1. Nick, you’ve investigated all kinds of paranormal strangeness...from chupacabras to crashed saucers; government cover-ups and NASA conspiracies, but you haven’t devoted much time to investigating ghosts. Why not? Do you believe in them?
ANSWER: The answer to this one is comprised of several things. Cryptozoology and Ufology are my two biggest interests when it comes to Forteana. And those are the areas I feel most capable of working in. And it has to be interesting too, of course! Personally, while there are various areas in which I have strong interests - the Contactee movement, werewolves, Men in Black stories, Mothman - there are some that I have little or no interest in, such as Tarot-Cards, Ouija-Boards, the Bermuda Triangle, telepathy, and ghosts. When I say I have no interest, I mean chiefly from the perspective of doing intensive research into these areas. I've read a lot of books on such topics, but I have zero interest in researching and writing about, say, Tarot-Cards. Mainly because there are many people far more skilled in that area already - so why go rampaging around in an area you're not overly familiar with? And that's the same with ghosts: there are plenty of people who have been researching this area for years. What would be the point of me getting involved in it now, and having to start from scratch? Plus, to be honest, ghostly phenomena just doesn't interest me that much, in the same way some people in other Fortean areas could not care less about Bigfoot or Roswell. Plus, it would be boring if we were all into the same stuff! I think there is often a tendency for people to assume if we're into one Fortean issue, we're into them all! But, I'm not. Plus, I like to have a life away from Forteana too. I usually start work each day about 6.30AM and go on to about 5PM, Monday to Friday, writing constantly, and then I stop. I have zero interest in having my head in books all the time, or constantly chasing mysteries. At night, after work for me ends at 5PM, me and my wife, Dana, will go to our favorite pubs, go to a gig (preferably very loud and punk guitar-based!), or have friends over, etc. I also watch a lot of English football (I hate the word soccer!) on the subscription channels - I usually watch that each and every week-night, if we are at home, from about 9PM to Midnight. Forteana is actually a secondary aspect of my life - maybe even less than secondary! Do I believe in ghosts? Well...I believe there is a phenomenon that causes people to see ghosts. But, if you're asking me do I believe this is a manifestation of the dead returned, I truthfully don't know. It could be. It could also be the subconscious wanting to believe so badly that there is life-after-death that it outwardly projects imagery from the human-mind that acts as "damage-control" and gives the person some comfort that death is not the end. Frankly, the idea of no life-after-death does not worry me at all. If there's just oblivion, it's no big deal. The thing to do is realize that as a very real possibility and make sure you have a bloody good time in the 80 years or so we'll hopefully have.
do I believe that a colony of 7-foot-tall ape-men has successfully managed to remain hidden across the United States without any hard evidence never, ever being forthcoming? No I do not!
2. Out of all the cryptids you’ve investigated, the chupacabra, mothman, goatman, dogman, etc., which one do you think is actually real, or at least could be real?
ANSWER: Ah, well, that's an interesting question, because it all depends on your personal perception on what defines "reality"! If you mean: do I believe that a colony of 7-foot-tall ape-men has successfully managed to remain hidden across the United States without any hard evidence never, ever being forthcoming? No I do not! The idea that all the Bigfoot-type beasts, all the lake-monsters, all the Chupacabra, all the werewolves etc, could be flesh-and-blood and never be caught, captured, killed, or found dead of old-age is totally ridiculous. People should realize this by now, and not get caught up on the notion that these are animals.
None of these things - in my view - are flesh-and-blood animals in the way we understand the term. I'm a big believer in the phenomenon of the Tulpa - the notion that the human-mind can create thought-forms that can be externalized and given some form of quasi-existence in the real-world. Tulpas feed on energy to sustain them - and the higher the state of energy, the stronger the feeding ability. That's why people are always seeing Bigfoot crossing the road (and particularly so at bridges): the creatures NEED to be seen, to provoke a high-emotional state in the eye-witness, and then they "feed" upon that emotion to sustain them. That's why we have Fortean "flaps." The reason the flap ends is when the entity is fully "fueled," and it only resurfaces again in a new place when it needs to "eat" again. If these beasts are one day proved to be nothing stranger than unknown animals of a type that science has not classified, I'll be totally amazed! So, yes I believe most of these entities are real, but it's the meaning of "real" that defines them.
3. What’s one thing (or two) you’ve investigated over the years that has kept you up at night?
ANSWER: Actually, I sleep very well! Nothing of a Fortean nature keeps me awake at all.; aside from - occasionally - book-deadlines! It might sound cool and atmospheric if I said I lie awake wondering if there are strange, glowing-eyed, Lovecraftian beasts lurking around the large fields at the foot of our back-garden. But I don't! LOL. I do sometimes worry about my favorite football teams qualifying for this or that tournament, but Forteana is just not high enough on my radar to lose sleep over.
4. Let’s talk about UFOs for a bit. What’s your take on rocker Sammy Hagar’s claim that he has had contact with aliens? Do you think it’s all made up to sell copies of his new book, "Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock"?
ANSWER: My answer is short and simple: No, I don't think it's made up, because Sammy Hagar has enough fans who will buy his book anyway, without having to resort to making anything up. Why add something like this, when tens of thousands of Hagar and Van Halen fans will already buy the book?
To me, what’s most interesting about Hagar’s story is the abduction part. True, there have been many celebrities over the years who have gone on the record as saying they believe in the paranormal, but not many actually admit to having an extraterrestrial encounter/abduction. Thoughts?
ANSWER: Well, whenever anyone famous talks about seeing aliens, or having a UFO encounter, the media are inevitably going to sit up and take notice. But Hagar's story is, essentially, no different to anyone else's story of alien contact. The only difference is that people know who Hagar is. The general public and the media don't know who "John Smith" is, and, for the most part, they don't care either. So, there's nothing stand-out about the encounter (aside from the fact that it clearly left a marked impression on Sammy - as you would imagine it would, and as such experiences leave a marked impression on everyone that undergoes such a thing), aside from who the witness is - a famous rock-singer.
5. What’s your opinion about the new Temple Mount UFO videos? There are now 6 different videos that have surfaced, all shot at different angles and allegedly from different people. Have you seen them? Have you done any research into this? If this does, indeed, turn out to be real, do you feel there is any significance to the UFO appearing over such a holy place?
ANSWER: I have seen the footage, much of which I think is dubious. No, I haven't researched the imagery, and no I don't feel the link to a Holy place has any relevance at all. It's only a Holy place to people who think it's Holy. If you're an atheist, it's not a Holy place; it's just a place. So, the significance of the place is only relative to people's belief-systems, or non-belief-systems. To be honest, I take the view that continually collecting reports, analyzing footage etc, is not getting us anywhere. All it does is fill up filing-cabinets, and that's all it's done since Kenneth Arnold came on the scene in 1947. We clearly have enough reports now to demonstrate that something weird is going on, and that there definitely is a real UFO phenomenon of unknown origins. But it's the heart of the phenomenon we need to penetrate and understand, not just collecting more and more reports of a "Mr. Smith saw a blue light in sky last Wednesday night." That approach, after 64 years since Kenneth Arnold, has clearly got us nowhere at all, nor can it.
6. Regarding religion and UFOs, in your book “Final Events and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife”, you interviewed members of The Collins Elite, this shadowy think tank that believes aliens are in fact demons, not friendly ETs from other worlds. There seems to be a great divide in UFO-ology about whether aliens are from the spiritual realm, as the Collins Elite suggest, or physical beings from other planets. Can you tell us a little bit more about the Collins Elite and their beliefs?
ANSWER: Final Events is probably the weirdest and most controversial book I have ever written, in the sense that it deals with a small - but influential - think-tank in Government that believes UFOs have - literal - demonic origins. They have apparently been around for a long, long time, and take a definitively fundamentalist approach to the subject. They are a dangerous, dangerous group that wishes to enforce old-time religion on the populace as a means to keep the demons (the "Grays" of Ufology) at bay. They started off as having very interesting beliefs and concepts relative to the UFO phenomenon and potential occult links, but then transformed into some kind of Ufologically-obsessed fundamentalist. That they have infected the minds of people in Government is the most worrying thing of all. Religion should be a personal belief (or a personal non-belief, or a personal "I'm not sure" approach). The Collins Elite intend it becoming a widespread tool of control. That they believe this manipulation of the populace is a valid approach, if it keeps the demons at bay, is not their decision to make. Religion, and religious beliefs, should never, ever be pushed on others. Which is why I hate all organized religions, because that's what they do: preachers tell their flock what they believe to be right. Then their flock program the minds of their children, at a very young age when they specifically cannot differentiate between what is merely a belief and a provable fact. All mainstream religions are less about a duscussion of the phenomena of creation, deities, and what this all might mean on a grander scale, than they are about carefully controlling people at a mass-level via two issues: fear and guilt. I suffer from neither, which is perhaps why I feel no religious connection, or any need for such a connection.
I find the Jack Parsons and Aleister Crowley connection to this story absolutely fascinating. Can you explain why the Collins Elite feel Parsons & Crowley are responsible for modern day UFO sightings, abductions, etc?
ANSWER: This is an incredibly complicated story, but basically the Collins Elite came to believe that people such as Crowley and Parsons were - in simple terms - responsible for opening "doorways" to further expand the ability of demonic entities to exist in our world, and to allow them to further exploit and spread the ruse that they are extraterrestrial. The Collins Elite also came to believe that all (and I do mean all) "alien abductions" are in the mind; in other words, visionary events rather than physical events. Their view is that abductions are a kind of "mind-propaganda" designed to further spread an alien abduction "meme" to have us believe we are dealing with aliens, rather than soul-sucking/feeding demons.
7. What are your own personal beliefs about aliens, Nick? Demons, EBEs or none of the above?
ANSWER: Ironically, as the person who wrote Final Events, I'm not a religious person. I've only ever gone to church for weddings or funerals. It's not so much that I'm atheist, or a non-believer. Rather, I just don't think about, or ponder on, religion, Heaven and Hell, etc. Maybe it's because I'm from England, which - although a Christian nation for the most part- is not particularly religious for most of the population. Where I do agree with the Collins Elite is on two issues: I gave up a long time ago - at least a decade ago - thinking that the UFO phenomenon is extraterrestrial. My view is that we are looking at something extra-dimensional, and possibly explainable along these lines via quantum-physics. And the second thing I agree with the Collins Elite is that the phenomenon is hostile to the Human Race. It's deceptive, manipulative, and exploits us and uses us. Why? I'm not sure. But I see nothing positive from our interaction with non-human entities. People who think the phenomenon is a positive one need a good wake-up call. The biggest mistake on the part of the Collins Elite is that they excluded all possibilities for the true nature of the UFO phenomenon, beyond the truly sinister fundamentalist one.
8. I would think that if the Collins Elite group are right, and these things are demons and not EBEs flying around in spacecrafts, the Roswell crash never happened. After all, that would mean that demons are mortal beings that fly around in spaceships. Thoughts?
ANSWER: The Collins Elite actually had a very thought-provoking reason for why demons - as non-physical entities - could be involved in a UFO crash event like Roswell. They believed - as I spell out in the book - that the Roswell event was a staged manipulation, in which these entities used a kind of "demonic alchemy" to create/weave the debris and even the bodies, which were viewed as kind of biological mannequins that never really lived.
9. Now that’s bizarre! Speaking of Roswell, you put forth an interesting theory about what may have actually happened at Roswell in your book, “Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story.” 
ANSWER: This is a book that very few people in Ufology like. My view: so what? They don't like it because it doesn't say what Ufology wants to hear, that Roswell was an ET event. The book offers the theory that the Roswell affair did not involve a UFO crash, but was based around high-altitude exposure experiments using human-subjects that catastrophically failed and the bodies of the human guinea-pigs and their craft crashed - provoking the "alien bodies" and "crashed UFO" legends. I'll give you a little scoop here: there was certain concern at an official level when the book came out, and the original printed copy of the Word document of the book vanished under very weird, murky circumstances from the publisher's office in early 2005. That's not hearsay or rumor, but fact. I might write about that one day.
10. Your latest book, “The NASA Conspiracies” is creating quite a buzz. What’s the premise?
ANSWER: This is basically a study of such controversies as astronaut sightings of UFOs (yes, they have seen them!); the Face on Mars (in my view, real); and the issue of whether or not the Apollo Moon-Landings were faked. In my view, no: of course they were not faked! They were totally real.
11. You’ve got a new book coming out this summer about the Men in Black, called "The Real Men in Black"...
ANSWER:Yeah, this book will be out in June, and is a study of the whole MIB phenomenon, from its beginnings to the present day. It includes a massive amount of new, on-the-record cases, demonstrating that the MIB are still around, and also a lot of theories: are they government agents, aliens, time-travelers, etc.
12. What new Nick Redfern projects/books are coming up after “The Real Men in Black” has been released this summer?
ANSWER: I'm working on a couple of cryptozoology-themed books. And at least one more UFO-themed book. Will I do any more UFO books after that? I'm really not sure. I actually might not. It would be solely (and I do mean solely) dependent on me being able to keep adding new data to the debate of what UFOs are. That goes exactly the same for cryptozoology: if I feel I have something new and valid to say, then I'll keep saying it. But I'm not going to keep on writing books just for the sake of writing them. Having something valuable and relevant to say is far more important than saying: "I've written 30 books, blah-blah-blah etc." So, I'll keep writing books for at least another couple of years, and then I'll see if I have anything new to say after that or not. There actually is something very, very positive to be said about getting out while you still feel fresh and vital - and then never, ever coming back, and hopefully leaving a good legacy in your wake. I would totally hate to just continue writing books, just like some rock band that doesn't know when to stop playing gigs, or when they can't face up to stopping when they have extinguished all their ideas.
13. Lastly, your book “Three Men Seeking Monsters” is my personal favorite. I think it has inspired countless amateur paranormal investigators to jump in a van and take their own paranormal road-trips. What advice do you have for people who want to investigate the paranormal for themselves?
ANSWER: I would always say the most important things are (A) don't get caught up in belief-systems. Don't assume UFOs are extraterrestrial, or that Bigfoot is a giant-ape. Look at all the evidence and see where it leads - in an unbiased fashion. And (B), don't grovel to long-term players in the Fortean world, and don't say what you think they want to hear, just to get on the lecture-circuit. I've seen that so many times and it angers me. Researchers fawning like sheep to say the right thing to the right magazine editor or the right conference organizer. That approach makes me puke. It's embarrassing and demeaning to you. Have the strength of character to follow your own path, and your own conclusions. And have fun and a few beers doing it!
Editor's Note:
Cheers to Nick for this great interview! Truly, one of the good guys in this field.
You can visit Nick at his blog, at: http://monsterusa.blogspot.com/
Follow him on Twitter: @nickredfernufo
