Secret reports on New Zealand UFO sightings revealed

Wellington, Dec 22 (ANI): Thousands of secret reports detailing mysterious unexplained UFO sightings from the public and military personnel in New Zealand have been revealed.

Included in the files is every witness account of unidentified flying objects reported to authorities since early 1952, and the infamous 1978 Kaikoura mystery.

Detailed in more than 2000 pages of files are letters from people who claim to be in touch with alien beings, sketches from witnesses and media reports.

Some of the earliest reports come from the president of the Civilian Saucer Investigation (New Zealand) group, Harold H. Fulton, thanking a witness who wrote to him about a sighting.

The witness had seen a "strange, bowl-shaped object that he saw fall from a clear sky".

"As the object fell it made a hissing sound, hit the wharf pier he was standing on and then bounced high and landed on a Government survey vessel," Stuff.co.nz quoted the letter as stating.

The files had been held by Archives New Zealand, which was to make them available in February after requests from the public, but the Defence Force stepped in saying it needed to remove personal identification to comply with the Privacy Act.

Access to the original files will be restricted until the year 2050 at the earliest for personal privacy reasons.

Before their release, Squadron Leader Kavae Tamariki said the Defence Force would not comment on the files' content, and that it did not have the resources to investigate UFO sightings.

The director of research group UFOCUS NZ, Suzanne Hansen, said she had been trying to get hold of the files for nearly two years.

Hansen said she hoped the files would reveal more detail about some of New Zealand's most famous cases, including the Kaikoura sighting on December 21, 1978. (ANI)