Great opportunity to make a new friend like Richard Thomas. He has a fresh energetic positive approach to all things paranormal that one can be grateful for. We delve into the UFO topic heavily and many other fringe subjects revolving around the paranormal. Richard will also be appearing on my radio show The Church of Mabus later in the year. I hope you enjoy this interview. Presenting.
1. Richard could you give our readers a bit of background on your origins paranormal wise and what you have been involved in?
RT: In 2008 I started writing a regular column about the paranormal for Tim Binnall’s website Binnall of America (BoA). Since then I’ve written articles for various paranormal and UFO themed magazines as well as my local newspaper. I’ve also written blogs for UFOMystic and Cryptomundo.
2. Tell us about your book entitled Para-News: UFOs, Ghosts, Conspiracy, Cryptids - and More and what it is about and what motivated you behind its creation?
RT: Something I liked to do for my BoA columns were interviews with other paranormal researchers. One of these interviewees was Rupert Matthews, he took a look at some of the many articles and blogs I had written and suggested putting together a collection of my favourite articles and interviews for an ebook. This sold well enough that not that long after it came out the book company Bretwalda Books asked me to do a revised and updated version to be released as a paperback.
3. So what originally got you into the paranormal and these fringe topics? Did you have a paranormal encounter or was it a fascination since childhood etc?
RT: I have had an interest in the UFOs, ghosts and other unexplained phenomena since a very early age. My dad had an interest in these subjects and had some books I liked to flick through sometimes. I think my interest in science fiction also was a big factor. I grew up in the Nineties when films and TV shows like Independence Day, Men In Black and The X-Files were all coming out.
Up to about the age of 16, however, UFOs were just one of many interests I had and I was probably more interested in Pro-Wrestling than the paranormal. Then I had my own UFO sighting. After that, what had been a casual interest in the unexplained metamorphosed into almost an obsession with finding books and taping every documentary I could find on TV about UFOs and other unexplained phenomena. Around the same time 9/11 and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan got me interested in what people like to dismiss as “conspiracy theories” and I started looking into things like mind control and secret societies. I think people like to class UFOs and conspiracies as two different fields of research, but for me they’re different pieces of the same puzzle. If we want the complete picture of what is really happening on this planet we need to use all the pieces.
4. When it comes to UFOs I notice a lot of people want to believe everything is ET originated these days. I have had ET experiences. But I want to ask you how do you feel about Drones and black ops technology compared to ET and discerning from them both? Most of us know the government loves to use the alien hoopla to their advantage to hide their business.
RT: I’m sure the US government have used the UFO phenomenon to their own advantage, just as they (and others) use everything else from global warming to international terrorism to further their own goals. In the book I interview the author of “Mirage Men” Mark Pilkington about this topic. He believes that the US intelligence agencies have encouraged or even invented much of the UFO cannon, i.e., crashed saucers, recovered ET hardware and bodies, etc. It is certainly true that the US government have encouraged these beliefs to cover-up their secret programmes like the U-2 spy plane in the 1950s.
That said, I’m not one of these people that goes to the other extreme, that all UFOs are just top secret aircraft. There are cave paintings thought to be 16,000 years old in France of flying objects that strongly resemble flying saucers. So whatever UFOs are, they’ve been here a very long time, which is why I don’t like the terms like “extraterrestrial” or “visitors”. Wherever these beings originally came from, it looks to me that they’ve been here as long or perhaps even longer than humans have been on this planet. So maybe it is us humans who are the real “aliens” not them.
5. What can you share with us from your book regarding UFOs and some cases you have looked into?
RT: I mentioned my own UFO sighting earlier, perhaps this is a good place to describe what I saw, or, think I saw. It took place in 2003 in Swansea where I live. My father was driving me and my brother home from town on Mumbles Road, which is near the sea front. This is how I describe my sighting in the book:
While we were stopped at a red light, my eyes turned to the relatively cloudless sky and I saw what at first glance I took to be an aeroplane. I quickly realised, by the strange way the object was moving, that it could not have been. As well as being very curious, I remember getting a bit scared at this point because I really did not know what I was looking at.
The object was moving up and down diagonally from right to left over and over again in the sky. It was a shining white line or rod, almost silver in parts, and appeared to have small round lights spaced out equally in a horizontal line along the centre of its body. I got the impression that the lights were moving around the object.
After registering that what I was looking at was very odd, I pointed the strange moving object out to my father and younger brother. For some reason it took them both a little while to find the object in the sky. After watching and discussing this unusual object among ourselves for a couple of minuets, the traffic light turned green again and we began to move off. As we were moving away, I continued to watch the object for another minuet or so until, most strangely of all, the object suddenly disappeared in a silver flash.
What I saw I still don’t know today, but I think it is interesting at least that my sighting took place near the sea. I have heard it said by UFO researchers that more UFO sightings take place near or over water than anywhere else. In one chapter in the book I speculate that there could be an “alien” base in the Bermuda Triangle, and that there might be multiple UFO undersea bases around the world. Since scientists know more about the surface of the moon than they do about the depths of the oceans it would be a good place to hide.
6. How do you feel about Bigfoot as of late and the DNA situation that has come up from Melba Ketchum and the David Paulides crew? Saying pretty much Bigfoot is a cross between modern humans and another type of human some 15,000 years old? Your thoughts on the Squatch?
RT: I haven’t looked into this in any great depth and we‘ll have wait to see if the conclusions stand up to scientific scrutiny, however, I was very intrigued when I heard about this study. One topic I like to speculate about is the possibility that “aliens” created modern humans, or perhaps a better word might be “domesticated”. There are many accounts of UFO abductees seeing human/alien hybrids, could this study be evidence of other crossbreeds the UFO occupants have created. This is just knee-jerk speculation, however.
7. What are some other Cryptid stories you can share with us from your book or articles that interest you?
RT: One Cryptid I ask a lot of researchers about in the book is the Chupacabra. It’s interesting how some said it was just a dog, others said it was an inter dimensional alien and others said it was an unknown species of new world porcupine. I think you can tell a lot about where a person stands on UFOs and the paranormal by what they think the Chupacabra could be.
8. I see you tackle subjects like the Illuminaughty in your book.. Yes I said Illuminaughty. Because well their naughty obviously. lol What are they up to these days and do you think some people are taking the NWO over board a bit? I think elites exist and I don't like them of course. But in the truther community. I see this obsession with it all. And I guess it seems hopeless to try to do anything about it. I am just curious to your thoughts on all of this..
RT: Yes, I’m very concerned about the direction the world seems to be heading in. By that I mean that power seems to be moving further and further away from the general public and into the hands of unelected elitists, and yes an international network of secret societies or “Illuminati” seems to be steering the world in that direction. The European Union now has a President, but EU citizens were never given the chance to vote for him or anybody else. They weren’t even asked if they wanted a EU President with a salary higher than President Obama to begin with.
The best way to protect an evil thing is to deny that it exists and pretend everything is fine. People don’t have to do much to fight this group, they just have to get a little informed and tell other people what they really think instead of playing the game of parroting everything they’re told on the TV and in the newspapers. If just half the people in the world or even a quarter leaned to truly think for themselves, instead of worrying what other people might think of them, we would be living in much freer world. Unfortunately, being a real individual is a lot harder than it sounds. Thankfully, more and more people seem to be trying though.
One thing I do think the Truther community is missing, however, is the importance of the UFO phenomenon. Whatever is really happening on this planet, UFOs seem to be a big part of the puzzle and without using all the pieces they’ll never have the full picture.
9. Just off the top of your head what is another subject aka story you would like to share with us from your book to peek our interests? One of your favorites perhaps?
RT: In another chapter of the book I ask “Is There a Secret Space Program?” While I believe some UFOs are “alien” for lack of a better word it is hard for me to believe that the fastest aircraft in the world is still the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, first flown in the 1960s. Serious science fiction authors in that decade, like Arthur C. Clarke in his 2001: A Space Odyssey, thought mankind would have bases on the moon by now. Well maybe we do. In the book I get the take of UFO researchers like Richard Dolan and Timothy Good on this subject. This is part of what Richard Dolan said when I questioned him about this:
“There is another reason to suppose the existence of an advanced, clandestine space program. An enormous amount of video of space missions has been downloaded and is available for anyone to see. These include missions of NASA, the European Space Agency, Russia, and China. Much of this was downloaded and made available by a gentleman named Jeff Challender, who unfortunately died in 2007. Jeff spent an enormous part of his life downloading and reviewing – very carefully – video recordings of those missions. There can be no denying that there has been a great deal of activity in Earth’s orbit. Much of what was recorded undoubtedly has conventional explanations. But, frankly, many events do not offer easy explanations. I firmly believe there is something unusual going on in Earth’s orbit. Fortunately, after Jeff’s death, I was able to upload his entire site and attach it to my own. His site, known as Project Prove, now has a permanent home at keyholepublishing.com.”
10. What is Richard Thomas up to next? Besides appearing on my radio show The Church Of Mabus later in 2013 of course? Looking forward to that! Any other books or projects in the works? Any links you'd like to share? Thanks Richard!
RT: The working title of my next book is “Alien Invaders” in it I’ll be exploring my pet theory regarding UFOs, that the Earth has already been colonized by an alien race. Readers can buy my Para-News book from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Thomas/e/B008M6XQE6/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1) or go to www.richardthomas.eu to purchase a signed copy from me.
Jeffery Pritchett is the host of The Church Of Mabus Show bringing you high strange stories from professionals in the carousel of fields surrounding the paranormal.
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