UK Probe Conference- March '08

Well, I’m back; and as usual I’m in the throes of “post-Probe blues”. My fourth Probe conference is over and another six months without my beloved Probe-buddies looms ahead. But it was worth it and I’d never have missed it for the world! I salute Jean, Sam and all other organizers who made the experience possible; thanks guys! This conference was as fun and interesting as any, but it was the most arduous by far. There were ten speakers instead of the usual eight which packed even more into the weekend than the previous events, which are as intense enough as it is. This of course gave the delegates more information and therefore better value-for-money, but the speakers had a shorter time on stage and the breaks between sets were shorter too. The inevitable lapsing of the schedule was consequently more serious and I felt a very manifest urgency to the proceedings. I prefer the 8-speaker format personally. But nevertheless it was fascinating and wondrous and I’m dosed up to the gills with unprocessed information, pushing and shoving in the queue for my back-burner. I feel like a computer that’s just downloaded a huge package of programs, but hasn’t installed them yet. The installation process will take a long time and may not even be complete by the time of the next Probe in October. I arrived on Friday lunchtime after a train journey through the pouring rain. In fact the weather this weekend has been generally a wash-out and I’ve been soaked quite badly! But as I got off the train the clouds parted and the sun shone. It felt like a greeting and so I walked the long way to the hotel and took a stroll on the beach (I even saw the object that Nathan Sorea found! See below). The freezing wind ripped through me and the sun blazed its energy into me. Later on my friends Fred and Val turned up and we went out for a meal together that was lovely.

This conference was rather disappointing in some ways because so many familiar faces that I’d looked forward to seeing were absent. Ellis Taylor is still in Australia after the Laughlin UFO conference, Dave Starbuck is trapped by responsibilities at home and Ben Fairhall has become a bit of a recluse lately. In fact I got talking to someone who had intended to travel with him and she told me that she couldn’t get in touch with Ben and so had to travel to the conference alone. His blog is on private access only and when I emailed him asking for an invitation I found that his email had changed. I wonder what he’s up to; maybe some explosive discoveries he’s made. Hope he goes public with them soon if they’re that top-level! Despite all the absent friends, many of my good old mates did show up: Matt Delooze, Suzy- who's married to Matt, Dennis and Marian, who had a great stall this time, Fred and Val Allsop, Tony and many others whom it was great to see. I was delighted to find many HPANWO fans there who were pleased to meet me when they realized that I was the author! My mate Tony ran a counter on the blog a few months back and I’m getting lots of hits; it came to over 3800. Many people are linking up to HPANWO now so that’s great. But I think that's a good thing because I just want to get my message across. I don't want to be famous; in fact the whole basis of my philospohy is that we don't need fame and fortune to be OK people. As I said, it was uplifting to see all my old mates again, but I met some new people too. I got talking to a young lady called Kerstin who runs a blog of her own called Marmite-Lover; I also met a bloke called Dave whom I had a nice chat with. So many people were there for the first time, including a lady who’d just celebrated her 92nd birthday! Hope she enjoyed it. I didn’t have much money this time unfortunately, what with all the other expenses (and indulgences!) I’ve entertained lately. I had to make some difficult choices from the array of books, movies and other merchandise there. In the end I bought two books including one I’ve been meaning to get for ages: The Day after Roswell by Colonel Philip Corso, the outspoken former Pentagon official who’s revealed a lot about secret governmental UFO policy. I also got an old Tim Good book to add to my collection: his 1991 Alien Liaison. I bought a DVD on Area 51 and an alien T-shirt from Dennis and Marian’s stall.

I experienced many hardships at this Probe, and I’m not just talking about the weather. I’ve already mentioned the many new friends I made over the weekend, but at the same time several existing relationships are now in jeopardy. I’m learning that although the vast majority of Probe regulars are wonderful people whom it’s a joy to be with, there are a few individuals I need to avoid. At Probe we spend hours and hours out of the arena discussing and chatting, and this is one of the greatest joys of the conference. We have many diverging views. I’ve never had a problem with anyone who has a different view to mine, no matter how extreme. The feeling is usually mutual, but there are some people who get a bit hot under the collar in that situation; they sometimes even become aggressive and start hitting me with personal insults. This then gets me angry too and an argument follows. I was told by someone at the last conference that I was ”living in Cuckooland”! At this conference the same person said that the only reason I didn’t think the same way they did was because I obviously hadn’t suffered as much! This was unprovoked, improper and just plain wrong, but I kept plugging away, trying not to bite back in the same way and sticking to the issues not people. But then this person shouted at me, in a loud voice and in front of other people, that they, in a hypothetical situation, would not risk introducing me to their mentally-handicapped relative because my manner might harm them! This is probably not true seeing as I have to deal with mentally-injured people every day as part of my job, but even if it was true, it’s really spiteful of that person to exploit their relative’s situation like that, especially using it as a weapon to attack me. I felt deeply embarrassed and hurt. Hopefully by the time the next conference comes along this person will understand that and refrain from addressing me in such a way again; if not then the two of us will have no further contact. I also have a sore misgiving with the conference’s accommodation. The last two times, the speakers have all been put up in the Carlton Hotel and the place serves as a social centre for the delegates, both resident and visiting. But the bar is very small and has no draught beverages. Also the barmaid there is less than totally helpful and accommodating! On the Saturday evening I turned up with a new friend Kerstin that I’d met at the conference. We’d just been in the Admiral pub and Kerstin wanted some fish and chips. I assumed that she’d be allowed to eat them in the hotel, seeing as they were not serving their own food at the time; most other hotels I’ve been in are fine with it. Unfortunately the barmaid kicked her out. I pointed out that it was chucking it down with rain and asked the barnmaid if she could make an exception just this once, but she point-blank refused and turned her back on us. Kerstin was understandably very upset and went back to her hotel, so missing out on what should have been a delightful few hours. I hope the conference finds somewhere else next time. I much preferred the Elsinghurst Hotel where we were before.

Since Thursday night I’ve also been experiencing something untypical and unwelcome: Nightmares. Normally nearly all my dreams are either pleasant or neutral, but the last five nights I’ve had sad and/or frightening ones. I originally put it down to anxiety about being away from my daughter, and indeed the first one, the night before leaving, was about her. But they’ve carried on since. They mostly involve my mother, who, as regular HPANWO-readers will know, died in November 2006. In fact, I’ve started to wonder if she’s trying to haunt me! I know it sounds silly and probably subsequent events will disprove it, but I can’t get the idea out of my mind. I’ve been feeling very ill since I got back; Along with my post-Probe blues I’ve caught a cold and feel fluey. I always get a cold when I get upset or stressed out and I predicted getting it beforehand. Hope it goes away soon because I go back to work on Wednesday. At the conference I had hoped to get a bit of skywatching in, after all it’s exactly a year since my first UFO sighting on St Annes beach. Unfortunately the weather was so atrocious that I didn’t bother trying. This could have been a mistake because another lady at the conference told me that she and her two mates had seen a UFO right over the street where our hotel was, during a brief let-up in the overcast. It consisted of a series of lights in the sky “brighter than the stars” that moved in a “figure 8” formation. I wish I’d been there to see it!

OK, wingeing over! I had a wonderful time and will definitely attend the next conference in October. In fact I’ve already booked the hotel and told Sam to keep a venue ticket for me. The speakers will I’m sure be just as good as this time’s were. They are as always of top quality and I’ve done a quick review of them:


Dr Jeff Merryfield
Dr Merryfield was the stand-in speaker to replace the film producer and researcher Chris Everard who’s apparently stuck in France because he can’t get his new passport processed (Seeing as he’s been making a movie about the murder of Princes Diana that’s hardly surprising!). Merryfield was a big, lively man with a thick white beard. He’s a great friend of the comedian and actor Ken Campbell and began by telling us a bit about him. Campbell produced the stage play adapted from my favourite book The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which must have been a task and a half because it would be a hard novel to adapt. He was also drawn into the world of the Cathars, getting his inspiration from the novel Flicker by Theodore Roszak. The main part of his address was about Damanhur, an alternative spiritual community in the mountains of Piedmont in northern Italy. The community is centred around a series of caves and grottoes that were constructed in total secrecy between 1978 and 1992. The complex has been described as an “art gallery”, but that hardly does it credit. It is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The caves are perfectly-shaped underground temples covered on the walls, ceiling and floors by exquisite murals like nothing I’ve ever seen before. There are no words to describe it. Have a look on their website: http://www.thetemples.org/ The authorities originally wanted to destroy it because it was built without planning permission, but more likely the Church put them under pressure, fearing a rival to its monopoly on our souls. Thankfully they failed and the centre is open to visitors in a similar way to the Findhorn Community in Scotland.
David CaytonDavid Cayton’s interest in the paranormal began when he was in the Royal Air Force and had to deal with UFO’s that regularly appear on radar screens (A friend of mine at the conference who was also in the RAF said that he’d heard of UFO’s on radar as well). Later on he became a researcher into one of the darkest and most disturbing strange phenomenon of all: animal mutilation. Reports on animal mutilations or “mutes” began in the 1950’s, but were only taken seriously in the 70’s by the renowned UFOlogist Linda Moulton-Howe. Domesticated animals are always being killed by predators, accidents or human attacks, but occasionally a dead animal will turn up with injuries that don’t fit the format of conventional deaths. Parts of their body will be surgically removed with medical skill and precision. The wounds often don’t bleed or the entire body will be exsanguinated, have its blood completely drained, as if by a vampire of some sort. Often the body will have a strange chemical smell or be covered with an unknown residue. It might decompose unusually quickly, or conversely lie preserved in a kind of mummified state. In either event, hungry scavengers leave it well alone which is strange behavior for them. Farm animals are most usually the victims, but occasionally pets and even wild animals are effected. David went on to describe his investigations. He seems to have won the trust of the farming community and they often call him now before they call the other authorities. This has not gone unnoticed it seems. He one day received an angry phone call from someone at DEPRA, formerly the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food, warning him not to get involved. The government appears to be aware of what is going on and are clearly worried about it, but true to form, don’t want publicity. Either they know why this is happening and want to keep it secret or don’t know and want to prevent public concern. David’s address was interesting and it told a story that needs to be told, but I think he could have made his point while leaving out some of the most gruesome pictures. After 18 years in the Hospital Portering Service I’ve developed a stomach about as strong as one can get, but when he put up a picture of a cat cut in half I had to look away. Many other delegates were profoundly upset by it. Most frightening of all, the species who suffer these kinds of attacks are so varied that they occasionally include Homo Sapiens. He showed evidence of an incident where 12 human bodies were found in a forest with the typical injuries of these anomalous mutilations. Because of the tight schedule at this conference there was little time for Q-and-A sessions, but if there had been I would have asked two obvious questions to which David didn’t pose an opinion: Who… or what… is doing this? And why? I’ve heard several theories: Satanic ritual, black-budget government operations, aliens collecting scientific specimens; but none of them fit the evidence. The persons… or other things… doing this are working from a motive beyond our ability to even speculate.
Matthew DeloozeI’ve known Matt for a long time as he’s always attended the conference, but this is the first time he’s been a speaker. He gave a very interesting and stylish address which was rushed more than any of the others and sadly cut short by the schedule. He came onto the stage dressed in a white suit and straw hat. He got straight to the point with the simple words: “The human race in under hypnosis!” He explained how we are programmed to feed and worship a force from another dimension. He went on to explain how sometimes we carry out rituals of homage and sacrifice without even knowing it, through outwardly harmless activites. He calls the regime of this malevolent extradimensional intelligence “The Serpent Cult”. Matt was living an ordinary, conventional life in the north of England, unknowingly serving this cult, until an awakening experience at the age of 40. He was a working in an aviation factory, under the supervision of a foreman who bullied him. It drove him to the brink of suicide, but then he had what sounds like a powerful transcendental revolution. It led him to write books and an excellent website that you can find on the links column. He’s working hard to understand how the Serpent Cult works and how it generates energy from us. He spots symbolism and actions in conventional society that are really hidden opus of the Cult. This is something other researchers have dabbled with, including myself and David Icke with his theories on the “secret language” for instance, but Matt has gone into the subject deeper and in more detail than anyone else and his work will make you look at the world very differently. He has two books out, but he also writes long articles online. He wrote one about Ferris wheels a few months ago and what they mean. This tied in with the spectacular and bizarre New Year celebrations in London with an arsenal of fireworks watched by an enraptured crowd in front of the world’s biggest Ferris wheel, the London Eye. This is one of the biggest white elephants in the city that loses £50 million a year, but it is kept open. Why?
Jeff MoranJeff Moran was someone I think I’ve seen before at Probe. He gave a speech that involved audience participation that demonstrated how our brains work. He does a lot of this at schools, although he obviously has to tone it down a bit to get through the door! He showed some short movies that included the cartoon character Bartok listing all the different organs in the brain. He also showed a clip from something I’ve been meaning to get into for months: the lecture by the neurologist Dr Jill Bolte Taylor, a woman who suffered a stroke and was therefore able to study her own brain from its personal injuries; she’s come to some startling conclusions. Jeff’s speech was hard to follow because like many Probe speeches it contained so many concepts, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that I missed the beginning of it because I was having dinner, but one image I recall very well is another short movie showing a person being treated for cancer by sonic transmissions in China. The camera shows the monitor of an ultrasound scanner and you can see the tumour shrivel under the resonant voice of the chanting practitioner. Jeff showed us the power of sound by blowing a horn made from a seashell that we could feel in our whole bodies.
Neil HagueThis is a man whose work I’m very familiar with, and again you can get to his site from the links column. I’ve read both his books and they are damn good. But it’s his artwork that really drew me to him. He’s since become my favourite artist. His pictures are colourful, detailed and have a kind of abstract Shamanic quality that can rivet me for hours. It reminds me of the paintings of Damanhur actually. I went to one of his exhibitions in London in 2004 and got the chance to meet him. It was well worth the journey. Neil is also a very good friend of David Icke and took the piss out of him a bit (Oops, he asked us not to tell anyone that bit!) He’s also, like Ellis Taylor, a nature-watcher and notices things like birds’ flying formations and patterns in trees. He’s a big fan of William Blake who was, and still is, a very controversial artist and writer, 200 years after his birth. Blake also adapted things in nature, like the shapes of trees and rocks, into his own artwork. Skeptics call it “just your mind playing tricks!”, but for Shamanic minds, it’s a whole way of seeing the world. The basis of his message is that life is a holographic creation. It is made up of matrix of templates that get repeated over and over, like the spiral: It can be a swirl of cream in a coffee cup, a hurricane, or a spiral galaxy. The scale is different, but they’re made from the very same basic shape. The same goes for the way the pattern of veins on a leaf resembles a river delta seem from very high up. Children are good at spotting these connections, but as we develop and mature in the quantitative, fragmented mindset of Western cognition we lose that ability. From what we see of ancient art, from the Classical and Egyptian to the even older cave paintings; this mindset is a new one and foreign to the natural human state; this tied in nicely with Jeff Moran’s view on the workings of the brain.
Nigel Mortimer
Nigel was the first of the Sunday speakers. He was probably the hardest of all to follow, not because of any lack of skill on his part, but because there was just too much involved in his discoveries for me to comprehend in a one-hour introduction. Nigel’s research centres around Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire, a vast wasteland of pasture, woods and heath with a spooky and occult reputation. The famous song On Ilkley Moor Baht At means “on Ilkley Moor without a hat” in the native Yorkshire dialect (Hardly spoken today sadly), and I wondered if there might be a connection with UFO’s because before sci-fi became popular, people often used the simile of comparing classic saucer UFO’s to hats. Nigel also got reports of people seeing etheric swords. These objects would appear like orbs, suspended in the air, and are still seen today. Witnesses report that although they’re very obviously swords in shape and look, they do not seem to be made of inanimate metal, but are described as “alive”. He began looking into the phenomenon and discovered that there is a legend of a golden sword appearing at a church in one of the towns bordering the moor. That church today has a replica of the sword on display inside it. Nigel’s investigation led him to discover a new megalithic site and a link with a Viking warrior called Harkon the Good. I didn’t quite keep up with the connection, but the Vikings called Ilkely Moor “The Land of the Dragon”. He is convinced that there are other ancient sites waiting to be discovered and it’s a good reminder that we don’t have to travel to the depths of the darkest jungles on the other side of the world to find the unknown; there are mysteries and wild frontiers right on our doorstep.
Nathan SoreaNathan Sorea is a spiritual healer. He’s also a motivational lecturer into positive thought. We hear a lot about this kind of “life coaching” these days and it’s mostly false, gimmicky rubbish, but some of it is based on genuine spiritual principles. He, like me, is an avid fan of the film What the BLEEP Do We Know? This fabulous movie was made in 2005 and tells the story of a woman, played by Marlee Matlin, who explores the world of scientific spirituality and learns to bring joy and peace into her own life. The drama is interspersed with commentary by leading physicists, theologians and spiritual researchers like Mical Ledwith, Fred Alan Wolf, Lynne McTaggart (Extended edition) and Joe Dispenza. Nathan compares the film to its wider-known pale imitator, The Secret. Like me, Nathan finds The Secret not half as good as WTB. He also sees it as a commercialization and debasement of spirituality. I think that’s a bit too harsh, but I know where he’s coming from. The Secret is an attempt to take the genuine positive thinking movement and merge it with the tacky life-coaching industry. This train of thought lead Nathan onto the pathological generation of consumer culture that The Secret panders to and has devastated the world, causing ill health both for people and the planet. He mentions the manipulation of the public mind by the likes of Edward L Bernays who virtually invented the modern marketing industry. Nathan then got the audience up on our feet like Jeff Moran did and gave us a series of exercises to mentally detox and enliven us, and it worked I can tell you! He got us to recite an anti-fear oath; and he says that the word fear could be an acronym for "False Expectations Appearing Real". He also points out positive omens like how he found an object on St Annes beach that could be part of a black helicopter!
Frank Willis
Frank Willis’ address consisted of a simple speech with no frills. He’s a slim and unremarkable-looking middle-aged man, but has an amazing story to tell. He’s a psychic medium and healer and is very concerned with the endemic use of drugs in society. By “drugs” he means both illegal, legal recreational and medical drugs. He believes the distinction between the three that conventional society makes is a delusion. Drugs you get on prescriptions are usually unnecessary, can be addictive and have damaging side effects every bit as much as alcohol or crack cocaine. He calls doctors “pushers” and describes the pharmaceutical industry as no better than Colombian drug barons. He should know because in his youth he was a mercenary and was employed as a security guard for one of the most brutal and notorious drug barons. He quickly learned that America’s “War on drugs” is a sham. Not only that, it’s a cover for a secret programme whose objective is the exact opposite, to increase drug production and public addiction! I once read the bestselling novel Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy which portrayed the US administration as brave crusaders, fighting a war against the evil cocaine warlords of South America, but even when I read it all those years ago I could tell it was hype (which perhaps explains the book’s success!). The governments of the world are colluding with the drug barons. Even President Clinton is said to have allowed his private airstrip to be used to smuggle the stuff into America! When Frank was working for them, he saw that the drug barons were regularly visited by CIA agents and top American politicians and secret deals were done. This all connects to the “black budget”. One of the questions most often asked by Skeppies is: how do secret projects like the UFO cover-up and Area 51 get funded? A few years ago it was revealed that US$1.5 trillion fell off the Pentagon’s books and cannot be traced! That’s an enormous amount of money when you realize that a trillion is a thousand billion! But it gets worse!: In addition to official embezzling, these projects are also funded by the drugs industry. So when a junkie shoots up on the street he is helping stop UFO Disclosure. Frank is not the only person who claim this, so does James Casbolt: http://www.jamescasbolt.com/
Richard LawrenceRichard Lawrence is a member of an unusual group called the Atherius Society. It’s a quasi-religious organization that believes in UFO’s and sees their presence as the next step on human spiritual evolution. It believes that the great spiritual masters of mankind like Jesus, the Buddha, LaoTzu etc, were all in contact with spiritually enlightened ET’s. His speech began with some very sensible and down-to-Earth statements about the UFO cover-up and how it is today failing, but then went onto a path that looked very unhealthy to me. He seemed to regard the ET’s in a similar way to how many people in India worship guru’s and Holy men simply because they’ve spent ten years on a mountain top eating nothing but dry rice. It’s a kind of extension of the New Age or Oriental guru cults to encompass aliens; Sai Baba with bug eyes! It is simply not my line at all, especially coming so soon after David Cayton’s speech on cattle mutilations. I’m not going to sign up for the Atherius Society (Although they sound slightly less phony that the Raelians!)But Richard is partly right. There are people who’ve had very enlightening and uplifting experiences with aliens. Read Stephen Greer’s new book for an example. But there are people who’ve had encounters with aliens that are terrifying and agonizing and have even led to nervous breakdowns and physical disability; some encounters prove fatal. Richard explains this away in the same way Greer does: All unpleasant encounters with aliens are staged by the government to generate fear of ET’s. As I’ve written before on HPANWO, this explanation might fit in a few cases, but falls woefully short of covering the whole issue. I think aliens are just like us: some are caring and benevolent, while some are exploitative and wish us harm. They should be loved and respected by us as fellow universal lifeforms, but they are not Gods, demigods, Messiahs or anything that should be worshiped and venerated.
David BoyleDavid Boyle runs a conspiracy exhibition in nearby Blackpool that I’d hoped to visit on Friday afternoon after arriving on the train, but found that it is unfortunately closed on weekdays. I first heard about David in the book by the cryptozoologist Jonathan Downes: Monster of the Mere. In 2002, Downes and his colleagues visited David’s centre to learn more about local folklore. Downes has little time for “conspiracy nuts” (like me!), but warmed to David because he saw him as the only person in Blackpool not out to exploit the tourists with tacky gifts and sweets! David is a stocky, elderly man who comes across as very jolly and lively. He reminds me a bit of the late actor and comedian that I love, Roy Kinnear. He gave a rich lecture on a huge variety of topics and at the end said: “That’s only about 2% of what I have to tell you!” His address included visuals and movies. I’m glad to have met him because he, like me, is a fan of the book Two Thirds which is not well-known, even within the “scene”. David is more of a “presenter” of other people’s work than a researcher in his own right. Some people dislike this and consider it immoral, but I think that so long as you credit and source what you present, which David does, then there’s no problem. I think there’s even a legitimate role for an eloquent public-speaker to present other people’s discoveries. He seems to have a good relationship with Two Thirds’ author David Percy and I hope Percy is glad to have someone like David Boyle giving him all this free publicity. In fact why doesn’t Boyle charge him a fee!?