Somewhere in the Skies - The Banbury Ballyhoo: A Haunting Encounter on an Oxfordshire Road

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Starting point is 00:00:42 Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. 2.30 a.m. Lorry driver Len Delman was driving into Bamborey Oxfurture when he saw someone standing in the middle of the road, clothed entirely in white. He slammed on the brakes, hoping that it wasn't too late and screeched to a halt. When he got out to investigate, he found absolutely nothing, no trace of the person that had been standing in the road, until he turned and saw a tall being caught in his headlights. Welcome to just another tinfoil hat with your host, Zilia Edgar. Join Zilia as she walks us through some of the most bizarre UFO cases and incidents of high strangeness. Today we are going to be discussing the fascinating case of the Banbury-Batley-Hoo. So this case involves the pretty much just rash of anomalies, which occurred from August through October 1971, kind of centering in on the Bamberry-Oxfordshire region of the UK and includes several really bizarre humanoid encounters.

Starting point is 00:01:44 So regarding the UFO sightings, it was pretty much a UFO flap. Many of them involved these orange or red objects, fireballs moving across the sky. In October, even some police officers on duty reported seeing something bizarre in the sky. Police Constable Perry Jackson and cadet William Byron were walking at a place called Brecht Hill, Banbury, near some water tower, when they saw an orange object moving across the sky. Now, at first, they thought that it was some sort of firework, but then they realized it was far too high up. They claimed that as it was moving, the object began to disintegrate until finally, absolutely nothing remained. No debris or leftovers or, like, you know, those like lantern things. there was nothing left after the object itself vanished.

Starting point is 00:02:28 Now, three other people, including the wife of a Banbury police sergeant, also reported seeing the object. Now, other sightings in the area at the time included daylight sightings of dumbbell-shaped objects, as well as the all-time classic cigar-shaped objects. Also, there were multiple sightings of this brilliant, flashing, dazzling thing, including an incredibly close sighting on October 26th. On October 26th, Mr. and Mrs. Burton were driving near Banbury, and as they approached to crossroads, claimed to see a row of yellow lighted windows shining over a hedge with a rapidly

Starting point is 00:03:03 flashing red light on one side. Mr. Burton stopped the car and got out to watch as it began to ascend into the sky. He claimed that it was about 50 yards in diameter, and then just as suddenly as it was there, it was simply gone. Now, too, the whole event was completely soundless. Now, in my opinion, the only thing more intriguing than a UFO flap is, wait for it, a UFO flap with humanoids, which is exactly what we have here. At 2.30 in the morning of September 24th, a lorry driver, Len Delman claimed that as he was driving into Banbury, he suddenly saw what he thought was a man in a white suit directly in the middle of the road right in front of him. Delman slammed on the brake, screeched to a halt, and thinking that he probably hit this guy, got out of his cab to look. He went around the vehicle and saw absolutely nothing, so he went to the front to get back in and saw, caught in the headlights, a seven to eight foot tall thing with huge, wide-set eyes that stretched around the side of its head. Delman claimed that he noticed kind of a pack on the back of this thing with pipes coming from the head and going into the pack.

Starting point is 00:04:09 Not only did he refer to this thing as a spaceman. He also said that at first the pipes appeared to be horns. Now, seeing this, he quickly jumped back into the vehicle and laid on the horn, at which point the thing jumped into the air, ran across the road, and cleared a hedge. Now, two other lorry drivers also showed up on the scene, and all three, plus another person nearby, saw a disc-shaped object rise into the air from the area in which the creature disappeared. However, this was not the only, you know, bizarre, humanoid or creature report in the area at the time. Several other witnesses also came forward to say that they too had seen a tall hairy monster. On September 25th, a woman by the name of Linda Milne claimed that she saw a tall hairy thing near an old canal. It was moving off into some nearby woods.

Starting point is 00:04:57 Two boys also claimed to see a big hairy creature that chased them. I mean, this sounds pretty much almost exactly like the far more, I would say, widespread American Sasquatch sightings. They threw stones at the creature, which then continued running towards them. They cleared a gate, the thing did the same, and at some point, this thing vanished, and they saw a disc take off from a nearby field into the skies. Now, as I was sifting through old articles, I also noticed a very disturbing headline, which was literally right above another headline about a skywatch for UFOs planned in Banbury. And this other headline was Vandals Kill Family Pets. Apparently, there was a spate of stranglings of small animals like guinea pigs and rabbits going on in nearby. Worcester. Now, am I saying there's a connection? For sure, no. Am I saying there's for sure not a

Starting point is 00:05:48 connection? Also no. I mean, given other occurrences of anomalies in conjunction with small animal killings, one of note, of course, is the foul carnage chicken massacre of the Roachdale encounter. I thought it was at least worth mentioning here. So this is a super funky case. I mean, you have, according to one report, over 100 UFO reports in the span of a couple months in this rather concentrated area, as well as these highly bizarre humanoid encounters. So the first one I'm going to start with is the bizarre sightings of this Bigfoot-like creature. Now, first of all, the British Bigfoot is something that I'm very interested in. Personally, I have not come across nearly as many of these reports from Sasquatch in the UK as the American Bigfoot. Now, in my opinion, again,

Starting point is 00:06:33 I think I've been very clear in the past that I think there is definitely the potential for some sort of actual, you know, truly cryptozoological Bigfoot, especially in places like the Pacific Northwest, you know, i.e. just an undiscovered species of primate. However, in many other cases, I think it seems likely that these sightings of Bigfoot fall in line with other, you know, sorts of phantasmagorical anomalous encounters. And in my opinion, again, sightings of the British Bigfoot tend to feel more heavily mythologically folkloric, as opposed to flesh and blood, much like a lot of the encounters on the eastern coast of the U.S. They just seem to be a much weird or much more high strangeness

Starting point is 00:07:12 than, again, the Pacific Northwest sightings. Here, it's just amazing that you have this really strong UFO flap going on, and along with, of course, the far space you're feeling sighting of Lendellman, which I'll get to in a minute, you have these sightings of a Sasquatch-like creature, popping up, first of all, in a canal, a waterway, you know, a place that's kind of naturally associated with anomalous phenomena. and then running off into the woods, into the wilds. Now, in the encounter with the teenage boys,

Starting point is 00:07:40 the creature not only kept pace and followed them, which, again, is a very creepy behavior that seems to crop up with every single type of anomaly, whether you're dealing with ghosts, UFOs, or cryptids, but then vanished into an area from which a saucer emerged. Undoubtedly, in my opinion, the most intriguing part of this entire case has got to be Len Delman's humanoid encounter.

Starting point is 00:08:02 Truthfully, I was actually just going to focus in that sighting, but then when I was looking into it, all of the, like, you know, surrounding sightings encounters with the Bigfoot-like creature, with the UFOs, they were just too interesting not to include. So anyway, moving on, kind of focusing in on the Delman encounter. First of all, I absolutely love, I am just absolutely intrigued by the fact that Delman experienced a classic trope in line with the Phantom Pitchhiker phenomenon or other ghosts that haunt roadways. He thought that he ran someone over, got out to see the carnage and boom, surprise, surprise, nothing was there. Now, again, this is a classic, nearly cliche trope of the Phantom Hitchhiker Urban Legend slash

Starting point is 00:08:43 encounters. And I've also seen it played out by decidedly non-human paranormal entities, including but not limited to werewolves and phantom chickens. Now, for more on the latter, check out Chad Lewis's Wisconsin Road Guide to Haunted locations. But genuinely, this is one of those tropes that just pops up time and time again. It's just that in this case, you know, instead of what we would think of like the classic human ghost standing in the middle of the road, and then, you know, the guy pretty much

Starting point is 00:09:08 runs into it, and either it shows up alongside the road unharmed or pops up in the rear of your mirror, this guy gets out and finds a quote-unquote spaceman. A note on the spaceman itself. The fact that Delman thought that he ran over someone in a white suit brings up, again, of this classic trope of the woman in white. Now, one of these classic ghost stories that just seems to pop up across cultures and belief systems. And guess what? One of the most popular haunts for this phantom is roadways. Now, it's just that in this case,

Starting point is 00:09:40 the white-suited being was not, you know, the ghost of a bride who died on her way home from her wedding. But instead it was this seven to eight-foot-tall thing with pipes coming out of its head, which kind of reflects another sort of phantom. You know, this silhouette calls to mind horned beings, such as the great god Pan, Saders. You know, these were later, you know,

Starting point is 00:09:59 thanks to the influx of Christianity, literally demonized into, well, demons. Yet again, I must bring up the concept of perfect timing. I mean, you need to tell me that this seven to eight foot tall, white-suited being with some sort of jetpack on its back and, like, pipes running out of its head, was just standing in the middle of the road, waiting for one person, and that just so happened to be lucky Mr. Delman, to run into it. I mean, he gets out, sees nothing, and then turns to see this thing standing, caught in his headlights like the poster child of campy UFO flicks. I mean, it seems, as so many of these cases do,

Starting point is 00:10:34 highly performative. And the other intriguing thing to me is that the way that he dispelled this entity was almost exactly the same point for point as one of the great classics of Bigfoot lore, Momo the Missouri Monster. Two women who saw this, you know, hairy being, claimed that the way they got rid of it was laying on the horn and this startled it. So, you know, it's just intriguing to see these same kind of patterns playing out time and time again just with different players. Now, as in the case of the hair humanoid spotted near Bambury, right where this creature vanished, a flying saucer suddenly just like sprouts and flies away. Now, in my opinion, as weird as this sounds, because yes, the anomalous will always, I think, be kind of on the fringes of what is

Starting point is 00:11:20 culturally acceptable. But within that, there is a certain amount of cultural acceptability to certain beliefs more than others. Again, where people would have said that they belong to the good folk. Now they say they belong to the grades. So the only ending to this encounter, which he could kind of conceptualize, is that the spaceman gets into his spacecraft and flies off into space. You know, however, I think that the image in each of these cases, the white-suited humanoid, the bigfoot-like creatures, the windowed craft seen over the hedge, the flying saucer, is merely a distorted reflection of the observer's expectations, kind of running up against whatever this truly is,

Starting point is 00:12:01 whatever is truly anomalous. And for today, I am Zelia Edgar, signing off. This has been just another tinfoil hat with Zelia Edgar. Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For full video versions of these episodes, be sure to subscribe to Just Another Tinfoil Hat on YouTube. Thank you for listening. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle.

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Somewhere in the Skies - The Banbury Ballyhoo: A Haunting Encounter on an Oxfordshire Road

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