Tag Archives: myth

I thought I’d share a local legend of an event that occurred very close to where I live with my family.

For a bit of context, we live on a small row of houses on a very long main road between Warrington and Leigh, in the North West of England. To the left of us, past the motorway, is a huge mosaic of lanes, farms/farmers fields and wide open countryside. To the right is a large Science and Business Park. The office I work at is on this Park and I can walk to work, past a little duck pond, which is really nice in the Spring and Summer months.

The whole area was originally ordnance and munitions works for the Second World War and then became the most important place in the whole of the UK for nuclear research and development. To this day, there’s a large amount of nuclear businesses, laboratories and research places. The area was also the home of the Manchester University Research Reactor.

We even have road names like Cavendish Avenue, Kelvin Close and Faraday Street, all named after famous physicists and for the Department of Atomic Energy (DATEN).

Here’s the story about The Curse of the Silver Man.

At approximately 11:30 pm. on the evening of March 17th, 1978 (I was 14 months old at the time!), a 39 year-old service engineer, by the name of Ken Edwards, was heading home after a meeting in Greater Manchester. By all accounts, Edwards was a straight-laced, hard working man, who was not prone to wild flights of fancy or belief in the paranormal.

However, as Ken drove home, through the area where the atomic energy complex was located, he came across a two legged apparition, which he would later dub the “Silver Man”.  Apparently, it ambled down a hill, with its arms outstretched, walking in a strange, stiff-legged manner, like someone who was born without knee joints.

Ken also noticed that the figure’s roundish face was black, or that it was covered with some sort of mask, with no discernible features except for a pair of glowing eyes. Furthermore, it had two, thin arms, which were not attached at its shoulders, but stuck straight out of its chest like a T Rex.

The bizarre being trudged into the road, directly in front of Ken’s car and turned to face him, staring into his eyes with its own self illuminated orbs.

Ken also noticed that this creature assumed an odd ‘stooped’ posture, as it scrambled down the hill, which seemed impossible for a human to emulate without toppling over. This would be confirmed by investigators who inspected the scene and who were unable to imitate the thing’s gait, forcing some to wonder if perhaps this Silver Man was not susceptible to the same laws of gravity as the rest of us.

Ken estimated that the figure was at least 7-feet in height and was either clad in some sort of reflective silver fabric, like a radiation suit, or had a dull metallic skin.

Then, without warning, two pencil-thin “energy beams” of white light shot from the humanoid’s eyes directly into Ken’s van. He claimed that as soon as he was struck by these intense beams, he was overcome by a “dizzy” sensation and lost all sense of time. He also claimed that there was some kind of invisible force that had apparently paralysed him, which he compared to:

“…someone with two enormous hands pressing me down from the top. The pressure was tremendous… it seemed to paralyse me. I could only move my eyes. The rest of me was rigid.”

Stranger still, he claimed that he was overcome with unconventional thoughts rushing through his head all at once, but he only remembered one that kept looping over and over in his brain:

“Is this something from outer space and what does it want with me?”

A moment later he regained control of his muscles and realised that his fingers were throbbing and covered with what looked like sunburnt flesh. Even more disturbingly, he noticed that the circuitry of his pricey radio transceiver had completely burned out during the ordeal.

When Ken looked up again, he saw that the entity had apparently lost interest in him and was heading straight for the 10-foot high, barbwire topped security fence that surrounded the fire station, opposite the nuclear facility. Once it arrived at the fence, the Silver Man raised its fingerless hands upwards, paused, lowered its arms and then walked directly through the barrier!!!

As soon as it “melted” through the fence, the creature clambered up the hill next to the fire station and disappeared into the woods beyond.

Needless to say, Ken was stunned by this entire episode and took a moment to compose himself and wonder what the hell just happened!! He later claimed that he remained motionless on the roadside for just a few minutes before he threw his vehicle into gear and sped home. However, he arrived at his house, nearly an hour later, at about 12:30am, following a drive which should have taken no more than 5 minutes!

Ken knew that something was not quite right. Even so, he simply chalked it up to the trauma of this harrowing event making him lose track of time:

“…[It] seems like a long time I know, but I was petrified and I do not want to go through that again.”

While that may be the case, the fact that Ken had no direct memory of the time he lingered in his van, forces you to wonder whether or not this might have been an example of the “missing time” phenomenon that is so often associated with alleged alien abduction cases.

If that were the case, either Ken had no recollection of the event, as most do not until the “lost” memories are unlocked through hypnosis, or he simply refused to speak about it, although some researchers claimed that he was haunted by thoughts of abduction.

Regardless of whether or not he had any additional information, he agreed to accompany the officers back to the scene of the encounter where they met up with a team of twenty, baton armed, UKAEA security guards.

It bears mentioning that one of the men on the scene later stated that when the UKAEA security team was told of Edwards strange sighting none of the men so much as offered a smirk. Is this because they were stone-cold professionals or could it be that they were familiar with this peculiar night visitor?

Unfortunately, the search party found no sign of the creature, nor any indication that the fence had been damaged.

Ken later realised that the “sunburned” fingers on his right hand were scarring with three dark marks that ran the entire length of the fingers. These strange marks faded within 3-weeks.

Almost as bizarre as his enigmatic night time sunburn, were the effects these allegedly alien energy beams had on Edwards’ transceiver. The second unusual thing found by the investigators, was the dead body of a rabbit that had no evident injuries. While this poor bunny may be completely unrelated to the event, there are some who have speculated that it might have been a (perhaps unintentional) victim of the Silver Man’s energy beam or conceivably it succumbed to some sort of extraterrestrial radiation poisoning. Others surmised that the pitiable critter had simply been “scared to death”.

At about midnight, on Thursday March 23, 1978, a mere 6 days after his frightening run-in with the unknown, Edwards once again found himself at the site of the event, this time with a man who is only identified as a “freelance UFO investigator from Leeds.” Edwards claimed that for a second time he felt himself being overcome by the disturbing mental and physical sensations that had flooded him during his “staring match” with the Silver Man.

The next strange incident occurred on April 2, 1978, but did not involve an actual sighting. According to Ken, he and his wife were driving home along the usual route that took them past the nuclear power plant at about 2:00am, following a daytrip to Yorkshire, when he was overcome by that same disquieting “feeling” that had gripped him twice before.

For reasons he was unable to explain, Edwards felt compelled to bring his van to a halt at the location of his first sighting. It was then that the engineer pledged to never travel by that road again, no matter how far out of the way he had to go.

The final weird incident in the Risley ordeal happened in the wee hours of April 12, 1978. Ken claimed that he had been awoken in the middle of the night by a deep electrical hum that seemed to fill his house. He climbed out of bed, careful not to disturb his wife, and began searching for the source of the strange hum. He thoroughly searched his home, assuming that something mechanical had been left on, but when he found nothing running he decided to check outside.

According to Ken, the sound increased in volume as soon as he opened the window, but he could still see nothing. Eventually the noise faded and he returned to bed. A few days later it was discovered that two local residents had also heard the hum and when they looked skyward they realised that it was emanating from an oval, red UFO. While there’s no direct correlation between the UFO and the Silver Man, it’s difficult not to make at least circumstantial connections.

Within a year of his now infamous sighting, just as things were starting to return to normal, Ken became unexpectedly ill. He experienced a loss of energy and suffered from severe stomach pains. He decided that he needed to go to the hospital, where, after a battery of tests, he was diagnosed with cancer of the kidneys.

Ken underwent major surgery to remove the cancer, but within a few months the insidious cells had reappeared in his throat. Within five years of his encounter with the Silver Man, Ken Edwards had tragically succumbed to the cancer and passed away.

No one has ever seen anything quite the same again and it’s usually a really quiet and uninteresting place…..but it makes you wonder what exactly happened to poor Ken that fateful night?