August 3, 2025 — UFO Hoaxes with John Keeling - The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:22):
You're in the Para Cast, the gold standard of paranormal radio.
And now here's Jane Steinberg.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
So before we get to our main guest, this is
John Keeling, who has a book called Landed, the Great
British Flying Saucer Hoax and other extraterrestrial Spoofs. And I
last him with her. He knows who Jim Moseley was
speaking of spoofing. We're going to talk about last week's episode,

(00:55):
which has become a little controversial, which I kind of expected.
Ella Lebane. Now Ella Labine is what some people call
it Jewish evangelists, which is someone who is Jewish who
embraces Christ, like my wife's late uncle, Lewis Kaplan. But
that's not the point. The point is she said a

(01:16):
few things that were way off the wall, and some
things in the after the power Cast podcast which is
for Powercast Plus subscribers that were really so far beyond
the pale. I had to stop and correct her. But
some people suggest we should have just cut her off.
Others suggest, well, don't have her on.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
The first place.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
And in the history of the power Cast, which continues
for over nineteen years, we have had some wacky guests
on we let them talk. We don't constantly interrupt them,
but when they'd say something really beyond the pale, we
take that pale. I'd give them a little fact check,
as it were, which we did in this the case.

(02:00):
I mean, let her talk about her religious opinions, but
when she starts to attack other religions or come up
with completely absurd, insane conspiracy theories, we correct her. Of course,
she didn't feel corrected, she just continued talking. But that's
that's where it is. So we will continue to have
people like that, right.

Speaker 4 (02:18):
Tim, Oh, definitely, definitely, unless somebody is what's to come
in on here and expound racist, misogynistic viewpoints things like that.
You know, I think that we should be the type
of form to let someone like Ella come on and
talk about what she is writing about. I mean, it's

(02:40):
an important part of all of this, I think, and
it's just something that needs to be heard and then
the listener can figure out for themselves whether or not
someone like Ella has a legitimate viewpoint.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
We're going to correct her when necessary. And let's face it, Tim,
she made some statements in after the poarer cast that
I would regard as racist. I think, you know which ones.
They were, and I won't get into them here to
repeat them, just common common myths. And then we stopped
her because that's really too far. I mean, she believes

(03:19):
that UFOs are at least partly demonic. That's not an
unusual opinion. All the religious arena in which he follows
believes that. I got a book from my late uncle,
Lewis Kaplan's wife, a sci fi book. But nevertheless, it
had frequent scenes whenever UFO appeared. You cite the Lord's

(03:43):
Prayer and it goes bye bye. So it's unusual. Nick
Redfern told us about Ones something called the Collins Elite,
in organization within the US government that subscribes to similar.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Beliefs, So it's not unusual.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
And I'm glad we had her on for that reason alone,
and also because she basically follows a belief system that
my wife's uncle followed, which I really didn't care about
at the time because we said, oh, okay, he's kind
of a wacky guy, and we never got into a
religious discussion, and I'm kind of glad we did.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Then I was tempted to pull the plug once again.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
I mean, unless the person is just really just being
outrageous and horrible, you know, pulling the plug I don't think.
I don't think serves anyone. It's not as if Ella
was unintelligent. I mean she obviously with a lot of

(04:44):
her studies, very scholarly and kind of like Zacharia's stitching.
It's a matter of her interpretation of what she has
been researching. That can be the issue.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
And again, if we pulled the plug, the other issue
is and I could have done it when she made
that racist comment or two. If you do that, then
she can go out and say the power has censored us.
They wouldn't let us tell her truth. So we end
up being the bad guys. But if we let her
talk and correct her where necessary, or they hang up

(05:20):
on us, which a few guests have done, well that's
a different thing. It's not our fault.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
Nope. And she I think that she she handled herself
well to our corrections. And I mean she didn't get
you know, honked off and hang up on us. I mean,
she just took what we had to say in stride.
And you know, maybe that will be a future influence

(05:48):
on her on her research. Maybe you know, she'll be
willing to look outside of her comfort zone and in
what she's studying.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
And she's a nice person.

Speaker 4 (06:02):
Yes, you know, very much, so very much, so very.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Much so so I mean, I don't hate her, I
just disliked some of the reviews. John Killing, Welcome to
the show. And before we get into your book, I
want to get into your background what attracted you about
what I call the UFO mess.

Speaker 5 (06:22):
First of all, gentlemen, thank you very much for having
the year, and thank you very much to your audience.
The incident that I talk about in this book was
actually what sparked my interest when I was a young
lad in the nineteen sixties and I watched wide eyed
on the TV news when all these policemen were standing

(06:42):
around these little flying sources. Now I didn't understand what
the term hopes meant at that point in time. I
just knew I was absolutely mesmerized. In the nineteen sixties,
I grew up on watching Doctor Who on TV all
Lost in Space. I absolutely loved Lost in Space. So
I was a product of the space age. And then

(07:03):
later in life I actually went eventually into media production,
and along the way, at various times this particular story
of this nineteen sixty seven hoax would pop up and
it would kind of pique my interest.

Speaker 6 (07:19):
Again.

Speaker 5 (07:20):
I was working in a company once that had to
make Patha newsreels into these sort of video gift and
by a fluke, I got the nineteen sixty seven and
sure enough there was a Patha newsreel about this particular story.
And I should say I think at that point in
time when I got you know, as a young lad,
I was absolutely convinced UFOs were extraterrestrial. There was no

(07:45):
two ways about it for me, and that belief carried
on for quite some time, you know, well into my
well into my twenties, and I think it was eventually
watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos on BBC Television and his approach
to extraterrestrial intelligence in that that started kind of changing

(08:08):
my mind, if you like. I started becoming should we say,
just a little bit more skeptical. And so that's the
kind of journey I went on. And so, you know,
as as somebody who become versed in media research, I
remember seeing a book that had a tiny mention of

(08:30):
this incident in there, and it so piqued my interest.
I decided to go down to the British Newspaper Library
in London, and I just wanted to get as many
newspaper clippings about this incident as I could, and I
was astonished at how much there was, and I was
also astonished at how seriously it had been taken because

(08:55):
as a as a stunt, it was dismissed very soon afterwards,
because it was discovered, if you like, or on, covered
quite quickly. But it's import I think, for the most part,
was missed by the media.

Speaker 6 (09:06):
So I set.

Speaker 5 (09:07):
About finding as many people who were involved in that
as possible. And this was about thirty years on after
the incident, and I just became fascinated and enamored of
this story. But in telling it, I also wanted to
put it into context, so I have included lots of
other hoaxes as well, many of which took place in

(09:28):
the US, so it's by no means all about Britain,
although I suppose the central story is.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
I'm aware of a few hoaxes in the US with
regard to UFOs, and I want to cover some of
those too, because I had a very close friend who
was one of the first guests on the show, who,
despite a serious interest in UFOs, could play a few
pranks John Tim Gene, you're in the.

Speaker 6 (09:55):
Bevercast opinion, We're not in Kansas anymore.

Speaker 7 (10:03):
This is Jennifer Stein, executive producer of the Disclosure Dialogues.
You're listening to the Para Cast, the gold standard of
paranormal radio.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
We have John Killing and he's responsible for a study of,
among other things, a really elaborate UFO hoax back from
nineteen sixty seven in the UK, and he mentions as
part of his book Landed that actually he found out

(10:39):
about some cases in the US before we get onto
the big case though. Have you ever heard the name
Jim Moseley.

Speaker 5 (10:47):
I've certainly heard Jim Moseley, and I got his last book,
which I thought was great.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
Fun, shockingly close to the truth.

Speaker 6 (10:55):
That's the one.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
You will notice that my name's in it.

Speaker 5 (11:01):
Well, first of all, I don't doubt that, but it's
been some time since I read it. One of the
reasons I actually bought that book is because I was
particularly interested in his comments he was making about the
infamous shaved monkey stunt from the nineteen fifties that took
place in the US. That was an intriguing one.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Well, he perpetrated a hoax called the strength letter with
his friend Gray Barker.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
It wasn't exciting.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
They sent letters out to contact the Georgia Dampsky and
some other people with government stationary they got from a
friend and with A damps They said, at least mister
Straith said in the letter that the government can't officially
support his claims, but can privately encourage it. Now, A

(11:52):
Dampski was a character in and of himself, and we
can go into that at some other time, but in
the meantime, you go on it. You can go on
for everybody. Dampski, right, But the key here is that
he publicly said, ah see, they proved everything, but you
got to know A Dampsky knew that it had to

(12:13):
be a fake. The problem also with the straight letter
is that Gray Barker had a very distinctive, easily recognized
writing style, and he had a way to turn a phrase,
and anyone who knew Barker would say, aha, they wouldn't
be surprised, or that Jim Mosley and Gray Barker had

(12:36):
a few too many beers and concocted these hoaxes.

Speaker 5 (12:40):
Sure, how would you like me to comment on that?
Though I'm not sure, I'm well versed enough to to
really give you a cogent response there.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Well, you mentioned, of course reading Jim's book, anything else
about it that relates to UFO hoaxes you want to
get into.

Speaker 5 (13:00):
As I say, you know, I'm not trying to be
evasive here, but this is something I researched over a
long time, and as I say, for the purposes of
the research for my book, I was interested in his
view of spoofing. And you know, it's his story anyway.

(13:22):
The book is delightfully told, you know, and it often
has its tongue very firmly in its cheek, and I
do rather like that.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Well, so here is this anyway inspiring of the British
hoax you cover, which was far far more involved, and
anything that Barker and Mosley did, or even what Georgia
Danski did. There's some fake claims about meeting a blind
Venusian in the desert, a christlike figure ah and making

(13:54):
fake photos is no I.

Speaker 5 (13:57):
Mean, as you say, this was this was an altogether
more elaborate stunt. I mean, certainly, I think it's really important,
particularly for a Transatlantic audience, to understand the kind of
the genesis of this story comes from a place called
the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farmborough.

Speaker 6 (14:19):
In the UK.

Speaker 5 (14:20):
Now that might not mean a great deal, which is
some folks in the US, but in many ways it's
the closest that Britain's ever had to NASA. The ra
was responsible for many of our major aviation breakthroughs, from
the Harrier Jump yet to the development of Concord. The
RAE in fact developed the calling systems for the first

(14:44):
American space suits, and so students that went there were
apprentices apprentices for five years. They serve an apprenticeship there
and in the UK every year it was customary for
apprenticeships and universities to hold what they called rag stunts,
and this was to raise money for charity. And so

(15:08):
a bunch of these guys that were at the are
in Farnbra decided two years before this particular story, they
decided to fake a space capsule looked very much like
a Mercury space capsule, and they ditched it in the
River Thames. And that caused quite a security alert in

(15:30):
its own right, that one, and it went so well
for them that two years later they decided that to
try and top it. And you'll know, as historians are
the subjects yourself. Nineteen sixty seven was a really pivotal
year for all sorts of reason. You know, the condom

(15:50):
thing was underway at that point in time, and certainly
in the UK. The UK was experiencing its biggest UFO
flap ever time, and so these guys said to themselves,
you know, why don't we why don't we stage a
flying sorcer invasion and that would mean multiple UFO is

(16:11):
found across the UK. And it was an extremely ingenious plot.
It was very well thought out, and it was technically
very elaborate, But I don't think any of them were
really particularly necessarily motivated by reading anything stateside about flying sources.

(16:31):
They were just enam with the fact that they got
so much press in the UK that year, I mean,
and it was absolute. You know, the MOD had its
biggest number of official reports that year, which for the
UK was run about three hundred and sixty five. And
now that might not sound a lot in US terms,
of course, but that's a lot for the UK.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
So they wanted to get into the act. But let's
before we've expose what happened there. We're not saying that
many of these other cases or any were elaborate hoaxes,
are we oh?

Speaker 5 (17:06):
I mean no, although what's interesting I mean, I mean
to give an example one of the In fact, some
of them can be very very simple that you may
well be aware of. In nineteen seventy four, an alert
was sparked in basically a kind of slag pond in

(17:27):
a place called Carbondale in Pennsylvania, and a bunch of kids,
you know, told the police they'd seen this funny light
in the sky, and the police came along to take
a look, and in this kind of.

Speaker 6 (17:43):
Very large slag pond.

Speaker 5 (17:45):
There was a light shining up from the bottom of
the pond.

Speaker 6 (17:49):
And that took now more than forty eight hours.

Speaker 5 (17:54):
It was investigated effectively as a potential UFO incident and
a potential you know what was this NATA debris? Was
this something secret? What was interesting to me about the
story like that is that thousands of people, I mean

(18:16):
literally thousands of people turned up to Carbondale to see
what was going on. And what I find profound about
that and many of the incidents I've looked at in
this book, is that the UFO paradigm is Hey, the
reason that the UFOs are are you know, nobody's going

(18:36):
for full disclosure is because of the panic it will cause.
And yet here we have an incident where local radio
people are going, there's something unusual in this pond well,
and everybody and his friend want to turn up. What
kind of panic is that?

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Like someone once said a comedian many years ago, everyone
wants to get into the act.

Speaker 5 (19:03):
You see the point I'm making, though, it's it's rather
than each the aliens have come. Quick, board your house up.
It's Gene, Abel, let's go and see the aliens.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Reminds me of the scene in the movie Independence Day
the nineteen ninety six.

Speaker 6 (19:22):
The room by Ry.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Right and someone's saying, I bet Elvis is coming back.
The thing, of course, is that ET was evil, and
ET simply sent down its ray gun to destroy that
building and everything around it. So that didn't work so well,
but it's obvious how people would react. They had a
good idea.

Speaker 4 (19:44):
There.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
We have some more good ideas from John, from Tim
and sometimes on a rare, rare occasion, from Gene.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
You're in the peric cast.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
We'd like to hear from you. If you have a
comment or question about the paracast, send it to news
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dot com, and don't forget to visit our famous paracast
community forums at forum dot theparacast dot com.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Long and short here, John, you feel that in large respect,
unless the UFOs do something that's overtly hostile, if they come,
if they land, people will want to see it. They're
not going to want to run for the hills.

Speaker 5 (20:38):
I can only comment on the hoaxes that I've looked at,
you know, I mean, obviously the British one in particular
as well, but you know, there was another one from
nineteen seventy three in Greenwood, Delaware, where a bunch of
volunteer firemen, I mean, they really didn't do anything more
than kind of make this big sort of frame of

(21:02):
twigs and branches. They covered it with some colored paper
and then using a little generator they borrow from fire stations,
shone a light through it, and that created quite a
quite a stir, quite a panic, with lots of police attending,
lots of armed police attending, and once again, interestingly enough,

(21:22):
many many many vehicles as people heard that something was
going down, and because you know, you'll know that nineteen
seventy three was the you know, the significant post Condon
flap year, if you like, and so, and once again
I find what I find interesting about the hoax is
that it.

Speaker 6 (21:39):
Still draws people.

Speaker 5 (21:41):
It's not run for the hills, doesn't that kind of
negate at least some of the some of the mantra
that the reason that there isn't disclosure is because everybody's
going to panic.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
But as a Faireno said that, maybe some of these
UFOs are really test aircraft. And I think for example
of the nineteen eighty sighting at Rendalstrom Forest in the UK,
involving the US military, is that possibly one example of
a test aircraft.

Speaker 6 (22:14):
On that one? You know, I don't know for me.
The jury is out on that one.

Speaker 5 (22:17):
But what I would say is that I had absolutely
no doubt whatsoever that a numbers should we say, of
the still unexplained sexier reports are almost certainly linked to
a terrestrial tech, Absolutely no doubt about it at all. Yeah,
I'd agree with that wholeheartedly.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
I think the question is here what percentage? And also
in practical matters here, if governments are testing aircraft, they
would likely I would think, stay away from populated areas.
They this in more isolated areas, so those who see
them would be far fewer. They wouldn't upset the apple

(22:58):
cart as it were.

Speaker 5 (23:00):
Yes, of course, a country view to that is it
might be better to hide something in plain sight. And frankly,
if you can create a lot of UFO excitement, which
then can be pooh pooed in many ways, you're generating
your own perfect cover, aren't you. You can fly something
around with impunity people go hey, wow, what's that something? Absolutely,

(23:21):
you may, oh, that's the UFO. Yeah, So the press
aren't going to worry too much about that, are they?

Speaker 2 (23:27):
So basically hiding in plain sight and basically being represented
as a UFO, so therefore people don't take it seriously.

Speaker 6 (23:36):
Absolutely. I mean, I'm not saying that's what happens.

Speaker 5 (23:39):
I'm only saying it would be one way of looking
at it, wouldn't it.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Okay, we know that the vast, vast majority of UFO
settings have conventional explanations past test aircraft misidentified phenomena, stars, planets,
lights in the sky of other nature like regular aircraft.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
Do you think.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Among all these cases at least some might be unknowns?

Speaker 6 (24:09):
Well, you know what I would say there is.

Speaker 5 (24:11):
Firstly, on a personal level, i'd love that to be
so it's very interesting these days, I'm very skeptical about
UFOs as being any evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence, but I
would love it where it's so there's absolutely no doubt
about it. I mean, a what a what an extraordinary Well,

(24:33):
I can't think of anything more important to find out
if that were evidence, But I don't think the evidence, unfortunately,
is really very strong. And it's interesting when you were
talking earlier about you were giving examples of what people see,
what they report. You know, upology will tell you it's
almost a mantra now to make itself as acceptable. It

(24:55):
will say, well, about ninety five percent we accept now
are mistakes, but the other five percent, well, you know what,
how is it the other five why isn't it?

Speaker 6 (25:04):
The other four percent? Why isn't it? In fact? The
other two percent?

Speaker 5 (25:08):
In fact, why is it not? The other point one percent?
In fact, why is it any percent? Unfortunately, there just
isn't any unequivocal evidence to demonstrate that we're being visited.
And as I say, on a personal and emotional level,

(25:29):
for me, more is the pity. I'd absolutely, I'd absolutely
love that situation, and in fact, I follow the follow
SETI work avidly, and you know, I keep my fingers crossed,
you know, I mean, AVI Lob is probably getting all
excited again now because we've got this third interstellar object
that's entered the entered the Solar System, and who knows,

(25:56):
you know, one day something like that could happen. Because
you know, in my book, because I get onto discussing,
you know, wide aspects of the whole of the subject,
I think SETI make a mistake when they discount the
possibility of direct contact of a visitation scenario, because the

(26:18):
fact of the matter is, on the one hand, they
want to talk about incredibly advanced extraterrestrials with the technology
to you know, be messages to us over vast distances powerfully, etcetera, etcetera.

Speaker 6 (26:34):
So they weren't really.

Speaker 5 (26:35):
Really smart ET. You know all this, and yet they're
smart ET. Apparently it's just going to die around its
star because it hasn't got the wherewithal to escape it.
That doesn't sound like a very intelligent extraterrestrial to me.
I think that any ET that's sufficiently advanced to do so,
who knows its star is going to die as ours

(26:55):
will will go. Let's go out or dodge guys, however
we do it. So I would expect us to be
in if there is other intelligent life in our universe,
and for me, fingers crossed, some of them will be traveling.

Speaker 6 (27:11):
Well.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
The other thing to care about here is the method
of communication. How do we know that they use any
means that we can detect. It's like the joke Star
Trek has subspace radio for instantaneous communications across star systems. Now,
it doesn't matter whether it's true or not.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
It might just be sci fi.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
But if they had anything like that, whatever it is,
we couldn't detect it.

Speaker 5 (27:39):
No, indeed, and I do agree with that, but I
still as far as the SETI thing goes, you have
to kind of start somewhere and where they've started with. Okay, well,
you know radio signals, you know, you get quite a
lot of bang for your buck, and they have to
be modulated this way or that they have to be
modulated that way. It's I think it's always been worth looking.

(28:05):
But I agree with you that in fact, you know,
ET might might be going well, you know, it's kind
of like we've been. They might have been doing it
with a million years with no answer, and they've just
borded it. So they go, well, we'll try it this
way then, and so we'll try a different method. Who

(28:25):
knows that the thing is we've only been listening, We've
only been well no, sorry, let's turn that round. We've
only been generating detectable electromagnetic signals ourselves for about one
hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty years. Well
as a light shell around Earth that's you know, that

(28:47):
might contain about four thousand stars. Well, you know the
chances that in one of those four thousand stars there's
already a smart et that's outlived us, it is going
to pick it up. I think that's probably unlikely. The
problem is, physics isn't.

Speaker 6 (29:05):
Our friend, is it?

Speaker 5 (29:05):
When it comes when it comes to the idea of
searching and trying to detect extraterrestrials.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
I also think about the movie Galaxy Quest, where this
advanced civilization picks up the signals from a sci fi
TV show in Earth on the United States, And obviously
it was a satire of star trek. But the key
of course here is plays both ends. Like you have

(29:35):
these actors typecast not getting any roles again, making a
few books from conventions, and they based their entire civilization
on what they saw on that TV show, which is interesting.
Let's get into that in a more detail.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
John and Tim Jen you're in pericast.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
Hi, my name is Richard Dolan.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
You're listening to the paracast.

Speaker 6 (30:16):
Now.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
I don't know how many people saw Galaxy Quests. I
think it became a cult classic. It did so so
at the box office, but it had some really great
portrayals by a lot of people. Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver,
especially the late Oh Yeah. I first saw him when

(30:37):
he did the Bruce Willis action vehicle.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
He played the villain.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
He was just fabulous because in person when you see
him interviewed, he was very funny, very wacky, UK sense
of humor. I really enjoyed it listening to him.

Speaker 6 (30:55):
Now.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
This particular film, as I said, it was a cult
class but terrific acting, a great idea. Tony Shalob, for example,
appears as the ship's engineer. Again, all these actors who
have great reputations as stars or character actors. And as

(31:16):
a matter of fact, a fast story about Galaxy Quest
I've seen a number of times. I was attending an
Apple computer store opening in the Soho area of New
York City in Lower Manhattan. This is back in the
early two thousands and I was a journalist. I worked

(31:37):
for a number of well known outlets, for Gannett, USA, Today, etc.
I was invited to this press gathering. Tim Allen was
there and we talked about Galaxy Quests for about ten
to fifteen minutes.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
By the way, really nice guy.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
You know a lot of these people who are stars
don't talk to regular people, and maybe he doesn't everywhere,
but I talked to the guy and he's like a
perfectly nice gentleman.

Speaker 5 (32:02):
You spoke to Buzz Lightyear. Well done.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Oh yes, I talked to Buzz Lightyear. And the interesting
thing about it also is I asked him, for obvious
reasons would there have been a sequel to Galaxy Quest,
and he said, one of the reasons they didn't consider
it is the fellow who played the ship's navigator had
a motorcycle accident that left him crippled. On the other hand,

(32:29):
he played a computer nerd on NCIS New Orleans.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
So we're still out there, still working.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
But I can understand that's one of the reasons because
you had to have that cast, that's perfectly selected cast
to make it work. So unfortunate. But it also raised
the bigger question here is if a race on another
star system, the planet orbiting another star system, picks up

(32:56):
our TV signals, our radio broadcasts, how do they separate
fact from fiction?

Speaker 5 (33:04):
Indeed, But I mean the other thing is cognitively do
they understand anything about what they're seeing? And we started
off with a little bit of preamble chat you and
I together.

Speaker 6 (33:17):
Now you know, AI is very de rege.

Speaker 5 (33:21):
Obviously for us all at the moment, but of course
advanced aliens would have been using AI for some considerable time,
and I think that I think the chances of us
actually encountering whichever direction of traveler is biological entities is
probably close to zero. I think we're much more likely

(33:45):
to see an encounter some form of AI emissary.

Speaker 6 (33:51):
Well, the other.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Question, of course, is they're so advanced they come here,
couldn't they visit us and not be detected. I'm not
just talking about the rimulent cloaking device on Star Trek.
Get the picture.

Speaker 6 (34:06):
You know, I understand what you're saying.

Speaker 5 (34:08):
The thing is one of the problems to me with
the whole UFO thing as well, is in a sense,
the kind of hubris of it is unfortunately earth just
I don't think would be that interesting.

Speaker 6 (34:19):
It's just not interesting enough.

Speaker 5 (34:22):
You know, when you've got advanced technology like that you
can map the place, you know, in nano seconds, you'd
find every piece of chemical information you might ever have
wanted to learn from it that fast.

Speaker 6 (34:35):
As well.

Speaker 5 (34:37):
I think that I've thought long and hard about this. Obviously,
what extraterrestrials might be interested in. They're not going to
be impressed at all with our technology. Our technology is
going to seem hopelessly outdated to them, and they have
nothing to fear from us. They could wipe us out
in an instance when you're smart enough to do what

(34:58):
they've done. I do think, funny enough, that the one
thing that they might be interested in is literally our
thoughts and dreams, which express themselves creatively through art, through cinema,
through music. I think that that would be the currency,
the cultural currency, which would be of real value to them.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Just think of how Paul McCartney dreams up wonderful melodies
and writes decent lyrics. Paul McCartney is an example of
creativity understanding our music because we have the number of
notes on a scale, just a few notes basically, and
you have basically tens and tens of thousands, maybe more,

(35:48):
of great songs using this limited vocabulary, which is amazing.
But I would think there that another race would have
creative people.

Speaker 5 (36:00):
No, I'm not saying it wouldn't, but I think that
they come down to this world and what they're going
to be impressed with a motor car or impressed with
an airplane, I don't think so. I think that what
would be of value to them is the cerebral stuff.
I mean, with aliens, we would want to know what
made them them, What does it mean to be alien

(36:24):
and what it means to be human? Isn't about whether
we've got a big motor car or not, is it.

Speaker 6 (36:31):
Well?

Speaker 2 (36:31):
The other question here is some suggest that we are
here because of them, that they seeded us many moons
ago because this planet was suitable for their form of life,
and therefore we are them and they're coming back to
see what's going on. I mean, it may be as

(36:51):
wild as any other theory, but it is a theory.

Speaker 6 (36:55):
Yeah, I'm sure it's a theory.

Speaker 5 (36:59):
For me, it doesn't really hold It doesn't really hold
much much water. But if you like, I can see
it's a neat way out of being able to explain
why the humanoid form would would be would be represented,
should we say, by you know, alleged encounters with euphone ors,

(37:21):
et cetera. I'd be extremely surprised to find that an
ETI that was humanoid.

Speaker 6 (37:34):
Extremely surprised.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Doesn't mean they can't mask Korea as one.

Speaker 5 (37:41):
No, No, of course, of course it doesn't. But then
you kind of all bets are off. I mean, you know,
you can, you can have aliens being as advanced and
sneaky and clever as you as you want. The thing is, though,
carrying out the same series of sort of fairly inane

(38:01):
tricks decade in, decade out just kind of doesn't. It
doesn't seem much of an experiment, does it.

Speaker 6 (38:12):
Well.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
The question I have then, is of all the sightings
or you know, what is one of course to be real,
and it doesn't matter about the others. There is no
single there is no single sighting that you've read about
that there's just no conventional explanation for it.

Speaker 5 (38:32):
No, I don't feel that way about it because The
problem is as well with once you involve humans in anything,
you involve fallibility straight away. I mean, you know, very
I mean, I don't want to turn this conversation too dark.
But sadly, only a few days ago, a wildly expensive
sophisticated aircraft fell out of the sky in India in

(38:58):
what looks very much Likedley a human error, a human
error from.

Speaker 6 (39:03):
A very very skilled person. You know. So I don't
want to be I mean, you know, I didn't in
my my you.

Speaker 5 (39:17):
Know, my book title rather says it all, if you like,
from my perspective, I'm, you know, I'm I'm interested in
in in what's spoofing, what we can learn from the
spouce that have taken place where we where we know
they're spoos. I'm I'm not a I'm not a ufologist
per se, you know in the sense that i'm I'm

(39:40):
I'm convinced at all that that we're being visited. And
you know, down the years, I've read dozens and dozens
of UFO books.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
Gen Tim, You're in the Bury Ghost.

Speaker 4 (40:08):
This is Chris Ratkowski, and this is the Paracast, the
gold standard of paranormal radio.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
So John Keeling, our guest is a skeptic and he's
just looking into a major UFO hoax back in nineteen
sixty seven. But we're looking into his belief systems. And
you told us before our previous segment ended, you've read dozens.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
Of UFO books.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Absolutely, do they have a sense are they all similar
or do you have a sense of what you get
from that?

Speaker 6 (40:43):
Well you need to.

Speaker 5 (40:44):
I can tell you where I started off, and these
were when their books were relatively knew. One of the
first I ever read was Keyhose Alien from Space when
it just came out, which I think is seventy two
seventy three, And of course round about that time as well,
is when Heinez's first book came out as well, the
UFO experience. Now, think about holding those two books up

(41:04):
side by side. You couldn't have a more different approach
to a subject, could you.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Well, keyhow of course, was a popular writer. He was
an aviation writer. He wrote sci fi, and he lashed
on to the UFO thing because True Magazine, a men's
action magazine, assigned into something that he didn't even think
had any value, but he did it. You know, he's
a he's a freelance writer and he got the Flying

(41:35):
Saucers are real out of it and became convinced. And
I've had talked to him several times over the years.
I think he did believe it. He became convinced that
we were being visited by et.

Speaker 6 (41:49):
Absolutely. You know.

Speaker 5 (41:50):
I think one of the great shames is I'd love
somebody to write a good biography of keyhose involvement in
this subject. I think it's I think it's a gap
in the literature which I would like to.

Speaker 6 (42:05):
You know, if I.

Speaker 5 (42:07):
Was to learn tomorrow somebody had written a really thorough and,
if you like, relatively neutral view of.

Speaker 6 (42:16):
Key hoose contribution to.

Speaker 5 (42:18):
The subject and the impact he had upon it, I'd
be the first in the que for the book.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
There was a book that came out about Keyhole. We
had a guest on the show some time back, Tim,
Do you recall that.

Speaker 4 (42:32):
Yeah, trying to remember his name now, but yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 6 (42:37):
Well, there you go. It's not occurred on my radar.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
I'm looking at it right now to see I there's
anything about that book Against the Odds Major Donald Keyhole
and its Battle to End the UFO Secrecy from Linda Powell,
published back in twenty twenty three.

Speaker 6 (42:57):
Yeah, do you.

Speaker 5 (42:58):
Remember when I said to you relatively neutral And what
I can already tell from that title is where the
thrust of that book's going to be.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
Well, I would agree with that, But he still believed
in UFO secrecy, Donald Keyhoe, and therefore he did battle
to try to end it. That was definitely a belief system.
I have no doubt about that. I remember I did
meet Keyho, did follow his life and what he did

(43:28):
through the fifties and sixties and seventies, So I have
no doubt that he was serious about everything. He may
have been totally wrong about everything, but I think that
is the key about Donald Kehoe is what he did
and what he tried to do because of his UFO
belief and there's no way you can separate that.

Speaker 6 (43:51):
No.

Speaker 5 (43:52):
I think the thing with Keyho, though, is that in
a sense, and I'm sorry, I don't want to offend anybody,
but I'm going to use the term the UAE myth.
Keyho attempted to own the UFO myth and made a
lot of enemies along the way, you know, and you know,

(44:14):
no one person can own the UFO myth, can they.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
I think there was some of that, Yeah, I would
agree with you about that. He didn't get along with
everybody in the UFO field for different reasons. Jim Mosley
and Donald Keyho were particularly unfriendly because Jim at the
time he went along and may have been part a
game to suggest UFOs the unexplained ones were secret aircraft,

(44:45):
and Keyho resented that also that Jim didn't always take
things seriously, whereas Keyho was this hard nosed, dedicated soldier,
always on the straight and arrow. I never got the
feeling when I met a few times that he ever smiled,
although he seemed friendly enough, and that he was ever

(45:06):
not serious about everything exactly.

Speaker 5 (45:09):
But it's interesting that you say that because he's always
struck me is incredibly humorless.

Speaker 6 (45:15):
I mean, it really has struck me as humorless.

Speaker 5 (45:17):
And I think that when you're when you're making the
kind of extravagant claims that were made by Ko, you
need a bit of self awareness over that.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
But then again, he is the person who would take
orders until he felt that the government was keeping things
a secret. So but basically the assumption here, since it's
not a show about Kiho, and I can get into
that because I had interactions with the organization NICAP that
weren't always so friendly, but it was some like HEO.

(45:51):
He was dedicated to a single belief system and at
least as far as I could determine, wouldn't consider other causes.

Speaker 6 (46:00):
Now he wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
A person being a euphologist doesn't mean they believe in spaceships.
He believes something is going on. We don't understand what
it is, and it needs to be investigated.

Speaker 6 (46:12):
If harm me.

Speaker 5 (46:14):
Yeah, you know, it's funny you're saying this because once again,
in the last couple of chapters of my book, I
look at this in some depths and quote a number
of the American and British groups extensively about this. And
the fact is that I think that UFO societies for

(46:36):
the most part are somewhat disingenuous, because the truth of
the matter is, and you can see it in examples
of their literature which I quote that the pervasive view
of UFO investigation groups Comma or parentheses rather is that
UFOs are Their motivation is the view that UFOs are

(46:59):
extra terrestrial visitation. And that's the that's the uh, that's
what's exciting to you them.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
I look at this way anything that has not been
fully explained. As elaborate and as long lasting as this,
it's certainly worth study. I also think if they were extraterrestrial,
they would be capable of masquerating that aspect of them,

(47:31):
so we really wouldn't know or whatever it is it
is coming across or presenting itself as extraterrestrial to hide
what it really is.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
There are some.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Suggestions that may even be a parallel civilization on Earth
that's more advanced than ours, and they use the UFO
myth to hide their activities.

Speaker 5 (47:52):
You must be misunderstanding you, though, and as I say
in the book, actually you folowed you in one since
I think.

Speaker 6 (48:00):
Does have value.

Speaker 5 (48:02):
And the interesting thing is the ninety five percent that
often get dismissed, and probably quite rightly so for the
reasons given. Nonetheless, the people who felt impelled to make
that report, and they felt impelled to make it, why
did they make it?

Speaker 6 (48:22):
For them?

Speaker 5 (48:23):
It was one they felt it was something important, and frankly,
the idea, the pervasive idea that it might be extraterrestrial,
is surely the.

Speaker 6 (48:37):
Really the primary driving force there.

Speaker 5 (48:41):
As such, I think that the SETI community, for instance,
can learn that they try and they treat they're embarrassed
by upology. In truth, they don't want their work, as
it were, to get tainted by what they see as
the kind of mad cat world of eupology. But in

(49:02):
fact you can't rule out a direct visitation. And as such,
the data, funnily enough, that's considered not important by eupology
might in fact to a sociologist, to a psychologist, be
extremely important and worthy of study.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Or some people believe in a collective unconscious in a sense,
we create our own myths that exists because we believe
in them, and that we are somehow participating in their reality,
whatever that reality might be. But that gets into Carl
Jung and more complicated issues than just et coming along

(49:45):
and saying home home, John Jean, Tim, you're.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
In the per cast.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
This is Michah Hanks of the Gray Leanterport and you're
listening to the para cast, the gold standard of paranormal radio.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Tim Schwartz is trying to be very robotic in the
way he is talking, and therefore I will let him
speak to us. This is the recording, a recording.

Speaker 4 (50:33):
I'll leave the robotic voice behind for no gene, Thank heavens,
I would like to though, comment about, you know, going
back and forth about the whole you know, extraterrestrial hypothesis
behind the UFO phenomena. But it's amazing to me how

(50:58):
early on with in the modern UFO era, which started
around nineteen forty seven, how early on this belief system
started up. I mean, within a year, maybe even less
of nineteen forty seven, there were people talking about visitors

(51:20):
from other planets. You know, you had Georgiana Dabski and
the other contactes with the friendly Space Brothers, when really
just a few years previously, any talk like that was
within the realms of pulp science fiction magazines.

Speaker 5 (51:41):
And indeed, but you know, Ray Palmer had sown the
seeds for a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
Hadn't he, Yes, exactly, And I'm glad you picked up
on that.

Speaker 6 (51:54):
I've been a careful student.

Speaker 4 (51:59):
Well, actually have the pleasure of meeting Ray Palmer. And
of course a lot of the people that you know
that I worked with and Gen has worked with, all
can really trace their interest back to Ray Palmer and
amazing stories and that whole kind of fantasy slash sci

(52:24):
fi bend to pulp fiction.

Speaker 6 (52:27):
M Indeed.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
Yeah, well, I mean because I mean, I don't think
that it's a coincidence that a lot of these early
popular pulp magazines all featured extrareastural spaceships that had that
flying saucer look to them, and that, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 5 (52:51):
Well it was only going to say, but you know,
on that one, if you if you look properly at
the records of the Kenneth Arnold sighting, you know, he's
describing a series of objects, most of which looked like
the heel of the shoe, didn't they They were they
were They were pretty well, you know, like like a
round spade head flat with no other protuberances apart from

(53:14):
the one kind of we might.

Speaker 6 (53:16):
Call the bat wing one.

Speaker 5 (53:18):
And you know, there were no he didn't talk about
any couplers or anything like that. His drawings, you know,
for the Air Force don't show anything like that. They
you know, it came from the you know, flew like
a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.

Speaker 6 (53:35):
Quote, isn't it.

Speaker 4 (53:37):
Right? Yeah? And that said that, the press picked up
on that and it evolved into flying sassus and then wow,
surprising enough people started seeing legit flying sassrus.

Speaker 5 (53:51):
Absolutely, but that you know, that that sighting, I mean,
you know, the Arnold sighting. There's no doubt about it.
It's the seminole sighting in terms of the public city.
It started generating. And what what what he didn't do
is he didn't draw something for the air Force that
was circular with a kind of coupler and a dome
on top and three little legs on the bottom, did he?

Speaker 4 (54:11):
No? No, absolutely not no. Well that's see that's the
interesting thing that always has been to me about, you know,
the whole UFO phenomena is how it evolves and how
it has evolved, you know, from these uh these really
nuts and bolts flying saucers from the fifties to now

(54:33):
you know, you you have reports of orbs and flying
silver sears, which you know, I mean have always been around,
but it's just, you know, it's it's like the hoax
that you feature in your book in Landing, which has
that traditional flying saucer shape.

Speaker 6 (54:55):
You know.

Speaker 4 (54:55):
Now, now there is a hoax going on in Mexico, right,
that's where it's centering now with this uh what was
it called the Bugge's sphere sphere which rather than being
the you know, traditional flying saucer shape is now the sphere.

Speaker 6 (55:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (55:16):
Well, I mean, if you think about it, the early
food fighters inverted commas were effectively glowing orbs, you know.
I mean, you know, we've all we've all watched close
encounters when that little red one follows the police cars
at the very end, whizzing in and out, what have you.
That was a foo fighter. That's kind of Sightings like
that have been there all the time, haven't they.

Speaker 4 (55:36):
M hm, Yes, absolutely absolutely. I think it's just a
matter of the attention that gets gets gets played upon them,
you know. I mean, if if people start saying that
they're seeing the traditional flying saucer shape again, then that's
that will end up spreading, just like all the rest,

(55:57):
I think.

Speaker 6 (55:59):
You know, I mean, I as I agree with you.

Speaker 5 (56:01):
I think that the the cultural development of this subject
is for me, the most interesting thing about it. So
you know, the thing is you can be skeptical about
the eth and still be interested in this subject.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
Oh, absolutely absolutely, And I'm glad you brought that up,
you know, because there are a lot of skeptics who
I mean, it's it's it's just all lumped together.

Speaker 6 (56:29):
You know.

Speaker 4 (56:29):
If you're if you're interested in it, you're a die
hard believer, and that's that I always always chafe at
that knee jerk reaction to an interest in the phenomena.

Speaker 5 (56:45):
No, I think I think it's perfectly reasonable. And as
I say, because the the eth is so important culturally
to the subject and to all of the groups as well,
anybody like me who's interested in you know, zenology or
SETI et cetera, the idea, how can you ignore the

(57:08):
UFO subject. It's it's it's just not compatible, is it.
And that's what as I said, I said earlier in
our conversation, I think SETI, you know, I understand why
they do what they do, but I think they make
a mistake with I'm not saying that SETI should go

(57:28):
off and investigate as it were, you know, UFO reports,
but they should look at the UFO data, just at
least in the terms of and how people responded to it.
What does what does it tell us that so many
people thought they might be seeing e T their reactions

(57:49):
consequently must feed into to what SETI you're trying to do.

Speaker 4 (57:55):
Surely I remember reading them this wasn't that long ago,
just a couple of years ago, that if there was
a public announcement with actual proof that we've detected intelligent
extraterrestrial life, that all the people that were thought to panic,

(58:21):
you know, average average Joe and joone household church people,
they would be fine. It would be the scientist that
would react badly to this announcement. I just always found
that interesting, Yeah, because I'd like you. I mean, you know,

(58:44):
I think that for the most part, I think the
average person if that kind of announcement came through, would
be like, oh okay, and then you know, go back
to worrying about how much eggs are costing.

Speaker 5 (58:56):
Absolutely, and of course vass ways this you know. You know,
once again, I don't want to turn this subject into
something unpleasant the conversation, but to put it bluntly, if
news came that we detected an extra tress room signal
and the scientists stand up and show us the charts
and everything and go fabulous, here we go, what would

(59:18):
the population of girls are worry about with that? H
I don't think it's going to be a really very
much consequence to them.

Speaker 4 (59:26):
Do you. No, absolutely not.

Speaker 5 (59:29):
And I picked that one because it's axiomatic at this moment.
But there are vast ways of global populations who I
don't think.

Speaker 6 (59:38):
Would you know?

Speaker 5 (59:39):
We're all even what we're doing now, we're all rather
western centric the way we discuss potentially ETI aren't we.

Speaker 4 (59:49):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (59:49):
Yes, John, Geene, Tim, you're in little perlocast.

Speaker 8 (01:00:06):
Hi, this is James Fox, director of the Phenomenon and
Moment of Contact. You're listening to the para Cast, the

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
And before we get into your book and that elaborate hoax,
that's long, but a feeling of mine, John, And that
is if there was real disclosure, just as Major Kiho
was clamoring for during the last third of his life,
if there was such a thing, especially in this day
and age whose social networks and podcasts and all sorts

(01:00:49):
of different arenas to present information, it would be a
story for a day or two, unless there was something
like a mass landing or some really serious over an action,
and then all the other craziness like the price of
eggs and how the price of beavers up, all these
things would take over and the story would disappear to

(01:01:11):
the back of the book, as they say, or not
just the inside inside pages of the newspapers.

Speaker 5 (01:01:18):
Yeah, it's not just that I think it would very
with social media now as well. I think it would
be hijacked very quickly by bad actors.

Speaker 4 (01:01:27):
I could see that, Yeah, I could see that happening.

Speaker 5 (01:01:30):
And you know, I mean, just just to allude to,
you know, the story I told in the book, which
is obviously this kind of fake multiple multiple landing. Now
it all took place in the UK, and I speculate
in this book, let's just say, you know for a

(01:01:52):
moment that that this incident wasn't a hoax and it
had been real. There we are, And so England's the
lucky recipient if you like, and this one how lucky
would it be in the sense that you know your enemies?
And of course we certainly had enemies in nineteen sixties,
not least which was certainly the nuclear threat from Russia

(01:02:12):
at that point in time was very very prevalent. Indeed,
you've now just become a target to other major players,
haven't you, Because are they going to are they going
to let dear little England have extra terrestrial knowledge, whatever

(01:02:32):
that knowledge might be. They don't even know what it
might be. Are we going to be allowed to have it?
Or would would other people go? You know what, I
don't think we can risk this one. I think we'll
just push the button on England. I know it sounds
very dramatic, but you know, if you think it through whilce,
you're up against competing ideologies. You know, maybe having you know,

(01:02:58):
you know, a visitation like this wouldn't necessarily play out
well for you.

Speaker 4 (01:03:04):
Yeah, that's a scary thought, isn't it.

Speaker 6 (01:03:06):
You know, geopolitics is a very dangerous game.

Speaker 4 (01:03:11):
Well, it's you saying that. It makes me think that.
You know, Well, last year you had the alleged UFO
whistleblower here in the United States named David Grush. One
of the things that he talked about was that he
had been told that the United States and other countries

(01:03:35):
had crashed UFOs. Now, the first thing that occurred to
me when he made that statement was, Okay, I can
see that. You know, if that was the case, the
United States would be capable of keeping that kind of
information quiet. However, how would the United States be capable

(01:03:59):
of keeping other countries quiet if that was the case,
especially if it was an unfriendly country nor you know,
North Korea, someplace like that. Heck, even Russia. Now, if
that story is true, what is to prevent these other
countries from coming forward and say, hey, you know, the
United States has been keeping the secret from you guys,

(01:04:21):
but we're not going to We've got to crash UFO.

Speaker 5 (01:04:25):
Yeah, absolutely, I certainly agree with that. I know this
isn't the point you were making for me as well.
You know, every time I hear it crashed UFOs, you know,
and by that, you know, in our in the context
of our conversation, we're talking about crashed extraterrestrial vehicles. So

(01:04:45):
I'm an extra trest real species that's had the wherewithal
to conduct into stead of travel of the most difficult
cretigious I mean, you know, to do so. You're tens
of thousands of years advanced scientifically to us and technically,
and yet you cover that incredible distance with vehicles that

(01:05:07):
are alleged to travel through the Earth's atmosphere at mind
numbing speeds and capable extraordinary manus what have you, and
then crash. I mean, you know, guys, that's one of
the things I find the most difficult. I mean, you know,
even Apollo thirteen survived a disaster, and all of the

(01:05:29):
other landings, none of them crashed on the Moon, did they.

Speaker 4 (01:05:34):
I mean seriously, Yeah, yeah, well, I mean I always
kind of counter that with if that was the case,
you know, extrassuriels coming from thousands of light years to
visit us, then you know that last leg of the journey,
you know, they're not going to use their interstellar craft
to land on the planet. Nah, They're going to have

(01:05:55):
something cheaper, kind of like the you know, maybe like
the reliant robin of craft.

Speaker 5 (01:06:04):
Whilst I know what you mean, it would still be
the reliant robin of a society.

Speaker 6 (01:06:10):
Thousands and thousands.

Speaker 5 (01:06:12):
Of years technically advanced across. And I really think that
they could. I mean, I can remember at one point,
if I'm not mistaken here, uh sorry, what's his name now?
I'm sorry, I'm thinking of our little He's long lost now,
bless him. He passed away a few years ago with
the with the black Beard. He was he was one

(01:06:38):
of the people involved in promoting the Majestic Twelve documents.

Speaker 6 (01:06:41):
I just can't, you know, I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
Sorry, Stanton Friedman.

Speaker 6 (01:06:45):
Stanton Friedman, I'm so sorry that I couldn't.

Speaker 5 (01:06:47):
I couldn't find his I couldn't find his name in
my mental library. Then for a moment in one of
these you know books, he actually actually suggested that there
was crash, was actually in fact two UFOs crashing together.

Speaker 6 (01:07:07):
And you know, I mean, how I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 (01:07:12):
It's just impossible for me not to laugh at that,
you know, I mean, really they couldn't you.

Speaker 6 (01:07:17):
Know they you know, I can imagine the trailer for
the movie. They came ten billion light years and then
crashed into each other. I mean, it just doesn't work
with it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
I have a few theories about that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
And let's go into the one thing here, which is
maybe it was built by the lowest bidder who gave
them enough pure latinum to build a defective ship. Okay,
the scolarships don't have the same quality control.

Speaker 6 (01:07:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
The other is, if there was a crash and this
craft is sent here by an advanced civilization, would they
not have a contingency plan like we do. They try
number one to recover it or destroy it, not let
the primitive Earthlings get a hold of their technology. That

(01:08:09):
does not make sense.

Speaker 5 (01:08:12):
No, The thing is, I mean, we could we could
carry on with these logical assertions, but the people that
enjoy the you know, if you like the the crash retrieval.
Scringfield used to call it area are are going to
carry on enjoying what they want to enjoy on.

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
Well, you know, let's move here, because I want to
get into some of it in our main show, maybe
more in the After the Power Cast podcasts. This elaborate hoax. Now,
we know about people who want to have a UFO hoax,
and they like the Last Creek UFO from Jim Mosley
and Gray Barker, where they basically suspend something.

Speaker 6 (01:09:00):
With a wire.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Yeah, kind of like they do with superhero movies, but
they don't have the sophisticated CGI where the wires are
not visible. The wire is kind of sort of visible
and in the words, basically low tech solutions of faking
a sighting. So while people in the UFO field might
believe this stuff, in the real practical world, they don't

(01:09:24):
make much of an impression. The same thing with photographs,
you know, like using Chrysler hubcaps like Georgia Damski did,
or surgical lamps like other people who tried to duplicate
his photos did, or just paintings sign paintings like Howard
Mender copying the UFO leaving the Earth and day Earth

(01:09:45):
stood still. That was blatant. So I think that's a
good issue here we'll get into with John Jean and Tim.

Speaker 4 (01:09:54):
You're in the pedogost o repeating We're not in Kansas anymore.

Speaker 6 (01:10:07):
I'm Kevin Randall. You're listening to the Peri cast, the

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
From what I was making China's the efforts at UFO
fakery are basically low tech. Now this one was more
elaborate get into this place.

Speaker 6 (01:10:27):
Yeah, it wasn't, you know normally.

Speaker 5 (01:10:28):
I mean in the book, I tell the story, you know,
backside round, So we had the hopes first and then
I reveal. But for the sake of this conversation, I
think it would be much better to say how it
was put together. As I alluded to earlier, a prentice
students who were all around about twenty twenty one years
of age, who were in the last year of their

(01:10:50):
apprenticeship at the Royal Aircraft Establishment of Farm and as
I've said, really Britain's premiere aerospace center. They decided that
they're going to have this kind of flying source of hoax.
And in fact, one of you said earlier these were
the classic shape. Actually finally enough their sources were. They

(01:11:11):
had them designed more like the kind of shape of
a blood corpuscle. So rather than being completely round, they
were in fact elongated, and they were made from fiberglass shells,
and on the exterior those fiberglass shells, they got lots
of aluminium powder and they mixed that. It was quite

(01:11:32):
expensive and of course dangerously flammable, and they mixed that
in so rather than having something that felt like plastic,
it felt like a combination of plastic and metal. And
so these objects, and I'm sure that you've seen some
photos that I've sent, you do have, if you like,

(01:11:56):
a sort of classic dome, and likewise a class dome
underneath as well. But they have no other appendages whatsoever.
But the outside layer of aluminium powder with fiberglass was
polished to a very very high gleam. I mean they
polished them for weeks and weeks. But they realized that,

(01:12:20):
you know, they were going to be far too light,
so they were going to need some ballast and they
would need They wanted to try and at least suggest
something that could be organic life. They spent quite some
time thinking can we use collagourn, and can we use this?
And can we do that? And eventually they boiled up

(01:12:40):
this kind of flower and water paste, and they left
a jar of it in one of their rooms, in
a wardrobe, and after two or three weeks it began
to stink to high heavens, but it produced this wonderful,
satisfying sort of wobbly organic dough.

Speaker 6 (01:12:57):
It almost looked like brain matter.

Speaker 5 (01:12:59):
So the sauces were filled with this stuff, this wobbly
reeking dough that you know, you know, it would almost
look like an alien brain if you like, if you
if you cut the saucer open. And they also decided
that because they were going to leave them in some instances,
in relatively isolated spots, they were worried that they might

(01:13:23):
not be they might not be found.

Speaker 6 (01:13:26):
So they decided that they needed and.

Speaker 5 (01:13:29):
They needed the saucers to speak, as it were, So
they divised a series. Each one had a different electronic
circuit made for it. And you have to excuse me
doing this for you, but one of them would go
something like, you know, something like something out of some
like the nineteen fifties horror film or something. But they
all had different they all had different sounds. And that

(01:13:52):
meant now that there was a compartment inside the saucer
that had to have a battery pack, It had to
have a loud speaker, It had to have this small
circuit to make it.

Speaker 6 (01:14:02):
And so the batteries didn't run out.

Speaker 5 (01:14:05):
It had to have a mercury switch exactly the same
kind of mercury switch you would put in a bomb.
So when they when they when they actually built the
things so that the batteries didn't run out, they had
the sources inverted where they where they stored them, you know,
stored them away in a kind of secret hut where
they built them. It took them about three months to

(01:14:26):
build this, the six flying sources gleaming and beautiful they were.
And then they decided the best way to the best
way to you know, give them a sort of more
enigmatic landing is that they drew a line from coast
to coast across the UK that was going to be

(01:14:47):
relatively easy to drive from Farmborough where they were, and
so from Britain's east coast to its west coast equidistant,
and that was turned out to be about thirty one
and a half thirty two miles. One of these one
of these objects, one of these sources, was placed on
the fifty one and a half degree line of latitude

(01:15:12):
and so on. On d day as it were, or
d night, it might be best to say, in the
very early hour of the morning, these students got in vans,
got in cars and they you know, these objects were
about just under five feet long, three feet wide, two
feet deep, and they navigated through the night. They got

(01:15:34):
to their sites, they inverted them so they would start bleeping,
and they did this about half past one two o'clock
in the morning, and then they basically just scarped off.
They went back to base as it were, which was
in Farmborough, and then they could have no more influence

(01:15:55):
over it. They was just going to have to wait
and see what happened. And so when dawn dawned, as
it were, these were starting, you know, they were being
found by One was found by a paper boy, one
was found by a postmistress, One was found by eight
gentleman near his basically on his land. One was found

(01:16:22):
next to a joint NASA and UK satellite tracking station.
I mean literally yea. Also, I mean you can imagine
how excited they got and so and so very early
in the morning from you know, the first one was
found in a place called Bromley, which is not too
far away from central London, maybe about sort of fifteen

(01:16:45):
miles away from from central Bromley ironically is where HG.
Wells hailed from. And a caddie found one on a
golf course, but remarkably he didn't do anything about it.
He saw it there and caddies go out early in
the morning on golf courses to look for golf balls

(01:17:07):
because they can sell them on afterwards.

Speaker 6 (01:17:09):
And a police officer.

Speaker 5 (01:17:11):
Turned up who was also a golfing enthusiast and thought
he'd go on to the course to try and have
a look. And he found this this caddy guy wondering
about doing his bit, and he said to him, you know,
what are you doing then? And he explained to me
he said, he said look, he said, I found and
he used this term an undefinable object on the course,

(01:17:31):
and I won't use the vulgar language, but he basically
suggested had he been drinking, you know?

Speaker 6 (01:17:38):
And the caddy was insistent, now go and take a look.

Speaker 5 (01:17:42):
So this police officer was called Police Constable Gordon Hampton,
but by a cosmic fluke, his friends used to call him,
of course, flash Flash Gordon, so how unlikely.

Speaker 6 (01:17:55):
Wait, a man Flash the So the.

Speaker 5 (01:18:00):
Very first British policeman to ever find a confirmed landed
flying saucer happened to be nicknamed Flash Gordon.

Speaker 6 (01:18:08):
You couldn't make it up, could you.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
The person who helped him design it was, of course
doctor Zarkov.

Speaker 6 (01:18:16):
But here's the interesting news.

Speaker 5 (01:18:17):
When I tracked Gordon Hampton down, and this was now
about thirty years remember after the event, he was very
much even in sixty seven, he was very much a skeptic.
Not everybody in the police force was, by the way,
but he was a skeptic. But I said to him,
I said, there it is. Now you've gone. You've gone
on to the first fair way and you found it,

(01:18:38):
he said, He said, I parked my.

Speaker 6 (01:18:39):
Car, he said, about thirty yards away.

Speaker 5 (01:18:41):
He said, I got out and I could hear it.
It was making this really strange bleeping sound and you
could imagine there's a low ground miss. This is about
half past six in the morning. And I said, did
you touch it? And he said absolutely, no way was
I going to touch that.

Speaker 6 (01:18:56):
He said.

Speaker 5 (01:18:57):
So I walked around it a few times and I
realized I was going to to get some help. So
go on his walkie talking and he got in touch
with his station and brom Bromley Control and he goes, look,
look I've found something on the first fairway. It's a
bit it's a bit unusual. I found an unusual object.
Because he didn't want to say the words flying the

(01:19:17):
saucer and it's Serge goes, well, sorry, can you you
know Hampton, can you elaborate a bit more? And in
the end he had to say, well, he said, it
does look like a flying saucer. Now, of course police
radio traffic is open to all police offices, so police
officers everywhere now who can pick up this traffic start
jeering and go he's been down the park. He's you know,

(01:19:38):
he's he's had one too many. All this kind of stuff.
There's lots of barracking, but you know, the sergeant quells
it down and says, right, well, we're gonna We're going
to send some people along.

Speaker 2 (01:19:47):
We'll go along. In our next segment, what were they
drinking with Gene.

Speaker 3 (01:19:53):
John, Tim you're in the Perogast opinion.

Speaker 6 (01:19:57):
We're not in Kansas anymore.

Speaker 5 (01:20:05):
Hey, this is Marie D.

Speaker 7 (01:20:06):
Jones, the author of this book is from the future,
and you are listening to the para cast the gold
standard of paranormal radio.

Speaker 2 (01:20:22):
Okay, the police radios go a flutters.

Speaker 5 (01:20:27):
Yeah, absolutely. But here's the interesting thing. One of his
colleagues I also interviewed, said, he said, for God's sake,
get here quick, because it's this thing takes off. No
one's ever going to believe me. And he sounded to
his colleagues extremely serious about that.

Speaker 6 (01:20:48):
And so further officers went down there, and.

Speaker 5 (01:20:53):
You know, one of them, one of the more senior officers,
went up to the thing and pushed it with his
hand and he must have affected the mercury switch because
it stopped bleeping. And when it stopped bleeping, they all
jumped back because they thought, oh God, what have we done.

Speaker 4 (01:21:12):
Now.

Speaker 6 (01:21:14):
It's very difficult.

Speaker 5 (01:21:14):
I'm not going to try and get too elaborate about
each one of these sites. But what's very interesting for
me about this particular story is you have to remember
that these were all made from the same mold, which
means that the six sources that were inverted commas landed
across the country were all identical apart from the sound

(01:21:36):
they were making. So the stimulus was the same in
each instance, but the difference in the response from the
public from police force to police force. This involved four
police forces in Britain as well as the Metropolitan Police,
so it was investigated ultimately by forty seven police officers

(01:21:59):
that day. It was investigated by the Army, It was
investigated by the Air Force, it was investigated by mod specialists.
And in that sense it was the biggest response to
a UFO incident that ever occurred in the United Kingdom.

(01:22:19):
And in fact, I'll bet looking even at US hoaxes
and what have you, that none of them received the
same scale response as actually this one did in the
UK that day. Anyway, the one at Bromley was taken
back to You couldn't make this up with you. It
was taken back to the police station for further investigation.

(01:22:40):
Can you imagine a suspicious object that weighed nearly one hundredweight.
It took two coppers to lift it up and put
it in the back of a van. They had absolutely
no idea.

Speaker 6 (01:22:51):
What they were handling.

Speaker 5 (01:22:52):
I mean, even if they weren't handling something potentially extraterrestrial,
it could have been full of explosives.

Speaker 6 (01:23:00):
And this was a time when the IRA was starting
their bombing on on mainland Britain.

Speaker 5 (01:23:06):
And so the fact of the matter is to take
something like that to a police station in a built
up metropolitan area was absolutely lunacy and in fact, when
bomb disposal officers found out they'd done that, and when
they eventually arrived at Bromley, they were absolutely furious with
the police officers for moving it. Now, not every police

(01:23:30):
force handled it so badly. What's interesting is is to
it is not many members of the public really in
many ways got access apart from the initial discovery. But
the postmistress and her husband who were driving down some
leafy lane the one that they the object that they
found was only about half a mile away from the

(01:23:52):
main gates of a place called RAF Welford. And RAF
Welford in nineteen sixty seven was the United States Air
Force in Europe's biggest ammunition supply depot in Europe. In fact,
there were there were roads in it called Ammo Alley.
There was tons and tons and tons of conventional ordinance

(01:24:16):
and in fact, well when when a British policeman was
summoned to this one that was close to Welford, the
first thing he found was American military police from the
base taking their own photographs around around this author. And
so when he turned up trying to be ever the
British bobby on his own, he's going right, stand back there, peace, gentlemen.

Speaker 6 (01:24:39):
This is down in the British police now.

Speaker 5 (01:24:41):
And I said, you know, well they all right about it,
And he said, well, you know, he said they didn't.
He said, to be fair to them, they didn't cap
any kick up, any arguments, he said. But he said
they didn't look happy about it being there. And you
can imagine.

Speaker 6 (01:24:56):
This bizarre, suspicious.

Speaker 5 (01:24:57):
Object for all they know, it's the own he won.
Of course, at that moment in time, during a massive
UFO flap in the UK, that far away from a
weapons storage base, I think I.

Speaker 6 (01:25:11):
Would feel I would think i'd feel.

Speaker 5 (01:25:13):
Alarmed as well, similar as you know, you know, on
the opposite coast, on near Bristol on the west coast
of the UK, one of these sources were found.

Speaker 6 (01:25:23):
There by a paper boy.

Speaker 5 (01:25:25):
And the paper boy went back to his paper shop,
you know, from doing his paper deliveries and his newspaper
at Beggy Pardon newspaper deliveries.

Speaker 6 (01:25:34):
And he rushed into He rushed in and said to
his boss, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:25:38):
You're not going to believe this, but I found a
flying saucer, and sure enough everybody that was in the
shop burst out laughing.

Speaker 6 (01:25:44):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:25:45):
But this this young guy, he was only about thirteen fourteen.
It was deadly earnest. He said, no, really, really, you've
got to come and see it. So his boss drove
down there in the car to where this young chap
had found this landed flying saucer, and he took one
look at it and said, right, well, we've got to
go and get the police. So the police were summoned again.

(01:26:06):
Basically three officers turned up and they they didn't know,
of course, what to make of it. They did, they
didn't touch it. Initially, they did a sort of cursory
examination around it. They went knocks on a few doors,
you know, has anybody seen anything? And then one of
them decided, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll take

(01:26:27):
it down to the station. And of course, once again
this was entirely the wrong thing to do, drive it
through a built up area, and so they got it
back to the police station and their saucer hadn't made
a sound at that point in time, so they found
a silent one. So for them it was just signed
that well, you know, it looks a bit like a

(01:26:47):
flying saucer. Yeah, but you know, we can we can
carry it. You know, it didn't seem particularly threatening to them,
but you know, obviously it.

Speaker 6 (01:26:55):
Looked like what it was supposed to look like.

Speaker 5 (01:26:57):
So two of the officers decided that they would be
real wags and they were going to take it. Their
sergeant hadn't come down from his room above the police station,
but his family quarters above the police station, to start
his duty shift yet, so they thought it would be
a real hoot to leave this flying saucer on his desk,
So the two of them carried it in there. They

(01:27:19):
put it on the desk, and as they did and
it came to rest on its room on the side,
the mercury switch activated and all of a sudden, this
electronic alarm shrieked out in the police station. And the
police station. The police have been telling me about it, said,
he and his colleague just about four each other to
get out of the police station. They absolutely fled. They

(01:27:41):
were absolutely terrified when that happened. And of course when
they were outside and thought, well, you know, we've left
it in a police station now where two police families
are sleeping above. You can imagine they felt rather sheepish
and rather foolish. So they had to go in and
retrieve it and take it around the back of the station.
And as they were doing so, their sergeant came down

(01:28:04):
and he used some language which I can't possibly use
on your show, but you know, alluded to the fact
that I could have been blown out of my bleeping bed,
for instance, was one of the things he said. He
was extremely unhappy. And these these little dramas at six

(01:28:26):
different sites in different ways are playing out through throughout
the day. You can imagine that all of the police stations,
the first thing that they were doing is for the
most part, phoning up the RAF. Is this something to
have you dropped something from an aircraft?

Speaker 6 (01:28:44):
You know what?

Speaker 5 (01:28:45):
What have we got here? And of course RAF sensor
after an RAF censor was going well, you know, we
don't know what it is. And eventually the word made
it to Whitehall and the MOD and an intelligence office
in the MOD who would have been responsible for investigating

(01:29:06):
UFO reports. His squadron leader came and summoned him. Guy's
name was Cliff Watson and he's a win command of
Sidney Muns came along him. He said, Cliff, he said,
my office now, And so the guy had only just
turned up for work and he was just finishing his
first cup of coffee. He goes into the squadron leader's

(01:29:27):
office sits down. So Cliff, he said, we've got a problem.
He said, he said, at least three different police forces
in the UK now have phoned and confirmed to us
that they have a landed flying saucer under their jurisdiction.

Speaker 2 (01:29:42):
And you know what, before we get the reaction, the
reaction to that has to be outrageous, as you might expect.
So we have John Killing, we have Tims Swartz, we
have Geen Steinberg. Ward to come.

Speaker 1 (01:29:53):
You're in.

Speaker 6 (01:29:57):
Oppeeing. We're not in Kansas anymore.

Speaker 8 (01:30:06):
Hi, this is James Spox, director of the Phenomenon and
Moment of Contact. You're listening to the Pera cast, the

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):
So we have this alleged set of recovered flying saucers.

Speaker 5 (01:30:31):
They're not recovered yet. They're on the ground for the
most part, they're on the ground.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
You know, we have some recovered flying saucers alleged and
some unrecovered.

Speaker 5 (01:30:41):
What was the response, absolutely well as I say, the
in the MOD, when this guy Cliff Watson was told
about what had happened, his response and you said, I
was allowed to use one mild expleted word, and this
won't have any impact if I don't because I asked him,
I say, well, when you were a wing commander told

(01:31:02):
you that three police forces had unequivocally said we've got
a flying saucer on the ground, I said, what did
you think? And he said, I thought, shit, what are
we going to do?

Speaker 6 (01:31:14):
Now?

Speaker 5 (01:31:15):
For me, that's extremely telling, because, of course, down the years,
the UFO community had loved to paint a scenario where
any kind of you know, you know, military intelligence agency,
he certainly in the Western world cognizant to a matter
like this, would immediately dash to the drawer saying secret

(01:31:38):
UFO plans what to do in the event of and
of course that that expletive what do we do now?
Spoke spoke volumes to me, and I suspect that that's
exactly the reaction you would get.

Speaker 6 (01:31:54):
You would get now now.

Speaker 5 (01:31:55):
In fact, this guy Cliff Watson and I didn't find
out for a number of years after this, until the
MOD released some documents. Just by getting in touch with me.
He'd kind of irritated the MOD and they released a
flurry in twenty twelve. There is a flurry of documents
where my research had caused all sorts of angst within

(01:32:20):
the MOD because I was asking for the names of
who went here and who did this and what analysis
was carried out. And they were they were very they
were very prickly with each other about it. Some of
them were saying, this is madness, The thing was a hoax. Anyway,
I found that a very interesting, interesting reaction. But anyway,

(01:32:42):
to the day in question, or should I say back
to the day in question. So these sources are examined
one by one. People are arming and ring and they
don't know what it is, and they don't know and
it becomes a comedy of errors. One was taken to
a police station and I'm not making this up. It

(01:33:04):
was put in the lost property office.

Speaker 6 (01:33:07):
Of the police station.

Speaker 5 (01:33:09):
Out of the six sources, one's alarm system never worked
at all. And what I find interesting about that one
is that as the day went on, all of the
other sources were opened aggressively, and when I say aggressively,
and the very last one to be opened was opened
explosively by the army. Now, if you if you can

(01:33:32):
imagine for a moment, let's say that you're you have
half a doubt about what it is that you're dealing with.
So there's that awful, sneaking suspicion or that sneaking little
worry could this be.

Speaker 6 (01:33:44):
The real thing?

Speaker 5 (01:33:46):
And then scrapped plastic explosives to it and designate it.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine the bio hazard you
would create if you attempted to explose I mean, you know,
never mind about starting you know, you know, War of
the Worlds, there were so many bad you know, for

(01:34:07):
all that for the last I'm coming up with here,
there were so many mistakes made that day, even if
you just looked at it as as a potential such
security risk, never mind the ET factor. But you know,
with the with the ET factor as well, it was

(01:34:27):
a shocking, shocking fiasco.

Speaker 6 (01:34:30):
I mean, it really was.

Speaker 5 (01:34:32):
And I think that, or I fear that exactly the
same would happen. I think it would it would happen
in the event of a real thing happening.

Speaker 4 (01:34:46):
But do you know I've had after the fact, were
there any changes in policy on how something like this,
if it happened again, would be handled.

Speaker 6 (01:35:00):
Yeah. That's a really good one, isn't it.

Speaker 5 (01:35:01):
And of course it's a question I asked now that
the one gentleman I referred to Cliff Watson. Cliff Watson
took his should we say, his Official Secrets act oath
extremely seriously and he he didn't tell me very much
at all to stick to that, you know, he could

(01:35:22):
only hint at the kind of investigations, you know, because
he was he was effectively an electronic warfare radar specialist.
But very interesting that particular guy. When Ronald Reagan came
up with the Star Wars initiative and decided that some

(01:35:42):
of that information were shared with the Brits, the person
that briefed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on the Star Wars
initiative was Cliff Watson, the very same guy who got
promoted and promoted and promoted and promoted and so so.

(01:36:03):
But his reporting officer, the officer he reported to. And
bear in mind in the m o D you guys
are you know in America who used to compartmentalized information,
which meant that although he reported to a guy called
Barry Wiggins, squadron leader, but in fact, that didn't mean

(01:36:24):
that Barry Wiggins knew everything about a subject that Cliff
Watson did. Even though he was Julia Rank, he might
have some sense of the broad scope of things. And
Barry Wiggins was, if you like him, conversations, was more
forthcoming than than Cliff Watson.

Speaker 6 (01:36:43):
And I asked that.

Speaker 5 (01:36:44):
I asked that very same question, and he said, you know,
I'm sorry not to make it more satisfying for you.
He said, I'd be very surprised, he said, if something
wasn't drawn up, because I you know, one thing I
know for a fact from him is that they used

(01:37:04):
to have to do various minutes from incidents like this.
And he said, I know for a fact that this
ended up on Prime Minister Harold Wilson's desk.

Speaker 6 (01:37:13):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:37:17):
So so.

Speaker 5 (01:37:19):
And you know what was interesting is that it took
more than twelve hours, if.

Speaker 6 (01:37:24):
You like, for there to be the acknowledgment.

Speaker 5 (01:37:28):
In fact, we weren't being invaded from Mars, if you like,
although even after those twelve hours, nobody quite knew yet
what was going on.

Speaker 6 (01:37:40):
Sorry, I've lost my you know what, I've gone lost
my thread? How embarrassed?

Speaker 4 (01:37:45):
Well, okay, I'll just asked the first question, then.

Speaker 6 (01:37:50):
That the next question. I'll get back to that one.

Speaker 4 (01:37:52):
Okay, all right, well how long did it take them,
the media to get a hold of this.

Speaker 6 (01:37:59):
Actually, sorry, you've given me a wonderful prompt.

Speaker 5 (01:38:02):
There One thing that is important about this as well
is that, and I'll make this point very forcibly in
the book as well.

Speaker 6 (01:38:11):
British UFO societies.

Speaker 5 (01:38:13):
And of course, you know, Beufoorah was the main one,
certainly at that point in time, but there were plenty
of you know, in the same way as in the States,
there were plenty of UFO societies throughout the UK.

Speaker 6 (01:38:25):
They always claimed to be they were always ready to rock.

Speaker 5 (01:38:28):
They you know, if anything was going to happen, we
can be there, and well, you know, we'll be there
within the hour.

Speaker 6 (01:38:34):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:38:34):
And the first and the first early newspaper editions that
couldn't offer much information were coming out about twelve mid
day in the UK and they were able to allude
effectually to three inverted commons of the landing sites. And interestingly,

(01:38:56):
bufora didn't twig what was going on until about half
past four in the afternoon, at which point in time
all they did was phone up one of the police
stations and go can we come and have a look
and they said no, you can't. So that was but
it was fantastic because in the press afterwards it said
BLU four or were out all night investigating this incident.

Speaker 6 (01:39:20):
But at the other side of the country, the.

Speaker 5 (01:39:22):
One where I was telling you about it, about it
being taken into the sergeant's office, there there was a society.

Speaker 6 (01:39:32):
Called They were called the.

Speaker 5 (01:39:34):
British Flying Saucer Bureau. They'd originally started out as the
Bristol Flying Source of Bureau, but they were the very
earliest UFO club in the UK, dating back to nineteen
fifty two.

Speaker 3 (01:39:47):
So much for early warning systems. John Jean, Tim, you're
in the pros.

Speaker 4 (01:40:07):
This is a choicy Tom May, screenwriter, producer. You're listening to
para cast, the gold standard of paranormal radio.

Speaker 2 (01:40:17):
Now, looking over the response by UFO organizations to this.
In today's social network environment, if something was found landed
ten seconds later, I think someone would be there.

Speaker 5 (01:40:31):
I don't disagree, and I'm not trying to suggest that there,
of course weren't technological limitations at that time. In fact,
what I was about to add is that by mid
afternoon two, well two or three gentlemen from the Bristol
Flying Sorts of Bureau.

Speaker 6 (01:40:49):
And one of these guys, by the way, had been
a former army sappa.

Speaker 5 (01:40:53):
So you're looking at men here who had, if you like,
a kind of military bearing, yeah, wearing cities. You know,
you might have thought that they were playing closed police officers.

Speaker 6 (01:41:03):
Or something like that.

Speaker 5 (01:41:04):
They turned up at the Cleveland Police station in that
a very very swanky Bentley motor car, and the the
police simply assumed that they actually had some kind of
official capacity, so they just let them in. You know,
they were they were keeping the press away, but let

(01:41:25):
these UFO guys in. And so, to be fair, at
least one UFO club as it were, or UFO Society
did make it to one of the to one of
the one of the sources. So you know, to be fair,
I ought to give them that much. I ought to
give them that much credit.

Speaker 4 (01:41:45):
Ask a question, so now, the the originators of this hoax,
is this the kind of response that they were expecting
or did this get had a hand.

Speaker 6 (01:42:04):
Well that's next.

Speaker 5 (01:42:06):
First of all, of course, they didn't know what was
going to happen, and it was very cheeky because when
the press eventually found them, and they found them because
one one reporter had remembered the space capsule hopes I
told you about from two years earlier. So he just
turned up at Farmborough and said it was you a lot,
wasn't it. And they kind of, you know, they'd hoped

(01:42:30):
to hold out for a couple more days, but you know,
they put their hands up and said it's a fair
cop garth as you do, and held an impromptuy press conference.
But one of the one of the hopes is a
guy called Christopher Subtle, who was the guy who I
suppose designed designed the saucer shells. He's you know, the

(01:42:53):
famous quote that came from him was that, you know,
he said, we think UFOs could land one day. He said,
so we thought give the authorities a bit of an exercise,
and we.

Speaker 6 (01:43:03):
Landed them for them, which.

Speaker 5 (01:43:05):
Was and the police, by the way, were or some
of the police, I should say, were very very angry
because I mean it was an absolutely you know, I've
given you figures.

Speaker 6 (01:43:17):
It was a massive response, you know, forty.

Speaker 5 (01:43:21):
Seven police officers, loads of vehicles, RF helicopters, you name it,
bomb disposal officers, explosively.

Speaker 6 (01:43:29):
Opening one of them. Of course, ex portable X ray
machines being used.

Speaker 5 (01:43:34):
I mean, you know, all manner of paraphernalia brought to
brought to bear on this, and so some of the
police officers wanted them prosecuted. I mean, they really did
want them prosecuted. They were very, very angry. And one
of the gentlemen I spoke to from Scotland Yard Forensics
Laboratory in Holborn in London, who was involved in one

(01:43:55):
of the incidents. He had to go with two bomb
disposal officers to Bromley Police station where they got the
one in the in their backyard. Actually, there's a little
story I must tell you there. So this this this
Scotland police officer, you know, plain clothes and his two
plane clothes ex Army EOD officers. They walked into the

(01:44:19):
backyard of prominent police station. At that point in time,
there were dozens of people swarming around this, let's face it,
suspicious object. And somebody had fashioned two little men out
of pipe cleaners sat on top of the flying give
to give them a crue And when they saw this

(01:44:39):
going on, they went ballistic. I can't possibly use the
kind of language that was used by them. But you
can probably imagine that some of these have been bomb
disposal officers during the Second World War, so these were
hardened people, you can imagine, and you can imagine in
that kind of right British militaristic way didn't take falls

(01:45:02):
gladly and they were absolutely furious with the scene at Bromley,
and in fact, for one of the officers there, Superintendent Barnet,
who is the actual Scotland yard officer, when they decided
that they were going to like investigate the saucer, even
though you know, they said you should never have moved.

Speaker 6 (01:45:22):
This, you know, and tore a strip off the police, but.

Speaker 5 (01:45:25):
They couldn't move it themselves then, so we're going to
investigate it now. And they were very unhappy about the sound.
For them, it was there's a trip mechanism in here
that's making this sound and we don't like it and
we're not happy about it. So they decided to enter
the saucer by using a brace and bit, you know,
so manually, very very gently, gently gently making a tiny

(01:45:48):
hole in the saucer. Apparently, you know, because they had
the police yard cleared and you could hear the squeaking
sound on this.

Speaker 6 (01:45:55):
Kind of you know, fiberglass.

Speaker 5 (01:45:58):
But of course when the drill bit through the contents
I described to you earlier of the alien host, if
you like, had fermented, and of course it shot.

Speaker 6 (01:46:09):
Out like.

Speaker 5 (01:46:11):
It sprayed out at high velocity, and it reeked and
it went all up this police officer. And you can
imagine for him, just for that one moment, what an
unpleasant sensation that must have been. What had he just
been covered in? And he assured me it wasn't funny
at that moment. You can imagine, can't you.

Speaker 6 (01:46:36):
I mean, he was.

Speaker 5 (01:46:38):
But it's very interesting because I found some I mean
I researched this extensively over many years. I found some
BBC archive footage, some of which wasn't used necessarily, of
one of the the C seven to two bomb disposal
officers being interviewed after it had been opened. And what
was interesting is that the Barnett had told me that

(01:47:01):
they'd taken a sample of it and it was sent
to Aldermaston, where there was both the Electronic Energy Commission,
but there was also a very sophisticated forensics laboratory for
the police.

Speaker 6 (01:47:15):
So a sample was sent there for analysis.

Speaker 5 (01:47:19):
Because bear in mind. At the point they still didn't
know what this was. You know, it was just gunge
and it could have been anything. And so what's really
interesting is that on this footage you can see all
of the other stuff that's poured out of it. They're
swilling it down the drain.

Speaker 2 (01:47:38):
For those interested in learning more about this book and
your work, John, where can they check you out?

Speaker 5 (01:47:44):
First of all, if you just look up, you know,
landed John Keeling, You're going to find plenty of links.
I've got a blog page where I've got information about.

Speaker 6 (01:47:53):
It on there.

Speaker 5 (01:47:55):
Obviously, it would be great if they could go and
check out the Amazon site for it and click that
purchase button.

Speaker 2 (01:48:02):
Well, that sounds like one quick way to do it.
I mean, this opens up so many fascinating possibilities. Possibly
this was the greatest UFO hoax ever, or have there
been some we haven't discovered yet. Any case, John will
be back for the After the power Cast podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:48:20):
Where we will explore more.

Speaker 2 (01:48:22):
Details about this. I have just a few dozen questions
in the waiting. You can find us on x Threads,
blue Sky Social, and Facebook as the power Cast. Look
for the power Cast on those services or at the
power Cast however it goes. We also offer a special
streaming service with this show without network ads and the

(01:48:46):
After the Power Cast exclusive bonus podcast. Got all those
words right, Go to the Powercast dot plus to sign
up for the Powercast Plus. Once again, that's the Power
Cast dot Plus. You can sign up in a minute
or two and then get the show without the ads
and the after the Power of Cast podcast. John Killing,

(01:49:09):
great to talk to you, Great to meet you, to
learn about some really, really fascinating things in the early
days of the Flying Saucer era. Thank you for joining
us on the Para Cast.

Speaker 6 (01:49:22):
Now, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:49:38):
The Power Cast featuring Jeens Steinberg is a copyrighted presentation
of Making the Impossible Incorporated. Tune in next week for
a new adventure in the Para Cast.

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August 3, 2025 — UFO Hoaxes with John Keeling

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}August 3, 2025 — UFO Hoaxes with John Keeling