All Colors Sam and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Weird Picnic | 512

2026-07-27

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We go pond jumping this week and head to the Isle of Wight for one of the strangest paranormal encounters ever reported: All Colours Sam, better known as the Sandown Clown.In 1973, two children claimed they met a nearly seven-foot-tall, three-fingered, three-toed, ghost-like humanoid living in a metal hut near Sandown Airport. Normal British stuff, we are pretty sure. Sam wore a pointed yellow hat, spoke through a strange device, said he was “a ghost in an odd sort of way,” and somehow managed to make eating berries look like advanced alien sur...

We go pond jumping this week and head to the Isle of Wight for one of the strangest paranormal encounters ever reported: All Colours Sam, better known as the Sandown Clown.

In 1973, two children claimed they met a nearly seven-foot-tall, three-fingered, three-toed, ghost-like humanoid living in a metal hut near Sandown Airport. Normal British stuff, we are pretty sure. Sam wore a pointed yellow hat, spoke through a strange device, said he was “a ghost in an odd sort of way,” and somehow managed to make eating berries look like advanced alien surgery.

So what was All Colours Sam? An extraterrestrial? A robot? A folkloric entity? A man in a costume? Or one of the most bizarre childhood stories ever to escape into UFO and cryptid lore?

We break down the full encounter, the witnesses, the weirdest details, what believers think happened, what skeptics say, and why the Sandown Clown mystery is still confusing paranormal researchers more than 50 years later this week on Hysteria 51.

Sources

BUFORA Journal, Vol. 6, No. 5, Jan/Feb 1978 – “Ghost or Spaceman ’73?”
Internet Archive
Think Anomalous – The Sandown “Ghost Clown,” 1973
Think Anomalous
OnTheWight – All Colours Sam, aka Sam the Sandown Clown
OnTheWight
OnTheWight – The Sandown Clown: Exploring Sam, the Isle of Wight’s Surreal 1973 Encounter
OnTheWight
BBC Radio 4 / Uncanny – Cold Cases: Case 5: The Sandown Clown
Apple Podcasts
OnTheWight – BBC Sounds and Cease to Exist Podcasts Turn Their Attention to All Colours Sam
OnTheWight
Spooky Isles – The Sandown Clown: Fact or Fiction?
Spooky Isles
Weird Darkness – The Sandown Clown: All Colours Sam and the Isle of Wight
Weird Darkness
Island Echo – The Sandown Clown Returns to the Isle of Wight
Island Echo
Bedtime Stories – The Sandown Clown
The Sandown Clown
Shrouded Hand – The Sandown Clown Incident: A Creepy Encounter With an Unknown Entity
The Sandown Clown Incident