An Alien Murder Mystery?

I remember the following story from when I was a teenager growing up in Yorkshire. I've looked up a few references to see what has happened with regards to the case in the twenty five or so years since the events took place. I more than half-expected to find an answer to what actually happened in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, back in the summer of 1980 but I came up with a big fat zero.

Here is a short summary:

Zigmund Jan Adamski, a polish born miner who lived in England since the end of the second world war, went missing after going to the shops at Tingley, near Wakefield on the afternoon of Friday 6th June 1980. At 3.30pm he left the house to go and buy some potatoes. He exchanged a friendly greeting with a neighbour and was never seen alive again.

Five days later, he was found dead in a coal yard near a busy railway line, twenty miles away in Todmorden. His body was lying on top of a 12 ft high pile of coal and was minus his shirt and wristwatch.

He was 56 years old at the time of his death and was happily married to his wheelchair-bound wife, Lottie, since 1951. On the morning of his disappearance he had gone to Leeds on a shopping trip with his cousin, who had come over from Poland with her son for a holiday and was staying with the Adamskis at their home. The very next day, on Saturday 7th June, he was due to give his god-daughter away at her marriage and he was very much looking forward to this.

So far this looks like an everyday, run-of-the-mill, mysterious death case right?

I'll let the BBC continue with the story:

Alien Abduction Claims in Yorkshire

On the back of his head, neck and shoulders were mysterious burns which attracted lots of attention.

James Turnbull, the coroner who dealt with Zigmund’s death, says it’s the biggest mystery of his career.

The coroner was baffled because although Zigmund had been missing for five days, he only had one day’s growth of beard.

He says, "The question of where he was before he died and what led to his death just could not be answered."

James also said a strange ointment that appeared to have been used on Zigmund’s burns could not be identified by forensic scientists.

Exhaustive checks failed to reveal any record of Zigmund having been treated at any hospital during his missing five days.

It was at this point that questions began occurring, regarding the origin of this inexplicable ointment and who applied it to Zigmund.

What the above article doesn't mention is that he had apparently not being sleeping rough, his body showed no other injuries or signs of a struggle, he had eaten well but not on the day he died and he had died the morning of the day his body was discovered. His death was by natural causes.

Todmorden is located near the Pennine hills in Yorkshire and is an area known for its many UFO sightings.

The next bit shows that even the BBC can make mistakes...

It was not just the usual investigators, the police and coroners, who were attracted to this case.

One of the most famous UFOlogists of all time, also called Adamski offered his own amazing theories on the tragedy.

He believed aliens from outer space abducted the Yorkshire miner by mistake.

I guess they must have used a Medium to extract this statement. George Adamski had been dead for years when this event happened! The above probably came from a local wannabe-ufologist and was relayed verbatim by the BBC reporter.

The next event was the one that really fuelled the UFO-fire and involved the policeman that had originally been called to the coal yard to investigate the discovery of Adamskis body.

In November that year, five and a half months later, PC Alan Godfrey was in his patrol car in an area just one mile from the coal yard where Adamskis body was found. At just after 5am in the morning, PC Godfrey came across what he described as a diamond-shaped UFO in the middle of the road. He attempted to radio his headquarters but was unable to do so. Suddenly, he found himself 100 yards down the road and the UFO had vanished. In addition, his boot was split and he had apparently 'lost' fifteen minutes.

MUFORA, a Manchester-based UFO study group heard about the incident and subsequently regressed Godfrey under hypnosis, after which details of an alien contact and medical examination aboard the UFO were revealed.

And so a UFO minor-legend was born. Was the unfortunate Zigmund Adamski the victim of an alien examination that caused him to die of fright, or is a more earthly reason the likely culprit? If so, where did he receive the burns?

The West Yorkshire Police have never solved the case.

The following links contain more details of the case, including an exhaustive investigation by none other than Jenny Randles which has an extremely bizarre conclusion!

BBC Inside Out - Alien Abduction Claims in Yorkshire

Jenny Randles Investigation

Zygmunt (Sic) Adamski - Alan Godfrey and the UFO

Ufo's over Calderdale

Thoughts?

Right on ZT. Now ya got me lookin through my (original)copy of her book The UFO Conspiracy-The First Forty Years even though this kinda sidetracks my own current investigation(I'll give ya a hint-Roswell,Oak Island, Dropa).
The copyright is 1987 so maybe there's something there.
The Randles piece was impressive as usual.

Zep Tepi,

Thanks for clearing up the George Adamski involvement in this case for me. I had read about this case before that also mentioned George Adamski and didn't even realize then he had been deceased for 15 years.

Originally posted by longhaircowboy
Right on ZT. Now ya got me lookin through my (original)copy of her book The UFO Conspiracy-The First Forty Years even though this kinda sidetracks my own current investigation(I'll give ya a hint-Roswell,Oak Island, Dropa).
The copyright is 1987 so maybe there's something there.
The Randles piece was impressive as usual.

Cheers LHC. The story is in that book, on pages 153-154, Chapter 25 of the Barnes & Noble hardback edition.

I hope that saves you some time for your own investigation, which sounds rather intriguing

Originally posted by lost_shaman
I had read about this case before that also mentioned George Adamski and didn't even realize then he had been deceased for 15 years.

I know, I was very surprised that the BBC (and others) included that statement in the piece when it is so obviously false. It would only have taken them a few minutes of research to realise it could not be true.

You have voted Zep Tepi for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

I had not heard anout this case before, maybe because I live in the US and our media filters a lot of things out.

Anyway, I am now interested and will do some more reading and research into this. Thanks for bringing this to me.

- One Man Short

Thanks One Man Short, let us know if you uncover something not posted here

Thanks Zep Tepi, I found it pretty easily. That book is a pretty good one. If you hadn't mentioned her name I probably wouldn't have bothered lookin for the book cause I got so many I wouldn't have any idea where to look. I think I might actually have a copy of just about every book written on UFOs. It can get confusin.
Here's another hint on my investigation-glyphs.
Great post ZT

Thanks again LHC, I'm looking forward to reading the fruits of your investigation.

As you can probably guess from my name and avatar, I'm quite interested in glyphs, well, hieroglyphics anyway

Any idea what might of become of Alan Godfrey the policeman?
Randles references him as possibly being related to the Adamski case then sends ya back to page 69 to relate his own experience. He seems to have been abducted right out of his car. She then uses his testimony as backup for the Hill case. Man what a crazy story.

Here is some more information on the Zigmund Adamski case and (former) PC Alan Godfrey's encounter.

All photos, except where stated, are used with the kind permission of Steve Johnson. See "The Policeman and the Aliens" below for link.


Zigmund Adamski


The unfortunate Zigmund Adamski

His body was lying face-up on the pile of coal and although his shirt had been removed, he WAS wearing his jacket, which was fastened out of sequence. He was also wearing his string vest underneath the jacket. The body was in clear sight of anyone entering the coal yard and wasn't there when workers arrived in the morning to take a truck.


Reconstruction of the discovery of the body

The look on Adamski's face was described as that of abject fear by PC Godfrey and his widow Lottie also mentioned that he looked very frightened in death. The coroner investigating the case also mentioned the contorted look on the victim's face and commented he was either extremely frightened or in tremendous pain immediately prior to his death.

The mysterious substance that had been applied to the burns on his neck (mentioned in the first post) was actually tested by a Home Office (UK Government) laboratory and even they couldn't identify it.


Newspaper article on the Adamski case


The Death Certificate



Alan Godfrey


Recent photo of Alan Godfrey (Looking a lot like David Icke!)

The link below has some extensive information regarding Alan Godfrey, including the immense difficulties he encountered as a result of his encounter and his career as a policeman thereafter.

The Policeman and the Aliens
A few months after finding Zygmund Adamski’s body, on the night of 28th November 1980, Alan was in the patrol car in Todmorden, looking for some cows that had gone missing from a farmer’s field. Unable to locate them, he was about to return to the station when, through the rain, he saw a bright light in the road ahead of him. It was about 5am and he thought it might be a local, early morning bus. As he neared, though, he saw that it was a large, oval object that was spinning above the road so rapidly that it was making the bushes at the verge shake violently. He stopped the car and took out his notepad and sketched the object. Then there was a brilliant flash. The UFO had gone and he found himself driving the car, further up the road.

He turned around and headed back to where he had seen the UFO, but found nothing, save for a patch of road that appeared to have been dried into a spiral pattern. It was later learned that he had ‘lost’ about fifteen minutes during that time.

Fearful of making an official report and being classified as a loony, Alan changed his mind when he discovered that somebody else had seen something strange that night. A driver on the same road as Alan, at roughly the same time, but three miles further along, had seen a brilliant white object and had been so affected by it that he had called the police in Todmorden. Also at roughly the same time, police officers from Halifax had seen a bright, glowing object descending from the sky towards Todmorden.

Buoyed by these matching statements, Alan filed his official report. He was surprised when the police released his story to the local papers the following week!

The picture below is a cgi reconstruction of the UFO that PC Alan Godfrey encountered on the 28th November 1980. It is used with the kind permission of the creator, David Sankey.

www.davidsankey.com...

That's clearer than in Randles book. When I went back to the Godfrey incident and read through it it took a turn to the Hills and left poor Alan.
He does look like Icke and younger than I had imagined. Guess he just aged well like me.
Thanks again for a wonderful post.
Care to try Mcminneville?
Maybe I'll just go through my library if I get time.

Originally posted by longhaircowboy
Care to try Mcminneville?

I remember reading about the Trent photos a long time ago. My personal belief is the case is a hoax.

The follwong link provides a good deal of information, from the 'debunker's' perspective:

The Trent Ufo Photos - Robert Sheaffer

From the above link:

...They were investigated and left unresolved by the Condon Report.

My unpublished 1969 paper on this "classic" case (often referred to but never before available) caused the Condon report's chief investigator of that case to reconsider his conclusion.

A lot of the links at the above page are no longer working (updated 2002), but the link highlighted in the quote above is the author's investigation into the case and makes for interesting reading.

From the Investigation:

In light of the above, it is clear that the witnesses’ story of supposedly photographing a UFO cannot be accepted at face value.

There is actually an annual UFO Festival held at McMenamins Hotel Oregon, McMinnville that celebrates this and other cases. The next one is May 20th this year. The above page also has a link to a newsletter special (pdf file) with more information on the Trent UFO's. As is to be expected, this is a more biased view on the events

Hope that helps!

"This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psyhological, and physical appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disc-shaped, tens of metres in diameter and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two witnesses."
Dr. William K. Hartmann, final conclusion to analysis of McMinnville photos in 1969 Colorado University report

Bruce Maccabee and William Spaulding both concluded after computer-enhancement analysis it was not a model suspended by thread.
They did not however(to my knowledge) express an opinion as to what it was. I'm still lookin through some books so maybe I can find something.
Yup usein my old dusty tomes rather than the inet.

this is funny because my uncle was telling me this story just this afternoon, when we were debating "UFO'S".. He told me the story of the miner who was strangely murdered and dumped on a pile of coal, saying that it spooked other miners at the time (he was a miner himself) I live in pontefract, West yorkshire, about 6 miles from wakefield and i havent heard about this incident until today.....Nice post!!

(P.S. wasn't this just a few years before the great miners strike?? Perhaps its one more reason to join the union..."we strike for fear of abduction, and want protection" he he...)

Thank you so much for sharing info on this case. I think I know most of the big cases but had never heard of this one. It is extremely interesting.

I don't know if anybody is aware on the board of my own experiences; however, I have never come to any real harm.

I read of this Mr. Adamski, not George Adamski of 'Flying Saucers are Real' fame. I got the impression that he was shaken by those who took him. It sounds like the substance was some kind of analgesic.

On one of my encounters, I woke up with a strange sweet, orange substance on my leg that didn't go onto my clothes. I was in pyjamas that night. When I went to touch it, it turned to water and evaporated.

I am pretty much use to their visitations. Adamski, maybe found the ordeal more than he could bare. His own fear could have frightened him. It sounds like they were trying to heal him and he died from fear and shock, before the substance could work.



[edit on 7-2-2006 by rachel07]

reply to post by Zep Tepi


Yes, good write up for the Adamski case, and I also wondered about the George Adamski quote on the BBC website.
My own investigation of the case, off and on, over the last few years inluded a conversation with the coroner James Turnbull, and I also appealed for info from readers of the Yorkshire Evening Post and Psychic News.

My investigation of the Adamski case is featured in my next book Paranormal West Yorkshire (Tempus Publishing) due out on Halloween, in a chapter entitled THE BODY ON THE COAL PILE.

I even asked a trance medium to help me solve the case by getting in touch with the spirit world to help me find a solution, which I thought extremely unlikely, and as I guessed, I found out nothing new. But it was still fascinating and I have included this as a rather curious postcript to the chapter.

Any further comments about the Adamski case (Zigmund - not George!) would be welcomed.

My email address is *snip*

All the best,

Andy Owens
(West Yorkshire)

[edit on 12/21/2008 by Badge01]

i days growth of beard ...he had shaved for 4 of the missing days! or was shaved.
treated burns with unknown ointment! (not by civilian hospital)
but who cares if the idea was to kill him?
could have been military microwaved accident.
or... if aliens, why did they try to treat him and shave him?

A similar case occurred in Latin America, believe it was Mexico.

In fact, the two cases are identical. I may be speaking with an unwarranted assertion, but this case in Yorkshire has hauntingly eerie coincidences.

The two dead South Americans had similar burns and were found on top of an apartment block.