Since late 2025 I’ve been writing about true crime. Mysteries, and conspiracies. Particularly British ones, dating back over the past century. These include peculiar deaths, paranormal occurrences, strange disappearances, and (possibly) the hidden hand of government(s) involvement. I’ve been researching those infamous tales less traveled. Less well known. But with a real chill down the spine impact. I’ve been publishing these stories in my regular monthly author newsletter. It now goes out to thousands of people, I’m delighted to say. This new approach to my content is in preparation for the new mystery-thriller trilogy coming later in 2026, or early 2027. I’ll be talking about this more in due course.

Meantime, there’s a novella I’m publishing this summer that acts as precursor to the full novels.

What follows, below, gives you a flavor of these bizarre and mysterious events I cover. This month it features the true, odd and eerie tale of the strange disappearance – and subsequent death – of one Zigmund Adamski. The circumstances of which are now well known here in the UK. Oddly, his death was only the start of some truly peculiar coincidences.

All of which is to say, if you’d like to subscribe to the regular newsletter, and read more, you can do so here. No obligation to do anything else. Oh, and you’ll get a free copy of The House of Woo.

On with the blog…

Here we are. The days are finally stretching out here in England. We’ve traded those grim, steel-grey skies of February for something a little softer. There’s a hint of spring in the air. Daffodils nodding their yellow heads along the roadside, birds waking me up, and that distinct smell of rain on fresh grass (something we’ve had a lot of since the turn of the year). It’s enough to make you feel optimistic, isn’t it?

Well, almost.

If you’re anything like me, the changing seasons mean swapping one set of chores for another. But, as always, the writing desk is the best place to hide from responsibilities.

Speaking of hiding, thank you to everyone who wrote in about last month’s dive into the ‘Bella in the Wych Elm’ mystery. Your theories were fascinating. And terrifying. It seems we all share a love of the unexplained, of those stories that sit just on the edge of reality, refusing to be neatly categorised.

Talking of which, I’m hugely excited for Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming summer blockbuster, Disclosure Day, out in theatres (or cinemas, here in the UK) on 12 June. He’s returning to his Close Encounters, E.T. and The War of the Worlds roots, diving back into UFOs and the big question: are we alone? This time, it’s a more grounded conspiracy thriller (though very little is known about the plot at this stage). You can watch the latest trailer here…

I’m excited because this precise subject was the premise of my debut, The Otero County Disclosure: A novel for our times, published last summer. It too featured hidden truths and deep conspiracy (and climaxed on the set of a Hollywood blockbuster being filmed in the US’ mysterious southwest). Like the movie, it’s a story that dares to stray to the edge of our reality, and a novel that can’t be neatly categorized.

With all this in mind, this month’s true case is both bizarre and frightening, and features the subject close to Spielberg’s heart: UFOs, with a mysterious death thrown in for good measure.

So, grab your coffee (or tea, I’m not judging), find your favorite reading spot, and let’s travel back in time again. This month, we aren’t going back to the 1940s. We’re landing in 1980. The year of the Rubik’s Cube, Pac-Man, and The Empire Strikes Back. But in a quiet corner of West Yorkshire, here in the UK. For something far stranger than science fiction was about to unfold…

We’re heading to the town of Todmorden.

The strange, eerie case… of Zigmund Adamski

It was June 6, 1980. A Friday. 

In the bustling market town of Tingley, near Wakefield, 56-year-old former coal miner Zigmund Adamski was running errands. It should have been a joyous time. His goddaughter was getting married the very next day, and the family was in high spirits.

Zigmund was a solid man. A Polish immigrant who had made a life for himself in Britain after the war. He was known as a hard worker, a loving husband to his wife Lottie, and a man of routine. He wasn’t the type to disappear or walk out on his family, especially not the day before a wedding he was looking forward to.

Around 3:30 PM, he popped out to buy some groceries. He stopped to chat with a neighbor, exchanged pleasantries, and then… vanished.

Just like that.

When he didn’t return home, Lottie panicked. This wasn’t like Zigmund. The wedding came and went without him—a somber affair overshadowed by his empty chair. Days turned into a week. Police were baffled. There was no evidence of foul play, no sightings, notes left, or money withdrawn from the bank. It was as if the earth had swallowed him whole.

Five days later, on Wednesday, June 11th, Zigmund Adamski was found. But where he was found—and how he was found—would spark a mystery that endures to this day.

His body was discovered over 20 miles away in the town of Todmorden. He was lying on top of a 10-foot-high pile of coal in a coal yard near the railway line.

Now, pause for a moment. Imagine the scene. A man who has been missing for five days, found atop a massive heap of coal. But here’s the kicker… he was wearing a suit, but his shirt was missing. His watch and wallet were gone. And despite climbing a coal heap, his clothes were remarkably clean. His shoes were tied properly.

The pathologist, Dr. Alan Edwards, was stumped. Adamski had died of a heart attack; that much was clear. But the body’s condition was baffling. He had burns on his neck, shoulders, and the back of his head. However, these weren’t burns from fire. They were chemical burns, covered in a strange, gel-like substance the coroner couldn’t identify.

And there was something else. Zigmund had been missing for five days, yet he only had one day’s growth of beard. He was well-nourished. It was as if, for the majority of his disappearance, time had stopped for him. Or perhaps, he had been kept somewhere… else.

The cop who saw too much

The coroner, James Turnbull, would later go on record calling it the most baffling case of his career. The verdict was an open one. He stated explicitly that the burns could not have been self-inflicted and that Adamski had died of “fright.” Yes, you read that right. He was scared to death.

But the story doesn’t end with poor Zigmund. In fact, it gets stranger.

The police officer first on the scene at the coal yard was a man named Alan Godfrey. A pragmatic, no-nonsense Yorkshire copper. He investigated the scene, noted the oddities—the clean clothes on the dirty coal, the strange burns, the look of terror on the victim’s face. He filed his report and tried to move on.

But Todmorden wasn’t done with Alan Godfrey.

Six months later, in November 1980, Godfrey was on patrol in the early hours of the morning. He was driving down the town’s Burnley Road looking for some missing cows (you can’t make this stuff up—it’s the most British beginning to a sci-fi story ever).

As he rounded a bend, he saw something in the road ahead. At first, he thought it was a bus that had skewed sideways, blocking the lane. But as he got closer, he realized it wasn’t a bus.

It was a diamond-shaped object, hovering about five feet off the ground. It was rotating silently, the bottom spinning while the top remained stationary. It was massive—about six meters wide and 4 meters high.

Godfrey, bless him, did what any good policeman would do. He grabbed his radio to call it in. But the radio was dead. Just static.

So, he did the next logical thing. He grabbed his sketch pad to draw it.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light.

The next thing Godfrey knew, he was driving his car again. But he was 30 yards further down the road. The object was gone. The cows were gone. He was alone in the dark, confused and disoriented. When he checked his watch, he realized he had “lost” about 15 minutes. He couldn’t account for it.

As he told The Sun newspaper in 2020, “I was about 100 yards on the other side of where the thing had been hovering,” he claims.
“There was a strange tickly electric feeling about the place.
“I turned around and went back to the spot the object was hovering. The road surface beneath it was bone dry – everything else was glistening from the earlier downpour.
“In the dry patch, leaves, twigs and small branches lay in a swirled pattern. It was very peculiar.”

When he returned to the police station, he noticed something odd. His boots were split at the sole, as if he’d been dragged. And the radio? It was working fine again.

Oh, and those missing cows? They were eventually discovered later that day, mysteriously relocated to a rain‑soaked field.
Crucially, the field showed no hoofmarks, despite the wet ground—one of the elements that made the case so puzzling.

A connection in the sky?

Now, here is where the threads start to tangle. Godfrey, being an honest man, filed an official report about the UFO. He didn’t want to be ridiculed, but he couldn’t lie about what he saw. It made the papers. Locally and nationally. “Copper Sees UFO.” You can imagine the field day the press had.

But the connection to Adamski is what keeps researchers up at night.

Both incidents happened in Todmorden, within six months of each other.

Godfrey was the officer who found Adamski’s body.

Adamski had strange burns and “missing time” (the beard growth discrepancy).

Godfrey experienced “missing time” during his encounter.

Years later, under hypnosis (a controversial method, I know, but bear with me), Godfrey recalled being taken aboard the craft. He described seeing a human man there—a man who looked suspiciously like… Zigmund Adamski.

Is it possible? Could a former coal miner from Tingley have been abducted, subjected to some terrifying ordeal that stopped his biological clock, and then been unceremoniously dumped on a coal pile, scared to death? And did the officer who found him get a visit from the same visitors months later?

Or is it all a tragic coincidence? Was Adamski kidnapped by humans? Perhaps a family feud or a grudge we don’t know about? But that doesn’t explain the mysterious gel, the lack of beard growth, or the clean clothes in a coal yard. And it certainly doesn’t explain a hovering diamond in the middle of a Yorkshire road.

Alan Godfrey suffered for his honesty. He was ridiculed, his career stalled, and he eventually left the force. But he never recanted. To this day, he stands by what he saw. He maintains that the Adamski case and his own encounter are linked, pieces of a puzzle we haven’t quite figured out how to solve.

The town of secrets

Todmorden itself is a bit of a hotspot for this kind of high strangeness. Locals talk about lights in the sky, strange hums, and feelings of being watched. It sits in a valley, deep and shadowed, the kind of place that holds onto its secrets tight.

I find the Adamski case particularly haunting because of the humanity of it. Zigmund was just buying groceries. He was a man with a family, a life, a future. He walked around a corner and stepped into a nightmare. It’s that randomness that chills the bone. We like to think we are safe in our routines, that the world makes sense. But stories like this remind us that sometimes, the rules don’t apply.

What do you think happened to Zigmund Adamski? Was it a botched abduction? A secret government experiment (chemical burns and mysterious gels often point that way for conspiracy theorists)? Or something even darker?

And what about Alan Godfrey? A hero for speaking the truth, or a man whose mind played tricks on him in the lonely dark of a night shift?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Reply to this email (huey@hueyhawke) and let me know. Do you believe in UFOs? Have you ever had “missing time?” Or maybe you’ve been to Todmorden and felt that strange energy yourself.

A little tease…

Before I go back to my chores, a quick update on the writing front. The manuscript for the full new conspiracy thriller trilogy is coming along nicely. It’s gritty, it’s fast-paced, and yes, it might just have a little touch of the unexplained in it. All this research into local mysteries has the creative juices flowing.

I’m also still looking for a few more beta readers for the upcoming thriller. If you want a sneak peek before anyone else and don’t mind spotting the occasional typo (it’s a rough draft, after all), drop me a line.

And next month I hope to share with you a new free novella, linked to the trilogy, set in West Virginia in 1972. A strange death in a remote forest close to the Ohio River, investigated by a Scottish journalist who’s trying to hide…

It’s called The Notch.

Until next month, keep your eyes on the skies—but maybe keep your feet firmly on the ground. You never know who—or what—might be watching.

Stay safe, and happy reading.

Huey