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

a reply to: ctj83

Keep going with this one by the way.
Re John Burroughs hypnosis etc.

It's not news. Penniston underwent 'regression hypnosis' in September 1994, with extracts of this session given in Linda Moulton Howe's Glimpses of Other Realities Vol. II.

The whole purpose of regression hypnosis, if valid at all, is to try to undercover hidden experiences in the recipient's subconscious mind. There is a vast amount of evidence to show that, even in this simple aim, it is dubious at best, damaging at worst. The National Council for Hypnotherapy (UK) has published a policy document specifically relating to its use with "Alien Abduction Clients."

The problem with the text of Penniston's hypnosis session - one of the problems; there are many - is that, on close inspection, it reads extremely poorly as a simple attempt at trying to 'recover hidden experiences'.

Let's take, as an example, the reconstruction of a motorcycle accident. Regression hypnosis could seek the detail with such questions as:

WHAT IS AROUND YOU? WHAT CAN YOU SEE?
There is a red car coming towards me. It appears to be out of control.

This is fine, and may get to the experience of the lead-up to the accident. However:

THE DRIVER IN THE RED CAR... WHAT WAS HIS PURPOSE THAT DAY? WHERE WAS HE HEADING?
...

would be an utter nonsense question, and completely outside the immediate experience of the motorcycle rider. He/she may indeed answer this question - and probably would - but the answer would be led and would be a fabrication.

But this is just what we get, time and again, in the Penniston hypnosis session, both subtly and no so.

AND THE MISSION IS?
...
DO THEY SAY CONTACT WITH WHAT?
...
PURPOSE?
...
FOR?
...
TO HELP THEM WITH WHAT?
...
WHAT DO THEY NEED?
...
AND HOW DO THEY GET THAT?
...

And on and on it goes. Not one of these questions is phrased to illicit anything at all about any subconscious repressed experience of Penniston's. The 'hypnotist' (who was that, by the way?) has utterly and completely strayed outside the parameters of what regression can (dubiously) hope to achieve. And what is the result?

Without surprise - accepting this to even be a genuine hypnotically induced account - Penniston goes on to answer just about every single one of these non-experientially-motivated questions. It's like he's talking about a group of people, some far off (earthy) race for example, that he has studied and studied for years and knows everything about their aims, motivations, culture, intent, etc.

It is this very willingness, and seeming ability, of Penniston to answer each and every one of these irrelevant questions that shows the whole episode to be the sham it surely is. Because, were it otherwise, you would expect to see a whole lot more responses along the lines "I dunno that one. Dunno."

"Ask and ye shall get."

And that's just what's happening here.

a reply to: Shaqmeister

Ever feel like you're stuck in a revolving door with this case? We're 139 pages in now and the basic issues keep resurfacing. Basically Warren's story has now been despatched into history as it's almost certainly Bustinza's account with a few additional bells and whistles backed up with creative documentation and photographs.

Penniston's is almost as flakey. Yet he can't seem to understand why people don't believe it. Yes he was there but his story just never quite adds up. Perhaps there is some genuine impairment there?

Hence the coming ebook. It will mainly be aimed at pointing out the discrepancies in the Penniston story and hopefully give people a more informed choice regarding whether Penniston's coming book "We Don't Need Another Zero" is worth buying or not. You will be able to decide whether he really did have a notebook with him and all the other amazing discoveries that end up with the binary code and it all being related to other mysterious stuff. Thankfully we've also had people close to him leak a few things. Also some analysis on his acting skills when on TV (even under supposed hypnosis. It's not looking good for him (it hasn't for a long time). But anyone who thinks Penniston's story is even remotely true would be a fool not to get hold of a copy. There also be plenty of jokes and humorous quips. I will reveal how to download it free of charge nearer the release day.

a reply to: Baablacksheep

Sizewell and Orfordness.
The Duga and Chernobyl

Satellites and beam forming OTH radar. Super computers.

Question. Why do the RFI objects and ufos in general present the following characteristics:

- False illumination
- Inability to move on parabolic trajectories - instead, direct translation on X,Y,Z coordinates
- Lack of inertia
- Simple geometric primitives such as spheres, saucers, tubes and pyramids

Conclusion

Computers of the day could not create complex polygonal 3d objects, so basic objects were created. Phong and then gourad shading, with simple shadow maps were evolved to help blend the objects into their environment. These were then moved by adjusting the focal points of multiple electromagnetic beaming and or OTH radar systems.

Movement is achieved via linear interpolation only, due to the difficulty of keeping the apparition together. With an ability to create a false radar signature these 'vehicles' were used to probe enemy defences.

Minority Report

There is a history of many 'witnesses' talking of satellite control in many incidents.

- Karan - RFI
- Dr Bond - RFI
- APEN - RFI
- Martlesham Heath Engineer - RFI
- Berwyn - Ufologists
- Bennewitz - Greg Bishop

So is this all a rumour started by rogue group led by men of Science?

Or instead are we looking at the Private Property of a software system?

In which case, is it possible to implement 'Halt and Catch Fire' ?

a reply to: mirageman
Curious how you can write a book about Penniston's experience without ever asking him any questions?

originally posted by: mirageman
a reply to: Shaqmeister

Ever feel like you're stuck in a revolving door with this case? We're 139 pages in now and the basic issues keep resurfacing. ...

Well, yeah. And it's easy to see why, too. And certainly not just here, either - the whole 'RFI' thing. The trouble is, nothing ever leaves the table. I mean, every year it seems more and more 'witnesses' come out the dark, there are more and more grandiose claims made by the ones we know, and nothing ever gets the critical evaluation it deserves to enable anything to be rejected. It just gets bigger and bigger, and to such an extent that it's not even possible to say that there is one RFI. Burroughs' story correlates only loosely with Penniston's, which has (frankly) gone into orbit. Halt's differs again, but is getting closer (maybe) to that of the others. Warren's ramblings don't correlate with anything. And then Georgina Bruni comes along and takes the whole caboodle to be 'RFI' while Pope is still - I mean, STILL - talking about "tracked on radar" and "higher than background radiation levels."

Hence the coming ebook.

It's not written in binary, is it. I couldn't take that. When's the release date?

originally posted by: Sedonabird
a reply to: mirageman
Curious how you can write a book about Penniston's experience without ever asking him any questions?

The 'Rendlesham Forest Incident' (RFI), whatever that is, is an historical event just like the moon landings and the Alamo. And in the context of RFI as an historical event, Penniston is just an artefact like that piece of plaster in the shape of a salad bowl that keeps getting lumped around, as if it helps anything. We don't need anymore words from Penniston, or anyone for that matter. What is needed is some good old fashioned critical appraisal of what has been said already, over the last 36 and some years. What is this preoccupation with "RFI is what they say it is?" Any useful and objective investigation of an event must be independent of the people involved in it. That's how you take bias out of the equation.

Not all 'witnesses' are equal, and some are more not equal than others.

My money's on someone who doesn't know what binary is, but thinks its a 'language' all the same.

originally posted by: Sedonabird
a reply to: mirageman
Curious how you can write a book about Penniston's experience without ever asking him any questions?

My only question to Jim would be: “Why did you blow up the story?”

There are five possible answers:
1. Because he enjoys fooling people and getting attention.
2. Because he is hiding a Big Secret that may cost him his life if he reveals it.
3. Because deep down he knows it could have been the lighthouse and he’ll never admit it.
4. Because his memory is messed up.
5. Because he is slowly unveiling the truth.

His fabrications have been exposed now, so 5 can be excluded.

He doesn’t act like someone who is trying to fix holes in his memory but presents his story as gospel instead, even if it doesn’t jibe with that of others who were there.
That means 4 can be excluded, too.

So which is it? 1, 2, or 3?
In either one of these remaining cases, asking further questions (or buying his books) is useless.

asking further questions (or buying his books) is useless.

And what about his co-author, the Osborn chap?

originally posted by: Guest101
...
3. Because deep down he knows it could have been the lighthouse and he’ll never admit it.
...

I think that this whole "It's the lighthouse," "It's not the lighthouse" non-argument is the biggest stumbling block to getting to the truth about RFI. And the reason I want to call it a 'non-argument' is simply because there is no single 'it' in RFI. There just isn't.

Take the 'misidentification hypothesis' as an example, applied to the original testimony. This is certainly not refuted by the likes of Pope and Bruni going on documentaries and having their words clipped down to "It's not the lighthouse."

To me, it is absolutely undeniable, when close study is made of the original witness statements and the Halt Tape, that for all but one group of observations of 'lights' in the distance there is a mundane light-emitting object (or several) in the direction reported that is, in appearance and behaviour, conforming to what is variously reported, minus all the over-excited embellishments. There would be no point in regurgitating all the arguments here.

The key aspect of this, however, is that - from this argument - it is far, far away from there being a single misidentification, as of the Orford Ness lighthouse. The Halt tape is just riddled with them. In the excitedness of the moment, and with the bias of having gone out on the basis of a report of 'lights', it is hard to see that Halt overlooked a single light source in that disorienting environment that he did not, somehow, knit into his expectations. It's like "Ooh, a light. That's alien. Ooh, a light..." And it is this constant 'attention shifting' that betrays the psychology of a group of men loaded with fearful preconceptions seeing boogie-men in every shadow.

And there were similar misidentifications on the first night, too - although not as many - and the Orford Ness lighthouse was one of them. But only one.

In fact, when you pare everything down, the only 'it' that doesn't have such an association with a light-like phenomena known to have been in the environment at the time is this collection of red & blue & white (or whatever) lights reported in the forest the first night. And I don't think anybody would ever have wanted to come out and claim that this was (just) the lighthouse.

But how spectacular actually was this coloured light show in the forest?

For the 2003 SciFi documentary UFO Invasion at Rendlesham, Cabansag gave the following account of his experiences:

Burroughs would say 'Do you see that? Do you see what's out there at the edge of the trees?' And I'm looking, and I'm looking, and I'm going 'What are you seeing? What are you seeing?' And he extended his finger out, put my head to his... end of his finger - 'Look at the end of my finger.' I was looking left, right, left, right. And it had blue, white, yellow, um... lights.

and later:

It was maybe 100 yards, 150 yards. Couldn't quite tell if it was silvery, but it was moving left, right, left, right. Nothing could move the way it moved, at the time. Nothing could move that quick."

So, it's so spectacular that, until Burroughs forces Cabansag's head to his finger, Cabansag can't even locate where he's looking!

And then, twice in the documentary (see above quotes), Cabansag refers to an apparent side-to-side motion, and on both tellings his manner of speech is rhythmical - "left, right, left, right." Only, his conclusion is that "Nothing could move that quick." Only, its being a 'one thing moving' is an inference, not an observation. Two lights a distance apart and flashing in time but out of sync would give the impression of "left, right, left, right" motion, also.

I'm not saying, okay? But kind of something like this:

Curious how you can write a book about Penniston's experience without ever asking him any questions?

MM appears to have given the reason to his writing the book.

It should not worry Penniston.

a reply to: Shaqmeister
The lighthouse beacon was rotating so I don't see why that can't account for a side-to-side motion.

Also the understanding of color perception in the general population is lacking and people make unwarranted inferences that it can't be the lighthouse because of the colors described, but that's not the way I see it. The original light source is omnidirectional but then it was focused through three special lenses designed to focus the omnidirectional light into three narrow beams that would be visible for 20 miles (except in the direction of the town where the shield prevented that).

Ever had a flash picture taken and then seen spots afterward? I have and the spots can be just about any color especially if looking at a dark background. So what do you think happens if you stare into a beam so bright it's supposed to be seen 20 miles away? I don't think it's unreasonable to think spots can be seen as a result.

If anybody thinks their color perception is accurate, here's a test to prove it's not. Stare at the crosshairs in the center, then see if you can notice a green dot moving around the circle.



If you can see it and most people can, there's your proof, you're seeing a color that simply isn't there. Why would anybody think it can happen here but not with looking directly into the third brightest lighthouse in the UK at the time is beyond me.

Not only is there the perception issue, but the design of the lenses was stepped and angled which in addition to focusing the main white beam out to 20 miles might have also diffracted various colors to a lesser degree at other angles. This shows the three lenses where you can see wedge-shaped pieces of glass and if you ever played with prisms you know what diffraction can do.

www.youtube.com...


One problem is that while the witnesses referred to flashing lights, they didn't mention the frequency of the flashing which would have been a clue to the source of the light. One notable exception is of course the Halt recording where without actually timing it the witnesses exclaim when they can see the light, and again 5 seconds later, the exact time of the orfordness lighthouse flashing. If they mentioned the light was flashing at 5 second intervals that would suggest the lighthouse as the source but I didn't see any mention of the frequency.

The flashing light could have had another source besides the lighthouse but I'm just saying that the colors and other descriptions don't seem to me to be reasons to exclude the lighthouse.

Also don't forget this witness statement who investigated the report and stated his personal experience with "strange visual effects" from the lighthouse:

Rendlesham Forest incident

"I know from personal experience that at night, in certain weather and cloud conditions, these beams were very pronounced and certainly caused strange visual effects."

-Suffolk Constabulary.

Looking at the brightness of the light, the design of the lens and other factors I'm not surprised at all by strange visual effects, but apparently some people can't accept it as a possibility. I can accept the possibility.

originally posted by: Baablacksheep

asking further questions (or buying his books) is useless.

And what about his co-author, the Osborn chap?

Gary Osborn is an intelligent researcher and author. The books he has written are exceptional. You should read them !!! This guy is a brilliant author ...

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
a reply to: Shaqmeister
The lighthouse beacon was rotating so I don't see why that can't account for a side-to-side motion.

Also the understanding of color perception in the general population is lacking and people make unwarranted inferences that it can't be the lighthouse because of the colors described, but that's not the way I see it.

Respectfully, I would have to suggest that your argument here equally shows poor "understanding" of colour perception. It's not enough to say "it is possible for us to misperceive colours" and then, on just this, say "PB & C did just that." And, for two reasons:

Firstly, the effect that you give as an example (although there are other effects with different causes, such as colour-blindness) relies on "negative retinal afterimaging" which, in turn, is dependent upon a degree of artificial fixed gaze which would not be significantly present in normal observation. Indeed, to the degree that it is present, under such circumstances, the brain is more than adept at filtering out the residual afterimages. Also, the effect is one involving complimentary colours. So, even were it to be at play, in order to account for the near-consistent observation of red & blue & yellow lights, this would require that the lighthouse were generating whatever three colours are the complimentaries of these. So...

Secondly, it is not valid reasoning to remove every trace of potentially accurate reporting even from confused testimonies. In terms of what was reported as seen, rather than what was inferred, even the Halt Tape is unremarkable.

For example, I would argue that everything that was witnessed as an 'object' of sorts on the Halt Tape corresponds one-to-one with an identifiable, mundane phenonomenon in the visible environment. There is no necessity to twist what Halt is reporting, only to critically examine his interpretations therefrom. He reports 'star-like' objects, in places where bright stars are located and behaving exactly like we would expect stars to behave. He sees a red winking eye right where there is a winking light house. He sees five smaller objects right where there are five lights atop the Orford Ness Transmitter mast, and so on. So, we should do the same for the first night and accept that they were seeing red & blue & yellow, or whatever.

But then you have to ask, what's so weird about that? The night-time is lit up with lights, of all colours, brightnesses, durations and periods. Someone or something was in the forest with red & blue lights. And?

originally posted by: Shaqmeister
But then you have to ask, what's so weird about that? The night-time is lit up with lights, of all colours, brightnesses, durations and periods. Someone or something was in the forest with red & blue lights. And?

And just to put this in some degree of context, around 1980 in the UK - although I was just a couple years too young - 'we' were buying cheap cars, fitting them up with all the spotlights we could get away with, wiring in musical horns and strapping a god-almighty aerial on the roof to drive out to remote locations to see how far we could get on a CB radio. Only, it wasn't legal in 1980. So, were you to find yourself out near a couple of military bases, seeing torches heading towards you and hearing excited voices, you'd kinda want to get out of there.

For the history of CB Radio in the UK, see here and on Wikipedia.

Particularly interesting is what was clearly the 'nuisance' problem of CB-radioing in the UK before part-regulation in 1981.

There are some notable anti-social aspects to the hobby. It is possible to increase power output to very high levels using power amplifiers, and in some cases this can cause interference to and affect the operation of other equipment such as television and radio, and also to other CB radio users. (Emphasis added.)

Sound familiar?

And don't forget, following the 1979 film release of Quadrophenia, all this was happening too:

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I've wondered about the lighthouse for a long time.
I know that they were aware of it and that it could be seen from parts of the area around the base/woods.

Aren't they there to warn ships at sea?
What purpose would it serve to shine a massive light INLAND?
The flashing effect was from the revolving beam passing a cowelling plate facing inland which probably had interior reflectors to enhance the outward beam.

Not being critical here. Just wondering. If the beam did sweep all the way round (including inland), I imagine it would've been a giant pain for local motorists driving at night and getting dazzled.

UFO hunters had a look at it on their episode on RFI but as the lighthouse was no longer in use they couldn't test the theory, unfortunately.

originally posted by: Tulpa
I've wondered about the lighthouse for a long time.
I know that they were aware of it ...

Were they aware of it?

Burroughs (original witness statement):

Once we reached the farmer's house we could see a becon [sic.] going around so we went towards it. We followed it for about 2 miles before we could [see] it was comming [sic.] from a light house.

Not 'the lighthouse, or "the Orford Ness lighthouse." And it took a 2-mile trek even to identify that it was "a lighthouse."

Cabansag (original witness statement):

But we ran and walked a good 2 miles past our vehicle, until we got to a vantage point where we could determine that what we were chasing was only a beacon light off in the distance.

Cabansag doesn't appear to have been aware of any lighthouse. But then, to be fair, he was only on his third or fourth shift at the base.

Buran (original witness statement):

SSgt Penniston reported getting near the "object" and then all of a sudden said they had gone past it and were looking at a marker beacon that was in the same general directions as the other lights.

Again, the "marker beacon" is not identified as the Orford Ness lighthouse, or indeed any lighthouse.

Chandler (original witness statement):

He [Penniston] eventually arrived at a "beacon light," ...

In fact, Penniston leaves this whole jolly jaunt towards the 'unrecognised' lighthouse completely out of his account, and probably out of embarrassment more than anything else.

Halt Affidavit (2010):

Claims by skeptics that this was merely a sweeping beam from a distant lighthouse are unfounded; we could see the unknown light and the lighthouse simultaneously. The latter was 35 to 40-degrees off where all this was happening.

Only, roughly "35 to 40-degrees off" the Orford Ness lighthouse was the Shipwash lightship.

So, the bit about "we were aware of the lighthouse"... ?

a reply to: Shaqmeister

Yeah, sorry, I wasn't too clear there was I.
What I meant about the flashing was that there would only be a flash when the beam was pointing directly in your direction.
The rest of the rotation would paint a straight line out across the landscape which, I imagine, would be fairly easy to distinguish.

Halt could be right about the 30 degree angle between the lighthouse and the unidentified light.
He may have forgotten that a second light appeared to their left while they were investigating the one at 110-120 degrees. It’s on the Halt tape:

SGT BALL: Look to the left!
SGT NEVELS: Yeah, definitely moving. There's two...two lights. One light in front and one light to the left.

The second light is to the left of the light at 110 degrees.

SGT BALL: .. it just moved to the right... it moved off to the right.
LT COLONEL HALT: Yeah ... strange, whoohh.

The light at 110-120 degrees just moved off to the right.
Only the second light remains, which was to the left of the first light.
Now Halt also notices the light to their left.

LT COLONEL HALT: Another one again to the left!

He may even have said: “the other one came to the left” (he talks very fast here).

Then they start looking at it through the star scope.

So the light they watched through the star scope is to the left of the lighthouse and may have been in front of the farmer’s house at an estimated 30 degree angle with the lighthouse.