Vrillon ETI, 1977 Television Hijacking Incident

Was the source of this hoax ever caught and named.Does anyone have the name of the source of this hoax, was it a ITN prankster or outside prankster ect.

The 'Vrillon' case still remains an interresting mysterie.

So far as I know, No one has ever come out with a claim that he/she was responsable for this. I am not saying that this is real, but it was verry well done, and up to this date still a unsolved mysterie.

reply to post by K-PAX-PROT


No, the perpetrators were never named or caught. There were at least two groups of suspects during the investigation, one a group of students (never named in news reports) and another group, with a name attached as "Cosmic Cowboy" and friends, but neither group was assigned the blame, and nobody ever claimed responsibility. Was a pretty good stunt though...you'd think someone would own up to it, hehe...

Originally posted by Gazrok
reply to post by K-PAX-PROT

 

No, the perpetrators were never named or caught. There were at least two groups of suspects during the investigation, one a group of students (never named in news reports) and another group, with a name attached as "Cosmic Cowboy" and friends, but neither group was assigned the blame, and nobody ever claimed responsibility. Was a pretty good stunt though...you'd think someone would own up to it, hehe...

Thanks for the reply, yes you would think that the PAB would latch on to any group or individual to blame and have the case close as to speak.Not saying this was the real deal but the level of strangeness in the lack of responsibly either being claimed or named on someone or group is strange in itself.

i think its a remarkable hack with a good message

There was a similar prank years back, with a guy in a Max Headroom mask... Like this one, they never found the culprits of this signal interruption either (Google on Max Headroom Incident, and you'll likely find a link).

So, it's not unheard of.

I gave a pretty full account of this curiosity in another thread on the subject. I was actually involved in an *investigation* into it to try and find out who was at the root of it all. I've had a look through my posts and can't find the original entry so i will surmise here..

The transmission was not some local event as is often claimed. It covered Kent Surrey Hampshire and parts of Berkshire as far North as reading , South West to Portsmouth and East right over to Dover.

The engineers at the transmission stations who had their signal hijacked were totally unaware their signal had been cut into, until they started receiving phone calls about it.

The Cosmic Cowboys... are a bunch of Erisians inspired by the writings of R A Wilson etc... The Police hate them because they don;t know who they are or even if they really exist. The signs of the Cowboys are now so widespread they have become, in many ways, virtually meaningless . A whole rake load of rip off merchant **dance clubs/djs etc* ripped the whole thing off in an attempt to seem *cool*. What started as a way of like minded people identifying each other became a sale able item emblazoned on a 1000 t shirts the wearers of which, probably don;t have clue what it signifies...The Cowboys didn't do it, in fact several of them were involved in and around the investigation into exactly who did it.. That might seem a contradiction in the light of what i earlier said about the group not existing. What i mean is, several people who the Police suspected were part of the Cowboys were involved in and around the investigation.

We were told from inside sources who would not be named for fear of losing their jobs that... "The idea that it was some students with a tv set in someone's bedroom that did it, is ridiculous. Whoever did it had access to some pretty sophisticated equipment and one hell of a power supply."

One engineer quoted us, maybe 6 flat bed trucks worth of batteries to generate enough power to send the signal so far if the perpetrators didn't have access to an industrial sized power supply. Remember here, this wans't one single transmitter cut into as some would have you believe. They took all the transmitters, South of the Thames, covering almost 4 whole counties. we are talking of an area well over 1500 square miles in size.

When we investigated we were told by the Police that. "The perpetrators had been caught and dealt with and they came from Hampshire". From memory, it was Rex Dutta via a contact, then searched through the whole of the criminal records for Hampshire dating back to the time of the transmission and there was absolutely NO trace of anyone being charged with any sort of offense that was commensurate with the one that took place.

A note here. Yes Rex is/was a bit out there, but he could be wholly focused on actual evidence and put aside his own personal beliefs. While I might not have agreed with him on many subjects within Ufology, he was a thoroughly decent bloke whose knowledge of the folklore of Ufology was/is encyclopedic.. let me further add, as "eccentric" as Rex might seem, the guy had contacts up the wazoo in some pretty high places. Several of those who spoke to us only did so because of Rex's input and I am talking about high ranking Police and people in broadcasting. Through Rex, the sort of people i met were nearly always the likes of Doctors, Lawyers and Scientists from various fields. Eccentric he might have been, however he undoubtedly had a definite *charm* and even those who thought him barking mad were, more often than not, entirely civil to him, to his face.

To the best of my knowledge the report that was compiled was never actually published. I believe this was mainly due to a schism which had rent the established filed of UFO investigation in Britain. Essentially it boiled down to a bun fight between the *nuts and bolts* people and the more *philosophical people*. Remember, this was before String and Membrane theory so to postulate *other realities* was tantamount to heresy for many people.

The report as far as i know, was heading in a direction of saying something along the following lines...


We can find no method by which this could have been hoaxed by someone outside of the broadcasting world itself unless, they were party to some pretty advanced equipment and understood how to use it. The stories of it being a prank are merely window dressing to hide the fact neither the broadcasting authorities or the police have the first real clue how it was done. Neither does there seem to be any evidence that this was some *test operation" by a country that might be deemed as unfriendly to the UK, to ascertain its' practicality for possible use in a future invasion scenario.

It therefore remains an unknown although, it could possibly have been our own secret services running to a test to see if it was feasible in order to put in place some sort of safeguard against it being done by outside sources. Remember, the staff at the transmission stations were totally unaware of the broadcast cutting in, I would guess this would be intrinsic to any test the intelligence services might run, for security and practical reasons. That is, they needed to know could it be done without the TV stations themselves being aware it was .

As pointed out elsewhere this was not an isolated incident. Brain Hayes, around the same time this incident scoured, during his chat show on LBC had exactly the same sort of message jam every phone line into the radio station.. I have heard the tape of it and it contains the same sort of message delivered in the same sort of stilted efx laden voice. In the LBC case, they cut to ads and music the moment it happened so the message was never heard by the public.

So a hoax?? Well yes probably, but a very very sophisticated one by people who really knew their stuff. It was made light of by the authorities to hide the fact they were, in private, absolutely bricking themselves about the incident.

So there you have it

reply to post by FireMoon


Wow. Thanks for that fascinating information, Firemoon.

No kidding, great extra info... *applause*

Would seem to be a much more impressive feat than the media led us to believe. Still though, we have to view the message as bogus, as the claims of the speech have not come to pass... We're still doing all of the things we did then, with no additional consequences from alien visitors.

reply to post by Gazrok


Thank you both for the kind words. Without wanting to come across as some old codger or overly sentimental those days were amazing. Yes, we were probably naive and a lil gauche about the way we investigated things. That said, there were some amazing people around. I will never forget 4 of us visiting some country pub in Kent to interview a TV engineer about this incident. Quite what the locals made of two guys in leather jackets jeans and waist length hair accompanied by two elderly and unbelievably well turned out, one was an ex RAF officer handle bar mustache and all, companions I will never know. At times, it was all very Sherlock Holmes and a little like something from a Hammer film.

One thing i will say and this is one of the chief reasons i have never left the UFO field. Some of those guy's I met, spoke to and at times, worked with, were there because of the following. They themselves had seen, or been party to evidence of sightings during their military service, where because of their sense of honour they had never actually spoken or given details to anyone about them. Even after retirement they stuck to that code and in their retirement they sought to find evidence from a separate source to validate their previous experiences.

Excellent info FireMoon, very well written and laid out. This "television piracy" event is quite interesting. The equipment required to over-ride the stations signal would be tremendous as would the power required to drive the transmitter RF amplifiers.

reply to post by Cybernet
About your age of aqurius question, and did people know about it, ok well this is really vague in my memory because i was only 9 in 77, but im sure in the early seventies there was a sort of in between show filler, with really cosmic illustrations and it may have been accompanied by the song 'Dawning of the age of aquarius' this was on british tv for quite a while i think. Maybe some older british members might remember, if not, then sorry this could have been my imagination' but i dont think so.

I've just watched this video and as much as i believe we are not alone in this Universe i do find this video a little hard to believe.
I'm not a non believer i have seen things in the sky, believe in ET's but something about this seems fishy.
It is weird that it was in 1877 technology was not advanced back then but i still find this a little hard to believe.

I found an MP3 of the audio recording (there's a few of them knocking about on the web). To my knowledge, and that of just about everyone else that has an opinion, no recording of the picture exists; but all accounts of this incident state that it was only the sound that was affected and the picture stayed normal throughout

I actually saw the broadcast from a friend's flat on Clapham Common. My recollection is that the screen was just static. There might have some message in a typeface over the static but I am not sure about that, we were watching on and old Black and White set. Others might have just had the message over the normal picture. There is one piece of info worth remembering.

The message was cut into the ITV transmission. Now ITV had various franchises that came together for certain *big shows." In those days prgrammes such as The Sweeney were shown at the same time same day by every franchise. The National news was one of these shared programmes. That is, it was on at the same time on every regional station. Outside of that the various stations could have wildly differing content. Not only that, in many areas one could tune into your own channel and another nearby regions channel giving you a whopping great 4 channels of TV to choose from

Clapham Common was a case in point. One could watch the local TV channel Thames during the weekdays and LWT (London Weekend Television) at weekends or, tune into Southern TV broadcasts We were tuned into Thames/LWT and yet we saw the same broadcast it is claimed was only sent to Southern TV viewers. That means the *pranksters* were blocking not one, but two different frequencies with their message.

That gives us something which mapped out looks like this....


London Weekend TV (LWT).... the source of transmission for the whole of the UK during the National News programme..

LWT sends to Southern TV who rebroadcast to their own area on their own frequency, different to that of LWT's

So first question.... Let's surmise the pranksters hijacked the LWT signal..

In that case, as that signal as being sent to every home in England why wasn't it seen anywhere North of the river Thames?

Second Question... They cut into Southern TV's transmission only...

Then how did the message appear on people's TV sets who were tuned to LWT for the news not Southern TV, but only South of the River Thames?

It is that crucial point that, from memory, all technical staff were told to simply reply no comment to if they were asked by the media. It was the pranksters ability to do that very thing, block 2 transmissions on different frequencies, that the engineers told us, off the record, would require some serious equipment to do.

I hope that makes it a little clearer.

With video....

reply to post by thedoctorswife


Yep. I was reading all the thread to find out if someone would mention the song You did !! One Snaffstar for you

Utter BS..

British speaking alien hijacks British television.. Has a message for the world...but only hijacks a certain area...

If you believe any of this...just walk around with a sign saying gullible.

Why would a supposedly highly advanced race give a warning for earth but only a hijack one area of broadcast?

Let's say for instance they did not have the power to multiple hijacks then why not go around worldwide and do it by area...especially if the message was supposedly so important?

I say again..utter BS..

the fact that the 'alien' mentioned the word "Aquarius" in 1977 is a dead giveaway that the hoaxer is a hippy, re-living the old 5th dimension song from the latter 1960s, such is not a common phrase today, but it was very common in 1977, common for extra terrestrials? doubt it, a real E.T. would use a more intelligent word to describe the next age, nicely written, but written in a human hippy way, making it dated, a true E.T. message would be timeless.

reply to post by kerazeesicko


Perhaps he finds them charming? I mean, If I had to choose a small group of people to give some groundbreaking news to I'd likely tell the English as well... Their, just so charming!!!

reply to post by hightowerx


I did not read all the replies but when I say that it is probabaly a pranck from a amateur electronic-technician I will be close to the truth I think.

3rd line.