Inside sleepy UK market town that's actually a hotbed of mysterious UFO sighting (2025)

The sleepy Yorkshire market town known for being a hotbed of UFO sightings (Image: Getty)

Nestled in the Pennines is the small market town of Todmorden. This industrial town made its name in the cotton trade and reached its peak during the Industrial Revolution. In recent years, though, it's not the town's industrious history that's got tongues wagging, but rather the fact that it has become a hotbed of UFO sightings.

This rather strange claim to fame started in 1980 when the body of coalminer Zigmund Adamski, from the nearby town of Tingley, was discovered on a pile of coal in Todmorden seven days after he went missing. His body was found with mysterious burns on the head, shoulder and neck - the source of which has never been confirmed.

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Police Officer Alan Godfrey refused to rule out "alien abduction" (Image: Getty)

Alien abduction claims were then started when Police Constable Alan Godfrey claimed that Adamski looked as though he had been "frightened to death." When asked if this could have been an alien abduction, Godfrey told the media: "I am open-minded. I can't rule it out."

Six months later, Godfrey had his own UFO experience. Responding to reports of cattle wandering around a Todmorden council estate, the now-retired police officer claims he saw a bright light hovering above the road, which he described as a "rotating diamond-shaped object."

After seeing this, he tried to radio for help, but his police equipment had ceased to work. Then the object suddenly vanished, and Godfrey found himself 30 yards further down the road - with a split boot and an itchy red mark on his foot.

He also had no memory of the last half an hour. Later under hypnosis, he claimed he had briefly awoken inside a room being medically examined by what appeared to be aliens - although then in 2018 he admitted this was likely a dream.

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Todmorden can be found nestled in the Pennines (Image: Getty)

Following his UFO account and claims that aliens may have abducted Adamski, Godfrey says that he was introduced to a man who claimed to be "from the ministry" who made him swear on the official secrets act that he would not discuss what he had seen.

Godfrey then claims to have senen this man on a few more occasions until he eventually confronted him in a pub, telling him to "clear off." He never saw the man again but later shared that he believed this mystery man had been an MI5 Agent.

In the years since these experiences, Godfrey claims that he was forced to resign from the police. He has since gone on to write a self-published book detailing his alien claims.

However, the UFO sightings in the area have only continued, and 40 years after Godfrey's account of the "spinning diamond", local resident Vicky Dinsdale claims that she, too, saw this UFO just a few months after the former police officer.