THC 36: Nick Redfern | The World’s Weirdest Places

00:04 We're here because we don't buy into the bullshit of mainstream culture. We're tired of the mundane, passionless careers that have been shuffled into as a result of this orchestrated debt-based system of rule and the stranglehold on education and entertainment by cold soulless corporations People yes, we are frustrated Yes, we are tired And we reject the brave group tranquilizers that are Monday Night Football and an ice cold Budweiser But we have to stop hiding Stop hiding behind the headphones and the cherry popper 420 username. Let the world see that resistance is strong, and society is changing." There was a time to be anonymous but that time has passed And so The Hireside Chats would like present conspirities as the dawning of this new paradigm in uniform revolution Because bold fashion should mean more than some celebrity meat dresser frat boy in a silly pink polo

00:52 Conspiratease redefines bold fashion as having the balls to project socially uncomfortable and unpopular truths from your radiant chest. All fucking day. conspiratese.net Let them know that you know, Bold designs for troubled times Hard Truths Softcock Hi, our side-chatters. Please while you're listening to the intro you've heard plenty of times before open up another browser go to podcastawards.com THC is honored to have been nominated we're in the general category and you can vote once a day until the 15th if You're hearing this after the 15th well I'll just go fuck myself

01:35 In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the Fireside Chats. His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times. But what if 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire? For a new era of worldly frustration we offer a fresh conversation! Hello higher side chatters drinking a little drink smoking a little smoke from San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood and i hope you have a campfire handy because today kids we're gonna hear some stories Back in black for the second time on THC one of my favorite fringe topic journalists tackling everything under the paranormal sun He's been on UFO hunters, Monster Quest, Ancient Aliens and One credit. I'm a bit curious about actually Countdown with Keith Oberman Nick Redfern my man welcome back How's life?

02:33 Hi Greg, doing good thanks. How are things with you? Good. Well, I have been talking about I think it was seven or eight years ago now, and what happened was that the US Air Force released a document through the terms of the Freedom of Information Act which addressed a project that they'd actually kick-started to try and determine if the sort of technology we see on On Star Trek, sort of being the upstarty type technology could actually be considered feasible if you could really teleport people from one place to another. The Air Force kind of gave it a bit of bad job in the end but it was interesting that the whole issue with teleportation was something

03:25 Sort of occupied their minds for a long time and so they had me on the show talking about you know This sort of stranger than fiction project that the Air Force was involved in Well, you know your new book The World's Weirdest Place is pretty much the book I've been wanting my whole life. Oh Because you write about places, your top 25 hotspots for strangeness. And because it's about places you can include UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, demons ghosts and everything else but how did you pick your top twenty five? Well, I guess it was one of the situations where there were certain criteria that I was looking for. Say for example somebody sees a big foot in one particular town and then somebody else knows the haunted house in another town but that doesnít necessarily make the place strange you know?

04:17 of an old village or isolated town where there have been sightings of UFOs, Bigfoot and werewolves. There was a cult activity going on, paranormal phenomena, portals in window areas and interdimensional stories and things like that but they are all situated focused on one area, then that to me suggested it was the place that was weird rather than just the things that were appearing there. So what I did is pick out 25 places that fell into that particular category and then focus on the best ones I could find

05:09 Nice. One of my favorite parts, which I had never heard about and the location is only 350 miles from where i live Is the stories of the crazy caverns in Death Valley How did those come about? Well, yeah. Death Valley is an interesting place with a lot of weirdness attached to it and certainly one of the strangest stories coming out of Death Valley are the tales about what they call the sailing stones Now you can go to certain parts of Death Valley pretty much any time of year And you'll see these massive stones anywhere from sort of 30 pounds to literally like about 170-180 pounds in weight

05:49 that are sitting still, seemingly frozen on the desert floor but they've got this long track behind them as if they'd literally moved across the desert surface. In some cases up to a couple of miles and they even appear on occasion to have actually done like a 180 degree turn and gone back the way they came! That is so weird It's very weird. A number of down to earth scenarios have been put forward that initially at least do seem to make sense. The idea is that Death Valley is a very dry and hot location so the desert floor is like solid

06:26 but sometimes they have been very out of the blue seven floods and downpours a very heavy rain in other words the desert floor goes from being very hard to bury muddy uh... because he has his heart service for water settled on top of the of the hearts and until the period that when like a very large wind blows through the valley is it possible that back tremendous wind about finger near a board actually is enough of a stimulus to get the stones moving, kind of like a little bolt on a body of water so to speak. And that when the sand dries up you know this stone comes to a grinding halt. Now the only problems with those theories

07:10 uh... number one is the fact that numerous scientists in university teams and all sorts of people have been out there nobody's ever actually caught um... the stones in movement and that even involves you know sort of late night stop motion cameras that are put out to film anything that suddenly moves even those haven't picked it up. And, of course, the other big problem is because some of these stones literally weigh in the order of 170-180 pounds A number of scientists have suggested that wind, even if it was a thin veneer of water could actually kickstart stones weighing close to 200 pounds.

07:54 keep them moving when the momentum's going, but could they actually start them moving? I mean that that's a very valid question. So it's a deep mystery that anyone can go out there and see but for more than 100 years of people knowing about it nobody's actually solved the puzzle. Yeah and what about these crazy these stories of massive caverns underneath the Death Valley area and the weird discoveries there. Yeah, well these go back to roughly the 1920's and particularly through the 1930's when a number of I guess so-called Indiana Jones type adventurers and explorers claimed to have discovered or stumbled upon in some cases where they literally

08:40 plan to sort of fallen through the ground uh... these very deep caverns people oh and death valley which rather than being you know just regular normal caves in cabins that we will be needed one time or another they were reportedly filled with what appeared to be evidence of ancient civilizations in the u s that came along far beyond even the native american tribes and things like that For example, a number of these explorers and adventurers talked about coming across what seemed to be probably the closest thing you could imagine like a sunken ancient Roman or Egyptian city.

09:23 to the pillars and you know that's a great type pillars in buildings some of them of course in like a very ruined state but suggesting you know could there have been an ancient civilization that existed in united states possibly even tens and tens of thousands years ago that banished without a trace of the release remaining remnants of them uh... people talked about seeing for the money-fired figures in yes we will clothing and things like that uh... the big problem of course is not that the people themselves weren't credible or were named i mean actually point out in the book with all the paper made these claims it's on the record the problem is that they were very reticent to reveal the exact locations in death valley where they stumbled upon sort of alleged priceless underground realm if you like and i guess the main reason was you know they didn't want anybody else to debate them today

10:20 to get the secret out or plundering all the treasures that were down there. But what was interesting is these stories and the people themselves kind of literally vanished without a trace, which sort of led to speculation that maybe they went back there and got lost inside, got trapped, died... Or even some people think the survivors of these civilizations are still down there and don't want us to know. You stumble on their ground, you don't get out again unless you're really lucky so it's a lot of weird controversies like that concerning what might be going on not necessarily just on Death Valley but way below as well

11:00 Yeah, that is...that to me was the craziest story. And whenever I hear these a new story about like El Dorado or something? I'm like why aren't people searching for this stuff and I mean this is so close to my house it's like a trip to Vegas and uh..I mean are there any... You might be the person who finds it Well, I mean are there any modern expeditions that you know of? I feel like I should check this out Well, that's the interesting thing actually isn't but the biggest irony of all is when press conferences were held in Los Angeles in the 30s, when the people involved were talking about this they actually made an offer to let the local archaeological groups and scientific communities and universities send people along. And a lot of these scientists and archaeologists are very fearful of upsetting their own reputations like oh no we're not going to get involved with this and end up looking like idiots

11:53 each and every one of them actually refused the invite to come along so uh... they just didn't want to know so in other words that's been something that's typified many of these stories is that mainstream science historians They're far more worried about their reputations than they are stumbling upon something fantastic and so that's why there's been a big stumbling block, but nobody in the position of authority or You know importance has actually taken the time to look for these places. So yeah maybe 70 80 years later now it's the time to do it Yeah Now let me ask you this is kind of

12:31 Just a random question, but of all the crazy stories you've heard because I know you've heard a lot If you could finance any expedition just one for supposed treasure or mysterious finding and You could be the one who has that information. What expedition would you fund? Good question thought about Well, you know I mean...I actually think some of these things like Death Valley and El Dorado. And also talk in the book about similar stories that are applied to Mount Shasta in California where there were rumors of ancient civilizations like Lemuria and Atlantis supposedly surviving relics living again deep in the caverns at Mount Shasta. And I think these stories about underground realms and ancient civilizations

13:21 people. I think not only would it be a fantastic discovery from the perspective of what you might actually find in terms of sort of ancient weaponry, clothing, treasures that sort of thing. But equally the way in which it would rewrite history books as a species and civilization and I think also just for the fact that it would be great adventure to go on one of these treks so I think for me something along those lines you know a literal

13:57 Indiana Jones trek into the mysteries of the past and you know sort of climbing mountains and swinging through caverns And you know that sort of stuff would be a cool one to do. Of course So I believe you've actually said you've been to about 15 or so, the 25 spots in the book which do you? Yeah Well i was going to ask you which one You thought was the creepiest Or weirdest if somebody wanted To visit One and maybe come back with A good story Well, I think personally I would say one which is only sort of like a six or seven hours drive from where I used to live in Britain and that would be Loch Ness Scotland. Now when you think of Loch Ness everybody thinks of the Loch Ness Monster which in itself is weird enough but what makes Loch Ness

14:43 even stranger is the fact that it's been the site of numerous sort of paranormal and supernatural activity that goes far beyond Nessie, you know which is obviously a most famous story there. But over the years there have been just a massive amount of strangers for example back at the dawn in the 20th century sort of 100-110 year ago None other than the famous occultist Alastair Crowley actually had a house on the shores of Loch Ness called Boleskine House. And he engaged in a number of sort-of ancient occult rites and rituals to try and conjure up demons from the loch, and Boleskine House was later owned by Jimmy Page, the guitarist with Led Zeppelin. Even in the 70s, Page said that the house had this sort-of weird ominous atmosphere

15:32 but being the house itself is also a deep underground tunnel uh... which links to local cemetery which was and be sort of tunneled out area supposedly a safe haven for local which covered um... on top of that would be in number of ufo sightings over the lock i've been reports of large black panther type cats roaming around the boards that suits either side of the law In 1974, a well-known Loch Ness Monster hunter named Ted Holliday who actually came to believe that the Loch Ness Monster was supernatural rather than a flesh and blood animal. He claimed to have had a literal encounter with a man in black on the shores of The Loch.

16:16 You know, so you've got all this extra weirdness going on at Loch Ness that most people know absolutely nothing about. And there's also a ghost story from the Second World War where the British military plane crashed in the loch and all but one of the crew managed to survive and get out but there are reports of this one crewman where his ghost still haunts the waters in the beach area of the loch where the plane came down So...you know, you've got everything! You have the Loch Ness monster Alistair Crowley, occult rituals, UFOs and black cats. And a man in black, you know all the lock ranks. That's pretty weird in itself Of course yeah Pandora's box of weirdness You know one of my favorite places that made the cut and a very sexy mystery the Bermuda Triangle Obviously a lot of sea and aircrafts have gone missing there But I guess skeptics would just say well the ocean is fucking dangerous man but some vessels have had they've had even uh radio contact before disappearing right like that flight 19

17:18 Yeah, I mean this is the thing. I actually would agree with you and I do agree with the skeptics when they say if your going to go out on the oceans whether its in ships or aircrafts if your not sort of a skilled navigator people can become disoriented and confused but if you rely on your instruments and follow your compass and everything else There really isn't a problem. So in that sense, if you're stranded out there and you've just got no sort of technical technology to fall back on then you can be in big trouble but if you also have a skilled navigator or pilot or captain of the ship then you should be okay but the problem is that many people who travel through the Bermuda Triangle whether it's ships boats aircraft from large to small aircraft

18:07 They report things like massive compass malfunction where the compass has either just stopped working or they just spin wildly so that people are unable to differentiate between, you know, are they going north-east south west or around in circles. So that's a big problem and a number of people, this is where it gets very weird, are reported feeling mentally disoriented if their common sense factors have gone out the window. That kind of applies to the most famous case. of Flight 19, an entire flight of US Navy Avenger aircraft that disappeared in the Triangle in December 1945. This was like a whole fleet of aircraft and even one of the search planes that went looking for them vanished without trace as well but what was interesting is this particular unit of Avenger aircraft were based out in Florida

19:04 So they knew the area very well and so they headed from in Florida out into the Atlantic, which of course you know you head east um... out to be US mainland and they reported how the sky looked weird. The small islands that populated that particular area looked strange which in themselves were strange words and phrases to use but they didn't actually explain what they meant other than things did not look like they should but what was even stranger was if you had a way into the Atlantic east into the Atlantic Ocean and you're lost. All you've got to do is look at your compass, swing round and go west! In a short time you'll reach land again. You don't have to be Einstein to know that. If you're going east and you like going that way or you know you gotta go the opposite way just do a complete 180. They didn't even think to do that they just literally flew around in circles

20:03 their radio messages got weaker and weaker, and vanished one by one. Now people have said well maybe they ditched in the ocean? The problem is that no aircraft record was ever found, no bodies were found, there was even sort of no tell-tale oil slick or gasoline slick or anything like that from any of the aircraft, or even the chase plane that went after them for all intents and purposes They just literally all disappeared. So while I do admit that you have to be very careful when you're in the oceans, that case more than any other is a real sort of standout one in terms of containing all the aspects and these sort of classic encounters into the Bermuda Triangle. Do you think it's like a magnetic anomaly? Or do you think its like a doorway of some kind? Like an interdimensional portal or something?

20:54 Well, I kind of look at it from both angles really. There are stories where people have talked about flying through the Bermuda Triangle and suddenly going through this very weird and eerie looking green fog when their equipment starts to malfunction like compasses other navigation equipment and then they come through it and realize well you know, they've just been through the Buddha Triangle and survived it. But there are other stories where ships have vanished almost if they're being sucked down or something like that but one of the things that typifies many of these cases is we never find wreckage, we never find bodies so that has given rise to the idea

21:39 so-called portals and window areas which I talk about a lot in the book. For example, things today like quantum physics are allowing for the existence of extra dimensions or multi-dimensions that might coexist with ours and perhaps through deliberate means or possibly even natural means via science that we don't understand yet sometimes Perhaps our realm of reality crosses paths with other ones and something gets sucked through And then it's not able to get back again, you know and vice versa Maybe sometimes when we see weird creatures like Bigfoot that are here one minute and gone the next maybe they're doing exactly the same thing You know perhaps they sort of almost like dimension hopping. Yeah, it's kind of an anomalous place but

22:25 It does seem like one of the hotbeds for weirdness. I guess another really good one is North Wales and the Berwyn Mountains, there's a pretty crazy UFO crash story there! I'm surprised that one isn't more talked about it should be more famous in Roswell Well, the Berlin mountains are this huge and very ancient mountain range in North Wales. Even today the area itself hasn't changed much for centuries. It's populated by these classic little British villages where there is one pover graveyard and a bunch of cottages and things like that.

23:06 A lot of the villages are like something even today, straight out of The Hound of the Baskervilles or something like that. So it's a very atmospheric area sort-of steeped in ancient mystery and the Berwins are typified again by not just one mystery but several. Not too far from the foot of the mountain range is a lake called Lake Balla and Lake Balla has a light monster tradition attached to it not unlike that of the lot less monster and be whereas we create a lot message known as messy uh... like balance is called teddy and um... the story or the lots of stories as to what this creature or creatures might pay everything from what could join in

23:47 sort of mutated pike, possibly 12 to 13 feet long. Other people have suggested something like a freshwater crocodile Some people think it could be a totally unknown animal We just don't really know until or if we ever catch one of these things But on top of that, even the name Berwyn itself is sort of like a derivation from two words which essentially mean kingdom of the fairies. And that in itself is intriguing but the most famous mystery attached to the Berwyn Mountains occurred in January 1974 when local villages in the area reported seeing strange lights in the sky and then feeling

24:30 but sadly what the impact of something crashing onto the side of a mountain and because of this uh... emergency services came out to the british army um... and the royal airport sent planes up to fly over the mountain Land Rovers went up there and trucks full of troops, and a lot of stories about roads being cordoned off by the military preventing even the police from getting up there. The official story is that the British government and the Ministry of Defence don't actually avoid talking about land rovers. this event in January 74 but they say that the strange lights in the sky were meteors re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and that the presumed impact on the mountain was a localized earthquake. But if that was the case then it is very weird there should have been

25:23 reentry of meteorites right over the Berwins at the same time that there was an earthquake on the ground in the Berwins as well. It almost sounds too good to be true, and since that time a number of British military people have come forward to claim knowledge or personal involvement in the recovery of alien bodies and very strange wreckage from the mountainside that was whisked away in the south of England called Porton Down. Porton Down is a government establishment, highly secret facility where the government does all its research into things like exotic viruses and chemical warfare and biological warfare and stuff like that so if you want to autopsy an alien body where you worry it might contain hazardous viruses or something like that then Porton Down would be ideal place

26:11 to do the autopsy where there'll be a great deal of prevention of you know, contamination and leakage of virus viruses outside of the confines of being facilitated. And do you think there's an explanation for why certain places or people for that matter are prone to more paranormal experiences in sightings than other places? Well, again I think certainly in terms of places. I do personally believe it comes down to the idea of these window areas or gateways and you know two other realms of existence. I guess the simplest way to describe is driving down a road in your car

26:52 and you don't like the radio channel that's on so you flip to another, you don't like that one so you flip to another. And all these channels are going on at the same time but you can only be tuned into one at any given moment. That is kind of how quantum physics describes sort of multi-dimensions that they're all existing at one moment but we can only be in one and of course most of us if not all of us don't possess the technology to jump from one to the other. But maybe beings or creatures far more advanced than us can do that and perhaps that's why we see them sometimes in our realms

27:28 And maybe, again quantum physics or physicists I should say have speculated on the idea that some of these gateways occur naturally and randomly. So in other words you could be walking through an area of forest land and suddenly find yourself transported, as some people suggested to previous times or to a totally different world. And then 20 minutes later they're suddenly back in their own world wondering what on earth happened but you made sort of like a temporary transition to somewhere else through the natural action that nature. Then you were sort of tossed back into your own realm again. I guess there's also a lot

28:13 researchers that are coming to conclusions about Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster themselves, the actual entities that there might be a just a paranormal aspect to them rather than just bigfoot being an ape creature because it is so strange that in this densely populated world with all the technology we have we can't get a body. We can't get really good photographs but it would kind of explain things if they were some type of energy that were just you know some kinda timeless energy falling through these gateways of some kind. Well, yeah. I mean that's actually what a lot of people think and you know I go down that path which is more of a paranormal thing than just flesh and blood. A lot of mainstream cryptozoologists who look at these things disagree with me and that's fair enough and we'll never really know until or unless we get a body or not but right in the United States

29:13 So there are thousands and thousands of Bigfoot running around, reproducing living feeding. countless times seen running across roads and photographed, and people even trying to shoot them. We should have at least one body." And the fact that Bigfoot sort of typifies this kind of here one minute and gone the next type situation I actually do think you know there's something about this that goes far beyond it just being a snake that science and zoology haven't found yet. And i'm more inclined to think we are dealing with some sort transitory creature that does flit in and out of our reality. I don't pretend to know what its specific realm is, but if it can do it to order then that would probably suggest that these creatures may look savage and primitive but they would have to be fairly highly evolved you know? To be able to do that

30:06 But they say we're not able to do it. Yeah, that would be quite the M Night Shyamalan twist that something that looks exactly like what you'd consider a caveman is actually laughing at our technology and laughing at our advancement. Yeah I mean it may be but their technology's highly different You know perhaps there's a reliant more on the power of the mind whereas we have sort of more Reliance on the power of electricity or whatever you may be to that such an alternative energy or science, but We don't even you know. We've done it literally say yes And you also discuss in the book I guess there's a parallel to the Bermuda Triangle with the Japanese equivalent in The Devil's Sea What have you discovered about that?

30:52 Yes, the Devil's Sea is one of a number of places not unlike the Bermuda Triangle that exist around the world where there seems to have been far greater amounts and disappearances of ships, aircrafts, light planes boats. than they should be. And for that reason, it's become known as the Devil Sea. Now what's interesting about the Devil Sea which is not too far from off the coast of Tokyo... What's interesting about the Devil Sea is that whereas some stories in the Bermuda Triangle just go back for the most part at least two or three hundred years, the stories from the Devil Sea actually date back more than 1,000 years now

31:32 Japan has a long tradition in its folklore and mythology of stories of sea dragons. That's actually one reason why, in Japan, the Godzilla movies are so popular because they pay homage to these early dragons that have a staple part of Japanese folklore. Even 10, 11 centuries ago the area was perceived by the Japanese people that period as being very weird and ominous so there was something going on that was making all their ocean-going ships and galleons of that era vanish

32:08 At that time it was all put down to giant fiery dragons living under the oceans, and they would pull ships and sailors down to their deaths. Now unless somebody comes across the body of a dragon I think we can sort of relegate that to mythology but What we can't relegate to mythology is the idea or the fact in my view that the Japanese were using these stories of dragons, to try and explain a very real phenomenon. Namely, the real disappearance of ships under unexplained circumstances and that's important thing to remember

32:47 you know regardless of who or what was doing it the ships were vanishing the people were vanishing and And it predated the Bermuda Triangle stories by centuries, but parallels them very closely as well man It does definitely seem like there's some type of strange connection Have you tried to map any of these places like on? To see if they're in any kind of any kind of pattern or alignment comes up. I Well, I mean some people have done that and then they've said well it seems to be that you know they crisscrossed if you were to sort of draw like a straight line through the planet. Some of them crisscross and then skeptics have said well this is all dependent on where you kind of draw the line as to where this particular region

33:30 ends, you know. So it's...you're always going to have that argument but what I can say there are a number of places like this in the world For example, a book was written back in the 70s about how the entire Great Lakes area seemed to be almost identical in terms of ships and aircraft and people vanishing throughout the Great Lakes region of the US So, you know it could well be that there are a number of these regions that have been sort of underappreciated because people just think oh well its pilots and ships captains getting lost and then running low on fuel and sinking or ditching in the ocean. But it may actually not be if we look at these stories more carefully

34:12 One thing I liked about reading your book is you got places from all over, several that i haven't even heard of. But it does seem like there's a subtext in your book that other cultures, eastern cultures have more of a curiosity and reverence for their mysteries than the western world especially in the US. Would you say thats true? They seem to be more accepting Yeah, I think one of the reasons for that is because although the Western world is technologically more advanced The more technologically advanced you become, it's kind of like you not only become reliant on it but you take a step away from the more spiritual world. And when I say spiritual world I don't mean literally just Christianity or any particular religion what I mean is the idea that there are sort of other realms and alternative

35:05 Mysteries and things like that out there, we become very desensitized to more black-and-white. We rely on computers and TV and cars. you know, the radios and the internet. But we've kind of lost touch with the sort of magical earth energies and the fact that there are profound mysteries out there. And the more we forget about them underappreciate them or totally, a total lack of appreciation I think what happens is that we don't go looking for them, we apply less interest in them and it's almost like there's a karma type situation where the people who you know start to forget about these things and the existence of this phenomena. And they don't manifest for people yet those people are looking for them and have a deep interest in

35:58 they still experience these phenomena as if the phenomenon kind of gets its grips into the people who believe in them and those that don't believe in them. It's like, well screw you! Yeah One other thing... I had no idea that the Philippines had such a wide variety it seems like the biggest variety of cryptids of any place seems to be in Laguna. Tell us about some of those more interesting cases Yeah, but the Philippines has sort of long and rich folklore mythology probably more than anything else of cryptids. Sort of fantastic creatures and mysterious animals that science tells us doesn't exist or don't exist I should say And some of them you know there are parallels between some of the more famous monsters of the world like Bigfoot in The Abominable Snowman in a sense that the Philippines they have their own sort

36:53 a eerily, primitively human as well in some respects. So they have those but there are also reports of horrible mothman-type vampire type creatures if you like sort of predatory winged creatures with glowing eyes that terrorize the people of the Philippines at night and again they're typical vampiric type animals not the typical cloaked

37:29 Vampires that you have seen, old Bela Lugosi films or even the watered down rubbish like Twilight. These are more like flesh eating or blood drinking nightmares, bat winged glowing eyes gargoyle type creatures. They also have a lot of reports of goblin-type creatures and all around the world you find stories about so called little people, and the Philippines is no exception it has a lot of tales and traditions of sort of highly advanced trickster like little people that come out at night to plague and torment the locals

38:09 Well, there are some researchers who come to the conclusion that through time we're really dealing with some type of the same phenomenon that manifests itself in different ways over time whether it be fairies or leprechauns or you know even in more modern times UFOs and the greys. Do you make that connection as well? You think these are related Oh yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about that. When people think of fairies the image today we have is sort of little female characters with wings on their back flitting around Christmas trees and whatever you know? That's actually a creation only about the last 150-200 years prior to that time particularly in Britain fairies were perceived as

38:53 They were actually quite ominous characters that could be as friendly in play as they could be trickster-like and malevolent. They would describe more along the lines of small, wizened sort of goblin little people who would live in caves and caverns and come out at night to steal milk from animals or kidnap babies and terrorize people in their bedrooms And of course, this all fits in very closely with today's alien abduction stories. I mean the parallels are so close. For example in fairy lore men would often be taken to the fairy kingdom to mate with a fairy queen and create half-human half-faerie offspring which is

39:35 like a classic case today with the alien greys and making hybrid children you know when people were in the fairy kingdom when they came back they'd find two days had gone by, then they thought just two hours had gone by which is you know today's equivalent of missing time. Real time! Yeah, and you can have a UFO angle where people today have abductions they see UFOs. Back 400-500 years ago people talked about going into the woods and before the fairies would turn up they would see fairy lights in other words something unknown flying in the sky that was brightly lit and they would see these fairy rings on the ground which in retrospect sounds somewhat like crop circles

40:17 So I think one person's fairy or goblin is another person's alien. But where I take it a bit further than some other people, I actually wonder if the phenomenon kind of camouflages itself and manifests according to the beliefs and subconscious scenarios of the people that are here? So maybe you know that the phenomenon itself changes in In the way it presents itself for people. I mean literally, you know Maybe we've never seen in its real form but it kind of appears according to our preconceived perceptions of how these things should appear Definitely something I just thought about is even in The Disney universe Tinkerbell herself I mean she glows which is kind of odd and then when you see her flying around It looks just like the stories of the orbs that you see flying around You know

41:09 Oh yeah, I mean you can draw many parallels throughout history of countless cultures of the little people where the similarity between today's abductions. Only an idiot would ignore them but unfortunately a lot of abduction researchers do ignore them and they just don't want to... They think it is tainting their research if they were looking deeply they find actually would help in search for answers It is a shame. I run into that kind of a lot on this show with certain people come out of the woodwork and start telling me, oh you know you're having a psychic on? You believe in psychics it's like no interest doesn't necessarily mean belief it's just... we can look at it and at the end be like eh there's nothing there but why just ignore things yeah I mean that's an important thing I mean people say to me

42:03 well what do you believe in this or do you believe in that? And belief is a sort of very emotive term because none of us really should be believing in anything without proof. What we should be doing is investigating it and trying to the best our ability, to come to a conclusion and even if we can't come to a conclusion we should try and figure out based on the evidence that we do have what looks to be going on or what may be going on but to recognize a conclusion or theory and belief is different to hard fact. So, you know I'm convinced it's a genuine Bigfoot phenomenon there is no doubt about that but I don't believe its a giant ape anymore than I can say I believe fully that its interdimensional You know I conclude because there are reports of bigfoot vanishing in the flash of light or flitting out of our reality

42:56 The path to me suggests we go down that sort of portal or doorway type route, but that's very different from you know, believing that or having proof of it. You know we need to sort of stay grounded when we're dealing with controversies like this. Agreed and uh...you mentioned a minute ago like these winged creatures and there is another story again in California Devil's Gate Dam that crops up with Marvel Whiteside Parsons who followed Crowley and it seems like wherever these occultists go, so does some kind of weird creatures. I mean they could be... would you suggest maybe conjuring these things?

43:41 Well, I'm not sure if they're conjuring them or you know the whole thing with Crowley was that he was involved in a lot of rites and rituals to try and invoke these entities. But the important thing is that he wasn't so much invoking them from his subconscious sort-of creating something out of his mind then giving it substance in the real world He was a believer in the existence of sort of multi-layered realms and that if you knew how to do it, you could invoke them into our reality. So I think there's a good chance that a skilled occultist using some of these ancient teachings which the ancient man knew great deal more about than we do

44:25 I I want to Open these doors and let things through. You know, it's like sometimes everything just goes to shit in their lives you know? It's like they're being hit by this total negative atmosphere where you know it just runs a bad luck physical health problems mental health problems you know just disaster upon disaster the refrigerator stops working you know the washing machine goes out

45:26 It's all at one time as if you know a total air of negativity created by this being is Has descended on you for daring to sort of disturb its slumber or whatever, you know Yeah I hear that all the time. But also another thing I know You don't do a lot of work on the you know Illuminati your global elite but you always hear stories that They're doing you know satanic rituals and stuff too, and it's such a weird thing because it's like they seem to be doing okay Well again I think you know depends. I actually do believe there's something to the idea that what you go looking for is

46:04 you actually get. People are gathering with Ouija boards, and I think it's cool on a Friday night to get a bunch of beer in and let's try to contact your grandmother or whatever. Joking aside there is evidence that this actually works but sometimes sort of like an entity or a very negative thing that sort of manifests, or you know pretends to be something it's not. In other words, it is not the real thing you think your calling true but also people like Crowley they recognize Crowley wasn't a dabbler he was a very skilled occultist who knew the hazards

46:46 What happens if you go looking for these things and he even, you know is very careful as to the type that he went looking for the type that he felt could benefit him because he knew there were those that you know, were negative and would only end in disaster. And of course maybe that's with some of these conspiratorial groups and political organizations that do this sort of thing where they actually don't do it randomly they focus on the ones that they think are going to give them health wealth and power or whatever rather than There's some supernatural powers if you like which is the sort of thing that Crowley was looking for and he comes up Alistair Crowley comes in to open a couple of your books and I Feel like we could do a whole show just on him. He's so fascinating, but do you know like how he got into it? What kind of guy was he because he seems somewhat like kinda evil But I mean he was also famous right? Oh

47:44 Yeah, I mean I wouldn't say it was evil. That's more the sort of simplistic image people have. You know if you dabble in the occult, you know people think that you're slaughtering babies at midnight on Halloween or something! You know what I mean? Which isn't true at all. Crowley's view was that there are other realms beyond ours inhabited by magical fantastic creatures which you can almost do like a deal with, you know in return for offering them something or doing something to them. You can be sort of honored with as I said wealth power and whatever he wants now so that was sort of very much his approach it wasn't conjuring up demons to kill people you know it was opening doorways to try and

48:32 do deals with these powerful entities and enrich his own life, if you like. But what's interesting from a psychological perspective when you ask how did he get involved? He actually grew up in very strict orthodox normal religious background where his father was a very domineering religious character and he rebelled against that So you could argue, there's actually a bit of a psychological thing going on. You know sort of the typical teenage rebellion against dad. Yeah to an extreme! Where most people... yeah where most people wear a Sex Pistols t-shirt and get your nose pierced and dye your hair green. Amen! He went... yeah amen exactly! Instead of doing that he went down the other path

49:19 you know, sort of dabbling with rigid boards but literally immersing himself massively in sort of ancient books and poring over them for months and years at a time. And some of these rituals he engaged in I mean they were like weeks long! I mean literally not sort of Friday night with a few beers, you know? I mean literally where he would go on starvation mode living on you know, the smallest amounts of food and water possible to purify his mind and body and get himself in trance-like states caused by almost like near starvation. To enter into some sort of interaction with these beings." Yeah he's such a strange guy I mean probably the most interesting story is his

50:05 I don't know if it would be channeling or his communication with the entity Lamb. Do you think there's any validity to that story? Oh yeah, i mean if you look at lamb today retrospectively looks almost like a creature on the front of Whitley Strieber's communion although its got eyeballs and pupils but if you just painted in those eyes that are totally black There's really no difference. It has this large bald head, these penetrating eyes and a little thin nose and mouth. A huge head sitting on these tiny shoulders that looks like one of todays greys but this was conjured up before 1920. This is 1918 or 1919. Again I don't think there is any doubt

50:50 that what Crowley conjured up is what today passes for the greys. I don't believe that the greys, whatever they are, are literal aliens coming in with nuts and bolts craft. They're far stranger possibly rather than being alien in the sense of being extraterrestrial, I think they're more likely alien in the sense of being interdimensional and maybe they come through when they want to but maybe you know if power of mind we go looking for them. They know their radar kind of goes off when they know someone's looking for them and maybe they manifest like channeling a lot of people sort of look down on channeling but I think with the idea that you get yourself into an altered state

51:38 It's like something sparks off, like a radar or red light flashes at the end in simple terms and then they appear if they choose to. I think that is what happened with Crowley. Like the Strieber books, you know? A lot of people haven't read them because it is just straightforward stories of abduction. If you read Communion, that is as much about magic and right and which ought to, you know sort of try and get these things to appear in synchronicities and all sorts of weird stuff. I think that's why there was a lot of backlash against Strava because a lot of people knew

52:14 thought they were going to get a story of alien abduction, you know eggs and sperm DNA taken lots of alien scientists but you know you really had something that was for me far better and more open-minded indeed the alternative in terms of looking for answers. But you know we have mythological old school I don't want to hear about it you now that's what you're up against unfortunately Well, when you think about Lamb do like I mean because there is a you know A drawing a representation of him was this something that came from Crowley's mind or do you think like there was a

52:53 You know like did it was it a holographic representation or well? I mean, it's difficult to say because When people get into these altered states you know whether it's through just trans Repeated meditation or whether it's you know through something like masculine or LSD. You know the big question is are People seeing something that manifests in in our world or are they seeing something that manifests, that is real and external but manifest within the human mind? You know these are the big questions and I don't think even today with all the research that's been done we can be fully clear. The idea with alien abductions they often happen to people when they're sleeping in bed. In other words they occur in the dream state now skeptics will say well that means it was just a dream

53:47 the our dream state and so they can hop from that to ours. So what appears to be a real experience or very vivid dream actually is something that's really being played out in our mind but in a way, in a fashion so fantastic that it's almost impossible to believe it could occur, you know. That the dream state itself is a type of reality but that's quite right to describe would be something like The Matrix, you know? A totally real looking environment that doesn't exist

54:36 Well, and also not only dream states but psychedelic states. I mean myself...I've had one experience—I talk about it every so often on the show—but it is just one of those things that's hard to explain if you had to be there kind of story. But, I mean, on Salvia experienced a male and female entity was all nothing I could visualize but just like us sensed presence Long story short, the dialogue was essentially this male presence that was like yeah man I'm glad you're here. It's super cool that we were able to communicate with you and then there was a female presence that was more cynical that was like he is not going to stay here stop! He isn't going to get here leave him alone and then it was over and that has happened a couple of times and its reported all the time. There is something about the psychedelic state and dream state any altered states seems to be a connection between them

55:31 Yeah, I mean the thing with psychedelics is that people say well it's just an experience where the mind hallucinates but I actually don't think that is the case. When you talk about having a positive and negative in your experience, I mean the whole thing with psychedelics you know, the setting is as important as the mood. You know? The mind frame is important. It's like if you're having a first time trip on LSD and your scared stiff that it's all going to go wrong or your heart's going to beat wildly and cause a stroke then I can't but guarantee what you experience in that state each

56:10 it's probably going to be pretty negative. If you go in open-minded and thinking this is going to transform me and elevate me, that's usually what happens is a positive experience so again I think this demonstrates this whole issue of the phenomena reacting to it according to the mindset of the person, you know kind of like that karma thing that you'll get what you ask for in life. You know if you're the sort of person who sees a glass is always half empty it's going to stay off empty when he sees his half full it magically fills its way up! And I do think psychedelics

56:48 do open portals to other realms. I actually do think some of these realms, maybe all of them are like a matrix style dream world that we can insert ourselves in. It's kind of like we're an addition to the program and we can be loaded onto the mainframe or whatever you know, downloaded onto the hard drive briefly and then was sucked back into our body afterwards. And psychedelics I think are the equivalent of sticking a thumb drive into the side of your laptop and downloading it. The change in mind is the same as

57:26 putting a new JPEG onto your computer or whatever. It's adding something to the memory or whatever. Yeah, that's a great analogy! Have you yourself ever had any paranormal psychedelic experiences? Well the closest I can think of in terms of what I've just been speaking about is that we had a very sort-of weird sleep paralysis type experience about ten years ago. And this was actually when I was doing like trance meditation stuff and it's Sleep One Night, this is 2002 or 2003 something like that so nine to ten years ago and you know sleep paralysis is the situation where people

58:07 You know kind of semi-awake in the middle of the night, can't move and they feel this hostile often hostile presence coming towards them. Or often you know it sort of straddles them in bed. It's kinda like the incubus succubus situation or Canada they have a very prevalent legend of the old hag old woman that comes in your bedroom and straddles you in the middle of the night, which probably would be pretty frightening. The one I had was like a bipedal figure, like a man-like figure with a cloak and cowl but with a wolf's face so almost definitive

58:48 It was making this growling noise but it didn't sound like a random growl, although I couldn't obviously understand what it was. For some reason I knew that it was like an animalistic language is the best way to describe it rather than just random growling like your dog might do you know? And I could sense it sort of coming down the corridor towards the bedroom and I was living in a duplex at the time so all were on one side of the corridor. You know, they'll run down the length of the corridor and I had sort of this graphic image of this thing coming towards the room and making these rapid growling noise And that can make sort of a supreme effort to wake up and as i did you know that sort of vague imagery of it sort of retreating and charging out the room and just sort of dissipated if you like So uh... That was a pretty

59:37 pretty weird and traumatic experience. And then afterwards I did sort of a lot of cleansing stuff in the house with things like sage, and something happened once after yeah so like a shadowy thing looming over me in bed again and I did this cleansing stuff again and eventually you know it was like the darkness was lifted so to speak you know not the sun coming up kind It's kind of like you met a modern Anubis or something. That is wild! Yeah, that's actually good way to describe it actually. What I didn't see though was sort of the Anubis got these huge ears and the cowl, the hood looked like what you'd see on a normal person with no points sticking through so that's actually a good point but I never gave it thought before there wasn't sort of a huge ears just like the long snout and growling which created that werewolf type imagery if

1:00:29 Man, that is a wild one. I love the stories of Crowley but is there anyone in more modern times that you would consider kind of the head of this field? A modern day Crowley? Well, not so much in terms of what he did but in terms of realizing that altered states can invoke interaction with other entities. I mean Dr. Rich Strassman's book The Spirit Molecule which talks about how DMT can open doors to what don't just seem like hallucinations but sound very much like

1:01:08 Advanced entities from somewhere else that again, you know we can altered states of mind allow us access to their realms the DMT Study that Strassman did and wrote up in his book The Spirit Molecule That's a very good study of how you know rituals and altered states can alter people's minds also I mean there's a number of other people whose work you know Adam Gell-Wrightley, he's written a number of books. He was my guest three days ago! Funny! Oh cool! Well Adam is good guy and friend of mine and you know he has written about

1:01:47 things like how altered states and doorways being opened by people like Parsons and Crowley, letting these things through to our realm. I think people like that who recognize that there's more to this world than we see but In simple terms, getting out of it actually allows you into it. Getting back to The World's Weirdest Places what is your favorite story from the book that we might not have touched on? It is jam-packed full of stories like that's what I love about really all your books as you just keep going

1:02:30 Well actually I think probably the stories from Halifax, Nova Scotia which are so varied. I mean this little town in Nova Scotia where there have been sightings of sea serpents off the coast and massive amounts of ghostly activity through to this very day particularly in a local restaurant in town called The Five Fishermen which used to be a mortuary and where a lot of the bodies from the Titanic were taken after that sunk in 1912, and even massive amounts of UFO activity over town. So I think for me Halifax is probably my favourite because the mysteries are so drastically different between each other. You've got the Titanic's ghosts, you've got these monstrous sea serpents

1:03:15 surfacing from the waves and then reported alien activity right over the town itself. Yeah, variety is a spice of life's what they say you know? Exactly! Are there any places you looked into that didn't make the cut like what would be your 26th location? Well there were some that I could have included, but the reason why I didn't was because I couldn�t add anything new. For example the most famous one would have been Point Pleasant where the Mothman appeared in the 60s and John Keel wrote all about this in Mothman Prophecies Any chronicle, the Mothman reports, UFO activity, poltergeist contact cases. Many black reports and of course the collapse of the Silver Bridge in town which spanned the Ohio River and killed

1:04:03 all these people and they drowned, you know the cars just fell into the river. I mean that's a typical and perfect example but i didn't include it because i literally could not add anything new to the story right so like with the Bermuda Triangle um and Loch Ness you know included those they're very well known but most people didn't know about the Crowley Angle or The Big Black Cat or The Man in Black Angle to Loch Ness now including a lot of new cases with the Bermuda Triangle. So in other words, if I could add something new...I would include it but there were a lot of cases that i could have used as I said Lightpoint Pleasant and like the Skinwalker Ranch you know this famous ranch that's um is kind of not on light point pleasant but again it's like we've got nothing new to say and you know expecting people to buy your books you've gotta get something news now they're just going over old grounds

1:04:59 I'm so glad you did that because it does make the book a much more fascinating read than just flipping the page and be like, oh Egypt. Okay Let's read the bullet points we've done before You know, so that's it is an awesome book definitely belongs on anybody's coffee table Yeah, no problem but uh That pretty much doesn't you know? That brings us to the top of the hour Nick You're a real savage probably one of the hardest working journalists in the parent home around um well Well, I guess it's one of these things where luckily you know there is plenty to research and write about. You never stop for things True! And i mean this book just dropped like two months ago but are you taking a break? Are you working on anything else? What next?

1:05:41 it's actually uh... no brakes sure who you've called monster diary and uh... lately most of my so-called technology studies um... you know i wrote them up sort of road trip style you know uh... hit the road and go ahead looking at a thing that's a chronicling to try did it and uh... anomalous book support had a book from me before the end of the year uh... cold monster diary basically like a road trip for the last three years of I've done looking for werewolves, bigfoot, lake monsters, big cats and just about anything and everything monstrous. So I don't actually have the literal exact release date yet but it probably will be in the next couple of weeks something like that. Nice! Very cool.

1:06:26 Was there anything else you'd like to leave the people with I mean, I know your website actually Nick Redfern calm That is a website but it doesn't seem to get updated all that much. Is there somewhere? No, yeah Actually people don't really look that although it's in my name. It's not my side He was put together years ago by a fan. Oh Makes sense Yeah, they did it and then they vanished. So unfortunately I have no way to get into that site. They didn't even have the common courtesy to drop you the domain name? No, but I don't know the password or anything because I don't own it. You know, I've got legal... way to get into it. But people think that is mine and they're always like, why don't you update your website? I'm glad somebody did it but its just a shame that it didn't go any further. I have a blog which I update pretty much daily which is mickredfern40an.blogspot.com. As I said I update that pretty much daily with everything from UFOs, Bigfoot conspiracies

1:07:29 what shows I'm doing, you know TV stuff or whatever. People will also get me on Facebook and Twitter as well. Very cool! Well thanks again Nick for coming back great talk. I'll call you about that Death Valley expedition. Alright cool! All right man hey thanks a lot good luck in exploring the infinite abyss. Thanks Greg! Have a good one! Wow, there it is people. Nick Redfern the Pimp of Pimps I gotta say thanks to everyone who listened and shared the show through Twitter and Facebook It's happening more and more That keeps this show growing that makes me happy Thank you Please vote for THC every day until November 15th at The Podcast Awards podcastawards.com The link is right below this goddamn show Just click on it Means more than a donation or buying a shirt Although I do appreciate those things too

1:08:23 Please go to conspirites.net for all your conspiracy clothing needs, the Hireside Chats logo shirt is on there The Pyramid Builders shirt, the Quit Your Job Shirt All of the highest quality because I don't fuck around What you're hearing now is a little song called Lucky Dice by a band called Dreamers Sal from the band sent me this song Got a couple conspirities We talked about the pyramids Bada boom bada bing Check out their music and I'll see you next week with something that might be the coolest fucking thing ever. But we gotta see if it pops off, alright peace!

1:09:39 And the shapes, and colors and the faces To steer into the balance of existence A flying device that flew through gravity Take a look what we used to be A picture perfect melody A body that felt fiber and aspirin Body that arms would create

1:10:18 inside the explosions that are made to destroy hate. Destroy hate. There's a prize you're fighting, not your soul. You travel through holes in the darkness of space. I'm mankind and I'm a-