Speaker 1: What's he throughout the impossible or whatever I may have,
the improbable.
Speaker 2: Must be true.
Speaker 3: Then it is not a question of the libero cultism
all a touch of mysticism is today it is Empires
as a host of them souls.
Speaker 4: Telophaps, my father, spirit dude for a certain termed or
the night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the old gods unt dead? And what is the
true God? When he's dead? He can't complain.
Speaker 5: People assume the time is a strict progression of cause
to effect, but actually from a nonlinear, non subjective viewpoint,
it's more.
Speaker 2: Like a big ball of wibby wobbly thymy wymy stuff.
You're listening to Paranormal UK Radio.
Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, this is Irene Adam Blue, the host of
the Paranormal UK Radio Show, the flagship show to the
Paranormal UK Radio Network, and say there's amount of breath
now I'm here with Mark Johnson.
Speaker 5: Hey, you got my name right. I'm actually rather impressed.
Speaker 1: No, there's not even a homer or anything in that sentence.
That's why it totally wipes me out.
Speaker 5: Well, you can put one there. We can always rewrite
it too, That's that's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could have a Hi, this is Iron Alan Block,
the host of the Paranormal your radio show period like
ship show to the Paranormal UK Radio Network.
Speaker 5: See yeah, I think that would work. Allow you to
catch your breath.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, so what come on then?
Speaker 6: Or give me it?
Speaker 1: Tell the news, tell my news.
Speaker 5: So the news. Well we've it's been out now for
a couple of months, but your Iren's new book, Walking
with the Dead, is now available in softcover, kindle and
hardcover formats, and it's available at Amazon dot com or
other retail outlets online.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's got a very pretty cover, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Mark?
Speaker 5: Yes, I know I sleep.
Speaker 1: Yes, I know you did. I know you did. And
what about this other book, my story book that's coming
out now round about now, Mysterious Tales of the Unseen.
There's a combination of small, r short spooky stories. It's
right for the winter's nights coming when they.
Speaker 5: Mean yep, okay, you like it, you're busy bee.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, no, not to mention.
Speaker 5: The other book we're currently right.
Speaker 1: Which is about coming out now as well, you hope,
I hope.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's go on, we'll work on it.
Speaker 1: And what's that called we.
Speaker 5: Haven't we haven't nailed down a title yet.
Speaker 1: No, we haven't, but it's going to be a brilliant book,
Absolutely brilliant book because we have worked hard on that book. Yes,
we have been at it for months now, on that.
Speaker 5: Book, technically years if you think about it. Well, yeah,
it's covering a lot of a lot of time, a
lot of our experiences, a lot of things that we
have learned that we're sharing with the public.
Speaker 6: So that'll be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a very difficult book to write though.
It is a difficult.
Speaker 5: Book, but it'll be easy to read.
Speaker 1: That's it will be there. Everything will be there, easy enough,
I hope for everyone to understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to also cons a considering mark before
you go considering. It is a very complicated subject. It
should be easy enough to read. But the way we're
doing it, yes you think, I think so, yes, we
then all right, now you can get on with it.
Speaker 6: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, I want to introduce tonight's guest. Our guest
is one of the world's leading researchers into unexplained mysteries
and cover ups and paranormal phenomenon. He has written several
books and does lectures on history and British folklore as
well as performing around the globe. And his newest book
that's just come out is called Strange. And we want
to welcome Andy Thomas to the program. How are you tonight, Andy.
Speaker 2: Oh hello, yeah, well, very nice to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Hello Andy.
Speaker 2: Hello Ira.
Speaker 1: Do you know my ears picked up when Mark said folklore,
English folk law.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's a lot of it about and I mean,
to me, it's really interesting. I mean the world of mysteries,
I mean there's a folklore around that, of course. I mean,
there's so many folklore mysteries. But you know, even in
the world of the paranormal, you know, there's pictures of
the devil making crop circles in sixteen seventy eight and
very clear descriptions of them. And you know, as we know,
strange creatures and strange lights, they've always been there's always
been going on. So yeah, there is a folklore behind that,
but here it is still going on today. And I
think that's what amazes me is that a lot of
people think this is some kind of thing that used
to happen and doesn't anymore. And as you know, the
two of you it's going on all the time, the paranormal,
the strange, the supernatural. It's still all around us. But
of course now we live in a world that's post enlightenment.
We're not meant to talk about it anymore because if
science can't explain it, well, obviously it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 5: It doesn't exist across the science. Yeah. Yeah, that's the
problem is in plus the onslaught of the media and
social media and how they skew what's most of what's happening,
especially because, let's face it, fear cells and they sell
the scary aspects of it without really trying to dig
into the truth and look at things from a more
scientific explanation, And especially in this age where science has
expanded and we start looking at ideas of string theory,
quantum mechanics that starts to offer answer or at least
hints at answers to a lot of this phenomenon that's
been happening all this time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's truth to that. But don't you
find it really interesting that it's like the nearer that
science creeps to actually, you know, explaining how at least
bits of the universe might work. The more they reveal
that the mystics were probably right all along, but nobody
wants to admit that. And I think that's the silliest
situation we're now in. I mean, every other week you
hear a story saying they realize they've misunderstood some aspects
of science. It doesn't work the way we thought. And
then they'll tell you about things like entanglement and non locality,
where things are communicating with each other of a vast distances.
But then in the next breath they'll tell you that
telepathy can't exist, and I just I don't understand any
longer how that position is tenable. And one of the
things that I'm trying to do with this book Strange
is to try to wake up a lot of people
that maybe are on the cusp of this and still
think it's all a load of fouy, to say, well, actually, look,
this is not mutually exclusive. Yes, science often denies this,
but actually what it's discovering is bringing us background in
a circle to find pretty much the same things. And
it's now time to look again at all these phenomena
that have just been dismissed for so long and say,
we know what, maybe actually we should try to find
explanations because I think we're getting there. But there's this
huge denialism that does exist in the scientific world, and
that's really not helping anyone.
Speaker 5: Well there has been you know, people science really polices
what you're allowed or people are allowed to research and
publish because they control the money. You know, they want
a certain outcome. They don't want to rock the boat.
They don't want to you know, shift somebody's paradigm away
from our current society, and so they actively shut down
a lot of research that would really open up the
doors for all of this. But you know, we can't
shake up the status quo. I mean here in America.
Look what the Smithsonian Institution did around the turn of
the twentieth century when they started finding all the giant skeletons. Yes, yes,
and they whisked those away never to be seen again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't that telling because you know, when you
look at the research people like Hugh Newman and others
who've investigated that, you realize, my god, there's so much
evidence for giants. But yeah, for some reason, it doesn't
fit the paradigm that we're supposed to be looking at
or you know, however, they filter it through. They have
clearly an agenda which says that didn't exist and we
don't want you to know that it exists. And there's
a lot of other evidence like that that I think
does get buried. And I mean, just give a good
example of that. I mean, you know, some years ago
they were looking for the body of the very late
King Richard the third over Do you remember that? Do
you remember that? And there was there was a lady
called Philip Langley, you know, who was very evolved in
the research to try to find where the body might
be buried. Now they knew he'd be somewhere in the
city of Leicester somewhere, but they weren't sure where. And
she had what you know, she's alluded to as some
kind of psychic intuition which led her to this exact
spot in this car park, which weirdly had a big
letter R painted in white on it AH for Richard
Well who knows. But nobody believed her. They thought she
was bonkers. But in the end, just to shut her up,
they dug down and she got it right, and there
was the body of Richard the Third exactly where she
was led to. But that didn't fit the paradigm, and
as a result of that she got well, well, I
mean you could argue now it's made it big because
they actually made a film about this in more recent years,
so she's got her own back. But you know, they
didn't want to hear that it didn't fit the paradigm.
She didn't speak the orthodoxy. She was treated appalling me.
And did you see headlines like Philip Langley genius or crazy? Well,
would they have said that about the scientist she was
working with. Probably not.
Speaker 1: No, that's true, that's true. But what I got from
that when I because I only I didn't take an
awful lot of notice about it. I know it was
in the papers, but all I got was that they
discovered the body of King Richard in a car parking
Leicester sort of thing. That's the only thing that registered
with me. I didn't even realize I'll read it enough
to know that she was involved in it.
Speaker 2: Well that's the point, you see, they don't want you
to hear that side of it, So you know, any
talk of psychic intuition and all of that, I that
got edited out the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I only I only read the first paragraph
before I got bored anyway, So I how are you
doing that.
Speaker 2: It's just an example though, and you know, I point
this out throughout the book of how things get edited
out of our reality if they don't fit this pre
accepted paradigm. And yeah, here we are in the world
of social media right now, right, we can see there's
a huge world out there that does believe in the paranormal.
And a statistic I quote in strange is that a
poll in America only I think three or four years
ago showed that I think sixty seven percent of the
American population anyway, do believe in the paranormal, but that's
not reflected in the mainstream. You would think it was
only a handful of people if you went by the mainstream.
Speaker 1: And everybody has something paranormal happened to at some point
in their life that can't be explained and science can't
explain it. So you've got to believe that there's got
to be something there.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, that's what I'm trying to do, And
I mean they're very much the spine of this book
literally but metaphorically, is the tales that I've heard over
I've been giving talks about this kind of stuff. For
you know, nearly thirty five years now, and I have
met thousands and thousands of people with all these incredible stories,
and there's a pattern they constantly repeat. It doesn't matter
where you go in the world. People come up to
you and after a talk and they share with you
stories because they know you're not going to make fun
of them. Because I've just been standing there talking about it,
and I began to realize, my god, this is such
an incredible opportunity here. I've got a cross section of
society speaking to me, and they're not people who are
particularly interested in the paranormal. You know. I often will
address groups that have all kinds of subjects. They're not
there because they're interested in the paranormal. But then, you know,
one month they get me, but then they open up
and then you realize, right, well, there's all these people
who are having such similar experiences and it's not reflected
in the mainstream. So that's really what trying to do
is to put all that together, is to share some
of these stories and say, look, this is happening. There's
got to be an explanation beyond the mundane dismissal that
we get from the world of skepticism. And I've got
on board three people who have helped me what I
call the moderators, who are one that is basically a
space scientist, the other as a physicist, and the other
as an IT expert. But they are also open to
this kind of stuff, and they've come in and actually said, right,
how could this happen? Not how could this not happen?
Which is the normal approach. And that's what we're trying
to do, is say, right, there's got to be good
explanations for this that aren't skeptical ones. What could they be?
And I explore that in the book and hopefully make
people see, look, there really is something here really worth
talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah you're talking about I forgot what you said. What
are the actual words you said? But it made me think,
where do you actually get your research for this book?
Did people come willingly forward to tell you their stories?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, very much so. I mean this is the point, especially,
you know, as I said a talk, you suddenly find
people have been sitting on these stories for years. They
bought them up because they bottle them up, because the
family and friends around them tend to make fun of
them if they try to talk about it, and they
then go into the fear of sharing it and then don't.
But of course when they've just seen somebody like me
standing up there making a fool of myself, well why
shouldn't they share it? And they do, and then that
is a real I think it's a release for them,
and it's a revelation to me. And you know, I've
been studying this for years. I began in the world
of things like crop circles and UFOs, and I had
myself had so many experiences, and I have of course
done the whole shebang ghost hunting, been involved with psychics
and channelists, trying to find out right what the hell
is going on with all of this, And I have got,
i believe, a very broad understanding of it, and I've
learned not just to dismiss people. Okay maybe sometimes yes
there will be mundane explanations, but sometimes that's very hard,
especially when, just as one example, you get so many
ghost sightings where two or more people all witness the
same thing, and yet in the next breath a scientist
will say, well, they had a hallucination. How does that
work when everybody's having the same hallucinating? You know what
I mean? So it's things like this have led me
to be really open minded my own experiences and just that. Yeah,
and it is thousands of people that I've met that
are just saying, very sincerely, this happened to me. I
can't explain it, but by god, I really need to
tell someone. And so now many of their stories and
are recorded in this book, and people email me as well,
of course, and you know, they know where I am
and they send me incredible stories, and I thought, right,
you know what, it's time to chain these together and
see what the bigger picture is when you actually shine
a light on them properly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's one thing that rankles me whenever I hear
that mass illusion explanation, when more than one person witnesses
a phenomenon at the same time and they still blow
it off. Or that person they're not a scientist, so
they're not a reliable witness. What about the police officers
or military personnel, people who are very you know, they're
well trained at observation, and yet it still doesn't make
much of a scratch out in the normal world.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the extraordinary thing, because many of these people
are people in the professions I have lost track now
of how many, for instance, pilots, soldiers, sailors, police that
have seen UFOs in the absolute classic sense that cannot
just be explained by the usual list of silly things
like venus or the moon or you know, they clearly
know what is what and they are having these experiences.
It's very often very well educated, very sensible people who
are seeing these things. And just to keep saying, oh,
they had an hallucination, like that explains anything. A tall
isn't good enough, especially when yeah, you get a collective sighting.
So this is the silliness we're now dealing with. I mean,
one of the things that I pointed out in the book.
And by the way, I should tell you the subtitle
of the book Strange is deliberately in a way to
have a go at those that deny paranormal realities in
the everyday world. And there is a reality to this. Yes,
you can argue about the causes, but they cannot all
just be These are limp causes that people put forward.
And the thing is this, it really means something to
the people who are having them, but they've not been
given a voice. Yes, social media does give them a
voice now, but the mainstream still it seems like it's
wanting to still be the gatekeeper mainstream science, mainstream media.
But you know, when you look at that sixty seven
percent poll result, they're not speaking for the majority anymore.
So when is this going to change? When are we
going to get a media that actually begins to reflect
the reality of what people believe? And maybe we're on
the way to that, which is why, of course the
mainstream media hates it, and they're constantly trying to put
down alternative so called media because.
Speaker 5: They're threatened because they're going to be out of a job.
But people don't trust them anymore, and that's a big problem.
But the other problem with social media is you can
post things online tell your truth, even if you have
evidence to share, and yet you're still going to have
the professional debunkers coming in and trash talking and dismissing
and ridiculing, and you know, people dogpiling on other people
just to shut them up. And some of these people
wouldn't surprise me if they're paid actors.
Speaker 2: You know, well, yeah, I think that's true. I mean,
it's just a good example of that. And there's a
whole chapter about this in the book is you know,
the whistleblow as we've had in the last few years
about UFO, stroke up whatever we call them. These are
really high level, sensible people. They're not going to make
this stuff up for a laugh. That they're you know,
threatening their own livelihoods and their careers by doing it,
but they feel they can no longer be silent. So
these are really credible people. But even now we're getting,
you know, the skeptics who I think you almost certainly
must be paid to do this, saying oh no, it
was only blooms. I mean, if anybody's seen the famous
tic Tac video where this tic Tac shape UFO is
speeding at incredible velocities. Yes, there are still people that
say they're birds or balloons. And then you have to say, okay,
that's just ridiculous because those kinds of explanations are far
more tenuous, far more tangled and ridiculous than saying that
the paranormal exists. And when you just say that, suddenly
things will fall into place. But they would rather jump
through these crazy hoops of all the things that are
obviously isn't rather than consider, well, maybe I've misunderstood the universe,
but of course that isn't what they want to do.
But I think also by cutting this off from belief
in higher things and multi dimensional reality, they do keep
us in our places. And it's almost like somebody out
there wants to keep it for themselves. That sounds a
bit conspiratorial, of course, but I've written about that many
times over the years, and yeah, I think there are
agendas where they don't want us to know that there
are these other layers of reality because for whatever reason
they want to keep it more to themselves.
Speaker 5: Well, I think it's a combination of power wanting to
stay in power and control of people. We can't have
them being freethinkers or learning new things about our reality
that contradicts everything we've ever been taught. No, we want
them to all to stay good little consumers, you know,
go out and buy the latest thing by your electronic toys,
keep glued to the internet, you know, dumbing of society.
And this is just me talking here. Yeah, and it
keeps us in perpetual state of ignorance from what it does.
Speaker 2: It does. I mean, in my previous book, which some
listeners might be interested in, called The New Heretics, I
look at, you know, the fact that anybody that believes
in anything unusual is now brand is some kind of
heretic in the modern world. But when you look at
the way that people that do believe in the paranormal
or you know, anything unusual, in the way they are treated,
the terminology that gets used in the mainstream for them,
it's disgraceful. You know. They openly journalists call them crackpots,
you know, or crazies or nutcases. I mean, and you
think you would not talk about anybody else like that.
I mean, for instance, they wouldn't describe somebody who's very
religious in those terms. And yet, as we know, a
lot of religions touch very much into the supernatural. But
it's we seem to be fair as long as there's
no religion, right, they can treat you in the lowest
form they want to, and they get away with it.
And I think that's wrong, and I think it's time
that they should be held to account for the kind
of language they use to squash all of this down.
But it's not working.
Speaker 1: Yes, you see them, and do you see them on
the news broadcast? Don't you? They give that snig a factor?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well exactly, yeah. Yeah. In the end, finally, sloted
and now let's have a little chuck about all these
silly people. They're believe in silly things, but they're losing.
They're not working. Otherwise you wouldn't have sixty seven percent
of people believing in the Baronrmal. So that's the thing.
They think they're winning, but actually they're not. And it's
the same with conspiracy thinking. You know, they by condemning it.
I'm not saying every conspiracy is true, but by constantly
condemning it and not actually looking at it properly, all
they do is increase belief in it. So it's weird
they keep going in the same direction of denial, even
though it obviously doesn't work. But there you go. That's
their own desperation, as Mark, as you just said.
Speaker 5: Well, and part of that whole system is not just
ridicule ridicule, but actual threats. I mean, I personally know
people who have been threatened, getting threatening phone calls telling
them to shut up or else. One good friend of
ours who used to he used to be in the
US Coast Guard, and he told the story about his
father seeing something and kind of being involved in something
that was very hush hush and wild and he went
on coast to coast and did an interview on it,
and then he got phone calls telling him to shut up,
and then suddenly all of his Coast Guard records disappeared.
He had to dig things up to prove he was
still in the Coastguard and entitled the Benefits. And you know,
so they use a lot of intimidation tactics too to
shut people up.
Speaker 2: Oh they do. And I mean that's been going on
for a long time. I mean, if you look at
something like Roswell, for which you know, I know some
people still say it was a bloon, it's just just
madness when you look at the real eledence. You know,
you've got around six hundred either witnesses or relatives of
witnesses that are on record now, and people like Don Schmidt,
very good researcher. You know, he's pointed out just how
many families at the time or relatives were threatened. You know,
people were told if you ever speak publicly about what's
happened here, you will be killed, your family will be killed.
This is really nasty stuff, which on one level is
satisfying because it shows you how desperate they were to
cover something up that obviously was far more than a balloon,
but equally, yeah, it tells you the ruthlessness that you're
dealing with, So yeah, that does occur. But then what
they do for those that aren't quite so dangerous, but
they still want to keep it, you know, out of
the public view, is to constantly pour scorn and ridicule
and doubt. Even with you know, the key UFO whistle blower,
David Grush. Suddenly they start to call into account their
mental health and you know, this guy was a top
military intelligence officer, but suddenly no, well yes, we always
had doubts about it. But it's so clever. They see
these ideas, oh yes, well maybe they're not mentally reliable,
even though they were happy to employ them as one
of their top men or women for years, you know,
And that's the way they do it, and it's clever,
but it kind of works, and it kind of doesn't
work for the reasons that I've just given. And in
the end, I think that's going to fall apart as
it just becomes clearer and clearer, especially in the world
of UFO disclosure, that they can't keep this under wraps forever,
and then they're going to have to start apologizing to
quite a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Can you see them saying sorry.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but if it comes out to such a
degree that they actually can't hold it down, what are
they going to do? Yeah, I expect they'll just carry
on and saying, oh, well, yes, we knew all along, really.
Speaker 1: And thought it might be that way.
Speaker 2: But we can prove that that's not the case, can't we.
So we know what they really said at the time. Yeah,
there were Listen, if it's something, you know, big revelation
to do with anything paranormal, whether it be UFOs or
proof scientific proof that ghosts do exist, after all, there's
going to be a smug factor where those of us
that have been home to this for many years but go, well,
there we go. We told you so. But it won't
last long because, of course, the unveiling of that will
change people's view of the whole universe around them. But
you can't help feeling that we're on the way to
that anyway. All the old certainties in every level political
or social or understanding of science, it's all been turned
upside down at the moment, and people feel that so
maybe this is a very good time now to start
putting you know, like your own books out there and
this book trying to say, right, well, shall we look
at this properly now, because these are the times where
I think we can begin to reevaluate and people are
now open minded to looking again at things like the paranormal.
I mean, one of the things that really strikes me
is like looking at psychic phenomena, out of body experiences, telepathy.
You know, this is going on all the time, and
yet we live in a world where you're meant to
feel ashamed if you mention it, or you know, people
look down at their feet, and this is part of
the conditioning and similar I'm in the book. I talk
a lot about ghosts and people that have had full
conversations with lost relatives, and you know, there's so many
incredible stories that I just don't believe our imagination. And
yet you'll read I quote one of them in a
book in a medical journal saying, oh, where isn't it
sad that these people have to comfort themselves in this
way and we should feel sorry for them instead of saying, well,
what if it actually happened? And That's what I'm trying
to do, is say, well, okay, believe what you want,
But what if it did actually happen in the way
that these people have related, Well, what could explain that?
And then what are the implications for multi dimensional reality
for a whole understanding of physics and the way the
universe works? Shall we look at that? And that's what
I'm doing in the book, and then you know, by
the time you get to the end of it, you
come out with completely new understanding what's going on around us.
So it's time, I think to start joining the dots
and putting the pieces together, because I think people are
now open to that and or certainly becoming more open
to it.
Speaker 1: Okay, that sounds really good, done it, Mark, Yes.
Speaker 6: It's gonna be a good book this Yeah, Well, I'd
like to talk about some of the subjects that you
covered in the book and the fact that you had
like a panel put together to help you look at it.
Speaker 5: From all sides. But uh, you mentioned folklore in the beginning.
What types of folklore were you looking at in specific?
Speaker 2: So I mean what I found is that the work
that I've been doing over the years looking into the paranormal. Yeah,
you start to look back through history and you discover
things like what I mentioned earlier pictures of the devil
making crop circles. Then you realize there's about three hundred
historical accounts of crop circles, and it's folklore, and some
of the stories associated with them, of course, get mixed
in with fairies and goblins, which some think, by the way,
are are simply is another word for e t's or
maybe they're one and the same thing, but coming from
some unusual realm, and you think, we'll hang on, there's
threats here, and you know, again, we tend to go, oh,
weren't the old people funny? They had all their little
funny beliefs and they believed in fairies and goblins, and
you go, yeah, but hang on a minute, something like
some skim walker runch right, and you look at the
creatures people are claiming they're seeing in that area, and
you think, well, hang on a minute, what's the difference.
There is no difference. That's a modern folklore. It's always
been going on around. So you know, that's one thing
that led me into that. However, I'm also very interested
in mainstream history, and I grew up in a town
in East Sussex, which is in the southeast of England.
Speaker 1: Did you worry about Lewis. I was, I'm from Ambley
in West Sussex.
Speaker 2: No, there we go. Yeah, but that's not so far
from here, you know. I know a well Lewis of course.
And by the way, it's l e. W Ees is
famous for having the biggest Bonfineite celebrations in the world,
so the whole guy Hawk's thing. They have these massive
torch lip processions and these huge firework effigies and it's
just phenomenal. And I grew up with that from a
very early age, thinking this just seemed normal. I thought
every town did this, and then growing up and realizing
that actually each area has its own kind of festivities
and folklore and processions, and I got interested in it,
and we wound up writing books about the history of
Lewis and the Bonfineite celebrations, and then from that moved
on to getting interested in other festivals, not least Christmas.
And I'm well known for a book called Christmas, A
History from Solstice to Center, which I haven't little's out
there somewhere because that, I mean, the history of the
festival itself is just phenomenal, and the comings and goings
and the different variations of the way that people around
the world have, you know, celebrated Christmas over the years
is amazing. And then all the countries that banned it,
not least England that we banned Christmas back in the
sixteen hundreds in the Cromwellian Times Oliver Cromwell, because it was.
Speaker 1: Seen it was something I didn't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. See Christmas was banned for roughly
about twelve years here and the Pilgrim Fathers in America
when they arrived, they refused to celebrate Christmas the first
Christmas they were there because they had that same mindset.
They saw it for complex reasons as the heresy, and
it's really fascinating you look back at that, so, you know,
talks about not only the paranormal and conspiracies and that,
but also the history of the festivals like Bonfinite and Christmas,
because it is so fantastic when you realize just how
many ways of doing it there are and where it's
meant to different people. I mean, Christmas was radical, you
know when it was banned. You celebrated Christmas, you were
a radical and people forget that. People think it's some
kind of you know, opium for the masses. But Actually,
it's I think a necessity to have it, and it's
always had this revolutionary edge to celebrate in Christmas. And
you know there's other countries, North Korea being an obvious
one that has banned banned Christmas over the years. The
Soviet Union did and had to recreate it in a
new Soviet way. So it's interesting these things, you might
think a little harmless festivals often have actually rattled authorities.
And you know that immediately interests me because I get
bored with authorities trying to tell us what to do
all the time when they're not always right. So you know,
it all joined in the middle for me.
Speaker 1: So is this what, sorry, Mark? Is this why the
Americans seem to think more or celebrate more Thanksgiving than
they do actually Christmas, although they do celebrate Christmas, but
not in such a way that we do over here.
I don't think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure that there is truth to that we
say the Pilgrim Fathers, you know, obviously they were very influential.
Not everybody was of the same belief system, but yeah,
I think there was a strong feeling and especially when
you know the colonists arrived over there, not just from England,
but other European countries that they were setting up, you
know truly, you know, religious states. They wanted to be
in a place where they could live their religion. A
lot of them have been persecuted for varying reasons over here,
and they went down to the fundamentals, hence the name fundamentalists,
and they lived the truth that they lived. And one
of the key things was if something wasn't in the by,
especially for the Puritans, then it was a heresy. And
of course no date is ever given in the Bible,
say for Christmas, so to celebrate that is a heresy
because it's not in the Bible. You only do that
which is in scripture. So yeah, I'm sure that that
is one of the reasons why. Yeah, it happens over there,
but it's not quite the big deal say that it
is here in England. But then every country has its
own variation of the way they celebrate.
Speaker 1: It's like they celebrate more hog mainaue than what they
do Christmas Christmas as well, but hogmanaut means more to them.
Speaker 2: Well again though, but there's a reason for that, which
is that Christmas got banned even earlier in Scotland than
it did in it. It was banned in the fifteen
hundreds by the Calvinistic preacher John Knox, so he scrapped
Christmas even before Oliver Cromwell did down here. So yeah,
that's the thing. So what did they do. They reinvented it.
You take something away that people want, all they do
is recreate it in a new form. And that's the
joke of the whole thing. People think, right, we've managed
to get rid of that. Well, all it does is
come back in a new guys and Hockmaney was a
classic example. It's right, fine, we'll just move it to
a New Year celebration then, and that's the way it goes.
But what I love about it is you can't keep
something down that people really want. And that's the saying,
going back to the paranormal. With people that want to
explore this kind of stuff, you can have every scientist
in the world telling them why they're wrong and why
they're all mad, but in the end you say, yeah, right,
shut up, that's just boring. We've heard that. Now I
actually want to look at the real evidence. And so
people will only go the other way anyway. So suppression, yeah,
it works to a degree, but only for so long normally,
and then something always breaks out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mark, Well, I was just going to ask, in
regards to let's say, the paranormal, is there any particular
cases that fascinate you.
Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness, where to start? I mean, the cases
have fascinate me are in the book, of course. So
I kind of begin the book with explaining a bit
about my own background and some of the things that
have happened to me. But I then start sort of
with the things that I think people are most familiar with.
And there's so many people that have had exchanges with
the apparent ghosts or the spirits of loved ones that
have passed away, and you could just say, well, they
wanted to see them, so they imagine they saw them. Well,
when you hear these accounts, that can't be the case.
And listen, I've lost people in my life that I
would love to have had conversations with, but they didn't
come and see me, and I wanted it to happen.
So all this, well, there you go. But you know,
and by the way, some people see relatives they don't
want to see. There's a couple of accounts in the
book where one lady in particular, kept hearing the voice
of her recently departed father to take that up as
an interesting comparison, and he started a spooker out by
talking to her shops and whatever. And in the end
she didn't want this and she said, well, you go away.
She had to tell them to shut up. And there's
a few cases like that where it's like the spirits
of relatives or even partners or you know, husbands, wives,
they hang around and then the person here they can't
get on with their lives like that, so in the
end they have to kind of tell them very vigorously, look,
I love you, but you got to get out of here.
You're not in this world anymore. I am so that
those are, you know, very interesting because again it goes
against this thing of oh, well, people want it to happen,
so they imagine it hands it's not like that, and
many of the things about the paranormal, it's not the
way that the skeptics spin it. And a lot of
these people have no interest in the paranormal. They never
knew it even existed until it happened to them. And
another good example of that, beyond ghosts and psychic phenomena,
is what it's related, of course, are out of body experiences.
I mean, my goodness, that is so common, you know.
And it's either during operations, whether they're under an anesthetic,
often even just sleep, where people suddenly fine, they hovering
above their bodies, they're up near the ceiling somewhere, and
they have a separate existence. And so many very credible
people have described as personally to me, and that's the
point of the book here. Yes, there are some famous
accounts that I will reference to give context, but these
are all new cases, and it's over and over the
same thing. A lot of the people will always say, well,
I was a complete skeptic until it happened to me,
and I just can't explain it. I just go, you know.
And it was when they say, oh, well, it's a
trick of the mind. Again, there's various times. It's it's
got to be.
Speaker 1: It's half the time when you have these experiences, you're
not even thinking about that, you know, the paranorls not
even cross your mind. You're thinking about where you can
put them for dinner or something like that.
Speaker 2: You know, what's funny you say that, because there are
there's a lot of people that have had outer body
experiences which are relating in the book, who were not
actually doing anything out of the ordinary. They were eating
their sandwiches. There's a case even in the book of
one lady who was chatting away to an office colleague
when suddenly she realized she was watching herself from over
the other side of the room, and she had become
detached and her consciousness was watching her own waking selves,
still chatting away, and she was able to remember this
when she came back, and that again also happened. So
it can happen in completely normal, mundane circumstances. So this
is something we have a gift. We have the ability
to project our consciousness. And if you read the military
whistleblowers and people like Louis Elisondo who was saying, look,
remote viewing, which of course in a way is the
official practice of this is real. The US military is
using it, is trying to pay all around the world.
But I'm using them as an example because that's what
he has. The experience.
Speaker 1: They're the one. They're the ones that, yeah, look they.
Speaker 2: Have this ability, and obviously they're trying to use it
for dodgy espion arge purposes. But the fact that there
are people still trying to do this, It tells you
that it must work. I mean, I know the CIA
they dismissed the whole Stargate project thing years ago and said, oh,
we didn't find any evidence. Well, you're going to believe
that they knew it worked and it went underground. And
now people like Alixanda are making it clear, and you
know Joseph mon Eagle as well, that look, this is
something that works, and they know it works. They don't
want you and I to know, because of course the
last thing they want is everybody trying to do this
and then getting in their way. So these are faculties
we have and they're being denied. But it's so I
think tenuous now to keep denying it when it's absolutely
obvious that this is going on and again on a
daily basis to somebody somewhere.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, you know about those dodgy remote viewers.
Speaker 2: H Irene.
Speaker 1: I'll solt you later, mister. What I want to hear
is what I missed when I got up to go
to get a drink and you two were having a
casual conversation before the actual show. You were talking about drones.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, the drones.
Speaker 6: No, you were talking about.
Speaker 1: I missed all that conversation because I had to leave through.
Speaker 2: Well for anybody listening has somehow missed this, and don't
feel bad if you have, because it's been again written
out of modern history now but so last year in
twenty twenty four, but it goes back before then. But
last year it finally broke into the news that there
were all these mystery drones they call them drones, which
is quite interesting, flying over various places, including New Jersey
a big spot where you are marked, but around the world,
especially over military bases and well known cities. These things
some of them are performing at acrobatics that no known
drones do, moving at speeds that no known drones do,
and some of them are the size of buses. So
this was going on to such a degree we're even
the mayor of New Jersey spoke out and said, look,
we need to find out what's going on here, and
they just kept saying, ah, yes, we can't explain them.
The US military even held you know, press conferences saying
we can't really explain this, but you know, we're looking
into it. They couldn't stop them either, which is really interesting.
Could you think by now wouldn't you. They'd shoot them down,
or they'd have some zappa where you could electro magnetically
bring the drones down, but it would appear that they couldn't.
And then with all this building up and up, suddenly
just earlier this year, they held a new press conference
and said, oh, no, we've looked into it and they're
just they're normal drones and some of our research drones.
And that's it, and now you can all go back
to sleep. So that's all it is. Goodbye, And honestly
that's where it's been left, even though the drone site
is are still going on around the well. And if
you change the word drone the UFO, you realize why
they're very keen to shut this up. Yes, some of
them almost certainly are normal drones, but when you read
the behavior others, you realize no way. And I was
saying to Mark earlier that you know one of the
other military or ex military whistleblowers, Jake Barber, who has
now come out and said he's been part of UFO
gresh retrieval programs. He says he himself and his team
that he works with have looked into the drones and
in their view yes, some of them are probably research drones,
but there are quite a few of them that have
got to be, in his view, some kind of off
world intelligence because the way they move, what they're doing, well,
there's no officially acknowledged drones that are out there doing it.
But the clever thing is the world's been convinced it's
finished now because of the press conference where they just
told you not to worry about it, and that goes
on a lot. Well it hasn't finished, it hasn't gone away.
It's still going on, but it's just been swept aside
from the mainstream agenda. And that's what happens again and again,
and we see that with UFOs in general. We saw
that with crop circles, just something I've researched a lot
over the years. People think it's not going on at
all now, Well it is. We've just said the first
crop circle of the year just a couple of weeks ago,
but most people think it ended twenty years ago because
the media has this kind of weird blanking of it,
or they only talk about them when they debunk them.
So this is going on, I'm afraid all the time.
But it doesn't mean the paranormal phenomena itself is not
going on.
Speaker 1: Oh tell them about those drums that when you were
driving along the road with Sherry.
Speaker 5: Well, that was I have to be I have to
clarify this falls under the category of UAP unidentified aerial phenomenon.
I can't call them drones because I don't think they
were drones in the mechanical sense. But this happened back
in January of twenty eighteen up here in northern New Jersey.
I looved a little bit farther north, up in the mountains,
and it was dark already, and we were heading out
to go to a restaurant, and I saw on the
horizon there was these bunch of orange globes and they
were traveling in kind of a formation, but a very
loose formation. They were about twenty of them, and they
just stretched back in a loose line. Some were overtaking others,
but they were basically staying in a certain formation. And
they came from the south and they were heading towards
the north, and I was able to watch them for
a few minutes because I saw them coming. They got
right up I'm going to say about three to five
hundred feet away, maybe a couple hundred feet off the ground, silent,
and because I rolled down my window and I really
wanted to pull over and film, but I was stuck
in traffic and I couldn't do it. And they were
pure orange, no running lights, no FAA lighting, nothing, and
they moved silently about forty miles an hour, and they
traveled right past and continued on going straight north and
then they went out of view. Now, back at that time,
consumer drones really don't have that. Didn't have that much
battery life, maybe twenty minutes if you're lucky, and the
way these things were coming from such a long way
away and where they were heading, normal drones wouldn't have
had that battery life to do that. And they were
big too, I mean, the globes looked like the size
of soccer balls, and it was just truly weird and unexplained.
And then a couple years later, I was down in
South Jersey along the Jersey Shore and we were sitting
out one night looking at the surf. It was night,
and then I noticed coming up the beach the exact
same lights coming up in pairs about a mile away.
They'd come up the coastline right over the beach, and
they got to a spot about a quarter of a
mile away from me, and then the two would turn
and go over the ocean disappear in the cloud layer. Well,
right behind them were two more and that would do
the exact same maneuver, And there was about six or
seven pairs of these orange globe whatever. They were moving silently,
and they looked exactly like the ones I saw back
in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a pretty amazing sighting and fits with so
many other things that people are seeing now. Of course,
you know what they'll say to that. They'll say, ah, yes,
probably elon Musk Starlink satellites. You will know it isn't
because they don't. That's what they're saying. Anybody that sees
strings of lights now in the sky, you're always told
you're seeing Starlink satellites, which yeah, sure might explain the
odd sighting, but what you're describing there very different.
Speaker 5: Sure when there are a couple hundred feet over my head,
Yeah sure.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. No, I mean, well that's fascinating.
But also you mentioned something there that is another now
recurring feature going out over to the ocean, and of
course many people are seeing lights coming out of the
sea or going into the sea, and I recount examples
of this in the book. This is another thing that
now people are latching onto that Look, whether they're coming
from outer space or not, they're also existing under the sea.
And they're clearly, you know, these things are in some
way living under the sea or they come submerge themselves,
and it's making people think, well, maybe, like you know
the film The Abyss, which you imagines aliens living under
the sea, maybe that's actually true, because there does seem
to be a big connection with this, and many of
the bits of footage that have been released, especially by
the US Navy. You know, some of them show them
going into the sea or going into the sea and
straight out again in a way that we don't know
any object that could do that. So yeah, USOS, as
they call them, unidentify submerged objects. That is another big
thing that I think people are now beginning to realize.
It tells us that, look, there's more going on here
than just the standard nuts and bolts flying saucer from space. Also,
many people believe these things are effectively organic, and you know,
we talk about the plasmoid sightings. Some of these things
people are seeing are very amorphous. They can change the shape.
It's almost like they're not quite in this reality. Or
there's certainly not something just tacked together with nails. You know,
very clearly there of some nature or some substance that
can be fluid. You know. Again, that throws a whole
new light on what kind of technology or life is
out there. And I think we're probably seeing all of
these things and more, not just one thing above the other.
Speaker 5: There's a similar phenomenon that I've become very fascinated with,
and a lot of researchers, if they're out doing any
type of research out and let's say, in the woods
away from civilization, start encountering these lights in the woods
when there's no civilization around. And I've seen lots of
examples on video of these plasmoid like lights flying over
in between the trees. I had a buddy of mine
who is actually a bigfoot researcher in Ohio. In fact,
I'm gonna have to get him back on the program
because it's been a long time since we've talked to him,
because he had a big foot sighting years ago and
he's been looking ever since, and there were a couple
of times where he was out in the woods and
he would see these lights, or one time he's filming
himself talking and not realizing there's this big ball of
light weaving in and out of the trees behind him. Now,
the strangest story.
Speaker 6: He told was he was in the woods.
Speaker 5: But walking along and all of a sudden, this ball
of light comes out of the woods, comes up and
hovers right in front of his face and stays there
for about thirty seconds, and he just stared at it,
and then he thought to grab his cell phone, and
once he grabbed his cell phone, boom, it was gone,
just linked out. And what was interesting about that was
he had my number. He immediately called me from the woods.
He had cell phone signal, just totally losing it, saying,
oh my god, you won't believe what just happened. And
one of the things that I just thought to ask him,
and I go, okay, you say it took about thirty seconds,
Go how are you feeling during that time? And he goes,
he didn't really think about it at verse, and he goes,
you know, it just felt peaceful. There is nothing, no threat,
know nothing from it. It was just when he reached
for his cell phone, then it winked out. Then he
got scared and freaked out and he called me so yeah,
interesting phenomenon.
Speaker 2: It's very balls of light are seen in many circumstances,
including in people's houses, and some people have associated them
with spirits, not just something perhaps extraterrestrial. And in the
Strange Book, I mean, I recount how I was present
back in nineteen ninety three when I was with two
other researchers overlooking crop fields doing a night watch, and
we watched three glowing green spheres appear over the and
then suddenly fly off. And there was another occasion where
I also saw one of these balls of light. And
one of the things that's been noted over and over
is that, as you suggest from the story there, people
can interact with them. They're either drawn to people or
people are generating them in some way, that there is
a psychic connection. And there's a number of UFO researchers,
I mean Chris Bledsoe, it is a well known one
that claim they can call these things to them. You
know that there is this psychic bond or psionic as
they call it. And that's something again which has now
been talked about a lot more in the world of
UFO research. Because it's funny because when I was writing
The Strange Book, when it came to the UFO subject,
I realized, on one level, at first sight, it looks
like this is very different talking about ghosts and psychic
phenomena that precedes that. But then, of course the more
you look at it, you realize it isn't different. There
are connections here. You've got the psychic link, You've got
this motion that look, there are other realms where other
existences seem to be, and beings come and go from them,
and you can call them spirits, you can call them ghosts,
and you can call them aliens. And maybe sometimes they
are separate, but other times there's a crossover here. It
isn't just one thing or the other. And I think
it's really notable in the uap UFO world at the moment,
the people are coming more and more to this view
that there is this interactive, almost spiritual quality to these
balls of light and other even bigger sightings. It's not
just us and them. There is something that binds us
in some strange way together. And I did experiments back
in the nineteen nineties with a whole group of other researchers,
and I've written about this to gone to or web
my website truthagender dot org you can find the articles
and one of my early books about this where we
had incredible interactions. The more we try to do these
experiments trying to see crop circles appearing, the more saw
the balls of light, the more they seem to be
drawn to us. We all have the strangest experiences, and
some of those are in the Strange Book, and we
realized ourselves, yeah, it's not there is something here that
connects us, and people that do this kind of work
they learn very rapidly that there is some interconnecting factor
here and we're all part of something bigger and this
other paranormal realm that it interacts with us. So I
think we're all joined in the middle somewhere.
Speaker 5: It's all very fascinating, and this is something that we
could talk about for days upon days on end because
there's so much great information out there and new things
to think about too that you know, it's starting to
come to light. So people definitely should pick up your book,
which again I'll remind everyone, is called Strange paranormal realities
in the everyday world, and it just out and andy,
where can people find the book?
Speaker 2: You're going to find it anywhere, so usual places, Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, you know, any good retailer. And I
should add that there's an audiobook version as well, and ebooks,
so you know, you can get it in the old, good,
old print fashion. But if you like the other formats,
it's all out there, so look around you'll find it.
It's there, and certainly it's out in all the English
speaking countries. Hopefully some other translations coming soon. And yeah,
if anyone's looking for a good introduction to all of
this world, this is a great place to start, people.
But equally, if you're already a big part of this world,
I hope that it pulls together a lot of threads
for people. And what it does is make the case that, yeah,
it's really time to look at this again. And meanwhile,
you can find out about me and the book or
on my website, which is truth Agenda dot org. So
www dot truth agenda dot org and you'll find lots
of stuff about me and the book, and there normal
and lots of other things. So do have a look.
If you're interested.
Speaker 5: Fantastic. Well, Andy, thank you very much for coming on
the program, and good luck with the book Hope it's
a huge hit.
Speaker 2: Thank you. And yeah, well and thank you for inviting
me on today. It's been yeah, very enjoyable chatting with
you both.
Speaker 5: Okay, and thank you everyone for tuning in to another
edition of the Paranormal UK Radio show, The Flag Chip
Show here on the Paranormal UK Radio Network and Irene
Where can people find us?
Speaker 1: You never get that wrong to you? No, I don't
don't make any mistake, sir.
Speaker 5: I even took a breath and you didn't even notice.
Speaker 1: Does it? Everywhere? People? Everywhere?
Speaker 5: Well, thanks again everyone, have a great week, be good
humans and we will talk with you all soon. Take care.
I