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During the Cold War, top secret military facilities appeared to be magnets for UFO sightings.

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Why?

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You've got this apparent interest in our technology.

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Is it the Soviets or is it something else?

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The fact that it's unexplained doesn't mean it's extraterrestrial.

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It just means that you just means unidentified.

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Declassified military documents reveal stunning eyewitness reports.

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It appears to be a beam coming down to the ground.

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But is that enough to prove anything?

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Eyewitness testimony isn't all that reliable.

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And in fact, in science, it's about the worst kind of evidence possible.

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Damn it, what are they playing at?

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Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!

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The speculation continues.

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It's kind of the British Roswell.

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Could it have been extraterrestrial?

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I can't rule that out.

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Was it paranoia-fueled misperception, hoax, or truly unknown?

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Unidentified flying objects.

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They've been reported in our skies for decades.

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Thousands of UFO sightings have been documented in official government files.

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Most have logical, scientific explanations.

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Yet some cases remain unexplained, classified, unidentified.

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Can newly released files reveal the truth behind these UFO encounters?

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Christmas night, 1980.

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Security personnel on a NATO Air Force base notice something is wrong.

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100 miles northeast of London, two RAF bases sit side by side.

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Woodbridge and bent waters.

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They are separated by a wooded area known as Rendlesham Forest.

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During the Cold War, the British bases are operated by the U.S. Air Force.

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Airman First Class John Burroughs and Sergeant Bud Steffens are patrolmen of the Air Force Police.

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Sergeant Steffens, who was driving the vehicle, noticed some strange lights in the forest.

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According to their report, this is how the night unfolds.

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There were strange, like, white lights.

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The two patrolmen head outside of the base into the adjoining forest to investigate.

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When Burroughs gets out of the car, he immediately notices something unusual.

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There was like a static electricity in the air.

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Something just didn't feel right.

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He says, yeah, let's get out of here. Let's get back up to the gate.

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Burroughs and Steffens head back to the base.

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They need authorization before they can investigate further.

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I jumped out, went into the gate shack and picked up the phone.

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The shift commander got confirmation that something was over the area that disappeared off of radar.

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Woodbridge Central Security Command alerts the Suffolk Police that troops are investigating what they call a UFO.

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This is the beginning of a three-night stretch of strange events.

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Staff Sergeant Jim Peniston and Airman Edward Cabansag are assigned to join Burroughs.

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Their orders investigate unidentified lights in Rendlesham Forest.

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As we were driving down, you could still see the light in the forest.

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We eventually got to the point where the truck couldn't go any further and we stopped.

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We dismounted a vehicle, the three of us.

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We followed the lights into the forest so the adrenaline was pumping and we just spread out.

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More than 30 years later, John Burroughs retraces his steps in Rendlesham Forest.

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This is where Sergeant Peniston and myself and Airman Cabansag were.

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We came up over the burn.

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All of a sudden, there was this whole area.

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This whole area was lit up almost like daylight.

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And then that's when we hit the ground.

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Burroughs, Peniston and Cabansag don't know what they've just seen.

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But their entire story is nothing more than a story, compelling but not supported by any hard evidence.

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UFO sightings are by definition unidentified, so we don't know what they are.

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Dr. Roger Launius is an Associate Director at the National Air and Space Museum.

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Many times, we tend to leap to conclusions about these sorts of things and clearly they can be any number of things.

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But given the military sensitivity of the area, the Rendlesham story triggered an investigation.

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Early the next morning, base personnel and local police went to the area of the sighting.

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They combed the scene and reported three strange indentations in the soil.

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In the Rendlesham Forest, which is near some British air bases, I've actually been there,

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there were claims that they had found something strange going on.

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There were lights in the sky, maybe aircraft, maybe people touched them, maybe they didn't touch them.

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Seth Shostak is the lead astronomer for the SETI Institute, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

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It's kind of the British Roswell.

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Like the Roswell incident in America, Shostak thinks the Rendlesham Forest incident in Britain has been built into a legend that is overtaken logic.

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There seems to be a pretty strong connection between military bases and UFO activities,

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as if the aliens have a lot of interest in our military facilities.

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They're buzzing our silos or something like that.

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Doesn't make any sense to me.

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Any society that could come here is, you know, hundreds, maybe thousands of years more advanced than we are.

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Their interest in our military sounds like me spending all my time going back to the Roman Empire

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and looking at the places where they make their spears.

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Despite Shostak's skepticism, he looks for alien civilizations for a living.

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The SETI Institute uses a large array of radio dishes to scan the sky.

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We can certainly see space from Earth, but can we hear it?

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Our project SETI is designed to find out if there's anybody out there in space that's not just alive, not just biology, but intelligent.

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So we try and eavesdrop on radio signals that they might be broadcasting our way.

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No matter what we think the chances might be, we don't know how many societies are out there waiting to be found.

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Shostak is an astronomer, but also an ambassador of sorts. He is in constant demand for media interviews.

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So where are you looking at the moment?

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Well, at the moment we still look at the nearby stars that are pretty much like the sun.

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Shostak knows that one of the fundamental questions of humanity is, who else is out there?

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That question has created a universe of stories, books, TV shows, movies that show the infinite creativity of the human imagination.

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But while the search for aliens is fascinating to ponder, Shostak wants it to be fundamentally rooted in science, not stories.

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Look, I'm not against mysterious phenomena.

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You know, this idea, and you hear this a lot, particularly from people who are convinced that UFOs represent alien visitation.

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You scientists are so close-minded, you won't look at this evidence. You don't like the idea of mysteries.

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Well, that's crazy. That's exactly what scientists are interested in. Of course we're interested in mysteries.

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So the only question is, is there really a mystery here, or is it something that in fact if you looked at it deeply, you would find that, well, there actually isn't any mystery.

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It's just a bunch of phenomena that are perfectly prosaic.

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But some thought the phenomena of UFO sightings at nuclear facilities deserved more investigation.

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In the early 1990s, Nick Pope was an employee of the British government's Ministry of Defense.

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One of his duties was to investigate UFO phenomena and determine any potential threats to national defense.

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The vast majority of sightings were easily explainable, but a few remain riddles to Nick Pope.

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During my time on the Ministry of Defense's UFO project, it was clear to me that the Rendlesham Forest incident was Britain's most significant and compelling UFO case.

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More than a decade after the sighting, he investigated the Rendlesham files, including the theory that something landed.

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Though no photos of any landing evidence have ever surfaced.

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The three indentations when plotted out formed a triangle shape.

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What is this object? Is it the Soviets or is it something else?

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It is 1980. World politics is dominated by two competing superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union.

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And the fault line between them runs through the heart of Europe.

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On the English North Sea coast, the twin bases Woodbridge and Bentwaters are within striking distance if the Soviets invade Western allies.

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So any report of a violation of NATO airspace would be taken very seriously.

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I think that the Cold War is probably responsible for a lot of our attitude towards UFOs because after the Second World War, we were worried about, of course, bombers from the Soviet Union.

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So watching the skies was something that you had to do for survival.

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Everybody was worried about this threat from above.

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And I think that that did influence our attitude toward unknown objects seen in the skies.

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Less than a week after their unusual experience, burrows, peniston and caban sag were required to write statements.

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Detailed witness statements were taken from the key participants.

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These declassified documents from the US Air Force Archives are first person accounts of the events from that night.

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The whole area just turned white. We all hit the ground, I would have been in the center, Edward would have been to my right, Jim would have been to my left.

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The eyewitnesses were instructed to sketch their version of events.

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I also drew what the object looked like to me, how I perceived it.

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Red light, sunlight, had white light coming out from underneath it and blue lights mixed in with it.

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The three statements were consistent, blue, red, white and yellow lights.

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Sergeant Peniston's statement includes his judgment that the object was definitely mechanical in nature.

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Could this have been classified US technology in one way or another?

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Author and UFO researcher Richard Dolan has studied the case in depth.

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Could it have been a falling satellite like some people have said? No, I don't think it could at all have been a falling satellite. At all.

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How does that explain what happened in the forest? The Russians? No, not really. I mean, there's just no evidence.

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There's no reason to think that this was Russian technology.

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Skeptics think this lack of evidence is okay as long as people don't try to fill the void with alien visitation theories.

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Because we can't explain everything.

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Michael Schermer is a science author and publisher of Skeptic Magazine.

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What UFOlogists do, they take those handful of little anomalies like see, it wasn't Venus, it wasn't swamp gas, it wasn't, the Air Force wasn't there, so it has to be an alien.

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No, it doesn't have to be anything, it can just be, I don't know what it is.

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Some believe the bizarre events at Bentwaters may have a simple explanation.

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The mistaken observations of men in a situation of extreme stress.

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During the 1980s, there was a heightened sense of that possibility of nuclear annihilation.

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Cold War tension may have influenced the perceptions of the men at Rendlesham.

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One of the things that we've seen in the Cold War as it ebbed and flowed is sort of heightened awareness.

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And I think when you have that heightened awareness, you tend to be more cautious and you see certain things.

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And eyewitness reports in any environment are easily challenged.

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Eyewitness reports are the backbone of our justice system, but as has been demonstrated many times, they are not necessarily what actually took place.

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We got lights over Rendlesham Forest.

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For two more nights, the strange lights returned to the Twin Nato air bases near Rendlesham.

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No documentation for the second night's sighting has ever surfaced.

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The third night was different. This time, senior officers were involved.

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Deputy Base Commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt was a first-hand witness.

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He decided to go to the clearing where Burroughs and Peniston had had their encounter on the first night.

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Halt's intention is to defuse this whole situation. Rumours about the UFO sightings have been sweeping the base.

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So Halt wants to go out here and debunk this whole UFO nonsense.

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While there is still no photographic evidence of that night, there is an audio recording.

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Colonel Halt habitually carried with him a small handheld cassette recorder.

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150 feet or more from the initial, I should say, suspected impact point.

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That night in Rendlesham Forest, Colonel Halt recorded a startling event in real time.

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But was it real?

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There is no doubt about it. This is weird.

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Colonel Halt and his men are trying to identify the lights in Rendlesham Forest near two military bases.

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We got lights over Rendlesham Forest. Anyone see it?

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One reason for the extreme caution. The bases were rumoured to be hiding places for nuclear weapons.

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There was absolutely no tolerance for a security breach.

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There have been a number of allegations over the years that nuclear weapons were kept at Bent Waters and Orwood Bridge.

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But it was not the first time UFOs were reported around secret nuclear facilities.

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In the 1940s, Los Alamos was ground zero.

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It was the real centre for US nuclear technology.

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Los Alamos, New Mexico is the legendary birthplace of the atomic bomb.

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Here, the greatest minds of 20th century science crack the atom and unleash the power of nuclear fission.

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An FBI document reveals one strange event that raised concern.

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December 1948, University of New Mexico.

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Astronomer Lincoln La Paz reports witnessing a green fireball from his lab in Albuquerque.

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He triangulates his observations with other eyewitnesses.

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He predicts it is heading towards Los Alamos.

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An unknown object was tracked going at an unbelievable speed.

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At one of America's most secret facilities, anything strange in the sky caused a reaction.

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So out of caution and curiosity, the US government commissioned Dr. La Paz to study the phenomena at Los Alamos.

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Other eyewitnesses agreed with La Paz, reporting that the object appeared as if controlled.

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Subsequent research and debate never fully explained the fireballs.

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Some thought it was a craft, others thought it was a natural phenomenon.

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But all agreed it was mysterious at a time when mystery and tension ruled global politics.

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During the Cold War, nuclear secrecy was the order of the day.

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And he perceived security breach at a military facility was serious business.

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Duc and cover.

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Apprehension and sometimes paranoia pervaded both the armed forces and the general public.

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Duc and cover under the table.

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Then?

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Such a mentality could have shaped perceptions of any UFO eyewitnesses in 1940s Los Alamos or 1980s Great Britain.

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At Rendlesham Forest, Sergeant Jim Peniston reported something he believed to be a threat to the world.

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He was definitely mechanical in nature.

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Some thought that an entity, foreign or alien, was spying.

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If nuclear weapons were secretly stored at Bentwater's and Woodbridge bases,

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the heightened secrecy and watchfulness could have caused an overreaction to a strange phenomenon.

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But the story was about to get even stranger.

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On the third night of the incident, Colonel Charles Halt led a group into the woods, tape recorder in hand.

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There is no question whatsoever about the authenticity of this tape.

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But there are many mysteries about the story on the tape.

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Nick Pope thinks the men did see something.

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This audio tape is a key piece of evidence and documents exactly what Halt and the other men saw.

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Halt's team came equipped with Geiger counters to detect anomalous radiation levels.

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For abrasion or something in the ground where the pine needles were all pushed back and we'll be getting a high-yack reading.

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So there's a positive after-effect? Yes, there is.

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Halt and his men observed damage to the trees at the suspected landing site.

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Looking directly overhead, one can see an open tree across some freshly broken pine branches underground underneath.

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But also there seem to be burn marks, scorch marks on the sides of some of the trees around the clearing.

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There are these peaks in radiation levels in the three indentations and on the faces of the trees.

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And at that point it becomes a reality for Halt because somebody calls out,

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Sir, it's back. Look there, through the trees.

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Halt's team moved forward.

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They really don't know what to make of this thing.

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But there's a point where they realise it's actually coming closer.

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And it's like, it's coming this way.

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You listen to that tape, you can hear the tension and the fear in those men's voices.

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It starts off as just a light in the distance.

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Was this communication? Was this a weapon? Was this a warning? What was this?

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The story of the mysterious light created a lot of fascinating questions,

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but it cannot create much of a scientific case.

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This is a great story, it's fascinating, but we know from research that, you know,

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eyewitnesses, counts are not reliable, mind's not any better than yours.

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So we have to actually have physical evidence or else we don't really have a case.

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There's this fascination amongst ufologists that the higher the rank you are in the military,

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the better you are at perceiving things.

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But what they're looking for is credibility.

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And somehow the general has more credibility than the sergeant

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who has more credibility than the average citizen standing there.

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But in reality, to scientists, it doesn't make any difference.

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Credible or not, when stories are similar, they become connected.

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UFO researchers compared the Rendlesham story with others like it, including one from America.

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So it's late October 1975, it's late at night, you're at Lauring Air Force Base, northern Maine,

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and an unknown something is being tracked coming toward the base.

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Lauring was one of over 50 strategic air command bases.

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Most had nuclear weapons, few at any UFO sightings,

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but when they did, UFO researchers took notice.

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A report from that night states that the unidentified object was at an altitude of 150 feet

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and was sighted near the weapons storage area.

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The sighting lasted almost two hours.

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Identify yourself, over.

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But when a National Guard helicopter attempted to intercept it, the pilot saw nothing.

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Despite the report that it hovered over the Air Force Base for two hours,

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it was never intercepted, filled, or photographed.

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It's reported again the next night at the exact same time.

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So you've got this case where this something comes in, it hangs out for a certain period of time and then it goes away.

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And again, this is a pattern.

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UFO investigators were drawing connections between the sightings in America and Britain

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and saying that nuclear weapons were the bait.

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We've got this apparent interest by whoever is behind this phenomenon in our technology.

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While these sightings were compelling, they were not abnormal.

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UFOs were reported no more frequently at nuclear sites than they were anywhere else.

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But military security and sensitivity gave them an air of espionage.

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We've got lights over Rendlesham Forest.

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Even without hard evidence, it could have been a dangerous breach of security.

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Officials had to assume the threat was real.

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And for one eyewitness, it is about to get personal.

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It's coming this way.

250
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It is definitely coming this way.

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It should be.

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It should be.

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It should be.

254
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There is no doubt about it.

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This is weird.

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This is the third night of sightings near Bentwater's Air Base in 1980.

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Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt is trying to get to the bottom of the mystery with a tape recorder in hand.

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The Air Force cordons off the forest to military personnel only.

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Off-duty patrolman John Burroughs, who witnessed the first night's events, rushes to the scene.

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When I got out here, I found out there was already a group of people out in the forest doing an investigation.

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Burroughs requests permission to join Halt's investigation.

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Myself and one other airman were allowed to proceed forward out into the field and meet up with Colonel Halt's party.

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Halt and his men are on their way back to the base to report what they've seen.

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When I met up with Colonel Halt, he turned and pointed out towards what would have been Bentwater's base.

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And at that point, I could see a blue light which appeared to be flying around in the sky.

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With Halt's permission, Burroughs and Sergeant Adrian Bestinza move forward.

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What happens next is the story they came back with.

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As the two men move toward the object, Sergeant Bestinza falls to the ground.

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He felt something actually pushed him down to the ground and held him to the ground.

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I looked up and it appeared like the object was almost on top of us at that point.

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Burroughs is mesmerized by the intense light.

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Everything seemed like we were in slow motion.

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And the next thing I know, the object was gone.

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For John Burroughs, what happens next is a total mystery.

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I have no memory from how I got back from the field all the way up till Sunday night,

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which would have been about 14 hours where I don't remember how I got home or where I was.

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According to Burroughs, Colonel Halt summoned him and the other eyewitnesses to file their reports.

278
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When we were asked to write the report, I was told just to write a brief summary on the first night while we went out there.

279
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Colonel Halt wanted this whole situation to go away.

280
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He wanted to forget the whole thing and put it behind him.

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Halt describes this whole subject as being not career enhancing.

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Burroughs claims that Halt ordered him to limit his report to the first night and omit the rest,

283
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only Halt reported on the third night, which remains the lone official document describing those events.

284
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The Halt memo is entitled Unexplained Lights, but clearly goes on to describe something which goes over and above just lights in the sky.

285
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The low key title is I think a deliberate attempt already at the outset to try and downplay this incident.

286
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Halt speculates that Halt's report could be describing an extraordinary event,

287
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but others think it may be a case of extraordinary imagination in reaction to a very ordinary light source.

288
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My feeling is that their original source of UFO was the Norford Nest Lighthouse.

289
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:34,000
Retired U.S. Navy Submariner Tim Printy is an amateur astronomer and UFO skeptic.

290
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:38,000
The lighthouse was in the direction that the airman went.

291
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:44,000
The Orford Lighthouse is located six miles directly east of Rendlesham Forest.

292
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They went out the East Gate, they went into the woods, they ended up in a field,

293
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and in that field you can see the Orford Lighthouse out in the distance.

294
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Police documents back Printy's hypothesis.

295
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:01,000
During their investigation they state,

296
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:06,000
the only lights visible to the attending officers were those visible from the Orford Lighthouse.

297
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:09,000
I saw yellow tangent too.

298
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:15,000
And the only physical evidence of the night, Halt's audio tape appears to support Printy's theory.

299
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On the tape that Colonel Halt made, you get a time sequence on there.

300
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:28,000
And every five seconds that's the same rotation rate in which the lighthouse and Orford Nest flashes its light.

301
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On the recording, Colonel Halt's reactions appear to line up with the five second interval of the rotating light.

302
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:39,000
Straight ahead, in between, there it is again.

303
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:43,000
Watch straight ahead off my flash back there.

304
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:44,000
There it is.

305
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:45,000
I see it too.

306
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:52,000
Unfortunately, the Orford Lighthouse is now decommissioned, so no further analysis can be done.

307
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:57,000
The stories of Halt and Burroughs may never be fully explained.

308
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:02,000
But for another eyewitness, the story goes far beyond strange lights.

309
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:08,000
Larry Warren is one of the most controversial figures in the Rendlesham story.

310
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:13,000
He was an Air Force security specialist at the time of the UFO event.

311
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:18,000
On the night in question I was involved, that is the night Charles Halt made his audio tape.

312
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:24,000
Larry Warren has returned to RAF Bentwaters for the first time in over 30 years.

313
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Wow.

314
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His account of what happened on the third night is far stranger than anything Burroughs and Halt have said so far.

315
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We're at the end of the Bentwaters runway.

316
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On this runway, on that night, Warren was on guard at the east end of Bentwaters base.

317
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We got lights over Rendlesham Forest.

318
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I started to hear the talk about lights being seen in the direction of Woodbridge.

319
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Tell you say tell visual confirmation and again the five lights over Forest.

320
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I get a call from central security control saying deactivate your post.

321
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:04,000
Lieutenant England is going to be pulling up to your post soon.

322
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So within 10 minutes I had three other individuals in the back of the secured police truck.

323
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Warren realizes they are driving into Rendlesham Forest towards the east gate of Woodbridge base.

324
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And that's where everything, you know, took a turn for me.

325
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Warren arrives at operations base camp and is immediately ordered to investigate the forest.

326
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I saw lights out of distance.

327
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At first, nothing seems out of the ordinary to Warren.

328
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Everything was normal. I thought it was an exercise, a training exercise.

329
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But it got weird and it got strange.

330
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Larry claims the bizarre phenomena that he saw was only the beginning of a mystery that became deeper and much darker.

331
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:08,000
December 28th, 1980, the third night of UFO sightings outside Bentwaters airbase.

332
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U.S. Air Force Security Specialist Larry Warren is cautiously making his way through Rendlesham Forest.

333
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This is the middle of the night now. Two nights after the initial contact.

334
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Warren and the security detail are directed to a clearing in the woods.

335
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There was a massive static electric charge in the forest. You can feel the hair on your arms.

336
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It was an energy thing that was all over you.

337
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:43,000
Warren claims to have entered the clearing.

338
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In this field was a mist on the ground. It was 50 foot in diameter. It wasn't hovering above it. It was like a fog.

339
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His recollections go beyond anyone else's reports.

340
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:59,000
The cameras now would be behind me off to the right, right over here.

341
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:03,000
Filming this thing, this glowing fog.

342
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:07,000
That was the axis where the commanders came in, right over here.

343
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:12,000
Above that stand of trees, a red light appeared.

344
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And this red light came in and it did a downward arc over this field.

345
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:22,000
20 feet above, this mist on the ground, and detonated.

346
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And exploded right instantly.

347
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And it flashed so bright that it was a moment of blindness.

348
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And then I was tapped out on the shoulder, head back to the vehicles.

349
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That night changed my life forever.

350
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I was one way when I got here. I was a total different person when I left this field.

351
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Warren's claims get even stranger. He says he saw extraterrestrials.

352
00:32:55,000 --> 00:33:00,000
But when people interpret strange lights as spaceships, or even aliens themselves,

353
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skeptics ask for more than a story. They ask for evidence.

354
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:12,000
With no physical evidence, really, accounts of aliens or any other activity like that

355
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:16,000
is automatically one that many people will be suspicious of.

356
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:21,000
Scientists have studied how our imaginations can create memories

357
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:23,000
we sincerely think are real.

358
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In the absence of facts, people are hardwired to supply an explanation

359
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:32,000
for something that they've seen, heard, or experienced.

360
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Anybody can make conjectures about anything, and they do.

361
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It takes extra effort. It's a lot of work to actually devise a method to find out if it's actually true.

362
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Warren wrote a book detailing his experience.

363
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:51,000
But he remains a long voice in the Rendlesham Forest incident.

364
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:55,000
No known document verifies his account.

365
00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:01,000
No other eyewitnesses reported anything like it, and some of them, doubt Warren, was even there.

366
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:06,000
No footage from the cameras he said were nearby has ever surfaced.

367
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:12,000
No photographs. No traces of a craft or residue from any explosions.

368
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:18,000
There's no evidence that anything landed anywhere, let alone a spacecraft with passengers.

369
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:23,000
But Larry Warren stands by his story, proof or no proof.

370
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:32,000
Rendlesham is the most famous UFO incident near a weapons facility, but it is not the only one.

371
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:38,000
Five years before, America experienced its own wave of weirdness.

372
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All through late October and early November of 1975, there were a number of US bases that were subject to violations of airspace by unknown objects.

373
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And one of them was Wortsmouth Air Force Base.

374
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According to the report, a tower guard claimed to see an unidentified craft descending over the base.

375
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A military airplane was dispatched to investigate.

376
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:13,000
And what ensued is this very bizarre cat and mouse chase.

377
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:18,000
The people operating the aircraft are thinking, are we following one object or two objects, and they couldn't really tell.

378
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:27,000
When military rank and file saw strange things during the Cold War, it's not surprising that officials tried to find out what they were.

379
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:34,000
But at that time, a military base may not have been the best place for a transparent scientific investigation.

380
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:42,000
The Cold War was defined by classified programs, top secret tests, and trust no one's security procedures.

381
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:47,000
Strange sightings at the most sensitive bases caused alarm, and perhaps confusion.

382
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:59,000
Certainly, Cold War anxieties about secrets in general, particularly nuclear weapons, would probably play into this in the sense that nobody actually knows everything that's going on.

383
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:08,000
The higher up you go in terms of military secrets, government secrets, the less you actually know about what other people know, and they don't know about what you know.

384
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And consequently, where there are secrets, well, who knows what could be going on.

385
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:20,000
The thing is that a lot of things do happen near military bases involving aircraft that you don't know about because they're not landing at your local airport.

386
00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:24,000
So I think that the connection is mostly bad, if not entirely bad.

387
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:30,000
But at the time, reports of anything unusual were taken seriously.

388
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:37,000
The sightings near the British bases involved some American personnel, and that drew a visit from an American general.

389
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:44,000
The most senior United States Air Force officer in Europe personally flew in to be briefed about this.

390
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:59,000
In a declassified memo dated February 16th, 1981, a senior RAF officer stated that General Charles Gabriel, commander-in-chief of the United States Air Force in Europe, flew in to bent waters.

391
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:11,000
The fact that General Gabriel visited the base and was briefed on this incident shows that this was taken seriously at the very highest levels within the US military.

392
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:16,000
General Gabriel could have had a perfectly rational reason for being on base.

393
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:19,000
Tim Printy has an opposing theory.

394
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:30,000
There may have been a concern on his part as to his personnel actually going out into British territory on unauthorized visits in uniform.

395
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:36,000
People are going to be concerned about that. Why is the US military walking around in my backyard?

396
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:39,000
Something bizarre was happening at Bent Waters.

397
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:41,000
It's coming this way.

398
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:46,000
And Colonel Halt is about to come forward 30 years later.

399
00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:49,000
It's a real...

400
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:53,000
The strange phenomena at Bent Waters Air Base...

401
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:55,000
We got lights over Rendleship Forest.

402
00:37:55,000 --> 00:38:01,000
...have been described as everything from a UFO landing to the flashes of a nearby lighthouse.

403
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:07,000
Rank and file men like Burroughs and Warren continue to recount their version of events.

404
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:11,000
But what about the officer in command on the third night?

405
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:18,000
Colonel Halt maintains public silence about his experiences and has refused television interviews for nearly a decade.

406
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:22,000
Nick Pope interviewed Colonel Halt privately on this subject.

407
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:27,000
Halt felt strongly that something unexplained happened that night.

408
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:36,000
Colonel Halt felt extremely angry and frustrated by the way in which unmarked aircraft were flying in.

409
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:41,000
Finally, Halt ended his silence.

410
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:50,000
In 2010, he signed a notarized affidavit offering his recollection of the night he had recorded on audio tape 30 years earlier.

411
00:38:54,000 --> 00:39:00,000
This is a little funny, but there is no doubt about it. This is weird.

412
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:08,000
Halt states that he believes the objects he saw were extraterrestrial in origin.

413
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:12,000
That looks like a beam coming down to the ground.

414
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:14,000
This is unreal.

415
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:19,000
Why would the military try to downplay these mysterious events at the time?

416
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:25,000
It may have been for a very timely reason. Global tension with the Soviet Union.

417
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:29,000
We're in the war operations center at Bentwaters.

418
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:35,000
In the event of a nuclear war or incident, this room would have played a key role.

419
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:45,000
The base's war room infrastructure signaled just how much the Cold War drove the mindset at Bentwaters and could have driven people to misperceptions.

420
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:52,000
The months leading up to the Rendlesham Forest incident were an unstable period of the Cold War.

421
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:57,000
The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan just one year earlier.

422
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:06,000
They were also considering military intervention in Poland, where a growing solidarity movement threatened the Soviet grip on power.

423
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:11,000
The U.S. had boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

424
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:20,000
Then, Ronald Reagan was elected president on a platform of strengthening the military to better face down Soviet aggression.

425
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:25,000
The delicate balance between superpowers was tenoring dangerously.

426
00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:32,000
And any base with nuclear weapons felt the tension.

427
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:36,000
But did Bentwaters have nuclear weapons?

428
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:40,000
At that time, governments did not typically disclose where they were storing them.

429
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:46,000
When asked directly, Nick Pope refuses to speak openly.

430
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:54,000
I served for 21 years in the Ministry of Defense, and I signed the Official Secrets Act on my very first day.

431
00:40:54,000 --> 00:41:02,000
It binds me for life. I must neither confirm nor deny any of the stories and rumors about nuclear weapons here.

432
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:08,000
But at the time, Larry Warren suspected what history has since revealed.

433
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:13,000
We're at the entrance to Hot Row, right here.

434
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:21,000
And it's called a Hot Row because of radiac material and the ordnance, nuclear ordnance, so it's hot nuke.

435
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:26,000
Frankly, no one would talk about the nukes here on the base or anything.

436
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:35,000
Of course, the military didn't announce the location of its weapons, but for those working on the base, it was hardly a secret.

437
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:44,000
I worked in here one night as a shadow for a cop, and I had a lot explained to me about what was here.

438
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:48,000
We had a huge backline storage of tactical nuclear weapons.

439
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:57,000
A report from the Environmental Watchdog Natural Resources Defense Council supports Larry Warren's claim of nuclear weapons at Bentwaters.

440
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:11,000
Their research suggests that until 1986, RAF Bentwaters was a storage facility for nuclear bombs with a capacity of 100 nuclear warheads.

441
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:17,000
Despite the government's neither confirmed nor deny stance on the nuclear rumors,

442
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:24,000
Lord Hill Norton, a former chief of the Defense Star for the Five Star Admiral, has been rather more outspoken.

443
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:32,000
In a 1997 letter asking for an investigation into Colonel Halt's claims,

444
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:37,000
Hill Norton appeared to confirm that Bentwaters was nuclear armed.

445
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:50,000
Ministers and the Ministry of Defense in particular saying that nothing that took place that December night in Suffolk is of defense interest. It simply isn't true.

446
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:58,000
For Hill Norton, the events at the Twin Bases were an embarrassing breach of military security at a secret weapons facility.

447
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:04,000
But whether that breach was real or imagined, human or alien remains in the realm of opinion.

448
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:11,000
Colonel Charles Halt is on record saying he believes the objects were extraterrestrial in origin.

449
00:43:12,000 --> 00:43:15,000
There is no doubt about it. This is weird.

450
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:21,000
Richard Dolan believes the bases were hiding nukes, which could have attracted interest from somewhere.

451
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:32,000
Look, if you're an intelligence that's monitoring the Earth and you're seeing the native species blow up one nuclear bomb after another, after another, after another in these tests all over the planet,

452
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:38,000
you might find it interesting and you might even be a little bit concerned about what these natives are doing.

453
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:40,000
Tim Prenti has doubts about them both.

454
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:50,000
The energy released in a nuclear explosion while very devastating locally is relatively insignificant when you're observing from space.

455
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:53,000
If you're on the moon, you probably wouldn't even notice.

456
00:43:53,000 --> 00:44:00,000
Radiation falls off with distance. In other words, the further you are away, the fainter it gets.

457
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:10,000
Many scientists point out that the power of nuclear weapons would be trivial to hypothetical aliens that have mastered faster-than-light space travel to get to Earth in the first place.

458
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:16,000
The UFO nuclear connection is tempting to make, but it is not supported by statistics.

459
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:21,000
UFO sightings were no more common at nuclear facilities than anywhere else.

460
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:31,000
But when bizarre happenings were reported near such facilities, a lack of evidence created a vacuum and people will always try to fill it up with theories.

461
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:36,000
UFO as a phenomenon is a fascinating area to look at from a cultural perspective.

462
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:41,000
We love the things that are unexplained and seemingly unexplainable.

463
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:47,000
Remember always that the fact that it's unexplained doesn't mean it's extraterrestrial.

464
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:51,000
It just means that you just means unidentified. That's it.

465
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:57,000
It isn't good enough to just tell me you think it's true. I mean, I'm going to ask you, so what are the data? What's the evidence?

466
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:05,000
In fact, if the evidence were better, you'd have thousands and thousands of academics beavering away on this problem.

467
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:09,000
I mean, there's nothing that would be more interesting than the show that we're being visited.

468
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:16,000
I'm not against the idea. I would love if it was true. I think it would be the most spectacular discovery of all time.

469
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:23,000
Certainly. But the continued lack of evidence for visitations here is a sign that they probably haven't come here.

470
00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:32,000
Rumors flew and stories grew. Over 30 years later, it's still fascinating, but time usually reveals the truth.

471
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:40,000
It is possible to keep secrets for a few decades anyway. But at some point it comes out and we find out what happened.

472
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:49,000
Never have we discovered, finally, once and for all, oh yes, there is an alien spacecraft. There it is. That has never happened.

473
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:59,000
Without evidence, there can be no proof. So the speculation continues and the sightings may forever remain unidentified.