Warminster Wiltshire UFOs

[BS3]

I think most of the answer to the question 'why Warminster' is fairly obvious, with the topography of the town and the proximity of the military (and hence of flares, aircraft etc) providing one half of the answer, and the presence of an authoritative, 'trusted' believer / enabler in the person of the local journalist the other.

Nevertheless I find it an interesting parallel to the Pembrokeshire events a decade later in that something that can start with a handful of events, or perhaps even a hoax or two, seems to open the doorway to a whole series of stranger and stranger experiences within the community.

 

[Kondoru]

Ah!

Just reading that chapter in Whitlocks, `the Folklore of Wiltshire`

 

[SimonBurchell]

Ah!

Just reading that chapter in Whitlocks, `the Folklore of Wiltshire`

Does the book have any folklore associated with Battlesbury, Middle Hill or Scratchbury? With so much archaeology up there, surely they must have something?

 

[Kondoru]

I checked the index; no.

Just because there is archaeology doesnt mean it makes it into myth.

 

[SimonBurchell]

I checked the index; no.

Just because there is archaeology doesnt mean it makes it into myth.

Thanks for looking. People make up stories about these places, creating myths; whether those myths make it into print is the thing...

 

[Paul_Exeter]

I think most of the answer to the question 'why Warminster' is fairly obvious, with the topography of the town and the proximity of the military (and hence of flares, aircraft etc) providing one half of the answer, and the presence of an authoritative, 'trusted' believer / enabler in the person of the local journalist the other.

Nevertheless I find it an interesting parallel to the Pembrokeshire events a decade later in that something that can start with a handful of events, or perhaps even a hoax or two, seems to open the doorway to a whole series of stranger and stranger experiences within the community.

Peter Paget was an active Warminster Ufologist and ran the Fountain Centre in Warminster where fellow Ufologists could stay overnight and groups could meet. The same Peter Paget was very one of the first on the scene of the Pembrokeshire events and authored "The Welsh Triangle". Thankfully there were other researchers to verify the Welsh events and so it wasn't just a case of him exaggerating events etc.

 

[BS3]

Peter Paget was an active Warminster Ufologist and ran the Fountain Centre in Warminster where fellow Ufologists could stay overnight and groups could meet. The same Peter Paget was very one of the first on the scene of the Pembrokeshire events and authored "The Welsh Triangle". Thankfully there were other researchers to verify the Welsh events and so it wasn't just a case of him exaggerating events etc.

Yes there was a lot of overlap between Warminster and Pembrokeshire in terms of people. The real Shuttlewood figure in Pembrokeshire however was Randall Jones Pugh, who not only had a job that would have made him an immediately respected figure in this mainly rural area (he was a vet) but had seen a UFO himself and was therefore inclined towards belief.

He also couldn't resist putting leading questions to witnesses, but that's another matter.

Despite portraying himself as a cynical, down to earth journalist and a 'trained observer' (he'd been a policeman for a time) a lot of Shuttlewood's stuff is an absolute hoot by today's standards. The fact that it all led up to a contact claim was no surprise at all, depicted in inadvertently hilarious detail in 'Warnings from Flying Friends', particularly the series of phone calls from a phone box elsewhere in Warminster. The Aenstrians didn't like him talking about that:

"Another point that causes us dismay in your work is the reference to a telephone call box used by Traellison, Caellsan and Selorik, in Boreham Field. This information could alarm those who have habitations in that locality.

"You should not have revealed this, which is of no consequence and hardly secondary importance: only the many messages we issued to you for publications. As we emphasized, we speak truth: if you ignore this fact in future, it is probable we shall have to sever communication with you."

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Yes there was a lot of overlap between Warminster and Pembrokeshire in terms of people. The real Shuttlewood figure in Pembrokeshire however was Randall Jones Pugh, who not only had a job that would have made him an immediately respected figure in this mainly rural area (he was a vet) but had seen a UFO himself and was therefore inclined towards belief.

He also couldn't resist putting leading questions to witnesses, but that's another matter.

Despite portraying himself as a cynical, down to earth journalist and a 'trained observer' (he'd been a policeman for a time) a lot of Shuttlewood's stuff is an absolute hoot by today's standards. The fact that it all led up to a contact claim was no surprise at all, depicted in inadvertently hilarious detail in 'Warnings from Flying Friends', particularly the series of phone calls from a phone box elsewhere in Warminster. The Aenstrians didn't like him talking about that:

Then the contactee alights onto the metallic spacecraft and describes dials, levers and knobs as the Aenstrians may have conquered interstellar space but not touch screens and LCD panels...

 

[BS3]

Incidentally Shuttlewood claims he initially took the calls to be the work of "slow-witted imbeciles".

He only changed his mind when he challenged one of the phone box callers, Karne, to come to his house. Which he allegedly did about 10 seconds (!) later.

Anyway, obviously a lot of this sounds like nonsense, but part of me does wonder if Shuttlewood was on the end of some primitive version of a Bennewitz / Doty type misinformation campaign. Maybe his wife's fear that the callers were actually Russian agents wasn't that far off the truth

 

[BS3]

Note also it has been suggested that Warminster was the site of various secret military activities in this period - I feel there is a small possibility that the alien story may have been gently encouraged as a form of misdirection from something entirely earthly.

 

[SimonBurchell]

Note also it has been suggested that Warminster was the site of various secret military activities in this period - I feel there is a small possibility that the alien story may have been gently encouraged as a form of misdirection from something entirely earthly.

To tell the truth, I'm more interested in the stuff that isn't supposed to be alien activity, the "just" generally weird.

 

[SimonBurchell]

Note also it has been suggested that Warminster was the site of various secret military activities in this period - I feel there is a small possibility that the alien story may have been gently encouraged as a form of misdirection from something entirely earthly.

Yes. that did occur to me, MOD all over the place, and full-on Cold War shenanigans - a bit like some of the Cold War-era Truth Proof stuff from Paul Sinclair.

 

[BS3]

Yes. that did occur to me, MOD all over the place, and full-on Cold War shenanigans - a bit like some of the Cold War-era Truth Proof stuff from Paul Sinclair.

There's a lot in Shuttlewood's account that does make you wonder. Particularly if his tale of meeting 'Karne' is genuine (allegedly the rest of his family also saw him). Karne's most striking feature was the apparent lack of pupils in his eyes but a) Shuttlewood wasn't 100% about this and b) contact lenses were available by that point.

Shuttlewood claims to have been puzzled by the fact that Karne turned up after only a few seconds when the nearest call box was hundreds of yards away, but this rests on his curious assumption that Karne was actually calling from a phone box. If we imagine for a second that Karne was really some operative employed, for whatever reason, to feed Shuttlewood a load of standard New Age-type views in the wake of his first book's publication, then couldn't he have been calling from a house over the road where he'd been observing his 'target'? Did Shuttlewood know all his neighbours?

There's also the bigger question of why the authorities might have wanted to convince Shuttlewood that the Aenstrians were real, but as I said, the Doty saga does make you wonder what governments have got up to over the years.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

There's a lot in Shuttlewood's account that does make you wonder. Particularly if his tale of meeting 'Karne' is genuine (allegedly the rest of his family also saw him). Karne's most striking feature was the apparent lack of pupils in his eyes but a) Shuttlewood wasn't 100% about this and b) contact lenses were available by that point.

Shuttlewood claims to have been puzzled by the fact that Karne turned up after only a few seconds when the nearest call box was hundreds of yards away, but this rests on his curious assumption that Karne was actually calling from a phone box. If we imagine for a second that Karne was really some operative employed, for whatever reason, to feed Shuttlewood a load of standard New Age-type views in the wake of his first book's publication, then couldn't he have been calling from a house over the road where he'd been observing his 'target'? Did Shuttlewood know all his neighbours?

There's also the bigger question of why the authorities might have wanted to convince Shuttlewood that the Aenstrians were real, but as I said, the Doty saga does make you wonder what governments have got up to over the years.

Hmmm, what are the odds that these aliens would evolve on the planet light years away to be exactly like us except for the pupils in our eyes, eh?

More on Shuttlewood:

"However, Shuttlewood did deliberately exaggerate his stories. Shuttlewood's first book, The Warminster Mystery, revisits many of the stories first reported in the Warminster Journal. The stories related in the Journal are nowhere near as hysterical as their later retellings in Shuttlewood's book. Shuttlewood was undoubtedly reworking his material to make it more dramatic, more appealing to ufologists - it is deliberately exaggerated. The stories in his books are also related uncritically, as are the theories and explanations that he received from correspondents"

http://www.ufo-warminster.co.uk/information/shuttlewood_bio.htm

 

[SimonBurchell]

Then the contactee alights onto the metallic spacecraft and describes dials, levers and knobs as the Aenstrians may have conquered interstellar space but not touch screens and LCD panels...

Should we ever get to the stars, I think even touch screens and LCD panels would look ridiculously archaic.

 

[BS3]

Hmmm, what are the odds that these aliens would evolve on the planet light years away to be exactly like us except for the pupils in our eyes, eh?

More on Shuttlewood:

"However, Shuttlewood did deliberately exaggerate his stories. Shuttlewood's first book, The Warminster Mystery, revisits many of the stories first reported in the Warminster Journal. The stories related in the Journal are nowhere near as hysterical as their later retellings in Shuttlewood's book. Shuttlewood was undoubtedly reworking his material to make it more dramatic, more appealing to ufologists - it is deliberately exaggerated. The stories in his books are also related uncritically, as are the theories and explanations that he received from correspondents"

http://www.ufo-warminster.co.uk/information/shuttlewood_bio.htm

The question with Shuttlewood, given that his claims went well beyond reporting other people's lights in the sky and onto actually being a contactee, is whether:

a) he cynically made stuff up, which seems unlikely;
b) he had some kind of mental derangement which caused him to imagine it all, which also seems unlikely, given he generally remained a respected figure on non-UFO matters;
c) he really was contacted by the Aenstrians, or by a trickster Phenomenon presenting itself as them
d) he was a rather uncritical man inclined towards belief and who was easily nudged into believing what he had seen and heard was truly remarkable

I think we can all agree he was a rather florid writer who went for dramatic and exciting descriptions rather than sober recollection. Moreover, I think we can all agree that Traellison, the Queen of Aenstria, was very unlikely to be calling Shuttlewood from a phone box on the outskirts of Warminster (and notably close to a barracks, probably full of bored young men).

However, I'm inclined to think "d", but who was doing the 'nudging' and why?

 

[Paul_Exeter]

The question with Shuttlewood, given that his claims went well beyond reporting other people's lights in the sky and onto actually being a contactee, is whether:

a) he cynically made stuff up, which seems unlikely;
b) he had some kind of mental derangement which caused him to imagine it all, which also seems unlikely, given he generally remained a respected figure on non-UFO matters;
c) he really was contacted by the Aenstrians, or by a trickster Phenomenon presenting itself as them
d) he was a rather uncritical man inclined towards belief and who was easily nudged into believing what he had seen and heard was truly remarkable

I think we can all agree he was a rather florid writer who went for dramatic and exciting descriptions rather than sober recollection. Moreover, I think we can all agree that Traellison, the Queen of Aenstria, was very unlikely to be calling Shuttlewood from a phone box on the outskirts of Warminster (and notably close to a barracks, probably full of bored young men).

However, I'm inclined to think "d", but who was doing the 'nudging' and why?

Just conjures up the image of a line of annoyed people waiting outside the phonebox as inside Traellison, the Queen of Aenstria searches her pockets for loose change

By the way, how did Shuttlewood know how to spell all those aliens names and words just from phone conservations?

"Behold earthling, I am Traellison, the Queen of Aenstria...!"

"Right, that's nice, and how are we spelling that?"

 

[BS3]

There is a perceptive review of Shuttlewood's first book, The Warminster Mystery, by John Rimmer of Magonia. Amongst other things he notes that Shuttlewood's way of dealing with things is very much in the tradition of local newspaper journalism:

Get names and addresses and tell us about the people, the cub reporter is instructed. I open the book at random: “Ted and Gwen Davies live in a thatched cottage at Crockerton. They run separate shops in Warminster, she one for teenage fashions and he a fish saloon”; “Mrs Mildred Head, aged 63, is the wife of an ex-policeman and was once a seamstress at Warminster Hospital”; “self-employed Warminster woodworker Robert Payne and his hair stylist wife Wendy”. All in the finest tradition of the local reporter, and all helping to set their remarkable stories firmly in a down-to-earth reality. [...] But the problem of reporting a UFO flap in the style of a local paper is that no critical voice is allowed.

As Rimmer notes, this is OK when Shuttlewood is talking to local residents about their experiences. Later on, however, he starts reporting the far less grounded views of ufologists and psychics, in addition to stranger and stranger phenomena, leading up to those phone calls. Still, maybe there's something to be said for it all:

Is The Warminster Mystery just a collection of uncritical anecdotes and rumour? Well, probably, but it is an accurate record of uncritical anecdotes and rumour. It tells us not so much what was happening in that small town, as what people thought was happening, and what they were telling others had happened. A few years later John Keel was using the same reportorial techniques, perhaps in a more knowing manner, when he described the goings-on in the small Ohio Valley towns that he visited before and during the Mothman scares. Keel had an understanding of the broader social and mythical framework of such phenomena and he was able to draw on a wider range of sources than Shuttlewood, who was trapped into the small-town reporter role, and this makes Keel's books perhaps a more entertaining read.

 

[BS3]

Just conjures up the image of a line of annoyed people waiting outside the phonebox as inside Traellison, the Queen of Aenstria searches her pockets for loose change

By the way, how did Shuttlewood know how to spell all those aliens names and words just from phone conservations?

"Behold earthling, I am Traellison, the Queen of Aenstria...!"

"Right, that's nice, and how are we spelling that?"

Even better, Shuttlewood in all seriousness offers the fact he did not hear coins dropping into the phone during the Aenstrians' calls as evidence of their High Strangeness.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Even better, Shuttlewood in all seriousness offers the fact he did not hear coins dropping into the phone during the Aenstrians' calls as evidence of their High Strangeness.

Do we know if he heard the pips that phone boxes made when it was time to insert more money? I'm surprised the Queen didn't reverse the charges:

"Hello sir, will you accept a reverse charge call from Traellison, the Queen of Aenstria?"

 

[SimonBurchell]

Do we know if he heard the pips that phone boxes made when it was time to insert more money? I'm surprised the Queen didn't reverse the charges:

"Hello sir, will you accept a reverse charge call from Traellison, the Queen of Aenstria?"

You would have thought, being Queen and all, she'd have people to do this kind of thing for her. Sounds like those Nigerian royalty scams that used to do the rounds.

 

[BS3]

Do we know if he heard the pips that phone boxes made when it was time to insert more money? I'm surprised the Queen didn't reverse the charges:

"Hello sir, will you accept a reverse charge call from Traellison, the Queen of Aenstria?"

The best that can be said is that it was clearly a more innocent time.

The Aenstrians' messages contain so many cliches of really bad pulp sci-fi (stilted language such as "those who have habitations in that locality"; the silly inclusion of the occasional untranslated term such as "cantel", which the aliens keep using for "planet", to give a bit of colour etc etc) that it seems remarkable that Shuttlewood didn't notice them. But maybe he'd not read that much, or any, pulp sci-fi; he doesn't really seem the type.

Similarly the 'philological expert' quoted by Shuttlewood as comparing a sample of alien writing to the "sacred Boggah script of the Abluti Indians of Paraguay"; it's so obviously a bit of public-schoolyard humour (probably Patrick Moore's schoolyard, at a guess) that you're amazed he printed it. But I guess these were all new and wonderful events to many people in the mid 1960s.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Similarly the 'philological expert' quoted by Shuttlewood as comparing a sample of alien writing to the "sacred Boggah script of the Abluti Indians of Paraguay";

But yes, there were a lot of teenage budding Ufologists drawn to the area by Shuttlewood's claims in, as you say, a much more innocent era of sitting on that hill in the dark and interpreting every passing satellite as a UFO etc.

 

[BS3]

But yes, there were a lot of teenage budding Ufologists drawn to the area by Shuttlewood's claims in, as you say, a much more innocent era of sitting on that hill in the dark and interpreting every passing satellite as a UFO etc.

To get an idea of the effect, another of John Rimmer's articles describes the appeal of Shuttlewood and the Cradle Hill setting very eloquently:

https://mufobmagazine.blogspot.com/2014/03/visited.html

To be on Cradle Hill, on a skywatch, listening to Arthur Shuttlewood, is a very remarkable experience. He speaks with the smooth assurance of a professional commentator, his voice is carefully modulated to sound clearly over the noise of wind and cars. He is a persuasive, not a dogmatic person. He will point out some minor effect of the light: “There’s a very remarkable thing – it’s just a phenomenon, of course, but we often see things like that up here.” How much more convincing that is than a dogmatic assertion that something incredible has happened.

As he speaks it is easy to fall into a generous, easy attitude of acceptance. It is easy to suspend disbelief on Cradle Hill at two o’clock in the morning after listening to Arthur Shuttlewood for a few hours. I think it would not be too extreme to say that some of the occurrences reported on skywatches at Warminster could be attributed to some mild form of hypnotic suggestion. Cradle Hill at night is a spooky place. Arthur Shuttlewood is a convincing speaker, a sincere convincing speaker whom it is hard to doubt. Almost anything is possible under these conditions.

I think a "mild form of hypnotic suggestion" could well be central to many 'flaps', whether mediated through a single individual or something else.