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May 29, 2020 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
55:45
Edition 457 - Lori Rehfeldt

Lori Rehfeldt - ex USAF - talks about the high strangeness that happened during her years of service at the US airbase in Suffolk,UK where the "UFO events" of December 1980 made world headlines...

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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 Unexplained.
Well, we're looking back at a great week weather-wise in the United Kingdom.
We had one day when the temperature hit 27 degrees Celsius, 81 degrees Fahrenheit, and we're looking at some pretty good weather in the week that's to come if the weather forecasts are to be believed.
So what I've been trying to do, still in the middle of lockdown here, is I've been trying to get out for a cycle, for a bike ride, once a day, and maybe a little walk.
Very important because I've noticed that since I've been sedentary, well, a lot of the time and based at home, I don't know about you, I find that my joints, I'm not getting any younger, my joints are beginning to stiffen up a bit.
It's been a bit painful.
And I got some advice.
And the advice said you've got to flex everything.
So I'm trying to flex everything.
And although still painful, I have to tell you that using it all and exercising is the way forward.
So that's my story.
Love to hear your stories.
Thank you very much for all of the nice emails.
And thank you so much for the amazing support that you have given me during this week.
A lot of you sent me messages and emails this week.
It's been an incredible week, one way or another.
And to know that you care about what I do and to read your thoughts and your guidance has meant a lot to me.
If you'd like to connect with me, tell me your story, tell me how you're getting by in lockdown, then you can go to my website, theunexplained.tv, designed and created by Adam from Creative Hotspot, and you can send me a message through there.
And thank you very much, by the way, to Haley, who does fantastic work setting up these shows.
You know, basically, I send Haley a great big list and details of how to contact people, and Haley goes away and does it.
Couldn't do it without Haley.
Haley and Adam, my heroes in all of this and always.
Okay, now the guest on this edition is another take on the events at Rendlesham Forest.
I think we've heard on a number of occasions from various guests here that Rendlesham Forest and that whole area where those events at the end of December 1980 at the twin air bases there, Bentwaters, Woodbridge, the events there were much more than those that happened on those nights that we all know about.
And we'll get confirmation of that in this edition with somebody who doesn't do a lot of interviews.
Her name, Laurie Rayfelt, in Tucson, Arizona.
She was in the U.S. military in 1918, a couple of years before that, stationed here in the UK.
She experienced some things you will not have heard about, and we'll be talking about those on this edition of the show.
So Laurie Rayfeld from Tucson, coming very soon here on The Unexplained.
Like I say, thank you very, very much for everything that you've done for me.
You know, it's a two-way street here.
You tell me that you're, you know, you're liking these shows, which is great.
And you tell me your stories, and you've heard a little bit about me in this last week.
So, you know, thank you very much.
As I'm sitting here in lockdown, hasn't been the easiest period for any of us, has it?
But I think we're, I hope, we're getting through to the sunlit uplands now, and we're not going to have to do this for too much longer.
Although I have to say, I've loved learning about producing material at home.
You know, I've become a real one-man band at that.
And it's been, I think it's been the experience of having to be at home and focused on what you do that has actually done that for me.
So I come out of all of this, actually, I think, maybe having improved in skills one way or another.
But let's not speak too soon, eh?
All right, let's get to Tucson, Arizona.
Then we'll talk Rendlesham Forest with Laurie Rayfeld.
Laurie, thank you very much for coming on my show.
You pronounce my name so well.
I got chills.
I started to look over my shoulder to say, is he talking about me?
Two things, Laurie, you'll find if you ever have to do any of this stuff, and I know that you've done conferences and stuff, but people are very, some people can be very picky about how you pronounce their name.
And if you get it wrong, they'll let you know.
And also, if they have a title, they have a title, then you've got to get that title right.
I suppose it's a respect thing.
I don't know.
But that's the way I've always.
Yeah.
And my title is a reflection of what when I was at Bentwaters, actually.
I eventually retired after 27 years, 10 years in the Air Force and active duty.
And then the rest of my time I was in the Army Reserves.
I retired as an Army major, Army Reserve Major.
And that to me is really important because it was Bentwaters was a tough assignment.
It was, for me, I felt like I spent most of my time just trying to survive that place.
Okay, well, that's interesting.
We need to be getting into the detail here because I've never really talked about anybody who worked at Bentwaters.
You know, there were two air bases, weren't they?
Just so that my listeners know about this.
They were side by side.
One was a British one, one was an American one, and they coexisted.
They were part of the NATO operation, especially in the likes of 1980 when all of this happened, because the Cold War was still on.
When I was there, both bases were considered, they called them sister bases.
And they were both run by mainly we were Bentwaters, but we worked both Bentwaters and Woodbridge.
And both bases were American bases.
And yeah, so sometimes we'd work, you know, at Woodbridge, which was several miles away from Bentwaters.
But, you know, it just seemed like it was just an extension of Bentwaters to me.
Woodbridge was tiny.
It was a small little base.
And definitely, if you compare them to military bases anywhere else in the world, I mean, most bases you can get really lost on, but both Bentwaters and Woodbridge, you could not really, you could not get lost.
And so, yeah, so anyway, they were both American bases.
Okay.
And before I ask you, I want to wind the story back just a little, because I want to know about you.
I want to know about the person that I'm talking with.
But before I ask you that question, can you just do something that I asked you before this and just move very slightly back from that microphone so we don't get any artifacts, as I say.
Now, I want to know about Laurie Rayfeld because you were, and we didn't say this, you were in the 81st Security Police Squadron at RAF Bentwaters, but you were with the American military because it was a joint base.
Yep.
Yes.
I was an airman at the time.
I got there from out of basic training.
I was 18.
And yeah, from the moment I got there, I, yeah, being young and everything, I was excited to be there for the adventure.
When I was a child, my mom took me on a trip to England and Ireland and France and Italy.
And so I was really kind of excited to get back to the country and just take in the sights and also the smells of burning turf, which I really, really like a lot.
It just brought me back home.
And so, and I, you know, my roots are from, my grandma lived, was born and raised in Ireland.
So, you know, we weren't too far, you know, being in the United States.
If she hadn't gone on that boat in the 1920s, I probably would have been a young Irish woman.
Or, excuse me, I'm old now.
But back then.
Back then, I would have been.
Yeah.
Because what we have to, you know, we have to point up is that these events, astonishingly as it may feel to a lot of us, these events were 40 years ago this year.
So, you know, I'm delighted that your recollection of being there is so clear.
Now, I've spoken to other people who were in the military police there, which was a very big part of the contingent there.
What sorts of things did you have to do?
What did your duties entail?
Oh, I would do patrol, meaning I would be given an assignment to be one of the patrols.
And there was one patrol over at Woodbridge.
So that would be police 4 was the call sign.
And the gates were police 12 was the main gate at RAF Woodbridge.
And then there was Police 10 was at the technical side of RAF Bentwater.
So there were, you know, there were numbers.
So I was a gate guard and I was also or entry controller and I, you know, did a lot of patrol.
And I worked the midnight shift and the swing shift, the swing shift and the midnight shift.
So that was kind of topsy-turvy, having to work those kinds of outs.
I was 18, so there you go.
I'm like, oh.
Okay, now it's never been formally confirmed, but it is widely reported that there were nuclear missiles there at one stage, at least.
But like I say, that's never been formally acknowledged or confirmed.
Was your duty to protect what was within, to protect any hardware that might have been there, or was it to keep order among the service people?
Mainly to keep order among the service people and take care of traffic situations.
The one incident that I do remember was when I first got there, they were moving some of the nuclear weapons.
They were moving them from RAF Woodbridge to RAF Bentwaters.
And they did post me near the NMSA, the non-munition storage area that was right beside the weapon storage area.
And they told me, my flight chief said, look, if anyone comes over that hill, you shoot.
And I was, you know, just kind of scared, you know, thinking, oh my God, what if I kill somebody?
I can't, you know, I was grappling with that whole thing of.
How old were you then?
You know, you were very young to be given an order like that.
Yes, I was either 18 or just turned 19.
Yeah, I was, so I stood there with my, and I had an M16.
But usually working with, see, I worked on the law enforcement side versus what you mentioned, the security police side.
Most of them were security police where they did guard the weapons and the aircraft.
But our job kind of sometimes mingled in a little bit that we touched it.
But personally, I never even went into the weapon storage area until, oh gosh, what was it, 20, I think 2000?
Yeah, I went back to visit the bases, right?
So it was several years after the bases closed, just because I was still, I've always been grappling with my experience there and how it's really affected me and pretty much shaped me in many ways.
It's, you know.
Well, a lot of people claim that they were changed by those nights, that experience at Randlesham, at the twin air bases there.
And I don't doubt that they, whatever the events were and how they unfolded, I don't doubt that people have been changed and some people have had to a lot of them.
No, they've had a lot of coming to terms to do.
I think that's it.
And it sounds to me, and we'll get into the story in the next segment of our conversation, but it sounds to me like a lot of people had a lot of coming to terms to do with those events.
Even if they didn't seem impactful to you at the time, over time they've become so.
Yeah, when I was there, and I wasn't there for those nights in December of 1980, I actually left there, we call it PCSed, permanent change of station.
So I PCSed, I like the way they can make that into a word, December 15th.
Although my orders said December 27th, and I'm like, no way am I going to spend my time sitting in the dorm room waiting for them to get on a bus to get back to get to Milton Hall to fly off, that whole thing.
I'm like, no, I want to be home for Christmas.
But my sighting, and that was just one of, that's kind of the tip of the iceberg.
And my sighting occurred in February 1980, and I wasn't by myself.
I was with Keith Duffield, and I know we'll talk about that in a little bit.
Well, the reason I want to do it in the next segment of the conversation is that I want to get into that, and then I want to relate it to everything else that followed and what happened when you discovered that other people had discovered, you know, had had rather other experiences there.
So the whole thing will tie together, but I don't think I've ever spoken, and I think my audience will be interested in this.
I haven't really spoken with, and nor has anybody really told me about the experience of being there, the experience of working there, what kind of a place it was, you know, what it was like to be with your colleagues there in England and the duty that you felt that you had.
You know, you were giving service overseas.
So I'm just interested to know what the vibe was like at that place and what you felt you were there to do.
Yeah, the vibe there, which is an excellent word, it was hostile.
It was a hostile environment.
Really?
England was wonderful.
I loved England.
I mean, I lived at one point, I did live in Wickham Market and I loved it.
I felt a peace.
As soon as I got off the base, I felt the peace.
But when I was on the base, I felt like I was in the war zone.
I truly did.
And it's because the base itself, everything is off-kilter.
Everything was off-kilter.
And it just wasn't, it was like the UFO sighting was just a part of it, the one that I experienced.
Was it a bit of a backwater?
Did it feel like a backwater?
What do you mean by backwater?
Oh, sorry.
Backwater means like, you know, a place that it's there, but it's not, you know, I don't know how it fits into the whole military strategy at the time.
Was it an important place?
I think I'm saying.
Well, I think that there were, you know, since you do the unexplained and the paranormal, there was a lot of paranormal stuff going on over there.
Really?
And I think many people, yeah, and that's why, I mean, when I start, if I were to take out many of the experiences I had there, I would say that, yeah, it was horrifying in many ways.
But throughout it all, I mean, working with the guys and different things, we did cut up and have fun and laugh.
But when I had the experiences, whether it was paranormal or the UFO, I was, yeah, I was scared.
I was really, really scared.
And I couldn't tell anybody because if you did, Major Zickler at the time was really big on, you know, if you start talking crazy stuff, you're going to snap out, which means to snap, yeah, to snap.
Snap was a big word.
We'd look at guys who finally quit, did something real stupid, whether they shot their weapon off while on post or one guy stole a weapon and threw it in the North Sea and they were then told, you're not going to be working in security police or law enforcement.
You're now going to be on what they call weeds and seeds duty, which was pretty much go around the base picking up trash before they were processed out.
And there were a lot of people that were processed out that way.
I mean, it was just really, that too was so unnerving to me to see so many people, so many really, really smart young young men who I thought a lot of, but they just couldn't take it anymore.
Why was it so because the job was to guard, to run an air base?
You know, it was part of the whole network of British and American bases at that time, some of which still exist.
Why was it so stressful for some people?
You know, I would ask the same question.
I'm thinking, you know, logically, we're looking at two small bases in a sleepy area.
You know, so, you know, it's got the wood, you know, the forest and it's farmland.
You know, they said it was out, and we were out in the sticks.
And yeah, it was just so crazy.
It's like, why, why all this?
I mean, I felt like I was walking on thin ice the entire time I was there.
All right.
The last question then, before I go to commercials here.
Last question just to tidy up.
You said that some people were finding it stressful.
Some people got put on weeds and seeds duty doing the gardening.
They weren't doing anything important because they'd had a problem.
That would be a nice way.
Yeah.
That would be a nice way of putting gardening because they were pretty much, it was like a form of humiliation, you know, having them go out and pick up trash.
You know, it's just a way it...
Okay, last question then before we get to those commercials, which you've got to do.
Do you think that the fact that so many people found it, you say so many people found it stressful, was because of the atmosphere around that location?
You know, or will have discovered subsequently that a lot of people have reported paranormal issues in that Rendlesham Forest area nearby for not just for decades, but for hundreds of years.
It's been a location where things have happened.
Do you think that played into it at all?
Absolutely.
But here's the thing.
I think it has to do with a receptivity.
I think there are people out there that are lightning rods to all this stuff that's unexplained, whether they want to believe it or not.
I think other people they are just not aware.
I mean, it's not in their senses to pick it up.
If it's not, you know, if you can't taste it, feel it, touch it.
Okay.
So you're basically saying some people were experiencing it all subliminally, even if they didn't know they were affected.
All right.
I hear what you say.
Laurie Reifelt, we're talking with, she was at Rendlesham Forest.
She was at those twin air bases serving the American military in 1980.
She wasn't actually on duty the night when the famous events happened.
But when we talk about Rendlesham Forest, we know that other things are reported to have happened there over a period.
Things that you might deem as UFO sightings, things that you might deem as something else.
You said that there were some paranormal events that happened to you that were nothing to do with UFOs or anything like that.
Maybe that's me surmising too much.
Let's talk about those events.
Some of it I can and some of it I cannot because I promised Dion Johnson, the director of Capel Green.
Okay, we've got to say that Capel Green is the new documentary that is going to be coming out soon that Gary Heseltine, our friend here on the show, has been working on.
So, okay, well, tell me what you can tell me without ruining Gary's documentary.
For me, there were pockets of areas on both bases that were, there was something going on there.
And so, I mean, if someone were to take me to Bentwaters, I would, and Woodbridge, I would go to specific places and I would say there's something happened here.
And over the years, I've actually been looking to figure out what was going on in that area.
And hence, I, you know, it's just trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
And so that's why often I've been, when I was first found out about the other sighting, I didn't find out about that until 1996, something like that.
I mean, it was just, I had a computer on my desk and I typed in RAF Bandwaters and all of a sudden I came up with this UFO thing.
And the first thought that went through my mind is, it came back, you know.
But, but there were about, back to the paranormal stuff, there was about five places and five experiences that I had there that were really, really, some of it was just off the wall.
I wish I could explain it, but I promised him I wouldn't say anything.
Okay, well, it's going to be hard to do the conversation if you can't tell me something about it, though, Laurie.
Right.
I mean, look, were they ghost experiences?
What were they?
You know.
One would, I'm sorry.
One would be a kind of a, I guess a UFO, a gray.
And the other one, yeah.
Yeah.
I would say two of them were alien related.
One was actually a ghost.
And the other one was some, it was like a mad man with dark hair, dark.
He was over.
I could talk about him, I think.
Okay, well, you say that you saw a gray alien on the base, near the base?
I actually, it's the way someone told me it's like I'm sentient, clarient, clarient, sentient.
Clari sentient.
It's like I felt them.
I guess I'm a really strong feeling.
And I felt them, and I was scared.
And they told me in my mind not to turn around that whole thing.
It's like, we're not going to do anything, blah, blah, blah.
So I kind of, you know, listened to it because I didn't want to be frightened too much.
Hold on.
And relative to the events at Rendleton Forest, which were all in December 1980, when was that experience for you?
Oh, these other experiences were sprinkled throughout the time I was there.
I mean, there was a couple of places that I, the one where I was talking about that crazed man, that was at Bentwaters, and it was right near the POL site, the petroleum site, or the locks site.
And I couldn't, I had to check, I always had to go over there and check the lock, and it scared the hell out of me.
I couldn't wait to get back in the truck and get out.
So that one was quite often, but the others were- No, it's like I, again, it's like I knew it was there.
It presented itself in my mind.
I know that's crazy, but it did.
And I knew if I looked to the left, because it was looking to the left was off the base.
And I knew there must have been like he was coming out of a swamp.
And I knew that in that area, even though I couldn't see it because it was covered in brush and weeds and, you know, trees, it wasn't until I got Google Earth that, yeah, there is definitely a pond, like swamp there.
So, you know, there are things that, yeah, it's just crazy, I guess.
And when that happened, did you tell people about it?
No, no.
They would have snapped me and I would have been out there picking up garbage.
And do you think because you said other people had problems and they got put on the weeds and seeds rotation, could it be that some of those other people, and I'm not putting words into your mouth here, I don't know.
Could it be that some of those other people that you say had issues there, might they have seen and experienced things that made them uneasy?
Yes.
Yes.
I know one area that really made people uneasy is Eastgate, which was pretty close to where the Rendleshim and my UFO sighting, I actually call my UFO sighting East Gate Incident.
So I called EGI.
We got RFI, so I decided to empower myself and call it EGI.
But there were a lot of people that when they were left on the gate, we had a couple of guys that would start crying.
I mean, it was just, you know, it was really, really, yeah.
You were isolated and you had to stand out there at this little telephone booth type of gate shack.
It's not the one that they show when people are showing you what Eastgate looked like.
Eastgate was not this huge, you know, big gate shack that's in the middle of the road.
It was actually, it looked like a little box that was on the side of the road.
But it was just, it was butted up against the forest.
So the forest is behind you and you've got glass all around you.
So you feel like you're kind of in a fishbowl.
And yeah, it was just disconcerting for sure.
And because other people were experiencing things at Eastgate, at the Eastgate, were the commanding officers, were the people in charge of the base aware of these things?
And if they were, what did they do?
Well, they brushed it off.
They brushed it off as, you know, just stories or they'd minimize it or say, oh, well, look who's doing it.
He's, you know, he's one of those people that drink a lot or, you know, they would just minimize it or rationalize it.
And often, you know, it really made you more of an outsider, especially for if you wanted to fit in, you had to, you know, suck it up.
Right.
Keep a lid on it and don't talk about it.
What a strange culture.
And look, this is a hard question to ask, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
You know, I'm presuming that maybe people found escape at times in, as you said, alcohol, maybe substances.
I don't know.
Did you?
Did I personally?
No, no.
Well, I did.
No, I take that back.
I did.
It was a culture of drinking and I, you know, I would drink once in a while with friends, go out for a drink or something like that.
And I just want to say here that I was only asking about substances.
I don't have any knowledge that anybody did do those things there.
So just before anybody says, you know, nobody did that there, I was just asking you whether that was the case.
No, to give you an example, one of the drug dog handlers, when I first got there, he had to get rid of, it looked like a brick-size block of hashish.
He had to get rid of it.
But he couldn't do it by himself.
He had to have a witness with him so that you would know that it didn't go from him to me or, you know, he wasn't going to take it home and use it.
And it was like a way of controlling.
Right, that's an official disposal procedure.
By the by, how did he come by that?
You know, where had it been seized?
That I don't know, but it was definitely at the law enforcement desk in this locked up area at the time.
But when he took it out, we went over by the runway, and there was this little area where he put it into it.
It was like a, anyways, like a fire pit.
And I looked at him and I said, what are you doing?
And he says, we got to destroy it.
I'm like, yeah, but how are you going to destroy it?
He said, we're going to burn it.
That's not a good idea.
I know.
And I said, where should we stand?
And, you know, he pretty much said, you can stand wherever you want to stand.
And, you know, he said, I'm going to stand against the wind.
And I don't know.
I don't know.
But.
Okay, I was just interested to.
I was just trying to find out whether, you know, maybe people who were sort of drinking to reduce the tension or whatever might have been more prone to experiencing things.
But you're telling me that those things were happening anyway.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was, yeah, there was a lot.
There was drug and alcohol issues a lot actually at that base because I left there and went to other bases so I could compare the difference.
That base was R.A. at Mentwaters when it came to substance abuse was it was through the roof.
It was like these young kids coming over and they become alcoholics.
I mean, it was severe.
Well, I hear what you say.
Now, the Eastgate, where people have experiences, you say that you have a UFO experience.
Was that where you say that you met an alien gray creature?
Or was that something different?
Yes.
Yeah, it was the same place.
Yes.
I didn't really meet him.
I really didn't meet him.
He was kind of behind me.
So he pretty much was, I don't know what he was doing.
It was pretty much just probably wanting to, I don't know, understand me or something.
I don't know.
But I felt him and it was real, he was death, like a death white.
I mean, it was like he was not, he wouldn't be someone I would really want to see, you know?
So I was thankful.
But that only happened once.
And one thing that I've always been consistent about is what I've seen.
I have never changed what I've said and, you know, never embellished it.
I haven't initially when I talked about this, I would only talk about the UFO sighting because that seemed to be okay because it happened after in December.
But before, But all the other sightings, even when I was still on active reserves, when I did my disclosure interview with Stephen Greer, I didn't want to get into the paranormal stuff.
I really didn't because it was just, it was like, it was crazy.
It was crazy insane.
And I was embarrassed by it because, you know, I knew it was there.
I felt it.
I mean, it was, you know, and some of the other things that I experienced, I finally decided to share it with Gary Hazeltine.
Hasletine?
Haseltine, who's making the Cable Green documentary.
I get this.
Because I was going to ask you, why are you talking about this now?
I guess that was the question that was simmering away, but I was going to ask later, but let's say it now.
Because I need to.
And the reason I need to is because it's something out there in the universe that A, wants me to get the word out, and B, wants me to help me understand what we've been experiencing and what's really happening in the universe.
Okay, so you say that when you were at the East Gate at that base, and this was before the December events, was this the same year?
Yes.
Okay, and you felt the sorry.
You talk about the UFO sighting?
Well, I'm talking about the alien and the UFO sighting.
Yeah, the alien, I think, came before that.
That might have been 79.
Okay.
And the UFO sighting?
That was February 1980.
And there have been other reports of stuff happening not only before December 1980, but also after it.
We have to remember that.
So what did you see?
A craft or lights in the sky?
What was going on?
Well, I was on patrol with Keith Duffield.
It's funny how I remember some of these names, and he and I were checking the back gate because at that point in 1980, East Gate was now closed in the evening time, so you didn't have to stand out there by yourself.
You know, if somebody needed to come through the gate, they could contact us so we could open the gate for them.
So we were checking the gate lock on it, and then I pulled back and positioned my truck off base.
And so I was in the driver's seat, and I could, we were driving American cars back then on the English base.
So I was sitting in the left seat, and I was looking out my window, and out my window was the runway, and straight ahead would be in the direction of the North Sea.
The aircraft, it was three o'clock in the morning, or 0,300 hours, and we just looked out, we saw this bright yellow, white-yellow light.
And at first I thought, oh, that's interesting.
There's an aircraft approaching.
And it might have been about several hundred feet off the ground.
I mean, it wasn't like a little speck in the sky or anything.
It was low.
But it was coming in like a regular approach.
And I thought, oh, we got an airplane coming in.
And I started thinking about, that means we have to do a customs detail.
And I kept looking at the runway to see if the lights would go on.
And the lights did not go on.
Okay.
What is a costume detail, by the way?
Custom, you know, when people go from one country to another.
Oh, I see.
Sorry.
I thought you said costume customs.
Of course.
Yeah, you've got to do the formalities.
Okay, so you're seeing this thing approaching and you think it's just a regular aircraft.
Right.
And then it stops.
It was about 100, probably about 100 yards from us.
I don't know how to interpret that for the metric system.
Well, then we know 100 yards.
Don't worry about that.
100 yards is like smarter than you can use metric.
95 meters, I think, but it's neither here nor there.
Okay.
And thank you.
And it stopped.
It just hovered.
Now, this thing didn't make any noise.
That was the other thing that we, you know, that watching it, we were probably watching it for it wasn't, it hovered for probably about 20 seconds.
And it was a good size orb.
I'd say, yeah, it looked like, like I said, it looked like I thought it was a cargo plane.
So the aircraft was hovering, again, wasn't making any sound.
And it was for about 20 seconds.
And we were stunned.
We were just, both of us were just staring straight ahead.
We didn't say a word.
And then it made these geometric movements.
It went up, down, left, right.
It went up about maybe 20 feet and then down about 20 feet and then left, right.
So it was a very tight geometric movement.
And it may have done it a few times.
That I don't remember.
I mean, you know, I kind of just remember it doing that.
And then it broke into three pieces and it happened.
It was like a burst.
And then it flew across the RF Woodbridge runway.
Now, that's a big difference in what the guys saw in Rendells from Forest.
And I'm not comparing either one, but the problem with my UFO sighting is that it flew over military land, property.
And that really bothered me because at that point, I was really not one of the most well-liked people with a lot of this sergeants.
I think because A, I was a woman and, you know, and B, I don't know.
I don't know.
Maybe I was too laid back.
I don't know.
but I knew I was in a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation because when it split into three pieces, it flew across the runway and it flew so fast, it flew, it did an arc kind of a movement.
And it flew straight up in the sky.
And we thought, you know, we were looking at the three lights and then it disappeared into the night sky.
And we're both staring up there, waiting for it to come back as if it was part of our entertainment now.
Come back.
We've got to figure out what you are.
And why were you not hitting the intruder alarm buttons then?
I know.
I was processing what the heck we just saw, you know, and the next thought that went through my mind was it didn't do any damage or anything that I could see.
And then the third thing is I handed my radio over to my colleague and said, you better call this in because, you know, you have to report it.
It flew over the base or flew over the runway.
And he looked at me and goes, no, you're the lead patrol.
You call it in.
And I was like, oh, God.
So I called it in and the desk sergeant at the time was, he and I didn't really see eye to eye.
But, you know, when it came to doing your job, you still got to do your job.
And I said, you know, over the radio that we saw these lights and they, you know, what they did.
And then he immediately told me to get on the phone.
And Eastgate had a landline.
So I got out of the truck and went over to the to the gate, the gate check, and got on the landline.
And they're like, you saw what?
You know, and I said, well, you know, it was these lights and it looked like an aircraft coming in.
I thought it was a, you know, cargo plane.
And then it made these geometric movements and then it flew across the base.
And I said, hey, look, I'm just trying to do my job.
Were you hearing, but I didn't ask you, you should have.
Were you hearing engine noise?
Did it make sound?
It made no sound, sound whatsoever.
And so he told me to go to the air tower.
So I went to the air tower and I was climbing up these steps.
Now, it was about three o'clock in the morning when all this was going on.
And we got, and in February then, as you know, you guys do dark for a really long time during that time of year.
I hate it.
I know, yeah.
Yeah, dark from about four o'clock in the afternoon until eight o'clock in the morning or whatever.
No, not that late.
I'm exaggerating.
No, it's not quite the way it is in Scandinavia, but no, the winters are quite dark here.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so we got to the air tower and he told me to report.
So I went up and the stairs to get into the air tower, you had to climb these outside stairs.
So we climbed it.
It was a small little air tower at RAF Woodbridge.
And I pounded on the door.
There was no answer.
I pounded again on the door.
Right, so this is the control tower.
This is where the radar is.
Yes, yes.
And the guy who answered the door was an airman, and we woke him up.
It was obvious.
He was so, he looked, he looked out of it like, oh, you know, he was in a good dream, you know, that kind of thing.
And we told him what we saw.
And he said, well, that could have been, and he was giving a guess.
He said, that could have been afterburners from a fighter aircraft on one of the British bases.
And I said, I said, no, it's not.
I said, first of all, afterburners is usually a sonic boom that occurs.
This thing made no sound.
And he was like, I don't know.
I don't know what to say.
Was he covering up the fact that he'd missed it?
Yes.
I got that impression.
Yes.
And that was the impression I got.
And so I, at that point, I had to get back on the radio and just let them know that the air tower didn't really see anything.
And then I was walking down those stairs again, and it was kind of funny because I was looking out toward the North Sea, thinking about the British base, thinking about afterburners, you know, just thinking about these things.
And the sky was breaking open.
It was becoming morning.
It was still dark a little bit, but it was becoming morning.
It was a lot lighter than I thought.
And it wasn't until years later that it dawned on me that there was some lost time.
It wasn't a lot of lost time, but the fact that it was three o'clock in the morning and then all of a sudden it's like the sky is breaking open for sunrise.
Right.
And did that happen to you and Keith, the two of you?
I haven't talked to him about that.
But yeah, I'd have to, if I could contact him.
But the last I heard, I think he's in Oklahoma.
But we did talk several years ago about it.
But I still didn't connect the dots because I, but I can just remember always looking off to the right and while I'm standing at the air tower thinking about the whole thing, because, you know, thinking, because I was pissed off about him saying afterburners, because I'm thinking, I'm not stupid, you know.
And, you know, sonic boom, this thing made no sound, you know.
And so anyway, I was pretty fed up with it.
And it really upset me because it made me realize because I felt so discounted there that I felt that Jesus Christ could have come up to me and told me the meaning of life.
And I'd have to tell him, I love you, man.
You're a great guy.
You got to go to the public affairs office because no one's going to believe me.
Okay.
And this whole experience then left, it left you conflicted.
Oh, it left me, you know, for the next few weeks, it was Ray Felt seeing UFOs.
Duffield and others, really, I don't think they got that kind of heat.
I know the guys who saw the December UFO sighting, they did too.
And actually, when I found out about their UFO sighting, which was, gosh, about 15 years, 1996, I was, and I found out John Burroughs was one of them.
I was like, yay.
Good, good.
You could handle that kind of.
So when you've had some contact with these people who experienced the main event, if it was the main event in December 1980, when you've contacted them, have they been surprised that more was happening there than they knew?
They knew what had happened in December 80, but you knew other stuff?
They kind of didn't listen.
They just didn't listen.
It was sort of like, aha, it's there.
Oh, yeah, Lori had her own sighting this time.
That was Jim Peniston.
He mentioned my sighting in his book.
And The Enigma, Russian Enigma.
And John Burroughs, you know, there were just, I wasn't on their radar, you know, and same with Charles Halt.
I did talk to him in 1997.
And I thought, I said to him, I said, you live in Woodbridge, Virginia?
I said, isn't that interesting?
Everything happened at Woodbridge-based.
Now you live in Woodbridge.
Synchronicity.
Or maybe not just happenstance.
Who knows?
No.
That's a perfect word.
So is what you want.
Is what you want people to know on the basis of what you experienced there, that this is an area of high strangeness and was before what happened in December 80 and was after what happened in December 80?
Absolutely.
And I think there are so many more stories that need to be told.
And what I need to understand is there's been a lot of synchronicity happening too from the UFO sighting to through dreams and different experiences that I've had that sometimes when I was thinking about RAF Bentwaters,
and I would get this kind of like I'd be thinking about it for a week, but during that time, it's like everything around me would become, like I said, there'd be this synchronicity coincidence stuff happening.
And to give you an example, I received a complimentary copy of a National Geographic book, and this is back in 96.
And in it, I keep having these dreams that I'm at Bent Waters and I'm telling people that I don't work here.
I don't work here anymore.
And then I would end up, in my dream, I'd be heading into the desert and I'd come across this aqua pond of water butted up against these dirt mountains.
And I get this magazine and I'm flipping through it and there's the mountain with this pool of water.
And I thought, that's so weird.
And I had to look to see where it was.
And it was in this place called the Zone of Silence, which is known for a lot of frequency activity and UFO activity happening there.
Now, this is like the close encounters of the third kind.
How do I know this stuff?
You know?
So are you saying that you felt that...
It's just, you know, we've only got minutes to go and I want to get to the core of it, really.
Are you saying that what you believe happened in 1980 for you and the other things that you went through there haunted you in a way?
In a way that perhaps is not just, I say just, you can't say just about that because it's really serious for many, many people, but that isn't only, that's better, only post-traumatic stress disorder or unfinished business because you never got an explanation for that.
And that can cause people all sorts of psychological issues.
If you don't get an explanation for something that's happened to you, it's going to bug you.
Of course it is.
But you're saying that maybe there was more to it and perhaps you were being communicated with subliminally in the years afterwards.
Isn't that so?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And the thing is, is that it reminded me of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when Richard Dreyfus was talking to Jacques Ballet, or his name was Roy in the show.
And he said, how do I know?
How do I know what I know?
You know, I mean, why do I have this huge mountain in my living room?
I don't know if you've seen the film, but it's definitely worth seeing.
Okay, because it's like an obsession or, you know, something that you feel like you're almost there.
You can almost figure it out, you know, but you can't.
It's like, I gotta, oh, what is this, you know?
And it's the same way.
It's the same way.
Okay, so you're still looking for answers now by the science of it.
Now, look, I spoke with Nick Redfern in exactly this slot a week ago.
And Nick Redfern, you know, I respect a great deal, is a great investigative author.
And he's been looking into the theory, the idea that maybe what happened in December 80 was some kind of hallucinogenic military experiment.
You know, these are just claims and they're just, you know, there's evidence backing them up and it's all in his book.
What do you make of that?
Well, was it hallucinogenic throughout the entire atmosphere of the entire time that we were all there?
Because that's important because most of my experiences happened during the two years I was there.
You know.
What would you like to happen now then?
What would you like to, on the basis of what you've been saying and the fact that your story hasn't been told as much as the story about December 1980?
Your information hasn't been out there as much.
What would you like to happen?
I would like to have a larger, more open conversation to keep this going, because I think the more that we share our experiences, the more that we can actually get clarity and maybe get things more in focus and maybe have that aha moment.
And yeah, that's what I hope.
I think all these other things to me, like the hallucinogenics, what would they call that, a hypothesis?
I guess so.
And there are so many of these here.
Obviously, you're still working on reconciling this.
Do you believe that we are not alone in this universe then?
You must, if you've been through that and you believe it was some kind of UFO.
Do you believe that we're being overseen by ET?
Yeah, I do.
I think we're being overseen by a lot of different entities from a lot of different places, to include the paranormal, to include, because I truly think that there is, we had nuclear bombs there.
And I really think that the powers to be were looking at us as if we were little children with matches.
You know, it's like, oh.
Well, you know, that's another subject.
And we have talked about that, but I hear what you say.
Last question.
I've only got seconds to answer it.
Do you ever sit there in lockdown like we all are now and say, Laurie, why me?
I feel it's been a blessing for me in so many ways because I've always been looking for the meaning of life or how we got here.
And it's just been, I've been very, when I was a little girl, I had some experiences.
And yeah, I just, yeah, I don't, sometimes I do feel like the why me, it's heavy on my shoulders is when folks aren't listening.
Because it's not about me.
It's about what happened.
And I think that, especially with Cable Green coming out, I hope people will just give it a chance.
A lot of people have been, there's been a lot of anger around it.
But there's always a lot of everybody has their two cents when it comes to Rendlesham Forest and all the events around it.
I think you're going to find that.
Laurie, listen, we're totally out of time.
Thank you for sharing your story with me in Tosan.
Oh, you're very, very welcome.
And thank you for having me.
Well, I think that was an amazing conversation.
What do you think?
Go to my website, theunexplained.tv, and you can let me know there.
Thank you very much for being part of all this.
More great guests in the pipeline here at The Unexplained as we cruise through May and into June.
For the Gemini people, that includes me.
So until next, we meet here on The Unexplained Online.
My name is Howard Hughes.
I am in London.
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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