The Warminster UFO Mystery - “The Warminster Thing”
At the end of 1964, residents of the Wiltshire town of Warminster in the southwest of England started to witness strange happenings.
These reports were collected in a book published in 1967 by the journalist Arthur Shuttlewood called “The Warminster Mystery.” The unexplained phenomena, including noises and objects in the sky, continued until the end of 1977.
Up to the 1980s, the memories of those events were fresh in the minds of the people in and around the town, but over recent decades, these have faded. However, more recently, interest in the “Warminster Mystery” or the “Warminster Thing” has been reignited due to several books and YouTube videos. These books have included:
Alien Heat - The Warminster Mystery revisited by Steve Dewey and John Ries (2005)
Warminster - Cradle Of Contact by Kevin Goodman (2006)
History of a mystery - fifty years of the Warminster Thing by Steve Dewey and Kevin Goodman (2015)
Arthur Shuttlewood’s Forgotten Warminster X- Files by Chip Norton (2019)
UFO picture taken by Gordon Faulkner (enlarged)
Several sources confirm the numerous events relating to the Warminster Thing during the 1960s-1970s, suggesting something mysterious happened. As a result, the town has been called Britain’s UFO capital.
Whether these phenomena can be explained by mass hysteria, physical factors such as static electricity or cloud formation, top-secret military activity, exaggerated claims by a journalist trying to make extra money, or evidence of aliens remains unresolved.
Some believe the area's proximity to the prehistoric stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury is the reason for the strange activity. Others say it is because Warminster lies on the confluence of two so-called leylines, which link spots said to have mystical energy. Conspiracy theorists put them down to the proximity of Salisbury Plain, home of secret military projects similar to Area 51 in Nevada in the United States.
Warminster will always remain an enigma in the history of UFOs in the United Kingdom, and the role of Arthur Shuttlewood in reporting the various incidents is a hotly debated topic that continues to this day.
About Warminster in Wiltshire
Warminster is a historic market town and civil parish in south-west Wiltshire, England, on the western edge of Salisbury Plain. As of 2024, the town had a population of over 23,000, including the residents of Warminster Garrison, a British Army military garrison.
It is located near the Somerset border, and a minor river known as The Were flows through the town to join the River Wylye on the southeast outskirts.
The town's name has evolved. It was known as Worgemynstre in the early tenth century and was recorded as Guerminstre in the Domesday Book. The noun minster derives from Old English mynster, meaning monastery, nunnery, mother church, or cathedral, and was given to the town by Saxon settlers in the seventh century.
The main settlement at Warminster dates back to the Anglo-Saxon period. However, there is evidence of pre-historic settlements in the area, especially at the nearby Iron Age hill forts: Battlesbury Camp, Scratchbury Camp and Cley Hill. Two Roman villas were discovered in the area in 1786.
The town of Warminster began in Saxon times as a small settlement within the loop of the Were stream. By the 10th century, Warminster included a royal manor and an Anglo-Saxon minster, with the residents primarily associated with the estate. The Domesday Book (1086) records a population of 400. The royal manor was passed to new lords in the 12th century when the township grew. In the 13th century, a market was set up at Warminster, and by 1377, the town had 304 poll-tax payers, the tenth largest in Wiltshire.
Bread Street, Warminster
Warminster was granted a market back in 1204. Although the growth of the town was gradual, to begin with, the granting of approval to hold a market was key to the town's prosperity, with significant wool, clothing and malting trades established by the 16th century and continuing to be the economic backbone of the town until the 19th century.
The market also included a significant corn trade throughout the period. By the middle of the 17th century, it was considered the “greatest corn market by much in the West”. The success of the corn trade encouraged other trades, such as malting, cloth production, and iron founding. By 1830 Warminster had the second largest corn market in the west of England. Unlike many markets where farmers would take only samples to market, its corn market required a sack from each load of corn to be available to customers; each purchase was to be agreed upon between 11 am and 1 pm and paid for by the end of the day. Corn and cloth gave rise to much of the architecture in the town centre today.
Warminster has long been associated with military activity. The town was involved during the English Civil War between 1642 and 1645. A major for the "Roundheads", Henry Wansey, was besieged in Warminster, while a force under Edmund Ludlow entered a skirmish on Warminster Common when trying to relieve him. Several Warminster men enlisted for the Boer Wars in South Africa and later in the two world wars. Five years before the outbreak of the First World War, the 10th Wiltshire Volunteer Rifle Corps (Warminster) was absorbed into the Wiltshire Regiment.
The town centre was redesigned after 1807 when George Wansey, from a family of clothiers in Warminster, left £1,000 (around £90,000 now) to improve the town, provided his money could be matched by local fundraising. The donation was used to demolish houses to widen roads. In 1851, a railway line from Westbury was opened, and then in 1856 the line was continued to Salisbury.
The railway had a devastating effect on the town's market. The Corn Exchange, built in 1855, slowed down the decline for a few years, but by 1900, the great days of the corn market were over, the shops and inns lost most of their business, and the local industries declined.
Between 1937 and 1965, a significant military presence was created near the town, with the addition of camps, a permanent barracks at Battlesbury, married quarters, a School of Infantry, and workshops for vehicle repairs.
Warminster is home to the Land Warfare Center, and Salisbury Plain to the north is used for military training, including live firing. The Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force also use the area.
Who was Arthur Shuttlewood? - author of The Warminster Mystery (astounding UFO sightings)
Arthur Shuttlewood
Arthur Shuttlewood was a journalist for the local newspaper, the Warminster Journal. His articles focused on minor crimes, town meetings, and events. But all that changed in 1964-65.
Shuttlewood was born in Chelmsford, Essex, in 1920 and died in Warminster in 1996. He moved to Warminster in 1940 and worked as a reporter, first for the Wiltshire Times and then for the Warminster Journal, from the early 1950s. Before becoming a journalist, Shuttlewood was a member of the Grenadier Guards and the Air Ministry Constabulary and a councillor on Warminster Urban District Council.
When strange noises were reported and objects were seen in the skies near Warminster in the late 1960s, Shuttlewood collected a sizable file on these sightings. According to reports, it was not until September 1965, when he saw a UFO from his home, that he became a believer in the phenomenon.
Shuttlewood soon became the mouthpiece of the Warminster mystery and the route for many people to hear about the various strange events that people were reporting.
He published several books on the subject of Warminster and UFOs:
The Warminster Mystery (astounding UFO sightings) (1967)
UFOs: Key to the New Age (1971)
The Flying Saucerers (1976)
UFO Magic in Motion (1979)
More UFOs over Warminster (1979)
Shuttlewood actively participated in sky-watches and the local UFO scene until his death after he said he saw a UFO himself on September 28, 1965. Arthur died in Warminster in 1996.
Arthur Shuttlewood 1973: UFO SPOTTING in WARMINSTER, WILTSHIRE | Nationwide | Weird and Wonderful | BBC Archive
Other Warminster related UFO sources
Following Shuttlewood’s articles, a UFO expert called Ken Rogers began publishing The Warminster UFO newsletter in August 1971, which continued until 1973.
In late 1975 to early 1976, Peter and Jane Paget's Fountain Centre, located in Carlton Villa, Portway, opened in Warminster. With Jane's mother, Margaret Tedder-Shepperd, the Pagets renamed the Star House property to serve as a UFO research facility and provide bed and breakfast accommodation to visitors interested in potential extraterrestrial activity.
They also published The Fountain Journal, a bi-monthly magazine covering the UFO sightings in the area, which included Shuttlewood on the editorial team for the first few issues, but he later succumbed to ill health and had to terminate his involvement.
Then Margaret withdrew her support, leaving the Pagets to continue to run the center with limited funds and increasing financial pressures. Issue 11 of the Fountain Journal, from 1977, was the last published.
Another research group, UFO—Info, was also founded in the town. It was run and staffed by unpaid volunteers.
The Story of the Warminster Thing
Christmas Day 1964
At 1.25 am on Christmas Day morning, 1964, Mildred Head was woken by a strange noise. Her ceiling, she later told local journalist Arthur Shuttlewood, had “[come] alive with strange sounds lashing at [the] roof.” It sounded like twigs brushing against the tiles and got louder and louder until it reverberated like giant hailstones.
Her husband, who was deaf, had heard nothing and slept on. Thinking there had been a storm, Mildred got out of bed and went to the window. The night was dry and clear; she could see nothing unusual. However, she heard another noise, a humming sound that grew louder before fading to “a faint whisper—a low whistling or wheezing.”
Arthur Shuttlewood reported in his book The Warminster Mystery: "The air was brazenly filled with a menacing sound. Sudden vibrations came overhead, chilling in intensity. They tore the quiet atmosphere to raucous rags and descended upon her savagely. Shockwaves pounded at her head, neck and shoulders."
Later that morning, around 6 am, Marjorie Bye was walking to the Holy Communion Service at Christ Church in Warminster. She noticed a “crackling” sound coming from the nearby Bell Hill area of the town. At first, she thought it was a lorry spreading grit on the hill, but as the noise grew louder, it came over her head and passed on across Ludlow Close.
She said the noise sounded like branches being pulled over gravel. There was a faint hum, loud enough to be heard over someone talking. The sky was dark but starlit, and she could see nothing above her.
Then as she approached the church, she experienced a “sonic attack. She reported, “Sudden vibrations came overhead, chilling in intensity…Shockwaves pounded at her head, neck and shoulders.” She was pinned down by “invisible fingers of sound.”
Initially, Mrs Bye’s identity was not reported as she feared ridicule. The Warminster Journal Reported that explanations for the incident included static electricity caused by wet power lines, satellites, and even Father Christmas!
Around the same time, Roger Rump, Warminster’s head postmaster, heard similar noises to Mrs Bye. He reported hearing a terrific clatter, as though the roof tiles were being pulled off by some “tremendous force.“ Rump said, “Then came a scrambling sound as if they were being loudly slammed back into place . I could hear an odd humming tone. It was most unusual ..lasted no more than a minute.”
Shuttlewood also reported in the Warminster Journal that thirty soldiers at Knook Camp, around four miles from Warminster, were woken by a loud noise described as being like a chimney stack being ripped from a roof and scattered about. The guards were alerted, but nothing was found, and the soldiers said the noises were not the same as those of an aircraft.
Later, other "sonic attacks" occurred around the same time in different locations around the town were reported.
The publication of Mildred Head’s story encouraged more than 30 local people from in and around Warminster to write to Arthur, many claiming to have also heard similar strange sounds. The events were named "The Thing" by the locals as, at the time, the concept of UFOs or “flying saucers” was not widely known.
1965 events
In March 1965 the Brown family reported that their roof had quivered under an onrush of sounds and their cat had vomited. Others in the area reported that livestock and their pets had been nervous or actually been injured.
David C Holton told Shuttleworth of a flock of birds being killed inexplicably in flight in February 1965 at Five Ash Lane.
On Thursday, March 25, 1965, Ted and Gwen Davies were eating breakfast in Crockeryon, a village two miles south of Warminster. They heard a noise like the flapping of birds' wings and a crackling noise near their chimney. Then they heard a metallic grinding noise, causing their roof rafters to shake and windows to rattle with what sounded like gale-force winds. They went outside, but there were no birds, and the air was still.
On the evening of March 28, 1955, Eric Payne was walking to Warminster after he dropped off his girlfriend in Sutton Veny, 3 miles southeast of Warminster. Near Bishopstrow, 1.5 miles from the centre of Warminster, he heard a whistling noise that turned into a buzzing. Eric described it as “a gigantic tin can with huge nuts and bolts inside it, rattling overhead.”
In spring 1965, Mr and Mrs Marson were to experience a similar noise three times, twice on one particular night. Mrs Marson said, “It was a great bouncing and bumping noise over our heads. As though a load of stones was being tipped against the roof and the back wall of the bungalow.” Mr Marson described it as “it seemed like a tonne of coal were being emptied from sacks and sent tumbling over all the place.” Furthermore, they said, “It all began with an electric crackling” and heard high-pitched droning sounds. They went outside the house and saw and found nothing. On June 1, 1955, Mrs Marson reported similar sounds and a light of brilliant white intensity so strong that it turned night to day.
Patricia Philips, wife of the vicar of Heytesbury, reported seeing a cigar-shaped object in the sky visible and stationary for 25 minutes. It then seemed to grow shorter, as if turning, and then it vanished. Her 12-year-old son, watching through binoculars, managed to draw the object. Patricia’s husband, their three children and a visitor also saw the strange cigar-shaped object. Once Shuttlewood had published their story, others came forward with similar sightings, including seventeen people fishing or swimming at Shearwater Lake on Longleat estate near Warminster.
On June 19, Kathleen Penton reported a “shining thing going along sideways in the sky. Porthole-type windows ran the entire length of it. It glided slowly in front of the downs…it was the size of a whole bedroom wall. It was very much like a train carriage, only with rounded ends to it. It did not travel lengthways but was gliding sideways.”
On August 17, a large explosion was heard on the Boreham Field housing estate. A series of jolts and explosions resulted in an orange flame in the sky shaped like an electric bulb. Windows in two houses were broken. The nearby military bases denied knowledge.
By the end of August 1965, Arthur Shuttlewood had filled eight notebooks with details on the phenomena around Warminster.
The Bristol Evening Post reported another sighting of the Warminster Thing at Lulsgate Bottom on September 14, 1965.
It allegedly emitted an “unearthly blue light” and a “shrill whine” as it passed overhead, pausing briefly over Bristol Airport's boundary.
Kenneth Kimberley, a 32-year-old insurance consultant, spotted the object while driving home in his Bentley at midnight, “Suddenly ahead of me, I saw a patch of odd greenish-blue light across the road. I suppose it was about 50 yards wide.”
He carried on, thinking what he saw was a patch of mist on the road. But as he entered the area of light, his engine cut abruptly, and his lights went out, “I immediately braked, and the car stopped. Then I heard the sound. It was a shrill, high-pitched noise, like a jet engine. It seemed somehow close, yet distant at the same time.”
As Kimberley sat there, his car began to vibrate. He jumped out, thinking an earthquake was happening, and as he did so, the light disappeared.
Getting back in the car, Kimberley tried the engine. It started, and he drove towards home. On reaching a phone box, he dialled 999 and asked for the police.
Arthur Shuttlewood’s sighting of a cigar-shaped object and alien phone calls
At 3.42 pm on September 28, 1965, Shuttlewood was in his home and going up the stairs to collect some notes. He saw a huge cigar shape in the sky over Colloway Clump to the Northwest at one of the windows. He went to grab a cine camera to film the object, but at that point, the camera began to jump about in his hands, making it difficult to focus. He felt sharp pricking needles down his right side, including his hand, wrist and face. This feeling and the malfunctioning of the camera convinced Shuttlewood that whoever was controlling the cigar-shaped object was aware he was trying to film it and was deliberately using a concentrated force field to affect the camera. Nothing developed from 25 feet of film; eight feet had burnt right through.
Then a more bizarre series of events occurred. Shuttlewood’s book, The Warminster Mystery, describes a series of strange phone calls with aliens from the planet called Aenstria. The calls were made to a phone box in Boreham Fields, very close to the army barracks and the area where the mysterious explosion had occurred in August. Why advanced aliens would be contacting him using a phone box is unclear.
He believed these calls to be hoaxes, but some of Arthur’s friends persuaded him to include these contacts in an appendix of the book. The Aenstrians told Arthur that humanity should return to simpler, more spiritual, ways and be careful about atomic power and pollution.
Gordon Faulkner's Warminster UFO photo
UFO picture taken by Gordon Faulkner
The most iconic image of Warminster's UFO activity is a photograph taken by 23-year-old Gordon Faulkner in 1965. It shows what appears to be a “flying saucer” or UFO (Unidentified Flying Object).
On August 29, 1965, Gordon was on his way to his mother’s home in Warminster and took his 35mm camera with him as his sister wanted to borrow it. In a subsequent account, Faulkner stated that he was retrieving the camera from his mother’s after his sister had used it. He said he had the film developed and printed at a photographer in Warminster, opposite the Methodist Church.
He became aware of an unusually shaped object in the sky flying low and fast over the south of the town, making no sound. He quickly grabbed the camera, but as the object was traveling so fast, it was virtually impossible to get it in his viewfinder. So he focused some way ahead and pressed the shutter release, believing it was unlikely he had photographed it. He was amazed that upon development, the saucer-shaped object was on the print.
Faulkner sent the picture to Arthur Shuttlewood at the Warminster Journal and told the reporter to "do as he seemed fit with it”. It appeared in the newspaper on Friday, September 10, 1965 in the “Letters to the Editor” column.
Gordon Faulkner
Shuttlewood had sent it to the Daily Mirror, and it was published the same day as in the Journal. The picture has been reproduced countless times using a heavy zoom, showing a disc-shaped object with a dome with little detail visible due to the poor quality and grain of the image.
The Daily Mirror’s science and aeronautical editors were skeptical and weren’t sure if it was faked, but Faulkner’s picture is one of the few daytime pictures taken of the Thing.
Within weeks, thousands of people began to travel to Warminster to see the strange phenomenon for themselves. Newspapers as far away as the United States reported on the events.
The unusual events began to receive national attention. Over the August Bank holiday of 1965, an estimated 8000 people arrived in Warminster.
On April Fool’s Day, April 1, 1966, the BBC South and West broadcast a 30-minute documentary covering the events in Warminster. It concluded that the strange reports in the area were most likely related to secret military technology being tested near Salisbury Plain. Whether the documentary was intended as an April Fool’s joke is unclear but the reporter involved in the film seemed genuinely intrigued following interviews with the town’s residents.
However, by the early 1970s, sightings of the Warminster Thing and the number of visitors to the town began to decline.
The Warminster Thing – An Eyewitness Account published in Weird Wiltshire 2023
Did me and my friend see the Warminster Thing in 1977 at Cley Hill? Some friends of mine were having a conversation about UFOs in 1977, and we decided to visit Cley Hill one night for a vigil. We arrived around 11 pm but I can’t remember what the date was.
We managed to climb to the top in virtual darkness. It was a clear night and from the top we could see for miles and saw all the lights from nearby villages and towns, saw helicopter activity from nearby army bases and watched satellites for an hour or so. Other than that, there was nothing out of the ordinary flying or moving about.
We bought a tent so we decided to scale back down the hill and find somewhere to pitch the tent. Heading back to the car we drove around some local lanes but it’s hard to find somewhere when you are in the country in darkness with no streetlights. I found a gated field entrance which I pulled up to and my friends got out the tent and stuff from the boot, including a couple of torches. I admit I was starting to feel a bit vulnerable being in the middle of nowhere near the bottom of Cley Hill in UFO country.
I stayed near the car while my friends tried to stake out the tent in the field. They were saying the ground was too stoney and hard as I noticed a light coming towards us up the lane, like a swinging latern. There was a house 300 yards or so away so I wondered if it was someone from there. I was trying to figure out what it was when the light disappeared from view going down and leaving a light showing then popping up again at a low level a little closer to her. I shouted to my mates to look, ‘what is it?’ We watched and saw a very bright ‘arc-light’ perfectly formed and round like an orange corona around its circumference. It was now a lot bigger than a lantern size.
It approached us steadily before bouncing up and down, disappearing as it dipped and reappearing again. This must have been sometime well after midnight. I was getting pretty scared but one of my braver mates tried to attract this light thing with his torch. It was already coming towards us, growing larger in size by the second, and noiseless I may add. I remember saying something to my friends like ‘If you want to stay here, you stay. But I am getting out of here.’
With that we picked up our gear, threw it in the back of the car and jumped in. We wheel span out of the gated field like a bat out of hell and sped away from the area and whatever that ‘thing’ was. It was definitely coming our way and we did not want to wait around and find out more.
After a short while we pulled over to compose ourselves, found a track between farm fields and decided to stake out the tent there and brew a cuppa. Surprisingly we did manage to sleep for a couple of hours until the sun came up. It was in the daylight we decided to head back to the field entrance where we witnessed the ‘thing’. In the light of day and using the landscape, we managed to figure out the light was around the size of a house and the reason it appeared to bounce as it moved was because it was following the contours of the land, fields and trees very tightly, disappearing behind copses of trees and popping up over them again.
I know this was not a helicopter. I am an amateur aviation photographer so I am familiar with all types of aircraft and their lights. Plus, it was silent! No noise whatsoever and no flashing lights, just a huge extremely light, pure white and orange-tinged object.
We went back up the top of Cley Hill and could see the field where we had witnessed the ‘thing’. It allowed us to figure out how the light had been disappearing and reappearing as we could see the tree boundaries around the fields. We could also see it would have been quite some distance away at first before moving towards us.
I ask myself if I would have like to see something similar again and I will admit I am a bit of a wuss in the dark. The whole experience terrified all of us. However, I have lived back in Wiltshire for the last eight years and I do still look up in the sky and check, just in case I catch another glimpse of the Warminster Thing!’
I wrote an account of the Warminster Thing, which appeared in Haunted Magazine back in the summer. After a deep dive into the subject, I do feel that although there would have been mistaken identifications within the 1000s of accounts reported and some admissions of fakery and trying to set people up, there was definitely something very strange going on around Warminster back then. Were they visitors from outer space? Maybe! I guess we will never truly know!
The Warminster Thing Mural
In 2015, the Warminster Information Centre organised a mural by a "secret" artist. The mural was painted on the old police station wall and depicted the events relating to the Thing and the 50th anniversary of the events. It is still visible at the Warminster Community Hub, in the Central Car Park, Off Station Rd, Warminster BA12 9TB.
Was the Warminster Thing a fake?
Some believe that Arthur Shuttlewood became so immersed in the Warminster Thing that he lost all sense of balance and became prone to hyperbole.
While Shuttlewood might be remembered fondly and respected at the Journal, a few colleagues at the Wiltshire Times recounted that he would sometimes embellish his reports of local events for dramatic effect.
While alive, he was adamant that he was a sceptic, “I am not easily fooled. I dare not be. I have built my reputation as a journalist on the bedrock of integrity”.
However, by the time he wrote “The Warminster Mystery” in 1967, he was of the opinion that the Things spotted around the town were alien spacecraft.
Since his job as a journalist at the Warminster Journal gave him access to most of the witnesses to the strange sounds and sights in 1964/1965, he became the primary source of information and, in many early cases, the sole source.
When UFO investigators or reporters from newspapers came to Warminster, they were normally directed towards Arthur Shuttlewood for comment and information. Everybody who met Shuttlewood believed he was charming, charismatic, and sincere. Certainly, there were no doubts about his reliability. The BBC’s Nationwide special “UFO SPOTTING in WARMINSTER” from 1973 shows this side of his persona.
His later books, featuring accounts of conversations with aliens called Aenstrians, certainly stretch credibility. Although he initially dismissed these interactions as a hoax, by the late 1960s, on various speaking tours, he appeared to have changed his mind that these were genuine alien encounters advising humanity. Shuttlewood even claimed that the arrival of Jesus Christ two thousand years earlier was because the Aenstrians had sent him to change the ways of mankind, but the warnings had been ignored.
Skeptics suspected Shuttlewood of embellishing some of his articles. The Merseyside UFO Research Group (MUFORG), particularly, was suspicious of Warminster's regular UFO reports.
MUFORG created Magonia in 1966 as a regular bulletin. A retired librarian, John Rimmer became its editor in 1973, ending on the magazine’s ninety-ninth issue in 2008. It had the strapline “Interpreting vision and belief.”
Rimmer thought it unlikely that Shuttlewood deliberately created the Thing, nor did he personally accuse him of exaggerating stories to increase sales of his books or gain income from articles in national newspapers.
John Rimmer
However, the consensus is probably that Shuttlewood did “spice up” certain parts of his books to increase interest, sales, and, thus, his personal income. In The Warminster Mystery, he revisited many of the stories first reported in the Warminster Journal, using a more dramatic spin to make them more appealing to those interested in UFOs. This does not mean he was faking the various reports, just making them more exciting for readers, as endless reports of cigar-shaped objects and strange sounds are insufficient for several books. In his later publications, Shuttlewood focused on the origins of these spacecraft and alien life more so than the actual descriptions of UFO encounters.
Further reading
History of a Mystery: Fifty Years of the Warminster Thing by Steve Dewey and Kevin Goodman | 17 Feb 2015
Haunted Skies by John Hanson
The Warminster Triangle by Ken Rogers
UFO Warminster: Cradle of Contact [2nd edition] Paperback – 21 Feb. 2007 by Kevin Goodman, Steve Dewey and Paul Vought
Alien Heat - The Warminster Mystery revisited by Steve Dewey and John Ries (2005)
Warminster - Cradle Of Contact by Kevin Goodman (2006)
Arthur Shuttlewood’s Forgotten Warminster X- Files by Chip Norton (2019)
Further viewing
1973: UFO SPOTTING in WARMINSTER, WILTSHIRE | Nationwide | Weird and Wonderful | BBC Archive
The Paranormal Scholar: The Warminster Thing: A UFO Mystery That Continues To This Day | Documentary
Sources
Thanks to Kevin Goodman and Steve Dewey for an excellent 152-page overview in History of a Mystery: Fifty Years of the Warminster Thing (well worth purchasing from Amazon for £4.99 ($6.27)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warminster
https://warminster-tc.gov.uk/activities/warminster-history/
http://www.ufo-warminster.co.uk/information/shuttlewood_bio.htm
https://weird-wiltshire.co.uk/2023/12/03/the-warminster-thing-an-eyewitness-account/
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/638338/warminster-thing-ufo
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/low/people_and_places/history/newsid_8694000/8694729.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8694000/8694729.stm
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-32972518
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4558858/UFO-spotted-Warminster-spark-rumours-extra-terrestrial.html
https://www.wiltshirelive.co.uk/news/wiltshire-news/wiltshires-most-notorious-ufo-sightings-6723205
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/a-flight-of-pelicans-john-rimmer/