Big thanks to the mods for restoring my access so quickly, much appreciated.
OK, onto my Frank Hyde research. Over Christmas I did a bit of a ‘cold case’ review of the main protagonists in the story and decided to try again with Frank Hyde.
I dug around in a number of academic sources rather than the usual mainstream newspapers etc. and a biography of a person called Frank Hyde came up fairly quickly. At first I dismissed it but the more I read about him, the more I thought this is definitely our man.
In his book Paul Screeton writes what he knows about Frank Hyde:
“I found a few facts about Hyde during a 2007 intemet trawl which suggested a career in engineering and a fascination for pseudoscience. After the name F W Hyde came the letters FSE, FEng and FRAS. Born on 10 September I 909, it seems he was a consultant in technology with special attention to space exploration and space medicine. He was also a consultant in parapsychology and operating a unit of interface between man and his environment, including mysticism and related practices… The diviner lived in Kilburn, North-West London, and one evening in early February 1978, Don drove to deliver the Heads.”
My research has found someone with the full name of Frank Wilsenham Hyde who was born in 1909. He used the letters F.R.A.S. and F.R.S.A. after his name. He was a colourful member of the British Astronomical Association, who luckily published a lengthy article about him in their journal in 2018. The only difference I can find between the two Hydes is that there is no mention in the article that he lived in London at any time – this Frank Hyde was based in Essex. Other than this all of the information matches up, including the article stating that “Hyde had always been interested in paranormal activity.”
Even more curiously Hyde was reported as writing a monthly column in Practical Electronics magazine all the way up to his death in 1984. If this is our man, why are there so many claims that he was untraceable and uncontactable once he had purportedly taken possession of the Heads? The fact that this Frank Hyde died in 1984 is also another strange thing, as people said he effectively disappeared from the late 1970s onwards. He can’t have been that hard to find or his death would have gone unnoticed.
I may be getting ahead of myself with this theory but it’s an interesting one to throw out there. It could be that Frank Hyde has been hiding in plain sight all these years. If this proves to be correct there are also Hyde’s old home addresses mentioned in the journal article. Could one of these addresses be where the Heads are now?
@Dan Craigie - if you have anything more to add from your research please let me know.
