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John Rimmer was editor and publisher of MUFOB and Magonia magazines from 1974 to 2008, when Magonia magazine ceased publication.

When Springheeled Jack Wore Galoshes
Peter Rogerson

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When Spring Heel Jack wore Galoshes.

Flash mobs, phantoms and Men in Black in 1920s Warrington

 
  • This is the full story of Spring Heeled Jack in Warrington in 1927 as told through the newspapers of the period: 

Warrington EXAMINER 

20 August 1927 
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A GHOST IN GALOSHES
Hue and Cry in Haydock Street After Tall Figure in White
HUNDREDS IN THE CHASE
A very evil-looking man in a black suit.
A tall figure dressed all in white.
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These, literally, are the principal figures in a “Dracula” like story which comes from the Haydock Streetdistrict. Strange happenings have been reported during the week, and hundreds of people have had the not altogether unpleasant thrill of the “ghost” hunt. The most serious side of the story is that many women and girls have been alarmed, and a very sensible solution, told to the investigator, is that the “ghost” is either a practical joker or the accomplice of a thief who may be endeavouring to draw people from their homes to enable his confederate to have better facilities for breaking in.
The story begins last week when it is stated “a very evil looking man” in a black suit” was seen prowling around in a very mysterious manner. This fact is authenticated by several residents of Haydock Street.
In the early hours of Sunday morning the whole neighbourhood was thrown into excitement by the news that a “ghost” had been seen. It was stated that between the hours of one and two o’clock a “tall figure dressed all in white” was seen passing along the streets adjoining Haydock Street and completely disappearing from time to time. Two women who witnessed the apparition were so overcome that they fainted and had to be revived by the crowd which soon assembled. A diligent search was afterwards made, but no trace of a supposed visitor from another world was to be found. 
SOLID ARGUMENTS FOR THE SHADE 
Comparatively few people saw the figure on Sunday morning, but on Sunday night a crowd of some hundreds of people from all over Warrington gathered in Haydock and Furness Streets armed with pokes, bottles, shovels, brooms, carving knives and hay making implements prepared to lay the ghost. Many of them ridiculed the suggestion that anything had been seen, but they were less sceptical when, about eleven o’ clock the “ghost” made its appearance once again. Immediately the cry went up “There it is”” and the crowd set off after the apparition.
          After beckoning to various people, the ghost took to its heels and, instead of vanishing as all well-bred ghosts should, darted down a narrow entry in Furness-street. At the end of the entry is a high wall, but this did not stop the ghost in its flight, for its placed its hands on the top of the wall and sprang over like-to use one woman’s expression-“the famous Spring Heeled Jack”. From that point on all trace of it was lost. The search continued, however, until four o’clock in the morning , but nothing further was seen.
          The occurrence had such an effect on the people however that many of them could not get any sleep, and windows were bolted, extra fastenings were put on the doors, and some men even stayed up until daylight, in readiness for any other appearance that the “ghost” might make. On Monday morning however, many girls were hysterical and could not be calmed. If they moved from one room into another they had to take their father or mother with them, even when they were getting ready for work. Many of those who go early to work had to be escorted the greater part of the way. One girl said “ I was so frightened that I kept looking behind me for fear the ghost should get me.” 
WHAT EYE-WITNESSES SAW 
Mrs Flanaghan of Furness-street and her three daughters were among the first to see the apparition. “I was standing at the door” said Mrs Flanaghan, about eleven o’clock on Sunday night and, happening to look across the road, I suddenly saw something white. I cried out “There it is” and my three daughters and a young man to whom we were talking, saw it too. The young man wanted to run after, but he was held back because we feared the “ghost” might have a knife under the white covering. The apparition was very tall, about six feet, and was covered from head to foot with something white, the only part of it visible being the eyes. When a chase was attempted it ran down the entry, taking off the white covering as it went, and we noticed that it had on a dark suit. It must of have had galoshes or something on its feet, for we heard the “pit pat” as it ran.”
Another person who had a “close up” of the figure was Mrs Ellison of Scott-street, who was walking home with her husband on Sunday night after visiting a friend. “When nearing Furness-street” said Mrs Ellison “ I saw a ghostly figure in white. I was startled and cried to my husband “Oh a ghost”. He replied there were no such things as ghosts, but when he turned and saw it he said “My God it is a ghost!”. He said he would see if it really were a ghost and grabbed my umbrella. When the ghost saw this it put its hands up in the air, just like a ghost, and then ran down the entry.”
Although another lady from Chorley-street states there are no such things as ghosts, the apparition frightened her when she came upon it suddenly on Sunday night. It was dressed all in white and was a very terrifying spectacle.
The people of the neighbourhood are doing their best to lay the “ghost” as it is causing so much annoyance in the neighbourhood and the search was continued on Monday and Tuesday nights, but the ghost kept itself to itself.
Each night through the week parties of people, mostly young, have waited until the early hours of the morning with the hope of seeing, and, as one young man said, “doing for” the apparition. One evening an “Examiner” representative spent an hour or two in the district but, until after midnight, nothing was seen or heard except for a few ghostly wails which , when investigated, were found to proceed from very human throats-those of young children who took a delight in trying to frighten the watchers. Time after time persons would shout “There it is” but their imaginations were playing them a trick, for the “ghost” did not show its face.
Manchester Evening News
Saturday 10 September 1927
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FACE AT THE WINDOW
WEIRD HAPPENINGS IN WARRINGTON
DOGS HOWL
Warrington has a ghost! 
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Women in the Orford Lanedistrict of Warrington have been terrified during the past week by weird happenings. A remarkable series of incident began three weeks ago when hundreds of people in the Haydock-street district chased a ghost-a figure in white which disappeared by jumping over a high wall,. Shortly before the appearance of the “ghost” the residents report that a person variously described as “ a very evil looking man” and “a tall strange man” was seen in the vicinity.
Last Sunday the ghost reappeared. At about 10.15 on Sunday night Miss May Evans of 26 Neston-street was sitting in the kitchen, sewing, while her brother Bernard aged nine years, was playing with a toy engine on the floor. The back gate and the door of the shed adjoining the house were unfastened.
While sewing she heard a peculiar squealing noise in the shed, and turned the key of the door leading into the shed. Thinking no more about the matter she resumed her work, and suddenly Bernard exclaimed: “Oh look at the window”.
“I looked” said Miss Evans to our representative, “and had the fright of my life. There was a face, almost covered with something white, pressed to the window, while a hand over the bottom of the window held a big electric torch. It must have been a very powerful torch for it lit up the whole of the kitchen, thought the gas [light] was full on. I was frightened and could not move. At last I ran to the front and neighbours came out to see what was the matter. They made a search but could not find anything.”
          The only noise Miss Evans heard was the “squealing” before the apparition appeared at the window.
Neighbours state that on the Sunday night all the dogs in the neighbourhood barked and howled for hours. Another appearance occurred in the Birchall-street district on Tuesday evening. Mrs Bird of 23 Chorley-street was sitting in the house with her little boy when she heard a loud rapping on a piece of three-ply wood which had been inserted in place of a broken window pane.
“We went to bed” said Mrs Bird “and after a time we were awakened by a commotion at the back. We went down and found that the “ghost” had been visiting a house down the road”.
  • The Liverpool Express of the same date on page 5 also carried the story with even more alarming headlines:
“GHOST FACE” AT A WINDOW
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TERROR CAUSED AMONG WARRINGTON WOMEN
ELUSIVE FIGURE
RESIDENT ON LOOK-OUT WITH A TRUNCHEON. 
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“Women in the Orford-lane district have been during the week been terrified by weird happenings in the night and crowds of people have gathered in Neston Streetto watch for a ghost.
One man went about with a truncheon up his sleeve, and another with a blank shot pistol, but nothing supernatural or otherwise has been captured.

Excitement began three weeks ago, when the people in theHaydock Streetdistrict chased a “figure in white” which jumped over a high wall. Shortly before the appearences of the ghost, residents had reported that a person described as an “evil looking man” and a “tall strange man” had been seen in the district.”

  • The paper then went on report the story of May and Bernard Evans in almost the same language as the Manchester Evening News, adding that the little boy had to be given restoratives and that the face at the window had moved from side to side. Likewise the story of Mrs Bird. There was also the story of Mrs Bate of 44 Birchall Street. She and her family were going to bed when “one of the family went into the kitchen. There were three loud bangs on the window, and the woman ran into the kitchen and said she had seen a large fist come to the window and bang on it three times” 
  • The next Saturday the Manchester Evening News had more on the ghost to report (17 September) 
HOWLING GHOST
Warrington Disturbed Again
UGLY VISITOR
(From Our Own Correspondent.)
Warrington: Saturday
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The now famous Warringtonghost has been up to his usual tricks again this week and the latest description of him which comes from the Birchall-street district is that he is “ a second spring-heeled Jack” who makes a noise similar to the howl made in “The Face at the Window”.
Mrs Garner of Birchall-street was in the front room with her husband when they heard weird noises at the back. There were tappings on the window panes and a peculiar howling noise in the air.
Although not unduly troubled about the matter, Mr Garner took the precaution of nailing up the back room window.

It was just as well for the visitor came back again to the house on Tuesday evening and this time appeared to try and get in, for finger marks were found all over the window.
Two days later Mrs Garner went into the back room and saw something at the window. A white light flashed.
At the window was a man with “a very large mouth and ugly face”. The light which flashed was, according to Mrs Garner, about six times brighter than the light from the gas mantle.
Although hundreds of people were out within three minutes after the occurrence, no sign of the man could be found.

UGLY FACE 
A little later the same evening the ghost appeared to have made its way round to Algernon-street. A Mr Dunn was in the yard when he suddenly saw a man’s head and shoulders appear above the gate, which is 5ft 6inches [about 1.65m.] high.
It was an ugly face and he made a smack at it with his fist. His hand however hit the top of the gate and the ghost made off.
Mr Dunn opened the gate and ran after the “thing” but it disappeared like a shadow. It did not run but seemed to glide. It had a long white coat like a mackintosh (rain coat PR), and appeared to have no feet at all.
The ghost also made an appearance in Hamilton-street, where it tapped a young man on the shoulder, and frightened him so much that he ran into a shop and fainted.
Another unusual occurrence comes from Alder-street. A woman was in bed, and she told her husband she could heard a fizzling noise downstairs.
Her husband went down to investigate and he found a plate of fried bacon in the back kitchen. He heard a sound as of someone running down the yard, but when he made a search nothing was revealed.
  • Here is how it was presented in the two weekly newspapers in the town on Saturday 24 September 1927. First there was the more populist paper, the Liberal Warrington Examiner. That went in for the sensational approach:
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THE GHOST!
Appearance Before an Armed Mob: White Robe and Folded Arms
“ MY TIME’S UP”
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“We think it is somebody playing pranks and, more than anything else, it is women who “have got the wind up”, is the opinion of the police with regard to remarkable happenings which have taken place in the Orford-lane and surrounding districts during the past few weeks.
This is probably a common sense view of the whole matter, but at the same time there is no doubt that the repeated appearances of some individual posing as a “ghost” have created a big sensation in that part of Warrington, and is causing a lot of discomfort and alarm amongst the more nervous women and children.
The Examiner” learns that in many cases, parents have put their clocks on at night in order to get their children to go to bed before the time when the “ghost” is supposed to appear: and that the children themselves are becoming frightened of leaving their homes in the evening.
Suring the last week-end another probable solution to the mystery was arrived at following a message shouted to some young men by the “ghost”, which was being chased. “My time’s up on Thursday” was the message, and this would make appear that the “ghost” is carrying out his queer programme for a wager.
When the ghost was reported to be in Margaret-street on Sunday night, hundreds of men, women and even children, armed with pokers, fire tongues, bottles, truncheons, “chilalahs”, [shillelaghs] and other weapons rushed in a mob to the neighbourhood with the object of “finishing it off”.
The Warrington “ghost” however is very brave and seems to care not what manner of revenge the public have planned for him, for he walked past the crowd with only a few feet separating them from him. “There he is!” shouted the people and after him they went. Down Margaret-street, which is blocked at one end by railings separating the street from the railway, he went over the rails “like greased lightning”. The crowd uprooted the rails to get on to the embankment, and there was the “ghost” in his white robes and folded arms, staring at them.
They again took up the chase and after flashing his powerful torch on a wall of corrugated iron, which is very jagged at the top and is about 10 feet high, over he went, making the peculiar howling noise which generally announces his coming. From that point he disappeared. Later however, however, he was again heard in a backyard at the other end of the street, but before the crowd could get hold of him he had once more disappeared. One man got so close to him as to almost touch him, but his hand came into contact with a wagon or something, and the “ghost” got away.
Thus matters went on until about two o’ clock, but although the people saw the light being flashed in various places, nothing came of their searching.
GREEN EYES
Earlier in the evening Mr Frangleton, of Margaret-street, was in his yard, which adjoins the railway, when he saw the “ghost” dressed all in white standing in the middle of the yard with its arms crossed, staring at him. According to Mr Frangleton’s daughter, her father called for his slippers, but the ghost disappeared from the yard as if by magic. It had an extremely ugly face, which must have been a mask, for no human could have a face so ugly, and the eyes appeared to be green and illuminated. On his chest was something that resembled an electric light switch.
Mrs Denmade and Miss Fragleton saw the “ghost” again in a wooden building on the railway.
On Monday night the people of the neighbourhood arranged a systematic search of the district around Margaret-street, but nothing unusual was seen.
The extraordinary manner in which the “ghost” moves and the way it surmounts high walls lead people to surmise that is has springs on its feet.
THE MYSTERY BACON 
Another unusual occurrence, which may or may not be associated with the ghost is reported from the Alder-lane district. The report goes that a lady was in bed when she thought she head a frizzling noise downstairs. Her husband went down to investigate, and found a plate of cooked bacon in the back kitchen. He heard a sound as of somebody running down the yard, but when he made a search nothing was revealed.
  • This was essentially the story that appeared in the Liverpool Express and Manchester Evening News of September 19th. They clearly had a common source. Similar stories also appeared in the Manchester Evening Chronicle but add no further details. The rival Conservative and somewhat more upmarket Warrington Guardian was much more sober in its reportage: 
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A SILLY SCARE
“GHOST” STORY “ALL BUNKUM”
EYE-WITNESS VISITS THE “GUARDIAN” OFFICE 
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The silly pranks of some persons who have been referred to as the “Haydock Streetghost” has caused considerable disturbances in that neighbourhood. Stories have been circulated of an ugly face, weird noises and green eyes, and children and credulous people have been unnerved. It was reported early this week that the man shouted a message to some young men who chased him saying “I won’t be sorry when my time’s up on Thursday”
A CHASE DESCRIBED
Mr Stanley Trantum of 45 Laira Street, called at the “Guardian” Office on Monday and stated that at 11.30 on the previous evening he was at the house of a friend inChorley Streetwhen he heard screams. Running out, he saw a crowd of people inMargaret Street, where a man was being chased. Mr Trantum followed and almost caught the man when he scaled a corrugated iron wall. He says that on the far side of the wall he fell into an iron box and then became entangled in some wire: otherwise, the man would not have escaped. The man was wearing a light fawn raincoat and was carrying an electric lamp.
POLICE SUPERINTENDENT’S VIEW 
Mr Trantum had not reported the matter to the police, and when a “Guardian” reporter visited Superintendent Holland with the information, he said he thought the story of the “ghost” was “all bunkum”. We think it is somebody playing pranks” he added and “more than anything else, that it is hysterical women who have “got the wind up” and imaged most of the things which are reported.  
  • That was that, with the police pronouncement the story left the presses. It was to linger in the memories of older people and in Ghost, Mysteries and Legends of Old Warrington by charity worker Wally Barnes (Owl Books 1990), where there is a wildly exaggerated account of his activities. Far from the back streets of the original reports Barnes has “Spring Heel Jack” bouncing up Horsemarket Street, (the portion of the main road leading up to Warrington Central Railway Station from the central roundabout) on shoes with springs on their soles. He is now seen bounding along in 15ft leaps along John Street and leaping as high as bedroom windows in Hardy Street and leaping along Cockhedge Lane in 20ft leaps.  
  • The areas at the centre of this story were streets of terraced housing in a working class district to the north of Central Railway Station in Warrington. They can be seen on this 1910 map in comparison with a 21st century one here:
  • Much of the housing was demolished in the 1970s, and though street names survive, the scene is quite different. There are no images of the streets at this period in the public domain (photographers concentrated on the main shopping streets and little of the working class housing was ever generated)
  • Ghosts were in the news in this period; in July a man in Towcester refused accommodation proffered because a man had committed suicide there 30 years before and it was said to be haunted (e.g. Western Daily Press 21 July 1927) 
  • The Warrington “ghost” was just one of three according to this report in the Aberdeen Journal of 23 August 1927: 
VARIETY IN GHOSTS 
Police Baffled by Weird Apparitions. Three ghosts are stalking abroad, if the evidence received is to be accepted—one in London, one in Barry, Wales, and one in Warrington, who stalks six feet high with a menacing mien. That they were not members of the same Trade Union of Departed Spirits is very evident, for while the white-haired ghost of London gently kissed a sleeping woman on the forehead and silently stole away, he of Warrington shocked two women into a faint and leaped over a ten-foot wall like Spring-Heeled Jack, when angry husbands armed with bottles and carving knives, gave chase in the dead of night.
The ghost of Barry a mystic Peeping Tom, peering in at windows feet above the, ground, terrorising a mother and children in flat. The London ghost, whom two women and a girl say they have seen flit across the hall of an ancient mansion house within five minutes’ walk of Denmark Hill station, is declared by a spiritualistic medium to be that of George Tavener, born in 1854, and his present mission on earth he has revealed to be a quest for an old desk of his where, a secret drawer, lie papers proving that his earthly niece is entitled to his property.
The unearthly terror at Barry has been hunting a top-storey flat at 24,Dock New Road, near the docks. Mrs Christoforato declares his visits have extended over three weeks. A policeman has been keeping guard at night, but nothing happened while he was there. After he had gone a stealthy footstep was heard in the corridor, but when a woman dashed out there was no one there, the same night a child screamed with fright when a ghostly face appeared at the window and then vanished.
  • According to the Derby Telegraph of 6 September 1927 a ghost at Brampton in Derbyshire led to a drunken women ending in the police courts: 
The Brampton Ghost. 
Stories of a ghost have been, running aboutBrampton, and when a woman was chargedChesterfieldpolice court yesterday with being drunk and incapable, a policeman said that when appeared, wearing his white overalls, the woman sank on her knees, bowed head to the ground, and shouted “ Oh, theBramptonghost.” She was fined 10s[shillings].
  • The Angus Evening Telegraph of the 27th September reports a poltergeist story 
THE GHOST OF MARKINCH GASWORKS. FROM A MARKINCH READER.
For some time past a strange thing has been going on at the gas works in -thevillageofMarkinch. There are two stokers employed at different shifts, and one of them is pelted with missiles always on his nightshift week. The other man is not interfered with. Stones, half-bricks, bolts, &c., have come flying all directions, but no serious damage has been done except the smashing of a gas lamp and mantle. The “ ghost” waits till the sma’ ‘oors ayont the twal “ before he begins, and sometimes the annoyance lasts till five or six o’clock. Fully score of men have tried to discover the culprit, but have failed, not even getting a glimpse of the “ ghost.” It must be an eerie job for the poor stoker, especially on the long dark winter nights”
  • The Dundee Evening Telegraph of 27 September 1927 reported “ghostly figures dressed in white” leading to women and children collapsing on the way to home in the north end of Dundee near Craigie Quarries. A 17 year old boy reported seeing two figures jump into the quarry, making strange noises. The next day the paper reported a flash mob on the site: 
5000 HUNT DUNDEE “GHOSTS” EVENING SEARCH AT CRAIGIE QUARRIES
What the Residents Think: A “ghost” hunt on a large scale took place inDundeelast night, when over 5000 people of all ages went in search of the “ spooks” which have been appearing near Craigie Quarries. The crowd gathered early in the evening, intent on laying the “ghost” or “ghosts” which have been causing such terror in the district. Nothing, however, manifested itself, and although the crowd gradually dispersed, it was steadily joined by fresh arrivals.
Throughout the evening and up to late hour the crowd scoured the environs of Dalkeith Road and the quarries, but apparently the “ game” which they were after thought better of it than put in an appearance. Further instances of what had taken place was given by several persons who had been previously alarmed by the strange happenings. When coming home from evening School one night, a youth was greatly disturbed the sight of a white pony in one of the fields, on which was mounted a ghostly figure. There are a number of ponies grazing in a field nearby.
Ratner Have the “Ghosts.”
Residents in the district have been greatly troubled by these unusual ongoings, but according to many they would rather have had the “ ghosts” than the crowd which gathered last night. A white sheet has been observed by more than one person lying on the high ground near the quarries. It possibly part of the equipment of the “ ghosts.” The sheet has been lying for several days. Armed with lamps, torches, and even a miniature searchlight, the crowd surged over all the waste ground in the vicinity, but failed to unearth anything of an unusual nature.
  • The mob was back the following day:
THE CRAIGIE QUARRY “GHOST”
Big Crowd Again Visits the District 
“The Ghost of Craigie Quarry,”Dundee, evidently quite pleased with the effect of its initial appearance, and refuses to give encore to the expectant crowds who would like to see it. A crowd of between 2000 and 3000 both sexes invaded the quarry and surrounding district last night in -the hope of seeing “ spectre,” and were disappointed at its non-appearance. It is unfortunate that the “ spook “ hunters are inclined to become rather noisy in their efforts to locate their “ quarry,” and the inhabitants of the district, particularly those in the immediate vicinity of the Quarry, are becoming rather annoyed their visits.
  • The next day however only a few hundred attended. The Western Daily Press of 27 August reported on a phantom perfume haunting a Monmouthshire farm.
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The Bristol Vortex, by Peter Rogerson

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Peter Rogerson’s research into ghostly and Fortean happenings reported in nineteenth-century local newspapers continues with this court report of an extraordinary series of events that feature in Charles Fort’s Lo! (pages 152 – 154 of the Fortean Tomes edition)
……………………………………………………………………..
The Bristol Mercury
13th December 1873
EXTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCE AT A BRISTOL HOTEL.
At the Council-house, on Tuesday, before they mayor (Mr.T. Barnes) and Messrs. G. Wiles and C. Godwin, a young man. and woman of genteel deportment and address, and who gave the name of Thomas B. Cumpston and Ann Martha Cumpston, of Virginia-road, Leeds, were brought up on a charge of being disorderly and letting off firearms in the Victoria hotel, near the Terminus. Mrs Tongue the landlady of the hotel was first called, and she deposed that the defendants arrived at her hotel about eight of clock the previous evening and engaged a room for the night, bringing luggage with them. She was away from the house when they came and they retired to rest about twelve o clock. 
About one o clock in the morning she was alarmed by a great noise in their bedroom` and found them in a very excited state, but she succeeded in pacifying them, and they returned to bed. At four. o’clock she was awoke by loud screams, and cries of. murder, and by the report of firearms, Being much terrified by the uproar she got up, and went down to see what was them matter and she heard Mrs. Cumpston exclaim, “keep that knife from me”. They both jumped from their bedroom window into the back yard, a height of about twelve feet, then made their way to the front street, and ran across the road up to the railway station. She then spoke to a .police constable Mr. Godwin They left their luggage behind them.  
Mr Thomas Hawker, who stated that he was on duty as night superintendent at the Bristol and. Exeter railway station was next called and stated that, he was in the booking-office about four o’ clock in the morning making up his report, when be heard in noise outside, and immediately the doors of the office were burst open a person rushed in. Someone tapped the window at his inner office, and screamed out “Murder”. Witness was dozing at the time, and immediately went out on the platform see what was the matter. He there saw both defendants in the act of crossing to the express platform, and he spoke to them. The lady was in a very excited state. Her hair was flowing about, and neither she nor her husband had. anything on their heads. Both of them were excited. They rushed toward him as soon as they saw him, and said. they had been in some den or other, and had been waylaid by thieves, and were trying to get out of the way. 
He (witness) could not tell what to make of them at first, and he took them into the parcels office by the fire. They appeared in a very exited condition; having succeeded in pacifying them, he put some questions as to who they were and where they had been. They told him they had been in one of the worst houses they were ever in their lives, Amongst a lot of thieves and rogues ,and they had to do the best they could to defend themselves.. He took them into the waiting-room, but scarcely anything would pacify them. They were under the, impression that someone was following them, to do them, some bodily injury, and both of them expressed themselves to that effect. The lady told him her husband had a revolver. . They made him go into the inside room and examine it, to see that there was no one there and they themselves went in and searched the room. The lady, took. up the poker to defend herself.  
Prior to this witness had sent for a. city policeman., and during, the time he got he tried to keep them as quite as possible. He understood them to say that they had come, from the Victoria, Hotel, and he told them there was nothing there to harm them and that it was a very respectable house, but nothing would pacify them until two of the city police arrived. They. searched, the gentleman and took from him a revolver and some knives. The male defendant declined to ask this witness anything – and a similar question being put to his wife, she also said she had nothing to ask him, adding, “I have to thank him for his great kindness last night.”  
Mr. Godwin (to witness)- Did the excitement appear to be from drink? 
Witness- ‘No. I thought they were labouring under insanity.  
P.C.321 sworn, said he was called to the Victoria Hotel on Bath-parade, about five minutes to five o’clock that morning, and was told by Mrs. Tongue, the landlady that some parties who had been sleeping there had jumped out of the window and escaped to the railway-station. Upon proceeding to the railway station, he found both defendants to be comfortably seated before the fire in the waiting-room. He believed it was fright that caused them to run away. The witness produced. a revolver and three knives, which he said had been found upon the gentleman. The revolver was here handed to Mr Brice (magistrates’ clerk), who examined it. It was a small. weapon, but of apparently of highly-finished workmanship.  
 Mr. Cumpston, being asked what be had to say in answer to the charge, spoke with apparent incoherencey, and his wife explained that he had an impediment in his speech. He said they came from Clifton previous day, and, has intended to proceed to Weston super Mare that morning. A porter took their luggage and they asked him at what hotel they could spend the night. He said he could take them to a very nice one and mentioned the George and the Victoria. He took them across the line and instead of taking them to the George he took them to the Victoria. They went to bed about twelve o’clock, and about one they became annoyed by a disagreeable row. He could not explain it. They were both frightened. The bed was peculiar one. It opened, and did all sorts of strange things. And the floor opened, and they heard voices, and then they jumped out of the window.  
Mrs. Cumpston was asked to give her version of the affair, She said they were very much frightened about one o’clock that morning by what they heard, but the landlady came and reassured them for a time, and they went back bed. About three or four o’clock they heard worse noises, but what they were they had no idea. The floor seemed to he giving way, and the bed also seemed to open. They heard voices, and what they said was repeated after them. Her husband wished her to get out of the way. The floor certainly seemed to open, and her husband fell down some distance, and she tried to get him up. She asked him to discharge his pistol to frighten anybody who might he near, and he fired his revolver into the ceiling. They got out of the window, but she did not know how, being so frightened; and when they got to the ground she asked him to fire off another shot, which he did. She certainly heard the repetition of their voices. Some one spoke every time they spoke. 
In reply to the magistrates, she said she did not hear the noises so plainly as her husband. 
In reply to Mr. W.K. Wait, who happened to be in court, Mrs. Cumpston gave the name of the parties with whom they were connected in Gloucester, and Mr. Wait his thereupon remarked that they were most respectable people.  
After a short delay, a gentlemanly young man, who said his name was Butt, and that be had just come from Gloucester, stepped into the witness-box. In reply to the Mayor he said the defendants were good friends of his. They were people who occupied a very good position. Mr. Cumpston was an independent gentleman.  
Mr. Brice inquired whether he had any reason to believe that the gentleman had anything the matter with his mind Mr. Butt replied that he had not known him for a long time.
Mr. Brice remarked that Mr. Cumpston seemed to show some aberration of mind, The parties were then discharged, And the weapons and other property found upon the gentleman handed over to Mr. Butt.
From inquiries we have made of the police who examined the room at the Victoria Hotel occupied by the parties, there seems nothing whatever to warrant such conduct on their part. There is little doubt that the whole was an hallucination.
* * * * * *
The man at the centre of this story was Thomas Bowser Cumpston Jnr., the son of a Leeds linen merchant, Thomas Bowser Cumpston Snr., living at the time of the 1871 census at Woodfield House Potternewton, a posh suburb of the town (several of the Duchess of Cambridge’s more affluent ancestors came from there). He was baptised on the 13 October 1847. He married Annie Martha Carter, the daughter of a surgeon, in Leeds Parish Church on April 10 1873 and died on the 9th December 1893 at his home “Rosehurst” Grosvenor Road, Headlingley, making Annie Martha the executor of his £4,153 estate.
Some further details of his life can be found here:
http://www.cumpston.org.uk/#/thomas-b-cumpston-2nd/4539431388
This site however incorrectly attributes the “paranormal episode” to his father, which would have been problematic to say the least as he died in March 1873!
The story has elements of a shared hynopompic hallucination, with elements of aware sleep paralysis and or night terrors. No doubt if it occurred today, the police would be testing the couple’s blood for not altogether legal substances.
* * * * * *

The Pill-Maker’s Poltergeist.
Peter Rogerson

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The Pill Maker’s Poltergeist and Other Tales of Urban Ghosts.
Peter Rogerson
In his always fascinating ‘Ghostwatch’ column in Fortean Times 291, Alan Murdie draws our attention to the phenomena of ‘urban ghosts’. These were not the typical SPR phantoms in nice country houses, nor the traditional ghosts of ‘ye ancient pile’; they were stories of ghosts in urban settings, which became the centre of attention for huge crowds. The stories which I present here are a first selection of these.
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The first takes place in St Helens, in the late 19th century a rapidly rising industrial town, best known for its glass works. The centre of this story however was another St Helens firm, Messers Beecham’s pill makers, owned by Thomas Beecham, grandfather of the famous conductor of that name.
He had come to the town in 1858/59 and by the 1880s his firm of patent medicines was making huge strides. In the years 1884-1889 the amount spent on advertising (example left) rose from �22,000 to �95,000 and the work force from 19 to 88. (T. C. Barker and R Harris, A Merseyside Town in the Industrial Revolution 1750-1900, Liverpool University Press, 1954, pp.378-9) This meant the construction of new premises and while that was going on the firm moved to temporary premises. This when the trouble began.
The man at the centre of things was the works manager, a man who gave his name as Walter Robert Andrews, said to have been born in the outskirts of Bristol around 1844, but who cannot be found until his marriage to the pregnant Elizabeth Dyson in Walton, Liverpool, in 1870. His association with the firm will terminate soon after the opening of the new factory in 1887. The 1891 census shows him working as an insurance agent in Walton on the Hill, by 1901 he is trying his hand as a mineral water maker and by 1911 he is described as retired engineer. He is joined in this adventure by his son Walter James Andrews (1870-1890).
I have not been able to access St Helens papers as the local studies library there is closed for refurbishment, but regional papers tell the full story.
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 26 August 1885.
THE FREAKS OF A ST. HELENS GHOST. During the past few weeks the employees of Messrs. Beecham, manufacturers, St. Helens, have been alarmed by an extraordinary series of performances of what has been termed “ghost.” The Messrs. Beecham some time ago determined to rebuild their manufactory, and for this purpose the machinery was moved into a building in Lowe-street belonging to the same firm, which had been used as sawmill, but which for a year or two had remained unoccupied.
A portion of the ground floor had recently been taken as a co-operative store, and the upper room by the Salvation Army as a barracks: and Messrs. Beecham utilised the remaining portion as a temporary pill manufactory. During the day the work goes on without anything extraordinary taking place, but as soon as darkness sets and the place is locked up, “beings of immortal shape” take possession. The public assemble nightly in Lowe-street watching for the “supernatural,” which, however, has not been seen. So far our inquiries go, it seems that the “antics” of the ghost are confined to stone-throwing.
The manager of the works, Mr. Andrews, gives us an instance. On Sunday night week he was a little conservatory the rear of the building with his son, about 15 years of age, and started to go his nightly rounds through the building. He opened back door and he and his son walked in, when a missile, apparently launched at him, struck the door with great force. He looked round, but saw one, as indeed he had seen no one on previous nights when he had experienced the same thing. He moved forward a little, when another stone came in a slanting direction and struck the wall. This was followed by another, which struck some iron wheels, making a clear ring, and then the further door was struck fourth. This sort of thing had been going on for some weeks, and although a number of workmen had been got together and formed band and scoured the place, searching particularly every nook and corner, no trace of anyone could be seen.
The police had been appealed to, and constables had perambulated the premises, but with no effect, and as yet the mystery has not been solved. Of course the excited crowds outside have imagined all sorts of things appertaining to the invisible, and have done some damage to the building by breaking glass, &c. With the exception of the doors inside being dented and brass machine being struck by some missiles, no damage has been done inwardly. The chief work of the police has been to keep the street clear. An entrance has not been made into the works since Sunday night week, but it is stated that the missiles can be heard flying about. This extraordinary occurrence has caused great excitement, and will continue to do so until the mystery is solved. Suspicions are fixed on a certain person who is believed to be playing an exceedingly clover hoax; but if detected in the works it will be “the worse for him,” unless he is made of stuff that the penetration of lead will not affect.
Cheshire Observer 29 August 1885
A ST. HELENS GHOST STORY- A sensation is just now raging in St Helens the cause the cause of which, being shrouded in mystery. has given rise to all kind .of wild speculation. Mr Beecham, the world-famed pill-maker, has. removed his. manufactory to premises in Lowe Street, pending the completion of his new works. The temporary building was formerly a saw-mill. Mr Beecham occupies the basement, comprising three rooms, and the large hall overhead is utilised as the headquarters of the local branch of General Booth’s warriors.
Almost every night during the past three months there has been s stone-throwing seance in the works, performed with such success that although the gas has been suddenly turned on the “spirit” escaped detection. Whether these performances have a sinister motive in their accomplishment, or may be regarded as the outcome of a sportive disposition, remains yet to be discovered. But one thing is certain, that if the unknown one who has been the cause of so much annoyance is caught, he will be speedily introduced to a magistrate.
It is the custom of Mr Beecham’s manager, Mr Andrews, to make a nightly inspection of the works. For between two and three months his entrance has been welcomed by the throwing of missiles with such velocity and accuracy of aim that it was deemed prudent to erect a door opposite the main entrance for protection. Scheme after scheme for the detection of the perpetrator has been unsuccessfully put into effect. Whoever the individual may be he has carried out his little game with a persistency and an ingenuity that would have distinguished him if employed in s better cause. For four successive nights – that is from eight till dsybreak – Mr Andrew, with s staff of men paraded the works determined to capture the delinquent. The stone-tbrowing went on as usual, but Mr Andrews and his men failed after repeated search to bring the mysterious one to light. At last the assistance of the police was obtained.
A detective backed by five men, good and true, entered the works determined not to leave the premises until they had captured the intruder. The gas had been left burning low. The instant the stone throwing commenced the lights were quickly turned up and the searchers rushed in the direction from which the missiles came. The mysterious one, however, had disappeared into thin air for the nonce, and the detective and his five men quitted the premises baffled and disappointed. On this night about 30 missiles – copper slag, pieces of brick, scraps of stone, etc., in weight averaging from four or five ounces – were thrown. Of the hundreds of missiles thrown, not one has caused personal injury, although some of them have passed in dangerous proximity to the person. No property has been removed from the works.
It having been suggested that the mischief-maker might be a member of the monkey tribe, dogs were introduced, but although the stones darted about as usual no ” Jacko ” could be found. Meanwhile the public got wind of the occurrence! Imaginative women, peeping through crevices, saw inhabitants of the invisible world in every shape and form floating about the air ; and gossip -mongers knew for s fact that skulls had been dog up, pointing to the conclusion that all kinds of foul murders bad been committed.
Every night last week crowds of people thronged the streets near the works, and on Friday evening when the last seance took place hundreds of people congregated about the works, giving the streets the appearance of a fair. Fried fish sellers and hot potato vendors drove a roaring trade. The police had a busy time of it in keeping the thoroughfares passable, and it was not until the small hours of the morning that the crowd was finally dispersed. Hundreds of people again assembled on Saturday night, but as there was no seance the police had not so much difficulty in dispersing the crowd. The works are now being watched by the police and others, and no doubt the unknown one will cease his pranks — for the present at least.
Warrington Examiner August 29 1885 p. 6, col. b.
A STRANGE GHOST STORY: Extraordinary proceedings. A great sensation , and one that has occasioned very lively comment, has arisen in St Helens during the past few weeks by the alleged haunting of the manufactory of the world-famed pills of Messes Beecham. To say the least, the incidents which have occurred therein have been of the most startling character, and their exceedingly mysterious nature has given rise to rumours that they are of supernatural origin. Whatever doubts may exist as to the latter theory, the occurrences are still unexplained, and the mystery remains unsolved.
Messes Beecham’s establishment is situated in Westfield-street St Helens, but some months ago they decided to rebuild it on a more extended scale. In order to carry out these operations the machinery was removed to another building in Lowe Street, belonging to the firm. The greater portion of this building was formerly used as a saw mill, but it remained unoccupied for a year or two. At present Messes Beecham occupy the basement, comprising three rooms, while another portion of the ground floor is taken up by the St Helens Industrial Co-operative Society, and the upper room is used as a barracks by the Salvation Army.
Each day the employees of Messes Beecham perform their accustomed duties without hindrance or inconvenience, but after darkness has set in for some two or three months past their have been nightly occurrences, which have given rise to every imaginable rumour as to “Ghosts and Goblins’. Party of the duty of Mr Andrews, the manager, has been to inspect the building each night after the men have left, and this has lately been an exiting the risky undertaking. No sooner has Mr Andrews entered the works to make his accustomed rounds than he has been assailed by an alarming shower of stones, pieces of brick, copper slag and other missiles, hurled with great force by some unseen hand.
This has been an almost nightly occurrence for a considerable period, and the elucidation of the mystery has baffled the most searching investigation of police officers and other inquirers. As an instance of the stone throwing Mr Andrews states that on Sunday night week he was in a little conservatory at the rear of the building with his son, about fifteen years of age, and started to go on his nightly rounds through the building. he opened the back door and he and his son walked in, when a missile, apparently launched at him, struck the door with great force. He looked round, but saw no one, as indeed he had seen no one on previous nights when he had experienced the same thing. He moved forward a little when another stone came in a slanting direction and struck the wall. This was followed by another which struck some iron wheels, making a clear ring, and then the further door was struck by a fourth.
With the view of unravelling the mystery, bands of workmen have got together and patrolled the works and its neighbourhood, while the aid of the police has been sought. Scheme after scheme for the detection of the author of the stone throwing has hitherto been unsuccessful. The steps taken to secure the stoppage of the noisome visitations have apparently been of a most complete character. For four successive nights, from sunset till daybreak. Mr Andrews with a staff of men have paraded the works. but after the closest searches they have failed to bring the mysterious individual to light. On another occasion five police officers entered the works and determined not to leave the premises until they had [cornered?] the intruder. For that purpose the gas was set burning low, and the instant the stone throwing commenced the lights were turned up and the searchers rushed in the direction from which the missiles had apparently proceeded, but again the search was fruitless and the policemen left the premises disappointed.
On the night in question about 30 missiles, including pieces of bricks, stones and etc., were thrown, their weight averaging from four to five ounces.. A suggestion was made that the mischief maker might be a member of the monkey tribe, but dogs were introduced without success, though the stones flew as usual. Information as to these alarming proceedings naturally spread throughout the town, and each evening for the past fortnight the neighbourhood of Beecham’s Pill Works has had an animated appearance.
A crowd of some hundreds of persons has nightly gathered in the vicinity. The police have had some difficulty in keeping the footpaths clear. The superstitious gossip mongers in the vicinity have imagined all sorts of things, and rumours of ‘ghosts and goblins’� having been seen floating about have been circulated on every hand. It is needless to add that these and numberless other assertions are absolutely without foundation. The genuine manifestations have been confined to stone throwing, and of these mysterious occurrences there can be no doubt. A large number of individuals have volunteered to render assistance in ferreting out the ‘invisible one’� and Mr Andrews on several occasions has permitted them to undergo the trying ordeal. he states however that one trial has been sufficient to test the nerves of the bravest among them., and they have manifested an anxious desire to escape to a place of safety at all possible speed.
Another singular part of the affair is the fact that not withstanding all the stones that have been flying about, neither Mr Andrews nor any of those who have witnessed the occurrences have ever been injured or even struck by any of the stones. There have, however, been some very narrow escapes, many of the stones having past within a few inches of the bodies and faces of those present. The only damage to the property inside has been the [dinging?] of doors and other woodwork, while a brass machine also bears evidence of having been struck by a stone. So violent and accurate was the stone throwing a short time ago that it was deemed advisable for the safety of Mr Andrews to erect a wooden partition opposite the main entrance, and this partition still remains.
The excitement attending the affair seemed to reach a culminating point on Sunday evening when some thousands of persons visited the spot. The crush around the doors to look inside the works through crevices in the door was so great that the gate was burst open. From seven o clock on Monday evening until 9 o’clock on Tuesday morning thousands of persons flooded to the neighbourhood, but the crowd was a good deal more orderly than on the previous evening, On Monday night two policemen and six of Mr Beecham’s employees were stationed outside the building while Mr Andrews was on duty inside, with a view of capturing the ‘spirit’.
Notwithstanding these precautions, however, when Mr Andrews paraded the works a large stone of about half a pound in weight was violently thrown and struck the wall near to where he then was. That was the only missile thrown during the night. On Tuesday morning a member of the Salvation Army volunteered to solve the mystery, not by physical means, but he declared that he would invoke divine aid, and since Monday night the stone throwing has ceased. Mr Andrews expressing the opinion to our representative on Thursday that he thought the manifestations would (cease?) ‘for the present’.
He added that he did not think the occurrences were due to any supernatural cause but he thought it was a clever dodge on the part of some scheming individual. In their efforts to the latter men had surrounded the works, been on the roof, stood at every door, and yet the stone throwing had gone on. He observed that one constable who was rambling in the dark through the works in his endeavour to discover the marauder fell down an old sawpit� and so damaged his clothing that the firm produced new articles of clothing for him. The room of the Salvation Army had also been visited by the nocturnal wanderer and on one occasion the drum and money-box were struck, sending a rattle through the room.. Up to Thursday evening the strange affair had not been explained, but as long as it remains in its present state the excitement is not likely to diminish.
Another Visit.
For the last two days hopes have been entertained by Mr Beecham, Mr Andrews, his employees and public generally that the extraordinary performances had ceased, and that the ‘ghost’ had either vanished entirely or removed his quarters. About half past seven o clock on Thursday night however, Mr Andrews and his son went into the works to fetch out their overcoats as the evening was wet. All seemed quiet and Mr Andrews remarked that he should very much like to do a little of the work, which was in arrears owning the disturbances, but that he was almost afraid to stay. He had scarcely uttered the words when a large piece of copper slag, weighing half a pound, came whizzing through the air, rolled over a number of parcels, struck a bench and then dropped to the floor. Neither Mr Andrews nor his son was hurt.
Previous suspicions have been carried into another channel by the following letter which on Thursday was received by Mr Beecham:
  • Dear Sir In reference to the ghost in Lowe-st by Reports I note that you cannot find anything, have you, Sir, Examined the floor. It is my firm opinion that someone Carrying out an illegal Business and that there are subterranean vaults of which you are not aware, it may be a subterranean passage from Cowley Hill (C.M.) Perhaps dynamitards) it is very advisable to be very Cautious in the Proceedings as the consequences might be fatal should you fall on them in their lair they would in all probability be desperate it is quite evident that there are someone there that have no business there, and you are stumbling block in their way, and so they have formed a conspiracy to try and frighten you from the premises.
The envelope bears the Prescot postmark and is addressed to Mr Beecham, pill manufacturer, St Helens, private. The letter bears a signature but until enquiries have been made it is not considered advisable to publish it. Mr Andrews says many persons have an idea that ‘Beecham’s Ghost’ has been ‘got up’ as an advertisement, but he states that no such idea has been entertained, and that the members of the firm are all mystified as to the extraordinary occurrences.!
We can see one of the great ‘traditions of disbelief here; that ghostly things are got up by nefarious people trying to drive the residents out. These tend to be folk devils of the current social panics, here we see the coiners and smugglers of tradition replaced by ‘dynamitards’ (i.e. Anarchists, who occupied the same role as folk devils as do radical Islamists today).
This was not the first industrial haunting in the St Helens area. Peter Underwood in his Ghosts of North-West England (Fontana 1978) records the strange events in a flint glass work and showroom at Croppers Brow in September 1875 when “an industrious loyal and reliable glass engraver”� was interrupted at 3 o clock one Wednesday afternoon by a shower of stones smashing the windows. These did not come from a polt but from a crowd of people outside who claimed that they saw a ghostly face in the window. Clearly there was something of a local tradition for ghost stories to be an excuse for vandalism.
Meanwhile the phantom chucker moved to the leafier Warrington suburb of Stockton Heath, an area that was just beginning the suburbanisation that would accelerated with the building of the Manchester Ship Canal the next decade.
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, Saturday 31st October, 1885, p.11.
WARRINGTON GHOST STORY. During the past few days (says a Liverpool contemporary) the inhabitants of Stockton Heath, a usually quiet suburb of Warrington, have had their minds considerably agitated by some extraordinary phenomena. A short time ago the public of St. Helens were startled by mysterious operations a certain pill manufactory that were popularly supposed to be due to supernatural agency.
It will be remembered that despite all precautions that could be taken large numbers of stones of rather peculiar appearance wore thrown about the building in all directions in a most unaccountable manner. This took place whenever anyone entered the building, and in the presence large numbers of people, who had been attracted there by the rumours of the mysterious doings In spite, however, of the closest watching no one so far has fathomed the mystery, and a mystery it still remains. From what can be learned it would appear that the ghost, if ghost it be, migrated from the busy manufacturing Lancashire borough to the rural Cheshire village. Here mysterious stone-throwing, similar in character, has been taking place at intervals for some days.
The particular part of the village where this has been going on in close proximity to the churchyard, and the unwelcome visitant has displayed considerable activity. The scene of its operations is one of a row of better-class houses abutting on the high road. Instead of, like the rest of its kind, disturbing the quietude of timorous mortals in the darkness of night, it has not feared to brave the full light of day. The first indication of its presence was the smashing of glass in the greenhouse. At first little notice was taken of this, but when the first stone was succeeded by others, a temporary feeling of annoyance gave way to one of uncomfortable anxiety. The missiles were common paving stones, and after a large quantity of glass had been destroyed it was determined that no effort should be spared to clear up the mystery.
Accordingly sentinels were stationed in front, behind, and on the top of the house. Despite their vigilance, in one day, the third since the commencement of these strange doings, no fewer than twelve fomidable-looking stones were quietly dropped from the direction of the roof on the greenhouse, shattering about as many large panes of glass. A day of quietness intervened, but on the following day the window smashing was repeated in a more singular manner still.
While several people were watching at various points, a crash of breaking glass was heard at the front of the house, and, a rush being made to the spot, an ordinary pane of glass was found to have been broken, and the glass was lying some yards away near a paving stone, and everything pointed to the theory that the stone had been thrown the inside of the house. The singular part of the story is that no one so far as can be ascertained, was in that portion of the house, which was the parlour, and the thing remains shrouded in mystery despite the efforts of the inhabitants and the police.
Warrington Guardian, 24th October 1885 p.5, col. 2.
BEECHAM’S GHOST AT STOCKTON HEATH: During the past week a peculiar affair, which has caused considerable excitement has taken place at Stockton Heath. A clerk employed by Wilderspool Brewery has had nearly twenty widows of his conservatory, which is attached to his private residence, broken. A rigorous look out has been kept both night and day for the depredators but they have not been discovered and some of the credulous attribute the damage to ‘Beechams Ghost’�, which caused so great a sensation at St Helens a short time since, but more sensible people consider it to be the work of some mischievous persons.
  • Four years later a disused flour mill in Warrington was to become the scene of crowd excitement similar to that at Cropper’s Brow.
Liverpool Echo, 5 September 1889.
ALLEGED GHOST AT WARRINGTON. The headless lady. The inhabitants the neighbourhood of Dial Street Warrington, are just now somewhat exercised in their minds regarding the alleged appearance of a ghost and other supernatural mysteries In the street in question there is an old mill formerly used as corn mill by Messers Fairclough, which is now in a state of disuse and neglect. One night this week, it is stated, a strange light was noticed in the building and rumours have since been circulated (about) a ghostly visitant, blood-curdling tales at the same time being told as to what occurred in the locale some time ago.
It said that in the dim and distant past a lady was murdered in the neighbourhood. in question, and that now her spirit haunts the place at that particular hour when “churchyards yawn and .graves give their dead.” Tradition does not say what means were adopted to put an end to the to the life of the poor lady, but as she is reported appear in the spirit in a headless condition; its is surmised that her death must have been a terrible one. The apparition, it is alleged, when the ghostly presence is revealed to unfortunate members of the male sex, give an utterance to a scream (to) literally make the flesh creep, and hence the name of too “Screaming Lady” has been awarded the wandering headless one.
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The Butter Boggart of Old Lostock

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In my review of  Karl Bell’s The Magical Imagination, I mentioned that there was a story from my own area which I intended to look into, So here it is; the story of the mysterious appearance of butter in an isolated country cottage.

The Place

The locality was one of  two cottages known as Knowsley Cottages (the other being unoccupied at the time), lying just to the west of Moss Lane (now Moss Vale Road) which ran from the Barton-Stretford turnpike in Lostock (now Lostock Road) to Gammershaw Lane (now Stretford Road) in Urmston. The lost village of Lostock was divided between the civil parish of Davyhulme (latter part of Urmston Urban District) and the Borough of Stretford toward the end of the 19th century.

Before the building of the Urmston and Flixton railway stations, the villages of Urmston, Flixton, Davyhulme, Lostock, Croft and etc were rural places, where according to Edwin Waugh writing in 1857 “Even now, the scattered inhabitants are mostly employed in agriculture, and their language and customs savour more of three centuries ago than those which we are used to in manufacturing towns”

(http://gerald-massey.org.uk/waugh/c_sketches_1a.htm)

 

Of these locations Lostock was the most underdeveloped, and much of the medieval field system remained. The area remained rural until the mid 1930s when there was a major housing development.

The Personnel.

At the heart of the story lies Samuel Warburton, baptised at St Michael’s Church Flixton on 23 June 1793, and his younger brother William baptised there on 21 October 1799, the sons of William Warburton and his wife Betty Muddiman who were married at St Michael’s on the 19th of October 1784.

Then there is Samuel’s wife Ann Royle, daughter of Benjamin and Betty Royle baptised at St Michael’s on the 27th of July 1788, and whom he married at the Collegiate Church in Manchester on the 12th of January 1815.

The final person in the household is Ann’s great niece Mary Maria Hopwood who was  baptised on 22 August 1841 at the Manchester Collegiate. Samuel, Ann and Mary Maria are the core household, William has come to lodge with them after loosing his job as a schoolmaster in Hulme. The Warburton brothers are devout members of the Primitive Methodist denomination, and the family’s life seems uneventful until the morning of Sunday 22 January 1854, when something very strange starts to happen. The Manchester Times of 4 February takes up the story.

A STRANGE STORY.

During the recent week a number of the inhabitants in the villages of Stretford and Barton-upon Irwell, near Manchester  have had their wonder excited by a report that in a certain cottage situate in the latter township, occupied by persons of quiet habits and of rather advanced age, there had been innumerable instances of butter spontaneously and marvellously presenting itself, on the floor, the furniture, and the clothing, and even the beds of the occupants, for which they could assign no cause, and by which they were very much alarmed.

The news of this spread to Manchester and Salford. Our reporter found the matter exciting the curiosity a of several individuals who had business at the New Bailey (1) on Thursday. One of them, a farmer, who is the owner of land in the vicinity of the cottage, had himself witnessed the circumstance, and was unable to find any rational solution. Police-constable Bent, (2) whose duties lay in the neighbourhood of Stretford, had also visited the place, but although tolerably clever in detecting parties who are in the habit of illegally taking butter away, lie was unable to discover who could be the contributor of it in the case under notice.

With the view of tracing the odd story about the wondrous butter to its source, our reporter proceeded to the place on Thursday afternoon. The topic, he found, was even rife in the railway Carriages between Manchester and Stretford. Half an-hours walk from the Stretford station sufficed to reach the scene of the alleged mystery, and which, it would seem, was threatening to supersede the good offices of that useful animal, the cow, which has hitherto had the sole monopoly of supplying us with butter. The cottage is situate about six miles west of Manchester, between Stretford and Barton Bridge, a little to the right of Moss Lane, a few hundred yards beyond Lostock Hall. There are two double-story thatched cottages adjoining, having gardens and door in front, but only one of these is tenanted. There is no other house within 200 yards, and the others are thinly scattered, and at greater distances.

The cottage, which has a brook running close at his rear, is occupied by Samuel Warburton, a man about 60 years of age (who we understand, has a small income, and weaves  a little cotton plaid in a room within the house), his wife, William Warburton (a brother), nearly 60 years old, and a girl about 12, the daughter of a relative. William Warburton has also a small income, and was, during some part of last year, a schoolmaster in Hulme, (3) but is not now so engaged. On entering the cottage, our reporter found these four persons within, and a very few words sufficed to explain the object of his visit, for that was anticipated, as many had already preceded him to make inquiries. A glance around the apartment revealed the fact that he was in the fat of the land, for butter seemed to have budded from every description of substance from living boughs of holly to dead veneers of mahogany, and even glass.

The door had been closed but a few minutes, when a knock was heard. On its being opened, a gentleman remarked, ” How do you do, Mrs Warburton; I have heard a strange story, and I am come to investigate it.” He was desired to take a seat, and was tolerably silent while the inmates gave an account of what seems to them an inpenetrable mystery. They are all professors of religion, and attend the services of the Primitive Methodist Connection (4). This may not apply to the girl, but she seems steady, and has been several years with her relatives, who have occupied this house about fifteen years. William Warburton, the younger brother, we may remark, was the owner of the house in Urmston where the celebrated Tim Bobbin was born .(5) The following is the narration of the parties: (6)

Samuel Warburton: ‘The first time we noticed anything particular was last Sunday but one. Just before breakfast, we saw several bits of butter on the floor, upon some of which we had trodden. William (the younger brother) had gone out, and we thought he must have accidentally spilled some. Nothing was said or thought of further until last Saturday, in the forenoon, when he again observed little bits of butter on the floor.

Mrs. Warburton: I said to my husband, it must have been done by William (who had gone to Manchester at the time), he must have had his coat amongst the butter, and then have shaken his coat, and so thrown the bits about; for I found them against the drawer, the cupboard, the sofa, the clock, the table, and all round.

Samuel Warburton: The girl sleeps in a bed in our room, and my brother William in another room. On Saturday night, they went to their beds about nine o’clock, but I stayed up with my wife, to have a little talk, and a pipe of tobacco. It would be after one when we went to bed. We noticed nothing on the stairs that night, but on Sunday morning there was not, I believe, a single step without butter upon it. It seemed, in many instances, as if we had trodden upon it  on Saturday night. We followed the track into each room, and there were marks on the, carpets. At first we thought  this had come off’ our shoes, but we don’t think so now. We found a piece upon my brother’s bolster, also on his night cap. Than we examined the bed clothes, and we found some between the two quilts, which were on the top of the bed; and another piece, being the larger, at  the bottom of the bed, where his feet might lie.

He had gone to Manchester, and it kept us busy all the forenoon clearing it away. A piece of paper we found at the top part of the bed by the girl, with butter upon it, but we believe that had only had the butter wiped upon it which we collected, and then accidentally let the paper fall. There were  several bits of butter found in our room, too. On Sunday morning last, my brother got up first, as usual, had lighted the fire. He goes to the Primitive Methodist Sunday school, to teach. I and my wife came down stairs about nine o’clock, and we found that bits of butter were all about the floor, and sticking to the furniture.

Mrs. Warburton: I had occasion to go into the garden, and took my shawl out of the drawer; I saw nothing on the shawl when I went out, but when I came in, after a few minutes, there was a large piece upon it.

Will. Warburton: I found a piece inside my coat, before I set off to the school, in Urmston; (7) and when I came home there was a piece on my trousers.

Samuel Warburton: We kept picking it off the furniture, and still we found it, On Sunday, after dinner, it was again a on the furniture. As we sat by the fire we kept observing it on our clothes. We never saw it coming, an know not how it came. On Sunday evening, I and my brother were going to public service (8), but my wife and the girl, owing to it, did not like to stay by themselves, so we arranged for or my brother to stay with them. When I put my coat on to go there were pieces of butter on it, and my wife took a  number off, and then, when she thought I were partly clean, she said, “Will’t be off, while thou’s decent.” (9)

Mrs. Warburton (appearing very serious): I could not keep straight with it, and I said, “Will’t be off while that only a bit like.”

Samuel Warburton: When I come back from the preaching, they told me they had been standing by the fire, picking the butter off each other’s clothes, They threw it into the fire and it burned.

Mrs. Warburton: At last I said, “Let’s sit down, and let it do as it likes” for I was weary. It never came on our skins, but I found one piece between my dress and my petticoats, and two pieces on my cap, and the girl had some on  her hair,

Samuel Warburton: On Monday morning it continued to appear on the furniture, and instead of burning it, as we had done, we determined to keep it. About nine o’clock, I d collected what I could see, and put it on that piece of pot on the table. I thought that it must be some black thing or other, and I have a  Herbal, and read in this book that holly boughs were good against witchcraft. (10) I thought, “Well, I can easily get them, I’ll try that.” So I got three holly boughs, and I hung them up to the ceiling of the house, and in half an hour there was a piece of butter on every bough So that 1 am satisfied that holly boughs can do no good.

Mrs. Warburton: As we were going to wash, the girl was  putting water into a boiler in a little scullery, and she called me to look at a piece of butter sticking to the side of the boiler.

Samuel Warburton: I weave a little plaid cotton, in a small room adjoining the kitchen, and, on Monday forenoon, when I went to work at my loom there were two pieces of butter on the cloth, and other two pieces on the panes of  glass. I read a passage of scripture every morning; and on Monday I was surprised to find several bits of butter between  the leaves of different parts of my Bible; and they were not in the places where I had read.

The Bible was then shown, and the greasy marks were  visible enough. Of course there was nothing in the stained places referring to the importation of foreign butter, but to satisfy the curiosity of any who might wish to examine for themselves, we may state that the first mark was in 1st Saml. (Chap.6, v.5)  and 1st Saml. (Chap.9, v.2-3); Isaiah (Chap. 57, v.1) and another between the  v. and vii. chapters of Revelations.

It was stated that there had been no obvious accumulation since Monday noon, although a few bits were noted on the furniture on Tuesday morning which were not seen on Monday. On Tuesday the head family invited the Rev. J. Garner, Primitive Methodist preacher residing in Warde Street, Hulme (11) (and who was to preach in the neighbourhood) to take tea with him. The particulars of the unusual situation were discussed, but no explanation could be given.

No clear notion of the weight of the butter thus collected could be ascertained, but as the bits were only from the size of a bean to that of a  nut, it would probably not exceed a few ounces,. although the master of the house said he must have burned hundreds of them.

In answer to various questions, it does not appear that it can be the interest of anyone to frighten them from the house. The house is so isolated, and there are no mischievous boys about, and no one has been near the house.  No broken panes were observed, through which the pellets of butter could be introduced, nor does it seem likely they could have come from without, as they were found in the chambers, and inside two other small rooms down stairs, and at the time our reporter vas present there were fourteen or fifteen bits collected together, a few of which were brought to Manchester, and there can. be no doubt of its really being butter, from various tests; there were four or five bits adhering to the front of the mahogany drawers; two upon a bookcase, one of them on the glass; three on a waistcoat belonging to the younger brother, the schoolmaster, and three on the holly boughs. one it the frame of a sampler, and another or two on the weaving rooms, inside.

That there can be no such thing as butter springing out of  glass, is evident enough; the whole must, of course, be a trick, but it has hitherto been so ingeniously accomplished,  that the perpetrator of the deception is undiscovered. The bits of butter are very varied in shape, and although some of them have an appearance which would suggest the probability of their being sucked in the mouth and then ejected, yet others are so irregularly shaped as to preclude any such  supposition. One thing was noticeable, however, that some  of them had struck the surface obliquely (as drops of rain do when falling against vertical panes of glass), and thus slid along a little, and thus left a mark at the point of first contact. This ought to have been sufficient to have .prevented the idea which the old people seem to entertain, that the substance might possibly grow where it was found.

The young girl does not appear to have anything about her indicative of the artfulness which a series  of’ tricks of this kind would imply. The manner in which the old man and woman speak about the circumstances, and seem to be affected by them, would lead even an observer of the deceptiveness of human nature to acquit them of any participation it the fraud.

Probably the reader of the above will think that the “schoolmaster” is the most  likely person to explain the matter.

 

The rival Manchester Courier and Lancashire Advertiser also published the story on the same day, a shorter piece but giving some additional information.

The Manchester Courier and Lancashire and General Advertiser of Saturday 4th February 1854, p. 7 col. 7.

Mysterious production of butter in a cottage

The labouring population of Lostock near Stretford are in a state of some excitement in consequence of a mysterious and very novel mode in which butter has been supplied to the inhabitants of a cottage in Moss Lane, leading to Urmston from the turnpike and between Stretford and Barton Bridge.

The inmates of the cottage are a couple named Warburton, near sixty years of age, a brother of Mr Warburton who is, we should guess between forty and fifty, and a girl of about 12, a relative of Mrs Warburton. Warburton has some little property and also follows and occupation of handloom weaver; the brother is a schoolmaster, but has been out of employment since Christmas, and the girl takes a share in the homework.

Last Sunday week when Mr and Mrs Warburton got up, they observed lumps of butter varying in the size from the bulk of a bean to that of a small nut and they thought that Mr William Warburton had been getting something to eat, and had been careless with the butter, which it should be stated, he purchases for himself along with other provisions.

The week passed over without any more appearances, but on the following Saturday morning, a quantity was observed on the floor. They thought it belonged to William, who had gone out, but they were puzzled, when in the course of the forenoon, they found it sticking upon the furniture, where they had not observed it before.

On Sunday morning they found it upon the steps heading to the bedroom, upon the bedroom floor in patches as though it had been trodden into the room, upon the beds, and upon various articles of clothing. In some places it appeared  as if it had been patted on, in others as if it had been rubbed on by a finger. The old man and woman are members of the Primitive Methodist Society and the brother is a teacher in the Sunday School connected to the chapel of that body near the house, and on putting on his clothes to go to school he found the butter adhering to his clothes. It was with some difficulty he was put in proper trim to go to school , and when he came home at noon, he found a lump sticking to his leg.

While he had been out the old couple and the girl has so much to do in picking it off their clothes that they had not got the dinner ready, and they were both puzzled and worried. it got into impossible places, between Mrs Warburton’s gown and petticoat, inside the collar of a waistcoat and, on Monday, three lumps were actually found inside a bible. There was another visitation on that day, and on the last time we have heard of, appeared on Tuesday. The only man having heard that holly bushes are a check to witches, thought he would try if they were any good, though he had no faith in them, and got three, but they had not been up many minutes before a lump adorned them. Many persons have visited the house and declare, from having tasted it, that the substance is butter, rather old and “turnipy” but without any flavour of sulphur. It burns in the fire as butter would, and without any blue accompaniment. If any more should make its appearance, we will examine the matter and report more at length.

Despite this publicity neither paper ever referred to the matter again, and one has to presume after the Rev Garner’s visit the events ceased.  No doubt if such a story were reported today it would be ascribed to a poltergeist, albeit a reasonably well behaved one. At the time William seems to have been the chief suspect, perhaps because people thought that a schoolmaster might be a better trickster than a young girl, but the latter clearly fits into Frank Podmore’s stereotype of the bored young girl.

Life cannot have been easy for a girl verging on her teens living with a strongly religious elderly couple in an isolated spot, and that may have been exacerbated by the arrival of schoolmaster William. Perhaps she had to give up her own room to him, hence her sharing a room with the elderly couple.

However as we saw, at the time it seems to have been attributed to witchcraft, or at least to some “dark thing”.

One explanation of the period would have been the actions of a boggart. Boggarts were quite well known in the district, the road at the southern end of Moss Lane, Gammershaw Lane, was the haunt of a notorious boggart, though no-one ever seems to have given a clear description of it. Along the Barton-Stretford turnpike was a house called by the Victorians the boggart house, though whether this referred to an alleged haunting, or was a Victorian euphemism for ‘bugged’, (local term for stupid or ruined) as that was how it was described in the 18th century Stretford Parish Registers.

Mary Maria stuck it out however, she was still there at the time of the 1861 censuses, and when Samuel died on the 25 June 1864, she was the main executor of his will. By 1871 she had gone and her widowed mother Mary Hopwood Snr. had come to look after her aunt.

The cottages remained in existence into the early twentieth century, apparently now run together into a house called locally “The Butterhouse” after the incident, but memories were vague and confused. In one of two histories of the district written for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria but not published until the following year. Richard Lawson, the Head Master of the Urmston Higher Grade School wrote;

“THE BUTTERHOUSE. This farmhouse still standing on the left hand side of Moss Road, was the subject of a supposed mystery, about the year 1848; it was then occupied by Samuel Warburton and his wife. A greasy substance, resembling butter was supposed to have unaccountably appeared on the walls, furniture, pictures but especially the leaves of the family bible; in fact everywhere except Sam’s suite of Sunday clothes. It is generally supposed the author of this ‘mystery’ was Warburton himself, due to mental alienation.” (Lawson, Richard.  A History of Flixton, Urmston and Davyhulme. The author, 1898, p.123)

This area was finally urbanised in the mid 1930s and became an estate of semi-detached houses. No trace of the old cottages remains, and I have not been able to find a photograph of it.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

NOTES

1. New Bailey: the old prison in Salford, opened in 1787 and closed in 1868.

2. Police Constable Bent.  James Bent (1828-1901), In 1853 he was the constable for Lostock and Davyhulme. By 1868 he had risen to the Superintendent at Stretford in the Lancashire Police. He was noted for his work with destitute children, and was author of  My Criminal Life. (1891) He does not refer to the incident in this book, but does confess that as a young man he was much afraid of ghosts and the like, mainly from reading too many “penny dreadfuls”

3. Not traced; in the 1851 census William was lodging with John Owen a farmer at Pownall Fee in Cheshire, probably a distant relative, Samuel and William’s grandfather was John Owen alias Warburton. Hulme was a suburb of Manchester, already it was an industrial area. In 1851 the population was 53,482

4. Primitive Methodist, a radical evangelical and essentially working class breakaway from the mainstream Methodist Movement, starting from a camp meeting at Mow Cop in Staffordshire in 1807. Regarded as ‘emotional’ and ‘enthusiastic’ by its critics. Both its founders William Clowes and Hugh Bourne believed in witches and boggarts. Handloom weavers and petty property owners like the Warburtons were the sort of people attracted. By 1854 the denomination was edging much closer to respectability.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_Methodism and http://www.methodist.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=opentogod.content&cmid=1619)

5. Tim Bobbin, John Collier (1708-1786) was a Lancashire dialect writer of both prose and poetry, he was the son of a local schoolmaster, and was born in a house in Church Lane (Church Road) in Urmston. However the actual house was demolished by this period, and its exact location was disputed, Warburton presumably owned one of the cottages on the most probable site. For more details on Collier and his house see the Waugh reference above.

6. These purport to be verbatim transcripts, yet they are all in suspiciously standard English, not the heavy local dialect (briefly used in the bit about Sam’s suit.

7. I have not been able to locate this Sunday School

8. Possibly the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Davyhulme Road built in 1853.

9. The couple may have been bilingual in standard English and Lancashire but it is perhaps more probable that the editor has standardised the speech and perhaps altered in other ways.

10. Briefly mentioned in A Dictionary of Superstitions edited by Iona Opie and Moira Tatem Oxford University Press, 1992 pp.200-01 and Steve Roud The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. Penguin Books, 2003 p.250.

11. James Garner 1809- 1895, was a noted member of the Primitive Methodist Community (born in Leake, Nottinghamshire) and spent much of his career in the nearby Cheshire town of Sale.

* * * * *

The Lostock area was relatively unchanged as late as 1910, and a comparison with a modern map can be found here. http://maps.cheshire.gov.uk/tithemaps/  You should enter ‘Sale’ township and move slowly north-west at high magnification to find the locality.

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The Magonia Problem.
David Halperin

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1

THE MAGONIA PROBLEM

by David Halperin

– 1 –

One day not long after the year 800, Agobard, archbishop of Lyon, found himself in exactly the right place to stop a lynching. Lucky thing for three men and one woman, who were said to have fallen from ships that sailed through the sky.

Vis-à-vis the aerial ships, Agobard was what we’d now call a “debunker.” If he were alive today, he’d probably be in CSICOP. Or maybe not: the foundation of his skepticism was that the popular beliefs he devoted himself to debunking were contrary to Holy Scripture.

But let Agobard tell the story:

But we have seen and heard of many people overcome with so much foolishness, made crazy by so much stupidity, that they believe and say that there is a certain region, which is called Magonia, from which ships come in the clouds. In these ships the crops that fell because of hail and were lost in storms are carried back into that region; evidently these aerial sailors make a payment to the storm-makers [Tempestariis], and take the grain and other crops. Among those so blinded with profound stupidity that they believe these things could happen we have seen many people in a kind of meeting, exhibiting four captives, three men and one woman, as if they had fallen from these very ships. As I have said, they exhibited these four, who had been chained up for some days, with such a meeting finally assembling in our presence, as if these captives ought to be stoned. But when the truth had prevailed, however, after much argument, the people who had exhibited the captives, in accordance with the prophecy (Jeremiah 2:26), “were confounded … as the thief is confounded when he is taken.”

(From Agobard, Against the Multitude’s Absurd Belief Concerning Hail and Thunder, chapter 2; translated by Wendy Lewis http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/Agobard-OnHailandThunder.asp)

Obviously—the skyships were “really” extraterrestrial vehicles, the three men and the woman “really” humanoid beings from other planets. That’s what the UFOlogists of the 1950s and 1960s would have said. It was left for Jacques Vallee, in a groundbreaking book published in 1969, to float the idea that the obvious resemblances between reported UFOnaut behavior, and traditional beliefs about “little men” and “fairy folk,” pointed instead to some transcendent realm which we humans can’t grasp as it really is, and therefore try to force into whatever categories our culture approves. For Biblical prophets like Ezekiel, the appropriate conventionalization might be “visions of God.” For us, it’s space-age technology.

Vallee took his code name for this realm from Agobard’s story. He entitled his book Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers. From there “Magonia” entered UFOlogical discourse, where it remains to this day.

But what and where was Magonia? Who were the four people alleged to have come from there? Nice that Agobard (or somebody voicing arguments similar to Agobard’s) seems to have kept them from being stoned to death—but what gave the crowd the idea in the first place that they ought to be stoned? Agobard gives hardly a clue. A true “debunker,” he’s more interested in mocking than in understanding.

Getting behind a 1300-year-old story is seldom easy. But it can’t hurt to try.

– 2 –

What exactly is Magonia? I learn from Miceal Ross’s fascinating article “Anchors in a Three-Decker World” (in the 1998 volume of the journal Folklore) that the etymology of the name is a subject of dispute. Some derive it from Greek magoi, Latin magi, “magicians,” and understand it as “land of the magicians.” This is the derivation that’s always made sense to me. But there’s another theory, associated with the famous nineteenth-century folklorist Jakob Grimm, that links Magonia to Old High German maganwetar, “whirlwind.” As far as I know, the name occurs nowhere but in this Agobard passage.

Let’s grant that Agobard must be right: the three men and the woman were ordinary human beings. Magonia and the Magonians never existed. But the Tempestarii to whom they paid their tolls surely did. To judge from Agobard’s references, these “storm-makers” were as real, and every bit as pathetic, as the nasty old women who got burned at the stake in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when some witch-hunter decided they had near-infinite powers of malignity hiding behind their feeble exteriors. Agobard doesn’t deny that the “storm-makers” are actual, identifiable people. Only, he says, they can’t possibly have the magical mastery of weather that his contemporaries credit them with.

Homunculi, “little men,” he calls them (ch. 14). The term might evoke Vallee’s elfin folk and our modern UFO aliens, but it probably conveys only Agobard’s contempt for the storm-makers’ insignificance. They’re hated by their neighbors, he says, who at every passing breeze curse them as gale-raisers. He tells a rather funny anecdote (ch. 7) about someone who assured him he’d witnessed one storm-maker’s wonders with his own eyes, yet backed off under cross-examination and admitted he wasn’t actually there at the time. He complains about a similar sort of folk, believed to have the power to ward off storms in exchange for a share of the farmer’s crop—and about the so-called Christians who can’t be bothered to pay tithes for the church or the deserving poor, yet are only too eager to buy protection from these fakers.

It’s a hardscrabble, superstition-ridden world Agobard calls up for us, where a hailstorm might doom an entire village to starvation while sky-riding “Magonians” feast off the fruits of their broken backs. Not very long before, Agobard tells us at the end of his treatise, a cattle plague was blamed on poison dust scattered through the fields by Charlemagne’s enemies. Whole crowds of people were scapegoated and lynched for the impossible crime, perversely insisting on their own guilt as they died. In a world like this, what’s extraordinary about three men and a woman almost stoned for falling from airships?

Yet as I read Agobard’s story I sense a residue of bafflement, something pointing beyond simple superstition toward “Magonia,” in Vallee’s sense of the word . And to an oddly similar story from a different time and place, told by a dead man whom I’ve come to know exceedingly well, which may (or may not) give the key to what happened in Lyon centuries earlier. You be the judge.

– 3 –

This man is usually known as Abraham Cardozo, though he was christened Miguel at birth and carried that name with him until he died.

He was born in Spain in 1627, to a family that once had been Jewish but accepted Catholicism at the end of the fifteenth century, when the Iberian Jews were given the choice of conversion or exile. Not all such families preserved their ancestral Judaism in secret—confessions of “Judaizing,” extracted by Inquisitional tortures, are often suspect. But the Cardozos did. At age six, little Miguel knew he was a Jew beneath his Christian façade. At age 21 he fled to Venice and formally converted. That was when he took the name “Abraham,” after Judaism’s first convert.

He became a physician, then a Hebrew scholar, then a Kabbalist—a devotee of Judaism’s mystic doctrine. In 1665, when a Turkish Jew named Sabbatai Zevi became an international celebrity by proclaiming himself Messiah, Cardozo was among the thousands who believed. He kept on believing even after 1666, when Sabbatai scandalized his followers by converting to Islam.

Cardozo knew what it was to profess a religion you didn’t really believe—Islam in Sabbatai’s case, Christianity in Cardozo’s. He conceived that he also was Messiah, Sabbatai’s mirror and partner; and when Sabbatai died without doing what Cardozo believed was the Messiah’s task, of revealing the secret identity of God, Cardozo took it upon himself. Until his death in 1706, he wandered among the cities of the Turkish Empire, expounding upon the relation between God and the Supreme Being. (Hint: they’re not the same.) He performed magic rites to bring about the messianic redemption. He maintained a lively intercourse with the world of ghosts and demons.

Insane, you say? Probably. (You might have turned out a little odd too, growing up in the shadow of the Spanish Inquisition.) Yet extraordinary—intellectually brilliant, dazzling in his utter sincerity and devotion to Judaism as he understood it, which happened to be different from the way nearly every other Jew of his time did. For years I’ve felt admiration and spiritual kinship with this man, and eventually published translations of his Hebrew writings under the title Abraham Miguel Cardozo: Selected Writings (Paulist Press, 2001). The story I’m about to tell may be found, with more detail and citation of sources, in that book.

– 4 –

It takes place in July 1683. Cardozo was at the time living by the Dardanelles, a hunted exile. He’d predicted Redemption for the spring of 1682; prophecy, as often, had failed. Its failure was not just embarrassment but disaster. Cardozo’s Jewish enemies, fed up with him, were rumored to have planned a lynching. He fled.

From this time of exile and humiliation, Cardozo reports the following experience:

On Tammuz 11, 5443 [= July 5, 1683], one hour before nightfall, as I was descending into my garden from my upper chamber, I looked up and saw the moon. “I see what appear to be shapes on the moon,” I said to the people of my household. They looked and said: “There are four shapes: Messiah ben David, Rabbi Nathan, Rabbi Isaac Luria, and a fourth shape that looks to be a woman.”

Cardozo lists five witnesses beside himself. They know, or think they know, who the three men on the moon are: Sabbatai Zevi, the Messiah descended from David; Sabbatai’s prophet Nathan of Gaza; and the sixteenth-century Kabbalist Isaac Luria. Three ghosts, in other words (for both Sabbatai and Nathan had died years earlier); and it comes as a shock when, later on, Cardozo discovers the three are not what they seem to be. No one tries to guess the woman’s identity.

Now I could see them clearly. “After our meal,” I told the others, “we shall say the evening prayer. They shall tell us then what their appearance in the moon today may betoken. It has been many years since they visited us, sitting and speaking with us. This is a certain indication that something new has come to be, and after the prayer, we shall know what it is.”

(Am I the only one who’s reminded of the Anglican missionary William Booth Gill, who on June 26-27, 1959, at Boianai, Papua New Guinea, saw close-up a hovering illuminated disk with four humanoid pilots? And who interrupted his contemplation of the extraordinary craft to eat dinner and lead a church service?)

About a half-hour past nightfall they began to speak with us from the moon, loudly, in human voices. We could hear them as distinctly as though they were conversing with us in the garden. I told them that the spot was ritually pure and that they might stand upon the trees, which they proceeded to do. They spoke that night for about two hours. They imparted attractive interpretations of the Bible, considered according to its literal meaning. They discussed Kabbalistic subjects with accuracy. And, after bidding us adieu, they departed.

The next day they visited me in my upper chamber, conversing with me as was their wont. I did not recognize them; I believed they really were the Messiah, and Rabbi Isaac Luria, and Rabbi Nathan.

The three men, in other words; the woman seems to have stayed on the moon. Gradually Cardozo unmasks his three visitors. They are not, as he and his friends first imagined, spirits of the blessed dead. They’re three demons, come to seduce him into misbelief.

Foul are the blasphemies the evil three pronounce. God, they tell Cardozo, has been stripped of His power by the Supreme Being; Satan now rules the world. Once God was able to drown Pharaoh in the sea, to kill Sennacherib within his camp. Now, the demons demand—if He has any power at all, let Cardozo call upon Him to send fire to burn them up! Cardozo accepts their challenge. But, horribly, it’s upon Cardozo himself that the fire descends.

For days Cardozo lies in his bed, teetering on the edge of death with fiebre ardiente, burning fever. Dressed in black, the three men stand by his bedside, declaring it their demon-god’s delight to do to him as his God once did to Pharaoh. Their black clothing has its roots in Talmudic legend; yet it’s striking that this is the first time “three men in black” put in an appearance. They will re-appear in Bridgeport, Connecticut, 270 years later—as Gray Barker relates in They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers—to terrorize Albert K. Bender into abandoning his UFO researches.

Of course all this is Cardozo’s hallucination. That his friends also see the foursome on the moon is a problem, but not much of one. Throughout his life Cardozo had a talent for getting others to share his hallucinatory experiences, to enter with him into a complex folie à deux, to see things that were never there to be seen. It’s likely enough, actually, that his memories of the whole episode were a fever-hallucination, the beginnings of which he projected back to the time just before he fell ill. His moon-woman, his three moon-men, never had any physical existence. In this they differ from Agobard’s Magonian Four, who were plainly flesh-and-blood human beings.

Yet the parallel is haunting. A quaternity in the celestial realms, three men and one woman. They descend, three of them or all four, to earth. Their purpose is sinister and malignant. (And in case you wonder what evil beings would be doing in the sky rather than somewhere down below, the idea of “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” is as old as the New Testament: Ephesians 6:12.)

Forget the gap of nearly nine centuries that separates Agobard’s report from Cardozo’s. Can their resemblance be coincidence?

Well, of course it can.

The more fruitful question is, is it coincidence? Or is there another hypothesis that works better, that correlates and explains the two testimonies in a more satisfying way than treating their resemblance as random and accidental? I think there is. And as I’ve tipped you off with my use of the word “quaternity,” this hypothesis is rooted in the psychology of Carl Jung.

– 5 –

I’m not a Jungian, not exactly. The mystagogic quality of Jung’s writings has always put me off. More than once I’ve found myself asking, as I read him: why can’t he just say what he means, show us the evidence, and let us decide for ourselves? (The way I hope I’ve done with you, in this essay.)

Yet, during my three decades of research in some of the odder byways of Jewish mysticism, I’ve kept coming up against texts which Jung is highly unlikely to have been aware of, yet which best make sense through his explanatory models. The ancient rabbinic doctrines of the merkavah (the chariot seen by Ezekiel, chapter 1), for example, show us a quaternity very like the hypothetical Quaternity of which the Christian Trinity is a mutilated relic: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, plus the Fourth, the Devil. (Jung develops this idea in “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity,” in Psychology and Religion: West and East, vol. 20 in the Bollingen edition, pp. 109-200. I discuss the rabbinic materials in my book The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1988.)

Cardozo also knows a divine, or at least messianic, quaternity. It’s the same Jungian 3 + 1 pattern—three alike, the fourth tied to the three yet in some significant way different. Developing an ancient Jewish tradition of two Messiahs, Cardozo tells us there will be four: Messiah son of David, Messiah son of Joseph, Moses redivivus, and Elijah returned from heaven. Only—here Cardozo bowls a major googly—he’s not quite sure whether the fourth Messiah will really be Elijah after all. Maybe it will be a she, a woman Messiah, the She-Who-Brings-Good-News-To-Zion of Isaiah 40:9. This female Messiah has no precedent in Jewish tradition. She’s the Jungian Fourth, in a quaternity that’s no longer 3 divine + 1 demonic (as in Ezekiel’s vision), but 3 male + 1 female.

In Cardozo’s vision of 1683, this quaternity is transplanted to the moon. Degraded, in the process, from messianic to demonic. (But Cardozo admits: they had him fooled for a while.)

There’s more to Cardozo’s vision than Jungian psychology. I have no doubt that the unnamed moon-woman came to him, at least in part, from unconscious or half-conscious memories of his Catholic childhood. Seventeenth-century Spain was awash with paintings and sculptures of the Immaculate Conception, showing the Blessed Virgin as a beautiful young girl standing on the moon. (There’s a particularly gorgeous painting of this genre by Velázquez, done about eight years before Cardozo was born http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/diego-velazquez-the-immaculate-conception.) Often the Virgin is accompanied by three male cherubic figures, whose wings could have suggested to an impressionable child that they might fly down from the moon to pay us a visit, while the Lady remains above.

Will this contradict the Jungian explanation of the vision, or render it unnecessary? Not at all. The two supplement each other. The archetypes clothe themselves in the cultural garb of the time and place in which they appear. And who knows?—the tendency of Spanish artists to give the Virgin three cherubic attendants may itself have been influenced by the quaternity archetype.

You may say: this is well and good for a psychic production, a hallucinatory vision like Cardozo’s. But do the archetypes become flesh, as they must if we’re to use them to make sense of Agobard’s story?

Jung himself asked much the same question …

– 6 –

In the final chapter of his classic Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1958), after demonstrating at length the psychic associations of the UFO, Jung confronts the problem: UFOs can be photographed. UFOs can appear on the radar screen. And if they’re psychological—how can this be?

It boils down to nothing less than this: that either psychic projections throw back a radar echo, or else the appearance of real objects affords an opportunity for mythological projections. …

If these things are real—and by all human standards it hardly seems possible to doubt this any longer—then we are left with only two hypotheses: that of their weightlessness on the one hand and of their psychic nature on the other. This is a question I for one cannot decide. … But the psychic aspect plays so great a role that it cannot be left out of account. The discussion of it, as I have tried to show, leads to psychological problems which involve just as fantastic possibilities or impossibilities as the approach from the physical side … psychology, too, has not only the right but also the duty to do what it can to shed light on this dark problem.

The question of anti-gravity is one which I must leave to the physicists, who alone can inform us what chances of success such an hypothesis has. The alternative hypothesis that Ufos are something psychic that is equipped with certain physical properties seems even less probable, for where should such a thing come from? If weightlessness is a hard hypothesis to swallow, then the notion of a materialized psychism opens a bottomless void under our feet …

Fortunately, there are less drastic ways by which psychic phenomena can take on physical reality. The extent to which these can be applied to the more baffling modern UFO experiences, and the manner of their application, are questions upon which I’m not yet prepared to offer an opinion. But for Agobard’s Magonians, I think they’ll work.

I’m thinking of the mechanism called projection, to which Jung alludes in the quote above. The term refers to our psychological habit, nearly unbreakable, of projecting what’s going on inside us onto people or situations in the external world. These persons or situations are sometimes wholly innocent of what we attribute to them, blank screens for our projections. Sometimes they collude, consciously or unconsciously, with our projections, in which case they confirm the illusion of reality that we’ve created. But the essential process remains the same. What we won’t recognize within us, we conceive to be out there.

Sometimes, by taking action based on our projection we can make it be out there, in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I imagine something of the sort happened in Agobard’s Lyon. For reasons I can’t guess, the quaternity archetype of 3 + 1 had taken on a peculiar power and intensity in the collective psyche of the people of his time. (Like Jung, I do believe in a psyche that transcends the individual.) The archetype is a pattern, a form; it goes in search of matter to be formed, reality to be patterned and organized. One day early in the ninth century, the quaternity archetype encountered its matching reality.

That reality, no doubt, was something altogether banal. A fortuitous grouping of three men and one woman—that by itself, perhaps, was enough to invoke the archetype. Or perhaps these people were seen conversing with one of the reputed Tempestarii, arranging something that looked like an exchange of goods or promises. In came the archetype, investing the situation, and the unfortunate individuals caught up in it, with its own uncanny numinosity.

And the populace, seeing its internal “spiritual hosts of wickedness” made flesh before its eyes, set about stoning them.

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My thanks to Dr. Thomas E. Bullard, author of The Myth and Mystery of UFOs (University Press of Kansas, 2010), for his read of this essay and his insightful comments thereon.

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David Halperin was a teenage UFO investigator in the 1960s. Later he became a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—his specialty, religious traditions of heavenly ascent and otherworldly journeys. His novel Journal of a UFO Investigator was published in the USA by Viking Press this past year. It appeared in Spanish translation in 2010; Italian and German editions are scheduled for 2012. David blogs about UFOs, religion, and related subjects at: www.davidhalperin.net.

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Make Ufology History
‘The Pelican’

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Originally published as ‘The Pelican Writes…’ in Magonia 89, August 2005.

In his previous column The Pelican discussed the falseness of ufology as a supposed subject for scientific investigation. Now he feels it is time to propose what to do about it. What is needed is a suitable slogan for the project and The Pelican has unashamedly borrowed an idea from the recent campaign to tackle poverty in Africa. Thus the rallying cry for all who want to launch a concerted attack on the false science of ufology is: Make Ufology History. This is a bit snappier than Andy Roberts’s slogan: Tough on ufology, tough on the causes of ufology.

How will the destruction of ufology be achieved by The Pelican, together with his horde of acolytes, sycophants, hero-worshippers and hangers-on? The answer is fairly simple. The social and psychological treatment of UFO reports should be pursued, but attempts must be made to discourage psychologists from over-simplifying the problem. A notable example of this is the tendency of those investigating persons claiming to have been abducted by aliens to assume that all of these experiences happen as a result of sleep disturbances, even though a large proportion of such cases are said to involve people who were out walking or even driving cars at the onset of their experiences. Failure to study the literature on the subject resulting in failure to be aware of its complexities only serves to bring their work into eventual disrepute and to encourage those who prefer some of the wilder interpretations of such experiences.

Another important task is to attempt to destroy the credibility of those ufologists who do not deserve it. These are usually those of the American nuts-and-bolts school, the people who believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial but prefer not to say so outright. Most of these people seem perfectly rational in their approach so long as one does not look too closely at their work, and so long as one ignores their regrettable tendency, which The Pelican has previously noted, to give credence to certain notorious hoaxes as being sightings of genuine UFOs. These ufologists seek to maintain their credibility by attacking those who are obviously charlatans or are mentally unhinged, making themselves look eminently respectable by contrast. What they have in common is the belief that behind all the misperceptions, lies, fantasies and nonsense, there lurks the genuine or ‘true’ UFO, just waiting to be discovered and its exotic nature proved beyond doubt, this being the fantasy which keeps them going.

In Britain, a small number of ufologists, most notably Andy Roberts, David Clarke and Jenny Randles have wrecked some of the schemes of ufological mystery-mongers by investigating and explaining certain high-profile UFO cases, thus so far frustrating their efforts to establish a ‘British Roswell’.

This brings The Pelican to the next task, which is to make it clear to the news media and the makers of documentaries that the great majority of the more prominent ufologists are basically not amateur scientists but entertainers. Their aim is not to discover the true facts concerning UFO reports and UFO witnesses, but to court media exposure and popularity by telling people what they obviously want to hear about UFOs – that they are real, and that the reason why this is not generally recognised is that governments have concealed The Truth from the public for nearly 60 years. This brings us to the next task.

This is one falsehood of ufology that needs to be exposed for the nonsense it is. In fact this will be surprisingly difficult as the persistence of such an utterly absurd belief is a mystery in itself. It can only be an indication of the power of the will-to-believe in UFOs. It is a belief strongly held not only by the lumpenproletariat of ufology but also by many of the more intelligent and highly educated. Of course, not all are sincere. The ufological entertainers, mentioned above, have incorporated it as part of their acts. When anyone asks why we don’t have any crashed UFOs or aliens available for public display they are told that they are all locked away at heavily guarded government establishments.

The government secrecy angle is particularly hilarious in American ufology, where the US government is accused of
concealing the evidence, silencing witnesses and confiscating every last piece of crashed UFO before it can be subjected to independent laboratory testing. In pursuing these fantasies American ufologists rarely pause to consider that every other nation would be either willing or able to pursue this policy. The maintenance of the government secrecy fantasy requires that, if at all possible, UFO crashes should take place only on US territory, otherwise it can get a bit complicated. In the case of the notorious Varginha, Brazil, incident in which a UFO is said to have crashed and its occupants captured, someone added extra details to the story saying that the aliens had been flown out of Brazil on a US Air Force plane, thus removing the vital evidence to a place where the blanket of secrecy could be safely maintained.

American ufologist Royce J. Myers has a web site containing a ‘Hall of Shame’ which gives details of ufologists who have incurred his disapproval. Some of these characters would be on almost anyone’s lists. They are the usual frauds, hoaxers and fantasists, but others, such as Phil Klass and Dr Jill Tarter are there simply because they don’t believe in pursuing the holy grail of the ‘True UFO’. The Pelican’s Hall of Shame would be a much longer list and would include all but a very few ufologists, and The Pelican would not be short of cogent reasons for including them. However, he is inhibited by the prospect of attracting the unwelcome and expensive attentions of m’learned friends.

Readers are invited to join The Pelican to put ufological studies into their rightful place as a branch of modern folklore and Make Ufology History.

Declassing the Classics.
‘The Pelican’

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This article was first published as ‘The Pelican Writes…’ in Magonia 98, September 2008.

As devoted readers of this column will know, The Pelican has long since solved the UFO so-called “mystery”. There are two separate but related fields of study which may be described as ufology, but very few people pursue them. One kind of study uses the physical sciences to investigate UFO reports to try to discover the physical stimuli which produce them. For example, a ‘strange’ light in the sky reported by a number of witnesses might be identified as the planet Venus. The other kind uses the social sciences and involves psychologists, sociologists and folklorists in the study of ufologists and UFO groups, and their beliefs and motivations.

Both kinds of study, if carried out with appropriate scientific or academic rigour, incur the condemnation of UFO enthusiasts, including those who like to consider themselves to be Serious Ufologists.

Certain cases become known as ‘classics’, sometimes because there were multiple independent witnesses, and sometimes because Serious Ufologists, with impressive scientific or technical credentials, investigated them and solemnly pronounced them to be inexplicable.

An interesting multiple witness event which quickly became a classic took place in Arizona on 13 March 1997. This was in two parts: first, a formation of lights which was seen over Prescott at about 8.15 p.m., over Phoenix at 8.30 and over Tucson at 8.45; then at about 10 p.m. a string of lights appeared southwest of Phoenix, slowly sank down and disappeared.

Because many ufologists rejected possible explanations offered, this attained “classic” status, although it was eventually conceded by some Serious Ufologists, after intensive investigation and much agonising, that the second phase of the sightings was caused by flares dropped from aircraft. Sceptical ufologist Tim Printy noted: “Richard Motzer, of MUFON, had determined … that the lights were flares and said so in the MUFON Journal. He drew a lot of criticism for this and was called, of course, a ‘debunker’ and a secret member of skeptical organizations. Even after the identification of the planes involved, Motzer was still vilified by other investigators when he should have been praised for his good work.” (1)

As for the first phase of the sightings, some Serious Ufologists proclaimed that the V-shaped formation of lights was an enormous triangular UFO. However, Tony Ortega, a journalist who actually investigated the sightings, identified the lights as aircraft flying in formation. He wrote an article in which he criticised the treatment of the case by NBC in a programme titled ’10 Close Encounters Caught on Tape’. (2) In the article, Ortega said that he had interviewed a young man who had seen the V-formation from his backyard and trained his Dobsonian telescope on it, which revealed it to be a formation of aircraft.

He wrote: “When the young man, Mitch Stanley, tried to contact a city councilwoman making noise about the event, as well as a couple of UFO flim-flam men working the local scene he was rebuffed. I was the first reporter to talk to him, and, as a telescope builder myself, I made a thorough examination of his instrument and his knowledge of it.”

Some Serious Ufologists dismissed this explanation, saying that a formation of aircraft could not appear as a solid object, as described by some of the witnesses. Others took the simpler course of just ignoring it.

Does this mean that there was a highflying formation of aircraft observed by Mitch Stanley, who somehow failed to notice the V-shaped UFO, or that he was lying about what he claimed to have seen through the telescope? It seems that having reluctantly agreed to flares as the explanation for the first set of sightings, Serious Ufologists were determined to hang on to the idea of the second set as sightings of a True UFO. Seeing a Classic case being completely junked was just too much to bear. Think of the comfort and joy it would bring to the skeptibunkers and noisy negativists!

Of course, the Serious Ufologists’ error here is to entertain the notion that some UFO reports are sightings of alien craft and that their task is to recognise these and add them to the list of unexplained cases. The notion that the true explanations for sightings that remain unidentified after being investigated by Serious Ufologists is that they are alien craft, is what makes ufology a pseudoscience. The truth, of course, is that there are numerous true explanations and, in some cases such as the Berwyn Mountain incident, three or more true explanations. It is absurd to suppose, for example, that the cause of the RB47 incident will be the same as that of Socorro.

It is not just the nuts-and-bolts ETH Serious Ufologists who are rather flaky, but also those who seek more subtle explanations. As The Pelican has noted in one of his previous columns, all but a very few ufologists do not have a purely objective approach to the subject. And, of course, they usually get away with their dodgy hypotheses and tall stories.

One notable example is ‘respected’ scientist and ufologist Jacques Vallée. The Pelican has noticed that he has several times told a little anecdote about his early work at Paris observatory, tracking satellites. In one interview he claims that he and his colleagues “started tracking objects that were not satellites, were fairly elusive, and so we decided that we would pay attention to those objects even though they were not on the schedule of normal satellites.”

He then goes on to allege that: “And one night we got eleven data points on one of these objects–it was very bright. It was also retrograde. This was at a time when there was no rocket powerful enough to launch a retrograde satellite, a satellite that goes around opposite to the rotation of the earth, which takes a lot more energy than the direct direction. And the man in charge of the project confiscated the tape and erased it the next morning.”

Now this claim raises some questions. The first is the obvious one asked by the interviewer: “Why did he destroy it?” Vallee replied that it was “fear of ridicule”. But, The Pelican’s percipient readers will ask: If these objects could be tracked by the Paris observatory, then surely they could also be tracked by other observatories and, as the one in question was described by Vallee as being of first magnitude and as bright as Sirius, it could also easily have been tracked by amateur astronomers?

Indeed, Vallee claimed that he later discovered that the same object had been tracked by other observatories and photographed by American tracking stations. Other questions which occur to The Pelican ar: how does a moron get appointed as the leader of a team of professional astronomers tracking satellites; why should anyone be afraid of ridicule if they have accurately recorded data, confirmed by a number of teams of professional observers, so that there is no doubt about its authenticity, and is there any truth in this anecdote, or is it just another ufological tall story?

The attentive reader will notice that there is something else about this anecdote which it shares with other amazing UFO stories which apparently demonstrate the truth of the ETH. It is, of course, the lack of technical detail, and the lack of any reference to where this may be obtained. It will be argued, inevitably, that this has been kept secret, despite the alleged mystery satellite’s being “as bright as Sirius” and having been tracked by several observatories.

Indeed, most of the Classic UFO cases are notably lacking in precise details, so that investigators have to make do with rough estimates. There are often multiple witnesses, but rarely multiple independent witnesses.

Some ufologists, then — Serious or otherwise — examine UFO abduction reports in the hope of gaining decisive evidence. These have the advantage that the relevant information is available to the enthusiastic amateur, and can not be kept secret like that obtained by government agencies with their radars and other remote-sensing devices. Many abductionists (abductologists?) ferociously attack the authors of papers which seek to explain abductions in psychological terms, notably as the effects of sleep paralysis, with the details being drawn from popular culture, together with the leading questions asked by the abduction enthusiasts. They object that many abductions take place while the subjects are awake. But couldn’t it be true that, in some cases, the abductees are not really awake when they have their experiences, but only think they are? The following account, which does not involve an alien abduction scenario, should give believers in alien abductions pause for thought:

“This was in Minnesota about 25 years ago. I got up from a nap one day and walked down to a McDonalds where I always went because all my friends hung out there. As I was standing in line to get my coffee I suddenly fell backwards for no apparent reason right onto the guy who was standing behind me. A second later I was lying on my back, back in my bed at home. But I was lying on top of the guy I had fallen onto at the McDonalds. He had my arms pinned and he was sniggering in my ear. I was pretty much paralyzed. There was someone else in the room, too. This guy paced back and forth slowly, not looking at me or the other guy, seeming to be waiting for something to happen. He looked depressed. The guy holding me down kept sniggering in my ear and seemed to be enjoying the fact I was paralyzed. I was completely terrified, to say the least, and couldn’t even struggle.

“This went on only a short time, though, maybe a quarter minute at most, and then they both suddenly evaporated. I was there alone lying on my bed. I could move now, but was completely upset and in shock about what had just happened. It had all been completely vivid in all detail: I could see, hear and feel them perfectly clearly while it was going on.

“I didn’t learn about the phenomenon of sleep paralysis until quite a few years later, and used to just think of the incident as some kind of nightmare. Anyway, I know why ‘abductees’ are loath to assume they are any kind of hallucination: they seem too vivid. We have the false preconception that hallucinations are supposed to be unrealistic somehow, have some dreamlike insubstantiality that gives them away as hallucinations, but they don’t. What was especially peculiar was the ‘set up’: the part where I hallucinated walking all the way to the McDonald’s when I was actually still at home in bed. I suppose I really wanted to go down there but got caught in some ‘interzone’ where my neurotransmitters hadn’t all shifted back into waking mode allowing me to hallucinate I was doing what I wanted to do. “Had it been two grey alien looking things instead of two humans, I’m sure I’d have been seriously considering that I’d been abducted by space aliens.” (3)

Most UFO incidents, whether abductions or strange things in the sky, are not what they seem. Hoaxes, often quite elaborate and well organised, are more common than American Serious Ufologists like to believe. The Pelican can reveal that the US government, and other governments, are not going to disclose the evidence that UFOs are interstellar spacecraft, either now or at any time in the foreseeable future, for the simple reason that they possess no such evidence. It’s true. Trust The Pelican and retain your sanity, and Make Ufology History.

Moonlight at Warminster
Alan W. Sharp

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From MUFORG Bulletin. December 1966

To any British investigator of the UFO phenomenon the little town of Warminster nestling below rolling chalk hills on the edge of Salisbury Plain holds a fascination second to none, and after learning from Mr Arthur Shuttlewood that sightings could be made on any clear night, your investigator determined to visit the place again at the earliest opportunity.

So it was that shortly after dusk on Tuesday, November 1st, 1966, a small car, loaded with paraphernalia and with myself at the wheel, approached the town from the direction of Frome, some eight miles distant to the west, on what promised to be a perfect night for observation.

The moon had just begun to rise and the planet Saturn was visible in the sky to the south as the main street came into sight and with it the house which had been recommended as a base for operations and where a top-floor room was immediately secured having an excellent view of the surrounding hills in the direction where the anticipated events were expected to occur.

A key to the premises was obtained and the task of moving a carload of impediment was completed, but not before clouds had begun to obscure the sky in ever increasing amounts until ebentually even the moon was hidden and a thin drizzle began to fall.

However, as the best time for seeing strange things had been put at around 4 a.m. not too much notice was taken of the weather and the writer retired to bed unwontedly early after setting the alarm for 3 a.m. and making suitable preparations for a sortie at that hour.

Promptly at three the peace was shattered and your observer staggered to the window to find everywhere bathed in moonlight with the last of the clouds moving quickly away to the south. Needless to say the streets appeared deserted and the car started without any difficulties due to ignition failure. Evidently I was at last to be allowed to make a move in the right direction, though subsequent events might make the return journey less easy.

Proceeding up the main street, the Westbury road was taken as far as the signpost pointing towards the West Wilts Golf Club, where a right turn was made up the long hill leading to the Imber Ranges.

Driving up the narrow road with headlights out, half expecting to meet some apparition from another world, I felt a distinct sense of uneasiness as the lights of the town were left behind and the moon’s ghostly radiance became virtually the only source of illumination, until suddenly a cluster of bright lights sprang out on the hilltop to the left.

I stopped the car and felt a tinge of fear as I opened the door and stepped onto the road, fingers fumbling with the binocular case.

What could those lights be at such an hour? Curiously I raised the glasses and focused on the hill. A dim shape was revealed but, disappointingly, seemed to bear more resemblance to a house than to a space-craft. I determined to investigate further on the way back, but the incident left a heightened feeling of unreality as the journey was resumed.

Then, as the road began to level out I was amazed to find the way barred by a white iron gate where on a previous visit there had been no obstruction. The unexpected event was not reassuring and as I stepped out of the car for the second time I realised that it would now be necessary to complete the last half mile on foot.

A chill wind was blowing and, as I collected camera and binoculars, a bright meteor flashed overhead from the direction of the moon. The time was 3.40 a.m. and the omens appeared auspicious for some unusual event. I hoped I should not regret having dared to scoff at the possibility of extraterrestrial activities at Warminster and felt a keen sense of loneliness as I looked back at my car, forlorn and desolate in this strange place.

I had half expected to meet some other humans out here on the UFO quest and every roadside shadow took on a strange form as I trudge up the hill, occasionally looking backward in apprehension of being stalked by the unknown.

However, no beings materialised and eventually the shape of the guard house came into view with the barrier for some unaccountable reason raised into the open position. Was this some sinister invitation to enter?

The planets Mars and Jupiter looked down in silent scrutiny as I shone a torch inside the building but ther was no one in occupation. The muted roar of the wind in a nearby copse and its whistling sound round the hood of my anorak were sufficient to drown most other noises, I reflected as I peered round the hut into the forbidden territory, to see to my apprehension what appeared to be a crowd of formless black shapes a hundred or so yards away and an indistinct, saucer-shaped white patch reflecting the moonlight slightly to the right, whilst the distant glow of some reflected light enhanced the eeriness of the situation.

I determined to press on, come what might, and gingerly eased round the barrier onto the concrete apron.

To my surprise the dark shapes materialised into the forms of wrecked cars and I clambered onto one of them for a better look round.

The reflected light seemed to come from a naked bulb somewhere out on the range and the white shape was in fact a long mound of chalk bulldozed out of the hillside to create what appeared to be a refuse pit of some description.

Then I saw a faint yellow light glide across the sky at a low elevation from east to west and I focused the binoculars on it as it passed close to the star Deneb, almost due north of the constellation Cygnus. A pulsating red light could now be seen and a faint drone was borne on the wind above the nearer sounds. The object was evidently an aeroplane bound for some unknown destination, possibly Bristol. The time, 4.10 a.m.

Cold but reassured I returned to ground level and continued my reconnaissance, but without meeting anything further out of the ordinary.

I looked at Jupiter to pass the time. Two of the Galilean satellites were visible close to the planet. Nothing unusual there.

No clouds, either, to be investigated, so at five-thirty I began to walk downhill to the car which I was relieved to find still where I had left it and without any sinister occupants waiting to escort me to an exciting rendezvous.

A quick cup of hot tea and I was on my way back to Warminster, though not without first finding the origin of the mysterious lights. It was the Golf Club-house, strategically situated, I thought, for UFO observation, though why the outside lights should be on remained a mystery. Perhaps the members liked to play by moonlight. Or did they?

Arrived in Warminster, I surprised an early milk roundsman and made two purchases. He seemed to take my odd appearance for granted fortunately and, armed with refreshing fluid, I parked the car and eventually climbed back into bed as the first signs of dawn appeared in the eastern sky, a somewhat disappointed but perhaps rather relieved ufologist.

Interestingly enough I had seen no satellites during my sojourn but a quick glance at the official predictions showed that Echo I had been visible earlier in the night, but had moved too far to the west, while Echo II was in southbound transit and hence was eclipsed in the earth’s shadow.

Looking back now I am glad I made the trip; it was an adventure, but the vigil was not one which I could recommend to anyone of a nervous disposition.

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MUFORG Bulletin, October 1967

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Merseyside Unidentified Flying Objects Research Group

MUFORG Bulletin, October 1967

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Edited by John Harney

COMMENT

From Outer Space, or From Inner Space?

In the study of UFOs we are presented with spontaneous phenomena of unknown cause. We have accounts of sightings of UFOs, of encounters with occupants of UFOs and of messages received from the powers behind the UFOs.

Some enthusiasts confine their attentions to the contactees and seek to interpret the messages which these people say they have received. At the other extreme, physical scientists make statistical studies of UFO reports in the hope of finding a physical explanation. In other words, most people approach the subject with preconceived theories and tend to consider only those aspects which appear to fit in with them, whilst dismissing other aspects of the subject as being untrue or irrelevant.

Most of the controversies which rage among ufologists centre about the question of where to draw the line when considering wht is or is not admissible evidence. For example, many who are impressed by the Socorro and Exeter incidents treat the accounts of Bender’s “men in dark suits” and Arnold’s experiences at Tacoma with derision. Such an attitude presupposes that UFOs are either interplanetary spacecraft or misinterpretations of natural phenomena and man-made aircraft.

It will be obvious to many enthusiasts that the attitude to contactees displayed by most of the physical scietists who are interested in the subject is inconsistent and prejudiced. Their total rejection of the accounts given by people such as Adamski and Angelucci appears to be based on the hypothesis that some of the UFO landing reports are genuine encounters with alien beings. In this case hoaxes are inevitable and the people who claim to receive messages from benevolent Venusians are the hoaxers. However, it is evident that virtually all of the alleged reports of meetings with extraterrestrials are, by all normal standards of evaluation, ridiculous.

Indeed, when it comes to the question of landing reports, no investigator has yet told us exactly where to draw the line between the “contactee story” and the “UFO with operators”. What about the cases of Antonio Villas Boas and Betty and Barney Hill? Into which category do they fall? It is certainly true that contact stories generally have features which distinguish them from “normal” landing reports. Could it not be argued, though, at least in some cases, that the differences are mainly due to the differing reactions of people of different temperaments to similar stimuli?

The contactee problem is not the simple, psychological problem that most ufologists would have us believe – a mere side-effect of persistent UFO reports on suggestible or unscrupulous people. Sometimes, instead of a problematical spaceman we get an apparently non-existent earthman. Take for instance an extraordinary sequel to persistent UFO reports in the area of Wanaque Reservoir, New Jersey, USA. It seems that members of the local police force were under the impression that they had been interviewed concerning their sightings by an Air Force officer who told them that they were just “seeing things” and generally ridiculed their stories. Extensive enquiries by journalists, Air Force personnel and Dr Condon’s team seem to point inescapably to the conclusion that this incident never actually took place.

What actually happened, then? It seems incredible that the police officers should have made it up. It is, of course, conceivable that the true explanation may lie outside the confines of modern scientific theory. However, before we embrace the esoteric or occult evaluations of the situation we should first explore the possibilities offered by present scientific knowledge.

When it comes to contact stories, mysterious telephone calls, the alleged silencing of UFO witnesses and similar phenomena, it is evident that psychology is the subject one must turn to. Unfortunately, few qualified psychologists have seen fir to devote any attention to our subject. Most of those who have looked at the subject have done so in such a superficial and perfunctory manner that their findings are easily refuted.

It is true that there is plenty of physical evidence concerning UFOs, but all of this is capable of alternative explanations. It is right to look for evidence to support the interplanetary spaceships theory, but in view of the ambiguous and disappointing results of twenty years of research on these lines, is it not time to change our general approach?

Ever since 1947 believers and sceptics have taken the proposition that UFOs are spaceships from other planets and have attempted to prove or to disprove it. This has led to much unnecessary misunderstanding and ridicule. We are no nearer to a solution than we were in 1947. It is time to look at the problem in another way. WE know that UFOs exist, but are they physical, or psychological? Do they come from outer space, or from “inner space”?

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RECENT NORTH WEST UFO REPORTS

Borough Road, Birkenhead, Cheshire September 19th, 1967 1315 BST

Report by T.C. Dixon (MUFORG)

Reported to me about 5 minutes after sighting by several, seriously excited, ten-years-old schoolboys:

  1. Glowing white oval. Estimated size – sixpence at 3 yards. Elevation between 45 and 60 degrees. Moved “not too quickly” westwards into cloud.
  2. Glowing white oval. Estimated size – larger (nearer?) than No. 1. Elevation approximately 45 degrees. Moved “faster than before” southwards.
  3. Glowing white and round. Estimated size – small saucer at 3 yards, which “looked like it was spinning!” Moved northwards from cloud to cloud until it disappeared.
  4. Glowing white oval. Estimated size – sixpence at arm’s length. Elevation approximately 45 degrees. Moved north-eastwards into small cloud which then “began to break up rather quickly until nothing was left in that spot – just blue sky!”

Preston, Lancashire October 1967 (date and time not given)

Two architects claimed to have sighted a UFO over Preston. They made a sketch of it which they planned to send to the Ministry of Defence. The witnesses measured the object as it moved above church spires, mill chimneys, and a block of flats – whose exact distances apart they have established. They said that the object was 400 feet long.

(Source: Daily Mail, 18/10/67)

Hoylake, Wirral, Cheshire October 19th, 1967 1800 BST

Mrs A.N. Crossman, of Meols, reported to Hoylake Police that she and her son Jeremy, aged 6, saw an unidentified flying object from their home at about 6 p.m. It was torpedo-shaped, greyish-white and travelled at a fast speed.

(Source: Liverpool Echo, 20/10/67)

Further details of sightings reported in previous issues of the Bulletin

We have now received the completed sighting form for the report referred to in the August issue of the Bulletin as occurring at Dingle, Liverpool, on July 11th. However, the report form gives the place as Sefton Park, Liverpool and the date as July 21st, so please disregard this report until further checks have been made.

A further trip was made to Hindley, Lancashire, to investigate the UFO sightings there, briefly reported in our last issue. [The figure] is a copy of a drawing of the UFO made by the principal witness, Bernard Cox, aged 17, of Hindley.

Cox said that the two sightings of this strange object had taken place on August 19th and August 29th, at about 2140 BST on each occasion. He also had a list of 15 people living nearby who had seen the UFOs and 11 people who had heard strange noises. He said that when the UFO appeared all the dogs began barking. The strange hummin noises sometimes began at about 11 p.m. and continued until about 2 a.m. Bernard Cox said that they even woke his grandmother, who is somewhat deaf. The noises were said to cause distressing symptoms in those who heard them, such as headaches. There had apparently been numerous other sightings in the area, but most of them seemed to originate from young children and were of the vague, “lights in the sky” variety.

On a second visit to Hindley, Bernard Cox was not at home, so another witness, Mrs Judson, was interviewed. Her description of the cone-shaped UFO was similar to that given by Cox, except that she was not very clear about the details. However, she confirmed that it was a very large object. She estimated that she had viewed it for about 20 minutes on one occasion and that children playing in the street had been watching it for about ten minutes before her attention was drawn to it. She was a little vague about the exact dates.

A peculiar detail given by Bernard Cox was that while the object was actually moving across the sky, it was spinning, so that purple lights appeared as purple bands around it, but when it hovered it stopped spinning and came to rest in a position such that the lights appeared on the edges, as seen from his viewpoint. Mrs Judson spoke of coloured lights and beams streaming from the object and Bernard Cox spoke of a sort of glow surrounding the object. Mrs Judson also said that she had seen mysterious glows in the sky when no actual UFO was visible.

There can be little doubt that something very strange was seen in the vicinity of Eckersley Avenue, Hindley, on at least two occasions in August. Some of the details tie in quite well with some of the reports received before and since these incients.

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UFO REPORTS FROM NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

The following reports were sent to us by Walter Blythe, of the Mansfield UFO Group.

The Clifteon Landing Report

A report in a Nottingham newspaper, dated July 5th, 1967, reads:-

Did a flying saucer really land in Clfton or, as the police believe, was it just an optical illusion caused as a result of the sun shining on a barn roof or on greenhouses?

Last night frightened housewives and dozens of people rushed out of their homes when it was reported that a flying saucer “about 30 feet long” had landed somewhere in Clifton.

According to at least a dozen people who said they saw the object, it was disc-shaped and silvery in colour and was seen travelling across the sky at about 4.45 p.m.

The object was described by independent witnesses who gave an identical account of its size, colour, direction and movements. They said they saw it clearly from the High Bank area of the estate. It had travelled about two miles from Wilford Hill to a point on the Bradmore to Plumtree road wher it became confused with a barn roof.

Police in patrol cars who were called out to investigate the report later told over a hundred people gathered on high ground near Fareham Comprehensive School that it was an optical illusion caused by sunlight.

But Mrs Marjorie Cowdell, of High Bank said she was amazed by the incident and teenager Denise Stanley said she saw the object clearly. “I was scared”, she added.

Several schoolboys, too, claimed it was not the first time they had seen strange objects which had scared them. A few days ago they had seen one hovering above the trees in the vicinity of a wood on the estate.

Earlier on Monday, several reports of strange objects in the skies were received at the Guardian Journal offices. At one point three objects were claimed to have been sighted by three boys on their way home from school.

Last night’s descriptions tally with these earlier reports.

Most of the people who say they saw the object say it seemed to have a cloud of dust or smoke around it.

The “Clifton Disc” had the Air Ministry [sic] and Meteorological Office baffled. They could not account for the sighting.

And at Watnall Meteorological Office a spokesman said he could not rule out the possibility of the disc being a weather balloon although at that time of the day it would be unlikely.

“Whatever the cause people have no need to worry. These things have been with us a long time now and they have never done anyone any harm”, he said.

Wellow, near Ollerton, Notts July 8th, 1967 2110 to 2150 BST

A newspaper cutting, dated July 10th, reads:-

Newark schoolmaster Bernard Doy has always been sceptical about tales of flying saucers. But he says he saw one while driving through Wellow, near Ollerton, on Saturday night.

It was shaped like a child’s humming top, with an elliptical top and pointed base, and spun in the air for over 40 minutes before disappearing in the clouds.

“I realise that there are cranks who believe that flying saucers carry other beings who are trying to communicate with the earth”, said Mr Doy.

“This experience has made me wonder whether they may be partly correct about the flying saucers.”

Mr Doy, who teaches art at the Sconce Hill Secondary School and lives in Parklands, said the object was sighted “several thousand feet away”.

“It was stationary while we watched the object, though it did spin on its axis from one side to an upright position. It was surrounded by a very bright light”, he said.

He went on: “The very fact that it was surrounded with light – not merely on one side – convinces me that it could not be a weather balloon.”

Mr Doy’s strange experience occurred while driving with his wife and two friends through Wellow at about 9.10 p.m. on Saturday evening.

Using binoculars, Mr Doy’s party viewed the strange object and fetched the police constable at Wellow Park to confirm their sighting. He in turn notified his superior officer, Insp. R. Street.

The policeman, P.c. E. Holmes, commented last night: “I had a look at the thing and I wouldn’t like to even guess at its identity.”

Inquiries made by Insp. Street have so far proved negative and the identity of the “flying saucer” remains a mystery.

A spokesman at Watnall Meteorological Office said last night: “We have no idea what the object could have been. It was probably not a meteorological balloon.”

Mr Blythe got in touch with Mr Doy, who sent him a picture of the object (right).

Stapleford Woods, near Newark, Notts August 7th, 1967, 2225 BST (approx.)

On August 9th, Mr Blythe received the following letter from a Mr Robinson of Newark, Notts:-

Dear Sir,

On Monday evening, 7th August, at approx. 1025, my girl friend and me had the experience of seeing what we believe to be a space craft. The occurrence happened at a place called Stapleford Woods, about 3 miles from Newark, near a village called Coddington. We drove into the woods earlier in the evening and pulled just off the road into a small clearing facing a track which ran at the side of part of the Forest and adjacent to a small dyke. On the other side of the dyke is a field which had just been cleared of trees. At about 10.15 my girl said what are those lights in front of us? and about 1/2 mile away we could see 2, round or slightly oval shaped lights, not beams of light, but just like 2 pieces of white or yellow coloured paper, at this distance they seemed to be about 6 in. dia., and close together. (Obviously they were actually bigger because of the distance away.) We watched the lights and after about a minute they disappeared and were replaced by a flashing red light which moved away to our right, climbing until it was above the trees. I thought and suggested it was a helicopter, but thought it strange as I couldn’t hear any sound, and there was no wind anyway. The red light faded away. About 5 mins. later my girl friend said look the 2 lights again, they were on our right coming towards us above a line of trees about 1/4 mile away, they stopped and hovered for about 2 mins. Curious because of the absence of sound I started the car and drove slowly towards the lights. The road had a bend where I lost sight of the lights but on coming to the sport I thought they were I flashed my headlights. And 20 yds away a craft came over the trees towards us. Astonished I stopped the car engine, still no sound, and watched the craft until it was about 20 ft. away, it was about 20 ft. high from the road. We saw the curved top and bottom, 3 square-ish windows showing orange light, and on each side a brilliant beam of light shone downwards. Suddenly I got frightened as it came right up to us so I started the engine and shot away. I contacted Mr Doy of Newark (TEACHER SAW SPINNING TOP) as I didn’t know who to tell, as I thought the police would think we were nuts and he gave me your address,

Hoping this may be of interest to you.

Yours, David Robinson

Mr Blythe adds: “I have a paper cutting reporting an object with 2 beams of light shining downwards, near some woods at Grantham, about 20 miles from above sighting, young couple in a car, no noise. July 1st.”

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UFO FLAP IN CANADA

The Canadian Air Force has stepped up a probe into flying saucers following fresh reports that mysterious objects with flashing lights are terrorising the Calgary district.

In the latest incident recorded in official files, a woman claimed a dazzling light stabbed out of the night sky as she drove home on Wednesday.

Then her car’s engine and electrical system cut out completely while a dark oval shape silently circled over her at a height of about 1,000 feet.

“It circled the car four or five times”, said terrified Mrs Nora Tibbs, of High River, Alberta. When the object finally disappeared the car’s power mysteriously returned.

Helicopters may be sent out to hunt an unidentified object three gold prospectors claim they saw fall from a flying saucer in July, an Air Force spokesman said.

Squadron Leader E.B. Chase, of Calgary, said the latest reports have the ring of authenticity and that a photograph taken by one of the gold prospectors in July was the best of an unidentified flying object in the Air Force files.

He said an enlargement of the photograph taken by prospector Warren Smith, aged 27, of Calgary, showed a domed, saucer-shaped object about 40 feet in diameter with a red light on top and leaving a trail of what appeared to be blue exhaust smoke.

Forestry look-out Russ Hill said he heard a throbbing pulsating sound on October 7 and saw a bowl-shaped object 75 feet in diameter sweep down a valley below his forest tower.

The lights in his tower flickered as the object passed. It had two exhaust flames, a green neon-like ring around it and a dome with a pulsating yellow-green light. – Reuter.

(Liverpool Echo, 14/10/67)

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THE SKY SCOUTS MUDDLE

The Daily Mirror, of October 27th, reported that the British Section of the International Sky Scouts had changed their name, at the behest of the Boy Scouts Association. The Boy Scouts complained that people were continually confusing the Sky Scouts with their Air Scouts. Accordingly they have now changed their name to CONTACT (UK). Their chairman, Mr Quanjer, states that this new name “implies a variety of activities of a psycho-spiritual nature as well as the more obvious practical ones”.

It seems, though, that the Boy Scouts Association will have to put up with the Sky Scouts for a while longer. A recent circular from NICAP/GB states that Yusuke Matsumura (who founded the Sky Scouts as a junior branch of the Japanese-based Cosmic Brotherhood Association) “has decided to issue a statement proclaiming that they have severed relations and have no connections with the INTERNATIONAL SKY SCOUTS ASSOCIATION (UK), whose National Chairman is one Joham Quanjer.”

The reason for this action is given in the NICAP/GB circular as follows: “The International Sky Scouts Association (UK), under Mr Joham Quanjer, have recently turned their attention to raise the ancient emblem of the winged sun-disc as their motif. We believe that it is wrong and dangerous to revive the winged sun-disc which was the emblem of great ancient civilisations such as CHINE-MU-LEMURIA-ATLANTIS-EGYPT. These were all stained with blood sacrifices, and they all perished. It is our contention that it is a grave error to submit the minds of youth to ancient pagan worship.”

Because of these esoteric errors the SKY SCOUTS have been renamed INTERNATIONAL SKY-SCOUTS GB and their parent body in Britain is NICAP/GB. (Secretary of NICAP/GB is Mr Derek Samson, Solihull, Warwickshire.) In view of all this it is strange that CONTACT (UK) have not announced any severance nof relations with the International Sky Scouts or Cosmic Brotherhood.

Rightly or wrongly, the Sky Scouts in this country have acquired a reputation for eccentricity and many ufologists may consider that their internal politics are amusing rather than important. However, new branches of the Sky Scouts are being formed. A Mr Frank Shaw, of Croxteth, Liverpool, has informed me that he is forming a local branch, under the guidance of NICAP/GB. I was recently shown a cutting from a Cambridge paper, reporting on the impending formation of a branch there, where they apparently hope to bask in the reflected glory of the Cambridge University UFO Group.

So it looks as if several local UFO groups may have to deal with the “Sky Scouts” or “Contact” in the near future. It would thus be nice to know which is which and who is who. If anyone can sort out for us the complexities of Sky Scout politics, aims and ideologies, we would be pleased to publish such information in the December issue of this Bulletin. -  J.H.

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RECENT BOOKS

Flying Saucer Occupants by Coral and Jim Lorenzen, Signet Books, New York. 75 cents

Those who assiduously study UFO reports and literature will find in this book few reports which they have not already read in greater detail elsewhere. It is only fair to point out, though, that the authors’ UFO organisation APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organisation) was the means by which many of the more interesting reports have been brought to light. APRO has always made a point of investigating all reports received, including reports of UFO “occupants”, unlike certain other American UFO organisations, as the Lorenzens are not slow to point out.

For me, the most interesting chapter in the book is the one entitled: “Psychological Implications of the Investigation of UFO Reports”, by R. Leo Sprinkle, PhD. Dr Sprinkle discusses the problem of bias on the part of investigators of UFO reports and suggests procedures and techniques for eliminating this. He also suggests methods of obtaining all possible details from witnesses.

The authors are plainly of the opinion that the UFOs and their occupants are physically real and at the end of the book they sum up their position thus:

“1. The objects and their ‘operators’ are physically real. The remaining speculation concerns their identity and origin and, eventually, motivation. Another book could be written about this aspect and, admittedly, we are simplifying for the sake of space.

“2. The population of this world is falling victim to a particularly insidious and apparently contagious mental disease which generates hallucinations involving specific types of airships and humanoids. This diease seems to be spreading.

“Who will be next to contract the malady? You?” J.H.

The Flying Saucer Vision by John Michell, Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd. 25/-

This work will doubtless be welcomed by the “New Age” ufologists. The author seeks to re-interpret the ancient myths, legends and popular beliefs as garbled accounts of meetings with superior beings from other planets, or from other dimensions.

Some enthusiasts may regard the whole idea as being quite ridiculous, but such notions are at present entertained by some eminent scientists, and a number of well-known ufologists have devoted much time and effort to research into this aspect of the subject.

The general theme of this book is a hypothesis to the effect that superior alien beings brought civilisation to mankind thousands of years ago, by establishing direct contact with them. Eventually they withdrew and memories of their activities were preserved in the form of various cults, ceremonies and superstitions. The increase in UFO activity during the past 20 years indicates that mankind has reached a crisis in its development and another full-scale contact with extraterrestrials is imminent.

This idea has, of course, been expressed by other writers and there is a considerable body of evidence which may be adduced in its support. Only time will tell whether Mr Michell’s speculations are correct. —  J.H.

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Thank You to MUFORG Members

“On behalf of my husband and I, we would like to thank all MUFORG Members for their most acceptable Present which has been received with great pleasure on the occasion of our recent Marriage.”

- Marlene Waddington, Treasurer

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BUFORA NORTHERN CONFERENCE – Last Minute Reminder

The Conference will be held on Saturday, November 4th, 1967, at the Central Hall, Renshaw Street, Liverpool, 1. Admission 8/- including refreshments. Doors open 9.30 a.m. Lectures begin at 2 p.m.

Chairman: Captain Ivar Mackay (Chairman of BUFORA).

Main speakers: CHARLES BOWEN (Editor of Flying Saucer Review), ANTHONY DURHAM (“Ball Lightning”), W. SKELLAN (“Mechanical Implications of UFOs”).

If, after attending the Conference, you have any comments, favourable or otherwise, which you wish to make on it, please send them to the Editor to be considered for publication in the December issue of this Bulletin.

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GREAT UFO FLAP: As this is being typed (October 30th), a wave of UFO sightings, surely unprecedented in this country, is sweeping Britain. Depending on how the situation develops, this Flap will be dealt with either in a special edition of this Bulletin in a few weeks’ time, or in the December issue.

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MUFORG Bulletin, August 1967

Posted on by
Reply

Merseyside Unidentified Flying Objects Research Group

MUFORG Bulletin, August 1967

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Editor: John Harney

COMMENT

The latest British UFO “flap” has so far proved rather disappointing. Most of the reports have been of the “lights in the sky” variety.

There has been quite a large volume of reports, but one feels that many of them have got into the newspapers because there are insufficient hard news stories available at present.

However, the lack of spectacular landing reports – so far – has served to awaken interest in the subject without arousing hysteria.

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RECENT NORTH WEST UFO REPORTS

Runcorn, Cheshire July 3rd 0200 BST – and other dates

Our attention was drawn to events at Runcorn by a report in the July 6th issue of the Runcorn Weekly News, sent to us by Mr J.G. Hodgkinson. The report was as follows:

FLYING SAUCER STORY REVIVED – Strange Noises and Unusual Lights

Flying saucers are in the air again! Coincidentally with renewed interest in the subject in various parts of the country – an Unidentified Flying Object society in the south recently kept nightly vigils to witness possible landings and, in nearby St Helens, a security officer was reported to have witnessed strange phenomena – there is a report this week of an inexplicable sighting by a Runcorn family.

Previous flying saucer claims by Runcorn people have been regarded with disbelief and often with amusement. Of course, the stories cannot be true! But, after Monday morning, at least one Runcorn family have had reason to give the subject some more thought.

It was at 2 a.m. that 20-years-old Mr Michael Baker, an electrician’s labourer, of Pine Road, was awakened by a noise. “I was lying in bed listening to this noise, a whirring or burring sound”, he said “and then I went to the window. I was there nearly 15 minutes trying to fathom it out, and was just returning to bed when I saw it; it just looked like it was on the roofs of the new houses.”

His young wife, 17-years-old Janice, who was awakened by her husband, also saw the object. “The noise seemed very close, almost as if from the gardens, and it was loud. As soon as the object – it was just like a glow – went, so did the noise. Michael heard the noise first and got up to the window. He saw a light like a moonbeam on the path. When I got up, the light vanished, then slowly came back like a big bowl of fire.”

Mrs Baker roused her mother, Mrs Betty Bennett, who went quickly to the window, as by this time the “sighting” was beginning to diminish in size.

Mrs Bennett said it was definitely unnatural. It was too early for the sun to be coming up, she said.

“Everybody hears noises along here, it’s a whining noise.”

The object she described as similar to a quarter moon with the top cut off. “As it moved away it changed shape to an oval. It left the sky pink, too. It looked as if it were glowing mad hot.”

Her thirteen-years-old daughter, Geraldine, a pupil at Grange Secondary School, was also brought to the window – but by now the light had lessened to a dot . . . then to everyone’s surprise it seemed to approach, growing in size. It did not regain its previous size and this time was unaccompanied by sound.

Mr Baker commented: “It could have been farther off towards Halton, but from where we were it seemed to be over the houses. When it came back there was no noise.” By this time it was 2.30 they recalled, as Geraldine was sent to check the clock.

Objects have been witnessed in the area before. The family recalled several years ago when a neighbour Mr R. Newby of Boston Avenue saw something in the sky. The Weekly News reported him as saying: “My wife and I were settling down to watch Emergency Ward 10. The curtains were open and the lights in the sitting room were off. Then a vivid bluish-coloured light appeared above the field between my house and Halton and barely seconds later a huge, star like thing went sailing across.”

Mr Newby’s sighting was in November 1963. The newspaper report continued: “This, which I believe to be a flying saucer, flew just above the roof tops all the time. My wife was very scared and my 15-years-old daughter Ann refused to sleep on her own. It shook them both up a heck of a lot.

“When Ann went to school the next day two of her friends also said they had seen the peculiar light.

“I served for seven years in the RAF and I have heard pilots speak about these flying saucers after returning from operations. I myself was very alarmed. I’ve seen plenty of shooting stars and airliners but this was neither. It looked nothing like a shooting star and it was dead silent.”

Of this latest UFO, Mr Baker concluded: “No one can explain these noises over the last three years. They could be different things.” They may not be the only people who saw the light for Mr Baker said that at the time he could see a bedroom light on across in Grangeway, as though someone was at the window.

Mrs Bennett recalled how a friend of her daughter’s had left their home very late one evening to walk to her own home in Weston. The girl, who is now in the forces, was passing the ICI Heath offices when she saw something. She was so terrified she fled to a nearby house and knocked. The householder let her in but he himself admitted something was wrong, for the pet dog’s hair was standing on end, and the animal was obviously scared.

Lightheartedly Mrs Bennett compared the night’s happenings with The Invaders TV programme and cracked “If I’d met anyone with a crooked little finger this morning, I’d have run a mile.”

On a more serious note she added: “The trouble is though, people say ‘nowt’. We’ve heard the noises for ages. I was with Janice one night when we heard the noise so close we thought it was a bird. We opened the upstairs box room window and put our heads out. We hoped the bird might have crashed into the window, but there was nothing.”

She had even told her schoolgirl daughter not to say anything but Geraldine had told a few close friends and as was expected “no one would believe her”.

Just as the Bennett family would have laughed it off too . . . until Monday morning that is.

The witnesses were visited the following week by John Harney and Alan W. Sharp and they confirmed that the newspaper report was substantially correct, except that the object looked like a quarter moon with the bottom cut off, not “with the top cut off” and that the noise was first heard by Janice, not by Michael.

The witnesses were unable to estimate the true distance of the object, and said it must have been further away than the houses over which it appeared – about 400 yards – as the roofs and chimneys were silhouetted against the light. The bearing of the object was about 090° and the elevation varied from “a few degrees” to about 10° higher. It was difficult to estimate the true elevation because of the upward slope of the ground behind the house.

Mrs Bennett said that when the object was hovering in the position A (Fig. 1), it appeared as in Fig. 2. It was shoining with a golden glow, similar to that of sodium street lights. It appeared to be spinning and its edges were ill defined. Mrs Bennett compared it to a Chinese lantern. After hovering for a while in position A the object seemed to fold up, like an accordion, until it assumed the appearance of a sharply defined, spinning, metallic disc (Fig. 3). It then moved quickly upwards and away from the witnesses to position B, where it was reduced to a star-like point. It then retraced its path to position A, wher it repeated the performance, but without the noise this time.

The family said that the noise which accompanied this sighting was the same noise they had been hearing at intervals during the past three years. These strange noises had also been heard in the other houses in the terrace, and this was confirmed by a neighbour who called in while we were talking. The noise was said to be quite loud enough to be easily recorded on a tape recorder, if one were available.

Michael Baker told us he had had two other sightings. On July 7th, at about 2230, he was walking along a path across the fields behind his house when he saw a large, round object quickly crossing the sky. The following morning, while looking out of his bedroom window at about 0200, he saw a flashing, star-like object slowly crossing the sky. We pointed out that this could possibly have been a satellite, or a distant aircraft, but he said that it was “more convincing” than the sighting of July 3rd. He repeated this remark, but it is not clear what he meant by it.

We were told that there have been other local sightings, including a landing report, but no details were immediately available. Also, there is a local contactee, Mr James Cook, who, a few years ago, claimed to have been taken in a flying saucer to the planet “Shebic”. Mr Cook is fairly well known locally; we were told that he holds regular faith healing sessions and seances in Runcorn.

Whiston, near St Helens, Lancashire July 9th, 0145-0148 BST

While skywatching in the early morning of July 9th, MUFORG member, Mr G.T. Woods observed a cylindrical object moving in a NW direction over Huyton. The ends of the cylinder were bright red and the object itself was the size of a sixpence held at arm’s length.

The object was travelling in a series of dips, its altitude varying between 5° and 10°. Its speed was estimated to average about 400 mp.p.h., increasing by about 50 m.p.h. on the ascent. See sketch below.

Dingle, Liverpool July 11th 0130 BST?

A large, round, greyish object, moving rapidly across the sky, startled witnesses. (We are still waiting for return of completed sighting form.)

Formby, Lancashire July 18th 2200 BST

Mr J.G. Clore, of Moss Green, Formby, was out walking when he saw a large orange ball of light coming towards him from the direction of New Brighton. Suddenly it seemed to drop very quickly and vanish.

The brightness of the light made his eyes “very queer”. This sensation lasted for about half an hour.

(Source: Liverpool Daily Post, 24/7/67)

Aintree, Liverpool July 20th 2250 BST

Mr B. Young and his fiancée, of Aintree, were on Melling Bridge, Aintree, when they saw an orange-red object low down in the direction of Kirkby. Its shape was described as “not quite round”. It hovered and then seemed to move downwards and away from them. It was in view for about 12 seconds.

(Source: Telephone call from witness)

Hindley, near Wigan, Lancashire August 10th 0043 BST

Police Constables Lionel Haw and Steve Parsonage, stationed at Hindley, reported seeing an unidentified flying object at 0043 BST. Several newspapers carried full reports of the incident, including the Liverpool Echo, from which the following report is taken:

P.C. Parsonage said: “I was on the beat when I glanced up and saw this saucer-shaped object in the sky. There were no clouds and I could see it very clearly.

“It wasn’t moving and was glowing white. I was amazed and couldn’t believe my eyes. I looked up the road and saw P.C. Haw driving a Panda car.

“I waved him to stop and he came across. We stood looking at it and suddenly it started to move.”

P.C. Haw, a member of the force for eight years, added: “We watched it moving across the sky for two minutes. It certainly wasn’t a comet, plane or weather balloon. I have seen all these and know what I am talking about.

“It was as big as an orange and very high. I would estimate its size as well over 100 feet in diameter. It was very bright and didn’t flicker.

“I drove to Hindley police station and phoned Jodrell Bank to see if it was a satellite but they assured me it could not possibly be as there were none in the area.

“Then I checked with Manchester and Barton airports just to make sure and was told that no planes were in the vicinity.”

Inspector Albert Jordan, in charge of the Hindley section, said: “Both men are very reliable and policemen are trained observers. They wouldn’t say they had seen it if it wasn’t true.”

Bredbury, near Stockport, Cheshire August 10th 0350 BST

Police Constables Peter Morris and Robert Young, stationed at Bredbury, near Stockport, were on duty together in Green Lane, Romily, Bredbury. PC Morris said there was a flash of light 200 yards away from them and about 200 yards up in the sky. They saw a large, cigar-shaped object which was whitish in colour. It was at least 100 feet long and possibly a lot more. It reeled away at a very fast speed and was out of sight in six or seven seconds.

Bredbury is about 30 miles away from Hindley.

(Sources: Daily Mail, 17/8/67; Liverpool Echo, 17/8/67, 19/8/67)

Platt Bridge, near Wigan, Lancashire August 15th 2200 BST

Mrs Margaret Dodd, wife of the licensee of the Railway Hotel, Platt Bridge, near Wigan, said she watched a round, orange-red object zig-zagging across the sky for two minutes at 10 p.m. on August 15th.

(Source: Daily Mail, 18/8/67)

Coppull, near Chorley, Lancashire August 15th evening?

Mill workers William Holme, 21, and Peter gallery, 22, both of Mavis Drive, Coppull, near Chorley, said they were walking down Mavis Drive when they saw a yellow-orange ball travelling below the clouds from north to south over Chorley.

The time of the sighting is not given, but it presumably ties in with the sighting at Platt Bridge, as it appears in the same newspaper article.

(Source: Daily Mail, 18/8/67)

Horwich, near Bolton, Lancashire August 22nd 2130, 2135 and 2230 BST

Mr David Evans, of Rawson Street, Farnworth, reported to the police that he saw flying saucers on the moors at Horwich. He saw the first at 2130, and the others at 2135 and 2230.

(Source; Daily Mail, 23/8/67)

Hindley, near Wigan, Lancashire August 19th 2140 & 2205, August 29th 2140 and 2210

Following up newspaper and television reports featuring UFO sightings by Bernard Cox, of Hindley, your Editor paid him a preliminary visit on September 2nd and conducted an informal interview with him to see if it called for any intensive investigation.

He said he and his family and neighbours had witnessed UFOs on the dates mentioned above. The main sightings were of a huge, top-shaped object which appeared at 2140 on two occasions (August 19th and August 29th). He gave me a list of names of 15 other witnesses. Also, a landing was recently reported from nearby Westhoughton. People from nearby Bickershaw also reported seeing UFOs.

He told me that during the past few weeks his family and neighbours had been disturbed three or four nights a week by strange humming or droning noises. These noises are said to cause headaches.

Further investigations are to be carried out and a full report will be published in due course.

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RECENT BOOKS

Challenge to Science by Jacques and Janine Vallée, Neville Spearman, 25/-

Readers of this book will obtain a good idea of the methods being employed by interested scientists in their approach to the UFO problem. At the moment it seems that the physical scientists have the upper hand. Psychologists have, so far, remarkably little to say concerning the phenomenon and the author shows that those who have derived purely psychological explanations have evidently not dome their homework very well.

This apparent imbalance has led to the favouring of the “interplanetary spaceships” hypothesis. This hypothesis appears to be implied throughout the book. Vallée is by no means alone in pursuing it; I understand that the Condon committee are using it as their working hypothesis.

Much emphasis is given to the statistical treatment of UFO reports. Many readers will be interested to note that Vallée’s researches confirm the findings of some other workers that there appears to be a correlation between the incidence of UFO activity and the Martian cycle. However, the author cautions us not to jump to conclusions.

The last chapter is entitled “The Solution is Within Reach”, but one feels that many researchers will take a more pessimistic view.

The Interrupted Journey by John G. Fuller, The Dial Press, New York, 5.95 dollars

“Some scientists have argued that if the phenomenon is purely psychological, then the story should be considered even more startling than if it were an indication of extraterrestrial visitors.”

This quotation from Mr Fuller’s book neatly demonstrates that the subject of UFOs is a very important one, whatever the true explanation may be.

The author deals with the case of Mr and Mrs Barney Hill, who believe that they were taken on board a flying saucer while on their way back from a holiday in Canada.

They saw an unidentified flying object which appeared to be following their car. When they got home they eventually realised that there were two hours missing from their memories of the journey. This period of amnesia was investigated, under hypnosis, by the psychiatrist, Dr Benjamin Simon.

The story that the two witnesses revealed under hypnosis was that they had been abducted by the crew of an unidentified flying object and submitted to medical examination. In the introduction to the book Dr Simon writes: “. . . it must be understood that hypnosis is a pathway to the truth as it is felt and understood by the patient. The truth is what he believes to be the truth, and this may or may not be consonant with the ultimate nonpersonal truth. Most frequently it is.”

What makes the book more impressive is the fact that the investigations were carried out by sensible and rational people. The story is interesting but, on the basis of the evidence obtained, no definite conclusions have been arrived at.

The casual reader will probably find it rather heavy going but it will no doubt prove very useful to any serious investigator who finds himself confronted with what appears to be a similar case.

The Warminster Mystery by Arthur Shuttlewood, Neville Spearman, 25/-

Mr Shuttlewood employs what is an all-too-common technique in UFO literature, namely the presentation of report after report. interspersed with comment and speculation, in a manner apparently calculated to bludgeon the reader into acceptance of the interplanetary theory of UFOs.

His style is another source of irritation to the serious reader. The book abounds with “purple passages”, such as: “This is the most common, sight-searing Thing that cavorts across our night skies in a fiery ball or ovular disc, crazily cleaving through the blue daytime skies and fleecy clouds in the guise of a silver phantom; shimmering, spinning, and always silent in flight.”

Too much space is devoted to various “theories” of UFO propulsion and the author gives the impression that he expects us to believe that practically every unusual incident which occurs in Warminster is something to do with the “Thing”. One incident in particular illustrates his skill in transforming natural phenomena into manifestations of the “Thing”. This is the story of the adventure of three young children (pages 73-75). If the incident really happened as described it is a very good description of an encounter with a whirlwind and is thus of more interest to meteorologists than to ufologists.

At the end of the book Mr Shuttlewood gives an account of his famous telephone calls from the “Aenstrians”. The messages show the typical contactee features. They consist mainly of moralising, directed at humanity in general. There is the usual, vague pseudo-science. Another typical feature is the author’s claim to have received information which he must not disclose.

Although this book lacks objectivity it must be regarded as required reading for British ufologists, in view of the amount of attention which is continually devoted to Warminster.

The Scoriton Mystery by Eileen Buckle, Neville Spearman, 30/-

Anyone setting out to investigate a contact claim should read this book first, then he will obtain some idea of what he may be letting himself in for!

BUFORA Committee members Norman Oliver and Eileen Buckle were intrigued to learn of the claim of Arthur Bryant (who died recently), of Scoriton, Devon, to have encountered a flying saucer and its three occupants and they decided to conduct a thorough investigation.

The results of their labours are set out in minute detail in this book. They have neglected no clue and scorned no method – scientific or otherwise – that might possibly shed further light on the mystery. Object reading, amateur psychology and the following of hunches and messages in doggerel verse which mysteriously appear on Norman Oliver’s tape recorder lead the investigators into ever more bizarre adventures, at least, subjectively. As the plot thickens and more and more people get in on the act, Miss Buckle parades before the reader a delightful collection of amiable eccentrics.

The apparent preference shown in this book for occult, rather than psychological explanations of the various strange experiences described will no doubt irritate scientifically minded readers. However, I feel that anyone who takes the trouble to read it carefully and critically will derive much interest from it.

UFOs for the Millions by Howard V. Chambers, Sherbourne Press, Inc., Los Angeles, California, 1.95 dollars

As the title implies, this book serves as a popular introduction to the subject. Much of the material will therefore be familiar to our readers, but it is very readable.

Very fair accounts are given of oppossing views on the subject and most aspects of the mystery are covered.

The Flying Saucer Menace, text by Brad Steiger, pictures edited by August C. Roberts, Award Books, New York and Randem Books, London, 3/6

This is a 64-page booklet, attractively printed in magazine format, and containing 90 photographs. It is thus very good value for 3/6. Eleven chapters review every aspect of the subject, with plenty of sighting reports. The “hostility” theory is emphasised – no doubt in order to enhance the book’s appeal to sensation-seekers.

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Flying Saucer Hoax Makes Front Page News

An elaborate hoax, perpetrated by apprentices from the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, made headlines in the press on September 5th.

The apprentices constructed galss fibre “saucers”, filled them with noxious-smelling substances, equipped them with buzzing and bleeping devices and distributed them right across England (about six of them) along the 51° 30′ N parallel of latitude, from Clevedon in the west to the Isle of Sheppey in the east.

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BUFORA Northern Conference

The Conference will take place on Saturday, November 4th, 1967, at the Central Hall, Renshaw Street, Liverpool, 1. Conference Co-ordinator: – R.D. Hughes, Liverpool, 4.

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