A sprinkling of star dust

JENNY RANDLES recalls cases where UFO encounters triggered virus-like symptoms in witnesses

As I write in late March the world is in lockdown, wondering if a sore throat is more than it seems. I’ve had one since

I sat behind a man coughing on the bus and was left wondering if he carried the coronavirus. Two weeks on, I’ve had only minor symptoms: it was probably just a cold, but I remain in NHS-ordered isolation, experiencing a way of life few of us have known in peacetime.

Despite the seriousness of the global situation, which has even seen space missions put on hold for fear of exporting Covid-19 to ‘other worlds’, wild speculation has mounted that the virus might have originated from somewhere other than a Wuhan market.

Aliens, of course, are in the mix for some. Well known cases of ‘space sickness’ have seen sudden onset illnesses following on from close encounters. Usually, such cases are assumed to be due to some kind of energy or radiation emitted by whatever triggered the incident. Far more likely is an indirect correlation between a strange event and a pre-existing medical condition, or that these symptoms are stress-related; even a misperception of a UFO can be a trigger.

Yet there are still some interesting UFO puzzles. One case occurred on 27 January 1997 and only came to light as a result of Ministry of Defence file releases, because the witness reported it to the police and not the media or ufologists.

It occurred on the B4560 in rural Powys, Wales. It was one of 12 cases reported to the MoD over a 72-hour period, none of which reached UFO groups. Indeed, a few hours earlier a man in Droylsden, Manchester, contacted police to report a ‘cruise missile’ in busy airspace in broad daylight. Needless to say, the police assumed it was just a plane.

But that evening at around 10.40pm a Newport man was driving just south of Llangynidr on a quiet back road when he observed a ‘massive star’ moving towards him. Curious, he stopped, switched the headlights off and got out to observe it. The glowing tube of smoky grey/blue light descended and then encircled the car. The strange glow hovered around for what he estimated was five minutes. Most remarkably, as this was happening the witness was able to walk through the very bright ‘misty cloud’, but he heard no sound associated with the object. He reported feeling very frightened at this time.

When the thing first appeared his car radio started to malfunction and then ‘failed’, and he was unable to use his mobile to call for help (though 23 years ago rural cell phone coverage was not as it is today). After the glow vanished, he drove home feeling unwell and was actually sick on arrival. He also seems to have developed a skin rash the following morning, when he was still feeling poorly. This is when he decided, while hoping the symptoms would clear, to report the event by phone to police at Ebbw Vale; from there, the case reached the MoD in London, but seems not to have been followed up. Yet this is exactly the kind of case you’d hope the MoD would investigate.

We presume the witness recovered, but we may never know – unless he is reading this magazine: if so, please contact us now, as this incident has parallels in the UFO literature that deserve better follow-through than it got 23 years ago.

There is another aspect that the MoD could have studied: after the witness walked through the glow, it disappeared – but his vehicle was covered in a coating of dust of unknown origin. Was it just debris already present from his winter drive? Perhaps. But this feature has cropped up in other encounters and is commonly linked with illness cases, something random witnesses are unlikely to know. Indeed, there is a pattern to these reports that suggests some kind of unknown atmospheric phenomenon may trigger or spread illnesses.

The best known case occurred on the night of 20-21 January 1988 on the long highway skirting Australia’s southern coast where a family of four were doing the epic drive from Perth to Melbourne. Much as in Powys nine years later, a glowing fuzzy light encircled the car, but was said to have ‘sucked’ it off the road. Again, it deposited dusty ash onto the bodywork, left a skin condition on the hand of one witness and left them all feeling ill and shaken (see FT193:29; 240:43). The parallels between these cases are interesting enough to make us wonder if there might be some kind of as yet unresolved phenomenon behind both instances. I have being using my isolation to draw up a list of cases that reveal interesting patterns. Here are a few brief examples:

June 1977: As rain poured down near the village of Lartington, Durham, a car driver and a motorcyclist both saw a purple glow that appeared to ‘pull’ them up a hill. The motorcyclist was left feeling ill and with sunburn-like marks on his exposed skin. The car driver was never traced, but I kept in touch with the motorcyclist, who had subsequent health issues that he happily overcame.

September 1977: a couple renovating an old building in Newmill, Cornwall, were heading out for the night when a hazy green ball of mist appeared and moved towards the young woman who had gone ahead. It came very close to her and she fled indoors. Her partner went out and saw it only as it was moving away, so never got very close. Other locals viewed it from a greater distance and suffered no effects, but the couple fell ill with virus-like symptoms: headaches, muscle aches and being sick. Both were tested in hospital – the woman even undergoing exploratory surgery – but no cause was ever found for their illness.

August 1978: A Scottish ex-pat couple living in a beautiful mountain retreat in Ibiza were woken at 2.30am by a strange noise filling the bedroom. Outside, an orange mist was on the rock-strewn slopes and seemed to be moving upward and away from their home. The sound was emanating from it and boring into their skulls. A few seconds later, the glow climbed off the hill and vanished, as did the noise. Next morning, the couple awoke with headaches and that persisted for some time.

These are just three cases from many in my records describing strange mists or glows that come down into proximity with people and seem to trigger almost immediate ill-effects. While these are almost certainly not cases of alien craft seeding viruses to Earth, they do constitute a most unusual phenomenon. We need to look at these cases with the help of scientists and ask why they are triggering what resembles a virus. Are the effects physiological or psychological, and what is the cause of these strange events?

If any readers have other examples from their own files or indeed from the annals of fortean history I would be most interested to hear from you at: nufonnews@gmail.com.