I have been encouraged by two MUFON members to submit this sighting. I am now a ufo researchjer but was not prior to the event. I have copied and pasted this article over from my notes. It also includes severe long term after effects. I haven't been back to Wales since it happened but will soon to take photos so I can mark on the horizon where it was first observed and it's flight path over to us. Also a MUFON member has offered to make a 3d CG film of the event so you will be able to see what happened. I am ready to have hypnotic regression now and also would take a lie detector rest without prior notice.It was October the 4th 1996. My partner (at the time) "S", myself and my son had arranged to go to Wales for the weekend. We'd hired a cottage in Glyn Ciriog and invited His sister "D" and her son "J" and their uncle "Jn" along too. Most mundane details have gone from my mind now, the journey there and the daytime on Friday. I can remember walking to the shop with the kids and "S" and "D" and not feeling too good. I was edgy and irritated by "D" from some reason I have forgotten now. My next memory is it's nighttime, well it's dark, it could have been anytime really but we were all in the garden sorting wood out for the fire. I can remember this because we had a particularly large part of a tree we were jumping on to try and snap it but all that happened is we bounced off it, it was funny and we made a game out of it for a while.We must have had some food by this time and I remember going upstairs to unpack my things, I was in the bedroom with my bag on the bed when "S" started shouting me. It sounded urgent and the kids were screaming and so I thought something was wrong and ran downstairs. I found "J" and my son Louis just playing about, relieved I turned to "S" and asked what was wrong.He ushered me outside to a wall on our right and pointed out into the sky and said "look at that". I looked, all I could see for miles was thick dark cloud, he kept insisting and eventually I saw a tiny flicker of light. I said "It's lightning" he replied "no it's not keep watching" as I looked on it happened again, then again and again. It was just a little flicker in the clouds which repeated itself over and over. By now it was obvious that it had a uniformed pattern to the way it was lighting up. We called everyone else out after a little while and we stood and watched.I've no idea how long we were there until it stated to get bigger and we realized it was coming our way. It didn't just zoom over to us in a straight line, it kind of zigzagged, like it was following the contours of a valley or river maybe. But sure enough it moved to us at a steady pace. By this time we were all excited, I'm not sure what the children thought was going on. Eventually it was above the field directly in front of the house and we'd moved up the garden by now. It was a spectacular sight. We couldn't see the actual craft because it was in the clouds but I remember thinking how low they were. This object was only a couple of hundred feet at most above us. It had a large round central light which was blue ish white and had lines of light that were rotating coming from the middle to the outer edge which also was lit but they were rotating in opposite directions. It looked like the underneath of a mushroom but through the clouds the lights were rippling and gave it the effect of being almost like a jelly fish. The lights in the cloud made them look like mashed potato, highlighting the different densities of the clouds. I seem to remember noticing a red light above the white lights but I'm not 100% sure on that point now.I can remember us all stood as a group in front of a small hedge that bordered the field that was in front of the house, to our left was a small wall and behind us there was a patch of ground with a chain linked fence bordering the property, behind the chain linked fence was a small copse of trees. As we stood there watching the craft moved over and was hanging directly above us. "S" had gone into the house to ring our housemates Mark and "Jn" to tell them but there was no one in so he left a message on the answer phone and came back out. While "S" was on the phone I'd noticed that the sheep in the field in front of us were all lying down and were quiet. I don't remember hearing any external noises at all. Not even a hum from the craft above us.... just silence apart from our excited chatter.As we stood there something made me turn and look behind me. Behind the chain linked fence there was another object, it was maybe 25 feet high and was a sphere. It was shrouded in a swirling mist and pulsed a grey ish white light... on... off every other second or so. I turned to everyone and said "ooh look there's another one" and everyone turned around, looked at it and said "Oh yeah" with mild interest then promptly started looking straight back up at the one above us. It was gone from our minds instantly. At no point did anyone think "Oh [cms/tg/pd]! they've landed"!!! I can remember standing with the hedge in front of me and my son to my right, we'd tried to tell the kids that there was nothing to worry about, the lights were from a tractor and were reflecting off the bottom of the clouds. This might have worked for a while.. but not for long. My son suddenly started tugging on my clothes and I looked at him, he was terrified. He said with his little ashen face and really wide eyes "Mummy, mummy, a hand came through the hedge and touched my foot. It was not my imagination... I saw it with my eyes"! Still nothing registered. I turned to "S" and said, "come on, lets get them in they're getting scared" So off we trotted back to the house to get them inside. As soon as we walked through that door everyone just went straight back to being normal... "D" and "Jn" went in the living room to watch TV... and "S" started doing the dishes and the kids started playing. I was stood there agog! You'd think we'd just been watching fireworks and the display was over! I said to "S" "I'm going back out" and off I marched right to the bottom of the garden and stood right underneath it. Now you would think that the fact that there was a craft on the ground and a hand coming through the hedge would have registered in my head... but it did not. I still can't get my head around that.So there I am on my own a good hundred yards from the house standing by myself underneath a craft that must have been 60 feet across completely oblivious to the one on the ground behind me, stood in front of the same hedge that a hand had poked through to touch my sons foot. I can remember thinking "Ok.. now what"? I was awestruck and was full of wonder and amazement. Suddenly I heard something running towards me from my right, the sound was of two feet running quickly... it sounded like when a child runs across their bedroom quickly to grab something after bed time.... whatever it was bumped into me, brushed across my back as it went dragging my jumper with it. I didn't look, I didn't think, I just ran for my life in absolute terror. I can only remember taking three steps and leaping from the raised bit of the garden onto the patio in front of the kitchen door but realistically that would not be possible as I was so far away. I think it's quite safe to say that was blind panic. I shot into the kitchen shivering and shaking and trying to tell "S" without letting the kids hear. He just turned to look at the clock on the cooker and said "Well you haven't been out there long so you haven't had any missing time" like it was the most normal thing in the world. I was a mess. I made him shut the doors and lock them, close the curtains.. all that last defence stuff even though I knew that didn't make any difference!!! I can remember sitting in the middle of the bed shaking, not daring to even put my feet on the floor in case something was under the bed, I wouldn't even go to the toilet on my own.I can remember putting the kids to bed and hiding out in the bedroom, I left the door open so I could see the hallway and my sons bedroom door. "S" looked out of the bedroom window once and he didn't say it had gone which he would have if it had, he didn't say anything, he just closed the curtain again. Then we went to bed and went to sleep.The next day was dreadful. Everyone was arguing, "D" was screaming at me in the kitchen while I was making some sandwiches, I turned and told her to shut her mouth or else... so she went outside and continued to carry on hysterically at me through the window. "Jn" was being foul too. We were all in a state. "Jn" and "D" went out in the car with the two boys and me and "S" went for a walk.We walked into the village and saw someone stood outside the pub so we tentatively asked him if anyone ever saw lights in the sky in the area. He just laughed and said "if you want magic mushrooms they grow in that field over there". We didn't bother asking anyone else. We walked towards a hill we could see in the distance with a solitary gnarly looking tree on it. When we got to the top and looked around there was nothing to see for miles. We were hoping to see a town or anything at all because we thought 2well, maybe it was lasers from the roof of a nightclub or something" hahaha! Bloody good lasers if they were. As we stood there I felt something on my leg so I looked to see a massive ginger tom cat rubbing itself on me and purring it's head off! We were in the middle of nowhere! where the hell had the cat come from???? After realizing there was nothing to see we headed back to the house and got out maps. The nearest town was Wrexham and that was 16 miles away! "Jn" and "D" came back and the day grew worse, "S" ended up ringing to book tickets for the coach home, the thought of being in a car with those two was too much to bear. He booked the tickets and a taxi for 4.30 am and we sneaked off and left them there on their own. They'd been so horrible we didn't care, we didn't even leave a note.In hindsight I can see that this was their reaction to what had happened, but what I couldn't understand was why it was directed at me. My reaction to it was strong. I was terrified all the time. If I wanted to walk into a room and the door was shut I'd bang the door wide open fast so that if anything was hiding behind it I'd knock it senseless. I can also remember running up stairs and realizing the light wasn't on and running back down to switch it on before going back up there again. I couldn't sleep with the light off for years after this."S" and I split up after a while, I'd turned into a nervous wreck. I got my own house with my son and started to build a new life. The only problem was, was that I couldn't stop thinking about it. Some day's i'd think about it all day. Then because I was living on my own I daren't go to bed. I had a small window above the door in my front room and I'd sit looking out of it for hours looking for them... I don't know where I went in my head... I just used to sit and stare. Eventually I started to take amphetamines to stay awake all night and would still just look and stare. When my son was with his dad I was out partying all the time, anything to make myself feel good, and not be at home on my own. I took it to the extreme though, lost lots of weight, wouldn't eat... I think deep down I was trying to make myself disappear. No matter how much I tried to distract myself, every single day I saw those lights and heard those footsteps. It's safe to say I lost the plot and nearly lost my son. Things got so bad I eventually decided I couldn't cope anymore and my son would be better off with his dad anyway and I took a lot of pills and hoped I'd die. I'd pretty much been hoping I wouldn't wake up ever Monday after a heavy weekend. Thankfully i did wake up, I made some new friends but was still a mess. One day I found out I was pregnant with my oldest daughter. That was what saved me. I sorted myself out and made a nice home, she was what i needed to keep me from continuing in this death slide on self destruct. My nights were taken up looking after her and I hardly thought about the ufos for a while.I first talked about this in 2005 on the 25th June..... That was the biggest thing for me. Talking to other people about it and them taking me seriously. Even though this event terrified me and forced a massive paradigm shift onto me, I would not go back in time and change a thing. Actually maybe I would, maybe I'd stand my ground and look around to see what it was that touched me. Maybe I missed an opportunity for contact? But then looking back on my life there are many strange memories that I have that seem to make sense to me now. I have a feeling this was not the first time this sort of thing had happened and maybe that's why I wasn't afraid to go back out on my own? Somehow though I think that our behaviour that night was modified. Not manipulated but just to the point where we weren't afraid. How come we all forgot about the smaller craft on the ground? why didn't the fact that my son saw a hand come through the hedge register as it should have? He told me recently that at first he thought it was part of the hedge moving because it looked like twigs but then as it came forward he saw it was a hand. He suffered terrible panic attacks as a child after this and when I tried to hold him he would say "get off me your fingers are like twigs" and once he scrabbled around on the floor in a panic saying to me " I want my mum, where's my mum, can we go home now, I want to go home" He slept with me a lot because he heard strange noises in his head and felt like he was falling backwards through his bed and if he did he would die. I've had this myself and it's hypnagogia. A common thing for experiencers.