‘We’re female UFO researchers – and there IS something out there’ two women speak out against stigma

Two women who are part of the flourishing UK UFO community have spoken out against the stigma involved in their interest, and insist they are ‘normal people with an interest in the extraordinary’. 

Holly Anne Wood, 34, from Merseyside works in marketing and lives in a suburban house with her husband and child, there is no strange alien paraphernalia in her back garden and she doesn’t wear a tinfoil hat – the mother of two lives a perfectly normal daily life, but has had an interest in UFOs from a young age. 

In her early teens Holly stumbled across topics online such as Area 51 and the Roswell incident and her interest grew from there.

A CE5 meeting out in the wilderness, the term was first coined by Dr Steven Greer, an American UFO-ologist who believes that harnessing the power of consciousness can bring human beings into contact with ‘beings’. It is almost like a type of meditation – where people use the power of mindfulness and energy to connect with each other and then with ETs.

As a child she had an experience in Wiltshire, a well known UFO ‘hotspot’ within the community, that she couldn’t explain, but she now believes ‘is of an extra-terrestrial nature’. 

She described seeing ‘a craft’ as a child in the area, which is known to be a ‘center of mystical activity’ for both spiritualists and UFO researchers. 

She said: ‘Looking back, it was a craft, but I was too young to process it.’ 

The marketing manager is part of a booming CE5 community, which is an offshoot of the UFO researchers based around the world. 

CE5 is ‘encounters of the fifth kind’ and deals with consciousness and communication in relation to UFOs and aliens, or ‘beings’ as they are called in the community.

The idea is that through meditation and combined consciousness of a group of human beings that ET’s can be communicated with on ‘another plane’ or mental sphere.

CE5 started gaining traction after several well publicized documentaries on Amazon Prime with American researcher Dr Steven Greer at the helm explained the process, taking the UFO experience out of the common frame of tangible experience and into the realm of consciousness. 

The sun setting over a CE5 meet in the UK, attended by Holly Anne Wood – who firmly believes the ‘beings’ exist along with thousands of others who are part of the community

Steven Greer  founded the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) in 1990 to create a diplomatic and research-based initiative to contact civilizations.

The group defined CE5 or ‘close encounters of the fifth kind’ as human initiated contact and communication with extraterrestrial life.

CSETI claims to have over 3,000 confirmed reports of UFO sightings by pilots and over 4,000 of what they describe as landing traces.

The documentary Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact has Begun was released April 2020 and was watched by millions. The documentary was directed and written by Michael Mazzola and stars Dr Greer, Adam Curry, and Russell Targ. It was narrated by Jeremy Piven.

His previous documentary Unacknowledged, reached the top spot on ITunes and other digital platforms.

Holly, who is part of the community told FEMAIL: ‘The community is global, and is also huge in the UK. 

‘We have doctors, policemen, people who work in government, all sorts who attend our meets. We aren’t running around in tinfoil hats barking at the moon, that’s such a common misconception. 

‘Yes, UFO research attracts some strange people but that’s a minority – all communities attract people like that. 

‘I firmly believe there is something out there, and we are being drip fed information. 

‘I have had experiences during CE5 meets that can only be described as extraordinary and extraterrestrial. I think that there is a link between consciousness and ET’s and our understanding and science hasn’t caught up yet. There are greater minds than mine exploring this at the moment.

‘The evidence suggests overwhelmingly that our skies are busy, we just want to know who and why, it is my opinion that we are waiting full government disclosure.

‘I also know that whom-ever these beings are, they are of a peaceful nature and I don’t buy into any threat narrative or we would be toast by now. 

Holly says that she feels the beings are ‘peaceful’ and the CE5 community has people ‘of every kind in it’ from lawyers, doctors and even people in Government ETs and UFOs attract a diverse range of the population

‘My research and study tells me that they have been visiting for a very long time now and these beings could be from another world, time or dimension. My first hand experiences through CE5 has led me to believe they are of peaceful intent.

‘I haven’t seen a being in the flesh, but I’ve seen things that can not be explained both at CE5 events and other sky watching meets.’ 

Holly described a CE5 meet where an object came very close to the group in front of them all and moved ‘very quickly’, and she felt vindicated that through the practice of the movement – their research had bore fruit.  

Thousands of CE5 members gather in hotspots across the UK to communicate with ‘beings’ or draw in nearby crafts through the power of consciousness. 

A typical CE5 meet involves people meeting at a specified location, and gathering in a circle. They will then perform a kind of meditation that is the ‘consciousness’ Dr Greer refers to in his documentary. 

Holly reveals she has had many experiences through CE5 meets that confirm her beliefs. 

‘It’s a really nice community and it’s growing fast, I just would like to say that the stigma surrounding it is outdated and wrong,’she says. 

Abigail Hyslop ,52, a civil servant and author from Preston, and mother of three, knows Holly through the UFO community and is also a female researcher. 

Author and civil servant Abigail Hyslop is into the data side of UFO’s and helps co-ordinate one of the UK’s largest databases she says she ‘won’t believe things until she see’s them – and she has seen them’

She lives at home with her fiancée and has authored thrillers Do You See Me Now? and Pursued For Silence – which are both sold on Amazon.   

Her interest in life on other planets also began at a young age, from ‘looking up at the skies’, she has also ‘experienced things she can’t explain’. 

Abigail grew up in Galloway,Scotland, and said: ‘The skies captured my imagination as a child, and I’ve had the privilege to be able to view some of the darkest skies in the UK in Galloway – you can see things moving in an unatural way. 

‘The sky is so clear, that the first time you head out it gives you vertigo.’ 

Galloway, which is situated in the South West of Scotland is a dark skies park and protected from light pollution. It boasts more than one observatory and is one of the few places in the UK you can see a nebula or the Milky Way with little equipment and sometimes even with the naked eye. 

The mother of three said she renewed her interest with vigor in 2008, after sighting a large funnel cloud and snapping a photograph of it. 

The funnel cloud seen by Abigail in 2008, that re-kindled her love of sky watching.  A number of UFO reports that mention solid-looking, cigar-shaped objects, moving in and out of the clouds – causing the strange shape of cloud to appear. 

She said: ‘Weather phenomena are said to be linked to UFOs, and that moment affirmed a lot for me – I started to collect more data and get in touch with others who were like minded online.’

When she heads out alone, she takes her pet dog for protection, and come sometimes be called out to verify a sighting several times a week. 

She says: ‘Normally we are called out at least once a week.’ 

Abigail’s approach to the subject is more data focused, she co-runs one of the UK’s largest databases for UFO’s called UFOidentified.co.uk along with founder Ash Ellis, Natalie Pearce and historian Steve Yarwood. 

She has a degree in biology, so likes to approach things from a scientific angle. 

Abigail produces content for the website, along with the others, and helps collate data from reports. 

A report from July says there have been 30 sightings within the month, with 43 per cent of them classified as a ‘daylight disk’. 

Four per cent of sightings were of the first kind, meaning the sighting of a craft within 150 meters.  

Abigail will take her dog with her if going out sky watching alone, as a form of deterrent 

The use of apps, flight trackers and other technology has proven useful for Abigail and others, as they move into a more contemporary era of UFO research. 

It’s now easy to see the location of flights and satellites, whereas researchers of the 80’s and 90’s were quite literally in the dark.  

She said: ‘I don’t believe it unless I see it, and I have seen things. Our group is often called to sightings that we have to verify, and 99 per cent of the time it’s a satellite, a plane or even a military craft. 

‘We look at the science and rule things out, it’s when you rule everything out and you have nothing left – you then realize that it could be a UFO.’ 

Abigail doesn’t take part in CE5 meets but is ‘open’ to the idea if only to ‘rule it out scientifically’ – her role in the UFO community involves contacting the police, met office and military to add to the swelling collection of data of sightings across the UK.

Abigail and her UFO comrades like to check facts on reported sightings – including contacting the military, the met office and the police to rule out all other possibilities. She says: ’99 per cent of the time it can be explained as something terrestrial, it’s that one per cent that can’t be explained that keeps you looking and researching’

The team out and about researching reported sightings and sky-watching with a telescope. Abigail says they go out ‘at least once a week’

Like Holly she says: ‘I feel we are being drip fed information.’ 

However she doesn’t share Holly’s sentiment that the beings are peaceful – she said: ‘I honestly can’t say if they are peaceful or not, they could be, or they could be waiting until we finish ourselves off to use our resources. 

‘Until I know for sure I wouldn’t like to speculate on that.’ 

She also feels strongly about the stigma attached to the UFO community, and like many others would like it quashed. 

Abigail said: ‘In the media and films the person who believes in UFOs is always the one who is nuts, but we aren’t all living in our mum’s basement or driving around in a weird camper van or a little bit of a sketchy character. 

‘That’s simply not the case.’

An issue with technology however is that many sightings can be faked and photographs tampered with, something Abigail says often ‘happens online’.

Sophisticated editing apps can be downloaded onto most devices, and those who can master photoshop can produce very convincing fake imagery – many of which are then used on YouTube sites as ‘evidence’. 

‘We come up against this alot, people work hard to create fake photos and they look convincing, but it’s often just a really good photoshop job,’ she told FEMAIL. 

Abigail said many reported sightings can ‘seem like a UFO’ at the time, and has even been tricked herself by lighting and angles. 

‘One day I stopped my car to take a picture of what looked like a craft, but it just turned out to be a plane, the light had hit it at a certain angle – making it look different, a lot of experiences can turn out to be just like that, so that’s something I’m very attuned to,’ Abigail said. 

She also admits to moments of skepticism of herself, but has shaken it off and continued with her research. 

The author said: ‘Yes, I’ve had moments where I’ve thought “Am I just bonkers here?” but honestly? I have seen things I can’t explain and I will continue on in my research, if I’m bonkers then so is congress.’

For the first time in more than 50 years, the US congress held a meeting to discuss UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) as they are also known. 

According to CNN at the time of the historical congress meeting André Carson, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee’s Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation subcommittee said: ‘For too long, the stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis.

‘DOD officials relegated the issue to the back room, or swept it under the rug entirely, fearful of a skeptical national security community. Today, we know better. UAPs are unexplained, it’s true. But they are real.’ 

In May of this year NBC News reported that congress is ‘waking up’ to UFOs. 

The report said Navy pilots’ descriptions of unidentified aerial craft that behaved in ways well beyond any known technology in the arsenal of the United States or its top military rivals, Russia and China and must be ‘of another world’. 

Since World War Two pilots have reported unidentified aircraft globally, which has been added to a large database, this has yet to be disclosed by the US or UK governments fully. 

The Daily Mail reported the capture of an image, thought to be a UFO, captured by two young chefs in August of 1990. 

On August 4, 1990, two young men were working as chefs in a hotel in Pitlochry, a beautiful Highland Perthshire town, just outside the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland.

At 9pm, after a long day in a hot kitchen, they drove about 13 miles north along the A9 to Calvine, a spot on the edge of the Cairngorms, for a walk in the hills.

A 30-year-old, black and white photo of a UFO siting – described as ‘one of the best in the world’ has been unearthed, after being hidden by MoD. Was taken by a couple of hotel workers while hiking in the Scottish glen in 1990 Collect Image from RAF Officer Craig Lindsay

They hadn’t gone far when they saw a huge, solid, diamond-shaped object, about 100ft long, hovering silently in the sky above them. Terrified, they hid in some bushes and looked up.

 Minutes later, they heard the scream of a jet aircraft going north: In 1990, RAF Leuchars in Fife had two squadrons of Tornado fighters on 24-hour standby to intercept Russian intruder aircraft.

The jet came back and circled the ‘thing’ before heading off on its original course, as if the pilot had seen the object too and had come back for a closer look.

Eventually the two men stuck their camera out from where they were hiding and fired off six frames. At that point, the object shot vertically upwards and disappeared way, way up in to the sky.

Convinced they’d just seen a UFO, they took their photos to the Daily Record, one of Scotland’s leading newspapers. But no story was ever printed: The paper passed the pictures on to the Ministry of Defence.

Now the picture has been revealed for the first time since 1990.