The UFO Phenomenon

Rare and unseen 1950s UFO report discovered in box at flea market

By T.K. Randall
August 3, 2026

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) While some UFO reports are well documented, countless others have been largely forgotten. One such forgotten case resurfaced recently after a rare account of an early UFO sighting was discovered in a box of junk at a flea market in south-west England.

The report was written by Barbara Graves of South Africa who described an encounter that occurred on March 8th, 1953 while she was visiting botanical gardens in her local city of Durban.

"I spied a round object in the sky, very high and moving," she wrote.

"We both agreed it definitely wasn't an aeroplane - it was a perfectly cloudless, blue sky, otherwise we would never have seen it at the height it was.""We watched it travel a good distance, and then it seemed to remain in the same spot for quite a long time - then went higher and higher until it was lost from our sight."

The sighting happens to coincide with a similar report filed by two South African Air Force officers who saw something very similar over the same area on the same day.

The letter has been described as a significant find.

"The significance of this letter lies as it is a genuine surviving first-hand UFO eyewitness account written in 1953, at a time when such sightings attracted worldwide attention but were often met with scepticism and ridicule," said Sworders Auctioneers spokesperson Mark Wilkinson.

"No comparable private first-hand UFO eyewitness letter from this period is known to have notably appeared on the open auction market, making the survival of this document exceptionally rare."

Source: Independent

Tags: UFO