The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - Rendlesham Forest Incident: A Christmas Horror Story

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

Brace yourself for a journey into one of the most perplexing UFO incidents in history—the Rendlesham Forest Encounter of 1980. In this chilling episode, The Tape Library delves deep into the eyewitness testimonies of Air Force personnel, piecing together the haunting puzzle of unidentified phenomena that rocked that fateful Christmas season. The Rendlesham Forest incident might be one of the most compelling UFO cases of all time. Do you have a supernatural story to share? A case to suggest? Or just a general question? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in audio form on all of your favourite podcast providers. Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True scary stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Singularity, Midjourney and Pexels. All other footage used under fair use. Chapters 00:00 Rendlesham Forest Incident 02:21 Did You See Something? 04:07 Night 1 18:33 Night 2 30:14 The Skeptical View 32:26 The Rendlesham Binary Code Mystery Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're hearing very strange sounds out of the farmers, barnyard animals. They see eight, seven, we're very, very active, making an awful lot of noise. There it is, yeah, I see it too. What is it? We don't know, sir. Sir, you have to try it somewhere. Yeah, it's a strange, small red light. Looks at it, maybe a quarter to a half now, maybe further out.

It's brighter than has been. Yeah, well? It's coming this way. It is definitely coming this way. In the early hours of December 26, 1980, something strange was happening, in a cold dark forest in Suffolk. They had been called to investigate a possible aircraft crash, but the closer they got to that glowing light, the more they realized something wasn't right. Little did they know, they were walking into one of the most compelling mysteries in military history.

The words one of their colleagues had used just ten minutes earlier rang in their ears, As they started to doubt if they should really be out here, it didn't crash. It landed. Welcome to the tape library. After a few episodes of demons, ghosts and sleep paralysis entities, I thought it would be nice to shift gears a little bit and explore a different kind of mystery, but one that is just as chilling as any haunted house. It's also such a compelling case because of the calibre of the witnesses involved. These were serious, in some cases, high-ranking military men involved in this story, many of whom would have been considered sceptics until that fateful night.

What's more? It's a Christmas story. So it's the perfect way for us all to round out the year together. So get yourself a warm drink, dim the lights, and get comfortable. It's time to take a trip to the woods. night were going to be covering the tale of the Rendlesham Forest Incident. In late December, forestry worker Vince Fur Kettle was out chopping wood deep inside the forest. It was a quiet, foggy morning. He had seen the odd dog walker hiking through the trees, but

not many. It was that odd week between Christmas and New Year, where time seems to behave little strangely. Most people were happily tucked up in their warm homes rather than being out in the bitter temperatures of the forest that day. But Vince was surprised when he saw a car, traveling along one of the roads, and seemingly was headed in his direction. The car pulled up in front of Vince. He paused as two men in their early 30s stepped out, both dressed in suits. The first man in a well-spoken voice said to Vince, Good morning, do you mind if we ask you some questions?

They then proceeded to fire a question after question at Vince, asking if he had been out in the area last night. Had he left his house at all? Had he seen anything strange? Specifically, the two men made reference to some odd red lights in the forest. But Vince had no idea what the men were talking about. Eventually they told Vince it was probably nothing to be concerned about, got in their car and drove away.

The men never identified themselves. It would take three years before Vince would find out what this incident was all about when something called the Holt memo became front page news. Night 1. We were deep into the Cold War on that 3rd. freezing night in 1980. Rendlesham Forest is situated in Suffolk, a beautiful, dense, remote woodland, situated not too far from the coast. At the time, this forest wasn't just a natural landmark. It was home to two US-run military bases, bent waters and Woodbridge. They were seen as

key locations for the US military in the event of a Soviet invasion into the West. They were well stocked with plenty of troops and a fleet of A-10 walkhogs in the event of the Cold War, finally becoming hot after so much time. These two bases, however, may not have just been important as strategic locations in the event of an all-out war, however. Rumours have been circulating for years, and in some cases seemingly all but confirmed by certain individuals that these bases were being used to house, nuclear warheads. While this all sounds kind of exciting, for the troops situated at Woodbridge and Bentwaters,

life was anything but exciting. Rendlesham Forest was not a desirable posting for a young American air forceman. It was isolated and surrounded by dark forests and farmland. We were decades into the Cold War at this point. and their days were mostly spent keeping the bases maintained and running drills. The bases were running on limited men at this time of year, with many being away for the holiday period,

and the base's Christmas party wasn't due until the 28th. So as Christmas night moved into Boxing Day, the lookouts were sat, twiddling their thumbs, waiting to be relieved from duty. They could not have expected, What came next? Multiple troops spotted something as they were patrolling the area outside the east gate of RAF Woodbridge.

They saw what appeared to be a couple of flashing lights, illuminating the tree line, deep into the forest. One red, one blue, both on top of each other, flashing on and off. Due to the flashing, the men immediately thought this may be an aircraft, and were concerned that a small plane may have come down somewhere in the woods. But weirdly, they hadn't heard a sound. One of the guards that night was Airman First Class John Burroughs,

a man who would end up serving 27 years in the Air Force. They quickly got onto the phone and after being passed around a bit, they got put through to Sergeant Jim Peniston, who decided to head to the East Gate himself, in a Jeep with his driver, Edward Cabinsang. When he arrived, he started to ask the men questions about the apparent crash they had seen, which led to one of the guards, Bud Stephens,

telling him that it didn't look like a crash at all. He said, it didn't crash. It landed, a puzzling fort for such a wooded area that any aircraft wouldn't be able to land in. Peniston had the control tower start putting out the word to any major airport, ports in the area or other Air Force bases to see if anyone had caught anything on radar. Sure enough, an unknown object had popped up on radar in the area, but it had strangely vanished from their screens as soon as it moved over the Woodbridge area. What's more, it was revealed at a much later date by Colonel Holt, who we will be meeting a bit later,

that radar operators at Bentwaters saw something pop up onto their screen. but moved with such a speed, it was passed off for some kind of error. In 2015, he said he had received statements from the operators at night, and said, I have confirmed that Ben Water's radar operators saw the object to go across their 60-mile scope in two or three seconds. Thousands of miles an hour. He came across their scope again, stopped near the water tower.

They watched it, and they watched it, and observed it going to the forest where we were, said Colonel Holt. At Wattisham, they picked up what they called a bogey and lost it near Rendlesham Forest. Whatever was there was clearly under intelligent control. Penison took Burrows, Master Sergeant Chandler, and Cabern sang with him in a Jeep, and headed towards the apparent source of the light. Once they had gotten close enough on the roads, three of the men perceived. proceeded into the forest on foot, leaving Cabinsang with the Jeep. However, as they proceeded into the forest,

all four men reported their radios began to malfunction. Cutting off contact not just with Cabin Sang, but also the base itself. Peniston instructed Chandler to return to the Jeep to inform Cabinsang of what had happened with the radios, leaving just Peniston and Burroughs to continue. They could They could see the light poking through the trees, becoming brighter and brighter as they ventured closer. They began to notice a change in the air around them. It was almost like it was charged with static electricity, a sort of tingling sensation filling the environment. Then they noticed it was becoming increasingly hard to walk. The ground was frozen solid with compacted dirt,

the winter temperatures but it felt almost like they were wading through waste high water or soup as they would later describe it as they reached the light source they stepped out into what appeared to be a rounded clearing in the trees as soon as they did they were blinded by a sudden explosion of white light both men flung themselves to the floor assuming there had there had been some sort of explosion, but after remaining face down for a few seconds, they realised, and there wasn't. It was just an extremely bright flash of light. Now this is where things get interesting, because what happened next varies greatly in both men's reports. Jim Peniston stood up, and as the light faded around him,

He could see, sat in the middle of the clearing, a black object. It was triangular in shape, measuring about nine feet tall by nine foot wide, standing on three legs with rounded edges, two things that looked a little like wings and the dorsal thin. Peniston noted that it was pulsing with a strange light that almost resembled a lava lamp, like the object was made of glass with pulsing liquid lights moving around

on the side were a bunch of blue lights on the top a bright white light that seemed to be the source of the blinding flash the object made no sound Penesden started to approach the black object as he did he said the electrical sensations in the air grew more intense

but then suddenly it was like he stepped into some sort of environmental bubble all of the ambient sounds around him fell deadly silent Peniston turned to speak to Burroughs who was about 10 feet behind him but to his shock he saw that Burroughs was just stood there

frozen to the spot Peniston tried to yell out to Burroughs but he never reacted. Peniston continued to move forward, and said it felt like the object calmed down in some way. The lights on it began to dim. Peniston called through on his radio that this was a serious incident, and the integrity of the base was at risk.

But he had no idea if he was being received by anyone. His calls on the radio was simply met with. Silence. He was, alone. Peniston always carried a small pocket notebook with him, and he pulled it out and started making notes about the object, as well as drawing some rough sketches of it. When he got close, he saw strange symbols etched into the body of the triangle.

He did not recognise them, but said they looked slightly like Egyptian hieroglyphs. Peniston then bravely touched the object. He said it felt hard, and smooth like glass, but when he moved his hand over the symbols, they felt rough like sandpaper. Touching the symbols, however, caused some sort of reaction. The white light on top of the triangle once again powered up and temporarily blinded him at the time, although he couldn't see. Peniston felt that he could see a series of numbers in his mind's eye. All ones and zeros, but it quickly faded as his vision returned. As soon as he retracted its hand, the light

began to dim. Peniston stood there for a little while longer, making notes before suddenly the object began to move. It very slowly started to float up above the ground and silently move upwards over the course of a couple of minutes. Once the object was high enough to be above the tree line, it shot off into the night sky at a speed that Peniston noted as being impossible for any craft he had ever seen. Burroughs, who had been standing behind Peniston after the flash in his entry into the bubble, however, had a very different experience. After the initial blinding flash, Burroughs had also gotten to his feet, but he didn't see the black object at all. To him, in the centre of the clearing, there was just light.

An oval-shaped red light that he said resembled the sun. He said this only lasted a few seconds as Peniston stepped towards it. Then in the blink of an eye the object was in the sky and shot off towards the east, although confusingly in his original statement 72 hours after the incident, he included his own sketch that looked a lot like Penistons. Once it was gone, the men began to look around the area. When inspecting the ground, they saw there were three deep indentations in the ground from the legs of the craft. Branches on the edges of the clearing had all been snapped, including further up the trees. When they returned to the Jeep,

Burrs and Peniston believed they had been out of radio contact for around 5 to 10 minutes. A fact that was backed up when they checked their watches and saw they had been away for less than 10 minutes. However, it had actually been 45. Both watches were running 45 minutes slow. There had been some element of panic back at the base, having lost contact with the men for such a long period of time. When they were debriefed, it became apparent others saw something in the sky that night. Numerous others had seen lights, and they weren't the only ones to have some sort of direct encounter with it.

In the same night, two more personnel reported lights in the forest. They too drove towards the source, but before they could get close enough to see what it was, a white light engulfed their jeep, and the engine cut out. and wouldn't restart. This incident happened in the forest outside the base, so the troops contacted the local police to inform them of what was happening. The police backed up in a statement that they had found a place where it appeared some sort of object had landed. By the next day, it had become a total joke amongst the troops on the base, with people joking about how Peniston and Burroughs had been out,

chasing UFOs. The deputy base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Holt checked in for duty and began to hear his men making fun of the events that had taken place the previous evening. Holt asked him to refer to it as unexplained lights in the report and not a UFO, seemingly trying to ground the entire story. This could be something to be concerned about, and he didn't want the stigma of the UFO acronym placed on it. Base commander Ted Conrad almost immediately took the various reports that had been made and classified them as secret. It appeared the higher-ups were taken this much more seriously than the base's troops. Holt should have been involved in this process, but it was passed over him for reasons he didn't understand.

A small team was deployed to the site to take photographs of the evidence of the apparent landing, which backed up a lot of the evidence of Peniston and boroughs, had reported seeing Night 2. 28th of December. The following evening the base was having a delayed Christmas party on the on-base bar on the Woodbridge side. The drinks were flowing, fun was being had,

and the jokes about aliens continued. Suddenly an on-duty lieutenant named Bruce England crashed through the doors of the bar with a concerned look on his face. He rushed over to Colonel Holt and dragged him to one side. That was when he told him, it was back. The UFO was back. Holt wanted to get to the bottom of this himself, so he grabbed a few men, Sergeant Monroe Nevels, and master sergeant Bobby Ball, to join him on the investigation.

Holt ordered some of the other troops to set up a series of lights and point them up into the sky. But strangely all of the lights were either out of fuel Or had seemingly malfunctioned Holt, Nevels and Ball all headed into the forest While the remaining few sober troops attempted to fix the lights Incredibly What happens next we can actually get a limited but direct insight into Holt carries a handheld tape record with him

Everywhere he went And that night he made a series of recordings Only 18 minutes of those recordings have ever been made public by the authorities, but Holt claims he made up to five hours of recordings on what he saw that night. He doesn't believe the rest of the tapes will ever be released to the public. For reasons that aren't exactly clear, Holt headed straight for the landing site from the previous encounter. The men brought with them some gear, including Geiger counters. When they arrived at the site, they found an area of the ground that appeared to be almost burnt-looking.

Sure enough, as they ran the Geiger counter over it, it at least temporarily spiked. It gave them an extremely high reading that was worth noting. However, although it was very high, the fact it was just a singular spike, does point to it possibly being an error in the testing. They spoke about the marks on the tree, all had abrasions, facing towards the centre of the clearing. Then they began collecting samples from the soil in the indentations, left by the legs that were still visible,

despite the harsh winter weather making the ground solid. Using night vision, they saw spots on the ground that was still showing as warm from the centre of the clearing. That was when things took a turn. They suddenly started to hear noises from nearby barnyard animals on a farm. The animals were suddenly starting to freak out. Then they too saw a light. A strange small red light about a quarter of a mile away in the sky.

It kept disappearing and reappearing. They moved to the edge of the clearing to try and get a better view through the trees. But that was when they realised. All the animals had suddenly gone silent. They then realised the light was heading right towards them. They turned their lights off and watched it move in their direction. Then it suddenly darted from left to right. The men were stood there in the darkness watching this light that they described as a giant red eye

with a black ring around it, zigzagging through the tree line, with small sparks shooting off the sides of the light source. As it got closer they claimed it looked like it shot a beam of light down. to the ground. Holt said the light beam was pencil-thin like a laser beam and hit the ground just 10 feet away from him. Then it zipped over to the woodbridge base and shot the same beam down into the base. Eventually this red light appeared to shoot off into five separate white lights and then vanished. Soon after however they saw three lights in the sky that they described as star-like, moving in an irregular fashion across the night sky.

While this was going on, John Burroughs had a second encounter. He had rushed back to the base as soon as word got to him that it was back. He felt strangely drawn to the lights. Holt had specifically told his men to keep Burroughs away from the landing site, seemingly not wanting him to influence their perception of what was going on. Although once the lights began to appear, they requested that Burroughs come to confirm it was the same thing he had seen the previous evening, as Burroughs and his driver drove towards the location of the lights. They were hit by some sort of blinding blue light. They got out of the jeep and claimed they could see a white object floating in the distance as they walked towards it.

The blue light started to move into their path. Burroughs kept walking forward before disappearing into the light, and apparently not returning for several minutes. He had no memory of what happened when he stepped into the light. In total, around 80 men across the two bases claimed to have seen some element of the events that took place across these two nights, not including a whole host of locals in the area who also reported sightings of strange lights in the sky. In the days that followed, Penes then kept being plagued by visions of the ones and zeros he had seen when he touched the craft. Eventually they became so persistent he wrote them down.

A whole 16 pages of ones and zeros. This note was kind of glossed over when put together with all the other crazy incidents that were taking place, the initial reports that were conducted in the aftermath, stressed that the people involved in this case were to be taken seriously and spoke highly of their character as witnesses. Some of the men who were interviewed, however, were simply handed statements and told to sign without reading them, telling them it would be simpler for them to do so, and that it would end their involvement in this incident,

which many of those who had been involved would have been quite happy to wash their hands of. no statements were taken at the time from the men involved in the incidents on the second night the officials were seemingly only interested in what happened on the first evening Burroughs and Peniston were interviewed over a dozen times

in a style that often bordered on interrogation rather than fact-finding Halt later claimed that the men were injected with truth serum time after time something that could have caused serious damage to them with the amount of interviews they were forced to sit through. both American and British authorities were trying to make it the other country's problem

to investigate this incident further. It felt like no one wanted to deal with it, and they just hoped the entire incident would go away. A few details, particularly the dates the events took place, seemed to have caused some confusion. With both Holt and Peniston initially confusing the days the events took place on, Colonel Holt wrote the following statement, which would be given to the authorities, some of the, weeks later. Subject, unexplained lights. Early in the morning of the 27th of December,

1980, approximately 3 a.m., two US Air Force Security Police Patrolmen saw unusual lights outside the back gate at RAF Woodbridge. Thinking an aircraft might have crashed or been forced down. They called for permission to go outside the gate to investigate. The on-duty flight chief responded and allowed free patrolmen to proceed on foot. The individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest. The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three metres across the base, and approximately two meters high. It illuminated the entire forest with a white light.

The object itself had a pulsing red light on top, and a bank of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering, or wrong. on legs. As the patrolman approached the object, it manoeuvred through the trees and disappeared. At this time, the animals on the nearby farm went into a frenzy. The object was briefly sighted approximately an hour later, near the back gate. The next day, three depressions, one and a half inches deep and seven inches in diameter, were found where the object had been sighted on the ground. The following night, 29th December, 1980, the area was checked for radio, beta and gamma readings of 0.1 were recorded with peak recordings.

In the three depressions and near the centre of the triangle formed by the depressions. A nearby tree had moderate readings on the side of the tree towards the depression. Later in the night a red sun-like light spotted through the trees. It moved about and pulsed. At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects and disappeared. Immediately afterwards, three star-like objects were noticed in the sky, two objects to the north and one to the south,

all of which were about ten degrees off the horizon. The objects moved rapidly in a sharp angular movements and displayed red, green and blue lights. The objects to the north appeared to be elliptical through an eight to twelve power lens. They then turned to full circles. The objects to the north remained in the sky for an hour or more. The object to the south was visible for two to three hours

and beamed down a stream of light from time to time. Numerous individuals including the undersigned witnessed the activities in paragraphs two and three. Signed Charles Halt, deputy base commander. This statement would be the same one that was picked up years later by the British tabloids as evidence that the US military had encountered a US military had encountered a UFO and Suffolk of all places.

As it was leaked to the press, the story became confused and distorted. A number of people have inserted themselves into the story of Rendlesham of the years, and as the encounter became more and more famous, the story has become more and more over the top, and the lines between truth, lie, and everything in between has been blurred.

There are a number of possible explanations, that had been put forward over the years. Around the time the event took place, a Russian satellite was said to have been breaking up over England. There was on one evening a meteor shower taking place. Others have pointed to the fact that a nearby lighthouse blinks on and off every five seconds at night, and is visible on a clear evening through the forest. That one in particular is often cited as a piece of powerful evidence to debunk the events. However, it seems strange to me that men who had been stationed there for weeks, months or even years, wouldn't have already been aware of the lighthouse if it was that visible.

There has also been suggestions that the event was a prank conducted by the SAS to torment the American troops stationed in their country. As well as a rather strange story about burning manure and a man named Peter Turtle being responsible for the lights in the forest. forest. Others have suggested the misreporting of dates was done on purpose to not coincide with the meteor shower or satellite incident. All of these have been thrown around and they certainly could explain some of the sightings that many of the people who claim to have seen things on those two nights reported. However, it certainly doesn't explain everything. A member of the House of Lords, Lord Hill Norton took a particular interest in the Rendlesham case, and I had thought I'd include this interesting quote from him about the case. My position, both privately and publicly expressed

over the last dozen years or more, is that there are only two possibilities. Either A, an intrusion into our airspace and a landing by unidentified craft took place at Rendlesham as described, or B, the deputy commander of an operational nuclear armed US Air Force Base in England and a large number of his enlisted men are either hallucinating or lying. So let's wrap things up if he'll indulge me for a moment. With a slightly more out there twist to this tale, we're going to go back to those numbers that Peniston claimed he saw when he first touched a graft. In 2010, Peniston finally put the notebook pages out.

there and it was quickly identified as being binary code. When the code was deciphered, it left some very interesting information. The notebook was carved and dated and has been confirmed it was written back in the period of time the Rendlesham Forest incident took place. When it was translated there were a few phrases mixed in with coordinates. It started with the words exploration of humanity. Towards the end, the phrases, Eye of Your Eyes was revealed. But in between these two points were a list of coordinates. The locations mapped to.

Curricol Belize. Sedonia and Arizona. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The Nazca Lines in Peru. Tai Shanquo, China, the temple of Apollo in Greece. And most interestingly of all, The reported location of a legendary island, off the coast of island, named Hybrisil, and is believed to have never existed, despite being featured on multiple maps in the past.

The final translated line reads, Origin Year, 8,100. Thank you for joining me on this entry into the tape library. I've tried to keep the focus of the events that took place across the two nights here. But there is so, so, so much more to this case. Everything from cover-ups to potential other witnesses. I'd love to hear what you thought about this one. And if you know information that can fill in some of the gaps of what's happened in the aftermath,

then please feel free to share in the comments below. I'd love it if the comment section could become a place for you all to discuss your theories or other apparent versions of how these things took place. I always try to work from the most direct sources that I can, but that obviously doesn't always mean it's the definitive version of what really took place, especially with something as complicated as this. If you ever find yourself in Rindlesham, you can actually hike the UFO trail there,

and there is a statue of the craft that you can visit. That rounds us out for what has been a fun year for the tape library. About two months ago, to be honest, I was questioning the future of this channel. as much as I was enjoying it it does take up a lot of my limited free time and it really wasn't getting much traction over the last few months so I'm so thrilled to suddenly have so many new people

checking out the channel every single day 2024 is shaping up to be a good one and I have an ever-growing list of cases I want to cover there may only be one episode in January I'm actually releasing a feature film in January and have the premiere of that so we'll be a little busy with the first that side of things, but once that's out the way it'll be full steam ahead with the tape library.

Our first episode of 2024 will hopefully see us delving back into history to talk about an old haunting that I wasn't familiar with myself until recently. So I hope you all have a brilliant Christmas if you celebrate it. And I'll see you on the other side. Oh and remember, there is an old tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve, so why not check out a few older episodes to get you through that dark night. Until next time, pleasant dreams.