Decemystery (2023) 2: The Poole Pyramid

 

This story is dedicated to my dear friend Graham. I just want to let you know that Kyle Larson is the better driver.

So, I have a story to tell you all. Today’s entry was planned to be on The Bunnyman; I had wanted to do something grandiose and go over basically the entire history and numerous variations of the story, what inspired it, and the “real” versions of the fiend. And I did; I got a little over 11,000 words into the story until I realized something: I was absolutely not using what I had for Decemystery.

When I do these write-ups, I try my absolute best to make them as smoothly paced as possible. Even the longer ones, I aim to feel like brisk reads; I don’t want them to feel painfully long. A good example of what I aim for is David Fincher’s “Zodiac.” That movie is nearly 3 hours long, but it sure as heck doesn’t feel that long. Not in my eyes, at least.

What I had with The Bunnyman, while I liked most of it, went on and on for way too long. So, I set it aside. However, that left me with a problem: I had no idea what I wanted to replace it with. Yes, I—the guy who has several thousands of stories in a backlog—didn’t know what to replace it with; I’ll elaborate on that later when I give my take on this story.

Thankfully, I quickly found the perfect replacement. Today’s story is that of The Poole Pyramid; it’s a story that is filed as an extraterrestrial encounter, and it comes across as anything but one. So come along, dear reader; it’s time to see just how much stranger alien encounters can get!

Pyramid Song

I found today’s story while flipping through the Paranormal Strange Wiki, though most of the information comes from Cryptopia (who coined this being’s name). It’s been a while since I went there for information; I ought to visit it more since there’s a lot of good stuff there. Now, then, onto the story. 

7-year-old Terrence Drive and his 6-year-old brother Broderick lived in Poole, England. It was 1965, so I have no idea what life was like outside of what I’ve read and my time playing Destroy All Humans! 2. Based on those two things, the 1960s sound like a peculiar time period, but dang it, the music is so good. Long live The Rolling Stones!

One night, in 1965—not February of 1972 like the Paranormal Strange Wiki article initially claims—Terrence awoke. Exactly why isn’t stated, but I imagine it was due to that feeling you get when you believe you’re being watched. If that was the case, then Terrence was more than right because hovering at the end of his bed was something only the 1960s could produce.

At an estimated 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall was a triangular-shaped entity “composed of closely fitting triangles of many colors.” Meanwhile, protruding from its oddly shaped body were two thin black arms that ended with crab-like pincers. For whatever reason, its arms were waving slightly. I like to imagine that it was trying to be a person in a bedsheet who was pretending to be a ghost.

In all seriousness, I have no words for what I just typed and quoted; that is, without a doubt, one of the most baffling things I’ve ever read. Is this what you see when you mix LSD with DMT? If it is, then this further reinforces my desire to never touch any illegal substances—ever. I am not about to see a 1960s Lovecraftian horror.

Understandably, the sight of this thing scared Terrence; he shrieked, waking his brother Broderick (who was sleeping beside him). In an incredibly rare instance, the enigmatic entity didn’t vanish the moment it was spotted or scare those in its immediate vicinity half to death. As a result, Broderick got a glimpse of the triangle-shaped Church window for a few seconds before disappearing before the boys’ eyes.

After this, the details become very vague. As Cryptopia states, the official record of this case doesn’t state whether or not Terrence and Broderick told their parents about what they saw. From what I know, his mom would later verify to Leslie Harris—who published this story in “Flying Saucer Review, Case Histories #9” in February of 1972; you can read the edition here. The story is near the end and features two sketches from both Terrence and Broderick (the second sketch is of the second sighting; more on that in a bit).

To circle back to whether or not the boys told their parents (or at least their mom) about what they saw: I’m not sure, though it seems like they eventually have. Though at the time, I imagine they likely didn’t. Even at their young age, I think they’d know that any adult wouldn’t believe them; they would have probably gotten that age-old response of, “Oh, honey, it was just a bad dream.” Then again, as we’ll learn later, the Druce family is no stranger to UFOs, so maybe they did tell their mom they saw something.

Anyway, as you may have guessed by what I said about the second sketch, the story doesn’t end there. The afternoon after the duo saw the multi-colored Bronzong, they would end up seeing it a second time. Only this time, they weren’t in bed; they were outside, making their way home. As the young lads crossed a parking lot, a familiar figure near a parked car caught their eye.

According to Terrence, the “apex” of everyone’s favorite triangular-shaped grade-school art project “reached approximately halfway up the window of the car that it was adjacent to.” However, This time, there was one major difference with this thing. No longer was it multi-colored. Rather, it was completely black; it was also “standing” this time rather than floating in the air. On top of the color change, Broderick said it appeared to have a “nose” or “beak” around the top of what was presumably its head. If I’m to be honest, I have to wonder if this was even the same thing, but I digress; let’s continue.

Unlike its predecessor, this die-hard fan of Paint It, Black turned its attention towards the two boys “as if to watch” them. This action scared the duo, and so they ran away. However, they weren’t pursued by the thing.

Something I want to quickly mention before we move on is that this encounter isn’t said on the Paranormal Strange Wiki. At least, I don’t believe it does; it notes that while the thing “gave the impression it was watching the boys,” it “never moved to follow them.” I’d hazard a guess and say that this is referring to the parking lot sighting, but I don’t know for certain. If it is, I find it a bit odd that that was nixed since the article is, by and large, the Cryptopia write-up.

Anyway, the thing I wanted to note was that the Paranormal Strange Wiki says something else. While this strange entity wasn’t seen again, this didn’t stop “other members of the Druce family would continue witnessing strange sky-lights and UFO activity” several years after this story occurred. Unfortunately, I have no idea if any of them saw this bizarre multi-colored fellow.

With that, the story of The Poole Pyramid comes to an end—at least, the story of the being itself. I do have a few additional things I want to go over, starting with an elephant that could be in the room. If you decided to read Leslie Harris’ article before reading this write-up, you’d know that it was entitled A Family and UFOs.

Indeed, the Druces have quite a history with them; it details the sightings from the others in the family. Because of this, I want to make a note of something. I seriously considered going over the other sightings covered in that article, but I opted against it since, in the end, it doesn’t add anything—at least not anything major. It could reinforce the idea that the family was targeted by aliens, but to me, the central focus of this write-up is on The Poole Pyramid, not the Druce family’s sightings of UFOs and their possible inhabitants as a whole. God willing, in the future, I’ll revisit the magazine article to cover that aspect as a whole, but for now, let’s move on to the final bit I want to go over.

To round things off, I went ahead and looked for any additional details. To my delight, I managed to find two additional bits of information; it isn’t much, but I felt it warranted mentioning. The first is that, apparently, 1965 was a really big year for strange alien encounters. You see, while I was looking around for additional information, I decided to look at a website called “THE COMPENDIUM OF ARCANE BEASTS AND CRITTERS,” and yes, the name is in all capital letters. On this site are four links; the first leads to the edition of Flying Saucer Review that ran today’s story, while the second brings you to Cryptopia, 

The third link, meanwhile, is for an article that was run by Mysterious Universe, and it’ll require an account to read. I have one, and so I read over the article, and I wanted to make a note of it since there are two details that are quite inconsistent with everything we just went over—and everything that I read when doing research for this story.

The first is that Broderick supposedly ran into the room when Terrence screamed, rather than Broderick being asleep in the room with his brother. On a smaller note, the article also says the entity had lobster-like pincers. This is probably just a choice on the part of the writer, but it stood out to me. Side note: Crab claws apparently taste sweeter than lobster claws. Man, I haven’t had lobster in forever; I really want some. I love seafood.

The second inconsistency is that, during the second encounter, the strange triangular terror wasn’t standing next to a car but was rather hovering near one. Again, the only place I read this version of events was on Mysterious Universe; no other site told the story this way. If any did—be it a podcast or some book—I didn’t come across it. I personally use Mysterious Universe a great deal and love the site, but it baffles me as to how it was the only one to detail this story this way. As such, I’m inclined to believe the way it was told by Leslie Harris, you know, the person who interviewed the eyewitnesses.

The final link is to a website called thinkaboutitdocs.com, which has a catalog of UFO and alien alien sightings from 1965. As Mysterious Universe’s article mentions, 1965 was a year full of UFO and extraterrestrial reports; this particular site more than proves that. It includes two encounters with The Poole Pyramid along with other reports of aliens; I’ve bookmarked the page so I can revisit it in the future to find stories to cover because, holy cow, there are a lot of interesting stories to pick from.

With that, the multi-colored tale of The Poole Pyramid comes to an end. I tried to snoop around for a bit of additional information, but this is another case of a story that’s unfortunately ridiculously obscure. Honestly, it’s a real shame since I think it’s incredibly interesting. Luckily, there are a fair number of theories for us to go over, so let’s dive bomb into ‘em!

Theories

1. A time-traveling probe

Once you hit 88 light-years per second, you’re gonna see some serious triangular redactions.

The inaugural theory for this write-up is one that was put forth by Cryptopia. It’s also one that the writer freely admits is “wishful thinking” on their part since they’re a fan of Dr. Who. Disclaimer on my end: I have never watched Dr. Who, so I have no idea what this theory may be referencing.

The theory goes that Terrence and Broderick are ancestors of “some significant (and perhaps yet to be born) historical figure.” So, in the distant future, a probe was sent back to observe them and get information. I’m not sure why you’d want information on them at such a tough age, but I guess it’s possible they were hoping to fully detail their ancestors’ lives.

Honestly, even though this is a reference to a TV show, it actually doesn’t come across as the most absurd thing to me. Assuming time travel is real, I could imagine it’d be less risky to timeline shenanigans if you sent a probe back to observe people or events rather than going back yourself. That said, I feel it would be a dick move to not have some sort of cloaking technology on it; I doubt it’ll make a difference if someone has a heart attack when they see your little time-traveling spy probe.

2. An interdimensional entity

Get ready to see this theory a lot this month because it’s going to be in almost every single one in some way, shape, or form. Best of all, that wasn’t intentional, but I decided to make it so when I realized how often I was using it. Gotta love inadvertently causing something!

This theory isn’t completely outlandish—at least, not unless you find the idea of interdimensional beings absurd. Assuming you don’t, this theory is more or less like the first one: beings from another dimension sent something over to observe us. Alternatively, this could be one of those very beings. How did they get here? Given it doesn’t seem accidental, one can presume they know how to travel to other realities and dimensions. I hope they liked the music!

In all seriousness, this theory rests solely on whether or not you believe in other realities and dimensions. If you do, this is probably one of your immediate thoughts; if not, then you probably think I’m insane for putting it forward. Then again, you probably think this entire story is absolutely nuts.

3. An alien

This is arguably the most popular theory, given The Poole Pyramid’s incredibly alien appearance and the Druce family’s strange history with UFOs. Of course, if you want actual proof to back this up, you’re going to be out of luck; this thing left nothing behind. No burn marks, no increased radiation readings, nothing. Just two traumatized youngsters.

Not only that, but the word of a child is a shaky one to take at face value. Children are notoriously unreliable, and taking their word as gospel is foolish at best and magnificently dumb at worst. It’s like trusting the word of a con man; it’s a bad idea on all fronts.

However, assuming what the boys saw was real, I’d argue it’s hard to take this as anything other than an alien. Its appearance is one of the most alien things I’ve ever heard of. Anyway, onto the next theory.

4. A figment of the boys’ imaginations

Most of you probably know this, but kids have some crazy imaginations. I remember when I was young, I had an imagination I wish I had nowadays. Unfortunately, nowadays, I only have a one-track mind for writing about weird stuff, like multi-colored, triangular-shaped sections of a paintball gun range’s wall.

A theory that I believe most skeptics and non-believers in extraterrestrials (along with most, if not all, things along those lines) will subscribe to, this posits that it was in the minds of Terrence and Broderick. With the first sighting, the idea is that Terrence was seeing things as he woke up from a dream and scared Broderick into thinking he saw something, too. That’s honestly a very plausible scenario; grogginess and the lingering effects of sleep can make you see things. It is what it is; you can’t exactly change that. Couple that with being a child and having an overactive imagination, and you have a recipe for seeing some strange stuff.

Though what about the second sighting? That’s a bit harder to explain since I couldn’t find a theory for that sighting; theories, in general, were extremely difficult to come by. However, if I had to guess, the lingering fear from the previous day resulted in them mistaking a shadow or something else for the same strange entity. They were kids; they aren’t exactly going to have brains that rival Albert Einstein.

5. A hoax

While kids may not have the brains to rival one of the world’s greatest physicists, there is one thing they can rival him in, and that’s the “being real jerks” department. Children are great at causing mischief and lying, and there’s no better way to prove that than when they make up stories and excuses to get out of doing something or to play longer. That’s just the nature of kids from my experiences; there’s a reason I don’t want any, and that’s because I’d lose my mind.

For our fifth theory, we have the idea that Terrence and Broderick decided to pull the sickest prank a 1960s child could think of. Evidently, that amounted to seeing a multi-colored triangle with arms and crab-like pincers. It’s not exactly the greatest prank, but hey, they’re children. They do silly things, and if it makes them happy, they’ll probably do it.

Unfortunately, in this case, this seems unlikely since whatever the boys saw did legitimately scare them. So unless they were the greatest child actors to ever live, this theory seems far-fetched. Though, hey, what do I know? I never played any pranks when I was a kid; I was too busy reading about dinosaurs and playing Spyro the Dragon.

6. A large bird

I shouldn’t have this theory here; I really shouldn’t. But I want to include it because it was something I tried absurdly hard to latch onto. In fact, as I type this, I’m still clinging to it, trying to think of something that would make it make sense.

The way I saw it was this: Terrence awoke and, still groggy, saw something; the shadows played tricks on him, and he scared both himself and his brother. The following day, while walking through a parking lot, he saw a large bird next to a car. Bang, boom, I am the smartest man alive.

There’s just one problem: I have absolutely no idea what bird this could be because absolutely no bird looks anything like this multi-colored, deformed Rubik’s Cube. I looked through as many birds as I could, and the closest I could get was an Emperor Penguin that might have escaped a zoo. Though I think those are iconic enough—especially to a child—that they’d know what a penguin looks like, it sure as heck wouldn’t look like whatever this thing looked like. Additionally, their flippers don’t look anything like crab-like pincers.l

I tried to think of other things—even other animals—but nothing sounded satisfactory. Nevertheless, I still cling to this theory as the most rational explanation; it’s just that nothing actually sounds logical to me. It’s honestly quite astounding to me just how difficult it is to rationalize something like this—at least, it is to me. Who would have thought that something called The Poole Pyramid would leave me saying that nothing makes sense?

7. A ghost

It’s not really much of a concrete theory, but it’s yet another one I wanted to make a note of since it sounded decent in my head at first. Perhaps there was some sort of spirit that took on the enigmatic appearance of a floating multi-colored pyramid-like thing and haunted the boys for a bit. Does it make sense? Absolutely not, but I would be remiss if I excluded it entirely since it sprang to mind early on.

8. They weren’t the same entity

Honestly, this was a theory I thought of while trying to rationalize this story; more on that later. The two encounters with this thing, while similar, do also have differences. Their color, the nose or beak, and the fact one didn’t disappear after being spotted are interesting. However, at the same time, their general physical appearance and height are similar.

Nevertheless, I do have to wonder if maybe they weren’t the same thing. It’s admittedly a thought that doesn’t make much sense—I think—but it wouldn’t leave my head. As I said above, the first encounter ended with the entity disappearing after Terrence screamed (though it took the multi-colored floater a bit to go poof).

While the two boys ran away without looking back during the second encounter, I’m a bit surprised it didn’t do so again if they screamed before running away. I also find its change in color, plus its now noticeable nose, a bit weird. The fact it also opted to stand out in the open in the middle of the day is absolutely mind-boggling to me. Though I guess it’s possible it was using some sort of special alien technology.

I’m admittedly likely applying too much thought here, but I figured that I’d at least put forth the theory that they weren’t the same thing, maybe of the same origin, but not the same thing. Perhaps two different kinds of probes or droids.

#DI9. Chase Elliott

RING THE BELL DOWN IN DAWSONVILLE; CHASE ELLIOTT WINS THE PYRAMID ALIEN 500!

My Take

Before I give my take, I want to mention why I didn’t know what to replace The Bunnyman with. The fact of the matter is: while I have a backlog of several thousand stories I’d love to cover, I’m writing this story at the tail end of August; I’ve written these write-ups out of order (something I did during Decemystery 2021). Why I did this, I don’t know, but I just did. It’s a bizarre habit of mine, and old habits die hard.

Anyway, as you’ll read periodically throughout this month, my health hasn’t been the exact best. I’ve gotten vertigo, and that’s led to a lot of problems, including a trip to the emergency room. Although that trip was caused by my body rejecting a medication that was prescribed to combat vertigo, I’ve noticed that it can flare up quite badly if I’m under a lot of stress. In order to combat that, I’ve taken to picking out stories that will be equal parts fun and interesting.

So, in short, despite having several thousand stories just waiting to be covered, they’d result in me feeling like I was spun around by God Himself. Now, ain’t that just dandy? If you answered yes, I disagree.

Also, I’m pretty sure I’ll say the exact same thing you just read in a later Decemystery write-up, but I can’t remember. I can barely remember the stories I’ve written at this point since I’m jumping from one to the next without a single break. This can’t be good for me, but I feel great.

Now that you have all of that in mind, let’s get to my take. Honestly, I spent a considerable amount of time trying to rationalize this thing; I spent an egregious amount of time looking at various birds native to the United Kingdom and thinking about various other animals.

In the end, I couldn’t think of a single one that matched The Poole Pyramid’s description. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough, but I genuinely cannot think of a single one that matches its appearance. Even from the angle of it being a case of mistaken identity because kids are kids, this thing’s appearance is in the realm of being too crazy.

Let me put it this way: In a lot of write-ups, I think that stories involving children are explainable instances of a child’s wild imagination running wild. Usually, though, the creature in those stories bears some resemblance to one I know of or a friend can tell me about. Here, however, I’m at a complete loss. I simply don’t know of anything a child could mistake this for, especially after they saw it in their bedroom.

My best guess, should I try to rationalize it, is that the two were scared and saw a large bird—or a trash can—in the parking lot and mistook it for the multi-colored, triangular-shaped, Bejeweled combination. But even that leaves me feeling a little unsatisfied since I can’t explain the arms with crab-like pincers; the nose I can explain as something hanging out of the trash can. Also, 4 feet seems like an excessive height for one, especially in 1965.

I also know it could have been a shadow, but again, it feels unsatisfactory. Really, every explanation for this one comes across as not feeling “right” to me. Call it bias or ineptitude on my end, but this is one instance where I genuinely have to concede that what was seen was likely of an extraterrestrial nature. I also know that children are notoriously unreliable eyewitnesses, but this is a rare instance where I, for whatever reason, feel a little more lenient given the two sightings. Though I will admit, I’m almost certainly an idiot for doing this.

As for why these beings potentially chose two children… shoot, I don’t know. Though, honestly, I feel they can be said for any instance of a person seeing an alien; heck, any time something happens to anyone. “Why me!?” Don’t ask questions no one has the answer to. That especially goes to when aliens are involved.

Then again, if the Druce family as a whole had been the subject of numerous UFO sightings, I think it would make sense that the kids would see something, too. I feel bad for them, though. It can’t be easy being the victim of intergalactic gangstalking.

That’s my best guess; I’ve taken so many guesses at this point that I’m putting more thought into this than when I decide on what I want to eat any day of the year. So, let’s end my take here now before I begin to realize how much more thought I put into stories like this than I do about my own life.

Conclusion

This was certainly one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever stumbled across. Though, as you probably know, I live for this; it’s what I love to write about. Best of all, we have so many more stories left this month, so be sure to check back tomorrow for more Decemystery goodness. And as always, stay happy, stay healthy, and thank you for reading!