All language subtitles for Britains.X.Files.S01E06.1080p.NOW.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

I'm Tim Tate. I've been
an investigative journalist

for almost half a century.

And what I specialise in
is exploring official archives,

unearthing dusty old files
from government departments,

spy agencies, the police.

This strange figure looked
very much like an astronaut.

And what I have found
in those collections,

both in Britain
and in the United States,

is a truly extraordinary collection
of real life X-Files.

True Cryptids, like the Yeti and
the Mongolian Death Worm .

And those files disclose
investigations by the police,

by governments, by spy agencies.

Shortly after that transmission,
Captain Schaefer's radio went dark.

To examine and uncover the truth
about phenomena

which are truly out of this world.

It's a great piece of branding,
the death ray.

Everyone knows where to stand
in the death ray.

When someone goes missing,

we all know there must be
a rational explanation.

But in our first X-File,

the only logical interpretation
seems to come from another planet.

Captain William Schaffner

was a 28 year old
U.S. air force pilot,

and in September 1970,
he was on attachment to the RAF.

And at that time, we're involved
in this standoff with the Russians.

Still the Cold War,
a lot of tension.

And every now and again,

the Russians would send aircraft
over the Arctic

probing NATO defences.

Radar stations have picked up
a wave of high-flying supersonic

bombers heading for targets
all over Western Europe.

And we had a whole series
of air bases

where aircraft will be at standby,
known as QRA,

which stands for
Quick Reaction Alert.

So these are cockpit-ready pilots
who were there 24 hours a day

waiting for the order to come
from the RAF

to scramble into the air
over the North Sea,

to go and fend off
whatever is waiting for them.

In the modern world,
the emphasis is on speed.

The Lightning is said to be
the fastest aircraft in the world

on active service.

William Schaffner was
an experienced pilot.

He'd flown in the US Air Force
during the Vietnam War.

The RAF listed him formally
as combat ready.

Scramble. Scramble.

At 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday,
September the 9th, 1970,

Schaffner was scrambled
to intercept an intruder.

Something unusual had been seen
on radar

coming over the North Sea
towards Flamborough Head

in Yorkshire,

it had gone much further than what
they would have expected

a Russian intruder aircraft,

so they needed to get
into the air quickly.

Bill Schaffner leapt
into his Lightning,

so he went up and got he
an RAF pilot behind him,

his wingman,
and they were being directed by

the radar ground controller
RAF Staxton Wold.

And he reported back
when he spotted the interloper.

He wasn't able at that distance

to determine what type of aircraft
it was,

but he was able to calculate
its speed,

160 knots or thereabouts,

well below the speeds at which
his Lightning was capable of flying.

And Lightning is
an apt description of its ferocity

and speed,

twice the speed of sound,
1,320 miles an hour.

That's the incredible ability
that's part of Britain's defence.

He was talking to the ground
control and he said, I can see-

I can see some lights
in the distance.

I'm going in for the interception.
And he was told, be careful.

You know,
you need to sort of slow down.

So he was moving
towards it to intercept it.

As he got closer,

he realised that
there were some strange blue lights,

that there was kind
of conical shape,

and also seeing this sort of
football shape as well.

Schaffner did relay the fact that
this was an unusual sight,

or rather, he did say about
how it's turning around,

it's coming straight towards me,

and that he was going to take
evasive manoeuvres.

Shortly after that transmission,
Captain Schaffner's radio went dark.

That night in September
would be the last time

anyone ever saw or heard from
Captain William Schaffner.

Pilots had only a very
limited survival time

in the cold September North Sea,

so the RAF quickly mounted
a full air-sea rescue operation

to try and find Captain Schaffner
and his missing Lightning.

Code named Foxtrot 94.

The pilots had,
they had an ejection mechanism.

So if you're in trouble,
you could hit a button,

it blew off the cockpit

and you'd be propelled
out of the aircraft

and you would have
an inflatable dinghy

that would open up and
give you some time

before you were spotted
by the air sea rescue.

But no sign of the pilot,
no sign of the aircraft.

It had vanished.

Royal Navy divers located
the Lightning plane

five weeks later on the seabed.

The bizarre thing was that
when they recovered the aircraft

and looked in the cockpit,

there was no pilot
and the cockpit was shut.

William Schaffner was
married with two sons,

but all the RAF could tell them
was that he had died

in an unfortunate accident
whilst on active service

and his body had not been recovered.

The ensuing official inquiry was
conducted,

as with everything else related
to the fate of Foxtrot 94

under conditions of
complete secrecy.

What changed that was a phone call
made to the offices

of the Grimsby Evening News in 1992.

The caller, when he was put through
to the newsroom

and spoke to a journalist,
refused to identify himself.

But what he said was that he had
been a member of the RAF team

which examined the remains.

He said that on the night
that Foxtrot 94 had been lost,

number five squadron and
Captain Schaffner had been on

a unique top secret mission.

And that top secret mission was
to intercept UFOs.

Even more astonishingly,
the anonymous caller provided

a transcript of the radio chatter
between Captain Schaffner

and his ground control.

That transcript appeared to record
Schaffner describing

the object he encountered.

He said, in this transcript,

it emitted a blinding,
bluish light...

...and was flying far faster
than any other aircraft.

And then the transcript recorded him
saying,

wait, it's turning towards me.

I'm gonna have to take
evasive action.

After that, the radio went dead.

When the newspaper
published the story,

the silence surrounding Captain
William Shafner's disappearance

mutated from being
an unexplained accident

into a full-blown conspiracy theory
involving a cover-up,

UFOs, and alien abduction.

The family of Bill Schaffner,

by that point his sons were
in their 20s,

they looked on the internet
and they saw all this stuff

about their dad dying
as a result of an alien abduction.

So you can imagine how they felt,

because they felt, oh my God,
you know,

we've never found the truth
about what happened to our dad.

And now we're reading
all this stuff on the internet.

In 2002, Schaffner's sons
asked the British government

to release any information
they had

relating to the disappearance
of their father.

But it took a further six years

before the contents
of their investigation

was finally released in 2008.

The main problem that was found
was the fact that Schaffner,

despite being an experienced
fighter pilot,

hadn't really received
the proper training for this,

for low-level flying at night.

Another factor is the fact
that Schaffner was impatient

to get back into the skies
when he had scrambled.

Initially, he was meant to make sure
that the Lightning

was properly serviced,

but he'd actually left
without it being fully completed.

Unused to flying
the Lightning at low speeds,

Schaffner stalled the aeroplane.

Having stalled at low altitude,

the plane hit the water
and skidded on the surface

before starting to sink.

Schaffner had only seconds
to activate his ejector seat.

The cockpit wouldn't blow
when he hit the button

that should have blown it off.

So what did he do next?
I'd have to manually do it.

And he's motoring this cockpit open
and trying to think,

have I got all my life saving gear
with him?

And he hadn't.
It had become detached.

So he gets out of the cockpit,
he's in the water,

and the cockpit's closing like that

before he could retrieve anything
from the cockpit,

the aircraft sinking,
and he drowned.

This seems to account
for the order of events

that left Captain Schaffner stranded
as his Lightning sinks,

but it doesn't explain the object
that Schaffner reported seeing.

The RAF knew all along
what it was, this object.

It was a Shackleton.

A Shackleton was
a British aircraft

and the descendant of
the Lancaster bomber.

It was used primarily by the RAF
against Russian submarines.

In September 1970,

it was on exercise playing the part
of a Russian intruder.

The crew of the Shackleton
were interviewed and they said,

yeah, you know, we were there.
We knew it was an exercise.

We knew that Lightnings would be
coming in and shadowing us.

And we saw this aircraft pass by.

We saw its lights and then it just
vanished and we assumed

it had hit the water.
Which was exactly what it had done.

But none of this takes
into account the testimony

of the anonymous whistleblower,

who knew it was a secret mission
to intercept a UFO,

and who provided transcripts
in which Captain William Schaffner

reported seeing lights in the sky
shortly before he vanished.

When the transcripts of
Captain Schaffner's communications

were finally released
in the official inquiry,

it deviated significantly
from the whistleblower's report

to the Grimsby Telegraph.

There is no mention of taking
evasive action,

and the alleged flashing blue light
is not referenced.

So how did Captain William Schaffner
become the poster boy

for British UFO conspiracy theories?

At the time, very little was
revealed from the incident.

Some of this, of course,
was just the normal protocol

of dealing with aircraft crashes
and disappearances.

But I do think there was a bit of
an official cover-up in terms of

just what had happened to Schaffner,

because there were a certain amount
of failings in this

that would have been very
incriminating for the MOD

and for the RAF.

This is why no one trusts
what the government says,

because there's so many examples
of this kind of thing,

unnecessary secrecy,

things where they did know
the answer to a mystery,

but deliberately keep it
under wraps for decades.

And that allows conspiracies
to develop.

And a lot of it is well
over the top, unnecessary secrecy.

There's no reason why
Bill Schaffner's family

couldn't have been told at the time
what had happened,

but for some reason they weren't.

There is, though,
one small coda to this story.

When the file was released,

it turned out to have been stored
in a collection held by the RAF

and the government.

And that designation was:

Inquiries into
Unexplained Aerial Phenomena,

UFOs.

Would the world be
a better place

if paranormal abilities
really existed?

But what if those who had
those incredible powers,

fell into the hands of our enemies?

In the 1960's, remarkable claims
emerged from Soviet Russia

that they had found someone
with the ability to move objects

using only the power of their mind.

What's more,
they could prove those claims.

There was moving footage
of telekinetic experiments,

and those films featured

an otherwise unremarkable
Russian woman

called Nina Kulagina.

The incredible footage
shows Kulagina sat at a table

surrounded by scientists
and journalists

as she apparently
moves objects with her mind.

This rare talent for moving
objects by force of will alone

has been termed psychokinesis or PK.

Nina Kulagina is a Russian housewife
who has this ability.

She was born in Leningrad
in 1926,

and her birth name was
Ninel Mikhailova.

So usually in the West,
we call her Nina Kolagina,

but she was actually called Ninel,
which is N-I-N-E-L,

or Lenin backwards, which was
a popular name at the time.

She was born two years
after Lenin's death.

Her adolescence was very traumatic.
It coincides with World War II.

At the age of 14,
with the Second World War raging,

she joined a tank regiment

and she was assigned to the defence
of Leningrad

in the lengthy and bloody, terrible
Siege of her city by German forces.

She was badly wounded
during the fighting.

In the early 1960s,

it seems that she had
some kind of breakdown

linked to her injuries
in World War II.

And so the first time
that she showed

her psychic abilities
was in hospital.

There was a radio report about
a woman who was said to be able

to see colour with her fingers,
and Ninel had the same ability.

Apparently, she could pick out
threads from a box of threads

and pick the right colour
without being able to see them.

She simultaneously discovered that
these powers were not always benign.

Kulagina described events
in which,

during times when she got angry,

objects, vases, China pottery
would fly across the room

and smash themselves

and she attributed this
to her telekinetic powers.

Kulagina and her husband set out

to record her telekinetic powers.

And they made short films
in which she is seated at a table,

with an everyday household object
in a glass case in front of her.

And by sitting and staring
at the object,

she is able, as these films show,
to make it move.

These early home movies
soon came to the attention

of the Russian authorities,

who signed Nina up to
a scientific programme

which could test whether
her abilities were real or fake.

And once again,
it was all captured on film.

Kulagina was studied intensively
for more than 10 years

by Professor Sergeiev of
Leningrad University,

and the films of her demonstrations
became the subject

of unending controversy.

Did she have genuine paranormal
powers or was she a charlatan?

She's putting a lot of force
and effort into what she's doing.

She's waving her hands
over certain items,

she's wearing a short-sleeved top
and short-sleeved skirt,

so we can see nothing like a watch
or anything else is on her arms.

And so you can see
all these different compelling items

being moved,
groups of matches sliding together,

a cigarette upended,

just moving across the table
without falling over and rolling.

In 1968, Russia mounted
the first parapsychology symposium

in Moscow. Expert observers
from the West were invited.

And were amazed at the footage
of Kulagina's telekinetic powers.

They were also allowed to watch
Nina perform,

and the reports they sent back
were nothing short of startling.

They described witnessing Kulagina
seated six feet away

from a case which held an egg...

...and seeing Kulagina's mind,
apparently,

separating the yolk from the albumen
of this egg

without her ever touching it.

Kulagina was involved in
an experiment

which involved a heart
being suspended in a solution

that kept it artificially beating.

That was wired up to electrodes
and the heart rate was monitored

and what they found was
that the heart could be sped up,

slowed down,
and eventually stopped by Kulagina.

One of the Westerners who was
present at that demonstration

took secret footage,
and that made its way to the West.

And from that moment, the,
what we might call the paranormal

community in the West,
and also Western scientists,

became fascinated
by Kulagina's powers.

But on seeing the films
of Kulagina's psychokinesis or PK,

there were others in the West
who recognised that the Russians

now had control of a power
with a much darker potential.

The Soviets claimed
they've already devised machines,

that create magnetic and other kinds
of artificial fields

that increase psychic powers,
particularly telepathy and PK.

To suddenly have papers coming out
saying that they've got

just one subject alone
and perhaps many others.

With their mind manipulating things
and can affect biological systems,

can think of someone at a distance
and stop their heart,

for warfare that is
extremely advanced

and a very powerful weapon
to have and harness.

The United States commissions
a report from military intelligence

that looks at all aspects
of Soviet psychic research,

and it concludes that
the Soviet Union has

at least 20 different institutes
that were involved in research

at a cost of
21 million dollars per year.

The CIA was then about
to begin its own experiments

in parapsychology,

convinced that
Moscow would produce a weapon

against which the United States
would be powerless.

As a result of the Cold War,

the United States was spending
billions of dollars

on conventional and nuclear warfare.

Now they would need to pump even
more time and money

into psychic research if they were
going to catch up with the Russians.

But the big question that hung over
Nina Kulagina was,

how did she do it?

There were many sources that
claimed that

basically Kulagina's abilities
were fraudulent,

that she was faking it,

basically that she was using
either hidden wires or hidden cords,

or magnets in order
to conduct her experiments.

In the 1980s, there was a magazine
article that claimed this,

and Kulagina sued the author
of the article,

and she actually won the case.

The judge said there's no evidence
that Kulagina was faking it,

and a lot of the claims
in the article were fake.

The films of Kulagina
do contain an explanation

of what powers she was tapping into
to achieve her psychokinesis or PK.

According to Dr Rabbitts
in the 1951 Yale Journal

of Biology and Medicine,

the action of the sun and moon
also affects the body's force field.

Dr Sergiev agrees, the most
favourable time for PK

is during magnetic disturbances
of the earth

caused by sunspot activity.

According to the Soviet view,

PK is not accomplished
by mind over matter,

but rather by mind over force field.

However she was doing it,

the film seemed to show that the
tests had a genuine physical effect

on Kulagina.

The films claim that these effects
were backed up

by scientific evidence.

She loses up
to three pounds

after a demonstration
of psychokinesis.

For days after doing the tests,
her arms and legs hurt.

Kolagina was also wired up and
her heart rate was monitored

and they found that her heart rate
increased to around

240 beats per minute.

And many sources suggest
that in other tests,

she suffered terrible problems,

ranging from a loss of sight,
pain in her spine,

the opening up of the wound
that she had from World War II

and eventually a heart attack.

When Nina Kologina died
of a heart attack in 1990,

many believed it was due
to the strain on her body

caused by the forces
she wielded

in the many scientific experiments
she performed.

Ever since, debate has raged.

Was she a real life x-woman,

someone who could move objects

just using the power of her mind?

Or was she a talented trickster

supported by Soviet scientists

who were serving a much deeper
and more sinister purpose,

for the Kremlin.

It's an amazing story
and the footage is fascinating.

And the idea that both the
Soviet Union and the United States

are involved in this campaign
of psychic research

is something that we don't usually
associate with the Cold War.

So this is kind of esoteric,
psychic Cold War,

what we might call a psychic arms
race, is absolutely fascinating.

Some objects are
the stuff of legend.

They are so revered
that the thought that they might

actually exist seems impossible.

That is unless your mind is bent
on world domination.

A few Christian relics have
generated

as much academic interest,

scientific controversy,

and wild conspiracy theories

as the Holy Grail.

Early medieval poems,

a 19th century opera

and Hollywood movies

have cemented the Grail's place

in the mythology
of supernatural objects,

objects which have
some mystical, paranormal power.

But what is
the otherworldly source

of the Grail's power?

It was known as
the drinking vessel

that was used during
the Last Supper.

And so it was associated
with the blood of Christ.

And was therefore a particularly
precious and holy object.

It's believed by some that
if you have the cup of Christ,

you have access to some form
of eternal power or invincibility.

It's a highly venerated,
highly symbolic object

that is invested
with supernatural religious power

that is connected to Jesus Christ.

It has been reported
to be in a cathedral in Spain

or a French chateau?

Is it a cup in Wales

or could it even be in the
Metropolitan Museum in New York?

All we know is that some wanted it
for its religious significance,

while others had far more
sinister intentions.

1920, Hitler began.

He was considered just
a joke then, a raving crackpot.

What Nazism was trying to do
was to fuse all forms

of belief systems

such as Christianity,
occult, superstition, astrology,

you name it, and blend them

to form this new super religion
that's gonna last a thousand years.

The Nazis are interested
in creating a mythology

for the concept of Aryanism.

And as a part of this,

they're trying to create a mythical
pedigree for the Aryan race.

You know, that doesn't exist,
so what do you do?

You go into actual history
that exists,

and then you try to use that
for it.

They wanted to connect
the Aryan race

with the life of Jesus Christ.

Now, of course,
Jesus Christ was Jewish.

He was a Jew growing up
in The Middle East

thousands of years ago.

For the Nazis,

it was a very uncomfortable fact
that he was a Jew.

What the Nazis wanted to do is
to portray Christ as an Aryan.

Essentially a white man.

A strong believer in all
things occult,

the man who took on the task
of creating this new association

between the fictional Aryan race
and Christianity

was Heinrich Himmler.

Heinrich Himmler,
grim and bloody name in Nazidom,

the hangman of freedom.

0 Heinrich Himmler was
the Reichsfuhrer-SS,

or the guy who led the SS
for quite some time,

and he very particularly
is interested in creating

this Aryan mythos.

So he spends a lot of time
trying to create

a theoretical ancestral heritage
for Aryanism.

Then in 1934,

Otto Rahn, an otherwise obscure
German academic historian,

published a book which
would fuel Himmler's obsession

with the Grail

and with its place and importance
to...

...his Brotherhood
of Aryan Teutonic Knights.

He's written a book that's called
the Crusade Against the Holy Grail.

And he's convinced that
a group of heretics

who lived in southern France,

who were sometimes called
the Cathars,

had hold of the Holy Grail.

And he writes a whole book
about this.

That becomes really popular
with Himmler,

who is really the big one
pushing forward this idea

of an Aryan mythology.

And so you get these ideas kind
of roped together,

and basically it's a way
of justifying Nazism.

Himmler had formed an organisation

which was part of the SS,

a kind of think tank
called the Ahnenerbe,

which means ancestral heritage.

And it was quite
a large organisation

that looked at different aspects
of Aryan history

in order to link them
to the new Germany

that was being created by the Nazis.

So he invited Rahn
to join the Ahnenerbe,

and gave him opportunities to go
and seek out the Holy Grail.

Rahn, however, was eccentric.

He had a drink problem, he was gay,
he didn't fit into the SS ethos.

Nevertheless,
Himmler continued to support him.

If he did anything wrong,
if he was caught... misbehaving,

Himmler would punish him
by giving him guard duty

at Dachau concentration camp.

And we know that Rahn was deeply
disturbed by what he saw there.

The Ahnenerbe took
these very amounted,

these very, very long
and costly trips all over the world,

to places like Tibet,

you name it, all over the world,
to try and find evidence

that kind of linked
the modern Nazi state

to the cradle of humankind.

Now, it is possible that
during some of those expeditions

that actually the Nazis were looking
for objects like the Holy Grail.

But you better believe
that if they found some little cup

on route and thought that was
the Grail,

they would have brought
it back to Berlin.

But how were Himmler and
Rahn going to find the Holy Grail?

It could be anywhere in the world.

Himmler found the answer
in an opera by Richard Wagner.

The inspiration of Richard
Wagner's grandiose operas

was shrewdly utilised by Hitler

to glamorise his nation's age-old
pattern of treachery and violence.

Parsifal took the original
mediaeval tale of Percival

and placed it at the centre
of an occultic tale

of magical forces and redemption.

And the opera suggested
that the Grail's resting place

was in the Pyrenees Mountains

on the border
between France and Spain.

Himmler is particularly interested
in the Grail

to the point that he actually
goes looking for it.

And he ends up over in Catalonia
at a place called Montserrat,

which is kind of like Monsalvat,

which is a reference
to the Holy Grail,

very specifically
from a Wagner opera.

He doesn't find it, surprise,

because the Holy Grail is
probably not real.

But what he does find is
a lot of tunnels

that are underneath monasteries
and castles,

which is completely normal,
just absolutely ordinary.

That's how you would kind of get
things in and out

if you're under siege.

But he kind of takes this as some
kind of proof

that there was the Holy Grail

and it's being squirrelled around
varying places.

But he obviously believes
enough in it to go looking for it.

And interestingly, also, he doesn't
believe enough in it to fake it.

You know, you would think that
a Nazi like this might just be like,

oh yeah, look,
we found the Holy Grail.

He doesn't do that. He says
that it's an inconclusive search.

The Nazis didn't really
hide their belief in the Holy Grail,

as it was part of The Aryan myth.

And so it came
to the attention of the Allies.

The British were very much aware
of the fact that there was a lot

of Nazi interest in the occult.

They were very much aware that
there might have been propaganda

value in this.

So I think the British and
the Allies were very wary

of what the Nazis were doing.
Did they take it seriously? No.

What would have happened
if the Nazis claimed

that they had found the Holy Grail.

How would they have used
its occult power?

Himmler took possession
of Wewelsburg Castle

as the headquarters of his mystical
Aryan Brotherhood

of SS Knights.

He had a crypt constructed

around which 12 SS leaders

would conduct occult ceremonies
in front of an occult symbol.

And that number 12 was not
coincidental

because that was exactly
the number of knights

around King Arthur's
fabled round table.

Himmler conflated the two myths.

I think that people are obsessed
with the idea that the Nazis

were searching for the Holy Grail

because the Nazis were so horrible
and terrifying

that we want an occult explanation
for their behaviours.

It's difficult for us to say
this is just a group

of really terrible people

who wanted to exterminate
whole other groups of people.

So we want there to be a magic
that describes

what it is that they're doing.

It's easier than just accepting
that sometimes human beings

are really awful.

I think we have to be a little bit
careful with this obsession

with things like the Holy Grail and
the occult activities of the Nazis.

It's in danger of clouding the fact

that what the Nazis did was
to transform Europe

in the most diabolical way.

What if something was
so strange that it seemed impossible

to give it a name?
How would we refer to such a thing?

Warminster, where strange
sights and sounds at night

have been reported.

Warminster is
a quiet market town in Wiltshire,

where things like this
just don't happen.

Well, I've lived in Warminster
for 11 years,

and in the whole time,
the Warminster thing

has been discussed.

Sometimes you hear it two or three
times a week,

sometimes you don't hear it
for weeks on end,

but you are Just aware, I think,
that it's always there.

There was enough interest
to pack a public meeting

in the town hall last Friday night.

More than 300 people turned up
to hear the local council chairman,

Mr Emlin Reece, open the meeting.

The most disturbing factor

is that many of our townspeople have
been frightened by unusual sounds.

The Warminster Thing began
on Christmas Day in 1964

with a lady who was walking
very early in the morning to church

and heard a noise in the sky

and lots of vibrations
and stuff like that.

At 6:30 that morning,

a local woman walking
to her church

along a country lane near Warminster
heard a sound behind her.

It was, she thought,
the sound of a gritting lorry,

but it was accompanied
by a very loud humming noise.

But when she turned round...

...there was nothing there,
and the noise suddenly seemed to go

from behind her and vanish off
up into the skies above her.

Many, many different sightings
over quite a long period of time

by many different people in
the community at different places,

but all within Warminster.

And I suspect because
there is, at this stage,

no clear explanation

of what those phenomena are

or represent, whether they're
connected or not connected,

it's been given this rather...
loose generic term

the Warminster Thing.

It was the Thing
and it's earned itself that title

if you like, the Thing,

because people didn't have a clue
what it was.

Then in June 1965,

came the first "sighting"

of what was causing this fury,

the first sighting of
the Warminster Thing

and it was reported
in the local paper,

that what was causing
all of this concern,

all of this upheaval,
all of this panic,

was a flying saucer.

The early 1960s saw
a wave of UFO reports in Britain,

but the epicentre seemed to be
around Warminster in Wiltshire,

where stories of alien invasions
struck fear into the hearts

of the locals.

They were worried, because it is
something completely out of context.

It's not what normally happens
in society.

Yes, so that was why they had
the meeting and had to turn away

two or three hundred people
outside the town hall in Warminster.

The meeting was thrown open
to the people of Warminster.

How many people here tonight
are afraid of the thing?

How many of you?

At quarter to four in the morning,

I was wakened
by this dreadful droning sound.

And I went to the bedroom window

and I saw this brilliant object.

It was quite low in the sky,

and I live up Beacon View that way,

I just couldn't move, and it was
going on for half an hour.

But it wasn't just
the locals who wanted to know

what was going on.

The meeting also attracted
a gaggle of ufologists.

Also in attendance, but trying not
to make their presence known,

were men in dark suits
from the Air Ministry.

The military were there,
but they weren't in uniform

and there were plenty, as I say,
a lot of people attended

and clearly it was causing concern,

you know,
because no answers could be found.

The meeting didn't really
help because, try as they might,

the official explanations didn't
convince the citizens of Warminster.

The reason that the rational
explanations didn't work

was that the strange events
kept being reported.

All of these stories found there
way onto the desk of

the Warminster Gazette's
chief reporter, Arthur Shuttlewood.

He had a number of sightings
which brought to his attention,

that galvanised his interest.

And that's-

The newspapers picked up on it,

especially the Gordon Faulkner
famous photo.

65, that created wonderful newspaper
reports of the Thing,

the Thing,
the invasion of Warminster.

The photograph,
this groundbreaking picture

of the Warminster Thing,

had been captured by chance
by Gordon Faulkner.

He'd been out and happened to have
his camera handy

when the Thing
streaked across the sky.

Ufologists flocked to the town.

So too,
according to local press reports,

did television's
favourite astronomer, Patrick Moore,

hopefully to catch a glimpse
of the Warminster Thing.

In the early 60s, the flying
saucer place was Warminster,

Cradle Hill.
I went there to do a programme

and talked to all kinds of people,
including various journalists.

When one person sees
a flying saucer, others will too.

Someone who joined
the throng of new witnesses

was Arthur Shuttlewood.

The previously sceptical journalist
reported his own close encounter

with the Thing.

He recounted his terrifying
experience of seeing

the Thing through a bedroom window

and of grabbing his cine camera and
pointing it at the object

as it flew across the sky,
only to find

that the camera twitched
in his hands

and then flew out of his grasp.

Some reports described
a fiery, cigar-shaped object

hovering in the sky,

but most Warminster folk have
seen nothing out of the ordinary

and strongly resent newspaper
stories about a town

living in terror.

The presence of the Thing
divided opinion

among the people of Warminster.

I've talked to people who say,
that's just a load of rubbish.

People really believe that,

and people who say
that that's got to be a thing.

It's got to be a thing because
so, so many people over the years

have produced consistent evidence
that there is a Thing

and something's going on.

Whilst opinion was split,

there was one group of people
who were delighted at the arrival

of little green men in Warminster

because it attracted hordes
of ufologists and tourists.

Warminster started in around
about 1964-65

and went through till about 1978-80

and then it petered out to about
150-200 sightings.

These things, they're real,
they're genuine,

and but it's a matter of sorting
the wheat out from the chaff.

And that's not crop circles, is it?
Or is it? I don't know.

Recently, I was very privileged,

as mayor
and chairman of the council,

to cut the ribbon to unveil
the newly painted mural

to celebrate 60 years
of the Warminster Thing.

But the key to a rational
explanation for the Thing

might be closer to home.

The army is much in evidence
in these parts,

and sceptics say that if odd things
are being seen,

they're most likely rockets,
flares, balloons, or aircraft,

which the army's not talking about
for security reasons.

There were secret aircraft going
around,

and of course some of those were
responsible for saucer sightings,

that was the case in Warminster, certainly.

Lots of extraordinary things have
happened to me

since I've been in Warminster.

But one of those things has not
been the Warminster Thing.

Historic reports,
including the Warminster Thing,

showed that at the time,
and ever since,

the Ministry of Defence has taken
the idea of UFOs in general

and the Warminster Thing
in particular,

very seriously, as a potential issue
of national security.

Next time on Britain's X Files.

What happened when Uri Geller's
powers were tested by the CIA?

What was the real origin

of a mysterious crater
in a farmer's potato field?

Why did the Nazis want
the Spear of Destiny?

And we reveal the meaning
of a mysterious message

sent over 50 years ago.

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