All cases / Diamonds / PC Godfrey, Todmorden

PC Godfrey, Todmorden

November 28, 1980, about 5 a.m. (some accounts give November 29)
Burnley Road, Todmorden, West Yorkshire, England

Explanation proposed
Representative drawing from the Diamonds page, not this specific sighting.
"diamond-shaped," spinning lower half; about 20 ft wide and 14 ft high (some retellings reverse the figures)"The witness's own shape words

What happened

Near the end of a night shift, while looking for cattle loose on a housing estate, Godfrey first took a light ahead for a double-decker bus. Closer, he said it was a diamond-shaped object blocking the road, hovering about five feet up, with its bottom half spinning and dark panels across its upper part. His radio did not work, so he sketched it from his patrol car. He then found himself further down the road with the object gone, and reported a gap of about 15 to 30 minutes he could not account for. Under later hypnotic regression he described an abduction. A History UK account says other officers and a bus driver reported strange lights the same morning.

Witnesses

PC Alan Godfrey, West Yorkshire Police

Explanation

Explanation proposed

Fell asleep at the wheel and dreamed it (proposed). Local writer Paul Weatherhead argues that Godfrey, exhausted at the end of a night shift, had a vivid hallucination and drew the sketch afterward. Godfrey has always insisted the object was real.

Sources

  1. examinerlive.co.ukexaminerlive.co.uk
  2. history.co.ukhistory.co.uk
  3. paulweatherhead.compaulweatherhead.com