This is my first ufo experience, occurred in summer evening (still daylight) in derry city. northern ireland, can't remember the exact year. but between 1975 to 1978 but 1976 seems right, i was around 10 years old and playing with my friends and there was lots of other people present because of the warm summers evening. anyway we were sliding down a embankment on cardboard because the grass was dead like straw from dry summer. some older kid shouted "look at the lightning"! we stopped playing to look but couldn't see it, there was absolutely no sound of thunder at all, anyway we continued to play, then possibly the same kid shouted again look at the flash! we all stopped to look but i couldn't see it. we were all looking across the river foyle from the creggan estate towards the waterside over 2 miles away and we were on top of a hill. so the i saw the flash but no sound, and again and again, it travelled through the clouds very slowly, but only appeared when it flashed, i thought it was lighting, it flashed again in another position, further north, and again further north, then some shouted it flashes every 3 minutes, then i saw it again, it was a huge white sphere with a lighthouse type bean flashing across the sky, and we confirmed it was flashing every 3 minutes, there was no thunder at all, and i've seen thunderstorms across the river and it was nothing like that. when i saw the sphere i saw it between the clouds, that's the reason i saw it clearly, sometimes it flashed inside the clouds. the size was bigger than the sun (to compare) which was towards the nw, we have long summers days because we are 55 degrees north. we all knew it wasn't lighting but some of us called it a ufo, the whole street saw it. we lived in the creggan estate derry which was one of the troubles hotspots during the conflict with the british army, we usually had british army helicopters flying a few times each day over our estate, and we all knew the different types by name. it was far too big to be a helicopter, as the craft we saw was i estimate to be around 500 metres in diameter, but no less than 300m. i ran straight to my house to tell my dad and he said i should report it to a guy in derry who knows about that stuff, but i didn't. ever since that period i have had loads of different encounters with the paranormal from spirits to ufo orbs and visions of the future. i surely hope my account of what happened can be useful
