Buckfastleigh, Devon: 1978

Last October I posted the following item and also contacted various news outlets:

Buckfastleigh, Devon: 1978 -witness appeal

It is a long shot but you never know...

On the 3^rd October, 1978, three teenagers left a youth club in Buckfastleigh, Devon. The trio were given pseudonyms at the time of Shirley, Mark and Paul.

Investigation procedures at the time as well as protocol on dealing with witnesses were not what they are today. 

We know that the trio observed a number of unidentified objects in the sky above the village and some unidentified figures on three occasions.  We might normally be cautious but a retired gentleman named Harry observed the objects himself after the nervous trio knocked on his door –his cats also behaved oddly.

The teens were traumatised and the girl identified as Shirley was said to have been most affected.

1978 seems a very long time ago now but I am trying to locate the teens and gather as much information about observations that evening as I can.  If they read this, or any family members do, then please get in touch. I cannot over-emphasise that I deal with witnesses in the strictest confidence and have done so for over 40 years.  My interest is purely for research and so I hope that the trio will consider getting in touch with me.

I can be contacted via email at aopbureau@yahoo.co.uk or blackto@hotmail.com or via Face Book Messenger –Anomalous Observational Phenomena page.

My thanks in advance

Terry Hooper-Scharf

CE3K/AE Project

It was one of several appeals I sent out that month looking for percipients in UFO entity cases that were never investigated or were simply dismissed by ufologists because they involved entities or young persons.

I have no idea whether any of those involved in the incidents read the requests and even if some had they were treated very badly at the time by ufologists so they might not be inclined to come forward.,

During 1976 a colleague, in UFO International which I had founded, offered to look into a report of a large oval shaped object landing near to a witness' home close to Bristol.  He was going to be working in that area and I had no reason to not trust him. I was told that the report was a fake and the person in question a "Ufonut". That was it and I had to make do with a verbal 'report' as the man in question could not be bothered wasting time writing up what he had learnt. In a conversation with another group member I was told that this 'investigator' "Couldn't be bothered after the fella told him that someone had left the object and walked around it".

I exploded with anger.  We were talking about a Close Encounter of the Third Kind rather than just a landing that might involve natural phenomena. So I confronted the investigator (in private) and basically asked WTF was going on?  He told me how the man had seen the object land nearby and wartching it had seen "someone or something come out and move about for a while".  What did the man describe?  How long had the incident lasted? Did he see the object take off and did he check the landing site -and did the 'investigator' check?

No. It seems that once "something coming from inside the object" was mentioned he had switched off as he "knew" he was talking to a "nutter". Now, since I had dealt with entity/CE3K cases and talked and written about them that was pretty damn insulting.  In fact, the same person (not daring to use my name) later wrote a piece "Are you a UFOnut" that was a personal attack on me. Turns out he was even part of the Aerial Phenomena Enquiries Network (APEN) which was renowned for hoaxing and so on (I have files with my solicitor naming the other prominent British ufologists involved in APEN).

Not long after the same 'investigator' told me that a witness in another case was "Pretty useless. He was a blackie and you know what they are like". For me that was it and I distanced myself from him as well as other factions in ufology who seemed to be almost mentally retarded in their attitudes and racist attitudes. It wasn't just teenagers being treated disgustingly.

Did I try to follow up the two reports?  Yes. The witness near to Bristol refused phone calls and correspondence and I gathered that he had been treated very rudely. As for the other witness who was as Bristolian as me: he was very polite and pointed out that he would never speak to another ufologist because of the attitude and what was said to him (he never elaborated).

All of these, like the Buckfastleigh case, were high priority events that needed proper investigation but are now lost. I doubrt that we will ever know what went on but Buckfastleigh definitely appears to have had some type of activity going on because, years before I made my appeal, others had reported CE3Ks/possible abductions in and around the area in the space of a month.  It took me weeks of searching before I came across vague references and then details of what happened. and guess what? The organisations the events were reported to never made any follow-up and until I mentioned the cases and they checked they had no clue -but if I found anything out....?

At the time of publishing UFO Contact? I was unaware of these other incidents and it appears -if it turns out to be genuine- that one percipient has physical scarring that his doctors cannot explain but appear to have involved a major medical procedure.

We'll see.