Berwyn Incident : Article > [prev ¦1¦ 2 ¦ 3 ¦ 4 ¦ 5 ¦ 6 ¦ 7 ¦ next]

As Mrs Evans reached the point where the B4391 mountain road levels out she was puzzled by what appeared to be a large illuminated ball of light on the hillside. Unable to identify it was she drove on for a few minutes before returning to the same spot. The light was still there so she parked and observed it for a while. A light drizzle was falling but the night was otherwise clear and Mrs Evans was able to describe the ball as ‘large’, and forming a ‘perfect circle’. But it didn’t appear to be three dimensional. In an interview she recalled, ‘There were no flames shooting or anything like that. It was very uniform, round in shape...it was a flat round...’. As she watched in puzzlement the light changed colour several times from red to yellow to white. Smaller lights, ‘fairy lights’ in Mrs Evans’ words, could be seen nearby. It was too far away to reach on foot and so she returned home to bed.

Many ufologists who have written about the Berwyn Incident have claimed that Mrs Evans was turned back from the mountain by soldiers and police. This is untrue and arose from a misunderstanding when she was first interviewed by ufologists. Pat Evans is furious that she has been misrepresented in this way and stated unequivocally to me in 1998 that she saw ‘not a living soul’ on the mountain that night. More importantly a letter from her exists, pre-dating any interview, noting that she saw no-one. This fact is significant because the misreporting of Mrs Evans’ experience has lent credence to claims that a crash retrieval team was on the mountain shortly after the explosion.

Nonetheless what the nurse saw on the slopes of Cader Berwyn was still crucial to any explanation of the case and I wanted further evidence untainted by time or ufologists. For that evidence I turned to records kept by the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh. The BGS records, untouched for twenty four years, revealed that within days of the explosion a team of investigators had been sent to the Bala area. This, incidentally, is almost certainly the source of rumours of ‘officials’ who came to the area, stayed in local hotels and questioned villagers closely about the event. That is exactly what the BGS field team did. A total of six interviewers came to the area and conducted door to door enquiries about the event. This is the procedure by which the BGS investigates earth tremors and earth quakes. These interviewers worked to a set questionnaire which asked questions such as ‘Were you at all alarmed or frightened?’, and ‘Did you hear any creaking noises?’. These and similar questions must have seemed quite odd to the locals especially when asked by a team of outsiders who just arrived from nowhere. Over two hundred witnesses were interviewed. Nurse Pat Evans was one of them.

The BGS field notes were enlightening. Most ufologists have always assumed that Pat Evans must have been on the mountain almost immediately after the explosion. They use this assumption to argue that the lights she saw surrounding the anomalous red lights she saw must have been from a pre-alerted crash retrieval team as no-one else could have got on the mountain so quickly after the ‘crash’.

But the BGS records from her 1974 interview are very specific about time and say she, ‘left house during ‘Till Death’....’. I took ‘Till Death’ to be a reference to the popular TV sit-com ‘Til Death Us Do Part and checked the TV schedules. Sure enough, ‘Til Death Us Do Part had started at 9.30pm that night. ‘Til Death.... was the only post-8.30pm sit-com that evening. Knowing that the Evans’ left the house after 9.30pm means she would have observed the anomalous light sometime after 9.40pm, an hour later than previously thought. That hour’s difference is crucial.

Meanwhile, 14 year old farmer’s son Huw Thomas was also watching TV that night. At about 9.20pm he answered the door to find several policemen in the farm yard. They wanted to commandeer the farm Landrover, saying a ‘plane had crashed up on the mountain. Thomas’ parents were out so, with his neighbour Enoch driving, they set off up a track leading to the mountain, other police following in a car. As they neared the mountain-gate they had to waste valuable time moving a car which blocked the road. Huw Thomas recognised the car as belonging to local poachers. Once through the mountain gate several policemen spread out on foot with torches, whilst the Landrover and police car drove slowly up the track.

The time it took Huw Thomas to speak to the police, load the landrover, drive up to the mountain and move a car from the road would place the police search team on the lower slopes of Cader Berwyn at about 9.40pm.
The BGS also interviewed one of the poachers whose car Huw Thomas had moved. This interview confirmed their time and position and states that the poachers ‘carried on work for 45 minutes (after the explosion) and were almost back at the car when met party (police etc) coming up.’

Huw Thomas, now a farmer in his own right, confirmed this meeting in a 1998 interview.

That the search party comprising of police and farmers met the poachers as they went up the mountain is further backed up by other BGS materials. Besides interviews the BGS records also contained an Ordnance Survey map on which important witness locations and sightings of lights were plotted. This map was a revelation. It showed the anomalous light seen by the nurse, the location of the poachers and the police search party to be all in the same small area of hillside. And as already noted the times given to the BGS by all three parties place them there at the same time. »

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