North Horsingdon Lane runs to the top of Horsingdon Hill. On clear nights, the hilltop is the haunt of amateur astronomers, and is also has reputation - as I have noted previously - of being something of a local UFO hotspot.
At approximately 3.05 am on the morning of November 21st 1975, Samantha Lea - a seven year old girl from the Northwich Park area - was discovered by a passing motorist, wandering in a highly distressed state along a stretch of the lane close to the base of Horsingdon Hill. The subsequent police investigation revealed that the girl had probably been taken by her mother, Jennifer Lea, to the top of the hill an hour or so earlier in the family car. The car was indeed discovered in the parking area at the hilltop, but without any sign of the missing woman. The girl's father, Simon Lea, claimed to have been in bed asleep when the incident occured, and so was unaware of his wife's actions who, he also claimed, had been suffering from mental health issues.
Jennifer Lea was never found; a few weeks after her disappearance, Simon Lea was charged with his wife's murder and - despite the lack of any concrete evidence - ultimately convicted on that count, committing suicide in prison (although under what can only be described as extremely suspicious circumstances) two years into a life sentence.
It remains unclear as to what happened to Samantha Lee in the aftermath of so much tragedy, although I have it on good authority that, not long after the conviction of her father, she was taken into custody by representatives from the Ministry of Defence. Exactly why the MoD would take an interest in the girl is a matter of speculation - but for one intriguing and rather disturbing aspect of the case: the policewoman tasked with interviewing Samantha regarding her mother's disappearance noted that the little girl, who was clearly in a state of shock, would only repeat, time after time, the same chilling refrain: 'why are spacemen hurting my mummy?'
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