Uncanny: The Todmorden UFO Might Be Linked To Broad Haven & Zimbabwe School Sightings

Danny then introduces us to another major UFO case involving multiple witnesses that happened just three years before Alan's sighting. 14 people all claimed to have seen the same UFOa in a small seaside village in Wales on February 4, 1977 and those 14 people are schoolchildren.

The incident took place at Broad Haven Primary School, where pupils claimed that a flying saucer hovered over a field near their playground one Friday afternoon, this was the first of a wave of sightings dubbed the Dyfed Triangle.

Danny was joined on the podcast by Dave Davis, one of the witnesses who was 10 at the time. He told Danny, "the object just popped up from behind some trees. It was about 50 foot long, about the size of a bus with a pearlescent silver finished to it. It had a central dome on top which covered the middle third of the vehicle and on top there was a red pulsating light."

The following Monday, Dave remembers being called in by the headmaster with the other kids who had see the object, "he made us draw pictures of what we saw, and also a written account. Now, he was very skeptical, but the accounts were so similar, that there was this resignation that hit him that we had, in fact, seen something."

Later, Danny was joined by David Clark, one of the UK's leading authorities on UFOs. David told Danny he had some doubts about the drawings, "because they all went to him over the weekend, and then on the Monday morning, after they'd had two days to all talk about it amongst themselves, the head teacher Ralph Llewellyn, sat them all down separately and gave him a sheet of paper."

But David admits, "those drawings are amazing. You've got a classic flying saucer, you've got a ladder coming down from the saucer. In some of the drawings, you've got quite clearly silver-suited aliens and I did a bit of research on this." The UFO expert added, "I went back to the Radio Times from 1977 and I found that 'Forbidden Planet', the 1950s sci-fi film was actually showing on BBC at the time."

The movie features a classic scene where a saucer-shaped spacecraft lands and a ladder comes down from it. David says, "I'm not trying to suggest that those children were lying, clearly they did see something that they thought was extraordinary, but when they actually came to draw it, these elements from popular culture have come in somewhere."

According to data released from the National Archives, the officials who investigated the Broad Haven sightings concluded that it was most likely the work of local pranksters, but the area still remains a popular location for UFO hunters, and there are even locally run UFO tours available.

Danny then tells us that this is not the only time that something like this happens, "let's fast forward 17 years to 1994 in Zimbabwe, Africa," he says.

Danny tells us about a famous case which got worldwide press attention at the time. The incident involved more than 110 children and staff at a school, which sits just outside the small agricultural centre of Ruwa. The witnesses all claim they saw aliens land near their school. The case is often referenced as an example of the psychological principle of mass hysteria.

Danny had managed to track down one of the school children who witnessed the incident. Now grown up, Liesl Field told Danny, "it was our break time and I remember the teachers were in a meeting, we were playing and I looked towards the trees, and there was flashing lights in the sky. So that's what drew our attention. I looked towards the trees and we saw flashing lights and like a silver saucer kind of thing."

Danny says, "Liesl, Dave, and the other children have always stuck to their stories, just like Alan, despite the press scrutiny, and the personal cost, which was huge in Alan's case, we heard how he lost his job, and his family and you wonder why someone would choose to bring that upon themselves."