515

Exact date and location not known.

The following anecdote has much in common with the classic alien abduction. It was recorded in 1887, by the Rev. Elias Owen, and concerns a servant called David Williams.

Williams was on his way home one evening to the house where he worked in North Wales, closely following his mistress. The lady of the house, believing Williams to be behind her, continued home and did not look back. To her great surprise, he did not arrive back at the house until three hours later.

On questioning Williams about his disappearance, he was insistent that he had arrived only minutes after her. He kept to his story until eventually he conceded that something may have been amiss, and promptly recalled a string of bizarre events.

Williams claimed that he had seen a comet flying through the sky, and close behind it was what he described as a 'hoop of fire', with a small man and woman standing within it. When the object landed, the two beings quickly leapt from the hoop and began to construct a circle on the ground.

After their task was finished a group of fairy folk appeared from nowhere and began to dance around the circle, accompanied by the sweetest music Williams had ever heard. He also noticed that the whole area was awash in an eerie light. In time, the meteor returned, picked up the two small beings, and shot off skyward, and the remaining little people simply vanished.

Williams found himself once again in the dark, and proceeded home, thinking that he had only stopped to watch for a few minutes. These events are remarkably akin to modern day abduction, the only difference being that Williams lived at a time when fairies were widely observed - and, of course, alien abduction was totally unheard of. What was suspected, however, was that fairies stole children or created hybrids, which again echoes the modern stories of alien abduction.

Source: 'Aliens - Encounters With the Unexplained' - Marcus Day 1997 page 75.