Vrillon: the alien voice hoax that became a legend

If you’re in your late forties or older, and grew up in the part of the country served by what was then the Southern Television (part of the independent TV network), you might well have witnessed a rather intriguing incident four decades ago.

On 26 November 1977, people were doing what they usually do at around 5pm on Saturday in the Seventies. There would have been an afternoon’s sport, either on the terraces or on the telly, and the children would be waiting for the results service to finish while Mum checked the Pools so they could watch the Pink Panther, while the tea was being made in readiness for an evening’s light entertainment on the TV.

Just a normal winter Saturday. Unless you lived in the Southern Television area.

Southern Television was the licence holder for the ITV service covering parts of the South, South-east and South-west of England: the area now covered by Meridian TV. It was headquartered in Southampton and Dover and broadcast across the South from transmitters at Dover, Bluebell Hill and Hannington, among others.

Saturday 26 November, 1977, must have seemed like a normal Saturday. Southern TV’s news anchor Andrew Gardner was relating the day’s headlines, which included the latest happenings from what was then Rhodesia. The day before, there’d been violent clashes between the security forces and the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army guerrillas, led by a certain Robert Mugabe.

At ten minutes past five, the TV picture wobbled slightly and the sound of Andrew Gardner’s professional delivery was silenced, to be replaced by a distorted voice delivering a quite remarkable message for almost six minutes.

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While TV engineers valiantly tried to get to the bottom of the interruption, and the visuals on the TV continued as normal, the local news round-up followed by a Looney Tunes cartoon, the audio was something else entirely.

It purported to be a communication from an individual identifying themselves as Vrillon, representing a body called the Ashtar Galactic Command. And the message was simple: we humans had to give up our warlike ways and embrace a more peaceful existence… before it was too late.

This is the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. For many years you have seen us as lights in the skies. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom as we have done to your brothers and sisters all over this, your planet Earth. We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disaster which threatens your world, and the beings on our worlds around you.

This is in order that you may share in the great awakening, as the planet passes into the New Age of Aquarius. The New Age can be a time of great peace and evolution for your race, but only if your rulers are made aware of the evil forces that can overshadow their judgments.

Be still now and listen, for your chance may not come again. All your weapons of evil must be removed. The time for conflict is now past and the race of which you are a part may proceed to the higher stages of its evolution if you show yourselves worthy to do this. You have but a short time to learn to live together in peace and goodwill. Small groups all over the planet are learning this, and exist to pass on the light of the dawning New Age to you all.

You are free to accept or reject their teachings, but only those who learn to live in peace will pass to the higher realms of spiritual evolution. Hear now the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. Be aware also that there are many false prophets and guides operating in your world. They will suck your energy from you – the energy you call money and will put it to evil ends and give you worthless dross in return.

Your inner divine self will protect you from this. You must learn to be sensitive to the voice within that can tell you what is truth, and what is confusion, chaos and untruth. Learn to listen to the voice of truth which is within you and you will lead yourselves onto the path of evolution. This is our message to our dear friends. We have watched you growing for many years as you too have watched our lights in your skies.

You know now that we are here, and that there are more beings on and around your Earth than your scientists admit. We are deeply concerned about you and your path towards the light and will do all we can to help you. Have no fear, seek only to know yourselves, and live in harmony with the ways of your planet Earth.

We of the Ashtar Galactic Command thank you for your attention. We are now leaving the plane of your existence. May you be blessed by the supreme love and truth of the cosmos.

Those watching must have thought it was either some TV practical joke or a mix-up with audio from the likes of Captain Scarlet or The Outer Limits, old TV shows which both used the device of aliens taking control of our TV signals.

Or perhaps they thought it was real – that Vrillon and the Ashtar Galactic Command really were putting us on notice to sort ourselves out and take our place in the cosmos.

When the normal service was resumed, the station apologised for what it called “a breakthrough in sound”, but by late night ITV’s own news network was reporting the strange happening, and provided some great copy for the next day’s Sunday papers, which gleefully ramped up the suggestions of panic in the streets as the aliens were about to descend upon us.

It was a hoax, of course, a prank – and a very sophisticated one for the time, when hacking into a TV network was not the work of just a few minutes with a laptop. Strangely, though, no-one’s ever come forward and claimed responsibility for it, and the episode remains one of those curiosities from the 1970s that will perhaps never be explained.

The incident is cherished by those who describe themselves as Forteans – students of the strange and unexplained, who take their name from the American writer and researcher into strange phenomenon, Charles Fort.

John Reppion is a Fortean author, a folklorist, and lover of what he refers to as “the English Weird”. He thinks those who broadcast the Vrillon message, by jamming Southern TV’s signal, chose their time carefully.

“Obviously, interrupting a news broadcast rather than a programme not only ensured a wider audience, but also a ‘serious’ one, lending much more gravitas to the message than if it had been played out over ‘Crossroads’ or something,” says Reppion.

“This, perhaps, implies serious intent on the part of the signal jammers, but it could equally be argued that their intent was merely to give the stunt the strongest possible impact. That said, the bits of audio from the cartoon which immediately followed the news that day which were still audible under the Vrillon voice, did make the whole thing even more weird and disquieting.”

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Indeed, jamming signals and replacing them with video or audio isn’t completely unknown; a decade later in the States – on two occasions – the infamous Max Headroom jamming took place.

But, as Reppion says, there was something prankish about those that followed, whereas Vrillon was played dead straight, and not for any apparent fame or publicity. Which, in a way, has helped to maintain this air of mystery about the whole thing, and perhaps gives us pause to think that, just maybe, there might be something in it...?

Reppion points out: “Unlike so many of the broadcast interruptions which came after, mostly in the USA, there is nothing prankish about the Vrillon interruption; there's no punchline or rug-pull, no swearing, or obscenity, or explicit protest of the specific TV station or media in general.

“That keeps it ambiguous enough that there's still this glimmer of possibility – no matter how tiny – that the whole thing was, and is, somehow real.

“Some people believe it wholeheartedly of course, but even for those of us who don't, there's still something fascinating and exciting about the notion of hearing a non-human, non-terrestrial voice. An unsolved case is always much more intriguing than a solved one. Everyone loves a good mystery, and the fact that those responsible for the interruption were never caught or came forward gives the whole incident this wonderfully open-ended intrigue. This air of ‘what if...?’.”

In the 1970s, of course, hacking as we know it today wasn’t a well-known phenomenon. When the jokey headlines had subsided, there was concern about how persons unknown had managed to break into the TV network in this way, jamming the signal at the Hannington transmitter.

An investigation into this was launched by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, but it’s difficult to find the results. The IBA was replaced in 1991 by the Independent Television Commission, which itself ceased to exist in 2003 when it and other bodies were folded into the new broadcast regulator Ofcom.

I asked Ofcom, but of course they don’t keep records from other bodies going back so far. They did point out that deliberately interfering with the UK’s TV and radio infrastructure is against the law, and can affect others who need to use vital airwaves – such as the emergency services.

They also added: “And these days, thanks to new technology, we can offer smaller stations a safe, legal route to air through community radio.” So if you do happen to be a representative of an interstellar aliens’ club, you don’t have to jam our signals at all. You can just apply for a licence to run your own radio station.

It’s easy to become seduced by the fantasy behind the Vrillon broadcast for one main reason; this was not a threat of invasion or destruction, but it was basically telling us as a planet to get our act together.

“The Vrillon message is a lengthy one, but undeniably one of peaceful intent, calling for the removal of all ‘weapons of evil’ and promising that ‘those who learn to live in peace will pass to the higher realms of spiritual evolution’ in the new age which is dawning,” says Reppion. “It's not a threatening message intended to cause panic, as the Orson Wells War of the Worlds was supposed to have done.

“Rather Vrillon, the spokesperson of the Ashtar Galactic Command, is a benevolent, and seemingly reasonable individual who is offering the human race a chance at bettering themselves. Only when Vrillon speaks about money do we get any hint of anger or contempt in their voice; this perhaps shows a little too much humanity, and reveals some of the ideology of those responsible.

“The talk of the ‘New Age of Aquarius’ obviously ties in with hippy and New Age beliefs, which may have seemed a little dated by late 1977, but of course survive in various forms today.”

Just imagine if it was all true, though. Perhaps, as a species, we’ve hardly covered ourselves in glory in the past 40 years. Britain had just joined the European Union when Vrillon made the broadcast; we’re now on our way out of it. Robert Mugabe rose from guerrilla commander to country leader in Zimbabwe, and just in the past week fell from office. It’s possible we’re in as bad a state as we were in 1977 – arguably, we’re in a worse one.

Perhaps today, on the anniversary of the broadcast, Vrillon will return. Maybe only folk round Hampshire will get the message again, or maybe this time the Ashtar Galactic Command’s reach will be a longer one.

And, who knows, maybe they’re not going to be as benevolent this time round. You have been warned. Keep watching the skies.