by Neil Spring
Caxton was shaking his head. ‘The study of the paranormal should be for good, to advance our knowledge about the human condition.’ He had learned this, he told us, from his father’s psychic research.
‘Actually,’ Thatcher said suddenly, ‘it was the government who funded your father’s work, Dr Caxton. The Security Service.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Back in the 1930s. Your father’s laboratory at Queensbury Place was under intense scrutiny by the government. Our files on his work are kept below the Cabinet Office in Room 800.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Caxton, but he looked shaken.
‘The Security Service took the view that we needed to know whether his work on the paranormal had produced results; whether we could learn about events at a distance, for example, or predict the future. The knowledge we gained was invaluable in the war. Your father’s worldwide expeditions, his many visits to Germany, only increased its value.’
Caxton looked horrified.
The prime minister smiled. ‘We can fund your work too.’
Caxton looked a little less horrified.
‘Don’t listen to her!’ Wilding insisted.
Thatcher ignored him. ‘The idea is to expose a group of young and impressionable service personnel to a sky spectre. We will devise the scenario, control the situation and observe the results.’
‘You mean open a portal to hell!’
She nodded. ‘Much as your father did before you. The site has already been selected. Remote and off limits to the public: the twin bases of Bentwaters and Woodbridge. Near Rendlesham Forest.’
Caxton was silent. He was staring at a document the prime minister had just laid before him. Finally he reached forward and picked it up.
‘I won’t sanction this,’ Wilding whispered.
‘It is not for you to sanction,’ was the prime minister’s cutting response. ‘And as for your cooperation, I will not take no for an answer. You will help us or you will be arrested under the Official Secrets Act and detained.’ She glanced at Caxton. ‘The same applies to you.’
‘My God,’ Wilding exclaimed, his eyes rolling back in his head. Caxton placed a consoling hand on his arm.
‘Young man,’ said the prime minister, her tone softer now, ‘your suffering has not been in vain, and your grandfather’s sacrifice won’t be forgotten, I promise. His memory and his work will live on.’
Wilding’s eyes misted over.
‘It is your duty,’ Thatcher said to the man whose worst nightmares had once been proliferating warheads and his own spiralling obsessions. ‘Tomorrow we face a new world. We must have the facts. And we cannot tell the people.’
‘When?’ Caxton asked, apparently resigned.
Thatcher’s eyes glimmered. ‘The date is set,’ she replied. ‘December 1980.’
‘Next year,’ said Wilding as if she’d said next week, next day, now.
‘But in the meantime,’ said Thatcher, ‘we have need of your experience elsewhere. There have been other reports of . . . sightings, all over Britain. And abductions.’
Caxton looked at Wilding, who did not move, did not speak.
‘What do you need us to do?’ the doctor asked the prime minister.
She spread her arms wide. ‘Everything in your power. Help us. Fight for us.’
Robert Wilding stared down at fingers that had begun to drum out a staccato rhythm on the tabletop, and I thought I heard him whisper, ‘No more. Please. No more,’ but his words were lost amid the tapping of his fingers on the table, three short beats, three long beats, three short beats. Save our souls.
THE END
Author’s Note
This story is inspired by the wave of UFO sightings that occurred in the Havens in the winter of 1977. It is however a work of fiction. Thankfully the area did not flood that year or in 1963; there was no satanic cult and no mass suicide. I hope the residents of the Havens will forgive me taking liberties with events, geography and place names. Yet something very mysterious did happen at Broad Haven Primary School, and the children – now adults – who witnessed a UFO land in the field behind their school still maintain they saw something truly unexplained. And on the whole the residents of the Havens seem to believe them. The school keeps a scrapbook commemorating the event; it’s packed full of written descriptions and drawings made by the children. But of what?
It surprised me to learn that in 1977 officials at the Ministry of Defence were asking themselves the same question. I say surprised because, while the British government was telling the public that it had ‘no records of any unusual activity in the area’, we now know – thanks to declassified documents – that officials were so concerned about UFO sightings in Wales that they asked the military police to conduct a discreet investigation. One document asks the military police to assess ‘the volume of local interest and/or alarm and whether there is a readily discernible rational explanation, or whether there is prima facie evidence for a more serious specialist inquiry’. Intriguingly, the minister responsible at the time was deliberately kept in the dark about the investigation. The author of the mysterious memo writes, ‘I have not even told the minister I am consulting you.’ One can’t help but wonder why our elected representatives weren’t told what was going on, especially when they were making public statements about the events. How was this covert investigation handled? We may never know. Curiously, these documents have not been released.
In the hope of learning more I stayed in the area and interviewed witnesses. Not only did the people I meet believe they had seen strange lights in the sky, they described craft of unknown origin on the ground and in the air. They also described seeing giant humanoid figures in spacesuits in 1977 – figures that stalked the countryside at night. Was there an explanation? In the 1990s a practical joker confessed to dressing up in a silver suit and scaring a local woman, but his admission did not explain all of the sightings: UFOs around Stack Rocks and a nearby farm, giant figures staring through the windows of isolated houses, terrifying families.
That’s when the idea for this story occurred to me. A story about belief. How do people respond to unexpected events? How do we interpret them? How do one man’s paranoid interrogations of reality interact with our own understanding of the material universe? These were the questions I wanted to explore through my protagonists’ eyes. Anxiety and compulsive disorders interest me; any syndrome that can cause someone to give themselves over to rituals that are self-destructive deserves scrutiny. What compels someone to do something without reason or evidence? The same question could be asked of anyone who believes in God, any supernatural phenomena or for that matter UFOs.
And the evidence for the existence of UFOs is persuasive. Reports come from credible and reliable eye witnesses – pilots, scientists and other professionals – describing objects that travel at quite fantastic speeds, buzz aircraft and outrun scrambled jets. They have been tracked on radar hundreds of times, they have left ground traces in the form of radiation readings and they have harmed witnesses.
Just one example. In 2015 Airman First Class John Burroughs succeeded in a legal bid to force the US Department of Veterans Affairs to pay for an illness allegedly caused by a UFO encounter in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, in December 1980. That month several members of the United States Air Force witnessed a strange craft near the base at close range. Shortly afterwards Burrows fell ill with symptoms resembling radiation exposure. Documents from the British Ministry of Defence confirmed that high levels of radiation were detected at the site where the UFO was encountered.
Readers may be interested to learn that most of my characters’ experiences in St Brides Bay are inspired by actual reports. Stack Rocks has been associated with a great many UFO sightings, and there have long been mysterious reports of ‘ladders’ and ‘doors’ embedded in the rock surface. But there is no fort, nor any tunnels co
nnecting Stack Rocks with the mainland.
I have chosen quite deliberately to present an alternative hypothesis to explain UFO mysteries firstly because this is a thriller whose purpose is to entertain, and secondly because I wanted a more original explanation than extraterrestrials. When I learned of a private report circulated among the British Establishment in the 1970s warning that the forces controlling UFOs were dangerous and demonic, I found that hypothesis. It is based on the theory that before Satan can return to dominate the earth his way must be prepared by an elite group which either sympathizes with the Antichrist or has been possessed by demonic powers.
Something about that idea perfectly captured the Cold War paranoia of the times, as well as reflecting some historical accuracies. For example, although the rocket scientist Jack Parsons never visited the Havens, he was a student of satanist Aleister Crowley, who claimed to have opened a portal to another world through which UFOs and other demonic influences slipped through. There is also evidence that in the 1950s Parsons was studied by a secret US government group, the Collins Elite, which was concerned that his experiments had opened a psychic doorway allowing UFOs through from elsewhere. Closer to home, in the early 1950s a branch of the Air Ministry at the Hotel Metropole on Northumberland Avenue near Trafalgar Square was secretly studying flying saucers. This unit wasn’t located underground as it appears in my novel but its operations were highly classified.
Do similar secret investigations continue to this day? The MoD says not, but then of course they have said that before. Readers can draw their own conclusions.
Acknowledgements
If this novel evokes a strong sense of place, that is possibly because much of it was written in the Havens, and I would like to thank everyone living in the area who assisted me with my research. Most of the UFO sightings that appear in the book are loosely based on factual reports.
I would like to acknowledge a number of people who have helped me with this book. At William Morris Endeavour, my fabulous agent and early supporter Cathryn M. Summerhayes; I appreciate you getting me started on this road and for your constant support in handling complicated rights issues. At Quercus thanks to: Andrew Turner for his avid promotional efforts, Louise Davies for structural edits, Mark Jones for his beautiful illustrations, Leo Nickolls for his stunning cover design and editor Kathryn Taussig for accepting the book.
I owe particular thanks to the many dedicated researchers who study UFOs, including Dr David Clarke and Nick Redfern, who have both played considerable roles in accessing and analysing official documents on the subject, and Nick Pope, a noted researcher who investigated UFOs for the Ministry of Defence. His experiences with the subject in the corridors of power were an early inspiration. Most importantly thanks to the late Randall Jones Pugh, who so diligently investigated the wave of sightings that inspired this story.
Thanks to my friends: Guy Black, to whom this novel is dedicated, for supporting this project in so many ways, but notably by assisting in research by tabling parliamentary written questions in the House of Lords; Jon Harrison for his comments on an early draft; Craig Jarrett for his generosity; Guy Chambers for taking the trouble to accompany me on a research trip to the Havens in weather that was very far from ideal; and Robert Wilding for kindly allowing me to borrow his wonderful name (any other resemblances are purely coincidental!).
My heartfelt thanks to my family: my brother James Spring for his comments, contributions and extremely helpful revisions, and my wonderful mum Pamela Spring for sharing so many of the ideas that inspired the novel and for having the patience to hear me talking about them over too many years!
Last but by no means least I owe thanks to my partner, Owen Meredith, for his dedication and support.
Writing this novel has been a mysterious journey but a long one, and I am sincerely grateful that I have not had to make that journey alone.
Also Available
Also from bestselling author Neil Spring . . .
Welcome to Borley Rectory, the most haunted house in England.
The year is 1926 and Sarah Grey has landed herself an unlikely new job – assistant to Harry Price, London’s most infamous ghost hunter. Equal parts charming and neurotic, Harry has devoted his life to exposing the truth behind England’s many ‘false hauntings’, and has never left a case unsolved, nor a fraud unexposed.
So when Harry and Sarah are invited to Borley Rectory – a house so haunted that objects frequently fly through the air and locals avoid the grounds for fear of facing the spectral nun that walks there – they’re sure that this case will be like any other. But when night falls and still no artifice can be found, the ghost hunters are forced to confront an uncomfortable possibility: the ghost of Borley Rectory may be real. And, if so, they’re about to make its most intimate acquaintance.
