Greetings Earthlings: An Alien Miscellany // The Dagenham Spacewoman

Where: Dagenham, London
When: 1972 (onwards)
Witness: "Glenda"

Introduction

I've just received (via eBay) a copy of Hilary Evans' 1984 volume Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors: A Comparative Study of the Entity Enigma. Time has not permitted me to do more than dip into it yet - though (at first glance) it looks quite interesting and broad-ranging. Like most people presented with a previously unseen non-fiction book (I'd imagine), I went straight for the middle pages in search of illustrations. There, among "ghost" photographs and sketches of the BVM, I found the above - a wonderfully arresting and unsettling image created by an English teenager called "Glenda" (full name not stated).¹

Event

The most recent reference to Glenda and her visitor I've found is in Evans' own 2005 (Magonia Supplement) article "Beyond the UFO Horizon".² Here's what he had to say on that occasion:

In 1976 a 17-year old girl from Dagenham, near London, England, told investigators of a series of strange experiences culminating in a cigar-shaped UFO which followed her along a city street. She revealed that five years earlier she had come home from school one afternoon, gone upstairs to her room, only to be joined by a spacewoman who walked in through the closed door, sat beside her on her bed and talked with her for an hour or so. Ever since then, the spacewoman had been a sort of companion, counsellor and friend - generally unseen, but always felt.

A further detail or two can be found in Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors:

This entity was later to appear intermittently in Glenda's life - sometimes when awake, sometimes in dreams; neither malevolent nor benevolent, though seemingly concerned for Glenda's well-being. An elusive, enigmatic apparition.³

Thoughts

While Glenda's sketch of the entity unambiguously suggests "alien" - her description of its arrival, actions, and (apparent) concerns leads to the kind of "category blurring" so typical of many such experiences. The scenario of a young, (pre)teenage girl being visited by an enigmatic (but comforting) female figure clearly calls to mind certain famous Marian apparitions, while the notion of an ever-present counsellor/companion can't but make one think of "spirit guides" or "imaginary friends" (like Carl Jung's "Philemon").

The bedroom setting is also, of course, a staple of otherworldly experiences. It is, after all, something of a liminal place - a gateway (of sorts) between the waking and sleeping worlds. Little surprise then that ghostly visitors, religious apparitions, alien abductors, incubi (etc., etc.) all see it as a happy hunting (or haunting) ground.

I see that Evans mentions David Hufford's book The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions, a volume I've been meaning to buy/read for some time. I once used to experience some pretty vivid and terrifying sleep paralysis/night terror episodes myself (see comments section here), but got to a stage where I became aware I was actually asleep when they were happening. One practical observation confirmed for me that this was the case: I could "see" everything in the bedroom clearly when thus paralysed. Since I am very short-sighted, this shouldn't have been the case.⁴ I've often wondered whether myopic "alien abductees" have re-examined their own experiences in the same way.

None of this is meant to trivialise encounters with "bedroom invaders" of course. While I'm reluctant to view them as literally real, physical experiences, I'm happy to imagine that there very well may be something fundamentally human at play in all of this. What that is exactly, I don't know…but then this is a realm where very little is exact.

Images

"Glenda" may, of course, be pseudonymous. [back]
Magonia Supplement, No. 58, 10 August 2005. [back]
Evans, Hilary, Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors: A Comparative Study of the Entity Enigma (London: Book Club Associates, 1984), p.15. [back]
Obviously enough, I don't wear glasses or contact lenses in bed! [back]

Greetings Earthlings

The Dagenham Spacewoman

Introduction

Event

Thoughts

Images

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