Some more UFO stuff

[BIAD]

I posted this one on the old site back in 2019, but I feel it deserves another telling due to the sardonic manner
the legacy media and some social-media have cranked-up their ridiculously excessive embellished narratives for
the last few years.

Once, it was only commercials promoting tooth-paste and washing-powder that went to preposterous lengths with
promises to make one's toes curl and guarantee the opposite sex will admire the purchaser as they passed by with
their alluring wares. These days, the establishment-media take their readers/viewers/ listeners for suckers at every
turn and offer nothing but stolid and trivial narratives full of 'if' and 'maybe'. Facts have become whatever someone
can state with a confident tone and countering rational voices are silenced for the sake of the 'message'.

But for a wee while, lets leave this festival of foolery. this carnival of intended horseplay and travel back to the days
when the dot-eating Pac Man appeared on the world stage and CNN was born. Let's go back to 1980.

It's difficult to explain the subject of investigating Ufos in Britain during that year to those who weren't old enough to
appreciate the situation or are from other countries. For instance, in the USA, the topic of 'flying saucers' was already
a well-developed industry with books, magazines and conferences always available for the few who had the time to
peruse the field of possible alien encounters. But in Britain, the main concern was employment -or the lack of it due
to 'THE' recession.

Margaret Thatcher was wielding her sword to destroy the Trade Unions and the country stood at over two million out
of work. The Yorkshire Ripper was out-and-about with his hammer and a little baby of Indian descent was born in an
hospital in Southampton, a boy who would be named Rishi Sunak.

Meanwhile in Swindon, a small town west of London, those who believed that the excitement of Ufos in America
could be transported to their home named by the Anglo Saxons as 'Pig Hill', grouped together and emulated our
cousins across the pond. In an effort to strive for officialdom, the six intrepid wannabe-researchers named themselves
with a formidable title. The Swindon Centre for UFO Research and Investigation (SCUFORI).

Together they would seek out the sneaky aliens who preferred hot deserts over rain-soaked villages of the out-of-work
and drag them kicking and screaming into the rare sunlight of the British Isles, proving -once and for all, that the US
did not have the monopoly on visitors from other worlds.

Or... maybe not.
...............................................................................................
Thanks to Martin Shipp for the article and I'll reproduce it appropriately verbatim.
......................................

'Do Not Meddle Or Else'

MEN IN BLACK' had their hey-day in the 1950s and 1960s. They were mysterious visitors, clad in black and of a
darkish complexion, who were said to have visited many prominent ufologists and made vague threats against
them. They were said to have some successes: some ufologists were reputed to have been silenced.

In those days most ufologists believed UFOS to be 'flying saucers', spacecraft piloted by extra-terrestrials. Visits by
men in black (MIBS) and threatening telephone calls and letters ere due either to the aliens or to government agents
trying to stifle the investigators' research. None of this was proved, but it fitted in neatly with the spacecraft theory.

The ufologist today is on the whole a cooler and more objective investigator. He is open to a wider range of possibilities
as the source of the UFOS; alien ships and MIBS are out of favour and largely forgotten. So when a case reminiscent of
MIBS was thrust onto a serious UFO group in 1980, the past seemed to be returning.

The group in question was the Swindon Centre for UFO Research and Investigation (SCUFORI), in [southern] western
England. It's members are recruited by invitation only -there are only six.


SCUFORI members. (front row left-to-right) Martin Shipp, Terry Amey, Martin Moffatt.
(Back row left-to-right) Bob McGregor, Jan Wojtowicz and Charles Affleck.

Mysterious messages disrupted SCUFORI's research for four months. During this period over thirty messages, sent
by post and over the telephone, were received. They threatened the investigators' welfare if they did not stop their
investigations.

The first of them came on Monday, 18th August 1980. On that day, SCUFORI member Charles Affleck found on his
doorstep a small, shrivelled-up plastic bag, which appeared to have been damaged by heat. Inside he found a piece
of paper addressed to SCUFORI. The message simply said:
CEASE UFO STUDY  DO NOT MEDDLE OR ELSE
The message was followed by a jumble of squiggles resembling Arabic script.

Affleck was astonished and immediately called for an emergency meeting of the group. That evening, the message
was discussed and group members jokingly blamed each other for it. They regarded the whole episode as something
of a joke. As little could be done, the matter was dropped.

To everyone's surprise, a second message was received two days later, this time through the post. It read:
BEWARE WE ARE WATCHING YOU ALL    DO NOT INTERFERE  WE WILL MEET


Examples of the 'MIB' letters. [Notice how the lined-paper is folded! Aliens must have pockets too!]

The group were still of the opinion that this was all some kind of joke and that the joker would soon reveal himself.

The following week, three telephone calls were received by two members in their respective homes. The 'messages'
consisted of three bleeps followed by a jumble of weird electronic noises and finally three further bleeps; they lasted
from ten to twenty seconds. A third letter arrived on 3rd September and it read:
IT SEEMS THAT YOU INTEND TO CONTINUE TO INTERFERE  WE MUST MEET AT DESIGNATED PLACE
TWO REPRESENTATIVES TO BE CHOSEN  WEAR PROTECTION  TAPE REPLY PLACE TAPE EXACT
REFERENCE 172x816

The location was visited the next day: it turned out to be a field just outside of Swindon. The group decided not to
record a message on tape, but to leave a written one: it wished to keep some control of the situation by declining
to obey the instructions exactly. In the meantime, Charles Affleck had set up a cassette recorder next to his telephone,
so that when the next telephone call came -this time at midnight -it would be recorded. The message consisted of the
same weird noises that had been heard before.

The next day, Affleck and the present author [Shipp] listened to the recording over and over again, trying to make sense
of it. At first it sounded like electronic gibberish. Then, to their surprise, they heard what sounded like words. Listening
very carefully, trying to ignore the other noises, they could pick out further words.

The voice was eerie -almost frightening. It sounded non-human, mechanical. Eventually they made out the following
message: YOU ARE PRIMITIVE  WE ARE WATCHING YOU...  WE WILL JUDGE WHAT WE WANT  YOU ARE TOO CLOSE

Naturally, the investigators were taken aback by this. Sensing the issue might get out of hand, they approached the
local police and told them what was happening. The police were not very interested and did no more than record the
complaint. The next message worried SCUFORI further.

It said:
'DO NOT GO TO THE AUTHORITIES AGAIN OR ELSE.'

How the sender knew the police had been contacted was a mystery.
However, as the police were not going to help, the investigators decided to solve the matter themselves. They hoped
they would get some answer to the letter they had left that might lead to something. The cassette case had disappeared
from the location, despite the group's efforts to watch it whenever possible.

The SCUFORI investigators like to think of themselves as very level-headed people, but these messages were beginning
to scare them since they had no idea who could be behind them. The group's normal activities virtually came to a standstill.

Several days after the cassette case was taken from the field, a letter was received by Charles Affleck -again through
the post. It was the paper that had been left in the cassette case, bearing SCUFORI's message, along with the curt reply:
'WE WILL CONTACT YOU.'

Soon another letter arrived. Its tone was far stronger Here is an extract:
YOU THINK WE ARE CRANKS    WE WILL CHANGE YOUR MINDS  THINGS WILL HAPPEN...  THIS IS A WARNING
WE ARE HERE FOR A PURPOSE  YOU ARE ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT THINGS YOU KNOW NOTHING OF
YOU WILL CEASE UFO STUDY  WE HAVE STOPPED OTHERS    WE WILL STOP YOU

Then to the complete amazement of the group, the message ended by listing the members' surnames.
It now seemed that one of the group was leaking information. However, this idea was dismissed on the grounds that all
of the members knew each other so well.

On 15th September, three further telephone calls were reported by Charles Affleck and SCUFORI members Jan Wojtowicz
and Raymond Smithers. Affleck's call was made by the same horrible voice, but this time it seemed much angrier, telling
SCUFORI to stop its investigations. Jan Wojtowicz's call consisted simply of weird electronic noises.

The story Raymond Smithers had to tell, though, was more interesting. He had been able to to make out a map reference,
which turned out to be a small track, one mile (1.6 kilometres) east of Avebury. The spot was visited by members of SCUFORI;
on the ground they left the cassette case that had been left at the first location.
It contained a blank piece of paper, which after various experiments proved to carry a message, written in ink visible only
under ultra-violet light. The message said that 'they' would be willing to co-operate with SCUFORI and would send details
of a meeting place.

Two days later a map reference was given in a telephone call, and a week after that a letter arrived with a message consisting
of one word: 'HALLOWEEN'. There were also other telephone calls consisting of apparently meaningless messages and weird
noises.

On Hallowe'en (Saturday night, 31st October), several SCUFORI members visited the location, West Woods, which is a small,
isolated wood. They stayed there for some time and had one harrowing experience when they saw a white shape cross their
path and disappear. But nothing further happened.


SCUFORI researchers maintaining surveillance on one of the locations of the 'alien' correspondent.
(Right) Charles Affleck setting up the device for the trap.

The group re-examined the messages, the times the dates of their arrival, and so on, in the hope that this might produce
some clues. It was obvious that many of the group's activities were mentioned in the messages, and it became an inescapable
possibility that one of the group might be in league with the mystery caller.

An Excess Of Encounters.
Smithers was the only group member who had not been present when the telephone calls were received. He claimed to have
received calls himself, but no one else had been present on these occasions. He was also interested in electronic gadgets.
It seemed incredible that he would be responsible, for he appeared to be as mystified as anyone else by the messages, but
he was now felt to be worth watching.

Smithers then made a series of bizarre claims that strengthened the other group members' suspicions. First he presented
a picture of a 'crashed UFO'. It showed a spherical object that, he claimed, he had come across while walking his dog close
to his home. He had just had time to rush indoors, grab his Polaroid camera and use the last picture to snap the object before
it rose into the air.
Later investigation showed that the object was actually part of a sewage system.


The spacecraft that cleverly disguised itself as part of a sewage system and the damaged cassette tape and casing.

On another occasion Smithers said that he had been stopped by a MIB on his way to a SCUFORI meeting. The man had
touched his arm and caused the cassette case he was carrying to melt; later a rash appeared on that arm.

SCUFORI now set about trapping the culprit. Affleck built an ingenious device that would photograph the hoaxer.
A cassette case had been left at a location, placed on a micro-switch connected to a camera and flash unit. The camera,
an Olympus OMI , was sealed inside a steel box, the front of which a shutter device was fitted.
[Oh, those heady-days before cell-phones!]

The box was fixed on a pole, at the other end was a block of cement. The pole was buried in the ground, with the camera
and flash unit pointing to the spot at which the cassette case was placed. When the case was picked up, the micro-switch
would be operated, and the camera flash would go off, thus taking a picture of whoever picked up the case.
The the shutter would close in such a way that it would be impossible to re-open.

The trap was set up in yet another remote location. The investigators made sure that Smithers knew where they had left
the cassette case. The device was tested several times, and the ufologists left. It did work, and the resulting photograph
showed Smithers picking up the cassette case.

When SCUFORI members revisited the location, they found that the steel box, the pole and the attached block of concrete
had been wrenched from the ground and dragged a short distance. The flash had instantly given away the presence of the
camera, of course and in his fury, Smithers had found strength enough to perform the remarkable feat of uprooting the
whole device. But he could not batter his way into the box or drag the whole structure away.

Smithers was required to resign from SCUFORI .
He claimed that he had perpetrated the hoax because he himself was being harassed: unless he caused the group to fold,
harm would come to him. However, he produced no proof of this claim.

What was particularly surprising about Smithers's guilt is that he was a special constable in the police force and training to
be a state registered nurse. In most people's eyes these distinctions would presumably have proved him a very responsible
citizen! (Incidentally, the name 'Raymond Smithers' is a pseudonym.)

SCUFORI now as a unique record of an MIB-type case: unusually, this one was solved. The affair proves that with
determination and initiative one can get answers to a mystifying phenomenon.

The End.
......................................

God loves a tryer...! And I love the simplistic narrative, the working-class perception and the limited-funded equipment used.
In most accounts, intricate technologies are discussed by reliable and noted witnesses, thought-provoking rhetoric is used to
arouse feelings in the reader that powerful forces are afoot to maintain society's ignorance and the threat to life is always
waiting in the shadows.


The font we all believed would be the way of the future!

Here, we have a guy goofing about with constrained finances and getting caught by a chunk of concrete. But most of all,
get a load of that hand-written font in the letters! Surely that 'space-age' text would convince the most grounded researcher
that aliens were here and enjoyed using the Royal Mail!!