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May 31, 2014 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:09:34
Edition 159 - Haunted Skies

A return visit with retired UK policeman John Hanson - he talks about his exhaustive BritishUFO research...

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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.
Beautiful weather here in the UK as I record this June has finally arrived.
Been very busy over the last few days, so sorry if this show comes to you a day or two late.
I've been doing some outside broadcasting, some inside broadcasting, and now I'm doing the unexplained.
My great labor of love here.
We are the independent media.
We're here up against the big guys.
And thanks to your support, wherever you are, if you're in the United States or Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, my many listeners around the world, wherever you are, this show, because of you, is growing all the time.
And thank you very much.
But we depend on your donations.
If it's possible for you to make a donation, please go to the website www.theunexplained.tv, www.theunexplained.tv.
And you can make a donation through a PayPal link there and also send me email.
And I've had a lot of emails.
I'll do some shout-outs in a future edition.
Lot of new listeners.
Gratifying to read what you say about the show and really good to get your guest suggestions.
They're fueling me at the moment and firing me up with ideas.
So thank you for those.
Like I say, we are competition for the big boys here, but we are small media.
And that has many advantages.
It means that when you email the show, I see your email, not some anonymous person in a production office who may not even pass it on.
That kind of stuff goes on at some places.
Not here.
Thank you very much to my webmaster, Adam Cornwell, a creative hotspot in Liverpool, for continued hard work on the website and getting the show out to you.
We're going to talk to a man now who we've talked to before here.
He is one of the people behind a series of books that contain the most incredible documentation.
Newspaper articles, copies of original documents, photographs, sketches to do with UFOs and ufology.
Haunted Skies is the series.
We're going to specifically talk about Volume 8 covering the fascinating year of 1980, which here in the UK culminated in the Rendlesham Forest incident that I guess if you've listened to my shows, you'll know about.
Perhaps the most important incident of claimed contact, if it was indeed, that ever happened in this country close to Christmas of 1980.
I remember it well.
This book has a large section on that.
So we're going to cross to John Hansen in just a moment.
Got some very good guests booked for the future.
Hoping to talk to at least two of the guests that you've recently suggested in editions that are coming very soon.
So let's hope that comes up.
And we also hope to get to grips, if it hasn't been solved already, with the mystery of Flight MH370, which now they tell us they've been looking in the wrong place for.
I think there may be more to this than meets the eye.
The most fascinating story that I think I've come across for a very long time, the other one being that there's a political seismic shift here in the UK.
A lot of people voted in the European and local elections that we had for a party called UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, which is giving the major parties here a major headache.
So these are fascinating times, and it looks like the people are speaking, and the politicians are going to have to hear all of them what they have to say.
Otherwise, they're going to be out changing times.
All right, let's cross to the English Midlands now and talk to one of the authors of Haunted Skies, John Hansen, Dawn Holloway, Brenda Butler are the team.
John Hansen is online to The Unexplained now from the English Midlands.
John, nice to have you on The Unexplained again.
Thank you very much, Howard.
And how nice to hear your jolly friendly voice from the English Midlands.
Remind me again exactly which bit.
Well, we live in a place called Alf Church.
It's a small village to the...
But, of course, I originally hailed from Sunny Berkshire.
Oh, fine place where I'm working these days, doing some work on the BBC.
I think I can say that, on the BBC there.
But thereby hangs another tale.
And where you are at the moment, I know Alfchurch very well because you're very close to Radio Wyvern, as it was, country, which is Evesham.
That's right, Evesham, a place I know very well from my childhood.
And it's lovely.
If you look it up anyway, if you're in America, it's literally the heart of England.
Very agricultural, handy for Birmingham, not too far from London, and a nice place to be.
Now, we last spoke when you wrote a book about haunted skies and UFOs in wartime.
We're now up to volume 8 of Haunted Skies, 1980, and this...
Oh, yes, Volume 9 is as thick as Volume 8 and in colour and overspills into a particularly fascinating case involving a guy called David Daniels.
All right, well, let's talk about that when we've talked about Volume 8.
I do want to do that.
I didn't know there was a Volume 9, so but look, in terms of UFO research, I have a lot of people on here who've done a lot of third-party stuff.
They haven't got the documentation, they don't have the pictures, and they're a little bit detached from it all, it seems to me.
It doesn't mean they haven't got a good theory about it all.
But I've got to say about this book here, this is a big book with a lot of photographs.
If you like documentation, if you want to see the original documentation and the original newspaper pieces about some of these cases, they're in the book.
So full marks to not only you, of course, your writing partners, Dawn Holloway, Brenda Butler, in this research.
It is quite remarkable.
So we'll talk about Volume 8, 1980, first off.
Tell me about you and your research team first, though, John.
Well, you mean from the beginning or relatively?
Well, you know, how you all got together and why you do this, because an awful lot of work has gone into this stuff.
Well, that's right.
Well, we first started actually in 1995.
Myself, my partner Dawn, spent an awful lot of time down in the Wiltshire area researching into reports of UFO incidents and an occasional Report of crop circles, and over the years we met an amazing number of people.
But I should have said this curiosity was actually triggered off by actually my son, and he's now a chief inspector in the police.
He was a police constable in 1995.
And shortly after I'd retired from the force, he told me about an incident that took place in Birmingham when he and some other officers had been directed to a report of a UFO seen over some trees.
And as a result of what he saw, this was the trigger for me.
You know, I wondered personally whether such things existed, because surely they couldn't exist.
There's no such thing as flying saucers or UFOs.
They could not exist.
And suffice to say, after getting involved, researching from that day onwards, it was always our intention after having accumulated a huge mass of documents and interviews with people that we wanted to publish a book.
And back in sort of 2006, 2007, it really wasn't possible because traditional publishers would not accept this sort of material.
They certainly weren't interested in books on British UFOs.
It was only in 2010 that we met somebody from the Devon area who agreed to assist us with publishing these books.
So volumes one to six were born.
After volume six, we decided that we wanted to publish them ourselves because we wanted to publish them in colour.
And also we wanted to increase the pagination because, you know, small books don't cost a lot of money to post, but bigger books cost far more.
But bigger books obviously can contain more information.
And I mean, look at this.
We've been doing this since 1995.
It is a source of great frustration that this morning I'm looking at volume 11 at the moment.
Good lord.
This is 1988.
Now let me get this right.
No, 1989 to 1990.
Now in those two particular years, it's taken me, the coverage of those two particular years, it has taken me something like five weeks to, and for Dawn to proofread, the events that took place in England covering January and February of 1989.
That in itself is tremendous.
And most of the sightings relate to what people would now refer to as triangular craft.
And none of this information has ever been published before.
So we think that it should be.
And you have a methodical approach to this that you don't see very often in the UK.
All right, there are some very serious investigators in America.
And of course, we have people like Nick Pope over here in the UK, although he's moved to America now.
You've got the documentation.
I keep saying this, but I'm just flipping through the book now, and I'm seeing all of these forms and front pages from newspapers.
So we'll talk about Volume 8, and I'm going to cherry-pick some cases.
And you also tell me cases that you think I should be bringing to light here.
And then if anybody wants to buy the book, they can read a greater exposition.
But methodical, absolutely.
And from my knowledge of this, my dad was a copper, a policeman.
I think only a policeman can do that amount of legwork and know that you've got to cross the T's and dot the I's.
You've got to get it right.
You've got to get it all in there.
Because if you're prosecuting somebody, that has got to go to a court of law.
Similarly, if you're researching this, it's the court of public opinion, really.
I want to go to page 65, the suspicious death of Zygmunt Jan Adamski, born 1923, died June 1980.
What a weird case.
Tell me.
Well, it was a weird case, but my attitude is that with matters such as that, that obviously still attract huge amounts of publicity to this present day, that if it's clear that it has absolutely nothing to do with any UFO activity, one should work just as hard, if you like, to prove otherwise.
Because it was quite clear from our research into it and our visits up there and speaking to so many people that this gentleman was never dumped onto a coal heap by a UFO.
Absolutely not.
And it's strange you should mention that because I've just, in 2005, I emailed the West Yorkshire Police and asked them if they were interested in reopening the investigation because we had a suspect for it and we'd spoken to a witness who gave us an awful lot of information relative to what took place.
Hold on for just a second, John.
Do you mean that through your investigations into something that may well not have been a UFO case after all, you were able to get a lead on what may have been a crime?
That's correct.
That is correct.
But the attitude of the West Yorkshire Police was to say that this was a matter that we should take up with the coroner's department because the coroner at that time was Mr. James Turnbull, who's still involved periodically with coroner's courts there.
And we were told to contact them.
Well, of course, as far as a coroners are concerned, unless you have contact with the family or you are a family member, you have no rights to examine any of the fire, which is fair enough.
So that effectively was put to bed in 2005.
But a few weeks ago, now that we have police commissioners, I decided to send a full report to the Police Commissioner in West Yorkshire.
For our friends in America, we've got to say police commissioner is fairly new here, but this is somebody who is a civilian elected and charged with oversight of the police.
That's right, yes.
And I sent her and sent a full copy of the file to him and asked that you're right there, Howard.
Oh, yes.
I thought you had a rum and coke or something.
Oh, no.
Strong black coffee.
Too early, right?
Anyway, so I'm currently waiting a reply from that, but I don't hold out much.
But I have a passion about this in as much that this is the time to record all of this information because in 10, 15, 20 years' time, we shall all have passed away.
So many people have passed away and so many people that bothered to go out there and get off the backsides and go and interview people and take photographs and obtain documents.
It's all slowly sliding away.
And I feel, as I say, that it should be recorded because it's so interesting.
Absolutely.
Well, you have a quote here.
On the 7th of July, the Halifax Courier newspaper ran a story about this case of Mr. Adamski.
The mystery of the last few days of a man of 57's life before he was found dead at Todmoden deepened today.
When police established he'd visited Lancashire for medical treatment, it's now known that he went to an acupuncturist on June the 6th.
Detective Inspector John Boyle of Halifax, leading the inquiry, said today that the Lancashire connection was the only new development and that Mr. Adamski's whereabouts on the days leading up to his death remained a mystery.
By the sounds of it, you've been able to pencil in some of that detail.
Yes, well, Graham Birdsell himself went out to Nelson and interviewed some people.
And you do have in front of you a questions and answer between James Turnbull and Graham Birdsell, which is very illuminating.
But, you know, we've been up there and we've had a look at the scene and we know that the guy in charge of the yard left the yard for some hours and when he came back the deceased was on top of the coal tip.
But there is no doubt that following on from that, purely because Alan Godfrey, who had his own UFO sighting some months later, the press then cobbled the two together and that's how it was born.
And, you know, I don't know if you know Philip Mantle, but of course Philip Mantle's father in he actually went, he was a coal miner and he knew Mr. Adamski.
And as you say, we've been pretty thorough.
I mean, I'm not looking at any documents here, so everything is from my memory.
But it's justice has not been served.
And of course, that's what it's all about at the end of the day.
So this man's body was found on the top of a coal tip, and it wasn't explained.
His death was not explained.
It was a great mystery.
And sometimes, of course, people find very mysterious explanations for these things, and they say, well, it must have been UFOs or a UFO that dumped him there.
But now you've found evidence that suggests this may have been more mundane.
And that is just as important, I think, to ufology, to be able to know which cases you can weed out and which cases you should look into a bit more.
That's right.
Apart from that, in those days, let me say that coroners were allowed to speculate.
Since then, coroners cannot speculate.
But speculations were made and association was drawn or intimated with regard to this man's death and UFO activity.
How did that get into the mix?
People interviewed the gentleman concerned, and that's what you've got the comments or quotes in the book there.
And it set it all off.
And I hate to say this, but there were people engaged in this line of business that obviously saw some value in promoting that particular situation to arise.
But we do know that Mr. Adamski, we're pretty sure that he was not looking forward to giving his goddaughter away at all because of threats.
And this information was given to us by a guy who was very close to Mr. Adamski.
And as I say, the contents of that have gone to the police.
And I think it's still time to perhaps interview somebody.
But as people tell me, these matters take money.
And of course, there isn't a lot of money about these days, is there?
Well, what a fascinating situation.
All right, page 128 of volume 8, UFO Encounter Herefordshire, an area close to my heart because I worked on Radio Wyvern Wyvern FM there and know Worcestershire and Herefordshire really well.
A veteran sports reporter, Jeremy Finney from the Hereford Times, a down-to-earth man, quotes, with no previous interest in UFOs, still wonders to this present day what exactly happened to him on August 18th, 1980, while traveling home from work.
And you quote, here, to be honest, it's not really a matter I like speaking about, as I can normally guess people's reaction when I tell them.
Apart from that, you don't expect down-to-earth reporters like myself to have strange experiences.
And you've got a photograph there that looks pretty bizarre.
Tell me about the case.
Well, he was, I think he'd been out on some business and coming back, he'd seen this object in the sky.
But if I remember rightly, shortly after this, again, you will have the information there.
I think it was Carol and a colleague saw more or less the same object and then had some particularly strange experiences.
And I'm pretty sure that's not too far from the A5.
You might have to correct me there, but The A5, which is a road network, at some stage, Dawn and I thought we should call it the sort of super UFO highway because the amount of incidents involving motorists that had been pursued and chased by these things along that particular stretch of road is actually phenomenal.
And as I say before to you, the frightening part about this is that I've only come up to 1989.
I can't, I really struggle with all of this information, and I really breathe a sigh of relief when a book is published.
Your capacity for finding this material is remarkable, but then coming from a police family as I do, I know that policemen have their sources and they don't stop until they get the information.
But you have a letter from Jeremy Finney, this Hereford sports reporter.
He wrote to you in 2000 and he says, I've kept an open mind on the subject of UFOs and don't think that what I saw was a freak of nature.
It was too clear at the time to be mistaken.
I later had a similar experience to that reported by two Lempster women at the time of my sighting.
So there was corroboration there.
And here is somebody, you know, reporters generally, speaking as one myself, are usually pretty level-headed people and we generally look for a rational explanation for most things.
But, you know, here is a most bizarre case, these lights in the sky, not only seen by Jeremy Finney.
Many others, but surely we must have arrived at a situation now after all these years of the, I think most people realize that these UFOs, of course, which is an ambiguous terminology in itself, people realize that these things exist and we certainly have learnt a great deal about the behavior characteristics of UFOs.
But I would say looking back maybe three, four, 500 years, most sightings that clearly aren't fireballs, Beledes, planets, meteorites and goodness what will actually fall into a category of three separate objects.
Some people refer to them as triangular UFO now.
Of course, there was the big wave of triangular UFO sightings in 1989.
And as we indeed now know, a huge wave in the Essex area in 1988, 1989, 1990 and probably onwards, where people see these triangular things going over.
And of course, people will try and claim that they're top secret technology, which in my opinion is a load of cod's wallet, because of course these things were being seen before we could even get an airplane up into the air.
What was it about 1980, though?
Because of course 1980, and we'll talk about this in a bit, culminated in Rendlesham Forest just before Christmas of that year, the most famous British, probably, UFO case.
But your book is packed with cases from 1980.
Why that year, do you think?
How bizarre?
Well, 80 was a busy year, but when I first started this, bearing in mind that I served nearly 30 years in the police force, and I've always wondered about the particular period of 1967.
Well, I actually had only been in the force one year, and I think to myself, well, I must have looked at newspapers talking about UFOs, but completely discarded them as being a load of rubbish.
When, in fact, in 66 and 67, there was a huge amount of activity culminating in what they called the flying cross-sighting by the police officers in Devon towards the end of October.
But the interesting thing is that many people would say, would look at one specific sighting individually and then maybe look for an alternative explanation, which is fine.
But then how do you explain all of the other sightings that took place before it and all of the other sightings that took place after it?
Surely there's something pretty inexplicable happening.
And I suppose one day, will governments really accept the truth of all of this or will they not?
Well, what hits me right between the eyes from the book, you know, just from this book about 1980, is that there is case after case after case, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, that hits you smack in the face.
All of these people can't be deluded or lying.
There must be some fact in some of it.
You know, even if some of them are mistaken, they can't all be.
For example, page 138, August 1980, we're talking about Gateshead here, famous case.
You talk about Marjorie Stainthorpe driving towards Winleton at 3 o'clock near Shibden Bank when she became aware of a blue and green coloured ball of light following behind the vehicle she was in.
Quotes, I was terrified when I arrived home.
I find myself shaking with fear.
I don't know what it was, but this was not any aircraft.
That's right.
Well, the interesting thing about incidents involving motorists that are pursued by UFOs is also quite peculiar to the Herefordshire, Worcestershire borders.
Quite a few reports from people who've had experiences there.
And unfortunately, on some occasions, people do have some medical problems afterwards.
And there are, of course, researchers that would immediately say that an abduction took place, an alien abduction.
Well, for a start, we don't know that we can't prove any of this.
But what we seek to prove in these books is that these strange things happen and that people do, unfortunately, sometimes suffer medical maladies as a result.
I think that's as far as you can take it.
One of the many, many, many newspaper cuttings you have here, and you must have spent so many hours and days in newspaper Offices by the looks of this, John.
16th of September 1980, five Dover Court people, including one of the town's firemen, saw what they believed was a UFO over the town yesterday.
Quotes, it was bright silver on top, black underneath, looked like a motor car hubcap in shape.
We've heard that before.
Said fireman Derek Cook of Dean's Close in Dover Court.
Mr. Cook said he was in the garden when the object appeared.
It had no windows.
It may be mine imagination, but it seemed to be making a humming noise.
And the headline, of course, humming UFO.
No, that's, well, I have to say that if you take out, I mean, I've looked at thousands upon thousands of newspaper articles over the years.
Our greatest problem, if you like, from the Horn to Skies situation is getting a national to take any interest in what we're doing.
So far, we have not achieved that at all, although local newspapers generally are fairly helpful.
When I say generally, not all.
But invariably going back to Broadhaven, 77, February 77, all the kids at the school saw an object land and saw occupants getting out of it.
You know, cases and cases and cases like that, unfortunately, the newspapers will publish, will sensationalize things like that.
And the headlines are tongue in cheek, calculated to attract the reader, because, I mean, with all due respect, what else can they do?
But there also seems to be, and look, all right, I work for the mainstream media, we know that, but hopefully I'm a little different because I also do this.
And, you know, that's hopefully a good thing.
But the mainstream media seem to have a template for this sort of story, whereas, you know, those of us in the alternative media don't.
And their template is usually, we'll give you the reports, we'll talk to the people, and then at the end of the story, having done all of that, we'll knock it down because we have to.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, look, I've got cases from 54, 55, where I think one was at a BBC installation up in Yorkshire.
And, you know, I know from documents that this matter was brought to the attention of the BBC in London.
And certainly the people there were told to keep quiet about it, which is fair enough.
When you say BBC installation, do you mean a transmitter?
Because they've got a few isolated transmitters there.
One huge one is called Emily Moor, which is in a very lonely place.
Spot on there.
So many of these objects are particularly attracted not only to reservoirs and water, but to installations.
I mean, you know, some people will automatically presume in this line of business that they're trying to eavesdrop or monitor us, which I certainly don't think is the case.
But these, you know, these things, these UFOs, they've been with us for one hell of a long time now.
And, you know, they're going to be here when, unfortunately, we won't be.
But in that interim period, we should at least give them some respectability, you know, rather than take the Mickey.
You've got a case from, you talked about that Worcestershire border area that I know so very well.
You've got a case from Redditch, which is another place that I know extremely well, which is part of Worcestershire, but very much on the Birmingham border.
18th of September 1980, West Mercier Police, which is the local police force there, called to the Church Hill area of Redditch, know that place well.
Four schoolboys, Tim Belmont, Peter Bevington, Stuart Heath and Colin Humphreys, contacted police reporting having cited a clover-shaped UFO.
You've got a few pages about this.
Interesting case.
Yes.
Yeah, I do speak to the lads concerned who would no longer be boys now.
But I have to say that that is an interesting case.
And each and every individual case is interesting.
But each and every individual case is duplicated in the hundreds, if not thousands.
And I'm always remindful of what Dr. Alan Hyne said, that the guy, Project Blue Book from the States.
And he said that the problem with all of this is there's too much of it.
And that is the trouble.
There is too much of it.
But how can you throw anything out?
Absolutely not.
I mean, in front of me, actually, I've got a cutting here from, it was actually by Bill Tanner.
I don't know if he still works for a Herefordshire newspaper, but some years ago, he covered a story about a UFO that was seen to land at a farm, it was an apple, a farm that produced apples in Fownhope, Herefordshire.
And according to the daughter of the mother, because this story was handed down, this object landed in the orchard.
And according to them, some aliens or creatures got out and started examining the apples.
Quite funny.
Because this is some, I know that area well as well.
This is cider country.
That's where they grow the apples that make the famous cider.
It is an area that's full of farmland, full of places where they grow apples, but not a whole lot of people.
So, you know, that's another one of these isolated places.
Yes, but what was interesting about this was that it took place in July 1947.
And I interviewed Mrs. Molly Tilly, the lady whose mum told her over the years time and time again what they'd seen.
And the only thing I could do was check that the farm existed.
The farmer himself actually existed as well.
And there were other things that matched up with it.
But according to Molly, they did receive a visit from the police.
She says it Was Ministry of Defence, but they wouldn't be known as a Ministry of Defence then.
But they were warned not to say anything about it.
And, you know, you're talking about a sensible woman, not somebody that's raving mad or someone that is, you know, flights of imagination.
You're talking about a lady that is coherent.
She's a very, very, very nice lady.
And this is her story.
Well, listen, my dad was a policeman.
I said that.
And, you know, so were you.
You have a radar.
He had a radar for whether people are lying or not.
My dad just knew, and 99.999% of the time, he was absolutely right.
He knew if somebody was drunk, he knew if somebody was lying, he could just spot them a mile off.
So your feeling from that woman was that she was telling you the truth, that she'd been essentially told to shut up.
Well, and taking into consideration that if people wanted to embellish, they would.
But there was nothing embellished about this, about what had been said.
You know, this was a very genuine lady.
And I have to say that over the years, I've not come across many people that don't fall into that category, but do have had issues with people involved in this line of business because a lot of people think it's researchers think it's extraterrestrial or interdimensional or this and that.
And I've always said, I just don't know.
All I can say is that it certainly appears indigenous to our planet.
It's been here for a heck of a long time now.
And I mean, I've just recently written to the Prime Minister, hoping that I'm certainly not asking David Cameron for any comments on UFOs.
It's probably the wrong time to be honest.
I have a feeling that all the politicians in the UK, with the rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party, which has suddenly appeared almost like a UFO itself out of nowhere and is giving the three main parties problems, I have a feeling that UFOs are pretty low down his agenda right now.
You're probably right.
It's just a guess, you know.
Hey, you've got a great one here.
UFO close encounter Cumbria.
This is great.
A guy called Mario Luisi, you've got the...
You've got a newspaper article from 1980, November of that year.
Mario's close encounter.
Paper mill worker, Mario Luisi, claims he's had a close encounter with the spine-chilling being, whatever this is.
And there's a sketch in the newspaper piece, a photograph of a younger version of him, and also a sketch of his of the alien.
What an amazing case.
Well, it is an amazing case.
I know that, and I think there is some information in the book to the effect that at some stage he was advised wrongly to try and flog some photos of the UFOs and make some money out of it.
Oh, dear.
This is a matter for, obviously, which denigrates it or degrades it.
But, you know, if this particular case was an individual one and there were no other reports like that, one might be minded to speculate as to whether that happened at all.
But, you know, he's not the only one.
I have to say that for me that the classic one, the most important case I've ever looked at is the July 1955 sighting involving Margaret Fry when the object landed on a pavement or near enough landed a few feet above the pavement in Bexley Heath, Kent.
On the 17th of July 55, that was witnessed by a number of people that we tracked down and a number of people, school children, a few days before who saw it over the local school.
Now, Bexley Heath, we have to say, is almost these days a suburb of London, well it is a suburb of London these days and it was pretty much that in those days.
It has nothing in common with Found Hope in Herefordshire.
There are a lot of people around so if anything happens there even in 1955 as you say it will have been seen.
That's right.
That was a particularly fascinating case because it involved the sighting of an object, a saucer-shaped craft with the three globes.
I know this off by heart, hemispheric distance forming an equilateral triangle underneath.
And one's first thought of seeing these three globes underneath is to link it with the earlier Damsky stuff 55.
But how many times have people told me about these three objects forming an equilateral triangle from underneath?
So, you know, we're talking about, we're talking about Belgium triangular craft in the 1989, 1990s.
You know, it's.
I don't really have superlatives to describe this stuff.
But, you know, I'm flipping through this book right now, cherry-picking stuff out of it.
And I really could stop at any page.
I don't think I've seen a volume, and definitely not from this country, that's been so comprehensive.
Before we get to Rendlesham Forest, which of course was the culmination of everything that happened in that year of 1980, and then we'll move on briefly to talk about your other more recent books.
You've got a case here, R.A.F.
Welford.
Now, this is December 67 you're talking about here in this, but why are you talking about December 67 in the book about 1980?
I don't understand that, but it's a fascinating case.
Well, because although, generally speaking, we write these books chronologically and understanding that many years ago, we tried to attract the attention of a publisher through a literary agent.
We were told it wasn't focused.
And at that time, it was a jumble of different counties, different dates, places.
So we decided to write books based on day-by-day activity.
That's what took us so many years, probably 15, 16, 17 years to write up.
That was an interesting case at Welford because that's something not many people know about, but that was a number of United States Air Force security personnel that saw UFOs flying over the base itself.
Can we just describe whereabouts is Welford?
Is it near Rendlesham?
I thought Welford isn't near Newbury, Berkshire.
Oh, is it?
I ought to know that.
Okay, yeah.
Yes, it is.
It is, absolutely.
I should have known that, actually, working out there these days.
That's bad, isn't it?
R.A.F.
Welford, Newbury, Berkshire, 1967.
Photograph of the person involved.
You've even got an official-looking document from the United States military.
Pictures of Welford the way it used to look and sketches of what apparently was seen there.
Tell me that story.
Well, you've got to...
You'd have to remind me of his name.
What was his name?
This is a Sergeant Coleman, is that right?
And Sergeant John Artie, two of them.
Yeah, Astrid, Robert Arty.
Yeah, it was Robert that contacted me, a smashing bloke, and told me about that.
Okay, John Roger Artie, you say.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, John Roger Arty.
And he told me about that.
And I just thought it was absolutely fascinating.
And it's strange how public interest has continued to manifest with regard to the Rendlesham case, which is continually the subject of research and documentaries, whilst cases like that in the backwater, and nobody hardly knows anything about that.
But thinking about that particular case when the sorcerer-shaped craft was flying up and down and over the buildings, I think this was a couple of nights before the helicopter of the Queen's flight crashed.
And I'm pretty sure that there was a suggestion that the, I think it was Prince Philip was going to pilot that, but he didn't.
He, in fact, piloted another helicopter.
I know that the guy in that helicopter was killed and that there was a suggestion that there was a connection with the UFO activity, but clearly there wasn't.
Although, as I say, the events at Welford were certainly very interesting indeed.
Well, you've got a very cogent quote from John Roger Artie here.
He says, whatever it was, I don't know, but it wasn't the same object we'd seen earlier, so there were multiple sightings, as you hinted there.
Suddenly, I noticed the yellow light, only visible through binoculars, was back in the sky over the direction of Rowbury Farmhouse, possibly much further backwards and forwards in a north then south direction, across the sky for a few minutes, then disappeared, leaving the other object still visible in the mist.
At this point, we were called away when we returned to the scene just under an hour later.
There was no sign of anything untoward in the sky.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It never stops to be absolutely fascination.
I mean, you know, thousands upon thousands of cases.
And as I've always pointed out, no disrespect to the MOD, but, you know, you won't, you probably know yourself that, you know, there is no sort of files that they declassify are in the main pretty low-grade stuff and sanitized and bear no resemblance whatsoever to, as I say, to what we've published.
And that's why I wrote to the Prime Minister, at least asking him if he'd offer us some encouragement, because, you know, at the end of the day, this is part of our social history.
And we should not let it all slide away.
And I think you probably agree with me there.
Well, John, I absolutely do.
I wonder if anybody has ever indicated to you that there is some very good stuff that is classified and is likely to remain so.
But just so that you know, John, maybe they've said to you, it's there.
Has anybody ever given you a steer like that?
No.
They haven't?
Not at all.
No.
Other than the fact that there are cases, one, many, many spring to mind, but 71 girl guides out at Droit, which in Worcestershire, camping for the night.
An object circled overhead and then a jet fighter turned up and off went the object followed by the jet fighter.
And this was all reported to the MOD.
I think they promised that those files will be declassified sort of 15 years ago.
But cases like that, I don't think will be declassified.
So in essence, a lot of our stuff, although it's never been reported to the MOD, if it had, I'm sure it wouldn't have been declassified.
And what you've done is primary legwork.
You've been to newspaper archives, you've been to coroner's offices, you've done all the stuff that police do.
The stuff that might be interesting to you at some point, maybe, is to just get somebody who perhaps has been in government or perhaps has been an MP, somebody like that to say, just to let you know, John, I'm a fan of your work and you're on the right track.
I guess you wait for that kind of thing.
Well, we have, of course, been assisted over the years by various people.
And shall I say, there are certain people within government that do have Horns of Skies books from us.
Oh, really?
Okay.
Well, that's a testimonial, isn't it?
A testament to what you do.
Well, it is.
It is a testimonial.
But it is hard graph putting these together.
It really is, but it's very enjoyable, particularly when you finish a volume.
And all I ever want to do is hopefully get up to the year 2000, which is ridiculous because we're talking about 10 years of UFO reports and we're probably talking about the four volumes.
Are you getting reports of stuff that's Happening now in 2014?
We are still receiving some reports and photographs of UFOs and triangular objects seen in the skies.
Yes, still currently.
So it's still ongoing.
But to all intent and purposes, I'm stuck back in those 1980s.
And 1980 being the zenith, perhaps, of ufology, of bizarreness of this kind in the United Kingdom, because at the end of that year, just before Christmas, at a U.S. Air Force base in Suffolk, there was the closest encounter, it has been alleged over the years, that nobody's really been able to fully explain.
And a lot of people, it is claimed, have been very keen to cover up.
There's a man who you've talked to about this Rendlesham Forrest case, who I've also spoken to face-to-face in Liverpool.
Larry Warren, an American who worked there at the time, now lives in Liverpool.
A very cool dude turned up to a radio city in Liverpool where I was working at the time.
Wearing a leather jacket, we had a long conversation, and I regarded him as completely credible.
And he effectively told me that he was part of all of this, but he was warned off.
Well, that's what Larry says.
I have no reason to disbelieve that at all.
What I will say is that out of all the cases that we've looked at, the events at Rendlesham were extremely problematical inasmuch that we started off with Sky Crash, which was written back in 83 by Brenda Butler, Dot Street and Jenny Randalls.
And there were images in there which weren't clear.
And we've explained about images in the books that some of them show a craft with alien beings.
And the actual origin of some of those photographs and images is certainly never been clarified.
So what we've sought to do, first of all, is look at all of this accumulated stuff and sort it out bit by bit.
And we couldn't have done that without the help of Brenda Butler, who's been researching this material and still goes down to the forest nearly every night.
You know, we couldn't have done it really without her.
Or Dot or Dot Street.
But, you know, if you look at it simplistically, the first report of anything untoward was made by security man Steve Roberts.
Now, this was a pseudonym for another guy who's been actually named in Nick Pope's recent book, although they've spelt the guy's name wrong.
Yeah, I do know who the guy is, and I've actually been emailing him for years, asking him if he'll clarify how he arrived at the original information that a UFO landed in the forest and that aliens came out of it and they met with the commander of the airbase.
I personally believe that information came from a police blotter, which went missing.
And there are other people that tend to agree that is probably the case.
For our North American listeners, blotter is a notepad.
A notepad, yeah, containing the police notes of what people saw during the night.
But there are so many different shapes and forms to that particular inquiry.
For argument's sake, when Brendan Dott went to the air base to speak with squadron leader Donald Maul and secretary, he thought they were from the ministry, not UFO investigators.
So he produced a great big file on UFOs and referred to...
I was laughing.
He referred to the 30th of December 1980.
And the two ladies said, no, the 27th.
And as soon as it was obvious that they weren't from the ministry, the file was put away.
And also you've got the very strange case involving the lady from the airbase that had a meeting with Brenda and her colleague and disclosed pertinent information about something that was kept in a hangar there, which was not a UFO.
And we ummed and ah about this for some considerable years because the circumstances in which that information was obtained is, shall I say, rather sensitive.
So, you know, we've got to bear that in mind.
But I think we will include the whole of that interview in volume 10 because it is of interest.
But we certainly feel that whistleblowers, you know, that you've got to be very careful with what they've said.
Well, you do, you have to handle this information sensitively.
So is what you're saying here that something was being kept at that airbase near Rendlesham Forest that alien species or some form of entity or presence may have been interested in?
No, no, no, no.
The information is that the object that was kept at the airbase was not anything to do with aliens.
You know, the first person to actually learn about the Rendlesham incident was Chris Pennington, who was Brenda Butler's partner, and he was told about it by the guy called Steve Roberts.
But back in November 79, there was a spate of security alerts at the same air base, including one where Brenda and her companion, Chris, were told that it was to do with the UFO that landed on the base.
And that was November 79.
Now, in that particular month, there was an awful lot of UFO sightings around that locality anyway.
So Brenda has speculated over the years whether, in fact, that November 79, whether that was in fact the dates when all this happened and not December 80.
But of course, December 80 is what most people refer to.
But it is a fascinating, absolutely fascinating case, which never goes away and is continually the subject of documentaries.
Or do you believe it was what it has been claimed to be over the years, and that is some extraterrestrials landing very close to a military base, the military there being spooked and not knowing what to do about it, and then everything being hushed up?
Or do you think now that there's more to this than meets the eye?
I think there's a lot more to it than meets the eye.
I mean, during the production of the second half of that particular book, we did have received a lot of help from Colonel Holt, who he's shown holding, he's always backed Horn to the Sky and he's been a great help to us.
This is the base commander.
Deputy Base Commander Colonel Holt.
But one has to remember that the problem is that these guys, you know, there are things they can't speak about.
But, you know, we've got reports of an object that landed and had to be repaired.
And we've been given names and addresses and locations.
An object that landed and had to be repaired.
You mean one of theirs being repaired by some of ours?
That's right.
But as I say, we've checked all of these out and we've concluded our opinions at the end of each particular reference.
And we talked about the whistleblower case and also Kingston School, where it was alleged something had near enough crashed at Kingston School outside Woodbridge before then taking off and landing in the forest.
That was another claim.
And that's not very far from Rendlesham.
That's right.
But that was made by the wife of a serving United States Air Force person.
And then, of course, by the same token, we have a lot of people that we've spoken to who say the whole thing was a load of rubbish and that they never witnessed anything.
But it keeps getting more interesting.
I mean, to quote from the book here, in late July 2013, last year, we entered into email communication with Ronnie Dugdale, a laboratory technician and nurseryman from Great Yarmouth, which is out that way east of England.
Ronnie has a long-standing personal interest in the UFO events reported at Rendlesham Forest and has more recently witnessed his friend Brenda Butler receiving and writing a binary download during one of their nighttime visits to the forest.
Not sure what a binary download is, but this is all about claims of a piece of metal that looks like solid mercury found allegedly at the so-called landing site at Rendlesham, right?
That's right.
The problem with that particular, if you like, that particular incident is that obviously without knowing the name of the lady that took it and gave it to Ronnie, you know, if you like, the case isn't as strong.
But we did.
But there is a photograph.
Sorry to interrupt, John.
A photograph of somebody here holding a piece of what looks like solid mercury.
So somebody could analyze that, couldn't they?
Now that's been done.
Okay, and what's the result?
That's been done in the States by a very charming gentleman called Nick Writer, R-E-I-T-E-R.
And he's been involved with the Roswell stuff from years ago.
Nick's a smashing bloke.
He's done quite a bit of work for us.
And he strongly contrasted that with an incident in Ohio, which we've also covered somewhere, where a guy called Bernie Foggins, an ex-veteran, recovered it after a rectangular object moved overhead.
And Nick looked at it and examined it, and he was very interested in it because there were strong parallels could be drawn between what Ronnie had, in fact, been given and the Ohio case.
Well, I'm looking at photographs of both of them for the book, Colour Photographs, and they do look similar.
The only thing is the stuff from Ohio looks pretty much the same, but looks more pitted.
But that could be down to the photograph.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, rather than him turning around and saying, look, this is just a lump of aluminium or lead or solder, he was very interested.
But, of course, it takes us a little way further ahead, but it doesn't.
I'd love to know who the lady is, because I think the story is that she said that she found it in the forest the day after the landing.
But the amount of people that were tramping about in that forest the day after the landing is in itself phenomenal.
And some of what they've told us is certainly apparently truthful, but very odd indeed.
You've got a wonderful section at the back of this, 1980, and I'm just going through this.
Page after page of newspaper cuttings, the most amazing.
God knows how you got them all, but they are fabulous.
You know, well done.
Yeah, thank you.
Is that the scrapbook?
Yeah, that's the scrapbook right at the back of the book.
Yeah, but I just don't know.
I mean, I just don't know how much the amount of work that goes into these books is tremendous.
And please bear in mind that although they're now sort of 600 pages in colour, although the price of 1999 sounds quite a lot, and oddly, when that was first published on Amazon, somebody changed it to dollars instead of pounds.
So three weeks it was going they got a discount in America.
Well, yeah, it was easier for me to buy the books at the dollars than the pounds.
But we don't make any money on these at all.
John, nobody could knock you for the quality of your research.
It is in depth.
You've really done the legwork here.
Would I be fair to you in saying that what you're doing here is adding to the questions perhaps more than you're giving us answers?
Well, there are, you know, without the cliché of reading the books, there are, I mean, there are a lot of answers in there to a number of questions, particularly where we specifically have put questions to Colonel Hall and wherever possible he's answered.
All right, what's the most convincing thing the Colonel has said?
He should know.
Well, as I say, there's so many different quotes from him.
I mean, I do have so many, as I say, many quotes.
I'm surrounded.
I'm engulfed with paperwork here.
I don't move anything because it collapses on me.
But he's been very helpful.
I mean, what he witnessed, I'm pretty sure that what he witnessed has been seen time after time again.
The way in which the objects moved over the forest.
Some people have said there were three objects.
We're back to our famous three, and that these patterns of light came down out of the sky and hit the ground.
But if you take into consideration what Jim Penniston and John Burroughs have said about lights, then a craft, and we're pretty sure at some stage that those guys out there put their hands up to chasing the lighthouse are getting mixed up.
Initially, they saw the UFO, and then at some stage, it's claimed they were confused with the lighthouse.
So everything, unfortunately, combines to make it one of the most hideous things I've ever looked at, because there's so many conflicting statements.
Sometimes I'd like to see it go before a court of law when I think you probably get more truth out of it.
But you mentioned about the binary code.
Yes.
Let's not lose that point.
Well, as I say, I think it was James Penniston that found some binary code after a number of years, and I think he forgot about it.
This is actual, what, binary code like we learn in school found at the Rendlesham site?
That's right, yeah.
But without...
And I don't know what academic qualifications that person had got, but I know one person fell out with somebody else.
But it was sort of inane things like, we are here and we are watching you.
Not very profound.
Not very profound at all.
And, you know, I know there are plans in foot to get another conference going this year in Woodbridge.
And I salute anybody who wants to take those on.
But as you said before, something pretty strange happened in that forest.
And strange things are still happening to this present day in that forest.
Really?
Like what?
A couple of, about a week ago, certainly there were sightings of triangular craft going over the forest by quite a number of people who contacted me.
But not forgetting, of course, our visits to the forest, you'll see in the scrapbook.
You know, what really stands out with me is that, okay, people will say about the orbs, they will say about the straight twists, and they will try and blame orbs as condensation or a peculiarity of the digital camera when, in fact, they were taken for 35 mil some years previously.
But I have seen phonographs of orbs forming a tube and coming out of a tube and then forming lights, a bit like the old spirit lights of many years ago.
So there's a heavy spiritual paranormal or manifestation.
There's a heavy presence in that forest to this current day.
Now, whether it's connected with Rendlesham or the events that happened in December 1980, I don't know.
But as I say, it's still ongoing.
And there was a time when somebody would have said to me about UFOs, I would have laughed at them.
I think what we both need to do, and certainly I need to do, is revisit my interview with Larry Warren, which I think was one of the editions of this show in the 20s.
So it's a few years back now, but it was a studio interview recorded at the studios of Radio City in Liverpool.
Larry Warren came in.
And I looked at him.
I looked into the whites of his eyes.
And I've got a bit of my dad's sense for whether people are telling me the truth or not.
I had no reason not to disbelieve Larry Warren whatsoever.
And he was a really cool dude who had a really fascinating case to put before me about Rendlesham Forest.
So go back to the previous editions of this show in the 20s.
You'll find Larry Warren there.
A full broadcast quality studio interview there.
And that explains an awful lot.
We've done about an hour now.
We're pretty much out of time.
But I wanted to talk about edition 9 of your books.
You're talking around 1988.
You said 88 was a special year.
Why?
Sorry, 88.
Well, did you say 88 or 89?
If I'm confused.
I'm lost now.
How do you think I manage?
Now, 19, volume 9 was 1981 to 86.
I got you.
Okay.
With volume 9, what was interesting was the incident involving David Daniels, who claimed to be a reptilian from the Pleiades.
Now, he came to see Brenda Butler after having seen Colonel Wendell Stevens in the States and a number of other prominent ufologists in the States.
He came From the States to England, and visited Brenda.
And Brenda was so impressed with him that she actually introduced him to the Lord Hill Norton.
She took that guy to meet Lord Hill Norton and also Ralph Noyes, who was head of the MOD.
And Lord Hill Norton, of course, head of the air ministry.
That's right, yeah, yeah.
And she introduced, I mean, for just a situation like that to occur is pretty strange indeed.
And so we've covered that pretty fully.
And I think also we covered the apports of stones.
This was in Birmingham, West Midlands, where the police staked the place out for two years trying to catch the person, chucking stones.
Really fascinating case that was.
But of course, they all are.
Well, and these stones have just appeared out of nowhere, and it's thought they were apports, things that just appear from another dimension?
Apports, yeah.
I mean, the ones at Rendlesham, people, you know, you tell people about the ones at Rendlesham, and which some of them we've got here, and you tell people, and they turn around and say, well, look, could it have been a bird flying at night time with a pebble in its beak or hooligans or whatever?
But what we do know is that they are very hot.
And when they drop to the ground, you pick them up, they're hot in the hand.
So I've no idea whether that heat is a byproduct of the levitation from wherever they've come from to wherever they've landed.
But, you know, to experience those is pretty impressive because, you know, it's not anybody taking a Mickey.
These things happen and it's certainly worth recording them.
John Hansen, I said last time we spoke we have to talk again.
Sorry if this has sounded rushed.
I'm talking to my listener now.
Two reasons for this.
You have an awful lot of detail to cram in.
And I literally have just raced off the motorway having been on an outside broadcast, a remote as you call them in America, in a place called Pangbourne in Berkshire.
So I've been on the radio.
I've done a show and an outside broadcast in Pangbourne.
And now I've raced back home to London and we're doing this.
So forgive me if I've sounded a bit kind of breathless and racing through all of this, but there's an awful lot to cram in.
And John Hansen, we have to talk again.
The series of books up to volume 11, very nearly, is Haunted Skies.
How do people find out about you and your team's research if they want to?
Well, if they can go onto Facebook, I mean, we're on Facebook, Haunted Skies.
If you go onto the internet, you know, you'll need to get in touch with us.
You know, we're on johndawn1 at sky.com, j-o-h-n-d-a-w-n1, the number one at sky.com.
Are you happy about giving your email address out?
Yeah.
Yeah.
If anybody can help us, if anybody wants any advice, if anybody wants to know anything, we're here for them.
It's john dawn1 at sky.com.
That's right.
And I will just say it's not about us.
It's about the people that put up, that, you know, that have helped us over the years.
And it's about them.
It's ensuring that for some of them who've gone now, it's ensuring that what they've witnessed will be preserved for posterity.
Nice one, John.
Thank you so much for this.
And, you know, you're a great guest.
And I'm sorry this has taken a little bit of time to put together.
We have to talk again.
Right.
Well, I should get you off volume nine.
Thank you, John.
Take care.
John Hansen.
Thank you very much, Shazan.
Thank you very much.
Bye.
John Hansen, fascinating work.
We will get him back on.
Amazingly documented material, though.
This guy must spend such a lot of time putting this together along with Don Holloway and Brenda Butler.
Amazing work.
Haunted skies.
Can't praise it enough.
Great shows coming soon.
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