All Episodes
Previous Next
June 7, 2016 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:00:25
Edition 255 - Possession and Robotics

Paranormal investigator Stephen Mera on Possession - and (thanks to talkRADIO) ProfessorKevin Warwick on Robotics/Cybernetics...

| 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.
The original and the online version here reaching you internationally.
If you've been in touch recently, and I'm going to do some shout-outs for you soon, thank you very much for getting in touch.
If you want to get in touch, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use the show.
The way to do it is to go to the website theunexplained.tv, click on the link, and then you can send me a message and make a guest suggestion or whatever you want to do there.
Tell me how you think the show is being done and getting good response as well on the radio show, which is on air, separate from this podcast, which has been running for 10 years.
The radio show is new, and it's on talk radio in the UK at 10pm on Sunday nights.
And the best items from that, I will always try and put on here as well.
But, you know, this show will have different guests, this podcast that we've been doing, and will be done in a different way.
In fact, in the way that it's always been done, because I think you like that.
So, two guests on this show from the radio show, Professor Kevin Warwick, a man who is absolutely at the cutting edge of cybernetics and robotics.
He's been chipped.
He's personally had chips active in his own system, which he will talk about.
Truly remarkable stuff, Kevin Warwick.
I first met him when I was on the air in Berkshire, UK, and he was at Reading University.
He is part of Reading University, where he's absolutely driving forward this research there.
So he's the second item in the show, and the first item is paranormal expert Stephen Mirror, and we're going to be talking about demonic possession.
I'll talk more about that in just a moment.
But before all of that, if I can find them, let's do some shout-outs.
And thank you very much if you've been in touch recently through the website, theunexplained.tv.
Alistair in Derby got your email this morning, says, Hi, Howard.
Brilliant show.
I listen in my car on my long drives to Skelmersdale from Derby.
I watched an interview with Larry Warren about the Rendlesham Forest case and would like to have him on the show.
I've been trying to get an update from him.
He has been on a past edition of the podcast.
If you go back through the archives, maybe somewhere around edition 35 or so.
So he's there, but we're trying to get him back on.
Sue Brooke in York, nice to hear from you, Sue.
Some positive feedback on the radio show.
You think it has a lovely magazine feel about it.
Lots of interesting subjects.
Thank you.
Ian Blackham, thank you for your email.
Shad says, interesting conversation on the radio show about cybernetics, which are about to hear here on the online show.
And interesting thoughts that you had too.
Very much my own thoughts, Shad.
Thank you.
Gina Mariposa in California listens to all of the online shows and a big fan of the unexplained.
Gina, thank you very much.
Damien Goodwin in Swanage, Dorset, is catching up on the show right now on holiday in Croatia.
You lucky man, lovely place.
I went there years and years and years ago with my parents.
Simon in Coventry loves the show.
Thanks, Simon.
Howard, Clive Middleton, says, if you want to look into a really interesting reinterpretation of history, check the Megaliths website.
I will, and thank you.
Lee, Lee, I'm glad that you're getting the help that you need for your tinnitus.
Please keep me in touch about that, okay?
You know, I'm a fellow sufferer and always interested.
Matt in Cornwall says, I've been an avid listener for more than seven years and often save up to two or three shows to keep me entertained on long car journeys.
I live in Penzance, nice place.
I'd like to live there.
Jeremy in San Diego, there's another place I'd like to live.
Recently found your show, wanted to reach out and say thank you for producing such an interesting program.
I've had many paranormal encounters.
If you want to tell me about them, Jeremy, on the radio show or send me an email about them, like to know.
Sergio in Illinois, stumbled across your show on my phone.
No complaints here.
Love what you do.
Thank you, Sergio.
Larry Lamarca in Louisiana says, as I was listening to your interview with Rob Guttrow, my cat Buffy was lying on the floor a couple of feet away.
I'd given her a couple of small bits of chicken.
Although she was not looking at me, I said, did you eat your chicken?
I never said her name, but she got up, walked over to the dish and began to eat the chicken.
And Rob Gutrow was talking about the way that animals communicate with us and us with them, even from the afterlife.
So interesting stuff, Larry.
Thank you.
Ryan McDermott in Australia's Outback says, keep it up, mate.
Thank you, Ryan.
Listens to this show on his big drives through the outback.
One of these days, I'd love to join you on one of those.
I love Australia.
And it's been too many years since I was last there.
And graphic designer Ryan Padgett, thank you very much.
I greatly appreciate your email.
Right, two guests on this show.
Like I say, Professor Kevin Warwick at the cutting edge of cybernetics and robotics, we'll hear about his work taken from my radio show.
And direct from London right now here on the podcast, Stephen Mearer, on the back of a poll that was done this week, which was itself done on the back of a new TV drama called Outcast, which premiered in the UK on the 7th of June, all about somebody possessed from childhood, apparently, by demonic spirits, demonic entities.
So the poll connected with this TV show says that a quarter of us believe in paranormal activity, with more than one in 10 saying they believe people can be possessed by something evil.
In fact, more than one in 10 think they know somebody who may be possessed, with 3% saying they believe their partner is possessed, and 2% think they're bosses.
I've had a few bosses like that.
Well, to talk about the survey and demonic possession, we have an expert on paranormality, Stephen Mearer, paranormal expert, founder of Phenomena magazine, and also founder of the scientific establishment of parapsychology.
So Kevin Warwick coming up after Stephen Mearer.
And Stephen, thank you very much for coming on The Unexplained.
Talk to me first of all, Stephen, because I've done some research about you, but you were a new name until today to me.
You've done a lot of paranormal research.
So talk to me about you first.
Well, I started in the subject 33 years back.
Prior to that, I was an engineer.
I got my electrical engineering degree, and then I went into the Royal Engineers.
And then I was an engineer, a telecommunications officer for NATO in Weathersfields in Essex.
After leaving that, I had an interest in the subject.
So I followed my interest, went to university, obtained my psychology degree in behavioral sciences, did a number of parapsychological Courses and then I was introduced to a number of groups, conducted investigations throughout the years, got involved in television work quite a number of years ago from being behind the camera to being in front of it.
And then it just rocketed from then on.
I've done it now.
I do investigations all over the world.
International lecturer, I've wrote four or five books and basically at the principle of the subject of paranormal phenomena.
People say that you're an engineer, right?
And they'll say, what's a man of technology doing trying to investigate something that is so nebulous and out there?
But actually, when you do these investigations these days, there's an awful lot of technology involved.
Absolutely.
It's certainly become beneficial, actually, at this moment in time, the way technology is.
And of course, you know, we are aware that sometimes, you know, certain equipment does suppress phenomena.
We're also aware that, you know, some of most of the equipment that we do see on television isn't utilized right in the field of paranormal research.
Very little of it is worthy of scientific valuation.
And that's the downside to it.
But we do have to employ a scientific mind.
And of course, it teaches us the process that to look at things rationally, to evaluate situations, to replicate if possible, and try and find out answers.
And of course, you know, to publicize those when we do find rational explanations.
How do you feel, Stephen, about the number of all over the world?
I mean, nice people.
I've spoken to someone on this show, but happy amateurs who do paranormal research, form little groups in their own communities and think they're doing a good job.
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, you know, we've got two sides of the paranormal here.
We've got paranormal research and you've got the guys that are just conducting some investigation.
I mean, the bottom line is, is that most organizations and groups throughout the United Kingdom, at least, when they get involved in paranormal research, they go into a location, they try and be as scientific as they possibly can.
But when dealing with people and traumatic experiences, that is where it's usually the line is drawn.
It's because what type of assistance and help can they offer those people?
It's not about just going into a location, taking the old photograph or video, and then shouting it from the rooftops if you think you've got something good.
You know, because sometimes you may be contacted by people that are having traumatic experiences and they might need some type of psychological evaluation.
If you're dealing with companies, and I've done 17 years of corporate investigations throughout the United Kingdom, I think I was the only one in the country dealing with that.
When you say corporate investigations, what are they?
I was employed to investigate, to come up with explanations regarding paranormal disturbances for businesses, establishments, the Ministry of Defence, police authorities, tenants, landlords, all types of different companies and things.
I've done that for 17 years and that was on a confidential basis.
Even the police?
I've been involved, yeah.
I've been in Greater Manchester Police, CID, Southampton Crime Force.
I've been involved in a number of cases that you may consider had a paranormal involvement.
Right, so you were saying that there's a big difference between doing it for individuals who may need separate psychological assessment and doing it for corporations or the police or whatever.
Absolutely, yeah, because we've got to properly evaluate, properly document.
I mean, you know, we've got to prove the conclusions that we reach and how we reach them and rationalize as best we possibly can.
And if we do, we have to document that and present our findings to our clients.
And our clients are the ones that have employed us to do so.
And because it's of that nature and we're working for them, we have to seem to do as best as we possibly can.
And if sometimes, if we don't have an explanation, we have to certainly just say it as it is, you know, that there isn't an explanation.
But sometimes we find rational explanations.
In some cases, it could be like a company that having paranormal disturbances that the staff won't work there late at night, and that's a problematic thing for management levels.
And of course, public relations officers tend to get in touch with us regarding those matters.
So we try and help in regarding making that environment a little bit better, interviewing the staff and educating them about phenomena, how to deal with it.
So yeah, it can be certainly problematic for businesses.
I have told the story on this show before about my dad, who when he left the police, became the regional security manager in the northwest of England.
In fact, across the whole north of England from Hull to Liverpool and, you know, all points east and west.
He worked for Comet, the electrical people, and they had a great big warehouse in Liverpool, which was based in an old theatre on Bold Street in Liverpool.
Beautiful old Victorian theatre.
Now, this place was seriously haunted, and as a kid on a Saturday night, my dad used to have to go down there as a favour to the security man with his big Alsatian dog.
My dad and I would go and stand inside the warehouse based in this old theater, and the dog would go out for a walk and, you know, do whatever it had to do.
And then we'd just relieve him on a Saturday night.
It was a trip out for us.
But this building was seriously haunted.
And my father, who was, you know, ex-policeman, very rational guy, told me the stories of how the dog would refuse to go up to what used to be the balcony, the circle in the theater, but was now a storage area and offices.
And there was said to reside the ghost of a girl who'd committed suicide because she'd been locked inside the building very late at night and got scared and threw herself off the balcony.
Very weird things happened in that building.
In the old days when television sets were great big, heavy things, they used to throw themselves around, doors would slam, and the biggest, most telling thing was, and I saw this myself, I was only 16, 17, this great big, hairy, toothy Alsatian dog would refuse to go up those stairs.
So are those the kind of things that you look at?
You might even have heard of this case, but are those of the kind of things that you look into?
Well, there's certainly attributes towards power normal.
I mean, for us, it's a matter of finding the evidence, you know.
I mean, of course, we end up with lots of people's accounts, witness testimonies, which are interesting, you know.
But we try and find as much evidence as we possibly can and see what we can utilise as replicated phenomena so it can be documented.
In many cases, yeah, we do find footprints of what we rightly refer to as a haunting for that nature.
Sometimes a little bit worse.
I have most of the cases I take on board are usually a haunting associated, but we're very, very picky about the cases we are involved in.
The Science of Establishment at Power Psychology assess the investigations they take part in.
Very, you know, on most occasions, we don't involve, we don't get involved.
We kind of work on the outskirts, should we say.
We keep a low level.
We don't get involved in too much high priority or high media type cases.
But you know, we are called in to assist on many occasions.
And when that happens, then, yeah, we look, we're trying to find as much evidence as we possibly can, and then we're trying to sort of see if it could be replicated in some way for further testing.
At the end of the day, we want to advance the field of parapsychology, you know, and grow and learn in this subject because we do is a little bit static, the subject, and we do need to advance and come up with new methodologies of investigating it.
So, what is the latest techniques that people are using?
And I know people use measures of temperature and measures of electromagnetic radiation and that kind of stuff.
What's the cutting edge of research in this now?
I'm telling you what the cutting edges.
It's that cutting, it's not even documented.
It's what you refer to as the advanced paranormal mechanics.
And rather than looking at the field of paranormal phenomena, which for you and I know exists because we've experienced it, and I have no problems with anybody out there who don't believe in that type of thing because they haven't experienced it, that's fine.
Because I started in this subject as a sceptic until I experienced something which kind of changed my life and viewpoint from then on.
And of course, once you have experiences these type of things, you know that you know something is going on, something is real.
And for me, you know, the study at this moment in time, which is the advancing, is the paranormal mechanics, is looking at the little bits to try and make the picture, as opposed to looking at phenomena and trying to just work it out in general.
Looking at the pieces of the puzzle, in other words, how does it work?
How does it do things?
Things like transplacement, for an example, which is direct communication to the individuals like yourself or myself when recording equipment doesn't get it, but we clearly hear or see something.
This is referred to as transplacement.
I mean, people can actually hear words without bypassing completely the eardrum.
We know that from something referred to as a cochlear device now, which fastens the part of the brain for people who have hearing impediments or have been born deaf.
We know that they can hear words now and it completely bypasses the eardrum.
So, we do know that the phenomena of transplacement could very well be using the same method.
So, we are getting closer, but we have to look at the little bits to make the bigger picture, I think, now, rather than looking at just the subjects and saying, okay, this is paranormal phenomenon and how does it work?
You know, we've taken it apart, dissecting it, and looking at the little things.
I think we've got to sort of build the picture up again to study the field a little bit more in depth.
Before we talk about possession, my listeners love stories, love real case studies.
I wonder if you've got one or two that have really scared you and baffled you over the years.
Well, you know, for me, the turning point was in 1996.
I mean, I was a sceptic.
I have to admit, I openly will admit it.
I was trained to do so and be so.
And in 1996, I was employed by Rochdale City Council in the UK in regarding a family who were being plagued by what I can only describe it as a poltergeist infestation and physical manifestations of water outpourings from unknown sources, from, you know, just seem to manifest.
When I was there on one particular occasion during an investigation, I was sat in the rear bedroom on the end of a double bed with two other investigators listening to the house sounds, just trying to get a feel of what those sounds are generated from the house.
We heard a very deep, rasping male breath, a few of them, come from behind from the darkness.
I looked to my left, and then there was, I sat between two female investigators, Carol and Val.
And I looked to my left and Carol was giving me that look to say, Well, I'm not looking behind, you know, you're the guy here.
And I looked to my right, and of course, Val was giving me the same look.
And I thought, okay, here we go.
I'm going to have to turn around and have a look.
I'm going to have to lean over my shoulder, stare into the darkness, and find out what this rasping male voice is, you know, this breathing I can hear coming from behind me.
Not a pleasant experience.
There was a little hat in it, you know, I was a little bit, you know, a little bit freaked.
And just by the, I was turning in the process of turning round when my shoulders just kind of edging over.
And then suddenly, next minute, I'm four feet away.
I'm four feet across the bedroom on top of a dressing table.
And I don't, I'm a big guy.
You know, it took a lot.
I don't even know how I got there.
Hang on.
So something upended you and threw you across the room four feet?
I was sat on the bed and next minute I'm four feet across the room.
Don't know how I got there, to be honest.
And I'm in pain.
First thing I do is I grab my back.
My back was in pain and I ran out.
I just ran out.
I panicked, to be honest.
I ran, I ran through it.
I got out of there.
I ran into the lounge, switched the lights on, and I was holding my back in pain.
People were rushing to my aid, trying to think out what was going on.
Quick behind my heels was Val and Carol, and who saw what had happened.
And they said, one minute you were on the bed next to me, you just kind of got flung off it.
Lifted up my shirt.
It was very large, bruised, peering, very red, very sore.
And I don't know what happened, but I don't know if I was thumped.
But in hindsight, being an electrical engineer, what I can say is that there were two things that took place.
It was like a physical punch and an electric shock.
For anybody who's been an electrical engineer, they'll know when it gets in.
When you get a belt now and again, it repels you.
You know, it throws you away and it was like that feeling at the same time being punched.
Not a pleasant experience.
And to be honest, that was my first experience of something I can truly say was something power normal.
And that was a political infestation.
And how did that resolve itself in the end for the people who lived there?
Well, do you know, I was actually, that was the first time I was actually thinking of leaving the phenomena.
Oh, boy.
Leaving the whole thing, just walking away and do something different because it really did bother me.
For that family, we ended up having to relocate them, you know, even though that the phenomena did follow them for three weeks into the new home.
But the disturbances were that bad.
And we got, you know, it was just priests were called in, we got scientific evaluation and analysis conducted on the water formings, which proved that it wasn't tap water.
And the conductivity level of the water was just immense, absolutely immense.
It was referred to as a Rochdale Poltergeist case.
I recently released a book on it, which is out to purchase.
Do you know, it was a fascinating case that turned my life upside down, to be honest, because for the first time I realized, for the very first time, after spending so, so many years in the subject and rationalizing things that there is actually phenomena and it is real.
And of course, I understand what people are experiencing when they experience that now.
But I was a skeptic up till then, you know, and I completely understand from a sceptical point of view that people don't believe until they experience it.
And I wouldn't dumb.
I don't believe in believing in believing anything you've never experienced because it's very, very difficult to do so.
For me, it changed my life.
I know that this type of paranormal phenomenon is a real thing.
Even though it might be rare, it is a real phenomenon.
It does take place.
Just so much as the rarities of exorcisms and possessions.
I mean, recent surveys show that one in 10 people know what exorcisms are and possessions.
I mean, Fox TV have done quite a lengthy statistical survey on these things and found out that maybe one in 11 people would report incidents such as to a priest if they believed any required an exorcism.
But I believe the theoretic of that is, you know, logistically they're only about 12% of them are successful as far as I'm concerned in regarding exorcisms.
You know, usually takes more than one go.
We don't tend to hear about them very often.
But what is surprising is that one in 10 people know what possessions really consist of and exorcisms.
And that's basically, I can say, obviously has come from media interest and people, you know, being taught those things as time goes on.
Right.
Interesting, the survey, and speaks to me very much of the work of a man, I'm not sure if you've heard of him, but was quite famous in his day, and his day was about 15, 20 years ago, Father Malachi Martin in America.
Now, Father Malachi Martin, former Catholic priest, very critical of in his later years the Catholic Church, but a man who would be called in in New York or wherever he was required to do removal of demons from people and places.
And the way that he talked about it, and a lot of his stuff is still online, and I interviewed a Canadian man who'd spent years interviewing and researching him before his death.
But the way he describes this is often a fight and sometimes a physical fight with entities to remove them from the person, very much pitting himself against it or them.
Yes.
Yeah, a physical, yeah, absolutely, for sure.
I mean, of course, it's not everybody's cup of tea, you know, I mean, you know, I mean, there's certainly a procedure of learning, being capable, certainly having capabilities, but also being able to invoke what you might refer to as heavenly power, where you become a conduit or channeler for that phenomenon to assist in the ridding of these possessions to people, these hosts, which are hosting them.
Well, he was a great believer, and this is a direct quote from him, that Satanism is everywhere and that the users of Satanism in this modern world were much more apparent than we would believe.
Yes, absolutely.
I agree completely.
That is very much true.
I mean, I've even interviewed Satanists and they gave me their aspect and their belief and so on and so forth.
It is, absolutely.
And also the power of belief is immense.
We do know, proven scientifically now, that we can influence the physical body and our environment simply through the process of belief.
And of course, we've got to start looking into that a little bit more in depth in parapsychological terms, because we do as a connection, a direct connection in association to belief and physical conditions, physical phenomena taking place.
You know, for me, it's a fascinating subject.
I've only been involved in 33 years.
It shows how rare four cases of what you might refer to as a, you know, as a possession type case, where, you know, priests and churches have been involved.
And of course, it's highly confidential what work they do.
And there has been times when I've had been able to cross the line when I haven't.
Simply be the reason is I was warned many years ago that if you are involved in exorcisms and you follow right through, that if you are, if you become recognized, that they know your name and such a thing, and do you really want to get that involvement?
For me, it was, yes, I have a limit because I have to go back and live a normal life with a family, in a home, where these priests, you know, they tend to live, you know, with religion on a 24-hour basis.
Some come from certain areas where they live at locations like that.
For me, it's a bit different.
You know, I have to have limitations.
And I completely understand that.
I saw that.
I've interviewed investigators.
I can only attribute to that.
It's absolutely something to some of the.
I can completely relate to that.
I've interviewed a couple of investigators who are very concerned and have to be very tough because sometimes they take things home.
Sometimes I'm sure people who work in butchers' shops might take a slice of bacon home to dry or whatever.
These people who do this sometimes take home aspects of the evil personality or whatever it is they're chucking out of the victim of a possession.
It is.
And I've explained to people, you know, when you pay attention to the subject, the subject pays attention to you.
And of course, sometimes, you know, you talk about taking your work home with you.
You know, it can happen.
It can happen, and this is the problem.
I mean, for me, you know, when I'm involved in high severity and high frequency cases of such, I mean, I've recently just done one in Seattle, a diabolical haunting.
And, you know, it can be very traumatic, you know, and it does invade your dreams.
It's not good for your health.
I admit, there are downsides to this, but at the same time, such a massive reward to helping people.
And that's the fascination of the subject.
I mean, that is why I'm kind of hooked into it and have been since the last 33 years.
But it's also very interesting to note that it's very, very difficult to portray on television screens.
You know, I mean, it's certainly a lot of information which is so sensitive that it doesn't get portrayed as part of the possession or the exercise that are carried out.
It would seem that only a certain amount of information is put out to television.
And I couldn't, And rightly so, because it can be very tongue-in-cheek in some cases.
Nevertheless, though, it's very, very difficult to portray something in a realistic manner because it is a subject, it's a little bit taboo still, but not so much as it used to be.
But it's very little understood.
And for a TV show to be able to show something where you know that they've actually done the work, you know, they've done the research and they've hit home on numerous occasions.
Because, for instance, the Outcast TV show, I've been lucky enough to see a few episodes.
One of the first things I saw was the compelling, or what you might remember is the compelment levitation.
And that is a very real thing.
It does tend to happen at that time of compelling.
And they picked up on that.
So I know that they've done the research.
I know that they picked up on some facts here and actually portrayed it correctly, which is a breath of fresh air for you and I, because a lot of TV shows on the subject paranormal don't show things exactly as they usually are.
But nevertheless, though, it also has a really good storyline, which is really good, which helps the TV show.
10 episodes in total for season one, already been signed for season two at this early stage, so we know it's going to be successful.
And for me, it was interesting to learn that it's done by the same guys that made that very successful TV show, The Walking Dead.
And of course, you'll be able to see that immediately within the way it's filmed and perceived.
It's got that undertone of The Walking Dead to it.
And you can certainly tell it's done by the same guys.
I believe it's going to be a very successful.
And it's got that wonderful star Philip Glennis doing that we all know and love from Life on Mars.
He's very well known.
Yeah, very, very hard thing to portray.
Now, when we talk about people who've been possessed or say that they've been possessed, you know, I always go back to Malachi Martin and his writings.
And he says victims tend to undergo a startling change of personality.
They may become unpredictable, violent, treacherous.
They may humiliate their families, plot against their friends, lie to their colleagues.
They have become alien entities.
Now, if we believe that, and if that is so, what can cause that?
What has got into them?
Literally, what has got into them?
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, there's old references of like this, like, what's got under your skin, what's got into them.
I mean, you know, it could have been a literal question, should we say?
You know, I mean, if we go back many years, you know, demonic possession was noted very much so in sudden characteristical changes.
However, we have to look at that and say, could there be psychological conditions that could take effect?
You know, I mean, it's interesting to note, you know, such things such as schizophrenia, which causes sudden changes in behavior patterns.
And that in the early days, in third world countries, schizophrenia was treated as some type of spiritual invasion.
And in fact, when conducting certain religious exorcisms, they believed they actually cured individuals, which makes it very interesting.
You have to start questioning it then.
How much are, should we say, our psychological problems and how much are something else?
It becomes a very grey area, but very interesting.
Totally interesting.
One of the fields of research that Malachi Martin got involved in was people who kill.
And he looked at the case of 70s serial killer David Berkowitz, and he called it a case of perfect possession and discovered that he had indeed been a Satanist and had been part of a coven.
And he believed, I think from what I read, that that is what got into him.
Well, certainly personality disorders are noted.
I mean, one of the biggest things that we do note from any forms of demonic possession is the sudden behavior changes where they obtain information that they shouldn't know of, especially when they can speak several languages.
I mean, there was an 11-year-old boy that could speak four languages.
I mean, he'd only known English, and yet he could speak four languages.
And this is something which is quite remarkable because it would seem that they have a knowledge base of things they shouldn't know of.
And that's what makes it very interesting because from a psychological point of view, you have to ask the question, how does an 11-year-old boy know how to speak three other languages?
I have no idea.
The only suggestions I can make are untoward ones and it's something to do with something paranormal.
But there again, the mind is an amazing thing.
And it is such, as you rightly say, it's such a grey area between what is mental disturbance, pure and simple, and what is drawing in something from outside.
Yeah, we've got to tread very lightly on the subjects like this because when I'm called in, we've got to psychologically assess.
Nine times out of ten, we're walking away with, yeah, we're happy to say this psychological.
You know, people can have their bodies going to spasm, which makes it look like they're being possessed.
And they can talk in tongues sometimes, which doesn't really make sense.
It doesn't mean anything.
But, you know, people can think more to it than that.
You know, people can attribute paranormal things when they're not taking place.
And of course, all sorts of things.
You know, they can come very quickly come to the conclusion, you know, their son or daughter or somebody they know is possessed when there could be simply rational explanations.
However, if we conduct all those tests and the conclusion is that we do not know, there's got to be an external force here, then we have to look into that and say, okay, what could that be?
And how does it work?
And of course, when churches get involved, you say, okay, we've got involvement from the church.
They're going to conduct an exorcism.
We don't know how successful that'd be.
From our statistics, it's only about 12% of them.
They had to reconduct them.
And we'll monitor it.
But how much do we get that involvement?
Because like I said, when a priest turns around to you and stares you straight in the eye and says, you're welcome to come into the room if you want to.
But as soon as they know your name, they'll never forget.
You have to question, do you really want to take that extra step?
And if you do so, because at the end of the day, we've all got lives to live and people that we care about.
So why have you taken that extra step?
Simple for fascination and foolishly as well in some cases.
Because don't get me wrong, you know, I've been plagued with bad experiences and nightmares after dealing with traumatic and diabolical hauntings.
It takes a long time to sort of, you know, it wears heavy.
But my involvement with trying to help people is my Ultimate goal, you know, to try and help anything, anybody with a case like this is for me the most rewarding thing.
The downside of it is that, yes, sometimes there are, you know, your involvement can weigh heavy and you can have disturbances and upset in your life.
But it is a learning curve.
And I think we'll put on this planet to learn as much as we possibly can.
I'm certainly trying to do so, you know, beyond what we're taught throughout schools and universities and beyond that.
Are you surprised, shocked, disturbed, whatever, by the findings of this survey that say 3% of people believe that their partner might be possessed and 2% think their boss might be possessed.
Now, I can certainly, in some cases, think, well, maybe my past bosses may have had something going on.
But your partner, the person that you're living with, that's a remarkable finding.
It is a remarkable finding.
The first thing is that, you know, nobody's going to know anybody better than their own partner.
And of course, but then at the same time, you could easily misinterpret actions.
You know, people do have bad days.
They snap out at other people.
It doesn't mean that they've been possessed, just means that, you know, that, I mean, some people will see that as a sudden characteristic change.
You know, but to other people, it could simply be it's just a natural, intrinsic psychological reaction to having a bad day, for an example, or a disagreement.
The problem at it is we live in a society today that, you know, it's getting harder and harder for people to communicate with each other, even partners, because we're invaded by communications, television, mobile phones, computers.
You know, communication levels are dropping.
And because this communications level is dropping, there's a lot less talking and communicating with our partners.
So, of course, there is obviously upset and, of course, misinterpretations of reactions, psychological reactions.
It could simply be, I mean, if we looked into that more deeply, we may find a lot more rational explanations to account for these statistics.
Nevertheless, though, we can never rule out the fact that, you know, maybe something untoward just sometimes is responsible for these type of disturbances, or you could say, or characteristic or behavioral changes.
Just finally, and intriguingly, this has occurred to me a few times lately.
These days, people, some of them anyway, feel disempowered.
You know, they feel the control of their lives is being lost.
It's being controlled by big corporations and forces outside them.
Does it appear to you that sometimes people, because of their feeling of weakness and disempowerment, might be turning to the occult these days?
And that would account for the fact that there seems to be more and more interest in it.
Absolutely.
I think you hit the nail right on the head there, Howard.
I mean, there is a huge influx of interest in the subject of the supernatural and the occult, be it from paganism, Satanism, all sorts of different types of things.
And of course, people will dabble and people will mess.
You know, they see what is taught.
What do we teach our kids these days?
Well, they can switch on the TV pretty much any day of the week, watch a paranormal TV show, and they see the lightheartedness of it, they see the entertainment value of it.
For them, it's no problem.
Let's go and get a Ouija board, let's go to some place, let's have a mess about.
It's all entertainment at the end of the day, you know.
But the live side of that, really, the realism of it is that something really untoward could happen.
Invocation, you know, 16% of cases that we've been involved in, which reached a diabolical, have had invocation through Ouija boards and things like that.
I don't say that it's empowered through the Ouija board or saints boards.
What I'm saying is, is that it's the right people under the right conditions in the right environment.
And if all those three all come together at the right time, sometimes you can switch a light on and things are attracted to that light.
And when that happens, then sometimes untoward things happen.
So what we're saying, and it's always a good watchword, is that anybody who thinks that it might be a good idea to get involved with these things needs to think once, needs to think twice, needs to think many times before they actually take that step.
You have to be sure of yourself in a thousand ways before you get involved, before you research.
What I mean by get involved is start to research.
That's for sure.
Absolutely.
And for anybody who wants to learn a little bit more, there's lots of information currently out on the, you know, all over the internet, you know, which they can study the field of the paranormal research and what we've obtained so far.
And of course, like I also mentioned on recent TV shows, there's not so many which are that accurate.
Outcast TV series, it's certainly a drama one.
It's very, very interesting.
If you are going to watch it, then I'd certainly leave a light on it.
Now, Stephen, if people want to know about you, Stephen Mira, where do they go online?
Where do they find out?
There's a number of things.
I mean, you can just Google my name, Steve Mera, M-E-R-A, and there's numerous different things that will pop up.
Some of those things will be on the director of Phenomena Magazine, which is the largest e-sign in the world.
It's distributed to 12 countries, 1.8 million downloaders a year.
And it's a magazine just designed for the format of the paranormal and research like that material.
They can go to the scientific establishment of power psychology's website, SEP.
They can just Google that.
Or Manchester's Association of Paranormal Investigation and Training.
Bit of a mouthful.
Don't say that when you've got a drink.
Stephen Merrill, thank you for that.
M-A-P-I-T.
That's based in Manchester.
It's an organization.
And of course, we have a lot of information on there.
Boy, a man of many activities, some of them paranormal.
Stephen, thank you so much for your time.
And let's keep in contact.
I'd love to have you back on here.
And thank you.
Yes, if you find my email address, we'll keep in contact.
Great.
And thank you to my friends at the Marketeers for making this interview possible.
Thanks very much, Stephen.
Mark Fennell.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Let's now cross to part of my radio show, Professor Kevin Warwick, who is a professor of cybernetics and robotics.
Truly interesting man.
Check him out online.
We talked about his work in cybernetics and robotics on my recent radio show.
And as part of this conversation, you will hear how he himself had a chip, not just one, but two, implanted for the purposes of research.
Amazing man, Professor Kevin Warwick.
We're going to be talking about cybernetics and robotics.
A lot of us, including me, are not entirely sure if those two things are complementary or completely different.
What's the difference between the two?
Well, I guess robotics can mean all sorts of different things to different people.
Is an aeroplane a robot?
Some people might think it is.
But I think the science fiction version of a robot clearly is a humanoid type machine.
So it looks a bit like a human, moves around, maybe even thinks a bit like a human.
Whereas the cybernetics element, and the cyborg is the epitome of that, is an entity that is part machine, part human.
So it's the biotechnology mix of the two.
Right, so these things take us to machine, although there are exceptions to that.
These things take us all the way back to childhood, because I'm guessing when you and I were kids, one of the things we might have been given for Christmas was a little robot that you could put a battery in or wind up, and that robot would clank around the carpet until it broke.
And then on the television, we'd turn the Avengers on, and one of their great villains were the cybernauts who were partly human, partly robotic villains.
Yes, well, this is all coming to life now.
I mean, one mixture which complicates things, one of the things we've done is to take brain cells either from rat embryos or literally human brain cells and to grow them in a little dish.
This is in an incubator.
You have to keep the temperature 37 degrees centigrade because this is living brain cells.
They link together and communicate as brain cells do, and then we put them in a robot body.
So they have a little body which, I mean, it's fairly simple things at the moment.
They're moving around trying to avoid obstacles and things like that.
But essentially, it is a robot, but it has a biological brain, which is quite a bit different, I think, but there again, maybe not from what you're talking about in things like the Avengers many years.
But this is for real, though.
So why would we want to do experiments like that?
Well, partly you've got a brain that you can then investigate with.
It's interacting with the real world.
You can potentially close down part of the brain as if somebody's having a stroke.
So the brain can have a stroke, this little brain.
It's a small model brain, as it were.
And then you can work out ways of trying to reinvigorate, add stem cells or add brain cells and see if you can get part of that brain working again.
Memories, trying to figure out what exactly memories are so you can play around with the brain as well as just looking at the whole issue of a robot that has a biological brain.
Now isn't this interesting?
A few weeks ago we had a guy on this show who was talking about reinvigorating people who had died or were close to death and helping their brains spark back to life.
And some of the people listening to the show thought the guy was a complete lunatic and really didn't buy it at all.
But from what you're saying, real science today is working in that direction.
Yes, I mean I wouldn't go the guy that you're talking about.
I wouldn't be able to support or otherwise in particular.
But yes, it's moving in that direction.
I mean, what I'm talking about is actual science is taking brain cells, growing them, and then giving them a technological body, which opens up all sorts of possibilities for humans in the future.
You know, maybe we can have a part technological body ourselves, as some people do in terms of prosthetics, but maybe we can all have a body, something like that, in the future that's partly technological.
Well, you know, Kevin, I saw, you might have seen it yourself, a program about a guy comparatively young with Alzheimer's this week.
It was a documentary, I think it was on BBC One, and they followed this guy over a number of years and watched his deterioration.
I mean, I have to say, it had me in floods of tears, and I'm sure the nation for his fortitude and bravery going through all of that.
And my thought as I watched that program unfold and watched him deteriorate and watched the family support him through it all was in this day and age, surely with the scientific ability we have, we must be able to come up with some kind of gizmo that could help this poor man's mind.
Well, I have to say, I'm frustrated by the slow pace of change.
And, you know, there's a lot more I think we could do.
A lot of neurological problems.
The Alzheimer's, you're mentioning their Parkinson disease is another one, epilepsy.
There's a whole range of them that affect people, not just older age, but as you're saying, younger people as well.
And they are horrific diseases, really.
And I think there is a lot more we could do now.
Technology is changing.
With Parkinson's disease, you can have deep brain stimulation.
This is electrodes that are put into the central area of the brain that apply electric current into the brain that counteract the effects of Parkinson disease.
The same sort of thing is being used for people who have severe depression as well.
So some things are being done, but the pace of change is a lot slower than certainly I would like, and I think a lot of others.
So when we talk about cybernetics, the harmonization of human beings with technology, it can have some very real positives.
I think some of us would worry about how far that would go.
You know, who would control that?
In the medical world, I think there's an enormous amount that can be done.
And I just mentioned some of those things.
Artificial intelligence, we may well come on to a bit more, but that can be used to actually understand some of the signals that are going on.
The human brain is extremely complex, but artificial intelligence is complex in itself and can be used to understand some of the signals that are going on and can then be used to help and assist and counteract some of the problem areas.
So there are lots of positives there, and therefore there's a drive to push it forward for therapeutic effects, helping people that have problems.
But clearly you're talking about technology that is starting to think for itself in ways that humans can't understand and therefore there are dangers associated with it.
And we can't, you know, it would be nice to put pink glasses on and say, oh, yes, isn't everything wonderful?
And just look at the positives.
But that wouldn't really be appropriate.
One has to be open and honest and say there are also potential negatives.
And, you know, that's what we need to try and explain to people.
I read some of the stuff on your website today or on the university's website talking about you.
And you said that we have to get involved in the philosophy of this.
It's not all technology.
Yeah, I mean, it depends where the AI, where in machine intelligence, where is used and how much power it's given.
One area that I would worry about, and I'm not the only one, would be in the military domain.
We hear about drones, which has a sort of a friendly tone to it.
These are pretty nasty fighting machines.
They have a lot of firepower on them, and they control themselves, essentially.
They're machines that are looking after themselves.
And it depends how much intelligence you give them.
And if you give them a fairness, But these are killing people.
That's what they're made for.
They're not there to go and present a bunch of flowers to people.
They're there to actually fire weapons at them and potentially kill them.
And you give them more autonomy.
It doesn't have to be a lot.
And they think for themselves in a very simplistic way.
This is happening to them, right?
They will defend themselves, as it were.
There is supposed to be an override, a veto system, but it's never actually used for all sorts of practical reasons.
So that's one area that I would really worry about.
And unfortunately, we have very limited control over that.
And the problem is, of course, just as we close out this segment of our conversation, Kevin, that if our side doesn't use it, you know that the other guy's going to.
Well, the technology's there, and it's very difficult to keep it to yourself.
Yes, the worry is they would use it, and therefore you feel, well, we've got to use it ourselves anyway to stay one step ahead.
We talked, and just to close out, as I say in the last minute in this segment of our conversation, and we were talking about cybernetics, a man in your position, you're at the cutting edge of the technology.
A lot of this involves the medical profession.
How much contact with them do you have?
Well, I work particularly at the John Radcliffe Hospital, surgeons there, on the positive side, helping with Parkinson disease.
But also, of course, I have had a number of implants myself in terms of different experiments.
And that has involved surgeons, again, at the Radcliffe Hospital.
In Oxford, who do great work.
You were in the papers because you've been chipped.
And when we last met in a radio studio, I asked you about that.
I want to ask you about that again, because that itself is fascinating.
This man's actually had a chip.
We're talking about robotics and cybernetics with a man who knows Professor Kevin Warwick, who is connected with Reading University and is Deputy Vice Chancellor at Coventry University.
Kevin, I want to talk about the robotics now because I have reported in my news persona doing news bulletins on things like the experiments that are being done with robotic trucks on the M6, on the latest shenanigans to do with Google's automated cars, and people complaining, you know, are they safe or are they not in the United States?
And there was a story last week, I can't remember which firm it was, which company it was in which country you might know, replacing 6,000 of its workers with robotics.
Now, this is almost happening by stealth.
Little news stories that appear from time to time.
But robotics is where it's at, absolutely, isn't it?
Oh, yeah.
Well, autonomous vehicles has to be the way to go.
And if you, I've worked recently with Nissan, with Jaguar Landrover JLR, and they have teams specifically working in this area.
For them, this is the direction.
I'm sure it's the same with all car companies, vehicle companies.
And it's a very exciting future because when you think about it, if we're looking ahead, I don't know how many years it's going to be, 15, 20 years, and we have autonomous vehicles on the road, we don't need traffic lights anymore because vehicles, they won't, they're a human things.
We don't need lanes on the motorways.
We'll be able to get a lot more vehicles on the motorways.
The vehicles can be cooperative as opposed to the complete opposite, which I think happens with human drivers trying to annoy each other rather than accommodate each other.
So what you'd be able to get would be, right, I am going to leave home at this time and I want to go to this particular venue and your route would be planned out and that would be coordinated with other vehicles.
So it's a completely different system with artificial intelligence backup that we're looking at ultimately in the future.
And we wouldn't have a lot of the things that we have, road signs and things like that, because we don't need them with autonomous vehicles.
Information would be passed to them.
But this assumes that you ban human drivers, doesn't it?
Well, human drivers are a big problem.
And the issue is getting from where we are now, which of course is 99.999% human drivers, to the system where it's 0.0001.
But it's a very exciting area for research because the vehicles will have to look out for, you know, are there puddles?
Is it a puddle or is it something else?
Is the road sandy?
Is it raining?
And hence accommodate that in terms of the speed and braking distances for the vehicles, which often humans unfortunately don't do.
So it should be ultimately an awful lot safer on the roads when we have autonomous vehicles.
Just got to thank two of our listeners who both said that that quote that I bastardized in a way wasn't exactly the proper quote.
It was from Nietzsche, of course.
If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back.
I've been trying to work that out all evening.
Thank you very much, Andy, and the other person, P.D., who reminded me, was Nietzsche.
And that is something I think that very much in the philosophical debates that you have must be in your mind, too, because you're staring into a future that you cannot predict.
Yes, I mean, it's exciting, but it's also scary.
I mean, Nietzsche was very futuristic, I think, in a lot of what he did, and maybe had a bit of a bad press because of associations with different regimes that came about.
But I mean, we have to face it.
We have possibilities.
Again, getting back to humans linking with technology.
Okay, we talk more about the therapeutic side of things.
But of course, the human brain is very limited in what it can do.
And therefore, if You link it with technology so you can improve its capabilities.
As we see with computers, you outsource some of your memory and communication abilities to the computer.
But if you link your brain directly to a computer, then you have all sorts of potential advantages which give you an intellectual power way beyond humans, potentially.
You do, Kevin, but back at the robotic cars, if we get rid of human drivers, then that is another skill that we are unlearning.
That is something else that we can't do for ourselves.
And I worry for the human race that we will lose skills, things that we can physically do.
Yeah, but a lot of things, you know, should we bother doing them?
I wonder sometimes some jobs we're told they're going, such as mining.
Mining is extremely dangerous.
And one minute we're told it was extremely dangerous.
These people have just died or injured from it.
But we know it could be done by robots.
It could be done by technology.
Well, let's do it.
Why should people be put under danger and stress and so on when we could use technology for it?
So I think there are an awful lot of jobs.
The question is, how far do we go?
But do we really need to work now?
Why not?
You know, you and I, I'm sure we both got books about the future when we were kids.
I can remember getting annuals.
Remember when kids got annuals at Christmas?
Some of the annuals were about the future, and they were full of pictures of people living in space, living on Mars.
And I can remember distinctly one of these annuals talked about a future in which we wouldn't have to work because we would have developed technology that would do it for us.
It would create enough prosperity and wealth that we wouldn't have to worry about money anymore.
Now, we're not really there, are we?
No, I think that the money is an issue because wealth has historically, at least from Victorian times and maybe a bit before that, been linked to the job that you've got.
You do some work for it and you get paid for it and that's how you live.
Now saying, all right, we're not going to do the work, well, how do we sort out the money?
Do we give everybody the same?
Do we give everybody a basic wage or something like that?
And I think those questions, amazingly, are actually starting to be put out there.
Well, indeed, if a news report I heard on the radio on the way into work tonight, apparently the Labour Party, as soon as tomorrow, is going to be looking at this as a concept, as an idea.
It's just been rejected by the Swiss.
The idea of paying everybody one flat fee and then you can do little bits of whatever you want to on top of that.
But we can fully, I think the word they used was robotize the economy and get the benefit.
Yes, well, and I think if you like, we don't do it in this country, others will be doing it, and they will get the benefits from it.
So it's something we have to face realistically, a whole redirection of how we deal with the economy and individual salaries or payments.
Because I think in a lot of jobs, it's very sensible to go for it and let's put it into the hands of technology.
Let them take the dangers.
You know, dealing with nuclear power plants and so on, well, the humans shouldn't go near them.
Let's let the technology deal with it.
But which politician, and we look at our range of politicians of whatever hue they represent today, is going to bite that bullet, Kevin.
Yeah, because we don't have any robot politicians.
Or do we?
I'm not sure.
They're not programmed in any way, are they?
They think for themselves, isn't that right?
Perhaps we've got it already.
Okay, hold that thought.
Got to get into this before I forget, Kevin.
You were chipped.
You had a chip implanted.
Talk to me about that.
Well, I've had two, actually.
The first one I had was what's called an RFID, radio frequency identification device.
So it's a bit like a smart card, but it's very small.
It was about one inch long, and it was implanted in my left arm.
And what it did in the University of Reading was as I walked around, the computer could track me at different points, and it opened doors for me, switched on lights, and computers said hello, as it does, that sort of thing.
And I think there are quite a few people now who have followed Root and have similar sort of chips, and various companies have tried it out.
So it's starting, and I think your typical use of it now is in a cats and dogs for pet passports.
It's the same technology as that.
So it was fully tested on humans before animals took it on board.
But the last chip I had was 100 electrodes, which was fired into my nervous system to link my nervous system with the computer.
Then I could link.
So some of the things I did was control a robot hand from America, from New York to Reading, UK, directly from my neural signals, from my brain signals via the Internet.
So as I moved my hand in New York, my brain signals went across the internet to move the robot hand, and as it gripped an object, signals went back across the internet to stimulate my brain.
So I could feel how much force the robot hand was applying.
Good lord.
And how accurate was that?
Well, in terms of how much I could feel, I mean, what I was trying to do was the egg test, if you like.
So to just grip the egg without putting too much pressure on.
So this was with the robot hand.
And yeah, it was very successful in that respect.
So it was very accurate in that sense, yes, in terms of fineness of touch, as it were.
But it showed that someone who had had their hand amputated could operate a robot hand if their nervous system is linked directly up to the wires in the robot hand and actually feel what the hand is feeling.
So all of that is possible, but of course it also means anybody can have extra hands and legs and whatever body parts they want and the body parts can be on a different continent if they want.
And how far away is this technology from being used in more general practice?
Well it's still therapy.
You may have seen it's about a month ago now a guy who had exactly the same implant that I had and he's paralyzed though and it was put into his brain, the motor neural area of his brain and linked to a little armband that he was wearing with muscle stimulators.
So signals from his brain bypassed his nervous system which there was a break in it that he was paralyzed bypassed his nervous system and he was able to move his wrist and fingers to a certain extent.
So signals from his brain, it's like rewiring his nervous system using the same implant that I had pioneered quite a few years ago.
Professor Kevin Warwick there from my radio show and before that here on the podcast, Stephen Mira, Paranormal Expert.
More great shows coming.
Hopefully the next one you hear will be David Icke.
My fingers are tightly crossed about that.
Thank you very much for the questions that you've sent for David.
I'm also going to put the David Icke interview a little later on my radio show.
So one way or the other, you will hear that, assuming it happens.
And as I say, look at my fingers there.
Well, you can't see them, but they're tightly crossed.
Thank you very much for all of your support.
Professor Kevin Warwick there from my radio show and before that here on the podcast, Stephen Mira, Paranormal Expert.
More great shows coming.
Hopefully the next one you hear will be David Icke.
My fingers are tightly crossed about that.
Thank you very much for the questions that you've sent for David.
I'm also going to put the David Icke interview a little later on my radio show.
So one way or the other, you will hear that, assuming it happens.
And as I say, look at my fingers there.
Well, you can't see them, but they're tightly crossed.
Thank you very much for all of your support, for the nice things you say.
Please keep your emails coming.
Go to the website theunexplained.tv and follow the link and send me an email.
And if you can, please make a donation to this show if you've been enjoying it through the 300 hours or so of content that we've had online over this last 10 years.
Thank you very much indeed.
More great guests coming soon here on The Unexplained.
Until next we meet here on this show.
My name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained.
I am in London.
And please stay safe, stay calm.
And above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
▲
Export Selection