Hi, and welcome back to The Unseen Podcast, a podcast dedicated to missing people, unresolved cases, and UK true crime. Today we're going to be exploring the disappearance of fifty six year old Zigmunda Damski, a miner who lived in the market town of Toddmenden in West Yorkshire. His disappearance has remained a mystery since nineteen eighty and there has
been a lot of speculation surrounding it. Despite the large amount of publicity that Zigmund's case has got over the years, there are few actual known facts about it, and I would like to present Zigmund's disappearance through just the facts. This episode contains descriptions that some listeners may find distressing, so listener discretion is advised. Of Toddmden is located in
the Colder Valley in West Yorkshire. It's around seventeen miles from Manchester and around nine miles from the town of Halifax.
It is known for its rolling hills and countryside, as well as being known today as one of the places that infamous serial killer Harold Shipman lived and worked, as well as the filming location for the BBC crime drama Happy Valley on June the eleventh, nineteen eighty, Trevor Parker, a coal yard worker, was working in his father's coal yard when he came upon a ten foot pile of coal. This in itself would have been a normal discovery for him. However, it was what he found on top of the pile
of coal which caught his attention. There was a man lying on top. He was wearing a three piece suit, which in any other situation would not seem odd, but the man's placement on top of the coal pile seemed unusual. It looked as though he had been placed there rather than climbed up. There were other reasons to believe this as well. The man's suit had no coal dust on it, implying that he didn't climb up there himself. There were
other odd things about this discovery. While he was wearing a suit, he didn't look like he'd dressed himself properly. For one, he wasn't wearing a shirt, just his suit jacket buttoned up. The buttons hadn't been fastened properly and had ended up being fastened wonky. It looked to those that saw him as though someone else had dressed him. The thing that struck Parker and then later PC Godfrey, who attended the scene, was the look on the man's face. It has been described as a look of terror, as
though something had scared him to death. PC Godfrey later stated, those eyes were staring up at me. I was looking down on him from a foot. Those eyes sent a shudder down my spine. They were wide open. He had a look of someone who had seen something or someone that had scared him to death. This was an alarming discovery. However, upon closer inspection of the body, there were even more
strange discoveries. When police arrived at the scene, they were able to see that the man had burns to his head, neck and shoulders which appeared to have had some sort of ointment applied to them. He was missing his shirt, wallet, and his watch. The scene was all around very strange and at first glance could not be explained. One of the first jobs was to try and identify who this man was, given that his wallet was missing and there seemed to be no explanation for why he was there.
While the identification was ongoing, the man's body was sent for a post mortem with the coroner to try and establish what had happened. The story of the man that had been found on top of the coal pile began to spread around Todmden and the surrounding areas, and as a result, it didn't take long to find out this man's identity. He was fifty six year old Zigmund A Damski. Zigmund or Ziggy as many people called him, lived on
Thornfield Crescent in the village of Tingley in Wakefield. Ziggi lived there with his wife Lottie and worked the loft House Collery as a miner. Ziggy was originally from Poland, but had moved over to the UK, met his wife and settled in Tingley. The collery where Ziggy worked had made headlines in nineteen seventy three when the Lofthouse Collery disaster occurred. This was due to excavations being made too
close to an abandoned flooded mine shaft. Three million imperial gallons of water flooded into the shaft, trapping seven workers below the surface. All of the workers died in the incident. It would turn out that relevant records were not checked which indicated the depth of the abandoned shaft. This led to new regulations being brought in and loft House. Collery closed in nineteen eighty one at the time, though in nineteen eighty Ziggy worked there and by all accounts was
liked by his colleagues. On the sixth of June nineteen eighty Ziggi left his home in Tingley to walk and get some groceries from the shop. This was just a normal errand for him, and there was nothing to suggest anything would happen on his way there. He didn't return to the house and days began to pass without anyone
seeing Ziggy or knowing where he went. Lotti continued to wonder about where he had gone, and she initially believed that he must have been abducted, given that it seemed completely out of character for him to just disappear without saying anything to her. When Ziggy's body was found five days later, it would seem that the mystery had somewhat been solved. However, there were many questions that had not been answered. How had he got there and where had
he been since he disappeared. The post Martin was able to establish a cause of death for Zigmund. It was found that he had died of heart failure due to heart disease and emphysema. A coroner would later rule this as an open verdict. However, this would not provide police with much information about how Ziggy came to be on top of the coal pile or why he was found
around thirty eight miles from Tingley, where he lived. Another odd piece of information was that the coroner believed that Ziggi had only been dead for around eight to ten hours before he was found. This would mean that for three to four days he may have been elsewhere. He also had what looked to be around one day's worth of biard, which again indicated that Ziggi had been somewhere else during the time that he had disappeared. He had also had his hair cut short, though it looked crudely done.
These were not the only odd things about Ziggy's body. It were the burns that attracted a lot of attention. Not only did he have these burns, but there had been some sort of ointment rubbed onto them. This ointment was extremely unusual and when it was analyzed by forensic scientists at the Home Office, it couldn't be identified and nor could its origin. The fact that Ziggi had been missing for five days, however, had not been dead that
long was extremely odd and begged many questions. What had happened to him and why had he ended up where he was. James Turnbull, the coroner, later stated the question of where he was before he died and what led to his death just could not be answered. Police did check any hospitals in the local area to see if he had been admitted as a patient. However, this also drew a blank. It didn't appear that he had been treated by anyone in the days since his disappearance, and
inquiries into his whereabouts were also unsuccessful. The strangeness of the situation struck everyone that heard about it. Zigmunder Damski appeared to have died of natural causes on top of a coal heap thirty eight miles away from his home and was missing his shirt, wallet, and watch. Due to the many strange aspects of the case, theories began to
spread around the surrounding area. Many of these theories were complete speculation, However, they started to gain some traction in the absence of any other explanation for what had happened. Some of these rumors related to the fact that Zigmund was from Poland and that the KGB had possibly been involved with his disappearance and death. Another theory was that perhaps Ziggy knew about poor practices and mistakes happening at the colliery, and perhaps this had been a reason for
someone to try and get rid of him. None of these rumors were substantiated. The biggest rumor to take hold about Ziggy's death came from a very unusual place, the paranormal community. This theory primarily took hold five months after Ziggy's death in November nineteen eighty, when PC Alan Godfrey, who had been the first officer on the scene in June, was driving up Burnley Road, around a mile from where Ziggy was found. It is described as a remote road, and as he was driving up it, he got a
cause to investigate cows loose in people's gardens. He went to the location and said that he thought he saw a bus parked up. When he got closer, he saw what looked like a diamond shaped object hovering above him. He said that to him, this looked like a UFO. He said he managed to make a sketch of it, and then went to use his car radio, which had stopped working. He said he saw a brilliant white blinding flash a bit like having your photograph taken with the
flash gun in your face before blacking out. He said he woke up twenty five minutes later and his car had moved thirty yards away from where it was located before. He said his car was dry despite the wet weather, and that his boot was split open and he had what looked to be an itchy mark on the bottom of his foot. He couldn't really explain what he had seen, and he later underwent hypnosis to try and establish what
had happened. During this hypnosis, he said he was in a strange room being examined by a tall humanoid figure with a beard. The fact that Alan Godfrey claimed to have been abducted by aliens was difficult to understand for many people and added all the more oddness to a case that was already full of questions. For some, however, this possible UFO sighting added credence to what they already thought Ziggy's death could have been the result of an
alien abduction. This is what many newspapers at the time began to run, with headlines like Todminen is out of this world and terrifying tales given Alan Godfrey's experience and the number of other UFO sightings which had taken place in the Todburnhen area, people could in some way believe that this may have been what happened to zigmun Adamski Is reported at the time, however, that West Yorkshire Police were less than impressed with this rumors, given that they
were embroiled in the Yorkshire Ripper investigation at the time and they couldn't give any time or credence to rumors that their officers were claiming to see UFOs on their shifts. There has been much made over the years of the connection between Ziggy's death and the paranormal. However, I believe this in some way detracts away from his story. Ziggy was a man who died in mysterious circumstances, but which
were very real. There are many real questions as to what happened to him, Where had he gone during those five days, why had he taken his shirt off and cut his hair, how had he got the burns on his body? And why could the ointment not be identified? This case genuinely is a mystery. However, we cannot lose sight of the fact that Ziggy was a real person. And not just a case of possible alien abduction, which is what he's been made out to be in the press.
What did happen to Zigmund Damski in nineteen eighty There are so many confusing aspects to this case, and it's sad that after all these years, we're still none the wiser as to what happened. If you know anything about the death and disappearance of Zigmund Damski, then please contact the police on one oh one and let them know.
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