How did you first become interested in ufology and the paranormal?
I’ve been hooked since at least the age of 10 or 11 (1978) when I saw Spielberg’s movie CE3K and it blew my mind; at the time I was reading lots of those cheap 1970s paperbacks on UFOs (John Keel, Allen Hynek, etc) and I’ve never been able to extricate myself from the subject since that time – despite many attempts! Even before that I was interested in ghost stories. My grandparents, now sadly deceased, used to tell me about local ghosts including Spring-heeled Jack and the Boggard of Bunting Nook (a spooky lane near Graves Park in Sheffield), so I guess I was brought up on this stuff.
Can you remember your very first Investigation, and the Investigation that really got you excited?
The first investigation I did was a pretty boring ‘lights in the sky’ sighting, that was passed to me by Jenny Randles of the Northern UFO Network. That was around 1980, I think, and recently I found the report form filled out by the witness in the MoD files released in London. I remember dragging a tape-recorder which was the size of a suitcase to this poor guy’s house and asking him lots of questions. It was all pretty exciting stuff at the time, but today I wouldn’t even get out of bed for a LITS case. It was probably a satellite. But after that I had some more interesting cases to check out – the best being the woman who saw a flying saucer containing aliens hovering over a chip-shop at Gleadless town-end. I was never able to explain that one!
How have your opinions on UFOs changed since your early years?
Of course. As a teenager I read everything about UFOs and mysteries I could lay my hands on – the Bermuda Triangle, Chariots of the Gods, Mothman Prophecies – and believed six impossible things before breakfast. I was never a believer in the ETH (extra-terrestrial hypothesis) for UFOs and the supernatural. I was more into John Keel’s ideas about ultra-terrestrials, beings from other dimensions of space and time, who visit s and play with our beliefs for unfathomable reasons. But I now see that as just a modern version of medieval demonology. I left much of this behind me on studying folklore, which ultimately led me to a Ph.D at the former Centre for English Cultural Tradition at Sheffield University. I now look at the whole subject differently – and try to stand back from the whole scene, and not make judgements about what people experience per se, but why they believe what they do, and what’s led them to believe it: i.e. the influence of popular culture, religion, etc on the development of a range of supernatural belief systems. As for what I personally believe: I honestly can’t give a useful answer, but I know it’s a very weird universe!
In our moden times, the stories of Spring Heeled Jack are dimissed as myth and just stories. But who was Spring Heeled Jack and what was the story about him?.
Firstly there was no such person as Spring-heeled Jack. There were many dozens of people who adopted the name during the 19th and early 20th century – petty criminals, pranksters and what we would today describe as hoodies! Mike Dash has been putting together a book on the SHJ phenomenon which is due to be published later this year, and I’ve written two chapters for the book, one on the Jack scare in Sheffield and Rotherham in 1873 and another on the folklore of Spring-heeled Jack. Jack wasn’t a myth, he was a legend – ‘a short traditional story about a person, place or objects that really exists, existed, or is believed to have existed’. As most of your readers probably know the named was coined in 1838 when London was terrorised by a man, or more likely a gang of men, wearing animal skins and other outlandish disguises who pounced on unsuspecting victims – usually lone women – late at night. The most popular explanation at the time was that Jack was a member of the rakish upper-classes who had taken a ‘wild wager’ to scare a certain number of females to death; what’s more it was alleged there was an establishment cover-up to conceal his mad scheme. It all sounds to me like a classic urban legend. The research that Mike Dash has conducted in the old newspaper files suggests that many of the original stories were newspaper hoaxes concocted by penny-a-liners who earned money from dreaming up imaginary stories. So maybe the whole thing was a media invention. The idea that Jack was a demon or man from outer space was invented much more recently by UFO writers; there is absolutely no evidence for this idea in the original accounts themselves.
Can you tell our readers the story of The Angel Of Mons?
The Angel of Mons was story that spread during the First World War in the aftermath of the first British setbacks on the western front during 1915. It claimed the British Expeditionary Force had been saved from destruction during the first battle with the Germans (at Mons in Belgium in August 1914), by a supernatural vision that appeared at the height of the fighting, when the Brits were outnumbered and losing hope. Originally, the vision was supposed to have been of ghostly archers from Agincourt led by St George, who scattered the Germans and allowed the Brits to escape the massacre. But later the story changed and the archers became angels. Thousands believed the story, which was a fantastic morale-booster during the dark days of the Somme when the casualty figures were hitting home. Unfortunately, not a single soldier was ever found who said he had seen the archers/St George/angels – many claims were made, but most of them turned out to be hoaxes or distortions. In fact the legend originated with a short story written by the Welsh author Arthur Machen – a writer of horror and supernatural fiction – called The Bowmen. This was published in a London newspaper one month after the Battle of Mons, and told how St George had saved the British Army. He made the whole thing up, and because it was published in a newspaper people – who wanted to believe – could not accept it was a piece of fiction. The angel of Mons was another urban legend. To read more about it see my webpage here:
http://www.drdavidclarke.co.uk/AMons1.htm
or get hold of a copy of my book, ‘The Angel of Mons: Phantom Soldiers and Ghostly Guardians’ (Wiley 2002).
Can you explain what are the Longdendale Lights and what is "The Haunted Valley?
The Longdendale Lights are strange moving lights that have been haunting the Dark Peak hills of Bleaklow, along the Woodhead Pass in Derbyshire, for decades. They are a type of ‘earthlight’ or spooklight probably created by some form of natural phenomena we don’t understand at the present time. They were spotted long before they first aircraft when they were known as ‘the Devil’s Bonfires’ and more recently the mountain rescue teams have turned out to search the hills after lights have been spotted. Of course they were thought to be hikers lost on the moors, but the search teams have never found anyone. Sometimes it’s a single red light, like a flare, but at other times people have seen pulsating blobs of light or strings of light, sometimes emerging from the ground. It’s a very weird place at night and has become popular for skywatches in recent years. There are a lot of electricity pylons running through the valley, and of course it’s on a landing run for aircraft approaching Manchester, so there are lots of other things that have been misinterpreted as the lights which have simple explanations. Again, see my webpage on the Lights for more details:
http://www.drdavidclarke.co.uk/longden.htm
You investigated the infamous Stocksbridge Bypass. Can you tell us about this and have you ever been back there to investigate it again?
Again see my webpage on the Stocksbridge ghosts, here:
http://www.drdavidclarke.co.uk/Urbl2.htm
The bypass ghost was one of the first hauntings I investigated in any depth. I remember the story appearing on pg 1 of the Sheffield Star (in September 1987); I was training as a journalist at the time and went out to interview the two police officers who had reported seeing the apparition. At the time the road was still under construction and it was a very eerie place to be at night. I stayed out there a couple of times – safely inside a car – just to see if anything happened, but unfortunately my presence appears to exorcise any ghosts who might be lurking! I was never able to find a satisfying explanation for this mystery – it sticks in my mind as something genuinely supernatural. I don’t believe in spirits of the dead coming back to haunt locations; to me that’s as unlikely as aliens visiting us in flying saucers. But it’s a logical that people should use that idea to explain things they don’t understand. I prefer to simply say it’s an unexplained phenomena, and leave it at that. I’ve been back to Stocksbridge many times since – always in daylight – mainly to film documentaries and/or interview additional witnesses. I still get people writing to me saying they have seen ghostly figures, usually described as like monks wearing long robes, in and around that valley.
The Curse of the Crying Boy painting i know you have a particular fascination with this picture, can you please tell our readers the story behind this painting and can it be really cursed?
I got interested in the crying boy whilst working as a journalist in Rotherham, where the legend began in 1985. Some of the old timers on the newspaper there remembered how the story spread about fire fighters noticing this awful cheap print – of a toddler with tear pouring down his cheeks – kept turning up in the ruins of houses that had burnt to the ground. The fires themselves were NOT mysterious; the usual things caused them: chip-pans left unattended, electric fires near beds etc. But they couldn’t work out how the prints survived when plaster had been stripped from the walls through the intense heat. Of course the story made it to the tabloids, to the Sun in particular, who turned it into an urban legend par excellence. Thousands of people read about the curse of the crying boy and came to believe the print was possessed by an evil spirit. Three thousand of the prints were sent to the Sun’s HQ in London, and they hyped it up by burning them all on a huge bonfire on Halloween in 1985 – to exorcise the curse! Since then the story has migrated to the internet and there are all sorts of weird and wonderful tales about the little boy in the paintings. Unfortunately, there isn’t just one painting – there are dozens, some by different authors! And the originals were mass-produced on flame-resistant hardboard which might explain why they were so difficult to burn. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story? If anyone’s interested Fortean Times magazine printed my article on the Crying Boy legend in their issue number 238 (April 2008) – it’s worth a look.
You are known primarily as a ufologist but are you interested in other paranormal phenomena?
Yes I’m interested in a range of supernatural belief and experience. I’d describe myself as a Fortean rather than as a UFOlogist, it’s just that my work on UFOs seem to be the thing that people know me for. If you have a poke around on my website you will see my interests range far and wide!
What is your favourite Urban Myth?
It would have to be the curse of the crying boy. I think that one has got it all!
We at the HRPI have investigated many alleged haunted locations
Have you every experienced anything ghostly yourself if so where and what did you see or hear?
Sadly no. I’ve joined a few vigils at haunted places in the past, but never experienced anything unusual. But then I do eat a lot of garlic, maybe it scares them off!
What is your personal opinion of what at Warminster.
Warminster was the first ‘UFO window’ to emerge in the UK back in the 1960s. It began as a strange sound that was heard by residents around Christmas time, rattling rooftops. Then people began to see strange lights and flying saucers. A local journalist, Arthur Shuttlewood, played a key role in hyping the stories and within a couple of years Warminster had become THE place to see UFOs. People used to go there at Bank Holidays and sit out on the hills watching for the space people. As Warminster sits smack bang alongside Salisbury Plain, where the British Army exercises, it seems probable that many of the sightings were of flares and other lights sent up by the military. This was way before we had Roswell or alien abductions – innocent days. The novelty wore off in the 1970s and we then got the Welsh Triangle, the Pennine UFO Mystery, Bonnybridge and more recently Bonsall. Where will the UFOs be heading next? Who knows. But if you go to Warminster today, you’ll find an old shed on Cradle Hill where people used to skywatch which is covered in UFO graffiti. And there is a website dedicated to Warminster UFOs and an attempt to revive the August bank holiday skywatches. So maybe we haven’t heard the last of it.
Can you tell us about the realise of The British UFO files and how you plan to use this information?
For the past ten years I’ve been working with a group of researchers, Joe McGonagle, Gary Anthony and others to force the MoD to release the remaining files they hold on UFO sightings, which date from 1980 to present. All the earlier files have already been opened at the National Archives in London. We used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which I use frequently to source stories, to make life difficult for the MoD. Early on we managed to obtain a number of older documents on UFOs they had been with-holding under Britain’s culture of official secrecy, such as the file on the Rendlesham forest incident and the report by the Flying Saucer Working Party that had been used to brief Winston Churchill in the 50s. Now they have agreed to release all the remaining papers, some 160 files in all containing details of around 8000 sightings. Within the next 3-4 years all these will be made available via the National Archives UFO website, which I’ve been helping to construct. You can take a look at the first eight files here:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos
In my opinion, having seen many of these files in advance, the decision to release these papers proves there is no ‘official cover-up’ concerning UFOs in the UK at least. They have been telling us the truth for years – it’s just that the truth isn’t the truth that many people want to hear. Believers in the ETH just want to know where they are hiding the bodies, and won’t accept there aren’t any. The truth is simple: there really are many strange phenomena in the sky, and these are invariably reported by rational people. But there is a wide range of natural explanations to account for such phenomena. There is no a single shred of evidence that any of them are alien spacecraft. But of course, those who believe in flying saucers and cover-ups will never accept this!
What are you working on at the moment you can tell our readers about?
Most of my time is occupied at the moment with the release of the MoD files; I’m acting as consultant to the National Archives for the releases, which as I said will continue for the next 3-4 years, so it’s going to be a busy time for me. I’m working on an application for funding to carry out a detailed study of all the MoD files on UFOs but that’s at a very early stage. In the immediate future I continue to write for Fortean Times magazine and will be speaking at their Unconvention in London later this year.
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