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| Illustration by Traci Shepard |
A Portal on the Dorset Coast
In 1969, Leslie Harris was a member of the Bournemouth-based Cosmic Research Group. Led by former government official Francis E. Hurley, this tightly-knit group maintained a library of books, pamphlets, and tapes relevant to UFOs. They conducted skywatches in the summer, and could often be seen delivering lectures to public meetings regarding flying saucers, approaching the issue from a metaphysical point of view [1].
Between these activities, Harris dedicated his time to investigating local Dorset reports of the strange and unusual. It was in this capacity that he first encountered L. Druce.
As far as Druce could remember at the time, it all began in October of 1967. He and his brother-in-law, B. George, were driving home through the autumnal dusk after an afternoon's fishing off the beautiful Portland coast. They had been accompanied by eight of their friends, but had eventually gotten separated from the rest of them on the road, seeing as George was an inexperienced driver currently being taught by Druce. They were passing through Lytchett Minster when George first noticed something odd.
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| "A cigar-shaped form, coffee brown in colour with a row of regular yellow lights" |
Whatever it was, it was big. It was floating over St Peter's Finger Garage [2], and appeared to be about 70ft long and roughly 200ft off the ground. The car's engine abruptly stalled, leaving both men staring helplessly out of their window at a cigar-shaped form, coffee brown in colour with a row of regular yellow lights along it, resembling windows. Several others gathered around them, leaving their cars and staring up at the night sky in bewilderment and rapture. They watched the thing for five minutes, becoming increasingly unnerved until they decided to leave the scene.
Luckily, their car was now starting as if nothing had happened. They set off down the road, only to see the UFO ascend slightly before beginning to follow them. It crossed from one side of the road to the other in order to keep pace with them, and they eventually stopped their car again when they reached the Oasis Cafe. The flying enigma came to rest in the sky above a police station opposite the cafe, and Druce decided to run into the building to fetch an officer. When a policeman accompanied him back outside, the object had vanished into the night sky.
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| "It crossed from one side of the road to the other in order to keep pace with them" |
However, just as the two men were about to explain what had happened, their need to do so was extinguished by the reappearance of the apparition. This time it looked completely different, resembling a blazing mass of coloured light, composed of bands of multiple different colours. It shone red, yellow, green, and blue in the dark night. Awestruck, the policeman staggered back into the station to alert his compatriots to the unfolding situation.
Now two policemen were watching the thing, and it began an uncanny dance. The top section of the vaguely conical vision split off from the main body of the object, and went beneath it before rejoining. After flickering out of existence and back again once more, the UFO began to slowly move away from the witnesses. It suddenly gained speed and shot out of view, like a bullet from a gun, leaving all four men stood on the street with their sense of reality irrevocably shattered. The policemen took statements from the brothers-in-law, but they never heard anything more about it.
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| "A blazing mass of coloured light" |
Druce told Harris that his legs had felt weak for the duration of the sighting, and that the hairs on his arms had stood up. George vomited on the journey back home. The men had perhaps been initiated into something that night.
Harris also notes that George had since seen an orange sphere "four times the size of a dinner plate" traversing the clouds near Old Harry Rocks in Studland, Dorset. He had also seen a floating yellow "scratch" in the sky on September 25th 1968, which he estimated to be one inch wide and eighteen inches long [3].
When You Notice It...
After witnessing the incomprehensible in the skies over Lychett Minster, Druce had become an enthusiastic believer in the reality of extraterrestrial visitation. On these grounds, he had maintained contact with Leslie Harris, and so he notified her on July 20th, 1971 that his brother-in-law had photographed something neither of them could identify five days previously. Harris promptly went to speak with George, and was able to disclose that his full name was Brian Arthur George, and that he lived in Poole.
It had been the evening of Thursday, July 15th, somewhere between 22:30 and 23:00, and George was just about to turn in for the night. His wife, Sallie, and his three-year-old son, Rory, were already asleep, leaving him as the sole conscious occupant of the house. In what was a normal nighttime ritual for him, he went over to his window and looked out at the night sky.
As he did, he caught sight of a white, glowing object plotting a slow course across the sky. It seemed to be moving diagonally away from him, from left to right in his field of vision. The UFO appeared approximately the "size of a tennis ball at arm's length" and was roughly 30° above the horizon, probably moving west from a southeasterly direction, as seen in the southwest-facing window. George watched it for a few moments in confusion, before remembering that he had a polaroid camera nearby.
Clutching the blocky body of his Polaroid Swinger II in his hands and opening the window, he pointed the camera at the UFO and took a photo with a dazzling flash. Anxious to resume his observation of the saucer, he pulled the developing photograph out of the device slightly before it was finished and looked back up at the sky. The mysterious craft had vanished, but its image had clearly impressed itself onto the film. White patches had appeared along the top of the photo, likely caused by rushed viewing.
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| Brian George's full 1971 photo |
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| Closeup of apparent flying saucer |
Harris persuaded George to part with his sole copy of this photo so that he could get prints made, which he published in Flying Saucer Review in October of that year. He also reported that between his visit to Poole in July and the publication of his article, members of the George and Druce families had been having further strange experiences, including several dramatic UFO encounters. Brian George and his sister (Mrs. Druce) were also said to have some limited ESP abilities, including George's apparent skill for predicting the sex and time of birth of unborn babies [4]!
It Notices You
What was to occur throughout the rest of 1971 was definitely not without precedent. Not only had Druce and George been tailed by a cigar-shaped object over Lychett Minster in 1967, but George had also had another eerie encounter sometime around 1970 while hunting rabbits on Canford Heath in Poole. He claimed that he suddenly became aware of two bright lights, one red and the other green, descending towards him. They were very close together, but he couldn't see any solid structure behind them. They made no audible sound. As one would, he initially thought he was watching an aircraft, but the lights were not flashing and continued to descend towards him at a steady 45° angle.
He started to grow uneasy as the lights got closer, and they appeared to land behind a clump of trees some 500-600 yards away. George was terrified at this point, fleeing the scene promptly.
Roughly one year later, Brian and Sallie were driving to Poole along Longfleet Road at 13:30, when they both noticed a "rocket-shaped" object climbing steeply into the southern sky above Poole Hospital. It was bright white in colour. Both witnesses momentarily lost it in the glare as it crossed over the sun, and soon after Brian was unable to continue observing it due to needing to drive.
Slightly over two weeks after Brian took his striking photograph, on Saturday, July 31st, Druce's mother and his sister Jenny saw a flying saucer. Jenny was the first to see it, looking out of her lounge window just after 23:00. Excited, she attracted her mother's attention and they both ventured outside the house to watch the strange object. A large, white craft shaped like a child's spinning top was floating at an elevation of approximately 75°. It moved slightly to the right and lost a little altitude before continuing to hover, with a slight vertical oscillation.
As they were observing the perplexing thing from outside on the street, another object started to emerge from it. This one was about a quarter of the size of the saucer, and resembled a string of five red-orange lights. Harris described it as worm-like when he briefly mentioned this sighting in his October article. Only the lights could be seen, but it gave the impression of a solid object. The streetlights went out as the serpentine apparition slowly and silently drifted away from them. In total, it took about 15 minutes to disappear. The saucer remained hovering, and the women watched it for a few more minutes before both grew tired and decided to retire to bed. Neither of them knew of Brian's photo.
Two days later, on August 2nd, Druce and Roy George (Brian's brother) were driving along the A31 towards Ringwood in their removal van. Three white lights approached them from their left at roughly 21:50, and began to keep pace with their vehicle. They were described as approximately the size of an old penny at arm's length, and appeared to be attached to a circular object, despite this not being visible. They noiselessly flew at an elevation of roughly 150-200 yards.
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| "They noiselessly flew at an elevation of roughly 150-200 yards" |
The lights initially travelled in a straight line until the van cleared a line of trees, at which point they swooped much closer to it, getting to roughly 100 yards away. George began to slow the vehicle, intending to stop for inexplicable reasons. Druce was terrified and yelled at him to speed up, at which point he accelerated rapidly and the objects overtook them. They flew at least 600 yards ahead of the vehicle before turning back on themselves to the left, and abruptly retreating the way they had come [5].
Enter the Pyramid
It was at this point that Druce's two stepsons, Roderick (13) and Terence (14) told Harris that they had been through a frightening and inexplicable experience of their own some seven years ago. Seeing as Harris was writing in 1972, that would mean that the event took place in 1965. Terence had woken up in bed in the middle of the night, and had seen something utterly bizarre moving at the foot of his bed. It had a pyramidal body, taller than it was wide, composed of many-coloured triangles that slotted together, as well as spindly black 'arms' ending in crab-like claws. These appendages moved in an unsettling "waving" motion.
Terence screamed in baffled horror, and Roderick woke with a start. He also saw the pyramid, just before it suddenly vanished. Mrs. Druce also confirmed to Harris that she remembered Terence being terrified of something in his bedroom that night.
The next afternoon, the brothers were walking home across a carpark when they saw it again. This time, it was entirely black in colour, and seemed to be stood next to a parked car. It was halfway up the car's window in height. Roderick had a side view of the thing, and he said that it had a sort of "beak" protruding near the top of its triangular form. Horrified, both boys ran off, and claimed to see the creature turn to watch them as they left [6].
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| Terence's drawing of the pyramid in his bedroom (left) Roderick's drawing of the pyramid by the car (right) |
The Wheel of the Year
The families' houses were perhaps unusually quiet throughout the rest of August and September, although I can imagine that they were all holding their breath for the inevitable return of the alarming phenomena. This return indeed came on Tuesday, October 12th. Druce's daughter, Suzanne, woke blearily from sleep at 3am on that day, and soon became conscious of a "whirring, swishing" sound that seemed to be coming from outside. Wandering over to her window and wiping the condensation from the glass, she saw nothing, despite the continuing noise.
Perplexed, she ran to her parents' bedroom and woke them up, whereupon they too could hear the weird noise. Mr. Druce told Harris that it sounded like the regular swishing of a skipping rope, and appeared to be passing overhead. He also looked outside, but was similarly unable to see anything unusual.
Precisely a week later, it was between 22:00 and 22:30 at night when Druce and his two brothers-in-law were driving along the M3. When they got between the Reading intersection and Winchester, they started noticing vibrant red points of light appearing in the night sky. Some of these were round, some were oblong. Some were stationary while others moved about in all different directions, with some being very close to the ground. They seemed to randomly appear and disappear.
Although there were no more than 50 lights in the sky at any one time, the men counted at least 200 in total.
At this point, they had stopped on the deserted motorway and were watching the UFOs dancing in the darkness from outside their van. A policeman rolled up behind them and told them to move along. No-one heard any sound, and it is implied that either the policeman was unable to see the lights, or they had vanished by the time the trio got back on the road.
They continued driving until the Winchester bypass, where something even more unsettling happened. They stopped again, presumably at Brian's request, who abruptly left the vehicle and marched off into a pitch-black field by the side of the road. Thankfully, he swiftly returned, but appeared terrified. His pulse was racing, and he was so agitated that he was unable to speak for a moment, but was eventually able to answer when Druce asked him what was wrong. "Come see for yourself!"
Druce accompanied Brian out into the field while Roy remained in the van. They waded through the presumably wet October grass, before catching sight of something glowing white in the darkness. It was roughly 40 yards away, and was shaped like the letter M, 10ft tall and between 7-8ft wide. The incomprehensible thing seemed to silently hover some 2ft above the ground, and was slowly progressing over a rising incline to its right. Deeply unnerved, both men elected to return to the van.
When later questioned, Brian told Harris that he had initially only seen one of the arches, but that he had seen the full M-shape when he returned to the scene with his brother-in-law.
On October 24th, a red oblong hovered in the air in full view of the Druce household. Mr. Druce's two sisters, mother, and brother all saw the aerial geometry very clearly, as did everyone who lived in the house next door. It remained stationary in the air for many minutes before exiting the scene, and Druce's sister phoned him while watching it, telling him to look in its direction. He was unable to see it.
As mentioned earlier, Harris noted that Brian George, Mrs. Druce and her husband's mother have all had ESP experiences. The latter apparently had a gift for recognising certain places despite having never visited them before. Mr. Druce told Harris that he was growing tired of the inhuman attention, stating clearly that he was "fed up with it all".
As if granting his wish, no more reports of strange activity were forthcoming from the Druce or George families. Whether this was due to lack of reporting or genuine cessation of anomalous events, we will likely never know [7].
Sources and Notes
1. Topside, No. 32 (Summer and Fall, 1969)
2. St. Peter's Finger Garage no longer exists (or at least is not findable on Google), but there is a pub in Lychett Minster called St Peter's Finger. Perhaps this is the same location?
3. Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 15 No. 6 (November-December 1969)
4. Flying Saucer Review: Case Histories, Supplement No. 7 (October, 1971)
5. Flying Saucer Review: Case Histories, Supplement No. 9 (February, 1972)
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
