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Alternate Perceptions Magazine, May 2021


Rosalind Reynolds, September 1982, Sudbury, Suffolk.

by: Philip Mantle


Rosalind Reynolds and Philip Mantle





Citizen's Band radio fan Rosalind Reynolds and her then boyfriend Philip were on a late summer's drive through East Anglia when an encounter with a UFO changed her life. The couple had set off from Clacton, Essex to Corby in Northamptonshire where they were due to meet relatives, but they had given themselves two and a half hours to reach their destination so they could enjoy the journey. They stopped off for a burger shortly after leaving Clacton and then continued towards Sudbury through the warm bright evening with the windows of the car wound down and their radio tuned into their favourite station. As they approached the outskirts of Sudbury they found themselves driving beneath some high-tension cables strung between electricity pylons which march up the adjacent hillside.

Suddenly they were confronted by a strange configuration of lights as they emerged from underneath the power lines. A horse-shoe shaped set of lights was approaching them at high speed. The multi-coloured, mostly orange and red object seemed to swoop low over their car. It was at that moment when Rosalind noticed the silence and strange stillness around her. As the UFO moved across the sky a lurid flash of blue electric light illuminated everything around her. "It made everything look like a photo negative," recalled Rosalind who will never forget the way huge electrical tendrils arced their way up the metal skeletons of the pylons in that heart stopping moment. A strange, foul smell, almost like rotten eggs seemed to be coming from the object. The odour became stronger the closer it was. Bemused by the strange light show the couple pressed on through Sudbury and at Long Milford joined the A604 to Haverhill. As Philip concentrated on driving his Ford Cortina Rosalind took in the surrounding countryside. Then her eye was caught by something in the distance. "Look another one," she screamed, pointing to an oval shaped object that was heading towards the car. "It's coming towards us." "It's probably just a plane, or a helicopter," grunted Philip, keeping his eyes on the road ahead. "Why should a plane draw level with us?" she asked as she looked out at the opalescent ball that was now obviously pacing the car. Philip would have none of it; he simply continued to drive through the enfolding darkness of the late evening. Rosalind tried to ignore the thing that followed them, but it was no good, she knew it was there. Philip refused to acknowledge its existence. Later Ros said: "I don't know how long we drove on like that; it could have been twenty minutes, or two hours." Suddenly they were plunged into darkness.

The car's engine and electrics cut out simultaneously, and the disabled vehicle rolled to a stop. Philip “was glued to the steering wheel, looking straight ahead as if he had blinkers on" remembers Ros. She assumed that, like she, he was shocked and scared by the presence of the UFO. The things were now so close they could not avoid looking at it. Big, bright and round and sitting just sixty feet away from their now crippled car. “It was like a big ball of light with lots of little lights around it," Ros told an investigator later. The couple reluctantly climbed out of their car and lifted the bonnet to see if they could find the trouble. The way the car had cut out it had seemed as if the battery had been suddenly drained. As they stood looking into the engine compartment the Cortina's headlamps came on. The couple looked at each other and Philip jumped back in the driver’s seat and tried the ignition. It started first time. Rosalind climbed in and they pulled away with the UFO still flashing nearby. As they increased the distance between themselves and the strange object the pair seemed to relax. Then a few miles away from their encounter Rosalind saw what she believes was the same object shooting straight up into the sky with a pencil-thin blue light streaming out behind it. Glad to be on their way they seemed to make good progress but when they got to Corby their host was not answering the knock at his door. Suddenly a window above opened, and a head popped out and said: "What time do you call this? It's half past two in the morning." Their two and a half hours journey had taken five and a half hours. Rosalind and Philip were stunned by the events of that night, and by their missing hours. But the after effects of that encounter would be equally astonishing. Within months the couple broke up after six years together. "He was a different person, not the Philip I knew," said Ros. Rosalind had changed too. She dramatically lost weight, despite developing a craving for sweets, especially chocolate, and went down to just six stones. Rosalind also suddenly became creative, speedily writing complicated scientific papers on such topics as:"How the universe was formed" and "What religion really is." Some of the topics she wrote about concerned ‘engines’ and ‘propulsion’. Rosalind had no knowledge of this prior to her encounter. But she was desperate to discover why she had three hours missing from her life.

What had happened on that summer's evening which had changed her life so much? Rosalind saw the chance to recover that lost time when she spotted an article in a local newspaper about an East Anglian UFO research group. She made contact and they arranged a hypnosis session at her home. But the session went disastrously wrong. “A bright beam of light came into the room, the video recording was wiped out and all the clocks stopped," said Rosalind. After the abandoned hypnosis session Rosalind was advised to see a psychic and introduced to the man she would shortly marry, Mark Reynolds-Parnham. who claims to have been psychic since birth. Mark arranged a second hypnosis session in which Rosalind was taken back to her 1982 encounter. She recalled being approached by four or five small beings after their car had broken down. The aliens, for that is what she assumed they were, forced her into their craft.

They took her to an examination room where she was undressed and laid on a clear Perspex-like table for observation Rosalind became agitated, embarrassed and frightened during the hypnosis session. She described how the aliens undressed her and laid her on the table but then she became very quiet. Suddenly Rosalind sat bolt upright in her chair and screamed: “No I don't want any babies." So concerned were the hypnosis team by Rosalind's distress in trance, they decided to bring her back. Rosalind is convinced she underwent some gynaecological procedure, but she still prefers not to speak about her hypnosis session. Since that night she has suffered irregular menstruation. Medical tests failed to find the cause for the problem. She also reports an unexplained scar in the vaginal area, which she assumed is linked with her alleged abduction. Additionally, she developed a "buzzing in her head" which troubles her to this day. Rosalind says the after effects of that encounter were truly devastating for her.

The initial weight loss left her friends and family worried that she might be anorexic, and she was worried about her missing periods. "I could not talk to anybody about these things because I thought they would think I was a freak." said Rosalind. "I just bottled it up. I became a recluse for a while worrying about what had happened." Her husband Mark has helped her come to terms with her experience, but she now believes she may well have had UFO encounters in the past, short slices of missing time that she simply ignored.

Rosalind Reynolds is now living with her son Nathaniel in Lincolnshire. A single parent she runs her own business and is a well-known dog breeder and dog show judge.

About the author:
Philip Mantle is a long-standing UFO researcher and author from the UK. He was formerly the Director of Investigations for the British UFO Research Association and the MUFON Representative for England. He is the founder of FLYING DISK PRESS and can be contacted at: http://flyingdiskpress.blogspot.co.uk/

The revised edition of Carl Nagaitis and Philip Mantle’s book ‘WITHOUT CONSENT’ is out now on Amazon.


Thursday, March 28, 2024