The Shrigley Abduction

The Shrigley Abduction

 

Edward Gibbon Wakefield

Edward Gibbon Wakefield sat in Newgate Gaol in 1828, thinking about the newly proposed South Australia Colony and what could be done to make the new colony, and society in general, work better.

 He believed the southern proposed ‘Utopia’ would need a good colonisation scheme and set about working out he could manifest it. In his plan, the sale of land at higher prices would attract a better class of person, coupled with the idea of not transporting convicts to be labourers, but offering free transport to labour tradesmen and artisans. In 1836, that very idea of Wakefield’s came to be, with the proclamation of South Australia, and the laying out of its Capitol City, Adelaide.

 So how did Wakefield end up in gaol in the first place?

Wakefield was born in 1796, educated in London and Edinburgh, and became a King’s Messenger. His job was to carry diplomatic messages across Europe, of which he did during the Napoleonic Wars and the Battle of Waterloo.

In 1816, he fell in love with the heiress, Miss Eliza Pattle and married her. He was paid 70, 000 pounds upon marrying her with an offer of more when she reached the age of 29.

 The newlyweds moved to Genoa with his Mother-in-law and her servants, where they lived as a family, whilst he again worked in diplomatic capacities.
 Whilst in Genoa, his first child, Nina was born, not long after the family moved back to London and a second child was born, Jerningham, unfortunately, due to complications, Eliza died 4 days after the birth. The children were then raised by Edward’s sister Catherine.

Wakefield, looking for a “get a rich quick scheme”, hit upon the idea of marrying another wealthy heiress, and hatched a plan that would later be known as “The Shrigley Abduction” of 1827.
 Edward, with help from his brother William, abducted 15-year-old Ellen Turner from her school, after luring her outside with a message that her mother had fallen ill. His plan was to marry the girl and therefore make a claim on her inheritance.

 The Wakefield brothers were caught swiftly and sentenced to 3 years in the Newgate Gaol.

The gaol sentence did not deter Wakefield from dreaming up another “get-rich-scheme”, this time trying to overturn his Father-in-law’s will through the court system, of which he did not succeed. During the hearings though, Wakefield was accused of perjury and forgery but was never held accountable for either.

Wakefield, whose influence on The South Australia Colony had begun to fade, now found interest in the New Zealand Association and the rebellion in Canada.

 It was in Canada that his influence would be most felt, becoming an unofficial (the English Government would never employee him) Commissioner of Crown Lands under John Lambton, Lord Durham, which would eventually see upper and lower Canada unite.

Wakefield had sent his brother William and son Jerningham to New Zealand in 1839 to help settle the new colony, followed a few years later by another brother, Arthur, who began settled at Nelson on the South Island.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield died in Wellington on 16 May 1862.

The town of Port Wakefield was named after him in South Australia.

(Wakefield Street in Adelaide is named after Edwards’s brother Daniel Bell Wakefield, the solicitor who drafted the Act which proclaimed Adelaide.)

Bronte Lloyd’s 1988 UFO Encounter – Spalding, South Australia

Bronte Lloyd’s 1988 UFO Encounter

 – Spalding, South Australia

 Spalding, a “blink and you miss it” town near the Clare Valley in South Australia, is known more for its sheep runs than it’s UFO sightings, but in 1987-1988 that dramatically changed when local farmer, Bronte Lloyd reported a UFO sighting and abduction encounter.

 In May 1987, whilst out seeding a paddock, Mr Lloyd and his son-in-law witnessed a group of UFO’s hovering over the farm. His son-in-law chose not to hang around and investigate the phenomena, but left Mr Lloyd to finish the job, and then investigate the strange lights by himself.

 The next morning Mr Lloyd awoke early before sunrise, the following is his description of events, as told to a journalist from the Sunday Mail in 1988. (Mr Lloyd underwent hypnosis to ‘relive’ the experience)

 “I was lying in bed. It was as though Time and space were suddenly suspended: I was suddenly aware of pitch blackness, total blackness, and freezing cold. I couldn’t move, and thought I was having a heart attack. Then I felt myself floating upwards, and felt something being pushed against either side of my cheeks. I battled against whatever it was that was pinning me down, and tried to reach for the light switch, and to brush away the pressure against my cheeks. I knew ‘something’ was close to me, and that it was moving backwards and forwards just out of my reach.”

  When Mr Lloyd awoke a little later in the morning, he did not remember the experience of the night before. It wasn’t until he was shaving that he noticed three sore marks on his cheek, and four more on his nose.
 (It would come out during further hypnosis that the small wounds were from hard plastic tubes that had been forced underneath his skin.)

A month later, in June, Mr Lloyd and his son had been out seeding a field, night was approaching when a bright red light flew over their heads, and then hovered over some trees about 30 meters from the house, then flew away.

 Mr Lloyd’s son returned to his own home, whilst he himself went back to the farm house for dinner. While sitting there, his dogs suddenly went berserk, jumping about and barking, then cowering and howling. He looked out the window to see what the problem was and noticed there was something on the ground at a nearby grove of trees.

Under the nearby trees he saw an object, that at first, he took to be a car, but on further investigation, realised it was an object unlike any he had seen before.
 The object, which he described as being “3.6 meters across and 2 meters high with a circular body and square base”, appeared to be sitting on support legs. The object had portholes at regular intervals around it, and three large “head-lights” at what he considered the front of the object.

  Rather than try his luck entering the object, he retreated to the safety of his house and phoned his family, who were visiting a nearby farm, and told them not to return home that night.

 Mr Lloyd hung up the phone after speaking with his wife, and slouched in his chair, trying to make sense of recent events when he suddenly heard “footsteps”, which he describes as “Short, close together, and sounded like someone was walking in or on plastic.”
  Lights suddenly came on in the house, and Mr Lloyd opened the hallway door to see what was going on, he witnessed two small “men-like” creatures racing about at blurring speed. The next thing he remembers is waking the next day when his wife woke him up.

 The police were called and upon inspecting the property, found a very large depression in the ground amongst the trees, 30 meters from the house. Unexplained footprints were also found near the tree line where the object had been witnessed.

 Samples were taken from Mr Lloyd by Biochemist Tom Coote, who discovered electrolyte anomalies in Mr Lloyd’s samples. Mr Lloyd’s facial wounds never healed properly, and when one would seem to recede, another would grow larger. Unfortunately Mr Lloyd passed away only a few years later, before any definitive answers from his bio-testing and hypnosis regression could be found.

For more on this story please visit the websites below (WARNING: the websites below information does conflict in some places)

http://www.project1947.com/forum/bctrace2.htm

http://www.ignaciodarnaude.com/ufologia/Creighton,Gordon,FSR,Biography,FSR1991V36N3.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spalding,_South_Australia

Books:

A Paranormal File. An Australian Investigators Case Book - John Pinkney

Nullarbor UFO Sighting 1988

Nullarbor UFO Sighting 1988

January 1988, the Knowles family, Mother Faye, Patrick, 24, Sean, 21, and Wayne, 18, were travelling from Melbourne Victoria, across South Australia, heading for a new life in Perth Western Australia.

 The family of four were traveling in their Ford Telstar across the Nullarbor Plains, when, approximately 40kms east of the Western Australian border, near Mundrabilla they had an encounter with an unidentified flying object.

 The family claim at around 5am, as they were driving along the flat, straight stretch of road, they swerved to avoid a large glowing object on the road.. The object appeared to the Knowles family to resemble an “egg in an eggcup” about a metre wide, and glowing brightly.

 The family stopped and went back to look at the strange object, but got scared and ran back to their car and started to drive off.

 As they did so the object suddenly took off and started following them, Sean, who was driving, put his foot down, and claimed to have reached speeds of 200 KM/H. The object, which resonated with a low hum not unlike an electrical transformer, suddenly came down hard on the roof of the car and lifted it off the road.

 At this point, Mrs Knowles put her hand out the window and touched the weird object, describing it as being hot, and feeling like a “rubber suction cup” - with the window now open, smoke began to fill the car, which the family described as smelling like dead bodies...

The family reported, that whilst in the air, it seemed like everything was in slow motion and their voices became distorted.

 

 The car suddenly dropped to the ground, bursting a tire, making it impossible to continue driving, so the family escaped in the bushes nearby and waited for the object to leave, which it eventually did. They changed the burst tire, then drove to Mundrabilla Roadhouse and told their story, of which a truck driver, Graham Henley, reported that he had seen a bright light in the vicinity in his rear view mirror,

 The Ceduna Police were called to inspect the car and take statements from the Knowles family. Sergeant Fred Longley said the family were in a state of shock and distress when he encountered them.

“They were in a terrible state — even though it was five hours after the incident. Something happened out there. Their car, even after being driven all that way, still had black ash — or dust — over it. Even on the inside. Where did that come from? There’s no soil like that out there, only sand.”

Another police officer Sergeant Jim Furnell described the dents in the roof of the car “as if something had landed on top “

So what did happen to the Knowles family that fateful day in 1988?

Plenty of theories have been put forward, but only the family themselves will ever really know.