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May 28, 2023 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:00:30
Edition 726 - Phill Webster
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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, hoping that everything is good with you, I'm seeing a really heartwarming sight outside my little window at the moment.
I am seeing the trees gently sway in what looks like a summer breeze.
I'm not going to start singing Isley Brothers style, by the way, but it's just so nice out there.
There is not a cloud anywhere in the sky.
And the only thing I can see are the trails from jet liners going backwards and forwards to Heathrow Airport.
So really nice here.
Thank you for all of your nice emails and communications.
Shout out to Lou in North Gower in Canada.
Lou, nice to hear from you.
Thanks very much for a very interesting email, Lou.
And always happy to do a shout out when a shout-out is required, as they say.
So life goes on with me.
I'm a little achy today because I spent a good portion of yesterday and the day before doing some garage clearance, right?
So I had to get rid of an awful lot of accumulated stuff.
And I'm talking about a quarter of a century of accumulated stuff.
And, you know, there's more to go.
But I had to get a trip to the tip, which these days you have to book.
So I did that.
And then I had somebody to help me.
I booked somebody, never used them before, who came and did some of the work with me yesterday.
And in fact, I ended up doing most of the heavy lifting.
And today, because I'm not used to that kind of thing, I used to be able to do loads of this stuff.
Maybe you're the same.
But today, I'm paying the price for the physical exertion and all the boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes and things that I'd forgotten about for years.
So the only thing that I would advise you to do, and fate intervened with me when I had the fire here that I'm still and will be for months, I think, you know, dealing with the consequences of, you know, just take a look at the things that you accumulate in life and get rid of the ones that you don't need, I think would be the best advice that I could possibly offer at this stage.
But, you know, who am I to do that?
Lovely to hear from you.
Thank you very much for all of your emails.
The guest on this edition is a guy who's an actor who's been in movies with the likes of Sliced Alone and Benedict Cumberbatch.
But he's also, I guess, would you call him a medium spiritual teacher?
I'm going to ask him how he'd define himself.
He's got a new book out that seems to be doing very well on Amazon.
It's called Letting Glow, which I think is a great title.
And he's also got another one in the works that will be released in January 2024.
So very organized guy.
His name is Phil Webster, writer, actor, spiritual teacher.
After losing his mother in 2021, he realized that he'd been dismissing spiritual calls to action his entire life.
One particular incident that he writes about in his debut book, this is the one we're going to be talking about, spurred this call to action above all the others.
He's been around the world, really, this guy.
He's been trained and interacted with indigenous shamans from North and South America and known some people that I know and have spoken with.
My good friend Claire Broad, the medium, Gordon Smith in Scotland and James Van Praag, three people who've been on this show, and Claire, of course, who came on the Unexplained Cruise last year and was absolutely amazing.
And I'll have some more news on that front and about Claire very soon here.
Thank you very much to Adam, my webmaster, for his continued hard work, and thank you to you for being part of this.
If you want to communicate with me, lovely to hear from you.
Guest suggestions, welcome.
Anything you want to see, go to the website theunexplained.tv.
Follow the link and you can send me an email from there.
Okay, I think that's all I have to say at this point.
Quite enough, you would probably say.
Let's get to the guest on this edition across London, Phil Webster.
And we're going to talk about his life experience and his book, Letting Glow.
Phil, thank you for doing this.
Thank you, Howard.
It's a pleasure to be here and an honor.
I'm a fan of the show.
Oh, that's kind of you.
How long have you been listening?
On and off for a few years now, most particularly in the last couple of years since I've already delved into the whole sort of spiritual aspects of life.
You know, like you, and I feel a kind of affinity with you because my approach to these things is not as others is, or others are.
I find that I look at things as a journalist.
I take a balanced view.
And you have another life beyond this too, the life that involves what you might loosely term acting.
So I think, you know, we're both kind of people who have a dual role in this thing.
I'm the journalist who does all of this.
And you're the guy, you know, we've all got to make a living.
So you do a bit of, I say a bit of acting, but some of the stuff you've done is, by the standards of most of us, pretty damn remarkable.
Coming into contact with the likes of Sly Stallone and Benedict Cumberbatch.
You know, it doesn't happen for most of us.
Stallone was a highlight for me, I must say, growing up in the 80s.
That was quite an intimidating experience.
Yeah, my job was to stare at him as he walked into a nightclub like I was going to beat him up, which is quite hilarious, obviously.
But yeah, that was a lot of fun.
You've had quite a life, and I want to get into that story.
The book that we're going to discuss mainly is your current book, Letting Glow, which is kind of a life story, but also there is a moral to the life story, and there's a list of takeout points or takeaway points for people within that.
But I see, I always look at the Amazon reviews for anybody that I speak to.
If they've got the book out on Amazon, it's always worth going to look.
And on the Amazon UK site, you've got five.
That doesn't sound like a lot, but the book has only been out a few weeks.
And all of them, apart from one, are five star.
And the one that isn't five star is four star.
So I think that's pretty good.
It's a good start, yeah.
In terms of sales and things like that, which weren't obviously my focus when I wrote it, I think it spent a good month in the top 10 of the new releases in that supernatural category.
So yeah, let's see.
I think people can relate to a life story, and this is, of necessity, it is your life story, as well as, as we say, something that is replete with takeaway points.
How do we start With this, you appear to me, and I'm trying to find the right words for this, and I hope that these are not the wrong words.
You had not an easy childhood.
I'm going to hesitate to call it a troubled childhood, but it wasn't easy, was it?
It wasn't an easy one.
It wasn't the worst.
People definitely have been through a lot worse.
Just the sort of, I think, that era of families disintegrating, my parents' divorced, stuff like that.
I had a stepfather that wasn't my biggest fan, which I mentioned in the book.
It's kind of funny when I look back on it, almost regret it because I don't really need to be pouring all that out, but I was kind of just trying to sort of place where I was at that time and then introducing these esoteric events as they popped up.
But yeah, I mean, it was, yeah, it was particularly difficult, I suppose, mostly based around not having a good relationship with my stepdad.
But I think that's quite a common experience for people.
I think it is.
Reading between the lines of the book and even more than reading between the lines, reading what's in the book.
It seems that your stepfather, who died when he was 50 and you were 14, you didn't have a good relationship with him.
He didn't have a great relationship with your mother.
It seems that it was abusive.
Somewhat.
I mean, more.
So my biological father was definitely, he was a heavy drinker and she really bore the brunt of it.
And then this other man that stepped in was more, I think it was more sort of psychologically abusive, but she was just kind of of that era where she thought she was doing the right thing by having a man around and sort of just keeping a roof over her head and things like that.
But yeah, he passed away when I was in my early teens, which without hopefully sounding too horrific at the time to me was almost, it felt like a blessing.
I mean, I wouldn't have wished him to die or anything, but with him out of the picture, it kind of loosened up my, you know, the reins on me a bit.
Yeah, it seems to me like it was a sort of liberation.
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
But then at that age, again, and in that era, I kind of just, you know, went off the rails slightly like a lot of teenagers tend to do.
So, yeah.
And you seem to seek escape solace in the movies.
Yeah, definitely.
That had always been something for me growing up as a kid.
I was always obsessed with films.
And yeah, it was a lot easier to sort of escape into a film or a book in those days.
There wasn't really any mention of the internet at that point.
Yeah, so it was always kind of, yeah, my escape was definitely always in a story somewhere.
Yeah.
When and how did you realize that you might be a little different from everybody else, if you want to put it that way?
So that's the first time I've heard it put like that.
Well, it's funny because like you said at the intro, there's so much sort of ground covered in the book with these esoteric events that I mentioned.
And they did start coming up as a kid.
But then I'm talking every now and again, every few years, something would happen.
And then with hindsight and getting older and what have you, I would question it.
Like, did that really happen?
Or was it imagination or wishful thinking as a kid or all of those kind of things?
So there did seem to be somewhat paranormal events happening around the house that I remember.
And then a couple of more notable events, such as astral projection at one point.
But then again, there were long spaces of just practical living.
You know, I wasn't walking around thinking about this stuff all the time.
But I would just look back and think, well, that was odd.
Did that really happen?
And particularly with the astral projection thing.
And then in recent years, well, the last couple of years, a couple of things happened that made me go back and re-evaluate all of those things and think, well, yeah, it seems like they were a thing.
And yeah, it seems to have taken me towards this path that I'm on now.
I'm supposed to know, and I don't think I could give a dictionary perfect definition.
You talk about that early experience with astral travel, astral projection.
Can you talk to me about what happened?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, it was pretty rudimentary.
It was very short-lived.
I grew up on the Isle of Wight, which, as you know, is a very rural place at the south of England.
And there wasn't that much to do.
I remember browsing a bookshop one day and finding a book on lucid dreaming.
And then right next to that book was one on astral projection.
And I was thinking, okay, that sounds interesting.
And I browsed through the book without buying it because I think I was 15 or something at the time and didn't have any money.
So I just read as much as possible.
And then I went home that night and attempted to do this thing called astral projection.
You know, I just thought it sounded cool at the time.
I thought the way I saw it at that age was your ghost body leaves your physical body and you can go flying around the neighborhood, right?
So I thought, well, that sounds fun and attempted to do it.
And I just laid on the bed and just thought very intently about getting up without actually getting up.
And I couldn't tell you how long I laid there, but sooner or later, I felt this separation and this sensation of floating above my body.
And all of a sudden, I could feel as though I were in two different places.
I was still laying on the bed.
I had this very pleasant sensation of being above the bed, floating above.
But then something that I didn't count on was I suddenly had a third perspective from the side of the room.
And I could see this all happening.
I could see myself on the bed and above the bed from this conscious state at the side of the room, which the book hadn't said anything about and completely threw me off.
So I just kind of snapped myself out of it immediately.
And that was that, really.
I remember going to school the next day telling people about it.
And they were like, yeah, okay, sure.
And you're convinced.
I'm not wanting to pour cold water over it or anything like that because I'm fascinated.
But you're convinced that you weren't asleep.
Well, that was the thing.
So that night, I remember as I sort of tried to bring myself back around, every time I would try to go back to sleep, this separation would happen again and to the point that it started scaring me.
And then I think I must have eventually fallen asleep.
But then some years later, so I was watching One of the UK's staple TV shows this morning.
And somebody called in, and they basically described the same experience.
Apparently, it happened to them just out of the blue, involuntarily.
And it was the first time that I'd heard anyone describe this looking at the whole situation from the side of the room, which completely took me by surprise.
I hadn't found anything about that on it since.
And it kind of validated it for me that, okay, well, that was what happened.
But then again, what do you do with that?
So it's not like it really served me in any other way.
And it had been quite a freaky experience for me at that age.
So I just let it be.
Right.
But you must have thought, I mean, look, I know that you were kind of questing at the time.
So a part of you will have wanted this to happen, of course.
You bought the book and you went through the steps and that's what happened.
But you must have asked the question, what's happening to me?
I guess that's it.
Absolutely.
I just didn't really know what to do with it.
And then as I got older, I think through my late 20s to mid-30s, I became sort of deeply cynical.
The environment that I was working in at that point wasn't a very healthy one.
I was running bars and clubs.
And I kind of just, all of my sort of deeper beliefs took a back seat.
And yeah, looking back on that, I probably wouldn't have believed that it was actually, that it did actually happen.
It's only since, in these last couple of years, since exploring these things and having more experiences similar to that, that I've come to the conclusion that, yeah, that probably did happen as I remembered it in the first place.
Down the years from the beginning on this show, one of our regular guests is Karen Dolman in California, the person who writes books and experiences, many things involving the Ouija board.
You, I hesitate to say, played with that, but you used a Ouija board quite early on, didn't you?
Yeah, it's funny talking about these things.
It sounds like I was doing something every week like this.
But again, these were quite few and far between.
But yeah, around the same time, mid-teens, we started messing around with a Ouija board, quite a bunch of us in someone's room.
And we didn't really trust each other at that age.
And again, that era.
We weren't that smart, I suppose.
And no one was really sure what happened, but two of us really took a shine to it and we continued to use it over the following weeks.
And it seemed like we really did tap into something.
But what that something was, I couldn't say for sure.
I think at that time I didn't perceive it as a, or afterwards didn't perceive it as a positive event.
And I could put that down to maybe, again, fragile egos and not really sure what we were doing.
Maybe it was just our own energy that we were bringing to this thing.
But it did feel as though something shifted in the room and physically passed through us, which was, again, unexpected.
I was thinking at that age that maybe to ask something to come in, that a candle would blow out or the lights would flicker or something like that.
But my friend and myself, we both had this sensation of something passing through us, like an energy, which I've since experienced again in the last couple of years, but from a different, well, from not doing a Ouija board.
But yeah, again, something happened, but time would go on and then I would sort of question if the whole experience was actually genuine.
But, you know, something that can shake you.
I remember something that happened to me when I was 24 and I got to know a man who's quite a well-known medium these days.
And he took me to a couple of friends of his and we were sitting there having some coffee.
And I think there were maybe a couple of glasses of wine, but we were just sitting talking like you do.
And I've never forgotten that we were on sofas.
I think there were two parallel sofas.
And we were sitting there, a group of people.
And I can remember the temperature dropped at knee height.
And there was almost like a mist at that height.
And I was convinced at that time that something was happening.
Something had been brought on by this group of people.
But over the years, I've found it very hard to describe and talk about.
And I've never quite forgotten that.
So I think it is possible, although I don't understand the mechanism, to let something in.
So your description of something traveling through you chimed with me for that reason, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
It was, at the time, again, it was a scary experience when this thing actually happened.
Then that was the end of it.
We were done.
We were, okay, no, we're not doing this anymore.
And I remembered it continued, that strange sensation would just continue for a couple of weeks after we stopped doing it.
And again, it just, in hindsight, I'm not really sure how to sort of put my finger on it.
But perhaps, and again, just looking into these things now, perhaps I was just awakening a sort of dormant spiritual energy around myself.
I don't think it was a demon waiting to pounce, as a movie would have us believe or something like that.
But still, it was quite a profound, overwhelming experience at that age or any age, I suppose.
Well, I suppose people, having looked into this stuff for years, and if you believe in this kind of thing, talking to my listener now, if you open a door, don't be surprised if something steps through it.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it.
Okay.
You ended up living in Miami and then some time after that going to Finland to live.
How do those experiences play into your story?
Yeah, I was always kind of desperate to get away from the Isle of Wight, not knocking the Isle of Wight.
I enjoy going back there now.
No, I lived and worked in that area, so I know the Isle of Wight well.
I love the Isle of Wight, especially West White.
Yeah, it is a beautiful place.
And as I've got older, I have a completely different opinion on the place.
But at the time, it just felt like almost imprisoned, being imprisoned there.
Well, it is an island, and sometimes it's difficult to be young in a place like that.
Sorry, I jumped in.
No, that's it.
But I just felt that my options were quite limited.
And yeah, around the age Of 25, I had an opportunity to go and work in Miami, which I jumped on, and very much enjoyed the experience.
I really felt very comfortable there.
When I first arrived there, I remember feeling like I'd got this sensation of being there before to take it down a slightly mystical path there.
But I ended up with moving to Finland because of my Finnish girlfriend at the time, which was a very different experience.
And I ended up staying in Finland for 20 years.
So I didn't dislike it.
I got very comfortable there.
So it's a very comfortable way of living there.
And yeah, just through not really ever knowing what I really wanted to do, did a number of jobs.
I was a bartender for a while, just sort of fell into it, teaching English to kids, stuff like that.
Just kind of whatever would come up that I could do around not being able to speak Finnish very well.
So it's an impossible language to say.
And then ended up as a personal trainer over there as well.
And in 2017, eventually came back to the UK.
Didn't you fall into what my school teachers used to call bad ways?
Didn't you get into the drink a bit there?
Definitely.
Yeah, so I think just through being in the environment, I was working as a bartender just for the sake of doing something.
And it seemed like a relatively easy job to do at the time.
I wasn't looking for anything that was too taxing.
And I think I was late 20s at this point.
And then just through staying in that environment, I just kind of graduated to run in bars and clubs.
Definitely not management material, but I just sort of fell into it through location, basically.
And yeah, along with that, it kind of sneaks up on you.
You know, in that environment, you're working till five in the morning.
And at one point, you know, you'll have a drink after work.
And at this point, it's six in the morning.
And then that'll turn into a couple more drinks.
And then you'll have a couple before you're finishing work, before you know it, you know, you're drinking at work and drinking after work.
And then that'll turn into an after party, which goes to midday the next day.
And I kind of fell into that situation for quite a few years.
It's very hard for a lot of people to get out of.
How did you?
Yeah, I mean, you don't sort of see it.
And you think it's normal.
So you're around people in that environment.
You're pretty much sleeping all day because of the hours.
So then all you're dealing with are people that are essentially sort of looking for a bit of escape, like by going out, getting drunk, stuff like that.
And you see a lot of stuff in that environment.
A lot of people are fighting.
You see sort of partners cheating on each other, stuff like that.
And it developed a very cynical, or I developed a very cynical outlook just through being around that at the time.
And I wasn't that great a person myself.
I didn't hopefully doing anything too horrific.
But yeah.
That's an interesting thing and a very honest thing to say about yourself.
Yeah, I mean, just in hindsight, like I say, it wasn't anything that terrible, but just sort of cultivated this lifestyle of somewhat dishonesty.
And it just was a bit of a toxic environment to be in, I suppose.
So you got lost.
Essentially, you got lost.
How did you get found?
Yeah, I discovered the gym, like the most basic thing.
And I hired a personal trainer.
And I thought, well, that was like, he seemed to do a really good job.
And I noticed physical results very quickly.
And that sort of piqued my interest.
And then I trained to become a personal trainer and very much got into the whole health and fitness thing, which took me away from the, I still ended up working in that environment, but on the side, I would work as a personal trainer.
And that kind of took me more towards a healthier lifestyle.
And then, yeah, eventually just coming back to the UK in my 40s, where you can't really continue like that at that age.
But you had in 2021, I mean, it's two years ago now, something that I went through some years ago and it stays with you all your life.
You lost your mother.
That seems to be a bit of a turning point for you.
Excuse me.
Yeah.
So that was really where this whole, well, where the book came from.
Definitely the catalyst to write the book.
So yeah, we'd all just been through the pandemic and I don't need to dredge that up again for everybody.
But at the tail end of it, I think it was the Christmas here in the UK, they told us that we could spend Christmas with our families and things like that.
And then they did a U-turn, they, I mean the government, sorry.
And my mum was all set to come up to London for Christmas.
She was still on the Isle of Wight and she'd been living there alone for 20 years or so since I'd left.
So I hadn't seen her for a couple of months because I was trying to do the right thing and keep away where you should and things like that.
But we would FaceTime every day.
And I think this was the third, probably the third FaceTime call we'd had that day.
It was mid-January in 2021.
And the one thing that I must sort of lay down here is that where she lived, I kind of knew everyone that lived around there, knew all the neighbors.
Again, we were in a lockdown, so nobody should have been around and things like that.
She did have some nurses that would come by to check that she was taking her meds and things like that.
But this phone call that we had at this point was, it was quite late at night.
It was 9.30, 10 o'clock.
So there shouldn't have been anyone there.
But when she answered the FaceTime call, there was a man beside her.
And I saw him long enough to be able to describe him.
He had thin and grey hair, glasses, quite gaunt looking and probably looked in his late 60s, I would say.
Which kind of shocked me because, again, I didn't recognize him and there shouldn't have been anyone in the house with him because we were somewhat in the thick of COVID once again.
So you saw...
You saw an apparition on a FaceTime screen?
Well, I didn't, yeah, and again, in hindsight, but at the time I didn't take it like that.
You know, my mum was in her mid-70s.
I expected her to be around for a few more years at least.
She was in reasonably good health other than a few age-related health problems that she had.
So again, this was, yeah, it's hard to say.
I just was shocked that someone was there.
So as she kind of moved the phone and went to sit down, he went out of shot.
And I asked, I said, okay, who's that?
And she said, who's what?
So that threw me off.
And I said, well, I just saw somebody who was the guy that's in the house.
And she said, oh, no, there hasn't been anyone here since lunchtime.
And I started sort of rambling about her day, which just left me a little bit confused.
Did you describe the man to your mother?
I didn't.
It just kind of threw me off.
And she was talking about her day while I was just thinking, okay, I just saw someone.
How do I approach this?
I didn't, I suppose my mind maybe did go to the supernatural, but I just didn't know how to, it didn't really just sit with me properly.
I wasn't quite sure.
I could see him that I'd seen him long enough that I could describe him.
But then I thought, well, I must have been mistaken because she wasn't acting like there was anyone there.
And I could usually tell when someone was there because her whole demeanor would change.
She would start speaking more politely and she wouldn't be herself.
And it was something that would drive me nuts when I was younger.
You couldn't get a straight conversation out of her.
So I just interrupted her and I said, look, mum, sorry, but I just saw someone.
You're telling me that there's no one in the house.
And she just dismissed it.
She was like, no, there's not been anyone here since lunchtime.
And again, just started talking.
And, you know, I can't 100% say that there was absolutely no one in the house.
I wasn't there.
But just knowing her routine, knowing everyone that lived around there, again, it was a lockdown.
And the way that she was reacting, I believe that there was no one there.
And we spoke for perhaps 45 minutes and she didn't acknowledge anyone.
Nobody said goodbye.
It was a small house.
It was a council house.
And we wrapped the call up and I just kind of thought, well, I don't really think much more of it.
I just thought, well, I must have been mistaken.
You're going to hate me for this question.
But a lot of people are going to be thinking and they will email me to say so.
Why didn't you take a screenshot?
It wasn't quick enough.
I'm sorry.
I wasn't quick enough.
He was there right at the start of the call.
And then Ashie kind of, she would always have a, just to sort of be talk about it practically, she would always have a phone charging in the hallway on the floor plugged into the wall.
So as she picked it up, this guy was kind of leaning in from the other side as she leaned into the call.
And then as she moved around, he just went out of shot.
And then she took the phone into the other room and sat down.
So whatever it was was very three-dimensional to you.
It wasn't just a fleeting glimpse.
It was much more than that.
Yeah.
And when I would call her and the nurses would occasionally be there earlier in the day and they always would finish, the latest I ever saw them there was six o'clock at night because their shift would finish them.
And they would just kind of go and check on her and make sure she took her meds all right and make her a cup of tea or something like that.
And like I say, this was 9.30, 10 at night.
So I just assumed that it was one of them because occasionally they would answer the phone for her if she wasn't nearby or something and then pass the phone over.
And I was just, I remember being instantly annoyed because I just, I was keeping away from her.
And then this guy just showed up not wearing a mask properly.
And that's another thing I should mention.
He was wearing a surgical mask, which threw me off further if we're talking ghosts, because why would a ghost be wearing one of the surgical masks like in solidarity or what?
But he wasn't wearing it properly.
It was kind of pulled down beneath his nose, which instantly annoyed me.
I was thinking, okay, well, what good is he doing being there and not following the rules properly, right?
And so that kind of just made it even more confusing when she said that, no, there was no one there.
But yeah, it's a strange one.
And then, of course, the next morning, I received a phone call from one of the neighbors that they couldn't get in and she'd had a heart attack and had passed.
So the whole event just took a different spin completely.
Here I am jumping in at this part of the story, but it obviously had a big impact on you because if she wasn't aware of somebody being there, and if there was somebody there, and you can describe them very clearly, and sadly, tragically, your mother died the next day, it seems that what you might have seen...
That's it.
I just didn't really know what to do with it.
Obviously, the grief then hit me, well, the shock of my mum passing initially.
So I told a couple of people this story and they sort of dismissed it as though it was just part of the grieving process.
But I had to point out that there was before that, I wasn't expecting that she was going to pass away the next day.
And it kind of played on my mind that, well, if I had have interpreted this as if we're talking ghosts or spirit guys or what have you, then I should have gone down there if it was a warning or I could have spent her last moments with her, but I just dismissed it as I don't know what, you know.
Well, I sometimes, look, I went through this myself with my own mother.
The end can be close, and yet the last people to be aware of that are the people who were closest to the one who is facing the end.
And that's what happened to me.
Sounds like that was exactly your situation, because you didn't leap in the car and get on the ferry and go there because you didn't think that was the situation.
No, that's it.
And in hindsight, just looking at photos of her from the start of the year till the end of the year, then it seemed quite clear that she'd very much deteriorated over that year of isolating at home.
I don't think she was eating properly, and there was some confusion around her meds and stuff like that.
She was out of her routine.
So yeah, then it seems, well, obvious after the fact.
But at the time, she would always bounce back from things.
So I just thought that that would be the case again.
So what happened then?
Obviously, you had the grief to deal with that never really goes away fully.
Of course, it doesn't.
You learn to live with it, but there's always a degree of grief about it as we get on with our daily lives.
But you're going through this experience.
We all have to go through it.
It's a horrible experience, but there's another dimension to it because you believe you've seen something connected to it.
So what did you do about it?
Well, that was it.
So I didn't, it just kind of sat at the back of my mind for a few months before I really processed it.
It was definitely there, And I was telling people about it, but I was going to mix reactions depending on people's beliefs and stuff like that.
I immediately started working on a film that I'd very much been looking forward to working on because it was a good stretch of four months of work.
It was one of those big superhero Marvel movies.
And for the first two months, I barely interacted with anyone.
I was just kind of sat with my head down reading books.
Were you an extra?
Yeah, we were sort of like a heightened extra.
There was a bunch of us that were playing Warriors on this big Marvel Doctor Strange movie.
So it was a sequel to Doctor Strange, actually.
I'll mention that because it's relevant to something else.
And here I go jumping again because I have to ask this question.
How do you get work like that?
Yeah.
So initially, just I won't go too deeply into it.
When I first came back to the UK in 2017, I went to drama school in my mid-40s or early 40s, I should say.
And just thought I've always been interested in film, so acting seemed like the logical way to get into it.
I haven't got any education in film directing or editing or anything like that.
So it wasn't really from a desperate ego, I need to be seen kind of approach, but more this seemed like a practical way to get into the film industry.
So yeah, I ended up getting an agent, getting a few small roles with dialogue and things like that.
And then I joined a lot of agencies that get you extra work.
And yeah, the Doctor Strange, we were something called Special Action.
So we had a lot of running around and shooting arrows and things like this to do.
Um, It was an experience.
It was a big, big set and all the money that goes into those things.
But at the time, I was very much just, my mum had passed days before I started on this film.
So I wasn't really taking it in and enjoying it as I would have done before.
So just kind of was going through the motions with it.
But there were a large group of people there.
And a couple of months, I suppose, into it, I told someone this story about my mum passing and what had happened the night before.
And she was very into this whole esoteric stuff, which I must mention, had fallen by the wayside for me.
I hadn't really, I definitely wasn't on a spiritual path or didn't really have any interest in supernatural things or anything like that.
I'd been living a very practical life, I suppose.
And she said, well, you should ask for a sign.
So I thought, okay, sure.
So at the time, we just moved into a new apartment with my partner.
I have to say, she actually moved us into the apartment because I was on this film every day.
So I'm very grateful for that.
But I was unboxing a bunch of Blu-rays and I was putting them very methodically away.
And I noticed that one was missing.
And I had all of these superhero films and stuff like that.
And I must mention that this morning I asked for a sign.
I said, okay, mum, if you're around, give me a sign.
And I went about the day and packing these things away.
And then I noticed that the one Blu-ray that was missing was Doctor Strange.
So the original movie to the one that I was working on at the time.
So I thought, well, that's kind of odd.
And anyway, just sort of carried on putting things away.
And then later in the day, I found this Blu-ray sitting on top of a pile of books.
And the book underneath it, the corner was poking out.
And the author's name, which was Maureen, was there, which was my mum's name.
And then the book underneath that, the corner of the title was poking out, which said living.
So I'd got Doctor Strange, Maureen, and Living about an hour after I last was signed.
And, you know, this could be taken as coincidence or something like that, but I don't know.
I took it as, okay, okay, maybe that's it.
Well, look, I've had a million things happen like that, so I'm not going to knock that at all.
Sounds like it might be.
And you're convinced that you didn't arrange things that way.
You don't remember doing that?
No, it was just a random pile of books, and this Blu-ray shouldn't have been there.
Like, all of the Blu-rays were in one box.
This isn't the most sensational story anyone's ever told on.
No, but it's relevant to where you were at at the time, and that's why it's important, yeah?
Yeah, I just thought, how strange, you know, that out of all of these Blu-rays that are now obsolete because we've got streaming services, but I've got a lot of them, that that was the one that was out of place, and then that it was on top of a book with my mum's name poking out and living beneath that one.
And that's all I could see was that was the movie, her name, and then living.
And a couple of hours after I'd asked for a sign.
So I thought, okay, maybe, maybe, let's take it like that.
Okay, now, if this had been me, I couldn't have left it at that.
What did you do?
I did start looking into mediumship.
So one of the first books I came across, and I'd never looked into mediumship before.
I think we've, well, I know we've got a connection here, was a book by Claire Broad, who's a good friend of yours, I believe.
Yes.
And that was odd as well, because I just picked the book up.
Actually, sorry, I say I picked the book up.
It was an audio book.
I just picked the title because it kind of appealed to me and I started to listen to it.
I didn't know anything about Claire Broad.
I didn't look her up at all.
And one of the first stories in the book, funnily enough, took place right across the street from where I lived in Richmond Cemetery.
So something that she describes at the start of her story happened to take place across the road from where I lived.
And for all I knew, Claire was American or Australian or anything like that.
So it kind of resonated with me immediately because she was talking about my neighborhood.
So that kind of piqued my interest in mediumship.
And I listened to the whole book.
And I think within a month or so, I was walking down a street in the area where I live.
And I walked past a spiritualist church.
So I'd never really heard of these things before until reading Claire's book.
And I'd probably walk past this church 30 times or so.
And this day I had a look at the notice board and they were talking about a demonstration of mediumship, which happened every Sunday, which happens all over this country every Sunday, but never heard of this before.
So I kind of tentatively thought, I'll go along to this, but for some reason I was very skeptical about it.
Even though I wanted to believe in this and I was going there hoping to get a message from my mum, I said all of my Social media things to private and stuff like that.
I don't know how I thought that someone was going to anticipate me showing up there.
But I went along.
No money exchanges' hands or anything like that.
You just kind of join the congregation.
And a medium will stand up there and give a demonstration.
And I watched her work her way around the room.
And as she did, my skepticism kind of started like vanishing as she got confirmation after confirmation.
And eventually she came to me and she started talking about a young man that just, I wasn't expecting that at all.
And I had no idea who she was talking about.
And she kept on for about five minutes giving me descriptions about this guy.
And eventually the penny dropped.
And I realized that it was someone that had passed when I was in my, I think I was late teens, he was in his early 20s.
And then it all made perfect sense.
And then next she immediately started talking about me being a medium or, you know, having this connection with spirit.
And then she brought my mum through.
And that was the most profound thing.
Like the lady's accent changed.
So my mum was from Derby in the middle of the UK.
And this lady, the medium, had quite a strong London accent.
And immediately her accent changed to this northern accent or Midlands accent.
And she just said a few words about how she passed and how she was okay.
And that kind of did it for me.
It was, well, life-changing, essentially.
How would she have known that your mother wasn't from London?
Well, that's true.
Yeah.
Unless she'd asked you questions beforehand and you'd indicated that.
And I'm guessing you didn't.
No, that's it.
And there was nothing wrote on any of my social media, even though I put them all to private at this point.
But yeah, she nailed it, to be honest.
And it brought a huge amount of comfort to me for the weeks following that.
I think with all these experiences and still then I was kind of, even though I'd experienced that, I was maybe on the fence still about the whole mediumship thing.
And then sort of doubt creeps in somehow.
I think your logical brain takes over.
So I went back and had a few more confirmations.
And at some point, I ended up meeting with Claire and doing a workshop with her.
And then it started to become, okay, this seems like a real thing.
Like these people seem, they know what they're talking about.
And yeah, I kind of started down that path myself.
Well, I mean, Claire, I think I've talked about this on one of my podcasts, but she came on The Unexplained Cruise last year.
And there will be some more news about that for my listener, about what's happening this year quite soon.
But Claire was the last event on the last night of the cruise.
And it was going to be a late one.
It was going to be a seance in the big theater.
And, you know, I always love that thing, as you will know, doing acting.
There is an energy that comes to you when you step out on a stage and you have to talk to a lot of people.
Something great, you know, if you're into it, something grabs you.
And I introduced Claire.
She and I know each other well.
And I thought, I wonder how this is going to go, because we hadn't done anything like that before.
And the beginning of it was quite slow.
And I'm thinking, okay, well, it's interesting just to have this experience, but I don't think much is going to happen here.
And then suddenly something happened.
And Claire began, and I am professionally and personally very skeptical.
She began to pick particular people, including some Americans who'd flown to Europe specifically to be on that cruise, to see people like Claire and Dr. David Whitehouse.
So she, one of those people who I'd met and talked to a lot, the Americans there.
She, and Claire didn't know this.
I hadn't talked to Claire about it.
And she started to talk about the woman's father who'd been, I think, quite high ranking in the U.S. Navy.
And she described him and the work that he did.
And then there was another guy there who was from the street that I was born in in Liverpool, right?
How weird is that?
Of all the people in all the world, she went straight to him.
Again, she couldn't have known that I'd talked to this guy in a bar on the ship before that session.
She would have had no idea about that.
She and her mum were preparing for the session.
So I think Claire is pretty amazing.
And I'm going to ask you a question based on all of that then.
What did you do about all of this next?
It had been indicated to you that you might have some of this ability yourself.
What did you do?
So yeah, just going back to, sorry, I just kind of missed like almost a vital part.
When the medium did bring through this friend of mine that had passed, it was actually the friend that I used the Ouija board with when we were kids.
Yeah, yeah.
And she said, well, you've already tried to connect with spirit, which again, then the penny dropped that it was him.
I don't attribute his passing to anything to do with us using a Ouija board.
He just kind of fell in with the wrong crowd at some point.
But yeah, that just sort of further confounded me that maybe this was the path for me to look into.
And then it kind of made me look at these other events, like I say, from the past with the astral projection thing and all of that.
And then obviously what happened around my mum.
And I went to a workshop with Claire.
So again, I just finished her book and I looked into a place called the College of Psychic Studies in London, which I didn't know existed.
So the name grabbed me.
I was like, okay, there's a place that's actually called the College of Psychic Studies that's been there for a couple of hundred years, I believe.
And I went along to Claire's workshop and watched her work.
She did a brief demonstration of mediumship in the class, and then we all kind of practiced.
So this is the very first class I've ever been to of this kind of thing.
And I didn't particularly get any results myself that day.
Other people appeared to.
And then I went home that night.
So my partner was away.
She went back to Finland.
She's Finnish.
And she was seeing her parents for a week.
And I was kind of going to bed that night in a very relaxed state of mind.
We've been meditating in the class and all that kind of thing.
And I felt the energy shift in the room, which was a new thing for me since looking into this stuff.
And I thought, okay, something's up here.
And I've got a small cat who also started staring off into the corner of the room, like very intently.
And I know cats, they kind of do that thing anyway.
But I just had the mind, I thought, all right, I'm going to record this.
Something's up here.
So I just pulled out my phone and started recording the room, which I'm not in the habit of doing, just recording an empty room before bed.
And I just kind of took the cat's cue and just started filming this part of the world of the room that she was staring at.
And after about five minutes or so, I mean, this is what happened.
A glowing orb just appeared from below the bed, zigzagged around the room and took off.
And I got the whole thing on camera.
Now, did you see this with your eyes as well as with the camera?
I sort of, I did, but it came out on the camera much stronger.
I just, I saw something shift in the room, but I didn't see it as it appeared on the camera.
And I was amazed.
I was like, okay, well, somebody might argue that it could have been, and people did because I showed a couple of friends afterwards.
I showed my fiancé when she got back.
And she's very, she doesn't believe in any of this stuff, funnily enough.
And she was like, okay, well, it's dust.
And I said, it's clearly not dust.
It zigzags around the room and takes off.
And then I showed another friend of mine who said, well, that could be a light that's coming through the window.
And I was like, there's no, it couldn't be a light coming through the window.
We had a very flat roof outside the balcony door in that place.
There was no external light coming into the room.
And it kind of annoyed me because I'm not in the habit of making things up, especially to the people that know me, you know, the best.
So I kind of refrained from showing people after that.
But for me, that, again, that just happened to be, I'd been in a class the whole day trying to develop mediumship.
We'd been meditating and all these kind of things.
And then that evening, this happened to happen.
And I got the whole thing on camera.
So I don't really need anyone else's validation for it, but I appreciate people's skepticism.
I mean, I would have probably said the same thing a couple of years before.
Anything else happen?
I mean, plenty since then, just as not as tangible as that one.
But yeah, as I've been sitting in a development circle and learning about mediumship, I brought messages through for people myself and started meditating and sort of going through the process of opening myself up and then giving someone validation of someone that's passed.
And so far, I mean, this sounds like a little bit of an arrogant thing to say, but had a 100% success rate.
And I'm talking a few people.
I haven't done hundreds of readings.
I don't call myself a medium.
I'm certainly not taking any money to give anyone messages or anything like that.
But in practicing, I've just told people things that there's no way that I knew these things.
Some very specific messages.
Yeah.
You sound almost shocked about it.
I'm not quite sure how it works.
I know the process.
I know what I have to do to sort of open up, talking about spirit guides and things like that.
So I've got very deeply into meditation.
And then I write a lot about that in the book.
I know a meditation exercise is in the book.
I'm not trying to make anyone a medium through the book, but I'm just sort of documenting what worked for me.
And one of the main things is being able to step back from your thoughts and kind of observe that we're not our thoughts, that we're something external or internal to our thoughts that can observe them and just let it all go by.
And when you can get to that state, then when something else comes in, you recognize it as not being from you.
It's not part of that whole parade of madness that's going on 24-7.
And an external voice or symbol will come through.
And those have been what I've given to people that I've been sat with.
And those have been the parts that have made sense to them.
This might sound strange, but I get the impression from you that you almost feel like your life started when you got into all of this, when you came back to the UK.
And you went to drama school, then you got into all of this.
Sounds to me like your life started in your 40s.
Yeah, absolutely.
And thanks.
That's a very intuitive observation, actually, I would say.
Yeah, I've somewhat thought of it like that myself.
I definitely feel that I'm on the...
I never really found what it was I was looking for.
And as much as I would rather my mum was still here, absolutely, it feels that her passing was the catalyst to sort of send me on this journey that I possibly was always supposed to be on, just looking back over these things that had happened over the years.
You've got a book according to your website that's coming out in 2024.
So you're very, very organized.
I mean, it's the middle of 2023.
You're already planning for next year's.
One of the things that you're going to say in that book that's out in 2024 is some guidance on how you can connect with lost loved ones on a conscious level.
Now, that's interesting.
You know, there are those who say you can see, you can get impressions of them.
You can feel their presence.
They might leave you a sign, whatever.
You're talking about consciously experiencing those who've gone.
And I've never heard that before.
How does that work?
I would just, again, I feel I'm sort of tentatively saying this.
So, well, just to just go back to where the second book came from, I finished writing the first one and I felt that I'd learned so much and I'd had a lot of experiences that I had another book in me and just went straight to it, which goes a lot deeper.
And just again, it's my own subjective experiences.
So all I can say is what's worked for me.
And if people follow those, what worked for me, then presumably it should work for someone else.
But yeah, I've just through these experiences that I've had.
And of course, these are all very subjective experiences, but it's a difficult one when you, it's a knowing that it's real for yourself.
I've had too many of them now to doubt it anymore.
So I would say at a conscious level, absolutely, that I've picked up my mum, I've picked up other people's loved ones when I've given them readings.
But of course, there's no way you can really validate it other than if you are telling somebody something about someone that's passed.
That is the only way, and it's something that you could not definitively have known.
I mean, you can't give people a certificate of authenticity, it doesn't work that way.
That's it, yeah.
And I think there are those, I think there are people that are offering those certificates, but at the end of the day, they're kind of worthless.
So I don't mean to dismiss anyone's practice or teachings or anything like that.
But essentially, at the end of the day, it's just kind of an inner knowing that comes.
And I understand that that's where skepticism comes in and other people doubt it.
But it's kind of when you know, you know, as simple as it sounds.
Sounds to me like you're on a journey.
I'm fascinated to know where you think that journey might take you.
I mean, you've got to put food on the table, so that's why you do bits of acting and being extras in movies.
And that sounds really fascinating to come across famous people and be around them like that.
But it seems to me like you're, you know, I'm talking to a work in progress here.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I definitely don't know all the answers, that's for sure.
I've only really been diving into this for two years.
So as you know, there's a very strong spiritualist community in this country, and I suppose worldwide.
And I don't want to talk as though I'm stepping on anyone's toes.
I know they have a very somewhat of a strict way of going about these things.
And I'm kind of stepping in here, writing a couple of books saying that anyone can do this, which I genuinely believe anyone can do this, maybe to a deeper or lesser degree, depending on sort of how in tune with yourself you perhaps are.
But yeah, I've definitely got a lot to learn when I see other mediums.
In fact, I'm going to see Gordon Smith today in London.
Well, if you get to speak to him, please give him my regards.
I've got to speak with him again.
I love Gordon Smith.
Terrific.
Yeah, I will do, definitely.
Yes, when I watch someone like him, then I'm, okay, I'm really, I'm very much at the start of my journey.
When I've had these experiences, I'll see a couple of symbols.
I'll be able to physically describe someone that's passed.
But then when you talk about him, he's talking full names, surnames, street names, all of this evidence that he gives to people, which is amazing.
Okay.
Well, I have a little bit of the psychic in me.
Sometimes I do know things that are going to happen, and I have shocked people by telling them, but it's been a very small part of my life.
I think you're going to find a way where you use that acting experience together with what you're going through at the moment, this growing up experience that you've had and this realization that sounds very real to me.
You know, it's not going to be bells and whistles.
It's not full Technicolor.
So if people listening to this were expecting that, I don't think life is like that.
But I have a feeling that you might end up doing something, and we'll talk again if this turns out to be right, that brings together your performing and this mediumship thing.
I hope so.
Thank you.
I have a couple of talks coming up, which I'm terrified about.
I've never done actual public speaking before on a stage.
So yeah, maybe we'll go that route.
Only thing I can say, somebody who's been speaking into microphones and now has to speak into a camera, which I've been doing for just over a year, and terrified.
I hated the idea of being seen.
Amazing, really, for a guy who'd been on huge radio shows, but I loathed the idea of being seen.
And, you know, I've come to terms with it.
The best advice I ever heard was from the late Terry Wogan, you know, famous British broadcast.
Well, Irish broadcaster, forgive me.
And Terry Wogan said, be yourself.
If you can't be yourself, what are you doing this for?
And my career started improving when I ceased to care how I was coming across and whether people would like me.
And I just started to be the person that I am off the air, on the air.
So I think if you just do what you've just done, you'll be fine with that.
Thank you very much.
I'll definitely take that on board.
Yeah, definitely.
I need all the advice I can get at the moment.
What's it like working with really famous people?
Yeah, that's been interesting.
Again, my Sylvester Stallone story is as though it's not the most amazing, but that for me was a highlight.
Yeah, I've worked with Benedict Cumberbatch, a couple of TV shows with Elf.
I'm just dropping names now, forgive me.
Tom Hardy and El Fanning and people like that.
It depends what sort of capacity you're in on the set.
You get treated very differently.
When you have an actual acting role, you get a trailer and everyone's treating you very nicely, bringing you snacks and things like that.
And you can interact with other actors.
But the extra side of things, there's a definite hierarchy on the film sets there.
Does that mean they don't bother with you much?
I mean, you get treated generally well.
Yeah, it's good.
You get fed and it can be really good money.
Do the stars say good morning to you when they see you?
Some of them, not so much all of them.
Like if you're doing something that's a big crowd of people and you're part of that, then you don't really get to.
But it depends what your capacity is.
I did a TV show as an extra for a good nine months where I was a guard on a TV show called The Great.
So we were kind of escorting the main cast around in the actual TV show.
So yeah, we did interact with them a lot.
But yeah, it kind of depends where they place you.
Well, the TV shows that I used to do, I was a disembodied voice on a lot of game shows and things like the British Comedy Awards on ITV.
That makes sense.
Sometimes you don't get to talk to the big, you might see them and smile at them and wave to them in the corridor, but that's about it.
But it's an interesting experience.
I think you're on a bit of a journey.
I think we should have this conversation again.
I'm glad the book is doing well because it's nicely written and it's honest.
That's what it is.
It's honest.
And I think people can spot honesty and they can spot dishonesty.
So I think for that reason, you're on a good path here.
But what do I know?
Thank you very much.
That was very encouraging.
Thank you.
Well, I hope we covered the ground that you wanted to cover.
I've really enjoyed just talking with you.
You too, definitely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I must admit, this was a big one for me.
I'm a fan of the show.
And yeah, you've had a lot more sensational stories than mine on here.
So, yeah, I was wondering where I'll fit into it.
Well, maybe I'm going to have to write that book.
But I think if you know Claire, Claire is a great guide because Claire is not trying to convince anybody.
You know, that's not what she does.
That's not how she is.
You know, What she does is what she is.
And that is what spoke to me first about Claire.
And that's why we're friends.
So I think you're connected with a good person there.
And thank you very much indeed.
Let's just remind people, the book is called Letting Glow.
By the way, great title.
Did you come up with that title?
Yeah, I did.
It just came from one of the meditations in there.
I was trying to think of what to call it, and there was a meditation in there where I kind of used that term, and it seemed fitting as dealing with grief, which the book does somewhat, and then sort of hopefully coming out of it a bit brighter.
So yeah, it seemed like a good title.
No, I think have you got that trademark?
Do you need to?
I haven't, actually, no.
Yeah, I'm full of advice today.
God, I wish I could take some of my own damned advice.
Well, I wish you well with it and with the book coming out in 2024, and I'll look forward to seeing you on the TV.
Doing that thing that brings together what we've just talked about, I think, and your acting.
But we'll see.
Thank you very much, Phil.
Thank you very much for having me.
It's been a pleasure.
As ever, your thoughts on this guest, Phil Webster, very welcome.
Go to my website, theunexplained.tv.
Follow the link, and you can send me your thoughts and reflections on this particular edition of the show from there.
And don't forget, of course, most of my guests always welcome emails and communications themselves.
And I see that Phil has a contact section on his website that would also do that.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the Home of the Unexplained online.
So until we meet again, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been the Unexplained.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, stay in touch.
And if you're in the northern hemisphere and you're looking out the window and seeing what I'm seeing, enjoy the summer.
Take care.
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