Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Ian Jones
Release Date: 30/09/2024
The Sighting: Occurred in 1977
Time of Year: Probably 15th – 16th September
Time of Day: Between 8pm and 9pm
The Place: West Heath, Birmingham
West Heath is a residential area of Birmingham, England on the boundary with Worcestershire. Forming the larger part of the ward of Longbridge and West Heath it is situated between Kings Norton, Northfield, Longbridge and Cofton Hackett. It is just to the north-west of the A441 Redditch Road.
Sighting Description
Kaz Kelsell's description of her sighting:
“I was 14 when I saw a UFO in West Heath on an evening in 1977. The time of night was about 8-9pm. It was about September, clear sky. I was on the Fordrough near the shops. Near Aire Croft. I was waiting outside a phone box waiting to use it, when I looked up and about 100 foot away, there was a large UFO hovering above a house in Aire Croft. It was, the size was smaller than a helicopter. Big enough to see from where I was.
It was near the roof, directly above the bedroom window. No noise at all, even when it zoomed off. It was silent, large, a strip of different colours not like a plane nor a police helicopter. It hovered over the house for at least 3-4 minutes. I was in disbelief what I was watching. Then a young lad came to use the phone box and he saw it and he was more frightened than me. He was shocked and watched it too.
Then, all of a sudden, it shot across the evening sky, no sound. Your eyes could not follow it as it went at top speed. I can't tell you west to east, but it was on the left of my vision then shot across the sky to my right.
He looked at me and I was stunned. I got in the phone box and rang my parents to say I was coming home late and I told them that I had saw a UFO. They didn't believe me. I got home about 9pm-ish and on the local radio BRMB, people were ringing up saying they had seen a UFO. My parents had nothing to say after that.
Years later, I was watching a programme on UFO's and Shaun Ryder was in Manchester in Sept 1977 and he saw one too. I think it was the same one. Shaun Ryder saw one around that time in Manchester. I know he described his experience on a programme he was in about UFO's. This was a few years ago on the tv. Reading the article, it seems his 1977 experience was 6.45am. Next day.
I have told only a few people in my life and this is the first time I have drawn it, the colours were so bright and shone through the porthole- looking windows. It was spinning that fast, but you could see the colours.”
I asked Kaz whether she felt any emotions, like being frightened? Her response was:
“Funny enough not frightened but more what the hell? That's a UFO and what are they doing hovering over that house... not thinking that they could be taking someone. The lad near me was more frightened than me.”
The shops where Kaz had the sighting in 1977 have long since been demolished, along with the phone box. Kaz kindly forwarded some map prints showing this area and marked on details of where she was and where the object she saw hovered above the houses nearby.
Above is the local area, with the arrow pointing to Aire Croft.
In the above aerial photo, Kaz was standing approximately where the “0” marker is on the white car, where 26 The Fordrough is now. This was where there were shops in 1977. The phone box she was waiting outside of was located there. The object was roughly directly above the house at about 9 Aire Croft. Note that on this recent photo there are mature trees between where Kaz was standing and where she saw the object, but Kaz reports that they were not there in 1977. So, she had a clear view.
Below is a 2024 photo of the same area, with a phone box in the top right-hand corner, above the red line. If Kaz was standing there, observing the object, and it moved away from her left to her right side then it moved in an approximately NW to SE direction.
Below is a May 2022 picture from the rear of the property, showing the position in which Kaz saw the object, with added notes by the witness.
Below is the position of the object above the house, from the front of the property (May 2022 photo).
The distance between Kaz and the object was quite close. As such it falls into the Hynek classification system as an example of:
Close Encounters of the First Kind (CE1) – Sightings where the UFO, whatever its appearance, comes near enough to a witness—typically within about 500 feet—that details of the UFO can be readily observed. There is no interaction with the witness or the environment.
Kaz was able to see the shape and size of the object and that it was spinning and details of port-hole type windows with multi-coloured lights shining out through them.
Shaun Ryder's Sighting
The report by Shaun Ryder Kaz refers to is described in an article in The Guardian on 2nd November 2013:
Here is what Simon Hattenstone, who wrote the article, reported he said:
"Shaun Ryder was 15 when he first saw one. He'd just started as a messenger boy at the post office, and was walking to the bus stop on Hilton Lane, Little Hulton. It was 6.45am, pitch black when he looked up into the sky. "At first it was still, and then it went, 'Voooooooom!' And then again: 'Voooooooom!' Classic zig-zag, hovered, then went off at 10,000 miles an hour. Like Star Trek. Boom. Gone. Yeah!"
He then describes another sighting:
"Another bus stop a few months later in 1978. This time he's at Irlams o' Th' Height in Salford, it's around 5pm. "Hundreds of lights going across the sky really slow, and I'm thinking, 'God, are we being invaded?' The next day in the papers it said: 'Mysterious lights in the sky – lights at Salford rugby ground have gone mad.' And that was bullshit because when the lights at rugby grounds start moving around, it's nothing like these."
These accounts were in a much longer article about Shaun’s interest in UFOs and was promoting his new 4-episode tv show, which started later that month:
Then, on the This Morning TV show on 8th November 2013, he gave more details about that first sighting:
He was on the way to a bus-stop:
"It was about 7am, I saw this thing just hovering then it just shot off, stayed still, shot off again, did a sort of zig-zag, came back over the bus-stop, stayed there for a few seconds then shot off, that was like 1978."
Unfortunately, in this second source, Shaun says it took place in 1978, which is several months later than he implies it happened in the Guardian article, which was closer in time to when Kaz says she had her sighting. Therefore, with this confusion over when they happened, linking these sightings is not possible.
Other Sightings Around This Time
As Kaz reports, when she got home she heard many people phoning the local radio station BRMB about having seen something the same evening. I did contact BRMB, but had this response, which is not surprising given how long ago this was:
“You are talking about something from a very long time ago. There is nobody working at the new BRMB who was there at the time. There is a Facebook group/forum called BRMB radio remembered that may give you answers.”
I have placed a request on this FB group’s page, but after several weeks have had no response at all.
The newspaper reports at the time I have found are for 15th and 16th September 1977 in the Wolverhampton Express and Star. On the 15th September it wrote about many people having reported strange shapes flashing in the sky and coloured lights on the objects. On the 16th September it wrote about many UFO sightings locally in the Black Country, probably debris from Skylab [my italics] and that Beacon Radio had been flooded with reports.
The first report for the 15th September does suggest similarities with what Kaz reported. The second report, on the 16th September, is a clear attempt to debunk things - there was no debris from Skylab anywhere over the UK at anytime during 1977, so whoever thought that “explanation” up hadn’t done any research.
However, taken together, these articles do confirm there were many reports of something unusual in the skies during the middle days of September 1977 in the West Midlands. I have not found any reports of colourful objects similar to that Kaz describes, anywhere else in the UK around that time.
Conclusions
Kaz has provided a detailed account of what she saw, with a clear drawing of the object. She saw it fairly close up – less than 100 yards away above houses. She saw it for several minutes as it was stationary. It was smaller than a helicopter. She saw it leave the area at high speed. She did not feel frightened, just a bit stunned/surprised. A young lad also saw it and reacted as being frightened.
It was not anything to do with the weather at the time, because the sky was clear. It was not something astronomical that was mis-identified, because it was too large and colourful and moved quickly. It was not an aircraft, or a helicopter, because these are very loud and do not fly around, or hover, in the way Kaz describes, nor do they look the same as the object she describes.
It was not a glider, because these do not remain stationary for minutes over a housing estate and do not fly away suddenly at top speed. Nor do they fly at night, or have lights. It was not a balloon, blimp, kite, or similar aerial object, because these move with the wind and would not be stationary for several minutes and then “shoot off” at top speed, too fast to follow. Drones were not around in 1977. It was not satellite debris, because that wouldn’t hover in the air, nor would it then shoot off horizontally and disappear from sight. Debris falls and crash lands somewhere. There was no satellite debris reported over any part of the country during that year.
Therefore, unless more information becomes available to help identify what Kaz saw, this has to be filed as an Unidentified Flying Object / Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Did anyone else see this object anywhere over Birmingham during September 1977? If you did, please get in touch with BUFOG.
Copyright Ian Jones 2024
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