The Lowton A580 Silver Figure in an Orange Glow

The A580, known as the East Lancashire Road, runs through Lowton in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Greater Manchester. Before 1974, Lowton was part of Lancashire. The road is a dual carriageway with a grassed central reservation, crossing country shaped by coal mining, with the old Golborne and Lowton collieries close by. In the autumn of 1978, that strip of grass became the setting for one of the stranger entries in the British humanoid catalogues.

Sunday 8 October 1978. About 23:30. Mr Tranter was at the wheel, his wife dozing in the passenger seat. Then, for a few seconds, his headlights picked out a figure standing on the grass in the centre of the road.

It was human in form. About 1.8m tall, or over six foot by another account. It wore a three quarter length reflective silvery garment with no zips or seams. And it was surrounded by an orange aura. One catalogue describes a "silver-foil suit", the figure "immersed in orange light as if glowing with heat."

No movement was reported. No gesture, no communication. Mr Tranter drove on. As he looked back, the orange glow was still there on the roadway, visible in the rear view mirror as the car pulled away.

The figure was not the only report from that stretch of road. Earlier in the same area, other witnesses had seen a large lighted object with a silvery dome and three bumps underneath descend slowly towards the road. One catalogue places this about 30 minutes before and describes a disc with an orange dome. Those witnesses were never named.

Then there was Mrs Tranter's own story. Three weeks before, she claimed, she had seen the ghost of a coal miner at this spot. One account describes a figure of a miner, in old-style uniform, floating in air above the grass.

Peter Hough and Steve Balon looked into the case for NUFON, the Northern UFO Network, and wrote it up in Northern UFO News #55. Their conclusions have not surfaced online. Albert Rosales later catalogued the case in his humanoid reports, and Patrick Gross also lists the International UFO Reporter, published by the Center for UFO Studies, as a source. The record is thin, and it is not consistent. Most accounts say only Mr Tranter saw the figure, because his wife was asleep. One entry says the woman saw it. A later summary adds two large black eyes, a detail missing from the fuller accounts that cannot be traced.

Patrick Gross, cataloguing the case in 2012, weighed two options: extraterrestrial visitors, or a man in a special outfit. He suggested someone really wearing a fireproof suit, then asked the obvious question. What about the orange glow? He also raised emergency lighting. His list of problems was long. Only secondary sources, contradictory witness accounts, no independent corroboration, and no mundane explanation ruled out. No one has ever claimed a hoax.

The Lowton figure survives only in catalogues. Yet it sits at an odd crossroads. A silver being in an orange glow, a domed craft descending, and a miner's ghost, all on the same grass verge within a few weeks. It joins other 1978 humanoid reports from Britain, among them Frodsham, Oulton Marshes and Llanerchymedd. Until Northern UFO News #55 resurfaces, the figure on the East Lancashire Road remains a few seconds of headlight and a glow in the mirror.