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June 7, 2013 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:03:16
Edition 114 - Nick Redfern

This edition features Texas-based British researcher Nick Redfern’s look into secretgovernment files on “monster” sightings...

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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 Return of the Unexplained.
Thank you very much for keeping the faith with my show.
Thank you for the stream of emails and for your ongoing support.
You can always find out more about this show or link up with me at www.theunexplained.tv, www.theunexplained.tv, the website designed by the incredible Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
Lovely weather in the UK as I record this at the front end of June.
It is very nearly my birthday, and I'm recording this show with a little piece of Americana.
I don't know if you can hear the difference at all, but I've found a classic American microphone.
Not an expensive one at all, but one that is becoming increasingly rare.
It's an American-made Shur SM58, as seen on many a stage and used by many artists and speakers over the years.
These days, and for many years they've been made in Mexico, very hard to find the ones that were made in Evanston, Illinois.
And I have got one of those that I managed to find quite recently, quite inexpensively.
Now, the connoisseurs say that the ones made in America sound better than the ones made in Mexico.
Well, I don't know.
I've heard and used both.
I think they're different, but I don't think one is better than the other.
But at the moment, I'm using the American one made in Illinois just for this edition of the show, just to see what you think of that.
A little piece of Americana here.
And I've always loved this microphone.
When I used to do outside broadcasts and travel around the world, we used to take these with us because they can take an awful lot of abuse and punishment, which they have to do on stage.
Anyway, that's, as we say in the UK, that's enough anoracking for now.
But yeah, a little bit of history at the moment.
Something that is not so pleasant to talk about now is the condition of Nelson Mandela, who, as I record these words, is in hospital, and for the first time, they're admitting he's in a serious condition.
Well, I visited South Africa many times and went there first, just after the elections in 1994, and have seen that country transition to what it's become today, very largely through the efforts of Mandela and the people around him.
What the country will be like without him is, of course, for anyone to guess or speculate, and they've been doing that in books and other places for years now.
But we wish him a speedy recovery, and we wish him the best at all times.
He did such a lot.
The man they call Madiba, Nelson Mandela, in hospital, as I record this.
A couple of things that are in the news that are kind of connected.
One, as you will have heard in whatever country you're in, the ongoing efforts of governments to eavesdrop or spy on our communications, which are making news here, and some collusion allegedly by big organizations to allow them to look at records of email addresses and that kind of thing.
We're being told that the content of communications is not being looked at, but who is being communicated with is being looked at and all, as President Obama has been saying, in the fight against terrorism, which is a good thing.
But the question we all have to ask for our own sake is how far ought this stuff to go?
And who regulates it?
If it's all being done in secret and we're only just hearing about it now wherever we are, who regulates this stuff?
Who regulates the regulators, in other words?
Maybe there's a freedom issue here somewhere.
What do you think?
And the tie into all of that is that as I speak and during this week, a meeting of a group that has been commented on by many conspiracy theorists for a long, long time, the Bilderberg Group, this organization whose existence has been denied but has always been very secret, of the great and the good, political leaders from around the world, senior bankers and people like that, who all periodically get together.
Now we know where they are, and there are various people saying they even have agendas for the meeting and they know exactly who's going to attend.
Well, we know that David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has been there and many, many other important people, like the head, I understand, of British Petroleum BP has been there too.
The Bilderberg Group meeting at a hotel deep in the countryside, north of London, and a whole fringe festival is on there, attended by people like Alex Jones, who's been broadcasting from there, and David Icke has been there.
My friend David has been there today speaking, I understand, about the Bilderberg.
The only thing that I would remark upon about the Bilderberg meeting is if these people wanted to be so secret, then why wouldn't they meet somewhere in an underground bunker buried and burrowed into a hillside in West Virginia or Arkansas or way up on the Canadian border?
Why would they do it in a hotel outside London in plain sight?
Or is that disinformation?
Are they doing this so publicly so they can do private business and secret business behind closed doors?
I don't know.
And that's another one for you to think about.
But Alex Jones certainly has been making an awful lot about this on his radio show and in other places during this week.
And I will ask David Icke about it all when he comes on the show, which we hope is going to be next month, David Icke booked now definitely for July.
And we'll talk about the Bilderbergers and what that's all about.
Special show this time round, we've got Nick Redfern returning to talk about his book, The Monster Files, A Look Inside Government Secrets and Classified Documents on Bizarre Creatures and Extraordinary Animals.
A lot of research has gone into this.
It's had some very good reviews.
Nick Redfern, of course, British investigator based in the United States.
He's been on the show a few times before, so we'll have him back on in just a second.
Like I say, if you want to connect with me and The Unexplained, go to the website www.theunexplained.tv, www.theunexplained.tv.
There you can send me an email or you can leave me a donation for the show gratefully received so we can develop what we're doing here.
And thank you, as I say, for all of the supportive things that you've said to me lately in your emails.
They are much appreciated.
Right, let's get to the United States.
High time we did and talk to Mr. Nick Redfern.
Well, thank you.
Thanks for having me back on the show.
Now remind me where you are, Nick Redfern.
I know you're in the central time zone of the United States, but that's a pretty big area.
Yeah, it is.
I actually live about 20 minutes from downtown Dallas in Texas.
Wow, it doesn't get me busier than that then.
No, and for today, it's sort of really red hot.
It's like pushing 90 degrees.
So on days like this, I keep vampire hours.
I stay in the day and lurk at night.
And is it humid with it, too?
Well, sometimes it is.
It depends.
I mean, the weather's really sort of unpredictable.
I mean, this week we've had two days where it poured down with rain and we had thunderstorms, and the temperature just sort of plummeted for two days, and then it sort of skyrocketed back up again.
So, you know, you can never sort of predict it one day from the other, really.
Yeah, true.
I'm looking at some reports of, I think they've got tropical rain in the east coast and they've got all sorts of other stuff west coast.
So, you know, interesting times, interesting weather.
We have some very pleasant spring weather here, so I can't complain about that for now.
But you know, the UK, because you left it, you leave it for a little while and it might change.
You never know.
All right, let's, in a moment, we're going to talk about your latest project, but you do research all things that are unusual.
I just wonder whether you had any thoughts about this, and I know it's more in the area of conspiracy theories, really, but the meeting that's happening now of the Bilderberg Group that's happening just outside London.
I'm told that as I record these words, something like 5,000 people are gathering there to protest about this thing, and there are thousands more queuing down the lane near this big hotel near Watford where this thing's being held.
Well, yeah, I mean, it's sort of an interesting thing because they have the Bilderberger Group is basically a collection of very powerful and influential people in areas everywhere from industry and politics and, you know, you name it, where they're sort of the people who have the ability to, I guess, change things and manipulate things and I guess essentially get together and discuss sort of forward thinking for the future.
And I guess you can look at it from two perspectives.
You know, the idea that it's a forward thinking, unified group.
Other people take the view that it's sort of more sinister and conspiratorial along the lines of, you know, sort of manipulating the population or the world for certain events, you know, and to steer it in a particular direction.
What do you think?
What's your thought?
Well, you know, I mean, I think that I don't believe there's some sort of sinister plot to, you know, overthrow world governments into whatever, a new world order.
Although I think, you know, that it's not up to, it shouldn't be up to a group of people, to one group of people, to decide how we live our lives.
You know, I think, you know, we should have, it should be more down to the population.
I think governments have too much control, you know, over the people today.
I think, you know, and it's all put down, well, we've got to protect you.
Well, you know, we ought to be protected in the Second World War, but people used common sense.
You know, you didn't need to be controlled or whatever, you know.
And David Cameron, we'll get off this in just a second, but David Cameron is at this meeting, we understand.
Now, he's elected by a majority, supposedly, of the British people, and he's accountable.
Well, going to a secret meeting or a meeting that isn't exactly open to the air of publicity, that's nothing to do with accountability, is it?
That's quite the other way.
I mean, the problem is, it's like with all politicians, that when they make a lot of promises and statements, etc., when they're, you know, it's coming up to election or whatever, but very often after they've been elected, a lot of the pledges and promises go out the window.
You know, that's sort of typical of politics, unfortunately.
And the other thing that's being talked about at the moment, both in the country that you're in and the country that I'm in, and I was also listening to some radio this morning from Canada, they're talking about it there too, is this whole thing about spying on our electronic communications.
And they're telling us now that it's okay because we're not looking into the contents of what you're sending, but we are looking at who you're sending it to and who you're communicating with and for how long.
I don't know how much we can believe of this.
Well, again, I mean, my view is that it comes down to, you know, why the need for it.
I mean, you know, on the one hand, somebody can make an argument, well, in the world we live in today, that's how it is.
But on the other, for me, I look at it from the perspective, you know, I grew up in the 80s and 90s when the IRA was setting things off all across England and killing people by the dozen, you know.
But we didn't have to go all under like some 1984 state.
People just used common sense and were vigilant and understood the risks, but you get on with your everyday life because it's important that life shouldn't be affected and changed by people who want to change it.
But it didn't mean we all had to go under surveillance.
Do you see what I mean?
So why shouldn't that be the case today?
Why shouldn't we, you know, it's like they say, well, it's got to be done to not change your way of life.
You make a very good point.
You know, there was a different terrorist threat in the United Kingdom in the 80s.
And, you know, I was sort of growing up in that era too.
And in the 70s, we all had to be a bit careful at times.
But there was no suggestion.
And in fact, there was no ability to do this anyway.
No suggestion that we would be eavesdropped and spied on to that extent.
And now, because we have other threats in this world, and they're all about killing people, just like terrorist groups of every kind are about killing people to create an atmosphere of terror.
But there was no suggestion that we would be curtailed in that way.
And I just wonder what's changed.
Why has it got to be different?
Simply because we have the ability to email people or phone them on a mobile phone.
Well, yeah, I mean, my perspective is that the reason why it's being done is because it's so easy, because the world is now based around electronic communications.
You know, I mean, you can go back only 15 years and, you know, everybody was still communicating by letters or, you know, if it was electronic, it was by facts.
You know, but the entire world today is electronic based.
You know, most people don't even write a letter, or maybe just send a Christmas card or whatever.
And so for that reason, it's become so simple to monitor people.
but my view has always been that, you know, if we're told, well, this has to be done to protect your way of life, the way of life you used to, but if they're going to do that, well, that way of life's gone.
Exactly.
Another very good point that they're saying that they want to protect and preserve our way of life, but to do it, they're eroding one of the fundamental principles of our way of life.
And I think, you know, there is something to be said for, you know, it's almost like a cross between Big Brother and like the nanny state of, well, we need to protect you.
You know, it's kind of like kids at school being told, well, you can't play conquers and you can't do this.
Well, there's nothing wrong with people just being careful and using common sense and not taking away, you know, the life that you're used to.
I mean, you know, like the Second World War, I mean, that was a major conflict.
But people were careful.
You know, when the Blitz occurred and the Germans were bombing, they, you know, black out the lights and whatever.
You know, but you didn't have sort of surveillance.
People just used their brains.
Well, I'm sure there was surveillance, but what they were doing is they were doing it in a more targeted way.
What we're talking about today is the ability for agencies to spy on everybody effectively, not just spy on targeted people that they've cleverly found.
This is not clever stuff.
This is just throwing a great big blanket over everybody.
And, you know, until I hear difference, I'm concerned.
I'm very, very concerned for our way of looking at.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's good that this whole issue is debated because, you know, it affects everybody.
That's the thing.
And again, for me, the thing is that, well, if you're going to target everybody or massive amounts of people, how much good is it actually going to achieve?
You know, because you've got so much to traw through.
Yeah, true enough.
I think that's another.
Well, it takes even cleverer people to be able to go through all of that material and find something that may be of use to us.
And I suppose the other argument would be, the counter-argument would be, well, they would tell us that the fact that we've had no significant major terrorist attacks for a while, we haven't had another 9-11, we haven't had another 7-7, is a measure of the fact that they're succeeding.
But it's a great big argument that I want to take up at another time.
And let's talk about what we're here to talk about, which is your new book, Monster Files.
Great title, A Look Inside Government Secrets and Classified Documents on Bizarre Creatures and Extraordinary Animals.
This is one of those shows, I think, Nick, where I can kind of sit back and let me tell you some stories.
First of all, why did you want to do some research like this?
Well, you know, over the years, sort of rumors and tales have surfaced to the effect that government agencies all around the world have taken an interest in reports of strange creatures like sea serpents, the Lott Ness Monster, Bigfoot, the abominable snowman, things like that.
And so as someone who's sort of dug into a lot of issues relative to government secrecy and strange phenomena, I don't really get involved in sort of the conspiracy side of research.
Mainly my interest is sort of UFOs and cryptozoology, which is unknown animals.
So what I do, or have done, I should say, is to sort of use the Freedom of Information Act to acquire documents that might exist and that, as it turns out, do exist on a wide range of these strange creatures that science and zoology say don't exist, but the eyewitnesses tell us do exist.
Okay.
And I thought because a lot of these files had never been seen before, and most people probably weren't even aware they existed, it was, you know, sort of like a new angle to get out to people and show them that this is really going on.
I presume because you're a Brit, even though you're in America, one of the starting places would have been the famous Loch Ness Monster in Scotland because it is maybe the most famous crypto zoological tale, apart from Bigfoot, of course, in the world.
Yeah, I would probably say.
I mean, I think that's a fair point.
I think if people think of strange creatures, you know, they think of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.
But, yeah, I mean, there are a number of files on the Loch Ness Monster, which are in the public domain.
The first, or the earliest, I should say, investigations where there was a government connection actually weren't secret.
I point this out in the book that sometimes, you know, governments are being quite open from the get-go, so to speak, about the research they're doing.
Other occasions they haven't.
But in terms of the Loch Ness Monster and I guess the world of officialdom, it actually goes back to the 1960s when there's an organisation in the British Royal Air Force.
It was called the Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre.
And these are basically the people who would analyse aerial photographs taken by high-flying spy planes of a Soviet missile base.
And they'd try and determine what the pictures showed and how many missile silos there were and that kind of thing.
And so what happened was that actually a member of parliament lobbied Jarek, as it was known.
It's today called the National Imagery Exploitation Centre and operates out of Royal Air Force Brampton in Cambridgeshire.
And the whole point was to sort of get Jarek on board to study film footage and photographs of the Loch Ness monster because these are the guys who are very good at determining, you know, does a photograph show a small, excuse me, a small object close at the cat towards the camera or does it show a large object further away from the camera.
And so this is actually lobbied by, as I said, a member of parliament named David James back in the 1960s.
And the whole point was that James had got his hands on some footage and photographs of what purported to show the Loch Ness Monster.
And he had a personal interest in the subject.
He was actually with Sir Peter Scott, One of the co-founders of the World Wildlife Fund.
And so Peter James, excuse me, David James approached Jarek and said, Hey, you know, can you have a look at this material?
So they said, Sure.
And in one piece of footage taken in the early 1960s, Jarek actually concluded that it wasn't a boat, that it wasn't a wave, that it seemed to be some sort of animate object.
And they concluded that from looking at the waves and the wake, etc., in the water, it appeared that there was a significant amount of the object, whatever it was, under the water as well.
So I guess the implication was they were talking about like a solid animate object, which wasn't a boat, which was of considerable size and which was partially swimming along on the water and under it.
Now, that's very, very significant, isn't it?
Because those are all the questions that people who try and debunk the Loch Ness monster stories, all the questions they raise.
Yeah, and of course, you know, we have to remember the caliber of the people that were looking at the footage.
You know, they weren't just somebody pulling something up on the internet.
You know, that was their entire job for the British military.
Now, that was sort of fairly wide open back in the 60s.
It became public knowledge.
But what didn't become public knowledge until the 2000s was actually a couple of programs and projects that the government of Margaret Thatcher attempted or thought about initiating.
They actually didn't in the end, but they were kind of weird ones.
Well, one of them was sort of typically bureaucratic stuff about whether or not the Loch Ness monster should be given some sort of endangered species classification to prevent people from killing it or whatever, or killing them.
Now, of course, that's kind of interesting because they were debating on a creature that nobody's actually proved exists, you know, so that was kind of unusual.
But the other issue was that the government actually came up with a very intriguing plan.
The idea was to release dolphins into Loch Ness and try and train them to chase large animate objects like the Loch Ness monsters.
And, you know, the idea was to sort of strap cameras to them and sonar equipment and see if they could actually pick something up.
That's astonishing.
And this stuff was done not in the public domain.
No, this is actually all behind the scenes.
And the only reason we know today is because the files are surfaced through the Freedom of Information Act.
But what's kind of amusing is that the files don't make any reference as to what would actually might happen if the dolphins came face to face with Loch Ness monsters.
Whether it would be like a square off between the two, I don't know.
And do we know whether any of this was ever tried?
Did anybody ever get to the point of the future?
There actually are rumors because over the years, people have talked about seeing dolphins in Loch Ness, but also other large fish like sturgeon and catfish even.
So, you know, there could be other things going on in Loch Ness.
I mean, to give you an example, one of the things I talk about in the book was in Lake Balar in Wales, actually just before the outbreak of the First World War.
The British Admiralty at the time secretly initiated a project where they released seals into Loch Ness.
And the idea was to try and train the seals to attack small boats.
And in a real-life situation, the plan was to strap dynamite to the seals.
And in the event of the First World War breaking out, they would train the seals to attack German warships and blow them up.
Of course, the SEALs, perhaps even astutely realizing that things wouldn't go well for them, they stopped responding to the trainers in the mosque.
They were no fools.
Excuse me, in the lake, in Lake Bala.
And the military was forced to just give up the project.
And of course, they had to leave the seals there.
But because this was a classified project and they didn't want sort of word and gossip getting around in the local villages, the Admiralty actually started spreading fake stories of lake monsters being on the loose in Lake Bala to hide the fact that they'd been really been doing sort of experiments with seals and explosives.
So on the one hand, in the 80s with the Thatcher government, they were trying to actually uncover the Loch Ness monster, but 70 years previously, they were actually trying to create lake monster stories to hide military projects behind them in case anybody saw anything going on.
And of course, a lot of people have said over the years that that's been done with the UFO phenomenon.
Now, look, you've not only looked at the Loch Ness Monster, but I understand that one of the other cases that you've looked at is in Asia, where there's a massive sea serpent on the Han River in Vietnam.
I've never heard of this.
Yeah, the Han River is an interesting place, as you said, Vietnam.
And we get a lot of weird monster stories from Vietnam.
There are reports from the Vietnam War of soldiers seeing what became known as rock apes because they would throw large rocks at the troops.
And they sound very much like a primitive human, almost like Neanderthal man or something even more savage than that.
And so a lot of strange stories from the jungles of Vietnam, which understandably did surface during the Vietnam War.
And this particular case that I talk about in the book is also from the Vietnam War and documented in official files where actually personnel who were flying over the Han River, military personnel, caught sight of what was described as like a large yellowy coloured, like a massive serpent or gigantic snake sort of coiling along in the river.
You know, they had the benefit of seeing it from directly above and because it was such of a bright colour, it sort of distinctly stood out.
But we're not talking, you know, like a 20-foot-long snake.
I mean, this was like a massive thing, you know, sort of tens and tens of feet long, which kind of created the idea of something more along the lines of a sea serpent than just a large snake.
And this couldn't have been something that was mechanical and devised as a weapon, I'm guessing.
Well, no, I mean, they were sort of adamant that they could see like flippers on it, etc.
It's not like they were, you know, 2,000 feet up.
They'd literally just sort of taken off from a nearby base and were taken to the skies and crossing the river when they saw it before it submerged into the sort of the darker depths Of the river, and they were absolutely sure that it was a flesh and blood living creature.
But again, this sort of just demonstrates the fact that qualified personnel are seeing strange things and then recording them in official documents.
Amazing, isn't it, that somebody in the Pentagon didn't think at that time, because all sorts of wacky stuff was being tried, certainly in the time of the Vietnam War, can't we harness this creature's abilities to the good of the United States?
Well, I mean, it's funny you say that because I did find other occasions similar to the Lake Ballastore in North Wales, where the US military had used lake monster rumors when they were testing what they were called like small submersibles in certain US lakes.
And again, in case anybody saw them, this is back in the 40s and 50s, where they're actually testing out these new devices.
They started spreading lake monster stories to sort of keep people away from the idea that it was actually like a classified little submarine.
So I think in some cases, as I note in the book, we're dealing with real strange creatures.
At other times, we're dealing with ways in which government agencies have realized they can exploit the myths and the stories to cover their own actions as well.
Because we're so much more savvy in this day and age and because we've got the internet and because we all think we're very clever, do you think that kind of stuff still goes on, that kind of spreading of disinformation, scare stories?
Well, that's actually a very good question because I think it probably doesn't.
I mean, you can look back sort of the 40s, 50s and 60s, and there were a lot of these weird psychological warfare operations.
I talk about one in the book, for example, about the government spreading vampire myths in the Philippines to scare rebels who were making an uprising against the elected government.
And so because the rebels were very superstitious of these vampires and the stories of vampires in the jungles of the Philippines, psychological warfare experts began spreading stories that there really were vampires and it actually deterred the rebels from following their goals.
But we don't see that much of that kind of thing today.
And I think it is a fair point to say that certainly, I think a lot of this was done in the 40s, 50s and 60s and today just wouldn't work so well, I think, because a lot of the smaller countries were more isolated back then and the routes was more likely to work than today, you know.
And what about human hybrids?
I'm asking you this for a reason.
Because when I was a child, I'd have been about nine or so, I had a wonderful grandmother who used to take me on days out from Liverpool to Southport.
Now, if you're in America or another country, Southport is a sort of seaside resort 20 miles north of Liverpool.
Quite nice.
It's got a fun fair, and I was always being taken there.
And I can remember being taken home to the train.
We always travel by train.
And my grandmother said, don't look.
And of course, as a child, the first thing you do is you do look.
And there is a man walking towards us.
And I swear now that this guy did not have feet.
He had cloven hooves.
And he looked like a cross between a goat and a human being.
And it wasn't something from the fun fair.
This, to all intents and purposes, was absolutely real.
And I've never, I've thought about it a lot over the years because I know what I saw.
I may have been nine years of age, but I know what I saw.
This was not a costume, and I still can't explain it.
Well, that's very weird.
I mean, you do get stories all around the world of what are called goat men.
I mean, ironically, where I live in Dallas, there's a place not too far away, about a 30-minute drive, called Lake Worth, which has a legend of a goatman.
And you can find stories like this across the United States, in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Michigan, a few other places.
And they're kind of described as like something straight out of Greek mythology, you know, like a fawn or something like that.
And that's what I saw in Southport.
That's the kind of thing that I saw as a nine-year-old.
That's weird, but, you know, it's a weird world.
Well, it is, and that's what you're shedding light on in this book.
By the way, I'll tell you what, I must ask you.
I had Robert Bartholomew, who wrote a recent book about Champ, the Lake Champlain monster.
Did you look into that case?
Is that one you'd like to look into?
Yeah, I didn't.
But the only reason I didn't was because I didn't find any evidence of government interest in it.
And that was sort of the one qualification with the cases that I looked into was the fact that where there was some sort of official interest in following the story.
But I mean, in saying that, the Champ story is a really intriguing one because there's a lot of testimony, a lot of cases.
And I know some people are sceptical of some of the pictures and the reports.
But I mean, for me, collectively, when you put it all together, I think there's evidence of something in the lakes.
Okay, and of the other stories that you looked at, which are the most interesting?
Tell me some stories.
Well, I mean, coming back to Britain again, one of the things I found fascinating was that at the National Archives at Kew, just outside London, where all the government declassified files are eventually put on display, there's a large collection of files on sightings of sea serpents from the 19th century.
And the reason I included this in the book was because the reports weren't just from, you know, some family looking out at sea and seeing its long neck come out.
They're actually all from Royal Navy personnel, Admiralty military personnel from the 19th century.
And the reports began from about the 1830s and went up to about 1880.
So you have this entire dossier covering about half a century where military personnel had reported seeing sea serpent-type creatures.
And what's interesting is that many of the reports in the file all emanate from one particular area, and it was the Atlantic Ocean around the island of St. Helena.
And there are a number of reports where the entire crew and the captain had seen these massive creatures.
And when I say massive, one of them is actually described as being like 500 feet long, which you know, that's not an exaggeration.
That would be incredible.
It was described as like having a gigantic snake-like body.
And here we're talking about people who are professional observers, so if they say a thing is 500 feet long, it probably is.
Yeah, I mean, when I talk about reports, I mean, what you have, the reports were all prepared for the most part, at least, by the captains of the ship in the official logbook, which was then shared with the Admiralty.
But they talk about how, you know, the entire ship metaphorically came to a standstill with all the crews sort of just gaping open-mouthed over the side as this gigantic creature just kept pace with them as if it was sort of shadowing them almost.
Maybe even wondered, you know, what the ship was.
But they said it was sort of twice the length of the ship and the ship was about 250 feet long.
Any reports of any naval ships being endangered by anything like this?
No, I mean there's nothing like that, unfortunately.
I mean, the cover of the book actually has got a great painting of this sort of gigantic sea serpent sort of pummeling a ship.
But the, I mean, it's close to that, you know, because they actually talked about how these creatures came so close to the ship that they could even make out what looked like a, almost like a fin of hair.
But, but, you know, see, clearly a fin, but it looked like hair running down the back of the creature's head.
That's actually how close it got to the ship, where they could make out the fine detail.
But what's interesting to me is that, you know, the fact that the Admiralty actually had guidelines for the collection of these types of reports.
So it was almost like an early sort of ex-Files type thing, you know, somebody going out of their way to log sort of supernatural or unexplained phenomena seen by military personnel.
And what were the guidelines?
What were people who went to sea and captains of ships in particular?
How were they told to record these things?
Well, it was basically, you know, just record as much as you can in print as soon as possible after it's occurred and then send it to the Admiralty.
Now, we have, as I said, we have this entire dossier in the file.
And what's interesting is that it doesn't just contain reports from captains and crews.
It also includes clippings from London newspapers and regional newspapers across the UK from the 1800s.
So somebody was going to an extraordinary extent to collect sea serpent reports for the British military.
And so that begs the question of why.
Why would they want to do that?
Well, yeah, that's the thing.
We have the guidelines and the information say this is what we want.
But what we don't have is the background documentation explaining precisely why they wanted these reports collected.
You know, maybe it was like a safety issue.
Maybe there were concerns about ships being attacked.
And who knows?
You know, maybe one or two were attacked and it was hidden.
You know, perhaps that has some bearing on it, perhaps.
And maybe these things were kept secret and not talked about widely amongst the public, because just like with UFOs and aliens today, the powers that be would be afraid of scaring and destabilizing the population.
Well, yeah, I think, you know, if the military was aware that one or two of their ships had been attacked and possibly even sunk, you know, but it was blamed perhaps on bad weather to keep the secrets, well, there's no reason why, you know, a seagoing liner full of passengers, you know, couldn't get attacked as well.
So maybe it really was out of concern that the military was aware that there had been attacks and possibly even deaths.
And so it was a case of just trying to keep things carefully under scrutiny to try and avoid something else happening.
And of course, you know, they obviously wouldn't want the economy to drop off because people would be frightened to, you know, take overseas trips or whatever on large boats.
In case they encountered something large and very nasty.
You knew I had to ask this at some point.
What about Bigfoot?
Well, yeah, Bigfoot, obviously, you know, as I said earlier, along with Nessie, is probably the most famous strange creature or unacknowledged creature, shall we say.
All right, well, let's start with a definition.
What do you think?
Let's leave aside of whether it's fake or anything.
But what do you think Bigfoot is?
Is Bigfoot animal?
What is Bigfoot?
Well, I mean, there are a number of key theories.
I mean, one is that it's just an unknown type of giant ape that happens to live in the US and which hasn't been caught and identified yet.
Another theory is that it's a creature known as Gigantopithecus.
Gigantopithecus was actually a real, verifiable, large ape that grew to about 10 feet tall, maybe even a bit taller than that, and that lived in China, India, and also around Tibet, which is interesting because that's the area where people see the abominable snowman today.
So the gigantopithecus theory is interesting because it sort of goes along with the lines of maybe Bigfoot isn't an unknown animal, but an animal that did exist, that was believed to become extinct, but maybe didn't become extinct after all.
However, with all that said, there are a number of very weird reports of Bigfoot that kind of put it into a paranormal category as well.
And a lot of cryptozoologists and sort of monster hunters don't like dealing with that angle, but I do because I think there's enough witness testimony, credible witness testimony, where people have seen UFOs and strange lights in the woods or over the woods at the same time people have seen Bigfoot.
There are reports of Bigfoot vanishing in a flash of light, which things like that, which sounds bizarre, but the witnesses are saying this and very often they're not looking for publicity.
They don't want the name used.
They're very credible people, but they're reporting an incredible story.
So I don't rule out and I'm sort of quite supportive of this paranormal aspect to it.
And what's interesting is that one of the things I talk about in the book is when there was a wave in the early 1970s of Bigfoot activity in certain little towns and in the woods of Pennsylvania where Bigfoot was seen quite regularly.
But it was in conjunction with a lot of strange UFO activity.
And what was notable was that the military and the government took a great deal of interest and actually paid personal visits to the homes of certain cryptozoologists, one of them being a man named Stan Gordon, Who's still active in the field today, and he's gone on record talking about how these people came to his house and said, you know, keep us informed, we're very interested in this.
And what's interesting for me is that all the indications I found of when the government takes an interest is where there's this crossover in sort of the paranormal and the UFO stuff.
You know, it's not like they're chasing down every report of Bigfoot under the sun, but it is these weirder ones that they seem to take or to have a deeper fascination in.
And why do you think that might be?
Well, I mean, if there is something that suggests Bigfoot is kind of paranormal or has links to the UFO phenomenon and the subject, I think possibly they're trying to get a handle on every aspect of the UFO phenomenon.
And when they see these sort of crossover things and these tangential issues, investigating Bigfoot might help them gain an answer as to what the truth is to the UFO mystery.
So in other words, the investigations of Bigfoot might be kind of like a side project of a larger thing to try and understand what's going on.
And did you uncover any interesting classified documents about Bigfoot?
Well, yeah, I mean, one of the most interesting things of all was a US government document from 1977, which basically originated with, you know, whatever in the UK you would call the Forestry Commission, you know, the people who are responsible for the upkeep and preservation and just rules and regulations for the nation's forests.
And these documents actually talk about what would happen if Bigfoot was found and proved to exist.
How would it impact, for example, on the logging industry?
You know, how, you know, would the area in which these creatures live have to become protected?
Would that mean that trees couldn't be chopped down?
How would that affect the economy?
What do you mean so they were talking about preservation of Bigfoot?
Yes, they're actually talking, you know, there are people talking in these documents about, well, if Bigfoot's shown to be a real animal and it's some sort of unknown ape, then clearly it would need to be given protected status.
On top of that, there are also questions asked, well, what if Bigfoot is not just a giant ape?
What if it's a type of primitive human, you know, like Neanderthal or Neanderthal or Cro-Magnoman?
Does that then mean it would have to be given legal status as a human?
You know, they were looking at all these, it sounds kind of bureaucratic, the sort of typical bureaucracy type questions that would be asked, but also you could tell from some of the words that it was very clearly worrying as well, that how it could impact upon society and even the economy,
you know, when whole swathes of the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. are very reliant on the logging industry, you know, hundreds, well, tens of thousands of people and they're living in that particular field.
And the documents talk about, well, you know, if we have to preserve these forests and nothing can be cut down anymore, how's that going to impact on not just the logging industry, but the ability to generate timber, etc.
So a lot of issues are covered that you wouldn't necessarily think would apply, but it just demonstrates the sort of a sheer strangeness and some of the alternative areas that go through the minds of people in government when they do look at these things.
And the whole idea that on our behalf as the citizenry, they were looking into what happens if Bigfoot is real, how do we relate to it, and do we give it rights as a citizen?
And I suppose it's almost like making contact with aliens from a spacecraft.
How do you relate to it?
Well, I'm not sure you could.
But in saying that, I mean, if it is shown to be like a primitive human, you know, that has more human traits than egg traits, well, then that might make it easier.
But in saying that, I mean, gorillas and chimpanzees are highly evolved, intelligent animals, you know, and people can, I won't say talk to them, but, you know, they can learn sign language and communicate with people and bond with people.
So who knows?
Maybe, you know, it sounds incredible, but maybe something along those lines could occur with Bigfoot, if it's a real creature, that we could actually have some sort of, you know, contact with it.
I mean, the sort of the more extreme angle that was actually talked about was the idea of, well, what happens if somebody kills a Bigfoot?
You know, if somebody kills a Bigfoot and it's shown to have human qualities, is that person then going to get tried for murder?
Now, I never saw that.
Yeah, my view would be if somebody ever did kill a Bigfoot, you know, the first time it happened, and when it was autopsied, it was shown that it was like, you know, let's say it was 80%, you know, human or whatever, or very close to us.
I don't think anything would happen to that person.
But I do think that when it was shown, or if it was shown that this was some sort of primitive human, I think laws would then be laid down and you would be, people would be told, you know, you shoot this, you're basically killing a human being and effectively you could be tried for murder.
You know, I don't know how it would stand up in court and it would make for a fascinating case.
But I mean, if you've killed a human, even if it's a primitive human, you've still killed a human, you know.
So I think there'd be a lot of interesting legal issues could be discussed at a government meeting.
These are all incredible questions that I've never, and I'm sure a lot of the audience would have thought of for a nanosecond.
It's all fascinating stuff.
Of all the research you did in these papers that you got to look at under Freedom of Information, to use a Britishism, which was the most gobsmacking case, the most interesting, the most eyebrow-raising case that you came across?
Well, actually, that's a very good question.
There's several, but one that really sort of springs to mind is a story, again, from Britain that I talk about in the book from the 1940s.
When the Germans were attacking the UK, you know, flying over at night on bombing missions, etc., well, occasionally, you know, with the ground crews, you know, who were working on the ground with the so-called ACAC guns, etc., that they had, you know, would shoot down Germans as they were flying over.
And there's one example I talk about in the book where a German pilot was reportedly shot down at night over woods in Devon, just outside the city of Exeter.
And the Home Guard were the people who were sent out to try and find where he'd come down.
And they found the plane, and we're never really sure if they actually found the guy or if he escaped or was killed or what happened.
But there's a story that in the days afterwards, that when the Home Guard were patrolling the area, they came across essentially what you would call like a wild man, like a hair-covered wild man running through the woods, just you know, naked but covered in hair, but looking human, but savage as well.
And, you know, it sounds like a bizarre, wild story.
But the more I dug into it, what I found was that there were files held at a place called Star Cross Hospital back in the Second World War, which described how a very powerful and rich family in the area were afflicted by a disease.
It's like a genetic inherited disease called hypertrichosis.
And it's a condition where people develop excessive amounts of hair all over their body.
And you can find pictures of people online, you know, with the so-called circus freaks, as they used to call them.
You know, they call them like the monkey man or whatever.
But it was just an unfortunate person who'd got this genetic condition where they would just develop massive amounts of hair on the body and face even.
And the more I dug into this, it seems to be the case that this story, which became known as like the Star Cross Hospital Wild Man, or even Werewolf, that it was actually sort of born out of this sort of tragic condition that was inherited through this particular powerful Devonshire family,
and that it was all hidden and covered up back in the 40s by the local authorities in Devonshire to ensure that a scandal didn't develop about this sort of inherited, possibly even like an inbred almost condition in this family.
And it was subject to great secrecy and the files were kept at Starcross for a number of years.
And then there are stories from some of the doctors who worked there that some of the files at least were shredded to protect the people.
So it's sort of a fascinating story that has sort of links to werewolf legends and wild man legends.
But when you actually get into the heart of it, it's more like a tragic story of a medical abnormality that was hidden for, you know, just the issue of not embarrassing the family.
But it's sort of conspiratorial as well because of the shredding of files and the local authorities sort of wanting not to upset this powerful family.
So in the UK, class is a very important issue even today.
In fact, perhaps even more so than 30, 40 years ago at the moment.
I wonder if these people had not been important, would there have been so much secrecy there that ultimately protected that?
I don't believe there would be.
I think it's kind of like scandals involving the royal family.
They don't want it coming out because it impacts on them, what people think of them.
And it's kind of a particular thing.
Yes, it's all about power, prestige, reputations, that kind of thing.
And I think they felt it was better.
It was all swept under the carpet.
And the rumour, at least, is that whoever this man was, when he was captured by the Home Guard and then taken to Star Cross Hospital, he was then released back into the family with, you know, sort of warnings, keep him under control.
Because in some cases, hypertrichosis, although the main symptom is massive amounts of hair on the body and the face, it can also create mental abnormalities, you know, where a person just goes crazy and just runs around like a savage, and that was reportedly what he was doing.
That's actually a very, very sad story for the person involved.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, it's understandable how the myth of like the British Bigfoot or a werewolf running around the woods would develop, particularly when it was all shrouded in secrecy as well.
But often with a lot of these monster stories, they do have a basis in fact, but sometimes the fact isn't necessarily what you were initially looking for.
And how many of these things that you've looked into are genuinely unexplained?
Do you believe?
Well, I would say a good of the book itself, I would say 70% deal with what seem to be legitimate, genuine, unknown animals, like everything from lake monsters to Bigfoot-type creatures, sea serpents, choppacabra, things like this.
The other 30% or so seem to be examples where government agencies have used the subject as a cover, like as I said with the Lake Bala experiments in the 1910s to spread lake monster stories, to cover up testing underwater equipment and that kind of thing.
So I think governments clearly take an interest in the phenomenon, but they astutely realize that it's a phenomenon that they can also make use of when circumstances dictate it.
One of the many people who've reviewed your book online, I looked at some of the reviews today and you've had some very good reviews.
I'm sure you know that.
Talks about somebody called Dr. Joseph Banks Rine, who, according to this reviewer, who was very keen on this story from the book, tested the psychic abilities of dogs in being able to locate dummy minefields in California.
What's that all about?
Well, yeah, I mean, the book is sort of spread.
It mainly deals with unknown animals and monsters, etc.
But there are several chapters that deal with extraordinary animals, which relates to the subtype of the book as well.
And there are a couple of chapters in there which talk about how the US government in the 50s and 60s particularly took an interest in determining if animals possess things like psychic powers and ESP.
And the story that the reviewer mentioned occurred back in 1953 and 1954 when the US Army set up a little project, like a think tank type group, to determine if dogs possessed ESP and even in cats and pigeons as well.
And the plan was to see if they did possess psychic powers, could they locate enemy landmines buried under the sand or under the ground, you know, on battlefields, that kind of thing.
And parts of the files are still blacked out.
So we're not really sure how the military was able to explain to the dogs what a landmine is, you know, what they should be looking for.
However, we do have the later files which do talk about how there were two particular dogs, their names were Tessie and Binny, and they were both Alsatians.
And it talks about how they would release them onto these beaches that the military had used as like a test area where they would bury dummy landmines under the ground, sometimes up to like 12, 15 feet.
And reportedly, the two dogs would sort of just charge immediately to the areas where the military buried these mines.
Now, you know, they apparently ruled out, well, are they just using a keen sense of smell?
Because, you know, they would spray the mines with different things to put them off, you know, the scent of the metal or whatever.
But the military came to the conclusion that it was a genuine phenomenon, that the dogs did appear to be using some sort of psychic skill to locate these mines.
But the problem was their success rate was high, but it was also erratic and it couldn't be relied on on every occasion.
So that's why the project was shut down.
Not that they didn't have any successes, but it was like a hit and miss thing.
And so they decided to rely on sort of more down-to-earth techniques, you know, sort of like metal detectors and that kind of thing.
But as I said, he didn't take away from the fact that many of the people in the Pentagon that were on this project were happily, you know, were happy with the results.
It was just they wish they occurred 90% of the time rather than say 60.
I heard something similar.
I'm not sure if I got this story exactly right, but as we know, the Japanese used kamikaze pilots in World War II.
And our side, I think, tried to use pigeons, wasn't it, to steer missiles towards their shipping?
Yeah, I actually have a chapter on this in the book.
This sounds like something totally made of, but it actually isn't.
The project itself was actually called Project Pigeon.
That was the real name of it.
And the idea was to have remotely controlled small aircraft.
You know, like the sort of thing you would see at an air display where people fly these little remote planes and things like that.
Well, we call them drones today, don't we?
Yeah, exactly.
And the idea was that these sort of small, remotely piloted aircraft would have sort of powerful rockets and bombs attached to them.
But of course, they didn't want to send men into battle.
So the idea was that they would have these little cockpits where they could sit a pigeon in there and teach the pigeon to peck the screen in front of it.
And the idea was to try and at least aim the plane in the general direction of a particular Japanese city or whatever.
And then the pigeon would be trained to hit the screen.
And by tapping one particular button, it would cause the aircraft to dive downwards.
They couldn't direct the pigeon to zip in and out of streets or whatever, but they could train it to hit the buttons at a certain time.
And of course, if it did it right, it would get a reward.
That's how these things work, isn't it?
Well, it would get a reward if it survived, but the pigeon would be blasted to pieces anyway with the aircraft, because it didn't drop the bombs.
The bombs were strapped to the aircraft, so the aircraft, the bomb, and the pigeon would all go down together, so to speak.
But the problem was, apparently the pigeons had such tension deficit disorder that they just got bored very quickly and just gave up.
And with the pigeons on them, one eh?
Doesn't sound very fair to the pigeons to me.
No, that was like another of those weird little projects that government agencies set up now and again and they just get closed down because they just sort of too much trouble than they're worth in the end.
Now look, you've unearthed all of these documents both in the US and the UK.
One of the great frustrations for anybody doing research are the bits that are, and you hinted at this before, that are redacted, crossed out, taken away from these things.
You must have come across some real frustrations there.
Oh, yeah, I mean, one of the most bizarre ones of all, and again, this sounds like something totally made up, but it really isn't.
And you can find some of the stories about it on the internet.
It deals with a CIA project that was codenamed Acoustic Kitty.
And it's a sort of very strange title for a project.
But it's basically a CIA project in the 1960s where they would obtain, and we don't know how they obtained them, but obtained a number of cats.
And they surgically implanted into the cats like antenna into their tails and transponders and all sorts of different equipment under their skin and their neck and the body.
And the plan was to release the cats in the vicinity of the Russian embassy, or the Soviet embassy then, in Washington, D.C. This is back in 1965.
The plan was to try and release them as close to the Russian embassy and encourage them to sort of walk around the embassy grounds while they got all these transponders and antenna in them.
And in the hope that, you know, sort of somebody named Boris or Ivan would be walking past the cat at the time and chatting with somebody in the KGB and that the CIA would be able to pick up snippets of the conversation through the wiring of the cat.
So these people were seriously assuming that you could, apart from the fact that it sounds very cruel doing that to a cat, but they assumed that you could train a cat.
Anybody who's ever had a cat knows that a cat will not be trained.
No, they won't.
They're sort of their own bosses.
But the reason I mention this is because a couple of pages of documents on this project have been released, but they're literally nearly half a century later, they're sort of 90% blacked out, and they're just like a couple of references to how the project was initiated and that it was actually closed down, they said, because it just proved to be unfeasible.
If it was closed down, Nick, I wonder why they want some of it kept secret still.
Well, actually, one of the reasons, I think, is because it demonstrates that it was, I think it was more embarrassment than anything else, too, because...
But you have a person who has come forward, one of the original CIA guys involved, who knew about it.
And he said that on the first occasion they attempted it, they pulled up in like a blacked-out window van across the road from the Soviet embassy and let the cat out the door to cross the road and it got splattered by a taxi.
So that was like the very first attempt, you know, and the cat didn't even make it across the road.
Not a great start, then.
Yeah, so I think after doing it two or three times.
It was like the penny drop that, you know, just because it was successful in terms of implanting the cats with all these gadgets, you know, it's still not going to work.
Wow.
What are you working on at the moment, Nick?
Well, I'm working on a couple of UFO books right now, but that's my other big interest.
One being a book on the men in black, the sort of the real men in black mysteries, which I've written a book about that previously, or a couple of books, but there's so many cases and accounts and stories and theories.
So I'm working on one of those right now, and so that's keeping me pretty busy.
I've talked to quite a few people in the UFO field, and a lot of those people believe that men in black actually do exist.
And I've told on this show two or three times before the story of what happened to me when I was doing this show on national radio.
And I came out of the building where we were doing the show late on a Saturday night.
I used to finish be off air at 11 o'clock.
David, my producer, and I would be out of the building by about 10 past.
And there was one night, and David said, are you looking over there?
And I wasn't looking.
I was tired, you know, busy week.
And I looked over there, and this was an area of London that's a business area.
Saturday night, no one else is there.
There was a black car with two guys in black suits.
They looked like the Blues brothers.
On the dashboard was anchored a camera that was pointed at us.
Now, a few weeks before, we'd talked to the former Defense Minister of Canada, who believed that essentially UFOs were real.
Paul Hellier.
Paul Hellier.
We'd had Paul Hellier on the show, and I'd done an hour interview with him.
So this was like three weeks after that.
And we'd been talking about a lot of stuff and getting some very good guests on.
And to this day, I still don't know what that was about.
But these people appeared to get whatever they wanted.
And they just, they had a black Jaguar, Jaguar, as the Americans say, and they turned the camera around and drove away.
Having got pictures, the lens was pointed at us.
I still don't know what on earth that was about.
Well, I'll tell you why that's very interesting is because, I mean, people think of the Men in Black, you know, they think of Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, but a lot of people don't realize that the movies were based on a comic book franchise of the same name, and the comic books were based on real-life reports going back to the 40s of people claiming to have seen these men in black.
Now, in the US, the men in black are usually described as driving sort of like old-style 1950s Cadillacs, but all the British reports I've come across where there's been a car involved, it's always been a Jaguar.
You're joking.
No, every single one I've got is a Jaguar.
It's not like they've ever turned up in the 70s in like a black Ford Capri or something.
You know, it's always a Jaguar.
Oh, well, this happened about six years ago, seven years ago, maybe.
And I've never been able to explain it.
Amazing if they were interested in my little radio show.
How bizarre is that?
But it's always a Jaguar.
This is a true.
I didn't know that.
True story.
I mean, the interesting thing is usually the MIB turn up on the doorstep, and it's like they've just appeared out of literally nowhere.
But I think I've probably got about 10 reports, 10 to 15 reports on file where a car's been involved, and it has always been a Jaguar's.
Wow.
Well, you've made me think.
Nick Redfern, always a pleasure to have you on.
I know you'll be on again.
If people want to know more about you, where do they go?
They can reach me at NickRedfern, 4-T-N-F-O-R-T-E-A-N, dot blogspot.com or they can reach me at Facebook.
Just type in Nick Redfern as well.
Top stuff.
Nick Redfern, thank you very much.
Take care.
All right.
Thanks, Ed.
Thanks a lot.
A welcome return for Nick Redfern talking about his research on the monster files, a look inside government secrets and classified documents on bizarre creatures and extraordinary animals.
Great stuff.
And if you want to know more about Nick Redfern, I'll put a link to his work on my website, www.theunexplained.tv.theunexplained.tv, the website designed and made for you by Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
I hope the weather's good wherever you are.
I understand that they've had some tropical storms in New York City.
So East Coast being affected by some real heavy, hot tropical rain.
And West Coast, I think you've had some atmospheric warnings, some air quality warnings and stuff.
And here in the UK, it's just at the moment, but it'll probably change in another hour.
It's very pleasant springtime come summer weather.
So not bad here in the northern hemisphere.
I know it's colder where you are if you're in the southern hemisphere.
Please keep the faith.
My name is Howard Hughes.
You've been listening to The Unexplained, and I will return here soon.
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