UFO Lands in Suffolk and That’s Official – Other Witnesses, Other Allegations
Shortly after the publication of Skycrash in the late summer of 1984 I made a visit to the Rendlesham area and talked with several of the local characters which the book identifies. Halt, of course, had already departed, and so had his RAF counterpart, Squadron Leader Moreland (technically the resident British “landlord” of the Bent waters/Woodbridge complex and the officer who trans mitted Halt’s Memorandum to the British Ministry of Defense). ·
I found that USAF families on the base had only a dim and hearsay recollection that something odd had happened on those December nights of nearly four years before. (Such is the speed of tum-over of military personnel and the shortness of human memory.) Mrs. Boast, whose fam ily live on a farm quite close to the likely site of the UFO visitation and who are described in Skycrash as “frightened people, ” terrorized into silence by “strange” visitors, told me that she and her husband had little . to tell except the memory of something bright in the sky, which could well have been the meteor of December 25/26. She said that she was not frightened and had never been persecuted except by ufologists. Later, in the pub at Sutley, I chatted with the two elderly brothers (a pair of friendly and entertaining “characters “) who are described in Sky crash as having suffered mysterious disturbances to their television in December 1980. I gathered that they were still having the same sort of problem from time to time, the TV set being in the nature of a much prized vintage article.
I came away from Suffolk with only two vital pieces of information: first, a vivid impression of the Rendlesham area from which, helped by Halt’s Tape, I feel confident in marking on the map the route probably taken by Halt on December 29/30, 1980; second, the recollection of some superb oysters in the village of Orford.
I cannot subscribe to any view that local residents saw much of significance in December 1980 or that they live under obscure threats from obscure authorities (without so much as mentioning the matter to their lively and energetic Member of Parliament).
Much more important are the many accounts of the events of December 29/30, 1980 which have been given to investigators by a range of alleged USAF witnesses. These accounts are, of course, wholly without the official stamp carried by the Halt Memorandum, and it is impossible to apply to them the kind of analysis which persuades me that the Halt Tape is authentic. They tend, moreover, to contradict each other on points of detail . In total, how ever, they add up to a formidable body of testimony to the occurrence of highly bizarre events which none of the wit nesses had anything to gain by describing-and probably something to lose.
We are told by these witnesses of interferences to the functioning of military vehicles and equipment; of a dense yellow mist or semi-substantial disk which formed in the forest (like a “transparent aspirin tablet” said one witness with inadvertent whimsy); of the sudden transformation of this “proto-form” into a large domed or saucer shaped structure following a spectacular display of lights (one account calls this new object “tremendous” and expresses surprise that it was able to fit into the clearing) ; of silver-suited entities suspended in a shaft of light ; of a local distortion of perception which caused shadows to appear to move independently of the objects casting them . . .
This sensational scenario, which reads like a drug induced nightmare, is not mentioned in Halt’s Memorandum and forms no part of his tape-recording. Its absence from the latter in particular has been thought by some to be damning evidence against its “real” occurrence. But the tape, as already mentioned, is greatly abbreviated. It also moves from one time-check to another (recorded in Halt’s voice) at a very uneven rate. There is, in particular, one passage of nearly an hour-from 1 :48 a.m. to 2:44 a.m.-which passes in a mere three to four minutes and contains an extraordinary discontinuity. At one moment, which can be put at roughly 2 a.m. or a little earlier, Halt reports a remarkable object: ” . . . I t looks like an eye winking at you. Still moving from side to side. And when you put the starscope on it, it’s like this thing has a hollow center, a dark center, like the pupil of an eye looking at you , winking. And it flashes so bright . . . t hat it almost bums your eye. “
There follows what the transcribers of the tape call uagarbled security communication” and then Halt immediately resumes, in a remarkably steady voice, with relatively unexciting information that has nothing to do with the breathless wonder of that great winking “eye.”
He says:
“We’ve passed the farmer’s house and across into the next field . . . “
Half a minute later Halt gives a time-check of 2:44 a.m.
For the rest of the tape, events are reported in somewhat low key. All are of the kind which determined critics have interpreted as the inadvertent-or even deliberate misperception of the Orford Ness lighthouse and of the bright stars in the sky (and which I, personally, would not go to the barricades to defend against that suggestion) .
Some of these other witnesses have given us not only their extraordinary UFO visions but also the suggestion that General Gordon Williams (the Bentwaters/Wood bridge supremo) hastily joined Halt’s posse in the small hours of December 30; that he communicated with the “silver-suited entities” ; that members of U .S. Intelligence were also present; that cinefilm was taken; that this film was flown immediately to USAF headquarters in Germany; that exceptional steps were taken to swear all wit nesses to silence .
No collateral has ever been obtained for these other al legations, despite inquiries which I (and more significantly Lord Hill-Norton , former Chief of the Defense Staff) put to the Ministry of Defense, and notwithstanding the determined attempts of Ray Boeche5 to secure information through Senator Exon, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Nor has any of us been able to verify the persistent rumor that radar traces exist of the Rendle sham events. On all these matters I think we are bound to remain reserved-noting, however, that the Defense authorities, both here and in the U.S.A. , have given unmistakable signs of unease, prevarication and downright dishonesty.