SEPTEMBER 1962  …………  AVEBURY WILTSHIRE ENGLAND

Malcolm Lees enlisted in the British Royal Air Force in the early 1950s and retired in the late 1960s. In 1962 he received a posting to a RAF station in the county of Wiltshire, England, which he declined to name, and worked in the prestigious and secretive world of intelligence gathering. Most of the work, Lees explained, was routine and even mundane and he laughed heartily at the idea, spouted by many, that intelligence work was a glamorous one full of James Bond-style escapades. Nevertheless, Lees said, there was one aspect of his career that really was stranger than fiction. Early one September morning in 1962, a call came into the base from someone who had seen a UFO hovering in the vicinity of the ancient standing-stones in the historic English village of Avebury, Wiltshire.

UFO reports reached the base from time to time, said Lees. They were always handled by the RAF’s Provost and Security Services. For the most part they were mind-numbingly mundane, and related to little more than sightings of unidentified lights in the sky that could, in reality, have been anything or nothing. Invariably, he said, the reports were a week, or even more, old by the time they were received. And so, they were simply filed and passed up the chain of command – that was then at Government Buildings, Acton, and which relocated to RAF Rudloe Manor in 1977. But this particular case was a little different, said Lees.   The witness was a middle-aged lady who had lived in Avebury all of her adult life and who was fascinated by archaeological history. She would often stroll among the Stonehenge-like formations at night, marveling at their creation and musing upon their history. It was on the night in question that she had been out walking at around 10:30 p.m. when she was both startled and amazed to see a small ball of light, perhaps two-feet in diameter, gliding slowly through the stones. Transfixed