1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:24,600
What caused the two-hour bombardment of apples from the sky which terrified the occupants

2
00:00:24,600 --> 00:00:26,600
of this house?

3
00:00:27,600 --> 00:00:32,600
Fifty miles from the coast, how did sea fish come to fall on this man's garden?

4
00:00:35,600 --> 00:00:41,600
Can science identify the mystery goo which appeared from out of the blue on a Washington farm?

5
00:00:43,600 --> 00:00:50,600
Mysteries from the files of Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001 and inventor of the communications satellite.

6
00:00:50,600 --> 00:00:55,600
Now in retreat in Sri Lanka, he ponders the riddles of this and other worlds.

7
00:01:27,600 --> 00:01:32,600
Here in Sri Lanka, missiles regularly rain down on us.

8
00:01:32,600 --> 00:01:38,600
They bring injury and even death to anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in the firing line.

9
00:01:38,600 --> 00:01:45,600
They seem to come from out of the blue, but a closer look up into the palm trees reveals the truth.

10
00:01:46,600 --> 00:02:00,600
Though I'm always on the lookout for killer coconuts, one of them almost brained a member of my film crew a few years ago,

11
00:02:00,600 --> 00:02:05,600
I'm far more interested in stranger aerial bombardments.

12
00:02:05,600 --> 00:02:10,600
For example, showers of fish, rains of frogs and the falls of weird jelly.

13
00:02:10,600 --> 00:02:12,600
Where do they come from?

14
00:02:12,600 --> 00:02:15,600
Well, it's a question I've tried to answer before.

15
00:02:16,600 --> 00:02:24,600
Just before she hit it, the fish fell down on the ground in front of us and then we looked up in the sky and suddenly

16
00:02:24,600 --> 00:02:29,600
hundreds of fishes falling in an area of about a hundred yards.

17
00:02:29,600 --> 00:02:32,600
I saw the fish, saw the fish fall out of the sky.

18
00:02:32,600 --> 00:02:41,600
I kept driving, I was very amazed and when I got here, at this location here, the yard was just absolutely covered with fish.

19
00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:46,600
Looking around, we found they were in the middle of a shower of hazelnuts coming from the sky.

20
00:02:46,600 --> 00:02:51,600
They were dropping on the cars, falling in the gutter and I said,

21
00:02:51,600 --> 00:02:55,600
think there would be as many as we saw, about 350 of them.

22
00:02:56,600 --> 00:02:59,600
It sounded like the ceiling all fell in on my house.

23
00:02:59,600 --> 00:03:09,600
We looked up the ceiling and we saw insulation and ice falling down on the floor, which flew all over us.

24
00:03:09,600 --> 00:03:13,600
We had no idea where it came from but it was sure and a hurry to get here.

25
00:03:13,600 --> 00:03:21,600
That first investigation reached no definite conclusions so I make no apology for returning to this intriguing subject.

26
00:03:23,600 --> 00:03:30,600
More than half a century after the most extraordinary experience of his life, Ron Newton is still haunted by the day

27
00:03:30,600 --> 00:03:34,600
thousands of fish fell on him and his girlfriend.

28
00:03:34,600 --> 00:03:45,600
I was about 15 year old and my girl, Ivy Crouch, she was 16 and as we were walking down the chase,

29
00:03:45,600 --> 00:03:50,600
we saw this cloud that size of a billiard table to us.

30
00:03:50,600 --> 00:03:53,600
It came lower and lower.

31
00:03:53,600 --> 00:03:58,600
We run under a big old tree and by the tree was a cottage.

32
00:03:59,600 --> 00:04:08,600
We hadn't been under the tree long and there was a rattly noise up in the branches and there was fish coming down.

33
00:04:08,600 --> 00:04:16,600
At the size of the sticklebacks, white bait, inch to three inches long.

34
00:04:16,600 --> 00:04:24,600
But they were coming down on the cottage roof and sliding down the roof and falling off onto the path.

35
00:04:24,600 --> 00:04:34,600
Well Ivy was crying about it because of the poor little fish were flipping about helpless and we found an old shoebox.

36
00:04:34,600 --> 00:04:40,600
But there were too many fish for the shoebox. The rescue attempt overwhelmed them.

37
00:04:40,600 --> 00:04:44,600
Suddenly a romantic walk had turned into something sinister.

38
00:04:44,600 --> 00:04:50,600
Amidst the flapping fish, Ron and Ivy struggled to make sense of what was happening to them.

39
00:04:50,600 --> 00:04:55,600
There were so many thousands of fish on the ground all round.

40
00:04:55,600 --> 00:05:03,600
What we did wouldn't notice so we gave it up and we were scared about it.

41
00:05:03,600 --> 00:05:06,600
We didn't know quite what was going to happen.

42
00:05:06,600 --> 00:05:21,600
In the heart of the south of England, Derek Gosling's home in Surrey stands in a county far from the sea.

43
00:05:21,600 --> 00:05:28,600
His garden is his pride and joy but one morning he was startled to discover a mystifying crop.

44
00:05:28,600 --> 00:05:35,600
It had been a very stormy night and I came out the following morning to see what damage had been done.

45
00:05:35,600 --> 00:05:42,600
I noticed fish on the pathway which was rather puzzling.

46
00:05:42,600 --> 00:05:48,600
I looked around and I saw more on the ground and two on the roof of the lean too.

47
00:05:48,600 --> 00:05:56,600
Various fish spread about the garden, two in the rose bushes just hanging in the rose bushes.

48
00:05:56,600 --> 00:06:03,600
More scattered on the lawn and under the bushes. I couldn't make out where they had come from.

49
00:06:06,600 --> 00:06:14,600
I looked round to the other gardens to see if they had anything because I thought someone was having a joke at the time.

50
00:06:14,600 --> 00:06:21,600
I couldn't see any more and it was rather puzzling so I called the wife and she came out and had a look.

51
00:06:21,600 --> 00:06:24,600
She was as puzzled as I was.

52
00:06:26,600 --> 00:06:33,600
I must say that they were smelling at that time so they must have been out of the water for a few hours at least.

53
00:06:33,600 --> 00:06:41,600
There are no major rivers from the south west and I can only assume that they come from the sea.

54
00:06:43,600 --> 00:06:50,600
I've always suspected that tornadoes or waterspouts may be the main causes of such weird falls.

55
00:06:50,600 --> 00:06:58,600
For example, when a tornado passed through the Ramaputra district of India in March 1875

56
00:06:58,600 --> 00:07:04,600
a cow was found in the branches of a tree about 30 feet from the ground.

57
00:07:04,600 --> 00:07:14,600
After a storm in America in 1943 dozens of chickens were found sitting in a row entirely stripped of their feathers.

58
00:07:14,600 --> 00:07:18,600
But my favorite comes from 1896.

59
00:07:18,600 --> 00:07:22,600
At St. Louis a whirlwind lifted a carriage into the air.

60
00:07:22,600 --> 00:07:31,600
It was carried along for a hundred yards before floating back to earth so gently that the coachman's hat stayed firmly on his head.

61
00:07:31,600 --> 00:07:38,600
And in more recent times tornadoes and whirlwinds have continued to play extraordinary tricks.

62
00:07:41,600 --> 00:07:51,600
America's West, here where Texas joins Oklahoma and the wide open spaces seem to run on forever, they call it Tornado Alley.

63
00:07:53,600 --> 00:08:00,600
More tornadoes like this one in 1957 are born here than anywhere else on earth.

64
00:08:00,600 --> 00:08:06,600
And the tricks they play can be devastating, ripping whole communities from their roots.

65
00:08:06,600 --> 00:08:12,600
Sometimes they sweep everyone in their path high into the tempestuous sky.

66
00:08:12,600 --> 00:08:17,600
Today Kenneth Harrell is returning to his childhood home as a grown man,

67
00:08:17,600 --> 00:08:22,600
a stark contrast to the strange and dangerous journey he once made here as a baby.

68
00:08:22,600 --> 00:08:27,600
40 years on his older sister Jean Stray waits for him full of memories.

69
00:08:27,600 --> 00:08:30,600
Hello, Jean. How you doing?

70
00:08:30,600 --> 00:08:32,600
Long time.

71
00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:34,600
Long, long time.

72
00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:37,600
Honey, this is where it took place.

73
00:08:37,600 --> 00:08:38,600
So this is it?

74
00:08:38,600 --> 00:08:40,600
This is it.

75
00:08:40,600 --> 00:08:42,600
47 years ago.

76
00:08:43,600 --> 00:08:45,600
47 years ago.

77
00:08:47,600 --> 00:08:52,600
Kenneth was the baby of the family. He and his sisters had enjoyed a quiet day at home.

78
00:08:52,600 --> 00:09:01,600
It was in the afternoon about 6 or 6.30 and mother was cooking dinner on this great big wood burning stove.

79
00:09:01,600 --> 00:09:05,600
And all of a sudden there was a loud roar.

80
00:09:05,600 --> 00:09:08,600
About that time I was standing behind mother and I saw the grove of trees.

81
00:09:08,600 --> 00:09:13,600
And the tornado and the trees just being picked up like toothpicks and laid down.

82
00:09:13,600 --> 00:09:17,600
The tornado was about half a mile to the horizon.

83
00:09:17,600 --> 00:09:24,600
Mother then got us all, all four of his children into where the bed area was because we lived in one room.

84
00:09:24,600 --> 00:09:31,600
Put us on the mattress, me, my sister, my other sister, and then put Kenny on my tummy.

85
00:09:31,600 --> 00:09:34,600
Tucked the covers in underneath us.

86
00:09:34,600 --> 00:09:39,600
And by the time the tornado had hit the house, we were losing our oxygen.

87
00:09:39,600 --> 00:09:43,600
And our memory was standing over us and I said, mother quit moving the bed.

88
00:09:43,600 --> 00:09:45,600
She said, honey, I'm not moving the bed.

89
00:09:47,600 --> 00:09:52,600
At that moment the tornado struck. The whole family was lifted into the sky.

90
00:09:54,600 --> 00:09:57,600
And when I came to, I was underneath these tree branches.

91
00:09:58,600 --> 00:10:02,600
And the girls I saw over there by the fire coming pulled me out.

92
00:10:02,600 --> 00:10:05,600
And I looked and looked and called for Kenny.

93
00:10:05,600 --> 00:10:09,600
I'm sure that I was screaming his name, Kenny, where are you?

94
00:10:09,600 --> 00:10:13,600
And it was about a hundred yards away.

95
00:10:13,600 --> 00:10:15,600
It's where I found him, one of the beds did.

96
00:10:16,600 --> 00:10:19,600
He was like a little mud ball that I'd picked up from underneath the gate.

97
00:10:19,600 --> 00:10:22,600
He was unconscious and blood everywhere.

98
00:10:22,600 --> 00:10:25,600
And the mud was in his hair and his eyes and his face.

99
00:10:25,600 --> 00:10:27,600
You could hardly make him out as a baby.

100
00:10:28,600 --> 00:10:34,600
The tornado roared on, shattering the nearby communities of Glacier, Canadian and Higgins.

101
00:10:34,600 --> 00:10:39,600
Back on the ground, seven-year-old Jean was frantically searching for the rest of her family.

102
00:10:40,600 --> 00:10:43,600
The tornado must have carried us a hundred feet in the air.

103
00:10:43,600 --> 00:10:49,600
And just the mattress turned over and just let us come down together like a parachute.

104
00:10:50,600 --> 00:10:54,600
And not being able to find mother was the most terrifying thing of all.

105
00:10:54,600 --> 00:10:59,600
Early the next morning, they found mother at the horizon.

106
00:11:00,600 --> 00:11:10,600
She had fell on one of the tree stones that was uprooted and broke her back, all of her ribs, her arms, broken up body.

107
00:11:11,600 --> 00:11:17,600
Miraculously, Jean's mother did survive, but the village itself was virtually blown off the map.

108
00:11:18,600 --> 00:11:26,600
Glacier was completely destroyed and as was Higgins, there was nothing there. It was leveled.

109
00:11:26,600 --> 00:11:32,600
And the only thing that survived was, looked like a 9 by 12 cement jailhouse.

110
00:11:34,600 --> 00:11:41,600
Such tales don't in themselves solve the mystery of these peculiar falls, though they do provide valuable leads.

111
00:11:42,600 --> 00:11:51,600
Proof that whirlwinds are responsible demands eyewitness evidence that fish can be sucked out of ponds like this one and blown across the country.

112
00:11:51,600 --> 00:11:56,600
I found reliable reports impossible to obtain until now.

113
00:11:56,600 --> 00:12:05,600
One of the most convincing accounts of a lift off from a pond comes from a man in the north of England who was out one day for a walk with his children.

114
00:12:06,600 --> 00:12:13,600
New houses today fill the space once occupied by a fish pond.

115
00:12:13,600 --> 00:12:21,600
Every time Ernie Singleton walks past, he relives the moment when he feared all that he loved would be snatched from him.

116
00:12:22,600 --> 00:12:28,600
I was walking along with my two children going home, just where these houses are, though.

117
00:12:28,600 --> 00:12:36,600
And I felt a wind blowing up. It was quite strong, very blowing up the road.

118
00:12:36,600 --> 00:12:40,600
And I thought, it's funny, it's time of the year, very wind blowing.

119
00:12:40,600 --> 00:12:43,600
And I walked a bit further, he got stronger and stronger.

120
00:12:45,600 --> 00:12:49,600
And it started going a little bit dark. I thought, the devil's happening here, is it me?

121
00:12:49,600 --> 00:12:54,600
And the kid says, what's the matter, dad? I said, no, nothing, it's all right.

122
00:12:54,600 --> 00:13:02,600
And then I reached this spot, and where the houses are, there was a big pond which had been a clay pit.

123
00:13:03,600 --> 00:13:11,600
And the wind was so strong that I was afraid of it blowing the children into the road, so I pushed them on the floor and lay on top of them.

124
00:13:12,600 --> 00:13:17,600
And I clung onto the fence with one hand and over the kids with the other.

125
00:13:17,600 --> 00:13:23,600
And as I looked to the pond, all the water was going out of the pond and going upwards.

126
00:13:23,600 --> 00:13:27,600
It was spiraling up into the air, and all going black and dark.

127
00:13:29,600 --> 00:13:35,600
I was terrified. I could feel it tugging at my clothes, because I only had summer clothes on which were loose.

128
00:13:35,600 --> 00:13:41,600
There must have been thousands and thousands of gallons went up out of the pit because it was almost empty.

129
00:13:42,600 --> 00:13:48,600
And as I got up, little bits of things lying on the road here, and it was so, the fish is out of the pit.

130
00:13:49,600 --> 00:13:55,600
It wasn't till later that day that the community discovered where their pond and its contents had made land for.

131
00:13:55,600 --> 00:14:00,600
A mile away, the cricket ground was awash with water, weeds, fish and frogs.

132
00:14:00,600 --> 00:14:07,600
Ernie Singleton had witnessed the awesome power of a localised whirlwind. He had seen the lift off of an entire pond.

133
00:14:07,600 --> 00:14:12,600
Oh, it was the talk of the town. It was buzzing for about nine days, or nine days wonder.

134
00:14:12,600 --> 00:14:17,600
The fish were no good. They were all dead, of course. But they were used as manure.

135
00:14:20,600 --> 00:14:25,600
Where falls of fish are concerned, I'm quite happy with the whirlwind explanation.

136
00:14:25,600 --> 00:14:31,600
But can the same apply to the showers of frogs reported from all over the world?

137
00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:35,600
I think that for these, there may be a different answer.

138
00:14:37,600 --> 00:14:40,600
No one knows more about frogs than Dr. Richard Griffiths.

139
00:14:40,600 --> 00:14:46,600
From his university at Canterbury in Kent, Griffiths travels the world in search of slimy specimens.

140
00:14:46,600 --> 00:14:53,600
He's studied their habits and their habitats, and he's investigated reports of weird showers of frogs and toads.

141
00:14:53,600 --> 00:14:58,600
He believes eyewitnesses are seeing a rarely observed natural phenomenon.

142
00:14:58,600 --> 00:15:02,600
It appears paranormal, but it can be explained by science.

143
00:15:03,600 --> 00:15:10,600
A number of species, particularly the common toad which we have in this country, are what we call explosive breeders.

144
00:15:10,600 --> 00:15:14,600
And they breed very quickly in a very short period of time on mass.

145
00:15:14,600 --> 00:15:21,600
Very often warm damp weather acts like a switch, and you get a mass, what we call a mass metamorphosis,

146
00:15:21,600 --> 00:15:25,600
a very young individual leaving the pond. And they emerge from their hiding places,

147
00:15:25,600 --> 00:15:31,600
and you can see again very large numbers of tiny little frogs or toads wandering around on land.

148
00:15:31,600 --> 00:15:35,600
So literally, a lot of people might live in an area where there are many frogs and toads,

149
00:15:35,600 --> 00:15:41,600
and not see any one day, but if the weather conditions change, the following day there may be very large numbers around.

150
00:15:42,600 --> 00:15:46,600
Frogs live in communities of huge numbers, up to 15,000.

151
00:15:46,600 --> 00:15:53,600
When rain triggers them, they emerge from their hiding places, and often seem to have fallen with the raindrops.

152
00:15:53,600 --> 00:15:58,600
But Dr. Griffiths also has another explanation for the falling frog phenomenon.

153
00:15:58,600 --> 00:16:02,600
I had an interesting experience when I was on a field trip in Austria.

154
00:16:02,600 --> 00:16:06,600
We were doing some work around a lake, and we decided to break for lunch.

155
00:16:06,600 --> 00:16:12,600
And I was sitting under a tree eating my sandwiches when literally a frog fell into my lap.

156
00:16:12,600 --> 00:16:17,600
When I picked it up, I looked at it and this turned out to be a European tree frog.

157
00:16:17,600 --> 00:16:20,600
And in this particular area, this species was actually very, very abundant.

158
00:16:20,600 --> 00:16:24,600
So if you're in that sort of situation, very often, if you've got them jumping around above you,

159
00:16:24,600 --> 00:16:26,600
they may appear to fall out of the sky.

160
00:16:27,600 --> 00:16:34,600
I think that many of the stories of frogs falling from the sky can probably be explained by conventional reasons.

161
00:16:34,600 --> 00:16:41,600
In other words, they can probably be explained simply by the natural breeding migrations of adults moving into ponds en masse

162
00:16:41,600 --> 00:16:49,600
and possibly young individuals leaving ponds en masse, rather than any other curious phenomena that we don't understand.

163
00:16:50,600 --> 00:16:58,600
Just when I'm satisfied that I have some answers, one of the immutable laws of my mysterious universe comes into play.

164
00:16:58,600 --> 00:17:05,600
Solve one mystery, and there's always another to remind us that we don't have all the answers and probably never will.

165
00:17:07,600 --> 00:17:16,600
Seattle, Washington. In this city, at the laboratories where a farmer from out of town hopes to find the answer to a problem which has mystified her.

166
00:17:16,600 --> 00:17:23,600
Dottie Hearn has been troubled ever since she found tiny globules of goo covering her farm buildings and land.

167
00:17:23,600 --> 00:17:29,600
She hopes that a small sample she froze will yield its secrets to the scientists.

168
00:17:30,600 --> 00:17:35,600
Are there any birds that you have in the area that may have flown over and dropped some feces?

169
00:17:35,600 --> 00:17:38,600
I have birds, but I haven't seen any feces.

170
00:17:38,600 --> 00:17:42,600
And what exactly are we looking at, the liquid or what is it?

171
00:17:42,600 --> 00:17:46,600
There's little tiny blobs in there, they're crystal clear.

172
00:17:46,600 --> 00:17:50,600
Is this one that we're looking at here with the little white one?

173
00:17:50,600 --> 00:17:59,600
To try to determine what this is, we can look for E. coli, which is a bacteria that's found in the intestinal tract of warm animals.

174
00:17:59,600 --> 00:18:02,600
We should have the results in about two days.

175
00:18:02,600 --> 00:18:03,600
Okay.

176
00:18:03,600 --> 00:18:04,600
Thank you very much.

177
00:18:04,600 --> 00:18:05,600
And thank you.

178
00:18:06,600 --> 00:18:12,600
Dottie Hearn knows every acre and every tree on her farm near the Oregon border.

179
00:18:12,600 --> 00:18:15,600
I keep a daily log.

180
00:18:15,600 --> 00:18:23,600
I've been doing this for years and it's about the life on the farm and anything that happens, about the weather and so on and so forth.

181
00:18:23,600 --> 00:18:30,600
Well, this is about August 7th and on this day, it began to rain about 3 p.m.

182
00:18:30,600 --> 00:18:33,600
and after the rain had stopped, I put the dogs out.

183
00:18:33,600 --> 00:18:37,600
I found a jettleton-like substance on top of the wood box.

184
00:18:37,600 --> 00:18:39,600
It was clear and in chunks.

185
00:18:39,600 --> 00:18:43,600
Sonny, my daughter, went out and scooped up some into a plastic bag.

186
00:18:43,600 --> 00:18:46,600
Also, there was blobs in other places too.

187
00:18:52,600 --> 00:18:53,600
It was everywhere.

188
00:18:53,600 --> 00:18:54,600
It was on the grass.

189
00:18:54,600 --> 00:18:56,600
It was on the floor of the porch.

190
00:18:56,600 --> 00:18:58,600
It was on the hand railings.

191
00:18:58,600 --> 00:19:04,600
The reason I keep mentioning the wood box is because it showed up the most there.

192
00:19:04,600 --> 00:19:06,600
It was soft and gelatinous.

193
00:19:06,600 --> 00:19:07,600
It was clear.

194
00:19:07,600 --> 00:19:09,600
There was no color to it or odor.

195
00:19:09,600 --> 00:19:14,600
The blobs cropped up again on Dottie Hearn's farm several days later.

196
00:19:14,600 --> 00:19:19,600
By now, even more puzzled, she decided to approach the government for help.

197
00:19:19,600 --> 00:19:22,600
One possible cause was suggested by the Pentagon.

198
00:19:22,600 --> 00:19:29,600
The military and Air Force and Navy have said that the practice bombing out at sea

199
00:19:29,600 --> 00:19:31,600
10 to 25 miles out.

200
00:19:31,600 --> 00:19:35,600
They said they blasted a school of jellyfish sky high.

201
00:19:35,600 --> 00:19:38,600
We are about 50 miles from the ocean.

202
00:19:38,600 --> 00:19:41,600
The jellyfish thing sounds a little far-fetched.

203
00:19:41,600 --> 00:19:46,600
At the laboratories, the scientists have spent two days testing the goo.

204
00:19:46,600 --> 00:19:48,600
Dottie Hearn is about to get some answers.

205
00:19:48,600 --> 00:19:49,600
Hi, chair.

206
00:19:49,600 --> 00:19:50,600
Hello, Dottie.

207
00:19:50,600 --> 00:19:51,600
What did you find now?

208
00:19:51,600 --> 00:19:54,600
Well, this is our control plate.

209
00:19:54,600 --> 00:20:02,600
As you can see, the coli colonies are the shiny green colonies on this plate.

210
00:20:02,600 --> 00:20:05,600
This is our control plate, like I said.

211
00:20:05,600 --> 00:20:07,600
This is your sample.

212
00:20:07,600 --> 00:20:12,600
As you can see, there aren't any bacteria on this plate at all.

213
00:20:12,600 --> 00:20:21,600
So at this point, we've determined that it is not associated with birds or bird droppings.

214
00:20:21,600 --> 00:20:26,600
That's the conclusion that we've come to with this test.

215
00:20:26,600 --> 00:20:30,600
The goo has also been tested under the microscope.

216
00:20:30,600 --> 00:20:33,600
There is debris in there.

217
00:20:33,600 --> 00:20:35,600
It's unrecognizable.

218
00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:39,600
We can't distinguish exactly what it was originally.

219
00:20:39,600 --> 00:20:42,600
I think the freezing may be at fault.

220
00:20:42,600 --> 00:20:47,600
It seems that it's caused decomposition.

221
00:20:47,600 --> 00:20:52,600
As far as identifying it goes, it is not possible with what we have received.

222
00:20:52,600 --> 00:20:54,600
We would need a better sample.

223
00:20:54,600 --> 00:20:59,600
For now, Dottie's sample goes into cold storage, but not the problem itself.

224
00:20:59,600 --> 00:21:04,600
She's determined that one day she will find out just where the mysterious goo came from.

225
00:21:04,600 --> 00:21:08,600
I've never seen anything like it before in my life.

226
00:21:08,600 --> 00:21:13,600
If somebody else would have told me about this, I don't think I would have believed them.

227
00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:17,600
I'm as baffled as I could be about it.

228
00:21:17,600 --> 00:21:20,600
I guess the mystery still goes on.

229
00:21:30,600 --> 00:21:36,600
Akrington in the north of England enjoys the reputation of being a down-to-earth industrial Lancashire town.

230
00:21:36,600 --> 00:21:42,600
But one night the place played host to the strangest visitation from the heavens.

231
00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:45,600
It was a very quiet still night.

232
00:21:45,600 --> 00:21:51,600
I was awakened by the strange noise and then I heard it on top of the roof,

233
00:21:51,600 --> 00:21:54,600
thudding, frightening thudding noise.

234
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:59,600
So I put my dressing gown on and came downstairs, opened the front door,

235
00:21:59,600 --> 00:22:02,600
and there was nothing there.

236
00:22:02,600 --> 00:22:07,600
I went to the back door. All these apples was coming down.

237
00:22:07,600 --> 00:22:11,600
As far as I could see, they were just coming straight from the sky.

238
00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:14,600
That's all I heard.

239
00:22:14,600 --> 00:22:19,600
I was down at the velocity, but nothing coming from a great height.

240
00:22:19,600 --> 00:22:21,600
They gathered the momentum they were coming out.

241
00:22:21,600 --> 00:22:25,600
There was bouncing off the shed all over the place.

242
00:22:25,600 --> 00:22:29,600
And I was just terrified just watching this for ages.

243
00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:31,600
And it was that fright, I shut the window shut,

244
00:22:31,600 --> 00:22:35,600
but I had feelings and visions of them coming through the pain at me.

245
00:22:35,600 --> 00:22:37,600
It carried on falling, falling, falling.

246
00:22:37,600 --> 00:22:40,600
It just went down for two hours.

247
00:22:40,600 --> 00:22:46,600
The Haythorn whites were so terrified they spent the rest of the night awake and fearful.

248
00:22:46,600 --> 00:22:55,600
When dawn broke they realised just what the fusillade of fruit had brought into their lives.

249
00:22:55,600 --> 00:22:59,600
When we came out in the morning, I've never seen nothing like it.

250
00:22:59,600 --> 00:23:02,600
There were so many apples in the garden.

251
00:23:02,600 --> 00:23:06,600
I just couldn't understand where they'd come from.

252
00:23:06,600 --> 00:23:11,600
And there was just a few in the next doors, but it bounced.

253
00:23:11,600 --> 00:23:15,600
They were just littered, peppered all over.

254
00:23:15,600 --> 00:23:18,600
Really ankle deep. I had to wade through them myself to get through them.

255
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:22,600
They were embedded in the garden, eight to ten inches deep.

256
00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:26,600
But you realise I've lanced through the garden since.

257
00:23:26,600 --> 00:23:30,600
There must be hundreds under there somewhere, probably rotted away by now.

258
00:23:30,600 --> 00:23:36,600
Across the way their neighbour Joan Cork had also been woken up by the avalanche of apples.

259
00:23:36,600 --> 00:23:42,600
I heard this noise. It was a thud, thud, thud.

260
00:23:42,600 --> 00:23:45,600
And I thought, somebody digging.

261
00:23:45,600 --> 00:23:50,600
And so I got out of bed and I came to this window.

262
00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:56,600
And I pinpointed it as coming from Adrian's over there.

263
00:23:56,600 --> 00:23:59,600
And I thought, what on earth is she doing now?

264
00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:05,600
Is she having a party at this time of the night because it was about half past one?

265
00:24:07,600 --> 00:24:11,600
After listening to the barrage for half an hour, Joan went back to bed.

266
00:24:11,600 --> 00:24:15,600
The next morning she rushed to investigate.

267
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:22,600
At the shock of my life, apples seemed to be thousands of them.

268
00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:24,600
They were only in her garden.

269
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:26,600
Only in her garden.

270
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:30,600
And there were bramblers, there were coxies.

271
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:33,600
Some were whole, some were embedded.

272
00:24:33,600 --> 00:24:37,600
I've never, never come across anything like that before.

273
00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:41,600
And it was a bit frightening, you know.

274
00:24:41,600 --> 00:24:47,600
The Hatheln whites have spent long hours racking their brains about that strange and terrifying night.

275
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:49,600
It was long past the apple harvest.

276
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:52,600
There was no apple tree for miles around.

277
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:55,600
They're still mystified by the baffling bombardment.

278
00:24:55,600 --> 00:25:01,600
It could have been a wind what brought them, but it wasn't windy that night or it wasn't raining.

279
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:08,600
And there was no aircraft recorded at that particular time in the morning.

280
00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:12,600
So we just, just couldn't understand where they'd come from.

281
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:17,600
I've heard of a lot of things, but seeing is actually believing.

282
00:25:17,600 --> 00:25:20,600
And I'll never forget it.

283
00:25:20,600 --> 00:25:23,600
It must be an explanation, a logical explanation.

284
00:25:23,600 --> 00:25:26,600
But who knows?