The Bat Beast of Kent: the Saltwood Mystery at Sandling Park

Sandling Park lies beside Sandling railway station, in the parish of Saltwood near Hythe, in Kent. On the evening of Saturday 16 November 1963, four young people were walking home along the road after a party. Some accounts say a dance. Two of them are named in the reports: John Flaxton, 17, and Mervyn Hutchinson, 18.

It began with a light. A very bright star, it seemed, that grew larger before it dropped behind the trees. Others described a glowing oval a few metres across, hovering above a field. One of the boys remembered it clearly. "It was a bright and gold oval. And when we moved, it moved. When we stopped, it stopped." They ran. A gold light followed them. Then it went back to where it had been and slowly sank behind the trees.

Then something came out of the woods. The account later printed in Flying Saucer Review describes how "a dark figure shambled out. It was all black, about the size of a human but without a head. It seemed to have wings like a bat on either side and came stumbling towards us." Hutchinson said the same. "It was the size of a human. But it didn't seem to have any head. There were wings on its back, like bat wings." Flaxton remembered the feeling. "I felt cold all over." They fled, and the sighting was reported to the police.

The woods did not settle. For several days, they were said to be bathed in an eerie glow. On 21 November, Keith Croucher saw an oddly shaped craft, or golden lights, cross a football pitch at Sandling. On 23 November, John McGoldrick and a friend made a discovery. Three footprints, two feet long and nine inches across, and an area where bracken had been flattened.

The Kent Messenger ran the story on 29 November. On 11 December, reporters visited the site with McGoldrick. Once again, the thickets were bathed in an eerie glow. One account says the woods pulsed with golden light for about 30 minutes.

Not every version agrees. The Kent Messenger report, as later quoted, has Flaxton describing something different: "we saw this red light, like a red ball of fire. As we moved towards it we could make out a figure, which seemed to have webbed feet and no head. It was carrying a red lantern." A red light and a lantern. Not a gold oval. The researcher Neil Arnold has noted that Flaxton may have changed his story. Later retellings added a thick hairy body and a height of about 5 ft.

In March 1964, Flying Saucer Review covered the case as "The Saltwood Mystery". In the 1970s, the ufologist Chris Wolfe interviewed Flaxton and visited the site. His answer was down to earth. The light, he suggested, was "electric flashing caused by an electric train passing just at the right place in the icy air", and "the creature might have been just a crow" seen against the flashes. Critics ask how a crow could look 5 ft tall and headless, with webbed feet. Sceptics later offered another idea. A scarecrow.

The Bat Beast of Kent never quite went away. Several sources say John Keel included it in The Mothman Prophecies. Patrick Gross calls Sandling "probably the unique occasion" of a Mothman-like creature linked to a UFO outside Point Pleasant. A headless figure with bat wings. A golden light in the trees. And four young people who ran.