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Ep 157 - UFOs in Scotland with Mark Anderson
193 Plays10 days ago
This week, researcher Mark Anderson joins us to tell us about his own paranormal and UFO / UAP experiences that started in childhood as well as some interesting cases from the Livingston area of Scotland.
Title music provided by Steve Yarwood & Ambienfinity
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Transcript
Introduction and Holiday Greetings
00:00:00
Speaker
almost intricate with me i don't know where to white those on soft or what it was it wasn't an airplane it was not in your plane it was sound off You're listening to Pursuit of the Paranormal Podcast with your hosts, Ash Ellis and Drake Tomlinson.
00:00:20
Speaker
Hey Ash, how are you doing? Very well, very well. It's going to be Christmas tomorrow. It's Christmas Eve. That's where we're releasing this. I'm looking forward to the festivities. How are you doing?
00:00:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'm good.
Trending Topic: Drone Sightings
00:00:33
Speaker
It's been a pretty wild week on social media with the drones, which obviously is hot topic at the moment. And I know it's not UFO, but it is some definitely something we've spoken about over the last week and pretty much everybody around the world is talking about as well. yeah These things are unidentified as such, although they're drones, the owners are unidentified, I suppose. So how are you doing?
00:01:00
Speaker
um' good I'm good. I'm sure we'll get our guests' opinion on the and all the drone and stuff even that's going on when we when we get to it. So we are continuing UFO Month on the podcast. It's our fourth anniversary birthday celebration. Let's talk UFOs a month, which kind of fit in well, because UFOs are quite hot topic, like you say at the minute. So it's kind of like we're jumping on the trend even though we had
Guest Introduction: Mark Anderson
00:01:24
Speaker
this plan before that. but Yeah, it's so good. So we are in week four of... We are. God, the thing about it is three or four, that's week four of December, because it's starting on Tuesday. So yeah, very good. Yeah, like I said, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day tomorrow. And joining us for a UFO episode special again, with a bit of an international flair, kind of, this this week.
00:01:54
Speaker
Coming all the way from Scotland, we have Mark Anderson joining us.
Mysterious Drones: Origins and Speculations
00:01:59
Speaker
Good evening, Mark. Thank you very much for joining us. Hi, guys. Yeah, thank you for having me on today. And yeah, I've been looking at the drones in the States. it's ah It's a strange one. It's a really strange, strange thing that's happened just now. What's your guess? like Let's start there. What's your kind of thoughts on that? Because it has been quite a wig. It's been going on for a few weeks now.
00:02:23
Speaker
Well, my my thoughts are, I'm going to be a bit of a, I honestly don't know, which is going to come out quite a lot during the interview. The one thing I was interested in is, Lou Alexandro said, I mean, speaking to Lou at Rush Coletard,
00:02:41
Speaker
that some of these UFOs or drones exhibited properties that wouldn't be actually associated with our tech, like they might be coming out of the water or doing some sort of maneuvers that would just simply wouldn't be possible. However, Mufon, for example, Earl Grey-Anderson, they said the exact opposite, that these things are completely conventional So it's really weird. The first thing is that the information that we're getting from people on what the drones are and their capabilities is completely different. So it's very difficult to come up with a conclusion with what it is. My thoughts are though is i've from a previous, from my experience with UFOs, I've never had encounters
00:03:28
Speaker
for this long. I've had encounters that have lasted maybe days, close to weeks, but these have been going on for about three weeks now. I've never seen anything like that, not at this sort of scale. So it's also there's a lot of timing issues as well, like the new government coming in,
00:03:48
Speaker
also looking back at the congress hearings they were talking about trying to increase funding for defence and then a few weeks later these drones mysteriously are showing up so my thoughts are more likely at some sort of actor within sorry I'm not going to say more likely my thoughts push or steer towards some form of actor within the United States government, especially within defence. They're trying to push this to create increase fear and alarm and panic, especially as the and new government come in. a But I really don't know. I don't think anybody really does.
00:04:28
Speaker
the The one thing, though, that's been incredibly disappointing is the Biden administration's take on it. that' But in parallel, saying it's nothing to be worried about, but they don't know what it is. So how do they know there's nothing to be worried about if they don't know what it is? So that's my thoughts on that. I don't think we have enough data.
00:04:51
Speaker
but I don't think it's going to be anything like Iran or China. a Some of these things have been said have been coming from the sea, but you'd be able to detect the ship.
Public Perception and Disinformation on UFOs
00:05:01
Speaker
Like these things, if they're hovering for five hours, you're going to be able to track where they're going to go to, and you'd find out where the ship is. I know there'd been some and members members of Congress saying that they might be from an Iranian mothership, but that just got completely switched off after after the announcement. so My thoughts are still it's some sort of defense, some sort of a budget or sort of element of the road element of their the DOD or something like that. Yeah, definitely. And it doesn't help that I think I mentioned it on last week's episode about where there seems to be this kind of hysteria happening where everything in the sky, every light in the sky is now a drone.
00:05:48
Speaker
So whereas people reported it as just like an unidentified light or an orb or even like potential satellites and stuff, everything is now a drone. So instead of saying oh I saw this weird light in the sky, you're seeing it as I saw this weird drone in the sky last night. It sort of changed to that. So now everyone's saying oh the drone's been seen in all these countries and all these states when it's like is it or is it just people kind of just putting that word to it?
00:06:14
Speaker
But it is maybe only happening in these couple of states. Obviously we had them over a couple of bases in the UK. But now people are just latching onto that word and kind of changing the meaning of the word. But it's not like, instead of saying UAP or UFO or even just a light, and I'll just say drone coming to the synomeness, rather than actually just being drones, being called drones, you know what I mean?
00:06:36
Speaker
yeah I mean is it the fact now that it's the perfect sort of disinformation it's written itself the government now don't have to push this agenda because people are doing it for them they can then discount any future tech that they're potentially thrown up in the air now at the same time would be just classed as drone. So it's it's the perfect cover for wherever there whatever they're doing I s suppose.
00:07:08
Speaker
could be a I think the problem is is that what I find interesting is that that we're not getting information And this is lead this has led to this sort of explosion of a this is this, this is that. We don't have enough data to actually have some sort of concrete a concrete conclusion, basically. Yes, it's very it's very, very weird. But yeah, people are starting to panic. And it's is is very sad and that there is panic and panic going on now. But yes.
Mark's Paranormal Experiences and Family History
00:07:50
Speaker
The other thing I think is weird is, if I'm right, was it not like they had the balloons and they kind of stopped. Remember about two years ago, they had the balloons flying over and they kind of stuck on that for a while. They never said anything and they waited until then we had the F-22 shoot them down.
00:08:11
Speaker
And it's like they're letting these things happen for a bit and making people stew over them and basically writing their own conspiracy theories and making themselves more and more afraid. am Yeah, for me, ah with a lot of this stuff, I always think, I think it's Darren Brown who always said about being a magician, he said, the more you closely you look at these things, it's easier to trick somebody. So I've always felt that listen to these things, but not get totally uh too enamored about it or too obsessed about these things because it's going to be easy to go down the rabbit hole and easy to get scared by these things listen to them get information and uh to see what happens but i don't think there's a for just now anyway there's of course our concern
00:08:59
Speaker
Definitely. I kind of agree. It's February 23. I think when that first balloon came over in the States, and like I say, it's the government are very happy probably to stay silent and let people go off about UFOs. It probably just completely takes away from what they're actually doing. So it just keeps their eyes off what they're actually doing. Just lets people go down that rabbit hole. It muddies the water.
00:09:24
Speaker
like i say six months time, if it all stops, so I don't think there's been any last couple of nights, I'm not sure, but if it all just stops, then there's nothing, there's six months down the line, it'd just be, oh, remember that UFOs, then couple of weeks, and that that's all it'd become. As if it was some kind of government testing, whatever, it's really going to be known as a UFO thing, which is government will happily let it stay as that, because that's probably another reason why they are staying silent about it and even like local local like mayors and local senates saying like we need to tell what it is and the government not not even telling them what it is i saw that yeah good reason
00:10:00
Speaker
I saw that and and mayor from New Jersey, and I think it was Fox, and he was saying we were brought into a meeting and we got to nothing. so And they these are the people that actually people are actually going to speak to. It must be incredibly frustrating for them that they don't know anything. They know just as much as we do. And they have to, yeah, and yeah they they have to say we don't know to the public who are getting more and more framed. Definitely. So kind of moving on. So let's get into maybe a bit of your history. So you're obviously a Scotland based researcher and experiencer. So do you want to just kind of give us a bit of your background into how you first became kind of involved in this topic of paranormal and UFO?
00:10:54
Speaker
Yeah, of course. So I come from a town called Dundee, which is the fourth largest town in a in Scotland. And it's not really well known for being a paranormal hotspot. Nowadays, I live in Livingston, which is, which has deck with woods with sort of like a Scottish Fisher of Rendlesham. However, Dundee itself is not really a, there's not really too many stories about it.
00:11:23
Speaker
and we moved to a house where my parents still lived to this day when I was three back in 1983 and as soon as we moved there there was paranormal activity happening where my family members saw like a ghost of a lady like standing over her when she was sleeping she woke up to find this and there was all the other things that you associate with a haunted house and some things that you wouldn't there would be like the unusual feelings the places that I just knew weren't safe or were haunted and then as static
00:12:06
Speaker
I kind of took it as normal. I didn't actually think this was anything. I thought my fears and the things that I was experiencing were just me being a young child and being a bit silly. So, yes, so lots of things happened. One thing that was really weird is that we just got a lot of hammering. So even if there was only, say for example, I was the only person in the house who was a bit older in my teens, I would hear hammering within the house.
00:12:37
Speaker
and they just went on for years and years different types of paranormal phenomenon and occasionally still happens to this day although it's much less say pronounced.
00:12:49
Speaker
and Yeah, there was just there was a lot of little weird things that happened. I once saw something that looked like a family member. I was i was actually outside the wall of the house and I could see it trying to rep but and resemble my family member but it was missing eyes. His eyes were black.
00:13:11
Speaker
so And know it didn't sound quite scary but it actually and wasn't. wrong I don't know why. i actually felt I think I might have lost consciousness when it happened. This happened well over 30 years ago. So some of the memories are a little bit...
00:13:29
Speaker
a little bit faded now. But what was not faded is that the sheer, there was these screams that would happen in the house and they were unmistakable. They would come from certain member certain family members rooms and there would be these absolute screams. Or I could actually sense like footsteps. actually So say for example,
00:13:51
Speaker
in my own house, in my own room, where I was actually sitting, I could actually see like somebody walking over to me at times. So I wasn't really seeing that much, but hearing a great deal. And then my, I think everybody or a lot of people get these dreams where they see the future and that was common. So I'm i'm not really going to say that as a paranormal, and anything too paranormal, but my first time where I had something where I was what I thought was paranormal was I was in France lost my wallet and I had a feeling that I would find it again we went on a ah bus and we drove almost we're almost at a little city near Callies and it was a really busy place and we'd been driving for about one hour or two hours and we got to got to that place I got feeling like I'm gonna find this wallet
00:14:47
Speaker
So I walked outside and this woman spoke to me in English and this time was buzzing. It was thousands of people in this town centre. But this woman handed me over the wallet, spoke to him me in English with all the money in it and the wallet. And I was 11 years old.
00:15:04
Speaker
and it could be just chance or coincidence, but there was something, and it was only many years later, I thought there was something maybe a bit angelic to that expiate encounter. I totally admit though, it might not be, it may just be coincidence, but to me, in my heart of hearts, I felt there was something a but and ah bit more to it. But when it was unmistakable, it was about six months or so later, I used to play table tennis,
00:15:32
Speaker
in Dundee and it must have been a Monday night because we played table tennis that night and I remember playing the song at the hedgehog, it was like when it came out and my friend was there, he went to play the song like well I'll take the dog out. I saw a flash in the sky just outside my home, another flash And then this a very flat UFO just appeared right over my neighbor's house. I wasn't quite hovering, but it was kind of darting about almost the perimeter of my neighbor's house, and neighbor's roof, basically. I was moving quite erratically, quite fast, and there was light coming off it. And we were in a quite a built up neighborhood, and I was just there, just looked at it for a number of minutes.
00:16:18
Speaker
and I went back, got my friend, and be we looked at it, and then we went to table tennis, came back and saw that sort of flash. It was almost like something from a movie where you see a shooting star. That was the the first time I saw a UFO was was at night when I was 11 years old, back in 91. So I'm going to be stopped there because there's quite a lot of there's there's quite a lot of other things that happened.
00:16:46
Speaker
But over the years, for another 11 years, I would see quite a lot of UFOs, not about 20 or 30, in that space of 11 years. so ah All the stuff that was happening kind of in the house, sort going back to when you were younger,
00:17:02
Speaker
ah they What can a family think about? Is it something that you're taught about ah as a family? A family. and So even to this day, the family and won't speak about it and certain members of the family won't be alone in a house by themselves.
00:17:19
Speaker
so it was and yeah there there's two family members that will refuse to be in a house by themselves to this day but we never spoke about it it was one of these things that uh so even to this day i'm i'm very careful about what i say i'll never say i'll just say a family member but the there Some of the family members were were quite traumatized by by what happened. there Seeing that lady was extremely traumatic to the family member that saw it. But all the other things, there's all there the the constant noises, the the weird feelings, that the screams. It wasn't anything like a human scream. like I can't even replicate or even give you a likeness of what it was like. It was just this really quite
00:18:10
Speaker
ear pierced and screaming. It happened a few times just and it was inside the house basically so it was it was really frightening. Is that house still kind of blank? Does your family still own that house? Yeah they still own it to this day. and There was about two or three years ago I believe a I don't think this is going to be a big one but there was some sort of like bang in the house and then the garage is separate and then there was almost like something going into the house made a noise and walked into the garage and just like threw paint all over there the garage
00:18:48
Speaker
So that happened, I wasn't in the house and I wasn't staying there. There has been other reports from other members of the family as well, so I won't go into it too much. You saw it, but somebody said they saw a man actually staring over them at one point. That was a young child whether or not that actually happened or not, I'm not too sure.
00:19:08
Speaker
but and there have been things I've, certainly feelings and the the noises I've personally went through. Did you get a sense, you said you you could sense it, was there a sense that it was like overly bad or an overly positive feeling when these things were happening? a The feelings were quite intense and it What I have to say, Greg, is I was quite young, so things like ghosts and all that probably would scare me a bit more than they do now. There was quite an oppressive feeling in the dining room, and I remember my mum saying that's the only, I don't know whether or not this has got any relevance at all in it, but my mum said that was the only a room that wasn't blessed in the house.
00:20:04
Speaker
but there was there was actually a feeling, quite an oppressive feeling that myself and somebody else felt about the house. I don't feel it anymore, I've got to
Nature and Properties of UFO Craft
00:20:15
Speaker
admit. I've not felt it for a long time, but during Google run-up there was was a couple of places that did feel quite spooky and a bit scary.
00:20:26
Speaker
Have you ever, or ever wanted to kind of go and do some proper, what you call paranormal investigation and in that house? No, no, I wouldn't want to do it in the house. My family are quite religious and they're not really into this. I have kind of put feelers, but it's really not in there. It's not something they would they would want. and Yeah, it's it's not something that they're they're comfortable about. i I moved to another house and
00:21:02
Speaker
that was haunted that was that was crazy and they were fine and it was only just me by myself and they were fine to say mark your house is haunted and then then so they'd come up and they were saying mark we saw this weird light and at night last night we'll see you later leave you on your own but and when it comes to their house all of a sudden they get a bit they get a bit scared but they were okay to leave me in my house my scared house by myself yeah Yeah, and yes so it would it wasn't just me, there was a whole family experiencing things am and it was i was a bit it was a bit spooky. The only person I was aware of at the time who did see the UFOs was myself.
00:21:50
Speaker
and I had a if few, it's okay to talk about the sightings after another sentence. Yep, I guess just quickly before we go on to that, when you saw the first one, was it when you were at 11, the first UFO, how did that kind of, what were you thinking as as a kid, kind of seeing that, what did you think it was or what it could be?
00:22:11
Speaker
There was no way it could have been, and even to this day, there was no way it could have been any form of terrestrial or any sort of rational explanation. It was about six, seven, eight feet and above my neighbours house and that neighbour was like ah right across the road from where my parents were so there was no way it was even from the the get go I thought this is not anything this is this unusual this is strange
00:22:45
Speaker
i I didn't know what to think about it. Honestly, aist to the extent that I don't really know, I haven't come up with any profound or amazing insights that i could I could share with you. There was only a couple of things that I found weird was when I've been looking back and constantly been replaying at my mind even though it's been ah almost 35 years ago.
00:23:08
Speaker
and the first thing is that it's weird now is that how flat it was like you wouldn't like it was maybe like you maybe put a very small person into it but it was so flat it was like pancake style flat you couldn't have had any sort of an occupant in that craft it was just ah and it didn't seem to be a craft itself it just seemed to be this white energy some people might say it's a plasma or but I don't know what it was it just saw as as a white energy and Also, it was a letting off light as well. I can actually see light bouncing off my neighbours.
00:23:47
Speaker
my neighbour's house basically so it was a light source in itself but there was no way that was any form of a biological entity that was in that at the time it was just the dimensions were too small so that's only maybe retrospectively looking at it but at the time I just remember looking at it and I didn't really have any sort of opinion or any other thing that I could think of other than this UFO
00:24:15
Speaker
I did get a feeling though and I did say to to my friend, we shouldn't speak about this. I don't know where that came from. I just got this feeling. I actually said to him, and we shouldn't be speaking about this. Which was actually a bit ironic because I'm the one that actually broke that promise and I've been speaking about it. But that's the only thing I really got from it was don't speak about it. i'm and But I speak about it all the time. so yeah But that's the only insights I have. I don't have any insights or any thoughts so of their of the craft.
00:24:49
Speaker
Have you spoken to that friend that kind of in recent years or anything about it? Have they still given touch? I've not seen him for a long time. I last saw him about three or four years ago and it's not something we speak about. So last thing the last time we spoke about it, I can remember, we're 96 and a what was really interesting is he he actually said that when
00:25:20
Speaker
that he had seen other things going forward from that. And I remember him saying, and they saw like, he lives in a place called Brotte Ferry, which is suburb of Dundee. It's quite a nice affluent suburb and it's quite close to the, like the, where the Tae River Tae meets the North Sea. The River Tae is the longest river in in Scotland and has the most volume of water in the UK.
00:25:49
Speaker
and there he said that he saw like a flare fly up and then another flare and I thought even at 16 that's just flares he's what's he talking about but about 20 years later I was actually looking over the waterfront and actually oh I was actually almost to my mind wondering about those flares that I remember my friends saying next minute I saw a flare and then another flare and then this massive golden orb just appeared right over the water. It happened after a sky watch you did with the SPI which Malcolm Robinson runs and that was the very last time I saw a UFO but yeah I've always wondered if there's been some sort of
00:26:34
Speaker
a the last time I saw a UFO was some sort of a ritual memory of what my friend had told me many years ago. I honestly don't know Ash, I really don't know but that has cost my mind. So so in in the years between the first sighting at 11 and that last sighting in and 2016, I'm going to try and do very quick maths in my head. So what was kind of your experiences between them, some of the other sightings you've had? Well, the day down between
00:27:14
Speaker
Ninety-one and ninety-four, it was pretty quiet. Let the old die down. Then ninety-five things started to happen. So, and which from memory it was like moving stars to start off with. So, things that were normally associated with satellite as satellites nowadays.
00:27:33
Speaker
But then there was a couple of times when there was, I remember, it was an unusually foggy night and there was unusual white lights. I remember seeing them about 1995. But then there was other things that started happening as well.
00:27:47
Speaker
I saw like a moving stars again these you would just normally think of them as satellites now but the angle that they're flying out on was was not right it was almost like moving down towards Earth or there'd be a fleet of them like even to this day Starlink wouldn't actually look or resemble the way that these things look like they almost look like that I can't I guess the way they come in that sort of reformation that's how those say satellite those those moving stars look like back in 95 so there's things like that happening and then but there weren't really anything I wasn't really and in close encounter or anything
00:28:29
Speaker
a I wasn't massive, you could certainly see them and thought that was interesting, but it wasn't like the 1991 encounter, and then moved forward to 1996, and I'd just turned 17, and I was being a bit naughty, and I went to the pub with my pal, and I remember taking the dog out for a walk, and it was at the top end of my street,
00:28:57
Speaker
there was ah an old like industrial unit there and I saw what looked like a it was like a ball of smoke but moving in that sort of same erratic manner as I'd seen five years previously and it was moving it was moving quite fast and it was move it wasn't and there was no fire, it was just like a bottle of smoke, I just condensed and then just started moving by its own accord, even though there was no wind. And the best way to describe it would be like a cloaked UFO, like almost what I saw five years previously, but almost made itself semi-cloaked.
Close Encounters and Personal Experiences
00:29:39
Speaker
I could kind of see this semi-transparent outline, but couldn't see anything, I could see right through it.
00:29:48
Speaker
and it kind of had no notice with me. and I've always wondered that having a ah drink or something like that have an effect on my ability its ability to perceive me or not. I really don't know. So I walked, I walked just observe it for a few minutes and walked to, um, walk my dog back to the house. And then the next night I saw the same thing and it noticed me and it starts following me down the street.
00:30:13
Speaker
And then, as it followed me, during you get like security, like even back in the 90s, they were going on and off. So as it was following me down the street, it was changing shape. It started going from this sort of partially invisible thing to ah showing like almost like light was coming out of it. And then it was changing shape more and it would almost,
00:30:40
Speaker
The way the light was destroyed, it was showing itself as well. It was almost like, imagine somebody opening up a curtain and then putting the curtain back. I was doing things like that, as and but I was going down, all the security lights kept on going on and off with it. And by the time it got to my parents' house, it had made a circle made of small circles and expanding and contracting.
00:31:08
Speaker
and I thought it was actually pretty cool actually, it was quick and again it was um almost again where I'd seen the first UFO, it almost stopped exactly the same place and I just watched it for a bit and I thought that's that's actually pretty cool and I watched it, I can't remember how long I watched it for it but I thought right that's enough, put the dog back in and then I thought that's too late there so I went back in, but went back outside into the garden and it almost like expanded right into the garden. I thought, okay, that's way too close. That was, I got really uncomfortable then. So I ran back in and thought, oh no, what am I doing? them These things have come from wherever and I've, I've made myself look like a curse. I ran back out and like, and then they did the same. I'm like, no, can't handle this. Ran back in again, snip the door because that's going to save me from being abducted. And, uh, I was absolutely petrified. And then I was saying before about the security lights going on and off.
00:32:05
Speaker
My neighbour's security light went on and off about three or four days afterwards. I was petrified of leaving the house. I was just, it was so scary because you just knew this thing was just hovering about making itself known that you knew, and making it known that it was right there. So it went away after a few days, but it was quite, ah that was when it got a bit scary. Well, so when it was kind of, when you're walking back, it was, like I said, kind of following you.
00:32:36
Speaker
How high up was it? Was it quite high up? Was it lower down? but that was and was lowered down It was So the way the houses are, it was just above most roof heights, but it wasn't actually going over the roofs, it was just slightly behind the the houses.
00:33:01
Speaker
So imagine walking down the street and you've got like most houses that have got there, maybe two storeys. It was just slightly above the houses. So we're talking maybe about 25 feet. Yeah, pretty close. Yeah. And it was almost like walking, it was almost like fall going through the neighbor's back gardens. So it was, I don't know, about 50 feet or something like that away from me.
00:33:29
Speaker
and i just it just kept its distance. So if I had stopped, if the dog stopped, do the the toilet or anything like that, it stopped. But it would all be changed. It was like was like it was had this like energy that had to keep doing something. It had to keep on moving. And yeah, so and day it would be like shimmers or light going through it or It was just changing some way. It's hard to actually even describe what the the changes look like, but it was always just keeping in parallel with me as it moved, as it moved from walk down the street. So it clearly had some kind of awareness. Yeah. do you Was there any point where you felt like it was trying to communicate in any way or do you just feel like it was observing you or? I think
00:34:28
Speaker
I think I'm honest with you, Greg. I'm not making myself sound good here. I think I was so full of anxiety and so... ah frankly my head up more than ours that I wouldn't have known if I was trying to communicate with me. That was fair, that was fair. There had been times when I felt they have communicated with me but it was like I just wasn't too mature to pick it up. I wasn't really grounding myself in just kind of
00:35:01
Speaker
trying to to pick up something like that, what my thoughts were, hey just kind of watching it and... and yeah and just trying to try and get the dog to do what he was what the dog was trying to pull at me so and what was interesting is that the dog had no interest no notice of okay anything it just seemed to be doing this it just for for the dog it was just i walked in the street so i was kind of like the dog was pulling at me and i wasn't
00:35:35
Speaker
I can't remember what I was thinking 30 odd years ago but I don't think I would have done anything like being meditated or or being grounded as a probability of that now. no that's fair that's fair i mean and it's quite a profound experience especially when you're a lot younger um so yeah absolutely fair point interesting the dog didn't sort of pick up on it which i suppose if it was far enough away that probably the dog probably didn't get a sense that there was anything untoward anyway maybe i don't i Yeah I don't know Greg and I've heard of other people I know Chris Meek has just done an investigation in the dogs in the Bathgate Hills and the dogs went crazy and they were further away from where I was from
00:36:24
Speaker
aliens were further away than from where I was when the owner saw and so so the UFO and saw the beings so I don't know i don't know why i didn't the dog and seems to notice it. and it never seemed The dog never seemed to notice anything when because all my accounts seemed to be when I was taking the dog out and the dog never seemed to notice
00:36:52
Speaker
That's fair. Thank you. So we've done anything that happened after that. That's kind of, obviously that's quite a, like Greg said, quite a profound, uh, intense experience. I say, with it coming right into your garden and stuff, having around for a few days, we've done even a kind of similar or as kind of impactful as, as that one. Well, that seemed to be the precursor to going crazy. Right. And then 97, 98.
00:37:21
Speaker
Both times, both both years now, these are all happening late. and My birthday's December, and most of the times I think there'd be before my birthday, but maybe like maybe November, sort of November time. And I remember for about 10 days or something like that, 97 and 98, you would see these sheets of light. It would be kind of like Western way,
00:37:51
Speaker
saved nora there there'd be more the southern side of the sky. We'd just turn this sheet of light and these, and I'd almost have this like the wheel, the wind would move because it almost like be like a, imagine if you saw like a sail on the wind, wind caught it and it would kind of make that sort of like wave over the sail. I remember seeing things like that. And it just, they just seemed to be there. They didn't, Sade Nuxway. and it was all, the way I perceived them or perceived them laterally is
00:38:23
Speaker
it was almost like they got too close and they scared me so they always tried to keep through keep the distance away from me and it was almost like the way I sensed it was almost like they were trying to build me up to having a bigger encounter.
00:38:39
Speaker
So in 97 I would see these this sheet of light i' come and I remember coming in and the phenomena in the house at times was even more intense. Like I remember walking in one time and after seeing that sheet of light and I had footsteps upstairs and there was It was clear footsteps. It was like clear dumbm dum dum dum dum.
00:39:06
Speaker
and damn Yeah, so that happened in 1997-98. Nothing spectacular about those about that. Those sheets of like it just they were just there. And I was almost like them kind of having a ah presence that wasn't scary and wasn't anything major. They just were there. And then in 1999, it was about March 99 February March time and it was a very first time no so the second time I got what I call the knowing it's almost like you sense quite strongly that there was a that the phenomena was nearby it's almost like a ah very strong psychic sense and I got a sense that they were there and it was in it was when you get that sense it's unmistakable it' it's so so strong
00:40:01
Speaker
and there's a bit of waste ground, it's quite a large area, it's big bigger than a football field in its style. It's just been left for for nature to take over. So it's a bit of waste ground and you could easily go in and there's there's a lot less light pollution because there's no, there's no plan posts. And as soon as I went in there, and and after feeling this, I went right into the middle of the the area,
00:40:29
Speaker
and the sky changed, so the sky changed to this, and half of it became this like this reddish pink colour and that other side turned into a purplish blue and this was not just part of say of the whole sky turned into that colour and then this like flash beam, this flash of light or a beam of light went right through the middle and was just really incredibly bright and beam of light and then so started watching that and I remember trying to call a friend of mine so I'd been there for quite a while at least a few at least three or four minutes but what really scared me was that
00:41:15
Speaker
it seemed to be that the clouds start to move much much faster than normal so say for example it was I remember it not being a a windy night but the clouds were moving like 20-30 times faster than they should have been and that was just too weird had for me it was it was way way too scary so I tried my best to stay in there and in the area but but my nerve just went and I ran out of there as soon as I left it was almost like something like a psychic thing just broke it snapped and I just got this really profound like message to say you should not have run
00:41:57
Speaker
I feel bad about it, so I ran back in, but whatever magic, whatever connection had had been severed and they just didn't come back. So that was that was the the biggest encounter I've ever had, but it was It was more than just the, it wasn't really the solid UFO, it was the fact that reality itself had changed. There's no way that you could ever, especially at night, that the whole sky changes colour and especially changes different colours depending on the hey the place of the
00:42:31
Speaker
the the area of of the sky it was just too weird so that was that was the biggest encounter had another encounter in 2002 and then I thought that was it and then after doing the skywatch in 2016 they came back again so that was that's been my and the the big sightings
00:42:49
Speaker
Wow, that's, I guess, I mean, what, you tend to get a lot of people that kind of never have any experiences and you get people that seem to have a lot of experiences that kind of follow him throughout the
Phenomena and Personal Speculations
00:43:02
Speaker
life. You ever kind of thought, kind of why you ah in these situations?
00:43:09
Speaker
and The only hypothesis I've kind of come out with, a there's a couple, albeit there's a couple of leads I've got.
00:43:19
Speaker
um I'm more than into, I'm getting more, as I as you get more into the paranormal, there's a lot of people, been there's been some speaks, people like Gary Nolan, for example, have kind of made indications that people who are on the spectrum may be more prone to seeing things like that.
00:43:41
Speaker
And although I've never been diagnosed officially, ah my mother is a special needs teacher. She's a special needs teacher for 30 years. Then she went, Mark, you're clearly on the spectrum. So while it's not an official diagnosis, it's close to an official diagnosis, it as you could probably get. She also says I've been paying the arse, but I don't leave that part. And and they there times, for example, when and And I don't know if this is normal or anything like that guys, it's just the way i my experience is going up. But handling stress or boredom or or stuff like that, I would kind of i was kind of there process it in my own way, on on my own. My son's severely autistic and I see a lot of the similarities between what he does
00:44:33
Speaker
and what I did although mine is much much less severe and I did notice when I was doing that that sometimes the front and that's when the front got really close so when I was talking about feeling like hearing like footsteps in my own room that was actually when I was actually kind of like processing through my emotions so that's one hypothesis I've got there's The other thing I've wondered about is, I've wondered if I'd done some sort of CE5 without knowing it. I just would be looking up at the skies, having a clear mind, and just once in a while that happened. Like, I haven't had that dog for 14 years.
00:45:15
Speaker
and dare That's when my dad would demand the dog was taken out three times a night. So three times a night for 14 years is thousands of times, but only saw the phenomenon about 20 or 30 times in going up. So it wasn't like it was an every night occurrence.
00:45:35
Speaker
But I just wondered maybe occasionally if the stars were aligned right or and my mind was in a proper state. I just maybe saw it in that in that state. But I honestly don't have any hard or fast answers for that. No, that's fine. Nothing's quite interesting.
00:45:53
Speaker
we mentioned there about autism and so if I guess that's something I've never really considered and maybe that's an avenue of ah study as of that could be quite interesting to go down at some point that's I think that's quite interesting actually. ah screw I think is that the with Gary Nolan was it he what you're talking about where it's people that have had experiences have that ah extra something in the brain seems have the same and kind of chemical or something that's identified in the brain of experiences and those that didn't have experiences didn't have it. I'm probably getting that completely wrong but I know there's something around that. Yeah, yeah that that that does bring back a memory. It's been a while since I've listened to Gary Nolan but ah there there was something I don't know
00:46:50
Speaker
I'm not going to say the pineal gland because it sounds too common, but I did remember him saying that there was there was certain people that did have a certain chemical in their brains. A common trait amongst them.
00:47:04
Speaker
Yeah, and some of his stuff, and ah he's a very clever guy. I remember listening to the stuff he was doing, is he's definitely on the ball. But yeah, I can't remember exactly what was it was. I do remember something vaguely being spoken about, but kind of I couldn't repeat it one year without saying this silly.
00:47:27
Speaker
So I was just looking, there's an article that says the recent study of scans of brains of patients with ADHD shows a number of shared morphology morphological differences among them. Of note was heightened connectivity in the chordae putamen.
00:47:43
Speaker
Sorry if I've just butchered that. This is the same region of the brain showing heightened connectivity in pilots who have reportedly had close encounters with UAP as for Stanford's Dr. Gary Nolan. He says it's not clear if the brain differences predate the encounters or not. um And then there's a question asked on this particular website saying, do any experience out there have a diagnosis for ADHD?
00:48:09
Speaker
um I do. um i've I've been recently diagnosed with ADHD. I've only seen a couple of things, but I'm massively into the paranormal. and I'm open to that and I've had lots of weird experiences um over the years. So I don't know if that's anything to do with it, but yeah.
00:48:33
Speaker
There's something I've been listening to recently called the the telepathy tapes with a lady called Kai Dickens and she's looking at severely autistic children almost having a telepathic network.
00:48:46
Speaker
and somebody who has and these children all non-verbal. Now I have a non-verbal son and I find it very interesting to potentially see that was saying there's there's potentially some sort of thing that my son's able to do that I'm not aware of. Certainly it's been a few times off. I've seen him laugh with like looking at something just in there in space and laughing at something.
00:49:11
Speaker
and I can't see anything so I find that research extremely interesting.
00:49:20
Speaker
That is, yeah, like I said, interesting. And there is a lot of crossover, I believe, with ADHD and autism. So that could be definitely on something, that kind of train of thinking.
Mark's Journey to Counseling Paranormal Experiencers
00:49:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's definitely totally interesting. So kind of moving on from your experiences to your kind of investigations side of things. So was it your kind of experiences that led into wanting to do that, to kind of learn more about what you were seeing, or was it another reason?
00:49:49
Speaker
Well, my research just now is that there's kind of three paths towards it. So it's a bit it's a bit unusual research that I do.
00:50:01
Speaker
and My first bit of research is on AI, how we can use AI to a within two to further investigate the phenomenon. So I've done a fair amount of research on how we can do that and I'm actively, although extremely slowly building out some AI models that can actually help us.
00:50:22
Speaker
and ah Also, the thing that's taken most of my time is that I'm noticing that there's ah people are having some effects with the paranormal. that They're having a fear because they're not being able to be understood or be respected that there's some negative effects towards that.
00:50:43
Speaker
So I've actually started to become, I've started training to become a counsellor so that I can actually give counselling to people who are, and while maybe be ah a part of it or do as a professional side, the other side that would always be free would be for people who have had experiences but have some sort of trauma. I don't even think the trauma has to be from having been right close to UFO. It might just be the case that if nobody believes in their parents, their spouses don't believe them,
00:51:14
Speaker
and be able to to speak to somebody that just listens to them and gives them the time of day and respects them is it's going to be make all the difference to them so I'm very passionate about that and it's going to be a big four years so a lot of the research is based on that But from time to time as well, I also do research on ah UFO and some other things as well. So there's some in the Bathgate Hills and other places like in Fife, for example, that I've been really interested in. So yes, sir and that's what keeps me at mischief. No, that's amazing and well done on the the counselling stuff. I think that's
00:51:56
Speaker
really good and really needed, it really is. I mean we do and lots of meet ups in England and because people don't have that place to talk about this stuff and or have that people to talk to like they don't have that network of family or friends that they feel that they can talk to or they have had ridicule in the past so they don't want to talk about it and some of the these experiences whether it actually happened, whether they think it happened, however it's come about. People have been left with PTSD and trauma from these experiences and they don't, you can't go to the doctor and say like, I feel and all this, I got all these emotions and trauma because I was abducted. Like, there's help and support for lots of other things that can happen to you.
00:52:42
Speaker
but there's really that line of ah sort of help for this type of thing. So I think that is really amazing that you're you're doing that. Like I said, we have our meetings, we have people coming to our meetings. And there's one lady in particular who took her about six, she'd been following us for a couple of years. We started the meetings up and she always says she's kind of come but she had anxiety about not wanting to come and she had a lot of anxiety around it. And she eventually came to one of the meetings and she came every month and after about six months of coming she finally told her story she finally had that courage to tell her story because she knew she was in that safe place where she could talk about it and she came to me afterwards in tears because it's the first time she had told anybody in 30 years
00:53:25
Speaker
She had had that weighing on her ah that for whole life, basically, because she just got ridiculed in school and spoke to anybody about it. And it took us her years and coming to our meetings to finally tell that story. And it was such a weight off her shoulders. So that's that's why I do these meetings and conferences and events so people can share their story and actually get it out even if it's just in private or to other people giving them that platform so I think doing that is really really amazing so well done. I think yeah it's it's a lot of work and it's like so it's every it's part-time to work full-time in IT and nineteen t so and ah it's ah it's a lot of work because it's it's all the essay just going back to college
00:54:10
Speaker
and when you've got two kids and little time job and ah a dog it's ah sometimes the time is a bit tight but I'm seeing already home how needed it is i'm not even had a case I've not even had a case like that Ash I've had a few cases I've set up a little group in Dundee and there was one guy that was stopped by a dog man he was stopped for hours by a dog man it just kept on getting closer to him stopping when there's a light and then he would keep on walking and then and then next time he came to the lamppost it would stop. It would just not get quite to the light. I kept on doing that for four hours. He was absolutely petrified and we actually my had him on the Scottish Paranormal Podcast i actually now being able to, he's open about his experiences and he he spoke about it so we'll be releasing that quite shortly.
00:55:03
Speaker
But yeah, there's there there needs to be a place where there's a conflict. The guy was quite open and allowed that encounter to be spoken about. There's lots of encounters I'll never speak about. you know i've been told not I've been asked not to.
00:55:21
Speaker
and there needs to be that respect where people are i'd given a safe place to to be listened to and it doesn't even have to be a counsellor, it just even has somebody that, one of the best gifts that I got told by my lecturer is having somebody properly listen to them.
00:55:40
Speaker
and giving them the respect and it's needed because from first-hand experience, like ah my my wife is not into this at all. ah um Whenever I talk about seeing UFOs, although we've been married for years, there's always that element of doubt.
00:55:57
Speaker
And it's hard to, and understandably so, if you've never seen a UFO, if you've never been close to one, it's hard to actually prove it to people. But these things become, I feel these encounters become part of you. They change your perception in life.
00:56:17
Speaker
and they certainly are important to me. Without them I would not have this outlook I have in life. So these are important and having it and being able to be supportive of the community is something I feel is something we need to do.
Bathgate Hills: A Paranormal Hotspot
00:56:33
Speaker
So yeah it's a lot of work but I'm hoping that in the years to come it will be, it really can help a lot of people.
00:56:41
Speaker
Amazing. We've talked about, you mentioned back at Hills a couple of times in the kind of Livingston area. and I know from my own kind of research, there's a lot going going on up there. There's a reason why we went to that area to film a documentary. ah we we've got As have identified, we've got quite a big following from Scotland.
00:57:01
Speaker
we get a lot of reports coming in, UFO reports from kind of Edinburgh, Lohovian and across the back gate, that kind of between Edinburgh and Glasgow kind of area. That's why we wanted to go up there to kind of see what is going on inies in these little towns. yeah So please talk to us about some of the, maybe some of the cases that you've researched or read about in that area. Well, stuff I've done, what I've I haven't been looking at the Backate Hills for a while. I've kind of left left Chris to do it because what I've found is that there's ah been a few investigators and they're kind of jumping on when they see something on and in the Backate local groups, they'll jump on it. And I thought, you know, that's going a little bit much. And also Chris has done the most work for it. So kind of been holding fire a bit on that. But, um,
00:57:56
Speaker
stuff I've been looking at was I was speaking I got a I got speaking to a few people that looked after like the local community back at hills and forums and and facebook groups and they've been inundated with stories and so I went out with one guy who first hand had they seen ghosts so it's not just UFOs that have been seen at at Bathgate Hills but also a ghosts have been seen as well. and There's been phantom sightings of cars and I've spoken to a witness who had experienced that firsthand and I got speaking to a guy who actually lives in the Bathgate Hills during Covid and they hit him and his a girlfriend had actually seen The Silver Man which is a Bigfoot style Bigfoot type entity. a So
00:58:52
Speaker
there seems to be an awful lot of paranormal phenomena. It doesn't seem to be UFOs but there's been like like fairly like beings, Bigfoot, ghosts, you name it have been recorded.
00:59:10
Speaker
So some of the sightings I got from, so first hand was a guy was in a car park with his girlfriend and sometimes started banging on the, even though there was muppy in the carpet next to him, and they started banging on the roof of his car, and got frightened. A bunch of- I'm not surprised. Yeah. And a bunch of boys were down fishing at a lock, and this lock is actually a more modern lock, it's been this in the 50s, but there's ah an ancient path, and
00:59:49
Speaker
while they were while they're fishing and just kind of camping out this like spectral man just started walking down the path and they said that's just and to that day some of them won't still won't go near that area and there's been things that there's a small woodland called Raven's Creek woodland and it's a second-hand story but the guy said that He had, he bumped into a few walkers, a few campers, and he said, at night, there's footsteps and like things coming close and encroaching to the camp, to the tent. And the guy just got out there and just left. He said it was absolutely better fine. So yeah, the place is is pretty busy. and That's the things I've kind of, I'm aware of. ah Chris Meek has been looking at them a bit more in depth recently.
01:00:43
Speaker
and the stories are still coming a Chris and hard done and code spoke to a guy who saw two beings actually get into a ship and fly off and this happened about five years ago and he's he like like himself and a few other people people have been reported to him UFOs and i around the area and around a place called Cairne Papel which is kind of an ancient cairn which is actually on top of a hill and ah he's spoken to a few people in a town called Armadale and from Armadale you can actually see this hill, this Cairne Papel hill and some of the accounts from that are on the Scottish Paranormal Podcast are are absolutely incredible but to add to it I've spoken to people from Armadale on this head
01:01:33
Speaker
There's so many UFOs over and above Ken Papel. It's not that it's an everyday occurrence, but it's not uncommon. So it's ah it's a very unusual place. Very funnily. Well, I don't want to say funnily. So when we were up in Scotland filming for a documentary, we had a plan through their five nights and we had planned through each night. We were quite busy for throughout each of the days.
01:01:59
Speaker
and one of the nights we planned to go to to knock forest with the silver a man the running man silver a man yeah seeing then up to getting papo and we're gonna go up to the top and they do a little nighttime investigation over there and it was the night that the northern lights came out that nights. we've we've dropped We had no idea the Northern Lights were due. hey And is it ah mid mid-October? but And we were driving, thinking so many cars about. There's cars and everything laid by, loads of people in the pajamas and
01:02:33
Speaker
night nightgowns. I was like, what's happening? I was like, we expect this to be there quiet and stuff. And so we managed to get a part of the car somewhere. So I woke up and was like, why is this, but why are so many people? And the people started asking us, oh, you're looking for, I was like, what do you mean? Like all the Northern Lights, they're going to be visible or are visible. It was like, we're like, and no idea. So, so we ended up going up to the hill, climbing up. It wasn't Camp Apple we went to at this point. We couldn't get anywhere. there cocoel you went up Yes, that was the one, a bit further down. And we just stayed there for a bit and watched the Northern Lights, which was amazing. Completely visible to the naked eye massively, pink and green across the whole sky is absolutely incredible. So we were fortunate, I guess, to be in that part of the world.
01:03:18
Speaker
to be able to see it that that not well. But on the other hand, that was our night. We had a plan to do kind of investigation around, getting Papal around all the sightings and stuff. So obviously it kind of stopped us being able to do that. This is kind of like a bittersweet thing. But yeah, the amount of reports, like you say from there, and these look like all these towns like Gorbridge. We had spent quite a bit of time in Gorbridge.
01:03:43
Speaker
because there's so many reports. From then, it's like little old mining villages. And the populations aren't that big in the thousands. But yet, there's so, so many reports. The percentage to population must be so high, like i can the Chinese had a minute ago, next to Bafgate.
01:04:05
Speaker
and what's it called ummail Armadale again a small kind of village or area and but there's so so many reports it's like it's so mad that there's just so many things happening in these small little of villages there's yeah Gorebridge is a strange one there's I'm aware of a few accounts there was a near Nearby Gorebridge, there's a place called New Battle College. I think that's right. I can't remember the name of it. And there was a MIB sighting from there, back in the 70s. It's a pretty crazy very crazy place. I don't know much about, apart from that though, I don't kind of keep an eye on Gorebridge.
01:04:49
Speaker
The place that I've been focused on recently is Fife. So Fife is ah between Dundee and Edinburgh and probably is most famous for having a St Andrews, which is home of golf and where Kate and Will went to university. And there's been a lot of sightings around there. and Malcolm Robertson had a good sighting from 1996.
01:05:14
Speaker
But more recently, as I got to sit in last week of something in a time called STAR, and there just seems to be a small pocket of out of towns called, there's one called Mark County where I lived and that's where my house was haunted and then next to it is a thing called Star and another thing called Kenaway and there's numerous reports of haunted houses, UFOs and I think there's been anything like banter amongst being detected on <unk> on roads and stuff so yeah, there was an encounter last week
01:05:53
Speaker
but there' there's also things like in this town called Star a guy was just in the field and he just got pinned down by this invisible force just in the field and he can't, doesn't have any explanation behind it so that's a place that's been of interest to me more recently than than any place else but certainly if there are encounters in the Bathgate Hills I'll jump at a chance to to get there the one thing as well about the Bathgate Hills is that there's a the place that seems more focused on is a place called Raven's Creek woods and that's where people seem to have the most sightings. Now I was there about two weeks ago and the feeling there is very very strong. Like it's just a quite an oppressive, quite an ominous feeling, quite at the the back end of the woods and
01:06:45
Speaker
There's an old buddy, there's an old Cairn there. As soon as you get up to Cairn, you actually feel okay. But nearby, they the feeling's quite quite and unsettling. It's not the same as Cairn Papo. It's got quite an open feeling to it. But certainly Raven's Creek is a definitely different energy to it.
Innovations in Paranormal Research with AI
01:07:07
Speaker
Amazing. You mentioned Chris Meek and the Scottish panel podcast a couple of times. Chris Meek is the, I guess, the creator. And you're involved with the podcast. Now, how did that come about? Kind of.
01:07:18
Speaker
being on the show and now being part of it. There's a paranormal group in in westlodian West Lothian, West Lothian Paranormal, and I who was is a member of of it for, since about 2015. And we've done through all there the sort of classic ghost investigations going on with all the equipment in all that and the psychics as well.
01:07:43
Speaker
and And one day somebody posted on on Facebook that the creator of the the group set said, where's the most scariest places in the West? Lillian and Chris messaged to say Raven's Creek.
01:07:57
Speaker
And I thought, well, that's interesting. I know that we'd learnt and never really thought too much about it. So I ended up having a chat with Chris on on Zoom or something like that back in about 2020. So I just went COVID was about to hit. And he said, I'm about to start up a podcast. And would you like to to come on as a guest one time? So I came on as a guest. We had a few other guys on as well. He had like Andy Swann on.
01:08:23
Speaker
and then one day he asked if he'd like to come on as ah as a co-host and that but the rest was was history. So we tried to make it when when we can. ah so It's a massive honour to be asked by him because some of the guests we've had have been phenomenal. And they yeah, Chris has been able to get some some good guests on. So and yeah, it's been it's been an absolute pleasure to be be part of it actually.
01:08:50
Speaker
yeah it's It's a really good podcast. i found I came across it when I was researching Bathgate Hills and there's quite a lot of episodes. I think probably most of them are based around Bathgate Hills area, people having experiences and stuff.
01:09:06
Speaker
and I wanted to get used to the accent. I think Chris has got quite a stronger he does accent than you have. I did struggle initially when listening to, it and I've got a family out of Scotland that live in Danoon, and they're quite strong quite broad Scottish, but said i even I still kind of struggle a little bit, but I wanted to get used to it. is So um yeah yeah, definitely check out the Scottish panel podcast. It is good. and the Chris and Mark, anything else you want to add? I've been looking at EA before since about 2022.
01:09:37
Speaker
and did the And then it was just before chat GDP actually came out. So my the task was, asked I was asked by SPI to do a talk on how we can use a AI two for the paranormal and for UFOs. So I did a talk in 2023. And again, just before chat GDP came out, and honest honestly, guys, some of the stuff I was doing was just,
01:10:06
Speaker
Oh, I absolutely cringe when I look back at it. I was actually going on to to Netflix this thing and the guy asked me to do something about AI and I listened to YouTube on AI to actually have something to talk about just before I got to actually do there yeah the interview.
01:10:30
Speaker
And I spent, but after after the weeks and months, I spent ages just cramming over AI how we can actually use it and went from knowing nothing about it to actually having quite a relatively decent understanding of how AI works. And then there's a few ideas I've got on how to apply AI. Now, first of all,
01:10:53
Speaker
and nobody can ever say they're an expert in AI because it's it like saying in vehicles, there's so many different types of AI nowadays that and nobody can be an expert in all of them. They're just, it's just too fast. Like even looking at like the thing with the chat GDPs, is that's ah expertise ah in itself. But where I where i found where we can actually use AI would be in actually having like almost like a online interviews. So say for example somebody's hadda seen a UFO for example, being able to have a chatbot that can actually interact with them is going to be an absolute win. I think people like get Indigo Swan are actually looking at that already. But why that's really good is that if anybody who's ever
01:11:38
Speaker
today interview longer than the longer the experience has has been the less likely the information is going to be accurate. Getting the information as quickly as possible is going to be really helpful. Now I've done an investigation that takes me a few days to actually meet up with the the witness and if you can meet them up at all sometimes it's not possible.
01:11:59
Speaker
Having something on a mobile app that you can actually ask questions in a database means that the data they can actually be having minutes half after a UFO has actually been encountered. So that's an absolute quick win. It's an easy thing to do as well. So I'm actually building something out to do that. and But it's very slow just because of and other time commitments.
01:12:22
Speaker
moving forward though there are going to be other few things that we can use the eye for but i think the biggest one is going to be actually is to see is actually to find trends in social media so if you ever think look at things like usapp for example they were looking at trying to find trends and people if you look at skinwalker and pentagon They will look at like like iun ah people's immunological responses after they've had there encounters with the phenomenon. But my thoughts are that that's quite a slow amount of people you're going to be able to do and it's quite time consuming. Another more and better way of being able to do that is actually look at social media.
01:13:02
Speaker
things like social media, we'll have enough data on things like health, fitness, what people understand. Also they'll be able to find out trends on the people, what they're sort of into and by being able to find out trends on what sort of people are actually experiencing UFOs we're going to be able to get these insights into a onto the onto people who are more likely to be seeing things, but also if people may be seeing them a bit later on in life, what sort of changes that had to that person? Are they more spiritual or are they depressed or something like that? Be able to see these trends. They might not even be noticeable to the person.
01:13:39
Speaker
but AI and the digital footprint that people actually produce are going to be really insightful to actually see how is affecting the phenomena basically, how the phenomena is affecting us. So that's my that's my view on how we can use AI going forward. That's quite a resource and labor intensive endeavor, but certainly is possible.
01:14:02
Speaker
No, definitely. I think the future for a lot of things is going to be a massive help on the spot of things where, one, the time these things can take to and do things like data analysis and stuff like that, that can take a long time, like me doing it. I'm just going to throw it all into a machine. It does it in seconds. it's The capabilities and, like, say, the opportunities we have going forward for this topic and for many others, it's going to be astronomical. It's really going to kind of change the way research is done, the way we do everything really. It's yeah crazy. It's going to be crazy. I'm i'm actually, I used to be data analyst. I used to manage my own team of a business intelligence ah team and worked in BI and data analysis for years.
01:14:51
Speaker
and not all of it needs to be AI. Actually, the vast majority of the insights we can get don't need need to be with AI. Even things like a Google Sheets or Excel, we're going to be able to run a lot of data and a lot of it insights into it. However, if we want to actually find these sort of hidden trends and trying to see, kind of a deep dive into people, into a into people, then they would be looking at shot like the way that marketing acts upon us, gets that digital footprint on us and is able to then hey understand us and then be able to produce recommendations. That's why it's so effective.
01:15:32
Speaker
If we could actually utilize that technology for good, we could actually start to see how the framework is actually affecting us. But a lot of insights, for example, even like if you had things like a new product dataset, you'd be able to get a lot of bad decent insights even just using Google Sheets. Data analysis doesn't have to be complex.
01:15:53
Speaker
That's true, that's true. I'm using Tableau, so I'm like... Excellent Tableau I use for my team, don't I use Power BI, so I'm a data engineer, but I also used Power BI, and I was a DBA, so I built out the data realized myself, and then built out the... but it's their schema in Power BI. So yeah, that's my professional role, but it's, yeah, I don't think it has to be that context for the analysis. Although Table of Power BI, these are very powerful tools. Yeah, it's like we have a UFO identifier. We have the biggest database of UK, current UFO reports in the UK.
01:16:42
Speaker
I guess, like I say, a lot of the kind of basic stuff. We can run through Tableau or even using Excel to build up these dashboards and stuff. But yeah, definitely what you're saying about the more stuff that one, we probably won't recognize ourselves, ones that I won't even think about. You can really kind of pinpoint these trends and stuff that we wouldn't otherwise see. That's really exciting to think that we could do it with that. We do our reports each year.
01:17:12
Speaker
And it is still quite at a basic level and using just Excel and stuff to get these, try to do the basic data analysis and presenting it in a way that makes it interesting to people to read. and But I guess going more deeper down into that data and the more human side, I guess it's the human side of it, isn't it? You've got the data side of it, then you've got the human side of it. And it's going into that more human side of it, which I think is where you should be heading, going forward.
01:17:41
Speaker
There's also kind of the mix. So there's a really good website called Kaggle. And Kaggle's a data science website. It's funny that the two biggest data science websites say no on the planet. Both are beautiful. Analysis is on them. So DataCamp has new funds, data set, and Kaggle's got new products.
01:18:07
Speaker
and what I've seen a lot of people do is use like Python for example and then or and use things like use Python as a program language and then they're able to determine analysis from there but then what they can do is actually call in some some tools like use NLP for sentiment analysis So I've seen a lot of there people trying to apply sentiment analysis on ah UFO data and certainly that's a great way of a trying to find out the how it has affected people just by doing their counts themselves. I had some some very profound experiences like I mentioned earlier. Do you do you feel just in sort of
01:18:48
Speaker
um wrapping up from my side do you feel that the the paranormal experiences when you moved into the house when you were growing up and the UFO experiences had some kind of of link at all yeah yeah there's definitely between them i don't know what the link is but yeah there's certainly a link and there was also a link between me as well. i was there The UFO seemed to target mainly on me and
01:19:21
Speaker
But yeah, there I don't understand or can explain the link, but certainly the words there was a link. As I said before earlier on, there be there was that one time specifically specifically where I would see the UFOs like a sheet of light outside and then walk into the house and they would hear footsteps even though there was nobody upstairs. So yeah, they they weren' they were linked, but how or why they were linked, I don't know.
01:19:45
Speaker
amazing thank you very much mark that was fascinating quite a wide range of topics covered especially ai that's something not really uh talked about before and that's something definitely i can say in the future i think it become a much bigger part of ah lie do I do use it a lot in various ways that I think most people do nowadays. ah Definitely a help more than
Conclusion and Holiday Wishes
01:20:06
Speaker
Google these days. Google seems to be a bit, I don't know, a bit screw with me these days. I think like Jack GPT, I think I'm better now. That type of stuff. But yeah, no, thank you for sharing your experiences and your knowledge. It's been great.
01:20:22
Speaker
and well thanks for having me on guys I really appreciate it yes it's a really interesting conversation so thank you for taking the time you articulated it very well for someone like myself so great yeah it does it does take a bit of getting used to being able to to communicate a like when I was 19 I would have like three conversations in the same sentence and have to have that mental focus to to slow down and communicate is hard. yeah ah now it's been It's been great to have a chat and and nice to meet you definitely. Yeah well thank you for having me on really really appreciate it guys. Nice one and have a hope you and your family have a great Christmas and New Year and I'm sure we'll speak again very soon. Cheers to the UF ho ho ho to everybody. Oh Greg.
01:21:15
Speaker
On that note, ah everybody listening to our listeners ah is Christmas Eve, we're releasing this episode. So we wish you all a very happy Christmas. We hope you all have a great time, whatever you're doing, whoever you're with. And thank you for being with us this year, our fourth year coming to an end, coming into our fifth year of being a podcast. So yeah, thank you very much for the support we've had and we'll see you all in the new year.
01:21:43
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Pursuit of the Paranormal, title music created by Steve Yarwood and Ambienfinity. If you like the show, please follow us on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, X, and Instagram. And if you really like the show, please rate and review the show wherever you are listening. It really does help. See you next time, and until then, stay weird.