Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Date: 28/10/2021
In early October 2021 Brandon Ward joined our Facebook community group BUFOG Truthseekers and posted a video from his Youtube channel. In this video he described having contact experiences and his drive to share them with people in order to assist with understanding of the subject and speak with others who have had similar experiences. I got in touch with him to go over these incidents in more depth and write this case report.
As with many repeat contactees, Brandon has had a variety of experiences since childhood which will be discussed in depth throughout this report.
Vision of the Earth
Brandon was born in Islington, London, and spent the early years of his life there. When he was 5 years old he had an extremely vivid dream. In this dream he found himself standing on the rocky surface of the Moon and looking back at the Earth. It felt like he was physically there, but could breathe normally. There were no beings or craft seen, but the dream was so vivid for him that it deeply affected him, and he still remembers it clearly today.
It is of course unknown whether this vision has anything to do with his later contact experiences or not, but it is interesting that it made such a lasting impact on him.
Phone Home
When he was 7 Brandon watched Stephen Spielberg’s classic alien movie ET: The Extra-terrestrial. For a reason unknown to him, he felt a very powerful connection to this film, especially the being itself. It affected him on a deeply emotional level, and he knew deep down that something similar had happened to him, that he had met with a being of some kind.
Now of course ET is a very emotional film, however Brandon says that his feelings towards it ran deeper than that. He did not share his thoughts on this with his family, but it is something which has remained with him ever since.
Sphere & Triangle
By 2009 at age 14 Brandon had moved with his mother, two brothers and two sisters to a house on Thongsley in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. Late evening on 8th June at around 11pm he was lying down in bed with the light off and about to settle down to sleep. There was a heat wave at the time so he had his bedroom window open to cool down the room. The curtains were drawn but due to the angle he could see a thin strip of night sky around the edge of them.
Suddenly there was an orange glowing light coming from outside. He sat up on the bed and pulled the curtains apart to take a look at where the light was coming from. He was amazed at what he saw.
It was a clear night outside with the moon and stars fully visible. Coming in from the right of his vision about 50 metres away from the house were two strange objects. They were level with his upstairs window, so at an altitude of about 20 feet. The first appeared to be a glowing orange spherical-shaped object. It had a line of small white lights running around its centre, and it is clear that the light was coming from this object. It appeared to be about 30 feet across.
Behind it a short distance was what appeared to be a flattened black triangular shaped object with no lights on. It was visible against the night sky and blocking out the stars. It was much smaller than the sphere, about 12 feet in length.
Both of the objects were travelling on a straight and level course at quite a slow speed, perhaps 20 mph. They retained the same distance from one another as they moved but certainly appeared to be two separate objects.
As they reached the left side of the view from the window, without warning both objects shot away diagonally upward into the sky! They made no sound as they performed this manoeuvre and were gone in less than a second.
Brandon was both shocked and awestruck at what he had just witnessed. He ran downstairs to get his older brother Edward (who was 15 at the time). Edward came running back upstairs with him. He pointed out of the window and explained what he had just seen. Edward did not laugh at him and seemed to believe what he was told. Brandon did not mention the incident to his mother.
The orange sphere was clearly not a normal aeroplane or helicopter. It was close enough to see in detail, and had none of the normal navigation lights of an aircraft. 360 Radar confirms that the area does not lie within a normal airway:
It also confirms that it does lie in controlled airspace, which decreases the likelihood of private untracked flights:
Although the sphere was the right colour for a Chinese lantern, the fact that it had a line of white lights around it tends to imply it was not. It also seemed to be much too large to have been a lantern.
It seems unlikely that the triangular object was a normal aircraft as it seemingly had no lights on it at all. While it would be possible for a military aircraft to “fly dark” I find it unlikely they would do this over a highly populated urban area. Also the way in which the objects suddenly greatly accelerated in speed and shot away, ascending as they did, confirms that they were not mundane in any way and were also clearly related to one another.
Glowing Lights
Astoundingly, after seeing the spherical and triangular UFOs, Brandon claims to have seen unidentified objects in the sky every night for the next three months. He says that because of the initial sighting he would purposely look out of his bedroom window late at night, and to his recollection something would always take place.
The majority of these sightings involved orbs of light of various colours. Sometimes they would visibly change colour – red, green, blue, orange, yellow. On some occasions an orb would flash and then others would seemingly emerge from it. On other occasions the opposite would occur – there would be multiple orbs flying along together and they would appear to merge into one.
There was an open field close to where he lived. On one occasion he saw lights down low coming from behind a copse of trees at the edge of the field. He was tempted to go and investigate, but was too frightened of what he might find.
Because the sightings were repeated this gave Brandon an opportunity to capture them on camera. He says that he tried this on multiple occasions using his smartphone, but unfortunately the camera was not good enough to pick up the objects as they were too distant. This frustrated him as he wanted to capture some evidence of them for verification.
On multiple occasions he tried to show his brother the objects. Sometimes they would only briefly appear and by the time Edward had reached the window they had gone. On other occasions he did get there in time but when Brandon pointed them out to him for some reason he could not see them. After this has happened a few times he stopped telling him about them as he didn’t want him to think he was going mad.
Interestingly, a number of other sightings of unidentified lights had taken place over Huntingdon in the months leading up to Brandon’s sightings. Below is a link to a Hunts Post article about these sightings:
Although I feel that at least some of these incidents could well have been down to launches of Chinese lanterns, there is still the possibility that some were genuine UFO sightings, perhaps linked with what Brandon was seeing.
Like the newspaper report, some of Brandon’s sightings could have potentially had mundane explanations. There are numerous things which can appear as glowing orbs of light after dark including distant aircraft, lanterns, LED balloons, drones and radio controlled models. However it is very interesting that he was having so many sightings over such a short space of time which seemed to begin with the sighting of the oval-shaped and triangular-shaped UFOs.
Purple Stains
It was a week day in the first week of July 2009. Like normal Brandon woke to the sound of his alarm at 8am in order to get ready for school. He sat up in bed in his pyjamas and immediately noticed something very odd. There were light purple stains on the front of both the top and bottom of his pyjamas. It looked like liquid which had splashed up him and dried. Looking around at the bed he also saw similar stains on the centre of the pillow case and centre of the bed sheets. There was no detectable odour to the stains, however he did not attempt to smell them closely.
Because of the UFO sightings he had been having he assumed that these were related and that he may have been abducted in the night, even though he had no recollection of anything taking place. He was disturbed at the presence of the stains and didn’t want to entertain the notion that something had happened to him. He wanted to get rid of the evidence so his family wouldn’t see, to put it out of his mind as much as possible.
He took off his pyjamas, and then put them, the pillow case and bed sheet into a plastic bag he happened to have under his bed. He then got dressed and immediately headed outside to the bins in the back garden. He pushed the bin liner deep inside the bin so that nobody would find it, and then turned to walk back into the house.
As he walked back along the path he suddenly noticed something in the sky over the house. Looking up he saw what appeared to be a black coloured disc about 35 feet in diameter. It seemed to be about 400 feet up and was hovering motionless. This only served to confirm to him further that something had taken place. He was un-nerved and confused by what was happening. He tried his best to ignore the presence of the UFO and continued inside the house leaving it hovering there in the sky. He is unaware of how long it may have remained in the area.
The family moved house around 3 months later. For many years Brandon believed that nothing else had taken place at the property. However in September 2021 when he decided to start filming himself for YouTube he had a flashback to another incident where he had once again found purple stains. On this second occasion they had just been on his pyjamas not his bed clothes. Like before he had thrown them away in the bin, not wishing to think about what might have taken place. For whatever reason he had not remembered this incident, but in talking about his experiences it came back to him.
These incidents are absolutely fascinating. I asked Brandon if the stains could have been a drink of some kind that he had perhaps got in his sleep and then accidentally spilled over himself and the bed. He informed me that there were no purple coloured drinks e.g. fizzy pop, squash in the house at that time which could have been responsible. If he had gone and got a drink, brought it back into the bedroom and then spilled it surely he would have found an empty glass either near his bed or on the floor? Methylated spirits is often dyed a light purple colour, however Brandon is unaware of any being in the house. Also if this were tipped onto his clothing and the bed covers it would have smelled strongly of alcohol, even at a distance.
Another aspect which points away from it being a spilled drink of some kind is the fact that it happened on two separate occasions, and that the second occasion was seemingly blocked from his mind. While this may just have been down to because of how frightened he was about what was happening, there are many cases on record involving contact and close encounters with craft where memories have been blocked out, sometimes entirely, for long periods of time. These memories can later come back in the form of flashbacks just as Brandon has described.
The fact that he had a UFO sighting at the same time as disposing of the stained items is amazing. He only observed it a brief moment, but it certainly did not appear to be a normal aircraft or helicopter. While misidentification of a balloon or blimp cannot be entirely ruled out, the timing of the sighting is very interesting and could suggest it really was related, as Brandon believed it to be.
While I have not directly dealt with any other cases involving stains to clothing or bedding, I am aware of a number of cases where this has happened. A great example is the infamous Betty and Barney Hill abduction case, in which a pink coloured substance was found on the dress of Betty Hill. Perhaps this was even the same material due to the similarity in colouration. It is a shame that Brandon threw away the clothing and bedding, but it is also fully understandable given the situation. I have investigated several cases where people have discovered strange stain-like markings on their skin which have faded over time.
Pair of Orbs
In 2011 the family once again moved house to Kipling Road in Wolverhampton. For the first couple of years at this property nothing unusual took place.
In May 2012 Edward informed Brandon that he had started to see flashes of light in the night sky. Wondering whether activity was starting up again, they began both standing out after dark in the back garden in the hopes of seeing something together. They were not disappointed.
It was about 10pm and a clear and dry night, with very little cloud cover. They were standing facing the East, but occasionally looking round to get a clear view of the sky. Suddenly they noticed a couple of red glowing orbs coming in from the West. The orbs were at quite a high altitude and positioned alongside one another. They were travelling at quite a fast speed across the sky.
The orbs were moving on a roughly straight course, but as they flew they wavered from side to side, almost performing a zigzag motion. They flew right overhead, and within 5 seconds had vanished into the distance to the West.
The brothers had no camera on them at the time as they did not really expect to see anything substantial. Brandon says that even if they had the sighting was too fast and too distant to have really come out.
There are a number of aspects of this sighting which point away from it being down to either one or two normal aircraft. While red is one of the colours of navigation lights, it would usually be possible to see other colours such as white and green, or flashing strobes. Aircraft fly on a completely straight course, they do not waver left and right as Brandon reports the objects did. 360 Radar confirms that the area is not within an airway, but is within controlled airspace:
While it would be possible for Chinese lanterns to be buffeted by air currents and waver back and forth as they drifted along, Brandon says that the orbs were cherry red in colour rather than the amber orange commonly associated with lanterns. Red coloured LED balloons would be possible, however they seemed to be moving much too fast to be these, crossing the sky in only 5 seconds.
Earth lights are very unlikely as an explanation. These are very rare, tend to only occur in rural locations not over urbanised areas, drift slowly or hover still, and usually appear much closer to the ground. These characteristics would also apply to ball lightning too. This only occurs in stormy weather conditions, and if reports are to be believed is usually bright white/blue-white in colour and quite small in size.
Orange Orbs
Later in the month Brandon and Edward were once again outside in the back garden star-gazing. It was about 11pm and another pleasant evening. They looked to their left in the direction of Bee Lane playing fields which is a short distance to the North of Kipling Road. There is a line of tall trees around the edge of the playing fields which were visible from the garden.
Suddenly the witnesses saw three orange glowing orbs emerge one at a time from behind a particularly tall tree. The orbs floated on a level and straight course and slowly travelled along before disappearing into the distance.
Again the brothers did not have a camera with them, so we have no footage to examine. However the colour of the orbs combined with the movement pattern observed suggests that they might have been several Chinese lanterns. Brandon says that the glow coming from them was consistently bright. Often lanterns are seen to flicker in brightness due to the fire inside them, however this does not happen on all occasions. Lanterns can often drift on air currents and float along one after the other just as reported here. Also they were very popular back in 2012 as this was when they were still legal and commercially available. Therefore this explanation cannot be entirely ruled out.
A Sighting on Demand
Due to the fact they were having numerous sightings, in late May Brandon decided to purchase a camera in case they saw anything else. One evening he and Edward decided to walk to the centre of Bee Lane playing field close to their house to sky watch. It was about 11pm and there was nobody else around.
After about 10 minutes of being out there and nothing appearing, Brandon decided that he would try to call out to see if he could get something to appear. A moment after doing so, a white point of light suddenly appeared directly overhead! It appeared to be at very high altitude and immediately started travelling to the West.
Brandon quickly lifted the camera and tried videoing it. Unfortunately it was too distant to come out. The light was visible for about 10 seconds and then suddenly vanished again, as quickly as it had initially appeared.
Soon after having the sighting of the light, the boys decided to head back home. As they turned around the batteries for the camera suddenly seemed to drain completely. He checked his phone and found that the batteries of this had also seemingly drained. He was certain they had both been fully charged when they walked out to the field.
As they reached the edge of the playing field, Brandon suddenly saw another white light descend rapidly down behind their house in the distance. This seemed to have been too pronounced to have been a meteorite. When they arrived back home the camera and phone seemed to come back on and once again have charge to them.
This is an interesting series of events, however it is possible that the white light which was observed at the playing field was a satellite, and it was merely a coincidence that it had appeared shortly after Brandon asking for something to appear. It had the appearance of a satellite and moved on a straight course. Satellites can sometimes be invisible and only appear when they turn to a certain angle and are caught by the sun’s rays. Although the other white light did not appear to be a meteorite to Brandon, this explanation cannot be ruled out, sometimes meteorites can look extremely bright and large, and seem to come right down to the ground before fading away. The sudden draining of the camera and phone batteries is an interesting anomaly, however there is nothing to prove that this was in any way linked with either of the lights which were observed.
Visitation
Whether the sightings in May were truly anomalous or not, a couple of weeks later on the night of 8th June 2012 Brandon had an experience which was clearly linked with contact. He awoke in the middle of the night to find that he was paralyzed and floating a short distance above his bed in a lying down position. It was quite dark in the room, the only light coming from the door, which was slightly ajar, with the lit hallway beyond. He could only move his eyes. He tried shouting out in fear of the situation but no sound came out.
Looking to the left across the room he saw a Grey being standing by the wall near the door. It was about 5 foot 9 inches in height. It appeared to be unclothed and had blue-grey coloured skin. The being was very slender and had very long thin arms and fingers, and an elongated neck. Its head was pear-shaped, with black almond-shaped eyes, two small nostrils and a slit for a mouth. There were no ears visible. The being had its arms stretched outwards a little by its sides. It had a look of concentration on its face.
Brandon started to float across the room towards the being. It was extremely quiet like everything was muted. He tried to struggle against what was happening but could not move. Because of his previous experiences he had looked into the UFO subject, and was aware that he may not recollect the incident afterwards. As he began to get closer to the Grey he thought to himself “Remember this when you wake up!” again and again.
He reached the being and it held out its arms and cradled him in them. He looked up at its face for a brief moment, before glancing away in fear of it. He looked to his right and momentarily saw the head of a second being also standing in the room. Not knowing where to look he shifted his eyes to look straight upwards again.
At this moment there was a break in his memory. Things suddenly switched. He found his head was tilted right backwards and the door had been fully opened, flooding the bedroom in light. At this point he fully blacked out.
His next recollection was of waking up in the morning. At first he had no memory of what had taken place during the night. However he did feel exhausted, almost as if he had not been asleep at all.
About an hour later he suddenly remembered what had happened. It started with him remembering the words he had said to himself over and over. With this the memories of the beings in the room came back to him. Up until present he has no further memories of what may have taken place. After realising something had happened he briefly checked over himself, but could not find any unusual markings. He then ran downstairs and got his brother. He took him back up to his room and excitedly told him everything which he could remember happening.
Brandon was extremely anxious about what had taken place, but for him it was finally confirmation that something was definitely going on in his life, and that what had happened previously was real.
It is important to note that when people find themselves fully or partially paralyzed during the night the explanation can sometimes be sleep paralysis. However the fact that Brandon saw Grey beings and also floated across his room tends to imply this was a contact experience. Also Brandon has actually had sleep paralysis as a child numerous times and says that this felt completely different.
Greys in the Mist
In late June, three weeks after the previous incident, Brandon was once again visited by Greys. Like before he awoke at an unknown time of night and found that he was fully paralyzed. However there were two big differences to his previous experience.
The room seemed filled in thick white mist, making it impossible to see any of the furnishings. The mist did not smell of anything, and the room seemed to be at normal temperature. The other difference to before was that he could hear a buzzing sound in his ears. It almost sounded like energy charging up.
Suddenly three Greys emerged from the mist and began to walk towards him across the room. Because of the mist it was hard to see their features, they just looked like silhouettes, but they had the same shape as the beings he had seen previously.
As they got near to him he blacked out. Like before he woke in the morning with no immediate recollection of the experience. He felt fatigued so wondered if something else had taken place. About an hour after being up he suddenly had a flashback of the Greys standing in the mist. Like the first visitation, it is possible that he was abducted after he blacked out, but at present he has no memories of being elsewhere.
Line of Orbs
By 2020 Brandon had moved to Campion House, a high rise block of flats on Hobgate Road. His flat is right up on the 20th floor, giving him a clear view of the surrounding area.
At 11pm on 30th July 2020 he arrived home after visiting his step-father. He stepped out onto the balcony to get some air. It was a pleasant and still evening. There was no cloud cover and the stars could be seen. He was looking up at a diagonal into the sky to the South West. Suddenly a glowing white orb of light seemingly appeared out of nowhere. It began to move slowly to the North West on a straight course. After about 5 seconds it vanished without trace.
A moment later another identical orb appeared, travelling on the same course, and vanishing like the previous one had. This pattern was continued up to 20 times, one orb following after the other, always on the same course.
After examining the facts of what took place I feel it is extremely likely that what Brandon witnessed on this occasion was Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, potentially launching. I cannot find anything online linking this particular date with a launch, but there are lots of similarities. When they are first launched the satellites all follow the same path one after another. At first they can be extremely close together but then slowly spread out. Later on once out in orbit they are then manoeuvred to where they need to be.
The fact that the objects both appeared and vanished in the same areas of sky could well be down to reflection of sunlight. Satellites are only visible when the sun’s rays catch them. Sometimes this depends on the angle the satellite is. When at the wrong angle they can be completely invisible, but as they turn suddenly seem to appear. This would fit with the satellites all following the same course.
I feel that this adequately explains the incident, and Brandon agrees with this probable explanation.
Unexplained Lights
In late May 2021 around 10.30pm Brandon was sitting down in the living room of the flat writing down notes on some of his experiences. Suddenly the entire room lit up extremely brightly in white light. It lasted for about 2 seconds and then switched back off again. Brandon compared it to an extended lightning strike. There was no easy explanation for what had caused the light, and he immediately associated it with his contact experiences, thinking “They’re here!”
He stepped outside onto the balcony to see if anything out of the ordinary could be seen. It was a normal clear and still evening. Off to his right on the far side of the nearby railway line he noticed two red orbs flying side by side and coming in from the North. They were only a short distance higher than his 20th floor balcony, he was looking up at them at an elevation of about 5 degrees. The orbs appeared to be two separate objects as opposed to two red lights on a single object. They seemed to be about 10 metres apart from one another.
The orbs glided along on a roughly straight course, but did waver up and down a little as they went. They were moving at quite a slow speed, perhaps 40 mph. Brandon watched them for about 20 seconds as they flew South. They got to a position in front of him, visible in the sky over the gap between the two nearest high rises.
Suddenly both of the orbs seemed to dim right down at the same moment. Brandon could just about make out two dark oblong-shaped objects which the lights had clearly been coming from. These continued to fly on the same course for several seconds and were then lost from sight.
Brandon looked back to the North where the objects had come from and realised there was a third identical orb of red light again travelling South. He glanced to the left briefly. When he looked back this third orb had completely vanished.
He went back into the flat, grabbed his mobile phone, and headed back onto the balcony to ring his brother and tell him all about what had just happened. As he was describing the red orbs he suddenly noticed a round lime green coloured light coming up the wall of the neighbouring high rise to the West. The light was quite small but very bright. As it reached the top of the flats it seemed to vanish.
He went back inside and sat down on the couch. Immediately the green light appeared shining on the left side of his chest! It had distinct edges to it and was about 20 cm across. It seemed to be completely stationary. He turned on the sofa until it was on his left arm, wondering where it was coming from. He was still on the phone to his brother but did not tell him about this latest development as it seemed too much, he felt that he wouldn’t believe him.
Brandon stared out of the window trying to see the source of the light. Suddenly it blinked out. He expected it to return, but it did not re-appear.
This is a bizarre series of events. Although it is tempting to link them all together due to the timing, this may of course be coincidental so it is wise to analyse each individually.
The white light that flooded the room is very interesting, given the fact that Brandon was on the 20th floor, so therefore it cannot have been the lights of a ground vehicle. It was clear weather so a lightning strike or sheet lightning is not going to be the explanation. If it was the search light of a nearby helicopter surely Brandon would have heard its rotor blades, or seen it when he emerged onto the balcony? Many contactees have reported bright white light during contact experiences, sometimes coming in from outside through a window, and other times seemingly having no distinguishable source. However this would usually be followed by actual contact of one kind or another, with this it seemingly did not.
It seems unlikely that the red orbs were aircraft. Other navigation lights would likely have been visible. Also the area is not in an airway, and lies within controlled airspace:
They could potentially have been two drones being flown remotely. However the way in which they wavered up and down as they moved sounds more akin to two inflatables drifting on an air current. The colour was cherry red not amber orange, so I find it unlikely they were Chinese lanterns. These are also quite hard to get hold of these days, although can still be occasionally launched. Perhaps two red LED balloons was the explanation here, and they happened to both run out of batteries at the same moment. However even with these possibilities, none of them are definite explanations.
What happened with the green light is very odd. The most obvious source of the light on the high rise would be a green coloured laser light being shone by someone. This would be bright enough to see, even at that distance. However, in order for someone to have shone it up the building in the way that it was seen, the person with it would have had to have been standing on the ground between the two high rises, or would have had to have been shining it off a balcony lower down in Campion House. But how then would it have ended up shining onto Brandon’s chest moments later when he went and sat back down inside the flat? Considering he is on the 20th floor the only way this could occur would be from someone shining it from an aerial object like a helicopter, or from one of the top floors on the neighbouring block of flats.
There was barely any time at all between the two lights, merely seconds, nothing like enough time for an individual to enter the neighbouring high rise and get up to a floor level with or above Brandon’s flat. Brandon had been outside on the balcony moments earlier so it was obvious there were no aircraft in the vicinity. There was nothing inside the flat itself which could have accounted for the light, and this would not explain how it shone on the other block of flats. There is a possibility that after shining the laser ligt on the high rise its owner then shone it at Brandon's flat (perhaps noticing him up there on the balcony moments earlier). It may then have reflected on the glass and ended up falling on him. However this seems improbable, and the incident remains truly anomalous.
YouTube Channel
In recent years Brandon has felt that he should talk more about his experiences so that others can learn from them. In 2021 he started to record videos for a new YouTube channel in which he talks openly about his experiences. He hopes that these videos will help others undergoing similar experiences, and is also interested in speaking with these individuals.
His channel “Guided By The Greys” can be found at the below address:
Conclusion
As you can see, Brandon has had numerous fascinating experiences, some of which definitely appear to be linked with contact. His two visitation experiences in 2012 may well have involved abduction experiences that he cannot currently recollect. The unusual purple stains he found on his bedclothes in 2009 on two occasions are very intriguing, and again could point towards contact incidents. It is such a shame that he did not keep the bed clothes as we could have had them scientifically examined. Yet of course at the time he was frightened of what was occuring and so wanted to distance himself from it. It is only in recent years that he has become more curious towards his experiences.
I think it's great that he has decided to go public with his experiences and talk openly about them on YouTube. The more witnesses who do this, the more we can learn about the subject and more conclusions can be drawn regarding what is taking place. I hope that Brandon keeps in touch and updates me with any further incidents that may occur. He may also decide to be hypnotically regressed to see if any further details can be remembered. This report will be kept up-to-date with any developments.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2021
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