Church Stowe and the A5, Northamptonshire, England
Incident period: 22 November 1978
Elsie Oakensen’s account begins with red and green lights above the A5 and develops into an extraordinary description of a faltering car, sudden darkness and circles of white light. Her own published narrative is unusually detailed about the route, her decisions and what she could not remember.
A normal working day in Daventry
On 22 November 1978, Oakensen was working at a teachers’ centre in Daventry. She had been a teacher for many years and lived in the Church Stowe area. Her husband John was a police inspector, but he was not with her during the reported road encounter.
She left her car at a garage for servicing that morning and had it returned during the day. At lunchtime she experienced a brief tightening sensation around her head during a celebratory meal with a young colleague who had obtained a permanent job. She said it ended as suddenly as it started and she initially put it out of her mind.
Those details come from her own retrospective narrative, published in her 1995 book and reprinted with permission in BUFORA Bulletin in March 1999. The account explicitly places the first head sensation before the evening sighting and records a faulty front sidelight when she collected the car. They should not be rewritten as effects independently shown to have been caused by an object.
The red and green lights above the A5
Oakensen said she was ready to leave work at 5.15 pm. The first part of the drive along the A45 was uneventful. At the Weedon traffic lights she turned right towards Towcester on the A5 and noticed two unusually bright lights ahead, one red and one green.
At first she feared a low aircraft was about to crash among roadside buildings. As she approached, however, it seemed stationary. She described a smooth grey body with an enlarged section at each end, making a dumbbell shape, and a coloured light beneath each end. She saw no windows or openings.
The dimensions were estimates made from the experience: about fifty feet wide and somewhere around a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet above the road. She drove underneath without hearing anything unusual. She considered stopping in a lay-by but decided the traffic made a sudden manoeuvre unsafe, so continued towards the village road.
Looking back from the hill
After turning off the A5, Oakensen found a safer stopping place and looked back. She said the object was still there, now offering a side view as well as the underside seen from the main road. The green light began flashing while the red one remained steady.
Her account records her curiosity as well as her observations. She wondered whether the flashing might be a signal and why she felt so compelled to keep watching. These are questions she asked herself; they do not establish an exchanged message or an intention on the part of an unseen operator.
She noticed no obvious reaction from the other A5 traffic. In the published narrative she expected approaching drivers to slow down, but they did not. Their presence therefore does not supply a crowd of independent witnesses. Her reported view remains distinct from what those other motorists might or might not have seen.
The car loses power
As she turned into Church Stowe and changed from second into third gear, she said the engine became silent and the car slowed despite the accelerator being fully depressed. Her first thoughts were about the garage service and how she would get home if the car stopped.
She changed down into first and pressed the accelerator again. The car responded and she continued through second and into third gear, apparently normally. She did not describe switching the ignition off and on to achieve this recovery.
Farther along, branches formed a dark canopy over the road. Oakensen remembered reaching the end of that section, then finding herself stationary in complete darkness. She said neither the car lights nor engine seemed to be operating, and she could not identify the surrounding road or buildings.
White circles in the darkness
A brilliant circular patch of light appeared on the road beside the passenger door. In that illumination she recognised a farm gate beyond the tree-covered stretch and realised the car had also negotiated a bend. She could not remember consciously driving that intervening section.
She described further white circles appearing successively around the front of the vehicle, then repeating in the opposite direction. She counted about fifteen on the road and another in a cottage garden, where it appeared to turn upward towards the building. She saw no visible beams connecting the circles to a torch or other source.
After another interval of darkness, the surroundings abruptly seemed naturally lit again. She found herself driving in third gear a short distance farther along. Her central puzzle was the transition: she could remember neither deliberately stopping nor restarting, yet remembered sitting still and watching the lights.
This is the sequence in her own published recollection. Shorter accounts sometimes reduce it to a single beam shining on a disabled car, losing the repeated circles, the two separate changes in vehicle behaviour and her uncertainty about parts of the journey.
The kitchen clock
On reaching home, Oakensen glanced at the kitchen clock and read 5.45 pm. She first went upstairs to see whether the object remained visible, then returned to tell John about the drive. She concluded the journey had taken about fifteen minutes longer than usual.
The missing quarter-hour was an inference from her remembered departure, usual journey and arrival, rather than a continuously monitored gap in an instrument recording. Her account also includes a deliberate roadside stop to look back. That does not resolve her experience, but it helps distinguish the extra journey time from the separate stretches she could not remember driving.
Later that evening she experienced another brief tightening sensation like the one at lunch. She began listing questions: whether the sensations, lights, car behaviour and memory discontinuities were connected, whether somebody else had seen anything, and who could help explain them.
Her own account and the later investigations
The BUFORA reprint says she reported the experience to the association and underwent hypnotic regression in 1979. The accompanying editorial epilogue describes greyish, ghost-like shapes in the regression account. Those later recollections are a separate part of the case from the red-and-green object and road sequence presented in the main narrative.
By the mid-1980s she had developed interests in spiritual healing and writing. In the preceding January–February 1999 Bulletin she challenged how other writers had presented her story, arguing for greater attention to what witnesses actually said. The March issue then supplied her extended personal account.
The strongest way to read Church Stowe is consequently through that distinction: the remembered drive, her later efforts to interpret it, the investigators’ additions and her objections to retelling. The documents preserve an engaged witness trying to organise a puzzling experience, not simply a brief anecdote about an anonymous motorist.
Timeline
22 November 1978, lunchtime: Oakensen recalls a brief head-tightening sensation before any reported roadside sighting.
About 5.15 pm: she leaves Daventry; the reported observation and unusual car journey follow on the A5 and into Church Stowe.
About 5.45 pm: she reaches home and concludes the journey has taken longer than normal.
1979: hypnotic regression introduces a further layer of recollection, according to the later BUFORA epilogue.
1995: her book One Step Beyond publishes her personal account.
January–March 1999: BUFORA publishes her criticism of earlier retellings, followed by her detailed narrative.
Sources & further reading
Elsie Oakensen: The Daventry Event, a personal perspective — Extended first-person narrative in BUFORA Bulletin second series 9, March 1999, reprinted from her 1995 book; includes the editorial epilogue.
BUFORA Bulletin second series 8, January–February 1999 — Oakensen’s letter challenging how the experience had been reported; read alongside her account in the next issue.
Church Stowe village location — Broad geographical reference, not an identified private-property pin.
Related case files
Alan Godfrey at Todmorden, 1980: the road sketch, the missing time and the later recollections
Aveley, 1974: the Avis family, the green mist and the missing journey
Location note: Broad Church Stowe village marker. The account spans the A5 and roads into the village; this does not identify a private house or a measured object position.
UKPX historical case file. Researched and checked 4 November 2026. Explore the UK case map · Links & Sources.