The Alien. United Kingdom

Cardiff has long been a popular destination for visiting UFOs. In May 1909 'scareships', strange oblong bodies whirring through the sky, were witnessed across the UK. Perhaps the most unusual sighting was that of a Mr C. Lethbridge. Sometime dock worker, sometime Punch and Judy purveyor, Lethbridge was pushing his Punch and Judy cart home via Caerphilly Mountain on Tuesday 16th May.

Lethbridge, while admitting he had had a 'sleever', maintained that he hadn't been drunk when he came across the craft and two young men dressed in heavy fur coats and hats. On seeing him the men 'jumped up and jabbered furiously to each other in a strange lingo - Welsh or something; it was certainly not English.' They then got into 'a kind of little carriage suspended from' the craft, and rose into the air 'in a zig-zag fashion'. Other witnesses to a strange craft in the sky were a railway signalman named Robert Westlake, the chauffer to Archdeacon Bevan in Brecon, and men working on the SS Arndale.

On Wednesday night the airship was sighted in Pontypool by everyone ranging from night shift workers at the town forge, to Mr Garth Fisher, 'a well known local architect', and similar sightings came in from Monmouth, Maesteg and even far north, in Aberystwyth. Contemporary explanations included advertising models, super advanced spy ships, and youthful pranks. None was completely satisfactory and by July Lethbridge, as he told the Evening Express, was 'sick of the whole matter'.