Alan
Godfrey is a retired police constable who served with
the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police Force. His life
and career are notable for having been entangled in some
of Britain's most unusual mysteries, including the Zigmund
Adamski case, allegedly connected with the UFO phenomenon.
His alleged UFO encounter took place during one of the
most active waves of UFO sightings in British history.
He is considered by some ufologists to be one of the first
alien abductees in Britain. Ufologist Jenny Randles has
claimed that the Alan Godfrey case cemented the Pennines
as the central hot spot of UFO activity in Britain, and
possibly in all of Europe.
Life
Godfrey
had led a fairly normal life prior to his alleged UFO
encounter. He was married with two children. He was commended
twice by the police force for his investigative work in
cases of sudden and mysterious death. The only incident
reported prior to the investigation of Zigmund Adamski's
body was a scuffle with 3 unruly men on the day of October
23, 1977. Godfrey was attempting to take the men into
custody on the grounds that they had brutally assaulted
someone the night before. However, they resisted arrest,
beating him to the ground and wounding him severely. He
would later lose a testicle as a result of being kicked
in the groin. He was told by his doctor that he would
no longer be able to lead a normal sex life or father
children.
The
Zigmund Adamski Case
Alan
Godfrey was one of the two officers to inspect the body
of the deceased Zigmund Adamski. Adamski's body was found
lying on a heap of coal in Tomlin's coal yard in the town
of Todmorden at 15:45 on Wednesday June 11, 1980. Godfrey's
inspection revealed that the body had been crudely dressed:
he was wearing an overcoat and a vest, but no shirt. His
jacket was fastened unevenly, the fly of his trousers
was unzipped, and his shoes were not tied properly. Godfrey
thought that the shoes seemed as though they had been
placed on Adamski's feet by someone else. The forensic
inspection of the body revealed that he had died of a
heart attack, and had been dead for at least 8 hours before
the police arrived. There were other unusual circumstances
as well: Though Adamski was found at the top of a pile
of coal, no scuffs or traces of coal dust were found on
his clothing or skin, nor were there any signs on the
coal itself to suggest that he had climbed to the top
of the pile. Furthermore, strange burn marks were found
around the back of his head, and another on the back of
his neck that was covered in an unknown gel-like substance.
Neither the burn marks nor the substance were ever identified.
It was concluded that Adamski had been missing for six
days prior to the discovery of his body. Godfrey was tasked
with investigating the case (thought to be a homicide),
but was not able to ascertain what had happened to Adamski.
The
investigation into the death of Adamski was dropped later
that year, and a security clampdown forbade officers from
speaking to the press. Reflecting on the case in 1993,
coroner James Turnbull claimed that the case absolutely
mystified him. He also expressed some willingness to believe,
along with popular speculation, that a UFO had been involved.
The case remains unsolved.
Alleged
UFO encounter
Within
six months of discovering Adamski's body, Godfrey was
given another, seemingly less pressing, assignment. The
police station had been receiving multiple calls from
concerned citizens regarding a herd of cows that had allegedly
been appearing and reappearing on a local council estate.
On the night of November 28, 1980, Godfrey was dispatched
to investigate. He was driving his car down Burnley Road
when he spotted something down the way ahead of him. Thinking
that it was a double-decker bus that had skidded sideways
on the road, he turned on his police lights and moved
in for a closer inspection. When he got within 25 yards
of the object, he realized that it was not in fact on
the road at all; it was hovering approximately five feet
off the ground. Not knowing how to proceed, he tried calling
for backup in the car radio, only to discover that it
would not function. His personal radio was also "completely
dead." Godfrey recalled that the object appeared
to have been emitting some kind of force capable of disrupting
the trees on either side of the road, yet it made no noise
whatsoever, nor could he feel any vibration in the police
car. For safety reasons, he remained in the car and proceeded
to sketch the object in front of him in a notepad he kept
in the vehicle. He described the object as a diamond shape,
with the bottom half rotating and the top sitting stationary.
Soon after finishing the sketch, he reported a "jump
in time"; he suddenly found himself driving the car
again, approximately 20 or 30 yards past the point at
which he met the object. Confused as to what had just
happened, Godfrey turned the car around and inspected
the area in which it had rested. He found that the road
was perfectly dry where it had hovered, despite the fact
that the entire area had been dampened from the rainfall
that night. Despite initial scepticism, Godfrey later
came to believe that the he was the victim of an alien
abduction.
Godfrey
returned to the station to retrieve two fellow officers
in an attempt to continue the search for the missing cattle.
They managed to find them in a field, to which the only
point of access was across a bridge and through a locked
gate. There was no sign of the cattle having walked there
themselves, despite the ground being wet and easily disturbed.
Godfrey insisted that the only way the cows could have
gotten there was for them to have simply been dropped
on the spot.
Upon
returning to the station, Godfrey also noticed that there
was approximately 30–35 minutes "missing"
for which he could not account. While he claims his trip
down Burnley Road should have only taken him 15 minutes,
he had been gone for approximately 45–50. He also
noticed several other things for which he had no rational
explanation; an itchy but painless mark had appeared on
his foot, and his boot had been split horizontally on
the sole. The next day, he also discovered that three
other officers had reported seeing strange lights at the
time of Godfrey's encounter.
Godfrey
reported the occurrences as per standard police procedure,
despite some ridicule from colleagues. He soon found that
the story had been leaked to the press, much to the embarrassment
of the department and his family. Godfrey maintains that
the department, uncomfortable with his newfound notoriety,
pressured him to resign through such tactics as replacing
his car with a bicycle. Godfrey no longer works for the
Police Service.
Aftermath
At
some point after the UFO encounter, Godfrey's wife was
awakened by a strange noise outside the house while the
two of them were in bed together. Despite her best efforts,
she was unable to wake Godfrey. The next morning, they
had sex for the first time since the beating of 1977,
an act which resulted in the pregnancy of Godfrey's wife.
Godfrey was told that his condition had somehow reversed,
and maintains the belief that "the visitors"
he encountered on the night of November 28, 1980 served
some sort of positive function in his life.
Godfrey
was later convinced to undergo hypnotic regression in
order to attempt to recall what had transpired during
the 'jump in time' he had reported upon encountering the
UFO. Despite initial reservations, he conceded. During
the session, he claimed that the UFO had stopped his car
engine, filled his radio with static, then blinded him
with an intensely bright light which caused him to lose
consciousness. His next supposed memory was being inside
a room that looked very much like that of a regular house.
There was a large black dog in the room, and a heavily
bearded men assisted by several small, robot-like creatures
with heads shaped like lamps. The bearded man, dressed
in "biblical" clothes, communicated with Godfrey
telepathically, revealing that his name was "Yosef"
and that Godfrey already "knew" him. Yosef promised
him a later encounter. Godfrey still has no conscious
recall of the supposed abduction, and is unsure whether
what he 'recalled' during the hypnotic session was fact,
fantasy, a dream, or a mixture of all three.
Police
constable Alan Godfrey's abduction in West Yorkshire,
England
Date
of sighting: November 28, 1980
Location of sighting: Todmorden, West Yorkshire, England
Source:
Jenny Randles
"In
November and December 1980, the eastern side of Britain
was experiencing a major UFO sighting wave. There were
chases of UFOs by police cars near the coast, a UFO that
overflew an oil rig in the North Sea, and the wave culminated
in the famous events on the East Anglian coast at Rendlesham
Forest. Just a month before these landings beside those
NATO air bases, one of the most impressive alien abduction
cases took place in the small Penninemill town of Todmorden,
West Yorkshire, right in the centre of Britain's most
active window area known locally as "UFO Alley".
Police
Constable Alan Godfrey was on patrol on the night of 28
November 1980. Just before dawn, he drove along Burnley
Road on the edge of Todmorden, looking for some cows that
had been reported missing. They were only found after
sun-up, mysteriously relocated in a rain-soaked field
without hoofmarks to indicate their passage.
Giving
up his nocturnal hunt, Godfrey was about to go back to
base to sign off duty when he saw a large mass a few hundred
yards ahead. At first, he thought it was a bus coming
towards him that took workers to their jobs in town and
that he knew passed about 5:00 a.m. But as he approached,
he realized that it was something very strange. It was
a fuzzy oval that rotated at such speed and hovered so
low over the otherwise deserted highway that it was causing
the bushes by the side to shake. The police officer stopped,
propped onto his windscreen a pad that was in the patrol
car to make sketches of any road accidents, and drew the
UFO. Then there was a burst of light, and the next thing
he knew, he was driving his car again, further along Burnley
Road, with no sign of the UFO.
Godfrey
turned around and examined the spot where the UFO had
hovered. The road was very wet as it had rained heavily
earlier in the night. But just at this one location was
a circular patch where the roadway had been dried in a
swirled pattern. Only when back at the police station
did he realise that it was a little later than he had
expected - although any missing time was probably no greater
than 15 minutes from estimates later taken on site.
Concerned
as to possible ridicule, Godfrey at first chose not to
make an official report, but changed his mind later that
day when he discovered he was not alone. After breakfast
that morning, a driver who had been on Burnley Road three
miles further out at Cliviger reported seeing a brilliant
white object and contacted Todmorden police. The time
matched that of Alan Godfrey's. Furthermore, a police
patrol from an adjacent force (Halifax) had been engaged
in a stakeout for stolen motorcycles on the moors of the
Calder Valley and had witnessed a brilliant blue-white
glow descending into the valley towards Todmorden shortly
before Godfrey experienced his close encounter. Their
story, when it reached Todmorden police station, formed
a second match.
Encouraged
by this news Godfrey filed an official report, but was
surprised when police chose to release the story to the
local newspaper the following week. From here, UFOlogists
discovered the case and a lengthy investigation was mounted
by a Manchester-based UFO group.
Although
Alan Godfrey had no further conscious recall of the missing
time, he did have increasingly confused memory of the
sequence of events surrounding the sighting (with an unexplained
image of seeing himself outside the car during the sighting).
There was also puzzling physical evidence. His police-issue
boots were split on the sole, as if he had been dragged
along the floor and they had caught on something. He also
reported a previous history of seeing other strange things
and having experienced at least one earlier time lapse
as a youth — factors that UFOlogists have come to
recognise as common with abduction cases.
When
sure that all conscious testimony had been recorded, Godfrey
agreed to be hypnotically regressed by a Manchester psychiatrist
eight months after the incident. He eventually had several
other sessions with different therapists, and his recall
in later sessions was video-taped. The doctor refused
permission to the UFO group for the first session to be
recorded.
The
hypnotic testimony is very odd, and Godfrey was never
to be sure what really happened. Under regression, he
told of the bright light stopping the car engine, causing
his radio and police handset both to be filled with static
and then to be swamped by blinding light as he lost consciousness.
His next recall was of being inside a strange room, more
like a house than a spaceship, complete with a most unexpected
large black dog. He was studied by a heavily bearded man
who telepathically conveyed that his name was "Yosef"
and whose clothing was very Biblical in nature. Assisting
Yosef were several small robot-like creatures "the
size of a five-year-old lad" and with "a head
shaped like a lamp". They are reminiscent of the
"Grays" of UFO lore; although with major differences.
Godfrey
was supposedly asked questions, told that he "knew"
Josef, and was promised a later encounter. But apparently,
he was not subjected to the more familiar indignities
of abduction stories (especially from the US), such as
bodily fluid samples and rectal probes. Although there
were periods of missing memory, the hypnotic recall that
did emerge was a curious hybrid of mythic images, UFO
case elements and dream-like sequences.
When
asked his opinion as to the reality status of this hypnotic
testimony, Alan Godfrey was refreshingly honest. He told
me he was certain that the UFO encounter was real, but
he could not determine whether the story offered by hypnosis
was a dream, a fantasy, reality, or a mixture of all three.
Unhappily,
Alan Godfrey suffered terribly after this encounter. When
I first wrote up the investigation (just before the regression
hypnosis began) for Flying Saucer Review magazine in 1981,
I deliberately changed his identity to help protect him;
although this was probably futile because the story had
already been featured in the local press under Godfrey's
real name.
However,
despite my refusal to assist them, a tabloid reporter
traced the witness and devoted a front-page banner headline
article to the story — read by millions over the
Sunday lunch — which led to the officer being called
to explain himself before his superiors. He was forced
to undergo medical investigation to determine his "status",
but was pronounced psychologically fit and healthy. Yet
after some years feeling that he would never be allowed
to forget his sighting, he took advice to honorably resign
over an unrelated physical injury incurred during an incident
in which he bravely intervened to avert a crime.
Todmorden,
both before 1980 and in the years since, has been a hotbed
of alien contact activity with several other major encounters
having been investigated, including another abduction
of a truck driver from Burnley Road only a little further
out of Todmorden and on the same highway."
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Godfrey
http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/p/police-sightings.html
