Strange Places: An Eerie Incident From Surrey

by Gloria Heather Dixon

The following odd events occurred near Croydon in Surrey on 24th April 1995:

Ken was heading home from shift work in his truck. He lives on the top of a very steep hill. Half way up the hill he had signed off on his cab computer at exactly 0400 and at the same time became aware of a deafening turbine like drone accompanied by an ear piercing high pitched whine or whirr. We have to bear in mind here that he was driving a turbo diesel truck that was pulling up a very steep hill at the time, which would make the truck engine very noisy, but the other noise drowned the sound of his labouring engine.

This curious deafening noise seemed to go overhead, across the road and he wound down the window whilst travelling and the noise appeared to be heading south where he could hear it in the direction of the nearby woods. On reaching the brow of the hill and turning right into the road in which he lived, he switched off the engine and coasted on to his drive in order to avoid waking his family.

He then realised he could still hear this strange noise very close by and that it was still extremely loud. He felt it was emanating from his next-door neighbour’s garden, and tried to use a frame of reference for how the noise sounded. He said," it sounded like a Concorde in full reverse thrust, but with an extra electrical alarm type noise". 

Feeling that there must be an explanation for this noise, maybe a helicopter that had come down in the woods behind the houses, he walked down the alleyway at the side of his home and climbed onto to some building blocks beside his garage to look over his neighbour’s fence.

He told me that upon looking behind his neighbour’s hedge to the left of his oak tree, he nearly fell off the blocks in sheer panic because here he could see a brilliant ball of light glowing and hovering just above the ground behind the hedge In his own words he goes on to say, "At this point I was petrified and was balanced over the fence staring at this glow with the noise piercing my ears. I thought to myself ‘why aren’t my dogs barking and why aren’t the neighbours out? I wanted to run indoors and tell my wife, but I couldn’t seem to pull away from the scene. After what seemed like a couple of minutes, the noise stopped and up popped this aluminium looking saucer shaped object to about 15 feet above the ground to the left of the oak tree; it was silent and hovering in the air. It was emitting a light around its centre and I couldn’t decide if the object was spinning or the light was flashing on and off in a circular motion".

"I just stood there in total disbelief and thought to myself “I’m dreaming, this is ridiculous. After what seemed like a couple more minutes, the object moved off diagonally away from me in a southeasterly direction gaining height, and to my surprise, it went over the rooftops of the neighbours’ houses. I ran up the alleyway out of my drive and into the middle of my road and froze when I saw it again, motionless, hovering more or less in the centre of the road at the junction of another road.

It was no more than 20 feet higher than the houses and I gauged the width of the object by the rooftops, making it between eighteen and twenty feet wide and roughly ten feet deep. From ground level, it was about fifty feet high and around one hundred and twenty feet away. I stood there in total shock and then walked near to it, even though I was petrified, because it fascinated me. I got to about one hundred feet from it and I could see under the object, the bright lights and that the underside was slightly concave. After a couple of minutes, the silent motionless object sped off at an unbelievable speed towards Croydon without making a sound. I couldn’t believe it!’

Ken goes on to say that he ran into his house and shouted to his wife and went into his front bedroom and looked out of the window where he could see the brilliant ball of light in the crystal clear night sky over Croydon in the distance. He checked the time and it was now 04.26. He had observed this light for about fifteen to twenty minutes, but it had only seemed like a couple of minutes during these events. His wife checked the following morning to see if she could see anything that would appear unusual behind the back garden and oak tree, but saw nothing that she felt would be relevant to her husband’s sighting.

This sighting was not reported to BUFORA until mid -1996 and Ken cannot understand why he took so long to report it, but had only told his brother about it and didn’t want to suffer ridicule from reporting this to anyone else. On his written report he feels that he was trying to deny what he had seen.

A few months prior to him contacting BUFORA it was on his mind a lot and he feels that after the incident he was hoping to hear or read that another person had observed this too. It appeared no-one had observed this.

This case was followed up by a BUFORA investigator, who visited the witness in 1996 and to date this remains unexplained.