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May 23, 2020 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
53:12
Edition 456 - Professor Erling P Strand
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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.
Well, here I am again, and we're still in lockdown.
But then, there's no great surprise there.
I think we're going to be that way for a little while, although some of the regulations and the rules may change.
I'm not going to talk any more about that.
Thank you very much to Adam, my webmaster, for his hard work on the website and getting all the shows out to you.
And thank you very much for your ongoing messages of support.
Very gratefully received.
Okay, and if you want to contact me, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use the show and go to my website, theunexplained.tv.
That's theunexplained.tv.
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And please, as they say, be part of it.
Now, we're going to do something that you've suggested.
I've had maybe five or six emails over the last six months or so, maybe a little more, about this topic.
And it's a topic that I heard absolutely nothing about until recently, until I started reading about it.
Strange lights, but way much more than that.
In a place called Hestalen, in the central part of Norway, it's a valley.
But it's a valley where phenomena of a kind that I've never heard of before display themselves.
Strange lights that appear to be almost organized in the way that they appear.
And some of them of enormous intensity, the kind of intensity that can light up the entire sky.
And they've been investigating this phenomenon, or these phenomena, because it's a number of things all connected, for about four decades.
It is an astonishing story, and it's partly a story about one man's dedication to finding out what this is, that's taken him from a young man to an older man.
His name is Professor Erling Strand, Erling P. Strand, and he is an assistant professor in Norway and also the project manager for Project Hestern.
He's been trying for all of those decades to measure this phenomenon and to understand what it is and what it might be.
Now, it's not often we talk about a story that isn't on everybody's lips.
You know, we've talked about the Rendlesham Forests and the Roswells and all the things that everybody else talks about.
Maybe we've done it at times in a different way.
I've never talked about something like this before.
Maybe the Phoenix Lights is similar in some ways.
But I think you're going to be enormously interested in this.
Now, we're going to connect in just a second with Erling P. Strand in Norway.
And I have to tell you that his first language is not English.
And consequently, I know that there are some people who, you know, are concerned about those things.
I'm not.
I can understand every word that he says.
But I have to tell you that before we begin the conversation.
I think he's a fascinating man, and I think you're about to hear a fascinating story.
So that's all I'm going to say.
Apart from reminding you that the email address, well, the website where you can find an email link is theunexplained.tv and that's the way to contact me.
Let's get to Norway now.
Let's not waste any time and speak with Professor Erling P. Strand.
Erling, thank you so much for coming on my show.
Thank you to invite me.
It's a very pleasure to be here at your show.
Whereabouts are you?
Are you in Oslo, the capital, or near Oslo?
Very close to Oshlo, about 100 kilometers away from Oshlo, so close to the Swedish border.
Okay.
And at this time of year, we're recording this.
What is it now?
I think we're entering the third week of May now.
We've got lovely summertime conditions in London.
Do you have the same?
60 degrees north?
We did get some Norwegian summer temperature today, in fact.
It has been cold last week, but now they say that it will be better.
It will be warmer.
So in Norway, warm, it's, well, they say it's about 10 degrees centigrade.
So that's good.
Okay.
And just very quickly before we talk about the Hestalan lights, how are you coping with coronavirus?
What are they doing in Norway?
I think the Norwegian government is doing very well.
And also, I think the people in Norway also listen to what the government say.
So they managed to get the death rate and everything very low, very good.
Very few people die.
So totally in the whole Norway is a bit more than 200.
And so I think we can discuss why a Norwegian has been not so dramatically injured.
But of course, if you talk about companies, that is also all around the world, I think.
But I was talking about only the dead rate and people who get sick and so on.
And that's good.
That's good.
Yes, you're doing incredibly well there.
And I think it may be, I mean, look, the scientists and the experts will analyze this when they will.
But I think it's to do with the density of population, when your government acted is probably something to do with it.
And the fact that people maybe have listened to the messages a little more than they've listened in some cases.
It's very unfair to say broadbush things, but in some cases in the United Kingdom and the United States.
But I was just interested to know how it is.
I think that you're beginning to move out of it now, and we're still pretty much in it at the moment, Erling.
Yeah, I hope we're getting out of it, of course.
And I hope that for you too.
Okay, now, just before we start talking about the lights and your investigation of the lights and the phenomena connected with them, I just want to explain to my listener that we've been working on the sound from your end, and the sound that we have is perfectly intelligible to me, and it's the best that we can get.
And I had poor Erling moving all over his room to try and get it better, but I think we're fine.
So I just needed to explain that to my listener.
Erling, talk to me about you.
I know that you're An assistant professor, but more than that, I don't know.
So tell me about you.
Well, first of all, I'm a curious person.
I'm just lecturing at the University College in Norway in the computer science department, teaching computer stuff for my students, bachelor's students.
And also, which brings us into the Hessdaun Fenemland, the Hessdalen project, where I also use my student in investigating the mysteries in that valley.
But my ordinary work is lecturing computer science students.
Okay, very important work these days.
And what is it about the Hessdalen Lights phenomenon?
And we'll talk about exactly what it is.
But what is it in something like this that interests a man who does computer science?
Well, first of all, in the beginning of the 80s, or many years ago, 1980s, 1981 to be more exact, people up in that small valley in the middle of Norway, in the middle of southern Norway, started to see strange lights, mostly hovering above their houses, hovering about the grounds, going down in the valley.
You know, it's a valley with a river in the bottom and mountains on each side.
And it's not a big valley, but the people living there was sometimes frightened because sometimes it moved very close.
And newspapers started to write about it.
The press talked about it.
The news talked about it.
And it continued.
It could be up to 20 observations a week.
So people went up there to see it for themselves.
And many people did see it for themselves.
I was one of those.
Went up there.
I remember the date exactly because we were a group of young, young, not kids, but young people.
I was at that time about 20 years, but anyway, we wanted to see it for ourselves as all the other people who went up there.
And we did see it.
And that made a big impression.
If you can imagine, you're standing out in the mountain.
There's not many houses, not highly populated.
There's about 100 people living in that valley, very few people.
You're standing out in the mountain.
It's dark.
You were several people.
And then this huge light is coming.
And you can see it towards the nearest mountain, which is about two kilometers away.
You could see it towards that mountain.
And it's moving around, stopping, illuminating the ground, moving again slowly.
And it continues for more than one hour and then it suddenly disappears.
And were people thinking that these lights, because of the way that they moved, might be under intelligent control?
Well, all kind of different thoughts came up, of course.
So people want to know what it could be.
And they call it UFO, as everyone is.
If it's something which you cannot understand, it's light, and lights behavior much differently.
They call it UFO.
And everyone called it UFO.
And when you are out there, you know, people discuss, many people who haven't seen that don't believe in such kind of things.
It doesn't exist and so on.
And that's happened here too.
Those who haven't been up there and seen it for themselves, it was discussing, oh, is it something with the people up there?
Those going up there are crazy, all kind of stuff they talked about.
But I had been up there together with friends, together with many people who have been up there and seen for themselves.
And I knew there was something.
And I started to try to find an answer, what it could be.
And no one could give me an answer.
At that time, I was working as a scientist.
And I discussed that with my companion, other scientists, what it could be.
And no one could give an answer.
So I was thinking, oh, that could be curious to know more about if we could find an answer.
then it was i was starting the whole together with some friends and we was you know the And well, it's a difficult answer.
I read reports that these lights, in some cases, were as big as a car.
So this was not a small phenomenon.
This was something that you could not ignore.
That's true.
When this has been close to the houses, and sometimes people sit inside their houses, and their room has been illuminated by the big light moving slowly outside the windows.
And the room has been illuminated.
It's big.
And some has seen this light just beside of a big cottage, 10 meters in diameter.
It was standing precisely beside the cottage, so the size could be very well good estimated.
It was not far away from the cottage.
The man who saw this was about 100 meters away from the cottage.
So he had good estimate of the size.
10 meters.
We have also measured, we've taken pictures, we have measured it on three meters.
So in generally, it's some few meters.
It's big, it's strong.
The first time I went up there, I thought if I'm lucky, I can see a small light maybe in the mountainside or something.
But this was so strong.
If you can imagine, you have a car with your spotlight towards you, the headlights.
The headlights.
And you know, it's strong.
That surprised me mostly.
And were there any other sort of feelings of energy about this thing?
Were people getting feelings?
Were they hearing sounds?
Well, during the years, in the beginning, it was most focused on what they saw.
But the sound was away.
It was never any sound.
I think the sound has been just some few times, but mostly no sound at all.
Quiet, mostly as light.
The shape of the light can be different, not always circular, not oval shapes, all kind of different shapes.
Even sometimes several lights seem they are sticking together and moving around.
So you have a different description of how these lights look like.
We have also blue flashes, light, light who flash very short in time, fraction of a second, or mostly up to a couple of seconds.
Now, a blue light that flashes for a very short time, I mean, I don't know much about physics, but that to me sounds like some kind of electrical phenomenon.
Yes, it could be.
You could think of that in the beginning.
But we have also compared this with ball lightning, which has very clear electrical properties.
I've also discussed this phenomena.
We call it the phenomenon, Hestern phenomena.
We have discussed that behavior, all the different kinds of behavior with the ball lightning scientist.
And we come to the conclusion that it's completely different, mainly because of the electrical characteristics.
We have seen these lights move close to power lines, they're crossing power lines.
If this had been ball lightning, normally it's attracted to a power line or the ground and behave like something really electrical.
And we have to say, Irving, it's very important while we're trying in words to describe to people what this phenomenon was like.
And I have to say, until my listeners started to tell me about Hesterland, I'd never heard anything about it.
Then I looked at some of the pictures, some of them on your own website.
And this is the sort of light.
If I can describe a dawn, you know what the sky looks like at dawn when the sun starts to rise.
Whatever you were seeing in some cases was generating a light like the dawn, wasn't it?
Well, you have the some of the difficulties is the description of the light is so differently.
You have some categorize, some like I mentioned, this huge ball of light, several meters, moving around slowly, all different shapes, all different speeds, can stand still even for hours and then suddenly start moving again.
That's one type.
And you have the other type, which is the blue flashes, mostly blue or sometimes white, but not yellow or not red or any color.
Blue or white flashes, strong flashes.
We saw them for the first time on our pictures because we saw some blue lights on the pictures and then we become aware that it was some strong flashes with short duration, less than a second.
That's one type too.
And the third type is more, if you say, more small lights connected to something, moving around.
They go around and this is the three main types, but you have all different smaller types.
So it's very difficult to find one solution which, for instance, can explain the blue flashes, short flashes, fraction of a second.
And these balls of light, huge balls of light moving slowly around, illuminating the ground, it's quite a different behavior.
So that's one of the challenges.
Well, yes, indeed.
Were they only ever seen at nighttime or were they seen in daylight as well?
They had been seen in daylight too, but of course, not so many observations in the daytime because, well, in the daytime it's light outside and this is a light, so people don't easily see a light moving around when it's daylight up outside.
But some have seen that too.
And it has also been photographed in the daylight when people have taken pictures around and suddenly looking at the pictures afterwards and see these lights in the daytime.
But mostly in the nighttime.
And it can be due to the fact that it's easier to see a light when it's dark outside.
Now, I read when I was doing some research for this that there were at times 20 sightings per week, which is a lot of engagement.
So with something that big that the newspapers, presumably and the television and the radio, were taking an interest in, what were people saying?
What were they thinking?
Well, they were curious to know.
In the beginning, some was afraid of what this could be.
And they wanted someone to come and find an answer to what it could be.
And most people, all people I will say, who have seen it for themselves don't understand what it is.
It's a mystery.
It's a mystery.
And it has been so many people now who have seen it.
So it's not any doubt at all that this phenomenon exists.
And am I correct in saying that these things are still, although it's not as common as it was, say, 20 years ago, the lights are still being observed today?
It's still being observed today.
Not so many, because the high activity from up to 20 observations a week was in the early 80s, from 81 to 85.
But now it's in the order of 20 good observations a year.
It goes up and down, but not so many people are going up there to see it for themselves.
But those who do, there are people coming up there still.
Many of those do still see it.
So it is still active up there, but much less than it was.
And was there any indication when this was a big phenomenon in the 1980s, when it was happening very, very often, that there was the possibility that people could actually command these lights to appear?
Crazy as that may seem, you know that there are people who say that they can summon UFOs.
Were there people who felt that they could command the lights to appear?
Well, we have not any good documentation on that.
So it hasn't been any big topic because it's, well, first of all, it's very difficult to prove that that was the fact.
And so we don't know about that.
We haven't done any much testing on if people can attract the light.
The only thing we can say is that it seems that some people or many people, in fact, can see it several, quite often when they go there.
Now, when the lights have been a phenomenon for a period and you were interested in them, you wanted to investigate them, you began to systematically, technically try to measure and record the lights, didn't you?
You really, you know, you went, as we say here, you went to town on investigating them.
You did a big investigation.
Tell me about the way that you checked this phenomenon.
Well, in the beginning, I'm a technical person, engineer, scientist.
We want to do measurement.
We don't want to only look with our eyes and maybe camera.
We do measurement.
So we organized a project which we call Project Hestalan.
It still is alive today.
We had a field work back in 1984 and 1985.
We have had several field works after that when we started the project again.
But anyway, during the field work, we gathered a lot of different instruments.
We had the different stations up in the mountains, communicating with each other, had the different instruments operating, collecting data to see if we could use that scientific data to find a solution.
In the beginning, I hoped that we could do just some measurement and find a solution, but it wasn't that easy.
We did do a lot of different measurements, but sometimes, not often, but sometimes some of the readings pointing to one direction and other readings could point to another direction.
For instance, if you think of a light which move very fast, we had to measure the speed with the radar up to 30,000 kilometers an hour and it didn't make any sound.
So if you have a light which moves that fast, you should have a sound, but no sound at all.
That could say that, well, it isn't in a physical, in an ordinary sense which we think of something physically which are having illuminating.
But other times we have other indication, for example, the optical spectrum which point to some continuous optical spectrum, which could indicate that there is something solid, something which are an object, some sort of.
So we have different measurement.
Some of the different measurement point in different directions.
That's astonishing, isn't it?
If you have a silent light that is going at 30,000 kilometers per hour speed, and that is something that is like a nebulous phenomenon, it's just whooshes past you and it's gone.
And then you have something that appears to be solid, then it appears to be that you're dealing, as you hinted at the beginning of this, you're dealing not with one phenomenon, but with a number of connected phenomena.
That's correct.
We have more and more thinking.
Maybe we have several different solutions to this.
Maybe it's not only one solution.
Maybe it's different solutions.
But the big question is why does all these different things happen in one small valley, only 15 kilometers long?
It's quite a busy traffic area.
We know that there's a certain amount of space research happening everywhere.
Are you able to rule out military research, military causes?
Well, in the beginning, we cooperated with the military.
This said directly to me that they were surprised.
They didn't know what it was.
And so we had a good, and they wanted to know what it was, day too.
So we had a good cooperation with the military in Norway, also other universities around.
So this is, I would say, not any military system, and also other reasons why it couldn't be any military system.
And were you able to measure anything like radioactivity, any power from these lights, these phenomena?
We have not measured any radioactivity.
We have had instruments which could measure it, but these instruments haven't shown any high degree of radioactivity.
But we have measured some electromagnetic radiation with low frequency, especially, and also other frequencies.
So we have had what we call spectrum analyzer, which could record electromagnetic radiation in different frequencies.
And some frequencies, very low frequencies, seems to be some interesting, but also high frequencies.
So there's something going on in the electromagnetic stuff.
And what about, I mean, I suppose there are two questions to solve from the beginning or to try and ask at the beginning.
You know, I suppose you're asking, is this coming up from the ground or is it coming down from the sky or space?
It has to be one of those things, I presume.
Well, we haven't sometimes, or very few, or mostly I would say just show up from nowhere in the field.
Very few times at all where we have seen it coming from out from the space or coming from the ground.
It has happened, but mostly I would say, most of the observation we have done, it just shows up.
And also something interesting, we have done several measurement instruments, radar, for instance.
We could follow this on the radar screen and also we can see that there was something which the radar saw in the valley.
And this radar could see this for a long time.
There was something there.
After one hour, it was seen by our eyes and the cameras.
And we could see that for nearly one hour.
And then we couldn't see anymore.
So are you saying that whatever it is has the ability to be or the property to become invisible?
It could seem, it could be the possibility, yes.
And also I read that you had some great minds, great international people come.
I read, and this may be wrong, that you had J. Alan Hynek, the great UFO investigator, come to the location, did he?
That's correct.
He visited us during our second field work in 1985.
Our first fieldwork was in the winter of 1984, but due to the fact that we got so much results, we got so much instrumentation, readings, and so on, we decided to go on for one more year, 1985.
And then Jod Alan Hynek come and visited us.
He stayed together with us up there.
And that was very, very, very good.
And what did he, from his observations, what did he make of it?
Well, he said that Hessdown is a UFO laboratory.
It's a place where things can be studied and things can be measured.
And he was very keen on our project and wanted to help us.
He said that as soon as he returned back to the States, this was in 1985, he should organize a team of scientists which could be helping us in solving this problem or solving the phenomena.
Okay, and what actually happened?
Well, actually, you know, Hynek passed away the year after, 1986.
So that was really pity, of course.
And nobody picked up his work?
Well, not directly.
I don't think he ever got time to start this group.
So we didn't hear anything of this proposed group.
Well, that must have been a huge disappointment.
What did you do then?
Well, we continued without any group.
But at that time, in 1985, when he was here during our last field work in 1985, we got nearly none observation.
We got one good observation compared with more than 50 the year before.
So the period with high activity had gone down.
So actually, we didn't hear anything more from the people up there either telling about their observations.
So we thought it had gone back in 1985.
But I had a presentation up there for the people in this small valley in 1993, that's eight years after we had our last field work.
And because they wanted to know what had happened during after all the measurement and so on, we had a lot of data and what had happened.
So they wanted to know.
I went up there, 1993, and had a presentation for them.
And then they said, well, it still continues up here.
It's still active.
And I was surprised, still active.
I haven't heard anything.
What's going on?
Well, and they say that, well, we don't say it to anyone anymore because we were so ridiculed in the press the first time.
So we don't want to tell it anymore.
Right, so they were reluctant to talk about it anymore because they got such a bad time from the media.
That's correct.
But anyway, I thought we could start the project again.
So Project Heston started back in 1993.
And at that time, I was working at this university college, Gristwald University College.
And I established a project at that college.
And now I use my students in doing all kinds of different stuff up there, building automatic stations, running field work, science camps, we called it, and so on.
A lot of different activities which we go on.
And during these activities, when we have the students up there doing fieldwork out in the mountains area, we do get observations.
So of course, my students like it very much.
They, you know, when they're out there and see it for themselves, they have their instruments with them and that make something with the students.
So that continues.
Okay.
Now, if this was a random phenomenon, something that just appears in a random fashion, then presumably it would have appeared on a regular basis through all of those years, from the 80s right up to the present day.
And it hasn't done that.
It's been different.
There have been spates and bursts of the activity, and your students more recently have been able to occasionally measure it.
So there is something random about it.
But from what you said at the beginning of this, the movement of the lights, of the phenomena, appears to be less than random, appears to be almost organized at times.
Well, the phenomena, well, first of all, it's correct.
It's random.
You never know when it shows up now.
But in the beginning, it was more not, well, it was many different types, different looking.
I mentioned the white and blue flashes, the balls of light with different shapes, different speeds, several balls of light together with different colors sometimes, and so on.
So I categorize in three main different types, which also have different, each of these have a little bit difference too, so it could be categorized even more if I like.
But anyway, I choose three different team main types.
So that's correct, but I could also mention that one of these types, these blue flashes, which last sometimes very short time, sometimes only a fraction of a second.
So it can be difficult to see because you have to be aware and it's so short time that it's not every eye who can see it.
And in the beginning, Back in the 80s, when we had the first fieldworks, we were not aware of these because we were looking for the balls of light to last thing for minutes or even up to hours.
But the flashes, we weren't aware of those in the two first year.
But these are the most of these types of operations or observations.
And we always tell our students about this because it's not so many of these big lights, but these blue strong flashes, they have a good chance to be able to see one of these, one of some of these during the 14 days they're up in the mountains.
Now, there are two ways to explain this, I suppose, if you want to be very basic about it.
You know, there's a scientific explanation or there's a paranormal explanation.
Which do you think it is?
Well, maybe both in combination.
I think we are all connected in a way.
We call it paranormal now, maybe some of that, but that could be also normal when you know more about it.
Of course, when we try to find some solutions which are based on the knowledge you have with the naturists today, but that's very hard.
And sometimes, as I mentioned, this data point in different direction.
And you have also some stories from people who, we take them seriously, which say that this is very strange or very difficult to find one solution only based on what you can call scientific old knowledge in the science community.
Right, so science can't explain all of it?
No, I think the nature, if you call it a natural phenomenon, the nature haven't given all the answers yet on what's in it.
And in Hestal, and in that area, is the vegetation any different?
Are the animals, do they behave differently?
Is there anything different about that area?
Well, that's interesting to know.
We have asked ourselves that question too.
Why Hestal?
Why in that small valley?
One thing which are different is that there's a lot of minerals in the ground.
It's copper, it's sulfur, is iron, a lot of it in that valley.
But it's very difficult to say, well, it's minerals in the ground.
We know that's specific.
But how could a mineral in the ground generate these strange light behavior?
Because some people have suggested that the terrain, the ground there, is acting as a sort of natural battery.
That's also one theory.
There are several different theory based on natural thing.
We have plasma theories, we have cold plasma, we have dusty plasma, we have all different, which could fit into some theories.
My personal opinion on the battery is not so strong, battery theory.
The theory is that based on one mountain ridge is high on copper and the other one is high on iron and there's a river in the middle, so it's same as some kind of big battery.
But the problem is that even if you have one pole of the battery is one mountain and the other pole of the battery is on the other mountain, on the huge pole, it's not a high voltage.
If you think of a voltage which could do something to where it looks.
So if it was something natural generating this, like a sort of lightning effect, then the voltages that you're seeing would not be enough to create light that bright, basically.
Yes, I think so.
You can imagine if the voltage has been very high and you could really feel that there is electricity between these mountains.
But it's not.
It's very little.
It's less than a battery.
So Erling, there are so many questions then that, you know, three decades and more after this was first discovered, seen, reported.
So many questions that still have to be answered.
What sort of research would you like to have done if you could have anybody come from anywhere in the world to come and check Herr Stalin out?
What would you do?
Well, one thing is a technical side based on looking at different, having different types of instruments running all the times.
Even we haven't had a lot of fungi.
So when I talking about instruments, if we could have a lot of these instruments running all the time, also have some people who can collect the data and organize it, so we could have a strong base on data itself.
But of course, I'm open for, I know that some people can see this more often.
Some people are feeling energy up there.
Some people, so we have different kind of people have different availabilities And when some of them have been up there, they tell me about these different things.
For us, we don't have any data from instruments who's backing them up.
But anyway, it could be very interesting to anyway.
So the information that you're getting is largely anecdotal and what you need is to be able to And that's, it sounds to me what you need at the moment.
That's my biggest wish is to have completely set our instruments so we could cover it more better, much better than we do it now.
And it seems strange, doesn't it, Erling, that we're talking about a phenomenon in Norway.
My mind says, you know, the world is a big place.
It has many mountains, seas, valleys, oceans, everything.
This must be happening somewhere else.
Yes, this is happening nearly, I think, all over the world on some specific places.
And it has been seen out in the desert.
It has been seen not only in other mountains.
It has been seen in mountains.
It has been the same thing.
It's not one thing which are the same.
It's not only happening in the mountainous area.
It's happening out in the desert.
It's all different kind of natural shapes.
But it does happen some specific places.
So it's very easy to think of there must be something common with these places, even if these places look differently.
So that could be interesting to find out.
Do you think there are any connections with some of the phenomena experienced around the Phoenix lights, for example?
Yes, it could be much of the same.
I've been to other places myself, both in the States, in Mexico, in Australia, and I've seen the lights on these different locations.
And for me, it's nearly the same thing.
So I would guess it's probably the same thing happening on different places.
And in the place that you're investigating, Hesterland, have people reported UFOs, you know, the traditional reportings of craft, maybe that look like a wedding cake or something like that?
Do you get UFO reports there?
Yes, I do that too.
And also people have taken pictures of it.
And it's on my website, though.
Not many, but it has been seen of the people.
So there is something, what we leave this with is one of the great mysteries of our age, of our lifetimes.
Something that has been observed, maybe hasn't been measured as much as it needs to be, and maybe that will happen in the future.
But it's something that is truly unexplained.
There is, at the moment, no definitive way to say what causes this.
That must leave you very frustrated.
Yes, absolutely.
But it's very exciting too to investigate that because it's a mystery still.
Is there anything that I haven't asked you and I should have?
No, there's a lot of different things.
You know, we have tried, we do cooperate with scientists now.
And I will say that it's opening up in traditional scientific communities now.
They do understand there is something because we have had a lot of data which traditional scientists have looked at.
And then so they know there is something.
And so they're opening up now.
That's good because I think we have had we had to have scientists who can be open-minded to take what it is.
Boy, and it's only taken nearly 40 years.
Well, yes, that's true.
But when someone finds the solution on what it is, it can lead to big things.
Well, yes, I mean, something that was suggested, and I think it was on your website, is that if we can find the answer to this and maybe harness it, this could be a source of energy.
It could be a source of something that could be of benefit to us.
Yes, absolutely.
Where does the energy come from?
When the light is moving about the ground, illuminating the ground, where does the energy come from?
And that, I guess, is the big question.
And is it a place that when we're allowed to travel again, Erling, is it a place that it's easy to go and visit?
Well, it's possible to go up there and rent a cottage.
Very nice.
It's up in the countryside.
Buy your own food and everything.
And stay in a cottage.
And you use the local inhabitants up there, talk to them and ask them to show you the different places.
That's exciting.
Well, it is.
And I would love to do that.
Wow.
And maybe you see something.
Yes.
Something.
Maybe so.
What a strange story.
And thank you very much for sharing it with me.
My listeners, a number of them, have emailed me over the last year suggesting that I speak with you about this.
And now I understand why.
Erling, thank you so much for talking with me.
Thank you for being your guest.
Well, as they say on the old westerns, that's a hell of a story.
And in a way, I feel sorry that you know more organized scientific research hasn't been done up to now, but it sounds like it's starting to be done.
And maybe we'll get an explanation of something that may be useful to us, but certainly something that is deeply, extremely unusual.
And proof, isn't it, that this world can demonstrate to us at times remarkable things that we just don't expect.
I think Professor Erling P. Strand is a remarkable man, and his dedication to this topic, you've got to agree, 40 years of work on it, is pretty impressive and has to be applauded, wouldn't you say?
Thank you very much for being part of this.
Please communicate with me.
If you'd like to go to the website theuneplained.tv, you can send me a message from there.
More great guests in the pipeline here at The Unexplained, so until next we meet here at The Unexplained Online, my name is Howard Hughes.
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Take care.
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