UFOs in Reality (34 page)

From information I received about another strange happening in Reading, it seems that the interrupted journey in Florida was not to be the only time when Jeff was apparently abducted. In the early hours of one morning, David and Thelma Glanville awoke to hear a loud hammering coming from their front door. On going downstairs to investigate what it was all about, they opened the front door to find Jeff, standing stark naked, in a state of some desperation. He told them he had found himself suspended horizontally over the lawn and then dropped, a foot or so, onto the cold wet grass. He’d had no idea how he’d got there and his parents said the door was still locked and bolted. It seemed possible that he had once again been a guest of the ETs.

Poltergeists and spiritualism

From all accounts, strange happenings had begun to beset the Glanvilles soon after their ‘lost time’ in Florida. The first one I have been told about occurred at Easter 1996. Thelma and David had taken a short holiday in York and visited the old sites there. Jeff had gone to stay with friends. The younger son, Nick, had stayed at home with his cousin Darren. On arriving home and entering the gym they saw the heavy exercise machine balancing on top of a bar in a dangerous-looking manner. Nick and Darren denied responsibility for this. No one could account for how the feat had been achieved. Then followed a period of poltergeist-like activity, with items of heavy furniture shoved about and ornaments being moved to other locations and, sometimes, disappearing. Throughout all this annoyance Jeff had kept on with his body-building exercises in the gym and tried not to be ‘phased’ by these things.

At this point in the happenings, spiritualism was brought onto the scene by Dilys. Apparently she had received comfort from local spiritualists after she had lost someone in tragic circumstances some time before. The family became convinced that they needed to discover more about the entities causing the chaos in their home. The local vicar had been called in, but he’d felt unable to help them. From then on, any UFO connection became cloaked by the actions and revelations of the ‘spirits’ during seances. Even Jeff had been drawn in when he’d seemed to be taken over by one of these unseen influences and, thereafter, he’d often gone into trances during sessions. Throughout all this David had been an observer and at times he’d become angry about these dramatic changes to normal family life.

All these happenings had occurred before my meeting with David and Thelma at that Kidlington conference in the summer of 1996. After I had shown that the time and date of that expected happening had been close to a prediction by the AT, David began to confide in me about other strange things. I remember he rang me one night to discuss something and then said, “You would not believe the things that are happening in this house. Right now, as I’m talking to you, out there in the kitchen, there are two wooden mug stands with rounded tops – and one is balancing vertically on the other by its rounded top!” “Jeff dismantled them yesterday and now they’re balancing again”. He went on to tell me how he’d seen things fly across the room and then more about events in the gymnasium.

Back on track with Jeff’s graphics.

One night, as David and Thelma had returned home, they had seen balls of light disappear into the roof of their house. They had later found the door to the gym to be jammed, but they’d been able to push it open enough to peer inside through a small gap. They’d seen the exercise machine, weights and all, balanced at an impossible angle. They’d watched with interest as a large spider ran under the door, but then came rushing out again, as if being chased. Strange things began to happen in the swimming pool area too. The filter system would suddenly burst into life, run for a while and then shut off.

This is all background for the UFO/ET elements that followed. I think the first development of interest, in the context of my studies, was when I received sheets of A4 drawings through the post, early February, 1997. These looked like symbolic sketches from a scientist’s notebook and they had been drawn by Jeff in unusual circumstances. I talked with Jeff over the telephone and asked how he had produced them. What he told me was almost incredible. Those images had appeared in white outline superimposed upon his normal vision. He’d found that by closing his eyes he could remember them all and then on opening his eyes again, he’d been able to draw them.

I noticed that the earliest set of three small drawings on the first sheet (Fig.50) was dated October 11th, 1996 and the latest image had the date January 29th, 1997 beside it. The diagram at the bottom right-hand corner of the first sheet immediately caught my eye. It seemed to be a diagrammatic representation of the AT’s scenario. (It is worth bearing in mind that Jeff Glanville had no knowledge of the AT whatsoever and even today has little knowledge of it). A circle with a curved band across its middle and two more, smaller, arcs, top and bottom, seemed to represent the Earth. By measurement I established that the two arcs top and bottom represented the Arctic and the Antarctic Circles to unbelievable accuracy. A small ellipse sitting just above the equator, on the right of the diagram, was attached to the right leg of a broad upward pointing arrow, which had a direction arrow, pointing to the left, attached to the base of its left leg. I considered that this directional arrow indicated retrograde (East to West) motion and that the broad arrowhead represented the northward and southward motion of an orbiter, represented by the ellipse. To the left of this Earth diagram, a stick-man alien (with oval head) was drawn, seemingly throwing a diamond-shaped something towards the Earth. As can be seen from the annotations on Fig.50, I made attempts to interpret the other pieces of obscure symbolism on that sheet and found a few common symbols that might have had physical meaning. Of particular interest were spiral symbols which, in context, seemed to symbolise ‘power’.

A further sheet of drawings was received from Jeff towards the end of February 1997 (Fig.51). This was a reduced copy of the first sheet but with an appended strip at the bottom edge.

A very interesting diagram in the right-hand bottom corner caught my eye. It looked to me to be like the stylised outline of a lake or an island. It had two ‘power’ symbols and a broken arrow symbol within the confines of the outline. The right-hand extremity feature of the outline looked like a promontory of some kind. It was circled and an inverted triangular shape was shown linked to the circle. Jeff thought the outline might represent a star constellation, but I was not convinced by that and continued to pursue the lake or island solution by studying an atlas and other maps. After an intensive and fruitless search I gave up for a while. Then one day, soon afterwards, whilst reading a newspaper, I saw that elusive shape in an advertisement for holidays in New Zealand. The North Island had all the important outline features of Jeff’s stylised drawing. Another piece of serendipity then occurred (there have been many aiding my quest over the years). During May, I met a married couple who were from New Zealand and who were preparing to return there.

Fig 50

Fig 51

I showed them Jeff’s drawing and asked if they knew the locations of power stations
on North Island and whether the symbols shown corresponded to the positions of two of them. They were able to confirm that power stations were placed roughly in the positions shown and that the northernmost one, symbolised in a different way, was a geothermal plant. They’d no idea what the broken arrow symbolised, even when I prompted them with my suspicion that it might be a navigation beacon. However, they did know something about that ringed promontory. It was regarded as being a sacred area by the native Maori
population, because they believed that their souls departed from there when they died.

(This latter revelation seemed to link strangely with some of the soul-saving activities the Glanvilles had been involved in during their seances. These are not described in this book because they appeared to be ‘fringe’ activities taking place in parallel with the ET’s interactions.)

My next move was to enquire about that suspected aircraft beacon
feature. I contacted my friend and fellow UFO investigator, the late Capt. Graham Sheppard. After retiring from British Airways, Graham had been brave enough to admit, publicly, to having experienced two UFO encounters whilst flying. After a long flying career and voluntary retirement from British Airways, he had then ventured to appear on TV programmes to support other UFO witnesses. He had become a close friend of the author, Timothy Good. Over the ‘phone I asked Graham if he had any knowledge of the air traffic arrangements on North Island, New Zealand. He said he hadn’t, but he would find out more about that suspected beacon. Shortly afterwards I received information in the post that a navigational beacon was located in the position indicated by Jeff’s drawing. It was almost unbelievable that Jeff Glanville had somehow been given a recognisable portrayal of a location he’d never even seen!

A remarkable Scrabble diagram

Next, I received a FAX from David Glanville on March 17th, 1997, after I had been informed that unseen entities had taken over their dining room and messages were being left on the dining table using Scrabble
pieces. A pattern of pieces had been created, which Jeff believed represented the planets of the solar system. He’d been able to guess each planet’s identity from its distance from the centre of the pattern. Of special interest was a string of pieces, letters A to L, which seemed to create a trail from beyond Mars to the Earth. Jeff had tried to reproduce this pattern on paper and to sketch-in rings to represent the orbits of the supposed planets. David FAX-ed this drawing (Fig.52) to me and asked if it made any sense. (The longhand annotations are mine.)

Fig. 52

Several features of that diagram immediately stood out. Relative to the Earth, a ruler placed on it showed conjunctions between Mercury and Jupiter and between Venus and Mars, Saturn and Pluto in opposition and Neptune and Uranus in near opposition. That was an interesting and unique set of planetary alignments. I began a long search of my astronomical software to look for a date when those conditions might have been met. Eventually, I found that
Saturn and Pluto had been in exact opposition on December 8th, 1898. Uranus and Neptune had been in opposition on July 11th, 1908, Venus and Mars had been in conjunction on June 23rd, 1908, and Mercury and Jupiter in conjunction on August 19th, 1908.
The outer planets, Pluto, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn move slowly round the sky and, therefore, they tend to remain in close alignment with each other before and after the exact conjunction or opposition date. Jeff’s depictions of the alignments on the dining table were also approximate. Taking all this into account, it was quite remarkable that three of the approximate alignments had occurred during June, July and August, 1908. Uranus and Neptune will not be in opposition again until 2078-2081 and the other alignments will not coincide during that period. So, to me, it looked as if the summer of 1908 was being indicated. I wondered,
could it be just a coincidence that the Tunguska explosion in Siberia occurred on June 30th, 1908? Could it be possible that that string of Scrabble pieces represented the path of the object responsible for that enormous explosion?
Unfortunately, on June 30th, 1908, the planets were not placed in the regions of the sky indicated by the Scrabble diagram.