Journalist and TV presenter Chris Bell's mission to be abducted by aliens continues, but he's yet to have been much further than Southampton. Last episode he called me back in to advise him on the best way forward and I put him in touch with Michael Soper, who runs the UFO group Contact International. Chris had already met some abductees and a hypnotherapist, so I thought he should engage more with the wider UFO community. I also thought he might go on a skywatch.
Chris met Michael in his Oxford home and there followed a somewhat bizarre episode where Michael looked through various still photos of atom bomb blasts, terrorist bomb explosions and clouds, pointing out what appeared to him to be various faces. His theory - I think - was that aliens might be communicating with us in this way. Some of these messages seemed to be arriving in the form of images of various celebrities. Chris didn't look too sure about any of this and wanted, correctly I think, to crack on with the skywatch.
Michael first explained something about his own background, experiences and beliefs. His involvement started in around 1959 or 1960, when he saw a UFO flying close to an RAF aircraft. He's been investigating ever since and believes there may be "tens of thousands" of people experiencing alien abductions. He also managed to take a picture of a UFO, over his local Co-op, though it was rather too small to make anything out clearly.
Now for the science stuff. Michael showed Chris a range of equipment he intended to take on the skywatch. This included a torch, a magnifying glass, a Geiger counter and something made from an old TV set which he described as a "broadband low frequency electromagnetic detector". There was also a device which he'd purchased from his local Poundland store which seemed to combine a tape measure and some sort of knife. "Scientific and thrifty", as Chris observed.
Michael warned that going on a skywatch with a positive state of mind might "generate an interaction with something negative" and also advised - which doesn't bode well for the mission - that "the one thing you shouldn't expect to see on a skywatch is a UFO". He also, once again, raised the two words Chris doesn't want to hear in relation to his quest: anal probe. We'll find out how the skywatch goes next time around. Time is running out and as I've been advising Chris on how to achieve his mission, the pressure's on me too. Fingers crossed.
