By Steve Yarwood
I have fond memories of Wales. As a kid I holidayed there with my Mum and dad, atop a mountain in an old caravan and vividly remember heading down the mountain in the middle of the night as a massive storm hit and scared the heebie-jeebies out of us. More recently, about 5 years ago, I went to Wales with one of my oldest friends Nodge, to see another of my oldest friends Roo, who was staying in Portmeirion..the Italian village where the TV series The Prisoner was filmed. One of the most gorgeous places in Wales is the area of St Brides Bay in Pembrokeshire. I can almost hear you out there saying…what on Earth is this Mamma Jamma on about…I I expected to read about paranormal happenings, state of the art scientific news, UFO’s, conspiracies etc…not some kind of Judith Chalmers travelogue…Well settle down, pin back your lugholes and let Uncle Steve take you on a journey….a journey to events that kicked off big style in 1977 in and around the St Brides Bay area. These extraordinary series of events took place would put Broad Haven on a par with Warminster, Wiltshire, as one of the UK’s biggest UFO hotspots Both the Broad Haven and Warminster events are equally fascinating. Both had UFO’s and strange happenings and both were small communities that had to deal with strange and bizarre events.
Although the main events, in what has become known as The Welsh Triangle, began in 1977 there is reference to an encounter back in 1952. The encounter occurred near Castlemartin which is also in Pembrokeshire. Only the year is referenced as the exact date is unknown. Allegedly, a word that is used a lot amongst UFO and alien encounters, a Mr Thomas was taking a lunchtime stroll amongst the sand dunes near Castlemartin when he found a partially-concealed metallic object. As he got closer to the object he could see there were men standing there. One of them appeared to be in charge of the others and warned Mr Thomas not to get any closer to the object or he would be injured by powerful rays because he wasn’t wearing any protective clothing. In a manner that was very similar to the contactee encounters of the time they then began to speak to him about the fact that they were concerned that the Earth was on a self-destructive path. They told Mr Thomas that they had been visiting the Earth for hundreds of years. In a strange turn of events the visitors told him the name of their planet…aaannnddd (typically).. Mr Thomas then said he couldn’t remember it!
So ..back to 1977. One of the focal points of activity within “The Welsh Triangle” was Ripperstone Farm . Although the UFO activity seen at Ripperston Farmhouse happened some time ago, it is probably one of the most important events seen in Britain, and whilst it is not as famous as the Roswell incident many years earlier, it certainly warrants a great deal more attention.
I’ve been interested in UFO’s since I was a small kid after finding a book of my dads with some pictures of lights in the sky, but scared myself senseless when there was a picture of an alien. That picture always stuck in my mind and I eventually learnt that it was the famous Flatwoods monster.
In my mid-teens I remember getting a couple of books on this Welsh UFO experience. One was simply called The Welsh Triangle by Peter Paget and the other The Dyfed Enigma by Pugh and Holiday. At the time they were very absorbing books but on revisiting them recently I now feel that although it was interesting information they didn’t really seem to be going anywhere excepting relating stories that they had heard. That is not a sleight on the writers by the way, but in this present day of “serious” UFOlogy (a term often used by the writers making money from the subject) I fear the cases presented would get lost in the piles of other reports as they would not be classed as fashionable.
Whatever you think of the cases, the books and the people involved with the incidents surrounding the Welsh Triangle) you cannot fault the apparent honesty of all of those that related their stories.
In particular the Coombs family who seemed to be at the centre of most of the events. I always find that in a lot of UFO stories money changes hands quite a bit, sometimes ridiculous amounts and because of this, the larger the amounts, the fishier it smells. Look at recent cases of so called Alien Mummies or Photos of Roswell aliens and see what money was generated there and how much of a hoax both tales were. But I digress. The Coombs were never interested in profiting from the story and told their story matter of factly.
It should be pointed out that the UFO activity around the farm was not a one-off event, but a series of experiences that occurred between mid-January and mid-December 1977.
Although the Ripperston farm is situated in a rather isolated area of South Wales, there were (are) a number of high security (perhaps top secret) military bases close by. According to the records, UFOs were reported over these bases and the military were involved in some “unusual” activities and searches.
The Ripperston Farmhouse story began on the 14th of January 1977, when Pauline Coombs saw a “great ball of incandescent light, hanging motionless over the field near the cliff top”. It was not unusual to see strange lights in the sky because of the military activity, but this was different.
After approximately twenty minutes the light started to move, swinging from side to side (much like a pendulum) as it got nearer to the ground and disappearing below the cliff.
Pauline woke up her husband (who was sleeping in a chair at the time) and he went to the cliff top path to search for whatever the object was. Unfortunately, he found nothing.
The following day newspapers were carrying the story of UFO sightings. Although Billy didn’t really believe that his wife’s “light” was a “flying saucer”, he did admit that there were some strange things going on. He was quoted as saying “There were as many as fifty frogmen below the cliff. Unmarked army trucks, soldiers in camouflage. The Navy was there too… building some sort of path beneath the water. This doesn’t make sense!”
After this, both her and her children saw a bright light in the sky while driving home, which then ‘chased’ their car and ‘followed’ them home. It seemed the object caused the car’s engine to cut out just as it almost arrived home, causing Pauline to coast the rest of the way. Once she stopped she and the children hurriedly got into the house. The husband, Billy, saw it too that night when it was outside of their house, and soon their TVs started burning out and car started breaking down.
Clinton, Pauline’s eldest son, commented on a strange humming noise coming from outside the bathroom window which would enter and fill the whole room.
Two schoolboys claimed to have seen a dome shaped UFO with “pulsating green and yellow lights” hovering over a building in Haverfordwest. They also approached a blue light in a field near their school, which flew off at speed when they got nearer.
Fourteen other schoolboys also saw a landed UFO near their school and a “silver” figure near the craft. They described the craft as having ten or eleven windows and a kind of ramp leading from a door. This is another story that one day I will get round to doing an article on.
One Friday evening, as Pauline and Billy were watching a movie on television, Pauline was distracted by a flickering light in the window, and the whining of their dog Blackie. The light was still there after an hour, and Billy (who had fallen asleep) was woken by what he thought was car headlights. He then noticed a “shimmering figure” of a man at the window.
The figure was wearing a silver suit and apparently seven foot tall. It didn’t move and just seemed to be staring inside. Billy commented that there was only blackness where the face should have been, and it sounded as if the man at the window was wearing a helmet with a shaded visor (much like astronauts would use).
A little while later the figure at the window raised a gloved hand to the glass, which started to rattle. At the same time the lights dimmed and the television stopped working.
Billy managed to call his neighbour and the police, and when the police siren could be heard approaching the farm, the figure vanished.
The following morning Pauline discovered “a scorched rose bush in the flower bed and huge footprints beneath the window”
A newspaper reported a sighting involving a “Jelly Mould” shaped UFO in a garden near the farm, which was said to be fifteen feet high and fifty feet wide.
Shortly after reading this in the newspaper, Pauline’s friend, Rosa, telephoned to say that she had seen a dome shaped UFO in a field near the hotel where she worked. It produced a light and two tall, human like, figures got out and appeared to be searching for something on the ground.
The description of the figures seemed to match the one seen at Pauline and Billy’s window. Rosa said the figures returned to the craft after about twenty minutes and it flew off at great speed, in the direction of the farm.
Sightings of dome shaped UFOs and figures in silver suits continued, and on one occasion the Coomb’s son, Keiron, claimed to see a “tall dark, fluid-like shape” in the front room of their farmhouse. However, a sighting on the 12th of November was perhaps the most bizarre of all. After seeing a UFO (in the daytime) perform some spectacular manoeuvres, it suddenly plunged into the sea by the famous Stack Rocks.
Pauline took her kids with her to investigate this further from the cliff tops, and on the rocks below she saw two figures in silver suits, who she estimated to be between eight to twelve feet tall. She noticed a “door” in the rocks, where one of the figures emerged and they moved around the base of the rock. After the figures returned through the door, it faded away and could no longer be seen.
On returning home, Pauline received a call from her friend Rosa. Apparently, she had been looking at Stack Rocks with her binoculars and saw a “silvery” UFO fly into an entrance on the Rock. Sometime later silver-suited figures came out of the opening in the Rock and climbed down to the sea and back again several times.
This article will not do the sightings justice as there were many more instances involving the Coombs family and other people from the area. After one more sighting on the 19th of December 1977, the UFO activity came to an end at the Ripperston Farmhouse.
Did these events really happen? It would certainly seem so, but whether this involved aliens or advanced military equipment and personnel we cannot say for sure.
Considering these events happened more than 45 years ago, and not that long after the moon landing, it seems unlikely that the military would have such crafts. We can only assume that a more advanced race was responsible for these sightings, and were working with the knowledge of the military.
If this is true, it supports the belief of a cover-up and indicates how long this has been going on. It also asks the question of why this is being kept a secret. Do aliens want to keep their presence a secret from the general public, or do some of our leaders insist on this (for personal gain)?
The fact that people are still reporting UFO sightings might suggest that if aliens are involved, they are not that worried about being spotted. However, the authorities take a much more defensive role and make every effort to keep information from us.
It would be nice to think the authorities have our interests at heart in keeping this information secret, but knowing the government and politicians as we do, that is very unlikely.
