All Episodes
Previous Next
April 12, 2022 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:04:58
Edition 626 - John Russell, Medium

A new conversation with US medium/psychic John Russell...

| 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.
Well, another dull and wintry spring day here in the United Kingdom.
God knows what's happened to the weather.
Let's just hope it improves, hey, for Easter, the Easter holiday.
Whatever will happen with that.
I hope you get a chance maybe to take a couple of days off and enjoy yourself.
Couple of shout-outs before we get to the guest on this edition, John Russell, psychic in the United States, an update from him.
Ron, thank you very much for what you did, and I hope you got my reply.
Thank you, Ron.
Ryan in Linwood, Minneapolis, nice email.
Thank you, Ryan.
Paul Gafferkin in the English Midlands, thank you for yours.
Antonio in Cardiff, thank you for your communication.
And Jim, who heard the first radio shows that I did on this subject under the name of The Unexplained, which was nearly 18 years ago now.
So that's an awful long time.
And there are still people who have copies of some of those shows.
Most of them I've lost.
So if you do have any recordings of those, I will be very keen to hear from you.
The radio show I talked about on the last edition, as far as I know, that plan is proceeding.
I will tell you more details when I get it.
But basically, as I said, just to bring you up to speed, the radio station is moving towards all video.
You will still hear the sound of it on the radio in the same place.
But it's all going TV and it's all going live.
So for me, that will mean it will be entirely visual.
I'm being told every guest has to be live and in pictures and no more music.
So those are the changes.
But there will be other changes too that may be better changes.
I think I've just got to get my feet under the table, try it, and see how it works for me.
You know, I was, I think everybody knows, including my bosses, that I was very much against doing this because I believe in the intimacy of radio and I'm a radio guy and I really was very, very worried about being seen.
I don't like being seen.
I'm a very shy person.
But I think there could be advantages and we could take this to a bigger audience.
So I'm going to go with the flow.
And as somebody pointed out to me, Paul, quite recently, and as I'd already realized, really, the only domain name that I could get when I started The Unexplained was.tv.
And I thought in my head in 2006, that might be useful to me one day.
So I'm not a psychic, not like John Russell, who I'm about to speak with.
So I don't know what that means, but there you go.
My apologies if I'm not quite sounding so distinct or if I'm going to get some words wrong here.
I'm still having problems with the stump of that dental crown, and I'm hoping to be able to see a dentist for some expensive dental work, as all is these days, a little bit later this week.
And hopefully he will be able to get a new crown molded for me.
And then hopefully life will continue in its usual frame.
My thanks as ever to a very busy guy, Adam, my webmaster who's done so much for me over these years, has been with me for most of this journey.
He's got a busy time at the moment.
And, you know, he will continue to be part of this.
I think that's all I have to say.
Thank you very much for your emails.
If I haven't mentioned you here, please know that I see my first task every morning is reading all the emails and there are many of them now.
When you get in touch and I'd love to hear from you, tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show.
And if you could possibly make a donation to the running of the online version, like Ron kindly did, then please do.
You can do that too at theunexplained.tv.
As we march forward through 2022, I can't believe that we're nearly four months into it.
But I've said that before.
Where did that go?
Let's get to the U.S. now.
The guest, John Russell.
John, thank you for coming back on this show.
Howard, it's always a pleasure to be here.
Thank you for having me.
I'm looking forward to it.
Now, my listeners know, John, and I think you know too, that I'm a very honest guy.
So I have something to own up to here.
And it's very embarrassing, but then I guess everybody has to do this at least once in their professional lives.
And that is what's happened to me.
We actually recorded this first a week ago.
And somehow the recording got corrupted.
And I wasn't able to use it.
And more embarrassingly, as I'm doing at this moment, I usually run two recordings.
Okay, so I've got one recording, the main one going, and a secondary one just in case.
So there is never a situation where I lose a show.
And for reasons that I don't entirely understand, that recording got corrupted.
And for the first time in 16 years of podcasting, and I'm supposed to know better, I completely lost it.
So we had to rearrange this for a week later.
And not a problem at all.
And I have to tell you, sometimes, and not saying that this is the case here, but there have been experiences in my life where my guys on the other side will mess with electronics or electrical devices or whatever.
Sometimes it got to the point it was so bad that, and I don't know if it was my psychic energy or the guys on the other side or a combination of both, but when we would go to the grocery store and I would insert my card in the machine to pay, it wouldn't work no matter how many times I swiped it.
And if my wife took it and swiped it, it would work just fine.
So sometimes I cause electrical glitches or my guys on the other side do.
So whatever the reason, we're here today.
And, you know, let's, while we're on this subject, you and I have had a couple of conversations now.
The first one last year when a weird thing happened.
And I am not, you know, I'm not Mr. Hardheart skeptic, but I have to be balanced and quizzical about things.
So I don't believe everything that is put before me because, you know, that's my training.
But the first time we talked and last week in that recording that I lost, something weird happened.
The room around me, enveloping me, went completely cold.
And I couldn't understand it last week.
I didn't understand it last year.
I swear, because I'm not in the business of making stuff up just to get people listening.
That happened.
And, you know, it was weird so strange things happen around you what do you think as we look back on last week and that recording that we can't hear because it's gone forever what do you think was happening there if it was anything that was beyond the normal what might that be well you know i told you the the very first time it happened a year ago and then again this time that i think it may have been a visit from your mother um and also you know there are very strange things that
around me and because of me, I'm a portal and a catalyst and a magnet for this type of stuff.
And there's a lot of people that have experienced strange things simply by virtue of being around me.
And sometimes even at a distance after talking with me or while talking with me, so on and so forth, my clients will tell me, for example, that before I call them for a reading, they will hear my voice out loud, audibly in their home, speaking to them before I call them.
And sometimes they tell me that while I'm reading for them, they'll experience touches or sounds or aromas or all types of things.
So I am a catalyst for such things.
And I believe that with both experiences this time that I was a catalyst for, I think it's a visit from your mother.
I think your mother's there just letting you know that she is with you, that she's around you.
And she chose our podcast to do that.
My listener knows that I was very close to my mother and my father.
They were both the best you could possibly have.
They came from humble beginnings in Liverpool, and they were determined that I should have a better start in life than they and their fathers had.
They were the most wonderful people.
But, you know, the biggest issue for me has been that I've kind of felt my dad, you know, my dad, and I've said this before, was a Liverpool policeman.
Everybody loved him.
I never saw him without a smile.
He got me out of so many scrapes.
I've always felt that he's been kind of around.
And I've always felt that my mother, who was the spiritual, well, no, that's not true, actually.
My dad's father used to read tea leaves, teacups.
And so, and, you know, that was a strange element of our lives.
Right.
But in the great, you know, times in this country, and I think we might be going back into them where there was a lot of poverty.
That was one of the things my dad's dad did.
So I think my dad also had some experiences of ghosts and stuff.
So let's not say that my mother was only the sensitive one.
My mother was particularly inclined towards spirituality and these things.
My dad was too.
He just didn't talk about it quite as much.
Right.
But I would have thought my mother would be the one who would, if anybody could contact anybody beyond the grave, then I would have thought it would have been my mother.
But it wasn't.
You know, I've always felt my dad's presence, and I've always felt that my mother has gone on to do something else, which is a weird, and for those who are skeptical, for those who doubt any of this exists, that's going to be a really bizarre thing to say.
But I've always had that thought.
Right.
And there's your dog barking that wants to get in on it.
Does he want to be let out?
I can keep talking if he wants to be let out.
No, he's just, he hears something going on in the neighborhood here, and I shut the blinds so he couldn't see out so he wouldn't bark.
But now he's going on, let me close this door and see if that helps a little bit.
That's the great thing about doing it.
Sometimes he likes to be on the podcast where there is a camera involved.
He'll come in, climb up into my lap so he can be on camera on the podcast.
boy which you know kind of leads me to the question and you know your biographical material um says that uh for more than 15 years i know this you've been a popular guest on shows like coast to coast a.m. with george uh you kindly name-checked my show and some tv stuff that you've done um so you've you've got a track record in in all of this for a long time you've said you've been doing this for 50 years we'll talk about the early stuff uh in a moment um this is a question that i probably asked a thousand
on these conversations, and I've always got a different answer.
What do you think happens when we die?
Well, I think when we die, we're met on the other side by deceased loved ones, by deceased friends, by guardian angels, spirit guides, whatever you want to call them.
The best that I've been able to discern in communication with the other side and with spirits on the other side is that that's the way the transition process happens.
And so it's one that we're conscious of as it occurs, and we're conscious of the transition, and we're conscious that we're met on the other side.
And I firmly believe that there are people there that come to guide us over to acclimate us, as it were, and to kind of show us the ropes, so to speak.
But why is it then that some of the people in this world who have been most involved or interested in these things, you know, some of those people haven't come back and made their presence felt?
I'm thinking about noted famous psychics and mediums and people like that.
And I mean, there are instances where these people have made their presence felt after death.
But, you know, quite often it surprised me that some people you would have thought would make their presence felt, unless this is all being kept quiet, have not done that.
Why do you think some, you know, if we accept that we go on to something else, then how come everybody doesn't return in some form?
People on the other side, some people develop a better facility for being able to communicate, just like here.
Some of us have a better facility for playing music than others do.
Maybe people on the other side, there's some people there that perhaps are better communicators.
Perhaps our reception over here is lacking.
And it's not that they're not trying to get through, but that our reception here is lacking.
And the the uh the analogy that i always give with communication with the other side i always talk about back when i was a kid when i was a teenager and my friends and i met this man that was a the ham radio operator and on a good clear night in west texas he could talk with somebody in australia or england or wherever And they were just as clear as a bell,
sounded like they were sitting in the same room with us, and sometimes they could have a 15-20-minute conversation.
Other nights, the conditions were such that he couldn't hardly reach anybody across town to talk to.
And I think that that's the situation that we have between us and the other side: sometimes the conditions are ideal and we get that clear communication.
Other times, the conditions aren't as ideal and we have the difficulty with making that communication.
So I think there's a lot of factors involved in communication between us and the other side and the things that facilitate it and don't.
And sometimes you can do the exact same things the exact same way and you don't get the results you did previously.
So I think that has a lot to do with it.
Do you believe in reincarnation?
You know, I'm kind of sketchy on that.
I have mixed feelings about that.
I've read some compelling stories where people came back, young children especially, and said, hey, my name was so-and-so in a previous life, and I was a fighter pilot, and I lived here.
And sure enough, they look up the records, and that's the case.
So I've read a few compelling incidences of that, but I don't have anything on which I want to hang my hat yet.
I'm just, I'm out.
The jury's out for me on that.
So like I say, some compelling things to investigate further, but I don't think enough for me to personally hang my hat on.
I said you've been doing this for 50 years.
Indeed, that is true.
Apparently, this began for you when you were six years of age.
Now, that is pretty damned early.
And by about 12, according to your biography, you were doing your own paranormal investigations and research into this.
So talk to me about the early years and how you decided some people sense things, some people think they know things, but they don't make a life and a living out of it.
So talk to me about the early years and the progress from there.
Well, the early years, the way that I discovered that I had this connection opened up for me to the other side, to all of these experiences.
And I've had over a thousand paranormal experiences now on the physical realm, physical experiences actually occurring.
And the way that occurred was I was about five years old.
I was sound asleep in bed and I was just suddenly wide awake for no apparent reason.
No grogginess, no sleepiness, just absolutely, totally wide awake.
And I thought, well, this is really strange.
And I thought, well, maybe I heard a sound outside, a noise outside that woke me up or something.
So I laid there and listened, didn't hear anything.
And my parents had left a night light on for me in case I needed to get up and go to the bathroom.
And my bedroom door was open into the hallway where the bathroom was.
And then there were other doorways in the hallway there.
And so I raised up on my elbows and just kind of looked around my room.
And I looked out my open bedroom door.
And there was this elderly gentleman peering at me from around the doorway in the hallway.
I could see him in the nightlights glow very clearly.
And I screamed bloody murder because I presumed that we had an intruder in the home.
And when I screamed, he walked around the doorway, into the hallway, and began to walk toward my bedroom, locked eyes with me.
And I knew he was elderly because he had close-cropped white hair and a white mustache.
And he was every bit as solid as you or I, Howard.
He wasn't translucent.
He wasn't transparent.
He was every bit as solid as you or I. He had on a red flannel shirt, khaki pants, black shoes, black belt.
And I screamed bloody murder again because here this stranger is coming for me.
And my parents came running.
And when they started to come running, he began to vanish until he did disappear.
And when my parents came in, my fright was so real, I convinced them that there was somebody in the house.
And my mother held me and tried to console me.
And my father went around and literally looked under the beds, in the closets, checked all the doors and windows.
And we were locked up tight and there was no one there in the flesh.
But I knew I had seen someone.
And then it dawned on me that I had just seen my first ghost.
And it took me a long time to get back to sleep.
And I kind of looked over my shoulder for days and maybe weeks after that, you know, wondering, where did this guy come from?
Why did he come to visit me?
Is he going to reappear again?
Is he going to ask me to do something that I would find frightening?
Or, you know, what's there's just all these things running through my mind.
And then all of a sudden, I begin to experience these physical paranormal manifestations.
And it dawned on me that this guy came to open that portal.
Right.
So he was like a kind of gatekeeper.
I have to ask this because my listener will be emailing me if I don't.
How do you know as a kid this was not some kind of dream or fantasy?
I know that when I was a kid, and especially when I was about six or so, I love those Jerry Anderson puppet shows, you know, Thunderbirds and, oh, God, Captain Scarlett and Joe 90 and all of those shows.
And, you know, sometimes I'll be off in a reverie thinking about them.
And sometimes, I think as a little kid, it's hard to disconnect fantasy, fiction, and reality.
How do you know that you were not being just affected by that?
Oh, that's real easy to answer because for me, I was readily able to distinguish between dreams, daydreams, visions, fantasies, all those types of things.
And like I say, this occurred when I was sound asleep and then I woke up and then I saw this man and then saw him disappear and there was no change in my state of perception between that occurring and my parents coming in.
So if it had been something that was like a dream, I would have like woken up and my parents are there and whatever.
But I was in an absolute, total, complete wide awake waking state from the moment that I woke up suddenly for no explanation for the entire time that that occurred.
Were your parents concerned about you?
Oh, yeah, and they tried to console me.
They said, look, it must have just been a nightmare.
And I knew it wasn't a nightmare because I wasn't asleep.
I was wide awake.
And they tried to console me to get me back to sleep, which of course was very difficult because I knew I had seen someone as solid as you or I in the house, coming into my bedroom, who then vanished into thin air.
And so when I discovered, when I had the epiphany that this guy came to open up the portal to these paranormal experiences, the fear went away.
That left me then.
It was like, ah, okay.
And I had the knowing, I couldn't express it at that age, but I had the knowing that somehow having these experiences was going to be beneficial to my life and was eventually going to be beneficial to others' lives and help me to help others.
And it has, and to have that connection all these years has been very, very beneficial for me.
And then I discovered the psychic component to the gift between the ages of five and six, a short time later when I was outside playing in the backyard with some toy and this car pulled into the driveway and I didn't recognize the car or the people.
And I ran in the house to get my parents and I said, there's somebody out here pulling to the driveway.
I don't know who they are.
And I said, okay, we'll come out and look.
So they came out and I said, oh, those are friends of ours.
And they were friends I had never met.
So they got out and were standing there on the sidewalk outside talking with my parents, just making small talk.
And I came up and had this clear Isabel vision and just walked up and interrupted them, just walked into the midst of them.
And I said, you folks just went on vacation.
And I said, you drove that car that's in the driveway and you have two kids.
They're not with you today, but you have two children and you took them with you on this vacation.
And you stayed in this hotel that looked like this, had this many floors to it and was painted this color and had these trees out front, spaced like this.
And in the back, the pool area looked like this.
And the woman's husband kind of looked back and forth between me and his wife, my mom and dad, kind of amused, like, what in the world is going on?
And his wife was bug-eyed and slapjogged.
I mean, she was staring at me like I had cobras growing out of my ears.
And she said, how the hell could he possibly have known this?
And my mother said, oh, you know, kids and their imagination kind of trying to ease the situation, pass things off.
And she goes, kids' imaginations don't explain this.
How the hell could he possibly have known this?
My parents were kind of a little confused.
We're like, well, what do you mean?
And she said, that is what we came over to tell you about the vacation that we just took.
We drove that car with our two kids, stayed in this hotel that looked exactly like John described.
How in the hell is it possible that he could know this?
And my parents made some kind of excuses and kind of said, John, go play.
And I said, okay, nice to meet you folks.
And that was when I discovered then that as a component of all of this opening up and this portal opening up, I also had this psychic gift that began to develop.
And I could foretell people's futures.
I could tell where they had been.
I'd tell what had happened to them in the past.
I could read their thoughts.
And so as this continued to develop, I thought, okay, I've got something here that I have to learn what is and learn how to utilize.
What do I do with this?
And so around the age of 12, I began to read and study everything I could get my hands on, religion, psychology, parapsychology, psychic, paranormal, everything, because I wanted to find out what worked and what didn't.
I'd seen that there was a lot of things that people claimed they could do and they couldn't.
And I saw a lot of outright lies and a lot of con artists and a lot of phonies in the field of both religion and the paranormal in the psychics.
Well, indeed, as you know from previous conversations that we've had, I will certainly get some emails from listeners telling me, why do you have psychics on this show?
Those people are charlatans.
They're fakes, frauds, liars.
Sometimes they're just deluded.
They honestly think they've got something, but they're not people you should be talking with.
You must come across those objections.
And you've thought of those things yourself.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And the reason, the way that I answer those people, and some people, no matter how you answer them, it's never going to be enough.
They're never going to be satisfied.
But one of the things I tell people, I say, look, go to my website.
I've got 80 plus client testimonials that give very specific testimonials as to my readings and what I've done in my readings.
And go and look at like Stanford Research Institute and the results that they had with their psychic experiments there.
And there is ample evidence that this is real and that it can be utilized to help people and that these things do occur.
And if you are open-minded enough and willing enough to investigate the facts that are out there, you can discern this for yourself.
And like I said, there are some people that if they were taking a bath and Jesus came down and sat in the bathtub with them and started reading scripture to them, they would deny it.
So some people you will reach, some people you never will.
Some people have really funny reactions to things.
We had this friend of my, my wife's, her friend, they'd been friends since school, since schoolgirls, and she had married and her and her husband would come to our house in New York periodically to visit.
We would go to their house to visit.
And he knew I was a psychic and he didn't believe in it and he made fun of me and I didn't care.
It was all right.
And I asked him one time, I said, listen, I said, this is the question I ask people that are skeptics.
I said, if you are being totally, completely honest, the catchword there, being totally, completely honest, you have had one experience in your life that you can't explain by normal means.
So he tells me, nope, nope, not at all.
And I said, okay, I don't think you're being honest with me, but whatever.
And so one night my wife went over to their house to visit, and I was sick, and I stayed home.
And I would have given my eye teeth if I could have gone because when she came home, she told me that the conversation turned to the psychics and the paranormal realm, the spiritual realm.
And this guy says, this denier says, well, sure, I see people all the time in the house that are there just as solid as can be.
And I think somebody's broken in and then they disappear.
Or I'll see A door open and close on its own by itself.
I see these things all the time, but I just chalk it up to an overactive imagination.
So there are people that can have the physical evidence occur to them and they'll still deny it.
And when I was young, it was a passion of mine to attempt to convert people.
And now that I'm older, I'm 68 now, and now I just don't give a darn.
You believe or you don't.
No, I think that's a fair way of looking at it.
And I have to say, in the interests of balance here, I've interviewed scientists.
I think the scientist who did this experiment, I may be wrong about this, was Chris French in the UK.
But I think he got a bunch of mediums together.
It may have been Cal Cooper, but I'll check on that.
But got a bunch of mediums together, and the results were not conclusive at all.
They were most inconclusive, and there wasn't really much substance to it.
Plus, of course, people like the late magician James Randy, as you will know, offered a million dollars to anybody who could conclusively prove psychic phenomena, and nobody got the million dollars.
So that's a gray area, isn't it?
Let me tell you about Randy.
I have some information about Randy that everybody will find very interesting.
Yes, he did offer the million dollar prize and nobody got it.
And the reason why was Randy set up impossible conditions for anybody to win that prize.
And one example was I saw a documentary that he was on where he introduced some of these people, filmed some of these people, and showed them in this documentary and showed why they couldn't claim the prize.
Well, this one guy, this one psychic, he said that he could do psychometry, which all psychics can.
Most people can learn.
And so he said, if Randy would give him an object, he would tell Randy where this object came from and details about it that he couldn't otherwise know and so on and so forth.
So Randy said, okay.
Now I saw this on TV.
This was Randy's thing that he did.
This is Randy's documentary and I saw this on TV with my own eyes.
So Randy picks an item that he says, this friend of mine gave it to me.
There is no way this guy would know who my friend is.
And this guy either was from a foreign country or bought this in a foreign country or whatever.
It was a real obscure item.
And Randy said, there's no way that he said there's hardly anybody that knows where this came from and who gave this to me or the history of it.
This guy certainly couldn't.
I'm pulling it out of the blue here, out of thin air, giving it to him and saying, here you go.
So he gives the object to the guy, and the guy correctly states that this was given to him by a friend.
Well, Randy's not too impressed.
Well, that's an easy guess.
And then he tells him that the friend was in a foreign country or bought this in a foreign country or whatever.
And I think maybe even gave the location.
And so Randy is like, oh, well, okay, you know, two for two.
And he goes on to describe all these things that he's receiving, all these psychic impressions and things that he's receiving from this item.
And Randy says the guy is so far batting a thousand.
Okay.
Now, the guy says, this friend of yours that gave you this, he said, there's something about his neck, the clothes he wears.
He said, there's something around his neck.
He didn't say, he did not say it was a clerical collar.
He said, it reminds me of a clerical collar, like when you have a clerical collar around your neck, like there's some kind of opening and then the collar.
But there's something there that reminds me like that.
There's something unusual that he wears around his neck.
And so because he said it reminded him of a clerical collar, Randy took it and ran with it and said, no, he doesn't wear a clerical collar.
He's not a cleric.
He's wrong.
And so Randy said, if one thing is wrong, everything is wrong.
Okay, well, I didn't see that documentary.
I don't know about that.
I did see the case.
And, you know, I know that we can all trade examples.
You know, from now until the cows come home.
There was the example of the guy who said that he could move paper, sheets of paper.
I think it was a phone directory.
He could make the pages turn with his mind.
And it was later proved that he couldn't do it without, I think there was, if there wasn't the ability to have drafts of wind going over these papers, my listener will remember the specific details that he couldn't make it happen.
But Randy was saying this guy was 100% accurate and 100% correct up until that point.
Okay, well, I and my listeners will.
Wait, wait, wait.
He dismisses a point.
There's a lot more to the story here.
So Randy says the guy's 100% accurate until he misses this.
And the guy didn't say clerical collar.
And come to find out, the guy that gave this to Randy had this propensity for wearing turtleneck sweaters.
So he did have this thing up around his neck.
And so this radio show that I was on, the guy called me one day and he said, guess who I'm having as a guest?
I said, who?
And he said, Randy.
I said, oh, my God.
He said, what do you want me to ask him?
I said, okay.
I said, well, ask him the standard question.
If you're being totally honest, there's an experience you've had you can't explain by any other means.
And then I said, and then ask him, how is it fair that if the psychic doing the stuff with the psychometry with this object that he gave him, if Randy in his own special admits that the guy got everything right up to this one thing, which Randy discounted because of the way he described it, how is it fair that if one thing's wrong, everything is wrong?
If you get 10 things right, one thing's wrong, everything's wrong.
That's not the way an honest person investigating anything approaches anything.
So I said, ask him about that.
So he said, okay.
So he did.
And unfortunately, I wasn't able to call into the show, talk to Randy or do anything or listen to the show.
So the host called me back and he said, well, he said, here was Randy's response.
He said, that's the way he sets everything up in advance.
And the agreement is that if he decides that one thing that you've described is wrong, then everything's wrong, even if he admits previously that it was correct, which is totally, completely unfair.
And then the host asked him, said, okay, well, what about you?
You know, if you're being totally, completely honest, haven't you had at least one experience in your life that there's no rational explanation for?
And Randy's response was, no, next question.
So that's Randy.
Well, of course, you know, for the purposes of balance, once again, maybe that was true.
Maybe he didn't have an experience that he couldn't explain.
I've had scores of them in my life, and I know listeners email me with their experiences, but, you know, experiences may differ.
Have you ever known a scientist, perhaps one that you've worked with, who has been able to give us verifiable and repeatable proof of these things?
I mean, that's the thing that scientists always go for, isn't it?
The repeatability.
You're able to do this once and then you do it again.
Yeah, I do know people.
There's a friend of mine whose name I won't mention on the air, but there's a scientist friend of mine who worked at Stanford when Stanford Research Institute was developed and going, and he was privy to some of the things that went on there.
And he conducted some of his own scientific tests.
And those were proven valid.
And he was able to inform me that our government, the United States government, especially the alphabet agencies, CIA, so on and so forth, were paying money to Stanford for some of the research, funding some of the research that went on there because it was valid, it worked, and it proved useful to our intelligence community, such as remote viewing and other things.
So yeah, absolutely.
Interesting.
The million-dollar test that I stopped doing years ago because it gets boring after you've done it a few times, but maybe I can dust it off and wheel it out now.
Is there anything, since we spoke last week, and we've spoken before, and you sort of know me, I think, and I sort of know you, is there anything that you can tell me at this point?
Anything, anything that, I mean, just any random, I mean, for example, you know, where I'm sitting at the moment, I know these are party tricks, and I don't like doing party tricks.
Oh, they are, yeah, and I don't do those yet.
It's like I have people that want to do that all the time.
It's like, what color am I thinking of?
And I'll always answer for.
You know, that type of thing.
For the reason that to do what I do takes legitimate effort and takes legitimate energy.
It's a drain on the energy.
And to do it as a partner trick or a party trick or whatever, I don't do that.
I always tell people, like, well, where am I sitting?
It's like, well, if you don't know, you need a psychiatrist, not a psychic.
And so I don't do those types of things.
I reserve that for something legitimate that the other side would give me for a person that would help their lives in some way and help them advance their life in some way that would do them some good.
Okay, well, no, that's taken us away from that.
What I would have said is that there's something here in my little home studio that was given to me recently that is completely unique.
And, you know, you might have been able to tell me what it is.
I'll tell you what it is anyway.
It's a crystal pyramid that I actually unwrapped on the radio live and on the video portion of it that was sent to me by Kelly from Angel Crystals.
And I'm now keeping it in my studio.
But I just was just curious.
And like I say, I gave up doing those things a long time ago because I know from my experience that when stuff happens to you, it doesn't happen to you when you're making it or trying to make it happen.
It doesn't.
I didn't see a ghost.
Yeah, a lot of times it doesn't.
That's the difficulty with the probability of recreating something over and over reliably is the other side just doesn't work that way with us.
It'd be wonderful if they did.
But like in some paranormal investigations I've gone to, the exact same conditions the next time didn't get any results at all.
Like one investigation that I went to, the haunted horse barn that I write about in my second book, we had a, let's see, a group of one, two, three, four, five, six, I think five or six of us there.
And everyone witnessed these powerful physical supernatural manifestations that occurred.
And this buddy of mine was so enthralled with that, he had some people that were kind of on the fence as to what they believe.
And he was like, man, if they'll come and we'll do another investigation, they'll see this and they'll smite believers out of them.
And I told him, I said, I don't see that the same energies are going to be acting in the same way they did when we were there.
But nonetheless, he wanted to try and kept pressuring to do that.
And we did and we went and nothing happened.
And previously, like I say, there was just this plethora of physical paranormal manifestations that everybody heard, saw, witnessed, experienced.
Things moved.
There were sounds.
There were all these incredible things.
And the next time went, the conditions were the same and nothing happened.
So that's one of the problems in replicating things.
And I think also, you know, the spirits, the entities, whomever on the other side, they may get tired of saying, hey, you know, ring the bell, open the door, give us a sign.
You know, it's like, they may get tired of that, you know, just like a psychic gets tired of what color am I thinking of?
Well, the people on the other side might get tired of, hey, make the REM pod flash again.
You know, they may get tired of that.
They may say, hey, you know, I'm not playing tonight.
So there's a lot of things involved.
And we have a saying over here in the UK.
You might have it in the US too, that a washed pot never boils, right?
And look, I know that, look, you're preaching to the converted here because I have seen a ghost.
I am somebody who's seen a three-dimensional figure.
I'm not going to tell the story again because my listeners will be really bored with me telling it again.
But I saw a three-dimensional figure who disappeared before my eyes.
And on that occasion, my head was somewhere else completely.
I was not open to anything like that.
It was not part of my experience.
I couldn't replicate it.
It never happened again.
Other people had seen the same figure in the same place.
I didn't know that at the time.
And when I told somebody there, he said, yeah, you've seen him.
So, you know, I believe that these things happen.
And I also am kind of on your side when you say it's not possible to do them to order.
I wish it was because all of our lives would be a lot easier.
But I don't think they happen to order either.
But I just thought I would ask you because, you know, you and I have spoken before.
One thing that you do say, John, is that all houses are haunted in some way.
How do you know that?
Well, look, you know, if you get this excellent book, I think it's by Gary Snyder.
It's called The Practice of the Wild.
And he talks about every place on this planet that we assume having been desolate, uninhabited, or whatever, at some time or another has had people there, has had a culture there.
So one example I always give is here in Florida in St. Augustine, we have this beautiful place called Matanzas Inlet.
And you can look it up online and research it.
And Matanzas, Matanzas Inlet, I've got the inlet there.
There's a restaurant there on the water.
The ocean's on the other side of the highway and people are surfing, kite surfing, fishing, whatever.
Beautiful, absolutely gorgeous.
And the name Matanzas means slaughter.
And on that very spot where all this beauty is taking place and these people are vacationing in the sun and catching fish and whatever, there were all of these troops that were slaughtered there, killed on that spot, literally slaughtered.
And you'd never know what to look at it, but that's the history of that spot.
So all the places on this planet have history, have people that have lived there either in the flesh and nature has taken it back over, which it does, nature does very, very quickly, obliterate evidence of humanity.
And there may have been people that lived there.
And then certainly we have to also account for the fact that there are all these spirits that are constantly around us in this invisible realm and doing their thing here on this earth wherever.
So when you clear a lot and you build a brand new house, how is that haunted?
Well, there may have been somebody that cleared that lot a thousand years ago and abandoned it and nature took it back over.
So they may have been there.
There may have been some evidence of someone there.
Someone may have died there.
Someone may come back there.
There's these nature spirits that inhabit these areas and they're there.
So wherever you're at, you're going to have a haunting, either from the people that were there, people passing through, the nature spirits that are there, spirits coming through that apparently move around just like we do and go from place to place, some of these spirits just like we do.
So all places are haunted.
And I always tell people, look, you don't have to go to some notorious place to conduct a paranormal investigation.
You can do that right in your own house.
One of the clearest, sharpest EVP, electronic voice phenomena that I ever got was sitting in the office in my home.
And it's one of the sharpest, clearest you'll ever hear.
So you don't have to go to these notorious places.
It's fun if you do, but you don't have to.
It's all around.
It's going right in your own house.
Okay.
And what was said, the clearest EVP?
Oh, I asked what their name was, and this woman's voice clearly says joy.
And it's just absolutely so totally clear.
It's one of the clearest I have ever gotten.
And that was when I got in my home office.
How does that work?
I've always wondered, I've known people who've done EVPs, and I've heard some diabolically bad ones, and I've heard some incredibly mind-blowingly good ones.
How does it work that you can actually record something that you cannot physically hear at the moment you record it?
We don't know, and that's what we're trying to investigate.
The voices use noise.
There's always some type of noise, either ambient noise, the noise from the recorder itself.
A lot of people use white noise or use like a ghost box, which creates the necessary static.
And then you hear the voices when you play it back.
Now, why do we not hear them with our physical ears?
We don't know.
How is it that they can speak onto the recorder and then we can hear it with our physical ears?
We don't know.
And what is that frequency we're using?
We don't know.
I talked to a friend of mine that was on one of the podcast I was on and he's also a professional musician.
And he said, John, I can take with my software and I can take any sound, any song, any music, anything, anything audible, and I can completely, totally manipulate it, do anything I want to with it, reconstruct it, deconstruct it, make any kind of pull out any bit of sound or frequency or anything.
I can do anything with anything audible.
And he said, these EVP voices, I upload them and I work with them and I manipulate them.
I can hear them clearly, but I can never find the frequency that they're on.
I can tell you the frequency that any note of music is being played, what frequency that's on, any sound, what frequency that is produced on or whatever, but I cannot find the frequency that these voices are using.
And that's our problem.
And when we discover that frequency, we're going to have real-time two-way communications with the other side, I believe.
But the difficulty is in finding that frequency that the voices use.
There is a project at the moment, isn't there, to try to create a so-called spirit telephone.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think that's kind of on hold right now for funding reasons or whatever.
I read about that several years ago, and somebody was doing just that, trying to create a spirit telephone where you could literally hold a two-way conversation with the other side.
And obviously it hadn't developed yet.
But there are various people at various times experimenting with things.
Edison tried to experiment with a device to contact the dead.
And that's well known in history.
So people at various times do experiment with various things.
And the frustrating thing is for all of our technology and all of our advancement, we still haven't got very far with that.
You know, it's still a frustrating means of communication, EVP.
This conversation is turning out to be different, which is good from the one that got lost.
But one of the things that we talked about in that lost conversation, and I want to bring it out here, weird stuff, as you said at the beginning of this, happens to you all the time.
And I sympathize with that.
There was a strange experience that you had when you moved house.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
When the objects are teleported, we moved here about five, six months ago in the same state, but to a town a couple hours away from where we were at.
And when I was packing up my office, there were things that had to go right then to the new office that I had to have essential for my work.
And then there were some things that were like, okay, these can go in a box in time, but they have to be where I can lay my hands on it, where I can get it when I need it.
And so when we were packing the boxes up, my wife's son, who I call my son, her son and I were working on my office specifically.
And then his fiancé with my wife was working on packing up different parts of the house.
So in my office, I would tell him, I said, okay, this is something that has to be packed this way.
I need these items with this.
And he would ask me about specific things and what is this?
What is this used for?
What do you do with this?
And so on and so forth.
So we were discussing these things as we packed them up.
And I have an excellent memory and great visual acuity because I'm a fine artist and a photographer.
So as I'm packing things, I'm noticing where they're at, what things are in what box with what.
And then these boxes were sealed multiple times with strong strapping tape, not just where the flaps were, but from the bottom and then wrapped around in several places around the box itself so that there's no way they could be open, no way nothing could fall out, no way nothing could be put in.
And then I would write on the box John's office and, you know, basically what items, so on and so forth.
So we did that.
And of course, what my wife was packing up, she packed just as securely.
And when the items got here to our new house and got unloaded into the garage, the boxes in the garage there, which we still have some, we're still going through.
But I was in my office one day and I said, okay, guys, I call my spirit guides and everybody on the other side, kind of my guys.
So I said, okay, guys, here's something that I need to find for my office.
And I know I've packed that.
I know it's here.
So guide me to it to the box in the garage.
I need those items now.
So I went out into the garage and I stood there and I was led over to the stack of boxes, to this box on top.
And I had a strong leading to open that box.
Now the box, and all the boxes were still wrapped shut with strong wrapping tape.
No box has been opened.
And this box was in my wife's handwriting and it said John's old shoes.
And I believe like miscellaneous kitchen or whatever.
And I'm like, guys, why would you guide me to this box?
I need these certain items for my office.
It's not going to be my old shoes and kitchen items.
Why would you guide me over here?
And you could almost hear the laughter on the other side.
And they're like, open the box, open the box.
So I shake my head.
I cut all the tape open, cut all the seals open, open up the box.
And in this box are the items that I had packed and sealed in a different box that I had labeled and sealed.
And now here those items are teleported literally from one seal box into another.
And there are those items.
And I was like, holy cow.
Now this has happened to us several times now, to my wife and myself, where items we know that were packed in one box.
We open that box, they're not there.
And now they're in a different sealed box.
So this has happened several times.
And that's just the guys saying, hey, we want you to know for sure we made the trip with you and we're here.
And think how incredible that is that these spiritual forces can literally teleport items from one sealed box to another.
And this has happened several times now.
I've never heard of that, John.
I've heard about apports where things can appear from nowhere or disappear.
But never quite heard of apports, but, you know, well, things being shifted in boxes that you're moving and you swear you know what was in them and they're sealed carefully and they move to your new location.
And then the contents of those boxes, which presumably you'd written on them, as you said, changes.
Yeah.
I don't know what could have caused that other than going look in one box where you knew the item was packed and it's not in that box.
It's now in this other box and the boxes were both still sealed.
So that's just a demonstration of spiritual power showing that they have that capability.
And that's well like the little, I think we talked before about the story where my sister's little dog died and had the toy buried with it and wrapped in several turns and buried in the ground.
And then that toy came up to the top of the ground.
There's an example of teleportation through solid ground for that to have happened.
So it does occur and it's very, very dramatic when it does.
You bought a haunted doll.
Yeah, we did.
My wife and I were watching TV and there was a story about haunted dolls and we looked at each other and said, oh my God, we have to have a haunted doll.
Let's get a haunted doll.
So we looked on eBay and there's a lot of people that sell haunted objects and haunted dolls on eBay.
Well, I worry about some of those.
I've seen those too.
And, you know, I presume, I mean, how can you prove that something that you list on eBay is actually haunted?
But I know that you say that the one that you bought, and I'll let you tell the story, of course, the one that you bought does have something about it.
Yeah.
So we saw this one doll that the lady said would move by itself and do various things.
We said, okay, we got to have this.
So we bought the doll, got it in, and the doll would occasionally be in a different position or move slightly when it was left alone, those types of things.
But the main thing about the doll was there was a very strong spiritual presence in the doll.
We knew the doll did have a spirit living in it.
And so we would talk to the spirit.
We would talk to the doll and we would play music for it and we would give it little offerings and we'd be like, hey, we're going to light some incense, smell this nice aroma.
And we treated this doll with respect and kindness.
And we had the doll for a long time.
And then one night when I was asleep, I had this lucid dream.
And the doll came to me in the dream and stood and said, You have been so sweet and so kind to me, and I appreciate it so much.
And you've kind of set me free.
I'm going to go now, but I want you to know how much I appreciate your kindness to me and goodbye.
And the doll then vanished, and this pillar of fire goes up in flames.
And so the next day after that dream, I went and checked my emails.
And the woman that sold me the doll wrote me this email and said, are you okay?
And is your house okay?
I had this dream last night that the doll burned up and I wanted to make sure that you were okay, that your house didn't catch on fire or anything.
Is everything all right?
So the doll had also communicated to her in a dream that it was leaving that way in this column of fire burning up in this fire.
And then when I interacted with the doll the next day, sure enough, you could tell it was just a lifeless piece of plastic.
There was no energy there, no spirit there, no nothing there.
The doll, the spirit had left, but it had come to me in the dream to let me know that it was going and had verified that dream to the woman that sold it to me.
I've interviewed at least one person who collects those things.
I don't know why anybody would want to.
Do you believe that the doll has a persona or a spirit of its own from the beginning, its own inherent one?
Or do you believe that it's inherited that from something or somebody else?
I think that both are possibilities.
I think both things can happen.
Isn't that interesting?
It is.
I have felt chilling images of Chucky.
And I tell people, I say, look, you know, things do have an inherent energy or intelligence or power of their own.
It's just like if you'll think back to when you were a kid and maybe you had an old beat-up jalopy and it didn't run all that great, but you were so proud of it and you took good care of it.
And if you noticed, if you paid careful attention, when you scrubbed it and you vacuumed it and you waxed it and polished it to a good shine and you cleaned all the windows really good, it ran better for a few days or a few weeks.
It literally absolutely ran better.
So things do have this acknowledgement of what we do to them and so on and so forth.
So I think some things do have an inherent energy or inherent spirit or whatever.
And then I think some things can attract or some spirits or entities can be attracted to certain items or certain possessions or things.
General, I think you're right.
I owned, and I don't think I've talked about this before.
I'm sorry if I have.
My sister bought a VW bug, a VW Beetle.
Right.
And passed it on to me ultimately.
And I learned to drive on it and pass my driving test in it.
And this car was what they call a marathon beetle.
So it was a beetle that had special wheels.
I think they only ever made 4,000 of this particular kind.
It was a 1972.
It was a classic car.
My sister had good use from it.
Then my dad and I got it and we did some work on it.
I ultimately had it re-sprayed and it came with me at the start of my working adventure.
And, you know, I remember going to work.
I'd only passed my driving test about a week before.
And I went to work in Ireland.
I had to take it onto the car ferry and drive it in Dublin and around Ireland.
And I'd never driven before.
I believed that that car, who we called Taffy, because her registration plate number was TFY, TFY738K as she was.
Let's see, I'm calling her she.
She got me out of scrapes whenever I was alone and scared somewhere going to a new place.
I always felt that there was something.
I know people are going to think I am nuts.
I don't think you're nuts at all.
I believe that everybody, when I talk to people who knew me at the beginning of my career, they say, ah, have you still got Taffy?
Now, I always wanted to own a newer VW Beetle.
And the only place in more recent years, they stopped making them in 2007, I think, or three.
The only place making them was Mexico, right?
So I actually said goodbye to Taffy.
And that was a huge mistake.
I bought a Mexican Beetle.
Do you know something?
That Mexican Beetle drove like a tractor.
It was not Taffy.
Should have kept Taffy.
Oh, do me a favor, Howard.
Do me a favor.
We talked about this last time.
And before we go, before we run out of time, tell the story of the watch and spinning the numbers and then getting that call.
Remember that story you told me?
Tell that because that's phenomenal.
That's fascinating.
This was one of my first experiences with something that I couldn't explain.
And I swear this is true.
I'm 19 or 20.
And of course, I'm wanting to get into radio.
I always wanted to be a broadcaster.
And I've got one of these Casio digital watches, only a cheap one.
And I'm just, you know, I'm a student and I haven't got much to do.
And I'm sitting there listening to music in the afternoon.
And my parents looked after me and a big cup of coffee.
It's cold.
I'm sitting in the front room there in Liverpool.
And I'm spinning the numbers, you know, the timer on this watch, just coming up with random numbers.
And suddenly the numbers stop at 194.
This is a true story.
Two or three seconds later, I get a phone call from 194 Radio City, our local commercial radio station in Liverpool, on the wavelength, as it was then, of 194 meters, which is 1548 kilohertz.
Okay, I know that.
It's in my head.
But in those days, it was 194 Radio City.
And on the phone is somebody I've never spoken to before, a local BBC guy who I'd auditioned for, had passed on my telephone number.
And he'd said, this guy's not one of ours.
He's not a BBC person.
He's commercial.
You might be able to use him.
So I get, two or three seconds after getting the numbers 194, a phone call from 194 Radio City asking if I would like to come in.
And eventually I ended up being their first graduate news trainee.
I walked in off the street at 11 o'clock in the morning, one morning in the summertime, never having read the news anywhere.
And 194 Radio City, one of the biggest radio stations in the country, allowed me to read the news For the first time at 2 p.m. that same day.
And that was the start of my career.
I owe everything to them.
They paid to send me to another university to train to be a journalist, to learn newspaper writing skills and other journalistic skills.
That was 194 Radio City.
That's what they called themselves.
The number was in the name.
How did that happen?
Why did that happen?
I will never understand what that was about.
But I am certain, and I will be until they nail me down in my coffin one day, hopefully a long time from now, that that was just not a random occurrence.
That couldn't have been.
Absolutely.
I love that story.
And that goes to show that the other side will communicate important things to us if we will be open and receptive to that communication and pay attention to that.
And one of the keys to being able to do that, we're so distracted.
We have the TV on.
We have the cell phone constantly going.
We have music constantly going.
We have this.
And we never sit in silence and listen and just be open and receptive to what the other side can bring to us.
And I always tell my clients, I say, look, set aside 10 or 15 minutes.
It doesn't have to be a big production, but set aside at least 10 or 15 minutes every day where you sit down, you turn everything off, and you just become attentive and receptive and you listen and you say, okay, I'm here.
What do you have to show me?
What do I need to know?
What do you have for me?
And if you'll do that, you'll be shocked.
You'll be amazed at how the other side will communicate to you and how they'll help you.
And like with me, I've listened to things, heard things from the other side that have literally saved my life, literally physically saved my life.
So it's worth developing that receptivity to the other side.
And again, we talked about this question of what happens when you die.
Most of us, including me, are scared of dying.
I've watched my mother and my father leave this plane.
Is that a suffering experience?
There are those who say, those mediums and others I've spoken with, who say that ultimately before you go, you're taken out of it all.
So you don't actually suffer at the very end.
What do you think?
I think that you're probably, a lot of people are probably conscious of the pain or the suffering up until the moment of transition.
But the best that I can discern is during that period of time, right before your transition, I think that there is some alleviation there.
And then certainly the process itself of transitioning, while it may be surprising, holy cow, I'm still alive.
I'm out of my body.
I'm here on the other side.
I think is nonetheless a pleasant one that we have that aid and that comfort to get there.
And it's like an old preacher friend of mine, I knew, the only preacher I ever knew that I thought had any sense.
The quote wasn't original with him.
It's been around for a long time.
He always used to say, everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die to get there.
And it's true.
You know, we all believe, well, most of us believe in the afterlife and that life goes on, life continues, but we're not in any hurry to shuffle off the mortal coil to get there.
And I think that's a normal thing, a normal hesitancy, because we do have this sketchy relationship with the other side.
It's not this nailed down, cut and dried, you know, 100% proof.
We do walk a lot by faith and not by sight.
And so that's why it's important that people develop this relationship with the spiritual realm and get something for themselves that they can hang their hats on and say, hey, there is something more than just what I see with my physical eyes.
And I do believe that there will be a continuation when I die.
Why do you think just finally, John Russell, some people, some people that I know have lives of comfort and wealth, and it seems that everything they touch turns to gold.
And other people have terrible experiences, great suffering, and a lot of other people are in the middle where, you know, I've had some lousy, rotten, horrible times, but I've known the heights and the sunshine too.
Why is it going to be like that, do you think?
I have absolutely no clue, and I wish to God that I did.
That is something that me and a lot of other people that study on these things and investigate these things have puzzled over for, and well, it's been puzzled over for as long as the world has been around.
There have been thinking people and philosophical people, and we just don't know.
Why does a gangster live a life of crime and he smokes the best cigars, drinks the best wine, eats the best food, drives the best cars, has all the women he wants, has houses everywhere and lives to a ripe old age.
And another guy keeps his nose clean and works hard and is a decent, upright human being and goes to church and worships and this, that, and the other and lives a life of privation.
And who knows?
You know, that's one of the biggest mysteries that we have.
And I wish I had some clue, some answer for it, but I don't.
Well, I can't give you one either, but I'm still investigating.
John Russell, thank you.
What's your website for my listener to look?
JohnRussell.net.
And there you can get information on getting a reading with me.
The information on both my books is there.
They're available on Amazon, the UK, and other sources online.
So you can find out all the information you want just by going to johnrussell.net.
And are you interested in hearing from my listener?
You know, my listener sometimes wants to take me to task on things that my guests have said.
And I always say, if you have an issue, please take it up with the guest.
Are you happy to hear from people?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tell them to give me an email.
I'll be more than happy to discuss things with them for sure.
John Russell, that's very gracious of you.
Thank you very much.
I've enjoyed it very much.
Talk to you again soon.
Thanks, Howard.
John Russell, another guest returning to the unexplained.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the online home of 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, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
▲
Export Selection