The Skipton Lane Encounter

The account places two officers on night patrol on a country lane near Skipton in 1978. Rounding a bend, Sergeant Dodd and Constable Dale are described as coming upon a large silent white disc hovering over the road. The telling gives it a domed top, darkened portholes, flashing coloured lights and three globes protruding beneath. It is said to have thrown heavy static across the police radio before moving slowly away and appearing to land in a hillside forest.

What is on the record

The archive resolves two named claimants, Anthony Dodd and Alan Dale, both police officers, from a single reporting channel. The document trail here is worth stating exactly. The DEFE file linked to this case is Ministry correspondence that lists a matching report — January 1978, 2:30am, Cononley near Skipton — and directs the reader to the files that hold the paperwork itself, DEFE 24/1207 to 1211. Those files are not yet in our archive. So the Ministry's own index confirms the report exists; the report itself we do not hold, and under this archive's strict rule an index entry is not corroboration. The link has been reclassified accordingly.

The rest is thin in the usual ways. One channel carries the telling. The vivid particulars, the portholes and the three globes and the radio interference, rest on the two officers' description as retold. What the correspondence confirms is that a matching report sits in official files we have yet to ingest.

Why it sits where it does

Skipton grades L3 on its two police claimants. It stood at the document-corroborated tier while the DEFE link counted as paperwork; an index entry pointing at files we do not hold is not that, and the 2026 audit reclassified it. Ingesting DEFE 24/1207 to 1211 would settle the question properly. What was over the lane near Skipton is not resolved here.