THE COSMIC JOKERS: UFO BRACKNELL

The Invasion of Bracknell

Bracknell - a drab little town in southern England - is surely one of the least exotic places on Earth. Plagued by vandalism and petty crime, it seems an unlikely haven for High Strangeness. Nevertheless, in 2005 this dreary corner of Berkshire found itself at the epicentre of a wave of UFO activity reminiscent of the glory days of the Warminster Thing.

The Phantom Airship

Dreary Bracknell

The first sighting occurred at midnight on Wednesday, June 22. Popeswood resident Corinne Dainton was rudely awakened by "bright lights coming through the window", while her neighbours saw an "oval-shaped object" hovering over the nearby Coppid Beech Hotel.

One of the witnesses reported the sighting to the Ministry of Defence, who dismissed it as being "probably an airship". Corinne was unimpressed, protesting "how can it have been an airship that appeared in the middle of the night then just disappeared into nowhere?"

A Flying Ashtray and a Flying Cigar

Four days later, surface technician Terry Campbell was installing a synthetic hockey pitch at Birch Hill when a UFO resembling "a deep round ashtray" appeared overhead.

"It was stationary, but the sunlight was glistening on the paintwork or metalwork," he said. "It was like somebody holding a mirror and flashing it on and off in your eyes."

The object (which Mr Campbell thought might be "a weather station, or satellite or something") hovered silently for fifteen minutes, then was momentarily lost behind clouds. When the clouds cleared, the UFO had vanished.

In the nearby suburb of Crown Wood, a group of neighbours watched a rotating cigar-shaped craft hovering above them for twenty minutes. "I just couldn't make out what it was," declared baffled witness Maurice Jones. "When it caught the sun it had a metallic appearance. It came right over the top of us."

No sooner had the cigar departed than a spinning saucer-shaped craft appeared in its place. "This object was going a lot faster than the other one," said Mr Jones. "We were so gobsmacked we thought what we were seeing might have been a hoax."

A Plague of UFOs

By July, the flap was in full swing. Binfield resident Myrtle Brain saw a saucer-shaped craft "with lights on the bottom and a light on a dome" hovering over fields near her home at 11pm one night. "I was just mesmerised, absolutely mesmerised," she told reporters. Twenty minutes later, the saucer vanished "as if the lights went out".

"The only thing I can think is that if it wasn't anything to do with the military, it was related to crop circles," she speculated. "I have never seen anything like that before and I doubt I ever will again."

Equally baffled was Ian Etwell, who watched a "big searchlight" shoot across the sky towards Windsor on the afternoon of July 12.

"I have been around 60 odd years and I have never seen anything move that fast before," he said. "I don't know whether it was somebody coming to visit us, but other people have seen it too so there must be something up there".

The Contactee and the Mayor

In August, the Bracknell News ran an article on 62-year-old Terry Walters, who claimed that aliens from Orion had visited him in 1966 and cured him of a back injury. His doctors had been baffled by his overnight cure, but a "Harley Street Specialist" assured him that many others had likewise "experienced interstellar medical procedures".

Walters was back in the news at the end of the month, when former mayor Jennie McCraken revealed that she had asked him to exorcise a ghostly "two-headed snake" that had been haunting her home. Ms McCraken had also seen "sparkles of light or smoky apparitions" and suffered nightmares about "a spider with a woman's face". Mr Walters traced the spectral serpent to its lair in the attic and banished it from the house.

The Incredible Weather Balloon

A typical weather balloon

In October, the residents of Birch Hill were awoken early one Monday morning by a particularly noisy UFO.

"It looked like a pile of scaffolding with lights: red, blue and orange ones," Susan Mallia told The Bracknell Midweek. "It also had a big spotlight that was moving around. I don't think it was a helicopter because it sounded like a vacuum cleaner or a generator... perhaps it was a weather balloon."

Mrs Mallia and her husband watched the 'weather balloon' for half-an-hour before it occurred to them to fetch their camera. The object promptly departed - although they could still hear its engine droning in the distance.

The Return of the Bracknell Thing

Just when it seemed that life in Bracknell was back to normal, a "spherical object with four claws" appeared above the suburb of Priestwood on the morning of February 1st, 2006.

"I was gobsmacked," declared witness Julie Kendall; the daughter of none other than contactee (and occasional exorcist) Terry Walters. "I thought that they must have come back to get my dad!"

"At first I thought I was going crazy as it was so strange," added another witness. "But so many people were looking up at it, they must have been thinking the same as me".

Sources

All sighting reports quoted above are archived at IcBerkshire.