Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Date: 23/03/2022
In late February a lady from Marlborough named Kathie got in touch with BUFOG via our website’s reporting form regarding three very separate and very different incidents. Two of these incidents were witnessed by herself, and the third involved her late father. I reached out to her over the phone to discuss what took place in more depth, and she provided the various drawings you can see throughout this report.
Domed Disc
In September 1982 Kathie was 33 years old. At the time she lived on Wilcot Road, Pewsey, with her husband Fred and 5 year old daughter Claire. It was around the 20th of the month and in the run up to the annual carnival.
It was around 9pm and the family had been down into the town for the day. It was a clear and still evening, a bit chilly but pleasant. Due to the time of year the sun had set and the stars were visible. There was quite a bit of moonlight and street lights so the surroundings were easy to see.
They were walking back home and heading westward along the left side of Wilcot Road. The road has a gradual uphill slope to it. Their house was off on a short side road ahead of them and off to the right. The housing on the left side of the street was raised on a grass covered slope, with stepped pathways leading up to the front doors. As they walked along the road they passed a man who was heading down one of these pathways towards the road.
A short distance on from this they were walking past a low brick wall. Suddenly ahead of them they noticed an object in the sky visible in the distance over the housing on the left side of the road. The object was disc-shaped and was travelling at a very slow speed in their direction. Kathie exclaimed “Whoa, look! What’s that?” which drew the attention of her husband and daughter. The family stopped walking and began watching the object.
As it approached they got a clearer look at it. The object was a dark steely grey colour, which reminded Kathie of the hull of a ship removed from the sea for repair work. It had a smooth surface with no markings. On the top of the disc was a small central dome. Around the central rim were beautiful lights of a variety of pastel colours which seemed to phase into one another. Kathie estimates it was about 25 feet across and at an altitude of about 80 feet. It was moving at around 5 mph and was completely silent.
The movement of the UFO was very smooth indeed. Kathie described it as “Very slow and gentle so sleek with no bumps, like someone sliding on ice. It had a lovely smooth and silky way of moving." The witnesses watched in awe as the object flew right overhead. As it did so it then seemed to perform a sharp angled turn and begin travelling North West in the direction of their house.
They decided to follow it to keep observing it. As they ran up the road towards the house it disappeared beyond it. Upon arriving home they went out to the back garden expecting to still see it in the sky but it had completely vanished. There was nothing that it could have been hidden behind, it had just gone.
Kathie went back inside and immediately decided to ring RAF Upavon, 3 miles to the South of their location. She asked them whether there was any aerial vehicle in the world which could move with no sound, wings or visible means of propulsion. The man she was speaking with informed her that there was not, to which she replied “I think we’ve seen a UFO.” The man did not laugh at this, but instead provided her with the telephone number for BUFORA. Kathie ended the call and then contacted BUFORA to describe what they’d just seen. They agreed to send out an investigator.
Several days later a lady turned up and independently interviewed her and Fred about the sighting. She did not tell them what would happen next and after gathering the information simply left. They did not hear anything further about it, and assumed that the details had been stored somewhere.
A while later Kathie was speaking to another man in Pewsey. When she told him about the sighting he said that he and some friends had also witnessed the UFO when leaving a local pub called Crown Inn. The pub lies further along Wilcot Road to the West, so the UFO would indeed have flown right past this location. The man did not give many details so she was unable to verify for certain whether this was true or not, but she had no reason to doubt him.
Prior to this incident Kathie had not paid much attention to the UFO subject, but the sighting sparked her interest and she started to look into it from this point onwards.
This is a fascinating close encounter with what appears to have been a genuine domed-disc craft. It’s appearance certainly puts out of the question any normal civilian or military aircraft, and drones were not available back at the time of the sighting. It was flying at quite a low altitude so if it was making any sound this would clearly have been heard. The object was too large to be a novelty inflatable or radio controlled model.
It seems unlikely that it was an unusual shaped hot air balloon due to the presence of the lights around the central rim. The object travelled right over the heads of the witnesses so at this distance they would have been able to see a basket hanging below it if one was present.
The way the object vanished in a clear sky is also another interesting aspect, as is the fact that it vanished in the short period of time that the witnesses lost sight of it. This has happened on many occasions, too often to be just coincidental. There is the possibility that its occupants were aware they were being.
Mantid Sighting
By the 1990’s Kathie had moved to Marlborough. One summer’s day she had been out shopping in Great Bedwyn, a town to the South East. It was about 11am and she was driving back home North West along Forest Hill. The road is in a very rural area and leads through open farmer’s fields and areas of woodland. It was a wonderful sunny and still day.
About 1 mile along the road Kathie was just approaching a side road on the left which leads down to a number of houses. At this section of the road there were bushes and trees on either side. However the sunlight was shining brightly through gaps in the branches.
Suddenly about 50 feet ahead of her a strange figure stepped out sideways from the bushes on the right hand side, very close to another open track which leads to a gated field. The entire figure was jet black in colour, it was hard to see any details. It was upright and very tall, about 8-10 feet in height. It had a slender body frame with long thin arms and legs. The head looked triangular in shape, wider at the back and coming down to a point at the front. The arms were positioned out in front of it similar to a Praying Mantis.
The being was only visible for a couple of seconds. It very quickly retreated back into the bushes, seemingly disturbed by the presence of the approaching car. Kathie did not stop to see if she could spot it again, she just kept on driving, wondering what it could have been. She did not tell anyone else about the incident.
Although Kathie had an interest in the UFO subject at the time of this incident she had not looked much into contact. However a couple of years later she was attending a local UFO group. She mentioned the incident to another girl who was there. The girl had a book with drawings of different types of aliens in it. She asked Kathie to look through the book to see if she could find anything similar to what she’d seen. One of the pictures was of a Mantid. When she saw it she immediately realised this is what she’d seen and exclaimed “Oh my god that’s it!”
Although Kathie only glimpsed the figure for a couple of seconds she is convinced that it was really there and not just a shadow caused by sunlight through the trees. However she does wonder whether there was a shadow on it at the time leading to it looking completely black.
The figure was upright and was extremely tall, so a wild animal or escaped livestock seems to be an unlikely explanation. Due to the height and length of the arms and legs a pedestrian also seems improbable. Could this genuinely have been a Mantid being, and if so what was it doing there? Kathie has always wondered if it had just appeared from another dimension and was surprised by where it had found itself. This is an interesting theory worth considering, although there is no evidence which really supports that this is what occurred.
Missing Time
In addition to her own sightings, Kathie also went over an incident which happened to her father George Marshall right back in 1938 when he was 11 years old. At the time he lived in Honey Street, a hamlet near to Alton Barnes in Wiltshire. He happened to live in one of the houses opposite to The Barge Inn, a venue which is often used for paranormal events and conferences (one of which I have personally spoken at).
The area is covered in open farmer’s crop fields. Every Sunday George used to go out for a walk by himself. This walk would take him through a number of fields on both sides of the nearby canal.
One Sunday while out walking he entered a particular field and felt an intense heat. It felt to him like there was an object and figures in the field but there was nothing visible at all. He felt compelled to enter the field, almost as if something was leading him. He then felt the sensation of lifting up into the air.
Then suddenly everything went back to normal, although he could still feel heat around where he stood. He continued his walk without further incident.
When he arrived home his mother asked him where he had been. He informed her that he had just been out on his walk like normal. It was now that she revealed to him that he was two hours late home. He knew what time he had set off on the walk, and was familiar with the route so knew how long it would have taken. There was two hours of time he could not account for!
According to Kathie, George never associated it with UFOs at all, he merely just put it down to an odd experience. In the later years of his life he asked Kathie to write a small book about his life. He recounted many stories for her, this being one of them. Below is the actual passage from the book relating to what took place:
Kathie says she intended for her and him to head out to the field where the incident took place, but in the end this never happened, so she is unaware of the precise location.
This has all the hall marks of a missing time incident possibly related to an abduction which was wiped from her father’s mind. It is possible that the heat he felt was coming from a landed craft which was invisible, along with its occupants. There is the possibility that the incident had a medical explanation and that he had blacked out for a couple of hours, but if this had happened surely he would have recollected waking back up from this.
Conclusion
These incidents are of course wildly different from one another, and occurred years apart, so I do not feel there is any connection between them. The most impressive is of course her close encounter with the domed-disc shaped UFO, which was also witnessed by her husband and daughter. The appearance, movement and lack of sound all suggest that this was a genuine craft sighting.
The being that Kathie saw may have been a Mantid. Its shape was certainly reminiscent of one. However she did only have a fleeting glimpse of it, so there is the possibility that it was a misidentification of something more mundane. If it was indeed a Mantid, this was clearly not an intentional visitation of any kind. It just appears that Kathie may have been in the right place at the right time to briefly see it.
Her father’s experience is very interesting and it is great that Kathie managed to capture permanent record of it in the book on her father. The fact that her father knew the route and walked it regularly puts out of the question that he got lost or misjudged how long it would take, and there are some very interesting aspects to the experience.
It’s great to be able to get these incidents down on record and I would like to thank Kathie for coming forward with this information. If you have any additional information relating to any of these events please get in touch.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2022