A life in letters: Warminster Mystery

A book by journalist Arthur Shuttlewood (1920-1996) published in 1968 reporting on the series of alleged sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects in and around Warminster in Wiltshire which began at Christmas 1964. The blurb claimed that ‘The Warminster Mystery is a dramatic unfolding of these sightings, with eyewitness accounts of strange "things" seen by day and night; of bewildering mushrooms of smoke, crescents of fire, weird and disturbing sounds and even accounts of conversations with those from outer space.’  Shuttlewood wrote several books in which he claimed to have had personal contact with aliens intent on preventing the human race from destroying the planet.

I borrowed The Warminster Mystery from the library with enthusiastic anticipation, shortly after it was released, and naively didn’t question the truth of what I read.  I found the theme of alien encounters in Shuttlewood’s work disturbing.  He combined mysticism and pseudo-science, and I was shocked to come across a sentence to the effect that the UFO activity over Warminster was an indication that the return of Jesus Christ was imminent, and specifying the year in which it would happen.  In writing this, I suspect Shuttlewood (who is said to have claimed to have been visited by Jesus Christ)  had in mind the then-popular theory that ‘God is an astronaut’, and that religions are explained by encounters with an alien race. However, I read his words in the context of the Christian teaching about the Rapture and the second coming of Christ with which I was so familiar, and I was smitten with fear as the specified time approached.