Close Encounter Part 1

File: UFO59

Housewife Linda Jones, 49, considers herself to be an ordinary person. She is married to Trevor, who works as a heating engineer, and they have two children. One August evening 13 years ago, she was out walking with her daughter and son, aged 15 and five, collecting wild flowers along the banks of a local river. She was bending down looking at a plant when her son suddenly said, "Look Mum, the moon's coming towards us."

Linda saw an orange and pink ball of light heading towards them. "We all ducked really low in the grass," she recalls. "There was no noise, and at the last moment the object shot off to the right. It went over two hills and then appeared to drop vertically onto a field. I thought it was a plane on fire, so we started to run towards it. We got to within 30 meters and we could see this massive white light with an under-structure like a bridge, made of what looked like a mesh material," Linda says.

"It was hovering about a meter off the ground and appeared to have no windows or doors. It seemed to be as light as a feather, even though it was about 18 meters across. "Normally, I'd run away from any danger, but I felt myself being drawn towards it. My daughter was terrified and kept shouting, "Come away, Mum!" But my son was quite calm.

"As we were watching, the object kept appearing and disappearing - it was really weird. Eventually, we turned around and ran off. But as we ran, the grass blew over in front of us and the thing just followed us.

"The object then disappeared, but shortly afterwards we spotted it trailing a plane that was about to land at the nearby airport." When she got home, Linda found the skin under her eyes was burned and scaly. She and her daughter also had violet scars on their left legs.

Eighteen months later, Harry Harris, the lawyer who works with Roy Lake, contacted Linda and persuaded her and her daughter to be hypnotized. They gave their consent and, while under hypnosis, were videotaped. Both related the same chain of events. "I was running downhill and bumped into a tall human figure, then everything blurred," Linda says on one of the videotapes.

"I then experienced a sensation of floating. Next I was on a table being examined and I had a feeling of ice being put on my legs. There were six very tall people who looked like clones. They wore dark overalls up to their necks, their hair was dark and their eyes were black and almond-shaped."

Linda still cannot consciously recall this event. We have not named her children because her son is terrified of reliving the sighting and, although now a teenager, he sleeps with the light on. Linda's daughter is now married and refuses even to discuss the subject because she is afraid that people will mock her.

After the incident, Linda's periods stopped (she was 36 years old), and she has since had problems with a lump in her neck that keeps appearing a disappearing. "I even went into hospital to have the lump removed. When the surgeon came for a last check, he found it had disappeared, so the operation was cancelled. At the moment, it's back. I feel like an idiot because I know all this is not normal," Linda says.

"I just wish more people who have had similar experiences would come forward, because it would help me feel easier about the whole thing." XX