Norfolk claims a spot in top 10 places in the UK where you are most likely to spot UFOs – but just when is the best time to look for alien visitors in the county?

Our tourism figures prove that Norfolk is a national and international hot spot, but new figures reveal the county is also a favourite for alien visitors, too.

According to a 2020 YouGov survey, one in five people in Britain admitted that it’s likely that aliens currently live on Earth, whereas 65 per cent said it wasn’t likely and 15 per cent were undecided.

From the early 1950s until 2009, a department in the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) documented and investigated reports of UFOs. Now, more than a decade after the programme ended, many of those formerly classified files about UFOs have been made available to the public for the first time.

Previously, some MoD files about UFOs had been published online at the UK National Archives website, but all of the agency’s UFO reports were released earlier this year.

The decision came after a British news agency filed a request for the UFO files under the Freedom of Information Act. MoD officials decided “it would be better to publish these records, rather than continue sending documents to the National Archives,” the RAF spokesperson said.

Weird Norfolk has written extensively about UFO sightings in the county.

There was the sighting in Hainford and Motum Road in August 1971,in Cromer on New Year’s Eve in 1978 ,in Dereham Market Place in May 1978and an incident which was documented by the CIA when a UFO was seen above South Park Avenue in Norwich in 1953 to name just a handful.

Fresh Student Living has collated the ‘top hotspots’ in the UK for spotting UFOs according to archive data from the RAF which reveals that the top place to spot UFOs is in the capital with others including Kent, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Essex , Stafford, Swansea, Warwickshire, Surrey and Norfolk.

The data looked at the numbers of sightings in just one year from the RAF archives and revealed that the optimum time for a UFO spotting is from 8pm to midnight (in other words, when it is dark and when witnesses are likely to be awake).

Surprisingly, given the infamous Rendlesham Forest Incident across the border, when there were a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights from American airmen in woodland in December 1980, Suffolk did not make the top 10.