Is there life beyond our own planet?

Mysterious objects in the sky have fuelled the debate and the Hartlepool and east Durham areas are no strangers to reports of UFOs.

CHRIS CORDNER takes a look at local sightings through the decades.

FROM star-like shapes to spinning lights.

We have been struck with awe at reports of UFOs.

The late 1960s and early 1970s proved a real turning point in local sightings.

UFOs: Fact or fiction? > >

But there have been precious few reported sightings in the last decade.

In 1967, James Lupton was walking to his home in Edinburgh Grove when he saw three lights and watched a dark circular craft until it drifted out of sight.

Two years later in April 1969, the Northern Daily Mail headline read: "Police Out As Fireball Seen Over Hartlepool."

Officers searched an area between Hart and West View after a man reported seeing something crash in a field. They found nothing.

There were reports the same night from residents in Peterlee and Wheatley Hill of an orange object travelling fast and with sparks coming from it.

In 1975, Teesside scientist Mr Robert Wynford Wood said he had discovered a "twin earth" which was responsible for sending flying saucers to investigate our world.

A year later, in February 1976, schoolmaster Les Best and a group of six pupils were on sandbanks at Hartlepool Golf Club when they spotted a bright light in the sky. It hovered before the stunned spectators lost sight of the object.

In July 1977, Seaton Carew man Michael Dickinson reported a "discharge" emerging from the ground at Greatham Quarry. It was 4ft high and 2ft wide. It looked metallic at first and then went blurred. It jumped up 30ft and shot off at terrific speed.
A real peak for UFO sightings was in 1978.

Nigel Watson and John Clarke were school pupils at the time. They drew the attentions of their Henry Smith schoolmates to an object in the sky at around 11.15am on Thursday, June 24.

Their teacher, Les Best, also spotted an object which "resembled a seagull but without a tail".

He said there was a continuous noise rather like a jet engine.

The next year, two Hartlepool schoolgirls, Julie Malhon and Jill Purchon, were woken at 3am on a Saturday morning by a mushroom shaped object outside their bedroom window. The object moved out from Hart Station towards the sea.

Also in 1978, teenager Nigel Watson, 16, also from Hart Station, had his second UFO sighting in two years when he reported a long orange object with a dome on it while he was out with friends.

In 1980, two girls cycling from Hartlepool to Hart noticed a "huge pyramidal object" which moved from east to west and back again before vanishing.

Then in 1983, Wingate resident Donald Miller reported "a blue light similar to lightning travelling across the sky in an easterly direction."

In 1994, Rob Sweeney and Rob Walker were driving down the A19, near Peterlee, when they saw a large light like a type of torch coming down towards the ground.

By 1997, the Mail had received reports from readers that they had seen motionless V-shaped objects in the sky.

But experts from the British UFO Research Association claimed the sightings were nothing more than laser lights in the sky.