Zigmund Adamski
Zigmund (or Zygmunt) Jan Adamski (born 17 August 1923, Poland — died 1980) was a coal miner at Lofthouse Colliery, who mysteriously disappeared from his Tingley home in June 1980. His body was found on top of a large stack of anthracite in Todmorden.
Disappearance
Adamski set out to get some potatoes at 3:30pm on 6 June 1980. The next day he was due to attend a family wedding. His body was found five days later in Todmorden next to a railway line on the afternoon of Wednesday, 11 June at 3:45pm by Trevor Parker, the son of the owner of the Tomlin's coal yard. The yard had not been used since 11 o'clock that morning and the body had not been seen at that time; Parker had arrived at 8:00am. At 4:10pm a police officer, Alan Godfrey, attended the scene, with a colleague. On examination, it was found he had died of a heart attack and had peculiar burns on his neck and shoulders.
His clothes were in good condition although the shirt was removed. He had not attended any hospitals in the missing five days and had only been on the anthracite a few hours before he was found. It appeared that neither had he slept rough in the intervening days and he had been eating healthily, and that no struggle had taken place. It was also noticed that only one day's worth of beard growth had taken place, despite the length of his being missing, suggesting he had been able to shave. The post mortem was carried out at 9:15pm in Hebden Bridge by Dr Alan Edwards, a consultant pathologist at the Royal Halifax Infirmary. He found that Adamski's death took place between 11:00am and 1:00pm that day. The burn on his neck had been there two days before his death, and had had a peculiar ointment applied that forensic scientists could not identify. There was some deliberation over the cause of his death as his death was not registered until the autumn of 1980. The coroner was James Turnbull.
John Hanson and David Sankey of BUFORA, the British UFO Research Association, carried out an investigation in 2005. Citing interviews with Adamski's relatives, they claimed that he was not, in fact, looking forward to the god-daughter's wedding due to a feud with a family member. The unnamed family member's wife had taken out a restraining order against him, and moved in with Adamski's wife, Leokadia. Hanson and Sankey reported that Adamski's family suspected the man had kidnapped Zigmund and held him in a shed, where he suffered a heart attack.
Connections with UFOs
The policeman who found Zigmund Adamski, Alan Godfrey, would claim to have had an encounter with a UFO six months later, on 28 November at 5:00 on Burnley Road (A646) in Todmorden, as he was driving his car on duty. This was one mile from the coalyard. He could not account for fifteen minutes of his time. Under hypnosis with assistance from Manchester-based MUFORA in 1981, he claimed he had been abducted. The Sunday Mirror (27 September 1981) published this story on its front page as a UFO abduction. The story was written by John Sheard and Stewart Bonney.
Personal life
He had lived in Tingley since 1960, having married Leokadia Kowalska in 1951 in the West Riding of Yorkshire. She had multiple sclerosis in later life.