Strange Events in Fernvale in 1927

Note-Excerpt From Jerome Clark's UFO Encyclopedia Written By Bill Chalker Originally Entitled, "UFOs in Australia & New Zealand through 1959"
1992

     Fernvale, a small village in northeastern New South Wales, Australia, played host to odd phenomena over a several-week period in 1927. In 1985 and 1986 Bill Chalker interviewed the main reporting witness (A), who was a 10-year-old boy at the time of the events, and his younger sister.

The affair began with the nocturnal arrival of a dancing aerial light. For two nights it disturbed the family's cattle. On the third night the light apparently did not appear (or at least it was not seen), but the cow herd acted frightened. In the morning three cows were found dead, all looking as if they had been "scared to death," in A's words.

Neighbors reported other peculiar experiences. One was terrified by an "apparition" he encountered while walking home. A was seen to see this "apparition" himself.

An unseen intruder attacked three pigs kept in a special fattening sty. Two were killed, with puncture marks on their necks and scratches and puncture marks over their bodies. The other pig was missing. There was no evidence it had broken out, and in any case the railings of the sty were too high for it to get out. An unsuccessful day-long search ended with the bizarre discovery of a huge patch of blood, with telltale pig hair, just some 150 yards away from the cow yards. The cows were in a frenzy. No further trace of the missing pig was found.

One night A was awakened by strange night noises. He told his parents, but by then the noises had stopped, and they told him he was imagining things. But when the noises resumed the next night, only louder, the parents heard them, too, and were so unnerved that they did not go outside to investigate. Even though the doors and windows had been closed during the night, in the morning when the family woke up, footprints like those of a "Wellington boot tread" were found trailing from the front door through to die back. Both doors were open. The family noticed a strong poultry odour in the air, and A found big feathers from a bird he did not recognize.

The nocturnal-light visitations continued for a while, but soon the novelty wore off, and the family paid them little attention. One night, however, as A and his older brother returned from a night of cards with neighbours, they saw an extraordinary flying object travel through the valley, light up the whole area, turn slightly following the valley contours, and finally come to rest on a hill. In the daylight the boys came back to investigate. At the landing site they found a circle of scorched grass about 30 feet in diameter. They also met their neighbours there. It turned out that they had also witnessed the landing and come to see if any evidence of it remained behind.

While on his way to school, A saw an unusual bird in a tree. Because it seemed impossibly large, he rushed to fetch his teacher, but by the time the two got back,

the thing was gone. Later A's parents told him that the nocturnal "apparition" that had so terrified a neighbour was a huge bird which had appeared out of the darkness, ambled toward him, and flapped its wings.

Not long afterwards, as they were climbing down a nearby mountain, A and his brother saw two giant birds soaring overhead. They were enormous, at least three or four times bigger than a wedged-tail eagle. The birds seemed to be gliding along with wings outstretched. A recalled, "They were monsters ... making sounds like unintelligible conversation." One of A's sisters and a parent also saw a huge white bird "hopping down the hill [near the house] with its wings flapping." On another night, again from the house, they had seen a "dull type of light-a round thing" traveling at a leisurely pace across the sky. Other people in the area also reported seeing big birds.

One other puzzling event took place. One night the family went to visit neighbours, leaving only the oldest son at the house. A stranger dressed in an incongruous white suit arrived at the neighbours' residence. He stayed a short time and said nothing. All the while everyone assumed he was with the others. Back at the house A's brother, alone in the dark, heard a noise nearby. He shouted out, "Who is there?" The boy got out of bed in time to see a white-suited man disappearing into the darkness. The ground between the two neighbours was tricky, even more so on a pitch-black night. There were two large creeks, which were crossed at certain points by planks, and a big stream, which was navigated by picking one's way steadily over a fallen tree trunk-no easy matter for a stranger at night. The stranger was never seen or heard of again.

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See Also: Australia: UFO Files Opened