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BS3

Abominable Showman
Joined
Sep 20, 2021
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A recent, er, "showbiz news" story about filming for Amazon's Tolkien series taking place in Winterfold Forest in Surrey reminded me of a classically British, classically incomprehensible 'entity' case that took place there in November 1967. As often with these things (cf the Little Blue Man on Studham Common) our main source is Charles Bowen, editor of Flying Saucer Review, who wrote the case up in FSR v14, n1 (1968) as "The Spectre of Winterfold". Bowen was a UFO believer (and the paranormal / demonic interpretation of the phenomenon at that) so this colours his presentation, obviously.

In brief it's a case where a young couple, driving through the forest at night, stop to clear the car's windscreen, whereupon the man smells a foul odour and sees an odd, partly luminous figure alongside the car; the woman doesn't see it but does experience the sense of fear connected with it. Here are the details, and collation of the few sources available, in Patrick Gross's URECAT.

Feels a bit like some kind of prank is at the root of this but...who knows.
 
A recent, er, "showbiz news" story about filming for Amazon's Tolkien series taking place in Winterfold Forest in Surrey reminded me of a classically British, classically incomprehensible 'entity' case that took place there in November 1967. As often with these things (cf the Little Blue Man on Studham Common) our main source is Charles Bowen, editor of Flying Saucer Review, who wrote the case up in FSR v14, n1 (1968) as "The Spectre of Winterfold". Bowen was a UFO believer (and the paranormal / demonic interpretation of the phenomenon at that) so this colours his presentation, obviously.

In brief it's a case where a young couple, driving through the forest at night, stop to clear the car's windscreen, whereupon the man smells a foul odour and sees an odd, partly luminous figure alongside the car; the woman doesn't see it but does experience the sense of fear connected with it. Here are the details, and collation of the few sources available, in Patrick Gross's URECAT.

Feels a bit like some kind of prank is at the root of this but...who knows.
I personal favourite of mine, merely because it is in my region and suitably bizarre.

Description from the Paranormal Database copied below, but I have read slightly fuller descriptions elsewhere (although they are all pretty brief). I think it was summarised in an early issue of Fortean Times.

Smelly Creature

Location: Winterfold - Unknown road, near deserted mansion
Type: Cryptozoology
Date / Time: 16 December 1967
Further Comments: A driver who had pulled over to wipe his windscreen spotted a strange creature standing around 140 centimetres tall, with a glowing, oblong shaped head. The beast emanated an acrid smell. The driver jumped back into his car and quickly drove off.
 
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What I haven't been able to get a handle on is the exact location or where the 'deserted mansion' (which isn't in Bowen's version; note also the date difference in the two main versions out there) might be, other than it was near Pitch Hill in the general Winterfold / Hurstwood area.

One thing that does seem possible is that the smell, forest setting, time of year (November) and weather conditions (still enough for mist, possibly) might point to some type of Will-o-the-wisp phenomenon. But I often say that!
 
What I haven't been able to get a handle on is the exact location or where the 'deserted mansion' (which isn't in Bowen's version; note also the date difference in the two main versions out there) might be, other than it was near Pitch Hill in the general Winterfold / Hurstwood area.

One thing that does seem possible is that the smell, forest setting, time of year (November) and weather conditions (still enough for mist, possibly) might point to some type of Will-o-the-wisp phenomenon. But I often say that!
Found this on the Winterfold location, Scroll down to Page 16 -
http://www.noufors.com/Documents/Books, Manuals and Published Papers/Specialty UFO Publications/Flying Saucer Review/FSR,1968,Jan-Feb,V 14,N 1.pdf
 
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A recent, er, "showbiz news" story about filming for Amazon's Tolkien series taking place in Winterfold Forest in Surrey reminded me of a classically British, classically incomprehensible 'entity' case that took place there in November 1967. As often with these things (cf the Little Blue Man on Studham Common) our main source is Charles Bowen, editor of Flying Saucer Review, who wrote the case up in FSR v14, n1 (1968) as "The Spectre of Winterfold". Bowen was a UFO believer (and the paranormal / demonic interpretation of the phenomenon at that) so this colours his presentation, obviously.

In brief it's a case where a young couple, driving through the forest at night, stop to clear the car's windscreen, whereupon the man smells a foul odour and sees an odd, partly luminous figure alongside the car; the woman doesn't see it but does experience the sense of fear connected with it. Here are the details, and collation of the few sources available, in Patrick Gross's URECAT.

Feels a bit like some kind of prank is at the root of this but...who knows.

It took quite a bit of searching, but I've found the area involved. A prime source of confusion is that what the researchers name as Pitch Hill is now commonly referred to as Coneyhurst Hill.

The area from a 1:63,360 OS map from 1971:

Winterfold-UFO-Fortean-05.jpg


From an earlier OS map:

Winterfold-UFO-Fortean-06.jpg


From a modern 1:25,000 OS map:

Winterfold-UFO-Fortean-04.jpg


Where exactly the incident took place? Your guess is as good as mine.

Typing the following into Google Earth's search facility will land you on top of "Pitch Hill":

51° 10' 21.15" N, 0° 27' 18.10" W

maximus otter
 
It took quite a bit of searching, but I've found the area involved. A prime source of confusion is that what the researchers name as Pitch Hill is now commonly referred to as Coneyhurst Hill.

The area from a 1:63,360 OS map from 1971:

Winterfold-UFO-Fortean-05.jpg


From an earlier OS map:

Winterfold-UFO-Fortean-06.jpg


From a modern 1:25,000 OS map:

Winterfold-UFO-Fortean-04.jpg


Where exactly the incident took place? Your guess is as good as mine.

Typing the following into Google Earth's search facility will land you on top of "Pitch Hill":

51° 10' 21.15" N, 0° 27' 18.10" W
See. . . https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...ld-surrey-uk-november-1967.70447/post-2258387
maximus otter
 
The link to FSR you provide suggests that they were "2 miles from Cranleigh". Here's the "as the crow flies" 2 miles from Cranleigh:

Winterfold-UFO-Fortean-06.jpg


The area seems to be very wooded (sample pic; not the locus of the encounter):

Winterfold-UFO-Fortean-07.jpg


The locus seems to have been near the area of Winterfold House, used during WW2 for the training of spies by SOE, graduates including the legendary Violette Szabo and Noor Inyat Khan.

The house was also searched after the Great Train Robbery.

maximus otter
 
This is an area I've hiked very close to, although not recently. Not too far north is Farley Heath, which was the site of a Roman temple. Southwards, once you're away from Cranleigh, is the open Weald. I'll have to get back out there when time allows.
 
The link to FSR you provide suggests that they were "2 miles from Cranleigh". Here's the "as the crow flies" 2 miles from Cranleigh:

Winterfold-UFO-Fortean-06.jpg


The area seems to be very wooded (sample pic; not the locus of the encounter):

Winterfold-UFO-Fortean-07.jpg


The locus seems to have been near the area of Winterfold House, used during WW2 for the training of spies by SOE, graduates including the legendary Violette Szabo and Noor Inyat Khan.

The house was also searched after the Great Train Robbery.

maximus otter

Was Winterfold House "deserted" in 1967? It's odd that this 'deserted mansion' detail comes up in the Fortean Times report and those derived from it, but not Bowen's original 'investigation'. If the witness really had stopped near such a building you'd think Bowen would mention it, but maybe not.
 
Really intriguing case and, as ever on this forum, some great detective work, too. Back in the '60s many rural houses were not on the sewage network but rather had bog-like cesspits in a patch of local scrubland (I know this because our Sussex hamlet had one back in the late 1960s). These have nowadays been replaced by septic tanks. Back when this case took place it is feasible the smell was unrelated to what they saw but rather they had stopped next to a cesspit and the still, cold December air had trapped the gases close to the ground, in which case there would have been a smell not-unlike a stink bomb
 
Really intriguing case and, as ever on this forum, some great detective work, too. Back in the '60s many rural houses were not on the sewage network but rather had bog-like cesspits in a patch of local scrubland (I know this because our Sussex hamlet had one back in the late 1960s). These have nowadays been replaced by septic tanks. Back when this case took place it is feasible the smell was unrelated to what they saw but rather they had stopped next to a cesspit and the still, cold December air had trapped the gases close to the ground, in which case there would have been a smell not-unlike a stink bomb

On the other hand a cesspit / soakaway (I grew up with one of these too) might also be an ideal source of the organic matter decomposition that seems to be the source of will-o-the-wisp occurrences. There is a 1980 will-o-the-wisp record at Leg of Mutton Pond in urban London that was associated with "sewage sludge".
 
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