This is my website to collate and communicate my research into the Dodleston Messages, best known via the account written by Ken Webster in in ‘The Vertical Plane’ (1989).
I want to take a pragmatic approach to looking at what happened in Dodleston in 1984/85 because, lets face it, its all a bit odd. I came to the story via an eye-witness in 1996, and then saw it covered on the Out of This World hosted by Carol Vorderman later that year. I promptly forgot about it until it popped up on a Fortean Times feed a few years later.
I was initially interested to try and find out who it was that I spoke to in 1996, but as I delved deeper into the incident I started to become fascinated by the exceeding whackiness of the whole thing. As an anthropologist and phenomenologist my main question about Dodleston is now who, but why? There is no clear narrative arc, its a mishmash of all sorts, it goes on for ages without anything very exciting happening and no one benefits from it in any way.
The way I see it there are three main options here:
It’s Just a Book
It is entirely possible that this is just a book that Ken Webster wrote to have a bit of a go at writing novels. With all due respect to Ken, he is not a novellist. Being blunt, it is a bt of a rubbish book and not really worth publishing if it is just a book. The story is bonkers, no obvious narrative arc, it jumps about, misses out whole sections; if I wanted to write a book to launch my career as a novellist I would have got help and made sure I did a damn sight better than that. It was hardly going to be a best seller and there was no real revenue for Ken. So if it is just a book, its a weird book to write and publish and been more trouble than its worth.
It’s a Hoax
With so many of these kinds of ‘events’ a hoax seems the most likely scenario. And in many major paranormal events (Borley, Gef, Enfield etc.) there is some aspect of hoax even if unwittingly or only partially. But in this case, well beyond the hows, who would be bothered to perpetrate such a complicated, long lasting and ultimately pointless hoax? There was no press interest, no benefit to Ken, no damage to Ken if it were someone with a grudge, it just kind of happened and then stopped. And it went on for ages and a lot of it was so boring even Ken didn’t bother keeping all the messages. There are a few things that point to a hoax, but these are all eclipsed by asking who would be arsed and why? It would take extreme dedication to fake, and no one has ever come forward to take the credit. Just figuring out how to do that on a BBC Computer in 1985 would have been a feat worth coming forward to claim.
It’s All Real
The final option is that it is real. Some people from 2109, arguing with a poltergeist gave a thing to a bloke from 1548 and their communications were interrupted by 1984. Why? Why would anyone in 2109 bother doing that? They don’t seem to be have been gathering information, there was no warning of an impending disaster to be avoided, they were just watching two people talk about chickens for a few months then being odd. And, in 2109, the film Back to the Future would exist. Everyone in 2024 knows not to mess with the timeline during time travel, yet they willingly muck about with a witch trial that could have changed the entire course of history. If they were anthropologists studying humans in the past they were rubbish at it. If they were kids mucking about with a standard bit of kit in 2109 then why did they bother with it for so long when it was so boring? If they were a diabolical force trying to control people it evidently didn’t work as the most they got was a secret message to a ufologist and a bit of coverage by Carol Vorderman.
So, this research will do a number of things:
- Set out the basic story and timeline
- Gather together the messages to show as much of the ‘conversation’ as we can
- Try and find evidence/proof for those tangible bits that can be evidenced and proven
- Give a voice to some of those involved who didn’t write a book
- Try and figure out why anyone would bother with all this and therefore start to explore what the truth may be
- Look at this story in the context of other ‘hauntings’ and how we deal with them as a culture/society
- Review the sudden multitude of YouTube resources out there so that you don’t have to
Wish me luck and please do come along for the ride!
The Dodleston Messages 