UFO Archives
It’s time for another of those “from the archives” posts from me. This brief story is one that I investigated in 2000, while living in central England and is a copy-paste of my original write-up:
At some point in late 1985, a curious and somewhat disconcerting UFO event occurred at the Staffordshire town of Penkridge. In this particular case, the witness had served as a military policeman with the British Army in Egypt.
Early on a weekend morning, and along with a friend, the man in question had driven to Penkridge to take part in a “duck-shoot” at a river that was situated on farmland in the area.
Shortly after making his way to the river, the man caught sight of a light in the sky that appeared to be moving in his direction and across the fields on the opposite side of the river at a height of what he estimated to be approximately three hundred feet.
He watched carefully and with mounting concern as the light came to a complete halt above one particular field and proceeded to fire a beam of light down to the ground. As it did so, the man was able to see illuminated in the beam of the object a herd of cows that were blissfully munching away on their breakfast of grass.
Astonished by what he was seeing, the man leapt to his feet; as he did so, however, three smaller lights came out of the larger one – two “swept off” and one, to his horror, headed straight for him.
“Don’t point your gun, whatever you do!” the man told me he said to himself. And so what course of action did he take? He made a run for it. Clearing a fence of not inconsiderable height, he ran to his friend who was busy at the car and blurted out what he had seen. Both decided to head back to the scene, but the lights had vanished. As for the cows, they were still eating breakfast, seemingly oblivious to all that had taken place.
At the time the story surfaced I made an appeal for more data in the pages of a local newspaper that covered the town of Penkridge. Unfortunately, no-one else came forward and the story has remained in my files, unresolved, ever since.
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Jan 09 2008 
January 9th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
What color was the light?
January 9th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
It’s not mentioned in my Word document - I’ll check tonight if I still have the old cassette recording of the interview, as I have a box of literally 100s of old tapes and it may be in there.
January 9th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Oh! I didn’t mean to bother you like that Nick. I just wanted to know if it was a white light, which then it might have been attributed to a helicopter or something, or maybe it was red or orange.
But now that you’re at it, it might be interesting to know if the guy noticed any kind of sounds coming from the light
January 9th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
No sweat: the tapes are all labelled on the side by name and so if it’s there will take me a couple of minutes to find. I doubt there’s more than in the above post, as I try and include all pertinent data, but won’t hurt to check.
January 9th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
At least Cryptomundo gives the witness name (unlike Brad Steiger, for example) and THEN Nick you could have doubled your post with a tangent about Wicker Man, serial killers, etc. So sad, these secret witnesses, so much lost opportunity. haha.
“Numen Est Omen” — “Name is Fate” — parapsychologist Nandor Fodor (that’s our motto here at the Minnesota-based Reichian Center for Crypto-Anthropology).
January 9th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Drew:
Witness Name: Dave Anthony. He had no problem with his name being used. The decision to withhold it was mine.
Sometimes I withhold witness names at their request. Often I do it at my own volition.
Re the latter: there’s a good reason for that. On several occasions, I have published an article - without the witness name.
Then, someone in Ufology has asked if they could have the name and speak to the witness.
I’ve asked the witness, they have said yes, so I’ve then forwarded it to the researcher - who then violates the person’s privacy by telling all and sundry who the person is and publishing their name without permission etc.
So sadly, the minority who cause the problems are often responsible for the withholding of names - in my case, at least.
If people who can’t be trusted to respect witness privacy act go ahead and act like dicks (and I’ve come across more than a few), then you can hardly blame me for being cautious.
January 10th, 2008 at 4:47 am
Hi Nick,
Sorry to be annoying but did any one ask the guy if he was telling the truth? Assuming he was ( and I have no reason to think other wise from your account) Did he at any point look back over his shoulder to see if the intercepting light was still there or gaining on him? From my experience it’s natural to want to look to see how close the pursuer is getting!
January 10th, 2008 at 6:32 am
DH:
I try to avoid asking people when I interview them, or am about to interview them if they are nothing more than a blatant liar, as it tends to put people off speaking to me!
I prefer to try and make a judgment afterwards, based on what they said. Personally, I don’t think Anthony was lying.
He didn’t seek me out, wasn’t looking for massive publicity or money (the interview was done in 2000 and is only now, 8 years on, in the public domain), and to the best of my knowledge has never tried to capitalize on his story or approached other researchers with it.
What happened to put me in touch with him was the fact that he had also told the farmer, on whose land the duck-shoot took place, what allegedly happened.
That farmer happened to be friends with a Staffordshire, UK-based policeman with an interest in UFOs. The farmer told his policeeman friend, who then contacted the Staffordshire UFO Group (now closed down), and as the woman who set up the group, Irene Bott, was then leaving the group, she gave me the info on the report in case I was interested in following up on it.
I spoke with the cop, who put me in touch with the farmer, who I gave my phone number to, and said that if the guy wants to talk, have him give me a call.
So, in other words, it wasn’t like he had all this planned as a way of getting publicity for himself or was determined to make a big name for himself.
Had I not approached the farmer, I doubt we would know about the case.
It’s been my experience that with hoaxers in ufology, if one person doesn’t pick up the story they go to someone else. Or the story gets elaborated on over time and becomes more and more over the top.
To the best of my knowledge, Dave Anthony told his story to his farmer friend and me, was puzzled and alarmed by what happened, thanked me for listening and then went back to his life.
Now, that *could* be how a hoaxer might react, but in my personal experience of known hoaxers, it’s not.
I don’t know if he ever turned around, however, to look or just kept going.
January 10th, 2008 at 7:14 am
Hi Nick,
Yeah, that makes sense and I appreciate your insights into ‘hoaxers’.Thats an extremely valid point about the way you (as the researcher)was sought out.
I try to be an ‘honorable skeptic’ that is
skeptical to discover and reveal the truth rather than a ‘dis-honorable’ one who seeks to conceal or avoid the truth!
What caught my eye in this account was the peculiarity of the three lights released by the main UFO. It was almost as if they were part of a defensive system that was designed to make you ‘go away as fast as possible’ and not stop to reason why! I’ve come across this phenomena before in some UFO cases. If I can sound like a complete nutter for a moment-lol, I some times think a mental impression is sent out to clear the area by who or whatever is involved with the intelligent control of these kind of UFO’s. I’ve come across instances before where people felt an intense fear and just ran only to question their actions afterwards.
Thanks for posting this account I’m intrigued by it.
Kind regards,
dh
January 13th, 2008 at 6:12 am
An intense fear — well, that’s usually the effect of western technology. Nick — thanks for mentioning Dave Anthony and I recommend that he and everyone else consider “The Mother’s Tale” by James Agee to be the true essence of Anthony’s encounter (just as it was for St. Anthony in the desert).
January 14th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Just as an addition to the observation that people will sometimes react in a manner seemingly counter to what they would expect of themselves when confronted with a UFO, I offer an experience of my own: In September of 1996 I was working in a factory about 10 minutes drive from my home as the sole nighttime worker. The job afforded me much time to read (paid to sit and read; a nice gig).On one particular night I had neglected to bring my book with me, and drove back home to retrieve it. As I approached the rise in the road less than a mile before my turn, I could not help noticing an extremely bright glow eminating from who-knows-what hovering some 10-15 feet above the ground behind a tree on a hill perhaps 200 yards from the turnoff. Had the object not been behind the tree I suspect I would not have been able to look in its direction due to the intensity of the light (arc welding comes to mind). The source of the light seemed about as wide as the canopy of the tree itself, which I estimate at approx. 30 feet. I was quite amazed and intrigued by this sighting, having a long interest in the UFO phenomenon (this was actually my fourth sighting of something unidentifiable, despite my even longer interest in all things aeronautical/astronautical), and I would have thought my reaction would have been to stop the car and observe for a while, hoping for another car to come along and offer corroboration (this area is somewhat sparsely populated even to this day, located at the southern tip of the Adirondack State Park in upstate New York). However, I surprised myself with the sudden thought “I should hurry to the house and get my book so that I can see if the object remains on my return”, and I continued my journey, making the turn and driving the mile and a half remaining. Only 10 to 20 seconds after doing that, I suddenly thought “What are you DOING?! Why didn’t you STOP and WATCH?!!” Not wanting to turn back at that point. I raced to the house, grabbed the book, and raced back. Of course, you can guess the result when I returned to the spot: the object (whatever it was) was gone, and I was completely baffled by my own actions. I have read of such reactions in some other cases, and this one you’ve mentioned only served to bring the memory back once again. I’ve considered the event many times since its occurance, and can find no explanation for my behavior, which ran so completely counter to my curiosity about the UFO phenomenon. Was my thought process somehow affected by whatever intelligence was responsible for the glowing object, deflecting me away from the scene? I note here that there was no seismic activity reported in the area prior to or after my sighting, so earthlight-related explanations seem not to fit. I examined the site in daylight afterwards (it lies on private farmland) and saw no signs of disturbance to the ground beneath or the tree itself. Whatever it was must have been very close to the tree branches, and the lack of noise and wind-buffeting rules out a helicopter. But, for me, the mental phenomenon was even MORE interesting than the object, which is a considerable statement.