Were poet's mysterious midnight visions UFOs?

AN X-FILES expert has claimed a 19th-century poet who regularly saw strange lights over East Anglia may have actually seen flying saucers.

- By Mark Branagan

Dr David Clarke says much has been made of UFO reports by police officers, astronomers and military pilots down the years.

But poets who wrote about weird lights in the sky, calling them angels, demons, Will o' the Wisps or Jack o' Lanterns, have been ignored.

So-called "Peasant Poet" John Clare was one of the scribes who wrote about strange lights dancing in the sky and the lights were observed as late as the First World War. Clare, born in 1793 in the village of Helpstone, Cambs, chillingly described what he saw as "the midnight morris-dance of hell".