Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Date: 31/10/2019
For reasons of anonymity pseudonyms have been used for some witnesses
Encounters with the mysterious Men In Black are statistically rare it the world of UFOs. However they have sometimes been reported to grill witnesses for information about things they have seen. The main focus of this report is a night of UFO sightings, and a related incident involving possible MIB which occurred many years later!
Sightings
Back in 1992 James was 18 years old and lived on Mayfield Road in Moseley with his parents, grandmother, sister Karen and pet dog Duke. Duke had arthritis in his hind legs but was still active, so James would regularly walk him around the local neighbourhood during the evening.
The incident took place on 14th November. At the time James had an interest in UFOs and ran an online blog page named Paralnoia, which is no longer active. He documented what took place on the page, which is the reason he recalls the precise date it happened.
He was out walking Duke. They were walking along Highfield Road which leads directly off Mayfield Road. It was about 7pm and a very pleasant still evening. Due to the time of year it was already fully dark. The stars were visible overhead.
Suddenly Duke became agitated by something and began whimpering. Simon looked around to see what was causing this agitation. He happened to glance up into the sky. As he did he saw what appeared to be a bright white comet with a tail shoot across the sky in front of him from right to left in a curved arc. It moved slower than a meteorite, and appeared to be a few hundred feet up rather than out at the edge of the atmosphere. It travelled with quite a slow and deliberate movement.
But this was not all he saw. As the comet-like object began to move away to the left it seemed to pass behind something invisible in the air. For a split second it illuminated the curved edge of a second large aerial object which was not visible to his naked eye!
After this had occurred the dog immediately seemed to recover and stopped whimpering. He thought to himself “That’s really weird! I’ll go back to the house, get my binoculars out and have a look to see if anything’s there.” He quickly walked Duke the rest of the way three times as fast as usual. Within 5 minutes they were back home. There was nobody else in at the time.
Duke would usually remain downstairs in the house as climbing up the stairs caused him pain. So James left him downstairs and went up to his bedroom. He grabbed his binoculars then opened the big bedroom window which had a view to the East. Highfield Road was to the right of the view. He looked to the left in the direction of Birmingham International airport and scanned the sky for normal aircraft.
As he looked back to the right in the direction he had seen the comet-like object and the other invisible object he noticed two white orbs of light in the distance. They were in close proximity to one another but appeared to be darting back and forth, disappearing and reappearing, and curving around each other in erratic movements. They looked completely different to how a normal plane’s navigation lights would appear.
James is not sure whether one light vanished or whether they merged but suddenly instead of two lights he was looking at a single white light which was travelling in his direction. At this moment he heard Duke start to whimper again and begin to climb the stairs. This is not something he would normally do because of the pain involved in doing so, it was clear that he was highly concerned and wanted comforting.
As the light began to get closer he was able to observe it with his naked eye rather than through binoculars. He thought to himself “Right, is this an aeroplane?” The light continued approaching his location. James thought “Oh shit! This is getting really really close!”
The object came to a halt above the tree at the base of the back garden to his house. It appeared to be several hundred feet up. It was now possible to make out what it actually looked like. What had initially appeared as a glowing light was now an oval-shaped disc with a curved top but a flat base. It was chrome silver in colour but was giving off a slight orange glow. James believes this was probably down to the streetlights reflecting on its surface. It appeared to be about the size of a medium jet - James estimates about 100 foot across.
James also noticed that the atmosphere in the room had become very still, the air itself felt heavy. He also believes he felt a slight static charge all around him. He stood there transfixed by what he was observing, trying to take in as much detail as possible. He looked at the UFO through his binoculars to see if he could make out any markings or windows but there appeared to be none. Unfortunately he had no camera at the time and this was long before camera phones.
He knew that what he was looking at was clearly not mundane. He decided to try and communicate audibly with the UFO. He said out loud “I can’t tell what you are, can you show me something?” At this moment, seemingly in response to his request, the object began to rotate slowly in a clockwise direction! This continued until the flat underside of the object was now facing the sky.
After about 30 seconds of it hovering motionless it once again began moving slowly in his direction, but at a slower speed than before. James estimates it moved about 20 mph. It travelled on a straight and level course. As it passed over the house he lost sight of it through the window.
James quickly ran downstairs and out onto the front drive to continue observing the object. He found it had completely vanished from sight. However he was greeted by his 16 year old sister who had just arrived home. She immediately exclaimed “Oh my god have you just seen that light over the house?!” James responded saying “I’ve just seen it up close. I think I might have seen a UFO!” He then queried whether Karen had actually seen anything, to which she responded “Well I wouldn’t have said I’d seen a light if I hadn’t seen anything.”
She then went on to say that she had seen a light, then a bright flash and it was gone. The fact that his sister reported seeing a light rather than the oval-shaped metallic object is interesting. This was possibly due to the fact that she observed it at distance only, or that it was catching the light in such a way as to appear to be glowing. However it seemed that his sister had not only seen the object too but may have also witnessed it leaving the area!
It was now just past 8pm. James went back into the house and up to his bedroom for another look out of the window to see if there was any further activity. He remained there a few minutes and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
He then decided to find the number for the University of Birmingham Observatory and give them a call to confirm that there were no astronomical anomalies in the area which could potentially have accounted for some of what he had seen.
He managed to get in touch and said to the man on the phone “Hi there. I think I’ve just seen something unusual in the sky. What I want to work out is whether there was anything unusual at the time such as rare aircraft or astronomical anomalies.” The man quickly dismissed him saying “No there isn’t anything around here, you’ve probably just seen Sirius.” James was slightly annoyed at this response as what he had seen was clearly not a star in the sky. But he simply said “OK, that’s fine” and ended the call.
The following morning he checked the news, and scanned through all the local newspapers to see if anyone else had reported seeing anything, but there was nothing. James was mystified why there appeared to be no other witnesses (at least any that had come forward) as he had seen three separate objects across two sightings.
An Unexpected Visit
By 2005 James has moved into a house on Wyndham Road in Bearwood with his girlfriend Carol (now wife). One Saturday afternoon James was downstairs while Carol was doing housework upstairs. He heard a knock on the front door and went to answer it.
He was greeted with the sight of a man and a woman. They were both wearing smart black suits with long black trenchcoats. The man looked to be in his late 50s. He was about 5 foot 8 inches tall. He had grey hair which looked a little unkempt considering the smartness of the clothing he was wearing. He was clean shaven. The woman looked Swedish, with blonde pulled back hair and blue eyes. She was taller than the man, about 6 foot 1 inch. She was carrying a black holdall bag. James’ first thought was that they were police and he was in some sort of trouble. This made him naturally guarded.
The man began the conversation by saying “Hi there Mr Brody, we’d like to talk to you about something you reported some time ago. Can we come in?” His voice felt a little stern and direct. James thought to himself “Right I don’t know these people but clearly they know my name.” However he decided to honour the man’s request and responded “Ok, come on in.”
James took them through to the living room. He asked them if they wanted to take off their jackets but they responded “No, that’s fine.” They both sat down alongside one another on the sofa, and James sat down in one of the armchairs. He then continued the conversation saying “Ok then, I’m not quite sure what you want to talk about?” The man responded, saying “Well we understand that you reported that you saw something in the sky.” James was surprised by this and exclaimed “Oh! Right ok!” The man continued “We want to talk about what you saw. You saw a number of things.”
At this James was immediately suspicious of the people. They not only knew his name, but were also aware that he had seen multiple things that night, despite the fact that he had not informed anyone of this. On the night of the incident he had Birmingham Observatory if there were any atmospheric anomalies, but he had not gone into any detail about what he saw.
The man then asked “Would you mind us asking you some questions about what you saw?” James responded saying “Ok, I agree I’ve seen a number of different things.” Then the man said “The first thing you saw – was it a comet?” This really surprised him as the first thing he had seen that night was the comet-like object. He gave the man a really puzzled look.
At this moment the lady opened the holdall bag and pulled out a black ring binder. She then opened this up. The binder appeared to be full of A4 card pages covered in clear plastic film. She began flicking through the pages. James was not able to see these pages in detail but believes that they had on them various photographs of UFOs, mostly in colour but a few in black and white. When the lady had reached a particular page she lifted the binder up to show him, saying “Did you see this?”
There on the page was a single colour photograph. It was the comet-like object he had seen! The image was of good quality. Behind the object was just dark sky, there were no reference points. But what bothered James the most was it was exactly what he had seen. The angle of the shot was exactly how he remembered seeing it from his memory of the incident, almost like a snapshot of his vision had been taken and turned into a printed photograph.
As soon as James saw the picture he knew something was very wrong with the situation. He realised that he did not know who these people were, and didn’t know whether he should be guarded or not. He didn’t feel particularly threatened by them but neither did he feel secure.
He responded to the lady’s question by saying “Yes it is – who are you?” She replied “We’ll get to that in a minute.” She then once more flicked through the binder to another page, before showing it to him again. James almost anticipated what was going to be on the page. Sure enough there was the oval-shaped object with the flattened base. This time the image was a little lower in quality, but it was still clear enough to see. The object was filling up most of the image, and there was just dark sky beyond it, but once again the angle was exactly how he remembered it hovering at the end of his back garden before it had started to rotate. It was as if someone had been there next to him in the room and taken a photograph.
The lady asked “Did you see this?” James was quite confused by what was taking place and simply replied “Yes.” She then asked “Did you interact with this?” James wondered what she meant by this and asked “What do you mean, did I talk to it?” The lady clarified her query by asking “Did you speak to it?” Again James replied “Yes.” She then asked him “What did you say?” James said “I asked it to show be something and then it rotated.” The lady then asked “Did it do anything else?” James replied “No, it rotated and that was it.”
However the lady’s questions continued. She asked “Following on from there have you had any problems with electronics, any sort of telekinesis or any increase in paranormal activity?” James could not really think of anything dramatic but responded “There has been occasional experiences but nothing sort of major. Sometimes I think I’ve seen something out of the corner of my eye, occasionally objects seem to vanish then appear elsewhere. But nothing I could say 100% I’ve seen. I did go through a couple of years of setting off shop alarms and metal detectors at airports but that has stopped.” In a very matter-of-fact way the lady simply replied “Well that tends to go after a while.”
James was still not happy with what was happening so said “Right, I’ve told you all the information that I want to share with you. Could you now please tell me who you are?” At this the man started talking again, saying “We are an investigative group that review sightings. You obviously think you’ve seen something. It’s something we have past experience with. Thank you very much for your assistance.” This did not feel a satisfactory explanation so James continued “Are you able to tell me any more information about who you are? You’ve come into my house, you’ve asked for some very specific information, I’d like some more information about you.”
At this moment the man and lady appeared to sidestep the question. They looked at each other and then the man said “Right it’s time for us to go.” They got up off the sofa. James showed them to the door. They stepped outside and without saying anything further to him walked down the drive and off along the road together until they were out of sight.
Looking back at the incident James realises there’s so many questions he should have asked them. But he was completely disarmed by the situation as it was so bizarre. There are clearly many issues with who the people claimed to be. They said they were from an investigative group looking into UFO incidents. But they knew far too much about James and what he had seen. They knew his first and last name, and where he was living, despite having changed address since the incidents occurred. They knew he had seen multiple objects. They knew the appearance of what he had seen.
The fact they knew these details is intriguing in itself, but there is a possible explanation. Back in 1992 James did contact Birmingham Observatory on the night of the incidents. He cannot remember whether he gave them his name but it is conceivable that he did. A UFO investigation group could have contacted the observatory and asked about historical calls they had received which may been related to UFOs. There may have been other witnesses who they spoke with confirming what things were seen in the sky that night. They may have assumed that James saw the same objects and then performed research to work out his current address. This scenario seems unlikely but is of course plausible.
However the photographs the lady had of the objects are a side of the story much harder to explain. It is possible that these photographs were ones they had received from other witnesses they had previously spoken with. But the fact they were taken at an angle exactly how James recalled seeing them from is deeply puzzling. He saw nobody else in the area at the time when he had the sighting of the comet-like object. And obviously there was nobody there alongside him in his room when he had the second sighting.
There are other very suspicious aspects to James’ meeting with the man and woman. Their conversation about the second UFO James saw from his bedroom window suggested that they were aware he had communicated with it. It was almost a leading question, like they knew that he had tried interacting with it by speaking to it. This is not information they could have gained from speaking with anyone else, including other potential witnesses.
They also seemed very unwilling to give out information about who exactly they were. If they really were a UFO investigation group surely they would have provided him with details that he could contact them with in case he wanted to provide them with further information? Yet he never found out the name of their group or any way of keeping in touch. Similarly, if this were the case then the photographs would have to have come from other witnesses – and if so why would they not discuss these other witnesses with James and explain where the photographs had come from?
There have been many cases involving the Men In Black where they appear to have either grilled witnesses for information directly, or have monitored them from afar, seemingly in a way to learn more about what has happened to them rather than warn them off speaking about it to anyone. Looking at all of the details of what took place I believe that this could be one of those cases. There are too many unusual aspects to what occurred here. We can only speculate as to why they would have been asking about the incidents 17 years after they took place, perhaps what happened was significant in some way. And perhaps the photographs were really from James’s mind, extracted and put down on film via unknown means. However one argument against this suggestion is that the second photograph was not as high quality as the first. If they had been extracted in some way surely they would have both been of the same quality? This is just one of many questions that currently remain unanswered.
While Carol did not actually witness the two visitors herself she still remembers the incident. Here is what she recalls about what took place…
“I don’t have a direct recollection of the two people as I was upstairs at the time, however when I did come downstairs, my husband seemed very puzzled as to what had just happened. I know the visitors had been there for around 30 minutes and as I understand it they were very interested in talking about James experience although there elements that I know he hadn’t discussed with anyone else. We spent some time discussing who we thought they may have been and it wasn’t until sometime later that we considered that they may have been the MIB. I know it initially concerned James as he said they knew some very intimate details. We also wondered if they would return but to my knowledge there hasn’t been a follow up visit”.
Daughter’s Guardian
In the autumn of 2007 James and Carol moved to George Road, Five Ways. Carol was heavily pregnant with their daughter Nicola at the time, who was due to be born in the third week of January 2008. It was the evening of 20th December. James and Carol were relaxing in the living room alongside one another on the sofa.
All of a sudden James noticed that the air around him had become very cold. It was so cold that it was possible to see his breath. He pointed it out to Carol saying “Look at this, you can see my breath!” He looked around the room for anything which could be causing a draught such as an open door or window but there was nothing which could account for it.
He decided to swap places with Carol on the sofa to see if she could feel it to. However when she did this the cold air seemed to follow James. The side of the sofa he was previously sitting on now appeared normal, but he could still feel the cold air around him. He got up off the sofa entirely and walked to the other side of the room. Again the cold air followed him. It quickly became apparent that it was focused around him specifically, not the location in the room.
James was standing up near one of the corners of the room when he and Carol noticed a small pinprick of intensely bright white light appear down by one of the walls. It slowly increased in size until it was as big as a 50 pence piece. Then it suddenly vanished. As it did so every single electrical device in the room containing a battery went dead! There was no sound but they soon realised that their phones, the laptop and camcorder had all lost their charge!
James rang up his friends with an interest in the paranormal to tell them about what happened. When he told them they asked him if Carol was alright. He wondered why and they suggested that perhaps the activity he had just experienced was some kind of warning. At the time James did not dwell on this too much, but on New Years Eve Carol went into labour early and had to get an emergency C section during which Nicola was almost lost.
After a number of days Carol and Nicola came home from hospital. Nicola was still quite poorly with Jaudis. They had prepared a nursery for her along the landing from their bedroom. James also purchased a baby monitor to keep an eye on her while she was in there. Soon after they returned home James and Carol were in their room and Nicola had been put down to sleep in the nursery.
A short while passed and Nicola started to cry. As she began James looked over to their open bedroom door and noticed something. Out on the landing, floating about 3 feet off the ground was what looked like a small bubble. It was about an inch in diameter and did not appear to be giving off any light, but appeared to be energy of some kind rather than a physical object. James got up off the bed and walked towards it. As he got closer the orb moved left down the landing out of view.
He walked out onto the landing and looking to the left he saw the orb again, this time hovering outside the door of the nursery. He began to walk towards it and again as he got close it moved left, disappearing through the door to the nursery. When he went inside there was no sign of it. He picked up Nicola to comfort her.
This was not the only time this orb was seen. James says that for the period of several weeks while Nicola was recovering fully it appeared on many times when she started to cry. It would not appear every time, but most occasions it would occur. It would always appear in the same location and height off the floor, but was clearly intelligent as it would only move whenever he approached it, like it was leading him into the nursery.
It was not just James that saw the orb, Carol confirmed that she could see it too, but would try to ignore it. James was more interested in what was happening and as it was repeatable he attempted to capture the orb on his Sony HD camera using normal photographic mode and infra-red mode. Unfortunately the orb would not show up on camera, either video footage or still photographs. Nor would it show up on their mobile phone cameras. This perhaps suggests that it was some kind of psychic phenomenon which was only visible directly.
In total James estimates it occurred about 20 or so times over 3-4 weeks, after which it was never seen again. He feels that it may have been a lost relative looking after his new daughter in the vulnerable early weeks of her life.
The Figure
The summer of 2010 was very warm, and therefore James and Carol only had their thin duvet cover on the bed. One night James woke up with a start around 2am for an unknown reason. In the corner of the room was a cupboard against which was leaning a number of carrier bags filled with second hand clothing. He looked across the room at this corner. Standing there was what appeared to be the sillouette of a tall humanoid figure. It appeared to be 6 foot 5 inches tall and had no features, it was just a dark grey coloured shape, but one which appeared solid. Its arms were down by its side.
James put his head under the duvet cover for 5 seconds and then looked again. The figure was still there! He knew now that he was fully awake and that there was something physically there in the room. He thought to himself “I’m going to get up and confront it.” But before he did that he wanted to wake Carol up to gain confirmation that it was definitely there.
He reached over and tried to gently wake her up without causing too much noise. It took a couple of attempts but in the end she stirred. While keeping his eyes on the figure he asked her “Carol, can you see that in the corner?” She lifted her head to look towards it. At that exact second the figure faded away before his eyes! As it went he heard the sound of the bags collapsing.
He got up out of bed and walked over to where the figure had been. As expected the carrier bags had fallen flat on the ground. The figure was nowhere to be seen. In the following days James wondered if the figure would make a return. To attempt to capture physical evidence of its presence he put talcum powder on the floor in the corner of the room in an attempt to obtain footprints. However this was the last he saw of it.
Orb Videos
In May 2011 James attempted to capture paranormal activity on camera in his living room. For two consecutive days he set up a camera and invited any spirits present to show themselves. On both videos he managed to capture some small orbs which darted across the frame.
In the first video shot on the 24th May James specifically asked for two orbs to appear together on camera. Shortly after asking this an orb appears, closely followed by two more.
Here is the video footage:
Below are three stills of the orbs seen in the footage ringed in red:
Transcript of the first video:
"OK then thank you for coming forwards before now. What I need is 'cause people will say this is going to be dust or something like that there so do you think you could show two orbs together on the screen, in front of me so I can say that it's really happpening?"
"OK I think I got that. Do you think you could do that again for me? Two orbs?"
(First orb appears)
"Wow! Thank you so much!"
(Two more orbs appear)
"Thank you."
James filmed a second video in the same location on the following day in an attempt to capture further activity. In this video many orbs are seen passing the camera. A particularly visible one drifts across the screen while James is asking for activity to occur:
Still of the orb which passes across the camera at 35 seconds into the footage which James specifically takes note of:
Transcript of the second video:
"OK then thank you for coming forwards before now. What I need is 'cause people will say this is going to be dust or something like that there so do you think you could show two orbs together on the screen, in front of me so I can say that it's really happpening?"
"I'm a bit disappointed that the other camera didn't really pick anything up, so I'm not sure really that anything has actually happened, so um...is there anything you can do for me?"
"Anything in particular?"
"Do you think you can maybe move something for...
(Orb drifts across camera)
Ok. Ok thank you for that."
"Anything else? Do you think you can maybe show yourself?"
While these could be evidence of paranormal activity, I feel that they could just as easily be dust drifting past the camera. None of the orbs perform any manoeuvres which would designate intelligence, and there is no sign that they are self-illuminated. It is interesting that the orbs in the first video appeared a short time after James asked for something to occur, and that for the previous 37 seconds there was nothing observed, but this could just be coincidence. Make of the videos what you will.
Conclusions
The sightings that James had back in 1992 and subsequent visit by apparent MIB are fascinating and hard to explain. What could the comet-like object that he witnessed have been? Was it actually a bright meteorite that happened to pass across the sky and led him to catch a glimpse of the UFO which was cloaked and in most circumstances invisible to the naked eye? Or could it have been a craft of some kind, perhaps returning to meet with the other cloaked craft?
It is unknown if this cloaked object was the same as the oval shaped UFO seen a short while later, but It seems probable that it was due to the proximity of the sightings in both time and location, but there is no way of verifying this. Also if it was cloaked initially then why make its presence known later on? The oval shaped object was clearly not a mundane aircraft or other aerial object such as a balloon. Due to its characteristics and manoeuvres, including the apparent direct interaction James had with it, I find it very likely that this was a genuine sighting of an advanced ET craft.
As for the individuals who turned up at James’ door many years later, there are too many unusual aspects to the incident to merely explain as ufologists researching an old case. I feel the evidence certainly points towards a visit by the MIB. Perhaps they were interested in the direct interaction James had with the craft and wanted to see how it affected him, but it is a mystery as to why they would wait so many years before speaking with him.
While the more recent paranormal activity experienced by James may be completely un-related to his previous experiences, there is the possibility that his direct interaction with the oval-shaped craft may have triggered heightened senses, which in turn led to paranormal activity in his proximity. Most experiencers of ET contact also report activity of this nature so there may be a connection.
I hope that James will keep in touch regarding any further experiences he has. If so this report will be kept up-to-date.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2019