Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Date: 20/02/2022
Mike James is an elderly gentleman from Bristol. He initially got in touch with me via E-Mail in December 2021 to provide details regarding a number of varied fascinating experiences he has had throughout his life. After corresponding with him over the following weeks I was able to build up a detailed picture of what has taken place. This report covers them in depth, and features a number of drawings which were provided on request.
Imaginary Friend
Mike was born in 1950. He spent his childhood years in a house on Bridgewater Road in the outskirts of Bristol, about 500 yards from the city boundary. He lived there with his parents Reginald and Barbara, younger sister Jacqueline and younger brother Robert. The house was built on the remnants of some cottages and had one acre of land around it.
In his early childhood, according to his mother, he had an imaginary friend named Hannah. She could only be seen by him, but he would apparently spend hours outside chatting with her. To one side of the house was a boundary wall which was the ruins of a previous cottage. His mother informed him that this is where he would go to speak with Hannah. Mike has no recollection of this at all.
It is not at all un-common for young children to have imaginary friends, and this is probably all that this was, but due to Mike’s later experiences, and the fact that some ETs are extremely humanoid in appearance, it has been included.
White Orb
On a night in either the spring or summer of 1957 Mike woke up suddenly for no apparent reason. It was still dark, and he thinks it was around 3am. He shared the room with his younger sister and brother. They remained fast asleep.
The window of his room was alongside the bed. It was about 6 foot by 8 foot in size and did not have any curtains. For an unknown reason he felt the need to stand up on his bed and look out of the window. He was almost excited to do so. It was very dark outside as there were no nearby street lights.
Over the neighbour’s outhouse about 200 feet away and at an elevation of 45 degrees was a glowing white orb of light. It was hovering completely stationary and was constantly bright, although not bright enough to light up the surroundings. Puzzled by the object he started at it for around three minutes, before settling back down to sleep. He did not wake up his sister or brother to show them.
Looking back at the incident, Mike cannot be absolutely certain that the orb wasn’t a full moon. However he feels that by that age he would have recognised it as such. Also there was the strange compulsion to do what he did in the first place. If it was merely the moon why would he have felt the need to stand up on the bed?
In the morning he did not tell his family about the object as he felt that they would not believe him. However this experience left a lasting impression on Mike and he can still remember it extremely clearly after so many years.
A Visitation
It was the summer holidays in 1960. Mike was still in Junior school at the time. His sister Jacqueline was 8 and brother Robert was 6. They would regularly play outside on an area of rubble which lay between their house and the neighbouring house. Back in 1960 at the front of their neighbour’s house was another old cottage in a state of disrepair, which their neighbour used to store tools in. There were a number of missing bricks in one of the walls which formed a Z-shaped hole. This hole was dark and used to un-nerve them.
One afternoon Mike, Jacqueline and Robert were all playing outside. It was a pleasant sunny day. All of a sudden Mike got the feeling that they were being watched. He looked towards the hole in the wall of the old cottage. Bizarrely instead of it being Z-shaped it now appeared rectangular in shape, about 14 inches by 10 inches. In the darkness Mike could see two faces staring back at him. They were the shape of upside-down pears, hairless, and with very pale skin. The eyes were dark and no nose was visible at all.
The hole was about 3.5 feet up the wall, so if the faces belonged to figures they would have been about 4 feet in height. Upon seeing the faces Mike loudly exclaimed “What’s that!?” Jacqueline and Robert then looked and also saw them. After staring at them for several seconds all three of them ran away to a position where they could no longer see the hole.
They chatted for about five minutes about what they had just seen, before deciding to go and knock on the neighbour’s back door. The house next door was owned by a couple who had two daughters aged 18 and 15. The cottage could only be accessed by a stable door and a side door, both of which were usually padlocked. But Mike wondered whether the daughters were in there for whatever reason and had decided to play a trick on them.
Their mother answered the door. When Mike asked whether the girls were in the cottage she confirmed that they were not, and that they were not allowed to go in there because it was unsafe. Upon hearing this Mike thinks that he told the neighbour about what they’d seen but cannot remember how she reacted to this.
This incident certainly sounds like a visitation by a couple of Greys that for whatever reason were observing Mike, his sister and brother as they played. The fact that the faces were seen by all three children puts the possibility of individual imagination out of the question. The appearance of their faces with the very pale hairless skin, dark eyes and lack of visible noses, as well as their apparent height all fit with them being Greys.
Also the way in which the hole appeared a different shape to how it actually was sounds like an element of visual distortion also took place. There are many contact cases on record where visual elements of the experience have appeared unusual in one way or another, maybe this was done to ensure that they could be seen clearly. Unfortunately both Jacqueline and Robert have since passed away, so I am unable to speak with them about what they recollect.
Out-Of-Body Experience
In 1973 when he was 23 years old Mike moved out of his parent’s home into a flat in Henbury in North Bristol, which he shared with a friend. During the week he would leave for work at 8am so would go to bed around 10.30pm.
One night in early autumn he fell asleep quite quickly, lying face down on the bed with his arms folded under him. He suddenly woke up with a floating sensation. As he opened his eyes he began to rise up into the air above his bed. Looking down he could see himself still lying there asleep.
As he rose up it became obvious to him that he had no control over this movement. He continued to rise upward, passing through the ceiling and heading upward into the open air. He looked down at the flat roof of the block of flats. As he got higher he began to speed up faster and faster. He began to panic and fight back against what was happening.
He got to about 600 feet up when suddenly everything stopped. He found himself lying back in bed. He thought for a short while about what had happened, but soon managed to fall back off to sleep. The experience had been disturbing for him, and he is happy that it has never happened again since.
This experience is unlikely to have been directly linked with contact, but many contactees have reported having out-of-body experiences (OBE’s) so it has been included for interest.
Missing Time
Mike only lived in the flat for a couple of years before moving back in with his mother, who now lived in a house on Chew Valley Road in Chew Stoke, a village South of Bristol. He would regularly drive to Bath in the evening after work to see his friends. One evening in 1975 he was out at a bar with some friends. He decided to head for home around 10.30pm, leaving the establishment in his Ford Anglia.
He took the usual route home to Chew Stoke, which lead West out of Bath along the A38 through Corston and then South to Marksbury. There were no other cars on the road at the time. After passing through Marksbury he turned off onto the A368 like usual. This is a stretch of dark and winding road which leads West through Chelwood.
The next thing Mike became aware of he found himself at the crossroads with the A37, West of Chelwood, about 2.5 miles West of where he had consciously been moments before. He had no recollection of travelling along the road at all. He thought to himself “How did I get here?”
He headed around the island and continued along the A368 until he reached West Harptree, then turned and headed North along the B3114 until he reached Chew Stoke.
When he arrived home and checked the clock he discovered it was now 11.30pm. He had travelled the route back home from Bath many times before and knew that it took roughly half an hour when there was no traffic. He was certain that he had left Bath around 10.30pm and so had about 30 minutes time he could not account for. This combined with the sudden shift in position of his vehicle while on the way home was an un-nerving mystery.
Mike confirmed that he had not been drinking, nor was he feeling tired. I asked him whether he could have possibly zoned out and automatically driven along the stretch of road between Marksbury and the crossroads. He says that the road is too bendy for that and due to the lack of light it is important to remain alert while driving along that particular stretch.
There was of course no UFO seen or any indication of the presence of something, but aspects of this experience would fit in with a missing time scenario which can commonly occur when people are abducted while out driving. Mike could not have just simply zoned out behind the wheel as he drove along the A368, as this would not have made any difference to his journey time. The jump in position combined with the lost period of time suggests that something more unusual took place.
Flying Triangle
By 2001 Mike had moved to Twickenham in London, on a cul-de-sac called Clive Road situated behind St Mary’s College. Most evenings he would take his pet dog out for a walk. One evening in November at around 10.45pm he was out walking his dog along the road. It was a dark evening with no moon visible and not many stars out.
As they neared the end of the road off to his right he noticed two bright white lights approaching at low altitude. He could see them over the top of the fence and through a copse of trees. Due to the time of year the trees were bare of leaves.
The road lies under the Eastbound flight path out of Heathrow Airport, and Mike was used to seeing passenger jets on take off. However they would usually be in a steep climb, whereas these lights seemed to be coming straight towards him. He suddenly panicked, wondering if a plane crash was about to take place. However as the lights got closer Mike began to realise it was not a normal aircraft.
The two bright lights seemed to merge and become a dull almost fluorescent circular light which seemed to be about 5-6 feet across. This light was at the front corner of a huge triangular-shaped object which he could make out against the sky. As it passed over Mike saw similar lights at the other two corners. There was also a bright red pulsing red light situated in the centre of the base of the object which seemed to slowly spin. Mike estimates the object was at least 250 feet across and at a height of about 200 feet.
Mike was froze to the spot astounded by what he was seeing. The dog remained silent by his side. He says he should have gone and got other people to see it too but was too awestruck and did not want to stop staring at it. He also feels that he was literally rooted to the spot and couldn’t have moved even if he wanted to. As it flew overhead Mike heard a very dull humming sound, which may have been coming from the object. However there is an electrical transformer at the left end of the street and he cannot be certain that the noise was not coming from that.
The object flew on a straight and level course with no deviation at a speed of about 30-40 mph. It passed over the road and houses and continued flying to the South East East in the direction of the River Thames until it vanished from sight. In total he had watched it for about 6 minutes. He did not have a camera on him and smartphones did not exist back in 2001.
Strangely, Mike noted that there were no planes seen in the sky for a good while after the sighting was over. He says that he would usually see or hear planes regularly taking off. Eventually around 11.20pm as he came back up the road a jumbo jet was finally seen passing over. The sound of the engines was extremely easy to hear, highlighting the lack of sound during the sighting.
When Mike arrived home he told his family about what he had seen. In the following days he sent a letter to a researcher who had looked into the Belgian UFO Wave in the 1990s in which triangular craft were repeatedly observed, but never got a response.
The object was heading in the same direction as planes leaving Heathrow would travel, however it is clear that it was not a normal aircraft. The lighting configuration on it did not match any known civilian or military plane or helicopter. It was clearly making a very low humming sound or no noise at all, and also appeared to be much larger than a passenger jet.
It was much too large to be a lit inflatable, drone or remote controlled model, and the wrong shape and lighting for a blimp. This is instead likely to be an impressive close encounter with a Flying Triangle craft. This is one of the more commonly reported craft types, and there have been many previous reports of Flying Triangles with precisely the same lighting configuration and colours, some of which I have directly investigated.
Conclusions
As you can see, Mike has had some truly amazing and varied experiences throughout his life. The two pale beings which he, his brother and sister witnessed as children certainly seems to have been a visitation by two Greys, and it is entirely possible that the missing time incident in 1975 was an abduction experience that has been wiped from his memory.
The white orb which Mike saw as a child was close enough to suggest that it was there for him and that some kind of direct interaction may have gone on. The fact that he felt compelled to stand up on his bed in the night (the only way he was able to see it in the first place) also points in this direction. Many years later Mike also had the particularly impressive close encounter with a Flying Triangle craft, although it does not appear that any interaction took place on this occasion, so it is possible he was just at the right place and right time to see this.
It is great that Mike reached out to BUFOG to get these stunning experiences down on permanent record, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for getting in touch.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2022