They flew over the top of the hill and Battlesbury Barracks where they stopped and hung there for about a minute. Then one shot out of the sky at a 90 degree angle at great speed before it was followed a minute or two later by the other three.

Fifty years on and the people of Warminster still want answers over the mysterious outbreak of UFO sightings that propelled the country town in the south-west of England onto the national stage in the 1960s.

The Warminster case is one of the strangest cases of mass paranormal sightings cases registered in the UK.

Although strange phenomena were recorded in the area prior to 1965, it was in that year that the frequency of reports of mystery noises and sightings intensified.

On August 17, 1965, a "detonation noise" rocked houses on the town's Boreham Field housing estate before a "monstrous orange flame was seen in the sky, crackling and hissing".

There were also reports of strange sounds killing flocks of pigeons that year, as had also been claimed 12 months previously in 1964.

The phenomena then became known as the 'Warminster Thing' after scores of townspeople reported in late 1965 seeing an array of inexplicable sights in the sky, accompanies by noises and odd occurrences.