Taken from Unidentified - Identified
This report came to my attention in 1980 after BUFORA forwarded it –and only then because they hoped it might feature in a publication they were hoping might get them more members by reading the “juicy cases”.
During the winter of 1958/1959, Mr L was driving along the A38 toward Bristol and there was very little traffic around though the time was approaching Midnight. With no warning the car stopped as all the electrics failed; being of a mechanical bent what happened did not make sense to him. The one thing Mr L cannot say is for how long he just sat in his car before he got out and opened up the bonnet. He looked at the engine and then “as far as I can remember” went to the boot of the car to get his tools. As he returned to the front of the vehicle he was taken aback as the engine re-started by itself and the lights came on.
His first thought was that someone must have gotten into the car and started it up but, looking, he found the car empty. It made no sense and unnerved him so he got back into the car and drove off at speed “to get away from the spot”. Even in 1980, he was nervous about going past this spot.
Mr L reported that he had the definite feeling that the energy from the car as well as himself had somehow been drained. He felt that this might account for his not moving when the electrics initially died. When the car re-started he said that there was a definite feeling within himself of a flow of energy (see the Mr A report) which he likened to the feeling of the sun on your back when sun-bathing. This sensation made him “feel ten feet tall, terrific”. It was as though a barrier had been placed over driver and vehicle and the removed.
The fact that he had no idea how long the incident had lasted is worth noting, though he did know that some time was missing. He described the feeling, which seems to have unnerved him even decades later, that he had “visited another planet” or something associated with another planet though he cannot recall any object being present.
Mr L had decided to face his fears and contacted BUFORA before he was due to move abroad. BUFORA stressed the importance of getting in touch with the witness “urgently”. How “urgent” seemed to be down to the fact that this case might provide fodder for a new publication and BUFORA stated openly that it hoped the publicity would bring in new members. My phone call to the National Investigations Coordinator was rather brusque: get off my backside and look into this urgently was insulting since BUFORA had sat on this “urgent” matter for over four months before sending it to me.
By this time I believe that Mr L had second thoughts about opening up the memory. The flash of courage was gone. He moved and I eventually traced him to Zimbabwe but it was all in vain. When a percipients decides to build up courage and contact the ‘experts’ they need to act quickly before any change of mind.
It was the late Lord Clancarty who brought this series of events to my attention and suggested that, as I was also Bristol based, it might be worth looking into. I do recall talking to both Mr and Mrs G and from what I recall –I spoke to them over 40 years ago- they seemed quite normal and down-to-earth. In Mrs G’s case all the events took place in the family home in St. George and in 1965.
Mrs G was always alone in the house and only one experience took place on a Thursday, the rest all occurred on Mondays. She was always usually busy in the kitchen with the door between it and the lounge always open. On one occasion she suddenly found her consciousness filled with a very strong compulsion to look into the lounge. Mrs G would then turn to find a tall man, around 6 feet 3 inches (1.9 m), with fair-skin and rosy-cheeks. Rather “good looking” is how she described her uninvited visitor. He a grey, metallic-looking two-piece suit; the coat being hip length and having a round neck collar. There was a 4 inches (10 cms) wide belt but of darker material around the waist; the trousers were not tight-fitting and were tucked into the tops of rather large, dark boots. This visitor wore a rather large, bulbous silvery helmet.
If that was not odd enough, what happened might be considered so; Mrs G would stare at the man for 1-3 seconds, turn away but, looking back –he was gone. On other occasions Mrs G would enter the lounge and find the figure looking at her. I began to suspect that I was going to hear a lot of “Contactee twaddle” but I asked about communications from this visitor: none. Not a single word was spoken and there was no claim of telepathic contact; Mrs G never saw the figure appear or disappear so what was going on?
I had to leave open the possibility that more was going on than Mrs G remembered but she seemed perfectly able to account for all of her time; no “suddenly I realised an hour had gone by”. There was a sequence of six appearances and that was it. To Mrs G it made no sense and all I can think of as a possible explanation looking back at the case now is whether she might have been prone to parahypnagogia? Gurstelle and Oliveira distinguish a state which they call daytime parahypnagogia (DPH), the spontaneous intrusion of a flash image or dreamlike thought or insight into one's waking consciousness. DPH is typically encountered when one is "tired, bored, suffering from attention fatigue, and/or engaged in a passive activity." The exact nature of the waking dream may be forgotten even though the individual remembers having had such an experience.
To me this seemed to answer everything. Unfortunately, the proverbial fly-in-the-ointment here was Mr G and his experience. It was this unpublished account that Lord Clancarty thought I might find interesting and it was.
Some time between 1967/1968, Mr G was driving his lorry at night and was on Telegraph Hill, south-west of Exeter and north of Chudleigh in the Haldon Hills. The drive had been normal but then his vehicle headlights (four of them) picked out five figures standing by a hedgerow –on the other side of this hedgerow was a steep incline.
Only one of the figures was partly turned towards him, the others simply looked up in an uninterested manner. Mr G described them as 3 feet (90 cms) tall, “chocolate coloured” and with no head hair (“bald”). The entities appeared to have no joints but “bendy limbs”; he saw them for 10-15 seconds as he drove by “flabbergasted”
That was it and Mr G had only told his wife, Lord Clancarty (in a letter) and then me. There was definitely no object sighted though the steep incline beyond the hedgerow “could” have hidden one but that would be pure speculation. These were not (moving) scarecrows and were living things with only one showing any real interest in the approach of his vehicle. Mr G was most assuredly not asleep but quite awake and feeling fine.
This is the type of report that can really drive someone made if they need to classify an incident; “We have no idea what they were doing but they were near a UFO” helps them in these situations but there was no UFO. I really do not doubt Mr G as he seemed genuine but what do we make of this? I hate to say it but “it was something that happened” and that is it. I would love an answer but I doubt I will ever get one. Mrs G might have suffered from DPH but not Mr G –that is stretching explaining things away just too far.
If ufologists I was associated with were unwilling to talk to Mr and Mrs G, whom they called “UFO-nuts” I found that with the next case it was more a case of “Let’s not get too involved”.
When I read of the 1973 A428 incident I had suspicions that there was far more to the case and wrote to FSR who assured me that if the case was “of importance” then they were sure that they would hear about it all. This was never explained to me and since the percipients’ names and address were supplied to FSR but anonymity requested –and it had taken a year for the details to get to them- I doubted anything more would be heard. It was up to FSR to approach those involved or at least let me contact them; that was just not going to be done or allowed.
At 02:00 hours on a Sunday morning in September, 1973, Mr A was driving home from a dance and noted that the time on the church clock in the village of Little Houghton as he passed through. He then slowed down for what he thought were the headlights of an approaching car but found himself suddenly blinded by a single, very bright white light right in front of his windscreen.
Mr A then found himself walking along Bromham Bridge, 2 miles (3.2 kms) outside of Bedford, Bedfordshire. His shoes and coat were wet as though he had walked through long grass; he felt refreshed and wide awake. The time was now 07:00 hours –he was missing five hours.
Mr A made his way to a friend’s house and persuaded him to drive back along the road as he had no idea where his car was and it was eventually found near a main road turn-off. To be precise Mr A’s car was found in a ploughed field with no tracks leading up to it visible; the field gate was also bolted. The car itself was locked and unmarked but required a farmer using his tractor to get it out of the field.
Mr A did express the fact that he had fears regarding what happened to him; these were building up inside of him and one day he got drunk and violent and told his sister about the incident. His behaviour was unusual but typical of what you find in percipients in these cases; he dismissed the whole incident as a “road accident” and was accepting no other explanations.
Here is the big problem; Mr A was very concerned that “it” might happen again and he explained this in his letter to FSR. This letter was a blatant plea for help or looking to the ‘experts’ for some kind of advice and Mr A obviously must have known there was far more to his impossible “car accident”. If the case was “of importance” said FSR; 5 hours go missing after a mysterious white light appears in front of his car and he ends up miles away with no memory of what happened and his car in the middle of ploughed field with no tyre tracks and a bolted field gate.
Mr A was obviously suffering from traumatic stress and though he did not need people jumping in suggesting hypnosis he could have certainly done with talking to experienced investigators. Investigators should not just be there to get the report then dump the witness; the job entails far more than that and FSR proved itself nothing more than a fancy hobby journal repeatedly.
This is another potentially important case lost to us but I hope that Mr A found some peace of mind because it is the best we can hope for. In some cases, however, people seek help from ufologists but the trauma is such that they back away and more than a few move home and try to put what happened to them out of their mind –as with the Werrington case.
At around 21:30 hours one night in January, 1974, Mr AB and Miss J were driving along the A52 when they spotted a large but faint green light pass over the road from right to left. This light moved as though pacing the car but staying ahead of it and it continued to do so until the junction with the A520 where the object veered off to the left and the couple followed. It was still in sight as they approached Leek some three minutes later; the couple decided that it was pointless following this object if it was not going to land and so turned back.
Not far from Cheddleton village, Miss J turned to look into the rear of the car –nothing was there though both felt the over-powering sensation that they were being watched. Mr AB was very shaken and stopped the car; the feeling continued and grew stronger until the hairs on their necks stood up. At this point the duo left the car and, in the dark, spoke in whispers as they tried to work out what had caused the feeling; Mr AB went so far as to check out the empty car boot. It was empty.
Mr AB looked up and saw a black rectangular ‘hole’ (an object) directly above them; a green light shone down onto the road in front of the car while a blue light did likewise to the rear of the vehicle. Both lights then began to focus in on the car –the couple leapt in and drove off.
At the A520 junction the object was once more slightly in front of the car; by this time Mr AB and Miss J were both very scared but even so Mr AB felt compelled to follow the object. As they turned at the junction the car went over a bumpy, noisy patch –this was a cattle grid at Ilam near Dovedale, Derbyshire: this was some 15 miles (23 kms) away from where they were. In fact, it took Mr AB ten minutes to try to find out exactly where they were. The most unnerving discovery was finding that it was now 01:30 hours –some three-and-a-half hours had been lost.
Mr AB turned the car around and as the main A523 was reached both jumped: it should have been total darkness but they were now surrounded by houses and street lights. Confused, the couple eventually found someone who told them that they were in Macclesfield. This was some 20 miles (30 kms) from where they had turned back on to the A523. It was also now 03:30 hours.
The couple headed to the local police station but did not mention the object. The police got a squad car in Stoke to let Miss J’s parents know that she would be home in an hour or so. The police later confirmed that the couple had shown signs of being tense. Petrol consumption was consistent with the normal journey but certainly did not take into account the “mileage jumps”.
Norman Oliver of BUFORA noted that the couple did not want any publicity but felt that regression hypnosis might help them recall what happened. However, the couple moved away and left no forwarding address. I suspected, and still do, that the couple just wanted to take it no further; it had been traumatic and that was it, all over with. The parents of Miss J must surely have known where their daughter went but if percipients say “no” and go to the extent of moving away the investigator has no other option than to accept that decision. At the time Norman Oliver had hoped that the couple might get in touch at some later date; they have not.
If BUFORA and particularly FSR were frustrating at times I found Contact (UK) could be equally aggravating despite it having a great data research officer in the form of J. Bernard Delair, whose work on the annual UFO Registers leaves today’s ufologists severely lacking. When I read of the Bicester case I was fairly new to the whole CE3K/AE work and this sounded like one to get my teeth into.
On the evening of the 9th October, 1974, two 13 year old boys entered the station office of the Ministry of Defence Police at the Central Ordnance Depot, Bicester, Oxfordshire. Both were described as appearing to be in a state of fright. It seems that a “thing”, resembling a large, hunched man, had followed them along the Ploughly Road from the village of Ambrosden towards Lower Arncott; a distance of a quarter mile (0.8 km).
This “thing” was accompanied by a light in the sky; neither the object nor the entity made any noise. The boys were so shocked that they had to be treated by the MoD police officers; a dog and handler were sent to check around but saw nothing. A doctor later diagnosed one of the boys as suffering from severe shock.
According to Contact (UK) there “seems to be far more to this case” and though they had contact details they carried out no thorough investigation and despite by association with Lord Clancarty - 8th Lord Clancarty, Brinsley le Poer Trench founded the organisation in 1967- that was it; I could not get access to the information to carry out an investigation.
Both boys would now be in their 50’s so there is hope that it might be possible to trace them and find out what happened.
I need to point out that these cases are just a few of those lost to research over the years and while the ‘psychic’ photographs of Stella Lansing received many pages of coverage in FSR and while its editors railed against science and the establishment for ignoring the phenomenon it was doing like-wise with fake science, pontification and, in a few cases, publishing fake reports such as the Braemar landing and entity case. It allowed and encouraged armchair investigation and ignored cases that should have been the subject to so much more intense investigation.
Maybe we can correct some of these failings with cold case investigations. I hope so.
