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Nov. 9, 2014 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:01:49
Edition 181 - Lionel Fanthorpe

A return visit to the paranormal world of the Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe in Cardiff...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world, on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Well, as a comedy character in the UK called Victor Meldrew, who you might also have seen on BBC Worldwide in America, used to say, I don't believe it.
But we've now reached more than 180 hours of original content here.
By the time you total up the minutes of it all, I think it's probably about 200 hours, but we're over 180 editions of The Unexplained, and I know that some of you who've discovered this show in the last few months are busily working your way through the back catalogs wherever you happen to be.
Thank you very much for your support through all of these shows, and I am just amazed that an independent production has been able to achieve this, and I know that we're going to go on to bigger and better things with your help.
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I'm not going to do any shout-outs on this edition, but just to say thank you to the anonymous person who sent me an email criticising the use of the word fall in the poll that we put out.
He's written to me and basically apologised in a very nice way.
So whoever you are, thank you for that, and I do appreciate it.
We do try and do our best in all things here, but we're never going to get it completely right for everyone.
And not every guest will be totally suitable for every person listening.
But that's kind of one of those things about life, really.
But we're always striving to be better.
You know, we're like those big supermarket chains that say we're always trying to be better, but we really are trying to be.
We're independent media, we're small, but we're trying to punch well above our weight, and I think we're managing to do that.
Thanks to you for your constant support and the nice things that you say here.
Always glad to hear from you with any thoughts, suggestions.
You can tell me whether I'm doing it right, whether I'm doing it wrong, what you want to see on the show, anything.
I get to see your emails at www.theonexplained.tv.
Now, the guest on this show is somebody that you've requested many times.
He's very popular in America and in this country.
His name is the Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, very popular in the US and a man I first interviewed on radio about 10 or 12 years ago.
He is a man who is, I guess what you call in America, a preacher.
He is a man of the cloth, but he's also an investigator into paranormal matters and a writer on those matters and other things.
He is an incredibly intelligent man, and above all else, he's just an incredible storyteller, as if you've never heard him before, you are in for a treat, you will hear now.
So let's not mess about.
Let's cross to Cardiff now, the capital of Wales, land of my fathers, and let's talk to Lionel Fanthorpe.
Lionel, thanks very much for making time for me again.
Just for those who don't know you, for those who may have seen you on the television but are not sure who you are and what you do, how would you describe yourself, Lionel?
Well, I would say, first of all, I'm an Anglican priest.
Secondly, I write science fiction and fantasy, and I also research the paranormal from a scientific angle and written a number of books about different aspects of the paranormal.
And probably I'll best be remembered for the Fortin TV series that I did about 10, 15 years ago, which was a matter of visiting strange places and investigating the alleged mysteries.
Does that give you a rough idea?
It does, and I'm glad you said alleged mysteries, and before we talk about Halloween or anything like that, because quite often a lot of these GeeWiz television programs, they go to locations and those locations are claimed to be haunted or possessed or demonic in some way or weird things are said to happen there.
And then, of course, for the TV crew, they don't.
So you often get the feeling that they are kind of extemporizing a little to try and make it appear that maybe something is about to happen or maybe something happened that the camera missed or something like that, if you see what I'm saying.
Not exactly lying, but just theatricalizing it.
Yes, trying to make the most of what may be there.
Yes, thank you for saying that.
I think that's the way I would put it as well.
They do, she would say that there are some approaches in the media that really seem to be trying to make the most of what has been said to be there, rather than going into it objectively.
Well, now, I have the great honor to be the president of the group known as ASSAP, which is the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena.
It's one of the phrase, but it's one of the so-called learned societies, which I always think is a wonderful phrase.
Okay, so you like to try and keep, while you're reaching for the stars, you like to keep your feet on the ground?
Very much so, Howard, yes, all the way.
That's as good a description as you can come up with.
I'm as earthy as a Norfolk dumpling.
I'm going to use that one.
Now, one question that I have asked you before, but because some of the people who are hearing this are hearing you for the first time, I will ask it again.
You are an Anglican priest.
Among your duties, you've told me that you're doing a couple of funerals this week, which is a regular thing that you preside over or officiate at.
Shouse, it goes with the territory.
It goes with the territory, along with the other spiritual matters that you have to deal with.
I wonder how that fits in with your paranormal investigations and what the church feels about that.
Well, Shouse, I would draw a little distinction between what I sometimes categorize as churchianity as opposed to Christianity.
And I think that when we look at the really spiritual side and not at a lot of Bureaucratic regulations, 99% of which are totally unnecessary, then I would say that God is a God of truth, and that one of the most vital gifts that He gives us is our curiosity, our desire to examine and to research and to think things through.
And whether it's a mysterious chemical on a bench in a laboratory, or whether it's a matter of strange sounds and sights in an allegedly haunted location, then those are both ways in which we can exercise our curiosity and get towards the truth.
So is this what you've just described to me, a sort of variant on the biblical notion that God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform?
Yes, we could say that.
I would put it like this, that among the many things that a God of truth places before us is a desire to find the truth.
And by going to mysterious places, by investigating so-called inexplicable phenomena, then we do make progress towards further and further investigations of truth.
And that's what intrigues me.
When I find something that doesn't apparently go with the laws of physics as I learnt them and later as I taught them in a school situation, then I like to know why whatever this is is not going along with the laws of physics as, shall we say, dear old Newton thought of them.
If something seems to be impossible and has yet been witnessed and reported on by good and reliable and honest objective witnesses, then I think that by researching something in that area, we are much more likely to make real progress than if we just go on looking at the, again, in inverted commas, the regular and the normal.
Now, this is a difficult area, though, because once you bring science into it, well, of course, scientists are people who quite rightly demand levels of proof and explanation that, you know, the punters, you and me, may not particularly require.
In other words, we tend to believe the evidence of what we see and hear.
Scientists want a little bit more than that.
But claims are made by people.
For example, on my show, The Unexplained, we had Victor and Wendy Zammett in Australia on recently.
I don't know if you've ever come across them, but they are great fans of a physical medium.
Somebody who says that he can make the spirits of departed people appear and be three-dimensionally solid and actually speak.
And they've got recordings of people speaking.
Small children, members of their families, people they don't know, figures from history, that kind of thing.
Now, that has been widely debunked.
People just didn't buy that, didn't believe it.
Scientific proof for something like that, even if you experienced it and you saw it, almost impossible to get, isn't it?
Oh, it is.
And of course, what we've always got to look at, and I keep this in mind when I'm carrying out investigations, that the human mind is an enormously creative instrument with which we're blessed.
And there are occasions, I think, that many of our listeners and viewers will have had in which you wake from a dream and for a few moments you're not sure whether the bedroom is reality or whether the strange cave in the dream was the reality.
So that the mind can provide us with environments that are so strange and mysterious that we have a little difficulty in distinguishing the reality from the fantasy.
And then, of course, we come up against the great question of what is reality and the things that all the avant-garde physicists are telling us about the worlds of if and the parallel universes and which of those are real and do they impinge on what we think of as our own existential reality?
It raises so many philosophical questions.
It's absolutely enormous.
And through your investigations, have you had any more proof than perhaps the ordinary Joe on the street that what you've just talked about actually exists, that things beyond the norm, not just things that we create in this wonderful thing that we have, this tool we have in our heads, our brain, but things beyond that exist?
Well, let me just give you one episode where I have been unable to find any other explanation.
I had a very great friend called Billy Farrow.
We used to teach together in Cambridgeshire at one of the village colleges, a little village called Gamblingay.
Bill was the principal and I was the further education tutor.
And we really were the closest of friends.
We were like brothers.
A while back, Bill phoned me from the Cambridge village to which he'd retired and said that he'd just been diagnosed as terminally ill and could I go and see him for old time's sake.
So despite the 300 miles distance from Cardiff to Cambridge, I went over to see him as often as I could.
Then I had a phone call from his village priest, Father Ian, who said, ever so sorry, Lionel, but Billy's just passed over.
And he wanted me to do the funeral.
So I drove over the night before the service was planned and got to the rectory in the village where I was going to spend the night before taking the service next morning.
And as I sat talking, if you could imagine two priests planning a funeral together, you read this piece, I'll read that piece, you do this prayer, I'll do that reading, and so on, I suddenly saw Billy.
Now, I'm not psychic, I'm certainly not a medium.
And as I said earlier, I'm as earthy as a Norfolk dumpling.
But I saw him.
He looked as he had looked when we were young friends 50 years ago.
And he looked radiantly healthy, no trace of the disease, and radiantly happy.
And also totally solid, not ghost-like at all.
And he gave me a message.
He said, smiling all over his face, Lionel, tell Ian that Juliana of Norwich was absolutely right.
And then he vanished.
He didn't go through a wall or dissolve.
One minute he was in the room with me, as real as another human being.
The next minute, gone.
Amazing.
Were you scared?
Were you bemused?
How did you feel?
I was just, I think, surprised rather than scared.
Certainly there was nothing frightening about him.
It was just like seeing an old friend that you hadn't seen for a long time.
And here he was, as he had been years before when we were both young teachers together.
Now, you could say, and you talked about the wonders of the human brain, that there's no doubt about that, the mind is a fantastic thing that has capacities that we don't understand.
And it's a generator and it's a projector.
And a generator and a projector.
Now, you could have said that that image was projected from your own brain.
Perhaps you were thinking of him.
You certainly were thinking about him.
So it might have happened that way.
But the difference here is that he gave you a message.
Yes, and the message was, tell Ian, who could see and hear nothing, tell Ian, the other priest, that, and these were Bill's exact words, Juliana of Norwich was absolutely right.
And then he vanished.
And what did that mean to Ian?
Well, I gave him the message and expected that he'd just shrug his shoulders and, sorry, old man, doesn't mean anything, but he didn't.
He went back as if he'd been hit with a water cannon and then whispered, you can't have known that.
And then he explained.
He had been with Bill in intensive care as Bill took his last few breaths.
And the last thing that he'd said to him was, Bill, there was a saint in the 14th century named Juliana who lived and worked in Norwich.
She had a vision of heaven.
And when she recovered herself, because she'd been almost as though she was going to faint, as if her spirit had left her body, the other nuns were clustered round her, anxious in case she fell.
And when she recovered herself, she said, no, I'm not ill.
I've just seen heaven.
And the others said, Juliana, what was it like?
And all she could say in an ecstasy of happiness was, all shall be well, and all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.
And he said, that was the last thing that I said to Bill before he died.
And then he said, you've just driven 300 miles to tell me that Bill wants me to know that Juliana was right and that he's in heaven and it's absolutely wonderful.
Well, if you can imagine, two priests who suddenly turned into waxworks.
And finally, Ian went across to the sideboard and came back with a bottle of wine and he said, I think we need a drink for that.
By the sounds of it, you certainly did.
Now, both men of faith, an experience like that, what does that make you think and feel?
You know, you cannot explain it.
If you were driving and that was all happening, that particular message being passed in one direction, you couldn't have known that.
Unless, you know, you are psychic, you couldn't have known.
I couldn't and it was erm I didn't And when you and I were talking about what is inexplicable, it's that.
It was just the way that Ian said to me, you couldn't have known that when I mentioned Juliana of Norwich, as it was the last thing he'd told Bill.
Now, there's a tiny sequel to this.
Well, more than tiny, there's a sequel.
I was driving home down the M4.
I overtook a big Swedish Arctic, about 40 tons of him, and he did not see I was there because he was left-hand drive.
And as I was overtaking him, he suddenly pulled out into my lane, hit the back of my Granada, spun her at 90 degrees, so I was trapped on his front bumper.
And I thought, oh, this is it.
I'm dead.
He's going to roll me and come over the top.
I shall be identified by my fingerprints or my dental records.
And then quite suddenly, you know, if you've taught anyone to drive, that you sometimes put your hand over his on the wheel and say, just bring her in a bit.
Or you'll put your hand over his on the gear station.
My dad told me to drive.
He used to do that all the time he had to.
I'm the same.
I'm the same when my dad was teaching me.
And I got the feeling that someone was in the car with me, pinned on this front bumper as I was, and was guiding me as to what to do.
Now, when he'd been young and well, Bill was one of the best drivers I'd ever known.
He could have been a rally driver and a champion.
He could have been a racing driver.
He just, you know, you and I are good competent drivers, but there are guys like Bill who are gifted.
It's as if they can feel their fingertips are in the tires.
And suddenly I was off this bumper, over the hard shoulder, over a ditch, up a hedge, and I never had a scratch.
The car was a write-off, but I'd come through it.
And I couldn't resist looking up to the blue sky and saying, Bill, was that your first job as my guardian angel?
So you can really believe that you were helped.
Of course, there will be people hearing this now say, all of this stuff is in the mind.
A lot of it is sheer coincidence.
And because the mind is a wonderful thing, we look at things in retrospect and we try and make sense of them.
And that's just what happened to you.
Oh, of course.
The idea of making sense, the human mind abhors a vacuum.
We've got to make sense of things.
And if there isn't a rational explanation, we create our version of a rational explanation.
I'd go along with that.
I think it's one of the things we must constantly be on our guard against.
But I think that this really happened to me.
And we can only, in all honesty, give our own opinions, can't we?
You can.
And, you know, nobody would expect or demand anything else because that's only rational and reasonable.
As somebody who officiates at funerals, just like people who work in hospitals, you have a unique position to encounter the end of life and see people who are dying and those who are close to them and watch them go through the process.
And it is claimed that very strange things happen on those occasions.
Have you seen any evidence of that, and do you believe that sort of thing happens?
I believe that when we are with people who are going through the desperately sad process of bereavement, I lost my own younger brother a few months ago.
I never dreamt he's seven years younger than I am.
I'm sorry.
Thanks.
I never dreamt he would go first.
But when I was conducting, well, when I was taking part, because he had, this was over in Norfolk and his local priest was taking the service.
I was just over there to do a tribute.
And all I could see in my mind as we laid him to rest was when I was a kid of seven in 1942, the year he was born, my parents showed me how to put a baby into a baby's gas mask and zip it up and then pump air into it.
They were strange contraptions.
And they said, to be a seven-year-old in wartime and to be taught by your parents, who then said, if anything happens to us, you must keep the baby going.
And that was what came back to me with such power that I might have gone back all those years to 1942 and actually been doing it again.
So the strange experience there was the feeling that I wasn't just remembering it.
It was almost as if I'd gone back into the past, as if time had become flexible.
And I think a great many of the friends whom I try to help on these tragic occasions when they've lost a loved one, I think they too, as part of the natural grieving process, seem to travel back in time.
And so many of them will say to me that small things have happened that have convinced them that the loved one they've lost is still very, very close.
And that there's been some little sign or symbol, perhaps a sound, perhaps a little movement, perhaps some simple thing from nature, like a butterfly or a beautiful bird perching on a windowsill.
Or they talk about shiny new pennies that I tend to find all the time or in America one-cent coins.
Yes.
Isn't it strange?
But it's possibly just part of that awful grieving process that we all dread and that we all go through from time to time.
And it's impossible to explain.
I mean, it's good to quest and we may learn more, but it's very difficult.
Let's not say impossible to explain.
Because of this thing that our brains have, this propensity to when we buy, and I know I've said this to you before on other interviews, but we'll just put it here now because it fits here.
If you buy a blue car and it's a particular brand of car, say it's a Volkswagen or maybe a Ford, you'll be driving along and you will see then, what you never saw before, loads of people driving towards you, past you, or near you, or around you who've got exactly the same car.
Agreed.
And your brain is trying to sort things out, and that's what it does.
That is so true.
That example you just used of seeing other cars like yours when you've changed your car, and you've never noticed them before, but there they all are.
And perhaps in the process of mourning and grieving at a time of bereavement, it's perhaps that we become more acutely aware of the nature of life and death,
that we become acutely aware of those things which transcend the here and the now, where we touch, where our, shall we say, our physical world touches the eternal world.
What about those people, Lionel?
I don't know if you've done any research on this.
You've researched everything else, so maybe you have.
I've done quite a lot.
Well, you've done quite a bit, I know, and we've talked about a lot of it.
And those people who claim that they are guided, there seem to be a little flurry of books out at the moment, by people who claim that they are guided by the spirits of perhaps somebody famous to write further works.
I think for somebody who wrote another work of Shakespeare or something.
And there are people who've been guided by composers.
Do you think that's nonsense, or could there be something in that?
Well, the case that comes to mind, though I can't think of the lady's name, was the lady who, should we say, a musician of about average ability, like most of us are after as kids we've had to do piano lessons rather unwillingly, was inspired, partially possessed, by one of the great composers, Chopin or Beethoven.
And she wrote music and played it that was way beyond her own level of competence.
Now, that takes a lot of explaining.
One could suggest that it's at the back of her mind all the time, that the ability is there but hasn't come out.
You know, there are some of us who will suddenly find, I'm thinking about the days when I was teaching, and you go into the art room, and your art teacher will just call you across and say, headmaster, just come and have a look at this.
And one of the lads who is perhaps in a class of children with special needs is suddenly finding that he can draw and paint at a standard that would certainly get his work hung in the National Gallery.
And it's just something inside him.
Now, there are, I think, hidden gifts and hidden depths of that kind.
And I rather wonder whether, as in the case of the lady who suddenly found that she could play outstandingly good music and could actually compose outstandingly good music, is that something that's hidden inside a particular person and that certain changes in the environment or something of that kind will bring it out?
I don't know.
I find it very interesting when what we might call an abnormal talent comes out in that way and the person himself or herself believes that a great musician or a great artist or a great performer with tremendous skill and ability is doing it for them or through them.
It's a wonderful area of speculation.
Now, we're having this conversation, as we have done in the past, at or around the time of Halloween.
Now, Halloween is something that focuses people's minds about these things quite remarkably, like nothing else, really.
Do you think Halloween itself is doing anybody who's a serious researcher any favours?
Is it helping perceptions and understanding of all of these things?
Because one of the mysteries that lies behind Halloween is, I think, the way that the environment releases certain abilities within particular people.
If we just think quickly of the ordinary physical senses, the way that some of us have a keener vision and others of us have to wear glasses.
Some of us have very, very keen hearing.
Others of us are grateful to use a hearing aid.
And just as our physical senses vary from person to person, so I think psychic ability, psychic sensitivity also varies.
And it is on certain occasions that environmental factors, like time as well as place, can have an influence on whether or not we see things and hear things from an unknown realm.
And I think that this time of the year, the end of October, start of November, with autumn threatening winter, that there may be something in perhaps the rotation of the Earth or the way that the Earth is making its way around its orbit around the Sun.
Or it could be that there are factors, just as we have spring, summer, autumn and winter that affect the crops and the wildlife, so there may well be something in that seasonal variation of spring and summer, autumn and winter, which can also affect our ability to contact the paranormal.
And it could well be that Halloween, that the period around Halloween is one in which those people who are blessed with psychic sensitivity are able to see and hear more than they are at other times of the year.
Isn't that fascinating?
Yeah, and the rest of us just catch on and follow them.
Halloween, I don't know how it came about.
I do know it's supposed to be, isn't it, the eve of all hallows, all spirits.
That's all I know about it, really.
You know, I was just born with it.
You used to do a thing called Duck Apple in Liverpool, which was a thing you did on Halloween.
I don't know if they do it in the south of England.
We called it Bob Apple, but Duck Apple is the same thing.
So, you know, there were all those things around it, and we were told that, you know, creepies and crawlies and things that go bump in the night would appear probably on that particular night.
Now, as a kid, you just think, oh, it's part of fun, and it's part of the run-up to bonfire night, and then it's Christmas, and it's just a period of fun.
But I wonder if over the years and the centuries, there's been any more to it, if it is more serious than that, and if there's been a reason for us doing this Halloween thing, a serious one.
No, I think there probably has.
One of the other Halloween traditions is to do with marriage and young people getting together as couples.
And my grandmother always believed that if you looked into a pool, and it was usually a particular pool that had certain associations, if it was, shall we say, one of those saints' wells like we have in Wales, that you would see, if you were young and unmarried, you would see the face of your future partner.
But my grandmother was absolutely convinced that when she was a young girl, she had seen my grandfather's face long before she ever met him.
Really?
Reflected in water, a pool of water, on Halloween.
Now, there's that, as it were, that romance element as well as the spiritual element, because there is something as mysterious about a love affair and that wonderful chemistry that draws you to a partner who you will come to marry and to love for many years.
I mean, Patricia and I were married in 1957.
Not on Halloween, were you?
Not on Halloween, but pretty close.
It was September.
Oh, really?
And you see, still together.
Yeah, we've just celebrated our 57th anniversary.
Oh, congratulations, Lionel.
And did she or you look into a pool and see the reflection of your other husband?
Nothing mysterious like that as far as we were concerned, but it's just that there's something almost magical about you see the lady that you are later going to marry, and who will be your lifelong partner and a very wonderful partner, and there is something...
You could line up 100 attractive men, 100 attractive women, and there's nothing to tell you which one of them will partner which of the others.
Until it happens, there is something...
But why is it that one particular person suddenly breaks through into your personality and you feel an enormous attraction to that one particular person when there are 99 others, shall we say, alongside her?
Or there might be 99 other blokes alongside you.
That's true.
I always used to think it was all about hormones, but it's true, isn't it, that you can have people who you would think you might be attracted to and they don't do anything for you.
No.
There is something mysterious about it.
And one of the mysteries of Halloween, shall we say, is this mystery of connection to a future partner.
And then, of course, going off onto another track altogether, thinking about reincarnation, I'm wondering whether part of that mystery is that we may have known each other before in another context, in another life.
I've heard that said a lot, yeah.
Yeah, I'm fascinated by that concept.
And there are also people who say, and yes, I mean, this is loosely connected with Halloween, but it's interesting anyway, that if you were connected with the person that you're with, in a previous life, you may have been their uncle or their grandmother.
You may not have been necessarily the sex that you are now or the age that you are currently or anything like that.
You could have been twin brothers or twin sisters, or as you say, you could have been parent and child instead of loving partners as husband and wife.
Fascinating stuff.
Now, what about all of these traditions?
One that I never understood and never really bothered to read about, just didn't have time.
But there must be an explanation for it.
Why do the Americans and why do we do this hollowing out of a pumpkin thing and putting a candle in it?
What's that all about?
Well, there are several fascinating explanations for that one.
The idea of the garish carving on the pumpkin is that when we take the witch connection, the witch and wizards connected with Halloween, that it was alleged that if you hung such a thing up,
and again, the pumpkin with the glaring eyes and the candle inside, is to frighten evil away, that evil is afraid of light, and hopefully it's afraid of a light that's coming out of a pumpkin.
And that's what it's about.
I never knew.
Well, that's one of the explanations for it, that it's intended to frighten evil.
And another thought is that because we've got the idea of all hallows, that was for all those who have died.
They are hallowed.
They are now with God.
And so there was a thought that in some of the medieval Halloween traditions, that you hung up not a frightening face, but you carved a smile into the pumpkin, and it would attract the spirits of your grandparents and great-grandparents, who would then come and share the Halloween feast with you, unseen, but there.
That it was rather like, shall we say, if you're having a really good party and you have balloons that are up in the air to let your neighbors know there's a party going on at number 37.
And if you have lights and you and I can walk past a house and no doubt, well, there's a party taking place inside.
Yeah, because usually I haven't been invited.
Yes, no.
Yeah, like you, I'm the guy who walks past outside.
But it can be thought of as either something to repel evil or to attract the benign spirits who are still as much part of a loving extended family as when they inhabited physical bodies.
That's a lovely way of looking at it.
And again, I hadn't heard that.
And what about this trick or treating?
When I was a kid and we did Halloween, we did the pumpkins and we did duck apple or barb apple, whatever you want to call it, and we just had a generally good time.
We didn't do trick or treat.
Trick or treat appeared where I'm from in the northwest of England in the 80s.
In the early 80s, suddenly kids started banging on the door and asking or implying that you should give them something.
Yes, give us a bar of chocolate or give us a bag of sweet.
What do you make of it?
Give us a packet of crisps.
Well, it's the idea of the, again, human relationships and the idea, the fundamental idea behind trick or treat, it's what one might call in its simplest and most basic form a way of teaching children or helping children to learn that life has a number of social exchange mechanisms
in it.
And you and I will know through our past careers, when you've gone into one organization after another, when you've worked in one business after another, when you've been in one media situation after another, that if you go out of your way to be pleasant and to assist somebody, then he or she will go out of his or her way to be pleasant to you.
You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
I can remember so well when I joined the Phoenix Timber Company as their education and training manager.
And it was my first day at work there, and we had a manager's canteen.
And I strolled in, having been told where the manager's canteen was, and having sort of established my desk in the, you know, as you do in a new situation, I walked in there, and a very nice, friendly guy sitting at one of the tables where there was a spare seat said, oh, hello, would you like to come and join us?
And we became friends for the next 40 years.
And it was his very simple, friendly gesture.
Oh, look, here's a new member of the team.
I'll make him welcome.
Maybe there's something that later on he can do for me.
And I think trick or treat is there to teach us.
It's a fundamental part of our human lives.
And we know that life tends to be certainly much more enjoyable as well as much more successful if we are the kind of man or woman who enjoys helping other people and finding, as a pleasant surprise, that we get helped in return.
So you're kind of putting something out there in order to get something back, which always works in life, really.
I mean, it's a very good principle to live by.
But I do know people on contrary or treat night, and I'm not one of those people.
I tend to have some sweets or something ready, or, you know, a little bit of money.
But I do know people who turn the lights out and pretend not to be in.
Oh, yeah.
Yes, I've come across some of those as well.
Which we don't entirely recommend, but to each his owners they can.
No, we don't.
I definitely think, you know, a small coin or a little bag of sweets or a packet of crisps or, you know, a candy bar of some description that the youngsters will enjoy, give them a bit of fun.
What do you do every year on Halloween around that time?
Do you do anything special?
Well, I normally, since I've had this association with the paranormal, I find that many friends like your good self who are in the media will call me and say, Lionel, can you come over?
We're having a Halloween conference or we're doing a Halloween evening and we'd like you to talk to us for a few minutes.
And so I normally find that I've been invited out to the nicest ones and when they ask you to do the after-dinner speech, because they always lay on a very good dinner.
And there is such a thing as a free lunch.
A free dinner.
I like my food.
And you are a brilliant.
Have you always been that good a raconteur?
Because as long as I've known you, you're a brilliant storyteller.
You're far kinder than I deserve.
I have always, and I think that if your friends are kind enough to say that they enjoy the stories you tell them, that this is just something, it's rather like the guy who's got a gift for mathematics.
It's nothing to boast about, nothing clever.
It's just something that's borne into you.
You'll come across, as I have, some guys whose powers of thought exceed mine by about 100%, who can't express what they've worked out.
They're hesitant in talking about all the interesting stuff that they've thought about.
And you'll find someone else who has an enormous ability in another direction just sort of dissolves inside themselves if they are handed a microphone or placed on stage in the footlights.
And what I think is that it's that old psychological theory about introversion and extroversion, and that I'm just born an extrovert, and I love to talk about things that have interested me in the fond hope that the friends I'm with will enjoy it as well.
And that's where the raconteuring comes from.
And it works.
It works for me, and it definitely works for you.
I'm not saying that I'm a raconteur, but I'm saying it works listening to you.
You're great.
Audiences, though, I really do admire people who stand up and do public speak.
I mean, that's not what we're here to talk about, but I've done some of it, but I find it nerve-wracking.
I don't think you do.
I think you're just one of life's natural friends.
Some of my friends when I first took over the school at Glindaru High School in Ely, which is one of the suburbs of Cardiff.
Know it well.
One of my pals on the staff said to me after I'd been there a few years, he said, Lionel, I can imagine the way that you conduct the staff meeting.
If you were in a room full of total strangers, you would walk in with a broad smile and say, Good afternoon.
My name is Fanthorpe.
I'm in charge.
And you would do brilliantly because that's you.
One thing to talk about, there was a man who used to appear, and I know that I think you appeared with Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM in America.
You've certainly been on there with George Newy.
I've been doing quite a lot with George Newy.
So, you know, you've done the American stuff.
One of their great guests, one of Art's great guests, was a man called Father Malachi Martin, a Roman Catholic priest who died in mysterious circumstances.
You and I have talked about him before.
But I wonder, since the last time we talked, have you had any more thoughts about him and the stuff that he was getting into?
Because he was in no doubt at all that classical evil in this world genuinely exists.
And I think he also used to say that the Antichrist was already in this world.
Yes, he did.
And I think that there are people like Malachi who have a perception in a different direction.
I do not find it hard to believe that there may well be beings who are, shall we say, ethically and spiritually superior to us,
who have some kind of existence, perhaps as beings of pure energy or beings of pure thought, what some people would call the angels and the ministers of grace, who occupy a space between humanity and God himself on those upper reaches, you know, rather like The seven heavens in the old Italian poems, and Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.
And I believe at the same time that Malachi could be right, that there are evil forces which are below us in ethical and moral standing, whose purpose is to create evil.
You remember the great C.S. Lewis in his book, The Screw-Tape Letters, it was an imaginary correspondence between two demons, one of whom was called Screw-Tape.
And part of what C.S. Lewis said there was that these evil beings enjoyed the suffering and misery of others, and it was like food to them.
Now, I think that people like Father Malachi seem, as Lewis did in that book, to perceive dark evil forces, and that enables them to do something about it.
That's my thinking about him and his ideas.
And how about you?
Do you perceive when something or someone is evil?
There is a theory that people can be evil without knowing it.
They can have some kind of, I don't know whether it's a presence hanging around them or something that is back down their lineage in their past in some way that they can't be aware of, but innately they're evil.
Do you believe in such a thing or is that a nonsense?
No, I think that among the people who come to me over the years and ask for an exorcism on a house that they believe to be haunted, there are one or two who have come to me over the years and said that they believe themselves to be possessed.
And I then bless them, and I use the prayers of exorcism.
I sometimes anoint them with holy water or with holy oil.
And they then tell me afterwards that they feel that whatever presence was affecting them in a negative way has gone.
No power of mine, but the power of the holy water or the holy oil or the power of the prayer of exorcism.
So there certainly are people that I've come across who believe themselves to be entrapped or to be unable to escape.
They feel as if they're manacled to some dark evil force and they long to get away from it, but without help from a priest, they find it difficult to escape on their own.
And what do you think?
I mean, you've been very careful to tiptoe around the words that you're using here, to use your words very carefully.
Do you think that it's just the form of words, and they say that words have power that is able to unlock something within the person and you're not really dealing with something external, or do you believe that you're freeing up and sending away, as many people do, something nasty and external?
Well, I would look at it as possibilities and probabilities.
I wouldn't want to be absolutely decisive in that it hadn't come from...
then a subordinate personality can be created which wants to do the instinctive, greedy, selfish, evil things.
But the person's power of mind, strength of moral goodness, has held that out.
But it doesn't entirely disappear.
It's still there, waiting to come out.
You know the kind of characters whose personality changes after they've had about five pints?
Yeah, I've known people who become very, very happy and jolly, and I've known one or two who become...
Really?
They almost have the capacity to cause harm to people, physical harm, I mean.
Now, I think, again, the psychologists would suggest that the alcohol inhibits the inhibitions within that person, and that they then become one of their subordinate personalities.
And it can be, as you've just said, something really evil and dangerous.
And on the other hand, it can be something jovial, that maybe the person concerned has to live a rather careful life because of his professional status or because of his business concerns.
And that underneath, he's much happier and jollier and much more generous.
And given a few pints, he will become everybody's best friend.
And in the same way, there's the other guy who controls the evil within himself by thinking, no, I can't do that because of the consequences.
Or if I do that, I might get caught.
But once he's had a few drinks, he then begins to behave in the uninhibited way dictated by his instincts and by his greed and selfishness.
And it's almost like Jekyll and Hyde, isn't it, in the famous Stevenson book, that either personality can be released by alcohol or by some of the drugs will have the same effect in releasing a subordinate personality.
Well, I did know a couple of people, and one in particular I'm thinking of who used to have a drink, and he was such an affable guy, but became very, very dark indeed, and frighteningly dark, actually.
And people would tend to just kind of leave the bar or leave the pub or leave the restaurant.
And they didn't want to go any further through that night with this person.
I think you're right about that.
Yeah, I know exactly.
Now, Karma.
There is a thing called karma, and people in America and the UK say what comes around goes around in my life and my times.
I've met a lot of wonderful, supportive, nice, decent people in my professional life.
I have also met one or two who have appeared to delight in causing suffering, pain and difficulty to others for reasons.
Do you believe that as some people have said to me when I've suffered, and we've all suffered at the hands of such people, when they've said, don't worry about it, in the fullness of time, all things will be right.
Is that so?
Well, I believe, as we were saying earlier, that God is a God of truth.
I also believe that God is a God of justice.
And in the spiritual universe, the deeds have consequences, which is basically what the theory of karma suggests to us.
If we think about certain physical things, the way that in the chemistry lab, acids and alkalis will have particular effects on other chemicals.
And in the physics lab, a force in a particular direction will produce a counterforce, rather like firing a rifle and getting the butt kicking back into your shoulder.
Now, there are certain deeds, certain ways of behaving, which will produce very good responses and very good results.
And when we undertake things of that kind, we go out of our way.
I mean, I can remember one Christmas, we'd got the family over and having a marvellous time.
And there were a couple of little bits we needed to, we hadn't got lunch.
I walked across to the little corner shop, which, being run by some Asian friends, had not closed for Christmas.
And on my way to the shop, I found the bloke lying in the gutter, having just been horribly sick.
And the poor guy was a homeless alcoholic.
And I suddenly thought, here am I with the family that I love, preparing for a wonderful time.
And there's this poor devil lying in the gutter.
And I very gently picked him up, propped him on the wall so he didn't lie in what he'd just produced.
When I went to the shop, I got the things I needed, and I also bought a couple of cans of drinks, non-alcoholic, and some food for him.
And as I went past, I said, look, I know you're not feeling well now, but when you're well enough to eat it, here's a snack for you and some orange aid, and wish you all the best.
What a nice thing to do.
Well, I then enjoyed my Christmas with my loving family and our turkey, thinking that that poor bloke at least had the snack I'd bought him and an orange aid.
And I think that my enjoyment of our lovely family day together was enhanced by what I had instinctively wanted to do for the poor bloke who'd been lying in the gutter.
And it's use that as an example that just flashes up out of my memory from a year or two back.
And I think that if we can do something good, something kind, something helpful, think about it in the teaching situation.
If a candidate has failed an exam and comes to see the subject specialist the following day when he's got his exam results and says, sir, I want to do that again.
And the teacher who deals with that subject comes in at lunchtime and stays an hour after school to help the unfortunate student to do the extra revision.
And the next time he sits the exam, he passes it.
Now, the happiness that comes from that, to think that you've made a contribution to that disappointed student's subsequent success, this is all part of karma.
You put yourself out to help someone, and in his or her joy and satisfaction and pleasure, you get some back.
I think the odd thing about happiness is that the more you try to give it away, the more it comes bouncing back to you.
And I think that is at the heart of karma.
I'd like to think it works that way, and most of the time I do.
In my darkest times, I wonder about it, but you put it so beautifully, Lionel, that the next time I'm in a situation that I have to confront, and maybe this will go for a lot of my listeners as well, they'll think about the words that you just said so eloquently and so well.
Now, you're always working on something, Mr. Fanthorpe.
What are you working on at the moment?
Right.
I'd love to tell you about that.
You know the famous Watership Down about the rabbits.
I do.
With the rabbits' characters and wonderful characters.
Brilliant book.
Well, I'm dealing at the moment with an artist friend in the USA, a brilliant artist called Rick Seditu, who's over in the States.
He's doing the illustrations for me.
And I'm writing a book called Parables from the Pond.
And the basis of it is that if we go back to the plagues of Egypt, one of the plagues was the frogs.
And the Archangel Gabriel goes to one of his colleagues and says, those frogs did a very good job for us.
They helped to change Pharaoh's mind so that the people he had enslaved could get away.
And yet, the poor frogs are all dead.
Do you think it would be a good idea to resurrect them and give them their own world called frogdom?
And so they do.
And these frogs are rather like human beings.
They're like us.
They talk and think and do things.
And their leader is a big warrior bullfrog who is the rector of a parish called The Pond, and his name is Hugh John Green.
And when you run that together, of course, it's huge and green.
Yes!
And he and his warrior bullfrogs, who are known as the Web Guard, go off and rescue small, innocent, helpless animals when the predatory rats are attacking small, helpless things.
And the Webguard make mincemeat of the rats.
And one of the other characters is called Terrapond, and he's an amphibian ninja.
And when Hugh John was on holiday in Japan on one occasion, he saw a treacherous enemy about to stab this ninja in the back while he was fighting two or three others.
So Hugh John stepped in, destroyed the enemy who was about to attack the ninja, whereupon the ninja, when he'd disposed of his enemies, says to Hugh, I will come with you now and be your bodyguard forever.
I owe it to you.
I owe you my life.
And so Hugh goes everywhere with his huge ninja friend, Terrapond.
And it's heaven help any rats who encounter that pet.
This sounds enchanting.
I think you could be sitting on something that's going to be very successful, Lionel.
When's it out, do you think?
Well, hopefully, I'm on the last chapter, and it should be out very early in 2015.
Keep me posted, and I'll mention it on the unexplained.
And you know that I'm always here if you want to talk about it.
The illustrations are by my brilliant artist friend Rick Sedita, who's over in the USA.
And I keep sending chapters to him, and he keeps sending the pictures back to me over the internet.
You know, Lionel, we didn't do any particular, I didn't, certainly any great preparation for this conversation.
But I know that I can just call you up and we can speak, and the conversation will always go somewhere.
It'll always be interesting.
And the one thing about you, I think you may well have hypnosis as one of your powers because the hour passed like that snap of that finger there.
Quite amazing.
Thank you very much.
Oh, it's a real pleasure.
And can I just say how it is?
It really is tremendous fun to share a program with you.
And anytime I can help or anything I can do for any of our listeners, that's what life's all about.
And God bless you all.
Always a total pleasure to talk with Lionel Fanthorpe.
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Devised, created, maintained by Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
Thank you very much for keeping the faith with The Unexplained.
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So please stay there and tell your friends.
Until next, we meet on The Unexplained.
My name is Howard Hughes.
I am in London.
Stay safe, stay calm, and stay in touch.
Take care.
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