UFO Landings in the United Kingdom with Philip Mantle

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I am your host, Ryan Sprague, and I have been waiting a very long time to connect with who we'll be speaking to with today, and that is Philip Mantle. He is one of my favorite UFO researchers over in the UK. He has done everything from investigating UFO crashes, landings, close encounters, the alien autopsy as well, which we'll have to talk to him about on another episode. But today we're here to talk about his book, and that is UFO Landings UK. Now, a lot of people know the Rendlesham Forest incident, but the UK has a very rich history with UFO landings. A rich history that I was not fully aware of until I looked at this huge compilation that Philip has brought to us in the form of his book. So without further ado, I'm going to bring him in for the very first time to Somewhere in the Skies. Philip, welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. My pleasure. Good evening, Ryan. Before we talk landings, I always have to ask first-time guests, for those who may not be familiar with you, with your work, the quintessential origin story. How did you get involved with UFOs? That one that you're probably used to answering. Yeah, it's a long time ago, Ryan. I mean, when I was a young fella at high school, I had three or four interests. I mean, I'd always had an interest in all things paranormal. I mean, literally. And I was also interested in the space race at that time and horror movies. But the paranormal was top of the list. And I was fortunate in some respects that literally the other side of the street from where I lived, my best friend's grandmother lived there. And she used to go to a local spiritualist church. So I tagged along a few times. I've just found it fascinating. I didn't necessarily believe everything they were saying, but I still found it fascinating. I was interested in the space race and astronomy, and I read one astronomy book. I can't remember the title of it all these years later, but it had one chapter in it about UFOs. And it basically dismissed the subject, which I found rather odd, to be honest, Ryan, because elsewhere in this book, there was lots of theoretical things about astronomy. And I thought, well, you can theorize about astronomical phenomena, but you don't accept the UFO phenomena. I found it peculiar. But nonetheless, that sparked the interest. So I left high school at the age of 16 with no qualifications, didn't know what I was going to do with myself. but this this interest was was there so I read what I could about it which wasn't a lot you could get your hands on in those days and then in in late 1978 I went to work in what was then West Germany over the winter I worked there couldn't speak a word of the language so I phoned my mother and said, can you send me some books? I can sit down on an evening. You know, I can sit and watch the TV, but I can't understand it, you know. So she sent me a box of books, and lo and behold, every single one were UFO books. I don't know where she got them from. So I would sit there on an evening and read away. So when I returned home in, you know, I think it was March 1979, I had a bit more information, if you like. Then, of course, the Spielberg movie, Close Encounters, came out. And I went and watched that. And I used to live then about five miles from the city of Leeds in West Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. And Leeds then, as it does now, publishes an evening newspaper. It's called the Yorkshire Evening Post. now just around the corner from where i live my aunt used to live and she used to obtain a copy of this every night and she brought it around one night right and pointed to an advertisement in it coming up that sunday was the first ever meeting of the yorkshire ufo society in leeds now in in in this period of time in the uk on a sunday everything used to close i mean literally everything so i caught the bus i didn't drive in those days i caught the bus into leeds the location was a place called centenary house north street leeds in our goes i finds the room that hired a room in one in this building and there was about 20 or 30 people there uh great to see a pile of books for sale that that that pleased me now the york's ufo society was formed by two brothers and that is Graham and Mark Birdsell. And they'd obviously been involved in the subject for a few years. They put on a presentation, Ryan, and, you know, that was me. I felt, you know, I was home. I found my niche in life. I just wanted to know more. Graham, of course, went on several, some years later to successfully edit and publish UFO magazine here in the UK that sold in its tens of thousands. It was a newsstand magazine. Sadly, he died, you know, unexpectedly a few years back. But nonetheless, I felt this is it. So I actually joined the Yorkshire UFO Society. I think I paid two pound for the whole year. And we used to have monthly meetings. And by the time, you know, the fourth or fifth meeting now, you know, I were ready to jump in with both feet. And that's how it all started. Had it not been for that advertisement in the Yorkshire Evening Post, I would never have known about this society starting. But for me, it was the right place at the right time with the right people. I just felt very fortunate. Wow. See, I love hearing those stories. You know, many people have a sighting. That's what gets them interested. Or like you, it's complete happenstance. I recall Stanton Friedman even saying he accidentally, I believe, received a book in the mail about UFOs flying saucers, and it changed his life. That's it. That advertisement in the Yorkshire Evening Post changed my life. You know, and I'm forever grateful for it, you know, because where I lived was a small town. You know, there wasn't much happening, wasn't a great deal to do. Leeds was a nice enough city, still is. But, you know, I had no formal education. The high school I went to was absolutely hopeless. But I always had this thirst for knowledge. I'll give you an example. At high school, it wasn't a church school, but once a week we used to have RI, we called it, religious instruction. so we were taught that what was in the bible was verbatim and this is it i went to only one lesson a week and i was always the idiot at the back of the room would put his hand up and you know i don't think this is this can't be right you know and so i think around about the same period i literally sat down one you know every night and read a bit of the bible until i'd finished it so i thought if i'm gonna get in trouble at least i want to know what i'm getting in trouble for you know right So I always wanted to understand things. I wasn't just, I wasn't, I wasn't happy just sat there letting other people tell me what was going on. And, you know, that continued when I joined the Yorkshire UFO Society. Amazing. Question everything. Question everything. Well, okay. So, you know, throughout the years, decades, you've researched many, many cases. You've investigated some personally as well. And that kind of culminated into one of many of your books. But the one we'll be talking about today is UFO Landings UK. Like I mentioned, there have been so many that I was not aware of. We know the Pinnacle cases, the Rendleshams and whatnot, even Broadhaven. A lot of people are familiar with that one. But your book has hundreds upon hundreds. So before we even talk about some of the cases, Philip, where did these come from? How did you obtain these files? That's a good question, because, you know, when we started, Ryan, there was no Internet. There was no online service. So when you try to, you know, research cases, you either did it in person. I mean, literally in person. Or you would write, you know, the old fashioned way. You would write a letter or phone someone. I mean, these were about the only ways you could contact people. We were fortunate when I joined the Yorkshire UFO Society as it went into the 1980s. there is a national park in North Yorkshire. It's called the Yorkshire Dales. I'd recommend every American tourist to head there. It's a beautiful part of the world. And yes, I am biased, but it's the part of the world, the parts of it where the Bronte sisters wrote Wuthering Heights and so on. But areas in and around the market town of Skipton in the Yorkshire Dales, for whatever reason, Ryan, had a lot of sightings being reported. And this is, you know, a lot of it is what we call semi-rural. When you leave the town, there are no cities. When you leave the towns, there's villages, there's moors, especially one place called Carlton Moor, just outside of Skipton. It's heather. There are no livestock kept there. They do game bird shooting there, but that's about it. and we made it our purpose to make ourselves as visible as possible. We would leave our contact details with local police stations, you know, libraries, even put posters up in some of the local pubs. And one of the things when people contacted, one of the things we used to ask is, how have you found us? You know, have you found our address or our phone number? So we knew what was working. so there was a time in the early 1980s that we were you know bombarded with sightings from these areas and couldn't couldn't cope at times almost so you know i think i i joined ufology at the right time i i joined with the right people mark and graham but birdsall and we were just fortunate that there was a lot of things happening for us to get our teeth into and um and off we went and we were up and running you know i learned to drive got my own transport and there was no stopping us uh it was as simple as that and we made ourselves very very visible and we do lots of local lectures i mean we'll do the women's institute you i mean you name it just to get the word out that here we were and and that's how our information started to be gathered UFO landings is that true yeah yeah I mean once once we got up and running um the area that I lived in was was covered by another newspaper it was called the Wakefield Express I'm sure you've all read it I got it right on my uh my coffee table and I did a local feature in it you know make you stand there holding your camera looking stupid you know but they ran my phone number and we had a lady call us um just a local lady and she said philip you won't believe me you won't believe me i said well give us a chance now you won't believe me you won't believe me now the area that i lived in um was an industrial area uh mainly coal mines my father worked down the mines all his life um and this lady only lived a few miles away she lived in a town called normanton in west yorkshire and that was a coal mining town uh at that point in the history the mines have all gone now but so myself and mark birdsall went to see this lady she called mrs westerman now mrs westerman lived in a cul-de-sac and there was no houses opposite and her house was a terraced house but it was an what we call an elevated house so you walked up some steps to get into the to the front door at the bottom of the road at the end of the cul-de-sac were some trees some fields and some electricity pylons that went to then it came from the nearby power station at ferry bridge now she had several children it was about five of them and it was just after lunch and they were outside playing a ball game it was a beautiful sunny day and it was a made-up ball game. It's the same kind of thing I played when I was their age. And she was actually washing the dishes after lunch. And one of the children came running in and said, Mum, Mum, there's an airplane crashed in the field. So she came out the front door, and because it's an elevated house, Brian, she could actually see from her front door across these fields. It's just, Philip, it wasn't any airplane. and it was something shaped like a Mexican hat, but like a silver grain color on the ground. So she got all of the children. They walked down to the bottom of the cul-de-sac through the trees. Now, at one point, you go down a little dip, so you lose sight of the field above you. So they walked up the other side, and this field was bordered by a small fence. This thing is sat there on the ground, but now there are three tall men. all wearing white suits. They had some kind of visor over their face. She was that close, she could say, they didn't have gloves on. They had mittens. And they were waving something over the ground. One of the children tried to climb the fence, but she held him back. And at this point, these three beings walked to the back of this thing. It then rose up, stopped in the air, and was gone once it came in a flash. No noise, you know, nothing. So she went home and she sat down that night to watch the local TV news. It's going to be on the TV, bound to be. There's a major motorway passes Normanton. It's called the M62. Thousands of cars go by. It was a beautiful sunny day. Lots of people out and about. Nothing. I mean, nothing. She bought the local newspaper. Nothing. She even went and asked some of her neighbors if they'd seen anything. and not a thing at all. Now, Mark and I interviewed Mrs. Westerman. We interviewed all the children. They didn't call it a spaceship or aliens, and they just said these tall men, you know, this funny-shaped thing. We even interviewed one of the children's friends. He hadn seen anything but he gone home for lunch and when he came back you know everything was over with and he was a bit a bit upset because he missed it all you know he missed the excitement and she was mystified i mean she was perplexed by what she saw in the first place but she was even more perplexed by the fact that no one else seemed to have seen anything and and she couldn't get that out of her head. Like I said, she lived in a mining town, kind of people I grew up with all my life. We couldn't find any logical explanation for this sighting. And we did try. So she was either lying or telling the truth. And I could find no reason why she would be lying. She didn't want any publicity, wouldn't allow a photograph to be taken. We wrote this item up in our our own publication that we that we made at the time but we didn't we weren't even allowed to use her name and what's what's peculiar a couple of years back i did a podcast for someone and i told this story but i just forgot to use the lady's name it's mrs westerman i thought i just forgot and i got an email from a lady in new zealand and she said philip you know i used to live in normanton i've now immigrated to new zealand um what was the the lady's name and i said it was mrs westerman she says my best friend was called westerman and she still lives there but she's changed her name because she's got married so she emailed her friend and her friend was one of those children we interviewed all them years ago and i got in touch with her and she confirmed you know what she remembered and uh but still you know it seems almost ryan that you had to be in that place at that time to have experienced this oh you know i i'm just saying that it's just just an opinion of mine but even all these years later we were you know these the children now grown up and had our own family of course confirmed that it did happen they didn't say oh i'm sorry philip we're pulling your leg, you know, and what it did for me, Ryan, I don't know if I really needed it, but it cemented my belief in the UFO phenomenon. And I thought, I'm not wasting my time here. There is something worthy of further research and investigation. It's my time to waste anyway, but, you know, it wasn't a waste of time. There was something to it after all, especially the people that reported this they were the kind of people i'd grown up with all my life you know i knew them my father was a coal miner i had friends work down the mines i had other family members did um so i know that's not scientific or anything like that but it's the kind of community i grew up in and you know so landing cases as a result of mrs westerman's account on my doorstep you know couple of miles up the road just always were there in the back of my mind irrespective of what else i was dealing with or whatever else would come my way that was already in the file and um and it continued to to grow as as as the decades went went by but that's what it's that's that's the one that started it all really and make of it what you will yeah Yeah. Beautiful, sunny day. Everybody out and about a huge motorway going past. Nobody, nobody. I mean, we've run this feature in the local newspaper here a couple of times, hoping that somebody else might step forward. But but no one, no one. So as far as we're aware, you know, the Westerman family were the only ones to see it. Wow. There you go. Yeah. I love that. I love hearing that. And you're right. You know, there's a gut feeling in a lot of UFO investigations. You know, there's there's many ways to look at a case scientifically, spiritually, even psychologically. And then you also have, you know, this this just idea of I trust this person. There's no reason for them to have made this up. Like you said, these were the types of people you grew up with. These are these are modest, humble people. they have nothing to gain by telling a story like this. So then you're left wondering, this probably happened, but what was it? And we may never know. And that's frustrating in some ways and exciting in others, because then, like you said, it leads you to that curiosity of these UFO landings. And then, boom, an entire new door is opened for you, and hundreds of cases start to spill in. And that's what I liked about the book, is you compartmentalize these into decades, which I really liked, 40s, 50s, 60s. And a lot of us here in the United States, when we think of the modern UFO era, it always begins with Kenneth Arnold, the flying saucer story, the classic story. But in your book, you actually start with a lot of cases pre-Kenneth Arnold that I was not aware of. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners are aware of. Yeah, I mean, we always use Kenneth Arnold as the yardstick, but that's when flying saucers became, you know, into popular culture. So there's nothing wrong with that. But I remember, again, I moved a few miles away. And again, some years later, I did another local newspaper piece. And a gentleman by the name of John Warren contacted me. He was an oldish boy. he'd retired but he lived nearby so I went to I went to speak to Mr Warren because it was literally you know a mile or so from where I lived and he recounted an event back in 1942 before Kenneth Arnold obviously it was during wartime the second world war Mr Warren was in the Royal Air Force and stationed at a place called RAF Ludham in Norfolk in the UK. And it was, he couldn't remember the exact date, but he thinks it was May. And he'd been out to a local dance and it was some 12 miles from the airbase. And he was a bit late and he missed the last train back. So there was no other option in 1942 but to walk. And not only that, he was going to get in trouble for being late. You know, not absent without leave, but he was going to be in for it if they found out. So he sets off to walk back. He's nearing the town of Ludham and the airbase when he encounters up ahead of him a peculiar-looking humanoid just stood at the side of the road and it had a box on its chest and it was shining green light out of the top of this box i don't know if you ever did it when you were a youngster yourself right i mean you got a you call it a flashlight we call it a torch and put it under your chin and the light all shoots up it makes your face look funny you know yeah it was the early days of of apps that you have now on the phone to make your face look funny or you just get old and gray like me and it ends up looking funny anyway you know but this light was shining up in his in its face and he said he had a peculiar grin on his on its face but behind it uh there was also a dome-shaped object that was illuminated as well and it scared the living daylights out of him Remember, this is 1942. You know, it's, you know, the middle of the war. And although I didn't put it in the book, because he asked me not to write this, but he said, had he been armed at the time, had he had his sidearm with him, he would have shot it. Because this was wartime, and he knew it wasn't anything to do with the RAF or the army. So, i.e., it must be the enemy. And he said he would have shot it. But it didn't do anything. he scarpered pretty quickly and luckily for him he managed to get back into the barracks through a window his friend let him in through a window and he says you know I told my friend and he was you know startled by it so in the in the mid 1960s I think it was Mr Warren had also reported the sighting to the British UFO Research Association. So I managed to access their file and find his letter. But it was nice to be able to speak to him in person about something that happened pre-Arnold. And it obviously still bothered him because he contacted me when he saw me in the local newspaper. He still wanted to talk about it all those years later. and it's just a you know another fascinating little landing case that nobody's ever heard of it's been languishing in somebody's files but the good thing was i got to speak to him in person so you're not just reading bits of paper you can you could feel you could feel the fascination that this this old boy had and of course the era that we're talking about it was you know the wartime and I can honestly believe him if he would have shot it. You know, I can honestly believe that. You know, we'll laugh about it, but it sounds the obvious thing to do to me. This is not us, therefore it must be the enemy. I'm going to shoot the damn thing. And it's right outside the RAF base where he was stationed. So, you know, make of it what you will. I mean, it just gives you one example that if you dig, these are the type of things that that come to the surface wow yeah that is a fascinating case and you know this idea of yeah it's a potential threat especially around a military base which there were several of those in the book that you spoke of and that lends a lot of credibility for a lot of people who don't you know research ufos like you and i do on a daily basis when they hear that military people are witnessing these pilots people on the ground radar operators that seems to be what really catches people's attention. Mr. Warren was responsible for arming two squadrons of fighter aircraft at RAF Ludenham. So he wasn't just a T-boy. You know, he wasn't a colonel either, but, you know, he wasn't. And like I said, he had no option but to walk home that night. Once you missed the last train, that was it. It was not. So it was 12 miles. and he said I hadn't been on the drink because there wasn't a lot of it anyway and we didn't have a lot of money either you know I think he'd been in all honesty he'd been chasing the ladies at the dance but that's another story you know but you know fascinating and it makes you wonder Ryan when you come across cases like this it makes you think well what others are there out there that we are totally unaware of and i'll give you an example it's not in the book um as you mentioned in the introduction i was involved in the the alien autopsy film uh research and i made a little four-part tv series tv documentary series about it and it was broadcast last year and a local gentleman contacted me on email he said i've got something i'd like to show you philip and um so when the lockdown the cold with lockdown had finished he paid me a visit and this was a the memoirs of his wife's grandfather um like i said this area used to be a big big coal mining area he was actually um a mining engineer so not a digger of coal but he He used to design the lift shafts and the loading gear and all this kind of thing. And before he died, he typed up his memoirs. They weren't extensive, you know. And as a young boy, he used to live near Manchester, which is about, you know, 40 miles from here. Not that far. And these memoirs were in two parts. One was about his life, where he grew up, his family. The second part was about his life as a mining engineer. And this chap said the second half is dreadfully boring, unless you're heavily into mining engineering. But in the other part, when he was nine years old, I believe, eight or nine, there is a chapter and it just says The Encounter. And it's the largest chapter in the whole memoirs. He printed these things out himself and just gave them to family members. There were only about 10 coppers he ever made. So he talks about an encounter in 1911. And him and his friend were on the way to a local park. They had to walk to it. You know, children didn't get run around in cars in those days. And he said, we came to this clearing and there's this, this thing's on the ground. you know, like a cigar-shaped thing on the ground. And, you know, they went up to it, it opened up, and there were beings, humanoid beings, looked at what we probably describe as Asian, wearing coloured clothing and even a headgear that looked something like a turban. And they communicated with them and conversed with them, and then off they went. And he reported it to his parents when he got home, and they didn't do anything about it. But this was the largest chapter in this gentleman's memoirs. Wow. And nobody knew anything about it. I mean, I put this gentleman's name in on Google. I think I found one mention of him, you know, and that was it. Nothing to do with UFOs, and I managed to get an old photograph of him. but nothing, not a whisper. And this was 1911, you know, the early part of the 20th century, before the First World War. And it had just been sat gathering dust. You know, I was only disappointed that I didn't get to meet the old boy and speak to him, you know, in person. And this gentleman let me take a copy of this file, and I have it, but it's not in the book. but I thought I'd mention that because it's an example. We just said, you know, what else is lying around out there that we're not aware of? And here was one. Again, it came about because I appeared on TV and he must have Googled me and he thought, oh, he only lives up there. I'm easy enough to find, you know. I'm not living in some hobbit land in a little round house, you know. And I was forever thankful. And I published the story in a couple of magazines and I sent this gentleman copies of it to share with the family. But very bizarre, very strange, but it shows you what else may be lying around that we're unaware of, of these strange accounts. You know, and make of it what you will. There's a lot more to the story than that, but A, I can't remember it all offhand. B, we're limited for time anyway. But it's an example. That is something that's only in 10 copies of an old boy's memoirs. And you will not find it anywhere else. very interesting again i i like the way you uh you think about these things philip of you know how many lost chapters are there to memoirs out there or uh you know reports that never made it to an organization or to the faa or to the local law enforcement you know that old saying of like you know 95 of people have probably seen something unexplained in the sky but two percent maybe report it somewhere so we can only imagine the untold stories that are out there so that's really fascinating people say to me how do you find out these things philip well i i always say my my my my my mom god rest her soul she always used to say to me you'll never get lost so long as you have a tongue in your head in other words ask just ask and when you ask the simplest of questions right it's amazing of what the answers are that come back especially when you're dealing with these things and what things you find i know i've given you examples here where i've been in the local media and somebody's contacted me but a lot of the times we were just doing the asking you know and putting ourselves out there and saying have you seen anything if you have come and tell us come and tell us and i mean again hundreds of landings have occurred um are there any more philip that you find um extra notable that you'd like to share with us here throughout the decades well you know one of the busiest times uh for ufos full stop was just before i got involved in the uk i'm talking about and it's the the sort of late 1970s and um i think you i think you mentioned it anyway there's a an incident that took place it was called Deckmont Woods in Livingston in Scotland. And it was the late 1970s, I think it was 1979. And it involved a local gentleman by the name of Robert Taylor. Mr. Taylor was a forestry worker, hence it happening in Deckmont Woods. He set off to go to work from Livingston and the woods were up on a hill, you know, beyond where he lived. in his truck with his dog. And it was a very down-to-earth gentleman, was Mr. Taylor. And he's walking down through these woods, and there's a small clearing. And as he comes to this clearing, there is this thing there, again, sat on the ground. It is dome-shaped. It has what he described as a flange going around the bottom of it. and on this flange were little pointers sticking up with like a helicopter blade on them. And either from the back of this thing or from underneath it, rolled these two large balls, black balls with spikes on. He said they're reminding him of the old World War II mines they used out at sea. And they literally plopped across the you could hear them plopping across the ground because it was muddy as they came towards him He felt a tug on either side of his trousers in the middle of his thighs but outside there was a high whistling sound a smell of sulfur and he was out cold I mean, literally out cold. when he came around you know his dog is doing somersaults and this thing has gone i mean literally so he staggered to his his truck tried to drive it and managed to just get it into a ditch so we it wasn't far to where he lived so he staggered down home knocked on the door and his wife's there and she says what's the matter what's happening you know he's looking a bit disheveled a bit dirty and he says i've been attacked so she phones the police you know and the police come and he tells them and when the police go to the location it's exactly where he told them to go there are these strange marks in the ground there's two that look like caterpillar marks and some other indentations around them uh fortunately for the police and and ufo investigators it was cold that night I believe it might have had a bit of snow so it froze the muddy ground so these imprints were frozen in place and photographs were taken the police even drew a sketch of these marks and because Mr Taylor was such an upstanding member of the community the police actually carried out a forensic investigation and it's the only official forensic police investigation of a ufo sighting anywhere in the uk and you know they confirmed the that mr mr taylor's trousers were torn where he felt these things pulling on him went right through and these were heavy you know duty work trousers uh they confirmed that they were consistent with a upward pulling motion and they kind of you know they conducted a full report and i have you know I have a copy of that police report. Again, there's a motorway runs nearby from Edinburgh to Glasgow. Livingston's kind of in the middle of those. If you're trying to picture it on a map, it's not an out-of-the-way place, in the middle of nowhere. And I was fortunate. My colleague, Malcolm Robinson from Scotland, was on site within no time at all. And Malcolm has written the definitive book on this. I mean, it is a fantastic book. So just look out for that if you're interested. But I went with Malcolm many years later to interview Mr. Taylor. And this is an interesting little story. He told us the account just as he'd done with everybody else. And we thanked him for the time. And Malcolm and I set off up to Deckmont Woods. And, you know, the trees had grown somewhat in the years past. but we found the location and we're taking some photographs but it wasn't if you didn't know where you were going uh ryan you wouldn't have known anything about it's just just trees right so i said to malcolm they now put a picnic bench there the local council put a picnic bench so when you get a brass plaque made i just screw it onto the side of the picnic bench you know so malcolm went to the local council with this idea and instead of that they put a huge great rock there with a big plaque on it you know commemorating the event and i think just the other year they've gone a stage further now and put sign posters and things explaining it you know and and not that they're going to get thousands of tourists like they do in roswell but it you know there are maps there and it will take you to the location and that just came as an off-the-cuff remark between malcolm and i and fair play to him he malcolm took the idea up and ran with it and he's done a great job but it's again a fascinating case was you know forensically i have to emphasize that word forensically investigated by the by the police and they could find no explanation for it you know again he wasn't lying you know he had no idea one of the curious things about this and it's you know i forgot to mention it myself um is that when mr taylor is looking at this object on the ground the the dome if you like is part of it was transparent but that transparency moved didn't stay all in one place. We're not looking at a transparent dome. That transparency moved around the top of this dome. And I can't figure that out at all. It's very puzzling indeed. But there is a lot more involved in the case than I've highlighted. But just look for Malcolm's book, Malcolm Robinson. You'll not be disappointed, I can assure you. but it's another fascinating case this one has appeared in the newspapers it has appeared on television but it's not widely well known like rendalsham or or you won't find anything any mention of rendalsham forest in my new book at all because you know there are countless books about it so i didn't need to write about that uh i couldn't have done it justice in just one chapter. But the Decmont Woods case or Livingston or Robert Taylor, you know, is fascinating. And again, I was glad to meet the Manning himself. I was actually researching my first book when I spoke to Mr. Taylor. Way back in 1994, I co-authored a book called Without Consent, which dealt with abductions and missing time cases. Again, only here in the UK, nowhere else. And there was a period of missing time that Mr. Taylor couldn't account for. So that's why I went to interview him. But he'd never explored it any further. It was just, I don't know. You know, I was out cold. I don't know what happened, you know. And I tried to drive my truck and that ended up in a ditch, you know. So, but I was glad. I was glad I got to speak to him. I really am. And he was, again, Ryan, I know it doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people, but he was such a down-to-earth gentleman. You know, he really was. He had his job, his wife, his family, and his dog, and that's all he was really interested in, you know. And he was bewildered by the whole event. Even right up to the day he died, I believe he was still, you know, had no idea what happened to him that day. Wow. Wow. Again, you know, posing that question, why? why would someone make something like this up there's absolutely nothing to gain he didn't want notoriety uh he reported it to the only people he thought he could and that's the police his wife did and that makes sense so yeah that is a great case i've been attacked so if you've been attacked what do you do just the logical thing call the police you're right yeah i love it um well and i do want to talk about there is this subset in the UFO field when it comes to landings or close encounters where school children are involved. And that seems to be a really big thing. More cases than I ever thought actually existed. And we will get there. But before we get to that pinnacle case in Broadhaven, Philip, are there any other cases in the book that you really want to share with us now um you have a chapter called the x-files which is of course i'll go no i'll go back in time to the 70s again if i may yeah please because one of the things i talk about in the book is the term that the late alan hynek came up with and that's high strangeness and as far as he was concerned you know um the the stranger these cases were the closer you got to the objects, then the less likely it is that it's a misidentification. You know, we all know, Ryan, that most UFO sightings at the end of the day have a conventional explanation. But when you're up close and personal to these things, it's very difficult to say it was an airplane or it was a star or planet or whatever other excuse. Even Heineck fell foul of that, didn't he, with the swamp gas. You know, and he admitted he got that wrong many years later. but um there's a place and i can't pronounce it correctly so i it's in wales now the welsh language is you know uh one of a kind really it's a place called mackalent in in wales and it involved a young boy called trevor you know we've never released his his surname it happened on July the 22nd 1975 and he was with his father and they were heading for the coast and the beach behind the beach was this large hill and you know Trevor being an adventurous young man thought I'm I'm up here so he you know it wasn't anything dangerous he scrambled up the rocks and when he got to the top it was amazed that there was this this dome-shaped object with lights all around it actually there amongst the rocks and it was dome-shaped this dome was transparent and what makes it even more high strengthens is the creatures that he saw in it there were two creatures that he called jelly men they were seemed as if they were you know bubbling away inside them all moving this mass moving inside of them and it frightened the hell out of him he ran down the rocks yelled to his father and then turned around and ran back up and his father thought he playing some kind of game. But when his father looked up, he could see Trevor hiding behind a rock. So he's climbed these rocks and he's hiding behind it and bobbing up to look at these things. So he hid behind the rock again. And when he's gone back, this thing has gone. You know? And it is totally bizarre what Trevor described. I can't find anything in the UFO literature that matches what we call jelly men. And I had to use it. It's a case that some of us older researchers here in the UK are aware of, but by no means everybody. And it shows you how really strange some of these incidents are. This is 1975. So there are science fiction movies that have been out there. But he hasn't got this from any science fiction story that I'm aware of that made the headlines in Wales as a young lad. And it is extremely peculiar. It really is. And like anything else, I don't try and indoctrinate with anything that I do, Ryan. I just say, here it is. You can decide for yourself. You've got a brain in your head. You don't need me to tell you what to do or what to think. make of it what you will but it shows again the bizarre nature of some of these encounters because if we if we believe the tabloid press that it's all the same no matter where you go things that are reported are the little gray guys and the only people who report them are you know hicks out in the middle of the new new mexico desert you know but no they're not this was on a beach in wales you know and some rocks behind the beach so you know yeah yeah raf base in 1942 right outside the raf base you know what i mean it's just and it makes me scratch my head you know it's some of these cases when you look into them you think well i can't deny it but it's so bizarre and that's one example of it that when we talk about high strangeness his father didn't see the but his father saw him hiding behind the rocks he hid behind this rock and he kept popping up because at one point this dome started to open and that's when he ran so he thought these things are coming out i'm blaming him yeah i know but uh but there you go i make but again people have said well why why were things so active in in the late 1970s in the uk my answer is i don't know I just do not know. But if you've gone through archives and files like I have, not only was it very active in the late 1970s, these high strangeness cases were very active in the late 1970s. Some people, obviously, sceptical, say it's because Star Wars, you know, close encounters. But, you know, for me, that doesn't explain it all. It can't explain it. You know, it's a nice try, but no cigar, you know. But there you go. So that case is in the book, and you can read for it. There's a picture of what was drawn, an artist's impression. You know, make of it what you will. Yeah. Well, yeah, we should mention, too, in the book, you have many detailed witness sketches of craft of humanoids. And that alone was very interesting to just skim through the book and look at the, like you mentioned, the bizarre nature of some of these beings, a jelly being and, you know, these beings with boxes. the way they're described, it truly makes you wonder, A, how many different intelligences are we dealing with? How many different phenomena? How high strangeness do these actually get? And what can we say about the witnesses and their perception of these things as well? It's interesting. I mean, that's where the answers lie in those questions you've just posed. You know, I have another kind of a favorite case, but in the late 1970s, early 1980s, we had a well-known pop group in the UK called Hot Chocolate. Love it. Yeah, led by a black guy called Errol Brown, who was a beautiful voice, great singer, well-known. In 1980, they released a song called No Doubt About It. And when you listen to the song, it's on YouTube, you'll find it, Hot Chocolate, No Doubt About It, the singing about a flying saucer landing. And the video they made to go with it, you know, is all spacey and what have you. And I just thought it was just a pop song that somebody had written and made up. But I found out that it's actually based on a real event. Now, none of the members of the pop group Hot Chocolate saw anything. But the two people that wrote the song actually did. And one of them is called Steve Glenn. And I managed to get hold of Steve when I was researching the book and speak to him. he's still active in the in the music business he was a uh a singer himself i think he even went to number one in japan at one point with one of his songs but he was more of a songwriter and he wrote a lot of songs for a lot of the well-known pop stars in the uk in that era and um they were in the south of england and they were heading for the recording studio one night him and his friend in a car and they had another pop group following along behind them in a van when they saw this peculiar thing it's a huge great thing so he pulled over at the side of the road and they they ducked down behind some bushes because this thing came to ground and he said he shot out these little spheres almost as if they were like attacking them so you know they even phoned the police uh when this and the police came out and spoke to them you know it's too late this thing had gone by then so steve told me he said uh we went home that night and we sat down him and his partner and they wrote the song no doubt about it in about 10 minutes and it was i think it was hot chocolate's best-selling single it sold zillions of them all over the world obviously not in you know so that is in the book you know that is in the book there's a pop song inspired by a real event and and in fact i spoke to steve glenn just the other day uh telling the book's out and you know i needed his address to send him a copy because i always said i would and he gave me his address and and um it's he's now got it so there you go yeah you know a pop we even have a pop song inspired by a real event i just like what a made-up song you know like they do ryan yeah no it's based on a ufo landing case here in the uk right and you know like you said written in 10 minutes all you need for your lyrics is uh your witness testimony of what happened and throw some rhythm behind it and you got a pop song Hey guys, Ryan Sprague here from Somewhere in the Skies. 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Well, let's, I guess, kind of bookend this with probably one of the most well-known UFO landings. in the UK and this was in Wales This was part of a what many consider a UFO flap A lot of things were happening in Wales at the time but this is probably one of the most prominent that I i know of here in the states and that is the the broad haven incident like i mentioned earlier school children involved a lot of people know the rua zimbabwe case in the 90s but this case actually um is a little lesser known here so i if you don't mind could you tell us a little about this case and Yeah, well, Broadhaven, I mean, Wales itself is a country. You know, it's only a small place. It's the Western bit that sticks out from the UK. And Broadhaven, this happened on February the 4th, 1977. And as we were saying earlier, a lot of things seem to be happening in the 1970s here in the UK. And it involved 14 children, 14 at school, at the local school in Broadhaven. We used to call it playtime, but, you know, it was a break at school. And they saw this silver metallic object, you know, land outside. It had some kind of thing on the top. And I believe there were, I think, six of the children actually reported seeing humanoid figures. And they were silver suited. And the only sort of facial description that the children were describing, they said that these creatures had big ears, you know, and fortunately, they were all sat down and drew pictures of these things. and we have some of the original drawings reproduced in my book. It was also reported to the Ministry of Defence here in the UK who did indeed look into it, not extensively, but they did look into it. The local police were involved. But other things were happening in and around Wales at the time, lots of sightings to such an extent that this area got nicknamed the Broadhaven Triangle. So within this specific geographical area, there was a lot of sightings. But as I mentioned, throughout the UK in the late 1970s, there were a lot of weird and wonderful things. And I don't know about you, Ryan, but, you know, I've lectured at schools and I find the youngsters probably ask the better questions than the grown-ups. And, of course, most of them don't have the vices that we adults accumulate down the years. And they can be very honest. I mean, you know, I've got two daughters, and I take my youngest daughter when she was little. She would be so honest. She was blunt, you know, because she said, well, you always tell the truth, Dad. And I said, yeah, I know sometimes, but if somebody's ugly, you don't have to tell them, you know. so you know so i think sometimes the children are the best witnesses because they just say it as they see it you know they haven't got the vices that we have and and that is a prime example here with broad haven and it's sad really that that um it's kind of disappeared from the public domain I mean, it would be, I haven't been able to do it, but I haven't tried. I'm going to be honest. To speak to some of these children now that they've grown up, I'm sure, you know, there were only youngsters in 1977. So hopefully some of them would still be around, but it would be fascinating to speak to them now. Like I did with the children in Normanton, we found one of them was introduced to me, you know, just a couple of years back and she still reported the same thing, Ryan. and I believe, like you mentioned, the aerial school sighting in the 90s in Zimbabwe. They're all grown up and adults now, and some of those have been interviewed. Westall in Australia in 1966, Shane Ryan's done a great job with that, and he's spoken to a lot of the children now that are adults, and even I think one of the teachers was also involved at that time. So schoolyard sightings, if you like, are a bit more common than perhaps we would imagine. And that's just one example is the Broadhaven sightings. And there's lots of drawings that went with it. I couldn't really have room to reproduce them all, but I've put a good example of them in the book. And I think observations by children, per se, are fascinating. But when it comes to things like this, you know, people always say, well, the kids are making it up, you know, what for? You know, it's usually one child or one child and his mate will come up with a crazy idea. And that's how it used to work when I was young. Me and my best friend got up to some mischief, but it was never the whole school, you know. Right. So, but yeah, I mean, you're right. You're right to flag it up, Ryan, because it is a fascinating story, as are the other what we call schoolyard sightings as well. And it'd be interesting to see if in the coming years there aren't a few more that come out of the woodwork. Are the contemporary ones that happens now or things that are, you know, stuck in somebody's filing cabinet and forgotten about? We shall see. We shall see. Yeah. let's hope hope for the best well um i want to ask you this philip with a lot of these cases you mentioned the high strangeness aspect what these humanoids look like um you know the craft landing and then taking off but my big question when it comes to any of these landings that it seems the beings come out maybe they hang around for a couple minutes and then leave what do you think if you had to guess what is the purpose of these landings are they surveying the the earth are they here to evade what do you what do you think the purpose is well well if we come to a conclusion that way we have to agree that these are beings from another world and i would say we don't know as yet what these things are now some people will will know that i i'm a i'm a publisher i run a small outfit called flying dispress and the second book i ever published was by a romanian uh scientist called dr dan farkas it's simply called ufos over romania dan's second book was his hypotheses of what ufos are and he calls it hyper civilizations because it's the very question that the very thing you just pointed out there that that puzzle Dan more than anything is that he calls them the euphonauts do stupid things you know they come they fiddle around and they're gone you know yeah leaving leaving the poor bemused witnesses behind scratching their heads and what he his I'm not saying he's right or wrong I'm not saying I agree with him but it made me think he said he honestly believes we are being visited by an intelligence not of this earth where it comes from how it gets here what no idea but on the evolutionary scale he estimates that it's not a few thousand years in advance of us it's actually millions of years in advance and no matter how hard you know we humans try we're simply not able to understand it. We're not high enough up the evolutionary ladder yet to figure it out. And he gives an idea, he says, you know, you take a flat screen television and stick it in an ant's nest. Now the ants will know it's there. They'll crawl all over it. Maybe some of the soldier ants might even attack it. But never in a million years will they be able to figure out what the hell it is, what it's made of, and what its purpose is. So maybe on that scale we are the evolutionary ants you know that is the difference between us and and of course that's one of the parameters in the drake equation you know the astronomer drake and about the possibility of life elsewhere in in the universe and one of them is the the age of civilizations that's that's one of the things that make up the drake drake equation now we as as a species never mind a civilization we have us as a species i've only been around for you know in the blink of an eye the dinosaurs ruled the earth for millions of years before they were wiped out you know mankind is you know we haven't been here for two minutes really so you imagine let's assume that we don't wipe ourselves out one way or another that mankind survives for the next billion years what will we look like what will that technology be i mean it's forget star trek well beyond all that you know you look what we've done since the what the the wright brothers first flew at kitty hawk you know within within within a generation we went from flying at kitty hawk to landing on the moon so you know you stick a billion years on on the top of that i just think what will be like technology and it says there may be a civilization or civilizations out there already at that point that they evolved or were created whichever way you want to believe you know a billion years ago and they've stumbled across us you know swarming about on this little planet you know and it's shown an interest but we're too dumb to figure out what it is and it makes you wonder for example you look you could also look at the next most intelligent creature on earth is the dolphin and scientists believe that the dolphins have a rudimentary rudimentary language but yeah we can't say hello flipper how you doing how do you feel today we can teach you to jump up and catch a fish you know we can't converse with them you know and what do so we don't know when they look up out the water and they see us what they what do they think i mean they're self-aware you know i think therefore i am the dolphins are self-aware um what do they think about us when they're looking up out of the water you know imagine that in a in a expand that between us and another civilization elsewhere so i don't know but it just made me think it really did make me think and um because if you think about it if we if you and i were astronauts and we landed on a planet and we found another civilization another life form we wouldn't just piddled around and then leave it you know i'm out of there you know good point yeah but it's a good analogy yeah yeah it's just it's just food for thought and all i would say is to anyone you know the information is out there Just pick it up, have a look at it and draw your own conclusions, you know. And I think, you know, people like me and my colleagues, one of the things, our purpose is to record this information, though, that hopefully somebody somewhere will be able to make sense of it all. It's a bit like the early astronomers. You know, they were recording things, people saying, I don't know what this is. You know, for example, you know, I think it was 150 years ago, stones couldn't fall from the skies. You look up into the sky, Ryan, there's no stones there, is there? It's clouds and rainbows. But I think there was an event in the early part of the 19th century in France where a lot of stones did fall from the sky. And it forced the astronomers to admit, yes, we do know they fall from the sky, but we just don't know what the hell they are anyway. so maybe in ufological terms we're at that point now we we know that ufos exist we know there is a ufo phenomena but you know we've got one of those rocks that's falling from the sky we finally admitted it but we don't know what they come from what it is what it's made of what its purpose is etc etc etc i may be totally wrong as well of course but it's it's just it's just an idea i know i love that you're building off of what we can now accept and uh hopefully globally uh begin to understand that yes there is a phenomena you know here in the united states our government has said yes ufos exist now it's a million questions that come after that like you said yeah here in the min our own ministry defense have always admitted always you go back through the the the mod files have always admitted there are things in the skies that they can't explain but then they put a caveat on that we didn't find you know there's no threat to the air defense of the uk's therefore we're not interested and you know but they've always admitted there's things in the sky they can't explain it's nothing new yeah very good point well um speaking of new philip what can new people who uh you know might have one of these close encounters or see a craft landing what advice would you give to people like this um if this does happen to them if these things are truly happening yeah well i would i would say you know by all means report it you know there are a lot of there's a lot of different channels now where you can report things in confidence if required. A lot of the local UFO groups that used to be here in the UK have disappeared, but they're being replaced by other online assets where you can report things. Again, in confidence, it is vital that, you know, we add the information to the pool of knowledge that we already have. But think about it carefully. You know, speak to family members first. You know, if it's something so bizarre, so frightening, you may wish to report it to the local authorities. Even the police here are still duty bound to investigate. And I mentioned there has been one full forensic investigation because of the gentleman in question. He was a well-known member of the local community. And that was, you know, in Livingston in Scotland. And we know there are lots of independent ufo researchers as well so you're able to do your homework like you couldn't do when i first started you can google somebody's name you can have a look you can see what they've worked on and you're thinking that might be the right person for me or or not uh that is still ufo organizations like move on and others in other different countries of course and um i would say you know step forward you don't have to go public but by all means share what information you have with ufo research it can it could be another piece of the of the jigsaw puzzle that you're adding who you never know yeah exactly yeah you know i think you're right the more people who come forward uh the more we normalize this and the more data we can add to this growing mystery and maybe find some answers to some of it, maybe not all of it. But hey, like you said, I'd rather have half the puzzle than no puzzle at all, at least in my lifetime. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, to wrap things up, Philip, where can we find your book? Where can we find everything you're up to? And yeah, tell the folks at home how they can find you. UFO Landings UK, you'll find it on Amazon. it's there's a large format softback book there's a hardback there's a kindle and we're in the process of turning it into a an audio book as well so that'll be ready at some point and um you know all you know i've written a few other books but they're all there you just punch my name into amazon you'll find them i have a little blog although i don't write a lot on it i just put bits and pieces on it that's just flyingdiscpress.com that's disc with a k i'm on i'm on facebook i'm easy enough to find you can never forget this fat old boy's face once you've seen it will you oh stop well philip i have to thank you for coming on somewhere in the skies today and for all the invaluable work you do in this field it's truly an honor to talk to you it's My pleasure, Ryan, I can assure you. And let's not leave it so long until next time we speak. Absolutely. Absolutely. Transcription by CastingWords Now receiving frequency transmission. So if you take tarot the way that pop culture portrays it, which is that the cards themselves have some kind of hidden power to predict your future, the jury is very much out. However, if I were to do my own tarot and have such a connection with my own subconscious that when I see these symbols I could apply any meaning to it and I basically use it as a way to explore my unconscious and subconscious mind, there's a lot of things that you don't know that you know, that are buried deep inside of you. Through things like meditation and therapy and all of that, you get these epiphanies that bring it out. And I think that symbols are another method to do that, these kinds of internal excavations. And so it actually doesn't require a belief in the supernatural, although it totally helps. Transmission complete. Stay tuned to Spector Vision Radio. Stay. Stay.