Children's Encounter With Odd Humanoid (Isle Of Wight; May 1973)

[BS3]

Interesting, especially as the words were apparently in a bit of a random order. Just re-reading the BUFORA report and Sam states he has a 'camp" he goes to on the mainland, could this be some sort of medical set-up at Portsmouth naval base?

There was the very significant Haslar hospital.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

So was the weird microphone on a lead a 1970s form of an electrolarynx:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolarynx

Apparently these were battery operated and "the most common device is a handheld, battery-operated device pressed against the skin"

 

[BS3]

So was the weird microphone on a lead a 1970s form of an electrolarynx:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolarynx

Apparently these were battery operated

That's an extremely good call actually.

It seems perhaps odd that 'Sam' would have been carrying this stuff round with him but, perhaps as an ex military man, he was a practical sort of person used to living a self reliant life (after all, he does just seem to have knocked up some furniture for his 'hut'). Such a thing might have been useful to keep around for the occasional face to face conversation.

Perhaps he'd just been talking to the two workmen, hence why they ignored him from that point.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

So we have a Korean war veteran, possibly a colour sergeant, with severe burn wounds who is being treated at Haslar hospital but perhaps understandably prefers a somewhat hermit existence on the island. He has gloves and wooden splints to protect his burn dressings, wears a burns mask and uses an electrolarynx to talk.

These days we have a much more positive approach to the disabled, but that wasn't always the case in the 1970s, remember the 'spastic child' collecting boxes?

 

[BS3]

So we have a Korean war veteran, possibly a colour sergeant, with severe burn wounds who is being treated at Haslar hospital but perhaps understandably prefers a somewhat hermit existence on the island. He has gloves and wooden splints to protect his burn dressings, wears a burns mask and uses an electrolarynx to talk.

Indeed, or was just badly disfigured enough that the children could only describe his facial features in such a strange way - as discussed upthread it would be filtered by their own expectations.

The 'wooden antennae' on the hat don't have any obvious explanation but maybe exaggeration was in play too.

 

[BS3]

Again, I think it's understandable that such a person might have spent some time talking to two kids - once they'd got over his strange appearance. Most adults would not have given a couple of children the time of day, after all. It provides a bit of context for the experience.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Of course, this does mean the children were telling the truth - as they saw it through their innocent eyes. Perhaps in later life the girl understood what she had seen? Something to reflect upon when considering the Wollaton Park gnomes and other accounts

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Indeed, or was just badly disfigured enough that the children could only describe his facial features in such a strange way - as discussed upthread it would be filtered by their own expectations.

The 'wooden antennae' on the hat don't have any obvious explanation but maybe exaggeration was in play too.

Perhaps callipers of some sort to support his dressings/plastic surgery?

Well overall it is a good theory and makes the most sense if we are to believe the children were being honest/ were not hallucinating. However, Sam does sound very much like a 1970s scarecrow and Wurzel Gummidge was first shown on tv in the 1950s. It is still possible they came across such a scarecrow and the girl invented a story about him for her little brother, hence why she could reveal every detail but the boy was rather tongue-tied

 

[BS3]

Of course, this does mean the children were telling the truth - as they saw it through their innocent eyes. perhaps in later life the girl understood what she had seen? Something to reflect upon when considering the Wollaton Park gnomes and other accounts

I think this is the central point - the question "why would they make such a thing up?" The simplest answer is that they didn't - it actually happened much as they had said. It's just that subsequent remembering, perhaps aided by self-reinforcing discussion among the witnesses immediately after the experience, exaggerated things a bit (eg transformed a man's merely strange, rather immobile face into the bizarre 'mask' they recalled). The rest can perhaps be explained by adults then hearing the story and putting their own spin on it. But in many ways it was essentially 'true' if we accept this possible explanation.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Scarecrow Sam, a children's book published in 1970:

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780893752873/Sam-Scarecrow-First-Start-Easy-Reader-0893752878/plp

Look at his colours, cheeks, gloves...

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Here is a video of the book, note the small building/barn in the background with a door but no windows on the sides:

I will be the first to admit not all the details add up, for example he has the right number of fingers, but he does have a head that sits on his shoulders, a white face, a hat, straw sticking out the top of the hat, rags for clothes, a mouth that doesn't open or talk....

 

[staticgirl]

Here is a video of the book, note the small building/barn in the background with a door but no windows on the sides:

I will be the first to admit not all the details add up, for example he has the right number of fingers, but he does have a head that sits on his shoulders, a white face, a hat, straw sticking out the top of the hat, rags for clothes, a mouth that doesn't open or talk....

It might be that in meeting a hermit or gentleman traveller with the sort of disabilities you mention they fell back on what they had seen in a book to try and describe and make sense of him. It all sounds rather poignant, I had not heard of this incident before.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

It is interesting that Sam is seen fumbling a book when they first meet him and you have a children's book with a scarecrow named Sam, almost like a dream metaphor.

She didn't tell her father about the experience for three weeks, so it is possible they met the disabled veteran and she then had a vivid dream in which he was Sam the Scarecrow and all the details got a bit mixed up...?

 

[Earthly oddity]

It might be that in meeting a hermit or gentleman traveller with the sort of disabilities you mention they fell back on what they had seen in a book to try and describe and make sense of him. It all sounds rather poignant, I had not heard of this incident before.

Ha ha - @WeirdExeter did what I did. I found a different video though!

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Ha ha - @WeirdExeter did what I did. I found a different video though!

There was some 1990s character by the same name, that one...?

 

[Earthly oddity]

There was some 1990s character by the same name, that one...?

No, it was just a different person reading the same book....

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Had a look on Google maps. Of course there has been a lot of development around that area over the past 50 years. However, there is still a lot of common land by the airport that must have remained untouched, and there is a footpath, a stream and a bridge that lead towards a rough area close to the airport perimeter fence, so it's a possible match.

Also the area is known as Berry Hill, and of course Sam performed a trick with a berry. The event took place in early-May, so before any wild blackberries or other berries would have been ripe, and this despite his claim to be living on berries that he "picked in the afternoon". So perhaps another dream metaphor...? That the berry picking takes place in the afternoon is quite specific and suggests to me an earlier memory of going berry picking as a family, perhaps?

I think that she waited three weeks to tell her father, and that the boy had said nothing in the meantime, makes me think something triggered her memory of the event. After all, weeks seem an eternity when you are that age. Perhaps that trigger was a very vivid dream?

 

[Kondoru]

It all sounds very believable.

 

[Sollywos]

@BS3 and @WeirdExeter and others, I'd never heard of the case before what an intersting discussion you've been having getting to the bottom of it.

This was a case that BUFORA and also forum member Jenny Randles became involved with and Jenny wrote about in "Alien Contact" that she co-authored with Paul Whetnall (1981):

However in case you missed message 7 upthread she does now regret having published it ( more fully explained in the rest of the post)

The family did okay out of it and were happy for the book to appear and I made sure they read it all as it was created so they could ask for changes. But in retrospect it is the one book I would rather not have published.

 

[BS3]

Had a look on Google maps. Of course there has been a lot of development around that area over the past 50 years. However, there is still a lot of common land by the airport that must have remained untouched, and there is a footpath, a stream and a bridge that lead towards a rough area close to the airport perimeter fence, so it's a possible match.

Also the area is known as Berry Hill, and of course Sam performed a trick with a berry. The event took place in early-May, so before any wild blackberries or other berries would have been ripe, and this despite his claim to be living on berries that he "picked in the afternoon". So perhaps another dream metaphor...? That the berry picking takes place in the afternoon is quite specific and suggests to me an earlier memory of going berry picking as a family, perhaps?

I think that she waited three weeks to tell her father, and that the boy had said nothing in the meantime, makes me think something triggered her memory of the event. After all, weeks seem an eternity when you are that age. Perhaps that trigger was a very vivid dream?

This is a good point - I have no doubt that the 'real' 'Sam' (if there was one) wasn't actually living on berries, but in early May there would be nothing to forage anyway.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

@BS3 and @WeirdExeter and others, I'd never heard of the case before what an intersting discussion you've been having getting to the bottom of it.



However in case you missed message 7 upthread she does now regret having published it ( more fully explained in the rest of the post)

Thanks for posting this link.

I had understood Jenny’s statement of regret to be in connection with the Sunderland case and not the Sam IoW case but now I’m not sure…?

 

[BS3]

Thanks for posting this link.

I had understood Jenny’s statement of regret to be in connection with the Sunderland case and not the Sam IoW case but now I’m not sure…?

I had read this as referring to the Sunderland family. I think as far as the IoW case goes, it pretty much stands on the narrative as reported in the BUFORA magazine - as JR pointed out it happened prior to her involvement with BUFORA and could not really be reinvestigated, presumably partly as the family had taken steps to keep their identity private.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

I had read this as referring to the Sunderland family. I think as far as the IoW case goes, it pretty much stands on the narrative as reported in the BUFORA magazine - as JR pointed out it happened prior to her involvement with BUFORA and could not really be reinvestigated, presumably partly as the family had taken steps to keep their identity private.

Thanks, we can still have faith in Sam

I had read elsewhere (Northern UFO News?) that Randles had become increasingly exasperated with the Sunderland family following the initial investigation:

http://www.ignaciodarnaude.com/avis...hetnall,UFOs 1976,Wales,U.K.-2,FSR79V25N4.pdf

Link to BUFORA journal here which contains a detailed analysis of the situation from Randles:

http://bufora.org.uk/documents/BUFORABulletinNo.22Jul1986.pdf

 

[BS3]

Indeed, 'Sam' stands on his own merits I think.

The problem now is that retellings of the case increasingly distort what happened. Here's a typical in depth article - remember, the only source we actually have for this event is the BUFORA article - anything else is elaboration. While the author accuses Norman Oliver (the BUFORA investigator) of making suggestions founded on "nothing more than his imagination", they themselves do things like characterising 'Sam' as a "robot clown", neither of these terms the children used; 'Sam' was, to them, clearly a "ghost". There are other distortions and speculations based on an inability to get beyond the idea that children might have simplistically described what they saw - not considering that the children might have been in their own way accurate, but that adults had then put their own spin on what the children described. They were kids, so they had to have been describing a 'clown', right?

In this thread I think we've managed to work out a different way of looking at it that is plausible and also gives the witnesses some credit. That bit of conversation that the author of the piece above presents as strange:

Given how white the being's face was, the children asked if they were human. The clown chuckled and said no

suddenly falls into place, perhaps, if you imagine it rewritten like this:

Given how white the burnt man's face was, the children asked him if he was human. The man chuckled to himself and said "no".

 

[Paul_Exeter]

I do feel the idea of a burnt war veteran living rough on the island but close to the hospital on the mainland makes a lot of sense. The living on foraged berries is a nice romantic illusion to tell the children, in reality he was probably raiding commercial greenhouses.

Sam the Scarecrow was published in Spanish as well as English and so probably sold quite well and perhaps distributed widely to schools and libraries, and this book may have some role in shaping the memory of the event by the time she told her father three weeks later. There are some notable similarities. But as you remind us, the character was described as a ghost and not a scarecrow come-to-life and so perhaps not.

So, would there be anyone alive today who would remember this semi-vagrant, disfigured war veteran inhabiting the area?

 

[EnolaGaia]

... I think that she waited three weeks to tell her father ...

Yes. The Sandown Clown encounter was in early May 1973. According to the girl's father (the informant to the BUFORA article author) she first told him the story on 2 June.

The seminal BUFORA article wasn't published until the beginning of 1978.

 

[maximus otter]

A little context re the mysterious "Sam":

The area from a 1961 OS map:

The children are described in the BUFORA report as playing "...near Lake Common, Sandown...", which isn't particularly helpful as the Common covers a large area. There is, however, a Lake Common Road, which runs N to S, petering out into woodland at its north end. This seems to align nicely with the start of a footpath marked on a Victorian 25" to the mile OS map. I've starred this point on a more modern OS map:

The footpath marked on the Victorian map follows a course roughly towards the WNW and the Isle of Wight airport, which accords nicely with "Fay's" account:

Line of footpath dotted

1 = North end of Lake Common Road/start of footpath

2 = Footbridge over Scotchells Brook

Runway 23 of the airport at upper left

The footpath continues generally WNW towards where the modern airport lies. Note that - shortly west of the footbridge - the path crosses the line of a Victorian long-range rifle range, between the 600-yard and 500-yard firing points.

A study of the 25"/mile map reveals two other footbridges crossing Scotchells Brook; they are, respectively 2,905 feet NNW of the footbridge marked (1) on the map, and 1,703 feet SSW of it, as the crow flies. I think we can dismiss these as being "Sam's bridge": No footpath leads to the southern one, and it parallels rather than approaches the airport; the northern one has a footpath leading to it, but is far north of the airport.

The relevant 25" OS map covering the area.

maximus otter

 

[maximus otter]

I note that the father of "Fay" was the man who reported his two UFO experiences in the BUFORA article; this wasn't clear to me initially.

Here's a theory:

1. I used to belong to a rifle club that used a 1,000+ yard range. This rifle range was crossed by a public footpath. To comply with the rules - and common sense! - the club was required to post members at the points on each side of the range to (a) Warn members of the public that there was a danger area ahead, and (b) Radio the Range Conducting Officer to order a ceasefire if said MOPs insisted on continuing across the range. Britain's climate being...unpredictable...shelter was provided for the club members so tasked. I can imagine a Victorian rifle club providing a (semi) permanent shelter at the point where the path crossed their line of fire. Suppose that said structure survived the closure of the range and the development of the runway...

2. "Fay" and her chum heard "...a weird wailing noise not unlike an ambulance siren..." Could this have been a siren alerting airport staff to a fire drill?

3. Suppose that (1) and (2) are correct. An airport fireman, dressed in firefighting kit, is stationed on the east side of the runway. Some time had passed - enough for a seven-year-old to have wandered over to see what was happening. Perhaps Mr. Firefighter had slipped off towards the (putative) Victorian hut to have a crafty fag. Having a look around the area, he drops something - his clipboard, with details of the day's exercise? - into Scotchells Brook off the footbridge. Cursing, he wades in to retrieve it. As he emerges, he sees two kids staring wide-eyed at this apparition, perhaps wearing a personal radio and associated antenna, plus a hand mike with PA system.

The kids ask the obvious questions, "Sam" decides to play along...

"Fay" seems to have come from a background not resistant to woo, her father reporting two brushes with high strangeness in the area. "Fay's" encounter, followed by weeks of Chinese whispers with her unnamed playmate before she told her father about it, might well account for this incident.

maximus otter

 

[BS3]

A little context re the mysterious "Sam":

The area from a 1961 OS map:

The children are described in the BUFORA report as playing "...near Lake Common, Sandown...", which isn't particularly helpful as the Common covers a large area. There is, however, a Lake Common Road, which runs N to S, petering out into woodland at its north end. This seems to align nicely with the start of a footpath marked on a Victorian 25" to the mile OS map. I've starred this point on a more modern OS map:

The footpath marked on the Victorian map follows a course roughly towards the WNW and the Isle of Wight airport, which accords nicely with "Fay's" account:

Line of footpath dotted

1 = North end of Lake Common Road/start of footpath

2 = Footbridge over Scotchells Brook

The footpath continues generally WNW towards where the modern airport lies. Note that - shortly west of the footbridge - the path crosses the line of a Victorian long-range rifle range, between the 600-yard and 500-yard firing points.

A study of the 25"/mile map reveals two other footbridges crossing Scotchells Brook; they are, respectively 2,905 feet NNW of the footbridge marked (1) on the map, and 1,703 feet SSW of it, as the crow flies. I think we can dismiss these as being "Sam's bridge": No footpath leads to the southern one, and it parallels rather than approaches the airport; the northern one has a footpath leading to it, but is far north of the airport.

The relevant 25" OS map covering the area.

I note that the father of "Fay" was the man who reported his two UFO experiences in the BUFORA article; this wasn't clear to me initially.

Here's a theory:

1. I used to belong to a rifle club that used a 1,000+ yard range. This rifle range was crossed by a public footpath. To comply with the rules - and common sense! - the club was required to post members at the points on each side of the range to (a) Warn members of the public that there was a danger area ahead, and (b) Radio the Range Conducting Officer to order a ceasefire if said MOPs insisted on continuing across the range. Britain's climate being...unpredictable...shelter was provided for the club members so tasked. I can imagine a Victorina rifle club providing a (semi) permanent shelter at the point where the path crossed their line of fire. Suppose that said structure survived the closure of the range and the development of the runway...

2. "Fay" and her chum heard "...a weird wailing noise not unlike an ambulance siren..." Could this have been a siren alerting airport staff to a fire drill?

3. Suppose that (1) and (2) are correct. An airport fireman, dressed in firefighting kit, is stationed on the east side of the runway. Some time had passed - enough for a seven-year-old to have wandered over to see what was happening. Perhaps Mr. Firefighter had slipped off towards the (putative) Victorian hut to have a crafty fag. Having a look around the area, he drops something - his clipboard, with details of the day's exercise? - into Scotchells Brook off the footbridge. Cursing, he wades in to retrieve it. As he emerges, he sees two kids staring wide-eyed at this apparition, perhaps wearing a personal radio and associated antenna, plus a hand mike with PA system.

The kids ask the obvious questions, "Sam" decides to play along...

"Fay" seems to have come from a background not resistant to woo, her father reporting two brushess with high strangeness in the area. "Fay's" encounter, followed by weeks of Chinese whispers with her unnamed playmate before she told her father about it, might well account for this incident.

maximus otter

I think this also sounds plausible.

One thing this does highlight is that there are several footbridges in the area. This suggests that the reason the father was unable to find the 'hut' when he went to look for himself was that he might have simply looked in the wrong place. If he'd found it then who knows, there might have been no mystery.

I'm actually on IoW in a few weeks for work - might see if I can make time to head over and take a few pictures.

 

[SimonBurchell]

Here's a more detailed (modern) OS map: