The Egryn Lights

The Welsh UFO triangle — The “Welsh UFO Triangle”

EPISODES: INTRODUCTION | The Egryn Lights | The Welsh Roswell

The Egryn Lights 1904-1906

‘Mrs Jones, unless mistaken, your light still accompanies us.’
‘Yes, I kept both occasions to see whether any of you perceived it for yourselves.’

The town of Barmouth and its surrounds is the location of a fascinating event known as the “Egryn Lights” phenomenon, which took place between December 1904 and March 1906. This account has all the usual features of UFO sightings, including unworldly lights and the baleful presence of “Men in Black,” creepy personnel frequently described in UFO lore as appearing very quickly at the scene of UFO activities with the apparent objective of scaring witnesses from reporting on particulars. In December 1904 residents of the villages of Egryn, Bryncrug and Towyn described seeing in the surrounding hills an enormous luminous star of intensely brilliant white light, its circumference emitting dazzling sparks. It poised in midair, a fiery mass of every conceivable colour spreading on all sides and descending into a rainbow shower to the surface of the mountain. Even more spectacular events were seen at nearby ancient megalithic remains. There, several multicoloured columns of light emerged out of the ground and leapt upwards. One appeared to flutter before producing spheres of light, which slowly rose up its length before exploding at the top. The lights took the forms of starlike bodies, spheres, ovals, glowing arches, bars, and luminous forms “suspended” upon incandescent “arms.” On one occasion a bloodred light no more than a foot from the ground appeared before startled onlookers in the centre of the village street. On another a group of villagers walking near Barmouth suddenly saw a soft shimmering radiance that was flooding the road at their feet. Some described it as a luminescent snowy whiteness, others as brilliant blue. Immediately, it spread around them; every stick and stone within twenty yards visible as if under the influence of the soft light. Villagers said later that it was as if some large body between earth and sky had suddenly opened and emitted a flood of light from within itself. The effect was like that of a bursting firework bomb, yet wonderfully different. They looked up and saw an oval grey mass, half open, disclosing an interior kernel of white light.

This was not the first occasion when “fiery exhalations” had been witnessed in the area. An online journal, Science Frontiers, reported in July 2001 that in 1790 a Welsh gazetteer published this report:

A remarkable phenomenon was seen near this town [Harlech] in the year 1694 and it continued about the space of eight months. It was a livid vapour, or fiery exhalation, which seemed to arise from the sea on the borders of Caernarvonshire. It made its first appearance on the side of a bay, a little after sunset, and from thence spread itself in the most gradual manner, until it had set all the houses in the neighbourhood on fire.

Not only the ricks of hay, corn, and other sorts of grain were destroyed, but also the vegetables in the gardens, for it had so noxious a smell that everything perished where it diffused its baleful infuence. Its effects were severely felt by the cattle to whom [sic] it communicated a contagious distemper, by which many of them died.

It made its appearance regularly every night, always rising at the same place, nor did it stop its course either by rain or storms. It was sometimes visible by day, but it was very remarkable that it never did any damage except in the night. The flames were in no way violent, but its continuance at last consumed everything that opposed it.

Those few scientists who have mused over this curious old account have concluded that the “fiery exhalations” resulted from the spontaneous ignition of marsh gas; that is, the flames were will-o'-the-wisps, albeit relatively powerful ones. Will-o'-the-wisp theory states that marsh gas (mostly methane) also contains phosphane and traces of diphosphane (P₂H₄). The latter gas reacts spontaneously with air and ignites the methane, creating weak blue flames.

In 1847, John Mason Neale, describing in The Unseen World the same incident, now dubbed the “Harlech meteor,” said:

…. the celebrated Harlech meteor of 1694: between Harlech and the Caernarvonshire side of the Traeth Bychan intervenes a low range of marsh land, running up some way into the country. Just before Christmas, 1693, a pale blue light was observed to come across the sea, apparently from the Caernarvonshire coast, and moving slowly from one part of the neighbouring country to another, to fire all the hay-ricks and some of the barns which it approached. It never appeared but at night. At first the country people were terrified at it; at length, taking courage, they ventured boldly close to it, and sometimes into it, to save, if it might be, their hay. As summer came on, instead of appearing almost every night, its visits were confined to once or twice a week, and almost always on Saturday or Sunday. It now began to cease from firing ricks, but was hurtful in another manner; for it poisoned all the grass on which it rested, and a great mortality of cattle and sheep ensued. At length it was traced to a place called Morvabychan, in Caernarvonshire, a sandy and marshy bay, about nine miles distant from Harlech. Storm or fine weather seemed to make no difference to this meteor; but any loud noise, as shouting, firing guns, blowing horns, appeared to prevent its doing mischief. It was seen for the last time in the August of 1694.

Similarly, blue-coloured lights appeared in the neighbourhood of Pwllheli in 1875, while two years later lights of various colours were seen moving over the estuary of the Dysynni.

Investigators of the 1904-05 recurrences, described alternately as the Egryn Lights or the Harlech Lights Flap, later mapped the precise locations of the many sightings in the four-month period and discovered that they were strung out like beads on a thread centred round the deep seated Mochras Fault, which runs north-south between the coastal towns of Harlech and Barmouth and passes almost directly under the village of Egryn. The nearby northeast–southwest Bala geological fault also passes by Egryn. It was learned that the area had been subject to tremors immediately around and after the occurrence of the lights, which culminated in a minor earthquake under the Swansea area in 1906. Ground-lights were also seen in nearby Llangollen to the east in April 1905. Three local vicars who had gathered to see what all the fuss was about saw them ‘burst luridly’ and fly off.

Investigators advanced the notion that the phenomenon went back much further. They suggested that people who lived in this northwestern area of Wales 3,000 years ago might have witnessed similar lighting phenomena and marked the appearances by building stone edifices to mark the sites. This interpretation supports the belief that there is a connection between the flight paths of UFOs, earth energies and ancient civilisations.

In 1958 French UFO specialist Aimé Michel[1] set out his ideas on the existence of fixed alignments of energy paths across the globe that are navigated by UFOs. Michel dubbed these alignments “orthotenies.” The late Bruce Cathie, a New Zealand pilot and pioneering researcher of earth energy science with whom I shared fruitful exchanges, returned to the theme in his descriptions[2] of an all-encompassing worldwide grid, one whose interlocking lines correspond to the lines of flight of UFO appearances and whose properties are governed by the speed of light. The values of Cathie’s grid reflect harmonic relationships with the acceleration and deceleration of light, gravity and the mass of the earth

The mysterious lights in Merionethshire quickly became associated with lay-preacher Mary Jones of Islaw’rfford, near Dyffryn. A contemporary described her as ‘a simple-mannered country woman of thirty-five, her hair touched with grey. She was absolutely without self- consciousness, and had a quiet, easy mien. Her tone was deep and soft, but her brown eyes were alive with a strange light. I think she had natural powers of personality.’

Mary Elizabeth Powell was born at Bontddu on 30th March 1868 to Morris and Anne Powell. Bontddu was then a small gold and copper mining community on the north side of the Mawddach estuary, a few miles west of Dolgellau, on the road to Barmouth. The Powell family would have attended Bethania Calvinistic Methodist Chapel. However, soon after Mary was born, her parents moved to Sarnfaen farm near Talybont, a few miles north of Barmouth.

On 16th November 1887 Mary Powell, then 19 years old, married Richard Jones, who in 1881 was working on her aunt Mary Owen's neighbouring farm, Glanafon Hall. After they married, Richard and Mary Jones took on Islaw'rffordd farm, just half a mile south of Sarnfaen. They soon had a son, who they named Robert after his grandfather. A few years later they also had a daughter, Annie. Tragically, the son died in 1893 at the age of six. The couple were devastated. Mary was particularly badly hit by the experience and plunged into a depression, which intensified when a sister died a short while afterwards. Her grief and subsequent personal despair, which continued for many years, gradually led her to seek after God.

At that point, just before the onset of the Welsh Revival in 1904, Mary came across a copy of a recently published book called In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? by an American Congregational minister from Topeka in Kansas, Charles Monroe Sheldon (1857-1946). The book first appeared in America in 1897. It would subsequently become a worldwide best seller, helping to bring into being the Social Gospel movement, which characterised the church's response to the social and economic challenges of life in the first half of the twentieth century. The theme of In His Steps focusses on imagining what would happen if a group of Christians took seriously the call to discipleship and only did in life what they felt Jesus himself would do when faced with the decisions that need to be made daily in every sphere of life. Mary was profoundly affected by the book and determined to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit, an aspect of her faith that would become a key characteristic of her ministry. She was especially intent on rekindling her husband’s faith, which had been dwindling but she was unsure as to the next steps she should take going forward.

Presently, reports of the ministry of Glamorgan-based Evan Roberts, a leading figure in the Welsh Revival of 1904-05, began to reach Mary through the press in November 1904, and she was greatly encouraged. She later spoke to a local journalist, who reported:

“I did not want to go out to the big world outside Egryn,” she said with a pathetic catch of the breath. “Who was I to do that? But oh I longed to be the means of bringing my husband to Christ. For 17 years my example had shown him the hollowness of a mere profession of religion, and my heart yearned to be allowed to undo the wrong I had thus done him. I prayed that I might convert all my relatives, friends, and neighbours; I did not ask then for more than that.”

That night, “whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out of the body I cannot tell,” the Saviour appeared, and told her that the mission for which she longed was not for her but reserved for another, whose name for obvious reasons I suppress. In the morning she visited this friend and told her the message. “Oh, I can never do it! I can never do it,” was the response to the proffered commission. That night Mrs Jones's “'Star” appeared for the first time. She attended the little chapel, related her vision, told how her friend had refused the heavenly commission, and added, “She has missed the one great opportunity of her life, and my service is accepted.”

On the 5th December 1904, Jones began her Christian revival work at Egryn Chapel. On this same night a star of light was heralded by a luminous arch that witnesses likened to the Aurora Borealis, one end resting on the sea, the other bathing the little hilltop chapel in a soft luminescent glow. The star then appeared, its light flooding the chapel.

From that night the star and the lights always accompanied Mrs Jones’s preachings, Mrs Jones and her Welsh Revivalist congregation adopting the Egryn Lights as proof that God was communicating with them. Each night the star would appear above a particular house, its occupant afterwards coming to the Egryn chapel as a new convert. Some witnesses saw the lights around Jones making jumping motions, rushing or coming together (sometimes with a loud peel of thunder), or balls of fire rising from the ground and bursting.

On 22nd December three people saw a large light to the south of Egryn Chapel, describing that within the light could be seen a bottle or black person, and that surrounding the large light were smaller ones of many colours.

A man saw three lights in formation like a Prince of Wales feathers over a farmhouse on the 2nd January. In what was probably the same sighting, a woman saw lights between Dyffryn and Llanbedr.

By the 15th January The Barmouth Advertiser was reporting on Jones’s group, stating that “close upon 40 converts” had been enrolled. However, the journal at this stage did not refer to the phenomenon of the lights.

The next day Mrs Jones in conversation with an enquirer said: “I have seen the light every night from the beginning of the Revival about six weeks ago. Sometimes it appears like a motor-car lamp flashing and going out, and injures nothing at all; other times like two lamps and tongues of fire all round them, going out in one place and lighting again in another place far off sometimes; other times a quick flash and going out immediately, and when the fire goes out a vapour of smoke comes in its place; also a rainbow of vapour and a very bright star.”

The enquirer asked, ‘Have the lights been seen by any one who had not been converted?’

‘Yes,’ Mrs Jones replied.

By the 9th February, Jones’s preachings and the accompanying lights phenomena had attracted wider coverage, articles published in both the Daily News and the Guardian prompting the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror to send journalists to North Wales to investigate. The resultant media frenzy lasted for about a week. On 11th February, the Daily News reported an Egryn resident’s remarkable account:

At 8.15 p.m. I was on the hillside, walking from Dyffryn to Egryn. In the distance, about a mile away, I could see the three lighted windows of the tiny Egryn chapel, where service was going on. It was the only touch of light in the miles of countryside. Suddenly at 8.20 p.m. I saw what appeared to be a ball of fire above the roof of the chapel. It came from nowhere, and sprang into existence simultaneously. It had a steady, intense yellow brilliance, and did not move… It seemed to me to be at twice the height of the chapel, say fifty feet, and it stood out with electric vividness against the encircling hills behind. Suddenly it disappeared, having lasted about a minute and a half… The minutes crept by and it was 8.35 p.m. before I saw anything else. Then two lights flashed out, one on each side of the chapel. They seemed about 100 feet apart, and considerably higher in the air than the first one. In the night it was difficult to judge distance, but I made a rough guess that they were 100 feet above the roof of the chapel. They shone out brilliantly and steadily for a space of thirty seconds. Then they both began to flicker like a defective arc lamp. They were flickering like that while one could count to ten. Then they became steady again. In the distance they looked like large and brilliant motorcar lights. They disappeared within a couple of seconds of each other… I set off to walk the four miles to Barmouth, stopping here and there for ten minutes to watch for fresh lights… Just after half-past ten I was startled by a flash on the dark hillside immediately on my left, and looking up I saw I was comparatively close to one of the strange lights. It was about 300 feet up the hillside, and about 500 feet from where I stood. It shone out dazzlingly, not with a white brightness, but with a deep yellow brightness. It looked a solid bulb of light six inches in diameter, and was tiring to look at. I ran at the stone wall by the side of the road, climbed it, and made a run for the light. It was gone before I had covered a dozen yards, and I could find nothing but the bare hillside. When I reached the road again, I looked back along the way I had come, and saw in the roadway near the Egryn Chapel another of the bright lights.

The latter event is probably the same as reported by another witness at Egryn Chapel that took place at around 10.30 p.m. on the 11th. A Daily Mirror journalist, speaking with the Society for Psychical Research, reported the account:

… I then told Mrs Jones how anxious I was to see the light for myself, and she said she would pray that it might appear to me. I made arrangements to drive back behind her carriage. Both drivers consented to drive without lights. In the first carriage were Mrs Jones and three ladies, in my own with me, the Daily Mirror photographer, a keen witted, hardheaded Londoner… For three miles we drove in silence, and I had given up hope. It was close on midnight, and we were nearing Barmouth when suddenly, without the faintest warning, a soft shimmering radiance flooded the road at our feet. Immediately it spread around us, and every stick and stone within twenty yards was visible, as if under the influence of the softest limelight. It seemed as though some large body between earth and sky had suddenly opened and emitted a flood of light from within itself. It was a little suggestive of the bursting of a firework bomb - and yet wonderfully different. Quickly as I looked up, the light was even then fading away from the sky overhead. I looked up to see an oval mass of grey, half open, disclosing within a kernel of white light. As I looked it closed, and everything was once again in darkness. Every one saw this extraordinary light, but while it appeared to me of snowy whiteness, the rest declared it was a brilliant blue.

More than two months later the Egryn Lights phenomenon appeared to widen its sphere of activity when in the early hours of the morning Reverend E.W.E. of Ystrad in Rhondda, 127 miles from Barmouth, reported seeing lights near Penrhys Hill after attending a meeting with Mary Jones. Two days later a Dr. R.J.M. saw similar lights at Libanus where Mrs Jones was holding a meeting.

One particular report from Mrs Jones highlights the appearance of a chilling figure in black that was not what he seemed. Returning home one night well after midnight from one of her mission meetings, Mrs Jones dismissed her driver, telling him that her brother would walk her the rest of the way home. She pointed to the figure of a man she believed to be her brother approaching up the lane. The car drove off and Mrs Jones walked on to meet her chaperone. The man then turned and walked before her down the lane. Puzzled, Mrs Jones called out to her brother by name. The figure looked back over his shoulder and she realised it was not her brother. Afraid, she began singing softly one of the Revival hymns. The man stopped abruptly and, according to Mrs Jones, transformed into an enormous black dog which ran from bank to bank across the road in front of her as though to prevent her advancing any further. There and then she believed that the figure before her was the Devil who was angry about her Christian evangelist work. She prayed aloud for strength whereupon the black dog rushed growling into a nearby hillside.

Mrs Jones’s story would sound absurd and fantastical were it not for the corroborative testimony of another Egryn villager. A highly intelligent and well-respected young woman of the parish reported that on three nights in succession at midnight she was visited in her bedroom by a man dressed in black whose appearance corresponded with the person seen by Mrs Jones in the lane. The young woman said that the visitor gave to her a message and forbade her to reveal its contents.

The theme of “secret messages” conveyed to a parishioner in a deeply devout Christian community has its parallels with celebrated events such as at Lourdes, Garabandal and Fátima.

Two episodes among the Egryn Lights series of events echo witnesses’s experiences during the renowned Pembrokeshire UFO encounters of 1977. The first describes how on the 10th February 1905 a remarkable phenomenon occurred at Bryncrug Chapel between Towyn and Abergynolwyn, 25 miles from Dyffryn, where Mrs Jones was holding a meeting. The Daily News of 16th February described the Bryncrug event:

The chapel became bathed in mysterious light. After the meeting a professional gentleman returning homeward suddenly saw a gigantic figure rising over a hedgerow, with right arm extended over the road. Then a ball of fire appeared above, a long white ray descended and pierced the figure, which vanished. This extraordinary manifestation was witnessed simultaneously by a prominent local farmer from another standpoint. A party of youths returning from a Bryncrug meeting saw a ball of fire preceding them high above the road. Hastening forward they overtook the light, which then remained still. They knelt in the roadway, bathed in this mysterious light, and united in prayer, while the light remained stationary.

In the second case, The Barmouth Advertiser of 23rd March described scenes that unfolded during a revival meeting held ten days earlier 13th:

Mrs Jones was holding a revival meeting at a Methodist schoolroom, Ty'n-y-Drain, a mile and a half from Llanbedr in the direction of the mountains… It was about 11 o'clock at night, Monday, March 13th, with a little drizzling rain, but not very dark… After proceeding some distance, the mysterious “light” suddenly appeared above the roadway, a few yards in front of the car, around which it played and danced, sometimes in front, at other times behind Mrs Jones' vehicle. When we reached the crossroads where the road to Egryn makes a sharp turn to the left, the “Light,” on reaching this point, instead of following the road we had travelled and going straight on as might have been expected, at once turned and made its way in the direction of Egryn in front of the car! Up to this point it had been a single “light”' but after proceeding some distance on the Egryn road, it changed. A small red ball of fire appeared, around which danced two other attendant white lights. The red fire ball remained stationary for some time, the other “lights” playing around it. Meanwhile the car conveying Mrs Jones proceeded onwards, leaving the “lights” behind. These then suddenly again combined in one, and made a rapid dash after the car, which it again overtook and preceded. For over a mile did we thus keep it in view.

The comparisons between the Egryn phenomena and others that took place much later are exemplified by three witness accounts of Mrs Jones’s activities. These describe appearances of spectacular large-scale, multicoloured aerial phenomena, mindful of the extraordinary scenes witnessed one night in Pentyrch, north of Cardiff, in 2016, a UFO episode described in full in Chapter 4. The features shared with the Pentyrch sighting are italicised.

In early January 1905 a young woman from Barmouth told a reporter what she had seen one night between 10 and 10.30 p.m. “At first, I saw two very bright lights, about half a mile away [between Dyffryn and Llanbedr], one a big white light, the other smaller and red in colour. The latter flashed backwards and forwards, and finally seemed to become merged in the other. Then all was darkness again. It did not appear in the same place again, but a few minutes after we saw another light which seemed to be a few yards above the ground. It now looked like one big flame, and all around it shone like one big glare of light. It flamed up and went out alternately for about ten minutes, very much in the same way as some lighthouses.”

The second account, made by a Mr. L.M. to the Society for Psychical Research, describes what he and his wife saw at about 11 p.m. after Mrs Jones had concluded her service at the Calvinistic Methodist Chapel at Llanfair, about a mile and a half from Harlech. “...Mrs Jones was passing us home in her carriage, and in a few seconds after she passed, on the main road, and within a yard of us, there appeared a brilliant light twice, tinged with blue. In two or three seconds, after this disappeared, on our right hand, within 150 or 200 yards, there appeared twice very huge balls of similar appearance as that which appeared on the road. It was so brilliant and powerful this time that we were dazed for a minute or two. Then immediately there appeared ascending from a field high into the sky, three balls of light, deep red. Two of these appeared to split up, while the middle one remained unchanged. Then we left for home, having been watching these last phenomena for a quarter of an hour.”

Thirdly, Mr. D.D. spoke of events that took place on 26th July 1905 at a meeting of the Salvation Army in Robert Town Square in the colliery town of Ynysybwl, near Pontypridd. This was one week before Mrs Jones held an open-air meeting in the same square on 2nd August. Mr. D.D. was one among numerous witneses to see unusual light phenomena in and around Ynysybwl, but his report is significant relative to the later Pentyrch incident because he told an investigator that he saw “over a wood on the mountainside a black cloud from which emerged first a white light, then a yellow, and finally a brilliantly red triangle.”

By July 1905 Mrs. Jones’s revivalist work was drawing criticism from some quarters. In an article published that month in The Aberdare Leader journalist Beriah G. Evans (later becoming a Liberal politician and Welsh Nationalist) stated on her behalf:

Mrs Jones is a fairly fluent speaker. She has a strong, guttural accent, which betrays the Northern speech, but her addresses are by no means dialectical or colloquial. She is well steeped in Scriptural knowledge and can recite texts and also hymns with ease and accuracy. She speaks with great fervour, but makes no demonstration of hysteria, and her appeals are directed more to the intellect than to the emotions. She is very sparing in her references to the strange lights with which her name has been associated. In justice to the seeress it must be said that she makes no effort whatever to trade on sensationalism by making capital out of the visions which others, less scrupulous and more diplomatic have utilised for purposes of sensation-mongering.

Spectacular light displays such as occurred at Egryn are often assumed to be the work of Mother Nature. In this context a description commonly applied is “earthlights,” a term coined by English investigator Paul Devereux in his 1982 book Earthlights. Earthlights were known to traditional and ancient peoples. They were fairies to the Irish and other Celtic peoples, though also harbingers of death known as “corpse candles” to the Welsh.

Devereux believes that earthlights are exotic geophysical or meteorological phenomena. They appear in all colours, shapes and sizes, though the small globular orange ball variety is very common. Most sightings occur at night, when some lights can be seen from miles around. They can move against the wind and reach extraordinary speeds. Devereux wrote of their electrical and magnetic attributes, and suggested that some form of plasma energy is assumed

A companion theory posits that earthlights are literally generated within the earth’s crust as a result of tectonic strain in minor fault lines. Devereux has some sympathy with the theory, stating there is certainly an association between the appearance of earthlights and geophysical factors such as stresses and strains in the earth’s crust, but these do not necessarily have to amount to earthquakes. For instance, evidence suggests that the pressure of bodies of water on underlying geology can provide sufficient tectonic forces to produce luminosities in the atmosphere. Devereux points out that there are doubtless many more sources of energy, geological and meteorological, that could power these lightforms.

Devereux investigated the Egryn Lights phenomena. Drawing on reports from December 1904 to March 1905 of the lights near Egryn and also those seen several kilometers to the north and south, Devereux plotted on a large-scale map the exact location of each sighting. He then sought the advice of professional geologists who pointed out the existence of a major, deep-seated fault, the Mochras Fault, which runs northsouth between the coastal towns of Harlech and Barmouth and passes almost directly under the village of Egryn. When Devereux compared the places where the earthlights had been observed with the path of the fault he found a striking correlation: the reported sightings were strung out like beads on a thread. Checking the geological records, Devereux learned that the area had been subject to tremors immediately around and after the occurrence of the lights, culminating in a minor earthquake under Swansea in 1906.

Modern witnesses who come close to earthlights may report hallucinatory episodes, suggestive of magnetic fields that are known to be able to affect parts of the brain. One thing that struck Devereux in his review of witness accounts is the similarity of descriptions stating that earthlights sometimes behave as if they have a rudimentary intelligence.

Intriguingly, it was recently announced that scientists in Romania had created laboratory plasmas, which, they observed, behaved exactly like living cells. Moreover, the late quantum physicist David Bohm, who was recognised as laying the foundations of plasma physics, observed that once electrons were in a plasma they stopped behaving like individuals and started behaving as if they were part of a larger and interconnected whole; he remarked that he frequently had the impression that the sea of electrons was “in some sense alive.”

Devereux is impressed by some witness reports that the lights sometimes display illogical effects, in particular that they are often visible from one side but not the other. This leads Devereux to suspect that earthlights may be what he terms “macro-quantal” events, phenomena that should exist only at the sub-atomic quantum level but have somehow manifested on our larger macro-scale of experience.

Such observations encourage investigators to consider that earthlights are actually geophysical-based manifestations of conscious intelligence, representative of an older form than biologically-based consciousness. In this context, Devereux uses the term “ancestor lights.” One implication of this observation is that phenomena such as earthlights may be brought into being by some form of conscious control mechanism. This next and final account on the Egryn Lights brings into sharp relief this remarkable possibility.

On one occasion Beriah G. Evans, accompanied Mary Jones with others, including local ministers, on a visit to a local chapel. Here is part of Evans’s account of what happened:

Having passed the railway level crossing without seeing anything, we were told to wait, and watch the southern sky, and even as she spoke there apparently, a couple of miles away, between us and the hills, flashed a giant white light in the form of an enormous star, but emitting from its surface dazzling sparklets like flashing rays from a diamond. In the quiet of the night the sullen splash of the waves on the beach to our right answered by the sobbing sough of the win the firs to our left. The sky was overcast with darkening clouds, no other than this mysterious star visible. And though the starlight was what we had longed for, and travelled far to see, it sent an eerie feeling creeping down the spine.

“It may be the head-light of the train?” faintly suggested our doubting Thomas.

“No,” was Mrs Jones’s quiet reply, “it is too high for that.”

Even as she spoke and as though in corroboration, the star made a sudden jump towards the mountains, returning immediately to its old position, and then rushing at an immense speed straight towards us. Then came the unmistakeable rumbling roar of the train approaching from the direction of Barmouth. “I thought it was the train,” came with a sigh of relief from our solitary unbeliever. “No,” was Mrs Jones's confident contradiction. “That is not the train light; it is now that it comes.” And a second light, very different in character from the first, was now perceptible at distance below the “star,” both obviously rushing rapidly upon us. As the train drew near the “star” disappeared. With a rush and a roar the train was past, but the tremulous sigh of relief at the disappearance of the “star” was hardly breathed before it reappeared nearer and if possible more brilliant than ever. Then it suddenly vanished. “'Wait!” was Mrs Jones's quiet rejoinder. In a moment, high upon the hillside, two miles away from where the star had been an instant previously, a light again flashed, illuminating the heather as though bathed in brilliant sunlight. Again, it vanished, again to re-appear a mile further north evidently circling, the valley and in the direction for which we were bound. “Come!” said Mrs Jones. “Let us go. It is all right. We shall have a good meeting.” And we did.

So far, the light and star had been equally visible to the five who formed the company. But now comes a more remarkable thing. Having proceeded a little over half a mile along the main road, all walking abreast, I saw three brilliant rays of dazzling white light strike across the road from mountain to sea, throwing the stone wall some twenty or thirty yards in front into bold relief, every stone and interstice being visible. There was not a soul near the house from which the light could have come. Another short half-mile, and the blood-red light, apparently within a foot of the ground, appeared to me in the centre of the village street just before us. I said nothing until we had reached the spot. The red light had disappeared as suddenly and as mysteriously as it had come, and there was absolutely nothing which could conceivably account for its having been there a moment before.

“Mrs Jones,” I said, and this was the intimation the three other members of the party had of what I had seen, “unless mistaken, your light still accompanies us.” “Yes,” she replied calmly, “I kept both occasions to see whether any of you perceived it for yourselves. The first you know it was white, but I have seen it sometimes blood-red as you saw it now.”

One reasonable interpretation of Mrs Jones’s remark: “I kept both occasions…” is that she believed she possessed the conscious power to control the lights by her own volition. Psychic phenomena and the means by which individuals can draw on one’s innate powerpack of “ancestor lights” to make impressions upon the physical world will be explored in Part 2.

What may be drawn from this remarkable event in northwest Wales? While it exhibits all the usual features of a UFO flap, including unworldly lights and the presence of “Men in Black,” its undoubted fairyland aspects provide it with a distinct otherworldly quality of strangeness. This is exemplified by the remarkable scenes where multicoloured columns of light leapt out of the ground, fluttering like fairies at play, their balletic movements producing star-like bodies, spheres, glowing arches and luminous forms suspended upon incandescent arms. These scenes indicate powerfully that events casually labelled as UFO-related are never what they seem; that one must look upon them with an unjaundiced eye and be open to alternative interpretations.

Over the centuries Wales has witnessed many episodes of encounters with non-human visitors, some evoking happy emotions, others of a much darker nature. In 1656 John Lewis of Cardiganshire woke from sleep after midnight. His family remained sleeping. He saw a light enter the room followed by a dozen small men and three small women. They embarked on a wild dance and his room grew lighter and wider than physically possible. During their dance the visitors broke off to eat what looked like bread and cheese they had brought with them. They offered Mr Lewis meat. He heard no voices and received their thoughts in Welsh. The beings wanted him to remain calm. After four hours Mr Lewis tried vainly to wake his wife. Eventually the beings departed and Mr Lewis, clearly in another world, “pixie-led,” was unable to find either the door or his bed in his small room.

In 1856 Ronald Rhys of the Vale of Neath, an area long renowned as a fairyland community, was walking home from his work as a farm labourer when he saw a strange light in a nearby field. It was making a whooshing noise and Rhys went to investigate. The next thing he knew he was floating in the air. After that his memories were patchy. He later made a sensational report that tiny people with swords collected his blood and one bald-headed green being cut into his stomach and, extraordinarily, took out his organs! When Ronald woke up he was lying in the field, his organs in place. He returned to work and discovered he had lost a full week. Rhys afterwards exhibited symptoms similar to radiation exposure. His skin was pink and scarred and his hair was falling out.

Taliesin, the Welsh bard wrote that King Arthur and his Knights invaded an unearthly country to seize the cauldron of Annwn, a magical vessel fired by the breath of nine maidens. Its rim was studded with bright pearls. Servant boy Gwion burned his thumb while stirring its contents. He put it into his mouth and was immediately inspired. The cauldron taught Gwion about the patterns of the universe and of the language of birds.

In 2016 Caz Clarke, a resident of Pentyrch, described the appearance over a local field of extraordinary red barrel shaped objects. In these she saw three-dimensional movements and lights like those on a fairground ride. Like Gwion when faced by his own magical dish studded with pearl-like portholes, Ms Clarke felt in these moments a force reach into her and free her from fear. She felt elated, almost, she said, as if she was being touched by a benign force.

Welsh myth has it that fairies are a real race of invisible or spiritual human-like beings, rarely seen, who inhabit a world of their own. These include the Gwragedd Annwn: beautiful fair-haired fairy women, the same size as humans, who live in underwater palaces beneath the lakes of the South Wales Black Mountains. Welsh culture even suggests that fairies can be embodied as members of the human race. Collectively, Wales’ invisible race is known as the Tylwyth Teg, the Fair Family.

The Fair Family of Wales may be divided into five classes: the Ellyllon, or elves; the Coblynau, or mine fairies; the Bwbachod, or household fairies; the Gwragedd Annwn, or fairies of the lakes and streams; and the Gwyllion, or mountain fairies. Welsh folklore offers a number of origins for the Tylwyth Teg. One has it that the first fairies were men and women of flesh and blood. Another portrays them as the souls of dead mortals, neither bad enough for hell nor good enough for heaven. They are doomed to dwell in the secret places of the earth until the Day of Judgement when they will be admitted into Paradise. The western regions of Wales are favourite haunts of the Tylwyth Teg. Legends speak of them living on Pembrokeshire’s enchanted islands, in underground dwellings in Cardiganshire, and under lakes in Carmarthenshire close to the hillside cave where Merlin sleeps with his fairy consort, Vivian

Today, strange things seen in the skies—and events closer to the earth, such as on Stack Rocks in Pembrokeshire and in a field by the Village Hall in Pentrych —are passed off in our technological world as visits from outer space.