Zigmund Adamski
Zigmund Adamski was a 57 year old Polish coal worker who, on the afternoon of June 6, 1980, was seen leaving his home in the small borough of Tingley to buy some potatoes.
He disappeared soon after and when rediscovered a baffling mystery awaited investigators.
I introduced Alan Godfrey, a former police officer who was thrust into the limelight when a front page article on one of the UK's major newspapers in 1981, reported his alleged encounter with a UFO in the town of Todmorden in November 1980.
Godfrey allegedly recalled, during hypnotic regression sessions, meeting and being medically examined by extraterrestrial beings during a period of missing time, and the alleged miraculous healing of a major medical ailment that occurred afterwards.
Godfrey has become somewhat of a celebrity within the British UFO community, as he is considered by many to be one of the first alien abductees in Britian.
However, an event that occurred in June 1980 was to pre date Alan's encounter, an event Godfrey is linked to as he was one of 2 police constables to investigate the case.
A case that many regard as the first possible alien abduction in the United Kingdom, and possibly linked to why Alan Godfrey was to have his infamous experiences.
Here is that account:
Zigmund Adamski was a 57 year old Polish coal worker who, on the afternoon of June 6, 1980, was seen leaving his home in the small borough of Tingley to buy some potatoes.
He was to attend a family wedding the following day, however he disappeared soon after.
His family was baffled, as he was well liked and respected.
On the following Wednesday, June 11, a man was to discover in the late afternoon Adamski's corpse lying on top of a 10' tall pile of anthracite, black coal, in a coal yard next to a railway line in Todmorden, a mile away from the road Alan Godfrey was months later to see a diamond shaped craft hovering in the middle of the road.
Within 30 minutes police officers Alan Godfrey & Malcolm Agley attended the scene and determined he had possibly died of a heart attack.
However, the scene was presenting a number of questions.
He was wearing clothes and shoes that appeared to be uneven and untied.
The fly on his trousers was down, and he had strange burn marks on his neck and shoulders.
He also seemed to have travelled some 20 to 30 miles from where he had last been seen near his home.
What was even stranger, was the fact that there was no evidence of him having climbed the heap of coal, or anyone having dumped the body, as no footprints were found leading to and from the coal pile.
It appeared he may have fallen, or been dropped, onto the heap.
Stranger still was the fact that the body was not there 2 hours previously, as a police officer had conducted a random patrol along the railway line.
So how had Zigmund Adamski got to the top of the coal pile?
A post mortem examination was conducted at the nearby town of Hebden Bridge that night and it was determined that he had died 8 hours previous to being found of a heart attack that had been bought on by something that had terrified him, essentially scaring him to death.
As well as the strange burn marks, that were determined to have been there for at least 48 hours, a strange green ointment like gel had been applied to the marks, and a forensic pathologist found he could not identify the substance as he took samples.
It is said that this ointment, to this day, has not been identified.
Godfrey will maintain in interviews his belief that Zigmund Adamski was abducted by extraterrestrials, possibly the same ones who were to take him months later, and that the abduction scenario took place, and possibly caused Adamski to have a heart attack while under examination, his body dumped due to his death on top of the coal pile hurriedly.
Many UFO researchers agree with this conclusion, although researchers conducting an investigation in 2005 for BUFORA, British UFO Research Association, cited that Adamski's family believed he had been kidnapped by a family member and held captive in a shed, and had possibly been tortured.
This has not stopped UFO advocates and researchers from calling Adamski the first person to be killed by aliens in Britian.
Godfrey's investigation into Adamski's death was dropped late in 1980, and it is claimed senior police officials installed a clamp down on confidentiality, stopping police from speaking to the media in regards to the case.
All files regarding the investigation have not been made public, even though a number of MoD, Ministry of Defence, files regarding UFO reports were released by the National Archives in 2008.
The fact that files regarding anything to do with Zigmund Adamski have not been made public have been asserted by many, including Godfrey, to be the result of a possible cover up by the Government or Military of the UK.
The case of Zigmund Adamski and his disappearance remains a mystery, the case is unsolved to this day.
Many UFO researchers believe the case is one of the world's strangest cases of possible alien abduction.
It occurred during a wave of UFO related incidents that included the now infamous Rendlesham Forest Incident in December that year, and would make 1980 a year UFOlogists will consider a pivotal one in British UFO history.