Prince Philip's rather extraordinary planned encounter with an alien called Janus

Prince Philip was reportedly very interested in UFOs and was even close to meeting one himself.

In a new documentary, The King Of UFOs, a story is retold of the time the late Duke of Edinburgh was due to meet an alleged alien called Janus, which had already met with Philip’s equerry Sir Peter Horsley beforehand.

Horsley said the alien wanted to talk to the Duke, however the meeting never took place.

In his book Sounds from Another Room, Sir Peter, who served as the Duke’s ‘equerry’ from 1949 to 1956, said Philip was extremely interested in UFOs and even asked him to bring witnesses to Buckingham Palace for private discussions.

Philip reportedly spent the summer of 2019 reading The Halt Perspective, which tells the story of Rendlesham Forest incident, dubbed ‘Britain’s Roswell’, where a number of strange lights were spotted at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, in 1980.

One serviceman claimed they got within touching distance of a ‘craft of unknown origin’ in the forest.

The Duke, who was also fond of looking after the environment, had a number of other books on extraterrestrials in his collection, including Haunted Skies: The Encyclopedia of British UFOs.

According to The Sun, the Duke’s interest in UFOs first began after an incident experienced by his uncle Lord Mountbatten, who wrote an official report about a silver spaceship reportedly landing on his Broadlands estate in Romsey, Hampshire in 1955.

The report, which was kept secret until after Lord Mountbatten’s death in 1979, told the story of how bricklayer Fred Briggs spotted the craft hovering above the ground.

A figure dressed in overalls and a helmet was then said to have emerged from the bottom of the vehicle, before Briggs was knocked off his bike and pinned to the ground by ‘an unseen force’.

Philip’s interest in UFOs is believed to have lasted up until his death in 2021 aged 99.