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Britains.X.Files.S01E06
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00:01I'm Tim Tate. I've been an investigative journalist for almost half a century.
00:08And what I specialise in is exploring official archives,
00:13unearthing dusty old files from government departments, spy agencies, the police.
00:20This strange figure looked very much like an astronaut.
00:23And what I have found in those collections, both in Britain and in the United States,
00:30is a truly extraordinary collection of real-life X-Files.
00:36True cryptids are the Yeti, the Mongolian death worm, death worm, death worm.
00:41And those files disclose investigations by the police, by governments, by spy agencies.
00:48Shortly after that transmission, Captain Schaffner's radio went dark.
00:54To examine and uncover the truth about phenomena which are truly out of this world.
01:01It's a great piece of branding, death ray. Everyone knows where to stand on your death ray, death ray.
01:16When someone goes missing, we all know there must be a rational explanation.
01:21But in our first X-File, the only logical interpretation seems to come from another planet.
01:33Captain William Schaffner was a 28-year-old US Air Force pilot.
01:40And in September 1970, he was on attachment to the RAF.
01:44And at that time, we were involved in this standoff with the Russians.
01:48Still the Cold War, a lot of tension.
01:52And every now and again, the Russians would send aircraft over the Arctic, probing NATO defences.
02:00Radar stations have picked up a wave of high-flying supersonic bombers heading for targets all over Western Europe.
02:07And we had a whole series of air bases where aircraft will be at standby, known as QRA, which stands
02:15for Quick Reaction Alert.
02:16So these are cockpit-ready pilots who were there 24 hours a day waiting for the order to come from
02:24the RAF to scramble into the air over the North Sea to go and fend off whatever is waiting for
02:30them.
02:30In the modern world, the emphasis is on speed. The Lightning is said to be the fastest aircraft in the
02:36world on active service.
02:37William Schaffner was an experienced pilot. He'd flown in the US Air Force during the Vietnam War.
02:43The RAF listed him formally as combat-ready.
02:47Scramble! Scramble! Scramble! Scramble! Scramble! Scramble!
02:53At 8.30pm on Wednesday, September 9th, 1970, Schaffner was scrambled to intercept an intruder.
03:01Something unusual had been seen on radar coming over the North Sea towards Flamborough Head in Yorkshire.
03:09It had gone much further than what they would have expected a Russian intruder aircraft, so they needed to get
03:15into the air quickly.
03:16Bill Schaffner leapt into his lightning, so he went up and he got an RAF pilot behind him, his wingman,
03:25and they were being directed by the radar ground controller, RAF Staxton Wald.
03:30And he reported back when he spotted the interloper.
03:34He wasn't able at that distance to determine what type of aircraft he was, but he was able to calculate
03:42its speed.
03:43160 knots or thereabouts, well below the speeds at which his lightning was capable of flying.
03:51And lightning is an apt description of its ferocity and speed.
03:54Twice the speed of sound.
03:561,320 miles an hour. That's the incredible ability that's part of Britain's defence.
04:02He was talking to the ground control and he said, I can see, I can see some lights in the
04:06distance, I'm going in for the interception.
04:08And he was told, be careful, you know, you need to sort of slow down.
04:11So he was moving towards it to intercept it. As he got closer, we realised that there were some strange
04:18blue lights, that there was this kind of conical shape, and also seeing this sort of football shape as well.
04:24Schaffner did relay the fact that this was an unusual sight, or rather he did say about how it's turning
04:30around, it's coming straight towards me, and that he was going to take evasive manoeuvres.
04:35Shortly after that transmission, Captain Schaffner's radio went dark.
04:48That night in September would be the last time anyone ever saw or heard from Captain William Schaffner.
05:00Pilots had only a very limited survival time in the cold September North Sea.
05:05So the RAF quickly mounted a full air-sea rescue operation to try and find Captain Schaffner and his missing
05:11lightning, codenamed Foxtrot 94.
05:15The pilots had, they had an ejection mechanism, so if you're in trouble you could hit a button, it blew
05:22off the cockpit and you'd be propelled out of the aircraft and you would have an inflatable dingy that would
05:28open up and give you some time before you were spotted by the air-sea rescue.
05:32But no sign of the pilot, no sign of the aircraft, it had vanished.
05:36Royal Navy divers located the lightning plane five weeks later on the seabed.
05:44The bizarre thing was that when they recovered the aircraft and looked in the cockpit, there was no pilot and
05:51the cockpit was shut.
05:53William Schaffner was married with two sons, but all the RAF could tell them was that he had died in
06:00an unfortunate accident whilst on active service, and his body had not been recovered.
06:05The ensuing official inquiry was conducted, as with everything else related to the fate of Foxtrot 94, under conditions of
06:13complete secrecy.
06:16What changed that was a phone call made to the offices of the Grimsby Evening News in 1992.
06:24The caller, when he was put through to the newsroom and spoke to a journalist, refused to identify himself.
06:32But what he said was that he had been a member of the RAF team which examined the remains.
06:39He said that on the night that Foxtrot 94 had been lost, Number 5 Squadron and Captain Schaffner had been
06:47on a unique top secret mission.
06:50And that top secret mission was to intercept UFOs.
06:57Even more astonishingly, the anonymous caller provided a transcript of the radio chatter between Captain Schaffner and his ground control.
07:06That transcript appeared to record Schaffner describing the object he encountered.
07:11He said, in this transcript, it emitted a blinding bluish light and was flying far faster than any other aircraft.
07:25And then the transcript recorded him saying, wait, it's turning towards me.
07:31I'm going to have to take evasive action.
07:34After that, the radio went dead.
07:39When the newspaper published the story, the silence surrounding Captain William Schaffner's disappearance mutated from being an unexplained accident into
07:48a full blown conspiracy theory involving a cover up UFOs and alien abduction.
07:54The family of Bill Schaffner, by that point his sons were in their twenties, they looked on the internet and
08:01they saw all this stuff about their dad dying as a result of an alien abduction.
08:06So you can imagine how they felt because they felt, oh my God, you know, we've never found the truth
08:12about what happened to our dad.
08:14And now we're reading all this stuff on the internet.
08:17In 2002, Schaffner's sons asked the British government to release any information they had relating to the disappearance of their
08:25father.
08:25But it took a further six years before the contents of their investigation was finally released in 2008.
08:32The main problem that was found was the fact that Schaffner, despite being an experienced fighter pilot, hadn't really received
08:39the proper training for this for low level flying at night.
08:43Another factor is the fact that Schaffner was impatient to get back into the skies when he had scrambled.
08:49Initially, he was meant to make sure that the lightning was properly serviced, but he'd actually left without it being
08:55fully completed.
08:56Unused to flying the lightning at low speeds, Schaffner stalled the aeroplane.
09:01Having stalled at low altitude, the plane hit the water and skidded on the surface before starting to sink.
09:07Schaffner had only seconds to activate his ejector seat.
09:10The cockpit wouldn't blow when he hit the button that should have blown it off.
09:15So what did he do next? I'd have to manually do it.
09:18And he's motoring this cockpit open and trying to think, have I got all my life-saving gear with him?
09:24And he hadn't. It had become detached.
09:26So he gets out of the cockpit, he's in the water, and the cockpit's closing like that.
09:31Before he could retrieve anything from the cockpit, the aircraft's sinking, and he drowned.
09:37This seems to account for the order of events that left Captain Schaffner stranded as his lightning sinks.
09:43But it doesn't explain the object that Schaffner reported seeing.
09:47The RAF knew all along what it was, this object. It was a Shackleton.
09:53The Shackleton was a British aircraft and the descendant of the Lancaster bomber.
09:57It was used primarily by the RAF against Russian submarines.
10:02In September 1970, it was on exercise, playing the part of a Russian intruder.
10:07The crew of the Shackleton were interviewed and they said, yeah, you know, we were there.
10:11We knew it was an exercise. We knew that lightnings would be coming in and shadowing us.
10:16And we saw this aircraft pass by. We saw its lights and then it just vanished.
10:21And we assumed it had hit the water, which was exactly what it had done.
10:24But none of this takes into account the testimony of the anonymous whistleblower, who knew it was a secret mission
10:30to intercept a UFO,
10:32and who provided transcripts in which Captain William Schaffner reported seeing lights in the sky shortly before he vanished.
10:39When the transcripts of Captain Schaffner's communications were finally released in the official inquiry,
10:45it deviated significantly from the whistleblower's report to the Grimsby Telegraph.
10:51There is no mention of taking evasive action, and the alleged flashing blue light is not referenced.
11:02So how did Captain William Schaffner become the poster boy for British UFO conspiracy theories?
11:09At the time, very little was revealed from the incident.
11:13Some of this, of course, was just the normal protocol of dealing with aircraft crashes and disappearances.
11:19But I do think there was a bit of an official cover up in terms of just what had happened
11:24to Schaffner,
11:25because there were a certain amount of failings in this that would have been very incriminating for the MOD and
11:30for the RAF.
11:31This is why no one trusts what the government says, because there's so many examples of this kind of thing.
11:38Unnecessary secrecy, things where they didn't know the answer to a mystery,
11:44but deliberately keep it under wraps for decades.
11:46And that allows conspiracies to develop, and a lot of it is well over the top, unnecessary secrecy.
11:53There's no reason why Bill Schaffner's family couldn't have been told at the time what had happened.
11:59But for some reason they weren't.
12:01There is, though, one small coda to this story.
12:07When the file was released, it turned out to have been stored in a collection held by the RAF and
12:16the government.
12:16And that designation was...
12:19Inquiries into Unexplained Aerial Phenomena, UFOs.
12:48Inquiries into Unexplained Aerial Phenomena, UFOs.
12:52A
12:53world be a better place if paranormal abilities really existed? But what if those who had
13:00those incredible powers fell into the hands of our enemies?
13:10In the 1960s, remarkable claims emerged from Soviet Russia that they had found someone
13:16with the ability to move objects using only the power of their mind. What's more, they
13:21could prove those claims? There was moving footage of telekinetic experiments and those
13:30films featured an otherwise unremarkable Russian woman called Nina Kulagina.
13:40The incredible footage shows Kulagina sat at a table surrounded by scientists and journalists
13:46as she apparently moves objects with her mind.
13:49This rare talent for moving objects by force of will alone has been termed psychokinesis
13:57or PK.
13:58Nienel Kulagina is a Russian housewife who has this ability.
14:03She was born in Leningrad in 1926 and her birth name was Nienel Mikhailova. So usually in the
14:10West we call her Nina Kulagina but she was actually called Nienel which is N-I-N-E-L or
14:16Lenin backwards,
14:17which was a popular name at the time. She was born two years after Lenin's death.
14:23Her adolescence was very traumatic. It coincides with World War II.
14:27At the age of 14 with the Second World War raging she joined a tank regiment and she was assigned
14:36to the defense of Leningrad in the lengthy and bloody terrible siege of her city by German forces.
14:44She was badly wounded during the fighting.
14:50In the early 1960s it seems that she had some kind of breakdown linked to her injuries in World War
14:56II.
14:56So the first time that she showed her psychic abilities was in hospital. There was a radio report about a
15:04woman who was said to be able to see colour with her fingers and Nienel had the same ability.
15:10Apparently she could pick out threads from a box of threads and pick the right colour without being able to
15:15see them.
15:15She simultaneously discovered that these powers were not always benign.
15:23Kulagina described events in which during times when she got angry objects, vases, china pottery would fly across the room
15:32and smash themselves and she attributed this to her telekinetic powers.
15:36Kulagina and her husband set out to record her telekinetic powers and they made short films in which she is
15:48seated at a table with an everyday household object in a glass case in front of her and by sitting
15:56and staring at the object she is able as these films show to make it move.
16:05These early home movies soon came to the attention of the Russian authorities who signed Nienel up to a scientific
16:12programme which could test whether her abilities were real or fake and once again it was all captured on film.
16:20Kulagina was studied intensively for more than 10 years by Professor Segeyev of Leningrad University and the films of her
16:28demonstrations became the subject of unending controversy.
16:31Did she have genuine paranormal powers, a washier charlatan?
16:36She's putting a lot of force and effort into what she's doing, she's waving her hands over certain items, she's
16:42wearing a short-sleeved top and short-sleeved skirt so we can see nothing like a watch or anything else
16:47is on her arms.
16:49And so you can see all these different compelling items being moved, groups of matches sliding together, a cigarette upended
16:56just moving across the table without falling over and rolling.
16:59In 1968, Russia mounted the first parapsychology symposium in Moscow.
17:05Expert observers from the West were invited and were amazed at the footage of Kulagina's telekinetic powers.
17:12They were also allowed to watch Nina perform and the reports they sent back were nothing short of startling.
17:19They described witnessing Kulagina seated six feet away from a case which held an egg and seeing Kulagina's mind, apparently,
17:35separating the yolk from the albumen of this egg without her ever touching it.
17:42Kulagina was involved in an experiment which involved a heart being suspended in a solution that kept it artificially beating.
17:51That was wired up to electrodes and the heart rate was monitored and what they found was that the heart
18:00could be sped up, slowed down and eventually stopped by Kulagina.
18:06One of the Westerners who was present at that demonstration took secret footage and that made its way to the
18:13West.
18:13And from that moment, what we might call the paranormal community in the West and also Western scientists became fascinated
18:21by Kulagina's powers.
18:24But on seeing the films of Kulagina's psychokinesis or PK, there were others in the West who recognised that the
18:32Russians now had control over power with a much darker potential.
18:35The Soviets claim they've already devised machines that create magnetic and other kinds of artificial fields that increase psychic powers,
18:44particularly telepathy and PK.
18:47To suddenly have papers coming out saying that they've got just one subject alone and perhaps many others, with their
18:54mind manipulating things and can affect biological systems, can think of someone at distance and stop their heart.
19:00For warfare, that is extremely advanced and a very powerful weapon to have and harness.
19:05The United States commissions a report from military intelligence that looks at all aspects of Soviet psychic research.
19:12And it concludes that the Soviet Union has at least 20 different institutes that were involved in research at a
19:20cost of $21 million per year.
19:22The CIA was then about to begin its own experiments in parapsychology, convinced that Moscow would produce a weapon against
19:35which the United States would be powerless.
19:40As a result of the Cold War, the United States was spending billions of dollars on conventional and nuclear warfare.
19:47Now, they would need to pump even more time and money into psychic research if they were going to catch
19:53up with the Russians.
19:55But the big question that hungover Nila Kulagina was, how did she do it?
20:00There were many sources that claimed that basically Kulagina's abilities were fraudulent, that she was faking it.
20:07Basically that she was using either hidden wires or hidden cords or magnets in order to conduct her experiments.
20:14In the 1980s, there was a magazine article that claimed this and Kulagina sued the author of the article and
20:23she actually won the case.
20:25The judge said there's no evidence that Kulagina was faking it and a lot of the claims in the article
20:31were fake.
20:32The films of Kulagina do contain an explanation of what powers she was tapping into to achieve her psychokinesis or
20:39PK.
20:39According to Dr. Raditz, in the 1951 Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, the action of the sun and moon
20:47also affects the body's force field.
20:50Dr. Sergeyev agrees, the most favorable time for PK is during magnetic disturbances of the earth caused by sunspot activity.
20:59According to the Soviet view, PK is not accomplished by mind over matter, but rather by mind over force field.
21:07However she was doing it, the film seemed to show that the tests had a genuine physical effect on Kulagina.
21:14The films claim that these effects were backed up by scientific evidence.
21:19She loses up to three pounds after a demonstration of psychokinesis.
21:23For days after doing the tests, her arms and legs hurt.
21:27Kulagina was also wired up and her heart rate was monitored and they found that her heart rate increased to
21:35around 240 beats per minute.
21:38And many sources suggest that in other tests, she suffered terrible problems ranging from a loss of sight, pain in
21:47her spine, the opening up of the wound that she had from World War II, and eventually a heart attack.
21:54When Nina Kulagina died of a heart attack in 1990, many believed it was due to the strain on her
22:00body caused by the forces she wielded in the many scientific experiments she performed.
22:05Ever since debate has raged, was she a real life ex-woman, someone who could move objects just using the
22:19power of her mind?
22:21Or was she a talented trickster, supported by Soviet scientists who were serving a much deeper and more sinister purpose
22:34for the Kremlin?
22:35It's an amazing story and the footage is fascinating.
22:39And the idea that both the Soviet Union and the United States are involved in this campaign of psychic research
22:47is something that we don't usually associate with the Cold War.
22:50So this kind of esoteric psychic Cold War, what we might call a psychic arms race, is absolutely fascinating.
23:21Some objects are the stuff of legend.
23:24They are so revered that the thought that they might actually exist seems impossible.
23:29That is, unless your mind is bent on world domination.
23:36Few Christian relics have generated as much academic interest, scientific controversy and wild conspiracy theories as the Holy Grail.
23:51Early medieval poems, a 19th century opera and Hollywood movies have cemented the Grail's place in the mythology of supernatural
24:04objects.
24:05Objects which have some mystical paranormal power.
24:09But what is the otherworldly source of the Grail's power?
24:12It was known as the drinking vessel that was used during the Last Supper.
24:18And so it was associated with the blood of Christ and was therefore a particularly precious and holy object.
24:25It's believed by some that if you have the cup of Christ, you have access to some form of eternal
24:32power or invincibility.
24:34It's a highly venerated, highly symbolic object that is invested with supernatural religious power that is connected to Jesus Christ.
24:46It has been reported to be in a cathedral in Spain or a French chateau.
24:51Is it a cup in Wales or could it even be in the Metropolitan Museum in New York?
24:56All we know is that some wanted it for its religious significance while others had far more sinister intentions.
25:031920, Hitler began. He was considered just a joke then. A raving crackpot.
25:09What Nazism was trying to do was to fuse all forms of belief systems such as Christianity, the occult, superstition,
25:19astrology, you name it.
25:21And blend them to form this new super religion that's going to last a thousand years.
25:27The Nazis are interested in creating a mythology for the concept of Aryanism.
25:32And as a part of this, they're trying to create a mythical pedigree for the Aryan race.
25:37You know, that doesn't exist. So what do you do? You go into actual history that exists and then you
25:41try to use that for it.
25:43They wanted to connect the Aryan race with the life of Jesus Christ.
25:51Now, of course, Jesus Christ was Jewish. He was a Jew growing up in the Middle East thousands of years
25:59ago.
25:59For the Nazis, it was a very uncomfortable fact that he was a Jew.
26:05What the Nazis wanted to do is to portray Christ as an Aryan, essentially a white man.
26:11A strong believer in all things occult, the man who took on the task of creating this new association between
26:18the fictional Aryan race and Christianity was Heinrich Himmler.
26:23Heinrich Himmler, grim and bloody name in Nazidom, the hangman of freedom.
26:27Heinrich Himmler was the Reichsführer SS or the guy who led the SS for quite some time.
26:34And he very particularly is interested in creating this Aryan mythos.
26:39So he spends a lot of time trying to create a theoretical ancestral heritage for Aryanism.
26:44Then, in 1934, Otto Rahm, an otherwise obscure German academic historian, published a book which would fuel Himmler's obsession with
26:58the Grail and with its place and importance to his brotherhood of Aryan Teutonic Knights.
27:09He's written a book that's called The Crusade Against the Holy Grail.
27:13And he's convinced that a group of heretics who had lived in southern France, who were sometimes called the Cathars,
27:19had hold of the Holy Grail and he writes a whole book about this.
27:23That becomes really popular with Himmler, who is really the big one pushing forward this idea of an Aryan mythology.
27:30And so you get these ideas kind of roped together and basically it's a way of justifying Nazism.
27:38Himmler had formed an organisation which was part of the SS, a kind of think tank called the Ahnenerbe, which
27:48means ancestral heritage.
27:50And it was quite a large organisation that looked at different aspects of Aryan history in order to link them
27:57to the new Germany that was being created by the Nazis.
28:01So he invited Raan to join the Ahnenerbe and gave him opportunities to go and seek out the Holy Grail.
28:10Raan, however, was eccentric.
28:14He had a drink problem, he was gay, he didn't fit into the SS ethos.
28:20Nevertheless, Himmler continued to support him.
28:24If he did anything wrong, if he was caught misbehaving, Himmler would punish him by giving him guard duty at
28:33Dachau concentration camp.
28:35And we know that Raan was deeply disturbed by what he saw there.
28:40The Ahnenerbe, you know, took these very, mounted, these very, very long and costly trips all over the world, places
28:49like Tibet, you name it, all over the world,
28:52to try and find evidence that kind of linked the modern Nazi state to, you know, the cradle of humankind.
29:01Now, it is possible that, you know, during some of those expeditions, that actually the Nazis were looking for objects
29:11like the Holy Grail.
29:13But you better believe that if they found some little cup en route and thought that was the Grail, they
29:19would have brought it back to Berlin.
29:21But how were Himmler and Raan going to find the Holy Grail? It could be anywhere in the world.
29:27Himmler found the answer in an opera by Richard Wagner.
29:30The inspiration of Richard Wagner's grandiose operas was shrewdly utilized by Hitler to glamorize his nation's age-old pattern of
29:39treachery and violence.
29:40Parsifal took the original medieval tale of Percival and placed it at the center of an occultic tale of magical
29:50forces and redemption.
29:51And the opera suggested that the Grail's resting place was in the Pyrenees mountains on the border between France and
30:02Spain.
30:06Himmler is particularly interested in the Grail to the point that he actually goes looking for it.
30:11And he ends up over in Catalonia at a place called Montserrat, which is kind of like Montsalvat, which is
30:18a reference to the Holy Grail, very specifically from a Wagner opera.
30:23He doesn't find it. Surprise, because the Holy Grail is probably not real.
30:27But what he does find is a lot of tunnels that are underneath monasteries and castles, which is completely normal,
30:34just absolutely ordinary.
30:35That's how you would kind of get things in and out if you're under siege.
30:38But he kind of takes this as some kind of proof that there was the Holy Grail and it's being
30:43squirreled around varying places.
30:45But he obviously believes enough in it to go looking for it.
30:50And interestingly, also, he doesn't believe enough in it to fake it.
30:53You know, you would think that a Nazi like this might just be like, oh, yeah, look, we found the
30:57Holy Grail.
30:58He doesn't do that. He says that it's an inconclusive search.
31:01The Nazis didn't really hide their belief in the Holy Grail as it was part of the Aryan myth.
31:07And so it came to the attention of the allies.
31:10The British were very much aware of the fact that there was a lot of Nazi interest in the occult.
31:17They were very much aware that there might have been propaganda value in this.
31:22So I think the British and the allies are very wary of what the Nazis were doing.
31:26Did they take it seriously? No.
31:35What would have happened if the Nazis claimed that they had found the Holy Grail?
31:39How would they have used its occult power?
31:43Himmler took possession of Wevelsberg Castle as the headquarters of his mystical Aryan Brotherhood of SS Knights.
31:54He had a crypt constructed around which 12 SS leaders would conduct occult ceremonies in front of an occult symbol.
32:07And that number 12 was not coincidental because that was exactly the number of knights around King Arthur's fable round
32:17table.
32:19Himmler conflated the two myths.
32:22I think that people are obsessed with the idea that the Nazis were searching for the Holy Grail because the
32:28Nazis were so horrible and terrifying that we want an occult explanation for their behaviours.
32:34It's difficult for us to say this is just a group of really terrible people who wanted to exterminate whole
32:39other groups of people.
32:40So we want there to be a magic that describes what it is that they are doing.
32:45It's easier than just accepting that sometimes human beings are really awful.
32:49I think we have to be a little bit careful with this obsession with things like the Holy Grail and
32:54the occult activities of the Nazis.
32:59It's in danger of clouding the fact that what the Nazis did was to transform Europe in the most diabolical
33:08way.
33:34What if something was so strange that it seemed impossible to give it a name?
33:39How would we refer to such a thing?
33:51Warminster, where strange sights and sounds at night have been reported.
33:56Warminster is a quiet market town in Wiltshire where things like this just don't happen.
34:01Well, I've lived in Warminster for 11 years and in the whole time the Warminster thing has been discussed.
34:11Sometimes you hear it two or three times a week, sometimes you don't hear it for weeks on end, but
34:15you're just aware, I think, that it's always there.
34:16There was enough interest to pack a public meeting in the town hall last Friday night.
34:21More than 300 people turned up to hear the local council chairman, Mr Emlyn Rees, open the meeting.
34:26The most disturbing factor is that many of our townspeople have been frightened by unusual sounds.
34:32The Warminster thing began on Christmas Day in 1964 with a lady who was walking very early in the morning
34:40to church and heard a noise in the sky and lots of vibrations and stuff like that.
34:53At 6.30 that morning, a local woman walking to her church along a country lane near Warminster heard a
35:04sound behind her.
35:06It was, she thought, the sound of a gritting lorry, but it was accompanied by a very loud humming noise.
35:14But when she turned round, there was nothing there.
35:19And the noise suddenly seemed to go from behind her and vanish off up into the skies above her.
35:28Many, many different sightings over quite a long period of time by many different people in the community at different
35:35places, but all within Warminster.
35:38And I suspect because there is at this stage no clear explanation of what those phenomena are or represent, whether
35:53they're connected or not connected, it's been given this rather loose, generic term, the Warminster thing.
36:03It was the thing.
36:05It was the thing.
36:05And it earned itself that title, if you like, the thing, because people didn't have a clue what it was.
36:11Then in June 1965 came the first sighting of what was causing this fury, the first sighting of the Warminster
36:24thing.
36:24And it was reported in the local paper that what was causing all of this concern, all of this upheaval,
36:36all of this panic, was a flying saucer.
36:44The early 1960s saw a wave of UFO reports in Britain.
36:49But the epicentre seemed to be around Warminster in Wiltshire, where stories of alien invasions struck fear into the hearts
36:56of the locals.
36:57They were worried because it was something completely out of context. It's not what normally happens in society. Yes, so
37:04that was why they had the meeting and had to turn away two or three hundred people outside the town
37:09hall in Warminster.
37:11The meeting was thrown open to the people of Warminster.
37:13How many people here tonight are afraid of the thing? How many of you?
37:19At quarter to four in the morning, I was wakened by this dreadful droning sound.
37:27And then I went to the bedroom window and I saw this brilliant object. It was quite low in the
37:34sky.
37:35And I live up Beacon View that way. I just couldn't move and it was going on for half an
37:41hour.
37:43But it wasn't just the locals who wanted to know what was going on. The meeting also attracted a gaggle
37:49of ufologists.
37:50Also in attendance, but trying not to make their presence known, were men in dark suits from the Air Ministry.
37:58The military were there, but they weren't in uniform and there were plenty, as I say, a lot of people
38:05attended and clearly it was causing concern, you know, because no answers could be found.
38:14The meeting didn't really help because, try as they might, the official explanations didn't convince the citizens of Warminster.
38:27The reason that the rational explanations didn't work was that the strange events kept being reported.
38:35All these stories found their way onto the desk of the Warminster Gazette's chief reporter, Arthur Shuttlewood.
38:42He had a number of sightings, which brought to his attention. That galvanised his interest.
38:50And that's, the newspapers picked up on it, especially the Gordon Faulkner famous photo, 65, that created wonderful newspaper reports
39:04of the thing, the thing, the invasion of Warminster.
39:08The photograph, this groundbreaking picture of the Warminster thing, had been captured by chance by Gordon Faulkner.
39:17He'd been out and happened to have his camera handy when the thing streaked across the sky.
39:26Ufologists flocked to the town.
39:30So, too, according to local press reports, did television's favourite astronomer, Patrick Moore, hopefully to catch a glimpse of the
39:41Warminster thing.
39:42In the early 60s, the flying saucer place was Warminster, Cradle Hill.
39:47I went there to do a programme and talked to all kinds of people, including various journalists.
39:51When one person sees a flying saucer, others will too.
39:54Someone who joined the throng of new witnesses was Arthur Shuttlewood.
39:58The previously sceptical journalist reported his own close encounter with the thing.
40:03He recounted his terrifying experience of seeing the thing through a bedroom window and of grabbing his cine camera and
40:16pointing it at the object as it flew across the sky, only to find that the camera twitched in his
40:23hands and then flew out of his grasp.
40:27Some reports described a fiery cigar-shaped object hovering in the sky.
40:32But most Warminster folk have seen nothing out of the ordinary and strongly resent newspaper stories about a town living
40:38in terror.
40:40The presence of the thing divided opinion amongst the people of Warminster.
40:45I've talked to people who say, that's just a load of rubbish.
40:49People really believe that?
40:50And people who say, that's got to be a thing.
40:53It's got to be a thing because so, so many people over the years have produced consistent evidence that there
41:02is a thing and something's going on.
41:06Whilst opinion was split, there was one group of people who were delighted at the arrival of little green men
41:12in Warminster because it attracted hordes of ufologists and tourists.
41:17Warminster started in around about 64, 65 and went through to about 1978, 1980 and then it petered out to
41:28about 150, 200 sightings.
41:32These things, they're real, they're genuine, but it's a matter of sorting the wheat out from the chaff.
41:40And that's not crop circles, is it? Or is it? I don't know.
41:44Recently, I was very privileged as mayor and chairman of the council to cut the ribbon to unveil the newly
41:53painted mural to celebrate 60 years of the Warminster thing.
42:04But the key to a rational explanation for the thing might be closer to home.
42:10The army is much in evidence in these parts and sceptics say that if odd things are being seen, they're
42:15most likely rockets, flares, balloons or aircraft, which the army's not talking about for security reasons.
42:20There were secret aircraft going around and before some of these were responsible for sorts of sightings.
42:26That was the case in Warminster, certainly.
42:28Lots of extraordinary things have happened to me since I've been in Warminster.
42:32But one of those things has not been the Warminster thing.
42:37Historic reports, including the Warminster thing, showed that at the time and ever since, the Ministry of Defence has taken
42:47the idea of UFOs in general and the Warminster thing in particular very seriously as a potential issue of national
42:58security.
43:02Next time on Britain's X-Files, what happened when Yuri Geller's powers were tested by the CIA?
43:09What was the real origin of a mysterious crater in a farmer's potato field?
43:13Why did the Nazis want the spear of destiny?
43:17And we revealed the meaning of a mysterious message sent over 50 years ago.
43:24To be continued...
43:24Whilst I've been pengene
43:25I think so galaxy had happened with us!
43:25Oh never did anything ã‚‚ America.
43:51Where did the Nazis get was kind?
43:51You
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