Reports of Unidentified Flying Object: The English Corn Circles in 1988 – The Avebury UFO
On July 22 the local Marlborough Times led with a head line story entitled “Strange Sighting at Silbury Hill” This featured a large photograph of the Circles opposite Silbury Hill, but also made brief mention of the fact that an un named woman from Marlborough had witnessed a bright object in the sky near Avebury a day or so before the first Corn Circles appeared there.
This story, in conjunction with the tracks and “shoe prints” in these recent Circles , naturally aroused the suspicions of those in the Circles investigation group.
“Footprints means hoax” was the obvious conclusion to be made, though the elaborateness and scale of such a production was unbelievable. If this was the case then surely the UFO witness’s account must also be bogus. It was with this in mind that Colin Andrews and I went to interview Mary Freeman, whose name we had discovered by inquiries. Much later that evening we left, sure that this was not the case, and impressed by her detailed and convincing account of what she had experienced.
On the evening of July 13 , perhaps twenty-four hours before the first Circles were formed at Silbury Hill, Mary Freeman had had dinner with a friend near Avebury, and was driving home along the A361 road through that village, which is a mile north of Silbury Hill. (See Figure 3:6.) She followed the road through the great Stone Circle and turned left into the “Avenue” (so-called because it is partly lined with ancient standing stones) to go toward Marlborough. No other cars were about. Over to her right she caught sight of an intense golden/white glow in the clouds. The source of this light, which she said was much, much brighter than the full moon, was enormous, silent, and stationary just above the ceiling of low cloud. Since it was New Moon that day, no moon was visible.
She glanced back at the road, and when her eyes re turned to the object she then saw a long, narrow beam of white light shining obliquely downward at the ground. Her immediate impression was that this was an ‘ ‘energy beam, ” or that it was “channeling energy. ” She did not know why she had this thought. The beam was directed south over the top of Silbury Hill or, at least, where she knew Silbury Hill must be, since it is not visible from that point on the road. Her instinct was to drive on and tum toward Silbury Hill to find the place where the beam touched the ground.
Within seconds of her seeing this immensely bright object, there was a further strange occurrence. Various things, such as a booklet and a cigarette pack, which had been left on the front shelf of her Renault 5, suddenly flew into her lap for no apparent reason. She drove on slowly, watching the UFO and its beam, and turned right onto the A4 road toward Silbury Hill. There were still no other cars on the road. But before she reached Silbury Hill , her view was briefly obscured by trees, and when she next looked there was nothing to be seen. When the things had flown off the shelf, she noticed that the dashboard digital clock read 11 : 13 p.m. The whole episode lasted barely three minutes.
The object which Mary drew for us was an elliptical shape, and from the center of its base shone a thin beam of light at 45° to the vertical . Since it was in cloud, its edges were not sharply defined, but the clouds did not appear to affect the beam. I asked whether the beam di verged downward, indicating that the UFO was its source, or diverged upward from the ground, suggesting that car headlights or a searchlight was shining on the clouds to produce this effect. Mary indicated that the beam of light was parallel-sided; indeed, there was no way of telling whether it shone down from the UFO, or up from the ground toward it. It could not possibly have been a car’s headlights or a searchlight; the object in the cloud was far too bright, and moreover the base of the cloud, through which the beam projected, was not lit up. Mary said she was not frightened by this strange and silent spectacle; perhaps more awed, or “honored, ” as she put it.
Clearly this experience had a deep emotional effect on Mary Freeman. She returned home by midnight and told her flatmates, whom I met and talked to, and, later, her mother and brother, what she had seen. It was not until six days later that she was told by Richard Martin, whose story subsequently appeared in the Marlborough Times, about the Circles at Silbury Hill . The possibility of a connection between these and her UFO sighting then seemed inescapable. Despite a gap of at least twenty-four hours between Mary’s sighting and the appearance of the Circles, the UFO beam had touched the ground where the Circles had formed.