Welsh UFO sightings from 1965. For sightings from other years please click HERE.
PRESS
February 12th 1965
Bristol Channel
Retired radio operator Reginald Eaves and his wife Myrtle saw a plane crash into the sea. Although a full scale 90 minute search and rescue operation was mounted, nothing was found and no aircraft was reported missing. And, yet, press coverage resulted in other potential witnesses coming forward... I first came across this case in Annals of the Enquiring Vol 2 No 4 from 1991.
The Western Daily Press for February 13th reported:
Ghost Plane Dives Into Sea
Mr. Reginald Eaves stood on the cliffs above Minehead, Somerset, yesterday and watched an aircraft disappear into the sea. It seems to have been a ghost. For no one else saw the plane crash about a mile off-shore in the Bristol Channel. A full-scale search by Minehead lifeboat, two RAF helicopters and a Shackleton revealed - nothing. Mr. Eaves. of Hopcutt Close Minehead, and his wife Myrtle are convinced they saw the plane crash.
They were driving across Exmoor from Exford to Minehead. Said Mr. Eaves: "The plane, a grey fighter type, came down over the hill. We were travelling the same way and did not hear anything. Suddenly it appeared beside us. It was only about 50 yards away on the same level as us. My wife said: 'He's having a good look at us,' and then she said: 'Oh, he's going into the sea.' Mr. Eaves, a retired radio operator, got out his binoculars and watched what happened. "It landed, then there was a puff of black smoke and nothing more was seen of it," he said.
A spokesman for Minehead police said: "Quite frankly this has got me baffled." The controller of the RAF rescue unit at Plymouth said last night: "I don't like it, quite frankly. It sounds as if the witness is reliable, but you just don't lose aireraft like that. I've checked every possibility - civil and military - in England and nothing's missing or overdue."
On February 15th the Western Daily Press followed up on the story with a new potential witness:
Ghost Plane Riddle Grows
Schoolmaster Mr. A. Rooks Phillips and his wife think they saw the ghost plane which crashed into the sea near Minehead on Friday. Mr. Phillips, of Wincanton, saw an unusual aircraft flying low at Swainswick, near Bath. His story supports that of Mr. Reginald Eaves of Minehead, who saw a strange, low-flying plane crash into the sea near his home. But the mystery remains. For a full-scale search by Minehead lifeboat, two RAF helicopters, and a Shackleton failed to find any trace of it.
Mr. Phillips was driving with his wife to visit friends near Nailsworth. They described it as an ash-grey plane about 100 feet above the road. It was heading in a West to South-westerly direction. "The plane was so unusual that it attracted our attention. There was definitely something abnormal about it. It did not seem to be distinct, but had a misty appearance, yet there was no mist or fog about. It came from behind some trees. Then it literally just disappeared before our eyes." said Mr. Phillips.
He and his wife turned to each other and said simultaneously: "Ghost plane." Then on Saturday they saw that they had echoed the words in the headline of that day's Western Daily Press story about the ghost plane seen by Mr Eaves. Mr. Phillips said. "It could have been the same plane. It was flying in the general direction of Minehead. The strange part was that it made no sound, and did not appear to have an engine. But it was cer. tainly not a glider.' said mystified Mr. Phillips.
PRESS
Monday August 23rd, 05:00
Swansea
Mr. S. J. Yeates, of 49 Wallace Road, St. Thomas, Swansea, was getting up for work and saw through his bedroom window a moving object in the sky. The South Wales Evening Post of Saturday August 28th 1965 reported:
"It was not going too fast for the eye to follow. I called my wife who was equally surprised. I at once sighted my telescope on it and could see it was as bright as a star and moved from south to east to north."
DATA PROJECT
Summer, 00:15
Pyle, Bridgend
A light was seen colliding with mist. A white and red spinning domed disc was seen.
PRESS
Wednesday August 25th, 23:50
Plasmarl, Swansea
Extremely bright light approached and seemed to burn witness' skin and make it difficult to breathe.
The witness' mother, Vivienne Francis of 52 Ewenny Place, Clase, wrote a letter to the South Wales Evening Post which was reported on in the Friday September 3rd edition:
A young woman was standing by the windows of her home in Trwyddfa Road, Plasmarl when she heard a tap at the window. On looking up she saw a bright light approaching. It lit up the kitchen and was so bright she could not see anything in the glare. She said it seemed to burn her skin and she had difficulty in breathing. She was very frightened as her husband was in work and she was alone with her 16 month old baby all night.
The next morning when she visited her mother she was still in a state of shock. At first she thought she had been struck by lightning but there was no thunder or lightning about that night. When she told a neighbour about the incident the neighbour recalled that her dog would not go out at the time of the incident and was very frightened. Ten minutes later the dog was willing to go out.
According to the mother, the witness was not given to imagining things.
Flying Saucer Review V12/N2 (March/April 1966) had some further following a private letter to Mrs Francis from A.C. Williams of Swansea:
"I wrote to this lady, who was also kind enough to reply, and I found out that, when the bright light passed, her daughter, thinking it was lightning, reached out to turn off the electric light - but found she could not move. Mrs Francis writes: She tried again to walk to the switch (only a step away) but was rooted to the spot, and could not move a finger. This happened on August 25th. It seems that our Visitors are fond of using 'paralyzers'!"
PRESS
Friday September 24th, 12:35
Gorseinon
Huge silver grey craft without wings.
The witness' brother, K.G.E. David, wrote a letter to the South Wales Evening Post detailing the sighting. They reported on it in the Tuesday September 28th 1965 edition:
14-year-old Michael David, of 4 Bryngwastad Road, Gorseinon, saw a huge object flying from the direction of Loughor towards that of Penllergaer (west to east). He heard the noise of an engine and looked up expecting to see the usual sort of aeroplane, but what he saw was completely abnormal to him. Directly overhead, flying between a break in the low cloud cover, was a huge object with a long, slender nose and only the smallest suggestion of a tail.
On the square-like underside of this machine, were two cylinder-shaped black marks running parallel to each other, the whole length of its body. There were no wings and its general colour was silver-grey, even its engines emitted a peculiar sound. Michael was the only person to see the object, but his mother said she heard the sound it made, and it seemed unusual to her.
October 1965
Aberfan
There are various premonitions commonly linked with the Aberfan disaster of October 21st 1965. John Barker, who was at the time a psychiatrist and also a member of Britain’s Society for Psychical Research, investigated the case of 10-year-old Eryl Mai Jones who tried to tell her mother about a strange dream she had the night of October 19th:
The day before the disaster she said to her mother, “Mummy, let me tell you about my dream last night.” Her mother answered gently, “Darling, I’ve no time. Tell me again later.” The child replied, “No Mummy, you must listen. I dreamt I went to school and there was no school there. Something black had come down all over it!
Similarly 8-year-old Paul Davies, who died in the landslide, had just the night before drawn an eerie picture of figures digging into the hillside.
Barker appealed to the press, and asked any other people who had had premonitions of the event to come forward. He received over 70 replies. One of the best documented was a woman in Plymouth who, on October 20th, told six witnesses at a Spiritualist Church that in a trance she had seen an avalanche of coal sliding down a Welsh mountainside towards a terrified child.
It should be remembered however that local concerns about the tips had been vocally raised for years before the disaster. As much as reports often try and make out it was an unforseeable tragedy, it was in fact well known that a slide would endanger the village.
SUFON
November, 18:00
Singleton Hospital, Swansea
During a dark, clear evening, the witness, Howard Middleton-Jones and three other people saw a huge object stationary over Singleton Hospital. Howard explains what happed:
I used to live in the Swansea University Playing Fields, Sketty Lane, Swansea, adjacent to the then new Singleton Hospital, set at a 60 degree angle from the Sports pavilion where we used to live at the time (1965). The distance from the sports pavilion building to the Hospital building is approximately 186 metres. The sighting initially was seen from my bedroom window on the first floor of the Pavilion building, and a few minutes later, from outside on the actual Sketty Lane road, which is approximately 140 metres distance from the main hospital building.
Singleton Hospital was completed in 1964 and at the time was one of the biggest self-contained buildings in Swansea, consisting of 12 floors, its own power generating system and approximately 145 metres in length.
In 1965, Sketty Lane was in fact that, a lane, a narrow road consisting of a car lane either side. The street lighting was of the ‘old fashioned type’ consisting of a large bulb hung under the lamp holder, therefore it was only light around the vicinity of the lamps and light pollution was practically non-existent.
Approximately just after 18.00 hours, one November evening in 1965, I was studying for my college exams in my room. My studying was broken by a feeling of a vibration or some form of frequency with no noise. I looked out of the window, and across to the new hospital and noticed many of the lights on all floors of the hospital were flashing on an off intermittently. I looked above the hospital and saw a large dark fat cigar shaped object which looked as if it were suspended over the building.
I immediately ran downstairs to the outside and ran across to the middle of the lane where a car had stopped and noticed the anomaly. While it was dark, it was a clear night and due to the old type of street lights shining down to the floor we had a clear view of the unidentified object.
The object was approximately 150-200 feet directly above the hospital and its length was at least the length of the hospital if not longer, so about 150 metres long. The object can only be described as like a fat cigar shape, very wide in the centre and narrowing to the front and rear. The height of the object, comparing with the height of the hospital was about the same – 12 floors.
By now, after 10 minutes of watching this object, there were three other witnesses watching this object (the witnesses were much older than myself). The intermittent flashing on and off of all the lights on all floors of the hospital continued for about a further 5 minutes then stopped. The unidentified object looked as if it were painted on the sky, there was no movement and no sound whatsoever.
After about 20 minutes, a thin bright luminous green band appeared and spread around the circumference of the object, speeding up at a pace over 15 seconds or so, until it appeared as a thin bright green band all around the craft.
Suddenly, the whole craft shuddered slightly for 2 or 3 seconds and in a blink dematerialised. There were no lights, no bright flashes, no noise, nothing, it literally disappeared right in front of our eyes. As soon as it had disappeared there seemed like there was a dark space here it was ‘parked’ and gradually after 10 seconds or so the stars could be seen again. The other witnesses just looked at each other scratching their heads, got into their cars and drove away.
Post-script:
Obviously, a sighting such as this has a profound effect on one, and for many years I have tried to get to the bottom of the event by searching out any other sightings in the area. The only activity I heard of in Swansea that year was of large balls of light flying over Townhill in the summer.
Looking back on the incident, it could be that the craft, engineered by some form of ‘warp’ drive harnessed by a form of electro-magnetic energy, must have encountered an engineering problem and used the largest source of energy available in the area, Singleton Hospital. Having ‘charged up’ its drive, it went on its way.
Unfortunately, I did not see the craft arrive, but I presume its arrival was in the same manner as its departure, materialisation and dematerialisation. To me this demonstrates some form of advanced (to us anyway) drive harnessing local and ‘cosmic’ energy with the ability to seek out ‘man-made’ energy sources. Was this some kind of warp drive using natural worm-hole technology? Who knows, but I have seen some strange sights in my time and nothing beats this one even after 50 years!
Source: SUFON Files: Report from Howard Middleton-Jones 2015.
SUFON Note: It might a significant link in that the South Wales Evening Post reported on November 10, 1965 – the same month as this amazing sighting, that there had been a massive power failure in the New York and 150,000 square miles of northeast United States and Canada during that city’s evening rush hour at 5.30 PM EST that day. The black-out had lasted 9 hours and 45 minutes. Could there be a link? UFO activity has, many times affected electricity supply, but it might not be a coincidence that the great American black-out and the Singleton Hospital sighting both occurred in the same month. Howard Middleton-Jones has not recorded the date of his sighting, but is sure that it took place in November 1965 [Emlyn Williams].
PRESS
Gurnos, Merthyr Tydfil
Artist Jon Pountney came across a forgotten stash of 18,000 photographic negatives at Treorchy Library in 2013. The pictures had been taken by David Thickins for the Merthyr Express and covered the period 1963 - 1974. There were two negatives of this lady, named as Mrs James, with her drawing of a UFO.
UFO Enigma V21/N10 featured this piece on ancestral memory that once struck Lt. Col. Charles E. Melchar of the USAF upon visiting Abersychan in 1965...
0 comments:
Post a Comment