It was late August 1962: Marilyn Monroe had died
under controversial circumstances just a few weeks earlier. And, U.S.
Intelligence had begun to suspect that the Soviets were secretly
transferring nuclear weapons to Cuba – something which, two months
later, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. For a young girl
named Anne Leamon, though, life went on as it always had. Just sixteen
at the time of her encounter, Anne lived on a farm run by her family in
the English county of Somerset. It was a picturesque area: Anne’s
bedroom backed right onto the green and inviting Brendon Hills,
which, today, are a part of the huge Exmoor National Park. Anne would
soon find herself in a strange situation, which revolved around the U.K.
military and unidentified aerial phenomena.
As the declassified U.K. Royal Air Force documents on Anne’s UFO
encounter reveal, she woke up late one evening – for no particular
reason she could fathom – and looked straight out of one of the windows.
She was confronted by the sight of a circular-shaped light hovering
over the hills. It was also changing color: from red to green and then
to yellow. Strange rays of light emanated from the light. Anne looked
on, utterly transfixed. Quite naturally, Anne’s first assumption was
that it had to be a star; although she had never seen a star like this
before. It became very apparent the object was no star when it suddenly
began to move. She considered that it might have been a helicopter, but
that theory was dismissed as a result of the overwhelming silence.
Suddenly, the object came towards Anne and, in her own words, she
felt “attracted” to it. Almost mesmerized by its flickering lights and
rapidly changing colors. It then reversed, moved sideways, and then
headed back to the hills. It was as if the display was meant for Anne
herself – which was likely the case. For around an hour, the light kept
its position above the hilly countryside, finally shooting away and
vanishing. This was not the end of things, however. There was far more
to come. Anne had an eerie feeling that the light would return to her
the following night. It did: but this time, it was well into the early
morning hours. Yet again, it glided across the Brendon Hills, stopping
outsider her bedroom window. She admitted to becoming “quite friendly”
with the light, which she felt was not in any way dangerous, even though
she was mystified by its origin and intent. Anne took a very proactive
approach and made drawings of the object, even tracking its movements
via a compass. And the light came again and again – always well into the
early hours of the morning and always approaching Anne’s bedroom.
Puzzled but intrigued by her stranger in the night, Anne decided to
do something that would ultimately lead to a secret file being opened on
her – one which was classified for thirty years. She telephoned a
military facility to report what she had seen: Royal Marines Base Chivenor,
as it is known today. To this day, the facility remains a vital
component of the British Government’s defense network. As interesting as
the late night light displays were for Anne, she hardly expected that a
senior official in the military would visit her home and interview her
at length. After all, it wasn’t as if she was reporting the landing of a
UFO, or talking about a face-to-face encounter with bug-eyed aliens.
But, that’s exactly what happened: Anne was visited and she
became the subject of a large file and the attention of a covert arm of
the military. It’s a file now in the public domain at the National
Archives.
It was late one evening when there was a knock at the front-door.
Anne’s mother opened it and was confronted by a man dressed in a black
suit – and who had arrived in a black car. He identified himself as a
Sergeant J.W. Scott of the Provost and Security Services.
Had Anne and her family a good knowledge of the UFO subject at the
time, they would surely have believed they were in the presence of one
of the dreaded MIB. In a sense, that’s what he was. Notably, such was
Sergeant Scott’s determination to see the mysterious light, he visited
the Leamon home on at least three occasions; sitting patiently and
near-silently in Anne’s bedroom with her and keeping a careful look-out
for the object.
It was on the third occasion that Sergeant Scott finally saw the UFO –
for that is surely what it was: an unidentified light-form in the skies
above. Notably, Anne stated that Sergeant Scott quickly grabbed the
camera he had brought with him, leaned through the window, and took
several photos. The mysterious object was now captured – at least, on
film. Anne noted that Scott seemed to deliberately try and play down the
matter and did his utmost to avoid sensationalizing what Anne thought
was a very exciting development in the matter. For Anne, though, it was
practically impossible for her not to be excited: after all, a
member of a covert arm of the U.K.’s military was standing in her
bedroom, firing off photo after photo of an aerial visitor of the very
weird variety.
When the object vanished from view, Sergeant Scott got ready to
leave; his air of calmness still completely intact: he wasn’t giving
away anything. But, he did take something with him: Anne’s drawings and
compass notes. Despite promising to return them, Scott never did. He
vanished into the night – with all of the available data and
documentation – never to be seen again. Before vanishing, though, Scott
did suggest to Anne that it would not be a good idea to share the story
of her experiences with her school-friends – or, indeed, with anyone
else at all, including the media.
Anne was mystified by the whole thing. Even more so when, several
weeks later, she got a response from the Air Ministry saying that she
had seen nothing stranger than a star. Does it really require an
operative of the Provost and Security Services – the “007’s” of the
Royal Air Force – to spend so much time and effort looking into the
movements of a star? One would imagine they had far better things to do
with their time, particularly given the fraught, ongoing situation with
the Russians and Fidel Castro’s regime on Cuba. It must be said that one
of the things which attracted Anne to the object was its movement: it
shot around the sky, even coming close to her bedroom window on several
occasions. Stars, I probably don’t need to tell you, certainly do not
act in such a fashion. Nor do planets. And, nor do aircraft or
helicopters, either.
We can learn a great deal from this undeniably weird series of
events. A young girl has close encounters in the dead of night and in
her bedroom. She is soon visited by a Man in Black
who visits her on three evenings, catches the object on film, grabs her
drawings, and leaves her home with a “friendly warning” not to talk
about what she had seen. All of this for a star? Not a chance.
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