The Boyle Incident

Happy World UFO Day! To celebrate, I thought I’d have a

Sunday World 21 September 1997

look at the closest thing Ireland has had to a “Roswell Incident.”

At about 3:40 am on 7 May 1996, the Gardai, via RTE in Dublin, received a report that a helicopter had crashed in the Curlew Mountains, near Boyle, in County Roscommon. Rescue teams – aided by a military helicopter from Finner Camp – were deployed. They found nothing, and the Gardai later declared the incident a hoax.

However, a little digging by the Sunday World newspaper uncovered a very different story.

According to one unnamed camper: “There was a huge flash of light which streaked in front of me and it was the aircraft coming over the mountain. I don’t know if it was a helicopter or something else but the strangest thing was that it was making very little noise for something that was out of control.”

Local man Brian O’Flaherty was asleep when the alleged crash occurred, but he was woken by the rescue helicopters. “They were hovering so close to the house the windows were rattling and we had no idea what was going on because we had slept through the whole thing,” he said.

“What I thought was strange was the length of time they stayed searching. They were looking for days even after it was declared a hoax.”

Another local, Frank Shanley, didn’t actually see the crash, but claims to have seen evidence that there had actually been one. “I saw the scorched ground and trees exactly where the crash happened and know something came down in the mountains.”

Shanley also claims that a road to the crash site was closed, and guarded at night, for six months after the incident. “I tried several times to get onto the road at night and there was no way they were letting me pass. Somebody is trying to hide something and I think it’s do to with aliens or the military.”

Amidst all this, two mysterious huts, bristling with aerials, appeared in the area. While the local council acknowledged the presence of one of the huts, claiming it was being used to improve radio communications for a road building project, they denied all knowledge of the second hut.

There was also a story that a Wicklow couple, who’d been camping in the area, had captured the crash on video.

Sunday World journalists weren’t the only people looking for witnesses, though. In their book, Conspiracy of Silence: UFOs in Ireland, Dermot Butler and Carl Nally claim that Belfast based UFO investigator Rena Maguire spoke to a senior military officer whose unit was deployed to the crash scene. According to this officer, in addition to the Irish soldiers and gardai at the crash site, there were a number of men with American accents – and they appeared to be in charge.

It’s all very intriguing.

However, on 22 July 2004, in response to a query from Butler and Nally, Superintendent T Commons issued a statement setting out the official position on the Boyle incident. 

He confirmed that at 3:35am on 7 May 1996 a report was received that a helicopter may have crashed on the Curlew Mountains. Local gardai – aided by a military helicopter from Finner Camp - had searched the area. But nothing was found and there were no reports of missing aircraft. 

It was all a hoax, Commons concluded. And while the identity of the hoaxer was known to the Gardai, no action was taken.

And that’s that – until the Boyle autopsy video is discovered, of course.

Sources:

Sunday World, 21 September 1997

Butler, D. and Nally, C. (2006) Conspiracy of Silence: UFOs in Ireland, Mercier Press, Cork