The Ilkley Moor Encounter (1987): Britain’s Creepiest Alien Photograph, Missing Time, and the Fog That Watches Back

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, dear listeners. Tonight we're not chasing flashing lights across

0:04 Speaker 1: desert skies or digging through crash debris. Tonight, we're walking

0:09 Speaker 1: into fog. Not metaphorical fog, real fog, the kind that

0:15 Speaker 1: swallows sound, erases landmarks, and makes even your own thoughts

0:19 Speaker 1: feel unreliable. Tonight we step onto ilkly More, a place

0:24 Speaker 1: already steeped in ancient folklore, stone circles, phantom black dogs,

0:29 Speaker 1: and stories of people who swear the land itself moves

0:32 Speaker 1: when you aren't looking. And on one cold December morning

0:36 Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven, something walked out of that fog,

0:40 Speaker 1: something small, something silent, something that did not belong. Ilkly

0:47 Speaker 1: More is not friendly terrain, even on a clear day.

0:50 Speaker 1: It's disorienting, wide open, uneven, and deceptively repetitive. The more

0:56 Speaker 1: doesn't guide you, It tests you. Locals will tell you

1:00 Speaker 1: that if you lose your bearings out there, panic arrives fast,

1:03 Speaker 1: and logic leaves quietly. On December one, nineteen eighty seven,

1:09 Speaker 1: the fog arrived early and thick, the kind that presses

1:12 Speaker 1: against your face and muffles your footsteps. That morning, Philip

1:17 Speaker 1: Spencer set out for a walk with his camera. This

1:20 Speaker 1: wasn't reckless. Spencer was an experienced outdoorsman, a former police officer,

1:26 Speaker 1: and a man who didn't romanticize danger. He brought a compass,

1:30 Speaker 1: he brought a camera. He brought common sense, and that's important,

1:35 Speaker 1: because common sense is the first thing this story strips away.

1:40 Speaker 1: As Spencer walked deeper onto the moor, he noticed the silence.

1:45 Speaker 1: No birds, no wind, just fog and the crunch of

1:49 Speaker 1: his boots on frozen ground. He later said the quiet

1:53 Speaker 1: felt deliberate, like someone had turned down the volume on

1:57 Speaker 1: the world. Then he saw movement. At first, he assumed

2:02 Speaker 1: it was another hiker, maybe a child, though that made

2:05 Speaker 1: little sense given the conditions. The figure was small and

2:09 Speaker 1: oddly proportioned, emerging from the fog ahead of him. As

2:14 Speaker 1: it drew closer, that assumption collapsed. The being stood roughly

2:19 Speaker 1: four feet tall. Its arms hung too long, nearly reaching

2:23 Speaker 1: its knees. Its hands appeared clawed, not gloved. Its head

2:28 Speaker 1: was large and rounded with no visible hair, and its

2:32 Speaker 1: posture wasn't curious or aggressive. It was neutral, observational. Spencer

2:38 Speaker 1: raised his camera on instinct and took a single photograph

2:42 Speaker 1: the moment the shutter clicked, everything fractured. A wave of

2:46 Speaker 1: panic hit him, sudden, overwhelming, and irrational. The fog thickened

2:51 Speaker 1: so rapidly it felt like the landscape folded inward. His

2:55 Speaker 1: camera malfunctioned, his compass spun uselessly, his sense of direction vanished.

3:01 Speaker 1: Then came the missing time. Spencer later calculated that over

3:05 Speaker 1: an hour had passed, an impossible gap given the distance

3:10 Speaker 1: he'd traveled. When he finally stumbled back towards Civilization, his

3:14 Speaker 1: watch had stopped entirely, and the more looked wrong. Landmarks

3:20 Speaker 1: didn't align, paths felt unfamiliar. It was as though he'd

3:24 Speaker 1: returned to a version of ilkly More that had been

3:27 Speaker 1: subtly rearranged when the film was developed. Only one image

3:32 Speaker 1: survived clearly, the photograph, A small humanoid figure standing in

3:37 Speaker 1: the fog. No obvious costume seems, no visible facial features,

3:42 Speaker 1: no theatrical pose, just there. Experts debated it endlessly. Some

3:49 Speaker 1: claimed forced perspective. Others suggested a prank or a child

3:53 Speaker 1: in a suit, but those explanations struggled to account for

3:57 Speaker 1: the arm length, the hand shape, and the fact that

4:00 Speaker 1: no similar suit has ever surfaced before or since, and

4:04 Speaker 1: Spencer never tried to capitalize on it. He didn't sell

4:08 Speaker 1: the photo, he didn't tour conventions, he didn't seek fame.

4:12 Speaker 1: He tried instead to understand what had happened to him.

4:17 Speaker 1: That's when the dreams began, except Spencer insisted they weren't dreams.

4:23 Speaker 1: He described vivid mental images arriving uninvited, flooded cities, environmental collapse,

4:29 Speaker 1: crowded urban centers, swallowed by decay. There were no words,

4:34 Speaker 1: no voice, just understanding, the kind that bypasses language entirely.

4:40 Speaker 1: He later said it felt like information had been placed

4:43 Speaker 1: inside him briefly and then removed. Investigators who retraced his

4:48 Speaker 1: steps noticed something chilling. Based on Spencer's memory, he should

4:53 Speaker 1: have exited the more miles from where he actually emerged,

4:57 Speaker 1: which suggests something far stranger than missing time. It suggests displacement,

5:02 Speaker 1: not taken far, not gone long, just moved.

5:07 Speaker 2: This episode is sponsored by fog Off alien repellent spray,

5:11 Speaker 2: because just ignore it is not a survival strategy. Walking

5:15 Speaker 2: on ilkly more experiencing thick fog, missing time, and a

5:20 Speaker 2: sudden urge to photograph something that looks disappointed in humanity,

5:24 Speaker 2: then you need fog Off. One quick spray creates a

5:28 Speaker 2: protective mist of artificial confidence, mild garlic undertones, and legally

5:33 Speaker 2: ambiguous science. Fog Off repels small humanoid beings with long arms,

5:38 Speaker 2: nonverbal evaluators, time curious entities, anything that approaches silently and

5:44 Speaker 2: ruins your afternoon. Still not convinced, try our fog Off

5:48 Speaker 2: TM daylux bundle featuring a compass that lies less, a

5:52 Speaker 2: watch that loudly announces you've lost an hour, and a

5:56 Speaker 2: wallet card that reads, if I'm disoriented, please return me

5:59 Speaker 2: to the correct decade. Fog Off if it steps out

6:03 Speaker 2: of the fog, step away from the fog available nowhere,

6:07 Speaker 2: works never, but emotionally very supportive.

6:12 Speaker 1: The ilkly More encounter doesn't feel like a dramatic abduction story.

6:16 Speaker 1: There's no table, no needles, no bright lights. It feels quieter, colder,

6:22 Speaker 1: like a field test, like someone briefly stepped into our environment,

6:27 Speaker 1: checked a variable, and stepped back out again. And perhaps

6:31 Speaker 1: the fog wasn't incidental, perhaps it was necessary. Today ilkly

6:36 Speaker 1: More remains unchanged and yet deeply altered by what happened there.

6:41 Speaker 1: Walkers still report strange sensations, sudden fear, lost orientation, the

6:48 Speaker 1: sense of being watched in heavy fog. No definitive explanation

6:52 Speaker 1: has ever emerged, and that may be the point, because

6:56 Speaker 1: some encounters aren't meant to convince you aliens exist. They're

7:00 Speaker 1: meant to remind you that certainty is fragile, that time

7:04 Speaker 1: can bend, that perception can fail, and that sometimes the

7:09 Speaker 1: universe doesn't announce itself with thunder. Sometimes it steps quietly

7:15 Speaker 1: out of the fog, waits for you to notice, and

7:18 Speaker 1: leaves before you're sure you did. And so, dear listeners,

7:23 Speaker 1: if you ever find yourself walking through thick fog on

7:26 Speaker 1: unfamiliar ground and the world suddenly feels muted, don't panic.

7:31 Speaker 1: Just remember where you were and where you are now.

7:35 Speaker 1: If those two things don't match, you may already be

7:38 Speaker 1: part of the story. This has been the Strange History podcast.

7:42 Speaker 1: I'm Amy, and some mysteries don't chase you. They wait.

7:46 Speaker 1: Sleep well.