The Mystery Of The Vibrating Pole
It’s never done it before, and it hasn’t done it since. A disused aerial pole on a neighbour’s house was observed to be vibrating in an unusual fashion on Tuesday 4th November 2008. What could have caused it?
This innocent-looking metal aerial pole (now disused — it’s minus the aerial) attached to my neighbour’s house (the owner was away at the time), which I can see clearly just beyond the bottom of my small garden, caught my attention as I gazed through the conservatory window on the morning of Tuesday 4th November.
The weather was overcast and there was hardly any wind — just light breezes blew from time to time. The pole, however, was acting as though it was in the teeth of a fierce gale, oscillating rapidly back and forth.
I drew Marcy’s attention to it, saying: “Now, what on earth could be causing that pole to vibrate like that?” We agreed that we’d never seen it doing it before. I’ve lived here five years, and Marcy lived in the house next door for 24 years before I married her and dragged her here next door in 2005, and she’d never seen anything like it either.
A little mesmerised by it, I opened the conservatory door and stood on the patio to get a clearer view. By now I had been observing it for about three minutes, and though it was not vibrating as fiercely as it had been when I first spotted it, I was amazed that it was still doing it at all — the wind, such as it was, hardly had the strength to move the nearby leaves on another neighbour’s silver birch trees, let alone affect a sturdy metal pole of about an inch diameter. Clearly, the movement couldn’t be put down to the wind alone. There were no unusual noises to be heard, no vibrations to be felt through the ground, and no other aerial poles within sight were behaving this way. Everything else seemed normal.
Mystified, I watched until it died down completely. “Well, I don’t know,” I said as I stepped back into the conservatory. “The only thing that comes to mind is that it was responding to some kind of electro-magnetic field — it resonated with the frequency of whatever the field might be. Perhaps a UFO’s passing overhead above the cloud cover,” I added jokingly.
A few hours later at around 2pm, Marcy had gone out and I wandered back into the conservatory to have another look.
The pole was doing it again — vibrating as fiercely as it had been during the morning. This time I grabbed my phone and videoed it. Here’s the result, posted to YouTube:
Source: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=m3jTIgL7KvU
It’s not the clearest video in the world, but the pole can be seen oscillating. (By the time I’d got my phone and started videoing, it was calming down again.)
The next day, Wednesday, weather conditions were about the same. I watched for any pole activity. There was none. In fact, at this time of writing, there’s been no activity (that I’ve seen) since Tuesday.
Then on Thursday came some interesting news that got me thinking. The Sun newspaper carried a story about two Bristol women who had used their camera phone on Tuesday evening to video what they said was a UFO with several lights (or maybe it was several separate UFOs) over south Bristol — about 18 miles from where I live. Apparently their video shows what wasn’t visible to the naked eye at the time: the UFO(s) were occasionally shooting red and white beams of ‘light’ down to the ground.
Under the headline What’s Zap? the story reports that A RED beam of light shoots to the ground from what is believed to be a UFO. The Sun was yesterday handed dramatic footage of the mysterious craft hovering over Bristol.
Shellie Williams, 20, and her mum Betty, 53, filmed it on their mobile phones. When they zoomed in, they also caught red and white vertical beams not visible to the naked eye. Care worker Shellie, who watched from outside her home in nearby Hartcliffe, said: “It was bizarre and I was quite frightened.” Betty said: “Through binoculars you could see clusters of lights. They seemed to form a circle and were attached to something. It freaked us out.”
Neighbour Tony Jefferies said he had seen the lights on and off for two weeks. In daylight yesterday, Shellie and Betty pinpointed the lights as being close to a radio mast on Dundry Hill. Air traffic control at Bristol International Airport said it had no reports of “unusual activity”. Avon & Somerset police said their helicopter was not out and they had not had UFO reports.
Here’s the Sun video, which has been posted several times now on YouTube:
Source: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9-FcPZ8g_eQ
Videos of this nature are always very hard to assess. There’s no real frame of reference, it’s jumpy, and it’s night-time. I’m sure Shellie and Betty would swear that they simply videoed what they saw with their own eyes, only discovering the red and white beams on playback, and I have no reason to disbelieve them. My video is just as poor — but it has the saving grace of having been filmed in daylight, and there are reference points such as the house and the nearby trees to give it scale. And I give you my word that I, too, simply videoed what I saw with my own eyes.
As a point of interest, another UFO was photographed on the Friday before (31st October), over Filton, near Bristol. It was reported on the This Is Bristol web site on Monday November 3rd. Taxi driver Paul Matthews spotted the object in the air near the Royal Mail Depot at 2pm on Friday afternoon. Mr Matthews said that at first he thought it was an aeroplane, microlite or parachute, but it wasn’t behaving like anything he had seen before. “It was very weird. It was so strange. I have been a lorry driver in my time and seen some strange things, but this is something else,” said Mr Matthews, 45, from Patchway. “I had never ever seen something like this before. I was really surprised how other people had not noticed it. I thought they would be stopping in their droves, but that was not the case at all.”
My purpose here isn’t really to present an analysis of the Sun video or the Filton UFO photograph, but if I were assessing them without having observed for myself the aerial pole going crazy, I’d probably say the red and white beams on the video look a bit suspect, and the photograph, on a closer view, looks something like a construction of light canvas or paper over a wire or balsa wood frame.
However, my observation of the strangely oscillating pole gives me pause for thought. Try as I might, I can’t think of any ‘rational’ explanation for its behaviour. The most obvious answer would be the action of the wind — but there was hardly any at the time, and in any case such a pole, carrying a hefty TV aerial (which it used to do until about two years ago), would have been chosen to resist high winds. Without the aerial fixed on top, the pole on its own would offer even less resistance to strong winds. (I’m waiting for a windy day so I can observe it under those conditions.)
I’ve wondered if perhaps there was a vibration coming up through the ground — something like infra-sound caused by minor earth tremors. (We do get them in Britain from time to time.) But again, even if I couldn’t feel them through the soles of my feet, I would have thought other aerial poles, or even our washing-line carousel, would have trembled at the same time, or buildings would have creaked with the movement. And the length of time the pole vibrated on each observation — at least five minutes, I would estimate — seems to rule out infra-sound from earth tremors or nearby heavy works or quarry explosions further afield.
I keep coming back to a non-physical cause, such as an energy field of some kind, presumably electro-magnetic in nature. The pole, being a particular length (I believe it’s a hollow cylinder) and being of a certain metal density and diameter, could have possessed just the right properties to ‘receive’ the particular frequency of energy that was being ‘transmitted’ in this area at the time. I think of a ferrite rod in an old transistor radio for comparison — the ‘length’ of the rod being effectively altered by the mechanical tuning mechanism moving a surrounding wire coil up and down the rod to tune the radio to differing frequencies. The hollow construction of the pole might also have served to magnify the effect of the energy being inducted into it.
No-one knows for sure what propulsion systems UFOs use, but it would not be out of the question for them to utilise some sort of electro-magnetic field generator that repulses the Earth’s magnetic field to give them the lift they need to stay aloft.
Perhaps my neighbour’s old aerial pole is, in effect, a UFO detector!
UPDATE 13 November 2008: The mystery has been solved. Read Vibrating Pole: Mystery Solved for an explanation.
AlexH says:
November 11th, 2008
12:28 pm
First thing to do is probably to check that the pole is a ferrous metal – a lot of aerial masts are actually aluminium, precisely because of the weight issue, and that would rule out one potential force.
And then maybe check with the neighbour that there’s nothing in his roof space, like cantankerous plumbing, which might have been inducing movement
Somerset Bob says:
November 11th, 2008
12:41 pm
AlexH — thanks for your comment. I’ll check with the neighbour on his return.
Could you help me here: if it is aluminium, what potential force would that rule out, and what other potential forces would still be in the frame?
Somerset Bob says:
November 11th, 2008
5:16 pm
A quick update — quite windy today, and the pole hasn’t so much as trembled.
Well, OK — it did move back and forth just a little, but I had to be standing right underneath it to see it. I took these pictures while I was there:
In the above photo, it can be seen that the pole is, indeed, hollow.
The pole from below, at a slightly different angle. The wire does not go into the house — it just dangles.
Zara says:
November 12th, 2008
7:13 pm
Hi Somerset Bob, I see what you are saying in that, once a unexplained experience happens to yourself it make you wonder what other events might have occurred that you previously thought was made up. I had an experience with a UFO in Burnham-on-sea that looks very similar to the Bristol one you show in content — I had one of these red lights about a metre from my head, a pane of glass separating us, a close encounter of the bizarre kind if ever there was one — only seven witnesses and a radar blip so no proof! …
As to your vibrating pole — time, space and gravity like a big carpet, I often wonder if it can get worn away or thread bare in places, that could be one answer.
Or — in water an eddie can make a whirlpool, I guess that is a vortex of some sort in the air — I imagine a long empty tube (like a hollow pole) might catch a smaller breeze and it could create a similar tumbling effect leading to a larger vibration, just like water can turn a water wheel, you need a scientist type that knows their aero dynamics from their elbow, but the video made interesting watching. I like a mystery!
Zara
Somerset Bob says:
November 13th, 2008
1:13 pm
Hi Zara — thanks so much for your post. What an interesting experience you had in Burnham-on-Sea! Is it written up anywhere on the web? I’d be interested to read the details.
You’re quite right with your thoughts on eddies and vortices — as your comment came in, I was busy writing up another post explaining the ‘mystery’: Vibrating Pole: Mystery Solved — so full marks to you!
Gill says:
December 13th, 2008
4:27 pm
Hi! Somerset Bob,
I’m from Somerset too, and on the 23rd Aug 2008, my family and I were travelling from West Huntspill to Woolavington, when as we were going over Woolavington Moor, I noticed this huge red ball hovering over Woolavington housing estate. I pointed it out to my family who at first though it was a planet, but it was far too low and the colour was different to anything I’d seen before.
As we pulled onto my daughter’s drive the ball went overhead. It was silent and went off in the direction of Shipham/Cheddar. It then shot up into the sky.
Well, we left our daughter and went on our way back to West Huntspill. When we got to the motorway bridge, my daughter phoned to say that her and my baby grandson were now watching three more of the objects pass over her house. She said they were in a line, and were also silent.
The next day the local radio did a phone-in and people FROM Curry Ivel/Bridgwater/Taunton and Shipham had also seen the objects. Some people had seen eight of them and they were travelling in a V-shape.
Before I saw the object, I always thought a UFO was a saucer shape, but I was very surprised to read about these round balls and am now most interested in finding out what they are.
My hubby thinks they may be military!
I have looked at the chinese lanterns, but the balls were nothing like them at all.
Just thought you might be interested in my story,
Best Wishes
Gill
Somerset Bob says:
December 14th, 2008
6:51 pm
Hi Gill — thanks so much for taking the time to post your story here. How very interesting.
I once saw a completely jet-black ball pass me by at close range, and to this day I can’t really explain it.
It was many years ago, and I was a youngster — probably about 12 years old. Sitting on the balcony of our first-floor home in the east end of London one sunny afternoon, I noticed a slow-moving black object at about roof height some distance away. Being on the first floor of a maisonette, my view was of another block of maisonettes across the road and the other nearby houses’ roofs were lower than me.
It approached from my left quite slowly, at a uniform speed, and I watched it go behind the block of maisonettes opposite and then re-appear beyond the right edge of the building. It drifted off across the rooftops of Leytonstone until it was too far away to be seen. In all the time I observed it, its height, speed and trajectory never changed.
Was it simply a black balloon, escaped from a youngster’s hand? Honestly, I don’t think so — if it was, I feel it would have behaved differently in the summer breeze, dancing around erratically. And it was completely spherical rather than balloon-shaped — there was no string that I could see hanging from the bottom of it, and no place for a string to be attached.
The oddest thing that struck me about it was its utter blackness — it seemed to me as though it was reflecting no light whatsoever, and yet it was a bright, sunny day.
Well, it happened far too long ago now for me to offer an objective opinion about it now — but it’s stuck in my mind for over forty years as a most unusual observation.
Becky Kirsek says:
February 25th, 2009
3:44 am
Good post, informative, is there an RSS Feed?
Somerset Bob says:
February 25th, 2009
10:37 am
Hi Becky — thanks.
RSS feeds? Yes — for this individual post: here
All comments: here
All posts: here.