IT WAS a few weeks later that our doorbell rang once again, and, to my immense delight, my old friend and messmate Hector Beeley stood there in the doorway. He was still in Army uniform, having stayed on as a regular after I got my discharge, and now had his commission as a Captain. I invited him in, of course, and intro­duced him to June. Over a glass of sherry, I said I was delighted to see him once more, but what brings him to Wistbourne?

“Oh, I’ve been posted to a nearby barracks and you’ll be seeing me quite often from now on. I’ve got orders to look over the Wistbourne situation.”

“What is the ‘Wistbourne situation’ now?” I couldn’t help asking.

“You know as much as we do,” replied Hector. “The babies—the Foundlings, you call them—their parentage is still a complete mystery. This damage to the cot: we’ve been trying to replicate it with various tools, and no-one, not even our best carpenter, can reproduce exactly what happened to it. The UFO sighting—yes, we’ve been told about that too—we have ascertained that no kind of aircraft that we know of was flying over Wistbourne at the time given, and all weather balloons and similar objects have been accounted for. However, our radar did detect something unknown in the air at the time. Something fairly large: about fifty feet long, we reckon. It disappeared from the radar after about half an hour: whether it landed, or whether it took off into space, we don’t know. I’d like you to keep this information to yourself, if you don’t mind: I know I can trust both of you, and as the District nurse, June, you ought be informed about these things. We don’t want panic about ‘flying saucers’ all round the village. So far the Ministry hasn’t decided whether information about Wistbourne should be classified.”

“Classified? You mean, Top Secret?” I burst out. “Is it as serious as that?”

“We don’t know yet—but any unexplained phenomenon must be regarded as serious. You’d agree that drilling a hole in a child’s cot, while the child is still in it, is pretty dangerous stuff! I have the welfare of the villagers here, including you—not just the Foundlings—to consider.”

“So you think that ‘blimp’ really was an alien spacecraft? And they planted creatures in the field that looked like human infants—even up to having the placentas attached—and passed all the tests for being genuine Homo sapiens—but weren’t?”

“I didn’t say that. For the time being, I’m keeping a watch. I shall be in the village fairly often, along with my men—and I don’t want anyone to be alarmed by their presence. I rely on you, June, to help out there. I’m also going to call on the Reverend Dibley.”

“That’s a good idea,” said June. “He’ll certainly do all he can to cooperate. But I think he’s getting more and more worried…”

“He’s not the only one,” said Hector. “Once people heard about the hole in the cot, they began imagining all sorts of frightening stuff. Did alien beings, from that spacecraft—if it was a spacecraft—come down in the night-time and use some exotic ‘power’ to ‘disintegrate’ a solid object? Turn wood into sawdust? Could they come again? Are they a danger to Earth?”

“Surely you don’t believe that?” I said, horrified.

“As I said, all I can do is keep a watch. And there haven’t been any more sightings of UFOs in this area, as far as we know. Yes, we hope very much that the incident with the cot was a one-off—but we can’t be sure.”

“What about the ‘Curse’?” asked June. “The inability of anyone to conceive a child for over five years—then suddenly lifted?”

“I don’t have any specific orders about that,” replied Hector. “But I’ll bear it in mind.”

And that was as far as we got. Hector dropped in on us several times over the next few months, but nothing untoward happened in the village. The ‘cot’ incident did indeed seem to be a one-off, as everyone hoped…

It was mid-January when I witnessed the next out-of-the-ordinary event. Snow had fallen during the night and a few inches had settled in the village. It was a Saturday, and as I trudged through the snow on the way to the shop, I saw three of the older boys on the village green having great fun throwing snowballs at each other. At the same time I met one of the foster-mothers, a Mrs Jackson, pushing her daughter Mary in a pram towards me, not without some difficulty. I was just greeting her with a “Good morning” when a snowball came flying towards her. It hit the canopy of the pram and burst asunder, sprinkling some flakes of snow onto the baby who burst out howling.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Mrs Jackson picked up Mary to comfort her, while I turned to remonstrate with the boys, but before I could do so another snowball came whizzing towards us: this one aimed straight at the baby’s head.

But it did not reach its target. Three or four feet short, it burst into a flurry of snowflakes which then settled gently on the ground. I think I was the only one who saw this happen.

I went up to the boys all the same, and gave them a sound ticking-off. “Play at snowballs if you like, I know it’s good fun—but don’t you ever throw one at a baby again—do you hear?” And I gave each of them a good cuff round the ear to drive the message home. “Now go and apologise to Mrs Jackson.”

And they did so, quite contrite. But Mrs Jackson passed the incident off lightly. “Don’t you fret, dears, a little snow won’t hurt Mary—and she wasn’t hit anyway.”

It was only later, as I was coming back from the shop, that I wondered: ought a snowball to burst in mid-air, just short of its target? Dry, powdery snow, yes: difficult to make a snowball with that—but this snow was rather damp and near melting-point. I stopped and thought about it for a bit, then furtively scooped up a handful and formed it into a snowball. Somewhat embarrassed (the boys were still playing nearby), I tossed it into the air. It landed with a wet thud on the snow, to a round of applause from the boys. It certainly didn’t disintegrate in mid-flight.

Had there been another uncanny happening—albeit not quite so uncanny as the cot incident? After a moment, I shrugged and decided that nothing was amiss.

Until later that year.

It must have been mid-summer of 1951. The Foundlings were now over one year old, all able to walk and utter a few words. Almost all of them had been fully adopted by their foster-parents. Several babies had been born (in the natural way) in the meantime, so a number of couples had both a toddler and a new-born infant to care for. It all seemed perfectly natural and it was surely inconceivable that anything out-of-the-ordinary might occur.

Then we had another unexplained happening.

Teddy-bears were by far the most popular soft toy for infants in those days. This was partly due to the reputation of ‘Brumas’, a polar bear cub that had been born in London Zoo a year or two earlier and was an instant celebrity. Anyway, just about every baby in Wist­bourne—Foundling or natural-born—was seldom to be seen unless they were clutching one of these woolly comfort toys. Certainly, at our neighbours, George and Susan’s, both the children, Foundling Deborah and newborn Michael, were provided with teddy-bears, bestowed on them by George’s parents. Michael had the larger bear, dark brown in colour, while Debbie possessed a white bear to take to bed with her—one which would growl if you pressed its tummy—which she did repeatedly, somewhat to the annoyance of her parents.

For some reason Debbie seemed jealous of Michael with his bear, possibly because it was bigger, and was often seen to snatch it away from him. This made Susan cross with her: she often had to rebuke her: “Leave Michael’s bear alone: you’ve got your own to play with.” In turn Debbie would throw a tantrum and have to be calmed down.

Then one morning Michael’s brown bear disappeared.

George and Susan searched all over the house, including Debbie’s toy-box, but the bear was nowhere to be found: instead they found a pile of brown and grey fluff in the corner of the children’s bedroom. This could be the remains of the bear: they weren’t sure. Searching diligently through the fluff, they discovered two little discs of plastic which they recognised as the bear’s eyes. This confirmed their suspicions. It looked as if the bear had been destroyed in some mysterious way.

As it happened, June was due to pay her routine visit that day to check the children over, and Susan told her about the missing bear.

“Don’t worry about it, Sue. I expect Debbie was a little bit rough when she snatched it out of Michael’s cot, and it fell apart. Some of these toys are rather poorly-made nowadays, aren’t they?”

George, overhearing this remark, was rather indignant. “My parents are not the sort of people to give cheap and nasty toys to their grandchildren,” he retorted. “Mum and Dad would have bought the best quality teddy-bears they could find. Only the finest toyshop in London’s good enough for them. There’s no way it could just have ‘fallen apart’.” He whispered to June, when Susan’s back was turned: “Could have been a rat, got in and chewed it up. Don’t say anything to Sue!”

June had a good look through the debris which was still lying on the floor. She could not see any rat droppings or any other evidence. “I don’t think so,” she whispered, “but have the house checked over, just in case.”

We later learned that our neighbours had called in the pest con­trollers, but no evidence of rats was found. A new bear was procured for little Michael, and that seemed to wrap up the affair. But it had set me wondering…