FT245

JANUARY
The big case of the month arrived while New Year bells were still ringing. Tabloid sources were awash with the news of a spectacular disc shape filmed off the Cornish coast. UFO buffs were quick to hail this as the best thing since last week, even when the rather obvious solution was offered that this was actually a marine bird frozen by the shutter speed of the camera. Undaunted by being hero today, goon tomorr­ow, researcher Jonathan C Ghull from Little Speck over Water told this column: “I watched as it swooped around making a blood-curdling screech and stood in awe as white material was ejected from the undercarriage. Luckily I collected samples and any scientist wishing to purchase them can do so from my auction web site – Alien Crap – where bids stand at £10,000. Preliminary analysis suggests the aliens have avian DNA implying that they are descended from the dinosaurs and left Earth 60 million years ago.”

FEBRUARY
At 12.56am on 27 February, there was a major earthquake in the UK, and this led to an interesting experiment when investigator Gary Anthony noticed that witnesses were describing times spread over a lengthy period when the geological survey had pinpointed exactly when the event had happened. The data  gathered made useful comparison with how UFO witnesses timed their sightings.
My own field research was limited to quizz­ing witnesses on the bus to Rhyl. I discovered that a lady from Denbigh had felt the Earth move but was “convinced it was the man next door – he does that sort of thing at one in the morning. So I banged on the wall and told him to shut up.”

MAY
Event of the year was undoubtedly the publication of the first batch of several hundred UFO case files from the MoD archives. A campaign team, masterminded by FT’s David Clarke, worked long and hard to get these valuable reports. While the tabloids talked about little green men, the UFO comm­unity obviously focused on the really important issues emerging from these files: worrying close encounters between civilian air traffic and fast-moving UFOs and the revel­ations of the inter-departmental machinations at Whitehall. Well, actually no! Debate focused on who deserved the credit for getting the files released. While there is no doubt about this, some people seemed unable to conceive how slowly, slowly had really caught this particular monkey and why sobriety and scepticism had triumphed over allegations that Gordon Brown was hiding an alien autopsy up his jumper (next to his fiscal policy).
Meanwhile MoD bureaucrat Ivor Bigiggo revealed that he had once sent a memo to the undersecretary of the Tea Bag Department Subcommittee insisting that UFO files should not be used as blotting paper as they had been during the last recession. But for this mandarin’s prescience, all we would have had released in 2008 were a few scraps of paper with names and dates about mostly useless lights in the sky on which the Air Staff had concluded next to nothing…

JUNE
One of Britain’s leading serious newspapers, the Sun, launched a major campaign to prove that there was an alien invasion of the UK. Day after day, week after week, they published photos submitted by readers of tiny red lights drifting across the sky and each one was presented as the latest proof that ‘they’ were here, parading in front of any camcorder or mobile phone that happened to be in the vicinity. Immediately, FT and its merry gang of case-wreckers got on with the task of investigating and reporting on the nearly-always ready explanations for everything under (or in this case in) the Sun. Despite the paper’s demand for a major government enquiry into the terrify­ing invasion, Gordon and Co. were sadly distracted from these floating lanterns, bright planets and army flares; having successfully brought the nation to the brink of financial collapse, they were too busy to answer the UFO inquisition.

JULY
The most impressive case of the year involved a midair encounter over the Channel Islands that was subjected to a very detailed investig­ation by a team of including Dave Clarke and Martin Shough. It achieved unpre­ced­ented attention from the science community because of its sober analysis.
It also attracted interest from the aviation industry. One entrepreneur even announced plans to launch a budget airline to take over the abduction market from the Grays. To be called Easy ET, it will offer one-way flights to Sirius for just . Passengers will be greeted with a complimentary salty lemonade drink, all seats will flatten out into a long table or bed but rectal probes will require a supplement.

SEPTEMBER
Much concern was expressed over the decis­ion to extradite UFO computer-hacker Garry McKinnon to the US where he faces charges ranging from terrorism to making George Bush look foolish – although the latter is to be dropped owing to a surfeit of evidence. Wrong as he was to break into sensitive computer systems seeking evidence of a UFO cover-up, and unlucky as he was to do so just before 9/11, the overreaction is merely a gift to both those who think that it obscures an American failure to reveal crashed spacecraft and to those who think it distracts from a failure to catch any real terrorists. It is also worth pondering the true lesson here: Gary used the lax security on government computer records to try to find a UFO, whereas here the UK’s lax security with government computer records is likely to see them being found on board a UFO.

NOVEMBER
Highlight of the autumn was the return of the FT UnConvention, at which a team of revisionist ufologists presented its findings into the abduct­ion of Yorkshire bobby Alan Godfrey. Andy Roberts had discovered some intriguing new evidence about a local plastics establishment. During the 1970s, they had created a sinister-looking house of the future – the ‘Futuro’ – which had been on display in an industrial estate on the edge of Todmorden long before the infamous encounter. It does look rather like the shape that Alan Godfrey perceived during his sighting. So was this oversized Wendy House the key to the mystery? Had a local folk memory lain dormant waiting for an appropriate moment to emerge from the policeman’s subconscious?
My contacts in Tod tell me it was well known to all who lived there but nobody had mentioned it in connection with the sighting because the scariest thing about it was that it was publicly unveiled by the fiery-tempered Coronation Street character Elsie Tanner – who would have terrified any alien invaders right back to where they came from.