Conspiracy of Silence E-Book

Dermot Butler

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2006

Seitenzahl: 466

Beschreibung

Conspiracy of Silence examines how many ordinary people in Ireland have seen extraordinary things in our skies. Some have gone through bizarre experiences but the truth about these encounters has been concealed in a Conspiracy of Silence. Butler and Nally firmly believe that UFOs are a reality and no matter what causes might be suggested, the phenomenon is as real here in Ireland as it is throughout the rest of the world. The book examines close encounters in Ireland and all aspects of the UFO phenomenon are covered, from encounters, to an examination of the history of the phenomenon, to what the bible has to say about the subject. Certain places are closely examined, such as Newgrange, where paranormal activity is recorded more often than anywhere else in the country and new theories are given to such events as the mysterious summer solstice.

Leseprobe

Dedicated

to the memory of Dr John E. Mack, MD,

Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School,

who challenged the fabric of our reality

to discover the true nature of the world

MERCIER PRESS

3B Oak House, Bessboro Rd

Blackrock, Cork, Ireland.

www.mercierpress.ie

http://twitter.com/IrishPublisher

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© Carl Nally and Dermot Butler, 2006

ISBN: 978 1 85635 509 4

Epub ISBN: 978 1 85635 842 2

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 85635 843 9

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge those people to whom we are grateful, for their courage, kindness, and support in the writing of this book. To Mark Furlong, Ross Nally and Gerry Butler, who were vital links in the chain; to John Scarry, who pointed us in the right direction; and to Eamonn Ansbro, Betty Meyler and Kathy Crinion, who were very generous in sharing their UFO files with us.

Thanks also to Sandra Ramdhanie for her encouragement and enthusiasm; to Kevin Jenkinson for his tireless efforts to promote UPRI; and to Mary Feehan and all at Mercier Press, who gave us the platform to take the story of Ireland’s UFO phenomenon a step further.

A special thanks goes to Timothy Good for his magnificent works on the subject, which we have been reading over the years, and for taking the time out from his hectic schedule to write a foreword for our book.

We are very grateful to those members of the public who made contact to tell us of their UFO and paranormal experiences, even though we could not publish all of the witness accounts we have received over the years.

We also wish to express our sincere gratitude to the commercial pilots who, at great risk to their professional positions, met with us to impart their close encounter experiences with UFOs in Ireland’s skies.

Finally, we are indebted to those witnesses whose stories grace the following pages, and who had the courage, in the face of ridicule, to step forward and be counted among the ever increasing number of Irish people who have come into contact with these perplexing paranormal occurrences.

Foreword

Conspiracy of Silence is an important new book. Dermot Butler and Carl Nally have written a valuable addition to the vast literature on this controversial, yet always fascinating, subject.

While numerous UFO sightings have been reported in the UK, it seemed that relatively few had occurred in Ireland. Thanks to the authors, we now know this is simply not so. Revealed here for the first time are numerous case studies of all kinds of UFO events – including alleged contacts with aliens – reported throughout the Republic over a lengthy period.

As the authors are quick to emphasise, an ‘unidentified flying object’ is just that, no more, no less. Thanks largely to the media, the acronym ‘UFO’ has, unfortunately, become synonymous with ‘alien spaceship’. While some UFOs, as well as USOs (unidentified submarine objects) are indeed alien spacecraft, in my view, others most definitely are not.

For me, among the most impressive UFO reports are those by military and civilian pilots, literally thousands of which have occurred since the dawn of aviation, frequently confirmed by radar and sometimes on camera. The alarming events reported to have taken place in recent years in the vicinity of Dublin Airport and over the Irish Sea, for example – which clearly pose a threat to air safety – have concerned me for a number of years. Were it not for the authors’ comprehensive knowledge of aviation matters and, more importantly, their proven reputation as trustworthy investigators, it is doubtful if these reports would have seen the light of day.

To the general public, the UFO subject continues to be equated with conspiracy theories and ‘new-age’ nonsense. As I have shown in my books, public perception on the matter has been manipulated since the 1940s by governments around the world – particularly those of the superpowers – and many of the facts are being withheld at an above top-secret level. Another conspiracy theory? In 1960, Rear Admiral R. Hillenkoetter, a former CIA director, stated that: ‘Behind the scenes, Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.’

In this ground-breaking book, Dermot Butler and Carl Nally have shown us that, in company with many other governments, the Irish authorities have made strenuous efforts to keep its populace in the dark. This may well be in our best interests. But, at the same time, we cannot remain in ignorance forever.

Timothy Good

London-born Timothy Good is widely considered to be one of the world’s leading authorities on the UFO subject. He has written many best-selling books, including Beyond Top Secret, Alien Liaison and Alien Base, and has discussed the subject at the Pentagon, the US Congress, at the headquarters of the French Air Force, and with numerous high-ranking military and intelligence personnel, as well as with astronauts, pilots, politicians and scientists. His latest book, Need to Know: UFOs, the Military, and Intelligence, is published by Sidgwick & Jackson (UK) and Pegasus Books (US).

Introduction

The year 2007 marks the sixtieth anniversary of two landmark incidents which triggered the modern era of Unidentified Flying Objects. In June 1947, while flying over Washington State’s Cascade Mountains, private pilot Kenneth Arnold’s eyes were drawn to the glint of sunlight reflecting from the evidently metallic structures of a flight of crescent-shaped, fast-moving airborne objects. When asked to describe their movements, Arnold commented that they had behaved like a saucer would if it were skimmed across water. The term ‘flying saucer’ was born, courtesy of an attentive (and inventive) correspondent. The description has become part of the vocabulary of journalism ever since, despite the fact that many reported UFOs look nothing like saucers whatsoever.

In July, the world’s media carried the stunning revelation – albeit briefly, until a sudden official about-turn – that one of these ‘saucers’ or ‘flying discs’ had crashed and been retrieved by the United States Army Air Force. The craft had met its demise on the Foster ranch, and its scattered wreckage was found by William ‘Mac’ Brazel in New Mexico. The ‘Roswell Incident’ had occurred, and its controversy continues to this day.

The ‘flying saucer’ phenomenon was largely a product of Cold War hysteria as a cataclysmic nuclear conflict threatened, and as developing missile technology gave us the means not only to destroy ourselves, but to finally leave our own planet and take our first tentative steps into space. Society’s fears of a Third World War, probably an atomic one, led to ever-present suspicions between East and West. UFOs were thus largely considered by the world’s military and governments as being, potentially at least, experimental aircraft being tested by either the United States or the Soviet Union. Or both.

The prevailing attitude in society, especially in America, was that if there wasn’t going to be a war among ourselves, then there could be one between all of us and the occupants of these ‘saucers’. The assumption thus grew in the public’s mind that these objects were definitely structured, alien spacecraft. Hollywood, sensing that there was a dollar to be made, played on this by churning out flying saucer themed movies in the 1950s. Evil aliens became a box office attraction, and this ‘evil alien’ idea became self-perpetuating through the influence of some sections of the media, and entertainment. The chilly breeze of Cold War politics ensured that this continued into the 1960s, with hostile extraterrestrials in the likes of television’s The Invaders substituting for the nasty ‘Reds’ of the immediate post-war period.

The alien culture was nurtured by continued sightings of UFOs, and the emergence of individuals who claimed to be in direct contact with their crews. They claimed that the aliens told them they were from Venus or other planets in our own solar system – something that’s now known to be absurd. In 1950s America, however, and elsewhere, these ‘contactees’ garnered a following, thanks to the peaceful (and anti-nuclear) messages that were allegedly imparted to them by their new-found alien friends. Such opinions attracted the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which proceeded to open and maintain files on reputed contactees such as George Adamski and George Van Tassel.

The UFO phenomenon, though, goes back much further than the years immediately following the Second World War. Sightings of unusual aerial objects have in fact occurred through the ages, prompting some to argue in favour of an extraterrestrial involvement with humanity at least as far back as the Old Testament (and, in particular, the Book of Ezekiel). More recently, newspaper reports from the United States (and media coverage closer to home) told of mysterious ‘airships’ being sighted as the twentieth century dawned. True, such craft had been built by that time, but their development and manufacture, like their speed, was slow – and they were few in number. The proliferation of these unusual craft across several American states remains puzzling. Also, some of their crew members were reported to be human, but acting peculiarly. One account of such a craft came from Ireland many hundreds of years before anything like a modern-looking airship or balloon was produced. According to witness testimony and newspaper reports, strange airships also glided around the night sky in Belfast in the opening years of the twentieth century.

What, though, about current evidence? Surely the evidence for UFOs has mounted? The answer is in the affirmative. In compiling this book, we have consulted a list of just over 850 UFO sightings by pilots and aircrew from around the world. There are many more. Private, commercial and military pilots have all reported mid-air encounters. Allied pilots in the Second World War reported ‘foo fighters’, balls of light flying around and pacing their aircraft formations. They were initially assumed to be German weapons or surveillance devices, until Luftwaffe crews admitted witnessing exactly the same phenomenon. Each side assumed the other was responsible, but it was concluded that neither of them actually was.

Aerial balls of light have continued to be observed in more recent times. One Irish pilot described to us his encounter with a glowing red object in the sky in late 2003, which was also then seen by the pilot on board a KLM flight. Another curious incident that a pilot related to us involved an unmoving, unidentified airborne object being detected on radar in a cloudbank near Dublin Airport.

An Irish Air Corps crew witnessed unidentified lights above their Dauphin helicopter one night in 1993. It emerged that two garda officers on patrol in the Askeaton area of County Limerick, at the same time as the military encounter, witnessed a UFO above their car. Reports also came from members of the public all over Ireland and in various parts of Britain. Immediately explained as the burn-up of Russian space debris, the fact remains that a number of people, including police officers here and in Britain, saw the phenomenon at varying times, and going in different directions. Was something else flying over these islands that night, as well as this space debris?

The Roswell ‘crash’ story made the headlines in the IrishIndependent and the Irish Times, but July 1947 also saw Irish newspapers reporting on a mysterious flying object being seen by a Michael O’Sullivan in the skies over the town of Cahersiveen, County Kerry. Another Kerry witness, Finn Curran, has spoken on national television about the close-up UFO encounter he had one day way back in 1939. Yet another strange object was observed flying over Ballinasloe, County Galway, as long ago as 1915. The large, luminous body was seen for a full five hours. These three cases were highlighted in filmmaker Colm Stapleton’s groundbreaking television documentary on UFOs in Ireland, Tell Me Captain Strange, which first aired on RTÉ in October 2001.

The UFO mystery is just one aspect of the paranormal. All too often it has been regarded in total isolation, and so it is little wonder that in the media – and in society as a whole – the topic has become somewhat pigeon-holed as a legitimate target for ridicule. Yet it has sometimes happened that those who report religious phenomena, for example, are seen as fortunate to have witnessed what they’ve claimed, and they are not deemed to be crazy at all. How one differentiates between UFO witnesses and those who experience other paranormal phenomena is a matter of interpretation, upbringing, cultural background, and so on. UFO witnesses have all too frequently been laughed at over the years, and regarded as being fraudsters at best and mentally disturbed at worst. Yet laughter was relatively scarce when many people claimed they were seeing statues of the Virgin Mary moving at grottos around Ireland in July 1985.

It is perhaps appropriate at this point to consider the religious apparitions that were reported at Knock, County Mayo, in 1879. An investigation duly followed, and the site has since become a well-known pilgrimage destination. Yet the 1879 events began with an unidentified aerial light being seen hovering above where the apparitions were later reported. There were no ‘aliens’ to be seen anywhere, but in today’s parlance the light would most certainly be an Unidentified Flying Object. Back then, though, the prevailing religious and cultural belief systems meant that a divine meaning was quickly attached to it. It was the only frame of reference available, so no other explanation was possible.

A common fallacy, when UFOs are mentioned, is to immediately think of extraterrestrial spaceships and these aforementioned aliens. An ‘unidentified’ object is just that. Some of them may be previously unknown natural phenomena, actual extraterrestrial vehicles, or secret military developments. (Some witnesses and researchers have even mooted the hypothesis that inter-dimensional visitors or time travellers may explain them). The reports from Ireland and from around the world all need to be looked at individually, as there may be many different explanations behind the sightings.

The one certainty is that the phenomenon itself is quite real. Amid the countless hours of videotape – much of it shot in broad daylight – that has emerged from the Mexican UFO ‘flap’ since July 1991, Mexican Air Force jets break formation to give chase to an ‘unknown’. Further startling footage was released by the country’s military itself, to television reporter Jaime Maussan. Captured by on-board cameras in 2004, during an operation against drug smugglers using light aircraft to bring their contraband into the country, a large formation of UFOs was clearly observed. The sequence was shown by Maussan to a stunned audience at a UFO conference in Laughlin, Nevada, in early 2005. The release of this footage by the authorities to a nationally respected journalist may, in time, lead to more openness from the Mexican government on the subject. Indeed, just months after the showing of this film, the Brazilian government allowed researchers to view sensitive UFO documentation that had been kept secret by the nation’s air defence apparatus since as far back as the 1950s.

In Europe, an F-16 jet pursued a UFO that had shown up on the radar screens of several NATO installations during Belgium’s flurry of ‘Flying Triangle’ activity of 1989 and 1990. Footage of cockpit instrumentation showed that the unknown object changed altitude at a rate that would kill a human pilot.

It is radar corroboration of eye-witness sightings that provides the most thought-provoking evidence of all. Among the countries to acknowledge that UFOs have been tracked on radar through their airspace are the United States, Britain, Russia, China, Japan, Canada, Belgium, Brazil, France, etc. The phenomenon is truly a global one. So, why should it be that Ireland is any different? Quite simply, it isn’t.

The biblical connection with UFOs was mentioned earlier on, but perhaps we should look much closer to home to see if our own dim and distant past holds clues. Several thousand years bc – at a conservative estimate – Ireland saw the arrival of the Tuath de Danaan. Their origins remain shrouded in mystery, but the resulting lore that tells of these ancient settlers refers to their arrival in ‘clouds of smoke’. What are we to make of this, exactly? Who, in fact, were they, and how did they arrive? Why did such descriptions become part of Ireland’s lore? Why weren’t they simply described as having arrived by boat, like any other foreign invaders or settlers?

The idea of beings from above arriving on earth is nothing new, but again it’s a matter of interpretation of the language and imagery used. The ancients explained things that were mysterious to them in terms that they could grasp. Whether these ‘clouds’ represented spaceships or not isn’t really the point. The point is that they were telling of something that was apparently structured, and that flew. How many centuries was this before powered flight was invented? How many millennia?

Science dictates that because faster-than-light travel is impossible, no extraterrestrial beings could possibly have made the trip to our planet. Yet this assumes that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is the only explanation on offer, the only game in town. It also assumes that there is no one out there in the cosmos more advanced than us, and a lot more experienced than us at space travel. Science is infallible, so some would have it, but then, didn’t science give us such pearls of wisdom as the ‘fact’ that the earth was flat?

The aim of this book is not to promote the extraterrestrial theory on UFOs, nor any other single theory, rather to show that many ordinary people in Ireland have seen extraordinary things in our skies. Some have gone through bizarre experiences, after which they have asked for anonymity. For this reason, we have used pseudonyms in various places, though we have used real identities wherever we have been given permission to do so, or where the witnesses’ names have already been placed in the public domain.

The reason for writing this book is, simply, to state that the phenomenon, no matter what cause or causes might lie behind it, is as real here in Ireland as it is throughout the rest of the world. Its reality can be gauged by the fact that UFOs even made it into questions and answers sessions in Dáil Éireann.

The fact that the Irish government discussed the subject in the national parliament will surprise some, but it shouldn’t. Governments elsewhere have admitted that sections of their military and intelligence apparatus have maintained an interest in UFOs. It is a fact that the British Ministry of Defence had its own ‘UFO desk’ for many years, which supplied us with a map showing four ‘unidentifieds’ over Northern Ireland in 1996. If the military’s access to logs, radar tapes, etc., can’t get to the bottom of a sighting, then what is the public meant to make of it? America’s Defense Intelligence Agency made available to us a copy of a declassified 1976 report, in which an Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom jet’s air-to-air missile system was immediately rendered useless when the pilot attempted to lock onto and engage a UFO. How can something ‘unreal’ cause this?

Further aerial close encounters between commercial jets and UFOs north of Dublin, especially in early 2004 and mid-2005, give plenty of food for thought, as does the 1996 reported ‘UFO crash’ near the northwestern town of Boyle, our investigation of which fills a file several inches thick at the time of writing. These incidents are detailed in the pages that follow.

So what has been going on over our heads over the past few decades, or further back? What is going on at the moment? Just what are these UFOs and who or what flies them? Perhaps none of us will ever solve the mystery – but we invite the reader to take on board the experiences and testimonies in the following pages, and to make up their own mind about whether the very existence of UFOs is real or not. From what we have learned during our years of research, we’ve already made up our own minds.

1. Not Just Lights In The Sky

The UFO subject has had its detractors from the start. Often, the sceptics and debunkers have referred to rigid scientific dogma to defend their entrenched positions, making the assumption that science is always right and never wrong, and never daring to apply a little more open-minded thinking.

While it is true that most UFO witnesses have been ordinary people, it is unfair, perhaps insulting at times, that their testimony is often completely disregarded by the sceptics on the basis that although the witnesses may be honest and well-intentioned individuals, they are not what many doubters have repeatedly called ‘qualified observers’, whatever that means.

In defence of these witnesses, many have risked ridicule by naming themselves when telling their stories to the printed media, or to broadcast news and documentary shows around the world. Others, in Ireland, have nervously approached UFO researchers, telling of their experiences on the condition that, in most cases, their identities remain confidential. Their stories, in this and subsequent chapters, are told in a matter-of-fact way. The witnesses are adamant that they saw what they say they saw, experienced strange things, and that’s all there is to it.

Sometimes, the explanations offered for these UFOs by sceptical ‘experts’ beggar belief. For example, some years ago a woman contacted RTÉ 2FM’s Gerry Ryan to tell him that she had seen an unusual, quiet, brightly-lit object the night before, landing in fields in the midlands. She and her husband were driving home in the early hours when the object’s lights caught their attention. They watched in disbelief as what was very obviously a craft of some kind came to rest a distance away, behind a hill and some trees. The object was too far away to get to, but they managed to snatch a short piece of video footage of it just as it was landing.

There was no apparent reason for a helicopter to land in the middle of nowhere, and no aircraft was reported missing. The perplexed woman emailed Ryan’s show, and the puzzled presenter was fascinated by the pictures she sent electronically to his computer. The programme’s researchers drew a blank when they made calls to various airports, and nothing appeared in the papers about a crash or a forced landing.

Was this a true Unidentified Flying Object? Not a bit of it, according to a spokesman for a well-known astronomy group who soon phoned in. He proclaimed, without having seen the footage, that the craft was a helicopter. To paraphrase him, he had reached this conclusion ‘because it couldn’t be anything else’. There was no analysis, no evaluation, and no reason given as to why the purported helicopter wasn’t, apparently, picked up on radar anywhere. Yet a safe answer could still somehow be arrived at, an answer which meant that uncomfortable possibilities didn’t have to be entertained. Science had spoken, and it had then put its blinkers back on.

Just what kind of testimony, exactly, would meet with approval from such sceptics? Who are these qualified observers that they seek? This is a grey area which is seldom if ever spoken about or elaborated upon by those who dismiss the UFO phenomenon out of hand. Neither these elusive observers, nor the criteria which would substantiate their UFO claims, are ever listed for UFO researchers by the debunkers, never specified. It serves them well, because the one sure way of gaining and maintaining the upper hand in the UFO debate is to keep shifting the sands of the ground rules, and to keep moving the goalposts.

Caught On Tape – A UFO Incident in Irish Airspace

Surely pilots are just such experienced, qualified observers? The UFO sightings by some ordinary members of the public follow in due course, but a pilot’s view of a UFO, while flying his aircraft off the east coast of Ireland, comes first. For reasons which are mentioned in chapter three, the identity of the source of the following material has been kept confidential. He has supplied us with a transcript of the incident, and a copy of the tape-recorded radio exchange between those involved. The incident occurred on 21 January 1977. We shall give him the pseudonym ‘Paul Redmond’. (Pseudonyms will be written in this manner from now on).

The exchange, which lasted some minutes, involved two aircraft and Dublin Air Traffic Control (ATC). The N57280 notation represents November 57280, a Rockwell Commander 690 aircraft, with a French pilot on board, being flown from Dublin to Europe. G-AYNB represents Golf Alpha November Bravo, a Piper PA-31 Navajo, being operated by a popular British food company. The comments in italics are ours:

Dublin ATC: 57280, your passing level now?

N57280: Two-one-five.

N57280: 57280, for your information we have traffic in sight on our right side.

Dublin ATC: 57280 say again?

N57280: We have traffic in sight at three hours.

Dublin ATC: 57280 Dublin, negative traffic to affect your climb.

N57280: I said we have traffic in sight!

Dublin ATC: Confirm if you have traffic in sight and say the position of the traffic?

N57280: From our position it seems to be at three o’clock.

Dublin ATC: And is he above you, or below?

N57280: Below.

Dublin ATC: Below, roger.

G-AYNB: Reaching five-five.

Dublin ATC: Roger, maintain.

Dublin ATC: 57280 there is no known traffic anywhere in your vicinity on radar, and no traffic known to this centre which should be in that position relative to you.

N57280: I don’t know what it can be. It is very light! [Does he mean bright?]

????: [unreadable, as transmissions cross.]

Dublin ATC: Confirm your flight conditions are VMC? [Visual Meteorological Conditions. In essence, this is the same as VFR – Visual Flight Rules. It is the ability of the pilot to make out features at ground level, as opposed to depending on instruments.]

N57280: ??? [exclaims something in French].

Dublin ATC: 57280 Dublin, we have negative contact with any other traffic on radar, and say your present level?

N57280: I said two-three-zero reaching.

Dublin ATC: Re-cleared now flight level two-five-zero.

N57280: Two-five-zero, roger.

G-AYNB: November Bravo, passing Killiney.

Dublin ATC: 57280 from Dublin, traffic on your starboard side about the two o’clock position now is ocean traffic, flight level three-five-zero. Would that be what you saw?

N57280: Okay … but I don’t know what it can be. I’m sure it’s not an aircraft. I don’t know what it is, it be a star [sic.], but it’s very shiny.

Dublin ATC: Okay, well there is only one item of traffic that we have located, it’s high level at three-five-zero, and, uh, I can see both of you on radar now, and that’s all the traffic I know of.

N57280: Okay. We are reaching two-five-zero now and maintaining.

G-AYNB: It’s those flying saucers again … Dublin?

Dublin ATC: November Bravo, say again?

G-AYNB: It’s that flying saucer again!

Dublin ATC: Oh!

N57280: Flying saucer – yes!

Dublin ATC: 57280, change to London airways on one-three-two decimal six.

At this point, as ATC instructs N57280 to change his radio frequency, the aircraft is transferring out of the airspace maintained by Dublin, and is coming under the responsibility of British Air Traffic Controllers.

The sceptical astronomer mentioned earlier might insist that the ‘very shiny’ light the pilot was looking at was nothing more than a star. Would an experienced pilot – who, incidentally, was quite agitated in the recording – really be fooled by such a prosaic phenomenon, one which he undoubtedly saw many times in his career? Why did he comment on the brightness? If a pilot is so easily fooled, then it would suggest that he and his colleagues are ‘seeing things’ a lot of the time – something which ought to make us all nervous when we put our lives in their hands whenever we fly. However, such a premise would certainly not explain the reported extensive damage caused to an Aer Lingus Boeing 737 in January 2004 by a UFO, which is examined in some detail in chapter three.

The logical conclusion is that the Rockwell Commander pilot did, indeed, see something rather more unusual. It will be remembered that he informed Dublin ATC that the light he was looking at was below his altitude as he flew out into the Irish Sea. An unusual height for a star to be at, one would think.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this incident doesn’t feature in either the transcript or the tape. When ‘Paul Redmond’ set up the recording equipment in his home that captured this exchange, he picked up some minutes of radio chatter from various aircraft and Dublin ATC. The Rockwell Commander pilot’s initial comment about the ‘traffic in sight’ came about after he had left Dublin Airport some time earlier. If it was only a star, he should have noticed it much sooner than this. Instead, it appears in view.

One final observation can be made about this curious incident. The Navajo’s pilot makes a comment to Dublin ATC about the light being ‘those flying saucers again’. Which flying saucers was he talking about? One wonders if he made this remark because he already knew of other aircraft reporting similar odd encounters in the same sector of airspace beforehand?

Both the Navajo and the Rockwell flew through an area that has been the scene of many UFO sightings over the years. The county of Wicklow and the waters just off its coast, and those of north County Wexford, have been host to a wide variety of strange aerial phenomena which continue, periodically, to this day.

The Clones Strand Incidents

The Wicklow area has been the site of UFO activity going back many years. At Grangecon, a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of ‘blood’ at one stage in the 1990s, though its owner refused to allow any laboratory analysis of the mysterious liquid. Since the late 1990s, radio phone-in shows on various Dublin stations have featured calls from Wicklow witnesses to ghosts, poltergeists and, of relevance here, unexplained aerial phenomena. In this regard, the same can be said about the County Roscommon and County Sligo region and, in the early 1990s, the Bantry area of County Cork.

A look at just a few County Wicklow incidents will suggest that the January 1977 event involving the Rockwell aircraft and its mysterious airborne companion is far from being an isolated occurrence.

Just over the county’s southeastern boundary, close to the Irish Sea, lies the small north Wexford community of Castletown. A mile or so to its east lies Clones Strand, the popularity of which can be seen, during the summer months especially, by how busy its adjacent caravan sites are. Close by, a stream leading into the sea at Kilmichael Point marks the division with County Wicklow.

Living and working in this area all his life, Tommy Flanagan was used to seeing aircraft, meteor showers and satellites, traversing dark skies that remain relatively free of the light pollution that blankets the nearby towns of Gorey and Arklow. Back in 1980, something strange happened to Flanagan, something which still sticks in his mind.[1]

After a late stroll to Castletown, the Clones Strand resident was returning to his home near the beach when he noticed something odd in the sky over the Irish Sea. He observed two large, bright orange objects flying towards the northwest – and over south Wicklow. The colour and glare of both objects reminded him of the setting sun. They made no noise on what was a clear, wind-free night, and they cast reflections that rippled across the calm waters off Clones Strand. No trails were visible behind them. Flanagan kept both objects in view for perhaps a minute or more, while they glided slowly inland.

He wasn’t frightened by what he had seen. Instead, he was amazed, and very curious. He was, though, reluctant to speak to anyone about his experience until some months later because he didn’t want to be ridiculed – a common factor with many such witnesses. Although the experience itself was in no way unpleasant, he was to have another UFO sighting which did frighten him, and two witnesses.

One night during the following summer, he gave a lift to two young friends of his from Clones Strand to Castletown’s only pub. The young men had joked some months earlier, at Flanagan’s expense, about him seeing little green men. He hadn’t, of course, seen anything of the sort, but the facts in cases like this are seldom allowed to stand in the way of some leg-pulling by close friends and relatives. It’s a natural reaction, some might suggest a defence mechanism, to being told something so fantastic it just can’t be true. In this way, details of his actual sighting became more and more exaggerated locally, mushrooming into a wild distortion of what had really transpired the previous year.

While driving west along the pitch dark road to Castletown, orange and white balls of light appeared behind his car. In a scene reminiscent of the Close Encounters of the Third Kind movie, he slowed down to pull in to the side of the road, so that the car behind him could overtake. As the other vehicle was closing on them quickly, with blinding headlights on full beam, he wished to avoid the possibility of what might have been a drunken driver dangerously tail-gating his car.

As he manoeuvred his car on to the grass verge, the ‘car’ behind them duly overtook their vehicle – by noiselessly lifting off the road and flying over their car’s roof. The now airborne craft veered to the right, again towards the Wicklow county border, and disappeared over the hedge and into the night sky.

Unlike some other UFO encounters at close quarters, the craft did not cause the car’s electrics to stall and switch off. Perhaps it was just as well, as the panic-stricken driver and his passengers wanted nothing more than to get away from there immediately. Flanagan slammed the car into gear and pressed heavily on the accelerator. Though only a very moderate drinker, he nervously joined his terrified passengers for a stiff whiskey when they reached the pub. They never again made fun of his earlier sighting, and all three have shunned publicity for well over twenty years.

This case featured in UFOs Over Ireland: A Status Report, compiled in 1997 for the now defunct IUFOPRA organisation. Using this material, some details of it were also published in 2002 by newspaper journalist Dara de Faoite, but the identity of the main witness has not been disclosed until now.[2]

Aerial Spectacle At Wicklow Town

Henry Sylvester enjoyed his holiday trip across the Irish Sea in the summer of 2001. The Englishman travelled with his girlfriend around Ireland that year, but something bizarre happened to him in Wicklow town which stayed in his mind. Two years later, he told of his experience.

In May 2003, Gerry Ryan’s radio show touched on the subject of UFOs. It wasn’t the first time that his show had done so. Following his own on-air admission that both he and his wife had awoken in their bedroom to see balls of light drifting about the end of their bed and flying out the window, Ryan had, to his credit, dealt with certain subjects that would scarcely if ever see the light of day in more mainstream shows. He made this comment on 15 September 1997, and Declan White of the Star newspaper wrote a feature about it the next day.

On numerous occasions various unusual and paranormal topics came up for both studio and phone-in discussion, such as religious simulacra and moving statues, ghosts, poltergeist activity, electronic voice phenomena (EVP), and UFOs. On this occasion, he asked for listeners to call in to tell him about the most bizarre things they had ever seen. Sylvester called the show, and a very curious tale then unfolded.

He arrived in Ireland two years earlier, and on his and his girlfriend’s journey around Ireland they stopped for a night in Wicklow town. While his girlfriend brought some items for their overnight stay into their B&B, he decided, for safekeeping, to also unload the remainder of their luggage from the back of his car. While doing so, his attention was drawn to a large, bright patch of sky to the east. Looking out to sea, he could make out a lighthouse or lightship in the far distance, its rotating beam flashing rhythmically, close to the horizon.

However, directly above this light there was what he called a ‘massive red and orange light, shimmering’. He was unfamiliar with the local topography and, coupled with the darkness, he made the assumption that there must have been a peninsula behind the beacon. He reached this conclusion because the large glow reminded him of an out-of-control gorse fire, or maybe the stubble of a large corn field being burned.

Thinking to himself that ‘they’ll have a hard time putting that out’, he locked his car and began to turn away to rejoin his girlfriend at their accommodation. As he moved, however, he noticed that the ‘burning field’ was changing. It moved further up into the sky, elongated itself, and then began to accelerate away until he either lost sight of it, or until it just winked out. It was like a light bulb switching off.

He told his girlfriend about what he’d witnessed, and they vowed to have another look in the morning. When they did so, his idea of it having been a fire on peninsular farmland evaporated. In the bright morning sunshine, standing exactly where he had been the night before, they saw that there was no land behind the location of the lighthouse or lightship, just the open expanse of the Irish Sea.

Other Wicklow Wonders

Several curious sightings were reported elsewhere in the county, a few of which are worth mentioning here. In the summer of 1996, for instance, one witness repeatedly told of luminous, noiseless, airborne objects that could be observed from his home near Newtownmountkennedy. The basic description of the objects was unchanging, and has been repeated in many cases since: they were oval in shape, a bright electric blue in colour, and they darted about the nearby mountains.[3]

It may be assumed that a little-understood natural phenomenon could be at work in some UFO sightings. Ball lightning, earthlights, tectonic and geological stresses, marsh gas … all have been put forward to explain incidents like this. (Indeed, eastern Ireland had an earth tremor in July 1984). However, what about when the witness sees not a luminous mass of some kind, but a structured, controlled object? In broad daylight?

On 1 March 1996, news came to us of a strange event that had just occurred. A motorist was driving around the Sugar Loaf Mountain area, having a pleasant spin with his wife and young children, looking for a suitable place for a picnic. Suddenly, a disc-like airborne craft came into view, which proceeded to harass the family, coming close to colliding with their car several times. The terrified driver swerved across the road, trying to avoid crashing into the object, which was very obviously intelligently controlled.[4]

The day out ended almost as soon as it had begun, with two petrified parents and their hysterical children driving home as quickly as they could. Our files indicate that other UFO sightings had occurred in the Sugar Loaf Mountain area shortly before this, with reports being made to local gardaí.

A similar incident occurred over a year later in the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains, when a young woman was driving home alone at approximately 2.30 a.m. In her rear view mirror, she made out two bright white lights. As in the Clones Strand incident many years earlier, she thought that a truck was trying to overtake her, so she slowed down, pulling her vehicle further over to the left side of the road as she did so. Instead of it being another driver passing her, she instead watched in shock as the two lights separated, then drew alongside the driver’s door, and the front passenger door.

The terrified woman screamed, and accelerated dangerously. The roads were devoid of traffic on what was a weeknight, so there was no one to help her in any way. Arriving outside her home, the menacing lights having just shot away into the sky, she skidded to a stop in the middle of the road. She flung the door open and ran into her home, sobbing for her parents.[5]

By the time they had woken up and calmed her down, the lights had completely disappeared. Reluctantly, the shaken and tearful woman then parked her car and locked it – but only while her parents kept watch as she did so. These lights had no obvious structure within them, and made no noise, but they gave every indication of being under intelligent control.[6]

If some sort of bizarre natural phenomenon was involved here, perhaps attracted by the workings of the car’s electrics, how was it that the orbs of light not only followed her around many street corners, but then seemed to choose to depart? Why didn’t they stay with the car as she approached her home?

The Bray UFO

A north County Wicklow resident, John Scarry, was yet another person who ran into the UFO puzzle head-on; the subject has been of interest to him ever since. One evening in late February or early March 1995, as the sun was dipping behind the mountains, he was travelling south on the suburban DART railway, from Dublin to Bray. Over the Bray Head peninsula, he and his companion noticed, low in the sky, a ‘stationary, pinkish-red, round object’, which was about the size of a penny held at arm’s length. It looked like a small, glowing sun – another description that repeats itself with other UFO sightings – and it had disappeared by the time the train pulled in to Bray railway station.[7]

The colour of the object could have been caused by the reflection of the setting sun, in the opposite side of the sky. As with the following case, the Bray area is a popular holiday and recreation spot, so the possibility of a distress flare springs to mind. However, the precise, round shape of the object makes that less likely, as does the lack of emergency service activity during and after the event, with no rescues or false alarms later publicised. Also, the extreme stillness and lack of wind that day makes it unlikely that a weather balloon could have drifted away from the area by the time the witnesses reached the station. This location is just a few miles away from the next sighting.

The UFO And The Helicopter - A Military Involvement?

Moving a little further south along the coast, a fascinating case occurred in March 1993. The witness could not provide a precise date for the sighting, which would have enabled further research into the possible involvement of the Irish Air Corps. The witness, the wife of a very prominent Dublin-based businessman, asked for her name to be withheld from any publication of her report.[8]

At 11.30 p.m. or so, ‘Marie Walsh’ was going to bed when, looking towards the sea on what was a crystal clear, starry night, she began to observe lights moving along the surface of the water. As her home was on slightly elevated land, she and her husband could look out to sea, beyond the village of Kilcoole, and they often watched the lights of ships and trawlers as they went about their trade.

On this night as she watched, one of the lights began to rise from the water – not unlike Henry Sylvester’s sighting from Wicklow town. Through her husband’s binoculars, she could see that this light – this object – was a globe of coloured lights which was ‘beautiful to look at’. Then, a separate white light switched on, shining its beam onto the object. Behind this light, she could make out the contours of a helicopter. The globe-shaped object continued to rise, as the helicopter followed suit. Suddenly, the globe accelerated skyward, leaving the helicopter hovering. It soon turned, and flew inland.

The area was (and is) popular for yachting and water pursuits, and with shipping always present, it is possible that a Search and Rescue helicopter was deployed by the military. This, though, would in no way explain the object itself, which was described as very large indeed in comparison with the aircraft. She could not tell what kind of helicopter was involved. It may have been helpful from a research point of view if it could have been determined whether an Air Corps Alouette, Dauphin, or Gazelle was involved. In SAR operations, however, a protocol between the Irish and British governments means that Royal Air Force or Royal Navy assets could also have been in the area. That said, the witness pointed out that no rescue story appeared in the media afterwards which might account for what she had seen.

If an Irish military chopper was present, it wouldn’t be the only time that an Air Corps aircraft has encountered something unknown in Ireland’s airspace. Within weeks of Marie Walsh’s sighting, the strange events of the night of 30 to 31 March 1993 would unfold.

Military And Garda Officers File UFO Reports

Various sections of the Irish media have commented over the past decade or so that the remarkable events of this night must just have been an April Fool’s Day prank. This isn’t so, and it serves to repeat the defensive attitude of the astronomy group spokesman on Gerry Ryan’s radio show. In other words, the public is given a tailored explanation for something strange in the sky, because it just can’t be anything else.

In fact, it was the Evening Press newspaper which, on the front page of its 31 March edition, broke the story in a dramatic fashion. It told of unexplained lights in the sky having been observed the night before. These lights, it turned out, were seen from many vantage points in both the Republic and Northern Ireland, and also by members of the public in parts of southwestern England. Among the witnesses on both sides of the Irish Sea were several of the much sought-after qualified observers that were mentioned earlier: police and military officers.

Veteran British UFO researcher Jenny Randles later wrote that Doug Cooper of the British UFO Research Association compiled a list of the sightings of these lights in England, but something simply did not add up. People had reported seeing the lights (or possibly objects) at very different times, and sometimes going in directions that were anything but northwest to southeast – which had been the direction indicated by the aviation authorities. This direction had been put forward in the official explanation, which declared that what had been seen was the burning up of space debris. This debris had re-entered the atmosphere following the launch of the Cosmos 2238 vehicle earlier on from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.[9]

The northwest to southeast trajectory was echoed in a report that was later released by the Air Corps. Six members of the Defence Forces on a Dauphin helicopter had observed two objects while flying from the Air Corps base at Baldonnell, near Dublin city, to Finner Camp in County Donegal. Their observation occurred at an altitude of 1,500 feet, ten nautical miles east of Mullingar.[10]

Commandant H. O’Keeffe, who was piloting the aircraft, stated in his report that visibility was approximately twenty kilometres, with a clear sky and a bright half moon to the west. He and the co-pilot observed a light being ‘turned on’ above their helicopter and to their two o’clock position. This hardly seems like the behaviour of space debris, which should have burned brightly as it came into contact with the atmosphere, rather than suddenly becoming highly visible. His companions were of the opinion, having observed the phenomenon through night vision goggles, that there was more than one aircraft involved, and that there were perhaps two or more objects ‘behind the leading item’.

Over the next two minutes, he and his five colleagues watched the object – or objects, as two bright lights were clearly visible – passing over their heads. Through the goggles, O’Keeffe could see that the objects remained a fixed distance apart. All on board agreed that they looked like lights on wing tips. He also observed that there looked to be condensation trails behind the lights.

O’Keeffe openly admitted in his statement that the lack of a definite aircraft outline, especially against a dark, starry sky, made it difficult to ascertain how far the phenomenon was above the Dauphin. However, the airmen concluded that the object (or objects) looked to be no more than between 2–5,000 feet above their position. Is this normal for space debris – let alone debris that can be seen from as far away as the south of England? If it was debris that had managed to make it through the atmosphere, how was it that there was no radar signature whatsoever picked up by either Dublin or Shannon ATC? The pilot contacted them both, but with negative results. Also, if it was debris, where did it finally come down?

O’Keeffe concluded his report by stating that the duty officer at Defence Forces Headquarters (DFHQ) phoned him after he had landed to confirm the report he’d made to Shannon ATC, and to ask him if he had established what type of aircraft was involved? He hadn’t. When he landed at Finner Camp, he had telephoned Shannon ATC to confirm his sighting. He stated that Shannon had informed him they had ‘already received several reports of the same item being observed by persons on the ground in Askeaton and Bantry’. Also, an Iona Airways cargo plane, Flight 971, was crossing the Welsh coast when its crew overheard the Dauphin’s radio contact with Dublin ATC. The Iona crew had observed a fast formation too, moving from north to south.

The incident is made even more puzzling by the release of a second military statement, this time by a Captain D. Cotter of the Number 3 Support Wing, Naval Support Squadron. In a submission to his group intelligence officer, Cotter told of seeing something unusual in the sky while driving his car through Newcastle, County Dublin. He got out of his vehicle for a better look, and watched ‘two bright lights travelling at speed along the night sky’. There looked to be a gap of 200 feet between the lights, which maintained ‘a perfect line abreast formation’. He estimated their speed to be around 200 knots, and their height was deemed to be around 5,000 feet. The direction of movement was from the north northwest to the south southeast. The diagram he attached showed contrails of ‘a few hundred’ feet behind each light.[11]

His statement made no mention of any contact with military or civilian radar systems, to ascertain if they had tracked anything in the area, but by far the most puzzling aspect of his report is the date. The time given is 1.10 a.m., which fits in precisely with the time O’Keeffe and his crew saw something strange near Mullingar, but the date given by Cotter is 28 March. Several days before the Cosmos 2238 launch and debris re-entry, what could these mysterious objects have been?

The early to mid-1990s saw an increased level of UFO activity in the Bantry area, which we shall look at in a later chapter. This March 1993 incident, commented upon by Shannon ATC to the pilot, was one of many sightings which were continuing as recently as the summer of 2005. What, though, about the mention of Askeaton by ATC?

It was in the environs of this County Limerick town that two garda officers were on patrol in the early hours of 31 March 1993. At approximately 1.10 a.m., Garda Michael O’Flaherty and Sergeant Pat McMahon were travelling in their patrol car. About a mile outside Askeaton, O’Flaherty, who was in the passenger seat, noticed a large craft of some kind in the sky. It was a brightly-lit, disc-shaped object, which was coming from the direction of the Shannon estuary. They stopped their car to get out for a better look, but within seconds the object darted towards them, stopping and remaining stationary over their vehicle. It looked quite flat, and it radiated luminous blue light.

The gardaí decided to go back into Askeaton to report the UFO at their station, but up until they came to the outskirts of the town, the UFO followed their every move on the road. It maintained its speed for over five minutes, keeping up with their car, and then flew off into the night sky.

Commandant O’Keeffe was probably informed about this particular incident when he was on the radio to Shannon ATC from his helicopter, or when he telephoned its staff after his arrival at Finner Camp. According to the journalist Tom Prendiville, who later wrote about the incident in a national newspaper, the object’s presence was known to the Woodcock Hill radar facility, which services Shannon Airport. According to Prendiville, the facility admitted that the UFO the gardaí saw was picked up on radar screens.[12] Suddenly, what was officially space debris looked like something else entirely.

Notes

[1] Personal interview with Tommy Flanagan, October 1999.

[2]Paranormal Ireland, Dara de Faoite, Maverick House, 2002.

[3]UFOs Over Ireland: A Status Report, Dermot Butler, September 1997.

[4]Ibid.

[5] Telephone interview with witness, November 1997.

[6] Personal interview with witness, November 1997.

[7]UFOs Over Ireland: A Status Report.

[8]Ibid.

[9]Northern UFO News, Winter 1998.

[10]‘Unidentified Airborne Sighting’, 30 March 1993, statement by Comdt. H. O’Keeffe, Irish Air Corps.

[11] Untitled statement and diagram by Captain D. Cotter, Irish Air Corps.

[12] Untitled statement and diagram by Captain D. Cotter, Irish Air Corps.

2. Irish UFO Research – A History

The UFO mystery has been around for a very long time, but those new to the subject, or whose familiarity with it doesn’t go beyond the claims and counter claims that have developed over the years concerning the Roswell crash, may be surprised to learn that Ireland has had its own UFO research history. While the United States and Britain have had a long history of UFO research societies, the investigation of anomalous aerial phenomena here in Ireland, and the collection of witness testimony, didn’t really begin until the 1970s. This followed almost non-existent media reporting on the subject up to that time, though one Sunday Press report in our files, dated 19 February 1967, tells of gardaí and Royal Ulster Constabulary officers looking into a reported UFO sighting along the Republic’s border with Northern Ireland.