THE mystery surrounding an apparent sighting of a UFO above a power station 25 years ago deepened further when an amateur radio operator raised the possibility the 'light in the sky' actually landed in a local farmer's field.

Robert Bennett revealed how in January 1978 he sat for five hours in his living room with three policemen, listening over the wires as enthusiasts and police tracked the craft across St Helens.

He claims that from conversations he heard between officers in his Nutgrove home and those on the ground, the UFO actually landed on a field in Rainhill.

The 71-year-old came forward with his version of events after former St Helens journalist, Ian Brandes, wrote in the Star of how the mysterious sighting had recently been logged in a X-Files style police database.

Ian revealed how Detective Constable Gary Heseltine had officially entered the sighting above Bold Power Station in the Police Reporting UFO sightings logging system.

Hovered

The serving officer with the British Transport Police in the South of England, who founded the unique log, says the St Helens sighting is classed as a sighting of major "Defence Significance".

DC Heseltine even says there is excellent circumstantial evidence that the craft, said to have hovered over the power station before shooting away at speed, was a genuine UFO.

Now, 71-year-old Robert Bennett, a former maintenance worker at the old Varley's Foundry on Atlas Street, Fingerpost, has come forward to add his side of the story.

Aged 46, back then, Mr Bennett says he was operating his radio when he picked up a message from the president of the Liverpool UFO society. The ET enthusiast asked Mr Bennett to phone the police and explain the goings on.

Mr Bennett, who was with wife Jean in his house, said: "With a bit of scepticism I phoned the St Helens police and told them I had just had a radio call about a UFO sighting. Everything went hush, hush on the phone and then they said they were sending someone up straight away.

"Three officers, one who I think was high-ranking, arrived at about 10.15pm and stayed until about 3am."

During the small hours he was instructed to relay messages to the radio amateurs chasing the craft, but also listened as police talked via radio with officers also on the object's trail.

He added: "From what I heard there were officers in the car trying to follow it and I believe it did land in a field in Rainhill and two police officers, a PC and a WPC were 20 yards away from it when it started to take off."

Mystery

The incident is now chronicled as No.44 in the database, that contains 84 official sightings of UFOs between 1950 and 2002.

However, what did hover above the power station that night still remains a mystery to the pensioner who says "he has no idea what it might have been". He says, though, that after 20 years he can finally tell the story that "died and heard nothing more of" without fear of people thinking he is "ready for the nuthouse".