In 1996, Nick Pope published his first book, Open Skies, Closed Minds. It’s a semi-autobiographical look at famous UFO cases, mixed with his own research. Pope worked at the UK Ministry of Defence for over twenty years, from 1985 to 2006. For three of those years—1991 to 1994—he handled what was informally called “the UFO desk” within the department. Its official name was Secretariat (Air Staff) Sec (AS) 2a, and its job was to assess whether reported UFO sightings had any defence significance.
To promote the book, Pope appeared on BBC Newsnight. The UK’s top news programme was known for its tough interviews, which could leave even the most seasoned politicians and intellectuals looking stunned. Given the topic and the platform, it could have gone badly, but Pope held his own. “I wasn’t nervous, probably because the MoD had trained me for the media,” he says. “The funny thing was, when I was assigned to the UFO desk, I sometimes had to go on TV as the department’s expert and downplay both the phenomena and how much we were really interested or involved.” That night, his interviewer was Peter Snow. “What do you believe now that you didn’t believe five years ago?” Snow began.
“Well, I started the job as a sceptic, but the sheer amount of evidence—the sightings, radar data, all that—convinced me that some of these things we see in the sky and call UFOs come from outside Earth,” Pope said. “Extraterrestrial? You mean, like craft with people inside?” Snow asked, looking doubtful. “Well, some kind of craft, yes. That doesn’t mean all of them are, of course. Most have normal explanations. But after careful investigation, we find that 5% or 10% completely defy any normal explanation. And those ones, yes, it does seem like they might be some kind of craft from elsewhere,” Pope replied.
Pope’s work on the UFO desk was driven by events—it could be very busy, then extremely quiet. During those slow times, he would study old cases. One encounter stood out. It was reported in Rendlesham Forest by two American airmen on Christmas night in 1980.
Rendlesham Forest is in Suffolk, England, near RAF Bentwaters, a US-operated airbase during the Cold War. In 1980, that base held several nuclear missiles.
I came to New York to interview Pope for my book Chasing Aliens. If aliens are here, or have been here before, what do they want? Could they come in peace, or do they want to plunder Earth like the invaders from War of the Worlds? The UFOs seen in Earth’s skies might be reconnaissance craft, feeding information about our weaknesses back to their mothership. Understanding their motives could be the key to finding them, I thought.
When we met on a sunny afternoon in Bryant Park, Pope wore a green striped shirt that was at least two sizes too big. He told me that unlike other UFO sightings, the eyewitness reports from Rendlesham were backed by solid evidence. “It’s the perfect storm of a UFO case. Multiple witnesses, including military. Sightings over three nights in a row. Physical evidence like radar, radioactivity, ground marks, and scorch marks. It’s a case where we’ve declassified and released documents, which you can see at the National Archives and the Ministry of Defence website. So, unlike many UFO documents out there, there’s no question about where they came from. They’re the real thing.” Pope’s research into the incident eventually led him to co-write a book, Encounter in Rendlesham Forest, with one of the eyewitnesses, Jim Penniston.And John Burroughs, after he left the Ministry of Defence. It was published in 2014.
The events of that night began when Burroughs, who was patrolling Woodbridge near the base’s east gate, noticed strange blinking red and blue lights coming from the forest. Burroughs and his supervisor, Staff Sergeant Bud Steffens, got into a vehicle and drove out to investigate. When they reached a dirt track leading into the forest, a white light joined the red and blue ones. Both agreed they had never seen lights like these on any aircraft. They hurried back to the guard shack at the east gate and called for backup.
Penniston, who was a staff sergeant at the time, took the call and rushed to the scene with his driver, Edward Cabansag. Fearing a plane had crashed, Penniston radioed Central Security Control for more details. The response was that an unidentified object had appeared on Woodbridge’s radar and then vanished 15 minutes earlier. After a brief discussion, Steffens stayed at the base, while Burroughs, Penniston, and Cabansag drove back to the woods to check out the lights. Even though there was no report of an explosion or fire, the three men moved into the cold, dark forest, expecting to find the wreckage of a crashed aircraft and all the problems that came with it. But what they found was far stranger.
About a week after meeting Pope, I speak with Penniston over a video call. He looks a bit like William Shatner, with thin glasses on a broad face marked by wrinkles that seem to tell of a life filled with worry and deep thought. It’s true, Penniston says, that he was called out that evening to investigate a possible aircraft crash. Air force personnel had seen something on radar, and Heathrow Airport reported losing contact with a non-civilian aircraft as it passed over Woodbridge. Penniston explains that when he met up with Burroughs, he took over as the on-scene commander.
Penniston, Burroughs, and Cabansag drove as far into the forest as they could, but the rough terrain forced them to continue on foot. Cabansag stayed behind, while Penniston, with Burroughs by his side, weaved through the trees and climbed over the berms. They came upon the lights a few minutes later—only they were dimmer than before. Suddenly, their radios started to break up. Penniston says he felt a strange sensation, like static electricity crackling through his hair and on his clothes. Then a blinding bright light burst into the night through the forest in front of them. Expecting an explosion, they threw themselves to the ground, but nothing happened. Penniston got up and saw the bright light starting to fade, revealing a triangular craft resting in a small clearing on the forest floor. Multicolored neon lights darted across its black, opaque surface until they too dimmed, and the only light left came from underneath the craft.
In Penniston’s book, The Rendlesham Enigma, he described seeing Burroughs “frozen to the spot” behind him, “with both arms down by his side, motionless. Although he was standing just outside the dome, or ‘bubble,’ of light between us, he was also engulfed in a beam of white/blue light, which looked as though it was shining down from above him.” Penniston didn’t know why Burroughs wasn’t moving, but he thought fear might have paralyzed him. Burroughs has few memories of what happened after that first explosion of light. He has mentioned seeing a “red, oval sun-like object in the clearing,” but not the craft Penniston saw. For Burroughs, seeing the bright light, hitting the ground, and getting back up lasted only a few seconds; for Penniston, the encounter lasted much longer.
View image in fullscreen: A replica UFO at the supposed landing site in the forest. Photograph: Rob Anscombe/Alamy
Penniston went to get a closer look at the craft. “It was hard getting there,” he explains on our call. “I mean, I felt like it was hard to move, like walking through waist-deep water. I decided…”He went ahead to investigate until backup forces could arrive. He took out his notebook and sketched the craft as he walked around it: “It was hovering above the forest floor as if it had landing gear, but when I looked underneath, there was none. It was just beams of light. And where three of those beams touched the ground, you could see strange indentations. Whatever that technology was, it was holding the craft up.” Penniston came to this conclusion because he tried to push the craft, thinking even a car rocks a little when you push it, but this was completely solid. “I knew right then that it was technology we didn’t have.” He knew this because the air force base he was guarding housed up to 35 generals, along with research and development teams.
While waiting for base security to make contact, he decided to investigate more closely. “Based on my height, I figured it was about six and a half feet tall. It’s hard to tell because the forest floor was uneven,” Penniston says. He circled the craft again and noticed what looked like a dorsal fin on its rear, about seven feet off the ground, as well as several engravings on its surface that looked like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Penniston says that when he first touched the craft, the surface felt warm and smooth, which he thought was from friction during flight, but he later learned it was due to beta radiation. When he ran his fingers over the hieroglyphs, they felt rough, like sandpaper. He touched one of the symbols, and a bright white light flooded the area, blinding him, and a strange series of ones and zeros filled his mind. “What the hell is this?” Penniston remembers thinking. “And I just lift my hand off, and it stops. Immediately.” The white light faded, and his vision returned.
The colorful streaks moving across the craft’s surface came back, so Penniston backed away and lay flat on the forest floor. The craft began to lift slowly off the ground, moving through the surrounding trees, rising to the level of the forest canopy—and then it was gone. Penniston thought what he had seen was impossible. The craft had none of the things we normally think are needed to fly: wings, flaps, rotor blades, or air displacement. Plus, given how quickly it disappeared, you’d expect a sonic boom, but it made no sound.
Burroughs, who seemed no longer frozen in place, joined Penniston. “It’s over there!” Burroughs shouted, pointing into the distance. Penniston had no idea what he was talking about—the forest was pitch black. Burroughs ran off toward the coast, and Penniston, feeling exhausted, reluctantly chased after him. They tore through the forest, jumping over several fences, until they stopped in a farmer’s field and saw a light flashing in the distance. It was the beam from nearby Orfordness lighthouse, more than four miles away off the coast. “So, I knew that he [Burroughs] hadn’t seen it. I don’t know what he was doing. He wasn’t very helpful,” Penniston says. The craft was gone, and Penniston and Burroughs returned to base in the early hours of Boxing Day.
When Penniston got back, he was too wired to sleep, so he decided to look through his notes to try to make sense of it all: the lights, the craft, the strange symbols, the eerie silence. Maybe it was the late hour and the adrenaline wearing off, but he couldn’t gather his thoughts; the ones and zeros he saw after touching the hieroglyphs were still swimming before his eyes. “I started writing them down, and the more I wrote, the better I felt. I went back to bed and slept all night.”
The stories of the lights and the mysterious craft caused unrest around the base. On the evening of December 27, the deputy base commander, Lt. Col. Charles Halt, along with his lieutenant, Bruce Englund, ventured out.He stepped out into the cold evening to check the clearing where the craft was said to have landed on Christmas Day. Halt brought his tape recorder along. What he captured that night is one of the most dramatic pieces of UFO evidence ever recorded.
In the recording, which is available online, you can hear Halt walking around the three indentations in the soil that were supposedly made by the craft’s landing gear. Halt and Englund have a Geiger counter with them and take radiation readings before turning their attention to marks on the trees around the clearing. “Each one of these trees that face into the blast, what we assume is the landing site, all have an abrasion facing in the same direction, towards the centre,” Englund says. Halt looks up at the trees around the clearing and sees an opening and freshly broken branches on the ground. “Some of them came off about 15 to 20 feet up. Some of the branches [are] about an inch or less in diameter.”
After examining the scene and getting startled by a screaming deer, Halt, Englund, and other unidentified servicemen notice a light in the sky. “You just saw a light? Where? Wait a minute. Slow down. Where?” Halt asks. “Straight ahead, in between the trees – there it is again,” Englund replies. “Watch – straight ahead … There it is.” “I see it too … What is it?” asks Halt, his voice rising with excitement. There is a long pause. “We don’t know, sir.”
By this point, they have moved about 140 metres away from the landing site, into a farmer’s field. Halt points out a bird, but everything else is “deathly calm”. “There is no doubt about it – there’s some type of strange flashing red light ahead,” says Halt. “Sir, it’s yellow,” Englund replies. “I saw a yellow tinge in it too. Weird! It appears to be maybe moving a little bit this way? It’s brighter than it has been.” There is another long pause on the tape, then: “It’s coming this way! It is definitely coming this way!” Other voices on the tape, as well as Halt’s, describe pieces “shooting off” the source of the light. “There is no doubt about it. This is weeeeeird!” Halt says, breathlessly.
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Charles Halt, the deputy base commander at the time of the incident. Photograph: YouTube
Halt and his men cross into another field. He reports that they have seen up to five lights, all of which have become steady after pulsing with red flashes. “We’re at the far side of the second farmer’s field and made sighting again about 110 degrees,” Halt says. “This looks like it’s clear off to the coast. It’s right on the horizon. Moves about a bit and flashes from time to time. Still steady or red in colour.” Halt’s Geiger counter picks up readings registering at “four or five” clicks – a low reading, consistent with normal background radiation.
“There’s definitely something there. Some kind of phenomenon,” Halt says. He then says he sees two strange objects on the horizon, shaped like half-moons, “dancing about with coloured lights on them”. He estimates that the half-moons, which become full circles, are five miles away and moving away. Then, suddenly the lights begin to race towards Halt and his men. In an instant, they are overhead, hovering erratically. Beams of light burst from the circular objects, hitting the ground. Halt laughs nervously. “This is unreal,” he says. Years later, Halt said they could hear chatter on their radios from his colleagues inside the base, reporting that the beams of light went down into the weapons-storage area, where the nuclear weapons were kept.
Listening to the tape for the first time was like stumbling across a real-life UFO Blair Witch Project; it’s just a shame they didn’t think to bring a camera.
The day after his adventure in the forest, Penniston made this report:I received a dispatch from Central Security Control to meet up with Police 4 AIC Burroughs and Police 5 SSgt Steffens. When we arrived at the east gate, about a mile and a half directly east, there was a large wooded area. A big, glowing yellow light was shining above the trees. In the center of the lit area, right at ground level, a red light was blinking on and off every 5 to 10 seconds. There was also a blue light that stayed mostly steady. When we got within about 50 meters, the object was giving off red and blue light. The blue light was steady and shone underneath the object, spreading out a meter or two around it. That was the closest I ever got to the object.
Nowhere in the report did Penniston mention a triangular craft, lost time, or downloading a binary code. Burroughs also wrote a report about what happened that night. Like Penniston, he described a bright white light and flashing blue and red lights coming from the woods. He said he lay flat on the ground, but he explained that was because of movement in the woods and strange noises, including what sounded like a woman screaming (later found to be a muntjac deer). Like Penniston, Burroughs didn’t mention any craft in his official report, but he did include a sketch that looked like a craft, with notes about the lights coming from it.
In later stories, Penniston claimed that Burroughs stood still the whole time during the encounter with the craft. “[He was] staring straight ahead and looked helplessly frozen to the spot … I yelled at him, but he seemed not to hear me … I couldn’t be certain if he was still conscious and aware of what was going on.” Penniston also said Burroughs doesn’t remember this happening. But what about Burroughs’ diagram? “This has always made me wonder about John’s memory. Why could he do this within 72 hours and today has no memory?” Penniston wrote in Encounter in Rendlesham Forest.
There are reasons to think the men’s official reports may have been influenced by their superiors to hide what really happened that night. According to Penniston, he first wrote a four-page report, but military superiors gave him the official version and ordered him to tell their story if anyone asked. The report from Cabansag, who drove Penniston and Burroughs that night, is signed but has no date. Cabansag said he was forced to sign it “under extreme duress.” In a 2013 interview, Penniston said he believed Burroughs’ statement was the only one that hadn’t been altered.
When Halt got back to base after his time in the woods, he was ordered to hand over the tape recording he had made. “I played the tape for the general and the staff,” Halt told the History Channel. “And the general, in his infinite wisdom, said: ‘Happened off the base. It’s a British affair. Case closed.'” Not satisfied, Halt wrote a signed memo a few weeks later that described the events in more detail. It mentioned the patrolmen seeing a “strange glowing object in the forest” that was “triangular in shape” and “hovering or on legs,” the object disappearing and then being briefly seen again. He then described what he saw: depressions in the ground and lights in the sky. The memo backs up part of Penniston’s story, but there’s no mention of him studying the craft for 45 minutes while writing in a notebook.
View image in fullscreen: Halt’s notorious memorandum. Photograph: Public Domain
This notebook has become a key part of the Rendlesham story. Penniston, who left the air force in 1993, says he has had nightmares about that night ever since. He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He says he didn’t think much about the numbers in his notebook until 2010, when he was reading it again for a documentary. One of the film’s producers noticed the ones and zeros as he flipped through.He flipped through the pages of his notebook and offered to decode the message.
In Encounter in Rendlesham Forest, the authors wrote that the numbers Penniston had scribbled down could be read as latitudes and longitudes for famous landmarks around the world. According to them, the numbers pointed to ancient buildings like the pyramids in Giza, the Nazca Lines in Peru, and the Temple of Apollo in Naxos. They also included a wooded area in Sedona, Arizona, known for its red-rock formations, along with other culturally and historically significant sites. The authors also claimed that the code contained messages like “exploration of humanity,” “eyes of your eyes,” “continuous for planetary advancement,” and “origin year 8100.”
They wrote that there was a “consensus” that binary code “would be a logical way for either extraterrestrials or time travelers to communicate with us.” I’m not sure what consensus they meant, or who reached it, but it’s true that the SETI Institute—a U.S. nonprofit focused on finding intelligent alien life—believes any communication would likely use a universal language like math.
The authors’ most far-fetched idea was probably linking the code to astrophysicist Ronald Mallett’s disputed theories on time travel. They suggested the craft might be unlike anything else because it came from the future, possibly to warn humans about the dangers of the nuclear weapons stored at Rendlesham. The Ministry of Defence maintains that the Rendlesham Forest incident has “no defense significance.”
Skeptics point to more ordinary explanations for what happened. Vince Thurkettle, who worked as a forester there at the time, said the marks on the ground could have been made by rabbits. “It was an absolutely normal clearing in the forest with three rabbit scrapes—and they’re all carefully marked—that happened to be roughly in a triangle,” he told the BBC in 2020. As for the broken branches? “Well, the forest is full of broken branches,” he said. Thurkettle also claimed the burn marks Halt found on the trees were made a few days earlier by an axe owned by a forest ranger, meaning the trees were ready to be cut down.
But what about the lights Halt and his men saw in the sky? Ian Ridpath, a British astronomer and UFO skeptic who runs a detailed website on the Rendlesham incident, argues that some of those lights came from the Orfordness lighthouse and others from a meteor. According to Ridpath, the “shooting off” pieces Halt mentions on the tape were an optical illusion caused by clouds distorting the lighthouse beam. Halt and his men noted the lights appeared every five seconds, which matches the lighthouse beacon. Halt even says on the tape: “OK, we’re looking at the thing… It looks like an eye winking at you.” And the bright objects described near the end of Halt’s tape—the ones that looked like half-moons, then full circles, that lingered and shot down beams of light? Just stars, he says.
Besides Encounter in Rendlesham Forest, which was co-written with Pope, Penniston and Burroughs have each written their own books about what happened that night. Their stories are contradictory, tangled, and confusing. Years later, in 2006, Burroughs emailed Ridpath, saying, “Penniston was not keeping a notebook as it went down.” Penniston denies this.
Did Penniston make up stories about spaceships and computer code after the event? “Obviously, in empirical terms, I can’t rule that out,” says Pope. “I think it’s more likely, if it didn’t happen as he says, that this is a memory somehow implanted through hypnosis and drugs. And that this is a constructed narrative he’s been fed, and he absolutely believes it, because, in my experience, he does.”He’s an honest man. Penniston underwent hypnotic regression twice in the 1990s, hoping to uncover memories he had suppressed. Regressive hypnosis is a controversial therapy where subjects are encouraged to use their imagination to revisit past events tied to emotional trauma. It’s more likely to create false memories than to unlock forgotten or unclear events. A false memory from hypnosis could explain why Penniston is so certain he saw the craft. But here’s the key point: Halt wrote his memo describing the triangular craft ten years before Penniston ever went under hypnosis.
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An information board in the forest. Photograph: Clynt Garnham/Alamy
So is Penniston just lying? Pope thinks it would be strange if he were, because he doesn’t come across as the hero of the story—he seems more like a victim. I suggested that some people can get ahead by playing the victim. “They do,” Pope replied. “But to what end? What has he really gained from this?” I thought about it for a moment. Money?
Pope shook his head. Although his books have sold well, the royalties for Encounter in Rendlesham Forest were split between him, Penniston, Burroughs, his agent, and his lawyer. But Penniston and Burroughs often appear on TV documentaries, which brings in money. “Well, first of all, most of that is repeats. Second, I don’t know what he got, but reading between the lines, I’d say someone probably gave him an appearance fee of a couple hundred dollars here and there. That’s not much.”
Pope also didn’t think they were in it for fame. While most people have heard of Roswell, almost no one knows about Rendlesham, let alone Burroughs and Penniston. “Even if they thought they had something to gain, which I doubt, they must have realized they stood to lose a lot in terms of reputation,” he said. “People thinking they’re crazy, people thinking they’re lying, people thinking they’re dumb and got fooled by a lighthouse.”
I asked Pope if he gives any credibility to the skeptical theories. He said he’s been to the forest many times: “I’ve walked the ground. The beam from the lighthouse isn’t even visible from most of the locations because of the terrain.”
After I met Pope, I walked the tall streets of Manhattan and wrestled with everything I had heard and read about Rendlesham. The story is extraordinary, like something out of a Marvel movie. Maybe it boils down to nothing more than a group of easily excited Americans getting spooked by a deer, a lighthouse, and some stars. But I found the witnesses’ stories compelling, and I believe they saw real aircraft with strange characteristics. I don’t accept that stars, weather conditions, and a lighthouse could fool people to such an extreme degree. Halt has said he was well aware of the lighthouse and pointed out that neither stars nor lighthouse beams zip across the sky and shoot light down to Earth.
And there’s more. There’s still confusion about the radiation levels the servicemen were exposed to over those Christmas nights. Burroughs claims he got sick after Boxing Day morning in 1980. He filed a claim with Veterans Affairs (VA) for disability benefits, but when he tried to get his military records, he found the government had classified them as top secret. Cheryl Bennett, an aide to the late Senator John McCain, helped Burroughs get his records in 2015. She said getting information for him was like “pulling teeth” and one of the hardest things she’s ever had to do.
In 2015, Burroughs won a settlement from the VA, forcing them to pay for his medical bills, which he says resulted from radiation exposure from his encounter in Rendlesham. Burroughs’s lawyer, Pat Frascogna, said the settlement excluded “the bogus explanations.”Over the years, various claims have been made about the lighthouse and the astronomical phenomena. “We were denied access to records, mostly from 1979, which we believe would have shown that John had no health issues when he joined the air force, but that he later developed heart problems and other illnesses because of the incident.”
To support his case, Burroughs referenced Project Condign, a 460-page UK Ministry of Defence study that analyzed over 10,000 possible UFO sightings collected over several decades, many from military personnel. It was declassified in 2006 and stated that several witnesses of the Rendlesham incident were “exposed to unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) radiation.” Frascogna said: “Condign specifically mentions the incident and how radiation from UAPs could cause injury. John provided that document, along with another from the time of the incident, which showed radiation readings significantly higher than normal.”
This doesn’t match Halt’s Geiger counter readings, which found radiation levels within the normal background range. However, if the radiation came from the triangular craft that Burroughs and Penniston encountered, why would Halt have recorded a high reading? The craft had disappeared many hours earlier, and if it was emitting beta particles, as Penniston claimed, any radiation spike would have returned to normal shortly after it left Rendlesham. Still, the normal radiation readings Halt recorded probably wouldn’t have convinced the VA to cover Burroughs’ medical bills, so maybe he had evidence we haven’t seen.
Perhaps we’ll never know. It’s a shame none of this was allowed to be argued in court. Reacting to the settlement, Pope said: “After years of denial, this is official confirmation that what they encountered was real and caused them physical harm. This welcome development doesn’t give us a definitive explanation of the Rendlesham Forest incident, but it brings us closer to the truth.”
Pope may have gotten a bit carried away, as legal settlements don’t necessarily mean the party being sued is liable or guilty. Settlements are often made to avoid the high costs of a trial.
Adding to the sense that a real incident occurred that night is the fact that when the MoD released 35 archives of UFO documents in 2011, the Rendlesham Forest papers were noticeably missing. The BBC reported that the MoD received a request for its own records of the incident in 2000, but when officials looked, they found a “huge” gap where defense intelligence files related to it should have been.
Peter Hill-Norton, a World War II veteran and former chief of the defence staff at the MoD, who died in 2004, was a strong believer in the defense significance of UFOs. He took the Rendlesham case very seriously. In an interview in the 1990s, he said: “The colonel at an American air force base, along with many of his airmen, claim that something from outside Earth’s atmosphere landed at their base. They inspected it, photographed it, took tests on the ground where it had been, and found radioactive traces. There are only two explanations for what happened that night. One is that it actually happened as Col Halt reported. The other is that Col Halt and all his men were hallucinating. Surely, to any sensible person, either explanation is of the utmost defense interest. This should be the subject of rigorous scientific investigation, not dismissed by deadline-driven newspapers.”
I think Lord Hill-Norton was right. The events at Rendlesham were not an isolated incident: military personnel around the world continue to report seeing strange objects near their bases and warships, some of which carry nuclear weapons. That’s not to say…Is there any solid proof that visitors from space exist?
In February, Pope announced that he was terminally ill: “A while ago, after some digestive issues, I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Unfortunately, it’s Stage 4 and has spread to my liver. I know it comes from kindness and hope when people suggest healers, supposed miracle cures, or say things like ‘fight it’ and ‘you can beat it.’ But I’m afraid my diagnosis and situation leave no doubt: I can’t beat it.”
Pope had always been incredibly generous with his time for me over the years. I emailed him to express my sympathy and thank him for all his help. When we met in New York, it felt like we were kindred spirits, far from home in the middle of our own adventures. On April 7, Pope passed away at his home in Arizona. He was 60 years old and is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Weiss.
Before he died, he posted: “The things I’ve done; the places I’ve been; the people I’ve met; and the secrets I’ve been trusted with. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.” This is an edited excerpt from Chasing Aliens by Daniel Lavelle, which will be published on April 30 (Viking, £20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the Rendlesham Forest mystery written in a natural tone with clear concise answers
Beginner Questions
1 What exactly is the Rendlesham Forest mystery
Its the most famous UFO sighting in British history In December 1980 US Air Force personnel stationed at two nearby bases reported seeing strange lights and a craft in Rendlesham Forest over three nights
2 Why do people call it Britains Roswell
Like the Roswell incident in the US it involves military witnesses official documents and a lot of controversy Its often seen as the most credible and welldocumented UFO case in the UK
3 Who saw the UFO
The main witnesses were US Air Force security police including Sergeant Jim Penniston Airman First Class John Burroughs and the Deputy Base Commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt
4 What did they actually see
Descriptions vary On the first night Penniston and Burroughs saw a metallic triangular craft with strange symbols on the side hovering and then landing in the forest On the third night Colonel Halt and his team saw a beam of light shoot down from the sky and a red glowing object moving between trees
5 Is there any proof this happened
Yes Theres an official US Air Force memo detailing the events plus audio recordings of Colonel Halt describing the third nights sightings in real time There are also physical traces like three small indentations in the ground where the craft was said to have landed
Intermediate Advanced Questions
6 Why do skeptics say it was just a lighthouse
The Orford Ness lighthouse is nearby and can flash Skeptics argue the witnesses were confused by the lighthouse beam However witnesses say the object was much closer moved in ways a lighthouse cant and was solid not just a light
7 What about the radiation readings
Witnesses reported Geiger counters going off near the landing site Colonel Halts memo mentions background readings of 010 milliroentgens rising to 005006 near the indentations Experts disagree on whether this was significant or
