Classic Mysteries
The Armed Elfin Ufonauts of Brighton
by Brent Raynes
This is one of my favorite high-strangeness UFO tales. It comes from Andrew Collins, appeared in his book Alien Energy (Eagle Wing Books, 2003), and is an incident that he looked into back in 1978. The witness, a young lady in her late teens at the time, named Sheila Burton, was staying at the home of her parents in the district of Withdean, in Brighton, East Sussex, England. It was September 1951, and she was just days from being married.
Early one morning she had a most unusual experience. She awoke and looked out the window at the flowers in a backyard garden when her eyes unexpectedly caught sight of a large disc-shaped object with flashing red lights coming down from the sky at a high rate of speed. The mysterious saucer landed on the lawn nearby as three evenly spaced doors opened. From each door an identical looking humanoid entity emerged simultaneously. Each being wore a one-piece silver suit, with a black diagonal sash, a thick belt, with a sci fi style looking ray gun attached to their hips. Their heads were egg-shaped and their ears were pointed, resembling Mr. Spock’s ears. They were somewhere around 1.5 to 1.8 meters tall.
After about 20 paces, each walking a straight line, the three suddenly stopped and then began walking backwards in a synchronized fashion. The alien trio re-entered the craft simultaneously, whereupon the large square doors shut, the red lights began flashing again, and then the UFO shot straight up and out of sight. The entire occurrence lasted only for an estimated 40 to 50 seconds.
“It was as if someone had hit the rewind button on a video machine, making the tape run backwards at an exaggerated speed until the gradually unfolding scenario had totally reversed itself,” Andrew wrote. “Such absurd actions are not what one might expect of highly advanced, extra-terrestrial visitors who would presumably have crossed galaxies to be here, and yet Sheila Burton, who is a mature and sensible woman, appeared to be sincere and I found no good reason to doubt her testimony.”
Andrew further noted that, as with cases that French-born scientist Jacques Vallee described in his Passport to Magonia some four decades earlier, the entities appeared to be a cross between “an astronaut and an elf.” “Cases such as this, and many more like it, convinced me that, although the witnesses might be truthfully relating very real experiences, physical spacecraft from another planet was simply not the answer.”
I would like to add that an “abductee” from East Tennessee named Patsy Wingate shared how three humanoid beings she encountered in 1985 walked in a similar fashion. She said “they walked together in unison. I’ve never seen anything walk more perfectly together.” (This account can be found in my book Visitors From Hidden Realms) The three grey-type entities had approached her bed and she surprised them, she claimed, by suddenly leaping out of bed and attacking the middle entity. She grabbed its neck and to her surprise heard a snap sound, its large head falling back onto its back. Seemingly unable to move, the other two greys held their disabled comrade up and began walking away backwards, the two still walking in unison.
