Fresh tales of strange sightings in the sky have emerged on the eve of a major conference into one of Suffolk’s most debated “supernatural” events.

As witnesses, researchers and authors prepare for Saturday’s Rendlesham Forest Incident Conference, two brothers have told of their own unexplained experiences.

Teenagers Alex and Leon Pattersson were sledging with their father in East Bergholt in December 1980, just days after the reported Boxing Day sightings, when they encountered a light in the sky that neither has ever been able to explain.

“It was getting on for twilight, when the light was slowly starting to fade, but it was not yet gone,” said Alex.

“It was me who saw the object first; it didn’t have any definite edge, it was just like a massive ball of white energy – it was huge. I caught it in the corner of my eye. It was a few hundred feet in the air and then it came to a stop and hovered above an oak tree. There was no noise, it was as silent as you could imagine and then literally, from standing still,it shot off right across the Dedham Vale – you could have clicked your fingers twice and it was gone.”

Alex, who was a 15-year-old student at East Bergholt at the time, said he was shocked and scared by what he saw, but did not obsess over it and never saw anything similar again.

“We’ve just kept ourselves to ourselves and never reported it, but I know in my heart of hearts that there’s a connection with what happened and I just wanted it documented,” he said.

Leon, who was 18 at the time and back home from studying art in Canterbury when the sighting happened, has given a similar account. “We looked up and saw a light, much brighter than a star would be and with a closer feel to it,” he said. “And then it shot off so fast you just would not believe it, from being there above us it just disappeared. We’d grown up around Bentwaters and had seen shooting stars and planes flying over head, but had never seen anything like this.”

The Rendlesham conference takes place from 7pm on Saturday, at Woodbridge Community Hall.