Seeking Aliens with the UFO Watchers – from ‘The Observer’

We were joined by Chris Trubridge who threw grass in the air to test the wind, though nobody liked to ask why.

“I’m really a nuts and bolts sort of character,” he said, “but I’ve seen things. Last November I was chatting to an embalmer from Sydney up on Cradle Hill when he asked me to move over as there was someone coming with a dog. There was a fair bit of mist about but I could make out this tall man with a sort of Aberdeen terrier on a lead with metal links as you could hear the clink, clink, clink when they walked. Then all of a sudden they both turned and walked straight into a grass embankment. Disappeared completely. It sounds strange, I know, but since then I have developed a sort of sixth sense.”

Arthur nodded slowly for a full minute. Silences don’t bother him. By half ten a near full moon had appeared, lost occasionally behind a mackerel sky, but strong enough for them to recognise the shape and gait of regulars who’d come to join them and, in the immediate absence of aliens, they began mulling over sightings as they swept the skies.

“Now Star Hill had everything,” said Reg Skrine, a concrete mixer from Trowbridge, who was lying on his back with a torch at the ready, “until that idiot set fire to the farm and we were banned. Anywhere else I didn’t seem to get that same feeling as Star….remember the burning bush, Arthur?”

“Ah, the burning bush,” said Arthur lovingly. “There was me and Reg and Cyril all sitting in the car and then all of a sudden – it had just the appearance of a burning bush.”

“The way it flared up, was nearly gone, and then -”

“Such a fixed thing, but no jagged edges – ”

“No, that’s right, no jagged edges at all, just a silhouette of fire. The nearer you got, the more it receded – almost as though it had intelligence.”

Reg put down his torch and meshed his hands behind his head as he dwelt on the phenomenon. “Now that,” he said, “were proper queer.”