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

a reply to: Guest101

Very interesting and all happening over a decade before Rendlesham.

Also in another thread here at the moment there is a discussion of the Hessdalen Lights and a link to a theory on the cause.

Here's the video

......strange bursts of light in the 1980s attracted physicists, too, interest piqued by the idea of some unexplained natural phenomenon. In the decades since, they have determined the glow likely comes from air turned into plasma.

The unique geology of the valley could be responsible for this plasma. The valley is formed by rocks on one side rich in copper and the other rich in iron and zinc—not unlike the cathode and anode of a battery. Sulfuric acid, leached from the abandoned sulfur mine at the bottom of the valley, could then turn the river into the weak acid of an electrolyte. But where does the charge to energize plasma come from?

It may be extraterrestrial after all. The Hessdalen phenomenon seems especially common after a display of Northern Lights


Sourced from : This link

Now could Rendlesham be something similar? The plasma theory is starting to gain ground again. Hessdalen seems to be caused by nature. Perhaps the Rendlesham incident, or part of it was too?

Peter Robbins has written a 60+ page critique of the "Encounter In Rendlesham Forest" book by Pope, Penniston and Burroughs.

For anyone who doesn't know, Peter, (along with Larry Warren) wrote "Left at East Gate" which is another book on the Rendlesham incident. He seems extremely disappointed that no direct credit is ever given to his work and that Larry Warren's role is dismissed or at best downplayed in the whole incident. He also points out a number of inaccuracies in the book.

There are also a few scraps of extra information that are offered up on the incident that are not mentioned in the book.

The full pdf can be downloaded here.

Whilst it can also be read on the web here.


"Left at East Gate" is a very interesting read. Nick Pope's book sticks mainly to the events of the Rendlesham incident and we are left to discover very little about the lives, personalities and character of Penniston and Burroughs. Whereas "East Gate" is much more personal tale from Larry Warren's perspective and very much written in the first person. A taster of it can be viewed he re.

a reply to: mirageman

For those who want to study this plasma phenomenon thoroughly I found this interesting scientific article:

eprints.bice.rm.cnr.it...

Some interesting excerpts:

They are most often of spherical shape, of different colours (mostly white), often of long duration (up to 30-60 min, spaced out by periods of “off” and “on” phases), and relatively large dimensions (1-10 meters).

When seen with the naked eye these light phenomena appear just like single occasionally “inflating” spheres, but upon more careful observation shows that they are composed of many secondary spheres whose appearance and disappearance cause the observed light pulsation effect.

Most phenomena that have been studied so far possess a spherical shape, but a few cases do exist in which other shapes have been encountered and where such a spherical shape changes into something else.

It can often happen that spheres of different colours (most often white, red and blue) coexist together in a static configuration.

Quite often the light phenomenon presents a radar track, and anomalous radar signatures also can be recorded when a luminous phenomenon is not in sight.

Many witnesses report that such phenomena very often tend to approach people and/or animals in a way that goes beyond a simple mechanism of electrostatic attraction.

(Thanks for the link to Peter Robbins' critique, Mirageman.)

a reply to: mirageman

Peter Robbins has written a 60+ page critique of the "Encounter In Rendlesham Forest" book by Pope, Penniston and Burroughs.
The full pdf can be downloaded here.

Interesting read.

I think both Robbins and Pope are heavily influenced by the witnesses they work with. The way Robbins seems to suggest Halt is involved in a cover-up does not sound logical to me.

I fully understand that Halt distances himself from a witness who claims Williams had a face-off with translucent aliens (Bustinza to Fawcett: “To tell the truth, I remember seeing the craft. I remember Colonel Halt talking, and I remember looking to who he was talking to and I couldn’t see nobody.”)

And I fully understand that Halt distances himself from a witness who claims that time travelers downloaded an English text with spelling errors in his brain using an ASCII translation table and a TeleAtlas map (Burroughs on the Rendlesham forum: “As far as Jim touching something he was the closest but I did not see him touch anything.”)

On top of that: Why would someone involved in a cover-up state in an affidavit that he believes the objects he saw moving rapidly in sharp, angular movements, displaying red, green and blue lights, and beaming down a stream of light from time to time were extraterrestrial in origin?
(www.ufohastings.com...)

a reply to: Guest101

I tend to agree with what you are saying on the Halt/Warren/Penniston axis. Peter Robbins naturally wants to defend his work and, by doing so, Larry Warren's take on the events to a major extent. Similarly Nick Pope will do so with his book and the stories of Penniston and Burroughs and their apparent bias against Larry Warren.

Colonel Halt's role in all of this is difficult to fathom out. Does he know a lot more than he has ever spoke about, is there a lot more of the Halt tape (even tapes) that has never been publicly released and did Halt manipulate the main witnesses? All of this has been alluded to at various times.

Yet he is on the record as saying that he believes something under intelligent ET control was out in the forest. Seemingly agreeing with Larry Warren on the conclusion of what was seen whilst totally at odds with anything else the man said.

“I believe the objects that I saw at close quarter were extraterrestrial in origin and that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted – both then and now – to subvert the significance of what occurred at Rendlesham forest and RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practiced methods of disinformation.”

Then we have John Burroughs. He has placed a lot of doubt on Jim Penniston's story right up until a few years ago and also claimed Colonel Halt had tried his best to ensure he did not appear in TV documentaries about the incident.
I may be wrong but I don't think Burroughs and Penniston appeared together in a documentary on Rendlesham until History's UFO files, "Britain's Roswell". In fact Burroughs appeared in "Unsolved Mysteries: Bentwaters UFO" with Halt and then nothing until the UFO files program to my knowledge. So perhaps there is more than some truth in that. The email exchange between Burroughs and Halt that Peter Robbins reveals on page 14 of his critique is also very interesting.

I'd have to add that John Burroughs' story is fairly straightforward and less expansive than Warren's, Penniston's and even the Colonel's over the years.

The relationship between these four men and their differing tales of what happened is a most interesting sub-plot to the whole Rendlesham story.

All I can say is that the release of "Encounter in Rendlesham" has not really got us any closer to the real truth of what happened.

One might wonder and even speculate on why David Clarke, whose self professed area of expertise is "Folklore". never actually talks about the subject of "Folklore" and seems instead, content to wander into his own and naive musings and incorrect analysis about the military history of the "Cold War". Ridpath and Clarke, neither are qualified scientists or historians and yet, they act as if by proxy as both and people blindly accept their musings without question as "unbiased and logical".

One might indeed wonder why, Clarke actually seems to studiously avoid any discussion of the Rendlesham area's rich history of folklore. Even more surprising in that, it has never really been a densely populated area, despite its' seeming attractiveness, location and yet, there are stories a plenty including, "otherworldly humanoids", that supposedly reside within its' depths.

it strikes me that, if Clarke was actually doing his job instead of seemingly spouting propaganda, he'd be all over the historical background and folklore in order to at least attempt to give a serious explanation, within the context of his actual field of expertise, with regards to the happenings that night.

As it is right now, Clarke seems to be exhibiting all the same symptoms of the handyman employed to fix a leaky tap who feels the need to regale their host with "where it's going wrong and how if only the politicians had listened to them" rather than, just crack on with fixing the tap.

originally posted by: mirageman
a reply to: Guest101

Colonel Halt's role in all of this is difficult to fathom out. Does he know a lot more than he has ever spoke about, is there a lot more of the Halt tape (even tapes) that has never been publicly released and did Halt manipulate the main witnesses? All of this has been alluded to at various times.

Yes, Halt may be holding back information and his tape may be edited.

In ‘You can’t tell the people’ by Georgina Bruni (which I think is the best book on the RFI), she wrote on p.237:

In late 1999 Halt admitted to me that he had four or five hours of tape, which I would never be allowed to hear.

Then on p.238:

According to radio presenter Lee Spiegel, Halt confided in him that he did not think the public were totally ready to hear all the facts about the case.

So was there a landed craft on ‘Halt’s night’?
Bustinza and Warren are not the only ones who claim a craft had landed.

On p.236:

Bobby Ball and Ray Gulyas were both flight chiefs. Gulyas told me that Ball had briefed him on a daily basis as to what occurred in the forest. Although Ball never suggested that Gordon Williams was involved, he confirmed he was with Halt’s patrol on the third night and it was during this particular night that they saw an object. At first they tried to follow it as it moved through the trees, almost touching the ground. Then it landed!

On p.256 Bruni tells how Ben Jamison, a professor of science and maths from New York, had interviewed an A10 pilot who insisted on remaining anonymous. According to this pilot, he and other officers were informed by Williams in a meeting that there had been an incident involving a UFO which had landed on 25/26 and 29/30 December.

And then there is Verrano’s message in LEAG:

I did drive Williams to an F-16 on the Bentwaters tarmac the a.m. of the 30th. He had two canisters of 35 mm footage with him, bagged in a TS [Top Secret] satchel. He told me directly that it was actual footage of the UFOs etc on the ground.

And Burroughs wrote on the old Rendlesham forum that, when he finally joined Halt and his team on the third night:

I was told by Halt when I met up with them that something landed the third night and by Bustinza also.

As far as Halt goes I stated that is what he told me when we met up on the third night. He never said what landed just something landed he then pointed up in the sky and showed me the blue lights that were flying around.

Of course ‘something landed’ can vary from a brief touch down to a 30 minute photo shoot..

a reply to: FireMoon

Messr Ridpath and Clarke are entitled to air their somewhat conclusion led views, qualifications or not. Just as we can choose to accept, question and ignore what they say.

Has David Clarke been actively talking about the Rendlesham case again?

a reply to: Guest101

I suspect parts of the Rendlesham story can be attributed to the satellite rocket, that damned lighthouse, the shooting stars and possibly even strange but perfectly natural phenomena. But is that all there is to the case?

The tense relationship of the main witnesses (to this day) and the plethora of stories coming out of the personnel based in Suffolk since 1980 also suggest there's more to the case. It remains unsolved.

a reply to: mirageman

They have a right to an opinion, they don't have aright to appear in virtually every documentary about the subject talking, essentially off topic, with regards to their actual fields of expertise.

Whilst I might disagree with his conclusions, Heseltine has without doubt, moved the whole investigation past the whole, did anything weird happen or was it all just misidentification? Plus, Heseltine actually has a relevant background in truly understanding the machinations and workings of " contemporaneous on base security". Yet, it's almost as if the Heseltine simply doesn't exist outside of those with a true interest in what happened. Just because Heseltine personally, thinks it was "aliens", does not mean the work he has done is somehow irrelevant to everyone. It's perfectly possible to accept his evidence, take it on board and still be sceptical of it being "aliens".

Ergo my point about Clarke and Ridpath is simple one they, for whatever reasons, act as if they simply don't want anyone to look past the surface and dig deeper because, the moment you do, it's almost inescapable that one arrives at a conclusion that, something damned weird happened over that holiday season. Why is it that, the MSM when presenting anything on Rendlesham never actually does it justice? Why is it that when, any discussion of "Berwyn Mountain", "Rendlesham" or the "Sheffield Incident" that the unholy triumvirate of Roberts, Clarke and Ridpath are there blocking others, who know far more than them, from appearing on TV, or being quoted in the National Press?

a reply to: FireMoon

Yes unfortunately the mainstream UK media (especially BBC) have always promoted the sceptical view and rarely entertain an unexplainable solution so the debunkers club were often favoured to have the last word (often the only word) in the past. Clarke then seemed to have buddied up with the MoD to become honorary spokesman for them whilst the UK government released it's UFO files. Make of that what you will.

However the non-BBC media is slightly shifting it's position. The smirk factor has gone and the topic is at least up for debate.

Gary Heseltine appeared on This Morning (ITV) a couple of years ago debating the Rendlesham case with Chris French (another member of the debunkers club).




Both of them also appeared in the 2013 Mystery Map show (ITV) starting about 8 mins in to around 24 mins. This was a peak time show for a mainstream audience, so naturally leaves a lot of detail out.




This also includes a short piece on the Sheffield UFO Incident of 97 which we have discussed previously.


Clarke and pal had a very heavy involvement in that case as we both know. The program did generate a lot of interest though with it's more balanced approach. So maybe things are slowly changing?

Thanks for those Mirage..I hadn't seen either of those clips before. I am fascinated by how, in the first clip, it's as if Heseltine has been told only to deal with the "classic tale" and he almost studiously avoids whole chunks of evidence which French wouldn't be able to answer so glibly. That's fascinating because, when invited on to ITV in the early 90s on a programme about UFOs, a colleague and I seriously considered it and then, about 48 hours before we were due to film the show. We received a list of things we could and could not discuss and specifically a list of incidents and evidence we were not allowed to bring up or direct questions on, towards the show's "sceptic" .

We rang the company making the show and the researcher who'd originally contacted us was very apologetic about it all however, they said there was nothing they could do and that we'd have to agree to abide by the letter's directions. At that point we simply said..."Thanks but no thanks, you'll have to find someone else".

So for Rendlesham lets start from the beginning....

Britain is a land steeped in folklore and legends that date back often, over a thousand years before the Common Era. Being a relatively fertile land and an Island at its' closest, only some 25 miles from mainland Europe it's fertile areas have always had a relatively high population density and yet, within some of those most fertile areas there are those areas where it is as if people feel uncomfortable living there. Meon Hill in Warwickshire, the area around Barbury Castle in Wiltshire, places where, as man developed beyond the Stone and Iron ages they , for some as yet inexplicable reason, began to shy away from living close to in any great numbers. This despite, such locations often being a key strategic points. Both Meon and Barbury give commanding views and in effect, block the natural routes in such a manner one has to ask why, no-one later than the Iron Age, built a fort or castle there?

Another such area is that now known as the Rendlesham Forest. As far as the archaeological record seems to show, pretty much since the Roman period that particular area has been wooded. Now that might not seem unusual at first glance however, look deeper and it begs certain questions. Under Roman and Saxon rule this part of the country was one of the most intensely farmed and had, proportionally a higher population than even today. There was historically, always a great pressure to bring as much land as possible under the plough particularly so in an area such as Suffolk and the great forest that covered a huge part of England for centuries was first totally cleared in the farm lands of Suffolk. Only not Rendlesham, in the medieval period a local legend speaks of the "mermaid" that dwells in the pool in the forest there. By then the legend of the Spectral Black Dog was already centuries old and sighings continued right up until Victorian times.

Not only that, locals also have an oral tradition of tales of "mysterious disembodied red lights" that are seen floating through the trees of the forest. Given that history, then maybe it's not too surprising that, some people claim to have a very strange experience in those woods in the winter of 1980?

Yes, "Britain's Roswell", one of the most awful and clichéd terms ever, happened in a place steeped with a prior history of high strangeness. So , you might well ask what do tales of demonic dogs, mermaids and floating spirits have to do with UFOs? Well actually, just maybe far more than you might expect. One of the most respected and qualified writers on the subject of UFOs is one Jacques Vallee, the very man Francois Truffaut's character in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was based on has pointed out, the essential similarities in the many of the narratives of UFO incidents and legends pertaining to faeries and the such like. Missing time, two people having wildly different stories though based on the same experience, a seismic shift in a particular way of thinking about life post he experience, the sense of truly having being in contact with a non human intelligence.

So maybe, just maybe we have a key that could unlock the door to understanding more about what happened over that holiday period in winter 1980. Could it be that, certain areas of the world, by their very nature, trigger circuits in the human brain that lead to people having what might be termed for ease's sake as "Spiritual in nature" and are interpreted and actually made manifest to a person , in terms of the contemporary Zeitgeist? Or, could it be we are actually interfacing with something that exists in its' own right and lives along side us yet, finds certain areas of the world seem to defeat its' "stealth technology" and reveal it to us as it actually is?

Maybe it's all mind tricks and people putting two and two together and coming up with 8, or is it actually genuine unknown craft from another planet, time or dimension?

So two questions to be answered, what makes places such as Rendlesham a magnet for such stories and do those experiences have a basis in cold hard reality or are they totally of the mind?

I've paraphrased and left out a fair bit of detail however, surely that outline, actually gives those seeking information on Rendlesham a decent summation of the background to the incident?

a reply to: FireMoon

Interesting comments there about how censored some TV shows are. I think a lot of people are aware that reality TV and even certain talent shows are carefully scripted affairs so I suppose it's not surprise if everything else on TV is. Only Mr. Heseltine would be able to say what he was allowed to mention in that debate.

And thanks for adding that information about Rendlesham and the area. It all adds another angle for us to look at in this very strange case. I wonder whether someone with Ph.D in Folklore has ever covered that side of things

I'm eventually going to see if there is anything to Nick Pope's hint about the contents of the Condign report when I get time.

“As far as I am concerned, the entire (Rendlesham Forest) affair and evidence trail constitutes official, Top Secret confirmation that humanity is dealing with an intelligence capable of engineering interstellar travel.”

- John F. Burroughs, USAF Tech Sgt. (ret.) in a recent press release.

www.earthfiles.com...

a reply to: Guest101
and thats the same conclusion I have come to as well.

a reply to: Guest101

I've had a quick look through that Earthfiles column.

The piece at Earthfiles including the quote from John Burroughs appears to directly relate to the executive summary of the Condign Report (“Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region: Executive Summary, Scientific & Technical Memorandum - No. 55/2/00,” Ministry of Defence, December 2000)

These documents have been available since at least 15th May 2006 via the web. Burroughs is claiming that there are still 6 UAP (ie UFO) policy documents that the MoD have not released. He claims that the document clearly mentions an international race to "weaponize" the 'phenomenon' that was observed at Rendlesham and elsewhere.

The original UAP reports are available from this link.

He goes on to state that characteristics of the 'phenomenon' are something that match that of a theoretical form of propulsion, the Alcubierre warp drive, capable of interstellar travel. He makes this claim based on what he has read in the MoD UAP reports, a 2003 paper by Jacque Vallee and Eric Davis and 2010 Journal by Hal Puthoff for the Journal of British Interplanetary Science. ( www.jbis.org.uk...)

Pretty astonishing stuff if his interpretations of these documents are correct.


Dr. David Clarke spokesperson for the UK UFO National Archive releases has countered this by saying :

The 'stunning revelation' that MoD is with-holding six UFO policy files is a load of old cobblers. The names and titles of those files are contained in the papers released by the National Archives in 2012-13. Gary Anthony and I made FOI requests for these files way back in 2006.

MoD agreed to release them at that time and I have a complete copy of the DI55 UFO Policy file covering 1971-1996 sitting here on my desk. The 6 files will, however, be released during 2014.

— David Clarke, Facebook, May 21, 2014

Clarke also says :

I acted as an unpaid consultant for The National Archives for the UFO files release - NOTE: National Archives is not MoD - simply to ensure that a valuable archive of material was saved for posterity. I did it for nothing and I asked for nothing in return.

— David Clarke, Facebook, May 21, 2014

What is deeply worrying in all of this is that it seems John Burroughs medical records from 1979 -1983 are a matter of National Security and he his unable to secure their release to assist with treatment from a life threatening heart condition.

a reply to: mirageman

The nice thing of an Alcubierre warp drive is that you can travel much faster than light, drastically reducing the time for interstellar travel. The research is still in its infancy; the first scientific publications appeared ten years ago.

But … the Acubierre warp drive is no longer ‘purely theoretical’.
NASA is doing laboratory tests on a tiny, tiny scale to check whether the math behind this warp drive actually works.
In the meantime, clever tweaking of this math has reduced the energy requirements from ‘impracticle’ to ‘plausible’.
Another hurdle is the need for “negative vacuum pressure”. New ideas to take that hurdle are based on so-called “q thrusters” which may be able to generate this negative vacuum pressure using strong electromagnetic fields.

Here is an interesting lecture on these recent developments. The first 12 minutes of the lecture give an idea about how the Alcubierre warp drive works and how the energy requirements have been drastically reduced, the q-thruster technology is discussed from 28:00.

a reply to: Guest101

The science behind all of this is impressive if a little difficult to comprehend at times.

The Condign report (I've only looked through the first few parts) does also point to 'potential military applications' after studying this phenomenon. Although it also makes it clear that no artefacts of unknown origin were ever in the possession of the UK authorities nor did the phenomenon appear to be extra-terrestrial or unfriendly terrestrial objects.

Although the author may simply have been told this was the case by the MoD?

Maybe relevant and maybe not.Back in my aircraft spotting days in the 1980s I slept on the ground somewhere in Rendelsham Forest.My mates slept in the car (a mk.3 Cortina estate of all things) and I drew the short straw and had to sleep outside,this was the first and only time I've ever slept under the stars.No tent or sleeping bag,just a blanket and a thick layer of leaves and soft tree bark making it the most comfortable bed I'd ever slept in.They still had Phantoms at Woodbridge in those days before those horrid A10s moved in,or at least that's how we saw them when the Tombs left.
And do you know what really strange thing happened to me that night in the legendary Rendelsham Forest?













Absolutely nothing........

Here's a few more bits of information that has been put out there recently.

In Issue 3 of Gary Heseltine’s UFO truth magazine Colonel Halt made a number of interesting, if very subtle, statements.

....The incident has taken on a life of its own. The facts have been twisted, numerous individuals have attempted to profit from it, and at least one wannabe had noisily come forward and collaborated on a book filled with disinformation. I should comment on all the book’s misleading comments and outright disinformation but will refrain from doing so here. The individuals originally involved in the first night/sighting have changed their story numerous times, to the point that one wonders what’s going on. ...

At least four individuals - the three that were involved in the initial sighting and a wannabe, according to them, were brought to the Office of Special Investigation (OSI) and “debriefed” with injected drugs and hypnotized by Special Agents.

They did not make me aware of this until several years later. If I had known then I would have gotten involved. I am convinced the purpose of the “debriefing” was to get the facts and to plant false memories. There’s no doubt the “debriefing” was a success. On one occasion, one of the individuals has taken me to the wrong “landing site” and made claims that were clearly wrong. For 20+ years I repeatedly saw a notebook from the incident that was supposedly made that night on scene. I never saw any binary codes in the book and there are several glaring errors with what’s now being shown as authentic.

......Yes, the incident really happened and I don’t have answers. A second story is what happened afterwards with US and British government agencies involved.

www.ufotruthmagazine.co.uk...

Halt is clearly pointing fingers at shady debriefings of the main witnesses. Here, he is alleging, false memories were implanted which account for their ’glaring errors’ when recounting the story. He is referring specifically to Jim Penniston in the second to last paragraph. He also is quite clearly labelling Larry Warren as the ‘wannabe’.

Despite this he has appeared a number of times in documentaries with Penniston.


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