Flying Sorcerers

The Old Man and the Thing

A 1965 photo of the Warminster Thing - later revealed to be a fake.

One of the strangest tales uncovered by journalist Arthur Shuttlewood during his investigation into the infamous 'Warminster Thing' was that told by an eighty-year-old widower who lived in a secluded cottage on the outskirts of Frome.

One winter afternoon in 1967, the widower was standing at his garden gate smoking his briar pipe and contemplating the woods beyond when his reverie was interrupted by the arrival of a disc-shaped craft. It descended into a clearing and silently hovered four feet above the ground.

A New-Fangled Contraption

Two figures wearing shiny blue-grey jumpsuits and black plastic helmets jumped down from the craft. They walked into the woods with a stiff gait "as if weighed down" and stood deep in conversation.

Thinking the craft must be "some new-fangled contraption of the air force", the old man hobbled towards the pilots to ask if they would like a cup of tea. Seeing him approaching, one of the figures raised its gloved hand and promptly vanished into thin air along with its companion.

Up in Smoke

The widower turned to look at the saucer and saw that it too had disappeared. In its place was a swirling cloud of mustard-yellow smoke. A shapeless light shot up from the smoke and streaked away through the sky.

"I wondered if I was dreaming," the old man recalled. "But my pipe was still alight and hot. I took an extra big puff at it and pressed it against my cheek to make sure I was still awake. I don't believe in ghosts or any of that nonsense. It did not make sense to me, and it still doesn't!"

Related External Links:

The Thing and Arthur Shuttlewood
Magonia's Warminster archives
Faeries, Drugs & Hyperspace
Darren Francis considers the hallucinatory nature of high strangeness.

Sources

Arthur Shuttlewood: UFO Magic In Motion, pp145-146.