John Gibirdi, 32, was driving along Boys Lane in Fulwood with eldest daughter Claudia, eight, when a bright light in the sky stopped them in their tracks on a cold but clear night last winter.

The father-of-two, from Wildman Street, said: "We were going down a lane and I saw something in the sky. It looked like a star but a lot brighter and I wondered what it was.

"The underneath looked like the underside of an iron and it was a copper colour. It looked like it was reflecting the sun but it was dark.

"It was moving very slowly. I was amazed, I don't know what it was and I've never seen anything like it before.

"I thought it might be a spycraft but then it wouldn't have been lit up."

Construction officer John and his daughter sat in the layby and watched the silent object hover above for around 15 minutes before returning home to tell sceptical wife Julie about the experience.

"She didn't seem as interested and everybody at work made a bit of a joke about," John said.

"But I was that captivated watching it, I forgot about where I was going
"I have seen a few things in the sky before but they have always looked more like aeroplanes. This didn't resemble anything I'd seen before – the way it moved and the colours. It was a little bit smaller than a plane."

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) released files which saw Lancashire ranked as third for having the most sightings of unidentified flying objects in recent years.

Nick Pope, who worked for the MoD for 21 years and was responsible for investigating sightings across the country, said: "While there's no evidence of little green men in these files, they should be of immense interest to sceptics and believers.

"Most of the UFO sightings here are probably misidentifications of aircraft lights and meteors, but some are more difficult to explain, and include cases where UFOs have been tracked on radar."

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