by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
On November 15, 1976, 42-year-old Joyce Bowles, and her 58-year-old friend, Ted Pratt, appeared on the BBC television program South Today. They were interviewed about their reported encounters with UFOs and humanoids the night before. Their case got the interest of researchers from various organizations and there are FOUR articles examining it in the February 1977, Vol. 22, No. 5 Flying Saucer Review: an article by Bournemouth Unexplained Phenomena Research Group Investigator Leslie Harris headlined “UFO & Silver-Suited Entity Seen Near Winchester,” an article by British UFO Research Association Investigator Richard Nash that consists mostly of a transcription of a tape recorded interview with Bowles and Pratt conducted by Nash, “Questions and Comments on the Nash Interview” by BUFORA Research Coordinator Jenny Randles, and an article by BUFORA Investigator Frank J. Wood based on two reports prepared by him headlined “Alleged CE-III at Winchester: Vehicle Examination,” with the subheading “Together with a few other matters of interest.” There is also an article by Lionel Beer in the March/April BUFORA Journal headlined “The Winchester Encounters. There are several sensational claims in this case, and while it is based on the testimony of two witnesses, Mrs. Bowles had a history of reporting other paranormal encounters, which caused some doubt among researchers. However, Jacques Vallée’s 1969 book, Passport to Magonia, had an impact on the thinking of researchers at that time, as did the work of John Keel, an FSR contributor, and an increasing number were considering the idea that UFOs might be more paranormal in nature than physical craft being piloted by extraterrestrials.
BUFORA COVERAs Beer’s article in the BUFORA Journal came out after what was likely a lot of discussion about the case among BUFORA researchers, we’re taking most of the narrative from that. According to Beer, at around 9:00 p.m. on November 14, 1976, Pratt and Bowles were in Bowles’s Mini Clubman on their way to pick up Bowles’s son from his girlfriend’s house in Chilcomb 3 1/2 miles away. They were on the A-31, and according to Bowles, she saw two lights, not very high, one above the other, and she pointed them out to Pratt. She said they were orange but more red than the sodium lights in the area. According to Beer, Pratt told another investigator that he had seen the lights, “but described them as a bright orange-red object some 40 feet long, flying at some 800 feet a quarter of a mile away.”
At this point, they were coming down a hill towards a hairpin turn. As she came around it, Bowles flashed her headlights to alert the oncoming cars. As they continued on, the car began to shudder and the steering wheel locked. Pratt grabbed onto it and tried to help. To their right was a verge (a strip of land along the side of the road) 280 yards long and 20-30 feet wide. To Bowles, it felt like the car was floating as it travelled sideways and then settled down in the middle of the verge, parallel to the road. According to Leslie Harris in the FSR article, Bowles said she had taken her foot off the accelerator and even so, the car engine was “roaring” as it left the road. Pratt said he reached over the steering column and turned the ignition off.
From their position in the grass, they looked up and saw a cigar-shaped object 5-6 yards away in front of them and slightly to the right. According to Beer, Bowles described it as being like a “fat Winston Churchill cigar.” Using a tape measure at the site with Bowles present, Beer estimated the object described by Bowles and Pratt to have been about 12 feet long and 5 feet high.
Bowles wasn’t sure she had seen the entire object, but she described it having three bow windows that were brightly lit. She said that Pratt said he’d only seen one. Both, however, described seeing 3 figures from the shoulders up, sitting one behind the other, as if they were on a bus.
They described the object as hovering above the ground and that it had a vapor underneath. According to Beer, Pratt described it to another investigator as being 18 inches above the ground held up by “gasses” coming out of 4 jets.
According to Beer, “It is possible that a few seconds elapsed before they saw a figure emerge out of the darkness between the cigar’s right hand side and their car, although no opening was seen in the object.” According to Harris in the FSR article, the creature “just passed through the side of the object.” Beer speculates that Bowles and Pratt might not have seen the creature emerge from the rear or the side of the object due to the brightness of the windows.
According to Beer, the creature, described by Pratt on the BBC program Nationwide as being 5 feet to 5 feet 6 inches tall, walked towards the car “in a normal manner” until it got to Bowles’s door. Bowles and Pratt said they thought it had its hand on the roof as it bent down to look in Bowles’s window. It passed its eyes over the dashboard and the engine started. The headlights came on as well, and they were so bright that Bowles and Pratt thought they would burn out.
Bowles said she was so scared that she clung to Pratt with her legs wrapped around his and buried her face in his shoulder. In contrast, she said that Pratt, who suffered from angina, became very calm. He is quoted by Harris in the FSR article as saying, “The man looked at me, and I think he transmitted some power which calmed me.”
What stood out to Bowles were the creature’s eyes, described as “piercing” and pink, with no pupil or iris. According to Beer, “She was convinced that it had left some kind of effect on her eyes, like one might expect from looking at the sun.” According to Harris in the FSR article, when Bowles looked away from the creature’s eyes, she saw spots of light.
The creature is described as looking like a human, with short hair in the front, long hair in the back that curled up at the end, sideboards (sideburns) that came down to a pointed beard, a pointed nose, and a normal mouth. Bowles said its hair had silvery flecks in it. It’s said to have been wearing a dull silver-colored coverall that Pratt described on Natiowide as resembling a “boiler suit.” Bowles said, “Its clothing shimmered as if being shaken by the wind.”
According to Beer, Bowles yelled, “Look out Ted, he is going round your side!,” but Pratt didn’t see the creature when he looked towards the rear. When he and Bowles looked to the front again, the craft and its occupants were gone.
Pratt offered to drive the rest of the way to pick up Bowles’s son, but she refused to get out of the car to switch seats. In the transcribed interview in FSR, it seems as though the car was still running and in neutral. According to Beer, Bowles put the car in gear and it wouldn’t move, and it was as if an invisible barrier was holding it back. She tried again, and this time she was able to drive out of the grass and onto the road.
Beer describes researchers being surprised that Bowles, after the fear she said she had experienced during the encounter, chose to return by the same road after picking up her son, as there was an alternative route that wouldn’t have taken any longer. Beer quotes Bowles as saying “Mr. Pratt phoned the BBC on our arrival home, mainly to find out if anyone else had phoned in.” Beer says this resulted in their appearance on BBC Southern Television the next day, following a woman, Mrs. Bates, who said she saw a man in a silvery suit on the side of the A-46 Bath Road the day before. According to Beer, “Subsequent information, however, suggests that this was a hoax perpetrated by students at Bristol University.
Next week: The second encounter.
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