03x20 - The Rendelsham Files

[bunniefuu]

Everything was highly classified back then.

Terrorism.

Chemical att*cks.

The Cold w*r.

Atomic bombs.

[Dog barking]

What I was seeing was nothing that I'd been trained to deal with.

Over there.

What is it?

Let's get out of here!

So fast it was scary.

Go, go, go, go!

Is this a warning?

Is this a w*apon?

This was definitely technology far...

Far above ours.

[Indistinct radio chatter]

In 1980, I was reassigned from the Pentagon to R.A.F. Bentwaters.

I was a Lieutenant Colonel and had been in the Air Force about 18 years.

This was the peak of The Cold w*r.

Tensions were high between the Americans and the Russians.

Merry Christmas, Sergeant.

Merry Christmas, Colonel.

This was a nuclear alert base.

Very, very tight Security.

Armed guards around it all the time.

The base had nuclear weapons in it.

Atomic bombs.

I was a tower supervisor.

I had been in the m*llitary 16 years.

My responsibility was to ensure the aircraft landed and took off safely.

Good evening.

At christmastime, every home takes on a special...

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

And that's certainly true at The White House, where so many famous Americans...

Anything new?

It's quiet out there.

We were not expecting any traffic at all that night.

And what a year it's been...

I mean, you set there and looked at the stars.

You know, there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

It was my first assignment. It was the first time I was away from home.

It was definitely a challenge, not only being in a different country, but also trying to learn a new job.

Around 2:00 in the morning, my supervisor...

He radioed and wanted to meet up with me.

One of the things that we were required to do was, we had to periodically check the East gate.

Do you see what I see?

And I sat up a little bit more and I looked out...

See what?

What do you think it is?

I don't know.

And he goes, is this anything that you'd seen before?

We couldn't identify what it was, and we needed to call it in.

This is Burroughs at East gate. Over.

Come in. Burroughs to East gate, over.

Penniston, over.

My job was to make sure that that base perimeter was secure.

Sir, we have a situation over here.

There's something strange, and you should take a look.

Over.

I had been in the service about seven years.

Every response I'd ever had up to that point in time, the Security Patroller would tell me what was going on.

This time it was different.

This time he wouldn't tell me.

So I jumped into my vehicle...

Hit the blue lights...

And off I went toward the East gate.

What's going on here?

There's something going on in that forest.

The whole canopy of the forest is...

Got, like, a white bubble of light over it.

I couldn't distinguish exactly what it was, but it was very odd.

My first thoughts of it was it was a downed aircraft, and it wasn't one of ours.

I was thinking it was a Security thr*at.

I was trying to find a rational explanation of what was going on, what I was seeing.

We started walking out into the forest...

And when I looked out there...

There was no lights.

They were gone.

And the forest was pitch black.

Sergeant Penniston to base, over.

[Radio static crackling]

Almost immediately, we started having trouble with our radios.

Sergeant Penniston to base, over.

[Radio static crackling]

I was getting no response at all back from the control center.

It's dead.

[Radio static crackling]

Something was interfering with our communications.

All of a sudden, everything was different.

There was like an... like, an electric charge in the air.

Like static electricity.

Felt like your hair was standing up.

Feel that?

[Squawking]

There was a loud-pitched squealing sound.

[Clucking, groaning]

Then we could hear farm animals.

[Squealing, mooing]

These animals were startled.

[Wings flapping, animals groaning]

Whatever was out there, that told me that they were trying to get away from it.

[Crash]

Something hit the ground.

I went in to defensive mode.

It's a thr*at. It's an unknown thr*at.

I had no clue of what this thing was.

I don't know that it's stable, radioactive.

Was thinking the worst.

I thought it was gonna explode.

[Whispers]

My job wasn't to worry about myself.

It was to go ahead and find out what it was and if it was hostile.

What I saw, I had no reference point to.

There was no way to identify what it was.

I was privy to prototypes from other assignments.

This was unlike aircraft I've ever seen before.

It was so unique.

So one-of-a-kind.

I was completely in awe.

[Sighs]

It was not an aircraft.

It was not a helicopter.

I'd never seen anything like that.

I...

Tried to compose myself a little bit and...

Do a 360 of the craft, walk around.

It looked like black glass.

Just over 6-foot tall.

I'm looking for exhaust ports...

Intake ports...

Crew compartment.

There's nothing.

This was definitely technology far...

Far above ours.

Take a look at this.

And then I could see that there's something on the... on the far side.

Symbols.

They're like nothing like I've seen before.

What do you think it means?

I mean, it was clearly something very significant.

So that's when I started to record each of them down in my notebook.

I wrote down the symbols. I drew 'em as well as I could.

There was this large symbol.

I was curious, in a way.

But I was in awe too.

When I touched it, it felt warm.

I was thinking radioactivity.

It felt like I pressed a button...

And I activated a technology that I couldn't understand.

I was scared.

I was scared that it was gonna blow up.

Blinding white light.

This is it.

It was like a blink of an eye, it went from being there to gone, just like that, snap.

Holy cow.

No way, man.

Immediately after it left, I wrote down two words in my notebook.

Speed, impossible.

Things started going through your mind, like, holy [Bleep], how are we gonna explain this?

I was told to go ahead and report in with... to the Shift Commander's office.

Reality is setting in.

If you report a U.F.O. incident in the Air Force, that's the end of your career.

What happened?

Well, Sir...

Decided to keep it in m*llitary terms.

It was a craft, Sir.

Unknown origin.

The odd thing was, after telling him about the craft, he didn't even flinch.

Is that all, Sir?

That's all.

Even stranger is, why didn't he ask for statements?

I was a Staff Sergeant, U.S. Air Force.

I was one of the main instructors in chemical warfare defense.

Nevells.

Automatically I jumped to the alert stage.

Here's a Lieutenant Security Policeman in front of me.

What in the heck's going on here?

Colonel's asked me to talk to you.

And he said, well...

This is classified, I want you to understand that what we're gonna be talking about is not to be told to anybody.

Do you understand?

And he proceeded to tell me about an unusual thing...

A U.F.O. had been rumored to hit the base.

He wanted me to go out and do an independent investigation.

There were three indentations.

All pressed in the same height...

Same depth...

Same width.

It looked like a tripod.

Look at this.

The trees had been...

Scorched.

By something that was either hot...

Or burning.

It didn't make sense to me.

I began to believe that something had happened.

It was starting to get dark.

So I had to pick up the night vision goggles.

What I'm seeing is green.

Look.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something out there.

Over there.

[Boom]

And all of a sudden...

Light is coming toward us.

[Whispers]

[Boom]

This light was...

I don't even know how to describe it.

It appeared to be...

An eyeball.

Real bright.

And then it would get dim.

It looked like it was just blinking.

Then it stopped.

Let's get out of here!

We didn't have time to think.

♪Santa's going to be there.
♪With his reindeer and his Elves.

The party was for all the officers.

It was just a nice time for everybody to get together.

♪Under the mistletoe.
♪That place you want to be.
♪They gonna have a party.
♪Hey!
♪A party for Christmas.
♪There's gonna be a party.

The senior Police Officer on duty came in carrying an M16.

I mean, he stood out like a sore thumb.

It's back.

What's back?

The U.F.O.'s back.

Oh, come on.

I'm serious.

The party was in full swing, and Colonel says...

Nevells, does this warrant further review?

And I said, yes, Sir, I think it does.

Right.

I really wanted to prove there wasn't anything out there.

We're gonna put this whole thing to rest once and for all.

Lo and behold, there's four or five vehicles and probably 25 people in the forest.

I almost went into shock.

The whole situation was getting out of control.

Okay, everybody needs to move back roadside now.

This is a classified zone. Do you hear me?

I was kind of surprised. What's John Burroughs doing here?

I was out in the forest with the team trying to figure out what was going on.

It was very shocking that senior leadership...

Had taken this much interest in the incident.

When we got into the forest, it was very quiet.

It was eerie quiet.

They took me up to a site which was 150, 200 feet or more from the vehicle.

I looked at the indentations.

They were all exactly the same.

A nice, neat triangle.

Okay, Sergeant Nevells, let's get some readings with the geiger counter.

The geiger counter was necessary to prove that there was no radiation or anything.

Let's clearly establish that there's nothing out here.

And he started taking readings, and he went around the whole triangle.

I'm getting residuals.

Okay, bring it into the center. See what kind of reading you get there.

The moment he put the geiger counter down into the hole...

The needle really started getting active.

It jumped to 7, to 10.

Right. Bring it on over to this tree here; See what it says.

It pegged out.

Sir, it's off the scale.

Whatever had been there had either been carrying nuclear material, or had some type of radioactivity on it.

[Whispers]

There's no way what I detected on that meter...

That it was normal.

It was abnormal.

I saw the evidence that something happened in the forest.

Something certainly landed there and made an impact.

Okay, Sergeant. Grab your camera, get some photographs.

At that time, I turned on my little tape recorder.

Mark this sample one.

Okay, we are now at the initial impact point.

[Birds rustling]

The animals...

[Birds squawking]

They went crazy.

The birds in the forest...

They were spooked by something.

Now I'm... I'm starting to get alarmed.

The animals that made all the noise, the night birds, suddenly just got silent.

[Electricity crackling]

And suddenly, without any notice...

The lights.

They weren't working properly.

[Pow]

Total darkness.

Suddenly, the police Lieutenant said...

Sir...

Over there.

[Alarming howl]

There's a bright glowing object.

It had a dark center.

Like a black pupil of an eye.

[Alarming howl]

It appeared to be on fire.

What is this?

It came toward us.

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go!

We were running.

[Alarming howl]

It exploded into five white objects like that.

Get down! Get down! Get down!

Something was coming straight at us...

And then it was off.

Straight back up into the sky.

Suddenly I could see...

Two objects to the north and one to the south.

They were elliptical.

Moving at high speed.

In sync.

They had to be going supersonic.

Good grief. Is this a w*apon?

[Whispers]

The real question was, what was it, who was controlling it, and was it a thr*at or a danger?

I was setting back with my feet propped up on the console.

And I was looking up at the Brite II radar...

What the heck is this coming?

This thing was traveling so fast...

That instead of getting individual blips...

We were getting a straight line.

This thing's moving too fast.

This thing was so fast it was scary.

Call Eastern Radar and see if they've got it in bound.

See if they're tracking this thing.

I could no longer see it visually.

And then...

It appeared.

It was right next to the window.

Slowing down.

It was huge.

I was totally astonished.

It just hung there in the air.

And then all of a sudden...

Just dead silence.

No noise.

No exhaust.

Not a shrill.

Nothing.

[Dog barks]

[Dog growling]

[Dog barking]

[Alarm blaring]

[Dog barking]

And then it stopped!

Near the w*apon storage area.

[Breathing heavily]

No.

It was where we stored the nukes.

[Dog barking]

And suddenly it sent down a beam...

[Dog barking]

What's that?

I don't know.

What is that?

[Indistinct radio chatter]

I heard chatter on the radio...

Saying there were beams of light in the vicinity of the weapons storage area.

No.

Everything we had was over there, and that light was right over it.

Oh, please, God, no.

We were a raw target.

[Alarm blares]

[Clock ticking]

[Boom]

[Whispers]

I mean, it was enough, blink of an eye.

It's gone.

I was literally in shock.

Oh, thank God.

It could've ignited a major conflict or a w*r.

I don't know what I saw.

I know what I saw, but I don't know what it was that I saw.

It could've struck the weapons storage area.

You know, it could've... it could've done anything it wanted to.

We have nuclear weapons there.

You know, that's the big boom.

And the last one I'd ever hear.

The whole time this thing was evolving, I had concern that this has serious Security implications.

It could've been misunderstood as something the Soviets were doing, for instance.

But I wasn't in a position to do much of anything, nobody wanted to up-channel it.

Nobody wanted to admit what happened.

There's no doubt in my mind it was an unidentified flying object.

Under intelligent control.

I feel that the craft that night was there for a specific reason.

It was a probe that was unmanned.

It was there to gather information.

That's the feeling I have on it.

It's led me on a quest to try and find out what happened.

I want to know what we encountered and what... what happened to us.

Didn't really speak about it while I was still in the m*llitary.

I had a career and a family to consider.

I'm not really proud of my actions for covering it up.

But I'm not gonna deny something that I know that happened.

Not anymore.

I guess I was just afraid...

Of being considered one of those kooks out there...

That see U.F.O.'s.

But those kooks are real... real people.