Case file · Close encounter
Broad Haven school sighting
Welsh schoolchildren reported a landed silver craft and a silver-suited figure.
1977 CE · 51.78, -5.10 · status: account
The account
Pupils at Broad Haven Primary independently drew a cigar/saucer craft behind the school; the wave of Pembrokeshire sightings that year became 'the Dyfed Enigma'.
The sceptical view
Children's testimony, possible misidentification and social contagion; no physical trace.
The researched reading
A charming school mystery that rests on children’s drawings made after they had talked to each other. Shared suggestion during a local UFO wave, a prank or a glimpsed vehicle explain it more simply than a landing.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Perception, memory or mind | 35% | The children talked together before drawing, the Pembrokeshire press was already full of sightings, and children’s testimony is highly suggestible; similar drawings can come from shared talk rather than shared sight. |
| Something known, misidentified | 25% | A vehicle, tank or work hut glinting in the field beyond the school, seen briefly by children primed by local UFO stories, is the simplest ordinary source for a silver cigar shape. |
| Undetermined | 15% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 12% | Fourteen children drew similar shapes and a teacher took them seriously, but no adult saw the craft and nothing was left behind. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | A schoolboy prank, or pupils playing along with one another, is common in school sightings, and the wider Dyfed wave had pranks and disputed silver-suit claims. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 3% | No weather or optical effect fits a landed object seen at midday. |
| Secret human technology | 3% | There is no reason a secret craft would land in a school field. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 2% | Nothing points to an unexplained natural phenomenon. |
Official position: No official investigation; the case became part of the 1977 “Dyfed Enigma” wave in the press.