The Peak District in England is something of a hotspot for UFOs and other weirdness. No-one knows why that’s so, but if you like to combine a bit of skywatching or ghost hunting with your annual holiday, the towns and cities bordering the Peak District National Park make a great jumping-off point.
Derbyshire was and still is blessed with local newspapers willing to give UFO sightings and the views of researchers an occasional good airing rather than sticking them in as jokey filler. I picked this story from my files more or less at random, mainly because the Sinfin triangle sighting comes with an eye witness’s hand drawn interpretation of what she saw.
The 1995 Sinfin sighting is a classic ‘while we were driving along’, one-off UFO encounter reported by a mother and daugher who asked to remain anonymous when speaking to reporters.
The daughter drew what they saw and the newspaper immediately jumped on its likeness to the (disputed) Belgian Triangle sightings from 1989-90.
Size isn’t mentioned in the article but from the context and the movements the pair described, it sounds the size of a stealth plane or a large UAV rather than one of the ‘bigger than a football field’ triangles reported elsewhere in the world.
Comparison with the Belgian UFO Wave of the 1990s
The Belgian flying triangle flap that produced the comparison drawing was far less informative about what witnesses actually saw – luminous effects in the sky, dancing lights, and the impression of a large shape, variously translated from French as a ‘plate’ or ‘platform’ – were among the earliest mentions to reach the English language newswires in 1989. Watching the story unfold, I remember it was quite a while before I read the word ‘triangle’ in connection with this mass sighting.
I personally don’t doubt that numerous witnesses saw something interesting overhead during the Belgian UFO wave. I can’t convince myself that they all described the distinctive black triangle shape pictured in the Sinfin UFO report, or that they necessarily all saw the same thing.
The Sinfin Triangle!
By Oliver Nieseward
These two UFO sightings look remarkably similar.
Yet one was made in Belgium last year, the other by an 8 year old Sinfin girl only a few weeks ago.
UFO investigators are convinced that what was seen, was an alien craft and describe the parallel between the two drawings as ‘fantastic’.
The Sinfin girl witnessed the flying triangle at Stenson Fields and later drew what she saw for a local UFO researcher.
The Ilkeston Express article continues, giving details of the sighting. The UFO researcher mentioned was named Peter Edwards. Omar Fowler, head of the Derbyshire Phenomena Research Association and keen follower of the flying triangle aspect, brought the fabled Aurora spy plane into the discussion towards the end of the article.
A separate article in the same issue documents Mr Fowler’s history, research, and views on UFOs as head of the Association. Mr Fowler, who I believe lived in the Sinfin area at the time of this sighting, passed away several years ago, but one doesn’t need to Google very hard to turn up more of his triangle-related interviews on websites and YouTube.
Belgium and Lubbock and Hoaxers – Oh My!
The iconic image of the round-cornered black triangle, and an assumed but perhaps mistaken connection to the V-shaped Lubbock Lights and other mass sightings, entered the story only after a famously clear photo of that shape appeared.
Skeptoid convincingly debunks some elements of the story, but I’d hesitate to put the whole Belgian UFO flap down to human error.
SOBEPS and “la vague Belge”
Skeptoid isn’t wrong about the origin of most of the surving evidence on the main 1989-1990 Belgian triangle wave. French UFO investigation group SOBEPS collated a lot of the original reports.
The Ufologie website of Patrick Gross presents an impressive amount of information on the Belgian UFO flap (“la vague Belge”), including a timeline of early sightings and locations per the SOBEPS investigation.
Rolls Royce and Secret Testbeds at Victory Road, Sinfin
Interestingly, as mentioned in this news piece about the Sinfin black triangle, the undated and unsourced rumours of secretive experimental testbeds at Rolls Royce’s Victory Road works are persistent to this day. They’re pretty vague about what’s been seen, when, and by whom. ‘Someone in the pub’ about covers it. I’ve come across these rumours myself – heavy hints of classified engine tech being tested somewhere on the Victory Road site at Sinfin – and not been sure if it’s entertainment for the tourists or solid local lore based on half-forgotten anecdotes from people who worked there.
The Rolls Royce campus is no remote testing ground for active flying, squashed as it is between two residential suburbs and near a major road. I once thought the stories of experimental aircraft might date from the Second World War era or the early Cold War, but maps show that even then the site was an unlikely base for flying craft. That doesn’t rule out bleeding edge engine testing on the site, though. These days there’s barely room to park on the busy campus, let alone take off or land anything bigger than a hobby drone, but oh… I’d just love those Rolls Royce rumours to be true, black triangles or not.
I Want to Believe…
Belgium’s UFO could’ve been strange lights, or a rhombus, or a square, a strip of lights, or maybe a black triangle big or small. There’s anecdotal evidence for all those and none. Sinfin’s UFO was definitely a triangle shape but the story dead-ends in 1995 with the little information contained in the newspaper report. I’m inclined to assume the Sinfin triangle was of Earthly origin, which makes it no less fascinating that it was spotted near a major population centre.
As for the wider black triangle UFO saga, I have no idea what to think any more. I grew up with this evolving story and watched it spiral out of control, with cherrypicked fragments of the story – edited highlights, if I’m generous – being repeated uncritically by source after source. It’s a legendary episode in the annals of UFOlogy, and any researcher needs to be cautious when interpreting legend.
I know this though: of all the UFOs and UAPs I’ve researched, that iconic low-flying, football-pitch-sized dark triangle with the four lights and the distressing low hum is the one I hope to see for myself someday.