Welcome to this edition of The High Strangest Factor, copyrighted on the Paranormal UK
Radio Network. I am your host Steve Ward. On The High Strangest Factor.
Andy Mercer and I have explored all aspects of the paranormal and unexplained for
the past several years. We have been privileged to have been able to speak
to many individuals that represent different viewpoints and have done research and investigations in many
fascinating areas. Addie Mercer can't be with us tonight, but our regular guest
co host Brandy is with us. Brandy, Welcome to The High Strangeness Factor.
Thank you so much. It's so fun to be back. Well,
it's just gonna be fun because we have a great guest and we I'm going
to warn people that the name John Keel might come up a few times in
the next hour or so, or however long it takes. So h have
you been reading anything interesting lately, Brandy? Any I know you're you're reading
like a million books like most of us do, but is there anything that's
really caught your interest? I am reading a million books. I have a
couple of David Weatherley books. He's got a series of Wood Knox books,
and I've been reading a couple of those, so that's that's the most recent
anyway. Those are always good, excellent, And I I'm reading so many
book that I just picked up one of the Missing four one one books I
know I had started, and I'm going in there. I'm seeing all these
copious notes I've written in the margins and everything, and I don't remember writing
one of them. So I'm not sure what that says about me. But
Okay, now all I have to do is find our guests intro here,
which I had a moment. Ah, there it is. That's good.
I'm not the best vamper in the world, you know what I mean?
Okay. Paul Bestel is the host of the Mysteries and Monstrous podcast. Over
the last five years, Paul has spoken to some of the world's leading researchers
across all manner of forty on topics with interest in all aspects of the strange.
Paul continues to expand both his own and the audience's knowledge with each show.
Paul, Welcome to the High Strangeness Factor. Thank you very much both
of here to you, and thank you again for the invitation. It's very
kind. Well, it's my pleasure. I had a great time on your
show not too long ago, and I guess, you know, I wonder
you know, we all have a pathway that we took to get here to
be doing shows like this and reading books like this and having crazy conversations about
oh, I don't know, altraterrestrials, cryptids and strange lights in the sky.
How did your interest start, Paul? Were you have you been an
experiencer or were you just kind of led because of the fascinations of the subject.
And I grew up in a haunted house as a child. We lived
my parents' first house was a converted vicarage in a little village outside of Barnsley
in South Yorkshire, which was built in seventeen forty eight, and it had
been split into three houses, and it was directly across the road from the
graveyard in the church, and and we had something in there. We had
a couple of things. We had an old chap that used to sit at
the end of my bed and talk to me most nights, and then we
had something else that lived in the rest of the house that used to sort
of drop things out there out the ceiling and walk up and down the stairs
all the time and move stuff about and things. So it was always a
good test of babysitters. I'll say that guys growing up, because if they
came back, they were made of stern and stuff than most. Well,
how old were you when this when you started to notice this? Four or
five? I live. We lived there for about five years. So my
brother is five years younger than me, and he was he was born whilst
we lived in the house, So yeah, we were very early, sort
of toddlers, young people, sort of Yeah, five, six, seven,
eight years old? What kind of things? Did the jet that sat
on the edge of your bed stay to you? And apparently he used to
tell me about history a lot and talk to me every night about the First
World War and history and geography in Europe, and we used to talk about
countries and ghosts, and he used to tell me about films. I can't
be very specific because it's it happened because other people heard me speaking and I
would tell them about it and who it was. So it wasn't like an
imaginary friend because it was only in my bedroom and it was only at night,
and I would have full born conversations with this person until I dropped off.
Wow. Wow, I can't even imagine. I was the kid that
would it when my dad finished the attic upstairs and that became my bedroom,
and I was, you know, I wasn't you being up there alone?
So I, of course every kid knows that covers are magical and protect you
from monsters. But so I had the covers over me, but I had
to leave a bit of a breathe hole so that I could survive through the
night. So yeah, if if somebody started sitting on the edge of my
bed telling me about world were one or two, I don't know what the
heck I would have done. Yeah. I think that's the thing about kids
is they take things really sort of with the straight back, don't they.
They seem they seem quite easy to accept these strange things, because in the
normal situation you'd be quite perturbed. I suspect, but we had a spooky
family. I mean, my grandmother was a was a white witch and a
psychic who did readings and was very well connected with the British psychical society at
that particular time. And obviously now I know that Doris Stokes visited her.
Who I didn't I had no idea who she was when I was seven,
who was sort of Britain's leading psychic for the best part of thirty or forty
years until she passed away, And then when we moved and unfortunately the ghosts
didn't come with us. My auntie who was a landlady who used to run
pubs in the in the Northwest, they had a poltergeist outbreak at one of
their pubs, which was phenomenal. What happened well, Fred as they called
him, was very good at sort of tidying up. He would always sort
of put the chairs back under tables and he'd move things around the bar area.
One of the best incidents that my cousin told me about was that she
was once talking to one of the staff in the kitchen and the phone was
picked up because it was a phone, one of the old rotary dial phones
that was fixed to the wall, and the handle was taken up and the
phone started dancing around like a snake sort of in the air in front of
both of them, and the member of staff screamed. My cousin was just
like, oh my god, this is amazing, and then the handle just
dropped to the floor with the clatter and it was that kind of thing,
the you know, the doors would close by themselves, the dogs would just
sort of walk along. I remember walking past once and one of the dogs.
They used to have black labradors. My auntie used to breed black labradors,
so there was there was always at least two labradors in the house at
any given time. And I remember walking past my cousin's room once and one
of the dogs was laid on the bed and you could see her fur moving
because she was being stroll and next next and next to where she was was
an indentation of obviously where someone's bottom was when they were sat down. And
as I was watching, the stroking stopped and the indentation rose up, and
then the bed was back to normal, and the dog was kind of looking
around wondering why the stroking had stopped. Oh no, thank you, no,
thank you. I guess hearted places and Portuguese phenomena isn't terribly uncommon in
the UK. I mean, well, a lot of the you know,
we're very impressed when we see the date on the building going back two or
three hundred years. When I was over there, I saw dates on buildings
back to the twelve hundreds, so that's a long time to gather up classic
countings. I think absolutely well. I work in town, well in the
city in Sheffield, and my local pub is called the Queen's Head, which
dates back to the fifteenth century. Oh my gosh, that is amazing.
And it's a very rickety old jewdor building. It's beautiful and it's obviously also
haunted. Have you witnessed anything there? I haven't, but it's got a
very long history. It's got a haunted ladies toilet. Oh no, that's
comforting. It's comforting for the man, that's for sure. Absolutely where the
doors rattle and you can hear them clanging even though there's nobody in. And
it's not the size of a it's not the size of a bathroom that people
can get in and out of without somebody seeing it. You know, you've
got your eye lines always on the area, so people can't sort of run
in and pull a prank. But they also used to be an old man
who would sit in the corner with the pints of beer that the cleaners would
often see on a morning, and then it was one of them. You'd
go hang on a minute, and he turned around and he wouldn't be there,
So that's that they're going back to sort of the at least sixty or
seventy years those reports have been going on in that particular location. Have you,
I'm sorry, I just wondered if you've noticed, Paul, if the
same people are the ones that witness this, or if pretty much anybody and
everybody has witnessed in this pub or in any other I think after and when
it when it comes to things like that, it's all down to the person
who can experience these things, because I'm a big believer that only specific people
seem to have experiences for whatever reason. I don't know why that is.
I've always been fascinated by sightings where there's a group of people and only two
or three people know it's something strange, which which kind of suggests that there's
something about certain people that they pick up on things that the general populace don't.
But I think because both of those things have gone on for so long,
numerous different people have reported them over the years, so it's not the
same people seeing the same things, it's it's multiple witnesses over a considerable length
of time. You know, I wonder if freg has a what eight hundred
number, because I could really use some cleaning and straightening here, you know.
Yeah, yeah, So I was basically born into it, Steve,
essentially, and I had I had very sort of open minded parents who kind
of encouraged my love of ghosts and nessy and horror films at an early age.
So I was I was very well versed with it, and I kind
of lost my way in my late teens early twenties, shall we say,
And I came back to the fold towards my thirties, and I've been building
up courage to dip my foot in the world of podcasting. Essentially, my
brother had bullied me for the best part of six years to do one,
Steve. Oh great, Well, you know it's great that you know that
you say that your parents encouraged it because some of the experiences you had as
a child. Other people that have had them their parents who would ignore them
or say you're imagining things, or it's an imaginary friend, don't talk about
it. But you didn't have any fear of that because of their support.
Absolutely. Well, I've always had a foot in two chems because my stepfather
was a doctor of chemistry and obviously my mum considered her self descended from witches,
so basically I was. I was astride the skeptical non skeptical argument throughout
all my childhood growing up. So my stepfather was very dismissive of such things,
but was also encouraged by the fact that it meant I read a lot,
which I suppose kept me quiet, which is always a bonus. Well,
he might not want to encourage it. It just he just pushed a
new book under my nose. What part of the UK? You win?
I live in South Yorkshire, part of the Greater County of Yorkshire, the
greatest county in England. Okay, I know. Uh Paul Sinclair has written
a lot about eastern and northern Yorkshire and uh yeah, here's his research is
as fascinating. And have you met the gentleman yourself. I've actually been out
for for a few hours over on Benton with Paul. I spent a birst
part with him. I've got to know Paul primary through doing the show and
got on like a house on fire because we kind of grew up. He
grew up on the opposite side of where I grew up, so we're from
a similar location. Then obviously he's moved out to East Yorkshire in Bridlington where
he's now based, right, and so we've got to know each other.
We've got on really well. And then a couple of years ago I kind
of said, hey, I've got a couple of days off will you be
around? Is it all right if I come home for a bit? And
him and Bob took me out onto Benton Cliffs and we we had about three
hours out there just looking out and checking things and going around a few of
the locations. It was. It was fabulous. So yeah, oh that
would be great. You know when when you're reading Paul's books, you feel
like you're right there with them on the edge of the cliffs, and and
you know he interviews all he's got a great way with people. And have
you seen his his documentary wolf Lands. Absolutely I've got everything, Paul.
I've got all four Truth book books. I've got The Night People, and
I've also got a copy of Wolfland. So absolutely I've read the four Truth
Truth Proof books. And that is the truth that leaves no proof, not
easy to day. And I'm almost done with Night People, and my god,
he took a departure when he was between three and four, and it
just just talks about starting with his childhood into adulthood of the you know,
he had just bizarre experiences and I encourage everybody to get a hold of his
books. Don't go to Amazon or eBay because third party pirates are selling them
there. You can find Paul's link. I don't have it right here offhand,
but you can. You can order them directly from him from the UK.
Might pay a couple bucks in shipping, but you're going to pay reasonable
prices for the books and they are just absolutely fascinating. Yeah, he's he's
a stellar researcher and he's a really down to earth person. He's he's a
really great guy. He's been very supportive because he's been on the show several
times, and like I say, he's very open about his experiences. True,
as you were saying about the departure that he made with The Night People,
I know when were we I did an episode with him about it,
and I just said to him, I think he'd being very brave because it's
it's one thing talking about going out and dealing with anomalous phenomena and interviewing other
people. But I think The Night People is such a raw portrayal of childhood.
Anyway, regardless of the strange things going on, Steve that I just
thought he was really brave coming forward to to lay himself baar like that person
and you can tell some of the experiences he was having a rough time sharing,
but he you know, he did it anyway, I think because he
knows that other people are have experienced things like this and they feel very alone.
So people like like Paul and yourself that come out and now me,
I don't. I don't experience anything, you know, just to speakers,
So I can't. I can't share experiences with anybody unless I make them up.
But he's, uh yeah, it's and the one thing I want to
tell people. Uh we won't talk about it. But if you get a
hold of The Night people, pay attention to the chapter about mister and missus
tick. That's t I c k that. That is the creepiest, the
creepiest thing I have ever read. Yeah, I mean, Brundy, if
you have aaron, had any strange experiences or are you like Steve quantfution that
you you sound like you probably don't want one anyway, I'm not, you
know, I wouldn't mind something exciting, or maybe somebody to smile at me,
you know, or something. But I don't need any creepy shadow people
while I'm trying to sleep or anything like that. The most I can say
is probably I've heard things at my place of employment before. We had doors
that would slam. I worked at night sometimes, and this stuff only happened
when nobody else was there, or you know, when when only a couple
of people were there. It would never happen during the day or anything like
that. So that's that's the best I can I can say, And that's
fine. You did pick up you were you were someplace once and you there
were a group of ladies there, and didn't you suddenly know their names or
a lot about them? I did. I did. We were actually it
was on a haunted tour of this old town, and so we had already
finished the tour and we were in the last location, and the whole time
there were there was this woman there, and I swore I knew her,
and I could not figure out. I was trying the time to figure out
how I knew her. And this place that we were at was not where
I lived. I was out of town at this at this thing, and
so like, my impulse was so strong that after it finished, she and
the ladies she was with went into the restroom, and so I followed them
into the restroom and I said, do you know me. I've just you
know, I've been trying to figure out how I know you. And to
make a long story short, you know, I said, I think you're
you know, your name is Jan or Jean or something, and she said,
well, I'm Jan, and my sister's Jean, and my other sisters
Jen. And she had never been in the you know, to the town
that I lived in. She'd never been to this ghost tour before. You
know, there was basically no way that she could think of of how we
had all met. But I just had this feeling that I knew her,
and I had a vision of them. I guess not a vision, but
I don't know what else to call it, but I almost a memory of
her signing her name, which is why I thought I knew what it was.
Yeah, I had forgotten about that, Steve, Yeah, that's that's
pretty cool. I had the one episode that I won't I won't repeat in
detail, but I Paul I might have mentioned on your show. I don't
know. But I went out to the T interior T and T area along
one night, which of course is the area where Mothman was seen back in
sixty six north about nine miles north of Point Pleasant. I came back to
my hotel room and I opened the door. The TV set turned down by
itself and started flipping steadily through stations. And my first thought was, No,
this doesn't happen to me. This happens to other people, and they
tell me about it, so that it's actually a longer story. But so
that's it for me. That's that's, that's it. But uh, which
I was probably fine because I'm the kid. That was. When I was
hiding under the covers, I'd hear the uh the heat duct, you know,
when the heat turned off, it would expand or contract, and I
probably thought it were footsteps of some kind of a critter up there, although
I will say that years later, uh, my sister was still living at
home and she was living up there, and uh, one one day she
was drying her hair with a hair dryer and she shot thought she saw this
mist up by the uh the light fixture, and she just thought it was
condensation or something like that. But then the dog came up, stared right
at it and started growling. She got the hell out of there. My
dad died in that house, so you know, she didn't know what to
think. But that was the that was the only time something like that happened.
And so whatever whatever. I'd stay at my mom's house and I was
sleeping up there in that bed. I'd be looking around suspiciously just in case,
you know, helping, hoping it was just a heat dot. You
know, always better to be safe than sorry, Steve. So what what
what happened in the when you got hit your thirties where you know, I
think I remember being very I was got into UFOs as a as a young
guy in junior high school, and it just seemed like there was a lot
of infighting and people nobody was making any headway. So there were a few
times when I kind of drifted away. But you know, it's it's always
it was. It's probably in my jeenes or whatever. I was always pulled
back somehow. What was it that brought you back into this realm? I
think? And I just kind of settled down. I'd continue to read the
forteen times throughout this period from the mid nineties, and I was a massive
X Files fan, so I wasn't completely out of it, but I wasn't
reading as much to the level that I had as a as a child,
as as as often happens when you become a teenager and you discover the opposite
sex and going out and concerts and things like that, your time tends to
fill up with other things, sadly, So it was a strange period because
I wasn't sort of immersed in it as much as I was. And then
I think I just really started opening myself back up to the fact that I
really did enjoy these subjects. I found them fascinating, and it was about
that point I started to buy the Odd Book now and again. Obviously these
days it's the Odd Book every week, as my creaking shelves will testify to,
and so I just kind of carried on reading the fourteen times. Obviously,
cable TV exploded over here in the nineties as well, late nineties,
and so I was delighted to discover programs like Sightings, Exit for Exit and
some of the great cases that they covered and some of the researchers. So
whilst I wasn't completely immersed in it, I kind of kept into it,
and then sort of, I don't know, after I s going to the
early thirties, I just really started to get interested in it and kind of
realized that I was interested in more than just the paranormal and neufology. And
like you say, Steve, i'd seen all that in the nineties and all
the infighting and everybody going on about Roswell again and again and again, and
I thought, right, and then you know, strange little things. I
mean, ironically, we're having a conversation today on March thirteenth, it's the
twenty seventh anniversary of the Phoenix Lights incident. And so things like that always
appeared on my radar, pardon the pun, unlike the US Air Force.
And so I just started to sort of open up and read more and get
in and start getting books. And then things like Amazon appeared and social media,
I think, and I think that opened me up because not a lot
of my friends were into these things, Steve, and I think as time's
gone on, prior to getting into doing what I do these days, obviously
I discovered my brother introduced me to podcasts about two thousand and nine, twenty
ten, and so that's when it really start. The bug really bit me
then, because then I was listening to loads of shows in America. I've
been on holiday in America once as well, and I remember I had the
Internet fairly early here in the UK, sort of about ninety eight I think.
And so I remember one Saturday lunchtime stumbling across this weird station from America
called Coast to Coast and there was a gentleman on there called Art Belt talking
to somebody about the men in Black, and I thought, Wow, what
is going on here? Who are these people calling in where it's wrong with
them? I just thought, this is just amazing. And then I happened
to be lucky, lucky enough to be in the States in Halloween two thousand
and four, and the place we were staying in had a radio, and
so I was able to listen to Coast to Coast for two weeks and annoyed
everybody I was on holiday with. It's important to do that, especially,
It's okay if you annoy Americans. They need to be all fellow Britts who
thought all stuff and nonsense. Whereas I was just loving listening to Art Bell
talks to a wide variety of characters of varying grips on reality. I think
Halloween, he not only does coast to coast, but he does ghost to
ghost, right, and people call in with their ghost stories. Yeah yeah,
I mean, somebody's very kindly because I subscribed to the art Bell Projects
patron and so somebody's uploaded about six hundred episodes that I did, and there's
I love the ghost of Ghost ones. They are amazing because there's some incredible
stories. I mean, there's some absolute nonsense and you get the odd weirdo
trying to tell a joke, which I never had time for. But some
of the ghost of Ghost experiences are absolutely chilling, some of them. And
it's fascinating when you have especially when you consider how many people listen to art
show. That people would call from all over the place. You know,
you get calls from Hawaii and Alaska and Alabama and New York and Missouri and
Kansas, and then you get a call from Oregon and stuff. It was
just amazing to see that how big the United States and Canada were. People
were having strange experiences all over the place. It was wonderful, and they
would have he would have the Ghost Investigation Society on that was Utah that would
capture They caught some of the best clearest EVPs that I've ever heard. And
man, you know Paul and Brandy. For a while, I wouldn't listen
to an e VP show at night. Yeah, Brenda was Brendan and it
was it was it was Brendan Cook and I can't remember the lady's name,
but they were. They were. That was so entertaining and uh and and
and and fascinating. But uh uh yeah he uh yeah, he was great.
And you know the uh early early revelations of the Skinwalker Ranch when Colin
Keller, her And and George and Knapp would come on and you get these
catalyzing stories. And I man, when that book hit the the hut for
the Skinwalker hit the stands, man, they was in my hot little hands
in no time. Absolutely, there was some some some amazing stuff. Like
I mean, it's funny because I often listened to the e VP shows he
did because I listened to podcasts to fall to sleep to Steve, which is
no which is no criticism on on the shows. I just like to drift
off to him, and I listened to those a lot as I'm drifting off
to sleep. So I don't know. Maybe maybe ghostly voices helped me.
I'm not sure. Do you remember Paul the episode with I think it was
Rodney and Everett. Rodney had supposedly captured Everett a ghost in a bug zapper
or something like that, and and he was he was kind of beside himself
because his wife was off at some new age thing and he's alone in the
house. Was he claimed he claimed he had captured Everett, who seemed to
be a little bit perturbed that he was trapped. You know, it's even
true. There were so many gray ones, I mean mouths hole. Oh
yes, absolutely yeah. So so what what was your what was your path?
You can you can keep laughing. Uh. Now, for for me,
I started out with UFOs. I mean, we had that flap in
Michigan in March nineteen sixty six. Doctor Heine came down, we had the
you know, he declared some of them swamp gas, and the swamp gas
jokes have lasted forever. So that was what started me. And then the
following November sixty six, the first major signing of the Mothman went all over
the world. So, and you know I've told people this before, I
would buy Fate Magazine for the UFO report. I had no patience for the
articles on ghosts or anything else. So Paul, I'm confessing this. I
would cut the UFO article out of Fate Magazine. I would take the front
cover off and the back cover and staple it together. I had a collection
of the thinnest Fate magazines in existence. I did reform, and I have
recaptured most of those that I have a pretty decent collection of Fate magazines now,
and I'm over the horrible malady that caused me to cut out all those
other articles I've got. I've got a handful of Faiths because they're really hard
to get old hole here, but I've got i think fourteen times now,
I've got a thirty five year run. Oh yeah, oh boy, that's
yeah. I've only got a handful of those, uh, very very high
quality magazine. Yeah, and that's why I'm ringing out of room, Steve,
because I don't got anything out. Well, when you've got three hundred
and sixty issues, it adds it's a lot of room, Steve. Well,
yeah, well, it's it's a good thing not to cut things out.
I think. So did did you what what was your path were you?
Was it ghosts first? And then did you branched out into other areas.
I've always been really interesting. I mean, we were very lucky here
in the UK. We had a series of children's books that came out in
the late seventies from Osborne and they did three sort of seminal books. There
was Ghosts, UFOs and monsters, and that was the first experience I had
had of the creature known as Bigfoot, because obviously we only knew about the
Yetti really here, and so those three books introduced me to cases i'd never
sort of read or heard of. I mean, obviously, at the same
time, we also had two major cases happening here in the UK. We
had the Enfield Poltergeist, which was widely reported in newspapers over here in the
UK, and obviously nineteen eighty three was when rendallsham broke. The story was
published three years after the events, so I'd always kind of really interested in
all of that. And then obviously we had another seminal TV show here called
Art C. Clark, which was the first time I ever saw the Patterson
Gimlin footage when I was nine, I think eight or nine, and I
didn't realize forty years on just how much that film would ingrain itself into me,
to turn me into a massive lover of all things Bigfoot. What what
was your impression when you first saw that? What were you thinking? Wow?
What is that? What is that? And I mean, see,
the thing the thing about this is that, as I was saying earlier,
because I love horror films, I'd seen all the Universal films, I've seen
a lot of films that were perhaps not age appropriate, shall we say,
But I was always very clever as a child that I was able to sort
of put them to one side. They never gave me nightmares. Well you
had a ghost sitting on your bed. Well, yeah, and he was
talking about movies too, Yeah, exactly, recommend recommending some classic Universal films
to me. And so I knew enough about films that I thought, well,
that's clearly not a man in a suit, Because I mean, I
remember at that age I was obsessed with the original version of King Kong as
well, and I'd also discovered a love of Godzilla, So I could I
could tell you what a money in a suit looks like. If anybody's a
big Godzilla film, fum, they can tell you exactly how how rubbish and
money in a suit can sometimes look. And so I just thought, wow,
there there are giant monkeys living in North America is what I thought.
Wow, you know that was that was my impression through the first time I
read anything about bigfoot. I don't know if they used to term bigfoot or
if it was just a squatch. I don't know if you ever came across
the books of Frank Edwards and his anthologies, uh, The Strangest of All
Strange World and so forth he had. He's the one that introduced me to
the Kelly Hoppinsfield Goblins on the flat Wood. But yeah, one of them
he had a chapter that was called Monster Apes of Oregon. And that's the
first time I read about bigfoot in the Northwest. So very very cool.
And was the the these books that you that introduced you to these ideas?
Was NeSSI in there? Oh? Of course, look she was on the
front Kuma. Ah, very good, that's of course she. Yeah,
I've been fortunate. I've visited lot Neess. This was this was when I
was getting back into it. I went on a holiday in Scotland back in
two thousand and Yeah, I spent twenty years ago and we spent I spent
three days and at Lotness and actually went out on Lotness in a boat for
an hour. I was there in the fall of seventy three. I stayed
stated at a youth hostel in Inverness and we went went down with a few
people to on a bus to uh about the Foyer's area. We we actually
like crazy people followed. I think it was the Foyers River down to the
lock and some of that is really treacherous. I mean we were on a
narrow pathway like you see Indiana Jones do. We're just a bunch of dumb
kids in our early twenties, you know, doing and you know, any
one of us could have slipped and that would have been it, you know.
But yeah, So I was able to stand on the shores of Loch
Ness. It was good weather. It was just kind of a bit of
a haze in the distance, and of course you're always looking out there on
the water. But I also was looking over my shoulder because I'd read FW
Holidays The Great Orm That's rm of Lockness, where he was talking about some
classic sightings where people were seeing this scooting across the road and going into the
lake, so I was looking both ways just in case. Yeah, a
lot of mysterious black cat sightings around Lotness as well stage, so you were
very lucky something didn't pounce on you. And yes, and also abductions.
There have been some classic UFO sightings there too. Who was at young Sandburg
from Sweden. Yeah, came across that those little guys and suits and some
kind of a He thought it was a submersible at first, but it took
off in the air and he thought, oh, this is not a submersible.
Yeah. So I've always had a thing for you. Like I said,
I love it all. Now, I wouldn't say I've got a particular
favorite subject. Really, That's why I consider myself a fortune because I love
cryptozoology, I love the paranormal. I'm really back into you athology because like
you say, it can sometimes it can be a part of the fortune that
can that can take its toll on you, Steve, especially like you said,
because there was so much inviting and things that can someone. But that's
kind of something I've kind of really reconnected with, especially since doing the show,
I have to say, And of course John Keel hated to be called
a ufologist because he considered himself a Fordian. And you know that infighting goes
way back. I remember I was actually subscribing to Saucer and New for a
while before it went defunct in the sixties. And h uh they had they
did a satire the Nightcap, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, Donald
Keho and James Moseley of Saucer News Man. They did not like each other,
so Saucer News did a satire once. It was a Saucer Booze versus
No Cramp And yeah, yeah, Mosley really got well, mostly got under
a lot of people's skins, but he really got under Keyho's skins. So
that's that was. Uh, that was some funny times back then. Uh.
When you were first looking at UFOs, were you now? I originally
thought we were dealing with something nuts and bolts, Uh, extraterrestrials coming to
visit Earth U, picking up soil samples occasionally and occasionally giving us one of
those unscheduled medical examinations. U. It was later that I had other ideas.
But how how did you first view the UFO enigma? I viewed it
primarily on an alien visitation. I have to say now, I think there
are numerous explanations that are running in tandem. I don't think that they're all
alien visitors, and I'm not sure that they're all interdimensional travelers or glimpses of
the future or whatever. I think speaking from personal experience having seen something very
odd in the sky several years ago, I know it wasn't a craft,
but I know where it wasn't and what I saw isn't a typical UFO siting.
So that alone says to me, I think there are several things that
play here. But when I first got into it and I was reading,
like you say, obviously, one of the key stories in that UFO books
and on the front cover was the Hopkinsville Goblins, which is which is stay
with me. It's one of my favorite stories as long as you As you
mentioned earlier Steve as well, the flat was Monster two of my very favorite
cases because that bom me. Yes, and one of them, you know,
there was a kind of a documentary done. Actually they did kind of
a replay of the event. I think it's called Monsters of the UFO.
But the guy was being interviewed on it, he found one of the original
witnesses when he was a kid then, and he said, oh yeah,
it all happened. And this particular guy, I don't remember his name,
he went to church every single Sunday after that for the rest of his life
because of that experience. Better better than fire and brimstone, just have an
alien land and and and harass you at your house. Absolutely, that would
certainly make you question your your grip on reality and what you thought you knew
the world was. I think if they turned up, how did you,
how did you discover John Keel and what and what what happened there? It's
It's also probably one of the biggest regrets I've ever got in my life because
during that period where I kind of dropped away from it other than reading the
Fourteen Times, Keel spoke in Sheffield at the at the British UFO conference,
and I still to this day Steve can't explain why I didn't go, because
it was it was somewhere where I knew I knew killed by that point because
of the Fourteen Times, and obviously people were referencing the Mothman. Because I
got I picked up a copy of a very dog eared copy of the Mothman
prophecies and what else? Did I get a third Tower? Eight? Yeah?
Or a Projian horse, Yeah, I think it was the eighth Tower.
So I got two very dog eared copies of both of those books for
a couple of pounds, not much, a couple of dollars worth, and
they both lasted about a year. And so I was absolutely fascinated with heels
work and the phenomena, especially the whole Mothman case, because for me it
was really interesting because it was a range of phenomena on top of everything in
regards to the Mothman sightings and then obviously the other cases that he involved,
and it just had a bit of everything, and I just thought, this
is really great journalistic writing, even if you don't put much credence in it.
This is a man who's a talented writer. These are great stories on
whatever level you want to judge them on. And so from that point you
could see through that sort of late nineties period obviously that the book got optioned
by Hollywood and then you've got the film turn up, which is a strange
thing because I know when we were speaking Steve, we were both saying when
it first came out, we weren't very keen on it, and now we've
gone back to that, we're really it's a great film. I think we
were too precious the well we I think we both. I know, I
was disappointed that there wasn't more on the Men in Black phenomena, which was
so fascinating. But but obviously they had already done two very silly films on
the Men in Black and to you know, make too much of a connection
with that, it would have just been laughable. Yeah, absolutely absolutely,
And so it was. He was. He was held in high circles here
in British fourteen society, and so he was kind of like the Grandfather I
think for a lot of people that certain people just held him up as some
kind of high priest of the strangeness and considered his his work almost like their
their fourteen Bibles. So when obviously everything kind of got re released when the
film came out, and from that point on, I was really hoped.
And he's an author that i've I mean, I must have read the Mothman
prophecies, I don't know, at least ten or twenty times. Right.
You can get it on audible too, which is really fun if you want
to fall asleep to that, you know, maybe you won't be, But
yeah, he he was speaking of Art Bell. He was he sort of
came out of retirement and he did an interview on Coast to Coast AM.
He hadn't done one for a long time, and you could still find that
on YouTube, I think, or at least online and very strange interview.
Steve Yes, Art Bell didn't know anything about Mathman or John Teele. You
know, which is weird, isn't it. Do you think of all the
characters he'd spoken to, and you know, there were certain people like Robert
Gold ghost Wolf who'd come on and talk about these clearly imagine any things that
he'd done, and all these other characters that he had, And then I
mean that was the only not really a criticism. I don't think he had
a massive interest in it, but he didn't sort of touch on anything to
do with cryptids at all. Really, the vast majority of his his shows
were to do with the paranormal and new ethology and things like Bigfoot and Mothman
and high strangeness in general. There doesn't seem to be much there in that
period, which I find very odd. But then I suppose you've got to
go where your audience wants to go. And they were the two key cryptozoology.
I don't is the one that's kind of risen to an equal level in
my opinion since since the Internet. Really, but I think at that period
a lot of people were primarily into the ghosts and into aliens and UFOs,
right, and like somebody that used to throw oracles out of Fake magazine didn't
want to join them together, you know. But again that person has reformed
a long time ago. Let me do my little intermission here for just a
moment. You are listening to the High Strangeness Factor, copyrighted on the Paranormal
UK Radio Network. Today, Brandy and I are talking to Paul Bestel about
his research, his ideas and his podcast Mysteries and Monsters. Uh, John
Keel, I remember he told his literary agent, Sandra Martin. She told
Brent Rains, who is a sort of Keel's biographer, and and he didn't
never met Keel, but he corresponded with him, talk to him on the
phone and so forth. Uh. She told Brent Rains that when Keel got
this screenplay for the film by Richard HadAM, I think Prior to that,
he had gotten screenplays that were turning just Mothman into a monster or whatever.
You know, he didn't want any part of that, so he was Sandra
Martin said, Keel was so happy. He was laughing. He said,
you know, they've they've updated it, they've got me married and so forth.
But finally somebody's captured some of the basic underlying idea of the book.
And that's what I began to feel later after my initial negative reaction. That's
my drift. Yeah, yeah, I can understand that because you it's one
of those things. I mean, you look at some of the films that
are made, Like I said, because I consider myself a lover of all
weird things, and I've watched more bad films than I care to admit to.
Sometimes sometimes bad films are the best, Oh absolutely. But it's strange
going back to all that because obviously one of the films I saw during my
sort of early childhood, which is one of those that surprises me when I
think, because I think back and I think, what the hell would the
BBC Player was that we had a season I don't know, nineteen eighteen,
nineteen eighty one, So I was aware of big Book by this point,
and they shelled The Beast of Boggie Creek on British television at six o'clock on
a Friday evening, and they just basically said, this docu drama is about
a strange creature running about Arkansas. I thought, oh, well, brilliant,
and I think it was a classic. They've been showing these films and
we had they'd showed the Battle Lugosi, Dracker and King Kong had been on,
and they's shown a Godzilla film and stuff. So I'm thinking, well,
this is all fine, and I watched The Beast of Bodie Creek and
it absolutely scared the bejesus O me. Well, you know, I did
not see it when it came out. It kind of hit the drive in
circuit over here, but I know that from listening to a lot of people
that are Bigfoot researchers nowadays, that was the film that started it for them,
that they had a huge, huge influence over here. Yeah. Yeah,
Well for me, I think it's the greatest big Foot film ever made.
Still, now, did you have a feeling that, even though you
may not have heard any reports from over there, that there might be some
kind of a creature like that over in the UK or were you kind of
did you kind of feel removed from it, like, well, thank gosh,
that's all happening and over in the United States. Yeah, Well,
at that point, Brandy, we in the UK, our eyes were fixed
to the east and we were just staring towards Nepal and looking for the Yetik.
So we'd get lots of stories and things about the Yeti, but Bigfoot
culturally was near enough non existent over here. And so, like I say,
it's only when I got into the sort of nineties and cable TV and
seeing certain people pop up on sightings and you'd occasionally see a documentary that had
been repeated that were made sort of in that great sort of period after the
Patson Gimlin film where people were making really great documentaries about Bigfoot, and you
had characters like John Green and many de Hinden and the like sort of arguing
on camera into about what they thought it was and what they should and shouldn't
do. And so when I was a kid growing up, there was next
to nothing about it. So when I saw something like that, I was
like, could it be? And I thought, well, you know,
I'm you know. I wasn't a adapt chat. I was very well read
and had a very open mind about things. So I just thought, well,
America's massive, Why why shouldn't there be something there? Why not?
There's you know, there's bears there, they're big. Why can't there be
something else wrong about there? And then I started thinking, well, are
there monkeys in America? I mean the monkeys in Africa? There are monkeys
in Asia. Why can't there be monkeys in North America? And for me,
it wasn't that much of a leap, so I thought, well,
maybe it's just some kind of undiscovered species. So I wasn't dismissive. I
just thought, well, I'm I'm always surprised that the arrogance of people that
they think they've discovered everything, when every week something turns up that nobody's expecting.
As I've said here, I mean, we've got capy barers running about
in England and you know, mysterious colonies of wallabies. We've got a wild
boar population that nobody wants to talk about. Here got mysterious black cats.
Yeah, yeah, so there are there are is the kind of situation that
nobody wants to talk about until something bad happens sadly. What about the man
Monkey. All I know about that is I skimmed the book Nick Redfer and
wrote a book on the man monkey. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There was a lot of sightings around Canic Chase, which is in the
Midlands, and there was a there was a story from sort of the late
nineteenth century I think, where people were being attacked by some strange kind of
man monkey type figure and it was like scaring people. It was. It
was very similar to to the kind of stories that surrounded Springheeled Jack, I
think, where a lot lots of people were caught unawares late at night wandering
in lonely parts of the Midlands. But there's some strange creatures around there.
They've got the shug monkey, which is essentially a dog faced monkey as well,
so I'm not too sure. I have to say, before I started
a podcast, I fell foul of the British big foot believers society because obviously
there are people who think they're running around here, which I'm not having that
people people might be seeing something, but it's not an eight foot cryptid.
I'll see that. I'll say that they might be seeing the ghosts of something,
but I don't think there's a flesh and blood something running around this country
anyway, primarily because it's not that big. As I've said to some of
my guests, I think the UK can fit inside thirteen American states, so
you know, we're not that big. You can drive from from Scotland to
Cornwall in about eighteen hours, so you can drive the entire length of the
country in less than a day. You know, that would be a great
quote, Paul Bestall, I'm not having that with an eight by ten glossy
of your photograph, not in my watch. But it's almost like this man
monkey thing. It's a little bit like some of John Keel's window areas.
There are things that sort of pop in, scare the hell out of people,
do seem to have some substance, and then they're gone, yeah,
yeah, well kind of chase is one of those areas of high strangeness.
Steve nick Nick Redfern's done a couple of books on a Nixxon phenomenal research and
a prolific author and another person who I would imagine you could he would happily
consider himself a fourting because he's obviously covered a wide variety of subjects from from
conspiracies to UFOs to cryptids. I'm not too sure if he's done on the
paranormal, but he's certainly covered a wide range of strange topics and so for
me, he's the perfect British example of somebody who would be looking into a
strange window area because I mean it's his neck of the woods and and so
he would be perfectly poised to give a personal opinion on it. Obviously,
I know he lived in the States for quite a long time. I believe
he's recently moved back to the UK. But obviously Nick's somebody that's been around
for a very long time. So he's another one like Keel that I became
aware of through the Forteen Times and the work he was doing. And obviously
he's worked with the Center of forty and zoology here because he also wrote another
brilliant book which is Three Men Seeking Monsters. Yes, what a you know?
They need to make that into a TV miniseries, which is which is
quite funny because I read that. I remember reading that on a plane Steve
on my kindle and the man next to me gave me the strangest looks all
where Back to the UK. He just kept looking, and you know when
somebody's looking at glands and he'd kind of give you that worried nod. I
wonder the hell and I got here and it's quite good. The books.
I dragged into restaurants and sit there for hours, striking coffee. I get
a lot of strange looks. Exactly one place I frequent in the morning,
they just called me a Marthman. So it's quite quite funny. Obviously,
I've really got to know Richard Freeman, who was one of the three men
in that book. I've got to know Richard really well. I've written the
forward for his for his new book that's coming out shortly. So to go
from reading about him and what he was up to to becoming somebody that I
know and speak to regularly and was asked to do that for his is phenomenal.
Really. Dick has done some books like I think it was Black Diarrhea's
one, and he's talked about the stranger or paranormal as spects of the men.
I'm black, So he does get it. He covers everything. Boy,
we could you know, we we could talk about Giant keel forever.
But some people out there are saying yes, and other people are groaning.
What about when did you discover Jacques Flee around the same time. Really,
I mean there was a lot of kind of cross pollination when people were talking
about the the deep thinkers of the subject. Steve and I think Jacques and
Johnna are very similar in regards to the fact that they I would say that
they elevated the conversation to a to a level that a lot of other people
weren't doing beneath them, sort of all the people who were pointing fingers and
arguing about arguing about themselves or whether they were Grays or the Nordics or whatever,
or whether they were all coming to take us to Venus, to meet
these wonderful naked planets full of fruits and ambrosia on every turn, you know.
And some of the crazy quasi religious cults that had sprung up around the
world in the fifties, Adan Ski especially as a prime example of that.
So I think Jacques Vallet and Passport to Mogolia is another one of those books,
and I just think is incredibly important because it makes you question the reality
of the world outside of not just talking about strange phenomenon because it if you
look at when it came out, and you look at what we know in
the world of astrophysics and physics these days. It's it's almost incredible where we've
come from in such such a short space of time, really, that you
know, we've got a giant hadron collider under the ground in Switzerland trying to
trying to make black holes. I mean, if you'd have said that to
me forty years ago and I laughed in your face. Yeah, yeah,
people stop hearing the transmission on this. That means the black hole stuff that's
going to get through the alp. Brandy, you probably have like a dozen
questions ready to go. Well, actually, I'm curious. You're talking about
these window areas and kind of the amalgamation of all different kinds of phenomena happening
in certain you know, spots, And I wonder, Paul, if you
have a theory as to why certain phenomena might happen in some spots and other
phenomena happens in other spots. If they're all kind of blinking in and out,
you know, like why is the man ape in Cannock Chase and a
yetti in Nepal? You know why why wouldn't they all be blinking in and
out of everywhere. I think sometimes one of the problems is I think that
there are places, I think where the veil is the thinnest, that you
have particular areas as you know, as we say these window areas that you
could kind of say like skin Walker Ranch or the Bridgewater Triangle is another one,
Chestnut Ridge where all kinds of weird and wonderful things go on there and
you've got here. And then as Steve was mentioning earlier on the work that
Paul Sinclair's done over on the east of Yorkshire, where that it's not just
strange lights in the sky. There's a lot of weird things going on over
there, and weird phenomenons being reported for three four hundred years. And it's
not just like I say that the atypical unidentified flying objects or whatever. There
are people seeing strange creatures, there are people seeing ghosts all over the place.
There are places where people seem to vanish off the face of the earth.
And so I think sometimes when we have localized phenomena like the Yetty wherever
that is, or you could even say very similar to the Yawi in Australia
because there's a lot of high strangeness that surrounds the Yawi. I'm not too
sure, but I'm a big believer in obviously how we know the universe works,
or we think we know as much as we like to that there are
lots of strange things that play going on of every second of every minute of
every day. I think in the universe that you have things that would just
blow our minds and bafflers if we, as normal lay people would look into
them and see what was happening on other planets or in far flung parts of
this galaxy. And I think when you get strange areas where you get strange
lights in the sky, hairy Homonid's running about people seeing ghosts, people seeing
other types of monsters like dog Man that I'm not too sure what creates that
veil to be so thin. I'm not sure if it's people seeing them on
a conscious level and believing that they're physical entities. I'm not sure if you've
got physical entities and also things popping in and out of other places. I
think sometimes a big believer in parallel phenomenon running concurrently that may not be linked,
so you will often hear people saying, oh, well, UFO's and
Bigfoot of linked because people have seen a big foot and there's also been UFOs
reported. Well, there might be, but it doesn't necessarily Just because two
things have happened at the same time, it doesn't mean they're linked. I
spoke recently to an author called T. Watson who's just released a book called
The Forest Poltergeist, And essentially what that's looking at is that you've obviously got
your class a bigfoot encounters where people see something, interact with something, have
a physical interaction on some level. But you also have all these reports of
people hearing things, tree knocks, howls, footprints wherever. Is that being
prescribed to bigfoot incorrectly? And is there something else going on at the same
time or is it a mixture of everything? And as with anything when people
come to the strange, a lot of people don't like situations they can't explain
easily, I find, And so some people will say that everything's bigfoot,
and some people will say everything's a poltergeist that lives in a wood. But
I think if we're going to talk about these creatures and these situations and these
phenomena, properly and openly. We have to be open to the fact that
why can't two things be happening at once? Why does it have to be
one or the other? Why does it have to be two? It could
be three or four. We are not sure. And that's before you even
start talking about things like the fae. So, yes, who knows,
Brandy. So I'm not sure I couldn't. If I gave you an answer,
I'd be I'd be I'd be punching above my grade, I think,
because I don't think anybody's got real answer for that. But I'm not sure.
That's that's me getting out of it. See that ready, you laid
a trap. I'd like to think I swiftly stepped out of the way very
well. And I think it was interesting because I know when you were saying
at the beginning about what you're reading. The Woodknocks series that Daily Weather has
done is a phenomenal I mean, David's work is amazing anyway, and if
you've not started them, David's obviously started doing his his books on every state
in the US. Yes, they are easily some of the best books I've
ever read, and I can't recommend them David's work across a number of David's
Another one, Stephen Brandy, that I would suggest is also somebody who would
consider himself for Fortuen because he obviously covers cryptids, but he deals with ghosts,
he deals with legends, he deals with the UFOs. He's a renaissance
man, I would suggest, and he's a damn good writer, and he's
a brilliant investigator. So once you get through the Woodknock series, because I've
got all them, because I'm near enough got everything David's released, I would
recommend you move on to the state ones because they are just brilliant, because
they cover everything, and you will learn. Even if you think you know
things about your particular state or a state that you know, or you think
you know very well, you will always discover something in those books. And
that's the best thing about this subject is not only do you learn about weird
things, you also get bit of history and a bit of geography as well,
which is a great thing. Knowledge is wonderful. Actually, Brandy and
I have had the privilege of meeting David a few times at the Van Meter
Visitor Festival in west of Des Moines, Iowa. At the end of September
commemorating the Week of Terror nineteen oh three, where they were seeing some kind
of a not just a pterodactyl like creature, but it had some very bizarre
attributes, like a light on its beak, I think. And it's just
a very strange set of circumstances. Yeah, I think that in some cases,
in some of these areas high strangest areas, there are some links.
You know, if you go back to eighteen ninety seven in Ohio, you
had the airship reports, you had a wild man being seen in Adams County
where the separate mound is between mid April and mid May, and also a
bunch of black panther sightings. You have Lee Hample's farm near bray Row,
near Elkhorn, Wisconsin, where he's seen the dog Man and there's some kind
of weird technology flying around there. And of course you have Stan You mentioned
the area in Pennsylvania that just slipped out of my head, the area where
Bigfoot and UFOs have been seen, especially in seventy three and seventy four.
But on the other hand, I have to say, you know, you're
I'm sure you're familiar with Albert Rosales's Database of the Humanoids, and he's got
those fifteen books out and when you read through those, those are fascinating.
But I can't believe everything in there, our will of the wisp, for
transmogrifications of energy or whatever. I think that some of them are probably physical
flesh and blood encounters along with the other. And I don't know, you
know, trying to separate the two if both exist, if we both have
two, if these two things are going on, something more ethereal, something
more tied to wor a consciousness, but then also something very physical, is
sometimes it's almost like you can't even separate them. Yeah, I think sometimes
the problem is, and I've said this before when I've spoken to some other
guests, is that a lot of people are into their particular subject and therefore
they don't know, they don't know much about the other things that are around
them. Because I've seen this in all walks of the weird. So you'll
you will always get people who will consider anything surrounding a UFO siting to be
related to the UFO or the occupants or something. You will see the Bigfoot
researchers who will have no interest in anything paranormal because the other thing I've said
about this is that whenever people talk about is Bigfoot an interdimensional being? Well,
why are we not saying why isn't it a ghost? Nobody wants to
say I've seen the ghost of a Bigfoot. They seem to leap straight to
it being an interdimensional being. That's magic. I think, well, why
why would you go that far across? Why would you jump over ghosts to
get to interdimensional being? Surely that's a stranger concept, is it not?
Then the possibility that people may see a ghost and that's why Bigfoot disappears behind
a tree, because you're not seeing a creature, you're seeing you're seeing a
haunting of something. Because there are so many reports of ghost cats and ghost
dogs, ghost horses. Why wouldn't there be if you open your mind to
the existence of the paranormal and all levels, and there are thousands and thousands
of accounts of people who had encounters with ghost animals. And I think if
you ask anybody in a paranormal sense, people will soon start talking about a
paranormal experience around an animal of some kind that I don't understand why people jump
over that when it comes to a creature like bigfoot. Why couldn't there be
I'm sure you know here in the UK we've got two very famous ghost ai
stories, so if we've got you know, obviously monkeys are not native to
the UK that some people used to keep them as pets, and some people
still do so. If you can have ghosts of apes reported in the United
Kingdom, why can you not have the ghost of a hairy hominid, which
has been reported for millennia, both through native culture and into the modern era,
rather than it being something from another dimension. What is the difference between
the UK ghost apes and Harry hominid reports? Is there some difference? Yeah,
well, they're both. They're both rather odd. Let's just say one
of them is rather rude. It's it's a ghost. How shall I say
this? It's a ghost of an ape that's enjoying himself. I'll say that,
Okay, Yeah, that's the politest description I can have for yourselves.
And the other one is just one that just runs around banging and jumping and
shrieking. I'm not sure if they're both ones of maccaor and ones of baboon
pecular apes, like, were they particular you know, zoo animals or particular
circus apes or something or are they pets? There were pets, oh,
okay, that's people people used to people in big country houses used to have
meningeries. So they have all kinds. And one of them was as a
as a story where the ape killed its owner and is known for for shrieking
around the particular building, and the other one. But yeah, a lot
of people used to keep them as pets. They'd buy them sort of on
the black market, as it were, and so you know, you'd have
a lot of people at that time sending around the world to people that just
pick up small monkeys and apes are all around the place. I mean quite
how they manage to get a baboon on a ship and getting back to the
UK and it ripping some of these eyes, I'm not really sure that the
baboons are not known for being the calmest of the the animal kingdom. So
but yeah, they were pets. Okay, you know, you know,
Paul, that's one of the best descriptions of a behavior I've ever heard.
I've mentioned that story enough to know how to don sround it rated PG excellent.
Okay, he's a very happy monkey. Well that's good, and he
has a hobby. Well, that's very good. Uh So what I'm always
fascinated about are are the parallels the connections. Uh. Keel said that people
he talked to that experienced cryptids and or UFOs, I mean, your cryptos
and UFO separately would suffer the same physical effects, uh, muscle ache,
thirst, and sometimes even conjunctive itis. What's what's the There was to the
lady Connie Carpenter, one of the original witnesses of the Mothman, that received
conjunctive itis iburn, which is normally associated with UFOs. And then you have
the situations where, of course you have UFOs that stop cars, you have
phantom armies that have manifested that stop car engines, and even the close proximity
of a bigfoot like creature. So it's those kinds of parallels that suggest that
at least in some cases, a lot of these things must be connected.
Yeah, I mean that kind of gives you some kind of indication that something
physical must be happening because people are having a physical reaction to it. Obviously,
people would say that sometimes these could be psychosomatic and they induce them on
themselves, and sometimes people's subcumscious can create ailments that wouldn't necessarily be reported.
But then as you say, there, Steve, are countless, especially when
it comes to the UFO cases where people have physical signs afterwards. I mean,
another great example is the cash Landrum incident where they both, yes,
well all three of them, obviously the small boy was ill as well,
where they suffered severe physical ailments afterwards to you know, to end up seeking
hospital treatment. And so you only have to sort of dive into that particular
subject where you as you say, in regards the mothmaan, there were numerous
people that had issues with their eyes after having sightings. There are countless UFO
reports where people have had insomnia, coming down with fevers, as you say,
chills, aches, as though they've been exposed to some kind of substance
or chemical or there's a reaction in them that causes them to become ill,
like I said, as though they're becoming allergic to something. Right. Whether
this is I don't know. It's weird because some of the reports it sounds
almost like they've they've got some kind of hay fever and they need antihistamines because
a lot of the symptoms seem to be quite similar to that kind of thing.
But then, obviously, as you say, you have people that have
reports of seeing a ufo or a cryptid who will then suddenly realize that for
some reason they seem to have a polsy ice move into their home. Brandy,
you must have more questions. I listen, Paul. I know,
Brandy, she's probably got twenty Quinton's questions written out in cursive, just ready
to go. Well, I know you didn't you kind of slid by this
earlier. But where do the fay fit into all of this? Are they?
I mean, are they their own category of phenomena or are they somehow
responsible for everything else? I think some people would like them to be.
I mean, they are the ultimate trickster in folklore, aren't they. There
are stories from all continents or cultures of little people, people who live in
the hills, in the woods, in the valleys, that you have to
treat with respect. Some are quite it doesn't really matter if you unite to
them. They just don't like humans. And so I think, once again,
because fairies and the fay seem to have been pushed to one side for
a considerable part of the twentieth century, I think it's only the last twenty
years or so that the FAY as a relevant forty and subject seems to be
being taken seriously again, Brandy, and I think once again that comes down
to the level of interest that researchers may or may not have in a particular
subject. You only have to look at how dismissive some people have been about
indigenous cultures across all continents, be they First Nations or Native American or down
into Australia or some of the continent. Some of the cultures across Europe that
people would often dismiss them as just being old tales and stories and not giving
them any credence. And yet if you sit down and look at them studiously
and look at them in a modern Fortian lens, there's a lot of parallels
with strange things that go on. Because most tribes in North America have stories
of hairy homonids, some quite large, some quite small. They also have
stories about creatures that live in certain areas that you have to treat with respect.
There's a lot of cultures from nations in Africa where they have a great
belief in elementals and earth spirits, and a lot of that came across during
the sort of migrations, the forced migrations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries where
people from African nations would find themselves in North America and they would bring these
beliefs with them, and so for them, regardless of the fact that they
were now in a different continent, they still thought that whatever they'd grown up
with had come with them. Which, well, it's one of those things
because when you look at certain areas of the US, different states seem to
have been popularized by different cultures, and so you have large sort of Germanic
and Scandinavian populations in the northern parts, you know, and there aren't many
states like Wisconsin where people put a pickle on their Christmas tree and that's a
German tradition, you know. But then you've also got large areas where you've
got Scandinavian culture quite evident. Obviously. You go to the southern States,
you've got a lot of French culture down there. You look at the western
US, you've got a lot of Spanish influence still, especially with a lot
of people that have kind of come up from Mexico and Central America as well.
So you've got different cultures all over it, lay it on top of
the existing histories and beliefs of the Native Americans. And yet a lot of
them all have very similar beliefs. They've just all got different names for them.
Sure we have the puck Wedgies in the Ridgewater Triangle and even you know,
if you go to the strange things going on in dubbed whales in seventy
seven Southwestern whales, not only did they have seven foot tall silver suited giants,
they've had these little shirt guys three foot feet tall with curved eyebrows and
in conjunction with the same kind of egg shaped craft. So you have this
bizarre mix of all the stuff with orbs and animal reactions. Another important thing,
so I think, and I think you know, Jacques Role, back
in what was the late sixties, began to pave the way for making those
connections with the faries, the elementals, whatever you want to call them,
the fay and and you know in various traditions and some UFO encounters. Yeah,
absolutely, I mean you only have to look for a direct comparison.
For example, I'm not saying they're the same thing, but if you look
at abductions in the in the ufo sphere, and then you look at the
history of the Fay. People were fairy led, they disappeared, and then
they come back and nobody know where they'd been for five days Allah Travis Walton,
for example. Yeah, and so there's there's a direct parallel there because
you've got two things that are happening that are very different, but essentially it's
the same thing. Somebody sees something that's not of this earth and disappears or
can't remember what's happened, and so you would think, well, is this
because this is the other argument that sometimes used to get put forward, is
that nobody sees fairies anymore. They just see aliens. And yet yeah,
Now, I mean, if you just said to me six years ago before
I started doing the show, is there anything in the world of the Fay
that you think is valid or relevant? I have said absolutely, not a
chance. Now, I don't know what's going on where I know enough,
and I've spoken to enough people, and I've seen enough now to know that
people having very real encounters with some strange form of beings of a variety of
types. You can call them bog arts or goblins or fay or the knockers,
or whatever, but they're not seeing aliens. They're not seeing the Grays
or the Nordics or the robots. Or you look at the incident at Pascagoula
with Charles xsent and Calvin Parker. You know that was a very sort of
robotic type of encounter before they met the strange woman on the ship. But
once again, you will have stories like that where people meet strange fay who
take them to meet the fairy queen or wherever. And so there are lots
of parallels. And once again, as Steve have mentioned in there about what
was happening in Wales, I've seen people who are into the fee try and
explain all that particular encounter as fairies. But everybody involved in it thinks they
encountered some form of alien And so once again you've got people's beliefs overriding the
witness testimony because they want it to be what they believe in, which isn't
fair because it's treating the witness with no respect. Brandy and I think when
I've spoke to other people, you will hear people talk about dog man encounters
and bigfoot researchers will say no, they didn't see a dog man they saw
a big foot, who are just mistaken. Well, they're clearly describing a
dog, they're not describing a hairy ape human type thing. Oh no,
they're wrong. And therefore you're taking that witness's account and manipulating it to fit
into what you want it to be. And that's not fair, and it's
also bad research because then the water gets mudded even more and it completely takes
the experience away from that person that's had it and puts it in the realm
of the person writing about it instead, which isn't fair either. And therefore
you have to unpick all these things and try and deal with the initial account
rather than get what gets reported. Because another thing that Steve mentioned one of
the things that always used to get on my nerves about the flat Woods monster
cases. You would always see so many reports where they talk about the dog
dying and it didn't the dog didn't die, right, And people now still
say that the dog died in it, even though it's a world recorded Even
witnesses have said the dog didn't know. There's nothing wrong with the dog.
But because certain reporters have tried to sort of escalate it make it more terrifying,
that well, they can't say people died, but we can kill the
dog off. Then it gives it, it gives it a more frightening theme.
But when you look at the original report, there's no mention of this
dog dying. It's one of those it just seems to happen along the way
that Now you can always tell the quality of a researcher, because if they
repeat the dog dying, then they've not researched the original case. They've researched
a book about the case exactly. They're just slappy research. They just are
repeating what somebody else has said and tying in with all this. David Politis
a missing four one one in one of his books actually mentions the fairy faith,
and he talks about some of the traditions brought over from the Old Country
to Newfoundland. And you know how this young boy was out there picking berries.
Another another thing that it's you know, I don't think I'm going to
go out and hang out on a boulder field or pick berries anywhere. People
just seem to, you know, I I've looked at UHT David Politis's uh
uh list, you know. And also people that have like a some kind
of physical melody. Well, I live sometimes too, so I think you'll
see I'm not going to be limping picking berries in a boulder field because you
know I want to. I want to wear the shirt at the end of
the line, right, yes, right, yeah. The one thing I've
learned about David's work is don't be, don't be, don't be leading the
group, and don't be at the back of the gad that's right. And
and I'm a slow guy with short legs called you know, always go in
the middle. You've got safety in numbers as long as they're around you,
Steve. But supposedly they're supposed to take I think bread with them in case
the the the fay comes up to try and get them. They give them
the bread and they'll just go away or it protects them somehow. Well,
this boy didn't bring bread with him, and he van for about four days.
He shows up later and he is in a stupor. He's befuddled,
like so many of the people in David's books. That that the ones that
survive, those I mean, it's tragic when you hear about all the people
that have perished, but the uh, the ones that come back and have
especially young children that try to describe what has happened to them, and it's
just so bizarre. Yeah, I mean, there's a very famous one of
those. When he was speaking about that about the were they brother and sister
and the brother had a speech impediment, he couldn't talk properly, and the
sister vanished for a couple of days, and then she was found wandering around
the roadside about three or four days later, and it had rained for four
days, and when they found her she was dry. Yes, yeah,
And he couldn't explain what had happened because he couldn't talk right. And it
seems to target people that can't explain what happened. And then that the children
sometimes that are found fifteen miles away, fortunately alive, but uh, you
know, over a mountain range, and you wonder, Yeah, so that's
that's just you know, that's just mystery piled on mystery. So I have
to ask, uh, Brandy, Paul, why do we do this?
Why do we punish ourselves? Because I like things where I don't know what
the reason is. I do too, you know what it is. It's
like all this is a movie directed by David Lynch. Hey, that's okay,
yeah, but with Lynch man, did you did you ever see Lost
Highway? Go it? Lord? My left my left brain was trying to
figure the thing out, and my right brain kept saying forget it, forget
it, forget it. But were you sad when it was over? No?
I couldn't. My headache was gone. I think it's one of There
are very few films that give me creaks, but David David Lynch's films all
you know, I've said this before on other films I've done. He's one
of those filmmakers who has never strayed from his belief in how he creates a
story. And often when you finish watching a David Lynch film, you have
no idea what's happened. And I think that's that's the sign of a really
good director, because sometimes you can kind of see what's coming an hour before
it happens, or you can see the twist. And the thing with Lynch
is you might see the twist, but then he's got another two on top
of it. Yeah. Well, I love twin peaks, including Return.
But and he can do a straight narrative. I mean, I'm sure you've
seen The Elephant Man, Yes, wonderful film. Yes, excellent film,
Brandy, any other questions before we sign off for tonight, Well, I
just kind of want to. I guess put it out there that after we
were talking about the politest missing and things, something that Paul said made me
wonder if maybe those people that were taken or went missing were also people that
have had maybe even unreported experiences in the past and are susceptible to whatever it
is that caused them to disappear, even though they may not have reported that
they've been observing strange phenomena. I think, I think sometimes with things like
this, this this is the thing when when weird things, as me and
Steve were talking about when we were talking when Steve kindly joined me on my
show, Brandy was one of the things that that Kiel and other research is.
Tony Heey is another one that they they want to know what the experiences
had for bread bakst as well as everything else, and they want to know
everything else. And I think when somebody disappears, I mean, this is
the thing about some of the four one one cases. Some of them are
terrifyingly strange because they make no sense, and you've got people who are with
people and they just vanish, completely disappear, and sometimes we don't get the
opportunity. As you say, it's only the people that survive it or come
back. But I think once again, I mean David, to be fair,
does has interests in other fields. He's not just focused on missing people.
He's obviously done he's written books, you know, obviously the Hoopler Project,
and he's obviously in his latest documentary he's looked into some sort of UFO
connections as well. And obviously David over the years has often said that there
isn't these cases, There isn't a one size fits all. You can make
mind up as to what you think's going on, and then you'll come across
a case where it doesn't work because I sat there watching and listening to them
and I'm thinking, yeah, these people are being taken by Bigfoot. And
then you're like, well, no, that can't happen because somebody's in the
middle of a city. So you know, Bigfoot's not going to turn up
in a cab, you know, uber it and into the city center and
take somebody and nobody's going to notice that, are they or they're not all
being zapped aboard something. Because you've got people where nobody sees anything. There
are strange things that go on at the same time. You know, people
will hear weird noises. There's that case from Whereabouts. It was the hunting
party and there there was a group of them. They're all like two hundred
yards apart, and one of them just completely vanished off his own property.
And one of the witnesses who was there says, the weirdest thing was,
I heard a massive crack, like a trap shutting. And I can't remember
one that particular case was, but it was an old guy and all him
and all his friends and family were out hunting. They were I think they
were pulling the deer in, and he vanished two hundred yards away from on
either side of him, disappeared. They didn't find any trace of him at
all. They drained the swamps, they searched everything, they did the grid
patterns where they just search everything, where they fine tooth comb nothing. And
you think, well, how can somebody like that disappear when they're when you
would essentially say that they're surrounded by people. You know, it's yes,
you've got stories of people wandering off. All these people who go hiking on
their own, you think, well, you kind of asking for trouble there
wherever happens, you know. So if Steve ever suggests going for a hike,
Brandy, I think you need to take at least three or four other
people with you. And what I've learned is you need to have a GPS
tracker on a satellite phone at all times. And obviously some of you guys,
depending which state you're in, a gun they'll definitely wipe me to go
because I'm a slow one. They figure they're sick. Well, remember remember
the bizarre case and even David Polita said, this is one of the most
bizarre he's ever seen. Is where a young boy he made the family anonymous
because he didn't want people bugging them, and the boys disappears for a couple
of days. He wakes up in some bushes somewhere and uh, and then
he goes home and he uh. He's very quiet about what happened. And
then when he sees his grandmother, he eventually tells her that he saw her
grand his grandmother's double, but it was in a cave or a dungeon.
It was very much like a UFO abduction. Yeah, and it's just just
so strange. And he said there were she was he knew she wasn't his
grandmother because she had these sparkly lights around her head, and he called her
a robot. And then there were other people this kind of like suspended animation
standing around there, because called the mother robots. And I thought, my
god, and I think about you know, when I'm reading Paul Sinclair's books,
kind of still kind of fresh in my mind, when he's trying to
deal with the stuff that happened to him personally and people that have had experiences,
nothing seems to make sense. You know. We so desperately want a
narrative beginning, middle, and end, some kind of solution, but it
just doesn't seem to exist in this very often. Yeah, I mean you've
got I mean another prime example. He's not young boy two or three years
ago who disappeared for three days. When they found him, he said,
oh, it's all right. A bear was looking after me. Oh yeah,
yeah, So I know enough about Bear Steve to know that they don't
tend to look after little children. No, I imagine, I imagine unless
he had some porridge. Maybe not all I did. Now that's another show.
So Yeah, it's baffling, isn't it. Really? Well, Paul,
I think I think we'll wrap it up here for now, but I
really hope you'll come back because I can't tell you how much I knew this
was going to be a great conversation, but it was just fantastic talking to
you again. Oh well, thank you, thank you for inviting me.
I've had a blast. Thank you both, and please tell us your contact
information and about your show. You can find Mysteries and Monsters across most social
media networks and it's available on all other podcast platforms, so you can find
the show on there. And also my other show which I do, which
is The Ghost Story Guys, which is primarily dealing with the paranormal, which
I co host with my good friend Brennan Stole from Canada, and that's first
hand accounts of people's paranormal experiences, though we do get the odd weirder one
from other realms, and that's also available everywhere. So just look for Mysteries
and Monsters and The Ghost Story Guys. Excellent and Brandy, any parting thoughts
or questions, No, it's just been a great times, great conversation,
well, very good and Paul, I'm going to hold you to that,
even though I'm the guy that ripped up fake magazine. I want you to
forgive me and I want you to come back sometime. I'd be delighted and
honored. And like I said, I had a lovely time. So thank
you both for indulging and putting it with my robbling Listen. It has been
fantastic. Everybody stand by. Let me do my clothes out here. The
High Strangeress Factor was created by Steve wd and Andy Mercer and his copyrighted on
the Paranormal UK Radio network. I want to thank our fearless leaders here at
the network, Irene Alan Block, Mark Johnson and Andy Mercer. Andy also
is producer and composer of the closing theme for the show. Also Brian Zeller,
who composed the opening for The High Strangest Factor. I can also be
heard on Mac Maloney's Military X Files Weekly as a correspondent on this same network
and many other platforms, and I am Steve Ward, your humble host here
on The High Strangeness Factor. Displaced Michigander deep in the Ohio Valley, living
on the same road that the Wing Garuda pursued Automobiles in nineteen sixty six in
Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Thank you all for listening, Andy Mercer and
I will see you all again in a fortnight. Take care,