My Local UFO Crash - Mystery Files

It was a dark windy night in North Wales - The year, 1974. About thirty miles from where I live, over the Denbigh Moors and nestling beneath the Berwyn Mountains was the tiny village of Llandrillo. Llandrillo, it has to be said, is a very quiet place, very few unusual things ever happen in Llandrillo - In fact not much happens at all. Tonight however, all that would change.

Tonight would see an incident that would shock and intrigue people for years to come. Something huge and baffling would occur. Allegations of conspiracy would be voiced as the government first denied anything had happened, then offered changing stories over the years. There are people living in Llandrillo today that still maintain that the government's official version of events was not what they witnessed. So, what really happened? Was it something mundane and ordinary? or was it something extraordinary? - Here is the story - you decide for yourself.

In was a cold dark night in Llandrillo North Wales. The date was January 23rd 1974. The time was a little after 6.40pm and the villagers were going about their normal everyday business. Two friends, Geraint Edwards and Elgar Hughes noticed something strange in the sky, which they said was saucer shaped and glowing coal-red. the object remained motionless in the sky for at least 10 minutes before suddenly shooting off at high speed, parallel with the horizon. The friends shrugged their shoulders and continued on their way to the pub to tell their friends what they had seen.

Shortly after 8.30 it began. There was a huge explosive bang and a massive brilliant light was seen over the Berwyn mountains. This was followed by a violent shaking - like a medium sized earthquake causing ornaments and objects in many of the houses (as well as in one pub in Bala - ten miles away) to crash to the ground. Firefighter Adrian Roberts was thrown from his settee by the ferocity of the tremor.

People were rushing out into the street, they assumed that there had been some sort of plane crash. High up on the Berwyn Mountains strange lights could be seen.The local emergency services went into overdrive. A helicopter was scrambled from RAF Valley (Where Prince William is now stationed) and sent to the scene, and retired North Wales Police Assistant Chief Constable Elfed Roberts, who at this time was a Police Sergeant, was racing towards Llandrillo with his superior, shortly after the tremor when they saw the mysterious lights on the mountain-side, he said: 'As we were driving, all of a sudden we saw this green light in the sky ahead of us and it seemed to be an arcing light, but it was very sudden, totally unexpected, different to anything ever seen before.'

District Nurse Pat Evans who lived locally at Llanderfel received an emergency phone call from the Main Police Headquarters at Colwyn Bay telling her that a plane had crashed and asking her to attend the scene. She assembled her medical kit and set off for the location she had been given. There was no one around to look after her two teenage daughters, so she took them with her. She took the lonely B4391 road which skirts the south of the Cader Bronwen area. It was ten o clock on a cold winters night and no other vehicles were to be seen.

Pat took a track up the hillside towards the top of the range and stopped within a few hundred feet of something remarkable sitting on the ground that she said "absolutely staggered" her .It was an extremely large sphere, glowing orange which she described as "quite intact". She and her daughters just sat there watching it for some ten minutes wondering what to do - There was no possibility of a mistake - this was clearly some sort of UFO.

The Military forces eventually came down to her vehicle and told her to go away. She explained that she had been sent there by Police HQ and asked what was happening. No answer was forthcoming. The soldiers told her that she was unauthorised to be in that place and must leave immediately. Fearing for her daughters safety she complied and was escorted down the mountain.

For several days afterwards, the entire area was cordoned off only accessible by military personel. Local sheep farmers were becoming angry as they were even prevented from attending their sheep on certain areas of the mountain.

A few days after the incident, the Bala hotel that had suffered breakages during the tremor played host to a group of "strange men" who stayed for several days. They were not local people and were noticed in the community because they helped fill the Hotel which was usually virtually empty during the winter months. They seemed to carry some official status and made many trips to and from the "crash site" on Berwyn mountain, but refused to speak of what it was they were doing. Then as quickly as they arrived - they left, leaving the locals none the wiser.

There have even been stories by alleged military staff that say they were part of a truck convoy called to the Berwyn mountain to crate up and remove non-human bodies which they transported to the Porton Down research facility in Wiltshire!

The authorities deny that any military activities took place that night, saying that the local inhabitants are confusing events with a plane crash that took place several years earlier. The original explanation for the incident was that it was an "earthquake". The strange men, they said were part of a geological survey, and the strange lights on the mountain were simply poacher's lights. There was no explanation at that time for the phenomena in the sky other than "they could have been earthquake lights".

After a number of "tweaks" over the years, the official explanation now is that the light phenomena in the sky was a meteorite which exploded over the Berwyn mountain which created the bang and flash. The aerial explosion was the reason why there was no impact crater or debris at the site. The ground-shake was created by a landslide which happened to coincide with the meteorite burst. The lights on the mountain continue to be attributed to poachers.

But many of the locals who actually witnessed the event are unhappy with the "official" explanation. One of the poachers who was on the mountain that night insists that the lights they saw could not possibly have been their lamps because they had finished for the night by that time and their lamps were switched off.

Local farmer Huw Lloyd, 48, who was a teenager at the time of the incident, said: 'Whatever it was, it was kept quiet. I think there are things we should know about. And things that have happened have been covered up.

The District Nurse Pat Evans remains angry. She is adamant that there was a massive cover-up of some still-unresolved incident on that barren mountainside.

Geraint evans has said 'It was definitely a flying saucer. It was a pity I didn't have a camera because it was there for at least 10 minutes, just hovering - If we were coming back from the pub, people would be saying, "They've had one or two." But we were going TO the pub"