The Salesman

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

In May 1968, an unearthly insurance salesman (who would surely have been more at home in Point Pleasant, West Virginia) visited the Yorkshire seaside resort of Scarborough.

16-yr-old schoolgirl 'Adele' was at home alone when she answered a knock at the front door and found him standing on her doorstep wearing a tiny pork pie hat and "an insanely beaming smile".

The visitor had an "extremely florid" complexion and was smartly dressed in a black suit and white shirt (although his trousers and jacket sleeves were both far too short).

Is it Now?

"After grinning madly at me for what seemed like ages... the man's whole body jerked," Adele told investigator Lynn Picknett. "Then he said 'Have you got insurance? Is it now?' His voice was most odd. Like a robot's - jerky and without feeling".

The startled girl asked the salesman to call back when her parents had returned. Sweating profusely, he took off his hat and wiped his forehead. A thick layer of carelessly applied stage makeup came off on the back of his hand. He was completely bald, and beneath the smeared makeup his skin looked unnaturally white and "dead".

"Can I see a glass? Of water?" he asked, still grinning fixedly.

A Question of Time

Afraid that the stranger might faint on the doorstep, Adele invited him in and sat him down in the lounge. He walked with peculiar jerky steps like a puppet (perhaps partly because he wore his shoes on the wrong feet!)

The girl fetched him a glass of water from the kitchen and returned to find him standing by the fireside staring fixedly at a carriage clock on the mantelpiece.

"He made me so nervous I started to blather," she recalled. "I told him that the clock was my father's retirement present, which seemed to be some huge revelation to him. He stared at me - still smiling - and said: 'It is your father's time? Is it here and now?'"

"Then he took the glass of water and just looked at it. I realised that he'd asked if he could see a glass, and that's what he was doing. After scrutinising it in a sort of polite way, he handed it back, having not taken even the smallest sip."

Watch The Lights!

The salesman seemed mesmerised by the carriage clock. He stood tapping it repeatedly, musing "Your father. Your father. His time. His time". Suddenly, he spun around and snapped "Watch the lights!". Then, after giving the clock an affectionate pat, he hobbled out without another word.

Adele had to run past him to open the front door as it looked as though he was about to walk straight into it. Once he had left, she rushed to the window to see where he called next, but he seemed to have vanished into thin air. Later that afternoon, a cluster of tiny lights materialised and danced around the living room.

The clock that had so delighted the extraordinary salesman stopped working following his visit. Years later, it started up again during one of Uri Geller's television appearances and has run smoothly ever since.

Sources

Lynn Picknett: The Massive Book of UFOs, pp269-272.