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| The World Notices |
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 UFO news, views and archives brought to you by Weird Wiltshire Introduction Latest News News Archive The Thing World Notices 1960s Recent sightings John Cowie interview Postcards Wallpaper Links  |
In 1994, a man named Richard Hooton claimed that he and Faulkner had faked the photograph using a cotton reel and a button. Deepening the mystery of the picture, Gordon Faulkner denied the claim, saying he did not even know a Richard Hooton. On August 27, 1965, a town meeting was held by councillors in an attempt to clear up the mystery that had been troubling Warminster for the past eight months. The meeting took place just before an August bank holiday and was attended by reporters from national newspapers and television stations. Soon Warminster found itself under the spotlight with national attention focused on its strange phenomenon. During the meeting, said to be the first of its kind in the country, townspeople stood up and claimed to have seen UFOs like "twin red hot pokers" and "huge cats eyes" which crackled and buzzed. One person even likened the noise to that of a refrigerator. Meanwhile, Dr Cleary Baker of the British Unidentified Flying Objects Association (BUFORA) claimed that the alien beings responsible were using large hills outside the town as a homing beacon, while observing the military activity on nearby Salisbury plain. It is thought some 10,000 people visited Warminster over that August bank holiday weekend - a defining moment for the town, with pubs running dry for the first time since World War II. From that point on, people keen to spot a UFO flocked Warminster, but by the early 1970s some enthusiasts were claiming the magic had gone and so had the UFOs. In the October 1971 edition of The Merseyside UFO Bulletin, the editor describes some writing he spotted on one of the bins at the entrance to the hallowed Cradle Hill, a Mecca for UFO spotters. He says: "On it were painted the following embarrassing legends: 'Litter. We leave no sign we've been here, why must you?', 'Space junk only' and 'This bin was donated to commemorate the invention of time travel, 2026 AS'." |
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