Scorriton, near Buckfastleigh, Devon, England
Incident period: Claimed encounter on 24 April 1965; investigations 1965–1967; books in 1967–1968
A Devon gardener said he entered a saucer and met a young visitor called Yamski. Metal fragments, a Greek message and a mysterious house seemed to make his story unusually testable. Scoriton became a book—and then a second publication by one of its original investigators, explaining why further inquiries had changed his view.
Two stories, disclosed in a different order
Ernest Arthur Bryant’s better-known claim concerns 24 April 1965. He said he was walking towards Scoriton Down around 17:30 when a large saucer appeared above a field, moved like a pendulum and stopped nearby. He described three occupants and said he entered the craft.
However, this was not the first story investigators heard. Bryant initially contacted the Exeter Astronomical Society about a blue light and pieces of equipment he said he had recovered. That observation was later assigned to June 1965, although the correspondence contained conflicting dates.
Norman Oliver’s 1968 Sequel to Scoriton carefully separates the order of the alleged events from the order in which they were disclosed. Dr Geoffrey Doel and Lionel Beer investigated the blue-light story in August 1965. The earlier contact narrative emerged through a BUFORA membership questionnaire that November.
The visitor called Yamski
According to Bryant, two occupants had long foreheads, blond hair and unusual hands. A third resembled a teenage boy and gave the name Yamski. Bryant said they came from Venus, and described an interior divided into compartments, with couches, screens and subdued lighting.
The conversation introduced warnings about hostile beings, references to “Des or Les”, and a promise of proof connected with Captain Thomas Mantell, who died after an American aircraft pursuit in 1948. These were statements attributed to the encounter, not independently verified information supplied by a visitor.
Investigators saw possible connections with contactee George Adamski, who had died shortly before the claimed encounter. Oliver later stressed that some of those connections were initially suggested by the investigators themselves. Bryant had not explicitly identified Yamski as Adamski or the fragments as Mantell’s aircraft before those interpretations entered the discussion.
The pieces and the Greek message
The recovered material included metal fittings, a bulb holder and a glass container said to have held a message in Greek. The words were translated as brother to brother. Gerald Aspin of the Exeter Astronomical Society helped trace pieces that had passed to a newspaper and other hands.
The physical items were real objects available for examination. Their existence did not establish the proposed route from an American aircraft to a Devon field. Oliver’s account records attempts to identify them and disagreements about their significance.
The original paper bearing the Greek writing was no longer available. A photograph remained. That limited what could be checked about the message’s material, writing and provenance. A photograph of an inscription is not the same as an intact object with a documented recovery history.
How the first book took shape
Oliver and Eileen Buckle interviewed Bryant, followed possible connections and recorded later conversations. Their first meeting concerning the detailed contact story took place in Newton Abbot in December 1965. Subsequent visits involved other researchers and people interested in Adamski’s claims.
Buckle’s The Scoriton Mystery appeared in 1967. Oliver initially found Bryant convincing and contributed to the investigation. The subsequent dispute is therefore not simply an outsider attacking an unfamiliar story: one of the people who helped build the case later published evidence against his earlier confidence.
His sequel’s foreword explains that shared notes, recordings and a joint talk underlay overlapping descriptions in the two publications. It also praises Buckle’s writing while explaining that later information needed to be placed on record.
The phial becomes a gardening item
In February 1967, Ivar Mackay examined the glass container and identified it as a phial peg, a kind of plant label used by gardeners. Oliver records checks with horticultural specialists supporting that identification.
This gave the unusual-looking item an ordinary use relevant to Bryant’s occupation. It did not explain every detail of the Greek wording. Oliver explored possible botanical associations but did not locate a plant name identical to the message.
The distinction is useful: identifying the container was a concrete advance; a complete reconstruction of who wrote the words and why remained an interpretation. The sequel does not provide a witnessed scene of the message being manufactured.
Letters change the field evidence
Oliver wrote directly to the owner of the field in March 1967. The reply attributed scorched grass and hedge damage to a bonfire of hedge cuttings, and described the affected tree as long dead. This was a very different account from a newly damaged landing site.
Other checks concerned Bryant’s biography. A Home Office response reproduced by Oliver said he had served as a prison officer under training for a short period in autumn 1954, rather than the several years described in interviews. Council-name checks also failed to substantiate claims of local council service.
These findings challenged specific statements that had helped establish the witness’s reputation. They should be read as correspondence reproduced by Oliver: this article has inspected his published account, not separately retrieved each original departmental file.
The mysterious house at Yeovil
Bryant’s narrative included information about an apparently abandoned family home in Yeovil. Investigators initially thought its details might be hard for him to obtain normally. Later searches uncovered television and newspaper coverage.
Oliver traced a substantial News of the World feature from August 1965, before the detailed contact narrative was disclosed to him. It described much of the house’s condition and the family’s absence. That supplied a potential public source for details initially regarded as private knowledge.
In a later family interview, Oliver reported that Mrs Bryant said the household had watched the television item. This contradicted the earlier suggestion that the family had not yet had access to television. Again, the sequel preserves the investigator’s account of the interview, rather than a separate statement directly obtained by UKPX.
Bryant’s illness and the limits of retrospective explanations
Bryant became seriously ill and died on 24 June 1967. The literature connects his final illness with a brain tumour, and participants offered different ideas about whether it affected his accounts. Those competing suggestions are part of the publication history; they are not a clinical explanation established by the material inspected here.
Oliver interviewed the family while Bryant was in hospital. He reported that they had understood much of the story as science fiction, and that a box of surplus components bought earlier might explain the pieces. The family did not identify every displayed fragment with absolute certainty.
It would therefore be misleading to convert Oliver’s proposed reconstruction into a signed confession by Bryant. No such confession appears in the consulted booklet. The case against the narrative was built from contradictory statements, alternative origins and later interviews.
Why the sequel belongs beside the mystery
Published in October 1968, Sequel to Scoriton documents an investigator changing his position as new information accumulated. It also prints responses from people who continued to find parts of the case persuasive. Oliver labelled his own reconstruction as a proposal, despite writing it in a confident narrative style.
The 2022 authorised online scan makes this rare follow-up accessible through Archives for the Unexplained. Scoriton is consequently more than a tale of a Devon landing: it is a detailed episode in the contactee era, with recoverable objects, publication disputes, letters and a striking change of direction within the original investigation.
Timeline
24 April 1965: the date Bryant later gave for the contact encounter.
Summer 1965: the blue-light and recovered-pieces story reaches local investigators.
November–December 1965: the contact claim emerges through BUFORA correspondence and an interview.
1966–1967: further interviews, object examinations and source checks.
24 June 1967: Bryant dies.
1967: The Scoriton Mystery is published.
October 1968: Oliver publishes Sequel to Scoriton.
2022: an authorised scan of the sequel becomes available online.
Sources & further reading
Norman Oliver: Sequel to Scoriton, October 1968 — Original investigator’s substantial account, with recapitulation, reproduced letters, interviews and responses.
Isaac Koi: publication of the authorised scan — Explains the booklet’s recovery and scanning with permission from Oliver’s family.
Scorriton geographical reference — Verified modern locality; the UFO publications commonly use the spelling Scoriton.
Related case files
Devon’s Flying Cross: the police pursuit of October 1967
The Warminster Thing: Christmas noises, the 1965 skywatch wave and the hilltop years
Location note: Broad Scorriton village reference. The marker does not identify a private home, the disputed recovery field or a surveyed landing position.
UKPX historical case file. Researched and checked 4 November 2026. Explore the UK case map · Links & Sources.