Numinous Geometries: Reflections on UFOs and Apparitions from Cymru

This short article presents a selection of unusual UFO and apparition accounts from Cymru (Wales), which seem to resonate with each other in terms of their major phenomenological characteristics, while also being more complex than many “standard” observations of anomalous lights. I have discussed elsewhere some of the difficulties that emerge when attempts are made to establish neat taxonomies of paranormal phenomena and experiences (Hunter, 2021, 2022, 2023). Such experiences often seem to resist easy categorization. The accounts presented here are no different – they straddle the lines between what are typically classed as UFO experiences, ghostly apparitions, and religious phenomena in both their presentation (i.e., how they are experienced at the time of the event), and their subsequent interpretation (i.e., how the experience is made sense of afterwards by the experiencer). The discussion presented here will begin with some late twentieth-century UFO sightings from Wales before moving on to consider earlier accounts. It will conclude with a summary of some emerging patterns in these experiences and a run-through of several different possible explanations for them.

The accounts presented here are no different - they straddle the lines between what are typically classed as UFO experiences, ghostly apparitions, and religious phenomena...

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Berwyn Mountains UFO

The infamous 1974 Berwyn Mountain UFO incident involved strange lights and loud sounds seen and heard in the night sky above the Berwyn mountain range in North Wales (Roberts, 2010).^[1] The incident was initiated with an immense boom and earthquake felt by villagers for miles around at 8.38 pm on January 23rd, 1974, and many local people, when asked, still recall the events of that strange night. Witnesses to the event described the sound as an “ominous rumbling,” as “frightening,” and as a “terrific explosion” (Roberts, 1998, p. 28). The rumble was followed by the observation of unusual lights in the sky above the Berwyn Mountains.

On driving up into the mountains to offer first aid in the event that the explosion was the result of an air crash, the chief witness at the center of the incident – Nurse Pat Evans from Llandderfel – described seeing a large, stationary, and strangely luminous object, surrounded by smaller moving lights at the top of the mountain. The following extract is taken from an interview with Pat Evans conducted by UFO researcher Andy Roberts in 1998. She explains:

We could see to our left… this huge round, orange ball sitting on the mountain. And so we looked at it, couldn’t make it out so we went further up to the county border as we called it. So we turned round and sort of parked. Now it was to the right as we were heading for home. We opened the windows and looked down and there was no sound, it was quiet, there was nothing really, just looking at this huge orange ball, and there was no windows in it, no doors and it seemed to be pulsating or glowing, like a huge ember. There were no flames shooting or anything like that… It was very uniform, very round in shape… Whatever it was it did not appear to be obviously three dimensional… It was a flat round, looking at it like that… They were like torch lights, not great big torches as searchlights, more like fairy lights really from where we were standing and they seemed to be pretty uniform, sort of coming toward this thing. (Pat Evans, as cited in Roberts, 2010, pp. 42-43)

As unusual as this experience might seem at first glance, there are nevertheless clear parallels with other elements of what are often called ‘high strangeness’ experiences – that is, experiences that feature multiple baffling components. The fact, for instance, that “there was no sound, it was quiet” seems to conform to a trend referred to as the “Oz Effect,” a “dreamy and weirdly silent state of mind” that the UFO researcher Jenny Randles has found to be associated with many paranormal experiences, either preceding them or arising as a consequence (Randles, 1988, p. 22). The strange behavior of the luminous object is also peculiar, as is its apparent two-dimensional nature – appearing as a “flat round” rather than as a three-dimensional sphere. The movement of the smaller lights surrounding the pulsating orange form, the multiple witnesses to the explosion, and so on, all contribute to making the event particularly difficult to explain away in simple terms (see Hunter, 2021, 2022 for more on the phenomenology of high strangeness experiences). For the purposes of this paper, it is the explicitly geometric nature of the “object” – the way in which it is described using geometric terminology, including its color – that is of particular interest.

More from the 1970s

In their classic book The Dyfed Enigma (1981), the UFO researchers Randall Pugh and F. W. Holiday recount several encounters with unidentified flying objects in Wales, many of which share features in common with the Berwyn Mountain UFO. While the Berwyn incident occurred in 1974 in North Wales, Pugh and Holiday’s book details a “flap” of UFO activity – which also included sightings of humanoid entities – centered primarily around the South West Wales coast between 1974 and 1977. Leaving the humanoids aside for the time being, I want to focus here on observations of weird luminous shapes. The following account was given to Pugh and Holiday by Mr. Stephen Bamford, describing a sighting of “a big orange ball divided into three by two black lines” that occurred in 1977 in Broad Haven in Pembrokeshire:

It seemed to be oscillating or moving within itself… It moved across to the left and as it came towards the cliffs it went a darker red. The original colour was a bright orange – almost fluorescent in intensity. As it moved slowly to the left. It began to get smaller and went a really dark red. It seemed to shrink up on itself. (Bamford, as cited in Pugh & Holiday, 1981, pp. 34)

Here is another example, from a Mr. John Petts, whose experience took place near the village of Llansteffan in South Wales in March of 1977. Petts recalls an encounter with a luminous geometric form. He explains:

I was amazed… because right in front, across the estuary and above Ferryside, was this strip with a point at each end which carried its own light. It was pale like the moon. Before I focused on it I thought: “Oh, that’s strange.” I thought it must be part of the moon masked by clouds – but no… There was this shape which was exactly like a weaver’s shuttle. I react away from the term “Cigar-shaped object” which I’ve heard used in other cases, because a weaver’s shuttle, parallel, pointed at each end, is exactly the shape that this was. And it was pin sharp… I felt like it might be a half a mile away; it would therefore have to be about thirty or forty feet long. [It was a] pale gold against the night sky. Above the hills – beyond and above the hills. (Petts, as cited in Pugh & Holiday, 1981, pp. 80-81)

There is a curious consistency between Pat Evans’ description of the Berwyn Mountains UFO and these other strangely shaped luminous objects, which were observed several years later in another part of Wales. Although their overall shapes may differ, they are nevertheless described in geometric terms – “flat round,” “big orange ball,” and a “weaver’s shuttle, parallel, pointed at each end.” The color is another similarity, with the forms often described as pale gold, orange, red, and ember-like.

Weird Apparitions

While the Berwyn Mountain incident and other similar encounters are often interpreted through the lens of UFOs and the extraterrestrial hypothesis, there are other frameworks through which such encounters have been interpreted in Wales. In certain respects, the experience of Pat Evans resonates with an older category of traditional Welsh apparitions, identified by the folklorist Dr. Delyth Badder,^[2] that are explicitly luminous and geometrical in nature, and which are a recurring motif in the folklore of Wales. Badder draws on accounts collected by the independent Welsh minister Edmund Jones (1702-1793) to illustrate the features of this category of apparition. Jones collected accounts of apparitions from people across Wales in the eighteenth century, primarily for the purpose of demonstrating the existence of the spiritual world, and as such they are interpreted through a religious and theological lens. Take the following example of an encounter from Glamorganshire from a man named Henry Lewelin in the 1700s:

On coming home by night towards Mynyddislwyn… the mare which he rode stood still. She would go no farther, but drew backward. Presently, he could see a living thing, round like a bowl, rolling from the right hand to the left, crossing the lane, moving sometimes slowly, sometimes very swiftly (swifter than any creature on earth could…). It altered, also, its size, appearing three times, lesser one time than another; it appeared least when near him… He stayed… about three minutes to look at it, but (fearing to see a worse sight) thought it time to speak to it, and said ‘What seekest thou, thou foul thing? In the name of the Lord Jesus, go away’… Upon his speaking this, it vanished into nothing, as if it sunk into the ground… It seemed to be of a reddish colour, with some mixture of an ash colour. (Jones, 2003, p. 105)

Edmund Jones collected several accounts of these strange geometric apparitions, including “a white thing in the form of a pyramid… about ten yards long upwards, and about ten yards abroad at the bottom” (Jones, 2003, p. 118), and an apparition of “two dun coloured things (like posts)” or columns (Jones, 2003, p. 98). For Jones, these encounters implied a religious interpretation in the sense that they demonstrated the reality of a supernatural realm, and so by extension, the reality of God as well.

The Egryn Lights

In the winter of 1904, in the vicinity of the small hamlet of Egryn between Barmouth and Harlech on the North Wales coast, villagers were amazed to see bright lights in the night sky, recurring night after night. All in all, the flap lasted from December 1904 to May 1905, in the midst of a Methodist revival in Wales. The mysterious “Mystic Lights,” as they were described at the time (now known as The Egryn Lights), seemed to be associated in some way with a pious local woman named Mary Jones. The lights would follow her as she walked to the chapel in Egryn to preach, and would erupt in bright displays over the roof of the chapel, reportedly similar to an aurora (Gwyndaf, 1999, p. 59). In addition to the lights that followed Mary Jones, other witness accounts from the time describe encounters with luminous forms during the course of this period of intense activity. Take the following account from a Mr. Evans:

Having left the fields and proceeded some distance along the main road, all five walking abreast, I suddenly saw three brilliant rays of dazzling white light stride across the road from mountain to sea, throwing the stone wall into relief… there was not a living soul near, nor a house from which the light could have come. Another short half-mile, and a blood-red light, apparently within a foot of the ground, appeared to me in the centre of the village street just before us. I said nothing until we reached the spot. The red light had disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come – and there was absolutely nothing which could conceivably account for it having been there a moment before. (Evans, as cited in Devereux, 1982, p. 197)

Red lights again. And here is another account from the Egryn flap, reported by Mr. J. J., this time presenting similarly to the “dun colored” columns documented by Edmund Jones in the 1700s:

The first form in which it appeared to me was that of a pillar of clear fire quite perpendicular. It was about two feet wide, and about three yards in height. Suddenly another small fire began by its side some two yards distant from the first pillar, and increased rapidly until it assumed the same size and form as the other two pillars. So there were three pillars of the same size and form. And as I gazed upon them I saw two arms of fire extending upwards from the top of each of the pillars. The three pillars and their arms assumed exactly the same shape and remained so for about a minute or two. As I looked towards the sky I saw smoke ascending from the pillars, and immediately they began to disappear. Their disappearance was equally swift with their growth. It was a gradual disappearance; the fire became small and went out… it was a very wonderful fire. (Mr J. J., as cited in Devereux, 1982, p. 199)

The way that the apparitions disappeared – changing size and becoming small – is reminiscent of Henry Lewelin’s sighting in the 1700s in which the object changed “its size, appearing three times, lesser one time than another; it appeared least when near him” (Jones, 2003, p. 105).

Machen and the Shining Pyramid

As a final curious addition to this small catalogue of anomalous geometric apparitions in Wales, we turn to the writings of the Welsh author of weird fiction Arthur Machen (1863-1947). In 1923, a remarkable short story of Machen’s was published – The Shining Pyramid – originally written in 1895. It tells a frightfully gothic tale of prehistoric “little people,” secret messages, and ancient magic in the hills of Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons) in Mid-Wales. At the culmination of the story Dyson – Machen’s occult detective character – witnesses an extraordinary pyramidal apparition at the climax of a frenzied ritual sacrifice performed by the “little people”:

They lay full length upon the turf; the rock between their faces and the Bowl, and now and again, Dyson, slouching his dark, soft hat over his forehead, put out the glint of an eye, and in a moment drew back, not daring to take a prolonged view… a spark gleamed beneath, a fire kindled, and as the voice of a woman cried out loud in a shrill scream of utter anguish and terror, a great pyramid of flame spired up like a bursting of a pent fountain, and threw a blaze of light upon the whole mountain. In that instant Vaughan saw the myriads beneath; the things made in the form of men but stunted like children hideously deformed, the faces with the almond eyes burning with evil and unspeakable lusts; the ghastly yellow of the mass of naked flesh and then as if by magic the place was empty, while the fire roared and crackled, and the flames shone abroad. “You have seen the Pyramid,” said Dyson in his ear, “the Pyramid of fire.” (Machen, 1923, p. 27)

Machen’s shining pyramid bears a remarkable similarity to the “white thing in the form of a pyramid… about ten yards long upwards, and about ten yards abroad at the bottom” documented by Edmund Jones in the eighteenth century (Jones, 2003, p. 118). Perhaps Machen had read the account in Jones’ book. The literary theorist Felix Taylor suggests that for Machen – himself a practicing member of the occult society, the Order of the Golden Dawn – the pyramidal form was one of “the many symbols for the numinous in [his] philosophy” explaining that: “The pyramid represents both esoteric knowledge attained through ritualistic means … and a gateway to a spiritual plane beyond the physical world” (Taylor, 2021, p. 42). Another curious thread to untangle.

Patterns

Although drawing on a small, and highly selective sample for this short paper, there are nevertheless some interesting patterns that emerge from these accounts that are worth mentioning. In his introduction to Edmund Jones’ book The Appearance of Evil: Apparitions of Spirits in Wales, John Harvey notes that witnesses of the strange geometric apparitions that Jones recorded frequently “comprehended the unusual entity by comparison with an ordinary object or thing and, strangely, singled out the attribute of colour as noteworthy” (Harvey, 2003, p. 36). For example, Henry Lewelin’s encounter with a “reddish… bowl” that seemed to change size (a motif also found in Stephen Bamford’s account from 1977 and Mr. J. J.’s sighting during the Egryn Flap), the “dun colored posts” recounted to Edmund Jones in the 1700s and the “three pillars” of a “very wonderful fire” seen at Egryn in 1904, and of course the shining white pyramids. It is curious that similar motifs and methods of describing the anomalous objects are continued in the later ‘UFO’ accounts of the 1970s. For instance, Pat Evans’ encounter with a “huge orange ball” that glowed and pulsated “like a huge ember” in 1974, Stephen Bamford’s sighting of a red “oscillating” sphere, and John Petts’ encounter with a “pale gold… weaver’s shuttle” in 1977. Further research into Welsh-language accounts – as distinct from those written or reported in English – may also yield other interesting phenomenological features and descriptive strategies.

Conclusions

There are different ways that these accounts can be understood. They may be considered in terms of folklore. In which case, one line of reasoning might suggest that we are dealing with a distinctive Welsh narrative and literary tradition – particular ways of telling stories about strange lights seen in the sky. Commonalities between accounts could be explained through the cultural source hypothesis – in other words, the narratives are all so similar because they are part of the same cultural tradition, influenced by, and entangled with one another, and with particular ways of telling stories. From this perspective, stories are told and retold, and gradually change through retellings, but may ultimately have no basis in reality. Another possibility would suggest that the accounts are similar because they have their origins in real experiences, even if not identical to one another. This is David Hufford’s “experiential source hypothesis” (Hufford, 1982). Of course, experiences do not have to be paranormal in nature. The glowing columns, shining pyramids, luminous “weaver’s shuttles” and pulsating “flat round” discs may have been hallucinations, for example. For Paul Devereux, they were evidence of earth-lights, very real luminous phenomena caused by tectonic activity, and connecting them to particular areas of the land (Devereux, 1982). For Edmund Jones and the people he spoke to in the 1700s, these objects were understood as spiritual apparitions. Perhaps, as Machen may have thought, they represent “a gateway to a spiritual place beyond the physical world” (Taylor, 2021, p. 42). Personally, when I read these accounts, they made me think of sentient multi-dimensional objects – conscious hyper-objects – or inter-dimensional platonic solids – briefly intersecting with our three-dimensional world, casting weird lights and shadows on the surrounding landscape and baffling witnesses with their strangeness. But that’s just me.

^[1] Incidentally, this is the area that I grew up in, at the foothills of the Berwyn mountain range, which partly accounts for my interest in the case.

^[2] Dr. Badder spoke about this category of apparitions at the September 2023 Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP) conference at the University of Bath.

References

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Gwyndaf, R. (1999). Chwedlau gwerin Cymru/Welsh folk tales. National Museum and Galleries of Wales.

Harvey, J. (2003). Introduction. In J. Harvey (Ed.), The appearance of evil: Apparitions of spirits in Wales (pp. 1-37). University of Wales Press.

Hufford, D. J. (1982). The terror that comes in the night: An experience-centred study of supernatural assault traditions. Pennsylvania University Press.

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Hunter, J. (2023). Deep weird: The varieties of high strangeness experience. August Night Press.

Jones, E. (2003). The appearance of evil: Apparitions of spirits in Wales. University of Wales Press.

Machen, A. (1923). The shining pyramid. Covici-McGee. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015054059533&seq=5

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Roberts, A. (2010). UFO down? The Berwyn Mountain UFO crash. Fortean Words.

Taylor, F. (2021). Welsh mythology and folklore in the novels of Arthur Machen, John Cowper Powys and Alan Garner (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). St. Hugh’s College, University of Oxford. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f9712e31-9854-4846-9380-4f56275a3cde/files/dft848q913