PEOPLE in Huddersfield are a real sceptical lot. Earlier this week, I recounted the story of the road traffic policeman who saw riders dressed as highwaymen in the middle of the night on the deserted road over Buckstones Moor. Were they ghosts from an earlier century?

I asked if readers could provide an explanation and Stephen Priest says: “It may have been due to LSD being dropped into the officer’s drink without his knowledge.”

He claims this happened to a police officer near Todmorden in 1980. The affects of the mind-altering hallucinatory drug made him believe he had been abducted by aliens, says Stephen.

“This is the explanation behind many UFO sightings,” he adds.

Which takes us into a new field of speculation: alien abduction.

Drugs or alcohol may well facilitate out of body experiences with little green men. I was always quizzical when those claiming to have been abducted were hillbillies with three teeth living on a mountainside in Tennessee with such a strong penchant for moonshine they could often lose days at a time all on their own without any help from flying saucers.

And back in the swinging 60s many followers of Timothy Leary turned on, tuned in and dropped out. How many confused bad acid trips with being medically examined on a hovering space ship? It’s easily done.

“Cool man, but warm the probe next time.”

However, I found no suggestion this was the case with policeman Alan Godfrey in Todmorden, another traffic officer whose experience also happened in the early hours on a deserted road. But there were plenty of doubts about his alleged abduction.

The Todmorden area between Lancashire and Yorkshire is well known for strange sightings but they have been explained as UAPs – unidentified atmospheric phenomenon – rather than UFOs.

A re-assessment of the Godfrey case last year by Peter Brookesmith, David Clarke and Andy Roberts, noted: “There have been literally thousands of sightings of this type of UAP reported in the Pennine region between Yorkshire and Lancashire: the area has been dubbed UFO Alley. Reports describe nocturnal lights that dance around, split apart, merge, and sometimes emerge from or disappear into the ground.”

Sightings are 12 times more frequent than the national average within this area and 73% of all alien contact reported within the Pennines over the last 50 years occurred within 16 kilometres of Todmorden.

Mind you, that could just be Todmorden. I went there once on a Saturday night and encountered all sorts of alien life.

Marsden, of course, has had a similar reputation for centuries because of the eerie lights of will o the wisps seen over the moorland at night, and the magic mushrooms that reputedly grow there. Happy sheep at Marsden.

So the next time you feel inclined to go somewhere bleak over the moors on a pub crawl, take care. Don’t accept a lift from aliens and watch out for highwaymen on the way back.