Unscripted responses gathered by a regional news crew outside the Countryside Centre car park, over one afternoon in December, broadcast in edited form and reproduced here unedited, at the reporter's own request, years later, for a retrospective nobody ever commissioned.

Woman, sixties, dog on a lead: I think it's probably nothing, love, but I've thought that about everything my whole life and I've been wrong often enough to know that not-knowing isn't the same as knowing it's nothing.

Man, twenties, on his lunch break: Honestly? I think it's the same as everything else now. Something happens, everyone's got an opinion by lunchtime, nobody actually knows anything, and in six months it's a documentary. I'll probably watch the documentary.

Woman, forties, two children in tow: I try not to let them see the news about it. Not because I think it's dangerous. Because I don't know what to tell them it is, and I'd rather say nothing than make something up just to have an answer ready.

Man, seventies, retired, walking stick: I was in the merchant navy thirty years. I've seen fog do stranger things than most people would credit. I'm not saying I know what walked out of it. I'm saying I've stopped assuming the sea always explains itself just because we'd like it to.

Teenage girl, with friend, both filming on their phones: We came because everyone's posting about it. I don't actually know what I think. Is that bad? Everyone online seems so sure and I just feel like nobody's actually said anything that's made me sure of anything.

Man, thirties, local business owner: Bad for trade at first, if I'm honest, then very good for trade, which I feel guilty saying out loud but there it is. I don't know what he is. I know my coffee takings are up forty percent since October.

Woman, eighties, sitting alone on a bench: I lost my husband on a morning not unlike this one, fog thick enough you couldn't see the fence from the car park. I don't come here for the story everyone else came for. I come because it's where I still feel closest to him. I'd rather it stayed that, if I'm honest, though I don't suppose anyone's asking my permission.

Man, forties, clearly agitated: It's a cover-up, plain as day, and anyone who tells you different is either lying to you or lying to themselves. [Interviewer, off mic: A cover-up of what?] That's exactly the question they don't want you asking.

Man, fifties, delivery driver, engine running behind him: I'll tell you what I think and you can cut it if you want. I think whatever he is, the way everyone's behaving about it says more about us than it does about him. Everybody's decided what he means before anybody's bothered finding out what he actually said.

Woman, thirties, on her way to work: I read the transcript Groundline published. The real one, not the clips everyone's arguing about online. It didn't sound like a threat and it didn't sound like a miracle. It sounded like somebody being honest with us, which I think might be why so many people don't know what to do with it.

Teenage boy, alone, headphones round his neck: My nan says it's the end times. My mate says it's the government testing something on us. I don't think either of them actually knows. I don't think I know either. I just think it's mad that something this big happened and six months later nobody agrees on basically anything about it.

Man, thirties, in running gear, stopped mid-jog: I'll be honest, I come past here most mornings and I don't think about it much any more. It stopped feeling like news a while back. It started feeling like weather. Something that happened, that's still sort of happening somewhere, that I'm not really equipped to have an opinion about before my coffee.

Man, forties, wheelchair user, waiting for a bus: People keep asking me if I'm frightened. I'm not, particularly. I've spent twenty years being told by various institutions that my own account of my own body isn't reliable enough to be believed without a second opinion. A stranger arriving and telling the truth plainly, and having half the country still argue about whether to believe him, doesn't feel unfamiliar to me at all. It feels like Tuesday.

Woman, twenties, university student, notebook in hand: I'm actually doing my dissertation on the media coverage of this, which probably disqualifies me from having a normal opinion about it anymore. What I'll say academically is that the speed of institutional response has been the most interesting part, not the man himself. What I'll say personally, off the record if that's allowed, is that I still don't know what I believe, and I've read more about this than almost anyone my age, and I've come to think that not knowing might just be the honest position.

The reporter who compiled these, unpublished at the time because her editor judged them "too inconclusive to run," kept the full tape for eleven years before finally handing it to an archive, with a note attached that read only: I think this is the most honest single hour of tape I ever shot in my career, precisely because nobody in it agreed, and nobody in it pretended to.