Red Rock, Wigan

Date: Thursday, 12 March

Time: 18.35

Location: Between Adlington and Red Rock, Wigan.

Age: 67

"Terence" (who lives alone on his narrowboat) was testing the engine on his boat and made his way along the Leeds/Liverpool canal from the direction of Chorley towards Wigan.

As he approached the Red Rock area near Wigan, he noticed a small black triangular shaped object hovering over the canal not far from the Crawford Arms public house. Thinking that it was just a plane he didn’t pay much attention to it at first and got on with his chore. However, as he got closer to the object, he started to feel very uneasy, as he couldn’t hear any engine noises. Fearing that the thing was about to crash, he steered the boat to the canal bank and made sure he was safe, as he continued to observe the craft, he noticed what appeared to be a "fat" hosepipe dangling from its underbelly into the water.

Overcoming his initial fear, "Terence" started to run towards the triangle, as he did so the tube shot up into it and it banked to the left and `swiftly` moved off into the direction of Winter Hill.

Flabbergasted, "Terence" ran back to his boat and tried to take stock of what he had seen.

He then stated that for some reason, he started to feel drowsy and went into his boat to rest - only waking up at 10.00am the following morning! (Previously, he has always got out of bed at 6.00am!)

"Terence" told a couple of his friends about what had happened but they only laughed at him, so he decided to contact myself, as he’d seen my phone number in one of the local newspapers.

After a long chat with "Terence", I found him to be very rational and level headed although he is a bit of a loner and a "character". He said that he even though he had travelled all over the place; he had never seen anything like it in his life.

Although it was quite dark, there was a lot of ambient light in the area making it easy to see the craft -that; (in his estimation) ,was only 100ft above the water.

He did not observe any lights on the phenomenon.