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March 27, 2018 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:14:53
Edition 339 - UFO Image Analysis

The UK's Jason Gleaves - becoming the "go to guy" for UFO image analysis - and PhilipMantle... top UFO investigator...

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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast.
My name is Howard Hughes, and this is the Return of the Unexplained.
Very nearly Easter as I record this.
The weather not so great in the UK at the moment, hopefully across the Easter weekend itself.
Things may improve.
By the time you hear this, it will be Easter already, and we'll know the answer to that question, won't we?
Thank you very much for all of your emails that continue to flood in.
Lots of new listeners.
I will do some shout-outs and address some points in a future edition of this show.
But do know that I get to see all of the emails, and where necessary, I reply in person.
And if you think about the way a lot of mainstream media handles correspondence, that puts us a country mile, I think, ahead of them.
But that's another subject, and we have discussed that one before.
Mark Sargent, the Flat Earth Theory, email continues to come in about him.
Some of you challenging the scientific basis, if there is one, you say, of what he says, and others saying, thank you for putting this man's unique view on air.
I think the only way to handle this, because he has been so controversial, is I plan to put him on the radio show in the future.
I will tell you when that will be, and I will ask if you would like to phone and put your points directly to him.
I think that's the best way of handling this thing, if you think that's a good idea.
What else?
Thank you very much for your emails about Stanton Friedman and Susie Hansen.
That show appears to be well received.
Thank you for that.
And what else?
The new website is still in beta form, but will be appearing before long.
So it will have more functionality.
And of course, we'll have to get used to it.
And so will I, because I will have some input into it for the first time.
So I've got a lot of learning to do, and I'm way behind the curve on all of that.
Lots of good response.
Wherever you are, thank you for it.
Keep your emails coming.
You can go to the website theunexplained.tv and you can follow the link to send email there.
And if you want to make a donation to the show, that'd be great too.
Okay, guest on this edition, a couple of things to say about him before we get to him.
His name is Jason Gleaves, and you might have seen him referred to by newspapers like the New York Post and The Sun in the UK recently.
Jason is rapidly becoming the go-to guy for analyzing digital images and other images of claimed UFOs.
He is the man who is able to put a thumbs up and say, maybe that is unexplained, or a thumbs down and say, actually, it's birds, or it's a plane, or it's some kind of artifact to do with your camera.
It's become an area of expertise for him, and it seems that people all over the world are now going to him.
Something important to say about him before we actually hear him.
This is his first interview.
He's never been interviewed before, and he was quite nervous about doing this.
Now, in my experience, people with interviews, some of them get nervous.
You have to put them at their ease, and as they do more interviews, they get better.
You know, I've got stories to tell you.
There's no time to tell you them of people having problems with interviews and us having to stop the recording.
One person didn't think he could do it, a very senior executive that I interviewed.
And I put him at his ease, and I was delighted to hear him doing interviews on other radio stations for years afterwards.
And that was a guy who was a quivering wreck before he did an interview for me on local radio in the Brighton area years and years and years and years ago.
So this is Jason Gleave's first interview.
And please, I know some of you expect every guest to be a little bit like Jimmy Kimmel or Jonathan Ross to have loads of wise cracks and slick talk.
Not everybody is like that.
You know, some people are scientists, some people are just ordinary civilians, not used to going in front of a microphone.
So this is Jason's first time.
And if you can be mindful of that when you hear him, that'd be great.
To introduce him, we've got the person who published his book, Philip Mantle, leading British UFO investigator, a guy who's a big friend of this show, gets a lot of media coverage these days.
So we'll ask Philip Mantle first about Jason and why he's important.
Then we'll talk to the man himself.
Sounds like a plan.
Please stay in touch with me.
Go to the website, theunexplained.tv, and you can send me a message from there.
It's always good to hear from you.
Okay, first up, Philip Mantle on the importance of Jason Gleaves and his work.
One of the things we have today, Howard, of course, is technology at our fingertips.
You know, in the West, certainly, pretty much everybody's got a laptop or a PC or your smartphone.
So we get an increase in alleged UFO photographs and pictures and film and so on.
So it is vital, I think, more than ever, that we have someone in this field who has the knowledge and the expertise to computer analyze these images.
And that person, as far as the UK is concerned, is Jason Gleaves.
And in this book, UFO Photo, Jason has taken some of his favorite UFO photographs from around the world.
He also took some suggestions from myself and he has analyzed them to the best of his ability.
And you can see all the computer photographs and at the beginning of the book, you know, he details how he goes about this analysis.
And of course, he's not a blind believer, Howard.
You know, if he thinks there's something untoward or shall we say, fake, or hoaxed, or a misidentification, you know, it's an aeroplane or a bird, then fine.
I mean, right at the beginning of the book, Howard, Jason gives an example that, you know, the most types of photographs that are submitted of alleged UFOs are actually of birds.
And he gives an example of that right at the front of the book, how they look.
And, of course, as they're flying, they blur and it looks like a flying saucer to a lot of people.
But the birds nonetheless.
So he details how he analyzes, what software he uses and his expertise.
As you'll find out, your listeners will find out he was formerly in the Royal Air Force.
So he's got a good working knowledge of aircraft.
He's a UFO witness himself.
So he's got that under his belt at the same time.
So one of the things I said to Jason was today, when we receive a piece of film or a photograph of an alleged UFO, it's now guilty right away because the technology is there to fake them, Howard.
So we treat them as guilty before they're proven innocent.
They used to be innocent until proven guilty, but it's the other way around.
Well, that's a point I'm going to put to him when I speak to him, Philip.
And you and I both know that everybody's got digital technology now.
It is dead easy, even for people who are not very good with it, to, if we wanted to fake it up.
And that's why I think there is much more cynicism.
It's not even skepticism now about UFO pictures.
And if you look at UFO pictures online, whether they're videos or they're stills, look at the comments underneath and most of the people say rubbish.
Absolutely.
I mean, they dismiss them straight away.
And I don't blame them, Howard.
I mean, let's just think about it.
Let's just think about this rationally.
You're going home tonight and you see something peculiar and you photograph it.
Are you going to rush straight in the house and put it on YouTube?
I'm not so sure you would.
I mean, some people may do, but I'm not so sure you would.
There are still facilities there for people to have these pictures analyzed.
And one of the things that Jason does, of course, he understands the computer technology that is available today.
And he turns that against the hoaxes.
He uses their own tricks.
He could fake a damn good photograph himself if he wanted to, of course.
So he kind of does it in reverse.
I've got this here photograph, right?
I know how to fake these.
So I'll count back, if you like.
I'll take this photograph back in time and see what it tells me.
And it'll either tell me that it's fake or it's real or, you know.
And that's what he's done.
So, you know, I think he's done an excellent job.
I tested him out recently as well.
Nothing sinister with a photograph from way back when that we'd had analyzed before there was computer technology in your home.
And we're pretty certain it was unidentified.
I think Jason's going to talk about it.
It's from Russia.
But he used the new technology and it came out the same.
So that was an interesting exercise as well.
And of course, that made the national press in the UK.
That got into the sun newspaper across the UK.
That's right.
And again, when you look at the book, Jason himself has gone back in time to look at some really old photographs and analyze them and see what they come up with, along with things that have happened more recently, of course.
So this is not talking about everything back, way, back when.
It's right through the decades.
I think that's the subtitle of his book.
It's through the decades.
And, you know, it's not a huge great tone by any means.
I mean, one of the things, the difficulty that Jason told me he had with the book was which photographs to leave out.
And if we were to look at the beginning of the book, he turned out completely different to the end because he couldn't make up his mind.
And then I would come in with suggestions as well.
But I think what we've got has got a nice balance of old photographs, some of which are black and white and quite grainy.
Even a couple of video clips he's analyzed.
Obviously, he's done stills of this.
And then right the way through to things that happened literally this year that he's analyzed.
A photograph, I believe, is in there from China that came our way.
And we're setting with the latest, you know, handheld mobile phone, which I think is an insult to call on mobile phones nowadays, Howard, but there you go.
Okay, now listen, Philip, the sound quality of this conversation is not brilliant.
There's some whirring noise in the background, and it's only meant to be a short conversation.
So I just want to ask you this.
Jason, I've spoken to already before we have our conversation, and he is a very, very understated man who was very, very shy about wanting to do an interview.
So he is not a natural performer.
That's one of the reasons I'm talking to you now, because I want you to tell me why he is the go-to guy and why he's been connected with and approached by so many important people in this field.
Just talking to him, you wouldn't realize that he is so very understated in himself.
Indeed, I mean, again, first off, his experience in the Royal Air Force.
So he knows what aircraft look like, you know.
Secondly, while in the Air Force, you know, while on duty, he had his own UFO sighting over RAF Cosford in 1993, I believe it was, witnessed by many other RAF-based personnel as well.
So he has that in his locker.
And he was determined back in Civi Street that he was going to look into this subject.
And the subject, you know, the aspect of the subject he's fallen on is analyzing UFO photographs from around the world.
And I personally, Howard, and I've been involved a long time, as you know, I don't know anyone better in this country that we can turn to.
Up until now, we used to go to one or two people in the United States, but no longer.
You know, we have Jason on our doorstep, and I think it's remarkable.
Like I say, he's a very quiet man, a very understated man, and I don't think he realizes what a good job he's doing.
Leading British UFO investigator Philip Mantle there, who's published this book by Jason Gleaves on the art and science of analysing images of claimed UFOs.
Fascinating stuff.
Let's get to the man himself.
Please remember, he is not a professional interviewee, and this is his first time.
So please bear that in mind when you hear Jason Gleaves, who is based in Chester, UK, and will talk about the whole subject of analysing images that may be of UFOs.
Well, Jason, thank you very much for coming on.
Thanks for having me on, Howard.
Now, Jason, your background from what I read in your biography is RAF.
It's Air Force in the UK.
So talk to me about your time in the Air Force.
Yeah, I was in the Air Force for about 10 years and started as a carpenter.
And then they did away with the carpenters in the Air Force and became civilianised.
So I remustered to aircraft finisher and obviously was stationed all around different places.
Including one of the places where there was one of the biggest UFO so-called contacts that we've ever seen in this country.
Yeah, REF Cosford, yeah, in the Midlands.
And so, were you, and we will talk about it more in a little while, but were you actually in the middle of that thing when it happened in 1993?
I was on the base that night.
It was a friend of mine who was in the guard room at the time, who was in charge, and that's how I know exactly what went on on the evening, on that night.
You see, a lot of my listeners have emailed me over the years to say I need to talk more about the Cosford case and a couple of other cases.
And you know what it is?
When you're doing something like this, the cases that make the headlines and the ones that are suggested most to you are things like Rendlesham Forest, because they are the big cases.
But Cosford was a big one.
We will get into it.
What about your interest in these things and your research?
Because it seems to me that you've given a big slice of your life to UFO research.
Yeah, well, I've sort of been into UFology, not deeply as I am now.
I had a sighting with my sister when I was seven, which I'd actually forgotten about.
My sister reminded me.
It was in Aintree in Liverpool.
Near the race.
I was actually born not far from Aintree Racecourse, so I know that area.
Yeah, well, my family live around there still.
It was my nan's house, and it was right on Mellon Road itself, where she lived.
Right, so I mean, that is literally right on the course.
So, what did you, when you were seven years of age and you've forgotten it until your sister reminded you, what did you see?
Yeah, we were playing like kids do in the house.
And I think we were upstairs and out of the window, a bright light and a silver disc-shaped object appeared in the window.
And we both stopped, looked at the disc, and it seemed to take off at great speed.
And then we just carried on playing again.
And I'd sort of forgotten about it.
It was my sister that reminds me about it.
Now, of course, in this day and age, you would say, oh, that's, you know, a drone.
It's probably, they're probably doing a survey of entry race course.
But I don't know what year this was, but it certainly wasn't in the era of drones, was it?
No, this was in the early 70s, 1970s, round about that time.
So it was way before drones or anything of that.
I mean, the military might have had them by then, but I don't think they'd be there flying them around entry race course at that time or houses around that area.
Now, you've become a bit of a specialist in something that I think is at the very heart of everything to do with ufology and whether UFO sightings are true, whether they can be said to be unexplained or whether they can be explained to something else or whether they can be called fakes or whatever.
The assessment of images.
That has become something that has become almost, it seems to me from reading the book, a bit of an obsession with you.
So how did that begin?
Well, like you say, I've always had an interest in UFology.
In the early days, obviously, with that early sighting, I didn't really know what UFOs were then.
It wasn't really spoken about.
And it was only later on when Star Wars and likes of that films started to come out and people sat up and took notice of science fiction and etc.
And I sort of went on and started watching, it was a programme, Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World.
I remember watching that as a young kid and sort of progressing on from there.
And then the interest took off.
And unexplained magazines, etc., you know, things like that.
So, yeah, and then with computer sides, I've always kept up with the latest technology as such.
So getting into the computer analysis side, it sort of became inevitable that I was going to go that way.
And then with, sorry.
No, you were saying, please, it was inevitable you were going to go that way.
Yeah, with research, obviously, I'd started asking more questions myself and looking into things.
This is before Cosford or the Air Force or anything.
And then the internet came around, which made it a lot easier to find things out and research.
One thing seemed to lead to another.
I think digital technology has empowered a lot of us in a lot of different ways.
But I don't know what you think about this, Jason.
But the fact is that there are more and more images now.
There are more images than there have ever been.
Because back in the old days, you could take a photograph and there were people who faked things by throwing frisbees up in the air and taking pictures of those and getting them published in newspapers.
I actually know some people who did that.
And I was only a kid at that time.
And, you know, I probably thought it was funny.
Of course, it wasn't because it doesn't help the research at all.
But these days with digital imagery, everybody has a phone that can take pictures.
Everybody can produce images of whatever they see.
And I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
What do you think?
Yeah, going back pre-Photoshop and things like that, it was a lot more difficult to fake things.
But people used to throw Frisbees, etc.
But nowadays with mobile phones and cameras, digital cameras, the way it's so easy to take a photograph, especially on your mobile phone now, you can quite easily take a photograph and delete it if you don't like it.
With the media, now that you've got, you can use mobile phones, cameras, it's just so easy.
And it's become more easy for everyone to take photographs now than it was before because not everyone carried a camera around with them.
You know, with the old 35mm cameras and things like that.
And then when they had the photos developed, you had to send them away to, you know, the chemist or wherever you had them done.
But now with the new phones, it's pretty instant.
So do you think that's made it easier to capture images of things that may be real, unidentified flying objects?
Or do you think it's just made people more likely to delude themselves?
Which it strikes me looking at some of the images that I see every day online, that some people have persuaded themselves that some kind of digital artifact or flare on the lens is something extraterrestrial when it might not be.
And of course, there are the ones who deliberately, and there are plenty of those around, deliberately fake images which you can easily do digitally.
Yeah, it's so easy to do.
It's made it harder, really, to analyze photographs.
But I think with Photoshop, it's a bit of a double-edged sword, really.
Because with Photoshop, you hear the word Photoshop and you just think, oh, somebody's altered a photograph, they've changed it.
But it can actually enhance photographs, it can bring things out that you can't physically see for yourself, you know, when you're actually looking at it.
So it's a bit of a funny one, really, because I obviously see quite a lot of photographs.
And a lot of the time, it is actually birds or it's an aircraft or something explainable.
And obviously, with lens flare, that's a big one as well.
And what about those situations, those UFO reports where you have seen, and there have been a number of them and some of them have been featured on TV, where perhaps something has been pictured from an aircraft, maybe a civilian aircraft or maybe a military aircraft, and we get a video of it and they zoom in and in and in on whatever the object may be.
And of course, once you zoom in beyond a certain point, you get into pixels and it becomes very hard to tell what it is.
And that's where people like you come in.
How do you tell when something is not a bunch of pixels, but might actually be something that is not of this earth?
Well, it's not always that easy, but the things I generally do with any photograph, I'll upscale the photograph first before I've even had a proper look at it.
Because when you upscale a photograph, and basically you're zooming in or making the photograph larger in its original state, you can actually work with it better other than trying to zoom into the photograph straight away, which, like you said, will pixelate the photograph, just makes it chunky and you just can't make anything count.
I didn't even know it was possible to do that, that it was possible to keep the integrity of the picture and still go into it.
Yeah, that's really what I tried to do if I can.
That's why I always ask people if they could send me the original photograph because it's the best you can have to do and to work with.
And when you actually upscale that photograph, you just sort of basically blowing into the image that you're trying to work on.
And you don't get the pixelation as much, and then you can work on it better.
But that's where people fall down because they zoom into the photograph that they've got of the image or subject they're trying to analyze.
And it just pixelates straight away.
And really, you're on a no-winner there.
Is it easy to spot a fake?
I know that there are people like Philip Mantle, who's one of the leading UFO investigators in this country and a great friend of the unexplained.
I know that he's a great friend and collaborator of yours, and he comes to you with images, doesn't he?
So, you know, it is a specialist thing.
Yeah, yeah.
I've worked on photographs for many people in UFology around the world.
They seem to come to me with their image.
And I can be fooled by them too.
Like I say, in this field of UFology, there are no experts.
We're all sort of teaching and you're learning on the journey because we're all trying to find answers, really.
You made the newspapers in a big way a few weeks ago here, which is why I first heard your name, Jason.
The Sun newspaper featured a very famous UFO case from 1989.
It was a couple of Russian air cadets, Alexei Formin and Alexander Petrov.
They took a picture November the 8th, 1989 in the former Soviet Union city of Vorozhne.
And this picture has been hotly debated for decades now since it was taken.
And you think that you've been able to crack the mystery about this?
I wouldn't say crack the mystery.
I just analyzed it.
To be fair, I hadn't seen that case before Philip had presented it to me.
And I just attacked it the same way I do with everything else.
You know, I'll look at the evidence in the photograph.
I'll look at who's taking the photograph, the location, etc., and try to do a bit of research into any other sightings in that area, you know, weather conditions.
There's a lot of factors to take into account when you do analysis of a photograph.
And why was this so famous?
What was spotted in that picture?
What did people think it was?
Well, that's the whole thing.
I don't think they did know what it was.
Either not of this Earth, extraterrestrial, secret covert military aircraft.
The list goes on, really.
And how was the picture taken and what does it show?
What is the object in the frame?
Because this is obviously sound recording, so we can't see the picture.
No, I was given the photograph by Philip and asked, and like I said, I'd not seen this case before.
And I think Philip deliberately didn't give me any information on it, just so I could do an analysis of it, really, like I do with all photographs.
And when I sort of got into it and looked at it, apparently it was similar, my analysis of it was similar to what people had done in the past and came up with the same conclusions that the object was definitely there.
That was one thing we were sure of.
And with being spherical in shape and the shadows and in reflection to where it was, sunlight, etc.
So it was taken by a pair of pilots or trainee pilots.
And what kind of scale depth was it?
It was an old black and white photograph, obviously pre-digital.
And you've got to look at the people that are taking the photograph because they're taking that they're observed trainers.
So they should know what they're looking at, the type of aircraft at the time and what they could see.
And they didn't know what it was.
So it sort of went from there, you know.
And there have been quite a few pictures and taken of orbs and that type of craft because the UFOs come in all different shapes and sizes.
So, yeah.
Have you been able to communicate with Alexei Fomin and Alexander Petrov?
Were you able to ask their thoughts about this nearly 30 years on?
No, no, I haven't.
I'd quite like to.
Yeah, no, that would be an interesting thing to do just to get their thoughts on it, because clearly everybody who saw the picture and they thought it was a bizarre case and the newspaper got very weird.
Yeah, yeah.
It's nice to see the media starting to publish things like this and especially with the events that are happening in America with Tom DeLong and etc., you know, with to the Stars Academy.
And of course, those two military videos that were released, which we've talked about on this show just before Christmas, one of them in particular, I think David Fraver is the name of the pilot.
He said that whatever it was in front of him, it was something that he'd never seen in his life and couldn't have been because of the way it was maneuvering, the way it was configured.
It couldn't be of this earth.
You've looked at that footage.
What did you think about that?
Yeah, I did analyze.
That footage has actually been around for quite a while.
It's not as new as people think.
I'm in two minds.
I look at it and you can see the shape of a disc-shaped object and its characteristics for its flight are not what a conventional military jet or civilian jet would do or take.
That doesn't mean that it's not secret covert or of that nature.
It doesn't always have to be extraterrestrial.
And I did also note that in the footage itself, down to the right-hand side of the HUD display, it did actually say slave.
And not a lot of people notice this.
I did actually put a thing out about it on the page.
I wondered what that word meant.
You're going to tell me now.
I didn't know.
Yeah.
Slave is another term used in military for drone.
So people don't seem to be talking about it much.
And I'm not trying to take away from the footage, but it's just in my nature to be open-minded to all possibilities, what it could be.
I don't know if you were involved in any way in the Rayboya case, you know, the Channel Islands pilot, somebody else who's been on this show.
In 2007, this Orini Airlines flight flying back to the Channel Islands encountered a massive, a gigantic object in the air.
And of course, the debate about that has raged on for years.
And now they're getting into, I think, analysing the radar tracking in some detail.
Yeah, they need to look at all avenues really.
And the radar is a big, important part to a lot of sightings that are seen all around the world.
I do recall that case, and I remember seeing it on the TV years ago when it was out.
Ray himself said it was the most terrifying experience.
And actually, for a good long period until recently, he just simply gave his interviews about it at the time and didn't want to talk about it again.
And I recently spoke with him again.
There are people who say that UFOs are often not in the visible spectrum.
So it's only at particular times, perhaps at sunrise, sunset, when the sun is at a particular angle, that they become visible or traces of them can be seen.
Do images that you've looked at, do they back that up?
Yeah, there is one case in the book that I've actually put in the book where it's of a visible disc-shaped object that was captured and it was during the sunset over Argentina during March 2013.
And you can see the craft between sunset, sunrise is the time you can actually see a cloaked craft because of the sunset and the altitude and everything and the position of the sun above it.
But I do believe a lot of craft are cloaked and camouflage and they use clouds and everything else around them that's not to be seen.
So yeah.
So this means that you believe that there is an extraterrestrial intelligence that might be using cloaking or you think that we might have cloaking?
I think both really, but I definitely do believe that there are craft from extraterrestrial origin that are in our skies visiting the Earth.
And I also think the earth is a zoo, really, where they'll come and observe what we're doing and not necessarily interact with humans as such, but just come to observe and see how we're living, what we're doing, and then go on their merry way.
This book that you've written about analysis of images, what contribution do you think that it will make to the overall research into UFOs that's being done?
I mean, people are a lot of people saying that we're getting very close to disclosure, whether that's true or not.
The research goes on.
So, what contribution do you think that you're going to be making with this book?
It's really leading on from my page.
I mean, I've got a UFO page, which I've had on Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus and etc.
for a few years, UFO only.
And it's an extension of that, really, because a lot of the work that I do similar to the book is exactly what I will do on the page.
So, and I think nowadays, more the imagery is a big important part because people like to see.
It's not necessarily just the stories and what people have encountered and their experiences.
I think it's more to do with the imagery.
And if people can see something, it's more whether it's believable or not.
It's quite open to that discussion.
Of course, we could be these days.
People seem to be not just skeptical about these phenomena.
Sometimes when it comes to images, they're almost cynical.
It looks like every video that's posted, if you look at YouTube, for example, where you see a video of something that might be some kind of UFO, might be something.
There is an overwhelming number of comments underneath it saying obviously a fake.
Do you think that's a problem that we are inclined to write everything off?
Yeah, I think that, well, there's always going to be people that will just deny.
Unless somebody sits up in a newsroom on the main media channels in their suit and actually says that we've got extraterrestrial visitation, UFOs are appearing, they won't believe it at all.
A lot of people wake up to it more so when they have a sight in themselves and then they start asking questions a bit like most of us, something happens in your life and you sort of wake up and you start delving.
And I find generally when I've been looking into a case or some research into ufology in general, I'll be looking for one subject in particular or one topic, and five doors will open in different directions with something else and something else.
And it just goes on and on and on.
Can you think of a recent case that has taken you on a path like that?
There's quite a few.
It never stops, really.
I sort of have the queue of people asking for photographs to be done.
I do quite a lot for people who have experiences themselves in the background, which I don't publicise or put out there through confidentiality because I do believe greatly in the confidentiality if somebody wants to just ask questions or I'm quite open and happy to do that for them.
That to me sounds like, and tell me if I'm wrong, that you've dealt with people who think that they've encountered maybe creatures, beings.
Yeah, I've got numerous photographs sent to me of different beings.
Obviously, some people don't want their names mentioned, which is fair enough.
And I totally agree with that.
I get all kinds of different types of beings.
I did one not so long ago for Peter Maxwell Slattery, who's an experiencer in Australia.
And I did part of his documentary for him.
And it was different entities where they've been visiting him and the Nordics, etc.
And it's all interesting and fascinating.
So these are how clear are those?
I mean, obviously, as we say, we're recording sound here, so we can't see those images, but how clear are they?
These images of so-called Nordic aliens?
Oh, some are really clear.
You'll get the haze where they're coming through in different dimensions and things like that.
I had one where somebody took a photograph of a being and it was of the sort of lioness type being, like a cat being, which a lot of people describe seeing.
And when I did an analysis of that and overlaid photographs, trying to match up, and you can actually see the being, you know, I get a lot of orb photographs, and then when you analyze it more into orbs, you can make out faces and things like that.
So it's all interesting.
And these, some of these, by the sounds of it, have absolutely convinced you that there are what people like to call extraterrestrials.
Sounds like you're a believer.
Yeah, definitely am.
Yeah.
Like I say to everybody, really, when I analyze photographs, it's a bit of an open book.
I always leave it back to the person who's viewing the photograph, video, image.
I mean, I have also got a YouTube channel where I've got quite a few videos on there of sightings because obviously they were taken on video.
And it doesn't really do it justice to put them in a still photograph when you can see what they are, you know.
Difficult question, and let me try and phrase it properly.
But there was an Era when people took photographs, and not everybody always carried a camera with them in the old days, as we will remember.
In the days of film, you know, you had cameras were for special occasions, really, so we didn't always have them.
So, people came down to sketching their experiences.
I'm thinking about the Alan Godfrey case in 1980.
This policeman who we spoke to on this show at Todmotham on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border.
And of course, all he was able to do was sketch the craft.
So, I think what I'm coming round to asking is the images that you see that people send you of what they think might be craft, do they look like the traditional sketches that people used to make of maybe layer cake-style UFOs, flying discs and that sort of stuff?
Do they match up?
Yeah, they do.
It's surprising, really, the accuracy some of them have actually put in their photo, in their drawings or images, you know.
And you can quite often relate a lot of sightings back to another sighting that has actually been taken of the time or era, and it could be anywhere in the world, and they quite often match up.
Have you come across cases where people have sent you images because they've tried to get officials to analyze them because they've been so concerned about what they are and you know, maybe the government officials, whatever, don't really want to know, so they come to you?
Yeah, yeah, they um I suppose, really, a lot of people will go to MUFON and places like that.
Um, I get a lot of people more word of mouth, or they'll want an explanation to what, not necessarily want their name or any fame or anything for it.
It's more they want answers to what they've seen because they can't, in their own mind, work out what they're seeing.
Um, and 50%, maybe more of the time, it's explainable to a point, whether it be in an aircraft or a lot of misidentifications or birds.
If you actually look in, because birds appear, depending on the distance away from yourself, can appear to be flying quite fast, so it doesn't look as real, it doesn't look like a bird, an aircraft as well, many different types of aircraft, different altitudes, etc.
There's a lot really to weigh up when you do receive somebody asking for information, so you have to dig deep and find out.
Another good thing: if somebody comes with an air, maybe it's a sighting of an aircraft or an object, you look at flight paths, airport flight paths, because you don't have to live right on the doorstep of an airport.
A flight path of an aircraft coming into land does come into play quite a number of miles away from the airport itself.
So, you know, there's like again, there's a lot of things to weigh on.
You say in the book, um, the exponential increase in visual UFO evidence brought with it two problems.
The first was information overload, and the second was the signal-to-noise ratio problem that we've partly talked about.
Simply put, you say there are lots of fake photos and videos out there, and lots of imagery that, while not hoaxed, shows nothing more than exciting, more exciting than a reflection, a lens flare, dust on the lens, or an insect that happened to fly in front of the camera.
So, as you say, you've got to, before you do anything with a video or a picture that you're given, you've got to make sure that you filter out all of those things.
Yeah, definitely.
It's so important to do that just to narrow down for your own mind, because sometimes I can look at a photograph and straight away I can see what it is.
There's a good case in the book where I was given photographs.
I think Philip gave them to me.
And it was an actual civilian airline pilot who was on holiday in the UK.
And he took photographs.
I think he was in Wiltshire at the time.
And he took a photograph of a Union Jack flagpole and a typical photograph, really.
And either side of the flagpole, there was two small dots.
In with the other photographs given to me that he took, one was of a dot, it was virtually a dot.
So when I analyzed the photograph, I could tell straight away that it was a military aircraft.
And the other two photographs, when I analyzed those of the flagpole and the two dots either side, they did actually look disc-shaped.
And at first, I did question, you know, into what am I really looking at and analyze it more and more.
And when I upscale the photograph and enhanced, like I do with all, I could see that it was actual two more military aircraft that were banking.
So what I'll do, I actually put in the book, I've showed somebody a similar photograph of that type of aircraft banking.
And you can see straight away when you see it yourself.
Are there places like Wiltshire, for example, not far from Stonehenge?
And there are places in Scotland where you can, if you have the right equipment and you want to wait long enough, you're not guaranteed, but you're quite likely to encounter something that may be strange phenomena.
Yeah, I would say you've got crop circles down there.
You know, they're always great to go down and see.
And you meet some great people down there, too.
Because I once interviewed a man who said that there's a place in Scotland not far from one of the big, you'll know this place.
I've forgotten its name now.
I think it might be Lossymouth, one of the big air bases up there where you can virtually summon UFOs.
Yeah, the places you can actually go.
I've seen quite a few myself.
And basically, you've just got to ask.
You go out and ask them to show themselves, and they tend to do that.
Again, you've got to also have the charts, and there are easy access apps that you can get for your phone that tell you where aircraft are and where satellites are at the time if you view in at night.
You were saying.
Yeah, no, sorry, Bob.
Yeah, if you're viewing at night, you are saying.
Yeah, if you're viewing at night, there are a lot of apps that you can pay for them or they're free on your phone and they'll tell you what aircraft are around, if there are satellites around, you know, and other things like that, important things.
And then you can weed out really what you think it might be or not be and take it from there, really.
Especially sky watches as well, you know.
There's more and more interest in night vision.
Do you think night vision is any use?
Yeah, definitely.
You can go in for red.
And like I said, a lot of the UFOs, well, obviously it's got to be technology vast, superior to anything we've got.
And I'm sure they travel and in many different spectrums that we can't physically see with our naked eye.
But infrared.
And I think there was a guy who was on YouTube and I did post something a while back where you can alter an old, we've all got old cameras that you throw in the cupboard when you buy a new camera and they become unusable.
But they're still decent digital cameras, obviously older.
And you can alter them.
You can take the filter out, so the front lens.
And you can buy the infrared lights that you get on security cameras around your home, etc.
And then you can actually film outside in infrared.
And hopefully, you know, you can pick up objects and things like that that you wouldn't see normally.
This is only an opinion I'm asking for, really.
Do you think that our government and other governments know that there's something going on that is extraterrestrial, that does visit our airspace, that does invade our territory, but they are keeping this quiet?
Yeah, definitely.
I definitely believe that they know of whether they're interacting with extraterrestrials.
We've all heard of Area 51, etc., where they're obviously working on back engineering technology recovered.
We've got past the point where we know that UFOs are real now, and it's really where the disclose is going to come.
And I do believe governments around the world for two reasons, really, more than two reasons, really, they're not going to disclose or they don't want to disclose because the public in general will just say they've been lied to for years.
And also, there's other things to take into account about petrol, oil, gas, etc.
Did we ever need them?
Because these craft can fly on free energy devices, etc.
So it's quite a deep debate, really.
You give a big portion of the book to the UFO case that you personally were involved in when you were in the military.
This is the big sighting at RAF Cosford in the English Midlands in March of 1993.
You go into it in a lot of depth.
Something that was the size of a battleship, which had been seen over numerous locations of the UK earlier that evening, invaded the airspace of RAF Cosford, and you were there.
Talk to me about that encounter that night.
Yeah, like I say, I was on the base and through my friend who was in the guard room at the time, etc.
It was on that evening that it was a young trainee.
It was on the guard post.
The pictures are in the book because they're the actual photographs of the guard post at REF Cosford.
And this craft, huge black triangular shaped craft, was seen throughout the UK that night on numerous different locations by policemen, civilians, you know, witnesses all over.
And the craft appeared over the airfield and the young lad who was a trainee, because R.F. Cosford is a training camp, so he was obviously there learning his trade and he was doing his guard duty on the airfield location.
And the radio started to go in the guard room with this young lad screaming down the radio to get the guard commander out to the airfield because something huge was over the airfield and he described it the size of a battleship, which is quite huge, quite large.
When we've heard about these cases in the US, sometimes where maybe nuclear missiles have been interrupted or stopped in some way, but something has appeared over a military base, there have been descriptions of something approaching panic.
By the sounds of that person's reaction, it was a little panicked.
Yeah, he was freaked out.
Really, really, I don't know who he was, name, etc.
A lot of people don't want to come forward with it, obviously, for obvious reasons, and I appreciate that.
But it must have been terrifying for him to see, because he would have been on that guard post on his own, and it's an airfield at night time.
I don't know if you know, it's totally pitch black.
You can't see a thing generally because there's no lights or anything.
So it must have been terrifying for him.
And were you there actually on the night?
I was on the base that night.
I was stationed there on the base.
And we didn't hear about it right away.
It was sort of afterwards through the grapevine, people talking on the base, etc.
That, you know, it sort of came to light.
And the descriptions that people gave to you after this thing happened, what were they like?
What was the sort of reaction that you were hearing?
A lot of people, yeah, really didn't want to talk about it because in those days it really was kept more secret, you know, not like nowadays with people, whistleblowers coming forward, etc.
Yeah, like I said, it wasn't really spoken about and it was, it took me a while to sort of get the full story out of my colleague what happened that night.
And I sort of, once I knew the story, I mean, I carried on with my career and other things happened, etc.
But it sort of went on a back foot.
And it was before really I got into UFOs.
So it was really another thing that I was really interested in and wanted to know more about.
And those people who told you about it, what kind of speed was it doing?
We know that it was the size people say of a battleship.
Was it drifting, floating?
Was it making a big noise?
Well, I don't know how it actually came in.
I don't know whether it floated or it arrived at great velocity.
I just know it flew off at great velocity because when it left Cosford, this was after all the military, police, etc., had got to the gate and had seen all this.
The official documents are in the book as well.
I've actually put those in from the MOD and Nick Pope, who obviously was involved a day later.
And Nick Pope, of course, was the Ministry of Defence.
He's now very famous worldwide for being an independent investigator, but he was the Ministry of Defence's man.
So if there was an issue, he was the guy who was sent to document it.
Well, he was, yeah, and he's actually wrote quite a piece in the book for me because he was involved with the aftermath the day after and inquiring and his investigation into it.
Like I say, the craft, when it left, it left RAF Cosford and actually flew on to a nearby military base, RAF Shawbury, which isn't too far away, to helicopter base.
And it's actually recorded on the radar coming in through the air traffic control, which is all publicised.
You can read all this on the internet and other UFO pages.
It sort of falls in the shadow of Rendelson, like we said before, which takes the limelight on it.
But, you know, I do believe it's such an important case.
And it was something so huge to be tracked on radar.
That's a big deal.
What was the conclusion about this?
Did the military try and close this down?
I wouldn't say closed it down as such because so many people saw it, not just military, obviously civilian people.
And I've spoken to other people who saw craft that night or around that era of similar description.
It was really just unexplained.
It was a whether it was secret covert, extraterrestrial, your guess is as good as mine, but we're still digging on what we've been trying to find out.
Whether the military know what it was or don't know what it was, it was reported and sort of left at that, really.
And on the cost-food base, Jason, were people aware that it had any effect on equipment there?
For example, sometimes these things, when they've been reported in the past, they have electromagnetic effects.
They interfere with the way equipment operates.
They mess up communications?
Yeah, yeah.
Like we said before, military bases, especially nuclear military bases, they've been known to turn off nuclear weapons.
They've actually set them into launch mode all out of the control of the operators, which is quite alarming, really.
Now, whether the extraterrestrials who are doing it or whoever was doing it were doing it as a test or they were testing the military or they were warning the military what they could actually do I don't really know but they yeah there are instances where people have had encounters with craft or lights in the sky and they've had it's interfered with their
Mars or other things like that.
So, yeah, I do believe they interfere.
And the people who were involved, you were on the base and you spoke to people after the event at Cosford.
Were they debriefed?
Presumably they were.
I'm interested in the sorts of things they may have been told.
I wondered if some of them were told not to talk about it, were told to get on with their lives, were given counselling.
As far as you can recall, and we know it's 25 years ago, what happened to them?
Well, yeah, I think the usual, I think my friend said the day after he was, two men came up from London.
I don't think it was Nick who actually came up, but he said two people in suits came up and they went through all the rigmarole of the paperwork and what did you see, what height was it, the altitude, every question.
And I'm sure if people were debriefed, I and not to talk about it they didn't so yeah, and whether they got counseling, I don't actually know.
I never really thought about that side before.
But it was a big case, and it's something that has been put down presumably to just being unexplained.
It was tracked on radar, so there is a log of the thing being there as huge as a battleship, and it's been logged as being something that we just simply don't understand.
Is that so?
Yeah, and you speak to Nick about it the same.
He's on the same, we really don't know the origin of the craft.
And again, I do believe a lot of UFO sightings are actually military aircraft and they're craft that are way advanced to what we've got in our squadrons and fleets around the world.
And I think it also suits the military to, if somebody comes forward saying I've just seen a UFO because they don't know what the object is, UFO, unidentified flying object, it suits the military because it's the perfect cover for them.
They don't have to explain that they've been flying a craft wherever over populated areas or around the world.
They can just write it off as a UFO and you know, job done to them, really.
So the records of this particular event are the radar records.
You said there were some images, is that so?
No, well, whether there are images and they were taken and they've disappeared like a lot of images do.
The images I've taken are when I've been there myself and I've taken photographs of the actual area, you know, to say this is where.
And I've actually done illustrations to show and explain to people so it gives them a better idea of what was actually seen that night.
It's important to keep talking about these things, otherwise they just go down into folklore and that's how they get filed away, I guess.
What are you working on then in terms of the images that you're analysing and the fact that people from all over the world come to you with images?
What are you working on right now?
I'm actually working on an image for another UFO just Robert Holtz.
He sent me an image.
Whether he puts it out public or not, it's up to him.
I do a lot of images for people.
I'll analyze them and then I'll send them back and then it's up to them what they want to do with them.
Sometimes they'll say put them on my page or put them on UFO pages but I'll send back.
It was sent to me of a, I'm sure he wouldn't mind me talking about it.
It looks like a cloud, but an out-of-place cloud, if I could say that.
It's hard when I can't show you the image.
And it was over Macclesfield.
Somebody taken a photograph of the church there and it was a scenic, quite a nice photograph.
But in the sky above, Robert, he's got quite a few photographs he sends me and I send them back to him.
And when I've analyzed it, it just looks totally out of place, the cloud, and it's actually got structure to it when I've actually analyzed it.
Yeah, it's like a cloud.
You can analyze clouds and you don't get a deep structure to it.
It's difficult to explain when really you can't see the photographs.
But does it mean it looks three-dimensional?
It looks like it's more solid than a cloud is?
Yeah, it's definitely.
It's got more structure than a cloud would have.
And like I said to you before, a lot of craft, I believe, use camouflage of clouds or they can produce a cloud around itself or for cloaking.
Because reference to military, etc.
One of the first basic principles of camouflage is to use your surroundings to help you hide from the enemy.
So they're probably no different.
I'm not saying that we're the enemy or such.
They just don't want to be seen.
And what sorts of analysis have you put this picture through?
The same as I do for everything.
I know Robert, he's a trustworthy person, etc.
I've known him for a couple of years.
Now I've actually met him in person.
And I've done photographs for him in the past.
So when I've seen it, I will go in and have a look, more depth.
So what I'll do, like I said before, I'll upscale the photograph and then take it from there.
And when you upscale, like I did on this case, you get more detail again and enhance and work on it again.
And yeah, it's quite an amazing photograph, really.
And as you said, you also do research, and maybe you haven't done this yet, but into what was around at the time.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I have still got to get to that because I'm still working on it at the minute, but I only received it this morning.
But I'm open to all cases.
If I have a bit of a lull in, you know, analysing photographs of people, etc., or talking about experiences and trying to help them in that respect, I'll start my research again.
And every single time I start researching into something, like I said, I'll look at one avenue of whatever it is on the moon, Mars, you know, buildings, things, etc.
It just opens up more doors.
What about these?
Well, I'm glad you mentioned that.
What about these people who say that there are images out there, some of them we've seen online, of structures on the surface of the moon?
Yeah, I've got quite a few myself that I've done myself.
There is a video that I've done, and it's whether people believe we went to the moon or didn't go to the moon, that's not really discussion really at the minute.
But I actually analyzed the second landing of the moon, which was Apollo 12.
And it was the footage as they were actually coming into land.
And I've done a video on my page.
And as they actually come into land, you can see three vertical illuminated orbs.
They look similar to the lights on a tunnel, as if it's going down sort of an elevator lift.
If you actually watch the video, and the more you watch the video, you can actually see it.
It just stands out like a sore thumb, really.
And when I actually took frames from the footage and analyzed them, there's something, I don't know whether it's a humanoid type being or standing over this entrance.
And it couldn't be some kind of camera artifact or angle of the sun or something like people tend to claim these things are?
Well, yeah, it could be.
I'm open to everything myself, and I'm certainly open to people pulling me up and saying, no, it's this or it's that.
I'm totally open to everything because this UFology is just a huge umbrella.
And, you know, I can be wrong too.
Well, you know, that's a very refreshing perspective.
When you think, because so many people who come on this show think that they are entirely right and won't accept anybody else's thoughts about it.
So that's very interesting to hear.
What about all of these videos that come up all the time, almost every other week, of things that are said to have flown past, zoomed past, zipped past the International Space Station?
Yeah, I've done quite a few images of the space station videos, footage, and I believe that there are anomalies flying within and around the space station itself.
Whether it's an unknown type of animal species, you know, that actually lives there, and we haven't discovered it properly yet, I don't know.
But there are a lot of images, and I could pull up quite a few different images of orbs, etc., or the craft astronauts have seen when they've been in orbit or around.
I mean, there was even the case with Neil Armstrong and his crew, Buzz Aldrin, when they were going to the moon, that they photographed huge craft, which were up to 20 miles in size, which followed them to the moon.
So, you know, there's a lot more out there than we think.
Have you analyzed any of the many images that have been sent back from Mars?
The ones that people say, well, they obviously show fossils.
I mean, there are even more bizarre examples than that.
There are supposed to be cloaked figures standing there.
But the ones that appear to show fossils or the remnants of regular geometry, that sort of thing.
Have you analyzed those?
Yeah, I've done a few of those.
I've actually found one where there was a pyramid which was sticking out.
Others were they look identical to building foundations where a building was there once before.
I do understand and do believe nature can produce things that can look out of place, you know, to the eye, to the trained eye.
You know, somebody who actually studies it all the time, they can say straight away, well, that's similar to this place on Earth.
They do exactly the same.
I do believe there was a civilization that lived on Mars and something happened there.
And whether it was a war or etc., I don't know.
You know, a lot of people have got different reasons to believe things.
We do, and you know, before people start saying, oh, this is all garbage, think about it.
Look at the world around you now, and it looks so solid and permanent.
But just ask yourself, if there was a cataclysm here and everybody disappeared, people died, how long would everything that we see, all the buildings, the roads, everything else, how long would it last before it crumbled away and there were only the merest remnants left of it?
And I think that's the dilemma that we've got with Mars, because if something cataclysmic happened to a previous Martian civilization, enough time will have elapsed for everything to become dust.
Nothing survives forever.
No, it doesn't, no.
And good examples are the Mayan and other past civilizations on the Earth.
And you go into the out into the Egypt and the deserts and the jungles and Amazons and everything around the world.
And you can see what is actually left from them.
So we'd be no different if we were wiped out tomorrow from the, hopefully not, but if we were, over a hundred years or so, it'd be the same, derelict.
And you can see a lot on Hollywood movies that come out with disaster movies and they show this type of thing, what it could be like or, you know, etc.
Okay.
Well, congratulations on the book and I hope it does well for you.
Is it actually out now and available?
Yes, it's out on Amazon now in paperback and Kindle, I believe.
And this is all via Philip Mantle, isn't it?
Yeah, Philip P. Yaksi is the publisher and he's got quite Another number of books and authors under his wing.
He's been a great help to me and helped me immensely with the book from the beginning.
Because I've never wrote a book.
I've obviously wrote in magazines for the Phenomena magazine and Outer Limits magazine, etc., and other publications.
But I've never actually wrote a book.
And I suppose I was like everybody else at the beginning.
Where'd you start?
And things like that.
So Philip has been really, really good to me.
And the book is called?
The book is called UFO Photo.
Just got to remind people what it is.
Yeah, and it's basically just computer analysis of worldwide UFO images through the decades.
Now, Jason and Chester, I hope this hasn't been too much of an ordeal for you because as I said at the beginning of this in my intro, this is your first ever interview.
You are not used to doing interviews, but you're talking about a subject that you love.
So, you know, maybe that's been a help.
Yeah, no, it's been, you've made it quite easy for me.
Thank you.
All right.
Well, good luck with all the work that you do.
And we have to say that you have worked with, even though you're very understated about the way you say it, some of the most important people in this field, people like Nick Pope have cooperated with you.
And Philip Mantle, of course, is your publisher.
And he is one of the best known UFO investigators in the UK.
So, you know, you are, as they say, connected.
And like I say to anybody, if you've ever got any photographs or anything you need analysing, I'm willing to help you.
If you don't want your name or anything, if you want to keep it private, I totally understand that.
I'm just here to help.
Jason Gleaves is who you heard there.
I'll put a link to him and his book on my website, theunexplained.tv.
And thank you for bearing with us both.
That was Jason's first interview.
I am sure he will do many more.
But as I say, he's becoming the go-to guy for analyzing digital images.
And his name appears in newspapers, has appeared in newspapers recently, like the New York Post and The Sun in the UK.
So, you know, he's getting some prominence here.
More great guests in the pipeline here at The Unexplained.
Always good to hear from you.
Go to the website theunexplained.tv, designed by Adam from Creative Hotspot in Liverpool, and you can send me your thoughts and messages from there.
I look forward to seeing you soon.
If you are about to have a break for Easter, I hope you enjoy it.
If you're having it, I hope you're enjoying it.
And if you've already had it, I hope you had a blast.
One of these days, I'm going to take a bit of a break too.
It's been seven years since I've been out of the UK.
That's a combination of, well, not having the funds to do it and life intervening.
But one of these days, I'm going to get back on a plane.
You know, I haven't been to an airport and traveled for so long.
It used to be part of my working life.
I used to travel tens of thousands of miles a year and visit all kinds of places.
That one of these days, before I turn my toes up, I'd like to see again.
But that's a whole other subject.
Look, whatever you're doing, have a wonderful time.
Please stay listening to The Unexplained and tell your friends about it until next we meet here on The Unexplained.
My name is Howard Hughes.
I am in London.
This has been The Unexplained.
And please stay safe, stay calm.
And above all, please stay in touch.
Thanks very much.
Take care.
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