Category Archives: Hough, Peter

The ‘Men in Black’: A New Case.
Peter Hough

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from Magonia 21, December 1985

The Men in Black, sinister anonymous characters who allegedly threaten and intimidate UFO witnesses, seem to have been around for as long as the UFO phenomenon itself – much to the chagrin of some researchers. Threats are sometimes delivered by telephone, often ordering the witness to keep quiet about their sighting – or else: No doubt some of these mystery callers are part of hoaxes by disturbed individuals. Nevertheless, some cases beg a different explanation, a more disturbing one.

Most of the incidents we hear about surface fro in the United States; however, I became embroiled in a case here in the North West of England. It began with the investigation of a spectacular UFO sighting in the Golbourne area of Lancashire (about halfway between Liverpool and Manchester). As an investigator for the Manchester UFO Research Organisation (MUFORA) I was asked to call on a Mrs Hollins, and heard the story she recounted.

On the night of August 31st, 1980, feeling unwell and not wishing to disturb her husband, she was sitting on the settee in the lounge of her bungalow. At about 2.00 a.m.. she was awoken by a bright light shining through the curtains. Perturbed, she wondered if it was their car, parked across the road, which had caught fire. She crossed to the window and pulled the curtains apart.

She was amazed to see that the light was coming from an object low in the sky, hovering apparently over some distant trees. Intrigued, yet slightly afraid, she went out onto the front lawn for a better view.

The object she described as spherical, light grey in colour, with a black band around its circumference. Set in the grey area were three dark blue nodules in a triangular configuration. Issuing from one side were red flames and sparks. The sky behind the object was misty and glowed a pinkish-red colour.

As she watched spellbound, Mrs Hollins saw a structural device of some sort being lowered from the ‘craft’ into the trees below. After a short time the apparatus retracted. Suddenly, at a terrific speed, the object moved soundlessly in her direction, turned sharply north, then sped away in a southerly direction, to disappear from sight.

Fortunately, because of the events which followed, the sighting was further corroborated by two other female witnesses living about a mile away. They observed the object from 1.40 a.m.. to approximately 2.05 a.m. – about the time Mrs Hollins was woken up. Although their descriptions differed in some respects, this could be accounted for by different angles of observation. Both accounts agree with the flames and sparks spluttering from the object, and the bizarre pink-red mist behind it.

The sighting appeared in a few short paragraph in a local newspaper – a story instigated by one of the other witnesses, and not Mrs Hollins.

When I called to interview her I found a lady of average intelligence struggling to come to terms with what she had seen. She welcomed my interest and provided tea and biscuits as we discussed the matter. Her husband was present in the room, although he played no part in the proceedings, having a somewhat disapproving attitude. Mrs Hollins’s strong personality had obviously overidden any objections he might have had to my presence.

After more than an hour, during which I had cross-checked much of the detail of her story, I asked a question which is my standard procedure: “Mrs Hollins, has anyone other than the local paper contacted you?”

She replied that only the previous week she had received a telephone call from a man purporting to represent Jodrell Bank – the radio telescope installation south of Manchester, in rural Cheshire. Apparently he was very interested in her experience and wished to question her closely about the sighting. When she asked how he had obtained her telephone number he laughed, and replied: “Don’t worry, it was from a very good source.”

“Do you mean the newspaper?” she asked. He failed to answer, but added he would be in touch shortly to arrange an interview.
I returned a week later, on September 21st, with a UFO Sighting Report Form for her to read and sign. Apparently the man had phoned once more; this time he asked her if she would accompany several other people in the area who had witnessed strange phenomena, to visit Jodrell Bank, where they would be asked questions.

She said he seemed to have an American accent, and claimed to have been present when the then Senator Carter had witnessed a UFO in Georgia. The voice then warned her not to associate with “cranks”, and stated, yet again, that he would contact her to fix up a time and date to be interviewed.

At this stage I was becoming a little concerned, especially as Mrs Hollins had made me so welcome in her home. I was given what she thought was the name of the caller. Although not wishing to alarm her, I warned the witness to treat any future calls with caution. To my knowledge the Jodrell Bank staff were not interested in investigating UFOs, and passed all such information they received on to MUFORA.

I contacted the installation anyway, and asked if they were involved in a programme of UFO witness interviews. Their spokesman flatly denied any such involvement, and had no knowledge of the caller claiming to represent them. When I mentioned his alleged name, I sensed the bemusement at the other end of the line. The name Mrs Hollins had given me was none other than the name of the new director of Jodrell Bank:

Several days later I telephoned Mrs Hollins. She told me the caller had arranged to pick her up in a car on Wednesday, October 8th, to take her to the observatory. I strongly advised her not to go unless positive proof of identity was produced. Whoever he was, I warned her, all the indications were that he had nothing to do with Jodrell Bank. The voice was lying.

The arrangements were for 1.30 a.m. She thanked me for the information, but advised me she had no intention of going alone in any case. A neighbour, a former policewoman, had offered to accompany her. Also Mr Hollins had arranged to be home in order to verify the man’s identity. I suggested I would contact her later on in the evening to discover what, if anything, had happened. Just before the conversation ended she thanked me for taking such an interest in her welfare.

That was the last time I was to have such an amicable conversation with Mrs Hollins. Perhaps I sensed something wrong when I put the phone down, because even though she appeared to have made sensible precautions, I was still worried about the whole affair.

Unbeknown to anyone, I arranged to be in the vicinity that day. At 1.20 p.m. I parked discreetly near the entrance to the cul-de-sac. The Hollins’s bungalow is situated at the bottom of the short road, partially screened from the other houses by thick bushes. By 1.45 p.m. – fifteen minutes past the appointed time – no one had arrived, so I decided to call on the witness to discover if the arrangements had been cancelled.

My repeated knockings on the front door received no response. Everyone seemed to be out – no Mrs Hollins, no husband or friendly neighbour. Perplexed, and preparing to walk away I heard something. It sounded like voices, so I peeked through the large picture window into the lounge. I was surprised to see, in view of the fact that everyone appeared to be out, that both bars of an electric fire were on, with a dog lying docilely before it. The voices persisted in the background, and I realised they were coming from either a radio or television set. Getting nowhere, I decided to leave.

During the following week or more I endeavoured to speak to Mrs Hollins, only to be given the run-around. When I telephoned Wednesday evening, upon recognising my voice, she pretended to be a relative, and claimed she could not speak to me because there was “a man in the house”, and would I call back later? I did, several times, but there was no reply. The witness now sounded a very frightened lady. I decided to give the case a rest.

I was totally bemused by the about turn in attitude of the witness. Up to three days before the alleged appointment she had been as friendly as ever, and seemingly pleased when I had warned her of the caller’s fake identity. What had occurred in the meantime to drastically change her attitude towards me?

The obvious solution was that Mr Hollis, fearing the whole affair was becoming out of hand, ordered his wife to have nothing more to do with it. But if this was so, why was it not explained to me, making it clear she wanted to drop the case? Why the charade? And why did she sound so tense and nervous on the telephone?

If the strange caller was a genuine example of the MIB at work, then it was probable that she had been put under some sort of pressure not to discuss her sighting any further with anyone. Remember, she had already been warned not to speak to ‘cranks’, and perhaps this net had been widened to me and MUFORA. Maybe she had been warned to keep quiet, yet was loathe to sever the connection entirely sensing she might need our help.

The other scenario is that the entire episode had been made up by the witness and was just pure fantasy. I would not rule this out entirely, but I would argue against it on a number of fronts.

For one thing, the sighting itself was no hoax as there were other independent witnesses. So why then would she manufacture the story of the phone calls? It would only make sense if the initial experience had also been a product of her imagination. At no time did she claim the calls were sinister, either; it was only the checking I did which seemed to throw a dark shadow across them.

The content of the calls did seem to follow some sort of pattern similar to others made to UFO witnesses. The voice claimed to be someone ‘official’, warned her not to speak to ‘cranks’, and tried to upgrade his status by an alleged association with Senator, soon to be President, Jimmy Carter. Of course an added bizarre touch was his name, which happened to be the same as the man who is now director of Jodrell Bank.

As previously stated, the case was rested. Almost two years later, in 1982, it came up for discussion between myself and Jenny Randles. She suggested that she should give the witness a phone-call in an effort to clear up some of the mystery. I readily agreed.

Jenny phoned and spoke to Mrs Hollins. She told her she was researching for a book, and had read of her UFO sighting sometime earlier: would she be willing to speak regarding the matter? Mrs Hollins agreed, and a appointment was arranged for the following Thursday. I was to accompany Jenny on her visit.

We arrived around 1.30 p.m., and I parked at the end of the close. As soon as Jenny knocked on the front door there was a commotion of banging from the rear of the bungalow. It sounded like someone having trouble slamming shut a door.
As we went down the side of the building we noticed a large shed. Peering through its single dusty window we noticed
a dog lying there: the same docile animal I has spotted that day on the lounge carpet. We wondered if that had been the source of the noise, although it seemed calm enough now.

The curtains at the rear of the bungalow were closed. This seemed odd, as it was daylight, and not sunny. Jenny knocked on the kitchen door, but no-one answered. Then we noticed that the door was not closed properly. She pushed gently against it, and it swung open. She looked at me and I shrugged.

“Hello”, Jenny called through the open doorway. “Are you there, Mrs Hollins? It’s Jenny Randles, the lady who phoned… we only want to speak to you. At least come and give us an explanation…”

I nudged her, there was toast under the grill. It was still warm.

Jenny called out a number of times, but although she had made an appointment. and there seemed evidence someone was at home, we received no reply. After pulling the door closed, we left.

That evening Jenny phoned the witness. Mrs Hollins claimed that she had not been at home because unexpectedly she had had to accompany one of her sons to hospital. It was felt undesirable to pursue the matter. The mystery would remain.

The Men-in-Black, apparent callers who frighten and intimidate certain UFO witnesses. They take on various guises, often complicating a case, sometimes elevating a UFO sighting into something much more bizarre.

Why?

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A Haunted Man
Peter Hough

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From Magonia 20, August 1983

Most people are now familiar with the term ‘astral projection’, or its more modern version: ‘out of the body experience’ (OOBE). This describes the phenomenon where the mind, or ‘astral double’, is projected from the physical body to wander around our world, enter another time or plane of reality. Here is one such case from here, in England, although I feel that OOBE cannot account for the whole of it.

After hearing of Mr Keith Sefton’s [pseudonym] claims through a friend, I became intrigued, and agreed to investigate them. Mr Sefton, a healthy looking 68-years-old, served in the Lancashire Fusiliers, but now retired, lives in a quiet backstreet in Wigan.

His experiences began suddenly in the summer of 1980. Before then there were no paranormal incidents in his life at all. This in itself is unusual, as most percipients of OOBE phenomena have a history of bizarre events to narrate – what started this great surge of happenings was something very sudden.

It occurred around 12.30, as Mr Sefton was sitting in the front room of his house, having lunch. Opposite, across the narrow road, lived an elderly lady who received a daily visit from the meals-on-wheels service. While he was eating, Mr Sefton glanced across expecting to see her standing in the bay window, waiting for the delivery van to arrive. In her place, and staring across at him, was an apparition of his dead mother.

She stood hands on hips, rigid like a statue, wearing a shawl which in life had been her favourite. Unbelieving, he movedcloser to the window of the sitting roombefore fear overcame him and he turned his head away. Slowly he looked forward again, but his mother’s stony expression stillstared across the intervening yards. The image lasted for about eight minutes. Finally she turned away, and magically resolved into the familiar features of the old lady.

This phenomenon occurred a second time, two weeks later under similar circumstances. Following this, Mr Sefton was to have an altogether different experience. Having been divorced for fifteen years, imagine his surprise early one morning, upon hearing the voice of his wife calling out his name.

It was unlike a voice ‘heard’ in a dream, he explained, but it was a perfectly natural auditory sound. Having received the strong impression it had come from outside, through the letterbox, he pulled on his dressing-gown and went downstairs. The door was unlocked, but there was no-one about. So convinced was he that he had heard his former wife calling out his name he ventured out onto the pavement and looked up and down the road.

This experience was also repeated two weeks later. Unfortunately, because of their poor relationship, he failed to contact his former wife to see if anything was wrong, to provide a possible explanation for this happening. What happened next was the penultimate episode before the main series of OOBE related events.

At eight o’clock one morning he was woken by the alarm clock. Preparing to rise, he suddenly heard footsteps outside the house and children’s voices – voices which had a familiar ring, forcing his mind to drift back to his own childhood, picking up lumps of coal from the surrounding pits, during the 1926 General Strike.

Slowly his attention was brought back to the room. His eyes focussed on a spot two feet above the bed, and the intense feeling that a ‘presence’ hung there, came over him. Then a voice spoke into his mind.

“Yes, and you will hear them again,” It said enigmatically, “You didn’t die you know.” The voice reminded him of his mother’s.

From then on until November 1981, Mr Sefton claims to have had twenty to thirty experiences. Many of these displayed ‘Out of Body’ characteristics. Most occurred upon reaching the point of falling asleep. They usually began with a tiny blue light, no bigger than a pin-head, hovering about nine inches from his head.

After several nights it began to pulsate and expand to the size of a pea, becoming multi-coloured. Eventually the light would suddenly vanish to be replaced by the vivid image of a full moon, dark clouds scudding swiftly across its surface. These clouds thickened until only a halo remained. On these occasions Mr Sefton was drawn towards the bright ring, and through it.

While recounting the bizarre episodes which followed his journeys through the ring, Keith Sefton was at pains to convince me of the lucidity, the realness, of his adventures. On his first and second visit he found himself looking up a long tube, or tunnel. At the other end was an eye, staring down at him. On the second occasion he saw enough of the face to conclude it belonged to a man. He received the intimation that the man was observing him under the lens of a microscope.

Visions of the moon continued to manifest in the darkness of the moon, and when the clouds obscured all but its aura, he felt himself being drawn upwards and through it. Exotic landscapes spread before him – on one occasion a beautiful pastoral scene of trees and flowers set around a lake. In the centre of the lake was a small rowing boat with a figure seated in it. It seemed the man was observing Mr Sefton, who in turn was observing him.

Once he travelled to a barren desert, strewn with rocks. A man inhabited this scene also, seated on a boulder, staring intensely in his direction. These figures were to crop up many times in various guises. They all shared similar physical characteristics and behaviour – always alone, they never spoke or moved, but seemed very aware of his intrusion. They had a ‘foreign’ look, possibly Grecian, with olive complexions, beards and hair of short, tight curls.

There were a few exceptions. The man in the desert, for instance, wore a long robe and was completely bald. He seemed to be travelling at tremendous speed through an intense blackness. He described how one night he was taken on a journey through the galaxies. One moment he was lying in bed, then he seemed to be travelling at tremendous speed through an intense blackness. Bright spheres rushed towards him then quickly away into the distance. He described this as highly invigorating.

Not all these experiences occurred whilst waiting to fall asleep, sometimes he would wake up in the early hours of the morning. On seven or eight occasions at around six o’clock something roused him. A few times he saw a man dressed in glittering trousers and tails rather like a circus ringmaster [1]. The man would silently wave a white stick at him, as if to emphasise a point. Usually he was only clearly visible if one eye was covered. The last vision of that nature was in November 1981.

Then there was a gap of almost a year.  In September 1982 the visitations resumed. He was awoken at 4am, and described seeing a “little white lady in my eye”. The image remained there for two or three minutes. This too reminded him of his mother,

 wearing a long nightdress. Suddenly the image burst from his eye into the form of a vapourous cloud, reforming into a four inch high figure at the bottom of the bed. [2] The ‘white lady’ walked around in a circle holding something resembling a broom handle. As he put out a hand to touch her she told him with a smile that it was forbidden. Then she passed out of sight as if she had slipped behind a black curtain.

I questioned Mr Sefton carefully about the physiological and psychological effects before, during and after these experiences. I also encouraged him, during our two meetings and subsequent correspondence, to air his own views on the matter.

In answer to my question of whether he could be experiencing very vivid dream imagery, he reminded me they had only begun in 1980, and went on:
“I have dreams, but these are not dreams – when I dream there are no colours, things are not clear. During these events I receive the most inexplicable panoramic views, and throughout I sense that something is feeding information into my mind. If only more people could experience it…”

He went on to explain that often he felt that he was in two places at once: the ‘here’ of the bedroom, and also in another ‘reality frame’. Time seemed suspended and inconsequential. This was illustrated one Saturday afternoon in the down-to-earth surroundings of Wigan market. The aisles between the stalls were crowded with shoppers, stocking up with meat and fresh vegetables for the weekend. As Keith Sefton picked his way through the crowd, suddenly all the noise diminished, and he felt his “consciousness was partially lifted from our plane”. Then out of this unnatural silence a lone child began calling. He focussed hard on a stallholder serving a woman with apples, and the noise and bustle of the marketplace returned.

This cross-references nicely with the sensations reported by people witness to close encounter UFO experiences. Many have noted that all sounds, such a birds singing or traffic noise on nearby roads, disappeared.

Why Mr Sefton’s mother should feature so prominently in these events is open to conjecture. He is not particularly religious, and has sought out books and people who would give him a logical scientific explanation for all this. The tunnel through which he passes on his journeys is a common component of out-of-body experiences, and by those relating accounts of an ‘afterlife’ during near-death experiences.

During questioning it transpired that just prior to many of these events he found himself breathing unnaturally deeply. Could Mr Sefton have unwittingly put himself into a trance? The heavy breathing would involve a degree of hyper-ventilation; flooding the body with oxygen and depriving the brain of sugar. Practitioners of yoga are adept at this, believing that it charges up the etheric double.

Also of interest is the phenomenon of hypnogogic and hypnopompic imagery, under study by psychiatrists. This refers to the state of mind when one is about to fall asleep or awaken, respectively. Something very strange can happen when the brain is neither fully asleep or awake, but ‘in neutral’, as it were. Very vivid hallucinations sometimes occur. This condition is known to effect something between half and three-quarter of the population. Although the sensations generally are visual or auditory, they may also involve heat, cold, odour or touch.

But the question remains – do these states of altered consciousness cause exotic imagery to manifest, or is the brain merely put into a mode where it is receptive to contact from an objective, exterior source? I know of one northern gentleman who would be interested in the answer to that one.

Meanwhile, the experiences have begun again. I quote from a recent letter:

“I have had a few visions on waking in the morning, since last I saw you. I suddenly found myself in a monastery. The entrance and surrounding walls were in dark colours, but the centre was beautifully lit. There were about twelve girls in a ring who were dancing holding the hems of their long white frocks, moving into the ring and out of it. I also saw the faces of two men, whom I did not recognise…”

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NOTES.

  1. This rather incongruous Image has a almost identical precedent In the case of ‘Miss Z’, Investigated by John Rimmer and Peter Rogerson, and reported In MUFOB. Other members of Miss Z’s family had reported hypnogogic and hypnopomplc experiences, Including her father “On another occasion there were about a dozen figures wearing ‘glittery’ silver suits… [they were] normal looking human figures and the suits of a normal style, resembling ‘glitter’ suits worn by show-business personalitles” (MUFOB, new series 4, p.4).
  2. This also echoes the experience of Miss Z’s father, who on one occasion awoke to find a number of tiny figures lust a few inches high running about the room – some on tiny horses!

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