The landing of a UFO in the Randlesham forest in England during the 1980 Christmas holidays was at one time reported by many media outlets. However, in subsequent years, new details of the incident became known, there were eyewitnesses who spoke after a long forced silence, and access to previously closed documents was opened.
They saw IT
Randlesham is a pine forest that stretches across the plains of Suffolk from Ipswich to Orford Ness, where the lighthouse tower rises. In the area of the Rendlesham forest on the night of December 25-26, 1980, several people witnessed unusual events at once. The Webbs were returning from a gala dinner at a friend's house when a circle of bright white light appeared over the trees, midway between two NATO airbases, Woodbridge and Bentwaters. At first they were not surprised - flying A-10 low-jet aircraft and Chinook helicopters became common here. However, then the couple realized that something was wrong here: the luminous object, unlike aviation equipment, moved completely silently.
Dave Roberts and his girlfriend kissed, secluded among the trees. Suddenly the ground shook beneath their feet. and the night sky lit up with a bright flash. Something silently fell from the sky very close. And when an army jeep appeared on the road, young people, having decided that they had become unwitting witnesses of some secret tests, hurried to escape from the place of mysterious events.
Gordon Levit's house stood at the edge of the forest, far from the rest of the village. Living on the outskirts, he got a watchdog. Late in the evening, Gordon was playing with him in the garden, when he saw an outlandish object in the sky, flying, it seemed, right at him. The UFO was shaped like an inverted mushroom cap and gleamed with a greenish light. For a moment, it hovered over Gordon, and then silently flew away towards Woodbridge.
The next morning, Gordon's dog began to behave strangely: he lay in the booth all day, as if he was afraid to get out of there. She began to develop rapidly some unknown disease, and after a few days the dog was gone.
The veterinarian said she was most likely poisoned.
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John Burroughs and Budd Parker were on guard at the gates of the Woodbridge Air Base when they suddenly saw an unusual light appear in the night sky over the forest. They decided that it was a plane crashing and that there would be an explosion. However, the light source began to gradually decrease, as if it were landing. When the object disappeared into the forest, no explosion occurred. Only one could see that somewhere behind the trees a bright light pulsating, constantly changing its color. Burrows immediately reported the incident to the command of the airbase.
First contact
Soon a jeep drove up to the gates of the base with Sergeant Jim Penniston and Private Herman Kawanasaki, who were instructed to go to the scene and find out the situation. Together with them, Burrows went in search of a mysterious object.
As the jeep stopped in front of the object's landing site, the colored lights behind the trees continued to flash. Three scouts with walkie-talkies went deep into the forest. Communication with the base began to malfunction. Then Penniston sent Kawanasaki with a walkie-talkie to the jeep in order to request help if necessary, and he went on with Bar-Rose. The sergeant was sure: a little more, and they will see the wreckage of the crashed plane. However, something strange was happening around: crackles were continuously heard from numerous atmospheric discharges. The soldiers gave goosebumps. And now, finally, they saw a mysterious object.
"It certainly didn't look like any aircraft," Penniston recalls. A cone-shaped object the size of a small car hung motionless in the air at a height of about 30 cm from the ground, as if leaning on the rays of light. The object was surrounded by a hazy halo, and signs resembling letters were visible on the side of its surface. Recovering from their amazement, the scouts attempted to examine the object. But getting close to him was not easy. “With every step the air seemed to get thicker, we walked like through syrup,” Penniston continues. "It looked like it would take a long time to get to the site."
Suddenly the soldier was blinded by a bright flash of light, the UFO quickly rose and disappeared from sight.
Subsequently, answering numerous questions, Penniston and Burrows argued that the mysterious object did not resemble anything they had seen before. A few years later, Burrows, who became an officer, once said: “Whether it was an alien spacecraft or some natural phenomenon, I do not know. I only know: it was something that cannot be accurately described in words."
The "hunt" continues
However, the events in Randlesham Forest did not end there. On the evening of December 27, 1980, the commander of the Bentwaters air base, Ted Konrad, was informed that "the same object has appeared again." The commander instructed his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Holt to figure out what was happening. A skeptic by nature, Holt was even delighted with the assignment: now he can silence the henchmen of the so-called ufologists. Soon a search group of several people, equipped with various devices, a walkie-talkie and a dictaphone, headed by the lieutenant colonel, went to the scene.
When the group entered the forest, Holt stated with satisfaction that he did not see any UFOs. But for some reason the arc lamps-searchlights taken with them immediately began to fail one after another, and only a continuous crackling was heard in the headphones, as if they were inside a powerful electrostatic field. To keep in touch people with the radio had to be left at the edge of the forest.
Having sent two soldiers to the base for new lamps, the lieutenant colonel with the rest of the people went deep into the forest. At the same time, he turned on the dictaphone: “… We are located 50 meters from the intended landing site. We have lighting problems. Two people sent for new lamps. Now let's measure the radiation level with a Geiger counter. The level turned out to be increased, but did not exceed the maximum permissible value.
Over the next hour, the recorder recorded only the voices of the search engines, who took samples of soil and tree bark, and photographed unusual traces. At one point, Holt noted that the noctovisor - a night vision device - detected the effect of heat or some other energy.
UFO avoids proximity
And suddenly loud exclamations were heard from all sides, and the lieutenant colonel commanded: “Attention! Keep calm everyone! At 01:48, the soldiers in front saw an object sparkling in different colors, leaning on a column of glowing yellowish fog. “I see something ahead, flashing with colored lights, mostly red,” the lieutenant colonel said into the recorder.
As it approached the object, it seemed to increase in size and soon began to look like a huge sparkling eye with a dark pupil. “The time is 03:15. We are close to the object, we are located to the north of it,”- recorded Holt.
And at that moment the UFO rushed up. After a moment's pause, the lieutenant colonel said excitedly: “A column of bright light rushed from the object to the ground. It's incredible! When the UFO was out of sight, Holt ordered the tired people back to Bentwaters.
In the meantime, the luminous object, the rays from which ransacked the strictly protected area, was visible for a long time over the Woodbridge airbase. And this picture was observed by hundreds of people: both base workers and residents of the surrounding villages.
What was it?
Eyewitnesses are sure that on the night of December 26 and 27, 1980, they saw the landing of a mysterious object. However, skeptics immediately appeared, refuting this opinion. So, astronomer Ian Ridpat suggested that for the first time a bright meteorite flying over England was mistaken for an object, and then soldiers, new to the area, saw through the trees the light of a nearby lighthouse.
"But the lighthouse does not move through the forest, does not change shape and does not shine vertically down," - Charles Holt countered this assumption. The soldiers who went to look for UFOs knew the surrounding area and the location of the lighthouse well, and Burrows even went there for picnics. In addition, according to eyewitness reports, the UFO appeared in the sky before the meteorite mentioned by Ridpath flew by. So, maybe everything was the other way around: the astronomer mistook the taking off UFO for a meteorite?
Another skeptic, psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, admitted that the car in which the police patrol arrived in the forest to find out what happened there was an imaginary UFO. However, from the register of patrol visits it followed that when he reached the forest, the object discovered by the soldiers had long since disappeared.
What actually appeared during Christmas 1980 in the Randlesham Forest? Ufologists have not yet come to a consensus. There are two main versions: an extraterrestrial spacecraft from another galaxy, or even from another dimension altogether, or an external manifestation of some unknown form of energy. Some add that under the influence of this energy a portal could open between our and another dimensions, and through it it was possible for some time to observe a phenomenon from another reality, parallel to ours.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №8. Author: Vadim Ilyin