Rendlesham Forest UFO case - watch the
lighthouse flashing
Rendlesham Forest UFO case
VINCE THURKETTLE INTERVIEWED
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Above is a still from my interview with forester Vince Thurkettle for BBC TV’s Breakfast Time programme, broadcast on 1983 October 7, five days after the story first hit the headlines in the News of the World. It shows the Orford Ness lighthouse flashing as seen from Rendlesham Forest, in the same direction that the US airmen saw their flashing UFO. You can download a movie file of the interview by clicking on the picture above, or see the entire report by clicking here. Copyright remains with the BBC.
We filmed the interview in the area where
Vince had been shown the supposed “landing marks”
on the forest floor some weeks after the event. By the time of
my visit in 1983, though, the trees in the area had been
cleared and any sign of the landing site was long gone. A
daytime view of the same area as it appeared in 1983 can be
seen here.
The interview starts with Vince’s
voice played over a direct shot of the lighthouse flashing. The
darkness between flashes was edited out for televisual reasons,
but once he is in shot the flash rate is unedited. This is a
transcript of Vince’s words as broadcast:
VINCE (out of vision): “It is a
pulsing white light that illuminates the forest...”
Vince then appears in shot with the
lighthouse flashing over his shoulder at its true rate, every 5
seconds.
VINCE: (in vision) “...and if that
wasn’t the light they saw then what they’re saying
is that within their line of vision there were two pulsing
white lights illuminating the forest.”
The shot then cuts away to me doing those
annoying nods. Vince continues to speak.
VINCE: “The other thing is the
height. It appeared to them to move along at ground level,
never going very high. Now this again – behind me was a
standing tree crop. As they moved through the crop the light
would appear to move away in front of them at ground
level.”
Fade in eerie music and cut to a direct
shot of the lighthouse flashing, again with the darkness edited
out, and my concluding voiceover.
On Col. Halt’s real-time audio tape,
an airman is heard pointing out the flashing light:
“Straight ahead, in between the trees – there it is
again. Watch – straight ahead, off my flashlight there,
sir. There it is”. (This exchange can be found at the
bottom of page 2 of my transcript of the tape.) The five-second interval between
the words “there it is again” and “there it
is” synchronizes exactly with the flashes of the
lighthouse. Want confirmation? Listen to this section of the
tape with a 5-second beep added by Brian Dunning of the skeptoid.com website;
or download a copy of the Halt tape from here and compare it with the video clip for
yourself.
On his tape, Col Halt described the light
seen through a Starscope image intensifier as having “a
hollow centre, a dark centre, it’s like a pupil of an eye
looking at you”. Is this how the light looks to you on
this TV footage?
For a longer and more recent interview with
Vince from a BBC TV documentary called Britain’s Closest
Encounter see here.
PS: Vince
Thurkettle and I met up with Col Halt in the forest in 2009
February – see here. We all got on fine!
PPS: The
lighthouse has been through two changes of bulb since the 1980s
and is now much fainter than when the BBC video was made, as
well as being whiter in colour. Even so, it can still appear
distinctly orange – see this recent footage from
film-maker Adrian Frearson:
http://www.chillfactorfilms.com/media
http://www.chillfactorfilms.com/media
Last revised 2009 July
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ON OTHER PAGES
For more details on the other aspects of
the case, see the following pages: