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Sept. 26, 2022 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
52:33
Edition 666 - Philip Mantle Part 2
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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is The Unexplained.
And if I sound remarkably similar to the way that I did in the last podcast, that's because this one is a continuation, as you know, of that one.
It's part two of my conversation with Philip Mantle.
We've already unearthed and unpicked some of the great stories in his book, UFO Landings UK, and talked about a couple of current ufological topics.
He is engrossing to listen to.
I'm sure you agree.
So, here comes part two of my conversation with Philip Mantle about UFO Landings UK.
Just over the page, page 64, Ray Wardle and Ian Jones, RAF Cosford.
You've got a lot of detail on this.
This is December 1963, so it's just a month after all that.
There was a report of a landing of a UFO at RAF Cosford, which is kind of near Wolverhampton, isn't it?
It's on the sort of Shropshire border area, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that area, I think, has also been noted for something else that appeared over it much, much later than that, which we've talked about before.
Let's just, I'm skipping through a lot of detail here.
1997, UFO researcher, our friend Nick Redfern, got a phone call from Graham Birds, the editor and publisher of UFO magazine, who told him he'd been contacted by a man called Ray Wardle.
He was one of the eyewitnesses to the events at RAF Cosford in 63.
It's a strange, strange story.
During further conversation, Ray told Nick Redfern he estimated the size of the object being 20 feet across, 30 feet high.
He and his companion were probably 100 yards away.
Although Ray wanted to investigate further, Ian ran away.
Ray deliberated what to do, caught up with Ian between two hangars where they discussed what they should do about the sighting and after some conversation decided to report it.
Ray said, what bothered me was that they refused to come back with us.
Nobody would go to the spot that we were telling them about.
And yet, I think officials denied that anything had happened after that.
Yeah, I mean, I think if I was an official and I was in charge of such a military installation, I would deny it as well, you know, for obvious reasons.
But again, you know, another fascinating case, we have a photograph of Mr. Wardle and it had been investigated by several people down the years, you know, and being documented accordingly.
And what we will know is that, you know, he's not the only military officer, sorry, military personnel in the book to report this type of thing.
We've skipped past one.
We had one from actually during the First World War.
A gentleman called John Warren, who in May 1943 in RF Ludham in Norwich, saw a strange creature just outside the base one night.
John was late coming back from a dance and he had to walk home or walk back to base and he was worried about getting into trouble when he saw this thing.
I had the honour of speaking to Mr. Warren in person many years ago.
And you've got a sketch of it too.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so again, it's not unprecedented that there are military witnesses to these events as well.
And of course, if we think about the congressional hearings that were conducted in Washington recently about UFOs and the Department of Defense setting up their own investigative body again, the sightings they're only going to look into, Howard, are from military personnel.
Now, I wondered if they would look into something similar as reported by Ray Wardle as a military man.
I wonder if they'd look into that type of case if it was reported to them now.
I don't know.
It would be interesting, would it not?
I think it would test their new organization, I think, to the limits.
I think it probably would.
And let's move forward now because we've got a lot of stories and not enough time.
I love stories that involve showbiz, and there are many of them.
Page 85, The Moody Blues, whose music I love.
They had lots of hits and lots of great albums in particular.
Wasn't it In Search of the Lost Chord was one of them?
I know that the great Art Bell was a big fan of the Moody Blues, used to use Ride My Seesaw as one of his tunes, bumper music tunes.
Moody Blues, ASICs, England, autumn 1967.
This is page 85.
The Moody Blues, English rock band, formed in Birmingham in 1964.
Mike Pinder, Denny Lane was in that, of course, went on to work with Paul McCartney and Wings.
They made some changes in musicians, settled on a lineup of Pinder, Thomas Edge guitarist Justin Haywood and John Lodge, of course, who worked together separately in the 70s.
But they had a sighting, and there's actually quite an interesting sketch that you've got.
Something that's bright red and blue and pulsing.
The road crew, you say, as usual, had taken the equipment at a truck.
The band members were following along in a car.
Apart from myself in the car, there was Denny Lane, Mike Pender, Ray Thomas, and Clint Warwick.
Around 1.30 to 2 a.m., we were driving on the A6 when a bright light appeared and flashed past us.
Everybody became highly excited as to what the light might be, with the usual jokes about UFOs.
Personally, I was convinced it was probably an aircraft warning light on top of a radio mast, apparently moving because of the motion of the car.
However, the light returned from the opposite direction, and I suggested stopping the car for a proper look.
As the car stopped, we all saw the light again on the left-hand side of us.
It went backwards and forwards and then actually over the car before settling in a field near the road, but on the opposite side of the dual carriageway.
As we scrambled out of the car, part scared, part fascinated, as you would be, we all noted the odd stillness around us.
No other cars were on the road in either direction, and there was none of the usual nocturnal animal noise either.
We could see the object in the opposite field shaped like a fat cigar with a low protrusion on the top, a number of dull red Lights on it, the upper half of the object appeared metallic, whereas the lower half was red and pulsed from left to right.
Even the moody balloons, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
I mean, again, yes, they're famous rock musicians, but they are human like the rest of us, Howard.
You know, if you publish a story like this now, you get the usual thing, you know, what were they taking?
What were they on?
You know, it makes you want to yawn.
It really does.
But that account I've just read was a very sober account.
It didn't read like somebody who was, you know, off his head on whatever.
Not at all.
I mean, one of my favourite books, when it's not a UFO book, is biographies or autobiographies.
Read several biographies of certain pot groups or pot stars, how they've become famous.
And I've read about some of the wild things they got up to.
And at no time did they ever say we took this substance and we saw aliens on a flying saucer.
A lot of other things, but not that.
But again, it's one of those accounts that I think there's more to it, actually.
I got in touch with the Moody Blues fan club and just asked them if they could confirm this.
Were they aware of it?
Because it had appeared in the Flying Saucer Review many years ago.
And they just said, yeah, you know, they didn't tell me any more detail.
They had no more than I had.
But they confirmed it was, you know, it wasn't the first time that they'd received an inquiry about it.
And I said, as far as they were concerned, it was the genuine thing.
You know, it wasn't made up, wasn't a publicity stunt and so on.
So there you go.
Boy, I'm having to skip more stories here, and they're all good ones, which is a pain.
But let's get into the 1970s.
And again, the sorts of things that are reported change.
This is December the 8th, 1971, page 100.
The following case, Mr. Sidney W. at Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
Following case, originally investigated by Andy Collins and Barry King of the UFO Investigators Network.
The incident wasn't reported until 1978 after a feature in the Daily Express.
The witness's real name is on file.
The encounter happened in December 1971 near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
We're talking about a being here.
Looks like something from a 1960s sci-fi program wearing a very tight-fitting suit and some kind of cap by the looks of it.
The entity was a lot taller than Sidney, approximately seven feet tall.
It had very broad shoulders, a large chest, large arms, although in proportion to the body, and oddly enough, spindly thin legs and small feet.
He was wearing a shiny silver one-piece tight-fitting suit made of what looked like a thin metal.
The suit covered the entire body, including his feet, excluding his hands, covering the side and back of his cranium in what he described as a balaclava.
I mean, this is something rather different.
Yeah, absolutely.
What we don't realize, first off, this is 1971.
For whatever reason, Howard, the 1970s here in the UK was the decade for this type of encounter.
Really, really lots of high strangeness encounters throughout the 1970s.
The investigator, Andy Collins, is still around today, although Andy's not necessarily involved in UFO research.
He's more into ancient mysteries, you know, ancient archaeology, that type of thing.
But he's still around.
And this was one of the cases he looked into.
Andy and his partner Barry King and others looked into a lot of strange cases in the 1970s.
They were very active.
This is just one of them.
And again, we've sort of moved back in time as far as the entity is concerned.
This is the kind of thing out of the 1950s.
This would be called retro now, you know, because we looked at the previous case and it was the, you know, the Batwind thing, the Mothman.
And so now we've sort of gone back in time again to look at things that were predominantly reported in the 1950s.
But this figure looks unusual and the only thing I can liken the sketch to is Buzz Lightyear.
Yes, it does, actually, yes.
I never thought of that until you mentioned it, Howard.
My kids had grown up at the time Buzz Lightyear came around, so I'm not seeing a lot of that.
But yes, and it is bizarre.
And again, you know, when I looked at these cases, the stranger they were, the more high strangeness they had, then the more likely they were to end up in the book.
And this is just one example.
There are a number of Welsh cases in the 1970s.
One at a place called Machuncleth, which is one of my favourite places because I just enjoy being able to say it, having watched Welsh television in my formative years in Liverpool.
I think we can just touch on this.
You were quite a bit of detail.
Page 119, 118.
Trevor P., Cambrian Mountains, Machuncleth.
There's that word again.
July 22nd, 1975.
The center of the base inside the dome was a big metal unit, 15 feet long, huge, 7 feet tall.
They consisted from left to right of a vertical side, eventually sloping away towards the right at a 45-degree angle, then leveled out into a horizontal top that stepped down twice in an irregular pattern.
As stared at, it appeared to be made of metal, being silver in colour.
No marks, switches or knobs could be observed on the unit at all.
Now, we have to say that this area, which is kind of mid-Wales, that's an area where I think the RAF do a lot of flying training.
Yeah, they do.
I've also seen I've also been on the top of Mount Snowden and seen the RAF come with him past as well many years ago but what he's I think I'm sorry, because I'm half Welsh myself.
Well, a lot of my friends in Liverpool used to call it Mackey Lineth.
But I was a bit of a Welsh television anorak as a kid, so I learned how to pronounce all sorts of Welsh names that way.
So I know this place.
And it's also a very lonely and lovely part of mid-Wales.
Yeah, my father was from Wales.
But what really got me as well about this case is that there were court entities inside it and they were described as looking like massive pieces of jelly, irregular in shape and some seven feet across and of a similar height.
I mean, Trevor, the witness to this, just, when he saw the dome opening, just scalp it.
He actually ran down to the beach.
He'd gone to the beach with his father.
His father was there and he went, dad, dad, you know, there's a flying sauce and shot off again.
And his father thought, what's he talking about?
And he could look up and he could see Trevor bobbing behind this rock.
Again, he was hiding.
And I've searched the UFO literature, Howard, for something that is similar to massive pieces of jelly like this.
And I can't find it anywhere.
It is very, very bizarre.
You know, I spoke to a colleague who was very sceptical about these kind of cases.
But the one that he mentioned straight away was McAlent.
He mentioned it straight away.
So he was certainly aware of it.
And it is, again, a fascinating case and very bizarre.
Very strange indeed.
Very, very bizarre.
And if you want to see how bizarre, because I don't think my words can describe it, Trevor's citing, there's a sketch of it on page 120.
And it is most, especially these jelly-like beans, most unusual.
I'm going to skip forward because of time, but page 130.
I talked about this on here before with Gavin Davis, I think it was, who was talking about this.
This was essentially, and there were a couple of these things, a bunch of school children in Dovid, sort of West Wales, who all saw the same thing, that kind of had, not precisely and exactly, but it sounded to me like a kind of mini version of the Ariel School Case, you know, from Zimbabwe.
Yeah, absolutely, Howard.
I mean, you know, it took place, when was it?
1977, I believe.
And, you know, I think there was something like 14 children involved.
This is page 125.
Mid-70s to this day remains somewhat low-key.
That's true.
It's not one that's much talked about.
Despite it being, you say, one of the few UFO cases that was investigated by the MOD.
Yeah, the MOD were curious because it made its way into the newspapers.
And you will find what I've done in the book is that our original drawings and handwritten notes made by the children.
I think six of the children also reported seeing humanoids.
But these drawings were, you know, made their way eventually to the MOD archives.
And my colleague John Hansen has copies of them.
That's where I got them from.
But they can be found within the MOD.
And it is known even today, like I mentioned, Howard, that even today, certain parts of the MOD will look into a few UFO cases.
And again, I'm talking a handful per year.
And this was one example.
And of course, you know, there was UFO groups around, I think, a chap by the name of Randall James Pugh.
He crops up from time to time.
He was one of the main investigators from Pew Forrest, the British UFO Research Association.
And, you know, there's pictures with all the children, you know, with all their own drawings.
And like you say, it predates the Rua Zimbabwe case by a couple of decades.
And the thing they said that John Mack and others said about the aerial school case is that children of this age telling the same story are very unlikely to be making it up.
They wouldn't tell the same story in the same kind of detail.
And they're too young, really, for fabrification and extemporization.
You quote page 128, Jeremy, age 9, I saw the UFO when it was dinner time.
It was silvery green.
It had a yellowy-orange to red color light.
It was a disc at the bottom and a sort of dome on the top.
Here we go again with a light on the top.
It was about 300 yards away.
It moved a minute, then disappeared.
It did have a noise, but I didn't hear it.
We felt very scared.
David George wanted somebody to go to the toilet with him.
Tudor Jones was nearly crying because he was scared he was going to be disintegrated or something.
So we all rushed in.
Some of our school didn't believe us.
And you say at the end of this, these children have now grown up.
Many of them have kids themselves, interviewed down the years.
All of the children stuck to their stories and are not convinced that what they saw was a misidentification of a local council sewage wagon as had been claimed.
I mean, yeah, I risk my case.
I really do.
From the mouths of children, I think that's astonishing.
Now, we're going to have to skip forward, I think, probably into the 80s now.
Let's have a look where we can go now.
I mean, there are loads of stories that I'm having to miss here.
Page 177.
I was a big fan of, as you might have been too, of hot chocolate.
Oh, yes.
Errol Brown.
Errol Brown, I once looked out of my window where I live, and I saw a four-wheel drive, I think it was a Range Rover, reversing in the little service road outside the flat, not far from the flat.
And I looked at the person driving it, and it was Errol Brown.
So I've met from Hot Chocolate.
I've never forgotten that.
They had a song called No Doubt About It, which is a sort of emblematic UFO type song.
It's about contact.
You tell the story of No Doubt About It and that hot chocolate song.
Now, the actual encounter was not about them.
They didn't have the encounter.
No, I mean, it was their best-selling single of all time.
And when you see the video they made of it, you know, Errol Brown's dressed in a silver suit and they talk about a flying saucer landing.
And apparently when they did media about it, you know, back in 1980, Errol would just say, yeah, we saw it.
And that's it.
He wouldn't comment any further.
And it sold zillions around the world.
However, you know, I thought, like many pop songs, it's just made up, you know, but it's not.
The sighting itself is by the two people who wrote the song, and that's called Steve Glenn and Mike Burns.
And they were on their way to the studio one night with another pop group behind them in a van.
It wasn't hot chocolate at all, when they saw this thing land.
They pulled over to the side of the road, they got out, and this thing was shooting like small discs out of them.
I mean, they hid behind some bushes at one point, Howard.
And the other band was called The Toys.
Steve Glenn himself was also a performer.
He had his own songs out.
I think he even went to number one in Japan at one point.
And he wrote songs for a lot of the 70s pop stars, you know, Cliff Richard, etc.
And I managed to get hold of Steve and interview him on the telephone.
He's still alive, lived down London.
And he says, you know, the UFO was above the two vehicles.
And they noticed there was a telephone box.
They actually phoned the police.
Did they?
And we have to say this was North London, wasn't it?
Hendon Way.
Yeah.
Hendon Way in North London, which is kind of north of Brent Cross shopping centre.
Yeah, it was a busy area, so you're not in the middle of nowhere.
And they reported it, and the police did come out.
Now, Steve said they went home that night, and he said it was the fastest song he ever wrote.
10 minutes flat.
Don Dustin.
You know, and inspired.
Yeah, well, the last time I spoke to him, I don't think this will come off because it was pre-COVID.
He said, wouldn't it be great to write a musical all about UFOs?
And we'll use the songs from hot chocolate.
So you never know.
But the account says here from him says it was massive, four or five houses wide.
And when we got out to have a look, it created an orange cloud.
I mean, that's just astonishing, isn't it?
Yeah, and he said he's not got any...
You know, was busy writing another musical about something entirely different.
And, you know, it's a great account.
And we have the song to go with it.
You know, what more do you want, Howard?
I love that song.
I used to play it on the radio in my formative days as a broadcaster.
And one of the daddies of them all, same year, 1980, we have to say this is also the year of Rendlesham Forest.
It was a big year.
Normanton, West Yorkshire.
This is a very detailed story.
This one is another one that has kept on delivering information to you.
And I know that you have a particular interest in this.
This is Normanton, West Yorkshire, summer 1980.
And the observers, you say in the book page 181, all observed a silvery-coloured object disc-shaped with a rim around the perimeter, low-level, was seen just above the electric pylons.
It stopped in mid-air, 100 feet up, hovered for a few seconds before landing in a field.
I mean, this is, there's a lot of detail here.
You've got to read the book.
But the object wasn't very big, perhaps as long as it's a large Volvo car.
The men around the object, quotes, seemed to be very tall, and the object in their hand looked like a torch.
And that's just part of this account.
Yeah, I mean, I live just literally a few miles from that location, Normanton.
And what is interesting was Mrs. Westerman, some of her children, and her children's friend, who all witnessed this broad daylight, beautiful sunny day.
The children actually saw it descend.
And they run in the house, said, Mom, mum, you know, the airplane crashed in the field.
When she came out and looked, see, it wasn't an airplane.
The location is still there.
What is interesting, Howard, myself and my colleague Mark Birdsell interviewed all of other witnesses way back when, in the early 80s.
And then down the years, I tried to find the children.
I thought they'll have grown up now.
I'm trying to find them.
Anyway, I had no one.
But a couple of years back, I did a broadcast or a podcast somewhere.
And a lady from New Zealand contacted me and she said, I heard you're on the podcast, but you didn't mention who the people were.
What were their name in the Normanton case?
I said, oh, sorry.
It was Mrs. Westerman.
She says, my best friend, Westerman, I used to live in Normanton.
I'll contact her.
And lo and behold, her best friend was one of those children.
She'd now changed the name, got married herself.
I contacted her.
She gave me a quote.
Then literally, about three months back, out of the blue, a gentleman contacted me.
He said, my partner was one of the children witnesses to the events you've been talking about at Normanton.
So I got in touch with him.
I spoke to his partner and she was one of the children, Mrs. Westerman's children's friend.
Again, told me the whole account and added a few more details.
One thing that we should be aware of, Howard, this lady said, oh, and two scientists appeared sometimes later.
Well, no, they didn't.
The two scientists were me and Mark Birdsell.
No scientists turned up.
But you see how that could go into UFO law, that two scientists turned up.
It wasn't.
Now, like I said, so we got two of the witnesses now re-emerge as adults and confirmed the story.
Just yesterday, quite literally, Howard, my wife and I were driving into Wakefield and there's a signpost for Normanton.
I said, just turn down here and go left at the bottom.
And there is the location.
It's not changed.
There's been more houses built.
The small, because they lived on a cul-de-sac, and the UFO landing in a field at the bottom of the cul-de-sac.
It's a bit overgrown now.
There were some trees there at the time.
They've got much bigger, of course, Howard.
But there's electricity pylons there.
hasn't really changed apart from you know nature taking its course um but a fascinating what And it confirmed for me that the phenomenon Was real.
Mrs. Westerman's husband, for example, worked in the local colliery.
They're all gone.
But my father worked all his life down the mine.
So this was the same type of household that I was brought up in.
The children playing outside were playing a made-up game, made-up ball game.
And it's the same kind of game we used to play when we were kids.
I think it might even be, you know, just played in Yorkshire.
I don't know.
But it's one that's made up.
You put three clothespegs up against the curb and then you try and knock them down with a tennis ball.
And then one team has to put them up before you.
It's a long story.
But the point is I think I played this one.
No photographs were allowed to be taken.
And certainly no publicity.
And she was stunned.
She thought it would be on the TV that night when she saw this.
But it wasn't.
She thought it would be in the local newspaper.
Not a thing.
She even asked some of her neighbours about it.
And it was a beautiful sunny day.
The M62 motorway goes right past here, Howard, with tens of thousands of cars.
Not anything.
You know, not anything.
So how strange.
I mean, sometimes we've had accounts we know where only selected people have actually seen whatever they've seen.
Well, that's one of the things about this.
I'm only, you know, guessing here.
I don't know.
It's almost that you had to be there at that time, at that location, to see this.
And if you weren't, if you were anywhere else, you wouldn't see it.
But I don't know.
I'm only guessing.
It is very bizarre.
Well, it is bizarre because it is so close, as you say, to the M62 where you've got traffic from Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, going off towards Hull.
And that's 24-7, 365.
Yes, yes.
And they were very down to us.
So you're left with two things.
You've either believed them or they're liars.
And I could find no reason why they would lie and then why they would lie again all these decades later, Howard.
So for me, that started my interest in UFO landing cases, which the end result has been this book.
So there you go.
One more case, and we have to say the cases spanned in this amazing book, which I think runs for close on 300 pages or thereabouts, packed pages.
This is the hardback version that I've got.
We'll stop at one in 1994 because it's bizarre.
The picture, the sketch illustration of this, looks like one of those...
It looks like there was an artist in the United Kingdom, for my listeners, in America, called L.S. Lowry, who was very famous.
He was from Lancashire, for drawing what they called matchstick figures.
Matchstick, everything was sort of very angular, and the people were matchsticks, and it was a unique way of doing this.
Now, this is in Ermston.
Robert Shaw, Ermston, Manchester.
Christmas Day, 1994.
Robert Shaw claimed to have seen a UFO outside his Ermston home.
He decided to head out to Manchester city centre, ordered a taxi for 10 p.m.
9.40 p.m.
He looked out of the window, noticed an aircraft at what he considered to be a high altitude.
He watched in horror as it started to plummet to the ground, breathlessly waited for the impact.
It never happened.
It was now that he realized the craft was nothing like anything he'd seen before.
Column-shaped.
There isn't another one like this, I don't think, in the book.
Five red lights in a sideways formation, which, although they were shining brightly, didn't illuminate the surrounding area.
The craft descended into the clearing.
Shaw noticed there didn't appear to be any sound from the object.
Eager for a closer look, he headed outside towards the clearing.
He'd not travel far when he claims he was overtaken by an innate kind of fear.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
His mind was awash with negative thoughts.
I mean, to cut a long story very short, unfairly, really, is what he saw, says he saw, is astonishing, this large column thing and these spindly beings around it.
And look, we have to say he was on his way out to a night out.
He wasn't at the back end of a night out.
Yeah, and it's interesting when he mentions there's no noise.
And if we go back to the Moody Blues sighting, similar like that, when they got out of the car, there was no noise, no sound of the natural environment.
It's a thing being called the Oz factor.
It was termed by Jenny Randalls.
It's almost, you know, you have these otherworldly encounters.
And again, this was investigated by a local organization whom I know.
Part of it is Steve Murray.
Steve is still very active in UFO paranormal research today.
And it left a mark on the ground.
There's a diagram of that.
And Mr. Shaw was one of those, in a minority really, however, that also went under hypnotic regression and revealed more details.
That was more commonly used in the United States than it was here.
But like you said, this column that descended, again, you won't find it anywhere else in this book.
And I think it'd be hard pressed to find it anywhere else in the UFO.
I mean, it looks like a dark-coloured small apartment block.
Yes.
Yeah, it looks like something that you might find in a biblical tale or, you know, something of that nature.
It looks out of time.
It's not in keeping, in tune with the kind of reports that we were seeing in the 1990s and the 2000s.
And what about the creatures?
I mean, the sketch looks like the archetypal pictures that we have of grey aliens.
Well, there you go.
As we said, as we move through the book, we're now in the 1990s, Howard, and you can see how things have evolved.
We've gone from the silver-suited entities on their ladders and batwings and other strange creatures now in the 90s, which was really the era for alien abductions that came to a pinnacle, usually with the work of the late Bud Hopkins and the late Dr. John Mack.
They were the pioneers, really.
And so, what we know as the alien grey, the small grey alien, four and a half feet tall with the big black eyes, of course, it was popularized by the image on Wheatley Streebers' best-selling book, Communion.
You know, and so the phenomenon has evolved, much as I said, you will see going through the book.
Once again, Philip, this is an urbanized area.
You know, I know, I'm a northwesterner, Liverpool, but I, you know, I know Manchester.
You know, this is Ermston.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the sceptics, one of the reasons we wrote the first book, Howard, going back to 1994, about alien encounters, the sceptics would have you believe that these things only happen in the deserts of New Mexico or, you know, middle of nowhere.
Well, there's examples throughout this book where it's totally the opposite.
It's in an urban area, it's a built-up area, it's on a motorway, you know, and make of it what you will.
Like I say, the book's not definitive, but these cases come from, people say, is there any commonalities in the book, Philip?
And you have to say, no, there's no one location that's more prominent than others.
Same with the age or the background.
It's just as if you have to be in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time.
Just depends on how you look at these things.
But again, you know, make of it what you will, however, but a fascinating case nonetheless.
And I haven't really scratched the surface of this remarkable book that is a great testament to your life's work, Philip.
Look, I've just made an executive decision here because we've done so much.
I think we've done an hour and a half or thereabouts so far.
I want to do a little bit more, if that's okay, another few minutes, and I will make this into a two-part podcast, I think.
So this is going to be in two parts.
Executive decision just taken.
We're talking with Philip Mantle about UFO landings UK.
This is essentially a lifetime's worth of archival research.
Now, something that I didn't include and should have was something that you posted on social media, I think, yesterday.
One of the stories that particularly impressed you was from the Isle of Wight, which isn't a place that we've had a lot of reports about.
So I'll leave it to you, but talk to me about the case.
I think it was a 1970s case, maybe 1970 itself, from the Isle of Wight.
Yeah, it is probably the most bizarre case in the book.
And when I was writing the book, I contemplated whether I should include it or not.
And I thought, well, no, I have to.
It is so strange.
You know, it is everything that we're talking about.
And what is interesting, the case was investigated by a gentleman called Norman Oliver for Bufora.
Sadly, Norman passed away just a couple of months back, I believe.
And I'd contacted Norman some time ago, but he was ill and didn't want to be bothered.
So I respectfully moved away because I was looking to see if he still had the case file.
Now, when Norman passed away, his files were recently collected and were sent to what's known as the Archives for UFO Research.
They're in Sweden and they have the biggest archives of UFO material you've ever seen, Howard.
I'm talking building after building after building full of stuff.
And they've been over on a mission and they'd collected a whole host of stuff.
And one of the things they did, they took a few photos and they posted it.
There was a pile of files and what was right on top of it was this event from the Isle of Wight of 1970.
So I'm in the process of gaining the original case files.
But it involved two children, you know, out on the Isle of Wight.
Gonna cut a story very short.
But they heard this strange noise.
And it was almost like the Piper of Hamlin.
They felt compelled to go and see what this is.
So they, you know, they trekked across the golf course.
This was an era howard when children were allowed to play outside.
You weren't frightened of it.
Much like you and I, I dare say.
Well, you know, I shudder when I think of some of the things we were allowed to do when I was a kid.
You know, staying out into darkness and going on the beach in Liverpool and staying kids, you know, for understandable reasons, it's a less safe world, but it wasn't like that in our day.
Yeah, so they began to move across.
One of the things, one of the reasons I haven't got the case file yet is because the witnesses' details are on it.
And they are still around these children.
So the archives for UFO research are trying to contact them.
And if they object, they'll just redact their names.
I'm no big deal.
But it was 1973.
I think I put 1970 online, but it was 1973.
And it was a place called Lake Common, Sandown, and on the Isle of Wight.
So they followed this sound and they came across the most bizarre humanoid you've ever seen.
It was later, many years later, it was published in the Bufora Journal.
And they've called it a ghost or a spaceman.
So it is this humanoid.
I don't know about you, Howard, but one of the things I bought my grandchildren was a little kit where you could make pictures out of pieces of felt.
And they just stick on it.
This, to me, looks like one of those felt creatures that you would make.
It is...
It's got antenna or horns coming out of its head.
Its face is almost clown-like.
And it speaks through a microphone.
It's almost like a mini karaoke machine.
And it converses with the children and it takes them to where it lives.
And we all talk about stranger danger, but they went with it.
And it's a hut.
It was a hut.
And it kind of reminds me, again, going back in the old days, sometimes you would see the, you know, digging up the road for some reason or other, and they would put a little tin up over it and leave their tools there or whatever.
It's almost like that.
And it is extremely bizarre.
That's why I'm desperate.
I'm bugging the AFU to send me the full case file.
And I'm looking for their permission just to publish it as it is.
You know, just the file on its own with no comments from anybody.
I tell you what you could do, because, look, I've worked all over the UK.
One of the places I worked was at a radio station called Ocean FM, which was also operating a station called Power FM.
They covered the Isle of Wight and Hampshire, parts of Dorset and parts of Sussex as well.
But one of the things you could do is approach Isle of Wight Radio and see if they could put out an appeal for you because everybody listens to Isle of White Radio.
Oh, no, I don't have to do that.
I mean, a colleague of mine knows one of the witnesses, the children.
Right.
And they're still around.
I don't know about the others.
Was it reported on?
Did it get into, I think, is it the Isle of White County Press or Isle of White Free Press, one of them.
Did it get into the papers?
I've not seen any newspaper accounts, but that doesn't mean anything.
It may well have done.
And it crops up in the UFO literature every now and again.
But, you know, the children talked to this thing for about half an hour or more.
And then, you know, said goodbye.
And they told their parents about it.
Shades, again, of the aerial school thing, but did whatever it was have a message for them of any kind?
Not really, no.
You kind of...
It had a blue-green pattern.
So there's something.
It had an electric heater and wooden furniture.
And was there anything that made them think that this wasn't a person in a suit?
No, no, not at all, because they talked to it via a microphone of some description.
That's very, very, very bizarre.
I'm sure somebody must be aware of more details of this.
I mean, this is...
It is.
Like I said, I wrote it out and left it to one side for a while and thought, should I put it in?
It's got to go in.
And it is probably the most bizarre case.
There's cases with more detail in the book, Howard, with more witnesses.
And, you know, this creature said, hello, I am all colours.
What does that mean?
I have no idea.
You know, make of it what you will.
Like all the cases, Howard, I don't say this is true.
You've got to believe this.
I leave the reader to draw their own conclusions.
You know, as simple as that.
I mean, look, I didn't count the number of cases in the book.
And we've only skimmed over them here.
How many are there, roughly?
You might not believe me, Howard, but I've not counted them either.
It must be more.
It's easily more than 100, though.
It'll be around that mark.
And, you know, they are ongoing.
Since the book come out, you know, colleagues have contacted me and said, oh, Philip, are you aware of this case?
I'll tell you one that if I revise this book or I do a follow-up, just last year, the book was already published.
A local gentleman contacted me and he said, I saw you on the TV.
Can I come and have a chat?
I've got something I want to show you.
Yeah.
So he came round.
I think it was about his wife's grandfather.
Now, they weren't from this area.
They were from up near Manchester.
And his father, sorry, his wife's grandfather was a mining engineer.
So he designed the lift shafts and all this kind of stuff.
And he said, when he died, he wrote his memoirs, which thankfully are not some use-rate tomorrow.
They're only, you know, a small little booklet, really.
And he handed wrote it, printed 10 copies out just for the family.
So he said, when you read it, he said the first half is about his life as a mining engineer.
This is dreadfully boring.
You know, it really is.
But he said the second half is about him, you know, growing up and so on.
The biggest chapter in these memoirs is called The Encounter.
And it details in 1922 at a place near Ermstone in Manchester.
Kim and his mate were on the way to the park this morning and in the field they encountered a cigar-shaped object on the ground.
So they went up to it, a door opened, a man appeared who they said was Asian or Oriental looking and he had strange clothing and even wore a turban on his head.
They were invited inside, had a chat, see you later and off they went to the park.
And so the only people that ever found out about this encounter are his family.
That was 1922.
And that's just one of the cases that have come in, you know, quite by accident since the book was released.
So wouldn't it be interesting?
Because a lot of people assume that the era of modern ufology began in the 1940s, maybe the 30s, but probably the 40s.
Wouldn't it be interesting to do something based on this country?
The research is going to be difficult because none of the people or most of the people are not going to be around.
Maybe their relatives might be.
But to do something that takes us back to the dawn of the previous century?
Wouldn't that be interesting?
Absolutely.
And this is what I've said to some researchers, especially those who've been involved in looking for things At Roswell, all the witnesses at Roswell are dead and gone.
So now you're looking for things that are in people's attics or basements or garages.
Like this old boy, you know, he wrote his memoirs and printed 10 copies out.
And the only reason this gentleman stepped forward with it because he saw me on television and then must have looked me up somewhere on Google and found out, oh, I'm only local and there's his email, you know.
And otherwise, we would never have heard about it, Howard.
It would have been lost to the sands of time.
And there's a couple more interesting cases coming as well, one of which I'm going to look at later today because the witness is still alive.
Can you give me a flavour?
Not really.
It literally only came in last night, Howard.
So the gentleman originally contacted me when the book came out and he said, I can't believe you haven't put my account in your book.
I said, well, I didn't know about it.
So I finally got around to revisiting it and going back to him.
I said, I will get back to you, I promise.
It's been a couple of years, but I've got back to him.
And I'm glad I did because in the meantime, he's done a presentation about it, which was filmed.
So I'll be able to watch the presentation and learn of the account from that.
So there is nothing in writing as such about it.
But, you know, there's more things out there, Howard.
I've always believed that.
And, you know, you're the man to collate and interpret them, Philip.
I just have to thank you for your dedication, really, for most of your life to all of this, and for the fact that you're actually able now in this day and age to be able to write it down, get the stories out there.
People want stories, you're giving them stories.
People want research.
You're giving them research.
I think that's gold dust in this day and age.
So I congratulate you for that.
And let's just say this at the end of it.
If this book, UFO Landings UK, out now from Flying Disc Press, if this book, and it's 100 stories, say if 10% of them are absolutely what they appear to be, then that 10% changes our paradigm on a lot of things, doesn't it?
It does, even if one of them's the genuine article, Howard, you know, and I've no doubt they are.
You know, because there's some of the witnesses in this book I've spoken to personally.
You know, in the old days, before the war, I mean, the old days, you know, there was no social media, there was no internet.
So I made it.
My wife used to say to me, where are you going?
I'm going to go interview so-and-so.
What time are you going to be back?
I didn't even know what time we were going to get there.
Never mind when I was getting back, Howard.
I used to have a kit bag with my film, batteries, notebook, tape recorder, pens and pencils, and I used to just chuck it in the back of the car and would be off.
There was no sat now for you, the old-fashioned map.
And so I made it whatever I could, I would speak to these people in person.
But, you know, I'm not knocking today's modern technology.
It makes it a lot easier.
But when you sat in somebody's front room with them and you can see their surroundings and you can see the look on their face.
Eyeball to eyeball.
Yeah, for me, I know it's not scientific or anything like that, but for me, it makes a big difference.
Do you see a point of retirement for yourself?
I mean, you're still a fine young man, Philip, and still have much to give.
But would you ever get to a stage where you'd retire from this?
Or are you a bit like me?
I want to keep doing this until I can't.
I've got no plans to retire, but I'm not suggesting you should.
I think you should carry on forever.
I've no plans to take retirement from my full-time paying job either.
But Howard, just for the record, I suffer from heart failure.
I've had many emergency admissions to hospital down the years.
So if I do retire, it'll be because of that rather than me getting fed up with things.
So hopefully, you know, I'll keep taking the tablets and they'll keep doing their job.
And I have a pacemaker fitted as well.
So as long as that keeps going, then I will.
Well, long may you continue, Philip Mantle.
And it's always a pleasure to talk with you.
And the one thing about you is you're one of the people, select band who I talk with, who you just don't notice the time going.
You know, that's what's happened with us.
Flying Disc with a K Press is your outfit.
What's the website?
Is it Flying Disc Press?
I always forget.
We can just put flyingdiscpress.com, disc with a K, and you'll find it.
I'm on Facebook.
I use Twitter occasionally, but Facebook is the main place.
All the books that I've either written or published are on flyingdiscpress.com.
It's just a small blog.
So you won't be bombarded with stuff.
You can just see the books and think, oh, I like the look of that one and click on it and it'll take you straight to Amazon.
A lot of the newer books are also available as e-books, softback, hardback, and audio books as well.
We had a request to do audio books, so we started them as well.
No, some of this stuff would absolutely make the dramatized reading.
Very much so.
Well, again, just for the record, Howard, I actually did publish a book called The UFO Trilogy, Dramas for the Stage.
And it's three UFO stage plays all written out.
And it's there.
If there's anybody in the theater world that's looking for something like that, we already have it.
You need to send that to Andrew Lloyd Weber, I think.
Well, who knows?
Or you need somebody with contacts.
That's what you need.
Or even, what's his name?
Is he still around?
Tom Stoppard?
Don't know.
I don't know.
Who's famous playwright and man of the theater?
Is he still based in Scarborough?
Is he still with us?
I'm sure he is.
But anyway, Philip, listen, congratulations.
Well done.
And we're talking on a Friday, so I wish you a good weekend.
Thank you very much, Howard, and a pleasure as always.
And my grateful thanks to Philip Mantle for giving me his time.
I wish him success in everything he does.
In particular, this amazing book, the hardback copy of Which, there it is, I'm holding in my hand now.
And, you know, sometimes I get sent a lot of books.
There'll be months when I get sent a dozen.
And I can't obviously keep them all.
This one is going in the bookshelf.
Philip, congratulations with this, and I hope that UFO Landings UK from Flying Disc Press does incredibly well.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the home of the Unexplained Online, 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.
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