The Binary Code
Besides drawings, Sergeant Penniston later filled sixteen pages of a palm-sized, six-ring notebook with strings of zeros and ones—binary code. The sergeant wasn’t “aware” of his pencil scribbles’ meaning; he simply felt compelled to write down specific patterns of zeros and ones. Images of zeros and ones entered his mind, Penniston said, because he had touched the indecipherable glyphs.
Years passed, and then, during a 2010 conversation with a retired computer systems engineer named Joe Luciano, Penniston mentioned the notebook pages he had filled with numerals. Luciano asked to analyze the pages. Penniston agreed, and following research conducted during 2011–12, Luciano arrived at what he called a “decoded and interpreted message.” (Luciano did not transcribe Penniston’s zeros and ones exactly as Penniston had written them; rather, Luciano made subjective allowance for “transmission errors” and “excess bit anomalies,” adjusting some of Penniston’s patterns and arriving at “logically and mathematically correct 8-bit binary ASCII.” Luciano continued, “This has also translated to a mathematically consistent set of latitude/longitude geographic coordinates.” The message, as massaged and interpreted by Luciano, is a brief conglomeration of words and numerals, headed with, “EXPLORATION OF HUMANITY 666 8100.” Sentence fragments with the words “PLANETARY” and “FOURTH COORDINATE” are followed by geographic coordinates (noted below) and these words:
EYES OF YOUR EYES
ORIGIN 52
ORIGIN YEAR 8100
It is impossible to know whether this text-and-numbers translation is an accurate reflection of the information relayed to Penniston; or merely a hopeful translation suggesting ideas that Luciano wished to see, or that he assumed others wished to see. Of course, the whole enterprise is pointless if Penniston had felt no compelling urge to write specific patterns of zeros and ones, and simply wrote zeros and ones at random. As with the nature of Luciano’s translation, it is impossible to know how the ex-sergeant arrived at the sequences. At any rate, “EXPLORATION OF HUMANITY,” as well as the phrase invoking eyes, seem swollen with significance; likewise “ORIGIN 52,” which inevitably leads the layperson to ponder how the beginning of things relates to the number of weeks in a year. “PLANETARY” apparently confirms an extraterrestrial origin of the Rendlesham craft.
With “666,” Penniston/Luciano facilitate the conversation’s drift into the generally discredited superstitious aspect of apocalyptic Christianity. Did the alien visitors invoke 666 as a reflection of a human belief, and if so, is the invocation a taunt or a warning? Perhaps 666 has significance for the aliens, as well as for us. Or perhaps our ideas about 666 have no relation whatever to the aliens’. “666” is immediately followed in the message by “8100”; the latter number reappears at the end of the message’s text portion, and is suggestive of a year (to our minds). But which calendar is at play here? Does 8100 connote our future, our past, or a time that carries significance for the aliens only? Perhaps 8100 refers to something other than a date or time.
The aforementioned geographic coordinates cite, according to Luciano, Hy Brasil (a fabulous, and wholly mythic, super-civilization on a now-lost island off the coast of ancient Ireland, thought by some to be a portal to another world); as well as locations in Belize (Caracol); Arizona (Sedona); Peru (Nazca Lines); China (Tai Shan Qu); Greece (the Portara at the unfinished temple to Apollo in Naxos); and, perhaps inevitably, the Great Pyramids at Giza, Egypt.
Each of the extant locations uncovered by Luciano is the site of notable and much studied UFO events. Is that dubiously convenient, or just unavoidable?
For Joe Luciano’s exhaustive technical explanation of his translation methods and results, see Luciano’s Web site. Despite—or perhaps because of—Luciano’s labors, Britain’s Ministry of Defence had nothing new to say about Rendlesham. As with the original MoD files, which showed no official interest or investigation at all—the latter-day reaction has been a nullity. If this suggests a cover-up, the tactics are maddeningly passive-aggressive. No hypervigilant denials, no labored alternate theories . . . just nothing.
Some persons outside the MoD surmise that the whole Rendlesham event was a hoax; or the headlights of a military vehicle; or the nearby Orford Ness lighthouse. Feel free to select one or add an explanation of your own. Britain’s Forestry Commission decided to play along with the ET explanation, establishing a Rendlesham UFO Trail in 2005, complete with a UFO-inspired art installation.
The case inspired books other than Penniston’s, including investigative journalist Georgina Bruni’s You Can’t Tell the People (2000), which levies the charge of deception against the CIA, and claims that that agency undercut witnesses by artificially inducing memories and amnesia. (The late Bruni, whose birth name was Linda Naylor, maintained a busy schedule as a private investigator and professional writer.
Other than her Rendlesham book, she is best recalled for her online magazine Hot Gossip.) A 2012 “displaced detective” novel by Stephanie Osborn, The Case of the Cosmological Killer: The Rendlesham Incident, inserts a time-traveling Sherlock Holmes into the story.
Television adapted the Rendlesham event for episodes of the pseudo- documentary programs Sightings (1993), Strange but True (1994), UFO Files (2005), Paranormal Witness (2011), and Alien Mysteries (2013), plus various one-off quasi-documentaries, e.g., Britain’s Closest Encounters (2003). A fictionalized TV-movie, UFO Invasion at Rendlesham, retold the story in 2003.
Close Encounters, a fictionalized documentary series, handled the subject in an episode broadcast in 2014.