The Maureen Puddy Case
Maureen Puddy's first UFO sighting occurred on July 5, 1972. The 27-year-old woman was coming home from the hospital after visiting her little boy. She noticed that “the road lit up in a blue iridescent glow” and at first thought the light was from the helicopter that had taken her son to the hospital. After stopping her car, she saw an “enormous flying saucer” approximately four times wider than the road. She said that the only noise was a “low hum.” Puddy saw no flashing lights or windows on the object as it hovered above the trees. She returned to her car and the flying saucer followed her for eight miles until she reached a populated area. The object then changed direction, reversing without swerving. There was a streak of light and it was “gone in a flash.”
She immediately went to the Rosebud police station to make an official report and the following day she phoned the air force. She was mailed a questionnaire that inspired her to comment, “You need to be a pilot to understand some of the questions.”
Puddy’s second sighting occurred on July 25 in the same vicinity and at around the same time of day. When the road lit up again, Puddy said, “I knew what it was straightaway, put my foot on the accelerator and off I went.” After traveling half a mile, her engine completely cut off and she found that she had no control of the car although the headlights were still on full beam. The car glided to a stop. She next described having the feeling of receiving a message that she couldn’t understand: “I don’t speak any foreign languages and I felt that I was receiving this message in a foreign language.” Then, the message was translated into English. “Not English like we speak — beautifully spoken English . . . I wouldn’t say that I could clearly know that it was male or female, it was just a voice stating a message.” She recalled the message as: “‘All your tests will be negative.’ Then there was a pause and it said, ‘Tell the media. Do not panic. We mean no harm.’ Then there was a long pause. And then it said, ‘You now have control.’ The car started up . . ."
After the second sighting, Puddy went again to the Rosebud police station and again insisted on making an official report. She also stated that she eventually filled out another air force questionnaire. The day following the second sighting, she contacted a radio and TV station.
Answering the unidentified interviewer’s questions, Puddy said that there had been no earlier similar experiences and she had no previous interest in UFOs. The interviewer then recalled that she’d mentioned briefly some experience during the interim between the two sightings and asked her about it.
On the Monday night before the second sighting, Puddy recounted hearing someone calling her name: “. . . the whole night long I was kept awake by this voice repeatedly calling my name ‘Maureen’ over and over again.” Her son was in the hospital, her five-year-old daughter was sound asleep and there was nobody in the backyard. Nor had her husband heard the voice. When the interviewer asked Puddy if she thought the voice might’ve been in her mind, she replied, “I think it might’ve.”
I previously mentioned Maureen Puddy's case in my article reviewing Flying Saucer Pilgrimage (1957) by Bryant and Helen Reeve. Details of the case are presented in the article "The Close Encounter of Maureen Puddy by Judith Magee" at the website of the Victorian UFO Research Society (VUFORS). Magee wrote about the case in articles published in Flying Saucer Review in 1972 and 1981.
The VUFORS article was last updated in October 1998 and revealed that Puddy’s contact experience hadn’t concluded at the time of the interview heard on the Faded Discs archive CD. The article reported that Puddy’s son had been taken to the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne by helicopter after an accident at school when a cupboard had fallen on him and broken his leg.
The article "UFO over the Mooraduc Road" was included in the book Encounter Cases from Flying Saucer Review (1977) edited by Charles Bowen. In the article, Judith M. Magee reported: "The witness . . . impressed everyone with her sincerity. She has an invalid husband and two children, a boy of seven and a girl of five."
Magee wrote in the VUFORS website article:
Naturally, we questioned Maureen regarding her experience in the car. What did the messages mean? She said she had not had any recent tests done, but some about six months ago proved negative. There was no use telling her not to be afraid, she was terrified! As for telling the media: she ‘phoned three of the four TV stations. One was mildly interested since they were showing “Chariots of the Gods.” Two made light of her news, so she did not bother to contact the fourth. I heard through a radio talk-back program, which in desperation, she had contacted, because the UFO-nauts had said to contact the media and she did not want to see them again!!
After a telephone conversation with Puddy, Magee arranged for her to address a VUFORS meeting where the standing room only audience was described as having been kept spellbound. As the article continued, Magee chronicled herself witnessing with another VUFORS member an experience of Puddy’s that occurred about six months later and was estimated by Magee as “purely psychic."
One Wednesday, I received a ‘phone call from a rather agitated Maureen Puddy, who said she had been trying to contact VUFORS. Her story goes:
For some days she had been hearing a voice calling to her to “return to the meeting place.” Believing she heard someone calling her name at the front door, she went to open it and her husband, who was an invalid in a wheel-chair, asked who it was, but there was no-one there! When she went shopping, she heard “Maureen, Maureen, return to the meeting place,” and she looked around to find there was no one near. She felt she had to go to the meeting place but she was too scared to go alone, so I told her that Paul Norman and I would be available when she wished to go. With very little gentle persuasion she agreed to go that Wednesday evening.
. . . We were early and it was not yet dark so we could see Maureen’s Holden station wagon when she arrived. She got out of her car and ran towards us saying she nearly “went off the road back there.” I suggested she tell me about it as we drove to the meeting place.
Before going further I should perhaps add, that as I entered her car, I had the odd feeling that something was amiss, I was experiencing a tingling sensation (like that of a mild electric shock), which passed off quite quickly. Maureen then told me that in the centre of the front seat, between where the two of us sat, had appeared an entity completely clad in a type of gold foil suit. As she turned to look in his direction, she was so startled she almost ran off the road. It was quite obvious she was quite shocked by the eventful drive.
By this time we had reached the meeting place which was somewhat hidden from passing traffic by a few trees. We drew to a stop and Paul came to sit in the back seat of the station wagon while I stayed in the front with Maureen.
We were talking about the latest incident along the road, when suddenly, she grabbed my arm and pointed across her car, exclaiming: “There he is! Can’t you see him?” and she shook my arm saying that I must be able to — I tried to explain to her that it was like closed circuit television — from him to her.
She said he was coming closer to the car, in fact, so close that if I put my arm out I could possibly touch him. He was now standing almost beside the front headlight, so I asked Paul to take a little walk around the car. As he came to where the entity was standing, the entity moved back to allow Paul to pass between him and the car. At this point the entity beckoned to Maureen to follow him, but she adamantly declared that she would not. I told her I’d go with her and to gently ease her out the car door, but she hung onto the steering wheel and would not budge.
The entity then became impatient when she would not follow and she became a trifle upset. He apparently disappeared behind bushes and she suddenly commenced describing the interior of the UFO. She told us that the entity was standing there pointing to a large “mushroom” like object in the centre of a large circular room. The centre object, which was taller than an average person, was a little like jelly, moving all the time; there were lines like those of Roman numerals around the lower portion. The top of the “mushroom” had lines on it and the whole thing seemed fixed to the floor. She was apparently looking around the room and became very agitated at this point, crying, “I can’t get out! There are no doors or windows. I can’t get out!” I put my arm around her shoulders in an attempt to calm her, and could feel tears on my hand. She was really upset and as I clearly visualized what Maureen was describing, I decided to direct my thoughts to the entity; nothing to lose and maybe something to gain — as I was very concerned about Maureen’s state. I felt she may have had a nervous collapse or even a stroke. I silently requested he take pity on the poor girl and suddenly she said, “he wants me to close my eyes.” I replied that she should do so and almost immediately I felt her relax as if in a trance.
Again she began to describe the interior of the object and once again became agitated when she could see no way out of the vehicle. After a brief period she “came back to us” and we switched on the car’s interior lights and asked if she would care for a cup of tea from our thermos flask. I had just handed Maureen her cup when she said, “Oh, I’m back in there again,” and repeated the description, but this time somewhat more calmly, before stating, “he’s gone. This time he’s really gone. I can tell. It feels different.”
She now seemed quite normal, so we went on with our supper, discussing the “mushroom” and trying to identify it. I asked if it could have been a gyroscope, but Maureen was not apparently familiar with that term so “compass” was suggested. She picked up a little gadget from the dashboard of her car and to my amazement it was exactly what I had envisaged from her description of the “mushroom.” A small compass on a suction cup. I have not seen one before or since.
We did not dare let her drive home alone, nor did she wish it, in case of a return visit from our ‘friend,’ or nerves on her part. I drove in her car with her and Paul followed in his car. I believe it was between 10:30 and 11:00 p.m. when we arrived at her home which was quite some distance away. We did not take particular note of the time, but it was fairly late.
In her article about the case, Judith Magee noted some of her own unanswered questions, including: "Was I also able to communicate with the entity? Did he really receive my thoughts regarding her agitated state?"
One of the things I, myself, find revealing about these incidents chronicled in Puddy's case concerns one of the declarations made by the voice in particular: “All of your tests will be negative.” The issue of tests and testing would impress me as being important when considering some incidents of interaction where ‘unexplained phenomena’ are a factor although it is apparent that more are involved with revealing/teaching. Furthermore, the customary expressions 'auditory hallucination' or 'verbal hallucination' seem to me to be obvious misnomers in connection to many incidents of 'hearing voices' and this is supported by what is recorded about the Maureen Puddy case.
Puddy's comment that she contacted the media to avoid yet another UFO encounter in this case seems a sensible response; however, the usual association of voice hearing with schizophrenia and psychosis in news reports has become cliché to the extent that the perpetrator of a crime may use this excuse in an attempt for sympathy.
A recent article about the shooter in the Washington Navy Yard attack is representative of how reporters may focus on circumstances concerning voice hearing although another NBC News article about the shooter quoted a friend who said the shooter "felt a lot of discrimination and racism with white people especially . . . he felt slighted as a veteran . . . ."
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