Skip to playerSkip to main content
Kids-TV
  • 2 days ago
Strange But True S04E04
Transcript
00:00Good evening.
00:28Before Galileo, popular wisdom decreed that the Earth was at the centre of the universe.
00:34Now we know that we're at the edge of our galaxy,
00:36a rotating spiral of hundreds of billions of suns like our own,
00:40each with the possibility of having planets that could sustain life.
00:45But if there is life, what chance is there of it being like ours?
00:49We only built the first internal combustion engine about a century ago.
00:53Is it possible that an alien civilisation has managed to cross the vastness of the galaxy to our planet?
01:00Some say there is evidence that they have.
01:03Our first story tonight takes us to an area of Scotland which has become known as the Falkirk Triangle.
01:09West Lothian, a small industrial region in central Scotland.
01:15The locals are a down-to-earth breed, not the sort you'd expect to spin tall tales and leave themselves open to ridicule.
01:22But their community has been gripped by a most unearthly phenomenon.
01:26Hurry up, look, look, it's a UFO.
01:28I'm trying to get it focused.
01:29There's a steroid underneath the craft that's looked like a shimmering Courtney light.
01:37I want the Ministry of Defence to send somebody in here now and give the people an answer.
01:44Councillor Billy Buchanan is a popular local figure who's championed many causes,
01:49gaining a reputation as a man of the people.
01:51But even he was stunned when locals came to him with stories of strange objects in the skies.
01:57Well, it started in 1992.
02:00I received a knock at the door one evening and there was a friend of mine who I've known for a number of years.
02:05He told me that he had an encounter on the back roads of Bonnie Bridge.
02:09He couldn't describe the format of it because the light was too intense,
02:13but it was hovering above the road, it was soundless,
02:16and he watched it for ten minutes and it moved off at incredible speed.
02:19I put a small news item in the local newspaper and that's when it began.
02:25This thing just appeared out in a farmer's field and it was jumbo jet size.
02:30Really luminous, bright, you know, objects.
02:33Just sitting there, I mean, I was terrified.
02:35Red lights at the top, clear lights in the middle and blue lights at the bottom and they were all spinning.
02:40Just look like oval red light.
02:43It was just sitting there.
02:45From there the whole thing just snowballed.
02:46We had hundreds of people come into the office or phoning us up to say we've seen things as well
02:52and it became a sort of national story.
02:54In the first week, I think I had about 400 to 450 either telephoning or coming to my door
03:00telling me that they had seen something.
03:04One of the local residents keeping watch and logging claims of sightings
03:07was UFO researcher Malcolm Robinson.
03:10Our society checked through various avenues open to us to provide a rational explanation to account for these UFO sightings.
03:19We checked firstly with the police.
03:21We also checked through various airports.
03:24Then we also checked with meteorological stations to see if there were a release of any weather balloons
03:29that may have overflown the area.
03:31And lastly, we checked through the Ministry of Defence to see if there were any aircraft manoeuvres.
03:36Once we have checked through all avenues open to us
03:39and we cannot find a rational explanation to account for a given sighting,
03:44then obviously that particular sighting must be classed as an unidentified flying object.
03:50The intensity of sighting is unbelievable.
03:53People call this the sort of Falker Triangle.
03:57On July 30th, 1994, Andy Swan, a 27-year-old cable lair with Scottish power,
04:04had what he says was a close encounter.
04:07I went up to the park to have a look at a lightning storm that we were having that night.
04:12I had noticed this object heading toward the school building.
04:15I was intending to come along and have a better look at this object from behind.
04:19As I was travelling along the road, I'd seen this object coming from the left-hand side.
04:25It came down so low, right in front of the car, so close that I thought I was going to hit it.
04:31And I had to put my brakes on hard to avoid it.
04:37And I go out of the car and I watch this thing just coming over to the top of me
04:41when it just landed just above the field.
04:44This thing just suddenly, like a bug, it just shot up right across the top of me.
04:49The atmosphere is capable of producing suffusing mystical effects of varying types
05:03and almost anything can be believed of the shape of such objects
05:06starting with an astronomical object, a planet or a bright star.
05:09Very many of the distortions that cause people to see a UFO out of an astronomical object
05:15is the temperature inversion.
05:17This occurs when a layer of hot air becomes trapped under a layer of cold.
05:22Just as you see a mirage on a hot road in the summer,
05:25you can get a mirage in the sky due to these effects.
05:29Tricks of the light or alien spacecraft, whatever they were,
05:32more and more UFOs were being reported all over central Scotland.
05:39We headed out about 10 o'clock and just chatting away about general things.
05:45I thought you said your radio was it, man.
05:48Tune it in, were you?
05:50Went down this bend and the road heading towards Starbracks.
05:53Something caught my eye just above the line of the top of the windscreen.
05:57What the hell's that?
05:59Nothing there!
06:00I've never ever seen anything like it in my life.
06:02It was black in colour.
06:04It was, like, shiny.
06:06It had three parts to it.
06:08It was circular.
06:10I really panicked.
06:11I just...
06:12I didn't know what to do.
06:14Gary, for God's sake, drive!
06:15Drive through it!
06:16As I started on the nephograph, it dropped, like, a shimmering Courtney light.
06:21I, like, braced myself.
06:22As I went underneath it, the whole road and surrounding the area just completely disappeared.
06:31I'm, like, in a void of blackness.
06:33I didn't know where I am.
06:34I had the sensation that the car was lifting.
06:37Because I know for a fact the wheels weren't turning.
06:39I mean, there was no traction.
06:40All of a sudden, there was just a big burst of bright light.
06:42The car sort of, like, slammed onto the road.
06:45Gary, for God's sake, drive!
06:46Go! Go!
06:47And I ran to Katrina's house, and it was banging like mad on the door.
06:53Katrina, wake up!
06:54Gary was hysterical.
06:55He knows I've got four kids.
06:57There is no way that he is going to come to my door, pound on it, push me right out the road, and enter the way he did.
07:05Something dramatically happened to him.
07:09He was blown.
07:11They say the journey should only have taken 30 minutes, but took two hours.
07:15So how could they account for the lost time?
07:19I'm an hour and a half missing out of my life, and I don't know how or why.
07:26Gary and Colin turn to regression therapist Helen Walters, hoping she might hold the key to explaining what happened on the road to Tarbrax.
07:34Hypnotic regression helps you recall the incident that you take them back to around that time, and it brings to light what their problem is, to be able to handle it in their daily life, and remove some of the fear.
07:49Dark!
07:50I just saw this thing coming towards me, these things.
07:55Gary?
07:55And I was just terrified.
07:57What can you see?
07:58And all I remember is just pure fear.
08:02Absolute terror.
08:05Can you see something, Colin?
08:06It's near my face.
08:14I mean, the next thing I can remember was like...
08:17Don't want it near.
08:19Some kind of instrument coming down from my right-hand side.
08:21Away!
08:21With a long, long, thin needle.
08:24Straight into the centre of my eye.
08:28Away!
08:29Even under hypnosis, you could see my eye was pouring the water.
08:31Could this be a genuine memory, and could the claimed abduction account for the missing two hours?
08:38Hypnosis has been used many times to discover what people went through in some UFO experience.
08:44Unfortunately, hypnosis is a dangerous and flawed technique.
08:48People are regressed to the events that they think happened to them, but unfortunately, hypnosis is rather prone to produce fantasy more than fact, and so fictitious tales emerge.
08:58The story had a galvanising effect on local opinion.
09:00It seemed everyone had a UFO story to tell.
09:04The object just tipped over like that, and basically swooped down over across our heads.
09:11And the first thing that I just thought of was point the camera up and snap away.
09:18Inspired by shots like this, others were busy scanning the night skies with their cameras and camcorders.
09:24We were inside Country Park one night with my video camera, and an object appeared in the sky, which I knew was not an aeroplane.
09:32This thing was just sitting in the sky, hovering, and it grew from a small light into a brilliant white light.
09:39It's pretty clear that Mr MacLeish, who was videoing an object he saw from Lilithgow, was videoing an image, a strong image, possibly a mirage image, of Jupiter.
09:50And he's got a pretty clear image of that on his video.
09:53This video, shot above hills near Inverness, shows a number of brilliant objects dancing around the sky.
10:02They turned out to have been mirages of an aircraft which eventually comes into view.
10:06More difficult to write off, however, was an image recorded by Barry MacDonald and Jane Adamson.
10:14Well, I just saw this bright light.
10:16I thought it was a helicopter at first, and I just kept, and then all of a sudden I says,
10:21Oh, Barry, there's a UFO.
10:23There, don't die.
10:24Barry, I'm telling you, that is a UFO.
10:26I'm serious, it's a UFO.
10:27There's a bright light.
10:28Barry, that is a UFO.
10:29When he wanted to pull over, I says, no, just keep going.
10:32He says, no, we'll pull over.
10:33We ran out to the back of the vehicle, hoping to boot up, and the camcorder was lying there.
10:39So I dived in and I grabbed it.
10:40I was trying to zoom it in and whatever, and then I lost it.
10:43Look, look, look, look at the colours.
10:45Of course it is.
10:46I'm trying to get a clear picture of it, so people wouldn't believe me if I had it on evidence on tape.
10:50It started off, like, around football, really bright, sort of tilted, went to its side, like a saucer shape.
10:59It was all about, I'd say about 300, 400 yards away.
11:02It was just, like, above the rooftops, kind of the houses.
11:07And then, all of a sudden, it just disappeared.
11:10For Billy Buchanan, this image, along with the other photographic evidence,
11:14was proof enough to take the fight for an investigation to the highest level.
11:19Earlier approaches to the then Prime Minister, John Major, and the MOD,
11:23had been rebuffed for what the government saw as a lack of evidence.
11:26We've had numerous videos, numerous photographs.
11:32We've had all these people that's came forward and given us their accounts of what they've seen.
11:37Now, that's no tangible.
11:38What do they need?
11:39Do they need some sort of flying saucer or something to land in the middle of Bonnie Bridge?
11:44Me and Colin, in a court of law, we would be taken as two good witnesses.
11:48But because it's such a subject like this, it's looked on as if we were mentally disturbed or something else.
11:56And it's just no fair.
11:57We're only looking for answers like everybody else, nothing else.
12:00What we are dealing with are low-level, close proximity UFO sightings, sightings above cars, above rooftops.
12:08And if that's not a threat to national security, then we don't know what is.
12:12I'm writing a letter at this moment to Tony Blair, the new Prime Minister.
12:17I'm saying, you get in here and give us an explanation.
12:20Now, it might be a logical explanation or a rational explanation, but we demand an answer.
12:25So far, Councillor Buchanan's extraordinary request for a government inquiry hasn't been taken up.
12:32Meanwhile, in the Falkirk Triangle, residents report that the number of alien visitors is still increasing.
12:38But then, of course, that includes the English tourists who've come up to see what all the fuss is about.
12:47Up until the 13th century, bears roamed the British countryside.
12:52They were dangerous beasts and would quite cheerfully maul people to death.
12:57The wild boar was another feared animal, capable of the odd disembowelment.
13:01By the 17th century, both species have been hunted to extinction.
13:05Today, with its pretty villages and ordered patchwork of fields,
13:09we like to think of the British countryside as a safe and gentle place.
13:14But could it be that a wild and savage beast still stalks the dales of Durham?
13:22They're locking up with extra care in Durham these days,
13:39since a mystery visitor first began to disturb their peace.
13:42It happened so quick as I went up to it, it stood up, turned out and went into the hedgerow.
13:57When it was very early, there was no other traffic about.
14:00It was... that's exactly what it is.
14:01Just got up, turned out and went.
14:04As a local farmer, Heather Allenson knows the usual animals of the region well,
14:09but this, she says, was something different.
14:12We have dogs and cats on the farm, obviously, and animals.
14:16We see deers, badgers, and it was nothing I've ever seen before.
14:21What struck me about it was its very shiny, glossy head, its features.
14:27It had big, bright eyes.
14:30And just the power of it as it got up and went.
14:32We've had about 180 sightings to date.
14:39Some of them have been very, very good sightings.
14:42Sightings by doctors of biology, by countrymen,
14:45who you would expect to be able to recognise anything that you see in a countryside.
14:50Sergeant Eddie Bell is Durham Police's wildlife officer.
14:54He's been on the case of the mystery sightings since they began over ten years ago.
14:58There's been a mobile phone. She's up at the A68. There's been a fox cub knocked down. Now, it's injured.
15:04It was something different to what people would normally see, or they wouldn't have reported it.
15:09But we hadn't a clue, really, what it could have been.
15:11It was, I suppose, mystical, really.
15:15One of the earliest sightings was made by lorry driver Robert Davis.
15:19His encounter happened at Fishburne Coke Works in 1986.
15:23It looked about five to six feet, maybe a bit less.
15:30It was sandy-coloured, and it had a dark sort-like front, maybe off the coke dust.
15:35And it just walked light.
15:39Fishburne Coke Works, now closed, provided Eddie Bell with the first clue as to the identity of his quarry.
15:49It appeared that the beast had jumped a ten-foot coke heap in one bound as it hunted for prey.
15:56On the top was a number of dead seagulls that had been hunted and eaten.
16:02So whatever it was, was big and very powerful and very athletic.
16:05It was, I think, the last place on Earth you would expect to find any sort of wild animal.
16:14Bell discovered a network of tunnels on the site, where he suspected the beast might have its lair.
16:21Going into an animal's den is obviously very frightening, especially when you don't know what's there.
16:27It was perhaps four feet square, running maybe 20, 25 yards back, and it really was dark in there, a bit like going potholding.
16:46I was going in the only way in or out, and if anything was at the other end, the only way out was to come past me.
16:55So it was a little bit worrying.
16:58Bell's courage paid off.
17:00In the dust lining the tunnel floor, he found the tracks of a large animal.
17:04They were big enough that you would think, well, I hope there's nothing at the end of this tunnel if I go in to have a look around.
17:17These are the actual prints found by Bell in 1986, but he had to wait seven years for the next hard evidence of the beast stalking Durham.
17:25In September 1993, the village of Walton had an unwelcome visitor, and this time it was after bigger prey.
17:32We were in bed, it was about half past one in the morning, not quite asleep, you know, and the security lights came on.
17:42So I immediately had a look out of the window and stayed there for two or three minutes and couldn't see anything.
17:47The dogs weren't barking, so I thought there's nothing really untoward, so I went back to bed.
17:51One of the three-quarter grown lambs in the paddock next door had been very effectively slaughtered and just about wholly eaten.
18:11This was not the kind of sheep kill local farmers had ever seen before.
18:17There was no sign of any blood on the grass, and I thought it was a bit strange, because I'd never seen a sheep worried before in them circumstances.
18:27Usually there's a lot of blood about, but in this case there wasn't any.
18:32I've seen plenty of dog worrying, having worked as a policeman in a sheep area for a long time, and it was completely different to any of the dog worryings I've ever been to.
18:44But this time the beast had left behind a series of clues to its identity.
18:49First, there was the sheep's carcass.
18:50It was a very, very clean kill. There was no sign of blood. There was no chewed bones.
18:58There was actually sort of raspings of flesh on the fleece, as if something like a cat had licked the meat from the actual animal.
19:09Next came an unusual paw print found on the edge of the village.
19:14This was examined by Scenes of Crime officer Ian Wilkinson.
19:17It was a fairly big print, which was unusual for this area, and the actual print that was made in the soil was quite firm.
19:26It was quite noticeable, so that struck me straight off.
19:33Wilkinson took this cast of the print.
19:35It was clear from this that they were dealing with a big cat, something approaching the size of a lion.
19:42Finally, there were the droppings found beside the carcass.
19:45These were sent to an expert for analysis.
19:49It was actually positively identified as the dropping of a large cat.
19:54The exact words were, which I'll never forget, were, had I found it on the Serengeti, I would have said it was from a leopard.
20:00But I would suspect that it's actually from something like a puma.
20:04The cast made by Ian Wilkinson was checked against this one, taken from a puma in a zoo.
20:11They were a close match.
20:13The puma lives in a very, very wide variety of habitats, ranging from high mountains down to rainforests and dry deserts.
20:20There's absolutely no reason that such a superbly adaptive animal couldn't exist in moorland and whatever we have to offer here in Durham.
20:29But if a puma could survive in the British countryside, how did it get there in the first place?
20:35Today, there are strict controls on the ownership of exotic pets, but this wasn't always the case.
20:40You could phone up harrots and order a panther or an anaconda to keep as a pet, as long as you had the money to pay for it.
20:48In 1976, the Wild Animals Act came into force, and that required the keeping of animals under much more secure conditions.
20:56And rather than have their pets put down or transfer them to a zoo, it's likely that they actually release them into the wild.
21:03There is no official acknowledgement of the Durham puma.
21:09The carcass from the Walton sheep kill was sent to the Ministry of Agriculture for post-mortem.
21:16But even as a police officer, Eddie Bell was not allowed to see the Ministry's report.
21:23But Eddie Bell doesn't need the Ministry's say-so.
21:27He's got the evidence of his own eyes.
21:29It was Christmas Eve, which is why I remember it.
21:33I was due back at work at two.
21:34I was coming home.
21:35It was a very frosty night.
21:37I was fairly tired.
21:39I was looking forward to getting home because I was frozen stiff.
21:42And I was about two miles from home, and ahead of me in the headlights,
21:46I actually saw the reflected eyes of an animal.
21:51What's that?
21:53What is it?
21:56It's not a deer.
21:59It can't be a fox.
22:01And as I came up on it, and I got a better view in the headlights,
22:04it was a puma sat at the roadside.
22:07It is.
22:08It's a cat.
22:09I stopped maybe five yards past it, and I got out the car, and it was still at the roadside,
22:26although by then it had realised I'd stopped, and it had got up, and it had started off away from me,
22:31and it went through a hedge and across a ploughed field.
22:34And I watched it go, and I really felt I wanted to go after it.
22:39But there was nothing I could do.
22:40I had no camera, no torch, nothing to record it with.
22:44And at the end of the day, there was nothing I could have done, even if I'd caught it.
22:47So I marked the position where I saw it with a stick, and I continued home, and I went to bed.
22:59And I remember waking up and thinking, I've just had the strangest dream.
23:07I must have been really tired.
23:10And then I thought, no, it wasn't a dream.
23:12I did see what I saw.
23:14And I got in the car, and I went straight back down the hill, and there was the stick where I'd left it.
23:19And I knew then that I hadn't actually dreamt it.
23:21I had actually seen a puma.
23:22Pumas live for around 15 years.
23:30The first sighting was reported in 1986, so if there is one at large, it might not be around for much longer,
23:36and the sighting should stop soon.
23:39Unless, of course, there's a pair of them breeding out there.
23:43Good night.
23:43Good night.
24:13Good night.