The Government have made public 5,000 files from the National Archives on UFO reports across Britain made between 1979 and 1987 to dispel conspiracies of cover-ups of flying saucers and aliens.

The first batch of files to be released includes a report by two Kingussie policemen who spotted a massive "platinum-white" sphere in the sky during a routine patrol on the A889 between Dalwhinnie and Laggan on Hogmanay, 1984.

Constables Donald MacLeod and Alasdair MacDonald were amazed to see the giant orb in the sky to the north of them.

"It was about the size of a football on our windscreen, but the bottom of it was hidden by the hills in front, so it was far away," recalled Constable MacDonald, who is now based in Dingwall.

"Donald and I watched it for a couple of minutes, thinking, 'What the hell is this?' It just wasn't natural. I think I put in the report that it was magnesium white, and then it sort of imploded; it shrunk down in size until it disappeared.

"It wasn't hidden by clouds, but we were asking each other if they had seen it too, and we were both positive we had, so we decided to report it to Inverness.

"It was off to the north of us, so we thought people in Inverness would have been able to see it too, but there were no other reports."

Constable MacDonald, who was based in Kingussie from 1981 to 1985, stands by his story, despite immediate scepticism on the part of staff at Northern Constabulary headquarters in Inverness.

He said: "To be honest, they thought we were taking the mickey, and at the end of the day I have never heard anything official about it since, but we knew what we saw and we thought it should be reported."

He is still happy to discuss his not-so-close encounter with the UFO, and regularly tells colleagues of the strange sighting.

"In fact, I was chatting to colleagues about it a couple of days ago, and a few others mentioned they had seen things like that they couldn't explain but not everybody reports it," he said.

"I know it happened on Hogmanay, but we were both on duty and sober. In fact, I don't drink at all, so that rules out one explanation people come out with.

"It wasn't covered by clouds and it wasn't the moon. No one knows what it was."

Another sighting revealed in the records happened just over two months earlier when staff in the operations room at RAF Kinloss were told of a 50-feet-long "orange-yellow flame", four feet across, seen by witnesses at Tomintoul as it descended towards Grantown.

Around the same period, delivery driver Clement Muir, of Duke Street, Kingussie, reported seeing a saucer-shaped craft with an orange light on top as he drove along the old A9.

"I only saw it because the car in front had stopped and the people were pointing into the sky," he said.

"It was a grey, round thing with an orange dome on top. We watched it for a few seconds and then it shot off at some speed.

"I told my boss about and he phoned the papers to tell them about it and then I started getting calls from all sorts of people asking for details.

"I don't think any of them were from the Government or the Army or police, just journalists, but I didn't want to talk about it.

"Folk weren't believing me so I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw something like this. I never really talk about it these days."

Mulders and Scullys wanting to wade through Britain's very own "X-Files" can see them at ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk and anyone can file an alien abduction report with www.ufowatch.com – providing, of course, that they have had their own close encounter with extra-terrestrial life.

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