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Okay, we're looking at the thing. We're probably about 200 to 300 yards away. It looks like an eye winking at you. It's still moving from side to side. And when you put the star scope on it, it sort of has a hollow center, a dark center. It's like a pupil of an eye looking at you and winking. And the flash is so bright through the star scope that it almost burns your eye. Now we're both heading north. Hey, here, here, he comes from the south. He's coming toward us now. Now we're observing what appears to be a beam coming down to the ground.
Multiple credible witnesses, audio recordings, notes and photographs taken on the scene. And yet, the U.S. government would like you to believe that nothing noteworthy happened at Rendlesham Forest in December 1980.
Over the next two weeks, we'll dive into the shocking reports and examine the explanations, from aliens to time travelers to military experiments.
Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. And we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Stay with us.
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Hello there, I'm Mike Flanagan, and welcome to Spectre Vision Radio's production of Director's Commentary. Director's Commentary is a deep dive into a film through the eyes of the filmmaker or filmmakers who made it. It combines an in-depth interview format with a classic Director's Commentary track, the likes of which used to be common on physical media releases, but sadly are becoming more and more rare these days. Filmmakers talking about film with filmmakers. For people who love film.
and filmmakers. They call it the British Roswell, though most of the witnesses were surprisingly Americans. You can blame the Cold War for that. In the 1970s and 80s, the US maintained multiple Air Force bases in the UK. Two of them were close together. If it's not clear already, nothing in this story is what you'd expect.
Located in Suffolk, England, the bases were known as Bentwaters and Woodbridge. They sandwiched either side of Rendlesham Forest and were pivotal to keeping an eye on the Soviet Union's activities in Europe. So when Airman First Class John Burroughs spotted red and blue lights in the night sky during his patrol on December 26, 1980, he watched with careful interest. This could be the beginning of a new war.
the lights appeared to sink down and disappear into the dense woods of Rendlesham Forest. If it was a plane, it had crashed. Bros leapt into action. It was the day after Christmas and the base was mostly shut down for the holidays. No military planes in the sky, which meant it had to be a civilian aircraft or even worse, a spy plane sent by their Cold War enemies like the Soviets.
Burroughs radioed other nearby military bases and London's Heathrow Airport. News came back that an unknown object had been spotted on radar a few minutes earlier, but it had mysteriously disappeared. Burroughs recruited two high-ranking officers, Staff Sergeants Bud Stevens and Jim Penniston, and another Airman First Class named Edward Cobbinsag. The four drove towards the woods to investigate.
When the road ended at the edge of the forest, the men cut the engine. Burroughs and Staff Sergeant Penniston climbed out of the Jeep and headed into the forest towards the lights. Steffens and Cobbinsag remained in the car. Someone had to stay in contact with the base. That simple decision, who'd stay, who'd go, altered the four men's lives forever.
Burroughs and Penniston later laid out their entire experience in the book they co-authored with Nick Pope, Encounter in Rendlesham Forest. This next part of the story comes from their first-hand accounts. Entering the woods, the officers noticed that the air felt strangely thick and heavy. Walking felt like wading through water, and their hair and skin pricked up as the forest crackled with static electricity.
Anyone else might have turned around and run away, but these were seasoned military officers, fighter pilots. As far as they knew, this could be an international crisis. And perhaps there was something else drawing them in, like the glowing lights in the distance, a beacon in the trees. Burroughs and Penniston pressed forward, step by step, until they reached a small clearing
There, in the center, was the source of the light. It was shockingly bright. But before they could make out what they were seeing, they felt a blinding flash. Burroughs' military training immediately kicked in. He dove to the forest floor to protect himself from an explosion. From that point on, Burroughs' memory got hazy.
After the bright light flooded over him, he could only recall a brief moment where he looked up to see an orb of red light hovering in the forest clearing. Penniston, on the other hand, had a very different recollection. He spent a long time investigating the lights and even had time to scribble down notes. When he looked towards Burroughs,
He saw his fellow officer illuminated inside a beam of white light, frozen in place. Penniston shouted at Burroughs, but Burroughs stayed still. So Penniston inched further into the clearing. Soon he could make out something sitting on the forest floor. It looked like a spacecraft.
Penniston had no idea what was going on, but he decided that if he died that night, he should leave behind some documentation. So he fumbled for his camera and started snapping pictures. Then he pulled out a pen and pocket notebook and began to sketch the ship. He noted it was about 10 feet long, shaped like a flattened triangle with a smaller raised section jutting up like a cockpit.
A row of blue lights ran across the side and a bright white floodlight beamed from its top. The ship's surface was smooth, but it didn't look metallic. In his book, he said it looked more like "opaque black glass." Penniston went closer to the ship, close enough to touch it. Up close, he realized that its surface wasn't as flawless and smooth as he first thought.
There were strange symbols carved into the hole. Penniston sketched a few of these symbols down in his notebook. There's an upside-down triangle sitting on a solid line, a square with a rounded bump jutting out of one side, two capital T shapes stacked on top of each other. Penniston later compared them to hieroglyphics. At one point, Penniston reached out and touched a symbol.
The moment he made contact, the ship's light erupted into another blinding flash. And then, finally, the ship began to move. Penniston watched it lift into the air and above the treeline. It accelerated to an impossible speed and disappeared into the night. Penniston staggered back to Burroughs, who was now unfrozen. The two men were stunned. What just happened? One thing was for sure.
They had to get out of there. Penniston and Burroughs hurried out of Rendlesham Forest. When they reached their jeep, the men they'd left behind were in a state of panic. Penniston and Burroughs had been gone for almost an hour. The two men were baffled. They'd been in the woods just a few minutes. Even Penniston, who'd had time to take notes and photos, didn't think it was that long. But when they checked the time, their confusion only grew.
Both men's watches were running 45 minutes behind. The two men returned to their base in a daze. They explained their bizarre experience to the senior officers on duty, but it was hard for anyone to take them seriously. It was the kind of thing you needed to see to believe. But Penniston and Burroughs wouldn't be the only ones who believed for long, because the next day, the UFO appeared.
returned. When Deputy Base Commander Charles Halt began his shift just after sunrise on December 27th, 1980, he had no idea the turn his life was about to take. The day started normal enough
He came across a few officers laughing and they filled him in. Some guys thought they saw a UFO. Penniston and Burroughs' adventure the night before had spread across Bentwaters and Woodbridge Air Force bases like wildfire. No one was taking it seriously. Especially Commander Halt. Halt didn't believe for a second that aliens had landed in Rendlesham Forest while he was sleeping.
He was a man of logic and reason. There had to be a rational explanation for whatever Penniston and Burroughs saw. More than that, Halt cared about protocol. So he ordered the men to stop joking around about Penniston and Burroughs' story and document the incident in the official log. He told the men to avoid the term UFO. They should simply call it what it was. Unexplained lights.
Halt didn't realize that just a few hours later, he'd see those unexplained lights for himself. That night, Halt joined his men for an awards party at Woody's Bar. It was the holiday season and everyone was in great spirits. While there were probably more than a few drunken jokes about little green men, it seemed like last night's drama was behind them.
At least until... Lieutenant Bruce England burst through the doors. "The UFO is back, sir." Halt wasn't exactly excited to leave the party to investigate some random lights. But he was the deputy commanding officer, so this was his responsibility. Halt assembled England and a few other men for the mission.
Around midnight, they ventured into the freezing cold forest clearing, floodlights in hand. With these light awls, they'd see what was really out there. But as they tried to set them up, the light awls mysteriously malfunctioned.
This is audio from Halt's handheld tape recorder, which he brought along to take notes. Even without the floodlights, Halt could see the triangle of impressions in the dirt, allegedly where the craft touched down, and there were scrapes and burn marks visible on nearby trees. At least part of Penniston and Burroughs' story checked out.
Halt ordered Lieutenant England to check the area for radiation with a Geiger counter. As England swept the ground, the needle jumped. "We found a small blast, what looks like a blasted or scrubbed up area here. We've got very positive rays. Is that here in the center?" "Yes, it is." Halt was confused. There wasn't a clear reason this random patch of forest should show radioactivity.
Halt ordered his men to be careful and watch where they stepped. They didn't want to stand on radioactive soil. This was turning out to be a strange night, and it was about to get even stranger. Halt and his men spent at least an hour in the woods surveying the landing site. Then, shortly before 2:00 a.m., Halt heard something that sent a chill up his spine. Inhuman screaming.
After a moment, Halt realized it was coming from a nearby farm. Something had spooked the animals. Then, something spooked his men. "I saw a light where?" "Where?" "Right on this position here, straight ahead, in between the trees." "There it is again." "Watch." "Straight ahead off my flashlight there, sir." "There it is." "I see it too." "What is it?" "We don't know, sir."
In the recording, Halt tries to describe what he's seeing. A flashing red light flying through the trees, flying towards his men. It's coming this way. It is definitely coming this way. It's just a little train off. There is no doubt about it. This is weird. Listening to Halt in this section is fascinating.
The normally unflappable Air Force sergeant sounds stunned, confused, and more than a little scared. Halt led his men out of the forest and past the local farm, but the flying light followed them. Worse, it multiplied.
The orb seemed to release more lights, filling the sky with whizzing, glowing objects surrounding the men. They moved so fast, it was hard to keep track of them. But Halt managed to count at least five different lights zipping over his head. One of Halt's men managed to get a good look at one hovering light.
In the recording, Lieutenant England explained that there seemed to be a dark and hollow sphere at the center of the light. Halt agreed. He said, "It's like the pupil of an eye looking at you, winking." And then to Halt's horror, one of these glowing, winking eyes grew. Nothing in Halt's years of military service prepared him for what happened next.
One of the objects beamed down a thin ray of light. It landed in the ground just a few feet in front of Halt and his men. The men froze, unsure what to do. But the beam didn't come closer. As Halt watched, the flying light zipped back across the forest towards Bentwater's Air Force Base.
One shot another thin ray of light down onto the base itself. The beam of light seemed to be aimed straight at the base's weapons storage area.
Halt knew no Air Force plane would stand a chance against these orbs if they attacked. They were too fast, too agile. All Halt could do was stare. Then, without warning, the orbs flew off and disappeared into the horizon. Halt and his men were left reeling. It was nearly sunrise.
Much like Burroughs and Penniston the night before, they returned to the base in a daze, questioning everything they thought they knew. He may have walked into Rendlesham Forest as a rational, straight-laced skeptic, but he walked out as a true believer. In the days following the UFO sightings at Rendlesham Forest, more reports trickled out.
Local British police received multiple eyewitness testimonies from Suffolk citizens who swore they saw strange lights in the sky. So it wasn't just the Americans. And back on the Bentwaters and Woodbridge bases, rumors spread of another Air Force officer who had her own close encounter. On December 26th, the same night Burroughs and Penniston claimed to find the spacecraft in the woods,
Lt. Bonnie Tamplin also saw the lights. She drove off base to investigate them for herself. Master Sergeant Bobby Ball followed in a separate jeep for backup. Tamplin has never spoken publicly about what happened next, so we have to piece together the alleged encounter from second and third hand accounts.
But according to Encounter in Rendlesham Forest, two of Tamplin's officers were talking to her over the radio when they heard her ask Ball for help. One of those officers, Lori Bowen, later said, "She was so scared. And this was our lieutenant." Later that night, another officer, Michael Stacy Smith, was on guard duty at the base's entrance. According to his account in Gary Heseltine's book Non-Human,
he saw Master Sergeant Ball and Lieutenant Tamplin return in Ball's Jeep. Tamplin's vehicle was nowhere to be seen. Even weirder, Tamplin's uniform was scuffed up and dirty, and she looked like she'd been crying. Later that night, Officer Stacy Smith was allegedly pulled into an office and debriefed on what happened to Tamplin.
Now, to be clear, this isn't exactly a first-person account. Someone told Stacy Smith, who told Heseltine. So it's important to take this story with a grain of salt. But allegedly, Lieutenant Tamplin was driving in her Jeep towards Rendlesham when a giant ball of orange light swooped towards her. She swerved to avoid the object but lost control of her vehicle.
The Jeep careened off the road and flipped onto its side. Thankfully, Tamplin wasn't hurt, but when she crawled out of her Jeep, the glowing craft was still in the sky above her. Terrified, Tamplin grabbed for her M16 rifle and fired at the strange object. Officer Stacy Smith said this was later confirmed by the base's armory when they found multiple rounds missing from Tamplin's gun.
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt later believed that Tamplin experienced a mental health crisis after her encounter and left the Air Force Base a few days later. Once again, Tamplin herself has never commented. According to Halt, she moved to Italy and refuses to talk about the incident to this day.
Halt, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite. He immediately set a time with his commanding officers to debrief them. On December 28th, Halt met with Colonel Gordon Williams and handed over his tape recordings as proof. Williams was intrigued and passed the story to the other high-ranking officials around Bentwaters and Woodbridge. No one quite knew how to handle the situation.
The Air Force didn't exactly have a standard protocol for flying balls of light that bend the laws of space and time. But ultimately, they decided not to deal with it at all. The sightings took place outside the base on what was technically British soil. So, outside the US Air Force's jurisdiction. They agreed to give the info to the UK government and let them figure it out.
But according to Jim Penniston, the Air Force's lackadaisical attitude was actually a smokescreen, part of a coordinated cover-up. Both the US and UK military were very interested in studying what happened at Rendlesham and making sure the story remained top secret. The supposed cover-up started almost immediately.
In January 1981, Halt got an order to write a memo about the incident for the British Ministry of Defence.
But the Air Force leadership apparently thought that Halt's story might seem unbelievable, so they ordered Halt to sanitize it. Ironically, that's exactly what Halt told his men to do when he first heard about the craft Burroughs and Penniston saw in the forest. Remember, he ordered them not to use the word "UFO" in their report. But now Halt was the one being forced to censor the story.
In a slight single-page document, he described the glowing craft that Penniston and Burroughs told him they saw in the woods, as well as the flying lights he witnessed himself the next night. There was no mention of the strange hieroglyphic symbols that Penniston saw in the craft, or the way both he and Burroughs had lost 45 minutes on their watches when they returned to the base. Lieutenant Tamplin's rumored jeep crash was also redacted,
And the memo's tone was extremely matter of fact. If it caused any commotion in the UK government, they kept it quiet. Halt and his fellow Air Force officers went back to work as if nothing had happened. It seemed like the Rendlesham incident was destined to be lost forever. Until nearly three years later.
In October of 1983, the UK tabloid News of the World ran a front page headline declaring that a UFO had landed in Suffolk, England. Apparently, the paper had gotten wind of Lieutenant Colonel Halt's memo. It turned out Halt's watered-down document was still shocking enough to make headlines. The Rendlesham Forest incident quickly became one of the most well-known UFO encounters in history.
whether the US government liked it or not. Next episode, I'll cover the conspiracy theories surrounding the Rendlesham Forest incident. Why did the US government try to cover it up? Was it a military experiment gone awry? An embarrassing hoax? Or, wildest of all, was the craft Penniston and Burroughs saw not a UFO, but a time machine?
Even the witnesses themselves are still grasping for answers. As Commander Halt said almost 30 years after Rendlesham, I have no idea what we saw, but do know whatever we saw was under intelligent control.
Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. We are here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. And we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts.
For more information on the Rendlesham Forest incident, amongst the many sources we used, we found "Encounter in Rendlesham Forest: The Inside Story of the World's Best Documented UFO Incident" by Nick Pope, Jim Penniston, and John Burrows, extremely helpful to our research.
Do you have a personal relationship to the stories we tell? Send a short audio recording telling your story to conspiracystoriesatspotify.com. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth.
Conspiracy Theories is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written by River Donahay, researched by Bradley Klein, edited by Sarah Batchelor and Maggie Admire, fact-checked by Laurie Siegel, and sound designed by Alex Button. Our head of programming is Julian Boisreau. Our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Carter Roy.
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