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

I don't think it's AI narrated. Sounds like a real woman to me.
 
Just wondering why this topic is in the UFO section?
 
Largely because it was reported by Norman Oliver of BUFORA - partly as the father of the children was quite interested in UFOs. So it's always been filed under ufology.
 
In one of the videos in this thread the narrator explains the link between what the children witnessed and UFO's.

Sorry, I can't remember which video it was.
 
The children's father had a UFO sighting in 1970 and another sighting of something apparently underwater in 1972. The father told Leonard Cramp (once a well-known figure in British ufology) about his family's experiences and Cramp advised him to contact BUFORA. So the UFO link is really one of context.
 
BS3 said:
The children's father had a UFO sighting in 1970 and another sighting of something apparently underwater in 1972. The father told Leonard Cramp (once a well-known figure in British ufology) about his family's experiences and Cramp advised him to contact BUFORA. So the UFO link is really one of context.
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Thanks for explaining that
 
According to the film clip, the kids started to run away in fear but stopped when the alien called out to them.

If I was scared I would not stop for nothing.

This one thing puzzles me about the story.
 
charliebrown said:
According to the film clip, the kids started to run away in fear but stopped when the alien called out to them.

If I was scared I would not stop for nothing.

This one thing puzzles me about the story.
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In genuinely anomalous situations, people react in strange ways - and in some it seems that high strangeness entities can influence the behaviour of the witness - I'm not necessarily saying that's what happened here, just that it is something that arises from witness accounts.

See here from example - Thoughts From Elsewhere thread
 
charliebrown said:
According to the film clip, the kids started to run away in fear but stopped when the alien called out to them.

If I was scared I would not stop for nothing.

This one thing puzzles me about the story.
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A kindly adult voice may have had that effect, however 'creatures' that can talk and lead children away to their fate is also the stuff of folklore and faeries.

That said, this entity was encountered after the father had his own UFO experience and over the years there have been a good number of seemingly sane and rational people who have witnessed bizarre entities and also poltergeist activity sometime after a UFO encounter
 
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kesavaross said:
In one of the videos in this thread the narrator explains the link between what the children witnessed and UFO's.

Sorry, I can't remember which video it was.
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My mistake. It wasn't a video. It was an article I read. I'm sure it was via a link somewhere on this forum but despite searching on this thread and other I can't find it.
 
Have been musing this case again and to my mind Sam's colours are crucial and often not included in drawings such as the Bufora article. I am now even more inclined to believe 'Sam' was inspired in some way by Bubbles the Test Card clown:

"The most iconic image, introduced in 1967 with the advent of colour TV, was called Test Card F. Its designer was a BBC engineer called George Hersee and, for a dummy run, he had included a picture of his eight-year-old daughter, Carole, at the centre of it. The BBC decided that replacing Carole's picture with an adult model was too risky – they needed something timeless, and 1967 fashions weren't exactly built to last. So Carole went into a photographer's studio: the result was the familiar image of a girl with an alice band, playing noughts and crosses with a rather terrifying toy clown, surrounded by mysterious test graphics. Hersee was, unsurprisingly, teased at school and, to her discomfort, the image was used on a daily basis until 1998. Now living in the New Forest with two daughters, she can claim to have had more screen time – around 70,000 hours – than anyone else in British TV history."

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2012/apr/22/the-test-card-girl-and-clown

The child witness therefore could easily have seen Bubbles on a colour tv, even if just in a tv shop. The colours and description of Sam closely match those of Bubbles bar the discrepancy in height. Also "all colours" has a parallel with the first all-colour tv sets, in fact you could say Bubbles was in "all colours".

So if we are to accept the young girl was truthful about what she believed she had witnessed then I feel it was either the recollection of a vivid dream inspired by Bubbles that her young memory confused with a waking memory or they witnessed something so 'alien' that her mind desperately 'clutched' at images from her subconscious to try to explain what she was seeing.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Have been musing this case again and to my mind Sam's colours are crucial and often not included in drawings such as the Bufora article. I am now even more inclined to believe 'Sam' was inspired in some way by Bubbles the Test Card clown:

"The most iconic image, introduced in 1967 with the advent of colour TV, was called Test Card F. Its designer was a BBC engineer called George Hersee and, for a dummy run, he had included a picture of his eight-year-old daughter, Carole, at the centre of it. The BBC decided that replacing Carole's picture with an adult model was too risky – they needed something timeless, and 1967 fashions weren't exactly built to last. So Carole went into a photographer's studio: the result was the familiar image of a girl with an alice band, playing noughts and crosses with a rather terrifying toy clown, surrounded by mysterious test graphics. Hersee was, unsurprisingly, teased at school and, to her discomfort, the image was used on a daily basis until 1998. Now living in the New Forest with two daughters, she can claim to have had more screen time – around 70,000 hours – than anyone else in British TV history."

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2012/apr/22/the-test-card-girl-and-clown

The child witness therefore could easily have seen Bubbles on a colour tv, even if just in a tv shop. The colours and description of Sam closely match those of Bubbles bar the discrepancy in height. Also "all colours" has a parallel with the first all-colour tv sets, in fact you could say Bubbles was in "all colours".

So if we are to accept the young girl was truthful about what she believed she had witnessed then I feel it was either the recollection of a vivid dream inspired by Bubbles that her young memory confused with a waking memory or they witnessed something so 'alien' that her mind desperately 'clutched' at images from her subconscious to try to explain what she was seeing.
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I'm inclined to agree - it was based on a dream. If you look at the original colour Test Card, they actually had 'all colours' displayed around the edge (I think it was something to do with technicians being able to check the colour balance...)
 
catseye said:
I'm inclined to agree - it was based on a dream. If you look at the original colour Test Card, they actually had 'all colours' displayed around the edge (I think it was something to do with technicians being able to check the colour balance...)
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I also feel those wooden splints were a child's solution as to how a doll with floppy limbs might be able to walk and use its arms.

It is unlikely she would have known the TV clown doll was called Bubbles, hence her own name for it.

I have a feeling she told the younger boy about her dream on the walk and it became embellished as they crossed the bridge, saw the hut etc. Quite possibly they also heard a siren and incorporated this as well (described as an ambulance siren)
 
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Paul_Exeter said:
I also feel those wooden splints were a child's solution as to how a doll with floppy limbs might be able to walk and use its arms.

It is unlikely she would have known the TV clown doll was called Bubbles, hence her own name for it.

I have a feeling she told the younger boy about her dream on the walk and it became embellished as they crossed the bridge, saw the hut etc. Quite possibly they also heard a siren and incorporated this as well (described as an ambulance siren)
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I remember being out with friends and hearing a weird noise and the whole bunch of us running away. We basically all giggled ourselves into believing that we 'saw' or experienced something spooky, it was almost like a form of group hypnosis of an event that grew and grew. I bet, if someone had interviewed us afterwards, we could have come up with some story to fill in background and explain our behaviour.
 
Something has suggested itself to me, and it's a bit left-field!

A lot of the descriptions and depictions of imagery, clothing and colouring of the humanoid in the previous pages of this thread and the "I am all colours" phrase made me think of this:

Test Card F

undefined


TCF_centre.jpg


First broadcast on 2 July 1967, and occupying the TV screens every day, the girl in the image, Carole Hersee, currently holds the record for having been on TV more than any other living person - for an estimated total of 70,000 hours or nearly eight years. That also is the case for the clown dolly 'Bubbles'.|

Edited to add: I see from page 6 & 7 that @BeardSprite and several others had this reaction/thought too, and way before me! I would surmise (invoking Wisdom of Crowds) that there's probably 'something' connecting this image to the account(s) of the original encounter.
 
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Having said that, let's look at the description of the entity again, recalling that Norman Oliver is the only source.

- Blue-gloved hands - no, Bubbles doesn't have those
- Yellow pointed hat with round black knob - Bubbles' hat is pointed, but that's about it
- Triangular eyes, brown square nose, yellow lips - well, we've got triangular eyebrows, but again there's still variation
- White face - Bubbles' face is actually pink
- Round markings on cheeks, fringe of red hair - not really seen on Bubbles.

The main point of similarity is the 'green tunic', albeit the entity also has white trousers.

The other thing that always strikes me about this one is that the children never said the figure was a 'clown' or compared it to one, they said it was a 'ghost'. Surely if the effect had been obviously clownlike they would have said so. I'm wondering how much of the 'clown' aspect is actually down to later interpretation (note that nearly all online sources refer to him as the "Sandown Clown" despite the word 'clown' never appearing in the original report) so I think when comparing what the children saw to clowns in the media then I think there needs to be some caution.
 
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This is the same exact situation in the story, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” as Mr.Tumnus lures Lucy to his home, but decides this is wrong and takes her back to the Wardrobe.

I wonder if these children may had read this book, and made up their stories about Sam.

In real life children being lured away usually do not have happy endings.
 
BS3 said:
Having said that, let's look at the description of the entity again, recalling that Norman Oliver is the only source.

- Blue-gloved hands - no, Bubbles doesn't have those
- Yellow pointed hat with round black knob - Bubbles' hat is pointed, but that's about it
- Triangular eyes, brown square nose, yellow lips - well, we've got triangular eyebrows, but again there's still variation
- White face - Bubbles' face is actually pink
- Round markings on cheeks, fringe of red hair - not really seen on Bubbles.

The main point of similarity is the 'green tunic', albeit the entity also has white trousers.

The other thing that always strikes me about this one is that the children never said the figure was a 'clown' or compared it to one, they said it was a 'ghost'. Surely if the effect had been obviously clownlike they would have said so. I'm wondering how much of the 'clown' aspect is actually down to later interpretation (note that nearly all online sources refer to him as the "Sandown Clown" despite the word 'clown' never appearing in the original report) so I think when comparing what the children saw to clowns in the media then I think there needs to be some caution.
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Good rebuttal...!

However, the girl may be remembering the image of Bubbles she saw some time ago, so s regards the hat, no not yellow but there are yellow circles on it. The face is white around the eyes and mouth as described by the witness. Also Bubbles is holding chalk in his hand that a childish imagination might perceive as a microphone. Then you have the tricks that the creature performed that are not unlike those a clown might perform at a children's party, or maybe a larger event requiring a microphone? But perhaps I am clutching at straws here...

So if it wasn't a dream was it a screen memory? Or a child's brain trying to interpret something so alien it had no reference points and therefore retrieved memories from her subconscious? As already stated, there have been a good number of reputable witnesses who have experienced frankly bizarre some time after a UFO experience, entities totally unlike the grass or silver-suited spacemen.

In fact, there is one such case in 'Into The Uncanny' by Danny Robins* that followed the family being pursued by a silent, low-flying red ball of light. A little while later the 16-year-old boy came home late one night to find a large ball in front of his house that then 'transformed' into a tall, incredibly skinny and faceless entity that then stalked off around his house. Intriguingly, there was a follow-up sighting by a postman. Whilst there was no interaction with the entity in this case it was no more rational than Sam. Danny interviews the now adult witness who holds down a responsible job and is convinced what was happened was real ( he even pinched himself).

The father in the Sam case had experienced a similar UFO and had also the bizarre 'sea monster' experience:

https://bufora.org.uk/documents/BUFORAJournalVolume6No.5JanFeb1978.pdf

So you can argue that high-strangeness was afoot here, the same high-strangeness that teleports cows, manifests as ghosts and creatures, plagues house with poltergeist activity and appears as lights in the sky. Ultimately what this case needs is for the witness or close family to come forward all these years later, otherwise unless we find an exact image of Sam in a comic, book or tv show then we are unlikely to get closure.

*buy the book for the whole story, there is more to it than this resume.
 
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With my biggest 'sceptical' hat on, I wonder if there's a genetic component to vivid dreaming and an inability to distinguish dreams from real life on occasion?
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The Sandown case does seem very dreamlike overall. A lot of CE3s in particular seem to incorporate dream imagery, as if they come from the same place as dreams yet the dreamer remains (in some sense) conscious. And yes, why shouldn't the ability to enter this state be something you can inherit?
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Apologies, I must have overlooked your link. I really like the analysis and alternative suggestions for what Sam was or represented, pretty much sums up the case.
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No apology needed but thanks anyway.

I thought it was a reasonable explanation and for me, the most plausible.
 
kesavaross said:
No apology needed but thanks anyway.

I thought it was a reasonable explanation and for me, the most plausible.
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I'm now of the opinion it was either:

a) Rational - a remembered dream/story created whilst walking/combination of both, or

b} Paranormal - high-strangeness associated with the father's UFO and 'sea monster' sightings.

So not a human in 'fancy dress' with possible unethical intentions or a lonely, disfigured man. If it was 'b' then I feel it was along the lines of the Herbert Hopkins visitation mentioned in the link and many other such cases; an interaction with an 'intelligent other' that manifests in a rather bizarre manner
 
Reading through the link above, I found myself wondering - what the hell were the adults doing? These children were on holiday on the Isle of Wight. From this account it sounds as though they were just wandering about, they didn't know the lay of the land, and no adults were present in any way and their experience lasted for well over 30 minutes. I know 1973 was a different time, and children were left to roam more than they are nowadays, but not somewhere where they had no idea where they were or where they were going, and these are, at 7, two quite small children. And presumably, when they did arrive back they didn't mention any of this to the adults who must have been looking for them - they mentioned it to some random 'first man they saw', but not at ALL until three weeks' later to one of the adults who were in charge? Were they not distressed when they got back?

So two children wander off in a strange place, are gone for over 30 minutes and nobody asks when they get back where they had been or what happened?

The more I read about this, the more it has shades of a dream happening that somehow got discussed between the two.
 
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