EPISODES: INTRODUCTION | The Egryn Lights | The Welsh Roswell |
UFO in the Berwyn Mountains, 1974, The Welsh “Roswell”.
In May 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, an object fell to earth. A few weeks later Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that they had recovered a “flying disc.” Evidently someone had spoken out of turn and the Army quickly retracted the statement, saying instead that the crashed object was a conventional weather balloon. Discussion on the incident did not recur until the late 1970s, when retired lieutenant colonel Jesse Marcel, in an interview with ufologist Stanton Friedman, said he believed the debris he had retrieved from the scene was extraterrestrial. The US Government denied this and denies it now. Nevertheless, many remain convinced that a UFO crashed in the desert, its debris recovered and live occupants taken away.
Wales has its own Roswell, dubbed by some as the “Roswelsh” event. It is the story of a UFO that reportedly crashed in the Berwyn Mountains in 1974. In common with the events in New Mexico twenty-seven years earlier, investigators believe that not only were the remains of a craft taken away but that, sensationally, live occupants were found, put in crates, and taken away in strict secrecy by the military.
The Berwyn range of peaks sits at the apex of Wales’s isosceles UFO triangle. The peaks occupy an area approximately bound by Bala in the southwest, Corwen in the northwest, Llangollen in the northeast, and in the southeast by Oswestry in Shropshire. The range largely consists of sparsely populated moorland thick with heather, interspersed with grassland and bracken. Its main summits are Cadair Berwyn at 832 metres above sea level, Moel Sych at 827 metres, and Cadair Bronwen at 784 metres.
There are numerous stories in Welsh folklore that point to prior appearances of strange objects seen on the land and in the skies of the Berwyn region. One such is the ceffyl dŵr (water horse), which will let a traveller ride it but often throws them off and kills them.
An especially frightful and malicious creature is the Llamhigyn Y Dwr, the Water Leaper. It is a giant, limbless frog or toad with a bat’s membranous wings (sometimes even a bird’s feathery wings) and a long, reptilian tail with a large stinger at the tip. It leaps across the water using its wings, hence its name. Its favourite prey is sheep that wander too close to the water’s edge, and, fatally, fishermen. It is said that its appearance alone will, Medusa-like, strike one dead.
The region also accommodates the dreadful afanc, a cross between an alligator and a dwarf that lives in Llyn yr Afanc on the River Conwy. Long ago it caused floods in the Conwy Valley, which drowned cattle and ruined crops. Villagers made a plan to get rid of the monster, using a maiden as bait. The maid sat on the side of the lake and sang. Enchanted by her presence, the afanc approached slowly and rested its head on her lap, with its claws upon her breast. Local man Hu Gardan and his helpers threw chains over the monster, which angrily leapt back into the water, ripping the maiden with its claws as it left. However, the chains held firm and the afanc was dragged back out of the lake by oxen. Instead of killing the monster, Hu Gardan took the afanc to Glaslyn on the eastern flank of Snowdon, where it lives till this day. In fact, the journey with the afanc was so difficult that one of the oxen’s eyes burst from its socket, causing it to cry many tears. So that now there is a field called Gwaun llygad yr ych (meadow of the ox’s eye), containing the Pwll llygad yr ych (pool of the ox’s eye), which never dries out.
Folklore tales also speak of unusual aerial phenomena in the Berwyn hills going back centuries. The westerly part of the range that abuts the mountains of Snowdonia, in particular Cader Idris (“the Chair of Idris the Giant”) is the home of the Cŵn Annwn, the Hounds of Hell. These are the fabled hounds of Annwn, the Celtic Otherworld. In the Mabinogion the Cŵn Annwn run with the Wild Hunt led by Arawn, King of Annwn, and at other times by Gwyn ap Nudd, King of the Fairyfolk. If one is unfortunate enough to hear the howling of the hounds, the die is cast—one’s death is nigh. Legend has it that anyone who stays the night on Cader Idris will find death, go mad or become a genius. On the first night of each New Year it is said that mysterious lights can be seen around its peak. Note that the twentieth-century UFO events in the nearby Berwyn Range took place in the month of January. In addition to the Cŵn Annwn, villagers living in the shadows of the Berwyn hills tell tales of being plagued by flying dragons, a synonym in medieval times for UFOs.
If all this were not enough, the region suffers phantom bombers, lake monsters and, in common with many other places in Britain, “ABCs” (Alien, or Anomalous, Big Cats). One might say that the Berwyn hills’ impressive mythological pedigree makes what occurred in 1974 at least as suggestive of a modern-day fairy tale as a UFO story.
From a study of witness testaments concerning the Berwyn event and, subsequently, research findings by first-rate investigators such as Andy Roberts, Scott Felton and the late Tony Dodd, a fascinating account emerges. During the twelve months prior to the Berwyn incident the north of England bore witness to a phenomenon dubbed the “phantom helicopter.” More than one hundred credible sightings were reported, including over the Cheshire skies a few miles to the east of the Berwyn range. It appeared at night at low altitude, often over difficult terrain, dangerously close to power lines, and in very poor weather. Witnesses felt that the phantom crafts were engaged in looking for something. The phenomenon ended on or around the date of the Berwyn incident.
On the night of 23 January 1974 villagers in Landrillo and Llandderfel, near Bala, witnessed over several hours, strange lights across the sky. The authorities later attributed the lights to a bolide meteor shower. A bolide is categorised as an extremely bright meteor, especially one that explodes in the atmosphere. Astronomers refer to them as fireballs about equal to the brightness of the full moon. That night these meteor sightings were recorded at 7:25 p.m., 8:15 p.m., 8:30 p.m. and 9:55 p.m., the latter appearance being the most dramatic. These times coincide with witness observations of the Berwyn UFO incident
At around 8:30 p.m. villagers heard a colossal explosion, closely followed by a deep rumbling. One witness recalled it as being ‘like a lorry running into a house.’ Its shockwaves reverberated through homes, overturning furniture, knocking objects off shelves, rippling walls, and upsetting pets and livestock. Scientific instruments registered the tremors between 4-5 on the Richter scale (corresponding to a “light earthquake”). Frightened, the villagers congregated outdoors. The tremors were felt in Wrexham, Cheshire, Wirral, Liverpool, and even as far as the Isle of Man
Locals at first thought that something, perhaps an aircraft, had crashed into Cadair Berwyn Mountain. Others believed they had seen something else. One farmer described seeing an object the size of a bus, white in the middle, travelling along the mountain. It then dipped and the farmer thought it was going to crash. Other witnesses spoke of red and amber pulsing lights and an egg-shaped craft flying past. Witness Elfed Roberts reported seeing from his car a green light in the sky ahead of him. He described it as an arcing light.
Many witnesses telephoned the local police to report these strange events. The Gwynedd Police Constabulary Major Incident Log for that night includes these sample calls:
Ø Explosion. PC receiving 999 calls of UFO. A witness who saw an object on the hillside reported: ‘Saw bright red light, like coal fire red. Large perfect circle. Like a big bonfire. Could see lights above and to the right and white lights moving to bottom. Light changed colour to yellowish white and back again.’
Ø ‘There's been a large explosion in the area and there is a large fire in the mountainside. I am speaking from ... and can see the fire where I am.’
Ø ‘Saw bright green lights, object with tail - travelling west. Saw about Bangor direction - dropped down.’
Ø ‘Saw a circular light in the sky at an estimated height of 1,500 feet. This object exploded and pieces fell to the ground. Mr X estimates the pieces would have fallen into the [Irish] sea between Rhyl and Liverpool.’
A detailed observation of a “flying sphere” was made at Betws-y-Coed at 21:58. It was also reported that on the 24th at the Shropshire village of Gobowen, 3 miles north of Oswestry, a disc with revolving-coloured lights was observable from 9.15 p.m. for 10 minutes.
In 2010 key witness, retired district nurse Pat Evans who at the time of the crash was living in Llandderfel, near Bala, told reporters for the Daily Post for its looking-back piece on the infamous event that she saw something strange on the mountainside:
We’d heard an almighty bang and we live at the foot of the mountain. I thought it might have been a plane crash. Me being a nurse and my girls being in St John Ambulance, I thought we could help. It (the object) couldn’t have got there any other way apart from being flown there, so it had to be a UFO of some sort. I’m talking about something that could only have got there by flying and landing. We just saw this huge ball glowing and pulsating on the mountain…the object glowed orange, red and yellow and was moon like, but without windows or doors. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. I have no idea what it was… Some lights seemed to be scattered around it and I just wish we’d stayed to see what the end result was – whether it would just disappear or fly away. We didn’t see anybody on the road even though there were various reports that we were told to go away by armed police and military etc, which was all totally untrue.
On the night, wanting to put her training to good use and assist any injured until the arrival of the emergency services, Pat, accompanied by her daughters, set off to help. After climbing above the tree line Pat rounded a bend on the B4391. Abruptly, she slammed on the breaks as she and her daughters saw the large red-orange pulsing ball of light on Cadair Berwyn a few miles off to their left. Unable to identify it in detail, Pat drove on for a few minutes before returning to the same spot. The light was still there so she parked and with her daughters observed it for a while. A light drizzle was falling but the night was otherwise clear and Pat was able to describe the ball as “large” and forming a “perfect circle,” but it did not appear to be three-dimensional. Pat’s first thought was that the glow was from the flames of an aircraft but was straightaway unconvinced because the glow was not making movements in the manner of flickering flames. Perfectly spherical and still, the glow pulsated between red and orange. In an interview she recalled, “There were no flames shooting or anything like that. It was very uniform, round in shape...it was flat and round.”
As Pat and her daughters watched in puzzlement the light changed colour several times from red to yellow to white. The three women also observed smaller white lights lower down the mountain. These were flashing like “Christmas tree fairy lights” and making a zigzag movement towards the glowing object. The astonished witnesses firstly assumed that they were seeing the lights of handheld lanterns. However, Pat quickly realised that a rescue team could not possibly have been organised in such a short time so as to arrive at the mountain before she and her daughters. Pat continued driving to the mountain, still intent on helping any survivors but even as she was making the initial climb, she realised that the crash had probably occurred on an inaccessible part of the peak. She said she then turned round and returned home.
In his book describing the Berwyn incident, Paul Devereux attributes the “earthlights” seen on Cadair Berwyn to geophysical stresses.[1] Devereux adds that his colleague, the late Keith Critchlow, got into discussions with scientists who were investigating the mountain in the days after the incident. Their Geiger counter gave off extraordinarily high readings at the Bronze Age archaeological stone circle known as Moel Tŷ Uchaf on the slopes of Cadair Berwyn.
In his book describing the Berwyn incident, Paul Devereux attributes the “earthlights” seen on Cadair Berwyn to geophysical stresses.[2] Devereux adds that his colleague, the late Keith Critchlow, got into discussions with scientists who were investigating the mountain in the days after the incident. Their Geiger counter gave off extraordinarily high readings at the Bronze Age archaeological stone circle known as Moel Tŷ Uchaf on the slopes of Cadair Berwyn.
Devereux went on to map approximately 85 UFO sightings in Wales against tectonic and geomagnetic factors. Interestingly, together with geologist colleague Paul McCartney, Devereux found that sightings corresponded more with earth (epicentre) movements rather than with the positions of static fault lines.
Devereux and Critchlow’s investigations should be considered in tandem with the late John Michell’s remarkable insights[3] on the true nature of megalithic constructions. The renowned academic was struck by Stonehenge’s remarkable resemblance to a UFO when viewed from above. He pointed out the significant features that characterise the resemblance: the well-defined outer rim consisting of low bank and ditch and its Aubrey holes, and small circular pits around the perimeter like portholes seen in UFO craft. In the centre is the perfect stone circle of the UFO’s raised cabin enclosing the horseshoe-shaped trilithon construction that appears above the surrounding rim like a domed cockpit. The smaller Preseli bluestones stand inside the circle, visible through its openings just as witnesses observe occupants inside UFOs, as in 1959 when teachers and pupils in New Guinea saw a UFO hovering in full view over their school.
In 1994 British UFO researcher Jenny Randles lectured on the Berwyn case at the Fortean Times UnConvention. During her presentation she mentioned the anomalous radiation count at the Moel Tŷ Uchaf circle. After her lecture a member of the audience, a science correspondent from The Sunday Express, told Randles of rumours of a leukaemia cluster among children in the Bala area that had arisen in the years following the Berwyn incident. The correspondent told Randles that at the time he connected the rumour with possible leaks from the Trawsfynedd nuclear power station (25 miles east of the Berwyn crash site) but he could not prove this. He told Randles that in the light of later claims of UFO crashes or the presence of secret military hardware, it could be implied that whatever had crashed in the Berwyn Mountains had possibly been radioactive in nature and of sufficient strength to subsequently generate the leukaemia cluster around the Bala district.
After the Berwyn incident police participated in the search for a downed aircraft, in some cases commandeering vehicles to assist but their public position was that nothing was found. Similarly, a team from RAF Valley on Anglesey conducted a search and, reportedly, found nothing.
Documents leaked in 2008 showed that many of the reports made to police that evening were from residents, like Pat Evans, who were convinced they had seen a UFO before the “earthquake” struck. One resident reported seeing ‘a bright red light, like coal fire red’ on the mountainside, as well as ‘light above and to the right… and white lights moving to the bottom.’ The documents also reveal a police officer’s testimony. He said, ‘large explosion in the area and… a large fire in the mountainside. I can see the fire [from] where I am.’ A local hotel manager told investigators that the conversation in the bar was increasingly about the military ‘sealing off the area.’ As with the Pembrokeshire UFO flap of 1977, there were also rumours about an American military presence.
A few days after the incident a family driving along a quiet road twenty miles from the Berwyn range heard a humming sound filling the air. Seemingly out of nowhere a saucer-shaped object passed in front of them above the treetops and then vanished. In the same period, two truckers driving home to Lincolnshire noticed a cigar-shaped object hovering over Bala Lake.
Three weeks after the event Geraint Edwards saw a UFO by Cadair Berwyn. It was a Friday evening. He was in a car with others on the way to play a pub darts match. At 6:45 p.m. they saw something to the southeast. It looked like a rugby ball but its ends were more “pointy.” It hovered for at least ten minutes.
Five other reports of UFOs seen over the UK at about 10:00 p.m. on 23 January 1974 were unearthed during the Ministry of Defence investigation. Three sightings were in the Home Counties, one in Lincolnshire, and another in Sussex.
Replying to a letter in May 1974 from local Member of Parliament, Dafydd Elis Thomas, Brynmor John, then a junior RAF minister, explained that: ‘the phenomena could well have been caused by a meteor descending through the atmosphere burning up and finally disintegrating before it reached the ground. Such a hypothesis would also explain the absence of any signs of impact. It has also been suggested that at 8:32 p.m. that evening there was an earth tremor in the Berwyn Mountains which produced a landslide with noises like detonation.’
It was reported that the tremor’s epicentre was in the Bala area at a depth of eight kilometres. However, officials maintained that a reading and depth of those proportions ruled out a cause that could be attributed to something crashing into Cadair Berwyn. Such an object, they stated, would have to be several hundred tons in weight and leave a massive crater. The Royal Astronomical Society, using data provided by the NASA Astrophysics Data System, published in Astronomy & Geophysics, vol. 47, an article: Bala earthquake 3.5, 20:38, Wednesday, 23 January 1974:
24th Jan Gwynedd police received reports of what appeared to be a meteorite that had crashed in flames on Cader Fronwen 2km south of Llandrillo, 10km east of Bala. Anglesey coastguard described the meteorite as green. Coastguards in Isle of Man, Formby and Cumberland described green flares. However, the Institute for Geological Sciences said that for a prelimimary magnitude reading of 4 a meteorite would have to have been very large and therefore unmistakeable.
A detailed observation of a "flying sphere" was made at Betws-y-Coed at 21:58. A report on that night's event was also made at Gobowen at 9.15 on the 24th of a disc with revolving, coloured lights, observable for 10 minutes. Astronomers searching the area by helicopter over the weekend saw nothing. (This conclusion, of course, takes no account of an operation by the military that would have sanitised the crash scene with hours of the event.) Certainly, there was no evidence of a large scar in the landscape that would be expected of so great an impact. Consequently, the prevailing professional opinion became that the tremor must have been caused by an earthquake.
The Berwyn narrative now attains a certain X-Files quality. Locals spoke of a substantial military presence after the incident, including the arrival of official-looking “Men-in-Black” figures that went around questioning the villagers about what they had seen that night. Military jets and helicopters criss-crossed the area. Roads were barricaded and people shepherded away from sensitive locations. A few even claimed they had seen strange boxes being carried away in lorries. Farmers reported that they were forbidden from tending their cattle. The feeling among locals was that something was obviously being sought.
A few months after the event a curious organisation emerged from the shadows. UFO investigators in the north of England received “official” documents from a group calling itself the Aerial Phenomena Enquiry Network (APEN). At this time APEN was not an unknown body and had been linked with the Men in Black phenomenon. On previous occasions it had contacted UFO researchers via letter and cassette tape offering pieces of information but never contact details. The format of the letters received was heavy with bureaucratic terminology references: “Code=7 Case number 174L 74-71/349 ST Classification = Jasmine Clearance date=02 DE 74” in one case.
Jenny Randles was one such recipient. On the one-hour audiocassette tape she received was an introduction from a male American claiming to be someone called “J.T. Anderson, Supreme Commander of APEN.” It contained television and radio broadcasts of UFO reports, occasionally interrupted by other voices, evidently terrified and in panic, claiming that UFOs were hostile and that the listener should be wary of their nature and intentions.
It has been speculated that APEN may have been part of a government disinformation unit whose remit was to cover up the true facts and divert attention from secret weapons testing. APEN issued similar communications in connection with other notable UFO events, including the sensational Rendlesham Forest case in December 1980 in the east of England.
During interviews in 2006 British ufologist Nick Redfern claimed that APEN had a far right wing agenda, and was under investigation by Special Branch. It is the case that some of the cassette tapes sent to UFO researchers included the sound of Nazi marching and Nazi marching music. Redfern also said that APEN manipulated and spread misinformation amongst various British UFO groups in the form of smear campaigns and false allegations in efforts to undermine the groups and, ultimately, to bring them together under the umbrella of APEN. The APEN documents sent to the Berywn investigators claimed that an extraterrestrial craft that had come down in the area was retrieved by an APEN crash retrieval team, which had been on the scene within hours. More significantly, APEN claimed that they were recommending for hypnotic regression an unnamed key witness to the event. In 1974 hypnotic regression was virtually unknown in the British UFO community.
In the 1990s witnesses began coming forward to say that they had been part of a UFO recovery operation in the Berwyn area. Sensationally, they claimed that NHE bodies were taken from the wreckage and transported to Porton Down in Wiltshire for analysis. Porton Down is the site of the U.K.’s top-secret Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment. It was also said that the crashed UFO had been accompanied by other alien craft that subsequently submerged in the Irish Sea and were eventually flushed out by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.
Seasoned investigators took up the cudgels and discovered startling new facts and lines of enquiry. Scott Felton claimed that a relative of Pat Evans told him that on her return home Pat was stopped by a military patrol, which ordered her away from the mountain to allow them to close the road. Pat denied that this happened. She also denied that she had seen bodies from the craft and had been ordered to keep quiet by the Ministry of Defence.
However, Felton also received testimony from a number of people who said that police or soldiers had stopped them. A hotel chef was stopped whilst returning from Corwen, a reporter from Bala had his camera confiscated, and two students noted a very heavy police presence in Llandrillo just after 9:30 p.m.
Felton also poured cold water on the oft-quoted suggestion that the lights seen on Cadair Berwyn were from poachers’ lamps. It is true that police were looking for poachers that night. However, this activity was going on several miles away on Cadair Bronwen and had finished by 9:00 p.m. Felton’s investigations confirmed also that the report of a plane accident that some residents had spoken of did not take place at the time of the event and had been conflated with an incident in 1982 when a light training aircraft crashed with very little disturbance to the locals.
Scott Felton’s research ultimately led him to conclude that a UFO had landed in the Berwyn hills on many occasions prior to the January event. He understood that the military was very much aware of this activity and that on the night of the 23rd they were to conduct an operation, using the meteor story as a cover if necessary. Felton reviewed his evidence and concluded that the object that had been visiting Berwyn in recent days returned. Observed by the waiting military personnel, it came down, stayed for about an hour and a half, and departed unhindered. Felton believed that it came and went in this fashion for another three weeks afterwards
The late Tony Dodd (formerly a contributor to “UFO Magazine”) claimed in 1996 that he was contacted by a serviceman whistleblower who said he was present at the Berwyn event. The soldier said that he had been attached to a barracks in southern England at the time. A few days before the incident the soldiers received orders to head for Birmingham, then west to Chester and, finally, to Llangollen where they set up base. Believing they were to be part of a live drill of some kind, the unit awaited further orders.
As soon as the “earthquake” occurred they were ordered to move to Llandderfel and not to stop under any circumstances until reaching their destination. On arrival, still expecting to participate in a drill the 5-man team found themselves being ordered to place two oblong boxes onto their military truck. They received strict orders to leave the boxes shut and not to stop until they reached Porton Down. Unwisely, the team stopped for refreshments, whereupon their tail, a plain-clothed man carrying high-level military police ID, appeared and ordered them to get back into their truck and not stop until they reached the Wiltshire facility.
At Porton Down the soldier and his buddies reportedly watched from behind transparent screens as scientists opened the boxes to reveal two frail “grey alien” creatures. Each had been placed in a decontamination chamber, presumably at the Berwyn crash site. As they were being removed, the soldiers saw the creatures’ obvious “not of this world” appearance. In the following days there were rumours that some of the NHEs retrieved were alive.
In his book Cosmic Crashes Nick Redfern provided further details of the soldier’s testimony, assigning him the pseudonym “Prescott.” Redfern claimed that Prescott was one among scores of troops despatched to recover wreckage from Cadair Berwyn. He describes the delivery of the oblong boxes to Porton Down and adds Prescott’s description of the greys as five to six feet tall, humanoid in shape but skeletal thin with covered skin. In his later book, A Covert Agenda, Redfern suggested that the “phantom helicopters” seen in the preceding months were crewed by UFO crash retrieval teams on permanent standby. Redfern gave serious consideration to the idea that there existed a jointly funded CIA-Ministry of Defence rapid response project.
Researcher Russ Kellett did great work to uncover in 2000 a Marine and Coastguard document, which refers to an exercise carried out by RAF Jerby Head during the late afternoon and early evening of 23rd January 1974. RAF Jurby Head was a Royal Air Force air weapons range that operated on the northwest coast of the Isle of Man between 1939 and 1993. Bombing practices were carried out at sea with the use of dummy bombs, including inert nuclear weapons. Tellingly, the main user of the range was the United States Air Force.
The document names the exercise as “Photoflash.” It relates that coastguards were advised to expect at least 10 aircraft taking part and around 80 flashes in the Liverpool Bay area and along the North Wales coastline. The document did not elaborate on the nature and purpose of these “photoflashes” but Kellett believed that their role was to light up the sea to reveal the position of submerged craft. Kellett concluded that three separate UFOs were flushed out of the sea that night and, crucially, military craft were involved and that there was an engagement. A fisherman saw one craft come out near Puffin Island, an uninhabited island off the eastern tip of Anglesey. His colleagues told him to say nothing about it.
Kellett was also in correspondence with witnesses who claimed they were moved on by military personnel on the roadside at Llandrillo where one of the craft came down. The men told Kellett that they saw occupants getting out the craft and helping two of their own that were injured. The NHEs were then loaded onto the back of a flatback truck and taken away. Kellett understood that there were actually two craft that came down, one crashing near Bala at a position that corresponded with the epicentre of the supposed “earthquake.” The other ship smashed into one of the Berwyn hills. Kellett also claimed to have in his possession fragments from one of the craft.
In June 1977 the head of S4 (Air), the MoD branch that handled UFO matters, asked the Provost and Security Service of the Royal Air Force Police, to make discreet enquiries into events in Wales. Earlier in 1977 the P&SS had moved to RAF Rudloe Manor in Wiltshire.
RAF Rudloe Manor, dubbed by UFO investigators “Britain’s Area 51,” lies 10 miles northeast of Bath. It was one of several military installations situated in the area, which are now used by Defence Digital, the UK’s Strategic Command, which manages allocated joint capabilities from the three armed services. Declassified files indicate the site was the centre for UFO investigations in the 1950s. On the surface, it appears to be nothing more than a quaint English manor house but researchers have argued for years that it remains the centre of British research into UFOs. MoD insiders claim that an astonishing 2.2 million square feet of vast caverns divided into many smaller chambers lie underneath Rudloe Manor. Nearby is the heavily secured Corsham Computer Centre, which the MoD says is a Royal Navy data processing centre. Researchers claim that important files related to the history of the UFO phenomenon are kept here under lock and key, including evidence of extraterrestrial contact from the Berwyn Mountains incident in 1974.
In 2007 the MoD released the entirety of their UFO files to the National Archives, reportedly to avoid having to respond any longer to Freedom of Information Act requests. There were 60,000 documents, but 18 key files were missing for some of the better-known cases. After another request the MoD located theses files, each containing 100 to 200 documents but then recalled them before they were released. Insiders within the ministry claimed that the files, rumoured to include details of extraterrestrial contact in the Berwyn Mountains, were moved to a safer facility, with fingers pointed to Rudloe Manor. Access to the underground facilities at Rudloe Manor is two miles away at the Corsham Computer Centre.
There is a fascinating precursor to the Berwyn event. In 1972 Manchester citizen Peter Taylor was driving home from work one night. As on the two previous nights, Taylor reached at 7:30 p.m. the tiny Cheshire village of Daresbury, the birthplace and childhood residence of Alice’s creator Charles Dodgson (“Lewis Carroll”). The village is a relatively short distance from the eastern limit of the Berwyn range.
As on the preceding two nights, the lights of Taylor’s new Ford car faltered at precisely the same spot. On this occasion, however, events unfolded in a very dramatic fashion. To his utter dismay, Taylor found that he was on an unfamiliar road and completely lost. Astonishingly, he discovered that he was forty miles north of Daresbury near the town of Preston in Lancashire. He phoned his wife Sandra from a roadside call box and learned that he had gained two hours in as many seconds.
Daresbury, centred round the Ring o’ Bells Inn, is at the epicentre of a zone of high strangeness where witnesses have repeatedly claimed all manner of bizarre goings-on. These days the area around Daresbury and the neighbouring villages of Moore, Helsby Hill and Runcorn is known by researchers as “Wonderland.” Over recent years, there have been repeated reports of car engines cutting out, the appearance of bright lights, a golden ball hovering above Sankey Way, and a huge cigar-shaped object the size of an aeroplane that travelled beside a car near Preston Brook.
[1] Devereux P., Places of Power: Measuring the Secret Energy of Ancient Sites, Cassell Illustrated, 1999.
[2] Devereux P., Places of Power: Measuring the Secret Energy of Ancient Sites, Cassell Illustrated, 1999.
[3] Michell, J., The Flying Saucer Vision, Abacus, London, 1974
EPISODES: INTRODUCTION | The Egryn Lights | The Welsh Roswell |
