Something Otherworldly Over The Plant: The Far-Reaching UFO Encounter Of Steve Robbins

While making his way to the control tower of a petroleum plant in Teeside, England, where he worked in the summer of 1981, a plant operator suddenly found himself at the center of one of the strangest and perhaps little-known UFO encounters in British UFO history. And one that would have long and far-reaching consequences for the witness. It is also a case that exhibits details most often seen with other paranormal cases, and remains of interest to researchers today over four decades later.

While the case in question is not as well-known as others – even in UFO circles – it is one of the most detailed on record, and also benefits from having a second witness who can corroborate the sighting of the first, as well as other witnesses who, while not seeing the object themselves, certainly observed the main witness’s shocked demeanor at the time, as well as the bizarre events that unfolded around him in the weeks that followed.

The following account is based on a research article titled Night Shift by Gloria Dixon for the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA), and is intriguing and thought-provoking in equal measure.

A Cigar-Shaped Object In Between The Towers

At just before midnight one evening in June 1981, Steve Robbins was making his way back to the control room of the Phillips Petroleum Plant on Teeside in the United Kingdom, where he worked, when he witnessed something that would change his view on reality forever. ^[1] As he looked up to the sky, he noticed a strange aerial object flying between two of the towers of the plant at an approximate altitude of 100 feet. He estimated the object was around 25 feet wide and 100 feet in length, and it appeared to be heading toward the ground, albeit slowly and very much controlled.

Within a few moments, the object was directly overhead, and Steve could now see that it was distinctly cigar-shaped and appeared to be of a metallic steel-like exterior that was a dull blue color with some kind of neon-like glow to it. This glow was particularly bright around the edge of the craft and was a bright white-yellow color. Perhaps strangest of all, despite its huge size, the object was completely silent.

At this point, it appeared as though the object was heading directly towards four huge crude oil receiving spheres, a short distance from where he was standing. He watched in awe and panic as the object cleared the top of the spheres by barely a foot. He then quickly got on his bike and peddled as fast as he could towards the spheres and around to the other side of them. To his absolute shock, when he arrived there, there was no object to be seen. It was as if it had simply vanished into thin air. He looked around for several moments, hardly able to believe his eyes, before he peddled away once more, this time back towards the control room where he had been heading when he saw this curious otherworldly vehicle.

A Second Witness And A Previous Sighting

He arrived at the control room to find his work colleagues eating. Upon his arrival, however, they could all clearly see how distressed he looked, with one even stating that he looked as if he had “seen a ghost!” He blurted out what he had seen, after which he and his colleagues, including his supervisor, rushed outside to where Steve had witnessed the curious craft. Much like before, though, this strange aerial anomaly was nowhere to be seen.

The supervisor of the plant contacted Teeside Airport to ask about any aircraft activity over the plant. However, he was promptly informed that they had no information on any aircraft anywhere near the plant. Moreover, they had no records of any aircraft landing or taking off at the airport within the last hour. Following this, the supervisor reported the sighting to nearby RAF Fylingdales, who promptly questioned Steve as to exactly what he had seen.

Despite the surreal nature of the event, Steve was sure that other people must have witnessed the strange object, not least due to its brightness and its sheer size. He began calling different departments across the plant to seek out other potential witnesses. Eventually, he spoke to a security guard stationed at the tank farm approximately a mile and a half away from where Steve had seen the craft. He described an almost identical object that he had seen at the same time as Steve, and that was heading in the same direction.

Meanwhile, the supervisor of the plant had his own concerns. Around a month previously, another employee at the plant had reported seeing a similar object, only this one, according to the witness, had attempted to “land” in the middle of the plant’s main road.

Strange Activity With Electrical Devices

Interestingly or not, Steve began to experience strange activity in his own home, no less, specifically with electrical devices following his encounter. One evening, for example, while he and his wife were watching television, it simply burst into flames. In fact, so sudden and out of control was this sudden fire that the pair had to throw the unit out of the window to prevent it from spreading to other parts of the room. Other devices suffered similar malfunctions, including the couple’s Hoover, toaster, iron, hairdryer, portable radio, and alarm clock. And these sudden malfunctions always occurred when Steve was present.

The pair eventually contacted the local electricity board, certain that some kind of external fault must be responsible. They eventually installed a mains voltage recorder to analyze the problem, but they could find no faults at the property. When UFO investigators later spoke to Steve’s neighbors, none of them reported any unusual activity. Moreover, a spokesperson from the electricity board was completely baffled by the activity at the property.

It wasn’t just at home, though, where Steve experienced these bizarre incidents. While at work, despite it never having happened before, Steve began experiencing problems with his computer terminals, which would malfunction and go “out of synch” with the rest of his colleagues. Several years later, in 1983, Steve worked temporarily offshore, noting that identical problems plagued him there also.

However, some of the most concerning events happened only two weeks after the sightings, once more, in Steve’s own home.

Strange Figures In The Room

It was as he was in bed asleep one evening that Steve was suddenly awoken by an unsettling high-pitched sound. A moment later, he realized that he couldn’t move and was completely paralyzed as he lay there helplessly on his back. The only part of his body that he could move was his eyes. As he scanned his surroundings, he, at first, was greeted only with darkness. However, with a few moments, as his eyes adjusted, he saw that there were “three or four figures, dressed in black” that were in the room with him.

At this point, a surge of terror went through him, and he attempted to scream but found that he simply couldn’t. Then things turned even stranger. He noticed a strange gurgling sound coming from his throat, while at the same time, directly inside his head, he noticed the entities were communicating with him, a communication he described as some kind of “thought transference!” Although he didn’t understand the language – indeed, this communication, he recalled, could not even be called voices – he understood what he was being told. No harm, for example, would come to him, his wife, or their two children.

Despite this assurance, Steve still tried with all his effort to move from the bed. However, he remained completely motionless and helpless. The communication in his head continued to assure him that he would come to no harm. Perhaps rather more ominously, they assured Steve that “she” (who we must presume to mean his wife), would “know nothing about this!”

At this point, Steve must have blacked out, as the next thing he realized was that he could move his body, and the strange figures were no longer there.

By this time, it was dawn, and as light began to filter into the house from outside, Steve got out of bed and went downstairs to make himself a cup of coffee. As he drank several cups, he noticed that he felt “grimy” – as if he had just returned from a long, arduous journey, a feeling he couldn’t explain. He would, however, have several similar experiences over the following years. There were, though, other signs of high strangeness taking place.

Premonitions And Unwanted Abilities

As time went on, Steve began to realize that he was having precognitive dreams, which included, at least according to Steve’s interpretation of them, premonitions of the Chernobyl and Lockerbie disasters. He claimed these premonitions came around six months prior to the respective incidents. However, when he saw the Lockerbie news reports, in particular, on his television, he was completely shocked at how familiar he was with the scene. In fact, when he spoke to UFO investigators about this years later, he was so emotional about the recollections that “a respite was taken from the interview!”

This wasn’t, though, the most profound change, or the most disturbing. Steve stated that in the years since the encounter at the power plant, he has discovered he has an ability to “tune into people” as soon as he meets them, something that he claimed he was far from comfortable with. He elaborated that although he found he could do this “with such ease”, he tried his best to “switch off” this ability due to “feelings of guilt and intrusion!”

Interestingly or not, Steve also claimed that he had had several out-of-body experiences when he was a young child, as well as being “aware” of some kind of communication from elsewhere. Might we ask if this “communication”, whatever it was and wherever it came from, is somehow connected to the strange object he witnessed that summer’s evening in 1981?

Moreover, and of further interest, he claimed that his grandmother also regularly experienced paranormal activity, perhaps suggesting that some kind of connection ran down the family line. While there is no evidence of alien abduction taking place on the night of the sighting, we might remind ourselves that Steve claimed to have awoken to several strange figures in his room several weeks after, in a scenario that sounds scarily like an alien abduction encounter. With this and his grandmother’s paranormal sensitivities in mind, we might ask if Steve, and perhaps members of his family, have been victims of repeated episodes of alien abduction, perhaps going back years or even decades before the encounter of June 1981.

A ”Subtle, Slow Realization Process!”

Whatever the truth of the matter, investigators, at the time, and since, have put forward several possible explanations, at least for the sighting, although some, such as the sightings was a hallucination caused by the gas or oil at the plant do not really hold water, not least as that would not account for the security guard who also witnessed the same object over a mile away. Perhaps a more likely potential explanation, as suggested at the time by researcher Albert Budden, will be found in the study of electromagnetic energies in the area.

Ultimately, what is agreed is that something very strange did occur that night in June 1981, and it had seemingly far-reaching repercussions for Steve. Whether of consequence or not, Steve claimed to have been indifferent to the possibility of UFOs before his encounter, and described himself as a typical family man who “worked hard and enjoyed a few pints at the pub!” Following the encounter, as well as the bizarre events that he experienced, Steve changed in terms of his outlook on life and his beliefs.

He stated to UFO investigator, Gloria Dixon, that “the experiences changed my life, but it wasn’t one blinding flash-type overnight wonder” that caused this change, but rather a more “subtle, slow realization process!” He continued that he watched little to no television following the encounter, and has a persistent feeling that there is “(not) enough hours in the day for what I need to do!” Ultimately, Steve believed he now enjoyed and lived life more to the full than he had previously, and moreover, this life was “just a current phase of eternity!”

He summed up the experiences by stating to Dixon that, “I keep my sanity by believing in myself – I believe in what happened. I will never be able to explain it, but at least I can now accept it!”

The “Gateways Are Linked!”

What is particularly interesting is a comment by the previously mentioned Gloria Dixon in her summary of the case in the early 2000s, where she stated that, “The gateways between reports of close encounter experiences and subsequent paranormal events are linked in a way that we have yet to understand!”

Dixon highlighted how many people who have had similar strange encounters also experience very similar paranormal events, including such things as precognition. Other researchers have stated very similar assertions, including that some people who have undergone alien abduction or close encounters with UFOs develop a sudden ability to read minds and communicate telepathically.

There are also many people around the world who, sometimes following a close encounter, sometimes not, have the ability to affect electrical devices, and even street lighting. This ability, even if it is not controlled, to affect such electrical devices surely says something about the importance of electrical energy in explaining and understanding paranormal events, including close encounters with UFOs, and even alien abduction. As Dixon writes, “these curious changes may be more important than the incident itself!” She continues that, “the real focus of interest…are the evolving changes in people, both spiritually, psychically, and creatively!” Indeed, she could well be right.

Another Piece Waiting At The Edge Of The Puzzle!

Just what Steve Robbins did see that night in the summer of 1981, and what was at the cause of the paranormal events he experienced following the incident remain, by and large, a mystery. While, on the surface, the incident could be swept away as a sighting that resulted in some bizarre aftereffects, closer inspection appears to suggest something much more profound is taking place, and something much more ingrained in Steve’s life, in general. Indeed, it could very well be the case that the sighting in the summer of 1981 simply sparked what had previously been subconscious encounters and abilities into his conscious mind, as speculative as that might be.

What is apparent is that Steve Robbins’ encounter is yet another that demonstrates how UFO incidents and alien abductions are seemingly connected to other aspects of the paranormal world, or they are to it. Ultimately, these strange events are coming from the same source, perhaps even using humanity in some kind of otherworldly game that we have no collective idea we are playing. There certainly seems to be more to these inexplicable events than just random encounters that occurred through pure chance, timing, and luck.

As with most cases that are now hurtling towards being half a century old, it remains to be seen if any further information or insight into the events of June 1981 in Teeside surface, or if a researcher somewhere down the line slots this case into a newly revealed bigger picture of not only the UFO mysteries but the paranormal world as a whole.

The short video below explores some of the best UFO encounters on record.

Expert Opinion

In the summer of 1981, a nighttime sighting above the Phillips Petroleum Plant in Teeside, England, by worker Steve Robbins spurred a lesser-known but intriguing UFO case. Witness statements point to a luminescent cylinder-like object moving silently overhead, apparently vanishing into thin air near massive oil storage spheres. Robbins’ bizarre personal experiences afterward, from warped electronics to eerie nighttime visitors, further deepened the puzzle.

Some investigators suggest environmental or electromagnetic explanations could account for misreadings and mechanical troubles, although a corroborating witness diminishes purely subjective illusions. Official channels found no corresponding aircraft data, leaving unconfirmed testimonies and inconclusive avenues for skeptics. Whether a genuine anomalous craft or a potent psychological phenomenon, the case endures, peppered with hints of broader paranormal entanglements.

Verdict: Inconclusive
Multiple credible witnesses reinforce the sighting’s validity, but the extraordinary follow-up phenomena lack definitive proof, leaving this case unresolved.

Marcus Lowth is an expert on this topic and has over 20 years experience studying and reporting in these fields. Marcus has written several books and appeared on TV shows as an expert investigator discussing these topics.