Seventy minutes on The Unexplained Live Cruise across The Mediterranean - featuring a daily journal and special face to face interview with Nick Pope on the very latest on UFOs - Also the ship's Captain - on his remarkable (and untold - until now) Mid-Atlantic UFO/UAP encounter!
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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. | |
| Well, recording these words just hours after a little bit of sleep, after getting home from the cruise that I did with TUI Morella. | |
| On board the Morela Explorer right across the Mediterranean, the Unexplained live cruise, we started in Corfu. | |
| That was all the way back on October the 28th. | |
| Then we called at various ports around Spain, including Parma Mallorca, and then Aracante and across gradually through other ports to Cadiz and then ending in the Canary Islands. | |
| It was, and it turned out to be, a remarkable experience. | |
| I was really nervous about doing this because I'm used to being in a studio and not standing up on stage in front of hundreds and hundreds of people. | |
| But I soon got into it. | |
| And although it was full on and it was hard work, I have to say here and I have to say now that the cruise experience was wonderful. | |
| The crew were incredible. | |
| I don't know how they do it. | |
| But it all worked like clockwork. | |
| And I'd like to thank all of the people on board the Morella Explorer who helped me so much, including Adrian the boss of the cruise line and Nick, who runs the hotel operations, so-called, basically the guest experience. | |
| And Davy, the cruise director. | |
| He's the guy who stands up there on stage and tells you what's going to be happening and introduces comedians and singers and all sorts of things. | |
| He and Liam were the two guys doing that job. | |
| And both Davy and Liam, I don't know how they did it, but they were consistently wonderful all the way through. | |
| I can't speak highly enough of the entire experience and nobody is paying me to say these words. | |
| It's something that I would do again if I ever got time or had the money as a cruise holiday because I don't think you can fault it in any way. | |
| So that was that. | |
| As to the speakers, they all more than delivered. | |
| Dr. Melvin Willen on the Enfield Poltergeist was just incredible and he had so many stories from his work and beyond with the Society for Psychical Research. | |
| So Melvin, if you're hearing this, thank you very much. | |
| You did well. | |
| Claire Broad, the medium, was amazing. | |
| We did a seance, a midnight seance, a few nights ago. | |
| And I was amazed at the number of people. | |
| Some of them hadn't booked specifically for the Unexplained Cruise. | |
| They were just there. | |
| The number of people who were stunned by it all, Claire really delivered. | |
| Very credible, very down-to-earth person, and a pleasure to spend time in her company, as with all the speakers. | |
| Dr. David Whitehouse, former BBC Space and Science correspondent, a man who had a million stories to tell and was hugely engaging with his presentations and wonderful company and very amusing company when we were privately having dinner and things like that. | |
| So a very full-on experience. | |
| And of course, Nick Pope, who flew in from the United States, and it was wonderful to hear him speak. | |
| He only had two days. | |
| He was in and then out in a fast car back to Malaga Airport, as it was, and then back to America for filming for Ancient Aliens. | |
| So Nick more than delivered. | |
| I had the privilege of having dinner, just him and me, with Nick Pope. | |
| And we talked a lot about his experience at the Ministry of Defense, the things that he did before he was the UFO man. | |
| And that was pretty remarkable. | |
| So all in all, I can tie it up with a nice neat bow. | |
| And it worked. | |
| A bit stressful for me because I'm by nature quite a shy guy. | |
| And doing that was a bit of a test, standing up in front of real people. | |
| But if you're one of those real people that I met, my thanks to you for making it all so good for me. | |
| You know, a totally positive experience. | |
| I've got to get back to life now and back to reality. | |
| Got to check my email and get up to speed with it and also start planning for Sunday show. | |
| We're half the way there already for the Sunday TV show. | |
| So thank you for bearing with me. | |
| The TV show, of course, was different while I wasn't on it. | |
| Normal, as far as I know, normal service will be resumed on Sunday night. | |
| So what's coming up is a kind of diary of the cruise, which will include a full interview with Nick Pope. | |
| And also, the captain of the ship had an amazing, and I do mean this, amazing UFO experience 10 years ago that he's never talked in public about before. | |
| He and three crewmates had just, well, a stunning experience. | |
| You're going to hear that in fall too with the captain Alan from the Morella Explorer. | |
| So this is going to sound different. | |
| The pieces that you're about to hear that I'm going to nail together were all recorded on a Tascam handheld digital recorder. | |
| And it was pretty damn good for something that costs about £100 in the UK. | |
| It really was amazing. | |
| It's broadcast quality, but of course it's location recording. | |
| So it's going to sound a little bit different from me speaking to you here in my little home recording area. | |
| So just bear that in mind. | |
| But tell me what you think. | |
| So stand by for my diary, my captain's log of the trip, the conversation with Nick Pope, and also the amazing experience with the captain of the ship that he's never talked about that happened in the middle of the Atlantic. | |
| I don't know how anybody could explain it, but your thoughts as ever welcoming. | |
| Always contact me through the website theunexplained.tv. | |
| Follow the link and you can email me from there. | |
| So from the Morella Explorer and the Unexplained Live 2022, I've literally only been back a few hours, so my head's still drinking coffee to focus. | |
| But from a wonderful experience, here is the presentation. | |
| 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 this is another very different edition. | |
| I've been saying for months and telling you, preparing you for this really, that I was going to be away for about 10 days or so as a guest of Tui Morella on board their ship, the Morela Explorer. | |
| So At the moment, I am recording this overlooking the Mediterranean and mile upon mile upon mile of clear blue sea, just the odd little foam fleck of a wave out there. | |
| No sign of land for miles and miles and miles. | |
| As I record these words, we landed in Corfu last night and we set sail, I think, a little around midnight. | |
| I say a little around midnight because I was on the ship. | |
| I was having a late buffet dinner and didn't even realize that we were on our way until I looked and woke up this morning and here we are in the middle of the sea. | |
| Now, we're heading across the Mediterranean today to Valletta, Malta. | |
| Guest speakers here flying out from the United States. | |
| Nick Pope will be here in a couple of days. | |
| Claire Broad, the medium, arriving with us in Valletta tomorrow as I speak. | |
| We've got Melvin Willen on board from the Society for Psychical Research, Enfield Poltergeist Researcher. | |
| So he's going to be here. | |
| And Dr. David Whitehouse, former BBC Space and Science Editor, these days prolific author and commentator on everything to do with science and space. | |
| So our top line up here, and very different for me because I'm used to being in front of microphones or these days TV cameras and doing it all, you know, in a studio setting or just by myself if I'm doing the podcast. | |
| On this and in this, it's going to be very different because I'm on board the ship and there's going to be a live audience. | |
| So that's going to feel a little different. | |
| And it's the first time for me that this podcast that I created and came up with all those years ago, nearly 20 years ago now, I came up with the idea first. | |
| It's going to be taken to a different venue completely. | |
| So this is going to be a kind of a bit of an audio diary, I guess, of what's going to be happening here on board the Tui Morella Explorer. | |
| And if I just lean over here very carefully from my balcony, have a listen to this. | |
| Captain's Log day two, and we've just arrived. | |
| It's eight o'clock in the morning, just after. | |
| A beautiful Sunday morning in Valletta, Malta. | |
| And I'm standing here. | |
| I'm going to have to describe it to you because I can't give you pictures. | |
| I'm looking out at the harbour here, which is a long sweep. | |
| And to the right, I've got the docks and the big cranes and all of the containers and all of that. | |
| And sweeping round to the left, I can see Valletta and the cathedral here. | |
| And it's just a beautiful Mediterranean morning at the very end of October, very beginning, nearly of December. | |
| Looking down at the beautiful blue water here, there are some canoeists in the middle of it. | |
| Somebody out on a speedboat. | |
| A lot of cargo traffic. | |
| And if I can just crane my head round slightly, on the other side, I can see, so that's literally the other side of the water, I can see Sliema at a hotel, I think, that I used to stay in years ago called the 14a, which used to do these marvelous packages that included health treatments if you wanted them and all sorts of things. | |
| I spent many happy days here. | |
| A very good friend of mine lived here and I used to come and visit from time to time and had a couple of holidays here. | |
| It was always such an easy place to come to. | |
| So yesterday I introduced The Unexplained to the audience here on the ship. | |
| It was three o'clock in the afternoon, had to do a talk. | |
| It was a kind of interview with the cruise director here about myself, my life, my times, and we spent an hour or so doing that. | |
| And the next thing is Claire Broad, the medium, will arrive here in Valletta today. | |
| The distant church bell, I don't think you can hear that, but that's just beautiful, really. | |
| What a place to be on a Sunday morning. | |
| So Claire Broad arrives a little later today. | |
| Then in a day or so, Nick Pope will arrive. | |
| We've got technical sessions and run-throughs today, so we're not actually doing any sessions today. | |
| And then tomorrow, the whole thing will be kicking off, and we'll have, well, quite a few things, actually. | |
| There's my alarm. | |
| You can tell it's morning time. | |
| That's just in case I overslept. | |
| But I'm very good at waking up. | |
| So the technical sessions today, and then the sessions begin tomorrow. | |
| There's Claire Broad, Melvin Willin. | |
| We'll do some Halloween things. | |
| And that's going to get the ball rolling for all of it, really. | |
| Captain's Log, day three and day four. | |
| I'm speaking to you at the moment from a balcony on board the Morella Explorer. | |
| And it is Monday, the 1st of November, and the sun is beating into my face beautifully. | |
| It's so warm. | |
| But I don't want to make you jealous about that. | |
| If you like this kind of thing, you would like this very much. | |
| I've got a view of Mallorca and out to sea and all of the cruise ships here. | |
| There are local cruise ships from a Spanish line. | |
| There's another Morella cruise ship. | |
| And there are a couple of other cruise ships, one that looks like it's Italian just here. | |
| And it is very tranquil. | |
| Today, the 1st of November is a public holiday. | |
| Let me just bring you up to speed. | |
| On day three and day four, let's step into my cabin. | |
| Day three was a day where we had a full-on Halloween-themed day. | |
| And there were a lot of meetings and technical setups in the morning time. | |
| And then in the afternoon, Claire Broad, the medium, joined us. | |
| And we had an absolutely packed session with Claire talking about her life and taking questions. | |
| And the thing that surprised me, because I asked the audience, was how many of you have actually had yourselves some kind of experience where you believe you might have encountered something that is beyond us here on this plane? | |
| And those who would admit it, on a show of hands, was about a third. | |
| And the questions that we got were quite interesting, too. | |
| So that was a good one. | |
| Evening time, it was onto the big main stage for a presentation based around the conjuring movie, which was the highlight. | |
| And Dr. Melvin Willin, who's come out here, giving his presentation about the Enfield Polgeist tapes. | |
| And we heard a few short clips of some of the original recordings that he is the custodian of at the Society for Psychical Research. | |
| So that went well, and people were very pleased with that. | |
| And I'd be walking around the ship this morning. | |
| I'm just catching up with myself. | |
| I don't know about actually, when I go on holiday, my body rebels a bit, and you have to adjust one way and another. | |
| And so I was doing the first couple of days on two hours' sleep if that, most nights. | |
| But last night I just crashed after the late session that culminated in the Conjuring 2 movie and had a nice breakfast here. | |
| You know, I've got to say, I'm not here as an advertising spokesman, but the whole experience has been so good. | |
| And it's so easy to do when you're completely looked after at every turn. | |
| And, you know, you can do breakfast whenever you want. | |
| And there's a huge variety of places to eat and things to eat and things like that. | |
| So, you know, if you get time, and I haven't had a lot of time because I've been doing what I'm here to do, but it's an experience. | |
| And of course, I'd never thought of it this way. | |
| The hotel comes with you wherever you go. | |
| So today, it's Parma Mallorca, and I'm looking at the shimmering Mediterranean, the sun above me here, and then it's Valencia. | |
| Then there are other ports in Spain that we do, and then we head out to the Canary Islands, and then I'm coming home. | |
| And we'll get back to The Unexplained. | |
| Now, I know some people were surprised that the TV show wasn't there, and you know, I will always put information about the shows and what I'm doing and how things are shaping up on the official Facebook page of The Unexplained with Howard Us. | |
| So I wanted to give you an update. | |
| Everybody should now be here on board. | |
| Nick Pope flying in from America today. | |
| Melvin Willin, Dr. David Whitehouse, who's giving a presentation later today about Space 2069. | |
| We've interviewed him a couple of times about that before and other topics to do with space. | |
| And it's just been a nice, relaxed atmosphere. | |
| And for me, I said to one of the directors is out here with us, the captain, and I said to him, this is the first time, really, in 25 years that I've stepped away. | |
| I'm still working, but you know, that's in my veins, in my blood. | |
| But I've just kind of stepped out of things. | |
| And it's so nice to be away from home and my flat and everything else. | |
| So I'll keep you posted, and I'm going to give you another Captain's Log update very soon. | |
| But I'm going to put all of these together just into a kind of journal at the end of it all when I get back to London. | |
| But we've got a lot to do between now and then. | |
| Good morning, Captain's Log, November the 2nd. | |
| It is a quarter to nine in the morning. | |
| And after a passing, crossing, that again, I didn't feel at all. | |
| It's almost as if, I don't know, you know that feeling that you get when you're on a plane and the plane feels completely rock solid? | |
| You know it's moving, but you can't feel it. | |
| Well, the ship has been from the beginning exactly the same here across a mill pond flat Mediterranean. | |
| So this morning I'm standing and looking out. | |
| There's a little tiny bit of cloud, but it's lovely and warm. | |
| I'm still wearing my shorts. | |
| I'm on the balcony and I'm looking out at Valencia, big city. | |
| A busy day today. | |
| The arrival of Nick Pope. | |
| He's doing two sessions here. | |
| He's literally flying in from the United States and then flying out. | |
| The two sessions will be about the MOD's UFO files and also about the latest state of play in the current upsurge in interest in UFO activity and UAP activity generally. | |
| So Nick Pope arriving. | |
| The way that it's working is that he has stayed in a hotel in Valencia overnight because he flew in yesterday and he will be transited the few miles to the ship quite soon, I think. | |
| And then we've got some preparation to do and then we're on at four o'clock here for the first of the two sessions. | |
| It's going to be pretty full on. | |
| I think the most I'll see of Valencia is standing from the ship and taking a look down at it. | |
| But that's okay. | |
| Because I have to tell you, over the years, I think I've said this on one of these logs before, you know, I haven't stopped really in 20 odd years. | |
| So it's been quite nice to have a change of pace. | |
| I mean, this has been, you know, this has been full on for me, but the change, I think, you know, they say in England, a change is as good as a rest. | |
| I think it's kind of been that way for me. | |
| Last night, yesterday afternoon, Dr. David Whitehouse did a presentation that left the audience here absolutely spellbound. | |
| It seems that the audiences are getting bigger and bigger. | |
| And that tells us something. | |
| Dr. David Whitehouse, of course, former BBC Space and Science Editor. | |
| And I had no idea what an accomplished scientist he is. | |
| I knew that he trained under Sir Bernard Lovell at Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope. | |
| But the stories that he's able to tell about his life, and one day we're going to have to do that, are just amazing. | |
| And the people that he's connected to and with now, just totally amazing. | |
| So he's got this presentation that he put on that actually had images, real-time images, of the landing of Perseverance on Mars, and then images of what it's like to land on Mars, and real images of what it's like to go to a possible landing site on the moon. | |
| And also a discussion of something that we haven't talked about a lot, and I think maybe we should. | |
| The idea that although the media, and it's me saying this, it wasn't David in the presentation, but it came out of it, the media is kind of telling us that all of these space missions are going to be happening to a schedule. | |
| It's all going to be hunky-dory. | |
| It's all going to be fine. | |
| Of course, there are a number of things in the way, and the most important one is the frailty of people. | |
| The guy who lived on the International Space Station for a whole year, and I'd forgotten this, came back with a lot of problems, and he may never be the same. | |
| Some of those problems, I think, were cognitive. | |
| So David flagged that up. | |
| The road and the route into space, it's not going to be easy. | |
| It's not going to be plane flying. | |
| And those are the aspects of it that I think, and I understand why, that the people who speak about space from organizations like NASA are less willing to talk about those things than the fact that the technical progress of the mission, the engines, the craft, and the development of a lander for the Artemis mission, you know, that's all on track. | |
| But there are other aspects to it. | |
| Space is not an exact science. | |
| So I find that bit of it fascinating. | |
| So like I say, Nick Pope today and Nick Polk tomorrow. | |
| And then we've got another presentation from Dr. David Whitehouse. | |
| Then another presentation about her life and times and her work. | |
| More importantly, from Claire Broad, the Medium. | |
| And then we have a sort of get-together session at the end. | |
| And there might be a seance, which I will try and record. | |
| I've been so full on with these sessions here that I haven't really done, you know, much in the way of recording. | |
| But I wanted to just give you a flavor of the way that it's all shaped up in these last few days. | |
| It's been, for me, quite amazing, really. | |
| And in the background there, can you hear this? | |
| That's the alarm that I set to wake me up this morning. | |
| But I was awake, I think probably about 5 a.m. anyway, before we got into port. | |
| And it's one of those things. | |
| But, you know, having a great time. | |
| They tell me in the UK it's raining at the moment. | |
| So as they say around the world, what's not to like? | |
| I will report back, and I hope that you're doing okay. | |
| Stand by. | |
| Well, good morning, Captains. | |
| Log, November the 3rd. | |
| It's Thursday. | |
| How many more days have we got to go? | |
| I'm losing complete track of time here on board the Morella Explorer. | |
| We docked about an hour ago. | |
| I'm looking at the mountains of southern Spain. | |
| There's a faint, and I mean, really almost imperceptible chill in the air. | |
| I'm looking at the port here, but everything looks very chilled and relaxed and as beautiful as you would expect from Spain in the off-season. | |
| So I'm sitting just on my balcony here, just grabbing a couple of minutes. | |
| It's been pretty full on these last few days, which I knew it would be. | |
| Yesterday, Nick Pope arrived at the airport at Valencia and was taken quickly by taxi to the ship here and did his first presentation. | |
| He's doing another one today. | |
| It's on a very tight schedule, so he's going to do a second presentation today just about the latest state of play with the UFO and UAP business and how the American government seems to be split on the issue. | |
| The idea that maybe these things are what they might appear to be or what the media thinks they might be, and others who feel it's all bunkum and nonsense and needs to be swept away. | |
| So there's an interesting debate that's happening now, and we'll talk about that a little bit later. | |
| And Nick's first session was about a lot of the stuff we've heard on the show a number of times about his background and bringing people, a lot of them of course, at the session, not familiar with any of this, up to date with what this phenomenon is and what Nick's role in all of it is. | |
| So we did that and then we had dinner here and I don't know what's wrong with me. | |
| I think maybe I'm beginning to unwind a little bit. | |
| I was just so tired. | |
| I didn't go and see a show or anything. | |
| I just went to bed. | |
| I'm hoping, although it might be difficult, just to get, if I can, an hour on the shore today, just to take a look around. | |
| And that's going to be it. | |
| You know, at least I've had a little bit of time to think and plan, which is nice, and to see these places. | |
| And, you know, I've got to say a word about the life on board ship. | |
| And this isn't just because I'm doing this. | |
| You know, if I was here anyway, I would say this. | |
| The routine of it is all amazing to watch. | |
| Everything just happens. | |
| If I put a bag of laundry on my bed in the morning, maybe 10 o'clock, 9.30, it's back in the evening and laundered and pressed in a way that I couldn't even begin to do it at home. | |
| I hate doing laundry. | |
| And the way that they do it here is fabulous. | |
| So it's nice to have that taken off me for a while. | |
| Last night we were very privileged, all of us, Dr. David Whitehouse, Nick Pope, and David's wife, Jill. | |
| We all went to the bridge with Adrian, who is the guy who runs the cruise line, and we watched the captain, Alan, who's such an experienced man. | |
| I mean, his entire life is at sea and around the world. | |
| We watched him take the ship out of port. | |
| I had no idea that it was so complex, because it's not just like you turn the engines on and you pull out. | |
| It's not at all like that. | |
| You have to be mindful of so many things, and it's a complete team effort. | |
| And in the darkness, the amount of concentration as they took the ship out last night was a fabulous thing to watch. | |
| The whole process took about an hour. | |
| And the pilot came aboard, so he jumped off his boat onto the ship and then helped us guide our way out. | |
| And then once he was done, the pilot boat came back and we watched him jump onto the little speedboat, the pilot boat, that took him to the next vessel that needed to leave. | |
| Everything working just like a Swiss watch, really. | |
| And to watch the technology in action, the amount of technology on ships these days, everything really, but it's phenomenal. | |
| And the size of the bridge, and you stand there observing anything, and I have to say, as we were moving out, I just took myself away and stood in a little open area just adjacent to one side of the bridge, Porto Starboard. | |
| And I just felt the smell of the sea and the warmth in the darkness. | |
| And I just thought, just leave me here this evening. | |
| I don't need to do anything else. | |
| It was very therapeutic. | |
| So I've done a lot of thinking out here. | |
| If you listen to this show a lot, you know that I have a number of things that I need to confront myself. | |
| So I've got a bit of a plan for when I go back. | |
| And part of that involves, we all need to do this. | |
| Part of this involves just being kinder to myself. | |
| So today's schedule then is Nick Pope. | |
| Tomorrow there's another presentation from Claire Broad the Medium. | |
| And then the day after, David Whitehouse does his presentation about the alien perspective, which of course he's talked about on the podcast. | |
| And then I think we have For the final session, it'll be a sort of meet and greet chance for people to have any final questions answered, and that's going to be the size of it. | |
| Been a real eye-opening experience here, and I've been very pleased that, in terms of sort of living day-to-day and just looking after myself, I don't have to think about anything. | |
| The crew really do look after anything and everything. | |
| And if there's ever been anything that I've wanted to do, like get something printed out, they've instantly found a way to do it, and it's happened so quickly. | |
| So I'm massively impressed, really. | |
| It's been a long time since I've been on anything that you could call a holiday. | |
| And, you know, part of me wants to do this again, if I could ever, just for myself quietly. | |
| I'm just looking over, actually, I'm looking at the harbour here. | |
| And there is what appears, and I don't know what that is. | |
| Maybe somebody knows this in Alacante. | |
| There's a galleon. | |
| There's actually a galleon out there. | |
| Now, I don't know whether it's some kind of recreation or something. | |
| It's very weird. | |
| Sorry. | |
| I know you don't come to the unexplained for a travelogue, but we're doing something different. | |
| And I'm just sort of leaning out as far as I dare, sniffing the morning air. | |
| And I wonder what that galleon's all about. | |
| So I can see up and down the coast. | |
| We're heading west now, eventually making our way towards Cadiz and then to the Canarias and Canary Islands and then flying home. | |
| But this is my favorite bit of Spain, this coast at the south. | |
| And as you start moving west, I love this. | |
| And I haven't seen it for too long, so it's nice to do that. | |
| I'm going to get on with my day, and I'll check in with you later. | |
| Mick, we've just done the second of the presentations for the audience here on the Morella Explorer. | |
| They watched you, even those who are not into this issue, with rapt attention. | |
| Is that something that you're more and more finding these days that people who perhaps are not that into it and they only know what they see occasionally on the TV are getting more interested? | |
| Absolutely, yes. | |
| I think this subject has always had its aficionados and the UFO community, if I can use that phrase, has obviously been engaged on this for a long time. | |
| But what I'm finding increasingly, speaking to your question, is that yes, there's a new audience here. | |
| And that new audience is people who switch on the TV and see reports that, for example, NASA is beginning a study into this. | |
| Or they see a report about a report has just gone to Congress, or that the Senate Armed Forces Committee have just had a hearing. | |
| So that audience sees those news stories and then says, wait a minute, I thought this subject was all stuff and nonsense, some fringe conspiracy talk. | |
| But NASA's doing it and there are classified reports going to Congress. | |
| I must look into this. | |
| And that's the new audience. | |
| And talking about it being stuff and nonsense in Washington right now, as you said in the presentation, quite rightly, there is a kind of factional fight going on. | |
| There are those who believe very fervently that there's nothing in it and those who want more facts to come out based on what they might have heard. | |
| So there's this tussle going on at the moment. | |
| Who do we think is going to win? | |
| I think it could go either way. | |
| But what I will say is this. | |
| It's unprecedented. | |
| I have never seen anything like this. | |
| I mean, you have, of course, on many subjects, differences of opinion between different agencies. | |
| For example, a classic example going right back, of course, is when the UK was looking at its strategic nuclear deterrent, the Air Force thought they should do it. | |
| The Navy thought they should do it. | |
| And in the end, the Navy won out, of course, and we have our ballistic missile submarines. | |
| But you can look at any issue. | |
| China, for example. | |
| And you can say some people think that we should hold out an olive branch to the Chinese, try and build some bridges. | |
| Other people say, no, we should take a more hawkish approach with China and face down the perceived Chinese threat. | |
| So sometimes you get hints of that. | |
| But what's happening on UFOs right now is extraordinary because you have this skeptic faction and this believer faction, not with the public, but within government, within the military, within the intelligence agencies in the United States, struggling, competing, fighting a virtual proxy war through various media outlets, struggling for control of the narrative on this subject. | |
| And it's extraordinary. | |
| And, you know, my point with this is there's no smoke without fire. | |
| If there wasn't something to all this, people wouldn't be getting so worked up. | |
| And my goodness, they are getting worked up. | |
| But Nick, if the faction that wants more revelation of whatever there might be wins out, and the people who think it's all bunk and we shouldn't be spending money on all of this loses, more information will be in the public domain. | |
| How is that going to be handled? | |
| Because one of the problems in that situation is that you would want, I would imagine if you're the U.S. or any government, you would want to avoid misinterpretation, alarm and despondency, people getting jumpy about the fact that maybe stuff has been kept back from them. | |
| And what does this mean for all of us? | |
| Yeah, there are some big questions there. | |
| I mean, let's just suppose for a moment that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is correct and that's what we're dealing with. | |
| Obviously, a range of questions emerge. | |
| One question is, what are the political ramifications of that going to be in terms of, for example, are there spin-off technologies that a nation with a full understanding of the phenomenon could develop? | |
| Almost anything, for example, that you could imagine involving interstellar travel is going to involve huge amounts of energy. | |
| Well, anything that involves huge amounts of energy can be weaponized. | |
| So there are issues there about the nation that first acquires this technology being the dominant force on the planet. | |
| But then there are whole second order questions like what are the religious ramifications of this going to be? | |
| How are people on all the different major world religions going to incorporate this into their new paradigm? | |
| How's that going to play out? | |
| What about the economic ramifications of this, particularly if we have new technologies? | |
| You know, we can look at human history and say certain things have revolutionized society, whether it's the motor car, the airplane, radio and television, the computer, social media. | |
| They've all changed us. | |
| What will be the implications of extraterrestrial contact? | |
| Well, what indeed, I think, is a question going forward, and it's one that we're having to consider more and more. | |
| And I guess, and your thoughts about this welcome, if we don't consider those things, if we don't come to a conclusion as to how we will respond and what we will do, the situation may arise, it may be foisted upon us, and then we have potential panic. | |
| Yes, that's why with a lot of things, even if you regard it as unlikely, it makes sense to have a contingency plan. | |
| That's why we have, for example, contingency plans and we had the recent mission, of course, the DART mission, to deflect an asteroid. | |
| Because although statistically the chances of an asteroid or comet hitting the Earth with the destructive power of what wiped out the dinosaurs, statistically the chances of that are extremely small, but they're there. | |
| And so it's what's called a low probability, high impact scenario, that if the consequences of what you're dealing with are sufficiently immense, you need to have a plan. | |
| And we should have, that's why I think people are now thinking about extraterrestrials and what we should prepare for, particularly if we're dealing with, as many people might believe we might be, particularly if we're dealing with artificial intelligence. | |
| Indeed. | |
| And NASA, you mentioned the NASA study. | |
| 16 people, I believe, are involved in this, 16 experts. | |
| They're going to be producing a report on this matter. | |
| That report, you told us today, is going to be unclassified. | |
| It's going to be readable and available to everybody. | |
| Now, how is that going to work if you've got perhaps more secrecy on the other side, you know, the U.S. military, whatever, but you've got NASA, the space agency, coming up with its own report and its own conclusions that might take us further than other agencies may want? | |
| It's a problem because, yeah, absolutely, as you say, NASA has said that they want pretty much all of this study to be done at an unclassified level. | |
| And although some people in NASA obviously do have security clearances, generally speaking, this UFO report will be done at unclassified level and everything will be published. | |
| Well, the problem, of course, is that other parts of the US government, by their own admission, are sitting on classified data. | |
| I mean, we saw, for example, when the House Intelligence Committee, one of the subcommittees had a hearing on all this in May, there was a question about what about these sightings under the water. | |
| And they immediately said, we're going to take that in the classified section after this open public hearing. | |
| Why would that be? | |
| Because some aspects of these USOs, unidentified submerged or submersible objects, some aspects of that are classified. | |
| Now, obviously anything that has anything to do with ballistic missile submarines, and there are certainly stories that some of these objects have tracked some of our submarines and that submarines have reported on the sonar objects traveling at seemingly impossible speeds. | |
| So some aspects of that are clearly going to be sensitive. | |
| But maybe there's some other part of the whole underwater mystery that has yet to be revealed. | |
| I first interviewed you probably more than 25 years ago when you were at the MOD and doing the job that you did there. | |
| It's a very different landscape now. | |
| It is, for those of us who do what we do, a very exciting time. | |
| Do you think we will ever get something that those who are into this and aficionados for this, if that's the right word, anything akin to disclosure, do you think that that day will ever dawn? | |
| And if it does, will it be in our lifetime? | |
| Well, of course, it depends what there is to disclose. | |
| If elements in, for example, the U.S. government are sitting literally, as some believe, on evidence here, like debris, wreckage, then yes, there's something tangible. | |
| But if it's a little bit more nebulous, if it's just, yeah, there is a phenomenon, these things are real, we track them on radar, we film them on the forward-looking infrared, but we still don't know what they are, then arguably you don't have that smoking gun to disclose. | |
| But of course, whatever we're dealing with, call it the phenomenon, if it's extraterrestrial or if it's something else, it itself might force disclosure. | |
| Because this is an events-led scenario, and we don't know what the next twist or turn to this intriguing story is going to be. | |
| And it may be something outside of our hands, in government, I mean. | |
| And if that happens, if an event happens or some government action happens that forces this, forces everybody's hand, then an international response is required. | |
| And that's going to be difficult, isn't it? | |
| Because the Chinese are not exactly on side in everything. | |
| Putin is certainly not on side in anything at the moment. | |
| How would we react? | |
| We'd have to come together, wouldn't we? | |
| Well, if there was an alien threat, absolutely. | |
| And Ronald Reagan, of course, in his famous speech to the United Nations, said, I occasionally think how quickly we would set aside our differences if we faced some threat from beyond this earth. | |
| And yeah, we've Seen with obviously other things in history that alliances form and sometimes some fairly unlikely bedfellows in terms of, you know, you can look at whether it was the Second World War or the First Gulf War, | |
| you could say that an extraordinary coalition, sometimes of former enemies, came together to fight the Nazi threat and Saddam Hussein in the 90s after the invasion of Kuwait. | |
| So these things do happen, alliances, unlikely friendships and bonds between nations. | |
| But at the moment, yes, it's a depressing geopolitical situation. | |
| Perhaps Reagan was right. | |
| Perhaps it does need something from beyond this earth to bring us together. | |
| Because something from beyond this earth suddenly makes those borders that we squabble over on this earth look, I won't say irrelevant, but less relevant than perhaps they were before. | |
| Have you enjoyed being on this cruise ship? | |
| I know that you've only got, you've done a sort of high and buy, as they call it in some parts of the world. | |
| You know, you're in here. | |
| Hello, you've done your two sessions and you're flying out tomorrow. | |
| You're going to London, then the United States. | |
| Has it been a good experience? | |
| It's been an excellent experience. | |
| I've had such fun. | |
| I wish I had been able to come for longer. | |
| The food and drink is amazing. | |
| The ship is wonderful. | |
| All the people, the crew and everyone, lovely people, super helpful. | |
| Everyone's friendly. | |
| Everyone's having a good time. | |
| It's great and it's kind of whetted my appetite for this. | |
| Well, you've got plenty of cruise lines in the U.S. you can choose from. | |
| I know you've got to go back to America, Nick. | |
| In 1994, 95, 96, Nick Pope was a civil servant. | |
| Today, Nick Pope is on Ancient Aliens. | |
| And as I've seen evidence today, people recognizing you here, Nick Pope's a celebrity now. | |
| You must get recognized everywhere. | |
| What's that like? | |
| How do you handle that? | |
| It's interesting, yeah, and particularly in the US, where I've lived for 10 or 11 years now, I do literally get stopped in the street and in the store or at the airport or whatever, and people ask me about ancient aliens, or they ask me about the latest UFO story in the media, and people want photographs and things. | |
| Yeah, I think I'm not one of these people that kind of gets upset by that. | |
| I think, you know, you have, with something like that, you have something in common because I'm still interested, of course, in this subject. | |
| How could I not be? | |
| And they're interested too. | |
| So I like to stop and chat with people and post a photo and you know that you're making someone's day and then why wouldn't you want to do that? | |
| Have you come to enjoy it? | |
| It sounds like you have. | |
| Yes, I'm in a lucky position. | |
| I mean, you know, people, yes, I work hard at what I do and television is always maybe a little bit, you know this, of course, but sometimes I think some of the viewers may not appreciate it. | |
| It is hard work. | |
| But let's not kid ourselves, it can be immensely fun and rewarding too. | |
| I consider myself in a fortunate position to have landed that job with the Ministry of Defence, to be in a position where the MOD themselves declassified and released a lot of the files that I wrote and worked on, enabling me to be more open with this. | |
| I'm in a privileged position. | |
| I'm not trying to put myself on a pedestal. | |
| I was very lucky and fortunate to have that job because it opened my eyes and my mind to a new reality. | |
| And if I can share that with people, I'm happy to do so. | |
| Should we get to that stage where something reveals itself or we reveal something and maybe we have an agreement with some other power that's from beyond this plane, what's Nick Pope's role then? | |
| What do you do? | |
| Well, I think I could make no assumptions, but I see my role now as a communicator on this issue. | |
| I am on a lot of TV shows, whether it's news shows, chat shows, documentaries, and if we have some huge game-changing paradigm-busting development, call it disclosure, call it something else, the facts would be different and we would be dealing with a certainty rather than a possibility. | |
| But my role, in a sense, would probably be unchanged. | |
| I would hopefully continue to be a communicator on this, and depending on what we find, hopefully I could play a part in, if there is apprehension, dealing with that and helping people to acclimatize to what would be a radically new world, a new world if you can take it. | |
| Lastly, could you see yourself, I could see you, could you see yourself as an ambassador to an alien species? | |
| Well, I think there are maybe people far better qualified than I for that role. | |
| I think someone like Mishi Okaku or Avi Loeb, perhaps. | |
| But, you know, if I had some role to play, given my background in this subject for the government and given my media contacts and my privileged position having a platform with people, if I had a part to play, I would play it willingly and contribute where I could. | |
| Nick Pope's safe trip back to America. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Captain's Log, Saturday, the 5th of November. | |
| And we're coming to the back end now of this unexplained live cruise with me, Howard Hughes, and all of the star guests that we've had here. | |
| Yesterday, another presentation that went out really well with Medium Claire Broad, old friend of the show. | |
| And today, The second presentation from Dr. David Whitehouse, you've heard the podcast with him about this. | |
| He'll be talking about his book, The Alien Perspective, about our quest for life out there. | |
| Now, as I'm speaking, and I'm trying to keep my voice down a bit because it's half past eight in the morning, some people may still be sleeping, but we're coming into Cadiz, and this is our last port of call before we head for the Canary Islands, Grand Canaria next, and that's virtually the end of it. | |
| And after that, I'll be returning home. | |
| But we're coming into port now, and it's going to be a bit of an interesting one because it's pretty thick fog. | |
| It's not cold, but this morning it's pretty thick fog. | |
| So we're coming in, and I can see the harbour wall and a couple of big cargo loading cranes here. | |
| And I think the ship's side thrusters are now being used. | |
| I have to say there was a little bit of chop on the sea as we were heading from our last port of call here to Cadiz, which was an overnight trip. | |
| But the stabilizers on the ship, the way that they handled this, meant that you didn't feel anything. | |
| I don't really think it was amazing. | |
| There was quite a lot of wind on the deck, but come inside and you couldn't really tell that there was anything going on outside, which I think is just amazing, really. | |
| Now, the next, of course, stage is going to be once we go beyond Cadiz and out into effectively out into the Atlantic. | |
| That's literally the horn, the fog horn on this occasion. | |
| So I can't see anything of Cadiz. | |
| I could see it in the distance, but this fog has come down. | |
| I guess once the sun comes up properly, it's going to burn right off. | |
| And I think we're going to get temperatures into the mid-20s, I would have said. | |
| Maybe 24 Celsius. | |
| That's what, 75 Fahrenheit? | |
| So that's the plan for today. | |
| And then we do a wrap-up session tomorrow, followed by Claire Broad explaining seances and effectively doing one. | |
| And that's going to be it. | |
| So I wish you a good day, and I shall return soon. | |
| The Unexplained Live at Sea, my name is Howard Hughes, but I think you know that by now. | |
| We're coming towards the end of it all now, and I've just got to say these words before I do anything else. | |
| I'm on the bridge of the Explorer, and I've got this fantastic panoramic all-round view. | |
| I mean, this thing is as long as a bowling alley, a view of where we are now. | |
| And all there is around us is ocean, is sea. | |
| And you see the occasional cargo ship. | |
| There was a naval ship that passed us just a little while ago, a small one. | |
| And for me, it's been just a superb experience. | |
| And I've been so well looked after by the team here, including Davey, the cruise director, and Adrian, the director of Morella, who had this idea of doing this here. | |
| And the man who heads up all of this, who has the big responsibility, is Captain Alan, who has the calmest exterior I've ever seen, but is also the coolest dude I've ever known. | |
| Alan, thank you very much for giving me time. | |
| I know, listen, you have to have eyes everywhere and you're always working. | |
| So thanks for doing this. | |
| You're absolutely welcome. | |
| It's a pleasure to have you here and it's a pleasure to talk to you. | |
| So there are a thousand duties, it seems to me, that you have every day, and you have, of course, a big team. | |
| Now, I know that that works and how that works, because I was lucky enough to be able to stand here on the bridge when you took this ship out of port a few nights ago. | |
| And literally, it was a privilege. | |
| I've worked in news and newsrooms. | |
| If you get a good news team and you're all working together, it's a beautiful thing. | |
| And to watch you guys in the darkness the other night, when push came to shove and you had to be getting this ship out correctly and on time, it was a work of synchronicity. | |
| It's much like synchronized swimming, but without a swimming pool and without swimming trunks. | |
| I never thought of it that way, but since you say it, I think that's definitely the case. | |
| You don't have to go into the degrees and minutes of it, but whereabouts are we right now? | |
| We are about halfway on our way down to the Canaries. | |
| We're about 100 miles off the African coast, so we're taking a straight line as short as possible distance for us to get down to the Canaries. | |
| It's a high-speed run, so we are making good, good speed here, just over 18 knots for us to arrive on time. | |
| And we'll be a timed arrival tomorrow morning for 7 o'clock at the pilot station to be docked and cleared for 8 o'clock. | |
| There's a bit of chop here on the sea. | |
| There's 10,000 feet roughly of water underneath us right now, which sounds like an awful lot, which it is. | |
| And there's a little bit of swell, but we're not feeling it. | |
| How come? | |
| Because we have huge stabilizers fold out from the side of the ship. | |
| They're like airplane wings. | |
| They're on massive big hydraulic pumps and they act independently of each other. | |
| And as we move off the upright, then they push back against that movement. | |
| So they reduce and eliminate most of the rolling. | |
| The faster we go, the more effective they are, the more flow that they have across them. | |
| So at the moment, they're both working and they're very efficient. | |
| So they're definitely making it much more comfortable than it would be without. | |
| But actually, yeah, it's quite a comfortable passage. | |
| It's going quite well. | |
| How come you are so staggeringly calm? | |
| You have to interface with the guests a lot. | |
| They see you're the public face of it all. | |
| You are the captain. | |
| They know you as Captain Allen. | |
| You've got so many responsibilities. | |
| I'm looking for personal tips here. | |
| How do you keep so calm? | |
| I'm not sure exactly. | |
| I've always been a fairly calm person. | |
| I've always been that kind of a demeanor in most things that I've ever done or achieved. | |
| Whenever I was younger, I was at school. | |
| This was always my way, really. | |
| But over time, you get more exposure to different experiences, different things happen. | |
| And you go through the various ranks on board the vessel as a trainee and then as a third officer, second officer and first officer. | |
| So you get exposed to a lot of activities and you learn from people around you and you learn to handle yourself and to stay calm and to stay collected. | |
| And everybody does look to you for direction. | |
| And as various things happen, and of course they do over the course of many, many years at sea in this career, of course, you have certain incidents. | |
| And as people are looking to you for direction, you need to be a calm person to give everybody the reassurance that it's going to be fine and we're going to work together for a solution. | |
| So, yeah, you just end up being a calm person. | |
| It's going to be fine, which invariably it is. | |
| And of course, the more experience you have, the more you know that fact, and that communicates itself to other people, which I'm massively impressed by. | |
| We're here talking for a reason. | |
| We'll get to that reason in just a second. | |
| Talk to me briefly about the technology of this bridge, which just, I mean, I'm amazed, blown away by the amount of computerization, the number of displays here. | |
| I was expecting to see a great big wheel and, you know, maybe a compass somewhere. | |
| You know, I watch too many movies, but it's all technology. | |
| Well, we do have a compass. | |
| It's just well hidden above us. | |
| But all of the technology that's here, yeah, there is lots of it. | |
| There's lots of buttons, there's lots of dials, there's lots of gauges, there's lots of screens with lots of information. | |
| But actually, it's always humans that are up here who are directing that machinery. | |
| So we're just presented with a lot of information, and you just have to filter the information for some of it's quite useless and it's just there and some of it's very relevant. | |
| So it's up to the humans that are up here on the bridge at all times to decide and to go through all of that information and to use the correct information to adjust and to be in control. | |
| So it's actually the humans that are up here that you see that are in charge. | |
| And just very quickly, when we took, when you took, I was watching the ship out of port, the final moves in it, the final decisions, they were yours by eye. | |
| You were watching it, you were standing, seeing how far we were clear of the quayside and all the rest of it. | |
| Yeah, that's all done by eye. | |
| So the final bit, like parking your car, I suppose. | |
| We stand on the side of the ship and we look back along the side and we've got cameras that show us the back and the sides of the ship, but we are watching, looking out the windows, and yeah, we are doing meter by meter. | |
| It is by eye at the end, yeah. | |
| I said we'd get to the point of this, and the point of this is that for people who've been listening to me for the 16 and a half years that I've done the podcast and the seven years nearly that I've done the radio and TV show, they know that we've talked about countless examples of pilots of many kinds, | |
| military pilots, the Tic-Tac UFOs in 2004, civilian cases like the British Midland plane off Belgium in 1994, where they saw something as big as a battleship, and Captain Ray Boyer, who was flying an Orinyi Airlines plane to the Channel Islands in 2007, I think it was, off the top of my head. | |
| Yeah, 2007, when he saw something huge and it was tracked by radar. | |
| We associate those things with pilots. | |
| But one of your team told me that you and two of your colleagues about a decade or so ago had an astonishing experience at sea. | |
| And I was given just the bones of that story. | |
| Alan, can you tell me that now? | |
| I can. | |
| Yeah, and I didn't know that you knew either. | |
| So, yes. | |
| I actually didn't mention it to anybody for a very long time. | |
| And it was just a strange sighting which I had. | |
| And actually, I was looking at the year as to when it was. | |
| And it was either 2005 or 2006. | |
| And it was an Atlantic crossing on another vessel. | |
| It was a cruise ship. | |
| And we were crossing from west to east. | |
| And about halfway across the Atlantic, I was on watch on the center of the bridge. | |
| It was around two o'clock in the morning. | |
| And my quartermaster, he was on the port side of the bridge. | |
| So he was an Indonesian who was keeping watch. | |
| You always have a couple of guys up on the bridge who are your eyes and ears for your nighttime watch. | |
| So he was standing over on the port side of the vessel. | |
| And he suddenly started to get very excited. | |
| And he got very interested in something that he was seeing. | |
| Something was bothering him. | |
| So I could see that it was a level of some urgency. | |
| So I ran from the bridge centre and I ran over to him on the port side of the bridge. | |
| And it was an open bridge. | |
| So the door opens and there's a bridge wing there. | |
| And he was on the bridge wing and he was staring up into the sky. | |
| And I did the same as he. | |
| So I looked up into the sky. | |
| And we saw it was two, what I would describe as incredibly bright searchlights, one forward of the other. | |
| So the aft one was looking forward to the other. | |
| Very bright and like two narrow beams of light. | |
| The forward one reaching much further ahead, but the aft one shining onto the position of the forward one. | |
| And they were moving so quickly through the sky. | |
| What I would describe as thousands of miles an hour. | |
| Went from one bridge wing, one horizon, sorry, went from one horizon to the other horizon and off and out of sight within a few seconds. | |
| So we're not talking helicopters? | |
| Nothing that I could ever possibly imagine was known technology. | |
| I'm not saying it was otherworldly, but definitely not a known technology and completely silent, which was part of the weird, the strange part of it. | |
| It was very close to the height of the vessel, so it only passed just over the top of us. | |
| So I was on a ship that had a height of, it was around, we were 67 meters, and I would say this was only maybe 40 or 50 meters above the height of the vessel. | |
| So very low to the sea level, very close to the height of the vessel, passed exactly over the top of us, but going incredibly fast, incredibly silently, and then disappeared off the other side of the vessel. | |
| And by the time we ran over to have a look, it had already disappeared. | |
| It was going so, so fast and so quickly, disappeared so quickly. | |
| And then the quartermaster that was up on the bridge with me, it's a lovely chap by the name of Zaini. | |
| And Zaini straightaway turned to me with some alarm on his Face and said, What was that? | |
| What was this? | |
| What did we see? | |
| And I still was also calm back then as well, and said very calmly to Zaini, I don't know, but let's not talk about it. | |
| Let's not discuss it. | |
| And you didn't? | |
| And we didn't. | |
| So I finished my contract on that vessel. | |
| I moved to another vessel, and I didn't see Zaini for about 10 years. | |
| And in that 10 years, I just had never mentioned this to anybody. | |
| If anybody asked me, have you ever seen anything a bit odd or a bit strange at sea? | |
| I always kept this to myself. | |
| Never really shared it with anybody. | |
| And then about 10 years later, I was then promoted to captain. | |
| I was working with the same company as master. | |
| And Zaney happened to be one of the quartermasters that was working on the ship at the time. | |
| And I was doing a watch on the bridge. | |
| I was covering some time for somebody else. | |
| And I was alone on the bridge with Zaini. | |
| So he came across to me. | |
| And after 10 years, it was the first time that we had sailed together. | |
| And said, Captain, do you remember? | |
| And I knew exactly what he was referring to. | |
| And I said, yeah, Zaney, it's been 10 years. | |
| I've never mentioned it to anybody. | |
| And he said, neither have I. I've not ever discussed it with anybody. | |
| I was like, maybe it's time. | |
| Maybe it's time that we acknowledge. | |
| And what do you think we saw? | |
| And I really don't know. | |
| And it's interesting, isn't it? | |
| Because had you done that then? | |
| And I know that for commercial pilots, it's difficult because of professional reasons, ridicule and stuff like that. | |
| And maybe you just don't want to get involved. | |
| And all of those things play out. | |
| But other people may have seen it. | |
| Did your radar record this? | |
| I don't know whether ship's radar see up or they only see the sea. | |
| But was anything recorded on the ship? | |
| It would have been. | |
| Yes. | |
| Yeah, it would have been. | |
| You mean, okay, but you didn't check that? | |
| No, it was too fast. | |
| Everything happened so quickly that it would be hard to imagine that it wouldn't have been there, but it would have been for such a brief moment that it would have appeared almost as interference. | |
| It would have been so, so fast and so quick. | |
| But I imagine that it would have been. | |
| But honestly, I didn't actually look at the radar. | |
| I was taken by the noise on the wing. | |
| And by the time I reached across to the other side, our radars are set up on different ranges. | |
| You can have them, and I believe because it was mid-Atlantic and we were far, I would have had at least one of them on a 24-mile range. | |
| But this object would have gone so quickly across 24-mile range that it would have been there for fractions of a second. | |
| And the thing that people report to me who've seen things, not at sea, I mean, I know that there are cases at sea, not as many as you get in the air and on the land, but the two things that people say are it's the light, well, the three things, the light, the speed, and the silence that get you. | |
| Those are the things that set it apart, whatever it might be, the phenomena apart, from something run of the mill, because most things make a noise. | |
| Even the ship makes a noise, although it's very quiet. | |
| And this didn't. | |
| No, and another thing that I thought was also interesting, after I started to acknowledge this and I'd said it to a couple of friends, and then I was with some other seafarers, and we hadn't seen each other for many, many, many years. | |
| And we met in Glasgow, and the conversation came up as to have any of us seen anything a bit strange and a bit weird? | |
| And I started to tell my story and to say, actually, I have. | |
| And I regaled the tale, as I've just mentioned it just now. | |
| And then one of my friends was looking a bit uncomfortable. | |
| One of my other seafarer friends, he was working on oil tankers and he'd been tankers his whole life and he'd just recently gone shoreside and kind of changed slightly his career. | |
| But as I was telling my story, I could see that something's not quite right there. | |
| And he had a few seconds of silence afterwards. | |
| And he then described the same two lights. | |
| And he asked if the lights were beside each other or one ahead of the other. | |
| And I realized that he also had something. | |
| I said, go on, please, what did you? | |
| And he said, I also haven't really talked about it. | |
| I'm a little uncomfortable about it. | |
| But actually, I saw exactly the same. | |
| The same two lights, the same beam, one forward of the other, and in the same crossing over Atlantic area sometime. | |
| Not the same time of, not in the same year, not at the same time at all, but several years apart, but almost identical sighting in a very similar part of the world. | |
| So like a lot of these things, we don't have definitive answers. | |
| We're still asking the questions, and maybe in our lifetimes, we're never going to get the answers, but there are a number of possibilities that could be some kind of over-the-horizon technology for military uses, knowing what's out there that we simply don't classify, we don't know about it. | |
| It might be that it's not from here, it's come from somewhere or another dimension or something. | |
| We don't know that either. | |
| There are almost more questions than answers. | |
| At the end of it all, looking back on it then, how do you feel? | |
| It just sounds like there's bafflement there. | |
| Yeah, a bit of confusion. | |
| I mean, something that you can't explain. | |
| So something that you're seeing that isn't explained by current known technology. | |
| So yeah, just a bit of confusion. | |
| And for that reason, probably when asked, I just blankly denied, said, no, haven't really experienced anything, haven't seen anything. | |
| Rather than get into a conversation about what it could have been or to be questioned about what did you actually see or various bits of doubt that can sneak in, just easier just to say, haven't seen anything. | |
| I can understand that. | |
| Relate to it totally. | |
| You wanted to leave those cans of worms closed for the foreseeable. | |
| I'm pleased that you're talking about it now. | |
| Thank you for telling me about it, and I'm grateful to your colleague for also telling me about it. | |
| And, you know, from what might be extraterrestrial, possibly, or, you know, military secret, whatever, back to the high seas, and I know that you've got a job to do here. | |
| You're doing it phenomenally well. | |
| You know, I haven't... | |
| And you always hear somebody who's got a gripe about it. | |
| I observe people as you will. | |
| I haven't heard anyone say anything that's anything of a problem with this. | |
| All of the talk About it, and that's how I feel: is that this ship works like absolute clockwork. | |
| There's obviously a lot going on behind the scenes, but you don't see it. | |
| And anything that people want is delivered. | |
| Almost, they've got to think it. | |
| From my point of view, doing the show, there have been a couple of things that I've needed, not very many. | |
| And sometimes in other places, you've had to double-check to make sure that it's been done. | |
| I have never, with those things on this ship, had to double-check anything. | |
| It's always happened. | |
| And that's a credit to you and your team. | |
| And thank you very much for hosting me, Alan. | |
| No problem. | |
| It's an absolute pleasure. | |
| As long as you didn't ever get exposed to the feet, you know, of the swan, you know, on the top of the water. | |
| It's all moving underneath. | |
| But all of the stuff that happens behind the scenes is what you don't need to see or know about. | |
| But yeah, it just works. | |
| There's a whole team here of very organized, interested, and very genuine people who want everybody on board to have an amazing experience. | |
| And it is a privilege and it's an honor to be here working with such a fine team and a fine group of people. | |
| Because I know at the end what our focus is, is to deliver and for you and everybody else to walk away having had an amazing holiday. | |
| And that's what we need. | |
| What will surprise people, maybe those who don't cruise, and if you don't, I recommend that you do, and I would recommend that you do this one. | |
| And I don't have to say that, but I'm saying it because it's been that kind of experience for me. | |
| The ratios, there are 800 crew, and at the moment we have around 2,000 passengers. | |
| So that's a very high ratio of crew to people. | |
| And that's why this works. | |
| Yeah, and that's us being pretty much full as well. | |
| I mean, we're almost a full vessel, but you rarely get the feeling that the vessel is full, and you can easily find yourself areas around the vessel where you get your own space and you get your own places, and you very quickly learn where there's more folk at certain hours and certain times. | |
| You just adjust your schedule accordingly. | |
| That's exactly what I've done. | |
| Alan, thank you very much. | |
| You're very welcome. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Captain's Log, the last day for me, November the 7th, 2022. | |
| And the unexplained cruise has come to an end. | |
| I was on stage last night until nearly one o'clock with Medium Claire Broad, who was doing a first for me and a first for this cruise line, a demonstration of mediumship that I think went pretty well for the people who were there. | |
| At the moment, I'm looking out over Grand Canaria. | |
| Of course, those hill ranges, some of them are black as coal and the sun is beating down here. | |
| And in the port, just looking across, I see the Greenpeace ship is here, the Arctic. | |
| I can't quite see the second word, but it's the Arctic something. | |
| The Arctic Sunrise, that's what it is with the Greenpeace logo. | |
| And the port is looking, well, it's another day here, isn't it? | |
| Another day in paradise. | |
| They're getting on with business here. | |
| So my job today is to unwind for one day. | |
| There hasn't been a moment in the last, what is it, eight days? | |
| I've lost track of time where I haven't had to be somewhere and do something. | |
| So today, oh boy, is quietly for me. | |
| And, you know, I was just sort of reflecting that a year ago, I was at home and I was a virtual hermit at the back end of two years, very nearly, of doing the unexplained from home and never seeing anybody. | |
| And a year later, here I am at sea on a ship with 2,000 people having this experience. | |
| My thanks for all of it, and I don't have to say this, it's not required. | |
| My thanks to the Morella team. | |
| Adrian, who had the idea, one of the directors who was a fan of the unexplained, I didn't know that until he contacted me, and I wasn't sure whether I wanted to do it. | |
| But Adrian persuaded me, and I'm glad he did. | |
| And the team on board here, for the guests, the passengers here, couldn't do enough to help and make it right. | |
| It's been an exceptional and humbling experience. | |
| And I've never quite experienced anything. | |
| And I've been lucky enough, certainly in my days with Chris Tarrant on Capitol Radio, to travel the world, but never quite experienced anything like this. | |
| And you know that feeling that you get after a period of hard work where you've had to concentrate all the time and you just let go? | |
| It's how I am this morning. | |
| So that's it. | |
| My thanks to all of the speakers. | |
| Claire brought the medium, Dr. David Whitehouse, former BBC Space and Science editor, who was superb. | |
| As was Nick Pope, as was Dr. Melvin J. Willen on the Enfield Poltergeist. | |
| A few people have asked me whether I can put their presentations here online. | |
| Well, no, of course I can't, because, you know, they're presentations that belong to each of the speakers. | |
| And, you know, that's not something that I would be allowed to do. | |
| But it's been a great experience, and I hope that you've enjoyed the captain's UFO story and the interview with Nick Pope and the Daily Diary. | |
| And it's back to business tomorrow for me when I fly out of Tenerife, which is our next port of call, so I won't see Tenerife. | |
| I'll just pack and go. | |
| And then I'll be home late tomorrow night. | |
| And then I start setting up the next edition of The Unexplained on TV and the podcast. | |
| We're back to it. | |
| So there. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| More great guests in the pipeline here at the home of the unexplained, which just happens to be on a ship at the moment, the Morella Explorer. | |
| Until next, we meet very soon. | |
| My name is Howard Hughes at Grand Canaria in the Canary Islands. | |
| Until next, we meet, please stay safe. | |
| Please stay calm. | |
| Above all, please stay in touch. | |
| Thank you very much from Grand Canaria. |