Close Encounters In Warminster

 As is normal for me just as I finished and published the AOP Journal with its look ar AE-CE3K incidents around Warminster I find this I could have used and make myself look daft.

In the AOP Journal I mention that no one has taken a look at the various reports as a whole before. I then find four articles written on the subject. All by me.

One reference mentions Skywatch Gazette (1979) published by the Swindon based Skywatch Aerial Phenomena Investigation Club (SCUFORI) and edited by (I believe) Adrienne Smith.  However, the only issue of that publication I have is one with my article on CE3K reports from Africa.

Back in the late 1970 I set up a number of  local UFO groups which were supposed to focus on investigation and reasearch in Gloucestershire/Wessex/ Somerset UFO Investigation Researcg Group. One of these published UFO West edited by Colin Birch. In Vol. 1 No.2 for January, 1981 there is an artcle by myself -Warminster: The Humanoid Factor.

It is noted, after the article, that it is augmented (by me) from one I wrote for Mersey News the monthly newsletter of the Merseyside Investigation Group into Aerial Phenomena (MIGAP).

Now I knew I had written a couple articles for MIGAP and because they (mainly via Brian Fishwick who also edited the News) had been very cooperative in forwarding interesting cases despite being part of UFOIN.  However, I thought my copy of the Mersey News No. 13, June, 1980 was lost. But then...bingo! Found the issue very easily -far too easily which worried me! 😅

These publications always varied in quality and one has to remember they were edited by amateurs -Skywatch Gazette was typed up using an electric type-writer and I thought that was how my old manual type-written article was going to be presented -in the end they just used my original. The covers for Mersey News were what might be called "cheap and cheerful", however, they were using a Gestetner hand printer notr a photocopier and the expense of getting just photocopied covers might have been a little too much.

That said, they did cover UFO sightings as well as subjects such as Spring-heeled Jack. I think that my article was asked for as there was a plana to visit Warminster by the group. SCUFORI, based in Wiltshire, had done so and found it a very disappointing experience.  By 1980s Warminster was no longer a "UFO Mecca" and only after all the X-Files and Grey abduction sensationalism did activity pick up for a while -if, in fact, there ever was really a "wave" of activity around Warminster in the 1960s.

I had thought that there was an article in the original in-house AOP Journal (Vol. 1 No. 1, Summer 1987). However, the article therein was  CE-3K, Abductions, Contactees & 'Psychic Contact': How Do We Approach Them so 33 years ago I was trying to hammer home the points I am still making like a broken record.

That article is interesting since even back then I noted that UFOIN investigations were extremely poor and hinted at what groups were discussing privately and at meetings -that there appeared to many fake reports being circulated by people within Ufology. So I double checked the file I kept on UFO groups and Ufologists at the time and, yes, I had noted all of this in 1984.

The problem is that, even after 33 years, nothing has changed in Ufology -in fact it has gotten worse. As someone at the Ministry of Defence said back in the 1980s when asked about alleged attempts to create confusion and arguments in Ufology: "Why on earth would we -Ufologists are doing an excellent job of that themselves!"

As for my opinions on CE3K/AE reports from Warminster -you need to buy the AOP Journal to find out!