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Jan. 22, 2009 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
59:32
Edition 19 - Gerald Celente

2009 begins with a few chilling words from US Trendwatcher Gerald Celente on the prospectsof the world's economy then we cross to my recent show which aired across the UK on Citytalk 105.9,based in Liverpool.

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Across the UK and around the world on the internet, my webcast and podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is the Unexplained 2009.
And it's nice to be back.
Well, I hope you were able to hear the little message I put up a week or so ago just saying that please keep the faith and that I'm continuing to work on the show and come up with ideas for future shows and try and find ways to finance this.
Because although it is very much a volunteer effort, I mean, I don't get any money out of it and don't expect to make any money out of it, people like Graham, my webmaster, are doing this for free because we believe in the project.
So, the whole idea being that one of these days we're going to find a better financial footing to put it on, which not only will, you know, keep the wheels turning, but it will allow us to do more adventurous things with the website, do other shows, go to places and do things that haven't been done before.
I've got the ideas.
All I need is the money, as they say, but I'm sure that's a lot of people's problem at the moment.
What with the state of the economy around the world as it is, both sides of the Atlantic and around the globe, too?
It is not good.
A few weeks ago on a radio show in Liverpool, I spoke to trend watcher Gerald Salente.
This man's become a bit of a guru in the United States.
And this was his take on the way things are going to be.
Don't spend a penny that you can't afford.
If you have a child going to university and they're not taking courses that are really going to bring a return on investment, like an engineer, a scientist, a doctor, an accountant, whatever, you know, if they're going for the safety arts, you know, consider a choice.
This is a time to save money and prepare for the worst.
And when you say the worst, does that mean soup cues and people being tipped out of their homes and all the rest of it that we saw in those newsreel films from the 30s?
Crime is another different level because the drug problems go on with the crime.
I mean, not only the prescription drugs that are whacking people out, all of these painkiller drugs that they're taking, the people that are taking those things, but things like crystal meth and on and on and on.
American trend watcher Gerald Salente from a show that I did for City Talk 105.9 in Liverpool very recently, and I've heard him more recently on American radio stations, and his view has not changed.
He believes that we are in for some hard times, as indeed many of the experts are saying.
One thing I did think, though, and this is not about Gerald Salente, but I'm thinking about the other experts, the ones who work for banks and financial institutions and governments.
How many of them a year ago were saying that we were going to be in for the kind of hell that subsequently unfolded towards the end of 2008?
Well, I can't remember any.
Perhaps there were some, but I don't remember any.
So equally, those people in governments and financial institutions who are saying we are in for a bad year this year may be just as wrong and things may be all right.
I suppose if we get together and collectively think good thoughts about the economy and our jobs and the state of the world, then things will be okay.
And that's a whole other subject.
Thank you very much for the emails that have kept coming in, even when I haven't been doing shows.
I got one particularly nice email that arrived on Christmas Day.
And it was like a little present.
It was just somebody saying, you know, where's the show?
We missed the show.
And thank you very much for it.
There was another guy who downloads the show for his dad to listen to.
I got an email from a guy who downloads the show to his iPod so that he can listen to the shows on his way to work on the transit system in Chicago.
That's cool.
Another email from a woman in San Diego, California, my favorite city.
And lots of emails from across the UK from regulars who listened to the radio show when it was on national radio and have followed the show on its transition to the internet and various other places where it's appeared.
Thank you very much for the feedback.
Please keep it coming.
Keep your ideas coming.
UnexplainedH at yahoo.co.uk is the email address.
That's unexplainedh at yahoo.co.uk.
And if you're listening to this show now, if you're doing it via iTunes, please go to the website.
Very important that you register a hit on the website.
It's theunexplained.tv.
That's www.theunexplained.tv.
And there's also an easy way from that site.
Just find the orange tab there.
You can email me direct through the site.
Makes it very easy.
And it's just nice to know who's out there.
And the site is still continuing to get response from around the world.
There are people in New Zealand and people in Bangkok and people in Beijing and people in Mauritius and people in the far north of Canada, places like Yellowknife, which I know I've mentioned before, and down in South America and in northern Spain.
People all over the world are discovering this website and this show.
Thank you very much.
Now, as I said on the little message that I posted on the internet on the website a week or so ago, the one thing that we're trying to address is the funding problem.
This is a volunteer effort, as I've said so many times, but we need to be able to cover our costs and things like web hosting, etc., all cost money.
So if you have any ideas about how we might fund this, I'm looking at sponsorship at the moment and also looking at a charging mechanism to charge a small fee for these shows, which would allow me to do more shows and expanded shows and expand the website content and all the things you can do if you've got a little bit of cash behind you.
One of the problems about charging mechanisms, as the experts I believe, call them, is that of course they involve extra coding on the website and some complicated technical measures to allow for payments to be taken in.
So they cost money as well, just setting the thing up.
That said, I'm looking at a whole variety of things to try and take this forward.
You know that I'm committed to this concept.
I love doing this show.
And of course I get a kick out of the fact that you are there wherever you might be in this world of ours.
And this is a cottage industry.
There's no big business involved.
There are no third parties.
There's only me and you.
And that's it.
And there's Graham, my webmaster, in the middle putting it there onto the internet.
And that's it.
Three of us.
Three people.
Well, four, if you count the guy who's downloading the shows for his dad, if you see what I mean.
And that is exciting.
It's a challenge.
And one of the other things that we've championed here on The Unexplained is UK content.
We've had a lot of Americans on, of course, because there are a lot of American potential guests and they're very good whenever we put them on.
But this show is entirely UK.
First up, from a show that I did at City Talk in Liverpool about two months ago is Timothy Goode, UFO expert.
And the subject for that night was Obama in Space.
And we were talking around the whole subject of whether the new president of the USA, Barack Obama, was going to take us any nearer to UFO disclosure.
Was perhaps going to open the X-Files.
A lot of people have hinted that he might.
Well, I had a few guests on that night on City Talk, and some of them weren't exactly negative, but they weren't exactly positive.
So when I put Timothy Goode on, I was astonished at what he said.
Listen to this.
Presidents don't necessarily get all the information.
Sometimes they're briefed on the subject.
Others are not.
I know that.
And the fact that Obama has no military background might present problems.
But you know, the media made a big deal of the fact that the day after he was elected, the day after we had the elections in the U.S. and there was this day of triumph, and then they said now he's having the briefings.
And one or two commentators on various networks said, ha ha, I wonder if they will tell him about UFOs.
That's interesting.
Well, I hope so.
I hope at least he'll get some information because I've recently returned from the United States from a research trip and I definitely get the impression that disclosure has begun.
And not just from the United States government, but from the French government, for example, and from the British government.
As you may know, the Ministry of Defense has released several thousand pages on October the 20th and back in May they released I think 4,000 pages of information.
None of this, I should hasten to add, was top secret.
Most of it was just confidential.
But the fact is that a lot of information is being released.
And I do think that there is disclosure in the works right now.
Now that's interesting because some of the people we've talked to on this radio program don't actually think that we're any closer or much closer to that.
And you think that things are looking much brighter.
Yes, I do.
I don't think we're going to get the whole story by any means, but most definitely from my connections, I have been told that definitely we are being informed about some of the things that have been going on.
Take a step into the unknown if you would.
What do you think they might be willing and able to tell us now?
Well, I don't think we're going to get the most sensitive material, such as the fact that the United States government has been in contact with extraterrestrials since the 1940s.
Are you sure of that?
I'm absolutely 100% sure of that.
Who have you spoken to?
That's the most sensitive secret.
I can talk about that.
And who have you spoken to at what level who's not?
I can't give any names, obviously.
But you're talking about people who are at a fairly high level and they're movers and shakers now, or have been.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And that's the most sensitive aspect of the entire subject, the fact that the United States, you can call it a cabal, if you like.
A government within a government has actually been in contact with certain extraterrestrials because there's not just one species that we have been communicating with, but some of them have definitely established communication.
And another very sensitive aspect is the fact that the United States, this cabal, if you like, has actually developed a very sophisticated spacecraft, which you're not going to hear about for a long time.
As a result of actually, you mentioned reverse technology.
This has been going on since the 1940s.
And is this technology reverse technology?
We have to explain for people who don't know what that means.
That is, a spacecraft crashes like happened at Roswell, they say, and the...
Okay, so we have the technology and we back engineer it, but are you talking about technology that they have given us?
Not technology that we have captured from things that have crashed, but they really.
Both.
Right.
Both.
That's my impression.
Now, in 1993, Ben Rich, who headed the Lockheed Martin Scout Works program, which developed the stealth plane, said in the presence of two friends of mine, and this is well established, it's confirmed by many independent observers, we now have the technology to go to the stars.
That was in 1993, two years before he passed on.
And he said, these programs are locked up in black budgets and there's just no way.
It would take an act of God, he said, to get this out to the civilian programs.
And that we now have the technology to go to the stars, to fly among the stars.
That was in 1993.
And since, from independent sources, I've confirmed that the United States inner government, if you like, has actually acquired or developed very highly sophisticated alien technology to the extent that they are now able to travel among the stars.
Now, it sounds absolutely outrageous.
It sounds astonishing.
It does.
I think there's something to that.
I really do think there's something to that.
And I think increasingly it's going to be very difficult to differentiate between actual E.T. craft and some highly sophisticated Earth-based or developed craft, if you like.
Now, you think that Barack Obama may move us in the direction of getting to know a little bit more about this?
I haven't the faintest idea what he knows about the subject, quite frankly.
Whatever he knows, you think he might move us a little way.
I wonder if that will happen because it is inevitable that people are going to find out because people work on these things and somebody one day will talk, perhaps somebody in a deathbed confession or whatever.
People are, and it's absolutely quite possible that he may be the president to bring this information forward.
As you probably are aware, several presidents have been well informed, and I've mentioned several names before.
But what I would like to say is that my own opinion that disclosure is happening right now is that I, for example, was interviewed for ABC News.
A program that I think it went out on something like October the 20th.
It was a seven-minute program about the subject in general, and I had a minute or two.
Nick Pope, who headed the MOD's UFO research project.
Also on this show tonight, in fact.
He was on the program as well.
And for the first time, this was a news program.
A lot of people saw it throughout the States.
Nothing was ridiculed.
It was all positive.
Secondly, in September this year, ABC News came out with a 90-minute special on UFOs.
90-minute program.
And instead of the usual debunking at the end of this documentary, quite the contrary.
There were people debunking the evidence.
But for the first time ever, the debunking evidence was absolutely rebutted very, very successfully by other people.
So I see this as a positive step forward.
Furthermore, I have been asked to participate in another one-hour documentary by ABC television.
And they have at least one other in the pipeline.
So to me, I think disclosure has begun.
The fact that it's not accompanied by the usual ridicule and cynicism.
And if you subscribe to the theory that when these programs happen in this way and when news is delivered in this way, somebody is behind it.
There is some degree of news management going on.
Absolutely.
You're absolutely on the nail there.
Because I'll give you another example.
ABC News is, I think you probably agree, sort of part of the establishment news.
The fact that they're taking this stuff seriously and not rubbishing it is very important.
Well, in America, ABC is almost the BBC.
Exactly.
The same sort of thing.
Now, also, Nick Pope had a long, very positive article saying that these things are real, they've landed, people have touched them, and so on and so forth.
This appeared about two months ago in the New York Times.
The New York Times is very much establishment.
And there's no way that article would have had an airing as it did unless disclosure has been given the go-ahead.
So somebody, somewhere, has given a guarded green light to taking us down this path.
No question about it at all.
So by the end of 2009, as we look ahead a year from now, how much more do you think we might know?
How much more enlightened might we be?
Well, I don't know.
I'm not a prophet.
But I think we will be somewhat enlightened.
The problem is, of course, that I'll be going to get the whole story.
I mean, there's no way they can come out with everything.
There's no way.
And as I always say, who's calling the shots?
If there's a liaison program, which I'm convinced there is, and this is at the top of the tree, the most sensitive aspect of the entire subject is the alien liaison program.
As I said even many years ago when I wrote the book Alien Liaison, there's just...
just no way they can come out with all of it and if the aliens are controlling the release of information just just you know imagine the consequences there this is howard hughes city talk 105.9 british ufo writer timothy good on the subject of obama in space and he as you heard is quite optimistic about perhaps a little more disclosure in this year of 2009 than we've had up to now you know that we've talked on this show about
various governments opening up their files and about the prospects of having all that information that it is believed is being kept by the USA, or at least the theorists say is being kept by the USA, actually seeing the light of day.
Well, maybe it might happen or might start to happen this year.
Let's see what happens as the year unfolds.
Going now to our next guest, who is in the northeast of England.
We've talked to him before on the show.
He was one of the first guests on the first or second online version of The Unexplained.
His name is Darren Ritson.
He's part of an organization called Northeast Ghost Inspectors, and he's got a book out about his ghost hunting activities.
He's online now.
Darren, thank you for coming on The Unexplained again.
No problem.
I think it was about two and a half years ago, wasn't it, when you were last on?
Yes, it was.
And you've got a very special place in the chronicles of this show because you were one of the very first guests when I took this thing from the radio to online, and I wasn't sure how it was going to go, and you were very, very nice about it, and you helped me through it, so thank you for that.
No problem.
And there are people, did you know that there are people still listening to those early shows now, so you are still being heard?
Oh, that's brilliant news.
Now, in the two and a bit years that have, you know, that have gone since you and I last talked, what have you been up to?
Well, it's been more the same, really.
Travelling around the country, doing me overnight investigations, visiting different areas, different cities, counties, popping into places, yeah, there and everywhere, calling in, just generally chatting to people, interviewing people, digging out ghost stories, researching them, and seeing what else I can find about this.
Because this was the thing that impressed me when we talked last time, I mean, you almost do this like a detective, you're almost like a policeman, where you travel to places, and you make notes on everything that you see, and it's all done in a very methodical way.
Well, I think it has to be.
I think if you're going to do a job, you might as well go the whole hog and, you know, do it probably.
I've always believed if something's worth doing, you've got to do it well, especially in regards to, I think, paranormal research, because it's so, it's so...
Well, it's so easily shot down, isn't it?
If you get something not quite right, and if your research isn't thorough, then somebody's going to say, well, actually, that's not true.
Well, yeah, that's more or less what I was going to say.
It's not an exact science yet, so I think if you're going to research something like this, I mean, I believe it's like Science of Tomorrow.
I've always said that ghosts, polygaste activities, and polygaste activities in the things like that are personally believed in the future, I'm not sure when, but in the future, there will be a rational explanation for it.
Polygasts will be explained, and I've got a few, well, I've got a theory on that.
And I think ghosts may be explained as well.
At the minute, it's paranormal.
Soon, maybe it's not today, maybe it's not tomorrow, maybe it's 50 or 100 years' time.
But one of these days, I predict paranormal will become normal.
You know, I think you're probably right.
Probably, what, 300 years ago, 400 years ago, the idea of electricity would have seemed to somebody then paranormal.
So who knows what we'll appreciate in the future?
That's a great analogy.
And the simple fact is, that's the exact analogy I use when I'm talking to people.
In fact, I've got it written down in a new manuscript I'm working with a fellow investigator.
Do you know what?
I think it's paranormal.
I think I knew.
I think it's in my head somewhere.
You never know.
Hey, listen, for people who didn't hear you last time, how did you get into all of this, Darren?
Started as a youngster.
As a child growing up, I had a few paranormal experiences in my home where I used to live.
A couple of weird things occurred.
There was a child that apparently used to live in my house before my family moved in, and that child, unfortunately, was killed on the railway lanes that run behind my house.
Subsequently, over the years, the lanes have been lifted, and now it's just a walkway, you see.
And my father actually seen a ghost of a young boy, I'm not sure if it's the young boy, but he's seen a ghost of a young boy on the railway line, or what was the railway line.
And he often heard footsteps in the house upstairs when my brother and I were in bed.
He used to holler up the stairs, you know, and tell me to get back to sleep.
When somebody would obviously be asleep and would be snoring my heads off, you know.
And one night I actually woke up and actually saw a figure of a young lad standing in my doorway.
Now, that was just one of a few incidences I had.
And how old were you then, Darren?
Oh, I would have been in my early teens.
Okay, well, you know, when I was that kind of age, if anything like that had happened to me, and in some ways I wish it had, but it never did, I'd have been terrified.
I really, I'd have been out of that house and down the street so fast.
Well, the thing is, in this particular case, I remember waking up, I remember looking at the thing, and I remember trying to put my t-shirt back on for some reason.
I mean, it was a hot baking night, I'd kick my t-shirt off, and I thought to myself, well, never mind the fact there might be a ghost standing in my doorway, I thought I'd better get my t-shirt on.
I put my t-shirt back on, went back to sleep, woke up the next morning, and I thought to myself, hmm, that was a bit of a strange dream.
When I jumped out of bed, my t-shirt was on, inside out and back to front.
So I'm thinking to myself, yes, I did get up through the night.
Yes, I did see something in my doorway.
But I'm not quite sure if it was a dream or if it was actually a ghost boy.
You see, so the way I've looked at that incident there is the way I like to look at all the incidences that happen.
You've always got to look for the rational explanation.
You've got to be very, very critical in your research as well, you see.
So how many years ago was that then?
Oh, good grief.
I'm getting really old these days.
It's at least a couple of decades, isn't it?
Yes, yes.
I must have been about, I said my early teens, probably about 10 or 11.
All right, well, when you think back on it now, do you think there's any possibility that it didn't happen?
No, it did happen.
It did happen.
But whether I was in sort of sleep state or if I had actually woken up and seen this thing, I still don't know to this day.
That was one of the experiences.
And do you think that this boy targeted you, was actually coming for you to see you, or was just there anyway?
Well, as a thought occurred at the time, because the bedroom I actually slept in as a child growing up was this child's bedroom when he was alive, I actually thought to myself, perhaps it's him looking at me and thinking to myself, what are you doing in my bedroom?
Who's this in my room?
Do you know what I mean?
That was the thought that I got at the time.
Because this is, as so many of these cases tend to be, don't they?
This was the case of a tragic and sudden death.
Yes, it was.
And so for the kid, I would imagine, crossing over to whatever there might be on the other side, it's a sudden shock.
And sometimes they can't accept, if we accept there are spirits, they can't accept that that's happened and they think that they're still on this earthly plane.
Yes, just getting on with that normal everyday lives, just getting on with things that they would normally have done in their life, you know.
Perhaps in this case, he was just standing at the door of his bedroom, which he might have done.
And as far as you know, is that ghost, that presence or whatever it might have been, is it still around that house?
Well, that's another funny thing.
My mom, my mother, who lives there still at this address, she's lived there 20, 30 years now, well, 35, 40 years even, and she's never experienced a thing at that house.
But my father has, and I have, and my brother hasn't, you see, but my mother hasn't either.
So do you think it's something to do, do you reckon, Darren, that it's something to do with, like we said, that whatever it is might have been targeting you, perhaps you're just more sensitive and so is your dad.
Maybe so.
Maybe that's where I'd get it from.
Like I said, I'm not saying I'm a full-on medium or a psychic.
I believe just every now and again you can tune in.
And I may have got that from my father said, because he did tell us a lot of ghost stories as a child growing up.
And when I asked him about them in later life, he said, yes, they were all true stories.
And so my father's had a lot of experiences.
Isn't it funny that in that kind of environment, and I think we're probably of roughly the same kind of vintage, my dad told me a lot of ghost stories about old Liverpool as well.
There seemed to be, you know, in previous decades, there seemed to be, you know, although we think of those eras as being very straight-laced and people didn't want to talk about those things, in fact they were happening and people were talking about them.
I think it's pretty odd to come up with someone what you've said there, to be honest.
I think you've just hit the nail sort of right on the head.
It's never a troll word said.
I mean, still to this day, I mean, even more so these days, what with TV programmes and entertainment programmes on the telly showing all these ghost hunting, people running around in the dark, I think it's reawakened.
I mean, it was already thriving back in the day, many, many years ago.
There was an interest out there.
But I think with programmes like the programmes that are shown on TV these days, it's just, I mean, it's now global.
But don't you think, Darren, as somebody who investigates ghosts as you do, and I know you've done this for quite a few years now, that those TV programmes don't always do you a lot of favours because they're very theatrical.
It's often like a show.
And sometimes you're very aware that they haven't really found anything, but they're trying very hard to listen for a little knock or a bump or something like that, which may or may not be something.
But sometimes the evidence that they find is really not very much.
Well, that's very true.
But it depends on sort of which one of these programs we're referring to.
There's one in particular that goes on week after week after week after week.
And every time they go somewhere, the phenomena gets better and better and better.
And now, I've got mixed views on this because personally, I think it doesn't happen like that everywhere you go.
Everywhere you go, every investigation you do, things are happening, they're being pelleted with bricks, you know, recording voices.
Everything's happening.
But on the other hand, I've had a lot of stuff like that happen to me.
So I believe that, yes, it can happen.
I know it can happen.
It's happened to me.
So sometimes I think to myself, well, why can't it be happening to them?
So I don't doubt them in that respect.
But in the other respect, I think like when I talk about my books, when you read all my investigations in my books, I think what people have to understand is if there's 25 investigations written up in my book, I've probably carried out 100 investigations to get those 25.
So what you've got to have is a lot of patience.
Yes, indeed.
A lot of patience.
Sitting around in dark rooms, dark, uncomfortable, cold conditions, waiting around for hours on end when normally, nine times out of ten, nothing will happen.
And when you go to a place, what kind of gear do you take with you?
Do you have like these electromagnetic meters and tape recorders and stuff like that?
Yeah, we've got a few of them.
We've got night vision video cameras.
We've got a good CCTV system set up which gets linked to a laptop computer.
So we monitor a few rooms at once at the same time there.
We keep it basic, we'll keep it simple.
We're taking torches, cameras, notepad, and pen.
We'll go in with what five sensors.
Some people go in claiming they've got a six.
Come to us.
But we'll just go in and see if we can document anything anomalous.
And what do you think is the best gear?
I mean, do you think that your own senses are actually better than any of the equipment?
You know, your own feelings about a place.
It can be sometimes.
I really do.
Yes.
I think they can be.
If you just go in with a part of...
If you just go in with a pen and a pad of paper, a torch, you know, and just go in, see what you feel, see what you pick up.
Having said that, that's not very scientific friendly for all of the scientists who say we want answers.
And does it matter to you to get the scientific evidence down?
Does it matter?
You know, if you've felt something, you've all seen something.
Does it really matter if you don't have the pictures?
Well, it doesn't, not nowadays.
It used to, when I first started out, my main goal, my main objective was I must prove this.
But after years and years of research and after years of putting evidence forward and telling people this has happened, that's happened.
And at the end of the day, no one's going to believe it anyway.
No one believes it anyway, to be honest.
I don't know why.
But if you get a good photograph of a ghost, you'll always get a waste kit on a PC out and say, I'm knocking one of them up.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it?
Because they're so easy to fake that, you know, there might be genuine photographs out there, but the problem is telling the difference between a fake and a real one is hard.
Well, we're having a bit of trouble with that at the minute, actually, with some critics for another book we wrote, I think which we're going to talk about later.
But in regards to the evidence we got, there's people posting stuff on their websites and they're saying things like, look, I have duped this photograph.
I have duplicated this piece of evidence.
Therefore, the original evidence must be faked.
But our point is, we've never said at all during any of this time that the stuff we've produced, excuse me, cannot be reproduced.
We've never said that this cannot be redone.
What we are seeing is this evidence that we've given you, these scratches, this bottle balancing on edge, which we'll go into later, this is...
Is this the famous case of the South Shields poltergeist that you're talking about?
It is.
All right, well, let's talk about that now, because this, I think you believe, and certainly from what I've heard about it, is your biggest investigation.
Well, it is, yes.
It's the biggest by four.
It's the longest by four and the most intense by four.
And I really don't think, to be honest, that I'll ever go an investigation like this one again.
I think politicized cases like this are very, very few and far between.
We must have been very, very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.
How did you hear about it?
Where I work, there's a lady I know.
She's got a friend who's got a daughter.
Now, it was her daughter that was having the problems at home.
Because I'm sort of well known at work with the ghost work that I do.
This lady was talking to my lane manager basically who said, you know, my friend's daughter's got a ghost.
So my lane manager said, ah, well, you know, there's a lad upstairs who's interested in this sort of thing, deals with that sort of stuff.
And basically, it went from there.
So the lady came up to me, my lane manager, and said, You've got a ghost, you're having a ghost.
And I thought, ah, brilliant, yeah, we'll go again.
Because nine times out of ten, I mean, you yell this all the time.
I've got a ghost, I've got a ghost, this happens, that happens.
A lot of the time, when you go to the actual houses in question, you can give them natural explanations for what's going on.
Okay, so this came to you at work.
What was the story that you were told?
Well, I was told that there was a couple that was living in a house in South Tyneside and they were experiencing some quite bewildering activity in the home.
Things like bottles of perfume after shaving, stuff were being found inside the bath, taps were being turned on, doors were being closed, found the front door open a number of times.
And at first, as normal, the couple thought that they were winding each other up.
You know, you're taking the mechanism.
Well, the last thing you want to believe is that there's anything sort of paranormal going on.
Well, that was it.
It started off quite low level and it just progressed slowly to the point where they became convinced that there was something odd going on in the house.
Now, this would have been in December 2005.
In the new year, 2006, the activity kept on going.
So eventually they got in a local vicar or a priest who came in, done whatever he was supposed to have done.
So they were that concerned about it all that they brought in a vicar, a priest, to do an exorcism?
That's all they tried, yes.
Yes.
And it didn't work.
As normal, no, it didn't.
No.
It's not very often when you get with a polargeist case, like a priest will come in and exercise the polargeist.
And there's reasons for that, which wouldn't grow in too soon.
But he came in and then he left.
Done his business and then he left.
And there was a lull.
He quieting down for a fortnight.
They thought it was great.
Basically, after a fortnight, things started happening again.
So they got a little bit more concerned.
Well, what kind of state were these people in?
Because in poltergeist cases that I've read about, quite often the people who have to live with these things are often very distressed by them.
Yes, they are.
Yes, they are.
And I think the poltergeist's main goal, the poltergeist's main objective is once they've got them on this sort of slippery slope to stress, then it keeps its activity going, it keeps them in a perpetual state of fear.
So do you believe that whatever this thing might have been was feeding on the energy of the people in the house?
Yes, and the fear, and a number of other things.
It's an incredible concept to think that this thing can come from wherever it is it comes from, which we think was a human focus who was within the house.
And it does the things that it does.
I mean, if you read the book, when people read what we've seen, what we've experienced, what we're documented in this house, to the believers, it'll make your hair stand on end.
To the sceptics, well, they'll just laugh in my face.
Give me some examples.
What happened?
Well, I've had a few different occasions in the house.
I've had doors opening and closing for her.
As if it's welcoming we're in.
We walk up the stairs, the door opens.
We walk in, the door closes behind us.
I've had messages left for us on, I think we're called Magna Doodle Boards.
It's a Chinese doodle board.
It's like an actual sketch tape thing with a pen.
And what did the messages say?
Basically, tell them we'll leave well alone and get the hell out.
And did those messages, I think this is important, did they appear while you were there or while you had a video camera recording them?
Or did they just, did the people in the house say, well, we've had this thing appear?
No, well, it started off with them saying that.
They said they were getting messages and they were like trying to communicate with this thing.
This was way into the actual case mind.
By now, we'd sort of convinced them to become investigators and document things as they were happening.
Although they were seriously stressed at the time and frightened of the thing, they were very brave and we take off to this family for doing what they did because they played a large part in helping us document this amazing phenomenon.
So they were able, and I'm not sure I could do this, but they were able to keep their heads and note down what was happening around them.
They made a diary, which we kind of asked them to do.
We said, look, if we're going to get to the problem of this, we're going to understand what's going on.
We need to know exactly what's happening as much as we can.
Well, quite often, as you said, and as we've heard before, the focus of this thing is somebody young within a house.
It normally is, yes, but there are exceptions to the rule.
In this case, we found, we believe to be the focus to be the gentleman who lived in the house, who was in his early to mid-20s.
He had gone under a severe amount of stress in the past, in his life, and it seemed it was coming back literally to haunt him.
Obviously, I'm not going to go into what it was that he was suffering, but we surmised, we came to the conclusion, this is at the end of an 11-month infestation, mate.
11 months.
Now, nobody polygates that around for four to six weeks period.
So these people had to put up with it for almost a year.
Almost a year.
This is why this case is so big, you see.
This is why this case is getting so much interest from the legs of the Gross Club of Great Britain.
So Darren, do you think that this energy, this thing that was doing whatever was happening in that house, was it coming from this guy or was it being siphoned towards this guy?
We believe it was coming from him.
See, there's a modern theory these days about what a polargeist is.
The more common, more accepted theory these days is that the polar geast energy is an energy, it's a force that's released from a disturbed or a stressed individual that's either undergone or is still undergoing a certain amount of pressure.
So we believe that, well, I say we, it's a theory that's been around for quite a while now.
I'm just sort of like agreeing with this.
The theory goes that this person, whoever the focus may be, will be going under a certain amount of stress and cannot release that stress in a normal way, in a normal outlet.
Like, say, for example, if I was seriously annoyed, if I was seriously angry about something, I have a temporary tantrum, I punch a wall, I kick a door, I go to the gym.
But these are people who don't do that, so they find another way that we don't necessarily understand to get rid of all that energy.
Well, basically, the theory goes that it builds up within them till it gets to the point where it can't go anywhere else.
It sort of boils over like a pan of milk, literally.
And this energy is somehow released as a form of psychic energy, and it's called recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis or recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis.
And did you ever feel in the time that you investigated this that you were in any danger?
Yes.
Yes, I did.
But at the time, we weren't going to let that show.
It was a case of let's just grill and bear it, let's help this family.
But there was an occasion when I thought to myself, like, oh my god, just what the hell are we dealing with here?
What is this thing capable of?
Well, if it went on for 11 months and you were documenting the whole thing, I suppose you must have all thought, when and how is this going to end?
How did it end?
Well, excuse me, normally when we went into this house, it had already been going on for about four or five months.
So we were thinking that we were going to get the tail end of it.
We didn't.
As it happens, we ended up going in more or less when it was just warming up.
Because we didn't know that at the time, we were saying to the family, quite naively, or honestly, we were quite genuine in our sort of approach when we said, look, sit it out, it's going to finish soon.
If it's a polygaste, then it's been gone on for five months, as it is, four or five months, then it has to burn itself out soon.
Because polygasts are very, very short-lived.
And so, do you think when you went in there and you told those people this thing is going to end soon, it was almost like a challenge to it?
Yes, well, I think you're right there as well, because there's certain other things that occurred during the investigation which got responses from the thing.
We conducted experiments and we said things, albeit subconsciously, you know, when we're just talking to the family, and it produced phenomena for us, as if it was saying to us, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, this is me, I'm doing this sort of thing.
Because there was one occasion when we went into the channel's bedroom at the house and we found two cuddly toys set up on a table.
Now, one cuddly toy had a carbon knife in its leg resting against its paw.
My God.
And the blade was over the other one's through it.
So the first thing Meg Halliwell and I, who I co-investigated the case with, the first thing we looked at each other and we thought, this is set up.
This has to be set up.
And this is said in the book.
I must emphasise that because we're getting a lot of stick and a lot of aggro.
Well, how could you prove that it wasn't a setup?
Well, we couldn't.
We just had to take the family's word for it.
And at the time, the family was and still is an honest, reliable, you know, trustworthy.
And as you said, all of them were in a state of fear about this thing.
So it's very, very hard to fake that for 11 months, I would think.
Well, the thing is, as well, we had to consider the fact that there could have been a little bit of foul play.
We had to.
There's no way we could have gone into that house and just trusted people from the word go.
We got to know them, we got to know them quite well.
And at the end of the day, even though we thought we knew them quite well, we still had that thought in the back of our head that someone's taking us for a fool.
Now, this is all spelled out in the book as well.
All right, so what happened at the end of it?
How did it resolve itself?
Well, basically, I think it was a combination of a number of factors.
One, I think it just ran out of steam after 11 months or so.
It just finished.
Two, we were advised by a lecturer from Sutherland University who's into these sort of sag matters.
He seemed to think that there was an electrical sort of interference.
He believed that your TV, your video, your hi-fi.
He believed that if you left them on standby, then it could feed from the dormant electricity.
So we were told, try turning them all off.
So, I mean, it's almost like something from Star Trek.
This guy believed that this thing was feeding on power, energy, and if you take the power away, it can't feed itself.
Well, that's it.
That's one of the main principles, yes.
But we also believed it fed on fear and it could feed on electrical energy.
There's a lot of theories bowling about like this.
So what we thought we'd do is we'd try and get the family more or less not frightened.
In the end, they weren't frightened.
They were just paid fit of the thing.
Right?
That was it.
They weren't frightened.
They just wanted it gone.
So I think, in respect, after 11 months, it wasn't getting the energy it needed from the fear.
And it gradually wound itself down.
What an amazing case.
It really is, actually.
And to be quite honest, I'm not sure if you've heard of it, you probably have, the Enfield Polargaste, 1977-78, investigated by Guyland Playfair, Maurice Gross of the Society for Psychical Research.
Well, not long after the case we had finished, we contacted the SPR.
I'm a current member, have been for years now.
And we knew we were putting the book together.
So we thought we'd contact Guy Playfair to see if he fancied reading up the manuscript and maybe he's contributing an introduction to the book for him.
He read it and he thought it was astounding.
And subsequently, he wrote the introduction to the book, which was absolutely amazing.
Because we never thought we'd get the likes of Guy Playfair to write an intro for a book.
Darren, I have a feeling they're going to make a film about this.
Well, at the end of the day, I don't know what to say about that.
If they do, then that's great.
But at the end of the day, I mean, we've been sort of the skeptics have had a go about that as well.
We've actually been accused of writing the book up in a way in order to get a movie, which I have to say is absolute Can you swear on that?
Well, I would rather that you didn't, but I know probably the word that you were about to use.
Well, it's that way.
It's absolutely watch wallet.
It's trash.
There was nothing further from my main.
But I suppose you know that people are always going to say it's a fake, you're a fake.
And I suppose all you can do is say, well, I am telling you the truth.
Whether you choose to believe it or not is really a matter for you.
Well, that's it.
At the end of the day, if I've got to be honest, maybe I was hoping to convert a few sceptics.
Now, I don't really give a damn to be.
The other thing is, of course, you know, I know you've got a full-time job and you've got, you know, a young daughter and you have a life.
You know, you wouldn't spend all this time, I wouldn't have thought, faking up stuff to maybe get yourself in the local papers.
You just wouldn't have the time.
You wouldn't have the inclination to do it, would you?
I wouldn't have thought.
No, I could be wrong.
You wouldn't have.
No, you see, as this politicist was getting juicy, as it was starting to warm up, my child was actually a month old.
She had just been born a month earlier.
Do you know what I mean?
So the vast majority of my time I spent dedicating to investigating this case.
I spent a lot of time at the family home with them, supporting them, as did make.
You know, you had to believe in this thing and the investigation that you were doing.
Again, I'm only saying what I think and what I feel.
You know, you had to be genuine about it because I don't think most people would not abandon, not abandon, but not give as much attention to a one-month-old child for something that was just a joke.
Well, that's certainly it.
I mean, you'd have to be a very strange person to do that, I would have thought.
Well, that's it.
That's it.
But at the end of the day, that's what happened.
I mean, my girlfriend's very understanding, would committed myself to looking after.
I mean, don't get us wrong.
I mean, I didn't abandon my chain altogether.
I walked through home here and then, and, you know, I did go to my job.
But there was like times at weekends and times when I took time off work to go across.
And it sounds like you felt a bit of a responsibility to those people in that house.
Well, we did.
We did.
Like Guy Playfair said in his forward to our book, what he actually says is this.
He says, if you have a heart attack or you need medical assistance, you'll phone for an ambulance.
If your house catches fire, you'll phone 999 for the fire brigade.
When people get infested by these things, these real entities or whatever it is they are, these mischievous swains, with all of a better word, when people get infested by these, they've got no one to turn to, really.
There isn't an emergency poltergeist service.
Well, that's true, because apart from the odd psychical researcher and person like yourself, a lot of organizations would just say, you know, well, you're fantasizing.
Well, that's it.
Well, that's it.
And I think at the end of the day, I've got to blow my trumpet to you, to be honest, because I've got to turn around and say that they were very lucky to get the investigators that did.
Because I know a lot of investigators in my area, and to be quite honest, without sounding too derogatory, they're just hobbyists, the weekend thrill seekers.
The best part.
Not all of them, I mean, that but they're just out for thrills in the night, running around, and then they go home.
They don't do any work, they don't do any follow-up research, they do nothing until the next case.
And I think if they'd got somewhere there main, I really don't think the case would have gotten anywhere that would have either run or it wouldn't have been documented the way it has.
I think because I brought in Make Halliwell to investigate with us, now he's a seasoned researcher, he's been into this for like 35, 40 years.
I thought I need someone with me who's got some good.
Well, it sounds to me like he gave you the idea and the thought that eventually could well have cracked the case.
Well, he could have, he could have, because Make has actually got Native American heritage.
And he's on his father's side.
It goes way the way back to, I think it's Louisiana, some tribe across in the States.
And you went over then a few years ago and you spent some time with them learning that we enlightened stuff.
And he sees the world through Native American eyes rather than that we are seeing through the world through May Christianized.
And of course to a lot of cultures, Native Americans included, this stuff is not out of the ordinary.
This stuff is part of everyday life.
It certainly is.
It certainly is.
As far as I'm aware, it is, yes.
But what we actually done as well is we done, we tested out a Native American, one of the smudge and ritual ceremonies to try and bring this thing under control.
And we managed to do that, believe it or not, to a certain extent.
Basically, by doing what Make did, essentially, we began to push its buttons rather than it pushing ours.
So gradually, bit by bit, you got control.
Well, I think they should definitely make a movie about this one, and people can judge for themselves.
So that was the 2008 book, Darren.
What about the new book that's out now in 2009?
Tell me about that.
No, no, sorry.
That Paula Gates book was 2007.
Okay, so what about the new one that you got out now?
The new one, In Search of Ghosts.
Yes, that's just recently been released.
And as we were chatting earlier on in the interview, yeah, I was on about me traveling the left and breadth of the country, visiting places and things and talking to people, going to pubs and clubs, etc.
Well, this book is sort of like a culmination of about three or four years worth of travelling and investigating.
And I go to places like Devon, go to central London, up to Scotland to Ayr, up to the Highlands, places like that where I've been on holiday and I've purposely went.
I go out and I dig out places, you know, I go to castles.
Do you go on holiday deliberately to do investigations?
Yes.
And what does your partner think about that?
She's great, to be honest.
She sounds it.
But what we'll do is when we're out and about, I'll sort of split my time with her and then, you know, like on an afternoon we'll do this.
God, I think you'd have to do that.
A lot of women wouldn't wear any of that.
They want all the attention themselves.
Like in the morning, I'll go and visit the castle and then we'll meet up in the afternoon and we'll do something together.
Okay, now our time is limited now.
So tell me, without spoiling it for people who are going to buy the book, the most or one of the most interesting cases in this book.
Go on.
Right, right.
Well, I have to say, every chapter is quite riven, to be honest.
The case studies, more interesting than the actual site visits to like different places.
Case studies are relatively good.
I might also add that some of the stuff you may read in there, you might not believe either, but I promise you it happened.
There's a number of things which stick out to me, which I remember.
And there was one instance at a manor house in Lincolnshire.
I can't even remember where it is now.
Across near Blackpool Way, Lancashire.
Yes.
It's a big haunted house in Lancashire.
Now, I can't name this place, unfortunately, because it went into the book on the condition that it wasn't named.
Well, that's fine, but what happened then?
Well, basically, we went into this house and we carried out our investigations and we made some quite astonishing EVPs, electronic device phenomena recordings.
Doing an experiment in the great hall area, we all sitting, we're all sitting quietly, you know, calling out.
And when we listen back to our recordings, you can hear us on the tape on the recording completing our experiment.
But in the background, you hear two distinct voices.
And it's not any of the investigators.
And the first voice speaks in a sort of growl, it's like a gruff voice, and it just sounds like, Dare come the dead, right?
Which I'll roughly translate, dear come the dead.
That's what we believe it says.
The second voice follows immediately after, and it's of a lady, and she says, Bring me the Bible.
So when we heard that, obviously, hair went on end, goosebumps.
Oh, my word.
Because every time you get something new like that, it sends shivers down your Spain.
Okay, well, I suppose the acid test of that, and often is with EVPs, is if you got those recordings, did they back up any kind of story about that location?
Well, there's an interesting postscript, actually, because we did actually find out that one of the former ladies in the house was really anti-ghost, anti-spiritual, and she was very religious.
Do you know what I mean?
Ah, so she would say, if anybody would say, bring me the Bible, then she'd be the person to do it.
Then that would be her.
But we had another theory, like that, you know, it's like, there come the dead, right?
It's as if we're saying spirits come forward, give us a sign.
It could be that a former resident of the house who is now in spirit, who is getting on with their everyday life, who doesn't believe they are dead, could be seeing us trying to bring forward spirits.
And it could actually be them speaking in all tongues, saying, dare come the dead.
In other words, don't you dare come forward.
How fascinating is that?
You know what I mean?
Like investigations like this, it brings up more questions than what you have before you go in.
Now, Darren, I'm going to have to wrap it up now, but when you die, and we all have to die at some point, we don't know when it'll be, are you planning on coming back as a ghost?
Yes, I think I might say yes, because fingers crossed, I'm going to go long before my beautiful little child, long before.
And ideally, if I've got a chance to come back and keep my eyes on her and see her through her life, then I will do that.
I suppose the way to do it is to be, you know, one of the first to tell people now, your daughter, when she gets a bit older, your partner now, what you plan to do, and then we'll see if you do it.
And I hope you're around for a lot of years, Darren.
I said, I hope you're around for a lot of years, though, before this happened.
I think you should say that because I've actually been having a bit of trouble lately.
What?
I've been having a bit of trouble.
And yesterday, I was referred to the hospital where I had to have an ECG and a chest x-ray.
And I'm waiting for my results.
I'm sure you'll be fine, Darren.
Let me know.
Well, I'm fingers crossed.
I think it's very common that people get...
Let me tell you.
I've got a very precautionary measure.
I think you're under too much stress with all these investigations.
Well, I'm hoping I'm just too fat and overweight.
Hey, listen, does it make you feel any easier, though, having seen what you've seen and knowing what you know, that we all have to go sometime?
Does it make you feel any easier about the process?
Not really.
Sometimes no, because I think at the end of the day, we still haven't got the answers, and nobody still knows for sure.
And I think at the end of the day, I say the end of the day quite a lot earlier.
In the end of the day, I think we're only going to find out when we actually pass over.
Possibly, like I said earlier on, a couple of hundred years' time, if we have found answers, then this paranormality will have become normal and it'll be understood.
So we'll know one way or the other.
I just don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime.
Well, you know, that takes us back right to the beginning of our conversation.
That was amazing.
I want to talk to you for hours.
Thank you very much.
And I do hope that we meet face to face one of these days.
We've talked about two of your books.
If people want to know about you, how do they find out about you?
Well, if they've got an internet, they can just go on to the internet and type in Wraithscape.
This is W-R-A-I-T-H-S-C-A-P-E Wraithscape.
There's a full URL, but it's quite long.
I can't quite remember it, to be honest.
But if you type in Wraithscape in any search engine, it brings up all our links to all our websites.
Okay, so that's Wraithscape.
Wraithscape.
What is that?
Wraithscape, that's just the name of our website.
Meg and I have put a website together dedicated to the work we've done.
So if you type in that name, Wraithscape, then there'll be links to you and your books.
If you type in Wraithscape, Darren Ritzen, or something like that, yeah, it'll come up.
But like I said, the Socialist Polygaste is still available.
There's just been another print run sort of made.
It's went through a few print runs already by other accounts, so It's not doing too bad.
So, if you want one, I would suggest getting on there because the print runs go really quick.
Oh, good commercial, Darren.
And I'll tell you what, you know, whatever the sceptics may say, people are buying the book, aren't they?
Well, if they're skeptical, then we'll welcome that criticism.
We really do.
As long as it's sort of mature and it's reasonable.
If it's just don't rate ad hominem attack, then we're not interested.
We're not entity in it.
All right, well, listen, I hope it's rubbish.
I understand.
Now, listen, I hope you're around for many, many years to keep doing your investigations.
I've really enjoyed our chat and hope we talk again soon.
The man I've been talking to is Darren Ritson, and he is working in the northeast of England and doing some very sincere research.
You tell me what you think about that.
Thank you very much for listening to The Unexplained this edition.
Thank you to my webmaster, Graham Mullins, for his work, and also to Martin for the theme tune.
And join us again very soon here on the internet for another edition of The Unexplained with me, Howard Hughes.
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