Kithra: New WOE Contributer!

Women Of Esoterica’s newest contributor, Kithra from the UK, has very generously allowed me to repost her article from her website Kithra’s Krystal Kave. It was difficult to choose; they’re all so interesting and well written! But since it’s the holiday season, I decided to repost this one by Kithra on Christmas UFO sightings. Enjoy, and welcome Kithra!

Christmas UFO Sightings in the UK
(January/February 2006)

Christmas and New Year is always a busy time for people, including those of us who write for, and read, UFO Review. So here’s a short article that takes a quick look at just a few of the UFO sightings that have been seen in the UK around this time of year. And, before you read on in the hopes of finding mention of Rendlesham …. I haven’t included it because it’s such a huge case that it deserves an article all of its own. But I’m not going to do one, and will have to leave you to Google for it if you don’t already have a folder full of Rendleham links!!!

One of the earliest documented sightings was way back in 1387 and, according to a link at the BUFORA website, it occurred during November and December. The description given is of a fire in the sky that was shaped like a blazing rotating wheel. The very short details can be found here:
http://www.bufora.org.uk/archive/UFOs_behind_veil.htm

But let’s really begin in the Modern Era with a report from 1952. Richard Hall copyrighted an article entitled Extraterrestrial Psychology, back in 1988, that has a list of tables detailing UFO sightings. In 1952 he catalogues a major wave, between June and December, over the North Sea; some of which were observed during NATO manoeuvres. You can find the table at this link:
http://www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk/ncp-hall2.htm

North Sea
Picture Credit:
http://sailingbooks.co.uk/images/ImrayNSea.gif

A decade later, or at least sometime during the 1960s, there was what appeared to be a 'Mass Sighting' in Furness, Cumbria. Late one December night, from their bedroom window, a gentleman and his wife saw a UFO hovering over the rooftops. The sighting only lasted about one minute but they talked about it for the whole of the night, having previously been highly sceptical of the existence of UFOs. The gentleman tried to report it to the local press on the following day, only to be laughed at, after which he didn’t even mention it to his work colleagues. So imagine his surprise that evening to see the story, together with many other reports of people having seen it, on the front page of his local newspaper. A contact address was also printed and he wrote to it without expecting to receive any reply. Two weeks later a titled gentleman turned up on his doorstep, and the witness invited him in. After much discussion and investigation, including measurements being taken, it seems that the UFO may have been as large as a football pitch. He was also asked to make a drawing of what he’d seen and, having done so, it seemed to tally almost exactly with twelve other such sketches done by those who had witnessed the UFO. The titled investigator later returned to interview the witness’s wife, accompanied by his own wife, and another whole night was spent in conversation. Unfortunately the witness can only remember the last name of this person, the surname of whom was O’Brien. Was there, is there, a titled gentleman by this name? I don’t know, but the couple sent the witness a Christmas card for years afterwards. You can read the full story here:
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/unknown/

Probably one of the strangest events to come out of the 1960s was what happened at Warminster, Wiltshire, and I won’t rehash the whole of the story here. But Steve Dewey, in his online Chapter 2 of The Start of Things tells it as he remembers it from his childhood in Warminster, and from how it was told in the books of Arthur Shuttlewood.

In it he mentions Arthur Shuttlewood’s book The Warminster Mystery and notes that Shuttlewood believed Warminster to be important because it was:

the focal point or node of some Earth encompassing navigational grid.

And that was the reason that Shuttlewood couldn’t understand why the UFOs suddenly seemed to stop visiting the area. Of course Shuttlewood had started out as a sceptic, but he became convinced that UFOs were real. His books covered most of the different aspects of the phenomenon, as it appeared to be at that time, although it’s worth pointing out that most of his alien contact was by telephone! When the events were taking place it was a topic of national attention by the media, and yet today it’s little talked of, and perhaps even little known about. But many of today’s modern UFO investigation methods come from the lessons learned back then.

Steve Dewey gives some very good insights into what really happened in the case. And the reason I’ve included it is because the origin of the Warminster case came from Christmas Day 1964 when strange sounds were heard in the area. These weird noises were thought to be coming from something that became dubbed as 'The Thing'. According to Shuttlewood, it seems to have begun when a lady reported hearing a very odd commotion on her roof at 01:25 a.m. that day. A few hours later, and about four miles away, more than thirty soldiers were woken up by loud, and inexplicable, noises. Around 06:00 a.m. a lady on her way to the early church service heard what she described as a menacing sound, adding that the air seemed to be vibrating. She was made to feel numb from a force pummelling her head, neck, and shoulders. The postmaster, who lived near by, corroborated the noises, although their descriptions of what they had heard differ, and they did not physically affect the postmaster. By the following summer Shuttlewood had claimed that there had been almost fifty witnesses to the sound, and he also disparaged any idea that they may have been due to some type of poltergeist activity. But, eventually, the noises stopped and the UFO sightings began to appear. These included fireball reports of the sort that we know today as probably being due to meteorites.

Later in his article Steve Dewey relates some of the sightings that Shuttlewood wrote about. However, he warns us that:

I merely point out that Shuttlewood's reports could be vague, confusing, even misleading.” And he concludes by saying: “For those interested in ufology, the Warminster mystery is an essentially 1960s phenomenon. Apart from the unusual sounds, it provided nothing that had not been described for earlier UFO sightings, both in Britain and the US. What marked Warminster out in particular was the sheer number of sightings, as well as the fact that a whole town seemed to be enmeshed in the phenomenon. What was also unusual, perhaps, was that the phenomenon had one prime focus, through which all information flowed. Shuttlewood's position as a respected local journalist helped focus attention on the Thing. It was to Shuttlewood that many of the reports of UFO sightings were made, and it was through him that these sightings were articulated for the public ……

You can read his online version here:
http://www.stevedewey.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ufo/



Christ Church
Picture Credit:
http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/gallery/church/

In the May/June 1997 issue of the UK's UFO Magazine, under the heading of Confrontations in the North Atlantic, NATO 1993, Tony Dodd wrote an article entitled Engaging Unknown Underwater Craft. He reports that during the Autumn and Winter of 1970, and the Spring of 1971, the:

Western Alliance became increasingly concerned at a speight of incidents involving UFOs over the north Atlantic Ocean and the eastern coastline of Britain. As a result, a highly secret operation was instigated to try to get to the bottom of the mystery once and for all.

During this operation, codenamed Aeneid, some UFO sightings took place that included one, during daylight hours, off the coast of Lincolnshire. The case involved a UFO one hundred and eighty feet long, with a number of glass-like, ball shaped, objects in attendance. The event lasted for quite a few hours, during which time the objects hovered over an RAF bombing range at Donna Nook, and were seen by at least half a dozen airmen.

In his article Tony Dodd described many other UFO sightings that took place during the operation, including one very intriguing incident where the pilot lost his life, although his body was never found. He also relates a report of what happened on 20th/23rd and 24th December 1992 when, on the 20th, a UFO was tracked entering the sea off the east coast of Iceland. On the 22nd fishermen off the northeast coast observed a:

very large, very fast, "moving underwater craft" which displayed flashing coloured lights.

These objects had also been seen, being escorted by a glowing object, travelling south towards the coast of Scotland. The fishermen’s nets were damaged, and they maintained that the underwater objects were definitely not submarines. On the 23rd Dodd tells us that:

an Icelandic Coast Guard vessel and two gunboats were ordered to take up station off Langeness, an area where UFOs had been seen entering the water. The operation was conducted in great secrecy and I was told the crews felt very uneasy. Their role was to observe and report. A short time later, three American warships took up station in the area and were eventually joined by a fleet of NATO warships, including some from Britain. A simple check with newspapers in the week leading up to Christmas of that year will reveal the gathering was described as a military exercise. Few bothered to appreciate that it was extremely strange and unusual for a massive NATO naval exercise to take place so close to Christmas.

And the following day, the 24th Dodd continues by saying that:

the crews of two British 'Hunter Killer' submarines were recalled from Christmas leave. HMS Endurance and HMS Warrior put to sea to link up with the NATO surface fleet. At the same time, Icelandic Coast Guard vessels and gunboats were ordered to take up station at Alice Fjord off the east coast of Iceland. British newspapers then put out a story that surface ships had entered the area to track a very large underwater craft, believed to be one of a new generation of Russian submarines. I then received further information from contacts that a further four UFOs had been seen to descend and enter the same area of sea. Icelandic sources also confirmed that the entire operation was linked to tracking "unknown underwater alien craft.

At the same time a big search and rescue effort was taking place to find a ship that appeared to have gone missing, but even after several days, nothing was found.

This search was undertaken in immense secrecy. Two weeks later, on 12th January 1993, the weather seriously deteriorated badly, and remained so for the next three weeks. In fact it was so dreadful that only large ships could remain at sea, with all smaller vessels having to take shelter. When the weather improved, and all ships could put back to sea, the operation continued, but this wasn’t the end of the strange UFO events.

According to Tony Dodd’s article very strange things were happening right up until the time it was written in 1997. And, if you’re interested, you can read the rest of it here:
http://www.stop-chemtrails.com/atlantic.html

This next report you won’t find online because it’s my own sighting that took place in late November/early December 1973. My husband was driving us along the main road, the A4, from Hungerford to Newbury. The time was either late morning or early afternoon, and the weather was cold, dry, and overcast.

Living so near Greenham Common both of us were quite used to the the many different types of aircraft that often flew over the area. Suddenly my husband drew my attention to something in the sky, over the fields to our right. At first we thought it was a plane because it was shiny and metallic looking, but we couldn’t see a tail or wings of any sort. The nearest description I can give is of a cigar. It kept pace with us, or we kept pace with it, for about six miles, there being hardly any traffic on this long straight stretch of road. Eventually, we went up a hill and into a built up area where it was no longer in our line of sight. We didn’t hear any noise at all, but this may have been because our windows were closed, due to the cold. At the time we both thought it might be a UFO; this to the extent that it convinced my husband who, until that sighting, had been a confirmed sceptic.

I suppose it’s possible that the road we were on ran in line with the flightpath into GreenahamCommon Airbase, but we’d never seen planes come in on that trajectory before. And we’d never seen planes fly so low over a populated area, even when the cloudbase was so low. Years later we saw massive American C17s fly low into the airbase over a built-up area, but that was a case of the flightpath having been there long before the town had spread out underneath it.

As for our personal sighting, did we report it? No, we didn’t know who to report it to. And, did we ever find an explanation? Again, no, we never did. But the memory is as clear in mind now, over thirty years later, as on the day it happened.

Notes:
Article with images:
http://kithraskrystalkave.org.uk/xmasufos.htm

Kithra's website:
kithraskrystalkave.org.uk