Britain's real-life X-Files investigator has pledged to look into Bradford's UFOs of last month.

Nick Pope, who works for the MoD, promised to examine accounts of bright balls of light travelling across the city's skies on February 2.

He was part of a panel of expert speakers at Saturday's event called Open The X-Files at Pictureville which looked at everything from alien abduction to the mystery of the Turin Shroud.

In the audience was Russell Kellett who runs the International UFO Research Network from his home in Lidget Green.

He has been collating reports of the sightings that night, some from people who say light beams from the UFOs focused on two of Bradford's reservoirs.

"Something big happened on February 2 which was tracked from Manchester to Leeds and Bradford," said Mr Russell, who is sending the evidence to Mr Pope.

Open The X-Files featured Mike Dash of the Fortean Times, crop-circle creator Rob Irving, photographic expert Dr Roger Green and paranormal agony aunt Lynn Picknett.

Mr Pope took on the job of MoD UFO investigator in 1991 and has in his time looked into sightings of strange crafts in the sky as reported by RAF pilots and respected meteorological staff.

He risked his professional reputation by encouraging people to come forward with details of what they had seen.

"RAF officers would approach often just privately at a social function to actually report UFO sightings they had witnessed,'' he said.

"One chap said to me I didn't want to be known as Flying Saucer Fred in the officers' mess.

"It's a mistake to think of the MoD having a corporate view on things. There are sceptics and believers in every department."

Mr Pope said he was a huge fan of the X-Files TV series and said: "To be fair they research quite thoroughly about a whole range of paranormal subjects. When they produce a storyline they do bring out the sorts of things I have in my case files.

"But I have never run around any dark warehouses with torches and sadly there's no Scully," he said referring to beautiful X-Files female investigator Dana Scully.

Mr Pope said reports to the MoD of UFO sightings had doubled from about 300 to more than 600 since the beginning of the decade.

The Unexplained (Part 1) exhibition full of photographs of bizarre sightings is on show at the Museum in Exile, Little Germany, until April 19.

The Unexplained Part Two: This Time It's Personal, which examines the human side of such stories, opens at Cartwright Hall on April 18.

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