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Dec. 6, 2023 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:03:48
Edition 773 - Chris Evers
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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, I know I always do a weather report now, but I think if you live in the United Kingdom, you'll be very well aware that we're just in the beginning of a cold break here.
At the moment, the sun is shining, but it is icy, icy cold.
And my flat, remains, my apartment that is, if you're in America, remains somewhat damp and very cold at the moment.
Last night we had, I think, what was an attempt at snow, but it didn't actually get here.
But I can tell you that I had to go down to my garage at about 10.30 last night, and it was absolutely icy.
The garage door was frozen, and every car that I saw was a little lump of ice, and we're not used to it these days.
So, you know, that was a bit of a surprise, let's put it that way.
Could be worse, could be raining.
I guess it'll do that next.
Thank you very much for all of your emails and your guest suggestions and everything else.
I am, as I seem to be getting like a stuck record here, but I'm a little behind with the emails.
But if your email requires a response, you haven't yet had one, please let me know about that.
And I will get right to it.
But please know that I see and read.
Even if I'm doing it at three o'clock in the morning when I wake up in the middle of the night, I read every email that comes in.
You can contact me through my website, theunexplained.tv.
Follow the link, and you can send me an email from there.
When you get in touch, don't forget, of course, to tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show.
Hope everything is okay with you.
Thank you very much as ever to Adam, my webmaster, who's traveling all over the world these days, but making time to post these shows.
Thank you, Adam, for doing that.
Okay, guest on this edition, Chris Evers, very well known on the ufology scene in the United Kingdom, a prolific researcher, author on these matters, conference organizer, publisher, all kinds of things is Chris.
And we've never actually done a podcast together, so I thought I would use the occasion of his new book that was out on the 1st of December, The Shape of Things to Come from Elsewhere, Chris Evers, with a forward by the great Peter Robbins in New York.
I thought we would use this opportunity, an occasion, to actually speak.
Chris, according to the back cover of the book, which I'm holding in my hand here, resides in Kingston-upon-Hull in the East Yorkshire area of the UK, the East Riding, as they used to call it.
He is the owner and editor of Outer Limits magazine, a six times a year publication dedicated to the paranormal world that we live in.
That's enough for now.
I think we'll get into the conversation and ask him a little bit about himself and about the contents of this book, which is kind of to do with the various flavors and types and shapes of UFOs, stroke UAPs, that have been reported down the years.
So we're going to get to Hull in Yorkshire and speak with Chris Evers.
That noise, by the way, was me putting the book down here.
It's all very, you know, organized.
Me, never.
Okay, what else is there to say?
My website, theunexplained.tv, Facebook page, the official Facebook page of The Unexplained with Howard Hughes.
All right, let's get straight to a place that's 250 miles, I think maybe 230 miles north of where I'm sitting and shivering at the moment.
Chris, thank you very much for coming on my show.
Absolute pleasure, Howard, and thank you for the invitation to do so.
I really appreciate it.
And listen, we've had communication with each other for years in various ways, partly connected with Out of Limits magazine and other things, but we've never actually done this.
We haven't done a podcast together, and I'm not quite sure why.
Well, I think part of the reason for that, Howard, could be the fact that I've kind of like kept myself in the background for quite a few years.
I mean, I've been interested in the UFO subject since 1974, which next year makes it my 50th year of interest in the subject.
But I've never done a book before, but I've always followed investigations and spoken with people.
I know a lot of people that you know, for example, like Philip Mantle and the Kinsella twins and other people like those, you know.
Malcolm Robinson is actually my associate editor for Outer Limits magazine.
I've known Malcolm again since the 1990s.
Well, as you know, I've just spent a fortnight with Malcolm on board a ship.
And, you know, we talked an awful lot about UFOs, Life, the World, and Outer Limits magazine.
So I know all about that.
So, you know, you've been around it for a very long time.
Talk to me.
Well, I think we've kind of partly done that anyway.
But talk to me about you.
If somebody was to meet you in the pub in Hull, where you are, and say, oh, hello, you know, my name's Chris.
My name's Jack.
And they said to you, how would you describe yourself?
What reply would you come up with?
Oh, good heavens, that's a $6 million question.
If I had an answer to that, I'd be a rich man.
It's one of those things I would wear, oh, yeah, I'm interested in this, I'm interested in that.
And I also run a paranormal magazine, which usually gets people's interest anyway, because it's not something that would come up in everyday conversation with anybody.
It's a subject that I explained to them that I've followed since I was 14 when I had my own unusual experience here in the city of Hull.
I had had an interest in the subject, but only a slight interest in that when I used to go and stay at my uncle's at home here in Hull, occasionally, I didn't want to go to bed at like nine o'clock, being 14 years old.
And when I did go to bed, I'd leave the light on and I'd look in the big pile of books he kept in the corner of this particular bedroom.
And I would read books on ghost stories and so on.
And of course, you know, scare myself to death and go to sleep eventually with a light lift on, you know.
But it was only a passing interest until I was 14 years old.
And I was at a place about a quarter of a mile actually from where I'm sitting right now, where I had my first strange experience of a light moving across the sky one early February evening.
This was in 1974.
And I was sat there with a few friends.
We didn't have, like they do nowadays, you know, mobile telephones, the internet, all that kind of stuff.
We were lucky if we had a pushbike And a stick to play war with.
And we were actually playing war this February evening.
It was about four o'clock in the evening.
And a group was split up into two equal groups.
And we were hiding on top of, it was a building site because you could actually get access to building sites back in those days.
And we were sat on top of the hill, hiding away from our friends, waiting for them to sneak up on us and was going to jump up and shoot them with our sticks.
But anyway, I happened to look across Hull to more or less where the Humber Bridge is today, which is the town of Ezel.
And I noticed a blink of light far off near Hessel.
Didn't think much to it, just, oh, yeah, blink of light.
But then it moved and it did it again.
But this time, instead of going forward, it jumped back on itself.
So it went to position one, position three, then back to position two, then forward to position four.
And this single light did this across the sky until eventually it got more or less above where I was hiding away with my friends.
Now, at this point, I jumped up and shouted to my friends, oh, look, guys, look up in the sky, there's a UFO.
Now, I only called it that because I was a fan of the UFO TV show that used to be on, you know, Jerry Anderson back in the day there, back in the 1970s.
And that's why I called it a UFO.
But as I shouted this, it just blinked out.
Now, the sky, it was a completely typical, crystal clear February evening.
You know, we've been lucky.
We hadn't had any snow or anything like that.
So the sky was crystal clear.
You could see every star up in the sky.
And this light didn't follow in the pattern that it should have done.
It just completely disappeared.
And it was this that brought my interest into the subject of UFOs.
And so what I did, I started reading the available publications at the time.
You know, books by Major Donald Kehoe, the Jones Pugh books, and things about the Warminster thing.
And it was all these books that got me interested in the subject till eventually.
Sorry, how we go on.
No, I was just going to say, sorry, I was just wanted to pick you up about one thing.
There you are, 14, were you, when that happened?
That's correct, yeah.
Right.
There you were, 14, looking towards Essel on the other bank, where the Humber Bridge now is.
And you see this thing, and it behaves anomalously, as they would say today.
Did you do anything?
Were you able to do anything about that?
And if you told anybody, what did they say?
Well, I didn't really tell anybody because a 14-year-old lad, the only people I knew were the school teachers, you know.
I did look in the local press in the whole Daily Mail at the time, but no other reports.
It was just something that I saw and I pointed out to my friends.
But of course, by the time they'd looked up, it had gone.
So it was just something that was always there.
It was like picking at the back of my brain, thinking, you know, what is this?
How can I find an answer to what this is?
So as I say, I looked in these books and these other publications to try and find an answer to what I'd actually experienced.
But of course, you know, there were no answers.
And 50 years later, next year, I still do not have an answer to what it was that I saw that early evening in February 1974.
Sounds an awful lot to me just thinking about it.
And it's not a million miles from where you are, same coast.
The kind of things that Paul Sinclair has been talking about for years.
Yeah, Paul Sinclair is actually a good friend.
And I had a good conversation with him yesterday evening.
He kindly interviewed me like yourself, Albert.
And Paul actually contacted me back in the 1990s about the strange experiences that he was investigating, sorry, he was looking at and experiencing in his own home.
Strange apparitions, strange things going on, strange lights on the stairs in his home, all those kind of things.
So I've known Paul a long time and we are actually good friends.
And I'd like to say I've actually got him coming to speak next year at the 2024 OLM conference.
September the 14th, 2024.
Is it Hull University?
That's correct.
Yeah, it's in the Kingsley suite at the Cranham Turner building, which is smack bang in the middle of the campus.
But there's more information on that on the website.
And you know what?
Just to talk about this just for 30 seconds.
It's an awful lot of hard work, this, isn't it?
Oh, yes, but it's not the first one that I've actually done.
My first one was way back in the 1990s.
Monday evening at the old Middleton Hall, again at Hull University.
We had a gentleman who's no longer with us, unfortunately, Graeme Bertel.
He came down and spoke with us.
And Russ Callahan, who is also a good friend, and, you know, he came down on a Monday night, again, it was in February, thrown it down with rain.
And we had 310 people in the hall that evening.
It was a brilliant night.
Everybody really thoroughly enjoyed it.
That's not bad because there wasn't Facebook, social media, Twitter, or X or whatever Musk wants to call it these days.
You didn't have those outlets to publicize things.
No, we certainly didn't.
It was all done.
I think Graham put a little advertisement in the UFO magazine as it was around at the time.
And we had people coming from Grimsby, from Hull, from Scarborough, from York, from Leeds.
We had them coming from all over.
We had a good grapevine going back in those days, as you probably remember, Howard.
Did you ever get involved in that?
This is just very much tangential, but I'm a great student of television and how it used to be in this country.
You had a great TV station there called Yorkshire Television, based in Leeds.
You know, it covered the whole area.
And, you know, they did a lot of offbeat stories.
Did you have any contact with them and people like Richard Whiteley?
No, no, not at all, really, to be quite honest.
It was Hull was always a bit of an hanging out branch of the tree, you know, where we didn't get as much coverage as other places.
But now we've got BBC Look North, which are actually based in Hull.
And I've had been on BBC Radio Humboldt a few exams over the years, talking various things.
And, you know, thankfully, you know, they've always Been kind of supportive.
Well, no, this is stuff that is great for television, I think.
You know, great for doing pieces, especially, as you say, there's still, you know, if the BBC don't go and axe, you've still got a television news program that actually comes from your area, actually comes from Hull, so that's good.
You mentioned Graham Birdsell.
Let's just talk very briefly about him, because I never met him, never knew him, knew of him when I was starting to get interested in all of these things.
Of course, I knew all about Graham Birdsell and his publishing efforts in an era when there wasn't electronic media like there is now.
Talk to me about Graham Birdsell.
Graham was a massive loss to the subject when he passed away, which is actually 20 years ago now.
And, you know, he would do what he could to get the information out there.
He would go on TV himself at Yorkshire TV.
He'd go and look north, you know, wherever he was required.
He would do whatever he could to get more information out to the public because it's the public that need to know what is going on with the various different sightings, you know, that are occurring in our region, not only in our region, Howard, but globally.
You know, these kind of things are going on all around the world.
And some things, you know, which I report about in the book, you know, go back 2,000 years, some of them.
It's completely amazing that the many different types of sightings that we've had.
And Graham would go out, he'd go out of his way.
I know when he came to Hull that particular time I spoke about, he wanted absolutely nothing for coming.
He was just glad to come and put the information to an audience, basically.
And I know I'm not the only one who's on the receiving end of his friendship and, you know, and what he would do for the subject to get it out there.
I know he did many, many talks around the UK and in America and other places, all dedicated to getting the truth out, to get the truth out to the public.
And, you know, to a certain extent, in 2017, as we know, the American government, they actually said, hang on a minute, there is something to UFOs.
But, you know, Graham would have loved to have seen that back in the day before he passed.
Absolute pioneer.
Before we talk about the book, which we will in depth, what do you think about the situation at the moment where we were supposed to be getting closer to disclosure?
We had this man called David Grush.
I remember speaking just hours after that piece by Leslie Kane and Ralph Blumenthal was published.
I actually phoned Ralph Blumenthal and he said, I'm very busy at the moment.
I said, can you give me 10 minutes on the phone?
And he very kindly did that because the whole world wanted to talk to him.
So that fired the starting pistol for it all.
That kicked it all off.
Now it's in Washington and now there's a possibility it may not go anywhere.
What do you think of the state of play at the moment to do with what they call disclosure?
Well, again, it's another $6 million question, I would.
I think the very fact that they've admitted there is something behind, to me, can be classed as disclosure.
They've actually already admitted there is something behind what people are seeing, what has been reported.
That's a very good point.
The big problem is they're not admitting, you know, the same, I mean, for example, NASA just recently said, oh, there isn't the information there.
We want more information.
Well, hold on a minute.
Go back to 1947.
Look the information up.
You've got enough information in your records to say something strange is going on.
Now, what that strange thing is that is going on is a different thing.
Are they ETs coming from an extraterrestrial planet?
Or, as some have suggested, are they strange creatures coming from underneath our own oceans?
You know, once we get those questions answered, then we can finally say we've got 100% disclosure.
But we have had a disclosure of a kind.
What gave you the idea of putting together a book that is essentially a sort of car mechanics guide, really, to the different kinds, the different kinds and shapes and types of UFOs?
A great idea.
Well, as I say, I've been interested in the subject for 50 years.
And over that 50 years, well, let's go back to 1947, Kenneth Arnold.
He described a series of convex or shapes that were flying through the sky.
He never called them flying saucers.
There was nine objects.
One was shaped differently to the other eight.
And so, therefore, we've already got two shapes there with what has been seen.
Now, over the years, we've gone from flying saucers, flying triangles, orbs.
We've got convex shapes, we've got cone shapes, we've got egg shapes, you name it, we've got donut shapes, you name it, you know, we've got it in, you know, with the subject.
And I was just sat there thinking, well, nobody else has done this before.
And I actually did take a little bit of time away from the subject for personal reasons, just in the early noughties.
And I came back to it and I thought, well, I bet I'm getting myself up to date.
And I was looking for information about these different shapes and different sizes.
You know, everything from pinpricks of light, similar to what I saw, going up to things as big as like two football stadiums.
So there are many, many different shapes.
And I thought, well, nobody's put anything together on this.
So I did it as a refresher for myself.
But also, not only is it good for somebody who has been involved in the subject for, well, 50 plus years or somewhere around there, it's good for people who are new to the subject to get a good idea.
I think in total, I cover about 60 to 65 different shaped sightings in the publication.
And it is said there are something like 47 different shapes and sightings of UFOs that have been spotted since 1947.
And indeed, you do carry the list.
I think it was Jay Alan Hynek's list of the various categorizations.
And as you say, there are more than 40 of them.
Now, you concentrate, I think, on eight different types.
So I thought what we, and you put it in chapters, so I thought we'd sort of do it by the chapters and lead, you know, without giving away the entire contents of the book, of course, because people have got to buy it.
But, you know, we'll lead people through a journey.
Just one thing before I start doing that, though.
You mentioned these unidentified aerial phenomena that seem to be as big as a couple of football pitches.
And there have been a number of those both in the United States and in this country, other countries as well.
Over the years, there was, I think, a British Midland aircraft crew in 1994.
I mean, we know the cases that saw something near Belgium.
And a man I've interviewed a couple of times, very nice man in the Channel Islands, Ray Bowyer, who was working for Origne Airlines in 2007, I think it was.
I spoke with him first then, and I spoke with him more recently about it.
It absolutely fired his imagination and his interest in these things.
But what he saw and his crew saw from the cockpit of that plane was massive.
It was like a battleship in the sky.
Those are the ones that fascinate me.
How can anything that, you know, once you've discounted optical illusions, various kinds of cloud phenomena, that kind of thing, once you've ruled those things out, how can anything be that big?
Well, more importantly, Howard, how can anything that big hold itself up in the sky?
What is the propulsion behind these craft?
How are they moving forward, reversing and then blinking out in the blink of an eye, they're gone?
What is it that's keeping them aloft?
You know, this is, again, it's all part of the phenomena that is ufology that we are seeking answers to.
And I do believe, my personal opinion, I'm a little bit old-fashioned.
Somebody called me last night, old school UFO ufologist.
So I do tend to think more in the area of a nuts and bolts craft than anything else.
Not that I'm unwilling to change my opinion.
If somebody can come to me and show me the evidence, you know, that these things are not nuts and bolts, then they're fine.
That's great.
But what Captain Bowies saw that time was absolutely amazing.
Where did it go?
That's more important to the point.
Where did we go?
Where did it come from?
And I believe there were passengers on that plane who also saw it.
I often wonder what happened to them.
And as far as I know, nobody's ever spoken to them.
So, you know, if you know anybody who was a passenger on that plane or saw whatever that was in 2007, I would love to hear from you.
All right, let's dive into the book.
And we'll do it by the chapters.
And chapter one, cross-shaped UFOs.
We often forget about those.
So you do a whole segment on cross and subliminally, not subliminally, as a subsidiary to it, coffin-shaped ones.
You talk about for starters, events of 1967, the famous Sussex Flying Cross.
Shall we start with that?
It was observed, I think, by a couple of police officers.
Yeah, that's right.
If I remember that one correctly, they were out traveling in a car where they witnessed this.
Actually, over that period, I think it was October the 25th, 26th and 27th of 1967, there were many, many sightings.
There was something of a flap going on at the time.
And yes, the two Surrey police officers saw that.
And I think, if I remember that one correctly, Howard, I think there was up to five cars that were following that one around.
You know, then we have the next day, we have a former REF intelligence officer, photographic intelligence officer.
I think his name was A.W. Brooke, if I remember correctly.
He was out in Dorset on the Moyne Downs, walking two dogs.
It was, let's say, October, and there was a gale had picked up.
And I think it went up to something like a force eight gale.
Now, he happened to be on the Downs there, walking his dogs, and to hide out of the wind, it got down into a bit of a dip in the terrain, you know, so he could actually hide away from it.
And he looked up and he sees something, which again, this turned into an X-shaped UFO, which did some incredible things.
And again, this story is in the publication.
And eventually, this thing disappeared after like 22 minutes on a windy day.
And it was stationary on a windy day.
And he reported this and it got back to the MOD.
And the MOD sent two or three people to talk to him and investigate what he'd seen.
And they came out, would you believe it, with a grand explanation that he'd fallen to sleep and he'd had some kind of dream while his dogs were still running around him and biting him and pulling at him.
Now, obviously, a photographic expert would know what he's looking at in the sky above his head.
And I think again, on the next day after that, there's another experience, which I mention again in the book, of more flying craft, flying crosses everywhere from, you know, in the southern part of the UK, everywhere from the Surrey area, going over to Dorset and to Wales.
So there was a massive flap going on then.
And this isn't just something in that era, 67.
There were various sightings at various times.
If we speed forward to 1995, we have the great Scandinavian ufologist Klaus Svahn, who I've spoken with a couple of times on this show, a Swedish cross that he observed.
And right up to date, 2009 in Manchester, another police officer, Ian Sawyer.
Well, the Ian Sawyer case is quite an interesting one.
I believe he was sat in his room at his home and he happened to notice something in the sky.
It was literally there, then gone.
He didn't even have time to pick his camera up, which was next to him, because he thinks it was moving that quick that it would have simply gone out of view by the time he'd got the camera ready.
And, you know, Ian's case is fascinating.
Again, I try to rely on people in the book who are In positions of authority, you know, not just the everyday joe, although there are some of those in there, you know, of people who've had these experiences.
But how can the authorities say that these witnesses are trained observers?
You know, how can they refute what they're telling them?
You know, it's just a joke.
I think the government's, for some reason, of their own choice, really, they're not wanting people to know the truth.
What about the coffin-shaped ones?
I've never heard of those.
Well, the coffin-shaped ones are quite interesting because they're quite interesting because these go back to events, I think, in the 1700s, where I think they were seen by the Tatars, I think, which is Hungary area, and these were flying around in the sky.
And these were all put onto a woodcut and printed out.
And, you know, it's again, that also has things like flying cannons and flying crosses.
That one's particularly mentioned because I think it's got a cross of Lorraine in that one, if I remember correctly, Howard.
If I don't, then no worries.
You've got some great illustrations.
I'm going to reach for the book while you're talking here, but the illustrations in here, I don't know how you managed to get them all, are really good.
The photographs and the diagrams and documents that you've got.
You know, this has taken an awful lot of work, we've got to say.
The square, rectangular, and cube-shaped ones, I've picked out a couple of cases here.
Batavia Chicago, a witness in Batavia, a suburb of Chicago, Kane County, Illinois, sighted and filmed a mysterious square-shaped UFO gliding quietly across the sky on the 5th of June, 2016.
Very recent.
According to the unnamed witness in a testimony filed to the mutual UFO network, MUFON, he was driving with his kids.
After leaving a restaurant, he sighted the strange craft about 8.50 p.m.
A TV station reported he was joking with the kids as he pulled out of the restaurant parking lot.
Perfect day for a UFO sighting when he looked up and noticed something strange in the sky, something square.
This is just one of many cases of square-shaped UFOs.
You know, I mean, we have some that are being spotted over the English channel.
Whether or not the square are there actually an FT seen from the side is a different thing, a different question.
But, you know, if we have that event from, I think it was 2019 or 20, if it was 2016.
Thank you.
And you use the phrase FT.
I think you, do you mean flying triangle?
Yes, flying triangle.
So a flying triangle from the side, if it's flat on the horizon, say, for example, it could look like a square-shaped object from a distance.
But, you know, it's absolutely amazing with the different types of craft that have been seen over the years.
You know, flying triangles, flying squares, they're all completely baffling, Howard.
Pilot films close call with square-looking UFO at 30,000 feet.
17th of October 2022, an A320 plane, routine flight from over Medina in Colombia.
An amazing dark silver metallic UFO, almost square-looking, flew next to the aircraft.
This is an A320 passenger plane.
Pilot commenced filming a polyhedron-shaped UFO.
He sees an unknown that is described as being almost square, but just before he starts to pan out and focus his camera directly onto it, he captures a view of the jet aircraft's altimeter that's showing 30,000 feet.
So that's something anomalous.
And square, how can that fly, you might ask, at 30,000 feet?
Yeah, well, so we know that this unknown is at an altitude of at least 30,000 feet and it's a flying square UFO, but he's also traveling extremely fast.
And we can also see that because of its very dark metallic colour, it clearly stands out like really like the proverbial saw thumb, as I put it in the book, against the soft white colours of the surrounding clouds.
You know, because he's a trained observer and the pilot takes the time to film the aircraft's altimeter, proving what he's seeing and the altitude it is at.
It's an unusual case.
I was just looking for the illustrations.
I can't find them at the moment in the book, but it is an unusual one.
Let's get to the diamond ones.
You've got a section of diamond, egg-shaped and lenticular clouds all together here.
Of course, the daddy of them all, and the one that we're still talking about and we've talked about a lot in the last year, is the famous Calvine photo from Scotland.
Something diamond-shaped, apparently being tailed or escorted, depends on how you look at it, by one of our or the Americans or somebody's military jets.
It looks like a Harrier or something like that.
It's diamond-shaped, going at speed.
And you say that a major analysis has been taken of the image by a university.
Senior lecturer Andrew Robinson conducted a summary of an 11-page appraisal document, I think.
And what did that analysis, just remind me, what did that analysis come out with?
Because there are many people who've had a go at this photograph.
They've said that can't be right.
That thing is the shape of a fishing lure.
The aspects of it look a bit wrong.
And yet other people have analyzed that picture and said something different.
So what did this analysis say?
Well, the result of the analysis is consistent with, and it does support the claimed heritage of the print, you know, which was alleged to have come from backpackers, we say, that were out on the hills that day.
What they were doing out there on the hills that day, perhaps is a different question.
But Andrew Robinson, he does suggest, in conclusion, that the UFO is nearer to the jet in the image than the image taker, and that size should have a 10% plus or minus discrepancy.
It has been suggested, by the way, Howard, in some quarters, that the aircraft that is said to be in the image may not be a Harrier jump jet, but actually a Hunter fighter jet.
So we've got two aircraft there that it could Possibly be most people do go with the Harrier jump jet, you know, but it follows really that it's either a genuine, unidentified flying object, a UAP, if we want to put it that way, you know, and it's it's kind of that it doesn't follow really that it's a manipulation used to create an effect.
It does suggest that because it's nearer the aircraft in the sky, the Calvarne UFO is nearer to the aircraft in the sky, that it is something completely unusual.
Now, whether it's a man-made object or an ET-orientated made object, then that's a different question.
And if it was now, I think this was 1991, wasn't it?
I should remember off the top of my head the date, but it was early 90s.
The cowbine thing, I'm sure.
In this era, then if you took a digital picture, you'd have copies of it, you'd email it to all your friends, it would be out there.
But in that era, this was an old-fashioned photograph that was taken to a newspaper and then disappeared for a long time.
Yeah.
What is quite interesting here, I don't want to, I'm not throwing any aspersions or dispersions, whatever you call them, on anybody.
But it's quite interesting that Nick Poe remembered the picture well enough to actually do a mock-up of it, which appeared in the British newspaper The Sun.
And he did put a picture in that.
And when you put that close to what we now know, next to what we now know is the image, they are very, very similar.
So either Nick Pullop has got a copy of it, or he's got a very, very good memory, you know, as to what it is and what it looked like at the time.
And I'm actually a photographer by trade.
I was a wedding photographer for quite a number of years.
And I do know some of the tricks you can get up to with modern digital photography and modern software.
But as seen as this has been around since the 1990s, it very much rules that out to me, to be quite honest.
Well, it would seem to, because I think people forget how difficult it was to take pictures.
You couldn't, you know, I have actually got an O-level in photography.
I can develop and print black and white pictures, you know, bully for me, but not many people could do that.
So you had to take them to, you know, Boots, the pharmacy or somewhere else, the local photographic store, and then wait a week and get them developed.
You know, it was a hassle back in those days.
It wasn't easy.
So altering a picture is something that was very, very specialist in those days.
And it's still a mystery, but I'm not sure how much further the researchers can go on it now.
Well, yeah, it would be great if we were there at the time when we all witnessed this, you know, and we could say, well, we were there, we witnessed it, you know, but unfortunately, there's only two witnesses and we're still looking for them as far as I'm aware.
But some have suggested that it is an ox image, for example, a reflection of a rock in a lake, which, you know, these are proven to be, to me, to be an incorrect assumption.
You know, it's when you look at what Andrew Robinson says, which is all mentioned in the book regarding the image, it kind of like belays that thought to me.
And to be honest, that area, there are no lakes up that high up in the hills, you know, in Scotland.
So to me, that's the no-no.
You know, I'm just looking as we speak with the Scottish Sun's version of the story, quite a recent one, and there's the picture.
And, you know, the headline is, it's October 2020.
I remember doing this story on the radio.
The Ministry of Defense has sparked anger from investigators after stalling the release of the best photographs ever taken of a UFO.
This is Calvine.
Top secret colour photographs said to show a flying saucer above the highlands, August 1990, it was, the so-called Calvine incident, were set to be released in the new year, they were saying then.
However, they have now been blocked for another 50 years.
It is astonishing, isn't it?
If there's nothing untoward about it, then...
Why dance around it?
Yeah, I mean, let's be honest.
Thank God for former RAF press officer Craig Lindsay, who came forward with the picture and passed it on to David Clark.
And I think the original picture now is down at Sheffield University.
So, you know, thank God for Craig Lindsay coming forward.
What are the MOD trying to add if there's nothing behind this?
And for the hard work of David Clark, who I spoke to around that time, who did an awful lot of legwork.
He actually went up there and started knocking on doors and talking to people, which at the end of the day is what these things come down to.
Why lenticular clouds then in this segment?
Yeah, these lenticular clouds are often mistaken for quite large UFOs, but they normally appear over hills, you know, in places, for example, like the Atacama Desert or the deserts in America and other deserts around the world.
I've actually got a good image there of a lenticular cloud, which is egg-shaped, which I believe is in Iceland, Howard.
So, you know, that is put in mainly just to say to people, don't be mistaken, these things do happen, but they're not what you think they are.
And of course, there are many credible ufologists, many good people in the field who will tell you that sometimes cloud formations are used to cloak or cover or camouflage UFOs.
That's true.
Yeah, I've heard that in the past, that, you know, they're riding within the cloud.
But I've not actually seen a report that would actually suggest that that is true.
Is it just wishful thinking on the part of the observer?
Egg-shaped UFOs next.
Now, they're pretty rare.
You mentioned the Socorro case, the Lonnie Zamora case, mid-60s, which is famous and we've talked about here before.
But it's a hell of a case.
I dimly remember, you know, the Westall School case in Australia.
Was that egg-shaped?
I don't remember.
I don't have the information directly in that one.
But anyway, egg-shaped UFOs, they're pretty rare, aren't they?
They certainly are, yeah.
I think Newfork has put a report out quite recently in the, I think it was, I'm going back to November 22, so it's over a year ago now.
They had something in the like 142,000 plus different reported sightings.
And remember, this is just a one organization in the US.
We've got Bufora, we've got other groups around the world that have actually taken reports in for decades, but they should share this information, in my opinion.
You know, I think Newfalk mentioned egg-shaped sightings, something around about, was it about 30 to 40 in one particular year?
Right.
So, you know, they do happen and people do see them.
But it's not often that kind of thing gets into the newspapers.
Well, no, but there was an interesting egg-shaped UFO reported in a pasture in 1957.
It was in the Knoxville News Sentinel reporter.
Carson Brewer, who was the author of the report in 1957, tells the story of Everett Clark, who witnessed an egg-shaped craft on the ground in a cow pasture close to his home.
And he claimed to have witnessed two females and two males who appeared to be human-like individuals with the spaceship at dawn the very day that it landed.
Now, at the time of the incident, Everett was only 12 years old and he was described really as a chunky blonde-aired boy.
His report caused quite a stir at that time, you know, says the Sentinel article.
And the reporter and a photographer traveled to interview the lad.
At first, claims the reporter that the story was too unreliable.
But according to the school's headmaster, the principal Howard Field, Everett was described as a pretty, you know, pretty dependable sort of lad.
So eventually the story was believed.
And it was quite an interesting account.
Basically, he was looking, he let the dog out in the morning to go running down.
And that's when it, you know, to the fields around his home.
And that's when he witnessed this craft come down on the ground.
And he saw it.
And, you know, he tried to get a bit closer, but the people that asked him to go to him, he briefly decided to turn around and go back home, basically.
But again, an egg-shaped reporting from 1957.
So these things, again, have been around decades, Howard.
Flying triangles.
There are lots of those around.
You've got some of the cases.
Quotes, British Airways jet pilot ducks as UFO flashes past at 13,000 feet, according to some newspaper report that you quote.
And more recently, that was 1995, in 2021, two years ago, student captures astonishing flying triangle image over British coast.
July 5th, 2021, student managed to snap a series of astonishing images of a UFO over the British coastline.
The pictures are said to be of fantastic quality and clearly show the unknown.
Matthew Evans, he was 36 at the time of the incident, apparently witnessed the flying unknown, he says for about 10 seconds, over Devon, 2021.
Yeah, so again, all showing that these things are still going on.
It's not just something that happened back in the 1990s, you know, or the early, sorry, the late 1980s.
They're still going on.
They're still being reported.
Now, granted, some of these can be maybe explained away as, you know, perhaps American technology.
We've seen the new B-21 recently be released.
And that was, you know, I think that was released around about 2022, December the 2nd, 2022.
So that is a new aircraft.
But then again, we've had what people would call the stealth bombers and stealth fighters back in the 80s and 90s.
Some of these, I think, can be explained away with up-to-date, updated or old American technology.
Flying wings have been around since the 1950s.
I remember watching, and probably yourself, Howard, watching the old version of the War of the Worlds movie, Regina Barryan, I think it was.
And there was a flying wing used in that to drop an atomic bomb, if I remember correctly, on the Martian spacecraft, which didn't destroy it.
So these flying wings have been around, but some of the reports that I've covered in the book are absolutely baffling.
They really are.
I've included conversations with people, and it's totally, totally amazing some of the things.
It's not easy, really, to reach a conclusion when you can't speak to witnesses in question.
And I quote a report from Philip Mantle about this lad who had this investigation.
Sorry, the investigation was done by Philip.
He quotes his mum who witnessed some at school.
Although again, this is in the book.
We've got reports from 1987 of disshaped objects witnessed near Rocky Hill, Connecticut in November.
Again, where are these things from?
What are they doing here?
Different shapes of UFOs.
Now, this is not a universal truth by any manner or means, because different shapes are seen all the time.
However, particular shapes seem to be associated with some particular eras.
1950s arguably was the era of cigar-shaped UFOs, according to the book.
What do you have to say about that?
Well, we could say that cigar shapes are coming back, quite simply, because when we look at the Tic-Tacs and the recent reported events from earlier in the noughties, the USS Nimitz.
That's the one.
Yes, thank you, Howard.
That is the one.
Yeah, the USS Nimitz encounters.
The Tic Tacs are modern day versions of flying cigars.
You know, the young lad that I reported a minute ago, Everett, it was said that what he'd seen on the ground was actually Kind of like cigar-shaped going back to the 50s again.
So people do still see these, but maybe they're not as announced or made public as much as they should be.
I love the Aurora case.
I've talked about it a number of times before on the radio and on podcast various places.
But let's just remind people: it was April 19th, 1897.
Aurora, Texas.
UFO crashed.
I think it went into a mountain or something or a water tower.
I think it was.
Examination of the pilot's remains suggested he was distinctly alien looking, according to accounts.
The townspeople combed through the out-of-this-world wreckage, as reported in the Dallas Morning News newspaper, which describes the UFO in detail.
The account reads as though the UFO had been previously seen, stating that on the morning of the crash, the airship was much nearer the Earth than ever before.
The craft flew directly over the public square, then directly hitting a windmill tower, that's what it was, which was located in the northern part of the town.
This thing crashed.
Now, that's interesting.
It would be interesting today, very interesting.
But to have an account like that published in an established newspaper in 1897 is quite something, isn't it?
I know we've talked about it before on the show, but that's a hell of a story.
It certainly is.
And something that was, as you alluded to, there's something that was extremely unusual for the time.
But back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were several, I think the mysterious airships encounters began originally in the New Zealand area, spread across to Australia, then came to Europe and to Britain as well.
And then, of course, they went across to America as well in the late 1800s.
And that is, of course, when the encounter, the incident happened that he was just described.
Again, showing that these things are not new.
This still are seen today.
The account, though, the quote of the account, the quotation that you give in the book, is pretty detailed.
And I wonder how it must have looked.
I mean, we're used to crazy out there stuff in our newspapers and media these days.
But this was 1897 when the happenings in the local sheriff's office, you know, people being disciplined for various misdemeanours or whatever it might be or agricultural affairs would probably be in the newspaper, but not this.
Well, the 1896, 1897 airship wave, it's probably the best investigated of all historical anomalies.
You know, I think something like 1,500 newspapers from across the US, the United States, they've been combed for reports.
An astonishing feat of research when you look at it.
The general conclusion of investigators is that a considerable number of the simplest sightings were simply misidentification of planets and stars.
But let's be honest, planets and stars are not cigar-shaped.
Planets and stars do not move.
You know, well, they do move, but not at a speed that you could equate with an airship.
Again, so what are they?
Some of them were quite obviously, I think, hoaxes and practical jokes.
But a small residuum remains perplexing, to say the least, I would.
Is there evidence that you found or seen that suggests that the different shapes move in different ways or present themselves in different ways, appear and disappear in different ways, shoot off into nowhere in different ways, or do they all fly, as they say, at great velocity and disappear very quickly?
I had a similar question asked to me recently regarding basically a similar matter.
And my answer to that was really the shapes of the craft have changed just like the shapes of our motor vehicles have changed.
We've known, we've called it the modern UFO era since 1947.
So we're about 70 plus years into that now.
But when we look at cars, the cars that we had invented by, you know, Henry Ford in 1900, or the model T Ford, if you want to put it that way, are completely different to the size and the shape of the cars and the vehicles that we have today.
So no doubt some of the shapes that have changed with these craft are there for a particular purpose that, in my opinion, is only known to the occupiers of these craft.
Some might be, we've heard of alien abduction events before, some might be designed for that kind of experience, to put people into them.
Others might be some kind of probes or a device scouting the planet.
So perhaps we have different types of rockets for different types of jobs ourselves.
We're sending a satellite up.
Obviously, there's no crew compartment.
When we're sending crew up, there is a crew compartment.
So, you know, it's exactly the same, but the different shapes that we've got out in these craft.
Do you know, I'd never thought of it that way.
Different shapes for different purposes, reflecting what those purposes are.
And of course, the language that we use about them reflects the world that we're in.
So, you know, 2000, whatever it was, we talked tic-tacs.
1897, we say airships.
Yeah, I've also got another report in the book, actually, of an account of a Japanese priest in the 1200s who was about to be beheaded, for whatever reason, I don't know.
But a silver disc-shaped object appeared in the sky over his execution.
And I'm presuming it was a daytime execution.
They didn't mistake the silver disc-shaped moon-like object it's described as, you know, for the actual moon.
And so I'm presuming it was a daily observation to make this so known.
Again, it's a disc-shaped craft.
Again, a completely different shape to the other events that were going around at the time.
You know, we had Emperor Constantine, who I mentioned in the cross shapes.
You know, the types of different crosses that we've had, we've had Cross of Lorraine, which is like a single down post with two beams across it.
We've had X-shaped, you know, the Brook incident that I mentioned earlier.
So we have had, over at least 2,000 years, in my opinion, many, many different types of shapes.
And the Cross of Lorraine.
Sorry, you were saying.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, the Cross of Lorraine, you mentioned, and I didn't say, but you mentioned earlier in the book in relation to, I think it was the 1970s sighting near an RAF Air Force base in Akrotiri, Cyprus.
That's correct.
Yeah.
Again, you know, what was this?
Some people thought at first, the people who witnessed this thought it was something to do with a Russian aircraft going into space or a satellite of some description or maybe even an American rocket.
But no, it was just moving too quickly and too fast and not in the kind of manner that it should be.
But the cigar-shaped craft is important because it really, to me, it does have a special place in government files.
You know, in March 1971, the crew of the USS Tripang, which was SSN674, it took stunning UFO photographs of a triangular and cigar-shaped unknowns.
Now, where was this?
It was actually, if I remember correctly, at the North Pole.
So what are they doing up there?
You know, I've had accounts, which I mention again in the book, from Tony Dodd, who investigated such events back in the 1990s of strange devices flying in and out of the sea around Iceland, you know, in the North Atlantic.
Again, all different types of shapes, sizes, and different things going on, which are quite simply baffling.
Did you talk about the classic sort of frisbee or wedding cake, you know, shape UFO?
My grandmother, my own grandmother, and Jason Gleaves in his book actually writes up my grandmother's story.
It's the only time I've ever told it, and he printed it in his book.
She's looking over to the main railway line that runs between Liverpool and Southport, and she lived halfway between the two at Waterloo in, you know, the street of terraced houses, cobbled streets in those days, I think, until I think they only got rid of the cobbles in the 70s.
But she stuck to the, and she was not a UFO person, nor was she a pushover.
But six o'clock in the morning, she's looking out of the bedroom window and over the railway line is this sort of wedding cake type shape, you know, the disc at the bottom and the slight dome on it.
Maybe that's not really a wedding cake, but you know what I'm saying.
That's the archetypal classic invaders type UFO.
And she didn't have a TV.
So she wouldn't have seen series like that.
Really, I would.
What you're actually referring to there, really, to me is the classical Adamski shape, which you remember the TV show, The Invaders.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, so that was, to me, that was an Adamski shape.
But, you know, many, many people have seen that similar.
They really have, you know, and what you, I think, I would love to see something like that myself.
So I'm slightly jealous of the individual who saw that, to be honest.
Well, you know, my dad was a policeman in those days.
I can remember them sitting at the kitchen table when I was a kid.
And my grandmother drew a picture.
And we had that picture for years.
She drew it in pencil.
And what she drew was exactly what we've seen on television.
She didn't have a TV, remember.
She only had the radio.
That's what she liked.
But it was a classic archetypal UFO shape.
And she was not a UFO person.
She didn't believe in anything like that.
But she was absolutely clear that this silver thing hovering over the railway line, that's what it looked like.
It was an astonishing story.
Let's just finish up here with the shapes.
If we can put these two together, the boomerang or V-shaped ones and the doughnut ones.
The boomerang shapes, again, they're quite popular.
It's a V-shaped or a boomerang shape.
You know, we have a report from Ireland, of all places, of a boomerang shape.
You've got the 1980s Hudson Valley sightings and the Phoenix sightings of V-shaped or boomerang-shaped objects going around the area.
The one from Ireland, which I just mentioned a moment ago, is it was actually, it's a strange V-shaped unknown.
It was seen on the 1st of March 2022.
And there were several reports from different locations around Ireland, including Slago, Donegal and Elitrim.
And, you know, please forgive my pronunciations of them.
I'm a Yorkshireman and I put H's where they're not supposed to be occasionally.
But these were on the 1st of March 2020 22.
And one witness to the bizarre events that evening was one-time Ireland X-Factor contestant Tabby Callahan.
And he took to Twitter and said he'd just seen a huge UFO go over his own home.
And he continued that it was shaped like a B-52 stealth bomber and that it was huge and silent.
So again, that is more or less a V-shaped or boomerang shaped thing.
You know, he spoke to Ocean FM radio station a brief time later and he elaborates more on the story of stating that he was smoking a cigarette outside when he first noticed the object after initially thinking it's nothing more than a flock of geese.
So you can imagine the size of a flock of geese going flying by.
He realized he was looking at something altogether more unusual.
And he said the object was best described as being like an upside-down W, except it looked like it was made of light.
You know, there was no fairs going on at the time or country fairs or anything like that.
So again, what is he experiencing?
These things have gone on for years, Howard.
And another V-shaped UFO sighting was over Vietnam.
And once again, this shows that these things are not just limited to the Western world, to one single city, state or nation.
They're a global phenomena.
You know, it was Over Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam on the 21st of March, less than three weeks after the Irish sighting.
And that couldn't be further away from Ireland, could it?
Ho Chi Minh City?
Absolutely not.
So, same time period, same phenomenon, seemingly.
Yep.
Absolutely.
So, what are they?
If we had that answer, we'd both be rich men.
Well, I think so, but it's good that we're still asking the questions.
And the doughnuts.
I must admit, in my time doing this, I've never spoken to anybody who's seen a doughnut shape.
Well, I must admit, I've never seen a doughnut shape or spoken to anybody who's seen one.
But, you know, if we dig into the literature and we look into the records, we will find them.
They are there.
You know, these are not being hidden.
It's a fascinating case.
All different shapes.
We have one from, if I remember correctly, from a Chinese gentleman who witnessed something over a famous lake in China, which was shaped like a cog on a wheel, you know, like, for example, the cog, your chain goes round, except it was all hollow in the center.
Again, a classic doughnut shape craft.
And all these are described in the book, you know, doughnut shapes of Switzerland, donut shapes of, you know, China.
They're all over the place.
Absolutely all over the place.
Congratulations on the book, Chris.
I'm just, I mentioned it and we skipped over it, my fault.
The story of the British Airways jet pilot ducking as UFO flashes past at 13,000 feet.
This was a British Airways plane.
According to newspaper reports, pilots Roger Wills and Mark Stewart ducked down in the cockpit when a brightly lit mystery craft appeared only yards in front of them at 13,000 feet over the Pennines in Yorkshire.
And you say on the other page, page 98, while bracing themselves for the impact, the pair saw a triangular UFO flash by the right-hand side of their Boeing 737, then disappear.
Captain Wills and his first officer Stewart at once checked with air traffic control.
Their flight from Milan to Manchester was 17 minutes from landing when the encounter occurred.
The 737 landed safely.
60 passengers didn't even know what had happened.
That's a great story.
But there are so many of these.
I mean, you've got, and you've got images and newspaper accounts and diagrams here.
Page 74, you've got my newspaper that I grew up with, the Liverpool Echo.
Photograph here.
Robert Howell spotted this mysterious egg-shaped UFO driving on the M62 motorway.
And there it is.
So it's a great book.
And it's a perfect, I would think it's a perfect Christmas buy because it's nicely laid out.
And you could just sort of sit in a corner when you've finished with the TV, bored with that.
You could flip through this.
So I'm very much liking this.
Well done.
Thank you very much, Howard.
It's very kind of you to say so.
And let's remind ourselves of the conference and where people can find out more about it.
September the 14th, 2024.
It's at the Kingsley Suite at the Canum Turner Building at the Hull University.
Tickets are available now.
They're a maximum £20 if you're a non-subscriber to Outer Limits magazine, which you can find more information on the conference.
The speakers are at the moment, and I'm hoping for one or two more to join us.
We've got Jason Gleaves, who you previously mentioned.
We've got Graham Rendell.
We've got Ronald Kinsella, myself.
And as I mentioned previously, Paul Sinclair will be joining us as well.
And, you know, found the tickets there, www.olmag.co.uk.
And it'd be delightful, be great to see everybody there.
But one of my taglines is being formed.
And you can do that by getting the book or joining us at the conference or even subscribing to the magazine, which comes out every eight weeks approximately.
Wow.
Out of Limits magazine, the book which I'm holding here, nice book, The Shape of Things to Come from Elsewhere.
It's Flying Disc Press.
Will be a very nice Christmas present.
And the forward is by the great Peter Robbins.
I think we're pretty much done.
Chris Evers, thank you very much indeed.
My pleasure, Ward.
Thank you very much.
Chris Evers, my thanks to him and the first conversation on the podcast.
The shape of things to come from elsewhere is the book.
The forward is by the great Peter Robbins in New York, of course, and it is well worth seeing.
It's a nice, tightly packed book with a lot of pictures and illustrations of various kinds.
I recommend it, rend it.
Recommend it.
I recommend it.
Sorry, I was doing my best, Dolly Parton accent, I recommend it to you wherever you are in this world.
Maybe a Christmas present.
Who knows?
Although, you know, I'm not here to sell things, but it's a good book.
And I'm not on the percentage, let me tell you that.
We have 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 calm, stay safe, and stay in touch.
And stay warm if you're in the northern hemisphere, because I think it's going to get colder.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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