Rendlesham Forest, When a UFO Landed in England

It's the 26th of December 1980. In Reynoldsham Forest in England is RAF Woodbridge, an air base which is currently being used by the United States Air Force. The Cold War is on, but things are quiet at Woodbridge, although it is rumoured that nuclear weapons are held on the base or nearby.

In the dead of night, a security patrol are checking the east gate. They notice something out of the ordinary. There are red and blue lights around 300 metres away in the sky, just above the trees and descending into Reynoldsham Forest.

The lights now in the forest cause the entire woods to light up. Their only thought was that an aircraft could be in trouble and was putting down an emergency. They decided to investigate further and drove into the forest towards the strange lights.

Perking up, the two men ventured onwards on foot to what was now a glowing white light which was coming towards them. At this stage, nothing had been reported and afraid of using their radios for being overheard reporting such a strange phenomenon, they decided to drive back to the gate and phone in a report. Also, they had a strong feeling of dread and static in the air was noticed by both men.

We got some strange lights in the forest here. Has anyone reported a downed aircraft? It's Christmas, maybe Santa Claus decided to take a rest after all his hard work last night.

No, no, I'm deadly serious. This is weird. Staff Sergeant Jim Peniston was sent to meet the two men and investigate further.

Upon meeting the men, they pointed in the direction of the lights. Peniston saw a glowing dome of light in the woods. It must be a downed A-10.

Quickly questioning the two guards, he was told no, there was no crash and that it looked like a UFO had landed in the forest. Peniston ignored the crazy explanation he was given by the two guards and called into control. Were there any aircraft reported missing?

No. Anything strange on radar? He was told that something in the air was being tracked in the area.

A strange bogey had been spotted and then disappeared off radar. Peniston considered the options. If it wasn't American or British, then maybe it was a threat.

Maybe even the Soviets. Peniston was given permission to go off base and investigate. Leaving their weapons behind, the three men headed into the jeep towards the crash site.

Driving deeper into the forest, the woods were lit up by what looked like the orange glow of a fire with flashing lights in the middle. They'd gotten about as far as they could in the jeep and radioed in to say they would approach the crash site on foot. On the way, the radios mysteriously stopped working.

They were working intermittently but something was interrupting with them. One man stayed in the jeep and Peniston and an airman named Burrows headed on foot to the site. While the lights were dancing, there was complete silence.

That is, until a scream of a muntjac deer pierced the night. At that point, as if on cue, all the animals in the woods started with a cacophony. The noise continued with the ground shaking, forest animals running away past Peniston.

Then it suddenly stopped and silence returned to the forest. Peniston thought that maybe Burrows was starting to lose it and went on alone. Emerging into the clearing, what he saw took his breath away.

Unable to believe his eyes, he saw an object which seemed to be floating. A force field of milky grey and yellow light surrounded the craft in a dome shape. Peniston pushed himself through the force field and suddenly all the details of the craft became clear.

It was triangular shaped, black and shiny. Under the skin of the craft, he could clearly see circular lights blinking in sequence along the side. Random colours and shapes formed and disappeared under the surface.

Looking back towards Burrows, he was shocked to see the man motionless, standing around three metres behind, bathed in a cone of light and fixedly staring ahead. Shouting at him, he received no response. He was just staring, his arms by his side.

Peniston realised he was on his own. Inspecting the craft, he took photos and kept reporting on the radio his observations. Even if the radio was dead, then maybe someone could hear him.

On the left side of the craft, he found some markings. Maybe it was NASA or USAF or even the Soviets. But no, these were like modern representations of Egyptian looking hieroglyphs.

Could it really be aliens? Touching the glyphs, a bright light flashed before his eyes. He dropped the camera and then like some kind of data transmission, he saw streams of ones and zeros and binary code in his mind's eye.

The lights on the craft merged together and grew brighter and brighter. Picking up his camera and retreating, he watched the craft ascend silently to around 80 metres and then suddenly it just disappeared. Burrows had by now come back to his senses.

The men went back to the jeep, the three of them reunited. They drove back in silence. After reporting the sighting, Peniston and some others went back the next day to the site.

In the ground they found three indentations where the craft had rested. Also, examining the clearing, they noticed several branches had been broken high up during the craft's arrival and departure. Physical evidence.

Without telling his superiors, Peniston even went back alone and produced plaster casts of the indentations. But this was just the start of the Wrennlesham incident. The following night, six more people saw strange green, white and red lights out near the east gate with the object disappearing and then reappearing at another point in the sky.

The guards, when checking the control tower, were told they had been observing those same lights for 90 minutes or more. Word had now gotten around the base of the extraordinary goings-on. The next evening, in the Woodbridge Officers Club, a late Christmas dinner was underway when Lieutenant Bruce Englund entered the club looking rather flustered and said, It's back.

The deputy base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Holt, took Englund to one side. What's happened? We were out in the forest.

We saw something. A team was quickly assembled. Lights, cameras, tape recorders and night vision cameras.

Geiger counters and weapons were gathered and they headed out towards the landing site. At the site, they found that they couldn't get the arc lights to work, but still went about taking radiation readings, finding the site was about as twice as radioactive as the surroundings. During the observations through which audio was recorded in a handheld tape recorder, lights were spotted on throughout the forest.

The men went in pursuit. They noticed that farmyard animals and the wildlife were acting very agitated. We're on 48.

We're getting very strange sounds out of the farmyard animals. It's very, very active, making a lot of noise. Very, very strange.

Amazed, they observed the object. They described a pyramid shape with what seemed to be a giant eye moving through the trees. It looked like it was blinking at them.

When looking at the thing, they were pulling about two to three hundred yards away. It looked like an eye winking at you, still moving from side to side. Then when you put the star scope on, it starts to have a hollow center, right?

The dark center. When using the star scope night vision, they could see it had a dark center. It looked like a purple eye looking at you winking and the flash is so bright to the star scope that it almost burned your eye.

The craft ascended and incredibly a beam shot down towards the ground. Eventually the craft shot up out of view, blasting the airmen with icy cold air. Elliptical shapes that had detached from the craft lingered in the air for about an hour before they too disappeared.

Peniston was comforted to know he had film evidence and went to pick up his film from the processing lab. When he looked at the photos, all of them had been fogged. The radiation that had been detected had also ruined the film.

There were many conflicting reports and alleged cover-ups of this incident. You can find the audio that Lieutenant Colonel Holt recorded on Wikipedia. We read the excellent Rendlesham Enigma by Jim Peniston and Gary Osbourne in researching this film.

In the book you can find more on the meaning of the binary encoded message that Peniston was given. Our Yarnhub mystery dog visited Rendlesham Forest in researching this video. It's possible to walk the route that was taken all those years ago and there's a campsite nearby.

It's changed little in that time and you can really get a sense of the strange happenings. There's even a reconstruction of the spacecraft that Peniston saw. When we wandered around, we were completely alone.

Even in the daytime, the forest has an… interesting feel. We decided we'd leave it to others to explore the forest alone at night. We hope you like this video.

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