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

a reply to: ianrid

Why hello Ian! There is a fairly plausible solution to the two men who visited. Terry Hooper Scharf and his investigative partner dressed up in suits and went to question Thurkettle. He's quite open about this.

Who was the partner? I'm not sure it matters but i think it's possible that it was a colleague of Scharf's who he later had difficulties with but is now dead.

So really it was a ufological feedback loop

On another note, Is the lighthouse still your preferred theory?

a reply to: ctj83

....We know that Penniston was present and involved in the RFI, yet we also know from an ATS member that the binary coordinates cannot be genuine. Is it possible or probable that there is a link between the source or motivation to create the binary code coordinates and the photo 'evidence' presented by Warren?

I think they are entirely separate issues with (perhaps) similar motivations.

As we know Larry has been 'photoshopped' into photos with various rock stars and has also been very active in the rock memorabilia market. Maybe he will even get a copy of Jim Penniston's autograph and sell it on Ebay? Although I have never seen a photograph of Jim and Larry in the same room together.

Whereas Jim seems to have had a 'slow release' program as his powers of recall seemingly continue to improve with the passage of time. His 1980 personal notebook is probably now bulging with new information he plans to reveal in a year of two for his book.

Sarcasm aside. I don't think the the same source is behind both stories.

a reply to: mirageman

Suppose we could always let it be if High Brazil makes an appearance.

a reply to: ianrid

Hello Ian, welcome back.

I suggested way back it may have been a certain British scientist and sidekick who were in the area investigating plasma physics. But that got all twisted and misinterpreted. Other people, added bits and pieces to that suggestion, took it as read, and and caused a few 'issues'. It could well have been journalists. But I still don't know exactly who approached Vince Thurkettle.

a reply to: mirageman

Does he strike you as a photoshop expert?

a reply to: ctj83

It's impossible for me to say. Larry Warren would be from the last generation of kids leaving school before the home PC was introduced. But he would still have been in his 20s when they went mainstream in the 1980s. That of course proves nothing. But it's entirely possible he knows more about modern photo software technology than he ever let on about.

a reply to: mirageman

Perhaps there was / is competent photography expert in the picture (!!). I want to say New York, but I think Sacha can clear this up.

originally posted by: ctj83
a reply to: ianrid
On another note, Is the lighthouse still your preferred theory?

The lighthouse certainly remains one of the three main parts of the explanation, which goes as follows:

1. We know that the original sighting of something apparently descending into the forest coincided with the 3 am fireball. Bright fireballs are a common cause of UFO reports.

2. We know that on Night One Burroughs and Cabansag chased the lighthouse, because they said so in their witness statements (credit to James Easton for tracking those down).

3. We know that the direction and flash rate of the flashing light reported by Halt matches that of the lighthouse.

4. Halt’s descriptions of the starlike objects hovering for hours sound like a misperception of bright stars, which are another common cause of UFO reports.

The police who came out on the first night said it was only the lighthouse, but no one ever seems to have passed this news on to Halt. I have often wondered how differently this case would have turned out if he had been told that in advance of his own sighting.

For those who would like to see how the original explanation published in January 1985 has stood up to the test of time, you can read it here
www.ianridpath.com...
Lots more info, including my original BBC TV interview with Vince in the forest, if you follow the various links.

Thanks for asking, and happy holidays.

Ian

a reply to: ianrid

Thanks for your thoughtful and insightful reply Ian! Happy holidays to you too. It's a rare pleasure to be able to talk to someone who was there at the 'start', so to speak.

If I could ask a few more questions:

1. We know that the original sighting of something apparently descending into the forest coincided with the 3 am fireball. Bright fireballs are a common cause of UFO reports.

Excuse my lack of astronomical knowledge, but I assume that this fireball were expected by astronomers and not out of the ordinary. I'm assuming you are also aware of the commentary of Dr Alan Bond to Jenny Randles about the reentry of Comsos (I forget which one) not following the predicted flight path. I realise that this is rather speculative but I'm not capable of forming an opinion on this one due to lack of knowledge.

2. We know that on Night One Burroughs and Cabansag chased the lighthouse, because they said so in their witness statements (credit to James Easton for tracking those down).

Could there have been any atmospheric phenomena that night that could have exaggerated the visual effect of the lighthouse? Some sort of temperature inversion, ice crystals etc - anything that could alter typical refraction and reflection ? I'm wondering why the event began when it did, and weather effects seem plausible.

3. We know that the direction and flash rate of the flashing light reported by Halt matches that of the lighthouse.

This is undeniable in that it matches the tape that we have but I wonder if you've considered why there are no animal noises, noises of branches etc. I could dismiss this as a result of the microphone type used, except that listening to the tape, it's quite clear that it presents reverberation of a relatively small room, as opposed to what one would expect in a outdoor woodland environment. I'm not for one minute suggesting the tape is fake, but it does appear to be a second generation duplication that has been played back in an office and the audio rerecorded. Any thoughts?

4. Halt’s descriptions of the starlike objects hovering for hours sound like a misperception of bright stars, which are another common cause of UFO reports.

This might interest you - Halt speaks of the star scope revealing a winking eye. I've often considered that the center of the eye is actually an artefact, similar to the kind produced by early tube cameras or CCDs, whereby the sensor becomes overwhelmed by brightness and returns black, instead of white. You can see lots of examples of this from BBC colour broadcasts in the early 70s, such as Dr Who, Top Of The Pops etc

If you visit Terry Hooper Scharf's blog you'll find a post about him visiting Vince, dressed in suits. At that time in British ufology there was also a group called APEN that liked to appear very official, I suppose to get more access to witnesses and official sources. I'm sure that the explanation is either directly Scharf or an APEN members.

originally posted by: ctj83
Excuse my lack of astronomical knowledge, but I assume that this fireball were expected by astronomers and not out of the ordinary.

I still want to see Ian's answers to your questions, but I thought I would add my thoughts. By the way your post would be easier to read if you learned how to use the ATS quote feature, like I did in this post. There's an icon for it right above where you type your post. And I can't get rid of the italics in my post even though I'm not using any, I think it's spillover from your post because you forgot to put the slash in front of one of your italics close bbcodes: "audio rerecorded. Any thoughts?" right before #4. If you use the quote button it adds the open and close bbcode tags so you don't have to worry about mis-typing them.

It's common to see "shooting stars" which are usually grain-of-sand type debris burning up leaving faint trails, but there's nothing common about fireballs. How many fireballs have you personally seen? For me, zero in person, though many on videos other people made, often on security cams. So the fact I've never seen one makes them "out of the ordinary" to me, and I don't think astronomers generally predict the bolide fireballs so I have no idea how you got the idea that fireballs "were expected by astronomers". I'm only aware of one prediction in 2008 where a known object was tracked entering Earth's atmosphere where it exploded over Africa, and that is supposedly the first one that was expected. Unlike bolide fireballs, satellite re-entries are somewhat predictable.

Could there have been any atmospheric phenomena that night that could have exaggerated the visual effect of the lighthouse? Some sort of temperature inversion, ice crystals etc - anything that could alter typical refraction and reflection ? I'm wondering why the event began when it did, and weather effects seem plausible.

I wondered the same thing, but from what I could find, weather didn't seem to play a role. My take from what the police said is that it was more a matter of the light and shadows playing tricks as it filtered through the forest, and I think that's all it would take. I think this is also why burroughs wasn't sure the "beacon" he finally ended up getting a better view of was the same thing he had seen in the forest, because I believe him when he says it didn't look the same from the forest. However that doesn't mean it's not the same object, just that you get a different perspective with a clear view than with something filtered through the forest. The only thing weather-related I recall hearing about were some reports of low-lying fog.

This is undeniable in that it matches the tape that we have but I wonder if you've considered why there are no animal noises, noises of branches etc.

Sometimes in the forest at night you hear animal noises, sometimes you don't. Branches don't make noise by themselves. Maybe if you were in a house and a branch you failed to trim was tapping against the window when the wind blows you would hear it, but out in the open I don't hear branches making noise.

This might interest you - Halt speaks of the star scope revealing a winking eye. I've often considered that the center of the eye is actually an artefact, similar to the kind produced by early tube cameras or CCDs, whereby the sensor becomes overwhelmed by brightness and returns black, instead of white. You can see lots of examples of this from BBC colour broadcasts in the early 70s, such as Dr Who, Top Of The Pops etc

It's possible it's an artifact, and I'll bet the "lights beaming down to the ground" from the stars were artifacts. You can see this "charge spill" effect even on modern equipment when filming bright lights which saturates part of the sensor and the overflow makes "streaks" in the image. The crude starscope was more primitive than modern equipment and probably made even worse streaks than modern equipment where streaks can still be seen apparently emanating from bright lights, but the streaks are just artifacts.

Several questions here, all good ones. I shall go through them in order.

Excuse my lack of astronomical knowledge, but I assume that this fireball were expected by astronomers and not out of the ordinary.

No, bright fireballs like this one occur at random and are entirely unexpected. I deal with it in detail here
www.ianridpath.com...

I'm assuming you are also aware of the commentary of Dr Alan Bond to Jenny Randles about the reentry of Cosmos

The Cosmos re-entry earlier the same night was not directly related to the Rendlesham sighting, but the guards might well have heard about it on the late-night news and been on ‘UFO alert’ as a result. My page on the Cosmos re-entry is here
www.ianridpath.com...

Could there have been any atmospheric phenomena that night that could have exaggerated the visual effect of the lighthouse?

Not that I’m aware. At that time the Orfordness lighthouse was one of the brightest in the country and from the forest they would have been looking almost directly into its beam. I have the advantage of having seen it in the 1980s and I know how startlingly bright it was. The guards had never been out there before at night and didn’t expect to see a lighthouse in a forest!

Much more about it here
www.ianridpath.com...

listening to the tape, it's quite clear that it presents reverberation of a relatively small room, as opposed to what one would expect in a outdoor woodland environment.

The tape that everyone has heard is not the original, but a copy that Halt made by the old expedient of placing a microphone in front of a loudspeaker. Hence there are a number of background noises, including Halt himself moving around the room and talking.

My complete transcript of it, with some associated commentary, starts here
www.ianridpath.com...

I've often considered that the center of the eye is actually an artefact, similar to the kind produced by early tube cameras or CCDs, whereby the sensor becomes overwhelmed by brightness and returns black, instead of white.

Good point, and very likely correct. In fact you can see the same effect happening in the TV recording of my interview with Vince. FYI, they were using a first-generation type of Starscope known as the AN/PVS-2 which amplified light by about a thousand times and had a magnification of 4 times, so naturally the light appeared much brighter and larger than to the naked eye.

If you visit Terry Hooper Scharf's blog you'll find a post about him visiting Vince, dressed in suits.

Thank you. I didn’t know about this. However, I wonder how he got to hear about the case so soon after it had occurred.

Hope this helps.

Ian

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I’ll bet the "lights beaming down to the ground" from the stars were artifacts. You can see this "charge spill" effect even on modern equipment when filming bright lights which saturates part of the sensor and the overflow makes "streaks" in the image. The crude starscope was more primitive than modern equipment and probably made even worse streaks than modern equipment where streaks can still be seen apparently emanating from bright lights, but the streaks are just artifacts.

Good thought, but I’m not sure Halt was looking through the Starscope when he made that comment. I’d attribute the supposed “beams” to a combination of dazzle in the eye and atmospheric scintillation — I still remember the Venus “flying cross” observed by two Devon policemen in 1967. Either way, the beams did not hit the ground in front of them — that’s something Halt made up many years later.

PS: I can’t get rid of the italics now, either!

a reply to: ianrid

PS: I can’t get rid of the italics now, either!

There is no way to do it as the [/ i ] tag has not been used in one of the posts above. It's too late to edit now so until we get to a new page we are stuck with them!




Thanks for the clarifications Ian.

Are you also aware of the discovery that Penniston's binary codes that link to co-ordinates from a number of 'mysterious places' were discovered to be exact matches to those on sacred-destinations.com? The site published them years before Penniston revealed his codes.

Plus Jim Penniston also threatened legal action against OKM for using 'his' glyphs on their ground radar device.



I suppose if they did come from the side of a time machine then technically they came from the future so Jim was the first person to create them.......Not sure how that stands up in a court of law. But there you go.

originally posted by: mirageman
Are you also aware of the discovery that Penniston's binary codes that link to co-ordinates from a number of 'mysterious places' were discovered to be exact matches to those on sacred-destinations.com? The site published them years before Penniston revealed his codes.

I've seen it on the preceding pages — I haven't been on here for a while so I've had quite a bit of catching up to do.
However, since the amazing expanding notebook is clearly a fabrication I've never taken any of its contents seriously. The term "post-truth" comes to mind, as does "fake news".

Cheers,
Ian

PS: I used the [/ i ] tag you recommended and that seems to have wiped the italics as mysteriously as they arrived -- no binary codes involved!

PPS: This song might amuse you if you haven't heard it -- the binary solo at 3:18 is a scream
www.youtube.com...

a reply to: mirageman

[Not directly related to Rendlesham necessarily.. but thought i'd mention it where various people might
read it.. and not just in an IM]

There is a reference in Forbidden Science Volume 3, where "some guy" claimed to have been
a helicopter pilot who was part of an operation to fly "Helicopters disguised as UFOs", to test
the security of nuclear weapon facilities.

Now normally I wouldn't even mention such a claim.. but the claim was made to Kit Green,
formerly of the CIA "Weird Desk" Here is an interesting interview with Dr. Green Link
as you can see, he is/was a very connected individual with a good head on this shoulders,
and he thought it possible enough to pass on the story to JV.. so he must have thought it
at least feasibly true.

Of course that says nothing about the person who gave him this information..
still.. very interesting..

Kev

a reply to: ianrid

Thanks for comprehensive reply and references Ian.

a reply to: mirageman

Deep shame on breaking ATS.

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

I've heard a similar answer from Gabe Valdez and his son regarding cattle mutilation and the Paul Bennewitz affair.

a reply to: ctj83

Oh we've known for a long time that faking UFOs is a booming cottage industry!

But unannounced/surprise "attacks" by "fake UFOs" vs. atomic weapon facilities
seemed a bit extreme.

Kev

originally posted by: ianrid
Several questions here, all good ones. I shall go through them in order.

Excuse my lack of astronomical knowledge, but I assume that this fireball were expected by astronomers and not out of the ordinary.

No, bright fireballs like this one occur at random and are entirely unexpected. I deal with it in detail here
www.ianridpath.com...

I'm assuming you are also aware of the commentary of Dr Alan Bond to Jenny Randles about the reentry of Cosmos

The Cosmos re-entry earlier the same night was not directly related to the Rendlesham sighting, but the guards might well have heard about it on the late-night news and been on ‘UFO alert’ as a result. My page on the Cosmos re-entry is here
www.ianridpath.com...

Could there have been any atmospheric phenomena that night that could have exaggerated the visual effect of the lighthouse?

Not that I’m aware. At that time the Orfordness lighthouse was one of the brightest in the country and from the forest they would have been looking almost directly into its beam. I have the advantage of having seen it in the 1980s and I know how startlingly bright it was. The guards had never been out there before at night and didn’t expect to see a lighthouse in a forest!

Much more about it here
www.ianridpath.com...

listening to the tape, it's quite clear that it presents reverberation of a relatively small room, as opposed to what one would expect in a outdoor woodland environment.

The tape that everyone has heard is not the original, but a copy that Halt made by the old expedient of placing a microphone in front of a loudspeaker. Hence there are a number of background noises, including Halt himself moving around the room and talking.

My complete transcript of it, with some associated commentary, starts here
www.ianridpath.com...

I've often considered that the center of the eye is actually an artefact, similar to the kind produced by early tube cameras or CCDs, whereby the sensor becomes overwhelmed by brightness and returns black, instead of white.

Good point, and very likely correct. In fact you can see the same effect happening in the TV recording of my interview with Vince. FYI, they were using a first-generation type of Starscope known as the AN/PVS-2 which amplified light by about a thousand times and had a magnification of 4 times, so naturally the light appeared much brighter and larger than to the naked eye.

If you visit Terry Hooper Scharf's blog you'll find a post about him visiting Vince, dressed in suits.

Thank you. I didn’t know about this. However, I wonder how he got to hear about the case so soon after it had occurred.

Hope this helps.

Ian

Learning to use the quote feature! I have a theory about that, which relates to numerous examples of 'insider knowledge' both on RFI and other cases such as Berwyn.

APEN.

Terry has spoken of his own targeting by APEN and I consider it possible that his original tipoff came from a colleague who was (unknown to Terry at the time) an APEN member.

I'll leave that theory there, although it would be nice if Terry could clarify.