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

a reply to: Defragmentor

Right I'm back from where I returned from now. The Adrian Bustinza event before Bentwaters is on p173 of this thread but for sake of ease let's repeat it here.

It occurred at Mather Air Force Base. In the interview with Larry Fawcett (FC) from 1987 he says:

AB – There, we didn’t really see muchwe were all out on the perimeter. The alert pad and bright lights lit up the whole area, and there was something in the middle of the pad but hovering about, oh, forty, fifty feet above in the air. Real shiny lights. You couldn’t even look up at it really–bright, bright lights all around. And then it just disappeared. We called it in, they just started laughing at us.
LF – What was your unit at the time?
AB – 320 SPS.
LF – What year was that, do you remember?
AB – ’77,’78, or ’79.
LF – You don’t remember exactly?
AB – I don’t remember exactly. I put that one way behind me. It was one of the first times and the last one for me until I went to Bentwaters.

Full source : Link

There was a a maximum of 3 years there but he had no memory of when it occurred. Not even to the nearest year???

The story he gave in the radio interview in your earlier post is summarised very briefly below for those who haven't the time to listen to it all




1. Strange Lights reports by a guard at the East Gate.
2. Adrian picks up Lt. Englund and MSgt. Bobby Ball and takes them into the forest.
3. He is sent back to get light-alls. They fail to work so he goes back again with still no joy.
4. He is then summoned to join Halt's party following odd light(s) in the forest.
5. He remembers a strange yellow mist on the ground.
6. The lights flew above them at one stage. The larger amber coloured one changed colour to a whitish blue as it sped off leaving a draft and then appeared to fracture into pieces.
7. The light that shone down was fuzzy like when dust particles are caught in powerful lights. He could see silhouettes but was not sure if they were just shadows from the other men around him. Apparently Larry was with him at this point walking around the lights.
8. The lights/objects then exploded 'like a bubble that bursts into different smaller bubbles'.
9. Later Bustinza remembered being with Halt as John requested to go forward to the lights and Adrian was told to follow him.
10. John was a few yards ahead in a clearing and another snowy light shone down on him. Adrian felt like something pushed him downward and his hand was engulfed by the light and it felt warm. He said John seemed to be looking up into the light. Adrian remembers a silhouette in the light but it was not well defined and then everything went dark.



I might have made a few errors there so if anyone wants to correct me feel free.

At the start of the third night (27/28 dec), the events that unfolded were similar to the events on the first night (25/26 dec). First, lights were seen above and in the forest (by Battram and his men), then a small group was sent out to investigate.

At some point Bustinza was with this first group.

According to Boeche, in the 1986 MUFON Symposium Proceedings:

After leaving the base and proceeding into Rendlesham Forest, the three men finally came upon the object itself. Airman A [Bustinza] continues:
“The thing had a pulsating red light on top of it and several blue lights underneath it. Everytime we got close to it, it would move away from us through the trees, then we’d try and catch up to it again.”

At this point, Col. Halt was contacted once more and advised of the situation. Halt indicated that he would be on the scene shortly.

Three men following an object through the forest on Dec 27.

It does resemble the events described by Conrad in 1983 (Omni magazine) pretty well:

”At 10 30 on that fateful night five Air Force policemen spotted lights from what they thought was a small plane descending into the forest.... Two of the men tracked the object on foot and came upon a large tripod-mounted craft. It had no windows but was studded with brilliant red and blue lights.

Each time the men came within 50 yards of the ship it levitated six feet in the air and backed away/ They followed it for almost an hour through the woods and across a field until it took off at a phenomenal speed.”

The first sightings on Dec 27 by Battram and his party may have well been at around 10:30 PM.

Maybe Halt mixed up these events (and their date) with the events of the first night in his memo?

a reply to: mirageman

Mirageman, your posts have provided an excellent read.

Might I ask in relation to the recent Doty, Linda and John show recently, do you have any thoughts about it?

a reply to: Guest101

The first sightings on Dec 27 by Battram and his party may have well been at around 10:30 PM. Maybe Halt mixed up these events (and their date) with the events of the first night in his memo?

Maybe he did? But he has no excuses for doing so. Other than his own ulterior motives or he was ordered to purposely do so. The Conrad interview was conducted and published in Omni in 1983 so Halt could not be referring to that. Conrad has some plausible reasons for not remembering. He would not have had base records to hand by 1983.

There is something not right about the background to how Halt's memo was eventually constructed and belatedly dispatched to the MoD. Probably because of disputes between the base commander and his deputy of whether further actions were required.

Halt had a collection of witness statements and supposedly his LE/SPS blotters to refer to in the leisurely time he took to conceive his memo. It is therefore inconceivable that any senior military officer would just trust their memory when bringing up and detailing such matters with the British Ministry of Defence. It's also unlikely he wouldn't remember the correct dates given that Christmas Night/Boxing Day was the first night of reports.

I suspect Conrad did not support Halt's stance and personally did not wish to escalate the issue with the MoD. So he compromised, allowing Halt to alert them, on condition Halt wrote and signed the letter. This would also subtly show Conrad's lack of support for Halt as he didn't even offer a covering letter. However Halt wished to avoid things easily leading straight back to him. So he messed around with the dates in the memo with future FOI requests in mind. [That's all just conjecture. The other option is that Halt was a bumbling forgetful man, second in command of one of NATO's largest military bases. If that was the case then what else has he forgotten or mixed up down the years?]

a reply to: Baablacksheep

......in relation to the recent Doty, Linda and John show recently, do you have any thoughts about it?

Give me some time on that one. I have to listen to it all first.

Good day mirageman. I thought I would bring the following to your attention as it is an interview with Monroe Nevells.

This is a brief layout of the main points to the first 25 mins.

Please note Monroe says for him, it started on 28th in the afternoon as his wife was at dinner at the officer's club.

Also note the starscope part at the end.

1. 28TH December 15:30 to 16:00hrs.
Bruce Englund knocks at Monroe Nevells.
2. They talked for a while. Bruce searched his home, claimed what they discussed was top secret.
3. Bruce claims he was asked to contact Monroe for his opinion on the first night of events from the site. (Q. Due to his Disaster Preparedness status?)
4. On way out, they discussed what was witnessed the first night.
5. Went to East Gate, reached site.
6. Went out on own. Bruce stays in jeep.
7. Found indentations. Takes mental note of site and indentations and surrounding area.
8. It gets dark and Bruce claims Ted calls them back to the function.
9. Bruce notifies Commander (Ted Conrad) when arriving at Officers Club dinner.
10. Ted Conrad speaks (outside) with Monroe. Asks if it is worth taking a look.
11. Monroe says ‘Most definitely. It is Commander’
12. Ted ‘are you ready to go?’
13. All then went into dinner, briefed the officers and Ted and Halt asked if he was willing to go in front of everyone. ‘ready to go’
14. Asked Monroe about going out and both Halt Monroe go to Monroe base office for cameras, and radiation detector PDR43B
15. Later went out to site with Halt and Halt ‘Showed him what was going on(?)
16. Notes Halts voice recorder with only 30 mins available. Didnt know what was available.
17. Light alls arrive. Took radiac readings of indentations.
18. All 3 showed low readings. (0.5 on the scale)
19. Monroe moves around area and notice trees burnt in a uniformed pattern/chard (like something had radiated out)
20. Trees tested, probe tested as radiac jumps from 1 to 35 on the scale..
21. Halt sees lights, they go chasing after
22. Farm animals go silent after earlier sounding manic. 22:00 hrs
23. Then the next bit is history (Monroe Nevells)
24. 3 radio frequencies at once, adding to confusion.
25. Events seemed to be happening quickly to the naked eye. The group went out into the (first) farmer’s field. Noted puddles on ground from creek bed. Bright moon lit night.
26. To his left in the farmers field about 200yds saw something that at first looked yellow, but then seemed to be of alternate colours (red yellow flashing, maybe blue).
27. Monroe saw sparks falling off light object that resembled bubbling/overflowing hot iron in a pot and reports this to Halt.(yellowish, something dropped off)
28. Halt asks Monroe if they should check it out, so they jump over the fence to the second field to investigate.
29. The lit object then moves towards them and disappears. Nobody could locate the lit object.
30. Monroe lays on back to view the sky to get a better perspective as he noticed 3 lights. Monroe noticed 2 dimmer ones at rear one brighter light in front.
31. The one in front started to move then they disappeared. Over the radio channel they hear they then appeared over Bentwaters. In just over a minute, they were again over their location.
32. Monroe says from his perspective ‘They followed lights and then the lights seemed to appear 1000 Feet up in the air over the WSA. Saw telescoping lights (laser beams) One went down over WSA. They also popped out one time (Laser light) near our feet. Laser beam hit ground, moved around a bit then it was gone.’
33. Stayed out till morning. (Q. Morning (didn’t look at watch all night) Would the morning then be recognised to Monroe as sunrise, which would be around 7 or 8 am?)
34. Monroe states ‘Scratching neck all night due to electrostatic in area’
35. (This is where Halts sighting of the object through the Star-scope comes into question) Monroe goes on to talk about the approach to the first site in the jeep with Bruce. This is where he saw a light through Night vision goggles in a field on the way, not a Star-scope.
36. He left the jeep to get a better view of the lit object. This is where Monroe goes on to talk about the eyeball sitting in one spot, ‘as long as we were on road, looked like blackness that got brighter, but when leaving jeep, it got brighter, then resided when getting back into jeep.’
They then make their way to the Officers club to inform Ted Conrad and Halt.
www.behindtheparanormal.com...

a reply to: AdamE

Hi Adam,

Thanks for pulling this together.

Were you somehow guessing that the days following the first night of the incident were to be scrutinized in this thread as well?

This does not reflect against you as the messenger. Just as my comments earlier were nothing against Guest101 who has added much valued information as well.

I haven't checked that interview today and it might be a while before I am able to. But I can say that Nevels has got his dates wrong. He can't have been out investigating on the afternoon of the 28th with the Xmas Party following that evening.

Why not?

Nick Redfern did some digging nearly 30 years ago and found that Col. Halt called for a radar confirmation at 03:25 on the early morning of the 28th Dec 1980. The RAF Watton (Eastern Radar) log book does confirm a report from Bentwaters of a UFO at that time. Although the response is that all other records were disposed of.



On point 33 - if Nevels is talking about morning in East Anglia, in late December then you are talking about 8:00 - 8:15am before the sun begins to rise. That's if the usual cloud cover isn't present to darken the day even more.

I would suggest he met with Englund on the afternoon of the 27th Dec 1980 and then later joined up with Halt. Finally returning to base around 4am as that is time checked as when the Halt tape ends.

Nevels is also the guy who claimed a hole was burned into the Weapons Storage Areas. That's an interesting story from 2016 in this thread as well but you'll have to go nostalgic and read it all through. He seems to be another witness with a faulty memory. My hunch would be that Nevels really did get his dates mixed up as he's hardly a 'frontline witness'.

But thanks for filling us all in with a bit more information.

a reply to: mirageman

LOL. On the contrary. I was just highlighting discrepancies in another witness testimony that may not have been covered already, which includes the date and with the description given by Halt.
I should have made that clear.
Please note that he stated tree Radiac jump from 1 to 5, not 1 to 35 as written.

a reply to: mirageman

Yes, the memo is pretty confusing, which may have been done deliberately.

It already starts in the first sentence:

Early in the morning of 27 Dec 80 (approximately 0300L)

0300L means 03:00 Lima time. Lima time is a military time zone running 11 hours ahead of UTC. So 0300L corresponds to 02:00 PM local time, which is in the afternoon. Yet the memo states that is was ‘early in the morning’. So which is it ..?

The memo does not contain any requests to the MOD so it seems a ‘FYI’ memo. Or maybe in this case: FYD (For Your Disinformation) ...

a reply to: Guest101

It’s worth noting that the supposed faked MOD memo Randles felt was intended to discredit her, was manipulated by the publisher just before the printing of SkyCrash.

Of course this is the memo that Doty mentions and is close to Steve Roberts, Warren and one others persons description of short metricly measured aliens in silver jump suits.

So what was edited out by the publisher? A security stamp saying “U.K. Eyes B”.

Noyes himself debunked the document after mysteriously and inexplicably inviting himself to join the investigation (a letter he denied having written later on).

I’ve also read certain aspects of the memo’s stationary were similar to Noyes or official stationary.

a reply to: AdamE

That's OK. Thanks for clarifying. I believe Nevels may be helping another witness to write their book with some information. But other than that he hasn't really been a prominent speaker. Nor has he tried to control the narrative like others have.

a reply to: Guest101

0300L means 03:00 Lima time. Lima time is a military time zone running 11 hours ahead of UTC. So 0300L corresponds to 02:00 PM local time, which is in the afternoon. Yet the memo states that is was ‘early in the morning’. So which is it ..?

Deary me. To be honest I suspected it could have been just a typo and Halt (or his secretary) meant to hit the ' ; ' (semi-colon) which is just to the right of the 'L' on the keyboard. But who knows?

The memo does not contain any requests to the MOD so it seems a ‘FYI’ memo. Or maybe in this case: FYD (For Your Disinformation) ...

Yes indeed. As discussed earlier as well. The Base Commander kept himself out of any correspondence with the UK MoD. Don Moreland the RAF liaison officer actually wrote a covering note for Halt. This was dated the 15th January 1981!! It's brazenly titled "Unidentified Flying Objects" in direct contrast to Halt's low key "Unexplained Lights".

But its message is "..MoD do as you see fit with this memo". And they did!

a reply to: ctj83

I haven't caught up with the latest Doty interview on KGRA in full.

But it is very strange how he discusses (about 60 mins in ) that 2 or 3 witnesses had seen aliens about 1.5m tall (and stresses the odd use of metric in the OSI report to describe them. Maybe he hadn't read this thread!!). Then Linda Howe jumps straight in with the exact page from one of her books where this HOAX memo features. It was like she had it all on hand ready to go within seconds when required. Why would that be?

Here it is the HOAX memo taken from the MoD reports DEFE 24-1948-1.



It can also be seen here : MoD UFO file part 3. The letter is page 34 and an MoD confirmation that it was a hoax/joke included on page 32. Many others have stated it was a hoax as well.

Now why Linda failed to mention this was a known fraudulent document I don't know? I can guess why...

She then plugs her book yet again. Reads out the memo. Which even at a glance does not look like a British MoD official wrote. Not by referring to OSI. A British officila would surely use "U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations" to be perfectly clear. But Doty didn't seem to take the bait and denied any knowledge of seeing anything in the mysterious file relating to Linda's HOAX document.

As regards Noyes I've always found his position in the UFO field rather odd. He was head of the MoD Defence Secretariat 8 (DS8) in the early 1970s and in the perfect position to know what was going on in our skies (if anything) but seemed to feel there was something more to it all than he was ever made privy to.

Anyway...when I've heard the full interview I'll comment further.

a reply to: mirageman

Now why Linda failed to mention this was a known fraudulent document I don't know?

Why has she? Its not exactly acceptable is it ?

a reply to: Baablacksheep

It seems that either Linda has an eidetic memory, or she had the book at hand and was prepared. The preparation angle is odd considering that she contributed so little and essentially let Doty off the hook for her own treatment...

a reply to: ctj83


Here is a you tube version. Comments are welcome so it appears.



www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: mirageman
Why has Penniston continually claimed Cabansag was the radio relay when the witness statements obviously point to it being Chandler?

You queried if there’s method in the madness. During the Joiner interview (13-Jan-2011), Penniston comes to a moment of ‘total recall’:

A. Joiner- Okay. Is there anything outstanding between you that you don't agree on or that you remember differently?

J. Penniston- Oh quite a few things. One of them was uh.. I was adamant about too, that Ed Cabansag, our third member, was left back for a radio relay. And uh..then when I.. and it's always been that way for 30 years I've said the same thing. And John's disagreed with that, and uh..he says no he was with us. And so when we went out and recreated the lo.., uh..the y'know. uh..went out for the situation with the uh..film company, I did have total recall and there I did remember Cabansag with us y'know and his position on my team where he was at, where John was at, I mean I had total recall then I was.. So John was actually right about that.

And uh.. and uh..I didn't know uh..otherwise until the uh..y'know the 26th of December of uh..of uh..2010 that that was the case. I mean there's other things that come up too that uh..like the location. And some of this is because of false memory implanted by the NSA or whoever it was at OSI.

Thinking aloud here: what if everything (or much of what) you thought you knew to be true, wasn’t true? You might swear blind that your version of events is true. You may become antagonistic about it when challenged to the contrary. Vehement disputes might develop. You might naturally deflect blame if "caught out".

If something more sinister is behind some of the 'memories' of events, attributing for some of the conflicting testimony, then perhaps witnesses are more innocent than we might believe.

a reply to: Defragmentor

I believe I can add a hypothesis here that might bring some illumination.

- John Burroughs was offered treatment as part of a UAP group run by Hal Puthoff and Dr Kit Green
- Penniston turned down treatment believing some requirement to be too onerous
- The UAP group has around 70 members who are all experiencers and they display, according to Dr Green in Annie Jacobs book Phenomena various immunological changes, epigeneitc changes and self perceived psychic ability
- According to Garry Nolan and Dr Green, there are also brain changes in a specific area associated with the paranormal

Here is where it gets interesting
- The members of the UAP groups immune system changes cannot lie according to Nolan, and also with MRI testing for brain changes the experiences can be defined as a physical encounter not mental

- another member is Chris Bledsoe whose experience resulted in his Crohn’s disease entering remission

Remember what Nolan said about getting the truth and Dr Green saying all members are non delusional, rational people with physical effects from their encounters?

Watch the MUFOn documentary investigating Bledso. According to their lie detector almost nothing came back as being truth, and it seems like some cams back as definite falsehood.

One such example was Bledsoe and son encountering aliens in their back yard. Bledsoe himself stated on camera that the encounter has a weird duality to him where he felt it was both real and unreal!

Which leaves us with the following:
- The Phenomena created the false memories
- there was no encounter at all
- Some actor created the memories of aliens to destroy credibility (see RFI confusion)

Which leaves us with just two possible conclusions:
- Either the UAP group is not filled with the genuine experiencers described by Nolan and Dr Green. In which case the true nature of the group is unknown .
- Or a third agency interfered in the Bledsoe case to destroy credibility and likely did in the case of the binary code

How else can Bledsoe and Burroughs (and potentially Penniston at one point) be part of a group with definitive brain changes, immological and epigenetic changes?

a reply to: Defragmentor
Our memories degrade over time even if there's no interference from anyone else, OSI or otherwise.

Even when this is proven to us, we will adamantly deny it, so we are quite irrational in thinking our memories preserve what happened when they get worse and worse with more and more time. Any good investigator knows this and will attempt to seek witness statements to an event being investigated as soon as possible after the event, because they know that even days later things will have been forgotten, or worse, mis-remembered in a way they didn't happen like Penniston's Cabansag story (Still not sure which is right but the two conflicting versions can't both be right so one must be wrong).

I made a thread about this issue and think it's worth mentioning how the subject research confirms there's no need for OSI to screw with our memories to mis-remember things:

You Have No Idea What Happened (We get many details wrong when recalling past memories)

One interesting finding in the research: When someone is very confident their old memory is correct, it's no more likely to be correct so we shouldn't put much weight on so-called "moments of clarity", which may just be another wrong memory.

You Have No Idea What Happened

When the psychologists rated the accuracy of the students’ recollections for things like where they were and what they were doing, the average student scored less than three on a scale of seven. A quarter scored zero. But when the students were asked about their confidence levels, with five being the highest, they averaged 4.17. Their memories were vivid, clear—and wrong. There was no relationship at all between confidence and accuracy.

This is why the witness statements closest to the event get the highest weight, and in the RFI case it's quite obvious how accuracy has degraded over time since we have different versions of events told by the same people at different points in time. None of the students in the research claimed OSI was messing with their memories, but they just didn't believe their memories could be that wrong.

a reply to: Defragmentor

You queried if there’s method in the madness. During the Joiner interview (13-Jan-2011), Penniston comes to a moment of ‘total recall’:

And then comes the book "Encounter in Rendlesham Forest" published Mar 2015. Some four years later.



So it looks Cabansag went forward but only a bit further forward as Chandler was now the relay. Still leaving only Burroughs and Penniston.
Four years on and it's more like a moment of "Scrotal Recall"? Penniston talking bollocks again (Sorry I just couldn't help that joke no matter how bad taste it is).

Maybe he's now compromising with Burroughs? Cabansag isn't quite up at the front with both of them but neither is he back at the jeep. Cabansag of course does not remember being a radio relay at all. So what is the truth?

However he could also be purposely relegating Cabansag's role so it becomes his word against Burroughs as the magic happened in the forest. Whereas leave Cabansag in the story and it's a 2:1 majority against him

Thinking aloud here: what if everything (or much of what) you thought you knew to be true, wasn’t true? You might swear blind that your version of events is true. You may become antagonistic about it when challenged to the contrary.

Believe me. I have a completely contradictory memory to one of my best friends of an event that happened at the end of the last century. We laugh about it now because it was not traumatic. But we still can't agree, at all, as to what happened. So yes memory can be a tricky thing.

If something more sinister is behind some of the 'memories' of events, attributing for some of the conflicting testimony, then perhaps witnesses are more innocent than we might believe.

There seems to be an underlying layer of the case. Were some of the witnesses messed around with chemical or even technological methods to scramble their memories? Does this explain why things are so divergent? Surely you agree that Penniston's account is by far the most problematic one?

a reply to: ctj83

- Either the UAP group is not filled with the genuine experiencers described by Nolan and Dr Green. In which case the true nature of the group is unknown .

I think I will go with that one.

As far as the binary goes without the men telling all the details one
may as well discuss the weather.