Tuesday 14 October 2014

Probe- Autumn 2014

(Some of the names have been changed)
In his book Monster of the Mere the cryptozoologist Jonathan Downes calls Blackpool "the biggest shithole in the world!" and goes on to describe his dislike of the town in lurid detail. I think that's going too far, but Blackpool certainly is the Babylon of the North. I've stayed there twice, once when I was an active young trade unionist at my hospital; I went with a lobby group to the Labour Party conference in 199-something. I also spent a weekend there in 1992 with a woman I should never have gone near, except she ended up being the mother of my daughter so it's a good job I did. In more recent years I've returned there many times, but I've come to know it well as a place to pass through rather than to visit. I'd finished last month's copy of Nexus by the time the coach arrived in Blackpool, so I left it on my seat in case anybody else wanted to read it and learn something. I walked out of the coach station, at the foot of the Tower, and southwards along the Victorian promenade, looking at the shop fronts and wondering if the local people's staple diet is candyfloss and hotdogs. Once past the Pleasure Beach with its huge overhanging rollercoaster, the streets evened out and the prom gave way to a path that runs along Blackpool's new sea wall which looks like the side of a nuclear bunker. It might be needed soon; the tide was in and the rough green autumnal waves were already pounding against its concrete bulk. The southern extremity of Blackpool is a tram stop with the intriguing name of Starr Gate; it's rather apt considering the esoteric nature of my business in the area. After that there's nothing in sight except the beach curving away along the coast of the Fylde Peninsula and the precarious looking dunes covered in rough grass. When walking to Lytham St Annes the town always emerges with a degree of theatrics. It's within walking distance from Blackpool (for a hospital porter at least), but it's another world away and the contrast is so striking. I plodded steadily down the white sandy beach. It was windy with heavy clouds, although none of the forecasted rain had yet hit. There were many people flying kites and others walking their dogs. The sky was deep blue and chemtrail-free. Then the end of a pier poked into view around the bend and slowly but surely more of it came into view. It was an old pier with 19th century decorations and no fairground rides or casinos. Then I saw the houses of North Promenade, a long row of dusky roofs and brick walls of a dark rose colour that I've never seen anywhere else. Closer to the pier were large multi-storey blocks, some very modern, hotels and the Lifeboat Memorial. Lytham St Annes is a unified conurbation of Lytham, Ansdell, Fairhaven and St Annes-on-the-sea, but it is St Annes I've come to know so well; I've calculated that in the last decade I've spent the equivalent of almost two months in the town. Music drifted through my head, strains of a George Formby ukulele thrash blended with a mellow number by The KLF. My mobile phone rang and it was my good friend Colin Woolford announcing that he'd just arrived. It was time to head for the Salters Wharf pub for some drinks and a meal, the first of my various Probe traditions. As I entered the pub it started raining and a thick rainbow arched over the town, framed by mountainous, elegant clouds.

The Probe International Conference is the first one I went to and definitely my favourite, see: http://www.ukprobe.com/. I didn't think I'd be able to go this year because of a lack of money. Then I had an email from a man who likes HPANWO asking me if I was planning on going. When I replied in the negative he immediately offered to pay for me to go. I must admit I felt embarrassed, but it was a say-yes-or-no situation and I said "yes". I'm very grateful and hope this report lives up to the expectations of my benefactor. For this reason I felt very fortunate indeed as I met up with some of my Probe-buddies. As is the case with most of my interactions with others, it's not all love and light. There are people I've met at Probe who have been very antagonistic towards me. Mack, one of the people in the pub on Friday night, is not one of those; in fact he's a good friend and I'm very fond of him. Nevertheless he is a very volatile individual and he bubbles over occasionally for no apparent reason. On one instance he very vehemently chided me over what he considered my terminology when I was talking about one of my favourite subjects- free energy, the way we can extract useable power from nothing. "It's not from nothing! It's from the zero point field!" he opined loudly. "And the zero point field is not nothing!... And it's not free!" I calmly but firmly stood my ground and stated that I knew what the zero point field is, but I disagreed. "Nobody will take you seriously and you'll sound like your talking bullshit!" he persisted. I replied, truthfully, that I'm not really interested in what other people think of me. Mack shook his head "I won't budge on this!" "I'm not asking you to budge" I responded. "I simply disagree with what you're saying." I also found it odd that Mack felt this issue was so important; I regarded it as trivial and inconsequential. When I was a hospital porter I was trained in conflict management, how to calm down a patient who becomes aggressive. However in my experience the skills I learned were more necessary for dealing with other members of the hospital's staff. I also developed a few tactics of my own, for example see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/physical-dignity-statements.html. I wasn't bothered by Mack's tirade and I felt no resentment towards him for it; I know him well enough not to take his behaviour too seriously. In fact I've learnt that resentment I feel towards negative action comes from my own sense of hurt; when that hurt doesn't happen then I have no reason to resent. Mack and I continued to get along fine for the remainder of the conference. It has come to my attention that some people regard me as a bit of a pushover. These are people who don't know me and make that judgement from some superficial aspect of my demeanour that I'm not aware of. It is sad that in the community that calls itself "alternative" this controlled response has not yet been unlearned by so many people; the currents of psychological manipulation run deep indeed, see here for more details: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/eastenders-murder.html. Like I say, it's a shame, but if that's the way things are then it must be dealt with. If anybody who has misjudged me thus, intends to act on their perceived advantage over me, then I hope they will consider my above words due warning.
I couldn't stay at the Monarch Hotel on Friday night because it was fully booked, so I had to bed down in the Travelodge on Clifton Drive. In the morning I headed for the venue at the YMCA on St Albans Road happily anticipating a sweet reunion with my Probe-buddies. It was as wonderful as always to see them all again; but sadly there were some notable absences. Dennis and Marian couldn't make it this year, and I badly missed Dennis' business-like discussions of orb photos and Marian's warm and affectionate hugs and kisses. Their stall with its alien T-shirts and sculptures is a landmark of the conference. Fred and Val, Dex Dobie, Dave Morgan and Noel couldn't get there either. However the biggest hole has definitely been made by the passing away of Jean Wright, Sam's wife and fellow organizer of the conference. She was a great lady, totally dedicated and as genuine as they come. Wherever she is now I wish her well. As always conferences cover many topics, but these tend to interact with current affairs. The situation with the Ebola outbreak and war with the Islamic State were the main focus of conversation, so when the dapper and distinguished figure of Dave Starbuck (http://www.revelationaudiovisual.com/) took to the stage it was quite refreshing. The subject of his lecture was numerology, the use of mathematics for divination. Unfortunately his microphone was not very good and he illustrated his talk with a paper flip chart that only the front row could see, but he was as knowledgeable and enthralling as always. He not only claims to have predicted an earthquake in California, but also that what day of the month we are born effects our personality. He links this to astrology too, that different numbers relate to the various planets. He has made the life of Adolf Hitler a test study and he says that things that fit in with his system are not a coincidence. Astrology and numerology are not my best subjects, but I have a healthy respect for them and take them very seriously. Dave is a very experienced lecturer, as opposed to the next speaker, Tracy Ashfield, who was making her conference debut. Her voice was quavering and she was close to tears as she explained that she's waited thirty years to tell her story. For her entire life, for as long as she can remember, she has been abducted by various strange creatures to which she has given her own names: "Mothman", "Egyptian man", "Greek people", "monks", "shadow people", "a dark smoky figure". Experiences like this have happened to generations of her family going back to her grandparents at least. She has been taken to spacecraft where she has seen a man lying on a table whom she suspects was the famous American experiencer Travis Walton. These events frighten and disturb her a lot and they seem to peak every ten years of her life. She explained how the creatures she has to deal with operate "pods" in which pieces of human bodies float in water. These are somehow connected with reincarnation and life-after-death. Tracy has been in touch with Rosemary Ellen Guiley, the brilliant researcher and prolific author who spoke at the recent Leeds Exopolitics Expo which I hosted, and she believes that these beings are what Muslims call the Djinn. Tracy is up against a lot of opposition. Her doctor thinks she's psychotic and her husband doesn't believe her. I was extremely impressed with Tracy's bravery and can only imagine what she's having to endure. I feel the deepest respect to her and hope she manages alright. Tracy Ashfield's information was considerably built upon by the next speaker, Miles Johnston (http://www.thebasesproject.org/), an old friend and colleague who is doing a lot of dedicated and expert work into these subjects. Miles is a radio and TV broadcast engineer as well as a UFOlogist and has put his skills to good use for his work in the Bases Project for over twenty years. Bases had its first major conference a couple of months ago which I was happy to attend, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-bases-project-conference-2014.html. Miles current labours began when he met Barry King, a man who claims to have been a security guard at a secret military underground base beneath the village of Peasemore in Berkshire. In this base, Nazi scientists were developing artificial alien-like creatures and many other nefarious activities including mind control and biological warfare. Many people have approached him with stories of their own experiences, including extraterrestrial and military abduction, implants, super-soldiering, interdimensional portals and much more. He has also worked on the disturbing subject of the elite plans to change the nature of life on Earth through transhumanism and pseudolife. A story was going round just before the conference that Miles had been cloned. I regarded this as somewhat tongue-in-cheek and we made many jokes about it early in the conference; therefore I never expected at all what happened next.
I began to feel drowsy, not because Miles was boring, in fact he was very riveting; it was just that I'd eaten a large pie at dinner and the room was warm with a smothering atmosphere. As I felt my eyelids droop I noticed that there were suddenly two people on stage. One was Miles himself, dressed in a grey jacket and standing at the podium delivering his lecture, the second was a man wearing a white T-shirt standing a few yards to his right downstage, just before the front row of the audience. This man had his arms akimbo and was staring hard at me. The really weird thing was, he looked just like Miles. It was Miles double. I blinked and the apparition vanished, but it returned a few minutes later when I felt my mind drift into half-sleep again. After this second appearance of Miles' double I was alarmed enough to remain fully awake for the rest of his speech and never saw the double again. This is not the first time I've seen unusual but very tangible visions while in the state between waking and sleeping. A few years ago I saw a phantasm of my girlfriend's dead father on a train, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/real-ghost-train.html. If this weird aetheric duplicate of Miles wasn't just my mind playing tricks then what could it be? Has this talk about Miles being cloned been more than just idle ribbing? If this was a clone then it wasn't a one in the conventional biological sense. Real clones are physical and can't appear and disappear. Was it therefore Miles' doppelganger? Unlikely because Miles did not see it himself. I've had an encounter with my own doppelganger and not only could I see it, but I may have been the only one able to, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/doppelganger.html. Things like this happen at Probe all the time; at the March 2011 event a "ghost" was captured on film by speaker Sweeps Fox, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1p0KMH563I. Several people have since come forward to claim that this is actually just an audience member, and have even nominated whom it might be, but I'm not so sure. The entity is sitting in front of a loudspeaker placed on a sack truck and it appears to be translucent. This is another reason why I'm reasonably confident that my own sighting of Miles' "clone" is significant too. As it turned out, this was not the only intrusion of the supernatural into this October 2014 conference.

Kieran Lee Perrin (http://chroniclesofamindcontroltarget.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/operation-you-lot-tree_13.html) is a very new face on the scene who debuted at Miles Johnston's Bases conference a couple of months ago, see link above. He was once a successful businessman living a conventional life running a recruitment consultancy firm, until he discovered that he is a "targeted individual"; this is somebody who has been selected by the authorities for harmful and non-consensual medical and psychological treatment. In Kieran's case this involved implants being placed in his body, "wetware" as he calls it. Sadly some of his family and friends are involved in this; this is known as "gangstalking" which is a multi-pronged attack involving the spreading of false rumours, following people around, nuisance phone calls etc. He has also heard sounds in his head due to V2K- voice-to-skull technology; this is a system militarized from research into experimental hearing aids for the deaf. It involves sounds being projected at a person, usually loud and annoying noise, or abrasive and insulting voices, which are heard through direct electronic stimulation of the aural nervous system. The TI can do nothing to stop themselves hearing these sounds because they bypass the ears entirely and enter the brain direct. You might think that Kieran is simply paranoid and fantasizing what's happening to him, but you'd be wrong. He has hard evidence in the form of MRI scans of his head which show foreign objects placed in his brain and at the back of his mouth. His dentist referred Kieran to radiology when he discovered these objects while removing Kieran's wisdom teeth. The ones at the back of his mouth and curved and mobile. Sickeningly, their function seems to be inflicting pain; they are instruments of torture. Kieran also has wires that run through his entire body. I've spoken about implants before, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/dr-roger-leir-dies.html. Although there is an extraterrestrial factor to consider, there's no doubt that the state and corporate forces are involved too, perhaps solely in some cases. After he'd spoken there were some people outside who had come to meet him from ICAACT, see: http://www.icaact.org/. One of them was Lenny whom I've met several times. As we greeted each other he glared at me with his thousand yard stare and gave me his regulation rant about how UFO's are "a load of old crap!" and that we all need to "wake up!" to "the real story!" I've spoken about Lenny previous reports, but I won't post a link; HPANWO-readers can use the search box if they like. This is because I think I was too hard on him in the past; he has suffered enormously and deserves a little slack. However he is as doctrinaire and intimidating as ever, although he and I can get along OK. He still refuses to enter the conference hall or buy a ticket because he believes that the Probe management would not tolerate his presence there, but it's probably more the other way round. There are several delegates who share his view that UFO's are a non-issue and belief in them is not a condition of entry. If he did attend the conference he'd be very welcome and most people would listen to him attentively. It has to be said that Lenny appears to know next to nothing about UFO's and his opposition to the topic is purely instinctive and ideological. It's a pity because he has a completely distorted view of a group of people who could otherwise be his allies; perhaps because he's a TI himself he doesn't have the luxury of time to develop an analytical perspective. The fact is that he's completely right about everything he talks about in his newsletters, of which he gave me a copy, and completely wrong about so many of the people who want to help him and others; and put a stop to the evil conspiracy that has ruined so many lives, including his own. The last speaker of the day was that regular personality David Boyle (http://exhibitionoftheuniverse.com/), and I'm pleased to report that his Exhibition of the Universe will be reopening very soon. He is the only man in Blackpool Jonathan Downes admired. The last time he was on stage at Probe he was designing a machine to extract energy from moonlight. It was just as well he was on last because, like Richard Hoagland, once he's on stage you can't get rid of him. He is a small, round and quite elderly man, but is enthusiasm and energy are boundless. He talked about what he sees as the answer to life's great questions: Who are we? What's the meaning of life? What's the purpose of the universe? He compared atoms to pixels- as above so below, as the saying goes. He's a student of the Kabbalah and the Tree of Life, crop circles, reincarnation, the 19.47 factor, the Flower of Life and how it relates to the Pyramids of Egypt. He also brought up numerology like Dave Starbuck did; he says the infamous number 666 relates to humans because we have 216 bones, which collapses to 6, as does the number of subatomic particles in carbon and water atoms. I always enjoy David Boyle's talks very much, even though I can only usually grasp about half of what he says. He has the knowledge and charm of a kind of Goro Adachi meets Roy Kinnear.
After Saturday's proceedings were over at about six PM I went to check in at the Monarch Hotel. As soon as I entered the room which Steve and Lesley had designated for me I realized something amazing. Although I'd stayed at the Monarch five or six times I was usually in a different room, but I had been placed in this room before, once. It was the room I had had in October 2006 when I attended my very first Probe conference; I recognized the large window and the view over the street. I remember being very agitated at the time. I sat on the bed and called my daughter urgently. I can't remember what the problem was. I went back out to meet up with Miles, Colin and Kieran Lee Perrin and we went for a meal at a very nice curry house just off the High Street. There we got talking to a young woman named Jenny who was also at the conference; it was her first time and she is quite new to Probe-esque subjects. I've been most careful of all not to mention Jenny's real name because she is a media personality, in the world of TV news. I know only too well how getting involved with the conspiratorial/paranormal/UFO world can be a very bad career move, as it were. Unfortunately it is quite likely that Jenny will be affected professionally by her private interests; nevertheless if she can protect herself she should. There is no valour in being a false martyr. She is acutely aware of the price she might have to pay for her awakening to the arcane and has bravely persisted nonetheless. One of the subjects that we talked about was something Gary Heseltine brought up at the UFO Truth Magazine Conference, the advanced age of the delegation. Gary sees this as the aging of the UFOlogical community, but is aging the correct word? Perhaps simply old is more appropriate. It's true that the average age of a Probe delegate is probably around the late 50's early 60's mark, and there is a large contingent in their 70's and even older. We had a lady of over a hundred attending her first one a few years ago. However at the BUFORA conference, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/bufora-conference-2012.html, I saw a photograph taken in the auditorium of a UFO meeting held in 1962 and the same observation could be made; so why are there any UFOlogists even alive today? It could simply be instead that subjects like UFO's, false flag terrorism, the paranormal etc, are ones that need the contemplation of a mature mind. Most of the major spokesmen within our community, like David Icke, Ian R Crane etc, only became aware of this milieu after a fair bit of conventional life experience. Ian talks eloquently about his "mid-life crisis" and how false that very word is. My own conspiratorial awareness only emerged in me after a long process of inner reflection, sometimes it was also traumatic. All such dismal thoughts were dispelled from my mind though when we went to the Langdale Hotel, the official conference hub, and watched a brilliant cabaret act, the same couple who were there last year. Apparently there is a video of me dancing out there somewhere; I suspect it will be used to blackmail me.

After a hearty Sunday morning breakfast I strode up the broad quiet streets of St Annes to the YMCA for what was to become one of the most remarkable days the Probe conferences have ever seen. It began with Steve Mera (http://www.phenomenamagazine.co.uk/#/steve-meras-books/4576857088), whom regular HPANWO-readers will recall from the UFO Truth event. Steve has joined forces with Don Philips to produce a new TV series which will hopefully be a unique and original scientific investigation into the paranormal, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/don-philips-and-steve-mera-hangout.html. His lecture focused on the UFO presence before the 1940's. This is because Skeptics often claim that there was no UFO presence previous to that era. This is completely false. There are very convincing photographs, eyewitness reports and documentary evidence which shows that UFO's date back long before then; in fact phenomena like them are found throughout history. Before there was photography flying saucers appeared in paintings like the Nuremburg Woodcut of 1561 and even in Egyptian tomb carvings. Interestingly somebody has apparently "confessed" to faking a famous UFO photograph from Belgium in the early 1990's. This says an awful lot about Skeptic logic; when a person claims to have spotted a UFO the Skeptics will demand evidence like a starving man grasping for food, yet the moment some nobody across the street sticks his hand in the air and says: "It's OK, I faked it." the Skeptics will respond: "Right, that's it then, case closed" without a second thought. And as Pia Knudsen points out, the moment anybody cries "fake" UFOlogists will drop a case like a hot potato and run away. However a confession is a claim too and fake confessions do happen, like the time a Bigfoot witness said that he'd produced a fraudulent film of the creature, yet later his tale turned out to be incredulous, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lDF-NAOraQ. What happened next was almost a poetic illustration of Steve's lecture. Between the speakers there was a fifteen minute break; I left the auditorium and headed for the entrance to grab some fresh air. As I stepped outside I saw everybody clustered round staring at upwards and pointing; some people had cameras out and were holding them up. Somebody quickly explained that an unidentified flying object had appeared. I stared into the sky, but it took me a minute or two to find it because it was so small. Eventually my eyes located a tiny speck of silver in the clear blue sky. It was completely stationary; I heard later that someone had reported a UFO at 8 o'clock in the morning. I made my own recording of the incident on my mobile phone, but the quality is so poor that it's useless. Most of the others, with phones a bit newer than mine, managed to zoom in on the object and these photographs were displayed on the auditorium screen during the afternoon break. Unfortunately, apart from the magnification, the quality of most of them was not much better than mine; they showed just a pixelated blob. However one photo was taken by a man with a proper camera and telephoto lens and the object appears to be silvery grey or light green in colour and shaped like a cone with a flat top. Somebody with binoculars described it as "diamond-shaped" and that it was "unmoving". Below is a snapshot of my notebook page where I wrote down the details at the time:
As you can see I recorded it as: Silver metallic grey. Very small, distant. Elevation about 40 degrees. Apparent size- less than 10% of the moon. 12th October 2014. 11 AM. East to northeast. Lytham St Annes, Lancashire UK. The drawing is based on the telephoto picture taken of it. We continued to watch the UFO for about twenty minutes; at one point a jet aircraft passed in front of it, indicating that it was at a very high altitude; this gave it a minimum range and size too. It got smaller and smaller as time went on, as if it were drifting away without changing its bearing by much; therefore we can estimate that it was moving very slowly towards the east or northeast. If there were any other witnesses to the sighting then they have either not contacted the media or the media have not covered it because I can find no stories online. It was a tantalizing and frustrating encounter. It can't be ruled out that the object was just a balloon of some kind; conversely its shape and other features mean that it was not obviously so and that it might have been a genuine ET. If so then it's a pity it never came any closer. It felt like we were being teased. The main effect on the conference was that it delayed the start of the next speaker's session by about half an hour. As it happened this was as apt as the previous one, for it was Brenda Butler (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJzWgFMB5TI). I met Brenda a few weeks ago in Rendlesham Forest, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/rendlesham-forest-2014.html. She is one of the principle investigators into the Rendlesham Forest Incident which is a highly significant UFO event that took place in Suffolk in 1980. She has been a UFOlogist since 1965 and talked about many other strange events that took place in that area, not just the famous landings during Christmas 1980. She says that the local British witnesses have been overlooked and that the "yanks" have been the only ones to have their testimony publicized; Brenda wishes to give their side of the story a hearing. The year before, 1979, there was major activity occurring in the area all year, animals disappearing from farms, UFO witnesses going missing or dying, and the landing of a craft north of RAF Woodbridge a long way from the 1980 events; this has become known as "Area 1". Also a fishing boat offshore struck a USO- Unidentified Submerged Object. Brenda still regularly visits Rendlesham Forest along with my friend and fellow researcher Derek Savory and they have recorded some bizarre images on film- a jeep driving through a portal-like structure, swirls of light and orbs, and a dragon. She has had encounters with ghostly monks and many other things, even the spirit of her departed dog. She has discovered tunnels leading to an underground facility in the area, maybe the same one the UFO witness Larry Warren was taken to. One thing Brenda makes very clear is that the 1980 incident was not unique and was in fact just one of many strange phenomena that regularly occur in that region.
After Brenda had finished a lady called Jane Fraser came onto the stage and sung some songs, including a lovely tribute to Jean Wright called Autumn Leaves. Then it was time for the return of the TV historian Mark Olly (http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/probe-conference-march-2009.html), this time dressed in normal clothes. He sent me full circle by telling us that Robin Hood is real. I remember first hearing about the story of Robin Hood as a child in first school and being captivated by it; I also watched the various films that have been made over many years. I assumed Robin Hood was a real person until quite recently, when I began visiting Nottingham regularly, that I was told that he was no more real than Santa Claus, just a character from a mediaeval folk tale. The popular image of Robin Hood- dressed in green with tight trousers and a feather in his cap, is straight out of Hollywood and based on the character as portrayed by the actors Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks. However, Mark has tracked down a real man behind the legend, not in Nottingham but in Yorkshire, and has even narrowed his grave down to a handful of places in Wakefield. There's even a connection between Robin Hood and the Knights Templar; so much for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Mark's next mission is too solve an even older historical mystery- what happened to the 9th Legion of the Roman army, which vanished without a trace in Caledonia, modern Scotland, almost two thousand years ago. I look forward to hearing what he discovers.
I was delighted to meet up again with Ellis Taylor (See links column and numerous HPANWO posts). This time he did a speech about the harrowing subject of occult elements in the most terrible crimes, especially the kidnap and murder of children. As Dave Starbuck described, certain numbers keep recurring in the reports of these crimes and also certain symbols, words and phrases. There are the names of saints in the names of the victims' schools and significant pagan holidays around the dates of the crimes. Also emblems like bells, swans and geese which are all powerful on a magickal level. He's also discovered that the location of these atrocities form a hexagram on the map of England. I was not surprised to learn that in the exact centre of this symbol stand the town on Milton Keynes, a giant occult temple; see here for more detail: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/secrets-of-milton-keynes.html. I know my new friend Jenny was very upset by this information, being a newcomer to this area of knowledge. However Ellis is doing the right thing talking about it; I'd be more disturbed if everybody was silent and complicit on the matter.
Time was getting on and we were running very late, thanks to the UFO sighting, so the last speaker of the Autumn 2014 Probe International Conference was rushed on without a break in between. He was Kevin Rowan-Drewitt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npZVrJu7GFk). He is a student of ancient mysteries and spoke about the enthralling topic of the ancient stone circles of the British Isles. I was shocked to learn that only a third of them survive, the rest having been demolished in the millennia since they were built. Long Meg and her Daughters in Cumbria is the site he concentrated on the most, talking about the enigmatic spiral patterns carved on it. This motif can be found all over Britain and beyond in places as far away as Brittany in France and Baffin Island off the coast of Canada. Contrary to popular belief, the stone circles of Britain are nothing to do with the Druids. The Druids only came to Britain with the Celts in the first millennium BC; these stone circles are far older, dating back to the Bronze Age and Neolithic. Kevin has discovered that the construction of many stone circles contains sacred geometry, and this can be found in more recent pagan art, like the lid of the Chalice Well at Glastonbury.   
See here for my HPANWO TV reportage on last year's Probe Conference: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/return-to-probe.html.

What goes up must come down, and the higher you fly the further you have to fall. It is the moment I dread at every Probe conference. When the last speaker has finished and Sam has closed the conference, it ends with a massive jolt. The YMCA staff walk in and begin packing up the chairs. The stall vendors carry their boxes out to their cars, the decorations and posters are put away and within minutes it's all over and I'm left staring at a room that is suddenly just a basketball/five-a-side court. The delegates and speakers hang around in little circles saying goodbye, but this doesn't take long either; one more handshake, a hug and kiss, tender words of parting. Few Probists stay behind when the conference is over. Most of them live somewhere in the North Country and they have their own transport. The carpark echoes with the roar of engines as they all head for the hills. Then there's that subdued triste silence that falls over the venue and the street outside. I don't have transport and so always have to stay overnight before making my way home on Monday morning; luckily there's never been a time when I'm literally the only one. This conference a lot of people were there to meet up in the evening, Miles, Colin, Kieran and our new friend Jenny. We went back to the curry house and they all chipped in to buy me a meal for my birthday. Then we went for a few more drinks before returning to our hotels. In the morning on the way down to breakfast I knocked on the door of Miles' room to say goodbye, but he didn't answer; I heard the sound inside of the shower running. Lesley served me up one more full English then it was time to plod along the wide streets and right angle junctions of St Annes one last time. I often feel lousy after the end of a good conference, but it's always far worse with Probe; I've even coined the term post-Probe blues. It only lasts for a day or two but it can be surprisingly potent. In fact when I was hosting the Leeds Exopolitics event two weeks before I said to the audience at the end: "You might feel a bit down after this. It's because it's such an intense experience being at a conference. You now have to go back into the so called 'real' world where everything you've allowed to flow freely for the last three days has to be dammed up again. All the people presently surrounding you who accept you as you are, will suddenly be hundreds of miles away." I then went on to advise them on a few tips to keep their spirits up: "Don't just dive back in head-first. Be kind to yourself. Read one of the UFO books you've bought off the stall or watch one of the UFO DVD's, just to keep yourself in the mindset you've been enjoying. Network with others on the phone or social media. You're not alone, even if it feels like it for a while." That advice was as much for myself as for the Exopol delegates. In the case of Probe this time I had the comforting bulk of Richard Dolan's UFO's and the National Security State- 1973 to 1991- the Cover-up Exposed in my rucksack. I relished settling down into it on the coach. But first I had to get to the coach. I caught the bus for the fifty light-year journey to Blackpool, but I looked at my clock and saw that I had an hour till the coach departed. I decided on impulse to decamp from the bus at Starr Gate and walk to the coach station along the beach. I strolled across the wet sand, dodging jellyfish and razorshells. It was a cloudy and dank morning, not very warm. I still took off my shoes and socks, as I have to on any beach, and headed for the waterline a few hundred yards out. The Blackpool shore lay stretched out to my right with the Tower and the South and Central Piers plainly visible. I suddenly remembered that today was my birthday, almost as an afterthought. Strange to be travelling on my birthday. After a few minutes I noticed that the South Pier didn't look much closer than it had a few minutes earlier. I looked at my clock. It was now forty five minutes until I had to catch my coach; I'd been walking for entire quarter of an hour and made very little progress. It struck me that I was a lot further from my destination than I thought; distances are hard to judge on a beach. My stroll broke into a stride and then a jog. Something similar happened at Exopol; I got lost in Leeds on my way to the coach stop and got it with minutes to spare by running like crazy. Perhaps it was subconscious; I didn't really want to leave after all. I knew I had to head for the Central Pier and the Tower. As soon as I remembered that the Tower wasn't actually by the Central Pier and was slightly north of it I knew I'd had it. I began wondering how much extra National Express would charge me for a ticket transfer and how many hours I'd have to wait for the next service. I decided to see if I could get to the prom and hail a taxi. It took about four minutes just to put my shoes and socks back onto my wet, numb feet, but once I'd managed it I saw one at a rank. On the way to the coach station I asked the female driver if she had heard of David Boyle and she hadn't. I tipped her two pounds and advised her to check out his new exhibition when it opens in a few weeks. The coach lumbered away from Blackpool onto the main road to Preston, past the ugly and dangerous-looking experimental fracking sites. On the M6 motorway there were a surprisingly large number of military vehicles travelling in both directions, including several convoys of a dozen cars each and lorries carrying God-knows-what. I couldn't help wondering, had the UFO sighting of the day before led to a crash-retrieval? Unlikely. I got home and went through my phone messages, organizing my work for the following day. I was feeling a bit better by then, after all Probe is different from most other conferences. It's on twice a year, not once. Only six months till the next one... and counting.



Thursday 21 August 2014

UFO Truth Magazine Conference 2014

Holmfirth is the most picturesque location for any conference I've ever been to. It lies in a steep-sided valley in West Yorkshire around a rocky, fast flowing river. The town has a lucrative tourist industry mostly courtesy of the BBC because it was the location used to film the long-running and very successful TV comedy series Last of the Summer Wine. There are numerous pubs, cafes and shops catering to the busloads of visitors that arrive every year to follow in the footsteps of Compo, Clegg, and Foggy as they stroll around cooking up various childish schemes to get the better of Nora Batty. I saw a group of Chinese people taking photographs; Last of the Summer Wine is one of the BBC's biggest exports as well as being a domestic favourite. The sky was cold and grey as I stepped off the bus in the centre of the town, and I got out the map I had printed out to find the way to my accommodation. I had decided to camp again, just like I had at the Bases Conference last week, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-bases-project-conference-2014.html. Camping is very cheap and easy to organize and if you know what you're doing you can be perfectly comfortable. The campsite was on the edge of town, however in Holmfirth that often means a stiff climb. I left the main road, ascended the dramatically steep and narrow streets and gazed at the unique local architecture which is totally different to anything I'm familiar with. The town consists almost exclusively of grey stone houses with dark slate roofs. This style covers all periods, from buildings ostensibly dating back several centuries, to fresh new developments with smooth facades unblemished by time. As I climbed higher and higher, I had to dip into that legendary Hospital Portering stamina because the roads continued upwards, their gradients showing no mercy. The lanes passed between lumpy and precarious pastures of the richest green. Sheep gaped at me as if they'd never seen a human being before; rabbits bolted at the sound of my footsteps. Another distinctive difference is that the fields near Holmfirth are edged by dry stone walls; indeed some of the earliest houses I saw are also made of dry stone. These constructions are extremely durable and can last for centuries; they use no cement and are built by skilfully fitting the right shaped stones in the right places. I hear that this is a dying trade known only to a few elderly artisans and in the future nobody will remember how to do it. It's sad to think that the gaps I saw in the walls might have to be replaced one day by the more mundane and familiar barbed wire fences. A short but dense shower fell on me; the clouds above me looked much closer than I'm familiar with; obviously because I was climbing higher and higher. I almost tripped over one of many dead rabbits I was to come across over the course of the weekend. My campsite was right on the crest of the hill next to a smelly barnyard; it looked like an ordinary field about an acre in size, no different to many of the others, and as I opened the gate I saw sheep grazing in it. I paused, wondering if I'd come to the wrong place, but there was one caravan parked up and a toilet hut, the only building; so it was indeed a campsite, albeit a very rudimentary and empty one. I pitched my tent and marvelled at the view. The lines of sight were extraordinary; to the west I could easily see Manchester; indeed at night-time it would be laid out on the horizon like an illuminated garden pond. The town of Holmfirth lay below, every house visible on the terraced streets; cars on the opposite side of the valley looked like crawling insects, dwarfed by distance. And to the east any sense of scale I felt was eliminated by the dark, gargantuan bulks of the Pennines. There were no roads or buildings there, just the sheen of distant moorland stretching up to desolate and inaccessible peaks of extreme black rock. The Pennines towered over my campsite the same way the campsite towered over the valley. I had a ringside seat on UFO Alley.
 
However I had no time for skywatching; as soon as I'd got my tent up I went back down the hill into town to meet up with the other people attending the conference, in many cases these were old friends and people I've only ever associated with before online. I was delighted to meet them again, people like Peter Robbins, Larry Warren, Richard D Hall and Brigitte Barclay. There were a few new faces too whose names I knew but had never met, like Pia Knudsen and Capt. Robert Salas. We fell into the Old Bridge Hotel and beer speedily flowed our way. One man I have become very close to in my internet social circles is Tim (not his real name). It was great to meet up with him again; I've not seen him physically since last year's conference, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/ufo-truth-magazine-conference-2013.html. Tim kindly offered to drive me back to the campsite after Friday evening's festivities had died down. I gladly accepted; although the site was well within walking distance. It is very steeply uphill, as I said, and if somebody offers to give me a lift I don't plan to try and talk them out of it. Tim needed bottom gear as we tacked up the hillside, the headlights disturbing the local wildlife. We reached the campsite and I said goodnight and thanks to Tim, and I entered the field as he turned his car round for the five minute drive back down into Holmfirth. I was walking across the grass towards my tent when I suddenly heard a man shouting angrily at the top of his voice outside where Tim was. Tim drove off and the voice went silent. It was only the following morning that I found out from Tim exactly what had happened. As he was driving away from the entrance of the campsite somebody burst out of a neighbouring barnyard and attacked him; luckily Tim was in the car and his assailant could only pound the chassis with his fist as he hurled abuse. This was a baffling and motiveless assault; Tim thinks the man was drunk. On Saturday night Tim offered again to drive me back to the campsite; I suggested he drop me off a short distance away in case the man came back out again to harass him. Tim refused and said that he would happily take me to the same place he did last night. I accorded, because after all, what was he doing wrong? He merely parked his car for a moment to let me step out and then drove away. He has a perfect right to do that and nobody should be threatening him or otherwise trying to prevent him, least of all through violence and rudeness. As we followed our tracks back up the hill we were preparing ourselves for any potential aggravation. I recommended we grab tree branches to use as weapons, Dr Jonathan Reed style, only half-jokingly. We laughed and quipped: "I bet he packs a hefty punch seeing as he probably has seven fingers on each hand from inbreeding!" I questioned that he might be some kind of escaped monster that the farmer had been breeding in his basement, like in some story by HP Lovecraft. As I walked past the entrance to the barnyard I was bracing myself for that thug to come out again and attack, me as well this time. Tim kept his car in gear and pointing towards the campsite gate. If the man came out again he planned to rush over and back me up. But nobody did; all was quiet in the barnyard except for a dog barking. But for now let us return to Saturday morning.
 
Gary Heseltine
This second UFO Truth Magazine Conference was a far more ambitious project than the first one last year. Gary appears to be working his way up the ladder bit by bit. He had booked a much bigger venue, the Holmfirth Civic Hall, and made this a two-day event. I'm glad to say that he managed to sell all his tickets too, which is a rare thing in this business. Gary seems to have excellent organizational abilities as well as a passion for the subject; that's a rare combination. He also has a flair for the dramatic, as we were to find out. Gary has come under some criticism, especially at last week's Bases event, that he only wants to promote his magazine and nothing else, and he's using these conferences as a platform to do so. Well, yes and no. Gary is focused on the magazine, but not for the magazine's sake in itself; the magazine is a means to an ends he believes in, the Disclosure... or disclosure- lower case d... of UFO's. An entire third of the profits from sales are ring-fenced for investment into UFOlogical and exopolitical causes. I dare say he takes a living wage out for himself as well, but why shouldn't he? Gary believes that the UFO community badly needs a new magazine, one that is based in evidential science and also accepts that the UFO phenomenon does contain a genuinely extraterrestrial factor. There are plenty of journals that display one of these two features but very few display both. When Gary first became actively interested in UFO's he read UFO magazine which was edited by Graham Birdsall. Here he is giving a lecture in Leeds in 1996; it is largely due to Birdsall's influence that Leeds is the pivot of today's UK exopolitics movement, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RijlwPpGlg (the less said about this revolting obituary the better: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/mar/14/pressandpublishing.uknews). It was a copious publication which ran from 1981 until 2004 and had over eleven thousand regular subscribers in forty-four countries. After Birdsall died it quickly ground to a halt and, in Gary's view, nothing has ever replaced it. This dealt a serious blow to UFO scholarship because a regular and popular British-based journal is an essential ingredient in serious study of the field. I recall the rapid rise and fall of UFO Data and I read a few copies myself during its brief incarnation. I was impressed by UFO Matrix, of which I bought a two-year subscription, but this also folded. Therefore Gary believes that the launch of UFO Truth Magazine is highly significant because it fills a very obtrusive void. As I said, Gary is good at the practicalities of organization and has thought the publication plan through carefully. He has taken the revolutionary step of not releasing a print edition at all. For a long time now all magazines have been available both in electronic form and good old fashioned paper and ink, but Truth is the first to be an e-zine alone. This is because electronic readers have recently become so effective and convenient that all their previous disadvantages have been negated. I don't agree there; I love the rustle of pages and the thump of paper hitting a doormat, but my motivations are probably just from me being a sentimental and stubborn traditionalist. Smart phones and tablets have improved electronic text enormously and most people I know always read that way now. What's more, releasing a print edition is prohibitively expensive and requires a far greater initial investment; the fate of Truth's predecessors gave Gary pause for thought. So with his idea developing he went out and recruited the best writers and researchers in the field to contribute; I'm honoured that he considered me among them, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/ufo-truth-magazine-issue-7.html. Gary says that we have a major challenge on our hands because of the success of the truth embargo, as Stephen Bassett calls it; this has not only suppressed and distorted the information on UFO's, but has bred confusion, fear and apathy among the general population. It has indeed, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/confessions-of-alien-abductee-aftermath.html. According to Google, search terms like "UFO" and "alien" are second only to those relating to pornography... not that I know anything about that personally of course... this means that a billion people or more have at some time used the internet to look for information on UFO's. This is backed up by opinion polls in the United States, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/usa-conspiracy-theory-poll.html. Yet the biggest UFO-themed public events attract no more than a few hundred individuals. This means that the vast majority of people interested in the subject take no associated action; they don't speak out, they do no research. They are in the closet, as it were. We who have "come out" are a tiny tip of a huge iceberg. This is encouraging in one sense, as I explain in the above link, because there is an entire host of potential activists out there just waiting for a call to arms. I believe that the propaganda we see in the world today- the lies, the ridicule, the demonization, is intended more to keep that silent majority in their place, rather than to give oblivious loudmouths like me a hard time. So the solution is to take the step of revealing your true nature to your family and friends. We could even set up support groups; "Hello everybody. My name's Ben and I'm a UFO enthusiast." As far as Gary is concerned, this is the role UFO Truth Magazine will hopefully play. We also need money. The singer Robbie Williams was at one point interested in UFO's. He'd had contact experiences in his youth and was outspoken in the media for a while; he even went to the International UFO Congress. However it seems to have just been a phase he was going through and he has since dropped off the scene. This is a shame because his own personal capital could fund the kind of projects Gary has in mind many time over; it would be small change to Robbie. Interest in UFO's and other conspiratorial subjects is very demographically homogenous; black or white, rich or poor, male or female. Therefore there must be a proportion of millionaires taking the subject seriously; so why won't any of them offer to help financially? None of them ever have with the exception of Bob Bigelow. Basically we need more Bob Bigelows. One of the first things Gary wants to do is put a full page advert on UFO's in The Times. This would cost £5000. If the newspaper refuses to publish it, even if we do pay up with the correct fee, then this will beg the question why. The Times will then be caught in a corner, either they publish the ad or confess that they've been "advised not to" by "somebody". So with the expenditure of the price of a second hand car, we will have made a groundbreaking move against the truth embargo, whichever way they go. Another idea Gary has is for a UFO data bank; a one-stop shop for all the hard facts about the subject. This means that if any journalist comes knocking at the door, we can just send them to the bank. If that reporter is under a mandate to call us all "nutters!" then he'll have a much harder time of it. Another flaw that Gary has detected on the scene is ego and division. There is a lot of personal animosity and rivalry in UFOlogy. This is a big subject, but it does need to be touched upon. A good example Gary didn’t mention, but has caused a major split, is the connection between UFO conspiracies and other kinds of conspiracy theory. As regular readers will know, I take many conspiracy theories seriously that are not directly related to UFO’s; I see them as all connected at a higher level. Many people at the conference share my opinion, but not all do. There is a contingent of people in exopolitics who disagree with general conspiracy theories and/or believe that the UFO issue should be kept separate from them. I was talking to a friend at the conference, a man I’m fond of and feel respect for, and the subject of the moon landings came up. I have serious doubts that the Apollo moon landings happened the way that history tells us it did, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/i-went-to-godamn-moon.html. My friend replied that he totally differed and that it was “insulting” and “anti-American” to suggest otherwise. I certainly would never willingly insult anybody, and I’m definitely not anti-American, but if something I say based on intellectual honestly offends somebody, so be it; I won’t tell lies to avoid that. I do not judge Apollo astronauts like Dr Ed Mitchell, who is involved in the exopolitics movement, and if I ever met him I wouldn’t even bring up the subject. 9/11 is another contentious issue and after his speech at the 2011 Leeds Exopolitics Expo Bryce Zabel wrote an article entitled: UFO’s and 9/11 Truth Don’t Mix. Again, I admire Bryce a lot too, but I disagree with him totally. I do not believe the official story of 9/11 and there’s good reason to suspect that the Breakaway Civilization behind the UFO truth embargo is the same entity that carried out the 9/11 attacks. Nothing can be achieved by denying it. I know that when talking to somebody new to these subjects it’s sensible not to overload them with all this challenging information and if I were discussing UFO’s with a newcomer I would stick to that one issue and no other; but if that newcomer asks me what I think of 9/11 I will answer truthfully without hesitation. Truth is now in its second year; a new issue, number 8, is due to hit the press just a couple of weeks after the time of writing. Who knows what will happen between then and the third year, but I'm very confident that the magazine will still be running and it's going to be an exciting ride. Gary loves to give us surprises and during his speech he paid homage to the man who inspired him, Graham Birdsall, and he presented a posthumous award to him, which was collected on stage by his wife Christine. This was not the only unexpected incident he had in store for us.
 
Mary Rodwell
This is the second time I've seen Mary Rodwell in as many weeks; she was at the Bases event, see link above. Mary has become famous for her work with children and how so many of them nowadays are talking about encounters they've had with non-human intelligent beings and the ways this is affecting their lives. Through her work with a mutual friend of ours, Ellis Taylor- see links column, Mary established ACERN, the Australian Close Encounters Resources Network. She used to be a nurse, midwife and counsellor in Britain but when she moved to Australia in 1991 she found a new calling. She began to meet people who related the most extraordinary experiences: they had had encounters with intelligent creatures that were not from this world. As more and more of these people came into her life it became clear that this was something that affected many people; many more than were willing to openly admit it. It was also a global phenomenon and people from all over the world were reporting very similar experiences. Some of these people developed remarkable abilities as a result of their encounters like extrasensory perception, high intelligence, healing and being able to speak and write in unknown languages. Very young children report these encounters, sometimes almost as soon as they’re old enough to speak. They often come out with information that they couldn’t possibly know through conventional means; in fact it seems that some of the extraterrestrial beings have a mission to educate human children. One child said “I learn more on the ships than I do at school”. Adults affected come from all walks of life and do not all fall into the condescending popular characterization of “UFO nuts”. They include, among others, an Australian model and an Israeli computer engineer. Remarkably, many people who’ve had no contact with each other and live in very different cultures see the very same creatures. There’s such a long list of different beings that it's almost a full biological taxonomy. The classic “Grey” is the species that has entered popular culture, but it is by no means alone; many less well-known ones regularly visit experiencers: Mary has gathered information on the attributes and personalities of the various creatures. There’s the “Praying Mantis” that resembles a giant version of the insect of that name. Despite it's fearsome countenance it is popular with its contactees and seems to be wise and benevolent. The same can be said of the “Lion Man”, a being that is humanoid, but is covered with golden fur and has a lion-like mane and a feline face. There’s the “Owl Man” that is like a Grey, but it has owl-like features; indeed it is sometimes seen in the form of an owl when it first tries to make contact. Some beings are very humanoid like the classic “Nordics”. Images of ET’s are not confined to modern reports; they’re described in everything from mediaeval paintings to native African mythology and Australian Aboriginal petroglyphs. Some children report completely unique beings and give them their own nicknames like "clowny" and "the scaries". It’s obvious that something very strange but manifestly real is going on here. Mary describes this as a "trigger of consciousness", the emergence of a new kind of human, Homo noeticus- the conscious man. This comes at a time when the world is ruled by malevolent forces that are desperately trying to prevent this emergence from happening. It seems to me that a very subtle and silent war is going on; it also takes the form of crop circles. Crop circles are actually just one manifestation of many different kind of medium used by some intelligence out there which is creating marks on the ground. Many people know that they also use grass, sand and snow to plant shapes onto the earth, but in Australia they've been using fire. Bush fires have been burning in specific patterns that are very similar in style to crop circles. Mary's work interests me a lot; it means that somebody "out there" is taking an interest in affairs on Earth and is bringing aid. I'm repelled by the idea that we've got to wait to be saved by divine intervention, the Messiah, or god-like aliens coming down from the sky etc. I've always believed that we humans are masters of our own destiny and therefore are our own saviours. On the other hand, if some friendly passing hyper-dimensional being offers to lend a hand then I'll happily swallow my pride and accept. Mary's work gives me hope, inspiration and comfort. I feel optimistic, whether I'm correct to feel that way, you decide.
See here for Mary Rodwell's appearance on the HPANWO Show: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/programme-11-podcast-mary-rodwell.html.
 
Alan Foster
Alan Foster is a writer and researcher on UFO’s, crop circles and spirituality. His journey began in 1983 and he has come to the belief that interactions with extraterrestrial life comes in three stages: contact, preparation and awakening. He claims that we are already through the contact stage and are onto the preparation, and the chief sign of this is the emergence of the crop circle phenomenon. Contrary to popular belief, a lot of scientific research has been done on crop circles, and some has concluded positively that they are not all man-made hoaxes despite claims to the contrary, like from Matthew Williams at Bases, see link above. The Leavengood study has shown us that the methods used by the known human hoaxers are not how many of the formations are created. They are actually created by focused energy beams into the growth nodes of the plants causing them to bend over. Autopsies of plants in crop circle lay show burning and expansion bubbles in the stalks at those growth nodes. Non-human made crop circles also contain magnetic anomalies. Compasses go wild in them and birds, which use the Earth’s magnetism to navigate, refuse to over-fly them. Sometimes crop circles appear in daylight, like the Stonehenge Julia Set which appeared in a thirty minute period in daytime, witnessed by two Stonehenge security guards and a pilot flying a light aircraft overhead. The pilot, Busty Taylor, went on to become a croppie himself and presented the Bases conference last weekend. A disturbing aspect to this phenomenon is that the authorities seem to be engaged in a campaign of harassment of crop circle visitors. Many people who’ve visited them for scientific data, or even just to sit and meditate in the formations, have been chased away by military helicopters. Alan spoke at some length about a series of crop formations that emerged near the Chilbolten radio telescope in Hampshire. This could be because Chilbolten was once part of the SETI network, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. One image was of an alien face, another was a fascinating adaptation of the Arecibo transmission. In 1974 this coded radio message was broadcast at a nearby star: http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/arecibo-message. It contained images and information about the Earth and its inhabitants. Amazingly, the crop circle facsimile of it came with several important differences. The human figure is replaced by a “grey”, the planets are different and so is its DNA depiction. Crop circles are usually abstract, but sometimes they are of religious symbols or recognizable images. A few can be seen as 3D images, some of which I only noticed when Alan pointed it out. Many Skeptics ask: “Why do aliens communicate like this? Why not just speak or write in human language?” and “Why don’t they just approach our world leaders? Why bother with ordinary people”. This is a case of anthropomorphizing; the Skeptics who make this point are effectively just saying: "If I flew to another planet I would not behave like this." We cannot speculate on how an extraterrestrial or other dimensional intelligence would communicate with us. Other strange things have happened that makes it clear something out there is trying to tell us something; one of the most interesting cases Alan brings up is from 1967 when a Polish merchant ship encountered an invisible craft. They detected it only when the object landed on the helicopter pad at the aft end of the vessel. The weight of the UFO made the ship angle upwards so far that its entire bow rose above the waterline. Strangely the ship suffered no structural damage; indeed the helicopter pad should have been crushed under the weight before the ship’s hull moved at all. Alan has also studied alien abduction and brought up a particularly interesting case; interesting because some third party strangers witnessed it happening. They allegedly saw the abductee being levitated through a window. The case became even more amazing when one of those witnesses was found to be Perez de Cuellar, who at the time was United Nations Secretary General. Alan is a fascinating chap to listen to because he has a scientific attitude towards UFO's and related phenomena, but also understands, like Mary Rodwell, that there is a spiritual matter at stake which we may not yet be able to comprehend, but need to learn to.
 
Peter Robbins
"Time to pull the pin" said my old friend Peter Robbins as he entered the auditorium to give his speech. One of the most notorious characters in the UFO world is Nick Pope. This former... or allegedly former... government agent was originally in charge of "Secretariat Air Staff 2A", a rather prosaic name for the UFO desk at the UK Ministry of Defence, one of the few official UFO research operations in the world since the closure of Project Blue Book in 1970. He has authored several books on UFO's and also was keen to promote the 1997 book Left at East Gate by Larry Warren and Peter, describing it as "dynamite... meticulously researched... gripping and provocative." The authors and Nick Pope became good friends and Pope assisted them with their promotional tour. This was a happy time for Larry and Peter; the book was sailing up the best-sellers list, a copy had been sent to Tony Blair and that late, great UFO hero Admiral-of-the-Fleet Lord Hill-Norton was making some great scenes in Parliament. So when Nick Pope published a new book on the Rendlesham Forest Incident- Encounter in Rendlesham Forest- the Inside Story of the World's Best-Documented UFO Incident (Thomas Dunne Books 2014) which he co-authored with Jim Penniston and John Burroughs, two of the principle witnesses, Peter returned the favour. However as soon as he read it he knew something was badly wrong. His review was intended to be a short article in Phenomena magazine but it soon blossomed into an entire volume in itself, with lots of sources and footnotes which the reader can check; one of Peter's criticisms of Nick Pope's book was that it lacked such background material. Peter has published the book for free online, see: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByUXMaBHOgPLUUJIQmd5V1I5dUU. He called it Deliberate Deception- a Case of Disinformation in the UFO Research Community, a descriptive title if ever there was one. I should point out that I've not yet read Nick's new book, yet I intend to and will be able to confirm or deny whether or not I agree with Peter's assessment. I will also be interviewing John Burroughs on the HPANWO Show soon and I intend to ask him about the points Peter raises. Peter read out some excerpts from his critique while on stage. He feels very annoyed that Nick's book draws heavily on Left at East Gate, but there is no acknowledgement of that fact in the text; Peter describes this as plagiarism, which it is by definition if so. Also Peter thinks Nick purposely downplays Larry Warren's role in the Rendlesham Forest Incident, an attempt to write Larry out of the story by omission. Peter specifically addresses Nick in his review and feels that although Penniston and Burroughs are officially listed as co-authors, they are really just sleeping partners in the firm, offering only token assistance to the real mastermind behind it- Nick Pope. For example he says that nobody has ever backed up Larry's claim that he was there on the night of the 28th and the airman Larry was with, SSgt. Adrian Bustinza denies it. This is not true; although Bustinza has generally kept very quiet about the RFI in recent years he did state categorically that Larry Warren was with him that night when the craft landed at Capel Green. Bustinza also made a comment that he had seen another object just like it land in Alaska some time before. There have also been a number of suicides among the men who experienced the events of Christmas 1980 and this is what motivates Larry to do what he does. This could also be caused by the "debriefing" the witnesses had to go through which included death threats, assault, being poisoned with drugs and kidnapping. What's more Peter believes that the forest was attacked by a weather warfare weapon which destroyed most of the trees in the wood; we know this as the Great Storm of 1987, but it could have been generated using secret government technology based on Wilhelm Reich's cloudbuster. A lot of the tension that has emerged in the last few years comes from Jim Penniston's explosive new statement, on the 30th anniversary of the event, that he had telepathic communication with the UFO and that it "downloaded" some information to him in binary code. I was there when he first brought it up on stage, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/rendlesham-forest-incident-30th.html. This announcement has been met with incredulity by the bulk of the UFO community. Nick does not address that adequately, in Peter's view. Nick fails to consider... or deliberately skirts round... another possibility- that Penniston has been targeted by a psychological warfare operation to discredit the entire RFI. Left at East Gate is a remarkable book and since I first read it I've got to know Larry Warren personally. He's an honest and open man, loud and humorous like New Yorkers are supposed to be. He dotes on his son and feels deeply for his family, and for his brothers-in-arms who suffered so badly along with him due to the UFO events of 1980. He's also had other experiences of ET contact which have happened to him and his family all his life; there may be a connection there to what happened in Suffolk that night. In another of the conference's drum-rollers, Gary announced that Larry has given him a letter that is dated the 9th of January 1981; it's the one he reports having written to his mother soon after he saw the UFO. Sceptics of Larry's testimony claim that he lied about writing the letter, but there it was. I've held it in my hand myself and read the ending where he talks about the UFO. The paper is thinned and yellowish the way old paper tends to be. It's also in an envelope which is a standard US military mail issue one, with a postmark and stamps that also match the early 1980's. Gary is going to have it forensically analyzed and if it is dated to the correct time period then this will vindicate Larry's story completely. It will also be a vital historical and evidential document because it will be literally the first written reference to the RFI, predating the Halt Memo by a full week. The moment was captured on video, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI_hgO29vkY.
See here for Peter and Larry's appearance on the HPANWO Show: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/programme-41-podcast-rendlesham-forest.html.
 
Richard D Hall
I've known Richard D Hall a long time and we've collaborated on several occasions, see links below. He's a very independent and self-styled researcher who runs his operation virtually single-handed. This includes his TV series, his films, his investigations and his nationwide tours, like his recent one in London that I attended, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/richplanet-live-in-london.html. His research is extremely varied and covers a wide range of subjects beyond UFO's; in fact he's just completed a documentary about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Before that, he released what was surely his most disturbing film, UFO's and NATO- the Human Mutilation Cover-Up. It's freely available online: http://www.richplanet.net/starship_main.php?ref=175&part=1. It's been known for a long time that animals have sometimes been found dead suffering from mysterious injuries that can't be explained by the usual causes of death- attacks by predators, disease, accidents etc. Flesh stripped off the jaw, organs surgically removed etc. Although this is often called "cattle mutilation" all kinds of species have been struck down by it, wild animals as well as farm livestock, even marine mammals. What Richard has discovered is that it was premature of us to assume that Homo sapiens was immune. There have been instances, including two confirmed in the UK, of human bodies turning up with these kinds of injuries- a teenage girl and young man in the Brecon Beacons in Wales and a group of seven people in Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire. When this happens there is an even bigger attempt to cover up the details than when it happens to animals. There's even a special military unit that secures the scene of these shocking incidents and sometimes it has to deal with UFO's and aliens on the ground. Richard has managed to contact a former member of this unit via a UFOlogist in South Wales. Richard has visited the man and confirmed his identity and he was a part of this taskforce, Section Five-Eight, a detachment of the SAS special forces regiment and the Royal Engineers. Since making the film Richard has found an independent source to confirm that this unbelievable and terrifying phenomenon is real. Who... or what... is behind this, and why, is a big question with no obvious answers. The same question that was asked when animal mutilation was first identified by Linda Moulton Howe in the 1970's. None of the theories proposed so far fit, but there is sometimes a connection between these attacks and UFO activity. I'm disappointed to report that when Richard contacted Linda Moulton Howe about his research she instantly dismissed it. She tabled all kinds of totally inadequate explanations even though these bodies had suffered the exact same kind of mutilations she herself had identified as anomalous in cows and other beasts. This is suspicious; could LMH have been turned into a "limited hangout"? I hope not, but she has reacted very unexpectedly. Like myself, Richard is interested in the behaviour of the media and has studied their underhand machinations very carefully. He was approached by Plum Pictures to take part in what they call their "documentary" about UFO conspiracies. Like myself, Richard wisely declined in no uncertain terms; see here for background from 23.50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMdyMb8ndPk. Unfortunately some of our peers have agreed to assist Plum Pictures; this is foolish and I'd be very surprised if it doesn't lead to disaster, like with the Off The Fence fiasco, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/confessions-of-alien-abductee-aftermath.html. Richard has developed a very dim view of Miles Johnston and explained on stage why that is. I don't agree at all and I think Richard is being unfair to Miles; Miles has done a lot of good work in raising awareness and distributing information. The AMMACH and Bases witnesses are always eager volunteers to be interviewed. Afterwards most of them remain pleased to have been involved. Many of these witnesses are close friends of mine and they feel they've achieved something and made a difference to the world by being on the sofa. In terms of their personal wellbeing they've commented to me that they find it healing and inspiring. This is not to say that Miles hasn't made a lot of mistakes; he's given a platform to some highly incredulous characters indeed over the years, but all in all I think he's genuine and has done a lot of good. That being said, Richard is correct to criticize Miles for signing up with Plum Pictures, and I do so myself in my recent interview with Miles, see: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/programme-92-podcast-miles-johnston.html. It's an extremely ill-advised move, especially in light of recent experience with Off The Fence, and when the programme is broadcast I think this will become very obvious. Miles was originally going to be at the UFO Truth Magazine Conference and manage the filming, but he had cancelled at the last minute meaning that the conference was not recorded. Some have speculated that this is because of Richard's presence there, but I doubt it. Miles was happy to speak at last autumn's Probe conference when none other than Joanne Summerscales was in the audience, and he did so with great dignity, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/return-to-probe.html. Richard's lecture on human mutilations gave me the chills I must admit. I think Richard is quite correct to speak out about the subject and I'd frankly be much more concerned if people were not talking about it, but I did feel a bit vulnerable when I was lying in my tent that night, up on top of a remote hill where anything could come and grab me if it wanted to.
 
Stephen Mera
I first came across Stephen Mera when I read his enthralling book Strange Happenings; it was a vital research textbook for my film Gateway to a Parallel Universe, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/gateway-to-parallel-universe.html. I was delighted to be able to interview Steve personally at later on at Exopol, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U81u057HVK8. He is the chief editor of Phenomena magazine and a member of MAPIT, Manchester's Association of Paranormal Investigators and Training. Steve covers all kinds of subjects as well as UFO's and told us about how many ancient UFO images there are. They appear in renaissance paintings, mediaeval church iconography, Egyptian hieroglyphics and even cave paintings from prehistoric times. One is forced to ask how many of the artists of those works watched 1940's science fiction movies. There is also a great deal of forensic evidence including skulls with horns and skeletons much bigger than a normal man. Amazingly the world's earliest UFO photo was in 1870. Again, it's pretty obvious that UFO's go back much further in time than Skeptics would have you believe. It's possible that some of what we call "UFO's" are actually man made. The Nazi's were particularly advanced in this field and had a project codenamed "the Bell" or "The Beehive" towards the end of World War II. These involved free energy and antigravity. Ed Fouche has recently been interviewed talking about the TR3B which might have been developed from the work of the Nazi scientists and also back-engineered extraterrestrial technology from crash-retrievals like Roswell, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJy53lx_vCI. It's possible that even some aviation projects that are publicly acknowledged use this kind of technology secretly, like the B2 bomber might achieve some of its lift from electrogravitic forces. Steve's lecture was very interesting and a good introduction, I'd say, to a lot of these concepts; one to show your friends and family who might not go along with all your ideas yet.
 
Pia Knudsen
UFOlogy in Scandinavia is very old and very unique. It was the Swedish Army Air Corps who in 1931 deployed aircraft when a strange object appeared in the sky; this was the world's first recorded UFO aerial interception. The region is also where the "ghost rocket" phenomenon took place. These date back to the 1930's and continue to be reported to this day. Unlike most UFO's these do bear a moderate resemblance to man-made aircraft or projectiles; they tend to be streamlined and have wings, fins and propulsion nozzles and they often end their flights by dropping into lakes. Pia Knudsen is a Danish UFOlogist who is the leading authority on the subject in the country and has earned an international reputation for her research. She's a personal friend and colleague of Gary Heseltine and writes for the magazine. She and Gary had a sighting at a lake near Bergen in Norway. In 1952 Denmark took part in Operation Mainbrace, a massive international naval exercise involving over two hundred ships. It was a vast muscle-display for the Soviet Union in the early days of the Cold War. UFO’s have always taken an interest in human military affairs, for reasons only known to themselves, and Mainbrace was the scene of a UFO flap that covered the entire area of the exercise, from Greenland to the British Isles. Many objects were seen by Danish ships and an officer on one of them became a principle witness. Another Dane who has spoken out about his UFO experiences is the policeman Evald Maarup. In 1970 in Hadersley, Denmark he encountered a strange object in the sky and took a photograph of it. This was the first of many encounters he was to have over three years. He describes the objecg as being ten metres in diameter and with a hole at the bottom from which shone a beam of light. His fellow police officers laughed at him and suggested he see a psychiatrist. Pia has had experience with all the various UFO organizations in Denmark and when she described them I was surprised how similar they sounded to the various organizations we see in the UK. She works directly for Copenhagen UFO Research and Exopolitics Denmark, but there is also an outfit called SUFOI- Skandinavisk (Scandinavian) UFO Information, see: http://www.sufoi.dk/. Pia is highly suspicious of this group because although it formally declares that it still takes the extraterrestrial hypothesis seriously and pays the odd bit of lip-service to those who genuinely do all the time, it is in practice mostly a pack of Skeptic debunkers. So CUFOR and Exopolitics Denmark appear to be the equivalent of Exopolitics Great Britain and Gary’s PRUFOS Police Database, SUFOI sounds to me very similar in form to BUFORA, see here for my review of their 2012 conference: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/bufora-conference-2012.html. Interestingly the year before, BUFORA cancelled a lecture by Richard D Hall at their 2011 conference. Nevertheless UFO research in Denmark is going full speed ahead, there’s a conference there this year on crop circles with the Norwegian film maker Terje Toftenes. I wish Pia all the best with it.
 
Roberto Pinotti
The next of the conference’s foreign speakers came all the way from Italy. Roberto Pinotti has been studying UFO’s since long before most of the conference’s delegates were born. He can speak good English, but he has a strong accent and I had to concentrate hard to understand him, and I’m glad I did. He helped organize a very successful UFO conference in 2010 in San Marino, as I read in Flying Saucer Review. He has travelled the world working alongside J Allen Hynek and John Mack. In Roswell he interviewed the witnesses Lt. Walter Haut and Glenn Dennis; he also knew the late Col. Philip Corso, a well-known spokesman on the subject. I’ve read Corso’s book and don’t quite know what to make of his story. Although he is highly thought of in most of the UFO community, also he is a former intelligence officer and Pentagon official therefore a high calibre witness, I can’t help finding some of his testimony dubious, see:  http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/day-after-roswell-by-col-philip-j-corso.html. Roberto told us that he “infiltrated” the scientific community, no mean feat that. He concentrated on SETI-the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. This is a project intended to detect radio signals from intelligent beings out in the deep cosmos; it was passionately endorsed by Carl Sagan and he wrote a novel about it which was turned into a film- Contact. Roberto tried to arrange an affiliation between SETI and UFO groups, which seems bizarre. SETI proponents are totally Skeptical of UFO’s for obvious reasons; it makes their efforts somewhat superfluous. Roberto also defied Cold War allegiance by forging links with UFOlogists in the Soviet Union; that area has the richest and most promising UFO data in the world. There was the Tunguska event of 1908 and the famous sighting in Voronezh in 1989. Roberto’s journal Notiziaro UFO published articles that were also put out in the famous Russian broadsheet, Pravda. Roberto also spoke about a wave of UFO sightings in 1954; these included the incredible close encounter over Florence at the packed football ground- Stadio Artemio Franchi in which a group of objects flew low over a Fiorentina match, see here for more details: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/football-ufo-in-florence.html. UFOlogy in Italy has a long history, in fact the dictator Benito Mussolini was obsessed by the subject and ordered an official government investigation in 1933, a full fourteen years before Project Sign. Il Duce’s interest was sparked off by a wave of sightings of black triangles, a form of UFO still widely reported today. Another case in Italy I’m interested in is the creature encountered by Filiberto Caponi; Timothy Good investigated this personally in his book Unearthly Disclosures. See here for more detail: http://www.filibertocaponi.it/index.php?lang=it. I asked Roberto about it and he laughed. “That one is nothing to do with UFO’s he said. It’s cryptozoology!” Technically he is correct. There’s nothing connecting the being Caponi claims to have encountered with ET, but the features of the entity do resemble those reported by witnesses of beings which do come from close encounters of the third kind, so is Roberto being a bit hasty? It was good to meet Roberto and his wife; it was a very interesting lecture.
 
Capt. Robert Salas
Stephen Hawking once commented on UFO’s; through his electronic voice box he declared that, seeing as they only appear to “cranks and weirdoes” he was very sceptical of their existence. However this next witness is a member of a profession who, by its very nature, has had his psychiatric health more carefully monitored and screened than anybody else in the world. The job Capt. Robert Salas USAF, ret. used to do was man the launch control station for intercontinental nuclear missiles. In the event of all out nuclear war it was his finger that was “on the button”, and he who would send the missiles on their way. If at any time he launched his missiles without authorization, because he lost his mind, or by mistake, then the country targeted would most likely shoot back before asking questions and this could result in an all-out exchange which would destroy the world forever. Who would let a “crank” or “weirdo” do a job like that? Yet Capt. Salas did have an encounter with a UFO and he is speaking openly about it today. It was one morning in 1967 and he was on duty in the launch facility. This is in an underground bunker, or “capsule”, in a rural area of Montana USA, a long way from his headquarters at Malmstrom Air Force Base; nuclear facilities are always spread out over a wide area in remote locations so that they can’t all be targeted by enemy fire. He was in the bunker monitoring the missiles, ready as always in case the order came through to launch, when he received a phonecall from the security police outside. There was a strange light flying around beyond the compound. Half an hour later there was a large glowing red object hovering right outside the gates. At the same time an alarm went off on the control panel. All the missiles began to shut down. Pretty soon all the siloes were in a no-go situation. It’s reasonable to presume that the presence of the UFO’s disabled the missiles. There were several other similar incidents at other nuclear bases. As Pia Kundsen also revealed, UFO’s seem to be fixated on our military activity, especially nuclear weapons. I myself took a photo of a UFO close to a nuclear weapons facility, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2gBQVSgfvg. The UFO’s clearly have the ability to interfere with the electronics of nuclear missiles. Does this mean if it ever came to a war they’d step in and put a stop to it; don’t know, but I hope so. However at the time Capt. Salas had his encounter America was not at war and his team were on routine alert. Why did the UFO’s choose that time and place to fiddle? Only they know. Since then Capt. Salas has appeared at the Citizen Hearing and studied man more cases of UFO’s at nuclear sites, in Israel, Pakistan, Russia and many other places. There were events in Vietnam too. He refers to what he calls “The Secret Group” people who know some of the facts about UFO’s which they’re not willing to reveal to the rest of us; this sounds like the same people Richard Dolan calls “the Breakaway Civilization”. Capt. Salas said that Wilbert Smith, a Canadian engineer, knows a lot more as well, see here for more details: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/who-is-wilbert-smith.html. Capt. Salas has had many contact experiences of his own, which might be an answer to why the UFO’s buzzed his team that day in 1967. He’s a staunch advocate for Disclosure and it was interesting to hear his speech.
 
I felt quite drained of energy as the conference drew to a close. I did also after Bases last weekend; it’s strange how just sitting there listening can take it out of you. We headed off to the Old Bridge for a social gathering and I had a “dirty burger” which was very nice. I had a lovely evening chatting to old friends and then it was time for bed. Some people left on the Sunday evening, but this was out of the question for me; I decided to stay overnight and travel home on Monday. The wind had strengthened during the day and the walls of my tent were battered continuously; it felt like somebody was punching them over and over. It rained very hard as well. However the fabric and poles of the tent held firm; not bad seeing as the tent is over fifteen years old. I bought it in 1998 for a trip to Ireland and it’s still in good shape. I couldn’t help feeling slightly uneasy because of what Richard D Hall talked about. The unfortunate victims of human mutilations are often people alone in remote areas like the Brecon Beacons and Dalby Forest. The campsite I was in was empty, my tent was the only one and there were no buildings as I said; I was several miles from Holmfirth on the isolated crest of a hill hundreds of feet above the populated valley. It was dark, cloudy and windy out there. I was intensely aware of my vulnerability. Was this the last anybody would hear of me? I’d be listed as missing while Section Five-Eight’s helicopter flew in to pick up my remains. Nevertheless I eventually drifted off to sleep. When I woke up it was light and the wind and rain had stopped. I breathed an only just slightly tongue-in-cheek sigh of relief and crawled out onto the waterlogged ground to strike the tent and pack everything into my rucksack. I then realized that I hadn’t paid the lady who runs the campsite. When I first booked online I couldn’t pay right then because I’m kind of “between bank accounts” right now… if you know what I mean. I phoned up the lady and explained and she said that was fine; all I had to do was give her the fee in cash when I arrived. However, as I explained, there was no management accommodation at the site and her personal address was in another town a few miles away. I had not seen her all weekend; nevertheless I was out all day from early till late and this might be why. So I had no choice but to head for a post office and send her the money via a postal order. When I got home and fired up my PC I had an email from her entitled Thanks for Nothing! It went on to say: Hi Ben. I noticed you’ve just packed up and left without paying. Here I am trying to run an honest business and people can’t be honest with me. I should have known better than to trust people. I never will again! It was signed: a very upset campsite owner. I’ve noticed that trust is generally regarded as a rather quaint and naïve notion in the modern world and those who succumb to it are suffering from childishness and weakness; this is deliberate social conditioning I think, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/eastenders-murder.html. Even somebody at the conference suggested that I do a runner and count myself lucky that there is still “one born every minute” and I’d quite rightly squeezed thirty quid out of one. If I had decided not to pay her it would have been easy. I didn’t give my home address or surname when I booked over the phone. No doubt there are many people who would hold her to blame for her gullibility had I done so. She apologized after I emailed her to explain. Presumably the postal order has arrived by now. I’m glad I didn’t cheat that lady, and that I did cheat the social manipulators. The second UFO Truth Magazine Conference was a glorious success and I’m very grateful to Gary Heseltine and his family who took part; also to all the speakers and assistants. I talked to the other delegates and I didn’t come across a single one who had any complaints. I had a great time and can’t wait for next years which will hopefully be even bigger and better.