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Anonymous
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The bigfoot thread on Cryptozoology.com makes good reading right now, the webmaster wants to ban Beckjord...
Beckjord: I Was Mothman!
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I love Fortean 'personalities'. I want Beckjord, Gary Denke, Reg Presley, Dave Farrant, David Icke and a certain ecclesiastical personage who can not be named for legal reasons, and i want them all on one thread moderated by Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe!
letter to jimmy saville should do the trick...
For those who can't resist morbid curiosity try here - he's all over the boards like a nasy rash: http://www.cryptozoology.com/forum/topic_view_tree_2.php
And this expose has got some gems on it: http://www.ufowatchdog.com/beckjord.html
Introductory extract:
Gotta love him.
letter to jimmy saville should do the trick...
molga parrot said:
For those who can't resist morbid curiosity try here - he's all over the boards like a nasy rash: http://www.cryptozoology.com/forum/topic_view_tree_2.php
And this expose has got some gems on it: http://www.ufowatchdog.com/beckjord.html
Introductory extract:
Gotta love him.- Joined
- Jul 27, 2001
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- 845
Charles Fort would have loved that sort of thing. He probably would have devoted a whole book to it.
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Yep!melf said:cos beckfjord is a fortean subject in himself then?
So are they all, 'Honorary Masters of the Airloom' !Yitthian said:
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Well, he is the mothman after all.The Yithian said:He'll be lapping that up, he loves in under the spotlight - doesn't matter what they're thinking about him as long as they are thinking about him.
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Well, he is the mothman after all.
*groan*
I walked into that one.
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Anonymous
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Austraia had a Mothman sighting in 1927
If youd like to se the investigation by a respected Bio-Chemist UFO researcher here just ask.
If youd like to se the investigation by a respected Bio-Chemist UFO researcher here just ask.
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Anonymous
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Fernvale Mothman 1927
Bill Chalker a bio-chemist UFO researcher of which I maintain his website investigated it.
I have all the photos etc...and testimony but in pdf. I willl be putting it online in the near future as soon as Bill gives me a different format.
Below is a good part of that.This is copywritten Bill Chalker from personel accounts given soley to Bill; no part of this can beused without prior permission.
im giving you this in good faith.
Please do not use it on the net on any websites and please do not mass email it to anyone.
Its from his upcoming book.
I know you will enjoy it. I included the entire investigation and story.
"Fernvale. There are probably a lot of places with such a name in this world, and probably just as aptly named. But you see the Fernvale where I was born and lived in the early years of my life is really a very special place, because I consider it part of one of the loveliest places in the world, and also it was where in my opinion, history was made."
So opened an extraordinary 19-page letter written to me in 1985. It told of a bizarre milieu of strange events that descended upon a previously undisturbed and tranquil dairy region of northern New South Wales. The closest major centre was Murwillumbah. Back in 1927 the area - the Tweed River district -was only affected by the austerity of the times.
My correspondent, Cecil McGann , was then ten years old, matured beyond his years by the demands of farm life. He was part of a large family, which struggled to survive at share farming on a dairy farm of about 200 acres at Fernvale.
For a 10 year old these were good times as well, as only those who have experienced the beauty of life in the country would know. Life, while hard, was also simple and enriching. The communion with life was at its fullest. However nothing prepared the boy, his family or the local community for the arrival of the visitors.
The visitors brought to Fernvale a bizarre, and at times, terrifying mystery, one which nearly 60 years later, Cecil McGann sort to ensure was put on the record, in the hope that an answer might be eventually forthcoming. I don't have the answers. At this point I can provide only the detail and perhaps a measure of perspective.
During 1984 I had been given a faint inkling of the Fernvale events of 1927 by a UFO researcher in Queensland, whose group was told something of the events by Cecil McGann. As someone keenly interested in historical pre-1947 UFO events, I sort more information but it was not forthcoming.
Eventually I secured Cecil McGann's address and wrote to him. By late 1984, when no reply was forthcoming, I had all but given up on what seemed like a diverting lead, something that all UFO researchers regularly experience.
By the time you finish this account you will begin to appreciate the feelings I had when, out of the blue, the long letter arrived. The letter was the result of some 4 years work by Cecil, prompted by the urgings of Dorothy Middleton, one of Cecil's sisters. I subsequently spoke with Cecil at length by phone, and eventually meet him in person, along with Dorothy during 1986. This series of discussions enabled me to assess the consistency of the accounts.
While Cecil McGann was, not surprisingly, unable to give a precise sequence of events, he did give reasonably consistent descriptions of what he felt he could remember and emphasised the elements he was uncertain about. He stressed he was not prepared to speculate or embellish on these events. He wanted me to have the account as he remembered it, not as someone else felt it should be. With the passage of so many years, we must wonder how accurate Cecil's account is. It clearly had a profound effect on him and one could argue a long-term memory, particularly of something so strange, may have been reasonably accurately recollected.
The first page of Cecil's 1985 letter to the author
While the passage of time may have affected the accuracy of the story, we must consider that altogether Cecil' s story, with the partial confirmation received from his sister, may describe a compelling account that emphasises that one of the major mysteries of our modern era is not just a curiosity of our contemporary space age. In 1947 Kenneth Arnold reported he saw 9 strange aerial objects, while flying in a light aircraft near Mount Rainer, Washington. The term "flying saucers" was coined to describe the objects Arnold saw and an extraordinary controversy was launched. Fully two decades before Kenneth Arnold's apparitions puzzled mankind an even more bizarre UFO mystery was ostensibly played out at the little community of Fernvale, in Australia.
The visitor came one hot summer's night.
Cecil tells it this way.
THE VISITOR ARRIVES
"We were sitting out the back of our home which was on a hill surrounded by large mountains, and we saw this light like a star rise up from behind a mountain and travel along at a very fast speed. Then it would stop or alter course or reverse, but it could travel slow or very fast and stop very quick, and it did antics in the sky for some time before disappearing. We were amazed that such should happen. Dad said it was a dancing star, and off to bed we went."
Cecil wrote, "I can remember the next day we talked about what we had seen and really no one could come up with an answer except that may be it was a falling star. But we had seen too many of them to know that they were not the answer."
It was the afternoon events of the day following the arrival of the light that forever displaced such prosaic speculations. The family looked after a milking herd of cows -some 70 or so in size. The cows were all 'pets' - a very quiet herd - "a beautiful herd of cattle", Dorothy told me. The property was cut up into 2-day paddocks and 3-night paddocks.
TERROR AMONGST THE COWS
At about 3.30 pm each day the herd would start coming in for the afternoon milking. However the day after the night visitor had first appeared, the herd could be heard coming in hours earlier than normal, coming "hell for leather" home, and bellowing in terror.
Cecil wrote, "I shall never forget that day as we were all amazed at what was happening. The cows were milling around in the yard and bellowing in terror, and with eyes blazing, always looking back into the hills from whence they came (the day paddock -B.C.). What could turn our quiet old cows into such a terror stricken state. We had no ideas, but I remember with my Dad, Mum and younger sisters, we gradually calmed them to settle in a small area around our house."
Very little milk was forthcoming that day.
The family soon found that one of their herd was missing. Cecil and his father went looking for it in the back of the day paddock. Their 2 dogs would not follow them. They eventually found the cow, totally mad. It had to be shot.
Cecil described what followed.
"We had seen our strange visitor in the eastern sky for the second night, and we watched it manoeuvre around the mountains and (it was) much brighter at times, but as the night before it put on quite a show for us, until eventually disappearing behind one of the many mountains."
Next day problems were once again experienced with the milking herd, when they were eventually milked the cows refused to leave the yards. They would not return to the big day paddock over the hill. The herd was allowed to stay in a small day paddock near the house. They seemed to settle down and were eventually put out for the night. Little did the family know what was to eventuate.
Cecil wrote, "It was as usual (on this the third night-B.C.) that we looked again into the sky for "our dancing star", but it didn't appear, and after a while it was off to bed for a well earned (rest) after a long day. ...but rest was to be short lived that night because the cattle came home bellowing. Even the dogs howled and we were out with our kerosene lamps trying to calm them.
"We could also hear our closest neighbours cattle bellowing around his yards and could see them with lights trying to find out what was wrong.
"We left our (kerosene) lights on all night (there was no electricity connected - B.C.) and let the cattle into the area around our house, where they milled and bellowed and were shivering with fright. (Our) normally quiet cattle were panick stricken."
The bizarre night made rest impossible. The morning ushered in another unsettling mystery. Three cows were missing.
DEATH IN THE NIGHT
Cecil walked to the top of the hill in the paddock the cows had been in. The 3 cows were lying on the side of a hill in the big day paddock. It was that paddock that the cows had refused to enter.
The 3 cows were dead. Their legs were badly cut about, ostensibly from crashing through the barbed wire fence that divided the 2 paddocks.
Cecil recollected the most unsettling element of the discovery:
"It was their eyes that scared me as they seemed to be sticking out of their sockets."
The family quickly notified the owner, who in turn fetched a vet from town. News spread fast among the neighbouring farms. Quite a few people came to look over the dead cows. Many suggestions were put forward, but were all ruled out by the vet. It was the vet's parting comment that was permanently etched in Cecil's 10 year-old mind.
According to Cecil's recollection the vet said, "It's funny, but one could nearly say that they were scared to death, but what the hell would scare cattle like that."
Cecil and his father hauled the dead cows with their draught horse, to where there was plenty of dry wood and burnt the carcases.
Cecil wrote, "I can remember Dad saying, 'There is something queer going on. What the hell could be frightening the animals in this way.' "
THE MILIEU SPREADS
While the family's property seemed to be the centre of the unfolding milieu of weirdness, neighbours were also witnessing aspects of the mystery. One of their closest neighbours admitted later that both he and his wife had watched the light moving around the sky on later nights. Another of their neighbours, who we will call Mr. Smith, had a terrifying encounter.
Cecil recollected the incident in the following way:
"We were awakened one night by a man crying out for help. Dad ran down to the bottom of the hill from our house. (The neighbour) was in a very bad shape. It appears he had been to a school meeting, and on leaving to walk home, had been confronted by what we were told at the time was an apparition, or something that should not be. He spent the night at our place and went home next morning. Both Mum and Dad were very tight lipped about the affair, but asked us to look for (Mr. Smith's) galoshes (rubber wet weather boots - B.C.) which he had lost when he took off for our place. And so when we went to school next day we found the galoshes, just a short way down the road from the school and they were stuck in the mud just as he had left them the night before when he had taken fright and in his mad rush to safety he had run past 3 houses along the way to our house."
As it turned out Mr. Smith and his wife lost no time in leaving the district. Whether the night's terrifying "apparition" prompted the departure was not clear. We will see shortly that subsequent startling events were to lead to Cecil finding out the apparent identity of this 'apparition.'
However before we get to that pivotal point there is much more to this olden day tale of a journey into the Twilight Zone.
Cecil described the critical point about what follows:
"Several interesting incidents happened during this time that made us really realise that something strange was occurring. I cannot possibly put them in their correct order as it was so long ago, but at least I remember each event clearly as they were something that one would never forget."
Cecil later told me that he felt that the bizarre milieu he describes occurred in a very narrow time frame - a matter of weeks. Given the great passage of time - more that 60 years - we cannot be certain of such matters. With that said let us confront the rest of this extraordinary affair.
It was the farm animals that experienced the worst of what was going on. Cecil said to me, "Something was interfering with the cattle, that was upsetting them." That interference may have been taken to a more terrifying stage with the next incident Cecil recalled.
THE EPISODE OF THE PIGS
"The waste milk was used to help fatten pigs and usually we had around 20 pigs of various ages, but always 3 in a special sty getting fattened. This sty consisted of a covered area and an open area with feeding trough surrounded by high railings all around, so that the pigs could not get out." The sty was located down a steep hill, so that the top of the wall was high off the ground at the back and almost level with the ground at the front.
The pigs being fattened represented a substantial financial investment. Each weighed about 200 pounds. The family would grow them up to 225 pounds and sell them. As they had a half share in the pigs, they were of significant financial value to the family. This point served to ensure that what followed had a disturbing effect on the family.
Once again Cecil described what happened.
"On going down to feed the pigs one morning during this time (I found) two of the large fat pigs dead and one missing... I called Dad ...We at first thought that they had been killed by dingoes or wild dogs, but when we had a closer look, we realised that there was a lack of blood, though there were puncture wounds around the neck area, but they didn't look like dog bites, though there were scratches and puncture marks over the bodies. Dad informed our boss and he came and looked at them, but was more interested in the missing pig as there was no sign of it breaking out of the sty."
The carcases of the 2 pigs were burnt. The missing pig was the subject of an unsuccessful search that lasted most of the day. In the afternoon, the cows were restless, as usual. Some of the cattle started to gather near a spot, some 150 yards up a steep incline close to the cow yards. They were bellowing and pawing the ground. Soon all the cattle were milling around the area in a frenzy. When the family moved the herd away, they found a huge patch of grass covered with blood. The farm owner brought in a vet again, who confirmed that it was pigs blood. Bits of hair, identical to that of the missing pig, were mixed in with the blood.
The real mystery was where was the pig's carcase, and what could have apparently killed it, lifted the pig out of the sty, and taken it up a steep slope and then somehow removed the remains, ostensibly either by devouring it or relocating it, to some undiscovered site!
To Cecil and his family the mystery was insoluble. He indicated, "We just had to accept the fact that something sinister was going on around the place, but there was more to come before we were to see the last of our unexpected visitors."
Cecil used to sleep on an open verandah near the front steps of the house, where one of the family dogs slept. It was a very good watch dog, "so one always slept contended in the knowledge that one was well guarded, even though no one ever bothered to interfere with any homes in those days. Windows and doors were never closed or locked."
THE STRANGE NIGHT NOISES
One night during this strange milieu, Cecil was awakened by a strange noise like nothing he had ever heard amongst the normal enduring nocturnal chorus.
Cecil described it as though "one was answering the other (with) a steady 'wroomp' and the answering one went on for a long time." There was no comfort with the watch dog. It was nowhere to be seen. Cecil raised his parents. His father listened out but by then the noises had stopped and the nights events were put down to Cecil's imagination.
Next night the noises returned, but this time they were much louder and Cecil's parents heard them. According to Cecil, both of his parents were very nervous, "especially Dad who had lived in the bush all his life but said he had never heard anything like it and he helped me move my bed into their room. All the time this incessant noise kept up and it seemed to get even closer."
"There seemed to be one here and one there. They were not all together. ...It sounded like 3 or 4 of them."
"It was shocking. It was RUMP, WRUMP, WROMP, like that," Cecil said.
The family closed all the windows and doors. The noise either stopped just when the kerosene lamp was blown out or when the lamp was lit. There is some uncertainty on this point.
The normally obedient dogs would not answer the family's calls. The cows, which normally rested near the house, were nowhere to be seen. It was clear something strange was occurring, however, the rest of the night passed without incident.
A VISITOR DURING THE NIGHT
When morning came Cecil's mother, who was always first to rise, indicated that both the front and back doors were open. Although this was somewhat unsettling everything else seemed normal, and so the children and their father set about their chores. When they returned to the house Cecil's mother deepened the previous nights' mystery by further indicating that something must have gone through the house during the night. She had seen foot prints, made from mud, near the front steps, lead right through the house. The footprints looked like the tread of a Wellington boot, i.e. a rubber boot, which you pulled on, with cross marks over the sole. No heel was evident. As she kept a spotlessly clean house, Cecil's mother had cleaned the footprints before Cecil's father had risen.
The family watch dogs normally slept at the front and back steps and would start up barking if anyone approached. The family could not understand how anyone could walk through the house, let alone approach it, without the dogs warning them.
The 2 consecutive nights of disturbing noises and the mystery house visit seemed to mark a respite to the procession of weird phenomena that had descended on the property.
Cecil told me, "The strange thing about it was that we never heard the noises anymore in the night, and things seemed to become normal once again, though the cattle still would not go out to the back paddock, nor would the dogs move from around the farm buildings.
"We still saw our light in the sky occasionally, always moving from the NE to a SE direction in an erratic manner, but as things quietened down on the farm no effort was made to watch it to any extent."
The lull was temporary.
THE NIGHT OF THE LANDING
Cecil's older brother, Tom, who had been partially crippled through polio, had returned to the property. Cecil and Tom went to their closest neighbour's house one night for a game of cards. It was during the walk back home, lit by lantern, across the flat, over the dividing fence, 3 creeks and a hill, that the inexplicable again intruded into their lives.
Just as the 2 boys had entered their own property and were within sight of their house, a light was observed approaching from the south. It was a light similar to the moon, which increased in size as it got closer.
Cecil described what followed.
"It got nearer until it was over our heads and there it was - a large round, dull light which seemed to be beneath a round cylinder shaped object with a dome on top. As it passed overhead we were able to get a good view of it for a brief moment, before it suddenly started to hiss and it lit up with a dazzling light, which lit up the whole area just like day, and then it turned slightly and moved towards our back paddock to where it came to rest on a hill just inside our neighbours property.
"My brother said it must have been a falling star, but ...we were puzzled as to how slow it had travelled and also that it had travelled down between 2 hills to pass over our heads and then alter course, but we decided to wait until morning and go out and see what it really was."
Next morning after chores, the brothers went to the top of the first hill and looked across to where they had seen the strange object land. There was a brown area amongst the green grass.
At the site they discovered a complete circle of "scorched" grass, about 30 feet in diameter.
As it turned out, their neighbours had also arrived at the spot to confirm their own observation. They had been outside their house watching to see that the boys had got home safely. They saw the strange object, especially when it lit up the valley with its brilliant lights and when it came to earth at the spot where the brown grass was found. They said the object had glowed for some time after landing. Eventually there was darkness.
By mid morning, as news had travelled about, quite a number of locals came to look at the site of the "landing'. Everyone was amazed as the brothers and the neighbours explained what they had seen that had apparently caused the circle of "scorched" grass.
Cecil said, "None ever suspected that such things existed, and of course it wasn't until many years later that the presence of UFOs were suspected or became known. And so, although a lot of theories were put forward as to what it may have been, there was little thought given to it afterwards, and I guess except for the ones who actually saw it, it was soon completely forgotten. But to me it was, and still is, an episode in my life that was instilled in my memory through the spine chilling events over the period of its stay. It seemed that we were singled out to become the victims of either tests or experiments. It would be foolish not to realise that the craft was under control and manned as it wound its way in between the mountains and hills to finally come to rest..."
It appeared that things "culminated after the night we saw it land. That was the finish of it," Cecil said. However there were other things that happened at this time that deepened the bizarre nature of the mystery.
THE BIG BIRDS
Cecil described a startling observation during this time.
"It was ...on my way to school that I first got a glimpse of a huge bird which was in my opinion well over 5 feet high, and it was on a limb of a big dead tree near our school. Its plumage shone in the morning sun and (it) stood erect, the same as a penguin.
"It did not stand like a normal bird. I saw it for a couple of minutes. It was stationary. It did not move."
Cecil hurried into the school and told his teacher about it. When they came out it was gone. It was when he told his parents about "the big bird" that another aspect of the strange events that had descended on the region, was revealed.
His parents told Cecil that it was "a giant bird" that had scared Mr. Smith, their terrified neighbour who had sort refuge at their house. It seemed that the neighbour had seen something "appear out of the darkness." The "apparition" turned out to be a huge "bird" on the ground. It flapped its wings towards the terrified neighbour.
These subsequent developments put a bizarre interpretation on the strange night noises heard earlier, on 2 consecutive nights. While the noises were heard there was a strong smell of poultry in the air! On the morning after the noises Cecil had found 2 big feathers, each about 2 to 3 feet long, just down from the house. "They were not feathers from any bird I had ever seen", Cecil declared. "They were a speckly type of feather. I don't think there was much colour attached to them that I can remember."
There were a number of other sightings of "giant birds".
Cecil and one of his brothers were coming off the mountain near the house, in daylight, when they heard what seemed to be "talking and laughing." Cecil described what followed. "When we looked up (the noise) was coming from 2 giant birds soaring overhead. They were much bigger than any bird we had ever seen. They seemed to be gliding with wings outstretched. The wing span was bigger than the length of the body." They were thought to be at least 3 or 4 times bigger than a wedged tail eagle - the biggest type of bird seen in their area.
"They were monsters ...making sounds like unintelligible conversation," Cecil said.
Cecil's sister, Dorothy, recollected that their other sister and one of their parents had gone out on to the verandah one night and observed "this bird ...hopping down the hill, with its wings flapping." "A huge, big bird," Dorothy recollected.
On another night, they were out on a side landing of the house and saw "a dull type of a light - a round thing" - go across. "It took some time about it," Dorothy said.
Cecil recollected that there was a story in the local paper referring to other people reporting seeing these birds. He thought Nobbs may have been the name of one of them. To date I have been unable to completely search the local papers.
THE MAN IN WHITE
One night the family had gone over to the neighbours. Tom remained behind at the house. "A strange man" dressed in "a white suit" arrived at the neighbours house. Everyone thought he was with the others. He didn't speak to anyone and only stayed for a short time.
Back at the house, Tom was in darkness. He heard a noise in the house and sang out, "Who is there!" Tom got out of bed in time to see someone in a white suit disappearing into the darkness!
The real mystery here was how the stranger had managed to visit both houses on a pitch black night (if indeed we are dealing with only one stranger in white). There were 2 large creeks to cross and "the only way to cross them was by planks that we had placed in a certain spot and also one big stream that could only be crossed by steadily picking your way over a fallen tree trunk." The stranger was never seen or
heard of again. I wonder if he was wearing Wellington type boots with cross-mark soles?
REFLECTIONS
Cecil ended his recollections with the following comments to me.
"I could probably fill up another 2 pages on this, but I wont you see, because I will only speak what I can actually verify as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. There's things that happened at that time that I will not and noboby will ever get me to talk about, because I am not sure. I only speak about things I am sure about."
I indicated that he had me tantalised.
Cecil replied, "Oh now, it is very tantalising to... I'll write it all down and if anything ever happens to me, you can have it then. I think you'll out live me. I'll just put your name and address on it and leave it to you. If anything goes wrong you can have it... then you won't be able to come along and pick me to pieces on it."
Cecil also pointed out that his parents brought he and his brothers and sisters up with the following philosophy, "You never did anything wrong. You never told a lie. Everything had to be done right."
The visitor or visitors came and went during 1927 leaving an enduring memory with a 10 year-old boy. The visitor may have briefly returned in 1936 for a performance at a dance at nearby Dumbible. All the people came out of the dance hall to watch it travelling around the sky. It was a lot bigger than a star, a good size street light sized
light, bright white like the landing lights of an aircraft.
In more recent times owners of the property near Fernvale, where "history was made" back in 1927, when the "visitor" came and drew the locals inexorably into a flirtation with an antipodean version of the Twilight Zone, believe in communion with nature. Instead of the property it once was, a more natural locality developed, somewhat like a rainforest. By the turn of the century the property had become run down. Other than the recollections of locals and the land itself, little remains to remind us of the bizarre series of events that haunted the area and touched the life of an ordinary family of the land.
Ostensibly for a few short weeks back in 1927 a cavalcade of strange phenomena had descended upon a small rural community, that knew of nothing like it, before or since.
Reports of disturbances, nocturnal aerial lights, night noises, giant birds, UFO landings, and mystery men have all occurred in various circumstances in more recent times, but rarely in one confined locality and within a very short time frame. The "Mothman" milieu of West Virginia during 1966 and 1967 is one of the few that comes most readily to mind.
The cover of the first edition of "The Mothman Prophecies"
Numerous other reports of giant birds or "birdmen" have been made elsewhere around the world, but to my knowledge this may be the first account in modern times of "winged weirdos" in Australia. A few such "bird" accounts have been linked to UFO activity and animal disturbances, the latter occasionally to the controversial realm of alleged cattle mutilations. Numerous references could be cited but for Cecil McGann such speculations are not very productive. He is reluctant, understandably, to link the UFO reports to the 'big bird' sightings. He felt that there was a possible link between the bird encounters and the missing pig incident. Beyond that he refused to be drawn. Cecil is loath to speculate about the significance of the range of phenomena he and his family witnessed. To him it was an enduring mystery that had puzzled and haunted him for some sixty years.
It is indeed a diverting tale.
During 1999 I reminded Cecil of his offer to write down the things he had not talked about. Late in 1999 he sent me a typed document he entitled "Terror on the Tweed" - "my story in full". In it he described the things he had not originally told me about, because he was uncertain of them.
I have included Cecil's 1999 document in full (with my comments as footnotes):
Introductory Remarks
It was not until I was discharged from the A-l-F in 1946 after serving
five years in Australia and overseas in the Pacific that I first became
aware of such things as U-F-O,s and my mind wandered back to the episode
I am about to relate, how could I ever forget such an event, even though I
was only ten years old it had stuck in my memory and so I decided to get
in contact with someone who knew something about them, as I had written
my story before then and so I eventually got in touch with a Mr Chalker
and even travelled to Sydney to meet and talk to him about the episode
and after some consultation it was agreed that he give the story to a.
person in Chicago in America where it was published in a magazine
similar to Readers Digest , but I made it clear to Mr Chalker that I had
a lot more to the story that I had not included, and so now I would like
to present to you the full story, and in doing so I want to stress that
we were people born and bred in the bush and were well accustomed to the
noises that happened in the night, and as the nights were clear of smog we
were quite accustomed to falling stars or meteors and there was no flying
planes to distract our attention.
And so to my story in full,
TERROR ON THE TWEED
My parents had moved from Cootamundra in N -S-W, to the Tweed to take up
share farming and they settled on a farm appr. four miles from Murwillumbah
which is situated on the Tweed River and the farm was at a place called
Fern Vale, south east of the town, and a beautiful area of rolling hills and
lovely clear streams and we milked about seventy cows and separated the
milk which used to feed the pigs and the cream was sent to the Dairy fact-
-ory to be made into butter and we were paid on the amount we produced at
the rate of eight shillings in the pound for our labour half share for pigs
which was a very meagre existence for a family of eight, then I was born in
1917 and two sisters came later, and so life went on until the year 1927 and
that was when strange things began to occur.
We were sitting at the back of our house in the cool and the house was on
the crest of a hill with a ridge running back to some large mountains and
the milking area was about two hundred yards from the house towards the
mountains, and we often sat out the back in the cool as it was mostly too
hot inside and it was then that we first seen the light as it rose from
behind the hills and travelled along the back of a. large mountain, it was
was moving very fast then it would stop and reverse, then it would go slow
or zigzag and so we watched for sometime before it disappeared behind the
hills, and so Dad decided that it was a dancing star, and off to bed we went.
The next morning it was the topic of our conversation, but we had no answer
except that it may have been a falling star, but then we had seen too many
of them to be confused into thinking that, but what we didn't know was what
was about to eventuate.
The cattle were very restless as were the other animals on the farm, and
the dogs refused to budge from under the house whereas they always went
and got the cattle when told to do so but they refused to move and the
cattle who were normally docile were very agitated and moving around and
around quite restless, but we milked them but like they normally did was to
head out into the day paddock they refused to go and just hung around the~
cow yard but by the time for milking in the afternoon they had settled
down and all seemed o-k as was for a day or two until one afternoon about
two p-m we heard the cows coming home at a rate of knots, bellowing and
also our neighbours cattle were all heading to their yard and we went down
to see what was going on and the cows were looking back to the hills and
milling around with their eyes blazing and we got very little milk that
afternoon, but the cows would not leave the yards and we let them into a
small enclosure around our house where they settled down for the night.
There was no way we could coax them to go out into our big day paddock
from then on and we allowed them to graze in the paddocks around the house
but there was one cow missing off whom we could not find
and so I walked out onto the ridge in our day paddock to see if she had
ventured out there during the day and a strange scene confronted me as I
looked down the ridge as there were two objects, one down on a small flat at
the bottom or a ridge and one amid bushes halfway down the ridge and they
were moving about and looked like small elephants, but as we know now they
could have been wearing space suits, but it caused quite a laugh when I got
back and told my family, but as you will see later in my story that what I
saw not as my family implied but something to do with the whole affair.
The very next morning we found three of our fat pigs dead but only two bodies
we kept our pigs in a wooden shed with eight ft high railings around to
stop them getting out., there were two bodies laying on the floor that had
marks on their necks but no sign of blood, one pig was missing but in the
afternoon at milking time the cows were milling around an area near the dairy
and when we looked there were signs of blood and hair on the grass, and so
the pig must have been taken up a very steep hill and slaughtered but how
anyone could lift a pig that size out of its pen and get it up there is a
mystery.
It was about this time that I began to hear strange noises in the night and
as I slept on an open verandah with just a railing around and steps down to
the ground and having lived in the bush I knew all the noises that went on
with birds and animals, but this was altogether different it was a noise I
had never heard before and I went into Dad's room and woke him up to come
and listen, it sounded like a Wroomp, one would go and then another would
answer in a different place, well Dad was as bewildered as I was as he said
it was something new to him and he lived and worked in the bush all his
life but it seemed as if they were calling to each other and this went on
for a few nights and climaxed later as I will tell in my story.
We had milked the cows in the afternoon and put them in a paddock close to
the house for the night and all was well as we started milking next morning
but two were missing and after we finished milking dad sent me to the top of
the hill where they had been to see if I could find them and looking across
into the day paddock I could see the two cows lying on the side of a ridge
when we went out we found that they had crashed through the fence where they
were for some unknown reason and were both lying close together on the ridge
we contacted our boss who got a vet from town and a1ong with our neighbours
who were all interested in what had happened but no verdict was reached but
the vet did say as he was leaving that it looked as if they were scared to
death, but the strange thing was that this was the ridge where I had seen
the two objects previously, so we burnt the bodies and mended the fence and
so that was another chapter of the saga.
And that night around midnight we heard a car coming into our property from
the main road, now I want to point out that none of our neighbours had cars
nor did any other people we knew as they all used horse and sulkies, and we
all got out of bed and went out into the pitch dark to see who it could be
and it progressed down the hill and over the creek and up the hill to around
the side of the house someone opened the gate and it proceeded on where there
was no road went past out shed and down to a gate into our cow yard it went
through that gate down through the cow yard and then through a gate at the
bottom. or the yard out into a paddock alongside of a hill for some distance
to' the bottom of a ridge where it stopped and turned its lights off and after
about ten minutes it turned around and came back closing the gates as they
came and when they got to where we were we sang out to them but got no reply
as they drove off out onto the road and away, a very strange event as how did
they know how to open the gates so easily as they all had different catches
so that the horses could not open them but it all seemed so easy and even
the people we knew would not have known and to drive where they did, but to
the best of our knowledge there seemed to be two occupants in the car but it
was too dark to really tell.
We all went over to our neighbours for an evening except one of our brothers
and it was very difficult to cross two creeks to get there and home but
when we arrived there was a person of whom no one knew also arrived and he
had a white suit on and each family thought that he belonged to the other
but he moved around the place between us and then disappeared but at the
same time our brother at home had gone to bed and he heard a noise out the
back of the house and he sang out, Who is there? And got out of bed to see
someone in a white suit disappearing into the darkness. Now if it was the
same person how would he get from where we were as there was only one way
you could cross the creeks and that was by walking along logs and you would
need a light in the dark, so there must have been two, and it was very odd to
see anyone in a white suit in that area as none wore that type of outfit
in those days.
A neighbour who lived past our place had been to a P&C meeting and was on
his way home and Dad heard someone shouting out, Help, help, down the bottom
of the hill from our house and Dad went down to see what was wrong and
he helped our friend up to our house and he was in a terrible state and
he stayed at our place and went home next morning and he and his wife
lost no time in leaving the district, but both mum and dad would not tell
us what happened but we found his galoshes as we went to school next
morning they were stuck in the mud where he had taken off.
I had almost reached school one morning when I looked up and seen an
enormous bird on top of a big dead tree his coat was shining in the sun
and he stood straight upright an would have been at least six feet tall
I ran to the school to tell my teacher to come and see it but when we
got there it was gone, But my brother and I were coming down off a hill
at the back of our place when we heard someone talking and laughing in the
sky above us and when we looked up there were two giant birds high in the
sky nothing like we had ever seen before and they seemed to be conversing
with each other. Mum later told me that our neighbour had been scared by -
by a huge bird, and there were reports from other people of sightings.
We eventually found the cow that was missing right out at the very back of
our day paddock behind some bushes, completely mad and in a bad state and
when she seen us she went straight through a three barbed wire fence and
away into those peoples property and was later tracked down and shot, we
also found a half grown pig who also was completely mad and we had to kill
it, but when we enquired around no one had lost any pigs.
My brother and I had been over helping our neighbours with their milking
in the afternoon as they were running late and we stayed with them until
late into the night and as we wended our way home and reached the flat at
the bottom of the hill going up to our house we seen this large dull light
coming from the south east and after it passed over us it lit up and bathed
the whole area like daylight and it went around a hill at the back of our
dairy, my brother said it was a meteor but I said meteors don't turn corners
and so off to bed but next morning after milking the cows I went up
on to the hill and looked to where it went in my opinion and there on the
crest of a hill in our day paddock was a round ring of brown grass and so
we all went out to have a look and our neighbours who were watching to see
if we had got home the night before came over to see as they had seen this
object and watched come to earth and then the glow died out. Well it covered
an area about fifty feet in diameter and the grass was not burned but it
was singed, and quite a few people came to see it even our boss who decided
that it was just grass dying out even though we tried to tell him different
and his theory was put to rest as after a couple of weeks it grew back to
green again.
We had retired for the night and this strange noise started again. WROOMP.
WROOMP, and kept getting louder and louder and everyone got out of bed and
Dad lit the kerosene lamps we had and we all went out onto our front
verendah to try and figure out what was causing the strange noise as it
kept up louder and louder and it was pitch black outside and we could not
see a thing and so we waited and waited and eventually it died down and
we eventually went to sleep.
Next morning I walked down to where the noise was coming from the night
before and I found two very large feathers about three feet long and
were white in colour with black specks and black rings on them I had seen
nothing like them before and ever in my life time and I left them on the
farm and were still there when I left years later. When Mum came down to
the milking she mentioned that there were some muddy footprints through
the house like she had never seen before but she had wiped them up before
anyone else could get to see them, but she said that they didn't seem to be
footprints of a human but had crossbars.
Well you would think that that would be all, well that was the last of any
incidents but not for me as a large swelling came up on my groin like a
huge boil with a yellow top on it and I became very sick and was taken to
the hospital where I was diagnosed as having, yellow jaundice and rheumatic
fever and so I lay in the hospital for a long time and got no better and
so the doctors told my parents that it would be just as well to take me
home as they could do nothing else for me as i was past any help, and so
I was taken home to the farm to die. Now the cattle inspector used to call
and see me if he was riding past as we were good mates and one afternoon
when he called he could not find me in bed and he went down to where they
were milking and told them and they found me in a large wardrobe which
meant that I could walk again and from then on I improved and eventually
recovered. I do not know if it could be contributed to the previous events
but it seemed strange that it happened straight after the visit of the
strange things that made the noise in the night.
In conclusion I would like to state that it seemed strange to me that
there were two of each, two birds, two men and two that I saw in what
seemed to be space suits, but the car in the night was a remarkable event
as to have came and gone where they went through all of the gates and
over the roads and rough ground in the middle of the night was amazing
and I would like to add that this is not a story but real facts of
events that occurred to us in our young life on the farm, and something
that is not easily to forget.
I am indebted to Cecil McGann for coming forward to share his unusual experiences.
Cecil's account of his daylight observation of apparent beings in "spacesuits" is fascinating. He described them as looking like "small elephants".
In this context it is perhaps worthwhile to describe the following oddity from the north-eastern Sydney suburb of Narrabeen.
On April 3rd, 1968 April 3rd Mrs Mabel Walsh was driving her nephew John to Newport, travelling along the Wakehurst Parkway beside Narrabeen Lakes. They were travelling at about 45 mph at about 1.15 p.m. when they both saw a strange creature standing with its feet in shallow water.
"It was a bit over 4 feet tall, with dark grey, tough leathery skin, like an elephant's. It had small front legs and walked on its hind legs, which were thick and round like an elephant's.
"It ambled out of the lake and ran into the scrub. It had a strange shuffling walk, but was quite fast. It shocked me. It was a peculiar looking thing. I've never seen anything like it. We saw it only for a few seconds".
"I stopped the car, but had to wait for traffic to pass before I could back up but the thing had gone. We were in a hurry. We wanted to have a swim. Then I had to get John to the airport and go home for tea before going to gemology classes. I didn't have time to call anyone and check on it.
"I didn't notice a tail or ears, but it had small eyes and smaller front legs or arms. It's head reminded me of an ant eater's. Its trunk was rigid, squared off at the end and stuck down and out at an angle".
About a fortnight later there was a rash of UFO sightings over Sydney. Slow moving, star-like objects moving west to east, were seen from several suburbs between 6 and 6.35 p.m. on April 16th. On April 20th many people throughout Sydney saw a bright object suddenly appear. It first was a dull orange in colour but then as it descended, it changed to a brilliant blue.
It would probably be erroneous to speculate that the unknown creature reported above was related in someway to UFOs. There is no direct connection evident, and because the creature or one like it was seen again in the area, it would probably be more correct to suggest that the creature was an unknown species perhaps local to that area.
During 1971 a lady was awoken by a terrible gurgling noise but saw nothing. Two fishermen in a boat, saw something by the light of a kerosene lamp. It had a trunk like an elephant and was walking on the water with its back legs. It was described as being grey in colour.
Sketch of Mrs. Walsh's Narrabeen Lakes creature
During the late 1970s with nothing better to do, I spent a number of evenings loitering around the Narrabeen Lakes environs checking out the areas involved in these stories. Unfortunately no "elephant" humanoids were seen and I was not able to determine any substance to a prosaic "elephant" connection.
Cecil's account of his illness in the wake of the strange events of 1927, lead me to highlight the following episode that occurred a few years later. The child in that experience reported blistering after the encounter.
A fifty year old man recounted in 1974, the story of his encounter with a mini-UFO back in 1932 or 1933, near the town of Nambour, in Northern Queensland. He was 8 or 9 at the time, and at about two one afternoon, in about late March or early April, he was playing with some local children. He strayed from them and went over to a nearby hillock, which was surrounded by a small body of water:
"....I put both hands up in front of me and parted this tall grass to look through. I heard a low humming sound, and saw a round object directly in front of me, about four feet away.
"It looked the same shape as if two ordinary saucers were placed face to face and then turned on their sides ... The colour of the object was the same shade of silver grey as a Canberra bomber looks on a dull, rainy, overcast day ... The size of the object was 12 inches in diameter. It hovered 3 inches above the surface of the water. There was a slight almost imperceptible shiver of the water surface directly below the object as if it was directing a force directly downwards in order to stay in the air ... The waves (of water) were going outward in concentric circles directly below the object...
"...There was a very high speed shiver motion of the object as if a gyro-stabiliser of some kind were keeping it up right.
"As I bent forward to look more closely, the humming sound rose suddenly in pitch and volume, and at the same time a whitish mist begun to form between me and the object, but close to it ...
"At the same time ... I felt a tight feeling in the head and as the noise increased, I let go of the tall grass and stepped back. I could not see it any more, and I felt stunned in the head, but I could still hear it humming behind the tall grass ....
"Soon afterwards, everyone decided to go up to the house, and on the way one girl said suddenly,
"What was that?" Something flew up between those trees. "It was a magpie," someone said. "No it was not," said the first girl.
"I did not see anything, but I knew what it was; it was the object flying off. "That night I noticed large white blisters on both of my hands and I felt out of sorts. Sometime during the night whilst I was asleep most of the blisters burst, and one or two remaining burst during the day and a clear fluid like water came out. I felt better after that..."
Ron Johansen's "Tales of our Times" series also records a fascinating cattle mystery in September 1957 that echoes Cecil McGann's 1927 experience. In fact when I read the story in Volume 7 of the series (published in 1998) I was struck by the similarities in the cattle's bizarre behaviour on Jack Smith's Doon Doon property, which is also in the Tweed district. I spoke with Jack Smith in 2001 and he confirmed the incident. Essentially it was Fernvale 1927 all over again, without the presence of UFOs, strange beings, mystery big birds and mystery men.
Cecil McGann has done an immense service in having the courage of detailing his extraordinary childhood experience in the Tweed of 1927 - the Fernvale "prophecy".
Acknowledgements:
This article would not have been possible, of course, without the testimony and assistance of Cecil McGann. His sister, Dorothy (Dot) Middleton (who passed away in 1991) provided partial support of the 1927 events. I met Cecil at her place in 1986. She also provided the paintings reproduced here. Ron Johansen and his wonderful "Tales of our Times" series were of great assistance in supporting Cecil's story and providing other supportive details and leads. Barry Roach also supported Cecil's story and was my guide to the Fernvale property during my 2001 visit. His family worked the property after the McGann's left it in the early 1940s. Barry also provided the early property and family photos.
References:
Chalker, Bill, "The Terror down under", Fate, September, 1988
Chalker, Bill, "The Oz Files - the Australian UFO Story", 1996
Johansen, Ron, "Tales of our Times", Volume 3 (1994) & Volume 7 (1998)
Has any reader come across anything similar. Australian experiences, in particular, would be most welcome. The author can be contacted at P.O. Box 42, West Pennant Hills, NSW, 2125, Australia
Regards Jimi
Bill Chalker a bio-chemist UFO researcher of which I maintain his website investigated it.
I have all the photos etc...and testimony but in pdf. I willl be putting it online in the near future as soon as Bill gives me a different format.
Below is a good part of that.This is copywritten Bill Chalker from personel accounts given soley to Bill; no part of this can beused without prior permission.
im giving you this in good faith.
Please do not use it on the net on any websites and please do not mass email it to anyone.
Its from his upcoming book.
I know you will enjoy it. I included the entire investigation and story.
"Fernvale. There are probably a lot of places with such a name in this world, and probably just as aptly named. But you see the Fernvale where I was born and lived in the early years of my life is really a very special place, because I consider it part of one of the loveliest places in the world, and also it was where in my opinion, history was made."
So opened an extraordinary 19-page letter written to me in 1985. It told of a bizarre milieu of strange events that descended upon a previously undisturbed and tranquil dairy region of northern New South Wales. The closest major centre was Murwillumbah. Back in 1927 the area - the Tweed River district -was only affected by the austerity of the times.
My correspondent, Cecil McGann , was then ten years old, matured beyond his years by the demands of farm life. He was part of a large family, which struggled to survive at share farming on a dairy farm of about 200 acres at Fernvale.
For a 10 year old these were good times as well, as only those who have experienced the beauty of life in the country would know. Life, while hard, was also simple and enriching. The communion with life was at its fullest. However nothing prepared the boy, his family or the local community for the arrival of the visitors.
The visitors brought to Fernvale a bizarre, and at times, terrifying mystery, one which nearly 60 years later, Cecil McGann sort to ensure was put on the record, in the hope that an answer might be eventually forthcoming. I don't have the answers. At this point I can provide only the detail and perhaps a measure of perspective.
During 1984 I had been given a faint inkling of the Fernvale events of 1927 by a UFO researcher in Queensland, whose group was told something of the events by Cecil McGann. As someone keenly interested in historical pre-1947 UFO events, I sort more information but it was not forthcoming.
Eventually I secured Cecil McGann's address and wrote to him. By late 1984, when no reply was forthcoming, I had all but given up on what seemed like a diverting lead, something that all UFO researchers regularly experience.
By the time you finish this account you will begin to appreciate the feelings I had when, out of the blue, the long letter arrived. The letter was the result of some 4 years work by Cecil, prompted by the urgings of Dorothy Middleton, one of Cecil's sisters. I subsequently spoke with Cecil at length by phone, and eventually meet him in person, along with Dorothy during 1986. This series of discussions enabled me to assess the consistency of the accounts.
While Cecil McGann was, not surprisingly, unable to give a precise sequence of events, he did give reasonably consistent descriptions of what he felt he could remember and emphasised the elements he was uncertain about. He stressed he was not prepared to speculate or embellish on these events. He wanted me to have the account as he remembered it, not as someone else felt it should be. With the passage of so many years, we must wonder how accurate Cecil's account is. It clearly had a profound effect on him and one could argue a long-term memory, particularly of something so strange, may have been reasonably accurately recollected.
The first page of Cecil's 1985 letter to the author
While the passage of time may have affected the accuracy of the story, we must consider that altogether Cecil' s story, with the partial confirmation received from his sister, may describe a compelling account that emphasises that one of the major mysteries of our modern era is not just a curiosity of our contemporary space age. In 1947 Kenneth Arnold reported he saw 9 strange aerial objects, while flying in a light aircraft near Mount Rainer, Washington. The term "flying saucers" was coined to describe the objects Arnold saw and an extraordinary controversy was launched. Fully two decades before Kenneth Arnold's apparitions puzzled mankind an even more bizarre UFO mystery was ostensibly played out at the little community of Fernvale, in Australia.
The visitor came one hot summer's night.
Cecil tells it this way.
THE VISITOR ARRIVES
"We were sitting out the back of our home which was on a hill surrounded by large mountains, and we saw this light like a star rise up from behind a mountain and travel along at a very fast speed. Then it would stop or alter course or reverse, but it could travel slow or very fast and stop very quick, and it did antics in the sky for some time before disappearing. We were amazed that such should happen. Dad said it was a dancing star, and off to bed we went."
Cecil wrote, "I can remember the next day we talked about what we had seen and really no one could come up with an answer except that may be it was a falling star. But we had seen too many of them to know that they were not the answer."
It was the afternoon events of the day following the arrival of the light that forever displaced such prosaic speculations. The family looked after a milking herd of cows -some 70 or so in size. The cows were all 'pets' - a very quiet herd - "a beautiful herd of cattle", Dorothy told me. The property was cut up into 2-day paddocks and 3-night paddocks.
TERROR AMONGST THE COWS
At about 3.30 pm each day the herd would start coming in for the afternoon milking. However the day after the night visitor had first appeared, the herd could be heard coming in hours earlier than normal, coming "hell for leather" home, and bellowing in terror.
Cecil wrote, "I shall never forget that day as we were all amazed at what was happening. The cows were milling around in the yard and bellowing in terror, and with eyes blazing, always looking back into the hills from whence they came (the day paddock -B.C.). What could turn our quiet old cows into such a terror stricken state. We had no ideas, but I remember with my Dad, Mum and younger sisters, we gradually calmed them to settle in a small area around our house."
Very little milk was forthcoming that day.
The family soon found that one of their herd was missing. Cecil and his father went looking for it in the back of the day paddock. Their 2 dogs would not follow them. They eventually found the cow, totally mad. It had to be shot.
Cecil described what followed.
"We had seen our strange visitor in the eastern sky for the second night, and we watched it manoeuvre around the mountains and (it was) much brighter at times, but as the night before it put on quite a show for us, until eventually disappearing behind one of the many mountains."
Next day problems were once again experienced with the milking herd, when they were eventually milked the cows refused to leave the yards. They would not return to the big day paddock over the hill. The herd was allowed to stay in a small day paddock near the house. They seemed to settle down and were eventually put out for the night. Little did the family know what was to eventuate.
Cecil wrote, "It was as usual (on this the third night-B.C.) that we looked again into the sky for "our dancing star", but it didn't appear, and after a while it was off to bed for a well earned (rest) after a long day. ...but rest was to be short lived that night because the cattle came home bellowing. Even the dogs howled and we were out with our kerosene lamps trying to calm them.
"We could also hear our closest neighbours cattle bellowing around his yards and could see them with lights trying to find out what was wrong.
"We left our (kerosene) lights on all night (there was no electricity connected - B.C.) and let the cattle into the area around our house, where they milled and bellowed and were shivering with fright. (Our) normally quiet cattle were panick stricken."
The bizarre night made rest impossible. The morning ushered in another unsettling mystery. Three cows were missing.
DEATH IN THE NIGHT
Cecil walked to the top of the hill in the paddock the cows had been in. The 3 cows were lying on the side of a hill in the big day paddock. It was that paddock that the cows had refused to enter.
The 3 cows were dead. Their legs were badly cut about, ostensibly from crashing through the barbed wire fence that divided the 2 paddocks.
Cecil recollected the most unsettling element of the discovery:
"It was their eyes that scared me as they seemed to be sticking out of their sockets."
The family quickly notified the owner, who in turn fetched a vet from town. News spread fast among the neighbouring farms. Quite a few people came to look over the dead cows. Many suggestions were put forward, but were all ruled out by the vet. It was the vet's parting comment that was permanently etched in Cecil's 10 year-old mind.
According to Cecil's recollection the vet said, "It's funny, but one could nearly say that they were scared to death, but what the hell would scare cattle like that."
Cecil and his father hauled the dead cows with their draught horse, to where there was plenty of dry wood and burnt the carcases.
Cecil wrote, "I can remember Dad saying, 'There is something queer going on. What the hell could be frightening the animals in this way.' "
THE MILIEU SPREADS
While the family's property seemed to be the centre of the unfolding milieu of weirdness, neighbours were also witnessing aspects of the mystery. One of their closest neighbours admitted later that both he and his wife had watched the light moving around the sky on later nights. Another of their neighbours, who we will call Mr. Smith, had a terrifying encounter.
Cecil recollected the incident in the following way:
"We were awakened one night by a man crying out for help. Dad ran down to the bottom of the hill from our house. (The neighbour) was in a very bad shape. It appears he had been to a school meeting, and on leaving to walk home, had been confronted by what we were told at the time was an apparition, or something that should not be. He spent the night at our place and went home next morning. Both Mum and Dad were very tight lipped about the affair, but asked us to look for (Mr. Smith's) galoshes (rubber wet weather boots - B.C.) which he had lost when he took off for our place. And so when we went to school next day we found the galoshes, just a short way down the road from the school and they were stuck in the mud just as he had left them the night before when he had taken fright and in his mad rush to safety he had run past 3 houses along the way to our house."
As it turned out Mr. Smith and his wife lost no time in leaving the district. Whether the night's terrifying "apparition" prompted the departure was not clear. We will see shortly that subsequent startling events were to lead to Cecil finding out the apparent identity of this 'apparition.'
However before we get to that pivotal point there is much more to this olden day tale of a journey into the Twilight Zone.
Cecil described the critical point about what follows:
"Several interesting incidents happened during this time that made us really realise that something strange was occurring. I cannot possibly put them in their correct order as it was so long ago, but at least I remember each event clearly as they were something that one would never forget."
Cecil later told me that he felt that the bizarre milieu he describes occurred in a very narrow time frame - a matter of weeks. Given the great passage of time - more that 60 years - we cannot be certain of such matters. With that said let us confront the rest of this extraordinary affair.
It was the farm animals that experienced the worst of what was going on. Cecil said to me, "Something was interfering with the cattle, that was upsetting them." That interference may have been taken to a more terrifying stage with the next incident Cecil recalled.
THE EPISODE OF THE PIGS
"The waste milk was used to help fatten pigs and usually we had around 20 pigs of various ages, but always 3 in a special sty getting fattened. This sty consisted of a covered area and an open area with feeding trough surrounded by high railings all around, so that the pigs could not get out." The sty was located down a steep hill, so that the top of the wall was high off the ground at the back and almost level with the ground at the front.
The pigs being fattened represented a substantial financial investment. Each weighed about 200 pounds. The family would grow them up to 225 pounds and sell them. As they had a half share in the pigs, they were of significant financial value to the family. This point served to ensure that what followed had a disturbing effect on the family.
Once again Cecil described what happened.
"On going down to feed the pigs one morning during this time (I found) two of the large fat pigs dead and one missing... I called Dad ...We at first thought that they had been killed by dingoes or wild dogs, but when we had a closer look, we realised that there was a lack of blood, though there were puncture wounds around the neck area, but they didn't look like dog bites, though there were scratches and puncture marks over the bodies. Dad informed our boss and he came and looked at them, but was more interested in the missing pig as there was no sign of it breaking out of the sty."
The carcases of the 2 pigs were burnt. The missing pig was the subject of an unsuccessful search that lasted most of the day. In the afternoon, the cows were restless, as usual. Some of the cattle started to gather near a spot, some 150 yards up a steep incline close to the cow yards. They were bellowing and pawing the ground. Soon all the cattle were milling around the area in a frenzy. When the family moved the herd away, they found a huge patch of grass covered with blood. The farm owner brought in a vet again, who confirmed that it was pigs blood. Bits of hair, identical to that of the missing pig, were mixed in with the blood.
The real mystery was where was the pig's carcase, and what could have apparently killed it, lifted the pig out of the sty, and taken it up a steep slope and then somehow removed the remains, ostensibly either by devouring it or relocating it, to some undiscovered site!
To Cecil and his family the mystery was insoluble. He indicated, "We just had to accept the fact that something sinister was going on around the place, but there was more to come before we were to see the last of our unexpected visitors."
Cecil used to sleep on an open verandah near the front steps of the house, where one of the family dogs slept. It was a very good watch dog, "so one always slept contended in the knowledge that one was well guarded, even though no one ever bothered to interfere with any homes in those days. Windows and doors were never closed or locked."
THE STRANGE NIGHT NOISES
One night during this strange milieu, Cecil was awakened by a strange noise like nothing he had ever heard amongst the normal enduring nocturnal chorus.
Cecil described it as though "one was answering the other (with) a steady 'wroomp' and the answering one went on for a long time." There was no comfort with the watch dog. It was nowhere to be seen. Cecil raised his parents. His father listened out but by then the noises had stopped and the nights events were put down to Cecil's imagination.
Next night the noises returned, but this time they were much louder and Cecil's parents heard them. According to Cecil, both of his parents were very nervous, "especially Dad who had lived in the bush all his life but said he had never heard anything like it and he helped me move my bed into their room. All the time this incessant noise kept up and it seemed to get even closer."
"There seemed to be one here and one there. They were not all together. ...It sounded like 3 or 4 of them."
"It was shocking. It was RUMP, WRUMP, WROMP, like that," Cecil said.
The family closed all the windows and doors. The noise either stopped just when the kerosene lamp was blown out or when the lamp was lit. There is some uncertainty on this point.
The normally obedient dogs would not answer the family's calls. The cows, which normally rested near the house, were nowhere to be seen. It was clear something strange was occurring, however, the rest of the night passed without incident.
A VISITOR DURING THE NIGHT
When morning came Cecil's mother, who was always first to rise, indicated that both the front and back doors were open. Although this was somewhat unsettling everything else seemed normal, and so the children and their father set about their chores. When they returned to the house Cecil's mother deepened the previous nights' mystery by further indicating that something must have gone through the house during the night. She had seen foot prints, made from mud, near the front steps, lead right through the house. The footprints looked like the tread of a Wellington boot, i.e. a rubber boot, which you pulled on, with cross marks over the sole. No heel was evident. As she kept a spotlessly clean house, Cecil's mother had cleaned the footprints before Cecil's father had risen.
The family watch dogs normally slept at the front and back steps and would start up barking if anyone approached. The family could not understand how anyone could walk through the house, let alone approach it, without the dogs warning them.
The 2 consecutive nights of disturbing noises and the mystery house visit seemed to mark a respite to the procession of weird phenomena that had descended on the property.
Cecil told me, "The strange thing about it was that we never heard the noises anymore in the night, and things seemed to become normal once again, though the cattle still would not go out to the back paddock, nor would the dogs move from around the farm buildings.
"We still saw our light in the sky occasionally, always moving from the NE to a SE direction in an erratic manner, but as things quietened down on the farm no effort was made to watch it to any extent."
The lull was temporary.
THE NIGHT OF THE LANDING
Cecil's older brother, Tom, who had been partially crippled through polio, had returned to the property. Cecil and Tom went to their closest neighbour's house one night for a game of cards. It was during the walk back home, lit by lantern, across the flat, over the dividing fence, 3 creeks and a hill, that the inexplicable again intruded into their lives.
Just as the 2 boys had entered their own property and were within sight of their house, a light was observed approaching from the south. It was a light similar to the moon, which increased in size as it got closer.
Cecil described what followed.
"It got nearer until it was over our heads and there it was - a large round, dull light which seemed to be beneath a round cylinder shaped object with a dome on top. As it passed overhead we were able to get a good view of it for a brief moment, before it suddenly started to hiss and it lit up with a dazzling light, which lit up the whole area just like day, and then it turned slightly and moved towards our back paddock to where it came to rest on a hill just inside our neighbours property.
"My brother said it must have been a falling star, but ...we were puzzled as to how slow it had travelled and also that it had travelled down between 2 hills to pass over our heads and then alter course, but we decided to wait until morning and go out and see what it really was."
Next morning after chores, the brothers went to the top of the first hill and looked across to where they had seen the strange object land. There was a brown area amongst the green grass.
At the site they discovered a complete circle of "scorched" grass, about 30 feet in diameter.
As it turned out, their neighbours had also arrived at the spot to confirm their own observation. They had been outside their house watching to see that the boys had got home safely. They saw the strange object, especially when it lit up the valley with its brilliant lights and when it came to earth at the spot where the brown grass was found. They said the object had glowed for some time after landing. Eventually there was darkness.
By mid morning, as news had travelled about, quite a number of locals came to look at the site of the "landing'. Everyone was amazed as the brothers and the neighbours explained what they had seen that had apparently caused the circle of "scorched" grass.
Cecil said, "None ever suspected that such things existed, and of course it wasn't until many years later that the presence of UFOs were suspected or became known. And so, although a lot of theories were put forward as to what it may have been, there was little thought given to it afterwards, and I guess except for the ones who actually saw it, it was soon completely forgotten. But to me it was, and still is, an episode in my life that was instilled in my memory through the spine chilling events over the period of its stay. It seemed that we were singled out to become the victims of either tests or experiments. It would be foolish not to realise that the craft was under control and manned as it wound its way in between the mountains and hills to finally come to rest..."
It appeared that things "culminated after the night we saw it land. That was the finish of it," Cecil said. However there were other things that happened at this time that deepened the bizarre nature of the mystery.
THE BIG BIRDS
Cecil described a startling observation during this time.
"It was ...on my way to school that I first got a glimpse of a huge bird which was in my opinion well over 5 feet high, and it was on a limb of a big dead tree near our school. Its plumage shone in the morning sun and (it) stood erect, the same as a penguin.
"It did not stand like a normal bird. I saw it for a couple of minutes. It was stationary. It did not move."
Cecil hurried into the school and told his teacher about it. When they came out it was gone. It was when he told his parents about "the big bird" that another aspect of the strange events that had descended on the region, was revealed.
His parents told Cecil that it was "a giant bird" that had scared Mr. Smith, their terrified neighbour who had sort refuge at their house. It seemed that the neighbour had seen something "appear out of the darkness." The "apparition" turned out to be a huge "bird" on the ground. It flapped its wings towards the terrified neighbour.
These subsequent developments put a bizarre interpretation on the strange night noises heard earlier, on 2 consecutive nights. While the noises were heard there was a strong smell of poultry in the air! On the morning after the noises Cecil had found 2 big feathers, each about 2 to 3 feet long, just down from the house. "They were not feathers from any bird I had ever seen", Cecil declared. "They were a speckly type of feather. I don't think there was much colour attached to them that I can remember."
There were a number of other sightings of "giant birds".
Cecil and one of his brothers were coming off the mountain near the house, in daylight, when they heard what seemed to be "talking and laughing." Cecil described what followed. "When we looked up (the noise) was coming from 2 giant birds soaring overhead. They were much bigger than any bird we had ever seen. They seemed to be gliding with wings outstretched. The wing span was bigger than the length of the body." They were thought to be at least 3 or 4 times bigger than a wedged tail eagle - the biggest type of bird seen in their area.
"They were monsters ...making sounds like unintelligible conversation," Cecil said.
Cecil's sister, Dorothy, recollected that their other sister and one of their parents had gone out on to the verandah one night and observed "this bird ...hopping down the hill, with its wings flapping." "A huge, big bird," Dorothy recollected.
On another night, they were out on a side landing of the house and saw "a dull type of a light - a round thing" - go across. "It took some time about it," Dorothy said.
Cecil recollected that there was a story in the local paper referring to other people reporting seeing these birds. He thought Nobbs may have been the name of one of them. To date I have been unable to completely search the local papers.
THE MAN IN WHITE
One night the family had gone over to the neighbours. Tom remained behind at the house. "A strange man" dressed in "a white suit" arrived at the neighbours house. Everyone thought he was with the others. He didn't speak to anyone and only stayed for a short time.
Back at the house, Tom was in darkness. He heard a noise in the house and sang out, "Who is there!" Tom got out of bed in time to see someone in a white suit disappearing into the darkness!
The real mystery here was how the stranger had managed to visit both houses on a pitch black night (if indeed we are dealing with only one stranger in white). There were 2 large creeks to cross and "the only way to cross them was by planks that we had placed in a certain spot and also one big stream that could only be crossed by steadily picking your way over a fallen tree trunk." The stranger was never seen or
heard of again. I wonder if he was wearing Wellington type boots with cross-mark soles?
REFLECTIONS
Cecil ended his recollections with the following comments to me.
"I could probably fill up another 2 pages on this, but I wont you see, because I will only speak what I can actually verify as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. There's things that happened at that time that I will not and noboby will ever get me to talk about, because I am not sure. I only speak about things I am sure about."
I indicated that he had me tantalised.
Cecil replied, "Oh now, it is very tantalising to... I'll write it all down and if anything ever happens to me, you can have it then. I think you'll out live me. I'll just put your name and address on it and leave it to you. If anything goes wrong you can have it... then you won't be able to come along and pick me to pieces on it."
Cecil also pointed out that his parents brought he and his brothers and sisters up with the following philosophy, "You never did anything wrong. You never told a lie. Everything had to be done right."
The visitor or visitors came and went during 1927 leaving an enduring memory with a 10 year-old boy. The visitor may have briefly returned in 1936 for a performance at a dance at nearby Dumbible. All the people came out of the dance hall to watch it travelling around the sky. It was a lot bigger than a star, a good size street light sized
light, bright white like the landing lights of an aircraft.
In more recent times owners of the property near Fernvale, where "history was made" back in 1927, when the "visitor" came and drew the locals inexorably into a flirtation with an antipodean version of the Twilight Zone, believe in communion with nature. Instead of the property it once was, a more natural locality developed, somewhat like a rainforest. By the turn of the century the property had become run down. Other than the recollections of locals and the land itself, little remains to remind us of the bizarre series of events that haunted the area and touched the life of an ordinary family of the land.
Ostensibly for a few short weeks back in 1927 a cavalcade of strange phenomena had descended upon a small rural community, that knew of nothing like it, before or since.
Reports of disturbances, nocturnal aerial lights, night noises, giant birds, UFO landings, and mystery men have all occurred in various circumstances in more recent times, but rarely in one confined locality and within a very short time frame. The "Mothman" milieu of West Virginia during 1966 and 1967 is one of the few that comes most readily to mind.
The cover of the first edition of "The Mothman Prophecies"
Numerous other reports of giant birds or "birdmen" have been made elsewhere around the world, but to my knowledge this may be the first account in modern times of "winged weirdos" in Australia. A few such "bird" accounts have been linked to UFO activity and animal disturbances, the latter occasionally to the controversial realm of alleged cattle mutilations. Numerous references could be cited but for Cecil McGann such speculations are not very productive. He is reluctant, understandably, to link the UFO reports to the 'big bird' sightings. He felt that there was a possible link between the bird encounters and the missing pig incident. Beyond that he refused to be drawn. Cecil is loath to speculate about the significance of the range of phenomena he and his family witnessed. To him it was an enduring mystery that had puzzled and haunted him for some sixty years.
It is indeed a diverting tale.
During 1999 I reminded Cecil of his offer to write down the things he had not talked about. Late in 1999 he sent me a typed document he entitled "Terror on the Tweed" - "my story in full". In it he described the things he had not originally told me about, because he was uncertain of them.
I have included Cecil's 1999 document in full (with my comments as footnotes):
Introductory Remarks
It was not until I was discharged from the A-l-F in 1946 after serving
five years in Australia and overseas in the Pacific that I first became
aware of such things as U-F-O,s and my mind wandered back to the episode
I am about to relate, how could I ever forget such an event, even though I
was only ten years old it had stuck in my memory and so I decided to get
in contact with someone who knew something about them, as I had written
my story before then and so I eventually got in touch with a Mr Chalker
and even travelled to Sydney to meet and talk to him about the episode
and after some consultation it was agreed that he give the story to a.
person in Chicago in America where it was published in a magazine
similar to Readers Digest , but I made it clear to Mr Chalker that I had
a lot more to the story that I had not included, and so now I would like
to present to you the full story, and in doing so I want to stress that
we were people born and bred in the bush and were well accustomed to the
noises that happened in the night, and as the nights were clear of smog we
were quite accustomed to falling stars or meteors and there was no flying
planes to distract our attention.
And so to my story in full,
TERROR ON THE TWEED
My parents had moved from Cootamundra in N -S-W, to the Tweed to take up
share farming and they settled on a farm appr. four miles from Murwillumbah
which is situated on the Tweed River and the farm was at a place called
Fern Vale, south east of the town, and a beautiful area of rolling hills and
lovely clear streams and we milked about seventy cows and separated the
milk which used to feed the pigs and the cream was sent to the Dairy fact-
-ory to be made into butter and we were paid on the amount we produced at
the rate of eight shillings in the pound for our labour half share for pigs
which was a very meagre existence for a family of eight, then I was born in
1917 and two sisters came later, and so life went on until the year 1927 and
that was when strange things began to occur.
We were sitting at the back of our house in the cool and the house was on
the crest of a hill with a ridge running back to some large mountains and
the milking area was about two hundred yards from the house towards the
mountains, and we often sat out the back in the cool as it was mostly too
hot inside and it was then that we first seen the light as it rose from
behind the hills and travelled along the back of a. large mountain, it was
was moving very fast then it would stop and reverse, then it would go slow
or zigzag and so we watched for sometime before it disappeared behind the
hills, and so Dad decided that it was a dancing star, and off to bed we went.
The next morning it was the topic of our conversation, but we had no answer
except that it may have been a falling star, but then we had seen too many
of them to be confused into thinking that, but what we didn't know was what
was about to eventuate.
The cattle were very restless as were the other animals on the farm, and
the dogs refused to budge from under the house whereas they always went
and got the cattle when told to do so but they refused to move and the
cattle who were normally docile were very agitated and moving around and
around quite restless, but we milked them but like they normally did was to
head out into the day paddock they refused to go and just hung around the~
cow yard but by the time for milking in the afternoon they had settled
down and all seemed o-k as was for a day or two until one afternoon about
two p-m we heard the cows coming home at a rate of knots, bellowing and
also our neighbours cattle were all heading to their yard and we went down
to see what was going on and the cows were looking back to the hills and
milling around with their eyes blazing and we got very little milk that
afternoon, but the cows would not leave the yards and we let them into a
small enclosure around our house where they settled down for the night.
There was no way we could coax them to go out into our big day paddock
from then on and we allowed them to graze in the paddocks around the house
but there was one cow missing off whom we could not find
and so I walked out onto the ridge in our day paddock to see if she had
ventured out there during the day and a strange scene confronted me as I
looked down the ridge as there were two objects, one down on a small flat at
the bottom or a ridge and one amid bushes halfway down the ridge and they
were moving about and looked like small elephants, but as we know now they
could have been wearing space suits, but it caused quite a laugh when I got
back and told my family, but as you will see later in my story that what I
saw not as my family implied but something to do with the whole affair.
The very next morning we found three of our fat pigs dead but only two bodies
we kept our pigs in a wooden shed with eight ft high railings around to
stop them getting out., there were two bodies laying on the floor that had
marks on their necks but no sign of blood, one pig was missing but in the
afternoon at milking time the cows were milling around an area near the dairy
and when we looked there were signs of blood and hair on the grass, and so
the pig must have been taken up a very steep hill and slaughtered but how
anyone could lift a pig that size out of its pen and get it up there is a
mystery.
It was about this time that I began to hear strange noises in the night and
as I slept on an open verandah with just a railing around and steps down to
the ground and having lived in the bush I knew all the noises that went on
with birds and animals, but this was altogether different it was a noise I
had never heard before and I went into Dad's room and woke him up to come
and listen, it sounded like a Wroomp, one would go and then another would
answer in a different place, well Dad was as bewildered as I was as he said
it was something new to him and he lived and worked in the bush all his
life but it seemed as if they were calling to each other and this went on
for a few nights and climaxed later as I will tell in my story.
We had milked the cows in the afternoon and put them in a paddock close to
the house for the night and all was well as we started milking next morning
but two were missing and after we finished milking dad sent me to the top of
the hill where they had been to see if I could find them and looking across
into the day paddock I could see the two cows lying on the side of a ridge
when we went out we found that they had crashed through the fence where they
were for some unknown reason and were both lying close together on the ridge
we contacted our boss who got a vet from town and a1ong with our neighbours
who were all interested in what had happened but no verdict was reached but
the vet did say as he was leaving that it looked as if they were scared to
death, but the strange thing was that this was the ridge where I had seen
the two objects previously, so we burnt the bodies and mended the fence and
so that was another chapter of the saga.
And that night around midnight we heard a car coming into our property from
the main road, now I want to point out that none of our neighbours had cars
nor did any other people we knew as they all used horse and sulkies, and we
all got out of bed and went out into the pitch dark to see who it could be
and it progressed down the hill and over the creek and up the hill to around
the side of the house someone opened the gate and it proceeded on where there
was no road went past out shed and down to a gate into our cow yard it went
through that gate down through the cow yard and then through a gate at the
bottom. or the yard out into a paddock alongside of a hill for some distance
to' the bottom of a ridge where it stopped and turned its lights off and after
about ten minutes it turned around and came back closing the gates as they
came and when they got to where we were we sang out to them but got no reply
as they drove off out onto the road and away, a very strange event as how did
they know how to open the gates so easily as they all had different catches
so that the horses could not open them but it all seemed so easy and even
the people we knew would not have known and to drive where they did, but to
the best of our knowledge there seemed to be two occupants in the car but it
was too dark to really tell.
We all went over to our neighbours for an evening except one of our brothers
and it was very difficult to cross two creeks to get there and home but
when we arrived there was a person of whom no one knew also arrived and he
had a white suit on and each family thought that he belonged to the other
but he moved around the place between us and then disappeared but at the
same time our brother at home had gone to bed and he heard a noise out the
back of the house and he sang out, Who is there? And got out of bed to see
someone in a white suit disappearing into the darkness. Now if it was the
same person how would he get from where we were as there was only one way
you could cross the creeks and that was by walking along logs and you would
need a light in the dark, so there must have been two, and it was very odd to
see anyone in a white suit in that area as none wore that type of outfit
in those days.
A neighbour who lived past our place had been to a P&C meeting and was on
his way home and Dad heard someone shouting out, Help, help, down the bottom
of the hill from our house and Dad went down to see what was wrong and
he helped our friend up to our house and he was in a terrible state and
he stayed at our place and went home next morning and he and his wife
lost no time in leaving the district, but both mum and dad would not tell
us what happened but we found his galoshes as we went to school next
morning they were stuck in the mud where he had taken off.
I had almost reached school one morning when I looked up and seen an
enormous bird on top of a big dead tree his coat was shining in the sun
and he stood straight upright an would have been at least six feet tall
I ran to the school to tell my teacher to come and see it but when we
got there it was gone, But my brother and I were coming down off a hill
at the back of our place when we heard someone talking and laughing in the
sky above us and when we looked up there were two giant birds high in the
sky nothing like we had ever seen before and they seemed to be conversing
with each other. Mum later told me that our neighbour had been scared by -
by a huge bird, and there were reports from other people of sightings.
We eventually found the cow that was missing right out at the very back of
our day paddock behind some bushes, completely mad and in a bad state and
when she seen us she went straight through a three barbed wire fence and
away into those peoples property and was later tracked down and shot, we
also found a half grown pig who also was completely mad and we had to kill
it, but when we enquired around no one had lost any pigs.
My brother and I had been over helping our neighbours with their milking
in the afternoon as they were running late and we stayed with them until
late into the night and as we wended our way home and reached the flat at
the bottom of the hill going up to our house we seen this large dull light
coming from the south east and after it passed over us it lit up and bathed
the whole area like daylight and it went around a hill at the back of our
dairy, my brother said it was a meteor but I said meteors don't turn corners
and so off to bed but next morning after milking the cows I went up
on to the hill and looked to where it went in my opinion and there on the
crest of a hill in our day paddock was a round ring of brown grass and so
we all went out to have a look and our neighbours who were watching to see
if we had got home the night before came over to see as they had seen this
object and watched come to earth and then the glow died out. Well it covered
an area about fifty feet in diameter and the grass was not burned but it
was singed, and quite a few people came to see it even our boss who decided
that it was just grass dying out even though we tried to tell him different
and his theory was put to rest as after a couple of weeks it grew back to
green again.
We had retired for the night and this strange noise started again. WROOMP.
WROOMP, and kept getting louder and louder and everyone got out of bed and
Dad lit the kerosene lamps we had and we all went out onto our front
verendah to try and figure out what was causing the strange noise as it
kept up louder and louder and it was pitch black outside and we could not
see a thing and so we waited and waited and eventually it died down and
we eventually went to sleep.
Next morning I walked down to where the noise was coming from the night
before and I found two very large feathers about three feet long and
were white in colour with black specks and black rings on them I had seen
nothing like them before and ever in my life time and I left them on the
farm and were still there when I left years later. When Mum came down to
the milking she mentioned that there were some muddy footprints through
the house like she had never seen before but she had wiped them up before
anyone else could get to see them, but she said that they didn't seem to be
footprints of a human but had crossbars.
Well you would think that that would be all, well that was the last of any
incidents but not for me as a large swelling came up on my groin like a
huge boil with a yellow top on it and I became very sick and was taken to
the hospital where I was diagnosed as having, yellow jaundice and rheumatic
fever and so I lay in the hospital for a long time and got no better and
so the doctors told my parents that it would be just as well to take me
home as they could do nothing else for me as i was past any help, and so
I was taken home to the farm to die. Now the cattle inspector used to call
and see me if he was riding past as we were good mates and one afternoon
when he called he could not find me in bed and he went down to where they
were milking and told them and they found me in a large wardrobe which
meant that I could walk again and from then on I improved and eventually
recovered. I do not know if it could be contributed to the previous events
but it seemed strange that it happened straight after the visit of the
strange things that made the noise in the night.
In conclusion I would like to state that it seemed strange to me that
there were two of each, two birds, two men and two that I saw in what
seemed to be space suits, but the car in the night was a remarkable event
as to have came and gone where they went through all of the gates and
over the roads and rough ground in the middle of the night was amazing
and I would like to add that this is not a story but real facts of
events that occurred to us in our young life on the farm, and something
that is not easily to forget.
I am indebted to Cecil McGann for coming forward to share his unusual experiences.
Cecil's account of his daylight observation of apparent beings in "spacesuits" is fascinating. He described them as looking like "small elephants".
In this context it is perhaps worthwhile to describe the following oddity from the north-eastern Sydney suburb of Narrabeen.
On April 3rd, 1968 April 3rd Mrs Mabel Walsh was driving her nephew John to Newport, travelling along the Wakehurst Parkway beside Narrabeen Lakes. They were travelling at about 45 mph at about 1.15 p.m. when they both saw a strange creature standing with its feet in shallow water.
"It was a bit over 4 feet tall, with dark grey, tough leathery skin, like an elephant's. It had small front legs and walked on its hind legs, which were thick and round like an elephant's.
"It ambled out of the lake and ran into the scrub. It had a strange shuffling walk, but was quite fast. It shocked me. It was a peculiar looking thing. I've never seen anything like it. We saw it only for a few seconds".
"I stopped the car, but had to wait for traffic to pass before I could back up but the thing had gone. We were in a hurry. We wanted to have a swim. Then I had to get John to the airport and go home for tea before going to gemology classes. I didn't have time to call anyone and check on it.
"I didn't notice a tail or ears, but it had small eyes and smaller front legs or arms. It's head reminded me of an ant eater's. Its trunk was rigid, squared off at the end and stuck down and out at an angle".
About a fortnight later there was a rash of UFO sightings over Sydney. Slow moving, star-like objects moving west to east, were seen from several suburbs between 6 and 6.35 p.m. on April 16th. On April 20th many people throughout Sydney saw a bright object suddenly appear. It first was a dull orange in colour but then as it descended, it changed to a brilliant blue.
It would probably be erroneous to speculate that the unknown creature reported above was related in someway to UFOs. There is no direct connection evident, and because the creature or one like it was seen again in the area, it would probably be more correct to suggest that the creature was an unknown species perhaps local to that area.
During 1971 a lady was awoken by a terrible gurgling noise but saw nothing. Two fishermen in a boat, saw something by the light of a kerosene lamp. It had a trunk like an elephant and was walking on the water with its back legs. It was described as being grey in colour.
Sketch of Mrs. Walsh's Narrabeen Lakes creature
During the late 1970s with nothing better to do, I spent a number of evenings loitering around the Narrabeen Lakes environs checking out the areas involved in these stories. Unfortunately no "elephant" humanoids were seen and I was not able to determine any substance to a prosaic "elephant" connection.
Cecil's account of his illness in the wake of the strange events of 1927, lead me to highlight the following episode that occurred a few years later. The child in that experience reported blistering after the encounter.
A fifty year old man recounted in 1974, the story of his encounter with a mini-UFO back in 1932 or 1933, near the town of Nambour, in Northern Queensland. He was 8 or 9 at the time, and at about two one afternoon, in about late March or early April, he was playing with some local children. He strayed from them and went over to a nearby hillock, which was surrounded by a small body of water:
"....I put both hands up in front of me and parted this tall grass to look through. I heard a low humming sound, and saw a round object directly in front of me, about four feet away.
"It looked the same shape as if two ordinary saucers were placed face to face and then turned on their sides ... The colour of the object was the same shade of silver grey as a Canberra bomber looks on a dull, rainy, overcast day ... The size of the object was 12 inches in diameter. It hovered 3 inches above the surface of the water. There was a slight almost imperceptible shiver of the water surface directly below the object as if it was directing a force directly downwards in order to stay in the air ... The waves (of water) were going outward in concentric circles directly below the object...
"...There was a very high speed shiver motion of the object as if a gyro-stabiliser of some kind were keeping it up right.
"As I bent forward to look more closely, the humming sound rose suddenly in pitch and volume, and at the same time a whitish mist begun to form between me and the object, but close to it ...
"At the same time ... I felt a tight feeling in the head and as the noise increased, I let go of the tall grass and stepped back. I could not see it any more, and I felt stunned in the head, but I could still hear it humming behind the tall grass ....
"Soon afterwards, everyone decided to go up to the house, and on the way one girl said suddenly,
"What was that?" Something flew up between those trees. "It was a magpie," someone said. "No it was not," said the first girl.
"I did not see anything, but I knew what it was; it was the object flying off. "That night I noticed large white blisters on both of my hands and I felt out of sorts. Sometime during the night whilst I was asleep most of the blisters burst, and one or two remaining burst during the day and a clear fluid like water came out. I felt better after that..."
Ron Johansen's "Tales of our Times" series also records a fascinating cattle mystery in September 1957 that echoes Cecil McGann's 1927 experience. In fact when I read the story in Volume 7 of the series (published in 1998) I was struck by the similarities in the cattle's bizarre behaviour on Jack Smith's Doon Doon property, which is also in the Tweed district. I spoke with Jack Smith in 2001 and he confirmed the incident. Essentially it was Fernvale 1927 all over again, without the presence of UFOs, strange beings, mystery big birds and mystery men.
Cecil McGann has done an immense service in having the courage of detailing his extraordinary childhood experience in the Tweed of 1927 - the Fernvale "prophecy".
Acknowledgements:
This article would not have been possible, of course, without the testimony and assistance of Cecil McGann. His sister, Dorothy (Dot) Middleton (who passed away in 1991) provided partial support of the 1927 events. I met Cecil at her place in 1986. She also provided the paintings reproduced here. Ron Johansen and his wonderful "Tales of our Times" series were of great assistance in supporting Cecil's story and providing other supportive details and leads. Barry Roach also supported Cecil's story and was my guide to the Fernvale property during my 2001 visit. His family worked the property after the McGann's left it in the early 1940s. Barry also provided the early property and family photos.
References:
Chalker, Bill, "The Terror down under", Fate, September, 1988
Chalker, Bill, "The Oz Files - the Australian UFO Story", 1996
Johansen, Ron, "Tales of our Times", Volume 3 (1994) & Volume 7 (1998)
Has any reader come across anything similar. Australian experiences, in particular, would be most welcome. The author can be contacted at P.O. Box 42, West Pennant Hills, NSW, 2125, Australia
Regards Jimi
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- Jul 30, 2001
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See attached file for the whole article and Beckjord's unrelated letter.
What makes me wonder about beckjord for the amount of time he spends complaineing that people who chalange his veiwpoint arn't as academicly qualifyed as he is he apears to tout around the fact that he has graduated from uni a lot.
fair enougth one may think but he actully graduated in Sociology which is as far as you can get from the subject of cryptozooology as it is possible to get. So any old bod that has read about it in books is just as knoligable, perhaps more so, in the feild as he claims to be.
fair enougth one may think but he actully graduated in Sociology which is as far as you can get from the subject of cryptozooology as it is possible to get. So any old bod that has read about it in books is just as knoligable, perhaps more so, in the feild as he claims to be.
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- Mar 18, 2004
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That was the most entertaining read in a long time
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- Nov 18, 2003
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- 473
No kidding, entertaining to say the least!!!! Although I did skip some after finding Beckjords' attitude so annoying!
You know what those pics on his site remind me of? We had, years ago, Marlite paneling in the bathroom, in which you could see anything your imagination would let you. It was a white background with gold swirls/splashes. I would be brushing my teeth and see faces, figures, etc ..... think someone else shared the same paneling as a child?! Honestly, you can zoom in on ANY picture and see things..... how dumb do you think we are?!
You know what those pics on his site remind me of? We had, years ago, Marlite paneling in the bathroom, in which you could see anything your imagination would let you. It was a white background with gold swirls/splashes. I would be brushing my teeth and see faces, figures, etc ..... think someone else shared the same paneling as a child?! Honestly, you can zoom in on ANY picture and see things..... how dumb do you think we are?!
Beckjord's site is no longer available. http://www.godaddy.com/sites.html :nooo:
:nooo:
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2002
- Messages
- 19,407
Its a conspiracy - checking through the archived versions:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.beckjord.com/
We see that the last page contained an anti-Kerry rant which wasn't there before:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040315054044/http://www.beckjord.com/index.html
and then BOOM!!!!
There are dark forces at work.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.beckjord.com/
We see that the last page contained an anti-Kerry rant which wasn't there before:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040315054044/http://www.beckjord.com/index.html
and then BOOM!!!!
There are dark forces at work.
A
Anonymous
Guest
Just an observation, on a message board devoted to all things Fortean a man stumbles in with something Really Odd and everyone goes apes**t. Apparently there is a difference between what is Odd and what is Too Odd. He actually made a good point. Is it possible to be seen while having an OOBE? The posters seem to be able to accept the premise that an OOBE is possible. They don't seem as open to the idea that you can be seen while having one. This reminds me of the people that think the moon landing was a hoax. They don't believe it is possible to visit another planet...but accept without question the idea of invisible signals beaming in to their living room and making pictures on their tv sets. It's just what level of weirdness you have become immune to. Then of course like all good Erik threads it degenerates into name calling and bad manners all around. The reason he is able to highjack boards is because everyone responds to him so negatively. This is not hard to do.... It's like a sociological experiment... or a car wreck...you just can't look away!Anyway, as someone who has had a series of unexplained experiences with something that might be called Sasquatch I actually AGREE with him. It IS too odd to understand. It IS a paranormal experience, which is not to say it is unnatural or not of this planet. (Read Keel, for example.) I think some of his issues arise from the fact that when you experience something unexplained (unexplainable) you can become preoccupied with it in a very unhealthy way.
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Numenorian said:
I agree, it's an interesting point, and one well worthy of further discussion, but I think the sticking point for many was the way Becks just steamed in shouting "I'm Mothman!", and then proceeded to get in one of his strops with anyone who dared to question or take the mickey (I made a particulaly facile joke of it, I admit, but his witty response that my flies were apparently open didn't exactly inspire confidence.) It's not the first time he's done that here either, and being brutally honest, a lot of the theories and "evidence" put forward on his website (he sees little Bigfoots everywhere!) is a bit barking, though presented as fact, and woe betide anyone who disagrees with him!
A
Anonymous
Guest
since nobody asked
Hands up here anyone who has had an OOBE.
Hands up here anyone who has had an OOBE.
A
Anonymous
Guest
dear ruff and ready
you can't use a fiction to prove or disprove facts
____________________
Never laugh at a live dragon
you can't use a fiction to prove or disprove facts
____________________
Never laugh at a live dragon
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It was Beckjord.