A close encounter with an 'otherworldly' light source left a Welsh driver feeling sick to his stomach, after his car was enveloped in a "tube of light".
The spooky January 1997 incident was revealed among previously classified papers that have just been released by the Ministry of Defence.
They show how the man - not named, but identified as a funeral director from Newport in South Wales - claimed his car was surrounded in a beam of light for five terrifying minutes, during which his radio and mobile phone stopped working.
According to the report, the man at first saw what he thought was a "massive star" moving towards his vehicle as he drove in Ebbw Vale.
Having stopped the vehicle, he was able to get out and walk about in the light, which was described as being very bright. Eerily, there was no sound, although the car emerged from the incident covered in "dust and dirt".
The driver, who was left feeling frightened and sick, developed a skin condition the next day.
Despite being a possible example of a close encounter of the second kind - a UFO sighting followed by a physical reaction - the incident nevertheless stopped short of the proverbial 'third kind', which would involve actual contact with alien life forms.
And the newly-declassified files reveal that no less a person than Winston Churchill took an interest in the flying saucer phenomenon.
In 1952 Churchill - who was serving his second term as Prime Minister - ordered his ministers to launch an investigation into UFOs.
In response to his typically plain question "what does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to?" the PM was served up with a litany of disappointingly rational explanations, including optical illusions, balloons, birds and mistakenly-identified aircraft.
