UFO's & Ghosts

During the 1970s, two men (one the son of a former worker for Cobra Mist) watched as lights appeared overhead, there was no sound. The lights darted off at incredible speed. It is said that downed Alien space craft was kept housed in one of the bunkers and that UFO’s visit this site in search of their long lost kin. More recently, witnesses have seen strange lights at night swimming around under the water.

Planes and Pilots -Www2 pilots have been seen gazing across the desolate shingle spit once home to the ministry of defence. Some say that compasses don’t work on certain parts of the island and that silent ghost planes fly overhead before vanishing.

Secret Ness

An island of mystery which houses an array of wildlife Shelduck, Oyster Catchers and the nationally scarce Little Tern along with important flaura and fauna and the many secrets of its past military history. 

Orford Ness is specifically designated as a special protection area and as a candidate Special Area for conservation under Natura 20000. It is also a  Site of Special Scientific Interest, a Ramsar site and a National Nature Reserve.

Orford Ness is one of only three major shingle landforms in Britain and the largest vegetated shingle spit in Europe. It is the only such landform that combines a shingle spit with a foreland or ‘nose’. The spit comprises a complex sequence of shingle ridges and swales (valleys) deposited over centuries and recording many stages in the evolution of the landform.

The site is enriched by the variety of habitats present. These include mud flats, saltmarsh, brackish lagoons, reedbeds and neutral grassland as well as shingle which supports species like the little tern and ringed plover and numerous rare and scarce plants. It has highly specialised and important floral communities including sea campion, false oat grass and the nationally scarce sea pea.

The Ness is a notable navigation feature surrounded by notoriously dangerous waters. During a great storm in 1627 thirty-two ships were wrecked off Orford Ness. This event led to the construction of a lighthouse. Local folklore is rich with stories of smugglers who frequented this area.

For 70 years the Ness was a site of intense military experimentation for radar, defence systems, bombs and atomic weapons some of which affected the course of world history. Secret testing structures can be seen in the form of the oddly named pagodas, laboratories designed to absorb and dissipate an explosion in the event of an accident.

With in trepidation we now explore the derelict labs where covert operations once took place. One is immediately affected by the dense surrounding, dank smell and muted colours, the manmade remnants give one a sense of past activity, an eerie and uneasy understanding of  the Ness' secret involvement with the research and development of the atomic bomb. Once a military testing ground the pagodas are now home to some of the Ness’s wildlife.

The top secret system 441A known as cobra mist an (OTH) backscatter radar was sited in a large grey building from the 1960s however a noise of unknown origin plagued operations and it was closed down in 1973. Talk of a downed UFO’s housed deep underground at this site is a local tale which has continued through the generations. The building currently houses the BBC world service transmitters and no evidence of extraterrestrial life has ever been confirmed.

Today the Ness reflects a bygone era, nature is reclaiming the land and it is perhaps hard to imagine that was this was once a site where meteor jets flew just 15 metres overhead. It is a unique and important landscape of extraordinary character and beauty characterised by contrasts; the ebb and flow of natural processes sit alongside deserted man-made constructions. An eerie sound transverses the island along with a strong sense of the ghosts of yesteryear.