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A strange aircraft spotted moving slowly and loudly across the night sky in Cannock has sparked UFO frenzy.

Hundreds of householders took to social media after first hearing a loud drone, then spotting the massive object move slowly over their homes.

Many believe that there is a very earthly explanation for a Close Encounter that has the community buzzing.

Locals in the Staffordshire town believe they saw a secret military protoype, possibly from a US aircraft carrier currently stationed off Portsmouth.

And the British UFO Research Association has not discounted claims that a drone might be behind the rash of reports.

The area has been a UFO hotbed since the early 1980s, but last week’s incident is the biggest in terms of the sheer volume of sightings.

Shortly after the X Files incident, at around 9pm on Tuesday, Facebook sites were awash with details of the UFO alert.

One individual posted: “My house was rumbling, and I’m still shaking. It was slow and it was huge.”

Another wrote: “Way too slow for fighter jets. It flew directly over our house, made a sharp left turn and carried on.”

The craft, sporting three red lights, was so low that many feared it was a plane in trouble.

Paranormal investigator Lee Brickley witnessed the same phenomenon, and began blogging as the drama unfolded.

He described the thunderous rumbling as like a World War Two bomber.

“Before anything could be seen with the naked eye, there was a deep and very loud droning,” he said.

“After around three minutes, the craft came into sight. It seemed incredibly large and astonishingly low in the sky with three red lights that were easily noticeable.

“The UFO travelled very slowly and many people thought it was about to crash.”

Lee claims you could still hear the growl of the engines after the mystery machine disappeared.”

Cannock journalist Hannah Hiles, who has worked for the Sunday Mercury, was also alerted by the thunderous noise.

“It was ever so loud and it went on for quite a while,” she said. “It was much more prolonged than a military jet. It was very curious.”

Another resident described the sound of jets followed by a loud whirr, akin to propellers.

The reports – and Lee is still collating them – have spawned three theories:

* Members of the public did see something from another planet, or

* They witnessed a plane in distress, or

* They saw an experimental military craft – a so-called “black project” – being tested over Staffordshire.

Lee added: “I’ve checked online with flight tracking services, and have concluded it would be impossible for this to have been a plane in trouble. There simply weren’t any flights in the area at that specific time.

“I also contacted Birmingham Airport to make sure, and they confirmed none of the flights leaving or arriving at the airport experienced issues that would have led them to fly so low.”

A number of recent UFO alerts have turned out to be drones, BUFORA, which takes a sceptical view of alien claims, revealed. And that could well be the explanation for Tuesday’s mass sighting.

A spokeswoman said: “I’m sure it is something that can be explained. Whether it will be explained is another matter.

“There are so many drones around.”

She stressed that tests of secret military machines are fact, not fiction.

“Development of new black projects – military hardware and vehicles – can take between 20 and 30 years. We are not going to know about the development and tests that go on. There are so many reasons why people see things in the sky.”