All Episodes
Previous Next
Sept. 26, 2022 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
55:19
Edition 665 - Philip Mantle Part 1

One of the world's most respected UFO researchers - Philip Mantle - returns to The Unexplained. Philip owns and runs the highly successful Flying Disk Press. In Part One of our conversation we discuss some of the UK and Ireland's most astonishing cases of landings and contact - plus there are updates on the Calvine case and Philip's upcoming Pascagoula documentary. Also an update on the Cruise.

| 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.
Hoping that everything is good in your world, wherever you happen to be, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere, whether you're staring down the barrel of a hurricane or whether you're just looking at more rain in London town.
I wish you all the very best.
I know these are tense times in this world, but we're going to get through.
I just have that feeling.
I'm sure we will.
Thanks for your communications.
I see every single email that comes in.
You can always communicate with me by writing to me via theunexplained.tv, my website designed and created by Adam.
And you can follow the link and send me an email from there.
Some news of the cruise before we get to the guest on this edition, a very special edition of The Unexplained with Philip Mantle.
News of the cruise.
Tui Morela have released 25 more booking codes.
If you use the code unexplained on bookings, of course, you get £50 per person off.
So use the code unexplained if and when you book.
Details at theunexplainedlive.com.
That's theunexplainedlive.com.
And of course, those discounts mean for two people, it's £100 off, and you multiply them by £50 every time.
A word about Alan Godfrey.
I did mention that Alan had some health issues.
Unfortunately, he won't be able to join us on the cruise, but we will be announcing another speaker who will be able to take Alan's place, somebody you will know from The Unexplained.
But more details of that when I'm able to give them.
So, theunexplainedlive.com, your place to find out about this magnificent cruise featuring some of the stars of the unexplained.
And I'll be there leading them through it all.
And you'll be able to ask them questions and interact with them up close and personal in a way that you can't do on the TV, certainly, and you can't do on a podcast.
It's theunexplainedlive.com.
That's that.
Philip Mantle is going to be talking about his new collection of UFO stories, UFO Landings UK.
It is an astonishingly researched piece, published, of course, by Philips Flying Disc Press, which is a magnificent operation, and Philip needs to be incredibly proud of himself for what he's achieved with that.
But this collection of stories is amazing, truly.
Most of the stories I hadn't heard before, and there's a lot of detail on stories I did know about that you won't have heard.
So we won't be able to get through all of them here, but we're going to talk through some of them and also talk through a couple of current ufological topics.
Philip Mantle will be talking about UFO Landings UK, his book, and other things coming very soon.
This is a special two-part edition of The Unexplained because we recorded an awful lot of material here that I know you're going to enjoy.
If you're even remotely interested in these things, you will be fascinated.
So make time to hear both parts of this.
But before I do that, Craig emailed recently.
Thank you for this, Craig.
I'm going to read what he said.
I hope you're doing well.
It's been a while since I contacted you.
I've been really enjoying your new at Archive podcasts and have donated when I can.
Thank you for that.
And if you've donated recently, thank you so much.
Please, can you do me a big favor?
Give a shout out at some point to my nephew, Joe, who loves the unexplained and all the subjects covered.
The TV show or the podcast, doesn't matter which.
We're doing it here on the podcast because we have a bit more time here.
He even wrote a story based on the unexplained for his school yearbook.
Joe, that's amazing.
That's excellent.
If you had enough time to read it out on air, he'd be blown away, but even just a mention would make both our days.
Well, I can certainly do that.
And I'd love to see the story if you want to send it to me.
So, Joe, congratulations on finding the unexplained, and thank you so much for enjoying it.
And I hope that you're having a good day.
I'm delighted to know that I think you might well be my youngest listener.
And I'm delighted to know that you're there, Joe.
And thank you, Craig, for getting in touch about Joe.
Okay, I think that's just about everything done that I have to do.
So let's get to the guest on this edition.
Philip Mankell, great friend of the unexplained for many, many years, diligent researcher in ufology and other areas for decades.
40 years or more he's given of his life, as you will hear.
The book is called UFO Landings UK.
I think it is a really creditable collection of stories.
There are many of them, and we'll talk about them.
So this is part one of the conversation with Philip Mantle on UFO Landings UK.
Philip Mantle, thank you very much for coming back on my show.
My pleasure, Howard.
Anytime.
Well, listen, you must be one of the busiest people in the United Kingdom, Philip, because you've got such a prolific output at the moment.
Plus, you're always researching apart from publishing material.
I just don't know how you do it.
Yes, I mean, I'm fortunate in many ways, Howard.
I have a very understanding wife.
And when I started Flying This Press, which is the publishing venture, back in 2015, it was only within a couple of years I got the chance to take early retirement on medical grounds.
So I took that and jumped in with both feet.
It was a steep learning curve, but I'm still learning now.
And I think as long as I do this, I will continue to learn.
And, you know, and it's done far better than I think anyone could have imagined, myself included.
We now have Flying Disc Press in France as well.
So we get some of our publications, our books in French and in Latin America as well.
So some of them have made it into Spanish.
And were it not for the pandemic, we'd done deals with a variety of overseas publishers as well, many of whom are struggling.
So they're either, you know, on hold or have had to be cancelled completely.
But nonetheless, we soldier on regardless.
I think you've done incredibly well, and your output, like I say, is prolific.
And I think I'm right in saying that you're the only publisher of material like this in Europe, I think.
As far as I'm aware, you know, and, you know, there's some that do publish UFO books, but not exclusively.
They're in other subject matter as well.
So you may well be right, Howard.
Well, among other things this time, we're going to talk about your book, UFO Landings UK.
I've got the hardcover here, which you kindly sent me, and I'm so pleased that you've got the hardcover for me because this is going in my little, you know, I don't have a lot of space here, but this is going in my bookshelf, Hall of Fame books.
It's a really, you know, beautiful is an unusual word to use, but this is a beautiful book because it has everything.
We'll talk about it in a little while.
I just wanted to run a couple of things past you before we do that.
You know, the Calvine case has been making all the headlines in the last month or six weeks or so.
I've spoken to various people about this, including David Clark from Sheffield Hallam University, who is the man who was able to find the man who kept one of those UFO photographs.
This was three decades ago.
A bunch of guys, two of them walking in Scotland, saw a craft being apparently pursued or followed by what appeared to be a military jet.
They took photographs.
They took the photographs to a newspaper.
The newspaper handed them to the MOT, the MOD, the MOD kind of disappeared them, although the word is that the MOD gave the newspaper the negatives of these photographs back in the days when we had negatives.
But it's all been murky, and the photographs disappeared, and some people sworn to secrecy, some people not wanting to talk.
It's been a weird case.
What do you make of where we're at with this?
Well, you know, I think first and foremost, David Clark and his colleagues, you know, deserve a big round of applause for their work in this, Howard.
I mean, David's been on the case for over a decade, on and off.
And so it's a real breakthrough.
And it is a fascinating photograph in its own right.
But like all photographic cases, Howard, this one is no different.
You don't just take the photograph on its own.
You take the backstory with it as well, because it's all part of the same story.
And of course, there's been suppositions that what you're seeing is a rock reflected in a lake, or it's a Christmas tree ornament dangled from the tree.
Or indeed a fishing lure.
Or a fishing lure, yeah.
But you have to, that is just looking at the photograph and not taking the backstory into account as well.
Part of that backstory, as told by Dr. David Clark, is the gentleman he spoke to at the MOD in the department called DI-55, Defense Intelligence 55.
They were the department that were responsible on occasion, Howard, that looked into UFO reports for the MOD.
I'm talking maybe a handful a year.
That's it, if that.
And of course, they looked into this.
David actually interviewed the gentleman in question.
He spoke to him at length.
And as you know, as a journalist, David's protected the gentleman's identity because he requested that.
And he tells the backstory of the Calvine and how the Americans became upset with it and so on.
Now, the Americans wouldn't be upset if it was a Christmas tree ornament or a rock in the pond.
They thought the Brits had stole their technology.
So, you know, so when you take the story as a whole, there is something to it.
And we must remember, there will be other prints because the photographer sent the negatives to the Daily Record.
So they'll have taken it somewhere and have the film processed and they'll produce prints of it.
So it's highly likely that the photographer will have his own set of prints.
It also seems by the type of film used and the framing of the photograph that the photographer knows a little bit about photography at the very least, Howard, because he used black and white Ilford film.
Now in 1990, you'd go in any of your, you know, go in boats and buy film.
Black and white film was more expensive.
It was on the bottom shelf.
Hardly anyone used it.
And I know this because I studied photography.
In fact, I have a very minor qualification in photography.
And, you know, you do most of your work in black and white when you're learning.
And the film that you buy used to be, I don't know if we still use it, but Ilford FP4.
But it was something you had to go into the Photoshop and ask for.
Absolutely.
And, you know, I did a bit of amateur photography.
And I used black and white film on certain occasions because I knew the contrast would be better when it was reproduced rather than a colour photograph.
And if you look at the framing of the film, you know, the UFO is smack banging in the center.
However, another gentleman has since stepped forward.
He was on one of the podcasts I listened to, and he was an up-and-coming press photographer, I believe.
And he was sent to deliver something to the Daily Record.
And he was shown the six photographs and the negatives.
They may well have even been copy negatives.
But he says in other shots that the UFO wasn't banging the centre, it was slightly off-centre.
And there were two aircraft in it as well, which all fits with the story, you know, the backstory.
So, you know, they certainly had them.
But we do know, Howard, that certain companies, media companies, when they've digitised things, a lot of the old stuff got thrown in the trash.
You know, the BBC, for example, are famous for taping over old shows, and they disappeared.
I was going to come to that because I've worked for a lot of media organizations that have gone through the digital switch.
Mostly, funnily enough, around that time, I think Capitol Radio did it in 1996.
And we had a lot of tapes that we just junked.
And there's a lot of material that never made it to the digital archive.
Yeah.
So I'm confident we haven't heard the last of this story.
What we also must remember, about the same time as this photograph was taken, 1989, 1990, there was a series of sightings over Belgium of this strange triangular inverted comet.
That's true.
Wasn't one of them a British Midland jet?
Yeah.
Well, the early sightings were seen by the Belgian gendarmerie, which Led the Air Force to take a serious interest in it, and the Air Force actually got it on airborne radar on an F-16 and released it.
You know, they released the film of this radar.
And I asked, I've known Dr. David Clarke for decades.
You know, he's a very skeptical guy, but a great guy.
And I asked David just one question about this whole Calvine thing.
I said, do you think the Calvine incident, as we'll call it, is related to the UFO sightings in Belgium?
And he just said yes.
So I assume he's perhaps pursuing that that way.
But what is also interesting, Howard, in the mid-1980s, there was a string of sightings of a similar nature in a place called Westchester County, which is in upstate New York.
And it was Dr. Alan Hyneck's last investigation.
And there was a whole raft of them.
Then in northern England and down into the Peak District, South Yorkshire and into West Yorkshire, there was a series again of triangle sightings.
And then lo and behold, as they dissipated, the things in Belgium popped up.
So are these three separate incidents or is it one continuous thing?
You know, we'll probably never know, but it is fascinating.
And all at the same time in different places.
Yeah, yeah.
And so I'm sure there'll be more to come.
It would not surprise me that at any moment David and his colleagues will say we found either one or two of the individuals that were involved.
They know their names, they know where they worked.
And there's been a lot of media coverage.
So maybe they've stepped forward and know what it's like to hunt for people or look for people, Howard.
And they turn up in the most unexpected way years later, which I'll tell you about in the Normanton UFO landing case that I looked into.
We had two instances of exactly what I'm talking about, but we'll get to that shortly.
But yeah, it's a fascinating case.
And again, well done to David and all his colleagues.
Right, just a couple of other things, a couple of updates on a couple of other things.
You might have seen the Daily Star, which does a lot of these stories in the UK, and credit to them for actually doing them.
Daily Star reported alien life will be discovered within the next 25 years, according to, quotes, what they call a top space boffin.
Dr. Sasha Kwons, who works at an institute in Switzerland, said technical advances mean the ambitious 25-year timeframe he has set himself for finding life beyond our solar system is not unrealistic.
He's an astrophysicist.
He says there's no guarantee for success, but we're going to learn other things on the way.
He said the James Webb Space Telescope was already providing extraordinary images of gas giant planets outside our solar system.
So he is thinking now and doing something that a lot of people won't do.
He's putting a time scale on it.
Yeah, I mean, he's not the first to do that.
I'm sure he won't be the last.
I would perhaps be a bit closer to home if I were him.
I mean, I was 11 years old when man first landed on the moon.
And of course, at that time, the next mission was Mars.
But that, as we know, has never happened.
Not a manned mission anyway.
And I even met one of the astronauts who was trained, part of his training was part of the Apollo backup, but he was actually trained to go to Mars and it never happened.
But if you go back to the Viking missions that landed on Mars, they were the first to take soil samples and analyze them.
And they first thought that they'd found bacterial life, and then it was denied.
And it's been argued about ever since.
If you then go back to when Bill Clinton was the US president, they'd found a Martian meteorite.
I don't know if it was the North or South Pole, somewhere cold anyway.
And NASA had presented it.
It didn't give it a name.
It had a big long number.
And in it, there was this thing.
I'll call it a thing because I don't know a better word for it.
But they thought it may well have been a micro-fossil, an otherwise fossilized bacteria, i.e.
life on Mars.
And Bill Clinton almost, almost, you know, admitted that.
Now, we also have Sir Fred Hoyle, British astronomer, I believe no longer with us.
He wrote a book many years back called The Intelligent Universe.
And he again, Howard, talked about these micro-fossils.
In other words, bacterial life, at the very least, were discovered in meteorites from here, there and everywhere.
Therefore, bacterial life is in abundance elsewhere in the universe.
Now, whether it develops into anything like you or I or any form of advanced life is another argument.
But I've often thought I'm confident if man, not a space mission, not a robot, if a man with his innate sense of curiosity and wonder walks on the surface of Mars and thinks, oh, what's that over there?
Then we might well find evidence of life on Mars.
We're confident now that there was liquid water on Mars at one point, Howard.
So everywhere we find water on Earth, we find life.
And I don't see why it should be any different anywhere else.
No, listen, I've always said, and I've been, for what my word is worth, very consistent.
I think from everything that science is telling us and everything that our gut is telling us, I think Mars may well be a gift that we'll continue to keep on giving.
And I think the first indication that there's been life elsewhere or there may be life elsewhere is going to be there.
I think you're dead right.
One other thing.
You and I have talked extensively and I've also talked with our mutual friend Calvin Parker about the 1970s, 1973 Pascagoula case.
Calvin, I know, is sadly not in the best of health at the moment.
And I wish him all the best for the treatment that he's having.
You're working on a documentary about Pascagoula.
Yes.
Originally, we meant to start filming three years ago, but the pandemic came and that put page to anything.
So we have got an agreement with a British production company, and they are literally, as we speak, out in the United States, filming now.
In the meantime, it's probably good that there was a delay, Howard, because we have tracked down and contacted so many more new, first-hand eyewitnesses to some of the events in and around Pascagoula.
I'll give you an example.
When I published Calvin's book in 1981, sorry, in 2018, a colleague of mine from Greece, who I'd never heard of before, stepped forward and said, Philip, I went to Pascagoula in 1981.
He was actually in the Greek Merchant Navy, but he was also a UFO researcher.
And the ship he was on docked in Pascagoula.
And he set off to interview Calvin's co-witness, which was Charles Igson.
And he did.
But he was also introduced to a pastor, a clergyman by the name of Emmanuel Seagales.
And Mr. Seagalis said, on the night of October the 11th, 1973, the night of the encounter, him and somebody from the probation office and a young lady, a church volunteer, set off in a car to attend like an Alcoholics Anonymous type event, Howard.
So they said, as we're going down the road past Gagula, the young lady in the back noticed something out of the side window and drew their attention to it.
And he said, they saw this strange thing and it literally went right across the road in front of them.
And they, you know, and my colleague Stephanos Panagy of Takis did an interview with him, provided me with a copy of that.
But the gentleman couldn't remember the lady's name.
Remember the chap sat next to him, he was a chap called Broados.
He's since passed away.
So I set about trying to find this young lady.
And it took me about, I don't know, a year or more.
Eventually found her name.
And she no longer lived in the area, Howard.
Many states away.
And she was still part of a church.
That's how I found her.
And I sent an email to the church, asked them to pass it on.
And to my amazement, she answered.
And we interviewed her.
And she confirmed all the events of that night and what they saw.
And sadly, she's too far away for the film crew to travel and get an interview with her.
But we will have it in the new book we are producing next year.
And she's just sent me a couple of photographs to use in it as well.
So it's a bit like David Clark, although we're not over such a long distance.
He was looking for people and photographs.
We've been looking for individuals and we found many of them that way.
Another example, about three weeks after Calvin's encounter in the same river, there were three small boats out one night fishing and they encountered something out under the water.
It was circular, it was illuminated and they got so close they could hit it with the oar and it went clunk.
So they played cat and mouse with this thing and then they eventually went in person to the Coast Guard station and the Coast Guard sent a boat out, they saw it and they hit it with an oar and it went clunk.
So it was officially reported, we got all the Coast Guard documents about it and then someone said to me, oh, do you know such and such has got a photograph that the Coast Guard took of all those witnesses, all the civilians who were fishing that night.
So I contacted him.
He sent me, it's in colour.
What is also on it?
He turned it over and there's all the names of the people.
My God.
And their ages.
So I put it on social media.
Within a couple of hours, Howard, we had the last survivor of those, I think it's eight or nine fishermen.
And we had the name, the telephone number, and within a couple of days, my colleague, Dr. Iron Scott, had interviewed him, and he's on the record.
And nobody has spoken to him since, you know, since it happened.
And it's fascinating.
I mean, absolutely fascinating.
Isn't it amazing when one connection leads to another like that?
And these days, you know, social media can be a curse.
We know that.
But look at how it helped you.
How did it feel when you made that breakthrough?
Well, this was just, these are just a couple of examples, Howard.
My wife said, I looked like a man on a mission because we were getting them on a regular basis.
I'll give you another example.
Calvin, working with a local journalist, made like an eight-minute mini documentary that was only used online.
Somebody posted it on YouTube.
One of the comments underneath it said, my mum and dad were on the opposite side of the river that night, and they too saw the UFO.
So that caught my attention.
So I found this young lady and I managed to get in contact with her.
She gave me the name and telephone number of her mum and dad.
They were Mr. and Mrs. Blair and they were indeed on the opposite side of the river.
Mr. Blair worked in the fishing industry and was waiting for a boat to come in, which was late and he was not in the best of moods.
Mrs. Blair said, bear in mind, Calvin and Charlie said this UFO gave off an intense blue light.
Mrs. Blair said, I'm looking across the river and there's this blue thing moving around as if it was either looking for something or didn't know where it was going.
And at that point, the boat came in.
So they walked down the pier, her and Mr. Blair, and she said, there's a huge great splash in the river next to me.
And she said, I look down.
These are her words, Howard.
She says, there's a grey man in the water.
Mr. Blair said he saw the grey humanoid, then again, his words, come up out of the water and head back across the river.
There's a lot more to the story to come from that, and that will be in the book and the documentary.
But it'll just give you something of a taster of what else happened.
And who would have thought, Philip, that 47 years, whatever it is beyond the event, 40 odd years beyond the event itself, there would be, in fact, it's 49 years, isn't it, there would be fresh information of this kind.
Not many cases deliver that.
No, no, we were constantly staggered by it, you know, by the amount of people, because now, when Kelvin came forward and told his story for the first time in full, he was treated by and large by respect.
Certainly with the media and social media.
The town of Pascagoula, a charity there, even raised enough money to put a historical marker at the site commemorating it.
And it was officially unveiled by the mayor.
So it encouraged people to step forward as well, Howard.
Not only that, they were coming to an age when in their 60s or 70s where they really couldn't care less anymore, you know.
And I think all but one has even allowed us to use their real names, which, you know, is an example of, you know, here's my story.
Yes, you can use my name.
I don't care what anybody thinks about it.
Because you get to a stage in your life where you don't care anymore.
Yeah.
And we were staggered by it, you know.
And I don't want to sound morbid or anything like that, but one or two people passed away.
So I said, we're only probably going to get one chance to document this.
Therefore, let's do it now.
Let's not think, oh, I'll ring him next month or I'll give it a few weeks.
As soon as someone came in, I made the initial contact or I found someone and my colleague, God bless her, Dr. Scott and was on the phone.
Much better to have an American lady phone you than some strange sounding man from across the Atlantic.
Me.
And it worked well.
And we've worked well together.
I think we've done a good job.
And time will tell when the documentary and the book come out next year.
The 50th anniversary, of course.
Yep, looking forward to it.
Let's get to this book that I'm talking about with you now, UFO Landings UK.
I can tell a lot of love and effort has gone into this.
You kindly sent me the hardcover version.
And I have to say that I'm constantly under pressure, as you know, Philip, to deliver when I do interviews, conversations I like to call them, really.
I'm always under pressure to deliver stories.
This book is about as rammed and crammed with stories.
I don't know how you collated so many as you could possibly get.
Amazing.
Yeah, well, you know, it's just I've been involved a long time.
I would, you know, let myself sound really old, don't I?
But I mean, what it shows, you've given your life, a big chunk of it anyway, to this.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I began when I was 21 and I'm now 64.
And I remember saying this a couple of years back, I thought, oh my God, you know, I've spent two-thirds of my life involved in this subject.
Yeah, you know, it suddenly dawned on me, you know, it finally caught up with me.
But, you know, these cases were in my files and they were getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
And I promised I'd write this book.
And of course, when the pandemic came, that was an ideal time because I couldn't go anywhere.
And, you know, so that's when I did it.
I sat down and wrote the book.
I'd already made a brief start on it, but when I say brief start, it was like the title and a couple of pages, Howard.
You know, it was really brief.
But so, you know, pandemic, you know, allowed me to do it.
Well, you know, I can't keep every single book that I'm sent.
I'm definitely keeping this one because it is, it's excellent.
You know, and I'm not just saying that because I'm talking to you now, you know, in anybody's terms.
And you've got, you've also, the icing on the cake here is that you've also got some very nice comments, some accounts.
Well, I say accounts, some commentary, that's better.
Some commentary from Dr. David Clark, who we mentioned in relation to Calvine, Nick Pope, Bob Tibbets, who works with John Hanson, of course, Malcolm Robinson and many others.
So you've got a section reflecting on the idea of UFO landings in the UK from all of those people.
I think that's nice too.
That's a nice touch, which comes at the end of the book.
Shall we get into the stories then?
Yeah, by all means.
First one I want to look at, and just to tell my listener, we are only going to skim the surface here.
So, you know, if you need to see them all, and I recommend you do, with all of the documentation that's included, all of the photographs and diagrams that are included and sketches, the book is UFO Landings UK.
It's Philips Flying Disc Press.
Hotly, highly recommended.
First case, page 18.
Mr. S, Christmas Day, 1945, west coast of Ireland.
Mr. S, and I quote from the story, within no time at all, the craft was only a few hundred feet away.
He could make out that it was a square shape underneath, while its upper surface was dome-shaped and a silvery colour.
Purple lights could now be seen around the dome section.
He could see that it was obviously no ordinary aircraft, especially as he'd served in the air service during the war.
He became nervous.
His fear worsened as the object, now making a noise like a drill, settled onto the water just offshore.
And then I'm going to skip a bit because there was a being or beings involved in this.
At one point on, the being stopped what it was doing and looked directly at the rocks where the witness was hiding.
It then carried on as before, occasionally looking back at the rocks, and the witnesses gave a huge sigh of relief.
He felt the beings, this is plural here, were aware of his presence, but just kept an eye on his so that he couldn't get too close to them.
He was just glad that they left him alone.
After just a few minutes, the beings got back into the craft that lifted off and sped away into the sky.
Now, this man specifically, this happened in 1945, Christmas Day.
He was interviewed in 2005 by two researchers, and he only wanted to be known as Mr. S. But clearly, it made an impact on him.
What a story from Ireland.
Absolutely.
I mean, the book's called UFO Landings UK, but this is the Republic of Ireland, not in the UK as such, but I thought, well, it's joined to us by landmass.
And I wanted to include that.
And it was interviewed by two Irish researchers, Dermot Butler and Carl Nally.
And I'd read their book, Conspiracy of Silence, and that gave me the information about this.
And I contacted Carl about this.
And it's one of, there's lots of reasons for using this case in the book, Howard, but it's one of, I think, only two cases that I came across in the Republic of Ireland.
They were both via Carl Nalley.
I mean, the UFO took off from the sea and landed in the field.
And the witness, this kind of made me laugh.
He thought he'd confront them, but when he saw the dome opening, he had a change of mind, so he hid behind the rock.
Now, for all the cases that are featured in the book, and it's not definitive, isn't this book, in any way, shape or form.
I go back to the late Dr. Alan Hynek, the man who invented the phrase close encounters.
And he talked about high strangeness.
So in other words, what he means by this, there was several parts to high strangeness.
The more witnesses there were, the closer you got to it, etc., etc.
All these white stages of high strangeness.
Because let's be fair, Howard, if you see a little light in the distance, could be anything.
And the amount of people I see online now saying, oh, there were a string of lights went across, well, that's Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system.
And then, of course, the private sector, again, like Musk, has got into launching space rockets.
And again, the amount of people who see one of his space launches, it leaves this great slash in the sky after it's gone.
It's very spectacular.
But you just get fed up with people thinking, you know, do you not realize what it is after all?
But with things like this, when it's up close and personal, it's difficult to turn around and say, well, it must have been a misidentification.
Exactly.
You can't claim mistaken identity.
It's a great story.
It really is.
I want to steam on with the stories.
Page 21, if we can.
And the principal reason I'm including this is I know exactly where this happened.
This was July 47, Fishpool Hill in Herefordshire.
And I think that's where you're going up towards Hereford and then, of course, on to Ross-on-Wye.
It's a nice story.
It's only a short one.
Frank Hanford and his housekeeper, Mrs. Newman, woken by the barking of their dogs.
Fearing intruders, Frank and Mrs. Newman went to investigate.
Through the window, overlooking their apple orchards, they saw a luminous dome-shaped object descending to the ground.
From it emerged a ladder, down which three beings in silver suits who picked up apples and some turf and then re-entered the craft.
The next day they found a large circle burned in the ground.
You know, those people looking for physical evidence, here it is, scorching on a wicker gate.
The police were called.
They came with military personnel.
We have to say that the SAS are stationed and, you know, always have been in Hereford.
It's a big army area.
They claim that a search with Geiger counters revealed a high level of radiation, warned the witnesses to say nothing about it.
Little short story, I know this area so well.
I think this is great, even though it's only a paragraph.
Well, I say, I mean, I use stories like this as examples of the cases that are around there, but they don't necessarily have a whole lot of investigation that was conducted at the time, simply because there was nobody there to do it.
I mean, we're talking July 1947.
It's only June 1947 that flying sources came into the public domain with the Kenneth Arnold sighting.
So there were no UFO groups, Howard.
There were no UFO investigators.
So who would you report it to?
Well, it's obvious.
It's the police, which is exactly what they did.
I don't know what the police would have made of it.
But even today, Howard, although we've got a shortage of police officers, even today, you can report a UFO sighting to your police and they should.
I don't think a lot of them would, but they should take it seriously and come out and have a word with you.
But as I said, we've got a shortage of police officers.
But it also is an example of the way sightings were reported at the time, Howard, and the depiction of the events therein.
A ladder.
You know, why does a spaceship need a ladder?
Yeah.
They would beam themselves down.
Who knows what?
It might have been some kind of descending mechanism that we just weren't familiar with.
But you have to interpret it in your own terms.
Yeah, exactly.
And silver suits and things like that.
So when you look at the book as a whole, because as you know, it's laid out in decades, you will see from beginning to end how the subject matter slightly evolves with things changing.
Like there's no more ladders at the end, and you don't get so many silver suits and so on.
So even the phenomena is evolving before your very eyes as you go through the book.
Hence, a reason for putting some of these small cases in it.
And some of this, as we say, the interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.
Just on the same page starts a story of Brenda, late 1940s.
It's 1948 or 1949.
I think the year is not totally clear, but it's summer time.
And this woman called Brenda, you've got quite a bit of it here.
You've got an artist's impression and a sketch.
Just a quick quote.
Brenda had no trouble in recalling the details.
We were walking through the field when this aircraft came out of nowhere and stopped nearby.
There were two beings inside, sitting facing one another.
The aircraft was like a boat with a see-through cover.
The two beings were neat and compact, dressed in grey, and had helmets with a kind of crest on top.
They were looking towards us.
Then one of them raised a hand as if he was waving.
Then the aircraft just went.
I mean, that's very matter of fact for, I mean, you've got a lot of detail on this.
It's an amazing story.
It is.
I mean, you know, and again, it's typical of that era.
You know, the type of clothing they wore, and it's waving.
And that's not, you know, typical, but it's not a one-off either.
However, if you go back to the Reverend Father Gill sightings in Papua New Guinea, and he was a missionary out there, no lights at night, it was set out the beautiful panorama of the night sky.
And they said that the UFO hovered there.
This was seen by dozens of people.
And these beings appeared on the outside of it.
So he did the natural thing and he waved and then waved back.
And the Reverend Father Gill went on to talk about this.
And eventually, there's even a little bit of film of him doing it as well.
So this waving thing is, whilst it's not common, it's not just for this case.
And like I said, there's a lot more information about this.
And, you know, she has been interviewed since that time.
So, you know, the story stuck with her throughout the decades, Howard.
Which is interesting in itself.
I want to skip forward, page 35 of the book.
Now, this one is interesting for a couple of reasons to me.
Number one, it's at Broadlands in Hampshire, somewhere else where I worked and I know very well.
This was 1955.
And there's a royal connection here.
And I'll just read from the book.
Because we know that Prince Philip, certainly Timothy Goode mentioned this to me when I interviewed him a few times.
And many others have.
He's got an interest in all of this.
Let's quote from the book.
The late Earl Mountbatten, Prince Philip's uncle, who served as Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia during World War II, also had a deep interest in the UFO topic.
Louis Mountbatten had allegedly seen UFOs up close.
The encounter goes like this.
February 25th, 1955, Frederick Briggs, a retired sergeant from the British Army, was working as a maintenance man at Broadlands, the Hampshire home of Mountbatten.
Briggs was either riding or wheeling his bicycle in the grounds, covered in a light dusting of snow, when he reportedly saw a large craft that looked like a child's top hovering over a field.
He saw a column descend from the middle of the object with what appeared to be a small 5'6 fair-haired humanoid wearing overalls and here we go again, a helmet.
On reaching close ground level, the humanoid noticed Briggs observing his descent.
Briggs was paralyzed by a strange light beam.
The humanoid retreated back into the craft.
As he arrived at the house, Mountbatten's chauffeur noted Briggs looked noticeably shocked.
I mean, there's much more here, including you've got a photocopy of a letter here from the archives of Broadlands and quite a bit of detail here.
That is an astonishing case, but once again, we have the being, humanoid, helmet, and what appears to be some kind of ladder or descent device.
Yeah, and it seems rather apt to talking about this, you know, at the time when our monarch has passed away.
Indeed.
And Prince Philip, you know, passed away not that long ago as well.
What is publicly known, of course, Howard, is the late Prince's interest in the UFO subject.
He subscribed to the Flying Saucer Review for decades, was an avid reader, and he also had his own small, and I'll put inverted commerce library of UFOs.
You know, Timothy Goode, the first time I interviewed him, which was on a radio station called Talk Sport about, what, 18 years ago or so?
He said to me, Howard, don't be nervous, and I can't tell you who, but somebody quite important is going to be listening to us tonight.
I think I knew who that was.
Yeah, absolutely.
And he had a long interest in the subjects.
People have wondered whether it was something himself or was it this landing case that happened on Earl Mount Martin's land that kicked off his interests because it's 1955.
And that kind of coincides not long after him subscribing to things like the Flying Sorcerer Review.
So it could well be that this Frederick Briggs encounter kicked off Prince Philip's lifelong interest in the subject, which is great.
And it shows, if nothing else, that members of the royal family are human like the rest of us, Howard, and have different interests, a lot of which we'll probably never know about.
But, you know, everybody knows about the prince's interest in the subject.
This may well be the encounter that kicks that off.
And it's, again, a fascinating story.
Somebody, you know, of a sceptical nature said that Briggs invented this story so he could get a day off.
He's an afternoon off work, I saw that.
I think that's a lot of effort to go to.
Howard, you know, for many years I worked in a factory and I was the shop steward in the factory and I had to represent my colleagues for a whole host of things.
And, you know, I remember one gentleman saying, I need an eye off.
My grandfather's died.
And someone said, well, that's the third time he's died.
I think you have to be careful.
I mean, look, you've also got a type script of his statement, Frederick S. Briggs.
Yes.
And, you know, you wouldn't, I don't think if you were making this up for whatever reason, I don't think you would go to this kind of detail.
It says here in his statement, as I stood there watching, I felt a curious light come on in one of the portholes, a bluish light.
And we've heard that, you know, that account before, a bluish light.
Although it was Quite bright, it didn't appear to be directed right at me, it didn't dazzle me.
Simultaneously, I suddenly seemed to be pushed over, I fell down in the snow with my bicycle on top of me.
What's more, I couldn't get up again.
You know, there's a lot of detail in there, yeah, and you know, whatever it is, it's a great story.
Yeah, I mean, there was much more simple stories you could invent if you wanted a day off work.
True enough, I think I'm going to, because I knew there are so many stories in this book, you wouldn't believe how many I am skipping, and I'm probably skipping through good ones here to make sure that we kind of fit the time.
You know, being a scouser, I'm always interested in stories from sort of my area.
There's one from Roncorn, Cheshire, page 53.
James Cook, Roncorn, Cheshire, September the 7th.
So it's almost an anniversary, isn't it?
How many?
65 years ago.
Yes, 65 years ago, September 7th, 1957.
So we're recording this on the, you know, I've forgotten what date it is now.
What is 16th today, I think?
16th of September.
So almost the 65th anniversary of this.
You say this encounter is best described as a typical contactee account from the 1950s.
James Cook, Runcorn Cheshire, a close encounter with the occupants of a flying saucer that landed at 2.15 a.m. on Frodsham Hill after receiving telepathic messages at 2 a.m. on September the 7th.
Mr. Cook was interviewed by UFO researcher Thelma Roberts from St. Albans.
He said, I was instructed to jump onto the rail leading into the spacecraft from the ground, not to step onto it or I'd be hurt.
After putting on a tight-fitting suit, I found on board the spacecraft I was directed to descend from the ship into a larger one below, where I was met by 20 people, tall by Earth standards, who didn't speak but made gestures, placing their left hands over their eyes and their right hands over their hearts.
They had no problem reading my mind.
What a story this is.
I mean, this is evolving.
Yeah, I mean, it's what we would call a contactee.
So they receive a message and it instructs them to do something.
Now, some people will have a sighting first and they become a contactee later.
Sometimes it's the other way around, you know.
By this time, of course, we've now got UFO research groups and you see a photograph of a UFO exhibition and Thelma Roberts, the lady who interviewed this gentleman, is featured.
So now you have a reporting and an investigation structure that's set up because this is what, you know, 10 years after Kenneth Arnold.
So, and thankfully, you know, accounts like this were documented.
And again, it's a fantastic, but again, when you talk about, he says that he talks about looking down into a lack of hangar.
I've heard that before as well.
My first book back in 1984 was called Without Consent.
It's all about alien abduction accounts in the UK.
One of the cases in it this is a chap called John and it was at Avery in Essex with his wife and family.
His name was John Day.
It's back in the 70s again, Howard, and it's a long story, a very long one.
But one of the things John and his wife Sue talked about is when they went on board this thing, they looked down into a hangar.
But in their hangar, they could see, this is rather strange, they could see themselves getting into their car because the whole car was allegedly taken up off the road.
So the way the story started is John and his wife and children have been to the in-laws for the evening.
They're driving home to their village, Avery in Essex.
They know what time it is.
John is looking forward to watching something specific on TV.
It's a journey they've made many times.
They enter a green mist.
The radio plays up.
There is a bump.
So they go over a bump.
And John's wife, Sue, is sitting next to him.
She just turns to him.
And out of the blue, she says, is everyone here?
Oh, boy.
And then they drive into the village.
Sue puts the kids to bed.
John puts the TV on and it's gone.
The TV program has finished.
You know, in those days, Howard, it finished at a certain time of night.
John even phoned the local police station to check the time.
So they were several hours late.
They remembered a lot that happened.
And of course, the point where Sue turned to him in the car and said, is everyone here?
is where they were being returned to their vehicle that was supposedly in the UFO hangar, which they themselves could look down on.
So it's almost like an out-of-body vision of themselves getting in the car.
And it's all, you know, I met John Day.
I'm one of the few people to have interviewed him.
He's a fascinating case.
But this thing about a hangar, again, it's not uncommon.
And here you have it reported, you know, decades before John Day's account went on the record.
In fact, you know, almost 20 years before.
But as you say, the phenomenon evolves and changes.
Absolutely.
And with the changes, it's interesting to see that the commonalities, the common features in the stories, you know, seem to harmonise, which, well, if people were making stuff up, and some maybe do, but if people were making stuff up, then there wouldn't be so many commonalities, I don't think, which makes it all the more worth investigating.
Let's get into the 1960s and 70s now, and I'm skipping through probably another dozen great stories here.
There isn't a duff story in this book.
It is excellent.
Page 62.
John Flaxton, Mervyn Hutchinson and two others, Sandling Park in Kent, November the 16th, 1963.
So the Beatles are having their hits.
I think the Prime Minister of this country is either Macmillan or is just about to be Harold Wilson.
Somebody will tell me.
But 63.
Four British teenagers saw a UFO land in a nearby forest, but what would haunt them for the rest of their lives Was the bizarre bat-like beast that apparently came out of it.
Chilly evening, autumn, November 16th, 1963, 17-year-old John Flaxton, 18-year-old Mervyn Hutchinson, two other youthful friends walking home from a party.
This is a region apparently rife with cryptozoological and paranormal activity, when they saw a silent, glowing, orb-like object descending from the heavens.
Later, the four horrified eyewitnesses would explain that an erratic, shambling, quasi-humanoid figure emerged from the woods and waddled, that's the word towards them.
It looked like a headless bat, five foot tall, large web feet and wings protruding from its back.
And there is an artist's impression.
And I have to say that if I saw this, I would not sleep for a month.
Yeah, exactly.
And there's a very famous case that's recently been celebrated in the States.
Again, I think it's about 50 years old.
And it's, you know, the Mothman.
And that was a large winged creature that haunted certain locations in the States.
There's even in the town when it was at Point Pleasant, there's even a huge grape statue of it in the town, and they have a festival every year.
This case, in some quarters, is known as the British Mothman, although it's described as bat-like.
So, you know, like cases around the world get known as the Russian Roswell or the, you know, whatever.
And this is, again, talk about bizarre and high strangeness, Howard, which we mentioned right at the beginning, then you couldn't get much more bizarre than this case.
And four young fellows, terrified out of their wits.
And as we said, the phenomena seems to be evolving.
So we don't have a silver-suited spaceman descending from a ladder with a helmet on.
We have this bizarre creature, like a bat, with webbed feet, no head apparently, but we'll take that on board.
And fascinating and bizarre in equal amounts, it really is.
What I'm saying is if these gentlemen wanted to make something up, there was plenty of evidence already in the literature that they could have got their hands on.
And it would probably, I don't know, not exclusively, it would probably be turned out to be a spaceman or a silver suit or a little green man or a Martian.
But no, it's not.
It's this bizarre figure.
And you won't find many bizarre figures like this anywhere else, Howard, I can assure you.
And that all adds up to the high strangeness so far as I'm concerned.
Well, it does.
And that area is, if it is where I think it is, is noted for weird stuff, not just UFOs and that sort of thing.
Philip Mantle, the book is called UFO Landings UK.
What an interesting guy.
I love talking to Philip.
He is one of the best.
Part two, coming soon here.
So until next, we meet on part two.
My name is Howard Hughes.
This has been part one of the conversation.
And until you play part two, please stay safe.
Please stay calm.
▲
Export Selection