Andy McGrillan
Appearances
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
UFOs indeed. And as the name suggests, we'll be deep diving into the most compelling UFO encounters history has to offer to figure out as best we can what it is we have been witnessing all these years.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
Yeah, I agree. A lot of the general public, Elle, have a limited to no knowledge or interest in the UFO topic.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
However, for those listening who have been ardent followers of ufology for months, years or decades, we hope this podcast you find something that is either news to you, a different way of looking at the topic, or maybe something you've heard about a bit before and forgotten about in the years gone by.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
Yes, Elle. It's essentially the UK's Roswell and it has that moniker for a reason. But before we get to talking about Vendelsham, I think we have to take it back a step. And this episode is an introductory episode to introduce some context, some background, some UFO history to bring folks up to speed to where we are now. And then we can jump back to 1980.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
Encounters, a new podcast available exclusively on Wondery Plus, takes a deep dive into one of the most famous and still unresolved UFO encounters to ever take place in the UK. Featuring shocking testimony from first-hand witnesses, journalists and senior military personnel...
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
Thank you very much. I think I know a little about a lot rather than a lot about a little.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
I had my own sighting in the kind of mid-90s. How old were you?
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
About 10, 11, something like that and we left the kind of winter's night, October, November time in Scotland and I remember looking along the road and to my left there's like a Chinese, a laundrette, a chip shop, you know, local shops and to my right just all houses, a community centre, there's no big fields, we're not in the middle of nowhere where a lot of UFO sightings commonly happen and
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
And along the road, there is this massive object that you can't see the bottom of it because it's so close to the ground and it's spinning on its side. So if you imagine like a Ferris wheel at a carnival, it was like that, but tilted at a really acute angle and spinning incredibly fast.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
Yeah. Imagine a ferris wheel at a carnival, but spinning at the kind of rate a washing machine would. So if it was indeed a ferris wheel and a carnival that we never knew was happening on our doorstep, everyone on that ferris wheel would have been dead at the speed they were being thrown off of this object or at least being spun around. So it's huge.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
And you can't make out a structure because of the lights. All you can kind of make out are spinning lights going round. No camera phones. It's the mid-90s, you know, unless you're carrying a massive camcorder on your shoulder. You weren't filming anything in public. And we saw this thing for a couple of minutes. And I remember we're about half a mile away from it.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
People would have been driving past it. So there's a whole other conversation we'll maybe get to another time about, did we see it because of where we were? And were there folks much closer to it who couldn't see it? But remember, we saw it, didn't report it to anyone. We don't phone the police. You know, there was no one to report it to.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
So there's every chance other folks saw this object and just never said anything about it either.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
Just the five of us, but we went one way, the object was another way. And really interestingly, the people that were with me, obviously mostly being family, they can't quite describe exactly what they saw. They just remember seeing something. I've probably got a more detailed recollection, despite it still being vague, of what I actually saw. I've asked my mum, for example, recently.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
She's got no interest in UFOs, thinks it's ridiculous. She can't even recall exactly what the object looked like, just that there was something there.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
Hosts, journalist, podcaster and UFO researcher Andy Macmillan, that's me, and producer Elle Scott take us back to the nights in question and examine all of the evidence and conflicting theories about what was encountered in the middle of a snowy Suffolk forest 40 years ago.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
I think that's a really interesting conversation to get into about, you know, what is a UFO? Like the age old question, do you believe in UFOs? It's not really a question because there are things unidentified in the sky that people see. But as to what they are now, that's the real question.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
Yeah, I've always had an interest, always fascinated with the UFO subject. And we'll get into it. But in 2017, that kind of came back for a lot of folks in a big way. And that probably had a big impact in me trying to get involved back in the subject. So there's so many different people with so many passions involved in UFOs. And that, I suppose, draws me into it as well.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
Elle, you're coming at this from a completely different angle, aren't you? And am I right in thinking that you've also been purposely avoiding the topic of UFOs?
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
It's a very impassioned subject for a lot of folks. So I can totally appreciate that.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
Yeah, I would never want to impress my opinion upon someone else. The entire UFO subject is made up of, to various degrees, limited data sets. So for me, like you said, I'll allow the audience to make up their own opinion, believe it, not believe it, or something in between, whatever that might be. And I think that's the kind of best way to broach the subject and move it forward.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
And if not, we can have some fun and interesting conversation along the way involving UFOs. And that's never a bad thing.
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Introducing: Encounters
Hello and welcome to Encounters. I'm Andy McGrillan.