A WELSH ENCOUNTER
What started out as a short break for family and friends in a picture book holiday cottage in Wales would end up in a relationship testing psychological horror story that would affect the life of one person in many ways.
Sacha was a young mother living in Leeds and together with her partner, son and friends had arranged a trip to Wales where they had rented a holiday cottage for a few days. The trip is one that Sacha will never forget. Just hours after their arrival in Wales things started to happen that would change Sacha’s life in particular forever.
Here then in her own words is an account that has everything.
It was the 4th of October 1996. Myself along with my five year old son, Louis, my partner at the time Steve, had gone to Glyn Cyriog in Wales along with Steve’s sister Danya, her son Joseph and their Uncle John. We had hired a holiday cottage for the weekend. We arrived at the cottage quite late and within a couple of hours of our arrival it had started to get dark.
My own personal interest in the UFO subject meant that
like many others I would watch the skies when an opportunity arose. I had
encountered a UFO some years previously as a child and had even played in
crop circles from being a youngster although in the village where I grew up
nobody seemed interested or passed any comments about the subject.
Anyhow, back to the holiday cottage, I don’t recall the actual time of the following events but it was October 1996 and it doesn’t stay light very late at that time of year. I had gone upstairs to unpack, planning to then have a relaxing bath after our long drive to Wales. I could hear the kids carrying on downstairs and then Steve started shouting my name, it sounded urgent.. perhaps one of the children had hurt themselves , I could hear screaming so I rushed downstairs to discover they were just playing about. I remember being irritated, I
needed to soak after the long journey to the cottage but I was also relieved knowing that everyone was alright.
I found Steve standing in the garden. I asked what he was shouting me for. He gestured to the night sky, "look at that" pointing at the distant clouds. I looked but could see nothing. He insisted that he'd seen something so I stood for a while trying to focus on what he could see. It was dark and cloudy and I seemed to be missing the point. Eventually however I saw a slight flicker. It was really far away, I can’t be sure how far but it must have been several miles as I recall.
Once my eyes had become accustomed to the light I was able to lock on to the distant object and observe it without further difficulty. It appeared to be a grey-white light, just flickering above the clouds. It came a little closer to our position and as it did, its shape grew clearer. We could see that it was not a regular aircraft or star, and there was a uniformed pattern to the way it was lighting up. Still it was too far away to comment with any certainty that it wasn't something explainable. Then something happened. It started to accelerate but was travelling in a zigzag fashion, like it was following a valley or river. It wasn't moving very fast but it was heading our way taking almost ten minutes to reach our viewpoint, unlike other encounters I have heard where witnesses tell you the object just appeared this thing actually travelled to us and we watched it do so.
By this time, everyone was outside and getting quite excited. We didn't feel scared at all, more exhilarated. In a strange way it was what I'd been searching for since my childhood encounter. I was happy, this was a real close encounter with something fantastic and it soon became obvious this was an encounter with something not of this earth.
In the excitement I remember my partner Steve phoning our housemate back home to tell him what was going on. He wasn't home but we left an answer phone message, we heard it later at home you could hear us all shouting and screaming.. "What the hell is it"? "What's going on?" and "Oh my god!"
By now the object, (and we could see it was a craft of some sort) was now directly above us. It must have been seventy to eighty feet in diameter. It had a light in the centre and a light around the edge which was rotating . Also there were lines of light travelling in a circular motion but which almost looked like the underneath of a mushroom. It reminded me of a neon jelly fish. Through the different densities of the cloud it seemed to ripple, but I knew it was just the effect of the lights on the clouds. We had moved to a small hill away from the house it was a higher view point with a hedge border, trying to get a closer look.
Nothing unusual happened, (if you call staring at a
80ft Flying Saucer nothing unusual) ,we were all just stood there
watching it rotate.
Then something caught my attention and made me turn to look behind our group. I saw a second craft, much smaller and much lower to the ground. It was shrouded in some sort of mist so I couldn't see the actual nuts and bolts of it, so to speak. It flashed a grey white light just like the main craft did earlier, maybe once every other second, just pulsing. I remember saying, "Oh look, there's another one" to which everyone looked around and said, "Oh, yes" and promptly got on with the business of watching the huge craft above our heads.
There was no fear among us, nobody was thinking ,"Oh my god we are surrounded", nothing like that, it was as if thoughts like that just didn’t enter our minds.
Then my five year old son, Louis, started to tug on my jumper quite fiercely. I looked at him and his face was ashen and his eyes were wide open.. I mean wide open. He said, "Mummy, a hand just came through the hedge and touched my foot, I saw it with my eyes, it was not my imagination.” Although he was only five, under the circumstances it was easy to believe him. I said to Steve, "Right lets get the kids inside, they're starting to get upset by this, Louis is freaking out now!" I told Louis, I believed him and assured the children this was nothing to worry about, everything was fine and the lights were just reflections on the clouds from a farmers tractor. I don't think they believed us for a second! We just didn't know what else to say!
We all returned indoors, even though the objects were still visible. Can you believe it? Six individuals in the middle of a fascinating UFO encounter and we bottle it and go back inside. John, the senior member of our party, was singularly unimpressed by the whole thing and claimed it to be the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). Nonplussed by the earlier events John and Danya settled down to watch TV, John reaching for his whiskey. I can't remember exactly what happened next but I must have said something that upset Danya because she started screaming at me (family holidays, great fun) and left the room slamming the living room door as she left. The two boys went into the play room in the cottage and Steve started to wash up. I couldn't believe it. Here we were in Wales with two bloody UFOs outside and everyone's behaving as if nothing at all had happened. I just stood there in a state of utter amazement.
To this day I have no idea what possessed me to do what I did next but I decided to go back outside on my own. I walked back up the garden to where we had all stood watching the large UFO. For some reason the second craft had gone from my memory completely. As I stood there, I remember talking to them (I say them.. it..) "Well? Then in my mind, ‘What are you going to do now?’ What’s the impressive display of lights.. for?" I was kind of challenging them/it. I've no idea how long I stood there, several minutes, when I heard rustling footsteps behind me.
The ground wasn't hard packed, it sounded hollow almost. What I heard was two feet running, ( it reminded me of my son running across his room). Something grabbed the back of my jumper as it ran past, tugged it. No way would a farm animal have come so close to me, running so fast... especially not on two feet. From that point I don't remember much aside from running in a total blind panic. I can remember jumping off two steps but I later realised how far I was away from the house.
I think I remember that because it was a danger point, it was like I had to be aware so I didn't miss my footing. I was in a total blind panic. I shot into the kitchen and stood there babbling at Steve like a crazy person. He wanted to go and look, but I wouldn't let him. I remember him saying, " You haven't been out there long". I must admit, it didn't help! I was shaking and almost wild with fright.
The enormity of what I had done sank in, I couldn't believe I would be so stupid as to go outside on my own and stand directly underneath it. I can remember thinking, "Stupid, stupid, stupid" over and over in my head. I made Steve close all the curtains and doors and lock them. It was my only defence. We put the kids to bed and I sat in the middle of our bed, shaking. I couldn't be left alone and I certainly wouldn't go to the loo on my own. Danya and John were still watching TV as I recall. I don't really remember what they were doing. I was just freaking out and wanted to stay in the bedroom. I don't even know what time it was but everyone had by now had retired to bed. It wasn't too long after I'd had the panic attack, maybe an hour, that I experienced something that has troubled me since. Why did everybody, almost casually, go to bed when the two UFOs were still outside the cottage? Hard to believe I know, but the two craft were still there.
The next day we considered all possibilities from the ridiculous to the sublime. We all went for a really long walk to the top of a nearby hill to see if there was anything about. Nothing, just hills and valleys. We looked on a map for the nearest town, hoping there could be a nightclub with spectacular lasers on the roof. There was nothing in any direction for 16 miles, the nearest town being Wrexham. The rest of the weekend was a total disaster. John drank all weekend, he was argumentative and Danya was screaming at every little thing, a hysterical wreck. She was so bad at one point that I threatened to hit her if she didn't shut up, I meant it too.
I was fraught to say the least and Steve was bemused by the whole thing. It got so bad that we phoned a taxi and sneaked off at four o clock the following morning, in a taxi to Wrexham, to get the coach home. The thought of being in that car with them all the way back to Leeds was not something I relished. It was dreadful. I couldn't stop crying. My son Louis was very quiet, not like his usual exuberant self. He was five and heavily into his Power Rangers but not this day.
When we arrived home, things were no better. I had to sleep with the light on. I couldn't walk into a dark room. I had to swing the door open really quickly, checking that nothing was standing behind it and if there was I would knock it into the middle of next week before I switched on the light. I remember starting to run upstairs and realising the landing light was off, I would have to run back and switch it on before I could go up them.
It took nine years of my life before I was able to discuss the events of that weekend in Wales with anyone and it wasn’t until June of 2005 that I spoke of this encounter openly.
I have considered regression but I’m not willing to put myself in the hands of someone who wants to be known as a regressional therapist for abductees. I don't want to strengthen their career, I only want to know what happened to me and my family that October night in Wales.
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ABDUCTEE SUPPORT  MARY RODWELL Co-Founder ACERN
 You can contact Mary Rodwell or The Acern Network at the following Website. www.maryrodwell.com |
I have had a major struggle with my life since that event and I am only now coming to terms with it, seriously. Since then I have not returned to Wales. I am hopefully going back later this year, to the actual place where the encounter took place I am going with friends and we hope to take photographs of the area and to film the whole trip. I want to see how I react, I want to try and remember what happened afterwards. After researching the subject, and talking to John Hanson, Dennette France and especially Jason and Anne Andrews, I know those UFOs and their occupants we encountered back in October 1996 didn't just fly away and leave us be. I believe both my son and I were actually touched physically by creatures from the craft, creatures from another world. Creatures so advanced over us they could have hurt us, taken us - in fact they could have done anything.
Were they selective in how members of our party were allowed to react to the encounter? Could they somehow control the thought process in each observer’s mind in a different way? Was I chosen to be their contactee for the night?. Let’s face it, everyone else actually walked away from the sighting, none were interested in the second craft I saw behind me. Was this second craft key to the events Remember the others went indoors while there were two UFOs outside our cottage. They were so close that we all knew exactly what we were looking at, but even then the magnitude of the events did not register with all our party, only I seemed to be aware of the reality of it all.
What do you do when you encounter two very real, very large close-up UFOs in a remote village in Wales, go to bed?
It could just be that this was what the unidentified visitors wanted.
I don’t know that if any of our group were abducted, I have no memory of it. I do however have a catalogue of psychological problems, and very typical changes in attitude similar to what some abduction cases report. I recycle everything, even vegetable waste, I am a spiritualist now and I have a sense of faith and belonging I never had before.
I have gone from hating ET's and not being able to watch Close Encounters or anything involving UFOs to feeling love for them and watching and reading everything I can about the different aspects of the subject. What caused this change? I have no idea. Is it because I have come to know them and to love them or do they use a technique that implants thoughts and memories they want you to experience. Or do they not take you physically but as Jason Andrews suggested during a lecture by him and his mother at the Great British UFO Show in Leeds last October, they take you astrally?
Or did they just fly away and leave us be?! Somehow, I don't think so.
Unfortunately I am no longer in touch with any of the people involved. It might not be impossible to track down my former partner, Steve, although I can't say with any certainty he'd be willing to comment. It left its mark on us all. Our relationship didn't last very long after this event unfortunately.
This was a very personal encounter and you have to be so convinced of events being real to be able to openly share them with people you have never met.
I find the recollections of Sacha very real I can also relate the events to another very ‘in the news’ case. Larry Warren has come under much criticism from researchers and debunkers of the famous Rendlesham Forest Incident of Christmas 1980, but what Larry recalls, seeing small object shrouded by mist almost on the ground and his memory of small, humanoid creatures standing by this object has much similarity to Sacha’s encounter.
Even down to the fact that those other witnesses with Sacha did not experience the grabbing of legs by something and seemed to pay no attention to the event afterwards. Likewise for Larry Warren nobody else recalls seeing the creatures or even seeing Larry at the site, could it just be the same type of selective memories being allowed to stay with the observer, controlled by the occupants of these wonderful machines we call UFOs.
UFO DATA appreciate what it must take to go public with claims such as these. But whatever happened that Autumn evening left a lasting impression on Sacha and her son.
I dare say the others involved in the case have flashbacks of what they actually saw that night and even if the events were dismissed from their minds out of a fear of the unknown there will be quiet moments when a flash of light or a strange sound brings the memories of October 1996 flooding back.
Sacha would be interested in sharing her experience with others and we will happily forward any email or postal correspondence to her via…
UFO DATA.
P O Box 280
Leeds
LS26 1AN
or email to info@ufodata.co.uk