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Aug. 14, 2013 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:02:01
Edition 122 - Things You Can Do When You're Dead!

This time stunning after-death accounts from Scottish researcher Tricia Robertson...

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The edition of The Unexplained You're About to Hear was originally recorded as edition 121 and scheduled to go out before Paul Hellier.
It is now edition 122 and runs after Paul Hellier.
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.
And I thank you for the great emails that have been coming in recently, some very good guest suggestions that I'm working on and some really nice comments about the show.
You had some things to say about the show we did with Amash, the British organization that works with alien contactees and people who've had that sort of involvement.
Some of you thought that we ought to do more with Dave Munro in Scotland, who was a very good interviewee and would be a very good guest.
So I'm thinking at the moment, and since Dave invited us up there, maybe trying to get up to the far north of Scotland and doing some investigations with him up there at some point in the future, if we can afford to do that, that would be a good show.
And I'm raring to do it.
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And literally, as I've said before, and I will continue to say until I am blue in the face, Adam is one of three people who makes up this show.
Me, him, you.
And we're each as important as the other.
We're all links in the chain here.
And that's great, isn't it?
When you think about it, when you compare it with the way big media organizations work, we have true digital democracy here.
If you suggest a topic, I can do it.
If I have an idea for doing a show, we can do that.
Now, this one is not about UFOs or aliens or anything up in space.
This is to do with what happens when we die.
And a great new book written by somebody who's got impeccable credentials in this field.
Her name is Tricia J. Robertson.
And she is one of the foremost researchers in these matters in Scotland.
She has a new book called Things to Do When You're Dead.
Great title for a book.
And there are some superb stories.
And I can guarantee that the vast majority of these stories, if not all of them, you will never have heard.
I've been poring through the book today, and it's one of those that you can't put down.
It's so good.
And she is clearly going to be a very, very good guest.
So I'm really excited about getting Tricia J. Robertson on from Scotland any moment now.
My story.
A few episodes ago, I suggested that if you had any stories of your own, any encounters with aliens or ghosts or anything unusual that's happened to you, you've never perhaps told anybody the story before, or maybe it's happened to somebody in your family, let me have it and we can put them all together here and maybe in a couple of months I can do a show about your stories.
Can't get me more democratic than that.
So if you've got a story, I've already had quite a few good ones in, subject it, my story, and email it to me at www.theunexplained.tv and we'll get that together.
Okay, let's get to the guests now in Scotland.
Tricia J. Robertson, former teacher of mathematics and physics, long-term council member and past vice president and immediate past president of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research.
So she has really got the background to do this.
Tricia Robertson, thank you very much for making time to come on here.
It's my pleasure.
Whereabouts are you then?
I know you're in Scotland, but it's a big place.
Whereabouts are you?
I'm actually just outside of Glasgow, seven miles out of Glasgow in a place called Milgai.
I know Milgai.
It's not spelt that way though, but it's pronounced that it's spelt Milgarvey, isn't it?
Millingarvi.
Yeah, but it's Milgai.
It's Milgai.
It's like Scotland has all these pronunciations.
Like I once had to do a commercial for a car dealer, and they were in Edinburgh, Kirkcaldy and Fife.
Yeah.
And apparently they'd had somebody in to do ads before who'd said Kircaldy.
A lot of people do that.
Even in radio too, I've heard them say that when they're giving travel announcements.
I know at network radio, you see they've got to get the pronunciations right, otherwise you really upset people.
Absolutely.
Being born in Liverpool, we have a place called Kirby, and it's spelt K-I-R-K-B-Y, and you don't pronounce the second K. So it's pronounced Kirby like that, Kirby.
Oh, yeah.
And people often get that wrong.
Oh, well, but enough of differences between up there and down here.
It's lovely to talk to you, Tricia.
I've been really looking forward to this, and especially looking forward to this since I did a journalist speed read of your book, 101 Things to Do When You're Dead.
And I've got to say that it is one of the best laid-out books in a traditional way that I've ever come across.
It's not, as some of the books in this field are, you know, you tend to get books that have, shall we say, not very many lines on the page and not very many pages between the covers.
Yours is tightly packed.
It's 168 pages of good stuff.
It's great stories and you can tell in every pore that you're directly connected with most of this stuff and you have a knowledge of all of it.
It really shines through.
Can I just tell you, I really wrote the book sort of in self-defense because Professor Roy and myself used to give evening classes on psychical research.
It was called an introduction to psychical research and we did 40 hours of that at Glasgow University.
But in evening classes have become extremely expensive now in Glasgow University and many people can't afford to go there.
So I just thought, let me get it down in a book and it will be available to more people because I come from a standpoint of truth.
All I can tell you is the truth and 100% honesty that these are the things that I have researched, these are the things I have found, with a background of mathematics and physics.
I'm not an Airy Fairy person and I go only on the evidence.
And that is really why I wrote the book.
What do you think it is about people of an academic bent and teachers in particular that makes them get involved in this?
I'm asking this for a very specific reason.
When I started to get interested in all of this, one of the first People I interviewed, and I'm talking about a long time ago when I was a boy broadcaster, was a lady in Liverpool called Lola McNaught.
And Lola McNaught had been, I think she'd been the deputy headmistress, she'd certainly been very senior at Bootle Girls' Grammar School in Liverpool because my sister had known her.
And she was rather posh and rather grand and rather lovely.
And she had been, when I met her, she had been researching psychic matters since the 1930s.
And she was a very erudite, just like yourself, very well-researched and very well-read person.
And she was convinced that this stuff exists.
Yes.
Well, this is a misconception, you see, by the public.
I have to say that a lot of media, television, radio, magazines, etc., they portray people like ourselves as sort of stupid people that don't really know what they're talking about.
And that is a misconception.
They don't realize the wealth of study that has been done for over 100 years with people of tremendous professions, Nobel Prize winners, you know, laureates, all the rest of it.
And that is really annoying to me.
And you mentioned, of course, Erlander Haraldsson in Iceland, who I interviewed last year, a wonderful man.
Fabulous to listen to.
We did a whole hour together on some of his amazing stories in his research.
Yes, I know Elder very well.
He actually stayed in my home.
He's a lovely man.
Lovely man.
And he is as academic an academic as you could possibly get.
He is a university man through and through.
Yep, absolutely.
As was my colleague, Professor Archie Roy, of course, and Professor Bernard Carr.
Many, many of them are really very, very clued in, as it were.
And it's good having Bernard because he knows all about multiverse and, you know, the physics and the modern physics up to date.
And he absolutely believes there's something in this as well.
So for you personally, with your teaching background and all the rest of it, there must have been in your life a tipping point where you said, okay, I want to, maybe you had a passing interest in it, I don't know, but you wanted to become more deeply involved.
People always ask me this for the last 25 years.
And you know, I cannot really pinpoint it.
I was married very happily at the time when I started to look at this when I was about 30.
And we had a lovely house, two cars, two nice children.
And one day I thought, there must be more to life than this.
I mean, everything was peachy in the garden.
There was no problem whatsoever.
And then I started to look at it from an intellectual standpoint.
And it was as simple as that, you know, testing the water.
And once I started to look around, read the material, go and watch mediums working.
And we have to admit, of course, there's a lot of mediums who are very, very poor.
And mediumship itself is never going to convince anyone about survival on its own.
And that is why I like to put all the topics together to make a much stronger case pointing to survival.
Now, listen, Tricia, when I talked to Lola McNaught all those years ago, who was a person very similar to yourself from a teaching background, nobody would pull the wool over her eyes.
She was very, very astute.
Nor you.
I'm getting that impression just by talking to you.
But she told me one story that she was never able to explain.
And this goes back to the glory days of mediumship.
You were talking about sort of 30s, 40s wartime, because she was old enough to remember these things.
And it was about a trumpet.
It was about a circle and a trumpet that manifested itself and hung in the air in this circle.
And a little boy who appeared and touched the hands of people who were there.
And it was a sealed room.
And she told this story most honestly.
And she was completely baffled by it.
And she believed that that was completely genuine.
Does that kind of thing still happen?
It certainly, yes, it does happen.
My colleague, Professor Roy, he was privy to a circle in England, the Rita Gould Circle.
And he had the same experience.
He was sitting in this circle and the little boy manifested and they were able to shine a torch with a red light on him.
They could see his toes, they could see his face, they could hear him speak.
And Professor Roy and many others, he was there several times, absolutely convinced that it was a reality.
I haven't seen that myself, but what I'm going to do next, I'm going to pursue physical mediumship rather than mental mediumship, which is what I've been doing up to now.
Because this is the stuff that is so easy to fake, you know, fake ectoplasm hanging their cotton wool and, you know, lights and curtains and all the other nonsense that we've seen.
My attitude at the moment is if you can't do it in a dim light, don't ask me.
Because once it's in the dark, then it's open to all sorts of ridicule and criticism, which correctly, quite correctly.
But I don't know where my original interest came from, only that when I was a young, a little girl, one of my friend's fathers, now he was Scottish, originally Scottish, and when he was a young boy, he went to boarding school in India and he went with Hindus,
Muslims, Sikhs in this boarding school and they took the paranormal as normal and he used to listen to stories and experience things and siancis over there which he told my friend and I when we were children and it was always fascinating but it was only when I had had my own two children and that wasn't the real reason behind it.
I had no death.
I wasn't unhappy.
It was just an intellectual interest probably stimulated by stories from when I was a child.
I don't know.
Before we get into your research and some of the wonderful stories in this book, which I did love going through today.
Excuse me, could I call them accounts rather than stories, please?
All right.
I'm going to write that down just in case I slip and say it again.
I should say at this point that Archie Roy at one point used to call me his Rotten Myler.
Don't worry, I'm officially chided.
They're occurrences.
I think it's important to clarify one thing.
All of us as we go through life and as we reach a certain age, death is an inevitability.
We all experience it and we all lose people.
I've lost a mother and father in these last few years and of course it will always hurt and I feel that they're still present in some way.
But we all go through that and I wonder if in your life as you have gone through those things, have you had any direct connection or contact, bearing in mind the work that you've been doing For all these years, has anything directly happened to you involving people that you know?
Yes.
Yes, it has.
Especially when I had a very, very good girlfriend who died when she was 50.
And after Carol died, I seem to get things through electrical equipment because I'm not at all psychic.
And when my mother died, I had stuff through electrical equipment as well.
When Archie Roy died, I got, I've had five different, excuse me, five different messages from five different mediums and four of whom who didn't know me at all, which proved the existence, the further existence of Professor Roy.
Yes, I have.
Okay.
And would you be interested in perhaps sharing one of those messages or some of those messages?
You know, were they relevant things?
Were they important things or were they trivia?
Well, absolutely.
The one thing that bothered Professor Roy, he had Alzheimer's or some kind of dementia for the past at least five years, but it was getting progressively worse.
And over the past two years, he really was quite bad.
And when I visited him in hospital, he really didn't know who I was.
You know, he really didn't.
I was just a woman who came in to see him.
Oh, dear.
Which is very sad.
Very, very.
He did live to 88.
But when he was lucid, he always said, I wonder if you lose your memory, if you'll be in a confused state, you know, when you get to the other side.
And I know that was something that absolutely worried him.
He died.
Three days later, I made myself available by going to a spiritualist sanctuary.
Now, the medium that was on was a very Glaswegian little woman who doesn't have a computer, is not sophisticated in any way at all.
And she came to me and she did not know what she was saying.
And she said to me, I have to come to you and have a very tall gentleman here.
And she made the sweeping gesture of a tall gentleman with big glasses on, with the hair swept over.
And she did the gesture with the hair sweeping over as well.
And I thought, well, maybe, you know.
And then she said, oh, she said, this gentleman, and she put her hands up in the air, she said, this gentleman's showing me stars, stars, stars, stars.
And then she said, now he's showing me a huge telescope and he's looking out and he's saying, this is wonderful.
It's just amazing.
It's wonderful.
And she said, the ethos of this message is he just wants to tell you, I've made it.
And that was the first message.
Of course, I was in tears by this time, you know.
As with the whole thing.
What a wonderful, wonderful story.
And I guess he, because he was a man who'd made quite a few media appearances there.
I know of his name.
He'd never said any of that about, he'd never sort of appeared in that context on television or in a magazine or something.
No, no, not at all, but it worried him.
So it was very important that she said, all he wants to say is, I've made it.
And then she said, oh, he's going away now, but he's now arm in arm with his mother and they're smiling and walking away.
Now that, too, is very relevant because he adored his mother, absolutely adored his mother.
If she'd said, father, I would not have believed it.
So it was just amazing that day.
It was just fantastic because she didn't know what she was talking about.
And I told her later on who it was and she was actually shocked.
And I said to her, why did you not see his face?
Or she said, I don't get faces.
I get the height, no glasses swept over here.
She said, but I don't actually often see a face at all, which is just as well because she would have recognized him had she actually seen a face.
So that was really good.
That is amazing.
Do you believe, and from that experience, do you believe that when people die, they go on to something else?
I say this for a reason because, you know, I was very close to my mother.
She was a huge supporter, as was my dad.
They were both wonderful, wonderful parents.
But my mum went first and had been terrific to me.
We were very close.
She appeared to me, this is a very common experience.
I know it happens to a lot of people, but she appeared to me in a dream a night or two after she died just to see if I was okay, to ask me if I was all right, because obviously I was wrecked by it.
This is 2006.
And there were one or two other little occurrences, very strange ones that I won't take up time with now.
But there were a couple of other things that happened.
And then I got the feeling that she had gone away to something else.
And I don't feel, although I know she's always around in some form, she's not immediately around me.
She has now gone on to do whatever else they do there.
Is that how it all works?
That appears to me to be absolutely correct.
For the first week to 10 days, maybe longer than that, I had five different one-line messages from different mediums.
One of them was a woman who did know me, but she didn't know who she was talking about.
And she said, I have to come to you, Tricia.
She said, I've got a very tall, learned man here, very, very well-educated.
And he's got one message for you today.
And he wants to tell you his mother was there to take him over.
Actually, like a midwife, you know, bringing him over to the other side.
That was the message.
That was it.
But once again, she didn't know the first message about the mother.
So once again, it all adds to the pot to make a better shoe.
But what you're saying is absolutely right.
For the past four months, I would say I've had nothing at all from Archie.
He's come, he said what he has to say, and he's getting on with whatever he's got to do.
It's the same with my mother.
It's the same.
It appears to be the same with everyone.
And that's why it's unhealthy for people to go to a church week upon week, expecting the same people to come through, because they've got other things to do.
And if they come, it's because they're worried about you.
What you say makes perfect sense to me with your experience with your mother.
Perfect sense.
And do you believe that we have to release those people, that we have a part in all of this as well, that once they come back to see that we're okay, then we have to sanction them going on the rest of their journey and say, well, thank you so much.
There is always a love link and a love bond, and you must now go and do what you have to do.
Well, it doesn't always work that way.
I was speaking to a medium the other day, actually, and I have to disguise this heavily.
And she was saying that she had a man who came to her and he was, oh, he was Devastated, you know, sobbing all over the place.
His wife had died seven months ago, he wasn't getting on with things at all.
And she said to him, Can I put it this way?
She said, If you had died and you were watching your wife crying every day and you were somewhere else, how would you feel about that watching your wife devastated?
And he went, Oh, and she just put it in a different way.
And the people who grieve are the ones are left behind because the ones that have gone on, as you probably know, through all of these near-death experiences, they're absolutely fine.
I believe that some people can be held back if you're really in a bad state, but they can also choose to say, you know, to vote with that.
I'm going on anyway.
I think it's slightly different for every person.
Your mother's experience seems a typical experience to me, as does Archie's.
That's more and more of the people that I talk to.
I'm getting an impression that that's how it works.
Of course, the big question is what happens beyond that?
And that's the great thing that as human beings, we can only surmise and research.
Well, in my next book, Plug Plug, I'm going to be looking at, you know, what might the afterlife, some more evidence, of course, and then what might it be like, you know, obviously comparing different people's ideas.
But the general theme seems to be that wherever you go, and it very much depends on what you do in this life, if you think of yourself as a body of light, right?
You can get 15 watt bulbs, 40 watt bulbs, 100 watt bulbs.
This is a very bad analogy.
Some people vibrate, as I say, the 15 watt.
Some don't even have any light at all.
And I think you go to that place, that place of light that you're comfortable with.
And if you've ever read a book called On the Death of My Son by Jasper Swain, the boy says exactly that, as does Silver Butch and many other people.
There is a marvelous quote in the forward, I think it is, of your book, which I've got here.
It says, just because you no longer have a physical body doesn't mean that you cannot function.
If you thought that your hard work was over when you died, then I'm afraid that evidence would point to the idea that this may not be indeed the case.
I could tell you a funny story about that.
One of my friends is a lady doctor who doesn't really believe in anything.
She said, please tennis with me.
And we're at a party one night and I stayed over at her house.
And in the morning, she came and popped into the single bed beside me.
We had coffee and tea and a chat.
And for some reason, we got onto the topic of reincarnation.
And I was obviously saying something.
And all at once, she went, bugger.
And I went, why?
She said, I thought I would get peace when I died.
I said, sorry, not going to happen.
Now, that same lady has read the book.
She knows me very well.
And she's now definitely changing in ideas, which is rather nice.
And that's what the book is about.
The book's for ordinary people who do not know what to believe.
And I'm giving them something to latch onto and go and do further research and the whole subject themselves, you know.
And the other nice thing about it is that very many, most of the stories are contemporary.
They're within the lifetimes of people who will be reading the book.
And some of them are very, very recent.
Well, most of them are mine and original, yes.
All right.
Well, let's work through them now.
Let's get to the good stuff here.
And people love to hear occurrences.
I'm not going to say stories.
See, I remembered.
Very early on in the book.
Accounts, darling.
Accounts.
Let's remember accounts.
I'm going to write that down too.
I'm going to put it on the blackboard here.
Apparitions.
Early in the book, you deal with those.
And the first case is the case of Captain Bob.
And this is 1995.
It's a place that I know very well because I've been there quite a few times.
And I think it's my favourite airport in the UK, Glasgow Airport, because it's all on a human scale and very, very friendly.
This is the case of a guy.
Sorry.
Not as good as it used to be after the people that tried to crash through the doors, unfortunately.
It's not as nice now as it used to be.
Yes, there was a terrorist or an attempted terrorist attack a few years ago, wasn't there?
Absolutely.
But it was in its day, and I used to go there, certainly when I was doing training for Radio Clyde there.
I used to be flying up and down.
We're talking about the late 90s, early 2000s.
And it was as if they knew you there.
You know, people you hadn't seen before.
They treated you as if you were a friend.
Well, we're a bit like that in Glasgow.
Yes.
Come in and have a cup of tea.
Yes, that's it.
This Captain Bob Case, this is an airline pilot, quite a hardened and qualified person.
Well, he was a fighter pilot.
He was a test pilot.
Okay, so, I mean, they're made of the right stuff.
They're the tough breed.
He's a trend observer.
And he went to Miramar to train the Americans in test piloting, you know, and targeting, you know, for fighter pilots.
I mean, he was nobody's fool, Captain Bob.
Nobody's fool.
And he did not believe in this God stuff at all.
Hated it, in fact.
But he had an experience there where he came across the presence in the airport of somebody he knew, and he wondered why he'd seen this guy there.
And the guy looked rather thin and emaciated.
And he just, the way that you just mentally note things, my God, you're not quite looking the way that you did.
They had a conversation.
And then it transpires through the book.
And I won't spoil the story because the detail is the fun of the thing.
And get the book if you want to read the detail because the detail is excellent.
So we won't do the detail.
We'll just tell the sketch of the story.
This person had died and his coffin had gone through the airport that day.
That's correct.
And well, the chap lived in Stornaway, which, as you know, is a very small island.
And that there was a plane going to Stornaway just about that time, which is amazing.
But to me, the interesting thing about it is that we'll call him the apparition.
He came through the glass doors and he approached Bob.
Bob didn't go up to him.
He approached him and they had words like, how are you, you old bugger?
And how are you getting on?
The usual sort of stuff pilots talk about.
But he did note the three stone, well, a very three-stone weight loss.
And he was shocked when he found out he was dead.
He was so shocked that he phoned up.
Well, the chap was working for Loganair.
He phoned up Loganair to say, what the hell do you think you're playing at?
I saw him yesterday and he was shocked.
He was actually crying when he told me about it because he couldn't believe that he had died three days earlier, couldn't believe it.
And here is somebody who's a trained observer, a hardened professional man, who's not at home in his bedroom or in his study.
He's actually in an airport in a day-to-day workaday context.
2.50 in the afternoon on a sunny day.
So did you physically speak to this guy?
Did you get his story directly from him?
Oh, yes.
We became quite a good friend after that, actually.
Yes.
And when you looked at him in the eye, was it clear to you that he was absolutely telling you the truth?
He was absolutely devastated.
But I mean, there was more evidence than that, but you'll have to read the whole story.
I mean, I went up to the chief of security at Glasgow Airport to verify dates, times and things like that.
And even looked for the video footage, didn't you?
We did look for the video footage, but unfortunately, at that time, they only had the video footage on for a week, and he was just too late in getting to me, which was a pity.
But there were other corroborating pieces of evidence, which you will read about.
And there's no one more surprised than Bob, as he said years later, I bloody well know who I met, but I still don't believe in this God stuff.
You know, it's a catch-22 situation.
And this man that Bob met, and just before we leave this occurrence behind, did any of the other guy was called Jack, wasn't he?
Did any of Jack's family have any experiences or was it only Bob?
Well, it's one of these situations that Jack's family were a very religious group of people and didn't want anything to do with it, unfortunately.
Different religions think that this is a work of the devil, which of course it's not, because it should enhance any religion that purports to believe in an afterlife.
They should go, yes, this is great.
Actually, the Church of England, they're very good.
They have great diocese for all of this stuff.
They're excellent.
Church of England, I think, are the best of the lot.
While we're just talking about churches and religion, have you ever come across an exorcist?
Have you ever worked with an exorcist?
No, I don't like the word exorcist.
I've worked with people who do house clearance.
If the spirit of somebody's been left in the house, yes, I've been there many times and witnessed that many, many times.
But it's not bell book and candle.
It's not get thee hence.
It's just a very chat.
There's a story about that in the book, actually.
The medium actually gets in touch with the person and encourages them to go.
And the Church of England, I was talking to one of the canons of the Church of England just yesterday, and they don't like the word exorcism either.
Exorcism is great for television, but it's a very, very bad word, and I don't like it at all.
Well, you kind of have this vision of somebody playing a clergyman, maybe Patrick Troughton, whole British actor who was in the exorcist with that haunted look on his face and that look of terror, haggard look in his eyes.
And he's wearing the clergyman's dog collar and he's challenging whatever entity it is to get the gone from this place.
That's all good media stuff, I'm afraid.
The reality is much quieter.
Okay, there's another great instance here.
This is somebody who took a taxi, a late-night taxi ride home in Scotland.
And the taxi driver and the passenger see a car heading towards them on a narrow road and they think, oh my God, this thing is going to hit.
And just at the point where this other car speeding towards them would have hit, it disappeared.
That's right.
What a story.
What an instance.
Well, there was nobody more surprised than the plasterer that was in the taxi.
The taxi driver was shattered.
He couldn't speak.
Yes, it's amazing.
That's amazing.
But these roadway apparitions seem to happen quite a lot.
But that's a different thing.
That's a different thing entirely to the survival of human personality.
It's like a video recording on that road.
It's as if the road holds a memory and some people are able to see that at a particular time.
That doesn't prove survival at all.
And that's the problem.
That's like a newsreel, like a movie, a videotape being imprinted on the scene.
It's actually called stone tape theory for some particular reason, where it seems to be held in the time and space rather than, say, that particular road.
And yet it doesn't seem to happen everywhere.
There's a place near where I was born and brought up, and I still have to drive when I go to my late dad's house.
I still have to drive past it.
It's a forested road in Blundall.
Well, it's in Blundell Woods near Liverpool, and it's on the way to Southport.
And it's a rather lovely little drive, but it's a curvy road.
And one of my earliest memories is being about three and asking my dad what had happened where this car, which was, I think, a Vauxhall.
No, it wasn't a Vauxhall.
It was a Ford Anglia, had gone into this wall.
And if you look at the wall now, it's a stately home, and the wall runs all the way along the length of this road.
It's an old wall.
It's been rebuilt so many times because so many cars have run into this wall on the curve and so many people have been injured or died in that spot.
But I don't think I've heard, maybe somebody will email me and tell me.
I don't think I've heard of any ghostly or apparitional stories about that location.
Doesn't happen everywhere.
Oh, no, it doesn't necessarily happen.
You know, it's just there's no answer.
If you want, that's what I always said to my class at university.
Now, I have to tell you, at the evening class, the pupils could be headmistresses, doctors of philosophy, you know, the man that sweeps the street.
The people that came to the class were just a huge broad spectrum of people.
And in fact, some of the headmistresses and doctors of philosophy were the ones who had their eyes opened after 20 weeks.
They were saying, wow, you know, this is amazing.
But I said, if you come here looking for answers, you're not going to get them, but you will get evidence.
And then what you do with it is a matter for you.
Absolutely.
Each person can only accept what they can accept.
I'm not forcing anything down anyone's throat.
I'm only telling you what happens as it is.
Poltergeist.
Now, two years ago, I talked to a wonderful man in London.
I went to his home, Guy Lyon Playfair.
You will know his.
Oh, yes.
Lovely.
English gentleman.
Guy wrote a bit of blurb in my book, remember?
Lovely man and very...
And in his living room, in his home in London, he's got all the tapes and files from this case that will go, when he dies, will go to an archive.
Yeah, I've heard most of them.
That was an amazing story, but that of course came down to some energy around members of the family, didn't it?
This is the trouble with poltergeist cases.
Some poltergeist cases would appear to emanate from the living people, and it usually comes from families that are dysfunctional or are under stress of some kind.
But there are other types of poltergeist cases where things are moved, which would appear mostly to come from someone discarnate, say like your mother trying to draw your attention by moving a particular object.
That's poltergeist activity as well.
Where there is destruction, it usually comes from the people who are actually in the house because they're angry, they're resentful.
The ones that come from people that have passed on are just trying to draw your attention to it.
And I think this family appeared to be, you know, fairly dysfunctional family.
Well, do any of us have functional families?
That's the question.
There is one case, you call it the Cardiff case, Cardiff being the capital of South Wales.
And this appears not, unlike the Enfield case, not linked to anybody in the house.
And I just want to quote from the book here, because I did a bit of cut and pasting before we came on here.
Blue flames emerging from a brass shell case, which was kept as an ornament in a workshop, and which was sometimes thrown violently around the room.
Planks of wood, apparently too heavy to be thrown by hand, hurled from the yard through the open door of the workshop, and stones thrown at a member of the family.
Very frightening stuff.
Nobody was ever hit, though.
Really?
No.
And that case, this is the whole problem.
Every case has to be examined in its entirety.
One case is not identical to another.
And this case, the focus of this case seemed to be a young boy that was knocked down in that particular area.
Well, David, they called him Pete just because they gave him the name Pete.
And that went on for a very long time as well.
And David Fentana, Professor Fentana, he went to see these things happening.
And he used to throw a stone into what they call the active corner.
And another stone would come back, not necessarily the same stone, nobody there.
And a stone would come back again.
David witnessed all these things for himself.
So it's quite amazing.
Wow.
And were they ever able to explain that?
No, just that Pete, just a typical boy, was making himself known.
It's as simple as that.
And even now, I think the man's name's Fred actually, that particular place is closed now.
And even Fred in his own house now, sometimes they'll hear a plop in the kitchen and an orange will appear on the sink.
And they know that for some reason they knew that Pete didn't like oranges.
Or occasionally a pound coin will plop into the coffee from nowhere.
Just a piece of mischief, just letting people know I'm still around.
Which, of course, he shouldn't be around.
He should be going on.
But that's another story.
I love quoting from your book because it's so, it's not, I won't say that it's colourfully written, but it's involvingly written is the way I want to put it.
Story of a house in Lanarkshire in Scotland.
And I'll just read this little paragraph if I may.
Another evening, a day or so later, within the same scenario, a helium balloon at the top of a long string which was located in this same secluded recess of the lounge began whirling around in a circular motion.
As both parents watched, it appeared to gain momentum as it moved.
And as they looked at it, they both saw a pulsating blue-white light above the balloon that seemed to increase in intensity with every gyration.
That's staggering.
That's correct.
And I tell you, the man was not very pleased.
He was terrified.
Well, I've been terrified, let me tell you.
What was that down to?
Well, do I have to spoil it for the readers?
That was down to the girl's mother, who was trying to make her...
And the mother never ever saw the child.
Now, remember, the child was smiling up the stairs to someone unseen by them.
And the favourite thing that was relocated was a particular vase the mother had bought the family.
So the mother was still making herself known.
And as I said, I haven't actually written this in the book, but once we worked through all and we worked out, you know, the most likely scenario was it was the mother just trying to say, hi, I'm here, you're not on your own.
And it made such a difference to that girl's life because she had postnatal depression and what a lift it gave her to know our mother was still there.
But the husband wasn't too pleased.
And I said to him, was your mother-in-law a kind of interfering person when she was alive?
And he went, oh, yes.
Can you not make the old bitch go away?
was what he said actually.
And what did you say?
Did you say that's not in my job description?
Well, no, I just looked, I looked at the girl's face and she looked shocked.
And I said, well, look at your wife's face.
When we came in, she was pale, wan.
And look at her now.
She was shining.
Her cheeks were pink and she was smiling.
And I said, in answer to your question, if in a while you want me to bring someone back to try and persuade her to go, I can do that.
I said, but my personal preference is leave her where she is just now.
Now she knows you'll recognise she's there.
I think you'll find things will probably calm down.
So it's a little bit like a child.
If you don't give a child attention, then a child will do more and more things to make sure you do give them attention.
Yeah.
But hers was, she had more of an impetus, more of a reason.
She wanted her daughter to know she was there and she was watching over her and she did see the baby.
That was, you know, that would probably be her reason for doing that.
Husband, I still wasn't too pleased, but that was too bad.
Now with all of these involvements that you've had and the many people that you have met and their stories that you've got and the locations that you've been to where things have happened, occurrences have happened, have you never feared that...
We keep being told that there are vibrations and energies and frequencies that are not good.
And, you know, I was always told when I started getting interested in these things that you have to protect yourself.
And I never quite understood what that meant, but I always took it on board.
Yeah, I'm not the Least bit psychic, so the chances of me taking something home with me are probably nil.
But if it certainly, yes, it has been known for people who are sort of psychic and open up to these things, they can on occasion take something home with them, and it's quite difficult for another medium to get rid of it.
It can happen, but if you keep yourself very positive, and I can tell by your voice, you're a very positive person, your chances would probably be nil of taking something home with you.
It seems to that negativity seems to latch on to people that are in a diminished position some way.
I think this might be a good one for you to investigate one day.
I'm not sure how many cases outside Scotland you do, but in Liverpool, and I've told this story briefly before on this show, but I'll tell it you now, there is a place that is, it's now a club, and I think it's been a Waterstones bookstore, and before that it was a branch of the Comet Electrical chain.
And my dad was security officer for Comet when he retired from the police, so used to have to spend time sometimes visiting a security guard there late on a Saturday evening with me just to make sure everything was okay.
I mean, a beautiful building, very much like the buildings in Glasgow, big stone building that had been a music hall in Bold Street in Liverpool, which itself has a bit of a haunted history one way or another.
Now, the story about this, and my father, very level-headed man, experienced it himself, as everybody else there did, that things would fling themselves around the top floor of this building, which is now, as I say, a club in Liverpool.
I'm just wondering whether these things are still going on there.
Doors would fling themselves open.
Big boxes in those days, when it was an electrical warehouse, containing huge colour television sets would move themselves.
Everybody was frightened of going there.
The security guard who did Saturday nights there was a little Scottish guy, and he was tough, and he had an big Alsatian dog.
The dog was almost bigger than he was.
The dog would not go up there.
That dog was afraid of nothing, and it wouldn't go up to that little office area that had been a balcony at the music hall in the days of yore.
And the story that went around about that was that a girl, probably 17 or so, maybe a little younger, had thrown, had got locked in there overnight when it was a music hall and thrown herself off the balcony and died there and had continued to be a presence in that building.
Well, let me tell you, when I went there one night, late November with my dad and we relieved the security guard.
He took his dog for a walk and we just stayed there for 20 minutes and then went home.
I somehow felt that I connected with whatever was there and I always felt that I connected with whatever was there.
And the story of that girl killing herself at that place and still being a presence in that building in Liverpool, you know, if I'd love to hear from anybody listening to this, perhaps who's heard this story too.
I would love to know more about it because for me it's unfinished business.
Well, that's exactly right.
The girl, that would certainly be a trigger.
But hopefully some medium would go in there and help that girl to move over because she's obviously angry when all that is happening.
And if she is still tied down there as an earthbound, which will be my notebook, if she's tied there as an earthbound, then someone should be helping her to move across.
But let me tell, I mean, we're talking about, you know, this is 25 years or more ago.
It's a very, very long time ago.
It doesn't matter.
Time means nothing.
But of course, the girl, as you rightly say, this had all happened at the turn of the century.
So, and I'm talking about the turn of the 1800s into the 1900s.
So it was a long time before.
It doesn't matter.
The time is irrelevant.
But whatever it was, you know, Tricia, was very real.
Everybody, including this tough little nut of a security guard and my dad, who was a policeman and not easily frightened, everybody was terrified.
Well, they should have been getting really good mediums in there to try and make contact with her and try and get her to move on, because somehow or other, she's stuck there.
Well, look, if you listening to this now know of that story of that place in Bold Street that used to be a music hall and then a Comet warehouse and then a Waterstones bookstore and now it's a club.
If you know more about that, email me at www.theunexplained.tv and I'd love to hear that story.
Your book, let's get back to it, 101 Things to Do When You're Dead.
It's actually just called Things You Can Do When You're Dead.
Oh, sorry.
I added the 101.
You did.
They're actually more than 101.
Gee whiz, you're a teacher.
You're as sharp as a tech.
You are.
I love you.
Drop-in communicators who appear to mediums but aren't known to anybody.
You tell the story of a medium who had hours of conversations with the crew of an airship that crashed in France in 1930, the R101.
This is a fascinating story.
This is a fabulous book.
It's much, much too complicated to actually discuss, but you can get the book.
It's called The Airman Who Would Not Die by John G. Fuller, and it's a fabulous book.
The intricacies of the tale, the account, sorry, and the quality of the people who were involved are just beyond reproach and amazing.
That's the one, that's a great test for all super sceptics.
I would love someone of a super sceptic nature to try to explain that one away because they can't.
There's far too many witnesses of a great quality.
It's fabulous.
And you even quote a man from the Air Ministry, the Ministry of Aviation.
That's right.
Who heard one of the designers of this ill-fated R101 airship say in his ear or wherever, for God's sake, let me talk to you.
It's all so ghastly.
I've got to speak to you.
I must.
And then he heard the voice again, another time.
He said, we're all bloody murderers.
For God's sake, help me to speak with you.
That's right.
It's very intricate.
That's one that you really cannot scan read.
You'll need to go back and read that one again because the evidence is just outstanding.
Outstanding.
Well, I shall be going back to that one.
In fact, I'm going to be taking this book to bed tonight because it really is excellent, I have to say.
And I don't often say that.
Good.
To get the full flavour, though, you really have to read The Airman Who Would Not Die by John G. Fool.
And it's just amazing.
I've tried.
One of my talents seems to be to condense things to make it readable for the ordinary person.
But the actual intricate detail is just amazing in the full book.
It's just amazing.
It's one of my favourite pieces of evidence for survival of human personality.
Really can't be denied.
Mediumship.
We talked about mediums earlier, but you talk a lot about a medium from Carnoustie called Helen Cuthill, who seems to have...
Cuthle, okay.
Helen Cuthel, who appears to have quite amazing abilities.
She has.
There are many.
I mean, Gordon Smith's a fabulous medium as well.
I've worked with Gordon.
Do you know Gordon?
Because I interviewed him on my radio show a few years ago.
Extremely well.
Gordon has become a great friend of mine.
And in all these years, I can only still admire him.
I would never say anything negative against him.
Gordon is an absolutely 100% genuine Mejum.
Or give him my regards when you talk to him and tell him I'd love to have him on here again.
Okay.
Helen Cuthill, you do say amazing things about him.
You tell the story of, and this is a recent one.
It's from five years ago, a woman whose teenage son had died and Helen was able to bring forward remarkable detail.
Absolutely.
That was amazing, that one.
Yes, it's incredible.
She actually has done something for me.
It's very similar just now, but I don't want to talk about it because it's ongoing and it's very raw with the people concerned.
But she has done so much for people.
She really is amazing.
And that's just on the telephone without even seeing them.
And of course, I'm an intermediary and I know nothing about whatever's happening to the people.
But this particular contact in the book with Helen Cuthill and somebody called Petula, you split the page in two and you have what Helen says and what Petula says.
And the information in the left column corroborates 100% with the information in the right column, which is staggeringly good.
Well, it is, especially the thing about the roses, you know, the three rose.
Helen said, and Helen's got that lovely sort of gentle Scottish accent like that, you know.
And Helen said to the woman, she said, your son's telling me, well, she got his name, Jack, straight away.
She said, Jack's telling me that there's three roses in his coffin.
And at the time, the woman said, no.
But later on that evening, the woman's mother came in, whom she hadn't seen for ages.
They're a bit strange.
The woman came in and put three roses in the boy's coffin.
So Helen was right.
Jack was right.
But the woman didn't know at that time that it was right.
And that's, to me, that's amazing.
And how do you think Helen Coffee was getting this information?
Well, Helen is absolutely 100% convinced she's getting it from Jack.
Helen lives, breathes and sleeps, you know, mediumship, and she's a lovely, lovely person, very down to earth.
And she's totally convinced she's talking to the personality she's talking to.
Well, I mean, the information speaks for itself.
Helen Cuttle wouldn't know that.
The woman didn't know about the roses.
And, you know, so you make up your own mind where the information comes from.
I don't know if you've heard of a researcher, I think he's probably getting up in years now, called Alan Gould at Nottingham University.
I know Alan well, yeah.
Well, there's somebody else for you to pass my regards to.
I haven't spoken to him since I was a student broadcaster, and I sat in his office in Nottingham.
And one of these days, I found the master tape for that interview, which is very old, an old reel-to-reel recording that I did in his office.
I found it recently when I was clearing my dad's house.
I'm going to have to put that on here because he's amazing.
And he, and I was just a kid when I did this interview, left me with an interesting piece of information that I've always thought about.
And he said the best cases of survival are ones where the medium is able to draw out something that even the person who is sitting for the medium doesn't know and has to go back and verify with somebody else.
That's right.
That's absolutely correct.
That's what I always say.
When I was in coast to coast, that's exactly what I said.
The best information is something you don't know and you have to go and verify.
And you could see that with the case of mediumship in the book, the murder case.
That was quite amazing.
Tell me about that briefly.
The murder most foul, the girl that was murdered.
And the mother came to me.
I didn't know the mother.
She came to me about six months later.
And she wanted a reading with a medium, but I said, no, it's too early.
Murdered daughter.
I said, bring me an envelope with something that belonged to the girl in the envelope.
So she eventually brought me this bumpy envelope.
And I took it to several mediums, which were so-so, took it to one particular medium.
And the information it was given was outstanding.
And it's in the book.
All the statistics are there of things that nobody could possibly know.
I didn't know.
Medium didn't know.
And in some cases, the mother didn't know.
And was that done through psychometry, holding the object?
It was done through psychometry, yes.
Okay.
Well, it's another reason to read the book.
And I don't want to sound like I'm a publicity man for you.
No, no, no, no, no, but I mean, there's too much.
There's a lot of stuff in there.
There's too much in it to go into that.
And like I've said, some of these books are very thinly packed with information.
Yours is very tightly packed with it.
Let's get, as we draw this to a close, appropriately to reincarnation.
Now, in London, there is a Hare Krishna restaurant.
They do beautiful vegetarian food.
And when I worked at Capital Radio in London, I used to go and have my lunch there quite a lot.
In the window, there is a beautiful model of the circle of life.
And it starts with a baby and it winds in a semicircle all the way up to an old man and then finally death, which tells the story of all of our lives, really.
But this whole thing of reincarnation, of course, it's at the core of religions like Hinduism.
But you tell a lot of stories about it, including one that made a television documentary that stayed with me.
In fact, it reduced me to tears.
In fact, I've seen it more than once when I saw it.
This is the story of Little Cameron, a boy who remembered a previous life.
Now, he was a boy who lived in an urban environment, but remembered a previous life on the island of Barra, remote island off Scotland.
A place that the mother didn't even know where it existed, yes.
Yes.
From when he could speak, he spoke about living in Barra.
And as you say, it wasn't just when he was unhappy that he spoke about it.
And as you know, they made the documentary took him up.
I hope in my presentation of the Cambern case, I've included a lot of detail that wasn't in the documentary.
And my favourite line from that, which nobody else seems to get except me, is when it was all over and he was sort of indicated that, you know, these people did exist, blah, blah, blah.
And then they were sitting in the pictures watching Chicken little, and he turned to his mom and he said, I know how that chicken felt.
Nobody believed me either.
And to me, I love that.
I just love it.
It's just so natural.
And it was the mother by this time and his brother were demented listening to him talking about Barra.
But the bit actually I liked another bit I liked about that was, if you want to say liked, a little girl, when he was six, a little girl in his school was knocked down and killed in Western Road.
And when he went home, the mother and the brother were all sitting crying.
And he looked at them with an aghast look.
He said, I don't know what you're crying for.
She's got a choice.
She can either stay where she is or come back again and then carried on playing.
I mean, that's the difference in children who remember a previous life.
They have a knowledge.
Remind us, how old was he then?
Six.
So it's unlikely that he would have been exposed to anything like that at that age.
No, I have to say, if you read between the lines, this is a very ordinary family, a very working class family and a lovely family, but there was nothing sophisticated about this family at all.
But a lovely child.
The first time I saw him, I was quite taken with his appearance.
It kind of blew me away.
And I don't know why.
I looked at him and wow, this kid's got something special, you know, even before I knew all the complete story.
Well, I've got hours and hours of video with the mum and the brother and Cameron.
Yeah, absolutely.
But now it's all over.
He's beginning to forget it now, of course.
He's tens.
Yeah, but they do.
This is typical.
But reincarnation, just if you want, if you want to draw to a close, people worry about reincarnation.
They think, like, well, just take you.
If you say, oh, if my mother reincarnates, she won't be my mother anymore.
No, not true.
The bond, the spiritual bond between you and mother will always be there, no matter in 100 years, what form you might both be in.
Where there is that bond, there is always the bond of love.
It will never be broken.
And we kind of, we make labels for people.
That's my mother, that's my son, that's my daughter.
But actually, she's a spiritual being that you're linked to.
And that link will never be broken where there's love.
And you will always recognise each other for who and what you really are.
So even if my mum or anybody's mum comes back as a little boy.
That doesn't matter.
The link with my mum still exists.
That part that is your mum is always there because we don't know the nature of the next life.
But when you go, you will see her.
Supposing it was 60 years from now, that essence of your mother will still be there and it's real.
It's not an elusive thing at all.
It will always be there.
On the other hand, somebody asked me this yesterday.
What if, well, let's just take a couple that maybe are not very happily married and they don't want to meet each other in the next life.
They don't have to.
And people who get married twice, three times, they say, well, which one will I gravitate to?
The answer is, I don't know.
It'll be the one where there's the greatest love.
But you'll also be able to, if you want to, to see the other people.
And that's why it's so complicated.
But at least it's democratic.
At least you get a bit of choice.
Absolutely.
Because I have to say, and I've heard other people say this.
I don't want to come back.
I've had enough this time around.
I'm done.
I want to go on to something else.
Would that be a legitimate choice to make?
I can't answer that for you.
I think we all have a part in our life as we are just now.
If you were, let's say you were up there somewhere and it's almost like a committee.
For example, I'm not a very patient person.
You'll be surprised to know.
And if my lesson this time was to learn patience, then I think I've possibly failed.
So let's say I go back again and someone says to me, well, you did quite a good job there, Tricia, you know, but you haven't really learned that patience.
We think you should go back again as a blah, blah, whatever.
But I think most people have an element of choice.
Do you want to stay where you are?
Especially suicides.
When suicides go over and there's no punishment for them at all, they might want to have another go at it to see if they could do better next time.
And who sits them down and says, look, you had a terrible time down there.
You decided to opt out of it, which is a choice that people make, sadly.
Do you want to have another bash and see if it can work out better next time?
Are you sat down and given that I think it's a distinct possibility you might want to make in the final essence?
You're your own worst judge and critic.
You might come to that decision yourself.
Or if you're maybe a very bad person, the choice might be made for you.
What about Hitler?
Everybody, I know they always, it's the honest old question of them all, but what about Hitler?
When Hitler died, what happened to him?
Did he come back?
I would very much doubt that.
I would think you'd go to a very dark place.
I don't like this heaven and hell thing at all.
I think it's like a strata.
I think you would be in a very dark place.
But no matter how dark the place is, if you ask simply, God help me, we'll use the word God for want of a better word, God help me, somebody please help me, then the opportunity is there for you to grow and get to a lighter place.
But that's why the whole thing is so complicated.
But don't worry, everybody, most people get there, like my friend Archie.
Someone takes them over and I've got a job to do.
I can't answer.
I mean, he would.
But you think there is redemption beyond?
I'm just thinking about, you know, people who've done bad things.
Like in this country, we had the Jimmy Saville ongoing case and he died, of course.
Nobody knew what he'd been up to.
And now, of course, we all do.
And he's still alive, but he'll die one day.
Anders Brevik, who murdered all of those young people on an island.
You know, those people, you think they will be perhaps redeemed when they move on?
No, I don't like the word redeemed.
That's a very religious word.
There's always an opportunity for everyone to improve themselves.
They will have to face that and they will maybe have a harder time.
They're going to have to really work to get through that, and they might have to come back and do something positive the next time.
But as I say, it's to me, it's logical.
I'm a very logical person, you know, mass physics.
And someone once said to me, it was actually a minister, he said, oh, you're trying to use logic when it comes to religion.
And I said, or he used the word God.
And I said, well, I think there is, it is a logic.
There's a lot.
It's just a logic that you don't understand.
And I certainly don't understand it, but I can only go on what I see or what happens from evidence from people who have committed suicide.
And by the way, most people don't choose to commit suicide.
It's like a madness that comes over them.
And they always say, I don't know why I did that.
The balance on my mind was turned at the time.
Well, they say that after they've crossed, obviously.
Yes, they say that after they've crossed, yes.
Occasionally not, but that's the majority of things that actually happen.
So if the balance is turned, then there's obviously no judgment on it.
They don't realise.
In the book, I talk about Bishop Pike's son, and he said, I thought I'd failed.
I failed the test, and I didn't realise the grief I would leave behind.
And that's what they're sorry for, the grief they've left behind.
And they really don't choose it with a rational mind.
They choose it when their mind is actually turned.
So you really can't condemn them.
You are a strong and logical person.
That has shone through every word that you've said.
It's been an absolute pleasure and delight to talk to you.
Do you fear death?
Not at all.
Looking forward to it, actually.
It's a bit weird.
But no, not at all.
No, the evidence is such that I will be very surprised if I don't survive.
And I'm absolutely sure that we will all survive.
Hopefully, I'll be in touch with you again and we can take this further.
I would love to.
I've really thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.
If people want to know more about you, which I'm sure and certain they will, and I'm sure I'll get emails and feedback about you, what's the best place to go and find out about you and your work?
Well.
Your website, for one.
Yeah, but my website doesn't always work.
If you go into White Crow Books.
Okay, White Crow Books.
White Crow Books.
And you see the bit about the book, things you can do when you're dead, there's a link there to my website, which always seems to work.
It was one of the few ones that actually seemed to work.
And it'll tell you there.
Of course, the book gives you my background, etc., and all the things I've said and done.
But I'm not important, but what I have to say is very important for the ordinary man in the street and people who have a broken heart or people who just don't know where to turn for good information.
That book will give you good information.
Let's pick up this conversation again sometime very soon, Tricia.
And I wish you all the very best with the book and all of your work.
Thank you.
Thank you, Herbert.
Bye.
Well, Tricia Robertson has just become one of my favorite guests ever on The Unexplained, and we will do this again.
Thank you to Adam Cornwell, my webmaster, for his great help with the website and the show.
Thank you very much to you for your guest suggestions.
Please keep your donations coming.
Go to www.theunexplained.tv and leave me your feedback for this show as well.
And also, of course, your stories of paranormal experiences would be very gratefully received, and we can do something about those in the future.
Please take care.
Look after yourself.
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