Risley & Solway silver men

GlenVaudrey’s ‘solution’ to the Silver Man Mystery [ FT:397:36-41] seems plausible at first glance. However, I’m not entirely convinced.

My basic problem with his explanation is that it relies for its credibility on a single, anonymous, source: the exfireman, who by his own admission, didn’t commence duties at the site until 10 years after the events took place. We can’t regard this person as a witness in the case. At best, anything he toldVaudrey would have been based on 40-year-old unsubstantiated hearsay. So, how accurate are the tales of the mysterious ‘Big John’ and his silver suit?

Vaudrey himself states that, “as the event happened 40 years ago, there would be no comeback for the people involved.” In that case, why doesn’t his source name ‘Big John’? Why does the source himself wish to remain anonymous, when he wasn’t even involved in the hoax (if that’s what it was)?

I went back to the original investigation, as detailed by Jenny Randles and Peter Hough in their book, Scary Stories: A SupernaturalYearbook (Futura 1991). This account contains many details either not included inVaudrey’s article or which contradict statements made in it.

Let’s begin with the insinuation that Ken Edwards was drunk behind the wheel of his van when the incident took place. According to Randles & Hough, Edwards “had had little to drink (at his union meeting), having to face the forty-minute drive home afterwards.” Edwards freely admitted to drinking a large whisky that night (described by his wife, Barbara, as “uncharacteristic”), but only after he’d reached home. As for the statement that Edwards was “as pissed as a newt”,

Was ‘Big John’ at it again, in daylight this time?

attributed byVaudrey to an unnamed policeman, again, this is unsubstantiated hearsay. Without the evidence of a breathalyser-test, this can only be a subjective opinion – and in any case, could only apply to Edwards’s condition after his experience, not before it.

As to the actual events on Daten Avenue that night, Randles & Hough record Edwards as stating that he watched the figure as it came down a steep embankment to his right (not to his left, as inVaudrey’s article). What made this even more startling was that it was descending at right angles to the ground, an impossible feat, even for someone of ‘Big John’s’ legendary abilities. Its arms were said to protrude from the top of its shoulders (again, not ‘coming out of its chest’, as perVaudrey). Edwards described the figure as being mostly silver, with a black head shaped like a goldfish-bowl. I searched the Internet for both fire and radiation protective-suits from the 1950s up till present-day, and could find nothing with a black helmet of that shape.

I find it telling that when police later pulled their stunt of a man in a silver fire-suit and suggested this is what Edwards saw, his reaction was a calm, “Nope. Nothing like it.” If what Edwards saw that night was only ‘Big John’ in his silver suit, I think it likely he would have acknowledged a similarity, at least – but he didn’t.

Quoting from Edwards’s statement, Randles & Hough tell us that the figure stopped in the middle of the road and its head swivelled towards the van. It had what resembled eyes, “set at the top of its head,” from which projected two “pencil-slim beams of light.” These beams penetrated the windscreen, leaving burn-marks, like sunburn, on the fingers of Edwards’s right hand, which was clutching the steering wheel. This doesn’t sound like the harmless reflections from a visor, as in Vaudry’s account.

Then we come to a crucial point: did the figure really walk straight through a chainlink fence? Here, Vaudrey (or rather, his source) tells us that there was a gate in the fence. While this is a plausible explanation, I find it curious that no mention seems to have been made of this gate by anyone else at the time. Both the UKAEA and civil police are said to have made a thorough search of the area, in broad daylight. Randles & Hough presumably did the same, as have, no doubt, several other people (including Edwards himself), up until the fence was demolished. But still, no mention of it.

The notion that the UKAEA police conspired with their fire service ‘colleagues’ to protect ‘Big John’ from disciplinary action doesn’t ring true. If this was a fire-service hoax, then it made both the UKAEA and civil police look like incompetent buffoons, because they couldn’t solve it. If all police officers can be said to have one thing in common, it’s that they resent being made to look foolish. I would have thought the existence of a gate would have been seized upon at the time, as a solution to the ‘alien-ghost’ theories. Why wasn’t it?

There are other strange aspects to this story, unmentioned inVaudrey’s article. According to Randles & Hough, Edwards was very familiar with the journey he made that night, having driven the route many times. He left the union meeting at 11pm and took his usual exit from the M62 motorway 30 minutes later. From

that point, he would expect to arrive home around 11.45pm at the latest. To Edwards, the encounter seemed to last just a few minutes, yet he didn’t reach home until 12.30am – three quarters of an hour after leaving the motorway. What happened during those missing 45 minutes? Did he just sit in his van, possibly in shock? Not according to the vehicle’s fuel gauge. Edwards stated that he didn’t switch the van’s engine off at any point, yet the gauge showed no consequent drop in fuel level, even for an idling engine.

On the Monday morning following his experience, Edwards tried to use the radio transceiver in the van, but it wouldn’t work. Company electricians, we are told, examined the radio and were mystified to find that an enormous power surge, possibly through the aerial, had burned out the entire transmitting circuit. The unit was beyond repair and had to be scrapped. Could ‘Big John’s’ reflective visor have created such damage? I hardly think so.

The night of 17 March 1978 would not be the last time Edwards would see the ‘silver man’. Randles & Hough tell us that six days after his initial encounter, he revisited the site at the request of a UFO investigator from Leeds. While there, Edwards began to feel dizzy. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed the figure again, though only for a few moments. Was ‘Big John’ at it again, in daylight this time (and had he added the ability to disappear to his repertoire of skills)?

Less than a year after these events, Edwards fell seriously ill and was diagnosed with cancer of the kidneys. In early 1980 he underwent emergency surgery, which at first was thought to be successful. However, within a few months he developed cancer of the throat, which eventually took his life in 1982.

Was Edwards’s illness the result of whatever energy source burned his fingers and fried his radio? We will never know.

But I’m certain of one thing: a ‘joker’ in a silver suit couldn’t be responsible for these effects. That leaves one chilling possibility: even if the tales of ‘Big John’ are true, might there have been another, less benign life form haunting that lonely road on a dark night in 1978?

Andy Robertson

Lancaster, Lancashire

Something not mentioned in Vaudrey’s article is researcher/ author Peter Paget’s comments in his excellent book The Welsh Triangle, where he relates other tall silver-suited being accounts. Regarding Ken Edwards: when the being passed through the perimeter fence, at the very same instant a huge power overload burnt out most of the capacitors and all of the transmitting diode circuit in his mobile two-way radio fitted in the service van (p.150). It’s understandable that some people can only perceive the practical joke scenario, but there have been many other reports of similar beings, probably all connected.

In 1977 schoolchildren and many locals in St Brides Bay, Wales, saw tall, silver-suited beings wearing visors around coastal paths and fields, occasionally levitating. Perhaps pertinently there was a NATO base at RAF Brawdy close by, originally a Navy base before the RAF took over in 1971. It then became a joint RAF/ American base rumoured to have deep underground facilities. I met Mrs Rosa Granville, owner of the Haven Fort Hotel in Broad Haven, three times in four years. She told me that she saw two floating, long-limbed ‘men’ in protective white suits and visors above a field from a hotel window. They appeared to be looking for something. When she reported this she was visited by a RAF Captain who asked her not to tell anybody as she probably wouldn’t see the figures again (implying some sort of control over the situation). But, if she did she was to ring the phone number he gave her.

UFO researchers Philip Mantle and Mark Birdsall investigated a 1979 report from a Mrs Westerman, who with her children had witnessed the landing of a UFO in a field in Normanton, near Wakefield, West Yorkshire. Next to the ‘Mexican hat’ craft stood three very tall men all dressed in silver suits with visors and gloves. Their movements were slow and precise.

Mike Prentis

Nottingham

I read the article on the Risley silver man mystery with interest. I’m not sure why Jim Templeton’s Solway spaceman photo was dragged out again (incidentally from 23 May 1964 not 1963 as stated). Most people now accept this was an overexposed photo of the back of Templeton’s wife. It might have been more relevant to mention other more contemporary sightings of silver men, such as the figures seen at Frodsham (less than 20 miles from Risley) by poachers on 27 January 1978. These figures were apparently seen emerging from their craft and for some reason placing a cow in a cage ( FSR vol.26/no.3, 1980). Then there were the famous Broad Haven sightings from the previous year, 1977, where tall silver-suited figures terrorised residents at the Haven Fort Hotel and Ripperston Farm. These humanoid sightings were also put down to being the work of a local prankster in a fire-resistant suit.

Mike Foster

Stockport, Cheshire

I showed the Solway spaceman photo to my wife for her opinion. To her it looked like a kite. She pointed out that to the right of the ‘spaceman’, at the same level, there were what looked like thin ribbons, often a feature of kite design. So it could have been a kite photographed at an unusual angle as it blew about and descended quickly, after which it could have landed suddenly, so there was no sight of it on the ground from the position of the girl and her father because they are on top of a knoll. In addition, the kite flyer could have been out of range or behind a rise in the landscape, as kites can travel some distance.

Eric Fitch

Hereford

Jenny Randles comments:

I saw statements from the Frodsham poachers at the time, but I never got to talk to them. I think the encounter was almost certainly a hoax, though I could never prove it.

As for the over-exposure of Jim Templeton’s wife, I can see why some like it as an explanation. I did discuss this with her 25 years ago at her home even before it was seriously proposed, and long before recent attempts to photo-assess that option. She was adamant she never stepped into that position. She was looking after the other child present and they both stayed behind the camera, knowing that her husband’s photography was important to him and in those days spoiling a shot was a big deal. I guess it will never be settled one way or another – but it is worth noting that I asked both of them about it before it became a popular theory, and both denied it had happened that way.

I don’t recall anyone suggesting the kite idea. Again, of course, it can never be ruled out – but it seems pretty unlikely that with two adults and two children present, none of them noticed someone with a kite.

It is unlikely the kite would just be there for a second or two. This was a wide-open area with people in view for a while, not just fleetingly.