Meanwhile, on the Other Side of the Pond

7

MEANWHILE, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE POND . . .

Just five months after Betty and Barney Hill’s late-night encounter, a similar incident occurred in the United Kingdom. In this case, the witness was a man named Ronald Wildman. It was in the early hours of February 9, 1962, that Wildman had an extraordinary experience, one which led him to fully believe he had seen a UFO at very close quarters. Amazed and slightly unsettled by what had occurred, Wildman contacted the local police, who later shared his story with the United Kingdom’s Air Ministry, which is today called the Ministry of Defense (MoD). The press, tipped off by the police, gave the story more than a bit of coverage, which led the UKs UFO research community to descend on Wildman and pick his brain about what he saw, too.

Behind the scenes, the military was maintaining a very close watch of Wildman and his experience. That much can be proved: the old Air Ministry file on the man and his encounter has been released into the public domain and can be accessed in person at the National Archives in Kew, England. The Wildman file runs from 1962 to 1964 and is predominantly comprised of clippings taken from newspapers, various issues of Flying Saucer Review magazine—a popular publication for UFO

enthusiasts, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s—and other newsletters and journals covering the issue of flying saucers. The file contains something else too, as you will now learn.

Exactly one week after the furor concerning Ronald Wildman’s encounter calmed down, an employee of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) Provost and Security Services (P&SS) paid a quiet visit to the local police to get all the data they had in hand. It should be noted that the P&SS is an elite arm of RAF. Its employees typically get involved in the investigation of terrorist threats against the military. They are experts in disinformation and espionage, and are skilled in counterintelligence. That the Air Ministry felt it was important for Wildman’s case to be investigated by the P&SS speaks volumes for its credibility. With that all said, let’s take a look at the initial report prepared by P&SS officer Sergeant C.J. Perry:

At Aylesbury on 16th February 1962, at 1530 hrs., I visited the Civil Police and requested information on an alleged “Flying Saucer” incident. I was afforded every facility by the Civil Police authorities and although no official report had been made, details of the incident were recorded in the Station Occurrence book.The details are as follows:

Mr. Ronald Wildman of Luton, a car collection driver, was traveling along the Aston Clinton road at about 0330 hrs. on 9th February 1962 when he came upon an object like a hovercraft flying approximately 30 feet above the road surface. As he approached he was traveling at 40 mph but an unknown force slowed him down to 20 mph over a distance of 400 yrd., then the object suddenly flew off.

Perry goes on to describe the object as being about forty feet wide and oval in shape with a number of small portholes around the bottom edge. It reportedly emitted a fluorescent glow but was otherwise not illuminated. Wildman reported the incident to a police patrol, who notified the duty sergeant, Sergeant Schofield. A radio patrol car was dispatched to the area, but no further trace of the “Flying Saucer” was seen. It was the opinion of

the local police that the report by Wildman was genuine and the experience was not a figment of imagination. They saw that he was obviously shaken.

I spoke to Sergeant Schofield and one of the constables to whom the incident was reported. Both were convinced that Ronald Wildman was genuinely upset by his experience.

The Missing Time Phenomenon Surfaces Again

As interesting as the above account certainly is, a follow-up report from Sergeant Perry reveals something more. It’s presented only as a passing reference, but—from the perspective of the story you are reading—it is incredibly important. Following a return visit to see Sergeant Schofield, Sergeant Perry wrote in his report that the police had failed to mention one particular thing in the initial discussion. At the time, the police didn’t feel it was too important. Namely, when he spoke with the police, Ronald Wildman was “muddled about the time.” Regrettably, these four words are not expanded on, but as brief as they are, they suggest there was some degree of missing hours—that Wildman believed the time frame of the encounter was very different to what it really was.

There is one more important factor in this story: copies of Sergeant Schofield’s report on the Wildman incident were copied to a division of the Air Ministry called A.I. (Tech) 5(b). The “A.I.” stands for “Air Intelligence.” Many years ago, A.I. (Tech) 5(b) was absorbed into MoD’s Defense Intelligence staff. For a case that involved a man whose car was briefly affected by a close encounter with a UFO, this is an extraordinary high degree of interest—all displayed by covert branches of UK military and intelligence services.

It’s not at all impossible that US authorities—carefully watching the growing abduction phenomenon in the United States—may well have confided in their British cousins the details of the 1961 experiences of Betty and Barney Hill. Maybe even the 1959 encounter of Gerry Irwin. After all, the United States and the Brits have, for decades, had a good, solid working relationship when it comes to matters relative to mutual national security.

It would have made a great deal of sense—when faced with the startling realization that US citizens were being kidnapped by extraterrestrial creatures—for the Americans to have warned the British government of this expanding threat. Probably, that’s exactly what happened. And, maybe, it’s for that reason that the Ronald Wildman incident was treated so seriously and handled by the elite of the British Royal Air Force.

Another Encounter and Another Visit by the Authorities

Six months after the Ronald Wildman issue, there was another incident— or, rather, incidents—that caught the attention of the P&SS. Before we get to the case itself, however, it’s important to note that in many incidents of alien abduction, the events revolve around young girls who are woken up in the early hours of the morning and who see strange lights outside of their bedroom windows—as if almost beckoning them to come for a closer look. From that point onward, the girl is taken from her home and a fullblown experience/abduction quickly follows. Notably, the case that follows concerns none other than a young girl who had her very own strange, bedroom-based encounters. It’s even more notable that the P&SS were quick to speak to the witness. They were also careful to ensure that she kept quiet about what exactly she encountered.

From Sleep to Unearthly Visitor

It was late August 1962: Marilyn Monroe had died under controversial circumstances just a few weeks earlier. And US intelligence began to suspect that the Soviets were secretly transferring nuclear weapons to Cuba—something that, two months later, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. For a young girl named Anne Leamon, though, life went on as it always had. Just sixteen at the time of her encounter, Anne lived on a farm run by her family in the English county of Somerset. It was a

picturesque area: Anne’s bedroom backed right onto the green and inviting Brendon Hills, which today are part of the huge Exmoor National Park.

As the released documents on Anne’s encounter reveal, she woke up late one evening—for no particular reason she could fathom—and looked straight out of one of the windows. She was confronted by the sight of a circular light hovering over the hills. It was also changing color: from red to green and then to yellow. Strange rays of light emanated from the source. Anne looked on, utterly transfixed. Quite naturally, her first assumption was that it had to be a star, although she had never seen a star like this before. It became very apparent the object was no star when it suddenly began to move. She considered that it might have been a helicopter, but that theory was dismissed as a result of the overwhelming silence.

Suddenly, the object came toward Anne, and in her own words, she felt “attracted” to it. Almost mesmerized by its flickering lights and rapidly changing colors. It then reversed, moved sideways, and then headed back to the hills. It was as if the display was meant for Anne herself, which was likely the case. For around an hour, the light kept its position above the hilly countryside; then it finally shot away and vanished. This was not the end of things, however. There was far more to come.

The UFO Returns, and Anne Leamon Gets a Visitor

Anne had an eerie feeling that the light would return to her the following night. It did—but this time, it was well into the early morning hours. Yet again, it glided across the Brendon Hills, stopping outsider her bedroom window. She admitted to becoming “quite friendly” with the light, which she felt was not in any way dangerous, even though she was mystified by its origin and intent. Anne took a very proactive approach and made drawings of the object, even tracking its movements via a compass. And the light came again and again—always well into the early hours of the morning and always approaching Anne’s bedroom.

Puzzled but intrigued by her stranger in the night, Anne decided to do something that would ultimately lead to a secret file being opened on her—one which was classified for thirty years. She telephoned a military facility to report what she had seen: Royal Marines Base Chivenor, as it is known today. To this day, the facility remains a vital component of the British government’s defense network.

As interesting as the late-night light displays were for Anne, she hardly expected that a senior official in the military would visit her home and interview her at length. After all, it wasn’t as if she was reporting the landing of a UFO, or talking about a face-to-face encounter with bug-eyed aliens. But that’s exactly what happened: Anne was visited, and she became the subject of a large file that commanded the attention of a covert arm of the military. It’s a file now in the public domain at the National Archives.

It was late one evening when there was a knock at the front door. Anne’s mother opened it and was confronted by a man dressed in a black suit who had arrived in a black car. He identified himself as a Sergeant J.W. Scott of the Provost and Security Services—the very same unit that investigated the Ronald Wildman case in February 1962, a case that had also occurred well after midnight. Had Anne and her family had good knowledge of the UFO subject at the time, they would surely have believed they were in the presence of one of the dreaded MIB. In a sense, that’s what he was.

A Suggestion Not to Talk

So determined was Sergeant Scott to see the mysterious light that he visited the Leamon home on at least three occasions, sitting patiently and near silently in Anne’s bedroom with her and keeping a careful lookout for the object. It was on the third occasion that Sergeant Scott finally saw the UFO—for that is surely what it was: an unidentified light-form in the skies above. Notably, Anne stated that Sergeant Scott quickly grabbed the camera he had brought with him, leaned through the window, and took several photos. The mysterious object was now captured—at least on film. Anne noted that Scott seemed to deliberately try to play down the matter

and did his utmost to avoid sensationalizing what Anne thought was a very exciting development in the matter. For Anne, though, it was practically impossible for her not to be excited: after all, a member of a covert arm of the UK military was standing in her bedroom, firing off photo after photo of an aerial visitor of the very weird variety.

When the object vanished from view, Sergeant Scott got ready to leave; his air of calmness still completely intact: he wasn’t giving away anything. But he did take something with him: Anne’s drawings and compass notes. Despite promising to return them, Scott never did. He vanished into the night—with all of the available data and documentation—never to be seen again. Before vanishing, though, Scott did suggest to Anne that it would not be a good idea to share the story of her experiences with her school friends—or, indeed, with anyone else at all, including the media.

Anne was mystified by the whole thing. Even more so when, several weeks later, she got a response from the Air Ministry saying that she had seen nothing stranger than a star. Does it really require an operative of the Provost and Security Services—the “007s” of the Royal Air Force—to spend so much time and effort looking into the movements of a star? One would imagine they had far better things to do with their time, particularly given the fraught, ongoing situation with the Russians and Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba. It must be said that one of the things which attracted Anne to the object was its movement: it shot around the sky, even coming close to her bedroom window on several occasions. Stars, I probably don’t need to tell you, certainly do not act in such a fashion. Nor do planets. Nor do aircraft or helicopters, either.

We can learn a great deal from this undeniably weird series of events. A young girl has close encounters in the dead of night and in her bedroom, which mirrors the ways in which numerous alien abduction encounters begin. She is soon visited by a Man in Black who spends three nights with her, catches the object on film, grabs her drawings, and leaves her home with a “friendly warning” not to talk about what she had seen. All of this for a star? Not a chance.

Now, we’ll see a third example of how and why the Provost and Security Services got involved in yet another late-night encounter with a UFO— which also just happens to have occurred late at night. And it, too, involved a young woman. For the P&SS, a pattern was developing. It wasn’t a good pattern.