Rendlesham Forest…, A Christmas Story from 1980 - Can We ‘Let it Be’?

Rob,
Gary Osborn has responded to your comments and my comments. He writes as follows:
‘I had a laugh at all that - the twisted logic of it I mean.
We have been down this road a few times about the close similarity between the Hy Brasil coordinates and the Woodbridge ones. I would not jump to the conclusion that this detail is enough to point to the code being a hoax. There may be a reason as to why these coordinates are similar which I have already addressed elsewhere. Anyway, as to how could exact coordinates for Hy Brasil be given when we don't know the whereabouts of the legendary island, I can only say that the coordinates themselves are part of a code - not just identifying the location of Hy Brasil by an intelligence that possibly holds information we don't, but the coordinates work with the other six coordinates to produce another piece of information . . . the value 51º is itself a clue to what this additional information is about. The following decimal point and other values merely give a location to anchor this information to and they could be anything, but it's more likely that these may be the correct coordinates of the legendary island - in that the intelligence that has produced this code, knows the exact location. If what I'm saying still doesn't make sense and cannot be accepted as yet, then people will just have to wait until all the information we have about the code is made public.’
I responded as follows:
‘It’s quite amazing how Gary can accuse others of indulging in twisted logic when he himself indulges in circular logic. He says, ‘it's more likely that these may be the correct coordinates of the legendary island - in that the intelligence that has produced this code, knows the exact location.’ Such a statement is a classic case of circular reasoning, in which the reasoner begins with what he is trying to end with. Circular logic cannot prove a conclusion because, if the conclusion is doubted, the premise which leads to it will also be doubted. In any case, no “intelligence” can know the exact location of something which never existed in the first place.
Furthermore, goodness knows when all the information of this binary code is going to be made public, seeing as it is not, apparently, going to incorporated fully into Nick Pope’s upcoming book.’
I’d be interested in any thoughts that you may have.

reply to post by Rob48

I'm sure someone else brought this up in this thread, but the latest buzz about it is the alien binary code. It's so mystical and cool that he gets a stream of numbers that point to a location(s), but com'on. If the dang aliens know ASCII code, why not just translate the letters in English??? The whole thing just reeks of fake. I do believe the event happened as the men describe, but the binary code transmitted into Penniston's head just doesn't make sense. The thing is that they call it binary code like that means something, but it doesn't, what matters is that it is ASCII, and that is just a representation of the English language, so why the heck would the aliens bother transmitting it in ASCII and not just use English? HIs brain was much better suited for English than ASCII.

I think he's reaching out for more attention, and that's a bit troubling. He needs some help to sort out what really happened and what may have been imagined or created later. These pages that just keep appearing more and more need to be challenged objectively.

mirageman
I was airing my own frustrations at being able to get any resolution to this after going over it for weeks. Too much chaff to sift through.

Mirageman, Did you ever see Tim Printy's review of the case in his online magazine SUNLite? I think it's a fair summary which sifts through a lot of the chaff for you. Tim was a long-term US Navy submariner on nuclear subs so his opinion of the radiation readings is particularly well-informed. I've snipped out the relevant pages from the magazine here
www.ianridpath.com...
Only six pages, so not much to read.

reply to post by DaveE66


I think the whole binary code episode was probably a poor attempt at adding "mystery" to the case for the 30th anniversary from someone who didn't realize binary code was around well before 1980. As for Gary Osborn. I tried reading his website but it's hard work. His style of prose is very difficult to read as he uses very long rambling sentences and never gets to the point.





reply to post by ianrid


Yes Ian .

Sunlite is a very useful source of information, as an excellent sceptical balance on many other cases .I did have it on file and I do agree that many elements of the Rendlesham case fit with more prosaic explanations than perhaps some would like to believe.

I am keeping an eye on this thread but am waiting for the 'big book release' from Pope, Penniston and Burroughs before taking a more active part in it once again.

mirageman
I am keeping an eye on this thread but am waiting for the 'big book release' from Pope, Penniston and Burroughs before taking a more active part in it once again.

Seeing how Penniston's story continually changes over time, I can't say I'm sitting at the edge of my seat to see how it changes this time, but I expect it will probably change again, somehow.

mirageman
I am keeping an eye on this thread but am waiting for the 'big book release' from Pope, Penniston and Burroughs before taking a more active part in it once again.

Nick Pope is only an advocate attempting to use his title to add credibility. Has he actually added anything in the way of factual evidence to any case? Anything other than giving his opinion or stories?

Penniston has effectively destroyed his credibility adding binary code to his story. I guess he figured the people that bought the first part, were foolish enough to buy any subsequent parts. And they are.

30 years later, it's still the meal ticket for many.

reply to post by DaveE66


"Close similarity"?

Yes, I'd say co-ordinates identical to eight significant figures in both latitude and longitude to those given for Woodbridge on a publicly available co-ordinate look-up website at the time the code was made public is a pretty close similarity.

Eight significant figures. That's a probability of 1 in 100 million even if just the longitude OR the latitude were correct. For both of them to match, you have to square that value, giving a probability of 1 in ten quadrillion (10,000,000,000,000,000).

You're talking about a patch of ground the size of an envelope out of the entire surface of the Earth! Who knows why the "official" co-ordinates for Woodbridge were given so precisely in the database, but they undoubtedly were - it's just a shame Google Maps no longer uses that database so we can't demonstrate it quite so nicely. However that patch of ground is right in the middle of the street at the NE corner of the Market Place in Woodbridge. See here: goo.gl...

And on Street View: i62.tinypic.com...

The secrets of the universe are hidden within a black Volkswagen Passat!

Where has Gary Osborn made these replies? Can you direct him to these calculations?

Ectoplasm8
Nick Pope is only an advocate attempting to use his title to add credibility. Has he actually added anything in the way of factual evidence to any case? Anything other than giving his opinion or stories?

True. I personally believe he's an unprincipled & boring little twerp. There's another way of looking at it though: Once a company man, always a company man.

We see it over and over and over again: Intelligence Community cadre pushing the ETH. Makes me go hrmmm...

The GUT
We see it over and over and over again: Intelligence Community cadre pushing the ETH. Makes me go hrmmm...

The ETH is not pushed by any intelligence agency or something, unless you think the eye-witnesses are all involved in some conspiracy.
To the majority of the eye-witnesses the ETH simply is the most likely explanation for what they have seen.

Ed Cabansag:
“No one was talking…. But it was not from Earth.”

Adrian Bustinza:
“At that time I thought we were dealing with an extra-terrestrial visitation.”

Monroe Nevels:
“Where is the technology coming from? It had to be from somewhere.”

Charles Halt:
“I believe the objects that I saw at close quarter were extraterrestrial in origin.”

Bob Ball:
“We saw .. flying objects containing .. maybe other people or another life form.”

Greg Battram:
“I think I saw a UFO. Some kind of spaceship from some place not on this Earth.”

And of course Larry Warren, too.

Penniston is the only exception, and Burroughs is sitting on the fence (the book will probably push the time traveler hypothesis).

reply to post by Guest101

To the majority of the eye-witnesses the ETH simply is the most likely explanation for what they have seen.

I disagree. I think the ETH is the first thing that pops into peoples heads when confronted with an unknown myself included. Just look at the all the sci fi movies and tv shows. Not the most likely explanation but the one most burned into peoples heads. Nobody and I mean nobody is going to sell a tv show about how a bunch of people misidentified something.

Adrian Bustinza:
“At that time I thought we were dealing with an extra-terrestrial visitation.”

At the time he thought...

Monroe Nevels:
“Where is the technology coming from? It had to be from somewhere.”

Was this a thought? What's the context?

Bob Ball:
“We saw .. flying objects containing .. maybe other people or another life form.”

maybe? maybe not?

Greg Battram:
“I think I saw a UFO. Some kind of spaceship from some place not on this Earth.”

He thought he saw.

These out of context quotes represent a thought process and speculation on something unknown, not the most likely explaination

reply to post by ZetaRediculian


I’m just saying it is the most likely explanation to THEM. This cannot be disputed.
(The Nevels statement is from the interview mp3 posted earlier, he clearly hints at non-human technology there.)

And yes, they represent six thought processes by six eye-witnesses, each a member of the USAF.

Their assessments are mainly based on the acceleration/deceleration capabilities and the maneuvering capabilities of the objects they saw. The objects were able to maneuver through a dense forest, make sharp angular turns in the sky and leave the scene in an instant.

The fact that they are careful in their statements (‘maybe’, ‘I think’, …) to me shows they are not a bunch of UFO buffs but simply trying to wrap their minds around the things they observed.

Of course we can never make absolute scientific statements purely based on eye witness testimony, but one thing is worse than that: Making scientific statements based on another man’s interpretation of eye witness testimony – an error made over and over again by skeptics.

What we need to do with witness observations is to correlate, not to interpret.
The timeline posted earlier is a great example.

Guest101I’m just saying it is the most likely explanation to THEM.

More likely they are just telling the interviewers what they think they want to hear.

Just figured out how to get the images to show up. For those that haven't clicked the links, here are the mythical co-ordinates, minus the transcription errors.






The precise spot appears to be a bus stop (which some naughty resident has left their VW estate car parked on). Perhaps in the 33 years since their last visit, the "time-travellers" have had to trade in their super-advanced flying craft for a more prosaic mode of transport?

I see this thread has gone into left field. this incident has been looked over and over ever since it happened.
I am certain the gov has intervened behind the scenes in telling them not to expose information or provide misinformation as to what happened. i am formally from the same speciality as these guys were, and know how the politics of the USAF work, and how information is used. based off what i have read, research i have conducted along with my own knowledge of how this field operates, i have no doubt at all, that a UFO was found, none at all

Rob48The precise spot appears to be a bus stop

Actually it's just outside one of the oldest houses in the area — Hill House, run by Sarenka Knight
www.hillhousehall.com...
Stayed there myself once.
Hope they don't twig that or there will be no end of additional theories...

Here’s one of the local residents, who saw the lights and heard the military vehicles in the forest:

Guest101
Here’s one of the local residents, who saw the lights and heard the military vehicles in the forest:

And he has diary entries to back this up, does he?

reply to post by ianrid


Only Gerry Harris can answer the question about whether he kept a diary on the events. He appears in the early 1980s on video and seems certain it was Christmas night. But there is little point in the question given that Jim Penniston did, supposedly, keep a diary and (I count myself amongst the sceptics) it is heavily doubted as genuine.

It is all down to whether Gerry Harris' testimony matches what you want to believe happened. He is on record from the early 1980s so he has not jumped on any bandwagon. His statements are as awkward to the de-bunkers as the lighthouse at Orfordness is to believers.

ZetaRediculian
reply to post by Guest101

 

The correct scientific methodology to validate a claim that these witnesses all saw the lighthouse would be to collect their testimony and check if against this claim. If you do that the only valid conclusion is that the claim is falsified by the testimony of each individual witness.

The only real valid piece of evidence is the "Halt tape". The facts have been clearly laid out that what they saw at certain points was, in all probability, the lighthouse. Someone here on ATS claims to have studied "witness testimony". Let me see if wants to weigh in.

Sorry I didn't know about this before now. I'm actually a social psychologist researching suicide, but a large part of the social psychology field deals with memory.

I actually find this very interesting because it gives me a chance to do something I haven't done before. I am not familiar at all with this story. So my comments below are only involving reliability of memory as I have observed it in studies. So I'll put my beliefs about the reliability of memory, than go back and read the thread and keep my observations consistent with what I say here. and I am not egotistical enough to think that I am "right" but it may be interesting to be forced to keep my argument consistent in this way.

I generally go into these situations believing in the possibility that the events might be possible, but like to see actual evidence. So I am neither actually a sceptic or an all out believer. I also dont know much about this issue, but will research it more after posting this.

Eyewitness testimony is likely the most unreliable form of proof you can have. It rarely is ever considered enough to even convict anyone of a crime despite what court and cop shows believe. Our memory is fragmented events connected in the brain by connections mostly created by our minds to make the memories make sense. Ive seen some really bizarre studies where false memories are created by mere suggestion and its kind of disturbing.

The issue with this is mostly that even if it dudnt happen like the witnesses said, they could easily have convinced themselves it did and vehemently believe it. The testimony would be most believable if there were large inconsistencies between the individual reports. Since the brain constantly rewrites memory, no two reports should be too similar. Also, after so many years the witnesses should five testimony again and compare it to the original. If the stories are very consistent or flawless over many people and much time, they are likely not as reliable. It would show that they collaborated on a story and kept the details as precise as possible in an effort to not get caught lying. More accuracy with little difference would indicate the motivation to keep the facts identical so holes are not seen in the story. People telling the truth are less likely to worry about this since they believe what happened and believe the memory would not change.

So, if you and a friend did something bad and were about to be interrogated, dont spend time getting your stories straight.

But memory and eyewitness testimony is only subjective evidence, since every memory is flawed. While you might be able to conclude they even believe this happened, it really should not be enough to convince anyone.

reply to post by foxbarking


Thanks for stopping by...This is good information. The point I like to make is that regardless if aliens landed or not, you still have to deal with subjective perceptions and memory. that's why its a good idea to write things down and take pictures.