Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident

[Scaramanga]

But we know for a fact that most cases just don't happen that way. Reality is complicated and, almost always, several unrelated factors contribute to a certain outcome. Think of it like an air crash investigation. Almost always, a long chain of events leads up to a catastrophic outcome, and few crashes can be explained by a single cause.
I simply don't agree with you on that. A group of people isn't necessarily a more reliable source than a single person. Independent witnesses are obviously a different matter, but humans in groups often conform to the emerging interpretation, even if their initial perception differs. This is classic conformity (think of Asch's line experiments), where individuals adjust their reports to match the group in order to avoid standing out or seeming "wrong." It's not that they're lying — memory is reconstructive, and social influences are strong factors.

Surely the crux of the matter is just how many 'complicated factors' you have to fudge into the equation. It reminds me of one of the bizarre interpretations of the Calvine UFO....that it was an upside down photo of a pond where the fence and the rock that was the 'UFO' and the tree branches hanging down ( or is it up ) all magically line up and the upside down clouds that only 'look' upside down but aren't really, and........heck it would be simpler if an alien spaceship was actually there !

And so it is with all these 'complicated factors'. A lighthouse that doesn't have the blue lights that were seen by Penniston, and two others on the first night. A lighthouse that gets recognised AS a lighthouse in statements from that first night.....and yet which somehow gets completely forgotten about by the time Halt goes out. A lighthouse that 'shoots off pieces'. And the bit everyone misses...two lights, not just one...

HALT: Pieces of it are shooting off.

VOICE: At eleven o'clock...

HALT: There is no doubt about it. This is weird!

VOICE (NEVELS?): To the left...

HALT: Definitely moving...

VOICE (NEVELS?): Two lights – one light just behind [?] and one light to the left.

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/halttape3.html


Then we have 'Stars' in the north that get mysteriously mistaken for UFOs. But hold on....its not the mere two stars ( Vega and Deneb ) that Ian Ridpath claims. Once again we have numbers just being ignored....as the tape clearly says five lights....

HALT: We've passed the farmer's house and are crossing the next field and now we have multiple sightings of up to five lights with a similar shape and all but they seem to be steady now rather than a pulsating or glow with a red flash.

And then we have to explain how Sirius, which had been sitting there all along, suddenly manages to achieve this....

HALT: They're both heading north. Hey, here he comes from the south, he's coming toward us now.

HALT: Now we're observing what appears to be a beam coming down to the ground.

SHOUT IN BACKGROUND: Colours! [?]

HALT: This is unreal. [Laughs]


The deputy commander of a top USAF base, responsible for defending us from the Soviets, thinks a star twinkling in the night sky is 'unreal' ? And I don't hear his men say ' Nah, boss....you just drank too much at the party'.

And none of this is the old bugbear of 'reconstructive memory' that gets dragged out as an excuse every time....for this is a live recording as events unfold.

 

[John J.]

And the fact that something bizarre is occurring is demonstrated by the ' this is unreal'.

Someone saying "This is unreal" is not necessarily evidence that something bizarre is happening.
We know that Halt has already decided that something strange is going on. The three ground depressions are evidence of a "pod", there's a blast area (not seen two days earlier in daylight, or as far as we know by anyone after Halt's expedition), the marks on the trees (all at the same height facing into the clearing- forestry worker axe marks) are something strange, they're detecting heat signature through an instrument that can't detect heat signatures and misreading/ arguably misusing a Geiger counter and finding the readings significant.

There is nothing on his tape, or memo to the MoD, about a light overhead shining a beam down to the ground close to the men, nor did Halt say this over the radio as far as we know. If it happened, it doesn't appear that anyone present mentioned it at the time.

It's entirely possible the men saw moving lights near the horizon, airspace over SE England is busy and was in 1980. There is no evidence that Halt, or the USAF, ever attempted to find out if there were aircraft in the direction(s) they were looking. As you (@Scaramanga) point out, distant aircraft can appear to be fixed points of light until a change of direction makes the point of light move.

 

[John J.]

The deputy commander of a top USAF base, responsible for defending us from the Soviets, thinks a star twinkling in the night sky is 'unreal' ? And I don't hear his men say ' Nah, boss....you just drank too much at the party'.

Well, defending FRG from Soviet tanks, so part of NATO's collective defence.
The point that other ranks/ NCOs are unlikely to question a Lt. Col. has already been made, and I fully agree.

I'll add the caviar, that at least on the recording, these are enlisted men who are not out running around with their enlisted supervisor (a master sergeant I believe) or even their officer supervisor, likely a Lieutenant or Captain. Rather, they are running around with a Lt. Colonial that is the deputy base commander, that is their boss's, boss's, boss's boss. Even if any of these guys were accomplished astronomers, in this situation, they were going to just nod along and say "yes sir"

It is strange that Halt didn't, or couldn't, get a Warrant Officer or more junior commissioned officer to join him. This is very unusual in a military context. And though deputy base commander of an airbase, he didn't take anyone who worked professionally with aircraft.

 

[Ann K]

The trouble with a lot of the skepticism is that it doesn't evaluate the event....it just ignores any of it that doesn't fit the narrative. People aren't listening to what the tape is actually saying. They've already decided it can't be anything unusual so it has to be forced into some simplistic 'stars' narrative...whether it actually fits or not.

Any sensible investigator MUST first examine the known factors. Why do you disapprove of that? If the story doesn't fit the known facts, you really have to consider the possibility that the error is in the story.

HALT: And the ones to the north are moving. One's moving away from us.

BACKGROUND VOICE: (indistinct, but includes 'moving')

NEVELS: Moving out fast.

BALL(?): This one on the right's heading away, too.

HALT: They're both heading north. Hey, here he comes from the south, he's coming toward us now.

"They're going north" and "here he comes from the south" sound exactly like the way one would describe the beams from a rotating object, i.e. a lighthouse.

 

[Scaramanga]

Someone saying "This is unreal" is not necessarily evidence that something bizarre is happening.
We know that Halt has already decided that something strange is going on. The three ground depressions are evidence of a "pod", there's a blast area (not seen two days earlier in daylight, or as far as we know by anyone after Halt's expedition), the marks on the trees (all at the same height facing into the clearing- forestry worker axe marks) are something strange, they're detecting heat signature through an instrument that can't detect heat signatures and misreading/ arguably misusing a Geiger counter and finding the readings significant.

Well, no, we can't just invent Halt's state of mind. And the simple fact is that however they were using or mis-using the Geiger counter, it clearly did detect more of whatever it was they were mearing in the depressions than outside of them. So the notion they were 'mis-using' it is a bit of a red herring. To me its just another example of how important aspects get ignored when some simplistic explanation claims to have explained it all.

 

[Scaramanga]

Any sensible investigator MUST first examine the known factors. Why do you disapprove of that? If the story doesn't fit the known facts, you really have to consider the possibility that the error is in the story.

There is a huge difference between fitting the story to the known facts and forcing the story into the known facts and just ignoring any aspects that don't actually fit. If a simplistic explanation can explain the whole story then fine...but it should not otherwise leave one with a whole load of ' but what about XYZ ?' questions or loose ends.

For example, why would Halt mistake Sirius for a UFO...and not mistake the twice as bright Jupiter/Saturn conjunction for one ? In fact at 3am Sirius would not even have been at its full brightness, due to being so low down. What's more, Halt comments at 3.15am...

HALT: They're both heading north. Hey, here he comes from the south, he's coming toward us now.

But Sirius was not to the south. It was pretty much due southwest. In fact the embarrassing truth for the 'stars' theory is that in between Sirius due southwest and Jupiter due southeast there was 90 degrees with NO bright stars...with due south right in the middle of it.

Halt has been giving compass readings all night...and now he's suddenly off by a whole 45 degrees ? Doesn't that place all the previous bearings, including those closer to the lighthouse, in doubt ?

Sirius is a classic example of something that has been forced to 'fit'. Gosh, if you've got 45 degrees to play with you could make almost any star 'fit' any UFO !

 

[Scaramanga]

"They're going north" and "here he comes from the south" sound exactly like the way one would describe the beams from a rotating object, i.e. a lighthouse.

Which Halt had failed to notice for the past 3 hours and suddenly finds 'unreal' at 3.15am ?

And a lighthouse 6 miles to the east would not produce a beam 'coming down'. It would be horizontal. Not only that, but as the lighthouse had 3 mirrors you'd get a beam every 5 seconds. But halt only says 'a' beam...not multiple ones separated by 5 seconds.

The lighthouse is a classic example of an 'explanation' that people will defend at all costs.....even when it doesn't fit what is actually being described. And, of course, whatever it was can't have been Sirius and be the lighthouse. Oh....but I suppose one could contrive that too.

 

[JMartJr]

That is an absurd statement. We have witness testimony literally at the actual time the event occurred.....not something recalled from memory.

And witness testimony is often wrong. Note I said that witness testimony is often wrong as people make mistakes in observation AND memories are fungible.

I list two things that cause witness error. One does not require the passage of time, it happens "live" during the experience.

We have only what witnesses say to back up any of this.And what people say is not reliable. Witnesses saying "this is unreal" is not good evidence that something incredible happened, as it could also be evidence that they were seeing something that was not real, though they had not recognized this. Accepting unsupported witness testimony is accepting the "I know what I saw!" argument. If we dothat, we are accepting witness testimony without supporting evidence as probitive of something. That would be a mistake.

Note I am not saying witnesses are always wrong. But in the absence if supporting evidence, we can't KNOW whether they are wrong, and which parts are wrong, and just how far wrong they are.

 

[DarkLight]

I listened for the first time to the Rendlesham Forest tape and I'm wondering if this is actually proposed to be a live recording made during the event, or is it a reconstruction?

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/Halt_tape.m4a

I wonder because based on the work I've done in years of playing with sound collage and ambient recording, I would put a 99% probability that what is being heard there is a constructed audio play. It does sound like it was at some point mastered onto a microcassette or a good facsimile thereof..
The way that the participants are speaking, the breaks in between words, the descriptions used-everything on that recording screams radio play to me. If you read a transcript of the dialogue, it literally reads like a script for an imaginary encounter-in the first 15 seconds of the recording it was clear to me that is not an unscripted recording.

Perhaps I'm missing something and this is actually meant to be a reconstruction?

The more I look into this incident, the more it seems to me to be almost entirely a constructed event based on popular ufo memes and media such as presented in the movie Close Encounters.

 

[John J.]

And the simple fact is that however they were using or mis-using the Geiger counter, it clearly did detect more of whatever it was they were mearing in the depressions than outside of them.

That isn't clear at all. Halt only records figures for one depression.

The 1st mark gave a reading of 0.03-0.04 mR/h.
The 2nd mark was "dead", no values were recorded on tape.
The 3rd mark "I'm getting some residual" (Nevels), "The meter's definitely giving a little pulse" (Halt), no values recorded.

On the tape, Halt says

This is out toward the number one indentation where we first got the strongest reading

a short time after a higher reading was gathered between the indentations. (which Halt described as "...the best deflection of the needle I've seen yet"), so his perception/ recollection of where the highest readings were was inaccurate even at the time.

He is using a small tape recorder so he doesn't have to make written notes. Higher readings were gathered later, not at the depressions.
Halt stated in his memo that readings of 0.1 mR/h were detected; there is no indication of this on the tape.

One of the 0.07 mR/h readings was between the depressions (but only on the second time it was examined- why is this?), so it isn't accurate to say the readings were higher "in the depressions than outside of them." The other 0.07 mR/h reading was from a marking on a tree, gathered while that marking was also being viewed from close by using the Starlight Scope, with its radioactive components. Nevels, using the counter, goes to the other side of the tree away from the scope and shielded by the trunk, and the reading drops. (We know the likely cause of the tree markings).

The second reading of 0.07 mR/h, at the point between the depressions, seems to have taken while Englund was there in the middle. He was close enough to Nevels to recount the Geiger counter readings. Englund might have been carrying the Starlite Scope at the time:
He answers when Halt asks about its name, Englund also answers when Halt asks if they are getting a "heat reflection"; and it is Englund who says

...when the lights are turned off, once we are focused in and allow time for the eyes to adjust we are getting an indication of a heat source coming out of that centre spot

...and Englund asks Ball to shine a flashlight on the area being examined with the scope, so it's unlikely Ball was carrying the scope (Ball had it earlier, Halt had it later).
The men are using a Geiger counter but appear unaware that they're also carrying a radiation source. The highest readings seem to be when the two might be close together.

The Geiger counter used was not optimal for measuring background radiation. In addition, at some point the beta shield was removed (we don't know when) and Halt (inexplicably) asks for it to placed on the ground before the highest readings are detected. Halt and co. record peak readings, not readings sustained over time.

Both the UK National Radiological Protection Board and the manufacturers of the AN/PDR-27 Geiger counter have questioned the accuracy of the readings;

NRPB contacted the American manufacturers of the AN/PDR-27, who stated that Halt's peak measurement of 0.1 mR/h was the 'bottom reading on the lowest range' of the monitor and was 'of little or no significance'. They noted further that these instruments are designed to be used to monitor workplace fields or radiation levels after sizable nuclear incidents and are therefore not suitable for environmental monitoring at background levels. On the basis of this information from the manufacturers, NRPB concluded that using such an instrument to establish a level of 10 times background is not credible. ...I subsequently wrote to NRPB to ensure that there was no misunderstanding. In a letter to me dated 1997 July 7 Michael Clark of the NRPB stated: 'We are convinced of the correctness of our interpretation.'

Ian Ridpath, Rendlesham Forest UFO Case website http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham4.html

Giles Cowling of DERA Radiation Protection Services, who advised Nick Pope, didn't know that an AN/PDR-27 had been used; he later said to Ridpath

In my original discussions with Mr Pope I did indeed state that the readings were around 10 times normal background levels, provided that the instrument was appropriate for measuring background radiation (at the time of our discussions he could not state what the instrument was), calibrated and being used/interpreted correctly. I share the NRPB view that the use of a high-range survey instruments to measure (accurately) environmental levels of radiation is somewhat questionable and this must throw some doubt on the validity of the data reported.

(ibid.)
And that's without considering the proximity of the Starlight Scope, the absent beta shield and the counter being placed on the ground and the selective recording of peak, not sustained readings.

Halt takes no action about what he believes are elevated radiation readings (nor does anyone else). He doesn't write his memo until a couple of weeks later. He doesn't alert local or UK authorities about this or the "blast site" (not seen when looked at in daylight 2 days earlier, by a USAF commissioned officer and Suffolk police, within an area less than 4 square metres).

As in some other claimed UFO cases, highly questionable evidence (e.g. the AN/PDR-27 readings), adequately explained by mundane factors, is mythologised by some as something extraordinary.

 

[Scaramanga]

And witness testimony is often wrong. Note I said that witness testimony is often wrong as people make mistakes in observation AND memories are fungible.

I list two things that cause witness error. One does not require the passage of time, it happens "live" during the experience.

We have only what witnesses say to back up any of this.And what people say is not reliable. Witnesses saying "this is unreal" is not good evidence that something incredible happened, as it could also be evidence that they were seeing something that was not real, though they had not recognized this. Accepting unsupported witness testimony is accepting the "I know what I saw!" argument. If we dothat, we are accepting witness testimony without supporting evidence as probitive of something. That would be a mistake.

The fact that a witness 'can' get things wrong provides no evidence either way that they actually did do so. Likewise, dismissing 'I know what I saw' out of hand is all very well...but what if the person did know just exactly what they saw ?

Skepticism is surely more than just nay-saying ad absurdum. Surely at some point we have to take a rational look at a specific case on its own merits. The Halt tape contains numerous lines that simply don't accord with the simplistic skeptical narrative. That simplistic narrative has to be stretched to breaking point to 'explain' the case. I cannot read the transcript without being certain that something very odd is going on....which doesn't necessarily even have to be aliens. But I cannot in all honesty fit it into a framework of purely 'mis-identified' lighthouses and stars.

Something is just not right about the Halt tape. I'd even consider DarkLight's hypothesis ( above ) that it is staged. Or that the whole thing was a psyops. I just don't think ordinary human fallibility really explains the bizarre-ness of it.

 

[Scaramanga]

I listened for the first time to the Rendlesham Forest tape and I'm wondering if this is actually proposed to be a live recording made during the event, or is it a reconstruction?

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/Halt_tape.m4a

I wonder because based on the work I've done in years of playing with sound collage and ambient recording, I would put a 99% probability that what is being heard there is a constructed audio play. It does sound like it was at some point mastered onto a microcassette or a good facsimile thereof..
The way that the participants are speaking, the breaks in between words, the descriptions used-everything on that recording screams radio play to me. If you read a transcript of the dialogue, it literally reads like a script for an imaginary encounter-in the first 15 seconds of the recording it was clear to me that is not an unscripted recording.

Perhaps I'm missing something and this is actually meant to be a reconstruction?

The more I look into this incident, the more it seems to me to be almost entirely a constructed event based on popular ufo memes and media such as presented in the movie Close Encounters.

The tape raises far more significant questions than it answers....

1) Having supposedly found radiation...why does Halt not raise any alarm ?
2) Having observed a 'strange' object supposedly 'shooting off pieces' near a USAF base...why does Halt not raise any alarm ?
3) Having had an 'unreal' object hover overhead and shoot down a beam of light....why does Halt STILL not raise any alarm ?
4) What happened during the missing 45-50 minutes time period of the tape ?
5) What is Halt using to get his 'bearings'...and is he consistently using it ?
6) Why...and this is one of the oddest aspects...does the tape just go silent immediately the beam of light appears ? You'd think Halt would make some further commentary on the 'unreal' object. Yet there is nothing. Just strange silence after the oddest event of the night.
7) Why does nobody at the base see the alleged beams of light shining down on the base ?
8) Why is Halt even in the woods in the first place ? That night's 'UFO' had gone, and there was no desperate need to examine....at 1.30am in the morning...supposed radiation from a craft whose landing was already two days past without anyone having any concern.

 

[Eburacum]

To me these 'inconsistencies' are in fact consistent with Halt's mistakes concerning the dates of these events. A Colonel in the USAF should have recorded the dates correctly, and reported them more promptly.

Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence.

 

[John J.]

I just don't think ordinary human fallibility really explains the bizarre-ness of it.

(my itals.)
Human fallibility can be extraordinary, as can misperceptions/ misinterpretations.

 

[Ann K]

The fact that a witness 'can' get things wrong provides no evidence either way that they actually did do so. Likewise, dismissing 'I know what I saw' out of hand is all very well...but what if the person did know just exactly what they saw ?

You say, "no evidence either way"... which makes your "what if" pure speculation. I'm not sure exactly what you would consider evidence of the negative conclusion (that nothing unusual happened), but we certainly have no hard evidence at all of the unusual. If all we have are words, then we have to question the words.

I just don't think ordinary human fallibility really explains the bizarre-ness of it.

Yes, we know you don't think so. You've told us time and again. But absent any hard evidence of strange occurrences, human fallibility remains the most likely explanation we have.

 

[JMartJr]

The fact that a witness 'can' get things wrong provides no evidence either way that they actually did do so. Likewise, dismissing 'I know what I saw' out of hand is all very well...but what if the person did know just exactly what they saw ?

They might. But how do you know? If you don't know, how can you possibly use what is reported as meaningful evidence of much of anything at all, much less do what Big UFO likes to do and use it as compelling evidence of extraordinary claims like alien spaceships or inter-dimensional visitors?

Skepticism is surely more than just nay-saying ad absurdum. Surely at some point we have to take a rational look at a specific case on its own merits.

Absolutely agree. And THIS specific case is pretty much worthless, as it does not come with evidence that can be examined , all we have is "I know what I saw" from witnesses. Other cases, like the Go Fast leaked video and such, or the best orb photo ever that turned out to be a butterfly, or racetrack UFOs that come with videos that can be matched against Sitrec to see if they match up with satellite flares are potentially useful, as IF there was anything extraordinary there there would be evidence to back it up. Sadly for UFOlogy, the better the evidnece, the easier it usually is to show that what is claimed by witnesses (or just by UFO promoters) is not the case. That is not the fault of skeptics, it is the fault of reality which, so far, stubbornly refuses to provide good evidence to the Big UFO promoters.

Something is just not right about the Halt tape.

I agree, but perhaps for different reasons! ^_^

I'd even consider DarkLight's hypothesis ( above ) that it is staged. Or that the whole thing was a psyops.

I'd agree that any hypothesis is worthy considering. But lacking evidence, none can be really proven. Perhaps we can agree on this point -- that given what we have to work with here, no hypothesis can be ultimately proven in this case, and unless actual evidence is presented (unlikely at this point) about the best we can do is acknowledge that there are some number of none-extraordinary explanations that, mixed with errors in observation at the time or memory later, could explain the report as we have it. Extraordinary hypotheses are not required, though not ruled out.

I just don't think ordinary human fallibility really explains the bizarre-ness of it.

I dunno, human fallibility has resulted in some pretty bizarre stuff.

It may be significant that, at least in my judgement, the most bizarre UFO reports tend to be the ones with the least evidence. The ones with the evidence often look mysterious and inexplicable at first, but turn out to be ceiling lights reflected in a window, helium party balloons, etc. when the evidence is evaluated. With cases like Rendlesham, we can't get to the evaluating-the-evidence because we don't have any. The best we can do is look at the witness story and hypothesize about what they might have seen. (There were bits of claimed evidence, that seem to have been identified as unrelated things like rabbit-scrapings and the like.)

Hang on half a second, let me go grab something ---
---------------
I'm back. (Did you miss me? ^_^) This will be a bit long (at least for me, typing it), as it is out of a book rather than a copy-pasteable website! But here goes!)

On the evening of December 11, 1996, more than thirty people in several different locations in Canada's sparsely populated Yukon Territories reported seeing a huge "UFO mothership" with rows of lights, flying by as a Close Encounter of the First Kind.
...
In 2012, skeptic James Oberg contacted the Canadian satellite expert Ted Molczan with the details of the case. ... Molczan looked into the matter carefully and came up with an exact match: "the observed phenomena were due to the reentry of the rocket that placed Cosmos 2335 into orbit earlier the same day." ... Later, satellite expert Harro Zimmer refined the details of the reentry decay of the Cosmos 2335 rocket booster, giving even even greater precision to the object's position and velocity... It fully confirms the identification Molczan made earlier.

So we have a good case to look at what was actually there, and compare it to what multiple witnesses reported. We know what was in the right place at the right time, and we know what re-entering space hardware looks like:

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket debris creates spectacular light show for Metro Vancouver
Source: https://winnipeg.citynews.ca/2021/03/25/spacex-failure-pacific-northwest/

So knowing what the witnesses were actually looking at (rare in "eyewitness cases") what was observed and how does that compare to what was reported?

First, here's a sketch of the UFO made by a witness:

Source: http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case96.htm

Some observations reported by witnesses compared to the reality:

Report: Many rows of lights.
Reality: The booster disintegrated into an irregular train of debris that was perceived as an orderly pattern of "lights" on a huge solid object.

Report: "As he was walking his flashlight happened to point in the direction of the UFO. As if reacting to his flashlight, the UFO started speeding rapidly toward him."
Reality: The UFO reacting to him was entirely in his imagination. The rocket booster did not react to his flashlight.

Report: The UFO was hovering approximately 300 yards in front of the observer...
Reality: The distance to the reentering booster was approximately 233 kilometer (145 miles)... At no time did it stop, or hover.

Report: The UFO was approximately 500-700 meters in length.
Reality: It is impossible to estimate the size of an unknown object unless its distance is known... the debris train must have been spread over many miles.

Report: "The interior lights in her car started to go dim and the music from her tape deck slowed down."
Reality: The effect was entirely in the observer's imagination. The rocket booster did not effect her car's electronics.

Report: "stars blocked out" by huge UFO (Reminds me of the Phoenix Lights case -- JM)
Reality: The observers were viewing a long train of debris from a disintegrating rocket booster. It was not a solid object, and thus could not have blocked out the stars. However, the light from the reentry may have mad nearby stars difficult to see.

Both blocks of external content from:
Shaefer, Robert, Bad UFOs: Critical Thinking About UFO Claims, 2016, Pp: 16-19
(I am a two-fingered-typist, and prone to typos. I've checked this to remove them, any that remain are mine, not the author's!)

This is, of course, not in any direct way related to the Rendlesham case -- but I've quoted it here as illustrative of just how far eyewitness UFOs can diverge from reality. Witness error can create a great deal of bizzareness!

We have a case of a reported UFO motheship hovering near witnesses, reacting to their presence, impacting the electrical systems of their cars, none of which matches what they were actually observing. Reentering space junk is not so common that we all see it all the time -- but it is not mysteirous nor unknown. It is not extraordinary. Yet here we have again a great example of how no extraordinary event is required to generate a report of the extraordinary.

Edit: Fixed some spacing issues that might have hampered readabillity...

 

[Scaramanga]

They might. But how do you know? If you don't know, how can you possibly use what is reported as meaningful evidence of much of anything at all

Well, nice attempt at turning it all around....but actually I was the one asking how do you know that they did 'get it wrong' ?

And what does the Metro Vancouver case even prove ? It's all very well trying to to use it as an 'illustrative' case....but it strikes me as on par with a lawyer in court arguing ' Your honour....we all know that in completely different case XYZ the defendant lied about a bloody glove.....which makes it more likely this defendant is lying too'.

 

[Scaramanga]

all we have is "I know what I saw" from witnesses

Having reported a UFO myself, I have to say there are few things more exasperating than having someone else who thinks he knows what you saw, even though he wasn't there, better than you who saw it with your own eyes.

I am 101% certain that what I saw was not any normal object. I do know what I saw. That's not to say it was aliens, but it was definitely some very bizarre atmospheric phenomenon at the very least.

It wasn't that long ago that people reporting strange flashes above thunderstorms were dismissed as cranks or just tired pilots or mistaken identity, yada yada. The exact same sort of sneering cynicism about 'I know what I saw'. Well...we all know how that example went.

 

[Scaramanga]

but we certainly have no hard evidence at all of the unusual

Then we resort to probability. Just how likely is it that explanation A, or B, or C explains an event. But the point I keep making is that you have to factor in all the aspects of the event. You can't just cherry pick those aspects that fit with a lighthouse or stars...you have to factor in those that don't.

 

[JMartJr]

Well, nice attempt at turning it all around....but actually I was the one asking how do you know that they did 'get it wrong' ?

I do not know how I can be more clear that I am NOT claiming we know that they got it wrong. So, asking me to support a claim I have clearly never made is... odd.

I'm saying that we know people get things wrong, and that we CAN'T know in this case that they got it right. Therefore the case does not have much evidentiary value.

And what does the Metro Vancouver case even prove ?

That your doubt that people could report really bizarre things when nothing bizarre has happened is in error. People do that.

Having reported a UFO myself, I have to say there are few things more exasperating than having someone else who thinks he knows what you saw, even though he wasn't there, better than you who saw it with your own eyes.

I sympathize with your predicament there. Seriously. That does not change the fact that people often report things they witness incorrectly. This remains true even if in your case your perceptions were 100% error free and your memories of it are 100% accurate.

Note, please, that I have no idea what you saw, nor have I made any claims about that.

I am 101% certain that what I saw was not any normal object. I do know what I saw. That's not to say it was aliens, but it was definitely some very bizarre atmospheric phenomenon at the very least.

Possibly -- I have no opinion, not having been there and not having any idea what you would report, if you were to report it. (Or if you did report it somewhere.)

It wasn't that long ago that people reporting strange flashes above thunderstorms were dismissed as cranks or just tired pilots or mistaken identity, yada yada. The exact same sort of sneering cynicism about 'I know what I saw'. Well...we all know how that example went.

Sure, and it was even more recently that a lot of people were reporting car-sized drones swarming New Jersey (and, as the flap spread, across the US.) It was not that long ago that people were reporting creepy mysterious clowns lurking all over the place, obviously up to unspecified no-good. I bit further back, people in the Yukon reported a "close encounter" with a mothership that had properties and did things that we are, unusually, in a position to know simply did not happen -- though they saw a real thing, their perceptions of it and memories of it were seriously in error.

Does this mean that every report of eyewitnesses of something unusual is seriously in error? No. It only means that some are. The issue this raises is that in cases where there is no supporting evidence, it is impossible to know which witness reports, or which parts of witness reports, are pretty accurate and which are wildly inaccurate. Thus, those cases are not really useful as evidence of anything.

In regard to pilots seeing lights in the sky, note that when evidence was added to the mix, it helped a lot -- sprites and jets and such were identified as new phenomena in one case, racetrack UFOs were identified as Starlink satellites flaring in another. In the case under discussion, such evidence is lacking, and always will be. The case will forever be useless as evidence of anything unusual, whether or not anything unusual happened.

We can speculate about it, and note how parts of what was reported seem to match up with known mundane things, but we can never know exactly what happened. It can never be proved that anything unusual happened there, and while it also cannot be proved that nothing unusual happened there, we do know that witnessing mundane things can result in spectacular, extraordinary UFO reports.

In sum -- I do not claim the witnesses are lying. I do not claim that I know they saw mundane things and that their reports are inaccurate (though I suspect this to be the case, IN THIS CASE.) I do maintain that we cannot learn anything about a purported new phenomenon behind "the UDFO Mystery" from this specific case as there is no usable evidence here beyond testimony that we have no way of corroborating. It's a fun story. It's fun to try and figure out what MIGHT have been seen, or even what likely was seen, or whether ANYTHING was seen for those who suspect it moght be a hoax or a false flag of some sort. But none of that can not be proven.

Hope that clarifies my position.

 

[Scaramanga]

I'm saying that we know people get things wrong, and that we CAN'T know in this case that they got it right. Therefore the case does not have much evidentiary value.

Evidentiary value for what ? We know something happened, or is claimed to have happened. I just find it extremely dubious that so many guys 'mis-identified' so much stuff. I equally don't think it was aliens. I think there is good reason to suppose that it was something more boring than aliens but not as boring as just clueless guys in a forest. I agree with DarkLight that the story reeks of being staged or a psyops.

The way it all goes silent the moment the alleged 'beam of light' shines down is very odd, and almost no-one questions that aspect. Halt has rattled on for over an hour about scrapings in the wood....and yet here is this 'unreal' sighting and all of a sudden he is quiet. No further description. Nothing about the object leaving. Its as if the object has been introduced to add the 'UFO' element......but heck lets not say any more or it gets too complicated.

 

[John J.]

This is, of course, not in any direct way related to the Rendlesham case --

-But coincidentally, it's likely that the reports of a potential aircraft crash/ UFOs near Woodbridge/ Bentwaters were started by the bright and unusually long-lasting fireball at approx. 02:50.

It wasn't that long ago that people reporting strange flashes above thunderstorms were dismissed as cranks... Well...we all know how that example went.

Yes, if you're talking about sprites. Likely photographic evidence was gathered in 1989 by a team from the University of Minnesota. With some possible parameters of the phenomenon established, and thanks to the availability of ultra-fast low-light cameras like those used by the Minnesota Uni guys, confirmatory evidence was soon found. Thousands of sprites have been photographed and filmed since.
We don't see this with UFOs (at least not as a class of objects with physical characteristics in common and plausible- if partial- explanations).

...people... ...were dismissed as cranks or just tired pilots or mistaken identity, yada yada. The exact same sort of sneering cynicism...

Have you any evidence for this?
There wasn't testable instrumental evidence of sprites before 1989, but was there a "sneering cynicism" about claimants?
Part of the reason that we know there were possible sightings of sprites is that they were documented, not least by Bernard Vonnegut of SUNY at Albany and O.H. Vaughan Jr. of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center ("Upward Electrical Discharges from Thunderstorm Tops", Lyons, Nelson et al., 2003, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 84 (4), PDF below).
I'm not sure sprites fit the "they mocked Galileo too" narrative.

There are many other things- the Lock Ness monster, sasquatches, mediums producing ectoplasm- where people know what they saw. Like UFOs, and unlike sprites, there's no testable confirmatory evidence for these things.
Some of the people who believe in these more elusive entities/ events are no doubt broadly responsible, honest people who trust their perceptions just as much as we do ours.

 

[Scaramanga]

bit further back, people in the Yukon reported a "close encounter" with a mothership that had properties and did things that we are, unusually, in a position to know simply did not happen -- though they saw a real thing, their perceptions of it and memories of it were seriously in error.

Actually that's a case I looked into a lot, and other than the wildly exaggerated story about the UFO hovering over a car, most of the witnesses ( from memory there were at least a dozen ) reported just exactly what they saw. They may have interpreted what they saw wrongly, but in general their description of what was visible is not wildly inaccurate.

 

[Ann K]

Then we resort to probability. Just how likely is it that explanation A, or B, or C explains an event. But the point I keep making is that you have to factor in all the aspects of the event. You can't just cherry pick those aspects that fit with a lighthouse or stars...you have to factor in those that don't.

What factors do we need to include? If you're talking about what people said, either then or now, that's just hearsay, NOT "hard evidence". I know you want to believe them, but their words are flimsy evidence indeed.

Things that are known to exist are ALWAYS going to be more probable than things which have never been shown to exist. There's no comparison. I thought I saw an animated string mop wandering around in my back yard, and I wouldn't have blamed anyone if they'd told me it was unlikely ...but then on closer inspection a little black nose showed it to be an almost-all-white skunk with its plumes of white hair all matted on a damp night. FIRST you have to know a thing exists at the very least, before you can consider it a candidate answer.

 

[Eburacum]

I am certainly interested in the possibility that this was a cover-up of a secret 'black ops' event. But there are a few unexplained elements there. Why did Halt make so many mistakes in his account; he used wrong dates in the report, which was submitted far too late, and he obviously didn't know how to use the Geiger counter or Starlight Scope. Halt also omitted to mention the lighthouse, which should have been visible at several locations in his wanderings, and at other times would have been visible as a 'loom' or radiating ray in the sky over the horizon.

A list of Halt's other errors can be found here
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/Halt_affidavit.html
example;

Halt refers vaguely to 'several airmen present' who supposedly told him that they saw the beams. However, he neglects to mention that airman Tim Egercic, who was on duty at the Bentwaters Weapons Storage Area at the time, has specifically denied that any such beams came down into the WSA. Elsewhere, Halt has claimed that his superior officer, Col Ted Conrad, also saw the lights. However, Conrad has said that he was watching from outside his quarters at Woodbridge but saw nothing that resembled Halt's descriptions. This whole part of Halt's story seems to be at odds with the facts.

The other problem is ; why would any event in 1980 still be 'top secret'? If it was the recovery of a satellite film capsule, this technology has been declassified since 2011, and is something to be proud of as technical achievement, not something to hide away after all this time. And there is no evidence of a 'Broken Arrow' incident at this time, despite several such events elsewhere which are now established as historical fact, and have been examined in great detail. The idea of a cover-up after nearly fifty years is absurd.

If this had really been an official cover-up it would have been done far more competently.

 

[Ann K]

The idea of a cover-up after nearly fifty years is absurd.

I have read elsewhere (perhaps in one of the several "Calvine" threads) that the UK doesn't publish reports that contain the names of living people, as a matter of privacy for the individuals. (Is that true? I don't know but I'm sure someone here does.) Perhaps that's the reason, not a "cover-up".