So Supernatural - ALIEN: The Rendlesham Forest Incident

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

In December 1980, just outside of London, several members of the U.S. Air Force spotted an indescribable craft in the forest. But this wasn't an ordinary sighting. It communicated with one of the officers — and offered an explanation about UFOs that completely turns the concept on its head. 

Most UFO sightings can be written off as hoaxes or misidentifications. Maybe it was just a few drones or Elon Musk's latest project. But the term UFO takes on a whole new meaning when it comes from respected U.S. Air Force officers, people who are experts in what's flying around above us. In December 1980, several officers stationed at a U.S. Air Force base in Suffolk, England, didn't just spot a UFO. They pursued it. After it touched down in a nearby forest, they traipsed out into the dark of night to see if they could find it. And they did. In fact, they got so close they could touch it. And when your host, Ashley Flowers.

Today, I'm covering the Rendlesham Forest incident, or as we Americans might know it, England's Roswell. In December 1980, multiple U.S. Air Force officers spotted a UFO near their bases on the east coast of England. What followed was a massive cover-up that took decades to unravel. I'll have that and more coming up. Stay with us. If you leave the bustling streets of London and take a two and a half hour drive northeast, you'll end up in this quaint little riverside town called Woodbridge. In the 1980s, this area was home to two Royal Air Force bases that were essentially on loan to the U.S. Air Force. They were called RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge. The two properties were separated by the Rendlesham Forest, five and a half square miles of densely wooded brush,

a place you wouldn't want to enter in the dark of night alone. Unfortunately, first class airman John Burroughs didn't have a choice. It's the early morning of December 26, 1980, just a little past midnight. Instead of sleeping off a Christmas food coma, John's out patrolling the Woodbridge base for any unusual activity. Now, I'd imagine this job can get pretty mundane at times, but tonight is not one of those nights. While John is doing his rounds along the east gate of the base, he notices something strange blinking in the Rendlesham Forest. It's a red light hovering just above a blue light. Now, John's thinking maybe this is some sort of aircraft he's not familiar with, or worse, maybe it's a crashed plane and somebody needs assistance.

So John grabs his supervisor, Staff Sergeant Bud Steffens. The two hop into this military jeep and drive into the forest until they reach the end of the access road. They can't get any further by car, but they do have a direct line of sight towards the lights. Only, they're no longer flashing red and blue. Now a bright white light has joined them and it seems to be on the ground moving closer toward them

like it knows they're there. At this point, the guys are like, okay, I think we probably need some more backup. So they head back to the East Gate and wait. Pretty soon, the security supervisor, Jim Penniston, arrives. John describes what he and Bud saw out in the woods, and Jim makes the same assessment, like, yeah, sounds like a crashed plane. But Bud corrects him. He says, no, no, no, no, this thing did not crash. It landed. There were no huge bangs, no explosions, no signs of fire. It came in silently, meaning whatever's out there, it chose to be here discreetly. woods blindly, they decide we better make a call into air traffic control and see if they picked anything up on their radar. And reportedly, they did. They say that a bogey, meaning an aircraft

of unknown origin, flew into their airspace earlier that evening. But then they lost sight of it right over Rendlesham Forest. So now they're thinking, if we don't know whose plane this is, then we might be dealing with a major security breach. Like, we have to go back in and take a closer look. So Jim, John, and another security officer drive back out to the woods and relocate those lights. The three men hop into the jeep and drive out to the end of the access road. From there, they meet up with a fourth officer and walk by foot down this uncharted path into the forest.

But once they get farther away from their jeep, their radios start acting up. It's like something is interfering with their systems. And not just one of their radios, all four of them are having issues. They can page each other from short distances, but calling back to the base is out of the question. So they put together this kind of relay system. Like one guy goes back to the jeep, another stays about halfway into the forest so he's still in range, while Jim and John keep going and get as close to those lights as they can.

But the deeper Jim and John get into the woods, the more they notice this bizarre energy in the air. It almost feels like static electricity, you know when you would like rub a balloon on your arm and your hair would stand up? Only this is like a full body experience. Then all of a sudden they realize it's getting kind of hard to walk, like they're waiting really slowly through a pool of sand, but they can see the lights directly in front of them, so they know they're getting close to whatever this thing is. That's when suddenly, bam, there's a giant flash of light so explosive it knocks the men to the ground. It takes Jim a moment to regain his bearings. He looks around for John and finds him engulfed in this brilliant white light. And the mysterious aircraft is right in front of him.

It's an opaque, black, triangular craft resting on three legs, and it has these blue lights shining from the bottom. Jim can't stop himself from moving closer to the ship. He's drawn like a moth to a flame, and when he's within a few feet of it, it's like someone hits a mute button. The rustling of the trees, the crickets, and the whistle of the wind, it's all gone. Everything is completely silent. now jim's an aircraft specialist and he's never seen technology that can do anything like this and the rest of the craft is equally unreal it has no seams no rivets no crew compartments no exhaust or any of the makings of a typical airplane what it does have is a set of cryptic symbols written along the outside of it. Now, at this point, I'd probably be freaking out, but not Jim. He has the wherewithal

to take out his notebook and draw the craft along with those hieroglyphic-like symbols, probably because he knows everyone is going to have a hard time believing this later on. Then he does something really bold. He runs his fingers over the symbols and suddenly another light shoots from the top of the vessel and Jim is totally blinded. Then he sees this flash of binary code, like ones and zeros repeating themselves over and over. It's almost as if this ship is downloading something into his brain. This lasts for what could be minutes, maybe even hours. Jim's not sure because he loses all sense of time. Then the aircraft takes off in complete silence, blasting off through the trees and into the night. Jim quickly jots down in his notebook, quote,

speed, impossible. Meanwhile, John comes to his senses about 10 feet away. He thinks only a few seconds have passed. He doesn't remember seeing any ship, but he knows that the bright white light he was engulfed in was something otherworldly. Jim and John are both in a total state of shock. They're not sure if what they experienced was even real. Like, maybe they were just hallucinating, which would be valid if the evidence wasn't staring them back in the face. Because branches have snapped off the trees directly above the launch site, and there's three deep indentations in the dirt where the craft was perched just moments ago.

And as they come to find out, there were supposedly dozens of other witnesses who reported strange lights and unusual things in the sky that week. But the most important evidence, the clue to unlocking this whole mystery, was right inside Jim's brain. Coming up, the Air Force investigates and suppresses the truth. Now back to the story. When his shift ends on the morning of December 26, 1980, Jim Penniston goes home and tries to sleep off whatever just happened. But he cannot stop thinking about those ones and zeros. Even as the day goes on, those numbers completely monopolize his brain. Like, he can't focus on

anything besides that repeating pattern. Zero, one, zero, one, one, one. He feels this compulsion to write those numbers down. And as soon as he gets them onto the page, the flashing in his mind just stops, as if that was the intention all along. Obviously, Jim is spooked, but he's afraid to show this to anyone at the base. They'll think he's losing his mind. He'll probably be discharged on psychiatric grounds. So he just tucks that journal away in a drawer and forces himself to forget about it. Meanwhile, back at the Bent Waters base, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt is arriving for duty. He's in charge of most of the security personnel both here and at Woodbridge, and his whole staff is buzzing over the morning's

UFO sighting. At first, Halt is extremely skeptical, to say the least. He just tells everyone to draft it up in the blotters, which are basically their shift logs, and just forget about it. But as the hours pass, the gossip is getting harder for Halt to ignore. He's hearing more about what his officers experienced out in the forest and he's realizing like, okay, this is way more than just some strange lights in the sky. He's actually got to look into this. So he goes back to review those shift blotters. But here's the thing, the reports, which were only drafted a few hours ago, are now nowhere to be found. And no one on Halt's security team can explain how or where they might have disappeared to. At this point, Halt basically just shrugs the whole thing off. Like, again, it's the day after

Christmas. He's got a lot of work to catch up on. Like, whatever this game is, he doesn't have time for it. But that evening, Holt is at this awards dinner, rubbing elbows with other colonels, when one of his shift commanders bursts into the party. He frantically ushers Holt away from his conversation to whisper something like, Sir, you know, that UFO from last night? Well, it's back. Now, Holt decides that he has to check this out for himself. In a matter of minutes, he throws together this small team of officers to come along with him. This includes Sergeant Monroe Nevels from the Air Force's Disaster Preparedness Office. Nevels brings along a Geiger counter to see if the object is giving off any radiation,

because if so, then this thing could be really dangerous to anyone who comes in contact with it. They also pack flashlights, radios, utility jackets, extra batteries, and a recorder to capture the entire experience on tape. Whatever happens, at least they'll have evidence. Once they get to the heart of Rendlesham Forest, Halt and his team don't spot anything out of the ordinary. But they figure, well, you know, we're out here. We might as well check out the site from last night.

And the evidence that that craft left behind is still there. The broken branches, the imprints on the ground. And when Sergeant Nevels takes a Geiger scan of the area, he finds that the radiation levels here are above average, and regular planes, they don't leave radiation behind. But that's not the strangest part of this incident. There's a small farm on the outskirts of Rendlesham, and Halt and the officers can hear animals making an unusual amount of noise, like they're distressed. And that's when Lieutenant Colonel Halt spots it. A tiny red light in the sky about a half mile away. I could describe it to you, but I think it's more

impactful if you listen to a clip from Halt's own recording. Everything else is just deathly calm. There is no doubt about it there's some type of strange flashing red light ahead. I saw yellow. I saw yellow tinge in it too. Weird. So as you can tell by the sound of Halt's voice, he seems to be getting a little more panicked as this thing gets closer, which rightfully so, because he goes on to mention that the reading on the Geiger counter is also increasing, meaning that whatever the object is, it seems like it's emitting a lot of radiation. When it gets about 200 yards away, Holt says it looks like the pupil of an eye, like winking at him, like it's opening and closing, and it's darting around in the sky with erratic movements that are completely baffling to him. Soon, it's joined by

another half-moon-shaped craft, and at that point, the two crafts seem to pick up on the team's presence, because one UFO shoots a thin beam of light towards the ground about 10 feet away from Halt and his team. Now he thinks whatever this thing is, it has to be under intelligent control, meaning someone is piloting it. Not only does the ship navigate carefully through the trees, but when Halt and his team walk towards the craft, it backs away, almost like it's afraid. The craft spends a while searching over the two bases until it hones in on their weapons storage area. It spends a few seconds blasting its beam of light into the facility before taking back off into the sky. Now, this has not been officially confirmed, but according to the UK's former chief of defence staff,

these bases might have been storing more than a few machine guns and hand grenades. He reportedly said they were protecting a secret nuclear arsenal. Which might be why, at this point, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations allegedly decides to step in. Over that last week of December, Jim and John say that the Air Force OSI questions them numerous times about what they saw in the forest, but it seems like they're less interested in finding the truth and more interested in covering it up. At one point, Jim says he hands over a four-page statement about his experience to an agent. 20 minutes later, the agent returns and hands Jim a revision of that whole statement he wrote. His testimony has been boiled down to a paragraph, and all the major details are gone.

Now, all it really says is that he saw a generic aircraft. Jim's told to memorize this. It will be his official story if anyone asks about that night. On top of that, all of the witnesses stationed at the twin bases are apparently told that this case is now top secret. They are forbidden from discussing it with anyone, even other officers who witnessed it. But despite how many people actually saw this UFO, according to Lieutenant Colonel Holt, only three other U.S. Air Force members are questioned besides Jim and John, meaning that the investigators are either extremely lazy or they're sweeping this under the rug on purpose. And for the five men who were questioned, Lieutenant Colonel Holt says that they were interrogated harshly.

According to him, the Air Force OSI may have even used truth serums along with some form of hypnotism to manipulate their memories, likely to keep them from talking about or even remembering the details about the event. Which paints a pretty chilling picture. Like, if the Air Force is willing to go to these extremes, then whatever happened in Rendlesham was not nothing. The strangest part is, after these interrogations, Lieutenant Colonel Holt and his men don't hear a peep from the U.S. Air Force about it ever again. No answers, no explanations, no, hey, we'll pay for your therapist. Nothing.

And here's where things get murky. Even though Bentwaters and Woodbridge were on U.K. soil, they were technically under US jurisdiction. But Lieutenant Colonel Holt is like, nah, that's not going to fly for me. So he decides to write a letter to the UK's Ministry of Defense and inform them about the matter. Maybe get them to proceed with a real investigation. So in January 1981, the Lieutenantel drafts up what famously becomes known as the Holt Memo. He waters down the story a bit so he doesn't sound too bonkers, but he mentions the important stuff, like what the craft looked like, and that it was giving off radiation, the depressions in the soil, and so on.

The only problem is he miswrites the date. He says the sightings began on December 27th, not the 26th. So when the Ministry of Defense looks into the radar reports and other data, they find nothing because, hello, they were looking at the wrong day. According to some researchers, if they would have checked the correct logs from December 26th, they would have found several radar stations that confirmed that there were unidentified craft in the airspace. They would have also found evidence of Suffolk County police

responding to calls about mysterious lights in the sky. Now, I'm not sure if the Ministry of Defense is just using this mistake as an excuse to ignore the situation, or if they actually think Lieutenant Colonel Halt is lying or confused. Either way, the ministry also brushes the case under the rug. No one else is interviewed, and the landing site isn't examined any further. And that would have been the end of it. But there's one thing neither government accounted for. Jim Penniston's notebook full of binary code. Written proof that the Rendlesham Forest UFO was real.

And it was something even stranger than an alien aircraft. Coming up, Jim Penniston cracks the Rendlesham Code. Now back to the story. The 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident might have been easy for the Air Force to forget, but for Jim Penniston and John Burroughs, not so much. Because in the years following the sighting, John starts suffering from symptoms commonly tied to radiation exposure. Now, I'm not exactly sure what his symptoms are, but they could be anything from nausea and dizziness to low blood pressure, hair loss, or internal bleeding. And in 2011, the mitral valve in John's heart fails.

Since this usually happens to patients who are much older than John, his doctors wonder if there's something in his medical history that could have caused this, like, say, a massive dose of radiation. So John tries to contact the Air Force for his medical records. And the response he says he gets is unbelievable. They deny that he was even employed with them in 1980. John argues back, like, yeah, I definitely was. And they change their tune slightly. They say that his medical records are classified and they're not at liberty to hand them over. It takes a few lawyers to try and get a hold of John's records.

And I'm not even sure if they succeed, but I do know that they find one particular report that confirms the Ministry of Defense did discover radiation out in Rendlesham Forest, and John and Jim could have been affected by it. After leaving the Air Force, Jim is also dealing with a myriad of health issues. Years later, he's diagnosed with Meniere's disease, an inner ear disorder that leads to dizzy spells and vertigo, which some doctors believe could be triggered by, you guessed it, radiation exposure. He also claims that he's been living with post-traumatic stress disorder since the incident, but the Air Force refuses to pay for his treatment. According to them, nothing happened to merit the financial assistance. But Jim is having serious trouble sleeping. So to deal with the problem, he decides

maybe I'll give hypnotherapy a shot. Now, I've already discussed the problems with hypnotherapy in other episodes. Like there's no way to know if the so-called recovered memories you dig up are actually real. So take this with a grain of salt, but it's definitely interesting. After a few appointments, Jim's hypnotherapist discovers that part of his memory is blocked. There are huge gaps around the time of the Rendlesham incident where he cannot remember anything. So Jim undergoes hypnosis again with the goal of uncovering those lost memories. And this time he has a breakthrough.

He's transported back to his interrogation by the Air Force OSI. And he remembers that he was given sodium pentothal, a truth serum. While he's under the influence, two government agents question him about the symbols he touched on the side of the craft. Jim says that the craft had stopped in the forest to repair itself.

When he touched the symbols, it disrupted the repair process and activated some new program, which somehow downloaded its code into his mind. And Jim also says that the beings on this craft aren't extraterrestrials. They're humans, time travelers. But here's what's interesting. The government agents aren't surprised by any of this. They don't ask anything else about the craft or the coat. All they want to know is if Jim had any other contact with these time travelers before. He says no and the agents discuss it among themselves. Their only concern is figuring out what to do with Jim so that he doesn't tell anyone. Apparently, the agents used some kind of hypnotic suggestion

to block this interrogation and everything about the time travelers from Jim's memory. Which, yeah, sounds kind of bonkers and given what we know about the problems with hypnotherapy, it would be easy enough to dismiss all of this if Jim didn't have physical evidence, the code itself. Jim says that he hasn't thought much about it since he jotted it down in 1980.

For a long time, it didn't even occur to him that the ones and zeros were binary code, and he never thought to try and crack it. But in October 2010, Jim is interviewed for a documentary series on the Rendlesham Forest incident. When he goes to show the producers his notebooks with the glyphs, they notice the code scribbled over the next few pages, and they realize this is a big deal. So the producers get a couple of experts to interpret the code, and the results are chilling.

The code says, Exploration of Humanity 6668100. Continuous for planetary advance. Then it lists a bunch of latitude and longitude coordinates for different locations. And then it says, eyes of your eyes, origin year 8100. Interestingly, all the coordinates listed are for significant places in human history. The Great Pyramids of Egypt, the Nazca Lines in Peru, the Temple of Apollo in Greece. So unless this is all just a very elaborate hoax 30 years in the making, this message confirms what Jim said under hypnosis. These beings were time travelers apparently from the year 8100. And look, I get it, this is a lot to take in. But once you hear people like Lieutenant Colonel

Holt, Jim Penniston, and John Burroughs talk about the sighting, you can tell these guys are being earnest. So I do want to validate their experience. But on the flip side, they're also human, which means they could have been mistaken. I mean, that's what some will argue. Some skeptics believe this UFO sighting might have actually been a military test, maybe performed by some higher organization in the government without the Air Force staff's knowledge. Perhaps they wanted to see how these guards would respond if a hostile threat were to infiltrate the base, which would make sense if Bentwaters and Woodbridge were in fact storing nuclear weapons on site. But in 2018, an alleged source

from Britain's Special Air Services took this a step further. He said the whole incident was actually a spiteful prank. Supposedly, back in August of 1980, SAS officers parachuted onto the Woodbridge base as part of a routine test. But U.S. Air Force officers captured the men thinking they were spies. They held them hostage, beat them, and repeatedly called them unidentified aliens. It took 18 hours for officials to clear up the confusion. In revenge, the SAS officers supposedly got a hold of a couple of black helium balloons, some remote control kites with flares, and flew them over the base, hoping to give the officers a real alien scare. But neither of these explanations do it for me. I mean, the missing time, the radiation,

the static electricity in the air, the freaking binary code. If this was a prank or even a test, these guys would have had to use highly advanced technologies to pull this off. Technologies that we've never even seen before. I doubt they were like signing them out for a goof. What this boils down to is a team of loyal Air Force personnel as high ranking as Lieutenant Colonel say that they saw something indescribable in the Rendlesham Forest that December. And after passing it up the chain of command, they were met with either indifference, a bureaucratic comedy of errors, or an epic cover-up. Maybe the truth is the UK and the US governments just don't want to admit there are things that even they don't have answers to. I just hope we don't have to wait till the year 8100 to find out the truth.

Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all Audiochuck Originals.