UFOs Over Russia

This article appeared in the British & Irish Skeptic, Vol. 4, No. 2, March/April 1990, pp.7-9. The illustrations which accompanied the article have no credits so I do not know their origin, but they are amusing so I have reproduced them here.



UFOs Over Russia

Are alien visitors taking advantage of glasnost?

There have been numerous reports recently concerning sightings of UFOs in the Soviet Union. The most dramatic have involved aliens perambulating in parks, or even dumping (presumably) unwanted debris from their craft. The bulk of these articles have originated from the official news agency, TASS, which one usually associates with announcements of industrial achievements, or synopses of leadership speeches. As well as fulfilling this prosaic function, it has become a kind of Russian Guardian, chronicling the adventures of aliens, psychic healers and abominable snowmen. This article will examine the Russian UFO stories which have been circulating in recent months.

On 23 June of last year, TASS reported that, according to local newspapers, schoolchildren in the Central European region of Vologda had sighted UFOs on several evenings. On 6 June some children were outside the village of Konantsevo when they saw ‘a fast increasing luminous dot in the sky, which soon turned into a shining sphere.’ The object landed in a meadow and rolled to a nearby river, the children standing no more than half a kilometre away. The sphere split and there appeared ‘something resembling a headless person in dark garb’, its ‘hands’ hanging lower than its ‘knees.’ The craft melted into the air, and the creature headed off to the village. We are not told what became of it. Later, three more spheres touched down in the same meadow, two inhabited. These, like the first sphere, quickly became invisible.

On 11 June, a fiery ball had been seen by one individual above Vologda which ‘showed’ over the city for seventeen minutes but did not attempt to land. Another UFO was spotted by a school pupil the following night. The same TASS report mentions an incident which occurred on 24 April. ‘An enigmatic object allegedly thrice as large as an aircraft flew over the city of Cherepovetsk’, according to a local inhabitant, coasting noiselessly at an altitude of 300 metres, and leaving a ‘large radiant trail.’ It carried blinking red lights.

A remarkable TASS story appeared on 9 July. It referred to an incident the year before when a UFO dumped about 60 kilos of detritus (‘gauzes, balls and glassy pieces’) on a hill near Dalnegorsk in the Soviet Far East. This debris had unusual properties supposedly beyond the capabilities of science on Earth. For example, a gauze heated to 900 degrees centigrade in the open air disappeared, whereas a piece refused to melt in a vacuum even at 2,800 degrees. The material would not conduct electricity when cool, but would when heated. There were other marvels, vaguely reminiscent of the science fiction novel Roadside Picnic, but the UFO proponents did not have it all their own way. There was a dissenting school which claimed that the material was the result of a ‘plasmoid—a plasma product naturally produced by geophysical fields in response to agitation caused by technical experiments or solar-terrestrial physical factors.’ One would have thought that such an important event would have been reported more widely, but there seems to have been no follow up. The story was picked up from the newspaper Socialist Industry. This paper has been one of the main feeds for the TASS UFO stories, which would appear to be an unlikely role for an official organ of the Communist Party’s central committee, mainly covering the Soviet economy.

Socialist Industry is, however, not the only source for TASS’s UFO watch. On 2 August, Trud reported a mysterious burnt spot eight metres in diameter, despite being oval, which had mysteriously appeared on a lawn near Moscow at the end of July. Theories proposed by A. Kuzovkin, chairman of the ‘Ecology of Unknown’ seminar of the Vokrug Sveta magazine, ranged from a UFO landing spot to the site of a lightning strike, although the latter possibility was felt to be shaky due to the fact that the interior of the spot was still green. How this characteristic was consonant with a UFO landing was not made clear. Further happenings were suggestive. A man who took soil samples felt his finger tips burning, and they turned red for several hours. Another fell ill on returning home, and rundown batteries placed on the spot somehow recharged themselves. However, Kuzovkin stressed that although the site could be characterised as that of a UFO landing, ‘that UFO was not a spacecraft with aliens, as many think, but a power plasmoid...’

The following day, TASS quoted Trud’s more mundane suggestion, taken from an interview with the local fire chief, as to how the spot had appeared. Out went power plasmoids, in came a burning haystack, set fire to as a prank (the middle of the spot was unscorched because the fire had been burning from the perimeter and had not had time to reach the inside). The Vologda and Moscow incidents were reported in the Financial Times on 5 August, although the possible solution to the latter was not mentioned.

TASS put out another item on 7 August reiterating the view that the spot was caused by normal means, but using it as a peg on which to hang the views of Vladimir Surdin of Moscow’s Astronautics Institute. He pointed out a few of the human made and natural objects with which UFOs can be confused, and went on to argue that although there might be alien life forms somewhere in the universe, it is odd that no proper contact has been made. ‘It is evident that such a hide and-seek game is meaningless and does not accord with the wisdom of a civilisation, which must be at a higher level of development than our own.’

These reports have been picked up by the US press with great enthusiasm. On 10 August Associated Press carried an article which included a note, gleaned from Socialist Industry, on the experience of a milkmaid in Perm who had been confronted with an alien at 4.30 am. She saw what appeared to be a dark figure riding a motorcycle. When she looked more closely, she realised that there was no bike, instead ‘something resembling a man, but taller than average with short legs.’ It did not possess a proper head, but rather sported a small knob. It became fluorescent and disappeared. A beekeeper saw a pair of fluorescent objects shaped like eggs and as big as aircraft, which hovered at a height of 200-300metres. In mid-July more aliens with no heads were seen by unnamed witnesses.

After a three week gap, TASS carried a short item on 1September concerning a sighting which occurred over the Mangyshlak peninsula in the Caspian Sea. Again Socialist Industry was the source. The report stated that residents had seen a UFO shaped like a cigar but several times bigger than a passenger aircraft, which flew silently over the city until it vanished in clouds above the sea. This one too had tail lights, and these remained in view for a considerable period.

TASS does not have a monopoly in promulgating these stories. On 25 September the British newspaper Today quoted an article from the Soviet Military Review which put forward the view that the US Strategic Defence Initiative should be scrapped because of the possibility of shooting down a UFO by accident: ‘...lack of information on the characteristics and influence of UFOs increases the threat of incorrect identification’, it said. The only way that the danger, with the attendant risk of an alien backlash, could be averted, would be increased international cooperation. An unnamed US Embassy official was asked to respond: ‘It is a novel argument. I am sure the White House will take it onboard in future negotiations.’


But the most famous Soviet UFO incident has to be that which allegedly occurred at Voronezh, 300 miles southeast of Moscow, in October. It received widespread coverage in the western media and highlighted the seeming obsession that the Russians entertain for alien encounters. The story broke in TASS on 9 October, when it announced that a landing in a Voronezh park had been confirmed by scientists. At least three visits had been made, according to eyewitnesses. On one occasion ‘a large shining ball or disk was seen hovering above the park, it then landed, a hatch opened and1,2, or 3 creatures similar to humans and a small robot came out.’ It was claimed that the aliens were three or four metres tall, but with very small heads, as in the Perm encounters. They strolled about near the craft and then went back inside. The experience caused those watching to be filled with fear lasting for some days.

Genrikh Silanov, head of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, was quoted as saying that he had identified the landing site by means of biolocation, discovering a circle twenty metres in diameter, plus two mysterious pieces of rock. These did look like sandstone, but upon analysis it was discovered that they could not have originated on earth, although Silanov did concede that further analysis was needed. Biolocation was also used to track the route taken by the aliens, and it was found that the scientists’ and onlookers’ descriptions coincided. The report ends by saying that there had also been sightings of ‘a banana- shaped object in the sky and a characteristic illuminated sign, as described in the US Saga magazine. It is unlikely that residents of Voronezh could have read the magazine.’ Alas we are given no more information about either the object or the sign, but numerous journalists misread this throwaway ending, and assumed that the aliens who landed did so in a flying banana.

The Associated Press weighed in with a crib of the TASS item on the same day, throwing in references to the Perm milkmaid and Moscow haystack for good measure. Not to be outdone, TASS issued another release on 10 October saying that the reports had been confirmed in the current issue of Soviet Culture. More details, including names of several children who witnessed the events, were given. The aliens had landed on 27 September in a park crowded with people, with several dozen people waiting at a bus stop nearby. At 6.30 ‘they saw a pink shining (sic) in the sky and then spotted a ball of a deep-red colour about ten metres in diameter.’ This ball circled the park, disappeared, reappeared and then hovered. A crowd which rushed across to it saw a hatch open in the lower half of the craft, with a humanoid standing in it. The figure was about three metres high, had three eyes, and was wearing a silver suit with a disc on its chest and bronze boots. The alien seemed to look the place over, the hatch closed and the sphere descended. After it had landed, the hatch reopened and two creatures, one of which seemed to be a robot, came out.

The first one spoke, at which point a triangle, about 30 by 50 centimetres, appeared on the ground. It suddenly disappeared. The alien touched the ‘robot’ and this began moving in a mechanical fashion. One boy screamed but was quelled by a look from the alien, which paralysed him. The alien’s eyes were shining, and the crowd screamed. After a while, both the ball and the creatures disappeared, but we are not told in what manner. In about five minutes, though, they were back, the alien carrying what looked like a gun, a tube about 50cm long, by its side. This was directed at a sixteen year old boy, presumably the one who had been paralysed, and he vanished. The alien went inside the ball, it ascended, and the boy reappeared at the same time.

Later, militia officers and reporters interviewed the witnesses, and found their stories to be consistent. Residents of Putilin Street also took the opportunity to mention the fact that they had seen UFOs between 23 and 29 September, presumably the other two contacts mentioned the previous day. The children at the park were still afraid, the report continued, and the affair was to be investigated by scientists, physicists and biologists. The same day the story circulated widely in the world’s press. The Washington Post used the TASS material, but fleshed out with an interview with a Moscow scientist. After mentioning that the aliens had arrived in a ‘banana-shaped object’, the paper mentioned that the Communist Party’s youth newspaper had published two photographs on its back page, one of a ‘derby-like object’ and the other ‘a bizarre ovoid flying over the flats of the Far East.’ The scientist stated that hitherto the study of UFOs had been seen as an occupation of bourgeois scientists, but recently it had achieved much more popularity, with an increase in the number of sightings. Silanov’s observations were quoted, and the Post journalist added drily, ‘Silanov could not be reached for any further incomprehensible comment.’ An Associated Press release the same day quoted a TASS duty officer as saying ‘it is not April Fool’s today.’ It transpired, though, that Soviet Culture had been the only major national daily in the Soviet Union to publish the story that day.

The Guardian recounted the TASS story but added information on another incident gleaned from Anatoly Listratov of the department studying anomalous phenomena at the All-Union Geodesical Society. He reported a sighting of a UFO by two pilots. One had been blinded, the other later died of cancer. Listratov added that officers engaged on space and missile work had reported a number of sightings. The following day, 11 October, Today provided a profile of The Aetherius Society which mentioned the Voronezh episode, although devoting more space to a South African encounter in which a UFO had been shot down and its two occupants captured alive. Yes, we were being invaded, according to the Aetherius Society, but the aliens were friendly. This was known because the Aetherians’ founder president Sir George King was receiving messages from them by telepathy. Spokesperson Chrissie Aubry called on Britain’s Ministry of Defence to open its UFO files. ‘TASS never jokes and if they take it seriously so should the authorities here,’ she said.

Also on 11 October, Associated Press reported how a drawing by a child who had witnessed the events at Voronezh had been seen by millions on television. The drawing took the form of a ‘glowing two-legged sphere with a smiling stick figure inside.’ Film of the landing site was also broadcast. An eyewitness gave further details of the main alien. It merely had a hump, not a head and shoulders. This it could not turn, but could only swivel its middle eye. It also had two holes rather than a proper nose. An aviation engineer from the area said that he and his colleagues had found intense magnetic activity at the landing site. A list of items detracting from the credibility of the story was also presented in the TV programme. No adult witnesses had appeared, although an apartment block overlooked the park; the story spread only after an article appeared in a local newspaper a week after the event was supposed to have occurred (uncharacteristically TASS had not quoted a source in its 9 October release); and Silanov’s rocks turned out to be terrestrial after all. The TV reporter concluded that more research was needed, distinguishing between experts and ‘Voronezh enthusiasts’. TASS hit back with a release the same day on the US reaction to Voronezh, listing the TV shows which had mentioned it. One critic had been dismissive, saying that glasnost had gone too far, and asking what the Academy of Science thought of it all. Others admitted that the TASS involvement had given the story credibility. There were also questions about biolocation. A NASA representative said that they did not have enough information with which to form an opinion, but pointed out that the Russians had not been in touch with them to discuss the case. The conclusion seemed to be that the story was not taken particularly seriously. It was a very candid release, not at all defensive, considering how much prestige TASS had invested in the story.

The Washington Post the same day rehearsed the main events, and after the banana joke, wondered what had happened to all the people who were supposed to have been waiting for a bus when the UFO landed. It also quoted the Yugoslav news agency Tanjung, which appeared as po-faced as TASS was supposed to be: ‘If the Soviet press and TASS news agency are to be trusted, aliens have carried out a real invasion in the Soviet Union over the past few days.’ In view of this, it wondered, where was a reaction from the Defence Ministry? After this the story seemed to slip from sight.

So from apparently sketchy articles in local newspapers, these alien stories spread until they reached international prominence, and just as suddenly disappeared. Commentators outside explained the UFO fever in the Soviet Union variously as the effects of glasnost or a deep need in the Russian psyche for mystery. Whatever the reason, it is true that Russian UFOs are part of a much livelier paranormal movement than exists in the West. Despite being the homeland of dialectical materialism, these phenomena have always been taken seriously. The difference is that now we can hear about it more easily. The episode still leaves one wondering about TASS, though. During the Voronezh incident especially, people seemed inclined to give the agency the benefit of the doubt, simply because it was TASS. Later, however, an Associated Press article carried a quotation which casts this view into question. Complaining that he had been misquoted, Silanov said: ‘Don’t believe all you hear from TASS’.


Tom Ruffles is a commercial analyst, but finds parapsychology rather more interesting.

Romancing the Stone

This was my first article in The British and Irish Skeptic (shortly to change its name to The Skeptic), edited by Steve Donnelly and Toby Howard. It appeared in Vol. 4, No 1, January/February 1990, pp.16-17. The title was mine, a nod to the 1984 film. The illustration is the one the editors chose to accompany the article.

Romancing the Stone

The lure of alchemy continues...

You might be forgiven for thinking that alchemy had been consigned to the dustbin of history. If the Times Higher Education Supplement [1] is to be believed, it is currently undergoing a resurgence of interest, albeit for its role in the growth of modern-day chemistry rather than any intrinsic merits in its methodology. At the recent annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement’s of Science, its History of Science section held a session on gunpowder. It emerged that alchemy has a respectable pedigree.

There are two variants, stemming from Egypt and China. The former propounded the familiar Aristotelian notion of the elements of earth, air, fire and water, and the possibility of combining them in such a way as to produce gold. The latter, together with Greek ideas, formed a synthesis which was imported into Europe by Arab migrants and gave rise to such words as alkali, alcohol and naphtha. Ironically the Chinese interest in gunpowder originated in alchemical research into immortality. Richard Gregory of Bristol University is quoted as saying that Newton ‘probably spent more time on his alchemical and biblical studies than on his laws of motion, gravity, optics and colour, and mathematics’, although whether he is being admiring or quizzical is not made clear.

The answer may be given in another reference to Professor Gregory, printed in the Daily Telegraph, in an article which also concerns the British Association [2]. It states that CSICOP speakers at the annual meeting would be demonstrating how ‘stories about spoon-benders, ghosts, UFOs and communication with the dead can be exposed. In this context, Professor Richard Gregory, of Bristol University, will describe how, in the light of 17th century science, people stopped believing in alchemy and witchcraft. Superstition faded, and the modern scientific method was born.’ Alas Gregory’s pronouncement seems to be a non sequitur, else CSICOP would not feel compelled to expose cases which flagrantly have not been subjected to current scientific methods.

It does seem that there is a belief in certain religious quarters that alchemical processes can occur, though in this context it can hardly be said that these are precursors to modern science. Two recent news items give details of supposed miraculous transformations in Texas [3], California and Medjugorje in Yugoslavia [4]. The Californians had been on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje, where miracles linked to sightings of the Virgin Mary had allegedly occurred. The description of the Texas incident does only state that ‘dozens reported that the silver beads on their rosaries turned to a gold colour’. The participants in the Californian and Yugoslav events appear to have been more specific, and asserted that the metal had changed from silver to gold (or copper). Happily for the owners, who might have had their faith tested by the power of Mammon, a jeweller who examined one such rosary said that the colour change was due to tarnishing.

Perhaps here the matter would rest, except for an odd story which appeared in the Guardian earlier this year [5], concerning a bizarre little organism called Thiobacillus ferro-oxidans. It would seem that it lives, by some unspecified means, on inorganic matter, and can liberate precious metals (including gold) as a by-product of eating spoil heaps containing such small quantities of the desired materials that it would not be economically viable to recover them mechanically. This may not be exactly what ancient alchemists had in mind, but I am sure that it can be seen as the transmutation of something worthless into something valuable. It so happens that the philosopher’s stone turns out to be organic.

There has to be a catch, and not just the possibility that the main beneficiary would be South Africa, the largest gold supplier and therefore the possessor of the biggest spoil heaps. It transpires that T. Ferrooxidans has a very low tolerance of temperature variations, making industrial applications too expensive and complicated. The article largely concerns the efforts of a team at King’s College London to improve the organism so that it will flourish in a much wider temperature range. Unfortunately, it claims, commercial exploitation of the new version had been slow due possibly to an unconscious aversion to the prospect of using organisms in an industrial process(presumably brewing does not count?).

By definition, of course, this loose usage of the term ‘transmutation of elements’ is about the closest one can come to the alteration of one element into another by chemical means. An element is denned as a substance which cannot be changed into or from simpler forms, except by a change in its atomic nucleus. In theory it would be possible to produce gold from cheaper elements, but the energy required to do so would be so expensive that the technique would not be viable whilst substantial stocks could be dug out of the ground.

However, I came across a reference to an alleged Russian process [6] which claimed to be able to turn lead into gold in an atom smasher at a very cheap rate (about $600 per oz) as opposed to previous processes which produced gold at a cost of between $3,000and $3 million per oz, a considerable reduction and one which would have significant consequences for the world market. However, this item appeared in 1980, and nothing seems to have been heard of the process since. Fool’s Gold perhaps?

References

1. Martin Ince, ‘Rich seam of explosive ideas amid the mumbo-jumbo’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 15 September 1989.

2. Roger Highfield and Adrian Berry, ‘Britain needs major initiative on science’, Dally Telegraph, 11September 1989.

3. ‘Hundreds of people stay in St John Neumann Roman Catholic church, Texas to talk about alleged miracle’, Associated Press, 17 August 1988.

4. Robert Sheaffer, ‘Psychic vibrations’, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol 14, No 1, 1989, pp. 23-24.

5. Dan Van Der Vat, ‘Answers lie in the soil—How science is harnessing the microbe to turn base metal into gold’, The Guardian, 28 February 1989.

6. ‘The escalating price of gold could make nuclear transmutation economically sensible, and the Soviets may have a method’, Cleveland Plain Dealer, 27 January1980.


Tom Ruffles is a commercial analyst, but finds parapsychology rather more interesting.

Memories of the Harry Price Library

Sarah Sparkes, who runs a blog detailing The Ghosts of Senate House, has asked for accounts of what it was like to visit the Harry Price Library when access to the room housing it was possible for members of the public. I was just going to email some quick thoughts, but decided that it was worth putting down as much as I can recall from that period. I have found a file of correspondence, plus some photographs, unfortunately in black and white and now a bit scuffed.

I used the Harry Price Library (HPL) for a number of years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Working in the City, it was an easy bike ride to Bloomsbury, and I spent a lot of time in the HPL. This was particularly so in the period 1987-1992, when I was taking a part-time psychology degree at Birkbeck, next door to Senate House, where the HPL is housed. If it had not been for the fact that I had a full-time job and family I would have spent even more time there I’m sure.

The librarian in charge of the HPL, Alan Wesencraft, was extremely welcoming and helpful. He would meet visitors by arrangement and escort them in the lift to the eighth floor where the HPL occupied a surprisingly small space; or he would arrange for visitors to let the main desk know that he was expecting them, and they would ascend on their own. Alan, or Wesey as he was generally known, had actually retired in 1977 and worked only part-time as the HPL’s Honorary Curator, so eventually I, like other regulars, was given a card that enabled me to ask for the key if he was not there and travel up to the HPL where I would work unsupervised and often alone.

The space occupied by the HPL had a cosy feeling (or perhaps that is nostalgia giving it a glow). The wind used to whistle round, which was atmospheric. There was a good view but there was never time to spare for looking out of windows. Sometimes there would be other people working at the small tables and I seem to remember there was only space for three people at any one time. The rest of the floor was very quiet, seemingly unvisited. I remember going for a walk around the deserted stacks, finding it creepy and unnerving in the semi-darkness.

By contrast there was a friendly atmosphere in the HPL, I suppose a sense that we were a select group, though there was never much chit-chat when I was there. Amazingly people used to bring in packed lunches to eat as they worked because once you were in it was a nuisance going back out, so it was wise to come prepared. The hospitable Wesey used to introduce researchers to each other. I remember meeting Ruth Brandon, who was writing her book on Houdini at the time. The library was not merely a monument to Price but was evolving, with new material being added, and Wesey would delight in showing acquisitions, or correspondence he had received.

Despite the cramped environment everything was well organised. There was always a huge feeling of serendipity when browsing the shelves, not knowing what might turn up. You felt like a small child in a toyshop, wanting to see everything as quickly as possible, unable to decide what to look at first, knowing you could spend years in there and only scratch the surface. In addition to the shelves of books there were film canisters on the window ledges, and filing cabinets with photographs, correspondence and clippings. One cabinet housed Eric Dingwall’s files, now sadly embargoed but then freely available to researchers. Had I realised that they would become inaccessible I would have made more use of them when I had the opportunity.

By 1993 Wesey was coming to the library only once a week, and change was in the air, with the University of London authorities tightening up what they saw as a lax situation. Unfortunately it would seem that some people abused Alan’s trust and things went missing. When I asked him for a replacement card for the eighth floor in April 1993 he replied that he was not allowed to issue any more. He also said that his two-year fight to prevent the introduction of charges had been unsuccessful

This restriction on our freedom was naturally unwelcome to the HPL community, and an attempt was made to reach a compromise which would allow readers to retain some rights. Regular users of the HPL received a letter, dated 4 November 1993, floating the idea of a Friends organisation:

We are writing to you and other users of the Harry Price Library, with the support of Mr Wesencraft the Hon Librarian, as he felt that you might be interested in some recent developments concerning the library

You might have heard that over the summer, the Director of Special Collections at University of London Library wrote to some users of the Harry Price Library, stating that the terms of usage would change. Essentially, the library wants to do away with the existing system, by which readers were permitted to collect the key and use the library whenever they chose, whether Mr Wesencraft was present or not.

The library’s intention is that from now on, books from the HPL will be produced for readers in the Palaeography Room and that direct access to the library will be restricted to Wednesdays when Mr Wesencraft is present.

This presents a number of difficulties. To begin with, the Palaeography Room is only open between 10 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on weekdays. In addition, as you will know, the HPL is not properly catalogued and therefore locating books is more difficult than is usually the case. This will almost certainly cause delays for readers. In addition, as we all know, part of the charm and fascination of this unique collection, is that so much is revealed by simply browsing – something that will largely be denied to us.

In view of all this and with due regard to University of London Library’s concern for the preservation of the antiquarian books, films, photographs and other materials, we have suggested a compromise to the Librarian and the Director of Special Collections.

The central point of our plan is to establish the ‘Friends of the Harry Price Library’. It is proposed that the Friends would assist Mr Wesencraft in his work as Librarian and eventually take over from him. At some point, the Friends would assist the University Library with the cataloguing of the HPL. It has also been suggested that the Friends could also help to raise funds for the upkeep of the collection. In return, the Library would grant the Friends continued direct access, although the details of this have yet to be worked out.

Naturally the proposal will only come to fruition if we have the support of committed users of the Harry Price Library. If you care about the Library and wish to have continued access to it, we would be very grateful for your assistance in this enterprise.

We are arranging an inaugural meeting to establish the Friends of the HPL, to be held at 2.00 pm, on Saturday 4th December 1993. The meeting will be held in the Ecclesiastical History Room of the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1.

We would be most grateful if you could attend this meeting; if however, this is not possible, do please write to us with your views and ideas. Any support that you can give would be of great help.

I attended the meeting, and the agenda for the meeting listed: Welcome and opening remarks; General discussion; Appointment of officers; Date of next meeting; Visit to the HPL. Members of the Society for Psychical Research that I recognised were Hilary Evans, Rosemary Dinnage and Maurice Grosse. Sadly but unsurprisingly the idea came to nothing, and we all knew an era had ended. No future generation of researchers would be able to sit, surrounded by Price’s collection, and soak in its atmosphere.

I certainly missed the HPL, and I felt a frisson of recognition when Michael Aspel used the room as the setting for the first series of Strange but True? in 1994. Camera angles made it look larger than it was, but the location was easily identifiable from the distinctive red and white Bell, Book and Candle poster on the side of a filing cabinet.

My connection with HPL was not quite over though. I became co-coordinator of a small team called the Anglia Paranormal Research Group, and in 1996 (by which time his visits to the HPL had dwindled to once a month) Alan agreed that to help boost our funds we could produce a facsimile – or as close as possible – edition of the famous 1937 Blue Book which Harry Price had given to volunteers helping him to investigate Borley Rectory. This project was a great success and helped to defray the expenses of spontaneous case investigations. Wesey finally retired in November 1998, after an association with the University Library which stretched back sixty-five years.

When he died in late 2007, I was glad to be able to write an obituary, as a mark of respect to a kind, knowledgeable man. He would have been appalled when, in 2008, rumours circulated that the HPL might be broken up in a cost-cutting exercise as a result of the University of London losing some of its funding. I was among those expressing grave concern that this treasure could be lost, and fortunately the feared disposal never materialised.

The University of London Library mounted an exhibition drawn from the HPL in 2004. It showed some gems, but it felt like standing outside the toyshop, staring through the window. Research is now more clinical, and ordering things to be fetched just isn’t the same as having direct contact, even though the reasons for forbidding access are understandable. Sitting in the room, there was a sense of continuity with the past, and one could feel that Harry Price himself might put his head round the door to see how you were getting on, and tell you about the collection of which he was so justifiably proud.

References

Price, Harry. The Alleged Haunting of B____ Rectory: Instructions for Observers, London: University of London Council for Psychical Investigation, 1937.

Ruffles, Tom. ‘Alan Wesencraft’, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 72 (No.892), July 2008, pp.188-90.

The Magical Library of Harry Price: An Exhibition of Books, Archives and Artefacts from the Collection of a Psychic Investigator and Ghost Hunter (19th April – 30th October 2004).

Laura Smith, Film Pioneer

Laura Eugenia Smith (née Bayley) was a significant figure in the development of British cinema at the turn of the twentieth century, acting in films made by her husband, George Albert Smith (1864-1959), and making films herself. Despite her importance to film history, information about her is sparse. She seems to disappear from the historical record entirely with Smith’s retirement following the demise of the colour process with which he is closely associated, Kinemacolor, during the First World War.

Laura Bayley was born at 5 Belle-Vue Place, Ramsgate, on 4 February 1862. Her father, William Bullivant Bayley, was a journeyman saddler, her mother was Elizabeth Rebecca Bayley, née Francis. Laura and Smith married at Ebenezer Chapel in Ramsgate on 13 June 1888 before honeymooning on the Isle of Wight. They had two children: Harold (born 5 April 1889, so almost a honeymoon baby, died in 1975) and Dorothy (born in 1891, died in 1964). Laura acted with her three sisters, Blanche, Eva and Florence, together known as the Bayley Sisters, before and after her marriage. She brought a comic style to the films in which she acted, most famously Smith’s 1903 Mary Jane’s Mishap. The Smiths also ran a pleasure garden in Hove, St Ann’s Well and Wild Garden, and it is likely that she was involved in the extensive programme of entertainments mounted there.

More intriguing is her involvement in the film industry as a filmmaker in her own right. Her husband became interested during 1899 in the 17.5mm Biokam camera, a format marketed for amateur use. While he was being interviewed by a journalist at St Ann’s Well, he showed the interviewer “a small hand-held camera”, ie a Biokam (Brighton Herald, 14 October, 1899, p.2). As they were chatting, “Mrs Smith came in to borrow the identical camera, to go off and photograph the waves breaking over the Hove sea wall”.

That this was not a one-off incident is indicated by a number of references to Laura in Smith’s cash book (which has survived) in connection with the Biokam during 1899-1900, such as the entry dated 9 December 1899: "L. E. Smith: 100 Biokams at 1/3", totalling £6 5s 0d. Luke McKernan’s Women Silent Filmmakers in Britain lists over eighty Biokam films, both fiction and non-fiction, which may have been made by Laura.

According to Tony Fletcher, who gave an illustrated presentation on Laura Eugenia Smith and the Biokam Films at the 11th Silent British Cinema Festival at Nottingham in 2008, the surviving examples of Biokam films are not up to Smith’s own standards. Even so, the Warwick Trading Company, with which Smith was closely associated as film supplier and processor, had a Biokam list, and it would seem that Smith sold Laura’s films on her behalf.

Bearing in mind the important part she played in the film industry in Britain in its earliest years, Laura has not been well served by film history. Smith is often referred to as part of The Brighton School or The Hove Pioneers, but Laura has never been considered a member in her own right. She is sometimes referred to merely as “Mrs Smith” or “Smith’s wife”. Even as fine a historian as John Barnes, writing on Mary Jane’s Mishap in the journal Film History in 2004, manages to misspell her surname as “Bailey” (twice). As an indication of this neglect, while we know about Smith’s death, and obituaries were published detailing his achievements, Laura’s was shrouded in mystery. Smith’s will (dated 4 February 1950) said that his wife’s maiden name was Edith Kate Harman, which left Laura’s fate a mystery. Had she died or had she divorced Albert?

Given Edith’s maiden name, it was straightforward to discover that she and Smith had married in Hove in late 1939 (when he was 75). As always when researching a name like Smith it is difficult to be sure one has the right person, though Eugenia was an unusual name. Finding her death record proved difficult, however, as she was listed as “Laura E Smith” in the register of deaths, and there were a few likely candidates named Laura Smith.

Her certificate supplies unambiguous information and we now know that Laura died at home – 7 Melville Road, Hove – with her husband at her side, on 25 October 1938, aged 77. Her cause of death was given as acute rheumatic arthritis. Smith registered her death the following day and put her occupation down as “Wife of George Albert Smith, a Cinematograph Technical Adviser (retired)”, with no acknowledgement whatsoever of her own varied career. A rather sad end, but at least we have fragments of screen work by a true pioneer to delight us still.

The Haunting of Willington Mill - A review

Review of The Haunting of Willington Mill: The Truth Behind England’s Most Enigmatic Ghost Story, by Michael J Hallowell and Darren W Ritson, The History Press, 2011.


Michael Hallowell and Darren Ritson (hereafter for convenience H&R) are well known for their regional paranormal books, and most famously for their collaboration on The South Shields Poltergeist. Now they have turned their attention to an older mystery to try to uncover what really happened at Willington Mill (actually most reports concern the separate mill house) in the mid-nineteenth century. Willington Mill was the first steam-driven flour mill in North Tyneside, built at Willington Quay in about 1800, and recorded (as opposed to hearsay) unexplained occurrences began in late 1834, though the authors posit a provenance for paranormal happenings on the site extending back to the seventeenth century.

They do a sterling job unravelling the complicated history of the business’s ownership. There were three original partners, including Joseph Procter. One partner was bought out in 1807, Procter died in 1813 and his son, confusingly also called Joseph, joined the partnership (presumably not straight away as he was only born in 1800). The last of the original partners died in 1842, and the younger Joseph Procter bought out the deceased partner’s son to become sole proprietor, though his residence was not to last much longer.

Procter kept a diary covering the years 1835-42 which was published in Volume 5 of the Society for Psychical Research‘s Journal (1892), edited with a commentary by his son Edmund (1839-95). H&R have analysed the text, pointing out that it is not a straightforward complete description of events as they occurred day by day. Rather it is a series of notes in which the order is muddled, the narrative frustratingly unclear and incomplete. H&R have done as good a job as the material will allow in sorting out the chronology, and they fill in from other sources events not recorded by Procter himself.

The diary is analysed over two chapters, and is broken down into separate occurrences, seventy-four in total, each with a gloss by the authors. H&R address problems of its authorship and history, but whilst acknowledging a number of issues, they believe that it is an essentially accurate account of events at the house. The family, including the servants, experienced an astonishing range of phenomena during their occupancy. These included numerous instances of heavy footsteps, thumping, droning, knocking, clattering, chirruping, clashing and tapping sounds, coughing, moaning, whistling, the movement of household objects, the sound of a clock being wound, the sound of a small bell ringing, voices, breathing, rustlings, miscellaneous noises, etc etc. One of the strangest occurrences, among many contenders, was when something that looked like a white towel waltzed around the room, before sliding under the door and descending the stairs with a heavy tread (audible to several people in the house) like something out of Fantasia.

People in bed were particularly likely to be disturbed. For example, Mrs Procter was in hers when it lifted up, as if someone were underneath pushing it, and on another occasion her sister Jane felt her bed lifted on one side. The children heard a shriek close to theirs, another time the bed of one moved backwards and forwards and a voice said “chuck” twice close by. One night one of the children saw the face of an old woman through the bed curtains (the girl seems to have been afflicted by heads – on another occasion she saw one on the landing at dusk). In a “night of horror”, as Edmund called it, Jane and the cook were sharing a room and they heard the handle turn and someone enter the room. The cook saw a shadow on the curtains of the bed and felt the counterpane pressed down. Eventually they heard the interloper exit the room, apparently leaving the door open, but when they checked in the morning they found the door still bolted as it had been when they retired the night before.

There were enough weird animals sighted to start a menagerie. These included a peculiar large ‘cat’ with a snout which walked into a furnace. Another ‘cat’ vanished into thin air, then reappeared – hopping – and the witness’s foot passed through it when he aimed a kick at it. It then grew to the size of a sheep, but a luminous one. A monkey was seen by the children jumping around, it tickled a child’s foot (no mean achievement as he was wearing boots) and vanished. Two employees saw what they described as a donkey which made no sound as it moved.

One of the best-known events associated with Willington is the vigil kept by Edward Drury and Thomas Hudson in July 1840. H&R go into this in some detail. Drury and Hudson had a pretty lively night, culminating in Drury seeing a woman dressed in grey appear from a closet, one of a number of figures seen by various witnesses. She had a hand pressed to her breast and with the other pointed at Dr Hudson, who was, shall we say, resting his eyes at the time. Drury rushed at the vision, collapsed in a faint, and could not be roused for several hours. As a consequence of this unnerving experience he shed his previous scepticism, though Hudson seemed inclined to dismiss Drury’s experience as an hallucination.

A woman in a grey mantle floating about three feet above the floor was seen independently by Mrs Hargrave, one of Mrs Procter’s sisters. Mrs Hargrave was interviewed in 1884 by Henry Sidgwick (H&R’s reference for this is incorrect: the notes of the interview are not in Volume 7 of the SPR’s Proceedings but Volume 5 of its Journal, pp.351-2). Other commentators who looked into the mysteries of Willington were Catherine Crowe, William Howitt and W T Stead. The Procters left the house in 1847, and Joseph died in 1875, but phenomena apparently continued, such as the appearance of Kitty, the supposed ghost of one Catherine Devore, who died in about 1902 in the mill, by then a rope factory.

H&R suggest that while Joseph Procter was ready to admit that strange things were occurring on the site, which given the volume of phenomena and the number of witnesses it would have been pointless to deny, he was keen to damp down publicity, to the extent of being less than candid in his diary (ie he was prone to lie), not only on his own behalf, but also his predecessors’ at the house. This is to support H&R's contention that phenomena extended earlier than 1834. Pursuing this line of argument contradicts their claim elsewhere that “we have no reason to think that the events described in [the diary] are anything but truthful”, a discrepancy symptomatic of a tendency to cherry-pick to suit the argument.

One of the most debatable chapters is the discussion of the alleged slab in the alleged cellar under the house, and it is indicative of the selective way evidence is used to bolster their theories. The idea that there was a cellar was based on mediumistic communications, a slender support for the weight of argument placed on it by H&R, given that a number of early commentators clearly state that the house had no cellaring, while its proximity to water – “Willington Quay” is something of a giveaway – would make the addition of a cellar unlikely.

H&R concede that Procter never challenged the claim that there was no cellar, which he might be expected to do if it existed, but even so they are confident that there was one. Naturally they make much of Stead’s anecdote in his 1897 Real Ghost Stories that Procter engaged a group of labourers to excavate this cellar but found nothing. Stead adds that “Local gossip, however, always asserted that when the men dug down to a certain depth they came upon a huge stone or slab, beneath which they believed the mystery lay”, gossip H&R take at face value.

Further, they suggest that Procter, who in any case denied the story according to Stead’s recollection (but must have been lying, of course), knew what was under the slab and did not want anyone else to know: it was the body of someone – of whom H&R cannot say – murdered in around 1800 while the mill was being built, one of possibly two or even three victims of a serial killer around the place. As they depict it, having made the slab accessible, Procter was in a position to lift it, somehow, and dispose of the body quietly himself.

H&R‘s answer to the obvious question (apart from how did Procter know about it in the first place), if the body was buried so thoroughly why should he want to remove it, is that he may have been concerned that it would be found at some future date, and he wanted to avoid a murder investigation that would involve his family. Yet if the slab had been buried so thoroughly that it took a gang of labourers to uncover it, the most discreet course of action would have been to let it lie, on the assumption that nobody would ever have cause to dig up the cellar floor. Uncovering it could only set tongues wagging, especially when Procter told the men to stop just as things got interesting.

Procter’s supposed reason for ordering a cessation of the work at the time – that the building was suffering from structural defects – sounds like a cover story, but H&R state that there may actually have been deficiencies which would have led to excavation, and hence discovery of the slab, at a later date. One wonders what sort of structural repairs would involve extensive digging in the cellar, assuming it existed. Even if it did, Procter would have had to balance the relative merits of uncovering the slab now to prevent future discovery, creating gossip in the process and with the added necessity of having to dispose of whatever was underneath with many potential witnesses in the vicinity, against the possibility that structural repairs would never happen, not involve the cellar if they did, or would happen in the far distant future. Leaving well alone would surely have been the more likely outcome of a dispassionate analysis of the pros and cons.

There is too the matter of Procter’s Quaker background in all this. H&R make much of it, even though he seems to have been somewhat flexible in his adherence to its principles according to their scenario. Perhaps he did want to ensure that the body was given a decent burial in consecrated soil, but it would be more in keeping with his beliefs to uncover a body immediately and report it, whatever the consequences, rather than remove it himself and bury it elsewhere.

As the elaborate cellar conjecture implies, this is a book of two rather odd halves. One is a sober reconstruction of a complex narrative using primary sources and dissecting the accounts to tease out ambiguities and highlight discrepancies in painstaking detail. The authors acknowledge that many of the details are unverifiable, and make some reasonable inferences. They go further, however, and while criticising earlier commentators for making assumptions, themselves make a few which are unsupported by firm evidence, despite which they conclude that they have uncovered “the truth“ and solved most of the mysteries. Some of those readers sympathetic to such speculations may still baulk at the use of mediums Tony Stockwell and Philip Solomon for information, not to mention reliance on the transcripts of mesmeric sessions with the clairvoyant ‘Jane’, held in 1853 (by which time of course the Procters were no longer living there) and included in Eleanor Sidgwick’s article in Volume 7 of the SPR’s Proceedings, ‘On the Evidence for Clairvoyance’ (1891).

H&R consider various possibilities, such as haunting, poltergeist, witchcraft (the “Witch of Willington”), timeslips, even cryptozoology, and plump for survival, as might be inferred from the title. They argue that it is a case “that seriously challenges the sceptic”. It is doubtful though whether many sceptics give these historical accounts much credence, as the passage of time makes it easier to attribute alleged phenomena to misperception, hysteria, fraud, exaggeration, misinterpretation of garbled transmission and all the other problems we now know that eyewitness testimony is heir to and which make it easy to dismiss.

We are unlikely now to be able to make a definitive assessment of the goings-on at Willington Mill, not being able to recreate the personal, and possibly sexual, dynamics that existed between a close-knit group during a period of dramatic and stressful social change in the north of England. But it is a fascinating story, and H&R have done a useful job assembling and comparing documents and, used judiciously, forming the basis for the further discussion the mystery of Willington Mill so richly deserves.