by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
This is the third part in a series looking at two separate encounters in Winchester, England, with UFOs and humanoids reported by two friends, 42-year-old Joyce Bowles and 58-year-old Ted Pratt. They reported that as Bowles was driving with Pratt in the passenger seat prior to their first encounter, Bowles’s Cooper Mini Clubman travelled diagonally as if it was floating after the steering wheel locked, and the car came to a rest on a strip of grass (known as a “verge” in England) next to the road. They said they then saw a craft hovering 18 inches above the ground with 3 humanoids behind a window or windows sitting lined up as if they were on a bus. A creature left the craft, possibly by walking through it, came up to the car, and seemed to have put its hand on the roof as it looked in Bowles’s window. It was said to have been wearing what looked like a silver “boiler suit” and to have had long hair that curled up in the back, sideburns that came down to a pointed beard, and brilliant red eyes with no pupils or irises. They said that during their second encounter, they found themselves standing next to Bowles’s car inside what they assumed was a spaceship. The creatures spoke with them, said they weren’t there to invade and that they’d be back. Their case got the interest of researchers from various organizations and there is one article examining it in the March/April 1977 BUFORA Journal and FOUR articles in the February 1977, Vol. 22, No. 5 Flying Saucer Review. In the course of the investigation, it came out that there were after-effects and that Bowles had a history of reported paranormal experiences and well as healing and psychic abilities. One of the researchers, Lionel Beer, reported in his article in the BUFORA Journal that Bowles’s history made him dubious, but he and the others didn’t discount her claims, possibly due to the influence the ideas of John Keel and Jacques Vallée were having on researchers at the time. Leslie Harris makes a reference to Vallée’s 1969 book “Passport to Magonia” in his article covering the case in Flying Saucer Review.
Harris’s article, “UFO & Silver-Suited Entity Seen Near Winchester” is based on his investigation, along with John Ledner, of the first encounter. Both were members of the Bournemouth Unexplained Phenomena Research Group, for which Harris edited the journal Scan. According to Harris, there were after-effects reported by Bowles and Pratt following their encounter. Pratt reported feeling “calm and relaxed for a week after the incident,” and Bowles said her car was performing better and that she no longer needed to use the choke. She also said she was shaken and unable to eat for three days and repeatedly suffered from a rash (confirmed by a neighbor and BUFORA investigator Frank J. Woods according to the BUFORA Journal article) on the right side of her face, “especially after visiting the location of the incident.”
Bowles NewsclippingAccording to Harris, during their questioning of Bowles on their first visit with her, it came out that Bowles had experienced frequent poltergeist activity throughout her life, but “Mrs. Bowles did not volunteer the information, nor did she appear anxious to discuss it.” Harris reports that they pursued the matter during their second visit.
Bowles said that objects would move or fly through the air in her house, at work, and even in her car. According to Harris, she pointed at some chips in the paint on a door and said they were made by candlesticks flying across the room. Bowles also said she saw a ghostly figure of a woman she described as a nun in a white robe. She said others had also seen the figure but not as well as she.
According to Harris, Bowles felt that the spiritual force was benevolent towards her, as she would find her car had locked itself when she had forgotten to. She also said she was a healer and that the poltergeist activity would increase until she used her ability. She said that afterwards it would stop for a period and then start and increase again.
Harris and Frank J. Woods in his article “CE-III at Winchester: Vehicle Examination” in that same issue, reported that Bowles received phone calls from a man trying to intimidate her into keeping quiet about her experience. According to Woods, the calls were taken by her in his presence. Woods reports that the caller told her he had read about her experience in the Sun and said the government wasn’t happy about the publicity and would be sending someone to see her. She was told to stop talking about the incident. The man called again and warned her that the creatures might take her again “and connect her up with wires” and he told her she should have nothing more to do with them. He called a third time, and according to Wood, “Each time she took the same line, saying, “this is a free country and I shall talk to whom I please and neither you nor the government will stop me.”
Wood then describes a visitor that stopped by that same afternoon. According to him, a young man from London named Richard Lawrence told her he had an interest in UFOs but was skeptical. Bowles told him about her encounter and found him to be pleasant. As she was with him, she got a call from another young man who said he was Richard Lawrence and she said he couldn’t be because she was with Richard Lawrence. It turned out that they were both named Richard Lawrence and both came from London just to see her. They met for the first time at Bowles’s house and Wood reported feeling “somewhat uneasy about the incident.”
At the end Harris’s article, he goes into a kind of speculation that wasn’t common at the time. He considers the idea that Bowles possessed some sort of “psychic energy” which manifested in various forms unless she used it for healing. He speculates that either Bowles’s energy produced the event or some unknown force used it “to manifest and become visible to the two witnesses.” He ends with a proposal that UFO researchers should consider “psychic powers” in their investigations and makes a reference to Vallée’s work:
Whatever the answer, we feel it should no longer be doubted that psychic power and manifestations have some connection, however tenuous, with UFO experiences and associated phenomena.
However, care must be exercised in this study which has no precedents or guidelines. There are many pitfalls on the road to Magonia.
Unfortunately for Bowles, the publicity she received regarding her reported encounters may have resulted in the loss of her job as “an attendant in the ladies’ waiting-room at Winchester Station, Hants” according to the article headlined “UFO Mystery Costs Joyce a Job” in the May 1, 1977 News of the World. It is reported there that “her British Rail bosses” told her she was “redundant” and that she blamed the “publicity given to her claims.” She is quoted as saying there were two vacancies at the station that she could have filled but that she wasn’t even considered. She said there was “a nasty campaign to get rid of me in other ways.” She described receiving insults over the phone about her “meeting spacemen,” having “razor blades put under my car tyres at the station,” and getting a warning from her neighbor who received a phone call from a person saying that Bowles might find a bomb under her car if she parked it at the station.
Her boss, Winchester Stationmaster Donald Baker is quoted as saying “I’d be very disturbed if I thought anyone was taking it out on Mrs. Bowles. I’ve simply been told that she isn’t needed at the station anymore.”
A local official of the National Union of Railwaymen was more expressive: “If they were removing Mrs. Bowles because of her interest in spacemen I wouldn’t stand by and let it happen. I’d do something about it – it would be too damn silly for words. We’re conducting our own inquiry into the matter.” We were unable to find any report as to the outcome of that inquiry.
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