The Broad Haven Triangle / Ripperston Farm Case

[BS3]

Having said all that, I do note that in his article Evans suggests that Josephine Hewison's sighting on 26 March (the 50 foot aluminium-coloured "jelly mould" in front of her greenhouse) may have been genuinely "paranormal" in the sense that there is nothing that obviously explains it, unlike many of the other incidents.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

The thing is that I guess the witness wouldn't have expected to see welding there at night either. A normal thing seen under unusual circumstances - the ideal conditions for misperception, in other words. However given the presence of things connected with the ROC post that might require welding, or maybe oxyacetyline cutting, it's plausible that some welding could have been going on, even if it wasn't an everyday sort of occurrence.

According to:

https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/broadhaven-roc-post-pembrokeshire-group-dec-07.25167/

... these bunkers used Battleship padlocks:

"Nowadays they are a little dated in technology but still solid as a rock as a high security padlock"

https://www.padlocks.co.uk/products/lever-padlocks/union-battleship-1k11

Can see how a key might get stuck in the mechanism requiring the padlock to be cut or worse still perhaps the Private Pike of the Broad Haven ROC had lost the keys. Certainly a bunker that they were unable to lock shut would represent a significant security risk and potential embarrassment in 1977.

Well, it is a theory, however we should still consider what the witness Rosa believes she saw (abnormally long legs and arms and pointed, faceless heads) and also particular the location she believes this took place i.e. in her field and not by the ROC post. I don't give much weight to finding depressions in the grass etc as these could very well be natural. We also have to consider that the ROC were all retired off once the bunkers were closed and declassified and yet no-one has come forward to spill the beans on what happened that night.

 

[BS3]

It was a bit of an eye-opener to read that the Coombs family had a couple of neighbours, Brian and Caroline Klass (!), living immediately adjacent to them during all this strangeness but that no-one actually sought confirmation from the Klasses of what was going on.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

It was a bit of an eye-opener to read that the Coombs family had a couple of neighbours, Brian and Caroline Klass (!), living immediately adjacent to them during all this strangeness but that no-one actually sought confirmation from the Klasses of what was going on.

You can see the two buildings here:

I suspect from the Evans article that they didn't get along all that well

 

[Robbrent]

Like all the old cases the zone is now completely flooded by theories and so called explanations that it's impossible to investigate by hindsight

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Like all the old cases the zone is now completely flooded by theories and so called explanations that it's impossible to investigate by hindsight

Yet it pulls at me like a magnet, no doubt due to being 8 years old when the whole 'Welsh Triangle' broke in the mainstream press and featured on an 'John Cravens Newsround'. Then a couple of years later Paget's 'Welsh Triangle was one of the first UFO books I ever read. Also, the rural landscape, people, coastline, RAF base and dairy farming in West Wales were very much like my north Devon surroundings at that time.

 

[catseye]

You can see the two buildings here:

View attachment 74286


I suspect from the Evans article that they didn't get along all that well

COMPLETELY off topic, but I love the way the dog is staring at the photographer! I really hope (knowing Border Collies as I do) that he/she had a good sturdy gate between them and the dog.

 

[SimonBurchell]

With thanks to @lordmongrove for finding this online stash of 'Unexplained' magazines, here is the analysis of the so-called Welsh Triangle events by Hilary Evans that I hadn't read for nearly forty years:

https://archive.org/details/the-unexplained-part-44-optimized/page/874/mode/2up?view=theater

It does not make comfortable reading for anyone like my teenage self that took the Peter Paget and Pugh & Holiday books at face value and debunks some of the less credible claims. As regards those Broad Haven schoolchildren who claimed to have seen a cigar-shaped UFO:

View attachment 74212



I don't agree with all her conclusions - especially as regards the entity in the window of Ripperstone Farm being hoaxers* - but this article represents a worthy dose of realism after the national media sensationalised the events.


* There are witnesses to Billy and Pauline Coombes being genuinely frightened and the humanoid/entity did not vanish (do a runner) after it had their attention but lingered for many minutes, even after Billy had rung the farm manager. So given the location several miles from town and the layout of the site, any hoaxers would have had to do a serious amount of trespassing just to reach the farmhouse and therefore there was a significant risk of hoaxers being apprehended either at the scene or whilst making their escape. Much easier to scare some people down in the town.

Just a quick correction - Hilary Evans was a bloke.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

COMPLETELY off topic, but I love the way the dog is staring at the photographer! I really hope (knowing Border Collies as I do) that he/she had a good sturdy gate between them and the dog.

Actually glad you mention that as the dog was in the front room with them that late night when the entity/humanoid/hoaxer in the silver suit and visored helmet appeared at the window. You would expect a farm dog like thetas to go bonkers and be desperate to get out there and have a go but the Coombes report it was instead cowering in the corner of the room with its tail between its legs

 

[Fanari_Lloyd]

Yet it pulls at me like a magnet, no doubt due to being 8 years old when the whole 'Welsh Triangle' broke in the mainstream press and featured on an 'John Cravens Newsround'. Then a couple of years later Paget's 'Welsh Triangle was one of the first UFO books I ever read. Also, the rural landscape, people, coastline, RAF base and dairy farming in West Wales were very much like my north Devon surroundings at that time.

I still find it interesting, too, even after years. I found the Dyfed Enigma book very interesting, too. I do love that part of the world anyway, and used to spend many holidays around there as a child and before the Welsh Triangle news broke.

 

[catseye]

Actually glad you mention that as the dog was in the front room with them that late night when the entity/humanoid/hoaxer in the silver suit and visored helmet appeared at the window. You would expect a farm dog like thetas to go bonkers and be desperate to get out there and have a go but the Coombes report it was instead cowering in the corner of the room with its tail between its legs

I dunno, Collies are very clever dogs. If it had been an ordinary person at the window I would expect it to go bonkers, but the fact it didn't would indicate to me that this was either a person who smelled very weird (chemical suit?) or was not behaving like a human (model/dummy?). Or alien, of course.

My last collie struggled with my friend's son, who is autistic. The lad had body language that the dog couldn't read, which made a dog who was usually very friendly to people behave in an 'alert, but standoffish' way.

 

[BS3]

Yet it pulls at me like a magnet, no doubt due to being 8 years old when the whole 'Welsh Triangle' broke in the mainstream press and featured on an 'John Cravens Newsround'. Then a couple of years later Paget's 'Welsh Triangle was one of the first UFO books I ever read. Also, the rural landscape, people, coastline, RAF base and dairy farming in West Wales were very much like my north Devon surroundings at that time.

Despite the obvious holes, it's a great one as flaps go. It's got underwater bases, the military, bonkers poltergeist stuff, teleporting cows, multiple witness sightings, dog reactions, and sinister, inscrutable silver-clad geeks all over the place. The entities don't so much come in peace as menace people incomprehensibly. I can't help wondering what Keel would have made of it.

 

[BS3]

I dunno, Collies are very clever dogs. If it had been an ordinary person at the window I would expect it to go bonkers, but the fact it didn't would indicate to me that this was either a person who smelled very weird (chemical suit?) or was not behaving like a human (model/dummy?). Or alien, of course.

I assume it was a Border collie; if it had been an actual Welsh collie it would probably have taken the head off whatever was in the window. Beautiful dogs but a bit...harsh

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Despite the obvious holes, it's a great one as flaps go. It's got underwater bases, the military, bonkers poltergeist stuff, teleporting cows, multiple witness sightings, dog reactions, and sinister, inscrutable silver-clad geeks all over the place. The entities don't so much come in peace as menace people incomprehensibly. I can't help wondering what Keel would have made of it.

Great summary.

Although once the tabloids got involved it was always going to turn a bit Silly Season and whilst there are potential rational explanations for much of what went wrong (still not buying the hoaxers beyond the one blatant case), there still remains an element of the unknown at the heart of it and long may that continue. Thankfully we have detailed accounts of what went on nearly 50 years ago and will we ever experience such a flap again or was this a 20th Century phenomenon?

There still remains the lingering possibility that one of the Coombes children will come forward as adults and provide new information. Thus far, we have only heard from the Broad Haven school children as adults sticking to what they believe they saw and Rosa Graville's daughter (Haven Fort hotel sightings) backing up her mother's accounts

 

[BS3]

Great summary.

Although once the tabloids got involved it was always going to turn a bit Silly Season and whilst there are potential rational explanations for much of what went wrong (still not buying the hoaxers beyond the one blatant case), there still remains an element of the unknown at the heart of it and long may that continue. Thankfully we have detailed accounts of what went on nearly 50 years ago and will we ever experience such a flap again or was this a 20th Century phenomenon?

There still remains the lingering possibility that one of the Coombes children will come forward as adults and provide new information. Thus far, we have only heard from the Broad Haven school children as adults sticking to what they believe they saw and Rosa Graville's daughter (Haven Fort hotel sightings) backing up her mother's accounts

I think there's a lot of value in there as an outbreak of Fortean stuff. Even some of the weaker sightings have interesting elements - while Deborah Swan's, as mentioned earlier, was reported by a child out looking for flying saucers, the actual sighting (a small, oddly moving silver football thing) isn't exactly what you'd expect a witness to fabricate under those circumstances.

There's certainly room to question what it was exactly the witnesses were seeing - whether that was mundane stuff, military activity, their own anxieties projected onto the sky and surroundings, or something else. And indeed, whether this process might have been encouraged by anyone beyond eager ufologists.

For me it also has a certain appeal as it all seemed very close to home...something underscored by the rather domestic, cosy quality to a lot of Pugh's book. In childhood UFOs seemed more of an American phenomenon (presumably as nearly all the 'classic' cases in books were located there) so stuff like Pembrokeshire certainly added a frisson of excited anxiety to evening walks home through the Welsh countryside.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

I think there's a lot of value in there as an outbreak of Fortean stuff. Even some of the weaker sightings have interesting elements - while Deborah Swan's, as mentioned earlier, was reported by a child out looking for flying saucers, the actual sighting (a small, oddly moving silver football thing) isn't exactly what you'd expect a witness to fabricate under those circumstances.

There's certainly room to question what it was exactly the witnesses were seeing - whether that was mundane stuff, military activity, their own anxieties projected onto the sky and surroundings, or something else. And indeed, whether this process might have been encouraged by anyone beyond eager ufologists.

For me it also has a certain appeal as it all seemed very close to home...something underscored by the rather domestic, cosy quality to a lot of Pugh's book. In childhood UFOs seemed more of an American phenomenon (presumably as nearly all the 'classic' cases in books were located there) so stuff like Pembrokeshire certainly added a frisson of excited anxiety to evening walks home through the Welsh countryside.

"For me it also has a certain appeal as it all seemed very close to home...something underscored by the rather domestic, cosy quality to a lot of Pugh's book. In childhood UFOs seemed more of an American phenomenon (presumably as nearly all the 'classic' cases in books were located there) so stuff like Pembrokeshire certainly added a frisson of excited anxiety to evening walks home through the Welsh countryside."

So true...! In 1977 I was nine when John Craven featured the sightings on 'Newsround' and my stepbrother and I would dare each other to walk down the lane after dark and beyond the last streetlight where the 'giant spacemen" might get us. Then a couple of years later we went on a caravan holiday to West Wales (Welsh stepdad) but not as far as Dyfed sadly, Still, it was in a local shop that I purchased my copy of Paget's 'The Welsh Triangle'and this further fulled my interest in the case (and some nightmares!). Then as a teenager a small gang of us would go and camp in the local woods and sit around a fire smoking cigarettes (cider too if we were lucky) and discussing these events in hushed tones whilst glancing up at the stars. events that as you rightly state were so 'close to home"...

 

[BS3]

"For me it also has a certain appeal as it all seemed very close to home...something underscored by the rather domestic, cosy quality to a lot of Pugh's book. In childhood UFOs seemed more of an American phenomenon (presumably as nearly all the 'classic' cases in books were located there) so stuff like Pembrokeshire certainly added a frisson of excited anxiety to evening walks home through the Welsh countryside."

So true...! In 1977 I was nine when John Craven featured the sightings on 'Newsround' and my stepbrother and I would dare each other to walk down the lane after dark and beyond the last streetlight where the 'giant spacemen" might get us. Then a couple of years later we went on a caravan holiday to West Wales (Welsh stepdad) but not as far as Dyfed sadly, Still, it was in a local shop that I purchased my copy of Paget's 'The Welsh Triangle'and this further fulled my interest in the case (and some nightmares!). Then as a teenager a small gang of us would go and camp in the local woods and sit around a fire smoking cigarettes (cider too if we were lucky) and discussing these events in hushed tones whilst glancing up at the stars. events that as you rightly state were so 'close to home"...

Yes, this is so close to my own experience, although I was just too young to remember the reporting at the time (earliest news memory in 1978).

Despite the sinister sort of atmosphere, one important thing about this pre-1980s flap is the lack of actual threat. Cattle aren't mutilated; merely teleported. The spacemen do not abduct anyone, just chase (unsuccessfully) after you or stand there with "wiggling fingers" like pantomime villains. They don't travel through walls and enter houses, staring in at the window instead. This is just the right level of creepiness before things went off the rails into government conspiracyland a few years later.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

There was another Welsh school UFO sighting in 1977 that seems to have gone under the radar (and so did the UFO it would seem):

North Wales X Files: UFO spotted over Llandudno Junction primary school​

Pupils and teacher saw orange and silver object skim the roof of Ysgol Maelgwn

"Enquiries were carried out with local emergency services to try and find out what the strange object was.

But no explanation for the close encounter has ever been found.

At the time 11-year-old Stuart Roberts said: “We were doing sums and I looked out of the window and saw this thing shaped like a flying saucer just skimming the roof of the main school building. I shouted ‘what’s that?’.”

The teacher, Ms Williams said: “I and several children looked up in time to see the object disappearing over the roof. It was quite small, about two arms length in width - not big enough to carry a man."

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/north-wales-x-files-ufo-11831267

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Another curious one:

"Mr Jones-Pugh interviewed two young men from Dyfed, scene of many sightings, who on a clear night in January 1975 found some cattle they had gone to collect by tracror, huddled in a tight group at the bottom of the
field. They saw a light shining through a hedge, which rose, moved in their direction hovering briefly 30 feet away and 3 feet above ground. Shaped like a rugby ball 18 inches long, it moved slowly away at an angle"

https://bufora.org.uk/documents/BuforaJournalVolume6No.1MayJun1977.pdf

This was in 1975 and two years later in the same area the Coombes family who kept also cattle were pursued by a brightly-lit, rugby ball shaped UFO of similar dimensions.

 

[Stormkhan]

Reading through this thread, I've suddenly recalled that I'd read about the Ripperston case (somewhere) while I was at Boarding School. At the time, we were in single-occupancy rooms surrounding a grassed quadrangle. Being outside, though under a loggia, to go anywhere - such as loos or dining room - we had to 'brave' the elements.
What I recall was reading about it ... then being freaked out by the idea that I might open my curtains to see a glowing/silver-suited figure peering in!

 

[BS3]

There was another Welsh school UFO sighting in 1977 that seems to have gone under the radar (and so did the UFO it would seem):

North Wales X Files: UFO spotted over Llandudno Junction primary school​

Pupils and teacher saw orange and silver object skim the roof of Ysgol Maelgwn

"Enquiries were carried out with local emergency services to try and find out what the strange object was.

But no explanation for the close encounter has ever been found.

At the time 11-year-old Stuart Roberts said: “We were doing sums and I looked out of the window and saw this thing shaped like a flying saucer just skimming the roof of the main school building. I shouted ‘what’s that?’.”

The teacher, Ms Williams said: “I and several children looked up in time to see the object disappearing over the roof. It was quite small, about two arms length in width - not big enough to carry a man."

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/north-wales-x-files-ufo-11831267

As well as the 1977 school sightings at Herbranston, Broad Haven, Rhosybol and the one above, there was also a sighting that October at Upton Priory school in Macclesfield - David Clarke has written about it.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

As well as the 1977 school sightings at Herbranston, Broad Haven, Rhosybol and the one above, there was also a sighting that October at Upton Priory school in Macclesfield - David Clarke has written about it.

So, some sort of social contagion perhaps based on one initial media report, clandestine operation to test how young children would react to 'aliens' arriving, misidentified earthly craft or the real deal...?

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Another curious one:

"Mr Jones-Pugh interviewed two young men from Dyfed, scene of many sightings, who on a clear night in January 1975 found some cattle they had gone to collect by tracror, huddled in a tight group at the bottom of the
field. They saw a light shining through a hedge, which rose, moved in their direction hovering briefly 30 feet away and 3 feet above ground. Shaped like a rugby ball 18 inches long, it moved slowly away at an angle"

https://bufora.org.uk/documents/BuforaJournalVolume6No.1MayJun1977.pdf

This was in 1975 and two years later in the same area the Coombes family who kept also cattle were pursued by a brightly-lit, rugby ball shaped UFO of similar dimensions.

Everytime I listen to:

"The Covid-19 pandemic has been one of the weirdest things any of us has lived through. But there was another sickness that once stalked the nation and turned things very strange for a while.

In the 1990s Britain was hit by an epidemic of a fatal neurological disease in cows that also killed 178 humans. Science was split between government assurances of safety and dissidents warning of disaster. Trust in officials took a battering. Facts became blurred. And the grisly truth about our global industrialised meat industry was revealed.

30 years on, scientists and activists are still searching for answers to two big questions - where did mad cow disease originally come from and how did humans get infected? This crazy tale of cannibal cows, competing origin theories, and scientific dead ends lives on as the madness continues to spread."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rrhy

... and then come across UFO reports from cattle farms such as this 1975 case, the Coombes and their neighbours and cattle multiations etc I just can't help but feel there is a connection

 

[BS3]

So, some sort of social contagion perhaps based on one initial media report, clandestine operation to test how young children would react to 'aliens' arriving, misidentified earthly craft or the real deal...?

Social contagion probably played some part (not so much "mass hysteria" as suggested by Brian Dunning for that case in Zimbabwe, but perhaps in stimulating a kind of creative or imaginative 'misperception'). Most of those children would have watched Newsround so would have been aware of Broad Haven.

Clarke also suggested the release of Star Wars that year might have been of relevance (although I note it was actually released several months after the sightings).

On the other hand I'm pretty sure the children were at the very least seeing something, rather than simply making it up. At Broad Haven it might well have been an agricultural vehicle but military stuff could maybe explain some of the other sightings in the period.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Social contagion probably played some part (not so much "mass hysteria" as suggested by Brian Dunning for that case in Zimbabwe, but perhaps in stimulating a kind of creative or imaginative 'misperception'). Most of those children would have watched Newsround so would have been aware of Broad Haven.

Clarke also suggested the release of Star Wars that year might have been of relevance (although I note it was actually released several months after the sightings).

On the other hand I'm pretty sure the children were at the very least seeing something, rather than simply making it up. At Broad Haven it might well have been an agricultural vehicle but military stuff could maybe explain some of the other sightings in the period.

I seem to recall Star Wars was being heavily promoted prior to its release and had been released in the US in May of that year (UK was November 1977) but then there weren't actual UFOs in Star Wars. Close Encounters wasn't released in the US until November 1977.

I just feel there is a major clue to all this in that there is no shortage of sheep farming in Wales yet the UFO accounts seem to have focused on those farms that were keeping cattle. BSE (Mad Cow Disease) was first seen in UK cattle just seven years later and science still doesn't know the exact origin (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rrhy) but rather the number of human deaths was thankfully small and so the public lost interest and slaughtering methods were changed.

In fact, writing this has reminded me of a personal connection with all this. In the late 1970s/early 80s my family were friends with a farming family near our home in north Devon. My sister and I used to go and stay on the farm at weekends and during the school holidays and I became good friends with their son (fun times driving tractors and exploring the farm). They had a milking herd and told me in all seriousness they had a UFO sighting from their car whilst on the farm drive (rather like Pauline Coombes). They also produced beef and had bought a bullock from market that turned out to be "mad" but this was in around 1984 before it was understood that meant BSE.

So, were these UFOs actually some sort of clandestine testing programme in response to insider fears about scrapie in sheep, the human form of CJD amongst cannibals and the feed producers grinding up cattle remains from as far away as India* to feed to cattle?


*Back then container loads of cattle remains were being shipped from places like India via the Netherlands until one consignment contained Anthrax and killed a dock worker (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rrhy)

 

[BS3]

I seem to recall Star Wars was being heavily promoted prior to its release and had been released in the US in May of that year (UK was November 1977) but then there weren't actual UFOs in Star Wars. Close Encounters wasn't released in the US until November 1977.

I just feel there is a major clue to all this in that there is no shortage of sheep farming in Wales yet the UFO accounts seem to have focused on those farms that were keeping cattle. BSE (Mad Cow Disease) was first seen in UK cattle just seven years later and science still doesn't know the exact origin (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rrhy) but rather the number of human deaths was thankfully small and so the public lost interest and slaughtering methods were changed.

In fact, writing this has reminded me of a personal connection with all this. In the late 1970s/early 80s my family were friends with a farming family near our home in north Devon. My sister and I used to go and stay on the farm at weekends and during the school holidays and I became good friends with their son (fun times driving tractors and exploring the farm). They had a milking herd and told me in all seriousness they had a UFO sighting from their car whilst on the farm drive (rather like Pauline Coombes). They also produced beef and had bought a bullock from market that turned out to be "mad" but this was in around 1984 before it was understood that meant BSE.

So, were these UFOs actually some sort of clandestine testing programme in response to insider fears about scrapie in sheep, the human form of CJD amongst cannibals and the feed producers grinding up cattle remains from as far away as India* to feed to cattle?


*Back then container loads of cattle remains were being shipped from places like India via the Netherlands until one consignment contained Anthrax and killed a dock worker (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rrhy)

Yes I remember you mentioning this in connection with the Rainford Humanoid case. There was at least one case in Cheshire in this period (IIRC) featuring 'occupants' taking an interest in dairy cattle too.

It seems plausible and, without getting too tinfoil hatted about it, I'd also gently suggest that there could plausibly have been some element of fears about biowarfare (perhaps concern that either some substance of ours, or of theirs, was getting into the food chain).

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Yes I remember you mentioning this in connection with the Rainford Humanoid case. There was at least one case in Cheshire in this period (IIRC) featuring 'occupants' taking an interest in dairy cattle too.

It seems plausible and, without getting too tinfoil hatted about it, I'd also gently suggest that there could plausibly have been some element of fears about biowarfare (perhaps concern that either some substance of ours, or of theirs, was getting into the food chain).

If you had to test live cattle without alerting either the farmers or the general public then this is how you would go about it. Might even have been for radiation entering the food chain as we humans conducted a staggering umber of nuclear weapons tests from the 1950s onwards, and by 1977 this totalled over 1300 tests and the two used in wartime against Japan.

Taking those French nuclear tests in The Sahara:

"Thousands of soldiers, nuclear program workers, and the local Tuareg population were exposed to radioactivity directly from the nuclear tests. The entire region was also exposed to significant levels of nuclear fallout that blanketed the area following the tests. Elevated levels of atmospheric radioactivity were detected as far away as the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, 3,200 km from Reggane, where testing had occurred."

https://www.globalzero.org/updates/...17 nuclear tests,a bloody eight-year struggle.

Also the fallout from Chernobyl affecting the UK:

Chernobyl disaster: how radiation affected the UK, and which parts of Britain are the most radioactive today​

https://inews.co.uk/news/science/ch...ria, Scotland and,26 years after the meltdown.

So if this was the case - a big IF - then were the covert units tasked with the testing mimicking UFO activity as a cover or were witnesses mistaking unexplained lights and craft as UFOs because of the UFO hysteria of the times?

 

[BS3]

https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1978-01-27-uk-frodsham.htm

The Jan 78 Frodsham case. Dubious but...kind of strange.

I'm sure there was another one too.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1978-01-27-uk-frodsham.htm

The Jan 78 Frodsham case. Dubious but...kind of strange.

I'm sure there was another one too.

So, were they hoaxing or were they told to shut up after their initial report? We had young lads who would go out poaching in our village so that aspect is believable,. I can also believe that if they genuinely gatecrashed some covert operation that they might have received a visit from the men in suits to put the frighteners on them. In fact, Nick Redfern has documented a case in which a UFO crash witness in the UK received a telephone telling him not to cooperate. Redfern was able to trace the call back to a military switchboard. Most likely that was some sort of military activity that the man witnessed.

The bit about the sunburn bothers me as that featured prominently in Close Encounters of the Third Kind that would be released in the UK two months alter but was already a hit in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_Encounters_of_the_Third_Kind

 

[Paul_Exeter]

I know we have discussed these teenage poachers on here before, but here is the FSR article by Randles and Whetnall:

http://www.noufors.com/Documents/Books, Manuals and Published Papers/Specialty UFO Publications/Flying Saucer Review/FSR,1980,V 26,N 3.pdf

My understanding is that pheasants roost above the ground at night:

"I'm not sure if this is the same as you are describing, but in my experience pheasants tend to spend the night roosting in trees and are liable to fly off noisily if disturbed. Once one or a few are disturbed then obviously their response disturbs the others. I can't remember offhand how much calling they do when this happens, but either way pheasants are naturally noisy creatures."

https://www.birdforum.net/threads/night-activity-of-the-pheasant.185682/

So if these lads knew what they were doing (which is debatable) they they would have needed at least decent air rifles and a flashlight. which would make their activity even more illegal. As regards that poor lad's testicles, then if they were moving through the woods at nighttime without a light (fearing pursuit by the aliens) then he could have been caught by a bramble; those thick ones can grab your clothing like a human hand would. Or is it just a teenager's idea of a joke? It is a strange thing to claim in a hoax and the whole narrative is so promising yet so elusive. I would love to know what David Sankey found out.

Edit: someone with a drone has posted an arial photo of the area where the sighting took place:

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.2983253,-2.6870735,3a,88.5y,84.39h,53.07t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMk8OgV6VYkfJ9I7RoJZyld4Z8jRIrx4W2pVdxD!2e10!3e11!6shttps://lh5.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipMk8OgV6VYkfJ9I7RoJZyld4Z8jRIrx4W2pVdxD=w203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya54.09389-ro-0-fo100!7i4096!8i2048?entry=ttu

Photo of Devil's Garden:

So i agues the four lads would have been in the woods and looking towards the meadows to the left (if they were there and saw the UFO/if they ere there and didn't)

https://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?/topic/76005-devils-garden/

Another snippet from that website is that a major water pipeline from the Vyrnwy reservoir that supplies Liverpool runs under this locatio. Also the fact that the river is navigable opens up the possibility that they saw a boat being piloted in the dark and their imaginations got the better of them.

Another post on this website:

"There was a well reported UFO sighting at the Devils Garden in the 70's involving a group of students and a landed UFO and spacemen and a cow.

More importantly to me. My mum was from Frodsham and told me that there is a bit of a family legend about the place. Her dad was a poacher and told my mum and her 4 brothers and sisters never to go there alone as it was 'a bad place'. This was never explained but my mum said that this was not like him and that she felt he had good reason to say it. They had been there with him and it was a beautiful part of the river Weaver but she remembered him making a point of it when they were there.

Prior to that, apparently one of my mums aunts was seeing a lad nearby and the Devils Garden was a convenient cut through for secret liaisons. She knew it wasn't somewhere she was supposed go after dark but with love on her mind she did so one night and saw what she described as a knight in shining armour in what was then a meadow at the Devils Garden. She ran home terrified and only told my mum and sister years later after she read the news article about the supposed UFO sighting.

I'm not one for woo stuff but I remember my hair standing on end when my mum told me about it."

https://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?/topic/76005-devils-garden/