The droning chatter of the evening news filed thousands of homes late one November evening in 1977. As the anchorman unenthusiastically reads the top world headlines, the audio portion of the televised feed was interrupted.

The hijack of the Southern Television broadcast came not from pranksters looking for a cheap thrill, but from an extraterrestrial being who issued a dire warning to all people of Earth.

The message

The Southern Television station in England had one of their local transmitters jammed with a strange signal. The evening of November 26th, 1977, proved to be a real bizarre events for thousands of viewers and station employees.

As the news feed rolled, the audio was interrupted. Viewers must have recoiled in discomfort as the shrieking and crackling sounds cut through their speakers. Through the metallic static they heard a deep buzzing that seem to come through in waves. It was right then that a deep masculine voice commanded their attention. In an echoing voice, the speaker introduced himself as a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command.

“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 disasters which threaten your world, and the beings on our worlds around you.”

The anchorman unaware of the signal hijack continued with his report. As the video played on those screens, the echoing of the alien voice sounded colder and more somber. Vrillon continues with a message to the world’s leaders to destroy the weapons of evil and to learn to live together in peace, because our time here on Earth is short. I bet many of them viewers sat there with a guilty conscience and the napalm flashbacks of the recent war. The alien voice continued:

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.

Ashtar Command

The transmitter

The interruption of the signal was traced to the Hannington transmitter in Hanningtong, Hampshire. During the time of the hijack, the Hannington transmitter was receiving its feed from another transmitter through ultra high frequency, or UHF to the rest of us. Since the Hannington was receiving the broadcast through the air –an outdated approach since landline feeds were more secure – it was vulnerable to hijackers who possessed a little know-how of radio antennas and broadcasting technology. The fact that these repeater-antennas are bouncing signals off of each other made it possible for the alien message to be heard throughout a far wider area. Maybe it wasn’t in the thousands, but in the hundreds of thousands of viewers who were the unintended recipient of the dire communiqué from somewhere deep in the dark universe.

THe UK’s  Independent Broadcasting Authority (or IBA) scrambled to put together a response for the panicking audience. The station’s telephone lines were buzzing and heavily congested just minutes after the broadcast. The IBA went on to explain that  “A hoaxer jammed our transmitter in the wilds of North Hampshire by taking another transmitter very close to it.”

The rumors

The highjacking of a television station feed has been successfully done, so the question here is really not how but who.

There are several questions and rumors about this story. Was this really a message from an extraterrestrial being? Why would they only broadcast to a small repeater out in the middle of nowhere, when the world is full of bustling cities and thriving cultures? One rumor is that this message is not extraterrestrial in origin, but rather very terrestrial and deceiving.

The voice that was transmitted through the Hannington repeater identified itself as Vrillon. Vrillon is the most repeated name that exists in the several broadcast transcripts floating around on the internet. The other names are Asteron and Gillon. One interesting rumor states that it is possible that this transmitter was hijacked by a famous cult. The young but already infamous UFO cult started by Claude Vorilhon. Mr. Vorilhon had funded the Raëlian Church, a UFO religion, back in 1974. So it was no surprise that many people began to compare the name of the representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command to that of Mr. Vorilhon. The similarity is quite obvious.

Of course there are also rumors that this was indeed an actual message broadcasted from an alien spacecraft hovering near earth. The tidal wave of phone calls that engulfed telephone lines can be seen as proof that many people were concerned about the ominous message. I can’t say with certainty that if I was to be a young man in 1977 and had just heard this strange broadcast coming through my television set….well, I can’t say that I wouldn’t be on the telephone as soon as the looney tunes cartoon ended the alien message.

Conclusion

The Southern Television broadcast hoax has its holes and over-inflated rumors. The explanation of this just being the product of some bored amateur radio enthusiasts, sounds absolutely reasonable. I don’t buy that the Raëlians were behind this. They have bigger fish to fry. Or should I say abduct.

Whoever it was that managed to take over the live television broadcast that November evening in 1977, they had  a very important message to deliver. Although it has been decades since the highjacking of the Southern Television station, the somber message never had more meaning that it does today.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Television_broadcast_interruption_hoax

http://strangeattractor.co.uk/further/1977-uk-ashtar-command-broadcast-online/