Len Stone searched for enlightenment and experience. He'd tried it all. But then, on a grubby bookstall, Stone chanced upon Panlyrae: A Message for Mankind, the story of Ed Freeman and his contact with aliens. Intrigued by Freeman's story, he hoped he too could learn the secrets of the universe through interaction with benevolent aliens. And then, in the nightclub he managed, he met a young woman, a runaway, and thought he'd found at last his soror mystica, his mystical sister. Together, they began to explore alien worlds.

But when Stone employed a handsome bruiser to mind the doors, he let trouble in rather than keeping it out.

The Warminster mystery is fifty years old. It began as unusual sounds on the morning of Christmas 1964 and continued as a UFO flap until 1977. The locals called the unusual lights and sounds central to the mystery "the Thing". The memory of that mystery remained in the background of ufology throughout the years, even while other events took centre stage.

This book reviews what happened during the crazy, exciting years of the Warminster mystery. It is not a long list of the sighting reports; it is a short history of events – the lights, the sounds – the media reports, and the characters that shaped the Thing. It is a history of the mystery.

There has probably never been anything like it in UFO history, but the UFO fever that gripped the small British town of Warminster for about a decade is now largely forgotten. It was one of the largest UFO flaps ever to occur. The hilltops around the town attracted a loyal band of followers, all waiting for the magic sighting, the landing, the contact. The authors were themselves among the skywatchers, watching and waiting for UFOs, but also watching and listening to witnesses and ufologists.

This book introduces the Warminster phenomenon to a new generation of readers. It contains a short history of the phenomenon, places it in its social and historical context, and examines the possible mechanisms that initiated and sustained this remarkable UFO flap.

Kevin Goodman and a group of his friends began to visit Warminster during the mid 1970s. Intrigued by tales of aliens and flying saucers, they went to the town to research the UFO sightings there.

Soon, they were to be the focus of the very phenomena they were researching.

This is their story.

John Ries was one of the Decadent Aesthetes, a not-so decadent group of writers and musicians that first centred on the town of Warminster. After Ries's death, Steve Dewey and S Carr Gogh sorted through the poems and short stories he had left behind. John was a perfectionist, and could never stop editing. His executor and friends took it upon themselves to finish the job.

Ries has a voice and a vision that is uniquely his own. These stories and poems reflect that. Odd and elliptical, full of symbolism and ritual, referring obliquely to the I Ching, religion, sirens and funerary rites, the stories and poems in this miscellany have an air of elusive and illusive mystery.

A small selection of poems about, and inspired by, Wiltshire landscapes.