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July 22, 2015 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:06:56
Edition 214 - Gary Heseltine

The ex-policeman who founded the place that collates police UFO reports returns to TheUnexplained...

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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, thank you for bearing with me.
This edition of The Unexplained is very slightly later hitting the internet than normal.
I'm sorry for that.
Just had a million things to do, not only work, trying to make a living, trying to stay fed and clothed, but also I've been doing some technical work, including reconfiguring computers to make sure that finally my recording gear is not running on Windows XP.
I don't know about you.
I liked Windows XP, used it for years, found it completely reliable, but it's not being supported.
The last bit of support was stopped, I think, about a week or two ago.
So I realized it was time to get away from that and everything is on more modern software.
And everything is a little happier now.
But at one point, I found myself having to download something like 220, 230 updates.
If you've ever done that, you know how long that takes.
So hopefully we're all up to date.
But that's what I've been up to.
So you're hearing me now via a new computer.
And it's all very exciting.
You know, I got my first computer back in 1997, which I bought through the people I was working for at the time, Capital Radio, and it cost a fortune.
I spent a year paying off the cost of this.
And it was laughably, laughably, punally specified compared with stuff today.
But for me, it was a quantum leap, and one of the first people I heard listening to radio on the internet was Art Bell.
And from that point, I was hooked.
That's the difference computers make.
And now, of course, I'm producing this show by computer.
And all of our lives have changed.
Thank you very much if you've been in touch recently.
Thank you for the kind emails and the donations that you've made.
Please keep all of those coming, your guest suggestions, donations, whatever.
You can go to the website, theunexplained.tv, www.theunexplained.tv, the website designed, created and honed by my webmaster, Adam Cornwell, at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
Follow the links.
You can leave a PayPal donation or you can send me a message.
And I'd love to hear from you.
And I'd love to hear where you are.
And I'd love to hear how you're using this show.
Thank you for the kind things you said recently.
A return guest on this edition.
This man is a former serving police officer who paid a high price for his interest in ufology.
Ultimately, he decided to leave the police and his job now is to collate UFO reports from people in uniform, mainly police.
His name is Gary Heseltine.
He's in the north of England.
We had him on the radio show and he got a lot of phone calls from listeners back then.
And I've had him on The Unexplained online at least once, so it's time we got him back on here.
So Gary Hesseltine, the guest on this edition, thank you very much for being involved in The Unexplained.
This is an interesting time, isn't it, for a whole variety of reasons.
And I keep reading the papers and reading the latest report from space.
I don't think, certainly since the 1970s or so, we've ever had so much space news in our media.
What with the photographs, the images coming back from Pluto, with NASA giving us details of a planet that is kind of sort of Earth-like?
It makes you wonder what we're going to find out next.
But it's a great time to be alive, isn't it?
And we just have to see.
I will do a space show very soon because I think there's an awful lot to update you on.
I'm trying to get a good guest for a space show, so watch this space.
Okay, let's get to the north of England now, to Yorkshire, and Gary Hesseltine, former police officer from the organization that he created, Proofos, for people in the police to report UFO sightings.
And there are more of them than you would think.
Gary, thank you very much for coming back on.
Thank you very much for inviting me back.
Well, Gary, life's been busy for me, and I know it's been busy for you as you've been establishing this organization and also the magazine that I think was new.
It had just been born when we last spoke.
That's right.
Yeah, UFO Truth magazine is a 96-page bi-monthly e-zine that I created and was launched in June 2013, just three months after retiring from the police at the end of March 2013.
Right.
Now, you started all of this.
It's all coming back to me now when you were a serving police officer.
And some of the conversations that we had, both on the radio and on this online show, were around the fact that some of the people that you worked with and for were not too happy with this operation that you'd also got.
Absolutely.
As the years went by, I launched the Pre-Force Police Database, which was just dedicated for British police officers to report on and off-duty sightings.
I began that in January 2002, but by 2007, 2008, I was starting to get quite a lot of interference, subtle interference about my activities, which, cutting a long story short,
came to a head when in late 2009, the Ministry of Defence suddenly decided to close its UFO reporting desk facility that had been in existence for over 50 years.
As a result, I thought, well, what are the police still going to do?
Just because they've closed the desk doesn't mean that you're not going to get police report or going to get members of the public ringing in saying I've seen a UFO.
So I wrote to all the police forces in England, Scotland and Wales and said, you may not be aware of this, but this will impact on you.
You're going to have to know what to do.
You're going to have to come up with a plan.
And basically, they were very interested and very pleased, the majority of forces, that I brought this to their attention.
However, in the process of writing to all the chief constables of all the various forces, I'd actually, by courtesy, also wrote to my own chief constable of the British Transport Police.
Well, unbeknownst to me, the story I was given by my chief superintendent was that my chief constable got a phone call from another chief constable, never identified, who basically said it was this UFO nut you've got working in Your force,
and because my chief constable felt a bit embarrassed, he then instructed my chief superintendent to instigate disciplinary proceedings for misconduct against me for bringing the force into disrepute, even though it was a private letter and quite least quite clearly stating I was in an off-duty capacity writing to you, just bringing this to your attention.
And then in my off-duty capacity, I researched police officer cases.
Did you ever think, and we'll explore the mechanics of that because they're important a little more in just a moment, but did you ever think there was any more to this?
Do you think that somebody somewhere perhaps higher even than that chief constable who complained about you was trying to stop you?
Well, over the years, there were some subtle little things like I was based in Leeds as a detective, but occasionally I would have to go down to London to our force headquarters and I would meet people and they would go in the intelligence departments and say, what's your name?
Hazel.
Oh yeah, yeah, I know about you.
As if to say they knew more about me than I knew about them.
So I think there very clearly was a file on me.
In fact, I was unofficially told that there was a file on me at False Headquarters.
Quite what was in it, I don't know.
But yeah, I was seen as something of a thorn.
And as time went on, the pressures at one time when I used to do similar radio shows when I first started and got a lot of national media attention in 2002, 2003, basically the force didn't say anything.
But as time went on, they said, oh, you can't say that you're based at Leeds or you can't say your colour number.
We don't want you to say that you're a detective.
These kind of things.
These little constraints started to come in.
But it culminated in that event with the Ministry of Defence.
And basically, cutting a long story short, I was investigated at what's called a level two disciplinary, which your job was potentially on the line and your pension.
And it took a year before I eventually sat down before a disciplinary panel to be given a 12-month written warning.
So that then stayed for another 12 months after that.
So you're looking at a process that began in 2009, but didn't actually end until 2011.
Now, my dad was a policeman.
You know that.
I've told you that before.
And from what you've just said, if you get a warning and you're in the police, it goes on your record.
You can forget promotion and advancing yourself.
They just really basically would like you to go.
Yeah, I mean, there are various levels of misconduct.
But basically, the level one, it was where the outcome, the tribunal outcome, you could be sacked.
In the end, mine was downgraded to a level two, but it still meant that 12 months, if anything happened in 12 months, they could get rid of you.
And that was obviously a nerve-wracking time with your 20-odd years of service.
It was not a very nice process at all.
You must have felt...
Other people had other activities in the police.
You're allowed to have hobbies.
This was effectively a hobby at that time.
But here you were being disciplined for it.
Absolutely.
I felt it was a case of discrimination because I mentioned all this in my mitigation that basically people belong to golf associations, martial arts clubs and whatever.
I said, well, you know, why is mine somewhat different?
And really, the problem was that my chief constable clearly had a problem with the subject matter.
And that for me is his ignorance, but he shouldn't have then allowed his ignorance to impact upon my life.
But here's the irony, Howard.
I did kind of add some kind of last laugh.
And as I mentioned to you before we went on air, that I'm writing a book about my police database.
Here's the major story that came out of that.
When you retire from the police, it's customary that you have a final chat with your chief superintendent, your area commander.
And I was no different.
So I got called in a couple of days before I officially retired.
And it was the same chief superintendent who'd actually been responsible for saying to me that the chief constables was offended by or upset and basically were instigating disciplinary proceedings against you.
Well, anyway, I'd always got on with that chief superintendent fine.
And basically, he said, oh, come in, what are you going to do?
I think you're going to pursue your UFO work.
And I knew it was going to come up.
So here's what I did.
I didn't have a clue or know for certain what was going to happen, but I tape recorded, I set my phone audio recorder going as I went into that meeting, just in case the subject of UFOs come up.
And that's only the second time I've ever done that.
But I did it.
And sure enough, the UFO subject came up.
And then do you know what he said to me?
The very same chief constable that said that I was to be investigated for bringing the force into disrepute, he actually then confided in me, and it's on audio, that he too had had a UFO sighting himself when he was a probationer early on in his service, and that he was aware of another female officer that he relayed her UFO sighting as well.
And I got two UFO sightings unofficially out of that.
But what an irony.
The same guy who was instigating these proceedings, for me at that point, should have turned back to the chief constable and said, no, no, no, sir.
I'm sorry.
I'm going to intervene there because I saw something too.
Well, yeah, maybe so, maybe not.
But this all comes down to the difficulties that anybody in the police service.
And like I say, my father was in the police.
He didn't have UFO experiences, but he certainly had at least two ghost experiences that scared the hell out of him and always told the family about them.
And this man was a very, you know, people who are in the police are very carefully vetted to be mentally stable.
So my father was not crazy.
He knew what he'd seen.
Similarly, if you have a UFO experience and you're in the police, you risk a few Things you risk professional consequences being viewed to be a nut, basically.
Absolutely.
I mean, every single case that I've ever dealt with or that's come my way is born out of two things: fear of ridicule and a perceived risk, a fear that it will cost them a promotion.
And the biggest thing, certainly in my dad's time, was the fear of ridicule because you have to go back and, you know, there's a locker room there where you keep your kit, your helmet, and all of the stuff that you have to have for the police.
And you have to meet your colleagues when you sign on for the day's duty.
You know, when you did, I don't know if they still have parades, but my father had to do a parade every day.
And you're going to see those people.
And if you've come out with something like this, those who don't get it are going to tease you.
And the level of ridicule that you can go through in the police or the armed services or anything like that is something that many people find hard to take, isn't it?
Absolutely.
And but for me, that makes the significance of the officers that do actually come forward all the more credible because they know exactly what's going to come and what's likely to follow.
And so for them to raise their head above the parapet, you can be damn sure that whatever they're telling you is absolutely real because they know what's at stake.
You were drawn to the attention of your boss.
You were disciplined and then subsequently you left the police because of what you do.
Absolutely.
I understand how comfortable to stay.
I understand how that happens as a mechanic.
But what you were drawing attention to was the fact that the Ministry of Defense, which would have collated police reports of anything like this, if the police officer was brave enough to make a report, they stopped taking in and collating those reports.
And all you were doing is alerting the different police forces all over this country, because they're federalized, there are different police forces for every area, that this was the case.
You were simply doing it as a matter of public information.
But the question that that brings me to is, if a police officer has some kind of encounter or sighting on duty now, what does he or she do?
Assuming that they're willing to report it and go on record, there's nowhere to put that, is there?
No, and this is the real story behind the closure of the MOD desk.
It was ludicrous to think that just because the MOD closes its desk, that all UFO sightings would stop.
So not only of members of the public still ringing in, but this time, whereas before the police would answer and say, yeah, fill in this online form and then we will send that off to the Ministry of Defense and they can do with it whatever they want.
Now, as I understand it, there is nothing.
And some forces are actually saying we don't record UFO sightings at all.
Now, I find that absolutely ludicrous because they keep records generally for seven years, have to keep them for at least seven years.
And many local radio stations put in FOI information requests and they're getting some statistics back.
But it's very fragmented.
And I think that this was the deliberate act and want that the MOD saw is to fragment the collating of UFO sightings.
Because the ironic thing is, is that the time they suddenly announced that they were closing the desk, sightings were the highest they'd been for many years.
So it made no sense.
And they cited the reason for the closure was to save £55,000 for one person who was at the MOD who dealt with it, i.e.
just admin costs.
However, I think the real reason, and it has later been admitted, that the real reason they closed it was because that person was being bogged down in freedom of information requests about UFOs and not about any other aspect that's covered by the Ministry of Defense.
And the question we have to ask about that, isn't it?
Is if they are being bogged down by freedom of information requests about UFOs, why is that?
Well, absolutely.
But here you do get a massive disconnect, though, because they say that after pornography, UFOs is the most searched term on the internet, which implies that basically literally billions of people around the world or hundreds of millions of people around the world are interested in the subject.
But that is not translated into openness about the subject.
So people are interested.
Maybe they're having experiences, but they're doing this furtively.
Absolutely.
And there is still, and the amount of people that contact me and say, look, you're going to think I'm crazy.
And I'll say, no, I don't think you're crazy.
Oh, you are, because if I heard this from anybody else, I would think they were crazy.
I'll say, look, believe me, after all these years of doing this now, nothing could surprise me and rarely does anything to surprise me now.
But that's the first thing that you get.
You're going to think I'm crazy.
Especially police officers, especially architects, doctors, professional people who have reputations that they risk.
Now, I think it's a terrible indictment of society and a stigma that's been allowed to be created through the media over the last 60 years at the behest really of governments and the American government, right the way from the 1950s when the debunking period and era began.
That's terribly worrying, isn't it?
For anybody who seeks after truth.
For anybody, and I'm a journalist, I suppose that's what I'm here to do.
Anybody who wants to get the truth out there, this seems to run counter to all of that.
Absolutely.
And strangely, the other day the Prime Minister made quite an important speech about radicalization of Islam and things like that.
But he actually touched on things like people who believe in conspiracies.
And he actually mentioned things like 9-11 and false flag operations.
Well, whilst there are a lot of conspiracy theories without foundation, there certainly are many, many mysteries that have foundation.
And certainly UFO's documentary evidence-wise, pilots, aircraft, Air traffic controllers, radar operators, there's a multitude of evidence collected over the last 60, 70 years that's not been addressed.
But for him to put it into that category, I think the worrying thing is, is that under the guise of anti-terrorism, they will try to restrict anybody that talks out of line with government thinking.
And that's really an attack on free speech.
And I find that quite worrying.
What can be done about that?
I really don't know other than basically shows like this where we have open discussions whilst we can because basically it does sound like they do want to restrict people's freedom of speech and I think that's something that's always been a great tradition and an aspect of living in Britain that you can literally say anything and have a proper discussion.
Well, it strikes me that at the very fringes of this possible new legislation, that suddenly you may be deemed kind of against the state and we don't agree with what you're saying.
But if you think about it, Gary, that's exactly the situation that you found yourself in, because you were viewed as being almost subversive by the police just because you were drawing attention to something.
Absolutely.
And what you've got to understand is certainly with the UFO subject, as with perhaps history itself, ancient history, as with 9-11, you can't actually have a rational discussion without being labeled a conspiracy theorist or a conspiracy believer or a UFO believer or a 9-11 truther or whatever.
You have to be given labels by the media.
And it's done very deliberately, in my eye, to kind of downplay and pigeon you into a certain section of society.
Well, you say that, though, Gary.
But if we look at the papers over the last week, there's been the usual crop of alien stories.
There is now tremendous interest in not only Pluto, because we've had the pictures back from Pluto, but what might be beyond Pluto.
And we're finally coming to be pretty close to the understanding that we're not alone.
More and more people at the highest levels are sort of tacitly admitting that.
So on the one hand, you say, and there is evidence that the media is trivializing all of this, and yet it's never been more prominent, has it?
Oh, no.
And this is the irony, but I actually think there is a change beginning to take place in what I would call the mainstream media in its view towards the subject of alien life at some point being discovered, officially, shall we say.
Now, 15 years ago, mainstream science would have said there may be life.
10 years ago, probably life.
But now, virtually all mainstream science is saying that it's only a matter of time before they detect one life and two an intelligent signal.
In fact, when people talk about UFO disclosure, I say, well, it's not as on the horizon as quick as most people think.
I said, but the wheels are in motion because two years ago, with the advancement in new radio telescopes, they basically said two years ago that within 20 years, that means by 2033, they will have detected an intelligent technological signal.
Now, 2033, now I think what that means is that disclosure will happen in the run-up to that.
And I think this interest now and all talk about, yeah, life's probably teeming, and we just have to discover it, is part of that process of the mainstream beginning to wake up to the fact that actually within a few years, this is actually going to be nailed on.
And they are then going to have to come to terms with the fact that, well, actually, if there is a technological system that we've discovered by a radio telescope and we're now possibly trying to attempt communication, well, how advanced are they over us?
And have they got the means to travel through the stars that, you know, we don't have?
And it opens up the possibility that UFOs actually may and probably have been coming here for thousands of years.
Okay.
Let's just backstep a moment here.
And I'd just like you to tell me in a minute or so, if you could, why did you get involved in all of this?
Two reasons.
One, I had a childhood sighting of a bright white light, which seemed to trigger a number of power cuts in the area.
And then really years later, when I was already a young detective with about six years' service in the police, I then came across a UFO magazine, a printed glossy magazine.
That triggered off my interest, reawakened my interest.
And I really got into it because I felt a sense of frustration welling up within me.
Because when I'd had the sighting at 16, I then did all I could do in 1976, which was get second-hand books on UFOs.
I had no interest up to that point.
And I first began reading a book by Major Donald Kehoe, who turns out to be one of the heroic figures in ufology, who was reporting pilots chasing UFOs.
And I'm thinking, why isn't this on the news?
It should be on the news.
This should be on the sixth block news, etc., etc.
And when my interest was reawakened in the mid-90s, when I came across this Glossick magazine on Leeds City Railway Station, basically that triggered something in me that said, well, hang on a minute, all these years later, have we not progressed at all?
We're still talking about pilots chasing UFOs in broad daylight that are on radar, ground and airborne radar, multiple aircraft involved.
Why is this not national news?
It should be.
Why is it not taken seriously?
And that's really the frustration.
It was born out of frustration.
And then I had an idea for the police database.
And the rest, shall we say, is history.
It is.
And fascinating history.
And it's set you off on a completely different path.
Absolutely.
My listeners around the world are going to want to hear the stories now.
So you knew that I would ask this, I'm sure.
I want to go into a few of the stories, possibly more recent ones, because we don't hear that many.
We don't see as many, I don't think.
Classical old-fashioned UFO-style discs in the sky-style reports here in the UK as we used to.
I remember when I was growing up, they were always in the newspapers.
These days, you see photographs and then you get the usual people underneath commenting, you know, this has got to be a fake.
So, good stories and recent if we can.
You know, let's start with what's the most recent report that you've looked into.
Well, a police officer just two or three months ago approached me when I did a lecture in the village of Honley, which was near to where I live.
And basically, he was just retired, but he told me an amazing story when he was traveling home over the Pennines, coming back from a music concert, and he was traveling late night with his wife.
His wife was asleep in the car, and as they're coming over the tops, as it were, where it's really barren, as he dropped down towards where he was living, which is on the West Yorkshire side of the Pennines, from out of a cloud, he saw a huge black triangular object.
Now, this object was so close that he stopped the car, opened his window, looked out, and the object traveled above his car at a really low altitude, so low that he could see the superstructure underneath.
It was traveling in total silence, and that he could see two or three figures from underneath the superstructure actually looking down at him.
He couldn't make out what the figures were, but he said there were figures moving, two or three people, persons, whatever, looking down at him.
And, you know, that was, and he's done an absolutely brilliant drawing of this.
You know, so I mean, that's not the first kind of black triangle story I've had from police officers.
Another one, absolutely mind-blowing, two uniformed police officers contacted me and basically said, well, we saw a huge black triangle object.
And I said, what size was it?
And they said it was the size of three football fields.
And I said, three football fields?
How do you know it was that size?
He says, because when we saw it, it was just above treetop, above three football fields.
Now, that is a brilliant size description, which is validation because one thing that a good police officer does is when somebody says, well, it happened at 10 o'clock, you say, well, how do you know it happened at 10 o'clock?
Oh, because I put the kettle on at 10 o'clock because Coronation Street just finished.
And that's the way you get that kind of time frame, you know, tied down.
And the other thing is, and this is something that my dad, who we said was in the police, taught me, that when people say, I can't remember, well, actually, when you give them the keys to remembering, if you ask them to link it to other things, you make them stop and think a bit.
They do remember.
And they recall details that they wouldn't have believed that they would recall.
Absolutely.
And one of the things there that touches on my police training, I was an advanced interviewer of suspects and witnesses and had psychological training.
And what you were given were memory tools that could help unlock people's memories.
You know, if it was a serious rape allegation.
And suddenly they'd start to recall fresh information.
And they used to call it, you've discovered fresh snow because it was uncontaminated, no footprints on it.
And you would see the person absolutely say, yeah, I turned that corner and there was a guy there with a brown check shirt on and he had a mustache.
And this information, and you could see the totally in the zone and they're recalling fresh evidence.
So you can use various memory tools to unlock people's memory.
Now, the people who'd seen the thing as big as three football fields, that's a pretty life-changing event.
And you like to go and talk to people personally, don't you, if you can.
So I'm presuming you actually saw them.
Well, no, actually, but I'd had Skype conversations with them and many telephone conversations and have subsequently been in contact with him since because I do want to get that officer to go on video because I want to put my own documentary together over the next year,
18 months and get as many of these officers who are happy to go forward, not usually retired, who are happy to go forward, be named on camera and put together a powerful documentary.
Because whilst over the years, various TV companies have said, oh, make a good documentary, but it's actually never happened.
And that's because they're governed by their own agendas.
Whereas if it was me, it would just be an agenda of letting the officers speak and tell their accounts.
But you're going to come across a brick wall there, aren't you?
Because police, more than anybody else, they're bound by things like the Official Secrets Act.
Well, I guess so, but what I would base it on is the fact that, you know, I could probably think of a dozen police officers straight away who have approached me who are willing to be named and go on camera.
And I think if you had 11 or 12 officers telling many similar accounts, it would be a fascinating documentary.
And we have to say, in case people are asking why would police particularly experience these things, well, we have to say that police tend to be in the places where you and I are not, because, you know, they're places where perhaps at that time of night, you know, you wouldn't be there unless you had a reason to be there.
They are acting in pursuance of their duty.
So when you and I are in bed stacking up the Zeds and snoring, they're actually out patrolling places.
And that is why they see things.
It is, but I mean, but then that gives the impression that people only see things at night.
That's not the case.
Whilst many, perhaps two-thirds are at night, there are many daylight sightings from members of the public, police officers, and other people that approach me that, you know, really fascinating accounts themselves.
The problem is that I suspect that only one in 10, perhaps one in 20, of all people come forward because of that fear of ridicule and the perceived risk to their careers.
You know, I've had a lady who was in charge of like a childcare facility with about 30 odd people bringing their kids every day to her facility.
She says, I couldn't ever go public with this.
He says, because I'd lose all the parents probably straight away and I'd have no business.
Now, that's a terrible indictment of the way the subject has been treated, in my opinion.
So there is still that level of risk if you have a public position of any kind.
Oh, absolutely.
I've got colleagues.
I work in the media and there are people who probably think that I'm crazy for doing this, even though I do this in a very serious way, because I think all of these things have to be investigated.
And I keep an open mind.
There are people who think that because I do this, I believe it all.
And I try to explain to them, I don't.
I am here to be persuaded.
Or I'm here to channel information on behalf of the guest to the audience.
The audience decides.
And of course, I'll make my mind up as well eventually.
But it's not that I buy into all of it.
And it's not that I'm crazy.
That is a fact that is very hard to get through to some people, even in 2015.
Absolutely.
What you've got is an open mind.
And that's the key to any kind of investigation is having an open mind.
And unfortunately, the way the subject has been portrayed over so many years, it's almost part of your subliminal psyche to have a downer view on the subject.
Anybody that's doing something a little bit different, you know, he's going to be labelled, oh, that's a bit weird, you know.
And people are almost frightened to actually just look at the evidence.
But, you know, somebody like yourself who's got an open mind, is willing to be or to look at the evidence, to be persuaded, or is open to be persuaded, is great.
But unfortunately, as you've probably encountered from your colleagues, you'll get labelled without, you know, you probably have the conversation.
Well, have you ever looked at any of the evidence on any of the subjects that we're talking about?
And they probably say no.
But they'll still have this closed-minded approach that, no, I don't want to look at that.
It's all a little rubbish.
none of that stops me doing this and none of it stops you doing what you're doing now my dad when You're doing your bit to open up the subject.
And in my own small sphere of capacity, that's what I'm trying to do.
My dad, when he was in uniform, I told you he had ghost experiences.
And indeed, when he was wearing a uniform, he did.
He had two.
And one of them, I've recounted on this show before, where he went to a graveyard, about two o'clock in the morning or so, could see a man standing by a grave.
And of course, he was doing his duty, my dad.
So he got off his bike because he was on a bicycle patrol back then.
And he said, what are you doing there?
And as he said to the man, what are you doing there?
The guy who was wearing a cap and an overcoat disappeared before his eyes.
That's twice that that happened to my father.
So I guess what this is getting round to, have you had people in uniform report to you experiences of beings?
Well, in a few cases, people have seen objects, creatures, yes, in terms of police officers.
I mean, there's the famous Alan Godfrey case from 1980, which I researched on and off for about 18 months, which is arguably Britain's first abduction case.
Repeated.
I mean, do you want me to give you a few details about that?
Yeah, well, basically, this is an extremely famous case where in November 1980, a uniformed police officer, Alan Godfrey, went out on mobile patrol in the town of Todmoden in West Yorkshire,
basically to look for a herd of cows, believe it or not, that had been reported by several members of the public during the night roaming the streets of Todmoden, which sounded ludicrous, but several people had rang in.
They'd gone out various times during the night to look for these six or seven cows that were apparently roaming the streets, never found them.
Well, that was the guys of which he went out for a last mobile patrol before coming off night duty that was due to go off at six o'clock.
Cutting a long story short, Izzy turned up to go onto an estate to search for these cows.
He suddenly, through the corner of his eye, thought that a bus had crashed further up the road that he was traveling, so he didn't turn onto the estate.
He basically approached what he thought was initially a bus slid across the road, only to find that it was actually a diamond-shaped UFO, 14 foot by 20 foot in diameter, actually hovering five feet above the ground, which was a row of windows on the top, darkened windows, and spinning anti-clockwise above the road, the lower half of the object.
And basically, he was looking at a UFO, and he basically said, if I had picked up a brick, I was that close to it, it would have gone bang.
So it was just blocking the road.
The next thing he remembers consciously is that suddenly he's then another 100 yards further up the road and it's like a time jump and basically the object's gone.
He looks in his mirror, the object's gone.
He spins around, goes back, finds an area that was considerably drier where twigs caused through the centrifugal force of the anti-clockwise motion because it was November time, had created a circle of twigs and basically then went back to the police station.
Just as he gets back to the police station, he sees a colleague, gets him to go back who verifies this circular pattern of twigs where the object was seen to hover.
Cutting a long story short, he was then hypnotized about three or four months later, one of four video regressions, hypnotism, hypnotic regressions.
And he came out with this story that in his subconscious mind, after drawing the picture in his police car, after trying his radio, main set and personal radio, where it failed, he then drew it and then he decided to get out and approach the object that was blocking the road.
And as he got out of the car and approached it, he suddenly became frightened.
Decided to seek the sanctuary of the car.
And as he got back to the car, suddenly he was engulfed in a brilliant white light.
And then he found himself lying down on a bed of some description or a table with small creatures that he called lampeds, bulp heads, about three to four feet tall, putting some kind of equipment on his legs.
And that was basically what happened under his regression.
And the first session was not videotaped.
The last three sessions were all video recorded, done by two professors from Manchester University, top people in their field.
And they were all amazed.
And a consistent story came out.
And that's now labeled really as Britain's first major abduction story because it follows many of the platforms missing time, being examined, small creatures, taken aboard somewhere and being examined.
That's kind of like become folklore now and well established through the X-Files and everybody's got this iconic.
One of the problems with this stuff though, isn't it, Gary, with any of these reports?
Police, more than many other professions, have to go through a lot of stress.
My father knew people who had stress and some people suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, which we call it today, because of the things that you have to do.
I mean, who do you think if there's a big accident on the highway here, who's going to pick up the debris?
And I mean, you know, everything from wreckage to body parts?
Who's going to assist in identifications?
Who's going to do all of those things?
Well, the police have to do that.
So it's a very, very stressful occupation.
Plus, of course, your life is at risk at times in the police for various reasons.
Are you sure in your own mind that many of these cases are not down to people simply having mental artifacts of things or from things that they've experienced in the line of duty?
Well, the first thing I generally look for is corroboration where possible, because that would then kind of make that scenario much more difficult.
So it's always much better if there is independent or multiple officer corroboration.
And what I would say on the database to cover that point is that, you know, you're now looking at over 500 cases involving over 1,000 British police officers.
Now, that's a hell of a statistic.
And when you break, and I'm not a big lover of statistics because they can be manipulated and often were by police forces, I might add.
But basically, when you get down to it, 70% of those cases on the police database are multiple officer cases.
So we're looking at from anywhere from two, three, four, five, six.
One case in 1993 has over 24 officers involved, many from different geographical vantage points.
So yeah, corroboration is always good.
As with the case with Alan Godfrey, some of the things that kind of corroborated it were the fact that, or helped to corroborate it, is the fact that when he went, took the officer back, that officer was called Malcolm Agley.
He took him back to the scene of where the object had been hovering.
That officer confirmed that there was the circular patch of twigs and it had been raining during the night.
And basically, the patch where the circular patch was, within that circle, it was considerably drier, as if something had blocked out the rain.
So that helped give a bit of physical trace evidence that something odd had occurred there.
It then turned out that as time went on, two police officers based at Littleborough, which is a village nearby to Todburden, had seen an object about an hour before moving in the direction of Todburden about an hour before whilst they were parked up in a layby and only approached Alan Godfrey a year later.
And then there was the story of the three police officers upon the moors at Near Keefley, which is in that vicinity, who saw a blue UFO streaking making zigzag manoeuvres across the valley, last seen heading towards Tombardon about half an hour before Alan had his sighting.
And then you had a school caretaker who was just opening up at about half past five in the morning, literally at the time or just before Alan's sighting, who saw an object coming low over the rooftops in the direction of where Alan had his sighting, literally minutes later.
So there was quite a lot of circumstantial evidence to say that something strange happened.
And what did the MOD, the British Ministry of Defence, because its reporting department was open then and it would have heard about all of this, from what you've heard, what did they do about that?
They didn't do anything about it.
And here's the inconsistency with the Ministry of Defence is people think, oh, well, they would report and investigate, once you get a report like that, they're going to investigate it.
But they never did.
They never interviewed him.
And as far as I'm aware, when this batch of files between 2008 and I think 2013, they were supposedly released all the files.
Well, Alan Godfrey's file didn't come out.
There was no investigation.
So that didn't happen.
Now, you would think that's crazy.
They should be investigating something like this.
And bear in mind that this is before the X-Files, before really anyone really looked at the abduction phenomena in Britain as a whole.
There'd been some historical cases in America and Argentina in the 50s and the 60s, but really it was unheard of in Britain.
And it was really only popularized with a book called Communion by Willie Striber.
And then it was made into a film with Christopher Walk and called Communion.
And then the X-Files kind of like cemented it into mythology, I guess, the iconic alien grey head face kind of thing.
But, you know, literally, those kind of cases are fairly rare, certainly police officer-wise.
But I've had others where one officer who spoke to me for over two hours and he was almost in tears telling me a story because he'd never told his wife.
He'd carried this kind of like trauma that had gone on.
And he said, but in the end, he'd never told his family, but he told his wife because his wife had been with him on three subsequent sightings.
He'd had an on-duty sighting on his own, and then subsequently he'd had three off-duty sightings, I think two of which were with his wife, who had seen strange objects, one of which had some kind of being inside that was seen very close up.
Which his wife had also seen.
Which his wife had also seen.
So again, these kind of stories are not so rare in the police, but again, for the reasons that we've already talked about, officers find it extremely difficult to come forward with such experiences because it's really out there.
And the officer spent the first half an hour saying to me, you know, you're going to think I'm crazy.
And we had this conversation and it took a long time.
But at the end of it, he was like I'd almost been a cathartic experience and I'd almost been a counselor to him because he'd finally been able to talk about this incident that caused him clearly post-trauma and he didn't know what to do with it.
And it had like manifested itself over many years and had eaten away at him.
And so it was a cathartic experience for him.
And that's happened on several occasions with officers that they get such a relief from finally being able to tell their story to someone who's not going to think that they're crazy.
I've heard cases where people have been, they say they've been warned off and warned of the consequences of telling the story that they, you know, the details of what they've encountered.
Have you come across situations where police have had somebody knock on their door and say, good idea if you say nothing about this?
Not the kind of like proverbial men in black knock on the door, but I've had plenty of officers who have seen something, then being called to give a statement to either somebody that appears to be in uniform or civil service, never really identified who, and at the end of it, they're told, well, you're not to mention this again.
Now, again, that's happened on many, many occasions with police officers.
So, you know, if there's nothing to this subject, why would anybody be saying this?
Well, exactly.
And those accounts are in your files.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And as I say, the book that I'll be writing, or I'm writing at the moment, which I hope to get out early next year, will contain over 500 and I think 550 cases, probably with around 1,050 police officers.
That's a hell of a lot of officers to be all wrong.
How many of those people have you spoken to personally?
All of them?
Oh, no, not all of them.
Many of them are historical records that have come to me or through freedom of information requests.
And of course, when you do freedom of information requests, often the names are redacted, etc.
But because they're official records, it means you can draw from the, it tells you the circumstances, where and when, and how many other officers and were there any other officers, yeah, four other uniform, you know, but we don't know the names.
But I mean, it's like sometimes you get this situation where luck plays a part.
And just before I retired, I think it was Christmas 2012, as I retired in March 2013, I was at the Christmas party, the police Christmas party, when an officer that had transferred in from the West Yorkshire Police approached me when I'd never spoken to in my life before.
And he says, I know you.
I said, well, I don't know you.
And he says, well, yeah, your UFO stuff.
He said, I had a UFO sighting.
And I said, where?
And he said, near the Emily Moore Tower, the TV master.
We've got to say that Emily Moore is quite a lonely place.
I mean, it's absolutely bleak in winter, isn't it?
It's near Halifax.
Well, we're near Huddersfield, isn't it?
It's actually only about six miles away from where I live in Holmforth.
And there's this massive concrete, Yeah, television broadcast tower.
And they had to put a concrete one there because they had a metal one there and it fell down in the snow.
That's right.
Well, as soon as he said that, I said, oh yeah, Emily Mormas, there's quite a lot of officers involved in that.
And he looked shocked.
He said, how do you know that?
I said, because the Ministry of Defence released a batch of documents and it redacted the names, but it gave all the statements word for word of those officers that had reported it.
And there was about six to eight officers that reported it.
And I said, I'll probably have your statement.
And he was absolutely shocked.
So it's amazing when you get this tie up.
And what he'd seen was a 200-foot long cylindrical object absolutely lying at the horizontal next to the top of the mast.
So if you can imagine looking at that mast in the distance and then having a big right angle where there's a big, huge cylindrical UFO there in total silence.
And he watched it with his colleague who both gave statements.
And as I say, I've got a batch of statements that were released under the Freedom of Information Act.
And, you know, when you get those kind of tie-ups, you think, great, because he was then able to give me some of the names that were involved, blah, blah, blah, that he could remember.
But I mean, here's an interesting thing about the Ministry of Defence.
The Ministry of Defence supposedly were releasing all its files over this four or five year programme that I think finished in 2013.
It now turns out, through research done by John Burroughs, who's one of the Rendlesham Forrest American witnesses, he did an FOI and basically somebody cocked up and there is still 18 files, policy files from government relating to UFOs over many decades still to come out.
And yet the Ministry of Defense had said, that's it, they're all out there.
And of course, all the UFO enthusiasts are saying, well, no, you're only giving us low-level stuff.
The best stuff you're not giving us.
And then suddenly we now know that there are 18 policy files.
Now, policy files is going to be quite important because that's Discussed at ministerial level.
So there's some who-how when they will be released, but they're set for release early next year.
But I mean, again, it proves that the MOD here are not exactly transparent with the UFO community.
And if you think, listening to this, I mean, if you think that you know at this point in time everything there is to know about everything that happened back in history, think again, because you've only got to look at the newspapers at the moment that are starting to indicate the scale of high-level child sex abuse, you know, in the portals of power in this country, something we would never have deemed possible.
Certainly, I would never have thought when I was younger such a thing could happen in this country, but we're getting more and more hints and indications of this, and more comes out all of the time.
So if it can happen in that field and documents can be unearthed and names can be named, why can't it happen in this field?
No, absolutely.
I mean, I think the Jimmy Saville fiasco of an investigation really set in motion a kind of an avenue that nobody thought anybody would really go down.
And finally, there is so much evidence beginning to be uncovered where, especially you hear the same phrases that a lot of the people, a lot of the production people, the senior directors at the time, knew of people that they suspected were perhaps pedophile, but didn't do anything.
Now, what this means, because the Jimmy Saville case, I mean, you know, I never met him, I interviewed him a couple of times, disgusting man, and he's made a worldwide reputation now for being Britain's most prolific sex offender.
But what this means for the field that you're in and for what we're talking about is that perhaps there is more of a climate now that will allow people to talk about things that they would have kept quiet about before.
Yeah, no, I agree.
And I think we are moving to that kind of climate.
I don't think we're quite there yet, but I think we are moving towards it.
And as I said earlier, as we move towards a more mainstream acceptance that life is bound to be out there and it's only a matter of time before we get this intelligent contact, which will be so profound for mankind, I think this debate will become more and more popular in the mainstream and people will be encouraged to come out because the mainstream are going to have to confront that this is a reality.
We're now living in a technological age where this will be resolved one way or the other within the next few years.
And really up until this point, whilst people speculated it, they had no actual means to find out for certain.
Well, we're living in an age now where we're on the brink of finding that out in the mainstream, you know, and the world, I think, is gearing up for this big, big discussion.
The people you've talked to in the police who've had these reports, and I know you're still collating reports and some of these we'll read about in the book next year.
Have you talked to any really senior officers or are they mostly people who are at the kind of level, I mean my dad was sort of sergeant inspector level?
You know, you go in this country from constable to sergeant to inspector to superintendent, and then it's the much higher ranks beyond that.
Have you talked to anybody higher up?
No, realistically, other than that chief superintendent who inadvertently told me the story, he'd be the most senior person I've spoken to personally.
But then that was at a time when he was recalling an incident when he was at a PC.
I think the reality is, is that until such time that the climate changes, where this is, you know, where in the mainstream it's accepted that there is technological life out there, I don't think you're ever going to get senior officers coming out because I don't think it'd be very good for their career.
But again, retiring has helped you to, you know, come out and do more of this.
I just wonder where there's some people who, you know, they retire them quite young comparatively in the police.
My dad retired.
I think he was 55, 56, 57, whatever.
You know, he had to retire because you do.
You reach that age and you can't chase, as he used to, chase crooks across rooftops in Liverpool.
You can't do that anymore, although he would have loved to.
You must be keen for anybody who's been through that, risen up the ranks and maybe has stories to tell and hasn't been able to tell them up to now.
You must be keen for those people to come out and talk to you.
Oh, absolutely.
And the beauty of a program like this is that there may be some retired senior officer out there who might think, well, yes, I'll contact Howard Hughes and see if I can get a message to this officer who's doing the police database.
The problem is, is I think because UFOs on what I call mainstream television rarely get in the news and very rarely is there anything live of any interest that basically it's hard to reach millions of people.
Whereas if we were to have this same show on the one show, me and you having this conversation.
Yeah, that's a mainstream TV show in the UK.
Yeah, which is right just after the news.
Main popular programme, it's on every night between 7 and 8.
And we did this interview now that was going out to Britain and 15 million people.
Then you're reaching millions of people at a stroke and discussing it in this very rational, sensible way that we are doing it.
Well, the good news about it is, just to fly the flag for what we're doing here, is that more and more people tell me by email that they want content they can download and they don't bother much with live broadcasting apart from the news.
That is an increasing trend.
And as we see Generation Y grow up, I think we'll see more of that.
No, I think the alternative media is growing exponentially.
And you get shows like Course to Coast in America, I think, that reaches millions of people.
I've done that a couple of times, but I honestly think that if we were to have these kind of discussions in the mainstream, on mainstream UK television, we would get far more people coming out of the woodwork.
Well, this is growing.
And at the moment, apart from on my own sources via iTunes and on my website, theunexplained.tv, this show goes out across America, around the world on the Dark Matter Digital Network every week.
So there will be people in the United States listening to you, people in Canada, places like that.
Do you welcome reports from them?
Do you want reports from them?
Absolutely.
Yeah, I do get reports from officers from around the world.
So yeah, any officer, part of me toys with the idea of launching a second database, which will be just for pilots.
Now, I know that there is one in America called NARCAP, who do excellent work.
But I'd love to do a British variation of that and call it Proof Force 2 because it's still the same.
Pilots report in UFO sightings.
Because again, so many pilots, which are my personal favourite category of cases, evidentially, so many pilots are afraid to come forward because they fear getting grounded, which has happened to many pilots who've gone public.
But if we could just get past that and start to get people coming forward in larger numbers, then I think it would be very hard for the aviation industry to discipline people and to affect their careers if enough people started to come forward.
What about police helicopter pilots?
I live in the London area and the Metropolitan Police around where I live use the helicopter an awful lot to follow people because it's easier than doing it by road or on foot.
Have you had any reports from police helicopter pilots?
I've got one excellent case on the database from two people, the police spotter and one of the civilians on board, because there's often civilians on board as well as the pilot.
But the actual pilot, no.
And unofficially, people have said people are seeing things, but basically, it's a big no-no.
You know, nobody will speak to you.
And officially, as yet, no helicopter pilot has come forward.
The only one that went public was a Sergeant Tickner, who'd been a spotter on a police helicopter when they saw an object over Brighton that was caught on their image camera, flow camera.
But when I saw the footage, it to me looked like it was a lantern because it flickered from underneath and it was tubular.
So that gained a lot of media attention at the time, but I've kind of written that one off as a large Chinese lantern.
But aside from that, it's very dare.
You remember a few years ago there was reports of a UFOB chasing, a police helicopter chasing a UFO over Cardiff.
South Wales, yeah, remember the case?
Well, I wrote to that force and said, look, you know, can I have a copy of the incident log?
And they said, there isn't an incident log.
I said, what do you mean there isn't an incident log?
There is no documentation for this incident at all.
I said, well, yeah, but you've given a press release confirming that your crew did chase something.
I said, there will have to be an incident log.
And they went, no.
I said, well, there must be an audio recording that's made by the flight crew as per normal for an incident like that.
Oh, no, there is no audio, nothing.
And I said, I'm sorry, you're lying.
But it didn't go anywhere because basically you just hit a brick wall.
So there are undoubtedly things like that.
Every incident now, cat up a tree, a woman falling over in the street, if the police attend, it creates an incident log, an automated command and control incident log.
Resources are automatically allocated.
Vehicle number six, seven is sent to that, blah, blah, blah.
Update written off if it's a small incident.
But if you had an incident like that, it is inconceivable that there would not be paperwork relating to it and audio content.
Everything that comes up.
So you're saying that stuff exists somewhere in South Wales and has disappeared.
Absolutely.
Has to.
Or has been disappeared.
I mean, I also know that sometimes a UFO incident, and this is since I've retired, comes onto the system and it's now restricted to superintendent level and above who can read it.
Because normally any uniformed officer can go onto the system and look at, see what open incidents are ongoing because they're all incident logs.
You can look at them and you can update them, the bit that you've played in that part of an incident.
But sometimes I'm getting word now from officers that UFO sightings are now restricted and above to superintendents.
That's a terrible restriction of information if that is so.
Absolutely.
And I think it's far more draconian now in the police than it ever was.
And the ability for an officer to speak out on any matter and not follow the party line, as it were, is extremely rare now.
So I guess you are saying here as we wrap this up that if there are police officers not only in the UK but anywhere who've got something they want to tell, they can approach you and you, if they require this, if they want this, you'll keep that anonymous.
Absolutely, because the thing that has made the database work is the fact that I offer a confidentiality clause and that's important because if you're serving, you don't want your career wrecked by going to somebody like me.
But to get the story out, as long as they can prove satisfactorily to me that they are who they say they are, and there's various things that I can do and check, once they've convinced me that they are who they say they are, then I'll say, yeah, okay, I'll make you a confidential source.
That's What we do with criminals, why can't we do it with police officers who just want to tell the truth on a whole variety of things?
So, yeah, any officer that's got a story out there who wants to approach me, my email is heseltangary at hotmail.com.
My magazine is ufotruthmagazine.co.uk.
Basically, come forward safe in the knowledge that if you want anonymity, that's what you'll get.
I wouldn't have lasted 13 years doing this if I'd ever breached somebody's confidence, so I won't do that.
But as long as you can convince me who you say you are, then I'm happy to make you a confidential source.
Glad we talked again, Gary.
Good luck with the book.
Stay in touch.
All right.
Thank you very much, Howard.
It's always a pleasure.
Amazing man, Gary Hesseltine from Proofos.
I'll put a link to him and his work on my website, theunexplained.tv.
More great guests coming soon.
Thank you very much for all of your guest suggestions.
Keep those coming.
And if you can make a donation to help this work continue, then you know it's all very hand-to-mouth.
It is a shoestring operation.
But the great thing about that is that I decide, with your help, what goes on this show.
And I haven't got executives, producers, and other people telling me what to do.
Because let me tell you, in my radio career, some of those people are well-intentioned and gifted, and some of those people really just get in the way.
So that's the great advantage of doing this.
And also, if you send me an email, I get to see it.
If you email one of the big media organizations, then it's possible the person doing the show might see your email.
It's probable they won't.
And will anything happen about your email?
Well, possibly, and possibly not.
The percentage of possibly not, probably higher, unfortunately.
And I'm sorry to be the person who told you that.
Thank you very much for your support and your contacts.
Until next, we meet here on The Unexplained.
My name is Howard Hughes.
I am in London.
Please stay safe, stay calm, and stay in touch.
Take care.
Thank you.
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