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Extraordinary new claims have surfaced about one of North Wales greatest mysteries after a fresh appeal for information.

Around 8.30pm on January 23, in 1974, people reported hearing a huge bang, with earth tremors felt amid claims of a brilliant light in the sky above the mountain range.

Families in the villages of Llandderfel and Llandrillo were settling down to watch TV when an explosion was heard and the ground shook which measured 3.5 on the Richter scale.

At the time police received reports of an object exploding in the sky, strange lights and a mountainside fire and arrived in the area and a RAF search and rescue team was scrambled from Anglesey.

Some researchers have claimed a UFO landed or crashed, with further claims “bodies” were retrieved and taken away by soldiers.

Other theories suggest it was a meteor shower combined with an earthquake – the epicentre of which was at Bala Lake – and the misconception of poachers on the hillside carrying lamps.

Retired nurse Pat Evans who believed an aircraft had crashed drove to the site and saw a pulsating orange and red glow on the hillside and other lights.

In October this year Russ Kellett, who has been researching the Berwyn Mountains enigma for 25 years, launched an appeal for other witnesses to come forward , after being approached by an American company in America to make a new documentary.

Mr Kellett has revealed he has received a further four key extraordinary claims, by people who say they were close to the incident, or knew officials involved.

One woman, who said she lived very close by, told Mr Kellett her dad worked for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and on that night she heard an enormous bang, she and her brother were told to go back to bed.

Later in the evening she could hear people talking in the house about making calls and when she looked out the window she saw something large being loaded onto the back of a truck, although she did not know what it was. She claimed there were a lot of soldiers in the area.

Years later her dad told her a Russian ship in the Irish Sea had fired a missile "in the wrong direction" and hit something which came down and was taken away by the military.

Another woman claimed her husband was in the military and knew about the incident. She said her husband told her a Russian submarine had fired at a UFO in the Irish Sea and hit a RAF jet which came down. She claimed her husband told her the military knew there was something going on with UFOs.

Another man claimed he was in the military and had been working in a team at one end of the A5 and claimed something "catastrophic" had gone wrong with an underground base "that was not manned by people of this world."

Finally Mr Kellett said an old man claimed he had been working with the RAF and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) had been working on a new weapon to bring down "bogies" or UFOS and it had been used successfully that night.

Mr Kellett says he is keeping an open mind on the latest extraordinary claims in his continued attempts to try and piece together what happened that night.

"You have to be careful with any new claims that it may be what people have heard or read being repeated back to you," said Mr Kellett.

"Sometimes there are people who just like to be involved in an event such as this and want to say they were there.

"On the other hand, why would these people in their 50s, 60s and 80s contact me to give me these stories. The people who contacted me appeared to be genuine.

"I have been researching this for 25 years now and am still trying to get to the bottom of what happened that night."

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