The Sandown “Ghost Clown,” 1973
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In 1973, two children on the Isle of Wight had a rather unique encounter with a strange, clown or scarecrow-like entity. A narrative of the case was later published in the journal of the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA), which remains the only source on the episode. While the children's story is impossible to verify, it is an enlightening glimpse into childhood entity encounters - real or imagined - and hints at the possibility that some of these encounters may actually take place in an alternate reality.
The Encounter
On a Tuesday afternoon in the first half of May, 1973, two children were out playing near a village south of Sandown, on the British Isle of Wight. One was a 7-year-old girl known to the public as “Fay”; the other was an unidentified boy of a similar age. Around 4 p.m., the pair heard an odd wailing noise that was similar to an ambulance siren. They followed the sound, cutting through a golf course to reach a swampy meadow by the small Sandown Airport. The siren noise had stopped at some point after their arrival, but as the children crossed a wooden foot-bridge, they saw an odd, humanoid figure emerge from under it, wading in the creek water. The figure fumbled with a book it was holding, dropped it in the creek, then splashed around trying to pick it up again. Next they watched as the figure hopped away, pulling its knees high into the air with every jump. It hopped its way over to a two-story, windowless metal hut, similar to those used on construction sites.
The children walked on and got just over 50 yards, or 46 meters, from the hut when they saw the figure standing outside again. This time it was holding what looked to be a black microphone connected to a white cord. The children described the entity as standing almost 7 feet tall. It was proportioned like a human, but with no neck. Its eyes were simple triangles and its nose was a brown square. It had paper-white skin with a circle on either cheek, and yellow lips that never moved. On top of its head was a pointed, yellow hat with a bit of red hair drooping down onto its forehead. A round, black knob topped the hat and what looked to be wooden antenna stuck out from either side. The hat connected directly to the red collar of a long-sleeved green tunic, over white pants. The entity’s hands had only three fingers, and its feet three toes. The hands were covered in blue gloves, while its feet were bare, and white. Some type of “wooden slats” stuck out from its sleeves and the legs of its pants, and its clothes had many rips in them.(1)
Suddenly the children could hear the alarm sound again, but louder. This scared the boy, who started to run. But just as he took off, the alarm stopped, and a friendly-sounding voice asked, “Hello, are you still there?” Fay indicated that the figure may have put the microphone to its mouth when the voice was heard. The children noted that the voice sounded as though it was coming from someone standing very close to them, and not necessarily from the figure, or the hut. Reassured by the friendly tone, the children approached again.(2)
The figure introduced itself by writing onto a notebook: “Hello and I am all colours, Sam.” It’s unclear if this was meant to be the entity’s name, but here we’ll call the thing, Sam. Fay read aloud as Sam pointed to each word at a time. She said that Sam wrote in “large hand,” likely indicating capital letters. She also noted that the words were arranged out of order.
The children walked closer and heard a voice again. Sam’s lips remained still, and its words were poorly enunciated, much as someone would sound if they spoke without fully opening their mouth, or moving their lips. Sam asked some questions of the children, which prompted them to ask it questions back. They asked why its shirt and pants were ripped, to which Sam responded that it had no other clothes. The children asked Sam if it was a man, to which it answered “no,” with a chuckle. They then asked if Sam was a ghost, and it replied, “well, not really, but I am in an odd sort of way.” The pair then asked it what it was, if not a man or ghost, to which Sam simply responded, “You know.” Sam went on to tell them that it had no name, despite the earlier introduction.(3) It also informed the kids that others like itself existed, and even drew a rough sketch of what another one of its kind looked like. Lastly, Sam claimed to be afraid of humans, fearing harm.
While the children were speaking to Sam, they could see two workers working on an electrical pole nearby. These men paid no attention to the scene before them, as if they couldn’t even see it.(4)
After this exchange, Sam invited the children into the metallic hut that it claimed it had just finished building. The pair entered by crawling through a flap, finding themselves in a room with some basic wooden furniture, an electric heater, and a high ceiling. The walls were covered in what looked to be a blue-green wallpaper, which itself was “covered in a pattern of dials,” but it’s unclear if these dials were merely a design on the wallpaper, or real mechanical fixtures. The children claimed that there was also a smaller upper-level room with a metallic floor, but it’s unclear if they went up there.
Sam took its hat off after entering the hut, and the children could now see its round, white ears and sparse brown hair. The children spoke to Sam inside the hut for 30 minutes or longer. During this time Sam told them that it eats berries that it gathers in the late afternoon, and claimed to drink purified river water. It also mentioned a “camp” it visited on the mainland. In addition, Sam showed the kids something that Fay described as a “conjuring trick.” Sam put a berry in its ear, then thrust its head forward until the berry reappeared at one of its eyes. With a few more thrusts, the berry disappeared again then reappeared at its mouth.
The pair eventually said goodbye to Sam, then left the hut to walk back home. While passing through the golf course they told a man that they’d seen a ghost, or someone dressed as one, then returned home.(5)
Mr. Y’s Experiences
It was three weeks later, on June 2nd, when Fay told her father, known only as Mr. Y, about the strange events. He was hesitant, at first, to take the story seriously, but he eventually followed-up with the boy, who confirmed his daughter’s account of events. Mr. Y visited the location of the encounter but there was no trace of the metal hut, or any sign of Sam.(6)
Though he hadn’t told Fay, Mr. Y had some anomalous experiences of his own in the preceding two-and-a-half years. Around 7 p.m. on October 20th, 1970, Mr. Y was driving to see a friend in the town of Ryde on the north-east coast of the Isle of Wight. As he was headed eastward, he spotted a very large, lit object in the sky to his right, roughly halfway between the road and the nearby village of Bembridge. Mr. Y stopped his car to watch the object as it hovered over swampland connected to the Yar River, drifting around apparently aimlessly. It was quite low to the ground, and completely silent. Mr. Y described the object as having seven or more large, spherical lights arranged in a wide ring around its circumference, each “like a bright red cherry.” There was also a turquoise light and a white light in between each of the red ones.
Mr. Y resumed driving, at which point the UFO followed parallel until he left the town he was passing through. The craft then moved perpendicular to his direction of travel, until it was positioned directly to his rear, roughly 300 yards behind. At this point, it slowly descended and started drifting around overtop of some hedges. Mr. Y stopped again, then took out a flashlight to try to signal to the craft. Farther away, the object seemed smaller, and only four red lights were discernible - which now appeared to be slowly rotating. Mr. Y signalled to the craft for 10 minutes, while it "weaved backwards and forwards” as Oliver put it.
Mr. Y drove on, and the red lights remained visible even after he arrived at his friend’s house. When Mr. Y’s friend had joined him outside, the two watched as the craft darted in and out from behind different trees - one of the men said that it was as if the UFO were playing “hide and seek.” Mr Y. then drove on to the town of Ryde when he lost sight of it. For at least several months afterwards, Mr. Y claimed that he spotted several other singular flying balls of red light that hovered in place or followed him.
On the 1st of March, 1972, Mr. Y had another unusual experience while out at Compton Bay on the south-western coast of the island. Between 9 and 10 p.m., an unanticipated tidal surge forced Mr. Y up onto a cliffside, where he was stranded until the tide receded. He then noticed two yellow lights just under the surface of the water, roughly 40 feet, or 12 metres from his location, “peering up at [him] like the eyes of some horrible sea monster.”
Mr. Y had never shared a word of his unusual experiences with Fay before her own experience with Sam.(7) However, he believed that her experiences were related to his own, and he felt the need to tell someone about them.
Debate
Mr Y. eventually shared his and his daughter’s experiences with Leonard Cramp, vice president of the British UFO Research Association’s council. Cramp suggested Mr. Y contact Norman Oliver, editor of the BUFORA journal. Mr. Y provided Oliver with a detailed account of all related events, and Oliver condensed the narrative for the January 1978 issue of the journal.(8)
The BUFORA article contains a few artist’s renderings of the scenes described, and a drawing of Sam appeared on the journal cover. It’s unknown how accurate these illustrations are since it’s unlikely that they were ever shown to Fay or Mr. Y. There is at least one error in these drawings: the hut has windows, despite the article stating that it was windowless. Although Sam stated that it was not a man, it is mostly referred to with male pronouns in the original publication. It’s possible that Sam’s voice, name, or size led Fay to conclude that it was a male.
The case has received limited attention, perhaps due to its strange and boundary-defying nature. The encounter is mentioned in the 1991 book Modern Mysteries of Britain by Janet and Colin Bord, and has received some coverage online.(9) Debunkers have largely ignored it, likely due to the scarcity of evidence.(10) With no corroborating witnesses, and no supporting physical evidence, it’s impossible to know the truth of the narrative contained in the BUFORA article.
Of course, the children could have been misremembering a different encounter, or lying altogether. But while young children at ages 4 and 5 are known to lie or make up tales, at older ages, these fabrications are more often told to serve some purpose.(11) However, Fay’s story served her no purpose, and yet she was insistent on its truth, even weeks after it supposedly happened. Her father said that the level of detail that she conveyed, and her persistent commitment to the truth of the narrative, convinced him that she was being honest. Neither Fay nor Mr. Y have ever spoken publicly about their experiences again, and so no more has been learned of the strange entity at Sandown.
It’s unknown what became of the witnesses, and Norman Oliver passed away in 2022.(12) Whatever notes he took on Mr. Y’s deposition are now lost, if not destroyed, and no file on the case exists in BUFORA’s archives.(13) It’s possible that some descendent of either Fay, the boy, or Oliver, will step forward with more documentation. Until then, the investigation is at a stand-still.
Analysis
The case is highly unique in many ways, but as with most anomalous experiences, there are similar ones on record. For example, when anomalist John Keel was doing research for his book, The Mothman Prophecies, he heard a story from Leonard Elmore of Duncan Falls, Ohio. In October 1966, the 72-year-old Leonard was out for an early-morning walk when he saw an unfamiliar “L-shaped building” in the middle of the field. Leonard got close enough to discover that it looked like a “galvanized iron shed,” though it had no windows or doors. Suddenly he heard a male voice come from the shed saying, “Don’t run… don’t run.” Leonard immediately walked home to retrieve his rifle, then returned to the location, only to find the shed now gone.(14)
The fact that the electrical workers didn’t appear to see the interaction is reminiscent of another case from Riverside County, California in 1955. According to a report from the Center for UFO Studies, on August 22nd, a group of 8 or 9 boys were playing in a family garden when they saw several strange UFOs appear. But when a parent came out to look, the UFOs would disappear. And at least once that afternoon, one of the parents saw nothing, even when the objects were still visible to the kids. The kids also saw unusual-looking entities that spoke to one of them, and hypnotised another. The whole encounter so disturbed the kids that one was still crying an hour later when a reporter arrived.(15)
The Sandown case contains elements of what astronomer J. Allen Hynek dubbed “high strangeness,” which is a way of describing cases with a large number of elements that can't be explained by conventional science.(16) Sam itself was highly strange. Many have debated what it meant by “all colours, Sam,” especially considering that it later claimed to have no name. “All colours” might have been meant to invoke the visible spectrum. Perhaps it meant that it somehow exhibits the full range of visible colours, or every wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum.
“All colours” may have also been a reference to the chromatic scale in music. The term “Chromatic” comes from the Greek word for colour, meaning the scale encompasses “all colours,” or all 12 notes in an octave. Of course, “all colours” may also have a much more literal interpretation, referring only to the being’s colourful appearance. The fact that the children were lured away by sound invokes the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Interestingly, the word “Pied” is used to refer to something with two or more colours.(17)
One of the greatest difficulties associated with this case is in classifying Sam. Commentators on the case have variously referred to Sam as an alien, a clown, a ghost, a robot, or a cryptid. Ufologists such as Jacques Vallée and John Keel have argued that the appearance of anomalous entities and UFOs is cobbled together from existing cultural images. The children may have been subconsciously projecting these cultural images onto whatever they were seeing, or perhaps, the entity was itself engaged in a crude imitation of a human, either through costume, or some more technical process.
In particular, Sam’s appearance seems to have been a mash-up between a clown and a scarecrow. There were several prominent books, films, and television shows available in England at the time that featured clowns and scarecrows as characters, and these were archetypes long before Fay’s time. One type of clown popular in vaudeville and minstrel shows of the 19th century was known as the tramp, and was always dressed in torn, dirty clothes.(18) Left to the elements, scarecrows would also naturally develop tattered clothes, and the scarecrow character in the Wizard of Oz - probably the most famous depiction of a scarecrow in western culture - had tears in his clothes as well. He also had straw protruding from his sleeves and pant legs, just as Sam had wooden slats protruding from the same places. The pointy hat and the covered neck and collar are also reminiscent of the Scarecrow character. It’s as if Sam’s image was constructed based on characters in pop culture that children felt safe and happy around.
Mr. Y commented in the BUFORA article that he felt that the kids were “taken into a bubble of alien reality” that Sam had created - hence why the electrical workers didn’t see anything.(19) Many witnesses to UFOs, cryptids, and other anomalous entities often report decisive changes in their perception before encounters. For example, many people report that the world around them goes completely silent, or that the air itself feels different. Others report time distortion, memory disruption, or unusual sounds or odours. English anomalist, Jenny Randles, coined the term Oz Factor in 1987 to describe the altered sense of reality surrounding many anomalous experiences, while Jacques Vallée has referred to this phenomenon as “reality transformation.”(20) Perhaps the reason that neither Sam nor its hut were ever seen again, was because both only existed in this transformed reality.
Conclusion
The case of the Sandown “ghost clown,” as it is often known, remains an anomaly even within the field of anomalistics. The children's experiences were similar to UFO abduction and ghost sightings, but were dissimilar to both in just as many ways. More so than any other encounter, the Sandown ghost clown is a reminder to approach each and every case as its own unique experience, and to resist being overly rigid in our categorization.
The case, and others like it, also suggests that whatever phenomenon is behind these interactions is reaching us in some alternate reality, or perhaps, inside of our own minds.
In 1973, two children on the Isle of Wight had a rather unique encounter with a strange, clown or scarecrow-like entity. A narrative of the case was later published in the journal of the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA), which remains the only source on the episode. While the children's story is impossible to verify, it is an enlightening glimpse into childhood entity encounters - real or imagined - and hints at the possibility that some of these encounters may actually take place in an alternate reality.
The Encounter
On a Tuesday afternoon in the first half of May, 1973, two children were out playing near a village south of Sandown, on the British Isle of Wight. One was a 7-year-old girl known to the public as “Fay”; the other was an unidentified boy of a similar age. Around 4 p.m., the pair heard an odd wailing noise that was similar to an ambulance siren. They followed the sound, cutting through a golf course to reach a swampy meadow by the small Sandown Airport. The siren noise had stopped at some point after their arrival, but as the children crossed a wooden foot-bridge, they saw an odd, humanoid figure emerge from under it, wading in the creek water. The figure fumbled with a book it was holding, dropped it in the creek, then splashed around trying to pick it up again. Next they watched as the figure hopped away, pulling its knees high into the air with every jump. It hopped its way over to a two-story, windowless metal hut, similar to those used on construction sites.
The children walked on and got just over 50 yards, or 46 meters, from the hut when they saw the figure standing outside again. This time it was holding what looked to be a black microphone connected to a white cord. The children described the entity as standing almost 7 feet tall. It was proportioned like a human, but with no neck. Its eyes were simple triangles and its nose was a brown square. It had paper-white skin with a circle on either cheek, and yellow lips that never moved. On top of its head was a pointed, yellow hat with a bit of red hair drooping down onto its forehead. A round, black knob topped the hat and what looked to be wooden antenna stuck out from either side. The hat connected directly to the red collar of a long-sleeved green tunic, over white pants. The entity’s hands had only three fingers, and its feet three toes. The hands were covered in blue gloves, while its feet were bare, and white. Some type of “wooden slats” stuck out from its sleeves and the legs of its pants, and its clothes had many rips in them.(1)
Suddenly the children could hear the alarm sound again, but louder. This scared the boy, who started to run. But just as he took off, the alarm stopped, and a friendly-sounding voice asked, “Hello, are you still there?” Fay indicated that the figure may have put the microphone to its mouth when the voice was heard. The children noted that the voice sounded as though it was coming from someone standing very close to them, and not necessarily from the figure, or the hut. Reassured by the friendly tone, the children approached again.(2)
The figure introduced itself by writing onto a notebook: “Hello and I am all colours, Sam.” It’s unclear if this was meant to be the entity’s name, but here we’ll call the thing, Sam. Fay read aloud as Sam pointed to each word at a time. She said that Sam wrote in “large hand,” likely indicating capital letters. She also noted that the words were arranged out of order.
The children walked closer and heard a voice again. Sam’s lips remained still, and its words were poorly enunciated, much as someone would sound if they spoke without fully opening their mouth, or moving their lips. Sam asked some questions of the children, which prompted them to ask it questions back. They asked why its shirt and pants were ripped, to which Sam responded that it had no other clothes. The children asked Sam if it was a man, to which it answered “no,” with a chuckle. They then asked if Sam was a ghost, and it replied, “well, not really, but I am in an odd sort of way.” The pair then asked it what it was, if not a man or ghost, to which Sam simply responded, “You know.” Sam went on to tell them that it had no name, despite the earlier introduction.(3) It also informed the kids that others like itself existed, and even drew a rough sketch of what another one of its kind looked like. Lastly, Sam claimed to be afraid of humans, fearing harm.
While the children were speaking to Sam, they could see two workers working on an electrical pole nearby. These men paid no attention to the scene before them, as if they couldn’t even see it.(4)
After this exchange, Sam invited the children into the metallic hut that it claimed it had just finished building. The pair entered by crawling through a flap, finding themselves in a room with some basic wooden furniture, an electric heater, and a high ceiling. The walls were covered in what looked to be a blue-green wallpaper, which itself was “covered in a pattern of dials,” but it’s unclear if these dials were merely a design on the wallpaper, or real mechanical fixtures. The children claimed that there was also a smaller upper-level room with a metallic floor, but it’s unclear if they went up there.
Sam took its hat off after entering the hut, and the children could now see its round, white ears and sparse brown hair. The children spoke to Sam inside the hut for 30 minutes or longer. During this time Sam told them that it eats berries that it gathers in the late afternoon, and claimed to drink purified river water. It also mentioned a “camp” it visited on the mainland. In addition, Sam showed the kids something that Fay described as a “conjuring trick.” Sam put a berry in its ear, then thrust its head forward until the berry reappeared at one of its eyes. With a few more thrusts, the berry disappeared again then reappeared at its mouth.
The pair eventually said goodbye to Sam, then left the hut to walk back home. While passing through the golf course they told a man that they’d seen a ghost, or someone dressed as one, then returned home.(5)
Mr. Y’s Experiences
It was three weeks later, on June 2nd, when Fay told her father, known only as Mr. Y, about the strange events. He was hesitant, at first, to take the story seriously, but he eventually followed-up with the boy, who confirmed his daughter’s account of events. Mr. Y visited the location of the encounter but there was no trace of the metal hut, or any sign of Sam.(6)
Though he hadn’t told Fay, Mr. Y had some anomalous experiences of his own in the preceding two-and-a-half years. Around 7 p.m. on October 20th, 1970, Mr. Y was driving to see a friend in the town of Ryde on the north-east coast of the Isle of Wight. As he was headed eastward, he spotted a very large, lit object in the sky to his right, roughly halfway between the road and the nearby village of Bembridge. Mr. Y stopped his car to watch the object as it hovered over swampland connected to the Yar River, drifting around apparently aimlessly. It was quite low to the ground, and completely silent. Mr. Y described the object as having seven or more large, spherical lights arranged in a wide ring around its circumference, each “like a bright red cherry.” There was also a turquoise light and a white light in between each of the red ones.
Mr. Y resumed driving, at which point the UFO followed parallel until he left the town he was passing through. The craft then moved perpendicular to his direction of travel, until it was positioned directly to his rear, roughly 300 yards behind. At this point, it slowly descended and started drifting around overtop of some hedges. Mr. Y stopped again, then took out a flashlight to try to signal to the craft. Farther away, the object seemed smaller, and only four red lights were discernible - which now appeared to be slowly rotating. Mr. Y signalled to the craft for 10 minutes, while it "weaved backwards and forwards” as Oliver put it.
Mr. Y drove on, and the red lights remained visible even after he arrived at his friend’s house. When Mr. Y’s friend had joined him outside, the two watched as the craft darted in and out from behind different trees - one of the men said that it was as if the UFO were playing “hide and seek.” Mr Y. then drove on to the town of Ryde when he lost sight of it. For at least several months afterwards, Mr. Y claimed that he spotted several other singular flying balls of red light that hovered in place or followed him.
On the 1st of March, 1972, Mr. Y had another unusual experience while out at Compton Bay on the south-western coast of the island. Between 9 and 10 p.m., an unanticipated tidal surge forced Mr. Y up onto a cliffside, where he was stranded until the tide receded. He then noticed two yellow lights just under the surface of the water, roughly 40 feet, or 12 metres from his location, “peering up at [him] like the eyes of some horrible sea monster.”
Mr. Y had never shared a word of his unusual experiences with Fay before her own experience with Sam.(7) However, he believed that her experiences were related to his own, and he felt the need to tell someone about them.
Debate
Mr Y. eventually shared his and his daughter’s experiences with Leonard Cramp, vice president of the British UFO Research Association’s council. Cramp suggested Mr. Y contact Norman Oliver, editor of the BUFORA journal. Mr. Y provided Oliver with a detailed account of all related events, and Oliver condensed the narrative for the January 1978 issue of the journal.(8)
The BUFORA article contains a few artist’s renderings of the scenes described, and a drawing of Sam appeared on the journal cover. It’s unknown how accurate these illustrations are since it’s unlikely that they were ever shown to Fay or Mr. Y. There is at least one error in these drawings: the hut has windows, despite the article stating that it was windowless. Although Sam stated that it was not a man, it is mostly referred to with male pronouns in the original publication. It’s possible that Sam’s voice, name, or size led Fay to conclude that it was a male.
The case has received limited attention, perhaps due to its strange and boundary-defying nature. The encounter is mentioned in the 1991 book Modern Mysteries of Britain by Janet and Colin Bord, and has received some coverage online.(9) Debunkers have largely ignored it, likely due to the scarcity of evidence.(10) With no corroborating witnesses, and no supporting physical evidence, it’s impossible to know the truth of the narrative contained in the BUFORA article.
Of course, the children could have been misremembering a different encounter, or lying altogether. But while young children at ages 4 and 5 are known to lie or make up tales, at older ages, these fabrications are more often told to serve some purpose.(11) However, Fay’s story served her no purpose, and yet she was insistent on its truth, even weeks after it supposedly happened. Her father said that the level of detail that she conveyed, and her persistent commitment to the truth of the narrative, convinced him that she was being honest. Neither Fay nor Mr. Y have ever spoken publicly about their experiences again, and so no more has been learned of the strange entity at Sandown.
It’s unknown what became of the witnesses, and Norman Oliver passed away in 2022.(12) Whatever notes he took on Mr. Y’s deposition are now lost, if not destroyed, and no file on the case exists in BUFORA’s archives.(13) It’s possible that some descendent of either Fay, the boy, or Oliver, will step forward with more documentation. Until then, the investigation is at a stand-still.
Analysis
The case is highly unique in many ways, but as with most anomalous experiences, there are similar ones on record. For example, when anomalist John Keel was doing research for his book, The Mothman Prophecies, he heard a story from Leonard Elmore of Duncan Falls, Ohio. In October 1966, the 72-year-old Leonard was out for an early-morning walk when he saw an unfamiliar “L-shaped building” in the middle of the field. Leonard got close enough to discover that it looked like a “galvanized iron shed,” though it had no windows or doors. Suddenly he heard a male voice come from the shed saying, “Don’t run… don’t run.” Leonard immediately walked home to retrieve his rifle, then returned to the location, only to find the shed now gone.(14)
The fact that the electrical workers didn’t appear to see the interaction is reminiscent of another case from Riverside County, California in 1955. According to a report from the Center for UFO Studies, on August 22nd, a group of 8 or 9 boys were playing in a family garden when they saw several strange UFOs appear. But when a parent came out to look, the UFOs would disappear. And at least once that afternoon, one of the parents saw nothing, even when the objects were still visible to the kids. The kids also saw unusual-looking entities that spoke to one of them, and hypnotised another. The whole encounter so disturbed the kids that one was still crying an hour later when a reporter arrived.(15)
The Sandown case contains elements of what astronomer J. Allen Hynek dubbed “high strangeness,” which is a way of describing cases with a large number of elements that can't be explained by conventional science.(16) Sam itself was highly strange. Many have debated what it meant by “all colours, Sam,” especially considering that it later claimed to have no name. “All colours” might have been meant to invoke the visible spectrum. Perhaps it meant that it somehow exhibits the full range of visible colours, or every wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum.
“All colours” may have also been a reference to the chromatic scale in music. The term “Chromatic” comes from the Greek word for colour, meaning the scale encompasses “all colours,” or all 12 notes in an octave. Of course, “all colours” may also have a much more literal interpretation, referring only to the being’s colourful appearance. The fact that the children were lured away by sound invokes the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Interestingly, the word “Pied” is used to refer to something with two or more colours.(17)
One of the greatest difficulties associated with this case is in classifying Sam. Commentators on the case have variously referred to Sam as an alien, a clown, a ghost, a robot, or a cryptid. Ufologists such as Jacques Vallée and John Keel have argued that the appearance of anomalous entities and UFOs is cobbled together from existing cultural images. The children may have been subconsciously projecting these cultural images onto whatever they were seeing, or perhaps, the entity was itself engaged in a crude imitation of a human, either through costume, or some more technical process.
In particular, Sam’s appearance seems to have been a mash-up between a clown and a scarecrow. There were several prominent books, films, and television shows available in England at the time that featured clowns and scarecrows as characters, and these were archetypes long before Fay’s time. One type of clown popular in vaudeville and minstrel shows of the 19th century was known as the tramp, and was always dressed in torn, dirty clothes.(18) Left to the elements, scarecrows would also naturally develop tattered clothes, and the scarecrow character in the Wizard of Oz - probably the most famous depiction of a scarecrow in western culture - had tears in his clothes as well. He also had straw protruding from his sleeves and pant legs, just as Sam had wooden slats protruding from the same places. The pointy hat and the covered neck and collar are also reminiscent of the Scarecrow character. It’s as if Sam’s image was constructed based on characters in pop culture that children felt safe and happy around.
Mr. Y commented in the BUFORA article that he felt that the kids were “taken into a bubble of alien reality” that Sam had created - hence why the electrical workers didn’t see anything.(19) Many witnesses to UFOs, cryptids, and other anomalous entities often report decisive changes in their perception before encounters. For example, many people report that the world around them goes completely silent, or that the air itself feels different. Others report time distortion, memory disruption, or unusual sounds or odours. English anomalist, Jenny Randles, coined the term Oz Factor in 1987 to describe the altered sense of reality surrounding many anomalous experiences, while Jacques Vallée has referred to this phenomenon as “reality transformation.”(20) Perhaps the reason that neither Sam nor its hut were ever seen again, was because both only existed in this transformed reality.
Conclusion
The case of the Sandown “ghost clown,” as it is often known, remains an anomaly even within the field of anomalistics. The children's experiences were similar to UFO abduction and ghost sightings, but were dissimilar to both in just as many ways. More so than any other encounter, the Sandown ghost clown is a reminder to approach each and every case as its own unique experience, and to resist being overly rigid in our categorization.
The case, and others like it, also suggests that whatever phenomenon is behind these interactions is reaching us in some alternate reality, or perhaps, inside of our own minds.
Notes:
1) Norman Oliver, “Report - Extra! Ghost or Spaceman ‘73?” British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) Journal, January/February 1978, Vol. 6, No. 5., 11 - 12.
2) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 10.
3) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 11.
4) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 12.
5) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 12.
6) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 12 - 13.
7) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 9 - 10.
8) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 9.
9) Janet Bord and Colin Bord, Modern Mysteries of Britain: One Hundred Years of Strange Events (London, Diamond Books, 1991), 202 - 03.
10) Searches for “skeptic” and “sceptic” coverage of the case yield no results.
11) American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, “Lying and Children,” No. 44, Updated July 2017; Theodor Schaarschmidt, “The Art of Lying,” July 11, 2018.
12) Jenny Randles, “The first gentleman of BUFORA,” Fortean Times, July 2022, issue 31; British UFO Research Association, BUFORA website https://bufora.org.uk/Home.php.
13) Personal communication with BUFORA staff.
14) John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies (Tor: New York, NY, USA, (1975) 2002), 149.
15) Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher, Close Encounter at Kelly and Others of 1955 (Center for UFO Studies, 1978), 186 - 89.
16) J. Allen Hynek, The UFO experience: A Scientific Inquiry (Ballantine Books: New York, NY, USA, 1972), 28.
17) CollinsDictionary.com, “Pied definition and meaning”; Merriam-Webster.com, “Pied Definition & Meaning”; Raphael Kadushin, “The grim truth behind the Pied Piper,” BBC.com, September 3, 2020.
18) Mike Giovinco, “HOBO AND TRAMP – HISTORY VS. PRACTICUM,” MichaelGiovinco.com, May 12, 2016.
19) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 12.
20) Jenny Randles, “In Search of the Oz Factor,” BUFORA Bulletin, July 1987, No. 26, 17 - 18; Jacques Vallée, Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact (Ballantine Books: NY, NY, USA, 1990), 239.
Sources:
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. “Lying and Children.” No. 44, Updated July 2017. https://aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Children-And-Lying-044.aspx.
Bord, Janet and Colin. Modern Mysteries of Britain: One Hundred Years of Strange Events. London, Diamond Books, 1991. https://archive.org/details/modernmysterieso0000jane_k0f9/mode/2up.
British UFO Research Association. BUFORA website: https://bufora.org.uk/Home.php.
CollinsDictionary.com. “Pied definition and meaning.” https://collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/pied.
Davis, Isabel, Ted Bloecher. Close Encounter at Kelly and Others of 1955. Center for UFO Studies, 1978.
https://archive.org/details/close-encounter-at-kelly-and-others-of-1955/mode/2up.
Giovinco, Mike. “HOBO AND TRAMP – HISTORY VS. PRACTICUM.” MichaelGiovinco.com. May 12, 2016. https://michaelgiovinco.com/2016/05/12/hobo-and-tramp-history-vs-practicum.
Hynek, J. Allen. The UFO experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Ballantine Books: New York, NY, USA, 1972. https://archive.org/details/ufoexperience00jall/mode/2up.
Kadushin, Raphael. “The grim truth behind the Pied Piper.” BBC.com. September 3, 2020.
https://bbc.com/travel/article/20200902-the-grim-truth-behind-the-pied-piper.
Keel, John. The Mothman Prophecies. Tor: New York, NY, USA, (1975) 2002. https://archive.org/details/mothmanprophecie00keelrich/mode/2up.
Merriam-Webster.com. “Pied Definition & Meaning.” https://merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pied.
Oliver, Norman. “Report - Extra! Ghost or Spaceman ‘73?” British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) Journal. January/February 1978. Vol. 6, No. 5. 9 - 13. https://archive.org/details/BUFORA_Journal_Volume_06_No_05_JanFeb_1978, https://bufora.org.uk/documents/BUFORAJournalVolume6No.5JanFeb1978.pdf.
Randles, Jenny. “The first gentleman of BUFORA.” Fortean Times, July 2022. Issue, 31. https://archive.org/details/fortean-times-08.2022/Fortean%20Times%2007.2022/page/n31/mode/2up.
Randles, Jenny. “In Search of the Oz Factor.” BUFORA Bulletin. July 1987, No. 26, 17 - 18. https://archive.org/details/BUFORA_Bulletin_No_26_Jul_1987_Misses_page_343334/page/n15/mode/2up.
Schaarschmidt, Theodor. “The Art of Lying.” ScientificAmerican.com. July 11, 2018. https://scientificamerican.com/article/the-art-of-lying.
Vallée, Jacques. Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact. Ballantine Books: NY, NY, USA, 1990. https://archive.org/details/confrontationssc00vall_0/mode/2up.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Research and draft written by Clark Murphy. Illustrations by V. R. Laurence. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
1) Norman Oliver, “Report - Extra! Ghost or Spaceman ‘73?” British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) Journal, January/February 1978, Vol. 6, No. 5., 11 - 12.
2) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 10.
3) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 11.
4) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 12.
5) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 12.
6) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 12 - 13.
7) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 9 - 10.
8) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 9.
9) Janet Bord and Colin Bord, Modern Mysteries of Britain: One Hundred Years of Strange Events (London, Diamond Books, 1991), 202 - 03.
10) Searches for “skeptic” and “sceptic” coverage of the case yield no results.
11) American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, “Lying and Children,” No. 44, Updated July 2017; Theodor Schaarschmidt, “The Art of Lying,” July 11, 2018.
12) Jenny Randles, “The first gentleman of BUFORA,” Fortean Times, July 2022, issue 31; British UFO Research Association, BUFORA website https://bufora.org.uk/Home.php.
13) Personal communication with BUFORA staff.
14) John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies (Tor: New York, NY, USA, (1975) 2002), 149.
15) Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher, Close Encounter at Kelly and Others of 1955 (Center for UFO Studies, 1978), 186 - 89.
16) J. Allen Hynek, The UFO experience: A Scientific Inquiry (Ballantine Books: New York, NY, USA, 1972), 28.
17) CollinsDictionary.com, “Pied definition and meaning”; Merriam-Webster.com, “Pied Definition & Meaning”; Raphael Kadushin, “The grim truth behind the Pied Piper,” BBC.com, September 3, 2020.
18) Mike Giovinco, “HOBO AND TRAMP – HISTORY VS. PRACTICUM,” MichaelGiovinco.com, May 12, 2016.
19) Oliver, “Report - Extra!,” 12.
20) Jenny Randles, “In Search of the Oz Factor,” BUFORA Bulletin, July 1987, No. 26, 17 - 18; Jacques Vallée, Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact (Ballantine Books: NY, NY, USA, 1990), 239.
Sources:
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. “Lying and Children.” No. 44, Updated July 2017. https://aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Children-And-Lying-044.aspx.
Bord, Janet and Colin. Modern Mysteries of Britain: One Hundred Years of Strange Events. London, Diamond Books, 1991. https://archive.org/details/modernmysterieso0000jane_k0f9/mode/2up.
British UFO Research Association. BUFORA website: https://bufora.org.uk/Home.php.
CollinsDictionary.com. “Pied definition and meaning.” https://collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/pied.
Davis, Isabel, Ted Bloecher. Close Encounter at Kelly and Others of 1955. Center for UFO Studies, 1978.
https://archive.org/details/close-encounter-at-kelly-and-others-of-1955/mode/2up.
Giovinco, Mike. “HOBO AND TRAMP – HISTORY VS. PRACTICUM.” MichaelGiovinco.com. May 12, 2016. https://michaelgiovinco.com/2016/05/12/hobo-and-tramp-history-vs-practicum.
Hynek, J. Allen. The UFO experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Ballantine Books: New York, NY, USA, 1972. https://archive.org/details/ufoexperience00jall/mode/2up.
Kadushin, Raphael. “The grim truth behind the Pied Piper.” BBC.com. September 3, 2020.
https://bbc.com/travel/article/20200902-the-grim-truth-behind-the-pied-piper.
Keel, John. The Mothman Prophecies. Tor: New York, NY, USA, (1975) 2002. https://archive.org/details/mothmanprophecie00keelrich/mode/2up.
Merriam-Webster.com. “Pied Definition & Meaning.” https://merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pied.
Oliver, Norman. “Report - Extra! Ghost or Spaceman ‘73?” British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) Journal. January/February 1978. Vol. 6, No. 5. 9 - 13. https://archive.org/details/BUFORA_Journal_Volume_06_No_05_JanFeb_1978, https://bufora.org.uk/documents/BUFORAJournalVolume6No.5JanFeb1978.pdf.
Randles, Jenny. “The first gentleman of BUFORA.” Fortean Times, July 2022. Issue, 31. https://archive.org/details/fortean-times-08.2022/Fortean%20Times%2007.2022/page/n31/mode/2up.
Randles, Jenny. “In Search of the Oz Factor.” BUFORA Bulletin. July 1987, No. 26, 17 - 18. https://archive.org/details/BUFORA_Bulletin_No_26_Jul_1987_Misses_page_343334/page/n15/mode/2up.
Schaarschmidt, Theodor. “The Art of Lying.” ScientificAmerican.com. July 11, 2018. https://scientificamerican.com/article/the-art-of-lying.
Vallée, Jacques. Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact. Ballantine Books: NY, NY, USA, 1990. https://archive.org/details/confrontationssc00vall_0/mode/2up.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Research and draft written by Clark Murphy. Illustrations by V. R. Laurence. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
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