A mural painted to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Warminster Thing (Image: Jon Austin)
A British town witnessed a wave of mysterious events including mass UFO sightings, cars breaking down, bizarre noises and even alien abductions.
The Wiltshire town of Warminster was plagued by a series of mystery UFO sightings, that often resulted in people’s cars temporally braking down, from the 1960s
Known as the Warminster Thing, the case is one of the strangest cases of mass paranormal sightings cases registered in the UK.
It stopped cars in their tracks, killed birds, terrified children and sparked reports of strange humming noises, tremors, lights, crop circles, UFOs, and even alien abductions – so just what did happen in a small leafy Wiltshire town?
Although strange phenomena were recorded in the area prior to 1965, it was in that year that the frequency of reports of mystery noises and sightings intensified.
On August 17, 1965, a “detonation noise” rocked houses on the town’s Boreham Field housing estate before a “monstrous orange flame was seen in the sky, crackling and hissing”.
There were also reports of strange sounds killing flocks of pigeons that year, as had also been claimed 12 months previously in 1964.
Most of the sightings were around the Cradle Hill and Clay Hill areas surrounding the town next to military land on the edge of Salisbury Plain.
Claims of paranormal activities in Warminster go as far back as the 1950s, but it was the sudden flood of reports around Christmas 1965 that a led to a public meeting being held in the town hall.
It was hoped the meeting would lead to answers from authorities about what was happening in the local area, but no explanation was forthcoming and the case remains unresolved today.
After the 1965 public meeting received national then international media interest the town became a gathering point for UFO hunters and investigators, with a series of books also written about the mystery.
The report, that has been unearthed, was written at the time of the first sighting in July 1965 by UFO researcher Lionel Beer.
s baffling as when it started.
Newspaper clippings from the time (Image: The Warminster Journal)
Among the audience for the Warminster Journal was one of its reporters Arthur Shuttlewood, who broke the original Warminster “Thing” story.
Mr Shuttlewood went on to publish a number of books on the mystery that saw mass sightings of UFOs in and about the town from 1965 to 1980, and became a firm believer that the phenomena were of alien origin.
You can read Mr Beer’s report of the curious December 1965 meeting, which took place in the town hall, here:
“A meeting called by Mr Emlyn Rees, chairman of Warminster Urban District Council was held in the town hall on August 27 1965 at 7.30pm.
“Upwards of 300 persons crowded into the hall and several hundred more thronged the stairs and corridor and overflowed into the street outside.
“About three dozen press men were present and the scene was dominated by an ITN camera crew complete with portable arc lights.
A UFO image snapped during the height of the sightings (Image: Gordon Faulkner)
“All these people came to hear a public discussion on the mysterious lights and sound which have been reported from the Warminster district in recent months.
“Mr Rees chaired the meeting and the speakers were Dr Deoffrey Doel. BUFORA’s chairman, who introduced Dr J Cleary-Baker,
Dr Cleary-Baker gave a summary of the UFO enigma and ended his talk by suggesting that the local people should form a “listening post.”
He also suggested that UFOs were alien craft, exerted by a higher order of intelligence than ourselves.
Rev Inge, who is chairman of the Salisbury Plain Astronomical Society, told how he operates a satellite-tracking post within 10 miles of Warminster, subsequently transmitting the results of the observation to the Satellite Tracking Centre at Slough.
Introduced to the meeting as the “opposition,” the Rev Inge, in fact made it clear that he supported the scientific investigation of UFO phenomena.
Stills from a video of the remarkable public meeting (Image: ITN/Warminster UFO)
A Mrs Atwell told how she had been very frightened by a strange and eerie sound accompanied by the apparition of a “brilliant star.”
A local reporter in the press gallery (Arthur Shuttlewood) said he knew of 49 witnesses to the sounds, which have killed birds and affect adversely animals and human beings.
Eight children had been scared by the “Thing” at various times but their parents had requested that their names should (not) be published.
Two representatives of the Arthurian Society gave their own highly-coloured interpretation of UFOs from the press gallery.
A black-suited young man, claiming ministry connections, tried to maintain that cigar-shaped UFOs result from the igniting of columns of methane gas.
The meeting ended about 10pm, inconclusively as was to be expected.
The town has remained a mecca for paranormal investigators and UFO hunters, with a 50th anniversary festival held there in 2015, but now, nearly 60 years on the case remains a mystery.
