Somewhere in the Skies - The Moreland Mystery: A New Zealand Encounter of the Cold War Kind

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

On episode 393, Ryan presents an exclusive audio documentary based on a relatively unknown UFO event that occurred in New Zealand in 1959. Eileen Moreland went out to milk the cows one morning in the South Island town of Blenheim. She returned home about eighty minutes later with an extraordinary story. "You may think I am mad,” she told police, “but I saw a flying saucer." After reporting the incident to the police, the local Air Force Base got involved and began to privately investigate the report. What they uncovered, and the events that followed, would both haunt the Air Force investigators and the Moreland family for many years to come. Special thanks to our voiceover talents: Jim Rees, Megan Mazzoccone, and Steve Mazzoccone. Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Discord: https://discord.gg/NTkmuwyB4F Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ryansprague.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/Sprague51/ Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Produced by LIONSGATE Copyright © 2024 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eileen Morland went out to milk the cows one morning in the South Island town of Blenheim in 1959. She returned home about 80 minutes later with an extraordinary story. She claimed a large craft descended from the sky and hovered above her. Her statement was full of astonishing detail. She saw two men inside the craft wearing silver spacesuits. One of them was missing his level. hand. Local Air Force officials took her claim seriously. They assigned an investigator who interviewed Morland and found her to be credible, and they found others in Blenheim who had seen similar lights.

Her story felt like a modern New Zealand myth, and like all myths, it expressed the peculiar anxieties of its time. Her story chimed with Cold War paranoia, atomic fears, and worries over the accelerating technology of 1950s New Zealand. Understanding her story could reveal something about a strange moment in New Zealand history. It also exposed how the military would lie to keep her story secret in the decades that followed. What had Morland seen? What had happened to her since? Was she still alive? Could she cast new light on her incident? After decades of secrecy, this is her story.

This is somewhere in the skies with Ryan's bread. Blenheim, New Zealand was booming. The farming town had doubled from about 6,000 people in 1945 to 12,000 in 1961. The Morland family was part of that population boom. Eileen Morland, her husband Frederick, and their five children, had moved to the town. by 1943. They purchased a nine-acre farm on the corner of Old Renwick Road in Coleman's Road in the western suburb of Springlands in the mid-1950s. They lived in a modest white wooden house with a red-tin roof and a brick chimney. Fruit trees were largely cleared to create two

paddocks for some Ashire dairy cows and a few sheep. Moorland used to show the cows at local events. On the Morning of July 13, 1959, Morland was 42 and had been married for 19 years. Her children ranged in age from preschool to late teens. She was tall and wiry, with short brown curly hair and pronounced eyebrows. She set out to milk the cows at 5.30 a.m. It was normal for her to be up so early. She was a hard-working woman, as well as running dairy cows. She also held down a few other jobs. Locals would turn to her for advice if their cows were unwell. She was a nurse aide at the local Lister Hospital. Her husband worked as a patrolman at Woodburn Air Base about six kilometers from their home. Moorland had also worked there occasionally. The Air Base was one of the largest

businesses in Blenheim by the end of the 1950s and was an integral part of the small community. Surplus planes were sold cheaply to locals by the Air Force after World War II. They were repurposed as children's playhouses or their parts were used for washing lines. Morland's hobby was reading. Donald Parker remembered that when she wasn't working, she was a great reader. Parker married Morland's eldest daughter. in 1967. This chilly morning was routine.

Morlin reached the cow shed, turned on the lights and radio, grabbed her torch, and set off across the paddock. Over the next few decades, she would tell journalists, researchers, and Air Force official about what had happened in the next 80 minutes. Here is what Morlin claimed. Halfway across the paddock, I saw strange green glow through the little clouds. The green glow broke through the blue clouds.

cloud cover and became two lights like eyes of big lamps. Everything was bathed in an eerie light that overwhelmed her torch. It was a horridor color. My first thought was I shouldn't be here and I made a dive for the trees. From her hiding place among a shelter belt of pine trees, she looked up. It was the most beautiful thing I have seen. A circular craft about nine meters wide and with a curved glass glass. cockpit silently descended towards her.

Two shafts of green light beamed down from its underside. Two rows of small orange jets shot outwards like spokes from the rim of the disc. The craft suddenly stopped descending and began to hover about four and a half meters from the ground. The jets disappeared and then reappeared, pointing sideways in two rows. The top row spanned clockwise. very fast, while the bottom row moved in the opposite direction, trailing orange flames. The air on this cold July morning became warm, and she noticed a low hum. I was scared, stiff, but curious and enchanted by the lights.

It was just imprinted in Deliblay in my mind. I just took it in. I saw everything in those few minutes. Inside the curved glass cockpit, she could see two figures wearing shiny silver suits in helmets. The suits were tight like a wet suit and looked like they were made of aluminum foil. The men were seated one in front of the other. Both had their backs to her. A flickering light shone up from below them reflecting off their suits.

Then one of the silver-suited men emerged from the craft, and walked towards her. I could see his face through a small visor in the helmet. He was wearing a white belt and a black disc at the center. He had a harness on his chest and held a small dial and a series of tubes coming out of his helmet. His left hand was missing and was encased in a dark sheaf. Then he shouted at me in a foreign language I couldn't recognize.

The man retreated back to the craft and got back on board. After a few moments, the jets started shooting out from the craft again. It tilted at an angle and then shot up into the sky at great speed. As it retreated behind the clouds, it made a soft, high-pitched wine. Then she was alone, standing in a waft of hot, peppery air. She was relieved that the attracting power of the green lights had gone, but didn't know what to do next. Eventually, she finished milking the cows.

While I was milking, I kept wondering. I felt a bit shaken and puzzled. I didn't quite know what to do about it. She returned to the house and woke her husband to tell him what she'd seen. I feared he would laugh at me. But it took me seriously and asked if I called the police. She rang the police at 7 a.m.

Woodburn commanding officer, Arthur Gainsford, visited the farm and interviewed Moreland later that day. Her husband Frederick had told Gainsford about his wife's claims that morning. Gainsford found Morland calm and rational. Local police told him she was a rational and stable person from their personal knowledge of her. Gainsford also found a second witness. A local farmer named Roy Haldaway, who lived about a personal. 7 kilometers from Morland's house. He'd seen a bright light in the sky about 30 minutes before Morland's sighting.

The claim attracted publicity. Morland gave an extensive interview to the Nelson Evening Mail about her sighting. On July 22nd, the paper ran a story under the headline, Went to Milk the Cows. This is what Blenheim woman said she saw. But Morland did not tell the journalist about the one-handed man. emerging from the craft. For now, she kept that detail to herself. Morland was not alone in claiming to see the lights in the sky in 1950s, New Zealand. Newspapers were filled with people adamant they'd seen

unusual craft. Each witness saw different shaped objects in the sky. One was shaped like a rolled-up newspaper. There was a lizard, a stingray, a horseshoe, a silver cigar. or a flying barrel even. Many claim to see balls of light traveling through the night sky. Some were green. Others were orange and red. Some described their sightings

with a new term recently imported from the United States. They called them flying saucers. I am here to discuss the so-called flying saucers. The Air Force interest in this problem has been due to our feeling of an obligation to identify and analyze to the best of our ability,

anything in the air that may have the possibility of threat or menace to the United States. In pursuit of this obligation since 1947, we have received and analyzed between one and two thousand reports that have come to us from all kinds of sources. However, there have been a certain percentage of this volume of reports that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things.

It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve. The New Zealand Air Force was curious about the sightings and wanted to find out what was happening in their airspace. In 1952, Air Force Sergeant Harold Fulton established the civilian saucer investigation to prove or disprove the existence of flying saucers. He claimed to have 350 members in 1956

and had logged 700 sightings by 1957. In 1953, the Air Force's Director of Intelligence paid five shillings to subscribe to Fulton's quarterly UFO newsletter. He wrote that the reports of the society were read with interest. In 1956, civilian aviation minister Thomas Schen believe the subject of flying saucers always appears to present a new aspect full of interest and mystery. The Air Force took Morland's claim seriously enough to appoint Flight Lieutenant Charles Milford Jennings to investigate. Jennings was a good choice.

The 34-year-old had been in the Air Force for 16 years and was a decorated officer. He was awarded a British Empire Medal in 1953. for working 72 hours straight, repairing planes during World War II. He went to England to personally receive his honor from the Queen. Jennings began as an instrument fitter for the Air Force and was now in charge of instruments and electrics on all aircraft at Woodburn. He was a North Island boy, born in Rattiehi, who had moved from Auckland to Woodburn with his wife and three children in May that year.

He had spent five months in Woodburn the year before. Jennings looked like a classic Air Force officer with his dashing looks, slicked back hair, and light brown eyes. He was curious about a rash of sightings but wanted to apply scientific rigor to the subject. His son, Lee Jennings, remembers his father as practical but open-minded. He was a technical person, and to do that, you have to use logic to work things through. But at the same time, he was particularly open-minded, especially for his generation. He did a bit of yoga here and there. They cooked from time of time.

This was at a time when men didn't really go into the kitchen. He was also a hobbyist writer and painted abstract oil paintings that still hang on his children's walls. His oldest son, Wayne Jennings, remembers how his father approached problems. Ignostic was his basic stance on life. Gove me the evidence and I will tell you what I think. It's a real scientist's mind. You used to say that there's nothing more exciting in life than being on the cutting edge of knowledge.

Something like a UFO wasn't going to completely and utterly bamboozle them. But Jennings was skeptical about people who believed the rash of sightings were proof of alien life. He dismissed the civilian saucer investigation group. as unscientific. Its publications fell far short of scientific investigation because of far too much emotive language and potted thinking. He would prove his objective approach two years later when he investigated another citing. In June of 1961, a pilot at Woodburn claimed to have seen a bright opulescent green disc in the sky and felt a pain in his eyes afterwards. Jennings solved the puzzle. The pilot had an eye infection.

But the Morland case was tougher. Gainsford later wrote that Jennings took the case seriously. Jennings has spent considerable private time on this matter. He is prepared to turn out at any hour, day or night to personally investigate further incidents. Wayne Jennings said his father spent a lot of time on the case. He must have spent quite a long time interviewing Morland because my mother was very, suspicious of their relationship. His investigation was colored by the anxieties of 1950s New Zealand. Cold War paranoia, nuclear fears, and worries over new technology all played a role

in his inquiries. Since early in the war, the trucks of the New Zealand Army Service Corps have been a familiar sight on the roads of Korea. Wherever battle has carried them, Kiwi guns have gone too. But even when the guns aren't firing, the work still going on. Every hour of 24, there are Kiwis working somewhere in Korea. When the time comes to go back, they know the importance of the job on hand. These men and those yet to replace them will be proud to have been Kiwis in Korea. In 1954, the director of Wellington's Carter Observatory, Ivan Thompson, neatly summarized the way these fears affected thinking about flying saucers.

In a world frightened by atomic bombs, amazed by phenomenal aircraft, performances, becoming used to thoughts of space travel and living in part in an atmosphere of comic strip nonsense, the alleged flying saucer phenomena has developed a form of mass hysteria. A headline in the Auckland Star in 1954 was more succinct. It read simply, has Russia got atomic saucers? Jennings first interviewed Morland ten days after the sighting. He took along an audio oscillator machine, which could generate different musical tone. in order to find out the exact tone of the aircraft's engine.

His summary of the interview is packed with details about the size and shape of the craft. The report notes the craft tilted at an angle of 15 degrees before it shot away and that it hummed at a frequency of 250 hertz. Morland did not mention the one-handed man in her interview, and Jennings sensed she was holding something back. simply wrote in his notes. Can I get more out of her? But he believed her account.

Mrs. Moulin did not convey to me any impression of being excitable by nature. She was helpful and, I believe, was quite honestly convinced that she didn't fact see a craft. His statement stands up and all respects. Greetings everyone, Ryan Sprague, our host of Summer in the Skies. For over seven years and more than 400 episodes, the Summer in the Sky's podcast, the Summer in the Guys podcast has always been free to listen to, but it's not free to create. So we offer several ways to help support our efforts and get rewards in return. If you listen to the podcast on Apple, you can click the subscribe button at the top of your somewhere in the sky's feed to become a premium Apple

subscriber. Or you can join our Patreon campaign with several tiers available. Both of these options give you the same benefits and rewards, add free episodes, early access to the main show, and bonus episodes and content. Help keep the lights on at the Summer in the Skies H.Q. And help us continue to grow by becoming a Patreon subscriber

at patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Or by clicking the subscribe button at the top of your Apple feed. Thank you for your continued support. And keep looking up. Morlin described would have been familiar to people in the 1950s. Flying saucers were a vivid part of the popular imagination from countless sightings and science fiction movies. Jennings even looked for possible new technologies similar to what Morland had described. He kept a newspaper clipping

in his file about two flying saucers being developed in the U.S. and Britain. But the flying saucers were in fact early prototypes of the hovercraft and only capable of very noisily hovering a few meters off the ground. An extensive program of research and development in the field of disc flight, which was started in 1952, is being conducted by Avro Aircraft Limited at Malton, Ontario. Early studies on behalf of the United States Air Force proved the feasibility of a circular plan form vertical takeoff aircraft

utilizing a system of peripheral jets for propulsion, stabilization, and control. The current phase of the program entails the design and construction of the Avrocar, an 18-foot diameter test vehicle for the United States Army. But the idea that Morland had seen some kind of experimental military aircraft was not outrageous. Anything seemed to be possible in the 1950s. The skies above New Zealand were filled for the first time with exotic new technology, capable of unprecedented speed and performance. In 1955, numerous people reported seeing strange flying pencils over the west coast of the South Island.

It turned out they were the Air Force's new vampire jets screaming across the South Island sky. Morland referred to vampire jets in her interview with Jennings. The Jets first introduced in New Zealand in 1951, sometimes used Woodburn Air Base. Morland would tell Jennings that the craft shot away at a speed that would make a vampire look like it was standing still. In a further sign of his commitment to the case, one day Jennings took a Geiger counter to Morland's paddock at 3 a.m. and waited there until dawn to see if he could detect anything. He was clearly troubled by the prospect that Morlin may have been exposed to radiation from the craft, especially since Morlin had developed physical symptoms after the sighting.

The backs of my hands were painful. Blisters popped up like pimples on my hands, lower lip in back. If I scratched them, ottero residue came out, then more would come up. I had a painful swelling under my left eye and a small patch like a brown. mole that appeared on my forehead. I did not want to consult a civilian doctor and would only see Woodbourne's medical officer if the matter was kept highly confidential.

Gainsford was skeptical, however, and would eventually state... The symptoms shown could of course be self-induced due to nervous strain. The blisters and the mole faded after six months. The consequences of radiation exposure were well known to the people living through the Cold War and the nuclear face-off between the U.S. and Russia.

Inneville-chutes novel On the Beach was a bestseller in New Zealand and had vividly popularized the deadly consequences of a nuclear conflict. Kiwi soldiers had officially observed British and U.S. nuclear tests from 1956 to 1958 in Australia, the Pacific and the Pacific and the Pacific, and Nevada, Jennings wrote a report on the siting claim, which was sent to squadron leader James McCleman. He replied within the day. Due to the absence of corroborative evidence,

the report does not appear to warrant further action. It seemed like the case was dead, but about a week later, the Marlaboro Express ran two stories about locals seeing a green light in the sky at about 6.50 p.m. on August 7th. Jennings tracked down three of the witnesses and interviewed them. A woman told him she was looking for her newspaper on the front lawn in the dark.

Gradually I began to be able to see the details around me more clearly. I noticed my paper, picked it up, and thought, that's funny, where's the light coming from? So I looked up and saw a bright, well, richly, a little green ball a light. I had the thing in view for several seconds and got the impression that it was tumbling over, a spinning, but much faster than it was going along.

An Air Force officer also saw a vivid green sphere that lit up the ground so that he could see all of the road. The object was rotating, and it looked rather like a Catherine wheel firecracker when lit. He could not really describe the green color because it was unlike any other green he'd ever seen. It was vivid indeed, though. It must have sounded familiar to Jennings. Then, was another break in the case. Morland finally told Jennings about the man in the silver suit with one hand. The silver suit Morland described was a familiar symbol of the space age. In January of 1958, about 18 months before Morland's sighting, U.S. test pilot Scott Crossfield

appeared on the cover of Life magazine. At Edwards Air Force Base, a B-52 mother plane carries along the X-15 rocket plane for another in the painstaking series of development tests leading up to the epic mission for which it was designed carry a man beyond the fringes of the earth's atmosphere and to return him to the ground in this powerless flight pilot scott crossfield brings the x-15 down through the pre-planned glide pattern without a hitch the space plane's first free flight is a success wearing a shiny silver pressure suit helmet and black gloves the suit was almost exactly the same as the one she was described. Jennings kept a clipping of the Life magazine cover in his file.

Morland also told Jennings how the man shouted at her in a foreign language. Jennings thought it may have been Russian. The new details were taken seriously. The security classification on the siting was raised from confidential to secret, meaning they felt it could raise international tensions. All communication about the sighting was handwritten to avoid typists reading the details. Morland was told to keep her information to herself. Only three people knew about the man in the suit, Morland, Jennings, and Gainesford.

The merest hint of Russian involvement was enough to prompt an urgent response. The Cold War fight against Russia was very real in 1950s, New Zealand. Kiwi soldiers fought in the American War against, communist insurgents in Malaya, from 1956 to 1960, with 15 losing their lives. The chill of the Cold War was also felt in Blenheim. Long-range Kambara bombers purchased to make sure New Zealand was ready to fight a possible war against communist China were serviced at Woodburn. The CIA's secret airline had also operated from Woodburn in 51.

Britain's long-range nuclear bomber, the Avro Vulcan, landed at Woodburn Air Base in 1956 for the locals to have a look. The Marlaborough Express ran a story just ten days after Russia launched its Sputnik satellite in October 1957. It was about a Russian satellite that had been left on their doorstep. It turned out the item, which bore a crudely painted hammer and sickle along with the words, return to Moscow was just a ventilator from a Blenheim building. Morland's new claim, along with annotated drawings, was sent to Air Force headquarters on August 20th. Gainsford vouched for Jennings' objectivity, writing that he had no previous interest in matters of this nature and commenced his task with an open mind.

Wing Commander G.S. Martin's response was withering and brought the investigation. to a close. The only possible conclusion to be drawn from the evidence is that Mrs. Morland was hallucinating, while that her story is an imaginative exaggeration of a normal subjective experience, and that there was in fact no such visitation by an object as described in the report. As for other sightings in August, they have no apparent relationship to the Molin Report, but fit neatly with a description of Venus, shining through a diffuse layer of high cloud or ice crystals, and seen through a layer of lower broken cloud,

the latter being under the influence of a northwesterly airstream. Records show that Venus would have appeared very bright and low in the sky on the night the witnesses saw the green light. Astronomer Marcel Mideart writes that Venus can turn from dull red to green as it meets the horizon and can appear to move as it is diffracted through the atmosphere. the planet Venus seen against the purple twilight sky can also appear emerald green. Morland's claims created a swirl of gossip in the small town of Blenheim. On July 28th, the Marla Burlow Express ran an article dispelling rumors that have spread rapidly

to the effect that the flying object left behind it a patch of scorched ground and that the area has been cordoned off by the police and Air Force. Police were treating the matter with a certain amount of reserve, although, owing to the number of previous reports, having been cited in various parts of the country, they could not discount the matter entirely. The ground may not have been scorched, but Morlin later told reporters that a row of peach trees in the paddock had died. When the trees were cut up for firewood, the cores of the branches were black ash like soot. the top branches of a walnut tree in the paddock had also died. On August 26th, Morland received a poison pen letter. It simply stated, you have talked.

The fallout from the sightings affected Morland's children. Morland's son-in-law, Donald Parker, said that years later, his wife did not want to speak about the experience. There is a strange epilogue to the 1959 site, In March 1960, Morland made another claim. This time, she said she saw a distant light in the sky. Jennings was given the case again and interviewed Morland before filing a report to Gainesford. Morland demanded absolute privacy on the matter and was given assurance the Air Force

would never release any files or speak publicly on the matter. Gainsford wrote in a memo. The previous incident was the cause of considerable publicity, much of which was of a derogatory nature, due in part to a press statement issued by Morland. Senior Air Force officers and the Secretary of Defense would unfairly cast doubt on Morland's credibility and paint Jennings as a biased investigator. Air Marshal Richard Bolt wrote to Radio New Zealand in 1979, stating that the evidence suggests that Morland, was in an emotionally unstable condition at the time. A letter from Secretary of Defense McLean in 1979 claimed Jennings allowed his obvious interest to reflect and to strengthen Moreland's convictions. Also in 1979, a journalist requested the Morland report.

The request was refused on the grounds that Morland was given an assurance of confidentiality about the sighting. internal minutes show they knew this response was not true. It only applied to the 1960s citing. In regard to the original sighting in July of 1959, Morland was not given a personal assurance of confidentiality. Rather, she was told by the RNZAF investigating officer to keep her information to herself. Our request for the report in 1983 was also refused.

the decision was appealed to Chief Ombudsman, George Lanking. The Secretary of Defense wrote to Lanking in 1984, arguing the document should be withheld because otherwise the defense force would be overwhelmed with requests from the eccentric hobbyist and the more extreme believers in visitations from outer space and those for whom UFOs will explain all the mysteries of the universe. The ministry should not, in my view, willingly get drawn into the pursuit of Chimera and should avoid providing fuel for fevered imaginations. The ombudsman was swayed by the argument and the report was not released. The majority of the Morland files, along with thousands of files on UFO sightings dating back to

the 1940s, were eventually released to the public in 2010 after multiple official information act requests. The year before, a spokesman for the Air Force told a North and South journalist that it held no files on UFOs. Some files on the Moreland case will not be released until 2017. The sighting would haunt the man who investigated the claim, Flight Lieutenant Charles Milford Jennings. He retired from the Air Force in 1974 at the age of 50. He had reached the rank of wing commander after 31 years of service. He did not speak to his two sons about the sighting claim while he was still in the Air Force.

He later deflected their questions by saying that he was still bound by the Official Secrets Act, which he signed upon retirement. His son, Lee Jennings, said he talked about it very briefly. All he could really say was that he was sure that the witness fully believed their story. He was sure they were not bullshitting. That was his take on it. His other son, Wayne Jennings, said his father pondered on the case later in life. He was fascinated by the 1979 Kikora Lights case,

where a film crew flying from Blenheim to Christchurch filmed lights that tracked their plane for hours. He also sought out a 1968 book by New Zealand pilot Bruce Cathy, called Harmonic 33. In the book, Kathy plots UFO sightings on a New Zealand map and concludes they conform to a systematic grid pattern. Kathy concludes that interplanetary spaceships have constructed a world grid system

from which they can draw power and navigate the globe. He claimed his findings provided a key that may unlock the secrets of UFOs. Jennings would have been interested to discover that Blenheim played a key role in Kathy's world grid. Kathy would state, Even before the advent of ordinary aircraft in New Zealand, this area had been visited by Sources.

Many recent sightings suggested again that this area had something special about it. Wayne Jennings said his father had thought deeply about the sighting. I asked him if he believes in your foes, and he said he had an open mind. It was an unexplained phenomenon. At the end, he leaned towards the idea that this was an alien presence of some sort. He believed her.

In later life, Jennings took up writing. His children never got a chance to read his work. Shortly before his death in 1999, he destroyed all of it. Morland never spoke publicly about the one-handed man emerging from the craft and how the sighting had impacted the rest of her life, and she never would. She died in a rest home in Omeru in 2016. She was 99 years old. Her family were also reluctant to talk.

One of her daughters did not want to talk about the sighting. She wanted her mother remembered as a kind and hard-working woman. Only Moreland's name at the time of the sighting, had been used in this story to respect the family's wishes. This story has been constructed using interviews Morland gave to UFO investigators and journalists from the 1970s to the 1990s, interviews with family members and historic Air Force files. In 1979, the government asked Morland about the possibility of releasing its files on her citing claim. After 20 years, a new name, a new place of a boat, I was hoping to sink into oblivion,

but somehow I'd been found. If you have knowledge of the full events of that awful morning, you will realize that to suggest that the beautiful people are friendly as left as I know full will. I'm 20 years older. Have a full life and am enjoying life in general. I just couldn't bear to be put through the mail again. Her desire to be left alone stands in strange contrast to her decision just a few months earlier in July 1978 to grant a television interview about her claims. At about this time, Morland's story became part of UFO folklore.

In November 1975, a U.S. comic book titled UFO's Flying Saucers ran a strange comic strip version of the incident. A very glamorous Morland encounters two men in spacesuits when setting out to milk the cows. She fears for her cow Bessie as the green light stalks her farm. When the spacecraft departs, Mrs. Morland is left with the memory of an experience she can never fully explain to anyone. The Morland family kept quiet about the sighting claims. Some of her children kept the sighting secret from even her grandchildren. they didn't want them to think less of their grandmother. Donald Parker visited Morland in the Rest Home in 2015.

I brought up the sighting when I saw. I mentioned it and her daughter was behind it, out of sight of her mother. And she shook her head in a way that said, don't talk about that. I didn't say any more about it. In the years since the 1959 sighting, the Morland family farm in Blenheim

was slowly carved in terms. smaller pieces and lost to development. The family had sold the farm and moved away by the early 1970s. The paddock where Morland claimed to have seen the craft has since been carved into small suburban plots. In 2017, houses had not yet been built on the exact spot where this strange story unfolded. That spot remained empty.

Just like the Morland family farm, the Paddleman family farm, the paddock has been gradually lost. It gets harder to make out the details. There was only one person who knew the truth. The full story of the lights and the shadows they cast died with her. The Somewhere in the Sky's podcast is part of the Lionsgate Sound Network. Please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever possible. Thank you for listening.