The Pennine UFO Mystery

About the Author

This site's own Jenny Randles key-figures entry already documents her broader career, including her 2000s re-investigation of Lakenheath-Bentwaters and her 2000-published co-authorship of The UFOs That Never Were. This article does not repeat that ground, focusing instead on this specific, earlier 1983 book.

This article's own research personally verified a genuine, documented public dispute between Randles and Magonia reviewer Peter Rogerson, published in Magonia 13 and 14 (1983) -- detailed under Critical Reception below. Randles herself described it, in her own words, as "the first really rotten review which one of my books has generated in the serious UFO literature."

Historical Context & Origins

This site's own Todmorden Police Encounter case file documents the wider 1980 Pennine UFO wave this book covers as its subject, beginning mid-1980 across West Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Greater Manchester and giving Todmorden its enduring reputation as one of Britain's most concentrated UFO "hotspots." This article's own research corroborates that the book's scope genuinely extends beyond Godfrey: a secondary source directly quoting page 45 describes the book documenting a March 1977 sighting witnessed by roughly forty coach passengers near Barnoldswick, alongside reports across Skipton, Nelson, Burnley, Barley, and Pendle Hill.

This site's own case file documents Alan Godfrey's own prior role attending the scene of the unexplained June 1980 death of Zigmund Adamski, a Polish-born coal miner found dead under unusual circumstances in a Todmorden coal yard five months before Godfrey's own sighting. This article's own research, personally verified via Randles's own 1983 published reply to a critical review, confirms the book opens with the Adamski case as its first chapter, and that Randles devotes "a whole chapter concerning rumour generation" specifically to that case, stating in her own words: "there is no evidence to support the claims that Adamski was killed by ufonauts."

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

This article's own research located what its own case file independently arrives at by a different route: Randles's own stated evidentiary framework, quoted directly from her 1983 Magonia reply, distinguishes between "objective, physical UAP events, and subjective, 'hallucinatory,' close encounters," arguing that the inability to photograph the latter "has nothing to do with the existence or otherwise of the former." This is close to a direct historical precedent for the same two-tier evidentiary weighting this site's own Todmorden case file applies to Godfrey's initial physical sighting versus his later hypnosis-derived abduction narrative.

Secondary sourcing indicates the book documents Godfrey's hypnotic regression sessions in detail, including transcribed material, while taking care to note that Godfrey himself was never fully certain the abduction narrative recovered under hypnosis actually happened, and that British police, unlike some American law enforcement of the era, did not treat hypnotic regression as an investigatively reliable method -- a position consistent with this site's own case file, though this article was not able to independently verify the exact wording of that passage from primary-source text.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

This site's own Todmorden Police Encounter case file (Case File #234) documents Godfrey's sighting, the missing-time episode, the physical trace evidence, and the later hypnosis sessions in far greater depth than any single book chapter allows, including this site's own documented connection between Godfrey and the Zigmund Adamski case. Readers wanting the complete case record should consult that case file directly.

This site's own Aveley Abduction case file documents a separate British hypnosis-derived abduction case from the same broader era, useful direct comparison for readers weighing how hypnotic regression testimony is handled across different UK cases.

Critical Reception & Controversies

This article personally retrieved and verified the actual text of a genuine 1983 published dispute between Randles and Magonia reviewer Peter Rogerson. Rogerson's review in Magonia 13 called the book "rambling" and, per Randles's own characterization in her reply, argued it was counter-productive to serious ufology's aims. Randles's direct, quoted response in Magonia 14 pushed back point by point: she disputed the "rambling" characterization, noted Rogerson's review did not engage her own stated caution about the Adamski case, and specifically flagged one substantive error Rogerson identified -- a mistaken date concerning the unrelated 1965 death of contactee George Adamski, which Randles readily acknowledged ("I offer no excuses, this was my mistake") while disputing that it reflected on the book's broader argument or her integrity.

As of this article's research (August 2026), the book holds a 3.67-out-of-5 rating on Goodreads from 18 ratings and 3 written reviews -- aggregated secondhand summaries describe reader praise for Randles's "street level insight" into 1980s British ufology, alongside at least one more critical assessment. The book remains an actively cited primary source: this article found it referenced with specific page citations by the Calderdale Local Studies library and by the "UFOs over Pendle" regional research project, indicating its continued standing as a documentary reference for the Pennine wave more than four decades after publication.

Influence & Legacy

The book's clearest legacy is as the earliest full-length, closest-to-contemporaneous investigation of the Todmorden case, written by a researcher who began interviewing Godfrey directly within months of his sighting -- a vantage point no later account of the case can replicate, regardless of how that account weighs the evidence.

Set alongside this site's own Todmorden Police Encounter case file, this book remains valuable both as a primary documentary source on Godfrey's own case and, via the 1983 Magonia exchange this article personally verified, as a window into how contemporaneous British ufology itself debated the proper handling of sensational, media-amplified cases like the Adamski death.

The Book

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