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May 23, 2020 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:09:33
Edition 455 - Nick Redfern

World-famous investigator/author Nick Redfern on his new investigation of the strange events at Rendlesham Forest in late 1980 - Plus Noah Angell on ghosts at The British Museum...

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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast.
My name is Howard Hughes, and this is The Return of the Unexplained.
Well, recording this at the beginning of week 8, I think it is, but you do lose track of time of lockdown, the sun pouring in through my window, which is always good news.
And temperatures this week slated to rise to about 27 Celsius, which is 81 degrees Fahrenheit.
I know that because I did radio weather forecasts and conversions for years of temperatures.
So a nice week by the looks of it, and I hope to be able to get some fresh air simply by walking out of here and just seeing what I can see.
I think it's important.
Otherwise, you do get cabin fever.
There is no doubt about that.
Now, what I'm going to do on this edition, a couple of items from my most recent radio show that I think you need to hear.
The first one is Nick Redfern, the great investigator Nick Redfern in Dallas, Texas.
And we've been talking about his new book to do with Rendlesham Forest and the possible alternative explanation to the events in 1980 at a joint British-American airbase that if you've been listening to this show for long enough, you will know that Rendlesham Forest is up there with the likes of Roswell as being one of the most fascinating claimed UFO cases in all of history, in all of ufology.
So Nick Redfern, the guest on this edition, and then one extra item, something else from the radio show, talking about the British Museum.
Now, we know that museums and public buildings like that that involve history, places like Hampton Court in London or the Tower of London, many places worldwide, are claimed to be seriously haunted and are claimed to be venues that are visited by serious paranormality.
Well, a guy who was featured in the newspapers here a week ago, Noah Angel, great name, and that's his real name, has been investigating these.
Noah is an artist, investigator, and is writing a book about the experiences people who work at or have visited the British Museum have had.
So he's the second item on this edition of The Unexplained.
And the next full edition online of The Unexplained will be Erling P. Strand, and we'll be talking about the Hess-Dahlin Lights.
It's something that you asked me to look into in Norway.
So that's the next edition, a very, very strange phenomenon investigated by Erling P. Strand.
Thank you very much to Adam, my very busy webmaster at this time.
And thank you to you if you've donated recently to The Unexplained.
That's very kind of you, and thank you very much.
Vital for the online work to continue in these weird days in which we live.
Okay, first item then from my radio show, Nick Redfern, talking about the Rendlesham Forest Conspiracy, his new book.
Here he is.
He's been on this show many times before.
Nick Redfern, if he's new to you, he's a full-time writer, lecturer, journalist.
He writes about a wide range of unsolved mysteries, Bigfoot UFOs, Loch Ness Monster alien encounters, government conspiracies.
There's a little bit of some of those things in what we're going to talk about tonight, because Nick has decided to visit one of the greatest unexplained mysteries of the topics that we discover here.
And I'm talking about the Rendlesham Forest occurrences.
Now, if I say Rendlesham Forest and you're into these things, you probably know precisely what I'm talking about.
But because you might be new to this, new people joining all the time, you might not.
It's not often that I go to Wikipedia for a definition, but here it is.
In late December 1980, there was a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights near Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, which have become linked with claims of UFO landings there.
The events occurred just outside RAF Woodbridge, which was used at the time by the United States Air Force personnel.
The occurrence is the most famous of claimed UFO events to have ever happened in the UK, ranking among the best-known reported UFO events worldwide.
And even now, how many years after all of this happened?
Well, it's 40 years this year.
People are still speculating as to what happened.
They're questioning the accounts, which sometimes differ, of those who were there.
And they're wondering whether anything like that could ever happen again, or indeed have happened before, or has happened since.
It is an astonishing story.
And Nick Redfern has decided to go behind the story and try and bring out some new themes that you may not have heard before.
And he's written a book all about this now.
And I think you're going to find it interesting.
In fact, I know you're going to find it interesting.
So let's get to him.
He's a Brit living in the United States, as you will know if you're a regular listener.
Nick Redfern, thank you very much for coming back on The Unexplained.
Hello, thanks, Howard.
Whereabouts are you, Nick?
Just remind my listener, because you're one of the many Brits who I speak to on this show who's made a life in the United States.
Where are you?
In Dallas, Dallas, Texas.
Okay, the home of conspiracy theories, the home of big hats, and the home at one time of J.R. Ewing.
How are things there at the moment?
Grim and cold and windy, and it looks kind of like an autumn day, really.
Right.
And interesting to me that you did not mention coronavirus.
Is it, you know, have people decided that they're going to get back out there in a kind of, you know, larger-than-life Texan way?
What's going on?
Well, some people are, but they're idiots.
The only time I go out now is to get food.
And if I need gas for the car, that's about it.
But, I mean, the idea, just because somebody says it's okay to go outside now or we need to start going outside, well, the virus isn't going to take any notice of that.
I mean, that's absolutely true, Nick.
What is your governor?
I've lost touch with the individual states.
I'm hearing the occasional story from Florida, places like that, maybe California, but most of it is just a blur now.
What's your local advice there?
Well, the local advice is be careful if you have to go out.
But because they're trying to sort of reboot the economy and encouraging people to go outside, I mean, none of us are superman.
We're not indestructible, you know, and you go outside and you start wandering around and there's, you know, you go in a store and there's 30 people there or you go out for lunch, you know, or go to a fast food place and there's 15 people there.
Well, let's just ask you for trouble.
So apart from going out once every three to four weeks to get food and water, et cetera, I actually haven't left my apartment until 28th, 29th of February, something like that.
Now, isn't that interesting?
So, you're trying to do it the way that we're doing it here.
Is it difficult because you've got so many people who just have a different view of it?
Well, I think, you know, there's a sort of mixed approach to it.
Some people take the view, well, you know, it's not going to happen to me, that kind of angle, you know, which is gambling at the worst way as well.
But most people I know, you know, are staying at home and they are keeping, you know, their time outside to a very limited degree.
I mean, obviously, you know, if you've got a back garden, I mean, there's no limits on sitting out there all day, you know, you can do because you're not really open to anybody else, you know.
And I have to say that, you know, in Texas, from what I'm aware, what some people call a garden is what we would call a public park in the UK.
Well, that's one of the good things.
You know, it's not like you sort of look over your fence to your next-door neighbour.
You're right.
It's sort of very expansive.
And most of the houses, you know, their back gardens, nearly all of them have got sort of like eight foot high wooden fences all the way around.
So that's a good thing, you know.
And so in that sense, most people are sort of following the rules.
But I mean, the apartments where I live here, the other day I was going to go down to get the mail in, and I had to wait like an hour because there was like three or four guys all just hanging out outside the mailbox area.
You know, none of them had got masks on.
And they're just stupid.
There's a certain amount of that here.
They call them covered idiots over here, but we just have to hope that their stupidity doesn't impact ordinary ordinary decent people who are obeying the rules, and that is the situation.
Well, it's just interesting to hear a report from there.
But apart from that, you're staying in a lot and you're getting by.
Well, I'm doing what I feel you've just got to do.
And the way I look at it, you know, it's a real pain in the neck if we've got to do this for four months or five months.
But if the alternative is five months inside or death, you know, I'll go for five months inside.
Yeah, well, I totally hear what you're saying.
Okay, talk to me just very briefly.
I gave a thumbnail sketch in the intro to this hour of what Nick Red Fern is, but just there are new people joining this show all the time.
So for somebody who's never heard you before, doesn't know what you're about, who are you?
What do you do?
Well, I'm someone who's got a lot of interests in weird areas like, for example, UFOs, Bigfoot, Loch Ness, Monster, paranormal, supernatural.
And I've had an interest since I was a kid.
And when I was in my mid-20s, I decided to start writing books on these various subjects, which is what I continue to do now.
And so anything that's a little bit weird, strange, and paranormal and ufological and extraterrestrial, I'll have a look at it and tackle it.
You have, and you've done them all.
You've done them all really well.
We've talked about Bigfoot and God knows what else over the years that you've investigated.
And they've always been, for me, good conversations.
But I'm curious as to why you would want to tackle Rendlesham Forest, because Rendlesham Forest, in many ways, is one of the holy grails of ufology.
And when you look at Rendlesham Forest, everybody's put their two cents worth in.
And a lot of people have disagreed about it.
And various accounts have been challenged and rubbished and naysayed over the years.
So why would you want to put your toes into that water?
Well, the primary reason, you know, I wouldn't have written the book if it was just like a rehash of what we already know about the subject.
I mean, there's just no point because it's already been said in sort of nine or ten books, you know, however many books on Rendlesham have now been published.
So there wouldn't have been any need for me to do that at all.
Even with the 40th anniversary coming up in December of this year, you know, there still would be no point in writing, you know, an overview because, again, that's all been done.
But over the years, as someone who's sort of looked into the case quite deeply and that I know a number of the guys who were out there at that time in the woods, the American soldiers, the reason why I chose to write this book was because over the years rumors have been suggested that the event itself or the events,
which covered three nights in December 1980, there have been rumors that it wasn't a UFO event, that it was like a sophisticated experiment, top secret experiment, using sophisticated holograms and hallucinogens to see how the human mind could be messed with to the ultimate degree.
Now, I've heard these things talked about peripherally, but they've been very much up to now on the fringes of what people have said about this.
Those people who buy into the thought that something happened there, they mostly think about aliens, UFOs, and that sort of stuff.
They don't talk about what you've just said.
No, that's right, they don't.
But the more that I dug into it, the more leads I was able to put together, you know, in relation to the idea of it being an experiment.
And of course, some people have said, well, how do you know you haven't been fed disinformation?
And my answer is I cannot say for sure that, you know, I wasn't fed disinformation.
You know, I'm honest enough to say, but I'm open-minded, but I feel after all the research that the secret experiment is the real one.
Now, you mentioned at the beginning, you know, that Rendlesham is sort of one of the primary cases.
You know, it's right up there with Roswell.
And if it was shown that it was a Secret experiment, and it did come tumbling down, then I think much of ufology would come tumbling down as well.
But the way I look at it, you know, I'm someone who goes looking for answers.
I don't go looking to uphold cool stories, you know.
But you've taken on a lot of vested interests here, not only the people who were there or say they were there, but also the people who've invested, like you've invested, a lot of time, shoe leather, and effort into investigating this thing and have come to the conclusion that maybe it was something, you know, not from here that may link to other phenomena like the interruption of missile silos in the US and other places and those sorts of things.
So you are up against a great wall, aren't you?
Well, yes, but I mean, you know, I've had that before and I'll have it again.
You know, I've got broad shoulders and thick skin and if somebody wants to debate me, you know, on the merits of this theory or that theory, I'll do it.
You know, I don't feel any need to uphold the traditional scenario of Rendlesham if it turns out to be something else.
I understand people don't want to see their, you know, their treasured belief system shattered, but if we're going to be responsible ourselves, you know, we really should just go where the evidence goes.
And that's what I've done.
But a lot of people, you know, already have said, you know, this is garbage.
And I said, well, have you read the book?
No.
Well, then, you know, it's not garbage or is garbage.
And that's one of the frustrations within ufology.
People just don't want to know about alternative theories.
They just want to hear cool stories of aliens.
And that's, to me, that's, you know, the irresponsible way of addressing all this.
You know, if people are happy just hearing and watching cool tales of aliens, well, that's fine if it keeps them happy.
But I would rather actually sort of open these cases bit by bit and find out what the answer is, not what people might want to hear.
Are you saying that all instances of UFOs and possible abductions and all of those things that we've been hearing about for decades, are you saying that they're all questionable?
Oh, no.
No, I mean, ironically, the whole reason why I got involved in this subject was because my dad was in the British Royal Air Force.
He was a radar mechanic, and he was actually involved in several UFO incidents in the 1950s where the radar operators were monitoring strange objects which were performing all sorts of weird movements in the skies, which clearly, you know, we couldn't fly anything like that back in the 1950s, which is when my dad was in the military.
And so, in my view, there's no doubt that there's a genuine, real UFO phenomenon.
Now, whether it's extraterrestrial, interdimensional, time travelers, I don't know what they are, but there is a real phenomenon.
But in the same way that there's a genuine UFO phenomenon, there's also a number of cases which I do think fall into the category of sort of classified military aircraft that might be sort of 10, 15 years ahead of what we're aware of, and technologies that may actually sort of mimic UFO events.
And so I think it's not an either-or kind of thing.
You know, we're looking at both sides, the real UFOs and the technology and science that we're developing now.
Okay, it's very important that we say that.
We're just coming up to our first break here, but it's important that we make this point now then.
Vic, you're not saying that all of ufology is rubbish.
In fact, your father, you know, your father was involved in some things that may well have been along those lines.
So that's not what you're saying.
You're just asking people to take a balanced view and focus.
Well, I would hope people would, but this is ufology.
And, you know, and the one thing that we all do in ufology well is a good argument.
And I enjoy a good argument, but the problem is at the end of the day, despite all the arguing and the debating over the theories, at the end of the day, we still don't have the answers.
And that's the frustrating thing.
You know, me, you, half a dozen of the guys from Mendelsham, you know, could all sit down together and debate on what happened for three hours and we'd still come out with no hard evidence of anything.
It would still just be theories and, well, I think this and I think that.
And that's what ufology is.
It's just a debate about cases.
You know, we've never yet found the smoking gun.
And so that's the problem, you know, and somehow, if we're going to get the answers, we need to get beyond that.
But I just don't know how we get beyond the, you know, the rumor mill and the legends and the theories without something that can be seen as like a definitive smoking gun.
If you would do this for me, just give me a quick thumbnail sketch, there's that phrase again, of the events of the nights in December 1980.
This was just around Christmas time of that year.
So just give me a, because it was more than one night.
Some people make the mistake of thinking it was one night.
It was a lot more than that.
Talk to me about what we know of those events.
Well, what we know for sure is that something very, very strange began on December 26, 1980.
And the location, for people who don't know, there are two, well, there were two military bases.
They're both closed down now.
One called Royal Air Force Bentwaters and the other one Royal Air Force Woodbridge.
And they're pretty much next door to each other and they both stand very close to Rendlesham Forest.
And they were constructed in the Second World War.
And as Hitler's got stronger and stronger, and there were concerns that the Germans would invade the UK, the British Isles, there was deep concern, you know, what are we going to do?
So a large contingency of US personnel came over to the United Kingdom and stayed there since until the bases were shut down a couple of years ago, a few years ago.
And so you have the location where this event occurred was right on the east gate of RAF Woodbridge.
And it was late at night, dark, and a number of the guys saw these strange lights on the fringe of the woods, just outside the perimeter fence of the base.
And they were given permission to go and see what it was, what was out there.
And that's when you have the story really expands, where you've got Lieutenant Colonel Charles Holt, who was the deputy base commander at Bentwaters.
He and some of his comrades, they went deeper into the woods and saw these strange lights, balls of light, this pencil-like laser beam in the sky, and all sorts of weird phenomena that were suggestive of an alien presence.
And Holt, to his credit, had the wherewithal to essentially get like a small audio cassette.
And he went out into the woods with his team, and they recorded about 18 or 19 minutes of the conversation between all the guys saying, yes, I can see that light, and, you know, what's that one, that kind of thing.
And he also prepared a memo for the British Ministry of Defence, which the MOD said was of no defence basically was, you know, they viewed the memo as interesting, but it wasn't perceived as having any bearing on national security.
So in that sense, you know, it was a very frustrating and mysterious situation, made even more mysterious by the fact that on the 27th and the 28th, there was further activity in the woods, again, of strange craft coming down.
There were rumors of strange little creatures running around the woods.
And following that, there were rumors of a huge cover-up to hide the truth.
And that's sort of the theory, or the scenario, I should say, that everybody knows.
There was one instance that you talked around there, but you didn't actually go specifically into.
There are the reports that one member of the military personnel had some kind of, if you've seen Star Trek, you'll know Spock's mind-melding.
There was talk of somebody actually having some kind of encounter with some kind of object that had hieroglyphics on it.
Am I recalling that correctly?
And there's been talk over the years that there might have been some kind of communication and a download of material, of information.
Yeah, this was Jim Pennerson who wrote the, yeah, and he wrote a book called The Roswell Enigma.
And that was basically a study of his own experiences because he was actually one of the guys who was involved.
And that's one of the important things about this case is that, okay, it is 40 years old, but a lot of the guys were still only in their early to mid-20s.
So now they're only like early 60s to mid-60s.
So in other words, this isn't like a Roswell case, you know, where everybody's just about dead.
You know, we can still interview the guys, they're still writing their books.
And yeah, and Jim Penniston wrote this book, extremely thick, long book.
And yeah, and it talks about sort of like a form of communication with some sort of entity or entities in the woods.
And since that's all happened, you've had some of the other guys have come forward long after retirement.
And as you mentioned earlier, it's become, because out of this sort of little event that began with just these small amounts of strange lights just outside the fence, it's now become the UK's biggest, most well-known UFO case.
I mean, you don't have to be interested in UFOs.
If you live in the UK and you say, what's Rendlesham Forest?
Most people probably would say, oh, yeah, that's where the UFO landing.
You know, the same way people over here say, what's Roswell?
Oh, that was a UFO crash.
So it has really been elevated from that one night in December 1980.
It's been elevated to the UK's most famous primary UFO event.
As far as you're aware then, talking to the people involved in this, and as you say, most of them are still around, do they tell you tales of how they were told to, as I have read, they were told, this never happened, keep your mouth shut about this.
Do they talk to you about that?
Yeah, some of them did say that they were warned not to talk about it and in quite sort of graphic fashion, you know, keep your mouth shut or else, that kind of thing.
But you've also, there are stories about some of the guys being hit with sodium pentathol, which is the truth drug, to try and get as much information out of them as they could.
And now that's been disputed by some of the people who were at the base at the time, and others at the base have said that exactly is what happened.
So there are parts of the story which, in other words, not everybody who was out there knew every aspect of the story.
And that's not a surprise, you know, when you've got all the chaos and running around deep in the woods in the dead of night, like 3 a.m.
You know, it's not like Rendlesham Forest is filled with lampposts and whatever to show you where you're going.
So in other words, there was a lot of chaotic activity.
And of course, when you've got three nights of activity and people are trying to remember 40 years later what happened on this night on that one, you know, it can cause confusions as well.
And the people that you spoke to, Did they want further discussion of this?
Presumably, the fact that they gave you an interview and they allowed you to speak with them suggests that they did.
But are they keen to have this raked over is the wrong phrase, but are they keen to have this discussed 40 years on?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, as I point out in the book, two of the most important people in the story are Jim Penniston, who we mentioned earlier, and John Burras.
They were two of the guys who were sort of really close, and Penniston was the guy who had this sort of like a communication of some sort.
And John Burras had an experience, got very close to it.
There was a period of like blacking out and missing time.
And so, you know, these people, you know, these guys are still willing to talk about this.
And as I said, Penniston's got his own book out, the Rendlesham Enigma.
So today, you know, they're quite open and calm and fine about speaking about their experiences.
Okay, now one other thing we have to say, and this is often referred to these days, but actually not deep in the past when this thing first started to be talked about, not so much.
That area is an area that is replete with paranormal tales, ghosts and witches and ghouls and all of those sorts of things that easily predate what happened in 1980, yeah?
Well, yes, but there's something far more important that predates 1980.
A lot of people don't know this, and even within the UFO community, it hasn't been sort of noted that deeply, namely that the whole area has been a hotbed of top-secret experiments on the part of the British government.
For example, in 1935, the British government created one of the earliest top-secret radar programs.
It was called the Tizard Committee.
And this was 1935.
Now, in the 1940s, at the height of the Second World War, there have been rumours at a place called Shingle Street where a group of German troops tried to invade the UK late at night from the east coast by Suffolk.
And reportedly, they were all killed in a very strange way.
They were all burned in the ocean, excuse me, in the sea.
And so you've got this weird story of Shingle Street.
Then in the 1960s, there was another top-secret radar facility created called Cobra Mist.
You had a facility that had a lot of Marconi personnel working there.
Now, the important thing to note is that the Tizard Committee, Cobra Mist, the mysterious fires at Shingle Street and the additional radar programs, all of them were located less than 11 miles from Rendlesham Forest.
So in other words, Rendlesham Forest since 1935 has been one of the biggest hubs for top secret technologically based programs since the 1930s.
And suddenly we get another one in 1980.
So I find that kind of suspicious that the government has run all these programs, top secret programs, since 1935.
And then suddenly we get another weird event occur in Rendlesham Forest.
As I said, all of those less than 11 miles from the forest.
And as you say in the book, and it's interesting to read, the fact that all of this paranormality and weirdness and witchcraft had been going on there for centuries beforehand, you think or you suggest or you put out there that actually, with all of those military experiments being done in that area, that that was deliberate because you could always play all of that woo-woo into it.
And that further muddies the water if anybody asks any questions.
Yeah, that's right.
Because, I mean, if you used any just normal area, forest land woods with no mythology or stories attached to it, well, that's not necessarily a problem, but it's not going to sort of influence people's minds.
But Rendlesham Forest has a long history of sightings of so-called phantom black dogs and large black cats that people report every year and ghostly encounters.
So my argument is if you want to stage something like a UFO event, which is actually really a secret experiment, the best place to do it in is an area of forest which is already steeped in tales of the paranormal, which would only amplify the rumors and the tales.
But there's another angle as well, and that's the time of the event.
And bear in mind, you know, it was December 26th, Boxing Day, and you went through the 27th and the 28th and the rumors that there were some events on the 29th.
Now, you know what it's like Christmas in England.
Everybody has, you know, a big chicken dinner or turkey dinner.
And, you know, everybody has a good time, watches the local movie or whatever's on, you know, and it becomes a holiday.
And most people are inside just hanging out, drinking and eating and sleeping.
And so this is an important thing when it comes to the timing, is that the whole thing went on at Christmas time.
Now, what a lot of people don't know is that the base itself, well, actually both bases, Bent Waters and Woodbridge, were filled with U.S. personnel.
You know, they got their families there as well.
So a lot of them had arranged to take time off for Christmas.
What that meant was that on the nights of the events, both bases only had skeleton crews because everybody else had taken time off for Christmas.
So again, you've got a situation where half the people on the base weren't even there to see anything.
So again, if you want to run a program, a secret operation, you want to have as few people on the bases as possible.
And what do we see?
It was Christmas.
They all took time off, and there was just a minimal number of people at the bases for those two or three days.
Now you quote the investigator Georgina Bruni, who I interviewed on The Unexplained in its early days on radio years and years and years ago.
And I seem to recall that she allowed me to, I think there was a fee to be paid or something, to play those recordings.
You know, the recordings that you told me were taken of the...
And I remember, although I don't have the recordings anymore, sadly, and I can't remember specifically the word spoken, but I can remember terror is a heavy word, but the fear in people's voices.
The people who were, you may well have heard those recordings, I'm sure you have.
Yes, I have, yeah.
People seem to be really scared.
So it makes you wonder what they were being scared of, doesn't it?
Well, that's the thing.
I mean, I'm sure you can find, I'm pretty sure you can actually find the entire recording on YouTube.
It used to be on YouTube.
I know that for sure.
Now, whether it's been taken down, you know, because I guess in one sense, it actually is Charles Holt's property.
You know, he recorded it on his recorder and with his tapes, you know.
And it was a bunch of people who were just, we say in the UK, gobsmacked at what they were experiencing.
Yeah, they were.
And, you know, they were out late at night, and you can tell in their voices, you know, there's like a sense of, I guess for some of them, it sounds like excitement.
Others, it seems like, you know, they're unsure as to what's going on.
Some actually sound quite worried.
And you can kind of get that sense in their voice, you know, that what's going on and, oh, my God, that kind of thing.
And, you know, if you read it sort of transcribed, it's still intriguing, but you're right, you don't actually get the atmospheric aspect that you do when you listen to the audio.
And again, whether it's a secret experiment or it was a UFO event, the fact is that those guys, as you can tell from the audio, were really, really sort of altered, you know, for years.
And some of them still feel, I won't say something as graphic as today, you know, PTSD, you know, when you get post-traumatic stress, but some of them for a while, you know, were having problems.
The central core of this book, the idea that Rendlesham Forest may not have been a UFO encounter, may not have involved the proverbial little green men, but may have been something equally strange, sinister, possibly some kind of military experiment.
Nick, it is a big thing to lay on people, isn't it?
Well, it is in one sense, and that sense, that particular sense, is because Rendlestrom has been elevated primarily by the media as the UK's most famous and well-known case, which it actually is.
But, you know, most UFO groups and books, you know, don't have the profile and the ability, you know, to spread the word, but the mainstream media does.
And so the media really are the ones, for the most part, who have really pushed the story because, you know, it sells newspapers.
You know, that's what it comes down to.
But as far as the experiments angle is concerned, the story that I got from all the people I interviewed and who were in the know, so to speak, was that the event itself was really a combination of two things.
One was highly sophisticated holograms which could be projected into the woods to the point where you would literally think you were seeing something 3D that was there, but actually wasn't.
And the other one was the sort of subtle and what was exact which was described to me in these exact words as low-grade hallucinogens.
That's to say, the release into the woods of hallucinogens, which would have an effect on the minds of the guys as well, which may explain why some of them had missing time and had blackouts and things like this.
Now, you know, the idea that the UK military or the Ministry of Defence or whoever was running this program, you know, the idea of altering the minds of some of the guys at least,
possibly on the second night, not on the first night, but also using them as guinea pigs in a secret experiment to see if they could actually tell the difference between something that's presented as like a UFO event versus a really radical, incredibly designed holographic type situation.
And so that's the scenario.
Now, in terms of the data that sort of pushes it down that avenue, one of the people who, after his retirement and who developed a deep interest in the Reynolds case, was Lord Hill Norton.
And Lord Hill Norton in the 1970s was one of the most powerful authoritative and influential.
He was the former head of the air ministry, wasn't he?
Yes, yes, he was right up the top of the scale.
And he developed a deep interest in the whole Rendlesham case.
And because of his position, he learned that there was a connection between Rendlesham Forest and a place, a top secret facility in the southwest of England called Porton Down.
And Porton Down is where the government does all its research into chemical warfare, bacterial warfare, viruses, and hallucinogens like LSDs and LSD and various other hallucinogenics as well.
And the story that he got from a number of informants was that the team from Port and Down were actually secretly brought up to Rendlesham Forest late on the night of the 25th, Christmas Day, when again everybody's going to be inside.
Half the guys at the staff at the base weren't even on base, you know, because they were taking time off.
And the story that he got, or one of the rumors, I should say, if we're going to be, you know, fully honest and straight, you know, he was given the same story by several sources to the effect that the team from Porton Down were brought up clandestinely on the 25th, night of the 25th, and devices were stationed in certain parts of the woods.
And as the guys would walk through, these devices would release the hallucinogens, aerosol-based hallucinogens, into the woods.
Okay, now the crucial thing that comes out of the book, though, and we have to, you know, we have to paint this in letters 10 miles high.
What you say in the book is that not that these people arrived afterwards to investigate the events.
You say that they were there before the events.
Yes, they were there to basically create the scenario or help to create the scenario with the other guys who were working on the holograms.
That's going to sound really far-fetched to a lot of people hearing this, especially those who've studied the details of Rendlesham Forest as far as we've known them up to now.
What else is there that stands up that claim?
Well, I mean, one of the important things to note is that the idea of a team coming up from Port and Down and dosing a bunch of US military personnel, you know, sounds bizarre and unlikely.
However, just that thing happened, but involving UK personnel in 1964.
For example, if you Google 1964 LSD Porton Down, British Army, it'll take you to numerous websites and also to an old piece of film footage taken in 1964 by Port and Down personnel, which was classified for years and just declassified a few years ago.
And basically what it is, is exactly what I've just said.
It was a team, a military Marines, were taken to a nearby area of woodland not too far from Port and Down and they were told they were going to be taking part in an experiment.
What they weren't told was that they were going to be dosed with LSD.
And you watch the footage and some of them cannot function.
Some of them had significant memory loss afterwards.
And none of this is hearsay.
As I said, you can see the film footage on YouTube.
Okay, and are you telling me that those people were not willing volunteers?
No, the ones in 1964 agreed to go along.
I've got you.
They were willing volunteers.
I understand.
Yes, they agreed to do it, but they weren't told what was going to happen.
All they knew that it was going to be an operation in the woods.
I understand.
That's all they were told.
But the people at Rendlesham in 1980, you're saying that something like that might have happened as far as you think, without consent?
Well, yes, yes.
That's the big difference.
One is, you know, where you've got full consent, but you don't know what's actually going to happen.
And another angle where nobody was given any consent, you know, or asked about any consent.
So, you know, one's a bit more grimmer than the other, but neither, what they both have in combination is that nobody really knew, you know, what was going to happen.
And, you know, and I think it is important to note that the person who, you know, brought up the Porton down angle was not, for the most part, you know, ufologist.
It really was Hill Norton.
He was the guy who pretty much kicked off the Porton down slash Rendlesham angles.
And did anybody else of similar stature ever reference that?
When Hill Norton approached the House of Lords and said, you know, I would like to know, you know, what the truth is behind this, well, Georgina Bruni at the same time was also speaking with people who knew of the Port and Down connection to this as well.
And several of them were specifically British Royal Air Force Police.
So that's kind of an intriguing thing, you know, which suggests that the majority of the programme may have actually been UK-based and driven out of the UK rather than run by a US team because Georgina's sources were all UK-based.
And apparently the Royal Air Force Police that she had knowledge of and was basically to help ensure that nothing went sort of wrong if things started to go wrong, you know, with the minds of the guys.
And so, in other words, you know, you've got several sources.
In fact, that's just sort of at the tip of the iceberg, you know, in relation to the Port and Down angle.
But, you know, when you've got an area which has been a hotbed for top secret experiments since 1935, when we know that there was some sort of Port and Down connection, and we know that there have been previous experiments, you know, where people were dosed up in the woods and the, you know, the teams that were running the program sat back and saw what happened, you know, what's the response.
So, you know, does that prove anything that aliens didn't land?
No, it does not.
But I feel that, you know, it's if you want to make a case for Bright Rendles from being a top secret experiment, I think you can make that case.
Okay, I hear what you say.
But of course, all of these things, as we know, you can play them uphill, downdale, and every which way, but loose, whatever.
The cynic, not the cynic, the skeptic within me, not cynic, I don't think I veer that far, but the skeptic in me says, if I was wanting to cover up a real alien encounter, then I would create a story about hallucinogens and, you know, an experiment on, just to muddy the waters, just to put everybody off the scent.
Well, the reason why I would disagree with you is why create a cover story that's so sensational?
You know, why didn't you, why not just have the government say are it just lights from the local well we have had that we've had people saying that yeah exactly that there was a lighthouse there well let's say for example you were running the program and it was a UFO event and you wanted to hide the real UFO aspect of it would you really create such a sensational and controversial scenario that is guaranteed to capture people's attention you'd arguably
keep it really low-key so that nobody would bother about it at all I don't know I mean neither of neither of us can be 100% sure of anything can we but if you're if there's a big thing happening then the counter to it has to be equally big doesn't it well no because nobody knew about it nobody in the villagers knew about it because we only found out when the whole memo was released in 1983 um from the uh freedom of information act in the u.s that's how we
audits.
I mean, nobody, you know, the media never touched on Rendlesham until 1983 because nobody knew.
So, in other words, you know, there was no need to make a cover story because nobody knew about it anyway.
If the news of the world hadn't got hold of the Holt Memo, which they did, and then put it in the newspaper, we wouldn't be any wiser now, really.
Yep, true enough.
What about the reports that the radiation levels on the ground where these things, you know, said to have happened, there were anomalies within the radiation levels, and I think some of the, I think there are those, you can tell me if I'm wrong about that, there are those who say that there are still anomalies in the area.
Where does that tie in?
Well, it depends who you ask.
I mean, you know, people, some people have said that, you know, the radiation levels were like 10 times normal, and then you've had other people who said that it was no different to regular background, regular normal background radiation, which you get everywhere.
You know, people think radiation's only around when there's an atomic bomb go off, but background radiation is present all the time, you know, and there's never really been a full consensus as to, you know, to what extent or otherwise, you know, the radiation angle has any merit to it or not.
The book is a great and very well researched book, which is what we've come to expect from you, Nick, over the years.
What can you do next with this thing?
You know, when you lay out a theory like this, and as I say, I've skipped through, I haven't been able to read every word on every page, but I did the, you know, the journalist skip read through it today, like you do.
As you know, but a story like that, I presume you can't leave it alone, though.
There has to be more, doesn't there?
You have to do more.
Oh, yeah.
And I mean, I often find that, you know, if I write a book and it's on a specific event or a specific series of events and the people who arrive are still alive, you know, I often get reports and or people, you know, Facebook message me and say, hey, you know, I saw the article you wrote and my dad was involved in that case, et cetera, et cetera, that kind of scenario.
So I'm pretty sure that hopefully, you know, people will come forward and be able to add more to this story because, you know, I mean, a lot of guys were able to do that.
were involved um you know over that three-day period and there are also rumors of prison evacuations and also of another experiment supposedly going off at a place called Royal Air Force Watton just over the border into Norfolk.
So, you know, whichever side you're on, the UFO angle or the secret experiment angle, the one thing we can all agree on is that data is still coming through.
And with more publicity and more books and articles, the bigger chance we're going to get to have more data and which may hopefully one day, you know, where we can just really nail the story down as ABC.
And amazing that 40 years on stuff is still coming up.
I promised John in Nottingham, a regular listener, that I would ask you this.
And we've only got like a minute or so, but he just wanted to know what your thoughts about the declassifying of those Tic Tac UFOs a few weeks back were.
You know, the famous ones from 2004 and 2015.
Well, I think, you know, for me, the most interesting thing is, well, actually, two things.
One, you know, is the material that was declassified.
But the other angle is the fact that it was declassified and put out there in the first place.
I mean, that's encouraging, you know, and it does sometimes make me wonder, you know, I'm not a big sort of believer in sort of worldwide UFO disclosure.
You know, we keep hearing about it, but it doesn't happen.
But I have to say, you know, some of these revelations, you know, and, you know, footage coming out from the military, et cetera, you know, you do have to wonder if this is being done to test the general public, you know, how they might react in the event of a, you know, a UFO event occurs.
So that.
Exactly that.
Exactly that.
And that's what I think.
You know, I wonder if that is the case.
But I suppose we'll know in the fullness of time, I hope, anyway.
Nick Redfern, you can tell the world the title of the book.
All right.
The Rendlesham Forrest UFO Conspiracy and the subtitle, A Close Encounter Exposed as a Top Secret Government Experiment.
And of course, I haven't looked at the book today.
I think there's a documentary or a movie in it.
So let's...
Oh, that's right.
Maybe somebody might be.
I know somebody was working on a documentary or two people were.
No, there are some of those happening, but I was just thinking about you specifically.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, I mean, somebody might be working at it already.
Who knows?
Congratulations on this and all of your work, Nick.
I always love talking with you, and you always leave me thinking.
So please take care, and thank you very much.
You too, Howard.
Nick Redfern, always a great guest and one of the great investigators, In my opinion.
Okay, second item, as I said, is Noah Angel, who has investigated strange happenings, ghosts, maybe weird phenomena at the British Museum.
What is it that made you want to research, of all places, the British Museum?
Beginning of all this is a sort of simple matter.
I was at the pub once upon a time, and it was a friend's birthday drinks.
And I'm sure you've had this experience, and some of your listeners probably as well, where you're gathered around a table, everyone's talking very excitedly.
But for some reason, because of the acoustics of the space, I just couldn't make out a word.
So I sat there and I tried, and I failed to understand what was going on.
And I asked my friend, finally, I said, this looks really interesting.
What is it that everyone's discussing?
She said, well, everyone sat around this table used to go to university together, all of us.
And when we were at university together, we all worked at the British Museum.
And we're all telling ghost stories from the British Museum.
Really?
Yeah, and I had to make sure I heard her correctly because as I mentioned, I wasn't hearing anything correctly up to that point.
So I said, just to be sure that I understood properly, I said, okay, well, you mean as in the museum itself is haunted.
And she looked at me with a look of real conviction and said, yes, there are many, many stories.
So that's how it began.
I thought to start with that there would be a few stories that everyone knows and retells and such.
But what I came to find very quickly was that in fact there were a lot of people who had worked there for 20 or 30 years.
There was just one thing in the course of those 20 or 30 years which happened, which they could never get their head around or rationally explain to themselves or anyone else.
And these tend to be the things that they want to share with me.
I've got you.
Now, it's one thing, isn't it, to listen to, as we've all listened to, amazing stories about places that we know.
You know, I'm not very far from Hampton Court, and some of the people who work there have told me stories about the stuff that goes on at Hampton Court, which is quite hair-curling.
But it's another thing to actually want to investigate it.
What made you want to actually go in and investigate these things?
Well, I mean, on that point, I think I have to be very honest with myself and clear with everyone else as to what my mission is.
I'm interested in collecting stories.
Well, that's a good thing.
I'm not a ghost hunter.
Knowing some of the things that I know, I wouldn't go looking for some of these things myself.
So, well, you know, I hadn't spent much time at the British Museum prior to this project, and to start to understand, to experience the building and the collection through the stories and through the perspectives of the peoples who have worked there over the years, it just kept pulling me in, basically.
Right, so it's a gift that doesn't stop giving.
Tell me the sorts of things then that people are telling you.
They must be more than just, you know, strange creeks in the middle of the night.
We probably don't have enough time for me to give you a proper overview, but I mean, I would say they're very, first of all, there are a couple of principles here.
I mean, everyone, no matter what their position in the museum, encounters this phenomenon at the level of their labor.
So overnight security, people are able to spend a lot of time alone with the objects, undistracted.
And things happen in that context.
For visitor services, very often visitors come, photograph something, something strange appears in their photographs, and they go to the first person they see in the blue shirt uniform and ask them, what is this?
You know, and so on and so forth.
So we have all kinds of things.
We've got, you know, things that seem to be connected to sacred objects, which still hold a bit of charge.
There are things which seem to be to do with contested objects, which, you know, there might still be some sort of residual conflict as to how they arrived at the museum or what they're still doing there.
There's things which only show up in photographs, things which only show up on CCTV.
There are temperature shifts.
There are all kinds.
There's a whole sort of world of different types of ghosts at the British Museum, so it seems.
It sounds like, doesn't it, that it's got it all, certainly from the report that I read about your research.
The ones that show up on CCTV, But the ones that show up on CCTV, what sorts of things show up?
Because CCTV is a very difficult, very rewarding when it works, but difficult way of capturing these things.
Sometimes you get lights or things that appear to move, but you're not quite sure.
What sorts of things are you aware of on CCTV?
Well, I have to go back in my mind.
I mean, certainly the things that are mentioned in the article, there are certainly stories about the Sutton Hoo Gallery where people will lock the doors, double check that they're locked, and then come by and the doors are just open.
And they'll go down to the CCTV and see that the door is just open.
There's no one behind them.
There's no one with a key, nothing like that.
There's another story which does appear in the article about these massive floating balls of light that came and went with the special exhibition.
And these were only perceptible through CCTV every night from half two to four in the morning until the exhibition had left.
I can tell you more about that if you'd like, but it's a longer one.
Okay, well, tell me a little bit more.
No, I'm keen to know.
Well, I think this might have been about 2013, 2014, there was an exhibition which was basically about German national history, Germany memories of a nation, something like that.
The first night, well, not the first night, but the first night that this occurred, it's about half two in the morning.
There was an alarm that was set off by a pull handle and the handicap stall in a women's toilet.
And, you know, the whole building is infrared up to the hilt.
It was very well demarcated where the security People and the people doing contracting work and so on were to do their toilet breaks and food and so on and so forth.
They rushed over, couldn't find any sign in that particular toilet or any of the adjacent galleries that anyone had been there.
It's kind of inconclusive.
And the guy who was operating the CCTV chamber downstairs called, radioed one of the security personnel, invited them downstairs and showed them at the entrance to the special exhibition.
There were massive balls of light that were chasing each other around, hovering in midair, all sorts of things.
They said it was like an orb party.
And this carried on every night from half two to four in the morning for the duration of the special exhibition.
They would just pop downstairs with their friend who works the CCTV and just watch them.
And it came and went when the special exhibition ended.
And this particular overnight security staff, when I pressed them for some sort of guess as to what might be the cause of all this, because, you know, these people very often, they don't, not all of them self-identify as believing in ghosts, but they all say objects hold energy and they'll tell you what has happened, but they're very careful about ascribing a cause to it.
And this particular worker said that there was a fragment of a gate from one of the concentration camps that was present in the exhibition.
And this was the only thing that they could imagine which would have such a charge all these years later so as to attract something like that.
So the sorts of objects or exhibits that seem to attract this kind of force or energy or whatever it may be, are they universally things that have a macabre or a dark history?
I would say no.
I mean, part of what started to intrigue me as I got deeper into this project was that there are objects that have extraordinary stories, which seemingly have no history of, you know, ritual use or, you know, no dark history in terms of how they've been acquired or what hands they passed through or whatever.
But, you know, it's hard to know the life of an object.
It is.
I mean, the one that you described from the German exhibition is perhaps, you know, a bit of an exception because you can track and trace what that is about and where that's been.
But I suppose other things, it is, as you say, difficult to look back at the background of objects and get to know exactly what it may be.
I was just trying to get some idea of whether there are clues in that and maybe there aren't.
Are you working directly with the management, the people who run the British Museum?
Do they know what you're doing?
I reckon they do at this point.
Well, that's all fine.
I'm sure if they've read the newspapers, they will have seen all about it.
Are there any particular kinds of objects?
Figures that represent people or boxes and things that are put in boxes or whatever?
Are there particular kinds of objects that seem to be magnets for this?
It's hard to sort of compare testimony, but ultimately I would say that the Upper Egyptian Gallery, which is where all the human remains are located, I mean, certainly there's a lot in the back of house, but where all the, as it's known, you know, the mummy gallery upstairs is absolutely heaving with stories.
I don't want to spoil the experience of your book for people because they need to look at the book, but just give me an example of the sorts of stories from the mummy gallery.
There are many, many, many, many stories from the mummy gallery.
The first story that I heard, I'll tell you this, is that there was a time when the cleaning staff refused to enter into the mummy gallery, the Upper Egyptian gallery, because they claimed that when they were cleaning the glass cases that the mummies were kept in, the bandages were moving.
Oh, Lord.
They said that they were rippling.
And, you know, this was serious enough that they all agreed as a unit that they were no longer going to go in there and clean these cases.
And this wasn't anything to do with the air conditioning.
The museum, no, I mean, this would have been certainly totally shielded from the air conditioning.
There's no air circulating inside the glass encasements.
But the museum did get wind of this and they felt that something needed to be said.
And I'm told that they prepared an elaborate explanation, you know, which was that the objects had been in storage for a very long time.
And as such, they were prone to the accumulation of static electricity.
And they argued that the cleaners were really over-laboring this cleaning.
Well, that sounds plausible, but we don't know.
Well, speaking to the guy I spoke to who told me this story is someone with extensive experience managing collections, and they said that, you know, the glass would have to be very thin, the fabric would have to be very thin.
I mean, these are enormous cases.
So he was saying this is totally implausible.
But, you know, that's the sort of thing that I heard.
I've heard things about...
I do, yeah.
Yeah, well, I'll tell you one.
There's a very wild one.
I mean, there are very, very many in the Upper Egyptian Gallery.
But there was a Dutch family that was in there, and they were, they had their child with them, young boy.
He was photographing just little discrete relics, you know, bits of ceramic or whatever, I would imagine.
And he looked back through, you know, his shots that he had taken throughout the day.
And again, this is according to some guards who were present.
They showed something appeared in the photograph, which they then showed to the guards.
And one of the guards who saw it said it was clear as anything.
There was a mummified Mexican baby boy hovering in mid-air In the gallery.
Boy.
And, you know, the guards there, they're used to weird things going on, especially in the Upper Egyptian Gallery.
So they sort of, I think, half pretended that they were really shocked by this, and the other half of them was wondering, well, why is there a Mexican ghost in the Upper Egyptian gallery?
And I was later told that, you know, of course, the Mexican gallery is directly downstairs.
So the guards had surmised that perhaps it had just floated through the floor underneath and sort of merged with the collection upstairs, or perhaps this family was in the Mexican gallery beforehand and walked upstairs and something followed them in.
Well, what a story that would be.
I mean, we can't know, but wow.
And the thing about temperature variations, of course, museums have to have carefully controlled temperatures.
So the idea that the temperature would plummet at any particular time or rise or whatever, that is astonishing because we know that museums, especially with extremely old items in them, have to be rigorously temperature controlled.
Well, that's true.
And of course, the workers are very well aware of this.
One very valuable source for these stories has been a woman named Fiona Candlin, who's a museologist.
And she had done some research whereby she was accompanying the overnight security staff, talking to them, observing how they work.
She was interested in all of this.
And she told me that over the course of one of these journeys, making the rounds with the overnight security, one of these guys took her through the gallery, a particular gallery.
I'd have to check the tape to see which one it was exactly.
But he went into very meticulous detail and said, okay, there's a vent here and there's a corridor here and there's a set of doors here.
And he was quite elaborately trying to explain to her why there were temperature variations in that part of the building.
And then they arrived at a certain spot and given all of this, that scaffolding that he had just put up to explain to her why things were the way they are in the gallery, he told her that there is a space in this gallery where it is inexplicably freezing.
And she looked at him.
She didn't ask anything besides, she said, are you telling me this because of ghosts?
And he said, yes.
Well, at least he was straight up about it, wasn't he?
Well, they've got plenty of time to suss it out.
They're in there all night, every night, you know, for years.
Okay, so you've written a book about this, and the book was the reason why this appeared in print this week.
Are you going to be doing any more investigations of this particular place, or maybe other places in London?
London is said to be replete with ghostly apparitions and presences.
You know, when we're allowed to do these things, are you going to be doing something more, something different?
Well, I put out a small publication, which was a bit of a preview.
So I'm actually still working on the big book, which will include all the details of these stories and ways of making sense of them.
So that's, I suppose, really, I've done a ton of research.
I've got a ton of interviews.
More information has come in since this has started to hit the press, but I would like to sort of take maybe two months to do more interviews and such, and then maybe six months to really sit down and perform.
All right.
Well, I'd love to speak with you again, Noah.
Can I ask you one final question, and I hope it's not rude.
It's not meant to be.
Noah Angel is a fantastic name.
Is that your real name?
It is.
Okay.
Well, Howard Hughes is my real name, too.
So Noah Angel, meet Howard Hughes.
Thank you very much, Noah.
It's been a real pleasure to speak with you.
Please take care.
I've enjoyed it also, Howard.
Take care of yourself.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Bye-bye.
Noah Angel.
And before that, you heard the great Nick Red fern.
More great guests in the pipeline here.
Don't forget the next edition will be about the Hess-Dahlen Lights in Norway with Professor Erling P. Strand.
So until next, we meet.
My name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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