Residents living near an Army barracks say their village green became a mysterious 'Bermuda Triangle' after their remote-control car door locks were by jammed by radio interference.

Motorists in Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, say the locks on their cars refused to work when they parked at the village green. Modern push-button ignitions were also scuppered by the unknown, eerie interference.

Investigation: Professor Piotrowski on Waterbeach Green monitoring ultra high frequency bands

Military theory: One scientist thinks that the source of the interference is the nearby Waterbeach barracks

Radio experts first noticed the problem when they met in the village pub last week and discovered they were all locked out of their vehicles. Some members of the group had to get lifts home and return with manual overrides.

The following day the group, including professional scientists, returned with sophisticated monitoring equipment and found 'ultra-high frequency bands' was causing the block. Professional scientist Wojciech Piotrowski said the mystery frequency was likely to have been caused by the military, but admitted a faulty TV or fridge could also be to blame.

He said: 'A strong electrical interference source was radiating radio signals in one of the ultra-high frequency bands at the southern end of the Green. 'The primary user of this band is the military. However, by Sunday, the problem seemed to have gone.'It was really weird but being the radio hams that we are, we sort of knew it was an interference of some kind.

Suspicions: The Waterbeach green is very close to the barracks


Eerie: One of the electronic key fobs in Waterbeach that will not work
'I'm sure it would be worrying for other people, suddenly being locked out of their cars could be scary I guess.' The boffins managed to detect the unusual frequency with a spectrum analyser and direction-finding techniques.

The amateur radio group believe wireless devices in nearby homes, such as thermostats, remote light dimmers, switches and energy meters will have been affected. An engineer was today investigating the interference after the group reported their findings to communications watchdog, Ofcom.

A spokesperson for the Army, which operates Waterbeach Barracks, said: 'We are not aware of anything happening at Waterbeach that would have caused anything remotely like that.' This is the first time an English village has experienced mysterious electronics failures.

Last month residents of Kingsclere in Hampshire, near the world-famous Watership Down Hill, were baffled when their heating, showers, doorbells and car remote locks refused to work. They spent much of the festive season without heating and lights after the failure of household systems that rely on digital technology, specifically radio-frequency identification (RFID).

Chris Smith, whose wife's birthday on Christmas Eve was ruined by the systems failure, spent more than £250 trying to fix the heating and shower but neither worked until late on December 27, according to the Newbury Weekly News. He has speculated that secret experiments at the nearby Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston military base - which builds and maintains the warheads for the country's nuclear Trident missiles - are responsible.

But a spokesman for Ofcom, which oversees radio communications, had a more mundane explanation. He said: 'Often these problems can be caused by a video sender - that transmits a television signal to other sets in the house. They are not the source of all the problems but in a lot of cases interference is tracked down to those devices.'