Pat Dollard

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This photo was taken in 2008 by the mysterious Internet persona known as ‘Raji’ before he oddly went missing.

THE New Zealand military has released hundreds of previously classified reports detailing claims of unidentified flying object sightings and alien encounters.

The reports, dating from 1954 to 2009, were released today under freedom of information laws after the New Zealand Defence Force removed names and other identifying material.

The reports range from the downright wacky to the intriguing.

Accounts came from people in all walks of life, including air force personnel, commercial airline pilots and passengers on aircraft, and even a New Zealand prime minister took a close interest in one case.

The most detailed accounts were from pilots who reported mysterious lights in the sky, providing maps, positioning data, and drawings.

Among those is New Zealand’s most enduring flying saucer mystery, dating from December 1978, in which the crew of a cargo plane reported seeing bright lights in the sky above the South Island coastal town of Kaikoura.

Their account was backed up by blurry footage filmed by a news crew for the state-owned broadcaster Television New Zealand.

Mysterious objects also reportedly appeared at the time on air traffic controllers’ radar screens but no other aircraft were in the vicinity.

The reports show that the late Sir Robert Muldoon, then prime minister, took a close personal interest in the Kaikoura incident.

Investigators believed the lights of a squid boat could have been to blame but the case was never satisfactorily resolved.

Suzanne Hansen, a flying saucer researcher who has studied the incident, said last night: “It is obviously something we can’t explain.

“We don’t know what it is, but it is certainly something that is unidentified and non-conventional.”

The documents show that every respondent, no matter how outlandish their claim, was treated with courtesy by officials.

While many reports were dismissed as the planet Venus, meteors, weather balloons, and even the Moon, one routine response was: “Thank you for the opportunity to look at your sketches.

“They are returned with thanks.”

In about 2000 pages of documents, members of the public, military personnel and commercial pilots outline close encounters, mostly involving moving lights in the sky.

Some of the accounts include drawings of flying saucers, descriptions of aliens wearing “pharaoh masks” and alleged examples of extraterrestrial writing.

Before their release, Air Force squadron leader Kavae Tamariki said the Defence Force did not have the resources to investigate UFO sightings and would not be commenting on the files’ contents.

“We’ve just been a collection point for the information. We don’t investigate or make reports, we haven’t substantiated anything in them,” he told the Dominion Post.

The original documents on which the reports released today were based will remain sealed in the national archive, some until 2080.