NO ALIENS, dead or alive, have ever been taken to Porton Down, a government website proclaimed last year in an attempt to finally shut down speculation surrounding the UK‘s most secret facility.
But when The Sun visited the villages around the controversial base this week, it was clear that no amount of is going to quell locals’ scepticism.
Residents living near the secretive site told The Sun they hear things going ‘bump in the night’Credit: Simon Jones
For years rumours have swirled around Porton Down’s purposeCredit: Simon Jones
Some believe the facility has been used to house alien bodiesCredit: Simon Jones
“We still hear plenty of bangs and things that go bump in the night,” said farmer Dan, 43.
“No one around here knows for sure what goes on inside but whatever it is, we don’t get told.
“At least once a week I’ll be woken up by the sound of a bang, like something exploded or hit the ground hard, in the early hours of the morning, usually around 2am.
“It is unnerving because there’s never any explanation. Like everything else at Porton Down, it is a mystery.
“It certainly makes me wonder what’s going on there. I read the government website telling us no aliens have ever been taken there, but something is going on that they don’t want us to know about, that’s for sure.“
Extraterrestrials and local rumours
Despite there being little evidence of alien or sci-fi experimentation going on at the site, the secrecy of the facility has spawned dozens of rumours about its true purpose.
As well as local tittle-tattle, Porton Down has become the subject of several fanciful works of , from an episode of BBC‘s to a 1960s blockbuster – The Satan Bug.
A fictional “what if” novel by Nick Pope, who worked for the , had to be cleared prior to publication and only served to spur these rumours on.
The book, Operation Thunder Child, deals with UFOs and “alien abductions” and Pope speculated that alien bodies could have been taken to Porton Down near Salisbury, .
The government last year tried to clear up the mystery shrouding the base – telling the public in a statement aliens had never been taken to or stored there, but the fiction around the facility continues to spur on locals who hold firmly to their beliefs about the facility’s secrets.
Janine, a chef in her mid 30s, said she has seen mysterious lights above the base from her bedroom window at night.
The mother-of-two said: “Several times, I’ve seen a huge round disc shape ring of lights in the skies above, kind of hovering, then suddenly disappearing.
“It looks like it’s suspended in mid-air for about 30 seconds before it vanishes as suddenly as it appears.
“I have no idea what it is and I’m not sure I actually believe in aliens, but there’s some weird s**t going on there and I wish they’d tell us what it is.”
Traffic concerns
For most living in the villages that surround the British weapons lab, including Porton, Boscombe and Allington, the issue keeping them awake at night is something much more mundane – the traffic, not an .
Residents of nearby towns say the secret facility causes havoc on their roadsCredit: Simon Jones
Villages near the facility are swamped with cars and HGVsCredit: Simon Jones
Residents told The Sun the government had recently closed one of the site’s entrances making the traffic issue even worseCredit: Simon Jones
They say the volume of traffic tearing through their villages, particularly during the morning and evening rush hours, as workers make their way to and from the base, is making their lives a misery.
Darren, 46, a scientist who works at the site, said the Defence and Laboratory last year closed the entrance at Idmiston, which doubled the traffic using the only other main entrance, less than half a mile from the village of Porton.
As a result, the flow of traffic using the narrow lane that winds through the village was almost constant.
Locals have said , vans and HGVs clog the route through Porton, regularly leading to angry confrontations between villagers and motorists.
Darren said: “I’ve seen a few angry bust-ups at these pinch-points. You’ll get one driver refusing to reverse to let another car come through the other way and all hell breaks loose.
“But things have got a lot worse since the bosses at the base, in their infinite wisdom, decided to close one of the two entrances.
“They closed the one at Idmiston, which has had the effect of forcing the traffic that would normally use that entrance through Porton instead, doubling the volume here.”
Residents are rarely put at odds with a flying saucer making its way along the narrow roads and blocking local access but human traffic coming to and from the base is becoming a real issue, locals say.
On a wet Wednesday morning this week, mother-of-one Alesha, 40, a pharmacist, spent almost 10 minutes patiently waiting with her young daughter to cross the busy road so she could walk her to school.
As we spoke, a large van sent rainwater from a puddle over the pavement, drenching us. “That’s a typical occurrence,” she warned.
“The roads have been so busy lately that it has caused potholes everywhere and when it rains they fill up with water and if you’re standing anywhere near you get an absolute drenching.
“To be honest, you get used to it. I hardly even notice it anymore.”
Some locals are calling for a bypass to take traffic out of the villages serving the Porton Down site, but their pleas have so far fallen on deaf ears.
Retired engineer Paul, 74, said he moved from Allington recently because he was “sick and tired“ of the traffic thundering through his village and past his home.
Paul, 74, moved out of Porton because of the trafficCredit: Simon Jones
Cars thunder through the nearby villages, clogging up pinch pointsCredit: Simon Jones
Ex-soldier Kevin, 44, says a new road needs to be installedCredit: Simon Jones
The pensioner, who now lives near Salisbury, said: ”It had become an absolute nightmare.
“The rumble of traffic made the house shake and I was getting no peace, so I took the bold decision to sell up and move. Some battles are not worth .
“Now I don’t have to put up with the traffic and I’m much happier, but I had to come back to the area today on an errand and it has served as a reminder that although it was a difficult decision at the time, it was the right one.”
And former soldier Kevin, 44, said: “We desperately need a new road to be built that takes the traffic away from these small villages. The roads through here cannot cope with this volume of traffic and it will only get worse.
“Where there’s a pinch point, you can be stuck for quite a long time and it’s dangerous for children going to and from school. It’s time we sorted this problem out and moved the traffic away from our front doors.“
While locals may be upset at the secrets and the traffic, purpose extends to much more than fictive extraterrestrial research and clogging up local roadways.
Residents are left in the dark on UFO secrets and saddled with heavy traffic so that the facility can serve its true purpose – something much more concerning than busy roads – in the interest of national security.
The site’s true purpose
The facility was founded in 1916 as Britain’s chemical and biological weapons laboratory and defence ministry scientists have carried out involving servicemen since its founding.
But Porton Down has always remained shrouded in mystery to maintain security – the reality of the site is that it is used to conduct research to ensure the UK’s military and wider public benefit from the latest technical and scientific developments.
Porton Down is responsible for developing countermeasures to threats posed by chemical and biological weapons – to do this, scientists there make very small amounts of chemical and biological agents which are securely kept and disposed of.
In the past nerve agents, psychedelic and chemical weapons have been stored and tested on military personnel at the site with one tragic experiment seeing an volunteer lose his life.
The site houses scientists working on secretive government defence projectsCredit: Simon Jones
Locals say the increased traffic has damaged the roads in the townCredit: Simon Jones
What goes on behind Porton down’s gates is a mysteryCredit: Simon Jones
So, while the locals suffer its secretive but busy existence, and the staff who work there ensure the country is kept safe from nerve agents, deadly disease and chemical weapons.
One man has spent time in the facility and lifted the lid on previously top secret records covering the testing of deadly chemical and biological agents – scroll down to read about Thomas Keegan’s inside look at the secretive site.
A DSTL spokesperson said: “ very rarely conducts night-time trials on the Porton range. Any explosive work is undertaken during the day.
“Any noise at 0200 will have carried from activities by others elsewhere on Salisbury Plain.
“Porton Down is a no-fly zone but is in close proximity to both the Army Aviation Centre at Middle Wallop and Boscombe Down which may conduct night-time flying. There are three entrances to DSTL’S Porton Down site.
“Temporary access arrangements were in place during past construction work which required the closure of the Idmiston Arch access from October 2024 to June 2025.”
Thomas Keegan - Inside Porton Down
ONE man who has been into the secretive Porton Down facility and come out with tales to tell is Thomas Keegan , a lecturer at Lancaster University.
He and a team from Oxford University conducted three years of research work at the base before Thomas went on to write about his findings.
Sadly, he declined to comment on his time at the site but his experiences have been penned and published for all to see.
While conducting his research at the “fascinating and scary” site Keegan “came across no aliens, but did discover records of experiments that ran from the ordinary, through to the bizarre.
“And sadly, in one isolated case, the lethal.”
While at first Porton Down appears “low key”, Keegan says, the facility holds an air of “the extraordinary hiding behind the ordinary.”
Thomas was granted access to previously sealed archives for his research, uncovering accounts of experiments carried out on human volunteers at the site.
Mr Keegan was allowed an inside view of Porton Down after government approval for a study into the health of some 20,000 human volunteers who had been tested on there over the years.
Tragically, one of the 20,000 – Ronald Maddison, an RAF volunteer, died in a secretive nerve agent experiment at the facility.
The inquest into his death was held in secret – returning a verdict of misadventure, but in 2004 there was a second inquest and this time it was made public and returned a verdict of unlawful killing.
The second inquest is what prompted Mr Keegan’s research into the facility and the various tests it had conducted on military personnel and Porton Down staff.
Members of a Porton Down veterans group have attributed the many health problems they suffered through their lives to the tests they endured at the top secret facility.
Eze Chidiebere Paul
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