Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 292: Rendlesham Forest Part 2 - Coverups and Binary Buffoonery

Episode Date: March 29, 2025

The final part of our Rendlesham Forest series lands in your lap. With consent of course. MOFFMIN PLUSH MERCH - http://www.theyetee.com/collections/chilluminati Thank you too - All you lovely people at Patreon! HTTP://PATREON.COM/CHILLUMINATIPOD Green Chef - http://www.greenchef.com/chillfree PROMO CODE: chillfree Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - http://www.youtube.com/user/superbeardbros Editor - DeanCutty http://www.twitter.com/deancutty Show art by - https://twitter.com/JetpackBraggin http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro Sources: Encounter in Rendlesham Forest: The Inside Story of the World's Best-Documented UFO Incident by Nick Pope The Halt Memo - https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/ufos/UK/defe-24-2005-1.pdf https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/21672773.medical-payout-ufo-mystery-airman-following-rendlesham-forest-encounter/ https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/ufos/UK/defe-24-2094-1.pdf

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Chiluminati podcast episode 292. As always, I'm one of your hosts, Mike Martin, joined by the Peppy and Cocky of LA, Jesse and Alex. Hello. Oh, hi. Hey there. Part of me feels like I should be cocky, but I also feel like out of the two of us, I'm also Peppy. You're Peppier than me for sure, just like purely on-

Yeah, but I feel like because my last name it's tough. This is a tough one. Peppy and cocky. Yeah. So these guys comes off as cocky, you know, spelled K O K K I. Yeah. I feel like my, my confidence, they're Dutch, right? These guys.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. These are the guys that like, they're like a, they had like a TV show. Yeah. These are the guys that like, they're like, they had like a TV show. Yeah. From the seventies, very, uh, they, they're described as got Laurel and Hardy esque.

Yeah. It's like, uh, it's like a fat guy and a skinny guy. I remember these guys. Yep. Yep. Yep. From, uh, the Netherlands. There you go. They had a TV show in the seventies, Peppy and cocky, uh, started working on a slapstick series for children's television. They portrayed two sailors forced to take odd jobs because they inherited the ship, their inherited ship ceased to function, their ship broke. So now they had to take on odd jobs. It's literally like asterisk and obelisk or something like that.

And there's like one who's like with a Mario guy and there's one who's like the Luigi guy. Yeah, that's a great way to describe the one photo I see of him. If you don't know, if you don't know, like comedians from 75 to a hundred years ago, like Laurel and Hardy, especially if you're confused why one of them has a Hitler mustache. Just forget about them. Think about Mario and Luigi. Uh, and when you have some time, go watch that sketch about them trying to bring that thing up the goddamn stairs. Cause holy shit, Laurel and Hardy are hilarious.

I think that's Laurel and Hardy. I don't know. I don't even know. I don't know the skit you're talking about. It's just them. It's like back in the day there was nothing. There was no entertainment. So two guys trying to bring a fucking thing up some stairs was like a fucking movie. That was a whole, that was a whole, I mean, that's, that's kind of the excitement of living back in that time, right? Like every idea, every creative idea on screen was new. So all of it is like,

I remember seeing footage of like somebody watching the train coming at them video for the first time and all of the audience ducking or moving out of the way, because they, the brain just didn't really know what to do with that. You know what's crazy about that? Is you say that, like, oh man, it was crazy, those people back then,

but there's an art exhibit where it's a boat and it's coming at you and it's modern and people watching that freak out. They can't handle it. Oh yeah, I gotta see that. The bridge in China that it looks like it cracks but really doesn't. And people are like freaking like yeah

It's humans be stupid. We do that. We still stupid music box the music box by Laurel and Hardy Just so you guys know is 29 minutes long and it's about them trying to bring a piano up some stairs in Echo Park for 29 minutes Wow, like they buy you know, they're like By the piano. They go, you know, like, but it's, it's really just the bit is they try to take this shit up the stairs. And that's it. It may not be 29 minutes long, but I mean, friends has that famous meme sketch of them taking a couch up the stairs.

That is just like, that is literally the same thing. Reference. It is literally a reference to the music box. It's not like, I guess it's not, it's what's funny is just funny always when presented the right way. Yeah. Which is our show. Welcome to it, everybody. That's us.

Actually, before that- Like Laurel and Hardy and the Mummy, welcome back to Tube Noddy. Taking boring old pseudo facts and fringe science and making it fun. Yeah, that's what we do. We're like the LearQ science teacher, but like- Doctrinating stoners all over the world. We're like the Three Stooges. Yeah, exactly like the Three Stooges.

A much more timely and modern reference. Listen, with the Department of Education gone, this is a prime opportunity for the Chiluminati, like- This is our time to step in. The actual Chiluminati to move in and maybe fill that void. I think they would do a really good job. Have you guys heard about have you guys heard about project for 2069? It's actually gonna change the world. It's it's a it's a way to make

it so that like money is now weed and everybody who's gonna grow your own money dude and everybody who's an asshole You can grow your own money dude and everybody who's an asshole It's like Bitcoin goes into like a little submarine that goes down to the bottom of the ocean Yeah, yeah, yeah It's good stuff

Is it a yellow submarine? I think that was somebody channeled the Boston Big Bean Boy when they wrote that I think he's on the board He might be actually He's on the board for Project 42069 I don't think he likes to say it because he's you know, he's into the legal Well He doesn't like it In order to get this going though we need funding for Project for 2069. I don't think he likes to say it because he's, you know, he's into the legal. Well, he doesn't like to get this going though. We need funding for project for 2069. Now my project 69 for 20 is so much better. Oh yeah. It puts my priorities first.

Fast forward 10 years and Jesse's on his own podcast and we're just complete opposite enemies. They put the 421st. They don't even know. Where's Zuck at? Where's Buffett at? We need to get him in there. We need to, we need to, we need to, uh, where's, where's Michael Bell? You know, they can go to patreon.com to do fund us directly. Actually. Yeah. Hey, you know what?

Larry Ellison, if you're out there and you're just, please don't, if you're feeling, if you're feeling crazy today, Larry, head on over to patreon.com slash children, pod and drop a hundred, a hundred K. I'm crazy today, Larry. Head on over to patreon.com slash ChiluminatiPod and drop 100K. I don't wanna have to say some shit I don't believe. No, that's not how Patreon works. That's not how Patreon works. That's the secret tier on Patreon. I feel like it is a little bit.

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Hey millionaires. Welcome sponsoring today's episode. Hey millionaires, welcome to today's episode. It's not anything to do with millionaires. We are today- If this happened to Mathis, he would feel like- I would feel like a millionaire. I might even feel like a billionaire. You know, the world would just be a joke to me

if this happened to me. Yes, today boys, we're doing the second and final part of the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident. Now if you remember, previously we covered the insane shit that happened on the events in December of 1980 when something very strange descended on the twin bases of RAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge. We followed the people like Jim Penniston and John Burroughs into the woods after seeing lights that didn't belong to the woods that they were familiar with.

They said they witnessed physical traces, strange radiation readings, and heard we also heard a little bit of audio from Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt calling it as it happened out there. I remember hearing the lights moving in different directions and like a beam hitting the ground. That was really cool. Yeah, yeah. It was a multi-night multi-witness event involving trained military personnel on a potential nuclear base.

And I say potential because the UK government doesn't confirm nor deny if nuclear weapons have ever been or were on or will be in any base. And now we're going to move into the second act. And this is where things start to get really kind of confusing, not just in terms of claims being made, but in the web of weird responses, possible cover-ups, purposeful and sometimes accidental confusion and contradictions that followed in the reporting from these people. What happened after the forest encounters is arguably, in my mind, more fascinating and revealing than the incident itself.

Because in the weeks and months, even years after those nights, new witnesses would continue coming out, strange memories resurfaced, documents began surfacing out of nowhere, and in the middle of it all, the UK Ministry of Defence decided it wasn't particularly interested in any of it and they kind of wanted it to go away. So in this second part, we're going to go deeper. The testimonies that we didn't hear in part one, the infamous halt memo and how it got kind of twisted, the UFO researchers and government types poking around at the case. And finally, obviously the skeptics and debunking theories as to what people think may have

happened if not a weird UAP thing. What do they have to say and does it actually explain everything? And we're going to give the Rendlesim short, the Rendlesim a four story. I think the kind of scrutiny it deserves, which is why this was fucking 40 pages and I cut off. We're down to 32. So this is a big boy strap in. It'll be about an hour and a half probably we'll see but this is a lot here that took me months and months of just trying to detangle and

figure out where the source of a lot of this stuff was so without without further ado let's just get into it again one of the of the remarkable things about the Randall Shim Forest incident is just the sheer number of people involved or aware of something strange going on. Part 1 we kind of focused on Penniston, Burroughs, Halt, but there were a ton of other people on base that had their own pieces of this weird UAP puzzle. So let's look at some of the additional ones, lesser known witness testimonies, because they kind of provide a crucial context into what was going on and how eager some of these people were just to insert themselves into

something interesting that was going on in the base even if they didn't actually witness anything at all. Now one of the men we mentioned last week was Airman Ed Cabinsag. Cabinsag accompanied Penniston and Burroughs into the woods in that first night. He's often kind of the forgotten third man, and according to the initial police statements that were later made public, Cabinsag's recollection was surprisingly unsensational.

He said the trio saw some lights in the distance, but by the time they reached a farmer's field, the lights had vanished. In his statement, Cabinsag noted they eventually realized one light was coming from a beacon way off near the coast, which is where the Orford Nest Lighthouse is, which we'll discuss a little bit later on.

Essentially, his official version sounded like a we just kind of chased a mysterious light turned out to be a lighthouse. Nothing landed. This kind of more flat retelling is in stark contrast to Penniston's claim of encountering a landed craft. Same with Burroughs who was with Peniston when it happened. And the question kind of lingers as why is there such a difference? And Smitty agrees. Smitty has been texting me utterly confused as to why there is such a difference while I've been sharing my research with him. He's a very good research conversationalist, Alex.

So I want you to thank Smitty for me. I appreciate that. You know, he can't speak English, but he can read it really well. And so he's just been, yeah, to be part of the show more. He does a great job. So why is there such a difference in this? Some UFO researchers kind of suspects that Cabin Seg was maybe pressured to downplay what he saw. We'll talk about the immediate debriefings that happened afterward in a bit. And years later, it emerged that Kavansag allegedly admitted he'd been ordered to sign a false statement that concealed the more bizarre things he actually witnessed.

And if that's true, obviously it's a bombshell because it suggests an immediate effort by someone up the chain of command to sanitize the reports coming out of Randall Shim and Cabin Zag himself then kind of faded into obscurity after that. Didn't really come back into the public eye, didn't really ever talk about it again and we won't really ever know if that claim is true because he's never addressed the claim that he was forced to sign something so that could just be pure rumor and speculation. Then we have Sergeant Adrian Bustinza.

His name, yes, all these guys have incredible names. All of them have. I was about to say, Bustinza's a good name. Adrian Bustinza sounds like it's like a Coen Brothers name. Yeah, Sergeant Adrian Bustinza is another name that doesn't really come up in the official narrative all that often, but Bustinza was a security police supervisor who was front and center on that second night. By his account, he was right next to Colonel Halt during the late night search

in the forest, and Bustinza has confirmed some of the weird, strange things that happened. He said when he arrived on site, he saw an object going in and out through the trees, and at one stage it was hovering That corroborates Halt's description of a maneuvering light or object of the woods as well And in some interviews, Bustinza even claimed a triangular craft appeared in a clearing emanating a blinding light and a humming noise He says he was there till the end literally he recounted that after Halt left says he was there till the end, literally he recounted that after Halt left, he saw the craft take off.

It lifted above the trees, then zipped away at a 45 degree angle with super incredible speed, stayed completely silent, and as it departed, Bustinza said he felt a strong whoosh of wind from the displacement. This testimony from a hands-on guy would be useful, but it's debated if he was actually there or if he's inserting himself into the story and merely said he was witnessing these things because both Burroughs and Penniston never describe a triangular craft, never describe the things that he claimed he saw. But it still ends up raising other people's eyebrows. He was one of the sources for the more extreme versions of the events that night too.

He also went on to include claims of alien beings in the woods. According to Bustinza and another guy that we'll get into in a second, there were small entities with glowing eyes roaming around the landed crack. They look like Prints from Apollonia. Yeah. And this is a huge leap from like the lights in the sky, more close encounters of the third kind style thing that was being described by Penniston and Burroughs. Not all of Pistins's colleagues buy this aspect of his story either.

Some suspect that not only was maybe his memories were influenced at best or he was just straight up lying or exaggerating to be a more important part of the story. Bustinza himself later expressed frustration that his account was used to support some of the more far out narratives. Still among all the witnesses though, Bustinza still attempts to straddle that line when he's interviewed saying that like, no, it's, I hate that people use my narrative to, to like fulfill their skeptical.

Yeah, he's a no my narrative kind of guy. It's my narrative. He's a, but his claims are insane. I'm just going to leave it at that. I don't really believe any of them. Then another one, Larry Warren, the most boring name of the group was maybe the most controversial figure in the Randall Shimfora saga. If you recall part one about the crazy idiots that I talked about that kind of just would

eventually insert themselves into it. Larry is what I would consider the number one man that I was thinking about when writing with he when he was a young airman on duty on those nights and for years he remained anonymous while leaking sensationalist tidbits by the way way, of the UFO story to investigators, he eventually came out publicly with his own insane account. Warren claims he was present in the clearing on the second night, along with Sergeant Bustinza and dozens of others,

and that he personally witnessed a craft landing and watched the entities depart from the craft. He then have a barbecue in the woods. Well, then a small red orb flew in from the coast, hovered and then exploded into a structured craft that landed on the forest floor. This I don't want to I don't really understand like the image there. Yeah, like what do we talk about? Like somebody throwing floor. This I don't really understand like the image there. Yeah, like, what are we talking about? Like somebody throwing like a like a plastic toy and it like bounces once. And like,

you know what I mean? Like, no, like, so yeah, orange. So a ship landed, then an orange orb came in. And then I imagine exploded into orange light, and then reveal the craft and a second craft landed. So like that craft is just like a little teleport ball. Yeah, I guess. Like you climb in it at home. I'm trying to imagine what this looks like

and I still can't. Like imagine you're at home and you climb into the ball ship with your family and then you're just sitting there and then you just shoot the ball to where you're going, right? Like Noctis' knife in Final Fantasy 15. You throw that one. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they're using that super solid light that we talked about

in last week's mini so to slingshot themselves. That's the plot of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. They make it well, there's a comic book by Alan Moore. Of course, you talk about the comic book. I don't know why I thought you weren't talking about the comic book. They use hard light crystal to like shoot down out of an airship. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Dr. Moriarty grabs it and falls into the sky.

It's good. Well, it's for Dr. Moriarty. He's there. He's there. Okay. It's fair that you seem confused because he described the craft kind of very vaguely as well. He said it's about the size of a tank with no markings or windows, but it was so bright

that he couldn't look at it straight on. So he even couldn't really get a good look at this thing. Definitely not a reason for him to not have to describe it. Just was too bright to look at. And if that wasn't stupid enough, he says a high ranking officer that he named Wing Commander Gordon Williams, the base commander, approached the craft and when the alien being emerged in a being with humanoid features, wearing what looked like a spacesuit or bright clothing, Warren insisted then there was a sudden standoff, no chatting,

no handshakes, just a silent face-off between the USAF officer and the alien from another world. Like a samurai and a samurai meeting on a bridge. No, it's like it's a very cinematic story. And I guess to his credit He kind of helped draw attention to the rendlesham forest in the early 80s with his nonsense But like not the good kind of attention that this thing needed at all many of the actual rendlesham forest witnesses like Holt and borrows have

Completely disavowed Warren's story. They're obviously, nevermind the internal inconsistencies, they're in lack of corroboration. Colonel Holt flatly says Larry Warren was not out there with us that night at all. So, you know, take it what you will. Or is he because he's telling the truth, they don't want to reveal the aliens? Dude. Oh, I can do this. I can be, I can be that guy. That's right. That's crazy. No, you're right. That's it. That's what it is. Well, you may say that, but then if you dig into some paperwork,

documents show that Warren was not on duty at Woodbridge those nights at all. They changed it. So he just, he just literally was like, yeah, I was there. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's exactly what happened. How I feel about 90% of the conversations we have about aliens. If someone's like, yeah, no, I saw it. No, for sure. For sure. Okay. Um, and even Sergeant Bustinza who Warren often sites as being there, backing him up has given mixed signals about Warren. So if the questionable guy is questioning somebody who's all like behind your story, you're kind of not in a great spot. Sometimes he supports parts of Warren's account and other times he kind of just distances

himself from it. He basically cherry picks some of Warren's story to help his own. That's the deep state right there. Right there. Yeah. at work. Over the years, researchers have continued, like who've done way more digging than I have, but I've seen their work have some indications

that Warren, obviously not only embellished flat out lied and maybe wasn't even at the base when this was going on, nevermind just at off duty. So- Why is he getting himself involved in, like why are you doing that? I don't know, man, this is he getting himself involved in like, why, why are you doing that? I don't, man, I don't, this isn't the problem with this shit is like these people get involved in it instantly muddies the water,

no matter what the actual paper trail and like reported facts are. A couple other people are going to like a little bit less on these people, but still these people were there as well. Staff Sergeant Bobby Ball, which we mentioned a little bit last week, then Sergeant Monroe Nevels who we also mentioned these two were part of halts team on that Night Nevels was the disaster preparedness tech who carried the Geiger counter in he was when they recorded the small bursts of radiation at the landing site Ball nor Nevels spoke much publicly about what they saw but on halts tape you do hear their voices and reactions There are clearly startled confused publicly about what they saw, but on Halt's tape, you do hear their voices and reactions.

They're clearly startled, confused, exclamations, also pointing out at the weird lights. They're there and they're seeing these things. They're just the kind of person who's like, I don't want to fucking talk about it. Lieutenant Bruce England, who we also mentioned last week. England, London, England, England. I just think of that dude from Austin Powers every time. So they said last week, London, England. Yeah. That's how I say his name. He was the shift commander who first alerted halt member. He was the guy who went back into the Christmas party and was like,

sir, it's back. And that's when halt was like, all right, I'm going to go out there. Um, we, uh, he also doesn't have a ton of detailed statements out there, but halt mentions that England and a few others back at the party briefly stepped outside to look toward the forest while Halt's team was chasing the lights and they reportedly saw nothing out of the ordinary. So just put that out there. They've like, yeah, we didn't go out there, but we also didn't see anything from the where we were. Then you have the local British police and foresters.

The Suffolk Constabulary was called twice at around 4 a.m. on the first night, which was the 26th of December, and local bobbies showed up in response to the USAAS report for a possible downed aircraft. The cops obviously saw nothing except for a bright light off off the horizon that they quickly identified as the Orford Nest Lighthouse. They logged it as a no incident, just the lighthouse and maybe some stars. Later, later that morning, when the Air Force showed the police the three ground depressions, the British officers shrugged

and simply said essentially like, and they might be animal tracks. That's all they did. Oh, OK. Yeah, that's it. That's all they did. And then on the on the the next next night it happened when Haltz crew was out chasing UFOs, base personnel called the police again. And this time, by the time the British cops arrived, Haltz team had already finished the investigation, the officers, again, all they noted was the lighthouse because it was already over.

So they noted the lighthouse was visible and just assumed that the dumb Americans were just like confusing themselves with the lighthouse, even though they would have seen the lighthouse there every single solitary night for the years, some of the years for some of these people that have worked there. They're like, no, they just didn't know what they were doing. Also a forestry commission worker named Vince Thurkettle, Vince Thurkettle, I love that last name, went to the landing site later and said that those landing impressions were just rabbit diggings

and old forestry marker holes in the soil. He even chuckled that anyone could mistake them as spots where a spaceship's tripod landed. With one witness upon hearing Thurkettle's take said, I know the difference between rabbit holes and landing gear impressions. But he remained anonymous to who that was on the base. Just that was his response.

And then there was a handful of others. There there was somebody by the name of Airman first class Bonnie Tamplin, and we talked a little bit, but she was really not super involved. There's a story that goes that she was in her patrol vehicle near the forest when the bright light engulfed her Jeep, causing the engine to die, which we touched on last week a little bit and she's one that panic and drove back. And then beyond that, there's really nobody else of note that's to bring up. So those are the main names that are involved.

Those who are forced themselves in and others. And then we move to a little bit less, less than a month after the event. The events happened on December 26th and 28th, I believe it was, or 27th. On January 13th, 1981, so like two to three weeks after, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt typed up his now famous but brief memo

titled Unexplained lights. This would of course be labeled as simply the HALT memo. It was just over two weeks after the incidents and HALT addressed it to the RAF liaison at the third Air Force, basically sending it up the chain on the UK side since this happened off base. Also a reminder, this is the 80s.

There is no email, no instant communication. Takes time for things to kind of like move around. Even if they didn't get around quickly, it wasn't as instant as it was now, as it is now. Little did he know that this one page report would become one of the most famous, I'd say, documents in the UFO lore. Initially, it was a low key internal memo,

and some say it was deliberately low key. So we're gonna break down what is said quickly and why it kind of caused a sir. So in the memo, I'm going to link you boys the memo so you can see it. It's really long. Um, but I will give it to you. I've like flirted with this memo before. Yeah. If you're, if you're UFO curious. Oh yeah. It's a full on document. Hilariously made available by the black vault. Yeah. Black black vault has their the foyer King over there.

That dude's the foyer King. Fucking memo 383 pages memo. It's huge. I have not read the whole thing. Also Holt went on to write the book called the Holt perspective. Oh wow. It's 800 pages. I heard that it was like one of the most direct, kind of most boring books ever.

So when I grabbed it, man, there's not even like an intro. The book just kind of starts and is like just stream of consciousness. What does that mean? Like, it's like not good? It's not written like somebody would take their story and at least package it in like a narrative like I do. Right? Like, I write these things to kind of have a story. Like a lot of them. No, he's

just like, here's a 800 pages of what I think, and why I think it. And that's it. And it just goes and goes and has a ton of documents he mentions and people's names. I did not read the whole thing. I didn't get close to reading the whole thing It's too fucking long. But just so you know, it's out there if you really want to dig into it. It is out there It's like 60 bucks. I think I got my copy of it on like used for like 40 something So you can find it's still pretty expensive no matter where you find it. Yeah, so on January 13th, 1981 Hull typed up a brief memo titled unexplained lights

On January 13th, 1981, Halt typed up a brief memo titled Unexplained Lights. It was just two weeks after the incident and Halt addressed it to the RAF liaison at the 3rd Air Force Base. So I'm going over this again. This would become one of the most famous documents in the UFO lore. In the memo, which has been released now,

kind of scanned and released to the public, Halt gives a pretty matter of fact summary of the events. Two USAF security patrolmen saw unusual lights outside the back gate in the early hours of December 27th, thinking an aircraft might have crashed. They got permission to check it out. They reported a strange glowing object in the forest, metallic in appearance and triangular in shape about two to three meters across and two meters high, with a pulsing red light on top

and blue lights underneath. The memo notes that as the patrolman approached, the object maneuvered through the trees and disappeared. And that nearby animal farms went crazy during the sighting, which we talked about last week as well. Hall then writes that the next day, three depressions in the ground were found where the object was seen,

each about one and a half inches deep and about seven inches in diameter. He mentions that on the night of the 29th, and this is where controversy pops up because he wrote December 29th, but it was actually the 28th according to everybody else. What are we talking about time wise here? One day mistake. He won't look like? Was it like 1130 p.m. on the 28th? No, no, no. It's literally just like the day of the event. Like it was, it's not an hour's difference. It's just a wrong day written at the top. He's admitted it is a mistake. It was meant to be 20. He just was like, what he just, it was two to three weeks after when he wrote that, two and a half weeks after he wrote this.

But this small mistake had an enormous repercussion on the entire story. One, when the government, the Ministry of Defense went to go look at records for the next day, the day after and the day before, they were already looking in the wrong time slot. So they were not gonna find the things that he said they would have found on the days prior in the day after because of that day. On top of that, it is like the smoking gun that a lot of a lot of skeptics use to show that like he couldn't even get the day right.

He then why? Why do we believe anything else? He said, but hang on to that because we will talk about that a little bit more. He also noted that they checked the area for radiation of readings of about 0.1 millirotengens, which is like the measurement with higher peaks in the depressions and on a tree trunk. Then later in the night, a red sunlight was seen through the trees that moved about and pulsed. It then broke into five white objects and disappeared. After that, three star-like objects were noticed in the sky, two to the north, one to the south,

hovering and a beam, a beam beaming down a beam of light. Halt concludes by saying numerous personnel, himself included, witnessed this. In essence, he eventually validates that something unexplained happened. But even to this day, Halt doesn't believe in aliens, in non-human intelligence stuff. He just simply says it was really fucking weird. Here's what I saw. I can't explain it. That's all. Honestly, respect for that.

Agreed. Yeah. If you read the memo today, it's just kind of straightforward and dry, especially considering what it's written about. It's very classic military memo tone. No exclamation points, no speculation. Just this was observed. Here's what happened.

Here are my questions. This is what I want to know. This is what I know. But a few things do kind of stand out. For one, Halt downplays the first night's encounter. He doesn't mention Sergeant Penniston's claims of touching a craft or seeing symbols on it. That's probably because Penniston hadn't shared those details through official channels

at that point. In fact, Penniston's more extraordinary claims that we'll talk about later didn't even surface until a few years later. Holt just calls it unusual lights and a glowing object. The second night, or third night as he puts it, the second night it happened, he describes the phenomenon but without any interpretation. Not once does he use it, second night it happened. He describes the phenomenon, but without any interpretation. Not once does he use the term UFO in the memo. It's like I said last week,

it was already a poison term in the 80s. So that doesn't surprise me at all. He probably didn't want to sound alarmist or crazy. You can almost kind of sense his internal military officer just taking over on this memo. His like PR training. Yes. Yeah.

So he basically he just sticks to observations and lets those who are reading it draw their conclusion. And initially this memo didn't circulate beyond defense circles. The Ministry of Defense in London received it, filed it away, and officially just kind of shrugged. Did nothing about it. And as we saw earlier, when questions were later asked, the Ministry of Defense stated that Halt's report was assessed by air defense staff and deemed to contain nothing of defense significance.

Therefore, they took no further action and didn't even respond to Halt. And they basically just kind of filed it under interesting but not important. That was basically what it was. From their perspective, if it wasn't a hostile aircraft that entered the UK airspace, no damage was done, so case closed. Which sounds mighty familiar to the drones happening around our air bases right now.

Where the official response from them is, it's not a threat, they're not doing anything, so we're not going to do anything. What is it now? How many years since the 80s? I almost said 20 years since the 80s, which makes me feel that's about right. And all is well. Forty five years ago. That seems totally fine. Yeah. I'm going to go have breakfast at the World Trade Center tomorrow.

Yeah, it's great. Oh, yeah, dude. Sweet. I can't wait. I'm never going. But I'm looking forward to visiting one very tall. I hear. Yeah. Yeah. And for a couple of years the Rendlesham Forest incidents remain dark real quick. Remain nothing more than just an internal whisper on base. It allowed rumors to swirl and among UFO enthusiasts in Britain,

there were murmurs that something big happened at a US air base over Christmas in 1980, but there was no official confirmation. It was all just hearsay, but that over Christmas in 1980, but there was no official confirmation. It was all just hearsay. But that eventually changed in 1980. Through the US Freedom of Information Act, a copy of Holtz memo was obtained by researchers. In October of 1983, the UK tabloid News of the World ran a screaming headline in all caps that said, UFO lands in Suffolk and that's official with a giant exclamation point right at the end of it and boom that's it the story was out and it was now

global news here was a bona fide military document describing a UFO encounter on British soil the fact that Holt was a high-ranking officer ended up lending it tremendous credibility to the public. This wasn't some random citizen filing a UFO report. It wasn't Mufon showing up. It was the deputy base commander of a major NATO installation. And the tabloid made the most of it, embellishing details, framing it as a cosmic drama for people to imbibe.

The public loved it. They fucking ate it up. And now suddenly Randall from forest was now mentioned in the same breath as Roswell. It basically is like in terms of like culturally right like cover up aspect of it is very reminiscent of English. If you're English or British or whatever, you probably feel similarly about this if you were there. Right, do where you're like,

whoa, you're like here, here we go again, too, though, like they it's a tabloid. So they're embellishing and just like creating things that like that didn't happen, which further just makes things muddy muddies it up. Do either of you think and this is just on like a human level, knowing the English that when a bunch of Americans are like, yo guys, aliens, and they were just kind of like, Oh, yeah. Uh, can we yanks around? We mentioned that last week briefly, I meant, I don't know what year it is.

They, they weren't fond of every year, every year, forever. I promise you every British guys would like the yang. So doing it again, they were not fond of the American troops. Let's just put it that way. They just weren't fond of them. I get it completely. I just know that when they're getting calls and things, it was like calls from the, yeah, they're like, there's aliens in our backyard, bro. Stay in the cops. Like, yeah, you know, there was a dude, like chief inspector nodding them. It was just like,

chief inspector, they're getting a call from the Yanks. Okay. It's like, oh, I don't know why they all sound exactly like that, but they definitely did. The ones that are saying that are. Yeah. Agreed. Uh, for the witnesses, this publicity was a double edged sword. Obviously on the one hand, it helped vindicate those who had been saying all along, we're not crazy.

Something happened. We just don't cavity the documents to prove it because they're all classified and Halt's memo was finally proof that they did report it through official channels. But on the other hand, it shoved these guys, many of whom were still in active duty or bound by clearance, into an uncomfortable spotlight out of nowhere just two years after the events happened. And the Air Force wasn't thrilled. Doesn't say that they were not happy about that. There were reports that some witnesses were warned or debriefed into silence, and Halt

for his part kept quiet publicly for a while after the leak. The memo itself became a subject of scrutiny. Skeptics immediately pounced on a couple of points. First, like we mentioned, the date discrepancy. Halt wrote the sightings were December 27th and 29th. Most now agree it should be the 26th and the 28th. Likely it was just a memory slip or confusion from writing this two and a half weeks later

after the event happened. He was requested to write this memo as well. That's why he was writing it later. Why the time discrepancy there? Cause they requested it late. They just requested it. Ah, like this is fucking annoying. Will you just write this?

But I feel like in most cases, be it police officer or officer in the military or anything, any time anything happens, you're doing paperwork. Well, remember, too, the blotties, were they called, were gone. The daily logs for that night the The next day we're like, take it just got rid of them. Right. They didn't throw them away. I think they classified them as what they said that happened. I don't, I can't,

I don't know, but yeah, I don't. Gone and classified are two different things. Well, gone from the, their eyes, because they were taken in classified, I should say. But there's no evidence of that though. So I'm just giving story of what is being said. Yeah, why the date discrepancy? I don't know, but that's exactly what the skeptics jump into too. If like, if you can't get the date right,

then what else in the memo isn't right? And then second, Halt mentioned radiation readings of 0.1 MR calling them higher than normal. And the British MOD, Ministry of Defense later noted that these levels were actually pretty close to background radiation. The UK average background is about 0.02 to 0.05. So 0.07 to 0.1 isn't like a huge jump,

but it is a notable. It's more, it's like almost double, right? It's about double, but for the mod apparently is fine. They say like it's not like crazy levels of radiation, but we're going to get, oh shit. Aliens were here. Yeah. But we're going to get to if that's true in a minute. And I with, with, with evidence.

But yeah, despite the quibbles, the halt memo has remained a pretty steady cornerstone of the case's credibility. Credibility overall. Even today, people point to to it and see like use this as the document and be like, see, the Air Force documented it. They just, you know, they use it as the end all be all. And while, yeah, it's hard for debunkers to ignore because it is a pretty black and white on government letterhead, it's still cautious to take it as it is because there are also a couple of inconsistencies

with it and it's worth to weigh both of those and when you take this into consideration. I also want to say it's also worth noting that Halt left out. He never speculates that it was maybe a Soviet satellite, nor does he ever speculate in the memo that it could have been a craft for another world. To address those claims, you mean? He never, yeah, there are people who like think that he did, but I think it's just muddying the waters. There is, he never mentions it. He doesn't talk about a craft from another world. He doesn't talk about a Soviet satellite. He doesn't mention the word.

Specifically, he says what? That it was unexplained, mysterious lights in the sky. That's it. Which is like an honest assessment. Yeah. He's like, I don't know what that is. Yeah. And he doesn't mention the word alien or anything about creatures running around like Warren

said. And while we have the audio tape where we hear him talking about the beam of light shooting to the ground like we listened to last week, he did not include that in the memo. So we have the audio knowing that he talks about it, but it didn't, he didn't put it in the memo for whatever reason. We don't really know why. Maybe he thought that it would be too much or too weird for them to take seriously if he did put it in there.

Or maybe he only remembered that clearly after reviewing the tape later, or maybe there's a reason we could never possibly fathom as to why he did it. I don't know. Either way, he did keep those out of the memo. The aftermath of the memo's leak was significant. Members of the UK parliament started asking the government, what the fuck is this about UFOs at a US air base? Did you investigate this? One famous exchange was with Admiral Lord Hill Norton, former chief of the defense staff.

That's the guy who's like this. That's exactly the dude who has that accent. He questioned the Ministry of Defense and his stance more or less was either. We read this quote last week. I had Jesse read it. This is the one that said either an alien craft landed near base nuclear equipped base or a bunch of Americans were essentially hallucinating and talking about imaginary UFOs.

So that's his either one. He said and he said either scenario is of defense interest. Hill Norton suspected there was a cover-up, but the Ministry of Defense Stonewall repeating that it was not deemed a threat and so they didn't investigate further. The official posture has fueled conspiracy theorists that just even more fuel their fire. The government knows more.

Why aren't they showing it? Because it does seem implausible that a Cold War military command would truly just ignore something like this if something was zipping over a nuclearly equipped base. But we are going to explore the cover-up angle shortly. As the years went on, Colonel Holt himself became more vocal. He retired from the USAF and eventually decided to start speaking openly. In the 90s and early 2000s, Holt gave interviews and even signed affidavits asserting that

the Rendlesham incident was real and unexplained, going so far as to say he believes it was of unknown origin that he had not seen our technology capable of, since no known technology that he had seen in his rank and file had anywhere near the abilities to maneuver like they were. He also then accused both the US and UK governments of quietly burying the case, which put him at odds with his former colleagues. In fact, Halt's own former boss, Colonel Ted Conrad,

the base commander in 1980, which we mentioned briefly in the first episode, also broke his silence 30 years later to dispute Halt's version. Conrad basically said he went out in the forest the day after the first sighting and found nothing remarkable. He acknowledged something odd happened the first night,

but he thought his people had misidentified lights. Conrad then said on the night Halt was out, he, Conrad, was at a holiday party and that's when he heard Halt on the radio excited about lights. Conrad and was at a holiday party, and that's when he heard Halt on the radio excited about lights. Conrad and others stepped outside and quote, "'Saw nothing that resembled Halt's description. "'None of them could.'

But he was at the Christmas party, like the other individual we talked about, and he said he also saw nothing. He then basically implying that Halt might have gotten spooked by the lighthouse and some stars. Which I find- It happened. It's happened to the best of us. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's out there, you know, exploring that piece of coastline that you always explore. And then one day you forget the lighthouse is there and think,

you chase it around for a while. And that hundred years old lighthouse, you just chase it, chase it, chase it. Like a dog. He Yeah yeah he conrad even scolded halt publicly saying halt should be ashamed and embarrassed for suggesting the uk and us conspired to cover up this incident adding that halt quote unquote knows better getting scolded like a kid and uh this public spat between the two of them the two high ranking officers essentially calling each other mistaken or insulting each other about what happened on their watch. For many, Conrad's skeptical take dented the case's credibility and for others, it was seen as a loyalty to the military line kind of thing that he was towing the official nothing to see here line versus halt,

who they say he has more whistleblowers. But again, even to Conrad's own admission, he was at the Christmas party anyway. He didn't go out there or anything. He went out after it happened and saw nothing during the day, which we know that nothing was happening during the day. There was indentations. But beyond that, he just was at the, again, it's just weird. It's just weird to go so aggressive. It is weird, but also, I mean, I would imagine there's an honesty to it.

Sure. Like if you're at the party, you open the door, you see nothing. You're going to say, I saw nothing. And you're going to be like this guy, he's talking shit. And I, I understand where you could come from. I feel like I would be definitely like, I'd be pissed if someone was like your toe in the line. Like, no, dude, I went outside. There was nothing there. You didn't see lights yet. That's yeah. And I get that too. Um, I just,

I don't know. I find it weird that it had to be such an aggressive, like come, come out like there. It just feels like a long 30 years, right? 30 years. Yeah. It's probably been dealing with that for 30 years it's kind of like I imagine it's when um yeah that's all drain or yeah the one of the other guy punch that dude for questioning if it was fake no you're correct absolutely like I can imagine after a while you'll be like I'm so tired of you guys and you just lose it for sure no yeah I Yeah, I agree.

You're actually a hundred for 30 years. That would drive me fucking insane. So, you know, all in all, the halt memo sparked whether you believe it or not fucking sparked and ignited the rendersham forest story worldwide. It lent a lot of weight to the story, but also became a focal point for controversy in a way to see it as in a from a skeptical light deservedly so. It's fascinating that one short document honestly can be like this end all be all and we've

got so much other shit in paperwork that is more interesting. But this is just like, I think the simplicity of it is really why it's so easy for people to kind of grab onto. And that kind of brings back into the story, Nick Pope. Now, Nick Pope is the guy who co-authored our main source, which is the Rendlesham Forest incident. Pope was also initially a skeptic. To remind you, from 1991 to 1994, he was assigned to a small, basicallyulder style ministry of defense office that handled the reports of the UFOs. Again, ex-files, very ex-files style. He was initially a skeptic about UFOs

just like J. Allen Hynek when he kind of got that same position, just doing a civil service job of logging and investigating sightings to see if there was any defense threat. But it was the Randallstrom Forest incident that landed squarely on his desk as one of Britain's major unresolved cases that eventually turned him to a believer. We mentioned that he co-authored the book, which has been our guide through the story

so far, but Pope has essentially become Randall Shim Forest's chief advocate, especially out in the UK, often citing it as the case that convinced him something unexplained and possibly extraterrestrial that he always hesitates to go that far happened. But his stance didn't form overnight either. It evolved as he dug into the Ministry of Defense files and talked to witnesses. Nick Pope has said that when he first learned about Rendlesham, he was astonished that such an incident involving US Air Force personnel and apparent parent, Kraft, could essentially be swept under the rug.

He reviewed the MoD's paperwork on it, which wasn't much beyond Holt's memo and some internal commentary. According to Pope, the file he found was thin, which in itself was odd given the magnitude of the claims. This either meant for him the MoD truly didn't do much or that additional documents were stored elsewhere or missing cue ominous music of conspiracy. He famously wrote quote, this is either this was either the biggest non story and everyone

was mistaken or it was one of the biggest cover-ups in MOD history. Oh, that's like every single story. That's I'm just gonna give you this quote. That's what he said. And you're right. Either it's real or it's fake. And the gun litters come right up. Literally.

Over the years, Pope's public stance became very pro-witness. He often emphasizes the credibility of the men involved, saying things like, these were trained military observers in charge of guarding nuclear weapons, not drunk yokels who saw a flying saucer above after pub hours. In interviews, Nick Pope points out that multiple witnesses, a recording, and physical traces make Rendlesham incredibly compelling. Saying things like, this was not some vague lights in the sky sighting, something actually landed. To Pope, the combination of radar, radiation, and testimony pushes the case into what he considers higher tier. He also played a part in later developments too.

For example, John Burroughs fight to get medical benefits. Burroughs, one of the airmen that was there from night one, ended up suffering mysterious health issues, including heart problems. In the year, and this all happened immediately after in the years following and believed to be caused by whatever he was exposed to that night. The US Veterans Administration initially just stonewalled Burroughs, even oddly claiming at one point

that they had no record of him serving in December of 1980, which makes no sense. So with the help of an attorney and Senator John McCain, Burroughs pressed for declassified info and in 2015, he finally won a settlement and full disability for injuries, quote, received in the line of duty in 1980. Importantly, Burroughs then obtained UK documents that acknowledged the presence of high levels of radiation at the landing site, higher than normal background,

enough to be potentially hazardous in a totally separate classified document that he had to dig out. And Nick Pope was instrumental in getting all of this out in the open and publicizing it. He even showed a memo which he had handwritten while at the MOD, noting that the Defense Intelligence staff speculated that the UFO might have emitted radiation that it could affect the bodies of those that came near it.

Pope hailed Burroughs VA victory as kind of like a de facto government acknowledged, which I kind of I would too if you were watching this dude fight for decades to get this shit covered. And like it was undoubtedly an intriguing outcome no matter how you look at it. The US government by granting Burroughs claim implicitly in a way accepted that something happened when he was there. But didn't we establish earlier that the radiation levels weren't that crazy? Right. There's a separate document that was declassified from the MOD. Sure, sure, sure. So this is like them saying that they were lying in the beginning? Well, the guy, so it's not them. So the guy, okay, so it's not them who were lying. The guy who went with Burroughs reported the levels of radiation that he

detected. And they're using that as their measure to compare it to. But apparently they may have, I could not find this, this particular paperwork in the black vault, F FOIA documents, but as a test separate document that shows that it was more dangerous and that the physical ailments he had are due to radiation radiation. So the initial assumption of it being non-hazardous like you're not hazardous double what normal it should be but like still non-hazardous is actually just bullshit. Correct. He got he had a heart issue like he had a list of illnesses that were cool but the... But only him? Other people had illnesses too. His was just like really bad.

His was like one of the worst for whatever reason. Yeah, I don't, again, we're gonna talk more about the medical stuff later as well. There's more that we're gonna cover, but yeah. Yeah, so all again, all that's to say, Pope's stance over time has just become more and more confident that whatever the explanation is for Rendlesham, it defies any conventional means or norms.

And early on he was careful not to shout aliens, instead just focusing on unexplained. But for him as more witnesses came forward and as no prosaic explanation was ever offered for it, he began to openly entertain the idea of extraterrestrials. He said that if even one account like Peniston's touching a craft is true, then we're dealing with something truly extraordinary. He also often encounters the skeptical theories, for instance, regarding the lighthouse theory. Pope points out that the airmen, like I've said, would have been fucking familiar with the lighthouse's appearance, the light at night, all these other things.

And the lighthouse doesn't explain the shooting beam of light that hit the ground in the multiple lights that showed up around them and moved in and out close to them. That said, Pope still, I would say Pope isn't beyond criticism. Like, I mean, I mean, I went into so much fucking depth, guys. It's fucking crazy. This guy, yeah, he was like. Skeptics want to say, like, he wants to believe and perhaps align facts to fit the extraterrestrial narrative. One of those, I'd say, is an example of proof of that is the later evidence that is known

as the binary code story, which we're now going to talk about pretty in depth. So Penniston years later, one of the two that were physically in front of the craft is him and borrows later came out and said that he had a binary code download that he forgot that he wrote down in his notebook that night. Pope, what do you, what do you, when you say binary code download. Like it was put into his brain and then he wrote, okay, not really a download, right? Like the matrix, but not, but not the matrix. This is before the matrix was a movie though. This happened in the early nineties.

Basically Pope said he is, you can go look at the pictures of it. Pope included the binary code transcripts in the book that I'm using as my main source, kind of presenting them as part of Peniston's experience. But he kind of diplomatically says things like when it comes to the binary code part, the tone changes and he says, this is Jim's story. I'm just reporting it. Readers can make up their own minds. He very much is like, I don't know about this. He didn't wholly debunk it, nor did he wholly endorse it, which is kind of fence-sitting a little bit, which is something critics also point out too, fairly enough. Being, you know, kind of being in the public circuit for the UFO world, he does have

an interest in keeping the Rendlesham story alive to a degree. But to be fair to Nick, he often underscores that not every weird event is a conspiracy. Sometimes it's just bureaucracy or incompetence. One of the quotes that he has in the book just simply says, what often looks like conspiracy just turns out to be the boring gears of bureaucracy doing what they do. In the context of the MOD handling of UFOs, he means I think sometimes the lack of action or loss of files isn't sinister cover-up. It's literally just mundane government inefficiency. So he doesn't see men in black around every corner. He's not seeing a conspiracy there.

Regardless, Rendlesham, but regarding Rendlesham, he does suspect there's at least a downplaying happening with it. He has kind of hinted that maybe the Americans and British privately maybe no more. Maybe the radar data or intelligence info that never made it to public files, but he never could get far when he did his research and he couldn't get super deep with what he was looking for. Maybe he just like just being stonewalled or couldn't find it. One interesting evolution did come in recent years Pope has embraced even some of the more stranger aspects Which is kind of bizarre like the possibility of time travel interdimensional future human theories

Which is kind of bizarre is more modern takes of Pope. So take it what you will He's mused about whether the craft could have been some ultra top secret US experiment as well or even something from our own future. These ideas are weird and that they fit into UFO lore now, but not remotely something he ever brought up in the decades prior to it. So he's Pope kind of ends up in modern day is something of a like, yeah, something weird happened and I wouldn't say no to it being something completely bizarre, like time traveling aliens or something. With that,

though, I want to now move into the skeptical lens. Let's talk really quickly. While you're talking about Pope. I was like, where do I know this name from? I know this guy, like not just from the show. I know this name. Yeah, dude. a few years back, like pre COVID times, this man was on IGN. What really promoting XCOM. Hey, I'm not even joking. You 100% was that's how I know this dude.

Make that so fun. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's like the perfect Right guy to bring in at least just like people who play those kinds of games are niche anyway, and there's a neat Oh, that's yeah I was like, why do I know this name and I was like I Nick Pope and it's like yeah, you went on to go promote an XCOM game. That's so funny to me. That's awesome. I love that so yeah, let's move into the skeptical lens for a bit here because as compelling as Redel Shemit is and it is Wildly compelling. There are a ton of people here that say there is no mystery at all Just a perfect storm of misidentification

tricks of perception and maybe a dash hysteria to just explain all of this. And we're gonna try, I'm gonna try and cover all the major explanations. There are a ton of them, but there are quite a few that are prominent. Can I ask, like, in your mind, what is the base story? Cause what we heard today was a bunch of addendums and a bunch of people being like,

oh yeah, we stared at it, or there was this other thing happening, or the other, like, what is the base story? The base story is night one lights were seen. They called it up the chain of command, got permission, went out. When they went out there, it was just about four or five of them. They saw the lights. It looked like one had landed. Two of them, spill it off. The people that stayed said they were gone for 10 minutes. They felt like they were, oh no, the people that stayed felt like they were gone for 45 minutes. They felt like they were, oh no, the people that staged felt like they were gone for 45 minutes.

The two that went, Penniston and Burroughs, felt like they were gone for 10 minutes. There was a time difference. They went back. 28th, they go out, they see it. The indentations, they make castings, they make notes. Nothing happens then. The next night, Christmas party, post Christmas

or whatever, they come into the party and they're like, Hey, it's back. That's when Holt goes out. That's when the recording starts. The audio recording is the second one. We have like, there's a beam of light. That's night. Number two, the lights happen. They see him zipping around. No word on if they actually landed. Doesn't seem like they did, or at least if they landed, it was far away and they didn't catch light and see anything then they left

The end right so at base they see like like the base level of what the story is is they want to be seen They look weird. We go out to investigate It seems weird and that's it. The first night is a two dude see the ship That's when the time dilation happened. Remember that. So like they thought they were like, like the ship they see, that was the one that had the weird symbol, not hieroglyphics, hieroglyphics that looked like a monster energy drink. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yep. Okay. Yep. That's it. Yeah. That's the story. All the addendums. So actual aliens actually, no

aliens, no triangle craft. None of that shit. I don't believe a word of it. 30 years later, people adding stuff to the story or whatever. Probably like one day later until 30 days later. Yeah, like no, because yeah, but Stinza and Warren were jumping in immediately almost as soon as it was like a big rumor on base. They were trying to be like we were there, bro. We were there. That's what they were doing. None of that is in remotely in my opinion.

I do press the local townies. I get it Yeah, you get man you else you fucking do it on the military base Anyway going out getting fish chips fish talking to local Dames the dolls the names of the Birds they would have been birds. What year was this? No, it would be to 81 chicks What year was this? No, it would've been a two 81 chicks Check chicks bro. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about some of these skeptical explanations Let's talk about the first the most obvious one that's been brought up in the memo No, you know, you know hearing it now going from like we used to be like, yeah the birds and then chicks

All it is just younger birds and that's like creepy. What do you think about it? Anyway moving on sorry, you're absolutely Like keep getting older they say the same man oh god I hate that shit oh okay the Orford Nest lighthouse is the first one we're gonna cover now if you ask basically any skeptic they most almost immediately will say it's the Orford Nest Lighthouse or if you're British, the bloody Orford Nest Lighthouse. What? I'm sorry. What was that? The bloody Orford Nest Lighthouse is that your redemption for your British accent last week? I

don't remember how I tried last week. Your British accent last week was like the lighthouse. redemption then I well, maybe We'll leave it to the internet to decide it sounded like I was actually in England again excellent I was like, oh my god. I was like wow like yeah, like oh my gosh. I must be in the East End 25 yeah surprise you're still in the United States of America Yeah Yeah. Surprise. You're still in the United States of America. Yeah. Uh, the Blot a lot.

It's like you weren't even trying. I was like, is that Mark Mir? Wow. He's so good, dude. Oh my God. When they do the new Mass Effect, I don't know if he's part of it, but if he is, let me be his twin brother. Yeah, perfect. I know.

I'll just show up and talk like that. And this one, Shepard is a East European vampire. Bloody Commander Shepard. Okay, okay, so the Orpher Nest Lighthouse, which was on the Suffolk coast until it was decommissioned in 2013, is very central to most of the mundane explanations. The lighthouse sits about five miles away from the Rendlesham Forest, flashing a bright rotating beam every five seconds through the trees at night, especially if you're moving. It can appear like a distant vehicle or moving object.

And I've been tricked myself with stars in the sky before that we've talked about on the show where like, if you move a bit, or even if you breathe, if you're the star, the guy you're looking at is surrounded by basically nothing or just like one thing, it can look like it's moving, but it's just your body's movement creating a hallucination. So the theory goes on night one, just after 3 a.m., a bright fireball,

meteor, they say, streaked over southern England. There and there really was a particularly bright one reported at that exact time. Penniston, Burroughs and Cabinsag see that flash and maybe some trailing debris and think something crashed in the forest. Hearts, you know, hearts are pounding, they get excited, let's go in. They spot a beacon of light, light shown through the trees, and that's the lighthouse. They chase it for a while, stumbling through brambles until they reach a vantage point near the farm where they finally realize, oh shit, it's just a light coming from the

coast from the lighthouse. And that's when Burrough's own written statement that we talked about, where he says that they explored for about two miles, we could see it was coming from a lighthouse and ended it. He later acknowledged this is exactly what happened on night one. And if that's true, it means no landed craft on night one, just a lot of running around after benign light.

It also means Peniston's vivid memory and story of a close encounter with that ship didn't happen as he initially reported, or he kept those details to himself. It's possible Peniston truly believed later that he also encountered the craft, but on the night under adrenaline, maybe he misinterpreted shadows in a light. To be honest, the human mind is funny and memories can be warped and changed. I'll tell you again the story of that thing crouched on the fence that I stared at for like an hour before I investigated it. Yeah, exactly.

Or he could have had a totally, I mean, it's possible he had a separate experience away from Burrows and Cabin Sag, but there's zero mention of that. Now on the next night, when the next night of event, when Holt went out, guess what he noted in his tape? At one point he sees a flashing light and he says, it's maybe five to 10 degrees off the horizon, which we heard in the last week. It's right off the horizon and it flashes from time to time. And he even says it's star-like. It's probably a lighthouse. And you can hear him and others debating this on the record.

Literally they're thinking about it. You know what I mean? That's what I was going to say is like, well, a lot of people point to that. They recognize it. They understand. You can hear them working it out despite this though. And like, despite that law halt still was adamant that they hadn't been chasing a lighthouse saying he said we could see the lighthouse. The things we saw was not that it was something else. That kind of refutes it, right? Yeah. Well, then you have skeptics like astronomer Ian Riddpath who have constructed the scenario from Halt's position in the forest, the flashing he saw was in fact in the exact line

of sight of the Orpher Nest Light, saying that no, he's wrong about him saying he knew what the lighthouse was. He's seeing the lighthouse. He says the timing of the flashes matched and his description of a red sun-like light that moved about and pulsed could match the lighthouse beam appearing and disappearing behind the trees as he moved. Riddpath and others also noted that the terrain was slightly elevated toward the coast, meaning the lighthouse, though miles away, could appear at about eye level from deep in the forest, giving the illusion of something moving

through the trees. But a key thing, out of Nervet's excitement, even Halt's men could have started interpreting the periodic flashes as a moving object when in fact the movement was them or the branches swaying. This is is again. I mentioned before this is a known psychological effect in night sightings. Your brain can make a fixed light appear to dart when you're amped up around the mover looking at something and you

don't really understand it. But if you know what you're looking at, you can kind of also know what you're looking at. What about the starlight objects in the sky that all reported then? Well, astronomers say were exactly that. They were just stars. In particular, the brightest star Sirius was low on the horizon to the south that night. And it's often reported that as a UFO because it twinkles in colors when the near

horizon, uh, when, when it's near the horizon. And we saw this when the drone sighting started happening, a ton of people started posting videos of weird lights in the sky. And the number of times I saw someone post Sirius or Venus or Mars because it's not, it's orange and it's not a star was like infinite and people still do it. So yes, this does happen often. Whether these guys would know that or not, you know, I don't know. It's a feasible explanation, I think.

Hall described one star-like object to the south that hovered for two to three hours and it beamed down a stream of light now and then. Sirius does hang around in that one spot for a long time. It's fixed in the sky relative to Earth's rotation, and it can appear to flash or send occasional rays Likely an optical illusion of the clouds now. I've seen it flicker I've never seen that fucker send down a beam ray to my yard or ever And I've seen that star every goddamn night. I go look at the stars

So I don't know about that, but I definitely have seen it flash and flicker around like it's it's bizarre It's just how it again. It's the interaction of the atmosphere and it does make it look weird. The northern objects could have been bright stars or planets like Vega or Deneb, which were up at that time. And to an excited observer, a star that's twinkling can look like it's moving in sharp angular movements. Racing through the air, racing through the air. Yeah, I don't know if that's how it looked. To me, like that's the thing.

If you listen to the tape, he says things like it's moving. Oh, there it goes. It's on the other side. Oh, it's coming toward us. Oh, it's absolutely coming toward us. Oh, now it's hovering and now it's leaving. Like-

Like I've seen stars and thought they were moving. Yeah. Before, but like it looks like, it's more like when you're like, I was, remember that time I was telling you, I was laying in bed with my wife and we were like looking out the window that was like above us and we could see something that looked like it

was moving. That's the characteristic of like you, I was laying in one place and I could see it the whole time. Right. And I, that's, and that's how I feel too. Like, and this is not to say some of the things they might be seeing might be these things too. And they are mixing up a couple things. It's just the audio of when like, in a lot of it, these things moving around them and coming close and pulling away and shit. That doesn't sound like a star in the sky or the or just like a beam from a lighthouse. Regardless, we'll keep moving through this because other stuff as as halt because remember, really

quickly about that. I know you want to move on but like, no, no, as halt because remember, hold them really quickly about that. I know you want to move on, but like, no, no, please. One of the things I think about all the time when I think about people talking about moving lights and seeing things in the sky is I don't think people, and this isn't poo pooing it, but it's just something to think about. I don't think people understand how much your head moves. Oh yeah. So you may think you're still, but like, all got to do is watch any footage of someone playing anything in

VR. Their camera is constantly moving. Even if they're trying their hardest not to move because you just micro move and I am, I can imagine there's a possibility that when you think you see stuff moving, really it's just you like- 100%. Slightly moving a little bit. I don't know.

I know scientific knowledge of it, but like it seems. No, it happens to me every single night. It's a real thing. Literally just your breathing, your own body, the way you said your head moves. Like it creates an illusion of them. They don't like, they look like they move in like weird, little like sharp ding, like move around,

but they never go super far from like a center point and that's if you stare at it long enough you'll realize oh no it's not moving but like once you recognize that you know you can start to realize how much you see is just an illusion. Same thing with like more modern satellites too when you look at a satellite it doesn't move in a straight line per se like it is moving in a straight line but it looks like it's swimming through the sky. And that's due to the atmosphere, your own eye, and due to like of its own orbit. It's not swimming. It's not a UFO.

It is just the way something looks like it's moving to the naked eye. And that's very, again, all very important to keep in mind. So yeah. So the hard quotes go to like the no craft as well. They say it was just a meteor that was, I've had a fiery streak, the lighthouse beam at its most basic. The case comes down to the misinterpretation of a series of nocturnal lights, a fireball, a lighthouse and some stars, writes Robert Schaeffer, which is summer,

which summarizes RID path's analysis. Essentially, it sounds almost disappointingly simple, but sometimes reality is underwhelming. Like, and that's like, I say, it's, it's worth taking these into consideration consideration. Obviously to bolster this, there's no, the, the skeptical viewpoint, there are no photos or videos that we're taking because, uh, you know, they were just running around the fucking forest in 1980. No definitive radar returns were recorded.

We're gonna get more to the radar in a little bit. And the local police and foresters saw zip diddly nothing when they eventually showed up, as we talked about earlier, which is another- Zip diddly and nothing? Zip diddly and nothing. Those are the three Rice Krispies, right? I believe so, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, those are the pedophile twin brothers of them. You know what? Why they gotta be pedophiles, man? Why they gotta do that? The Rice Kripies. Those are the pedophile twin brothers of them. You know what? Why they gotta do pedophiles? Why they gotta do that? Those are the Rice Creepies. The Rice Creepies? Love that.

I don't want any art of the Rice Creepies. Thank you. Yeah, if an actual, they're saying basically if an actual spaceship were zipping around, how did all so many people miss it? Maybe at a distance, they didn't have the advantage point that they needed to see what it really was, or the phenomena was hyper local and low to the ground. But skeptics use the absence of widespread observation beyond the military people that saw it as an argument for a contained, misperceived, mistaken light.

Do you think that the reason it, I mean, if that's the case, right? Like if the idea of it, yeah, it seems like how come only these guys saw it? Do you think the reason why stories like this have more credence and credibility is just because the military is attached? Oh, I think, yeah, it must be real because the military wrote a letter about it. That's, and that gets to the crux of the difficulty. I agree. Yes.

It's called an appeal to authority, right? People say it must be real because of this. And that's, and like, yeah, I'm definitely guilty of done having done that in the past. I try to be better about it now, but the real thing you try when you do like deep research into something like this, you realize the reality is it's a really messy middle ground. Like there is weird shit that was classified that didn't come out till decades later. Dude didn't get his medical benefits till decades later. They said this one thing, but then they say this other thing.

And like the only way to find the truth is via getting the actual paperwork. And as you even saw in the memo, it's not even fully like fully decensored. There's a ton that's redacted in there. And so you appeal to authority, but the problem is the authority is filled with people on both ends. And so, you know, for instance, like when Grush in a modern day comes out and you're like, well, Grush has all of these things that would indicate him as being at least honest about what

he was doing with his work. But then other people in government say, no, he wasn't. And now you have people saying on one hand, well, he was doing this. The government justifies him. Well, then looking at the other guy and saying he's for the government. We can't trust him. Right. Yes.

Like, and that's the problem. So that's why the paperwork is the only fucking way to figure out or get an idea of what might be the truth because Nope, that's where the reality is and and I don't really know I personally don't know how to address that like as just like a talking point because I mean it's it's it's a it's a Like I don't say hypocrisy, but it's the idea that yeah but the government is Covering it up and the authority on it being true who was in the

government when it happened. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, well, he can't be both right. But somehow that's where we're at. We're like right now it gets down to the compartmentalization. The top brass who don't communicate with the lower brass who saw the event say this happened and don't talk to them and just constantly say it didn't happen. While they said we witnessed it. It did happen. Here's, we reported it. It's as much as we're willing to say as facts. Yeah.

Because they're still on duty. They can get in trouble for breaching classifications, which could send them to jail. They don't want to lose their like, you don't want to lose your paycheck. If maybe you don't go to jail, maybe you're just like, go, you don't want to lose your paycheck. You have a life to live still. You're in the eighties. It's like, no one's going to you coming forward, isn't going to blow the top off of it. Like it's just, yeah, it's, there's a lot of context to keep in mind that makes it so much more nuanced than I think people wish it were. Um,

Penniston and Holt to their, to their credit also scoffed at the lighthouse Siri, literally Holt saying, quote, we could see the lighthouse off to the side. We were tracking something else, which actually when the audio tracking. Yeah. Yeah. And indeed not everything can be attributed to the lighthouse. For instance, Halt's tape does record something that sounds like an object flying overhead at one point in the eerie beam that is reportedly coming down near them, which a lighthouse

can't do nor can a star. Skeptics reply that maybe Halt and company got like freaked out by the lighthouse and started imagining or embellishing things, but now we're just going into, okay, well, if they're imagining things, then it could imagine anything, I guess. Like there's no way that now you have as much evidence as they do of a ship being there. Or you have less evidence of them than they would have a ship having landed. How many days was it after the fact that they wrote actually wrote the report? Two and a half weeks is when Hulk wrote the report. January 13th is when the report was

and then and then the M.O.D. didn't even address the report till another couple weeks after that. I mean, like I feel personally that if you were going to at some if you like screwed up and it was lighthouse, you had two and a you like screwed up and it was a lighthouse, you had two and a half weeks to be like, it was the lighthouse. Right. All of them had two and a half weeks. Any of them could have said that. Yeah, like even, even, even if it wasn't and they were told like it's the lighthouse, just say it's the lighthouse. Even if you personally didn't want to accept that it was something that you couldn't explain,

you could convince yourself. Yeah. Like you had the time and I feel like that's probably an indication that it was something that you couldn't explain, you could convince yourself. Yeah, like you had the time. And I feel like that's probably an indication that there was something it wasn't the lighthouse. Yeah, I would imagine they weren't out in the woods running around in the middle of December. Being like, let's go fucking chase the lighthouse around. It's cold, I imagine this fuck at that time. And like, and also the lighthouse is still the lighthouse. If you run towards the lighthouse, eventually you'll just see the lighthouse. You will just see the lighthouse. Yes. You will eventually chase. That's just how that shit works. Like if it's still there, the whole point is you'll be able to see it anywhere and you could go directly towards

it. But the whole idea is if you're in a boat, you avoid it. Like I get it. I understand. If you're chasing a star around, you're eventually going to realize, oh, it's not actually moving. It's a star. Why are we running? I mean, that that's why. Yeah, they're so yeah, I think that's interesting. Yeah, they would say it's a lighthouse because of all the explanations seems the stupidest. Yeah, and astronomers got involved in everything is just like they're trying to disprove. Now, to the next part where that people clamp onto the binary code. And this is another one where I'm like, I don't believe that shit at all. I don't either. I don't either. I'm just like, my question is like, why?

Why did you do this? Like, let's get into it. So, yeah, one of the strangest twists in the story emerged 30 years after it all happened in 2010. Jim Penniston revealed something he claims he kept mostly a secret. That when he touched the unknown craft on night one, he received a downloaded message. Not a verbal one, but a telepathic download of nothing but ones and zeros that implanted into his mind.

He then felt compelled to write down those digits which he did in his notebooks, six pages worth of binary code. In fact, years later, those binary sequences were translated to ASCII. The code, you know, the computers use now and turned out it's spelled a message in English plus a list of geographic coordinates, boys. And I bet you, you can guess at least one or two of them. Like Breyer Triangle and stuff? Like Roswell in New Mexico? Yeah, here we go.

We're going to do it. Here we go. The message said, apparently, I'm going to copy paste it because it's like, you know, I am unsure of what some of these are supposed to say because it's not complete. It says exploration of humanity 40th C T R, which some think is likely continuous for planetary advantage. And then it just ends planetary at a van. Yeah. At van planetary at van. Okay. Uh,

it's seems incomplete appears to mean continuous for planetary advancement likely. Uh, it also cryptically says in there eyes of your eyes. Um, we don't know what that means and lists seven locations around the globe by longitude and latitude. Uh, these coordinates correspond to the places, the following places, the pyramids at Giza. Sure.

Of course. Why not? The Nazca lines in Peru, right? This guy read some books, random location in Sedona, Arizona, a spot in Greece, another in China, one in Belize and intriguingly one in the middle of the Atlantic ocean triangle. No, uh, which some though is the legendary, they think this is the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Brunei Triangle? No, which some though is the legendary, they think this is the location of the legendary High Brasile, H-Y-B-R-A-S-I-L,

which is a mythical creature from Celtic lore, which I can't remember if we covered, we may have. I vaguely recognize the name. That's what I'm saying, right? Because it has the word high in it, but that's the best I got. Yeah, that's all I got too. And it also gave a date or a supposed date, and listed a number that some interpret as a date,

8100 like the year 8100. So according to penistens binary message, the UFO to some might've been a time traveling crash from humanity's future visiting sacred sites. humanity's future visiting sacred sites. UFO tourism, I, my theory that all UFOs are just rich alien kids is it's checking out y'all. Have you read them onto something? Have you read that little short story, the egg before? No egg. It's like the cosmic egg thing.

No, it's, it's so it's only like a page. It's, it's short. I forget who writes it. Maybe Andy Weir. I can't remember, but it's like, you die, and then you find out that every being on earth, ever, across all of time, every human, was a reincarnation of yourself. And that you reincarnate across time to until you have lived the life of every person on earth. And then when you die, the last time you ascend and that the whole universe was made for you to

ascend to become a God, as similar to other gods and that the UFOs are like them kind of watching us. Yeah, in a way. Yeah, it's an interesting take on like the universal consciousness theory. Essentially. You're telling me that I'm both of you. Yeah, man. Yeah. I mean, it's a short story. Any of that up since any of the stuff we've talked about. I feel like now hold on now to do mushrooms explains why I'm so

sexually attracted to myself. I feel like you should have like maybe you did all three of us like really separate from each other in your time, because like, why would you do this three times? Right? You know, right? Yeah. Wait, but then who's everyone else?

You. You, we're everybody. You have to lean these. At the same time, I'm everyone? Yeah, because time is only linear in our perspective. You're getting reincarnated at the end of each life. So I'm both of you right now talking to me right now, who is me, but also you.

You were also. Yes. This is, this is drugs. This is drugs. And girl, you were also, this is like half of UFO theory. Not, not this exact reincarnation thing, but just the thing that we're all the same. Yeah. But I just don't know.

I just don't remember being you. You might not have been me. Yeah. Ancient that pulls from that. I might pull from like ancient Eastern religion stuff too. Like it's ancient. But you learned nothing from me. No, us experiencing each other is the, is the learning. It's just having the experience. But like what if I don't want to experience?

Well, that's something you learned about yourself. You're the god. A part of you doesn't want to experience this. This was made for you. Yeah. But then also I'm a war, I'm a warmonger. Unfortunately. Yeah. And porn star. Yeah. Yeah. You were Hitler and you were Jesus and you were a murderer. Yeah. Unfortunately. And president. Yeah. And every single person that you mass murdered.

Damn dude. And where the last I really taught myself a lesson. Yeah. Damn dude. And where the last I really taught myself a lesson. Yeah, I taught myself a lesson. I really killed myself a whole bunch throughout history. It was crazy. Um, so this binary code shit is something that skeptics rightfully love because this is like the exact kind of convoluted like Dan Brown esque thing that somebody would make up after the fact of this shit.

And Penniston never mentioned any binary code or telepathy in the 80s in his reports, in his debriefings, not in his official statement, not to halt, not to investigators who interviewed him in the 90s. He says he was, in his defense, I guess, or what he says is that he was afraid to or that it only came out later under hypnosis that he underwent in the 90s.

We all know how we feel about hypnosis. So you know, I don't know. It wasn't until a TV show in 2010 that Penniston publicly unveiled the notebook ones and zeros. And critics like Ann Ridpath and Robert Schaeffer have pointed out glaring issues. First, the binary message uses modern ASCII encoding, which wouldn't be common knowledge in 1980, especially not to an Air Force cop. If beings from 8100 wanted to communicate, why on earth use binary English and include a random mix of ancient sites in a mythical Island. Uh,

it just reads like sci-fi novel plot or just like one of Alex's internet conspiracy conspiracy mashup episodes. I'm merely the messenger. Yeah. Uh, RID path also dryly noted that if these were future time travelers, they apparently run windows since ASCII is a computing standard for fucking windows and the technology just never got better. Maybe that's a, you know, they were on vacation and he's like, Oh dude, I forgot to bring my lap, my future laptop. Oh, well pick something up.

You were going to say it's like when you go to like the Amish and live their life for a little bit. So you try to restrict yourself to the technology of the time. No way. I put a phone springer, phone dropping We all really just like mess with them. They kicked me out so quick to get out of here Problem with like getting kicked out is they're gonna kick you out on earth Nobody wants to live on earth and you're gonna be stuck here forever So I wouldn't fuck with the alien laws of like not that sounds that sounds real

You know what be more fucked up for the Amish than like a phone is like the that like vibrating knife that like carves a turkey really well or some shit like that oh she that probably like they probably they're mine to you all right well it's fine because like to them we're all just gonna burn in hell and they're the only ones that are gonna get to heaven anyway so hey to each their own yeah yeah uh even like other fellow witnesses by the way have their doubts about this shit. John Burroughs, the man who was with him when he went to go see the ship, has been polite, but clearly doesn't fully embrace Penniston's binary story.

And like I said, Nick Pope, including in the book, took that kind of diplomatic step back and said it was mostly just Jim's story. Schaeffer, the Schaeffer we talked about a minute ago, in Skeptical Inquirer quipped that each year a witness adds a crazy new claim making the story fish that got bigger and bigger. And the binary code was a crowning achievement of that. To him, it proved all of it was fake.

On top of that, hypnosis sessions, bro. They're the ones that introduced these wild notions. Burroughs, under hypnosis, apparently talked about possibly being abducted by the craft for a brief period, and that penistin was taken too, but they had missing time. There was even a suggestion that other base personnel saw Burroughs and penistin being levitated into a light. And if you think this is starting to sound like fodder,

you're right, these details didn't come out until way a bunch of years later and are impossible to verify. They have the characteristic of like just classic UFO movie stuff, but were never part of not only the original story, but none of the original evidence. And why did Penniston add all this?

I don't know. I don't know because I do think something weird happened that night. It's like the, like there's a lot of evidence that shows something weird happened last night. Why Penniston 30 years later thought like to do this. And even if it, even if he's honest and it was binary code and he wrote it 30 years ago. Do you truly think coming forward 30 years later is like going to work? Moreover, it came out in hypnosis, man. Why? You're not helping your own credibility moving forward.

Like, good God. I don't think this that's like legit at all. Right. No, I don't either. It's why he announced this 30 years later but like what 90s 90s no no no no no 2010 2010 2010 so basically like just really quickly looking because I was like okay he writes books he has books um there are two that I see and one is from, it looks like 2014 and one's from 2019. For what? For books on what?

Um, literally penison has one encounter in rendersome forest. Uh, that appears to be from 20, uh, God, I did have the date. It was 2014, I think was the, was the, that one. And then his other one that's literally like the enigma. That one is 2019, October 16th, 2019. And so it's just interesting that he's going to do the run up to his books. Yeah, no, yeah. Agreed.

It's very bizarre. April 15th, 2014 was the first book in 2019 was the second. Yeah. And that's agreed. Like that's, that's pretty much how everybody kind of looks at it too. I think is like it's weird. It's happening at a time. Like you said, where books are starting, he's starting to come out with books. His, his first book would come out in like 2015 or whatever,

like 2014 or whatever it is. You said that first one he made with Pope? Yes, correct. Because, but that book has the documents, the M O D documents and all that stuff. And then when we get to the point where binary code happens, that's where Pope steps back and it's like, and I assume that's the enigma. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm assuming it's the enigma and literally it's book one timeline. Oh boy. Yeah. Uh, and then the whole perspective, let me see when that was released. Uh, yeah. Oh my God. It's just like, it's just the most boring book in the world. Um, a successful conference took place and uh, when did this come out?

I don't know. I'll look for this in a minute. It's 2015, 2016. So yeah, they're both releasing books around the same time at this point. 30 years after the fact, a little bit more than or whatever. Again, well worth keeping in mind, especially when it comes to the stuff that can't be backed by the government records and whatnot. And another big angle also for skeptics, this is another big one of the

things that people look at is that was it just pranks? So the way they explore this idea is that Randall Shim incident wasn't alien, but like just them pranking each other, either a deliberate prank or maybe it was like a COVID operation that they weren't told about that was misrepresented as a UFO. These theories really do vary from, plausible to like that sounds stupid as hell. There's the SAS payback prank theory. One of the this one came out around 20. I believe this immediately immediately believe this and this came from courtesy of Dr. David Clark, who's a UK researcher who often takes a skeptical position on these things.

He cited unnamed British Special Forces claiming that the whole affair was a Dr. David Clark, who's a UK researcher who often takes a skeptical position on these things. He cited unnamed British special forces claiming that the whole affair was a practical joke by the SAS played on the US Air Force. The story goes that a few months before in August of 1980, an SAS troop parachuted into RAF Woodbridge as a test of base security. This was something SAS apparently did to do to test and infiltrate NATO bases. But the Americans had recently upgraded their radar and caught them. The SAS men were hauled in, interrogated harshly and even reportedly

beat up a little bit with US personnel mocking them as unidentified aliens. They which the Brits must have loved the SAS being proud as well as themselves decided to get revenge for this treatment and the aliens' jibe. So fast forward to a few months later and they set up an elaborate hoax. According to the, again, this is an anonymous source that is supposedly one of the SAS people. They rigged lights, flares, and even black helium balloons with remote controlled kites to carry materials that would mimic a UFO. They used the forest as a stage flashing lights, maybe dangling something that looked like

a spacecraft and generally just trying to mess with the security patrols. They basically played into the USAF's expectations since UFO fever was somewhat in the zeitgeist and those guys had just called them aliens a few months back, supposedly. And the SAS gave them aliens as they requested. The first night, maybe they started with some flares and lights moving through the trees. And then the next time when halt came out, they pulled all the stops out, hovering array of lights that projected beams.

The SAS sources allegedly said it was meant to be a bit of fun on a cold night and that they had no idea it would blow up like it did. Once Halt sent that memo up and the Americans got all serious, some senior folk in London realized, oh, oops, this was probably our guys messing with them. Just bury it. Just bury it. And according to the story, high level officials had a quiet word with the USAF commanders to assure them there was no intrusion, thus explaining why both governments quickly shut

the case down. For them, essentially would save face on all sides. The US didn't have to admit they got bamboozled by their UK friends and the UK didn't have to admit that their elite troops were playing with balloons on Christmas and messing with the US forces and officially it could remain a mystery or non-event. That's fucking that's a crazy story to me with all the shit that was involved with the balloons and stuff like they wouldn't have seen them in the forest as they're running around the forest they wouldn't have heard their footsteps if they were there.

And this is again this is all based on an anonymous SAS insider, which means we literally have to take it on trust as much as we would take a UFO person who has no evidence on trust. And again, some elements are plausible. It would explain lack of official concern. It would also explain some physical things. Flares can often account for floating lights. If there were actually helium balloons with lights, they could appear like an orb that moved or exploded according to Warren.

But we already I already say I don't think Warren story is real. But as the SAS theory also has holes, it assumes an incredible level of coordination and risk. If US armed guards freaked out, they might have been open fire on if they heard or saw people that they didn't recognize in restricted territory. Also, tech in 1980 for remote controlled balloons or drones wasn't mega advanced, though the SAS were resourceful. Don't get me wrong. Could they really carry out this hoax over the course of two nights without the Americans realizing there are people around that there's

like a security base like that? Like it just feels like the exact thing that the base is there to like not let occur. Yeah, and they're running around the woods. They never heard anybody like it makes if you take a moment and just think about it, it doesn't really make sense. While it's entertaining, like it's a funny thought to have them running around the woods with balloons and flares.

Wouldn't they hear the flare gun go off? Like anyway, like it's a funny thought, but like it's kind of weird. And remember there's only 200 yards of woods between the two bases where the event happened. So it would have had to have been within that area. It's fucking bizarre. Anyway, then there's the classified craft or test theory, which is maybe that an experimental craft, government or drone in the 80s was being tested near the bases,

which became the focus of the sightings. Could the US have been secretly flying something out of RAF Woodbridge? Maybe it was a stealth helicopter that was like deployed to see what happened. Could the US have been secretly flying something out of RAF Woodbridge? Maybe it was a stealth helicopter that was like deployed to see what happened. For instance, a remote controlled VTOL craft vertical takeoff and landing with lights and would appear like a UFO. If it were a black project, meaning one that no one would be privy to except for those in it, even the security personnel might not know causing them to react like they did.

And in the late 1970s and 80s, did see some advanced projects like early stealth planes. The F-117 Nighthawk was around in 1980. The operational testing for that was in Nevada, not England. There was also rumors of a prototype remote drone or some plasma inducing device that would simulate some weird shit, but I couldn't find any paperwork on that supposed rumor.

And one specific idea was that maybe there was a satellite crash or there was a satellite and reentry and a team was sent to recover it. Hence the lights activity, but nothing about these things is documented in any of these regards and no debris was ever found. It was indentations. There was no no debris. It's also possible that some maybe equipment malfunction or maybe an internal prank on the base was doing it.

There's a story of Sergeant Kevin Condy, who was at Bentwaters in 1980, who admitted that around that timeframe, he once drove a security patrol vehicle around with the roof lights flashing and a spotlight in a foggy night to scare a newbie guard, which could be looked like a UFO in the woods, I suppose. He said he even was making weird noises over the loudspeaker to freak the guy out. Condi thought maybe this prank could have been contributing to the legend of the time

in the time if the timing matched. But upon looking into it further, it doesn't seem like his prank took place in the same date. It seems like from what I could find, it happened earlier 1980, like it wasn't in December. This is what this is like, these are the dominating theories. Then there's the red orb that Warren described, could have been a pyrotechnic flare,

but again, when people point to Warren story as a way to show how it's debunked I immediately don't believe it because Warren really wasn't involved. He wasn't involved. Everybody said he wasn't involved He just was making shit up to be involved because he was over at the Christmas party and saw nothing No, Warren wasn't even fucking on duty. Sorry. Warren was the one that wasn't on a duty The other one was at the Christmas party. Warren is like, I don't know why they point to Warren skeptics generally find that the natural explanation of lights and stars are the most convincing one, but that's about as convincing

as the skeptics have for what these could be to try to explain everything we have even the disparate pieces of evidence. There's not enough that can wholly explain it all. One thing that gives skeptics AMBO2 is how messy the timeline is. Beyond like the lights thing, the other thing is just like them writing the dates wrong. Coupled together, that alone is like where their main crux

of their argument is. Obviously, they also talk about the credibility of Warren and all them. But again, I don't anybody who takes Warren seriously and hasn't done their research because it just wasn't fucking there. So I don't know, I get frustrated about that shit. So let's talk about how, as we kind of come to the end of this, the official dumb kind of reacted or didn't react as deep as we can and whether there's any evidence of an actual cover up here or if it is truly just bureaucracy, mundanity and it just kind of got lost in the shuffle.

On the US side, the incident was handled within the USAFE, which is the US Air Forces in Europe. Halt briefed his superiors and in fact, a day or two after his experience, Halt says they had a meeting with a third Air Force commander and he briefed what happened. According to some accounts, General Gordon Williams, who was the wing commander who Warren accused of meeting aliens in his weird story, was aware and may be present during the time. and we have that detail from An article that says that general Charles Gabriel commander-in-chief at USAFE Made an unscheduled visit to the Bentwaters Woodbridge bases very soon after basically flying in and reportedly This that's the guy who grabbed like the blotties and stuff like the evidence and classified it

the problem is the the evidence of that is not strong enough to either confirm nor deny it happened. And that might be because he flew in unscheduled. Gabriel later became Air Force Chief of Staff in the 80s, which is a very high profile figure. And this whether, if he did go and collect those things, now that he was in charge they were certainly weren't going to come out and halt was then instructed

that since this happened off base in a British forest it was a also a British matter which we briefly touched on in the first episode hence his memo to the Ministry of Defense and after that the US essentially went dark on it if there were internal USAF reports, they never surfaced. Researchers foiled the USAF for any logs or communication assaults aside from Haltz memo, which was attained via the Brits, not via US. Nothing came out.

This fuels kind of both sides of the argument and ends up being kind of like a not worth worthy talking point. Witnesses like Penniston and Burroughs have said they were debriefed aggressively immediately after peniston even claimed and he claimed it back then that he was administered sodium pentothal and interrogated by intelligence folks wanted every for and wanted every detail the problem is and this is what's interesting some of the health of Fed defects that he did actively Yeah, so like some of the of Fed defects that he did actively. It was like the MIB. Or fucking in truth serums. Yeah. Yeah.

So like some of the. Agent K came in and gave. His medical documents show some of the things he was suffering are known side effects of having been given such a thing or having ingested it. I guess I guess they would shoot you up with it. I don't know how it's indeed given to you. Yeah, I've seen enough movies to know. Yeah.

Yeah. And then yeah. And then you get beat up a bunch. Right, like, tell us the truth. Exactly. Burr, I can never forget that damn, it was the first, was the first new 007 movie where he's tied to a chair and that wooden ball,

like that rope ball swings. Oh, he hits him in the dick with the, yeah, that happened. And over and over. Oh man. That happened all right. That like traumatized me for some reason. Anyway, Burrow similarly says that they were warned over and over. Oh, man. That happened. All right. That like traumatized me for some reason. Anyway, Burroughs similarly says that they were warned not to talk and that their statements

were altered. Sergeant Bustinza recounted being grilled for hours underground by what he assumed were just CIA agents. That particular one is hard to verify, but multiple witnesses have talked about the heavy-handed debriefs that they ended up undergoing. The British Ministry of Defense, as we saw, publicly insists it was of no defense significance and thus did not investigate further. But some suspect that privately they were very interested and maybe did inquire further.

Pope revealed that within the Ministry of Defense, the DI-55 did assess the case. One such document speculated that the witnesses might have been exposed to radiation from an unknown flying object, unidentified flying object, and that the UFO may have been a phenomenon that could have manipulated the radiation around them. That was not publicly known until files were released decades later and also there's evidence that the MOD kept an eye on Rendlesham discussions, even if just from a PR standpoint. Critics of the MOD say that they're nothing to see here,

stance doesn't add up. Lord Hill-Norton famously again said it was either a UFO or everybody hallucinated. There's no in middle ground. The M.O.D.'s lack of action is seen as a cover up by some by simply just ignoring it. They didn't want to touch this hot potato perhaps at the behest of the U.S. Because this was happening to the U.S. soldiers. So they just filed it away.

And interesting interestingly one administrative defense line in a declassified file noted that Americans were distinctly lacking in enthusiasm. That's a direct quote for any investigation. Saying the USAF didn't even ask the Brits to pursue it other than calling the cops. One like and that doesn't surprise me. Like, I feel like, you know, if that feels very like what the government would do with this, even if it were like real or not, like I'd be like, we got all the shit to do. Like fuck off.

Yeah. Like, yeah, exactly. And then there's the matter of the missing files. Over the years, researchers asked for all Rendlesham related MoD files and it took until the 2000s for everything to be released under the UK's version of the Freedom of Information Act. Hiccup, sorry. In one round of releases, it turned out some files from 1980 to 1982 were missing or destroyed causing again, more conspiracy chatter.

The MOD said it was an admin error that some files, possibly even the one that contained HALT memo originally had been missing or junked. Possibly even the one that contained Halt memo originally had been missing or junked How Nick pope discovered something like a defense intelligence evaluation draft that wasn't even initially part of the ufo files Separately filed in a separate part of the government that at least shows as well that there were other files that were part Of this that are no longer here Um the question of where the radar data went, nobody fucking knows.

There were RAF radar stations like RAF Watten that apparently were contacted that night. Officially, they said they tracked nothing unusual, but obviously rumors persist and no printout or logs confirming that have surfaced. More interestingly, the RAF Bentwaters bent waters in, uh, the other, uh, the other base rat water or ratford, whatever it was called there. It's they have no radar data from those events.

And they simply say that it was, must've been off for the night. It's like, what? They must've been off for the night. What did they, we must've got a PlayStation in the, in the barracks. What do you mean it's been off for the night where they, they, we must've got a PlayStation in the, in the barracks. What do you mean it's been off for the night and that goes, there are only two plugs, dude. And the PS one needs chilling. Yeah. And that goes a 0.5. Nintendo PlayStation, right? The, the, the, the, like Holt,

who was one of the base commanders and others said where there was lots and there was that shit. Um, they also, Holt says that he was being told to pipe down to some extent, like stop talking about it. If this was just misidentified lights, you could argue the cover up was simply to avoid ridicule. I guess the USAF might not want to advertise that a bunch of their guys chase the light house. In the 80s that makes sense, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like, again, if they specifically mentioned the lighthouse and I'm just, again, I'm don't know if that really holds water for me. Whatever the case, the lack of any official conclusion just leaves things wide open for both sides to just run. Isn't it? Yeah.

And it's not like Project Blue Book where they eventually slapped unknown or satellite labels here, both the U S and the UK basically said, well, we don't know case closed and left at a vacuum. Yeah. I was like, okay, thank you. Imagine being fine with that. Just being like, ah, yeah, there was this thing by the base, but yeah, I mean, that's the exact same vibe with the drones right now. We're like, yeah, there's things, but like it's whatever. I understand, that's the exact same vibe with the drones right now. We're like, yeah, there's things, but like it's whatever.

I understand why it's frustrating, especially to people who are varying the UFO world or UAP world. Now the idea of like, you can't like it. That seems like you shouldn't be allowed to do that. And just saying like, Oh yeah, it was something, but like, I got other things to do stuff like that happens. It should be like every piece of information is like on the internet immediately Yeah, literally what's happening with the drones? Yeah. Yeah, like all they keep saying is like man We don't know but it's not a threat. I can't think about I can't think about the drones every day because they're not killing my family

Anybody yeah, but I'm just saying the same response It's the literal same public response that we're getting right now. And it's crazy. And the other thing people don't talk about too is after this event, Peniston was given a week off because he was fucked up. He couldn't sleep. It bothered him extremely badly, not a good way. He like scared him for a while and he eventually eventually got a toll that he was had PTSD from the event.

He, Penniston goes on to say that I left the forest, a different man, profoundly affected by whatever he wasn't encountered. But he said he saw a thing. Yeah. Like he saw. Yes. He's the one that he's one, the one that said he saw the monster energy drink craft.

He saw that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what he said. He saw that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what he said. He touched it cause he felt it. Yeah. And he saw Burroughs get hit with a light and paralyzed and not move as well. Um, the immediate aftermath to colleagues, all openly noted that peniston wasn't himself. He was distressed.

He was on the verge of a breakdown every day. He had to take time off just to regroup. Burroughs for his part was so unnerved that he became obsessed with finding answers, eventually undergoing literally instead of like, so Penniston did hypnosis like in the nineties, Burroughs was so obsessed with what happened. He did hypnosis the next year, 1981, that he couldn't stop thinking about it. All of this leaps. Yeah.

He said, I'm trying to think of like the skeptics view on this, but he's also the one that said nothing was there. It was just lights. Yeah, it's like there's a lot. I can't. I know. And that's where the frustrating thing comes from. And like a logical way, none of it makes sense.

The idea that like it's nothing, but it messed me up so bad like, I just, I'm trying to figure out the story because it seems insane. It does not seem to put this on this man at all. Like I genuinely like if like he believes it's nothing too. But I wonder if like the hypnosis or therapy helped him like frame it as like whatever it was he can handle. But yeah, like that's exactly my frustration too, is like in Rendlesham is so muddy. It's so fucking muddy. It has that like unreliable narrator vibe. Like I don't trust anyone involved because every story is different. It sounds you just kind of it just kind of feels like sus now. It just feels like maybe nothing happened. You know what I mean? Like, but then so wild.

But then there's all these other things that make it seem like, of course, I know it happened. Of course, I know something happening. Oh, yeah, no, I know. But that's right. But I was with Like, but then so wild. But then there's all these other things that make it seem like something happened. Of course I know something happened. The recording, the audio. No, I know, but that's exactly the point. But I'm also with you. Maybe nothing did happen. There's like, I have no, there's no like through line in this plot. From here, from here, 30 years later, from here, 30 years later down the line, it's like, fuck man. Like it's a perfect example. Like even the most documented, the one that we did,

where we got the schlorp joke from, where the guy's pants came off, where the alien ship grabbed his pants, and there's like forensic evidence. It's like, unless there's like a, uh, like look at a murder, right? Like forget the fact that like confirming yes or no, the UFO case is going to like prove that aliens are real. Forget about that part. Right? Like, just imagine UFOs are normal and you ask yourself like, did you see a UFO? Forensically, even if you get to a murder, we still have to have a court of law today

for murders because there's no way to definitively prove that somebody killed someone if you didn't see it or it's recorded or whatever. And so like, even when it's audio of someone being murdered, you, even if you have the audio, you can't true. I guess it's true. Cause audio, I could say Mathis, you're killing me right now. It doesn't mean you killed me. I could say so dark, the con of men, but you won't be able to tell unless I leave the bundle trail. Yeah.

I had to change the letters around. Right, right. And I had longer hair. Yeah, really good haircut. Yeah. But you're actually, Mathis, you're the closest to the true Langdon look right now. But that's what I mean is it is frustrating that UFO cases are, are, uh, never proven, but like nobody proved, like what happened with like Casey Anthony?

You know what I mean? Like she's ticked off now. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like she's out there doing fine and she killed her daughter probably. Right. Like definitely probably I'm just saying, I can't say that she did because it's illegal because when allegedly, when the court, when the court did it, they say that she did because it's illegal because when allegedly

When the court did it they found that she's fine, right? So like that's what I'm saying. It's like Do you know that case what yes, oh no, dude That's your all your fock the reason they didn't do it because they didn't know what Firefox was and she literally like best way To suffocate child like search. Oh, you're talking about you're talking about Casey Anthony. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that's what I'm saying. Like if if our is that a government cover up when she's found to be not guilty of murder? No, it's not.

It's not incompetence even. It's just the law. It's just reality. It's just the rule of law. Yeah, I am. Not just the law, just the rule of like physics and reality. We never get off. Like, yeah, if the evidence is not there, your job is to find evidence. I, yeah, exactly.

But with UFO cases, the government won't even give it that they're like, no, no, no, no. Shh. Think about all the people that get killed and murdered and whatever. And there's not a giant news story about it. Right. Exactly. Every day. I'm just saying like, and when it comes to like, it's not that weird that we don't have a definitive answer. That's all. Sure. Yeah. And what's, what's crazy about this, like the fact that they had like true psychological tolls on themselves were basically, if they're going to believe the skeptics were basically saying they gave themselves PTSD over a distant lighthouse, they got confused about. I mean, like the, the

weird thing is like going back to Alex's murder analogy there, like the idea of if Mathis, let's say Alex and I walk into the forest and we see your dead body and I go over and I touch your dead body. And then we go back and report, we saw Mathis' dead body. And the next day everyone goes out. But it looked good. And no one finds your dead body. And more importantly, on that next day, everyone sees something different when we go, like that's what this it's like, not just, it's not just, oh, this is weird. It's like, yeah, it's a combination. It's a combination. Well-documented murder, missing hiker, uh, like missile attack type scenario. And there's like way too much going on.

There's no missile hit anything. It's just, even if it did really happen and aliens are real and everybody did their job right, it's still unlikely that the government would be like, it's definitely a UFO. And I don't think it would, even if even good investigators would still have to be like, you know, it seems like it was something, you know, I don't know. I don't think it's that frustrating. I think it's better to focus on how convincing it is. I just don't think it's like, I don't know that any of it's convincing because it's so muddy.

I just mean in general, I just mean in general. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just think like the idea of what it is, it's an interesting story and it's fascinating, but at the end of the day, I'm like, there's way too many people with too many points of view and none of it tracks in a way that's like, here's something everyone agreed upon. Even the date at one point was not agreed to, you know what I mean? Like, you know, he said it was a mistake. Like nothing tracks in this. And I understand why if you are very conspiracy minded, you would be like, cover up. I get it. I get that. It feels like something's off about it, but I think not to mention the fact that the government does in fact cover shit

up. Sure. Sure. Sure. And time. It feels like there's layers to this that are like a obfuscation on obfuscation. And I don't think it's purposeful. I think it's just there are a lot of people, a lot of different things, a lot of times past a lot like there's just so much going on that I don't know if any of it's reliable at all. And let me let me even throw some more in there for you. So John Burroughs, not Penniston,

is the one that developed the medical issues. Remember, Burroughs is the one that said, that was not the one that touched the craft. And he ended up dealing, not only having a whole list of like more minor things, but a really serious heart problem where the doctors told him was being caused by radiation poisoning and Burroughs then ended up that's when he

started fighting for years to obtain his own service medical records and get recognition for his condition which he was stolen while to every turn until 2015 which is when the US veterans admissions granted him full disability for injury suffered quote in the line of duty at Rendlesham Which is like what do you mean? Like and so beyond that when you go to look so he granted all of this Granted they didn't use a UFO in the paperwork obviously But they kept his personal they kept his medical records It's classified still.

I mean, question, even though they said when we first started this, there are no nukes there. No, no, no. They were confirmed nor deny. What I'm saying, like you would cover that up for sure. No. Yeah. Oh, I think they absolutely were.

So if they were like around material, you know, like I feel like maybe. I fully agree. And I, and, and, but remember they also detected the radiation on the trees, which they did mark and the radiation on the indents on the ground, which they did mark. But if there are nukes there, and we do take weird unexplained UFO angle, that's where they show up on record. But I military all the time where nukes are.

It's why people, we remember when the drones were swarming a base, when things were being moved, like in January, November, and people like, I wonder if there are nukes there, like if there were nukes there to me, that tells me maybe there was something weird zipping around there. It just be like, I don't know the radiation level of just a bunch of nukes sitting around. I would imagine not high, but I don't know. I literally don't know. Like maybe if you're around them a bunch like, yeah, borrows had to go undergo in his forties, uh, uh, open heart surgery to replace a

damaged Mitchell valve, which is doctors said would have been caused by intense radiation exposure. And lo and behold, a one secret UK intelligence assessment did end up getting on earth years later, explicitly speculating that during the Rendlesham Forest incident, personnel quote, were probably exposed to UAP radiation for longer than normal. And then that's coupled with the-

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The wording of that, can we just talk about the last bit of that, longer than normal? What's the normal amount of U that longer than normal? Yeah, I don't know what that means. What's the normal amount of UAP radiation to be exposed to? I don't know, dude. Longer than normal? Maybe they just mean no longer than normal, like being in that space for that time without UAP radiation?

It's just that's a weird phrase. Yeah. Yeah. Here's, I'm going to read the full quote so you get an idea of how distant the government is so loathe to say what they say. A section of the report that covers it says, and it's speculation, the well-reported Rendlesham Forest Bent Waters event is an example where it might be postulated that several observers were probably exposed to UAP radiation for longer longer than normal UAP sighting periods.

Huh? I mean, like that's they're literally saying in the past when seeing UAPs, people have not been exposed to this much radiation as when this guy saw the UAP like that is a bizarre statement. You want to know what that document comes from that document that report comes from the UK Defense Intelligence so does that mean they're like testing people for radiation all the time I guess I don't know man I don't know what this means but you have to follow up a lot of questions that statement I know you have

to fall like you have to follow the paperwork. Like, and this is where it leads. It's like, what do you mean the UK intelligence, defense intelligence had this quiet little paper that was filed away talking about how they probably were in front of a UAP. What do you, what does that mean? Right.

I lose them now. And that's when you see I lost, that's when I officially lose my mind and shit like this. It's just, anyway. And then you go into the fact that this, that Burroughs needed Senator John McCain's help just to pry those records loose and that the VA finally had to concede

that his injury was service-related on that base. It's literally on record. That's pretty serious. That's like a- That's like a- That's like dead serious, yeah. These are the most famous senators of the last 50 years. Right? And like, if skeptics want to say nothing

under the ordinary happened, they also have to explain all of this too. They can explain what they think they saw, but it is also on them to explain the military documents, the memos that surface, the physical and medical things, the medical documents still being classified to this day. And like that's, that's why this, this, this series took me months of work because it's rabbit hole after rabbit hole after rabbit hole that unless you look, it really looks

like you can explain it away. The British Ministry of Defense, like I said, played everything down. They responded to inquiries with the stock line that the events pose no threat to national security, which is what we're hearing today. And then it just ended up being case closed. Move along folks. We're done here. Then as it became less popular, that's when documents started getting released.

That's when the MOD, while the MOD was dismissing the incident publicly, we slowly learned over decades that behind closed doors, they were clearly intrigued and concerned. The MOD staffer who later went public about his stuff was Nick Pope, revealed within the MOD circles that this was being taken seriously by some people. In fact, a defense intelligence report, DI-55, from the time, speculated the airmen might

have also been seeing something that they could not explain. So it's like the paperwork is all there for it. On top of that, the missing documents are still weirdly and mysteriously missing. Key files over two years from the event 1980 to 1982 are just gone. They're just not part of the National Archives. The one file that covered the period of the Rendlesham Forest incident is gone. The M.O.D. claimed it was another routine administrative effort ever. Like I said earlier, in a simple misfiling or an innocent shredding

during off an office move. Can I convenient, right? Like, super little shredding, just a little shredding that they do sometimes. Well, it shredding there. Sometimes they're just like, are fucking around and we're like, you guys want to destroy some records? Hell yeah. Right. Yeah. Even the skeptic Ian Riddpath, the astronomer noted with a kind of raised eyebrow how convenient it was that the only UFO case file to accidentally go missing or

possibly destroyed was the biggest UFO case in UK history. When you've got the skeptic saying, well, that is kind of weird. You know, that's kind of bizarre. Eventually after public outcry, the MOD did locate a couple of copies of papers that we've already shared with you. That's the memo. But the damage was done. The absence of that file is gone. It's long gone and long out of the public mind.

Even Pope was baffled by all this as he worked in the government. So we knew how all this shit worked. The lack of documentation means that we'll just never know if there was a detailed report in there or analysis was probably done over those two years and then thrown away. It's really like you can't do anything with it. The weirdness isn't just on the UK side either. The security log books for those nights on the US side disappeared almost immediately. Staff Sergeant Bobby Cochran, the shift commander on duty, later stated that Colonel Conrad

pulled the logs and told him the incident was now classified. Those logs have never resurfaced. We've never seen them. And officially base logs are supposed to record all significant events on a shift, yet the biggest intruder incident on Betwater's fucking history apparently got yanked out from the books. Why?

Of course. Who fucking knows? Yeah. A simple destruction of records. Similarly, apparently there were photos taken by the airmen, gathered by them when it happened, that went missing with all those files or were sub deemed useless. So they all remember taking pictures too?

Yeah, Peniston says he took an entire roll of film of the craft on night one. Another airman took Polaroids of the strange light only to have them confiscated by the authorities. We do have Halt's micro cassette audio recording on night three like we've listened to, but again, it cuts off there for about 18 minutes and some, including Halt, have said that the full tape is hours long. We don't know what was edited out.

It's possible that at the very least, Halt himself has said he turned over physical evidence like plaster casts that he took and the original tape to higher headquarters and those items essentially just Vanished into the vaults. He never saw heard or learned what happened them ever again. Classic now This is just like the end of what's it called now, Indiana Jones He's handing in everything he did and just going away. Yeah missing photos missing reports missing logs Evidence evaporation essentially justishing. If everything had a simple explanation, you'd expect the opposite.

Thorough reports saying it was X case closed, or all evidence neatly filed and likely released under FOIA to quell rumors. Instead, we get gaps. To a skeptic, gaps are nothing. To a curious person like me, gaps are intriguing and sometimes intrusive. They might indicate so much as being like kept away for various reasons, whether they mean mundane or bizarre. And the radar,

which is the crown jewel of the hard evidence in this UFO case. If there were something there, people say we should have radar evidence. And initially the radar story, Rendlesham seems to favor the skeptics official reports at the time, claim that radar picked up nothing unusual. That Bentwater'sbased radar was reportedly offline for maintenance that day.

And RAF radar units like RAF Watten supposedly detected no intruders. In Halt's memo, he doesn't mention radar at all, implying that they had no confirmation there potentially. But this isn't the full story. Years later, Halt learned information that he wasn't privy to back then. He stated that two separate UK radar operators came forward after retirement to confirm that

they tracked an object during the incident. In one account, a radar at RAF Watten got a brief return of something traveling at high speed over Rendlesham Forest before it just vanished off the radar. Another radar operator at a site called RAF Needus Head. Needus Head? Needus Head? Needus Head? here. How would you say that gentlemen? I don't know. Need his head. Need his head, right? Yeah. Yeah.

That's what I'm going to try. Cause I know it's going to be something like Phillipsburg. Some commenter is going to come in and tell me how to say it, but you know what? I had the bravery to say needus Head. Not me. This guy reportedly saw an object on NRF Needus Head across the screen that night, but was told to just keep it quiet. And Halt himself has been quoted saying, quote, there were two radar confirmations. I don't know where they went. Like the radar reports. I don't know where they went. Like the radar reports. Like the blitz. So now you kind of thought it's like, okay,, we now even with the radar,

we have conflicting testimonies. Who do you believe? Are they lying about the blip? Why was it off on that night? Why was there no radar? Was it going down for maintenance then on the flip side, if the radars did catch something, then we have some sort of instrumentation backing up of the usual sightings. So where the fuck is it? Uh, it's unknown. I must stress. I had to go look this up. I need to know what answer. I knew it was going to be one of those British things where they just don't

pronounce half of it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Neat. Stead. There you go. Okay, cool. It's neat. Stead. There's no T F. Dude, the English language, the longer that words exist, the less reason and pronunciation mean less and less to you. I'm literally, I'm looking at it right now, neat as head. And then it says pronounced meat stead. Yeah. This is, this is a relic from before we,

there was consensus on what words, how words were spelled. Don't worry about it. And that tantalizingly open question, where all this goes, how or where the final answers lie, where do we stand? That's where it ends. Rendlesham Forest remains one of the most compelling, divisive UFO cases on record. It has wildly credible elements that make you think something weird happened. Logical explanations that might make you go, oh, what could have been lights? Then truth could be mixed in there somewhere in the middle with paper trails showing up

years later. Yep. It is chaos. And crucially, there's no smoking gun evidence that ever emerged on either side to say one or the other. Now I'm curious where you stand boys, but I personally, and maybe not surprisingly, lean towards something weird happened. I don't want to say aliens because like there's no way to know.

There were definitely weird incosistencies. The evidence, the testimonials, the resurfacing of papers, the medical stuff that happened, but still classifying. All of this to me, reeks that something happened. What happened? Who knows? But it seems like it was fucking weird. Yeah, couldn't agree more.

That's exactly what it feels like. Like definitely some real, like legit dudes saw something weird and that's it. That's all I got because everything else is too crazy. In fact, I think the fact that this isn't a murder or anything like that makes it like people are just too excited about the outcomes. Like, in murder, it's not like tight when somebody's like just been killed. It's not like sweet that that happens. But if somebody sees an alien, it's like, you know, and so it's like, I don't know, are they dead? I, you know, it's exciting.

It's exciting. And I think that's the difference. I think that's it. Yeah. For me, this is one of, and I hope a lot of listeners take this one away for these kinds of things too. This is one of those ones that reminded me the devil is in the details, like truly.

Like if you don't do the deep dive and you don't learn about the stuff, then you're not doing the Rendlesham Forest story right in any way, because the truth isn't the simple articles you read, isn't the simple interview you might get from one or two people. The truth is confusing, baffling, intriguing, exciting.

Like it's, but it's messy and it took months of work. And I still don't have nearly everything I would have liked to have my hands on. And I'll never have that answer. I mean, if you, we had money and you were like unofficial and like yada yada, we could kick it up the ladder, but that's not where we're at. No. And it's definitely something I hope one day we get to revisit in some way with some new info for whatever, you know, whatever it is.

But Jesse, I'm so curious what your thoughts on this, because this is the one I was, I knew when I would do the most credible modern UFO sighting, I think that exists out there. I don't Roswell or anything. I don't think so at all. I am. I think every, every ounce of the story is different every time you approach from a different angle. And again, you can say that's because that's the way it was made. So you'd be confused, but like, I don't know. I feel like there's the credibility here is again,

what you were talking about earlier that appealed to authority or because it's military. If you, if this was like the three of us on the side of the road, no one would take it seriously. I think the credibility comes from like the medical records and the weird two years of missing documents that should not have happened. That's where I find the credibility. I mean that could be something else completely that isn't UAP related. The only thing that to me screams absolutely like,

what the shit is the document words like the radiation from this UAP is not the same as other like that's a weird ass document to have written down those words from the U.S. intelligence and what did they see and what did they see? Yeah, I mean like that that document alone might be the one thing I'm like, okay, that's kind of weird and cool. The rest of it. I'm like, I don't know that I believe any of it right now because you all seem like you're telling a lie. It's crazy too. Like that's the other thing is like the effort to keep it buried seems very intentional for

some reason. Yeah, I don't know. It's a weird, it's, it's a weird story. Like it's strange because day one I was like, interesting, interesting. And now we're here. I'm like, nah, it's all falling apart really quickly for me. Except again, why write? Why write? The radiation is different from this UAP than other UAP.

Like, it's weird. I would like to strip. I would strip away the wild shit like Warren story and all that other stuff. You just stick with the basic story. It doesn't hasn't changed other than 30 years later when Penniston decided to add. There were many other people who were like we saw Nothing and I understand they weren't present at the exact site 100%

It is interesting. It is it's yeah, it's weird. I think some people definitely saw something and didn't lie about it That's what I think sure. Yeah, I think that's why I sit here. I'm barely a very diplomatic of you I'm just saying like that's as far as I can go. I don't think it's eight. I can't speak about aliens. I would go a step further to say the government also believes something weird happened and really made an effort to try and make it not a big deal. Like to not talk about it. Not to hide.

I can't say that for real, but I will say there was some weirdness. There's some evidence, like the evidence of like just the files. There's some weirdness for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Either way, that's off my shoulders. It's done. There's some evidence, like the evidence of like just the files. There's some weirdness for sure. Yeah. Either way, that's off my shoulders. It's done. It's nice. Like has a big boy.

We're done. Randall from Forest is in the books. One of my favorite UFO stories out there. That's it for us. We're going to go do a mini-sode over at patreon.com slash Chiluminati pod. Oh, I'm going to plug our mini, our plush one more time. Go over to the yeti.com slash Chaluminati and go get the Mothman plush variant that's out there with green eyes.

And he's going to be there till April, I think like mid April somewhere. And then he'll ship a little bit after that. Yeah. And they'll ship after that. Once it's done, it's done. So like make sure you get it if you want it. Because once he's gone off the shop, he's gone. You got to know how many to make and that's how many we're making

Yep, cuz we got the money to store a bunch of plushies in the warehouse you guys know. No, we do not No, we do not. Uh, thank you boys for joining us. Thank you listeners for joining us and supporting us We will get said be over patreon.com the Jaluminati Podcast. As always, I'm one of your hosts, Mike Marhen, joined by the... I don't know who they are. There's two... What? Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer. No! Neo and Trinity.

No! I don't understand and I probably never will. Let me just tell you right now that there's two... Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield. I'm telling you, I think he literally just looked up famous duos, and has been going through the list ever since. I'm trying to dig deep. Which one of you is Dick Powell?

Me? Your name's Jesse Cox! I want your Illuminati to the Jaluminati Podcast. As always, I'm one of your hosts, Mike Marhen, joined by Alex and Jesse. Like a shooting star across the sky that's actually a UFO you