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That's alll bi rds dot com. For a county that is home to the Westbury white Horse, the ancient feature once etched into the side of an Iron Age hill fort, and the ever mystical prehistoric monument of Stonehenge, it can be hard to stand out in Wiltsha. Back in nineteen sixty five, however, the town of Warminster gave it a could try. Perhaps the lines of it being an unusual
place had always been there. It is said that Clay Hill, for example, a prominent vantage point just to the west of the town, was created by the devil after they dug up a mound of earth to bury the nearby town of Devizes. When the devil decided in the end
not to bother, the mound was left behind. Some also say the Golden Ram of Satan, a supposed talisman that once belonged to the devil, is located inside, and that a triangular network of tunnels built for an unknown purpose lead from the cellar of a nearby tavern directly into
the center of it. Once, as writer Steve Dewey notes in his book in Alien Heat, prominent Warminster journalist Arthur Shuttlewood wrote about the urban myth in a leading paper, only for the owner of the pub in question, the Royal Oak, to then contact him with a peculiar story of his own. There was indeed a tunnel located under the pub, he explained, but he'd never given it much thought until then, when, not long after the article was published,
he was apparently visited by a mysterious stranger. When the tall, thin man with fanatical dark eyes, as he described him, asked to see the tunnels, the landlord kindly led him to the basement to inspect them, at which point the man requested permission to excavate behind a wall that led to the tunnel. When the landlord asked why, the man replied simply that he needed access to Clay Hill to
reclaim the golden ram that was buried underneath it. Upologist John Cleary Baker had his own theory about the hill, believing that somehow an alien species had injected a homing beacon into it so their UFOs could be guided toward the area. It was an idea borne out of the extraordinary series of events that occurred in and around Wominster in the mid nineteen sixties that, without a doubt, for one of the most bizarre and comprehensive UFO flaps in
British history. You're listening to Unexplained, and I am Richard McClean smith. It had just gone six am on the morning of December twenty fifth, nineteen sixty five, when thirty three year old Marjorie By stepped out of her front door, her breath billowing about her in the chilly morning air. A boundless sea of stars glimmered in the sky above as she pulled her coat in and set off toward the church, the heels of her shoes echoing along the quiet,
deserted streets as she went. When something caught her attention, like a faint harm at first, it soon morphed into an ominous crackling noise, coming from somewhere in the distance, as if a lorry were spreading grit nearby only the one vehicles on the road. In fact, Marjorie was completely alone on those empty streets. But as the sound drew nearer, she soon realized it wasn't coming from down the road.
It was coming from somewhere above. Marjorie looked up expectantly as the sound moved closer, straining for a glimpse of whatever was making the noise, but saw only the stars above. Suddenly gripped by fear, Marjorie could only stand rooted to the spot as the strange, menacing sound passed right over her head, a thunderous rattling, as if the very air above her was being ripped apart, until finally it was
gone and faded away into the night. With her legs trembling, Marjorie finally managed to place one foot in front of the other and hurried on to the church in desperate need of shelter. But almost actly the same time, in another part of the town, Roger Rump, the town's postmaster, was sat having breakfast in his kitchen when he too
became aware of a low hum. Seconds later, he was cowering in his own home when a terrifying clatter rang out from somewhere above the house, sounding, as he said later, as if the roof tiles were being rattled about and plucked off by some tremendous force. It was followed moments later by a strange scrambling sound, as if the same
tiles were then being hurriedly slammed back into place. When the disturbance was over, Roger raced into the street, relieved to find his house was still intact, but no sign of whatever could have possibly caused such a racket. And there he stood in the quiet of the early morning, scratching his head, gazing up at the sky under the
soft light of all those many glimmering stars. Over the next few months, down at the offices of the Warminster Journal on a market place, the phone didn't stop ringing as more and more residents called in to report being terrorized by the strange, ominous noise. Most calls were directed to Arthur Shuttlewood, a well known local journalist at the time. Though originally from Essex, the forty four year old Arthur had moved to Warminster in nineteen forty to start work
at the Wiltshire Times. Arthur moved to the Warminster Journal ten years later, and having once served on the town's Urban District Council, by nineteen sixty five he was well established as a much liked and trusted member of the community. Arthur was immediately intrigued by the reports and dedicated what time he could to collating as much testimony as possible, but as interesting as it all was, aside from the frequency and similarity of the reports, there was very little
for him to sink his teeth into. But all that was about to change. At some time around eleven p m. On the night of March twenty eighth, local resident Eric Payne left his girlfriend's house in Sutton Veni, a small village about a mile to the south of Warminster, and
set off on the short walk back to town. Leaving the pale sodium glow of the village street lights, Eric stepped on into the dark country lane ahead as a thick fog began to roll in, and before long it had completely surrounded him, even blotting out the sky above. As Eric plowed on, he could just make out the hazy lights of the next village when he heard a whistling noise that steadily grew into a loud buzzing like
the hum of electricity. Assuming it was coming from a nearby telegraph pole, Eric moved over to inspect it when he sensed a dimming of the moonlight. Looking up, he could just make out a small shadow moved moving through the fog. Above him, a vicious wind whipped across the road, and then came the noise, like nuts and bolts rattling around a tin can, he later said, swirling all about him. Eric stood in terror as a strange sensation of heat and pins and needles began to build all over his body,
followed by a strange pressure from above. Unable to resist it, Eric was horrified to find himself being pushed to the ground by an invisible force, onto his hands and knees. With the shrill whine of that hideous noise buzzing in his ears, it was all he could do to drag himself to the side of the road and throw himself down into the grass. And then as quickly as it
had begun, it was gone. A deeply shocked and rattled Eric dragged himself to his feet and stood for a moment in a daze, staring in amusement at the trees by the side of the road. Their tops had been completely flattened. It was Warminster resident Hilda Hebdage who finally saw it first, a cigar shaped object in the sky over the forest of Long Leap, just to the west of Warminster, that winked vivid shades of gold and yellow.
As was recounted to Arthur Shuttlewood, Hilda had apparently seen the object three times before contacting a UFO group she knew, who in turn passed on the information to Arthur, each time hovering for a moment, she said before shooting off into the blue. It was the beginning of Arthur's intense association with the phenomenon, as he threw what weight he
had behind the reports. Then, on June third, nineteen sixty six, three separate sightings from completely unrelated sources, the Philips family in Haytesbury see a brightly cigar shaped object hanging in the sky, while Dora and Harold Horlock, seeing it from their home in Warminster, described it as being like two red hot pokers hanging downwards, one on top of the other,
with a black space in between them. And At Sheer Water, a human made lake about a mile south of Warminster, resident Colinhampton was so distracted by the bizarre object he saw that he fell into the water. He was just one of seventeen individuals at the lake that day who
claimed to have seen it too. With the number of sightings continuing to grow throughout the summer, it was clear to Arthur that something very peculiar indeed was taking place in the area, with what had first started out as an ominous, unsettling sound now having solidified into something else entirely. The locals had a name for it too, the Warminster Thing, and perhaps with good reason, it was starting to worry them.
On the evening of August seventeenth, David Pinnell was at home on the Boreham Field housing estate when a huge explosion coming from the direction of Battlesbury to the north sent him running from his property. With the ground shaking beneath him. Pinnell got out just in time to see what he described as a monstrous flame in the sky, shaped like a light bulb, that bathed the hills below
in a soft orange light. Pinnell had watched, mesmerized as this light faded to reveal another yellow light, surrounded by a huge ball of smoke that floated down to the hills, cracking and hissing as it came into contact with the ground. Such occurrences weren't entirely irregular, since a British Army's school of infantry was located only twenty miles away. Pinnell was adamant, however, that not only did this come from a completely different direction,
but it was unlike anything he'd seen before. Keen to investigate, Arthur Shuttlewood got in touch with all military installations within the vicinity, and all denied it was anything to do with them. By August nineteen sixty six, with local nerves becoming increasingly frayed, Emlyn Rees, chairman of Warminster Urban District Council, took the extraordinary move to call a town hall meeting in the hope of getting to the bottom of it all.
But with news of the Warminster thing beginning to spread far and wide, there was no sign of the phenomenon abating anytime soon. On the day of the meeting, Reheese arrived at the town hall staggered to find upwards of three hundred people, many from out of town, trying to cram inside the building, with many spilling out onto the streets. The event was so oversubscribed that Reece could barely get
in himself. Inside, onlookers bustled for space alongside a dozen or so journalists, including a TV crew from a national news agency, as they all waited excitedly for the event to begin. Finally, with wreaths in place, he welcomed up the first of six eyewitnesses to give their accounts of what they'd seen. Among them were Roger Rump, the town's postmaster, and Rachel Atwell, another Warminster resident, who only a few weeks before had been stirred from sleep in the early
hours of the morning by a deep, droning sound. When she opened her eyes, she was shocked to find the room was shaking. Following the sound to the window, she looked out to see a bright, dome shaped object hanging in the sky about two hundred yards away above a range of hills. She watched it, she said, shaking like a leaf for a good twenty five minutes before it and the noise disappeared, leaving her with the feeling of a tight band of steel around her forehead and a
pounding in her ears. The witnesses were joined by doctor John Cleary Baker, evaluating officer of the British UFO Research Association, and doctor E. R. Dole, chairman of the National UFO Association. Both were quick to put the crowd at ease, imploring that they should not feel afraid, but rather privileged to be at the center of such an extraordinary event. Both men were convinced the town were dealing with, as Cleary Baker put it, the manifestation of an advanced technology, undoubtedly
piloted by alien beings. At one point, Counselor Reese stopped proceedings when he was given a telegram to read out investigations completed. Stop invasion fears are unfounded. Stop. The message had been sent by a doctor who One man who didn't attend the meeting was local resident David Holton, an amateur geologist. While carrying out his own investigations along five Ash Lane, a narrow road that ran through a small patch of woodland just south of Warminster, Halton discovered a
flock of dead pigeons scattered across the road. The birds, according to Halton, had died at the same time as one of the occurrences of the terrifying noise had been heard, causing him to speculate but they'd been killed by the sonic interference. Halton also claimed to have amassed evidence of up to two hundred separate sightings and accounts of the Warminster Thing, but later burnt the dossier to preserve the identity of his sources. Councilorese's ultimate hope was that his
meeting might bring an end to the Warminster Thing. In reality, it did anything, but not least because only two weeks later someone finally got a picture of it. This year, I'm refocusing on what it means to take care of myself, and it couldn't be easier than with Daily Harvest. Daily Harvest delivers delicious food or built on organic fruits and vegetables right to your door. It takes literally minutes to prepare and I never have to think twice off the
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you can too. Get started today. Go to Daily Harvest dot com and enter promo code unexplained to get twenty five dollars off your first box. That's promo code unexplained for twenty five dollars off your first box at daily harvest dot com. That's Daily Harvest dot com. Arthur was in the offices at work when he received the call. It was a young man from Warminster in possession of
an incredible photograph. The man, Gordon Faulkner, was walking out of his house a few days previously carrying a camera. He was planning to give to his sister when he spotted it what he first took to be a plane shooting across the sky, but completely silent. Without thinking, he grabbed a camera and started to shoot. It was only when the photo was developed, however, that he saw clearly it was in fact a sorcer shaped object. When Arthur saw the picture for himself, he was in no doubt
as to what it was. Finally, there was irrefutable proof. Without delay, he traveled immediately to the offices of national newspaper, The Daily Mirror. They published it the following day, along with Arthur's supporting article, the biggest scoop of his career, and then four days later something else. Around midnight, on a quiet stretch of the A thirty eight road, thirty two year old Kenneth Kimberly is driving home from Bristol when he spots a patch of mist up ahead, approaching
at speed. The moment he enters it, the engine and light cut out, suddenly bringing the car to a quick stop by the side of the road. Sitting alone in the pitch black of amused, Kenneth tries the engine again, unsuccessfully for the third time. When the car is suddenly bathed in light from above. Kenneth is trying to see where the light is coming from when he's bombarded by a terrifying, shrill and guttural roar like a jet engine.
With the back of the car now beginning to vibrate, Kenneth pushes open the door and leaps out, but no sooner. As he stepped into the road, the lights and noise completely disappear, leaving him standing alone and trembling in the dark, silent night. On September twenty sixth, Arthur Shuttlewood was at home when he received a phone call from a mystery
caller wanting to discuss the sightings with him directly. When Arthur suggested they meet at the office of the Warminster Journal, the caller declined, saying they needed to see him right away. The caller's name, a Shuttlewoo would later claim was carn and they had come here from the planet Ainstria. Assuming it, of course to be a hoax, Shuttlewood joked that if they were really who they said they were, he would
like to meet them in person. So it was with huge surprise when only moments later there was a loud knock at the door opening it, Arthur was greeted by the apparent Khn, who, although bearing a striking resemblance to a human being, none the less, had unusually small pupils
and oddly bluish cheeks and lips. As Shuttlewood later wrote, the supposed visitor came with a warning that he wished Arthur to relay to the human race that if humanity didn't change its ways immediately, it would cause irreversible destruction to itself and the planet. When the visitor made their good byes after ten minutes, Shuttlewood claimed he traced the original call back to a location near bore and Field,
close to a nearby army barracks. According to Shuttlewood, he continued to field calls from a number of representatives of the planet of Ainstria throughout September and October of nineteen sixty five, never entirely sure if it had been a hoax or not. But what Shuttlewood wanted more than anything else was to see the thing for himself, and he
wouldn't have long to wait. On the afternoon of September eighteenth, Arthur was at home finishing an article about famed lion tamer Mary Chippenfield when he went upstairs to grab a notebook from his office. Stepping into the room, he was distracted by something outside the window, hovering under the clouds, a white cigar shaped object with a slight domed protrusion the color of burned amber. Arthur called down to his wife to bring up his film camera, only to remember
he was alone in the house at the time. Returning to the room moments later with camera in hand, relieved to find the object was still there, he quickly flipped off the lens cap and proceeded to film it. But as soon as he pressed record, as Arthur would later recall, the camera began stuttering and jumping about in his hands. Then a sharp pain gripped the entire left side of his body, shooting up his arm and face. When he was finally able to try again, the object had gone.
Opening the camera up, he found the film uselessly coiled up inside, hoping you might have caught something. Nonetheless, he sent it away to be processed. Just over twenty four feet of it was untouched, while the other eight or so inches were completely overexposed. In the weeks following this apparent sighting, Shuttlewood claimed he suffered from a partial paralysis at the less side of his body and a weeping
eye that lasted two months. A few miles away, on the night of October seventh, Annabel Randall, a confidential clerk for the War Department, was driving with her fiance John Plowman, towards Stockton from Warminster. It had just gone eleven thirty pm. A couple rounded the curve onto a railway bridge when Annabel gasped at the sight of what looked like a man slumped against the pavement with his legs dangling into
the road. Pressing hard on the brakes, Annabel brought the car to a screeching halt as she took a moment to collect herself. John jumped out and sprinted back to the bridge, only to find it completely deserted. Having made a quick search of the area and finding nothing untoward, a greatly relieved John returned to the car and the couple continued on their way, returning later from the opposite direction.
Annabell was approaching the bridge for a second time that night when she was distracted by the glow of a large orange ball shaped object to her right, moving close to where the rail tracks trailed off. Just then her car engine began to sputter As the headlights flickered and dimmed. With the light growing brighter, Annabell realized with horror that
it was now moving quickly toward her. Squinting through the glare, she fought hard to stop the car from careening off the road when another object up ahead spun suddenly into her path, But as she braced for impact, the car's engine cut out altogether, slowing the car down just in time.
Annabel could only watch in complete disbelief as the second object flew off quickly to the right, shooting red and blue sparks as it went, and leaving in its wake what appeared to be two people standing still in the middle of the road. As she recounted later, they seemed to be dressed in dark, tight fitting clothes like scuba divers.
Finding her engine was then working properly again, Annabel was just able to avoid hitting the figures as she sped off back into the night, relieved to put the bizarre episode behind her. Over the next few years, Warminster's reputation as a hotbed of UFO activity, championed by the likes of Arthur Shuttlewood, only continued to grow with no let
up in the rate of sightings. In May nineteen sixty seven, Shuttlewood published a book, The Warminster Mystery, Astounding UFO Sightings, which provided a comprehensive list of all known sightings up to that point. By then, the town had become inundated, with skywatchers eager to catch a glimpse of the thing, often camping out at the top of Cradle and Clay
Hills for days on end. On one night in nineteen sixty six, a team of enthusiasts led by doctor John Cleary Baker even attempted to contact the apparent visitors using storm lanterns in the shape of a triangle in an effort to help guide them toward the area. The sightings were so extensive that in nineteen seventy one, local UFO enthusiast Ken Rogers began publishing Warminster's very own UFO newsletter.
This was followed in late nineteen seventy five by the opening of a dedicated UFO research center run by wife and husband team Jane and Peter Paget, called the Fountain Center, which also published its own newsletter. But as the years went by, eventually the sightings would start to dwindle, and with them, so too did the town's enthusiasm for any talk at the Warminster Thing, and before long it was little more than a bizarre footnote in the memories of
those who were there at the time. Shuttlewood published two further books on the subject and joined the editorial team of the Fountain Center's newsletter for a short time in nineteen seventy six, before leaving shortly after. He died in Warminster in nineteen ninety six. Back in nineteen sixty five, Roger Houghton twenty three at the time was a print worker employed by the same printing press that published the Warminster Journal. Twenty nine years later, in nineteen ninety four,
he finally came clean. The apparent photo of the UFO, taken by Gordon Faulkner, so heralded by Arthur Shuttleworth and one that turned a minor local story into intense national news, was a fake. He and his friend Gordon, who had made it as a practical joke that too quickly got out of hand after seeing it published in a national newspaper. He and Gordon had just been too scared at the time to admit the truth. Then, in two thousand and five,
amateur geologist David Holton also came clean. His story about pigeons mysteriously killed by sonic interference had also been fabricated, and yet there remained so many events and sightings even before Gordon Faulkner's photograph was published. One individual who was there at the time, Kevin Goodman, maintains a fantastic archive relating to the period, which you can find at UFO
hyphen Warminster dot co dot UK. As you put it simply in a twenty ten article on the subject, all I can say is this something strange did happen there? I know for a time I was part of it. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now do so via Patreon. To receive access to add three episodes, just go to patron dot com, forward slash Unexplained Pod to sign up, or if you'd like to make a one time donation, you can go
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