You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network, the best in paranormal talk radio
in the UK and around the world. Welcome to the Paranormal Pendal Podcast,
coming to you from the heart of Pendle Witch Country in the northwest of England.
My name is Craig Bryant, author, investigator and collector of stories.
Join me as we take a journey into the paranormal, UFO sightings, cryptozoology
and big casts. This is the Paranoral Pendal Podcast. Welcome to episode forty
seven of Paranormal Pedal, broadcasting to the Paranormal UK Network at PAUK radio dot
com. So this episode is a little bit different. I don't have a
guest for this episode. I did have a guest lined up, but unfortunately
that guest wasn't able to make it. It's one of the hazards of podcasting,
especially when you're an amateur podcaster. You do, unfortunately sometimes get people
who don't turn up for interviews or cancel interviews at the last minute, and
despite my best efforts, don't always reschedule. I have to say it doesn't
happen very often. I can count on one hand when it has. I've
been extremely lucky so far, I'm approaching I'm hoping to get to my fiftieth
episode soon. I've had some fantastic guests, some really really great guests,
very interesting people to talk to, more people that are always happy to give
up their time and talk to you about what they believe in and their experiences.
And that's what makes the whole podcasting thing for me particularly worthwhile. So
what I've decided to do on this episode is just do a bit of a
sort of informal waffle. I suppose it's probably the way it's going to go
about rendaltionro Forest, because Rendaltion Forest is of course a famous incident of potential
UFO citing in nineteen eighty in Suffolk, and I was lucky to go lucky
enough to go down there last week and I did some filming around rendal From
Forest, and I have to say that it is a very interesting place.
The atmosphere is unlike anything actually that I've ever experienced anywhere else. It's definitely
got a vibe of its own. It's a very interesting place. The video
that I did is on my YouTube channel, and I will put the link
down in the description for this podcast. But what I thought i'd do is
I just read some excerpts from various different publications that talk about rendals Forest,
and then just give you my thoughts having been there and having walked the ground
and seen the area where the UFOs were allegedly seen, and just the whole
feeling of the place, and how I what my take on Rendalson Forest is
having visited. So the rendals Forest incident, it was a series of reported
sightings of unexplained lights near Rendalstrom Forest in Suffolk, which is down in the
southeast part of England. If you're listening to this from anywhere other than England
and you're not sure where Suffolk is, if you have a look at a
map of England, look at London, go up a little bit into the
right, and there's a bulge sticks out at the side of England. That's
the East Anglia and it contains the counties of Suffolk and Norfolk. So Suffolk
is the southern bit, Norfolk is the north be so Rendallsham. It became
linked with UFO landings in December of nineteen eighty. Now the events occurred just
outside of ourf Woodbridge, which at the time was used by the United States
Air Force now THESF personnel, including the deputy based commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles
Holt, claimed that they had seen things that they described as a UFO.
So the occurrence is the most famous of UFO events that has ever happened up
till now in the United Kingdom and is amongst the best known reported UFO events
worldwide. It has been compared to Roswell in America and is sometimes actually referred
to as Britain's Roswell. So the UK Ministry of Defense has stated that the
event posed no threat to national security and therefore it was never investigated as a
security matter. It's very strange and skeptics have explained the sightings as a misinterpretation
of a series of nocturnal lights, possibly fireballs the ufered Nest Lighthouse which is
quite close by, or even bright stars in the sky. So the main
events happened over two nights. The first one was the twenty sixth of December
nineteen eighty at around three o'clock in the morning, and this was reported by
Major Holt in a memo that he sent to the UK Ministry of Defense.
He claimed that a security patrol near the East gate of r airwood Bridge saw
lights apparently descending into nearby rendalls from forest. These lights had been attributed by
astronomers to a piece of natural debris seen burning up as a fireball over southern
England at the time. Servicemen initially thought it was a downed aircraft. According
to Holt's memo, upon entering the forest to investigate their witness to glowing object
that was metallic in appearance with colored lights. As they attempted to approach the
object, it appeared to move through the trees, and the animals on a
nearby farm went into an absolute frenzy. So one of the service men,
a Sergeant Jim Peniston, later claimed to have encountered a as he described it,
craft of unknown origin whilst in the forest, although there was no publicized
mention of this at the time and there is no corroboration from other witnesses.
So shortly after four o'clock in the morning again were still On the twenty sixth
of December, local police were called to the scene, but reported that the
only lights they could see were those from Ufford Nest Lighthouse, some miles away
on the coast. After daybreak on the morning of the twenty sixth of December,
servicemen returned to a small clearing near the eastern edge of the forest and
found three small impressions on the ground in a triangular pattern, as well as
burnmarks and broken branches on nearby trees. At ten point thirty the local police
were called out again, this time to see the impressions, which they thought
could have been made by an animal. There was an author called Georgina Brune
which she wrote a book You Can't Tell the People published a photograph of the
supposed landing site taken on the morning after the first sighting. So we now
moved on to the twenty eighth of December. A couple of days later,
the deputy based Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Holt visited the site with several servicemen in
the early hours of the twenty eighth of December. Radiation readings in the triangle
of depressions and in the surrounding area using in an stroke PDR DASH twenty seven,
a standard US military radiation survey meter. Now although they recorded zero point
zero seven million rota gens per hour, in other regions they detected between zero
point zero three and zero point zero four milli rota gens per hour around the
background level. Furthermore, they detected a similar small burst over half a mile
away from the landing site and Halt recorded the events on a microsette recorder and
this is called the Halt tape. So it was during this investigation that a
flashing red light was seen across the field to the east, almost in line
with the farmhouse, as the witnesses had seen on the first night. Now
the Oyfenest lightouse is visible further to the east in the same line of sight.
So later, according to Holt's memo, starlight lights star like lights were
seen in the sky, two to the north and one to the south,
about ten degrees above the horizon. Holt said that the brightest of these three
hovered for two to three hours and seemed to beam down stream of lights from
time to time. So astronomers have explained these starlight lights simply as nothing more
than bright stars. So Rendalsham Forest is owned by the Forestry Commission and consists
of around five point eight square miles about fifteen square kilometers of coniferous plantations with
broad leaf belts, heathland and wetland areas, and as I said, it's
located in the County of Suffolk, about eight miles east of the town of
Ipswich. The incident occurred in the vicinity of the two former military bases,
OREF bent Waters, which is just the north of the forest, and I
actually visited the site of RAF bent Waters again. It's now no longer an
American US base. And also rif wood Bridge, which extends into the forest
from the west and is bounded by the forest on its northern and eastern edges.
So at the time both were being used by the United States Air Force.
As I said, we're under the command of Wing Commander Colonel Gordon E.
Williams. The base commander was Colonel Ted Conrad and his deputy was Lieutenant
Colonel Charles Holt. So the main events of the incident, including the supposed
landing or landings, took place in the forest, which starts at the east
end of the base runway, or about zero point three miles roughly about zero
point five kilometers to the east of the east gate of RF wood Bridge,
from where the security guards first noticed mysterious lights appearing to descend into the forest.
The forest extends east for about one mile roughly about one point six kilometers
beyond the east Gate, ending at a farmer's field at Capel Green, where
additional events allegedly took place. Wiford Nest Lighthouse, which kept its identify as
the flashing lights seeing off the course by the airmen, is along the same
line of sight, about five miles roughly eight kilometers further east of the forest
edge. At that time it was one of the brightest lighthouses in the UK.
So the first piece of primary evidence to be made available to the public
was a memorandum written by the deputy based Commander, Lieutenant Holt to the Ministry
of Defense. Now this is known as the Holt Memo, and this was
made publicly available in the United States under the US Freedom of Information Act in
nineteen eighty three. The memorandum was dated thirteenth of January nineteen eighty one under
the title Unexplained Lights. The two week delay between the incident and the report
might account for the errors in the dates and the times given. The memo
was not classified in any way. David Clarke, a consultant in the National
Archives, has investigated the background of this memo and the erection of it at
the MD. His interviews with the personnel involved, confirmed the curious nature of
the investigation made by the mod and failed to find any evidence for any other
reports on the incident made by the USAF or UK Apart from the Halt memo,
Halt has since gone on record as saying he believes that he witnessed an
extraterrestrial event that was then covered up. In nineteen eighty four, a copy
of what became known as the Halt Tape was released to UFO researchers by Colonel
Sam Morgan, and had by then succeeded Ted Conrad as Holt's superior. This
tape chronicles Halt's investigation in the forest in real time, including taking radiation readings,
the sighting of the flashing lights between the trees, and the starli like
objects that hovered and twinkled. The tape has been transcribed by researcher Ian Ridpath,
who includes a link to an audio download and also a step by step
analysis of the entire contents of the tape, and you can find that on
Wikipedia under the Rendelstrom Forest incident. In nineteen ninety seven, Scottish researcher James
Easton obtained the original witness statements made by those involved in the first night sightings.
One of the witnesses, ed Caban's Sag said in his statement, we
figured that the lights were coming from past the forest, since nothing was visible
when we passed through the woody forest. We would see a glowing near the
beacon light, but as we got closer we found it to be a little
farmhouse. We got to a vantage point where we could determine that what we
were chasing was only a beacon of light off in the distance. And other
participants, John Burrows, also stated we could see a beacon going around,
so he went towards it. We followed it for about two miles, roughly
about three kilometers before we could see it was coming from the lighthouse. Burrows
reported a noise like a woman was screaming, and also that you could hear
the fire animals making a lot of noise. Halt heard the same noises two
nights later. Such noises could have been made by monk jack deer in the
forest, which are known for their loud, shrill bark when alarmed. In
June of twenty ten, retired Colonel Holt signed a notarized AFFI David in which
he again summarized what had happened. He stated he believed the event to be
extraterrestrial and it had been covered up by both the US and US and UK.
Contradictions between this Affi David and the facts as recorded at the time in
Halt's memo and tape recording have been pointed out. In twenty ten, Based
Commander Colonel Ted Conrad provided a statement about the incident's clarke. Conrad stated that
we saw nothing that resembled Lieutenant Colonel Holt's description, either in the sky or
on the ground, and that we had people in per position to validate Holt's
narrative, but none of them could. In an interview, Conrad criticized Holtz
for the claims in his Affidavid, saying he should be ashamed and embarrassed by
his allegation that his country and Britain both conspired to deceive their citizens over this
issue. He should know better. Conrad also disputed the testimony of Sergeant Jim
Peniston, who claimed to have touched the alien spacecraft. He said that he
interviewed Peniston at the time and he made no mention of any such currents.
Conrad also suggested that the entire incident might have been a haax. In nineteen
eighty, the Three Omni article says that Colonel Ted Conrad, the base commander,
recalls five Air Force police spotted lights from what they thought was a small
plane descending into the forest. Two of the men tracked the objects on foot
and came across a large tripod mounted craft. It had no windows, but
were studded with brilliant red and blue lights. Each time the men came within
fifty yards of the shape, Conrad relates it levitated six feet in the air
and back to wait. They followed it for almost an hour through the woods
and across the field until it took off at phenomenal speed. Acting on the
reports made by his men, Colonel Conrad began a brief investigation of the incident.
In the mourning he went into the forest and located a triangular pattern ostensibly
made by the tripod legs. He did interview two of the eyewitnesses and concludes
those lads saw something, but I don't know what it was. Suffolk Police
were called to the scene on the night of the initial sighting and again the
following morning, but found nothing unusual. On the night of the initial incident.
They reported that the only lights visible were from Orford Lighthouse. They attributed
the indentations in the ground to animals. The Suffolk Constabulary file on the case
was released in two thousand and five under the UK's Freedom of Information Act and
can be accessed on their website. It includes a letter dated the twenty eighth
of July nineteen ninety nine, written by Inspector Mark Topless, who notes that
one of the police constables who attended the scene on the first night returned to
the sighting daylight in case he'd missed something. There was nothing to be seen,
he said, and he remained unconvinced that the occurrence was genuine. The
immediate area was swept by powerful lightbeams from a landing beacon at Aria Bentwaters and
the Offord Nest Lighthouse, and of from personal experience that at night, in
certain weather and cloud conditions, those beams were very pronounced and certainly callsed strange
visual effects. Evidence of a substantial mord file on the subject led to claims
of a cover up. Some interpreted this as part of a larger pattern of
information suppression concerning the true nature of unidentified flying objects by both the United States
and British governments. However, when the file was released in two thousand and
one, it turned out to consist mostly of internal correspondence and responses to inquiries
from the public. The lack of any in depth investigation in the publicity release
documents is consistent with the mold's earliest statement that they never took the case seriously.
Included in the release files is an explanation given by Defense Minister Lord Treft
Game as to why the MOLD did not investigate further. So. One proposed
theory is that the incident was a hawax. The BBC reported that a former
US security policeman, Kevin Conder, claimed responsibility for creating strange lights in the
forest by driving around in a police vehicle whose lights have been modified. However,
there is no evidence that this pranked up place on the nights in question.
Other explanations to the incident have included a downed Soviet Spice satellite, but
again no evidence has ever been produced to support this. The most widely accepted
explanation is that the sightings were due to a combination of three main factors.
The initial sighting at three am on the twenty sixth of December, when the
airman saw something apparently descending into the forest. Coincided with the appearance of a
bright fireball over southern England, and such fireballs are a common source of UFO
reports. The supposed landing marks were identified by police and foresters as rabbit Diggins.
No evidence has emerged to confirm that anything actually came down in the forest.
According to the witness statements from the twenty sixth of December, the flashing
lights seen from the forest lay in the same direction as the Orford Nest Lighthouse.
When the eyewitnesses attempted to approach the light, they realized it was further
off than their thought. One of the witnesses, ed Caban Sig, described
it as a beacon light off in the distance, whilst another, John Burrows,
said it was a lighthouse. Timings on Halt's take recording during the sighting
on the twenty eighth of December, indicate that the light he saw, which
lay in the same direction as the light seen two nights earlier, flashed every
five seconds, which was the flash rates of the Orford Nest Lighthouse. The
starlight objects that Halt reported hovering low to the north and south are thought by
some skeptics to have been misinterpretations of bright stars which had been distorted by atmospheric
and optical effects. Another common source of ufour reports, the brightest of Them
to the South, matched the position of Sirius, the brightest star in the
night sky. In his sixth of January two thousand and nine Skeptoid podcast episode
entitled the rendellschrom Forest USO, Scientific skeptic author Brian Dunning evaluated the original eyewitness
reports and audio recordings, as well as the result in media reporting of this
incident. After a lengthy analysis, Dunning concluded that Colonel Holt's thoroughness was commendable,
but even he can be mistaken. Without exception. Everything he reported on
his audio tape and in his written memo has a perfectly rational and unremarkable explanation.
All that remains is the tale that the men were debriefed and ordered never
to mention the effect the event, and warned that bullets are cheap. Well,
as we've seen on television, the men also quite freely about it,
and even Colonel Holt says to this day that nobody has ever debriefed him.
So this appears to be just another dramatic invention for television, perhaps from one
of the men who have expanded their stories over the years. When you examine
each piece of evidence separately on its own merit, you avoid the trap of
pattern matching and finding correlations where none exist. The meteors had nothing to do
with the lighthouse or the rabbit Diggins, but when you hear all three stories
told together, it's easy to conclude, as did the airmen, that the
light overhead became an alien spacecraft in the forest. Always remember, separate pieces
of poor evidence don't aggregate together into a single piece of good evidence. In
twenty ten, Jenny Randalls, who first reported the case in the London Evening
Standard in nineteen eighty one and co authored with the local researchers who uncovered the
events the first book on the case in nineteen eighty four, Skycrash, A
cos Conspiracy, emphasized her previously expressed doubts that the incident was caused by extraterrestrial
visitors, while suggesting that a UAP, an unidentified aerial phenomena of unknown origin,
might have caused part of the case. She noted, while some of
the puzzles remain, we can probably say that no unearthly craft were seen in
rendels from forest. We can also argue with confidence that the main focus of
the events was a series of mis preconceptions of everyday things encountered in a less
than everyday circumstance. In December of twenty eighteen, David Clarke, a British
UFOR researcher, reported a claim that the incident was a set up by the
SAS as a revenge plot on the USAF. According to this story, in
August nineteen eighty, the SAS parachuted into our ref Woodbridge to test the security
at the nuclear site. The USAF had recently upgraded their radar and detected the
black parachutes of the SAS men as they descended to the base. The SAS
troops were interrogated and beaten up with the ultimate insult that they were called unidentified
aliens. To enact their revenge, the SAS gave the USAF their own version
of an alien event. As December approached, lights and colored floors were rigged
in the woods. Black helium balloons were also coupled to remote controlled kites to
carry suspended materials into the sky, activated by remote controls. However, Clark's
investigation concluded that this story was also a haax. So as you can see,
there are various different theories as to what happened over those few days.
I remain skeptical until something is proved. If I can see proof that something's
happened, then that obviously makes a huge difference. Having been to Rendalls from
Forest, I have to admit that the whole place was quite creepy. It
was certainly very atmospheric. Whether or not that was because of the story around
the name Rentals from Forest and what it cojures up in your mind. Maybe
I was a little bit more on edge, Maybe I was a little bit
more sensitive to what was going on around me. The video that I've put
on YouTube, I think shows quite well what the layout of the forest is
like. There is a huge area, and I did take some film of
this that was later cleared by the Forestry Commission, and you'll see it.
There's a couple of dead trees, just almost petrified trees that are just stuck
in the middle of this area. It's difficult to sort of engage the size
of the area, but it was certainly quite a few hundred George Cross and
quite a few hundred geords deep. It was. It was a large area
and you'll you'll see it on the video. Now the Forestry Commission apparently came
in and cleared this area, and it's been cleared in quite a precise way.
I mean it's almost, you know, perfectly square at the corners.
It's it's quite a bizarre part of the forest. Obviously, I've interviewed people
in the past who've mentioned that when they have been alleged down UFOs, the
Forestry Commission have suddenly appeared and cleared out huge areas of forests where these these
UFOs were allegedly seen or allegedly crashed. Could this be a similar story at
Rendlesham? I don't know. If you watched the video, you can make
your own mind up. It is a very very strange part of the forest.
The whole area, as I said, has got a real feel about
it. One of my thoughts on it well, as I say, I'm
skeptical. Was it a UFO? Possibly? Was it the sas possibly?
Was it lights from Orford Nests Lighthouse or stellar phenomena stars in the sky possibly?
Who knows, But I think it's an interesting story. I'm glad I
went down to have a look at the area. I'm glad I managed to
get some film. Please, if you can just take time out to click
on the link on the description and just follow the link to my YouTube channel
and you'll see the video on there. I'd love you to comment about what
you think went on at Rendlesham and hopefully you'll enjoy the video as much as
I enjoyed making it. So thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed
this slightly different podcast. I apologize for stumbling over a couple of words as
I was reading some of the text, but you know you've got to You've
got to try these things in order to move forward. So again, thank
you for listening. Take care of everybody and we will speak soon. You
can visit my website at www dot Craig Bryant dot co dot uk. Paramalpendle
will return and remember to keep watching the shadows and pas