At 8.38pm on January 23, 1974, a rumbling grew steadily louder across the Berwyn mountains in rural Wales.
Ornaments rattled, walls shook and lights flickered. People spilled onto the streets and looked up at the dark hills, where strange lights darted across the sky.
Police switchboards became clogged as panicked residents called in some sort of ‘explosion’.
In the village of Llandderfel, Pat Evans was jolted to her feet as she watched television. Fearing an aircraft had crashed, the nurse hastily drove up the B4391 as mist rolled over the winding road.
‘We drove a fair way along the mountain road,’ Pat had told the press. ‘To our left we could see a huge orange ball sitting on the mountain. It was glowing.’
Ken Houghton, who lived on Royal Oak Farm in the village of Betws-y-Coed – 25 miles away from Llandderfel – also witnessed a strange occurrence on the hillside. He told reporters he saw ‘sheet lightning behind a cloud’ before ‘a sphere came down’ on the hills.
An RAF search and rescue team was scrambled to investigate the incident. But a ground search was called off due to the blanket of darkness that made the terrain difficult to traverse.
In the coming weeks, scientists, police officers and villagers flocked to the Berwyn mountains, a sparsely populated area of moorland popular with walkers.
It was thought a meteor – or perhaps something else entirely – had crashed into the hills.
But nothing was ever found, or so the world was told.
50 years later, on another cold January night, drinks are flowing in the Berwyn Arms in the village of Glyndyfrdwy. It’s popular with locals and tourists alike, due to its prime location on the side of the A5 road which climbs through the…
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