The mysterious disappearance and death of Zigmund Adamski and the Todmorden UFO

ZIGMUND JAN ADAMSKI, DISAPPEARED JUNE 6, 1980, TINGLEY, near wakefield, YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND. BODY FOUND JUNE 11, 1980, TODMORDEN, england.

Revised and expanded January 2024

Zigmund “Ziggy” Adamski was a 56-year-old miner who went missing in mysterious circumstances from his home on Thornfield Crescent, Tingley, Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom, in June 1980.

His body was found a few days later in Todmorden, 30 miles or so from his home, with a mysterious yellow or green substance on his neck that couldn’t be identified despite a thorough investigation by British forensic and pathology experts.

It was to be a bizarre case, with some theorising alien abduction or kidnapping and decades later, it remains unsolved. The coroner running the inquest into the death said “that the case was the biggest mystery of his career”.

The Ziggy Adamski case

Adamski was born in Poland in 1923 and emigrated to England in 1945 (aged 22). Six years later, in 1951, he married Leokadia “Lottie” Howalska and began working as a coal miner at the Lofthouse Colliery in the West Yorkshire village of Tingley, to the south of Leeds.

Ziggy had been born in Poland, and like many of his fellow countrymen, he had settled in England, having been forced to flee his native country after World War II.

When Lottie became so ill that she was confined to a wheelchair because of multiple sclerosis, Zigmund needed to spend more time with her. His health, too, was suffering, and he had been off work for several months, suffering from a lung disease caused by coal dust that often made breathing difficult.

He had decided to apply for early retirement, but the coalmine owners initially rejected this, but this decision was overturned on appeal. Unfortunately, the reversed decision arrived in the post the day after he disappeared.

Ziggy’s goddaughter was getting married, and he was worried about the preparation needed for the ceremony. So, on June 6, 1980, Adamski and a cousin headed to Wakefield to buy a few things for the wedding. They returned home, and he ate with two other relatives who had arrived from Poland.

The Adamski disappearance

On Friday, June 6, 1980, at around 3.30 - 3.45 pm, Zigmund left his home to walk to the local store (or market) to shop for essential supplies for the next day.

On the way, he ran into an old neighbor and greeted him, and then he continued on to the store. On arrival, he made the purchases as planned, paid, left the store and never returned home.

Leokadia became worried when Ziggy didn’t return as it became dark and decided to notify the police, and the search for Adamski began that evening.

His wife’s initial suspicion was that he had been kidnapped, and Zigmund’s colleagues at the coal mine considered his disappearance a complete mystery.

The body at the Todmorden coal yard

On the afternoon of June 11, 1980, five days after the disappearance of the Polish miner, police officer Alan Godfrey (who, until his retirement, worked in the town of Todmorden, 30 miles southwest of Tingley) received a call that a body had been discovered at a coal yard. He quickly left to attend the scene with his colleague Malcom Hagley.

Trevor Parker, co-owner of a coal distribution center located near the train station in Todmorden, had reported the find to the police. The coal yard was located at the end of an isolated single-trick dirt track, accessible only by car and difficult to reach on foot.

Parker told the police officers that while loading a company truck for deliveries for the second shift of the day, he located the body of a man on a 10-foot high (three-meter) mound of coal at around 3.45 pm.

Malcom Hagley and Alan Godrey arrived at the crime scene an hour later, before the ambulance that Trevor had requested when he discovered the body. Despite the rain, the officers climbed the coal mound to examine the body. They were unaware that it was the missing Adamski.

The male body wore a suit, but his shirt was missing. On the back of his head, neck, and shoulders were mysterious burns. His pants (trousers) were open, and his shoes were tightly tied. His watch, wallet, and wedding ring were all nowhere to be seen. The body and clothing showed no sign of coal dust.

In an interview with Alan Godfrey on the BBC Show Uncanny and featured in the episode “ Series 1 Classic Case: The Todmorden UFO” in November 2021, he said:

“The first thing that struck me. I’ve seen quite a few dead bodies, something about his eyes sent a shiver down your back. Have you heard the saying he’d been frightened to death? That was the look on his face.”

“Then I noticed his hair was cropped, on the crown of the head were these individual black burn marks in a ring, on the nape of the neck there was an open wound, and it had a yellowy/green substance smeared across it.”

“He was wearing a jacket that was fastened in the wrong place, and under the jacket, there was a white string vest, no shirt. This guy was dressed after death. Make no mistake, this guy didn’t die here. There wasn’t a mark of coal on him. It was completely wrong. “

Interviewer Danny Robins asked Alan, “How do you get the body of a man on top of a coal heap without getting coal on him?” he replied, “That’s the million dollar question, ain’t it.”

After checking the recent missing persons reports, the policemen realised that the body was Zigmund Adamski - the missing man from Tingley who had vanished a week before. Strangely, the hair on the body had also been cropped short in a “roughly cut” manner. But Ziggy had left his home with longer hair, so who had cut it? How had he gotten to the Todmorden coal yard, 30 miles from his home, on top of a coal heap with not a trace of coal on him?

Strangely, there was no coal dust on his body or clothes, which would be expected, especially as it had been raining and he had scrambled onto the coal himself. It was like he had been placed there by someone or something.

The Coroner’s inquest by James Turnbull

James Turnbull, the coroner running the inquest into Adamski’s death, told the BBC in 2003 that the case was the biggest mystery of his career. He was baffled because although Zigmund had been missing for five days, he only had one day’s beard growth.

He also found a good amount of undigested food in the stomach.

He said, "The question of where he was before he died and what led to his death just could not be answered."

Turnbull also said forensic scientists could not identify a strange ointment that appeared to have been used on Zigmund’s burns. Exhaustive checks failed to reveal any record of him being treated at any hospital during his five days of absence.

The coroner recorded an open verdict, ruling that Adamski had died of a heart attack. But many were thinking about what caused the heart attack in the first place and how he ended up on a coal pile in Todmorden, so far from his home, after a shopping trip.

What happened to Zigmund Adamski?

Some speculated that Ziggy had been abducted by someone and killed for reasons unknown. Others believed aliens had taken him and his body dumped on top of the coal pile after extraterrestrials had experimented on his body.

Others put forward theories that he had been killed by the Soviet Union’s KGB or had been left dazed and confused after being struck by ‘ball lightning’ or some other unidentified phenomenon.

The alien abduction theories were given added credibility by another incident that Alan Godfrey experienced.

Alan Godfrey and the Todmorden UFO

On November 28, 1980, five months after the Adamski incident, Godfrey encountered a UFO less than a mile from the coal yard in Todmorden. Locals reported that a herd of cows were wandering loose near the Burnley Road, and Godfrey headed alone in his Police car to investigate.

In the UnCanny interview with Danny Robins, he said he could not locate the cows but found an object in his patrol car. He said, “It wasn’t something that i’d never seen before; it was hovering about 5 feet off the ground, as I could see under it. It was diamond in shape, it was approximately 20 feet wide and 14 feet high. I got to 20 yards, and there it was hovering, spinning anti-clockwise, the leaves and twigs were all swirling clockwise.”

Asked if he could see into it, he said, “No, it was a solid object. Apart from what looked like black panelling, black darkened windows that went around top of it. It was silent, didn’t make a noise, and didn’t feel a vibration in the car. Objects going clockwise. Right weird”

“I immediately got on to the radio, got no response and tried the car radio, which was a lot stronger and didn’t get a signal. So I sat there thinking about what I was looking at and what I would do about it. I decided to do a quick sketch of it like I would at a road accident. Then all of a sudden there was a whoosh, everything went light, i mean bright light, split second later it had gone, I was further up road driving the police car. I looked in mirror the object wasn’;t there. There was debris on the road. There were leaves and bits of twigs. The road surface was dry, but the rest of the road surface was wet as it had been raining most of the night. It happened, outside the park gates, left the car and walked across the bridge, at that time there was a big rugby pitch and low and behold, the cars were there.”

Alan returned to the station but couldn't account for 25 minutes of 'missing time. He also had a split boot but couldn't account for it.

Under hypnosis, arranged by solicitor Harry Harris several months later, he recalled seeing small beings and a tall man with a beard on the craft, who conducted medical tests on him. Researchers regard Alan's encounter as the first alien abduction in the UK. The policeman’s UFO story made headlines around the world.

Soon after, he received a letter from Russia from a man called Professor Zacharov, who said he was a UFO expert. Alan handed the letter in, and he was told to write back to him. He was called into his Chief Inspector’s office, and when he arrived, there was a man in plain clothes with a file on his knee who said he was the man from the ministry. He was told not to mention the UFO incident or Adamski to the media. He had several encounters with the mysterious man and even met him at a local pub.

Following this, Godfrey retired from the police force and fell on hard times, lost his home, with his marriage failing, and resorted to alcohol for comfort. He published a book in November 2017 called “WHO or WHAT were THEY?” - “This is a story of secret forces and cover-ups and terrifing attempts to destroy a brave police officer career. The true story they did not want you to read but now for the first time read the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth in his own words”.

In early 2018, Godfrey, now 70, told the Yorkshire Examiner that the story he told under hypnosis was probably merely a dream, adding: “I never said aliens abducted me.” However, he believes it’s possible that aliens took Adamski, “I am open-minded. I can’t rule it out.”

Godfrey doesn’t believe Adamski was murdered, although he said a more senior police colleague in 1980 thought he had been killed and believes that he didn’t die where he was found but had been placed there “by someone or something.” Adding, “He was on top of the coal pile on his back with not much coal on him. His eyes were wide open, and he had burn marks. Why would he climb up a stack of coal?” “There was some ointment on the back of his neck. Samples were sent to a Home Office laboratory which couldn’t identify it.”

Parker and Godfrey said they would never forget the look on Adamski’s face., “Those eyes were staring up at me. I was looking down on him from a foot away. Those eyes sent a shudder down my spine. They were wide open. He had the look of someone who had seen something or someone that had scared him to death.”

Alan said, "I wish I'd never seen the UFO, particularly because of the effects on my children. It's not easy having a policeman as a father, but when he's a policeman who saw a UFO, it’s even worse."

Alan Godfrey is in no doubt of paranormal presence. In the past 20 years, there have been many claimed sightings of unexplained objects in the sky in the Pennine hills around Todmorden. It’s regarded as Britain’s UFO hotspot. But serious UFO watchers dismiss most of these Pennine sightings as just lights in the sky.

Neil Beecham, who in 1980 was a reporter for the Morley Observer, said: “Mr Adamski’s mysterious disappearance 37 years ago has always troubled me and is a topic of conversation for the tight-knit community of Tingley, even to this day.”

Some amateur investigators have suggested that Ziggy may have been abducted by family members and held against his will. In 2008, two British UFO investigators looked at the case again. According to reports, they discovered that when he disappeared, Adamski was in the midst of a feud with a family member who was having marital problems and had moved in with the Adamski couple. They believed that Adamski’s disappearance may have been an abduction linked to the feud. However, Alan Godfrey said, “We had no reason to suspect any family members.”

The coroner, James Turnbull, also told the BBC that he wasn’t convinced by any of the theories relating to paranormal activity, “The question of where he was before he died and what led to his death just could not be answered.”

In the Uncanny 2021 interview, Godfrey said, “They’ve released all the UFO files now, haven’t they now from the Ministry of Defence? They’ve never released mine. Why? What are they hiding?”

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