At around 22:30 hours on the 20th September, 1965, in Felixstowe, Suffolk, three young people, Michael Johnson and Mavis Fordyce, and the car driver Geoffrey Maskey parked in Walton Avenue. They were chatting when Michael suddenly opened his door and rushed out without a word of explanation. His friends were initially disconcerted but thought that he perhaps he needed to “answer the call of nature”.
After a few minutes Geoffrey and Mavis heard a high pitched humming sound and saw, some 30 meters (100 feet) away, an very luminous, orange oval shaped object, approximately 2 meters long. Accounts state that this “hovered above the car” or “Moved across the road” while illuminating the surrounding landscape in an orange gleam. The object moved fast and was lost from sight behind some trees though its sound remained clearly audible.
After a few minutes, as they recovered from surprise, the duo realized that Michael had not returned and became anxious; they called out to him, in vain and drove in reverse along the lane and called out to him again –still getting no response. But then
Michael finally appeared looking shocked and was staggering with his hands clutching at his head. His friends first thought was that he was playing some joke, but he then collapsed onto the road. He was unconscious and so Geoffrey and Mavis got him into the car rushed him to the hospital in Felixstowe.
At the hospital Michael regained consciousness but was unable to recognise his friends. The doctors diagnosed a serious shock and took care of his wounds: burn marks on the neck and a contusion above the right ear. For safety, he was transferred to the hospital in Ipswich which was better equipped. The next day he could go home as he was lucid again.
He told his friends that when he had suddenly left the car without a word it was him obeying an unknown and pressing "force". He was uncertain how far he had walked but had suddenly been confronted by a humanoid entity with large oblique and luminous eyes, surrounded by orange flames. He had no memories of what happened next until he woke up at the hospital.
It seems that the doctors scoffed at the story and joked about “Martians” while suggesting that the light they had seen was the flame from a propane gas works stack –this they all vehemently denied -and the newspapers, tipped off by a “ufological source”, had not taken the incident seriously either.
When I first read this case I obviously asked Flying Saucer Review what had been discovered since the incident. I got the now oh so familiar “That’s all there was to it” response. Had investigators even checked with doctors at the two hospitals –it seems not…but they could run off to the press.
An image published in conjunction with later retellings -possibly from the 1980s Unexplained magazine?
Again, decades later, John Hanson and Dawn Holloway of the Haunted Skies Project decided to try to find out what had happened. In this case they tracked down Geoffrey Maskey who gave them a more factual account:
“I was with my girlfriend, Mavis Forsyth, driving along Walton Avenue,
Felixstowe, at 10.30 pm, with my friend –Michael Johnson. ‘Mick’ asked
me to stop the car because he needed to attend to a call of nature. After a
few minutes had elapsed, I began to wonder what had happened to him,
especially when we heard what sounded like a mixture of very weird noises
and a high-pitched humming noise, followed by the appearance of an orange,
glowing, object lighting up part of the road, as it headed off eastwards, over
Walton Avenue, towards the coast.
“Now worried, I reversed the car up and down the road, with the window open,
calling out his name.
“About fifteen minutes later, Mick staggered out of the hedge at the side of the road,
clutching the back of his neck, and fell onto the ground –apparently unconscious.
“We managed to put Mick, who had a noticeable burn mark on the back of his
neck, into the Vanguard car and rushed him to Felixstowe Hospital.
“After arriving at the Hospital, and explaining to the casualty staff what had
happened, he became the butt of much humour, being referred to as the ‘Martian’
by his friends. Mick, who seemed completely to what was going on, seemed to
have some sort of fit and tried to take his clothes off, flaying his arms about.
It required the strength of three or four members of staff to restrain him, before
He was taken away for treatment”.
Above: P Geoffrey Maskey in the mid-1960s courtesy © 2018 G. Maskey/J. Hanson
Geoffrey telephoned the hospital the next morning and was told that Michael had been treated for “severe shock” and he was told that no one could visit him. Five days later Michael was discharged from hospital; Geoffrey saw that the burn mark had now disappeared from his friend’s neck. Michael told his friend what had happened:
“I remember seeing a glowing silver/orange object descending next to where
I was stood, about 12 feet above me. Standing on the side of the ‘craft’ were
two humanoid figures wearing steel coloured suits, with arms outstretched at
chest height, showing long pointed fingers. I saw them go back into the ‘craft’,
and the next thing I remember was waking up in hospital”.
It seems that the police had checked the area out but found nothing unusual. These are the facts and facts that the flying saucer fraternity should have known about at the time had they spoken to one of the trio. Dr Bernard Finch wrote at the end of Charles Bowen’s very brief piece:
“Several interesting points emerge from this episode. We have an example of
‘selective attraction’. Why, we ask, was it only Michael Johnson and not the
others who appeared to be attracted to the object?
“Again, the other two sitting in the car appear to have been protected
(or insulated) from the emanating force field : again, the effect of the force
field appears remarkable in the fact that according to its intensity (or distance from
source), so the effect varies from simple peripheral nerve paralysis to major
interruption of cerebration, resulting in loss of consciousness, shock and loss
of memory.”
I do so love how Finch got away with such utter fantastical bilge and fantasy and all based on a newspaper clipping because it is very obvious that this is what the UFO ‘expert’ had to pontificate on. Had he talked to any of the people involved he would have found out just what Michael recalled taking place –even the part about the doctors referring to Michael as the ‘Martian’ is incorrect. But this fine ufological tradition of investigating a case by newspaper clippings continues over fifty years later.
If there is one thing that I have learnt, backed up by John Hanson’s own findings, is that ufology rarely bothered getting involved in leg work and the nonsense that Finch spouted shows exactly why science never takes ufology seriously. Exactly what “emanating force field” and how does the effect vary? Then we have “the other two sitting in the car appear to have been protected (or insulated) from the emanating force field”; well that is interesting because there is then the question of just how were Geoffrey and Mavis “protected (or insulated)” –Michael was in the same car. But this is where the lack of any investigation shows since Michael did not “suddenly rush out of the car.
For over fifty years ufology has been quoting ‘facts’ that are wrong simply because someone –Finch and Bowen- sat in their chairs and “investigated by newspaper clipping”; no one thought to look into the report in more detail. When I tried in the mid 2000’s to see if I could find any of those involved it seemed older locals knew about the incident but ask if Mavis, Geoffrey or Michael still lived in the area: “No idea”. Well, we know that Geoffrey does still live in the area but locals tend to keep tight-lipped when you start asking questions.
As for Michael, we can only hope that this was a one time encounter and that after it he got on with his life. The question really has to be whether after something like this, when you can’t remember what happened, can you get on with your life normally? I hope Michael has.
NOTE 20th September, 1965 Felixstowe, Suffolk
(1) Felixstowe Glowing Object Mystery, Ipswich Evening Star, 21st September,
1965
(2) Bowen, C., "Knock-Out Blow At Felixstowe", Flying Saucer Review Volume 11,
No. 6, November, 1965: pp. 4 & 27
(3) Hanson, J. & Holloway, D., Haunted Skies vol. 2 (2010): pp. 260-263
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