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ON OTHER PAGES
What were the other lights
seen by Col Halt?
seen by Col Halt?
As well as the flashing light near ground level that was seen to the east, Col.
Halt’s memo on the Rendlesham Forest sightings reported three starlike objects in the
sky at about 10 degrees altitude, one in the south and two others in the north.
The one in the south, which was the most prominent, was visible for two or
three hours and was reported to beam down a stream of light from time to time.
Some UFO researchers have failed to distinguish the fact that these starlike
objects were quite different from the original flashing light to the east and
have referred disparagingly to the “flying lighthouse” as though all the lights were caused by the same highly mobile object. Even
Col. Halt has fallen into this trap, indicating that his own memory of events
has become distorted with time.
Identifying the lights
In my original investigation, I tentatively identified these three starlike
objects as real stars: first-magnitude Deneb and Vega in the north, and Sirius,
the brightest star in the
sky, in the south. I reached my conclusion before Col. Halt’s tape recording of events was released. That tape contains additional
information about the positions of these objects which allows us to make a more
secure identification.
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On the tape, Halt describes the starlike object to the south as “hovering over Woodbridge base at about five to ten degrees off the horizon” at 4 am. By Woodbridge base he cannot have meant the runway, which was west of
them, so presumably he meant the buildings. We do not know exactly where Col.
Halt was when he taped that note, but from his patrol’s likely position either in the forest or on their way back to East Gate the
base buildings would not in fact have been due south of them but southwest. A
simple planetarium computer program shows that this is indeed where Sirius was
slowly setting, being at an altitude of about 7 degrees when Halt taped his
note at 4 am. If Halt’s definition of north was similarly skewed, this supports the identification of
Deneb and Vega, which were actually east of north.
Moving and beaming
Some researchers have been unconvinced by these prosaic identifications, citing
Halt’s taped description of the objects as "dancing about with coloured lights on
them" (in his memo he had said they “moved rapidly in sharp, angular movements and displayed red, green and blue
lights”). But of course stars twinkle many colours as their light is refracted by the
atmosphere, and the effect is most noticeable when they are near the horizon,
as they were in this instance. In another common effect, stars appear to move
from side to side due to movements in the observer’s eye (the so-called
autokinetic effect). When they are seen between scudding cloud they can appear to be moving when
it is actually the cloud that is moving.
Another of Halt’s descriptions, contained on tape and in his memo, is that the objects appeared
as ‘half-moons turning to full circles’ seen through an 8–12 power lens (presumably zoom binoculars or a monocular), but this was
evidently an optical effect as he attempted to focus the binoculars.
More puzzling, perhaps, is this quotation from Halt’s tape: “Here he comes from the south. He’s coming toward us now. Now we’re observing what appears to be a beam
coming down to the ground”. (On the tape, Halt’s description of these beams is much less exciting than he has made them sound
in subsequent interviews.)
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Of course, the brilliance of objects such as Sirius causes dazzle in the eye
which can give the impression of beams (as with the ‘fiery cross’ effect of Venus). But what could cause stars apparently to move towards or away
from the observer? The answer is obscuration by thin, moving cloud. The
resulting changes in the brightness of a star can give the false impression of
approach (brightening) or recession (dimming). The length of time for which the
starlike objects were viewed (several hours) reinforces the belief that they
were in fact stars.
To me, the descriptions attributed to the “starlike objects” sound like the standard misperceptions of celestial objects which feature in so
many other UFO reports. (For more on the ways in which celestial objects are
misperceived, see my article on the astronomical causes of UFOs.)
Halt’s reaction
What did Halt do about these unidentified lights supposedly gallivanting in his
airspace? As he told journalist Salley Rayl in an interview published in the
1994 April issue of Omni: “I called the command post, asked them to call Eastern Radar [i.e. RAF Watton],
responsible for air defense of that sector. Twice they reported that they
didn't see anything.” (British research Nick Redfern had previously found that Eastern Radar had logged a call from Halt at 3.25 a.m. on December 28.) Halt’s superior officer, Col Conrad, was monitoring events by radio and came out of
his house along with his wife and several others to see what was going on, but
they failed to see any of the strange lights described by Halt.
After that there was not much more to do. Near the end of his tape, Halt says: “03:30 and the objects are still in the sky, although the one to the south looks
like it’s losing a little bit of altitude. We’re turning around and heading back toward the base.”
Halt confirmed this in his interview with Salley Rayl: “After an hour or so, I finally made the call to go in. We left those things out
there.”
What a curiously unsatisfactory way to end a supposed close encounter – “We left those things out there.”
Other witnesses
More recently, Halt has confused the issue by claiming that there were three
objects in the sky to the north, not two, and that they sent down beams into
the Weapons Storage Area (WSA) at Bentwaters. However, security policeman Tim
Egercic, who was actually in the Bentwaters WSA at the time, has publicly refuted Halt’s claim that any such beams came down into the WSA. In fact, on the tape and in
the memo the only object Halt describes as sending down beams is the one to the
south, over Woodbridge, not the ones to the north, over Bentwaters. So this
more recent claim by Halt seems to be based on faulty memory.
Another witness at Bentwaters, Rick Bobo, has spoken about seeing lights in the sky that night from the watchtower in the Bentwaters WSA. He told author Robert
Hastings:
“The main object hovered out there for a long, long time [he had previously told
Georgina Bruni “it was up there for about five hours, just hovering”]. It never really moved anywhere else. It was kind of hard to see, but it was
slightly oblong, I guess, and I seem to recall it had bluish and reddish lights
on it. When the object first caught my eye, it was already stationary, I didn’t see it move to where it was and I didn’t see it leave. After it was hanging there a long while, I saw things shooting
off it, really, really fast, like little sparks or something. Maybe four or
five of them... They were shooting off in all directions, but up into the sky,
not down to the ground.”
Bobo’s account has all the hallmarks of a sighting of twinkling stars, as outlined
above. If this sounds implausible, think how less likely it is that a large,
brightly lit alien craft should hover for hours over Suffolk without attracting
wider attention.
All eyewitness reports of the lights in the sky, including Halt’s, describe them as hovering low over the forest. No one ever claimed to see
them high up. From Bentwaters they were seen towards the south, so they cannot
have been the same objects that Halt saw to the north and which he claimed were
over the WSA at Bentwaters. In summary, all the sightings of lights hovering in
the sky are consistent with bright stars seen twinkling close to the horizon.
Content last updated: 2010 June
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved
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