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June 30, 2011 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:02:28
Edition 60 - Nick Redfern

The Unexplained returns with an all-new show featuring UK-born Texas-based anomalist NickRedfern. Nick has done painstaking research into UFOs and other strange phenomena – and now has a bookout about the real-life Men in Black!

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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.
Really nice to be back.
Thank you very much for your emails over these last four or five weeks.
I know I haven't been around for a few weeks.
Work has been particularly busy.
Got to pay the bills, got to pay the mortgage, keep the roof over my head.
So I've had to do a lot of work lately, and that is one of the main reasons why I haven't been here.
But I've had some really, really kind emails from you saying, are you still doing the show?
Yes, I am.
Are you still going to do the show?
Definitely.
But thank you very much for your concern.
It is very touching, and you said some really nice things.
Also made some superb guest suggestions, which I'm working on at the moment.
Got some news about Graham Hancock.
I really want to get him on here, and you want to hear him here.
From what I understand from his publishers, he's not going to be doing any media until 2012, which is six months away now, isn't it?
So, well, five months now.
So we're going to have to wait until the beginning of next year to talk to him by the looks of it, unless I can change things.
But that's definitely a work in progress, and I'll go and see him in Bath in the UK if I have to.
That's fine.
There are a number of other people.
Some of them we haven't been successful on.
Tom Slemman, the ghostwriter in Liverpool.
A lot of you want to hear him on here.
I've tried through his publisher and by contacting him directly, and it looks like that is not going to happen.
And that has to be the book closed on that, I think.
But I'll maybe give it one more try.
And if you know him, tell him that we're okay and we don't bite.
Literally, if you know of somebody, if you know them personally who you think might be good on this show, we don't just do the big names.
Some of the most interesting interviews we've done, I think, are with people you've never heard of.
So I'm trying to build in a bit of balance here.
We're going to try for the big names, but I'm also going to try and introduce you to people that you haven't discovered before, and maybe we'll create some big names ourselves.
Who knows?
The next show is going to be just like that.
But that is a work in progress.
It is about life after life if it comes off.
The guest on the show this time is a man called Nick Redfern.
You've been asking me for him for about four years now.
I've done some research into his work and I've finally got him on here.
So without further ado, as they say, we're going to cross now to Arlington in Texas, United States, and we're going to talk to a man who started out in the United Kingdom.
He trained here and had his early life here, now lives and works in America and writes on various anomalous phenomena.
What a great phrase that is, including UFOs and the whole nine yards, really all of this stuff.
He's got a book out at the moment about the men in black.
The men in black are real, and this time they are real.
So we'll find out more about that.
But let's cross now to Nick Redfern in the United States.
Nick, thank you very much for coming on The Unexplained.
Well, thanks for having me on the show, Howard.
Now, I have to ask you a couple of things first off before we talk about any of the things that you're involved in.
Number one, I think I have to ask, what is a man from the British Midlands doing in Arlington, Texas?
What's that all about?
Oh, that's a good question.
I've lived in the US for about 11 or 12 years, something like that.
And I'm originally from just outside the town of Cannock in Staffordshire.
And my wife's American, and although she grew up in the Cayman Islands, so we have kind of like an international relationship.
And when we got together, you know, we would just sort of come back and forth between each other's countries.
We actually met at a conference years ago.
And then we just settled on the US.
And we live just outside Dallas.
Arlington's like about a 20-minute drive outside the city of Dallas.
And been there, as I said, about 12 years.
But I guess I never lost the accent.
What do they make of you there then when they talk to you?
Do they say, now, sir, we think you sound a little like Prince Charles?
Because they think most people sound like Prince Charles there, don't they?
Yeah, you do get that classic thing where they say, oh, you know, do you know John Smith from London?
And it's like, no.
But no, I mean, you know, people are sort of interested with your accent, you know, where you're from, why are you over here, that sort of thing.
And, you know, they're interested to know what, particularly with the sort of the world situation now, you know, what people in England think of, you know, like American policies and things like that.
It is amazing, isn't it?
America is the most sophisticated, advanced country in the world in so many ways, and yet they are so isolated.
I've got lots of friends and contacts in America and have been there a lot, but sometimes you can be absolutely, as we say here in the UK, gobsmacked at their lack of knowledge of other places.
Or lack of knowledge of what's going on in America even in some respects because of the sheer size.
It would be quite right that America is very much an enclosed country.
And what surprised me most of all was the sheer number of people who in America, I mean, it's a massive percentage, who don't even have passports.
They do, and that is true even today.
I used to go to America a lot about seven or eight years ago.
I was there quite a few times around 9-11 and the first couple of years after that.
I was back and forth doing bits of news.
And I was amazed at how many educated people who would, of course, in this country be traveling all over the world, don't have a passport.
But there again, not that hard to justify, really, because America is a world in one country, really.
You've got every climate there and every kind of people.
Yeah, that's true.
And the strangest thing that I have found, sort of in relation to this same issue, is that, you know, if you watch the daily and nightly news, you get very, very little coverage of international news unless it's, you know, like the war in the Middle East or it involves the United States.
You know, you just don't get regular coverage of international news that much on the main stations.
You know, like if you watch the ITN news or whatever, BBC News, you know, you'll have coverage of what's going on here, what's going on there.
You don't really get that over here.
It's sort of very, very, you know, just like, you know, just a small news piece and that's it.
You must be liking it, though.
Oh, yeah, I like living over here.
I mean, I've got a lot of friends and, you know, and I enjoy it.
And I'm able to get back about twice a year as well.
So get your fix of the UK.
All right, now, I've been trying, struggling with myself for days now, as I've been reading bits of biography about you, to find a word that would describe you.
And I've made one up because that was the only thing I could do.
And I think, tell me if this is, I hope it's not an insult, but tell me what you think of it.
Anomalist.
I think you're an anomalist.
No, that's actually, I'd be happy with that because, you know, I delve into a lot of different areas and I have a lot of different theories and ideas that don't necessarily fit in with the mainstream ideas about whether it should be UFOs or Bigfoot or whatever.
And, you know, some people just are content to look into one thing, UFOs or the Roswell story or alien abductions or ghosts.
You know, I kind of, if there's something I see that interests me and it's a weird mystery, I'll look into it.
You know, I don't feel that there's a conflict doing one thing versus the other.
Some people do.
You know, they kind of think if they're doing, quote, serious UFO research, you know, it backfires on them if, you know, they're investigating Bigfoot or whatever.
But, you know, I don't care.
Well, you can't train to be an anomalist, so how did you become this person that you are?
Well, that's another good question, I guess.
When I finished school, this was back in the 1980s, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, you know, like most kids when you're like 16, 17.
And I went down the local job center one day and just looking for a job, you know, the harsh reality, you're no longer at school, you know, you've got to get work.
And it so happened that there was an opening on a local magazine that was being set up.
And it was like one of these, you know, sort of free what's-on guides to the area, excuse me.
And it was called Zero.
And it covered, it doesn't exist anymore, unfortunately, but it went for about three or four years in the Warsaw area.
And it was basically the job that was on offer was, you know, they would train the person in journalism and sort of tutor you and give you all the background and interview techniques and pretty much everything else.
And I thought, well, you know, this sounds interesting.
And I applied and got it.
And I did this all together for about two years.
And it really was sort of, you know, the best way for me at least to do it, you know, getting thrown in at the deep end into the world of journalism.
Now, you know, it certainly wasn't like a daily newspaper, but it was, you know, it was a weekly sort of print magazine.
And, you know, they sort of tutored me in pretty much every aspect of journalism.
And because I'd already got an interest in, you know, paranormal and weird stuff, over time I thought, well, you know, why not try and take a gamble and combine the two, you know, the background that I've done on the two years on the magazine, and then apply that to the weird stuff, but use journalistic techniques, if you like, as a means to investigate and write about these things.
Well, back when you and I were starting to do this thing, because we're the same kind of vintage.
Now, my background is journalism too.
I started on, and I'm still on, you know, hard-nosed, proper news desks.
And 20 years ago, when we were starting out, melding these two things, an interest in the paranormal, I was always interested in UFOs and life after death and space and the whole nine yards, all of it.
But bringing those two things together wasn't easy then.
It is a little easier now, but still there aren't very many of us, are there?
No, there aren't.
I mean, I think, I mean, I don't want to sort of tire everybody with the same brush, but I do have some sort of journalist friends who privately have an interest in these things, but have said, you know, I don't talk about it that much at work because I don't want to be known as the, you know, I want to get a background and develop a career as an investigative journalist, and I don't want to be known as the investigative journalist who chases little green men.
But, you know, for me, more than anything else, what it was was that I, after I finished on the Zero magazine, I went freelance.
So, you know, in other words, I wasn't sort of tied to one particular company where, you know, it was like going to work every day and people, you know, whistling the X-Files tune or something like that.
You know, it was more along the lines of working as a freelance journalist and taking work, you know, when you're in that field, if you're self-employed, you know, particularly freelance journalism, which can be a harsh world if you don't stay on I was writing and still do write for everything from like military history magazines to kids magazines and animals.
I used to write for a lot of these, you know, the part work magazines in England that you build up into the binders, those sorts of things, on all sorts of subjects.
And as I said, I still do that now.
So in other words, not being tied to one company or anything like that, you know, I didn't feel too much of a conflict if one week I was writing, as I was back then, like Pet Reptile or Animals, Animals, Animals, and then UFO magazine or Fortin Times or whatever.
You know, it wasn't really a conflict in that respect.
We have this thing in the UK.
I've got to explain this to people who are listening in America.
I've got lots of listeners in America, Australia, places like that.
This thing called the 40 and Times, which is a fantastically produced magazine.
It is still going and still very popular.
You see it in mainstream news vendors here.
It is a magazine of everything weird.
It's just, it is a British institution, I think.
Oh, it is.
I mean, 14 Times, I mean, it says a lot about 14 Times that other magazines have gone by the wayside, unfortunately, like UFO magazine and Alien Encounters in the 90s and early 2000s.
But 14 Times has sort of risen above them all and stood the test of time.
And I think the reason is that it's the sort of magazine that when it developed its readership, it captures the imagination of a certain type of person, I think, who's into all these sorts of things.
And then they stay with it because it does publish quality material.
And, you know, and it has, you know, they retain a sense of humor about it all as well.
Which you have to do.
Now, look, I'm going to have my listeners getting on to me saying, look, you talked about him and his background for all this time, and I asked you, but we want to get to the good stuff and how, you know, we want to get to the UFOs and all the rest of it.
So let's bring it now to your interest, first of all, in ufology.
Now, in that field, over the years that I've been interested in it and talking to people about it, there seem to be two kinds of people.
There are the experiences who write about it, and then there are the people who collate information talking about the experiences.
And there aren't really many people who are in between the two.
I've got a feeling I know the answer to it, but which one are you?
Well, I'm the latter.
The reason I got interested in UFOs is that my dad was in the British Royal Air Force and worked on radar.
And he was involved in several UFO incidents where, this is back in the 50s, where UFOs were picked up on the radar scopes approaching the east coast of England from the direction of Scandinavia.
And because this was the height of the Cold War, you know, the first thought was, well, it's got to be the Russians.
But when they began to plot the targets on the radar scopes, you know, they were flying at very high levels and fantastic speeds.
But nevertheless, they scrambled aircraft to try and intercept these things.
And my dad was based at a place called RF Netishead on the east coast.
And the planes were scrambled from a nearby base called Culteshaw.
And the pilots reported seeing these weird lights in the sky.
One of them, the way they described it, they weren't like silver gleaming saucers.
One described it kind of like, you know, the flash of a camera when you take a picture, but you imagine if that flash never goes away.
You know, it was like a blinding, illuminated light.
And the objects, whatever they were, kind of played like a game of cat and mouse with the air crews.
And this went on over the course of three nights.
And literally on each night, the pilots were forced to return to base because they literally just were running out of fuel.
And my dad told me about how everybody who was involved in these incidents was basically briefed and said, you know, you've signed the Official Secrets Act.
We don't want you to talk about it, or you won't talk about it.
And my dad didn't tell me about it until probably, I think, late 1970s.
I know I was like 13, 14, something like that.
And we'd been to see close encounters of the third kind.
And he told me after that and said, you know, this is what happened.
And, you know, when you get a story like that from your own parents, but also somebody trained in the military on radar, then that sort of really made me think, well, there's something to this and people in government know about it.
And then when I, you know, as I said, did the work in journalism, that's really what sort of spurred me on to dig into it more.
Well, that personal connection with your dad there, I mean, there's no reason to doubt what he tells you.
I'm amazed, and you've just answered a question for me, because I've often wondered about people who work both in the US and the UK for official agencies, and they know stuff, and they are told you must not tell.
I've always wondered, do they tell their immediate families, do they go home and over dinner, they say, by the way, we had an amazing UFO report, big silver craft in the sky today.
Your dad didn't.
He kept it secret for 20 years.
Yeah, I think, you know, it's one of these things where I think it depends on the nature of the incidents and, you know, who you are, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, by the time my dad told me, you know, he was out the Air Force, you know, he'd been out a long time.
But I think possibly, you know, other people may take a different approach.
I think where people are more inclined to stay quiet is perhaps, you know, in their early years of the career when they want to make a career out of it, you know, and there's a pension tied in it and everything else.
You know, I think it's the logistics of everyday life, paying your electric bill or whatever.
Absolutely, and there's the issue of professional credibility and say you're, I don't know, police man or woman or you're in some other official capacity, your credibility might be challenged if you come out with this stuff.
What was your dad told about those reports that he'd seen and been involved in?
What did they tell him it was believed they were?
Yeah, well, they didn't say what they were.
They just said that, you know, we're not sure what it was.
You know, we're not sure what happened.
You know, they knew they tracked something, and they knew the pilots had independently had visual encounters with what the guys on the ground were tracking on radar.
So they knew something was going on.
But the, I mean, whether they did know, you know, we can never be sure.
But the response was, we know something happened, we're not sure what.
And for that reason, you know, we continue to study it.
And in the meantime, you know, you won't talk about it.
Did your dad believe in ETs?
Well, I mean, even to this day, you know, my dad, he still comes over and visits us a couple of times a year.
He still talks about this, and he's happy to discuss it, you know, with people today.
There's a local UFO group, and last time, a previous time, excuse me, when he was over, he gave a little sort of 10-minute spiel for them about the experience.
And, you know, he says, well, all I can really say is that we tracked something, the pilots saw it, it was weird, the Russians weren't flying anything like that.
But, you know, he's somebody who likes to deal with facts.
And, you know, he won't come out and say it was definitely extraterrestrial because he doesn't know, you know, but I think he kind of knows it wasn't anything, you know, normal, put it that way.
And over the years, we had a lot of contacts in that kind of area over what is known as the North Sea off the east coast.
Amazing reports, even back in the 80s, I think, something the size of, what was it, the 90s?
Yes, it was the 90s, something the size of a battleship observed from a passenger plane.
And we know all of these stories because every ufologist has been taught them and has read them and perhaps has met people who've experienced them.
But we don't seem to get anywhere with these things.
We get these reports and pilots write them down and occasionally the press get hold of them and then they distort them.
And we never really get any further than, wow, isn't that weird?
Yes, the thing was big.
Yes, it moved at speeds that we cannot generate here on Earth.
And that's about as far as it goes.
Well, you're right.
I mean, I think there's two.
Well, actually, I think there's several reasons for this.
I think one is that, you know, to an extent at least, we know that government agencies are hiding something.
And they're very good at doing that.
Now, certainly the Freedom of Information Act has brought forth, you know, a lot of documentation on UFOs.
There's absolutely no doubt about that.
But I still believe that somewhere there's a black box type group, maybe not almost like an official agency, maybe sort of like a almost like a hidden body within government, if you like, that is sitting on far deeper secrets.
And I think, you know, some of these more significant stories get channeled into whatever this black box is.
And they may not even come up for scrutiny or release under the Freedom of Information Act.
And I think the other thing as well is that a good point with journalism.
I mean, what we've never ever seen is that, say, for example, a large mainstream news outlet, like one of the respected UK nationals or a US national, put kind of like a Woodward and Bernstein team on the UFO subject for, say, 18 months and say, hey, guys, you know, we're going to crack this mystery.
And yet there is, isn't there?
I don't know whether you get to see much of the British media, the British press, it's all online now anyway, most of it anyway.
There is a great deal more interest, certainly over this last 10 years or so that I've been involved in these.
Much more interest in it all now.
Oh, there's a lot more interest, particularly on the part of the public.
And, you know, certainly the media does treat the subject with more seriousness.
But I think, you know, if they were to, you know, sort of spend 18 months really digging seriously into the subject and do something and kind of approach it as they would approach, say, the weapons of mass destruction controversy or something like that,
you know, then we might see more and more data coming out, you know, because with the best will in the world, you know, most of us who do UFO research, you know, we're not millionaires who can spend, you know, two years just traveling the world.
And that's the problem with a lot of people I know, some of whom have appeared on this show, both the radio version and this online version.
A lot of those people are working on a shoestring or they're doing it in their spare time or they're retired or something and they've got very limited budgets.
And in the end, they can't find the smoking gun because they simply can't afford to do the amount of digging and spend the amount of time that you'd have to put into that.
No, that's right.
I mean, you know, it's one of these situations where, you know, I think all of us who do this sort of research, you know, you're in that position.
I mean, I find this sometimes that people think, you know, if you write a few books, you're sort of living in the Hollywood Hills driving a Ferrari.
And it's not, you know what it's like.
I mean, freelance journalism, for people who are listening and might want to go into it, it's a great job because every day can be different.
You can, you know, be sent out on jobs and hit the road, which is the sort of life I like to live.
But if you don't stay on top of it, it's a precarious job where quickly, you know, your income can dissolve if you just think, oh, you know, I'm a journalist and the work's going to come to me.
You know, it doesn't work like that.
And it's the same with book writing.
You know, you get relatively small advances and, you know, with a lot of outgoing expenses and just with the best will in the world.
You know, most of us just cannot jump on a plane to the other side of the planet or even the other side of the country, you know, because somebody said they know the truth about Roswell.
You know, you bankrupt yourself.
Do you think then, and in my working life, we've seen the emergence...
I'm not sure if you did, but in my working life, we've seen the emergence of computers.
That took us to word processors.
That took us to networks.
Now we have the internet.
We have social networking.
I can contact anybody that I know and everybody that I don't know very quickly here.
I can find information about most stuff simply by walking over to my computer right now.
We couldn't do that 15, 20 years ago.
Do you think that that is helping at all or is it just making the fog thicker?
Well, I think it certainly helps in terms of immediate communication and, you know, sharing data.
And, you know, if you investigate something, you can put it online and everybody sees it immediately.
The only thing I don't think the internet helps with is, you know, if some elderly guy, John Smith, you know, who has secret information on Roswell or whatever, what I don't think is that that encourages them to speak or helps them to speak out.
You know, these stories of the people who may be hiding the truth or know something significant, you know, and they live in some little town here or there, really that still takes, you know, sort of more along the lines of investigative journalism to ferret those stories out because, you know, John Smith doesn't have a blog.
He's 85 or whatever, you know, sitting in a little town pondering on whether to tell anyone.
And then his family tells someone, it leaks out.
And then you need to apply good old-fashioned journalism, I think, to investigate it.
So I don't think the internet's helped that aspect.
I think, you know, there'll always be that need for, you know, the foot soldiers who are digging up, you know, a deeply hidden story.
And that's where you come in.
You said to me a little while ago, a couple of minutes ago, that you felt that there was some kind of agency or body or group or cabal or something like that somewhere that was sitting on a trove of information that would perhaps help us to unlock this stuff.
What evidence do you have for that?
Well, I think more than anything else, I mean, if you take, for example, the Roswell story, you know, I mean, there are a lot of different theories about what happened at Roswell.
But regardless of what did happen or didn't happen, the important thing is that even the U.S. Air Force, you know, the Air Force hasn't said, okay, we've got files, but you can't see them.
They've said, they've officially gone on the record as stating they've looked for the files and they have nothing.
Now, unless, you know, to actually make that statement before Congress, the Senate and the government, to make that statement and lie, I think would be beyond risky.
And I don't believe they are lying.
I truly believe they've gone looking.
And for whatever reason, the files that existed back in 1947 are no longer in the Air Force's archives.
And they're as baffled as we are.
I actually don't believe they're hiding the files.
But if something significant happened at Roswell, and all the evidence points to the fact that it did, then clearly that material must be held somewhere.
And if it's held somewhere, why has it never surfaced through the terms of the Freedom of Information Act?
Because people have applied to the Air Force, the National Security Agency, all the ABC of agencies for files, and they've all said, we have nothing.
Now, very often, they'll say we cannot confirm or deny we have files or they're classified.
Again, to outright say we have nothing could be a highly risky tactic that would backfire.
So it's things like this where we have significant cases with dozens of people involved and we clearly know something's happened and material documentation must have been generated, but it's all gone.
And that's what it's things like this that lead me to believe it's gone because, you know, at some point it gets channeled outside of the official oversight.
You know, it's not subject to congressional review through the Freedom Information Act or whatever.
And, you know, it just sits in the vaults of whoever it is that does not want this bigger story coming out, I think.
Do you believe, as I've heard quite a number of times on this show from various people down the years, that there are certain United States presidents and important people who have been shown the truth.
They've been shown the bodies of the aliens.
They've been introduced to the craft, and they've known what's going on, at some risk, perhaps, to themselves in some cases.
Yeah, I mean, I think there's enough material in the public domain, you know, to suggest that something's been hidden and certain people, you know, who are in positions of power or authority, etc., know something.
I mean, a classic example is the former senator and presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, who openly said, you know, he'd heard the stories about alien bodies stored under Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which led to the legends of the so-called Hangar 18 installation.
And, you know, I think when you have somebody like that who said he'd heard the rumours, and then he went to one of his friends and colleagues, high up in the military, General LeMay, and said, you know, can I see the evidence?
And LeMay's response was not only no, but hell no, and don't ever ask me again.
You know, and when you hear stories like this, and, you know, we hear tales of presidential briefings and things like that, I do believe that over time, certain people have been provided with either summaries or briefings relative to the deeply guarded secrets.
Now, one of the things where I differ quite significantly to a lot of researchers, they believe, you know, the evidence is being hidden because the government is sitting on top of this terrible secret which we can never know about.
And, you know, they're hiding all this information they found and researched.
My view is quite different.
I think they're hiding, they've got evidence.
They may even have bodies and craft.
But I think as far as the nature of the phenomenon and their agenda, or the agenda I should say, I think they're completely in the dark.
And I think, you know, just having craft and having bodies tells you nothing about where these entities come from, tells you nothing about why they're here and sort of skulking around in the middle of the night or whatever.
And I think it's this, perhaps, more than the fact that they have all the answers that prompts the secrecy.
You know, people often assume that, oh, it's the government.
They're in control of it and they know what's going on and it's all for our own good.
Well, you know, you imagine 200 years ago, if somebody time-travelled a Volkswagen back to central England, you know, the people there would probably, even back then, they'd understand it was some sort of vehicle.
They could push it along and the wheels would turn.
But having that would not tell you anything about the people who built it or where it came from.
It would just be this weird thing that had fallen into your lap.
And maybe that's what happened at Roswell, that something literally fell into the military's lap.
But it's a phenomenon that has strictly stayed in the shadows ever since.
And the government doesn't know how to handle it because rather than sitting on a massive amount of answers, they actually have no real answers.
That's a fascinating take on it.
And I've never heard that one before, and it's really making me think.
So maybe something happened there.
I have a feeling it did.
You know, there is enough evidence down the years.
Sadly, some of those people involved in that are not alive anymore.
But perhaps if a thing like that appears on your doorstep or in the desert or wherever it appears, you don't know what the hell to do about it.
So you keep it within just a few people.
You put the evidence away against the day and you lock it away against the day when you perhaps might understand a little bit more about it.
Yeah, I think sometimes, you know, we give governments too much credit, you know, the idea that it's the government.
Well, they're on top of everything.
You know, they know everything.
Well, they don't, you know, I think, and when you're dealing with definitively anomalous things like this, then it becomes even harder to sort of ascertain exactly what's going on.
You know, as I said, even if you have a body, even if you have a craft, well, that may be all they have, you know, other than a lot of reports and a lot of suspicions.
Now, to me, you know, hiding the answers and not wanting to give them to the general public is probably less significant than having to admit you have no answers and you're not in control of the skies, you know.
Which brings me to a question that's bugged me for many, many years and has been prompted in my mind once again because the BBC over here is showing the series about Kennedy and the Kennedys.
I always wondered, did JFK know?
Well, you know, there's actually a lot of material that links Kennedy with the UFO subjects.
I mean, I'll give you a few classic examples.
You know, where I live, you know, I can almost spit on the grassy knoll, you know, literally, like a 15-minute drive away.
And, you know, I've been down there quite a lot and investigated the links between the Kennedy assassination and UFOs.
And I mean, to give you one example, when Kennedy was shot here in Dallas in 1963, he was actually in Texas for a couple of days altogether.
And one of the things he did prior to coming to Dallas, he opened a new wing at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas.
And this was a wing of the Air Force that was doing early research into how the human body would react or might react to low-gravity atmospheres, if you like.
And, you know, it was basically the dawning of the space age and the military wanted to know how people might be affected in space.
So they set up this body or installation at Brooks Air Force Base to do research.
And while Kennedy, after the dedication of this particular opening of the new building, Kennedy actually had a behind-closed doors Meeting with a man who was one of the chief medical people from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the summer of 1947, which was the location and the exact timeframe when the bodies from Roswell were reportedly taken to Wright-Patterson.
So we have that.
And another angle: one of the people who's been deeply linked with the Kennedy assassination from the conspiracy angle is a former FBI agent named Guy Bannister.
And Bannister was a colleague and friend of Lee Harvey Oswald.
On top of that, Bannister in 1947 was one of J. Edgar Hoover's early official UFO investigators for the FBI.
So that's just two out of many examples where we see linkages between Kennedy and the UFO phenomenon.
So there's a fragmented tapestry there, and one of these days maybe someone's going to join up the dots if they're allowed to.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, the whole Kennedy assassination thing is an intricate enough thing at the best of times without bringing in Roswell and UFOs.
But the fact is, you know, there are these links and connections there.
So, you know, in other words, somebody should really sort of do a really in-depth study of this.
I mean, I don't think it's something that would be cleared up in a year.
You know, it could be like a 10-year project or something, which wouldn't be a bad thing because then, you know, you have a better chance of resolving it, I think.
There is an impasse there, then.
If there is information held by governments, including the British government and certainly the United States government, and almost certainly the Russians as well, because things have happened out there, and they're perhaps a little more open about it these days than we are.
Maybe this impasse and the deadlock in information will only be broken if they, if they exist out there somewhere, decide to present themselves to us and more publicly than just the occasional abduction.
Yeah, well, that's the biggest sort of irony.
You know, people say, why doesn't the government reveal the truth?
But they just often forget or just ignore the fact that the phenomenon itself doesn't seem to want to reveal itself either.
You know, this is the biggest irony.
It doesn't matter how much the government does to hide things.
The cover-up could end overnight if the intelligences behind the UFOs just decided to appear over every major city on the planet.
But they've never done that, and they seem to have no interest in doing that either.
Now, of course, you know, that situation could change tomorrow.
But, I mean, if you look at historically, not necessarily just going back to the early years of the, you know, the 40s or whatever, but look back in history where you can find a lot of reports that sound like you could place them in a UFO context.
You could argue that this phenomenon has been with us for thousands of years, but it's always remained like a silent partner.
And maybe that means it always will.
Perhaps it has no particular interest in landing outside Buckingham Palace or on the White House lawn or saving the rainforest or giving us the answers to pollution and overpopulation.
It may be a self-serving presence.
People often kind of take this sort of, it's all love and light, etc.
Or they're hostile or they may be hostile.
Or maybe not.
Perhaps they're just like us.
They do things for their own purposes.
And maybe they just want to research us, hence the stories of alien contact, the Betty and Barney Hill case and many other cases like that.
They want to find out all they can about us, but they've got no real interest.
Why would they want to?
To reveal themselves.
They just want to take from us whatever they can get.
Yeah, I actually think that's a lot of what it is.
And it's our arrogance as a species to imagine, oh, if they're coming to the Earth, it's obviously they want to meet with the massively intelligent and wonderful human race.
I don't think it is that.
think is a self-serving thing and the fact that we You're joining up some dots in my brain, Nick, because we assume that everybody's like us, that we want to quest for information.
We've got to have the truth, the truth, the truth, because that's what we're here for, to quest to learn more over the years.
And when we die, people will know more than when we were alive, and the next generation will know some more.
But perhaps if they exist and if there are various species, they're all about just sustaining themselves.
They're not interested in furthering our knowledge or anybody else's knowledge.
They just want to keep themselves going.
Yeah, and I think that also one of the other things to sort of remember and think about is the fact that, you know, we're talking potentially about a definitively alien species.
You know, we assume, I think, that I don't think, not maliciously or deliberately, but sort of unconsciously, we assume that they're going to be like us, but their technology is going to be far more advanced.
Well, you know, to me, you only have to look at the divergence of sort of intelligence and, you know, within the animal kingdom on the Earth.
You know, we have dogs as pets or cats, you know, and we talk to them, but their mindset is extremely different to ours.
You know, they're very intelligent.
Dolphins are very intelligent, and we can interact with them to a massive degree, but they're nothing like us.
And so my view is that aliens won't just be the equivalent of highly advanced humans, but with better technology.
You know, interacting with them and understanding their mindset might be as impossible as understanding the mindsets of a dolphin or something like that.
We're all fascinated by contact.
We've just been talking about it, so we must be.
In your researches, have you met actual contactees?
And if you have, what have they told you?
Yeah, I've interviewed a number of contactees over the years and abductees.
And it seems to be the case that, you know, as far as the witnesses are concerned or the experiences are concerned, that something is going on.
There's some sort of a gender which intimately involves the human race.
Now, you know, with abductions, we hear a lot about hybrid children and, you know, genetic experimentation and gene splicing, that sort of thing.
And, you know, some people roll their eyes at that, but you only have to look at what we're doing today, you know, in the sort of early burgeoning years of gene splicing and gene manipulation to the extent, you know, where it has a lot of people worried, you know, where governments have put regulations in place to ensure, you know, we don't create kind of like literal Frankenstein monsters or anything like that.
So we seem to have an aspect of that in the UFO phenomenon.
What's interesting about a lot of contactee cases is that we get a lot of people who claim deeply sort of profound and intimate contact with aliens who sort of espouse on their sort of theories about how life should be lived, etc.
But they don't seem to want to land and speak to governments.
It's almost they want like an intimate one-to-one contact with members of the general public, then sow the seed and have them go out and spread the stories rather than the aliens, if that's what they are, doing it for us.
And I think that kind of makes sense.
It's sort of like the idea of, you know, if we don't develop on our own and advance, we're always reliant on somebody else doing it, that's not a healthy situation to be in.
That's why the motherbird kicks the little baby birds out of the nest eventually, because it's not healthy, you know, to have them reliant on the mother throughout their entire lives or whatever.
So I think that comes into play as well, possibly, the idea that if we're to develop, it should be on our own terms, but perhaps these entities are giving us a subtle nudge forward, but realizing that anything else and we become over-reliant on them could be sort of disastrous.
Do you believe that people are snatched from their homes or their beds and taken away by aliens for analysis or for whatever reason, and then they appear with missing time again?
Does that happen, really?
Well, you know, I mean, this is an interesting scenario because for me, it can go two ways.
I do believe there's a genuine abduction phenomenon.
I don't doubt that at all.
Now, on the face of it, it looks like aliens are landing, coming down and doing genetic experiments on people, you know, extracting DNA, eggs, etc.
And, you know, it kind of ties in with what we do with, you know, lab rats, that sort of thing.
But the problem is that, you know, on every single occasion in recorded history, not a single abduction has ever gone wrong.
You know, it's never been aborted halfway through.
You know, the irate husband of the woman or whatever has never clubbered the alien over the head and killed it.
You know, I mean, I'm generalizing here, but that has never happened.
It's like there has never been a single mistake.
And not a single person, no matter how hard they've tried, has ever even managed to bring back even the smallest little thing that was on board the craft, you know, as to say, as proof they went.
And for that reason, one of the other areas that interests me is the idea that abductions could be almost like visionary experiences, where almost like a 3D hologram imagery of an event is, I guess, pumped into the mind of the person as a means to sort of almost spread like a computer meme,
but the idea is, you know, it's like a form of contact between an alien intelligence and us, but it's done in a fashion where it's done very, very safely in the sense that there's no chance of the aliens ever being caught or, you know, outwitted because it's actually not a physical event.
Well, that's either a very convenient explanation for something that isn't really happening, or it prompts another question about the whole nature.
I didn't think we'd be talking about this, but the whole nature of reality and perhaps everything.
You know, talk to David Icke about this, but everything is in its own way an illusion.
So if what we see around us is our own creation, then maybe something else beyond us can project into us another form of reality, hence the idea that you've just given us.
Yeah, I think, you know, it's one of these things, if you want to elevate a species and you want to demonstrate that, yes, you're here and you want to get some of your views across, but they're a very warlike species, as we are, you know, hostile, et cetera, et cetera, well, then you take the greatest steps to protect yourself.
And maybe, you know, presenting yourself mind to mind in a visionary type experience benefits everybody.
The message still gets across that we're here to help, but there's never any chance, as I said, of the aliens being kind of outwitted, captured, etc.
You know, and maybe, you know, it's kind of like the equivalent of being given a book to read.
You know, you're learning facts, information, data from the past and the present, but it's all on paper.
Maybe it's a similar thing, but it's all in the mind.
Well, if that's how the game's being played, Nick, if that is how the game's being played by them, then we're always going to play this cat and mouse game.
We're never going to get anywhere.
Well, you know, maybe the idea, as I sometimes speculate, is that the phenomenon is trying to upgrade us as a species, but it's so alien that it does so in a definitive alien way.
You know, it doesn't do it in the way we might expect it to do it.
You know, it may realize, you know, I'm speculating here, but let's say there's some massively advanced intelligence, very, very old, you know, and it's traveled the universe and it's seen countless Earths over the years.
And some of them, you know, have made it and on other planets, you know, they get to our level of existence a couple of hundred years after their own industrial revolution and they destroy themselves through whatever reason.
You know, I think there is evidence to suggest, you know, there's a possibility that all civilizations reach that point where they can destroy themselves and some of them do and some of them don't.
And maybe this phenomenon goes around trying to prevent the destruction from happening, but it does so, as I said, in a behind-the-scenes fashion.
So in answer, you know, to your question, will we ever get anywhere?
I'm not sure, we may actually never really know what is behind the phenomenon, but we may get a deeper understanding of why it's here.
So in other words, we're on the journey, we just don't know it.
Yeah, we're on the journey, and we may reach the end of that journey, hopefully, and survive.
But we may have some sort of suspicion like now that something is helping us, guiding us, tutoring us, and possibly even influencing certain people to sort of spread the word.
But that doesn't mean they ever really want to show themselves to us, you know.
And we might be, well, you know, we want to see them, we want to know, and that's understandable.
But maybe, maybe that's not their agenda.
You know, maybe it's to do the job and then move on to the next one.
Which is the whole thing about, just to draw a kind of parallel with what goes on with us in the first world and people in the third world, you know, they say you can send them a whole lot of food and that'll keep them going for a month or so.
But if you teach them subtly how to produce their own food, you keep them going for life.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, you know, the and of course, you know, if you if you just help them out and then for whatever reason you go away, then they're in even bigger trouble.
You know, that's that's I mean, that's that's natural in any animal alive on the planet, human or otherwise.
And I mean, you only have to look at when advanced cultures, you know, visit another culture and integrate themselves into it, they generally come off better.
You know, and the more inferior, when I say inferior, I mean in terms of advanced technology and number, inevitably they come off worse.
And so, you know, I think the idea that somebody would just come down and help us and solve everything and we become overly reliant on them isn't actually a good situation at all.
There's a good argument to be made for that.
You just made it.
Okay, I want to bring you to your book, The Men in Black.
The Men in Black are back.
This time they're real.
Great title for a book.
Now, I saw that movie, the first one.
I thought the second one was ridiculous.
The first one, I thought, well, this kind of backs up an awful lot of stuff that I've always believed, that there are people who know stuff.
There are people who've experienced stuff.
And governments know stuff, and they've experienced stuff too.
And they have an agency that shuts people up.
And this is what the book's about, yeah?
Yeah, I mean, the book basically is a study of the entire Men in Black mystery.
You know, I mean, you made a good point.
I think a lot of people's views on the subject are sort of developed from the Hollywood movies.
But because, you know, the films, the Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones films are Hollywood creations, a lot of people, I've realized over the years in speaking to them, assume that the entire mystery or the phenomenon was a creation of Hollywood.
A lot of people don't realize that the movies were actually based upon a comic book of the same title, Men in Black.
And the comic books were inspired by real-life reports of people who said they'd had UFO experiences and they'd been visited by these sort of menacing guys in black suits who warned them not to talk about their UFO encounters.
Now, what's weird is that in the movie, they're just portrayed solely as government agents, which some of them certainly are.
But what's interesting is that within the UFO field in reality rather than fiction, what we actually see are kind of two category of men in black.
There's no doubt that there's a government angle, but we also get weirder men in black that actually kind of sound almost alien themselves.
They're sort of described as skinny, pale, and having these sort of bulging eyes hiding behind big wraparound sunglasses and, you know, that seem, that literally do seem like hybrids almost that people talk about.
So what I've done in the book is to address, you know, all the different facets of the subject and, you know, look at the different theories and the case files.
And I track down a lot of some of the old-timers who were involved in the early years of MIB research in the early 50s and, you know, to get their views.
So it's hopefully sort of a rounded, deep study of the entire phenomenon, trying to determine who they are and what their agenda is and which agency, et cetera, they're from.
Have you talked to people who've actually had the frighteners put on them?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I interviewed people for the book who literally had the knock on the front door and these menacing guys in black suits and the old style 1950s gangster type hats and sunglasses and just invited themselves in almost quite literally.
And what are those encounters like?
I've always wondered about that.
I mean, do these people sit down, calmly have a cup of coffee and say, we understand you experienced this, Mr. So-and-so?
We would advise you very strongly not to talk about it and leave it at that.
It's actually sort of more enigmatic than that.
I mean, you know, it's not even the case of sort of sitting down and drinking coffee.
It's, you know, you saw a UFO, you know, tell us about it.
It's kind of like that.
It's almost like zombie droning, you know.
It's sort of very sort of cold, emotionless.
When I say emotionless, I don't mean just sort of typical bureaucratic people you have to deal with, you know, when you go down to some arm of a government.
Not like that.
It's almost, it is like a totally emotionless, zombie type experience where, you know, these people or whatever they are, they just seem almost detached.
But, you know, they'll ask a vague question about the incident.
And then the person, very often and very weirdly, the people almost, it's kind of like they enter a trance or they're semi-hypnotized.
They just spill the beans and everything.
They have no qualms about letting the person in or the people in, even if it's like 10.30 at night, you know, and you open the door and there's three guys there in trench coats and black hats.
You know, you probably wouldn't let them in, but people do.
And they just spill the beans on the entire experience.
And then when they've finished, you know, the MIB just stand up and leave, don't even utter a word and just kind of single file go out the door.
So, you know, it's very, very strange.
And I think part of it at least could be that there are people in government who play up on this MIB image to make themselves look even weirder because they know then if people talk about it, they're going to be laughed at even more.
You know, oh yeah, right, you had a visit from the man in black.
You know, if somebody turns up and flashes an ID card from the Ministry of Defense or whatever, then people would say, wow, you know, well, we could track that person down and we could, you know, put a complaint into our local MP or whatever.
But if the government people themselves actually sort of deliberately manipulate the MIB mythology and maybe even dress in that fashion deliberately and speak and act odd, it really does act as a good camouflage if they're trying to, number one, get information out of people and number two, silence them.
And well, if you go along that route then, you're part of the process here because you're perpetuating this stuff and you're doing their work for them, assuming there's a them.
By telling people about this stuff, you're going to make people who might have had experiences afraid and maybe that's what they want.
They don't have to come to your door because you'll be too scared to speak anyway.
Yeah, it's like a double-edged sword.
You know, it's like when we're dealing with this sort of phenomena, you know, I think if we write about it and, you know, we demonstrate to people in books that people who've had the MIB visits have been intimidated into silence, then if people in government read that, they think, well, you know, our agenda actually works, you know, we'll do it even more.
So it is kind of like a double-edged sword as to how much you admit that the government tactics are actually working because, you know, then you encourage them to do it even more then.
But you kind of said at the beginning of this, and I don't want to let this point get away, that there are obviously agencies, alphabet agencies, whatever they are, involved in this stuff, but there's another force that's almost like alien or supernatural or something else.
Now, if we assume that is true, that opens a whole other can of worms.
And do we believe that the two are working in collusion?
Well, yeah, I mean, this is sort of the weirdest aspect of the MIB is that some of them, as I said, no doubt they are government people.
But a lot of witnesses, I wouldn't say more, but certainly a lot of witnesses have had these more creepy experiences where, again, they'll open the door late at night.
These people will be dressed the same, trench coats, turn-up collars, sunglasses, even late at night, and they're pulled down gangster-type hats.
But they look, I mean, they look sick.
They look ill.
They look, you know, five foot to five foot five, you know, maybe sort of nine stone, white as a sheet, as if they've got anemia or something like that.
They don't seem conversant with their ways and mannerisms.
They sort of stutter and stammer.
Like an alien or like an alien hybrid?
Actually, more like a hybrid in the sense that they look human-like, but a lot of witnesses have said if you look closely at them, there's a few subtle differences like the eyes and the mouth and things like that.
But it looks like by wearing all these sort of turned-up collars, pulled down hats, glasses, they're trying to disguise their appearance.
And you've had personal contact with people who've been through that.
Oh, yeah, I interviewed probably for the book, I think, and they're all named, they're all speaking on the record, I think probably 30 or 40 people altogether for the book.
And, you know, to hear these stories over and over again from both sides of the world, you know, it's pretty, it's intriguing, but it's alarming and disturbing as well.
And, you know, when you hear these type of accounts, it sounds weird.
But, I mean, I'll give you a classic example of why, another reason why they're so intriguing is because, you know, as I said, everybody assumes the men in black are from the government.
Well, one of the things that I reproduced in the book was a document that surfaced officially through the U.S. Air Force, through the terms of the Freedom of Information Act from the 1960s.
And it was circulated literally throughout the entire Air Force.
And it's a document which states that it had come to the Air Force's attention that people across the U.S. who'd been visit, who'd had UFO experiences, were being visited by mysterious characters dressed in black suits, warning them not to talk about UFOs.
And the Air Force said, if you have any information about who these people might be, we want to know because we want to try and catch them.
But the irony is, we think the MIB are the government, and the government's circulating documents saying who are the MIB?
We want to try and find out.
Well, that, of course, assumes that every arm of government, whatever you call government, is connected to every other armature of government.
And maybe that ain't so.
Maybe they're not joined up.
Oh, no, I think there's something to that as well.
Again, I think that's why the UFO secret has been hidden so long, because whether it's the MIB or Roswell or whatever, it's not like you join the CIA and you're suddenly told what happened at Roswell.
It doesn't work like that at all.
It works by you keep secrets and secrets are maintained by telling as few people as possible.
So I think there is something to this, that just because one arm of government says something doesn't mean another arm doesn't know more.
But I do find it intriguing that of all people, the Air Force, we're actually saying, who the hell are these men in black?
So what, you know, without spoiling the book for people who want to buy it, I'm sure there'll be plenty of those, what conclusion do you come to about this?
Well, I basically come to the conclusion that, you know, we've sort of discussed that there are, you know, when people say, who are the men in black?
You know, my answer is which group.
You know, I really do believe there are government people who have silenced and intimidated UFO witnesses.
And I think over time, they realize that by nurturing this MIB mythology, it does act as a good camouflage for them and a plausible deniability.
But equally, I do truly believe there is this other category of men in black as well.
You know, the weirder ones that don't even seem human, but they have a similar agenda to get people not to talk about UFOs.
And of course, the big question is, you know, who are they?
Where are they from?
Where are they coming?
You know, are they hybrids?
Are they literal aliens?
Are they something paranormal?
You know, there's all sorts of theories.
And I sort of present five or six different theories in the book as to, you know, what people have suggested they could be.
I even interviewed one guy who thought, you know, they were time travelers coming back on like archaeological expeditions and using our sort of, that's why the clothes kind of look kind of outdated because they get the timelines wrong when they come back.
So, you know, I've covered like a lot of alternative areas and theories for what the MIB might be, but presenting them as theories, you know, because that's all we can really do at this stage, I think.
Or, of course, which opens up yet another can of worms.
There are so many of them.
But they may be us.
We may have technology, or a group of us may have got some technology.
There's a guy called Richard Hoagland, who does space research, I'm sure you've heard about, who talks about the Nazi bell and all of that stuff.
And there's a technology that some people have.
Perhaps the Nazis had it and some of them disappeared after the war, took this stuff with them.
And that is what's manifesting UFOs and interplanetary travel and all kinds of things.
Well, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, when it comes to UFOs, we have to remember, you know, UFO is simply an unidentified flying object.
It doesn't always necessarily equate with alien Spacecraft.
And although I do personally believe, there's a jet, absolutely believe, there's a genuine UFO phenomenon of unknown origins, which has nothing to do with us, equally I do believe that there is sort of well, we know, you know, there are highly advanced technologies and aircraft being test-blown at various sort of secret installations, particularly in the US, that look weird.
And that, you know, if you saw them and you weren't clear to know the nature of the project, you would think it was a UFO.
I mean, you only have to look in, for example, the Middle East now with some of these remotely piloted drones that are being flown.
You know, some of them look very odd.
If you were to see one of those at prototype stage 25 years ago, you'd think, well, I've just seen a UFO.
So I think as time advances, unfortunately for us as UFO researchers, it's going to become harder and harder to differentiate between, quote, their UFOs and our UFOs.
But there are definitely two classes.
I believe that.
I believe that there's stuff that we have and there's stuff that they have.
Yes, there's no doubt about that.
And maybe we've been back engineering stuff that they've had that we've got hold of for years, but that's a whole other debate.
Listen, we've tried to compress four hours' worth of conversation at least into an hour.
We haven't done too badly at all, but I've got to get you back on here again.
If people want to know about you, Nick, want to know about your books and your work, how do they do that?
They can reach me at nickredfern.com or nickredfernsbooks.blogspot.com.
And I always try and respond to emails within a day or two if people want to contact me.
I'm sure you're working on another project now.
What is it?
I've actually got a new book coming out at the end of the year.
It's called Keep Out.
And it's a study of secret installations around the world that have been linked with UFOs.
So Area 51, Hangar 18, Rudlow Manor in England, the Russian Area 51.
So in other words, each chapter is based around a secret installation with a UFO linked to it.
What a great idea for a book that is.
Have you been to them all?
I've been to quite a few of them.
I haven't been to any of the Russian ones, but not yet at least.
We need to get you invited.
I'll put a letter into Mr. Putin.
Nick Redfern, pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you very, very much for coming on the Unexplained.
My listeners have been asking me to get you on for a long time, so now we've done it.
But let it not be just the only time.
Let's get you on again.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Thanks, Howard.
A little look into the world of Nick Redfern, and I don't know about you, but he made me think.
It's not often that somebody really makes you ask questions, and that guy does.
So very, very interesting.
Name is Nick Redfern.
You want to know more about him?
Go to nickredfern.com.
Better still, go to my front page, triple w.theunexplained.tv, and I will have a link to him.
Thank you very much, as ever, to Adam Cornwell, my fantastic webmaster, very busy guy these days, very successful at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool, for both designing this website and also for getting the show out to you.
Please, if you listen to the show however you hear it, can you go and register a hit on the website, www.theunexplained.tv.
If you want to, you can make a donation there and you can certainly please send me feedback because I love to hear from you.
And you have said some very, very kind things and they're all touching.
I think I've said before on the show that most of you I'm never going to meet, but I feel I know you and it's a really marvelous thing that we're not a radio station, we're not a corporation, said that before too, but I'm able to reach you now through this new technology in a way that wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago.
And that is a blast.
My promise to you that within my flesh and blood and my resources, I am going to develop this.
I'm going to do more shows and I want to develop it into something much more.
So that is a work in progress, as they say in the States, work in progress, as we say here in England.
It is going to happen.
And until it does, please keep the faith with the unexplained.
My name is Howard Hughes.
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