Living in Burley in Wharfedale, I spend a lot of time on Ilkley Moor with my dog and love exploring the wild moorland. So when a friend send me a podcast about “The Ilkley Moor Alien” I thought I needed to investigate further. After all I didn’t fancy missing my tea after being abducted and never liked the sound of being probed!

lkley Moor is just one of 14 moors which join together to form the larger Rombald’s Moor. The Moors are full of history and have the largest concentration of cup and ring marked stones dating to the Neolithic in England. The Moor also has it’s own small stone circle – The Twelve Apostles which I have blogged about previously.

But the story of the Ilkley Moor Alien is more recent and dates back to 1987.

As the testimony comes from a retired policeman – should we take it more seriously? I’ll let you make you’re own mind up. Philip Spencer was taking a walk across the Moor on the morning of 1st December 1987 to visit his father in law. It was a walk he had done many times before and that morning he had taken his camera as he loved taking pictures of the landscape with the early morning light.

As is often the case at that time of year, a mist hung over the moor making navigation more difficult. It was then that Spencer saw a being standing in the mist, at first thinking it was another walker but on approaching realising it was something un-natural and strange. The creature was waving an arm and apparently gesturing for him not to approach.

He managed to take a picture and the creature ran away.

The ex-policeman tried to follow the creature but claims he then caught a glimpse of a craft with a domed top rising into the sky and disappearing into the distance.

When Spencer eventually reached his father in law’s house visibly shaken, the village clock and all the clocks in his house were an hour ahead of Spencer’s watch, leading him to believe that he had possibly been the victim of an alien abduction.

The image which Philip Spencer took appears to show a slightly blurred 4ft Alien creature. The image has been analysed hundreds of times and experts conclude that the figure has not been superimposed and shows no resemblance to any local wildlife. Sadly Spencer was in too much shock to get a picture of the domed flying machine.

This sighting is just one of many reported UFO sightings in the area, many seeming to happen near the previously mentioned 12 Apostles stone circle

But the fact that the story of the Ilkley Moor alien has a photograph to back it up, it is now ranked as one of the Top 10 most important alien sightings in the UK.

No-one knows why the alien chose Ilkley to visit but I think that he or she may have just fancied a pint of Ilkley Brewery Mary Jane or a Betty’s Fat Rascal after a long journey from Mars!