The Todmorden UFO
Todmorden, Yorkshire 1980s
“It's not easy having a policeman as a father but when he's a policeman who saw a UFO it's even worse.”
It would be criminal of me to not talk about the Todmorden UFO, given that Todmorden is my home town, born and raised! It is a quirky little town at the best of times, but the ‘strange’ nature of Todmorden only amplified in the 1980s due to the story I’m about to tell. You may want to go get a snack, because this story has so many twists and turns... and growing up in Todmorden, I heard this story so many times from so many different people.
This story is a lot more well-known now, than it was when I was a child, thanks to the highly entertaining podcast Uncanny, hosted by Danny Robins. There is a fantastic interview with our main character Alan Godfrey on Uncanny, so if you are interested you should absolutely check it out.
We’re going back to June 1980 for this one and it begins with 56-year-old coal miner Zigmund Adamski. He left his home in Tingley, West Yorkshire on the 6th June and never returned, a curious incident, and highly unlikely to those who knew him, that he would run away. And they were right to presume foul-play, as on the 9th of June his body was reported laying atop a ten-foot high pile of coal in Todmorden, twenty miles away from his house.
Enter: our protagonist. PC Alan Godfrey found Adamski still wearing the suit he’d left the house in, but was missing his shirt, wallet and watch. Not only that, but Adamski left his house with a lush full head of hair, only to be discovered with most of it ‘roughly’ chopped off. His beard hair length was also peculiar, what should have been days of growth only seemed to be a singular day’s worth of stubble. Mysterious burns were reported on his neck, head and shoulders.
The mysteries did not stop showing themselves, as the coroner on the case stated that some of the burns on Adamski had been made from a ‘strange ointment’ unidentifiable by those who tested it. Once the story of Adamski’s death hit the newspapers, theories on how he died ran wild. Some said he was murdered by the KGB, some stated he must’ve been struck by a ball of lightning.
owever, one theory gained popularity more than others... ALIENS! It must be noted that this was the era of aliens within cinema, Ridley Scott’s Alien was just released a year before in 1979 and we cannot pretend that this didn’t influence many of the UFO sightings reported in the 1980s. But it feels cheap reminding ourselves of this, as we mustn’t forget that these are real people experiencing this kind of phenomena, so let’s continue with an open mind!
The world moved on from Adamski, as is the nature of the world, and PC Alan Godfrey continued being a damn good police officer. One morning, at 5am no less, he was sent to deal with a call about some pesky escaped cattle. On the drive, Alan was abruptly halted in his tracks by, as he described, an unidentified flying object.
Alan described the object as a bright light in the sky, what looked to be a rotating, diamond-shaped vessel. It was twenty feet high and fourteen feet wide. Being a policeman, he decided to take a quick sketch of the object before calling it into the station... but nothing is ever that easy. The line was completely dead, he was alone. Alan explained later that he saw a brilliant white blinding flash and, as if in an instant, he was driving back in the opposite direction with no recollection of doing so.
Alan believes it was around twenty to twenty-five minutes he lost before coming back to in his car... and even stranger, he noticed his boot was sliced open and an itchy red mark had begun to spread on his foot. Despite receiving ridicule, Alan stuck to his story and reported it to his police department.
Only when put under hypnosis was Alan able to recall what occurred in those lost twenty-or-so minutes. He described ‘a strange room’ filled with little creatures that seemed to be examining him. Within the room was also a ‘tall, humanoid figure with a beard’. Unfortunately for Alan, his story had leaked and was being reported by every newspaper in the North...nay... in the world.
Already a strange story, it gets weirder. Alan, having become somewhat of a local celebrity due to the news leak, was called into his inspector’s office. A man in a dark suit, who was introduced as ‘the Man from the Ministry’ (whatever that means) held a file including Alan’s initial sketch of the vessel. In his other hand, was the Adamski case.
Alan was made to swear on the Official Secrets Act that he would speak no more of the aliens, or probe into Adamski’s mysterious murder... suspicious, no? After months of being followed, by a man Alan did not recognise, and ridicule from his fellow policemen and the public, he was transferred to Wakefield and an attempt was made to have him sectioned.
‘I wish I'd never seen the UFO, particularly because of the effects on my children,’ he explained, later in life; ’It's not easy having a policeman as a father but when he's a policeman who saw a UFO it's even worse.’
It is worth noting that sometime in the 1970s, I’m not sure if it hung around, there was a ‘modern home’ model touring Yorkshire... which looked entirely like a spaceship! Seriously, Google ‘Todmorden Futuro House’!
Unfortunately, there’s no satisfaction of any answers for all of these combined mysteries. Was the death of Adamski in any way related to the alien occurrences in Todmorden at the time? Who was the ‘Man from the Ministry’? Despite the lack of answers, life became hard work for Alan after these events, my heart truly goes out to him.
As a kid, hearing this story from many different locals (most of them friends and family of mine), it always remained one of the more interesting UFO encounters I’ve heard... but maybe I’m biased!
Sources
https://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-todmorden-ufo-mystery-a-close-encounter-in-west-yorkshire
https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/55258/1/yorkshire-town-unexplained-extraterrestrial-activity-ufo-todmorden-rik-moran
https://www.discoveryuk.com/mysteries/the-unsolved-death-of-zigmund-adamski-ufo-abduction-or-foul-play/
