Thousands of secret files on New Zealand's UFO reports are set to be made public, nearly 32 years to the day after our most famous sighting.

The files include every witness account of unidentified flying objects reported to authorities since the early 1950s, including the 1978 Kaikoura mystery.

They had been held by Archives New Zealand, which was to make them available in February after requests from the public, but the Defence Force stepped in, saying it needed to remove personal identification to comply with the Privacy Act.

The Defence Force promised to release the files by the end of this year and is due to make them public this week.

IMPORTANT:  Whenever government agencies anywhere release information like this, it it always advisable to download the files as close to the date of release as possible. The reason for this is that sometimes further information will be redacted subsequent to the initial release.  To read the rest of the article, click here.

The Archives New Zealand UFO files can be found here.