Is this a reference to the Secret Service HQ on Vauxhall Bridge? I was a further upstream on the South Bank. The guy was flying his kite from the small park there.

I’d assumed the hotline was set up by UFO enthusiasts (but I wouldn’t know, I didn’t ring it).

“I once saw a UFO in London. I was working in a large office building by the Thames and saw a weird object hanging in the sky.”

Sounds like the office where you were working was the very same monolithic building by the Thames known for its UFO hotline. If my assumption here is correct, then you must have known that the line had been disconnected years ago.

So why did you attempt to phone it?

Next time Steve … just ask a colleague! That way you’ll save yourself 50 pence.

I called over a workmate and we both watched it. (He was a UFO believer and tried to report it to a UFO hotline number, but found it had been disconnected). Neither of us could make out what the thing was and this was in broad daylight with perfect visibility. It moved a little like a kite, swaying slightly but maintaining position as far as I could tell, but there was no string that I could see. We were the only two people in the office that day and watched it for around ten minutes before we had to go to a meeting. When we got back it had gone.

So that was my UFO experience. Except a week later I saw it again and this time I COULD see the string and the man on the other end – it was just a kite, a weirdly designed kite of a type I’d never seen before (or since). I called over my believer friend and pointed out the ‘UFO’ and the kite-flyer, but he just shrugged and went back to work.

Thinking back on the incident I was struck by the way my telling of it changed when I described it to other people: The sentence ‘I couldn’t see a string’ quickly morphed to the definite ‘There was no string’. I made a point of going back to all the people I’d told about the UFO to give them the explanation; there’s enough UFO garbage flying around as it is.

It’s so easy to be fooled. I recently came across a report of a man who observed formations of pulsing light crossing the horizon. He was amazed by the sight and even more astonished when he realised the lights were the setting sun reflecting from the feathers of migrating geese (the pulsing was caused by the beating wings). He said he would not have believed the explanation if he’d not seen it for himself.

JohKen – This is a big ol’ straw man. You’re confusing someone saying there’s no proof for alien visitation of Earth with someone saying there’s no life whatsoever in the Universe. HUGE difference. Carl Sagan, for example, didn’t believe in UFO reports but was very keen on the possibility of alien life somewhere out there.

Are there any reports of a monkey ever having been mistaken for a UFO in the past?

Regading the Huff Po – it promotes medical pseudoscience, which is what I said. I don’t care how wonderful it is otherwise – it deserves to be endlessly criticized for promoting dangerous medical nonsense. Perhaps we can shame it into irmproving its editorial policy when it comes to science.

Johken – the “open mind” gambit does not fly. I have an open mind to logic and evidence. Having an open mind does no erase the terrible logic and gullibility employed by the author. I am open specifically to the notion that we are not alone, and even that we are being visited – just show me evidence that isn’t pathetically laughable.

I have not experienced “inexplicable healing” – and I like how you dismiss this evidence out of hand with the “no true Scotsman” logical fallacy. That good confirmation bias. Speaking of confirmation bias – I am not angry, and not against the idea of alien life. There is simply no credible evidence that we have been visited.