Long-Leggedy Beasties on Windwhistle Hill

For at least 500 years, it has been a well-established English tradition to tell fireside ghost stories during the Christmas season, especially on Christmas Eve (Weir and Clarke, 2018). 

Early evidence of this fact dates from 1553, when Thomas Kirchmaier wrote:

"For these three nights are always thought unfortunate to be;
Wherein they are afraid of sprites and cankered witches' spite;
And dreadful devils, black and grim, that then have the chiefest might" (Weir and Clarke, 2018).

This Christmas, my family and I have been staying close to my grandparents in Somerset, specifically near Crewkerne and Ilminster. This area of the country is famous for its apple orchards - haunted by a fairy being called the Apple Tree Man (Briggs, 1979), whose good-will is required for the continued fortunes of the farmers. Somerset also plays host to the legendary Glastonbury, reportedly the site of both an entrance to the fairy kingdom (Briggs, 1979), and the final resting place of King Arthur (Green, 2009). Unsurprisingly, the whole county is a hotbed of weirdness. 

In the spirit of the traditional Christmas ghost story, I went searching for any unusual happenings around Crewkerne or Ilminster to regale my readers with. I was not disappointed.

A Light in the Mist

Approximately halfway between the towns of Chard and Crewkerne lies Windwhistle Hill. It is apparently so named because, as one travels down the A30, the wind makes an eerie whistling sound as it passes through the beech trees that line each side of the road. These trees previously made excellent hiding spots for highwaymen, who would rob and murder unfortunate travellers between London and the West Country (Malloy, 2022). 

The hill is also haunted by the ghost of a local witch, who was struck and killed by a stage coach long ago. A 17th century pub sits atop the ridge, whose former cellar was supposedly used both as a body disposal ground for homicidal highwaymen, and as a magical trap for the Devil himself (Holt, 1986).

All this provides a gloomy context for what transpired one dark September night in 1977. It was 21:30 at night, when Mrs. Kate Walker, her husband, and her two sons, were travelling home along the A30 through Windwhistle Hill. From a vantage point approaching the top of the hill, the Walker family were all able to see a large orange light ahead of them. It was off the road to their left, at the further end of the hill (Rosales, 2016). 

It was initially partially cloaked by fog, and at first none of them thought anything of it. There was a power station and electricity pylons nearby, seemingly offering a plausible explanation for the otherwise strange sight (Malloy, 2022).

However, as they drove closer to the object, the true strangeness of what they were witnessing began to sink in. It was cigar-shaped and enormous, probably between 200-300ft long. It was hovering, completely static in the sky, approximately 800-1000ft above the left-hand side of the road. 

"It was cigar-shaped and enormous" [x]

To the right of them at this point was the aforementioned Windwhistle Inn. Kate remembers peering at the pub and seeing it in total darkness, save for a single light in a little upstairs window, perhaps unusual for that time of the night. When the family glanced back up at the floating light, it had moved to be almost directly above them (Malloy, 2022).

Suddenly, time seemed to warp around them. The next thing any of them consciously remember was a cyclist's headlamp visible through the fog, coming down the road the other way, seemingly from nowhere. It passed them and moved along the road to Crewkerne (Mitrovic, 2021). The family completed their journey with a thick atmosphere of unease hanging over them inside the car. When they arrived home, Kate realised that roughly 30 minutes were completely unaccounted for in their memories.

Years later, memories of that fateful night began to return to the family. As they had been watching the light above them, their car engine had abruptly died and the headlights shut off, leaving only the spectral glow lighting the cold darkness around them. It felt as if the world was somehow in slow motion, and Mr. Walker's desperate attempts to restart the engine failed (Rosales, 2016). 

The Walkers' younger son claimed to have seen a dark shape outside the car window, which he described as being extremely tall. He got the impression that it was human, even though he knew it couldn't be on a deeper level. The thing bent down towards them and stared in through the window. His mother was missing from the front seat (Mitrovic, 2021).

Just a few days after their initial encounter with the UFO over Windwhistle Hill, the family found themselves driving through the same area. They were clearly much braver than many of us would be. Perhaps their stomachs turned slightly when they once again saw something strange on the left-most side of the road. Two figures were there, one of which was lying down and the other was standing. Thinking that maybe someone had been injured, they started to slow their car when the standing figure abruptly stepped out into the road (Malloy, 2022).

The dark shape only took one step, but nonetheless managed to get one of its feet into the centre of the road. The other foot was still on the grassy verge. At this point, panic was likely setting in. The shape was inhumanly tall, and its legs were "horrendously long and thin" (Malloy, 2022). Mr. Walker swerved to the far side of the road to avoid the figure, and then put the pedal to the floor. None of them looked back, but they all agreed that "no one could possibly have legs that long".

"A 17th century pub sits atop the ridge" [x]

Spectres Among the Singing Trees

Gloria Heather Dixon, of the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA), has done extensive research into the Walker family case. With the help of fellow investigator Robert Moore, four further reports from the area around Windwhistle Hill were uncovered.

A woman told of how she and her husband had found themselves transfixed by the sight of a very large silver object, shaped like a spinning top, near Windwhistle Hill. It was November of 1959, and the couple first caught sight of the UFO at 11pm one night, and then felt as if they were somehow unable to stop watching it until 9am the next morning. They got the impression that they shouldn't tell anyone about what they had seen (Malloy, 2022).

Either in 1976 or 1977, a lorry driver felt his vehicle mysteriously escape his control while passing through Windwhistle Hill. He distinctly remembers the dreamlike sensation of his lorry somehow hovering over the road. An anonymous witness also told Moore that something very similar to the Walker family's experience had befallen her parents on the hill in 1975 (Malloy, 2022).

Sometime in 1991, a farmer in Cricket Malherbie (some 3km northwest of Windwhistle Hill) along with her husband and grandson, recalled seeing a tall humanoid figure peering through the window of their farmhouse. A few days later, the witnesses caught sight of a "saucer-shaped object" (Malloy, 2022).

Finally, a strange tidbit is present in Jenny Randles' (1990) book Mind Monsters. An unnamed service engineer was driving along Chard High Street (four miles to the west of Windwhistle Hill along the A30) at 8am on the 18th of February, 1975. He looked above him to see a winged animal, looking like a giant bird with a wingspan between 12-14ft. 

The edges of the thing's wings were alternately shaded, and Randles claims to have seen a sketch made by the witness which depicts the creature as resembling a long-extinct pterosaur. 

Tantalisingly, Randles also makes brief mention of "another UFO flap" in the area at the time, about which I can find no more information (Randles, 1990).

Bibliography

Briggs, K.M. (1979) An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures. London: Allen Lane.

Green, T. (2009) Arthuriana: Early Arthurian Tradition and the Origins of the Legend. Louth: Lindes Press. 

Weir, A. and Clarke, S. (2018) A Tudor Christmas. London: Jonathan Cape. 

Malloy, T. (2022) The Spooky Somerset Road That is ‘a Hotbed for Supernatural Sightings’, Somerset Live. Available at: https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/spooky-somerset-road-a-hotbed-6887653 (Accessed: 27 December 2025).

Holt, A.L. (1986) East Somerset: Romantic Routes and Mysterious Byways. London: Charles Skilton.

Mitrovic, G. (2021) UFOs, Humanoids and Strange Phenomena of England. Admit Hub Ref Service. 

Rosales, A.S. (2016) Humanoid Encounters 1975-1979: The Others Amongst Us. CreateSpace. 

Randles, J. (1990) Mind Monsters: Invaders From Inner Space? Wellingborough: Aquarian. 

Honey, Aliens Shrunk the Kids

With a title like that, I really can't blame you for clicking on this article, and I really hope that you won't be disappointed. Today I have another case from the UFOs Northwest archives which involves the apparent abduction of an 18-year-old and his brother by otherworldly beings, which seemingly resulted in the two young victims becoming spontaneously shorter overnight...

The New Gloucester Abduction

It was 1973, the dreaded Year of the Humanoids, when an anonymous witness, his brother and two other friends - who were driving close to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Maine - suddenly became aware of a bright UFO following them, visible in the window of the driver's side of the car. They were on the road towards Middle Range Pond when they first saw it, and they promptly decided to make a 'sharp left' towards Oxford, Maine in what was presumably an attempt to evade the odd object. After they got to the Oxford Plains Speedway, they turned around and headed back the way they had come.

They had just reached the apple orchard by the intersection between Route #26, Outlet Road and Quarry Road (the latter of which was known as Shaker Village Road at the time) when they noticed that they had seemingly slipped into the Twilight Zone. There were no other cars on the busy and usually well-travelled road, and the Sun had gone down 'awfully fast'. The stars were apparently abnormally large in the night sky, with the witness saying that it felt as if he could 'reach out to them'. The world around them appeared to have gone completely silent - with the usual chirping of the crickets being totally absent. In this odd state, the witness could feel and hear his heart pounding in his ears, and he said that it was like they 'were inside a vacuumed bottle'.

The UFO suddenly made itself visible once again - hovering above what is still the only tree that is placed slightly ahead of its fellows in the orchard. It was a large, round object which 'lit up orange' and was totally silent. The four dumbstruck witnesses just sat and stared at the aerial enigma for what they thought at the time to be roughly one hour. However, when they finally decided to return home, the person who would later report the incident to UFOs Northwest noticed that 'it became daylight way too soon', and requested that his brother - who was driving the 1967 Tan Chevy Nova in which the group was travelling - redirect them to the Auburn, Maine police department so that they could report the bizarre happening. However, they were apparently about to witness further strange events.

This is sadly where the narrative gets a little cloudy. The witness said that he would write back to the organisation detailing his further experiences, but failed to do so if I am interpreting the records stored on the organisation's website correctly. However, he did describe (confusingly in an earlier letter) the bizarre physiological effects that this event had on him and his brother. Trying to report their abduction - it was an abduction, the witness clarifies, saying that they 'were taken onboard' and released one day later - was apparently a mistake. Instead, he elected to go to a local hospital for a checkup, seeing as his nose was bleeding, the whites of his eyes had gone a 'deep orange', and his lungs ached when he breathed. He was understandably 'very concerned' about this, but his shock would only get greater when the nurse read his height as 5ft 9 inches, seeing as he was supposed to be over 5ft 10 inches tall. Telling her that she was incorrect, he had the nurse re-check the measurements only to find that he had seemingly lost an inch of height overnight.

Map of the terrain around the abduction

When he and his brother returned home, their mother was apparently very vocal in her alarm at the state of her children. She demanded to know what had happened and remarked that they were both shorter and that she wanted to know what had happened to their eyes. Presumably panicking at this point, the witness ran to his bathroom mirror and was horrified to note that, indeed, he 'didn't look right'. In an effort to prove to the local authorities that this had happened, he implored them to check his high-school medical records and the photographs taken on his eighteenth birthday, roughly two weeks before the apparent abduction event. He asked them to compare how he looked now and how he was recorded as being back then. 'How many 18-year-olds lose an inch overnight?'

Analysis

I'm not sure what to make of this case. I know that at least one case in which the height of a UFO witness spontaneously changed after the event, and so this report is not unique. The language used by the witness in the letters transcribed on the UFOs Northwest website make me think that he is either possibly executing a rather-immature hoax, or is genuinely emotional and panicked to an extreme degree by the memories he now possesses. I think that I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, especially since he said that 'the emotional experience of my abduction never stops'.

Source

UFOs Northwest - Man Recalls Abduction Experience, He Sustained Injury from Experience

The Vanishing of Alfred Beilhartz

The child in question

It was July 2, 1938 - and the Beilhartz family had decided to go camping deep within the Rocky Mountain National Park as a summer vacation. On the day in question, they were going to Estes Park to do some fishing - and were hiking along a trail close to a creek by the name of Roaring River at approximately 8am. Their son, Alfred Edwin Beilhartz, was roughly 4 years old at the time, and was walking along at the back of the line formed by his family. His parents would eventually realise that he had seemingly fallen severely behind and was now no longer anywhere they could see him. This would begin a desperate 10-day-long search operation throughout the region - but Alfred Beilhartz would never return...

Bloodhounds and the Damned Dam

His parents briefly performed a preliminary search to try and find their missing son (he was just one son of apparently ten children in the Beilhartz family), and when they had no luck they decided to call in the park service for assistance. The rangers were operating under the assumption that Alfred may have fallen into the nearby creek and drowned, and so they proceeded to dam the river. This dam consisted of a fence line adorned with barbed wire - there was no way that his body could be carried downstream and not be instantly found by the team of rangers searching for the unfortunate child. When this returned no results, they dragged the bottom of the river for good measure, but also found nothing to indicate where Alfred had gone. After five days, they gave up searching the river.

His parents told the rangers that they were certain that he must have been abducted. They knew that their son wouldn't just leave his family - and they were (unsurprisingly) unconvinced that he had fallen into the river. At this point, the rangers called in some bloodhounds from the nearby Colorado State Penitentiary. According to David Paulides (one of the usual suspects when it comes to discussing cases such as this) claimed that the bloodhounds were able to follow the boy's scent '500ft uphill' from where his parents had been when he vanished. This is obviously exceptionally bizarre, seeing as he disappeared when he was behind them as opposed to in front of them as the scent trail suggested. More bloodhounds were apparently called in, and followed the same paradoxical trail, only to lay down in defeat when they reached a fork in the road. The search was eventually called off after a total of 10 days spent looking for the missing child.

The Devil's Nest and the Mystery Man

Meanwhile - on July 3rd - William J. Eells and his (unnamed in the newspaper report) wife were also hiking in the Rocky Mountains National Park. They had made it quite far up the Old Fall River road when they got tired and decided to stop for a rest. While resting, they decided to look up at the beautiful slopes of Mount Chapin - only to see a young boy sat on a rock in a section of the mountainside known as the Devil's Nest. This spot was six miles west of where Alfred Beilhartz had intially vanished from, and Mr. Eells expressed his disbelief that any child could have gotten up to that spot without assistance.

The child - presumed to be Alfred at this point - apparently made a 'shrill noise', walked out to look over the ledge and then left the scene. Paulides says that it was as if he was jerked back out of view, but Wikipedia instead asserts that he simply walked out of sight. The Eells decided to retreat to the carpark, where they heard the news about the missing boy. Upon returning home, they checked the newspaper and confirmed that the photograph of Alfred Beilhartz within it matched the child they had seen in the Devil's Nest. They promptly drove back to the park and talked to the rangers, but the rangers stated that it would've been 'totally impossible' for Alfred to have made his way up to the slope in question - and that the rangers themselves couldn't even manage it themselves in under two days and without carabiners and ropes. They did eventually send a group of over 150 men to search Devil's Nest, but they came back empty handed.

The next development in this increasingly-bizarre case came on July 8th, when the FBI announced that it was performing forensic tests on a piece of 'soiled' bandage that had been found in an abandoned cabin in the park. The disclosure of this finding was prompted by the insistence of the boy's parents that their son must've been kidnapped. Apparently Alfred had a blister on his foot at the time he had vanished, and his mother had bandaged it using similar material. It is unclear what came of this test, but I can be fairly sure that nothing did - otherwise there would be information available about it.

The Beilhartz family

On this same day, a woman by the name of Mrs. CA Linch who lived in Big Spring, Nebraska, allegedly saw Alfred and a mysterious man walking along a highway together as she and her husband were driving from Big Spring to Ogallala. She told her brother-in-law WB Linch (of Lincoln, Nebraska) about her sighting, and he then went to speak to a Denver detective sergeant by the name of Fred Renovati two days later on behalf of his sister-in-law. He said that she 'was positive the boy was the one whose picture she saw'. Seemingly nothing came of this odd lead either.

Held for Ransom?

Alfred Beilhartz had been missing for five months when his father was given a ransom note in November. It contained instructions for leaving $500 (equivalent to $8,900 as of 2018) in a tin can one block away from the Beilhartz family home in return for the safe return of their missing son in 24 hours, and also ominously said that 'the boy doesn't take to us'. However, by the 29th of that month the police were fairly certain that this was a hoax. This belief was all but confirmed by another police announcement announcement a day later saying that they had investigated two possible suspects - who were accused of attempting to extort money from the family. The suspects were not named and were apparently not being held, but here is where the trail of information about the Beilhartz disappearance stops - and so it is difficult to know what happened next. I imagine that it would've been announced if the suspects were confirmed to be guilty, but the ransom note was also never confirmed to not have been a hoax. 

Sources

Disappearance of Alfred Beilhartz on Wikipedia and all of the newspaper clippings provided as sources for that page. Some of the stranger details of this case were, of course, pointed out by David Paulides in an interview he did for MUFON on the 19th of February 2013 - which can be enjoyed here.

The Peter Pan Possession: The Curious Case of Cornelio Closa

A photograph of the boy in question as an adult

The year was 1965, and 'The Invisible Boy' had moved on with his life as best he could after what had happened to him. Two correspondents from the United Press International arrived at his house to interview him about the bizarre events, but he was retiscent at best about retelling the story in the company of strangers. What had taken place had happened approximately thirteen years previously, and the Invisible Boy was now the visible man. He was twenty-five years old, married, and the father of two children. Vicente Maliwang and his photographer Eduardo Martinez desperately wanted to speak to him to gather his description of what had happened to him, and he reluctantly agreed. His father, twenty-three-year-old sister and eighteen-year-old brother accompanied him. Before he spoke to the journalists, he told his wife to remove the children from the house. She already knew about the event, but he wanted his children never to know. He admitted that he would prefer to forget that it had ever happened. It felt like a nightmare. Now fully prepared for his interview, the Invisible Boy sat down and started to speak...

The Unearthly Child

An illustration of a pixie by John Bauer

Cornelio Closa Jr. first took the plunge into what he would later describe as being like a 'frightful dream' made real in September of 1951. He was only thirteen years old, and was in sixth grade at Zamora Elementary School in the city of Manila. He and his friend Rudolfo Carmine were walking home from school across a large field one day, when Cornelio suddenly came to a dead halt. Slowly, he started to point towards a seemingly-empty spot just in front of a nearby brick wall. Rudolfo described Cornelio's eyes as 'almost bulging out of their sockets'. Cornelio said that she was beautiful. He was looking at a girl roughly his age, dressed in white with long blonde hair that reached down to her waist. Rudolfo was baffled, unable to see anything where his friend was looking.

The girl's bare feet floated above the grass as she gently moved to be beside Cornelio. Although she never opened her smiling lips, Cornelio would later say that he was able to 'hear and understand' what the strange girl was saying to him. When she touched his hand, he claims that he felt different - very light. His awareness of his surroundings faded. To Rudolfo's horror he suddenly seemed to 'disappear from sight'. It was only a temporary vanishing - and Cornelio said that he had no memory of what had happened when he was away with the girl. He eventually returned home, and chose not to tell anyone about the experience.

After this first bizarre meeting, the usually mild-mannered Cornelio started behaving 'like an animal'. He became sullen, angry and antagonistic - and would now regularly fight with his parents and refuse to eat food. His mother said that she was 'losing control' of him with each passing day. She gradually got used to his new behaviour, however, but this begrudging acceptance was shattered on one particular evening when he seemed to appear 'particularly flushed and sick'. The doors and windows of the house were locked, and yet Cornelio suddenly vanished from sight - disappearing into thin air right in front of his mother. She was horrified. Cornelio would later tell Maliwang that the blonde girl would appear to him often, and that when he was with her he felt that he was somehow no longer real despite everything around him still seeming to be normal.

His schoolteacher started to complain to his parents that he was skipping school, and his father was faced with no choice but the take his son's vanishings extraordinarily seriously. He even enforced accompanied marches to school, but even this could not prevent the strange girl from snatching him away from his classroom. The girl regularly appeared to him in school, holding out her hand and filling Cornelio's body with a strange 'sensation' before the only thought in his head was the need to go with her. He didn't have a choice in the matter. His family locked all the doors and windows at home, but this did nothing. He would continually vanish - if the door was closed, he would simply walk through it 'as if it were open' - before hearing the cries of shock from his classmates after he disappeared. Sometimes he would disappear for three days, having no concept of his own as to for how long he had been missing.

A photograph of Cornelio Closa

Cornelio hid objects around the house and stole money from his parents. He even leapt at his father in a wild fury and smashed dishes. Desperate, his parents resorted to sending him off to a national mental institution and then to a welfare center, but neither of these branches of mental health professionals had any ideas as to what was going on. Authorities assured his parents that he was just a normal boy, and said that he would be better off living with his parents before sending him home. Having been given no answers for their son's violent behaviour, they were faced with no choice but to bring him to a juvenile correction facility. There, he was so disruptive that he had to be tied down to his bed before finally being sent home once again. His parents had now resigned themselves to living with a 'monster' instead of their son.

There were regular disturbances at school, including punch-ups. His teacher, Mrs. Agospi, had previously found him to be a 'quiet boy' but now thought of him as a 'nuisance' that she didn't want in her class. He would fight with anyone at even the slightest provocation - sometimes being able to take on three or four boys much larger than him and never be held down by them. Agospi said that it was as if Cornelio had 'superhuman strength'. A few days after this bizarre fight, Cornelio was called up to the blackboard at the front of the classroom to give a presentation. He stood at the board for a few minutes before simply evaporating into thin air. He was solid, then transparent, then invisible. The entire classroom saw it, and the teacher immediately resigned. This turn of events, according to Agospi, caused Cornelio to laugh 'a hideous kind of laughter' that sounded as if it didn't even come from a human being, let alone a small boy.

Sleep had also become impossible for him - he would feel as if his clothes were burning when he tried - and then he would see the girl enticing him to follow as soon as he opened his eyes. According to the testimony he would give Maliwang, there were many times when he and the girl would float around the city. Together, they went to the cinema several times and visited the International Fair that was being held in the city at the time. He never felt 'exhausted or hungry' when he was with her, and nobody else seemed to notice them on their phantasmal sojourns around Manila. They would sometimes go to restaurants together, and vanish conveniently when it was time to pay for the food they had ordered.

There were occasions where the whole family would be in the front room of their house, with the children playing on the floor. While everyone was watching, Cornelio would vanish and leave behind a foul stench that caused the other children to start coughing and vomiting. When he vanished, his parents would be dismayed at their son's absences which would sometimes last for two days or more. He would reappear in his bed, seemingly sleeping peacefully despite the windows and doors having been literally nailed shut at this point.

The Exorcism of Cornelio Closa

With all this chaos unfolding - and obviously being reported in the local media - it was not long until religious leaders started taking notice. An Evangelical missionary named Dr. Lester Sumrall took a great interest in the case, and he visited Cornelio's home and talked to the teacher who had quit after his disappearance. She had apparently suffered a signficant mental breakdown as a result of having witnessed the event, and never recuperated enough after it to start teaching again. Sumrall also hired policemen and other investigators to verify the complete truth of the matter, and the policemen returned to him with sworn affidavits. Reverend HA Baker also travelled from the United States to the Philippines to investigate the case, contacting Cornelio himself as well as his parents, Mrs. Agospi and his neighbours. He wrote to Sumrall to confirm the latter's belief that the case was genuine - it apparently went on for a full year, getting worse and worse.

A photograph of Cornelio from Sumrall's
documentary

A Methodist preacher tried to help Sumrall, but said that the boy had disappeared right out of his hands. Sumrall decided to venture onto the front-line of the case and perform what was effectively an exorcism on the child. Cornelio was brought to an Evangelical service whereupon he was intensely prayed over by Sumrall himself. Lord Jesus, we plead Thy holy blood; be free in Jesus Christ's Name! These prayers brought the haunting to a grinding halt - and the next time Cornelio caught sight of the young girl, she morphed into a hideous being that seemed to be extremely angry. The girl vanished for good after this.

Uncrossing the Wires

Yes, my reference to a cross in that subtitle was a pun. This is the obligatory section of this admittedly-fantastical article in which I discuss the credibility of my sources. As you might've guessed with the sudden prominence of Dr. Lester Sumrall in the narrative towards the end of the article, an interview with him carried out by Christian author Michael H. Brown is one of my main sources for the information I have displayed here. Sumrall is an Evangelical missionary, and so of course has a vested interest in creating and promoting the belief in evil spirits for the purposes of soul-saving. This might've given him a motive to lie about what had happened with Cornelio, and my other source (trusted paranormal author Brad Steiger) lists some of the events as having happened differently to what was related by Sumrall. For example, Sumrall's description of the events seems to be one year ahead of when Steiger claims the events took place. Cornelio's age also varies by a factor of one year between the different sources. Steiger says that Cornelio's trip to the mental hospital was able to cure his bizarre affliction, but Sumrall says that this did nothing and that Cornelio actually had to be incarcerated afterwards. The only mention of anything resembling an exorcism included by Steiger is the brief note that 'two pastors' added to the curing of Cornelio's demonic affliction after his trip to the mental hospital.

Steiger also focuses much more on the disappearance aspect of Cornelio's case, while Sumrall (understandably) instead chooses to place the emphasis on the possession symptoms experienced by Cornelio. Then again, Steiger's mention of the case is in the context of a chapter on interdimensional travel and mysterious disappearances. A documentary on the case has been made by Sumrall, and although I must admit that I have not yet watched it, I highly doubt that he would promote it if it didn't support his claims. I think that Steiger was focusing on one specific aspect of a much broader case, and so - just this once - I am siding with Sumrall in terms of how the story should be told.

Sources

'The Awful Thing in the Attic' by Brad Steiger
'An Incredible Case of Possession' on spiritdailyblog.com

Vengeance of the Djinn Orbs

Rosemary Ellen Guiley and Philip J. Imbrogno received a letter 'several years ago' from a woman who had grown up in Turkey. She told a harrowing story about the time when her husband and quite a few of his friends had decided to contact the djinn as something fun to pass the time. They didn’t believe that the djinn actually existed at this point, and so was just wanting to do something to mess around. They went about this by seeking out a man who was apparently capable of calling to the djinn - it would, predictably, end very badly...

Orbduction! 

Photoshopped rendition of this case

One of the husband's friends had a friend who was 'quite religious' and lived off in a nearby mountain village. This took place sometime in the late nineties on a summer evening in Istanbul - and the group of partygoers decided to visit the supposed djinn summoner.
Apparently some pre-Islamic Arabic rituals exist which can be used alongside readings from the Quran to achieve contact with the djinn and bring them into our plane of reality. The man was reluctant to use his abilities to summon the nebulous spirits forth from whatever bizarre realm they had originally emanated from, but ultimately the others - none of which really believed that the djinn were real - were eventually able to persuade him to perform the rite.
The man started chanting Islamic prayers, reading out the incantations from the Quran for several dramatic minutes before the windows were suddenly blown open by an invisible force and three 'glowing orbs' flew into the room. The orbs shone so dazzlingly bright that the men had to shield their eyes against the solar glare. These odd light-forms were also able to easily phase back and forth through the glass window panes. These alleged djinn were apparently 'very angry' that they had been interrupted by the summoning, and requested to know why the man had done so. It is unclear if they actually spoke or if this communication was telepathic and only between the djinn and the summoner. The men (plural in the source article, thus suggesting that it was possible that the djinn had actually spoken) had no idea what to say to this - and so the entities only got angrier.
The house's lights started flickering on and off, and loud banging noises could be heard on the walls and door. The carnage briefly seemed to subside when the djinn left the scene - allowing the terrified men to regain their composure. However, they hadn't realised that the one of the men had vanished during the commotion. Perhaps in denial, the other men concluded that he must've simply been frightened by the admittedly-horrifying manifestation and had chosen to run somewhere and hide there. His fellows 'looked everywhere' but were completely unable to find him.
Hours later, the solemn party heard someone crying out from their balcony. When they got there to investigate, they discovered the formerly-missing man in the foetal position, dripping with sweat and hysterical with fear. He told them that the djinn had stolen him away to their world as punishment for the unnecessary summoning. He said that the djinn's world was a 'terrible place' and that he was so utterly traumatised by the experience that he wouldn’t say anything more about it. Suffice to say, all members of the party now believe that the djinn are definitively real, and 'want nothing to do with them ever again'.

Notes on the Nature of the Djinn
It is of course interesting to note that this event would've been filed as being extraterrestrial or perhaps even demonic activity if it had occurred in a different cultural region - but seeing as it occurred in an Islamic region, it was described as being a manifestation of the djinn. Perhaps the same can be said for the aforementioned demons and extraterrestrials - what they appear as just depends on who is seeing them and what their beliefs are. It is no more correct to call these entities aliens than djinn or faeries, in my opinion.

Source 
'The Vengeful Djinn' by Rosemary Ellen Guiley and Philip J. Imbrogno