Below is a typed fascimile of Randal Jones Pugh's 1979 work on the west Wales flap. No copyright infringement is intended - I just found it very difficult to get hold of a reasonbly priced copy as it's been out of print so long. So, when I did finally pick one up, I felt it would be useful for myself and other researchers if it were digitised.
THE DYFED ENIGMA
Unidentified Flying Objects in West Wales
-
RANDALL JONES PUGH
and
F. W. HOLIDAY
First published in 1979 by Faber and Faber Limited
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ETERNAL TIME
For I, who now am old,
Can look back down the years
In wonder and in awe.
Yet, with complacent heart,
Accept the timelessness of Eternity,
And the eternalness of Time.
And, from the dark recesses of the mind,
By searing searches of the soul
Confirm the unrelenting truth -
That life is borne as on a stream
Or raging flood down thro' the aeons
From primeval mists to other births,
And other deaths.
Regret not then the sunny summers
Of lost ecstatic youth.
For they shall return again and again
And again,
In diverse shapes and forms,
In other lands.
At death, though life seem but illusion,
Then death itself is just a dream -
Brief sojourn in the future that was present
In the past,
That yet renews itself in years to come.
But think not that the arrowhead of time
Wreaks havoc with things yet to be,
For in the master-plan of space,
All things are and have been, and will be,
And nothing that is thought, or said, or done,
Can alter one iota of it all.
R. Jones Pugh
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Contents
Introduction and Acknowledgements - page 13
1. The Broad Haven Visitation - 19
2. Figures in the Night - 38
3. Phenomena at Milford Haven - 52
4. A Slight Hint of Menace - 66
5. The Ripperston Farm Affair - 86
6. The Ley Correlation - 104
7. The Enigma Continues - 124
8. Is There a 'Goblin Universe'? - 141
9. Aftermath - 154
10. Conclusion: The Veterinary Aspect - 168
Select Bibliography - 178
Index - 180
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Illustrations
1. St. Brides Bay and Dale Peninsula - 24
2. Broad Haven Primary School and site of UFO landing - 30
3. Haven Fort Hotel and environs - 43
4. Benton Castle and some adjacent UFO sighting locations - 55
5. Layout of Herbrandston Village - 69
6. Location of Mrs Basset's encounter with grounded objects - 74
7. Typical ley-line complex and associated UFO sightings - 105
8. Ley-line distribution in St Brides Bay - 109
9. Broad Haven Primary School with adjacent ley-line - 111
10. Haven Fort Hotel bisected by ley-line - 113
11. Plan of Ripperston Farm and ley-line - 114
12. Map of Puerto Rico showing magnetic anomalies - 122
13. UFO sites south of Carmarthen - 132
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Introduction and Acknowledgements
This book is an account of the 'wave' of flying saucers that occurred in West Wales mainly during the year 1977. Because this subject is so controversial, we decided at the outset that only first-hand experiences from reliable witnesses should be included. We met most of these witnesses personally - sometimes repeatedly - and checked their statements in every way possible. Recordings were taken of conversations so that descriptions could be reproduced verbatim. In nearly all cases we inspected the locations of the sightings.
We would like to express our very real appreciation to those witnesses of the paranormal who have had the moral courage to describe their weird encounters to us, and to have had their stories publicized in both local and national newspapers and other media. We feel that by spurning the very real possibility of ridicule and accusations of mental instability they have contributed appreciably to our understanding of the engimatic riddle which the UFO represents, and it is hoped that other witnesses who have previously been reluctant to come forward with their 'case histories' will now emulate these very co-operative spectators of the bizarre.
Our considered view of the flying saucer is that it has not so far been explained in terms that make sense to the intelligent lay witness. We also think that the prevalence of the phenomenon, whatever causes it, is more widely spread in Wales than is generally supposed. As Vincent Kane - the 'anchorman' of BBC Wales in Cardiff - remarked recently: 'Whatever they are - flying saucers, UFOs - they've been seen in all parts of Wales. A sighting was reported recently in Prestatyn, another off the west coast of Wales, and another was seen in Monmouthshire. Many sightings have been obtained near military establishements such
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as Aberporth. The latest in Wales was at Croespenmaen above an empty advance factory. There had been an earlier sighting at Croespenmaen by a group of local people a few months ago and then a further sighting by Mr Glanmor Bebb.'
On this occasion Mr Bebb had been working in the stables near his home, which is isolated. It was a very clear evening. After setting off for home he paused and sat down on a bank to watch the sunset. It was then that he saw an unidentified flying object hovering above a government advance factory about 400 yards away.
This is how he described it: 'What made it very strange to me was the way it was hovering quietly. It went down and then was rising ... it seemed to be exerting pressure as it was going down and suction as it was rising up. I was watching it for ten minutes just going up and down and then, all at once, it flashed across the sky at a tremendous speed and I counted ... in four seconds it reached the horizon. You couldn't define an actual shape - it was more like a haze. I called the wige, and she described it as a yellow light resembling a saucer.'
In fact anaomalous flying objects have a history of appearing in West Wales. Just after Christmas 1975, two UFOs landed near Haverfordwest. The first one looked like a glowing reddish ball which slowly descended into a wood. There were six or seven witnesses, and next day one of us organized them into a search-party to look for traces, but none were found.
A fortnight later a similar object was seen hovering above the grass in a field a few miles farther north. The Western Telegraph of 23 January 1975 stated: 'Saw red ball and fled. Two youths fled in terror from a field on a Clarbeston Road farm last week when they saw a strange ball of red light shoot off into the night from right in front of them. John Lavis (fifteen) of Moorfield Avenue, Clarbeston Road, and seventeen-year-old David Bevan of Longlands, Walton East, had gone to the field on Knock Farm with a tractor to roundup some cows. "We could see the light shining through the hedge before we got into the field," said John. "It was about twenty yards away then; it rose in front of the tractor and disappeared." John described the light as shaped like a rugby football and about eighteen inches in diameter. It glowed with a fierce red light and hovered about three feet above
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the ground. John and David were so terrified by what they had seen that they left the cows and raced back to the farm. Mr Randall Lavis, John's father, said the cows were at the opposite end of the field to where the light appeared. It was possible they had gone there after being frightened by it. He advised his son not to go near if he sees the light again, but to report it to the police.'
We were particularly interested in the alleged reactions of the cattle to the phenomenon for, if true, it seemed to be an objective effect that could be studied and analysed. Randall Jones Pugh was particularly well equipped to undertake such an analysis. He started his working life as a journalist before graduating, in 1949, as a veterinary surgeon. For a number of years he was in general practice and with the Animal Health Division of the Ministry of Agriculture. After two years with Crookes Laboratories he served for seven years as Director of Veterinary Services for Parke Davis Ltd. When numerous further cases of alleged animal reactions to UFOs were reported in 1977 in Dyfed, the need for an investigation became obvious.
F. W. Holiday spent upwards of twenty-five years writing about angling and allied wildlife subjects during which he took part in an extensive field investigation into another modern anomaly - the mystery of the Loch Ness monster. In collaborating over the enigma of the Dyfed UFOs, therefore, we were able, as joint authors, to present a fairly broad front in terms of experience with animals, and to maintain a reasonable degree of objectivity over the various reports.
In fact we became interested in the UFO problem via similar routes. Pugh was alerted to the subject after he had seen an extraordinary object in the sky over Spain in 1973. Holiday watched a strange oval object through binoculars over Dyfed in 1966. These entirely spontaneous encounters made us suddenly aware that a mystery did indeed exist. Following his retirement from the veterinary profession Pugh became South Wales co-ordinator for the British UFO Research Association.
The flying saucer is an apparently illogical fact of nature with which our current knowledge of the universe makes it almost impossible to deal. Always bearing in mind that appearances can frequently be deceptive, it does begin to look as if many present-
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day assumptions relating to living things are not only incomplete but may be actually erroneous. Clearly the whole is more complex than the parts thereof.
Attempts are made repeatedly to explain flying saucers as ball lightning or some unusual form of atmospheric electricity. Although this seems plausible for some of the aerial aightings it is manifestly absurd in the cases of the landed saucers we investigated - and these are surely the core of the UFO problem. If these things were truly seen then they are beyond current scientific knowledge; and if they were not seen, then we wonder what happened to the respectable and credible witnesses at the time of perception. Does a selective psychosis stalk the earth presenting its victims with an identical fantasy? Or must we admit, as many famous scientists have already done, that this stupendous galaxy, infinite in time, space and the pieces of information it contains, holds deeper mysteries than the human mind has yet grasped?
If the mystery of the flying saucer is a ghost-story, then it must be an ongoing story, a story constantly being updated to suit the civilization of the day. Moses - if we are to believe the Old Testament (Exodus 33 : 9 and 10) - observed similar humanoid forms about 1,400 B.C.
Professor John Taylor, Professor of Mathematics at King's College, London, considers that the Bible contains numerous references to man-like beings that are not of this earth. He writes in his book Black Holes: 'Besides these rather brief records in Genesis [regarding the 'sons of God'] there are other passages in the Bible which are difficult to explain rationally without calling upon some intervention of beings from outer spaces, as has been done by the Soviet ethnologist, M. M. Agrest.' If such intervention includes the loss of radio and television and apparent stoppage of car engines, as it did in Dyfed, we wish British scientists would show as much interest in the matter as the French appear to be doing.
An interesting fact about UFOs is the way a 'wave' seems to develop in one locality and then moves across the country. It is tempting to see in this a relationship with what the Irish used to call 'the wandering sighes' or trooping fairies which were said to shift from place to place. Although the Dyfed 'wave' diminished
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sometime in early 1978, there was a resumption of activity later that year in North Wales. On 3 September 1978, a North Wales police spokesman told the Western Mail that UFO sightings had been reported from Ruabon, Wrexham, Colwyn Bay and Prestatyn. Lights, grounded objects and humanoid figures were seen.
A witness at the village of Llanerchymedd was Mrs Pat Owen and her young daughter. Mrs Owen was looking out of her bedroom window on the Maes Athan estate. She told the Western Mail: 'I happened to look out of the window and saw three men walking across the field. The cows were terrified of them and stampeded away. They were wearing silver-grey suits with a sort of cap on their heads which was attached to the suits. They were all well over six feet tall but I only saw their backs and I was very frightened. I ran to the village square to find my husband.'
This book does not resolve the riddle of the UFO. Nevertheless, we think it indicates, particularly with regard to the animal involvement, that we are dealing with something more specific than a human delusion, a waking dream of a mistaken view of the commonplace. We challenge those who espouse bolides, ball lightning, plasmas and space-junk as an explanation to write and tell us precisely how any of these could have produced the Broad Haven school effects.
There is a time and a place for all things, and the time for human comprehension of the flying saucer has not yet come. Like alchemists, we can only tend the cauldron and note the effects. No gold may result; but in some distant era this humble groundwork may well flower into an edifice every whit as awesome as nuclear fission.
We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce short extracts:
William Heinemann Ltd for Sir Cyril Burt in The Scientist Speculates (ed. I. J. Good), 1962; A. & C. Black Ltd for W. R. Corliss's Some Mysteries of the Universe, 1967; Martin Brian & O'Keeffe Ltd for Professor Herbert Dingle's Science at the Crossroads, 1972; Thames & Hudson Ltd for Professor Otto Fisch's The Nature of Matter, 1972; A. D. Peters & Co. Ltd for Arthur Koestler's The Roots of Coincidence, 1972, and The Case of the Midwife Toad, 1971, published by Hutchinson & Co. Ltd.
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Chapter One
The Broad Haven Visitation
Thus the physicist was able to discard, one by one, all commonsense ideas of what the world is like - without suffering any traumatic shock. One by one, matter, energy and causality were dethroned; but the physicist was richly compensated by being able to play around with such enticing Gretchens as the neutrino, and with such exhiliarating notions as time flowing backwards, ghost particles of negative mass, and atoms of radium spontaneously emitting beta radiation without physical cause.
Arthur Koestler, The Roots of Coincidence (1972)
On Friday, 4 Februay 1977, an event occurred at a rural Country Primary School in West Wales which was so extraordinary in character that it immediately attracted nationwide attention. According to the basic account given by eyewitnesses a flying saucer was seen in a field behind the school where it was watched by relays of youngsters when they emerged from the canteen after lunch. The object was observed to move around on the ground, and at least one child-witness believed he saw a human shaped figure nearby. A small delegation of boys approached the headmaster, Ralph Llewellyn, and asked him to come out and view the object but he declined, possibly suspecting a prank. Eventually the object moved behind some bushes and was lost to view.
Many flying saucer stories are investigated weeks or even months after their occurrence. Fortunately, this was not the case at Broad Haven. At 4.50 p.m. on the day of the sighting Randall Jones Pugh, who is well known locally as a member of BUFORA (British UFO Research Association), received a telephone call
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from a lady who claimed that her ten-year-old-son, David Davies, had - in company with approximately fourteen other children - seen a UFO on the ground adjacent to their school at Broad Haven, which had frightened them considerably.
Pugh immediately drove to the Davies' home at Solbury Hostel, Tiers Cross, and interviewed the boy David, who agreed to go with him to the school and point out the exact spot where the object had been seen. They arrived there about 6 p.m. It was then raining heavily with the light fading rapidly. It became obvious that no attempt could be made to reach the actual location that day since a fence and a rapidly flowing stream separated the school playing-field where they stood from the UFO landing-site. Pugh made what notes he could in the wet dusk and took the boy home.
On Saturday, 5 February, Pugh honed local newspaper reporter Hugh Turnbull and arranged for Turnbull to visit the site along with himself and the witness David Davies. This time they avoided the stream and approached the site by a different route. Carefully and critically they examined the area where David believed he and his friends had watched the object. However, in Pugh's words: 'We found what David thought was the landing-site but, in spite of an extensive and exhausting search for imprints, tread-marks etc. we found nothing. It will be appreciated that the very dense rain might have been sufficiently heavy to have obliterated all traces of an actual landing, but I consider this improbable.'
The headmaster of Broad Haven Primary School quickly realized that the accounts of fourteen boys and one girl regarding the flying saucer they claimed to have seen just beyond the school grounds were unusual enough to warrant further investigation. No doubt the story reached him in dribs and drabs, first from one source and then another. Whether he actually stepped outside that winter afternoon and scanned the marshy little field for himself we don't know. What he certainly did - but not until the Monday after the sighting - was to segregate the self-declared sighters and get them to describe and sketch what they claimed to have seen.
Up to this point the headmaster and the teaching staff seem to have been sceptical about the affair. Unfortunately, by the
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time they realized that the children were in earnest and could stand up to cross-examination, and that their testimonies were too similar to have been contrived or rehearsed, it was already too late. A belated inspection by the school staff found nothing in the field.
As soon as Hugh Turnbull's article appeared in the Western Telegraph and was seen by the Fleet Street news-machine, an enormous amount of interest in the Broad Haven school affair began to develop. At the same time it had to be borne in mind that the children involved were very young - most of them were between nine and eleven years old. Had they suffered some sort of mass-halluncination? Could they have seen an unusual farm vehicle and fantasized the flying saucer from their collective imagination? Or was it all nothing but a hoax?
The London press put these points to Ralph Llewellyn, and he replied: 'Having talked to each of them individually and seen their drawings - and allowing for embellishment - I do not disbelieve they saw something they had never seen before. I do not believe that primary school children are capable of a sustained, sophisticated hoax. The thread which appears to run through their stories is that the object was silvery-yellow, cigar-shaped, with a dome and possibly a light on top.'
For two days the village school at Broad Haven was besieged by London journalists and television teams. Running a school is not the world's easiest job at the best of times and now the situation rapidbly became impossible. Mr Llewellyn wisely declined to give further interviews. Since no more juice could be sucked from that particular orange the stage began to clear and life virtually returned to normal. Thirteen days after the first sighting, however, the UFO appeared on the ground again and in the same place.
This time the witnesses were adults. The first was a teacher at Broad Haven Primary School who happened to be leaving the buildings by a side entrance which faced the now notorious little field. This lady, who wishes to remain anonymous, provided us with a signed statement, as follows: 'On leaving school (side entrance facing east) something shining caught my eye. I stopped and could see a large object, oval-shaped, with a slight dome. Colour: shining metal. I also noted ridges and stepped back
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intending to call someone, and then heard a humming noise and watched the object glide away to the left, in a field amongst trees. I know the area very well as I have frequently walked there. The time was approximately 10.30 a.m. and it was pouring with rain. Distance: about 200 yards.'
This teacher describes the object as silvery, sharply defined and saucer-shaped. It was almost at ground-level when she saw it glide away to her left. The actual sighting lasted between four and five seconds.
Shortly after this incident on the same day, two ladies who work in the school canteen went outside the school and saw an object on the ground where the original sighting had taken place. They saw a figure climb into the machine and watched as the vehicle moved up a slop and disappeared behind trees. It was still raining, and as visibility was poor the canteen workers decided they must have seen a local council truck used for carting sewage. They concluded that this explanation accounted for all the children's sightings - they had not yet heard the teacher's account - and went to inform the headmaster. However, Mr Llewellyn was not convinced and pointed out that the ground was so boggy in the place where they had watched the supposed truck that no vehicle could cross it.
The canteen ladies staunchly maintained their viewpoint and decide to prove it. The following morning, accompanied by their husbands, they reached the marshy little field in much the same manner as had BUFORA investigator Randall Jones Pugh on an earlier occasion. They then found themselves floundering in a foot-deep bog. Pugh, in fact, described the site thus: 'It should be noted that the field has initially a gentle slope which becomes quite steep at the point of landing. Even if a truck was able to get into the field it certainly would never be able to get out because there is a morass of mud at the bottom. The amount of sticky glutinous sludge at this spot accords well with the verbal descriptions given me by David Davies that, when he saw the object behind the trees, it seemed to give a "tugging action" as though it was well and truly "stuck in the mud". I was later informed that no council lorry or workmen engaged in sludge removal had been near the field.'
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The canteen ladies had to admit that the sewage truck notion didn't make sense. One of them told the Western Telegraph: 'When I heard the children's story, quite honestly I didn't believe it. I thought they had seen something but had been mistaken. Now I'm completely confused. We had convinced ourselves that what we saw was a tanker, but the ground was so wet that if anything had been down there we must have seen the tracks.'
Her friend was equally puzzled but remained obdurate. She said: 'I don't know what we saw but I still don't believe in flying saucers.'
These, then, are the bare bones of the Broad Haven school incident. However, as we shall see, this represents no more than the tip of an iceberg whose size is still undetermined.
The village of Broad Haven lies at the southern corner of St Brides Bay in what used to be called Pembrokeshire but is now part of the larger administrative unit of Dyfed (pronounced 'Dove-id'). The bay faces the open Atlantic and a sailor setting out from this shore and steering a straight course could eventually encounter Bermuda without sighting intervening land. The shoreline, which is wide open to the foibles of the ocean, is technically known as a 'storm-beach'. It has the characteristics of such a beach in being wide and sandy with the upper tideline demarcated by a pebble bank.
The whole of this section of the coast forms part of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and many people, including the writers, consider it to be scenically the finest coastline in Britain. Development is rigidly controlled and various attempts to convert villages such as Broad Haven into mechanized holiday camps have been frustrated.
To the immediate left of the village the coast runs out in a great ten-mile wall of rock, from Borough Head to the bird sanctuary of Skomer Island with its gannet colonies. This is Dale peninsula. In the westering sun this rock blazes in pastel shades of beige, yellow, pink and scarlet from the lichens which cover the precipice faces. Indeed, it is said that the Pembrokeshire coast can only be fully appreciated when the observer is offshore in a boat.
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Inland from the coast St Brides Bay is served by a labyrinth of narrow, twisting roads which are often wide enough to accommodate only one car. They run between high earthen banks thrown up by the shovel centureies ago, and on which wild flowers grow in profusion to the never-ending delight of visitors. This is due in part to the humidity and mildness of the climate - potatoes, for example, are planted here in late February and harvested in June.
More important from our viewpoint, however, is the fact that his relatively unspoilt landscape has yielded a most remarkable clue to the behaviour of the UFOs we are describing - a clue whose validity we must consider in full at a later point.
Broad Haven Primary School lies at the southern end of the village. It is approached by a short service road called Marine Road and lies with its back against the first gentle undulation of the coastal hills. There is a small sports field immediately adjacent to the tarmacked recreation area surrounded by the school buildings. This field is bounded by a fenced stream on the south and west sides. Beyond the stream on the south side the land forms a fold and is broken up into more small fields. These fields are rough pasture land sprinkled with scrub and small trees. They slope rapidly down from the crest of the fold on their south-west side to the more or less flat land at the bottom which is really little more than a bog, especially in wet weather. It was in the second of these fields beyond the stream - measuring them longitudinally from the school fence - that the UFO appeared.
We have been unable to determine who was the first to see the flying saucer, but the most cogent account came from Michael Webb, aged eleven, and David Davies in an interview with Randall Jones Pugh shortly after the occurrence. Pugh taped their conversation which ran as follows:
'Can you tell me what you were doing when it happened?' began Pugh. David Davies said: 'Well, we'd heard about it before, in the classroom, so I decided to go and look for myself. And we were up there and couldn't see anything, so Philip Reece - one of my friends - decided to find a way over the stream so that if there was anything there we could get a closer look. While he was trying to do this, this silvery object popped up from behind the hedge.'
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'David, can I break in? Who noticed the object first? Can you recall?'
'Yes, I did. It just popped up. That's really all there is, and we ran down then.'
'How big do you think it was? Was it as big as a bus ... a double-decker bus ... or ...?'
'Well, about as long as a coach or maybe a bit longer.'
'Was there any noise?'
'Yes. A humming noise.'
'Like anything you've ever heard before?'
'I don't believe so; no.'
'Was the sound like a generator or a saw cutting wood or ...?'
'No.'
'What did you think of it at the time?'
'Well, I didn't know what it was.'
'Were there any portholes or windows or anything that you could see?'
'I didn't see any. But there was a little sun and it could have been shining on them to match the colour of the ship.'
Pugh now turned to Michael Webb.
'What was your reaction, Michael, when David first spotted this craft and you first saw it?'
'I thought it was a UFO.'
'What made your thoughts run on those lines?'
'Well, a few days ago, up in Yorkshire, there was this sighting of a space-ship. It was exactly the same as we saw and ... well, nothing could have got into that field, man-made.'
'So the craft in the Yorkshire sighting was very similar to the one you saw in the field here and that made you think it was a UFO instead of anything man-made?'
'Yes.'
'Were either of you at all frightened? What reaction did you have?'
'Well, we didn't believe it at first,' Michael said. 'Then we looked again ... One of the other class boys ran down to tell "Sir". He didn't believe us at first but when we went down to tell him again, he started to believe us.'
'Did he come out?'
'No...'
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'Not at that point. But then I gather there was a second occasion when one of the lady teachers went out and saw it,' put in Pugh.
'I believe it was one of the cooks that saw it,' replied David.
'On the same day?'
'No, it was three days later.' [In fact it was on the 17th - thirteen days later.]
'I have a report about that, actually. What did it look like to you? You say it was silver, but say a little more about it. You see, we've never seen it.'
Michael replied: 'When I first looked at it it looked like two ordinary saucers put one against each other, to make a sort of dome. Then you've got a small ashtray, a round ashtray, put on top and that makes another sort of dome on top. And I thought I saw windows - about three or four windows round the edge on top of the dome. And a light flashing on top.'
'Any signs of activity?'
'No.'
'You didn't see any signs of life. How about you David?'
'No, not at all.'
'Although some of the other children thought they saw a man ...' said Pugh.
'There was one boy in the other class who thought he saw a man near the space-ship,' Michael affirmed.
'No markings like you seen on an aircraft, such as a British sign or a star or anything like that?'
'No.'
'Did it resemble any sort of farm implement?'
'The nearest I can think of... is a muck-spreader. That's the only thing I can think of that's near. And it's never that flat.'
'Yes,' agreed Pugh. 'And I examined the area myself for imprints and so on and a vehicle literally could not get into the field. How far away do you think you were when you saw it?'
'About ... four hundred yards,' said Michael. [An over-estimate - it was nearer 200 yards.]
'Did you feel any nervousness?'
'A bit.'
'What did you say to one another - "Come and have a look at this" - or did you all see it at the same time or ...?'
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'We were just standing. We didn't say anything.'
'You were frightened?'
'Yeah!'
'Didn't you feel curious enough to go closer to it?'
'We aren't allowed to go out of the school grounds or we would have gone a lot further.'
'There was one girl, wasn't there? Was she any more frightened than the rest?'
'She came after the rest of us had come up - she came running up.'
'And she saw it?'
'Yeah.'
'Have you any doubts now - that you imagined it? So many people must have asked you about it - are you still as sure as ever?'
'Yes.'
'And you, David?'
'Yes.'
'And then how did it go away when it went away?'
'It didn't. We never saw it go.'
'You just left it there because it was outside the school grounds?'
'When we looked at it we came back again after telling "Sir",' Michael replied. 'It was still there and then it started to shiver sort of thing and then it went behind a bush and we didn't see it after that.'
'So after school I went up there to see for myself,' said David.
'What did your parents say that first night when you went home and told them about it?'
'Well, my father believes there's something out there,' Michael replied.
'And your daddy's in the RAF, isn't he - a Squadron-Leader?'
'Yes. He was away that night - I told him the next day and he took it seriously.'
'How did your parents take it, David?'
'My mother asked me what it was like and things like that and then she immediately phoned you up.'
'Has anybody suggested to you that you were all having a joke - that you all went out one day and decided to pull everybody's leg?'
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'One person did - that was a few days ago. But if we had been doing that we would by now have to have told someone.'
'How did your drawings come about - I've seen them - did your headmaster ...?'
'It was a Friday - we did them on the Monday.'
'By the time you'd told the teacher all about it, what time of day was it then?'
'After we'd watched it for a couple of minutes and ran down and told "Sir",' said Michael. [The Broad Haven School UFO seems to have been visible intermittently between about 12.30 p.m. and 3.45 p.m.]
'He didn't believe you?'
'At first he thought it was a poppycock.'
'When you say "Sir" you mean ...?'
'The headmaster.'
'Did he ever go to look for it himself?'
'No, I don't think so.'
'In any case it was too late...' concluded Pugh.
This was the most lucid of the evidence we could draw from the Broad Haven Primary School pupils but certainly not the whole of it, as we shall see. Some of the children were clearly frightened by the incident and there are signs that a few of them hoped for a reassuring human explanation to the mystery. Some doubt was raised by the fact that of the sighters fourteen were boys and only one a girl. Was male chauvinism raising its ugly head even at this tender age? The doubts were resolved when it was pointed out that all the girls were at a football match!
Young Michael Webb's father is indeed an RAF officer. Squadron-Leader Tim Webb is, in fact, the chief instructor at RAF Brawdy's Tactical Weapons Unit, a NATO airbase used by both British and American fliers, at the northern corner of St Brides Bay. He had no doubts about the validity of his son's experience. 'I believe him implicitly,' he siad - had he supported the boy by taking him to be quizzed about what he had seen at a BBC Wales interview. 'I've yet to see a UFO,' Squadron-Leader Webb told the Observer, 'but I think it has to be something supernatural or paranormal.'
The other witnesses at Broad Haven Primary School presented and illustrated the theme in their own individual ways. Andrew
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Evans and David Ward thought the craft had stood on landing-legs. David R. George aged nine, was the boy who was convinced he had seen a humanoid. He wrote: 'I saw a saucer with a point. It was humming.' He said he also saw 'a silver man with spiked ears', and added that 'children were frightened'.
Jeremy Passmore, aged nine, related: 'I saw the UFO when it was dinner-time. It was a silvery-green and it had a yellow-orange to red docloured light. It was a disc at the bottom and a sort of dome on the top with a light. It was about 300 yards away. It moved a minute and then it disappeared. It did have a
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noise but I did not hear it. We felt very scared. David George wanted someone to go to the toilet with him. Tudor Jones was nearly crying because he was scared that he was going to be disintegrated or something. So we all rushed in. Some of our school did not believe us. We tried to make them believe but they would not.'
Philip James Reece, aged ten, recounted: 'My friends and I asked the headmaster to have a look at the object, but he refused. A couple of my friends saw the movement of a figure, but I did not. I was frightened. Two friends, Tudor and David, were very frightened.' The friends with him were: Jeremy Passmore, Shawn Garrison, David George, Martin Evans, Tudor Jones, David Davies and Michael Webb. Philip Reece added that he watched the object for about half an hour and it was still there when he returned to class at 2.00 p.m.
Tudor Jones said he saw the object at 1.00 p.m. and he knew this because 'my watch was on at the time'. He said the object was on the ground and disappeared behind bushes, adding: 'It made me cry and scared children.' However, firmly dismissing all talk of space-craft, he declared: 'I think it was man-made.'
In a written statement David Davies told us: 'We were standing by a fence watching the bush where it was sighted and Philip was trying to get a closer look when up from the bush popped a cigar-shaped object and then we all ran. The cigar object seemed to be tugging an object which was silver. Time sighted: 3.35 p.m., 4 February 1977.' He added: 'We had just come out of school.'
Several of the boys including Davies, Jones and Webb expressed the belief that the craft was stuck. In fact Tudor Jones wrote: 'Ship seemed to be stuck - tried to take off and then disappeared behind a bush.'
The land-surface certainly lent itself to the idea of a material vehicle sticking in the morass. But subsequent examination of the area failed to yield a particle of evidence that this had ever been the case.
The journalistic hubbub at Broad Haven thoroughly disrupted Mr Llewellyn's work schedules. But it in no way affected the manifestation of flying saucers in the little village, for these continued
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to be seen after the school affair just as they had been seen prior to it. What the publicity did was to sharpen public attention and bring forward witnesses who hitherto had been shy of being associated with such a 'wacky' subject. One of these was Dorothy Ethel Cale, a school meals supervisor, who had been driving a mile or two north of Broad Haven Primary School at 6.45 p.m. on Thursday, 9 December 1976. With her in the car were her son Nicholas, aged ten, and two friends, Mrs Yvonne Andrews and Mrs Anne Berry.
In a written statement, Mrs Cale explained to Randall Jones Pugh what it was that the party saw. 'On the evening of 9 December 1976, I was travelling in a friend's car with my ten-year-old son, from Broad Haven to Milford Haven, with another lady passenger. It was a cold, dry night with no moon. As we drove along the road between Walton West and Rosepool - a long, lonely road - there appeared, very suddenly, a very bright flashing light above the left-hand hedge. It was vaguely dome-shaped and as it flashed there appeared to be a zig-zag nucleus rather like an electric light filament. It gave a yellowish-white light which was so bright that it lit up the whole of the surrounding area and the sky above it. The driver stopped suddenly, thinking we were going to run into something, but after it had flashed four times, it disappeared. During the four seconds in which we observed it I had the impression that what we saw was the top of something which was obscured by the hedge. The size of the flashing object I would estimate to be about five or six feet across and about three feet high. The distance above ground-level was about fifteen to twenty feet - the hedge at this point along the road is quite high.'
There is no conclusive proof that Mrs Cale and her friends encountered a landed UFO hidden by a high hedge about a mile from Broad Haven Primary School some two months before the children had their experience. Even so, a brilliantly lighted flashing object with a dome-shaped upper portion is sufficiently unusual to make the matter a possibility.
Unaccountable lights frequently flew around the Broad Haven night sky during this period. Generally speaking, lights at night need to be treated with great caution by the investigator. The planets, high contrails of aircraft lit by the sun from below the
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horizon and the actual lights of planes, especially helicopters, are all easily mistaken by observers for something other than what they are. At the same time, some of these aerial lights performed antics so curious as to attract attention.
Norman John Davies, a forty-nine-year-old Broad Haven garage proprietor, told us how he and his wife saw something unusual at about 10.45 p.m. on 27 April 1977. He said: 'We - my wife and I - were standing on the slipway at the entrance to the beach. I suddenly noticed this light which was moving in short bursts of speed backwards and forwards. It moved about four times each way and then it made off along the skyline. It went behind a house and did not reappear. I noticed that the light would flash on very briefly and off for a much longer period. It was a bright moonlit night with only a wispy bit of cloud about. My wife also saw it.'
This seemed to us to be what was probably a genuine sighting of something not easily explainable in terms of aircraft. Even so, one felt on safer fround when dealing with objects having an actual profile. Such a sighting was in fact made from Broad Haven beach by a group of people in the early morning of 25 June 1977. We collected two accounts - one from Stephen Richard Bamford, a Ministry of Defense electrician, of 32 Atlantic Drive, Broad Haven, and the other from Robert Best, a local authority technician, of 19 Waterloo Square, Hakin, Milford Haven.
Stephen Bamford explained how he was coming home in a car with friends when they encountered a group of people on Broad Haven seafront watching something out at sea. The time was between 1.30 and 2.00 a.m. Stopping and looking in the same direction Mr Bamford saw a large orange shape in the sky. The object was sharply defined and the witnesses' first reaction was that it must be the dull moon emerging from cloud. They did not know that that night, in fact, the moon had just entered its first quarter. The object resembled a huge orange ball and it was bisected horizontally by two dark lines. Mr Bamford then saw that it was moving slowly from right to left.
To visualize the scene the reader should appreciate that the little group of observers were looking out to sea with the ten-mile rock wall of Dale peninsula on their immediate left. Exactly
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three miles out into the bay and half a mile out from the peninsula is a conspicuous reef called Stack Rock (which will feature significantly in Chapter Nine). The object seemed to emerge or appear from behind the Stack and drift gently left towards the land.
'It seemed to be oscillating or moving within itself.' Stephen Bamford told us. 'It moved across to the left and as it came towards the cliffs it went a darker red. The original colour was a bright orange - almost fluorescent in intensity. As it moved slowly to the left it began to get smaller and went a really dark red. It seemed to shrink up on itself. By then it was hovering over the cliff. We got back in the car and drove round to St Brides on the peninsula to see if we could get a closer look but we saw nothing.'
Robert Best's impression was that he saw a big orange ball divided into three by two black lines. He agreed that, as he watched, the thing diminished in size and ultimately disappeared. He watched it for about ten minutes. It seemed to be huge and he compared it to the size of a house.
Incidents of this sort, no matter how objective and fascinating, still left us hoping for a further demonstration of the phenomenon in a form as categoric as the school incident. Ideally, we would have liked a UFO to appear again on the ground and to be studied by an entirely responsible adult like Ralph Llewellyn. In the event something of this sort did occur and it taught us a little more about how these mysterious objects operate.
One evening Randall Jones Pugh phoned Ted Holiday to say that a lady in the Broad Haven area had recently seen something strange in a nearby cornfield. It was in an area about half a mile south-south-east of Broad Haven Primary School. Grabbing a camera and tape-recorder we hurried to the address Pugh had been given. To reach the place we had to pass the school and drive up a hill into the country beyond. The witness, Miss E. Griffiths, lived at Holme Dene, Walton West, in a modern bungalow in the very heart of the countryside. Her kitchen window provided an extensive view of rolling arable land, most of it under grass and corn. This was where she had watched the object in a tantalizingly short sighting. The recorded interview between Randall Jones Pugh and Miss Griffiths ran as follows:
'Can you tell me the date you saw this thing?'
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'A fortnight last Friday.'
'That would make it Friday, 6 May 1977. What were you doing, may I ask?'
'I was washing up the dinner things.'
'What time would that be?'
'I would say about a quarter past one in the afternoon. And I was washing up the dinner things, as I say, when I looked up and saw what I thought was a car in the field. That's what I thought. The sun was shining on it and I thought "There's no car in the cornfield." And it was all silver! Then I thought of a UFO.'
'What shape was it?'
'The shape of a car. Well, a car I thought it was. And about the same size as a car, looking at that distance. And it was all silver. At first I thought it was a car with the sun shining on it and then I thought, "You don't get a car in the middle of a cornfield." It was all silver - and then I thought of a UFO. And I watched it for a couple of minutes and all of a sudden it disappeared - it went into thin air.'
'While you were watching it, it actually disappeared?'
'It disappeared. I don't know where it went to - it just disappeared - while my eyes were on it. Then I knew it was a UFO. There was no mistake about it.'
'When you say "disappeared" you mean it was just like switching off an electric light - it "went out"?
'Yes. And then it appeared again about twenty yards further over into the field.'
'How long was that after the first view?'
'Oh, about a minute, I should say. And then it appeared again, exactly the same, all silver and the shape of a car, and I watched it ... and I was afraid to go and get my binoculars because I might miss something. And then I saw it moving on for about a couple of yards.'
'Now, when you say "it moved on", did you see it rise in the air?'
'No, it didn't rise. It was on the ground. And all of a sudden it disappeared again into thin air and I never saw no more of it.'
'Did it move along the ground slowly?'
'Yes, slowly. And then it disappeared again and I saw no more of it.'
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'And how long did you watch it after that?'
'I watched for quite a while but I saw no more.'
'What do you think the total time was that you had it under observation?'
'Oh ... a couple of minutes ... five minutes. I should say five minutes - and the gap in between - the total time I should say was five minutes.'
'You heard no noise?'
'No noise or nothing. But there it was - there was no mistake about it - it was one mass of silver.'
'Did you see any lights or figures?'
'No, nothing - only silver.'
'Were you frightened?'
'Not at all. It was such a long way away. It was what I thought was a car - at first.'
'We are now looking at the place where you saw it through your window and I would say it was about 400 yards away at a rough guess. Could you sort of pinpoint its position in the field?'
'Oh, yes. It was halfway up the field and nearly halfway across. And it moved over to the left and it was there a minute or two and it just went - like that - and it never came off the ground.'
Miss Griffiths was firm, calm and quite definite. The field where she watched the appearing/disappearing object was a gentle, rising slope in the middle distance. The field was planted to young corn. Scrutinizing it through binoculars we saw two dark patches in the position the suspected UFO had occupied. Clearly it was essential to have a much closer look.
The owner of the cornfield was a farmer, Miss Griffiths' nephew. After we had put through a phone call his wife and young family immediately drove out and accompanied us up a lane from which we gained access to the field. We then all set out to survey the ground.
It turned out to be a disappointing excursion because we had felt moderately confident that ground-traces of the phenomenon must have survived and would be awaiting discovery. Certainly we found the two patches. But it was impossible to determine whether they had been made by a large object resting on the ground or by a tractor turning when the field was set. In the patches there was no sign that the young corn had been burnt,
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nor did it appear stunted in growth. Playing for caution, we felt we had to assume the patches had been made by the tractor, although they were undoubtedly on the location where Miss Griffiths observed the object. The light, cultivated soil was still friable and would clealy have carried the imprints of a car or truck had one been driven through the field since the crop was set. No such marks were found despite a long search.
What this sighting seemed to demonstrate was that grounded UFOs could appear and disappear in situ. If so, this solved the problem of the school UFO which moved behind bushes and could not be located later. In this case the children had not been wrong and were simply attempting to explain a phenomenon impossible to rationalize by conventional physics.
We felt satisfied at this point that we had demonstrated, at least to ourselves, that both landed and flying UFOs did occur in the Broad Haven area. The flying saucer was an observable fact of nature, no matter how or from where it orgininated. But what lay at the back of these phenomena - did they indeed contain humanoid entities as strange in their physical attributes as the machines they deployed? If such creatures existed, then what possible interest could they have in the human race? The answers to some of these questions became somewhat clearer in the next few weeks.
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CHAPTER TWO - FIGURES IN THE NIGHT
In other words, we should not ask what light really is. Particles and waves are both constructs of the human mind, designed to help us speak about the behaviour of light in different circumstances. With Bohr we give up the naive concept of reality, the idea that the world is made up of things, waiting for us to discover their nature. The world is made up by us, out of our experiences and the concepts we create to link them together. Professor Otto Frisch, The Nature of Matter (1972)
Moving south from Broad Haven the visitor encounters the adjacent village of Little Haven after travelling no more than half a mile along the sinuous, narrow coastal road. The two communities are connected by isolated houses and the occasional hotel. One of these is the Haven Fort Hotel.
The Haven Fort is in fact a converted fortification which was in active use during the seventeenth century although the site, as a strong-point, has a far earlier history. The house stands on a knoll about eighty feet above sea-level. One of the screening-walls of the old fortification is still standing and has been incorporated into the modernized structure.
Rose Granville, her husband and her daughter, Francine, took over the Have Fort Hotel in 1970. One of Mrs Granville's aims, in an effort to extend the activities of the hotel beyond the summer tourist months, was to try and make the property viable in winter with a bar and a supper-club. When she was told by old local inhabitants that the site was haunted by a 'white lady' she ignored the story. It was because she wished to play down such legends that she hesitated so long before telling us about
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her encounter with a UFO and its occupants. Arguing against ghosts while reporting flying saucers is not perhaps the strongest logic. However, events forced Mrs Granville's hand.
She phoned up Randall Jones Pugh and complained that a strange, low-level light had been circling the field by the side of her house. She was not so much nervous as uneasy.
'I went to bed last night at 1 o'clock in the morning. Then I went to the bathroom, next to my bedroom, and had a look through the window. I then saw a flash like a star - like a blowlamp.'
'Was this on the ground or in the air?' Pugh asked.
'This was in the air - it was circling the field. It wasn't in the same place as I saw it before - it was over on this side. I thought at first it was a helicopter but I heard no noise at all.'
'It was a bluish light, you say?' Pugh asked.
'Yes. It's a light you don't usually see with helicopters. Bluey - like a blow-lamp. It was circling all the way, round and round, and then it disappeared. I didn't see any shape at all.'
'How high would it have been from the ground?'
'Much higher than the television aerial but not that high it could have been a shooting star. It was definitely higher than the TV mast. I keep a camera in my bedroom and if it does happen again I want to take pictures. It wasn't an aeroplane - definitely. It was like as if - you know, something like a lighthouse.'
'You mean pulsating?'
'Yes, exactly.'
Mrs Granville went to her bedroom, fetched her camera and then switched off all the hotel lights. For half an hour she waited in total darkness hoping for the light to reappear so that she could get a photograph, but nothing showed up.
Pugh suspected there was more to this than met the eye. People do not usually scan the night sky for strange lights before going to bed. In any case, why all this preparation of cameras - what did Mrs Granville really hope to film? What were the exact details of the experience she mentioned? Eventually Mrs Granville told the full story and here is the account she gave to Randall Jones Pugh:
'What is your full name, please?' asked Pugh.
'Rose Granville, Haven Fort Hotel, Little Haven.'
'And your occupation is...?'
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'Hotelier.'
'Can you describe for me the extraordinary events of Tuesday 19 April 1977?'
'About 2 o'clock I went to bed and I picked up a book to read. Then I realized I was getting a humming noise similar to the one I get from my central heating.'
'This is not normal at this time of the morning?'
'Yes, it is normal if I leave it switched on. Owing to the explosions of gas and what-have-you I have been very cautious and last thing at night I always switch off the central heating and electrical appliances for safety's sake. I thought at that point that I had forgotten to switch off the central heating.'
'So this humming noise resembled the noise from your boiler monitor and so on?'
'Yes. So I was debating for a good ten minutes whether to get up and go down and look.'
'So this noise was present all the time?'
'All the time, yes. Eventually I decided "Well, I'd better" and I got up and decided to go nearer to the boiler to listen if I had actually left it on. So I came out of my bedroom, past the public bathroom, and to the fire-escape door, which is just above the boiler-house. And I realized then that the noise was not exactly like my boiler usually gives. Although it souned the same in the bedroom, on coming nearer to the boiler I realised it was different. I then thought of a ship, because we do get a lot of ships in the bay, and I looked out. When I went to bed it was quite damp and dark - it wasn't a nice night. But now when I looked out I saw it was quite a lit-up, moonlit night.' [In fact moonlight was at minimum - New Moon was on 18 April 1977.]
'So when you drew your curtains apart you saw a light in the field?'
'In the field, yes. I looked and saw this light was like a painter's blow-lamp, you know - and it was a kind of bluey colour - sort of on and off.'
'Pulsating.'
'Yes, so I thought, "Oh, dear, someone is trying to break in here." You see, I've got a cottage out there and some chickens. So I looked again - I'd got my binoculars by then - and I saw two figures. But first of all I saw this object.'
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'It had a shape?'
'Yes, it was a round object.'
'Large?'
'Oh, yes. I would say about two yards in diameter.' It was an ovalish thing, you know, ovalish-round.'
'Like a rugby ball?'
'Not quite. Give me a pen and I'll draw it for you. You see ... this is how it was.'
'I see. So it was resting on the ground?'
'Yes. This part was resting on the ground and this part was upwards. Now in this corner of the field there's a gate and between this object and the gate were two figures.'
'How tall would you say they would be?'
'Oh, six-and-a-half to seven foot. Rather tallish men.'
'What were they dressed in, Mrs Granville?'
'It was a sort of whitish, plasticated ... I don't know what it was. It was definitely not silvery.'
'What did the clothes resemble?'
'Boiler suits.'
'Did they have anything round the waist?'
'No, I can't remember that. It looked like a boiler suit. It was as if it was the same thing from head to toe.'
'Presumably they had arms and legs?'
'This is what I'm trying to tell you. They had rather longish legs.'
'Were they thin or stout?'
'Medium, I would say. They had rather longish arms. I thought they had longish arms because they were stooping and measuring something and climbing up the bank.' [On a later occasion Mrs Granville asked us if we had seen a gibbon ape in the zoo. She likened the creatures' long arms to those of a gibbon.]
'Did you see their features?'
'Yes, they did turn round. They were turning round and observing ... but they had no features at all - it was just a blank face.'
'No eyes, no ...?'
'Nothing! I couldn't even see a spot! They had just a blank face. They were definitely not ghosts.'
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Mrs Granville said that at this point she tried to yell to her husband but found that she was literally speechless. She was now extremely frightened because, as she put it: 'I thought something was going to happen to this house and I switched all the lights on.' This was a fatal move because, when she looked again through the window, the strange luminous object and its crew had gone. 'It was pitch dark,' Rosa Granville said. 'I tried hard with my binoculars to see if I could see something ... if I could see them hiding - but there was nothing.'
Mrs Granville is a lady of Spanish origin and this accounts for her sometimes quaint turn of phrase. Her passionate belief in the reality of what she was was beyond doubt. When it was mildly suggested in the local press that the weird figures were simply hoaxers dressed in fire-fighting suits, Mrs Granville replied instantly: 'I write to comment on the photograph on the front page of the Western Telegraph (12 May) headed 'The Thing'. Your picture bears not the slightest resemblance to the two faceless humanoids I recently saw in my field alongside a UFO which was a pulsating a very bright glow and lighting the surrounding area. I can assure all your readers and any sceptics that on the evening in question I was neither drunk nor am I they type of person to imagine things. I saw exactly what I reported.'
We subjected the alleged landing-site to careful scrutiny and found it was located 120 yards from the witness's window. No prints or impressions could be detected; however, on the morning following the night's adventure, Mrs Granville claimed she went out and saw a crescent-shaped pressure-mark on the grass. She told us that, at one point in the sighting, she saw one of the humanoids climb up the grassy bank which borders the sides of the field. She was able to observe that its head seemed to come to a point of peak rather like the cowl of a monk's habit. (Later on we will see the relevance of this in terms of folklore.)
We climbed the bank and looked down into the next field and found ourselves regarding a submerged concrete structure fitted with ventilation shafts and a box-shaped entry-point whose lid was secured with a pair of massive Chubb padlocks. Mrs Granville didn't know anything about this object except that it belonged to the Ministry of Defence. Was it this that the mysterious beings had landed two yards away to inspect?
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Randall Jones Pugh started inquiries and finally obtained an interview with Member of Parliament Nicholas Edwards. After some weeks we learned that the structure which the UFO seemed to have been examining was in fact classed as 'a base for the Royal Observer Corps'. In simple terms it was a shelter for use during nuclear war. We hoped the humanoids felt suitable relieved at the scrub growing over the site and other signs of disuse.
Finally, after further interviews, we tried to decide whether Rosa Granville had been the victim of a waking dream of great intensity. Could the happenings of 19 April have been subjective rather than objective? Mrs Granville co-operated by describing the episode time and time again. She told us that she liked to retire to bed with a book before going to sleep and listen to Spanish music over the radio. Her radio runs off mains power and, on the night of the occurrence, it suddenly stopped for no reason. This happened immediately before she heard the humming noise. She told us: 'Sometime after 2 o'clock I got into bed and switched the radio on. The radio was going and then it stopped and then I heard this humming noise. Had the radio been running I would never have heard the humming.'
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This didn't sound to us like a subjective effect. Indeed during our Dyfed inquiries we were to hear constant reports of electrical interference with equipment in connection with UFOs. These could be neither objectively proved nor disproved because the appliances seemed to return to normal after the withdrawal of the flying saucer. However, the effect was described so frequently and by such a wide variety of witnesses of different ages and educational backgrounds, that we felt convinced it must be an objective effect.
Other unusual occurrences also took place at Haven Fort. One morning, about 1 a.m., Francine Granville was wakened by the violent rattling of her window. The night was calm and her room is a sheltered one at the back of the hotel. So unusual and violent was this vibration that Francine - an extremely pretty twenty-year-old - dived under the blankets and later discussed with her parents the possibility of changing her room. She felt the vibration was somehow abnormal. It is a fact that during the course of our investigations several other people told us about oddly vibrating windows at sires where UFOs had recently been observed.
Round about the time we came to hear of Mrs Granville's sighting of humanoids on her property we also heard of C. D. Stephen Taylor's earlier encounter with such an entity. Steve Taylor is a normal, extrovert youth of seventeen who likes to wear jaunty cowboy hats and take out girls. He lives with his parents at the tiny village of Llethr in the north-east corner of St Brides Bay and works in Haverfordwest at a sports clothier's.
On the evening of Sunday, 13 March 1977, Steve was walking home at about 9 o'clock from his girl-friend's home when he saw a glowing, oval object in the sky at a location called Hendre Bridge. The thing had an orange halo round it. Taylor thought the object so unusual that he went out of his way to call on some friends to tell them about it, but they simply lauughed at him. It was while he was walking to his friends' house that he saw a large black dog racing away from the area where the glowing object had been sighted. This point only assumed significance later.
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With a shrug Steve Taylor resumed his hike homewards and progressed about half a mile. It was now around 9.30 p.m. It was a dry, breezy night, and he was trudging along a remote country lane between high, grassy banks. His only view of the horizon was when he passed gateways leading to fields. However, it was a walk he had often done before and he was very familiar with the ground. This area is at the boundary of Brawdy NATO airbase, where Michael Webb's father is chief instructor. Taylor, who was used to seeing the airfield lights at different points along the lane, suddenly stopped at a gateway, puzzled. The lights of Brawdy airfield were no longer visible.
Casually he strolled over to the gate and leaned on it. He then realized that the lights were being blocked by a very large object that was sitting in the field.
In a taped interview Randall Jones Pugh asked Taylor: 'When you say "blocking out the lights" do you mean that since you walk this particular road very frequently the lights you would normally expect to see were not visible?'
Steve replied: 'Exactly, yes. Well, I leaned on the gate - to light a cigarette as a matter of fact - and I was looking at this object for a few minutes.'
'Could you describe the shape of the object?' continued Pugh.
'Well, it was like a dome. When I saw it up in the sky it was pear-shaped, but when I saw it on the ground I could just see the top of it on the horizon like a dome. Well, I was looking at it and there was a faint line around the outside of it.'
'Around the periphery - the edge?'
'Yeah, that's right.'
'How big was it?'
'It was pretty big. It took up a good bit of the field.'
'In relation to the lights it obscured, could you assess ...?'
'Well, I put it about the height of a house.' [In his written statement he estimates the object as twenty feet high by about thirty to forty feet wide.]
'I see. So you were leaning on the gate lighting a cigarette.'
'Yes. Then I heard something coming across on my extreme right and when I looked it was like a tall man, about six feet tall. And ... I just felt afraid.'
'Can you describe this man?'
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'Well, I noticed the very high cheek-bones and that it had like a suit on which seemed to be transparent but wasn't. I can't explain that ...'
'Anything else?'
'Well, there was a zip-like thing down the front, down to the waist.'
'Did you see any trousers or anything?'
'Well, I could see from the waist upwards easily, but the legs were below the gate.'
'So in effect, he was about six feet tall with high cheek-bones. Did you notice any other aspect of the face?'
'Well, I noticed the thing in the mouth. It was a sort of breathing-apparatus thing like divers have.'
'In effect, then, this could have been a sort of space-helmet?'
'It could have been. I didn't notice any hair, you see. So he could have had a helmet on. And there were large eyes.'
'Large eyes? Were they shining or ...?'
'No ... they just seemed dark, like anybody else's eyes at night.'
'Were they round or oriental in appearance?'
'Well, I should describe them as like a fish's eyes.'
'I see. So what we have then is a tall man of about six feet with high cheek-bones, possibly wearing something akin to a space-helmet and space-suit and ... was he actually moving when you saw him?'
'Well, he just stepped out by my side [when he lit the cigarette] so I ... I just took a swing at it.'
'He stepped out and you were so frightened you took a swing at it. Did you manage to make contact?'
'That I couldn't say. I felt nothing.'
'And then what happened, Steve?'
'Then I just turned and ran and kept on running.'
'How far did you have to run?'
'Say about three miles.'
'Were you frightened?'
'I was, yeah.'
'What happened when you got home?'
'When I got home I sat down and smoked about twenty fags and I got a pen and paper and drew what I'd seen. And I told my
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parents what I'd seen ... and my father didn't believe me ... and my dog is usually very friendly to me but ...'
'What breed is your dog?'
'It's a Pomeranian cross terrier. And ... I was sitting down and it was barking and growling at me as if I was somebody else.'
'Does he normally bark and growl at you when you come home?'
'Never. He wags his tail - or ignores me.'
'So would you consider, in these circumstances, that his reaction to your presence - having seen this entity - was uncharacteristic?'
'Yeah.'
'Just two questions. Did you see the man's ears?'
'No, I can't really remember.'
'You said his eyes were big. How big?'
'Well, they were a bigger than a normal man's eyes - about twice the size.'
'Thank you.'
Strange spacemen-like figures appeared to people all over Pembrokeshire in that spring of 1977. They were seen by children as young as eight and by pensioners. These figures had an apparitional quality in that they did things which are impossible in terms of physics as we understand the subject; for example, they would float in mid-air or disappear while under observation. In every case bar one - that of Stephen Taylor - the entities wore masks or visors. They and their craft or vehicles seemed to be massless and therefore unaffected by gravity. An instance of this effect was described to us by Cyril Victor John of 120 Marble Hall Road Milton Haven.
Cyril John, a sixty-four-year-old retired house decorator, was due to take a coachload of Senior Citizens to London on 7 April 1977. He intended to wake up at 5.45 a.m. but instead woke an hour earlier. He told us: 'I awoke because there was a strange orange light pulsating in the bedroom. It was coming from outside and it was pulsating off the walls.'
'Was it slow or rhythmic?' asked Pugh.
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'Yes, it wasn't fast,' Cyril John continued. I lay in bed for a few minutes and though: "What the devil is that?" Then I got up and looked out of the window and the sky was orange. Immediately outside here I saw two silvery-coloured objects enclosed in an area of coloured light. The first was like a very large Easter egg, about four feet in diameter, and it was swinging back and forth a little above and behind the chimneys of the house opposite. The movement was horizontal, like a pendulum, and through a distance of about fifty to sixty feet. There was no sound.
'I then saw an object like a man in a silvery boiler suit about forty feet above my window. It was very large - at least seven feet tall - and it hung stationary on a level with the "Easter egg". Its attitude was in the position of a free-fall parachute jumper with arms and legs outstretched. It hung motionless in the sky. No face was visible but the head seemed to be normal shape. It hovered face-downwards for about twenty-five minutes and all this time the "egg" was moving back and forth. The "egg" then moved up above roof-level and glided away sideways as did the figure. Wwhen they went away there was no further pulsating light. I did not switch on the house-light and my watch did not stop.'
'Was this figure actually sky-diving?' Pugh asked.
'No, he was stationary - motionless. And he stayed there for about twenty-five minutes. I looked at my watch because of the coach and it was 5.25 and I thought: "No matter what this is, I'll have to start thinking about going." Then all of a sudden the "Easter egg" vanished sideways. And this monster ... or call it what you like ... gradually moved away until it went over the roof of the houses and everything was gone.'
'How far away were you from this figure?' Pugh asked. 'I get the impression that it was nearer to you than the "Easter egg" was.'
'Yes,' replied Cyril John, 'it was between me and the "Easter egg". It was standing out so clearly against the orange sky that there was no question but that it was silver. Both the objects were the same colour.'
'You couldn't make out the features?'
'No. I couldn't make out the features.'
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'But it had the body of a man?'
'Exactly. There were the arms, body, legs - there was no question but that it was the shape of a man.'
'Thank you, Mr John,' said Pugh.
We have received various reports of swinging, pendulum-like objects. One of these was from Beverley Rees, a sixteen-year-old girl whom we interviewed in her home at Lower Hasgard Farm, Haverfordwest. She saw the object on the last Tuesday in April at about 8.45 p.m.
Beverly told us: 'I was driving with my mum from Tiers Cross and it was a bright night. When we got to Solvery Mountain we saw this thing about tree-top height above us - it was hovering over us. It was a rugby ball shape and a sort of orange-red in colour. It was about five to six times the size of the moon.'
Pugh asked: 'Were you driving along slowly?'
'Yes, fairly slowly.'
'Was the thing stationary?'
'No, it was swinging rather like a pendulum but at the same time moving forward. It was also flashing in and out. Sometimes it would go slow and sometimes it would go a bit faster.'
'Did you hear any sound?'
'No, there was none.'
'How far away from you would you say it was? The width of this yard? Twice the width of the yard?'
Beverly indicated by pointing out features round the farmyard.
Pugh said: 'So you were about fifty yards from this object and it was about 100 feet high.'
The pendulum object moved behind trees and was lost to view but the witness told us how she saw a similar thing while driving with friends on the Dale road on 19 May at 10.30 p.m. This object was observed in the Ratford Bridge-Churchill Farm area. It was bright red in colour and made no sound. Beverley's party drove to a nearby crossroads to get a better view but then found the thing had disappeared. 'The shape was the same shape as the lost one,' she told us, 'only this was further away.'
By early summer it was quite evident that Pembrokeshire was being haunted by low-level UFOs which various witnesses described as resembling 'ovals' and 'rugby balls'. These objects
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often prowled low over the landscape even in daylight. They were sometimes inconspicuous and seemed to use vegetation as a background for their forages.
Such an object was spotted in early May at Camrose, a tiny village only three miles from Randall Jones Pugh's home. He therefore went down to interview Mrs H. Woodhof of 'Perigm' bungalow, Camrose, about what had occurred.
Mrs Woodhof explained: 'My husband and I were sitting here and he was looking out at the road.'
'Which is about some forty feet away, actually,' Pugh commented.
Mrs Woodhof continued: 'Suddenly I said, "Did you see that, Hans?" It was a sort of round tihng, like the head of a girl on a horse. I got up to see if there was actually a girl on a horse but there was no such thing to be seen.'
'Now I can see this hedge on the other side of the road which is roughly twenty feet high,' said Pugh. 'So this thing was going along about halfway up the hedge. What shape was it?'
'Round,' replied Mrs Woodhof. 'I just happened to look up and there was this thing was going - and I couldn't see anything above it and nothing below it.'
'And what shape was it - an oblong, an oval, a round thing or what was it?'
'Like a rugby ball - that sort of shape. It wasn't very large.'
'How large - six feet, three feet, two feet?'
'Two to three feet.'
'And the colour was ...'
'It looked to me brownish - a beige. This was about 9 o'clock at night.'
'Did it have a light of any description?'
'No.'
'No sound.'
'No.'
'And it was going fairly slowly?'
'Yes, quite slowly. Hans had seen it coming from further up there.'
'Following the hedge down.'
'Yes. But he didn't say anything until I saw it and then he said "Yes, I saw it too."'
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'And your husband said it was definitely shaped like a rugby ball and it was just floating along the hedge horizontally, quite slowly?'
'Yes, it was just like that.'
A standard or stock explanation for many UFOs is that they are weather-balloons misidentified by startled witnesses. By coincidence such a balloon appeared over Camrose on 31 May when it landed and was examined. It is interesting to note what the prime witness to the affair claimed she saw. Her statement runs: 'Suddenly I saw this thing in the sky - it was all silver - and this long thing hanging. To me it looked the shape of a kite. It seemed to me it was going to land in the field so I ran round to my mother's house to see if my father would go and see if anything had landed. But yesterday evening Alastair Rogers went over to investigate and he found this balloon.'
Pugh welcomed this account as an example of the objective view of things seen in the sky taken by ordinary people. No one attempted to create a mystery and a search soon demonstrated the cause of the sighting. On the other hand the matter showed the value of caution during appraisals. Had the balloon moved around on wind-eddies at 100 feet this might have led us to draw quite the wrong conclusions.
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CHAPTER THREE - PHENOMENA AT MILFORD HAVEN
Now I venture to maintain that scientific progress has never resulted from merely dismissing incongruous phenomena as negligible illusions just because they refuse to conform. Again and again, as the story of scientific discoveries testifies, stray exceptions to orthodox theories which have been ignored or rejected by one generation have become cornerstones in the new theories built by the next.
Sir Cyril Burt, The Scientist Speculates (1962)
Milford Haven used to be a quiet western backwater haunted only by trawlers and lobster boats until it was converted, within less than a decade, into one of the largest oil ports in Europe. This area of Dyfed has always attracted UFOs, and sightings of these objects date back long before the vintage year of 1977. (Later in this Chapter there is an account of Warren Davies' sighting in 1935.) The industrialization of Milford has done nothing to diminish the UFO; indeed, the reverse could be argued.
This fact raises a problem. There are probably more professional look-out men per square mile around Milford Haven than almost anywhere else in Wales. They include tanker crews, conservancy vessels, coastguards and harbour police. It is the routine duty of such personnel to report anything anomalous they may observe, whether it be an erratic light or an unidentified object. Why, then, has a UFO-pattern in the Milford area not been identified over the years?
Certainly reports have been filed for which no ready explanation is forthcoming. The lifeboat has been turned out for lights which were never identified. Aircraft crossing the area
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have made curious observations. Even so, there is a lack of logic about the picture. Here, in this semi-militarist area of the sea-coast we would expect the anomalous flying object to have found its way into the Admiralty charts, at least in the form of some dry-as-dust remark to serious mariners. Such has not been the case, however.
The parameters of the mystery are well indicated by the experience of an area insurance agent, Mr D. J. Harris, who was walking down Charles Street in Milford Town at about 11 o'clock on a midsummer morning in 1959.
It was a fine day and Mr Harris was busy at his job, visiting customers. About 100 yards ahead of him, on his side of the street, was the seventy-foot high tower of the Tabernacle Chapel. As he walked along he suddenly heard the whispering sound one would associate with a low-altitude glider. Glancing up, he saw an object appear over the street ahead of him opposite the chapel tower. This object was about fifty feet above the ground and moving on a downward track.
Mr Harris described the UFO as 'enormous' and thought it must have been 150 feet in diameter. It was a metallic grey in colour rather like weathered aluminium. It was travelling quite slowly and seemed to be spinning or rotating equally slowly - so much so that the witness thinks he saw only a part of one revolution. The profile presented to him was a flattened ellipse, and around the widest part of the diameter he noticed deep scallops or fluting. Although the object seemed to be rotating it did not alter the profile it presented to the observer, and Mr Harris agreed that this suggested the plan-view was circular.
He stared in amazement as the UFO sailed over the street, still on a downward course, until it vanished from view behind the Tabernacle tower. Behind the Tabernacle is the harbour, and Harris realized that the object, whatever it was, was destined to plunge straight into the sea. Instinctively he began to run, with the confused idea of raising an alarm. But when he reached the twoer and could see the water there was nothing whatsoever of the phenomenon to be seen; nor did anyone else in the street seem to have observed it.
It seems most unlikely that a UFO of this size was generally visible that sunny morning at Milford, where there are just too
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many competent observers with binoculars on ships for such a thing to go unobserved. This forces the conclusion that no one saw the object except Mr Harris - that it was invisible to everyone but him. In the course of inquiry it turned out that the witness had certain psychical attributes such as the ability to dowse, or divine water. Nevertheless, it was a unique experience for him - he had never seen a UFO before nor has he seen one since. What was certainly significant about this case was the track or path taken by the object - a point which will be persued later.
The tourist who boards the diesel-launch Tudor Prince at Hobbs Point for a cruise to the upper reaches of Milford Haven will pass under the new road-bridge at Pembroke Ferry and see the hulk of HMS Warrior, Britain's first iron-clad warship, moored against the southern shore. A short distance inshore from the spot, at Cosheston Point, is the quarry from which the megalithic builders of Stonehenge took the micaceous sandstone blocks used as replacement for several Carnalw stones - which were obtained in the Preselly Mountains - when these capsized the rafts on which they were being loaded for transportation to the Stonehenge site. As the launch steams northward the Haven starts to close in and Benton Wood appears on the western shore. Amongst the greenery of the trees will be seen the pile of Benton Castle, the white castle. Benton Castle is now occupied by Colonel and Mrs Sulivan and their sons. This family has seen the Milford UFOs on two occasions.
The first statement we recorded was that OF Captain Timothy J. Sulivan who has a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering. As might be expected of an engineer, he gave a very precise account. He stated:
'I returned home, via the Haven bridge, from a supper party at Knowles Farm, Lawrenny, at about 23.10 on 3 January 1977. When I reached home at about a quarter to midnight I noticed a dry patch by the rear of the cottage [which is shared by the Sulivan brothers] where my brother's car had been. He had left about 23.15. I got out of my car and wandered round the back of the cottage to see if anyone was awake in the castle (where my
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parents sleep). Before I was in sight of the castle door I heard a shout which I thought was my mother shouting 'Marcus, where are you?' However, when the door was in sight it was evidently closed and there was a light in my parents' bedroom. I may have shouted back but consider it unlikely. I assumed that my mother had thought that my brother had not immediately gone but that she had not waited for an answer. I then began to stare around the sky looking for the Plough - about one constellation I can immediately recognize - when my eye was caught by a movement.
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An object (about a half to three-quarters of an inch in diameter at two feet - arm's length) travelling very fast (a sighting of about half a second over twenty to thirty degrees of arc) which definitely had no tail (such as is seen by objects burning out on entering the atmosphere) passed through the sky. This object, which was circular in shape, appeared to look like a two-dimensional view of a spheroidal open lattice-work - the latticing appearing as tracings of light having the instensity of some of the weaker stars. At the time two things appeared odd. Firstly, the object must have been more than fifty feet away - it went behind a building - and therefore was travelling fast (some 160 feet per second if fifty feet away, and a truly incredible speed if entering the atmosphere). Secondly, there was no characteristic trail as seen when meteorites or satellites burn up. The next morning I discovered that my mother had not gone out or shouted after saying goodbye to my brother.'
Mrs Betty Sulivan described to Randall Jones Pugh with characteristic forthrightness her own sighting of a UFO from Benton Castle.
She recalled: 'On 24 May 1977, the night I saw my extraordinary object going down Milford Haven, one of the drivers at the Castlemartin Army Camp left his hut to pee at 4 o'clocl in the morning and saw something extraordinary in the sky and the whole camp was talking about it.'
Pugh asked: 'Could you recall your own experience?'
'Yes. I walked out through the front door. It was a dark night. I walked out of the lighted hall and this light came across and I couldn't have missed it. There was no sound - no port or starboard lights - and I thought, "What an extraordinary aeroplane!" My first reaction was "No noise - where's the noise?" It was dead silent.'
'It was moving in a horizontal plane?'
'Horizontal plane, yes. The light was peculiar - it is difficult to describe. My son [Captain T. Sulivan] had a similar experience. It was sort of pulsating. Pulsating and glittering. It was quite large. I rushed off to get the field-glasses as soon as it had got down to Lawrenny, in the hope that it was coming back, but there was not a sign.'
'Was it moving fairly quickly?'
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'All in all I suppose I could have counted up to twelve - about a quarter of a minute was the time I saw it. I didn't like to leave it I was so fascinated with it. It was about a mile away and I should have heard the sound of a plane on such a clear night. It was absolutely silent. It wasn't a plane nor was it a helicopter. I have flown a plane and I thought at the time "This is what Tim saw." I was very intrigued.'
Other UFO witnesses were also intrigued by what they saw but some found the experience overwhelming and didn't want to have it repeated. Such a witness was Mrs Tibbs of Johnston, near Milford, who was both enthralled and upset by what she saw. Randall Jones Pugh interviewed her at her home.
'Now, Mrs Tibbs, could you please describe the events of Friday, 15 April 1977?'
'I was by the kitchen sink and looking out of the kitchen window.'
'Could you tell me what time it was?'
'A quarter past eight in the morning. And all of a sudden I thought to myself, "What on earth am I seeing in the sky?" And I looked and I looked and repeated over and over, "What on earth is it?" And as it moved nearer the yard I rushed to the phone and tried to get in contact with my husband but couldn't. Then I rushed back to the kitchen window and I saw it had changed its position.'
'Can you give me an idea of the shape you saw?'
'It was round ... like a saucer ... but still I couldn't fathom it.'
'Was it sharply defined?'
'Oh, yes, it was.'
'And the colour?'
'Silvery, glittering, oh, beautiful! You couldn't help but set your eyes on it.'
'Was it doing anything ... or was it motionless?'
'It was bobbing up and down.'
'Could you estimate the size of it?'
'When my husband came home he said, "Wwhat did it look like?" So I said, "Leave me think a minute." So I sat and thought and I'll tell you. It was something like a bed-warmer without the handle. It was floating, up and down.'
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'Was it moving slowly?'
'Yes, slowly. When it had gone further away it seemed to have gone over on its side.'
'Were you frightened?'
'I can't explain the sensation I had.'
'You heard no sound?'
'No, no sound. But I must say I was glad I saw it indoors and not out in the garden.'
'How long were you actually watching this object?'
'A few minutes.'
'And what happened then?'
'It floated out of sight.'
One of the most interesting aspects of the inquiry was the way shy or reluctant witnesses were encouraged to come forward when they noticed we were treating the UFO affair seriously. One of these was Warren Davies, the gardener employed by Colonel Sulivan at Benton Castle. The tale dates from Mr Davies' boyhood in that district.
Warren Davies described how, about 1935, he was living with his grandmother in Freystrop after the death of his mother. He and his sister had to go to school across a field and then through a wood. They had been doing this for some time until one night, as they neared the endd of the wood, they saw a bright yellow object which they thought at first was a balloon. It was floating amongst the trees and was moving backwards and forwards like a pendulum, about six feet each way. It seemed to be about the size of a bicycle wheel. The children were scared and ran home. Although they continued to use the same route to school they were usually accompanied through the wood by their grandfather after this episode.
Freystrop is only half a mile from the upper reaches of the Milford estuary. The oscillating or pendulum-motion UFO was already familiar to us following sightings in 1977. More interesting was Mr Davies' statement that his sister, Mrs Miller, who lived in the tiny village of Houghton - a mile inland from Benton Castle - had had a close encounter within the last few weeks. Mrs Miller lived at Newton Villa, Bowlings
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Corner, Houghton, and Randall Jones Pugh lost no time in going to ask her what had occurred.
Mrs Miller explained: 'It was about half past three in the morning on a day about halfway through May. It was the noise that woke me up. It sounded like ...' [Witness made a whistling / sucking sound.]
Pugh said: 'It was almost like a hoovering effect?'
'Yes. It was over the house and it was such a terrible noise I thought it was going to draw the house in.'
'Oh, it was very loud?'
'It was very loud, yes.'
'Was it like a wind?'
'Yes, it was like suction. Next morning I saw the gravel in the road and it had been all drawn up into the middle, in one spot.'
'What this a circular effect or not?'
'Yes, it was all drawn up in the middle as if something had drawn it up.'
'How much was there?' Pugh asked, fascinated by this very objective evidence. 'Was there an appreciable amount? Was it an inch high?'
'Oh, yes. Over two inches high.'
'So you had a sort of cone-shaped effect?'
'Yes, that's right. What happened then was that I ran downstairs and the dogs were howling. I've got one dog inside and one out in the shed but the one inside was literally going crazy.'
'Were both the dogs affected by this noise?'
'Yes. The one in the shed was making a terrific racket - he was really frightened. I tried to run outside but couldn't get past the dog in the house. She was in a terrible state too. I was so frightened I never even shouted to my son, who was still in bed. I just ran downstairs and the dogs were making such an awful racket. I tried to get out of the house to see what it was - there seemed to be something over the house - and then I suddenly saw this thing. It was just like a silver saucer but it was gone in a flash.'
'Now let me get this right,' said Pugh. 'It was a silver colour?'
'Yes, and it had an orange light.'
'And the shape?'
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'It was just like ... a saucer turned upside down.'
'Possibly it was too quick for you to get an estimate of size, but was it large?'
'Yes. It looked like ... from the distance I saw it from the back door it looked about [indicates] twice as long as that.'
'That would be ... forty or fifty feet I would say.'
'Yes. Well, I thought it was going to draw the house up into it. It must have come down by here, you see. There's a mountain over here and it must have come right over my place. It seemed to stop over my house. That's what frightened me, you know. I'm a very light sleeper. But, gosh, you know, I was really frightened. And this suction noise ...'
'This is what woke you up - this plus the dogs?'
'Yes.'
Unfortunately Mrs Miller did not report this disturbing affair when it actually happened, and we only heard of it, weeks later, through the good offices of her brother. (Official scepticism has done nothing to encourage country witnesses to come forward. Probably more incidents go unreported than are brought to the attention of people such as Randall Jones Pugh.) The usual winds and rains of early summer had, alas, intervened, and the remarkable evidence of the sucked-up gravel was no longer worth measuring or photographing.
Man's logical mind, married as it is to three spatial dimensions and a time dimension, cries out to reject flying saucer testimony in toto. If large objects resembling Mrs Miller's suction UFO move around the night skies, why have they not been universally observed and recorded? How could a fifty-foot mystery craft operate within a few miles of a NATO airbase without being detected within minutes? Or were we dealing with something paranormal and functionining on physical co-ordinates utterly different to anything so far suspected?
The UFOs seen in the Broad Haven - Milford area in the spring of 1977 were only occasionally in the metallic saucerite form. Probably the majority of sightings of anomalous aerial objects were of things either oval or spherical in shape. Care was needed before logging such incidents to avoid the danger of inadvertently cataloguing an innocent airliner or a helicopter. However, when the luminous object was clearly seen to descend
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and operate near the earth, at no great range from the observer, the matter was removed from serious doubt.
An incident of this sort was observed by Patrick Needham James, a twenty-six-year-old quantity surveyor of Silverston Road, Milford, on 5 February 1977, the day after the Broad Haven school children saw their landed saucer. Mr James was about halfay between Nolton Haven and Haverfordwest in his car at about 8.30 p.m. He saw what he took to be an unusually bright star, but as he glanced at it a second time he realized that it was descending. It was white in colour and seemed to be spherical. Its medium brightness seemed to dull as it came lower. It came down to within about 100 yards of the ground and then began to drift slowly on the wind in the direction of Broad Haven. The light from the object was steady and without pulsation. It was about a quarter of a mile away in the direction Mr James was travelling but, as he drew nearer, he lost sight of it as the road curved. He continued on his way home and then caught sight of the thing again. It seemed to be hovering over the council houses in Nolton Haven at a height of about fifty to a hundred feet in the air. It seemed to be a yard or more wide and resembled 'a ball of light'. Mr James was less than half a mile away as he watched the object resume its drifting in the direction of the beach. Thoroughly intrigued by the mystery, he took a road down to the seashore, but the light had vanished.
Early in March 1977, Mr James saw a second UFO at almost the same positioning along the road as he had seen the first one. He got out of his car to study it. The object in this csae was red and it was pulsating to a slow rhythm - dimming and then gradually getting brighter. It was quite stationary in the sky at an altitude of a few hundred feet and was soundless. After watching for over quarter of an hour without seeing any changes the witness resumed his journey.
The Dyfed flying saucers were no respecters of the age, sex, educational background or profession of the persons they visited. They frightened housewives as they worked in their kitchens, disturbed sleepers such as Mrs Miller and fascinated colonel's ladies. Lawyers, doctors and engineer saw the puzzling objects,
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yet we were no wiser about their origins. Late travellers of nervous disposition were well advised to keep their eyes glued to the dashboard and drive home by the shortest route. Some of the stories were almost beyond belief and these we investigated with great caution, being aware that hoaxes are always possible.
One of the most curious tales occurred in Milford Town itself. Like many of the most specific accounts this incident had not been directly reported and we heard of it through a relative of the sighter. (In the account that follows all names have been changed since those involved wished to remain anonymous.) Initially we called to interview Mrs Marjorie White of Moulton Crescent who had seen three strange objects in the sky at 8.30 p.m. on 20 May 1977. A description of the objects suggested that they might have been contrails from transatlantic airliners. We agreed, however, to see her young brother, Anthony, as he had been out that night with the ATC cadets and had made drawings of the objects. We found the Marsh family - two adults and two teenagers - sitting in the lounge of their home watching television. Having examined fiteetn-year-old Anthony's drawings of the objects we were about to leave when someone mentioned that his sister, Caroline, aged seventeen, had seen something weird outside the house. Caroline had been quietly watching the screen while we talked to her brother and only described what she had seen when her father insisted. None of the Marsh family knew in advance that we would call at their house.
'One night in the middle of May I woke up about 3 a.m. and I saw a bright light and a sort of space-ship hovering just above the window,' Caroline told us calmly. 'There was a sort of green beam round the edge of it.' Staring at the spectacle she suddenly saw that there was a small humanoid standing on the window-sill close to the glass.
Randall Jones Pugh said: 'Good grief! How tall was it, Caroline?'
The girl indicated about a yard high. 'It was dressed in a sort of suit. You could only see the hands and face. It had long hair really.'
'What colour was the suit?'
'Silvery. It had a high-necked collar. It was a single-piece suit except for the hands which were in a sort of glove - they were really a sort of mitten.'
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'Can you describe the features?'
'It had slanted eyebrows, normal eyes and a curved nose.'
'Like Mr Punch?'
'Yeah.'
'Were you frightened?'
'Quite a bit.'
'Did it do anything?'
'It just stood there and looked at me. I looked round the room to make sure I wasn't seeing things and it just stood there.'
'What happened then?'
'I just closed the curtains,' Caroline said, 'and went back to bed.'
This seemed so unlikely in the circumstances described that we began to suspect that Caroline had been suffering some sort of nocturnal trance or vision. However, she went on to describe her second encounter with the humanoid.
'This was the following Thursday at about 5 o'clock in the morning. This was a smaller space-ship but it still had the same green beam around it.'
'You say "space-ship". What shape was it?'
'The bottom was round and it had a sort of glass compartment over it.'
'What did it do then?'
'It had stationed itself near my father's car out there in the street.'
'You were in your bedroom all this time, so what drew your attention to this object?'
'I just woke up again and went to the window. This time it was hovering out near my sister's bedroom - you could see it over there by the gate.'
'Did the light fill your room?'
'Only the side window.'
'How high was the object?'
'About roof-level.'
Pugh looked down at the sketches Caroline had done and said: 'I see from your drawing that you've got portholes around it and there was this green beam of light round the edge. The thing was motionless. What happened then?'
'A figure came out of this machine and it was just walking in
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mid-air - there was nothing attached to it. It had an oval-shaped face, long brownish hair - a very dark colour - slanted eyebrows, normal eyes ...'
'This was the same figure you saw satanding at your window-sill?'
'Yes.'
'What happened then?'
'The figure kept on walking forward and walking back.'
'Did it turn before it walked back or did it literally walk backwards?'
'It literally walked backwards.'
'And then did it get back in the ship?'
'It got back inside and the ship just went off. That was the last I saw of it.'
After we had heard this account - which we suspected was a mixture of dream-images and teenage fantasy - Mrs Catherine Marsh ushered us towards the front door. In her arms she carried the family pet, a three-year-old male miniature poodle called Bobbi, which she said was getting ready to follow them all upstairs to bed.
'Doesn't he sleep downstairs in the kitchen?' Pugh asked casually. Mrs Marsh replied that the dog always used to sleep in the kitchen but, earlier that year, something had seemed to upset it. She said: 'All of a sudden he started acting up at night - he was howling terrible. This would be about February. He started acting strangely and there was no reason for it really. He would scream and howl at night and I came down to put him to bed a few times but in the end he was cowering so much I let him come upstairs.'
'About what time would he start these antics?'
'Between one and two in the morning. Several times I found him on the table by the window and he wouldn't settle down - he still kept screaming and crying - until in the end I took him upstairs.'
'At the time that Caroline had this experience ...'
'He's been upstairs every night since then,' Mrs Marsh said. 'The minute we start making preparations for bed he slinks up the stairs with his tail between his legs - as if he's afraid of being alone.'
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'And how was he previously?'
'Previous to February he was quite normal. He would go into his basket and have his blanket put over him and settle down. But now you can't get him to do that at all. He's upstairs every night and he'll really cower. He doesn't want to be left in the kitchen.'
Caroline then came over to supplement this by saying: 'My brother tried to put Bobbi to sleep in the kitchen but he wouldn't go. He came to me, cuddled up in my arms, and came into my bedroom. But he wouldn't go to sleep - he ran into Tony's bedroom and went to sleep there. He refused to sleep in my bedroom. He used to sleep there before what happened but now he won't.'
'The behaviour of the little poodle which first began to act strangely about the time the Broad Haven flying saucers started manifesting in numbers seemed mysterious. Even odder was the fact that the street where the Marshes live turned out to be very near the one where Cyril Victor John had seen the floating figure and craft in April of the same year, as described in Chapter Two. Moreover, a glance at the map and the use of a ruler showed that all these incidents, including the sighting of a disc by D. J. Harris in 1959 - described earlier in this chapter - were found to occur along a straight line. Did this somehow connect these curious events?
The little dog Bobbi was reported always to scramble on to the kitchen table when he was in his frightened state. The idea began to occur to us that perhaps, when the animal was on the floor, it was able to sense an almost imperceptible vibration, much as certain Japanese fish can sense minute earthquake shocks and are therefore kept in domestic aquaria as living early-warning devices. It was an idea - but where did the straight line effect come in, and how did the whole thing relate to UFOs? All this will be discussed in a later chapter.
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CHAPTER FOUR
A Slight Hint of Menace
As so frequently occurs when one is investigating so-called abnormal phenomena, one finds it equally impossible to withhold credence from the facts or to credit any possible explanation of the facts. Either the facts did not occur, or, if they did, the universe must in some important respects be totally other than what one is accustomed to suppose.
Dr C. E. M. Joad, Adventures in Psychical Research (1938)
We had both read a large amount of material about UFOs and were aware that some writers sepculate freely on the possibility that the objects, whatever they are, have inimical designs on the human race. So far in Dyfed, during the 1977 flood of sightings, there had been no evidence either in support of such a view nor against it. When humanoid figures were observed they seemed to be sombre, much preoccupied with some mysterious task, but neutral so far as the witnesses were concerned. However, we began to modify our attitude about this after we had investigated several peculiar cases, some of which involved animals. Whether UFOs and their occupants are truly inimical or not, one thing emerged quite clearly; they produce an irrational fear both in man and beast which sometimes borders on hysteria.
In April 1977, we heard that a twelve-year-old boy had been chased by 'a man from outer space'. The boy, Mark Alan Marsden, lived at 14 St Margaret's Way, Herbrandston, Dyfed. We visited the tiny village and found that it consisted essentially of a single street which terminates in a footpath running down to a small sewage plant. Beyond the plant are fields, and beyond these are the open waters of Milford Haven.
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Before speaking to Mark Marsden, we interviewed his adult relations, particularly his uncle, Michael John, and his grandmother, Mrs Winifred John. Their side of the story was of great interest since they appear to have seen the Herbrandston phenomenon in its aerial phase. We also interviewed Michael John's brother, Alwyn, and his wife who seem to have seen the UFO as it approached the district. Alwyn John told us how he and his wife were returning from Milford by bus at about 10 o'clock on a fine, cold night at Easter. After alighting from the bus they started to walk home when they saw a strange light in the sky. Mr John said: 'It was just like a round ball of fire.' The luminous ball hung stationary at no great altitude. The witness continued: 'We're outside most nights and I've never seen anything like it before - and we've lived here for twenty-four years. We just stood and looked at it and then came home.'
The incident of the luminous ball occurred either very soon before or very soon after the strange sequence of events in Herbrandston village. Alwyn John did not make a note of the date and only knows that it was 'at Easter'. Bearing this in mind we were able to establish that the affair seems to have reached its climax on Easter Monday, 11 April 1977.
As the spring dusk deepened over the little village that Easter Monday, many of the adults were at home and starting to switch on television sets. Most of the older youngsters were still outside, however, either playing in the village street or embarked on some juvenile expedition of one sort or another. Mark Marsden had gone looking for birds' nests with his friends. Back in St Margaret's Way his uncle, Michael John - who lodged in an adjacent house - was watching television with his landlady, Mrs Bray. The lurking UFO seems to have chosen this moment to arrive.
Pugh asked: 'Now, Michael, whilst you and your landlady were sitting in the room you saw this red glow over the roof of the house opposite. Can you take the story from there?'
'Well, I was sitting with my landlady, Mrs Bray, when the TV went clean off so I came over to Sandra [i.e. his sister, Mark's mother] to see if their TV had also gone off but they hadn't got it switched on. Sandra said to me: "We've just seen a red glow in the sky."'
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'So your television went off at the time the red glow was seen in the sky. What time was this roughly?'
'Between about half past eight and twenty to nine.'
Mrs Winifred John, Mark's grandmother, had also seen the red glow over the roof of the house opposite, so we asked her to describe it. She said: 'Well, it was like a sunset. Something like that. Just over the roof of that house.'
'Was it moving from right to left or left to right?'
'I didn't see. It was just a glow. My daughter suddenly pointed at the window and then I looked and saw it.'
'Did you see any object flying?'
'No, I didn't.'
About half an hour later - it was now quite dark - Mrs John saw something equally puzzling. She saw her young grandson arrive home terrified and almost incoherent about what had just happened. Mrs John said: 'He was in a terrible state when he came home. He was crying and was so frightened he could hardly describe what he'd seen. And then he cooled down and he explained it but he was still crying while he was talking. He was ever so frightened.'
We found Mark Marsden to be a sturdy, outdoor type of lad who didn't look as if he would dissolve into tears easily. He agreed to take us on a tour to show us where he had had his unpleasant adventure. Fifty yards or so beyond the end of St Margaret's Way the Herbrandston street becomes a dirt path which slopes down, curves round a corner, and leads to a patch of rough, grassy land - known locally as 'the beach' - which contains a fenced enclosure, guarded by tall iron gates, housing the sewage plant. As he came down this slope in the dusk, the boy explained, he noticed a red glow on one of the banks fringing the adjoining fields. We found it difficult not to associate this mysterious glow, now on the ground, with the glow seen over the houses only a few minutes earlier by the adults up in St Margaret's Way.
Randall Jones Pugh said: 'So you and four of your friends went birds'-nesting. Tell me where you went and what happened.'
'I went down there very near to the beach. It was just about getting dark. Some of my friends came up and asked me if I was going in the haystack and I said no, and they went in the
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haystack so I went back down to the valley and I was going to check a nest. And then I heard something back in the bushes behind me ...'
'You heard rustling or something like that?'
'Yeah. Then something jumped out of the hedge and I heard some heavy breathing - very deep. I was going to run - I was walking backwards like this, terrified ...'
'What caused you to be terrified? In other words, what did you see?'
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'Well, there was a man dressed in silver, like, and his face was black - I couldn't see his face.'
'You saw a man dressed in a silvery suit. What was he like? Was he tall or short?'
'Tall and very thin - skinny.'
'Did it seem to be a mask that he had on his face? A mask like motor-cyclists wear?'
'Yeah. And it was all pitch black - pure black.'
'Now, was it round or square?'
'Squarish, like.'
'O.K. then. Now, we've got a figure which is six feet or more high, thinnish, dressed in a silvery suit. Did it look like a spacesuit type of thing?'
'Yeah. Almost the same thing.'
'Or a set of overalls or a boiler suit?'
'A boiler suit, only silver.'
'But the head was covered, you say, Mark, with a device which was squarish and black. O.K. Now what happened then?'
'I was walking back, scared. And then his foot hit the loose gravel on the road and I started to run.'
'Was he coming towards you?'
'Yeah, he was running as well and I could hear ... And then I got past the gate going in towards the farm and he stopped under the street-light.'
'So you saw him under the light and had a fairly good impression of what he was like?'
'He was all gleaming and silvery and he had sort of funny boots on. Funny black boots.'
'How high did they come up the leg?'
'About halfway up. And he was all gleaming and skinny and tall and silver. And his face was all pure black.'
'How about the arms?'
'He had gloves on his hands - silver gloves as well.'
'So what was this thing doing then under the light? Was it standing still and watching you?'
'I was standing still watching him and he was standing still watching me and he was wriggling his fingers like this [gestures].'
'Feet slightly apart and wriggling his fingers. And what happened then?'
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'Then he went back down and I came up to the house crying my eyes out.'
'Now he turned away from you so you viewed his back. Now were there any distinguishing marks you saw?'
'I thought I seen like a thing sticking up from his shoulder when he turned his back.'
'Which shoulder - the right or the left?'
'This one - the right.'
'What did it resemble - a tube or ...?'
'Well, it was like a sort of car-aerial - about this high [gestures].'
'Six to eight inches high. And what happened then, Mark?'
'Well, he turned away and started to run back.'
'Was he running fast or slowly or...?'
'Stiffish. Then he passed around the corner from where he came out.'
'Out of the marsh?'
'Back into the sewers.'
'What did you do then?'
'I ran home and then I sat down crying and then I did a figure of him like my father asked me.'
After hearing the story Mark's father at once went down to the beach and searched around but found no trace of the silvery intruder. In the succeeding days another group of children also saw something odd in the beach area. A thirteen-year-old girl, Debbie Swan, told us how she was wandering around the adjoining fields with her brother, Andrew Swan (ten), Sally Thomas (eleven), David Marsden (ten) and Tracy Carrol (nine). However, it was not a silvery humanoid they saw but our familiar friend the floating ball.
Debbie told us: 'I left my house around 6 o'clock. My brother and I and my other friends went under the barbed wire up by the potato-field where they're drilling and walked halfway down the field. We looked across the field and I seen this... round ball.'
'How large would it be, Debbie?' asked Pugh. 'As large as a tennis ball?'
'Oh no, it was much bigger than that. Much bigger. Football size. It was silver, and we stood there because we seen it moving. It was moving all ways. And then, with this, we ran home - we were frightened.'
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During subsequent visits to Herbrandston Randall Jones Pugh discovered that a small dog, an eight-month-old terrier cross called Butch, belonging to a cousin of Mark Marsden, had behaved rather violently early one morning. This cousin, Peter John, lived at 15 St Margaret's Way, directly across the street from the Marsden home.
The dog was confined at night in a small shed where it slept on an old cushion. On 20 April 1977, at about 3.00 a.m., the animal was heard barking and then howling. Mr John explained that the dog was quiet and friendly and had never made such a din before.
'What exactly was he like?' Pugh asked.
'Well, it was as though he was frightened.'
'How long did this last?'
'For about three or four minutes. In the morning I went to let him out and the cushion was all over the shed - torn to pieces.'
'What do you suggest caused this?'
'I don't know,' Peter John said. 'Something frightened him. He takes no notice of cats fighting or anything like that.'
'You reckon that something frightened the dog and he reaction was quite uncharacteristic?'
'Yes.'
This unexplained little incident occurred nine days after Peter John's young cousin Mark had his encounter with the silvery humanoid, and two days before the Coombes saw a silvery giant at their farmhouse window as described in the next chapter. It was of course impossible to prove that the dog, Butch, had heard anything more frightening than a cat. Nevertheless, in view of the involvement of animals - especially dogs - in a considerable number of the sightings, this dog's atypical behaviour was of considerable interest.
This fear reaction entered into so many of the accounts we collected concerning flying saucers that it became almost a standard feature. But of what were people afraid? That many of the experiences were strange was undeniable; but strangeness in itself does not invoke terror. Most remarkable was the way this fear manifested itself in animals. Did they instinctively feel themselves to be threatened? One of the most remarkable cases
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of this sort occurred in a lonely stretch of the country by the River Towy, between Kidwelly and Carmarthen.
Mrs Mary Louise Basset was driving home from Carmarthen where she and her husband ran a restaurant. They live in the old manor house of Portiscliff which is located in Ferryside. It was about 1 a.m. on Sunday, 6 February 1977 - significantly, perhaps only two days after the Broad Haven School incident described in Chapter One. The road was deserted and the route familiar. The night was very dark.
As Mrs Basset approached the village of Idole she suddenly saw on the right-hand side of the road a blue flashing light and a rounded mass. Her first thought was that there had been a bad accident and that the light was on an ambulance or police car. She slowed down at once. During her homeward drive she had had the radio switched on and tuned to Radio Luxemburg. Static had steadily increased as she came along the road until, by the time she slowed down near Idole, it was hardly possible to hear the programme.
'You say you thought it was a bad accident. Why do you say that?' asked Pugh
'Because it looked as if there were barriers and because there was this mass. It was a very dark night. And there was this constant flashing light.'
'Coloured?'
'Blue. Constantly flashing. Very, very strong. And I honestly saw this mass and I knew it must be on the corner of the road further up. So I slowed down. And when I got to where I thought there must have been an accident there was no sign of one whatsoever. I drove along slowly, still with radio interference, and looked down the lanes of neighbouring farms but I couldn't see anything and couldn't understand what had happened. So I carried on even slower, and my radio came back.'
'What were your impressions at this stage?'
'There was no way I could explain the occurrence. I continued on towards Llandyfaelog. There are pylons, on top of the hill and on the left this time was exactly the same thing as before - blue lights and this mass as if there was an accident. But this time I
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thought: "There can't really be an accident - I wonder what it is."'
'So this was your second sighting?'
'Yes. And on the other side of the road - it had moved across. And again there was tremendous radio interference. I had total blockage on the radio and I stopped where I thought I'd seen this second light because there is a little farm there and I
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wondered if it might be an ambulance after all. I got out of the car and had a very good look around but couldn't see anything.'
'You say you saw a flashing blue light and a black mass which, to you, appeared amorphous?'
'Yes. That's exactly how it was. It was sort of nebulous, rounded shape with a flashing light.'
'Was the light protruding out of the top?'
'Yes. It gave the impression that one could write it off as an ambulance or whatever. The light was very, very strong. I laughingly said to myself: "Gosh, I think I've seen a UFO..."'
'Why did you think it could have been a UFO?'
'Because I couldn't explain it in any other way.'
Mrs Basset, a cool, well-educated young woman, now felt the first stirrings of alarm at these inexplicable appearances and disappearances. Jumping back into the car, she drove quickly down a side-road for three miles to Ferryside and home. But the night held yet another mystery.
The old manor of Portiscliff stands in heavily wooded grounds. Behind the antique coach-house the woodland rises up a steep hillside so that the house is literally hemmed in by tall trees and ornamental shrubbery. The driveway snakes its way up through a dark jungle.
The Bassets keep three perdigree Springer spaniels which Mrs Basset normally used to let out as soon as she arrived home. It was the reaction of these dogs which caused the surprise.
'Did your dogs show anything unusual when they greeted you?' Pugh asked. 'They didn't greet me - that was the most unusual thing. They are normally very friendly dogs because I've reared them from puppies and there's normally a big welcome. There's normally about three minutes of jumping up and wanting to be cuddled and patted. But that night it was totally uncharacteristic - they all shot past my legs and ran outside. After I'd made myself a cup of Ovaltine I went to call the dogs in. The two bitches rushed in with their hackles up and shaking. The dog, Jasper, who does not roam, had disappeared.'
'How did you get him back?'
'I went out and called him and I got the dog-whistle out. I went up to the stables; there was no sign of him there, so I went
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halfway down the drive. It was very late and very dark and I was a bit nervous and I thought: "I won't go down the drive any further." I then phoned my husband in Carmarthen and asked him to keep an eye open on the way home. Then I went out and called to Jasper again and he suddenly rushed in. All his hackles were up and he was shaking. He was very frightened.'
'This was a reaction that was totally alien to his normal character?'
'I've never seen a dog like that before. I've always had dogs and I've never seen a dog come in in that condition. Jasper is a placid dog, the family dog that guards the children. He just shot into his basket and shook.'
'Could you account for his condition?'
'Well, I thought: "Good Lord, he's seen a ghost or something." He was in the most peculiar state. Next morning we came down to let the dogs out and Jasper would not go. He lay under the table and refused to go out. He refused to go out all day unless someone went with him and then he did his business and shot straight back in. This continued all week and my husband said: "I wonder what he saw?" I didn't have to prompt my nannie or my housekeeper who both came in and said: "What on earth's wrong with Jasper? - he's in a very peculiar state." It wasn't that he was sick - he was just not himself.'
'You mean it was psychological?'
'Yes, one hundred per cent psychological. He was shaky, he was jumpy and he just would not go out. He was off his food and just lay in his basket all the time. This condition continued for two or three weeks until he got his confidence back and he's temporarily at any rate O.K. again. It was strange that this occurred immediately after whatever it was that I saw.'
'Do you think it possible that Jasper went out and somehow came into contact with whatever you saw yourself?'
'This is where one wishes a dog could talk. I don't know the explanation for his behaviour at all. I don't think it was normal. One has always heard stories that if a dog sees a ghost it acts most peculiar, so that it what one puts it down to really, I suppose. It was sort of paranormal.'
Nothing conclusive could be drawn from the behaviour of the Bassets' dogs except that they seem to have encountered
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something extraordinary in the black shrubberies that winter night which completely terrified them. Jasper, the male of the trio, probably came closer than the bitches to the phenomenon, whatever it was, and it affected him permanently. 'Jasper's personality has totally changed,' Mrs Basset told us as we sat in Portiscliff stroking the spaniels. 'All the people round here know me and know my dogs and it's become quite a joke - "Mrs Basset loves the dogs as much as the children." - Most of my friends have known Jasper since I had him as a six-week-old puppy and they've all commented on his personality change. He has to be escorted out of the house and then - literally, I've watched him - he won't go down on the grass, he stays on the terrace. He's a completely changed dog. He's a dog who has become nervous and, on occasion, has what I can only describe as a depression. He's a totally changed and depressed animal.'
'If you do go out, will he leave you at all?' Pugh asked.
'No. If we do go out across the fields he will not range out of my sight. He won't leave me.'
There are, of course, in the history of ufological investigations and reporting, many references to the effects such abnormal occurrences have on animals of many species. In the case histories of those species which came to our attention during the course of our Dyfed investigations the behaviour of the Basset dog, Jasper, was particularly interesting.
Certainly during our visit to Portiscliff, when we were enjoying our host's hospitality, Jasper's entry into the lounge was, in Randall Jones Pugh's opinion, totally uncharacteristic of a spaniel. Pugh has always found this beed to be invariably friendly, lovable and gregarious. But when the three dogs entered the lounge the two bitches immediately came over to us, tails wagging, noses prodding, ingratiatingly trying to get a share of the biscuits. Not so with the male dog. He completely ignored us, went straight to his basket, curled up and closed his eyes.
During the conversation we had with Mr and Mrs Basset, Mrs Basset declared that she considered Jasper to be by nature a typically boisterous, happy, uninhibited 'fool of a dog', and her husband concurred that Jasper, at one time, was indeed the friend of everyone. After the fear-inducing incident there was, as has been described, a distinct change in the general attitude of
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the three dogs. In the case of the two bitches they were, initially, extremely frightened and went off their food for a while, but soon recovered their normal aplomb.
Not so with Jasper. Whatever happened to him, whatever he encountered that night, certainly made a vivid and long-lasting impression on him. Indeed, so interested did Pugh become in the case of this dog that he kept in close touch with the owners for quite a while, to ascertain whether or not any signs of improvement had been seen in the animal.
In effect the dog's whole psychological character changed. He became introverted, disinterested in the members of the family and their activities, moody and very definitely fearful. Normally an animal always ready for his food, he could, at times, completely ignore his dish - sometimes leaving it for other dogs to finish off.
The most interesting change in the animal's normal behaviour, however, was his fear of going out of doors. On each of Pugh's monthly phone calls to the Basset menage Mrs Basset reiterated that the dog would go out in response to the calls of nature only if accompanied by a member of the family, and would then immediately dash indoors again. Sometimes the animal literally had to be carried out. Whenever he did elicit to go out voluntarily - invariably accompanied by Mrs Basset - he always showed extreme reluctance at remaining a second longer than was necessary by catchig his owner's trouser leg or skirt between his teeth and literally pulling her back indoors.
As time went be his behaviour slowly began to revert to normal, although he has not regained his old charisma. When Pugh phoned Mrs Basset on 5 October 1977 she confirmed that he still has what she terms 'funny days'. He still has to have the outside light on before he will go out at night - indeed the darkness around Portiscliff with its grounds full of giant fir-trees, etc. can by Styigan - and he still catches hold of her skirt when he wants to return indoors. Furthermore, Mrs Basset feels he has become extremely 'protective' about the house generally anf especially where the children are concerned. Indeed he has reached the point on some occasions when he will howl and scratch at the door of their bedroom until he can reassure himself that they are really in bed and then, in turn, he will settle down also.
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Whether or not this 'syndrome' is a compensatory reaction on the part of the animal is debatable. Certainly in conflict situations animals may show various compensatory reactions. Portelse (1942) reports that a young male drill (a West African baboon) used to put its thumb spasmodically into its mouth when conflict between fear and aggression was aroused by another male. The suppressed aggression was self-directed. (See M. W. Fox, Abnormal Behaviour in Animals, p. 490.)
It has been shown that unpleasant experiences such as Jasper presumably / possibly may have encountered can indeed cause long-lasting behavioural changes which can be observed on subsequent occasions when the dog is exposed to similar stimulatory conditions. In the case of the resilient, assured animal which Jasper undoubtedly was, such a personality is not easily inhibited in such a situation once his curiosity is aroused. In the case of the fearful and timid dog the animal shows 'an extreme lowering of the threshold for the release of flight-behaviour, cover-seeking, self defense (defensive aggression) reaction, fear biting, fright inhibition (stupor) or depressive behavioural reactions. These phenomena may occur individually or intermittently with each unfamiliar stimulation of the animal (when in an unknown territory or social environment).' (See F. Brunner, 'The Application of Behaviour Studies in Small Animal Practice', in Abnormal Behaviour in Animals, ed. M. W. Fox.)
In the case history of Jasper, therefore, one can only conclude that since he was in no sense 'socially deprived' (he was more than well cared for) and had previously shown no abnormal behavioural characteristics, no unusual emotional reactions or signs of psychomotor disturbance, the result of possibly coming into contact with UFO phenomena which the dog literally not 'identify' in terms associated with humans proved so utterly alien to him that, for a while, he was very much disturbed psychologically. In many case historians when humans have come into direct contact with UFOs and / or their occupants, their experience has been described as a very profound one. If Jasper really did undergo just such an experience, could this not prove to be equally applicable in all its psychological ramifications with regard to the dog?
It was difficult to evaluate the Basset case. Mrs Basset had not
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been accosted; indeed, she had seen no one who might have accosted her. On the other hand, the UFO sitting beside the road (if that is what it was), its curious change of position and the impression of barriers seemed to imply that she was in the process of being detained or halted in her journey home. Both of us were reminded here of perhaps the most famous of all UFO stories - the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill in New Hampshire in 1961. The Hills were driving home from vacation, on the night of 19 September 1961. On a lonely part of the road they were taken on board a strange craft, under protest, and were subjected to various medical tests. Later they were released and suffered amnesia until, in December 1963, Barney Hill consulted Benjamin Simon, M.D. Using hypnosis, Dr Simon was able to recover a great deal of information from the Hills about what happened to them that night.
The UFO had contacted the Hills by staging a road-block similar to the one seen by Mrs Basset. Had Mrs Basset been involved in an attempted abduction which, for some reason failed to succeed? Did the UFO entities subsequently follow her home to Portiscliff and then encounter the dogs in the grounds?
Although the above must remain in the category of sheer speculation we have other witnesses to the fact that a UFO was manoeuvring over Ferryside at the period in question. Immediately in front of Portiscliff is the estuary of the River Towy, half a mile wide, and on the opposite short is the village of Llanstephen where the artist John Petts has his studio. Mr Petts' stained-glass windows are known all over the world. In March 1977, he had been working late and about 1 a.m. he drew back the curtain to glance at the night. The view from this window is across the river to Ferryside and includes Portiscliff where the Bassets live.
'I was amazed,' John Petts reported on BBC Wales television 'because, right in front, across the estuary and above Ferryside, was this strip with a point at each end which carried its own light. It was pale like the moon. Before I focussed on it I thought: "Oh, that's strange." I thought it must be part of the moon masked by clouds - but no. By then I was staring very intently
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indeed. There was this shape which was exactly like a weaver's shuttle. I react away from the term "Cigar-shaped object" which I've heard in other cases, because a weaver's shuttle, parallel, pointed at each end, is exactly the shape that this was. AAnd it was pin-sharp.'
'Can you give us some idea of size?'
'Well, I felt it might be half a mile away; it would therefore have to be about thirty or forty feet long.'
'You produced a picture of it immediately afterwards?'
'Yes indeed. And I can put my hand on my heart and say that this is exactly what I saw.'
'And the colour?'
'A pale gold againt the night sky. Above the hills - beyond and above the hills.'
'Was there any movement?'
'No. This I was watching for. It was absolutely poised. I was expecting it to go up or down or right or left. It did none of these things. Suddenly - phut! - it was as if someone had switched off the light.'
'How long was the entire sighting?'
'This is hard to say. Anything from half a minute to a minute - probably less. I didn't call anyone - I simply stared.'
'So there was no other witness?'
'Fortunately there was. Mrs Teesey, who lives in the next house, met my wife the following day, without knowing what had been seen by me, and described going to her window, unable to sleep, and looking across to Ferryside and seeing this strange strip of light in he sky at 1 o'clock in the morning.'
The notion that the Basset dogs were indeed affected by a UFO - or by its denizens - is therefore supported by two independent witnesses who actually observed an extraordinary object stationed in the sky above Portiscliff only a week or two after Mrs Basset's encounter. Quite soon we discovered that other sorts of livestock were also affected - ponies and horses especially.
At the end of April 1977, a flying saucer seems to have landed - or appeared - on the ground in the middle of a freshly tilled field which is adjoined by rough pasture containing a herd of ponies. The ponies are owned by the Camrose sub-postmaster, Josiah
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George. That morning Mr George and his daughter Carol were visiting the animals to take them fodder. They soon realized that something was wrong with the ponies. They were milling around in a bunch by the gate, tossing their heads and rolling their eyes. 'They were very disturbed - something most unusual,' Mr George told us. 'It wasn't just one or two - it was the whole bunch of them.'
'How many ponies are there?' Pugh asked.
'Thirty. The whole bunch were all together - heads up in the air - ears up - eyes staring. It was most unusual. I said to Carol: "What's gone wrong with the ponies today? What's frightened them?" We couldn't do a thing with them. They were all looking in one direction so I said to Carol: "What on earth is up there frightening them? Go and have a look." Because I could then see something crossing the next field as I looked through a big gap in the hedge.'
'Could you make out a shape?'
'Yes. It was white, chromium-white - almost silvery and with three corners - almost a triangle.'
'A triangle with the apex pointing upwards. How far from the ground was it?'
'From where we were looking it seemed to be actually on the ground.'
'There was no sound with it?'
'No, not a sound.'
The object which had frightened the ponies was being viewed through a ten-yard gap in the bushes at the bottom of the pasture as it taversed the next field. To find out what it was Carol set off across the grass to get a closer look. This seemed to encourage the ponies and they trooped after her. However, when they got about halfway they stopped and simply watched as she approached the gap. She could see nothing in the next field whatsoever and, after a little while, came back.
Foddering the ponies continued, although they refused to touch the food. Some twenty minutes later they again became greatly disturbed and milled about, tossing their heads and staring down the field. When Mr George and his daughter looked in the same direction they once again saw the strange silvery object moving across the ground. Carol then repeated her actions.
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She walked across the field, was followed halfway by the ponies, went to the edge of the next field and could find nothing.
It took the ponies many days to recover from this incident. Even when they were moved to another field they could be seen staring at the place where the silvery object had appeared. Josiah George told us: 'They were completely different. They seemed to be expecting something. We moved them back after this to the field where they usually are but they weren't normal for at least a week. They watched every movement and every sound...'
The flying saucers and strange luminous phenomena which appeared repeatedly on the ground in Dyfed in the spring of 1977 were frequently found to have an electromagnetic effect. Television and radio sets cut out or suffered interference; sometimes there were failures of the main electric supply. Even if not actually inimical these nuisances could hardly be said to contribute to the well-being of the inhabitants of the district.
Mrs Andre Lewis of Haasgard Cross told us how one night she started getting a periodical interference on television, which seemed to be on a twenty minute cycle. Sound and vision were distorted on all channels. She checked the set by consulting neighbours, such as Mrs King, who said they had the same problem. This is a rural area and there was no obvious reason for the interference.
Some people experience an electric failure and saw phenomena on the ground as well. Mrs Rosemary Lewis and her husband, who live at Simpson Cross on the St David's road, had a local power blackout at 8.45 p.m. on 1 June 1977. The evening was still fairly light about 10 o'clock when Mr Lewis wandered into the kitchen to get a snack. The view from the window, at a range of about two miles, is of a ridge of low hills known as Cuffern Mountain.
Mr Lewis was studying these hills to see if the electricity supply had been restored to nearby farms and then he saw something which amazed him. He said: 'I was eating a biscuit when this terrific red glow came out of nowhere. It had a larger base, as it were - pear-shaped - then it moved up towards the horizon for perhaps twenty yards. Finally it moved in its entirety towards the horizon and disappeared. It moved quickly over this
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twenty yards - it looked like a fire moving - then went to the horizon and disappeared. It was something that I've never seen in the whole of my life. I just don't know what it was.'
Alerted by her husband, Rosemary Lewis also went to see the phenomenon. At first she thought it was a big gorse fire on the mountain.
'Can I ask what colour it was?' Pugh asked her.
'It just looked like a fire - orangey-red.'
'Was it extensive?'
'It was confined but it was large. And it started to move which I thought was odd because if it had been a fire it would have spread.'
'You say "started to move". How did it move?'
'It moved slightly to the side at first, then went up to the horizon. And it started to change shape. It was pear-shaped at first, then it moved to the side and became elongated. Then it moved to the top of the mountain and started fading quite a lot. It then became an elongated haze on top of the mountain. And just before it disappeared I noticed red lights on either side of it. It wasn't a vehicle - it was much too big to be a vehicle.'
'It wasn't the headlights of a car?'
'No, it was a ball of fire.'
'You've drawn something vaguely like a cigar shape.'
'Yes, but when it took that shape it was very hazy and it was then that I saw the red lights. Then it disappeared. It either went down the other side of the mountain or it just disappeared. I think it just disappeared. I find it odd because it went so hazy once it reached the top of the mountain.'
To avoid the impression that all UFO phenomena are in some way sinister, perhaps we could end this chapter with a rather charming story from Bridgend when one of the objects 'played' with some small children. Jean Hubber, a Community Nursing Sister, wrote to tell Randall Jones Pugh about an amazing incident that had just occurred in her own household. On Saturday, 7 April 1977, at about 4.30 p.m., Mrs Hubber's two young daughters came in from playing to complain: 'Mummy, there's a green ball chasing us.' However, Mrs Hubber, was busy with housework. 'I did not take any notice of them,' she wrote. 'I told them to go back out to play.' But ten minutes later the four-year-
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old came to report: 'Mummy, come and see - it's out by the back door.' Mrs Hubber wrote: 'Again I took no notice. The girls were adamant about me going to see the "green ball" but I was very busy. Half an hour later I noticed that the children were playing indoors and when I asked them why they weren't playing outside, they replied: "We're not going out - that green thing keeps chasing us." I then realized they were telling the truth. I went outside with the children to where they had seen the "ball"; I could not see it but the four-year-old claimed she could see it descending into swampland in a field. I can only say that although I couldn't see it I could sense that something was wrong.'
The 'ball' was described as 'dark on one side, shiny on the other'. The sighting extended over half an hour, and the object disappeared by 'going into the ground.'
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Chapter Five
The Ripperston Farm Affair
Why, then, all the sound and fury? Apart from the reasons already given, disciples tend to be more fanatical than their masters; they have committed themselves to his system, invested years of labour and staked their reputation on it; they fought the opposition and cannot tolerate the idea that the system might be at fault. To out-Herod Herod is a pheomenon as common amongst scientists devoted to their theory as it is amongst politicians or theologians devoted to a doctrine - whether Freudian or Jungian, Stalinist or Trotskyist, Jesuit or Jansenite.
Arthur Koestler, The Case Of The Midwife Toad (1971)
Perhaps the strangest case that occurred in Dyfed in 1977 involving the UFOs was centred on Ripperston Farm and the Coombes family. An investigation showed that this involved not just one sighting of a UFO but several, at different times and by different people. Humanoid figures were observed both by night and by day. Poltergeist activity of the most puzzling kind took place.
Ripperston is one of the most westerly farms in Wales. Lying as it does along the cliffs running out to Wooltack Point, it is both remote and beautiful. The climate is bland and frost is almost unknown.
One of the commercial outlets of Ripperston is dairying, with cattle-herds varying between 120 to 150 animals. It was as head dairyman that Billie Coombes moved to Ripperston in 1974 with his wife, Pauline, his two young sons, Clinton and Keiron, fourteen-year-old Tina and the little twin girls, Joann and Layann. The Coombes are locally born people, practical and
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pragmatic, with far too much work and responsibility on their hands to entertain psychic fancies. (Nevertheless, as we will see below, we learned that Mrs Coombes had observed paranormal phenomena on earlier occasions.) It was Billie Coombes' healthy scepticism throughout which helped us to keep Ripperston in perspective, even when the reported facts seemed absurdly impossible.
However, the Ripperston affair really first began on an adjacent farm, Lower Broadmoor, which is half a mile or so away. Here live Richard Hewison and his wife, Josephine, who manage both Ripperston and Broadmoor. Both hold agricultural degrees; indeed Mrs Hewison has a B.Sc. with Hons. in Agriculture and Botany. She is therefore an excellent witness in her description of the flying saucer parked outside her house on 26 March 1977.
It was a Saturday morning. Since the children were home from school Mrs Hewison was snatching an extra few minutes in bed although she'd been awake for some time. About 7.50 she sat up and glanced through the bedroom window, the curtains of which are always drawn back. A hundred yards away across the field outside is a large greenhouse in front of which are stacks of potato-chitting trays. She then realized she couldn't see the trays or most of the greenhouse because there was something parked on the grass in front of it. She stared fixedly at the object for about two minutes before realizing it was not a machine connected with the farm but something extraordinary.
'What shape was it?' Pugh asked in his interview.
'It was in three tiers. It seemed to be round bu when you see a thing in cross-section I suppose you can never be sure. There was a definite dome to start with and then a central portion. But, there seemed to be a rounded ridge, if you know what I mean, between the layers.'
'Like a Rowntree's jelly!'
'Yes, rather like a jelly. When I described it to the children I said it looked rather like a squashed jelly-mould which really it did. It was a smooth, aluminium-coloured, bulbous shape. It was pretty well as high as the greenhouse - fifteen feet maybe - and about double the greenhouse in width - which would have made it thirty-five to forty feet wide. It was obscuring the whole
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of the greenhouse door, you see, and the greenhouse is about eighteen feet wide and it was probably about twice that width.'
'There was no sound?'
'No, but we had the milking machine going at the same time and that is quite a noisy thing.'
'No sign of any activity around the object?'
'No, there was no sign of any activity or I might have been frightened. I certainly wasn't at all frightened - I was just fascinated by it really. I wanted to see something happen, then, I'd have gone out and had a closer look at it given the opportunity.'
'This was in full daylight?'
'Yes, it was completely light.'
'No sign of any doorway, markings or windows?'
'No.'
'How long were you watching it?'
'I'd say two minutes. Then I thought: "This is silly - I'd better go and find somebody else", so I went to wake the boys up and then went round the bed to have a better look through the window and there was nothing there. I could just see the rows of trays and there was nothing there at all.'
'How long a time were you not looking at it before you looked again and it was gone?'
'It would have been the time it takes to go round three bedrooms and wake up three boys. Forty-five seconds or something like that. Probably less than a minute.'
'Did it look a fairly solid object?'
'Well, it looked very lightweight because you automatically think that if a thing looks aluminiumy it's made up of a lightweight alloy. Whether it was is anybody's guess. I don't know.'
'Did you look for any imprints later?'
'Yes. But it was impossible to see anything. The tractors had been back and forth because they'd been planting potatoes.'
Beside the Hewison greenhouse is a gateway and a field containing a pony. Usually the pony was found standing by the gate where it is fed. That Saturday morning, however, it was nowhere in sight. Eventually it was found at the farthest extremity of the field, 400 yards away. No firm conclusion could be drawn from this, but Mrs Hewison thought it rather odd. We wondered
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if the pony had taken fright in the way the Camrose ponies belonging to Josiah George (see previous chapter) had taken fright.
Mrs Hewison also mentioned the fact that she and her family had lived at Broadmoor Farm for three years and that no one seemed to have lived there longer than five or six years. Something like eight families had lived at the farm within living memory. This was puzzling, because it was an excellent, very productive farm - grade two agricultural land, some of the best in Wales. Jokingly the Hewisons had told each other: 'There must be a ghost here.' After her experience we wondered if perhaps the joke was not on Mrs Hewison.
In spite of this astonishing sighting of a flying saucer by the farm manager's wife it became clear, as we investigated, that aerial objects and humanoid figures had become visible in the Ripperston-Broadmoor area over quite a long period. Pauline Coombes, for instance, told us how she and a friend went out of the Ripperston farmhouse at about 11.30 one night to visit a caravan parked near the house and occupied by visitors. On the way back to the farmhouse they saw the figure of a man in a gateway and immediately raised an alarm. Billie Coombes made a careful search of the farm buildings, using two dogs, but found no one. The figure may of course have been an ordinary human intruder, but Pauline Coombes thought this was not so. It was not until the spring of 1977, however, that a UFO was seen by the Coombes family as a group.
Pauline Coombes was driving back to Ripperston from St Ishmaels one evening after taking home a young boy who had been to the farm on a visit. The two little girls, Layann and Joann, were sitting beside her on the passenger seat. In the back of the car was he ryoungest son Keiron, aged ten. The distance from St Ishmaels to Ripperston is about three miles.
As the car came on to the main Dale road, Keiron let out a shout - 'Look at that light in the sky.' He craned his neck to see and then reported: 'Oh, look, it's coming towards us.' Pauline Coombes glanced long enough to see that there was indeed something approaching. It was a luminous object about
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the size and shape of a rugby football. She told us: 'It was a yellowish colour with a greyish, hazy light underneath like the beam of a torch pointing downwards.' To reach home she now had to turn off the Dale road and take a side-road. Keiron, kneeling on the back seat and looking through the rear window, was giving a running commentary on the UFO. He shouted that it had just done a U-turn and was now following them. The eight-year-old girls had begun to cry. Pauline Coombes, very much alarmed, began to drive faster and faster.
The approach to Ripperston Farm, though narrow, is fairly level and straight. The road is screened by trees about thirty feet high on one side. Mrs Coombes then saw on her left-hand side above the tree-tops, that the mysterious object was pacing the car. 'I didn't need to look behind,' she said, 'because it was there at the side of me.'
In the course of the last half mile or so the boy urged his mother to switch the headlights on. The car lights had in fact been switched to main beam throughout the journey; for some reason they had now suddenly started to dim. As the vehicle approached the house the lights and engine cut out completely, and the frightened family had to coast the last few yards. Pauline then dashed for the house to tell Billie: 'Come quick. There's something following us - there's a light following us.' Billie and sixteen-year-old Clinton, the Coombes' eldest son, rushed outside. Clinton got out just in time to see the UFO heading seawards. Billie Coombes walked over to the abandoned car and tried the starter. It started at once.
This episode had a very unsettling effect on Pauline Coombes. She refused to go out of the house after dark, even to fetch milk from the dairy.
'But why not?' Pugh asked her.
'I can't explain. I feel as though there's somebody out there but you can't see them.'
It was during this period that she had another view of a UFO, this time from her kitchen window. She had slipped into the kitchen about 10.30 p.m. to make a cup of tea before watching the Thursday evening film. While she waited for the kettle to boil she stood by the sink looking out at the night sky. All at once she saw a reddish-orange, circular object arc in from the sea at
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low altitude, at a fairly low speed, and disappear into one of the cliffside fields known as Mount Vanor. This object was a good deal bigger than a football and it had a reddish-orange tail. 'It seemed to come straight in and go into a hole waiting for it,' Pauline Coombes told us. 'There was no flash or anything. It just disappeared.'
By now we were very intrigued indeed by the Ripperston-Broadmoor area. We visited the farms frequently, took television and press journalists to see the witnesses and invited possibly more critical minds than our own to crack the stories if they could. None of them ever did. The worst 'attack' that ever developed was a satirical cartoon of UFO-creatures traversing the earth on a Hewison-type jelly-mould. No doubt it was worth a small guffaw over the breakfast toast - but it explained nothing. We ourselves looked for UFOs but saw none. Pugh invited the Coombes family to ring him the instant anything unusual occurred so that he could rush to the spot. One evening they did so, as we will see presently.
Meanwhile we had held many conferences in the large rambling rooms of Ripperston Farm. We were particularly interested in Billie Coombes and his reactions to the phenomena. How did you run a large dairy farm while seemingly nonsensical events took place around the household, we wondered. Modern farming is becoming increasingly a precision business and takes no account of aerial objects and peculiar car stoppages.
Billie Coombes is a countryman, bluff and a bit shy and inarticulate when talking about matters outside his job. Pugh, as a veterinarian, soon gained his confidence, however. It was then that Billie told us about his livestock problems. It strained the credulity.
Ripperston has modern, purpose-built buildings for its cattle. The spacious stock-yards are enclosed with steel piping. The various gates are well hung and massively supplied with industrial bolts designed to withstand the strains of constant agricultural use. As a precaution against the possibility of a cow's nose shifting one of these bolts Billie Coombes was in the habit of strapping the bolt into the locked position after the
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beasts had been shut into the yard for the night. He did this by wrapping several turns of binder-twine round the handle of the bolt so that it was immovable. This made it impossible for the stock to get out and wander unless they can have developed the miraculous ability to walk through steel piping - or had hands to open the gate.
Neither of us could quite accept this story. Either the facts were not as stated or the whole thing was impossible.
Pugh asked Billie Coombes: 'How can you account to me that about 100 cattle - fully-grown beasts - get out of a bolted yard, without anyone opening the gate, and creep past the house without disturbing yourself or any member of the family or your dog, Blackie, and manage to travel half a mile to a neighbour's field?'
'It's the same as I said at the time,' said Billie, 'they must have flew there!'
'What was the state of the gate when you went over to the yard?'
'It was still locked! That's the funny part of it. It was still locked but there were no cattle in!'
'It wasn't still tied as well?'
'Yes, it was tied.'
'And the twine was just as you'd left it?'
'Yes. And this isn't the first time.'
This we had to see for ourselves and for a quarter of an hour we went over the yard, testing the four-inch tubes, the gates and the bolts. We inspected gates that were already tied with twine and found them a hundred per cent secure. We wondered if some malicious person found it amusing to slink up in the dead of night, release the cattle, lock and re-tie the gate, and then creep away again.
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Billie Coombies didn't think so. He said: 'No. There's other things that have happened.'
He showed us a cement passage leading from the stockyard to the milking cubicles, which is secured at each end by a tubular steel fate and bolts. Each night around midnight it is part of his routine to visit the stock and ensure that everything is in order. He did this on the night in question. Since the passage was not in use both the gates were closed, the bolts shot and lashed fast with twine. Just after six the next morning he went out to the stock and found two cows were in the passage, locked in. The bolts and twine were still in position just as he had left them.
We wondered what state these animals were in. Billie Coombes said that they seemed very restless and gave a very poor milk yield.
A human intruder - someone deranged, one would have thought - still seemed the most logical explanation to the mystery. Billie Coombes then told us how the same trick had been worked in broad daylight, virtually in the presence of himself, his son Clinton, and the alert cattle-dog, Blackie.
On 15 April 1977, he and Clinton went out about 5.45 a.m. and brought sixteen in-calf heifers to an outside pen. The gate was locked and tied. The cattle were fed. Man and boy then stepped twn paces away to the milking parlour and Billie put on a few milking machines. He immediately came out to see if the milk was running into the dairy correctly. In his own words: 'I went into the milking parlour and put six machines on and then came out and checked the milk coming through as I always do and then I glanced over at the heifers in the pen and there was not a cow. Gone! We found them down there again - half a mile away at Broadmoor. This was all in a matter of ... four minutes. Four minutes at the most. By the time I walked from them ... that's a matter of half a dozen yards or so ... and by the time I put six machines on, which doesn't take two minutes, and came out again, they were gone. And the gate still bolted and tied!'
'That's impossible, isn't it?' Pugh said incredulously. 'If someone had been sitting in the hedge planning to do this they couldn't have done it without you seeing them.'
'No, they couldn't. And my eldest boy was there as well. The mysterious thing about it is that you go out of our land and you've
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a turning on the left going down to Broadmoor. We wondered why those cows never go straight down the lane - why do they always turn left to Broadmoor?'
'They could carry straight on to the main road?'
'Yes, I don't know why. That's what we've tried to find out. They can't cross any of the fields because of the electric fences.'
The mystery of the shifting cattle was never solved. Billie Coombes was forced to go about his work as if everything at Ripperston was completely normal - and for most of the time it was. We continued to drop in at the farm or ring the Coombes up, hoping for more specific developments, but events seemed normal. We discussed the possibility that one of the family might have the innate ability to attract a poltergeist - whatever a poltergeist is - and that this might account for the opening stock-gates. Even so, it hardly seemed to explain how several tons of live beef had apparently been spirited away in broad daylight. We wondered if these seemingly impossible events were in some way connected to the presence of UFOs in the area. And then, one night, there was a sensation.
One evening - it was 22 April - Pauline and Billie Coombes were sitting up watching a late TV show. There had been a power cut between 6.20 and 6.40 p.m. and most of the night there had been television interference. The television set is in the corner of the room and only a couple of feet from one of the tall farmhouse windows which invariably has undrawn curtains as is the custom in this remote part of the country. At about 11.30 Pauline's eye was drawn to the window which seemed to have lit up with a silvery glow. This glow faded but after a time came back. The dairyman's wife tried to ignore this curious effect while she watched the show. She thought: 'I'll put it down to my imagination and say nothing to Billie. He'll think I'm suffering from nerves after all that's gone on here these last few weeks.'
The show continued until, at 1.50 a.m., Billie Coombes himself glanced up at the window and jumped up exclaiming: 'What the hell's that? There's somebody out there in a silver suit!' His wife said: 'So you've seen it too.'
Billie Coombes rushed to the window. He told us: 'It was a
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man - but a terrible size. It was pressed right up against the window. I'm only five foot four inches but the was nearly the full height of the window which is almost seven feet. The funny part of it was that he didn't have no eyes, nose or nothing.'
'Perhaps he was so tall the upper portion was cut off by the window-top,' Pugh suggested.
'Oh, no. I saw the head but I couldn't see the eyes. It was just like looking at you except that he had no face. So I came back to the chair and my wife made one dash for the telephone. And while she phones he was still standing there! I can't say he was looking in because I couldn't see any eyes but, as far as I'm concerned, he was looking in.'
'How far away was it when you looked at it?'
'Close to the window! I don't get nervous at all because I spend hours out at night with the stock. But this thing scared me. And then my wife said: "Don't go outside." So I said: "Well, I am going out." And I did go out - but I took my time about it.'
First of all Pauline Coombes phoned the farm manager at Broadmoor and then she phoned Randall Jones Pugh. The thing, whatever it was, was still standing outside the window. Pugh advised her to ring the police - and this she did.
Billie Coombes lingered until these alarm calls had gone out and took his time putting on his boots. He then called to the cattle-dog, Blackie, an active retriever-cross, to come out into the night with him. The dog, however, was running restlessly all over the house, going in circles and to and fro. In retrospect Billie remembered that it had been doing this for the previous couple of hours. Blackie flatly refused to leave the house.
Billie Coombes told us: 'Before the police arrived I went outside. I turned on all the lights and shouted for Blackie to come with me. Usually, as soon as you open the door he shoots outside, but this time he wouldn't go out. So I chucked him out and followed him - and he never barked once. He was running around all over the place but without barking. But as soon as the police arrived he started barking and when Richard Hewison arrived to examine the place he started barking again - and he knows Richard. It seemed so damned funny like. Very funny.'
The thing at the window was not visible outside the house
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either to Billie Coombes, the police or the farm manager. Police Constable Philips made the following statement to Randall Jones Pugh: 'We received a telephone call at Haverfordwest police station on the morning of Saturday, 23 April 1977, and my colleague and myself went out to Ripperston where we spoke to Mr and Mrs Coombes. They stated they had seen something outside their house. On investigation, myself and my colleagues found nothing.'
Pugh said: 'So, in effect, you and your colleague found no logical answer to what Mr and Mrs Coombes had seen?'
'No, we saw no marks at all where they said they saw ... this figure.'
'What impression did you get when you found this young couple?'
'They just seemed frightened.'
'Would you say they were severely frightened - genuine in their apprehensions?'
'I think so.'
What happened to the Ripperston 'Silver Giant' as it was eventually dubbed? Did it simply dissolve on the spot as other witnesses arrived? Pauline Coombes seemed to think so. In a BBC Wales television interview she said: 'It was right up close to the window as if it was looking in. We couldn't see his face - or its face, whatever you like to call it - because it had a black visor around it. But there was actually a man in a silver suit standing there. Well, more of a monster, you could call it. It had a glow round the suit - a glow round the edge of him. It was like an astronaut's suit. The police took about ten minutes to get here and it must have seen the headlights of Mr Richard Hewison's car coming up from Broadmoor Farm or the police car, and just disappeared. It didn't walk away from the window or nothing - it just disappeared.'
At this point we were still trying to decide whether the phenomenon had been objective or subjective. Had the Coombes suffered some sort of joint hallucination? If so, how had it been triggered off?
Later that morning Mrs Josephine Hewison phoned to inquire how the Coombes were faring. Billie then remembered and described another feature of the incident. He said: 'All the
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time that it [the 'giant'] was here the window was going bang, bang, bang - yet it was securely fastened. And last night was a very calm night - there was no wind whatsoever. The window was banging all the time it was there but as soon as I put the outside lights on and went out, it never banged again. And it never banged again all night.' Josephine Hewison replied: 'It's an odd thing you should say that, but last night my window was doing the same.' Her window had also rattled and banged even though there was no wind.
We found this hard to reconcile with a purely psychological cause for the 'Silver Giant' effect. Indeed our records showed that numbers of UFO witnesses had complained about abnormally rattling windows. We remembered again the strange behaviour shown by the Marsh poodle in Milford and its apparent desire to get away from the ground (see Chapter Three). Was there indeed a vibrational aspect to the UFO problem? Ought we to be packing a seismograph around instead of cameras and recorders?
Billie Coombes had hitherto expressed mild scepticism about UFOs, but that morning he was challenged by Mrs Hewison with the words: 'Well, what do you think after all this?' He answered: 'I'm beginning to believe it now - after I've seen this thing.'
Pugh was particularly interested in Blackie, the four-year-old, black cross-Labrador cattle-dog, and its reactions to the curious happenings. 'My first introduction to the dog,' says Pugh, 'was on the morning of 17 March 1977, when I was investigating the case of the "flying football" which had chased Mrs Coombes and her children in the car the previous evening. As I drove into the farmyard Blackie came bounding out to meet me. In an earlier telephone conversation with the Coombes I had been warned of Blackie's over-boistrous reception of strangers. He was recognizable as one of the many well-fed, healthy, gregarious types of working dogs I have met with so often in practice. I spoke to him and once he had recgonized "authority" we became the best of friends.
'What was it, therefore, that set this dog wandering and sniffing around the rooms of the Coombes' house - which he of course knew so well - some two or three hours before the silver
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"monster" appeared at the window - something which, apparently, rendered him barkless? Blackie had always been an "out-of-doors" dog, and the Coombes often had difficulty in getting him indoors at night, especially during the warm summer months. However, the offer of food always did the trick although subsequent events showed that even this could fail.'
'Due to my interest in the Ripperston affair I kept in touch with the Coombes, by telephone or visits to the farm, from March onwards. It was not until 6 November 1977, that Mrs Coombes told me that the dog had become "a little aggressive" towards the family. He would no longer stay outside at nights. Indeed, he had become afraid of the dark to such an extent that he had broken down a small partition used to close a broken window in order to get back into the house.
'Mrs Coombes also told me that the dog had acquired the habit of sitting and staring into space. She said that it looked "as though he could see right through me". She added that some times the dog's staring eyes quite frightened her. Indeed, the dog's whole personality seemed to have changed. He had become indifferent and lazy and he had now become afraid of the cows, hiding in bushes whenever they approached him.'
After the incident in April the Coombes household was now in a state of watchful anticipation. Tripes across the dark yard were not popular. Nevertheless, nothing unusual occurred until a Sunday in early summer - 15 May. A silver figure then appeared before the two youngest Coombes children in broad daylight. We interviewed the two little girls with their mother a few days later.
Layann and her twin sister Joann wandered out of the house with the dogs and eventually ended up on the cliffside fields half a mile away. Why they went to this area is unclear for their mother discourages trips that far from the house.
'We were playing roly-poly in the grass and then I saw something walking up into the hedge ... quite near,' Layann told us.
'What was it doing?' Pugh asked.
'It was just walking straight.'
'Was it going quickly or slowly?'
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'Slowly.'
'Can you describe this thing, this figure?'
'Well ... it was like a silver human being but ... it had no face. I mean it had a face but no eyes or nose.'
'Obviously it must have had a head. Was it like a normal person?'
'Yeah, like a normal person ... but it was square.'
'Ears?'
'No.'
'What colour was the head?'
'It was black.'
'Was it short or tall?'
'Very tall.'
'So we've got a very tall person with a black, square head. You could not see any eyes, nose or mouth. Was it fat, thin, normal or ...?'
'Thin.'
'Did it have arms ...? What were they doing?'
'Yeah, it had arms. Long, straight arms by the side of him.'
'What were the dogs doing while all this was going on?'
'The dogs were trying to find us in the grass and I shouted to Joann: 'Can you see that thing?' ... and she looked at the hedge and she saw the back of it. The dogs were ... their hair was up and they were barking and growling.'
'Did they chase this thing?'
'No. They were going backwards.'
'Did they look ... frightened?'
'Yes, frightened. They were frightened.'
'How about you?'
'I wasn't frightened.'
'Now we've heard about this figure walking about fifty feet away from you with ... tall, with a silver-coloured suit. What did it do then?'
'Well, it went up through the hedge and went through the barbed wire.'
The children went to a gateway and looked into the next field, the dogs following behind, but could see nothing of the figure. They went home and told their story to Pauline Coombes and their grandmother who was on a visit. Their mother immediately
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accompanied them back down the fields to the spot where the figure had passed into the next field. Tread-marks were visible in the longish grass, but that was all. After an hour's search and much questioning of the girls Pauline Coombes gave up and returned home.
She told us: 'I kept on at Layann, questioning and questioning her, in the hope that she'd slip up and say they had only been playing. But in the end they convinced me that they'd seen something. She was definitely frightened. I'm convinced now that she did see something.'
Pugh also tried to break Layann's story of the figure walking through the wire. This we had examined and the top strand was waist-high and nearly buried in a hawthorn hedge. Manifestly no man could have walked through the obstacle although the children insisted that the figure had done this and had not climbed over. If what they saw was as they described then it was no organic figure.'
It was not until the middle of August that Pauline Coombes drew Randall Jones Pugh's attention to a rather odd sequel to their 'silver monster' adventure. In Pugh's own words:
'On either side of the high window against which the being is said to had stood are two rose-bushes which produce magnificent blossoms every year. Facing the window, from the outside of the house, the left-hand bush grows within inches of the glass. Anyone looking into the lounge would almost inevitably touch the rose-bush. The bush on the right is about six or seven feet away from the window.
'In August I went to Ripperston Farm with a friend who had expressed keen interest in the case. The Coombes told us how every year the two rose-trees had each produced abundant blossoms, but this particular season the tree on the left had failed.
'I examined the bush and found that, whilst the buds were both profuse and well-formed, almost the whole of the tree had acquired a desiccated appearance. The buds and branches were tinder-dry. As Billie Coombes commented, it looked as if "someone had gone over the rose-tree with a blow-lamp". In fact the tree did have this appearance. The other tree was in full bloom, magnificent with roses which were large, fragrant and numerous.
'When I revisited the farm some three weeks later I found that
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most of this tree had produced small, bright green leaves. However, a portion of the lower part of the tree seemed to have died.'
More than once Pugh expressed the belief that Pauline Coombes was very psychic, an incipient medium. Was she the focus of the Ripperston Farm phenomena? We wondered if there might be a religious angle to the sequence of events.
Pauline Coombes is a Roman Catholic, though not a practising one. She and Billie told us how, years earlier in their married life, they had experienced manifestations which were of a distinctly religious character. At that time they were living in a trailer-caravan at Pembroke Dock. As with the 'Silver Giant' phenomenon the religious manifestations also occurred againt or on a window pane. The salient parts of our conversation with her are reproduced below.
Pauline Coombes told us: 'There was nothing outside. It was seen from inside the caravan, in the window, in the glass. It was a life-size figure - it seemed to be in mid-air.'
Pugh said: 'You saw a figure which you took to be - by the presumed likeness - the Virgin Mary. What was the colour?'
'She was dressed in pure white.'
'Could you describe her clothes?'
'She had a veil like a nun and a ... cowl. And a long white dress on down to her toes. She was all in white. Even the Infant was in white.'
'Anything around her waist?'
'Yes, she had like a rosary tied round her waist. We were looking at this and then the figure transformed itself into the figure of Christ - Jeses, like you see in these churches.'
'Yes. Was the cross visible?'
'No, he'd no cross. He was just standing like this [gestures].'
'I see. Not in the position of crucifixion but with hands outstretched.'
'That went on for about half an hour.'
'Did anybody else see it?'
'Yes. Hundreds.'
'Now, how come there were hundreds of people there?'
Billie Coombes interjected: 'Because the story got around and the church came up there and the Sunday School was sent up to see it. It appeared every night about half past ten.'
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Pauline Coombes continued: 'The Roman Catholic vicar of Pembroke came up and asked me if he could see it and I said, "By all means - come in." And he had the whole Sunday School with him and he said "Oh, Mrs Coombes, my dear, that's beautiful."'
'Did it have a glow around it - a halo? If you see pictures of Christ you see a halo round the head?'
'Yes, this was all round it, round the whole body.'
'And dressed?'
'Christ himself was in pure white and he had long hair. He wore like a long woman's dress with a low neckline and he had long flowing sleeves. And he had a sash like a cord around his waist.'
'This must have attracted a lot of attention. Did the press come down?'
'They did. The West Wales Guardian and BBC Radio Wales - David Allen - and we went up to the County Cinema and they put it out on radio. There were some teddy boys, as they called them at the time, came up to see it and they were laughing. Then they became like lambs. I never saw such a quick change in all my life. "They're telling the truth," they said. "It's definitely there."'
'Now, Pauline, you were in the caravan when you saw this figure. Did the electric lights give trouble or did anything else occur?'
'The only thing is that on the wardrobe door the latch would lift up and the door open.'
Billie Coombes said: 'Yes, you could sit there and it would lift up and the doors swing open.'
'Did anything else occur?'
'A pressman was there trying to take pictures and his watch stopped at smack on half past ten - which was the time this thing appeared. He said: "Damn, this is the first time my watch has stopped," so I said: "If you hang on a minute you'll see the wardrobe door opening as well."'
Billie said: 'Well, I never saw a man move so quick in all my life...'
Pauline added: 'The latch lifted and the door opened. And I said: "Well, the thing is in the window for you to see now." So
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he to took pictures inside and out. He said to me: "Is there a flaw in the glass?" I said: "No, you can see for yourself. They've checked the glass. It's a perfectly normal window." We heard no more about the photos.'
'What happened finally?' Pugh asked.
Billie Coombes told him: 'She'd gone into hospital to have a baby just then and when she came back I had a new caravan. The farmer burned the old one. He said he was fed up with people coming up to see it. It was destroyed.'
Pauline Coombes offered the last comment by saying: 'The Vicar wanted to exorcize the caravan and to exorcize me. But' - she concluded - 'I didn't want to be exorcized.'
The mystery of the Ripperston affair seemed to us to go a good deal deeper than the sightings of a humanoid giant at a window - a figure which may or may not have been somehow projected by Pauline Coombes' mind. The argument that it must have been did not explain the movement of the cattle nor did it explain the flying saucer seen by Mrs Hewison. Even so, we felt that Pauline Coombes was somehow psychologically involved in some of the manifestations at a subconscious level. Yet this was difficult to rationalize. If she was unknowingly producing the figures, then why were the symbols so grotesquely unlike? A superficial case might be argued for a god-devil symbolism respecting the Christ-figure and the humanoid monster but, to us, it seemed too facile. Our conclusion was that a force existed at Ripperston which was distinct from humans but could use the potential of humans for ends which seemed purposeless and obscure. We discarded the word 'malignant' in favour of 'elemental' as an adjective to describe this force. It was almost like the pranks of a godlet with a slightly malicious sense of humour. We wondered what Billie Coombes said about it under his breath as he drove his cows home for the umpteenth time. Sceptics are of course entitled to retain their position - but we found it difficult to see how the things we investigated could have occurred if the world always runs on the normally accepted rules of causation.
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CHAPTER SIX
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coincidence, wishful thinking and cultism - with no firm basis in the study of real things.
But how is a ley-line defined? Alfred Watkins says: 'My main theme is the alignment across country of a great number of objects, or sites of objects, of prehistoric antiquity.' A ley-line, therefore, is the straight line - usually drafted on a map - linking these prehistoric sites in linear succession.
The existence of leys was brought to modern notice in 1925 by the publication of The Old Straight Track by Alfred Watkins, a Hereford merchant of the old school who was what John Mitchell describes as 'a provincial visionary'. In those days archaeologists depicted prehistoric Britain as a wilderness populated by ignorant savages and wild animals. This picture has changed - thanks largely to the work of Professor A. Thom. We now know that megalithic man was an astronomer, a mathematician and a geometrical builder. He was also a capable surveyor. The concept and execution of leys was therefore entirely within his capability assuming he had reason to attempt such work.
But why should this be so? Why should megalithic man have constructed his important sites - his raths (hill-forts), burial chambers and temples - in straight lines across the landscape? The surveying and execution of such a task must have been a daunting one in the Britain of about 2,000 B.C. It is hard to think of any practical application, although Watkins suggests that the leys were pathways linking the sites and were made straight for the sake of convenience. Undoubtedly many leys were once used as roads - and are still used as such even today. Nevertheless, a great many lie across such difficult country, including hill-peaks, that traversing the routes in prehistoric times must have been almost impossible.
Logically, we are left with the conclusion that, if the leys really do exist, their purpose had nothing to do with travel. They may have been alignments surveyed on the paths of stars or they may have been constructed on the basis of some mystical idea which has long been lost. Or there may, of course, have been some purpose behind the engineering, of which we have at present no scientific notion.
Critics of the ley-line base their argument on what they see as
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the chance juxtaposition of points on a map. The greater the number of points that are credited as ley-markers, the more likely it is that lines will occur linking some of these points. Instead of looking at a plan, say the critics, we are merely looking at fortuity. This argument is fair enough. The best way to attack is to reduce the number of acceptable ley-markers to an absolute minimum and see if leys still occur. In fact they do. Thus the argument supporting chance as the cause of the effect loses a lot of its impetus.
Further arguments can be used in support of ley-configurations. Generally speaking, the lines nearly always originate and eventually terminate in raths, forts and burial-mounds. Having discovered what seems to be an alignment of such artefacts, the investigator will usually find that the line can be triangulated by the addition of two further leys involving further rows of pre-historic monuments. The unsupported line therefore becomes a triangle or, occasionally, a quadrilateral.
Field archaeology tends to endorse the notion of triangles bring involved in megalithic burial-chamber construction in two ways. Professor Thom has found that the basic figure used in ancient geometry was in fact the triangle. He remarks that this civilization seemed to be obsessed with recording in stone as many triangles as possible which had all three sides expressed as integers. The actual contents of the burial-chambers continue the triangle theme. Many of the ancient dead were cremated, and their ashes placed in little pottery jars. In scores of instances these jars - and excellent examples have been found in Dyfed - are boldly patterned with triangles. Therefore the idea that megalithic man laid out his important sites over the face of the landscape in a triangulated pattern is by no means as unlikely as it might first seem.
Before we consider the possible significance of the juxtaposition of ley-lines and UFOs we need to look at the work of Aime Michel, the French researcher into the UFO mystery, who believed he had found a statistical tendency for UFOs to travel in a straight line over the earth's surface. In 1954 he invented the word 'orthoteny' for this effect. Michel, however, laboured
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their heads. In this respect the layman is in much the same position today in relation to scientific matters. No physicist has seen an electron, but it is universally agreed that such a concept helps to explain the physical world better than any other idea that has been advanced. The existence of electrons is taken on trustbecause mathematical analysis and the observed effects of experiments tend to agree as to their ultimate reality. Electrons are invisible entities discovered through the modern 'folk-tales' of science.
Folklorists are great categorizers. Asbjornsen, for instance, divided his collected Norwegian folk-narratives into groups of which one was called huldre-eventyr. Huldre derives from the word hylja meaning 'to cover or conceal'. Huldre stories refer to a group or class of paranormal creatures ranging from elves and goblins to monsters. The equivalent of such tales in Ireland was the fairy-tale.
A scholar who has made a comparative study of Norwegian, Irish and Scottish folk-tales is Professor Reidar Th. Christiansen. Regarding the huldre-folk he observes: 'As of old, grave-mounds were a part of the farmstead and the huldre-folk were thought to occupy the grave-mounds. Thus they were often referred to as haug-folk (the "dwellers in the mounds") or as the hauge-tusser.'
The ancient beliefs in Ireland seem to have been very similar. It could be said that 'the game was the same except for the name'. In Ireland the Bronze Age tumuli and raths were called the sid-mounds. Professor Miles Dillon of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies tell us: 'The story tellers of ancient Ireland by whom these tales were handed down spoke of the gods and people of the spirit world as aes side or sluagside, the "host of the side".'
In some unexplained way it was believed the raths lead into another world. Professor Dillon puts it like this: 'And here it must be emphasized that the Land of Promise is sometimes identified as a supernatural region in the sid-mounds, the great barrows of the dead; sometimes as approached over the sea or a lake. It is a land where there is naught but truth, without death or decay, or sadness, or envy, or jealousy, or hate, or gloom, or pride, a land of promise, of flocks and herds, of the ever-young, of
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flowers and fruit. It is Mag Mell, the "Delightful Plain", Tir na noc, the "Land of the Young", Tir Tairngire, the "Land of Promise".'
In the course of untold centuries the ancient raths, the sid-mounds, became simply 'fairy hills' and were invested with considerable sanctity. Some of these beliefs survived into modern times. The beings thought to inhabit these mounds were described in The Book of Armagh as dei terreni, the earth gods. In Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race T. W. Rolleston says: 'The fairyland in which they dwell is ordinarily inaccessible to mortals, yet it is ever near at hand. The invisible barriers may be and often are crossed by mortal man and they themselves frequently come forth from them.' The dei terreni were regarded as immortal (with limitations) and wielded mysterious powers of socrery and enchantment. However, no sort of moral governance was ever ascribed to them, nor (in bardic literature) was any sort of worship paid to them. 'Their strength,' says Rolleston, 'when they came into conflict (as frequently happens) with men lies in strategy and illusion; when the issue can be fairly knit between the rival powers it is the human that conquers.'
Professor Christiansen admits he cannot understand how the huldre-folk stories could have originated and describes the problem as 'very difficult'. He says: 'A belief in the existence of a class of beings, not human but belonging to the world of man, seems to be universal. But the conception of them varies and is altered for every new country. New aspects, new characteristics, have developed in new surroundings. In Norway, as well as in other northern countries, we note the persistence of the ancient pagan conception of the nature of man. He is not conceived of as consisting of two elements, the one surviving on the destruction of the other, but remains himself, continuing in some way to live on and on, to remain alive and active.'
Christiansen devlops this theme at considerable length. 'Gradually these non-human beings were conceived of as a race apart, were referred to by a new set of terms, some of them preserving the ancient associations (hauge-folk, "the people of the grave mounds"). Also inherited from the past were some of their characteristics: the desire to capture mortals for their own world, the evidence of visitors to their houses of having met
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people there they once knew who had died before their visit. The persistence of the belief in the huldre-folk and the preservation of the ancient characteristics justify the verdict of the archaeologists that this belief "is the strongest link extant with the distant past".'
The beliefs suggested by the folk-tales indicated that mortals and huldre-folk may be closely related but are essentially different. Contact with them often involves a risk. In their world nothing is what it seems to be: they live surrounded by illusions. Young boys and girls are often their victims. Neither food nor drink should ever be accepted from them. They are tricky neighbours and can appear and disappear at will.
A belief in the existence of 'the hidden folk', the 'people of the mounds' (who were also canned under-jordiske, 'those under the ground') was widespread throughout northern Europe right up to modern times. To observe such creatures was the modern equivalent of seeing a UFO. Our association of UFOs with raths and the alignment of raths is therefore by no means as absurd as it may first have seemed. If we are making a foolish deduction it is clear that untold generations of countryfolk have made similar deductions before us.
The neolithic-Bronze Age civilization of the megalith-builders is probably one of the most ancient societies of which science has found a trace. The system of carbon-dating based on the bristlecone pine has added at least 700 years to all previous individual estimates. The bristlecone pine is a tree which grows to a great age. By counting the rings scientists can equate the actual age of the tree with samples of its organic substance checked out by the carbon 14 process. This system suggests that all dates obtained by carbon 14 dating need to be somewhat increased in archaeology. In the opinion of Dr Colin Renfrew of Sheffield University's Department of Ancient Hitory, the megalithic mounds of New Grange were built before 3,000 B.C. and some of the French passage-graves as much as 1,000 years before that. Indeed, in a talk on BBC Radio 4, Dr Renfrew suggested that the latter may be the oldest stone-built monuments known in the world. It is interesting to note, therefore, that a sort of model depicting the ley-line principle seems to have been discovered over a hundred years ago in these very ancient French tombs.
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In 1864 the tumulus of Mané-er-H'oeck in Brittany was explored by M. René Galles. A description appears in Revue Archeologique, xiii, 1864, 'Fouilles de René Galles'. The site was described as absolutely intact and just as the builders had left it. Immediately on entering the rectangular chamber the explorer found a beautiful pendant in green jasper about the size of an egg. On the floor in the centre of the chamber was a singular arrangement of objects consisting of a large ring of jadite, slightly oval in shape, with a magnificent axe-head, also of jadite, its point resting on the ring. The axe was a well-known symbol of the power of godhead and has been found on rock carvings of the Bronze Age, Minoan carvings, at Stonehenge and in Egyptian hieroglyphs. At a little distance from these objects lay two large pendants of jasper, then an axe-head in white jade and then another jasper pendant. All these objects, according to the investigator, were ranged with evident intention en suite. They formed a straight line which coincided exactly with one of the diagonals of the chamber, running from north-west to south-east.
This NW-SE alignment was clearly of great mystical significance to the constructors of the tomb. They had laid along it the ancient symbols of divinity made of the most precious materials available. They had laid it along the ancient symbols of divinity made of the most precious materials available. Did it in fact represent a ley-line? In Dyfed we had already noted that the leys running out from the coast - against which the Broad Haven school and other UFOs appeared - were also on a NW-SE alignment. The azimuth value of these lines varied between 332° to 334°. Had these alignments been originally surveyed on the apparent path of a first-magnitude star such as Capella, or had they some other significance?
The religion and beliefs of the megalith builders are veiled in mystery. Writing had not then been invented, so there are no written records. The artefacts left behind by this civilization can, however, be interpreted to support the possibility that these ancient people saw UFOs and their peculiar 'crews' much as do today, and regarded them as paranormal 'earth gods'. It can be feasibly argued that they noted the track taken over the earth's surface by these strange beings and built their tombs along these routes.
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Admittedly, this seems very far-fetched. However, if true, it would explain first, why so many megalithic monuments lie in linear tracks, second, why such monuments are shaped in the way they are, and third, the contents of the sites.
Since the linearity of megalithic constructions has already been mentioned, we will now examine the shape of the monuments. There are said to be about 18,000 Bronze Age round barrows or tumuli in Britain. There is good archaeological evidence that these tumuli were very carefully constructed and that the finished shape was deemed important. Archaeology has classified the mounds according to their profile, and the resulting names are self-descriptive. We have bowl barrows, bell barrows, bell-disc, disc and saucer barrows. Thus it is obviously true that these mounds did indeed resemble the shape of what witnesses nowadays call 'a flying saucer'.
The discoid motif is continued in the artefacts found within the barrows. Discs of sandstone, pottery and gold have been recovered. Some examples had holes made around the rim - a sort of model UFO. A beautiful sheet-gold disc from the Knowes of Trotty, Huntiscarth, Orkney, was embossed to suggest a rotating effect. Amber discs mounted in gold have been discovered as well as disc designs on pottery.
Thus the shape of the tumulus, it grave-ornaments as well as associated carvings, strongly suggest a culture devoted to worship of the discoid shape. Archaeology classifies prehistoric tumuli with the words so often used by witnesses to UFOs - bowl, bell disc and saucer. If a modern sighter of a UFO were asked to model what he saw in earth and stone the result would inevitably be an object closely resembling a tumulus. In view of the apparent association of UFOs with alignments of tumuli we feel there is more to the notion of an actual relationship than meets the eye. European folklore supports the notion of a paranormal factor in relation to the mounds and the occasional appearance of humanoid, non-material beings called the huldre-folk. The material we collected in Dyfed in 1977 tended to substantiate this view.
The source of this paranormal activity is considered by many students of the subject today to be the ley-line itself, although just was these lines are has never been adequately defined, as
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we have seen. They could conceivably be a magnetic phenomenon. It is known that the earth's geomagnetic field alters regularly according to the position of the sun and the moon; and there may well be an even longer-term cyclic effect produced by the movements of the planets or by bodies out in deep space. Ley-lines could be a magnetic field response to a complex of factors which may be little understood or, indeed, quite unknown.
An electronics expert who has investigated leys for many years as a hobby is certain that the lines can be registered on specially designed instruments. In his opinion they are low frequency emissions coming out of the earth. An analogy might be the force which operates the forked twig of the water-dowser - a force which has never been scientifically described and is almost as curious in its own way as the ley-line. The two forces could be allied since ley-lines can be detected by the dowsing-rod. Perhaps the Bronze Age people used dowsing to locate the leys.
A study of UFO phenomena in Puerto Rico has established the fact that there seems to be a concentration of such activity in areas where there is a local abnormality in the terrestrial magnetism. It was found that most UFOs occurred in the western, south-western, north-western and central areas of the island and around magnetic anomalies. A systematic inquiry showed that no known UFO case occurred actually inside the anomalous areas but in the regions around, the average distance being eighteen miles. Everything in fact suggested that UFOs are intimately related to magnetic forces. Similar results have been obtained after studies in the USA, France and Spain.
If ley-lines, whatever their nature, are an objective force, then clearly they represent a major clue regarding the nature of UFOs. Indeed, some thinkers go further and suggest that all paranormal phenomena - haunted houses, traditional apparitions and so on - are associated with with the lines. Attempts have been made to demonstrate this by plots and charts, although not too successfully. But it is interesting to note, in connection with the Dyfed inquiry, that at least one traditionally haunted house - the Haven Fort Hotel - and a site allegedly haunted by a 'White Lady' are both very closely adjacent to the leys.
A good example of this effect occurs in East Anglia at the
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village of Borley where the rectory (now demolished) acquired the title of 'the most haunted house in England'. It seems that the name Borley derives from the term 'boar's ley'. If investigators could located the ley-line they would be better able to determine where paranormal effects are likely to occur in this village, much as we did in Dyfed.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
The Enigma Continues
In 1895 physical scientists were smug. They belived that they had physics pretty well under control. True, the ether problem was still a thorn in their sides, but no doubt it would soon be plucked out as science steamrollered on. The thought that mass might increase with veolcity would have been received with the ridicule reserved today for UFOs. Yet, by 1905, merely ten years later, the Special Theory of Relativity was forumlated, stating that the mass of an object approached infinity as it approached the veolcity of light. To throw that comfortable world into real confusion, Max Planck had just promulgated the quantum theory and Henri Becquerel had discovered radioactivity. The monolithic temple of Newtonian science was cracking and showed signs of complete collapse.
William R. Corliss, Some Mysteries Of The Universe (1967) Investigating a 'wave' or spate of flying saucers is no job for the timid or the finicky. Like the detective who sometimes has to put his ear to keyholes, the UFO researcher too must pick up information where he can. Witnesses of strange phenomena do not automatically telephone the authorities. Some of them wonder what the neighbours will think. Others are suspicious of the press. Quite a large proportion seem to be afraid of what they have observed and try to forget it. To obtain facts from these reluctant people calls for persistence and sometimes a disregard for the usual courtesies.
Such an incident occurred in a north Pembrokeshire village in the spring of 1977. A woman in a super-mart was overheard telling a neighbour that she, too, had watched one of the UFOs recently reported in the newspapers. We heard about this affair
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at third or fourth hand and managed, by following up the chain of informants, to obtain the original witness's address.
We met the woman outside her home as she returned from work. For several minutes she refused to discuss her experience although she admitted that she had seen 'something'. After a good deal of persuasion she finally gave us the following account.
At about 5 o'clock on the morning of 5 May 1977, she awoke and went to her bedroom window to investigate two lights which she could see about 200 yards away. It was a misty morning. Looking out she saw that one of the lights appeared to be a luminous disc which was hovering stationary over a group of parked motor-coaches drawn up on the forcourt of a local garage on the outskirts of the village. The second light was orange-coloured and about the size of a rugby football. Moreover, it was mobile and, as she watched it, it moved slowly out of the village, went over the fields and an adjacent salt-marsh, then returned to the coaches and hovered over the disc which had remained stationary throughout. With the onset of daylight both lights disappeared.
After she had described the incident the woman was joined by her husband who became truculent about our inquiries. It was clear that no further discussion was possible, and we were expressly forbidden to publicize names. The couple said that as far as they were concerned the episode was closed and they wanted no more to do with it.
We investigated the area of the sighting and had no trouble in eliminating such obvious explanations as street-lighting possibly producing the effect. The owner of the garage was helpful and provided a ladder so that we could climb up and inspect the roofs of his coaches for possible burn-marks. None were visible. We examined the probable route of the mobile light and found that it lay over very rough farmland and marsh. A likely rational explanation for the phenomenon failed to suggest itself.
Some witnesses do not report UFO effects because live in self-contained business and social worlds and treat the news media with caution, knowing how quickly a simple report can become grossly over-dramatized. Witnesses of this sort are often well-educated. They are aware that the universe contains all sorts of peculiarities and are not unduly surprised when they
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observe such things for themselves. These witnesses make the best possible oberservers, especially if trained in some form of observation technique. Unfortunately, however, they are often 'successful' people and usually have extensive responsibilities, a fact which mitigates against their spending time giving interviews and making reports. Contacting witnesses of this sort is therefore often a matter of luck.
Mrs Ann de Quincy, who owns a farm at Black Aldern, Narberth, Dyfed, was a witness in this category. The fact that her close sighting of a flying saucer occurred four years before we began our investigation only served to prove that large numbers of people must see these objects quite clearly without the world being any the wiser.
Randall Jones Pugh asked Mrs de Quincey when she obtained her sighting.
'I think it was in the spring about four years ago. I didn't notice the date particularly, but the trees were the trees of late spring because the object disappeared behind the trees. I can show you the exact spot. It came from behind me over the bank here.'
'We are now in the gardens of Black Aldern.'
'I was on my farm - my farm is all around here - although I was actually in my neighbour's field - it was a field I had taken on tack from her because I was short of grass. It was the next-door field to mine - connected to mine although it did actually belong to her.'
'Was it in the morning or the afternoon?'
'I think it was afternoon - the early afternoon. That's the time I usually go round the farm.'
'Could you describe what you saw?'
'Well, it was bright sunlight. I was in the field - the trees were on my left, a copse of trees - and out of the corner of my eye I saw something very bright coming. I looked up and there was this absolutely noiseless disc, slightly tilted this way towards me and going on a silght curve. I can't tell you the height - that's very difficult. All I can tell you is that it was very shining bright.'
'You term it a "disc". Would I be correct in saying that we could use the ufological expression a "saucer"?'
'Yes, it was that sort of thing. It had a sort of round top. It wasn't a ball; it wasn't a thick thing. It looked sort of slim to me.
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It was so bright - that's what struck me. It was a silvery-gold. That may have been the sunlight. It looked to me like a metal shining - a very shining metal.'
'And there was no noise?'
'Abolutely none.'
'Could you estimate its dimensions? It wasn't a small thing?'
'Not small, no. It's very difficult but I should say probably nearly half as big as my sitting-room. It could have been twenty to twenty-five feet across.'
'Was it coming slowly?'
'No, very, very fast - terrifically fast. Wwhat struck me was that it was absolutely noiseless.'
'So, in effect, you have seen a "flying saucer"?'
'Yes, that's what it looked like to me. It was a very strange phenomenon. It seemed to be like two upturned saucers joined together. I didn't see if it had any antennae on top.'
The UFO skimmed silently over Mrs de Quincey's head and disappeared behind trees, leaving yet another witness to the enigma of Dyfed. Many UFOs resemble the luminous 'weaver's shuttle' described earlier by artist John Petts (see Chapter Four). One of these was encountered by industrial chemist Michael Browning of Lower Basleford, Rosemarket, when he was flyfishing in the River Western Cleddau in 1972. As with most witnesses the phenomenon took Mr Browning by surprise.
'It was in the evening towards dusk in late July or August,' he recalled. 'I was about fifty yards downstream from the bridge near the house where I then lived, between the bridge and Natycoy Mill. I was standing in the river, casting. I was an inexperienced fly-fisher at the time and used to glance up at the line to see what was happening. That night I was having trouble with the casting and lifted my eyes to the rod-tip and then I saw this thing overhead.'
'What appearance did it have?'
'It was a cylinder with what appeared to be an orange light at one end. There was no sound.'
'How about size?'
'It's very hard to say. I've no idea how high it was. It could have been as low as a hundred feet, but it could have been further away.'
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'Any idea of the texture?'
'It was silvery to look at but it didn't give me the idea that it was metal at all. As I looked at it it started to move away slowly and then accelerated very, very quickly. Within less than a minute it was out of sight. But it started off quite slowly.'
'So you saw it in a stationary position?'
'Yes. When I first looked at it it was stationary overhead.'
'What direction did it go in?'
'It went downstream, so that would be in a southerly direction. It didn't seem to change course - it went in a straight line. There was no trail behind it and no noise. I thought at first it could have been a "floater" in my eye but I'd sure now that with those characteristics it couldn't possibly have been a "floater".'
As we have seen, group sightings of phenomena by families were not uncommon. A most interesting one occurred on 1 October 1977, in the tiny village of Llandeloy, not far from St David's where the Jenkins family live.
It was a dry, clear night. A full moon (27 September) was just starting to wane. At about 9.15 p.m. Tracey Jenkins (aged eleven) was in her bedroom at the back of the house getting ready for bed. The view from the window is northwards across the field with the buildings of Ashgrove Farm visible at a distance of about half a mile.
A little to the right of the Ashgrove barn Tracey saw a very low cloud or bank of mist. It was about the height of a house from the ground. Although a strong breeze was blowing from the sea that night the cloud remained quite stationary.
From the top of the cloud a luminous object rose into view. The colour was yellowish and the light pulsated rather quickly. The object was roughly triangular in shape and looked rather like a yacht with its sails set. It seemed to be about four feet high. The child stared at the object for about a minute before it sank back into the cloud. After a short time an object of a slightly different shape appeared.
'Did it change shape in front of your eyes or did it vanish first?' Pugh asked.
Tracey replied: 'It vanished and came back in a different shape.'
'Did you have to wait a while before it reappeared?'
'Yes. When it disappeared I was looking all over the place
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and I felt frightened. I waited about three or four minutes before it came back. When it came out again it seemed to have moved towards me.'
'Was it now smaller or larger than the first object?'
'Larger ... longer.'
What the child now saw was what she first described as a 'banana' and then a 'gondola'.
'Was it the same yellowish colour ... still pulsating?'
'Yes. That's when I called Dad. I said to Sarah: "Go and get Daddy quickly."'
Her nine-year-old sister, Sarah, shot down the stairs and their father, laboratory technician Islwyn Jenkins, quickly came up.
He said: 'The object was still there. I watched it for the best part of a minute until I shouted to Wendy [his wife] but when she came up it had reduced to an oval glow.'
Pugh asked Wendy Jenkins: 'Did you see it?'
'Yes. Just the gondola-shape - vaguely. I can't explain how it disappeared. It didn't go out. The glow was there for a long time, but there was no shape.'
Islwyn Jenkins candidly admitted: 'It scared me. It scared me inasmuch as anything you can't explain scares you.'
It then transpired that even the baby of the family - five-year-old Jan who was asleep in another bedroom - had also seen the phenomenon. She said that a noise like 'a lawnmower' had awakened her and she saw a 'blue rainbow' in the sky over the farm. She became terrified and begged to go into her parents' bedroom - something she had never done before.
Pugh asked Tracey: 'First of all you saw this throbbing, lighted object. Did it illuminate the area?'
'Yes. There was a light over the top of the cloud.'
He asked Islwyn Jenkins: 'Did the owners of the farm see anything?'
'No; they are two old ladies. One is on her own now - the other's in hospital.'
This case was exceptionally interesting. The shapes presented to the witnesses did not seem to be vehicles so much as symbols. One gained the impression, rightly or wrongly, that the second object was a reinforcement of the first. It was nearer, larger and less ambiguous, being of simpler shape.
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The ancient Celts based their calendar on the moon and not on the sun as we do. Crescentic amulets were common and survive today in some of the symbols found on horse-brasses. A typical one depicts a crescent moon, points upward, with a Celtic cross in the middle. This is very similar to the first object that Tracey Jenkins saw. This is the 'Moon and Life' symbol. The second object - the so-called 'gondola' - seems to have been a crescent, points upward - the simple lunar symbol.
If this reasoning is correct, one wonders why an eleven-year-old child living in a remote village should have been afforded a paranormal view of ancient Celtic symbols in this way. We can think of no answer to the question. The ancient Celts, however, held that reincarnatipn is a fact of existence, which leaves a good deal of room for speculation.
It is worth noting that ley-lines straddle Llandeloy. The village is about half a mile from the southerly line and about a mile from the northerly. Moreover, Llandeloy is only a little over a mile from where Steve Taylor encountered a UFO and a humanoid (see Chapter Two).
Our investigations indicated that most human beings and animals suffered a profound psychological shock when experiencing close encounters with UFOs. This was particularly the case when humanoid entities were observed. Some witnesses may well have been traumatized into permanent silence on the subject. Obviously it is impossible to know how frequently this could occur. A few, however, subsequently decided to speak up about what they had seen. Such a witness was Francis Lloyd of 24 Hawthorne Road, Haverfordwest, a heavy truck-driver. The case in which he was involved was strange and very disturbing since it showed so many similarities with a later tragic indcident which cost the lives of five men in Dyfed's worst road accident of 1977.
On the afternoon of 23 November there was a Welsh Counties rugby cup-match between Carmarthenshire and Brecon which was played at Ystradgynlais. After the match two cars set off back for Carmarthen town. One of these was driven by Glan Tucker, a former Llanelli Rugby Football Club chairman. At Porthyrhyd Mr Tucker stopped to set down one of his passengers.
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A BMW car, which was coming up behind him, also stopped. This car contained Phil Davies, aged twenty-four, Swansea's Player-of-the-Year in 1976, Brian Jenkins, aged twenty, Carmarthen's first-team hooker and Benny Lewis, a Carmarthen County RFC selector. Howard Parry, aged twenty-eight, who was riding in the first car with Mr Tucker, now changed cars and got into the BMW since this was going to Carmarthen Athletic RFC where Parry had left his own car parked. The BMW then drove away and was followed, a few minutes later, by Glan Tucker in the second car.
At about 8 o'clock that evening a Calor gas tanker driven by Roger Goodreid of Neath left Carmarthen for Swansea. About ten minutes later this tanker was on the A48 Carmarthen-Swansea road at the bottom of an incline called Nantycaws Hill. This region is rolling, pastoral, sparsely populated countryside. The road was dry, driving conditions were good and few cars were using the highway. Nevertheless, according to the Western Mail, the truck apparently jack-knifed and overturned across the three-lane carriageway. The BMW containing the rugby supporters hit the obstacle at speed and was literally torn in two.
Mr Tucker came upon the frightful scene a few minutes later. Wreckage was strewn over 300 yards. The emergency services were quickly alerted including gas experts and firemen with special appliances since there was danger of an explosion. The road remained blocked for seven hours while two heavy cranes lifted the tanker. An ambulance spokesman said that the bodies of the four rugby men and the tanker driver were almost unrecognizable.
We were particularly shocked at this disaster because we had only recently investigated the case of another truck-driver who had been badly shaken after encountering humanoids by night at this very spot.
On 27 August - eighty-nine days before the tanker crash - Francis Lloyd set off from Haverfordwest with a heavy truck of merchandise to deliver it to the Continent. With him in the cab was sixteen-year-old John Dwyer, he son of his employer. At 2.30 a.m. the truck was two miles out of Carmarthen on the A48 heading for Crosshands. As it slowed and started to take Nantycaws Hill the driver and his mate encountered the humanoids.
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Mr Lloyd told us: 'I came down into a dip at the bottom of Nantycaws and started to climb up and then the lights just picked up these two ... things. I saw them and thought: "It can't be - it must be my eyes", so I never said a word. John, by the side of me, said: "What the hell's that?" I just said: "I'm not hanging around to find out."
The big truck has eight forward headlights which made the road as light as day. Standing on the right-hand grassy verge were two huge figures about seven feet high and correspondingly wide. They were a reddish-orange in colour and seemed to be wearing single-piece celluloid suits. Their heads were elongated upwards as if carrying a tall helmet. The heads seemed to the witnesses to be about a foot wide and eighteen inches high -
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rather like those of guardsmen wearing busbies. As the light struck the figures it reflected back.
The two monstrous beings were standing together, slightly turned towards each other. They seemed to be holding some sort of instrument between them, although what this object was the two witnesses couldn't make out. The figures remained still as the truck ground up the slope past them. The boy gasped: 'Jeez, what was that? I've never seen anything like that before. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen.' Francise Lloyd told us: 'I also had a weird feeling. I wouldn't call it fright. It was a sort of cold tingling as we were approaching and passing them.'
Pugh asked: 'Did they have arms, legs?'
'Yes, they had arms. And there was a sort of flap on the shoulders.'
'Did they have their arms up when you saw them?'
'Yes. It seemed as if they had radios or something and they were holding an object ... They seemed to be holding something. Also they had some sort of aerial coming out of them.'
'How long were these aerials?'
'About to the top of the head. They glittered in the lights. They were a chrome-silvery colour.'
The supposed aerials seemed to emerge out of the left side of the figures' chests and reached to about the top of their high heads. However, John Dwyer said later that he also glimpsed a smaller aerial coming from the side of one of the being's heads.
'You saw no glow - no sign of a landed craft?' Pugh asked Francis Lloyd.
'No.'
'You've never seen individuals like this before? They weren't roadmen by any chance?'
'No, they definitely were not.'
'Were they facing you?'
'They were just standing. I've never seen anything so weird or ever felt so weird. They were slightly turned in towards each other like we are now. It wasn't a trick of the light because I had eight headlights on.'
'Did you notice their legs?'
'No. That's the funny part. I didn't. John didn't either.'
'Could you make out the features?'
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'No - and that's another queer part. The faces were there, but we seemed to see through them like. There seemed to be nothing. You couldn't make them out. I've never seen anything like it before. I always believed that UFOs were a hoax but it definitely made me change my mind about that. They weren't human - I'm pretty sure about that.'
Man and boy stared at this spectacle for five to six seconds while the heavy truck rumbled past the monsters and left them behind in the darkness. A reaction then seemed to set in with the truck crew and neither of them mentioned the subject for the rest of the journey. The load was delivered to the Continent and, in due course, John Dwyer returned to Ireland where he lives.
'Did he ever mention it before he went home?' Pugh asked.
'Yes,' said Francis Lloyd. 'He said: "I don't want to talk about it and I never want to see anything like that again. I've never seen anything like it in my whole life."'
Lloyd's wife, Pat, broke in to comment: 'Whatever it was they saw, the boy couldn't seem to get over it.'
The inexplicable affair nagged so much at Francis Lloyd's mind that he finally told the story to Harry Williams, a Carmarthen detective he knew. Thus by 28 September an account of the Nantycaws incident had already been transcribed into our notes. We know of no official action that the police took or, indeed, could have taken. The fatal crash between the rugby supporters and the gas tanker occurred on 23 November and it was not until 13 January 1978 that the findings of the inquest were announced. The verdict on the disaster was given as 'accidental death'.
It has been suggested that the rugby party may have been drinking as rugby parties often do. However, it is certainly true that the BMW had already driven twenty miles from Ystradgynlais over very busy roads without incident and was practically at the end of its journey home. The inquest also mentioned the slight dip in the road at the bottom of Nantycaws, just as Francis Lloyd had mentioned it to us many weeks before.
The mystery of the Nantycaws Hill accident, it seemed to us, lay in what was seen in August and what it was that caused the tanker-driver to jack-knife at the same spot in November. If we knew the answers to these questions, then the deaths of these five
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men would make better sense than at present. Did a further appearance of the humanoids cause the shocked tanker-driver to swerve and thus produce the fatal jack-knife? The answer lies with Dyfed's flying saucer enigma.
It is worth noting that Nantycaws Hill is only two miles across country from Idole where Mrs Mary Louise Basset observed an abnormal object on the A484 road as described earlier (see Chapter Four). A scrutiny of the maps fails to reveal any ley-lines in this area. This could be because this region of Dyfed is fertile, easily worked arable land on which most of the monuments of prehistory have been erased after centuries of agricultural use.
The ancient Scandinavians had categorized giants as well as other strange paranormal beings. They believed that the universe was divided into nine 'worlds' - what we would nowadays call 'dimensions'. These are mentioned in a verse in the ancient Völuspá:
Nine worlds I knew
The nine in the Tree
With its mighty roots
Under the mould.
These 'nine worlds' were: the Aesir (the gods), Vanir, Light Elves, Dark Elves, Men, Giants, Muspell's Sons, the Dead and The Dwarfs.
A verse in Grímnismál (written about A.D. 950) contains the line:
The land is holy
That lies hard by
The Aesir and the Elves.
The deity called Grímnismál was also known as Grimr (the Hooded or Masked One) or Hjálmberi (the Helmet Bearer).
It is not difficult immediately to see a parallel between these ideas and the description of the entities observed by the Coombes at Ripperston Farm and by the truck-driver and his companion at Nantycaws Hill. The figures were certainly gigantic and, moreover, were masked. Masked (or hooded) creatures, gigantic or otherwise, figure extensively in mythology, folklore and even
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religion. Moses describes a paranormal being - which he called 'The Lord' - which was masked. Indeed, Moses himself adopted the practice of wearing an obscuring veil for a time. 'The Lord', it is said, spoke to Moses 'face to face, as a man speaketh unto a friend.' The deity did not, however, reveal his face: 'Thou canst not see my face: for there shall be no man see me and live.'
These parallels are most extraordinary. Masked (or hooded) deities are not only referred to in Celtic literature - for example, an eighth- century Irish stroy concerning Finn and Dercc Corra Mac Lui Daighte (the 'peaked Red One') suggests that the latter wore 'a hood of disguise' - they are also well-known in Celtic archaeology, depicted as statues and in carvings. Dr Ann Ross of Southampton University mentions some of these in her book Pagan Celtic Britain. Indeed, she has also described a paranormal figure which she and her daughter saw, independently, in their own home, and which may have been associated with a stone Celtic head which Dr Ross then had in her possession.
Students of the UFO phenomena who believe that the beings observed have arrived from outer space have been quick to point out that the Apollo 16 astronauts used space-suits with a 'peak' built into the helmet to shield their eyes from the sun. But of course masked beings may cover their heads because they have no face to reveal, which seems to be waht Francis Lloyd was trying to say although he didn't put it in those words. This effect has been noted by other UFO investigators. Luis Schönherr, for instance, expresses it this way:
'Loosely speaking the entities seen in connection with UFOs seem to have difficulties with their extremeties. Witnesses report that they could see no arms, or that they had the impression that they were held close to the body.
'In one case the witness noted quite definitely that the legs of the entities were transparent - he could see the grass through them. Others reported that the lower part of the body seemed "indistinct" or hidden by high grass. Phenomenologically both statements could refer to the same category of phenomenon. Whether someone says the legs were transparent, or that the grass was visible through them, or whether another person says the legs were hidden by the grass, they amount basically to the same thing.
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'This kind of thing has frequently been reported about the phenomena of the seance room. Materializations of persons are seldom complete - often only the head appears, while legs and arms are either indistinct, or deformed, or partially missing. The same applies to many reports of apparitions, for in general they appear to the observer to be best defined in the upper part of the body.'
The inexplicable objects were seen not only by inhabitants of Dyfed, but by visitors to the area too. Typical of these was David Edward Smith, a Bachelor of Law, who gave us a very concise account. In an interview with Randall Jones Pugh he stated: 'My name is David Edward Smith. I'm aged fifty-eight. My home is at 5 Parc Tydd, Red Warf Bay, Anglesey. I'm at present on holiday at Cwn Odig Lodge which is a guest-house situated at Croesgoch on the main Fishguard-St David's road (A487) at its juncture with the Trevine road. On the evening of 12 April 1977, at about 11 p.m. I happened to go out of the guest-house to my car. On the way back I glanced at the sky and there I saw very, very long golden pencil-shaped object of light. It was at an angle in the sky between perpendicular and horizontal. If I had seen the object in daytime I might have thought it was the vapour-trail from an aircraft. But, in total darkness, surely not. It was a long, golden-coloured pencil of light and, at its topmost end, there appeared to be a protuding snout. Midway, there appeared to be another area of light, similar in colour, but not so well-defined and more round in shape.
'I went into the guest-house to try and attract the attention of someone else but saw no one. I went out, and the object was still there in the same position high in the sky. I went into the guest-house again and came back, and the object was still there. It seemed to be in the direction of the sea between the point of the headland at Abereiddy beach and the other well-defined headland in the direction of Croesgoch from the main headland at Abereiddy. I would say, at the distance I was looking at it, that although it seemed to be about six feet long, I could plainly see it was an immense object. Although I can't judge its distance from where I was standing I would sayi t was between 600 and 1,000 feet away.
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'How long did you observe the object, Mr Smith?' asked Pugh.
'I observed the object for at least half a miute on each of three occasions and when I went indoors for the night it was still visible.'
'How did the object disappear from view?'
'The object never disappeared from view the whole time I was watching it.'
'What were the main features which made you feel it was not natural or man-made?'
'It was the length of it and the clear golden colour - the very bright colour. It was straight - there was nothing crooked or mis-shapen or bent. Then this patch of light underneath gave me the impression it was either part of the main object itself or some reflection from it.'
'What were the weather conditions?'
'It had been raining heavily all evening and had only just stopped. It was cold with a fair amount of wind. And it was a really black night - very cloudy.'
'And this shape was ...?'
'Very pencil-like - cigar-shaped. The whole length of it was so well-defined it was unmistakable. It was neither a flash of light in the sky nor a glow. It was extremely well-defined.'
This vigorous testimony from a visiting solicitor was very persuasive. The conditions were not at all suitable for producing visible contrails that night. Moreover, we noticed that a ley-line some sixteen and a half miles long terminates at the prehistoric site called Caerau (along the Abereiddy cliffs) and only a quarter of a mile from where the phenomenon was observed. This ley originates in the rath near Llys-y-fran and cuts Woodstock Cross, the rath at Wolf's Castle and Caerau.
The UFO phenomenon, whatever its nature, seemed to show a good deal of interest in the Milford Haven industrial complex about this time. Patrick James, a quantity surveyor of 16 Silverstream Drive, Milford, was another of the many people who saw anomalous luminous objects in the sky during the spring of 1977. He told us how he was on the Herbrandston road one night in April between 11 and 12 o'clock. He suddenly noticed a yellow light moving above the silver funnels of the Esso oil refinery. 'As it was going over,' he said, 'there was a white light flashing downwards
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beneath it - almost like ack-ack fire.' The object cleared the refinery by about 200 yards and then just vanished.
Philip William Harris, of Oreston, Thornton, Milford, described how he saw an object over the Gulf Oil Refinery at 10.15 p.m. on 17 May 1977. The thing that caught his attention was the erractic course the object was taking. He described the rapid, wavy track as 'like a cardiograph'. There was no sound, he says, and it was definitely not a plane. He had binoculars trained on the object which was shaped 'between an egg and a rugby ball' and seemed large in size. After five minutes the thing just disappeared.
In an effort to cut through the welter of speculation concerning the mysterious objects Randall Jones Pugh obtained an interview, televised by BBC Wales, with Group Captain Brian Lemon, the officer commanding the RAF Brawdy NATO base. It did, after all, seem absurd that so much strange activity was going on without the nation's professional guardians making some sort of statement. How about radar, for example? How could these things - whatever they were - dodge about the night sky with no alarm being given?
Group Captain Lemon explained that the radar cover starts at 6.30 a.m. and closes down about twelve hours later. It only covers the station's flying time; there is no night cover. He admitted, however, that he found the UFO affair intriguing.
'If there is a "something",' he said, 'perhaps "tangible" isn't the word ... maybe it's intangible.'
BBC Wales television interviewers pressed more questions on the Group Captain.
'You only fly conventional aircraft from here?' he was asked.
'Very much so. We do have some visitors. Our aircraft are the very well-known Hunter and the Meteor.'
'Do you have anything with a blue or red light on top?'
'Yes. Most aircraft these days are fitted with red lights for anti-collision purposes. They're on all the time - in daylight as well.'
'I'm thinking that people in Dyfed may have mistaken your aircraft for something else.'
'It may be so. But certainly we do very little night flying ourselves.'
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'Then what was it that people in Dyfed were seeing?' asked the BBC.
Group Captain Lemon explained: 'Well, 99.9 per cent of sightings can be explained away as a trick of the light or a misunderstanding.'
'And the 0.1 per cent?'
'Well, I'm sure we do have some strange things - but beyond that I'm not prepared to go.'
'In that case the mystery of those forty-odd sightings in Dyfed remains,' said the interviewer, happy to score his final point.
All this public sparring was good clean stuff but not very enlightening. So one of us sought off-the-record information from a slightly less senior officer. Given that no one knew the answer to the enigma, what sort of general line did the top brass take on the matter? They must have adopted some kind of attitude.
'My information,' said our informant, 'is that what goes on seems to be paranormal.'
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Is There a 'Goblin Universe'?
In the days of Harold the Fair-headed, Thorir Oddson came from Iceland to Norway, and was sent by his uncle Sigmund there to his friend Ulf, north in Haogeland. One day Thorir and his comrades were out fishing and came home late. Ulf went to meet them and when they had fixed up their boat for the night Thorir saw a fire like the light of the moon over which hovered a blue flame. He asked what light that was. 'Better not inquire into that,' said Ulf. 'It has no human origins.' 'Why should I not know of it,' said Thorir, 'even though it is caused by trolls?'
William A. Cragie, Scandinavian Folklore (1896)
Once the investigator has satisfied himself, by cautious personal inquiry, that the sort of cases described in this book do in fact occur, he will inevitably ask himself: are we observing an aspect of nature about which science is unaware? If so, what sort of possibilities suggest themselves? How do the phenomena observed in Dyfed align with the world picture as supplied by physcial science?
The first problem to examine is the question of subjectivity/objectivity of the effects. Clearly it would be quite futile to inquire about the origin of extraordinary humanoid being if such beings turned out to be fantasies of our own minds. Therefore the first question must be: how can we be sure that the phenomena are objective and external to the observer?
In this book we have tried to demonstrate the domestic animals - particularly dogs and horses - seem to react in an atypical manner when in proximity to UFO manifestations. It may be argued that this proves little since dogs and horses, as
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well as humans, may experience subjective hallucinations in certain conditions. Whilst we could not close our minds to this possibility, it nevertheless remains a fact that the causation of the UFO experience has still not been explained. Clearly there is a close synchronism in time and space between the various human and animal experiences; our entire day-by-day awareness of events confirms that an external phenomenon is the more reasonable for what occurs rather than some impossible-to-prove mental theory. We believe that the behaviour of the animals - evidence, when subjected to all reasonable checks, for us to accept that they are responding to something apparently objective and external. Presumably an animal would not flee from a self-generated hallucinatio for it would, so to speak, carry the hallucination with it and generate it afresh elsewhere. Critics cannot have the argument both ways.
This suggests, pari passu, that the phenomena, whatever they are, exist externally in space. We assume, but we cannot by any means be sure, that they also exist in time as we know it. Nor do we know whether they objectively occupy space in any meaningful sense of the term. When the humanoid beings are perceived as occupying space, they appear to react in conformity to the laws governing perspective and optics. They give the appearance of being three-dimensional objects although they are manifestly neither physically solid nor organic in any known sense of the words.
Humanoid beings as bizarre as the Dyfed creatures cause science to react negatively. Our understanding of the life-origins of the human race is sketchy, with many gaps. Our comprehension of the earthly life-process as a whole is similarly incomplete. Current scientific belief is that it has evolved largely fortuitously, and that the formation of man is therefore also fortuitous. Humans, it is argued, are a product of the particular physicochemical environs of a specific planet, and our evolutionary development is quite possibly unique throughout this galaxy no matter how life may have evolved elsehwere.
It is very difficult to upset these arguments, for no objective evidence has been found so far with which to do so. Logic compels us to admit that the existence of quasi-human creatures of
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the sort we have described in this book is unsupported by anything known to science either as part of a world-picture or as a specific type. From the conventional scientific point of view, the Dyfed humanoids are utter nonsense.
This is an apt place to discuss the alleged extraterrestrial origin of the UFO phenomena. There is no evidence known to either of us that this extraordinary activity does indeed come from outer space even though this view is widely popular amongst cultists. According to folklore such activity was not associated with space and the stars but rather with supra-dimensions of being which are today conveniently catalogued as 'the paranormal'. Work over the last thirty years by parapsychologists in various countries into such phenomena as telepathy and precognition gives grounds for supposing that such a supra-dimension or dimensions may indeed exist.
Life as we know it is organized into cells of organic matter. Life as a philosophical principle nevertheless proves to be evasive of definition. We observe it as an evolutionary process operating through the earth's chemical interactions. There is some evidence - via chondrites - that it may also occur thus in space. Some scientists have even postulated that certain viruses may be extraterrestrial in origin. Nevertheless, celluar life is still under discussion. If life that is neither cellular nor having its activities based on biochemistry exists, then clearly an entirely new type of logistics is possible. No evidence known to us makes this seem probable, but on the other hand it is certainly not impossible.
The notion that UFOs are 'visiting' the earth on some exploratory venture strikes us as simplistic in the extreme. If such an assumption is made, the evasive nature of UFO-human contacts seems entirely illogical. The fear-reactions exhibited by animals and people who have seen UFOs is a matter for concern on the part of the medical disciplines. Although the innate potential of the galactic universe is, for all practical purposes, infinite we would, on balance, except a rapprochement between extraterrestrial intelligent beings and ourselves at some systematized level if visitations from the outer heavens were in fact taking place. The only contacts, so far as our information goes, are at an absurdly trivial level - far lower, indeed, than our own explorers would be prepared to extend to even the most primitive subtribe.
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For this and other logical reasons we find the extraterrestrial case lacking in conviction although, of course, it cannot be wholly dismissed.
Several investigators have already argued convincingly for a terrestrial origin for the enigma. Dr Jacques Vallee is particularly persuasive. Analysts and translators, such as Gordon Creighton, have transcribed traditional accounts which tesify to the great antiquity of UFO phenomena. Our greatest debt, however, is probably to the folklorists whose massive contribution has still not been fully evaluated. All of this greatly undermines the extraterrestrial visitation theory. Moreover it helps solve that most difficult problem - the humanistic appearance of the entities.
Nearly sixty years ago Edward L. Gardner of the Theosophical Society described the nature of elemental spirits as 'essentially magnetic'. In The Coming of the Fairies by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle he put the problem of their humanoid appearance this way: 'What determines the shape assumed and how the transformation is effected is not clear. One may speculate as to the influence of human thought, individual or in the mass, and quite probably the explanation when found will include this influence as a factor ...' However, he adds: 'The normal working body ... is not of human nor any other definite form. They have no clean-cut shape normally, and one can only describe them as small, hazy and somewhat luminous clouds of colour with a brighter spark-like nucleus.' He adds again: 'The higher orders of nature spirits are adding mentality to their emotional development and speech with them is possible. Their attitude to ordinary humanity is unfriendly rather than well-disposed, and often hostile, arising probably from our utter disregard of the amenities. Pollution of the atmosphere is a horror [to them] and deeply resented.'
Folklore accounts of the nature-spirit phenomenon, whether they derive from Iceland, Scandinavia, Germany, France, Ireland or Britain, are most remarkably consistent. The illusional nature of the encounters is repeatedly stressed. The magical appearance and disappearance of the entities and their trappings is a standard feature. The slightly malicious attitude of the creatures towards humans is related in tale after tale as are their occasional acts of generosity towards people they have come to
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like. Humans were often reported to be magically transported from place to place by nature-spirits. Sometimes folk were abducted into a universe of illusional beauty where time ran slow in relation to the real world. Contact with the huldre-folk, the fairy-folk or the Elves could be dangerous in a physical sense.
In the Middle Ages a condition known as 'elf disease' was widely known throughout Europe. Professor E. O. G. Turville-Petre, Oxford's professor of ancient Icelandic history, writes: 'It is an old and widespread belief that elves cause sickness and Old English is rich in expressions which show this fact. In Iceland a form of skin-disease in animals is still called alfabruni (elf-burn).' Elf disease consisted of a hardening of the epidermis which had the popular name 'elf-cake'. A remedy for it is given in Cockayne's Saxon Leechdoms and dates from the time of Henry VI (1422): 'Take the root of Gladen and make a powder thereof, and give the diseased party half a spoonful thereof to drink in white wine, and let him eat thereof so much in his pottage at one time and it will help him within a while.' Nature-spirits dislike very rank smells. No doubt it was for this reason that the ancient herbalists used gladen to disperse the cause of elf disease. Gladen or gladdon (Iris foetidissima) is sometimes known as the Stinking Iris due to the very rank smell which rises from the crushed leaves.
Ufologists today no longer talk of elf disease. Now it is usually described as a 'radiation-burn'. When a South American farmer allegedly came into close contact with UFO entities he developed a dermatological condition which was described as follows: 'Several scars from cutaneous lesions on the backs of the hands, the forearms and the legs. All present the same appearance which recalls that of small cicatrized boils or wounds. There are still two which have not yet healed, one on each arm, and their appearance is that of small reddish nodules or lumps, harder than the surrounding skin...'
It is an interesting fact that two of the people who came into close contact with Dyfed humanoid phenomena also developed a dermatoligcal condition. (We have no intention of naming them here.) The condition was treated as a natural disease by a G.P. and appears to have responded to this. It may, of course, have had natural causes; even so, the matter is enough of a coincidence to warrant mention.
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Our study of the Dyfed 'wave' of flying saucers indicates nothing that has been extensively described in the folk-tales of Europe and attributed to terrestrial nature-spirits. Viewed from this angle many of the Dyfed mysteries are explainable. These elemental beings were always considered to hate pollution in all its many forms, since large masses of pollutants could not be readily absorbed by the normal processes of nature. This gives a peculiar logic to the great interest shown by UFOs in the chimneys of the Milford oil complex, atomic bomb shelters and military airfields, rubbish dumps and sewage-pits. In at least three cases - Broad Haven Primary School, Ripperston and Herbrandston - there was a sewage-disposal unit very near to where the phenomena were observed. In one case - Herbrandston - the humanoid was actually observed coming out of the sewage compound.
One of the most widely known folk-tales of Norway, Sweden and Denmark - it has over 300 variants - can be used to explain the weird shifting of Billie Coombes' cows on Ripperston Farm. Here are the two relevant paragraphs:
'It often happened to one of the dairymaids that her goats got out during the night, so she had to put them back in again. This happened not just once but time and time again. The dairymaid could not understand it, for she took extra pains to lock the door in the evening.
'But one day a huldre-woman came to her and said: "You'd better stop keeping the goats inside, for the pen is standing in such a spot that our food is being spoiled!" Then they had to move the goatpen to another place, just to be able to keep their goats in peace.'
In this story the huldre-woman was using language suited to the peasants of the period. It was figurative speech. E. L. Gardner believe that the energy of nature-spirits is probably derived from magnetic effects - possibly directly from the earth's magnetic field. He points out that disagreeable odours repel them and 'this is one of the many reasons, besides timidity, why human society is usually avoided, there being little that is inviting and much that is obnoxious.' [147]
be to us. This concern provides an answer to the question that most ufologists try to grapple with - why flying saucers have appeared throughout the earth in great numbers only in recent decades. Various writers have remarked on the fact that the first atomic bombs were detonated at about the time when the first 'waves' of saucers started to be reported. It has been suggested that these explosions were visible to beings on other planets in space and thus attracted UFO visitors. However, there is a more logical explanation. The uranium bomb represents the first human device able to produce almost immediate wholesale global pollution. So deadly indeed is the fall-out that the long-term effects on people have even yet not been fully measured. What these malignant materials do to nature-spirits we do not know; but the horrific effects on humans are there to see. The alarm felt by other possible life-forms on our planet is therefore entirely logical. Thus they prowl the bomb-shelters, scrutinize our air forces and look with distaste on our sewage areas and the chemical clouds fuming from chimneys. We suggest that this is the real reason why UFOs started to monitor the globe.
Investigators who share our views about the basic nature of UFO phenomena include the French scientist and astronomer, Jacques Vallee. Dr Vallee writes: 'When the underlying archetypes are extracted from these rumours, the saucer myth is seen to coincide to a remarkable degree with the fairy-faith of Celtic countries ...' In Wales nature-spirits were called ellyllon, a word which derives from el, a spirit. Wales had strong associations with these beings. Indeed, there is a tradition in the Principality that Shakespeare visited Brecon to collect background material for A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is suggested that he stayed with his friend Richard Price, son of Sir John Price of Brecon Priory. The story relates that Shakespeare was shown a local haunt of the ellyllon called Cwm Pwca, a glen in the Clydach valley. This is said to have been the setting on which the play was based. Unhappily today this area has long since been butchered by industrial development. Although there is no hard proof that the playwright did indeed visit Brecon, nevertheless a strong case can be made out which suggests that Shakespeare collected his
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fairy-lore from Welsh sources. The name of his character Mab, for example, is the Welsh for 'small child' and can be associated with the ancient classic Mabinogion - tales of enchantment.
Other sophisticated investigators also seem to share our overall view regarding the nature of flying saucers. One of these is Gordon Creighton, ex-diplomat and linguist, who is now a consultant for Flying Saucer Review. Creighton writes: 'We pride ourselves nowadays on our enlightenment but, as Gurdjieff was always pointing out, it looks as though, for every piece of new knowledge that man acquires, ten pieces of old knowledge are lost. I hope one day to show that there is much evidence that some of what we nowadays call "beings from flying saucers" are much more probably creatures who share this earth with us; creatures who are totally unknown to most of us; regarding whom science has not a single word to say; but about whom our own written and oral traditions, in all our civilizations, speak volumes.'
The late Ivan T. Sanderson, biologist and investigator of anomalies, changed his views on the nature of the UFO mystery. After arguing a case for entities being physical in earlier books, he ultimately came round to this opinion: 'But now we are being forced to accept the fact - and the "forcing" is coming ever more often and from all manner of diverse angles - that there are tangible, measurable and reproducible evidences of other "universes" in contact with ours. And inhabiting these there would appear to be intelligences, ranging all the way from abyssmal idiots to godlike entities.'
John A. Keel, the well-known American writer on UFO phenomena, commented in a letter to F. W. Holiday: 'Privately, Ivan, like myself, came to suspect that UFOs were inexorably related to psychic phenomena.'
Humanoid creatures, of the sort described in this book, are a major anomaly to the well-ordered systems of nature. Science cannot deal with their possible reality without modifying many of its existing terms of reference. The world picture would need to extend in quite unexpected directions in order to accomodate the newcomers. Would human logic be equal to the task? Would it be possible for such knowledge to be assimilated in the way that Relativity has?
An opinion on these quasi-human creatures was sought from
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a distinguished anthropologist, John Napier, M.R.C.S., I.R.C.P., D.Sc. (Lond.), Visiting Professor of Primate Biology at London University. Professor Napier worked for years with Dr L. S. B. Leakey on African fossil sub-humans and was later the Director of the Primate Biology Programme at the Smithsonian Institute. It is scarcely possible, therefore, to find a scientist more qualified to discuss the humanoid format.
Professor Napier commented in a letter to F. W. Holiday: 'The way I see it at the moment is this. Reason tells us these things do not exist; yet the only apparent alternative is that the whole affair is a Great Conspiracy. I am not prepared to entirely ignore eye-witnesses or accuse them of being part of the Great Conspiracy; in fact I am sure they are truthful and that there is no such thing as a G.C. There must be a third explanation which is neither (a) a matter of reason, nor (b) fakery. This must be unreasonable (in our terms) but probably makes sense in the Goblin Universe. Essentially the third explanation must concern the minds of men.'
In a certain sense, physical scientists have discovered that fundamental aspects of our own material universe have 'goblin' qualities already. If two events, very distant from each other, occur in galactic space, it is impossible to determine whether they are simultaneous or not, because there is no absolute time by which to measure them. Length and time are both relative concepts. Special Relativity postulates that mass approaches infinity as it approached the velocity of light. 'Time dilation' at relativistic veolicities is an experimental fact. Yet the entire star system is somehow unified. All modern cosmologies, for instance, predict that space has some positive curvature and that its radius is therefore calculable. A typical value suggested is 13 billion light years. The material universe seems to exist as an entity in an inconceivably vast ocean of space/time.
Experiments to solve the riddle of telepathy, which functions even when the 'sender' is seated inside a Farraday Cage - therefore obviating the transmission of the signals by electromagnetic waves - strongly suggests that a medium exists which has so far not been discovered. The Russians have recently suggested that telepathic signals may be carried by gravity waves. However, this does not particularly clarify the position since
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gravity waves themselves are still conjectural. Nevertheless, scientists in many countries agree that there is here indeed a puzzling area of communication - different to anything so far discovered.
This mystery region may not necessarily be the Fairyland - the Magonia - written about by Jacques Vallee but it is almost certainly one of the keys to the eventual discovery of that strange place. This could, indeed, be the 'Goblin Universe' spoken of by Professor Napier - a place where time runs backwards making prerecognition possible, the region from which humanoids emerge, the home of the huldre-folk.
If humanity eventually penetrates this far into the enigma it will doubtless find itself dealing with a mental world which could be described only by a symbolism as esoteric as that used by physicists to describe by sub-atomic particles. For these things, the saucers and the humanoids, are somehow related to the mind of man himself.
Our belief, based on our Dyfed investigations, is that the UFO phenomenon functions or manifests itself through or around the electromagnetic spectrum. Too many TV, radio and electrical interferences have occurred in unexplained circumstances for it to be otherwise. Since we are bound to follow the reasoning that, in our world at least, cause does indeed precede effect, we feel compelled to assume that something causes the interference. It is this 'something' which is at the heart of the mystery; this is the real puzzle of the 'UFO-observed' situation. Whatever it is, it is not producing a novel effect, as folklore and indeed history testify.
The saucer and humanoid 'waves' reported in modern times clearly have an unexplained periodicity, a fact which lends itself to pragmatic research, especially in terms of astronomy. One responsible scientist has suggested that only half the matter in the solar system has so far been discovered and that there may be a dimly luminous companion sun out in space. This hypothesis might be useful in explaining certain geomagnetic variations. Some years ago Dr C. Poher, chief of the French Rockets Division of the Centre
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National d'Etudes Spatiales, did a study of UFOs in relation to variations in the earth's magnetic disturbance in this area can be correlated to periods in which the greatest number of UFO sightings occurred. The evidence led Dr Poher to believe that the magnetic field in the immediate neighbourhood of some UFOs is probably very intense. So far as is known at present, the single biggest cause of variations in the earth's magnetic field is the 11+ year sun-spot cycle. Clearly other factors may be involved, however, including the positions of the other solar planets and the hypothetical companion sun - if it exists.
On 21 February 1974, the French Defence Minister, M. Robert Galley, commented on this situation in the following words, in the course of a conversation with Jean-Claude Bourret, broadcast by France-Inter: 'Personally, I am very interested in this phenomenon, which Monsieur Poher has been describing, of the relationship between the variations in magnetic fields and the passage of unidentified flying objects. All this business presents a whole lot of quite disturbing phenomena which may of course, one of these days, be explained satisfactorily as not being due to the passage of some specific object or other, but simply as magnetic phenomena. But, so far as the present moment is concerned, we are forced to admit that here is something that escapes our comprehension. There has also been the extremely impressive increase in the number of visual sightings of luminous phenomena, sometimes spherical, sometimes ovoid, travelling at extra-ordinarily high speeds. All these are phenomena that call for a certain degree of attention.'
The comment that folklore has to make on this situation would seem to be enshrined in the belief that iron was, in some unspecified way, inimical to elemental beings. Iron objects were supposed to protect humans from the attentions of the nature-spirits since iron, of course, has an affinity for electromagnetism. It would be easier to dismiss such suggestions as nonsense. If science had not already started to endorse the principle behind them. Professor E. S. Burr of Yale University School of Medicine has proved after long experimentation that all organic
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material is electromagnetic in basic function. Organisms - seeds, eggs and even individual cells - all have an electrical field. This field which persists as long as life lasts, acts as a 'blueprint' for the development of the organism, and the growing cells faithfully obey its directives. Since life in cells relies on electrical fields for its fulfilment, the possibility that UFO humanoids also utilize such fields becomes a good deal more credible, although as yet, of course, we have no idea how such a thing could be done. Within this single point, however, may lie the potential for our first recognition of the entities as objective living beings.
Professor Burr's general feelings on the subject of life-fields are well worth repeating. He says: 'The universe in which we find ourselves and from which we cannot be separated is a place of law and order. It is not an accident or chaos. It is organized and maintained by an electro-dynamic field capable of determining the position and movement of all charged particles. For nearly half a century the logical consequences of this theory have been subjected to rigorously controlled experimental conditions and have met with no contradictions.'
To answer the question posed in the title of this chapter we would suggest that there is indeed a 'goblin universe' - or, it might be truer to say, a 'goblin dimension' since, ultimately, all forms of reality are seen to be unified and consistent within themselves and with each other. This particular type of existence - the 'world' of the humanoids - is no doubt just as 'real' and as valid to them as our own world is to us. Relativity has shown that no one frame of reference is to be preferred to another; that each is internally consistent within itself. The paradox of the flying saucer rests on this basis.
Folklore repeatedly stressed the illusory nature of the effects created by elementals and the way the human mind was thus manipulated. Cases have been described of amnesia in witnesses, which caused them to be incoherent when describing their experiences. A nineteenth-century story from Cardigan recalls what happened when local people allegedly encountered elementals. 'It was no doubt the ellyllon who led these folk astray and put the cap of oblivion on their heads which prevented them
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from ever telling of their adventures clearly.' This form of confusion was known as 'pixillation'. The modern UFO saga is full of similar accounts, and present-day scientific investigators try to probe the witnesses' minds using hypnosis or drug techniques.
A curious aspect of the phenomenon's 'tricks' is the presentation of the humanoids as space travellers complete with spacesuits and breathing apparatus. Earlier literature shows that our grandfathers observed no such equipment and that it is a modern feature. Like the ventriloquist's doll which can be made to behave like a living being by blinking its eyes and performing other functions, the show is very convincing. How convincing it is can be seen by the extent to which the bait has been swallowed by so many of the ufological literati. This has led to the Von Daniken super-cult of men like gods sired by angels. It is a flattering fantasy but totally without scientific foundation.
Its origins can only lie in human psychology and attitudes. That is to say, having lately become extraterrestrials ourselves we are automatically wide open to the suggestion that the technique can be used by other life-forms in space. Being able to blink we are thrilled to imagine that the ventriloquist's doll can also blink. This is really a remarkable form of egocentricism and quite unsupported by any scientific evidence.
Human groups who organize themselves to fight gross pollution of the earth are possibly the best unwitting allies of the UFOs. Those who devote themselves to preserving environmental amenities, to the saving of the earth's ecological structure and to the retention of wildlife, are trying to save no more than the natural balance of this planet's eco-systems which are shifting increasingly awry. The systematic destruction of tropical rainforest, with the resulting dimunition of oxygen in the atmosphere, is progressively nudging biochemical activity away from the orderly routines of nature. Within the looming void lie malfunction and death. Is the reason for the strange saucer-beings' concern that they are symbiotic on us, or do they know already what the human race is now coming to realize - that all forms of life are mutually dependent and that wholly exclusive creations do not exist?
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CHAPTER NINE
Aftermath
These facts certainly indicate something wrong, and it is not the evidence. Could it possibly be the critics themselves? That professional scientists could be anything but open-minded, unprejudiced seekers after truth is naturally a little hard for the idealistic student of science to believe. The lad who remarked on his first look at a giraffe 'There ain't no such animal' was from far away back in the sticks. One would not expect the same reaction from a psychologist with a Ph.D. degree.
Professor J. B. Rhine, The New Frontiers of the Mind (1938)
Humanity has made some grave errors of judgement since it tried to rationalize the material universe. We now appreciate that one of the most fundamental mistakes was the tendency to invest ourselves and our planetary environment with too much importance. Reluctantly it finally had to be conceded that the sun and stars do not actually circle the earth and that this planet is an almost inconsequential speck of cosmic material. Other organice life-systems, it is now felt, may well extend throughout the utmost depths of galactic space.
In treating the UFO problem, therefore, we do not wish to make similar false estimates regarding the potential means available to other intelligent life-forms. It is conceivable that life may have developed in a sort of parallel evolution, without the use of chemical cells, operating on quite different principles to anything so far recognized. If so, it would presumably be a form of psychic existence and as such not directly perceptible by material investigation.
No wise scientist denies the importance of witness-testimony;
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nevertheless he should insist on ultra-caution. As Professor Carl Sagan remarked recently in a lecture at the Royal Institution vide the UFO problem: 'Extraordinary events demand extraordinary evidence to support them.' And no event in human experience is more extraordinary than the appearance of humanoid beings which defy all attempts to classify or understand them.
As the year 1977 moved into its last quarter, still further observations in Dyfed were reported to Randall Jones Pugh. One of these was made by a fifty-five-year-old maintenance fitter, George Chapman, of 23 West Street, Rosemarket, who works for Krafts Foods at Merlin's Bridge, Haverfordwest.
In October 1977, Mr Chapman was outside his place of work between 10 and 11 a.m. when a workmate called him to see a puzzling object. He told us: 'Down the back of the factory we've got a loading-dock. I was coming down the concrete road between the factory and the railway line and, as I passed the loading-dock, Tommy shouted to me: "Hey, George, come and have a look at this." What had been there before I got there was some sort of silver object in the sky and this is what attracted attention. I don't think you could have missed it because it was such clear conditions. I got there just as he was pointing to it and then there was a sort of massive explosion.'
Pugh asked: 'Could you give me an estimation of the altitude in relation to the planes that pass over going between London and America?'
'I'd say very much lower because we see planes all day long. When I saw it it was just a silver object - more or less a round shape. And then this explosion came and it left a large area of black smoke. Three things occurred - there was first of all the silver ball effort, then there was either an explosion or a discharge of exhaust gases, and this left a nearly spherical area of black smoke. And from that leapt a bar of light that moved upwards fast.'
'Was it like a flash - a discharge of electricity?'
'Oh, no. We could see it going. And it was going up like hell!'
'Then it must have been an object - a luminous object.'
'It must have been something actual,' said George Chapman, 'because it came from this cloud and it was seeable. And it was seeable for quite some time. And then the cloud slowly dispersed.'
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As in so many of these cases we noticed with intrigued interest that Mr Chapman's sighting occurred within half a mile of an alignment of ancient sites. This ley-line runs through Llangwm church, Hook church, Haroldston ruins, Haverfordwest Priory ruins, Camrose Chruch, Hayscastle megalithic mound and Hayscastle church. Were these remarkable alignments due to pure chance, as sceptics maintained, or were they part of the mystery of the objects seen in the sky? In fact UFOs manifested themselves to many people in 1977 within a mile radius of the Priory ruins. One to see them was William Paul Flood, another worker at Krafts Foods, Haverfordwest.
Mr Flood, of 22 Veniss Close, Merlin's Bridge, was working on night-shift. He left the factory as usual at 6 a.m. on 14 December 1977 to drive the short distance to his home in his 1968 Morris 1800. However, on this particular night, before he reached his home, the car - which normally ran perfectly - suddenly started cutting out. It didn't splutter or fade: the enging simply stopped. Eventually, however, he got home. Then follows his own account of what happened after that.
'Well, I parked my car. I was going to get my flash and my sandwich-box when something caught the corner of my eye. This was about five past six in the morning. There are no lights with stars out. Just as I was locking up the car there it was - a ball. It was a bright blue. You've seen the blue on the points of a sparking-plug - well, that's the blue it was - electric. It suddenly lit up like that. It seemed to be more or less gliding.'
'How big a ball would you say it was?'
'About football size. There was no noise.'
'How high was it?'
'About fifty feet. It was as high as that tree over there.'
'So you had a good, close view of this thing. It seemed to appear out of nowhere.'
'You mean that one second it wasn't there and the next second it was?'
'Exactly. It wasn't a fast-moving object. As I watched it the thing seemed to be gliding down.'
'Did you see where it landed?'
'It landed in a field over there. I didn't go over to investigate. I'm a great believer in UFOs and ... I was a bit frightened. I didn't see it actually touch the ground but it definitely came down in one of those fields.'
'How has your car gone since this incident?'
'Beautifully. Its normal running self. No trouble at all.'
'Getting back to this ball. Was it a uniform colour or could you see any shades or graduations in it?'
'There was a very light blue and darkish blue. The light part was inside and the dark blue outside.'
'Was it pulsating?'
'No' 'William Flood said. The next morning he carried out a search of a nearby rough field where the UFO seeed to come down but found no traces of it.
The malfunctioning of cars often features in UFO reports and it is fair to suspect that somehow the magnetos are temporarily affected by the phenomena. Mr Flood's car cut out when he was about 200 yards from where the UFO subsequently appeared, as we discovered by inspecting the ground. A force-field would have to be very intense and widespread to stop an automobile engine at such a distance.
Our relationship with local people, who appreciated that we were trying to investigate what was going on in an objective manner, was by now such that those who had previously come into contact with UFO phenomena readily reported to Randall Jones Pugh anything they encountered on later daes that seemed unaccountable. This resulted in the recording of another inexplicable incident involving a car.
One evening in the middle of October 1977 Terry Marsden of 14 St Margarets Way, Herbrandston, went out with his wife Sandra to feed their two ponies. The ponies were in a field adjoining the Herbrandston-Milford road and they were at this location when dusk fell around 7.30 p.m. following a sunny day of good weather. The car was left parked on the road while the Marsdens spent half an hour or so stroking and feeding their animals. Terry Marsden said to his wife: 'Come on, we'll call and get some chips and take them home.' He went over and opened the car door on the driver's side and then smelled the
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strong reek of what seemed like sulphur. Sandra started to get in on her side bu then jumped back, exclaiming: 'There's something wrong with the car - what's that smell?'
At that moment a friend of theirs came along on his motor bike and gave a pip of greeting on his horn. Terry Marsden tried to signal back with the horn on his own cat but it wouldn't work. He tried to signal with the lights but they wouldn't work either. Opening the bonnet he inspected the engine, battery, terminals and so forth but all seemed in order. He was getting back into the six-year-old Morris, feeling puzzled, when he suddenly noticed that the car was surrounded by a localized white mist.
Pugh asked: 'Now, when you first went to the ponies, had you noticed the white mist in the area?'
'There was nothing at all. Everything was clear. It certainly wasn't a sea-mist. There was no mist anywhere else except to the top of the car and moving out about thirty or forty feet. That's how far you could see it.'
'Did it just cover the roof or ...?'
'What it looked like was as if the car was stood on top of something and the mist was rising and drifting over the top. There was no wind. My first impression when I opened the car door was sulphur and I thought: "What the hell is that?" It was hard to imagine being out in open spaces and a smell reaching that strength all of a sudden.'
'Did you or your wife notice anything else?'
'The coldness. The sudden change in temperature.'
'When you got in the car you felt much colder?'
'Yes. And it was cold outside when I got out again. I'd been outside for half an hour only wearing a tank-top and was warm enough, but when the mist came round I felt the cold. I was standing there after I'd checked the engine and the wife was asking me about this mist and the smell when suddenly she said the two horses had took off down the field.'
'What made them take off?'
'As we opened the car doors they neighed and then they ran away down the field. Something frightened the horses that night. Normally they never leave the gate until you drive away. Even if you're not feeding them they'll stand there. It was most unusual.'
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The pocket of cold, sulphur-smelling mist enveloping the car was now starting to disperse. When Terry Marsden tried the electrics of his car again he found they functioned perfectly. The couple drove home feeling puzzled and uneasy about an incident for which no explanation was forthcoming.
Mists, indeed, are frequently mentioned in modern stories about UFOs, just as they were in olden fairy legends. The Rev. Elias Owen in his book Welsh Folklore (1888) explains how: 'It was formerly believed in Wales that the fairies, for a little fun, sportively carried men in mid-air from place to place and left them to return to their homes as best they could. There was apprehension about encountering the "fair people" in a mist for this reason.'
In fact Terry and Sarah Marsden were the parents of the boy Mark Marsden whose encounter with a humanoid was described earlier, in Chapter Four. It was because Randall Jones Pugh had met the family previously that the mist incident was reported to him. How many instances of this type occur but are never reported is open to conjecture. We believe there must be quite a number since many people flatly refuse to become involved in having to defend themselves against imputations of faulty observation and gullibility, which is the standard way of dismissing such events in our civilization.
With the approach of winter the year 1977 produced a further flurry of activity in the south-east corner of St Brides Bay. One of these episodes, appropriately enough, was at Broad Haven, which had earned so much notoriety with the school landing affair earlier in the year. One of the witnesses was Mrs Anne Berry who had seen an extra-ordinary luminous object when she was driving with Mrs Dorothy Cale and others in December 1976 (see Chapter One).
Anne Berry lives at 41 Atlantic Drive, Broad Haven. On 28 November 1977, Mrs Berry's mother called to visit her daughter. It was a clear, crisp day. Shortly after 10.30 a.m. the two women were standing at the kitchen sink washing up a few cups.
Atlantic Drive is on the first low hill rising from the seashore. The view from the window includes other houses on the estate
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and arable fields in the middle distance. The women, in fact, were able to look west and north-west. This house is only a few hundred yards as the crow flies from Broad Haven Primary School.
Mrs Berry told us: 'I glanced up over the hill towards St David's. There is a field up there, and a brilliantly white object was hovering and moving slowly from my right to my left. It was not high up in the sky but just above the hedge. There was a strip of blue sky between the object and the hedge. The thing was moving very slowly. It wasn't silver but more of a flat white. It was large - as big as bus, a bulbous thing. It looked rather like a barrage balloon and there was no sign of propellers. The main portion was cigar-shaped with a fairly big tail that looked like a barrage balloon. I watched it for some seconds, and then my mother looked at it.'
'How far would it have been from where you were standing?' Pugh asked.
'About three quarters of a mile. It was a white, solid mass, quite clearly defined. There was no sound from it.'
'So this object was floating a few feet above the hedge. What happened then?'
'It progressed slowly downwards to my left, towards the sea, and then was cut off from view by the houses.'
No indication of what this object could have been was ever discovered. No balloon landed in the sea nor was there any official hunt for an escaped gasbag. Barrage balloons have of course been obsolete since the end of the last war. The story reminded us of the tales of 'airships' seen over the United States in the 1890s in the days before these craft had been invented. Such accounts represent a paradox because they do not obey the laws of causation as we understand them.
However, the most singular occurrence towards the end of 1977 took place between Broad Haven and Ripperston Farm. It strained both credulity and common sense because it seems impossible such things can happen. And even if they do happen, then no logic known to human beings can in any way rationalize them.
To visualize the locale, the reader should appreciate that the sandy seashore, on which Broad Haven is located, runs south of
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that village for about a mile before meeting a line of rocky cliffs, fifty feet high. These cliffs turn the coastal contour through ninety degrees, west and south-west. Two-and-a-half miles along them is the most easterly field of Ripperston Farm. In the sea, directly opposite this point, is a reef known as Stack Rock.
This lies exactly half a mile out to sea from the cliffs. It is really a cluster of upcrops rising sheerly out of seven-fathom water to a height of about thirty feet at low water. The intertidal zone is marked by the yellow and brown fonds of wracks. There is no artificial structure on these rocks, and they are rarely visited except by summer fishermen who find that mackerel and pollack shelter in their lee. The group extends laterally about 300 yards in a north-westerly direction. The largest of the Stacks - the rock nearest the shore - extends about 200 yards. Thus the Stacks are conspicuous objects in St Brides Bay.
On a fine, sunny Sunday afternoon in the middle of October 1977, Pauline Coombes (see Chapter Five) decided she needed to drive out to one of the local shops. She left Ripperston Farm about 3.30 p.m. accompanied by her mother, her daughter Tina, and the two youngest children Layann and Joann. On the way back to Ripperston she made a detour to visit Broadmoor, and this brought the car into clear view of the sea. As the family finall made their way towards Ripperston along the narrow road they saw something zip across the sky.
This object was a small, silvery disc. It hurtled along low, near the sea, heading straight for Stack Rock.
Pauline's mother said: 'What's that?', and her daughter stopped the car while they stared at the spectacle. The rock appeared to open like a door to receive the object which dived inside and vanished.
Pauline told us: 'It went straight into the rock. At the speed it was going I expected to see flames or something when it hit the rock, but there was none.'
'The craft went into the rock?' said Pugh incredulously.
'Yes. When she said to me: "What's that?", I stopped the car and we saw the object go straight into the rock. There seemed to be doors that opened and closed, and it went straight inside. When she saw that my mother used some very strong words. "Damn
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me," she said. "Get home, get home - it's another of those bloody things again! Get home!"'
Pauline then saw what appeared to be two man-like figures walking on the rock. She told us: 'I thought surely I'm imagining things, but there's two things on Stack Rock exactly like what we saw here at the window [i.e. the silver humanoid, described in Chapter Five]. Also I could see what looked like a door in Stack Rock. My mother could see it also and so could Tina.'
Her mother had no taste for investigating these mysteries further, so Pauline drove up to Ripperston to tell her husband, Billie. The party had hardly entered the house when the phone rang. The caller was Mrs Rose Granville of Haven Fort Hotel (see Chapter Two) who wanted to know if Stack Rock was visible from Ripperston because she could see silvery figures walking on it.
Pauline then decided to walk down over the fields to the edge of the cliffs and check whether the figures could still be seen. She was accompanied by her twin girls and her sons Clinton and Keiron. Eventually they stood on a west-facing slope looking across at Stack Rock.
'There were two of these humanoids,' she told us. 'By now they seemed to have moved further over the rock from where I saw them first. One of them seemed to be climbing up steps. When you see someone coming upstairs you see their head, then their shoulders, then their bodies and so on. It was like that. And the other one was walking round the edge of the water as if it was looking for something.'
'You mean that one was climbing steps out of the rock?'
'Yes, out of the rock ... up steps.'
Pugh attempted to draw the threads of this extraordinary story together. 'We've got the craft going into the rock; we've got the two humanoids walking on the rock. Now, how did they disappear?'
'One was walking up and down steps - well, I can't say they were steps but that was the motion. The other was walking right on the edge near the water. The one that was walking on the steps went below on the steps, right down. The other one was walking as if he was looking for something - he was bent, looking for something - and then ... You'd have to look at the rock as I
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explain but a piece of rock goes up like this and he seemed to go beyond this and then down...'
'So you lost sight of him?'
'Yes.'
'Now - two legs, two arms, silver-suited?'
'Yes, it was definitely a humanoid thing.'
'What were the features?'
'He was all in silver. The head seemd to be orange.' Pauline Coombes added, to remind us: 'Clinton saw them.'
'Yes,' said Pugh. 'First of all, Clinton - did they look human to you?'
'Yes,' Clinton said.
'They had arms, legs. Did they have any colour?'
'A whitish-silver.'
'What did they do?'
'He was going up and down these steps all the time.'
'Did you ever lose sight of him?'
'No. We seen him all the time. And then he went down and he just disappeared into the rock.'
'That goes for one; now, how about the second one?'
'I wasn't taking much notice of him.'
Pugh then questioned the younger boy, Keiron.
'What did you see, Keiron?'
'I seen the same as him. I seen a man walking up and down steps and I wasn't taking much notice of the one at the bottom.'
'Did it look to you as if it was a man or did it look as if it was someway funny or peculiar?'
'It was something odd. I never seen anything like it before. It wasn't a man.'
'What colour was it?'
'The colour of that fire [a bright, luminous effect].'
'Wwhat was he doing? What did he seem to be doing?'
'It looked as if he was looking for something ... up and down along the ledge ... searching.'
Pauline Coombes told us later that Clinton had seen windows in Stack Rock when he was on his own. This occurred about a week after the whole family had watched the humanoids.
'How would you describe these windows?' Pugh asked the boy.
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Clinton said: 'They were square.'
'Where were you standing when you saw this?'
'In the lane by the field where we used to grow potatoes.'
'If you were looking at Stack Rock from that point then the windows must have been largish.'
'To me they looked about the size of this TV screen, from where I was standing.'
His mother asked him: 'How many were there?'
The boy said: 'Four. They looked like glass but they were set in the rock.'
'Was there a door there as well?'
'I saw the door when I was down on the cliffs, and the windows were just to the right of it.'
The Stack Rock story was a fairy-tale complete with magic house, paranormal apartments below ground and weird, human-like residents. It was the story of a fairy island in St Brides Bay and its interaction with human beings. Given a moral slant and a more logical sequence of events it was the sort of story that Asbjörnsen might have collected from the Norwegian coast to share with folklore scholars everywhere. Our problem was that we were receiving it at first hand, reported as an actual happening.
At an early stage we noticed what was now becoming almost predictable. A straight line begins in a burial chamber on Kilpaison Burrows, runs through Broadmoor Farm (where Mrs Hewison saw the landed saucer, as described in Chapter Five), and cuts through megalithic cliftop fort below the farm before crossing St Brides Bay and running through St Nonn's well, the megalithic tumulus adjoining St David's Cathedral and terminating in the burial chamber on St David's Head. This line crosses the sea within a few hundred yards of Stack Rock, thus fulfilling the 'rule' that phenomena rarely occur directly on these lines but are always closely adjacent to them. As if to conclude a kin of thesis of the absurd we also noted the fact that St Nonn traditionally used to be known as the 'King of the Fairies'.
The Dyfed Enigma had once again swamped us with a welter of facts and non-facts. The facts about Stack Rock were that the doors and windows did not exist, nor did humanoids haunt its slippery
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flanks. On the other hand, our inquiries demonstrated that a family of six people, sometimes together, sometimes apart, had seen apparently impossible things take place on the Stack. Mrs Rose Granville - from a different aspect and through binoculars - had seen much the same thing. Moreover, such witnesses as Stephen Bamford's party, as described in Chapter One, had also seen abnormal objects around Stack Rock and were impressed enough to make a late-night investigation.
In a general discussion at Ripperston we asked the Coombes family how they could explain the Stack Rock mystery. After some thought Billie Coombes gave the following opinion: 'I think, myself, that they [the entities] can put their craft in some way so that it blends with things like Stack Rock.' This may seem a naïve explanation scientifically, but it could be that this countryman, surrounded by miraculous happenings while tending his cows, was intinctively moving nearer the truth than he realized.
The Dyfed UFOs made one of their last reported appearances of 1977 along the Dale road running out of Haverfordwest. Saturday, 24 December was a very clear day with brilliant sunshine. At about 3.30 p.m. Mrs Ann Gillian Simms of 28 Dale Road was collecting some washing from her garden when she happened to glance over to her left and saw what she described as a 'thing in the sky'.
'I got the impression that it wasn't very high,' she told us. 'It was slightly smaller than the sun in size but a different shape. It was oval-shaped, completely smooth and very well defined. It didn't seem far away. It was a flattened circle really - flatter than an oval, in fact. I thought it reflected the sun - it looked metallic. It was silvery in colour. It was moving slowly, and I watched it for some minutes before it finally became a pinprick and disappeared from view. The thing that struck me was that there was no sound at all from it.'
'Could it have been a helicopter?' Pugh asked her.
'It definitely was not a helicopter! I stayed and watched it until it went out of sight.'
Mrs Simms' husband, in fact, is a helicopter pilot at Brawdy NATO base. What she saw was therefore a matter of professional interest to the whole family. Needless to say, she is
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particularly well informed about what helicopters look like, especially in perfect viewing conditions.
Michael Simms heard his wife's account of the sighting with great interest. 'In fact,' Mrs Simms told us, 'I mentioned it later when we had some friends round one night - other pilots - and one of them asked me all sorts of questions - he was very interested in the incident. It was certainly something very unusual.'
It seems impossible to explain away this sort of calm, rational testimony in terms of the world as we know it. Somehow our total world picture seems dramatically incomplete. If saucers are a product of the human unconscious, as some scientists suggest, we wonder why they reproduce themselves in the format they do: dreams are not restrictive in this way. The dreamer is no more likely to dramatize his psychotic problems by means of one set of images than he is by another. Books which set out to explain the symbolism of dreams are usually encyclopaedic in scope, as indeed they must be. If dreams tended always towards a single set of imagins we would all soon learn the sequence and psychoanalysts would never be needed.
Our view is that the UFO is not a new phenomenon but a variation on an ancient theme. Elemental spirits have been observed by people throughout history and were as puzzling in olden times as they are today. One of the most lucid of such encounters in Wales was described by Dr Edward Williams in his journal under the year 1757. Since he was born in 1750 he must have been a child of seven when the incident occurred. He comments: 'Though I have often, in mature age, called to mind the principles of religion and philosophy to account for it, I am forced to class it amongest my unknowables.'
The story he gives runs thus:
'On a summer day about midsummer between the hours of twelve at noon and one, my eldest sister and myself, our next neighbour's children, Barbara and Ann Evans, both older than myself, were in a field called Cae Caled near their house when one of us observed on the middle of the field a company of - what shall I call them? - beings, neither men, women nor children, dancing with great briskness. They were in full view less than a hundred yards of us. They were all clothed in red, a dress not unlike a military uniform, without hats, but their heads
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tied with handkerchiefs of a reddish colour, spotted with yellow. They appeared of a size somewhat less than our own, but more like dwarfs than children.'
Williams relates how he and the other children feld the field and brought adults of their family from the house. However, the spectacle had vanished and 'we never found the least vestige of any circumstance that could contribute to a solution of this remarkable phenomenon.'
Experiences such as the above are clearly the raw data upon which fairy-legends are based. It has never been possible to prove that they were objective experiences, nor can they be summarily dismissed as purely psychological. These stories seem to be the precursors of latterday UFO reports, even though the presentation differs. If such creatures are indeed a form of life manifesting itself through some sort of magnetic concretion rather than through chemical elements, as human life does, then it is difficult to see why some of the Dyfed examples disport breathing-tubes and other aids in an alien environment. Clearly an animal without a respiratory system hardly needs breathing apparatus. The picture is illogical.
Folklorists, however, have commented consistently on the anomalous nature of the phenomenon. The Rev. Elias Owen in his Welsh Folklore remarks: 'Fairy illusion and phantasy was formerly firmly believed in by the inhabitants of Wales. Fairies were credited with being able to deceive the eyesight, if not also the other senses of man.' Rolleston in Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race (1919) observes on the same topic: 'Their strength, when they came into conflict with man, lay in strategy and illusion.'
Today we know a little more about the material world than they did in olden times. Our opinion, based on the reported electromagnetic effect on radios and cars together with the symptoms exhibited spontaneously by domestic animals, is that we are dealing with an actual, objective phenomenon, whatever the name we choose to give it.
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CHAPTER TEN
Conclusion: The Veterinary Aspect
The fact is that we know far less about these things than we imagine. The more man reflects intelligently on the nature of light, matter and gravitation, the more he realizes that there are problems connected with them that are quite insoluble in terms of our current notions.
Professor Herbert Dingle, Science at the Crossroad (1972)
One of the most perplexing cases in relation to animal behaviorism and presumed contact with a UFO occurred on 11 April 1977, at about 9 p.m., when Stephen Taylor, a seventeen-year-old shop assistant, was walking along a lonely country road. The details of his experience were described in Chapter Two.
It will be recalled that, as Taylor approached the scene of the encounter, a large black dog was seen fleeing from the area. It might be reasonable to think, in view of what transpired, that the dog had already come into contact with the mystery object and its humanoid occupant. Even more interesting, however, was the reaction of Taylor's own dog when he returned home. It greeted him quite uncharacteristically, barking and growling. Taylor told us that he had been very frightened during the encounter and had 'taken a swing' at the humanoid before running. He said he did not know whether he actually touched the humanoid when he struck out. It seems to have been a reflex action produced by the fright sustained. But by what rationale does one measure the atypical welcome (or lack of welcome) given to the young man by his dog when he got home? What percipience enabled the dog to comprehend that its master had come into contact with something as alien as a humanoid? Could it have been some odour, or was it something else?
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The emotion of fear, associated as it is with antagonistic behaviour, is related to escapist rather than truculent behaviourism, and physiologists have long experienced difficulty in distinguishing it from anger by objective measurement. The two emotions, fear and anger, manifest themselves subjectively quite differently, especially in the intestinal tract. In many people fear produces the sensation of 'butterflies-in-the-stomach' and an urge to evacuate the bowels, whereas in real anger these symptoms do not occur.
Recent evidence shows that two forms of adrenalin are secreted with slightly differing effects during he emotions of fear and anger. Since the emotive responses are so closely related, so are the appropriate external behaviour patterns of fighting and escape. Scott states that 'in the fearful kind of emotional reactions the sensations of the stimulated internal organs are distinctly recognizable and could have considerable effect as internal stimuli of behaviour.'
One can only conclude, therefore, that, like ingestive behaviour, antagonistic behaviourism has a complicated network of internal causes. However (quoting Scott again), 'these causes appear to be quite different in nature. Hormones are much more important and changes which are due to normal metabolic activities seem to have almost no effect.' Thus the causal chain reaction which exists behind fear and escape behaviour seems to be triggered off by some external stimulus.
We know that many of the normal physiological mechanisms of hunger, fear and rage are incompatible because of the antagonistic effects of the autonomic nervous system in mammals. For example, when the sympathetic nerves are stimulated in anger there is a tendency for the stomach contractions to be inhibited. Fear causes violent stimulation of the stomach, thereby giving a sensation of nausea. However, many of the psychological reactions of fear and anger can be combined.
More complicated types of nervous interaction exist. If two well-fed mice are given a pellet of food it will be ignored and they will not molest each other. But the same two hunry mice will struggle violently for the same pellet. In this case hunger has become a primary cause of fighting, directed towards the
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possession and eating of the food, rather than of injury to the other mouse. Therefore while fighting is primarily caused by the external stimulation of the smell and sight of food in recipient hungry mice, it can sometimes be affected by changes originating internally.
Yet so far as may be ascertained this still does not explain the mechanism of how fear engendered by the humanoid in young Taylor could be tranmitted to his dog, assuming that this was indeed what happened. What communication, in the receptive sense, existed between man and animal? Could Stephen Taylor's fear have been transmitted by smell?
Smell has been defined as 'the perception of air-borne chemicals that are inhaled when we breathe, and consequently it is a "distance" taste. Taste, which is a very closely related to smell is, on the other hand, a contact sense, determining the chemical nature of substances in contact with the receptors.' Since the ability to smell was one of the first senses to develop, we now know that animal life generally is governed to a great degree by this particular piece of receptor apparatus. Scent is used in eating, courtship, recognizing mates and offspring, in rivalry and in detecting enemies. Unfortunately, however, the study of smell is beset with difficulties. Perhaps because of human beings' limitations in their sense of smell, such descriptive terms as 'fragrant', 'musty' and 'sickly' are rather vague and can convey different meanings to different people who may provide varying descriptions for a single smell. According to Burton: 'There is no absolute framework for classifying smells equivalent to the spectrum of wavelengths for colours or frequencies for sounds ... to find such a system of classification is the goal of all research into the mechanism of smell, for it is the final proof of any theory that it can be used to make predictions. The aim of a theory of smell is to be able to predict from its other properties what a chemical will smell like.'
It is, however, interesting to note that whilst the human nose cannot distinguish smells very efficiently, it can detect remarkably minute concentrations of odours, perhaps in the order of millionths of a gramme. So how much more effective would the nose of a dog be in establishing an 'alien contact' on the person of Stephen Taylor, as suggested by the reaction of the dog when its master returned home.
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Unfortunately, there is little in the structure of the nose to provide us with clues its finer workings. The nerve fibres and receptor areas leading from the nose are extremely fine and tenuous; they lead to highly specialized chemoreceptors lying in a cleft on each side of the nostril. During normal, non-strenous respiration the main air-flow bypasses each cleft with little whirling eddies from the main air-stream. But when breathing becomes rapid and more purposeful, air is drawn into the clefts and over some half square inch of tissue which is richly endowed with millions of specialized cells - the chemoreceptors. These are long, thin cells with cilia which form a web over the surface of the tissue which, in turn, is bathed in mucus. These chemoreceptors then join the olfactory lobe which is situated in the medullary part of the brain and whose size is a good indication of the importance of smell in an animal's life. In a dog, for example, the olfactory lobe is much larger than it is in man.
Odours have fairly often been reprted in association with UFOs. Vallee describes 'a smell of something resembling pepper in the air'. Pungent chemical smells like the smell of nitrobenzine and hydrogen sulphide have also been reported. The reek of something like brake-fluid or embalming-fluid has also been described as emanating from UFOs.
Exactly what reaction occurred in Stephen Taylor's dog when its master returned home after his encounter with the humanoid? Did his action in lashing out at the creature result in some form of chemical 'contamination'? Or was the dog merely reacting to Taylor's own fear following the incident? If so, how was this fear tranmitted from man to dog?
Science has in fact identified a number of chemicals which stimulate insects. Since the sense of smell is an important factor in the life of an insect as regards finding food, mates and organizing activity within the nest, it is believed that such special odours are used as signals between individuals. They are known as pheromes. Pheromes as regarded as being the equivalent of hormones. But whereas hormones act as chemical messengers carrying instructions from one part of the body to another via the blood-stream, pheromes carry messages from one insect to another
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through the air. For example, the queen honey bee has a very specific scent which is secreted by glands lying near her mouth-parts. This scent is so strong and characteristic that it attracts male honey bees (drones) to the queen for mating purposes from several hundred yards away.
Certain ants also secrete a fear-scent which is liberated when they are disturbed. Within seconds of its release ants within a range of several inches are alerted, and their reaction is to move towards the centre of the disturbance. If the alarm ceases, the pheromes fade and the ants quieten down. If the alarm continues, then more pheromes are secreted and yet more ants are drawn to the trouble area.
Mammals, of course, also possess scent-glands. In almost every case their function is the same - to erect a protective barrier around a territory to keep out strangers and to delineate the area occupied by a particular pack or group. Another factor in the use of pheromes are the group-odours which appear to regulate numbers in animals. When over-population occurs among rats, for example, fighting becomes common and individuals show signs of stress and strain. Body-glands then become disturbed, resulting in abnormal behaviour. Courtship becomes quite disorganized, and females are unable to bear litters. Eventually there is a complete breakdown in the social life of the species and a rapid rise in infant mortality.
Experiments on rats suggest that pheromes play an important part in these changes. Whether this situation could apply to man has not been fully determined. Overcrowding with human populations does indeed appear to produce stresses and strains not entirely dissimilar to those observed in overcrowded rat populations. However, it is arguable whether this can be attributed to pheromal action. It seems not improbable that humans, too, may react - possibly subsconciously - to the odours of other people.
It is interesting to note that Burton in Animal Senses writes: 'there is evidence, for instance, that some people can smell frightened men and that this ability is used by witch-doctors and others to find criminals.' He suggests that fear can indeed 'make people smell' and that this may be due to the secretion of very fine particles of perspiration on the palms of the hands. He also contends that we may react to the odours of people around
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us in everyday life although we do not consciously smell them. If this is true, it might give the users of deodorants subtle advantages or disadvantages not fully realized.
Although maturation can be involved in motivational development - as, for instance, in small children where apparently the fear of snakes has to be learned - such fear response is not entirely independent of learning. As Professor Hebb of McGill University points out: 'It seems instead that "fear of the strange" is a fear produced by events that combine the familiar and the unfamiliar ... not by the totally unfamiliar event.'
This statement seems at odds with Stephen Taylor's experience which, to him, was a unique occurrence. One is tempted to contend that it was to pheromes produced by Taylor himself that his dog reacted so strongly.
Another aspect to be considered in studying the effects of UFO proximity on animals is the question of sound waves. The spectrum of human hearing extends from twenty to 15,000 cycles per second. Dogs, however, are more sensitive to higher frequencies; they are able to detect differences of a semi-tone, and their memory of absolute pitch is better than man's. Some dogs can detect frequencies in excess of 20,000 cycles per second and Pavlov, in his work on conditioned reflexes in the dog, suggests that the upper pitch limit is around 100,000 cycles. The silent dog-whistle emits frequencies much too high for human ears to detect but below the upper pitch limit for dogs.
The effect of some UFO-initiated noise on dogs seems to be to reduce the animals to a state of terror. It seems probable that subsonics and ultrasonics must both play a part in the general efffect of UFOs on animals.
There are probably psychological factors as well which contribute to the behavioural disturbance in ainmals when they become involved in a UFO situation. Brunner states that 'in almost all cases the described behavioral disturbances or generalized disorders either remained unchanged or gradually increased for many months prior to the time of the examination.' No reference whatsoever in any literature on veterinary psychological disorders appears to explain the sudden, sometimes overnight, changes in
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personality and characteristics which we found in some animals we examined.
At the time when reports of UFO sightings in South Wales were coming in very frequently, the coastal areas of the region right along to the Bristol Channel and round to Devon were subjected sporadically to a variety of strange bumps, thuds and rumblings from the air. These sounds were often nocturnal. There was an official inquiry, and the noises were explained as being due to Concorde's supersoinc flight-path. Although these sounds were disturbing and puzzling to the people of the area there is no evidence that they severly affected animals as close proximity with UFOs seems to have done. But some people were not convinced that Concorde was the whole answer to this phenomenon.
Correspondence in the October 1895 issue of Nature included a letter from Professor G. H. Darwin who remarked that 'in the delta of the Ganges dull sounds, more or less resembling distand artillery, are often heard. They are called "Barisal Guns", but I do not know the meaning of that term.' Similar sounds were said to be fairly common in northern France, and A. M. van der Broeek of the Belgian Museum of Natural History commented: 'I have constantly noticed these sounds in the Plain of Limburg since 1880. The detonations are dull and distant. The noise does not at all resemble artillery, blasting in mines or the growling of distant thunder.'
Strange low-frequency sounds have been reported from places as far apart as Comrie in Perthshire, East Haddon in Connecticut, Pignerol in Piedmont and Meleda on the Adriatic. Inexplicable aerial exploions were reported by Colonel Godwin-Austin in the spring of 1865 in Bhutan. Charles Sturt, who explored Australia, heard them in that continent in 1828 and concluded: 'It is not a terrestrial sound although it might have resembled a discharge of heavy artillery.' Similar sounds have been heard around Lough Neagh and on Dartmoor.
Some geologists have suggested that such noises are caused by small-scale faulting in the earth although no evidence to support the possibility of such a phenomenon on a global scale has ever been produced. In 1964, during a 'wave' of UFO sightings around Warminster, similar sounds were heard. Although most of
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the Pembrokeshire UFOs were described as being silent objects it is interesting to note that the appearance of a strange device resembling an old wartime barrage balloon, seen floating above a hedge near Broad Haven in November 1977, seemed to coincide with two Concorde-type booms.
We do not know how noxious odours and sounds relate to the paranormal in nature. That such things do affect animals, however, seems beyond all reasonable doubt. One of us received a letter from friends - Captain Lionel Leslie and his wife - who live in a remote house on Mull. Their house is an old inn which has been reconstructed. They told us that one night they were asleep in an upstairs room when they were awakened about 3 a.m. by the sound of a man's voice down below in what used to be the smoking-room. Lionel Leslie relates: 'We put on the light and went down but found no one. All the doors were locked. The interesting part was the actions of the two dogs. Normally they would have barked furiously at intruders but instead they were scared. One was trembling and growling and the other was stretched out near the door panting. He remained there until morning.' Paranormal effects have been observed in this house for many years by a variety of witnesses including F. W. Holiday, who while staying in the house heard unaccountable nocturnal footsteps, sensed a presence entering his bedroom, and was addressed by a northern Irish voice which said: 'And who the hell are ye?' The only living people in the house were asleep in bed, since this ocurred at 2 a.m.
Amongst the cases we considered in some detail was that of the pedigree springer spaniel Jasper who seemed to have in some manner come into contact with the phenomenon observed by its owner, Louise Basset, on the morning of 6 February. The fright reactions of Jasper and of the two bitches, Lady and Spring, were described earlier, in Chapter Four. In the case of Jasper, the animal seems to have had a more direct and closer contact with the phenomenon, which may be said to have seriously disrupted its psychological and motivational concepts. Whether the dog is permanently or only semi-permenantly impaired remains to be seen. No improvement has been observed to date.
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The reaction of Stephen Taylor's Pomeranian dog to his return home on the evening of 13 March can perhaps be treated more pragmatically in view of the case history. We can only repeat that the animal probably reacted to the scent of the young man's fear and that in this case at least we have a chain of cause and effect produced by recognized chemicals. This effect seems to have been only transitory and the dog was back to normal within a matter of hours.
Equally transitory was the atypical behaviour of Peter John's dog Butch on 20 April when it seemed to become deranged, as described in Chapter Four. The time and location of this incident are important because of what was occurring in the surrounding environment. For a dog known to be placid and tolerant towards both animals and humans, the savage way in which it attacked its bedding without any prior 'medical' warning is a most interesting feature. We can only wonder what was the causal factor in this particular case. It seems as if this degree of aggression must have been triggered off by an atavistic motivation we have yet to recognize.
A recent check on the ponies owned by Josiah George of Camrose which reacted so strongly to the ufological experience shared by the owner and his daughter (see Chapter Four) shows that these animals remained very wary and distrustful of any sudden sound or movement for a period of some three to four weeks after the incident. In the end they reverted to their normal placid pattern of behaviour. The two dogs belonging to Mrs Ann Miller (see Chapter Three) also appeared to forget their alarming experience when a UFO hovered over the roof-top. But this was not the case with Bobbi, the miniature poodle belonging to Mrs Marsh of Milford Haven (see Chapter Three). For about six months following the incident the dog was snappy and unpredictable and wanted to be near its owner. Just prior to Christmas 1977, it had again started to sleep in the daughter's room, but soon afterwards refused to do so. Mrs Marsh said the dog had seen a light in the sky; this may have been a passing plane but was enough to reactivate its old fears and inhibitions. A year after the incident it has shown slight psychological improvement. It still seems afraid to sleep downstairs, but now allows members of the family to fondle it.
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There was a less happy sequel to the story of the black labrador Blackie of Ripperston Farm (see Chapter Five). This dog had been present at many of the UFO/humanoid displays when it had reacted with uncharacteristic behaviour. Following the appearance of the silvery figure outside the window the dog's personality changed during the course of about two months. Blackie had hitherto been a good general farm dog and very useful to Billie Coombes in his work. In the end the animal became a complete introvert - lethargic, disobedient and exhibiting an alarming snappishness. Even stranger, it seemed to develop an actual fear of cattle - a peculiar thing for an animal bred and brought up on farms. Blackie deteriorated to such an extent that, in the interests of the children's safety, the Coombes had to have him put down.
Whatever conclusion may be drawn from the wave of UFO sightings in Dyfed in 1977, therefore, it is clear that an objective approach is essential if we are ever to acquire even a semblance of know-how on how these phenomena are structured. In a talk give in December 1977 at the British UFO Research Association, Randall Jones Pugh stated: 'I am acutely conscious that my purpose and motives might easily be miscontrued. Especially I should like to say to scientifically orientated members present that what I have said does not constitute a scientific study. Indeed, one if not left with conclusions nor even proof that the UFO per se can lend itself to any form of rational approach, but with something much less definite - feelings, questions, analogies and puzzling facts yet to be explained. But of one thing I am certain, and that is that we have reached a new phase in our scientific approach to these matters. We must have the courage to admit that our present-day knowledge is totally inadequate to mount this type of research. The study of the paranormal, especially that of the unidentified flying object, is going to be a quest of the next century when the question that will arise will be not so much 'Can such things be?' but rather 'Why are these things here?'
We see no reason to change our opinions from the above.
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
The place of publication is London, unless otherwise stated
Bowen, Charles, The Humanoids, Spearmann, 1969.
Brunner, F., 'The Application of Behaviour Studies in Small Animal Practice', in Abnormal Behaviour in Animals (ed. M. W. Fox), W. B. Saunders, 1968.
Burr, H. S., The Blueprint for Immortality, Spearmann, 1972.
Burt, Sir Cyril, in E.S.P. and Psychology (ed. Anita Gregory), Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1975.
Burton, R., Animal Senses, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1970.
Carrington, Hereward, The World of Psychic Research, Thomas Yoseloff, New York, 1973.
Christiansen, Reidar Th., Folktales of Norway, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964.
Conan Doyle, Arthur, The Coming of the Fairies, Hodder & Stoughton, 1922.
Cragie, William A., Scandinavian Folklore, Gardner, 1896.
Davies, Jonathan Ceredig, Folklore of West and Mid-Wales, Welsh Gazette Offices, Aberystwyth, 1911.
Dillon, Miles, and Chadwick, Norah K., The Celtic Realms, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967.
Fox, M. W., Abnormal Behaviour in Animals, W. B. Saunders, 1968.
Frisch, Otto R., The Nature of Matter, Thames & Hudson, 1972.
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