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6 FEBRUARY 1977 – IDOLE & FERRYSIDE

Mrs Mary Louise Bassett was driving home from Carmarthen where she and her husband run a restaurant. They live in the old manor house of Portiscliff which is located in Ferryside. It was about 1 am on Sunday, 6 February 1977. The road was deserted and the route familiar. The night was very dark.

As Mrs Bassett approached the village of Idole, she suddenly saw on the right-hand side of the road a blue flashing light and a rounded mass. Her first thought was that there had been a bad accident and that the light was on an ambulance or police car.

She slowed down at once. During her homeward drive she had had the radio switched on and tuned to Radio Luxembourg. Static had steadily increased as she came along the road until, by the time she slowed near Idole, it was hardly possible to hear the programme.

As she slowed down, she looked down the lanes of neighbouring farms but couldn’t see any evidence of an accident, so carried on even slower, when the radio came back on. She carried on towards Llandyfaelog, and before reaching some pylons, on top of a hill, on the left this time, she saw the flashing blue light again, and this mass again. But this time she thought,

“There can’t really be an accident – I wonder what it is.”

She explained that the ‘mass’, which was black appeared to be a nebulous, rounded shape with a flashing light protruding out of the top. She laughingly said to herself, ‘Gosh, I think I’ve seen a UFO...’ because she couldn’t explain it in any other way.

Again there was tremendous radio interference on her radio. She stopped where she thought she saw this second light, “because there is a little farm there and I wondered it might be an ambulance after all. I got out of the car and had a very good look around but couldn’t see anything.”

She felt alarm for the first time and jumped back into the car, she drove quickly down a side road for three miles to Ferryside, and home at the old manor of Portiscliff. The house stands in its own grounds, surrounded by woods and shrubbery.

When she arrived home, her three springer spaniels did not greet her as they usually did by making a fuss, but instead ran past her and outside, which was most uncharacteristic. Mrs Bassett made herself a hot drink and then went out to look for them. She called for them and the two bitches ran back in with their hackles up and shaking. The dog, Jasper, had disappeared.

She went out to call for him and used a dog whistle. She looked around but there was no sign of him. She went part of the way down the long and winding drive, but didn’t go any further due to feeling nervous in the dark. She went back in and phoned her husband at their restaurant in Carmarthen to ask him to keep an eye out for the dog on his way home.

She went back out to call for the dog again, and he rushed in, again like the bitches, with hackles raised and shaking. He had been frightened by something.

The next morning the dog was acting in a most peculiar way, he would not go out but just stayed under the kitchen table.

This condition continued for two or three weeks when his confidence slowly returned. The bitches, too came round to normality after being off their food for a while. The behaviour of the three animals, the dog in particular was totally out of character for them.

This case was investigated at the time by Randall Jones Pugh and F.W. Holiday, and they speculated if Mrs Bassett had been abducted on her way home, something which she could not recall, and whether she had been followed home, and the three spaniels had experienced something, to them very frightening.

Source: The Dyfed Enigma Pugh and Holiday 1979 pages 73-80.