<>#8THE STORY OF THE `WELSH TRIANGLE' @7The astonishing series of events in Dyfed in 1977 drew UFO enthusiasts and inventors from all over the country. But, says Hilary Evans, the west Wales flap was not quite what it seemed... @2UFOS IN THE SKY and on the ground. Cars pursued by orange footballs. Glowing cigars hovering over schools. Discs flying into solid rock and vanishing between sliding doors. Silver-suited entities with no faces stalking across fields and peering through cottage windows. Mysteriously malfunctioning cars, television and radio sets. Visits from sinister aliens with psychic powers. The teleportations of entire herds of cattle. Such, if the reports are to be believed, are just some of the extraordinary events that occurred not in some far-off land but in peaceful, homely Wales, and not at some distant time but as recently as the spring of 1977. Are these astonishing reports to be believed? In so accessible a region, and at so @2recent a date, there should be no problem about ascertaining the facts. Yet already discrepancies are apparent that may never now be resolved. The local newspaper, the Western Telegraph, did an excellent job of reporting the events as they occured, but the affair attracted wider attention. It bought into west Wales reporters from the national press and television; it lured investigators, some competent and some not; it enticed unscrupulous authors. Between them they created a confusion that is well-nigh impossible to disentangle. Accounts vary from one version to another; dates are incorrectly stated; the order of events is confused. And, as we shall see, the personal bias of some investigators, the desire of certain reporters for a 'good story' regardless of truth, the gullibility of some witnesses and the @2suggestibility of others - all these have combined to add distortion to confusion. Does this mean that the west Wales 'flap' doesn't deserve our attention? On the contrary, it remains a classic case - but not quite in the way it has been made out to be. The build-up to the events of 1977 had begun before the close of the previous year. Already residents of this remote corner of Wales were reporting UFO sightings on a scale that led Randall Jones Pugh, a local British UFO Research Association investigator who was interviewed by a journalist on 13 January, to forecast: 'The country is in for a spate of such incidents.' His prediction was confirmed on the afternoon of 4 February, when he received a telephone call from the @2mother of a pupil at nearby Broad Haven primary school, saying that her son, along with a dozen other children, had seen a UFO that afternoon, over a period of some hours, on the ground close to the school. Although, the Broad Haven school incidents were not the most sensational events of the west Wales flap, they were the first to alert the general public to the fact that something extraordinary was taking place in the locality. And, unlike some of the later occurrences, the facts - if not the explanations for them - are reasonably well- established. The first sighting took place during the lunch break, when a group of boys aged between 9 and 11, who were playing football in a field beside @2the school, noticed an unfamiliar object in another field close by. It was apparently at ground level and was partly obscured by trees and bushes, so that they could discern only its upper portions; they could see enough, however, to feel sure that it was a UFO. Some of the boys rushed into the school with the news; others came out to see what it was. Eventually there were 15 children who saw the object. They described it as being 'as long as a coach or maybe a bit longer'. One description was of two saucers stacked one against the other to make a sort of dome, with a round 'ashtray' added to make a smaller dome on top. One boy saw three or four windows around the edge, on top of the dome; others thought they saw 10 or 11. Several thought they saw a light flashing on top, and one @2witness claimed that it was red. One saw a door in the side, with a runway leading down from it. Some, but no all, heard a humming sound. In addition, six of the witnesses reckoned that they saw one or two entities near the object. 'We saw something come out of it. It had a helmet,' said one. A second described 'a silver man with spiked ears', while a third added, 'He wasn't a very tall person, and he didn't look very nice either.' The children watched the object for some 20 minutes. Two of them went to tell the headmaster, but he does not seem to have been sufficently convinced to come to see for himself, though one boy 'was nearly crying because he was scared that he was going to be disintegrated or something'. @2At 2 p.m. they went back into class, to re-emerge at 3.30. Naturally, they returned to the field at once to see if their UFO was still there. At first they couldn't see it and tried to get closer, though this meant crossing a fence and a stream. But just then the UFO popped up again from behind a bush, and they all took to their heels. This time they reported, 'The cigar object seemed to be tugging an object which was silver.' Again it disappeared behind a bush. Many of the children told their parents about the incident when they got home. Randall Jones Pugh's name was familiar in the region as that of the local UFO specialist, so it was natural that he should be the first to be contacted. At 6 p.m. he visited the site with one of the boys. By now, however, it was raining heavily, @2and the light was fading fast, so he returned next morning, with a reporter from the Western Telegraph. However, no traces of the landing were to be seen. News of the occurrence spread rapidly, and the tiny seaside village immediately found itself the centre of intense interest. On Monday the headmaster overcame his initial scepticism and asked the witnesses to draw what they had seen. By this time the children had had plenty of opportunity to discuss the matter both among themselves and with enquirers and reporters: the consensus was that they had seen a silver, cigar-shaped object with a dome and possibly a light. It was in much the same terms that, two weeks later, one of the teachers described a large object that she had @2seen on the same spot, though she glimpsed it only for four or five seconds and in pouring rain. She was about to call others when it glided away with a humming sound. Later that day two other adults, canteen workers at the school, noticed an object in the same place, saw a figure climb into it and watched it move up a slope. They did not think for one moment that they were watching a UFO but considered that it was a vehicle associated with the sewage works close by. Even when it was pointed out that it would have been very difficult for any type of vehicle to get to that location, they refused to accept that they had seen a UFO. Despite their scepticism, the Broad Haven school sighting, taken at face value appears to be quite convincing. There are however, some additional factors that investigators at the @2time failed to take into account: these we shall consider when we have looked at some of the other sightings reported from the area. For from then until the late summer hardly a week was to go by without some fresh incident being reported in the neighbourhood. Public interest was kept simmering not only by newspaper reports but also by widespread discussion, by visiting reporters for press and television and by investigators from UFO organizations. For the next six months or more, UFOs were to be front-page news in the area. Here, taken from among 45 cases described in minute detail in reports and interviews, not to mention others reported in less detail, are a handful of selected incidents. On 10 February two 12-year old boys @2saw a UFO in a field near Haverfordwest grammar school. It was a blue flashing light, seen at a distance of about 130 yards (40 metres). One boy threw a stone at it, whereupon it took off; as it did so, an orange cigar shape about 16 feet (5 metres) long materialised beneath it. It hovered for a while, then vanished. On 16 February Graham Howells, a 13- year-old schoolboy of Pembroke Dock, saw a bright, metallic object hovering over Pembroke school as he arrived in the morning. Although the weather was misty, he claimed a clear view of the object, which had a dome in the middle which was dark grey most of the time, but flashed to a dazzling white about every five seconds. It resembled a plate with a burnt fried egg on it. Around the rim of the 'plate' it had greeny- @2yellowish lights and what seemed to me to be retro-rockets. The 'plate' seemed to be revolving as well....I'm sure it wasn't a helicopter or a weather balloon. On 13 March Steven Taylor, aged 17, saw a UFO at about 9 p.m. It was a glowing light with an orange halo around it. He went to the house of some friends to tell them about it, but they did not believe him. About half an hour later, in a field, he saw a dome-shaped UFO about 20 feet (6 metres) high and stopped to look at it. Then a figure like a tall man approached, wearing a semi- transparent suit and a kind of spaceman's helmet. 'I was so frightened,' Stephen said, 'that I just took a swing at it and ran.' On 7 April, Cyril John, aged 64, woke at about 4.45 am., disturbed by a @2strange orange light pulsating in his bedroom. It came from outside and was reflected off the walls. He got up, looked out of the window and saw that the sky was orange. Immediately outside here I saw two silvery-coloured objects. The first was like a very large Easter egg, about 4 feet (1.2 metres) in diameter, and it was swinging back and forth a little above and behind the chimneys of the house opposite. I then saw an object like a man in a silvery boiler suit about 40 feet (12 metres) above my window. It was at least 7 feet (2 metres) tall, and it hung stationary, on a level with the 'Easter egg'. Its attitude was in the position of a free-fall parachute jumper... It hung motionless in the sky, face-downwards, for about 25 minutes. The 'egg' then moved up above roof-level and glided away @2sideways, as did the figure. On 19 April Mrs Rose Granville, proprietor of the Haven Fort Hotel, was just going to bed, at about 2 a.m., when she was disturbed by a strange humming sound. At first she took it for the central heating, but then she realized that it was something unfamilar. A flash outside her window caused her to look out: she saw a bluish light circling around, pulsating as it went. She got her binoculars and saw an oval object resting on the ground and, near it, two figures in 'whitish, plasticated' clothing like boiler suits; they had no faces. When the local newspaper printed a picture of a hoax spaceman and suggested that this was what she had seen, she wrote an indigant denial. With cases such as these being @2reported almost every week, it is not surprising that as early as 17 February investigator Randall Jones Pugh commented to a local reporter: 'There's certainly a minor flap down here.' On 28 April he told the same paper that he was planning a book on the sightings. No doubt he was encouraged in this venture by a further series of events, which were even more extraordinary: the astonishing incidents reported by the inhabitants of Ripperston Farm, just south of Broad Haven. end.