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Illustration by Etienne Gilfillan
FT265-266
According to media sources, the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks has a daring plot under development for the late summer. Allegedly, one of the cast is to have an ongoing relationship after meeting an alien (called Kevin!) and the audience must guess whether ‘he’ really is from another planet… or just Manchester. The soap’s viewing figures have been falling like space junk recently, and you might be forgiven for agreeing that this concept might be a step too far even in this fictional Chester suburb. However, the cast member involved is a UFO buff, so perhaps ‘real’ ufology is the inspiration. I thought I’d pull a few cases concerning alien visitors out of my files to see how close to reality Hollyoaks gets.
THE GARDEN VISITOR
At one end of the scale is this case told by Susan (I’ve used pseudonyms throughout, for obvious reasons).
Susan lived in an isolated village near Lymm, Cheshire, and described how one night in spring 1978 a figure appeared in the back garden beside a tree. It was no ordinary prowler – the entity glowed silver and, despite the brilliance, cast no shadow.
The next night, the figure returned, approaching from open fields at the rear, coming right up to the French windows and staring in. Susan and her terrified family looked on as the powerful glow lit up the room and two bright eyes gazed at them. Curiously, as on the first night, their fierce German shepherd (Alsatian), trained to bark at intruders, remained silent throughout.
Susan’s husband bravely ran into the garden to confront the alien intruder, but there was no sign of the figure. However, a splashing noise suggested that something had fallen into the swimming pool the family were having constructed.
Curiously, on reaching the pool there was nobody there and the figure never returned.
PROTO-ASTRONAUTS
In the above case, any links to UFOs are constructed through inference rather than evidence (a common theme). But alien-like behaviour is more apparent in what happened to Elsie, an elderly lady who lived near Halifax, during World War II amidst blackout regulations.
Elsie was very ill with severe jaundice and confined to bed when suddenly, in the sky outside her window, a huge electric blue sphere appeared, out of which emerged three figures. They were only about 1.5m tall but dressed in silver overalls with what she called “goldfish bowls” on their heads.
These entities floated to the foot of her bed, illuminated only by the dim embers of a coal fire. Elsie said that the oddest thing was the incredible silence that descended over the room: it was as if the Universe were holding its breath.
After busying themselves at her side, the beings floated through the bedroom wall. As they disappeared, so did the blue glow.
Elsie, who had felt curiously elated, always considered this a real experience, although others thought it more likely a hallucination, perhaps linked to her illness. However, the next day her family and the doctor were amazed to find that the jaundice had disappeared, something she ascribed to her strange nocturnal visitors.
Elsie had no knowledge of ‘aliens’ in 1942, but, years later, when seeing the first pictures of astronauts, she was stunned to see the same ‘goldfish bowls’ she had witnessed.
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