It was a familiar tune, writes Ben Bentley. Like most people, Frank Jones had heard The Wedding March before – usually emanating from an organ on a happy day in church.
Never before from a UFO travelling 1,000ft overhead in the middle of darkened countryside at Prees Heath.
But reading a story in the Shropshire Star in which former RAF air traffic controller Alan Turner of Shrewsbury revealed a previously untold close encounter between himself and a series of UFOs back in 1971, Frank was transported back to the time in 1961 that he himself witnessed a UFO in North Shropshire.
Frank, at the time a builder, was on his way to deliver a quote to a client who had asked him to give an estimate on tiling his kitchen floor.
As usual, Frank set off on his bike near the old airfield at Prees Heath.
“I was cycling along on my old sit up and beg and suddenly my lights went as bright as search lamps,” he said at his home near Cross Houses. “I jumped off the bike to check everything was all right and was just about to go off again when everything around was lit up with a flickering blue light. I knew we had engineering works two miles down the road where they did all sorts, but I’ve never seen welders light up all the sky – it was reaching five miles in any direction.
“I heard this strange noise of an organ and it was the first notes of Here Comes The Bride.”
Not that this musical knowledge registered at the time. It was only later when he was visiting a church with his brother, an organ mender, that he heard the same sound again from a 16ft pipe – the 16ft diapason.
He continued with his description of what he saw that night on the heath: “I thought ‘Hell, what is this?’ I saw a thin strip of super-white light coming over Prees Heath Forest and as it came nearer it was elliptical and then overhead it was round and the underside appeared to be revolving.
“It was a wonderful sight. It was something out of this world.”
Frank, now 72, describes how the wind from above beat down the grass and bushes and how within a couple of minutes at most the saucer had disappeared as quickly at it arrived.
Later that evening he recounted the whole episode to friends, some of whom had seen a similar thing. He said he rang the local police who contacted officers near Shawbury, where the RAF base is and where numerous other unexplained UFO sightings have been reported.
He was told “nothing had gone up” that night.
Frank, a man who likes to log things thoroughly, made extensive notes of his sighting at 7.45pm on October 25,1961, which he has turned into a document, details of which read: “A huge flying object passed over the airfield – and the writer – and then vanished into thin air!’
At the time Frank told members of his family about what he’d seen. They naturally thought he was crazy. But he was determined.
“My life changed from that moment on,” he admits. “I became mathematically minded and worked as a quantity surveyor.”
Using standard surveying methods of measurement and using other people’s sightings from different locations across North Shropshire, he determined a number of calculations.
Namely that the altitude of the unidentified craft was 1,066 ft at 675mph.
Power dissipated as light was rated at 603kW, illuminating a ground area of almost 195 square miles.
He says he doesn’t care what people think – what he believes is that there are other life forms out there.
“My thoughts are that there’s got to be ‘people’ out there who are brighter than we are – and there have been for a long time,” he says.
“Technically they are way above us. To find us alone in the universe? I don’t think so. I’m not saying they are going to walk around like us but they are probably not little green men either.”
Frank says he has not seen anything like it since. He’s observed unexplained movements of light in the night sky but nothing so specific as what he says he witnessed that night on Prees Heath.
He adds: “There are a lot of strange things out there that defy physics. Some of them are way beyond any human understanding or physics, and I’ve ‘quarrelled’ with Einstein many times.”
He admits, however, that he is naturally suspicious about reports of UFO sightings by other people, but of course Shropshire has become a hotbed for just this.
Former RAF air traffic controller Alan Turner MBE witnessed something and was told by the powers that be to keep it under his hat. But in September he came out and for the first time told the Shropshire Star how he and a group of RAF men witnessed on their radar screens a sustained series of unidentified objects flying in airspace over Salisbury Plain.
Frank himself admits that he’s grappled with trying to understand what he saw.
But he says: “We are dabbling in a science that is beyond us at the moment – it could be that we are being taught by example rather than by interference.”
22 Comments
“I became mathematically minded and worked as a quantity surveyor.”
He got a new job out of it?????
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OK Frank You’ve had your 5 minutes of fame, now watch the door on your way out!
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Sounds a little bit close to the script of ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ to be believable.
Dee dee dee dum duuumm…
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I have never heard UFO’s playing the wedding march before!!!!
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hmmm
UFO and few notes played on an Organ? Did he have pie and mash for his tea?
Sounds like Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
He needs to contact Mr. Speilberg
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“My thoughts are that there’s got to be ‘people’ out there who are brighter than we are – and there have been for a long time,” he says.
Hmmm, I couldn’t have put it better myself.
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I wonder if Aliens suffer from the credit crunch?
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I’ve just read the silly comments sent in by others who have ridiculed Franks story. It’s little wonder that people who do experience a strange sighting tend to keep it to themselves for this very reason and may only tell family and friends.
I had always had an open mind about these sightings, until in the early 1990’s, myself and 2 other engineers (who can confirm my story) were leaving work at Perkins Engines at about 5.30pm, it must have been Winter time because it was dark, as we entered the car park area, we all looked up to see a huge lit-up object, unlike any we had ever seen before and it was silent, had lots of lights although not blinding, it seemed to be very close, maybe only a matter of yards away, it seemed to hover for a few seconds and then suddenly sped off at a tremendous speed.
We talked about it th next day, but seemed to have some difficulty in remembering it’s exact shape but we were convinced that it was “nothing from this planet”
There was reports in the Shropshire Star from other people the next day, and a lame excuse from RAF Shawbury about maybe a small plane at low level.
Let me say again, this was no aircraft as we know it and it was Silent. Remember we were 3 level headed technical engineers coming out of work, NOT THE PUB!
Dave
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My UFO was booming out ‘Some Girls Will’ by Racy
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If I ever witnessed a UFO I would request it plays “Flash” by Queen for me
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aha the star is short of news so let us bring the ufo stories out to play again.
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There is a single intelligent comment on this list and it’s from Dave Tipton.
how can people you be so blinded by years of education and cultural brainwashin.
I would invite you to check out the National Press Club Disclosure Project conference, done in 2001 for a starter. Maybe this will open up some closed minds.
Richard
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Yes all very interesting Richard and David (and I am sure you are intelligent and level headed just like every other UFO spotter I have ever met!)…
So, do I take it from this that you don’t have a request for our intergalactic jukebox?
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Bleh. The wedding march. I am sure it was aliens who knew it was a well known song, and tried to communicate by blasting it out.
If it was me, with all the relationship probs I have had, they’d have gotten a well placed middle finger for their trouble.
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I believe in Aliens existing somewhere, but don’t believe they fly around blasting loud music. Unless it’s some kind of Chav Alien.
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Stranger encounters than Frank Jones’have been reported during my 40 years of researching this topic.My biggest doubt is whether Frank/recorded the date/and/time correctly. I may be able to link this case with/others/if/for/instance/the time should have been 8:45pm BST./Can you/help/me/ with this?
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I am a UFO agnostic (a true sceptic), but generally I have more sympathy for the believers than the debunkers (the pseudo-sceptics) because the latter are always so cretinously obnoxious and concerned mainly with stroking their own egos in public. (BTW Seratonin, my IQ is 128, what’s yours?)
As for the apparently bizarre report of hearing music during this encounter, I wonder why Mr Jones would have invented this detail, surely being aware of the increased doubt that it would cast over the whole story. There could be any number of explanations for this aspect of his experience, including the possibility that it was subjectively induced in his brain, deliberately or accidentally, by the UFO or its electro-magnetic field. Remember also that the two Voyager probes carried with them recordings of earth music to communicate our culture to any alien spacefarers that might come across them. (But then I guess that to you, Seratonin, Dr Carl Sagan must have been beyond dumb to have even considered this could ever be a real possibility.)
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All requests send up to the mothership please and DJ Alien will play the hot tunes during my drivetime show poppickers
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salisbury plain must have had a flock of lesser spotted tittypoos flying south, they knew what sort of winter we were due.
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What a badly written article.
Nothing wrong with the story, he’s quite believable but the writing is terrible.
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Jamie I’m curious – why do you find it a “badly written article”?
Seems fine to me…
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Kate#
Most SS articals are poorly writen, no one seems to read them back before submitting. The usual problems are:
Bad grammer
repeating of paragraphs
spelling mistakes.
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