Todmorden has a reputation as a UFO hotspot largely due to the UFO sighting of PC Alan Godfrey in November 1980. The story has everything – a mysterious death, teleporting cows, a flying saucer, a scoundrel hypnotist, alien abduction and a space dog.
For the full story, see my book Weird Calderdale.
However, I think I have found the first reported UFO over Todmorden – and it goes way back…
The Tomb of One Unknown
Stoodley Pike monument is surely the Calder Valley’s most iconic landmark, with perhaps only Wainhouse Tower giving it a run for its money. The first version of the monument was built in…. to commemorate the end of the Napoleonic Wars, though this structure collapsed in a storm on the eve of the Crimean War. The present version is rich in Masonic symbolism with its Egyptian architectural influences and dark spiral staircase in which the intrepid wanderer must feel his or her way through darkness before achieving the light of the panoramic viewing balcony.
However, the importance of the site goes back beyond the present and previous monuments. In 1832, local poet William Law published a book of verse Wanderings of a Wanderer in which Stoodley Pike (which is actually the name of the hill on which the monument stands, not the monument itself) was referred to as ‘the tomb of one unknown’.
In the footnotes to the poem, Law relates some of the local folklore. Before the first monument was built the hill was crowned by a cairn housing the bones of an ancient king or chieftain. If any of the stones of the cairn were moved, then strange noises and mysterious door slamming would plague the locals. What is more, strange flames would be seen flitting around the stones until the landowner had put everything back to how it should be.
So – strange lights in the sky above Stoodley Pike. The poem was published in 1832, so we can assume the folklore Law described would stretch back decades, perhaps centuries before that. And there we have it – Todmorden’s skies have long been haunted by mysterious phenomena…
Artwork by Larisa Moskaleva
Paul Weatherhead 