I’ve been visiting the Isle of Man since I was a small child and keep on returning because it is such a magical place. Easily accessible from the Mersey estuary in Liverpool, this small island is only 33 miles (53km) by 13 miles (21km) and has just 70,000 inhabitants. It nestles in the Irish Sea between Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales (all visible from its highest mountain) and is rich in ancient myths and legends. The island has also brought many fascinating insights into my UFO research.

Creation

According to legend, the Isle of Man was left to the charge of a mystical race of Celts, the Tuatha de Dannan. These psychic founding fathers strike an immediate chord with UFO researchers as their descriptions share many similarities with the blond haired, blue-eyed humanoid entities sometimes seen during alien contacts. On Man they were known as the Glashtin and compare closely with the encounter reported by Jessie Roestenberg in Staffordshire in October 1954 (see FT188:23).

Another intriguing parallel is the symbol universally associated with the Isle of Man and appearing on its stamps, flags, buildings and postcards. Even the Manx motto “whichever way I am thrown I will stand” derives from it. Yet the origin of the famous ‘three legs of Man’ hints at a memory of an ancient UFO sighting.

The myth dates back 2,500 years to when a group of fishermen was driven ashore by a storm. As they lit a fire on the beach, there was a fearsome noise and something emerged out of dark clouds cloaking the nearby cliffs. It resembled a fiery wheel, with three spokes or legs joined together which rolled as one within the shield of mist or cloud. The strange object then climbed from the beach and up along the slopes that led inland. The men saw this as a sign of their escape from danger, and the image was etched into their consciousness as the protective force of the island.

Themselves

The island has a wide collection of mystical inhabitants with delightful names such as the dooinney-oie (a warning spectre) and the lhiannan-shee (an amorous sprite). Collectively, these are known as ‘themselves’ and the stories that have been gathered over the centuries are deeply resonant with those of alien encounters. A few examples from my research in the museum archives at Douglas will show why.

In about 1850, during a stormy night, two residents of a house near Laxey noticed an eerie glow coming from downstairs and a buzzing noise like a swarm of bees. They were scared to investigate but associated the events with the presence of ‘themselves’. Indeed, it was a rural custom in the 19th century to go to bed early during bad weather so as to enable these beings to enter and find shelter.

Such bluish/white glows and buzzing noises are a staple element of modern day UFO encounters and, some speculate, might be caused by some kind of atmospheric electrical phenomenon.

Interestingly, this same area – and at around the same times – was the scene of white fleecy deposits found draped over local trees; this is quite clearly the same phenomenon known in UFO circles as ‘angel hair’ and reported in the aftermath of a number of 1950s cases across northern Europe. To see this linked with reports of ‘themselves’ and regarded by contemporary witnesses as being ‘fairy thread’ perfectly illustrates how many of the properties of space age ufology are new only in their interpretation as an extraterrestrial phenomenon.

To complete the circle, there was a fascinating UFO encounter on the night of 29 May 1984 – in the same location but a century later. Residents of a cottage commanding a fine view across the water saw an object over Laxey Bay. Two bright lights shone from the front as it arced slowly and silently above their rooftops and headed towards the peak of Snaefell, before curving back out to sea and disappearing. While directly overhead, the UFO was seen as a large disc with a flattened base and multiple lights on the rim, with vapour emerging from the rear. The location of this 20th-century encounter had earned its name through the rich lore that has been recorded at this spot in the past – it is called ‘Fairy Cottage’.

Many cases from the island report the contacts that took place between the Manx folk and ‘themselves’. There are undoubted parallels with any book about alien abductions.

The very term ‘fairy’ derives not from the name of a being, as such, but from the peculiar state of consciousness into which these entities were believed to place those contacted – a loss of awareness of space and time presumed to be the result of a magical enchantment. This is precisely what those reporting UFO close encounters and alien abductions describe today, usually quite unaware of this folkloric heritage.

In December 1896, again at Laxey, a man was walking past a row of terraced cottages when he heard a noise like the wind. It rose to a crescendo and something began to suck at him, pulling him up off his feet. He only remained rooted by hanging onto the wall until the sound subsided and the vortex of unseen energy was gone. The man developed an elaborate concept involving an attack by the hidden denizens of the island; today we might speculate about whirlwinds or extra terrestrial forces. Once more, these powerful vortices sucking people and cars from highways are a starting point for many modern alien abductions.

Another case just a couple of miles away at Glion Dhrink was in November 1898. A man walking home towards Lonan was singing to himself for company but took shelter in some bushes as a light rain began to fall. However, he found himself sucked into the undergrowth by a similar vortex of energy to the one described above. Having been pulled off his feet by this extraordinary wind, he later told how his lower limbs went “all queer like and the singing was all knocked out of me”. Certain that ‘themselves’ were nearby, he could sense but not see the forces that he believed to be responsible and was overcome by a powerful tiredness as all the energy was drained out of him.

The man awoke in a state of disorientation and confusion. At first, he thought he was at home in bed and must have dreamt the incident. Then he realised that he was some distance from where he had taken shelter and that it was several hours later than he recalled.

I have heard near-identical stories from modern day witnesses who have attributed such phenomena to alien, rather than fairy, intervention. The episode at Glion Dhrink may take us closer to the true heart of the abduction mystery than any contemporary UFO tale weighed down by the baggage of modern times, showing that what links them seems to be an encounter with some natural force – out of which our hopes, fears and cultural expectations combine to allow the witness to unwittingly manufacture something much more bizarre.

Mowing Devil

The north of the Isle of Man is only a short electric tram ride from Laxey and is riddled with reports of disappearances, ghosts, phantom black dogs and a fairy city. However, it is also the one place on the island where crop circles have put in an appearance. The ones around Sulby have been few in number and mundane in appearance – rough circular swathes of fl attened crop in the rich farmland known as the Curraghs. This I find refreshing, as the vast majority of the images we see elsewhere result from trickery by artists, farmers, pranksters and others with a vested interest in maintaining the phenomenon of geometric patterns in fields.

The Curraghs, however, have a history connected with these patterns that began long before the emergence of the modern phenomenon; you won’t be surprised to hear that Manx circles owe their origin to the hidden activities of ‘themselves’. In fact, the blame is given to one entity known as the fenoderee. Stories refer to this creature as a sort of fallen fairy exiled to wander amongst the human community as a kind of supernatural odd job man. Such tales date at least from the 17th century, possibly a little earlier. This is signifi cant as it ties in with the previously discovered folk tale of the ‘mowing devil’ which appears on a woodcut dated to the summer of 1678 and set in Hertfordshire, and is believed to be one of the fi rst historical records of a crop circle.

The adventures of the fenoderee describe him spending time in the cereal fields of the Curraghs (rare flatland on an otherwise hilly island), using his powers to mow fields – including two in one night near Bride. Other stories tell of fields being mowed and then later violently uprooted by some unseen force if the farmer wasn’t grateful – the blame naturally falling on the shoulders of the fenoderee.

Manx folklorist Walter Gill found that there were so many cases of mysteriously flattened crop fields that the fenoderee could have been an entire race of beings. He also discovered that the crops were usually found flattened overnight – a pattern repeated in modern cases. This description of how the seemingly invisible energy created these circular swathes across the Curraghs will bring a smile to the face of anyone who has studied modern circles: “The concentrated fury of his threshing resembled a whirlwind… He flung the grass to the morning star.”

Even more interesting is the case of an 18th-century Curraghs landowner concerned about the fenoderee mowing his crops unbidden. He began to mow them himself in circular swathes formed by a spiral path from the centre, enabling his workers to be constantly vigilant for an assault from any side – thus creating the now familiar crop circle pattern.

There is even a Manx folk song devoted to these old circles. Part of it goes: “The fenoderee went at dawn to the round field and lifted the dew from the meadow. The maiden’s hair and cow’s herb he trod them both beneath his feet. He stretched out his width across the ground and threw the grass towards the left.”

I have only had space to cover a few cases from this fascinating island, but they share a common theme – that an unseen energy exists which swirls crops like a whirlwind, tingles the skin, creates strange hums and glows, and induces altered states of consciousness with apparent loss of time and displacement through space.

We recognise these things today because they are integral parts of modern UFO research and we explain them with images of aliens bent on some covert scheme. Earlier, the Manx took the same phenomena and applied their own brand of supernatural ideology to them.

So who is right – the Manx with their otherworldly beings or today’s ufologists with their alien invaders? Or am I right to wonder whether the truth lies not in the solutions that we impose from our contemporary thinking but in the natural phenomena and unseen forces that weave their spells and trigger our desire to explain them?