Two guests - First , marking 35 years since Chernobyl, Professor Ekaterina Dadachova in Canada who has studied the effects of the nuclear accident... Then Richard Rokeby on the deeply strange Burton Dassett "UFO case..."
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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 Unexplained. | |
| Thank you very much for being part of my show. | |
| I think I'm feeling kind of skittish and lively because it's definitely spring outside my window at the moment. | |
| I'm recording this at 5.38pm. | |
| It's a beautiful spring evening, and it's still about 17 degrees Celsius, 63 Fahrenheit, in London. | |
| I know it's autumn time in the southern hemisphere, but still, some beautiful scenes from the southern hemisphere at autumn time. | |
| So it's the change of the seasons. | |
| What is it? | |
| The onward march of time, I guess is one way to put it. | |
| Thank you very much for all of your emails and donations if you've made them to the unexplained. | |
| You can always do both of those things by going to my website, designed and created by adamtheunexplained.tv. | |
| And your communication is gratefully received. | |
| Before I tell you what's going to be in the show, just a couple of shout-outs. | |
| Darren, thank you for your email recently. | |
| Keith, thank you for your email about Bob Lazar. | |
| Some food for thought there. | |
| Thank you for that. | |
| A shout-out to Xander and Mad Stan. | |
| I did mention you on my radio show, but I wasn't sure whether you'd hear it. | |
| So Xander and Mad Stan, consider yourselves mentioned. | |
| Alex in Tucson finally got in touch. | |
| And Alex, it's been a rotten week or two for me one way or another. | |
| So your email really brightened my day when you say that quite often you listen to my shows in preference to Coast to Coast AM. | |
| I think that's incredible. | |
| And thank you so much for the nice things that you said. | |
| It all keeps me going in my isolation here, which hopefully will be relieved at some point soon. | |
| Okay, on this edition of the show, we have two things. | |
| We're marking the 35th anniversary of Chernobyl with researcher into it, Professor Ekaterina Dadachova at Saskatchewan University. | |
| She not only has researched what happened and the effects upon people ongoing in various places because of the spread of radiation, but also the way that nature found ways of dealing with what happened there. | |
| Now, if you're younger than, I don't know, younger than 40, it's unlikely that you will directly remember the events at Chernobyl, but it was a terrible situation at a nuclear power station in Ukraine. | |
| And the ultimate disaster happened there. | |
| It meant that people had to be evacuated from a nearby area. | |
| Firefighters and other rescuers sacrificed their health and their lives. | |
| People suffered ongoing effects in cancers for years to come. | |
| And they were measuring radiation in places like Norway and Sweden and even North Wales in the United Kingdom. | |
| It was a very worrying time. | |
| And experts and governments determined that no such thing should ever happen again. | |
| So we'll speak with Professor Ekaterina Dadichova on this 35th anniversary first. | |
| Then after that, we'll talk with Richard Roqueby about a very British and very unusual sort of UFO case. | |
| The Lights Upon the Hills is Richard Roqueby's book based on his intensive research about this. | |
| It is a UFO case, but it has a lot in common with the Hestaland Lights, I think, in Norway. | |
| Now see what you think when you hear Richard Roqueby coming next. | |
| Please get in touch with me if you want to. | |
| Tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show. | |
| Thank you for the nice things you've been saying recently. | |
| You know, I can't always get it right for everybody, but I do do my best here on resources that the great big shows would laugh at. | |
| But that's okay. | |
| You know, I've got my way of doing things and they've got their way of doing things, I think you'll find. | |
| Okay, let's get to the first guest on this edition. | |
| And this is my conversation about Chernobyl 35 years on with Professor Ekaterina Dadachova. | |
| Well, we are primarily looking into microscopic fungi, like the microorganisms which populate the soils around the Chernobyl, because they have fascinating ways to deal with ionizing radiation. | |
| And they not only show extreme resistance to the ionizing radiation, but they also show the ability to thrive under those conditions much more than non-melanized fungi, which is basically non-black fungi. | |
| The fungi which we're studying are colored with pigment called melanin, which gives them the black color. | |
| But of course, we are focusing on those fungi because they're interesting to us for many applications, such as some radiation sensors, as well as nature-inspired radiation protectors for cancer patients, for example. | |
| But we're also looking in general out of interest on the effects of ionizing radiation on higher organisms, such as animals. | |
| And it's amazing how resistant, for example, animals who live in that zone around the Chernobyl proved to be. | |
| And I mean like mammals, deer and squirrels and all other animals. | |
| Katerina, this was the major surprise, wasn't it? | |
| The ability, I don't think scientists expected this after such a terrible disaster 35 years ago. | |
| The ability of nature to bounce back from this was quite remarkable. | |
| Yes, exactly. | |
| So nature bounced back, and I think I haven't been there, but now we know that Ukraine has a nice tourism program. | |
| And say, for example, students from our university already went there and saw that firsthand. | |
| And the environment now, as people say, resembles early, middle ages Europe. | |
| That's how Europe probably was in the 10th or 11th century. | |
| So yes, it's really interesting and very unexpected that the nature completely came back. | |
| What about radiation there? | |
| Because I know that the main reactor hole, they've encased, haven't they? | |
| They've put a special cover that took years to build over it. | |
| What is the radiation situation at Chernobyl and around Chernobyl now? | |
| Well, the reactor has been encased, as you just said, into this secondary sarcophagus, and there is no emission of any kind of radiation into the atmosphere or into the water. | |
| There is, of course, remainder of the radiation in the soils and in the trees, and maybe inside those animals which consume, for example, the vegetation. | |
| But of course, Chernobyl is now sort of self-contained zone, so to speak, so there is no danger to the areas outside of that 30-kilometer zone which surrounds Chernobyl. | |
| But in there, the radiation in the soil, the radioactive elements, they will stay there for many decades because their half-life, so decay, the way the time they need to decay, is actually tens of years. | |
| For example, cesium, strontium, and other isotopes. | |
| But as I said, there is no immediate danger to anybody. | |
| And even tourists who come there, they are safe if they observe the certain precautions which they are told to observe. | |
| But on the basis of what you've just said about what remains there and how long it remains there for Ekaterina, it seems that nobody will be able to live in places like Pripyat, which was evacuated for many, many years. | |
| Oh, yes, of course. | |
| I mean, the places which are inside that zone and like Pripyat, yes, they will not be habitable for another several decades because of that long half-life of radionuclides they have been contaminated with. | |
| There is like too much risk to take for people to populate those towns again. | |
| So they will be just remaining as a, I guess, a tourist attraction in a way and a reminder what could happen when the disaster of such scale strikes. | |
| It's a question that I have to ask because people are fascinated by this. | |
| There is a terror involved in this genie, which is nuclear power, that got out of the bottle in that terrible occurrence 35 years ago. | |
| We're talking about a different era. | |
| This was the era at the very end of the Soviet Union. | |
| There was a lot of decaying technology, a lot of practices that certainly wouldn't be entertained now. | |
| So the question is this. | |
| Do you think that anything of that magnitude could ever happen again? | |
| Well, I think in 2011, we all witnessed the Fukushima tragedy, right? | |
| Which was on the same scale. | |
| There is a scale of nuclear accidents, and the highest is seven. | |
| So Chernobyl was seven on that scale, and Fukushima was also seven. | |
| Of course, that was a very different type of accident because it was caused by natural cause such as earthquake and tsunami. | |
| But nevertheless, it happened. | |
| But again, you know, lessons have to be learned. | |
| And of course, nuclear power plants should not be built in very seismic accidents prone areas. | |
| That's like a lesson which I think Japanese colleagues have also learned. | |
| But it doesn't mean for me at least that nuclear power plants are not useful. | |
| They are, and the technology moved forward a lot during those 30 years. | |
| And nowadays, there are new models of nuclear reactors, much more reliable and smaller, which could probably help to solve at least to a certain extent the global warming problem. | |
| But terrifying when it all gets out of hand, like it did at Chernobyl, and as he rightly said, at Fukushima. | |
| So if we go back to the beginning of our conversation, and you talked about fungi and the remarkable ability of fungi to resist and thrive in the midst of this radiation, could we learn from fungi? | |
| Could we develop ways of protecting ourselves from radiation, maybe for astronauts who have to go to Mars and that kind of thing? | |
| Yes, exactly. | |
| So we have a lot to learn from fungi because they are great survivors. | |
| They can survive under almost any kind of condition. | |
| So, and they have several ways to protect themselves. | |
| And one of them is that pigment melanin. | |
| And melanin is in all of us, in our skin, for example, in our eyes, hair, and so on. | |
| But also, melanin is in many foods which we consume. | |
| And say in our laboratory, we're developing foods which could protect astronauts if they consume them during the flight. | |
| Basically, those foods contain mushrooms, edible mushrooms, which have been part of people's food for centuries. | |
| And they contain that pigment melanin, which will protect their digestive tract from excessive amounts of radiation, which astronauts encounter when they go into deep space. | |
| So actually from this... | |
| Sorry, from this tragedy, something very positive could emerge because, you know, we're going to live on the moon. | |
| We're going to be, you know, very soon we're going back to the moon and there's going to be a base on the moon. | |
| We want to go to Mars. | |
| We might colonize it. | |
| So we could actually, in some strange way, benefit from the spin-offs of what we've learned from that disaster. | |
| Exactly. | |
| I completely agree with you. | |
| I mean, Chernobyl, it was a huge strategy, but it's also provided a lot of knowledge which wasn't available before it happened in 1986. | |
| Katerina, have we seen the last of the cancers from Chernobyl? | |
| Well, I think we might still see some more, but these are in people who were actually there, for example, taking part in cleaning of those sites. | |
| Luckily, a lot of those people are still with us, but in them, say now several decades post that exposure, some additional cancers such as leukemia might appear, unfortunately. | |
| The cancers which appeared in children much sooner after the accident, such as thyroid cancer, because of the exposure of radioactive iodine, which was released, they already happened. | |
| So hopefully we will not see additional type of those cancers. | |
| But leukemia may be, yes, in those who were there. | |
| But it's so moving and a reminder of such a terrible force that was unleashed on that day to be able to go to and to be able to look at Pripyat and to be able to look at the school desks and the toys that still lie there and writing on the blackboards, on the teaching boards in the classrooms and the playground apparatus that is still there, frozen in time forever, or for certainly until it all decays away. | |
| A reminder, I guess, that nuclear power can be a tremendous servant, as you said, but also has to be something that we use with incredible caution. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Yes, of course. | |
| I mean, anybody who operates a nuclear plant needs to have all levels of protection in place, multiple levels of protection. | |
| Their personnel have to be very well trained and also responsible. | |
| And, of course, the reactors themselves need to be very reliable, which I think happened to a lot during that accident. | |
| Even that type of reactor, which was there, has been retrofitted and it's still functioning for 30 years in several places without any accidents, major or minor accidents. | |
| But as I said, nowadays there are differently operated reactors, much smaller and much safer, which could provide additional alternative to solving the global warming crisis. | |
| You're in Canada right now. | |
| I should know this, but what is the institution that you work for? | |
| Where are you at? | |
| I am in Saskatchewan. | |
| That's the name of our province. | |
| And I work for the University of Saskatchewan. | |
| So I am in the south sort of of our province, which is huge. | |
| It goes all the way towards almost North Pole, right? | |
| Canada is huge. | |
| And yeah, that's where we are. | |
| And actually, Canada now, including our province, is very serious on developing so-called SMR small modular reactors because we do need power here. | |
| The winters are very cold and we need heat in winter. | |
| We have remote communities in the north, indigenous communities, which also need to be self-sufficient in terms of energy. | |
| So nuclear power now actually has a lot of interest in Canada. | |
| Chilling and fascinating always, Professor Ekaterina Dadachova from Saskatchewan University on her research into the ongoing effects and the legacy of what happened at Chernobyl 35 years ago. | |
| Let's get now to Richard Roqueby. | |
| This is my conversation with him about his book, The Lights Upon the Hills, about a very British sort of UFO case at a place called Burton Dassett. | |
| This is Richard Roqueby. | |
| It is definitely a very British story, and it's one that has not been told in depth or enough. | |
| So that's what we're going to do here with Richard Roqueby in Warwickshire. | |
| And the place that we're going to talk about is a place called Burton Dassett. | |
| Now, I thought that I knew most areas of this country pretty well because I worked in most of them. | |
| You know, I worked in the Midlands extensively, started my career in the Northwest, and I know the South really well. | |
| But this is a place that I'm not familiar with. | |
| So I think we're going to learn a lot in this hour. | |
| Let's cross now to Warwickshire and Richard Rokeby. | |
| Richard, thank you very much for doing this. | |
| By the way, Richard, have I pronounced your second name right? | |
| Are you Rokeby or Rockaby? | |
| It is. | |
| Yeah, it's Rokeby. | |
| No problem, Howard. | |
| Absolutely delight to speak with you. | |
| Yes, you've got it right first time. | |
| Yes, it's Rokeby. | |
| But it originates in the northeast of England, which is where I'm from. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| And whereabouts are you now? | |
| So I'm just in Warwickshire. | |
| So for those listeners from around the country, we're about 20 miles south of Birmingham. | |
| So it's right in the heart of England, really. | |
| So you're kind of on the way down to Coventry Rugby way, are you? | |
| Yeah, a bit further over to the west, so a bit close to the Cotswolds. | |
| But yeah, that's where we are. | |
| Yeah, lovely part of the world, yes. | |
| In my days working on Radio Wyvern in Worcestershire, I used to know that area and drive through it all the time. | |
| So now we know where you are. | |
| I want to know a little bit about who you are. | |
| You've got a bit of a track record in being interested in things like this and investigating them. | |
| So talk to me about you. | |
| Yes, well, yeah, I suppose I've always had an interest in ufology from a child, being a child of the 70s and being influenced by, I suppose, the cultural media of the time of Star Wars and the ET. | |
| But it was really close encounters of the third kind that sort of really got me hooked at a very early age. | |
| And I read a few of the books around UFOs, etc. | |
| And then I kept sort of basic interest, but I put it away for a bit when I concentrated on a career. | |
| I was in the military for about six years. | |
| And then I joined the police at quite an early age and served in various forces around the country and sort of specialised as being a detective. | |
| And then I moved up out of London sort of 2000-ish and I just started to read a bit about the local history where I was moving to. | |
| And a part of that reading, I came across this story of these lights on the hills of Burton Dassett. | |
| And it took me 20 years, but 20 years. | |
| Eventually, once things started to calm down a bit, I just couldn't really leave this story alone. | |
| I found the story in a ghost book called Ghosts of Warwickshire by a really quite esteemed local historian called Betty Smith. | |
| And there was just one chapter in there which talked about these lights that were believed to be ghosts around about 1922, 1923. | |
| And as my interest in ufology developed, I just kept thinking, well, I think there's something else going on here. | |
| I don't think it's ghosts that's been seen. | |
| And indeed, as we'll find out, there's an awful lot more to this story, as your book, which I read yesterday, reveals. | |
| We have to say that your book, published by our friend Philip Mantle's Flying Disc Press, one of many great books that are out from them at the moment. | |
| So I'm grateful to him for facilitating this conversation with you. | |
| A lot of the people I've spoken with on this show over the years have had a police or detective background. | |
| And a lot of them have reported to me that it helps because it teaches you, and my dad was a copper, so I know this. | |
| It teaches you how to write reports for starters. | |
| My dad taught me to type because he was very well versed in typing up reports, but it teaches you how to write reports. | |
| But it also teaches you powers of observation and recording. | |
| Yeah? | |
| Yeah, I think so. | |
| Yeah, I mean, the power, sorry, the ability to write reports sort of comes under the umbrella of communication, really. | |
| And, you know, a good 50% of detective work is being a good communicator, talking to witnesses and getting accounts and getting people to speak to you that don't always want to speak to you is a real skill. | |
| And clearly, you've picked that up from your father, Howard, with your radio show, et cetera, and being the ability to speak to people. | |
| So I think that that does certainly help that communication skills and listening skills is really useful. | |
| And it's also maybe the ability to see links. | |
| I mean, a really true, great detective, which I don't count myself by any such imagination, but the people I've worked with are able to see links in things that nobody else can see. | |
| And they'll have that holistic view of it all that can really open a case or set you on a good path towards getting some more viable leads. | |
| So it certainly does help. | |
| I think there's something in there about police officers, detectives, they want to find the truth of something. | |
| And if the truth points a certain way or the evidence points a certain way, then I think they're very tenacious in seeking that out, even if it's maybe not the popular view or it's maybe what not what other people think. | |
| So I think those communication skills and holistic views and tenaciousness really tend to lend themselves very well to ufologists and the sort of research that I now do. | |
| And also, which I saw with my dad, I mean, my dad was mostly in uniform service, but he did do a little bit of time in the CID. | |
| The ability to not be daunted by going back in time and reopening a case. | |
| Whereas other people would say, well, that was years ago. | |
| Throw your hands up in the air. | |
| Where are we going to start? | |
| A good detective knows how to. | |
| Yeah, I think so. | |
| You know, again, an old sort of policing saying, which nobody heard, is every contact leaves a trace. | |
| And that's not just in the forensic world. | |
| That's to do with, you know, accounts that are written down or passed on in some other form. | |
| And I think you certainly get that in Burton Dasset and the surrounding area. | |
| So there is always something there to find. | |
| You have to do the field work as well. | |
| I mean, you can get so much from books, but I think you really need to go to that area and speak to people and get a lay of the land and follow sort of local knowledge and see for yourself. | |
| So there's the two sides to it. | |
| There's the academic research, if you like, and then there's the boots on the ground. | |
| What's the ground truth of what's this telling us? | |
| Lifelong interest in UFOs, just like me. | |
| Have you ever seen one? | |
| No, I don't think I have. | |
| I don't think I have. | |
| And again, in the book, I do give an account of something that I heard, which is some sort of strange audio phenomenon, which is part one once I was part of my research in Burton Dassett Hills. | |
| And I think probably that's the closest I've come. | |
| And in the book, I describe how I heard this sort of very early in the morning, actually, middle of night in February, while I was carrying out some sort of observations in the area. | |
| I heard the sort of revolving noise, which seemed to come from everywhere all at once and then suddenly stop. | |
| And, you know, it's quite similar to other UFO encounters that have been recorded. | |
| There was a place, I think, in Warrington in South Africa, that had a similar sort of effect, this revolving, whirring type noise. | |
| And a South African farmer said it sounded exactly like a Beetle engine. | |
| And when I read that, that's exactly what I heard. | |
| And I think that's probably the closest I've come. | |
| So there was nothing to see. | |
| No. | |
| But you just heard this weird sound like a VW. | |
| I owned a VW Beetle. | |
| I know the sound you're talking about. | |
| Yes, yeah, it is quite distant. | |
| All around you, though. | |
| Yes, yeah, it's quite distinct. | |
| So I'd gone with a trusted friend of mine, and what we tend to do is in February, we'd carried out some observations in the area to see if we can get any sightings ourselves of these lights that were being described. | |
| And I have to confess I did fall asleep for a bit. | |
| And then when I woke up, it was freezing cold, so I'm not sure how I managed that, but it was in February sort of. | |
| We went there for about 11 o'clock. | |
| And then at about 10 to 3, 10 to 4, I was woken up by this noise. | |
| I couldn't see any lights. | |
| I didn't feel any sort of static or change in the environment, but it was a noise that was just everywhere, mechanical noise that was as if, like I say, a rotary engine type noise. | |
| I didn't really put that expression to it at the time until I read this other account, but it was certainly like a whirring, a revving noise that just seemed to be all around me. | |
| And I did check me watch and to make sure, like a good ufologist or UFO researcher should to make sure there's no missing time. | |
| And there wasn't. | |
| That was very present-minded of you. | |
| Yes, it was. | |
| But it lasted for about five, six minutes and then just stopped as quickly as it started. | |
| And to be honest, that was my cue, I think, to pack up my Bivi and find my colleague. | |
| It was enough for that day, it was probably So I think that's the closest I've come. | |
| Okay. | |
| Anybody else report that? | |
| No, no. | |
| In fact, my friend I was with, he'd slept through it all. | |
| He didn't hear anything either. | |
| So what it was, I really don't know. | |
| I mean, I did a radio show in the United States. | |
| I think it was the Paranormal Road radio show. | |
| And somebody there suggested, well, actually, could the sound be projected onto you? | |
| So it actually could have been happening some distance away, but it had been projected somehow onto where I was. | |
| Well, even though that's the possibility. | |
| I mean, that's almost like the whispering gallery of St. Paul's Cathedral, where, of course, we know being Brits, but just to explain to our American listeners and listeners elsewhere, that you can sit there and it's in a big semicircle, big circle, and you can sit at one point and you can turn behind you, whisper at the wall, and somebody all the way around the semicircle will hear what you've had to say. | |
| So audio can play tricks. | |
| But that's an interesting phenomenon. | |
| And what would be making that kind of noise in that kind of way at that time? | |
| I don't know. | |
| And maybe it's related to the area. | |
| So what I want to do, just as we round out this first segment of our conversation, Richard, I want to talk about the area so that we can describe it. | |
| There are places that I know in this country that I consider to be, and you know, there are places that I like that I consider to have an eerie side to them. | |
| There are parts of Scotland that I know, certainly parts of mid-Wales that I know and also love, but feel them to be a little eerie, a little strange, and probably also areas of Lancashire, definitely around the Pennines, that have a reputation for strange phenomena to this very day that feel like that. | |
| Now, I know that area that you are in. | |
| I never got that feeling about that area. | |
| So talk to me about the Burton Dassett and its environs area. | |
| Yeah, so I suppose Burton Dassett, if people can picture it. | |
| So Warwickshire is typically sort of rolling English green countryside. | |
| You know, I sometimes describe it for when I'm talking on shores. | |
| If people can picture the Shire from Lord of the Rings, it is that sort of rolling green countryside. | |
| And actually, Tolkien was from around this area. | |
| And it has been mentioned that he sort of based the Shire on this part of England. | |
| So it's very much rolling, easy countryside until you get more or less to the Burton Dassett Hills that rise around about sort of 200 feet or so above sort of sea level. | |
| So they are quite prominent. | |
| And from the east side, there is not a lot until you get to maybe Bradgate Park in Leicestershire, and then you're into the Wash and sort of the lowlands there. | |
| And then out to the west, it does start to suddenly rise from, as you've already mentioned, how the Malvern Hills and as you go out to sort of Wales. | |
| But certainly in this sort of area, they are quite a prominent landscape, which you know may or may not have something to do with why there was this activity there. | |
| But Burton Dassett Hills is quite a small area. | |
| It's now a country park, but they pack an awful lot into it. | |
| So there's the three sort of main hills that sort of face the western side. | |
| And then there is two hills behind it, Harts Hill being the highest one. | |
| So it has a sort of three hills and then two behind it sort of set up. | |
| And there's also the church which I write about, which I think is key to the story, which is in quite an unusual place. | |
| And there's a small wooded area. | |
| And then it's sort of bookended really by a couple of villages, one being North End and then Fenney Compton. | |
| I know Fenney Compton, yes. | |
| Oh, great. | |
| Okay. | |
| Yeah, Fenney Compton is the other one. | |
| And I think you're right, Howard, about what you said in terms of it's not particularly an eerie place. | |
| And I, like you, have certainly been in certain areas, you know, Dartmoor. | |
| These give you a bit of a feeling, don't they? | |
| Yes, yeah, they do. | |
| And there can be a bit of atmosphere if the weather turns, etc. | |
| Burton Dassett isn't like that. | |
| It is a popular country park where people are there. | |
| Families are there walking in the night. | |
| People are there in their cars later on at all times of year. | |
| Obviously, we've had the lockdown, which has curtailed people's activities there. | |
| But it is quite a small, compact area with a lot packed in it. | |
| And now, you mentioned Fenney Compton. | |
| And I would have said the same about Fenney Compton, but I recently read something that, you know, something that maybe would strike a bit of a heart, you know, a bit of a note with us is there was a murder of a PC in 1866, which was described as a ritual murder, where a police officer had the local police officer had his throat cut. | |
| That's what rumblings of black magic then? | |
| Yeah, yes, that's right, around the Fenny Compton Age. | |
| So that's quite late on 1866 when that happened. | |
| But I guess if you look into any village history, you will have these more sordid stories there. | |
| But generally, the area is a friendly country park. | |
| And I do say that the lights that have been seen through all the accounts I've read are positive. | |
| You know, this is a positive story. | |
| You know, people felt it was when they interacted with these lights, these orbs or however they described, felt it was a positive interaction. | |
| You know, a few people said that they felt uncomfortable, but overwhelmingly they were interested, you know, curious. | |
| They described the lights, not threatening at all. | |
| And, you know, very much, I think my account, I think, is a concise, you know, family-friendly account, a positive story. | |
| So, not something that felt malevolent, but something that was definitely unexplained. | |
| This is from the introduction of Richard Roqueby's book. | |
| The winter of 1923, and in the Warwickshire countryside, there is great excitement about a series of ghostly sightings which have been seen by hundreds of people. | |
| Everybody's talking about it. | |
| The local papers are speculating about these ghosts. | |
| But Richard, are they ghosts? | |
| Well, so that was really good to hear you read out my introduction. | |
| Yeah, well, so 1920s, not too long after the First World War, spiritualism and mediumship is extremely popular, understandably so. | |
| People have lost their sons and daughters in a terrible war, and of course, they've had the Spanish flu not so long afterwards. | |
| So it's completely understandable why people thought that any sort of light phenomena seen anywhere could be ghosts. | |
| And it was a bit of a pastime in the 1920s, not just in Burton Dassett, but around the country, where if lights were seen, strange lights, strange shapes were seen out of the normal context, then people would go up onto the hills or to around the area, sometimes around churches, etc., to see if they could see the lights themselves. | |
| And, you know, that's completely understandable because people wanted to have some sort of perhaps proof or to corroborate their beliefs around spiritualism, et cetera, that there was a chance of seeing their sons and daughters again. | |
| So very often, if lights were seen in these circumstances, then the story would get around that ghosts were seen on the hills. | |
| But, and I think what I tried to do in the book is just explain why my interpretation is that these aren't ghosts. | |
| They're described as balls of white, bluish light. | |
| They're described moving at different velocities and different altitudes. | |
| They're sometimes described as scanning or searching an area. | |
| They're described as bobbing up and down and undulating along the hills. | |
| They're very rarely, there is one account where someone describes seeing what they thought was a figure in the lights, but primarily they're sort of brightly coloured orbs. | |
| So what I think, to answer your question, Howard, is what my interpretation, what I've read into it, the descriptions that I've seen, suggests to me that actually they probably fit the character more closely resembling UFOs in its purest terms, or this new term that sort of seemed to drift within last few years, this unidentified aerial phenomenon. | |
| But certainly something that looked, as we would describe it today, energetic. | |
| Yes, yes. | |
| And having, yes, I mean, that's a really good way of describing, having some energy around it and moving around various heights and speeds and in various places. | |
| It wasn't just one area of the Bendested Hills. | |
| And indeed, it was for several months, wasn't it? | |
| It wasn't just over a very short period. | |
| Yeah, it was. | |
| I mean, they started sort of, the first account started in December 1922. | |
| And the word was such around the village that it eventually got to the local newspapers. | |
| So the local Birmingham newspaper, the local Leamington newspaper, and the Banbury Gazette, which is where I got the majority of my accounts from, were sending reporters out to see if they can see this lights because they were probably seen by hundreds of people. | |
| But it had reached a sort of fever pitch around about February 1923. | |
| And people were going up onto the hills. | |
| And some people were being pretty sceptical, but they were seeing the lights themselves and then reporting it back. | |
| And it was over that sort of quite a tight period, which adds to the sort of strangeness of it. | |
| It wasn't perhaps something that was been going on consistently for hundreds of years, but in my view, every so often, Burton Dasit attracts this sort of attention. | |
| And yeah, it started and sort of reached its crescendo around about February 1923. | |
| Now, this is almost a century ago, so it would be hard for people to gauge what they were experiencing, I would have thought. | |
| But did they appear to those who observed them to be under any kind of control? | |
| Did they appear to be moving randomly or intelligently? | |
| You said some of them looked as if they were sort of reconnoitering the territory. | |
| Yeah, so the accounts we get certainly seem to be under some sort of intelligent control. | |
| So the first sort of person to give a good account that I found was a chap by the name of George White, who was a local man. | |
| And he'd heard the reports in the paper. | |
| And he decided to go up with a couple of friends and his field glasses in early February 1923 to see if he could see these lights from himself. | |
| He was connected with a local estate. | |
| And he went up onto the hills and he gives a really good account. | |
| And he says he sees the lights moving over them. | |
| He is quite unnerved by them, he says. | |
| What he actually says was he feels the lights go over him. | |
| And he uses that word, feels, and that to me suggests some sort of downward pressure, some sort of change in the atmosphere. | |
| But he does say he feels the lights go over him, and they look as though they are searching or scanning for something. | |
| So they're moving around in a relatively sort of structured pattern. | |
| And then there is another account of a motorcyclist late at night, is driving along the country roads through the hills, turns a corner to see a light traveling towards him, again, about the size of a motorcycle light. | |
| And then at the very last minute, this light veers off so as not to collide with him. | |
| And again, it shows some sort of intelligent control that whatever that light was didn't want to impact on another person. | |
| So it also shows a bit of care and empathy for that other individual, in this case, the motorcyclist. | |
| So we have accounts like that, which seem to have some thought and structure and intelligence behind them. | |
| But we've also got other accounts and made that work that the vicarage seemed to see the light just undulating, just going up and down, tracking the hills and just seem to, you know, having without having a care in the world, just moving up and down. | |
| So there is a range of lights and how they're seen. | |
| There's another account by a chap by the name of Harold Cottrell, who was a actually a local carpenter, but he had a horse with him and they were leading a horse back from an event. | |
| And he saw what he described as a bluish-white light near to a pond near to the village of North End. | |
| And he describes how the horse became excitable and a bit wary of this light. | |
| And he had to try and control the horse. | |
| So I know I spent a bit of time with horses for my time in the military. | |
| And horses generally are okay around natural occurring events, but it takes them a long while to get used to mechanical objects or anything with any sort of technology involved. | |
| So again, that suggests to me that it's not a natural event. | |
| It's something that has some sort of more of a presence and is changing the atmosphere. | |
| But what that account did do is it did give a bit of a get-out clause for the papers who assigned the phenomenon as a whole to marsh gas or swamp gas. | |
| And that's generally what people took away from it, that it was probably going to be swamp gas, even though that was just one sighting in one area. | |
| And there's been lots of studies done about trying to create swamp gas. | |
| And it's very difficult. | |
| And as you know the area quite well, Howard, you'll know how generally swamp gas is in hot, damp places. | |
| And Warwickshire in February, well, it's certainly wet, but it's not particularly hot. | |
| I mean, you know, I can remember a bit of mist over the fields in Evesham, which is not very far from where you are, like November. | |
| But, you know, we're not talking about thick mist particularly. | |
| And I can't imagine or think of cases of marsh gas in that area. | |
| So look, this is nearly 100 years ago. | |
| People don't have the understanding or the science or the technology that they have now. | |
| So what were they making of it? | |
| What were people saying? | |
| What were the papers reporting? | |
| Yeah, so people were saying that they felt there were ghosts. | |
| So they generally described them as ghosts or spectral lights. | |
| Some of the papers were seeing and comparing it to what we know as Will-O-T-Wisps, which could be another name for marsh gas or swamp gas. | |
| But the overall feeling was that there were spirits, there were ghosts that were moving around the hills, particularly because when they were centered around the church, people did feel as though it was spirits trying to come forward or show themselves, even though the reports at the time weren't what we would traditionally know as ghosts. | |
| There weren't particularly figures, human figures or animal figures. | |
| They weren't inside, they were outside. | |
| So the general consensus was that it was ghosts and people would be out looking for the ghosts, but describe these lights. | |
| There was talk of perhaps the storm lanterns as well, so some sort of ball lightning that could have been projected or appearing there. | |
| But the behaviour from the accounts, to me, and this is what really sort of gripped me with the story, they would say, oh, it's a ghost or it's ball lightning, but then describe what most people would recognize as some sort of craft or phenomena moving around and flying about. | |
| But by the standards of those of us who've heard about Roswell. | |
| Yes, or the, you know, or any of the reports, the Foo Fighters, whatever. | |
| The Foo Fighters. | |
| So I do, in the book, I do detail three or four cases, which I think are very similar to the lights that were seen in 1923. | |
| And the big one I think is the Foo Fighters. | |
| They are very much described as the same sort of size, same sort of luminosity, same sort of behaviour. | |
| Sometimes it appears to be intelligent, other times seems to be just doing its own thing. | |
| So I do think there's a lot of similarity with the Foo Fighters. | |
| Why they went to some hills in Warwickshire is perhaps another part of the discussion. | |
| Why do they get weird lights? | |
| I spoke with Erling P. Strand about the Hest Island lights a few months ago. | |
| Why does that phenomenon consistently be reported there? | |
| And that's a similar sort of phenomenon, not exactly the same. | |
| Now, your investigations, interestingly, and it's one of the great parts of the book, took you to the local church and you found not what one might expect there. | |
| Yeah, so I mentioned earlier on about, you know, putting feet on the ground and going have a look, looking around this area. | |
| So after my sort of 20-year or so wait, I did make my way over there and spent quite a lot of time around the hills and, you know, discovered this church, you know, immediately. | |
| I mean, it is a size, it's difficult to miss. | |
| It's sometimes called the Cathedral in the Hills or the Cathedral of the Cotswolds. | |
| And it's in quite an unusual place. | |
| You know, it's nestled within the Hills. | |
| It dates back to Saxon times, so there's always been a church there, and that was sometimes part of the process of going to church. | |
| Would there be a walk up a hill? | |
| It's more associated with Welsh churches, but you know, it wasn't unknown. | |
| But then it did seem to get quite a big investment around about the sort of Norman times and a bit later again in the 14th century, where it had been expanded and decorated in these fantastical sort of pictures and carvings. | |
| And I describe it in the book as being sparse but expansive. | |
| So when you walk into the church, you can't help feel the size of the place, really. | |
| So I spent some time around the church. | |
| There's some stories associated with the church with the lights being around there and at some point centred on there. | |
| Although there were elsewhere, you know, a lot of the sightings as well within the hills. | |
| There was talk of a black, red-eyed sort of ghost that was seen in the churchyard that had been recorded down. | |
| But for me, the thing that really caught my attention in the church was these carvings and the paintings that are in there. | |
| So the carvings that are there on the supports within the north side of the church. | |
| So traditionally, the north side was considered the evil side of the church. | |
| So generally, if there's going to be gargoyles or any sort of symbols to ward away evil, they'd be on the north side. | |
| And as you go into the church, there's a ring of carved orbs around the outside of the church, the church doorway. | |
| You go through and you're met with these pillars that support the church and then these fantastical carvings around it. | |
| And, you know, clearly they'd always been there. | |
| But I think what I tried to do in the book was just link in a couple of these anomalies that were around this sort of very special area and see if it had any sort of bearing on the lights that were seen in 1923. | |
| And the carvings themselves, I know, detail and I have some pictures in the book, one of which is of the green man. | |
| So the green man is an old ancient English symbol that through my research I found out wasn't massively unique to that church. | |
| Green men were featured in churches, not everywhere, but certainly other places. | |
| But it tended to symbolize the joining together of two cultures, paganism and Christianity. | |
| But I did think, well, is it symbolizing something else? | |
| Is it joining together of two other worlds, perhaps? | |
| And when you look at some of the other carvings in there, there's fantastical creatures, half dragons, half men-type creatures. | |
| And my personal favourite is there's a carving of two animals, seem to be like perhaps a deer and a horse or a dog or a fox, but they're upside down. | |
| They're carved upside down as if levitating, as if being tucked into the sky. | |
| So indications that this is no ordinary rural church and that maybe something had been going on there in the vicinity for a while. | |
| Yes, I think so. | |
| I think that's what it's trying to tell us. | |
| It's trying to tell us a bit of a story. | |
| And the rest of the church is quite sparse. | |
| No doubt a lot of your listeners will have known of Roslyn Chapel where the whole place is covered in carvings. | |
| This isn't like that. | |
| It's just along one side of the church, one set of pillars, which actually, this less is more. | |
| Maybe it carries more significance because there isn't much elsewhere. | |
| But again, moving into the church, there's these fantastic paintings that were up on the wall. | |
| And they were probably being whitewashed at some point, but they had survived and they were available, I'd come back into view over the last few centuries. | |
| And either side of the sort of altar end of the church, which is the eastern side of a church, there is a fantastic, beautiful picture of the Virgin Mary on one side and then St. Michael on the other, double life size, either side of the church. | |
| So this is not a normal, well, I say normal, not a kind of, not what you would expect in that location. | |
| At Burton Dassett in 1922 to 1923, what could this have been? | |
| Richard Rugby's been doing some research and Richard, we left it at the church. | |
| Did the church lead you to any conclusions? | |
| Did it lead you anywhere else? | |
| Yes, so the church paintings are described just before the break. | |
| We've got these pictures of the Virgin Mary and St. Michael on one side. | |
| But there was these other pictures just on the, again, on the northern side of the church that survived. | |
| There was a sort of strange gargoyle type head, which the literature would describe as an angel, but it doesn't look very angelic, to be honest. | |
| But there is a sort of picture there. | |
| And then there's two pictures of kings. | |
| So, you know, as part of my research, I'm not an expert in 14th century medieval art by any stretch of the imagination, but I did look into it into a bit more detail. | |
| And they are wonderful sort of drawings and paintings in their own right. | |
| And they mean lots of different things to lots of different people. | |
| I certainly wouldn't want to minimise the religious iconography of them as sort of paintings. | |
| But to me, they just seem to be telling another story. | |
| So there's a painting there of St. Ethelbert, who was a king of Mercia. | |
| So Warwickshire was part of the Mercian kingdom during the 6th, 7th, 8th century, the Old Saxon kingdom. | |
| And what's unusual about this picture is St. Ethelbert is actually holding his own head. | |
| And that represents he was beheaded in 794 following a battle. | |
| And he's buried in Hereford Cathedral. | |
| So they're fairly sure that what that picture is depicting is St Ethelbert. | |
| So again, it's 14th century painting depicting a sort of 8th century king and telling a story. | |
| But then there is another picture there. | |
| So traditionally, it's again, and there is pictures in the book, The Light Upon the Hills. | |
| There is pictures there. | |
| But it's a very regal looking man. | |
| He has a beard. | |
| He has some sort of crown on his head. | |
| He's very dressed in very fine clothes. | |
| And the traditional account, I suppose, would be that that person is St. Oswald, who was king of Northumbria. | |
| He died in 642 and again was killed at the Battle of Maresfield in Oswentree. | |
| So what was he doing there? | |
| That's unusual. | |
| I mean, as you would know, Howard, Osment Tree isn't too far away towards the, you know, western side, out towards Hereford and that sort of way as well. | |
| So, again, but it does seem a bit of a strange place to... | |
| But he's often depicted also holding a scepter and an orb, so his kingly status. | |
| But the other story that goes with that picture is that it's a wise man or a Magi from the Nativity story. | |
| And there's nothing else really amongst those pictures that would suggest it's the Nativity story. | |
| But what people tend to link with that is because on his hand, and I'll come on this in more detail, but on his hand, there appears to be a bottle shape, which could be one of the containers for frankincense and myrrh. | |
| But it's very much an orb. | |
| And it's very much, it has undulating inscriptions in it, which to me suggests movement or a turning sort of movement by that orb. | |
| And what I found was that when you look at the picture, that actually the orb isn't on his hand, it's floating above his hand. | |
| And the Mereji element, magician element, may come from the fact that this orb is floating. | |
| And I suppose my interpretation was when you look at the context with everything else in that area, is it actually depicting an event that happened in Burton Dassett to a local king and was represented, perhaps these orbs, flying around, which is why it's not in his hand. | |
| And I say, I'm no expert at all in medieval art. | |
| But from my research, I couldn't find any other pictures which showed a bottle being above a hand. | |
| Generally, it's collapsed, it's grasped as if it's being held. | |
| And then you've got the upside-down animals, which appear to be floating in free space. | |
| So there is something there. | |
| It suggests that there is maybe something that's, you know, if there were forces beyond this earth, they may be interested in, or maybe elemental forces from this earth that we don't understand even today, that they would want to zero in on that location. | |
| Now, elsewhere in your book, you talk about the actual location of the hills themselves and their relation to the stars, which you say is special. | |
| Yeah, so I sort of described the hills earlier on where you've got this sort of three at the front and two behind. | |
| But the three hills, the way that they're set out, and I was looking really for, you know, to go back to the detective analogy, the why. | |
| Why were these events there in 1923? | |
| Why were perhaps events from a thousand years ago being captured in the pictures and the carvings of the church? | |
| Why this sort of area? | |
| And one of the things that struck me just looking at it, when you look at the three hills of Magbai Hill, Windmill Hill and Beacon Hill, you've got two main hills together and one slightly offset. | |
| And when I was on one of my sort of visits to the hills, I was walking up the hill in a February night and it suddenly struck me there above the hills was Orion. | |
| And Orion's belt matches a similar pattern in as much as you've got the two stars, sorry, the three the three stars in a belt there that go off where you've got the two main ones, Al-Naltak, Al-Nilal and Mintaka, with Mintaka just off to the side. | |
| So there's some kind of natural symbology there, maybe? | |
| Yeah, yes, possibly. | |
| It just seemed that the sightings were in February and in February you have Orion predominant in that sky and it really looks like he stood on the hills at that time. | |
| So again, I was looking at why this area, was it the iron ore or was it something more symbolic that these crafts orb felt these orbs felt drawn to at around that time of the year? | |
| And it was one of the theories, you know, hypothesis I put forward. | |
| And, you know, the more you see the area and how it's set up, and the more you see the star, that star constellation, I just think, you know, particularly in that February time, perhaps there's something in it. | |
| So I took a bit of time in the book just to explain that hypothesis around why that area, you know, has this sort of fantastical events. | |
| Now, there is another factor here as we draw this into the final minutes of our conversation. | |
| I think it's important. | |
| And this appears in a number of places where weird stuff, quotes, happens. | |
| There is a military presence. | |
| Yes, yes. | |
| So there is a military base. | |
| I mean, the military base was built some years after the lights. | |
| It was built in 1941. | |
| It's known now as MOD Kynton. | |
| And it was built in 1941 initially as a bit of a transit camp for the Second World War. | |
| And then it became an ammunition storage base. | |
| And that's what it does to date. | |
| It holds around about 60% of all the UK's military's ammunition. | |
| It has 76 miles of railway track to move the ammunition around the site and elsewhere, around the country. | |
| Now, it is an ideal place to put a military base because it is so central in England and to get everywhere. | |
| But it just seemed odd to me if you wanted a checklist of strange anomalies to do with UFOs or UAPs. | |
| Military sites are always there. | |
| In case I missed this point, was that place working? | |
| Was it there and established in the First World War around this time? | |
| No, no, there wasn't. | |
| There was a village there, Temple Hedwick Village, which has obviously links to the Knights Templar, but I don't. | |
| So how do you think the military base might play into whatever this is? | |
| Well, so somebody pointed it out to me is was the military base put there to observe the light 20 years after. | |
| And I think that's, you know, somebody pointed that out to me again on one of the interviews I had. | |
| And I think that's probably a good hypothesis, except there hasn't been that much activity since. | |
| You know, something was special around about that February 1922, 1923 time, but it could have been a reason. | |
| It could have been that it's quite central to move the ammunition around. | |
| But it's just so close, it literally faces onto the hills that they could have put it anywhere, anywhere else within a sort of 20-mile radius to get that same effect. | |
| But somebody decided to put that base there. | |
| And it is a specialized base. | |
| It has the ammunition storage bunkers that you don't see in every base. | |
| So it is an extremely specialized base, which is holding the very high end of ammunition. | |
| So maybe, and it's only speculation, there is something that drew the people who conceived that place to that location. | |
| Rather than, as we've heard through history, with UFOs being drawn to nuclear bases, the actual strange phenomena being drawn to the site. | |
| Maybe this is the site being drawn to the phenomenon, but we simply don't know. | |
| Yes, I don't know. | |
| I mean, it's a hypothesis, again, it just in such a small area, you have the hills, you have the church, you have these sightings, and then you have a military base more or less directly opposite. | |
| If it was any closer, it'd be on top of it. | |
| So maybe there is something in that area that pulled somebody there. | |
| I said maybe they went there to see if they could observe these lights following the sort of reports from 20 years earlier, which isn't a massive time in the scale of things. | |
| But I do think it just adds to the mystique and interest of this sort of fascinating area of Warwickshire. | |
| And I guess there's nobody alive now who would have gone through that. | |
| So that would have been a difficulty for you, or were you able to find people related? | |
| No, no, I did try to find people related. | |
| I had a bit of help from the parish council at Fenney Compton, and they were very kind enough just to sort of send some reports that they did around about the anniversary. | |
| It did make the Times, the English paper of The Times in 2003, where a report was written about it, and somebody had detailed that in the Fenneycompton sort of parish council notes. | |
| But no, just speaking to locals, you know, there is people who are extremely knowledgeable around the railways and the iron ore. | |
| So it's burned into folklore there. | |
| This sounds to me like, just as we end this now, Richard, that this is not a finished work for you. | |
| This must be ongoing, is it? | |
| Yeah, I think so. | |
| There's always stuff to find out about it. | |
| There's always sort of more to be done. | |
| You know, I try and speak to people about it. | |
| I think in the local area, people know I have an interest. | |
| And, you know, if people have got any comments or any more information, then I have a Facebook page, Richard Rugby. | |
| Please do contact me. | |
| I'm not saying I know everything. | |
| I'll just give an interpretation. | |
| You may be surprised. | |
| You know, a lot of people listen to this, and you may be surprised who does. | |
| So they can either contact you through your Richard Rugby Facebook page, or they can contact you through me, through my website, theunexplained.tv, and I'll pass on any emails that I get for you. | |
| Fascinating story, a work in progress by the sounds of it. | |
| I can see an edition to or a revised version of The Lights Upon the Hills being published, Richard? | |
| Yes, I think so. | |
| It has just been made into an audio book and available on Amazon. | |
| So, yes, I think there might be something else to add to the story in a couple of years' time. | |
| Well, thank you for telling it so clearly and for being such a great guest, Richard Roqueby in the Midlands. | |
| The book is called The Lights Upon the Hills. | |
| It's published by Philip Mantle's Flying Disc Press and it is out now, as they say. | |
| Fascinating. | |
| Richard Roqueby, and before that, talking about Chernobyl, 35 years on Professor Ekaterina Dadachova from Saskatchewan University. | |
| Thank you to both of them for being part of this show. | |
| Thank you very much for listening to the show. | |
| Any thoughts and suggestions? | |
| Welcome. | |
| Please go to the website theunexplained.tv and I will see each and every email that comes in. | |
| And if your email requires a response, it will get one. | |
| And if you haven't had one, please send me a reminder. | |
| More great guests in the pipeline here at The Unexplained. | |
| So until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes. | |
| This has been The Unexplained in the springtime. | |
| And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| Take care. |