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LINKS TO MORE DETAILED DISCUSSION
Those who are already familiar with the case may wish to go directly to a more
detailed examination of the main issues:
NEW
More about the identification of the Orford Ness lighthouse, including photographic evidence demonstrating its visibility from the forest
and the question of whether Col. Halt saw it as well as the UFO.
Read the original written statements made for Col. Halt by the airmen who witnessed the first night’s events.
Watch a video clip of the lighthouse flashing in the forest, taken from my original BBC TV
investigation.
I would be particularly interested to hear from anyone who was on the base at
the time and can add their own insights to the case.
<ian @ ianridpath.com>
DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
How much did the British government really know about the Rendlesham incident,
and when? To find out, read the formerly secret file of the Ministry of Defence, now available publicly. Also now released is the Suffolk police file, which offers independent eyewitness accounts of the same sightings.
Why did the British government not investigate the case in any depth? Click here for its explanation.
A robust exchange of correspondence about the Rendlesham case between Lord Peter
Hill-Norton and the Ministry of Defence, released under the Freedom of
Information Act in 2007, can be downloaded from the MoD website (click here).
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Introductory note:
The Rendlesham Forest UFO case has taken on the mantle of the “British Roswell”, but in truth it is a far more significant event than Roswell. There is
scarcely any other UFO case anywhere which can boast such a large number of
apparently highly credible witnesses on two separate nights, or such a wide
variety of supporting evidence including supposed physical traces, an official memo confirming the events written by a high-ranking USAF officer, a real-time tape recording made during the second night of the sighting by the same USAF officer, a report
by local police officers who were called to the scene on two separate occasions, and written statements made by the witnesses to the first night’s events. There are more TV programmes to be found posted on YouTube about this
one case than any other, and it regularly appears on lists of ‘best ever’ UFO sightings. Yet much of the popular discussion of the case has centred not
on the well-substantiated primary evidence mentioned above, but instead on
various tales of doubtful provenance that emerged many years later once the
Rendlesham mythology had become well-entrenched.
I start these pages by reproducing the first article I wrote on the Rendlesham
incident, published early in 1985. Although old it remains valid because it
demonstrates where the case stood shortly after it became public knowledge in
the early 1980s. The article highlights the main elements of the case and
offers explanations for each in turn. It should be emphasized that none of the
genuine evidence that has emerged subsequently has invalidated any of these
explanations; rather, it has strengthened them. The bulk of this website is
devoted to examining that new evidence. Significantly, government documents
released since 2001 confirm that the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) never considered the case worthy of a serious
investigation, and we now also know
why.
The article first appeared in The Guardian, a highbrow English newspaper, on 1985 January 5 under the title “A Flashlight in the Forest”. In this web version I have included a few bracketed asides to clarify and
update various points, added some explanations to make various references more
comprehensible to non-English readers, and included several illustrations.
The article was written before the release of the tape-recording made by
Lt.Colonel Charles Halt describing the events of the second night as he
witnessed them. I have placed on this website the latest version of my own transcript of that tape, compiled with the help of Col Halt himself, which corrects many
errors contained in various other versions found in print and online. I have
also added a detailed analysis of the events on the tape.
In the years since the article first appeared in print I have been able to
amplify various points, based in many instances on the additional information
contained in Col. Halt’s real-time tape recording or his subsequent interviews. I hope you will find
this a suitable balance to some of the more fanciful treatments of this case
now in circulation.
SUMMARY
Although the overall case is complex, the main aspects can be summarized as
follows:
1. Security guards saw bright lights apparently descending into Rendlesham Forest
around 3 a.m on 1980 December 26. A bright fireball burned up over southern
England at the same time.
2. The guards went out into the forest and saw a flashing light between the trees,
which they followed until they realized it was coming from a lighthouse (Orford
Ness).
3. After daybreak, indentations in the ground and marks on the trees were found in
a clearing. Local police and a forester identified these as rabbit scrapings
and cuts made by foresters.
4. Two nights later the deputy base commander, Lt Col Charles Halt, investigated
the area. He took radiation readings, which were background levels. He also saw
a flashing light in the direction of Orford Ness but was unable to identify it.
5. Col Halt reported seeing starlike objects that twinkled and hovered for hours,
like stars. The brightest of these, which appeared to send down beams of light,
was in the direction of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.
At its most basic, the case comes down to the misinterpretation of a series of
nocturnal lights – standard fare for UFOlogy. It is only the concatenation of three different
stimuli (fireball, lighthouse, stars) that makes it exceptional.
The links at the left will take you to more detailed discussion of the above
issues, and more. These links are repeated at the end of this article.
______________________________________________________________________________
Books and articles about the Rendlesham Forest UFO case:
Sky Crash by Brenda Butler, Dot Street, and Jenny Randles (Neville Spearman, 1984).
UFO Crash Landing? by Jenny Randles (Blandford, 1998).
See also Jenny’s chapter titled Rendle Shame Forest in The UFOs That Never Were (London House, 2000).
You Can’t Tell the People by Georgina Bruni (Sidgwick & Jackson, 2000).
Read Dr David Clarke’s 25th anniversary assessment of the case, originally published in the 2005 December issue of Fortean Times.
Content of this site last updated 2010 August.
All original content © Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved.
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