40 Years of Mystery: the strange tale of Alan Godfrey

The 28th of November marks an important 40 year anniversary in the Calder Valley – the anniversary of PC Alan Godfrey’s close encounter of the first, second, third, or no kind at all, depending on which account of the event you believe.

Godfrey was out investigating a call regarding a herd of cows which were causing trouble on the Ashenhurst Estate, which sits on the Burnley Road side of Todmorden. As he came to the bottom of Ferney Lee Road he recounted seeing a flashing light a little ways ahead of him, hovering over the road:

“It was dome-shaped, not unlike a child’s spinning top. The top and base were both slightly curved, with the former more flat than the latter. About two-thirds of the way up there was a line of five windows which contrasted darkly with the bright fluorescence of the rest of the object … he could also tell that his car headlights were reflecting off what looked to be a metallic surface.” (from “The Pennine UFO Mystery” by Jenny Randles, p.124)

The point where Alan Godfrey would have stopped his car in order to see the mystery object, which would have been floating ahead of him where the campervan can be seen (credit: Google Street View)

Godfrey tried to radio the local police station and, when he was unsuccessful, quickly sketched the object in his police issue notebook. Then, suddenly, he found himself 30 yards down the road. His feet felt strange (later he realised one of his new shoes had been split almost down the middle) and his watch showed that almost 20 minutes had passed. The floating object was gone. What on earth had happened? Godfrey was none the wiser. Later, having undergone hypnotherapy to try and work out what had happened, he recovered a memory of having been examined by a tall bearded figure aboard a spaceship while surrounded by small “robots” and with a large black dog in a corner watching him. Godfrey’s life was changed forever as a result of sharing his experience; publicity was not always favourable, and his career progression was effectively stalled as some on the force began to doubt his sanity.

Various explanations have been given over the past 40 years for what might have happened to cause Godfrey to have these experiences and you can read about them in a number of books we have in stock: “The Pennine UFO Mystery” and “Supernatural Pennines” by Jenny Randles, “Who Or What Were They?” by Godfrey himself, and – yes, we know – “What Planet Am I On?” by Shaun Ryder. Who, we might add, was a very polite and interesting guest even if he did call us “old dears”! Randles’ books list a number of UFO sightings in the “Lancashire Triangle” in the 60’s and 70’s, with a cluster of sightings occurring in and around Calderdale in the two weeks prior to Godfrey’s experience, some of which have more mundane explanations and some of which are still unaccounted for. But can we actually work out what actually happened on the 28th of November? One theory which has been advanced by both sceptics and ufologists is that Godfrey may have had a hallucination brought on by stress, tiredness or a mild epileptic fit. In an altered state, whatever he did see (a bus? An atmospheric pressure event? A swirl of leaves and dust in lamplight?) became a very specific image in his head: a flattened oval-shaped UFO with a row of windows all around its middle. There was in fact one current Todmorden landmark which looked very much like what Godfrey sketched in his notebook at that moment…the Futuro House.

Futuro House (credit: Wikimedia Creative Commons)

The Futuro House was designed in 1968 by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen as a modernistic ski chalet which could be easily built and transported. Companies across the world were granted licenses to manufacture them and the only one granted in the UK went to Waterside Plastics in Todmorden. Tod’s own Futuro House was built in 1969 and travelled around the town, most famously seen in photographs from 1971 being towed down Rochdale Road on its way to the Abraham Ormerod Centre. It was a fixture of the town centre until the mid-1980s when it seems to have disappeared from Todmorden and gone somewhere else unknown. Lockdown 2.0 has meant that an exhibition at Todmorden Tourist Information Centre about the Futuro House has had to be temporarily delayed, but hopefully any visitors to the town will be able to enjoy it in person soon.

A website dedicated to collecting information about all known Futuro Houses has a lengthy section devoted to Todmorden’s “lost” House: https://thefuturohouse.com/Futuro-House-Lost-Locations.html . A photo of it in situ can be found on Pennine Horizons Digital Archive here (http://penninehorizons.org/items/show/33565).

Follow the Todmorden TIC on Facebook for more information about when the Futuro House exhibition will reopen to the public: https://www.facebook.com/TodTIC/

Other sources not listed:

“A Policeman’s Lot” parts 1 and 2 by Peter Brookesmith, David Clarke and Andy Roberts, from issues 269 and 270 of Fortean Times, 2010/2011

“UFO 1947-1997: Fifty Years of Flying Saucers” edited by Hilary Evans and Dennis Stacy, 1997

Alan Godfrey’s own website: https://www.alangodfreyufo.com/