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

originally posted by: mirageman
a reply to: Guest101
Have you any thoughts yourself on what might have been the cause or even what was not the cause?

A lot of theories have crossed my mind, depending on how my estimation of the honesty of the witnesses and of the reliability of tapes and documents evolved over time.

In any case this will never become the rock-solid proof of alien visitation I once thought it was. The whole case has become much too complicated and mixed with false information.

I’m still not sure whether this false information was spread deliberately, as part of a controlled disinformation campaign, or whether it is merely caused by the personalities of the people involved. Probably it’s a mix of both.

Were unidentified moving lights observed? Yes, there can be no doubt about that. Both civilian witnesses and all military witnesses involved support this.

Were these lights observed at or near ground level? Again, yes. Many witnesses observed this.

Did they leave landing traces? Very likely, since the combination of all physical traces (heat, radiation, indentations in a perfect triangle, broken branches, a scuffed up area in the middle) right at the spot where these lights were observed near or at the ground seems a bit too much of a coincidence to me.

Did they shine beams of light to the ground? Yes they probably did, there is ample evidence to support this.

Did they shine beams into the WSA? Possibly, the evidence for this is mixed and not fully convincing.

Were solid objects involved? Possibly, since landing traces were found and a mechanical object was reported on the first night. But here, too, the evidence is not fully convincing.

Wat caused all this? One can only speculate. The pattern of the RFI perfectly fits the larger patterns of UFO characteristics and of UFO sightings near nuclear sites over the years. Nobody knows where these UFO’s come from (or in any case they won’t tell us ;-).

Today I tend to think that Halt’s affidavit is closest to the truth. But I also think that Halt was or even is not fully aware of the things that happened on the third night just before his arrival, and he probably is not willing to speculate on that because it could potentially undermine his credibility, as would any change he makes to his story now.

Halt has been right all along about Larry Warren and Adrian Bustinza, as can be read in the interview transcript with Halt in Left At East Gate. Apparently, Bustinza was either spinning a yarn, or he was executing an order to spread disinformation when he and two others talked with Larry Warren on March 1981.

Therefore I want to dedicate this song to Halt...

a reply to: Guest101

Apparently, Bustinza was either spinning a yarn, or he was executing an order to spread disinformation when he and two others talked with Larry Warren on March 1981

Of course I want to say..." Where do we go from here" .... (Again)

a reply to: Guest101

Thanks for your thought G101. Who is to say whether they are right are wrong?

Of course the default 'uber-skeptic's' position is that a bunch of Americans went goofing around off base and got confused by the beams of the lighthouse and other strange atmospheric effects in the woods. I know Ian Ridpath has worked hard on pulling his theory together and it generally fits if nothing really much happened at all. But.....

I still find it difficult to believe so many troops could be fooled like that for 3 nights. Not forgetting Steve La Plume's strange sighting in mid Jan of 1981. Which although not part of the main incident seems to be a strange addendum to it all. I've been through numerous Cold War references and documents and found stuff that 'might' be relevant but nothing that nails it down to Rendlesham. Various military and science projects could be related from both sides of the Iron Curtain. But no smoking gun as yet!

I tend to think Halt's affidavit about it being a UK/US cover up and being extra-terrestrial lacks any real evidence to make that leap. It could be true but I think his memo was purposely jumbled from day one and his story down the years has also been adapted as we now know to protect what I don't know? Maybe himself?

Perhaps his tape was edited and with certain parts moved around to distort the actual timeline (he did it with his memo why not his tape?). That could explain his comments very early on about it being "too horrendous" to reveal everything. So I am not so trusting of the Halt perspective.

a reply to: Baablacksheep

Apparently, Bustinza was either spinning a yarn, or he was executing an order to spread disinformation when he and two others talked with Larry Warren on March 1981

Of course I want to say..." Where do we go from here" .... (Again)

Avoid getting caught by the many yarns that have been spun on the Rendlesham spindle and try to work out what happened when Adrian and John approached the lights.

a reply to: mirageman

I like the image MM, good choice

An oldie but one of the best Rendlesham documentaries (in my opinion of course).



Although this was around a decade after the incident it has some major players and close attention should be paid to what they all say....

originally posted by: mirageman
An oldie but one of the best Rendlesham documentaries (in my opinion of course).

Although this was around a decade after the incident it has some major players and close attention should be paid to what they all say....

Since I had some time to spare this morning I made a transcript of all the things said by the witnesses.

Burroughs:

There was definitely something out in the woods.
It seemed like to me, like a massive light show.
I was nervous, he was nervous, we didn’t know what to expect and we decided at that point that we’d better get back and let somebody know what’s going on in case something did happen.

We didn’t know what we were getting into.
We started now on foot towards the lights.
At the same time we could hear the animals were very upset. You could hear a lot of … [??]

At that point we got a radio transmission. They’ve just gotten contact from Heathrow tower in London that an object had been seen over our base and that it has disappeared on radar.

And all of a sudden in a clearing there was an object. It has a bank of blue lights on it and it was sitting there like strobing. It was unbelievable. We all hit the ground and then it went up into the trees.

When it was happening, everything seemed to go slower. We seemed to be in like a … I won’t say a ‘time warp’ but like everything appeared to be happening slower to us and everything felt different. But when it was all … when it disappeared it was like everything was normal again … the perception of the ground, the air, the sky, the stars, the whole nine yards, were different.

It was off the ground and the horizon above the trees. And it always stayed out in a distance on the horizon. Sometimes it appeared to get closer and we were going to get close to it again and then we never did.

[Next morning:]

He basically said: “Gentlemen you saw something, Heathrow tower confirms that you saw something, and now let’s go out into the area and see if we can find any physical proof of what happened.”

I was hoping that when I got out there that basically I would see nothing, that there would be no tell-tale evidence that possibly something happened. That would make it easier for me, because if there is nothing proving that something happened to me, you can just kind of check it off. But when you get out there and you find damage to the trees, depressions in the ground and stuff, that makes it even more unexplainable.

It was more of a mystery now. Because when I first saw it I didn’t perceive it as something sitting on the ground with a tripod-like, a tripod-type thing. Now all of a sudden there’s physical proof showing that something sat down in that area.

[Third night:]

I woke up about 3:30 – 4:00 in the morning and for whatever reason I felt like maybe something had happening and I don’t know why I just woke up and felt like something that came back – don’t ask me why it just was a gut feeling. So I went ahead and got up and went up to the base.

All of a sudden a couple of like blue transparent type lights appeared in the sky. They were all sitting on the horizon. And one of them broke towards us.

The only time the light-alls were working - as far as came on and off – when I saw them was when the light passed them. And I have no idea what caused the light-alls to come on and off other than the fact that the blue light, as it passed the light-alls came on.

Halt:

I was very skeptical. I found what had allegedly taken place hard to believe. And I was really going to debunk it quite frankly. And as events unfolded I became more and more concerned that there may be something to this. I kept telling myself that there had to be some type of explanation for it. But I certainly couldn’t find one and even to this day I can’t explain what happened.

I called the on-duty or stand-by man, of disaster preparedness, and had him get his camera – he was a professional photographer – and calibrate several radiac instruments to take along. We were going to go debunk this.

Some of the vehicles weren’t working properly. And radio transmissions were limited at best.

As we were pursuing this glowing object through the woods we noticed a farm house directly in front of us. The farm house appeared to be glowing, very brightly, as though it was on fire.

The object then broke into five white objects and disappeared.

There was a very strange feeling in the air. It made your hair bristle … sort of like static electricity, you just has a very unusual feeling. And I don’t think it was all psychological, I think there was something physiological about it.

I think there was some type of guiding force behind these objects.

And whether it was trying to communicate with us, or whether it was trying to warn us, or whether it was trying to do something to us, I don’t know.

We could very clearly see it. It sort of danced about in the sky and it sent down beams of light.
I noticed other beams of light coming down from the same object falling in different places on the base.
My boss was standing in his front yard at Woodbridge and he could see the beams of light falling down.
And the people in that weapon storage area and several other places on the base also reported the lights.

The object was coming at us at a very high rate of speed. One of these beams of light fell very, very close to us. Sort of a pencil beam of light.

I drafted a memo. Sent a copy to London and it was swallowed up. It became very quiet.

I know it was beyond the realm of anything that we experience in ordinary life.

Ball:

To me it looked like a grid search. Like they were boxing off an area and looking for something. And that was the thought that hit me right way and it stayed with me over the years. It looked like a search pattern.

The final part of the voice-over is interesting:

Around the same time, two other unconfirmed sightings were reported in the vicinity of Woodbridge Air Base. At least fifteen men, all of them US Air Force personnel, witnessed the strange lights and objects firsthand.

Also interesting is that Burroughs calls it an ‘object’.

originally posted by: Guest101
What caused all this? One can only speculate. The pattern of the RFI perfectly fits the larger patterns of UFO characteristics and of UFO sightings near nuclear sites over the years. Nobody knows where these UFO's come from (or in any case they won't tell us ;-).

Further speculation here (while I tend to stick with Robert Hastings who I find to be a credible, no-nonsense researcher in this area), where Bob Dean enters into this and even states Halt had told him that the nukes had been stolen (from 49:09 mark):
www.youtube.com...

I talked to Charlie Halt who was the deputy post commander there and I said, "Colonel, the word I got from a General recently was that they screwed up the warheads and scrambled them?"

He said: "Screwed up hell! They stole some of them!"

originally posted by: Guest101
Did they shine beams into the WSA? Possibly, the evidence for this is mixed and not fully convincing.

According to a posting made by Gary Heseltine on the UFOTruth facebook page, Halt states in his recent book (page 224): "I don't know for a fact that the beams landed there. I know they were in the area. I was too far away but relied on the radio chatter, which indicated the beams landed there"

Halt's testimony from the 27 September 2010 Disclosure Conference (Hastings/Salas) would seem to confirm this:

... the other object to the south was sending down beams., about a mile, mile-and-a-half away over Woodbridge Base ... but we were able to discern that, on the police and security net (radio), some of those beams were either falling into or near the weapons storage area, and there's a great deal of concern. It really bothered me at the time.

However, when Halt spoke with Gary Heseltine at the base, Halt states that he had learned from another witness that those beams of light had "in no uncertain terms" shone down into the Weapons Storage Area: www.youtube.com...

So while he technically didn't see them land with his own eyes directly into the base, up-close, does he accept it did actually happen?

Halt also told Robbins, Warren and Bob Oechsler during a Pentagon City shopping mall meeting that, "the real story was what happened afterward, 'not what happened there.' "(Left at East Gate, Kindle Locations 2136-2138)

Does a 'real story' hint at something even more disarming than the events that occurred? What are to believe? Was there silence afterwards? Confirmation? Does this relate to review of policy/procedure, possible examination of the WSA, debriefings, incoming information relating to similar events? Something even higher relating to the Cold War itself?

The clue may line in the Disclosure event, where Halt states that he "almost forgot about the incident. Gave up" (!):

So I wrote a—how shall I call it—a 'cleaned up' memo, just kind of ... unexplained lights, just to kind of tickle their ... get them to come out and investigate and look into the thing. ... The copy to MoD was apparently buried in the files. Days turned into weeks turned into months and I almost forgot about the incident, to be honest with you. Gave up. Several years later ...

originally posted by: Defragmentor

Halt also told Robbins, Warren and Bob Oechsler during a Pentagon City shopping mall meeting that, "the real story was what happened afterward, 'not what happened there.' "(Left at East Gate, Kindle Locations 2136-2138)

What John Burroughs said about the aftermath in the old Rendlesham incident forum may also interest you:

The C-5 came in the 28th at around 6:00pm. Activity was on 29 and 30. I was posted on gate 29-31. Gate was open late on 29and 30th I was posted 1500-2300. On 31st 1500- 1800.

It landed at Bentwaters.

It was not scheduled and Halt would have been allowed access to what was going on. Also we would have been involved in any kind of security and Halt has stated something happened to the codes!!

Was told when I was posted on the gate not to talk about anything to do with who was involved that was not from the base. I.e. vehicles, personnel or aircraft or anything strange that happened in the sky. Halt opened up the can of worms that it happened and a crew was there so I feel I can talk about that plus he brought up the codes so again I feel no problem in talking about that but that is as far as I will go.

Halt said one of the things they came in to check was the codes in hot row.... That was what he stated and I can say no more on that. There was also statements made about a special team that came in on it with equipment. They parked the C-5 back in an area where it was impossible to see what they were doing and they took care of their own security. I can also say there were a lot of helicopters flying around the forest and vehicles going into the woods.

The C-5 did not land to bring anything in! Also nothing was placed in the forest. What when on with the C-5 crew and what was going on in the forest had to do with them looking for something.

a reply to: Guest101

Now that is interesting. 'They came in to check the codes in hot row', and they were out and about looking for something ...

Something WSA-related seemed to be amiss.

originally posted by: ctj83
I believe, Noyes and yourself (Jenny Randles) both met David Daniels, who Butler believes was an alien. I wonder if that was really just surveillance, of a different form that I believe happened to you.

originally posted by: Jayceedove
I have met one or two people who seemed to think they are aliens. That is as far as I would go with describing any of them.

I'm resurrecting your old post from last July, ctj83, and part of Jenny's reply, because I've only just gotten around to reading the chapters of Brenda Butler and Philip Kinsella's book "Sky Crash Throughout Time" concerning this mysterious David Daniels! The events surrounding him, and his characteristics, seem frankly odd.

This is off-topic but it may be useful information to someone.

In the book, it's revealed that Daniels went to stay with Ralph Noyes for three days. And on one occasion, David raised his arms upwards to the sky while Ralph watched, who was amazed to see three, luminous white lights in the shape of a perfect triangle hovering above them. Noyes wrote letters to Brenda (Feb, Mar 1985) and discussed him. David also arranged a meeting with Lord Hill-Norton at the House of Lords (how easy would something like this be to arrange?). Daniels was not searched by security guards as he and Brenda entered, suggesting he was already very well known to them.

He was capable of mind-reading, teleportation (confirmed by Dot and her daughter Sue) and, on one occasion, shape-shifting: into something reptillian-like with snake-like skin. He carried a blue crystal and a toy bear (!), only ate greens and sweets (to keep his energy levels high) and would steal and bury books (!!). Interestingly, of the book 'Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth', he remarked: "A true book – the only one!" (This book he also buried.)

Also of note, David Daniels may have been seen again in Hawaii and then Australia, both times under the alias 'David Sutherland', and he supposedly visited Wendelle Stevens in jail.

Could "David" have used different aliases as he travelled far and wide?

Sorry to go off-topic.

a reply to: Guest101

Great work G101. It's always helpful to have it all in black and white to refer back to.

Very interesting that Burroughs calls it an object indeed. At that time was he convinced that is what he'd seen? Was it a slip of the tongue or something else? Over to you JB........

One thing that comes up continually in other interviews as well is this

Burroughs.....At that point we got a radio transmission. They’ve just gotten contact from Heathrow tower in London that an object had been seen over our base and that it has disappeared on radar.

Senior Officer possibly Skip Buran - Gentlemen you saw something, Heathrow tower confirms that you saw something, and now let’s go out into the area and see if we can find any physical proof of what happened.”

Note I think this is second hand verbalization so may not be accurate.

Yet to my knowledge not a soul ever tried to follow up and find out from Heathrow Tower if they really did pick up radar paints of an object over the base. I've mentioned this a few times before and it just seems to get ignored. So I assume it either didn't happen and Heathrow were never in contact with anyone at the twin bases. Or that no one has ever come forward to confirm and no researchers have tried to find out.

Halt : My boss was standing in his front yard at Woodbridge and he could see the beams of light falling down. And the people in that weapon storage area and several other places on the base also reported the lights.

I'll come back to this comment later.

Thanks again MM

a reply to: Defragmentor

All good points there my friend.

I talked to Charlie Halt who was the deputy post commander there and I said, "Colonel, the word I got from a General recently was that they screwed up the warheads and scrambled them?"

He said: "Screwed up hell! They stole some of them!"

However, when Halt spoke with Gary Heseltine at the base, Halt states that he had learned from another witness that those beams of light had "in no uncertain terms" shone down into the Weapons Storage Area

What? Who? How? US nuclear warheads compromised on British soil.If that's true then this was an international incident with very grave consequences.

Yet here's the other side of the story.

Colonel John Alexander replying to my question here in 2013

We [the Colonel and Nick Pope] both know Chuck Halt and find him to be a credible witness. Missing in most of the Bentwaters debate is that this was NOT a one or even two night event. Strange things happened long before, and continued well after December 1980. As for going on alert; alert for what reason?

Most of the events happened off the base and there was no threat to the base or the weapons stored there.

See : www.abovetopsecret.com...

Also Tim Eggercic who was working in the Weapons Storage Area (WSA) at Bentwaters on the night in question, doubted Halt’s story. He challenged Halt on a live radio programme back in 2010.

Halt claimed to have a witness saying the airspace above the WSA had been penetrated .Tim Eggercic maintained that he saw nothing to threaten the security of the area. Eggercic goes on to explain that he felt sure he would have been ordered to an alert status and to recall people from their barracks if an ‘unknown’ had got anywhere near to the WSA. Halt sort of backed down then and said he had a problem because the command post didn’t want to do anything.

The show is still available to listen to here : www.behindtheparanormal.com...

Of course Monroe Nevels the on duty Disaster Prepardness Officer has claimed differently. Perhaps he is Halt's witness.



At around 19:40 in the clip goes as follows:

Narrator : "Nick [Pope] wants to know what happened at the nuclear bunker. Colonel Halt was a mile from the base. So Nick tracks down Bentwaters Disaster Preparedness Officer - Monroe Nevels. In the days after the incident Nevels investigates the area. What he discovers is chilling."

Nevels : "One of the light beams...it came down, actually penetrated through one of the bunkers that had the nuclear weapons in it. It actually burned a hole through the bunker there and was able to get through to the site where the weapons were."

Nevel's was part of Halt's patrol on the 3rd night. A good few miles from any Weapon Storage area. So where did this knowledge come from?

Finally let's come back to Halt's statement from the Unsolved Mysteries show.

Halt : My boss was standing in his front yard at Woodbridge and he could see the beams of light falling down. And the people in that weapon storage area and several other places on the base also reported the lights.

However Colonel Ted Conrad the Base Commander refuted that statement entirely in an interview by Dr. David Clarke in 2010.

Col Halt can believe as he wishes. I’ve already disputed to some degree what he reported. However, he should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and England both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better.....

The incident was discovered, investigated, reported and finished all during an eighteen-day period from 27 December…through 13 January 1981 [when Halt’s memo was sent to the Ministry of Defence]. Claims of more sightings at different places and later times are unrelated to the Christmas 1980 event......

Lt Col Halt’s report of more lights both on the ground and in the sky brought quite a few people out of their houses at Woodbridge to see what was there. These people included myself, my wife, Lt Col Sawyer (the Director of Personnel), his wife, and several others listening to my radio and looking for the lights Halt was describing. Despite a sparkling, clear, cloudless, fogless night with a good field of view in all directions, we saw nothing that resembled Lt Col Halt’s descriptions either in the sky or on the ground. This episode ended in the early morning hours of [28 December 1980]....

Source : drdavidclarke.blogspot.co.uk...

This is a problem with the whole narrative to Rendlesham.

Who are we to believe?

Who is still spinning yarns to this day and putting out false information?

Who is holding information back?

But the biggest question is (assuming it wasn't all a lighthouse) who is behind it all?

There is one other source for the Heathrow radar contact: Nevels.
In his Earthfiles interview he told:

The story I got from Lt. Englund was that the London tower on December 25 to 26, when all this started, contacted the tower at Woodbridge base and asked them to identify the object that was above them because it was on their radar and they could not determine what it was.

Robert Hastings also did some very interesting research on what happened at the WSA and on the Bentwaters radar: www.ufohastings.com...

Here is something for those who are in London.

You can have a day out Mirageman considering your
own recent efforts .


www.andrewcollins.com...

Rendlesham forest is about 20 minutes from where I live, everyone knows the story but we don't talk about it much.

originally posted by: Baablacksheep
Here is something for those who are in London.

You can have a day out Mirageman considering your
own recent efforts

.


www.andrewcollins.com...

I think I've got a bonfire to build that day. For Fawkes sake!

a reply to: mirageman


Very amusing MM.

I am certain there shall be
"some" ATS members who will attend.

It will be interesting to finally learn
of how Sacred - Destinations is explained?

And all the rest.....

Has there ever been any historical research done for Woodbridge base?
Could be some ghosts from those two cottages that stood where the runway is in 1931.

originally posted by: Cauliflower
Has there ever been any historical research done for Woodbridge base?
Could be some ghosts from those two cottages that stood where the runway is in 1931.

158 pages later and it was just some ghosts.
Tremendous.