Aldershot Angler Dismissed by Canal-Side Visitors as 'Too Old and Infirm'

ALDERSHOT, ENGLAND — If Britain's most baffling UFO cases were ranked on a chart, the night-fishing excursion of Alfred Burtoo in the early hours of 12 August 1983 would be contending for first place, according to an account published by Spooky Isles. The case, its author writes, has survived for decades on the strength of its sheer strangeness.

Mr. Burtoo, a former soldier, farmer and gardener, had retired to the garrison town of Aldershot, Hampshire. By the account, he often fished through the night on the Basingstoke Canal, accompanied by his dog. On the occasion in question he had settled just north of the Government Road bridge, with a view south across the barracks.

According to the report, he saw a light descend and apparently land behind trees to the south, near the canal. Foliage blocked his view, but he did notice two small humanoid figures who approached and beckoned him to follow. He is said to have complied, crossing Government Road and walking a short way down the canal's eastern bank, where he found a landed craft resting on skis.

Directed inside, he was scanned by a device and asked his age. He replied that his 78th birthday was approaching, and was told, in what the article calls a crude manner, that he was "too old and infirm" for whatever his hosts had in mind. He returned to his fishing, watched the craft depart, and made his first report late that morning when two military police came along the towpath on horseback.

His wife, who was talking with a friend when he got home, heard the story first-hand. The article describes Mr. Burtoo as a down-to-earth man with no history of such tales, and says he allowed his account to appear in the local paper chiefly in the hope that other witnesses would come forward. He died before the case became widely known, the writer notes; it spread through an extensive write-up in Timothy Good's bestseller Above Top Secret (1987), and his widow regularly confirmed he was not given to invention.

The author, who says he visited and photographed the towpath in autumn 2026, offers a practical objection. An adult standing there can span the entire path with outstretched arms, he writes, which makes it hard to picture a craft holding one adult, two small figures and a scanner. He adds that no one at the time produced photographs of flattened growth beside the path, and that the site looks much as it did in 1983. Any such vessel, he suggests, would have needed Tardis-like interior space.

As for explanations, the writer allows that the episode might have been sleep paralysis or something similar, but finds it odd that Mr. Burtoo never described waking or rising from the ground, and instead told it as part of an otherwise ordinary night's fishing. He also notes the puzzle of beings able to land a craft yet unable to judge a man's health without a scan and a question. If the experience was an intrusion into his mind, he concludes, no purpose or meaning is apparent: "High strangeness indeed."