Researcher Nigel Watson has documented a trove of astonishing cases
It was not long after the Christmas holidays on a Wednesday in 1978 at Anlaby Primary School when “Peter” – a pseudonymous pupil – is reported to have had a close encounter of the third. Later that day, the seven year old told his puzzled mum that, while in the playground, he had heard a sharp whistling noise and looked up to see a flying saucer that was changing colour as it came in to land on the school’s flat roof.
Three humanoid beings are said to have got out of the craft – they appeared to be armless and wearing gold suits with wires or tubes hanging from their backs which connected them to the craft. Peter ran off to tell a friend but looked back to see the beings had got back into the craft – which took off slowly before flying away “like a boomerang” once it had cleared nearby buildings
Peter’s sighting – only a couple of months before Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Close Encounters Of The Third Kind hit British cinemas – is just one of several bizarre accounts from the Humber region researched by Scunthorpe UFO investigator Nigel Watson, who has spent much of his life peering into people’s experience of the phenomenon.
Now, with the US Government’s release of so-called UFO files and supposed whistleblowers coming forward in recent years, Nigel has highlighted several astonishing tales from his book – Portraits Of Alien Encounters Revisited: High Strangeness British UFO Cases – which was published last year and includes cases predominantly from the 1970s and 80s.
Nigel, who was a founder of the Scunthorpe UFO Research Society in the early 1970s, was drawn to the subject amid the space race in the ’60s and began interviewing people from across the North of England, who claimed to have seen mainly anomalous lights in the sky. Many, he supposes, were actually satellites, flares or other more pedestrian explanations.
But, for Nigel, a handful of really incredible stories stuck out – with some reported on his doorstep. The Anlaby encounter came only months after the eerily similar Wawne Primary case.
Nigel explained: “Children saw a craft fly over their school. The headmaster got them to do drawings and plasticine models afterwards, and they all seemed to be very similar.”
On the same day, 12 miles to the North West of Wawne, a mother and her seven year-old son were going to the youth club at Middleton when they saw a brilliant cone of blue light. They reported it travelling silently at high speed, and that as it moved it got larger. Nigel says the boy’s description of it as “like a rocket” suggests they saw a meteor or fireball.
Nigel, who describes himself an “optimistic sceptic”, said: “I think the accounts change on the basis of what they think aliens should look like. In the early years, people always seemed to report aliens in space suits with helmets and taking samples.
“Of course, that’s exactly what the Apollo astronauts were doing on the moon. It’s quite logical, but after Spielberg’s film, it’s been more about these ‘greys’, which don’t wear space suits. The way people perceive aliens seem to be influenced by things like films and that might be because people see something ambiguous and then interpret it as an alien.”
Another locally specific chapter in the book concerns a man from Hull who said he said he faced a number of disturbing experiences through practising meditation. The pseudonymous “Martin”, who had owned his own company in the city, talked of being invited by aliens to ride in a UFO, with him being sent to meet an invisible vehicle in a field near Goole which would take him to the craft.
Even though that case Nigel surmises to be based on the man’s imagination and psychological turmoil, he says not all bizarre reports can be dismissed out of hand.
He added: “I suppose over the years I’ve got more sceptical, but I’m still fascinated by the subject. There’s some fantastic accounts in my book and people do think they have had these experiences. I think you have to respect what people believe in.”
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