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Rendlesham Forest Incident

definitelymaybe said:
Just a quick word to mods, I think this post should be left visible for non members browsing the forum, by all means embed it into the other Rendlesham post and simply disable comments with a note directing people to comment there, just a thought!

I was just over at my usual watering hole and read this, again it's just gone up and is hot of the press.

For original photos get them from the link, these are reduced in size.


When I was younger I was a poacher, I lived very close to Rendlesham Forest and frequently went poaching there. So back in 1980, 28TH December I was in the forest poaching, now bear this in mind folks, before this encounter I saw and heard a lot of strange things in that forest, I could tell you stories that would bend your bones, so every time I went poaching I always took my camera always hoping to capture some evidence.

OK so let's cut to the chase, so I saw a basket ball sized red orb, it had a black centre like a pupil and looked just like an eye winking at you, just like Halt explained it, it was zig zagging between the trees, ****ing strange, freaked the **** out of me, weird man, proper not right, I saw it before Halt, it passed me first, Halt and his team was about 200 meters away, I could hear all the noise.

Later I saw another UFO it was firing beams of light down to the ground, definitely looking for something, god knows what. I tell you, what I witnessed was simply incredible, definitely extraterrestrial no two ways about it, you lot can read books and watch TV shows about it, but I'm telling you man you had to be there to really understand and appreciate just how incredible this thing was, changed my life for ever, I've sat on this information for over 40 years and it feels good to get it out and show you guys the truth.

After the thing happened I was followed for weeks, I had my phone tapped, scary **** man. Anyway enjoy my photos guys these are the real deal!!! Peace and Love from John The Poacher

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https://www.unexplained-mysteries.c...ged-photographs-of-the-rendlesham-forest-ufo/
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Great photos thank you but I have to ask .. when he was poaching that night, why did he take a camera with him? .. and what sort of camera was it?. An SLR?. We're Forteans so we research thanks in advance.

edit: IMO, the lighting that highlights the front of the trees looks very photoshopped and sharp for a 1980 photo.
 
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He also states that ".. Halt and his team were 200 metres away from me .." .. a team of military professionals specifically that night on a reconnaissance mission to guard a base didn't spot a bloke walking about poaching in the woods? ..
 
Comfortably Numb said:
In truth, like many others, I once had greater faith in the trustworthiness of our elemental, celebrated UFO story.

Regrettably, same as them, it has diminished and latterly become extinguished.
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Did someone just stir life back into remaining embers... :dinner:

For I have never seen this before and some of the content might raise a few eyebrows...

 
Carl Grove said:
I begin to feel a bit sorry for Halt, it seems that he was kept out of the loop regarding some secret activity. That is one thing that confirms that it was a really secret black project crash --
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The problem there, is we merely have that anecdote from John Burroughs.

How would he possibly know Halt was, 'out of the loop'...

Still can't see any evidence for a crash and so far as a black project...

Nothing new in the video just posted.

Fair enough, there is the, entirely new to myself, story of our anonymous guy who strolls into the RAF Bentwaters observation tower - presumably authorised - as if he owns the place, says nothing, watches whatever he's interested in for around half an hour and then leaves.

I mean, you would hardly call that evidence...

Would you...

:cool:
 
Comfortably Numb said:
...anonymous guy who strolls into the RAF Bentwaters observation tower - presumably authorised - as if he owns the place...
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"I was not there the night of the incident, however, the morning after, staff in the WSA were still in a heightened state of alert, IE more personnel in the WSA than normal. Why?? Who knows".

"When I came in the next morning, all I sawl was a lot of our staff in uniform and in civilian dress, posted about the weapons storage area, and everyone being told to not ask questions, just doour jobs.

To me it appeared to be no more than a regular training or alert drill after which there is normally a higher level of visible security at the twin bases anyway. It was months after the incident that rumor's of the UFO began to surface".

Mike Jenkins.
(...)


A "training exercise", or "alert drill", during the Christmas & New Year holiday period...?


"We would not have had an exercise during the Christmas holiday period".

SMSgt Kevin Conde.
 
Comfortably Numb said:
A "training exercise", or "alert drill", during the Christmas & New Year holiday period...?
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There are two good reasons for performing such occasional exercises during the holiday period - both of which I've experienced in other workplace contexts:

(1) The holiday period can be seen as a time of particular vulnerability owing to reduced staffing and increased chances of inattention.

(2) The relative lack or even absence of the facility's usual task and formal interaction burdens makes it a good time to perform tests and exercises with minimal disruption to the facility's usual operations and functions.
 
Swifty said:
Great photos thank you but I have to ask .. when he was poaching that night, why did he take a camera with him? .. and what sort of camera was it?. An SLR?. We're Forteans so we research thanks in advance.

edit: IMO, the lighting that highlights the front of the trees looks very photoshopped and sharp for a 1980 photo.
Click to expand...

Agreed - on both counts ... I was wondering whether anyone else would make note of these two incongruous points.

IMHO there's definitely a third situational issue as well. If a poacher (someone doing something he shouldn't, and for which he might face legal ramifications) at night in the woods saw a bright light at a possibly close distance in the forest, why would his reaction be to stay in place and take pictures of it?
 
One more issue with the photos ... If it's nighttime and there's really such a bright single point light source out front among the surrounding trees, why aren't there any shadows (even fainter secondary shadows) being cast toward the camera?
 
These look like the product of somebody editing a photo and accidentally turning the contrast up to 90/100.

What kind of camera natively produces the kind of 'texture' seen on those tree trunks?

How deep are the grooves in that bark?

Further:

When I was younger I was a poacher, I lived very close to Rendlesham Forest and frequently went poaching there. So back in 1980, 28TH December I was in the forest poaching, now bear this in mind folks, before this encounter I saw and heard a lot of strange things in that forest, I could tell you stories that would bend your bones, so every time I went poaching I always took my camera always hoping to capture some evidence.

OK so let's cut to the chase, so I saw a basket ball sized red orb, it had a black centre like a pupil and looked just like an eye winking at you, just like Halt explained it, it was zig zagging between the trees, ****ing strange, freaked the **** out of me, weird man, proper not right, I saw it before Halt, it passed me first, Halt and his team was about 200 meters away, I could hear all the noise.

Later I saw another UFO it was firing beams of light down to the ground, definitely looking for something, god knows what. I tell you, what I witnessed was simply incredible, definitely extraterrestrial no two ways about it, you lot can read books and watch TV shows about it, but I'm telling you man you had to be there to really understand and appreciate just how incredible this thing was, changed my life for ever, I've sat on this information for over 40 years and it feels good to get it out and show you guys the truth.

After the thing happened I was followed for weeks, I had my phone tapped, scary **** man. Anyway enjoy my photos guys these are the real deal!!! Peace and Love from John The Poacher
__________________________________________________________

John was a young (presumably British by spelling) poacher in 1980.

Let's assume he was roughly 16 to 20 years old.

That puts his year of birth between 1960 and 1964.

This makes him now between 57 and 61.

The level of English with standard illiteracies seems about right, but some of the turns of phrase suggest a younger author to me.

Few Brits of that vintage would make comparisons of size to a basketball instead of a football (soccer ball), which is only slightly smaller.

I'm not really comfortable with it 'freaked the fuck out of him'. This chap is submitting material on the Internet by email, so he is in some sense alive to modern culture, but few British men I know of that age would employ this idiom. Similarly 'proper not right' is idiomatically authentically British, but as you know, the slang of our youth tends to stick, and that one's (I'm open to correction here) too late to be age-appropriate.

Countrymen among you: what do you poach in British forests in late December? I'm going to check the historic weather reports.
 
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Comfortably Numb said:
I have never seen this before...
Click to expand...
"THE THIRD INCIDENT"

This begins with the riveting and apparently corroborating testimony of Airman Lori Bouen.

I am familiar with Lori's story, as she contacted myself back in 1999, when known as 1LT Lori E. Rehfeld

We correspondend for a time and Lori provided a detailed account of one puzzling observation she experienced while on guard duty at east gate, RAF Woodbridge.

With Lori's permission, I published this on the UFO Research List (UFORL), which I operated at that time.

In this documentary, her seemingly substantiating account of our third night, tieing all of the events together, is introduced:

"Airman Lori Bouen had no knowledge of what happened the night before...".

It's a remarkable tale...

Especially as Lori wasn't even serving on base at the time, as she confirmed in her initial correspondence:

"I departed RAF Bentwaters in mid-December 1980. I wasn't there when the incident happened".

The story Lori as told to myself and which was published, relates to an earlier and undated recollection.
 
EnolaGaia said:
One more issue with the photos ... If it's nighttime and there's really such a bright single point light source out front among the surrounding trees, why aren't there any shadows (even fainter secondary shadows) being cast toward the camera?
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Here’s a wallpaper l found after some Googling:

nature-landscape-trees-forest-wallpaper.jpg


Although the light source appears to be larger, more powerful and more diffuse than the “Rendlesham UFO”, we can all note the following:

a) The trees cast shadows towards the observer, and;

b) There is no detail visible on “our” side of the trees; they are plain black silhouettes.

It is implausible that a country poacher with an Instamatic, or possibly a posher 35mm camera and Tri-X film, could produce the images we see in the OP. As a poacher, and wanting to be surreptitious, l doubt whether he’d be using flash, or a tripod for long exposure work.

maximus otter
 
Yithian said:
a) Is this a confession?

b) I meant, what is typically easier or more desirable to obtain in the depths of winter?
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a) :dsist:

b) At night, in woods, he might well be out for pheasants roosting low in trees. He could take those with an air rifle or even a catapult. He might also be checking snares for rabbits.

Edited to add: Something like a Pedretti folding .410 fitted with a sound moderator (“silencer”) would be Gucci kit for a 1980 poacher:

20150412_191939.jpg


maximus otter
 
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definitelymaybe said:
a quick word to mods, I think this post should be left visible for non members browsing the forum..
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It would be anyway. Non-members can see all threads that registered posters can.
definitelymaybe said:
..by all means embed it into the other Rendlesham post and simply disable comments with a note directing people to comment there, just a thought!
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Thank you for the suggestion. As per our usual, accepted policy however I am now going to merge the whole series of posts into the Rendlesham thread, because as much as anything else:
definitelymaybe said:
...I just got the link from another website.
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..by your own admission, they're not even your photographs (which in themselves are somewhat dubious.)

Threads merged.
 
maximus otter said:
b) At night, in woods, he might well be out for pheasants roosting low in trees. He could take those with an air rifle or even a catapult. He might also be checking snares for rabbits.
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Vince the forester once told me when he first saw the lighthouse between the trees he thought it was poachers "lamping" deer. See the very bottom of this page
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham1c.html
 
definitelymaybe said:
original photos
Click to expand...

After a little work IMO these 'photos' are all basically 'photographs of prints'.
Running them through the same bit of software I used previously to adjust for contrast/brightness/sharpness I find that they have very little change, indicating that they are not original photos taken with a digital camera which have then been uploaded (the digital aspect of an original would include a lot of extra exposure information).

In conclusion, due to the high level of detail on the tree barks and surrounding area these pics were;
Originally taken in full daylight (around noon ish which accounts for the shadows within the tree bark)
Taken with a standard black and white, 35mm camera.
Contrast/brightness adjusted to make it appear to be night-time (possibly also negative image)
Crudely printed onto photographic paper with an overlay to depict a ball of light and 'light beams'.
Then those prints were subsequently photographed.

Not exactly advanced photographic skills.
 
Comfortably Numb said:
For I have never seen this before and some of the content might raise a few eyebrows...
Click to expand...
This seems to be a mash-up from lots of earlier programmes.
It includes poor old Lori Rehfeldt, who I think was hoaxed by her unkind colleagues using lights on a police car, like the Kevin Conde hoax (it could even have been him). And an excerpt from the SciFi channel programme of 2003 in which Penniston introduces the fake notebook for the first time.
Most interesting in light (sic) of the recent stills posted here is that the lighting on the trees in the opening sequence is very similar to what it is on those stills -- obvious floodlighting. Perhaps the stills were screengrabbed from such a made-for-TV reconstruction.
 
definitelymaybe said:
Just a quick word to mods, I think this post should be left visible for non members browsing the forum, by all means embed it into the other Rendlesham post and simply disable comments with a note directing people to comment there, just a thought!

I was just over at my usual watering hole and read this, again it's just gone up and is hot of the press.

For original photos get them from the link, these are reduced in size.


When I was younger I was a poacher, I lived very close to Rendlesham Forest and frequently went poaching there. So back in 1980, 28TH December I was in the forest poaching, now bear this in mind folks, before this encounter I saw and heard a lot of strange things in that forest, I could tell you stories that would bend your bones, so every time I went poaching I always took my camera always hoping to capture some evidence.

OK so let's cut to the chase, so I saw a basket ball sized red orb, it had a black centre like a pupil and looked just like an eye winking at you, just like Halt explained it, it was zig zagging between the trees, ****ing strange, freaked the **** out of me, weird man, proper not right, I saw it before Halt, it passed me first, Halt and his team was about 200 meters away, I could hear all the noise.

Later I saw another UFO it was firing beams of light down to the ground, definitely looking for something, god knows what. I tell you, what I witnessed was simply incredible, definitely extraterrestrial no two ways about it, you lot can read books and watch TV shows about it, but I'm telling you man you had to be there to really understand and appreciate just how incredible this thing was, changed my life for ever, I've sat on this information for over 40 years and it feels good to get it out and show you guys the truth.

After the thing happened I was followed for weeks, I had my phone tapped, scary **** man. Anyway enjoy my photos guys these are the real deal!!! Peace and Love from John The Poacher

View attachment 38463

View attachment 38464

View attachment 38465

View attachment 38466

View attachment 38467

View attachment 38468

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.c...ged-photographs-of-the-rendlesham-forest-ufo/
Click to expand...

On those B/W photos. It’s odd that the side of the trunk facing the camera is better lit than the side facing the bright light source. You’d also expect some rim lighting on the sides of the tree trunks. The last two pics looking up... well that sure is a bright light but it doesn’t seem to be doing much in the way of lighting the surrounding foliage considering the intensity.
Also, it all seems quite clear considering reported misty conditions.
 
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