Earliest
UFO sighting on record?
Source - The Scotsman, UK (Newspaper),
On This Day - December 8:
In 1733, A Dorset man reported seeing a polished silver
disc in the
sky the first known sighting of an Unidentified Flying
Object, or UFO.
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Visual case reconstruction by David Sankey
of the craft witnessed by Mr. D. Mc Murray and family
while driving home across Bagshot Heath, Surrey, to
Farnborough, Hampshire.
The craft was observed hovering above the road at 9:03
p.m. on Sunday 15 th Sept 1985, estimated to be approximately
50 ft wide with a depth of approx 5ft.
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Self
confessed sceptic thinks there is a cover up!
This item should be read in conjunction with “Abductions”.
Reporter
Geoffrey Wansell who describes himself as a sceptic, and did
not believe in aliens and UFOs, now thinks that there is case
to answer- that something has been covered up. The question
is how many more sceptics are going to become 'open minded'?
Daily
Mail (UK), Saturday, January 11, 2003
After
50 years of ridicule, denial and cover-up, is the real
truth about alien abductions about to be revealed? by Geoffrey
Wansell. On a hot, sticky July afternoon in 1987 Jason
Andrews is celebrating his fourth birthday at his family's
cottage near Slade Green in Kent when the heavens open.
As the thunder crashes all around, there is a single flash
of lightning. Suddenly, a stream of numbers starts pouring
out of Jason's mouth: fantastic numbers, complex mathematical
equations, even algebra - all from a boy who struggles
to count to ten. Seconds later the windows and doors begin
to shake violently and the four-year old announces to his
mother, father and elder brother: `They're waiting for
me. I have to go.' Jason's father, Paul, grabs his son
and stops him from walking out into the downpour, but the
boy struggles violently, and as he does so the house shakes
to its very foundations until, finally, he seems to wake
from a trance and the shaking stops. It is the first sign
that Jason Andrews is no ordinary little boy and, in the
eight years that follow, that is dramatically confirmed.
It
wasn't until 1995, when he was almost 12, that Jason told
his astonished parents exactly what had been happening
to him - aliens had been abducting him from his bed at
night. It's always the light that comes first,' he confessed
to his mother, Ann. `Then I see the tall one rise up at
the foot of the bed. Suddenly there's lots of little ones
everywhere. They're fuzzy and indistinct, and they move
very fast. I can't move or speak, but I'm awake and I can
see and hear and feel. I want to scream and run, but the
sound doesn't come out and my body doesn't move. I hate
them. I hate them,' the boy sobbed. `I have to go with
them. They take me to an operating theatre, like at the
hospital. It's all white and shiny Sometimes it's a circular
room with It's always cold. They're there. The big one
touches me but I don't feel it, like as if I've had an
anaesthetic.' Then he added poignantly: `But you don't
believe me, you just think I'm making it all up.' In fact,
Ann did believe him, and went on to explore the phenomena
affecting her son's life in a hook, Abducted. This decent,
uncomplicated wife and mother came to the conclusion that
we may not be alone.
Now,
the rest of the world may be about to agree with her After
five decades of ridicule, official denials and alleged
cover-ups, the possibility that aliens. may have visited
Earth is beginning to be taken seriously - and not just
by sci-fi fanatics and UFO freaks. Scientific researchers
are increasingly convinced that thin, grey-skinned beings
about 4ft tall, with large almond-shaped eyes set in an
oval, hairless, head, may not only have landed on earth,
but have also abducted human beings for bizarre experiments;
while all the time there has been an official conspiracy
to keep their visits secret.
Tonight American filmmaker Steven Spielberg,
the man who brought the world Close Encounters Of The Third
Kind and ET, will bring those convictions - and aliens
- to life in his new mini-series, Taken, on BBC2. A cunning
mixture of. fact, conjecture and fiction, based on the
latest research, it tells the story of how aliens affected
the lives of three American families over the past half
century. A massive hit in the U.S., where it was broadcast
on consecutive nights last month, Spielberg's series is
the most expensive TV science faction drama ever made -
with a budget of more than £25 million - and it's
certain to re-ignite public debate on this forever-contentious
subject. But surely all this talk of aliens is far-fetched?
As a natural sceptic, I've always believed
so, but over the past weeks and months of reviewing the
evidence I've come to the conclusion that it does, in fact,
warrant the closest investigation. There certainly seems
to have been an official conspiracy to keep the facts secret.
In the past few months, for example, firm evidence about
unexplained events connected with Unidentified Flying Objects
(UFOs) and extraterrestrial phenomena has begun to appear
for the first time as governments around the world have
released previously secret documents.
And, for the first time, politicians
have started to admit that evidence on the possibility
of extraterrestrial life has been concealed. In October
last year, for example, former White House Chief of Staff
John Podesta, who worked for President Clinton, called
on the U.S. government to de-classify `records that are
more than 25 years old' and `to provide scientists with
data that will assist them in determining the real nature
of this phenomenon'. Only four years ago, former Prime
Minister Baroness Thatcher hinted to British UFO researcher
Georgina Bruni that there was considerable secret information
on the subject, adding mysteriously : 'You can't tell the
people. 'Bruni was so struck by the remark that she used
it as the title for her 2001 book on alien sightings in
Suffolk in 1980. Shortly afterwards, former Tory Secretary
of State also confided to her on the subject: 'I know a
lot, but I tell a little.' After a campaign by Bruni and
other researchers, the Government last month released scores
of secret files on UFO sightings in this country, all of
which suggest that aliens can no longer be dismissed merely
as the product of fevered imaginations. Certainly the majority
of the public now seem to believe that aliens do exist.
As the editor of the British UFO magazine, Graham Birdsall,
points out: `Sixty years ago, 90 per cent of the population
thought the idea was "absolute rubbish". Now
every single opinion poll on the subject shows that millions
of people firmly believe in UFOs. 'Last June, for example,
when it was announced that Bonnybridge in Scotland boasted
more UFO sightings than any other place in the world, a
Sky News poll showed 65 per cent of its viewers believed
in UFOs. Five years earlier - in one of the biggest telephone
polls ever conducted on TV - 100,000 viewers phoned ITV
to answer the question `Have aliens already visited Earth?'
and 92 per cent voted `Yes'.
There's strong evidence to suggest that
Earth has been visited by extraterrestrial intelligence,'
insists Birdsall. And after my own research I am prepared
to admit that it is no longer possible to dismiss people
such as Birdsall as `cranks'. Spielberg, whose film Close
Encounters Of The Third Kind dramatically raised the issue
of alien encounters for a global audience, is certainly
convinced they've happened. Fascinated by the possibility
from childhood, he's devoted part of his life to discovering
the truth and has become an authority on the subject as
a result. But there is a striking difference between Spielberg's
approach in his TV series Taken and the one he took two
decades ago in Teethes time the aliens he is . depicting
are not trying to phone home they're here to subvert, and
ultimately control, the human race. And the new TV series,
his first since the award-winning Band Of Brothers, is
not only about the arrival of aliens, it's also about `alien
abductions'. I thought I couldn't do justice to this genre
in a two-hour movie,' Spielberg explains.
We
would need a lot more time to do justice to the history
of alien abductions, starting back in 1947, right
through to today' Watching the first episodes, it's
clear that Spielberg has done everything in his power
to create a fictional series' on the edge of fact.
This is no sci-fi comic book, no Invasion Of The
Body Snatchers, but a compelling and all-too-plausible
- drama. British UFO expert Mike Soper, of Contact
International, is as convinced as Spielberg that
alien abductions have happened. The telling fact
is that there are features common to all the people's
stories,' he maintains. `They all remember being
taken to a craft, and often talk about being "examined".
. `Many talk about something being "implanted" in
their bodies, and when they return they often have
triangular marks on their bodies and aren't wearing
exactly the same clothes they were before the abduction'.
Ministry of Defence civil servant Nick Pope, 37,
agrees. Abductions most definitely do occur,' he
says. `And although the phrase "alien abductions" is
a gift to those people who want to deride it, there
are genuine, ordinary people who believe they have
been in extraordinary situations.' Pope isn't a man
with an anorak and a slightly weird look in his eyes.
He is a down-to-earth civil servant who had no interest
in aliens at all until 1991, when the MOD asked him
to investigate reports of UFOs, alien abductions
and other strange phenomena.'
The
100 or so people I interviewed about being abducted
by aliens weren't publicity seekers merely after
their fifteen minutes of fame,' he explains.' I came
to the conclusion that some of these people had to
be telling the truth. And if just one of the abductees'
reports is true, the implications for the human race
would be profound and disturbing.' One person who
helped to convince Pope was 37 year old British -
born make-up artist Bridget Grant, whom he met seven
years ago. She addressed an audience of 750 people
at the British UFO conference in Leeds in 2001, where
she talked about her abduction. She explained that
in February 1993, when she was living in Los Angeles;
she was driving with a friend in the Brentwood area
at 5.50pm one bright, sunny day when she drew up
at a set of traffic lights. I suddenly saw this silver
tip out of the corner of my eye,' she explained.
`Then, I saw that it was a solid silver craft, with
a red-orange colour underneath it, about 35 - 45
ft in diameter. It came right above the car and I
leaned towards the steering wheel and looked up.'
The craft `flew really, really low' over her head,
she said, and away to the west, Her friend Jane,
sitting in the passenger seat, saw it, too. Grant
was so disturbed by the experience that in September
1998 she went to see the American UFO researcher
Budd Hopkins, of the Intruders Foundation in New
York, to undergo four sessions of `regressive hypnosis'.
.She wanted his help to remember the exact details
of what happened on that afternoon in 1993 because
she thought she had forgotten something. It appeared
that she had. For when this pale young 'woman, with
shoulder length dark hair; addressed the Leeds audience
she told them she'd not just seen the spacecraft
but had been abducted by it, even though she thought
she was in her car the entire time.
There
is often a time shift element in the stories of abduction,
where the individual doesn't realise that time. has
passed,' explains Nick Pope. My hands were gripping
the steering wheel,' Grant explained to the conference.
`But then I felt a pressure, like my body was being
sucked. It felt like all the atoms of my body were
going through the steering wheel.` Then I saw this
being. I was fascinated by its appearance - it was
transparent, had white hair and was carrying a baby.'
Hard though it may be for some to believe, and Grant
is reluctant to discuss the events further, ``there
is no doubt that the artists' impression of the being
which she said she saw looks uncannily like many
of the other descriptions of aliens that have surfaced
in recent years. However, as sceptics point out there
have been so many depictions of 'space creatures'
with dome heads and large oval eyes that it is hardly
surprising that this has become something of a stereotype.
When Spielberg was researching the aliens for Close
Encounters, he held lengthy consultations with the
veteran American astronomer Dr J Allen Hynek - a
once- fierce critic of UFOs and alien phenomena who
changed his mind completely after he became a consultant
on the subject for the United States Air Force. Hynek
assembled the authoritative American dossier on alien
encounters, Project Blue Book,
and advised Spielberg what aliens looked like. But
the idea that little grey - rather than green - men
with elongated fingers, legs and neck, sounds incredibly
far-fetched - until you talk to Georgina Bruni. `When
I interviewed Lady Thatcher a few years ago,' Bruni
explains, 'I was describing to her the fact that
US military personnel here in Britain had reportedly
had contact with, aliens, and an alien spacecraft,
in Rendlesham Forest in
Suffolk in December 1980.
I
expected her to tell me that I'd been watching too
many episodes of the X Files, But she didn't look
shocked at all. She just said, twice: "You can't
tell the people." With Bruni's encouragement,
in the wake of this conversation Lord Hill-Norton,
a former Chief of the Defence Staff tabled 18 Parliamentary
questions in the House of Lords -as a result of which
the Government released more than 200 previously
secret files concerning UFOs and aliens. One of the
files revealed that then Prime Minister Sir Winston
Churchill wanted the matter investigated in 1952.He
sent a memo to his scientific adviser, Sir Henry
Tizard, asking: `What does all this stuff about flying
saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the
truth?' After several months, Tizard reported that
all the sightings were 'explicable by natural events,
although shortly afterwards the Government explicitly
banned RAF personnel from discussing sightings with
anyone not from the military.
The U.S. Government had adopted a similar policy
of official secrecy five years earlier, in the wake
of a spate of incidents near the US Air Force base
at Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1949 - incidents
that Spielberg uses as his starting point for his
TV series. And so the modern history of UFOs, aliens
and official cover-ups was born. British UFO researcher
Jenny Randles, who has spent more than 20 years investigating
UFO and alien phenomena, maintains that in more recent
times alien kidnapping has become much more common,
An ever growing tide of people suspect that they
may be alien abductees,' she says. So is it fact
or fiction? I'm not certain, but the evidence of
witnesses such as Jason Andrews and Bridget Grant
is hard to ignore. And it's clear that, as the 2lst
century begins, opinions are changing. The Government
announced recently that it was `open-minded' about
the `existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial life
forms' a markedly different official position from
the one taken half a century ago. Perhaps the politicians
are beginning to accept that we are not alone. Steven
Spielberg certainly does. |
