The Unexplained - Howard Hughes - Edition 410 - Leslie Kean

Sept. 6, 2019 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

01:02:22

Edition 410 - Leslie Kean

Acclaimed New York Times investigative journalist Leslie Kean returns - with an update on AATIP, UFOs and her research on life after life...

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

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.
	Thanks as ever for being part of this.
	Thank you for all of the emails that keep coming in.
	And of course, if your email requires a personal reply, then it certainly gets one, as you will know if you've had one recently.
	Thank you very much if you've made a donation to the show, by the way.
	Gratefully received for a whole bunch of reasons right now.
	Thank you.
	Remember, cup of coffee in America, $2 minimum, £2 minimum UK.
	And probably with the state of the pound, that's going to rise.
	So that's a cup of coffee that you drink, and it takes you 10 minutes to drink it, and then it's gone.
	If you were to give £2 to this show, just as a general ballpark thought, then of course you can listen and listen, which is great.
	So do think, if you can, about making a donation to The Unexplained, which has remained for 13 years a free show.
	I think maybe that's a bit of an achievement.
	What do you think?
	I don't know.
	My website, theunexplained.tv, designed and created and owned by Adam Cornwell from Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
	Thank you, Adam, for all of that.
	So when you get in touch with me, by the way, by sending me an email through the website, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show.
	Very, very important for me to know where you are.
	I'm not keeping a file or a dossier.
	I'm not telling J. Edgar Hoover about you.
	I'm just very keen to know where my listener is and how my listener makes use of this show.
	A few shout-outs to do.
	Joan and Rob.
	Joan.
	Joanne, thank you.
	Joanne, I can't read my own writing.
	Joanne and Rob in Leicester, nice to hear from you.
	Terry, thank you for your email, Terry.
	Please, can you give me an idea of the experiences that you would like to talk about?
	You say that you've had some experiences.
	Please tell me a little bit more, would you?
	Cliff, thank you for your email.
	Dell in Scotland says that he was a prison officer at a jail.
	I won't say which jail it was at the moment, but he says that he had some experiences there of a paranormal nature.
	He saw a plastic bowl fly across his face when all the prisoners were locked up and no staff were in the area.
	The prisoners refused to go to a recreation room because they continually saw apparitions in it.
	I don't blame them.
	It got so bad the jail priest had to do an exorcism in the area.
	There were, sadly, some suicides in that jail, and it's built on the site of a battle, a famous historic battle.
	Many staff also reported seeing ghosts in the jail as well.
	Gee, whiz.
	Thank you, Del, for that in Scotland.
	John, thank you for the photos of your road trip in Nevada and the photos taken in Perrump near the home of my radio hero Art Bell.
	Much missed and so great to be able to see images of that area.
	Thank you for that.
	Gwyl in South Wales, land of my father's.
	Nice to hear from you, Gwyl.
	Andrew, started listening recently, working his way through the back catalogue.
	Nice to know you're there.
	Martin in Leeds.
	Yes, Martin, I'm trying to get David Icke back on this show, and I'll let you know about that.
	Some people love David Icke, some people don't like David Icke.
	When I did an interview with him a year or so ago, it was put on YouTube by the radio station, and I got a lot of criticism from David Icke fans because I asked him some hard questions.
	But then I try to ask hard questions or relevant questions.
	That's not to say hard.
	I don't do it deliberately to be hard.
	But the kind of questions that you would require asking.
	And I got some stick from his fans for that.
	But David Icke is a guest who a lot of people like to hear and I enjoy talking with.
	So we're going to try and get him back on here.
	Mario in Adelaide, Australia.
	Nice to hear from you, Mario.
	And Cohen in Colorado, who works at Centennial Airport there.
	I must research Centennial Airports.
	Sounds a great location, Cohen.
	Thank you for your email and your thoughts.
	So those are the shout-outs.
	If you want to get in touch, go to the website theunexplained.tv.
	Follow the email link and you can contact me from there.
	We've also got an official Facebook page for The Unexplained.
	Please be part of that.
	It's been developing all this year, so that's basically how long it's been running.
	What is that?
	Eight months now.
	And needs your involvement.
	But please, if you need to contact me, please don't use the Facebook messaging.
	Please email me through the website and then I will see your messages.
	Some of these Facebook messages I don't get and don't see.
	So please make contact with me if you'd like to.
	It's nice to hear from you that way.
	Okay, guest on this edition is investigative journalist Leslie Kane in the United States.
	The person who was behind those ATIP revelations in the New York Times nearly two years ago now, she's an author, investigative journalist.
	Her book, UFOs, Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record, is a bestseller.
	She's also got a book out about surviving death, the whole process of dying and whether we continue beyond it.
	We're going to talk about that.
	And when we do talk about that, it is likely the names of a couple of mediums will be raised and talked about.
	I just have to say this for the sake of the show, that of course this show is not here to recommend or endorse anybody.
	So when you hear those names, that doesn't mean that this show is endorsing those people.
	But we will get around to that.
	And we'll also talk about Leslie's work on UFOs.
	So Leslie Kane, the guest in the US on this edition of The Unexplained, which I hope you will enjoy.
	And please let me know what you think about it.
	And thank you very much for being in touch.
	It means a lot to me.
	Thank you.
	All right, let's get to the US then to Leslie Kane and a return visit to The Unexplained.
	Leslie, thank you for coming on my show again.
	You're welcome, Howard.
	I'm so happy to be with you.
	Well, Leslie, we've talked about many subjects over the months and years.
	I think you were on my radio show a couple of months ago just talking about something that was in the news.
	What are you up to at the moment then?
	Well, I am working on a six-part documentary series that's being based on a book I wrote in 2017 called Surviving Death, A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Afterlife.
	And I'm also always working on trying to get stories into the New York Times on the UFO topic with the two journalists that I work with.
	Our last story was in May of 2019.
	So we're always seeking new material to keep that momentum going.
	Now, you were the person, of course, responsible for bringing Luis Elizondo and all of that Stuff to our attention back at the end of 2017, weren't you?
	That's right.
	Myself and two colleagues, Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Cooper.
	Helene Cooper is the Washington Bureau correspondent from the New York Times.
	We did a pretty important article that was front page New York Times in December of 2017, in which we broke the story about the existence of the Pentagon program that Luis Elizondo was the head of.
	He had just left about two months before our story came out.
	And so the interview with him was really crucial to the story.
	But nobody knew before that that a government program even existed.
	And we were able to prove that, in fact, it is no longer speculation, but we know for a fact that there is a program within the Department of Defense.
	And in fact, I would say that you and the team who were working with you have been responsible for something very important because politicians have been getting on this particular bandwagon, been asking questions.
	You know, if we think about, well, I mean, let's take a look at the briefing that was reported earlier this year.
	And I talked about on my radio show, three U.S. senators, three more, got a classified Pentagon briefing about a series of reported encounters by the Navy with unidentified aircraft.
	According to congressional and military officials, one of them was somebody who's made himself known in the media lately, Senator Mark Warner.
	But he's not the only one.
	So I think that you were, even if you didn't know you were going to be at the time, responsible for a groundswell that we are now seeing.
	I think it's true.
	I think what the story did, Howard, was it gave the political establishment permission to take this subject seriously.
	Because if it was reported in the New York Times, the paper of record, that the government is actually studying this, obviously the Pentagon takes it very seriously.
	And this sort of opened a door for members of Congress and senators, like the one you mentioned, to decide, well, I think we better look into this.
	And it sounds like it's something to take seriously.
	And so this really did make a difference in Washington because it gave credibility to the topic that was really, really needed.
	And then when the story came out in May, in which we dealt with sightings by Navy pilots, I think that even escalated the briefings because there were some briefings that were held specifically related to the sightings by the Navy pilots.
	And that was a second story that, again, opened this door even wider and made it legitimate, made it okay, gave credibility to the topic.
	And so the senators have been up and running with it.
	And I'm quite sure that many more than three have actually been briefed so far.
	The briefings are classified.
	We're not able to find out what they specifically are talking about.
	But we do know that the briefings have been taking place and still are.
	Well, isn't that interesting, Leslie?
	Because you know and I know, and whether you're talking about Washington, D.C. or whether you're talking about London, UK, politicians of this kind are not going to waste their time, are they?
	So there must be something, I would speculate, to be talking about if that is what is being done.
	Absolutely.
	That's correct.
	And these are committees that deal with things like aerial threats and national security.
	And they recognize the fact that if there are objects in our skies that are actually interacting with Navy pilots, we can't explain them.
	We don't know what they are.
	We don't know where they're from.
	They demonstrate very sophisticated technology.
	I mean, who wouldn't when you have a responsibility for national security, for dealing with aerial threats and all those kinds of things, who wouldn't take that seriously?
	So finally, they are even letting the public know, some of them, that they have been involved with these briefings.
	So we're making progress here.
	It's slow, but it's happening.
	And that's good.
	And we have to remind listeners, this side of the Atlantic mainly, that the Mark Warner we referred to, the senator, Democrat, I believe, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said if naval pilots are running into unexplained interference in the air, that's a safety concern.
	In other words, you know, he's interested in this because if it's extraterrestrial, then it's a big deal.
	But also, if it's some nation that has a technology like this that is being kept secret, that too is a potential threat to the continental United States or whatever.
	So, you know, that is the growing background to what we've been looking at.
	Yeah, I mean, they have to find out, are these Chinese?
	Are these Russians?
	Do they have this kind of sophisticated technology?
	That is a big question for them.
	And that will motivate them to study this.
	Which is why I think, and I spoke with Nick Pope only days ago for my radio show in the UK, and I was asking him about Bernie Sanders.
	I'll talk with you about that in just a second, why Bernie Sanders is getting involved in this.
	But, you know, he was, I think he was of the view that we may be about to hear some more from the same sources, from the same stable as the revelations that you brought out.
	Are you aware of anything in the pipeline right now?
	You mean regarding these hearings on Capitol Hill?
	Well, regarding the whole thing.
	I mean, and the whole thing, Luis Elizondo and all of that.
	Yeah, my team and I at the New York Times are working on digging into some things right now, but I'm not at liberty to discuss them, Howard, but I can let you know that we're working our best to get out more information about this very topic.
	And you will be one of the first to know if we get a story out about it.
	But I just can't talk about it while we're in the process of investigating it.
	Journalists, I know how the thing works, but I wish you well with it.
	And I certainly want to hear about it when you do it.
	But it does seem to me, unless it's all smoke and mirrors and it's ultimately going to go away, it seemed to me that I've never known a time in my life when we have been closer.
	It feels like we're closer to something.
	I agree with you.
	I mean, I think, first of all, having the videos released, three videos that were actually Pentagon, U.S. government videos, that is a first.
	And then we do have three senators who have been on the record saying that they were briefed on this topic.
	Both of those developments are significant.
	I agree with you.
	Very, very significant.
	And probably the first time, I mean, Yes, the first time this has happened, certainly since the close of Project Blue Book, but maybe even earlier than that.
	So we are in a major breakthrough time right now.
	I would agree.
	As far as you're aware, what is Luis Elizondo, though, doing?
	Because he was a name that none of us had heard of when you brought that story out.
	He had a certain amount of prominence, does the occasional interview, but we haven't heard a lot from him.
	As far as you're aware, what's he doing?
	This is the man who ran ATIP.
	Yeah, he has become involved with the group called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, which you're probably aware of.
	Tom DeLong, yeah.
	Exactly.
	Tom DeLong's group, and he's been very loyal to that group.
	They do a lot of great work, but a lot of it has to be kept quiet while it's happening, just the same way journalism does.
	They're doing a lot of good work behind the scenes.
	And Elizondo was part of a series that was on the History Channel in the United States called Unidentified, which premiered just this past year and was very successful.
	I don't know if people in the UK have access to that show.
	Do they?
	They do.
	I haven't actually seen it myself, but we have talked about it.
	And it sounds to me to be one of the most important pieces of work in this field that there's ever been.
	Well, I certainly believe that I thought it was way better than most UFO shows, because most UFOs I don't usually like, to tell you the truth.
	But I would recommend if you want to know what Louis Elizondo is up to, watching that show will show you exactly the kind of work that he does.
	And a lot of the stuff in that show is very interesting.
	So I would recommend that.
	I just wish he'd speak to me, but that's a whole other issue for a whole other time.
	He does do interviews.
	I don't know.
	No, I'm trying to get messages to him.
	There's a possibility that we'll be getting Tom DeLong on this show, which will be really good.
	It's just a question of his schedule and a question of the amount of time that he will have available to give to us.
	I'm pressing for a full podcast-length interview, but I'm not sure whether he can do that.
	That's another issue again.
	Understood.
	I think Elizondo does a lot of traveling as well, so it's hard to pin him down.
	Okay, Bernie Sanders.
	Bernie Sanders, of course, a man who had presidential ambitions last time round, and those were trumped by, well, literally trumped by Trump and trumped also by Hillary Clinton, who, you know, was the person who was the candidate for the Democrats.
	But he's back, and his name is well and truly, as we say here, in the frame now.
	Last week, I think it was maybe 10 days or so ago from when we record this, he said that he owed it to everybody, and he brought his wife into the conversation that he owed it to her, that if he ever became president, then when he became president, if there was anything to know about UFOs, then the people would know that too.
	You know, Bernie Sanders, we know him as a social justice campaigner.
	We know him as a very prominent political figure.
	Never heard him talk about UFOs before.
	Right.
	I think it's just really honestly just because he was asked and he said that his wife would never allow him to hide it or something like that.
	He sort of put it on to his wife in a sort of jokey way.
	But I think that any Democratic candidate probably, if they are asked by an interviewer about this topic, I suspect they're all going to say they will do our best to bring the information out because I think that's what the Democrats want to do.
	But it was cool that he said it, and it was great that he was asked the question.
	And I hope more candidates are asked that question.
	You know, I've talked to, and I'm sure you know him too, Steve Bassett from the Paradigm Research Group.
	I've talked to Steve a lot, and he was somebody who was particularly hoping that Hillary, if she'd become president last time around, was going to be the disclosure president.
	And that didn't happen.
	Trump has been asked about UFOs, but we haven't really got very much out of him.
	You know, it seems to be everybody's saying that at some point a president will tell us what is there to be known if there is anything to be known.
	Apparently, you will remember that Clinton, when he got into office, didn't he ask the questions about he wanted to know who killed JFK and what extraterrestrial stuff, if any, have we got?
	And we didn't hear much about that.
	So it's a tantalizing issue, isn't it?
	Presidents and would-be presidents and UFOs.
	But the fact that Bernie Sanders is in this now, I find very, very interesting.
	Yeah, I think it's interesting.
	I don't think Sanders is really deeply in it.
	I think he was just asked a question by a reporter and he said he would do his best.
	But I really doubt that it's something he's focused on.
	And I think, you know, the idea of a quotes disclosure president has never really sat well with me or people that I work with.
	I think it's much more, we're talking about a gradual unfolding process here.
	I don't think we're ever going to have some high-level government official in America step up to a microphone and announce that we are engaging with extraterrestrial spacecraft or anything like that.
	I just think we are going to have a gradual unfolding of the truth.
	And I think that in a way sort of happened with our New York Times story.
	I mean, some people consider that to be a form of, quotes, disclosure, which is a word that a lot of the UFO people have latched on to.
	I don't think the process is quite that simple or will be that simple.
	But I don't know what it takes.
	I mean, if you have the Pentagon investing money and time for 10 years on exploring this issue and acknowledging that they did that, I think you can assume that the issue is real and that the government's involved and takes it seriously.
	That is a sort of type of disclosure, even though we're not being told everything that they know.
	But the fact is, Howard, the program in the DOD was most interested in trying to understand the technology behind the objects, how they do what they do.
	And they had no hopes of ever being able to answer the question of why they're here or where they're from or all the kinds of tantalizing questions that the UFO community are interested in.
	They weren't focused on those questions, and they're pretty hard to answer.
	So I think they're more interested in understanding how they worked from a sort of national security perspective and making sure that we get a hold of the answers to that before other countries do.
	You know, it would be a hell of a double bluff, wouldn't it?
	If they were investigating those things that were actually really ours, maybe developed from back engineered technology or whatever.
	You know, that would be a big stretch of credulity To think that one armature of the government is investigating something that another secret armature of the government is actually doing.
	I know.
	I mean, that seems really hard to imagine happening.
	And the people I've talked to connected with the Department of Defense program are convinced that that is not the case and that they have high enough clearances that they would be informed if these objects were ours.
	Now, maybe that's not the case, but certainly not all of them, they are convinced, can be explained that way.
	So it's a mystery, but I can't imagine that that would happen, that scenario.
	But maybe I'm wrong.
	I don't know if you were aware of the comments made by somebody else who's a regular guest on shows that I do, Seth Szostak from SETI, a man I've got a lot of time for.
	He's a great guest and a great guy, great talker.
	But he made some comments about the disclosure movement, and I think there's a lot of sense in the comments.
	And I asked him to talk about them a few weeks ago.
	He was basically saying that the disclosure movement is waiting for the government to do its work for it.
	In other words, it's waiting for some revelation from the government, which may not come.
	Whereas the disclosure movement should be concentrating on finding evidence.
	I wonder what you make of it.
	And I hope I'm being fair to Seth when I paraphrase it that way, but I wonder what you make of that general thought.
	I mean, it's a good point, but I don't think the people involved with this so-called disclosure movement really have the capacity to do a lot of serious work on this issue.
	So when he says they should be finding evidence, I mean, I don't know what he has in mind because the community, the UFO community has been trying to find evidence for a long time, and there is plenty of it already.
	And I don't know what they would be capable of doing that's different than what they did in the past.
	I think we really need government involvement to get really solid evidence.
	And I think that's why, you know, the program and the DOD is so important.
	That's why the videos were so important because they were government property.
	So I guess I don't have a lot of sense that the UFO community would really be capable of doing what Seth Szostak calls for.
	And I respect him too greatly, and I understand his desire for more evidence.
	I also think, you know, the SETI folks are a little bit prejudiced against the whole UFO effort.
	And I've been on his show before.
	I've talked to him at length.
	I think there's plenty of evidence, and he doesn't.
	So we have to disagree.
	But from a scientific perspective, I understand that scientists need a certain kind of evidence that we don't have a lot of.
	Well, the kind of evidence they require is the kind of evidence that in this field it's the hardest to get.
	That's hard and repeatable.
	Exactly.
	And they need physical material.
	Now, we do know that physical material exists and it is being studied.
	So at some point, that may be what turns the key a little bit for people at SETI.
	If we can get some definitive studies on some material that has been recovered from supposed crashed UFOs, and it can be determined to be exquisitely different than what is found on Earth, then we have something.
	But we don't know whether that's going to happen or not.
	But there are materials that are under investigation.
	And that, I think, is a very, very interesting development.
	Who has those?
	Are we talking about the U.S. Air Force?
	Who has that stuff?
	Well, I'm not exactly sure.
	Again, because all of this information is classified.
	I know that To the Stars Academy does have one important piece of material, and they are working on that, and they're trying to interest official agencies to work with them on it.
	They put out an announcement fairly recently about that.
	And then I have talked to other insiders who know these materials exist, and they can't say where they are, who has them, what they know about them.
	All of these things are very, very highly guarded, classified information.
	And that's the frustration of being a journalist.
	You know, you bump up against that wall all the time.
	And we can't get that information.
	But I can assure you that there are materials that exist, and they are being investigated.
	And a lot of it at the moment comes down to gut feeling, you know, and we can all have a gut feeling.
	I can have a gut feeling that Jesse Marcel, way back in Roswell days and Jesse Marcel's son, I think that Jesse Marcel's son was probably shown something exotic, something from not here that was probably taken away.
	The thing that's always tantalized me, though, is that even if people were told to give back whatever they had retrieved or kept for themselves, you know what human nature is like.
	There would always be someone involved in a recovery or something like that who would slip something into their pocket.
	And so far, we haven't seen or heard anything about that.
	I know.
	It's so frustrating.
	Or they would bury it in their backyard or do something with it, a little bit of it.
	And that is frustrating.
	But we just, you know, but I know there are materials that exist.
	And I think one of them is supposed to go back to the days of the Roswell incident.
	So hopefully we're going to find out more about that.
	I think there's more to it than we were ever officially told.
	Of course, there was.
	Absolutely.
	I'm sure.
	I'm sure that's true.
	To the main topic of our conversation, then, your work, this new documentary about your book or connected with your book, Surviving Death.
	This is a topic that seems just like the topic of disclosure and UFOs, that seems to be a topic that is getting more and more media coverage right now, right?
	I think that's true.
	I think a lot of people are interested in questions about the nature of consciousness and the evidence that shows that consciousness can function independent of the brain.
	And if that is the case, therefore, we can ask the question legitimately, does consciousness survive the death of the brain, of the physical body?
	And those questions can be addressed not just through people's experiences, which are incredible and very, very common, but also through scientific research.
	And that's what I'm trying to do is sort of bring the experiential together with the research.
	And what I've done is look at a lot of different areas of research and taken the best from a lot of different areas and kind of synthesized them together so you can see how they all fit together and all point towards the same thing.
	And there's a lot of great evidence that suggests that maybe something does survive death.
	We don't know for sure, but it's very interesting to me and very provocative.
	And I'm fascinated by that question right now.
	And you must be very pleased that television has picked up this because, let's face it, a lot of people buy books, but more people watch TV.
	Absolutely true.
	And although I'd love for people to read my book, they're going to get even more information in a six-part series than they're going to get in my book because in six hours, you can cover a lot.
	So I think it's going to be really exciting when it comes out.
	And it's going to be on a major streaming network, but I'm not supposed to say what network that is.
	It's high-level negotiations.
	I understand this.
	But give me an idea of the kind of researches that you've been looking into and the kind of things that we might expect to see on this program.
	Well, one of them has to do with very, very small children who talk about a past life, who give specific details about a past life and are very affected by their memories.
	And then investigators are able to find the actual person that that child is talking about, who may have died many years earlier.
	And the facts all match up to that person.
	So what you have is young children, and we're talking about two-year-olds, three-year-olds, children who are just learning to talk, remembering a previous life that can be verified.
	All of their memories can be verified as accurate.
	And these are children who have not been exposed to anything that relates to the memories that they had.
	And they often will have special knowledge, too, of things they were knowledgeable about in the previous life.
	And their parents can't possibly explain how this child would know something like that.
	It's absolutely freaky for the parents.
	Sometimes they have nightmares about their previous deaths, and there's a lot that goes on where the child is profoundly affected.
	And there's usually some kind of resolution that comes for them, and then they move on with their lives, and they don't really remember it.
	But I find this to be among the very strongest evidence for survival.
	And there is a, the University of Virginia in the United States has a very strong department that has been studying cases of childhood memories like this for decades.
	So they have a huge database of cases that most people don't even know exists.
	But in my book, I describe two American cases that happened fairly recently that are just astonishing.
	So that's one area of research.
	Give me an idea about those cases then without blowing the whole contents of your documentary.
	And can I ask you one thing?
	Can you just be like an inch further back from the microphone?
	You're popping very slightly.
	Okay, how is that?
	Is that good?
	Perfect.
	Okay, so one of the cases has been out in the media before.
	It's the case of James Leininger, who when he was two years old, he lives in Louisiana.
	He was born in the early 2000s.
	He's now 21 years old.
	But when he was absolutely tiny, less than two years old, he started to remember a lot of information about World War II airplanes.
	He was obsessed with World War II airplanes and was talking about them to his parents and knew things about them that the parents couldn't explain.
	He started to have intense nightmares about crashing in an airplane.
	An airplane caught on fire, he couldn't get out, and he crashed and died.
	And these nightmares woke him up many, many times every week, and he was absolutely terrified.
	And this was a little two-year-old boy still in diapers.
	Eventually, he was able to provide specific information to his parents.
	He gave the name of the aircraft carrier he flew off, the type of airplane that he flew.
	He gave the name of his best friend, a lot of specific information, where the plane went down, things he couldn't possibly have known, like, you know, the word Natoma.
	What two-year-old would ever come out with that when asked?
	I don't even know if he's asked.
	He would just reveal the information that that was the name of the boat that he flew off of.
	So his father goes to the internet and looks it up.
	And there was indeed an aircraft carrier called the Natoma Bay in World War II.
	So he was able to piece together a lot of information from what his son said.
	He went to reunions and found veterans from the Natoma Bay and eventually, through a long series of events, was able to determine who that person was that little James was talking about.
	He had died in 1945, exactly as James Leininger described it.
	And every detail was confirmed as being accurate.
	And that's the story.
	And it was an amazing story.
	And that child was emotionally affected by it, you know, through the nightmares.
	He was obsessed with playing with aircraft, with airplanes.
	It wasn't just sort of thoughts that were in his brain.
	He was reliving it, basically.
	Which is astonishing because there would seem to me that for somebody so young, there are only two potential ways that you could get that information.
	Maybe three.
	And the third one would be if your parents or somebody had told you that story, but that seems unlikely to know so much about a thing.
	The other two ways would be if these memories were somehow coming through your DNA somehow.
	Or the other one, which is the most intriguing one, and we have to say possibly the most likely, that we survived death and that he is maybe the reincarnation of that person.
	That's right.
	I mean, that's the third one that you just mentioned is the hypothesis that the scientists from the University of Virginia feel is the most likely as they, because they've looked at so many other cases, but of course, we can't ever know for sure.
	And the thing about that's important about this case, when you mentioned that the possibility that the parents could have, you know, created the whole thing, which is a reasonable thing for any skeptic to raise.
	But for this case and for the other really, really evidential cases, the information that the child has provided is on the record before the parents had any idea who the previous person was.
	So that's an important component.
	And that way we know, like it was either filmed or we have printouts from the internet that are dated.
	We have emails, communications, notes, and things like that that show that they had no idea where this was going or who the person was that was being talked about.
	And there's records Of the long process that his dad went through when he met with the veterans, they're all on the record talking to him.
	So it's really not possible in this particular case that this was created by the parents.
	It also was extremely disturbing to the parents.
	They didn't, you know, they don't enjoy going through this process of watching their little boy screaming at night in terror every night.
	So it was documented enough that we know this was a legitimate case.
	That's my point.
	I mean, that is an astonishing story, isn't it?
	And it's very hard for us, you and me, without scientific knowledge, without having experienced these things directly, to say, no, this cannot be so.
	If there is so much specific detail then, it is definitely something worthy of further research.
	Do you know where did those researchers park this then?
	Have they left that case now or are they doing more investigation?
	Well, this case took place, you know, James is now 21, and this took place when he was two, three, and four.
	So he was probably about four when they figured out who his previous person was.
	And then they found family members.
	This is another interesting part.
	The person who he was before was a pilot named James Houston Jr.
	They found James Houston's sister, who was then in her 80s.
	And little James, who was then about four, had conversations with that sister.
	And they discussed all kinds of things from their childhood.
	And she told, he told the sister things about their childhood that he couldn't possibly have known, that she was the only person who knew.
	So there's a lot of information in the case that goes beyond the specific points I mentioned that were actually on the record, which to me are the evidential ones.
	But the fact that they found the family members, it was just a fascinating long journey.
	And basically, this case was carried on by the father.
	The outside investigators didn't come on until later because the father, Bruce, was absolutely obsessed with proving that his son was wrong.
	He did not accept that reincarnation was a reality.
	And you can understand Bruce's point here, can't you?
	Because if there is more to this, if this isn't something that has a rational explanation, then the boy, who is now a man, will have to carry that burden, if it is a burden, for the rest of his life.
	That's correct.
	Yeah.
	And he does, as of now, because I recently saw him, still is sort of haunted by the memory of the death, of the crash of his plane.
	And that's a sad thing.
	I mean, the rest of it, he's pretty much finished with, but it lingers on and it's affected his life.
	So yes.
	But how does he feel about his own mortality, Leslie?
	Did you ask him that?
	Well, that's a good question.
	He doesn't deny that he was this person in his previous life.
	So I'm sure that he and his family members as well all accept this as a reality.
	And his dad, who was so opposed to the idea in the beginning, has come around to understand that this is what happened.
	And he does not any longer see it as being contradictory to his religious beliefs.
	That was his problem.
	So his journey through this is very, very interesting as well.
	It completely transformed the dad.
	But he was determined to prove that all those memories were wrong.
	And every time he checked one out, it was accurate.
	And that was driving him crazy for years.
	And he was absolutely obsessed with this.
	That's how the case got solved.
	Not only is it fascinating, but it is also very, very moving.
	I mean, I was just visualizing as we were talking what that conversation between the departed man's sister and the boy, the young man, might have been like.
	I just think that I would have loved to have been at that conversation because, my God, you could make a whole television documentary series about that.
	That's true.
	It's fascinating.
	And in my book, I have a lot of photographs, including photographs of little James with this 80-year-old sister.
	And I have some, you know, descriptions of their conversations.
	And also, I asked the father, Bruce, to write little sections in the chapter I wrote describing what his own issues were.
	It's very interesting for parents who might have children remembering things like this and dealing with this themselves, because most parents do not want to be accepting something like this.
	So his story is a very interesting one.
	Sorry, you were saying Venwin James?
	When he was eight years old, his parents took him back to the location.
	They were able to find a map that showed exactly where the plane crashed in the water.
	It was off the island of Chichijima, which is near Iwo Jima.
	And they went with a Japanese film crew to that exact location and performed the ceremony in honor of this man and of the others who died off of that aircraft carrier.
	And little James Leininger, when he was eight, he completely broke down and sobbed his heart out for about 15 minutes on that boat with no expectation that he would have, that anything like that would happen.
	He was just this happy little eight-year-old going out on a boat, you know.
	And suddenly he just had this cathartic, emotional, profound sobbing experience in which he said goodbye to James Houston.
	He saluted.
	He stood up and saluted to this man who he believed he was in a previous life and said goodbye to him.
	And from that moment on, his life completely changed and he was, he moved on.
	So that was sort of a cathartic change for him and a very, very profound moment.
	And that was filmed.
	So part of that will be shown in our documentary.
	Well, I can't wait to see that.
	From your researches, though, Leslie, did you get any sense of how common this might be?
	Because I'm not aware in my own circle of any stories like that.
	You know that I came into this world and I've told you before, telling people at the age of three that I came from California and describing California.
	Then I went years in my 40s, I went to California and I recognized some of the things that I saw.
	Now, that may just have been the number of TV shows I saw, but there may have been more to that.
	But it's not a common thing.
	I suppose I'm asking you, did you get a sense of how much of this stuff goes on?
	Well, I mean, the database in the University of Virginia, which is sort of the headquarters for all these studies, is quite large.
	They have more than 2,000 cases in their database that have actually been solved like this.
	I can't remember the exact number, I don't have it in front of me, but they have quite a lot, but most of them are not in the United States or probably not in the UK either.
	They're in countries in which the concept of reincarnation is more widely accepted, such as Burma or Thailand or India, a lot of Asian countries, Sri Lanka, and those are the countries that the original pioneer worked in, Ian Stevenson, who began the study of this.
	So I think the cases in America and countries that don't have strong religious beliefs about reincarnation are much rarer than those in other countries.
	And I'm hoping that getting the information out there like we're doing, like I'm doing and others are doing, will help parents who may think that their children are talking about a past life, will help them to recognize it.
	Because I think many parents, if they hear something like that, they'll just tell their children, oh, you're just having a bad dream or you're fantasizing or, you know, they just dismiss it.
	And parents need to know that these things do happen.
	And maybe we'll have more cases coming out when more people know about it.
	I recently spoke to some of the people behind, or one of the people behind the Soul Phone project.
	I don't know whether you're aware of that.
	This is Gary Schwartz and the people who are working with him.
	They are working on an actual scientific way to create a device that might allow us to communicate with those who've passed on.
	At the moment, they're at an early stage.
	I think they're at the stage of the Soul Switch.
	So the idea, if I'm putting this right, is that a medium connects you with the person who's departed.
	And then once you've got that connection, you can activate like a simple on-off yes-no switch on that basis.
	But the ultimate aim of the thing is to be able to create some kind of communication device.
	I don't know if you're aware of any of this kind of research.
	I mean, I've heard a little bit about it, Howard, and I think it would be obviously fantastic if that were to happen.
	Absolutely wonderful.
	Because right now, we rely on these kinds of communications we can have, but they have to happen through a medium.
	So there's not this kind of direct thing where you have a switch that allows you to have that direct communication.
	But there are a lot of very good mediums out there who can provide communications for people.
	And I've had that experience myself with a medium, and it's very profound.
	Can you talk about that?
	Yeah, I did have two.
	And, you know, again, there are lots of mediums who aren't very good or people who think they're mediums and they're not.
	Just like with everything else, you've got to go to the right people and be very careful who you go to.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, scientists suggest that is exactly the case.
	And in my own experience, I've consulted and met an awful lot and not been impressed by many and been impressed by a few.
	Exactly right.
	So that's important for people to know.
	You know, you need a recommendation from someone else who has been to that medium.
	You need somebody with a good reputation and all of that.
	So assuming all of that, I was able to find two who were absolutely top mediums, highly recommended to me.
	One of them is in Ireland.
	She's very available to people.
	She works on Skype.
	And so, I mean, I'll just say her name in case people are looking for somebody.
	Her name is Sandra O'Hara, and she is, you can find her on the, she has a website.
	And she was the second reading I did.
	And she knew absolutely nothing about me because I took out a separate email address that didn't involve my name.
	And I didn't give her my name.
	And she had no idea where on the planet I was.
	All she had from me was my first name spelled differently than I spell it.
	That's it.
	And her reading was absolutely phenomenal because she came up with lots and lots of accurate information about two loved ones who I had lost.
	And the specificity of it was just mind-blowing to me.
	Plus, personalities of the two people were present and they were very different personalities.
	So you could feel and notice the contrast between them.
	Right.
	Well, you see, at some level, that information is within you because it's within your recollection.
	The stuff that is really interesting, if there was any of that, would be the stuff that would tell you where they are now or perhaps stuff about them that you didn't know and you could later verify.
	Exactly.
	And that's a very astute point, Howard, because there is a large debate that goes on about the fact that perhaps mental mediumship involves the medium using her own psychic abilities to just telepathically get the information from the sitter.
	Mind reading, effectively.
	Yeah, mind reading is a sort of the more layman's term.
	That alone, if that's happening, of course, that alone is extraordinary, but it's not evidence of survival past death.
	So you're right.
	When evidence is provided to the sitter that the sitter doesn't even know or the sitter thinks is wrong, and then maybe later finds out, oh yeah, my grandmother has something that shows me that that's what she was talking about, of course that's more evidential.
	And did that happen with you?
	No, that didn't happen with me.
	There was a lot of information.
	I don't think there was anything that I, there were some things during the reading that didn't make sense to me in the moment where I'd go, no, that doesn't make sense.
	And then when I listened to the tape afterwards, I realized, oh yeah, now I know what that was.
	But they didn't require me to go to somebody else for that information.
	No.
	And, you know, but I know people and I know cases in which that has happened where it's very, they had no idea about something and they only found out later.
	Sometimes there are proxy sitters that are sent where the sitter isn't even present for the medium and the medium is still able to do an accurate reading for somebody who isn't even there.
	But nonetheless, we don't know the extent of human psychic capacity.
	So you can never prove one way or the other where the information is coming from.
	And the greatest reading, though, it feels very much like those people are there when you have a good reading.
	And I think that's what's meaningful about it.
	And I think it's up to every person to create the meaning from it that they want to create.
	And so I, during my reading, I allowed that to be those people.
	It felt to me like those people were there.
	And then afterwards, I put on my journalistic hat and I analyze it and I think about it.
	But you never know for sure.
	So I figure like, why not allow it to be for you?
	What gives you the most meaning?
	And that's how I look at it.
	Because it's the only standard at the moment.
	Until we get some scientific gizmo that will do it for us, it's the only standard, isn't it, really?
	what does it mean to you?
	If it means something to you, then it's worth something.
	If it doesn't, then it's probably not.
	And it's still extraordinary if it is just telepathy, mind reading, as you point out, it's still extraordinary that that level of mind reading is able to happen.
	Yeah, you provided so little information, absolutely.
	Yeah, she knew absolutely nothing about me.
	And the scientific community, the materialistic worldview that is conventional now, they can't even explain that, let alone if it were people from the other side talking.
	They'll deny the fact that such mental abilities even exist when it's a fact that they do exist.
	So even that is not something that science can explain.
	And yet and yet and yet the one problem is, isn't it, that so many people who you would expect to pass on and be in touch aren't.
	For example, my own mother.
	I had a dream about her.
	She came and checked, it's very common, this came and checked on me.
	She said, are you okay in a dream?
	And then I started asking her questions in the dream about what it was like where she was and she faded away.
	And that was it.
	You know, I would have expected her because we were so close to be in touch.
	And then if you think about the person who inspired my work, Ark Bell, Ark Bell left us very tragically.
	He died.
	You know, he had COPD and other health issues.
	But it was still a big shock for a lot of us that this man who was such a guide to so many of us and I actually got to know for a very brief time, you know, would pass like that.
	But if anybody was going to, because he discussed it so many times, if anybody was going to come back and send messages, I would have expected him to.
	And as far as I'm aware, he hasn't.
	I know, it's true.
	We can't explain this.
	The same with Ian Stevenson, who studied the past life cases at the University of Virginia for decades, the cases of children.
	And he died in, I think, 2011 or something.
	And everybody expected, in fact, he even left a code.
	He left some kind of code behind.
	Everyone expected he would come through, but nobody heard a word from him.
	Except you did have some mediums claiming they had him there, but it didn't seem like he was really him.
	So you get into a lot of confusion around this.
	And who knows why some people come through and some people don't?
	In your research for the book, what did you learn, if you learned anything, about the process of crossing over, the process of dying and assuming we go on to something else?
	What the common experience of that is?
	Yeah, I mean, one of the chapters in the book, and a number of them, by the way, were written by other people, just like my UFO book was.
	One of the chapters is by Peter Fennec, who's British.
	I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but he is a psychologist at Nottingham University, and he studies what they call end-of-life experiences.
	So he studies the process of conscious dying.
	And he has documented some extraordinary things that happen to people towards the end of life, which appear as if they are connecting with the other side and coming back or having little quick journeys over there.
	For instance, a lot of these dying people will start talking about loved ones who they say are there in the room with them or who have come to help them.
	They will go to the other side and come back and describe what it's like.
	People who are visiting them will see lights around them.
	There'll be effects on clocks and things like that.
	There's a lot of different experiences that he writes about that people have as they are dying, which make us hopeful that perhaps they are on the verge of crossing over into another world.
	And people who are going through the process often aren't afraid of dying because of these experiences.
	Well, it's either an elaborate hallucination and part of dying and being ill or whatever, or it is something.
	And I probably told you before about my own grandfather who was dying of cancer in the 70s, very tragically, and he was in a terrible state.
	But he was communicating with relatives who'd long passed and even talked about and was communicating about a child who was, I think, stillborn or died very young that my father who was there didn't even know about.
	There was a dialogue going on about that.
	So it was a very bizarre time for us.
	And he was, in those days in Liverpool, somebody who was sick and terminally so would be kept at home.
	They wouldn't die in a hospital.
	He was at home.
	And they brought the bed down into the living room.
	And I remember there was, it would be a cupboard, but it had a curtain, not a door.
	And whatever he was talking to was aimed towards that curtain that was next to his bed.
	It was a most astonishing time and something that I'll never forget.
	That's amazing.
	And that's quite evidential.
	And we have other cases like that where a dying person or somebody who's having a near-death experience who's actually clinically dead at the time will encounter somebody who they didn't even know had died or they might not have known existed before that encounter.
	It sort of reminds me of what you're saying there about the child, that the stillborn child or the miscarriage, that, you know, that the people still here don't know something and then the dying person will report it back.
	And that's, of course, a more evidential element of this than somebody just seeing somebody that everybody already knows has passed on.
	And then there are the many cases where people seem to have an awareness of the fact that they're going to die, but they don't actually consciously know that they're going to die.
	In my own case, I had a conversation with my mother.
	None of us, she was in hospital, and sadly she'd had an amputation, but we were all preparing for her to come home and go to the next stage.
	So it was a big shock for all of us when she died.
	But we had a conversation that was almost like I said to her, and I've heard a lot of people tell me stories like this, which is why I'm telling this one.
	I said, I don't think I've told this on air or anywhere before, but I said to her, you've, you know, I've always been, you've always had to worry about me and my various adventures in this crazy media business.
	And would I make a living?
	Would I go bust whatever.
	I said, you've got to stop worrying about me now, mum.
	It's all about you.
	From now on, it's all about you.
	And I'll always come through.
	I always do.
	And she thanked me for that.
	And then within 36 hours, she was dead.
	Wow.
	So that kind of thing is spooky in a way.
	It's like a final conversation, but neither side knows that.
	Exactly.
	And probably at some level, somebody does know something.
	Or certainly the dying person seems to sometimes have an unconscious sense of it, even if they're not conscious of it.
	We just don't know.
	But I've heard lots of stories like that also, Howard, and it's profound.
	And of course, the experiences that are perhaps the most valid are the ones that you periodically hear from people who work in ambulance departments or emergency rooms, or they deal with people who are sick or people involved in accidents.
	They're the people who know.
	Exactly.
	And the chapter that I was referring to in my book, which was written by Peter Fennec, involves a lot of reports from hospice workers.
	You know, they are with dying people.
	That's what they do.
	They help people die.
	And they witness lots of these amazing experiences that end-of-life people have.
	And many of the ones that he works with were convinced that there is some kind of a connection they're making to another world.
	It just seems that way.
	But they witness it all the time.
	Yeah, but what else is in the research then that we might see?
	Just tantalize me with something else.
	Okay, well, so, you know, I also do some work on near-death experiences, but I think a lot of people are very familiar with near-death experiences.
	It's not so new to people.
	There've been so much about that.
	A lot about stuff on trans mediumship and mental mediumship, which we've talked about.
	And then also physical mediumship and out-of-body experiences as well.
	Physical mediumship is something that is fraught with fakery, though, isn't it?
	People who claim that they can make things appear.
	That's right.
	And that's why it is such a difficult thing to report on.
	It was by far the most challenging part for me to cover in the book.
	But the fact is that there have been genuine physical mediums, and they've been studied by Nobel Prize-winning scientists very, very rigorously.
	And I don't think most people know that.
	So, you know, there are very, very rigorous studies with strict controls of physical mediums in history who have been shown to produce phenomenal effects.
	And all possibility of fraud was ruled out.
	So whether this has to do with survival or not is another question, but it's very, very interesting to me that these phenomenal physical events can take place that we can't explain.
	So it's sort of like taking mental mediumship to another level where within the room where the medium sits, there are also physical phenomena that occur that are, you know, lots of levitations and materializations, things moving around the room, voices speaking independently.
	And I know it's very, very hard to believe that this can happen, but it has been documented.
	Now, that's not to say that it's common.
	And as you said, there are many, many frauds out there and people who prey on innocent people by pretending that they can do these kinds of things.
	And quite often, of course, especially in the glory days of all of this stuff, I'm thinking about sort of 1930s, 1940s, you might be invited to the medium sitting room and then the lights will be dimmed.
	And then you may read later in a newspaper that actually the stuff that was appearing was made to appear by a Confederate.
	Exactly.
	And it happened a lot.
	And of course, we're not interested in those cases.
	I'm only focusing in my book on the ones that were rigorously studied by scientists in closed rooms.
	You know, all the controls that any intelligent person would want to have in place were in place.
	And those are the cases that are interesting.
	It's just like with UFOs.
	You know, 99% of the photographs you see on UFOs on the internet are faked.
	But that 1% of real photographs, such as the ones from the DOD, are the ones we care about.
	And the same with this.
	The few cases that have been documented, that have been shown to be genuine, are the ones that are important and they do exist.
	And I have also had experiences with one medium myself who is genuine, who works in England, and I write about that in the book as well.
	And I find it completely mystifying and fascinating.
	And to me, a very, very interesting area of study.
	But I do agree, it's a hard one for most people to accept and to wrap their minds around.
	But I think if they read my book, they would see that what I'm talking about is something legitimate.
	We're coming to the end of this, but what happened with the medium in England?
	His name is Stuart Alexander, and he lives in the north of England.
	He's been sitting with a small group for about 40 years.
	He's now in his 70s and quietly.
	He does not like publicity, but he was willing to allow me to write about him in my book.
	And he sits with a small group, and there is these, you know, as from their perspective, there are spirit people from the other side who speak through Stuart.
	He goes into a trance.
	So he's completely unconscious, kind of exits his body, and these other spirit people, for lack of better words, kind of take over his body and speak through him.
	He doesn't remember anything when he comes back about what happened.
	And when these spirit people are there, they can manifest a lot of different physical effects in the room, as well as bring through messages from people's loved ones on the other side who may be sitting in the room.
	And you saw all of this.
	I have.
	I've seen it multiple times, including the materialization of a physical hand that is alive.
	I've seen it and I've touched it.
	And there's a substance called ectoplasm that, you know, I think most people think is probably completely fake, but it's not.
	I've seen that substance.
	It comes out of Stewart's body.
	And that's the substance that is used to create these effects.
	And it's absolutely mind-blowing, but it's real in this case.
	I know that because I've studied his mediumship for years, and I know the group well, and I've checked out all possible avenues of anything being hoaxed.
	And he's been doing this for so long, so many people have witnessed it, that he's never been caught in any kind of fraudulent situation.
	So it's absolutely fascinating.
	So are you saying that, in your opinion, he is the real deal?
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Now, I have to say to my listener, just for my sake here, as a journalist, I have to say that you've heard a couple of people referred to.
	Please do not think that this program is recommending or advocating Or putting forward those people for you to go to.
	What you make of what you hear is a matter for you, but we are not endorsing anybody here.
	I'm sorry, I have to say that, though.
	Absolutely respect that.
	Totally respect that.
	And I'd like to say that if anybody's curious about Stuart Alexander, on my website, I have a video of him giving a talk about, it was made about a year ago, where he's describing how he developed as a medium.
	And you can get a very good sense of who he is as a person and what his journey has been like.
	So anybody who's curious can go look at that.
	But I can't advocate for it either.
	I mean, it is, he's not, it's just very, very hard to put your mind around this.
	Well, what it is, even if we can't say definitively what it is, we can say that it's fascinating.
	Absolutely fascinating.
	And I certainly am an astute person who I don't think is easily fooled.
	And I would not be involved with this if this was fake.
	But that's me speaking for myself.
	It's only up to people out there to draw their own conclusions.
	Which is what I say to everybody when I do radio shows or anything like that.
	You have to be able to make your own decisions and you have to maintain skepticism.
	And please don't believe whatever you're looking into, everything that you're told.
	You have to experience a thing for yourself and make up your own mind.
	Then you know.
	And it's not for anybody like me to say this is so or for you or for anyone to say this is so.
	You've got to, you know, you've got to read and research for yourself, I think.
	Now, you can't say a lot about this series, I know, but give us an idea of when it's coming out in America.
	I think it will be out in about a year from September at the earliest.
	But I will certainly let you know when I just don't know exactly because it takes a lot of time to produce six hours.
	But that's the earliest.
	So that would be the fall of 2020.
	Wow, Zee, that's a long time.
	Okay, but that's television.
	We know that's how that works.
	We're still in production.
	We're still shooting it.
	And then it all has to be edited.
	And there's a lot of work that has to be done even once it's all filmed.
	So it does take a long time.
	Well, we'll talk about it when it appears then.
	I'd love to see it.
	What else are you working on then, Leslie?
	Anything that you're working on right now?
	It's mainly, Howard, my involvement with this documentary series is pretty much full-time work.
	And again, keeping plugged into the UFO topic at the level of the kind of information that we can bring to the New York Times.
	Those are the main things.
	I mean, I have projects here and there, other media projects that I do, but those are the main things that occupy most of my time.
	The series is really a full-time job right now.
	Well, by the sounds of it, it's a big production.
	Okay, if people want to read about you and your work, what's your website so they know?
	My website is the name of my book, which is Surviving Death, and then my name after that, which is Kane, spelled K-E-A-N.
	So it's survivingdeathkane.com.
	And as I mentioned, on that website, there is a video of Stuart Alexander, but you can find a lot of information about my book there and my UFO book as well.
	I think if somebody just puts my name in Google, that website address will come up.
	It's sort of a hard one to remember.
	But it's survivingdeathkane, K-E-A-N.com.
	Well, Googling is how I found it, Leslie.
	Always good to talk with you, Leslie.
	Please take care.
	We will talk again.
	Thanks, Howard.
	It's been great to talk to you tonight.
	Appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	Leslie Kane, always good to talk with Leslie, and I can't wait to see that series when it comes out.
	It is a topic that interests an awful lot of people, and I have to say it's interested me for personal reasons that you will have heard in our conversation, but it's interested me all of my life, and maybe that goes for you too.
	More great guests in the pipeline here at The Unexplained as the rain here at the back end of summer hammers down on my window in London.
	Until next, we meet.
	My name is Howard Hughes.
	This has been The Unexplained Online.
	And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all else, please stay in touch.
	Thank you very much.
	Take care.

▲