Sunday, 14th May, 2006 Sale Masonic Hall, Greater Manchester
With not a rolled up trouser leg to be seen, the Masonic Hall in Sale hosted the 2006 Paraquest Paranormal Conference. The speaker line-up was thus:
Andrew Johnson – The Disclosure Project Tina Laurent – Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) Russel Callaghan (applause, please!) – UFO Update Titus Rivas – Life After Death & Reincarnation Nick Pope – The Man from the Ministry
Russ, Mick and I arrived at about 9am and set about filling our table with issues of UFOData Report (and a handful of my books – I went home with the same amount…grrrr!). We got settled and before long, the first of the speakers was given the mic.
Andrew Johnson (no relation, well, not as far as I know!) told us about The Disclosure Project (DP), the organisation fronted by Dr Steven Greer. The aim of the DP is to get American Congressional hearings into the UFO subject, specifically, the US government’s involvement in the field. Greer has amassed hundreds of people from many fields, some with Top Secret security clearances, who are willing to testify about their knowledge of UFOs.
After an introduction that included the famous speech from Eisenhower, when he warned against the power of the Military/Industrial Complex, Andrew’s talk was dominated by videos of excerpts from the 2001 National Press Club presentation by the DP and also featured clips from the Peter Coyote-narrated documentary, Out of the Blue (well worth watching, by the way), as well as an interview with Paul Hellyer (Hell Yeah!), the former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defence in the 1960s, who has been in the news recently regarding his views on the UFO subject and his fears that, if space is weaponised, an interstellar conflict could ensue.
An FAQ session told us that UFOs are real; we have reliable, and often multiple, witnesses to UFOs; that there has been a cover-up in the back-engineering of alien technology that would give us limitless free energy; and that the ETs that are here are benevolent and more worried about our hostility than we should be about theirs.
To finish, Andrew explained how we could all help The Disclosure Project, by telling people about it, copying and distributing the video of the National Press Club Press Conference, which is freely available on the web now (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=243421874735533678&q=disclosure +project ) or you can buy it on DVD from the DP website (http://www.disclosureproject.org ), or even donating money to the project.
Andrew’s talk was very interesting and he had a table filled with all sorts of books and DVDs about all manner of subjects, not just the DP.
Tina Laurent began her talk on Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) by playing some examples. Some of the EVPs were very clear (not to mention spine-tingling), while others were a little harder to make out. Intriguing stuff, however.
Tina got into her chosen field twenty-five years ago, when she lived in the USA and read about Sarah Estep, a lady from Maryland who founded the American Association for Electronic Voice Phenomena. Tina was instantly fascinated, borrowed a cassette recorder from a friend and went out to try and capture some EVPs for herself. By some bizarre twist of fate, she found that the recorder she had borrowed had a misaligned head. This meant that she could hear the other side of the tape in reverse and it was here that she heard some good ‘voices’.
Tina’s lecture was very interesting and she went into great detail about the subject, informing us about the history of EVP research and how we can do this for ourselves and what equipment is best to use (old-fashioned magnetic tape is best – digital recorders tend to be a bit rubbish, apparently). She also told us about all the different kinds of entities that come over, from ones that simply repeat what you say, to ones that beg for help, to those that have specific messages to convey.
She finished with some more recordings (one of a witch-like cackle that scared the pants off me!) and a brief question and answer session brought her to a close. A fascinating subject, but I think I’d be a bit creeped-out if I tried it for myself and captured something… Oh and I think White Noise is a great film…
After lunch it was time for our own Russel Callaghan to hit the stage.
Russ began by telling us that the next cover disc for the UFOData Report will feature footage shot by London researcher, Chris Martin. He then told the audience of his experiences in spiritualism, specifically with a transfiguration medium known as Queenie Nixon, and how she impressed him greatly.
What Russ is famous for, though, is UFO footage, and he didn’t disappoint.
NASA footage, captured by Canadian, Martyn Stubbs, impressed, especially a strange, door-shaped object that went by the shuttle. If it had collided, it would have done a great deal of damage. There was also footage from Mir, as a flashing object sped by the station and US astronaut, Story Musgrave, explained how he would tell the world if he saw a UFO while in space. John Glenn’s famous ‘fireflies’ were mentioned, along with a clip from the movie, The Right Stuff (I'm really going to have to get round to seeing that film!). Footage from the famous (or infamous, depending on your view) STS-75 ‘Tether’ mission showed objects apparently moving behind the tether when it was almost a hundred miles from the shuttle. Out of focus debris or genuinely anomalous objects? You decide. Closing out the NASA clips, we were treated to a pair of objects performing remarkably acute turns, something an ice crystal cannot do normally (unless something hits it or it is pushed by a blast from the shuttle’s thrusters – neither of which explain what happened in this case) and a clip of what appeared to be a fleet of objects between the shuttle and the Earth and the chap from Mission Control trying his best to ignore them – badly!
Anthony Woods’ footage of a weird object, rotating through the sky still baffles, while another bore a remarkable resemblance to another object sighted over twenty years earlier, as reported in UFOData Report No. 3. Another orb-like object filmed by Anthony hovered above the nearby naval radar stations and Russ wondered if they had been detected. After all, the object remained stationary for eight and a half minutes!
Next up was some footage from Mexican researcher and TV presenter, Jaime Maussan. Of course, the Infra-Red (IR) footage released by the Mexican military of several objects that were invisible to the naked eye just had to be shown. It’s great stuff! There were also clips of strange, serpent-like forms in the sky, as well as a UFO landing in broad daylight, although Russ suspects it was a balloon. A brightly-lit night-time UFO was seen over Yucatan and it could have been argued that it, too, was a lit balloon – until a police helicopter arrived on the scene and the object took off at high speed.
Some Italian footage from Maurizio Biati was very good, but was it too good, we should ask. Hopefully, Maurizio will be able to tell us in October, because he’s speaking at The Second Great British UFO Show on October 21-22 (http://www.ufodata.co.uk/pdf/conf_flyer_06.pdf)
The final clip came from Kent. It’s an old clip, but a good ‘un. Filmed in 1999, we see a fleet of multi-coloured objects gliding across a clear night sky. Several objects are occasionally left behind, only for them to speed up and rejoin the main group.
Russ closed with a tribute to the late Graham Birdsall and a music track from Ricky Seraphico. A great talk as usual from the voice of UFOData!
After a brief recess (and a swift fag outside), we were informed that Nick Pope was going to be on next, bumping Titus Rivas to the top of the bill.
Nick concentrated a great deal on the recently declassified Ministry of Defence (MoD) UFO report. He revealed that it was given the title ‘Project Condign’. MoD projects are given random names, he explained, and they often have no bearing on the subject matter. Well, as ‘condign’ means ‘fitting’ or ‘appropriate’, usually in the context of punishment, I beg to differ with him on that one…
Nick helped commission the report, but he took no part in compiling it. In fact, he feels that the report is seriously flawed, especially in the scientific aspects it covers, trying to explain the unexplained nature of UFOs away with theories that are almost as obscure. Trying to explain the thousands of sightings away as natural occurrences, from Earthlights to atmospheric plasmas to obscure, brain-altering phenomena, the report might just as well say at the end: “We don’t know, really, but we had to make it look as though you got your money’s worth!”
The whopping 200MB report can be downloaded from the MoD website, located specifically at:
He jokingly predicted that the MoD site would crash because of the volume of downloads on Monday morning.
Nick covered his early days in the MoD and the three years on the ‘UFO desk’ that changed his life. He now thinks that he’s looked upon as something of a maverick amongst his peers!
Several of his favourite UFO cases were covered in his talk:
The Rendlesham case, obviously, which we don’t really need to go into here. Everybody knows the details of that one (and if you don’t – where have you been, the Moon??). Nick nodded towards Larry Warren, who was present in the hall at that time, during his Rendlesham review.
On 5th November, 1990, a squadron of Tornadoes were overtaken by a UFO while they were flying over the North Sea. The jets were travelling at mach 0.8 and the UFO whistled past. It was described as a triangular or diamond-shaped object.
The Belgian wave of 1989-90 also ranks high in Nick’s list, given that the Belgian authorities did a great deal of work investigating the reports of huge, flying triangles over their country. They felt that, as these objects were tracked on radar, a serious violation of their airspace had occurred and they acted accordingly. F16s were scrambled with orders to intercept, but not to engage the unknown crafts. When a radar-lock was acquired, the UFO instantly darted away, breaking the lock. This happened several times before the fighter jets were forced to return to base for refuelling. The Belgian military officially acknowledged that something had happened and one officer gave the odd remark of: “Thank goodness they were friendly!”
Nick pointed out that several prominent figures have openly and seriously broached the UFO subject - people like Lord Hill-Norton and General DeBrouwer of the Belgian Air Force, to name but two.
Referencing the Belgian ‘triangles’ and the oft-opined theory that they are some top secret exotic aircraft, such as the legendary Aurora, Nick points out that such ‘black projects’ tend to be tested well away from the prying eyes of Joe Public in strictly-controlled regions. Why would they risk their prized prototypes getting shot down by some Belgian Top Gun?
In March of 1993, a huge, triangular UFO was seen slowly gliding over RAF Cosford in Devon. An operator at Cosford telephoned his counterpart at the nearby base of RAF Shorebury and told him that a UFO was heading in his direction. Thinking it was a joke, the Shorebury operator went outside, expecting to find nothing, but he saw a bright light slowly getting larger as it drifted closer. Soon it resolved into a structured craft – a giant, equilateral triangle, with a bright light on each corner. A bright beam of light would shine down to the ground, like a searchlight. It obviously found what it was looking for, as it suddenly zipped away at high speed. It was estimated at being between the size of a C-130 transport plane and a Boeing 747.
On hearing of this sighting, Nick launched a full investigation, but nothing could explain what was witnessed that night between 9:30pm and 2:45am. Nick tried to push his report higher up the chain of command, in the hope that his senior officers would be able to shed light on the incident, but he was simply handed back his unexplained file, with the comment that if he could find no answers, then there was nothing further that could be done.
In 1990, a newspaper sent the MoD some negatives that they had acquired of UFOs in Scotland, depicting, huge, metallic, diamond-shaped objects. It was not said in so many words, but the officer heading the briefing seriously suggested that it was an extra-terrestrial craft.
Nick closed his talk with a Q&A session, which, naturally, ended up being mostly about Project Condign. Despite being critical of the report, he admitted that he was glad it had been done, as it adds to our knowledge of the UFO phenomenon.
This, for us, ended the 2006 Paraquest Conference. Unfortunately, we had to make tracks before the final speaker, Titus Rivas, took the stage (apologies to Titus!). We had a good time at the Masonic Hall and it was nice to put faces to friends we had only known via the internet.
Thanks everybody…
© Steve Johnson - 2006