THC 65: Nick Redfern Interview | Monster Files

00:04 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 we're far from 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration We offer a fresh conversation! I'm Greg Carlwood These are The Hireside Chats How's it going, Hireside Chatters? I'm Greg Carlwood and it's another lovely sunny San Diego day. A wonderful day in the neighborhood a wonderful day for a neighbor perfect for smoking weed and drinking beers which is what I'm doing because I show patterns of self-destructive behavior...and that's just my style

00:53 In fact, I don't usually tell personal stories much on THC but earlier in the week I was having a particularly bad day and said to my lovely lady Therese that all I needed now is a run with the cops to top off my string of shit luck. And she would tell you that I manifested that reality with those words, but i would tell you That's an interesting idea But cops are pretty reliable for fucking up my life and what made this stop particularly interesting. And maybe The universe does have a message for me with this one but on my drive home from work I see a car pulled over on the shoulder up ahead. I instantly slow down to the speed limit. I get closer I see that it is in fact a cop his car doors open he's walking around the car no big deal as I pass him

01:35 He's just about to sit in the driver seat and we fucking lock eyes. And I instantly had the feeling of, oh shit this guy is definitely gunning for me. I'm kind of fucked And sure enough, he pulls me over and I had no idea what he could possibly have on me. I was completely shocked Motherfucker walks up to my window says he clocked me at 81. I say that's not possible! I wasn't speeding and i don't think you could've clocked me from outside the car Well... He doesn't like MY LIP So he tells me sit on my hands on the side of road while he searches my car but didn't find anything This is a fairly typical stop, but it just pissed me off because he did not clock me for speeding But he wanted to stop me Because I looked at him and he just threw out a reasonable number and wrote me a fucking ticket well What the fuck this is not a place. I want to live anymore people

05:43 And our guest today, Nick Redfern is no stranger to UFO conspiracy and cryptozoology research. He's been peeking behind the curtain for almost 20 years now. He has written many great books including The NASA Conspiracies, The Real Men in Black and Body Snatchers in the Desert. In his new book Monster Files a look inside government secrets and classified documents on bizarre creatures and extraordinary animals is no different where the weirdness flows is where the redfern goes and completing the circuit in his third appearance in the show creating a trifecta of awesomeness and the holy trinity that the good book describes here he is nick redfern how are you hey greg doing good thanks how's it going

06:21 It's going well, man. Couldn't be better you know? The first time we talked it was sort of an overview of a lot your work but I think the biggest focus was The Pyramid and the Pentagon on episode 25 which is a great book about government files pertaining to seeking out ancient relics Noah's Ark similar things like that And it was awesome because it showed that the government has taken something seriously that would probably surprise a lot of people, which is sort of the same case on a different subject in Monster Files. Right? Yeah well Monster Files is probably on my most favorite subject and area of investigation. That's cryptozoology which is the study

06:59 unknown animals like bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Chupacabra, Abominable Snowman Sea Serpents and so on. And I've written about seven or eight books over the years on various aspects of cryptozoology most of the book sort of written in diary road trip style just following me on the expeditions but monster files is significantly different because it deals with an aspect of cryptozoology that not only does it not get really much coverage Most people probably aren't even aware it exists and that is the way in which, how and for how long government agencies all around the world have secretly taken interest in strange creatures and put together files on them, investigated them. In some cases, in weird fashion they've created them as well.

07:48 Yeah, you know it's funny. You mentioned creating them because the one I really liked mainly because it might have cracked the case on It was the flatwoods monster You know which I always thought was one of the most unique creatures out there that people would describe seen but I mean you want to start off with that story and the connection you made too maybe a practical answer Yes, sure. The Flatwoods monster is a creature that goes back to September 1952 and the little town of Flatwoods in West Virginia. And I say little town because even today the population is still only in the 400's and back in 52 when this occurred it was just in the 300's so hasn't really grown much at all. It's sort of very rural wooded farm type area

08:35 Throughout the summer and the late summer of 1952, there was a huge wave of UFO activity all across the United States. One of the strangest events occurred in Flatwoods in September and a number of people in town reported after the sun was going down and darkness was setting they saw this strange object sort of shoot across the sky and it seemed to land or come down at least in a large area which was dominated by mountainous hill and forestland. A number of the townsfolk went out there to try and figure out what it was, and they came across these sorts of strange eerie fog and heard strange noises coming out of the woods

09:23 unusual illumination in the background, so clearly something strange was going on. But that made it even more strange and frightening for the people because this huge thing came clambering or lumbering out of the woods and it was described as being about 12 feet tall but unlike a hairy bigfoot creature It was described as being like a mechanical monster in some fashion, which kind of sounds bizarre but it sort of befits that period of the 1950s you know when we had all those weird sci-fi movies coming out with robots and things. But it was described about 12 feet tall, humanoid

10:02 It had all these weird flashes and sparks and bangs coming off it that gave a monstrous angle but a robotic angle as well. Not surprisingly, everybody sort of fled for their lives down the hill and it was never seen again! And he was one of these cases where you had almost like a unique creature It didn't surface before and never surfaced afterwards either. One of the things I was doing research on in the book is this whole angle, actually for other chapters in the book on how government agencies have used psychological warfare programs to create myths of monsters who fight the enemy

10:41 In doing this, I got hold of a RAND document which had been prepared for the US Air Force in 1950. It was a document that talked about how RAND had prepared all these data for the US Air Force on how psychological warfare could be used from the perspective of using mythology and folklore to defeat enemies rather than you know just guns and missiles or whatever. And in this particular file there's a reference to how during the Second World War, the British Army created this thing that sounds eerily like the Flatwoods Monster it was described as being exactly the same height 12 feet tall and it was like a robotic thing that had all these wires and lights

11:24 all over it which could be sort of lit up and sparks and arcs coming off it to give this effect of something monstrous if you like. What the British Army did, they sort of unleashed in around the fringes of little towns in Italy during the Second World War where Italians were helping Germans so the idea was They sort of briefly released this thing or sort of told it, you know remotely controlled it and the plan was then to tell the villagers well this is like a visit from some sort of satanic creature basically cursing you for helping the Germans.

12:04 A lot of these isolated little Italian villages worked. Of course, during the 1950s and 1952 there were no Italian or German spies running around Flatwoods so you have to wonder what's the motivation if this was an outgrowth The British psychological warfare thing of the 40s and you have to look at these similarities. As I said, the height of the creature is the same but they both gave off these weird sparks and arcs and electric static and things like this. They were both seen in little isolated towns The British Army program was a psychological warfare based one and the reference to it turns up in the US Air Force Psychological Warfare document. And the US Air Force was heavily interested in what people were saying about the Flatwood's case, so you have all these tangents and ties

12:58 And my speculation actually allows for like a real genuine UFO phenomenon and possibly for manipulation using a created thing at Flatwoods. I'll explain what I mean by that, it's pretty clear when you read the files that have surfaced through the Freedom of Information Act on what was going on in 1952, the elements of the military and intelligence community realized there was a real UFO phenomenon that they didn't understand. Some of these documents talk about how might the general public react in event to the real UFO invasion or if they showed themselves sort of en masse across the planet? How would people react?

13:41 well they had no way of knowing because the UFO phenomenon, they couldn't predict how it would act. It was almost like ghostly here what's going to happen next. So I kind of wonder if they may have sort of set up an event in Flatwoods and then secretly watch it, monitor the response to see how people reacted because that would give them an ability to gauge how the reaction might occur in a real life situation with the phenomenon. In other words, you can't predict the phenomenon is going is going to appear and you can't predict how people react, why not stage an event because that would give you a similar outcome so-to speak. The very fact that everybody at Flatwoods sort of fled for their lives screaming for their

14:26 may well have given the military an idea of, well now we know what to expect in the real world when it really happens. So I actually think there is a real phenomenon but at times things like this have been done to try and determine again how myths can be used or what the reaction and result is on people who are exposed to them Yeah, I mean...I thought that was really interesting because- I'm sure you've heard about the stories of Project Bluebeam where the government has supposedly entertained the idea of creating a holographic alien invasion or like a second coming of Christ over Cuba or something like that. But I mean that story is kind of right in the same wheelhouse

15:06 Bear in mind we're talking about 60 years ago. Today, the technology would be much greater but what I do find interesting is that both in the Second World War thing and this one from Flatwoods it was described as a relatively unsophisticated sort of clambering, sparking thing. Almost like the robot out Forbidden Planet or something like that! So you can imagine maybe back then they could have put something like that together but something far more expansive today like sophisticated holograms just weren't around then. Yeah I mean if you saw that Tupac thing and they've got some serious technology...

15:48 But there's a couple tales like that in Monster Files where government agencies either made or hyped up rumors of strange creatures or vampire-like beasts, but are there any stories in the book that you find particularly interesting that lead in the direction of involving a real unknown creature? Yeah, I mean for me one of the big areas of interest is Bigfoot but whereas most cryptozoologists just take the view that you know Bigfoot is the North American equivalent to like an African gorilla. I think there's more to Bigfoot. It may well be a flesh and blood creature but it is far stranger than just an unknown ape roaming the US. There are lot of cases for example where Bigfoot has been seen at the same time frame and location as UFO activity

16:39 People have reported sort of strange visions after seeing Bigfoot or having visits from men in black type characters and things like that. Now, certainly these cases aren't anywhere near the majority reports but they are sort five, six, seven or eight percent of the total which is still a significant amount. What I find interesting is that although we're not seeing government or military interest in every Bigfoot report under the sun what we are seeing is that many of these cases of high strangeness government people do pop up and take an interest for example

17:17 In the book, I talk about Stan Gordon a researcher who back in early to mid 70s investigated the wave of Bigfoot type activity in Pennsylvania where Stan still lives to this day. And in these particular cases they were highly and repeatedly associated with UFO activity and stamina number witnesses he was aware of all got visited by government people but not a lot of sinister m i'd be sense that basically quietly saying how you know we're interested in these reports can you keep us informed you know which is it itself was kind of weird but let's talk about

17:56 you cases like that in the book where this there's deep military interest and there's been a subsequent cover-up put into place annexed bigfoot what do you know if these creatures were just north american apes at science hadn't found why place it under a cover up you know it what he could be as illogical revelation would be something affecting national security unless they're a bit of a raspect to it Yeah, I mean sometimes wonder the same thing like if some of these weirder creatures Like Mothman or shadow people they might be some type of multi-dimensional manifestation maybe from conjurers like Aleister Crowley Or that Michael Aquino guy because they don't always seem like flesh and blood creatures. I mean even Bigfoot There's some stories that people can't shoot it

18:43 Yeah, I mean this is actually one of my big areas of interest and I do believe that either these creatures sort of zipping in out to our reality you know sort of multi-dimensions that kind of thing or when I say all it could be either or both they could be some sort of like a tulpa type thing. A Tulpa is like a thought form where the human mind can create something and then externalize it and it has some sort it's own independent quite a reality i think you know that supposedly spade on high states of human emotion to sustain them and so you know the the whole point is these things would have to be seen today in a lab at a sort of play try the emotion from from the witness and if they could actually one of the fears it's been applied to bit about topic but for the many black mystery you know the same black

19:33 often come across not like government agents in the films, you know these creepy weird little ghoulish vampire type characters you know and witnesses often talk about feeling hypnotized and drained of energy almost like a diabetic. You know if they missed a meal and they started to crash or something they feel like that and I've actually said they felt drained so a lot of people are sort of coming around to the idea now maybe the MIB fear in the witness, not because they're actually threatening them but it's like a fake threat. But the idea is to create fear which they then feed on and then maybe creatures like Bigfoot do exactly the same. They're almost like emotional vampires if you like.

20:19 That is a super interesting topic. It's just so hard to know You know one of the first weird things in the world that I was drawn to as a young kid I was glad to see in your book as tales of the Loch Ness Monster, you know it seems much juicier to me than Bigfoot because I used to love dinosaurs always wanted to believe that it was real But it seems to have faded out quite a lot in recent years, and yes there's still no smoking gun but you have discovered some files that show that many government agencies have looked into Nessie and have failed to find an explanation for some of the footage they've studied which has kind of restored my hope.

20:55 Good. Well, yeah I mean Loch Ness you know it's a large body of water it's like 22 miles long about a mile wide and at its deepest point officially around about 800 feet but there are stories about sort of cavernous areas and tunnels below that might take it conceivably below like 1000 feet deep so very large body of water now of course if the creatures of Loch Ness are fish or some sort of creature that doesn't need to surface for air, then we probably wouldnít see them very often. Just by chance when they decided to surface for who knows what reason but primarily if theyíre living exclusively under the water there probably wouldnít be that many sightings and because Loch Ness is far more busier than it was decades ago with boats and traffic

21:43 going from one side of the lake, the lock to the other then it might sort of have led these creatures to stay in their deeper depths almost exclusively now. But regardless of you know there's sort of a change in trends and sightings or whatever I did get hold of a number files on the Loch Ness Monster that are being put together by various British government agencies One of them was a group in the 1960s called JERIC which stands for Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Center. These are the people kind of like the British equivalents, like in the US where if there's rumors about a new missile base being built in China they sent a high-flying spy plane over years ago or today like a spy satellite and photograph it

22:30 and then the photographs are sent back to military experts who can analyze photographs and determine does this show a new aircraft hangar, those missiles etc. Thatís what Jarrick Jobs was ñ to sort of look at spy photographs of overseas potentially hostile military installations and determine what they showed. But in the mid-1960s, Jarrick set up like an in house little project to study film footage and photographs nothing less than the Loch Ness Monster

23:06 And what was interesting, bearing in mind the caliber of the people working for the group. In a good percentage of all the imagery they looked at, they ruled out things like logs falling into the lock or rotting trees sort of surfacing when you know that gas levels change and just breaking the surface. things like wave formations or shadows or rowing boats and in many cases said that what they were looking at appeared to be independent intelligent entities, creatures. And in some cases they could see shadows that seemed to suggest

23:44 whatever was on the surface, was actually only a small portion and they could make out vague evidence of what looked like the larger part of the creature below the water. So that in itself is significant for several reasons. One it demonstrates that footage and photographs can be vindicated and number two the people doing the analysis with the best people you could ask for within the u k you know that they were military experts just solely focused on that failed now the next files that i am got hold of premature dated from the nineteen eighties and jimmy uh... when at margaret thatcher was the prime minister of the government had this plan almost like a hair braiding plant to train dolphins

24:30 to swim in Loch Ness and try and find the Loch Ness monsters. The idea was to have the dolphins strapped with cameras, sonar equipment which could be triggered remotely in case they came across one of these creatures. But not much thought seems to have been given to the idea of how they would actually teach the dolphins to chase the monsters when nobody had actually got an example of a monster to show them. So that was a problem, but another one that not much thought was given too is what happens if there's a confrontation between the monsters and dolphins? Is it going to end in bloodbath? And then the other thing is well when it's all over how do we encourage the dolphins

25:15 to come back to shore and you know put the panic i can get them out of the lock again so it all of these different aspects that eventually led the government to drop a plan but what's interesting is that you know we've been sacred for a few years babies ideas sort of nurtured and built upon and a lot of thought went into its but uh... as i said sometimes you have these projects go ahead other times they just sort of relegated to yes i'm dusty shelf because they were just too weird to work, I guess.

25:59 Well, I mean if these creatures are some sort of fish. The plesiosaur is an interesting angle. Plesiosaurs were marine reptiles that existed during the dinosaur era but they were largely or exclusively as far as we know saltwater creatures because they lived in the oceans whereas Loch Ness is freshwater however some animals that can adapt. For example, you have saltwater crocodiles and fresh water crocodiles but it may well be the case that if these things are presumed extinct animals they might actually really become extinct before we prove what they are and we'll never know but I'm not sort of

26:44 Too worried about the fact that we haven't found a corpse because if these things exclusively or almost exclusively live in the water, although there are one or two land reports then they're going to die in the water and nature is going to take care of them. The smaller fish are going to eat them and so on. That's how nature works. So that doesn't surprise me as such you know but they would just sink to the bottom and rot or get eaten There are a lot of other interesting theories as well, things like giant eels – sort of 30 to 40 foot giant eel which I guess by definition would still be a monster. Or the other theory that's being given is something like a giant salamander. Salamanders can grow up to 6 or 7 feet but you know a thirty-footer would still be sort of monstrous creature.

27:34 I'm not sort of tied to the idea that it's nothing or it's a plesiosaur. I think there are other scenarios and I do really believe that they have been, and maybe still are strange creatures in the loch but lot of people don't realize that Loch Ness is actually connected to the Atlantic Ocean by the Caledonian Canal you go through like a series of locks and gates like on regular canal so what this means today you have an incredible amount traffic on Loch Ness and not just little rowing boats but huge boats that are going to cross the Atlantic. So, you know if these creatures are there and they're not stupid they're going to realize that days and centuries decades ago when Loch Nes was relatively quiet have long gone so they may just simply stay down in deeper depths it may not be extinct

28:26 They just don't surface much because Loch Ness is like, you know the local highway or whatever now. You know? Man it's a fascinating case but what's also very intriguing that I found in your book is several accounts of government files you've uncovered that detail some pretty conventional animals involved in some pretty unconventional experiments and programs. Do you want to tell us about a couple of those? One of the strangest ones I talk about in the book is a CIA program that became known as Acoustic Kitty. This is a project from the 1960's and it sounds almost like an animal equivalent to The Six Million Dollar Man or something along those lines,

29:06 Terminator or Robocop, the idea was to try and take regular cats like house cats and pet cats and insert them and wire them up with sort of like transmitting equipment and radar antennae and things like that. and the idea was it sounds totally far-fetched until we you realize you know that files now starting to surface through the freedom information act so i've actually quite heavily redacted but you know we have got a few which which confirmed the existence of the project and the idea was to have these cats are wired up with all this electronic

29:44 gear and gizmos, etc. Try to train them to walk around the grounds of the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC and if a couple guys walking past say name Boris and Ivan in the ground We're talking about some classified program, and the cat's wired up with all this sort of radio antenna microphones. And he picked up the conversation that could then be broadcast to CIA headquarters and transcribed. So it would almost be like instead putting bugging devices in the offices or the rooms at the embassy no one would think that a little cat wandering around was a walking meowing bugging device!

30:28 idea and incredibly the very first cat that was chosen for the operation actually survived having all this sort of wires and mechanical gear inserted into its body. The problem was, of course with hindsight cats aren't the easiest animals to train you know if we're going to want to train an animal dogs far better, cats basically look at you and give and uh... and so that might be problematic but on the very first occasion when they had the cap ready to go so to speak uh... a team of cia agency there regular looking for just pulled up as close to the soviet embassy as i caught um... open about doors in sort of urged the captain across the road toward the embassy now for the best we only got like a few feet it was splattered by a taxi that was speaking along the road

31:20 So that was the end of Acoustic Kitty and it was actually the end of a program. The files that have surfaced through Freedom of Information show that the reason why is because it's perceived as having too many factors that couldn't be necessarily chosen for and dictated, there were too many random events that could go wrong. And so the thing was shut down but again it sort of demonstrates some of the really weird aspects of how regular animals are used in an irregular practice, so to speak. Yeah I mean that is pretty morbid another one that was pretty interesting you know we had...I don't know if you're familiar with Rupert Sheldrake?

32:01 We had him on the show recently. He's done a lot of research into animal ESP with dogs, you know, animals that know when their owners are coming home they seem to just know as soon as the owner stands up at their desk at work and it's like an ESP kind of thing. And you also have kind of a story about dog ESP in the book too? Yeah, this goes back to the early 1950s and again this is from files which have surfaced from the US Army through the Freedom of Information Act. And they talk about a little project that was set up in 1952 to see if dogs possessed ESP and the plan was that if they did possess ESP could it be used to locate landmines on battlefield?

32:44 Now, the papers again are fairly redacted in some places but they show that two German shepherd dogs were chosen for this particular project. Their names were Tessie and Binnie and we donít know because we donít have all the files but we donít know how or why or what circumstances should say that their psychic powers were deemed to be real but apparently they were and so what happened was that this program went ahead on various stretches of beach uh... sort down by highway one in california i mean it's a running from los angeles at way up to uh... san francisco

33:22 Various pieces of beach were chosen and dummy mines, I should stress that they weren't live ones. Dummy mines were laid out on the beach or in some cases actually six or seven feet down and in a couple of cases they buried them a few feet down but like 15 feet out to sea and then the dogs would be sort of unloaded from the van or whatever then sent out to try and find uh... you know the mines and interestingly enough in something like seventy or eighty percent of the trials they actually succeeded but for some weird reason even when some of the cases where the mines were easily locatable, they didn't find them. And so the ultimate conclusion that the military was that there clearly seemed to be

34:09 unknown power or skilled at the dogs possessed that allowed them to find the minds but he didn't work every time you know the times when it was hit and miss any couldn't be predicted and that's kind of like the whole thing with the government and the remote viewing programs of the seventies and onwards you know where bed a lot of good remote viewers who had it clear they have some skills but then there are other times you know what it was to just shut down is almost likely created writers blocker something like that you know I think that's the reason with this psychic dog program why it was pretty much shut down. Not so much because they didn't have successes, but because they couldn't predict the successes and when it failed, they just totally failed and so they preferred to go back to regular human resources and more conventional ways of looking for the minds

35:00 Yeah, and when it fails in the field I mean that's gonna be a pretty nasty mess for the PR team. Man, you know messing with dolphins and cats and dogs there You know they it's almost like the government just use these animals as tools more than thinking them of them as live creatures But uh no. There's another crazy thing about the Soviet Union I believe it was who attempted to crossbreed apes with people? I mean that was a fascinating chapter pretty creepy chapter Yeah, this goes way back to the 1920s and a Russian scientist named Ilya Ivanov. He was a very brilliant Russian scientist but he was also like a typical sort of Dr Frankenstein mad professor type. He had an obsession – it is fair to call it an obsession not just an interest – with trying to crossbreed humans with apes particularly gorillas and chimpanzees.

36:00 Back in the 1920s, there was nothing like gene splicing and DNA was in its infancy. Nevertheless, the Soviet government's Academy of Sciences actually funded Ivanov to a highly significant amount where he had the funding to travel to West Africa and had an entire team that helped him round up a number of female gorillas and chimpanzees and laboratories were built all across West Africa, and some in Russia as well where these experiments went ahead. Now as I said it was nothing like gene splicing so basically... Yeah the old-fashioned way! The old fashioned way exactly. Of course nobody wanted to volunteer to impregnate the gorillas so they had to essentially just take human sperm and inject it

36:52 into anesthetized gorillas and chimpanzees. Now, granted we're actually like 98% compatible DNA wise with chimpanzee but it's that small percentage that isn't compatible that makes us look so different from chimpanzees and act so differently. And nature has a way of ensuring that sort of freaks of nature and interspecies offspring don't occur. As far as we know at least, or the official story is that all these experiments that Ivanov undertook ended in failure but there are a few rumors suggesting that maybe against all the odds you know if you freakish creatures were born to these female chimpanzees and gorillas and

37:40 The stories about some of them living just briefly, others suggesting they lived actually a long time and looked like sort of a freakish cross between humans and apes. offspring that was sort of supposedly mentally retarded and you know it would have brought shame on the whole project rather than being killed, because they were part human. They were banished to the walls of Siberia and then when people saw them it gave rise to the idea that oh Russia's got its own Bigfoot not realizing maybe the outgrowth of some of these secret projects so

38:19 I don't think we've probably heard the end of the story. I think there's probably more to uncover, and maybe as I said against all the odds one or two experiments really did work you know? We just don't really know unfortunately. Yeah that's wild! There is a photo in the book that is of a suggested hybrid that is pretty interesting too Yeah, that's a woman named Julia Pastrana and back in the 19th century like a lot of people who had unfortunately had sort of physical afflictions you know she earned her living in the so-called old circus freak shows that kind of thing. Now what we know for sure is that she had a condition called hypertrichosis and it's a real condition where the body and face pretty much everywhere just grows massive amounts

39:09 covers the entire body and face all over. It's unofficially known as werewolf syndrome which gives you sort of an idea how a person looks but if the person regularly shaves or has their hair medically removed, They look just like a normal regular person. You would never know until the stubble starts to come through again but Julia Pastrana, she looks very strange because as well as being covered in hair she has almost lots of deformed jaws which is elongated and very muscular looking powerful jaws not unlike

39:44 a gorilla or chimpanzee. And so she looks very strange and the fact that she is covered in hair suggests that maybe her hypertrichosis wasn't due to the regular condition because the regular condition doesnít cause facial appearance abnormalities, and she you know is one of those ones who there are still questions raised about was she completely human or again was she one some sort of offspring that's, you know again against every odd but managed to survive. Yeah it definitely is a picture worth looking at for anyone who's interested

40:23 You know another subject you've looked in before I think it also crops up in this book under the label of ABC's, you know the alien big cats. But what was interesting about their appearance and monster files is there seems to be a connection between Princess Diana and these cats apparently right? By default, she's been linked to a conspiracy concerning the big cats. All across Britain for decades have been reports of big cats on the loose kind of like the equivalent of like a fully grown black leopard or sort of mountain lion that you would see in the Pacific Northwest forest and

41:02 Now there shouldn't be anything like that running around the UK at all, other than pet cats. The only other cat in Britain is called the Scottish Wildcat which as its name suggests it lives in the wild and lives in Scotland but even the wild cat is barely any bigger than a normal house cat and it looks just like a house cat, but its actually quite savage. They will give you a nasty scratch or bite if you get too close to them in the wild! But your not going to mistake a Scottish Wild Cat for a mountain lion there's no comparison and yet people see these things every day so the big question is where are they from?

41:38 Part of the answer probably lies in the fact that back in 1976, the government passed a law, the Dangerous Wild Animals Act which meant anybody who wanted to own a big cat or large cats had to have a license and fully secure enclosure to keep it. Before that as incredible as it sounds anyone in the UK could own big cat and just keep it in their backyard. It's amazing nobody got killed, and we know people did but because some of them couldn't afford to pay for the new license and build new enclosures a few people have come forward to say well you know we let our cats go into the woods in the middle of night and there were males and females that may have mated and then today we've seen third or fourth generation

42:21 uh... cat after the nineteen seventy six releases that explains part of the story but the problem is a report going back decades before that and actually to be seventeen and eighteen centuries so you know maybe sailors from overseas brought back caps you know and and they're actually been breaking for centuries in the wild you know i think sacred i think so you've got a couple of angles but people nevertheless still say these a cat today. There are hundreds of reports coming every year so there's clearly something going on now in the late 1980s, a friend of mine named John Downes who like me writes books and investigates strange creatures got a telephone call from a former

43:03 British Army soldier and he was part of like an elite unit that was shadowing Princess Diana because the British government's military intelligence had picked up on rumors which they took very seriously, but some organization or possibly several were planning to either kidnap or assassinate Princess Diana. They didn't want to alarm the princess and they didn't want the story getting out to the media because their plan was if they kept it under wraps, it would help them track down who these people were. If it spilled all over the newspapers then the people would just go up to hide and never find him.

43:43 They wanted to keep it all under wraps and so what they did was a small unit of five or six soldiers, highly trained, used to maneuvers at nighttime, very skilled with guns and pistols, rifles. They would shadow and watch Diana wherever she went. Now this was, John got the call in 1989 and the group, its activities began around about 1985 onwards. At some point between those years the group actually shadowed Diana when she traveled down to the old English county of Devonshire but people are wondering, Devonshire is where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set

44:26 Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. This was the time when Diana's marriage to Prince Charles was sort of on the rocks and she would see other people, boyfriends etc. at that time and one of these actually lived in a little village on Devonshire.

45:02 So this team shadowed Diana and essentially sort of made like a stakeout in the village late at night, stayed in the shadows behind bushes etc., just keeping an eye on the property where Diana was visiting. To their amazement to the troops when they were looking through night scopes, just keeping envisioned on the house they saw this huge black cats sort of go prowling past the side of the property and literally right past the front door you know which is almost like the worst national security issue you could think of. They were trained to deal with terrorists or whatever, and here's this savage black cat! And they didn't know what to do it was like if I shoot him

45:44 going to wake the entire village up and before you know it, the tabloid press will be on the story and it'll all come tumbling out. If they didn't do anything... The very fact that the cat was right by the door, what if he broke in? Attacked the princess or killed her even worse! So they didn't know what to do and they actually chose to do nothing, just sort of held their breath and kept their sights trained on the cat. But they figured that it was looking for small animals to eat or whatever and eventually they watched it as it just sort of sauntered off and headed off towards the moors and he was gone!

46:20 As John was told when this soldier related the facts years later, there really was a conspiracy put into place to hide the truth of these big cats by the military. The military itself realized these things existed but they elected to cover it up because by default if they revealed what they knew about the big cat and how they knew it it would then reveal what they were doing down in Devonshire and why they happened to see it. So, you know the words? It was like the cover up of The Big Cats was forced on them by the fact that they had to cover-up the fact that they were watching Diana so its almost like a roundabout conspiracy but still a conspiracy nevertheless. Yeah I wonder how many stories out there are really

47:07 how many things we'd love to get information on are covered ups just because they're associated with some other thing that we don't even really care about, that's probably somewhat boring but to the government it's like a serious security issue. Well, I actually think that probably happens a lot because we tend to focus on if the government's hiding... If the British military is hiding something on Big Cats. We automatically think oh well they're hiding it because they don't want the general public to panic and that may well be part of it but it may also be the fact that something like this one or something else is going on and until somebody comes forward like John's informant

47:46 All you're seeing is one part of the picture and that part of it actually looks credible and understandable. But then when you see the other part, it totally throws a span in the works so to speak and the whole thing has turned on its head where you still have conspiracy but for totally different reasons than what you were expecting. Yeah, and another topic that was in the book that is really interesting is The Iceman. A lot of people are probably familiar with the stories of The Iceman We actually had someone come on and talk about it not long ago who basically just thought the whole thing was a fraud but um You know you have uncovered some some people's testimonies who've talked about it And said they could smell the creature So I mean that's pretty interesting

48:35 Yeah, I mean the Minnesota Iceman actually goes back to the mid-1960s and just as an aside The the model that some people say was always a model is actually going to be unveiled This coming Saturday at the Museum of the Weird in Austin Texas. It goes on public display there been in a state of limbo for years. The story is that back in the mid-1960s, a man named Frank Hansen who lived in Minnesota was one of these guys who put on like your controversial displays like state fairs you know come and see the two-headed snake in debated lady that kind of thing you know uh... them he acquired body um... encased in a huge block of ice and supposedly it had come to hansen from a anonymous millionaire friend of his who interned at supposedly got it from what we're not really sure where one theory is that it was like a primitive hair covered

49:38 human type creature shot in the woods of Minnesota hence why it became known as a Minnesota Iceman. Another theory which is sort of more intriguing is that he was actually shot and killed by troops in the Vietnam War, in the jungles of Vietnam and then secretly shipped back to the US by this millionaire who had it arranged in a body bag, like a soldier's body bag and then handed over to him. And then when Hanson made friends with him he agreed to allow Frank Hanson to put it on display for awhile before it was replaced supposedly with like a sophisticated dummy. Now of course as you pointed out some people do think the entire thing was a hoax and the only body that ever existed was the dummy but there are reasons

50:22 I think that wasn't the case. For example, in the mid-1960s a number of well respected cryptozoologists such as Ivan Sanderson and Bernard Hubelmans travelled up to Minnesota to visit the display actually before it went on display and they said that looking through the ice you know it didn't look like a dummy, looked highly sophisticated. It didn't look like hair stuck on or just like the guerrilla suit that you get from a novelty store or whatever and as they got close to the ice and peered in it they could sort of smell this putrid rotting smell which is like a fairly sophisticated thing to do if you're going to hoax it, cover the ice with rotted meat

51:09 So that led them to actually believe it was a real creature. They said it was like shot through the eye and he looked like a real bullet hole, you know? It didn't look like makeup or anything like that and it went on display various places over the years and through the 70's and then after time it sort of went missing for awhile and just got stored away etc but at the height of the uh... mania for it if you like in the late nineteen sixties none other than the fbi got involved because yet this room with that the iceman wasn't some sort of unknown a was a primitive type of human and when rooms began to circulate that had been shot your bureaucracy got involved and said well even if the privilege of humanity he'd still might be here where if you can help is that means america took place himself

52:00 The FBI got involved and actually sent one of their special agents out to Hanson's home, knocked on the door and said I'm a Special Agent so-and-so. I need to see the Minnesota Iceman which is kind of surreal! And Hanson not every day gets a knock on the door from the FBI. perturbed and worried so he let the agent in and freely let him look at it. The conclusion was, ìI donít think itís a man and its up to you whether you promote it as an iceman or monsterî and the FBI agent went away satisfied were the only thing he was concerned about, that it wasn't a human. But Hanson was one of these who never missed an opportunity to promote the Iceman so what he did is quickly got a big board and some paint and painted this huge board that said The Minnesota Iceman Investigated by FBI which he put on display every time

52:53 creatures on display. So, you know it's a strange story again of sort of quasi involvement on the part of the government for a very weird reason but possibly like an understandable reason as well Yeah, it's just a shame that they had to involve a dummy. It hurts the credibility of the case and makes it kind of skeptical I'm sick of being duped We get all these cases like we found a Bigfoot and then we test the DNA and its a possum mixed with a raccoon You know, well that's why he said this is one of the reasons why I think bigfoot small paranormal because Every time somebody talks about a body There's always an either or or a but or an if you know there's always something yeah

53:39 suggest it could be fake, you know or a model or whatever. And yet we get lots of credible sightings yet we never get a credible report to the body and this leads me to believe well this is why I believe that Bigfoot is sort of less flesh-and-blood and more paranormal based because The sheer number of reports we get, citing reports, we should get at least one body where we can say definitively this is what it is but if you only got a handful of citing reports and a handful of body report that's different. There are thousands of citing reports but no official body so I think

54:16 This is a pointer to the probability that, you know in many of these cases we are dealing with a paranormal type creature. That maybe isn't flesh and blood in the way we even understand it and possibly can't even be killed in the way we understand either Yeah, I mean...I have heard people give a lot of examples similar to this but one i can remember is people say you know I've been to a lot of cities and I've seen a lot of pigeons but have you ever seen a baby pigeon? You know clearly they exist. Yeah they have to exist! Well, that is true on the one hand. But then again a baby pigeon's probably like three inches long you know? Right, little easier to hide. Yeah than an eight foot tall lumbering ape running around just a couple of hours drive from Seattle or whatever you know so... If it was like a regular ape do you think there might be one case if it just wandering into a city, you know a big city where hundreds of people see and it ends up dead?

55:13 Yeah, it's like chimpanzees and gorillas. We know they can exist because they've either got shot or they made a mistake or they died in the woods and been found. Bigfoot eludes us 100% of the time. There are no other animals other than these cryptids that do that. It's like saying most people never see mountain lion but people do and we have bodies of them when we have them in zoos But because they do elude us most of the time, but not all the time. The Bigfoot does do it all the time you know? I mean well since this book is really focused on government files of weird creatures let me ask if there's any cryptid legends out there that you have a personal interest but couldn't really find any files on to fit into this particular book

55:56 I thought about doing a chapter on Mothman because Mothman sightings in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the 60s, there was a lot of men-in-black activity going on at the same time. People would turn up and interview Mothman's wife. mocked by a witness to task in what they saw you know and uh... because there is at least some sort of connection between some m i'd be reports from government i tried yet to find anything that might corroborate basin he got it for one of my plan file somewhere now the right way about couldn't find it so you know i didn't want to just go over all grounded just you know paul

56:36 a bunch of words from John Keel's Mothman Prophecies because I wanted to add something new if there was but it wouldn't surprise me if there isnít a mothman file somewhere when we know that there are Bigfoot files, Flatwoods files, Loch Ness files. think probably there is a mock man file or files somewhere at the problem is you know what we prefer to be information act you can only get faulty classified when you actually can identify to a fair degree what it did she want to be classified in your head Yeah, exactly. That's what I did.

57:25 Yes, I think one or two of the ones that would fall into that category were the ones that dealt more with real animals used under unusual circumstances like there was this project in the Second World War called Project Pigeon which I managed to get a few files on but not much. Some are still classified and it talks about how the military was planning to use pigeons to remotely sort of pilot rockets and bombs where they would be like a remotely piloted aircraft. And the pigeon, supposedly retrained press this button which would send this little remotely piloted aircraft with these bomb attached in its particular direction but the pigeons had an attention deficit disorder where they just keep pecking at screen and you know these little planes

58:13 slamming to the ground or whatever. And it's kind of weird though that some of those files are still withheld, you know? It's like what on earth could prompt a withholding of a file from 70 years ago on remotely controlled pigeon aircrafts! You know what I mean?! It's sort of bizarre that the files would be withheld at all... Man, well Nick that pretty much brings us to about that time to go. You know you've always been a great guest I think I've read about five of your books now which is that's a lot for me? I mean, I haven't even read that many Harry Potter books I'm a big fan of the way you write. There's no filler in your books, it's just story after story and that's the part that I really love. Of course man thank you! And I still even think about getting a few friends together and taking a trip out to Death Valley or the Grand Canyon looking for some great discovery because i love that World's Weirdest Places book

59:12 Well, Death Valley has those sailing stones that go across the landscape and stories of Indiana Jones type buried temples under the ground going back to Atlantean times and all sorts of weird stuff. That's all in Death Valley! Exactly, that book really restored my faith that there might be some discoveries left to make you know I've always kind of feel like we're under such surveillance there's people everywhere were also crowded that there probably can't be any mysteries but maybe just a you know 20 feet below us or might be something crazy yeah never know well before we go man is there anything you'd like to tell people about maybe your next topic or maybe your website or something

59:56 Yeah, people can reach me at Nick Redfern 14 F-O-R-T-E-A-N. Nickredfern14.blogspot.com or Facebook just type in Nick Redfern and up my blog on the right hand side I have a list of upcoming lectures and conferences and different places that I'll be speaking out and whatever so... We had Scotty Roberts on not long ago. You're going to be at the Paradigm Symposium this year right? Yeah, I spoke of last year. It was a really good event so i'm looking forward to this one again and that'll be in Minneapolis In October Excellent man well hopefully some people can make it out to that you know? It's always an honor and a pleasure keep doing what you do And may the freedom of information act always be your guide All right well thanks for that Rick Thank You

1:00:41 There we go people, Nick Redfern. Always a pleasure to talk to that guy Thanks for all the love and support for THC out there It's always very motivating Please share the show as much you can Spread it like the plague people Review THC on iTunes if ya think about it And I'll keep bringing you interviews with my favorite people Next week is Jon Rappaport so be ready We are, we are the Shea-Shea! We are the monsters! Our name is Yung Believe what you read We are, we are mistaken We have a voice that can stop me What you saw It came as no surprise You bring me back to life Believe it If you bleed for me I'll bleed for you I caught you walking through walls Drowning with applause From the world that makes me crazy

1:02:01 We are, we are the shaken We are the monsters underneath your head Yeah, bloody what you read We are, we are mistaken We are the voices inside your head Yeah, bloody what you... We are the monsters

1:02:48 We are the monsters, and we're the ones who are servants. We are the ones for all men! We are the monsters! We are the monsters! We are the monsters! Oh yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! We are, we are the shaky We are the mounds worth Underneath your head I believe what you read We are, we are mistaken Voices inside your head Believe what you see We are, we are the shaky We are the mounds worth Underneath your head

1:04:10 Watch me sink