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

a reply to: SkywatcherUK

Well said. I do not understand anyones hostility towards him at all. I found him to be a true gentleman. Always had time for me.. Always. He would PM me a lot because of the fights that would start. Every Rendlesham researcher has been pitted against another so none of them talk. How convenient seeing as they are all on the spot, always have been, know the original story.

a reply to: mirageman

Yes.

Human consciousness and the "phenomenon" are closely linked.

My personal research leads me to believe that organic life came first in the Universe, and "the phenomenon" evolved at a later time, with the organic molecules acting as a matrix...just like how it's hypothesized that life on Earth evolved with a little help from crystal matrices in the environment.

Kev

a reply to: ctj83

Yes I had although I didn't pull it into it that much, I did believe some of the events could have been as I suggested in my blog that they really were trying to knock satellites off course with their funky tech. Lets face it, thee base isn't a ridiculous way away from a nuclear power plant. In theory they could have access to any amount of energy. Lets not kid ourselves the cold war halted sales between the USA and the USSR.

Also I wondered if the parts from Germany bit was a rouse due to the nature of the accident. The A10s were from Germany and were not on local bases. I also thought that is where the confusion of the radar tape collection might have come in, also going to Germany. But we know those planes crashed and we know they were from a German base so I have not tried to attach any other significance, maybe I should take a closer look at what you say.

The thing that keeps me on it is the fact that the things I talk about in Rendlesham Revealed actually happened somewhere, possibly lots of places, during that very year and the fact that the symposium notes that cover that year have mysteriously vanished without trace, with only references to it on the net being found, I just can't drop it. Maybe only a small part of it took place there but there were so many other elements. Larrys story of the cracked concrete, in the symposium notes they were testing the impact resistance of concrete.

So I am with you on the sats completely but I can't help thinking its tied into their electro magnetic wingangery due to the ABM treaty.

a reply to: mirageman

In a "normal" UFO sighting a civilian (or more) sees something strange, maybe makes a report, someone in authority says there's nothing to see and maybe, if you're lucky, an investigation takes place.
Then we have some kind of conclusion but its never the alien UFO we all thought it might be.

In RFI its the people in authority who say they saw something, they "tried" not to report anything then, when questioned, said they saw a UFO.
They did the investigation and we don't really get a satisfactory conclusion.

There's nothing normal about any of it really and I think all the alternative theories drive people a bit nuts.
Everyone has their own favourite character and their own favourite theory and can't agree with anyone else.

None of the normal explanations seem to apply to normal UFO fans but I think the thing everyone hates the most is that deep down we all know that it wasn't an alien UFO at all.

We're just hanging around waiting to see what it really was.

a reply to: Tulpa

That's a nice post.

For the record in my 55 years of life, I've never for one single moment thought that space aliens have visited our planet.

Any neutral, nonbiased researcher must conclude that's very likely true with not much research at all.

Now...do "funky things" sometimes occur?

I'D say yes.

So I'm waiting to see which slight variation of funky is true, as you say.

Kev

a reply to: IsaacKoi

Why does a barrister with access to the top legal brains need to put a thread on ATS asking ordinary members of the public what the copyright laws are? Don't you know? Can't you go to a qualified expert via chambers, bar council or contacts?

Looks very dodgy to me and others I have asked including at my work where we need to be very careful what we do when even copying copyright material without PRIOR written consent, and that's before we get to handing out material.

If I went into our reprographics department and ask them to copy a whole book, chance the format from that in which it was published (paper to pdf) and store it on a retrievable system (eg a computer), they are going to point to this in the book and ask where my PRIOR written permission is:-

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduce, stored in a retrievable system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form or binding or
cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being impose on the subsequent purchaser.

PRIOR PERMISSION IN WRITING! When I say I have none they are going to swing me around by my heels and show me the door.

Legal bits aside. Common decency dictates asking first, you only run an obvious risk of problems otherwise. Also look at it this way, if you were going to seek permission afterwards what extra effort would it have taken to do it beforehand and avoid all this? After all, from what I have read you have asked other times before!

To end, if you had, you would have discovered the book has been in several electronic formats since it was written including pdf.

a reply to: SkywatcherUK

Why does a barrister with access to the top legal brains need to put a thread on ATS asking ordinary members of the public what the copyright laws are? Don't you know? Can't you go to a qualified expert via chambers, bar council or contacts?

If you are referring to this thread : Putting many UFO books online - Obtaining permissions then perhaps it is you who has misinterpreted things.

If you care to read beyond the title it actually says in the first paragraph :

I would like to be able to see as many UFO books as possible made easily available free of charge online for use by all of the UFO community (particularly those long out-of-print). This is not merely an aspiration. I could make any of the items on the list of approximately 2,900 UFO/Fortean/SETI books included below available online soon after relevant permissions are obtained. The main problem is now simply (?) obtaining permission from the author or other copyright holder. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to find the contact details of many relevant authors (or their heirs) on my own. Hence this thread.

See how easy it can be to misinterpret what someone else has written.

Where does it ask what the copyright laws are?

Later on the first page Isaac made it clear

PLEASE NOTE : Before making any book freely available online, I – of course - want the permission of the relevant author or other copyright holder. The point of this thread is to seek assistance in getting such permissions since it can be time consuming for a single individual to track down relevant contact details.

Now maybe I highlighted the wrong thread? In which case you are free to point out the correct one.

If not then do have any further comment to make?

a reply to: SkywatcherUK

I obviously can't speak for Isaak, but I think he did say it was a 'searchable' PDF. Being 'searchable', that may fall under 'text and data mining for non-commercial research' purposes.

Source: www.gov.uk...

Text and data mining is the use of automated analytical techniques to analyse text and data for patterns, trends and other useful information. Text and data mining usually requires copying of the work to be analysed.

An exception to copyright exists which allows researchers to make copies of any copyright material for the purpose of computational analysis if they already have the right to read the work (that is, they have 'lawful access' to the work).

While he may be trying to get permission from Andrew and/or publisher to upload the PDF for others to search and use, that doesn't necessarily conclude or reflect on his own usage. Creating the PDF would be necessary for the purposes of computational analysis, and it would have to 'searchable' for whatever program to try and discern patterns or trends, or other useful information. 'Lawful access' appears to mean you either need to purchase the material yourself or use subscriptions to database/sources (so not sure admittedly how that applies to a book loan).

Given Isaak's dedication to the subject matter and his attempts to cross-reference cases and find patterns (which IMO could produce some significant breakthroughs in ufology), it would seem a genuine and valid research aim.

I noticed also this line in the above, which may or may not apply to your posted T&C caveat:

Contract terms that stop researchers making copies to carry out text and data mining will be unenforceable.

But I'm sure there are many ins-and-outs, of which Isaak and yourself are much better prepared.

a reply to: ctj83

During various RFI related books and articles, I discovered a continuing narrative thread about satellites. I'd like to suggest that at the heart of the RFI someone has gone to significant lengths to keep reintroducing this. Why? As part of a hoax. What was hoaxed, and why, I'll leave to your imagination, although I'll just add that I don't think its the obvious answer.

A downed satellite just seems contrary to me with the events as described on the Halt memorandum and partly backed up by his tape. A triangular-shaped satellite which plummeted to earth, arrested or survived its fall and mysteriously manoeuvred through the trees as it wished in the forest? If the memo is to be believed, the object also appeared to elude them, short of some depressions. Did a foreign entity sneak in and grab it before anyone could see it?

And that's before you get into the other objects, explosion of a red sun-like light/orb into five separate white objects, and three objects in the sky that “moved rapidly in sharp angular movements”, of which "objects (2) to the north remained in the sky for an hour or more. The object to the south was visible for two or three hours and beamed down a stream of light from time to time."

If they did capture something, and something did fall and Halt embellished his memo and tape account up to cover up the incident, why do so? Would Halt even have the wherewithal to write about the subject of unknown objects? There was a real clam-up from witnesses in regards to the nuclear ordinance aspect of the base (and didn't Halt recently refute this again in response to Gary Heseltine?), so would they break oath and acknowledge one or more downed satellites, if that occurred? It doesn't seem likely they would. Therefore, if they're not likely to talk about it anyway, why would you even need to file an internal memo on 'Unexplained Lights' as a cover-up?

You have also, if some witnesses are to be believed, separate incidents. Not necessarily one, but three nights of events, La Plume's later sighting, and purported events with Warren/Robbins of February 1988.

On which BTW: Sacha, did Larry ever mention that 1988 event to you or go into detail about it?

a reply to: Defragmentor

That's actually my point. Why have various sources repeatedly attempted to say that the RFI was satellite / satellite and Tupelov related? Even going to far as to produce the photo of the retrieved object / canister in the aircraft (that I posted).

Seems a lot of effort, and one that is repeated.

The 1988 Robbins / Warren event is a very interesting one. Did they lie? Or did something happen? If so, was it hoaxed?

originally posted by: mirageman
As for Ian's work on the case. It cannot be dismissed. It is not all about the lighthouse as those with only a modicum of knowledge on the case seem to think. But could that lighthouse really have fooled so many people for three nights, yet never seemingly done so before or afterwards?

Buran was there, monitoring radio communications, right? He would have known if they found something other than lights in the distance, but aren't his comments re-posted here consistent with Ian's analysis? He says that's all that was seen, lights in the distance. If his account is true, the other written witness statements may also be true. I have yet to see anything to make me doubt he's telling the truth. I've seen plenty to make me doubt Penniston is telling the truth, and to some extent, some of the other witnesses who have changed their stories. Basically the witnesses who say they lied on their witness statements are calling themselves liars, so that's not a judgement I need to make when they make such admission themselves.

Nobody has ever asked me to sign a false statement but if they did, I'd refuse. However Buran's comment that "the AFOSI interrogating active service members in secret underground areas, which to my knowledge, DO NOT exist at RAF Bentwaters.
What rubbish." implies he doesn't believe those stories and again I find no reason to disagree with him on this point.

So once certain witnesses have admitted to being liars, good luck figuring out which version is the truth. Halt's story has even changed over the years, to make it sound less like the lighthouse, except Ian caught him changing it. And the number of objects seen grows in later years not unlike the size of the fish described in my grandfather's fish stories, which I suppose is human nature to embellish stories upon re-telling. Buran's comments also address this point: "more prevarication occurs as time goes on."

Most trained investigators will tell you your best chance of getting the closest description of events to what actually happened is to get statements as soon as possible after the incident. So it's not really an arbitrary decision to give those the most weight, because people embellish, they forget some things, they confabulate and as Buran says, they can prevaricate over time, which Ian's research is able to confirm in some cases.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Hello Arby,

We do have to consider that the 'prime' witness stories may amount to something mundane. Buran's "nothing to see here" statement is backed up by the comments of Chris Armold ,who was at RAF Lakenheath, but joined up with Burroughs, Penniston and Cabansag later in the morning of 26th Dec 1980.

There was absolutely nothing in the woods. We could see lights in the distance and it appeared unusual as it was a sweeping light, (we did not know about the lighthouse on the coast at the time). We also saw some strange coloured lights in the distance but were unable to determine what they were…

Full details : ufoupdateslist.com...

.

As we know Halt took statements from Burroughs and Cabansag mentioning a flashing beacon. The lighthouse was a recurring theme from day one of the incident. But Halt and his commanding officer still informed the British MoD without mentioning this 'beacon'.

Interestingly Colonel Conrad's interview in 2010 places Halt out on an investigation after attending a party, on Boxing Day evening. This is somewhat contradictory to Halt as this is was supposedly the night Tamplin went crazy.

Conrad also says he interviewed Penniston on the morning of the 27th (the date in Penniston's notebook!). Conrad goes on to say that Halt and a team were in place and went out to the forest again that evening when the Halt tape was recorded.

Don Moreland (the RAF Liaison officer for Bentwaters) also mentions chasing up a reply to the Halt memo
:

“I didn’t receive a reply so I telephoned DS8 several times, and was eventually told that they (MoD) had carried out a search of the defence radar logs for the period in question but nothing was found. They assumed it was the light from the Orford Ness Lighthouse flashing through the trees.”

Hmm - the MoD had cottoned on to the lighthouse idea without any mention in the memo.


So there was plenty opportunity to close this episode off with the Lighthouse explanation within a short time. However it seems that the viewpoint that it was not the lighthouse (or the Shipwash Lightship out at sea which was also visible) prevailed with the commanding officers, and lower ranks, at Bentwaters/Woodbridge.

As for underground tunnels and facilities. There is something below the area between the twin bases as there are many concrete shaft covers dotted around Rendlesham.



More recently they haveput warning signs on them




But I'll leave you with the comment from Chris Armold

........why are these few individuals who can't get a story straight, the only ones whose story is taken as gospel?

ufoupdateslist.com...

I guess because people love to hear a story.

a reply to: ctj83

.....In Butler's Skkycrash In Time and Haunted Skies Vol 8 Karin / Karen:

This had been nagging away at me and eventually I realized I'd read it in Georgina Bruni's book "You Can't Tell the People" the story is somewhat similar but with slight differences. Here is a brief summary.

Karen was married to one of the 67th ARRS (Apollo Rescue Team) based at Woodbridge. She revealed to Brenda Butler that a Russian Bear often approached the Suffolk coast and the Americans had stolen one. Karen had photos of a cylinder being retrieved from the sea. This taken to Bentwaters and then Woodbridge where a C5 transport took it away to Germany.
The stolen Tupolev TU-142 remained hidden for months at Woodbrdige and then was transported to the US. It later returned to Woodbridge.

Georgina was not convinced by any of this story as it made little sense to her. It all came second hand from Brenda Butler. So she thought it was probably disinformation. She did note that Brenda had also been told by some fishermen that two men told them to avoid the area between Bawdsy and Orfordness in case of exposure to radiation from experiments being conducted between the 25-30th Dec 1980. HMS Norfolk was supposedly stationed in the North Sea as well to keep other vessels from that area of the coastline.

None of it (I think) can be verified. Make of it what you will.

a reply to: mirageman

From twinbases.org.uk... G.Bruni Commented: Actually, there are underground facilities at Bentwaters but they are sealed. The security chief at the installation who gave me a guard and permission to investigate the buildings, told me the underground facilities were sealed when the MOD put the base up for sale. He had written several times to the MOD requesting details of these but although they promised to look into the matter, he received nothing. I also discovered a door in the main command post that was clearly an entrance to an underground facility because it could not lead to anywhere above ground. The guard had no keys for this very important door that was covered in warning signs. According to the chief of security there are still several parts of the installation that are sealed. So, the Answer is in essence is crafty because as the facilities are now sealed, one could surmise that there are none.

Underground mysteries spice up any story. Though I expect these were more on the order of fall out shelters and possibly connecting tunnels between the twin bases.

a reply to: mirageman

I posted the photo of the cylinder. I don't think much to it. Who created / perpetuated this story and why?

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
Halt's story has even changed over the years, to make it sound less like the lighthouse, except Ian caught him changing it.

Spoiler: Some interesting stuff about the WSA below…

Ian misses the mark several times:

1. Even if you assume the light at 110 degrees was the lighthouse, there was another light to the left, which was the one being observed:

[…]
SGT NEVELS: There's two...two lights. One light in front and one light to the left.
[…]
LT COLONEL HALT: Pieces are falling off it again.
SGT BALL: .. it just moved to the right... it moved off to the right.
LT COLONEL HALT: Yeah ... strange, whoohh.
LT COLONEL HALT: We’ve got one again to the left
LT COLONEL HALT: Let's let's approach to the edge of the woods up there. Can we do without lights? Let's do it carefully, come on..
LT COLONEL HALT: OK we're looking at the thing
[…]

2. Although the “objects with coloured lights on them” are described as ‘star-like’ objects that ‘displayed red, green and blue lights’ in Halt’s memo, they are not described as ‘star-like’ on the tape.
On the tape we can even hear them ‘moving out fast’:

LT COLONEL HALT: Three-o-five : At about err... 10 degrees horizon err directly north, we've got two strange objects, err ...half moon shape, dancing about with colored lights on 'em. But . . .
LT COLONEL HALT: . . . er appears to be about five to ten miles out. .
LY COLONEL HALT: . . . maybe less.
[…]
LT COLONEL HALT: The half moons have now turned into full circles as though there was an elip, eclipse or something there for a minute or two.
[…]
LT COLONEL HALT: Ten degrees off the horizon, and the ones to the north are moving, one's moving away from us.
SGT BALL: Movin forward!
SGT NEVELS: It's moving out fast!
LT COLONEL HALT: They're moving out fast.
SGT BALL: This one on the right's heading away too.
LT COLONEL HALT: Yeah, they're both heading north.

3. Just before the description of the beam, the object to the south is described as ‘coming in toward us’, so it may have been close when the beam came down:

LT COLONEL HALT: Ok hey, here he comes from the south, he's coming in toward us now.
SGT BALL: Holy #!
LT COLONEL HALT: Now were observing what appears to be a beam coming down to the ground.
SGT BALL: Look at the colours... #
LT COLONEL HALT: This is unreal

But Ian makes his biggest mistake in one of his last remarks, where he states:

In Paragraph 9 Halt says that this same object moved back towards Bentwaters and sent down beams of light into the Weapons Storage Area. But according to his memo and tape the object he is referring to remained in the south, over Woodbridge.

In reality, the object is to their west, over Woodbridge base:

LT COLONEL HALT: Zero four hundred hours: one object still hovering over Woodbridge base at about five to ten degrees off the horizon still moving erratic and similar lights and beaming down

Were there weapons stored at Woodbridge base?
I’ve found an interesting piece on a forum for former personnel of Woodbridge / Bentwaters:

Now, these incidents were supposed to have happened around December (~Jan? 1981) 1980, right? OK, here's a question for those of you who were stationed there.. like myself.. at that time.. remember that they had just spent millions of dollars upgrading the Woodbridge WSA into a state of the art facility. And then at some point, they announced.. right after they completed the multi-million dollar upgrade.. they'd close the Woodbridge WSA & move the nukes to the RAF Bentwaters WSA. This happened in 1980 or 1981.

Source

a reply to: Guest101

So they paid to upgrade one WSA, then moved out the weapons to the other base's WSA upon completion? Weird.

Remote Viewing RFI
In July 2008 Tunde Atunrace tasked Joe McMoneagle with viewing the RFI incident. Joe is a retired US Army Counter Intelligence Warrant Officer who served as a remote viewer for the original US government program. After retirement he was a consultant and researcher at Stanford Research Institute.

Tunde Atunrace includes Joe McMoneagle's complete viewing of RFI in his 2015 book Remote Viewing UFOs And The Visitors.

Joe's impression is a man made robotic three sided pyramid approximately six and a half feet tall and four and a half feet wide at the base. Using radio active material to generate a very fast rotating force field/plasma around itself. This force field/plasma gave off a very bright light from white to yellow with reddish tinge at top and bottom. He saw this event as a test of the object being launched from a vehicle above, performing evasive maneuvers and recovery by launch vehicle under cover of darkness. If witnessed additional mission included determining human reactions to duress or stress. Joe's impression is the object was controlled from somewhere in the Southwestern United States.

Joe McMoneagle was a guest on Phenomenon Radio June 23rd this year with more to say about this viewing. Those shows can often be found on youtube ninety days after live broadcast.

Remote viewing is fallible and Joe was a career counter intelligence agent. I'm not sure what to make of this yet, but find it interesting.

a reply to: Guest101

Were there weapons stored at Woodbridge base? I’ve found an interesting piece on a forum for former personnel of Woodbridge / Bentwaters:

I had always thought the nukes were housed at Bentwaters.

But around that time there was a growing CND movement. There was also a growing resentment against the US military being stationed on British soil amongst left wing activists. it could well be that originally BOTH storage areas were going to be used to house nukes. Or maybe the work at Woodbridge was substandard? Or it might have all been a cover story for something else. There are some things that go on that we never get to know about. So maybe Woodbridge was upgraded and when Reagan took over in the US in 1981 and something changed again.

What's interesting is how a number of members of the SPS on that board were there across 1980/81 and yet recall no gossip or mention of the UFO incident. There again I was in the same year at school as a fairly well known famous TV personality and I cannot remember them ever being there!

As for Ian Ridpath's explanation. As you point out there are parts that don't quite fit. Even though it is pretty much fact that the lighthouse did confuse people at times. It's in two of the witness statements. I still find it hard to believe that so many service men could be that confused by it over 3 nights into believing it was a UFO.

a reply to: DaveBowman

Not sure I'm convinced by remote viewing myself. It's like waiting for a newspaper headline "Psychic wins millions on lottery" for proof. But as you say interesting.

Also interesting that Joe is counter intelligence. Despite there being no defence significance to UFOs the intel boys are never far away are they?