All Episodes
July 6, 2021 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:00:21
Edition 555 - John B Alexander
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Hope everything's good in your world.
Life continues.
We've, well, we've heard very recently about the relaxation of a lot of the COVID restrictions here in the United Kingdom.
I guess that may be the same in all countries eventually, but we're going to see how that's going to go.
It will be interesting to go to places and maybe a little more free than we were before.
Thank you very much for all of your emails and communications.
Don't forget, you can always keep up with what I'm up to by going to the official Facebook page of the Unexplained with Howard Hughes and check in there.
That's where I will share with you news of whatever I'm up to.
If I'm up to anything much, that's the official Facebook page of the Unexplained with Howard Hughes.
And if you want to send me an email, like we used to, then you can go to my website, theunexplained.tv, devised and created by Adam, and you can follow the link and send me an email from there.
And thank you very much to Haley for booking my podcast guests, including the man we're about to speak with.
His name is John Alexander.
You may have heard him on shows like Coast to Coast AM.
He was in the army in America, quite a high level, but has done a remarkable amount of work on things that we would call paranormal.
Everything from life after death, near-death experiences, after-death communication, to psychokinesis, remote viewing, and UFOs.
So the conversation that we're about to have with John Alexander is going to be pretty wide-ranging.
You know, this guy's lived a long life and done a lot of things.
I've never quite spoken with anybody like him.
Just one thing to say before we get to him.
I'm not going to say any more now in this introduction, but the sound quality is as good as I could get it.
The actual sound of him speaking is fine.
There is a little bit of noise in the background, like a kind of waterfall type noise.
I think that's an audio issue at his end, but what you're about to hear is the best that I could get.
It certainly didn't detract from the conversation.
So this is the conversation then with John B. Alexander.
I don't know how I would encapsulate what he is and what he does.
I just think remarkable man who's had a life full of remarkable experience would kind of do it.
But your thoughts always welcome.
Tell me what you think.
Go to my website when you've heard this, theunexplained.tv.
Send me an email from there.
Okay, here is my conversation then in the United States with John B. Alexander.
John B. Alexander, thank you very much for coming on my show.
Oh, glad to be here.
Now, look, I'm not a great one for, you know, encapsulating people in just a few words because, you know, most of the people that I talk with on here, their lives are far too big and complex for that.
But you would be a person, if I was trying to do that, I would find it very difficult to do because you are a man with experience of so many different things.
I guess my first question would be for you, John, is why is a military man interested in all of the fields of esoterica, if you could call it that, that you're interested in?
Everything from psychokinesis to UFOs, what happens when we die?
You're interested in those things, but you've also done a lot of work in the military field on things like non-lethal warfare, non-lethal conflict.
So you seem to embrace a lot of things.
How so?
Well, if you talk about phenomena, I've just sort of been interested in that all my life.
I mean, I remember giving a radio broadcast at 10 years old in 1947.
I went to a very unusual school, but on UFOs, so that was long before I joined the military and have always been off on rather adventuresome things.
Okay, so you're a curious individual.
That's the way to describe you, I'd say.
I would agree with that.
In terms of military service, I mean, your record, from what I'm reading, is distinguished, and you served in the hotspots, including both Vietnam and Afghanistan.
I can't think that there would be many people who have that experience.
Well, I'd have to be around for quite a while.
I had, I guess, overall nearly half a century involved in national security and international relations.
So in the midst of all of that, though, you have this curiosity about what we might call the paranormal, the odd and the unusual.
When you were in the service, how did that manifest?
Well, of course, I always had personal interests, but then, I don't know if you want the war story, but there was a very unusual tale where I was called to meet with the Deputy Secretary of Defense one day.
Actually, I was working as an inspector general, very straightforward thing, but always had these advocational interests.
And so anyway, went up and talked to him about these unusual areas and went back to my office.
And at 4.20 that afternoon, the chief of staff came in and said, you don't work here anymore.
And the Deputy Secretary of Defense had moved me.
And we were starting into, well, you're familiar with the remote viewing, and I was working more in psychokinesis and then some of the primary perception works we did with Cleve Baxter and as you may know, John Hutchison, just a wide range of things.
Yes, no, I remember interviewing John Hutchison about his Hutchison effect years ago.
Right.
They said people used to ask, what do I do?
And I said, oh, I'm a freelance colonel.
You could turn your hand to anything.
The military, certainly in the 60s and 70s, from what I read and what people have told me, you said you were interested in psychokinesis.
And I guess things like remote viewing follow from that.
You know, the military in the U.S. had a deep and intense interest in these things, didn't it?
To try to give the United States some kind of handle on what the Soviets were up to?
Well, that's sort of partially true.
And I have problems when you start looking at the U.S. military as a monolithic organization.
It's true that there were some individuals who were working on this.
It's equally true that we had a number of detractors who were overtly hostile to any of these ideas.
And particularly when you get into the fundamentalist Christian, we ran into several times.
You're not supposed to do that.
That's the work of the devil.
Okay.
Were you involved in the research that involved people like Uri Geller?
Not at that time, though.
Uri has become a personal friend.
In fact, he did a foreword for my latest book, Reality Denied.
Yes, I saw that.
But I wasn't.
I met Uri later.
So in the 70s and the 60s, what was the U.S. doing?
What sort of research into things like remote viewing was being done that you were part of and experienced?
Well, that came along actually much later, and my direct involvement came in the 1980s.
There had been some prior work, as you know, with help put off and Russ Targ on remote viewing.
That started in the 70s.
In the 60s, early 70s, mostly what we were doing was Vietnam.
Okay.
And your involvement in these things, there was some of that in the service years.
Yes?
Well, there were incidents that happened, and I'm sure your folks have had the same experiences with, you know, precognition and, well, post-mortem communication issues.
Is there continuation of consciousness beyond physical death?
So you have a lot of these things that happen spontaneously in any conflict.
I remember interviewing a man once who told me a story from Vietnam about a guy who was in the service, quite a junior rank, but he was there walking with his rifle through a remote area of almost jungle, and a voice told him to move.
And I think he was physically pushed out of the way.
There wasn't anybody there, but he avoided the story went being blown up by a landmine.
Is that the kind of thing that you're discussing with me here?
Yeah, that's exactly.
In fact, one of my books, I talk about a similar incident where we got into a VC minefield without knowing it, and I'm backing up and suddenly stop, and across the back of my heel, the tripwire is already being pulled.
And obviously, I move forward and it didn't go off.
But that and the whole thing called the point man syndrome, if you will, that infantry troops learned that there were certain people, if they were the point man, meaning the first guy in the parade that was going out, that they were generally safe and there were other people who just seemed to stumble into things.
And you can't exactly say why that's true, but it's been noted through many conflicts.
So do you think from your experience in Vietnam, for example, that some people, perhaps as part of a platoon or whatever it may be, almost mentally communicate their presence to the other side, and maybe that makes them a target?
Is that what we're saying?
I would say it's more like intuition of impending danger.
And certain people appear to be more sensitive to that than others.
And can you recall, other than the story of your own survival from being blown up by that tripwire, can you recall any story that perhaps left you more baffled than any of the others during that period?
Well, there's many.
There's a classic near-death experience that I've written about.
A friend of mine whom I met after the incident.
But if you're familiar with Cobras, you know, gunships, you have a pilot and a co-pilot.
They're in tandem.
Anyway, they're tooling around where they shouldn't.
And normally, you never fly without a wingman.
But for whatever this particular day they were, and anyway, the ship got hit.
As long as I'll cut to the chase on it.
The controls get shot away.
There's a tiny hole in the jungle, but not big enough to land in, so they pull a control crash, meaning they pulled the nose up and came in, boom, down and whatnot.
The backseat, main pilot gets out.
He's running away.
He looks back and he sees the guy moved.
He moves his head, runs back, and jerks him out.
He said, I thought you were dead.
I'll skip some of the main points, but they are rescued sometime later.
And if you're familiar with the jungle penetrator, this is a device that was dropped down into the jungle to pick him up.
Now, during his near-death experience, he had been above the helicopter, looked down, seen the orientation of it, and knew that if you went straight forward off the nose of the helicopter for about a click, click and a half kilometer, that there was a friendly fire support base.
Anyway, he gets picked up in the jungle penetrator, and this is the only case that I have where the guy now physically replicates his out-of-body experience with the in-body experience and looks down and says, yes, yay, verily, the helicopter is pointed in the direction of the friendly fire support base.
The other pilot has gone off into trackless jungle, and so before he passes out, he says, by the way, the pilot went off further into the jungle, and they went out, and it saved the other pilot's life.
So, do you think that something guided this person, or did this person tap into an ability that perhaps we all have but don't use?
Well, no, this is an out-of-body experience where he is physically separated from his body.
Interestingly, he ran into a hooded figure, who says is male, who said, what are you doing here?
And he says, well, I need to get help for them, not I'm in trouble, but, you know, the two pilots.
And the entity said to him, well, don't you know you're not dead yet?
And it was at that time that he had moved.
And as I say, the pilot who thought he was dead, because he had not moved from the time they had been shot, that came back and rescued him.
It turns out that the.51 caliber had hit the plate, hit the side of his leg, and his legs were broken, so he physically could not move.
And that's why he hid while the pilot was ostensibly going off for help.
And when he came through that, which he did, what did he believe had happened to him?
Oh, he's very much, physically, there was intense pain.
He was medical in hospitals for probably more than a year.
His face was literally burned off in the process.
And no, it was clear that he had a continuation of consciousness as far as he knew.
He was dead.
Well, in fact, the side story, we were discussing this at Walter Reed a number of years later with a psychologist who tried to say, oh, well, you just had a dissociative experience.
And the guy looks at him and says, you can call that what you want.
I was dead.
Did he ever, I'm sure he did.
Anybody would.
Did he give thought to why he was saved, brought back, came back to life?
No, we have many, many cases like that.
As you know, I used to be the president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies and talk to hundreds of people who have had such experience, many of them from the military.
Often, one of the things they often say is they don't want to come back, that whatever is there, that they're there is so much more pleasant than being back in the body and whatnot.
Often they're not given a choice, but saying you have other duties to fulfill in this incarnation.
It's a very common report.
In fact, my own mother, when she was severely ill as a little girl, had exactly that experience.
She went to a beautiful place.
She didn't want to come back, and they told her that she had to.
And of course, the fact that she came back meant that I was facilitated and brought into this world along with my sister.
We wouldn't have been here if she'd died, but she had that near-death experience that so many people have.
So this is something that you've researched.
And the case is...
A guy that was a friend of mine who was shot down, similar.
He was with a Chinook helicopter coming in, and a Chinese claymore went off, and they literally were crushed and said when he's out of his body, he's not so much given a choice as no, you're going to become a single parent, and you need to go back to raise the kids, which was quite a surprise because he had no expectation that his wife would leave him.
Now, in that case, it was a divorce, but years later, he became a single parent and had to raise teenage sons.
So this suggests that behind all of these experiences is some kind of all-knowing power that knows the person involved, but also knows that person's whole life story.
Well, we're in a very, very complex areas now.
But, yeah, it is very complex.
Obviously, well, the conundrum that comes up, of course, is free will versus predestination.
And how much of this is previously set?
I would tell you that I happen to be one of people believing in reincarnation and that you kind of choose your life mission before you come and that certain situations are going to arise that are there for your learning and advancement as a soul.
I mean, I've had many people try and explain that to me, and I've said, well, look, I don't want to be coming back.
I've been through enough in this life.
You know, things have gone wrong, things have gone right.
I just don't want to experience it all again.
And the general view is that when you get over there, you think differently about it all, and you may well opt to come back to face the challenges and, you know, right the wrongs that were done before.
Well, one of my big concerns at the moment, I get very political and won't bore you with all of that, but I think we've made a horrible mess of things.
And one of the concerns is, yeah, well, somebody's going to have to come back and sort this out.
So do you believe that you had previous lives, John, and that you're back here now following a path and in future you'll follow another path?
Yes, but if you ask me what they were, I could not tell you.
I mean, most of the time they talk about something Called the veil of forgetfulness or whatever, that when you're doing the planning, you're in a position to be able to know all of these things.
But part of the process is that you have to do it without clear guidance.
I've often said, you know, would you just tell me what you want done?
We'll go to you.
It'll be a whole lot simpler.
Yeah, but unfortunately, they tell me the way the game is played that when you get back here, you unfortunately don't come with a roadmap, which is a bit of a problem.
Just taking you briefly back to Vietnam, you talked about after-death experiences.
Obviously, the Vietnam War and all conflict of that kind takes an enormous toll in young human life.
Did you come across experiences where people perished on the battlefield and communicated after that?
Not directly, no.
Now, remember, I was with Special Forces, your SAS, if you will, and we operated in relatively small teams.
And while I lost a few, that was pretty rare, particularly with American troops.
Most of my troops ended up with OPCON of probably over 1,000, but most of them were indigenous.
I had both Vietnamese and predominantly of my force was Cambodians.
Right.
After the service in Vietnam and elsewhere, you went to work at Los Alamos, which of course is the place where they developed what they used to call the H-bomb.
What was that all about?
Well, Los Alamos is a very big institution, and we continued on in many, many areas.
So it was and still is a nuclear weapons lab.
One of my kids' stories is there was a briefing going on one day, darkened room, but everybody sitting at a table.
I saw an empty chair, and I slipped in and sat there, and lights came on, and there's Edward Teller, the quote, father of the H-bomb, sitting next to me.
Wow.
So the lab studies a wide, wide range of technology.
There was a segment there that I happen to belong to that is literally part of the intelligence community.
But, you know, it was there that, well, I was looking at the various operations going on, like Just Cause in Panama and the Urgent Fury and Grenada.
And everything was aimed at overwhelming military strength, which we generally had.
And so I started evaluating that and saying, you know, the point of war is not necessarily killing the adversary.
It's being able to impose will.
And if you look at Panama, you had big families with long memories, and you, as you know, what they call the cycle of violence.
And so I was thinking in ways of what can you do where you can impose will and be able to dominate the battlefield, but not necessarily kill people in the process.
This is your research into non-lethal warfare, which sounds to be, you know, that sounds to be a contradiction in terms, but actually it isn't.
If you look at the way that they're saying wars will be fought in the future, a lot of it is going to be done by technology, taking down assets, power grids, and that kind of thing.
Well, we looked at the wide range of technologies from simple things that you know about from tasers and rubber bullets and pepper spray and things like that that are anti-personnel up to strategic incapacitation,
meaning what you were describing there, how can I take down the infrastructure, being mindful of secondary and tertiary casualties as well, but ones in which you can deny access to capabilities and yet restore them relatively quickly.
You don't want to take down, you know, hard bombs taking out long lead items like generators and whatnot can take many months to years to reconstitute power, so you don't want to do that.
But there are ways now where you can degrade those systems for a temporary period and then restore them post-conflict once you've been able to establish dominance.
Are you concerned about developments in the field of artificial intelligence which are continuing at pace?
And we will have weaponry.
It's already being developed, it's already been developed, that will effectively think and act for itself.
Yeah, that certainly is a concern.
Of course, Terminator is based on the concept taken to an extreme.
But I could tell you, my last assignment was as Director of Advanced System Concepts for the Army Laboratory Command, working all the early technologies.
And we're talking like late 1980s.
And there was congressional prohibition against looking at robotic systems that could make autonomous decisions.
I mean, we could not even research it at that time.
And now those things are clearly coming into vogue.
So there was a sort of moratorium on talking about, on researching that stuff.
It's all changed now, of course.
What do you think?
Technologies have changed.
Robotics have become mainstream.
And the biggest issue is how fast you have to make decisions.
And do you have machines that have To make moral decisions.
Well, that's a difficulty, isn't it?
And how can you guarantee with an artificially intelligent system that is autonomous or nearly autonomous that it's not going to go rogue on you?
Well, the problem is you can't.
And we're now talking about systems that get into areas like what is consciousness, but are they in fact becoming self-conscious entities that can make those decisions for themselves?
And that, as you say, that strikes to the core of our own consciousness.
What is it that makes us aware and autonomous and capable of making decisions?
If you start to imbue technology with a high degree of capability, then at what stage is that technology viewed to be conscious?
I think that's a fascinating topic, isn't it?
Certainly is.
I don't have many quick answers for you if that's where you're going with it.
But no, this is something that's going to have to be contemplated very quickly, and the evolution is taking place at near exponential speed.
I want to take you to the Skinwalker Ranch, because I understand in its early days, you actually found yourself staying there by yourself alone.
Now, this is said to be some kind of vortex of paranormality where everything from ghosts to UFOs appear on a regular basis.
Talk to me about your experience of Skinwalker.
Well, first of all, the experiences have been going on for decades to millennia.
The thing that you're talking about is when Bob Bigelow, for whom I was working at the time, bought the ranch.
I happened to be with him on that day and spent the first night sitting on the ridge line.
The main thing that happened was mosquito bites.
But having said that, you know, NIDS, National Institute for Discovery Science, we had a team of us that went up there periodically and would stay normally a week or so at a time.
And very, very strange things absolutely did happen there.
What sorts of things?
Wow.
Well, one of the problems in dealing with that phenomena is that it is so varied.
So you certainly had UFOs.
We had a number of cryptoological entities.
One of the famous war stories, when Terry had had the ranch, they look up and he sees this dog coming across the field towards him.
And then as he gets closer, he says, oh, that's not a dog.
And now it's a wolf.
And not only that, that's a really, really big wolf.
And Terry was a big guy, and this wolf comes up to head level, or I'm sorry, chest level on him.
Trunk in your story a bit, but a short time later, there's a calf yowling.
It's in a pen there, and the wolf has reached under and grabbed this 600-pound calf by the snout, trying to pull it under.
And Terry grabs a 2x4 and hits him, which does absolutely nothing.
So he takes out a 357 Magnum, and at close range, shoots him even directly into the heart, to which the wolf lets go and goes wandering off.
He happened to have an elk rifle handy, and he hits it with the elk rifle, and they see stuff flying off, and the wolf goes out across a creek and disappears.
The next day, well, they follow the tracks, and the tracks literally go through the mud up and disappear, and the chunks of stuff that have flown off the body are picked up and are already putrefied.
I mean, that's just one of many, many events that happen.
So it's a center for crypto creatures, as you said.
UFOs have been reported around that area.
I understand that when you stayed there by yourself, you didn't experience anything apart from the mosquito and bug bites.
There did seem to be people, guys that seem to be more sensitive and have things.
There's one incident where a couple of them are out near the old homestead, big Russian olive trees, and they're sort of aware of something moving through the trees, something like what you see in the Predator movie.
We have distortion in the views, and this one individual gets the message that says, we are watching you.
And we don't know who we are, but this particular individual seemed to have more incidents that he was particularly sensitive to.
Telepathically.
Right.
Boy.
So what do you think it is, having been there and knowing Bob Bigelow, about Skinwalker Ranch?
What do you think it is that makes it such a ground zero for all of these things?
Well, as I've been quoted on saying, there seems to be a vortex of some kind there.
And I have a friend of mine that I had met many years ago in Washington.
She happened to be a survivor, very young, at Pearl Harbor.
And what I didn't know is that during the war, she had come back and was living at Fort Deshane.
And said her grandfather had worked with the Ute tribe in the area and was even then familiar with the stories of the quote, Skinwalker.
By the way, it didn't become Skinwalker Ranch until after we left.
That was just the name that was attached to it.
And people also forget that it Actually, was and is a working ranch so that there's cattle and other things going on as well.
As to what's in charge, I have come up with something I call the precognitive sentient phenomena.
And by that, I mean there is something, and whatever it is, not sure how to describe it, that is in control.
When I say precognitive, it seemed to know how we would respond to various events before we were actually presented with that experience.
It is certainly sentient and certainly phenomenal.
And one of the problems was the phenomena keeps morphing.
It continues to do so.
And so you would set up instruments and try to capture things.
And there would be like on camera.
By the way, this applied to John Hutchinson a bit, too.
All this seemed to happen off-camera, immediately outside the range.
And the phenomena seemed to say, oh, you like that?
Try this.
And you'd get something similar, but significantly different.
So whatever is there, for whatever reason, not only knows about you, but it knows what you are going to do and how you're going to react.
Correct.
And what is, as far as you're aware, at the moment, what is being done to research these things?
Is there anything being done at the moment?
Oh, a tremendous amount.
Brendan Fiegel bought the ranch from Bob a number of years ago.
And, of course, there's been a whole series, two seasons of the Secret of Skinwalker Ranch from American History Channel.
I think most of them are available online.
But they have instrumented it far greater than anything that we did with NIDS.
But the same thing, it just keeps changing a little bit, and you end up with who knows what this is or where it's going.
And it seems to be cyclical.
One of the things when it died down was that Bob thought it was taving off.
Now, the other aspect, though, and one of the reasons it's now public that when he sold the ranch, was people found things followed them home.
What happened on the ranch didn't necessarily stay on the ranch.
And when you say things followed them home, do you mean that beings followed them home or ghostly apparitions followed them home?
What followed them home?
Well, yeah, it's more of a feeling and entities.
He now has told the story of home, and his wife, Diane, was there.
She influenced him to sell the ranch, too, but woke up and he's sound asleep next to her, and here's this something, human-like entity, apparition hovering right, you know, nose to nose above her.
And that was enough to scare them and to say, you know, whatever it is, stop this.
You know, if this place is so powerful and has such a history and has made such an impact on the American and the British TV viewing public, I certainly know that.
You would think that the U.S. government would want to know a little bit more about this in this day and age and would depute a team of scientists there.
As far as you're aware, is anything like that going on?
No, and my question to you would be, why?
Well, if you're aware of a thing, I guess if you're asking me the question, if you're aware of a thing, you want to know how it ticks.
You don't want it to be something that is random and can do anything.
You want to know how this thing works.
But I have an entire chapter in my UFO book that goes into how the U.S. government works.
I do know the U.K. government works very similar.
And the point is, yes, there's lots of interesting things that are going on, but there is no Department of Interesting Ideas.
Now, we've talked about communication, you know, post-mortem communications, for instance.
You have no expectation that the government is going to study that, even though it ought to be of interest to 100% of the population.
So my issue is why is it we select certain phenomena to be explored by governmental agencies and not others?
And I happen to think that all of these things are interrelated, and human consciousness is a key component to that.
I also don't think we're going to get there by stovepiping research into certain select areas.
So if we're going to research it, we need to have one organization, one bunch of experts who look at all of it in the round, because as you said, more and more people are coming to believe that UFOs and Bigfoot and all of these things may in some way be linked.
Oh, I firmly believe that.
And my approach that I've been pitching as much as possible, you're probably familiar with the Human Genome Project.
And the point there is that you had multiple countries, top research institutions, and most importantly, sharing of data.
And the problem with research, be it public or private, in many of these areas, is that it tends to be shrouded in secrecy for various reasons.
And I argue that we need to have data sharing and enable the best and brightest to be able to be involved in such research without risking their reputation or livelihood.
But, of course, first, those who would be responsible for funding and commissioning such research would have to have a degree of belief in the phenomenon.
Do you not think?
Well, yes.
Yeah, well, true.
And, you know, if anything has come out of the most recent UFO revelation here in the States, it is that, you know, the government formally coming out and saying, yeah, this is real.
It needs to be taken seriously.
Obviously, it's much broader than that.
But, you know, you actually have some very powerful forces who do not want that done.
Some of them are named religion.
As I mentioned, IAN's International Association for Near-Death Studies, and I said continuation of consciousness ought to be of interest to 100% of the population.
There are powerful entities who would like that not to be true, i.e.
religions who want to be the arbiter of truth.
In other words, we will tell you what you're supposed to believe and how the system works.
And stay clear of certain topics.
Just to get you back to the UFOs and this report, the interim report, the unclassified report that's landed in Washington, of course, this is ahead of another larger report that will be delivered in three months from now.
As far as you're hearing, you know, behind the scenes, do you think that we are about to get some kind of revelation?
Do you think the so-called truth embargo might be about to lift?
Well, I don't believe in, quote, the truth embargo.
And that sounds like Steve Bassett.
And he and I have had a discussion a number of times.
First of all, you know, if you're talking about the truth, i.e.
the reality of UFOs, you have been told and told and told, and the community refuses to take yes for an answer.
Now, if on the other hand you're trying to say, well, ET is here walking among us and all of that, I'd say probably not.
I don't think that the government has any corner on tremendous amounts of information.
Now, you may know that I actually ran a study similar to ATIP back in the 1980s.
And basically, the findings that they got are very, very similar to what we've known for 30 years and probably 30 years before that.
You know, the first line of my book starts, UFOs are real, and I mean that some of them are hard physical items.
But the last paragraph says, whatever this is, it is more complex than we can possibly imagine.
And I don't think we're at the point of getting answers, which is what people think they're going to get.
I don't think we're at the point of asking the right questions yet.
What are the right questions?
Well, I have no idea.
It's too complex.
But the point is we need to study these things.
And I said, pull back and look at the, you know, multiple phenomena.
See, one of the problems is we stovepipe it.
I'll start with, what do you mean by a UFO?
We've got little balls of light that are zipping about, maybe communicating.
We've got hard craft miles across and showed up on multi-sensory data and thousands and thousands of variations in between.
So which UFOs are you talking about?
It is not nearly as simple a question as I think most of the public would believe.
But I guess you have to make a start somewhere.
Well, the thing that the most recent studies have added, I think, are improved sensor systems.
And one of the big things, takeaways in that report is they talked about 144 cases, only one resolved, but as they pointed out, 80 of those cases had multi-sensory data, which says, yeah, verily, you're getting a physical object at some time.
But that also seems to be temporal in that, you know, they have the ability to act like the Klingon cloaking device, if you will, and just disappear.
Now, I would argue if you want to study it, it certainly would be interesting.
But if you're the steward of national resources, meaning taxpayer dollars, how much money are you willing to spend researching a topic that may be of interest, but you have a very low probability of getting answers to?
So you don't actually think that this point in history that we've landed upon is going to be the pivotal time where we will get answers about what these things are.
You think that the questions will remain, and just like your research 30 years ago, we're going to come out of this process in more or less the same state?
Pretty much.
We've got to remember that like Skinwalker, like the UFO thing, if you go back and look in history, these phenomena continue to morph.
I remember in the 1800s, you had airships literally floating along and anchors down and people talking back and forth.
I know you've had Jacques on, but one of the classic cases that I got from him was he talks about a guy early 1900s driving around a mountain in the state of Washington, and he sees they're hovering with a heptagonal UFO, and he said, I could see every rivet.
Now, that's very interesting because within a few years, you certainly Know that you would never use rivet for interspace travel.
And thus, like I say, these phenomena keep morphing.
That tends to lead me to the notion that we are looking at issues of consciousness.
And of course, you go back to Max Planck suggesting a physical reality actually evolves from consciousness.
I think that's fascinating, and it was interesting that you cited that story from Jacques Valley, who I did have on my show about six, eight weeks ago.
And I think there is something in this.
I think you're quite right that there is some degree of development over the centuries, over the decades with this, and it seems to change along with us.
In other words, to some extent that we don't understand, it seems to be reflecting us.
Correct.
That would be my take on it.
Which would suggest, wouldn't it, John, that perhaps we have some degree of control over this.
And those people who say that they can summon these things, well, you know, maybe you can't summon them, but maybe there is some kind of interconnectedness between the phenomena and ourselves.
And as we get more advanced, then it gets more advanced.
But if you look at things like Tibetan Buddhism, and you're familiar with tulpas, i.e.
thought forms, and they talk about in the advanced stages being able to create tulpas, i.e., you know, create thought forms and bring them into physical existence.
But the thing you are warned about if you're doing is they tend to get out of control.
So the idea that you can, you know, ultimately control these things is, you know, very, very difficult.
So actually, the questions around this are fascinating, but the outlook is a little disappointing because if these things reflect us and develop as we develop, then they're going to evolve to a point where they'll always be ahead of us, I think is what I'm saying.
And we'll never work out the answers.
Well, aren't you back to the issue of AI?
Yes, you are.
In a circuitous way, we are.
Exactly.
So what kind of research can you do then?
If you feel that whatever these things are are some kind of reflection of us connected with our consciousness, then the kind of research that's being done that's like mechanical and looking for data and that kind of thing is useless.
You need to be looking more towards consciousness research, as you say.
Yes.
Well, I argue a lot of this has to do with the fundamentals of our educational system that is purely mechanistic.
And as you know, we look at reality and advanced educational systems in the West are all geared towards a mechanical universe.
And we look for the God particle.
We have the Large Hadron Collider and cutting things in the smaller and smaller part.
And you'll get to the ultimate trap.
I argue, as you may know, I travel all over the world, have met with shamans in various places.
And in the West, we look at the real world and the spirit world, if we even believe in the second, as something that are separate and distinct.
Whereas there are other cultures that see them, and I talk with shamans who move seamlessly back and forth between the physical world and the spirit world.
I like Brazil.
I've been there many times and done research down there.
And I like that example because the people I've met, very senior in the best institutions, but are very Western, culturally oriented.
And so you have the mechanistic view of the universe, but concominantly deal with the spirit world and the spiritist religions that are there.
And they can inculcate those with much more fluidity than you generally hear in the U.S. Now, obviously, there are some people who do this, but it's not society at large.
And that is, I think, one of the big shames.
It gets back to the question of how do we get the best and brightest?
Because clearly these things are terribly complex.
And we have to change our entire mindset in the way that we research these things, because we're going about it from what you say in entirely the wrong way.
I would agree with that.
Talk to me about your latest book, John, A Reality Denied, First-Hand Experiences with Things That Can't Happen, but Did.
You know, in my experience of life, I can give you a dozen weird experiences that I've had that don't kind of add up.
Is that the kind of thing that you're looking at here in this book?
Well, I've split it into various parts, but the short answer would be yes.
I've dealt with, as you know, I did my doctorate under Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who was brought hospice to the U.S. and was with Raymond Moody starting on what became near-death experiences.
And so we've had a lot of experiences, as I said, with near-death experiences, post-mortem communication, working with shamans or mediums and things like that.
We talked about John Hutchison.
I actually funded some of that research.
And by the way, I think some of that stuff absolutely did happen.
We talked about metal bending of the PK psychokinesis.
We did that.
Remote viewing people are now more familiar with.
First chapter has to do with the skinwalker.
The second one is my second UFO sightings.
There's a guy that some know, Chris Bledsoe, who had a phenomenal experience.
And quite frankly, if I had just heard that, which I did, he would go like, Yeah, I'm not sure how much to believe in that because it's terribly complex and convoluted.
And then a few years ago, we were down there with him and went back to the original site and standing next to the car.
He goes, Oh, I think they're here.
And within just a few seconds, this UFO pops into view and goes flying off.
And that's when I went, whoa, wow.
Where was this?
This is near off the Cape Fear River, south of Fayetteville, North Carolina.
And you saw this?
Oh, yes.
I mean, that was the thing.
I saw it.
And it was the temporal relationship between him saying, I think they're here, and this thing just popping into view and zipping off.
Now, in his case, in the early ones, some of the things that happen, E.T. comes to his house and his big area goes running off.
And he turns around to the entities chasing him.
He goes, okay, you got me.
And to which they telepathically responded, you don't understand.
We're here to help.
The next day, around noon, he suddenly realizes he hasn't taken his medicine, and he's had Crohn's disease for 12 years, and it was cured instantly.
And I mean, the things that go on and on.
And he is still, I've got last week videos that he's sending me of orbs that they're, you know, responding to.
But why can't we all have these experiences?
You know, there are many times when I sit here, you know, maybe I've finished recording something and I've talked with somebody fascinating and I've thought to myself, if you are there, whatever you may be, come to me now and show me.
Otherwise, I will live the rest of my life in ignorance.
And I don't want to be in ignorance.
I want to know.
And yet nothing, well, nothing blatant happens.
There are strange small things that always happen.
But I don't get that kind of contact.
What am I doing wrong?
Oh, I don't think anything.
And didn't you tell me about your mother's experience earlier?
Yes, indeed.
I mean, these things happen most frequently when you're not expecting it.
I think you're right.
I certainly didn't expect when Chris and I were standing there that a UFO was going to show up.
And what is it that you believed you saw then?
Do you think that you were seeing some kind of projection or were you seeing something real?
Oh, there was something real that just popped into view.
I can't say that I could tell structure.
It was a bright light and lasted only a few seconds as it went zipping off.
Clearly not an aircraft.
But the point is these things, as we've been discussing, they seem to morph.
They appear when you're least ready.
Now, maybe this is part of the process that we talked about in planning for incarnation of the things that you are going to experience.
Now, there are people who do exactly what you're saying.
I need to know it now.
And we call them mediums.
And they seem, many of them work for years.
Others happen to have it occur spontaneously.
So we have a lot of research to do.
Just at the end of this, I've been fascinated all my life by remote viewing.
You know, I've interviewed people like Major Ed Dames and Russell Targ over the years.
I've never been quite able to work out how they do what they say they do, but I nevertheless remain fascinated by it.
What are your thoughts about remote viewing?
What is that?
Well, it's obviously a consciousness connection.
Now, initially, people thought it was some kind of electromagnetic wave or something like that that we didn't understand until you get into pre- and retrocognition, i.e.
you're perturbing time.
And that's more of an understanding.
Now, one of the things that has happened, and we always got dinged on the, but how does it work?
What's the theoretical underpinnings?
And my response is, well, we probably don't know.
But having said that, we, talking now the Army or military, had an operational capability.
So using the white crow, these things fly all the time.
So it does work.
Now, where I get into trouble with a number of these people is sometimes it works, because obviously it's not something that has 100% accuracy.
And I happen to believe, personally, that everybody has these capabilities.
It's just that some people are better than others.
And you can get better, but that doesn't mean you're going to become a virtuoso.
So it's kind of like having a cell phone.
You know, unless your cell phone finds the right network, you're not going to be able to make calls.
Some people can find the right network.
Right.
Well, fascinating, John.
I said that we would dance around a lot of topics, and this would be an introduction to you.
I've greatly enjoyed this.
How would you, look, you've done so many things and being in the military, being involved in all of this stuff that we've been talking about.
How would you sum up your life then?
If somebody asked you to describe, if you met somebody on a plane or somebody, you know, remember the days when we could fly more freely than we do now?
But if you met somebody on a plane, they asked you to describe John Alexander and what he does.
What would you say?
I would like you dance around the topic.
I don't know how you would do that.
Well, there was a description of it.
I think you're a Renaissance person who has been involved in many, many areas.
I've been very fortunate to have had first-hand experience with many of these phenomena.
I'm not sure you understand it any better.
And the ultimate challenge for all of us is the process of death.
As we get older, it gets closer, inevitably.
I'm closer to it than I was, obviously, because of the march of time.
From the work that you've done and the research that you've done, do you fear death?
No.
No, not at all.
I've been...
Dying, obviously, can be a very painful process, but the ultimate transition, no.
I have had enough information provided from various sources, firsthand, etc., that says consciousness in some form certainly continues beyond physical death.
Well, I've seen a certain amount of evidence of that, and I really want to believe that.
And I hope that that is so.
John Alexander, thank you very much indeed.
The new book is Reality Denied, Firsthand Experiences with Things That Can't Happen But Did.
How long has that been out?
It's been about four years now.
You got Zaint Ding by the COVID sort of things.
Slowed stuff down quite a bit.
Well, it's all coming back, they tell us.
John, please stay healthy, take care, and it's been good to speak with you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
John Alexander, and boy, did we cover a lot of ground there.
Your thoughts on this welcome.
Please go to my website, theunexplained.tv.
Let me know.
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 Online.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe.
Number one, stay calm.
And number three, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
Export Selection