The Todmorden UFO incident is one of the most famous and heavily investigated “close encounter” cases in British history. It took place in the small, valley town of Todmorden in West Yorkshire and revolves around a local police officer named PC Alan Godfrey.

What makes the story so legendary isn’t just what happened on the night of the sighting, but the bizarre, tragic mystery that preceded it.

1. The Precursor: The Death of Zigmund Adamski 

Six months before his UFO encounter, in June 1980, PC Alan Godfrey was called to a railway yard in Todmorden. A 56-year-old Polish miner named Zigmund Adamski had been found dead, inexplicably resting at the very top of a 10-foot-high pile of coal.

The details were profoundly baffling:

• Adamski had gone missing five days earlier from his home 20 miles away, yet he had only one day’s worth of beard growth.
• He was wearing a suit, but his shirt was missing, and his clothes were fastened improperly. Kids encyclopedia facts – Kiddle
• He had strange, oval-shaped burn marks on his head, neck, and shoulders, covered in an unidentifiable green ointment that stumped forensic scientists. Scaredy Cat Skeptic
• The coroner ultimately recorded an open verdict, completely unable to explain how the man died or how he got to the top of the coal pile without disturbing the coal itself.

2. The Encounter: November 28, 1980

In the early hours of November 28, PC Godfrey was driving his Ford Escort patrol car down Burnley Road on the outskirts of Todmorden, looking for a herd of reported loose cattle.

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At around 5:00 AM, he spotted what he initially thought was a double-decker bus that had skidded sideways across the road. As he drove closer (within about 20 yards), he realized it was a massive, diamond-shaped object hovering about 5 feet off the ground. He described it as roughly 20 feet wide and 14 feet high, spinning slowly, with a row of dark windows running across it.

Godfrey tried to call for backup, but both his vehicle’s VHF radio and his personal radio were completely dead. Stranded, he grabbed a notepad and began sketching the object in his police notebook.

Suddenly, there was a brilliant, blinding flash of light.

3. The Missing Minutes & The Aftermath

The next thing Godfrey knew, he was driving his car 30 yards further down the road. The object was gone. When he checked his watch, he realized roughly 25 minutes were missing from his night. Furthermore, his left police boot was cleanly split open, and he had a red, itchy mark on his foot.

When he returned to the scene, he noticed that while the surrounding roads were soaked from the night’s heavy rain, the exact patch of tarmac where the object had hovered was completely bone-dry.

When he got back to the station, he discovered that three other officers on duty in nearby areas had also reported seeing a brilliant, strange light moving toward Todmorden at exactly that time.

4. Hypnotic Regression and Later Life

Under intense psychological stress and ridicule from colleagues, Godfrey later underwent hypnotic regression to try and uncover what happened during those missing 25 minutes.

Under hypnosis, he claimed that the flash of light stopped his car engine. He recalled being taken inside a strange room where he was examined by small, robot-like entities with lamp-shaped heads, alongside a tall, bearded humanoid figure wearing biblical-style robes who communicated telepathically.

Important Context: Decades later, Alan Godfrey distanced himself slightly from the abduction memories recovered under hypnosis, stating in 2018 that the “abduction” part was likely a vivid dream or a hallucination brought on by extreme stress, though he stubbornly maintains to this day that the physical, diamond-shaped object he saw blocking the road was 100% real.

The incident effectively ended Godfrey’s police career; the department questioned his mental state, and he eventually left the force, later writing a book about how the incident upended his life. To this day, the dual mysteries of the Todmorden UFO and the death of Zigmund Adamski remain unsolved.