Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet by webcast and by podcast my name is Howard Hughes and this is the unexplained.

Really good to have you back there and I'm talking to you under very very sad circumstances for a whole variety of reasons.

I don't even know where to begin. I'm recording this at the weekend. You'll probably hear it at the beginning of the coming week.

We are well and truly into December. The British weather is grey and wet and windy and mild. And for all of this very odd week I've been laid in my bed with a very severe bout of flu.

I don't think I've ever had flu so bad and it's just beginning to abate. But if I start coughing my voice doesn't sound quite like me. You'll understand why but that's not all of it really.

This has been a strange week. A number of people in my circle have left us recently and that is incredibly sad.

And then this morning I get up to catch up on some very sad news from the United States. I think you know that my radio hero for many years has been Art Bell.

The fact that I'm sitting here now and trying out for the first time an Art Bell style headset to do the show is all down to him.

And it's so ironic that here I am using a headset identical to the one that I used for all of those years and trying to get my head right how to use that because he used it so proficiently.

And I read this news on his website. I'm sure you know about this if you're hearing me now and you're into these things. Art Bell, the man who devised this particular format and whose man I tried to carry here, if that's the word, to take on.

To some degree in the United Kingdom, none of us will ever be Art Bell. But I tried to do something similar based on interviews and experiences that I've done and had.

I tried to do something similar for Europe here. And now we read this. As you know Art established dark matter network, his own personal network having decided to move on from the big networks for reasons that I completely understand having worked in mainstream media myself.

And I was part of their network and part of that network. Anyway, this posting on Art Bell's own site Art Bell.com says this. And like I said, you probably seen this.

I'm sorry to have to announce this, but I will not be on tonight or any other night. Yes, I'm going to hang up. Whoever this crazy person is, they are not stopping and it's come to the point that we as a family do not feel it is worth the risk.

While I think the personal persons are after me, my wife and now my daughter are really scared. The other night that latest incident, my daughter was off in the corner of her bed scared to death as police cars came screaming up.

You may not know anything about this, but Art has a home that is pretty well publicized. It's his fortress in many ways. Certainly his cocoon from it all where he does his broadcasting.

From what I can understand this side of the Atlantic, somebody has been taking pot shots at that place. A situation that over here, look, I couldn't even couldn't even imagine.

So Art has decided to do the only thing that a reasonable person could do. You know, he's got to put his safety and primarily the safety of his wife and daughter at the paramount.

There is nothing else you can do in this situation, but it's just the saddest news really. It's very hard to take in and I hope that Art will be back with us and I have to see here and say now, and I'm sorry if I don't quite sound like me at the moment, that if I can have any part in assisting him and his project in the future to be with you again, then I will.

But I'm a tiny little cog in a very big wheel in a very strange world. Thank you very much for all of your emails recently, by the way, I will get round to shout out in the next edition, but I did promise Tana that I would mention his father's birthday, Tana and his dad are in Salt Lake City, Utah, love the show.

And they like me talking about the weather as well. And so I said I would mention Tana's dad's birthday in Salt Lake City, it was December the 8th, sorry, I'm a little late for that.

On this edition, I'm going to talk to a man called Philip Mantle. Now he is a UFO investigator, as big as people like Nick Pope over here.

...