Yorkshire UFO expert who ‘saw an alien as a child’ on his search for evidence

A ufologist from Yorkshire who claims to have met an alien as a child has opened up about his encounter and travels to UK locations in pursuit of more sightings – including to Bempton Cliffs.

Ben Walgate says he was around seven years old when he came face-to-face with an extra-terrestrial being in local woods, prompting him to later set up his YouTube channel 401 Files. Now 35, Ben, from Malton, travels to spots across the country where there have been recorded sightings.

They include Bempton Cliffs on the East Yorkshire coast, the North York Moors, Flamborough Head and Reminishin Forest in Surrey. Ben documents his trips and shares them with his 11.4k followers on the platform.

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Speaking to The Mirror, he claims he came across what he believes was an alien in broad daylight after wandering into a forest in North Yorkshire as a boy. Ben had been on his way back from a camping trip as a Cub Scout at Snowball Plantation, near York, when the minibus had stopped off to allow everyone to stretch their legs.

Venturing up a small embankment into a wooded area, the youngster spotted a derelict outbuilding in a clearing and went to explore. He said he potted the unknown creature 25 metres to his left.

Ben said he saw the spindly “green creature” with a tiny head, standing on two feet and well over six feet tall with oversized limbs. He described it as walking with a “stoop” as if struggling to stand or clumsily trying to keep a low profile.

Ben told The Mirror: “The wooded area wasn’t that dense so I got a good look at this thing. It might have only been a few seconds, but we made eye contact, it had black eyes.

“This thing was out of the ordinary, it looked at me I looked at this thing. It was definitely not of this Earth. It was such a weird vibe. Its head in proportion to its body was tiny.

“It’s not like the stereotypical alien with the grey skin and the big black eyes. This thing was more lizard. I’m not saying it had scales, it wasn’t snake-like.

“It was olive green from head to toe, a very sleek, slender-looking thing, dark black eyes, little tiny head, long over-proportional size arms that came past the knees. It was just other-worldly, it shouldn’t have been walking on two feet.

“This thing was walking right through the woods.” Ben said its attitude was “just so blasé” on coming into contact with him, and was convinced it was a prank so headed back to his bus expecting his pals to be laughing – but no-one said anything.

Ben described himself as an “outdoorsy” child who hadn’t ever really watched any Sci-Fi films or had any interest in alien lifeforms at the time and largely forgot about the incident until he was in his twenties. After remembering his experience, he began researching and found online groups of people who claim to have had similar sightings.

Around five years ago he set up his YouTube channel but, to his frustration, has been unable to return to the exact spot as he cannot remember where it was. The North York Moors is a key hotspot for sightings and being so local to Ben he has undertaken many expeditions there.

“I am still very scientifically minded, I won’t just jump to anything and say it’s an alien,” he said. “I’m getting out there and investigating some of these areas and following up on some of the stories that people have shared.”

His findings so far have included one strange object in the sky off the coast, and abnormally large footprints on the moors which he says were too big to be a local animal.

He added: “If there are intelligent beings out there, and I’m not saying there are, but it’s highly likely there are, if they were coming here for some reconnaissance or research, it wouldn’t be difficult in a place like the North Yorkshire Moors to stay hidden.

“The foot traffic there isn’t too heavy, you have the odd cyclist or dog walker and the area is 500 and something square miles of woodland and moorland.”

He said one of the main things many of these hotspots have in common is being close to military bases, including the moors, which contains the RAF Fylingdales base. Ben theorises otherworldly beings maybe “showing an interest in our military” or they are some level of “top secret military equipment”.

Last year, Ben and his brother staked out into the night at Flamborough Head and believe they saw a UFO over the North Sea. They were just about to head back to their van as the temperature dropped when Ben said they saw “five orange lights in a complete straight line”.

“It went right across the sky,” he added. “And we thought ‘what the hell is that thing doing? It can’t be a drone, it’s way too big, there’s no noise, there’s nothing, it’s just these five lights suspended in the sky moving really like nothing I’ve ever seen.’

“And then it was so weird because the thing shot out to sea and it was about 20 miles out to sea in a blink of an eye, and then we heard a fighter plane roar ahead above us heading in that direction. And this is where it gets weird, we thought this is strange, we’ve not heard a fighter plane or a plane all night and then the minute we see these five strange lights acting weirdly a fighter plane screeches overhead in that direction.

“As the fighter plane died out, we look up and it was literally the only little dark cloud in the sky, these five lights emerged eerily out of this cloud.” He described it as the “most bizarre thing” he’d “ever seen”.

Ben said the military must know a lot more than they have revealed but there is some hope following the release of a top secret report on ‘UAPS’ – unidentified aerial phenomena – by the US Pentagon in 2021.

However, he said whenever he or others in his community have tried to report sightings to the British government “it is long-winded and no one wants to touch it”.

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