ALAN GODFREY

1. Public Record

28 November 1980, early, rain. Burnley Road, Todmorden, West Yorkshire. PC Alan Godfrey, near the end of a night shift in a Ford Escort panda, had been sent after cows loose on the Ashenhurst Estate. He found no cows. He passed the early works bus, turned for one last sweep, and at the bottom of Ferney Lee Road saw what he first took for a bus that had slid across the tarmac. Closer, it was not a bus. A diamond or spinning-top shape, about 20 feet wide and 14 high, a bank of dark windows, the lower half turning, hanging five feet off the road. Headlights and the blue beacon came back off metal. Bushes at the verge were shaking. Both radios were dead.

He sketched it in his issue notebook because he did not trust his head to keep the shape. Then a white flash. The next clear minute he was further down the road, 30 to 100 yards depending on the telling, the object gone, something like fifteen to twenty-five minutes missing from the watch, one of his new boots split down the middle. The patch of road where the thing had hung was dry in the rain.

Todmorden already had the Adamski coal-yard death that June. Godfrey had been on that paper too. This is a different file. Same town, different hour, different man. In 1981 he sat for hypnosis and described a bearded figure who gave the name Yosef, small lamp-headed forms, and an examination. The contemporaneous paper is the notebook, the dead radios, the dry tarmac and the split boot.

I thought it was a bus at first, but I remembered I had already passed the early morning service, and as I got nearer it very clearly looked nothing like a bus.

2. Date of Incident

28 November 1980, about 05:00. Notebook sketch that shift. Hypnosis the following year.

3. Location

Burnley Road at Ferney Lee Road, Todmorden, West Yorkshire. Approximate 53°43 N 002°06 W. Same town as the Adamski page. Do not merge the two.

4. Official Narrative

West Yorkshire Police: an officer reported an object. Official narrative is a policeman and a sketch. A local Futuro house has been offered as the thing he drew. Godfrey has said he knew the difference between a house and a shape blocking the A road. The abduction layer is later and not a charge sheet.

5. Witness Layer

Godfrey alone for the road object. Other officers later said they had odd nights in the valley that year. Keep the notebook as the first layer. Keep Yosef in the second.

It was about twenty feet wide and fourteen feet high and was diamond shaped. The police blue beacon was bouncing back off it, as were my headlights.

If I had got out of the car and thrown a brick at it, it would have gone bang.

6. Recovery Logistics

A notebook page. A split boot. No recovered craft. Later session tapes.

7. Assessment

A British police close-file with a drawing made on duty. That is the rare part. The later session is common. Keep the sketch above the regression. Keep Adamski in his own folder. Two strange nights in one small town is not proof they were one night. The dry patch in the rain is the detail the weather cannot easily swallow.

8. Materials & Remains

Notebook sketch. Police statements.

9. Key Personnel

PC Alan Godfrey : Night duty. The sketch.

West Yorkshire Police : Received the report.

Later session clinicians : Second layer only.

10. Aftermath

Godfrey left the force in time. Todmorden kept both stories. Tour buses learned the road. He has not recanted the first look.

11. Current Archive Status

Status: Police notebook sketch, Todmorden, 28 November 1980. Later session layer.

Confidence: High that Godfrey sketched an object on duty that morning. High that this is not the Adamski coal-yard file. Low that a craft was recovered on Burnley Road. Low that hypnosis is a substitute for the missing minutes.

Filing note

A constable, cows that were not there, a diamond on the tarmac, a row of windows, two dead radios, a notebook, minutes gone, a split boot, a dry patch in the rain. Same valley as a coal-yard death six months earlier. Different man. Different paper.

He drew it because he did not trust his head to keep it. Not a later voice in a chair. A policeman using the same notebook he used for registrations.