UFO Magic in Motion

In the first chapter of his final book UFO Magic in Motion (1979), Arthur Shuttlewood (1920-1996) looked back at his predicament as reporter of the diverse unexplained phenomena occurring in the vicinity of his local Warminster, Wiltshire, England.  The first 'Thing story' broke on Christmas Day 1964, as he had acknowledged in a September 10, 1965 Daily Mirror article (shown above) that is included in the book.  He now reflected:

My past works on the 'new' scientific study of Ufology have been packed with masses of evidence and solemn testimony from reputable and reliable witnesses in all walks of life the world over.  Freely and fearlessly, they testify to unaccountable flying phenomena that excite yet mystify them.  Occasionally, they are shocked as well as surprised by their 'baptism' into deep waters of the unworldly in blue seas of heaven, having been assured by 'official' sources and armchair theorists that saucers in the air are a modern myth, do not exist, or would be better serving in the kitchen!

These extollers of 'spots before the eyes' and 'Venus having a giggling fit' as preferred alternates to reality, are backed by alarmist authors who warn readers of misleading UFO-oriented literature that UFOs savour of open hostility — and are patently preparing for a massive take-over bid for our pretty gem of a planet!  Garbled and ghoulish theories are propagated willy-nilly as facts.


If UFOs were crewed by predatory monsters, as the more lurid stories suggest, or by dictatorial entities with no soul force to guide them, they could easily have conquered us relative 'savages' many millennia ago.  There were no breaks in natural evolution.  It forms an enormous chain whose connecting links are composed of identical activity from the humble electron right through to the entirety of infinity.  There is no barrier between terrestrial and extraterrestrial, ultraterrestrial and celestial life concepts.


Sensibly we can postulate that extraterrestrials who are more advanced on the seven planes leading to ultimate perfection are our immediate contacts who bring warnings and advice, help and encouragement, that our subconscious yearns for on a lowly spiral of the ever-turning wheel!  It may be just as simple or uncomplicated as that, if we could envisage all-wisdom in our vision of coming knowledge.

Shuttlewood proceeded to relate "some recent sightings of our flying friends" for the reader's consideration. Also presented is a brief summary of the different forms of UFOs chronicled throughout his books: "Basic shapes are round, bell and long or torpedo . . . Longer and larger airships, much more rare, are likened by witneseses to aerial submarines, silvery white zeppelins or illuminated train carriages in flight, round-ended and equipped with apparent window slots or portholes along the smooth sides . . . On Cradle Hill, we see UFOs very low in altitude about once every thirtieth clear night, on average."  The most reported UFO was what Shuttlewood called 'a thinking light' or 'brain beacon' —

These normally fly at high altitude according to the eye, yet this is an optical illusion that stems from their miniature status when seen close at hand.


They are usually amber or white and surrounded by a glowing aura or halo, on edge looking like a shallow plate barely more than a foot in diameter.

Here are some of his further observations.

They have probably been visiting us, mingling with and guiding us and our actions, according to natural law, since the beginning of time on Earth.  And many legacies of their inspiring influences and wisdom from prehistoric eras still remain in certain hallowed regions if we search for them with unselfish motives and true humility of spirit, as this serious work illustrates.  As a reporter checking all known data thoroughly, I am convinced that our flying friends — and possible ancestors — could not have evolved to such technological perfection without having sensibly outlawed the main soul-stunting dangers of warfare, hunger, disease and bristling suspicion that still riddle our world with hostility and perforate it with the poverty of oppressive forces.  Plus such futilities as colour prejudice and stupid arguments over religious doctrines and belief.

Truth cannot be denied, although sick-minded hoaxers have dented it a trifle; but it assuredly requires the qualifications of ample corroborative evidence from others involved in the totality of the UFO picture on a worldwide basis.  It is heartening to receive such unsolicited support at unexpected times!  For a lone voice raised in truth is liable to be drowned by the tumult of sarcastic critics who have not yet had their own 'baptism' of proof!


Open-minded research students are at a grave disadvantage straight off, if they dare to take a 'holier than thou' stand towards alien intelligences that are fairly obviously not of our globe in present terms of time and space.  Yet that shapeless time factor may give us horological proof that UFO intelligences have a very close affinity and relationship with us when missing pieces of the gigantic jigsaw puzzle they comprise are finally locked into place!


We all need to be sceptical and cautious to some degree, but we also need to ask ourselves some questions:— How can we learn the truth about UFOs unless we listen to reliable observers?

Shuttlewood's numerous reports of UFOlogy cases in UFO Magic in Motion include sources from earlier centuries.

A Latin MS was discovered in January 1953 in Ampleforth Abbey.  Dating from 1290, it states that a "silver disc, flying slowly, spread terror among the people over whom it passed.  In 1027 in the month of Redjeb (August) a number of 'stars' flew over Cairo and the Nile delta.  These stars flew with a great noise.  An enormous and brilliant luminous sphere moved slowly across the sky on 4 November 1697."  While over London in May 1593, a "flying dragon" surrounded by flames was witnessed.

The term 'dragon' seems to have been a favourite name in ancient times for all unusual objects seen in the skies, whether they were in actual fact ball-lightning, meteors, or flying saucers!  And an astronomer named de Rostan saw and recorded a gigantic "flying spindle surrounded by a glowing ring, which passed slowly across the face of the sun" in 1762 at Basle, Switzerland.

Accounts from more recent eras include the 1879 report of objects described as "pulsating waves of light" by Captain J. E. Pringle of HMS Vulture sailing in the Persian Gulf (an incident also mentioned in Charles Fort's 1919 The Book of the Damned); a 1977 event in Chile involving Corporal Armando Valdes encompassing an instance of apparent trance channeling; the 1950 encounter of M. Claude Blondeau of Guyancourt where men from "saucers" emerged wearing flying-suits with one of them speaking briefly whose "French was quite correct but he spoke very slowly," as chronicled by Jimmy Guieu in Flying Saucers Come From Another Planet (1956); and the 1947 John Janssen case where a Continental J-3 was frozen into immobility for a brief interim during a flight.

The following excerpt is an example of one of the contemporary UFO sighting newspaper articles collected by Shuttlewood in the book.  The reported location was in the vicinity of Sawyer's Valley in Western Australia.  The account had been published in an issue of the Western Australia newspaper received by enthusiast Dennis Fenn in January 1977.  The sighting was of "a brightly lit bell-like object that followed a car driven by a young nurse . . ."

The nurse, aged 25, did not wish to be named in the report, but was driving her car along the Great Eastern Highway to Perth on 13 December 1976.  About four kilometres before the turn off to Lake Leschenaultia at 9:40 p.m., she noticed a bright orange glow on the right side of the road.  To her gaze it resembled a capsule or rocket flying at the same speed as her car.  A second look confirmed its true shape — a large ball.  It was flying just beyond the width of the road, skimming the tree tops.  She said later: "It was like a dream.  I grew agitated and lost my sense of steering.  The car was swerving from side to side, so I stopped."  The object stopped, too.  It hovered about a tree.  The car engine was running and the radio turned on full, which drowned any noise coming from outside.  The nurse, although lonely and scared, forced herself to take a good look at the aeroform.

She said it was made of a reflecting type of material and was many times bigger than the car.  A series of port-holes along the bottom half of the bell-shape showed white light.  Oblong apertures at the top shone with a yellow glow.  On the flat surface underneath were four coloured lights.  The nurse identified a red and a blue one but could not remember the other two: she drove away and the object followed her for about two kilometres, when it suddenly dipped into a gully and veered off.  The nurse did not stop until she arrived at her sister's home in Belmont.  She was in an agitated state.  Police at Mundaring were contacted but no UFO reports had been made that night.  The RAAF at Pearce stated that no object had appeared on radar.  There had been two other recent sightings, one at Midland on 17 December, the other at Dumbleyoung the following night.  Both were zig-zagging lights in the sky.  Last week, said the news report, two UFOs were sighted by Michael Winterbourne, meteorological officer at Kalgoorlie airport.  On the same day a UFO was seen from the Sectia nickel mine.  The nurse's sister said she was convinced that the description of the airform near Sawyer's Valley was correct.

"My sister is a down-to-earth person and as a nurse she is concerned with the realities of life.  She does not want her name mentioned because the event was so 'way out' that the staff at the country hospital where she works would lose confidence in her."  And George Hume, publicity officer of the Perth UFO research group, said it was the best description of a UFO received for many years.  As a so-called 'expert' myself (which I hotly deny!) I heartily agree with that assessment.

Shuttlewood's Afterword for UFO Magic in Motion commenced with the question "Do Ufonauts use the far side of our moon as a base for their operations in earth's atmosphere?" and included a quotation from Grenada Prime Minister Eric M. Gairy's speech at the United Nations general assembly on October 7, 1976: "One wonders why the existence of UFOs, or flying saucers as they are sometimes called, continues to remain a secret to those in whose archives repose useful information and other data . . ."  In 2013, readers can readily find websites and You Tube videos analyzing photographic anomalies seen on the moon and Mars.

Those who have read my 2012 series of articles about flying saucer contactees may understand how surprising and unique facets to each of the cases—Truman Bethurm, Daniel Fry, Orfeo Angelucci—were as revealing as the similarities.  Therefore, it seems appropriate to conclude this review of UFO Magic in Motion (and the books of Arthur Shuttlewood) with the following excerpt providing one of the most unexpected anecdotes found in the book.

Sincere seekers of hidden truths, inspired only by a healthy curiosity about their fellows throughout the universe, stumble occasionally upon odd stories such as the one told by a Wiltshire teacher.  This tutor of young minds and disciplines narrates: "Recent reports of peculiar events remind me of a mysterious experience I had in East Anglia a few years ago.  I was teaching in a small village school and the caretaker's husband declared that he had seen strange orange lights in the school fields as he walked the dog home at about 10:30 p.m.

"Cynics suggested that he had seen more light ale than anything else!  And I thought little of it at the time.  Next day, a tiny lad brought me a small plastic toy pistol which he had found near the school.  I popped it into my drawer until such time as someone claimed it.  Near the end of a hectic pre-Christmas bout of activities, I felt that I could not tolerate the compulsive ceaseless chatter of one Sandra; and on an impulse I pointed the pistol at her, saying 'Got you.'  To my utter astonishment, she immediately vanished!  The other children, conditioned to ignore her perpetual trivialities, did not even notice.

"At the end of the session I dismissed the class and sat in the ill-lit room to ponder over an unprecedented situation.  I was suddenly aware of the figure of a man standing by me, dressed in some kind of boiler-suit protective clothing.  I assumed he was a parent on his way home from work.  He extended his hand, lying in the palm of which was another toy pistol.  Wordlessly, I passed the first one over to him.  He examined it briefly, clicked a small ratchet at the side, pointed it towards the corner of the room and pressed the trigger.

"To my absolute amazement, Sandra reappeared immediately in full spate, breaking off only to observe that it was time to go home!  And as I sat there dumbfounded, Sandra and the stranger independently disappeared into the evening gloom."  A crazy story?  On the face of it, totally impossible and beyond credibility.  Yet it happened, she solemnly attested, giving her permission for her weird tale to be told publicly.