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Any lens flare effect from Sirius would have been quite dim, and I think the exact details would have been difficult to observe. I really wouldn't like to say exactly what Halt and the others saw, but long, thin optical flares seem likely to have been part of it. And of course, none of this rules out an alien ship- the same optical effects would apply to a luminous spacecraft.
 
With or without hypnotic regression (or any other procedure) having been conducted with him, Penniston's comment emerged circa 13.5 years after the fact.
In a previous reply, I noted having come across a reference to possible archive ParaNet case evidence which I was trying to track down.

It does exist and I have eventually located a source for same.

It's a online broadcast from 1994, featuring both Burroughs and Penniston.

I have, literally, only just established a link to it minutes ago and have not heard any of the content, as yet.

So, here it is and let's see what transpires...

https://avalonlibrary.net/Paranet_a...oughs - Bentwaters AFB UFO (July 10 1994).mp3
 
HALT: This is unreal.

One merely mentions the above, because I have spent some time this morning examining my own case material for this very same thing.

Spooky! :omg:

Can you please let us know who you believe were present?

Does Major Malcolm Zickler feature therein and it so, can you cite the source for believing so?

Apparently he had two titles, Commander of the Security Oolice Squadron and Chief of Security Police. He was the commander of security and law enforcement and thus a seriously important participent, if true.

I have entirely conflicting accounts regarding this.
So far, working my way through Bruni (and coming across evidence from a civilian witness that partially corroborates one of Halt's sightings in the forest), I have come across her comments about a strange anomaly in Halt's original memorandum. Describing the experiences of the group in the forest, Halt claims: "Numerous individuals, including the undersigned, witnessed the activities in paragraphs 2 and 3." Obviously "numerous" would imply more than 5. However, she then quotes the Rayl interview that there were also 25 or 30 security men in the forest, but when she asked Halt he claimed he had ordered a group of men to stay back while he went off with four senior men. There is obviously some ambiguity there and one wonders whether the security men would stay where they were for several hours while the other five went off into the forest, or maybe follow at a discreet distance. Later she asks Sgt Rick Bobo, who was in the Bentwaters tower. He was the first to raise the alarm when he saw "a huge ship... very low with lots of red and blue lights on it and I saw something come away from it and land in amongst the trees.." He was listening to the radio transmissions from the group, and also heard confirmation that London had spotted something on radar. He heard that the group had found low radiation levels, commenting on the three landing impressions, and were following a light through the forest but they kept changing frequencies so he didn't hear everything. However, I still have a feeling I have come across something more definite than that! Zickler certainly figures a lot in Bruni, notably as someone who was at a film presentation given to one of the witnesses about the reality of UFOs...
 
Obviously "numerous" would imply more than 5. However, she then quotes the Rayl interview that there were also 25 or 30 security men in the forest, but when she asked Halt he claimed he had ordered a group of men to stay back while he went off with four senior men.
That ties in with my understanding.

There were several others who took an interest and told to stay back, including Burroughs.

Aside from Ball, Englund and Nevilles, my case notes indicate that Master Sergeant J. D. Chandler, Security Flight Chief (who was involved in the first night's incident and we have his written statement re this) was another in Halt's assembled team.

If correct, for the remaining of our five, I have a reference to Sgt Adrian Bustinza, although this seems to be unsubstantiated and controversial, as he was supportive of Larry Warren's claimed involvement.

Shall see if I can clarify further.

Your comments re Zickler are of great interest, thanks and I will certainly follow this up forthwith!
 
So, here it is and let's see what transpires.
Burroughs 1994 revelation - new to myself - that Halt's involvement occurred during the third consecutive night of a, 'UFO sighting' from what seems to be the same vicinity is a game changer for myself and now probably sets other pieces of the puzzle in context.

That so to the extent I would now consider all other enigmatic factors as merely incidental.

Having said that... :)

I may change my mind in the morning.
 
That ties in with my understanding.

There were several others who took an interest and told to stay back, including Burroughs.

Aside from Ball, Englund and Nevilles, my case notes indicate that Master Sergeant J. D. Chandler, Security Flight Chief (who was involved in the first night's incident and we have his written statement re this) was another in Halt's assembled team.

If correct, for the remaining of our five, I have a reference to Sgt Adrian Bustinza, although this seems to be unsubstantiated and controversial, as he was supportive of Larry Warren's claimed involvement.

Shall see if I can clarify further.

Your comments re Zickler are of great interest, thanks and I will certainly follow this up forthwith!
In addition to these names, Pope says that Halt also had a Sgt. Fail in the group.
 
Just to enlarge my comment about a significant similarity between a civilian report and Halt and co's sighting of a small red object flying around the trees:

Gary Collins was a builder who had worked at the bases on construction jobs and was friendly with some of the servicemen. One night he was with four at the local Swan pub when their pagers went off and all were ordered back to base on a Red alert. About 11.30 when Gary was on his way home on his motor bike at Lion's Corner he rode into a brightly illuminated area. Bruni quotes him:

It was intensely bright, like daylight... I heard a faint humming sound and looked up to see what appeared to be a thirty foot object hovering about 60 feet above me. I can only describe its underside, which seemed to be traingular-shaped,black in colour, but dripping liquid. It was as if fluid was dripping off it... like melted ice. Suddenly it went at an angle, slowly, then took off at a tremendous speed and seemed to crash into the forest...

Next day he saw roadblocks on Tangham Road, leading to RAF Woodbridge. A few days later his pal Wayne told him that when he went back to base he was told to go to East gate with others when everyone saw a huge UFO on the ground with entities repairing it. Wayne said they had all been ordered not to reveal it... later on Wayne vanished and Gary was told he had gone back to the States, although he had left behind his precious motor bike. This sounds like a complete bit of mind control/disinformation aimed at establishing the ET narrative. The obvious conclusion (to me) is that the object that Gary saw was some US device in trouble and had to be covered up.

The similarity between the object described and the Halt observation of the "glowing red object like a red eye with a black pupil, which seemed to be winking and dripping what he could only describe as molten metal" is obvious, although Bruni strangely fails to pick up on this point.
 
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In addition to these names, Pope says that Halt also had a Sgt. Fail in the group.
Thanks!

That would make sense, he is mentioned in an email from Jerry Valdez:

"I was assigned to RAF Bentwaters in August of 1980.

I worked with Burroughs and Penniston. What they said was true. As a matter of fact, the following statements are true and can be verified by many people.

The acting squadron was the 81st. SPS and "B" Flight was the acting security force on duty. Burroughs and Penniston were on "B" flight.

"A" flight was the day flight, daytime only.

The Guard at East gate was Amn Burroughs and Amn Beachum.

I was stationed on Security - 6 with either Amn Hartman or Sgt Sauls.

We saw the entire thing.

Shift change was from 26th at 2300 hrs till 0700 hrs of the 27th.

The top Flight Sgt on duty was MSgt Fail.

Lt.Col Halt was not there the first night.

It was a bitterly cold night and clear the first night, when the lights were in the woods. It quite possibly could have been Christmas [i.e., the 25/26th].

The person on the post should have been Burroughs, but he was missing, the weapons were missing and the phone was off the hook.

This was around 2:00 a.m.

We were carrying weapons and were told to hold our position. MSgt Fail went out".
 
Fail is probably a mishearing for Ball (or the other way around).
Possibly!

Meanwhile, here is a piece of info from Jenny Randles apparently quoting a statement from Halt that I haven't seen anywhere else:

"The Colonel explained that the object from the south came really close and the beam of light struck the ground at the feet of his party some 5 yards away. It was about 12" in diameter and lasted about 5 seconds. When it hit the ground it did so instantly and then it vanished instantly as well."

She also says that Halt heard radio chatter from all over the area indicating that similar beams were being observed in several locations.

To me this doesn't sound anything like a laser beam, which is usually very narrow, certainly smaller than a foot wide. Nor does a beam that hit the ground 5 yards away really justify the claim that it was "at their feet." The fact that others were reporting the same phenomenon in different parts of the forest certainly argues against the idea that what he saw was an artefect of the image intensifier device.
 
Laser beams do spread out, especially if emitted from a small aperture. They are also invisible, unless they are emitted in a smoky atmosphere like a Pink Floyd concert. I doubt this was a laser beam.

There isn't much evidence that anyone except Halt and his small band of five or so men saw beams anyway - the 'chatter' on the tape doesn't mention beams, although it does mention Sgt Bustinza.
 
Next day he saw roadblocks on Tangham Road, leading to RAF Woodbridge. A few days later his pal Wayne told him that when he went back to base he was told to go to East gate with others when everyone saw a huge UFO on the ground with entities repairing it. Wayne said they had all been ordered not to reveal it... later on Wayne vanished and Gary was told he had gone back to the States, although he had left behind his precious motor bike. This sounds like a complete bit of mind control/disinformation aimed at establishing the ET narrative. The obvious conclusion (to me) is that the object that Gary saw was some US device in trouble and had to be covered up.

Well the following post from way back upstream may (or may not) suggest some pointers:
For what it's worth, a few years ago I was acquainted with an ex RAF engineer who had been based at Rendlesham at the time of the 'incident'. He wasn't involved in the flap himself, but remembers it well - there was blanket secrecy on the base, and officially nothing happened.

He did some nosing about, is pretty sure that the UFO story is itself a cover-up of something else. In the weeks before the incident, they had been working on a prototype VTOL jet, which he described as looking like a smaller, sleeker version of a Harrier. After the incident he never saw it or the project engineers again. Rumour had it that the jet had crashed in the forest that night, and the whole UFO story was something the intelligence officers fed to the public when journalists started sniffing about.

Of course he might just have been spinning me a yarn - but his story seemed to hang together.



I'm a UFO believer (albeit not committed to any particular paradigm) but I do feel that the Rendlesham case has a significantly different aspect to it than other close encountr cases. For one thing, the description of the object as seeming to eject `molten metal` seems pretty unique to me.I can think of no parallel from the UFO annals.

I dislike most conspiracy theories, but I do find myself gravitaring more in that direction when considering all the ins and outs of this series of events.

There are some other oddities from the surrounding area that no-one else seems to have mentioned. According to Graham Birdsall a former prison officer informed him that staff of High Point Prison in Suffolk had been advised of a potential need to evacuate persons in the jail as some kind of incident concerning national securiyy was going to take place on the night of 27th December 1980.*

I do find Ebaracum's hypothesis about certain stars being disstorted through a viewfinder as contributing to the sighting as quite a compelling one- at least as far as Halt's testimony goes (less so the lighthouse and the perseid meteors). However what this does not explain on its own is why two military men (a social group not known for flights of fancy) would get so worked up over an optical phenomena. In the podcast by Paranet that Comfortably Numb shared above, the two air base policemen interviewed are at pains to emphasise the emotional impact of the event - as though they themselves feel it to have been quite extraordinary.

The same podcast goes on to mention the possibility of experimental `psychotropic` weapons being deployed at the base - as an explanation for the conundrum. Certainly microwaves or even just some kind of infrasound could have made personnel jittery and paranoid.

It could also maybe explain why farm animals in the vicinity were reportedly acting out on those nights....

So.. piece all the above together: a test flight of an American prototype aircraft - perhaps one deploying psychtronic weaponry of some kind - and perhaps which crashed or came to grief - thus accidentally activating the weaponry? - at the Rendlesham base.

* Source: Redfern, Nicholas A Covert Agenda (London: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
 
Laser beams do spread out, especially if emitted from a small aperture. They are also invisible, unless they are emitted in a smoky atmosphere like a Pink Floyd concert. I doubt this was a laser beam.
This is true. It is possible to make a laser beam look much larger, with the use of a rotating/oscillating mirror. Maybe this is some kind of contour scanner?
 
A general question to anyone here really, if as hypothesised by @Zeke Newbold above, it may have been a secret/experimental US aircraft, why was it being tested in Suffolk rather than the US?
 
A general question to anyone here really, if as hypothesised by @Zeke Newbold above, it may have been a secret/experimental US aircraft, why was it being tested in Suffolk rather than the US?

It wouldn't have been an experimental aircraft's home base, but it might well have been a stopover point or alternate landing site for long-distance field trials.

A decade after the Rendlesham incident(s) UK airfields were often cited as waypoints for over-the-pole or circumglobal test flights of the alleged Aurora aircraft.

As of 1980 SR-71s and U-2s were operating out of Mildenhall, and Bentwaters / Woodbridge would almost certainly have been a designated alternative landing site should a problem arise.
 
Nor does a beam that hit the ground 5 yards away really justify the claim that it was "at their feet."
*If* it did happen, personally, I'm OK with that, given the circumstances and accounting for memory over the several years since!
 
It wouldn't have been an experimental
As of 1980 SR-71s and U-2s were operating out of Mildenhall, and Bentwaters / Woodbridge would almost certainly have been a designated alternative landing site should a problem arise.
Absolutely, although in our case we have no meaningful evidence of anything anything actually landing, especially now given Burroughs claims in the ParaNet radio interview and there being a 'UFO sighting', from effectively the same vicinity, over three consecutive nights.

It certainly sounds like the observation of a a bright, scintillating star which might have been the catalyst for all which subsequently transpired.

Would we all agree on one thing - if there was no actual enigmatic aeriel vehicle involved that first night, then there isn't much probability of one being involved during Halt's investigation?
 
Absolutely, although in our case we have no meaningful evidence of anything anything actually landing, especially now given Burroughs claims in the ParaNet radio interview and there being a 'UFO sighting', from effectively the same vicinity, over three consecutive nights. ...

I don't really have a spare hour to invest in the Paranet recording, so ...

Which 3 consecutive nights are the ones anyone's claiming were involved? My first guess would be the nights of December 25 / 26, 26 / 27, and 27 / 28. Is that right?

I'm still confused by all the confusion over the timeline and the dates. Over time much effort has gone into sorting the stories' contents into two nights - December 25 / 26 and 27 / 28. This two-night version seems to have become the standard interpretation. Are you saying it might well have been three nights? For one thing, that would help explain Halt's original claims for the dates, which clashed with the current standard interpretation.
 
... Would we all agree on one thing - if there was no actual enigmatic aeriel vehicle involved that first night, then there isn't much probability of one being involved during Halt's investigation?

Whether we're talking two or three nights, I don't think it's safe to generalize across all of them based on what may or may not have been the case for the first night in isolation - at least not for as long as the timeline and event descriptions are as jumbled as they are.
 
Thanks for the map. It's helpful in getting oriented to what happened where.

It appears to show Halt's party progressing eastward and crossing from the forest into open land beyond the "forest boundary fence." However, there's no gate in the fence noted at the point where they passed through.

Was there another gate they would have used to pass through the boundary fence on that path / route, or was the fence no real barrier to foot traffic all along its length?
 
For information and also courtesy of Robert, an aerial survey photograph (not taken in relation to our case) and I have this dated from 1986.

This shows the clearing and I presume it's relationship to the farmers field?

Robert has indicated the two accessible pathways.

www.forteanmedia.com/P1986_2.jpg
 
Was there another gate they would have used to pass through the boundary fence on that path / route, or was the fence no real barrier to foot traffic all along its length?
Robert provided several related maps, which I have only just rediscovered, quite literally!

They contain his possibly now invaluable notes and I shall upload them forthwith.

I found them in a folder named, 'ftp'; and thought, 'wonder what's in there'

As you do, some 20 years later... :)
 
Was there another gate they would have used to pass through the boundary fence on that path / route, or was the fence no real barrier to foot traffic all along its length?
There is so much detail in Robert's research I am simply going to upload the record I have of our correspondence and associated material. I'm trusting Robert would have zero objections and indeed quite the contrary.

It's raw, unedited and exactly as it should be! Although some of the contents probably look a bit naive now, that's how it was at the time.

Is the answer to your question therein?

Even from a cursory revision, there are currently some things which appear to merit revisiting, perhaps not least for myself, observations I made re Halt's tape recording way back then.

www.forteanmedia.com/R_McLean.txt

If nothing else, dare I say an engrossing Fortean read, on a very late winter's evening.

Can't believe it's actually snowing here... :cshock:
 
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