UFO Sightings
In the 1960s and early 1970s Warminster became the centre of a UFO flap that, at the time, was unprecedented in the UK.
The Warminster phenomenon began not with unidentified objects but with unidentified sounds; which is, perhaps, why the phenomenon came to be labelled the 'Thing'.
The genesis of the Warminster UFO phenomenon is described in Arthur Shuttlewood's The Warminster Mystery. Shuttlewood was a journalist with the Warminster Journal, the local newspaper. It was through this position that Shuttlewood first came into contact with the phenomenon.
The date on which the Warminster phenomenon started is a moot point. Flying Saucer Review reported that, in November 1961, four witnesses near Warminster witnessed a UFO leaving a trail of sparks. Two of the events reported by Shuttlewood in The Warminster Mystery as occurring in 1965 are also reported by Shuttlewood, in the Warminster Journal in December 1965, as having occurred in 1963 and 1964.
The history of the Warminster phenomenon as recounted by Shuttlewood, however, began early on Christmas morning, 1964. A number of witnesses were awoken by strange sounds, variously described as like twigs or leaves being drawn across a roof, or a chimney crashing to the ground, or roof tiles being forcefully rattled around. The sounds were witnessed in one case by as many as thirty individuals. Perhaps the strangest was that witnessed at 6.12am that morning by Mrs Marjorie Bye, who was walking to the Holy Communion service at Christ Church in Warminster. As she approached the church the air about her filled with strange sounds that she found disturbing, and made her feel weak and unable to move. These unidentified noises continued on an ad-hoc basis until at least June 1966. Roughly nine cases are described in The Warminster Mystery in which the only unusual phenomena are noises. Over the course of time this "noise" phenomenon receded and the visual phenomenon took its place to become the most important element of the Warminster phenomenon; the Warminster Thing became a UFO.
Through the early months of 1965, no UFOs were seen. The first UFO sighting recorded in The Warminster Mystery was around 19 May 1965, when three times during that week one witness saw unusual objects in the sky. The UFOs were silent, stationary and cigar-shaped, covered in winking bright lights, and gradually faded as the witness watched. On 3 June 1965, a brightly glowing, cigar-shaped object was witnessed by a family in Heytesbury, a village near Warminster. The UFO remained motionless over the south of Warminster for almost half an hour. The UFO was also observed by two Warminster residents, who described the UFO as 'twin red-hot pokers', and by seventeen people swimming or fishing at Shearwater, a lake near Warminster.
Although UFO sightings had now commenced, the strange sounds still continued to be heard, and on 10 August 1965 a connection between UFOs and the strange sounds appeared to be confirmed. At 3.45 am, a local woman was woken by a terrible droning sound. When she looked out of her bedroom window she saw a bright object like a massive star. It remained visible for some 25 minutes, then the humming began to attenuate, and the UFO began to flicker; the noise finally stopped, and the object vanished from sight. As with the reports from earlier in the year, it was the noise that most disturbed the witness.
As the reports of strange sounds and unidentified lights in the sky began to flood in to Arthur Shuttlewood and the local papers, ufological groups and personalities became involved. Shuttlewood managed to place stories in the national papers. A public meeting was held in the town in August 1965 at which the topic of UFOs was discussed. The meeting was televised and reported in local and national papers. The media coverage led to an invasion of the curious over the bank holiday weekend. Public interest in the Warminster phenomenon was further piqued by the publication, in the Daily Mirror, of a photograph of a UFO, taken in daylight over the town by Gordon Faulkner at the end of August. Interest in the Warminster Thing had become national, and was later to become international. Ufologists and skywatchers flocked to Warminster.
UFOs continued to be seen throughout the decade subsequent to 1965. The hey-day of the mass skywatch was in the mid-1960s, but continued through to the mid-1970s. Cradle Hill became the centre of skywatching activities, but Starr (Middle) Hill and Cley Hill were also popular with skywatchers. Warminster's reputation as a UFO hotspot diminished towards the end of the 1970s, although UFOs do continue to be reported in the area. In the 1980s the growth of the crop circle phenomena in Wiltshire rekindled interest in Warminster's UFO connection.
Because of its notoriety, Warminster was subject to much experimental and playful hoaxing. It has also been suggested that the iconic image of the Warminster UFO, Faulkner's photo of 1965, was a hoax, although Faulkner maintains that the photograph is genuine.
The proximity of Warminster to Salisbury Plain and its military presence could explain some of the UFO sightings, as weapons testing and live firing is carried out on the Plain.
Every year since August 2007, veterans of Warminster's skywatches, joined by interested newcomers, have visited Cradle Hill to relive and retell some of their memories of the phenomenon. In 2009 and 2010, Paranormal/UFO-themed two-day conferences (called Weird 09 and Weird 10) were held in Warminster. The conferences included presentations by experts in their fields, such as Paul Devereux, Nick Pope, Nick Redfern, Malcolm Robinson and Dr. David Clarke .
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