SUBJECT: ENCOUNTER IN ENGLAND FILE: UFO1266
NEWS CLIPPING SERVICE
DATE OF ARTICLE: February 10, 1989
SOURCE OF ARTICLE: News & Advertiser
LOCATION: Todmorden, England
BYLINE: Pat Swift
========================================================
(C) Copyright 1989 ParaNet Information Service
All Rights Reserved.
THIS FILE WAS PROVIDED BY THE UFO NEWSCLIPPING SERVICE
AND PREPARED BY PARANET ALPHA -- PARANET INFORMATION
SERVICE
PARANET INFORMATION SERVICE BBS
PARANET ALPHA
DENVER, COLORADO
NOTE: THESE FILES ARE NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION OUTSIDE
OF THE PARANET INFORMATION SERVICE NETWORK
========================================================
THE NIGHT THAT CHANGED HIS LIFE
By Pat Swift
Former policeman Alan Godfrey has never consciously claimed
to have met creatures from outer space.
But whatever happened to him in the "missing minutes" in the
cold early hours of a November morning over eight years ago has
irrevocably changed his life forever.
Alan hit the national headlines over a year after first
putting in an official report that he had seen a UFO hovering
above Burnley Road near Mons Jill.
At first there was local interest and a lot of speculation
about the sighting, particularly as five other officers in
Calderdale and Greater Manchester had reported seeing a similar
object low in the skies on the same morning.
But Alan was not the first police officer in Todmorden to
put in an official report of a UFO sighting.
It was only when a senior police officer persuaded him to
reveal details of tapes taken while he underwent regression
hypnosis that he really created a stir on the front pages of
nearly every national newspaper.
For under hypnosis, under stringent conditions and observed
by police officers, Alan told how he had been taken aboard the
spaceship and had been examined by creatures from outer space.
"To this day, I don't know what happened to me that
morning," says Alan. "I can clearly remember seeing this object
revolving and hovering above the road as I drove up towards
Lydgate in the police car. I stopped the car, made notes and did
a sketch and then got out of the car and started walking towards
it.
"The next thing I can remember is being further up Burnley
Road beyond the point where I had seen the craft, but it was no
longer there."
Consciously he has no recollection of what happened in
between, but there are physical clues which appear to back up his
story told under hypnosis.
On those tapes he tells how he was laid on a table and
examined with some kind of electrical probe fixed to the insole
of his foot.
At the time of the incident he found his heavy leather
police boot had been ripped and he had a small burn mark on his
insole.
"It would be a lot easier for me to believe that I made it
all up under hypnosis...that it was something my imagination
dreamed up.
"But the truth is I don't know what happened, and probably
never will."
When the details of the tapes were released to the press
they linked it to speculation about a case on which Alan had
worked five months before his UFO sighting--the mysterious death
of Polish born Leeds miner Zygmunt Adamski.
Mr. Adamski had disappeared from near his home on the
outskirts of Leeds. He had set out to visit a nearby shop to buy
some potatoes as his family had visitors in preparation for the
following day when he was due to give away his God daughter at
her wedding.
He never returned--but five days later his body was
discovered in the coal yard near Todmorden station.
Some of his clothing was missing; he had mysterious burn
marks on the back of his head which had been treated with an
ointment which scientists could not identify as anything known on
earth--and he had died of a heart attack brought on by fear or
shock.
There had been many reports of UFO sightings in West
Yorkshire around the time and Coroner Mr. James Turnbull in
recording an open verdict, said he could not rule out speculation
about creatures from space.
Alan was one of the local officers working on the case and
was surprised that no major investigation was launched.
But although he was discharged from West Yorkshire Police on
medical grounds due to an injury he had received before all these
strange events, Alan is still bound by the Official Secrets Act.
"Because of this I am not allowed to talk about the case,"
he says.
After he became a major news story, Alan felt that he was
being subjected to harassment in the force. "Life was being made
difficult for me," he said. "I was no longer 'one of the lads'
and superiors sent me for medical examinations in efforts to show
I was having hallucinations, but the doctors all gave me a clean
bill of health mentally."
Eventually Alan and the police parted company when an old
injury incurred during a struggle while on duty was the official
reason for his medical discharge.
"I felt I could have continued in the force, even if only at
a desk job," he says.
But losing his job also cost him his home as he could no
longer afford to meet the mortgage payments, and he had to turn
his hands to other trades.
"It put a strain on everything and life has been difficult,"
he recalls. "The police even raided my leaving party to check
for after hours drinkers."
Alan is regularly sought by TV and radio chat show hosts and
the Press.
"Whenever there is another major sighting, I start getting
calls for interviews again."
But don't the fees from these TV and radio interviews help
compensate for the difficulties he faced on first leaving the
force?
Alan smiles wrily. "There's a sliding scale for interview
fees, and I'm definitely on the bottom rung of the ladder!"
His financial fortunes cold change if one of the Hollywood
film giants decides to take up an option on using the transcripts
of the hypnosis sessions as the basis for a future film.
But in the meantime, Alan is settling into his new life,
although he still misses police work.
And has he seen any further strange objects in the skies?
"I don't look," he says emphatically. "If one landed right
in front of me, I'd turn around and run. I wouldn't want to get
involved."
=================================================================
5/89
**********************************************
* THE U.F.O. BBS -
http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
****************************************************************************************************************
