Chris is on the hunt for all things weird (From Swindon Advertiser)

Chris is on the hunt for all things weird

7:50pm Thursday 9th February 2012 in News By Barrie Hudson

LOOK to the skies. Or, if you prefer, look to a wheatfield or your cellar or some corner of your home you’ve never quite been comfortable in.

In fact, look to just about any place where things occasionally don’t quite add up, and where you wonder what tricks your senses are playing.

Then, whether your story is about a UFO, a crop circle or something in the eaves that isn’t a mouse, tell an Old Town man called Chris Williams.

Chris likes weird things. He runs the Weird Wiltshire website, he organises a conference called Weird, his library is full of books about weird phenomena and he heads Weird Investigations, a team who probe all matters weird.

“What we want,” he said, “is to hear from people who have had experiences in the past so we can build up a casebook on the internet.

“We also want to hear from people who are currently having experiences, or perhaps have something weird going on in their house and want an objective and open-minded appraisal.

“It’s fair to say that 99 per cent are explainable, but the one per cent is important.

“I think it’s really vital that people get to the bottom of any experiences they’re having, and we will hopefully find the one per cent that are truly unexplainable. That’s where my interest lies.”

Chris, 44, is originally from Brynmawr, in Wales, and has lived in Swindon since he was 18.

He works as a project manager for a building society.

He has been fascinated by strange phenomena since groundbreaking documentary Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World hit British screens in 1980.

As well as being the driving force behind Weird Investigations, he was a founder of the old Swindon UFO Research organisation, better known as SUFOR.

His own experiences include seeing truly Unidentified Flying Objects, being shoved by an invisible something-or-other and experiencing sudden icy terror in the cellar of an old inn.

“Out of all the UFO cases we did,” he said, “and there were hundreds, there were two or three that have no explanation to this day.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean they were extraterrestrial, though – they could have been military.

“The first was a perfect equilateral triangle, glowing red and perfectly silent, which passed over Swindon one Wednesday in 2008 at about 8.30pm. It didn’t look to be very high in the air.

“Another was a white orb that flew repeatedly across Swindon in 2009. It was just brilliant white. It went on for quite a while and was reported by several people.

“We had witnesses who saw it on different evenings and in different locations.”

Chris has also been involved in paranormal investigations, including one at a location he’ll describe only as an “old entertainment building” for fear of it being inundated with sightseers.

He was sitting in a debris-strewn room when something he couldn’t see struck his shoulder with enough force to leave a small bruise through his heavy wool coat.

Then there was the time when his team was invited to an old coaching inn, which he also declines to name.

“I don’t get freaked out very often, but this time I did,” he said.

“We got to a room on the bottom floor and there was an overwhelming feeling of dread. We heard a guttural retching sound.

“Later we went to the cellar and got that feeling again. I asked the owner where we were and he said we were under that same room.”

Chris can be reached at contactus@weirdwiltshire.co.uk.