1964: The Warminster Thing

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THINK ABOUTIT SIGHTING REPORT

Date: Christmas of 1964 – 1977

Sighting Time: 6:30 am

Day/Night: morning

Location: Warminster, in West Wiltshire

Urban or Rural: -rural

Hynek Classification: CE-II (Close Encounter II) Observation of an object in close proximity to the witness, where physical traces (impression, burn, medical effect, etc.) are left or (electrical effect, heat) are felt

Duration:

No. of Object(s): 1

Height & Speed:

Size of Object(s):

Distance to Object(s):

Shape of Object(s): Disc

Color of Object(s):

Number of Witnesses: Mass

Source:  http://www.weirdwiltshire.co.uk/ufos/world.html | http://www.weirdwiltshire.co.uk/ufos/ | The Western Daily Press – Derby, Derbyshire, UK

Full Report

17 February 2006-Revisiting Riddle Of The Warminster Thing

Thirty years ago, two teenage lads from Warminster were up on the nearby Cradle Hill every week to watch for UFOs, inspired by a local journalist’s book about the flying saucer flap which by that time had been flustering the Wiltshire town for more than a decade. Arthur Shuttlewood book of 1967 was entitled The Warminster Mystery, and much of the mystery still abounds.

But now those same lads, Steve Dewey and John Ries, are the authors of a remarkable new book, In Alien Heat: The Warminster Mystery Revisited, an in-depth investigation of the UFO fever that gripped the town in the 1960s and 1970s.

Modestly, the pair – Steve now lives at Westbury, Wiltshire, and John in Shropshire – say it was not a book waiting to be written.

The Warminster case, if not forgotten, is an embarrassment to modern-day ufologists, they say, and the story of the Warminster Thing almost unknown outside the UK.

But I would say this is a book that was waiting to be written. It’s a riveting social document, objectively placing the phenomenon in its cultural and historical context, and providing a highly engaging and revealing analysis of those strange days.

“When we were younger, with all the enthusiasm of youth, we were much more into it all, ” Steve, a technical author, told me. “We thought things were happening and a UFO landing was imminent.

“We went to Cradle Hill a lot; we were too young to go to the pub! We were there once a week for at least two years.

“But watching the sky-watchers made us skeptical because they would get so excited about things which were quite mundane. We began to think it was all in the UFO culture.”

While the book clears up some aspects of the Warminster mystery – some lights in the sky could be explained by military exercises on nearby Salisbury Plain – other questions remain unanswered.

“We think there is a genuine mystery behind what happened, ” said Steve. “It all started with a strange noise from the sky and there have never been any conclusions about what it was.”

From Christmas 1964, humming or droning sounds were reported to Shuttlewood – sonic disturbances which flung people to the ground and damaged buildings.

Shuttlewood blamed what he called The Thing and became the prime focus for the whole saucer circus that followed.

What was to mark out Warminster particularly was the sheer volume of UFO sightings, several thousand, and that the whole town seemed to be caught up in the fantastic affair.

Steve and John say it’s clear that the ufologists who flocked into Warminster helped to create the phenomenon.

They demanded that the weird sounds be spaceships, and the populace duly saw them.

The Warminster Journal, Shuttlewood’s paper, also played a role by its reporting, and providing a forum for UFO debate, and Shuttlewood created the national media interest, often embellishing or exaggerating incidents.

A photograph of a flying saucer over the area, taken by local man Gordon Faulkner in 1965, and which came to be the emblematic image of The Thing, now used for the cover of In Alien Heat, later turned out to be a hoax. In January 1969, the veteran TV astronomer Patrick Moore visited Warminster, poked fun at Shuttlewood, and cracked that several of the objects seen in the sky “looked like balls”.

However, Shuttlewood, who died in 1996, wrote two further books in which he claimed to have had contacts with extraterrestrials wanting to save humans from destroying the planet. Just how a straightforward, respected journalist in a small West town turned into a deluded UFO guru is not the least part of the Warminster mystery.

UFO called “The Thing” celebrates 50th anniversary in Warminster

50 years ago, mysterious events took place in the English town of Warminster that served as the impetus for the legend of a phenomenon called “The Thing.” An event will be held later this year marking the 50th anniversary of UFOs and other weirdness in Warminster.

The woman, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of being ridiculed, said the sound was like branches being pulled over gravel along with a faint hum.Although UFOs are part of the Warminster phenomena, it all started with a weird noise. According to a story in the Warminster Journal printed in January, 1965, early in the morning of Christmas day, 1964, a housewife heard a strange sound on her way to church. She left at about 6:30 in the morning, and soon after heard a “crackling” noise. The sound got more and more loud and seemed to pass over head. However, nothing could be seen.

A website called UFO Warminster chronicles the strange occurrences of the area, and it lists the anonymous housewife as Marjorie Bye in its timeline of strange events. According to the site, there were other witnesses that day. One man heard pounding on his roof, while a woman named Mildred Head apparently reported, “Our ceiling came alive with strange sounds that lashed our roof… as if twigs were brushing the tiles… ended up with a noise [like] giant hailstones.”

Little did the townsfolk know, this was only the beginning of a number of weird occurrences that would take place over the coming years.

One of the strangest stories comes from a news clipping from August, 1965 that, according to UFO Warminster, may have been the Warminster Journal, but they are unsure. The article reads like the plot of a 50s sci-fi movie. The story is about a Warminster town hall meeting that was arranged to discuss “The Thing.” The council chairman invited Mr. David Holton, a local scientist, to attend the meeting. Holton had been investigating the mysterious happenings, and was asked to share his findings.

In dramatic fashion, Holton said he would rather destroy his dossier than read it aloud to the crowd. He did not feel a town hall was the right way to go about an investigation. He told the paper, “This is a serious matter and must not be thrashed out in a half-hearted way by local people in front of newspaper men and television.”

The article goes on to describe some of the strangeness that had gone on since the first Christmas day occurrence. They say people had heard a crackling in the sky that “killed pigeons in flight, peppered dormice with holes and stuns animals, partridges and pheasants. Some people say they have been knocked down by the force.”

The article also claims that Mr. Horton warned the townspeople weeks ago “that the happenings indicated that people in Warminster would soon be seeing objects in the sky.”

Sure enough, soon after, “the Vicar of Heytesbury, the Reverend Graham Phillips, and his family, reported seeing a glowing, cigar-shaped object over the south of town from the vicarage in the village.”

Arthur Shuttlewood, a journalist for the Warminster Journal, is credited with making “The Thing” famous. He reported on the events and eventually wrote books about it as well.

However, according to a BBC article by Kevin Goodman, one of the founders of the UFO Warminster website, “The Thing” first received national attention when a UFO photograph hit the news.

The image was captured by a man named  Gordon Faulkner in 1965. Faulkner shared the image with Shuttlewood who then gave it to the Daily Mirror. The Daily Mirror printed it in September of 1965, and Warminster’s “Thing” became famous. Goodman writes, “Within weeks, thousands of people began to converge on the town to see this strange phenomenon for themselves.”

Warminster’s notoriety as a UFO hot spot was sealed when BBC West produced a documentary on the whole affair in 1966. The documentary can be seen in Goodman’s BBC article.

Goodman says frequent sightings of “The Thing” continued until the early 1970s, then they began to decline.