Note: I would recommend that anyone looking for a good factual history of UFOs including many lost accounts, go look for volumes of The Haunted Skies
__________________________________________________________________________
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 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, a 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 oblivious 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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