A Visit With Sandown Sam

All accounts of alleged encounters with extraterrestrial beings are, by their very nature, bizarre.  However, your average planet-hopping space aliens will really have to up their game if they ever want to outweird the creature now known in UFO lore as “Sandown Sam.”

The January/February 1978 issue of the Journal of the British UFO Research Association carried a story written by one Norman Oliver.  He stated that a man who wished to remain anonymous (Oliver dubbed him “Mr. Y.”) wrote him one very weird story.  On October 20, 1970, “Mr. Y” was driving from Shanklin to Ryde, with a stop at Seaview in order to visit a friend.  As he was passing through the village of Brading, he noticed a “large multi-lit ‘aircraft’” to his right, flying low over the swampy terrain.  He stopped the car, and observed the “aircraft” hovering, seemingly aimlessly, over the banks of the river Yar.  It made no sound.  “Y” resumed driving, with the “aircraft” flying parallel.  After a few minutes, the object cut across some 300 yards behind him, and continued its meanderings.  Y again stopped the car and spent ten minutes shining a flashlight at the craft, which was now weaving backwards and forwards.  Y drove on.  When he reached his destination, he saw the craft had followed him, and was playing “hide and seek” among the tree-tops.  When his friend came out of the house to greet him, he also noticed the craft.  When Y continued to Ryde, the mysterious object, evidently getting bored with him, went on its way.  He did not see it again, although on several later occasions, he saw a single ball of red light in the sky, which appeared to be following him.

Y had an even more unsettling experience on the night of March 1, 1972.  He was on the cliffside of Compton Bay, where he had retreated following a mysterious tidal surge that appeared to have been caused by some sort of underwater craft.  He saw in the water below two points of yellow light “peering up at me like the eyes of some horrible sea monster.”  After a few minutes, the “eyes” disappeared and the tide subsided, enabling Y to return to his car and drive home.

Y had a small daughter, whom Oliver called “Fay.”  Although Y never told the child anything about his eerie experiences, in early May 1973, the seven-year-old youngster found herself joining in the Fortean fun.  One Tuesday afternoon, Fay and a boy about her age were near Lake Common, Sandown, when they heard “a weird wailing noise not unlike an ambulance siren.”  They followed the noise to a swampy meadow adjacent to the small Sandown Airport.  The sounds stopped.

As the children were crossing a footbridge spanning a small brook, a blue-gloved hand suddenly appeared from under the bridge and an odd-looking figure emerged.  It took out a book, which it accidentally dropped in the water.  The creature retrieved it and entered a windowless metal hut.  It walked with an awkward hopping motion.

The children continued on their way.  After they had walked about 50 yards, the figure reappeared, carrying a black-knobbed microphone.  The creepy wailing started up again, so loudly that the boy took fright and began to run.  The wailing stopped, and the figure spoke into the microphone, asking, “Hello, are you still there?”  The voice sounded so friendly that the kids were moved to ignore the splendid lunacy of it all, and went over to speak to him/her/it.

The figure was nearly seven feet tall and had no neck--the head was resting directly on the shoulders.  It wore a yellow pointed hat which was attached to the red collar of its green tunic.  The hat was topped by a round black knob with what seemed to be wooden antennae attached to it.  The creature’s face had triangular eyes, a brown square for a nose, and yellow lips which never moved.  Its white cheeks were decorated with round markings, and a fringe of bright red hair festooned the forehead.  Wooden slats stuck out of its sleeves and from below white trousers.  It had only three fingers on each gloved hand, and three toes on its bare, white feet.

The creature wrote in a notebook, “Hello and I am all colours, Sam.”  “Sam” could talk, but its speech was unclear--probably because its lips did not move.  The three had an amiable chat.  The children asked why its clothes were ripped.  “Sam” replied that this was the only set of clothes it had, so they couldn’t be changed.

Are you a man, they asked.  “No,” “Sam” chuckled.

A ghost, perhaps?  “Well, not really, but I am in an odd sort of way.”

“What are you, then?” 

Sam replied with the enigmatic words, “You know.”

Sam went on to say that it had no real name.  It added that there were other beings like itself.  He normally avoided people, because he was frightened of them.

Sam invited the children to visit its two-level hut.  The lower floor had blue-green walls and was covered with a pattern of dials.  It also boasted an electric heater and crude wooden furniture.  The upper level was smaller, with a metallic floor.  Sam said it lived on berries and river water.  The creature ate in an unusual manner: Sam would place a berry in its ear, thrust its head forward, which caused the berry to disappear and reappear through one of its eyes.  After repeating the process, the berry would go into its mouth.

After visiting with Sam for half an hour, the children said a polite “Goodbye” and went on their way.  Some three weeks later, Fay told her father about Sam.  At first, he refused to believe her story--and who can really blame him?--but the wealth of details the girl provided, along with her vehement insistence that she was telling the truth, caused Mr. Y to reluctantly accept her account.  Y questioned the boy who had been with Fay.  The child didn’t want to talk very much about what had happened, but he corroborated Fay’s story.

Y wrote Oliver that as wild as Fay’s account was, there were parts of the story that seemed plausible to him, particularly since he thought there might be a connection to his own odd experiences.  He added, “I get the impression that Fay was somehow taken into a bubble of alien reality created by this strange personage…he told them he had just made the hut.  Also, Fay told me that while they were talking to this ‘ghost,’ two workmen nearby were repairing a post.  They paid no attention to the weird charade--as though they could not see it.”

So.  Did “Fay,” showing a talent for science-fiction well beyond her years, invent the story?  Did the two children have some sort of joint hallucination?  Did some adult stage a remarkably elaborate practical joke?  Or did they really have an encounter with one very, very peculiar “ghost?”  Whatever your opinion about this tale may be, it is indisputable that “Sandown Sam” occupies a proud place in the world of High Strangeness.