There are plenty of weird reports to be found when looking amongst the many accounts of encounters with strange, unidentifiable beings. I have often covered such anomalous sightings and incidents here, and there are always those that seem to go beyond even the bizarre, to stick firmly in the domain of the unclassifiable and downright odd. Certainly amongst these are the occasional reports of what can only be described as little blue people, that crawl out from some fringe realm of the truly, fantastically strange.
One of the more bizarre stories of some sort of little blue imp comes to us from the area of Studham Common, in Bedfordshire, England, and was first reported in the March 3rd, 1967 edition of the Dunstable Gazette, as well as the Borough Gazette and with a follow-up containing witness interviews following in The Flying Saucer Review in July of 1967. According to the account, on January 28, 1967 a group of six young boys was out playing on the common on their way to the nearby school. The day was overcast and slightly rainy, yet the boys were still having a blast out there when out of the blue a bolt of lightning came crashing down not far from the startled kids, and while whether it had anything to do with what happened next is not clear, they would have a very surreal encounter with something beyond understanding not long after.
An area of Bedfordshire
Just after the lightning strike, one of the witnesses, 10-year-old Alex Butler, looked over the common to see standing about 20 yards away in front of some bushes a tiny little blue man around 3 feet tall, with a blue beard and wearing an odd one-piece suit, a tall brimmed bowler-type hat, and a black belt carrying a black box on the front. Additionally, the little man was also described as having been bathed in a faint glow that seemed to emanate from him. Alex called out to his friends, and they ran over to see the strange entity for themselves. They all then ran towards this odd little stranger, perhaps to chase it away or perhaps to try and catch it, after which the little man vanished right before their eyes in “a puff of smoke.”
When the group of boys reached the spot where the man had been standing a moment before, they could find no sign of him, so they decided to look for him. They soon found the little blue man, again standing around 20 yards away, and once again he vanished into thin air when they approached. He did this yet again right after this, always appearing 20 yards away. Yet they continued on, hoping to find this enigmatic little man again, and they did, this time choosing to peer out at him from behind some bushes, but this time around things would get a little more bizarre, and the Flying Saucer Review article would say of what happened next thus:
Looking at him through the little bushes, they became aware of “voices” which they describe in a manner suggesting a continuous incomprehensible, and “foreign-sounding” babble, coming from a point in the bushes closer to them and down the slope to the right of their line of sight. A feeling that the little fellow had associates who were communicating with him and to whom he was replying, although they could detect no movement on his part. It induced a sense of caution which deterred them from rushing towards him as before. Instead, the boys continued to circle the Dell until they could look down it, whereupon they saw him for the fourth and last time still standing as motionless as ever in the same place.
The students would go on to tell their teacher, Ms. Newcomb, about their strange experience, and although she didn’t believe a word of it she had them separately write down their own versions of what had transpired. These accounts were then collected and pasted into a book called “The Little Blue Man On Studham Common.” R.H.B. Winder, the writer of the article in the Flying Saucer Review article, met with some of the witnesses, who showed him where their encounter had taken place and further elaborated on the story with some intriguing details. He would write:
The blue color turned out to be a dim grayish-blue glow lending to obscure outline and detail. They could, however, discern a line which was either a fringe of hair or the lower edge of the hat. Two round eyes, a small seemingly triangle in place of a nose, and a one-piece vestment extending down to a broad black belt carrying a black box at the front about six inches square. The arms appeared short and were held straight down close to the sides at all times. The legs and feet were indistinct. The “beard” is interesting: apparently it extended from the vicinity of the mouth downwards to divide and ran to both sides of the chest. Although agreeing that it could have been breathing apparatus. the boys could not see clearly enough to be certain and this thought had not occurred to them.
The disappearances caused me some difficulty at first, but became more understandable after further explanation of the “smoke” was apparently a whirling cloud of yellowish-blue mist shot towards the pursuers, possibly from the box on the belt. They agreed that he could have stepped into the bushes before this camouflage cleared, although it dissipated quite quickly. They heard no sound other than the voices and saw no movement at any time. Nor did they smell any smells or see anything strange in the vicinity, either on the ground or in the air.
Another good article on the case was written by Dutch researcher Theo Paijmans, who has spent a lot of time and effort trying to track down additional information on the very bizarre account. Paijmans has also tried to locate the book containing the children’s accounts, which seems to have disappeared, as well as track down the original witnesses. Despite these articles and efforts to glean more information about the case of “The Little Blue man,” we are ultimately left with only a few articles on the incident and the original testimony, and it is difficult to find out more about it, leaving much to speculation.
One very interesting detail concerning the case is the mention of the lightning strike. Although there is no concrete connection between the lightning and the report given by the boys, it does give cause for speculation. There has been the idea in recent years that lightning could sometimes herald a sort of rift between dimensions, allowing us to peer through into another reality, or for beings from that parallel world to come into ours. Could it be that the Little Blue Man was just such a denizen from another universe lying up against ours, an interdimensional traveler of sorts? Did he pass through that tear in the veil between dimensions, either intentionally or by accident? Or was the lightning perhaps an effect from some sort of ionization caused by a powerful device, perhaps from the box that the man wore on his belt or even from a UFO? There is no way to know, but it is hard not to think that the lightning strike had some relationship with what transpired.
In the end we are left with more questions than answers. Who or what was the Little Blue Man of Studham Common? Was this an alien, an inter-dimensional interloper, a hoax, or purely the delusions of some children’s overactive imaginations? No one really knows. What is strange, though, is that while this may seem at first to be merely an anomalous one-off encounter with something totally fringe, I have actually been able to locate some other cases that bear a striking similarity to this one in one way or annother, whether they are related or not. For instance there is the account of a woman known only as “Emily,” who came forward with her own story of a mysterious blue man she encountered in the U.S. state of Minnesota in 2007. She wrote of her experience thus:
When me and my family moved into a brand new house about 10 years ago, my mother would hear me talking to someone in my room. Supposedly I was talking to a man in a blue shirt. I was three and I couldn’t make out anything else out. A few years later my mother was mowing the lawn and briefly looked into my window and saw a man in a blue shirt standing in my window.
Then my step dad moved in and claimed that he woke up in his room with a blue man at the end of the bed. A few nights later my mom was sleeping in her room and woke up to loud noises. When she opened her eyes she saw blue man in the corner of the room by the door way. On another occasion I woke up to a face right in front of mine and then just disappear while turning away. Now my sister was in her bedroom in the basement and she was on the computer and in the reflection of the other side of the room she saw a figure a man. The next week I was in her bathroom cleaning and I saw this bright blue light and then a face appeared in the light.
Another account comes from a poster on Your Ghost Stories, who says that he had a similar encounter in the state of Wisconsin when he was 22 years old. He claims that the home he lived in had been haunted for some time, demonstrating various paranormal phenomena such as anomalous footsteps and doors opening or closing on their own, but by far the weirdest experience was a little blue man who would make appearances now and again. He would say of this:
I had just fallen asleep in my basement room and awoke to the blankets being pushed around my legs. I thought it was weird but then they felt like they were being “molded” around my back area. I sat up in my bed and saw nothing. I laid back down and closed my eyes and within about 10 minutes the blankets again were being pushed around my legs and suddenly I had a hard time breathing.
I opened my eyes and saw a small blue man sitting on my chest smiling at me. I could not get my breath. I clenched my fist and threw a punch at “him”. As I punched him, he disappeared, my door to my room opened up quickly, and so did this larger heavy door in the basement. At that point I could breathe much better but I was totally freaked out. I jumped out of bed, hit the light switch, hit the other lights in the basement, and no one was there. I ended up sleeping upstairs and never said anything to anyone since I thought they would think I was crazy. My brother who has played video games in the basement, has since mentioned the “noise” and asked me if I thought the house was haunted.
Still another witness on a Reddit forum gave a remarkably similar report, concerning his young son and a strange blue man who was colorfully described as “bald and very muscular, like a Bruce Lee type with red eyes.” He would say of his terrifying experience:
I had dreamed about a blue man being in the house, like a vampire – who was threatening us. I sat up – I was drenched with sweat. I went to get up, to go to my bathroom, when I heard my son scream. I went running to his room – he was maybe 4-5 – and he was terrified – he said there ‘was a blue man under the bed trying to get me.’
I grabbed him up and walked with him on my hip and checked the house, then took him back to bed with me, but neither of us slept that well the rest of the night. We didn’t really talk of it after that night. Well, about 2 years ago, we were all sitting around drawing, and I did a picture of the blue man. DS saw it and Said – That’s the blue man! You remember that night he tried to get us? He remembered him very clearly too.
There was interestingly a hoax carried out in 1958 in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the time there were numerous reports from motorists saying that they had seen an entity described as a “little blue man,” wearing a “spacesuit” and emitting an ethereal glow. The witnesses said that this thing would appear out of the wilderness on isolated roads and then vanish into thin air to leave no trace behind. Most of the reports said the strange blue man was only 2 feet high, while others said he was much taller, and most agreed that it ran faster than a human being. It seems very intriguing, but after a police investigation there were three men by the names of Jerry Sprague, Don Weiss, and LeRoy Schultz, who claimed that they had perpetrated the whole thing, making a costume to which they had attached blinking lights. They also said they had spray-painted the whole thing with blue, glow-in-the-dark paint.
The costume of the hoaxers
The mischievous trio claimed that they would hide along roadsides, jump out in front of cars, and then withdraw to a getaway car and speed off. The whole prank was carried out over several weeks, and sure enough stopped when the young men came forward. Was this really a hoax, or a coincidence? Was there ever really some anomalous blue man here or not? In the end it is far from clear if any of this is linked at all, but it is interesting to note all of the cases of diminutive blue men running around. What significance does this all have, if any? Is this all just hoaxes and tall tales or is there something more to it? If so, then what could these beings be and are they related in any way? Whether they be ghosts, aliens, interdimensional travelers, or simply tall tales, the cases of the little blue men remains intriguing all the same.
Brent Swancer (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
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