The Warminster “Thing”
Today, we travel to a quiet market town in Wiltshire that, during the 1960s, suddenly became one of the most famous UFO hotspots in Britain.
This is the story of the mysterious Warminster “Thing”.
It could be considered one of the most extraordinary UFO flaps in British history. The phenomenon transformed Warminster into a centre of modern British skywatching and attracted UFO researchers, journalists, tourists and believers from across the country and beyond.
But unlike much of American UFO lore, with its stories of crashed flying saucers, grey aliens and alleged government conspiracies, the Warminster mystery began as something far more abstract, sensory and deeply eerie.
It began not with something people saw…
But with something they heard.
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PHASE ONE: THE SOUND — CHRISTMAS MORNING, 1964
In the early hours of Christmas morning, 1964, a series of bizarre and frightening acoustic disturbances were reportedly heard around Warminster.
One of the most famous witnesses was **Marjorie Bye**, who was walking to an early church service at around 6 a.m. when she reportedly heard a terrifying sound above her.
She described a strange noise that seemed to intensify rapidly, accompanied by powerful vibrations. Contemporary and later accounts describe the phenomenon using comparisons such as giant hailstones hammering on a roof, a chimney being torn apart or heavy objects being dragged across gravel.
According to the story, the vibrations became so intense that Marjorie was temporarily unable to move normally and had to cling to nearby railings for support.
Other residents would come forward with their own accounts of mysterious noises, vibrations and strange disturbances. Animals were reportedly terrified, and some later accounts even claimed that birds had fallen dead from the sky—although firm contemporary evidence for this particular claim is difficult to establish.
Whatever caused the sounds, witnesses couldn’t see an obvious source.
And so the mysterious phenomenon became known simply as…
“The Thing.“
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PHASE TWO: THE SKIES COME ALIVE — 1965 AND BEYOND
By the summer of 1965, the mystery had changed.
Now, people weren’t just hearing strange things.
They were seeing them.
The skies around Warminster—and particularly the hills surrounding the town—became associated with reports of unidentified aerial phenomena.
Illustration of The Warminster Thing by police constables Roger Willie and Clifford Waycott.
Witnesses described an extraordinary variety of objects: metallic discs, cigar-shaped craft, brilliant lights and glowing orange or amber orbs.
Some of these mysterious lights became known as “Amber Gamblers.“
Then came the man who would become forever associated with the Warminster mystery.
Arthur Shuttlewood
Arthur Shuttlewood was a journalist working for the local Warminster Journal. Initially sceptical of the reports, he began interviewing witnesses and investigating the increasingly strange stories emerging from the town.
Eventually, Shuttlewood became convinced that something genuinely extraordinary was happening.
He later claimed to have personally witnessed hundreds of UFOs—some accounts put his total at more than 800 sightings between the 1960s and 1973.
Through his newspaper articles, lectures and books, Shuttlewood helped transform Warminster from a quiet Wiltshire town into one of the most famous UFO destinations in the world.
Cradle Hill became particularly famous as a gathering place for skywatchers. Groups would spend hours—or entire nights—watching the darkness in the hope of seeing one of the mysterious objects for themselves.
By the late 1960s and into the 1970s, Warminster had become a genuine mecca for British UFO enthusiasts.
THE GORDON FAULKNER PHOTOGRAPH
The “Thing”, taken by Gordon Faulkner
One of the most famous pieces of alleged evidence emerged on 29 August 1965.
A 23-year-old factory worker named Gordon Faulkner claimed to have photographed a strange flying object over Warminster.
The photograph appeared to show a dark, saucer-shaped object in the sky and was eventually published by the Daily Mirror, bringing the Warminster mystery to national attention.
Gordon Faulkner with his camera.
Was it genuine evidence of an unidentified craft?
A trick of perspective?
A hoax?
More than sixty years later, the photograph remains part of the enduring Warminster legend.
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SO WHAT WAS THE WARMINSTER “THING”?
For decades, believers, sceptics, researchers and historians have tried to explain what really happened in the skies—and streets—of Warminster.
There is no single proven explanation.
But several theories stand out.
THE MILITARY AND SALISBURY PLAIN
Warminster is a garrison town located beside Salisbury Plain, one of Britain’s most important military training areas.
This immediately provides several possible explanations for at least some of the phenomena.
Artillery fire, military aircraft, helicopters, flares and other training exercises could potentially account for some of the strange noises and lights reported around the town.
The 1960s were also the height of the Cold War, when military technology was developing rapidly and secrecy surrounding defence activities was commonplace.
However, this theory has its own problems.
Could military exercises explain every reported sighting, every unusual sound and every alleged close encounter?
Or does it merely explain some of them?
NATURAL PHENOMENA AND “EARTH LIGHTS”
Another possibility is that at least some of the mysterious lights had a natural origin.
Researchers have proposed that unusual luminous phenomena may sometimes be associated with geological stresses, electrical activity in the atmosphere or other poorly understood natural processes.
The controversial **earth lights hypothesis** suggests that geological strain might, under certain circumstances, be connected with unusual luminous phenomena.
However, this remains scientifically debated, and there is no conclusive evidence that such a mechanism explains the Warminster sightings.
Ball lightning, unusual atmospheric conditions and astronomical objects could also potentially account for some individual reports.
But again, the question remains:
Could one natural explanation account for the entire Warminster phenomenon?
MISIDENTIFICATION, EXPECTATION AND MEDIA ATTENTION
Once Warminster had gained its reputation as a UFO hotspot, people arrived specifically hoping to see something extraordinary.
Satellites, meteors, aircraft, planets, military flares and other conventional objects can appear extremely strange under the right conditions—particularly at night, without clear points of reference.
Arthur Shuttlewood’s newspaper articles and books undoubtedly played an enormous role in creating the Warminster legend.
But does that mean nothing genuinely unexplained happened?
Not necessarily.
It simply means that once a place becomes famous for UFOs, separating the genuinely anomalous from the misidentified, exaggerated or perhaps even deliberately fabricated becomes incredibly difficult.
DID THE SIGHTINGS CONTINUE?
Yes—but the phenomenon changed.
As the great Warminster UFO wave faded, Wiltshire became famous for another mystery.
Crop circles.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Wiltshire became one of the world’s most famous centres of the crop-circle phenomenon. Some UFO enthusiasts connected these formations to the same mysterious forces supposedly responsible for the Warminster Thing.
Others pointed to human circle-makers, and many crop circles have indeed been demonstrated or admitted to be man-made.
But Warminster’s association with UFOs never completely disappeared.
In May 2017, a local resident filmed a mysterious light near Cley Hill. Then, in August 2017, another witness reported and filmed a strange green and red object over the area.
Possible explanations included aircraft, drones and other conventional objects—but the sightings demonstrated that Warminster’s reputation as a UFO hotspot was still very much alive.
More than sixty years after the strange sounds of Christmas morning 1964, people still look to the skies above Warminster and wonder.
EVIDENCE RATING: 6/10
The Warminster Thing scores relatively highly because of the enormous number of witness reports spanning several years, contemporary newspaper coverage, alleged photographs and the fact that multiple people sometimes witnessed strange phenomena together.
However, there are major weaknesses in the evidence.
The sheer variety of reported objects suggests that we’re probably not dealing with one single phenomenon. Military activity on nearby Salisbury Plain provides plausible explanations for at least some sounds and lights, while astronomical objects, aircraft, satellites and misidentification almost certainly account for others.
And as Warminster’s fame grew, so did the possibility of exaggeration, expectation and hoaxing.
Yet I’m reluctant to dismiss the entire Warminster mystery.
Something happened there.
The real question is whether it was one extraordinary phenomenon—or dozens of completely different events that became woven together into one incredible legend.
RICHARD’S VERDICT
For me, the Warminster Thing is one of those cases where I don’t believe there is a single explanation that covers everything.
I think some of the lights were probably aircraft, military flares, satellites or other conventional objects. Given Warminster’s proximity to Salisbury Plain, it would be unreasonable to ignore the possibility that military exercises contributed to both the strange sounds and some of the sightings.
I also think that once Warminster became famous as a UFO hotspot, people began looking at the sky with heightened expectations. Things that might normally have gone unnoticed suddenly became potential UFOs.
But I’m not convinced that explains everything.
What interests me most are the original reports of the strange sounds and powerful vibrations. If the accounts are accurate, what caused them? Were they military in origin? An unusual natural phenomenon? Or something else entirely?
The Gordon Faulkner photograph is intriguing, but a photograph of an unidentified object isn’t, by itself, proof of an extraterrestrial craft.
So my verdict is that the Warminster Thing was probably a combination of genuine unexplained events, military activity, natural phenomena and misidentification—all amplified by media attention and the growing UFO culture of the 1960s.
But buried among all those reports, I think there may still be a small number of genuinely unexplained cases.
And that, for me, is what makes Warminster so fascinating.
Tomorrow, the Cornish Owlman Mystery
The truth may be stranger than the stories.
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