AVELEY INCIDENT

Opening

On the night of 27 October 1974, John and Sue Day were driving home to Aveley in Essex with their three children after visiting relatives. Their son Kevin pointed out a pale blue light in the sky that seemed to follow the car. On a quiet lane the engine noise and the tyres went silent, the radio crackled and began to smoke, and the car drove into a thick bank of green mist across the road.

They came out the other side feeling a jolt and a chill, and drove home. When they got in, it was much later than it should have been. Somewhere on a twenty-minute drive, around three hours had gone. Britain's most famous missing-time case began with that gap.

Timeline

About 9:50 p.mThe Days leave relatives in Harold Hill to drive home to Aveley, normally a journey of about 20 minutes.

During the driveKevin, the eldest child and the only one awake, points out a pale blue, oval light. John and Sue see it too, keeping pace with the car.

On a lane near AveleyThe car goes quiet. The radio crackles, sparks and smokes, and John pulls out its wires. Ahead a dense bank of green mist stretches across the road, about eight or nine feet high. The car drives into it. Inside, the light is strange and the air cold. The car jolts, and they are out the other side.

At homeThey find it is about 1 a.m. They had expected to be home by about 10:20. Neither adult can account for the missing time.

The following yearsThe family report odd changes. John has a nervous breakdown before Christmas 1974 and leaves his job, and he has recurring dreams.

August 1977John contacts researchers, and the investigation begins on 15 August. Andrew Collins and Barry King of the British UFO Research Association investigate, and both adults undergo hypnosis with Dr Leonard Wilder. Under hypnosis they describe being taken aboard a craft, examined by small, ugly beings, and shown around by tall figures in silver suits who spoke of the environment and the future.

1978The case is published in Flying Saucer Review, with the family under the pseudonym Avis: John and Elaine Avis.

Key figures

John Day, the driver, gave the fullest account of the experience under hypnosis. Sue Day remembered the mist and the cold. Kevin, the eldest child, saw the light first. The two younger children were asleep.

Andrew Collins, then about 20, led the investigation and went on to become a well-known writer on the subject. He considered Aveley one of the most important British cases.

Physical and documentary trail

The core of the case is the family's account of the night itself: the light, the silent car, the smoking radio, the green mist, and the gap between when they set off and when they arrived home. These were remembered without hypnosis.

The craft, the beings and the examinations come from hypnosis sessions about three years later. Hypnosis can bring back real memories, but it can also produce detailed false ones, so researchers have always treated those parts with more caution. No one else reported the mist, and nothing physical was found.

Things you might not know

• The car was lifted. Under hypnosis, the parents said a beam of light took the car up into the craft.
• The examiners were about four feet tall. The couple described them as ugly and bird-like, supervised by taller figures in one-piece suits with hoods like balaclavas.
• The family went vegetarian. All except the youngest child said the smell of meat began to repel them. John gave up smoking altogether.
• Kevin's reading improved. His parents said the boy, who had struggled at school, suddenly started reading much better.
• It was not John's first sighting. He had reported seeing a UFO in 1968.
• The house got strange afterwards. The family reported objects going missing, droning and clicking sounds after midnight, and one child said a man dressed like a clown stood by his bed.

Competing explanations

An abduction. The missing time, the dead radio and the matching accounts under hypnosis fit what many other abduction witnesses have described.

Missing time without a craft. A tired family, a patch of strange fog, a radio fault and a misread clock could create a gap that was later filled in under hypnosis. This reading struggles with the silent engine and with how long the gap was.

Memories shaped by hypnosis. Sceptics argue the onboard details reflect the questioning and the UFO stories of the time. That leaves the original missing time still unexplained.

Later life of the case

Aveley became Britain's best-known abduction case and a regular feature in books and television documentaries. It was one of the first cases to bring the American idea of missing time into British research.

Finding

A family drove into a green mist on an Essex lane and arrived home hours late with no memory of where the time went. That part comes from them directly, and nothing has ever explained it away. The onboard story came later under hypnosis and can't be checked.

What still will not resolve: what the green mist was, and what happened to three hours on a twenty-minute drive.