Random or Targeted? Little-Known Lonely Location UFO Encounters Of The British Isles

UFO encounters have been reported in the British Isles since Roman times, and continue to be reported today, midway through the third decade of the twenty-first century. In fact, there are so many reports that the vast majority of them are quickly lost to the sands of time, preserved in long-forgotten publications or in the dusty records of organizations that no longer exist. It might not surprise us, then, that there are many UFO sightings that could be of great importance that fall into this category, and, as such, deserve reinvestigation and reexamination.

Of particular interest to us here are several encounters that have taken place in lonely, almost isolated locations, with all but one involving only one witness. These encounters – of which we are only looking at a small sample – have seemingly been all but forgotten about by many, but might still offer clues towards the big picture of the UFO and alien question.

Were these seemingly random and obscure sightings nothing but coincidental encounters? Or might the witnesses have been somehow targeted by the intelligence behind these apparently otherworldly crafts for reasons that, for now at least, remain unknown to us?

The Barry Canner UFO Encounter

At around 9:30 pm on September 28^th, 1971, Barry Canner was returning to his car at the side of a country lane at Lord’s Hill in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, North Yorkshire, England, after an evening run. ^[1] Although there was no moon on this particular evening, Canner could see multiple stars shining in the now dark night sky.

As he approached his vehicle, his attention was drawn to a strange object in a field to his left, approximately 10 yards away. He was certain the object had not been there when he had set off on his run a 90 minutes earlier, not least as it was close enough for him to still make out details on its exterior, even in the darkness of the night, in part, due to the pink glow that seemed to come from it.

The object was an oval shape that appeared to rise slightly at what Barry assumed was the back of the craft. Toward the front was a “dome-shaped window” and, although he wasn’t certain, it appeared there were several portholes on each side, out of which emanated a bright white glow. He could see the object was standing on three short legs, and that it was around 12 feet in width and approximately 14 feet in length. Of even more intrigue, Barry saw a “cylindrical hatch” stretch from the bottom of the craft toward the ground.

Barry stood and watched the object for several minutes, seeing no sign of movement or life inside the craft. In fact, it was because of this that he suddenly began to feel decidedly uneasy, later stating to investigators that also had the feeling that someone – or something – was watching him. After several more moments, he turned and got into his waiting vehicle. He set off for home toward Warminster immediately, claiming he made the journey in “record time!”

An Earlier, Similar Sighting

Several days after the incident, investigators visited the location of the encounter, even parking their vehicle in the exact spot Barry had claimed he had parked his car on the night in question. However, not only had the field already been ploughed by that point, but heavy rain had also washed away any potential evidence of the landing.

Investigators did, though, manage to speak with a close friend of Barry Canner’s, Andrew Pritchard, who offered that Barry had been particularly quiet and withdrawn in the days immediately following the encounter, perhaps suggesting that, whatever it might have been, Barry had definitely seen something.

During the investigation of the sighting, it came to light that this was not the first UFO encounter that Barry Canner had witnessed. According to his account, one afternoon in August 1967, Barry was hiking on the Yorkshire Moors between Thirsk and Whitby and had decided to rest near an old quarry in order to smoke a cigarette.

Suddenly, he heard a strange buzzing sound coming from above him. When he looked upward, he could see a dark grey-colored object that was hovering a short distance overhead. He described the object as being made of two different sections – a central section that was completely encircled by an outer section. On this outer section were three circles that Barry described as “landing pads!”

Barry watched the object for several moments before it began to move away to the north. It moved slowly and calmly at first, before it suddenly shot off into the distance, disappearing in a second. Whether or not this object was connected to the object Barry witnessed four years later in September 1971 remains open to debate.

A Case Perhaps Too Easily Dismissed?

It is perhaps interesting to note that, at the time, there was considerable doubt cast upon Barry Canner’s sighting by UFO investigators, with the prime reason being that Barry had “listened to talk about UFOs by an ebullient enthusiast” and that he had “admitted to a readiness to believe, and could have been over-impressionable!”

In my own opinion, I always find this kind of stance quite bizarre, especially so when deciding on a person’s credibility. Now it has to be said, the investigators believed that Barry had seen something was not being untruthful, but they believed his knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject of UFOs had somehow clouded his perception and recollection. Whereas I understand the stance and agree that such things need to be kept in mind, it is also clear that a little too much weight is placed on such matters. In the modern world, for example, it would be hard to find anyone who has not heard of UFOs or who has a perception of a “grey alien”. Does this mean that we should automatically discount modern encounters or reduce their credibility?

Even Barry’s answer that he had previously had dreams of a “dark, zeppelin-shaped object” on several occasions during his life was dismissed by Charles Bowen as being a result of him reading a newspaper report of “an object of similar description!”

If Barry Canner was a person whose enthusiasm for the subject of UFOs had made him misidentify the object and then report it in a fashion that fit into his own interests, we might ask why he had not reported the sighting of the strange object in the summer of 1967.

It should be pointed out that Eileen Buckle points out the potential dangers of automatically dismissing the accounts of lone witnesses with a pinch of salt when she writes, “Could it be, however, that a certain type of person is selected and sought by UFO intelligences?” Buckle also pointed to Canner’s sighting in 1967, asking, “Could it be that Barry Canner was observed by someone or something in the quarry in 1967 and is still under scrutiny?”

It is an interesting and, it should be said, interesting question. One that is amplified by the fact that there are many other such seemingly random encounters with lone individuals in lonely locations that could be just as easily dismissed.

Followed Along The M4 – The Jane Human Encounter

Six years later, on the evening of February 7^th, 1977, Jane Human was driving home along the M4 between London and Bristol after visiting her boyfriend for the evening. ^[2] Although she had seen the headlights of a car behind for several minutes, by 10:45 pm, hers was the only car on the road. It was at this point that Jane noticed a strange circle of lights appear in her rearview mirror, lights that appeared to be following her car.

To begin with, Jane thought the light was the headlight from a motorbike. However, the more she looked at it, the more she could see that its position for a motorbike was wrong. Following this realization, she began to understand that something quite profound was unfolding around her. This was seemingly confirmed to her when the light began to change colors.

Although she was concerned, Jane remained calm, using her training as a former policewoman, and slowed her vehicle to little more than five miles per hour so she could observe the strange lights more closely. When she turned in her seat and looked at the light directly through the rear window, she could see much more detail.

A Circular Object With Jagged Edges

She stated that the light appeared to be the outline of an object that was approximately eight feet across. She recalled that it “wasn’t an exact circle (and) appeared jagged at the edges!” She further stated that the light was “different shades of yellows and reds” which “appeared dim and hazy!” She continued that the light was “darker red in the center, filtering out towards the edges on paler red and yellows!”

She estimated that the object was approximately 15 feet behind her car and seemingly maintained this distance from her vehicle – that was, until she slowed it. At this point, the object began to get closer to her, so close, in fact, that she could see the shape of it was disc-like. Before the object reached her, she pressed down on the accelerator and drove as fast as she could away from it.

It is interesting to note that this particular stretch of the road was quite “bendy” yet the object remained behind her vehicle for some time, as if it was following her exact route. At one point, Jane claimed she had to fight the urge to increase her speed to dangerous levels. She stated that she had “never felt so frightened in my whole life!”

The object remained behind her for a round half a mile before it suddenly vanished. Jane, however, continued at the pace she was at, eventually looking back when she approached the crossroads (known as Childrey Holloway) where she could see “the light appear fleetingly once more” hovering in the distance over the top of the hill. Even at this point, though, Jane didn’t contemplate stopping her car, wanting only to get back home as quickly as she could, which she did a short time later.

It is also perhaps interesting to note how Jane’s feelings towards the events seemingly changed over the days and weeks that followed. To begin with, and especially during the incident itself, Jane claimed to have felt that the object was “evil,” and it terrified her immensely. However, as time went on, she suddenly became curious about it and its origins, which, incidentally, she described as “otherworldly”. In fact, despite the fact that the encounter “frightened the life out of” her, she began to hope she would see the object again when she made the journey to and from her boyfriend’s house.

The 1924 Encounter Of Mr. Murphy

It is also worth our time detailing a similar UFO encounter from Ireland almost half a century earlier. According to the account ^[3], at around 8:30 pm one September evening in 1924 in County Wexford, Mr. Murphy (then 17 years old) was walking back home from the village of Wellington-bridge with a friend.

It was as they were walking along one of the quiet country roads when Mr. Murphy noticed “odd flashes of light” appearing in the trees ahead of them. To begin with, neither of the young men paid much attention to the lights, thinking they were flashes from a searchlight or even the headlights of a car in the distance. However, not long after they had turned right at a T-junction so they were facing the trees more directly, they suddenly “lit up brightly!” At this point, because of the brightness, the two teenagers still believed that a car was approaching them, and as such, they moved to the side of the road.

By this point, the light was closer, and Murphy could see that it was around a foot across and projected an apparent parallel beam of light in front of it as it moved approximately three feet from the ground. Still believing it was some kind of car, the two teenagers watched as it moved around 10 miles per hour as they themselves approached another junction. It was only as the light came closer still that they realized they couldn’t hear the sound of a car’s engine. In fact, they couldn’t hear the sound of anything.

A Purposely Navigated Journey

Now certain the object wasn’t a car after all, the two teenagers stopped and watched as it continued to approach. Then, when it – or at least the end of the beam of light – was around 15 feet from them, it suddenly moved to the left while at the same time moving up around seven feet from the ground, just high enough to clear a tall hedge.

The two young men watched as the light dropped back to just above the ground and continued on its way along the edge of a field. The witnesses then rushed to a gap in the hedge so they could continue to watch the glowing object as it made its way across the field. From this position, now slightly above it, the two boys watched as the light began to speed up as it continued on its way.

They continued to watch in amazement as the light then went straight through another hedge at the edge of the field, continuing on through a second field. In this field, towards the center, there was a quarry (similar to some of the other cases we have explored here, incidentally), and the glowing object seemingly intentionally turned in its direction, disappearing for several moments once it reached it. Then, it reappeared on the other side of the quarry and continued along a nearby country lane.

The two teenagers continued to watch in amazement as the light continued to shine. Eventually, it made a sudden turn onto the rail tracks at Wexford train station. It continued on this route for several miles before eventually disappearing from the teenagers’ sight. In total, the two boys watched the glowing object for around half an hour.

The incident remains unexplained, with suggestions that what the two boys had witnessed was ball lightning, seemingly not holding water due to the seemingly intelligent control it exhibited. When speaking of the encounter decades later, Mr. Murphy stated that he thought about the incident often and that it scared him, even years later.

Encounters That Mustn’t Be Forgotten

Obviously, it goes without saying that the accounts we have explored here are but a mere handful of a mountain of cases on record, many of which are not widely known, even in the UFO community. Were these encounters ones of pure chance? Or were the witnesses somehow targeted, and if so, by whom, and for what reason? Is this why there are so many encounters that take place in lonely locations where there are no other witnesses (the 1924 Ireland case aside)?

The fact is, in countries around the world, there are multiple other such encounters with strange objects on lonely roads and country lanes. Are these all part of the same cosmic agenda? And, once more, we might ask what the reason might be for such encounters. Are they some kind of monitoring program by an apparent otherworldly intelligence? Are these encounters taking place in the hope that humanity slowly comes to the realization that something strange is here on our planet?

Examining these cases highlights once more how little we collectively know about both the UFO and alien mystery, as well as the nature of our collective reality.

The short video below explores some of the best UFO reports from Great Britain.

Expert Opinion

Claims that UFOs might target solitary travelers in remote British locales trace back decades, with accounts pointing to unearthly lights trailing isolated cars or landing in lonely fields. While these stories often come from individual witnesses, many still note consistent patterns, from glowing orbs to structured craft on landing gear. Combined with historical reports, the notion of purposeful selection captivates researchers.

However, skeptics contest these interpretations by pointing out the lack of verifiable proof, especially in cases where fields have already been plowed or weather has erased potential impressions. A single witness’s passion for UFO findings can further complicate matters, blurring the line between genuine anomalies and misidentified phenomena. Nonetheless, corroborating elements, such as repeat sightings by the same observer, continue to provoke discussion.

Verdict: Inconclusive
While many sightings suggest intelligent direction, the limited corroboration and fleeting physical evidence make concrete conclusions elusive.

Marcus Lowth is an expert on this topic and has over 20 years experience studying and reporting in these fields. Marcus has written several books and appeared on TV shows as an expert investigator discussing these topics.