Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Ian Jones
Release Date: 15/09/2020
Last Updated: 15/10/2020
Note: For reasons of anonymity pseudonyms have been used for some witnesses.
Introduction
Caspian is a 28-year-old male who has had a wide range of experiences, both paranormal and highly strange in nature, in this country and when he and his family emigrated to New Zealand in 2008. He has twice returned to England since then, and each time has had ongoing incidents. His family, particularly his mother (Anne) and younger sister (Grace), have also continued to experience incidents in New Zealand. He returned to England and lives in Chichester, a county town in West Sussex not far from the south coast. It’s about 20 miles from Portsmouth and 50 miles from Southampton.
He reports that: “I'm 28 years old, as of 9th November 2019; I was born in 1991. My little sister is 19 years old, and my little brother [Peter] is 17 years old.”
Regarding his health, Caspian says:
“Chronic fatigue and chest pain is the best way to sum up my health conditions, I've found – wherever it may be relevant, asthma would also be worth noting. The only medication I use are my blue [Ventolin] and purple [Seretide] inhalers (for asthma), antihistamine (for hay fever and animal and food allergies), lidocaine patches (my doctor and I are testing them on me to see if they help ease my chest condition a little) and an EpiPen [Jext] (for anaphylaxis reaction to nuts), which I keep for emergencies.”
“A chronic pain specialist I went to see for an assessment in February 2020 agrees that my CFS likely developed as a result of the strain that my chest condition put on my body back in late 2009-mid 2011; throughout that time my health was the worst it's ever been – I was bedridden almost 24/7 in constant pain, was barely able to move around for more than 30 seconds on most days, struggled to take care of myself without assistance, and had to spend much time in a darkened environment because of migraines. I don't recall experiencing CFS symptoms prior to September 2009 (just the sort of exhaustion or tiredness that's usual for many people).”
Over more than eighteen months we remained in contact via Skype and emails, which has amounted to several hours of discussion. Caspian has also provided me with copious documentation detailing his experiences, alongside drawings and photographs of the phenomena he has witnessed.
Lavant Experiences
In December 1994, when he was 3 years old, Caspian's family moved to Churchmead Close in Lavant, a small downland village in West Sussex, on the northern outskirts of Chichester, near to England's southeast coast.
Caspian spent most of the time that he was living there solely with his mother, as his birth-father had left the family home about eight or nine months prior to his first strange experience at that address; he reports that his mum has been experiencing paranormal phenomena herself since she was little (see Anne's Experiences).
At the time, Caspian and his mother were High Anglo-Catholic and Spiritualist in faith and attended both St. Mary's and St. Nicholas C. of E. Church and Sunday School, as well as regular choir practices.
The nearest of those two parishes to their house, St. Nicholas Church, is situated next to the A286 Chichester to Midhurst road. It was built mainly in the 12th and 13th centuries, but it is believed that an older church existed on the site in Saxon times. The church was restored considerably in the 19th century when the north aisle and south porch were added, and the nave lengthened. The chancel, built in the 13th century, was also altered significantly in the 19th and 20th centuries. There was further building work done in the 1980's, both internally and externally.
Caspian's house was a social housing, rented property behind St. Nicholas Church. There were several houses on their side of the Close, built next to land that is sanctified as the church's graveyard – its border was just behind the bottom of their back garden.
Caspian reports that their garden was also apparently part of the church's graveyard plot at one point, but their priest didn't know whether anyone had actually been buried specifically where their house was built. It would be difficult to determine this for certain, since there have been no burials on that site since the 1720's, and no grave markers remain on the land which now belongs to the Close.
As far as Caspian knows, there were no reports of unusual phenomena in the area prior to his experiences; I have likewise been unable to find references to anything paranormal relating to Lavant's churches, or anywhere nearby.
Shadow on the Stairs
Caspian's first paranormal experience happened when he was 4 years old, in either April or May of 1996, after he had been living in Lavant for about 18 months.
He recalls that it was a warm and sunny day, with blue sky visible outside their front door, which his mum had left slightly ajar. It was in the morning, before lunch, and Caspian reports that he was standing at the bottom of their stairs in the entrance hallway, opposite the doorway to the kitchen, when he saw a “disembodied shadow” cast against the wall there. This shadow appeared to move upwards, as though someone were walking silently up the stairs. It disappeared when it reached the landing, blending into the natural shadows there.
He describes the shadow as looking like it belonged to an adult male, about the same height as his mum (5ft 6 inches). He did not experience any other impressions from it – no sensory effects or emotional impact, other than confused curiosity at what he had seen!
Caspian went and told Anne, who was busy in the kitchen and therefore hadn't noticed anything. He thinks that because of her own, earlier paranormal experiences she categorised the thing as a ghost, which at that time she believed in.
Paranormal Activity
In the next few weeks following his initial experience, Caspian reports that – usually starting from about 16:30 to 17:30 and always before sunset, continuing into the evening and the early hours of the morning– the following phenomena began to occur in the house:
A. Paranormal “mist” – a “greyish-dark, obscuring, fuzzy effect” that would manifest in particular rooms, often filling them from floor to ceiling, but at times rising no higher than a few feet off the floor.
B. Pale, semi-transparent, jelly-like orbs, which would whizz across the living room and appear in the downstairs and upstairs hallways. They varied in size, from blueberry to golf ball, and larger. They appeared and disappeared into thin air, sometimes travelling in a straight line and at other times suddenly curving round; Anne recalls that they would “circle in loops” on occasion. Most of the time they were out of reach, but they occasionally came close enough to the observers that they would have been able to touch them. Caspian thinks that they disappeared before they met any solid surfaces, but Anne recalls that they seemed to “phase through” objects (e.g. chairs, walls) at times, passing through them as if they weren't even there.
C. Between one and three small, electric blue, green or red lights that zipped, weaved and bobbed in their back garden, living room, entrance hallway and upstairs landing hallway.
D. Flickering light bulbs.
E. Other electrical interferences that affected their TV, cassette tape player and Caspian's GameBoy.
F. Cold spots and strange smells (ozone and cigarette smoke), which manifested throughout much of the house. However, nothing paranormal seemed to occur in the downstairs kitchen, or in Anne's bedroom upstairs (with the exception of one possible instance; see The Coat Ghost Incidents later).
There were never any sounds associated with the mists/orbs. Sometimes those phenomena appeared in conjunction with the electrical interference effects, but not always.
Usually only Caspian and his mum were present to witness these phenomena, but neighbours and other family members visiting the house at the aforementioned times also noticed them. He thinks that it was his grandmother who commented that she felt the house had “something” in it, which made her feel uncomfortable.
One of their neighbours, when visiting, called out to Caspian and his mum from their living room while both of them were in the kitchen, to ask if they'd also seen the “bobbing blue lights” in their back garden. The sun was starting to set then.
Anne remembered other things they experienced at that address, including a ball of circling, coloured lights that Caspian once looked up and noticed outside his open bedroom door, floating along the upstairs landing away from it and towards her room.
On another occasion, when she was in the upstairs bathroom Anne saw the shadow of a medium-sized dog (she thinks it was about 18 inches tall) move across one of the walls and exit through the slightly open bathroom door onto the landing, where it disappeared.
Sometimes she heard what sounded like adult footsteps going up and down the stairs, even when she was standing right next to them, but there was never anyone visible there.
Anne also recalled the bizarre fact that they used to have clusters of butterflies that seemingly manifested out of nowhere while they were out of the house! They settled high on the walls upstairs, out of reach. Anne and Caspian used to look around to see if they were laying any eggs, but they could never find any. The butterflies would eventually flutter out of the house of their own accord when all of the windows and doors were opened for them. Caspian and his mum had no idea how the butterflies got into the house each time, as they'd make sure that all of its doors and windows were closed before they went out.
Author’s Note: This may be a natural event. Some butterflies (and moths) do sneak into houses, garages or sheds during late summer/early autumn, when it is still warm outside and our houses appear to provide suitably cool, sheltered conditions. They become dormant and cling to the upper walls. If the house becomes too warm for them, usually through the heating being on in the winter, they awaken and fly around. In the spring they naturally become active with the increase in outside temperature and try to fly away. I have had this experience in my garage and was puzzled by it too.
Additionally, Anne recalls that one Christmas Eve they were sitting in their living room when it felt to them as though the building shook, and pictures which had been mounted on the walls either fell off them or tilted sideways. Their next-door neighbour had also felt the shaking at the time, but neighbours further away hadn't. That neighbour had mentioned to Caspian's mum before that strange things happened in her house as well, such as knocking sounds and door handles moving seemingly of their own accord.
Caspian says that he wasn't scared by these phenomena, but rather just accepted them since “a fear of the otherworldly had never been instilled in me, just a respect and acknowledgement of its existence and presence.”
When he was older, Caspian and his mum talked about these events and concurred in their thoughts that the various phenomena were different manifestations of the same thing. Their supposition was that “spirits” would somehow arrive in their back garden each evening, because they thought that there might have been a spirit path leading from the graveyard behind their house, through the back garden, into the living room, through the hallway and up the stairs to Caspian's bedroom door.
Author’s Note: The electrical interference effects are not unusual in cases where people report strange phenomena happening, but without having a comprehensive history of the house, it’s surroundings and underground status, it is not possible to try and explain these events, or why the “spirits” would travel along such an odd path, which would seem to lead nowhere of any significance. There were/are no power lines near to the house which could have caused any of these strange events.
In August 2020, Caspian’s mum wrote about these phenomena:
“These things did seem to happen quite regularly. Caspian had told me that he had seen coloured lights in his bedroom and outside in the upstairs hallway. I think he associated them with the ‘coat ghost’, that he had seen on a number of occasions. I also saw these coloured lights one time as I came out of my bedroom and saw them dancing in a circular pattern about a metre above the ground outside of Caspian’s bedroom door.
I do remember the mists in the house and there would be times when a drop in temperature occurred at the same time and it felt cold enough to make me shiver. Another strange thing also happened twice on New Year’s Eve. Between 11 pm and midnight both times, I felt a wind blow through the house from the hallway downstairs to the living room. As it blew through the hallway, the pictures I had on the wall opposite the stairs would shake and sway.”
Pyramidal UFOs
When he was 5–6 years old, Caspian reports that he had no fear of the dark. He often used to look out of his bedroom window at night, observing the moon, stars and occasional aircraft flying over the area, as well as looking at the roofs of houses nearby in the Close.
Caspian’s mum wrote in August 2020:
“I do know that he liked to look out of the little window in his bedroom at night, as he loved to see the moon and the stars."
On one occasion Caspian saw an orange light drifting over the countryside to the left of the Close, from the direction of Goodwood. He reports that as it came closer, he became able to tell that its shape was not that of the normal aircraft he was used to seeing. He thought that it might be a hot air balloon, though it looked more like a pyramid, and no basket was visible hanging down underneath it.
It had lines of a slightly darker colour across each side of its body section, as though it was tiered, with a softly fluorescent orange, glowing, dome-shaped ‘cap’ on top. It drifted smoothly and slowly over Lavant in a manner that Caspian thought similar to the way "an air hockey puck glides across a low-friction table, absent the speed".
It remained visible behind and above the roofs opposite their house until it disappeared behind a number of trees to his right, in the direction of Chichester.
Then, another similar object which was blue in colour drifted up from behind one of the roofs of the houses opposite his own and followed the same trajectory as the initial, orange-coloured shape, but at a different angle.
This allowed him to see that the base was triangular in shape – therefore, he says that the objects were tetrahedrons (triangular pyramids).
The tetrahedrons had a taller body than the width of their base, with a “cap” on top which was smooth and curved like a dome, and lighter in colour than the main body and base of the objects. Their colours were about as intense as dull neon signs: not uncomfortable to look at, and not too bright. There was no flickering effect; the illumination was at a constant level.
The objects moved slower than conventional aircraft. Caspian says that “whoever was flying them was going at a relaxed pace”! Their casual drift across the sky was part of what influenced his thought that they were some form of hot air balloon. If they had been in a car driving underneath them and trying to match their speed, he thinks that they would have been rolling forward at under 10mph.
Just before the blue one disappeared behind the same cluster of trees, three small, white lights in a triangular formation flashed/blinked briefly in and out of view. One was above the blue shape, and the other two were at either side of its base. He could not tell if they were separate from the blue object, or part of it.
Below is a map showing the estimated paths of the orange and blue UFOs with a purple line indicating the house. The green line relates to another UFO discussed in the Craft Abductions section. Caspian cautions that “the curve of the orange line may go out a bit too far, and I've also assumed that the abduction craft flew in a straight line toward the Close each night”.
He saw nothing else of interest after the blue object went out of sight, but stayed up to see if either of the pyramids would return until he became too tired to remain standing at his window, and went to bed. Clearly, he was not disturbed by what he saw.
Author’s Note: The description of the orange and blue objects as being triangular pyramids/tetrahedrons is unusual. I have come across only one other case where this description is used, which is referred to in a book – Intersect, by Marian Rudnyk. He took a photo of what he describes as a “new” never-before-seen (to the best of my knowledge) UFO: an incredible looking pyramidal tetrahedron”, which was appearing and hovering regularly over his house in southern California, on 28th February 2019. That’s about 22 years after Caspian saw his objects.
Strange “Dream”
Caspian estimates that it was two and a half weeks after that UFO sighting, probably in early summer, that he had a strange “dream”.
He had been in bed asleep, but got up in the early hours of the morning and decided that he wanted to go for a walk. He was wearing pyjamas and was barefoot. He crept downstairs and found that the front door was unlocked, so he went outside and walked down to the path at the back of Churchmead Close, on Warble Heath Close. This leads to a bridge tunnel under the A286.
He had always felt afraid of this tunnel without knowing why, so he had never walked under it alone before (nor would he do so, even after this); that night however, he walked under it with no qualms, continuing down Centurion Lane.
Caspian explains: “The path leading up to it is Warble Heath Close, directly behind Churchmead Close. The walk down Centurion Way is very peaceful and pretty, but the bridge itself has always made me feel uneasy; something about it just never 'felt right' to me, as though there was something invisible there.”
Centurion Way is part of the South Downs National Park. It is a 5.5-mile (9km) gravel and tarmac path, with flat, wide paths and minor slopes, that runs between Chichester, Lavant and West Dean. It follows the dismantled Chichester to Midhurst Railway, which closed in 1991; the last of the tracks were removed in 1993. The name “Centurion Way” was suggested by a local schoolboy because the path crosses the course of an ancient Roman road.
Caspian says that he felt like he was wide awake as he continued down Centurion Lane, into an open area adjacent to Hunters Race. There are metal sculptures of diggers visible beside the path there, which he stood and looked at in the moonlight before turning to walk back home.
However, at this point he reports that it was like he suddenly “woke up” (like snapping out of a trance) and realised where he was and what he had done in leaving the house and walking so far away without asking his mother first! He became terrified and called out for her as he stumbled back up Centurion Way, now very distressed. He felt like he was being watched, but looking behind him he couldn't see anyone.
Realising that she was probably still in bed, Caspian stopped shouting for his mum, but felt even more strongly that he was being watched. This time, when he turned round, he saw two very tall, slim beings standing down the path behind him, like elongated humans in shape but made of dusky, pale, white light. For some reason he felt comforted and calm upon seeing them, and these beings followed him as he walked the rest of the way home. As he approached the bridge tunnel, they went ahead of him and stood at either side of it. One of them nodded gently at him, raising a hand in a farewell action, then both entities seemed to fade out of sight.
He noticed that it was sunrise and continued to his house, now not feeling afraid at all. He entered through their front door (which he had left partly open), went upstairs to his room, climbed into bed and went back to sleep.
When he got out of bed later that morning, he noticed that the soles of his feet were a bit dirty, but there were no footprints on the stairs carpet leading from the front door. On telling his mother all this, she checked the front door and found it locked, and agreed that it was probably a dream.
The total distance he would have walked is probably over three-quarters of a mile; he thinks it would have taken at least 32 minutes to walk there and back (16 minutes each way). Caspian reports that he was not prone to sleepwalking.
In August 2020, Caspian’s mum wrote:
“He did tell me about the time when he left the house at night and went for a walk down Centurion Way. I was horrified by this as it was such a dangerous thing to do in the middle of the night. I had to put it down to sleepwalking (his father had done this on occasion) and from then on I was extra vigilant to listen out for him at night and to check in on him so that it wouldn’t happen again.”
Anne reports remembering Caspian waking her up one night when he was 6 years old, insisting that he'd just heard a train rumbling past outside; of course, this was not possible, because the local railway line had been decommissioned in the same year that he was born.
The Coat Ghost Incidents
Caspian isn't sure whether the encounters he had with what he dubbed the “coat ghost” were nightmares or waking experiences, but to this day he has retained some apprehension about clothing that is hung up on hooks on the back of doors.
His first experience involving that entity began when he woke up one night and noticed that the bottom and sleeves of his dressing gown were moving slightly, as though caught in a draft of air. His dressing gown then unhooked itself from his bedroom door and levitated towards him across the room, its arms swinging back and forth as if it were being worn by something invisible! On reaching the side of his bed it leaned over him, which frightened him.
His response was to roll over, hide under the duvet, squeeze his eyes shut, try to mask his breathing and will himself back to sleep – but Caspian admits that when he thinks about this now, it doesn't seem to make much sense that he could get back to sleep under those circumstances. The same thing happened three times over the course of a couple of weeks. He can't remember anything else happening on those nights.
After those repeated instances, one night he woke up to see it already standing by the side of his bed. Upon seeing that Caspian was awake, the entity moved away towards his bedroom door. This then opened of its own accord, and the entity went out onto the landing hallway, gliding towards his mother's bedroom. Caspian felt that he had to follow it, so he did so. Looking back on his willingness to do so now, he reflects, “Though I ascribe that to a combination of bravery and feeling worried about mum (since it was headed in the direction of her room), the fact that I got up and followed it still doesn't make much sense – what child follows the monster under their bed when they see it crawl out and leave their room?!”
He went through his mum's open bedroom door and saw his dressing gown sitting on the end of her bed; Anne was fast asleep. It gestured to him with one of its arms to sit beside it, which he did. He then heard the entity talk to him out loud, saying that he should look after his mother because she loved him very much! The voice sounded male and was husky, but not old, and not one he recognised. It spoke quietly, but not in a whisper. Caspian says that the way it spoke sounded like the way a parent would say, “Watch over my little one, keep them safe.”
His dressing gown then collapsed slowly, and Caspian took it back to his bedroom, dropping it on the floor beside his bed before climbing back under his duvet and falling asleep – again, it's interesting that it was so easy for him to do that.
He says now that he thought if he left the dressing gown lying on the floor, it would lose its ability to be possessed again, because his child's reasoning reckoned it had to be hung up on his bedroom door for the "ghost" to be able to wear it.
Caspian told his mum about what had happened the morning after. He reports that Anne said she thought it was just a strange nightmare – he thinks she was trying to prevent him from being afraid if she gave any indication that she thought the entity was real, and that what he'd remembered from the night before had actually happened.
She was mystified however about what it had meant when it told him to look after her; Caspian says that his mum has always had bad health in some way, but he doesn't know what specific problem/s she might have been having at the time.
Anne got rid of Caspian's first dressing gown after that night because he was still scared of it (in fact, he wouldn't let her hang anything on the back of his bedroom door for years afterwards). She bought him a new dressing gown a couple of weeks later because she wanted to ensure that he was warmer at night than he would have been if he'd only worn pyjamas out of fear, but Caspian only wore his new dressing gown when he was around her.
Since then Caspian has not encountered that entity again, nor has it featured in any other nightmares which he's had over the years.
Author’s Note: Caspian does seem to have been affected for a long time because of these “nightmares”, which is unusual. Even nightmares are usually forgotten within a few days, or weeks at most. They do not continue to cause such apprehension as Caspian reports over 20 years later.
Initial Doppelgänger Appearance
Before moving on to a job with the Wiley publishing company, where she would meet Caspian's soon-to-be stepdad Damian, Anne had worked at the Body Shop headquarters in Chichester.
One day, she called in sick – however, later in that same day she received a call from work because she had been seen there! Apparently a doppelgänger had turned up – in a skirt-dress that from their description Anne didn't actually own – ignored all of her work colleagues, took some of that morning's mail or documents and disappeared while ascending the stairwell.
People on the ground floor saw it go up the stairs, but nobody upstairs saw it arrive there. The staff at the Body Shop HQ were unsettled and deeply alarmed when Anne insisted that she hadn't come in earlier. She was also shocked and alarmed at the thought of someone impersonating her!
This incident happened at around the same time as Caspian saw the disembodied shadow on the stairs at home.
In August 2020, Caspian’s mum wrote:
“I tried to tell them that they must have been mistaken; that I had been at home that day and was only wearing jeans, not a suit. However, they said that at least 15 people had seen me that morning and that I must have changed my mind and come into work instead. After all, how could 15 people be wrong?”
MIB Encounter
Between 1995 and 1998 Caspian attended the now-closed St. Margaret's Catholic Primary School in Midhurst, which was attached to a convent of the Sisters of Mercy.
One afternoon, a man was seen getting out of a black van and pacing back and forth on the pavement outside of the front gate to the school for about an hour. The nuns went out to talk to him, and he initially went back to his van until Caspian's class came out and crossed the road, to take a class in one of the buildings on the other side.
As they were doing so, this same man and another who was similarly dressed got out of the front of the van and stared at Caspian intently. Then the first man made a beeline for Caspian when he was half-way across the road! Sister Joseph-Claire stood in his way and warned him that the school would call the police if he didn't leave immediately. At that, the two men silently got back into their van and drove away. Caspian was ushered away and told not to look at them. He recalls that the man who tried to reach him had a very penetrating, intense gaze, and an almost angry expression on his face.
Caspian reports that both males were white skinned, with no facial hair, but were not identical individuals. They were each dressed in a dark grey, mid-length coat and outfit, with a black fedora on their heads. He told his mum about what had happened, and his aunt also said that she had heard about the first man being there outside the school gate earlier in that day. Anne recalls that the school was even more security conscious afterwards, requiring parents to visibly pick up their children rather than allowing them to leave the premises alone and walk to a nearby parking spot.
In August 2020, Caspian’s mum wrote:
“That was a shocking incident and I was very shaken by it. I don’t remember the school saying much about it to me, I heard more information from Caspian and his aunt than from the staff. I couldn’t understand why these men would be targeting my son in particular. Knowing that they tried to kidnap my son was awful – the realisation that if they had succeeded I might never have seen him again. Obviously my big concern then was that if they had tried once, they might do so again. However, as far as I am aware they never returned to the school and certainly never came to our home.”
Craft Abductions
Caspian thinks that it was sometime during 1998, when he was 6 or 7 years old, that he started having night-time abductions. They lasted for about a year or two, until 1999-2000.
At first, over the course of about a year, a few times a month, he saw silvery beams appear at his bedroom window at night-time. They would rapidly fade away just as he was waking up, or before he could reach his window, as though they were being "switched off". He would look outside to see if the moon was their source, but it would either be in the wrong position in the sky to have cast the beams, or it would not be visible at all.
Then, one night he saw a UFO drifting to a stop above the close, having come from the direction of Chichester. It looked like a softly glowing orange square/diamond, with a green light on its underside at each corner (This was definitely not the same shape as the blue and orange tetrahedron-shaped UFOs he'd seen previously). On some nights it had a white luminous appearance, though its four green lights were always visible; on clear nights they appeared to “wobble”, like gas rings on a cooker top, while on overcast nights he could simply see the image of the craft glowing through the cloud cover.
It shone down the same silvery beam that he had been seeing from underneath it, either from the front or the middle of the craft, all the way to his bedroom floor (he doesn't recall if he ever saw it shine down onto the ground). The beam seemed to be a cluster of straight-edged rays, reminiscent of –but more solid or thicker than– dusky moonlight.
When the beam was at his window, it illuminated his room like moonlight would. Looking at, or directly into the beam wasn't blinding, but his eyes did become dry if he stared into it for too long. When he closed his eyes there were no after-images as you would have from looking at a bright light, or from staring at the sun; he could just see the silvery colour faintly through his eyelids.
He saw the same UFO every few nights, or at least once a fortnight. He reports that if he fell asleep before it arrived, sometimes he woke up –or was woken up, potentially– just in time to watch it coming to a stop in the sky where he could see it, where it would hover until he was ready to go back to sleep. He felt that its pilots knew when he was awake or asleep, or at his window, and that they were watching over him.
He reports that he looked forward to its appearance, and that he felt happy each time he saw it; he always felt a sense of peace and safety wash over him whenever it shone down its beam onto his body.
Caspian reports that assuming it flew in a relative straight line each time it may have come from the direction of the South Downs National Park on some nights, while on other nights it may have flown over from the Goodwood Aerodrome and Tangmere, possibly from the direction of Littlehampton or Rustington. Alternatively, it could have flown over from Selsey or Pagham up through Chichester (refer to the map above, showing the possible paths he mentions).
Initially, Caspian thought that the UFO was some sort of plane. He cannot remember when he was first taken on board the craft, or how he was moved there from his bedroom, but one of the occupants –a blonde woman– told him that it was in fact a spaceship. He felt awed and excited about that.
He remembers that the interior of the craft was clean, plain, smooth and very light grey, without any sharp edges: all of the architecture was curved. He describes it as being reminiscent of the casing on some Apple products. There were long, thin amber light fittings in the walls of the corridors and the two circular rooms that he was allowed to visit, though they didn't seem to illuminate the craft: he thinks that the wall, floor and ceiling surfaces did so. These were all the same material, like a single-piece construction rather than a modular one – there were no seams anywhere.
The air was fresh, and Caspian's bad asthma was not triggered at all, even though at that time he was effectively living off a nebuliser. He does not remember if he smelt anything. Voices did not echo, and it was quiet on the craft. He added that it never felt like they passed through any turbulence – there was no vibration through the floor and walls, or any sense of acceleration or deceleration.
Later he discovered that there were between one and four other children on the craft with him each time. The children were not given a tour of the ship beyond the corridors and rooms that they were always guided along and into. No-one explained to them how the craft worked. He doesn't know whether they left Earth's atmosphere at any time while they were on board; if they did, they weren't aware of it. Caspian thinks that they were probably on board for a few hours each time.
There were always two women in the craft with them, both of which he estimates to have been about 5ft to 6ft in height. Both women wore a white suit of some sort, but he does not recall whether they had any footwear on. He describes these women as follows:
“One had light blonde hair, and a gentle, fair, ethereal appearance. Her skin colour most resembled that of a Caucasian. She had a soft smile and voice, loving eyes full of care and life, and was incredibly empathetic and kind.
She could also be firm and strict however, in a motherly way. She spoke using her mouth, not just using telepathy. When she wrote, she used a strange set of symbols rather than English letters.”
These symbols were similar to ones which Caspian says he saw a few times later in his life, in other experiences.
Author’s Note: I have searched for other examples of alien symbols, but these do not match any of them. Indeed, there does not seem to be any similarity between symbols from different cases, so that is not helpful.
The other woman had eyes like a barn owl, dark hair that terminated just under her cheeks and above her chin, a large forehead, and amphibian-like skin that was somewhat like jellyfish flesh in colouration, without being see-through. Caspian didn't feel afraid of her at all; he was simply fascinated by her appearance. He doesn't remember her showing any expressions of emotion to them, but she didn't feel cold or act unkindly, either. He thought that both women were wonderful, since they took such gentle care of them and seemed to appreciate them so much.
The woman with the owl eyes seemed to be there to assist the blonde woman, and they appeared to communicate with each other using telepathy that was only between themselves, so Caspian and the other children could not hear them.
Caspian did not recognise any of the other children which were always on board the craft with him. As far as he is aware, he has not met any of them at any other time in his life. Two of them, a boy and a girl, each had pale skin and ginger hair, and looked like they were twins or siblings; they never spoke or interacted with Caspian. One of the other boys had dark hair and did interact with him. The fourth child sometimes interacted with Caspian and the dark-haired boy in group playtime, during which they could use toy-like objects that the two women gave to them.
However, Caspian reports that most often they were separated and led by the blonde woman into a circular room at the end of one of the corridors to interact with one of the objects by themselves, with only her present.
The objects that they were given were like toys of geometric shapes and vehicles –somewhat like trucks and trains– all made of a semi-transparent, seamless material, similar in colour and appearance to the craft itself. They could be configured in many ways, and the test the blonde woman asked Caspian to perform with them was to try and intuitively feel the different ways to open, lift, or manipulate parts of the objects. He wasn't allowed to use trial and error play using his hands, as most children would do, but instead had to use his mind to receive impressions and images of what could be done with them.
This included simple motions, like raising wheels from a vertical to a horizontal orientation. Other ways of articulating the objects were bizarre and outside of anything discoverable through normal play, to the point that they would completely change the shape of the object (like a Transformer morphing into a car, but much more complex).
After the test was finished, they could either take the toys back to the main room to play with them until they were delivered back home, or the blonde woman would converse with them one-on-one, or in their respective groups. Sometimes they were given a lesson on a white screen in the main room, with the two women present. Caspian says it was like sitting down for a primary school lesson. He can remember that their symbols and numerous moving scenes were displayed on the screen, but not what the scenes were. He doesn't think that the lessons were anything complicated – just basic education in whatever things the women deemed important for the children to know.
Another of the tests that they were given involved other objects, such as cubes, which were made of the same material as the toys; however, in these cases Caspian often felt like there was something inside of them. It was as if the cube were a box or container that he couldn't see into. Two of the other children (not the twins/siblings) were also given these objects. They were encouraged to hold out their hand/s over the objects, or to stretch their palm/s facing towards them, or to just be near them if they wished. They had to see what they could feel from the objects: thoughts, emotions, or other details such as their age.
Sometimes he could feel nothing from the objects, but the children were still encouraged with smiles and words of approval and affirmation for having tried.
Caspian reports that he was able to “feel” nature and living things, as though even flowing water and stones were conscious or alive in their own way. He thinks that he could discern and understand the thoughts and feelings of animals and plants. This interested the blonde woman greatly.
Another test was trying to feel what the blonde woman was thinking by holding either one, or both of her hands. Caspian says that he was not good at this, and that any success he had was likely a result of luck rather than telepathy. However, he was told that he was the second-most adept of the group in the other two tests they were given. The dark-haired boy was the most talented out of them all, in all three of the tests.
He does not recall being subjected to any other tests or medical examinations while on board the craft. The two women seemed to be able to “read” all that they needed to from the children telepathically, and the blonde woman was aware of what they were thinking and how they were always feeling. She would correct Caspian and the other children if they didn't tell the truth about how they were feeling exactly, honestly and fully.
Describing how it felt when his thoughts were being “read” telepathically by the women, Caspian says “it was like cool water washing through/expanding across your forehead, filling your mind in a way that's soothing; sometimes it felt like it was ‘trickling down’ into my mind through the top of my head.
When we're around other people on a mundane, everyday basis, we feel like our thoughts are internalised to ourselves: private, contained within the ‘wall’ of our skull that no-one else can penetrate; but with them there was no wall. Conversation flowed freely between our minds like voices travel through air, and we could hear each other as we thought things, in whatever tone and style we ascribed to our mental voice. On my end that was awkward, because the blonde woman seemed to able to come up with what she wanted to say fluidly and flawlessly, translating it to spoken sound instantaneously, while I stumbled through multiple ways of potentially putting together sentences in my mind before deciding on the one I wanted to ‘submit’ as what I wanted to say!
She thought that was humorous and cute, but she would advise or correct me if she saw my mind trying to avoid admitting what I really thought, or felt, by masking it through the words I would have chosen to say out loud.
Later abductions involving telepathic communication with other entities felt invasive simply because when telepathic communication stops being so regular that you aren't used to it anymore and you've fallen back into living in that illusion of mind-spaces being individual and self-contained, you feel violated when you suddenly find another entity sharing your mind-space and reading your thoughts and feelings like a book – faster than you've decided on what they are, or that you're aware of them being. It doesn't feel like someone's pushing in or pulling out – more that the ‘wall’ disappears, and everything's just open-air space between minds. You remember what it's like to engage in that mode of communication and stop worrying about awkwardness after a minute or so, and return to that state where you accept as an unavoidable ‘fact of life’ that no thoughts or feelings are ever private unless you know how to make them so (it's a psychologically and emotionally uncomfortable feeling when someone tries to read things you don't want them to be able to)
I've barely ever been able to read anything from human minds, but the ufonauts' minds are easier to communicate with when they open that channel for you (rather than you opening it on your end, which I think is part of what the blonde woman was encouraging us to try and do when we held her hands: she wanted us to transition from needing the comfort of additional verbal communication to talking purely using our minds, and being able to open that channel for ourselves without help). At times, though, it's not easy to ‘hear’ what they're mentally saying; it's like their words are fighting through the static reception filter of a sort of mental fog. Sometimes it's accompanied by a tingling sensation in your forehead, or a thick pressure on your head, and you can only pick up on bits and pieces of words, like a conversation over a radio signal that's breaking up.”
I asked Caspian about how he got back to his bed after these abductions, but he didn't know. He would just wake up either under, or on top of, his duvet the next morning, with no recollection of what had happened between being on board the UFO and waking up in his room; similarly, he doesn't remember how he got taken into the craft from his bedroom.
Caspian thinks these abduction experiences ended sometime when he was 8 years old, in either 1999 or 2000; it was certainly before his little sister was born (in March 2000). His recollection of them gradually faded from his memory, a state which continued for over a decade, but he retained vivid memories of the previous experiences he had in Lavant.
Author’s Note: Amnesia following abduction is commonly reported, but the extent to which an individual is affected varies enormously. Most abduction reports come from adults and only a few people can remember everything that happened to them. Many can recall little, or nothing and can only wonder about the missing time they are aware of. It is unusual for memories to fade as Caspian describes. He does not report having dreams about the abductions during this 10 year period as some abductees have done. However, he was still young at the time, so his relative mental immaturity might be a contributing factor.
Snowy Owl Sighting
When he was 8 years old, Caspian was out with his aunt on the sports playing area by the River Lavant, off Churchmead Close, with some other local children at about 7.30 pm. They noticed a snowy owl pass silently overhead. They didn't report this sighting to anyone.
While Caspian acknowledges that it was probably out of its natural habitat area, he has always loved owls – especially snowy owls– so he was certain that he had identified it correctly. He even had a hot water bottle cover in the shape of one, which he endearingly called “Snowy”.
Anne's Views
Caspian has been discussing his recollection of these incidents with his mother since the beginning of January 2019. While Anne initially confirmed distinctly remembering 90% of the incidents referred to above, she feels that her mind is gradually blocking certain things out over time; as such, she no longer (as of June 2020) remembers Caspian mentioning anything to do with his abductions at the time they were occurring. At first however, she had stated that she recalled him at least telling her about what the place he was taken to during his abductions looked like.
Her view is that she thought those experiences so potentially alarming in their nature and implication, and so strange, that she had to conclude that they were only dreams. She felt the alternative was hard to contemplate, when you hear your young son talking about being taken outside of your knowledge and control –with other children– to a place you can't reach, to interact with bizarre strangers.
She now believes that all such experiences are inter-dimensional and demonic in nature.
Chichester Experiences
Orbs Return
The family – Caspian, his mum Anne and his new stepdad Damian, along with his younger sister Grace – moved to a new address in 2000, at Bognor Road on the A259, a few miles (five minutes' drive) from their previous residence in Churchmead Close. Anne had recently married Damian, who had grown up in nearby Portsmouth and experienced paranormal events almost all his life, similar to those which both she and Caspian had experienced.
Caspian reports that they had hoped all the strange events which they'd experienced in Lavant would be left behind there, but this was not the case – they seemingly followed them and manifested in their next house, along with some new occurrences.
At the time, Caspian didn't realise that the sorts of things he had experienced weren't normal occurrences for other people. When he told his teachers and classmates at his primary school about it, they gave him nicknames like “Casper” and “Ghost Boy”. He was also bullied when he went to secondary school, so he learned to keep his mouth shut and never discuss such happenings with anyone else, besides his mum.
One night Caspian and his mum both kept noticing that an orb appeared and disappeared repeatedly in front of the door to their new dining room (mostly in the same spot, but at least once zipping across in front of the door), which they had closed while they were in the room watching TV. After they opened the door, they saw the orb one more time in the hallway outside the dining room, passing in front of the living room door and fading out of sight as they were about to go upstairs to bed.
The orbs were regularly seen by Caspian after he'd got home from school, from about 4.30 – 5.30 pm, but Anne was at home earlier and said that they appeared at around 2.30 pm. They usually showed up in the dining room at dinner time, or when they were in the living room watching shows on their larger, main household TV, but could also appear in the entrance hallway or on the stairs. Anne and Caspian both decided that the nearest thing they could think of to compare the colour of the orbs with is a plasma ball.
A plasma ball is a sealed glass globe containing an inert gas inside. The gas most used is neon, sometimes combined with other inert gases such as argon, xenon, and krypton. The gas inside the globe is typically at a pressure close to atmospheric pressure. This gas is highly energized, using electricity, which causes it to become a plasma state. This plasma appears to us as a colourful display of filaments moving around inside the glass globe.
The light emitted by the highly energized gas depends on the type of gas used. The type of filaments created, whether more lightning-like, or fuzzy streamer-like, also depend on the type of gas used. The high voltage causes the gas to break down and conduct electricity, and the high frequency enables the current (flow of electrons) to pass through the glass and into the surrounding air.
The electrons, which carry a negative charge, are attracted to the earth, which has a neutral charge. If you touch the globe with your hand, you are creating an easier pathway for the electrons to travel, which is why the filaments move to the location of your hand, as this provides an easier path for the electrons to reach the earth (by passing through your body).
Caspian says that they were not able to touch the orbs at all. This experience carried on for a couple of years after they moved there.
His aunt also used to say that there was always a strong smell of rotten eggs everywhere in the house, but particularly in the kitchen, downstairs bathroom and toilet. However, no-one else besides her could smell it.
Pig in the Bathroom Wall
Another odd occurrence which was experienced at the house was when Caspian entered the downstairs bathroom (which was adjacent to the garden) and saw the hindquarters of a pig protruding through the wall! He called for his mum to come see it, and when she entered the bathroom they watched as the pig proceeded to walk forward, passing through the wall as if it wasn't there. They went outside to see if the pig was now in their garden, but it had completely disappeared.
Some years later they discovered that the land their house was built on had previously been the site of a sizeable pig farm.
Girl in a Red Dress
In 2002, when Grace was 2 years old, she first began to mention (what the family initially took to be) an imaginary companion called Emily, who she talked to and played with in her bedroom at night after she had been tucked into bed. From Grace's description she was an older girl, about six or seven years of age, who had blonde hair and wore a red dress.
Emily treated Grace kindly, talked to her sweetly and would jump up onto her cot bed. At first Grace only saw her at night, and often Caspian's mum and stepdad would be woken up by laughter coming from Grace's bedroom; Caspian says that it could last for about half an hour. Damian would hear the distinct sounds of two girls laughing and go into her bedroom, but find only Grace there, laughing loudly. That spooked him.
When there was no-one in the room, things like toys, pictures, etc. would move. It got to the point that Emily would tell Grace that she was going to do something, and they would come back to the house to find that it had happened.
On one occasion, Anne and Caspian came home when there should have been no-one else in the house, but they heard a noise upstairs and called up “Hello?” They heard a little girl's voice respond, “Hello!” They thought it sounded like Grace, but when they went upstairs there was no-one there.
In August Caspian’s mum wrote:
“Yes, she did have an imaginary friend there. It was a little ‘Victorian’ girl in a red dress. I realised that she wasn’t so imaginary when Caspian also saw her sitting on the stairs. The house itself was Victorian in age. Unfortunately I have no way of knowing whether any phenomena was experienced in the property before we moved there. I had lived in old houses before and as I had experienced ‘haunting’ activity both in places I had lived and had visited ever since I was a child, I had come to regard this as being relatively ‘normal’.”
Author’s Note: It is interesting that the house was Victorian and the imaginary friend was also thought to be from the same time period.
They invited their parish priest, David Parker, in to bless every room in the house with holy water, but it had no effect. There were some gaps of up to a month when Emily didn't appear, but the girl nevertheless stayed in Grace's life, playing with her for the remainder of the nearly nine years that Caspian's family were living on Bognor Road.
Crystal Pendulum Incident
Caspian reports that they used to have a family friend, called Brian, who was a shaman. He gave Anne a crystal pendulum (fashioned in a teardrop shape, attached to a chain) and said that she should try to use it: they should ask it Yes/No type questions, and it was supposed to spin round one way for “Yes”, the other way for “No”.
They did so a few times, but nothing happened, until one evening when Anne's hand wasn't moving at all but the pendulum started spinning in a circle violently, then flew out of her hand across the room. Caspian thinks that they were asking it questions about the little girl Grace kept seeing.
They decided not to use it again for a number of years after that, bringing it out only once more in 2008 to see if it could provide them with answers about certain dreams Caspian had been having (see Canadian Woman section). It didn't yield any useful information, with its only apparent answers being contradictory at best; sometimes it wouldn't even move at all. Anne ultimately put it away for good after her faith changed in 2010.
Black Triangles and Humanoid Interaction
Caspian thinks that he was 10 years old when he had his first UFO experience while living on Bognor Road, and that it was probably sometime during August of 2002. While Caspian recalls it having been around 2.30 am when the events occurred, his mum says it was earlier, at 1.15 am.
Caspian woke up early in the morning and noticed silvery beams shining through his bedroom window blinds. At this time he did not recall his earlier abduction experiences in Lavant at all, so he looked outside to see if the moon was especially large or bright that night; instead, he was met with the sight of a monstrous black triangle hovering above the Blackberry Lane allotments behind their house, with two other objects of the same appearance at different heights above and behind it! The triangles had a single, circular red light at each corner, and three or four rows of rectangular lights between the red ones. He thought that he was seeing military aircraft from the nearby RAF Tangmere station, which his great-grandfather (a former RAF mechanic) had told him about – he wasn't aware at the time that it’s runways had been closed since 1970.
He opened his bedroom window and could hear a very faint electrical hum, exactly like standing next to an electrical sub-station. There was no breeze, but the branches of the trees which were under the large object were moving as if buffeted by a sort of gentle wind. There were no other noises at all: no cars, animals or birds. There was no discernible smell coming from the craft. Caspian estimates that the lowest triangle was slightly larger than a twelve-seater passenger plane, or about two-thirds of the length of a football field.
All three triangles just hovered there, but he says they set him on edge – they felt malevolent, and very unsettling.
As he watched the lowest object, a cluster of about five red, self-contained beams (i.e. not spreading out like a torch beam) shone down from the middle of it to the ground. The beams pierced the darkness rather than illuminating it, in a similar manner to the lights on the underside of the craft which were not casting light on anything besides themselves. At the bottom of the beams appeared three figures in what looked like gas masks, adorned with shoulder pads and weird armoured suits, all crimson-red coloured – the same colour as the beams were. They were deployed in a triangle formation: Two were positioned behind, and one was standing in front.
The nearest figure to Caspian raised its head and looked directly at him, then all three of them turned in unison and went towards the allotment gates.
Caspian says that though he doesn't know why he was so eager, he wanted to meet the pilots, so he hurried out of his bedroom as quietly as he could and went downstairs. He says that the weird, misty obscuring effect which they often saw in the house was present in the hallway and the dining room, outside of the living room doors and into the kitchen; however, since this would usually manifest whenever any paranormal stuff was happening in the house itself, it didn't seem that unusual to him.
Finding the back door unlocked, he went outside hoping to catch up with the three pilots, only to find that they were already standing in his back garden! One of them was three-quarters of the way down the garden by one of his stepfather's flower beds, holding a spade and a wooden box with silver-coloured engravings on it, as in the drawings below:
Another of the armoured figures was on the path by the stone wall at the end of their garden, holding a long, smooth, crimson gun-shaped object which Caspian describes as having been like a shotgun without any trigger, loading or grooves. He seemed to be standing guard there, looking back and forth between the garden and Blackberry Lane.
The third man, which Caspian thinks was the one who had looked directly up at him before, was standing by their garden path in front of him holding another of the strange, weapon-like objects. Caspian says he felt a bit intimidated by him, but nevertheless walked up to him and said: “Hi; who are you, and why are you parked over our allotment? Why are you in our garden?”
The figure responded out loud – there was no telepathy involved. It sounded like he was talking through a gas mask, which matched his appearance. Caspian says that the figure had an accent typical of the West Sussex/southeast coast area, possibly a male in his thirties or forties. It didn't sound out of place to him.
He told Caspian that it was just a routine visit on their part; he shouldn't be worried. He then asked Caspian what his name was, and Caspian was just about to reply when the figure said “Caspian, isn't it?” Though he was feeling a bit uneasy about everything that was happening, Caspian straightened and replied in the way that he'd been taught to respond to questions issued by those of military standing: “Yes sir.” The figure said, “Good.” He then turned around and looked at the pilot with the shovel and said, “We've got to bury something here, in your garden. It's to protect your household and this area, to keep you safe. Is it ok if we do that?” Caspian's curiosity was piqued; he wanted to ask what was in the box, but he simply said, “OK.”
The figure by the flower bed started digging, making a little hole. As he did so, Caspian looked up at the black, triangular thing that was still sitting there, making its low electrical hum, and asked the figure in front of him, “What is that? What kind of aircraft is that?” “You don't need to worry about that,” the man replied. “That's not something you need to be concerned about.” Caspian was still interested in the craft however, so thinking his questions innocent he continued asking, “How do you fly it? Is it like a helicopter? Why is it just sitting there?” But the figure completely dismissed all his questions, saying, “It's not a concern; you shouldn't be thinking about this.”
Meanwhile, the other figure casually dug a hole, lay the box in it and gingerly put the soil back on top, padding it down. Caspian says that he took his time doing this; he was standing out there dressed only in his pyjamas, and it was getting cold. When the somewhat drawn-out digging and burial process was finished, Caspian said, “Do you mind if I go back inside? I've got to go and get mum and bring her out here and tell her that you're here.” The figure said, “Of course, yes – go in and fetch your mother.”
Just as Caspian went to do so however, the figure put a hand on his shoulder and said, “They're here, duck, run!” Caspian said in a flurry of panic, “Who's here?” before lowering his body and rushing for the back door. The figure lifted the weapon-like thing he was holding, which made sucking, whooshing sounds as it started firing projectiles which looked like large, metal stakes! These disappeared when they went in front of the dining room window, as if they'd been absorbed by something invisible. Caspian hurried into the kitchen and hid down behind the units next to his goldfish bowl.
The next thing he knew, he was waking up in his bed later that morning at 7.30, as usual. He immediately went into his mum's room and said, “Mum, you won't believe what happened last night!” She was already awake, and replied, “You won't believe the weird dream I had last night.” Caspian asked her what her dream had been.
Anne said that in her dream, she woke up because she'd heard a little electrical buzzing sound in her room. She got out of bed and went downstairs, noticing that in the entrance hallway –around the living room and dining room doors– there was a dense paranormal mist rising from the floor. She walked through it and into the kitchen, where she turned around and saw a big face that seemed to be made from fog, or perhaps the mist itself (which was now surrounding it). The face was dark, with an ugly expression, and it rushed at her out of the mist, smacked her dead centre in the chest and knocked her back into the kitchen units, winding her. She collapsed to the kitchen floor. The last thing she remembered after that was waking up in her bed later that morning, as if nothing had happened.
After Caspian told her in turn about what he'd experienced that same night, they went outside to see if any of the metal stakes were lodged in the wall surrounding the dining room window, but there was nothing there. When they went to look at the flower bed they found some disturbed earth and a pile of soil exactly where Caspian had seen the figure with the spade bury the box, but they couldn't find anything when they took their trowels and dug into it.
Anne thought that the figure Caspian had talked to had probably been firing at the thing that knocked her backwards in the kitchen, but Caspian was sure that they were firing in the direction of the dining room window – this was across from the kitchen in a different area of the house, so he is not able to reconcile this difference. His mum agreed that the humming sound she'd heard that night was just like standing next to a power station, though she'd heard it inside her bedroom whereas Caspian had heard it coming from the lowest black triangle, outside the house.
Caspian reports that the morning after his encounter with the pilots he had a rash on his upper left arm, a bit like a sunburn, but it wasn't hot, didn't itch, and creams didn't have any effect on it. It faded after a week. His mum had a pain in her back afterwards, as though she really had been thrown back against the kitchen units, but there were no visible marks at all.
In August 2020, Caspian’s mum wrote:
“I remember thinking I was dreaming when Caspian came and asked me to come downstairs because he needed to show me something in the garden. I got up and followed him downstairs. I noticed it was very misty at the bottom of the stairs in front of the front door, but I had to walk through this to go through the hallway to the kitchen, so that I could follow Caspian out to the garden.
As I got to the kitchen I felt as if I wasn’t alone and that I was being watched. I turned back to look towards the front door and saw that the mist was turning thicker and black. All of a sudden, out of the mist came a black shape that ran towards me at great speed. It hit me with incredible force in the chest and I went flying backwards into the kitchen cabinets on the far wall. It actually lifted me off the ground and threw me at speed into the hanging cabinets up on the wall. I was physically winded and felt very frightened. I couldn’t tell what the shape was and didn’t know where it had gone to. For a while I felt like I couldn’t move. I decided to just wait until the mist cleared in the hallway before I felt I could make a run for it and go back to my bedroom. I wasn’t able to follow Caspian outside.
The next thing I remember is waking up and telling Caspian about my ‘dream’, and being astonished to hear what had happened to him that night also. At that point, I began to doubt that it had been just a dream. Whatever that black shape had been, it was undoubtedly malevolent – as it had rushed at me I could feel its intense anger and hatred of me and it had hit me with such force I was completely powerless against it. I can still remember how it felt to this day. I don't know whether what Caspian saw and experienced that night had any connection to what happened to me, but it was odd to say the least that both of us should experience these things at the same time, and that they should appear to 'overlap'.”
Author’s Note: This was clearly a significant event for Caspian and his mum. It is unusual to have a report of such an incident. The fact that they both confirm elements of what happened, although from different points of view, and each reports physical effects afterwards, gives it an extra level of credibility. It seemed to involve what could have been humans initially, because they conversed with Caspian easily and knew his name. Were they conducting a military exercise of some sort, using unfamiliar technology, as in a MILAB scenario, or were they from the future? Then there is an armed response to some sort of unseen, but imminent threat. The traces of anything that happened were minimal the following day, compared with what Caspian and his mum could have expected, which is confusing. Was some sort of mind-altering technology involved?
After this event, his stepfather noticed that he would walk under street lamps and they would suddenly turn off, or on. Even if he stopped walking and waited before going under the next street lamp, the effect would only occur as he went under it. He'd also come home from work and upon entering the house the hallway light, or lights throughout the house, would suddenly and inexplicably go out.
Caspian and his mum experienced a similar phenomenon, finding that they would only have to touch something electrical and it could either suddenly switch off, or turn on. Also, they got shocks from many objects: car doors, shopping trolleys, plastic bags, and even from hugging each other! After two weeks this effect ceased, and it hasn't happened in such regularity and intensity to Anne or Caspian since. It wasn't until six years later that his stepdad once again started having street lamps turn off as he walked under them.
I recently asked Caspian “Was your step dad - Damian - in the house when you and your mum had the black triangle and humanoids encounter in 2002 in Bognor Road? What was his reaction to it?” His response was “To answer your question - he was indeed in the house at the time; he and mum have always shared a bedroom together. He was sleeping in their bed next to her that night. He wasn't in mum's room later that morning, when I went in to tell her about my dream; I can't remember what part of the house he was in at the time, or whether he'd gone out somewhere.
What I can remember is that later that afternoon, when mum and Damian were both in the kitchen and I was in the dining room, she asked him if he was aware of her waking up the night before and leaving their bedroom at any time, but he said that he'd slept soundly throughout the whole night and hadn't noticed anything. He inquired as to why she'd asked that, and mum simply told him that we'd both had very similar, strange nightmares that night. He came into the dining room and rubbed my hair a bit painfully, commenting in a patronising way about what I watched on TV (by which he meant Most Haunted) and staying up too late, after which he left the room and went upstairs. He didn't really acknowledge the fact that mum had experienced something that night as well. I don't recall if either of us have ever talked to him about that night, since then.”
Author’s Note: This electrical interference with street lights, etc, is not uncommon and is almost like the individual is temporarily surrounded by an energy field which interferes with nearby electrical objects, but the effect fades over time. It suggests that something did happen to cause this effect. It is interesting that it affected Caspian’s stepfather, who was also in the house during the incident, but slept through it so was not actively involved in the incident and didn’t know anything about it.
For a long time, Caspian thought that what happened that night must have been a military event of some sort; he reports that he was disinterested in the topics of extra-terrestrial life and UFOs when he was younger, recalling, “I certainly didn't go looking for books on the subject when I was little. The only time I can recall seeing an image of a UFO when I was growing up (outside of their depiction in cartoons) was an old, black and white printed photograph of a flying saucer in a DK book in the children's section of the Chichester library. To be honest, when I was a child it was like there was a mental-emotional wall that prevented me from wanting to think about the subject (outside of science fiction, anyway – though I hadn't been allowed to watch shows like Doctor Who or X-Files prior to 2005). It was only years later that he thought that what he saw could have been a UFO."
With this event, the interactions Caspian had with UFO occupants changed from being friendly and loving in Lavant to something that was a bit more stand-offish, unsettling and sinister in Bognor Road. It was a sudden, puzzling transition.
Caspian says that he didn't want to think about it much at the time, since he was scared of what had happened. Even today thinking about it still gives him the chills, though he does not know why.
(Continued in Part 2 - click here)
Copyright © Ian Jones 2020
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