1
00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:05,120
I'm Tim Tate. I've been
an investigative journalist

2
00:00:05,280 --> 00:00:07,480
for almost half a century.

3
00:00:08,840 --> 00:00:13,280
And what I specialise in
is exploring official archives,

4
00:00:13,440 --> 00:00:17,880
unearthing dusty old files
from government departments,

5
00:00:18,040 --> 00:00:20,360
spy agencies, the police.

6
00:00:20,520 --> 00:00:23,840
This strange figure looked
very much like an astronaut.

7
00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:26,960
And what I have found in
those collections,

8
00:00:27,120 --> 00:00:30,120
both in Britain
and in the United States,

9
00:00:30,280 --> 00:00:33,760
is a truly extraordinary collection

10
00:00:33,920 --> 00:00:36,760
of real life X-Files.

11
00:00:36,920 --> 00:00:39,800
True Cryptids, like the Yeti
and the Mongolian death worm,

12
00:00:39,960 --> 00:00:41,040
death worm...

13
00:00:41,200 --> 00:00:45,760
And those files disclose
investigations by the police,

14
00:00:45,920 --> 00:00:48,200
by governments, by spy agencies.

15
00:00:48,360 --> 00:00:53,840
Shortly after that transmission,
Captain Schaffner's radio went dark.

16
00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:58,640
To examine and uncover the truth
about phenomena

17
00:00:58,800 --> 00:01:01,360
which are truly out of this world.

18
00:01:01,520 --> 00:01:03,320
It's a great piece of branding
the death ray.

19
00:01:03,480 --> 00:01:06,080
Everyone knows where they stand
with the death ray...

20
00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:20,000
What if everything we have
learned from science is wrong?

21
00:01:20,160 --> 00:01:22,000
If our governments
had proof of this,

22
00:01:22,160 --> 00:01:23,960
do you think they would let us know,

23
00:01:24,120 --> 00:01:27,000
even if our survival as a species
depended on it?

24
00:01:33,600 --> 00:01:36,520
In these days of changing climate
and rising sea levels,

25
00:01:36,680 --> 00:01:40,040
floods are one of
our greatest fears.

26
00:01:40,200 --> 00:01:43,880
But what if the water keeps rising?
Are we prepared?

27
00:01:44,040 --> 00:01:48,200
And what would we choose to save?

28
00:01:48,360 --> 00:01:50,600
In the spring of 2025,

29
00:01:50,760 --> 00:01:54,360
a rash of excitable
newspaper headlines

30
00:01:54,520 --> 00:01:57,920
splashed an astonishing story

31
00:01:58,080 --> 00:02:01,760
that declassified previously secret

32
00:02:01,920 --> 00:02:04,520
US Government X-Files

33
00:02:04,680 --> 00:02:08,960
revealed that the CIA,
the Central Intelligence Agency,

34
00:02:09,120 --> 00:02:11,160
had searched for,

35
00:02:11,320 --> 00:02:16,440
identified and located Noah's Ark.

36
00:02:21,080 --> 00:02:22,800
The story of Noah's Ark is told

37
00:02:22,960 --> 00:02:25,280
in the Old Testament book
of Genesis.

38
00:02:25,440 --> 00:02:30,720
In it, God sends a catastrophic
flood to destroy all life on Earth.

39
00:02:30,880 --> 00:02:35,560
The only person God warns is Noah,
who builds an ark to save his family

40
00:02:35,720 --> 00:02:38,200
and two of every creature on Earth.

41
00:02:38,360 --> 00:02:41,000
In the biblical account, the Ark

42
00:02:41,160 --> 00:02:44,760
lands upon the mountains of Ararat.

43
00:02:44,920 --> 00:02:47,080
This is probably a reference

44
00:02:47,240 --> 00:02:50,920
to the ancient kingdom of Urartu,

45
00:02:51,080 --> 00:02:55,200
which flourished from around
the 9th century BCE

46
00:02:55,360 --> 00:02:57,400
till about the 6th century BCE.

47
00:02:57,560 --> 00:03:02,320
So these are mountain tops
in the north of Mesopotamia.

48
00:03:02,480 --> 00:03:06,320
So if you're living in Mesopotamia
or in the ancient Near East,

49
00:03:06,480 --> 00:03:08,640
these mountains would have been
the tallest mountains

50
00:03:08,800 --> 00:03:11,360
that would have been known about.

51
00:03:12,920 --> 00:03:14,280
The story of Noah's Ark

52
00:03:14,440 --> 00:03:16,960
has become one of
the most popular Bible stories

53
00:03:17,120 --> 00:03:18,760
and is often told to children,

54
00:03:18,920 --> 00:03:22,520
but it also speaks
to our darkest fears.

55
00:03:22,680 --> 00:03:26,080
The Ark story
has a great attraction

56
00:03:26,240 --> 00:03:28,520
because it is in many ways the...

57
00:03:28,680 --> 00:03:30,680
I suppose
it's the original survival story.

58
00:03:30,840 --> 00:03:34,240
It's the story of how
against all odds

59
00:03:34,400 --> 00:03:39,480
a catastrophic event happens
and one family survives.

60
00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:42,360
Those stories
still attract us today.

61
00:03:42,520 --> 00:03:46,720
They tend to reflect deep anxieties
about events beyond human control,

62
00:03:46,880 --> 00:03:49,800
whether that is an asteroid
hitting the Earth,

63
00:03:49,960 --> 00:03:53,800
whether that is the catastrophic
effects of climate change,

64
00:03:53,960 --> 00:03:56,120
whether that's a volcano.

65
00:03:56,280 --> 00:03:58,560
It tells us really
about ancient fears,

66
00:03:58,720 --> 00:04:00,560
the possibility
that the whole of civilisation

67
00:04:00,720 --> 00:04:02,760
can be lost
through a catastrophic flood.

68
00:04:02,920 --> 00:04:07,880
And this is a story that belongs
very much in Ancient Mesopotamia,

69
00:04:08,040 --> 00:04:10,800
in the area of the world
that we now call Iraq,

70
00:04:10,960 --> 00:04:14,200
because that is a part of the world
that is very vulnerable to flooding.

71
00:04:15,600 --> 00:04:19,000
Whilst the story
of Noah's Ark might serve a cultural

72
00:04:19,160 --> 00:04:21,160
or even psychological function,

73
00:04:21,320 --> 00:04:25,600
is this ancient tale taken seriously
by modern scientists?

74
00:04:26,640 --> 00:04:29,000
There are advantages
in using folklore

75
00:04:29,160 --> 00:04:31,880
to inform on a more...
traditional archaeological approach.

76
00:04:33,520 --> 00:04:35,720
For example, in Britain,

77
00:04:35,880 --> 00:04:38,240
there are lots of stories
about ancient sites

78
00:04:38,400 --> 00:04:40,800
like Stonehenge
that ascribe them to the work

79
00:04:40,960 --> 00:04:44,920
of giants or the wizard Merlin.

80
00:04:45,080 --> 00:04:48,080
Mythic stories about how
these places came to be.

81
00:04:48,240 --> 00:04:51,240
And in some of those locations,
there may be a grain of truth.

82
00:04:51,400 --> 00:04:55,600
There may be some elements that are
preserved as part of that narrative,

83
00:04:55,760 --> 00:04:58,760
which might be interesting
to explore in itself.

84
00:04:59,880 --> 00:05:01,880
We can still see Stonehenge

85
00:05:02,040 --> 00:05:04,600
because it has survived
down the ages.

86
00:05:04,760 --> 00:05:08,040
But could evidence of a boat
made of wood 4,000 years ago

87
00:05:08,200 --> 00:05:10,960
still really exist?

88
00:05:11,120 --> 00:05:15,240
The idea that the Ark might
still survive is a very old idea.

89
00:05:15,400 --> 00:05:19,080
It's already mentioned by the
early Jewish historian Josephus

90
00:05:19,240 --> 00:05:20,440
in the first century AD.

91
00:05:20,600 --> 00:05:21,920
It's not something he's seen.

92
00:05:22,080 --> 00:05:28,040
He's telling how others have
reported that they have seen wood

93
00:05:28,200 --> 00:05:32,600
or that the...
the Ark can still be seen

94
00:05:32,760 --> 00:05:35,600
and still preserved
on a mountain in Armenia.

95
00:05:35,760 --> 00:05:38,240
According to interpretations
of the Bible,

96
00:05:38,400 --> 00:05:43,000
the Ark was deposited
on a mountainside after the flood.

97
00:05:43,160 --> 00:05:46,000
And according to
certain biblical scholars,

98
00:05:46,160 --> 00:05:48,720
there's a particular location
in contemporary Turkey

99
00:05:48,880 --> 00:05:53,200
called Mount Ararat, which is
supposedly the location of the ark.

100
00:05:53,360 --> 00:05:56,080
The area has
always been the site of political

101
00:05:56,240 --> 00:05:58,280
and sometimes military conflict,

102
00:05:58,440 --> 00:06:01,640
which makes it difficult for
archaeologists to work there.

103
00:06:05,640 --> 00:06:07,760
However, the political upheaval

104
00:06:07,920 --> 00:06:11,360
meant that it was also
of interest to the CIA,

105
00:06:11,520 --> 00:06:13,240
and in the '60s and '70s,

106
00:06:13,400 --> 00:06:18,000
they were keeping a close eye on the
area with U-2 planes and satellites.

107
00:06:18,160 --> 00:06:20,280
There was an interest
in the period

108
00:06:20,440 --> 00:06:22,440
in around the 1960s and '70s,

109
00:06:22,600 --> 00:06:27,240
about whether satellite imagery
or airborne imagery

110
00:06:27,400 --> 00:06:30,880
could be used to locate the site...

111
00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:34,200
the site where the Ark
is meant to have landed.

112
00:06:34,360 --> 00:06:37,680
A series of requests within

113
00:06:37,840 --> 00:06:40,920
the CIA administrative system

114
00:06:41,080 --> 00:06:42,720
asked whether they knew -

115
00:06:42,880 --> 00:06:46,360
the CIA as an organisation knew
whether this was Noah's Ark.

116
00:06:46,520 --> 00:06:50,680
And lots of these communiques
were entitled "re Noah's Ark,"

117
00:06:50,840 --> 00:06:53,000
which presupposes the CIA

118
00:06:53,160 --> 00:06:56,400
had identified this site
positively as Noah's Ark.

119
00:06:56,560 --> 00:06:58,600
As far as we know,
they've never done that,

120
00:06:58,760 --> 00:07:01,280
but by naming something,
you make it so.

121
00:07:01,440 --> 00:07:05,240
Certain individuals
were very interested in the fact

122
00:07:05,400 --> 00:07:10,160
that the CIA probably had
photographic imagery of Mount Ararat

123
00:07:10,320 --> 00:07:15,880
and that this might provide evidence
for the preservation of Noah's Ark.

124
00:07:16,040 --> 00:07:19,080
But even as recently as the 1960s,

125
00:07:19,240 --> 00:07:21,760
not everyone believed the science.

126
00:07:21,920 --> 00:07:26,000
Some saw scientific claims as going
against the teachings of the Bible

127
00:07:26,160 --> 00:07:27,840
and the Word of God.

128
00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:29,800
One of those was Henry Morris,

129
00:07:29,960 --> 00:07:32,720
who is sometimes known
as the father of creationism.

130
00:07:32,880 --> 00:07:35,560
Henry Morris wrote
what could be regarded

131
00:07:35,720 --> 00:07:39,120
as the... founding document

132
00:07:39,280 --> 00:07:42,760
for modern creationism,
a book called the Genesis Flood,

133
00:07:42,920 --> 00:07:46,640
which he wrote in the 1960s with
somebody called John Whitcomb.

134
00:07:46,800 --> 00:07:50,400
and that argues
that the geological evidence

135
00:07:50,560 --> 00:07:53,080
for the age of the earth

136
00:07:53,240 --> 00:07:55,080
can actually be understood
not as signs

137
00:07:55,240 --> 00:07:57,680
that the earth has existed for
millions and billions of years,

138
00:07:57,840 --> 00:08:01,280
but are actually sign
of a catastrophic worldwide flood.

139
00:08:01,440 --> 00:08:05,040
And so finding evidence for the Ark

140
00:08:05,200 --> 00:08:08,200
would be also to find evidence

141
00:08:08,360 --> 00:08:10,200
that the world had been created

142
00:08:10,360 --> 00:08:12,440
in six days by God,

143
00:08:12,600 --> 00:08:14,840
and evidence that, in fact,

144
00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:18,760
evolution as we know it
was fundamentally mistaken.

145
00:08:20,440 --> 00:08:23,160
CIA denials
that they had any photographs

146
00:08:23,320 --> 00:08:26,040
that proved the location
of Noah's Ark were met

147
00:08:26,200 --> 00:08:28,720
with claims of a cover-up.

148
00:08:28,880 --> 00:08:32,720
This is a normal pattern in the
birth of a conspiracy theory,

149
00:08:32,880 --> 00:08:34,040
but in this case,

150
00:08:34,200 --> 00:08:37,360
there was more than a grain of truth
in these claims.

151
00:08:37,520 --> 00:08:41,360
Those photographs had indeed
been taken by the U-2 spy plane

152
00:08:41,520 --> 00:08:45,160
and by satellites,
and the CIA held them,

153
00:08:45,320 --> 00:08:48,360
but absolutely refused
to release them.

154
00:08:48,520 --> 00:08:51,000
It said, "We can't release these.

155
00:08:51,160 --> 00:08:56,480
We can't disclose these
for national security reasons."

156
00:08:57,600 --> 00:08:59,520
Once the photographs were released,

157
00:08:59,680 --> 00:09:01,360
they would surely solve the mystery.

158
00:09:01,520 --> 00:09:04,560
Did they show evidence that
Noah's Ark had indeed landed

159
00:09:04,720 --> 00:09:06,760
on top of Mount Ararat?

160
00:09:06,920 --> 00:09:09,880
These photographs show what
more traditional archaeologists

161
00:09:10,040 --> 00:09:12,200
would suggest to be
geological features

162
00:09:12,360 --> 00:09:15,880
and what more creationist
archaeologists suggest

163
00:09:16,040 --> 00:09:17,960
are the remains of Noah's Ark.

164
00:09:18,920 --> 00:09:21,040
The local names for this location

165
00:09:21,200 --> 00:09:23,840
broadly translate
as Noah's Mountain.

166
00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:26,360
So there's a kind of
folkloric source there,

167
00:09:26,520 --> 00:09:29,400
but there's also these
aerial photographs

168
00:09:29,560 --> 00:09:35,040
that have the form
of a kind of ship in plan.

169
00:09:35,200 --> 00:09:39,000
So two curvy, linear positive lines,

170
00:09:39,160 --> 00:09:41,960
which are ridges
on the top of this mountain.

171
00:09:42,120 --> 00:09:45,080
But these days,
it's not just the CIA photographs

172
00:09:45,240 --> 00:09:46,760
that can be used as evidence.

173
00:09:46,920 --> 00:09:50,960
Archaeologists have now started
digging at the site on Mount Ararat.

174
00:09:51,120 --> 00:09:56,280
Since 2021, researchers
from two Turkish universities,

175
00:09:56,440 --> 00:09:59,000
in conjunction with
one American university,

176
00:09:59,160 --> 00:10:04,760
have been examining a boat-shaped
mound near Mount Ararat.

177
00:10:04,920 --> 00:10:08,280
And carbon dating samples

178
00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:11,280
from that mound indicates

179
00:10:11,440 --> 00:10:13,960
that it dates to the time

180
00:10:14,120 --> 00:10:16,080
when Noah is,

181
00:10:16,240 --> 00:10:19,680
according to the Bible,
supposed to have built,

182
00:10:19,840 --> 00:10:25,800
sailed, and eventually beached
his ark on Mount Ararat.

183
00:10:25,960 --> 00:10:28,920
The big point of contention
is how you interpret

184
00:10:29,080 --> 00:10:30,920
those positive features.

185
00:10:31,080 --> 00:10:34,840
Whether...
as some people have suggested,

186
00:10:35,000 --> 00:10:37,320
these are the remains of Noah's Ark,

187
00:10:37,480 --> 00:10:39,320
or whether as more traditional

188
00:10:39,480 --> 00:10:42,000
archaeological scholars
have interpreted,

189
00:10:42,160 --> 00:10:44,320
these are actually
geological features.

190
00:10:45,600 --> 00:10:47,760
How the features are interpreted

191
00:10:47,920 --> 00:10:50,480
can sometimes depend less
on what is found at the site

192
00:10:50,640 --> 00:10:53,440
and more on what
the searchers bring with them.

193
00:10:53,600 --> 00:10:57,440
Some of the problems with that
archaeological work are also that

194
00:10:57,600 --> 00:10:59,320
they are undertaken by people

195
00:10:59,480 --> 00:11:03,160
who have a very literal
interpretation of the Bible.

196
00:11:03,320 --> 00:11:06,160
And there's a fabulous quote by
another archaeologist who says

197
00:11:06,320 --> 00:11:11,080
that no expedition that has ever
gone looking for Noah's Ark

198
00:11:11,240 --> 00:11:13,440
has failed to find it.

199
00:11:13,600 --> 00:11:17,000
Have those scientists
found the location

200
00:11:17,160 --> 00:11:19,240
of the remains of Noah's Ark?

201
00:11:19,400 --> 00:11:25,080
If so, that's a genuine historical
revelation and indeed sensation,

202
00:11:25,240 --> 00:11:30,200
though those tests
and researches are still ongoing.

203
00:11:30,360 --> 00:11:33,760
What none of that proves

204
00:11:33,920 --> 00:11:37,520
is that the CIA got there first,

205
00:11:37,680 --> 00:11:40,800
that it located Noah's Ark,

206
00:11:40,960 --> 00:11:44,760
and that it covered up
the existence of its knowledge.

207
00:12:07,600 --> 00:12:10,920
The idea of spirits coming
back from the dead to haunt us

208
00:12:11,080 --> 00:12:12,640
is frightening enough.

209
00:12:12,800 --> 00:12:14,760
But a ghostly apparition
without a head

210
00:12:14,920 --> 00:12:18,440
would surely be enough to scare
even the sturdiest of souls.

211
00:12:34,320 --> 00:12:36,680
The one thing we have
never been short of in Britain

212
00:12:36,840 --> 00:12:39,600
are ghosts.

213
00:12:39,760 --> 00:12:42,440
Every village
seems to have a haunted graveyard

214
00:12:42,600 --> 00:12:44,600
and a manor house
would seem incomplete

215
00:12:44,760 --> 00:12:47,560
without the chain-rattling spirit
of an ancestor.

216
00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:53,360
Very few of these stories
have ever found their way

217
00:12:54,600 --> 00:12:57,960
into the august pages of the Times,

218
00:12:58,120 --> 00:13:01,880
the journal of record
for the British establishment.

219
00:13:02,040 --> 00:13:06,880
And only one can claim
to have been investigated

220
00:13:07,040 --> 00:13:11,160
by a prominent
former Home Office official

221
00:13:11,320 --> 00:13:13,280
and Justice of the Peace.

222
00:13:13,440 --> 00:13:18,320
And that story is the
Headless Woman of St James's Park.

223
00:13:26,320 --> 00:13:28,520
The story of the Headless Woman
of St James's Park

224
00:13:28,680 --> 00:13:31,480
actually begins,
as far as we can tell,

225
00:13:31,640 --> 00:13:34,240
in early 1804,
when soldiers on guard duty

226
00:13:34,400 --> 00:13:37,720
began to speak of this headless
woman who was appearing to them

227
00:13:37,880 --> 00:13:40,640
between the hours of one o'clock
and two o'clock in the morning.

228
00:13:40,800 --> 00:13:43,400
And in fact, several soldiers
were so startled by it,

229
00:13:43,560 --> 00:13:46,440
they ended up in hospital
for several days.

230
00:13:50,480 --> 00:13:53,400
We do have a record from one of the
soldiers who saw the Headless Woman.

231
00:13:53,560 --> 00:13:57,440
A man by the name of George Jones,
who said that he was on guard duty

232
00:13:57,600 --> 00:13:59,560
between one o'clock and two o'clock
in the morning,

233
00:13:59,720 --> 00:14:01,880
when suddenly
from the ground in front of him

234
00:14:02,040 --> 00:14:05,320
there appeared the form of a woman.

235
00:14:05,480 --> 00:14:09,920
Jones was confronted
by a terrifying vision.

236
00:14:10,080 --> 00:14:14,000
The spectral image of a woman

237
00:14:14,160 --> 00:14:18,680
rose up in front of him, no more
than four feet away from him.

238
00:14:18,840 --> 00:14:21,000
And the thing that struck him
most about her, he said,

239
00:14:21,160 --> 00:14:23,720
was that she didn't have a head.
She was without a head.

240
00:14:23,880 --> 00:14:27,040
He could see the collar
around her neck,

241
00:14:27,200 --> 00:14:29,840
and that was blood-stained.

242
00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:33,240
But the woman had no head.

243
00:14:34,080 --> 00:14:37,320
And then very quickly...

244
00:14:38,960 --> 00:14:40,880
...she vanished.

245
00:14:41,040 --> 00:14:43,360
And it absolutely terrified him.

246
00:14:43,520 --> 00:14:45,600
And he went right racing off
to try and report it,

247
00:14:45,760 --> 00:14:47,960
found another soldier,
told him what he'd seen,

248
00:14:48,120 --> 00:14:51,480
and as far as we can tell,
that's the first major sighting

249
00:14:51,640 --> 00:14:54,360
of the Headless Woman
of St James's Park.

250
00:14:54,520 --> 00:14:58,800
Just a few days later,
the Headless Woman appeared again.

251
00:14:58,960 --> 00:15:01,480
This time, she had appeared
to another young soldier

252
00:15:01,640 --> 00:15:06,040
who was occupying the same sentry
box that Jones had been standing in.

253
00:15:06,200 --> 00:15:09,200
And this young soldier
was found in a dead faint.

254
00:15:09,360 --> 00:15:12,200
Within a week, the spectral image
of a headless woman

255
00:15:12,360 --> 00:15:14,080
appeared to a third soldier.

256
00:15:14,240 --> 00:15:18,200
At that point,
the stories did become public,

257
00:15:18,360 --> 00:15:23,640
and they made their way into
the pages of the Times newspaper,

258
00:15:23,800 --> 00:15:26,240
and it caused a sensation.

259
00:15:26,400 --> 00:15:30,400
This enthralled... and horrified...

260
00:15:30,560 --> 00:15:32,560
the Times readership.

261
00:15:32,720 --> 00:15:38,200
That publicity led to an official
inquiry by Sir Richard Ford,

262
00:15:38,360 --> 00:15:40,800
a former MP,

263
00:15:40,960 --> 00:15:42,880
a former Home Office official,

264
00:15:43,040 --> 00:15:47,040
and who was then
the Chief Magistrate for the area.

265
00:15:47,200 --> 00:15:49,520
He held hearings

266
00:15:49,680 --> 00:15:54,640
and in those hearings Jones
adamantly stuck to his story.

267
00:15:54,800 --> 00:15:58,760
He insisted,
he said he would swear it under oath

268
00:15:58,920 --> 00:16:02,880
that he had seen this
woman rise up in front of him

269
00:16:03,040 --> 00:16:06,720
and that she had..a bloodied collar

270
00:16:06,880 --> 00:16:10,280
and just the stump... of a neck.

271
00:16:10,440 --> 00:16:12,240
We have to keep in mind
that this story

272
00:16:12,400 --> 00:16:15,840
is very early 1800s of a
headless woman in St James's Park.

273
00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:17,840
This is the early days
of spiritualism.

274
00:16:18,000 --> 00:16:20,400
There was certainly
a lot of writing of that time

275
00:16:20,560 --> 00:16:24,680
in many books and newspapers
about spiritual experiences,

276
00:16:24,840 --> 00:16:27,280
people seeing ghosts,
haunted locations.

277
00:16:27,440 --> 00:16:30,440
So already,
the 1800s was priming itself

278
00:16:30,600 --> 00:16:34,120
to become really interested
in ghosts and spirits

279
00:16:34,280 --> 00:16:35,840
and life after death.

280
00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:38,760
And so newspaper accounts
were starting to fuel that fire.

281
00:16:40,800 --> 00:16:45,280
Sir Richard Ford,
the man heading the inquiry,

282
00:16:45,440 --> 00:16:49,840
was hardly a conspiracy theorist
or a ghost hunter.

283
00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:54,840
He was, in fact, a fairly mundane
establishment civil servant,

284
00:16:55,000 --> 00:16:57,080
and he was baffled.

285
00:16:58,600 --> 00:17:04,360
He tried to think of any
possible rational explanation.

286
00:17:04,520 --> 00:17:07,160
And as he cast his mind back,

287
00:17:07,320 --> 00:17:12,120
he recalled an incident
20 years earlier.

288
00:17:12,280 --> 00:17:13,680
It was a murder case.

289
00:17:20,240 --> 00:17:24,400
A case involving a sergeant
in the Coldstream Guards

290
00:17:24,560 --> 00:17:28,160
who had killed his wife,

291
00:17:28,320 --> 00:17:29,880
decapitated her

292
00:17:30,040 --> 00:17:32,400
and dumped her body in the canal

293
00:17:33,600 --> 00:17:36,160
running through St James's Park.

294
00:17:38,160 --> 00:17:41,840
That seemed
the most likely explanation.

295
00:17:42,840 --> 00:17:46,240
That this new appearance

296
00:17:46,400 --> 00:17:50,440
of the headless woman
in St James's Park

297
00:17:50,600 --> 00:17:56,320
was a manifestation of the ghost
of that unfortunate army wife.

298
00:17:56,480 --> 00:17:59,800
But the Times had other ideas.

299
00:17:59,960 --> 00:18:02,400
Its reporter claimed to have
solved the mystery

300
00:18:02,560 --> 00:18:06,080
and to have come up with
a very different explanation.

301
00:18:06,240 --> 00:18:09,080
According to the report
in its august pages,

302
00:18:09,240 --> 00:18:12,160
the Times said it had discovered
the so-called ghost

303
00:18:12,320 --> 00:18:14,720
was in fact no more than a prank.

304
00:18:18,760 --> 00:18:20,960
It said it had discovered

305
00:18:21,120 --> 00:18:25,320
that two Westminster scholars,
as it called them,

306
00:18:25,480 --> 00:18:29,960
had been experimenting
with Phantasmagoria.

307
00:18:32,400 --> 00:18:36,040
Now Phantasmagoria
was then very popular.

308
00:18:36,200 --> 00:18:40,120
It was an early form of magic
lantern shows in which images

309
00:18:40,280 --> 00:18:45,560
were projected onto a screen
to widespread amazement.

310
00:18:45,720 --> 00:18:51,640
The Times didn't identify these two
mysterious Westminster scholars,

311
00:18:51,800 --> 00:18:55,040
nor did it quite explain how...

312
00:18:55,200 --> 00:19:00,120
they could have projected
the image of the headless woman

313
00:19:00,280 --> 00:19:02,280
onto the night air.

314
00:19:02,440 --> 00:19:06,680
Because there was no
back sheet in the area.

315
00:19:06,840 --> 00:19:10,840
No projection reception device

316
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:14,480
which could... have been used.

317
00:19:14,640 --> 00:19:19,400
But nonetheless,
this was now the explanation.

318
00:19:19,560 --> 00:19:22,280
It had all been a prank.

319
00:19:25,560 --> 00:19:28,800
The explanations
of Sir Richard Ford and the Times

320
00:19:28,960 --> 00:19:32,160
don't seem to have completely
exorcised the phantom.

321
00:19:32,320 --> 00:19:34,360
Across the years, users of the park

322
00:19:34,520 --> 00:19:38,720
still record supernatural encounters
with a headless woman.

323
00:19:38,880 --> 00:19:41,480
The sightings of the Headless
Woman in St James's Park

324
00:19:41,640 --> 00:19:44,720
continued over many years,
but they were very intermittent.

325
00:19:44,880 --> 00:19:48,600
But another significant one
was in 1972,

326
00:19:48,760 --> 00:19:50,840
when a driver says that they saw

327
00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:53,600
and nearly hit the apparition
of the Headless Woman.

328
00:19:53,760 --> 00:19:59,160
A taxi driver was driving through
the park, and was terrified...

329
00:20:01,440 --> 00:20:04,680
...when the apparition
of the Headless Woman

330
00:20:04,840 --> 00:20:07,440
appeared suddenly in front of him.

331
00:20:07,600 --> 00:20:10,120
Some reports saying
they crashed into a lamppost.

332
00:20:10,280 --> 00:20:13,880
So distinct for him was the
apparition in trying to avoid it.

333
00:20:14,040 --> 00:20:17,280
When the police came, he said that
he'd actually been driving along

334
00:20:17,440 --> 00:20:20,000
and suddenly a lady in a red dress
had appeared before him

335
00:20:20,160 --> 00:20:21,560
and he'd swerved to avoid her.

336
00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:25,320
Try as you might,
you will not trace

337
00:20:25,480 --> 00:20:30,200
any official records
to support this account.

338
00:20:31,040 --> 00:20:33,640
Which, despite the lack of
foundation, is repeated now

339
00:20:36,400 --> 00:20:38,760
time and time and time again,

340
00:20:38,920 --> 00:20:42,400
in cheap books or internet threads,

341
00:20:42,560 --> 00:20:46,360
as proof of a ghostly haunting.

342
00:20:46,520 --> 00:20:49,440
The Headless Woman's
reputation may have been sullied,

343
00:20:49,600 --> 00:20:52,760
but perhaps her power
to frighten persists.

344
00:20:52,920 --> 00:20:55,280
Would you be willing to take
a stroll around the lake

345
00:20:55,440 --> 00:20:57,280
in St James's Park at midnight?

346
00:20:57,440 --> 00:20:59,160
There's a bridge
that crosses the lake

347
00:20:59,320 --> 00:21:00,520
in St James's Park now.

348
00:21:00,680 --> 00:21:02,200
It's a beautiful spot.
You can stand there.

349
00:21:02,360 --> 00:21:04,560
If you look to one side,
you can see Buckingham Palace.

350
00:21:04,720 --> 00:21:07,880
Look to the other side, you see the
government buildings of Whitehall.

351
00:21:08,040 --> 00:21:09,960
But go there at night
when it's pitch black

352
00:21:10,120 --> 00:21:12,320
and you've just got
the moon overhead.

353
00:21:12,480 --> 00:21:14,160
Stand on that bridge,
and if you're on your own,

354
00:21:14,320 --> 00:21:16,400
it is absolutely terrifying.

355
00:21:38,720 --> 00:21:41,400
Nobody knows
why we seem to be so fascinated

356
00:21:41,560 --> 00:21:42,920
by stories of the paranormal.

357
00:21:43,880 --> 00:21:46,360
But one thing is certain -
they captivate us

358
00:21:46,520 --> 00:21:49,640
just like a moth drawn to a flame.

359
00:21:53,480 --> 00:21:56,200
The word monster
comes from the Latin monstrum,

360
00:21:56,360 --> 00:21:59,800
meaning a divine portent
or a warning.

361
00:21:59,960 --> 00:22:02,160
Those who are brave enough
to study monsters

362
00:22:02,320 --> 00:22:05,480
will tell you that they come
in two main types.

363
00:22:06,640 --> 00:22:08,480
One are true Cryptids.

364
00:22:08,640 --> 00:22:12,160
Flesh and blood animals like the
Yeti, the Mongolian death worm,

365
00:22:12,320 --> 00:22:14,480
animals thought to have
died out years ago,

366
00:22:14,640 --> 00:22:17,000
but are still around
like the Tasmanian wolf.

367
00:22:17,160 --> 00:22:19,240
But then there's this other group

368
00:22:19,400 --> 00:22:21,440
that are much stranger.

369
00:22:21,600 --> 00:22:24,200
And these seem to be
genuinely paranormal.

370
00:22:24,360 --> 00:22:27,600
So these aren't flesh and blood
animals as we think of them,

371
00:22:27,760 --> 00:22:30,400
and the way that you and I
are flesh and blood animals.

372
00:22:30,560 --> 00:22:33,080
These are some kind of very ancient,

373
00:22:33,240 --> 00:22:35,680
very terrifying,
paranormal phenomenon.

374
00:22:37,960 --> 00:22:43,320
Late on the night
of November the 15th, 1966,

375
00:22:43,480 --> 00:22:47,200
two young couples
were parked up in a car

376
00:22:47,360 --> 00:22:51,360
on the site of a
decommissioned munitions dump

377
00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:55,480
when they encountered
a terrifying sight.

378
00:22:55,640 --> 00:22:58,000
They saw two lights in the darkness

379
00:22:58,160 --> 00:23:02,840
and they realised that these lights
were huge, glowing orb-like eyes

380
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:06,320
and the owner of the light
shuffled forward.

381
00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:13,600
And they saw
this mysterious creature,

382
00:23:13,760 --> 00:23:15,880
which was winged,

383
00:23:16,040 --> 00:23:18,200
almost like a dark angel.

384
00:23:21,040 --> 00:23:25,360
Covered with
a brownish-greyish hair.

385
00:23:25,520 --> 00:23:27,800
It had a 10-foot wingspan.

386
00:23:27,960 --> 00:23:30,000
They were terrified and drove off.

387
00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:33,960
This terrifying creature
then pursued them

388
00:23:34,120 --> 00:23:37,680
as they sped away back to town,

389
00:23:37,840 --> 00:23:41,840
and the creature emitted
eerie screeching noises

390
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:43,600
as it flew behind them.

391
00:23:43,760 --> 00:23:47,280
And it pursued them
at 100 miles an hour.

392
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:50,400
And they felt sort of...
almost attacked the car.

393
00:23:50,560 --> 00:23:54,280
They certainly felt they heard
some noise on the roof of the car.

394
00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:57,160
And it only veered away
when they approached the town.

395
00:23:59,320 --> 00:24:02,000
The town was
Point Pleasant, West Virginia,

396
00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:05,440
in the Appalachian region
of the southeastern United States.

397
00:24:05,600 --> 00:24:07,400
Well, the police looked into this,

398
00:24:07,560 --> 00:24:10,360
and they looked into
a number of sightings...

399
00:24:11,280 --> 00:24:14,760
...including... a guy whose dog Bandit

400
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:18,960
tackled some creature with large
glowing eyes and then vanished.

401
00:24:19,120 --> 00:24:22,080
And then the dog's carcass
was seen at the side of the road

402
00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:23,440
by another witness.

403
00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:25,680
It appears in a local paper.

404
00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:28,480
A larger paper,
usually a national paper,

405
00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:31,000
is looking for interesting stories.

406
00:24:31,160 --> 00:24:34,960
They find this one. They publish it
and it starts to spread.

407
00:24:35,120 --> 00:24:38,040
The frightened citizens
of Point Pleasant, West Virginia,

408
00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:41,000
tried to explain away the horror
of the Mothman sightings

409
00:24:41,160 --> 00:24:42,920
with rational explanations.

410
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:46,400
Some of them tried to explain it
away as a very large heron,

411
00:24:46,560 --> 00:24:48,880
which doesn't fit the picture.

412
00:24:49,040 --> 00:24:52,360
A local wildlife biologist
said that it was a sandhill crane.

413
00:24:52,520 --> 00:24:56,760
Again, doesn't fit the picture.
These are tall, spindly, thin birds.

414
00:24:56,920 --> 00:24:58,760
Whatever Mothman was,
it was a bulky...

415
00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:02,240
It had a bulky, heavy body
with these great glowing eyes.

416
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:04,320
The sceptic, Joe Nickell,

417
00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:08,560
came up with a very lame
explanation that this was an owl.

418
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:12,360
There are no owls anywhere in
the world that are seven feet tall

419
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:17,120
and can chase cars
at 100 miles an hour.

420
00:25:18,360 --> 00:25:20,160
With no viable explanation,

421
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:23,200
the Mothman story
might well have ended there.

422
00:25:23,360 --> 00:25:25,520
Had it not been
for a terrifying accident

423
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:28,040
at the Silver Bridge
near Point Pleasant,

424
00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:31,320
13 months after
the Mothman's first appearance.

425
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:34,720
On December the 15th, 1967,

426
00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:38,520
the Silver Bridge collapsed.

427
00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:45,760
47 people were killed
in the disaster.

428
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:49,080
Two bodies were never found.
They were presumed to have been

429
00:25:49,240 --> 00:25:53,320
washed away
by the Ohio River's strong flow.

430
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:56,880
Locals saw
the appearance of the Mothman

431
00:25:57,040 --> 00:26:01,560
as a portent of the disaster, and
the story really began to take hold.

432
00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:06,120
You get two paranormal specialists
who wrote books about it,

433
00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:08,880
and one of them is called
the Mothman Prophecies.

434
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:11,720
And, of course, that was when it
got its name, and the name stuck.

435
00:26:11,880 --> 00:26:14,920
It's a lovely, you know, it's a
lovely, easy to remember name,

436
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:17,160
and it conjures up
something rather strange.

437
00:26:17,320 --> 00:26:18,920
The sightings didn't stop

438
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:21,000
after the collapse
of the Silver Bridge.

439
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:23,760
But they were not always quite
what they might have seemed.

440
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:25,400
There were hoaxes.

441
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:29,520
Apparently some
construction workers

442
00:26:29,680 --> 00:26:34,120
put the red car reflectors...

443
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:36,960
onto balloons
and sent them up in the air.

444
00:26:37,120 --> 00:26:39,800
Some of the hoaxes were
more imaginative reworking.

445
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:43,000
The one I'm particularly
thinking of is this little film

446
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:45,240
which is supposedly found footage

447
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:48,880
of people going off into the woods
and looking for the Mothman.

448
00:26:49,040 --> 00:26:50,520
I mean,
this kind of found footage film

449
00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:52,960
achieved a great deal of popularity.

450
00:26:53,120 --> 00:26:58,520
And I think it wasn't so much
trying to deceive and frighten

451
00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:02,720
as playing along with...
with this phenomenon.

452
00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:04,600
- There she is!
- Richard!

453
00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:09,120
Then in 2002,
Hollywood got in on the act.

454
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:14,280
A Los Angeles studio
bought the rights

455
00:27:14,440 --> 00:27:16,520
to the Mothman Prophecies book

456
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:22,680
and set about scripting
a supernatural horror movie.

457
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:28,520
It would star Richard Gere
and Laura Linney,

458
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:32,000
top-drawer name actors.

459
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:36,880
Unfortunately, the producers created
an entirely fictional lead character

460
00:27:37,040 --> 00:27:41,120
played by Richard Gere, who was
a reporter on the Washington Post,

461
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:45,480
who had an encounter, a near-death
encounter with "the Mothman"

462
00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:47,480
and then went on to investigate

463
00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:53,600
and narrowly escaped death in
the collapse of the Silver Bridge.

464
00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:59,160
Only through his intrepid journalism
in this movie

465
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:06,280
were the two events
finally able... to be associated.

466
00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:07,560
Because he... he doesn't...

467
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:09,560
The invention
of a fictional character

468
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:12,600
in a Hollywood movie
inevitably muddied the water

469
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:15,720
between fact and fable yet further.

470
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,840
All the more so when it was revealed
that the Silver Bridge collapse

471
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:22,800
was caused by the failure
of the suspension mechanism

472
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:26,440
rather than anything supernatural
or paranormal.

473
00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:32,720
Mothman is, I think...

474
00:28:32,880 --> 00:28:37,920
almost unique in the way
that the town has adopted it.

475
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:41,720
So, what is a horror figure

476
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:43,600
has become, I think,

477
00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:45,360
mascot would not be the wrong word.

478
00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:50,120
The town has really now
used Mothman as its identity.

479
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:53,200
There is now a little
Mothman Museum.

480
00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:56,960
There is a Mothman Festival
in September every year,

481
00:28:57,120 --> 00:28:59,160
and they would dress as the Mothman.

482
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:03,200
There's a statue, a very elaborate
statue that was commissioned,

483
00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:04,800
that's in the middle of the town.

484
00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:09,400
So, the town has kind of created the
sense that we are the Mothman town.

485
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:13,120
Which is very interesting because
it's made it a very positive image.

486
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:16,440
So it's managed to reverse this
into something which is,

487
00:29:16,600 --> 00:29:18,960
"Let's be scared,
but not too scared."

488
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:25,200
But not everyone
buys into the idea

489
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:28,200
that the Mothman
has been domesticated.

490
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:32,800
And while they may not think
it to be a real creature,

491
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:36,520
they believe there is an even
more frightening explanation.

492
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:39,880
I don't think
that Mothman was a cryptid.

493
00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:42,760
A cryptid is an animal
that's unknown to science,

494
00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:45,720
or maybe one that's thought to be
extinct but might still be around,

495
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:48,000
such as the Tasmanian wolf.

496
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:51,920
Mothman, I think,
was a paranormal manifestation.

497
00:29:52,080 --> 00:29:57,760
And why I say that is because
of the intense fear it engendered.

498
00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:00,960
This raises the question,

499
00:30:01,120 --> 00:30:03,200
where does
the Mothman's power come from?

500
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:06,480
How was it able to conjure up
such primordial fear in us?

501
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:09,720
I think one kind of has
to go back and think,

502
00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:12,080
"Where did it come from?"

503
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:15,320
And you get a lot
of supernatural monsters,

504
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:18,320
particularly associated
with forests.

505
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:21,680
I mean, this rural area
is quite a forested area,

506
00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:26,200
and they seem to be this kind
of semi-demonic sort of character.

507
00:30:26,360 --> 00:30:30,080
You might very well, at some point,
have gone into the woods

508
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:33,080
and seen witches and devils
and various things.

509
00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:41,280
Well, this has kind of defanged
that kind of religious overtone

510
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:44,400
by simply making them
sort of horror monsters.

511
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:48,520
And in this case, you know, it's
gone from being whatever it was,

512
00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:50,240
the monster
that you met in the woods

513
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:53,520
at the time when you really believed
that the devil haunted the woods,

514
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:56,440
to a horror monster, to our monster.

515
00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:58,800
You know, he may be a monster,
but he is ours,

516
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:00,920
and we, you know, we like him.

517
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:05,240
With the Mothman change,
you might imagine

518
00:31:05,400 --> 00:31:08,760
that we have seen the last of him,
but that is not the case.

519
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:10,520
There has been a recent sighting.

520
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:12,000
I think it was 2016,

521
00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:16,760
and it was a picture was transmitted
on a local TV station.

522
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:19,600
So people are seeing these animals.

523
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:22,080
They're seeing kind of
ambiguous information,

524
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:24,920
taking pictures, and it's a theme.

525
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:27,920
The idea that there is these
crypto-zoological things out there

526
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:29,880
that we don't know everything.

527
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:32,640
That there are mysteries,
is tremendously appealing.

528
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:35,040
And in the case of the Mothman, too,

529
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:38,640
you also have the possibility
that it's precognitive,

530
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:44,320
that it either prefigures or causes
some kind of big disaster.

531
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:48,600
So I can see how it would
just be perfect legend material.

532
00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:53,560
I think the legend of the Mothman
persists for a number of reasons.

533
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:56,680
One, it's been linked,
I think, erroneously,

534
00:31:56,840 --> 00:31:59,680
with the tragedy of the collapse
of the Silver Bridge.

535
00:31:59,840 --> 00:32:01,960
That's just a piece
of modern day folklore.

536
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:04,120
But it's the creepiness of it.

537
00:32:04,280 --> 00:32:06,720
It's the idea
of the small town monster.

538
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:10,600
This thing that's lurking
on the edge of civilisation

539
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:15,040
and seems to occasionally...
come into our habitat,

540
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:18,360
chasing cars,
looming out of the darkness

541
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:21,280
and then vanishing again
like some sort of phantom.

542
00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:48,600
The camera doesn't lie.

543
00:32:48,760 --> 00:32:51,840
So when a photograph seems to show
something extraordinary,

544
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:55,240
we tend to look for
an extraordinary explanation,

545
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:58,400
but that isn't always where
we will find the truth.

546
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:06,280
When an aeroplane crashes,

547
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:08,200
there is usually loss of life

548
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:10,920
and an immediate search
for the cause of disaster.

549
00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:13,280
Mechanical failure, human error,

550
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:16,280
striking another object,
running out of fuel,

551
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:18,680
all manner of things
can be to blame.

552
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:20,000
But in modern warfare,

553
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:23,320
a reliable machine
is a matter of life and death,

554
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:25,640
and finding the cause
for aircraft failures

555
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:28,400
can be the difference
between winning and losing.

556
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:32,480
In April 1942,
as the Allies suffered

557
00:33:32,640 --> 00:33:35,880
a devastating series of setbacks

558
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:38,120
against German forces,

559
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:41,840
the Royal Air Force
published an article

560
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:43,840
in its official journal,

561
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:47,320
entitled The Gremlin Question.

562
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:51,440
Every pilot, every navigator seems,

563
00:33:51,600 --> 00:33:56,000
"to be on nodding terms"
with gremlins.

564
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:58,720
Swarms of mischievous creatures

565
00:33:58,880 --> 00:34:02,120
who caused havoc with the aircraft.

566
00:34:02,280 --> 00:34:05,400
They caused havoc with bombs,
with navigation,

567
00:34:05,560 --> 00:34:09,040
with every part
of the aircraft equipment.

568
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:13,240
The one thing lacking
in the RAF document

569
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:16,920
is a description of what a gremlin
looks like or where they're from.

570
00:34:18,120 --> 00:34:20,080
It's important to remember that

571
00:34:20,240 --> 00:34:23,280
until the early years
of the 20th century,

572
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:27,280
no one had any idea what existed

573
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:30,040
above the Earth's atmosphere.

574
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:35,720
There was no concept of what
might be in this stratosphere

575
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:41,280
and that provided fertile ground
for novelists and storytellers

576
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:44,120
to come up with their own ideas

577
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:47,560
and to weave them
into speculative fiction.

578
00:34:47,720 --> 00:34:49,800
There's a very famous story

579
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:53,520
that was written by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1913

580
00:34:53,680 --> 00:34:55,640
called the Horror of the Heights

581
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:57,800
that was published
in Strand Magazine.

582
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:01,720
And it's all about a flyer around
the sort of pre-war period

583
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:05,360
who... goes up way beyond

584
00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:07,560
where pilots of that era could go.

585
00:35:07,720 --> 00:35:12,480
And he finds that the upper parts of
the air around sort of 24,000 feet,

586
00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:15,480
way beyond where any aircraft
could go at that time,

587
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,120
was populated by creatures.

588
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:19,960
Weird creatures,
the sort of creatures that you

589
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:24,800
would perhaps find at the bottom
of the sea who lived in the sky.

590
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:27,200
And his aircraft is attacked
by these creatures

591
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:29,240
who are sort of fighting
amongst themselves.

592
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:32,880
And this is a human being
who's gone up in a piece of metal.

593
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:35,960
So they descend on his aircraft
and pull it to pieces

594
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:37,960
and he crashes to Earth.

595
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:40,320
And all that's left of him
is the wreckage and a note

596
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:43,360
that basically says,
"Beware the horror of the heights."

597
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:47,000
Now the frantic race
of inventing, improvising, adapting

598
00:35:47,160 --> 00:35:49,920
and refining
aircraft equipment began.

599
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:52,920
Throughout the first World War

600
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:57,160
that fictional story gained currency

601
00:35:57,320 --> 00:36:00,760
and it gained currency
within the pilots and officers

602
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:02,960
of the Royal Flying Corps.

603
00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:08,520
Now they were trying to
manipulate cumbersome biplanes,

604
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:13,760
primitive planes,
and also fight battles.

605
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:16,680
The first sightings
would have been when

606
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:18,800
aviation started,
and there were lots

607
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:20,440
of unexplained things

608
00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:21,840
happening in aircraft

609
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:24,760
that people had
no clear explanation for.

610
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:26,400
If you became a pilot,

611
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:28,320
particularly a military pilot
at that time,

612
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:31,160
your chances of survival were slim.

613
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:36,040
Particularly if you were a fighter
pilot over the Western Front.

614
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:38,040
I mean, they... they... they...

615
00:36:38,200 --> 00:36:41,120
they were lucky to survive
two or three days

616
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:43,400
when they were deployed
to a fighter squadron.

617
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:46,880
So a lot of what happened
when they were going into the sky

618
00:36:47,040 --> 00:36:49,000
was all about luck.

619
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:52,680
A tradition arose that if something
went wrong on your aircraft,

620
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:56,480
fuel gauge, propellers...

621
00:36:56,640 --> 00:36:59,360
something that hadn't been
properly serviced,

622
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:01,560
and you didn't want
to blame it on humans,

623
00:37:01,720 --> 00:37:03,600
you blamed it on goblins.

624
00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:07,720
And the RAF version of this
was "the gremlin".

625
00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:15,920
By the time the
Second World War came around,

626
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:17,880
the belief in gremlins,

627
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:21,960
stratospheric gremlins
who interfered with aircraft...

628
00:37:23,720 --> 00:37:25,320
...gained currency.

629
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:31,080
It gained so much currency
that anywhere on any base,

630
00:37:31,240 --> 00:37:33,080
"gremlin" became a byword,

631
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:37,120
a shorthand for anything
which went wrong with a plane

632
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:41,480
which didn't have an immediate
and obvious cause.

633
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:47,560
But it wasn't just pilots
who told tales of gremlins.

634
00:37:47,720 --> 00:37:49,040
The United States Air Force

635
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:52,040
published an illustrated guide
to gremlins,

636
00:37:52,200 --> 00:37:55,440
that it distributed all across
its bases in Europe.

637
00:38:01,720 --> 00:38:04,440
The guide contains
illustrations of cartoon characters.

638
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,520
Who are given names
like Bubbles, Nitrogen,

639
00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:11,000
and a list of the effects
the gas can have.

640
00:38:11,160 --> 00:38:13,760
But it doesn't take itself
too seriously.

641
00:38:14,720 --> 00:38:18,640
The guide is humorous.
It's... It's tongue in cheek.

642
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:22,200
But it is actually serving
a serious purpose,

643
00:38:22,360 --> 00:38:27,040
because those conditions that it
described are very real problems

644
00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:31,440
which affect aviators
flying at high altitude.

645
00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:34,200
There was a US Air Force B-17

646
00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:38,800
stratosphere operated
flight test station

647
00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:41,840
which experienced a number
of very unexplained events,

648
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:45,120
such as oil leaks and lack of oxygen

649
00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:48,440
when they were flying
at over 40,000 feet

650
00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:51,800
and that's where they explained them
by saying it was the gremlins.

651
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:55,600
The hallucinatory effects and
the physiological effects on pilots

652
00:38:55,760 --> 00:38:59,680
flying at high altitude
in the early days of aviation

653
00:38:59,840 --> 00:39:03,920
without the same equipment
that they have now,

654
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:06,760
I think could have been
quite a contributory factor

655
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:10,760
to people beginning to see things
that maybe weren't there.

656
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:14,200
Uh-oh. Here it comes. The message.

657
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:16,120
As we go rolling...

658
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:17,400
Hi, Mac.

659
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:20,600
♪ Rolling home ♪

660
00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:24,720
Name is Grogan.
Technical gremlin, first class.

661
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:28,080
And then the British Government
got on board.

662
00:39:28,240 --> 00:39:31,280
It began issuing posters
which were tacked up

663
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:34,320
on air bases all across the country

664
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:38,120
warning pilots about gremlins.

665
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:40,520
These posters are extraordinary.

666
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:44,720
They carry a very real
safety message.

667
00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:47,560
"Don't do this.
Always wear your goggles.

668
00:39:47,720 --> 00:39:49,200
Don't do that."

669
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:53,400
And attributed the reason
for that to the dangers of gremlins.

670
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:56,840
Then in 1943,
a young RAF officer

671
00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:59,280
on secondment in Washington, DC

672
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:02,960
took the gremlin story even higher
into the stratosphere.

673
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:08,040
Roald Dahl, who became
one of the most celebrated novelists

674
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:13,040
of that period
through to the '60s and 1970s,

675
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:17,080
wrote a short story
Children's Story, the Gremlins.

676
00:40:17,240 --> 00:40:20,360
And he described Gremlins
as mischievous creatures.

677
00:40:20,520 --> 00:40:22,640
He said they were six inches tall

678
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:26,000
and they plagued air crews
all over the world.

679
00:40:26,160 --> 00:40:28,960
It was a lovely children's story

680
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:31,600
and it explained that Gremlins

681
00:40:31,760 --> 00:40:35,320
were so antagonised by air crew

682
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:38,600
that they decided to create havoc,

683
00:40:38,760 --> 00:40:40,480
to cause mischief on planes.

684
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:42,960
I was very lucky because I...I...

685
00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:46,120
My first little book I wrote
was called the Gremlins,

686
00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:49,120
which was
bought by Walt Disney.

687
00:40:49,280 --> 00:40:54,480
Walt Disney seized on this
and he published a syndicated column

688
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:57,360
illustrated with
pictures of Gremlins

689
00:40:57,520 --> 00:41:01,760
to strengthen the message
about Gremlins

690
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:04,440
and the risks they posed to fliers.

691
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:06,160
He said,
"If you doubt that they exist,

692
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:10,240
that's because you haven't flown
a Spitfire in a dogfight

693
00:41:10,400 --> 00:41:13,120
or been in a bomber over Germany."

694
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:25,680
The combination
of Roald Dahl and Walt Disney

695
00:41:25,840 --> 00:41:27,840
quickly got the attention
of the British Government,

696
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:30,640
who saw it as a neat way
to issue warnings to pilots

697
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:33,600
about the dangers
of flying at high altitude

698
00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:37,240
with Gremlins
as the convenient scapegoats.

699
00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:40,600
They got on board
with Disney's projected film.

700
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:45,480
He said, "I'm going to turn Roald
Dahl's novel into a feature movie."

701
00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:49,840
And the British government said,
"That sounds like a good idea."

702
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:54,240
In the end, that movie never
happened because, true to form,

703
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:57,760
the British Government,
stiff and censorious,

704
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:02,600
wanted control over every
last aspect of the production

705
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:04,560
and indeed the finances.

706
00:42:04,720 --> 00:42:06,680
Wait! That's different.

707
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:09,640
Are you kidding?

708
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:11,960
Why, the minute
they start talking to you,

709
00:42:12,120 --> 00:42:13,760
you'll go all soft and...

710
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:17,080
But the end of the film
wasn't the end for the Gremlins,

711
00:42:17,240 --> 00:42:20,400
as their empire spread
from aviation into other spheres.

712
00:42:20,560 --> 00:42:25,560
I think Gremlins were adopted as
a fiction for many other situations,

713
00:42:25,720 --> 00:42:29,200
such as driving, marine, etc.

714
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:31,040
Where anything went wrong

715
00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:33,000
that really could not be
easily explained.

716
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:35,480
There's not
so much reporting of them now.

717
00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:39,600
I think probably because the word
Gremlin has been

718
00:42:39,760 --> 00:42:42,480
taken over in other situations
such as the movies

719
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:44,240
that have got that same title.

720
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:50,200
The Gremlins had gone
from being an in-joke among pilots

721
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:54,720
to conquering Hollywood and become
a term we use in everyday speech.

722
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:57,240
But only when something goes wrong.

723
00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:03,400
It was those official USAF

724
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:06,200
and RAF inputs,

725
00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:11,600
which gave the Gremlin's story legs,
an entirely fictional story,

726
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:14,960
but one which became
a pervasive myth...

727
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:18,560
...for flyers during World War II.

728
00:43:18,720 --> 00:43:22,040
Look, friend, I don't know
what all this sarcasm is about,

729
00:43:22,200 --> 00:43:25,080
but I'm getting out
of this man's air force.

730
00:43:25,240 --> 00:43:29,760
Capital O, capital U, capital T.
OUT.

731
00:43:32,520 --> 00:43:34,880
Next time on Britain's X-Files...

732
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:37,280
How did an experienced pilot

733
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:39,240
disappear from the cockpit
of his plane?

734
00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:42,320
Does Russian film
show a woman moving objects

735
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:44,440
with the power of her mind?

736
00:43:44,600 --> 00:43:47,440
Did the Nazis discover
the Holy Grail?

737
00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:49,360
And what was the thing

738
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:51,880
that terrorised a peaceful
Wiltshire village?

739
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:21,080
Subtitles by Sky Access Services