ALIENS! Looking back on an alleged UFO sighting in Tipperary in 1969

As part of its archives series, RTÉ this week revisited a 1969 Newsbeat report detailing claims by several Mullinahone locals that they had encountered an unidentified flying object. The incident sparked rumours of alien activity in the area at the time.

The report features reporter Cathal O'Shannon interviewing local couple Kathleen and John Shelley about what they witnessed that night.

He begins by asking:

“What first drew your attention to the sky?”

John Shelley responds:

“A strange shape and a light.

At first, it appeared to us like a cloud with two lights shining from it. But the lights were not flashing on and off like an aeroplane.

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After we had travelled about two miles along the road, the object had dropped to what seemed like about 100 feet above the ground and was roughly 150 to 200 yards away. At this stage, it appeared to be hovering.”

O’Shannon then asks whether they could make out its shape.

“Not clearly at first,” John explains. “It was descending from the sky.”

Asked about its colour, he adds:

“There were three colours. An orange and crimson light seemed to come from the top of the object. The whole thing was surrounded by a mass of bluish fog or vapour, which partly obscured it.”

When pressed further on its form, John describes it as:

“Spherical.”

He continues:

“When we reached a point close to where we saw it hovering, I stopped the car and switched off the lights. It was moving slowly in a backward and forward motion while continuing to descend.

I looked over a five-foot fence to watch it and became quite frightened.”

O’Shannon then turns to Kathleen Shelley.

“What frightened you?”

She replies:

“I couldn’t understand what it was.”

Asked what she believed it might be, Kathleen says:

“I thought it might be, I won’t say a flying saucer, but certainly some kind of unidentified object. Something I had never seen before. Something unnatural.”

Kathleen remained inside the car during the sighting.

“I stayed inside and called John. I had the window down and could see it clearly, although not as well as John could when it was hovering.

We later discussed what we had seen and confirmed that we had both witnessed the same thing.”

When asked if the object had landed by the time Kathleen called him back to the car, John responds:

“No. It was just dropping below eye level.

I found it difficult to believe that anything could descend so quickly from that height in less than three minutes.”

O'Shannon interviews another eye-witness Ellen O'Donnell, who recounts a similar tale that occurred roughly a half hour after the Shelly's believed they saw the object.

In the field near the Mullinahone creamery where these sighting occurred, Cathal O'Shannon was later joined by Eddie Bergin, the South Tipperary Civil Defence Officer at the time, and his assistant Eddie O’Neill as they checked the field with geiger counters for possible signs of residual radiation from the alleged UFO. However, they found none. 

Were the locals in Mullinahone mistaken or are Aliens still hiding out in south Tipperary to this day... we may never know.

This 'Newsbeat' report was broadcast nearly 60 years ago this week on 26 February 1969, you can watch it online here.