Although I could not, personally, accept the following reports as evidence I feel that there needs to be some record of them.
During late 1976 I was up to my eye balls in a wave of UFO sightings in and around the city of Bristol and these I mainly had to look into myself (the reasons for this are explained in Beyond UFO Contact as well as the AOP Journal no. 5). When I hea\rd of thgis report I wanted to investigate and I wish I had waited before letting someone else do so.
(1) Iron Acton Landing
Late night/early morning of the 10th August, 1976, Mr E was on his way home at Iron Action, near Bristol, when he saw a reddish-yellow light on the ground. The object was large and Mr E stopped to get a better look which is when he saw "something" get out of the object and begin to walk around it. That was enough for the witness who then ran home apparently terrified by what he saw. That was it.
I know that the term "something" was used because whatever he had seen was not a humanoid. The word had gotten around and there was some mild ribbing going on. My mistake was in accepting the offer of Peter Tate to talk to the man as he would be working in the area concerned. A few days later I asked how he had gotten on and was told "The man' a UFO nutter saw space monsters. I dumped the report!"
This was one of the few occasions on which it can be said that I verbally exploded. The initial report and witness address had been burnt because the witness "saw aliens". I did ask Graham Knewstub at the British Flying Saucer Bureau whether he could try contacting the witness (I had forwarded all the details earlier) because he was a smooth talker. In fact, Graham passed the report to someone else who did the worst job possible.
I did learn that Tate had visited the witness dressed completely in black so that Mr E could tell people quite rightly that thje Man In Black had visited him. I have no idea what Tate said to the man but it seems that he also put the word around locally (quite 'innocently' of course) and being mocked Mr E went quiet.
Make no excuses; this was a deliberate act by Tate to stop an investigation before it started. Other things he had gotten up to under the guise of the Aerial Phenomena Enquiry Network (APEN -he was one of a number of "respectable" British Ufologists involved in this scare group and som even made themselves 'victims').
(2) Merehead Quarry, Somerset -another landing?
Now known as Torr Works quarry, it is a limestone quarry at East Cranmore, near Shepton Mallet on the Medip Hills, Somerset. The quarry was formerly known as Merehead, a name which has been retained for its rail depot on the opposite side of the A362 road.
At the time of this series of report the quarry was the largest quarry in Europe (apparently it could be seen from space) and had been used for TV series uch as Dr Who.
During the summer of 1976 there was a mini-flap of peculiar lights in the quarry that had caused some losses of power in equipment and one small object had laqnded temporarily atop a 100 ft (30m) high conveyor belt and I, as "the expert", had to climb up to and check for damage. The 10-15 workers who watched were not concerned about my vertigo (mainly because I never told them about it and my fellow investigator told everyone loudly that he was not "climbing up there!"
During this wave of sightings a small orange ball of light had hovered near a fork lift truck which began to move by itself. This seemed as though UNP (unscientifically investigated light phenomenon) was involved except in one case.
One night a worker had been going about his business when he observed a large sphere of lighty land. As he watched something -"possibly humanoid"- gopt out of the sphere and, as at Iron Acton, it began to walk around the object before re-entering it. The sphere then took off. His work mates made fun of him -until some of them had sightings of lights.
Unfortunately, on the day I got there the workers were polite but not that helpful. The local BBC regional news programme had sent a reporter, Graham Purchase, to cover the story and it was the usual over the top 'joke piece' that created ridicule. I was given some information and I think I identified which one of the workers had seen the landing but, no, they were not going to cooperate (the quarry owners had stepped in and warned about bad publicity and just how 'secure' jobs were).
As I left I asked the workers what they would tell Purchase if he stopped by again. The response got a nod from all concerned; "We'd tell him its a long drop over the quarry cliff!"
The Iron Acton case was lost and it showed me why any such future reports I would deal with and never allocate to someone else. The Merehead case had shown why it is important to speak to witnesses before word leaks out and the press/media gets involved.
Decades later I still regret losing both of these reports.
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