Before we get started, I would like to take a few moments to discuss Black Lives Matter. I stand 100% with the movement and I am committed to continuing my efforts. I have been signing petitions and donating where I can, along with setting aside an hour a day to educate myself. I encourage you all to do the same. Additionally, I recognize that True Crime often focuses too much on white people. In an effort to share and amplify black stories, I am pledging to only cover black John and Jane Does, unsolved murder victims, and missing persons for the foreseeable future. You can find more educational sources at the end of this post.
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This week we’re going to tackle our first extraterrestrial case. In 1964, the town of Warminster, England began experiencing mysterious and strange phenomena that could not be explained. And I have searched for an explanation. The individual phenomena may have individual explanations – but the confluence of events and why they happened in Warminster specifically are unexplainable. Let’s dive in.
It began with strange sounds in 1964. Many witnesses reported what sounded like a detonation that rumbled so deeply their houses shook and windows rattled. There was no explanation found for the sound. Around this time, reports of strange phenomena increased exponentially in Warminster. Noises such as droning or whizzing sounds continued to be reported throughout the following years. Besides the strange sounds, reported phenomena varied wildly in severity. The people of Warminster have reported flocks of birds dying mysteriously, cars stopping in their tracks with no signs of mechanical failure, and even crop circles. And, of course, there were dozens of reports of strange crafts – if not hundreds.
The crafts allegedly sighted throughout Warminster were fairly typical UFO fare. There were three main kinds of ships seen – cigar-shaped ships, orbs, and the classic saucer. Reports seem to agree that they were all silver. The only pieces of evidence available seem to be contemporary photos, purporting to contain unknown craft. Some of them I can write off as immediately fake or misunderstood – an “orb” looks like something on the lens of the camera, or metal wreckage that looks fairly earthly. The one photo that stands out to me is one that is obviously a saucer. The craft is sort of walnut-shaped, a silver sphere with a ridge or a disk-like protuberance around its middle. If it is fake, it’s impressive. Maybe the low quality of the craft masks any telltale signs of the thing being made by a human, but as it stands I can’t see any glaringly obvious signs of it being made by a human.
via Express)
At this point I definitely think it’s important to note that this is Prime Time for UFO sightings. UFOs were beginning to be popularized in the media, and accounts of encounters and abductions were widely reported on. I absolutely believe that the sheer number of sightings in Warminster may have been informed by the UFO culture of the time, but the conviction and detail of these sightings are fairly convincing to me.
Overall, I’m kind of at a loss with this one. I can see both sides of the coin. I lean more towards these phenomena being genuine – there just seems to be too many things going on here to properly explain. If these things had happened on their own in different times and places, I would be more inclined to believe that there are earthly explanations. The idea that all of these explanations would have to occur in conjunction with one another to explain the lights, the UFOs, the sounds discredits them slightly. Of course, this could be a case of wishful thinking or pop-culture-informed sightings, but it just doesn’t feel like that to me. The only explanation I could see as being possible is that the first report was something that could be explained away, and the rest of the reported phenomena were a result of UFO hysteria. But the bottom line here is that I don’t have an explanation for this, and I want to believe that Warminster was visited by extraterrestrials.
Sources
- https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-wiltshire-32972518
- https://unresolved.me/the-warminster-thing
- https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/696764/THE-WARMINSTER-THING-Has-UK-s-biggest-mass-UFO-sighting-case-finally-been-solved/amp
- https://www.mysterywire.com/mysteries/warminster-thing-links-odd-sounds-ufo-reports/
- https://books.google.com/books?id=4Hhm4Bs8KlcC&pg=PA278&lpg=PA278&dq=the+warminster+thing&source=bl&ots=Igi4EGPQWM&sig=ACfU3U03sAFT4SpGwfhakzJQMQNgiaGB6Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjL-_aFre7pAhUaVs0KHauUAOw4ChDoATAGegQICRAB
- https://books.google.com/books?id=cpQ3DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT49&lpg=PT49&dq=the+warminster+thing&source=bl&ots=upYG_0QWWC&sig=ACfU3U1RjwSAIJ81_QycJ5EJzW9KNbZfdA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjduO2Wre7pAhVbCM0KHSZiDLg4FBDoATADegQICRAB
- https://flashbak.com/in-the-1960s-the-warminster-thing-and-ufos-terrorised-wiltshire-18711/
- https://www.britishpathe.com/workspaces/itvwestpathe/TmreEoCC
- https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/228644/the-warminster-thing/
- https://www.cultofweird.com/aliens-ufo/warminster-thing-50th-anniversary/
- http://www.ufo-warminster.co.uk/information/thing_history.htm