UFOs in Reality (30 page)

Our involvement in Joyce’s activities probably began in mid-July 1994. We met with her and husband Pike at ‘The Merlin’. We guided the group on a tour to Avebury and its surroundings and then proceeded to ‘The Barge Inn’ for an evening meal. The following afternoon we had arranged to meet again at the Merlin and were introduced to members of the American UFO research group, MUFON, and to others then present in the tree-shaded area behind the premises. It was arranged we should be there again on the following afternoon to meet up with George Knapp, a well-known American broadcaster and UFO researcher. (I think Joyce had suggested that he should interview me.) After a late arrival, Knapp and his crew duly set about recording all I had to tell them. The session was a long one and probably took up a couple of hours. I can’t remember the topics we covered and I don’t think I ever heard a broadcast of the material. But Knapp was the first of two well-known American broadcasters who were to become familiar with my work as a result of Joyce Murphy’s efforts. The other was to be Jeff Rense, who had a regular and popular American, coast-to-coast, radio broadcast on UFOs and strange happenings, each week. More about that later.

Before we parted company with the Murphys in Wiltshire, we invited them to join us in Torquay for a short stay before they returned home. After ensuring that all members of their tour party had been safely installed onto their correct and various aircraft at Heathrow, Joyce and Pike managed to do that for a couple of very enjoyable days. On our little tours of the area, Pike marvelled at the sight of cows standing upright on the steep hillside pastures of Devon. The cattle he was accustomed to seeing were usually grazing on acres and acres of Texas flat land. I suggested that, perhaps, Devon cows must have developed adjustable legs. After hearing of the UFO activity and occasional crop-circle manifestations in our part of Devon, Joyce resolved to spend some time on her next English tour introducing her party to the area and to informal presentations of my research.

Soon after they had returned to Texas, I received a gift parcel from Joyce and Pike. This supplied me with detailed time zone information for all the states of America, and for the rest of the world, with the exception of Mexico and Canada. Also, contained were items of floppy disc software giving details of all American States. They had remembered the difficulties I’d had (before the coming of ‘Google Earth’) in tracing the locations of smaller American towns and determining the Time Zone each place was in; also, the periods of Daylight Saving Time applying to each location. This was a gift indeed! – and facilitated all my processing of events reported before the year 2000. I will be forever grateful to the Murphys for that generous act.

We corresponded over the following years and one year Marion and I were asked to guide a minibus full of mostly dowsers to ancient sites in South Devon. Unfortunately, on the chosen day, a frontal system and a deep depression had settled over the South West, creating low cloud, thick mist and outbursts of heavy rain. We were at a loss to know where to go with this group because most of the ancient settlement sites were located on Dartmoor, then buried in mist and rain. However, we managed to find two sites in our coastal area to satisfy their needs. En route between these sites, the elderly Californian couple sitting behind me leant forward and asked if the rain would soon stop. I had to answer negatively and then to go on to explain how long-lasting atmospheric depressions proceeded quite frequently to empty some of the Atlantic Ocean over us. Their horrified response was, “But this is your Summer!” On that occasion, the minibus was driven by Ruben Uriarte, who turned out to be MUFON Director for Northern California. We found him to be an amicable man and very reserved. He was good company and appeared to let nothing upset him. He was to become a replacement for Pike on all subsequent trips.

Many of the link-ups with Joyce Murphy had to be done by Fax or telephone before I went on-line and Joyce usually initiated them. One such initiative resulted from Joyce’s having informed a famous radio host, Jeff Rense, based somewhere on the West Coast of the U.S.A., that he would find my material irresistible. Joyce told me it would mean that I would be contacted by the show’s producer on the morning of July 23rd, 1998, at 5 am., and then put ‘On Air’ to talk with Rense. Would I be able to manage that? Of course, I would do my best to comply, even though it would mean setting my alarm clock for 4:45 am. and I would have to have collected my wits together for that 5 am. call.

Sure enough, all went to plan (I think). I was asked very sensible questions and I hoped I was giving sensible answers! I recall there was a ‘natural break, after the first half-hour and the interview then continued for the remaining half-hour until 6 am. BST. Rense seemed to be pleased to talk with me and there may have been questions from listeners for me to answer. It’s all rather a vague memory now.

During the next visit of Joyce Murphy’s group to Devon, the following year (1999), I had something quite momentous to report to her. I told her about Fred Lewis-Goodwin and his mysterious box on the hillside behind the Torbay Holiday Motel (see PHASE 4). Predictably, she wanted to meet him, so I arranged this with Fred, who had, in turn, got the permission of the owners/managers of the Motel to hold the interview in its main dining room. (The Booth family owners turned out to be very helpful and co-operative on several occasions.) Joyce interviewed Fred and immediately afterwards sent off an e-mail to Jeff Rense to recommend that he should have Fred L-G on his next programme. Subsequently, we were told this would take place at 5 am. on the morning of August 12th, 1999, and that I would also be contacted. Sure enough, that 5 am. call came, as scheduled. I was told by the producer that they hadn’t yet been able to contact Fred and that I would be called upon to outline the happening and to answer Rense’s questions until Fred could be brought on-line. Well, the first half-hour went by and they still hadn’t managed to contact Fred. The concerned producer spoke to me during the natural break. Could I give them Fred’s telephone number, in case they had been calling the wrong number? Very quickly I was able to oblige and, apparently, they
had
been calling the wrong number! When the programme resumed, Fred was there to answer Jeff Rense’s questions for himself and I think I became more of a listener from then on. What a pity Fred was not featuring for the entire hour, as I had done previously. I was given to understand that the Rense programmes are archived and can be replayed from the station’s web site.

Joyce Murphy promoted interest in her tours by issuing a magazine with the same title as her business,
‘Beyond Boundaries.’
For some time I received complimentary copies of this and was even featured in one of them. Joyce also came to regard me as a voluntary correspondent for England. Suddenly, everything ceased. I was unable to get in touch by e-mail and letters and cards sent by post were not answered. Quite recently, contact was again made and I discovered that the Murphys had retired from globe-trotting and were enjoying a peaceful existence on their Texas farm though, regrettably, it seems that Joyce is now confined to a wheelchair.

Ivan Zemanek.

In October, 1998, some months after the Jeff Rense radio interview, I received a long letter from a man living in Washington State who gave his name as Ivan Zemanek. It was a letter of almost unbelievable generosity. Ivan had listened through the Rense interview and had been inspired by it. Having heard mention of Edward Ashpole’s book,
‘The UFO Phenomena’ [18]
during the programme, he had gone out of his way to obtain a copy and then found it to be compulsive reading. He’d noted that I was appealing to astronomers, both professional and amateur, to test the Theory and went on, “– I would like to help you in my own modest way if I can”.

“If your theory is proven to be correct it will change the world forever”
.

He felt that officialdom had withheld that kind of information from the public for a very long time and left the burden of communicating it on the shoulders of private individuals. He had registered my suggestion that an inter-linked global network of observatories, working on an observational project, might provide one way of validating the AT. He had done some preliminary research and discovered that there were about 50 universities in the United States offering graduate degrees in astronomy. He imagined that there were probably as many, if not more, in Europe. Ivan then went on to offer to mail information about my work to all the graduate schools in the USA and to include contact details for anyone who wanted to know more. He added,
“
If you are interested in knowing why I am doing this, I can tell you that I do not expect any reward for my work – monetary or otherwise”
.
He added that his father had been a struggling inventor and his reward would be that he had helped in his own way to help me to succeed. He just needed my permission to proceed with this activity.

To say least, I was overwhelmed by this man’s generosity and self-effacing manner. But how could I accept his offer without telling him about failed attempts in the past to interest academia? Without telling him about Edward Ashpole’s continuing efforts to break through; about the NIDS Essay and the general lack of constructive response to it? I decided that I had to thank Ivan, profusely, for his willingness to commit himself to such a task but, also, to warn him with those caveats.

He was undeterred by my pessimism and asked for further details about myself and the project, to include in the packages he was hoping to send out. What could I do further to deter him? I decided to accept his offer graciously and to send further information about my work and background to him, as requested. So began a frequent exchange of Faxes between us (Ivan had no e-mail facility) which lasted until 2003, when I felt compelled to tell him not to waste any more of his time and money on attempts to open closed minds. By then, he’d told me he had sent out packages to over 200 academic establishments in the USA and Europe.

During that period of our co-operation, Ivan had given me the names of important contacts he felt would be contacting me, but they never did. Also, being an avid reader himself, he mailed several expensive books to me, because he felt they would provide useful information and, perhaps, help me to find more contacts. I was so overwhelmed that I had to ask him not to continue with that practice, because much of my time was being spent on further development of the AT and, simply, I did not have the time to consider the books in depth.

As a result of Ivan’s activity, I imagine few academic institutions in the Western World should have been left in ignorance of the Astronautical Theory, but did they just ‘bin’ the information as unsolicited mail? We’ll probably never know. Ivan and I are still in touch. Each year we exchange Christmas cards and, occasionally, I’m able to assist him and his brother, Paul, with studies of their own. Being so modestly self-effacing, Ivan will probably be embarrassed by this exposure of his unselfish activities, but I could not possibly leave him out of this book.

Kazuo Ueno.

As told in Phase 3, I first came to know Kazuo Ueno during the ‘Blackbird’ crop-watch in 1990. He had been passed over to me by Colin Andrews, in the hope that I would be able to answer his questions. Standing on the edge of the hill fort’s ditch, I had tried to explain the nature of my UFO research and used the hand-drawn timings graph of the area to demonstrate how the times of new events might be related to the lines on the graph. The outcome of my analysis of the spiralled lay of the crops in genuine circles was also of interest to him. He wanted to write an article about all this for a leading ‘glossy’ Japanese magazine (AZ) and, to enable him to get the diagrams and graphs on record, we arranged for him to visit us in Cheshire later. This visit took place as planned. Kazuo and his photographer, Emma Popik, from Poland, arrived at Stockport
Railway Station at 2:20 pm on Saturday, June 22nd, 1991. As we got to know Emma better we discovered that she was also a writer and a publisher in Poland and was especially interested in the UFO work for those reasons. After a session photographing my material at home and an overnight stay with us, I drove the visitors to the Jodrell Bank Telescope’s Visitors Centre for a morning visit.

Emma was particularly pleased and surprised to find a bust of Copernicus decorating the front lawn there. “But he’s Polish!”, she exclaimed and wanted to have her photograph taken next to the great man’s image – which, of course, I was pleased to do. That made her day. She and Kazuo were also pleased to know that several crop circles had been found in that rural area of Cheshire. We arrived home very late for a cooked lunch, which the (unwell) Marion had had ready for us at least two hours earlier. However, as usual, she understood and forgave us. Soon I had to deliver our visitors back to the Station. Emma returned to Poland and wrote requesting material about my studies that she might publish over there. This request was met but there were problems of translation of scientific terms into Polish. She has kept in touch spasmodically and has sent two of her published books to us. Unfortunately, we have no knowledge of Polish. Kazuo went away to write the article in the form of an interview with me and in November 1991, I received in the post a copy of the
AZ magazine
, sent to me directly from the publisher, with a ‘thank you’ cheque enclosed.

Having first to realise that Japanese magazines are read from back cover to front cover (right to left) and that articles were arranged in the same way, and that Japanese script is printed in vertical columns, from top to bottom, it became clear that Kazuo had produced a very presentable article, complete with the photographs and diagrams he had obtained during his visit. Of course, I had no way of knowing whether the script was accurate, but this seemed to be very pleasing way for the work to be presented to Japanese readers.