All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 14, 2015 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:09:35
Edition 233 - Philip Mantle

A big name in UK Ufology - Philip Mantle really has done the legwork - and it shows!

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
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.
Really good to have you back there and I'm talking to you under very, very sad circumstances for a whole variety of reasons.
I don't even know where to begin.
I'm recording this at the weekend.
You'll probably hear it at the beginning of the coming week.
We are well and truly into December.
The British weather is grey and wet and windy and mild.
And for all of this very odd week, I have been laid in my bed with a very severe bout of flu.
I don't think I've ever had flu so bad.
And it's just beginning to abate.
But if I start coughing, if my voice doesn't sound quite like me, you'll understand why.
But that's not all of it, really.
This has been a strange week.
A number of people in my circle have left us recently.
And that is incredibly sad.
And then this morning I get up to catch up on some very sad news from the United States.
I think you know that my radio hero for many years has been Art Bell.
The fact that I'm sitting here now and trying out for the first time an Art Bell style headset to do the show is all down to him.
And it's so ironic that here I am using a headset identical to the one that Art used for all of those years and trying to get my head around how to use that because he used it so proficiently.
And I read this news on his website.
I'm sure you know about this if you're hearing me now and you're into these things.
Art Bell, the man who devised this particular format and whose mantle I tried to carry here, if that's the word, to take on to some degree in the United Kingdom.
You know, none of us will ever be Art Bell.
But I tried to do something similar based on interviews and experiences that I've done and had.
Tried to do something similar for Europe here.
And now we read this.
As you know, Art established Dark Matter Network, his own personal network having decided to move on from the big networks for reasons that I completely understand, having worked in mainstream media myself.
And I was part of that network, am part of that network.
Anyway, this posting on Art Bell's own site, artbell.com, says this.
And like I say, you've probably seen this.
I'm sorry to have to announce this, but I will not be on tonight or any other night.
Yes, I'm going to hang up.
Whoever this crazy person is, they are not stopping, and it's come to the point that we, as a family, do not feel it is worth the risk.
While I think the personal persons are after me, my wife and now, my daughter, are really scared.
The other night, the latest incident, my daughter was off in the corner of her bed, scared to death, as police cars came screaming up.
You may not know anything about this, but Art has a home that is pretty well publicized.
It's his fortress in many ways.
Certainly his cocoon from it all, where he does his broadcasting.
From what I can understand, this side of the Atlantic, somebody has been taking pot shots at that place.
A situation that over here, look, I couldn't even imagine.
So Art has decided to do the only thing that a reasonable person could do.
You know, he's got to put his safety and primarily the safety of his wife and daughter at the paramount.
There is nothing else you can do in this situation.
But it's just the saddest news, really.
It's very hard to take in.
And I hope that Art will be back with us.
And I have to say here and say now, and I'm sorry if I don't quite sound like me at the moment, that if I can have any part in assisting him and his project in the future to be with you again, then I will.
But I'm a tiny little cog in a very big wheel, in a very strange world.
Thank you very much for all of your emails recently, by the way.
I will get round to shout-outs in the next edition, but I did promise Tanner that I would mention his father's birthday.
Tanner and his dad are in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Love the show, and they like me talking about the weather as well.
So I said I would mention Tanner's dad's birthday in Salt Lake City.
It was December the 8th.
Sorry, I'm a little late for that.
On this edition, I'm going to talk to a man called Philip Mantle.
Now, he is a UFO investigator, as big as people like Nick Pope over here, but perhaps doesn't quite get the publicity that Nick Pope gets.
But he is somebody who's facilitated other people's books.
He's been co-author on a number and done a certain amount of very interesting research and a lot of teaching in this subject.
I think you're going to find him a very interesting man, and his name has been mentioned to me over the years in a number of emails.
So Philip Mantle will be the guest on this show.
And one of the things we'll talk about is a new book that he's involved in called UFOs Over Poland, The Land of High Strangeness.
I think you're going to like this.
And this is a bit of a tribute to Art Bell, really, because I know this would be right up his street.
Philip Mantle himself, though, number of books that he's been involved in or co-author on or consultant to will talk about that as well, about his life and times.
If you'd like to get in touch with me, as life hopefully begins to return to normal, you can do that.
You can just go to the website, theunexplained.tv, and follow the link and send me an email.
And if you'd like to send a donation as we come to the end of this year, I would certainly welcome that.
I've lost a week of work with this terrible flu.
And so if ever I needed the money to help me go forward, I do.
Sorry, I shouldn't have said it that way.
I don't mean to sound too forlorn.
That's quite wrong.
But it's been one hell of a week, one way and another.
Thank you very much to Adam Cornwell, my webmaster at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool, For all of his hard work on all of this.
And as I say, life will return to its normal frame, I'm sure, in the next edition.
But let's cross to our guest now, way north of where I am in rainy, blowy London this morning, Philip Mantle.
Philip, thank you very much indeed for coming on my show, The Unexplained.
My pleasure, Howard, indeed.
I don't know what your week has been like, Philip, but it's been a bit of a week from hell down here for one reason or another.
But I think you've had it much worse weather-wise up there, haven't you?
Yeah, I mean, it's been raining in biblical proportions the whole week, and it's still at it.
I've taken my steps onto work today, and, you know, there just seems to be no end in sight.
You know, and I feel sorry for those, you know, poor unfortunates who've had their houses and businesses flooded, and it just seems no end in sight.
Yeah, I mean, we spend a lot of our time thinking about matters beyond this world, but every so often, nature and the hidden hand thereof intervenes and provides us with a little reminder that there is a force right down here that is bigger than any of us.
And that force this week has been the weather that has forced people in the north of England, Carlisle particularly, but other areas as well from their homes, deluged streets, forced boulders through hotels.
I mean, literally, I saw one TV report where a boulder, you might have seen this thing, was swept down a swollen river that had gone through a little town or little village and forced from the front door of this bar to the back door.
The force of nature in these circumstances, but you know, it goes to once again pose the question, what is happening to our weather?
If it isn't global warming, and I'm not saying it is or isn't, because I really above my pay grade, I don't know.
What is?
Because this is not the kind of winter that I remember.
I'm sitting here recording this in a T-shirt.
Now, all right, I've had a massive boiling temperature and still have one with the flu this week.
But something ain't right.
Well, no, I mean, you know, the weather certainly has changed over the last 10, 20 years of that, there's no doubt.
You know, and we can all argue whether, you know, mankind has had an influence on that or not.
But the fact remains it's changed.
My best friend is Norwegian, for example, and he lives sort of the southern part of Norway.
And I think, you know, for him, he's only had what he calls proper snow two or three times in the last 20 years.
Whereas a young man, they used to have it every year without fail.
Yeah, no, we can talk a lot about that.
You know, you and I grew up watching movies like, what's that one, Where Eagles Dare?
Isn't it where Richard Burton and Clint East would go and try and deal with a Nazi nuclear facility in Norway?
And of course, the snow was deep and thick.
That's the heroes of Telemark.
Is it the heroes?
Okay, I think it was a telemarket.
And you was one of the two.
Absolutely.
I love all those old movies, but they're always swathed in snow.
Listen, my listeners are going to tell me to get on with it, so we better do this.
I want to talk about you first, for a very good reason, because you've got a very long and very extensive track record in this entire field.
And I have a feeling that if we haven't spoken before, I think several decades ago, we were in contact because I was trying to do a little documentary recording about UFOs and ufology.
I was just getting into it all.
And the only people, I mean, there was no internet then.
The only way to get in touch with people was to buy magazines and phone phone numbers.
And the only people that I could get hold of were an organization that you've been affiliated with for years called Bufora and a woman called Jenny Randalls, who is the, still, I understand from what I read, still the doyenne of Bufora.
Well, Jenny's no longer with Bufora, the British UFO Research Association.
She was their director of investigations for many years.
And when Jenny left the scene, you know, it's a role that I took over from her.
Right, okay, because I seem to remember that when I was trying to get hold of Jenny back then, one of the names that came up was Philip Mantle.
Is that possible?
We're talking a long time ago.
Absolutely.
I mean, I worked, you know, hand in glove with Jenny on many things at the time.
You know, we had a, it was called a council, but we had a committee of such that had various roles at Beaufort.
And, you know, I was also their conference organiser for many years.
I also served as press officer for an awful long time.
So, you know, if Jenny didn't speak to members of the media, you know, it would cross my desk as well.
Well, that actually answers the question then, and that's why I know your name, apart from listeners getting in touch with me for the last couple of years, suggesting you as a guest.
I think you and I may have spoken in the early 1980s.
A long time ago.
Possibly, Howard.
You know, I recognize those dulcet tones from somewhere.
You must forgive me if I just have a quick cough.
When this flu gets you, and I hope it doesn't get you, it doesn't let you go.
All right.
Explain to me how a guy from the north of England, living what I guess is, you know, the kind of life that I'm from the north of England too, live there.
How do you get involved in UFOs and ufology?
Isn't that for people who live out in the Nevada desert?
It's a good question, Howard.
I mean, you know, I mean, going right back, I mean, I'm in my late 50s now.
And, you know, I grew up as a child enthralled in the space race.
You know, I was 11 years old when Apollo astronauts landed on the moon.
And yes, they did land on the moon.
And I was absolutely astounded by it all.
I mean, I always had an interest, Howard, in all things to do with astronomy, the paranormal, even as a young man.
I mean, my mum was from Northern Ireland.
And I remember at a very early age, she told me a story of when she met a fairy in rural Ireland.
They lived in the middle of nowhere.
And to her, she said, I don't know if I imagined it or not, son, but to me, it was very real.
I always had an interest in science fiction.
So all these things seem to get mixed up together and combined.
And I read one little newspaper article once about UFOs in one of the dailies.
I don't know which one.
And I thought, well, what a lot of nonsense.
I used to go on occasion with a friend's grandmother to the spiritualist church.
And whilst I found it fascinating, I found it something not quite right.
I don't mean they were faking it or anything like that.
There's something to me just didn't add up.
And of course, I just went to a normal high school and we were taught religious instruction, not education.
We were taught once a week bits about the Bible as being fact.
And I was one of those that would put their hands up and ask questions and get into trouble for it.
I mean, I think I was about 12 or 13, and I read the Bible from cover to cover.
It took me a while, but I thought, well, I better try and understand why I'm getting in trouble because things just didn't seem to make sense to me.
So I always had an inquisitive mind, and then in the late 1970s, of course, the movie Close Encounters was out.
And a friend and I were down in Wiltshire.
We went to use a telescope.
A chap had built his own little observatory.
And, you know, just so happens, we couldn't use it that night for whatever reason.
I think it was cloudy.
So that kind of puts the kibosh on looking through a telescope.
And I was reading the book and one chapter on UFOs and it mentioned a place nearby to where we were staying in Wiltshire.
And it was a little town called Warminster.
And apparently in the 60s, they had a lot of sightings there.
And quite literally, Howard, we were pretty bored and with nothing to do.
So we jumped in the car and found this place, parked on the hillside, and we saw these strange lights.
We were looking over from our vantage point, you could see right across Salisbury Plain.
We knew they weren't astronomical in nature and they certainly didn't look like aeroplanes.
In hindsight, they were probably something to do with the military.
We didn't know at the time that parts of Salisbury Plain were used for military training exercise, and there's still a military base even in there today.
And of course, if you get involved in the whole ufology thing around Warminster and around Wiltshire, very much a hotspot.
And there are people, I've had them on this program, who will tell you that not only do the military do exercises there, but sometimes they chase these things.
Well, yeah, I mean, that could well be, but, you know, this sparked the interest.
And rather naively, I thought, I'll write a couple of letters and I'll soon get an answer to all this, you know, and I found the address because, again, this was long before the internet.
And I wrote to the British UFO Research Association and I asked a few questions.
And to my great surprise, you know, I discovered they didn't have all the answers.
So I wanted to find out for myself.
And then, by pure coincidence, I started talking to my family members about this.
And my aunt, an auntie Emily who lived nearby, she bought me our local newspaper in Leeds.
It was still going, the Yorkshire Evening Post.
And it had a small little advertisement in it for a UFO group.
The Yorkshire UFO Society had just been formed.
And they're having a meeting at this particular venue in Leeds.
I lived just outside of Leeds at the time.
The Yorkshire UFO.
I've never heard of it.
Yep, the Yorkshire UFO Society.
And off I went Sunday afternoon, 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock, whatever time it was.
And it was organised and founded by brothers, Graham and Mark Birdsell.
Graham Birdsell, of course, went on to publish UFO magazine, which was hugely successful throughout the 1990s and the noughties.
And became a bit of, in this field, a bit of a rock star.
Absolutely.
And I was absolutely enthralled, you know, and again, just by coincidence, we were very fortunate that I got more and more interested that throughout the 1980s, in and around the north of England, certainly the Yorkshire Dales and the Pennine areas, we were literally inundated with UFO sightings.
And, you know, we had a membership at the Yorkshire UFO Society at that time of about, I don't know, 30 or 40 people.
And that continued to grow.
But we literally couldn't cope.
We had so many sightings.
Obviously, we could explain a lot, but there were certain areas in the moors above Skipton, for example, particular areas there called Carlton Moor and over the border into Lancashire.
Yeah, there seemed to be a little almost triangle, a little epicentre of it all around the Yorkshire-Lancashire border, places like Todmurden, as they call it.
And several words.
Throughout the 80s, Howard, right, right, right the way through, we had everything.
I mean, you name it, and we encountered it.
And so I just got more and more involved and more and more fascinated.
And the more I learned, the more I wanted to know.
I kept asking more and more questions.
Did it frustrate you, Philip, at the time?
Now, look, you and I are both from the north of England.
I've been in the south for a lot of years, but my heart is still up there in Liverpool.
Did it frustrate you that most of the talk about ufology in the 80s, and I remember it well, was to do with, you know, to do with the southeast of England or to do with Wiltshire, which is in the west of England?
And there was very little talk about stuff happening in the north?
Well, I don't think it frustrated us as such because we were too busy concentrating on what we were doing.
And of course, as we said, there was no internet in those days.
So, you know, we formed our own little newsletter.
Now, that became Quest magazine.
We bought our own little printing machine and figured out how to work it and printed a couple of hundred copies and collated it by hand.
And that eventually, you know, evolved into UFO magazine, you know, full glossy high street publication.
And we went on sale around the world.
But, you know, we were quite content to be involved with enough on our plates and didn't worry about what was going on elsewhere in the country or we weren't getting any recognition we were convinced at one point alarm that if we were patient enough and determined enough whatever the ufo phenomenon was we could confront it you know head-on face to face well that's interesting did you talk during that pioneering period with anybody who had confronted it as you say face to face head on
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, one of our sort of main members, if you like, was, he's now sadly no longer with us, was former Police Sergeant Tony Dodd.
Tony lived in Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales, and, you know, he at first got reports, and he wanted to know what was happening on his patch.
And what they used to do, you know, they would literally park on the moors at night above Skipton, because the radio transmission was better, rather than down in the hills and dales.
And Tony and his colleague, you know, encountered a UFO, and they were astonished.
This object with three large lights underneath, very low, Tony switched the blue lights on, and he's convinced that this thing reacts.
It turned down and came back.
He took two photographs, not at that time, but, you know, later sightings that coincided with a lot of things that were being reported by other people.
And we spent many days and hours interviewing people, you know, face to face, and all around these areas.
Not just there, but it moved further down into the Pennine areas, into around Sheffield, and into the Peak District, and other areas of the Pennines, and like I said, across the border.
I mean, we did a little PR exercise one week on Calton Mall.
We literally packed a caravan there and stayed in it for a week.
And we did some local lectures and some local press, and we encouraged people to come and report things to us.
And we were averaging, you know, about 10 or 12 people driving up onto the moor.
There wasn't a lot of passing traffic.
There was certainly no footfall, Howard.
They had to come and find us with a couple of handmade signs that we'd stuck on the side of the road.
So, in other words, the people who came to see you were ones who really wanted to and had a reason to.
Got it.
Yeah.
And what we found was that this wasn't a recent phenomenon.
You know, this was going back decades.
I mean, we managed to be friends with some of the local farming community that had been there, man and boy.
And they told us about, you know, things their parents had discussed and grandparents.
So, it certainly wasn't a recent phenomenon.
And do you think that's curious, isn't it?
Do you think that people in that area, the farmers, you know, they're all hardened people.
They see life in all its hues and shades.
Do you think that they'd come to accept these things as a part of life, just a part of existence there?
Well, they just, you know, they accepted it.
It didn't do them any harm.
It didn't necessarily scare their livestock.
If they were livestock farmers, they certainly didn't view it as a threat.
And no cattle or sheep mutilations, anything like that?
No, at all.
No, it was just there, you know, and it only happened occasionally.
It was bizarre.
It was confusing.
I mean, they didn't call it spaceships or anything like that.
They just said we saw these.
I remember once interviewing one chap who had a farm and he also had a cattery.
And he said there were like five big orange dinner plates.
And this was down in the valley.
This wasn't, you know, several thousand feet above his farm.
Doing, you know, acrobatic maneuvers the likes of which he'd never seen.
And he had no explanation for it whatsoever.
And with lots of things like that, not just from him, but from many, many dozens of people around the area.
Now, if you think this is strange, isn't it?
And this is probably rubbish, but I'm sure you've heard it before.
There are some people who say that these phenomena, if they exist, are attracted to power sources, things like radio frequency, that kind of stuff.
Now, that whole area has a number of very high power broadcast masts.
There's the enormous mast at Emily Moore, which is the big television mast.
There's one at Winter Hill, the other side of the Pennines.
And there's a great big one that carries radio these days.
Used to carry very high power television at Home Moss.
I wonder if there's anything, any connection that you found to do with those.
Well, we looked at every possible connection.
I mean, you know, we get the map out and we plot these things on the map.
But, of course, you know, some of the sightings that came our way, you know, predate any of these constructions long before Home Moss and Emily Moore.
But there are natural power sources as well that some people claim.
There's also fault lines in the area, you know, around the dales of the North and South Craven fault lines.
And then, of course, in more recent years, you've got much smaller ones.
You've got the microwave repeaters for the mobile phones now and things like that.
So it's very difficult.
You know, people claim that they are, you know, attracted to a whole host of things.
There's all mine workings in the area that have long since gone.
So when you look at a map, Howard, you can kind of connect it to anything you want, really, if you try hard enough.
But we did literally look at every kind of possibility.
But the fact remains that they were there.
You know, it wasn't a recent phenomenon.
They had been there down the decades.
Myths and legends at times have grown up around these things.
For example, I'm sure everybody knows, you know, the story of the calendar girls and the Women's Institute and their calendar and, you know, and the movie.
Very famous film, yeah.
Well, yeah.
But, you know, I remember just...
near the village where these ladies can't come from uh going to interview um a couple and to the kind of it's so small these these you know the house didn't even have numbers on you know and no names you just thought well where they live and and I knocked on the door and I said can you help me I'm trying to find Mr and Mrs so-and-so and oh it became about the black dog so when it all turned out it wasn't actually a black dog.
What they used to see was two orange lights that used to float down the valley.
And of course, that had then equated into being the eyes of this devil dog.
Nobody actually saw a dog, but they just saw two luminous spheres floating around.
So, you know, the sightings themselves had taken on myth and legendary status down the decades.
And that was common in the area, but all the more fascinating, you know.
And, you know, we could guarantee that at certain times of the year, we knew we'd get observations from these areas.
They never went away.
They would have peaks and softs in how many sightings were reported to us, but they would always be there.
And still are, Howard, you know, that hasn't changed.
What they are, whether they're attracted to anything in particular, you know, that remains a subject of much debate.
And what about the interest of authorities in some of these cases in these areas?
You know, the MOD, for example, the government, we know that local police often report these things or see these things and local pilots see these things.
But what about officialdom?
Did they take an interest in these things?
We didn't do too bad, certainly in the 1980s.
I mean, obviously, in the local area, you know, Tony Dodd was well known as, because he lived at the police station as well.
So he was known, you know, on an official basis as the police officer.
And to be quite honest, we could sometimes name drop and use his name.
Other areas, I remember going to interview a family who'd seen these things.
And what they'd done at the time, they made drawings of them.
And they reported it to the police.
And the police came out.
And I said, well, what happened to your drawings?
And they said, oh, the police took them away.
And I said, well, you know, which station was it?
And I went to the police station.
I introduced myself.
We used to have little business cards and I handed it in.
And they said, yeah, no problem.
They got them and they gave him.
But it differed from one station to another.
There didn't seem to be any official policy.
And I got the impression with some police departments, they were only too happy to hand this stuff over to you because they.
But they wouldn't know what to do with it for a start off.
Yeah, they'd more important things.
Yeah, I completely under the look at my dad was a copper and I completely and he had strange experiences.
One of these days I'll collate them and talk about them.
But sometimes it was just better to hand this stuff off.
What I was wondering about is whether the Ministry of Defence or any of the Alphabet agencies got involved at all, as far as you know.
Not that I'm aware of.
I mean, we pestered the living daylight out of the Ministry of Defence.
We also had a good working relationship with all the airports and that's both military and civil, wherever we could around the area.
I mean, we had a good relationship with Lee's Bradford Airport, for example, Aria Finningley, which is now closed, Binbrook and Lincolnshire and various other ones.
Because we didn't talk about flying saucers and little green men, we just stuck to the phrase, you know, UFO.
And we built this relationship over the years and were polite.
And more often than not, if they could and if they had the time, they would respond and they would help us.
Now, there was also a time when I was with the British UFO Research Association, Howard, that if you rang the MOD to report a UFO sighting, yes, they'd take the details, but they'd also give you my telephone number.
Because I used to ask people when they phoned, because we didn't advertise, you couldn't find it in the phone book, where have you got my phone number from?
And there were several people, I said, well, I rang the Ministry of Defense, and they gave me, this was, you know, a phone number we used for UFO sightings, but it was also my house phone number.
And that amazed me.
And, you know, there were various police stations would do that for us.
There was various RAF bases would do that for us.
So, you know, I never found any official involvement, you know, and it just depended who you spoke to at the time.
And if they knew you weren't a crank, then you're doing okay.
Were you ever warned off, or were you seen as a bunch of happy amateurs?
Never warned off, never had any threats.
We did have a lot of our post interfered with at one point.
And we actually made an official complaint to the postmaster in Leeds.
And he actually came out to see us in person.
And he said, well, you know, the post would come and we get it, but it would be opened and officially resealed.
And he said, that happens from time to time.
You know, you will get one or two letters that come open.
Really, but they come open or are open.
Well, but then, you know, I remember the look on his face when Graham said, well, Graham Berthslaw, he kept all these.
And he said, well, what about this lot?
And it wasn't just one or two.
It was dozens.
You know, and Graham had kept them all and he just piled them on the desk in front of him.
And the chap didn't know what to say.
He was dumbfounded.
Now, whether there was anything sinister in that, whether they thought we were a bunch of nutcases or whatever, I honestly don't know.
So there was a little bit of that.
You made a great leap, and I want to talk about this in our remaining time, from being somebody who collated UFO reports mainly in your own Yorkshire area to somebody who got involved in publishing books and being involved in research about some of the most famous cases of the world.
How did you make that step?
It seems to me it happened for you and to you and with you from the sort of mid to late 80s into the 90s.
Yeah, I mean, you know, things, I never planned anything really, Howard.
You know, things just tended to happen.
I mean, I moved on from the Yorkshire UFO Society in the late 80s.
I rejoined the British UFO Research Association, became more and more involved.
And of course, with Bufora, I wasn't just linked to Yorkshire.
Stuff had crossed my desk from all over the place.
And I also joined the Mutual UFO Network, which is a worldwide organization with its HQ in the States.
Became their representative for England.
And I began to do lectures.
And people would write to me.
I remember one incident.
I'll give you an example.
I think it was about 1987.
There was an incident in a place called Vorones in the Soviet Union, where this thing had landed.
The locals said they saw this thing land and these strange beings.
And even TASS, the official news agency, put out a statement confirming all this.
And I got a phone call from a Russian newspaper, and I'll try to pronounce it.
Not easy for a Yorkshireman, but it was called Izvedia.
Aye, Izvestia.
Hi, hi.
Okay, well, that's a big one.
If you're going to be in contact with a newspaper, you can't get much bigger.
And they sent me a copy of it.
Obviously, I couldn't read a word of it apart from my name.
And then I started getting letters, and it just said Philip Mantle, UFOs.
I used to live in a small town then called Batley, England.
And they would arrive.
And it was some UFO researchers in the Soviet Union, but mainly members of the public wouldn't read any of them.
And this was pre-1990.
This was pre-the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union.
Absolutely.
And, you know, so things just happened by chance.
And then, of course, in the early to mid-1990s, I became involved with the infamous alien autopsy film.
Again, I was Bufora's press officer and a letter from a company and a gentleman called Ray Santilli landed on my desk talking about making a documentary film.
And I rang him up and he went on to tell me this story about having this film of Roswell.
Long story, going to cut very short.
It eventually turned out to be a monumental money-making scam.
Well, at the time, though, I mean, this alien autopsy film and all the rest of it has been widely debunked, I think, by a lot of people.
What did you believe about it when you first viewed it?
Well, again, it's a long story, but Santa Me first contacted us in 1993.
And initially, I said, just about making a documentary.
And I rang him up.
And he went on to say, well, I've actually got a film of Roswell.
You know, the aliens being cut open, dissected.
And I said, surely.
Yes, I can.
No, I can't.
Yes, I can.
No, I can't.
I met him in London.
I was employed at one point to help promote the movie Fire in the Sky.
And we had Travis Walton, whom the movie is based on, and his brother-in-law, Mike Rogers, come and do a lecture for us in London.
And Santilli's offices were quite nearby, so I invited him to attend.
He told me the story.
He'd been in America looking for bits of old music and videos or film.
He'd bought this from a mysterious cameraman.
So I said, show me.
Anyway, I said, oh, forget it.
In 1995, so we're jumping forward now about 18 months or so.
I'd got his business card and I was sent a VHS video of a movie called Roswell that was being released by Sony Pictures.
It was only a very, very small release.
It was made by Showtime in America for TV.
Yeah, no, I saw it.
I liked it.
It was good.
But not many people saw it, though.
Yeah, but I got this video and it reminded me about Santilli.
So this was early 95 and I rang him up again.
I said, you still claim to have this film.
He says, but yes, Philip, but you don't believe me.
I said, well, I can't believe you until I see it.
It's just another fantastic story.
So he says, okay, make an appointment with my secretary.
Come down to London and I'll show you.
So over the next few months, I made two or three trips to London.
And hey, Presto, he showed me it.
So thinking on my feet, you know, I was also Bufora's conference organizer.
And in 1995, I had a conference organized in Sheffield for August, all done dusted.
This was about April time when I saw the film.
And I just said, off the top of my head, show it at our conference.
And he said, yeah, on one condition, you help me research it.
So we shook hands, and that's what happened.
I mean, none of us knew what was going to happen with this thing.
I just thought it would make an interesting topic.
I thought, if we can get it out in the public, Howard, you know, Santilli at that point had no TV involved.
He was just going to sell it on sell-through.
You had to buy it from him.
You had to buy a video.
And, you know, the story got out again by accident and then it just went around the world.
I was getting phone calls and faxes from, you know, places I didn't even know existed.
And the rest is the same as history.
But when I saw it, I thought, well, at least here's a film.
If we can get it out into the public domain, then people can scrutinize it.
They might come forward and say, that's me, I'm one of the actors.
Or, no, but my granddad told me about this.
You know, it really happened.
Or whatever, whatever scenario you want to imagine.
But nothing happened.
The film was shown around the world.
It made Santali a ton of money.
But not a peep.
Nobody came forward one way or the other.
And I remember sitting having lunch with Santali in London and I stared him in the eyes and I said, I will get to the bottom of this film.
And he just said, that's fine for me.
I didn't realize it, you know, it took me 14 years in the end, but I did.
Well, your book about this, if that started in 1995, then it wasn't published until the end of the 2000s.
That's right.
I published it a few years ago.
I finally, I mean, again, it's a long story, but the film, among many other people that scrutinized it, was scrutinized by a special effects company in America.
And they literally went through it frame by frame.
And the special effects artist, it was called The Really Dangerous Company.
And the artist was Trey Stokes.
He was the main guy.
And he wrote what you would call a blooper list.
Little errors.
But you literally had to sit down and be a bit of a geek and follow his instructions to look for.
And there was little things that didn't prove it was a fake, but thought there's something not quite right here.
It doesn't add up.
And they were the kind of things that only a special effects artist really would notice.
Were they things like the movement within the frames?
You know, When they cut the head open, the head wobbles.
And it doesn't look like it's attached to the body.
There's no snot, you know, a little thing like that.
But it's a tiny little thing.
Underneath of the body, for example, was still perfectly formed.
However, this is a bit gruesome.
But when you die and you lay your body down, all your bodily fluids sink to the bottom part.
So the bottom of your, where you lay it out, it's flat.
It's like squashed almost.
Well, I mean, I'm just trying to hold out a little hope for this, but, you know, aliens may be different.
Well, you know, when they cut it open, it had got giblets and things like that, like the rest of us, only just different giblets.
You see, I mean, we've got to say that there were a lot of people who were going around.
I mean, I was pretty convinced when I first saw a clip of this thing.
A lot of people believing this.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, it was a sensation.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
And there's still people believing it to this very day.
Even despite the fact that, you know, the man who led the team that faked it is a chap called Spiros Molaris, whom I've got to meet and view all his evidence.
And I've published most of it in my book.
But, you know, people don't believe that.
So, just tell you, did you ever ask the question, why would anybody want to fake something like this?
Money.
It's as simple as that.
See, I'm very naive.
I hadn't thought of that.
I mean, yeah, I mean, Santilli never made any secret that his only interest in this was to commercialise it.
I mean, that was an open, you know, everybody knew that from the beginning.
And as long as you honestly present it as something over which there is a question mark, as long as there remains a question mark, then you make of it whatever you will.
And if you're going to make money out of it, well, that's a fair deal.
I had no problem with that.
You know, it's a commercial world that we live in, Howard.
But what do you think, as somebody who investigated for years UFO cases and spoke to many sincere people who believe they'd had experiences, how do you feel that that incident and that drama left ufology?
I think it did us a lot of good.
I think it did the subject a lot of good because, you know, the most famous debunker at the time was Philip Klass.
Philip's no longer with us, but he condemned it as a fake, which is his right, but he couldn't prove it.
And there were many people around the world that couldn't prove it was a fake.
It's very easy, Howard, to label anything as hocus, pocus, or a fake.
I mean, that's the easy way, but to prove it is a different matter.
So at the end of the day, the main guy who was involved in it, i.e.
me, you know, took the time and the effort to stick at it to finally get to the bottom of it.
I didn't know where the bottom of it was.
I just followed the leads that came my way and I kept at it.
So it was ufology, you know, and a recognized UFO researcher who eventually exposed it for being exactly what it was.
And there were those, well, I said I told you so.
I said, well, yeah, but that's easy.
You couldn't prove it, you know.
And I did.
I proved it and I stuck at it.
I mean, you know, there's people still researching Roswell itself now, all these many years later.
And, you know, you say, well, why bother?
Because they want to get to the bottom of it.
Some believe they have already, others think they haven't.
You know, I didn't know what was going to happen.
I mean, there was lots of theories about the alien autopsy film.
Maybe Sanctille himself had been cotton.
Maybe he bought it in good faith.
And it was somebody else that had done it.
But I got to the bottom of it eventually.
I didn't think it'd take that long, but I got there.
And you're quite happy to close the file on that.
Do you think that somewhere might exist a similar sort of film of the real thing?
Well, you know, there's always a possibility, and it's the old phrase, isn't it?
Never say never.
But we had the fiasco, you know, earlier this year of the Roswell slides in Mexico.
I don't know if you're aware of that, Howard, but TV presenter Jaime Massound and a few researchers said we've got these slides, 35mm slides, and they are pictures of the alien at Roswell.
I think they had two slides or two or three.
And of course, as soon as they were released into the public, there was a big fanfan, a big presentation in Mexico.
Thousands of people turned up and paid their money for it.
And of course, when you see the slides, they're actually a mummy, a human mummy.
It's been trapped to one of the, you know, to the exact museum that this thing was on display.
Yeah, no, we've talked about that here before.
And I just wonder, you know, ufology is a great, I think most of these fields are, but is a great center for conspiracy theories.
And there are people who say, well, of course, you know, periodically there are going to be fakes put out there in order to throw genuine researchers like your good self off the scent.
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I don't always have a lot of time for conspiracy.
I mean, again, you look at the Roswell slides, it was a commercial thing, and that's it.
But, you know, what is curious when you talk about film is the lack of it.
People will argue that, you know, well, it's hidden away or it's stashed in an attic somewhere, and that may well be.
But when you think about, you know, certainly today's technology, Howard, we've all got phones.
Most of the phones that we've carry on our belts or in our pockets have got some kind of camera on them.
Still all video, but yet the images that we see haven't improved an awful lot.
They haven't, but I tell you what, this year of all, you know that I work some of my week on a news desk and I get to see the world's media.
And I have to say that 2015 has been the year of people recording, videoing, photographing stuff that they claim may be alien.
And some of it is absolutely ludicrous and laughable.
There's one going around at the moment.
A few news websites, so-called, are running this one.
It's a photograph of something, you've probably seen it, Philip, of a Boeing 747 being shadowed by something sort of cigar-shaped.
It looks pretty, in the literal sense of the word, it looks pretty incredible to me.
Well, again, you know, again, one of the difficulties we have, of course, is modern technology.
You know, the days have gone when special effects were just for the film studios.
You can do it on your home computer.
So, you know, an image is only as good as the story and the people that go with it.
But do you think that this will kill ufology because it is so easy to fake it up now?
Well, let's put it this way, Howard.
If you were honest and you were out today or tomorrow and you genuinely saw something, let's just call it anomalous, and you got out your camera or your camera phone and you filmed it, what would you do with it?
Would you put it straight up on your YouTube?
I don't think so.
You know, I really don't.
I'm not saying you'd go and sell it, but certainly when I first started, there were a number of people that did keep things for years.
You know, they'd have photographs that they'd never shown anybody.
But on occasion, people would be curious enough to want to get to the bottom of what they'd seen and what they'd filmed.
And they would speak to their local police station or even the local newspaper, you know, and say, can you help me get to the bottom of this, please?
And there was no financial incentive involved.
You know, I got called in by a few of the national newspapers to look up photographs that people had sent in.
And they weren't after making any money out of it.
I'm not saying that they turned any down, of course, but that wasn't their motive.
And I mean, one of the most convincing UFO photographs from Britain comes from a chap in Scotland.
I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but it was taken at a place called Craig Luscar Reservoir in broad daylight.
And I've met the chap, you know, and he handed it over to a colleague of mine, Malcolm Robinson, you know, locked stock on barrel.
And he didn't want any publicity, you know, didn't want any money.
Just, you know, here you go, mate.
What this chap did, he was an artist.
So we would go to certain locations and take a few location photographs and then go home and paint rather than stand there with the easel all day.
And he was at Craig Loska Reservoir taking a few snaps and he took two of this, you know, this thing, this object.
It's in daylight.
It looks like some kind of disc shaped or discus.
And I met him purely by accident.
You know, my wife used to live in Scotland and went to visit some friends and he lived next door, you know.
And it's one of the very few, I would say, photographs from anywhere in the world.
And there was no financial motive, you know.
And I spoke to my wife's friends who knew him.
And they said, no, he's just a regular guy.
Well, look, you mentioned, and I'm sorry to interrupt, Malcolm Robinson.
We had him on this show, I think, a year, probably two years ago.
And Malcolm was telling me the most hair-raising tales of almost being able up in Scotland in remote parts of Scotland near a military base up there.
He told me tales of almost being able to summon UFOs and orbs and bizarre stuff.
It was almost like a regular show, and everybody up there knew about it.
Now, I haven't been able to speak to Malcolm since that, but that was quite remarkable, and I'm very interested that you know him.
Yeah, I've known Malcolm many, many times, many years, I should say.
And, you know, we're on very good friendly terms.
And, you know, I've been to interview a few people with Malcolm, shared the lecture podium with him on many occasions.
And, you know, but again, you know, there are areas that have, I wouldn't say you can summon them at will, but, you know, have hotspots from time to time about UFOs.
I've mentioned the Dials and various others.
You know, Bonnie Bridge in Scotland was the same.
And people sometimes can read a little bit too much into it.
You can go, I can guarantee you'll be there.
And it's not always the case.
You just read a bit too much into it.
But Malcolm has investigated some most bizarre encounters.
Well, it did seem to me when I spoke to him that he sounded like he was getting very close to something.
And I was a little worried for him at one point.
Well, we were the same in the 80s in the Dales.
We were convinced that whatever this phenomenon was, if we were persistent enough and patient enough, we could confront it face to face.
Never managed to do that.
I did see something up there that I couldn't identify, but it wasn't at close quarters.
But it wasn't for the want of trying, I can assure you.
So there are hot spots, and certainly Scotland has had its share of it.
Two quick things to talk about as we've got, what, 15 minutes or so left?
So I want to try and get these two things in.
One, of course, is the new book that you're involved in about UFOs in Poland.
The other one, briefly, if we can, but we need to touch on this.
One of the books that you co-authored, and you've been quite prolific in partnering with authors and co-authoring with them and publishing, is Without Consent.
This is about alien abductions in the United Kingdom.
Now, we hear lots of cases from the United States.
We don't hear that many cases of people being abducted from the UK unless you know different.
Well, no, I mean, again, Without Consent was my first book back in 1994, long out of print.
My co-author is a chap called Carl Magatis.
Carl's a, you know, a lifelong journalist.
I met Carl when he worked, I believe it was for the Murray Group, and he now runs his own PR company.
Speaking to him just the other day, and it was just by coincidence that I did a couple of articles with Carl in his newspaper days, and it piqued his interest.
And originally, without consent, was designed as a TV documentary.
I was employed to write a TV documentary, and they pulled the plug on it.
And so we turned it into a book.
And we did it for a reason, like you just said, Howard, is because certainly more so in the early 90s that the idea was that abductions only happened in America and to some person out in the middle of nowhere.
And we knew that that wasn't the case, that wasn't true.
So I literally, along with Carl, set about gathering what documented evidence there was already.
There was a few that we were aware of.
And I travelled the length in Brentford, Britain, interviewing as many people as I could about their experiences face to face, and most of which ended up in without consent.
And we don't sort of favour any theory as to what lies behind these incidents.
We put a few theories forward, but leave the reader to make up their own mind.
But the way we wrote without consent is to show you that these incidents, these encounters, happen to ordinary people who at the time are just about their everyday tasks.
They're going to work, walking the dog, having a walk in the park, whatever.
Police Constable Alan Godfrey, he's a prime example from Tobin in the late 70s.
He's on patrol in his patrol car when this thing happens.
And some of the people I interviewed wouldn't allow us to use their real name or wouldn't allow us even to publish the stuff.
Nobody was out looking for publicity.
And what sort of, do they boil, I mean, you said that a police constable, we've heard the case of Alan Godfrey, but could you boil down a particular kind of person who would report having been abducted?
Not at all.
No.
I mean, again, you know, my experience, it's just a cross-spectrum of the general public.
I mean, you know, I know you're a painter and decorator, you know, a teacher, you know, an unemployed housewife who's out with her daughter.
I mean, you know, you name it.
There was no age group, no particular area in the country, no ethnic background or religious background.
I mean, and any commonalities in their stories?
That's difficult to say because each story is different.
And I mean, entirely different.
No two are exactly the same.
There were a number of people who, not necessarily their story, but how they encounter affected them, if you like.
It seemed to have a positive effect.
They became more and more of environmental issues, if you like, or of spirituality and green issues.
Is that because of, this sounds very Betty and Bardie Hill, is that because of what they imparted to them about what we are doing to this planet?
Not necessarily no, because, you know, some of them, no information was imparted to them at all.
You know, they just had this very bizarre experience.
Whereon with one young man whom I interviewed at length in Pafelli in Wales, they did show him pictures off film of the earth in the future predicting doom and disaster, environmental disaster.
This was a young lad with his jeans, you know, and t-shirt and his rock music.
And he became interested in environmental issues as a direct result of that.
Others weren't shown anything.
So again, there was no one common feature there at all.
And we tried to emphasize, oh, look, these people are not fruitcakes.
They're not mental, you know, they are just normal human beings.
A lot of them didn't say, I've had an encounter with an alien.
They just said, I had this most bizarre or this most unusual experience or series of experiences.
And I don't know what it is.
I think it's important.
And I think it's important that people know about it, but I don't know what it is.
And we were fortunate, certainly around about that time, because Nick Pope was becoming prominent from the Ministry of Defense, so that added an air of credibility.
We had Dr. John Mack as well, a Harvard professor, who again added an air of credibility.
So it did tempt one or two people to come out of the woodwork and go on the record, whereas previously they wouldn't.
And we were grateful for what they did.
And it's still a fascinating subject.
You said that a lot of these people found themselves in some way enhanced by the experience.
Did any of them find themselves, as you sometimes read, traumatised in an ongoing way?
Oh, well, certainly the young man or mentioning Perthelli in Wales, David, I mean, he was absolutely terrified by it as well, Howard.
But in an ongoing way.
Oh, absolutely, yes.
I'll give you an example.
You know, I went back many, many, many months after this had happened, and I asked him to take me to the area where it happened, just so I could take some photographs.
And he was petrified.
In the end, he had to go and have hypnotherapy.
Not regressive hypnosis, but hypnotherapy, because he was having nightmares about it.
It scared the, you know, you talked to him about his music or his girlfriend or his job, and he was just like any other young lad with long hair.
But then you talk about this subject, and his whole personality was changed.
You know, he would shake, he would change smoke.
Whilst he talked to me about it, he didn't like doing it.
And when Without Consent came out, I sent most of the people in the book, I sent them a copy, and I sent this young man a copy.
And I think it was four years before he read it.
You know, he just couldn't confront it.
He just couldn't confront it.
And again, you know, make of that what you will, Howard, you know, but that's the kind of effect it had on him.
And Philip, you know, I didn't know that much about you before we had this conversation, but you're pretty unique in the amount of research in this country that you've done.
So I'm getting to a point here, don't worry.
The point is this.
One of the things I read online about you is that you're a bit of an unsung hero, and people like Nick Pope, who is internationally known, and others in this country, get all the limelight, and you don't.
I'm not saying that's so or that isn't so, but how do you feel when people say that about you?
Well, it's very flattering, but, you know, thank you very much, you know, but with a great respect, you know, Nick is the man from the ministry, or was, now retired from the MOD.
I know him very well.
I have the greatest respect for him.
I personally don't have a problem with that at all.
You know, I didn't enter into this subject for any personal gain.
I entered into it because of My curiosity, and that curiosity is still there, Howard.
I want to know.
I've had lots of the questions I had as a young man have been answered, but by no means them all.
And, you know, the more you get involved, the more questions you seem to have.
You told me that you're in your late 50s, and a lot of people who do this kind of stuff seem to be there or thereabouts.
Do you worry about how this research will be taken forward in future generations?
Are there young people coming forward just as interested as you?
Yeah, I think there are some.
And what I've made it an effort down the years is to try and encourage the next generation to get involved.
I mean, I've lectured at schools, for example, in the past, and I'm talking high schools.
And they ask more intelligent questions than anybody.
But there are young people, like there are in any subject, and this subject, it goes in peaks and troughs in the levels of interests, and I'm sure that will continue to happen.
But I remember working with a young lady at a high school in America, and she wanted to write an essay about this, so I gave her some pointers.
So I've tried to encourage wherever I can, and I will continue to do so.
Well, you put some very good stories across very well, and you sound totally sincere about your work, Philip.
Let's talk quickly about the new book, and we'll talk, I think, on another edition in more detail about the subject.
But the new book is, and it's only just out, UFOs over Poland.
And it's a bit of a co-production.
You're involved with a Polish author about this, yeah?
Yeah, I mean, I've not written any of it, I've edited it.
You know, the author, Peter, speaks very good English, but, you know, writing is a different matter.
His written English is pretty good.
But I've edited a couple of magazines down the years, and Peter wrote a couple of articles for us, which I found, you know, fascinating.
And again, you know, when we're dealing with a subject like this, Howard, we tend to concentrate on what's happened in the West because, you know, we all speak English and we can read it.
And it's quite clear that certainly with my involvement with things in Russia, for example, that I knew that there's a vast amount of information out there that we're not aware of simply because of the language barrier.
True, and there are many, many people, including young people, in places like Poland, massively interested.
How do I know this?
My hairdresser, Paulina, locally where I live, she's Polish, very nice, very intelligent woman.
She's 25, and she started, she didn't know that I do this show or anything about me particularly.
She started to talk about all of these things and how fascinating she found them.
And she'd heard some stories herself in Poland.
So I know that there is tremendous interest there.
Well, absolutely.
I mean, Peter sent me a manuscript probably about 18 months ago asking if he knew anyone that might be interested.
He's had his own work published in his own country, of course.
And I read it and I thought, you know, this is fascinating stuff.
And a couple of colleagues encouraged me to set up self-publishing the technology that we have today with print on demand and all that kind of thing.
So I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it.
And so middle of this year, I got on with editing it and I took the plunge.
I formed our own little title called Flying Disc Press.
And Peter's book, UFOs Over Poland, The Land of High Strangeness, is the first of the titles that I'm going to publish.
And it's out now and it's had some terrific reviews already.
I've got the news release, the press release for it here.
And if I may say so, it's a great and detailed press release.
Well, you know, I get these things for a living across my desk all the time.
It says here, the book is peppered with many bizarre and anomalous sightings, and I found the Novini landing, Novini landing of 1943-44 intriguing to say the least.
Talk to me about that.
Well, again, you know, we've all heard of, you know, crashes at Roswell or landings at Rendlesham, and the debate of them seems to be never ending.
But there's, you know, Poland has its equivalent.
And what you find when you read this information, not just from Poland, Howard, but from other countries, again, it's different.
It's not, you know, we talked about commonalities, but we also tend to forget the differences that happen.
For example, when I mentioned Foreign Age back in 1987, the beings seen there weren't your typical little alien grey guys with the big eyes.
These were seven foot tall with small heads, you know, and Poland has its own equivalent of that.
When you see the cover of UFOs over Poland, you will see this strange creature on the front where its head looks like one big eye.
And it's human, but it is based on one of the encounters in the book.
So, you know, and that goes throughout, you know, Peter writes of sightings in early history, right the way through the 1900s, prior to the Kenneth Arnold sighting in 1947, right the way through to today's modern Poland.
You know, it's no longer the little sort of Soviet offshoot.
It has arisen from the ashes of the former Soviet bloc, so to speak, in many instances.
And it's not, you know, definitive.
It is a positive history of the UFO subject in Poland.
Are there still people in Novini who, I hope I pronounced that properly, who have recollections of this?
It is a long time ago now.
Absolutely.
I mean, you know, we're also talking about other things that have not...
One of the things that Peter has made an effort to do is to go and try and track down the original source, like we did with Without Consent.
I mean, I remember travelling with Malcolm Robinson up to Scotland to speak to Robert Taylor of the Livingston incidents, you know, famous, probably Scotland's most famous encounter, and we spoke to him face to face.
He's sadly no longer with us, so I'm glad we did it.
And Peter's done that wherever he's had the opportunity and continues to do so.
But you see, we have modern technology now.
You see, Howard, you know, you don't necessarily have to go and speak to them face to face on your smartphone, can't you?
Or Skype or whatever.
So there are shortcuts you can take today.
Okay, and one of just quickly, and I think we ought to do a whole show about this, and maybe we'll get Peter the author on himself as well.
So, let's pencil that in for quite early in the new year if we can.
But there are also talk in the book, apparently, about things that happened over and indeed under the Baltic Sea.
Well, yeah, I mean, again, you know, we're all aware of the Baltics.
And like we've mentioned here, and in certainly other areas around the world, there's tens of little hotspots like the Dales, like Bonniebridge in Scotland, like Warminster in Wiltshire, and Poland has its own equivalent, if you like.
And Paul calls some of them anomalous zones, but we call them window areas here.
It's the same thing.
And you find in these areas, Howard, that they tend to have a whole raft of paranormal phenomena.
Not just UFOs, but ghosts, poltergeists, myths, legends, all in this one area or one locale.
And of course, somewhere like the Baltic, we've got the Baltic Sea as well.
You have things not just on the land, you have it on the sea and underneath.
So-called unidentified submersible objects.
Absolutely.
And we touch on that as well.
And again, it's another aspect of the whole subject that is little known about.
So we mention it in the book, and it is absolutely fascinating.
I mean, Peter does speak good English, so if you want to interview him, you might have a problem.
Okay, well, look, we need to get that going.
But look, Tricia Robertson, my good friend in Scotland, who introduced us, said that you're a great talker and you and I would be able to, as we say here, talk for Britain, and we can certainly do that.
So we've only scratched the surface, Philip Mantle.
And thank you very much indeed for bearing up with me and my flu as we do this recording.
We have to do this again.
One question for you.
This has been a lifelong interest for you.
We've been on this earth for a similar kind of number of years.
If you were to meet a so-called alien, if he was standing in your living room, what would you want to ask him or her?
That's a good question.
Maybe I'd say, you know, do you like the option pudding?
Nice one, Philip Mantle.
That's a great answer to my very difficult question, I think.
I don't think I could answer that question.
So that was excellent.
Thank you.
Philip Mantle, if anybody wants to read about you and your work and your publishing ventures, is there a website they can go to?
We've got a blog, but if you're interested in UFO WhatsApp or Poland or any of my books, they'll just find them on Amazon.
That's the easiest way to do it.
I'm on Facebook as well, Howard, so I'm easy to find.
And you're very well represented on the search engines.
I saw that this morning when I checked.
So Philip Mantle, M-A-M-T-L-E.
And Philip with one L, isn't it?
It's one L, yes.
Philip, lovely to talk with you.
Thank you very much indeed.
Give my love to North Yorkshire.
My pleasure.
What an absolute discovery that man has turned out to be.
Philip Mantle is his name.
And as he said, you can find him just by searching him, really.
Thank you very much indeed for bearing with me.
I think the back end of my flu is beginning to abate.
But I'm sorry if I haven't quite sounded like me.
And I have to tell you, throughout this recording, I've been very much affected by the news that as I record this and things may change, Art Bell is stepping down from the microphone for reasons that I completely understand.
But Art, if you are happening to hear this, and I know that you do listen to me, and look, I'll tell you, I'll confide in you, my listener, that Art and I have had some conversations over the last six months.
He's always been my inspiration, and I want to hear him back.
And if I can be part of anything that he does in the future, wow, that would be fantastic.
But let's hope it isn't over.
You know, they say it's not over till it is.
So let's hold out some hope.
Until next we meet here on the Unexplained.
Thank you to Adam Colwell, my webmaster, a creative hotspot, and please stay safe.
Stay calm.
Above all, stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
▲
Export Selection