A Ufological Anniversary
It struck me yesterday that it was exactly ten years ago this week that I found myself immersed in one of the strangest UFO-related cases I have ever investigated.
It all began with the late American UFO researcher, Leonard Stringfield. In 1991, he released a self-published report on UFO crash-retrieval incidents - one of a significant number of reports that he had put out since 1980 and that continued up until the time of his death in 1994. And while all of Stringfield’s reports were of particular interest to me, his 1991 report stood out for one, key reason.
Stringfield made a brief reference in his report to the alleged crash of a UFO in early 1964 on the fringes of a large area of forest in central England known as the Cannock Chase. So the story went, U.S., Russian, and British military and intelligence personnel had been alerted to the fact that something strange and significant was going on, and all were apparently involved in monitoring the movements of the UFO as it plummeted towards the earth.
Stringfield had a source - S.M. Brannigan - who was apparently involved in monitoring the situation on behalf of the U.S. military and related to Stringfield that the object apparently split or broke into several pieces - with parts of it crashing on the Cannock Chase and the remainder slamming into the ground somewhere in Germany. And that was basically it.
Of course, this was an intriguing story; but, as with so many UFO crash cases, it was lacking in anything truly definitive or substantial. But the case was of particular interest to me for one prime reason: the location of the crash was only about a 20-minute drive from where I was living at the time.
Well, I dug into the story on and off for a few years; but again not much of significance ever surfaced. That is, until December 11, 1996. It was on that day that things became distinctly strange, when one of the few people who claimed to have firsthand, direct knowledge of the crash in question - Harold South, an elderly, retired man who lived in the nearby town of Brownhills - agreed to impart the facts of his story.
I traveled to his home on the date in question and sat back as he related the details: it was in February or March of 1964 and - as a washing-machine repairer at the time - he was driving across the Cannock Chase on his way to work, and came across a large cordon of military and police vehicles blocking the road. Everyone, said South, was being “turned around” and “ordered to take a different road.” Clearly something strange was afoot in the dark woods of the Chase.
South, however, wondering what all the fuss was about, turned around as ordered, but parked his car approximately half a mile up the road, jumped out, and stealthily made his way through the thick trees, and back to the scene of whatever it was that was taking place.
He was surprised, to say the least, when, while peering through a clearing in the trees, he could see a team of military personnel loading onto a transporter vehicle, a strange-looking object: it was relatively small, triangular in shape, and not at all like a normal aircraft, he elaborated.
South told me that he quickly took a couple of photographs and duly exited the area. That, however, proved to be his downfall. The upshot of all this was that - having apparently been seen clandestinely taking photographs - he was soon in the hands of the local police, who closely questioned him as to why he was in the area and duly confiscated his camera film.
Now, this was a great story. But, of course, in UFO crash-retrieval cases, the scenario of someone coming across a crashed UFO, securing evidence, only to have “the Government” quickly confiscate it, is a very common one. However, Harold South’s story differed with respect to one, key aspect.
It was clear when I arrived at his home that South was highly nervous about speaking to me - which was in stark contrast to the situation when I had telephoned him to arrange the interview only a few hours before. When I asked him what was troubling him, South replied that shortly after I had called him, he had received a phone call from the Ministry of Defense - essentially warning him not to say anything about what had occurred in the woods of the Cannock Chase all those years ago.
Well, again, claims like this abound in the crashed UFO field. But I did not dismiss it; and instead had an idea. I asked South if I could dial “1471″, a British-based service which provides the number of the last incoming caller. Sure enough, a number was available. I have to confess that I was amazed when the number turned out to belong to a British military operator-service in Staffordshire, England, whose job it was to transfer calls to and from military bases.
A brief conversation with the operator then put us on an even weirder path: it transpired that the call to South had been directed by another operator service from a British Army barracks at Whittington, near the city of Lichfield. Not only that: the specific office that made the call to South could be found within the Ministry of Defense’s “Ministry of Defense Guards Service” - the MGS.
They denied any knowledge of the call - which is curious since we had been able to track the call via the military’s own operator-service - and South became even more concerned, and eventually decided to say nothing more.
Were it not for the distinctly strange circumstances surrounding this call, I would have simply filed South’s story away as one of those interesting - but unprovable - accounts that many of us in ufology receive on a regular basis. But the fact that I had been able to prove that shortly after he agreed to speak with me about his strange encounter, South was quickly contacted by the Ministry of Defense, who suggested in no uncertain terms that speaking out would not be a good idea at all, led me to consider that this was one case that was of prime concern and significance to the British Government.
Not only that: the circumstances surrounding the call to South suggested to me that either his telephone or mine was being monitored. Now, concerns that “they” are listening in to the phone calls of UFO researchers have whirled around the UFO community for decades. But in this case, there seemed to be actual proof that such activity was taking place.
It was this case that really got me wondering about crashed UFOs and what, precisely, is known about the subect at an official level. And, now, with the tenth anniversary of my involvement in this murky affair having arrived, I’m still wondering…
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Dec 13 2006 
December 13th, 2006 at 8:39 am
Amazing story, Nick. Makes you truly wonder just how long these secrets can be kept from the public.
Marie Jones
December 13th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Marie, There’s no doubt in my mind that a wealth of secrecy surrounds what is known at an official level regarding UFOs. The biggest problem that I’ve found is in trying to find who, exactly, is hiding the really “good” data. Whoever they are, they seem to be buried incredibly well in the official world.
Nick Redfern
December 13th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
During the Liverpool UK school summer holidays of 1970, when I was 11, me, my younger brother Adrian, and several mates of a similar age range were helping build a makeshift adventure playground on some wasteground when I became irritated by the distinct sensation I was being spied on. At first I couldn’t quite pinpoint the source of this sensation, but after looking all around me it suddenly occurred to me to look up at what was a perfectly still, cloudless sky, at which point I found myself looking directly up at a dull black triangular shape hanging at, at most, a few hundred feet in the air directly overhead. The sensation of being watched by this object immediately grew, if anything more intense, and at first I tried to convince myself it was the first real life helicopter I’d seen, caught in the act of filming us. Yet I instantly knew there was a number of things wrong with this idea: first, the flat triangular shape was all wrong; second, it was making no noise whatsoever; third, instead of having a helicopter-like undercarriage, the only thing visible was what resembled a thick dull silvery metal ring surrounding a large darkly reflective ‘lense’, an object of sufficient size to all but touch each of the triangle’s three sides; fourth, there was what appeared to be a wild variety of elaborately and intricately shaped ‘old fashioned’ radio or tv ‘aerials’ poking out from all three sides, none of which looked even remotely like a helicopter’s tail or in the slightest aerodynamically sound.
Because of the ‘aerials’ and the ’space capsule door’-like ‘lense’, I decided what I might be looking was some sort of satellite, maybe even a genuine sputnik, and immediately drew everyone else’s attention to it in the hope one of them at least’d be able to identify what it really was for me.
However, after more than half-an-hour of the lot of us being utterly unable to take our eyes off it, I was forced to publicly admit it couldn’t be a satellite, because satellites moved in unceasing orbits, whereas this thing hadn’t moved off the spot even slightly; adding, even if was some sort of experimental soundless helicopter, surely it would’ve had to’ve adjusted its position in the air even if only ever so slightly.
Eventually, we all decided to go and get something to eat, and see if it was still there when we got back, but by the time we’d returned, later that afternoon, it’d vanished.
December 13th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Alan
That’s a very cool report - and extremely interesting. As you may know, a lot of reports have surfaced in the last decade or two of large, black triangular shaped UFOs - in the UK, Belgium, and the US. The reports from pre-1980 are less in number than those of today, but reports such as yours are beginning to show that the “Flying Triangles” (as they have come to be known) are not a new phenomenon. The biggest question is: are we flying them or do they belong to “someone else?”
Cheers,
Nick R.