UFO mass sighting at Bedonwell Primary School, 1955.

A dramatic and widely viewed schoolyard encounter began on the afternoon of July 17, 1955. Margaret Fry, her son Steve, and Doctor Thukarta were in a car driving through Bexley, England. Thukarta was driving.

“After a while,” says Margaret, “we became aware of a heavy shadow over our car. The rest of the sky was bright blue and cloudless, the sun blazing to the left of us. We kept peering through the windscreen, wondering what was causing the shadow engulfing the car.”

Fry asked the doctor to pull over. Thukarta agreed and as he made a right turn onto another street, the shadow followed them. “By now we definitely knew something was above the car,” Fry said.

The car engine suddenly failed and sputtered to a stop. Fry and Thukarta exited the car, while Fry’s son remained inside the car looking out the car window. “Once out of the car,” says Fry, “we looked up and were horrified to see a concentrated mass of gray cloud-like material just barely eighteen feet above our heads. As we watched, this oval mass started spinning. It then slowly solidified, and we saw three ball bearing-like wheels come down from what I thought was a smooth underside…I did think it was landing and would squash us, but we were so shocked we did not think to move away from under it. However, the wheels retracted, and it continued to spin and hum like a top, combined with a slight swooshing sound like the sea…it then flipped up on its side, then righted back again, then flopped down at the crossroads ahead of us. We exclaimed, ‘My God, it’s one of those flying saucer things!”

They stood at the T-intersection of Ashbourne and Whitfield roads. Both roads were blocked by the massive UFO which had landed right in the middle of the intersection. It hovered about four feet above the ground.

It was a densely populated area, with houses lining both streets. About a dozen children who had been playing on the street surrounded the craft. Quickly, people rushed out of their homes and cars, and the group of witnesses grew to at least thirty. They surrounded the object, which was making a soft humming noise.

“It was a typical bell-shaped craft,” said Fry, “although gray-silver-blue, it was not quite any of those hues; it was more like pewter than shining, in fact it looked just out of this world!”

She saw that her son Steve had his face pasted to the car-window and was watching in shock. She was also amazed by the detailed appearance of the object. “The craft had indents, or moldings, that I thought must be portholes around the center. Below this was a wide ledge, and above was a rounded dome which had further moldings for a door? What impressed itself in my memory was that the lower circular part was in sections, or so it seemed, with distinct seams and what appeared to be rivets.”

Rodney Maynard was 15 years old and was one of the witnesses. He was on his lunch break when he heard that something had landed on the road outside. He and his brother (age 16) ran outside and saw the saucer, which he said was “black, sleek and streamlined, with a surface like polished metal…It was very fine and beautiful.”

He joined the group, pushing to the front to get a good look. “This thing had landed in the road,” he said. “It took up the whole width of the road and overlapped onto the pavement. It wasn’t on the ground. It had about eight massive suckers. The center was still, but the outer rim was spinning slowly, and it had white lights flashing, like a camera flash…It had what looked like windows, but the glass was concave and molded together so you could not see in. A couple of us went forward to try and touch it, and it began to spin faster.”

The object then lifted slowly upward just over their heads. Fry says it reached a height of about 100 feet. As she says, “It wobbled from side to side, then stood still when a porthole opened up at about 100 feet. For the first time I felt a real fear, thinking there had to be people in there. When it was near to the ground and we were standing at arm’s length from it, we were so utterly amazed at the craft itself, that we did not think of aliens or anyone being in it.”

It then moved slowly down the street until it was hovering over Bedonwell Primary School. It remained over the school for about one minute in full view of witnesses until it suddenly “shot up into the sky and disappeared.”

Fry and Thukarta watched it until it reached an estimated altitude of 30,000 feet. It was still in view when they left the area.

The Maynard brothers told their parents what had happened. Neither of them was believed.

Fry says that the experience left her forever changed. “For weeks I really felt I had my feet in two worlds, one with that craft that linked me to another planet. I felt isolated, for my son was too young to discuss it in depth with. Gradually you put it out of your mind and get on with life, but you are never the same again.”

Fry eventually joined the BUFORA group and began to investigate and write about UFOs.

Source: Schoolyard UFO Encounters: 100 True Accounts by Preston Dennett.