All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 28, 2010 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
58:11
Edition 49 - UFO Sightings

This Edition showcases the extensive and detailed UFO research by retired BirminghamPoliceman John Hanson and his research-partner Dawn Holloway. Hear their amazing and, in many cases,previously-unheard accounts of UK sightings and contacts.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world, on the internet, by webcast and by podcast.
My name is Howard Hughes, and this is The Unexplained.
A show that is going from strength to strength.
I have had an amazing email inbox, mostly from North America and Canada.
Thank you so much, Linda Moulton Howe, who was kind enough at herfiles.com, to link to my website after the show we did together.
You seem to have loved it.
It seems to have given you pause for thought.
And I said at the time that I'd never heard Linda Moulton Howe speak like this, and she is not alone.
I think there are more and more of us who believe that on some level, something is changing and shifting in this world.
Many of us, I'm certainly not clever enough to know, but many of us are aware of something but don't really know what it is.
We talked last time about the demonstration that turned violent in London at a place called Mill Bank, where ultimately a fire extinguisher was thrown towards police.
Thankfully, nobody was badly hurt in any of those disturbances is the only word I can use for them in London, but we had some more of it in the last week.
Not as bad, more widely and more intensively policed than last time.
But I was on duty on a news radio station in London when the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the senior cop in London, said that he anticipated more demonstrations in this upcoming period, and police would have to be ready one way or another to deal with them, to cope with them, and to allow people their right to peaceful protest while also protecting the rest of us to allow us to go about our business every day safely.
So we're into a really interesting time for a whole variety of reasons.
Plus, the finances of the world, certainly Europe, are not looking so good.
At the beginning of this year, end of last year, I had Gerald Salente, American finance guru on, a man who's never off CNN and other places, and he was saying that we're in for all sorts of trouble.
And I have to say, if you listen back to it now, and I want to get Gerald on again, by the sounds of it, he was right.
Because we are in for terrible problems, the Irish economy, very nearly, if we're to believe the reports, went down the pan, as we say here, is having to be bailed out by Europe.
That has caused internal political strife in Ireland, because not everybody agrees with that.
Every Irish person has been saddled with an individual mountain of debt because of this.
The UK cannot afford to let Ireland fail because there is so much mutual trade between the pair of us, although they're going to be buying less from us, I guess, because they simply won't be able to afford it in future.
Ireland is not alone.
If you're listening in North America, you might not know about this stuff.
But the Portuguese have a problem.
To a lesser extent, I understand the Spanish have a problem, and we know that the Greeks have a problem with their economy.
So all of us are tied in here.
The question has to be, do we consider collectively as people, you listening to this and me doing this, that we're being told entirely the truth?
There is a little sneaking part of me that feels that maybe we're not being told the truth by those who lead us.
And maybe the situation we're heading towards is more deep and dark and dire.
I don't want to be a prophet of doom.
That's not what I'm here to do.
But the more I look at all of this, the more I think that may well be the case.
And only time will tell.
In the absence of any special knowledge and any great revelations, only time will tell.
And as we peer into 2011, I'm not sure how we're going to come out of it.
I hope we come out of it okay.
Now, I ended 2009 recording a show in a freeze-up in the UK and looking out of the window and seeing everywhere white with frost.
Guess what?
That's exactly how I'm ending 2010.
A strange circle is life.
We have another big freeze-up in the UK.
Some areas have had a lot of snow.
Some areas are expecting it.
And if you're listening in California, got a lot of listeners on the west coast of the USA now.
Can you imagine a temperature of minus 15 Celsius, which some parts of the UK had overnight, the night before I've recorded this show for you now?
Minus 15 degrees Celsius, which is well sub-zero.
And that's the kind of temperature you get up in the north of Canada.
Places like Yellowknife are well experienced in temperatures of minus 15 and below, but here in the UK, it's unusual.
So what's happening to the weather?
A very early taste of winter in the northern hemisphere by the looks of it.
Thank you so much for your emails.
As I say, I've had a slew of them from North America.
I can't mention everybody, but I can thank all of you.
Thank you so much.
Please keep the feedback coming.
Keep your support coming.
And if you want this independent voice to continue, if you want me to develop this show like I want to quite sincerely for you with Adam Cornwell, my webmaster, please go to the website www.theunexplained.tv.
And if you can, make a donation now.
And if you have, thank you sincerely.
Thank you to some of my emailers.
Celia, thank you for what you said.
Barry in Missouri, I loved your email.
Just imagining you trucking through the night listening to these shows in the U.S. What a kick that gives me.
Please drive carefully.
Robert, thank you.
Mo in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, thank you.
Anne-Marie, thank you for your email.
Chris in Michigan, thank you for yours.
Warren, thank you for that.
Many, many more that I can't get around to, but just one.
Somebody unnamed who emailed from a superb and historic location, Battle Creek in the U.S. I'm so grateful.
And I'm so thrilled that a little show like this one from the United Kingdom is making a breakthrough in the U.S. I won't go on about how I've loved all my life American radio and how I built my career by trying to model myself as best I could as a Brit on those great broadcasters I heard coming out of the U.S. As a kid, it was Casey Kaysom with the American Top 40 booming out of AM radio for the forces in Germany.
And then it became people like our boy Art Bell and Rush Limbaugh and all the greats that I hear.
I even had the great experience, I think I've mentioned this before, of about eight years ago sitting behind Sean Hannity at WABC in New York as he did his show Coast to Coast.
And I was absolutely amazed.
All he knew was that I was some visiting guy from London.
I was working for London's capital radio at the time and I was there covering the second anniversary of 9-11, I think it was.
And I sat behind Sean Hannity, amazed at what the guy does.
So all my life, I've loved American radio, and To think this little guy, Howard Hughes, in the UK, is making a breakthrough in the US is a wonderful thought.
Thank you again for all your emails and for your support.
Keep the feedback coming.
Please keep the donations coming for this independent voice in the wilderness.tv.
This time we come back to the UK and we have some true, good British content for you.
Going to be talking to John Hansen and probably, although I'm not entirely sure about this, it's to be confirmed, TBC, as they say, Dawn Holloway, the authors and researchers of a series of books, the first volume of which is out, the second volume of which is about to be out, called Haunted Skies.
Haunted Skies deals with classic British UFO sightings, including one alleged landing of a craft southeast of London in 1955.
It's great British stuff.
So I'm not going to hold you up anymore.
Just to say thank you as usual to Martin for the theme tune, which I know you love.
Thank you to Adam Cornwell, the Creative Hotspot in Liverpool, for getting the show out to you.
Thank you to you for listening.
Let's cross now to the English Midlands.
And we'll start with John Hanson.
And we may get Dawn Holloway on, too.
We're going to talk about haunted skies.
John, thank you very much for coming on the Unexplained.
Thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to put my point of view to the audience, as it were.
Thank you.
Well, that's what I'm here to do.
That's what the work's all about.
Now, we both have to thank a man called Bob Tibbets, who worked for a long while for the Coventry Evening Telegraph, because I believe he supplied you with some of the data that your books are based on.
That's right.
Well, I got to know Bob some years ago.
He was, in fact, responsible for forming the Coventry UFO Research Group back in the 70s, and he very kindly allowed me access to his group's records.
And over the years, I've got to know Bob, and he's really smashing mad.
Well, yeah, definitely.
The contacts I've had with him, and Bob, if you're listening to this, I know you will be.
Thank you so much for helping me and for your good thoughts about this.
And to a fellow journalist, I wish you all the very best.
But it is a fact, you said that Bob started this in the 70s.
There was a flurry of ufology and UFO interest in this country around that time.
And I think a lot of it was fueled by kids, you know.
I was at school in Liverpool at a comprehensive there called Chesterfield High School.
And we formed a little subgroup of Bufora, the UFO spotting organization there.
And we carried on for a year or two with it.
And I think there were kids all over the country doing that at that time.
I think these days, kids have got so much to occupy them.
They've got their computer games, reality TV shows, and all the rest of it.
Really, that level of interest among children is not so great.
Well, that's rather, unfortunately, I suppose progress, we've moved on.
It's rather sad, though, because in the 70s, of course, there was a magazine called The Magic Saucer, which was run by a lady called Crystal Hogben.
And in fact, she worked from the Kidninster area.
And her magazine was directed at the children.
And again, she's another lady that I've got to know over the years.
And I've been given access to a lot of her material.
And some people would regard it as rather sinister or strange now, but it was amazing the amount of information that those children gave back to her because, of course, UFO sightings still continue to this present day, although perhaps our attitudes have changed towards the subject.
I think our attitudes are changing all the time, but it's interesting.
You're near Birmingham, aren't you?
On the Worcestershire border, sort of Worcestershire, Warwickshire.
It's a place called Alve Church, a few miles from Birmingham.
Yeah, no, well, I worked for Radio Wyvern in Worcester for some years, and also at BRMB in Birmingham, so that area is very much my stamping ground.
But the one thing I was aware of when I worked in that area, I think the Midlands is a bit of a crucible for all of this stuff, because we used to hear UFO sightings from time to time, and especially over the Malvern Hills, people would see things.
Yeah, I do have reports of, I think, over the RSRE, the radio station over at Malvern.
That's right, that's just towards the west of Malvern, isn't it?
The radio signals and research establishments.
I do have quite a few of those from the 70s and also, I think, one from the 50s.
But yeah, it's a fascinating area.
But if I could just say briefly, my interest was triggered off in 1995 when I was still, well, I'd just retired from the police force by something that happened over Birmingham when a UFO was reported by members of the public.
And police officers went to the scene and actually came across this thing hovering above the trees and as a result of what they told me.
That's what triggered off my interest.
Sounds like a bit of a life-changing event.
Tell me about it.
Well, it was.
In fact, it's probably the first time ever I've divulged perhaps the source of the information, but the source of the information was I've always said it was a police officer, but it was in fact my son.
My son was a police constable then, and he was directed to this report of a tadpole-shaped object that had gone overhead on the 19th of January 95.
And he and the policewoman went to the scene and saw this saucer-shaped object hovering above trees.
And really, they were quite frightened.
And then suddenly, it appeared to shrank into itself and disappeared.
Well, I contacted the local papers because I thought, hey, wow, what is this?
I mean, I didn't even know anything about flying saucers or UFOs or anything like that.
I just hadn't got a clue.
But I thought, well, what the hell is this thing?
And I contacted the papers and they later explained it away as a shooting star, which I thought was the most incredible pile of rubbish.
Yes, we've heard that one before, haven't we?
Well, yeah, and I mean, it's just that was one of probably 10,000 that I was to come across over the years of reports involving these objects.
10,000?
Probably, yeah.
All right, so I think you're probably in a good position as a policeman, a police officer, to find out about these things.
My dad was a copper, and you do get to hear things and see things and experience things that are often well out of the ordinary.
I know that for a fact.
Well, all I can say is that I did nearly 30 years with the police force.
I can remember being a young officer in 1967.
I joined the force in 66, the Birmingham City Police.
And if anybody had mentioned flying saucers to me at that time, I would have thought they were absolutely bombing and probably would have detained them under the Mental Health Act or something.
But I found out later that during the, I mean, there was a huge wave of objects seen in October 1967.
67 was a year of prolific UFO activity.
And towards the end of October, the 25th or 26th, there was a terrific amount of sightings of what became labelled as the Flying Cross were seen over England.
And that culminated in the chase by police constable Roger Willey and Clifford Wycott, both of whom I know, chasing this object which was put down, which was explained away as Venus.
And there comes a time in your life when you think, you know, you're not prepared to accept these ridiculous explanations for, you know, if you took one case on its merits, you could perhaps think, well, maybe there is a rational explanation.
But when you look at thousands, you think, well, these people are seeing some pretty strange things.
I don't know what they are, and I don't know where they come from.
But by God, they exist and they're there.
And we have to give thought, don't we?
You said you know these two officers who saw that in 1967 and it was dismissed as being something that we think it probably wasn't, but it was a convenient explanation for somebody at the time.
What we don't think about is the effect that that has on the people who've actually had the guts to go public on this, you know, in later years, in later months afterwards.
Well, that's correct.
In some cases, of course, particularly where people take photographs of UFOs, I'm talking about...
I mean, I've known people that are about to change their names and move hundreds of miles away because of all the ridicule that is and the unwarranted attention that they've got.
Do you think that's the case today, though, John, or do you think things have changed?
I get the sense things have changed, but you might know different.
I think things have changed very much for the worse because on a number of occasions I have tried to bring reports of UFO sightings involving saucer-shaped objects pursued by RAF jets.
I have tried to bring matters like that to the attention of the newspapers and they ignore me.
Whereas on the other hand, if I was to say that I'd spoken to aliens or that I'd been abducted or all of this other stuff, they would probably take far more notice of me.
I don't understand why it is that the subject still attracts so much ridicule and that in the 1950s and 60s and 70s, first of all, the sightings were investigated far more professionally and they were accepted for what they were by the press.
But I'm not saying there's a conspiracy because I don't know.
But personally, on a number of occasions, they've just treated me, they've just dismissed whatever I've said and not wish to print it.
All right, well, here comes a theory, and you tell me if you think I'm right.
I think that these things get better reported by local media.
We're talking about local weekly newspapers and local papers rather than the nationals, because the locals will report the facts as a story without comment, but these things often don't go any further because the nationals don't pick the story up.
You're right.
I often liken this to throwing a stone in a pond, because if you throw a stone in a pond, you start off with a big splash and a big ripple and a smaller ripple, and as it gets towards the edge, you can't even see the ripples.
And it's the same with, yes, the local press are very good indeed.
But of course, the problem with reporting it locally means that many of the population, first of all, don't believe in UFOs and aren't interested, and just a tiny few do.
But, you know, it's not going to create any impact or awareness, or it's not going to change anything.
But I can't understand, again, why, you know, and I'll say people, you know, organizations like the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Daily Express used to publish quite a bit of UFO reports years ago.
And the tabloids, they're not interested.
And perhaps you have an idea why, but presumably it's because they don't want that sort of publicity.
Well, I do have an idea, and very recently I tried to get some publicity for Richard C. Hoagland, who's an American space expert, who has some controversial theories about, well, Phobos, for example, various other things he and I have talked about over the years.
I think he's got a legitimate point of view, and I think he's got a voice that should be heard.
And I tried to get one of the big national daily papers interested in him, and they simply didn't want to know.
I can't understand because it's so frustrating because, again, personally, I don't know where these things come from, and I don't know what they are or what they represent.
And I think people that say they do actually don't.
Nobody can prove it.
I accept that.
But they exist.
And I've been cataloguing and recording such reports going back to the 1940s and spoken with enough people, you know, very, very professional people, retired REF personnel, to know that certainly they've seen something very strange and that to ridicule it to me indicates perhaps some fear and an unwillingness to maybe accept that there is something out there,
which of course there is.
And I'm pleased that I feel a little privileged to appreciate that really we're not on our own on this planet.
You're sure about that?
Absolutely.
Okay, now you say that you've collated all these reports and you also say in your biography, which is excellent, if I may say so, you have 11 volumes in you.
You have written two.
There's one out, there's one coming out.
That's true.
And they go back to the 1940s.
We know the reports of Foo Fighters and that sort of stuff from the US, which pilots over the Pacific claim to have seen.
But not really aware of reports in this country.
So have you had any of those in the war?
Of Foo Fighters.
Well, that sort of thing here.
Oh, yes.
Well, yeah, to me, I mean, I think that there's not a lot of difference between Foo Fighters, which appears to be in a different category, but obviously isn't, and UFO sightings that occurred in the later years, because some of the pilots reported having seen triangular-shaped objects and saucer-shaped objects.
And the objects that they saw pacing the aircraft were moving in a process of behaviour that has been seen time and time again over the years.
Because there's one thing about UFOs that never changes, and that's their behaviour characteristics.
Absolutely never changes.
Okay, well, just give me, if there's one great story from that period from the UK that exemplifies all of this, tell me it.
From the Foo Fighter period.
Yeah, from that period in this country, in the UK?
Well, yeah, there was two gentlemen, one still living in Ipswich, RAF pilots.
One was Arthur Horton and his captain, they were on their way back from Germany from a bombing mission and they saw these cigar-shaped objects moving alongside the aircraft emitting these small puffs of smoke and moving rather weirdly.
And I mean their opinions was that it was some sort of German secret weapon and they were going to fire on these objects and didn't.
And then the objects disappeared.
And I have other sightings involving cases where the pilots actually fired at the objects and they fell to the ground and appeared to burn.
And there are so many.
And there was another gentleman I met oddly in Ipswich, again, separate airman.
And he saw something.
He was on his way back.
And again, he was going to fire on these objects and he didn't.
And there are so many cases.
In a situation where these pilots were viewing whatever they were viewing, were they telling their ground control what they were seeing?
Were they trying to explain that there was something weird going on?
Well, no.
No, I have very few examples where, first of all, one has to appreciate the distance because most of these incidents evolving, if you like, what we call Foo Fighters or UFOs took place, well, hundreds and hundreds of miles away.
And I suppose radio contact was not, probably wasn't possible then.
But yeah, I mean, to me, it's a fascinating, absolutely fascinating period.
I remember some years ago I wrote to the German embassy in London because I wondered whether they'd got such records on file.
And, well, I had a reply back from Curdle, somebody at the embassy, to say that, oh, these things didn't exist and they've no records at all, which is absolutely, well, it's BS.
That challenges credulity, doesn't it, really?
Because the Germans kept records about everything.
Well, of course.
But the more, sometimes I think the more the subject is treated with derision, the more people tell me that they don't exist makes me even more determined to get at the truth of this thing.
One of the things in the write-up of your first volume, Haunted Skies 1940-59, that caught my attention was an apparent landing of a sorcerer-shaped craft in 1955 in Kent.
I'm not aware of this one.
Tell me about it.
This was absolutely spectacular.
This was a lady called Margaret Fry, again, as a personal friend of mine.
And Margaret's written her own books on this.
She was a housewife in Bexley Heath in Kent in 1955.
And this was the incident that triggered off her lifelong, as I say, lifelong interest in the subject.
And she was on the way to the doctors one Sunday morning, and she'd got to get some prescription for her son who'd got heatstroke, particularly hot period then.
And the local doctor, a doctor called Fukara, came to see her.
And they went off in his little Austin to the surgery to pick up the prescription.
And all of a sudden, the black shadow fell across the car.
And the car then spluttered and came to a halt.
And they got out of the car.
And the doctor kept saying, I don't believe what I'm seeing, I don't believe it.
And there, in front of them, straddled across the pavement, was this huge saucer-shaped object hovering a few feet above the ground.
And then a lot of children came over to look at it.
And it was there for some time.
And I managed to eventually track down some of the witnesses.
And also a police officer who's Mr. Sparks, he's unfortunately passed away, but he was on duty at the police station.
He heard the conversation about the UFO that had landed the flying saucer.
And he decided to go have a look.
And he went out on his bicycle.
And when he got there, there was no sign of the saucer, but a lot of men were stood around, very officious, taking notes on notepads and things.
And he thought, well, I've had enough of this.
And he rode away.
And over the years, I managed to track down quite a few witnesses.
And just before we move on from that point, though, their reports of what they saw, it's 55 years ago now, are they consistent between each other?
Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, it's easy for people to say, you know, that with the passing of time and inconsistencies and different witnesses, different positions, but I tend to take all of this in my stride because so many people tell me, well, you know, John, what I saw On that date has been burnt into my memory.
I cannot forget it.
And, you know, this has always been the case with people.
And did any of them feel anything approximating to contact?
Did they feel that there was something in that craft, around that craft, that might be trying to communicate with them, perhaps telepathically?
On that occasion, no, no.
Okay, but it's such a big thing.
How come I hadn't heard about it until I read about it in your biogue material?
How come that was not front-page news for years?
Well, I wanted to trace some of the witnesses after speaking to Margaret, and bearing in mind that Margaret, I went down with Margaret to Becksy Heath in Kent about four years ago.
And I mean, what a lovely lady.
She was still posting letters through people's doors asking the children.
You know, this lady's in her 80s now, asking children if they could remember this incident.
And I mean, it was a fantastic sighting.
And apart from some interest in the Bexley Heath shopper, again, you talked about the local newspapers.
They give it a spread.
And as a result of the publicity, I was contacted by a number of people, including, for argument's sake, a postman that was on duty that morning and saw it go over.
Somebody else who saw it three days before over Bexley Heath School and I managed to contact that lady.
Could this thing have been a wartime style?
I know it wasn't wartime, but we were still in austerity Britain then and very much a security conscious nation.
Could it have been something like one of these barrage balloons or something like that?
No, no, no, absolutely.
Not a barrage balloon.
Not at all, because we, as I say, we have illustrations drawn up and I mean, that's not what people have been seeing.
Now, if a thing lands, it has to take off.
What were the accounts of it taking off?
Well, it suddenly shot up in the air, stopped for a few seconds, as they invariably do, and then moved even higher up and then before disappearing.
And that's so common, whether it's the United States, whether it's Mexico, whether it's Russia, those reports you hear all the time.
Where the thing goes up, it stops for a while, they seem to be engaging power, and off they go.
Yeah, it's just, yeah, everyone's the same.
And I mean, some years ago, I perhaps thought to myself, wondering whether maybe there is a rational explanation.
And of course, there could be, but I've yet to discover that explanation.
But what really puzzles me beyond doubt is the fact that the number of occasions I've come across where the RAF have been scrambled, I mean, they'll never admit it, but they've been scrambled, and they're on an intercept with these objects, and the objects then shoot off and disappear from sight, which suggests some form of intelligence.
I'm not necessarily saying these are super intelligent beings because I both know.
So why does that process of behavior happen?
And all of these people that see these things are not mistaken.
John, what do you make of the theories of people like Richard Hoagland, who I mentioned before, who talk about torsion field physics and the fact that maybe the Nazis had this during the war and maybe some disparate group somewhere in some part of the universe has this technology and that is what is behind some of this?
Well, I think you should treat, you know, I accept that.
I accept that what he's saying is quite possible because quite a few people still believe or that, of course, that this is a result of Nazi technology.
And I mean, anything's possible out there.
That's the fantastic thing about UFOs.
Everybody has their own theory.
I can't discount any theory whatsoever.
But as I keep saying, and I keep labouring a point, the darn things exist and they're here to stay.
And perhaps the sad part about it is that they'll be here long after we're gone because one thing's assured, they were probably here before man was here on this planet.
And there's a lot of evidence that suggests that might be the case, not only here in the UK, but also in places like South Africa, the work of Michael Tellinger, people like that.
It is fascinating, and I'm glad that we're able to get your work out there because people tend to assume that UFO sightings, well, they happen in the Russian steppes, they happen in Mexico, and of course they happen right across the United States, but they tend to think, well, UK, probably not.
And, you know, we're here to tell them they do happen here.
Well, that's right.
And often I think to myself that when I first started this, I intended to write four books to cover the British UFO period.
I'm now writing 11.
If I continued my investigation period for another five years, I could probably write 15 to 20 books on the first 60 years of British UFO activity.
So if you multiplied that by all the other, I mean, America or Australia, if you multiply that, we could probably produce, you know, one book to cover one day, which is absolutely ridiculous.
And one should always bear in mind that the MOD have always said that prior to 1967, they do not possess records of UFOs.
Well, I can tell you that in the next book that I'm publishing, there are ample records of UFO sightings prior to 1967.
And these are official records you've got hold of?
I have, yes.
Well, not so much official, but from people, from groups, because as I mentioned before, the other day I was speaking to a gentleman called Roy Stemman.
Roy is a charming gentleman, and he, in fact, was one of the co-founders of the London UFO Research Organisation, which then changed into the British UFO Association, which then changed into the British UFO Research Association.
And they certainly produced a number of fascinating booklets and records of sightings.
And that's, in my opinion, is the way to do it.
If you haven't, John, got the official records, you've talked to people who provided the data they were based on.
I don't think you can get any official records.
But you've talked to people who provided the data that some of those might have been based on.
That's what we're saying here.
That's right.
Did you ever research something that people have emailed me a lot about, and I'm trying to do more research about this, the famous North Wales Beryn Mountain case in the 70s?
I did, yes.
Again, Margaret Fry was very much involved with it, and Andy Roberts, who's just produced a new book on it.
And as far as I'm concerned, the Bering Mountains case is essentially a very simple case involving a nurse and two daughters that saw something on the mountain.
I visited the scene and I've spoken to Andy, I've spoken to Margaret.
For me personally, it's quite a simplistic sighting and I think that the controversy and the speculation, particularly during the 1990s, by people that suggested that aliens had crash-landed and bodies had been taken off the hill, well, I think that's very much tongue-in-cheek, and I don't really believe that.
But it hasn't stopped it from snowballing along, has it?
Well, it hasn't, and I think one of the reasons for that could be the place where it happened.
I mean, I know that area because I was brought up in Liverpool.
It's kind of 70 miles, 60 miles, 50 miles west of Liverpool.
But it's quite a remote area.
And the more remote an area is, I've found over the years, I don't know whether you agree with this, John, or not, but the more is the potential for folklore.
That's right.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, but there are other cases like that, which, you know, if one bothers to examine the facts for themselves, you realise that, of course, there isn't a great deal to it.
What happened, do you believe, in the 80s in 1980?
In fact, we're almost at the 30th anniversary at Rendlesham Forest.
Well, Randall Shum was always a case that I was never going to get involved in.
But how could you not get involved in, particularly when you're friends?
Well, if you believe that.
But my friend Brenda Butler, who wrote Sky Crash with Jenny Randalls and Dot Street in 1983, what you've got to remember, and not many people will realise this, that the first person to know about the incident that took place at the base was not Brenda Butler, was not Jenny Randalls or Dot Street.
It was in fact Chris Pennington who was Brenda's partner.
And they were on the base at a dance because he's a musician and he first heard of it from Ford of the Airman.
So in fact he was the first person to hear of it and only a few days ago lectured in the forest on the 20th of November because I went down to it and he lectured.
He certainly believes it was a satellite.
A satellite and not anything that was extraterrestrial.
That's what he believes.
They believe differently.
But I mean, Niko, have you ever heard the audio recordings of the radio traffic from that day?
That period?
Yes, yes, I have.
Absolutely chilling.
I mean, you can hear terror in people's voices.
We just have to say, for those of us who are not as initiated as others, that area was an American military base, Bent Waters, wasn't it, in Suffolk?
And Rendlesham Forest, something appeared to have landed or appeared in the forest there and was investigated by members of the military there who didn't know what to make of it.
I think that's a fair summation, is it?
That's right.
I've spoken to many over the years, and as I said before, I've never intended to write anything up about it, but I do have an awful lot written which has probably never been published before and which I really wouldn't want to say too much on the phone.
But you think it's not a close encounter?
I can't say.
I really can't say.
I wouldn't be surprised because if it was a close encounter, because I have similar cases.
What you've got to remember about Rendlesham is that there was an awful lot of activity before the end of December 1980.
I'm talking about UK.
I mean, in November 1980, there were sightings, and in November 1979, there were sightings, and I do have a photograph, an excellent photograph of UFO over that area.
And on the December 27, 2000, I took some film of the UFO, the forest, myself, which was not the lighthouse and can't be explained.
And the forest itself, there's some pretty strange things being seen and captured on film there.
But whether you can associate that with the incident that took place on the end of December 1980, of course, would be speculation.
And what do you make of the accounts of people, and I've met him and interviewed him, like Larry Warren, an American now living in Liverpool, says he was part of it all there and was actively, as was everybody who was involved in that, dissuaded from talking about it.
Yeah, well, I know Larry, as I say, I know most of them.
And certainly there's something, obviously very strange took place.
And if you accept Colonel Holt's testimony, and he seems a very genuine person, and although I am a little puzzled why he should say, after 30 years, I saw an alien, but yes, can't tell us exactly any more information, I find that rather puzzling.
But yeah, I mean, certainly something mysterious happened, but some people say it was a satellite, some people say it was the helicopter pilots messing about and doing some sort of a weird Christmas joke, and others say that it was a UFO that landed and that aliens were seen.
I don't know.
It's one of these cases that's snowballed over the years, and as I think you mentioned before, it is Britain's equivalent of Roswell.
Well, there are some people who'd like to think of, and it's certainly of it being so, but in the absence of more information, and that's always the difficulty, how are we going to know?
I want to talk about Dawn, Dawn Holloway, who is your co-conspirator in all of this work.
Co-conspirator.
No, well, Dawn's a very shy, retiring person, but she sees her role slightly different from mine.
I think actually very different.
She's given me a lot of assistance with this.
I mean, she's been absolutely gold, and I suppose a lot of the work is mine, but as far as I'm concerned, she's my partner.
She helps me with this work.
She goes with me.
She investigates.
And she deserves to be co-author of these books.
behind every great man, John, there is a good woman.
All right.
Let me ask you this.
The weirdest case that you've ever come across in your research is, you know, one book out, one book about to come out, nine more in the pipeline.
What's the weirdest?
Give me a taster.
Well, I've got to say, the weirdest thing that has ever happened, which I will be covering, is the ports at Rendlesham.
You obviously know what the port is.
Things that appear from nowhere.
Yeah, yeah, well, the stones, the ports of stones.
There was a case in Birmingham some years ago, which the Birmingham City Police investigated, where there was a fall of stones that was happening every day.
And I've come across situations like this before, where the police have staked out the area and they've put up cameras and they spent many man hours trying to find out who the culprit is.
And they've never found anybody.
And this case at Birmingham went on for some years.
And I, certainly when I was in the police, if I'd heard about it, I would have dismissed it as hooligans and not even took any notice of it.
And Sir Arthur C. Clarke covered it in his book and went to the scene.
And it was covered in one of his books.
But I thought, well, this is really, really interesting.
So we went there and I've got to say that where I lacked perhaps the confidence, which is pretty unusual for me to knock on someone's door 30 years later, Dawn went straight there.
I think she was getting a bit fed up of me.
And the lady that was still living in the house invited us in and told us all about the case.
And then I found out that these falls of stones, they had happened in other places in the world.
And they certainly happen at Rendlesham Forest.
Because on a number of occasions, we've been in the forest and these stones have dropped.
But they're not meteorites.
They've not dropped from the sky.
They've been levitated by some inexplicable force.
How do you know that?
Because there's no one there to throw them.
I mean, you tell me what force would be required to throw a stone from...
There's two of you, and it can't be the other person.
And you stood there, and then you hear the crash of a stone through the undergrowth, and then it lands, and it's hot.
Now, I actually have some of the stones, and I try to get them tested.
Really?
Because the difference with, if you like the control sample, this is an ordinary stone, is that it has fissures, it has dirt in it, and it's a typical stone.
The stone that lands is scrupulously clean, but an identical copy.
I don't know.
I can't give you any answers.
All I can say is that's what's happened.
But unfortunately, it's only when you see it with your own eyes, as indeed many people have who visited Rendlesham Forest, that you think, well, you know, it's happened.
But unless it happens to you, it's easy to come up with a rational explanation and say, oh, it's hooligans, or it's a bird dropping it from a tree, or it's a meteorite, which is not.
I can't explain them, but they do happen.
Why do you think it's not a meteorite, though?
Because we are told we're in a cosmic shooting gallery and a lot of material comes here that doesn't always get required.
I've had them looked at, and they're not meteorites.
I mean, they are.
They're typical.
In fact, I would love to put a challenge out to you.
Why don't you come down to the forest with me in the near future and you will experience it yourself?
Really?
Yeah, really.
It's weird stuff.
I mean, Rendlesham is weird, but...
I don't know.
I mean, for years, people used to talk to me and say to me about the orbs.
And I mean, I didn't, to be honest, I smiled inwardly and thought, well, orbs, they're just condensation on the lens.
Or, you know, the myriad of other explanations that you can think of.
And I took one gentleman down there.
He was a professional Fleet Street photographer.
And he's living a short distance away from me.
And I told him about the orbs.
And he said, oh, that's a load of rubbish.
He said, people, I'm sick and tired of it.
So he went down there for himself, and he was absolutely mesmerized by what he saw.
And when he got back to his house, the house was covered in them, absolutely covered him.
Really?
Again, I can't explain this, but these things have happened.
Does it frustrate you when we get what I got very excited about a few years ago, great reports which are verified, but they seem to go away?
They have their little moment in the sun in the media, then they go away.
I'm thinking of one specific one that I've talked about on this show before.
I tried to interview the man involved in this.
Maybe you were more successful than me.
But the airline pilot from the Channel Islands a few years ago who reported something that made him so shaken up that he had to land the plane and go and have a cup of tea immediately.
He was interviewed by Channel Television in the Channel Islands.
I think the story made the Daily Mail.
But then he seemed to be less interested in going public about this.
And I was given the phone number of the guy by a reporter at Channel Television and thanks to him, but could never get hold of him.
I had to go through the airline press office.
They didn't seem to be too interested after this.
And that story, which you might remember, simply went away.
Well, that's right.
I know the name of the gentleman concerned me.
I think it was Ray Bowyer.
That's the one.
Yep, yep.
I got his number.
I had to go through his airline press office, but I was, you know, it just wasn't possible for me to take it any further.
I saw the documentary.
I managed to find out where he was living because he changed house.
I wrote to him with a stamped address envelope and never got a reply.
Well, maybe he just got, I don't know, look, there are many explanations for this.
Maybe he simply got tired of it.
How can we know?
I don't think so.
I think he probably, well, I think that he attracted so much ridicule from his perhaps fellow colleagues and that this sort of It's always the same unforced with so many people that that initial groundswell of excitement and want to tell the public about what they've seen because it's so it's so it's so fantastic and it's so out of the ordinary and then within a few weeks the regret comes in because then I
mean what we forget is is that there are some very strange UFO researchers out there and that they can cause a lot of unwarranted attention and in the end you get sick of it and you bury it.
Because if you go public on a thing like this, especially if you have an important job and you wear a uniform, you have to be ready for the ridicule.
You have to have a thick skin.
Well, yeah, I mean, but what I can't understand is that, okay, he was an airline pilot and he got his publicity.
And I mean, I'm an ex-police officer and I spent 12 years in the CID and I feel reasonably qualified to talk about a subject which I've been researching for the last 16 years.
But even if you like these qualifications, you know, you still get turned away.
And there was a case in 2007 down in Phelp and Bogna, Regis, when Leo and Rosemary, he's a builder, they saw these saucer-shaped objects in the sky.
And a few minutes later, the REF jets turned up.
Well, I contacted the Sun newspaper that were currently then asking for people who'd had UFO sightings to contact them.
And I emailed Mr. David Merton, the editor, and I also wrote to Mr. David Merton about this case, and I received not a sausage of a reply.
sometimes on news desks things go missing and, you know, the news agenda is varying constantly every day.
I'm not making any excuses for any journalist, but...
Well, you know how it works, John.
And from what I've seen over the years, and I've worked in a fair few news organisations, on Monday, it might be a great story.
By Tuesday, there's something else happening.
Well, I agree, but unfortunately, UFOs are the story.
Well, you know, I think so, you think so.
What about abductions?
Have you dealt with those?
I have spoken to a number of ladies that have certainly made allegations that some very strange things have happened to them.
And how credible would you say they were?
Well, all I could say, well, I really don't.
They're credible witnesses as far as interviewing them is concerned.
But I mean, one lady springs to mind, a counsellor in, she's a counsellor in Cornwall.
I'm not going to give her name.
But she's in one of the books and she is named.
But after what she witnessed, she had these found these peculiar marks on a body.
And a lot of people will say that they are the alien scoop marks.
And again, I don't see how on earth you can say this, but that the marks are quite common with a lot of people that get perhaps close to these objects.
And getting close to the objects can also trigger off all sorts of strange things that happen in the household afterwards and secondary sightings.
And I don't know if aliens per se exist and if they carry out abductions because I don't know.
But enough people that report these sightings of UFOs and getting close to them will then invariably tell me about the marks on their body.
And most, it really is very peculiar.
And of course, in many cases, it's not just marks on the body, it's the impact on the person's life and mind afterwards, isn't it?
Absolutely.
Well, it can trigger off a whole completely different way of life for them.
The amount of people that have gone on and changed their whole lives.
And this person in Cornwall, who, you know, we don't have to name that, it's fine, but did her life change afterwards?
This lady, not so much, no, no, no.
And what did she do, just briefly, I mean, we don't have to go into sort of intimate detail, but what sorts of things did she claim happened?
Well, in this case, she saw this half-moon-shaped, half-sorce-shaped object on the ground, and you could see into it, and you could see what she referred to as the dials and instruments inside.
And the reason when she went out with her husband to look at this was because there'd been so many reports in the newspaper about UFO sightings, and she went out to have a look, and she came across this thing in the field, and they were pretty frightened and left.
And it was the next morning when she found these marks.
But there was a lady in Warminster.
I again spoke to her some years ago, and she was mentioned in one of Arthur Shuttlewood's books.
And this is very close, we have to say, to Stonehenge.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, she was in the house one afternoon, and her daughter said, Mummy, what's that in the sky?
And she looked out through the window and saw this cigar-shaped object hovering in the sky, and certainly no aircraft because it got no wings and thought no more of it.
And the object then moved away.
And then the next morning, her daughter said to her, Mummy, I've got some marks.
And on her stomach was three marks, forming a triangle.
And the mother had got the same marks.
And where this gets really unbelievable, but absolutely genuine in my opinion, was that the father was at work.
And when he arrived home, they told him about all of this.
And he was really quite excited.
And he said, well, you will not believe this.
But he pulled up his shirt and he got three marks.
And again, I can't explain this.
And this is the frustration.
That is an incredible story.
And when people tell you the story, you know, as a police officer, my dad has the instinct.
You know when somebody's telling you the truth.
You're dead right there.
How do you know whether...
Well, you do, yeah.
In the same respects that you do.
So what did you think?
When you were told this story and when you've been told other stories, that policeman's instinct must kick in.
Well, if this had been the first story that I've been told about, or the tenth story or the 20th story, I would have thought that these people obviously needed some sort of medical treatment.
I've got to admit, I would have thought that was the case because I would have argued that there must be a rational explanation.
But having spoken to so many thousands of people over the years and hundreds that have had these marks, well, that of course raises great curiosity, doesn't it?
As it indeed would do with you, wouldn't it?
Well, it would, and you would want to know how much information you could get about this.
The story by itself is fascinating.
I think the hard thing is always going to be for anybody who investigates this, and all the people that I've talked to, is the corroboration.
The stories, often they are hair-raising stories, but it's the corroboration and scientific detail, and that, of course, is the one thing that the skeptics will always be able to point to.
That's the problem, isn't it?
I mean, this is what you're up against, but these people, as I always say, have got everything to lose and nothing to gain by coming forward.
And I fully believe that they should identify themselves and that they should be identified on record and identified by book, because if I've got the guts to stand up and say this is what's happening, so should these people.
I don't like anonymous people.
All right, so two volumes out, well, one volume about to be out.
When does that one come out?
This should be out towards the end of December, early January.
Okay, and that is, what period is that?
1960 to 1965 is coming out.
The 1940 to 1959 is currently out and on sale on Amazon.
And all I can say to people is that it is well worth reading.
And at the end of the day, if they think it's rubbish, please let me know.
But I think they'll be very impressed because it's the first time anybody has ever tried to put all this together and write about it.
All right, and when will...
I'm looking ahead to volume six, which is 1980 to 1986.
When are we expecting that one out?
Sometime towards next year, if I'm still alive.
So, wow.
So you've got one hell of a year coming up in 2011.
I have, yeah.
Yeah.
It's a shame I don't make any money at these books, but there again, it's not about making money.
Oh, well, there again, you see all the people that I've talked to all over the world, very few of them are making money out.
But all of them, like you, are totally committed.
And the more you get into it, the more you want to get into it.
I think that's what happens.
You're so right.
It doesn't matter how many times people ring me up and say, look, it's like the other week somebody rang me up.
He was in charge of the fire service in Devon some years ago.
And he said, I want to tell you about something that happened 30 years ago.
And it so frightened him.
And, you know, it never ceases to be fascinating stories, UFOs.
It never gets boring.
So your X-Files are always open.
If people want to come to you with new reports, your books are not closed.
If I can help them, because I do have an awful lot of information here, I'd certainly be quite willing to do that.
Now, is there a way that people can contact you?
I don't want to give out your phone numbers.
That's not a good idea.
I've got a phone number.
Well, I'd rather not, not on a public medium like this, but if there's some kind of email address or some way that people can contact you.
It's John, J-O-H-N, Dawn, D-A-W-N, that's the retiring ladies.
So it's John Dawn, and it's number one at sky.com.
That's John Dawn, one word, one at sky.com.
Yeah, or I can give him a mobile.
No, well, I'd rather you didn't, because a lot of people in different places get to hear this.
It's not always a good idea.
Is that from previous experience?
Well, how many years have I done radio?
More years than I want to mention, so I wouldn't do that.
But John Dawn1 at sky.com is goodwill.
That's correct, yeah.
Plus, if you want to know more about the books, well, I'll put a link to what's the best place to link to?
Amazon.
Amazon.
Okay, you're on Amazon.
And these books are called Haunted Skies.
First one out is 1940 to 1959.
That's correct.
Volume two out soon is 1960 to 65, and then we take it from there.
67.
The third volume is 67 to 69.
So you're talking about one book, 300 pages, 200 images covering three years of British UFO activity.
That's a hell of a lot of research.
Correct.
And only somebody as methodical, and I know this from family experience, as methodical as a policeman could do this, I think, John.
But there you are.
John, I wish you well.
Thank you very, very much.
Stay in touch once more.
And thanks so much for inviting me.
And listen, tell Dawn not to be so shy and retiring.
Right.
I'll tell her she's probably not going to be very happy with me if she hears this.
It's only an interview.
It's only an interview.
It's not an alien abduction.
Thanks very much.
All the best, John.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Well, the book series is called Haunted Skies, Volume 1, Out, Volume 2, About to Be Out, and 9 more volumes we're told coming after that.
They're available, I know, through Amazon.
And I'll put a link on my site, www.theunexplained.tv, to their site.
Now, if there's anything that you would like me to cover on this show, please drop me an email.
Give me your feedback about it.
Go to www.theunexplained.tv.
Please, if you're hearing this show on iTunes or in any other way, please go to my website.
It is vital that you register a hit on it.
Thank you for the donations.
Please, please donate if you can to this show to keep this vital work going.
I want to be there as a voice.
For those of us, I don't want to sound pompous about this because that's not how I want this to come out.
But in a way, we're a voice for the voiceless.
We put out stories that do not get heard.
Please, if you want this to continue, make a donation if you can.
That's as far as I will take that.
Thank you to you for listening.
Thank you to Adam for his great contribution to this show, Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
What a talent he is.
Martin, thank you for the theme tune.
And as I say, thank you above all to you for listening to this and for putting it where it is today.
My name is Howard Hughes.
Go well.
Take care.
▲
Export Selection