A terrifed motorist had a close encounter of the third kind as she drove past Wigan, it has been revealed.
Files released to the National Archive by the Ministry of Defence this week include a letter from a woman who pleads for an explanation after a meeting with a UFO on the East Lancs Road.
The 38-year-old's frightening experience came as she drove with her mother from Southport to Manchester, past Wigan.
She said her progress was slowed "almost to a standstill," by a 1930s style car being driven be a "tall, stocky" man wearing a "strange German type hat."
In an effort to see what was causing the hold-up she looked out of her window.
She explains: "To my horror, above my car was an unusually shaped craft of some kind, about 30 feet above us.
"The lights on this craft were huge and very dazzling, the size of the thing was roughly about the size of a double decker bus, on its side, twice.
Mysterious UFO captured on filmUFO spotted in Wigan"The strangest thing though (here comes the hard bit) we both felt as though time had stood still, and it was very frightening indeed."
It is not the only time UFOs have been spotted over Wigan.
In July this year a man in his 30s sent film of a strange object hovering near junction 27 of the M6 at Shevington Moor to the Wigan Evening Post.
And earlier this month a reader emailed the paper asking if anyone had seen two orange lights hovering over Orrell Water Park that weekend.
Another letter included in the official UFO files reveals that a group called the Wigan Ariel Phenomena Investigation Team once asked the MoD if it had a code of practice for dealing with alien invasion
In this newly revealed letter the woman admits previously doubting UFO sightings and asks for a rational explanation for what she and her mother saw.
She also claims to have "lost" 55 minutes, and that a journey that should have taken just an hour lasted three-and-a-half.
But she admits: "I must say it was a beautiful thing all lit up, we did notice a sort of dome amidst the lights.
"But we were very scared. It was not a craft from this world."
The MoD files contain many other celebrated "alien encounters" that have taken place in Britain.
They include an incident in which an American Airforce pilot was ordered to shoot at a UFO over East Anglia and a woman claiming to be from outer space (the Sirius system, to be precise), who said her ship crashed in Britain in the 1940s.
