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The Alfred Burtoo Encounter

Date: August 12, 1983


Location: Aldershot, Hampshire, United Kingdom

Alfred Burtoo was fishing along an isolated canal when a disc-shaped UFO landed nearby.
The beings were humanoid, 4'6" tall, dressed in green overalls and wore helmets with visors.
The beings gestured at the witness to follow them and he went up a stairway into the craft.
He was made to stand under an amber light. The beings spoke to him in broken English
telling him that he was too old and infirm for their purposes, he was then let go.

Alfred Burtoo's sketch of the craft.


Alfred Burtoo.

Artist Michael Buhler's impression of the Alfred Burtoo encounter.


As 77-year-old Alfred Burtoo was fishing the Basingstoke Canal in the peaceful
early hours of the morning of August 12, 1983, he saw a brilliant light descend from
the sky and settle on the nearby towpath. Thinking it must be a helicopter from the
nearby MOD base, he took no notice, and poured himself a cup of tea from his
Thermos flask. Then his dog, Tiny, began whining furiously and two figures
emerged from the darkness.

"They were about four foot high, dressed in pale green coveralls from head to foot,"
Burtoo told reporters. "And they had helmets of the same colour with a visor that
was blacked out."

The strangers gestured to Burtoo to accompany them. Calmly setting down his cup
of tea, the intrepid pensioner follow them along the towpath towards a saucer-
shaped craft. "I was 77 and didn't have much to lose," he later explained.

Inside the Saucer

Climbing up a set of steps into the saucer, Burtoo discovered that the ceiling was
so low he had to stoop. He found himself inside a black, metallic octagonal
chamber, which smelt slightly of decaying meat.

"I did not see any signs of nuts or bolts, nor did I see any seams where the object
had been put together," he recalled. "What did interest me most of all was a shaft
that rose up from the floor to the ceiling. The shaft was about four feet in
circumference, and on the right-hand side stood two forms similar to those that
walked along the towpath with me."

One of the beings told the old man to stand beneath an orange light, which
appeared to scan him for a few minutes. "What is your age?" asked the entity, in a
"sing-song" voice which sounded like "a mixture of Chinese and Russian". When
he replied that he was 78, it declared: "You can go. You are too old and infirm for
our purposes." Bemused, Burtoo climbed down from the saucer and returned to his
fishing spot.

"The first thing I did...was to pick up my cold cup of tea and drink it," he recalled.
"And then I heard this whining noise, just as if an electric generator was starting up,
and this thing lifted up then took off at a very high speed."

Apparently unfazed by his bizarre encounter, Burtoo resumed the task at hand. "I
got into what I had come out for - the fishing!" Despite his rather curt reception, he
later declared his nocturnal adventure to have been "the greatest experience of my
life".

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