April 13, 2023 • 43 mins
Over the holidays in 1980, several days of sightings occurred in a forest surrounded by two military bases in eastern England. Payne speaks with two of the members of military who witnessed "Britain's Roswell."
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
High Strange is released weekly every Thursday, brought to you
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it's available right now on Apple Podcasts for all Tenderfoot
Plus subscribers. You'll also get exclusive bonus episodes throughout the season.
For more information, check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
There's some type of strange road light hill.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I saw, y'all a tang in it too.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Weird, It maybe a little bit funny.
Speaker 5 (00:35):
Yes, it's be not aspat thrill is coming its way.
Speaker 6 (00:38):
Also, it's definitely coming its way. It goes back out
into the farmer's field directly overhead a very high speed.
At least fifteen people in the weapons storage areas saw
the objects.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
In the sky.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Here's something very very strange.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It's not aspen.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
I said, let's try and approach it.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
We move up to the edge of the forest, and
when we.
Speaker 6 (01:05):
Tried to get close, it went back out into the field.
They knew we were trying to get close.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
It's kind of tourist house.
Speaker 6 (01:14):
Sparks are coming off and so bright.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
It was like looking at the sun coming down to
the ground.
Speaker 6 (01:21):
This is beyond anything that we're familiar with.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Welcome to high Strange. The year was nineteen eighty Suffolk, England.
Tensions between Russia and the US were high.
Speaker 7 (01:41):
There is imminent danger of some kind of Soviet military action.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
There were two bases in eastern England ran by the
US Air Force.
Speaker 7 (01:49):
This invasion is an extremely serious threat to peace.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
They house the most advanced weapons in the world, there
ready for deployment at any second. Right around Christmas time
that year, the forest behind this US military base will
become the location of Britain's very own roswell event known
as the Rendlesham Forest incident. Charles Holt, a military commander
on the base, headed into the forest to investigate rumors
(02:15):
of lights in the sky when he experienced an encounter
of his own. This was the third night in a
row that separate military officers claimed to have experienced something
unexplainable in the forest. I reached out to one of
the witnesses from the first night. His experience is arguably
even more bizarre than Halts. Forty years later, gathering these
(02:36):
different accounts, I'm hoping to try and piece together what
really happened here.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
This guy, yeah, it's perfect for you.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
This is Jim Piniston.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So how many guys believe in UFOs.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
At this point, I'm convinced that UFOs are not a
matter of believing, but rather the question is what are they?
There are outlier cases like this one that still puzzle
our government today. The real question we're asking ourselves is
do you believe these are extraterrestrial or are they some
other natural phenomenon we don't fully understand yet. Or are
(03:20):
these guys simply mistaking what they saw, embellishing their stories,
or just flat out making them all up.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
That's the real question here.
Speaker 8 (03:29):
You've told this story a thousand times, I'd say over times.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
We're fascinated about.
Speaker 8 (03:35):
Story, and they don't have a story. Though I don't
have a story. The story sounds like something that you
read when you're in grade school.
Speaker 9 (03:45):
What is it?
Speaker 8 (03:46):
This is an investigation by the United States Air Force.
I'm December twenty sixth, nineteen eight. This is gonna be
a rough night sleeping tonight. Well, I could talk. I'm
talking about these are triggers. So everything you hear is
a trigger. Nothing, there's no way around it. What I
was seeing was stuff I had never encountered in my
life or since then.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
In the trauma of dealing with it.
Speaker 8 (04:12):
I've always been able to tell you everything it wasn't,
but there is a problem because of what wasn't.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Jim's story begins on December twenty sixth, nineteen eighty, shortly
after midnight.
Speaker 8 (04:30):
I was a fifth generation military at that time. I
was in charge of base security for Woodbreach. Our job
was to protect aircraft weapons plus the personnel on the base.
The night started pretty much as usual. I had done
my guard mount, which is a briefing that you give
your fifteen guys that are going to be working with you,
(04:51):
putting my stuff down and grabbing a cup of coffee.
Sarry mccaully says, did you hear that call on the radio?
I said, no, I missed it. Central Security Control, our
control center is trying to get a hold of it.
We had a direct line. Talked to sargant coffee. He
was a senior controller. I said, well, what's going on?
(05:14):
He says, well, they'll brief you when you get out there.
He wouldn't tell me nfhone, which was odd. I'm being
dispatched for a situation.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
What it is? I don't know he wouldn't tell me.
I arrived at the east gate.
Speaker 8 (05:32):
I contact the senior law enforcement patrolman staff Sargen, Bud Stephens.
He said, what's going on, Bud? He just sort of
points over maybe preiriy yards over to render some forest
adjacent to the gate. I could see lighting above the
forest and in the forest. I turned around to him
(05:55):
and said, well, what is it? He says, oh, inside
the forest you could see orange light. You see a
red light. You could see flickering like that. It would
appear to be a fire, like something's burning. But the
strange part of that, over the top of the canopy
(06:15):
of the forest, there was a bubble of light over
the top of it. But I see out there didn't
make sense to me at all. Whatever is there had
to be really lit up. So my question to a
Bud was, need to hear a crash, And he goes, oh, no,
it'll landed. There's no way helicopter or plane could ever
(06:38):
land in that forest.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
The trees and Redntlesoome Forest at the time were used
as a crop hundreds of trees planted about five feet
apart from each other, which would make it nearly impossible
for conventional aircraft to land there. He went back to
the east gate and called in to report what he
was seeing in the forest.
Speaker 8 (06:57):
Reached central security control. It's now security problem.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Five guys pick up. We got five guys online.
Speaker 8 (07:08):
I says, well, I think this is a possible aircraft
crash in the forest. They lost contact. Was a unidentified
bogie on radar. They know where it came from. It
came from our ease. And all this stuff is happening megafast.
We were giving permission to go off base. We had
(07:29):
a crash kit. I pulled out the camera. Security control
was starting to break up and I couldn't really understand
what they were saying.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
On base, they used repeating systems for their radios, which
allowed their walkies to cover a much longer distance.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Basically, there's never a dead spot.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
But for the first time in his career on that base,
Jim was having trouble reaching the command post on his radio.
Speaker 8 (07:53):
Even though I wasn't hearing nothing in the radio, I'm talking.
I'll get to the edge of the tree line was
coming out of the forest was a white light. It
was so intense that you couldn't really see anything inside
the center of that light. Started taking pictures. I could
feel static electricity on my face and skin. At first
(08:19):
I thought it was maybe adrenaline, but it continued. My
movements felt labored, like walking waist deep and a pool
of water. I'm starting to wonder now, is this a rust?
Is this something out here to distract us? I started
to get worried. As I got to the edge of
(08:42):
the forest. I implemented a helping hand situation on the radio.
It's real and I'm unarmed. I used all the film up,
the camera started going out. This final burn, this bright
white light just exploded. I hit the ground. I was
(09:09):
getting very scared, very concerned for my.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Own well being.
Speaker 8 (09:14):
I know that what I'm seeing is nothing I trained for.
I personally thought, this is an unsurvivable situation. Everything out
there is something I haven't seen. Before I get up
off the ground, the white light started to dissipate, and
when it did, I could see nothing but this black aircraft,
(09:38):
this black triangular craft inside this white light.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Did you ever see anything like that before?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Craft like that didn't exist.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
He pulled out his pen and notebook and started documenting
as many details as he could about what he was seeing.
Itself was warm to the touch, he described it feeling
very smooth like black glass.
Speaker 8 (10:07):
Well, I looked the underneath it. I could see white
beams of light. There's three of them coming out from
underneath the craft. I wonder if that's stable. I wanted
to secure, so I tried to move it, and I
pushed on it, tried to give it a shove to
see if it would move. This didn't move at all.
It was solid, fixed to the ground. Somehow, with this technology,
(10:32):
how can this be? I started to look for things
that aircraft needs to fly, exhausts and intakes and things
like that. There was void of all those things. There
was no openings, there was no crew compartment. I had nothing. Basically,
(10:53):
it was a flying brick. This thing couldn't fly. You
need all those things for craft to fly.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I go out to record all that stuff down in
my book.
Speaker 8 (11:06):
The craft itself was warm to touch, smooth, glass like metal.
Still doing my security checks on the radio, but I'm
getting nothing back. During my interaction with the craft, the
air fell electric. I don't know how to explain that. Boy,
(11:30):
the hair was lifting in the back of the neck
and arms and face come back around and I could
see writing.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
On the side of the craft. That's a good thing.
Speaker 8 (11:42):
I'm thinking, I'm hoping this says Nassai or something. As
I got closer, it was a writing light we had.
It was like gliffs. Victoria Bliss was put the emotion
back into a panic.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
What it looked like the writing.
Speaker 8 (12:09):
There's five symbols. They were different shapes. The one that
stood out the most it was the one that was
above those five. There was another one which was larger
and had a circular a circle around it, and it
was a triangle with this huge circle around it, the
size of a big dinner plate.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
The circle.
Speaker 8 (12:33):
I put my hand on the circular triangle that was
above the other Gliss. All of a sudden, I have
a blinding, pure white light. I cannot see nothing else.
That eliminated all my visions. I start to see things
(12:54):
that don't make no sense at all. That more, things
that don't make those sense, like one and zeros and
things like that.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It terrified me.
Speaker 8 (13:06):
I gained my wits back, lift my hand back off,
and it stops.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Was it in your head or physically there?
Speaker 8 (13:18):
I was trying to determine whether or now it was
physically there or in my head? Okay, When I took
my hand off, that symbol I had my night vision,
which is impossible. I had perfect night vision once I
took my hand off the craft. After that happened with
the light, I was never going to touch that craft again.
(13:40):
All of a sudden, I started to see what I
perceive as activity. All of a sudden, the color light
that had dissipated inside the fabric of the cast started
to come back and started moving around in the craft.
So I backed away for about ten feet. I got
on the ground, tried to dig a hole. I was
thinking that I had active something. When I touched it,
(14:01):
I thought I was going to explode. The craft started
powering up and moved back through the trees. It had
no air displacement at all. There's absolutely no sound. All
(14:24):
aircraft make noise. That's a fact. All of the flaps
that all need either a propeller or intakes or exhaust,
or they can't fly. A few seconds later, it just
took off. It was gone in a blank of that eye.
(14:45):
After the craft departure, all of a sudden, I could
start hearing things. Immediately after it went out of site.
I could start hearing wind. I had full real contact.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Jim Penison was the head of security at the time,
not just some on duty guard, the head of security
on a US military base that held nuclear bombs ready
to drop on Russia at any given moment. He spent
his career in the Air Force and specialized in recognizing aircraft.
Multiple witnesses saw the same things over the course of
three days on the base. After the incident, Jim typed
(15:33):
a report recounting his experience, submitting it to the higher ups.
He took notes in his notepad and drew several sketches
of what the craft looked like. I got to see
these for myself and I'll post them on the High
Strange Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Just go to at High Strange.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
I'm no expert on anything aircraft related, but even to
the layperson, Jim's sketches of the aircraft looked nothing like
the US Air Force has then or now.
Speaker 6 (16:16):
After I had my encounter in the forest, I went
back and talked to all the participants that were involved.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
The first night.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Here's Charles Holtz again, the man who recorded the third
night of the incident on his tape.
Speaker 6 (16:28):
Recorder, Peniston Burrows Cabana sack. They told me a cleaned
up version of what happened.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
They were told what to tell me.
Speaker 6 (16:39):
In fact, Cabanasak brought me a typed statement. He didn't
type it. He couldn't type words that he would not
have used.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Holtz seems to think, or is at least hinting at
the idea, that the reports submitted by his buddy were
merely a cover story.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Basically said, we saw the Lighthews.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I think.
Speaker 5 (17:01):
The British tabloid press had a field day with reports
of the incident, with stories of flying saucers, mysterious lights,
and even aliens. The Times of London, however, dismissed the
incident and poked fun at the other newspapers. It quoted
this man, Vince their Kettle, a forester who works near
the alleged landing site. Their Kettle told CNN that the
(17:22):
UFO was merely a beam of light from the nearby
Orford Lighthouse.
Speaker 9 (17:27):
But if you didn't know as a lighthouse, if you short,
it was something small, maybe two three meters across, pulsing
white in the forest. Yes, it looks as if it's
within the trees, and it does appear to light up
the trees as well.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
When your senses are heightened, adrenaline pumping, and you're out
in the woods at night looking for something weird. Common
sense says there's a good chance you might find it.
Speaker 10 (17:49):
I don't think we're ever going to get very far
with the Renation Forest incident.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
This is Mick West again, an investigative UFO skeptic.
Speaker 10 (17:58):
I don't know if this is ever going to be
a determination of exactly what happened to that. I think
there are laws of all explanations a certain aspects of it.
There was a lighthouse, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It wasn't the lighthouse. I'm very familiar with.
Speaker 6 (18:13):
The lighthouse, and the lighthouse is at orford Ness. Orford
Ness is a little small fishing village on the coast
out on the island. Two little pubs out there have
very good food and reasonable prices. I have pictures of
me standing here. The lighthouse is over there, and the
object was out here. How could the lighthouse reflect off
the windows of the farmhouse when the lighthouse is two
(18:34):
or three miles out that way.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
The lighthouse theory quickly became the easiest and most rational explanation.
But why would all these highly trained men interpret a
lighthouse as some strange foreign object.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Three days in a row. I mean, what's the point.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
The lighthouse was always there anyway, a little strange to
suddenly take note of it and make a huge deal
out of it all.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
The game warden was also familiar with the cars and
dismissed the lighthouse theory outright.
Speaker 7 (19:06):
At the moment, We're standing on the orphored key, and
quite clearly you can see the lighthouse over there flashing.
The light from the UFO was totally nothing like the
light from the lighters.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
We know that people make mistakes.
Speaker 10 (19:21):
We know that people, even with the best of intentions
and with the best of observational abilities, can sometimes perceive
things to be other than the way they actually are.
There are classic cases like the Cottingly Fairies, where these
two girls took photographs of fairies and they managed to
convince a whole bunch of people that these were genuine
(19:42):
photos of fairies, including Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a
big investigator of such things at the time. They stuck
to their story for decades. People once they buy into
a certain explanation, it's kind of difficult for them to
admit that they made stuff up.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Once they told the same.
Speaker 10 (20:02):
Story over and over again, it almost becomes like a memory.
They're not really lying as such, they're simply just telling
the same story, which happens to be false.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
How could so many credible people from the military come
up with the exact same lie, the same exact misinterpretation
of something so completely normal. What are the odds they
were all just mistaken or hallucinating. If their job is
to guard and protect a military base, and they're dreaming
of fantastical stories of foreign lights in the sky that
(20:48):
didn't actually exist, then that would be pretty concerning on
its own, wouldn't it.
Speaker 6 (20:55):
I met the lighthouse keeper, Keith Simmons, met him and
talk with him. Light house has three lenses, red and green,
shine out to sea and white to land. He said,
if you saw a red light, you couldn't have seen
the lighthouse. You had to be out the sea to
see the red lights. So people say that red light
you saw was the lighthouse. There's no way it's not
the lighthouse. The lighthouse is in a different location, twenty
(21:17):
five or thirty degrees away. There's agencies that have a
whole lot more information in what they're reviewing. The following
week from the incident, an unmarked plane came normally went planes,
even the U two's and SR seventy one, which occasionally
dropped them when they had a problem. We provided security
(21:37):
for this plane, provided their own security and had their
own people in uniform which were not Air Force uniforms.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Unmarked planes are not unheard of.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
There's a company known as Janet Airlines that shuttles employees
from the Las Vegas Airport to Area fifty one. You'd
at least think that if unmarked planes full of unknown
uniformed employees were landing on the based to collect information
day whoever they are seem to find this incident just.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
A little bit interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Seems like a lot of extra unnecessary work for a lighthouse.
Speaker 6 (22:13):
It was obvious nobody else was going to investigate. Nobody
else was going to do anything, even though they did
do things in the background, behind the scenes, so to speak.
So I didn't know anybody else was in the background
playing games. I didn't know any of this. I wasn't
told to be quiet. It was sort of inferred that
I should be quiet, and I already knew that. But
(22:33):
I still got to three and four star endorsements on
my report cards and still got promoted because they knew
it was credible.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
When it comes to trolls Holts. I'll be honest, it's
hard not to believe him.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
I get disappointed with all the disinformation that's out there,
but I can't know anything about it except just tell
the truth.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
He doesn't claim to know what he saw that night,
but that it was certainly something they were beyond unfamiliar with.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
I have not ever said I saw a little green man.
I never saw any entity that I could identify. I
know what I saw, but I don't know what it was.
I'd sure like to know. So Obviously, whatever we're seeing
in the sky has the ability to do phenomenal things
change shape, change size, change calor going phenomenal speed, do
(23:22):
things that we just can't even imagine.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
He wrote down in his own memo that he and
several other military personnel saw multiple objects in the sky,
a quote redlight sun object that pulsed and shed into
particles before splitting into five separate white lights and then
disappearing in the sky. It's hard to imagine someone of
sound mind running around with a cassette recorder chasing a
(23:46):
stationary lighthouse all night. The tape itself feels genuine. It
sounds like they really don't know what's going on.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I wish I knew more, but I don't.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
I am firmly convinced that we're not alone.
Speaker 6 (23:59):
I can tell that, but I don't know what we're
faced with.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Charles Holt went on to investigate the supposed landing site
of the unknown aircraft, and he found indentations in the
frozen ground, So something, whatever it was, had to have
physically been there, or someone went out of their way
to make it look like there was. That feels like
we're entering conspiracy land a little bit. Holt and his
crew members also took Geiger counter readings. They found the
(24:25):
radiation on the indentations in the ground were significantly higher
than the background, and while they were examining the site,
they were interrupted by their own firsthand ufhoe encounter, and
each time they made an attempt to get closer to it,
the object moved further away from them.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Never once device in a lighthouse move. So what else
could these things be? Exactly?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Were they truly under intelligent control? Are they extraterrestrials, aliens, spirits,
ai from the future. I could go on and on,
or is it none of those things at all? Something
simpler and much more rational, but easily misinterpreted as something strange.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
However you feel about it.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
A case like the Reynolsome forest incident is a hard
one to just blindly dismiss as nothing at all.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
Let's take a step back.
Speaker 11 (25:23):
Forget the X files, forget popular culture and all the
alien visitation and stories.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Here's political journalist Brian Bender.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Take this at face value.
Speaker 11 (25:35):
Sightings reported by credible people over sensitive facilities, and we
don't know what they are, just an air safety hazard.
The military should probably try to find out what those
things are, if for nothing else, to protect its own personnel.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Our job is to protect our troops.
Speaker 11 (25:54):
If our troops are seeing things that they think are
potentially dangerous or is upsetting to them, it's our job
to do whatever we can do to figure out what
that is. Let's get scientists together and deal with what
can potentially.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Be a safety hazard.
Speaker 11 (26:11):
If we really want to maximize our resources, let's get
the government to be more transparent, share more of what
it might have and its ability to gather more data.
You know, maybe not publicize all of that, but what
if you shared that data with some scientists. If what
we get out of this is a society where we
(26:33):
pride ourselves on the search for knowledge. This is a
topic that fits squarely into that. A whole new generation
of people can put their minds to this see if
they can find more answers than their fathers or grandfathers
or great grandfathers could.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
That would be a real victory.
Speaker 11 (26:55):
We're at a time in human history where technology is advancing.
Assuming we can harness the technologies and they don't kill
us first, I think it'd be a victory if there
was a real career path, approach UAPs as a discipline
and be successful. That's the way to get down the
road of knowledge.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
In nineteen fifty an article was published in True magazine
titled The Flying Saucers Are Real. It was written by
former pilot and retired Marine Major Donald Keho. Donald Kehoe
is likely the very first citizen researcher of UFOs. Unlike
most of his peers at the time, he didn't rely
(27:41):
on the government to provide him all the answers, but
instead embarked on his very own investigation. At first, Keyho
was admittedly very skeptical that any of these reported sightings
were something extraordinary, but after speaking to countless witnesses.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
In numerous high ranking military officials.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
He became convinced that some of these UFO sightings were
of unearthly origin.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Keiho would go on.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
To sell millions of books about the UFO mystery, and
his diligent approach to the subject helped create a much
more pragmatic conversation that still exists to this day. The
road to knowledge is a long one, filled with roadblocks
and potholes. But if we stopped looking to the military
to provide us all the answers and instead turned to
independent scientists from around the world who can collect all
(28:27):
their own data, we might have a much better shot
at the truth.
Speaker 12 (29:04):
When we say the size of the universe, that's the
size of the region that we can see. The universe
is expanding, so if we go back in time, it
was denser. Back in time. Eventually you get infinite density.
That is the Big Bang when the density was infinite.
So that's the beginning of time thirteen point eight billion years.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
This is Abby Lobe, professor of science at Harvard University.
Speaker 12 (29:33):
Within that volume that we can see, which is basically
the distance that light could have traveled in thirteen point
eight billion years, there are about a trillion galaxies.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Like the Milky Way.
Speaker 12 (29:46):
Within the Milky Way galaxy, there are tens of billions
of stars. You have more habitable planets like the Earth
than there are grains of sand on all beaches on Earth?
Are twenty one just a huge number?
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Well, that's a brain buster for you.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
The chance of.
Speaker 12 (30:07):
Us being specially and unique is extremely smart. We know
that most of the stars formed ten billion years before
the present time, and the Sun only four point six
billion years ago. Most stars like the Sun formed billions
of years before the Sun.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Most planets that are habitable would be orbiting stars that
are billions of years older than ours. Of these tens
of billions of stars, many of them have what we
call Goldilock zones, a fancy term for the areas that
contain habitable planets like Earth. As of today, we've found
fifty nine of the estimated eleven billion planets that could
(30:46):
be inside these Goldilock zones.
Speaker 12 (30:49):
If the technological clock started ticking around the same time
as here, then the civilizations predated us. I think that
it's very likely there could be probes visiting us. They
had plenty of time to send probes that would fill
up the Milky Way Galaxy. Most likely there was a
(31:11):
scientist smarter than Albert Einstein on another planet who existed
a billion years ago. They could have launched probes that
arrived to us by now. And that's what we are
trying to find out. Let's find the smartest kid in
our interstellar class of intelligent civilizations. We can learn from
(31:32):
that kid. What Sherlock Holmes would say is never eliminate
any suspect, any possibility. Put all of them on the table,
and if you eliminate them one by one, whatever it
means must be the truth. At the same time, you
have those scientists that don't want to touch it ridicule,
which is also wrong. The correct thing to do is
(31:55):
to collect enough evidence such that we will be convinced.
The pan Star's Telescope in Hawaii was constructed to find
near Earth objects.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Since two thousand and eight, the pant Star's Telescope in
Hawaii has been using astronomical cameras and telescopes to track
moving objects in the sky. Near Earth objects, the kind
that Hollywood loves to make movies with. Bruce willis about
big asteroids that could potentially wipe out the planet.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Well, I'm glad that someone is doing this.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
I mean, remember what happened to all those dinosaurs.
Speaker 12 (32:32):
The hard purpose of it was to find ninety percent
of all the objects bigger than one hundred and forty
meters the size of a football field.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
On October nineteenth, twenty seventeen, the telescope spotted an objects
roughly twenty one million miles away.
Speaker 12 (32:48):
Here was an object that passed close to Earth, within
a sixth of the Earth's sund separation and was about
the size of a football field.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
The data they were receiving started splitting the science community.
Its characteristics were different. It didn't seem to look or
behave like a typical space rock. It's believed to be
somewhere between three hundred and three thousand feet long, and
avi Low became increasingly convinced that the object was of
interstellar origin. It was given the name a Mua Mua,
(33:18):
and it's likely the first object we've ever seen from
outside our own Solar system. Because of its unusually high
speed and trajectory, scientists became convinced that it came from
somewhere else, somewhere.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Far far away, but where exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
The more data they collected, the more science pointed to
the possibility that this wasn't a rock at all, and
maybe it was actually a piece of machinery.
Speaker 12 (33:43):
They flagged it and then they measured its speed and
they realized, oh, it's moving too fast to be bound
to the Sun. It's actually interested up. The more we
found about it, the more unusually it looked. And I said, well,
maybe it's artificial. They said, no, this must be natural,
and then try to explain that anomali is and always
(34:03):
concluded that it's something that we've never seen before.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
According to NASA, they concluded the object has vents on
its surface that emit jets of gases, giving it a
non gravitational boost in its speed. Because of how insanely
forward is from Earth, all we can see with our
own eyes is a little speck of light, so the
shape itself was.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Determined by its light curves.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
On a graph, a muahmua is said to be ten
times longer than it is wide, like a pancake. Astronomers
have never seen an object with such extreme proportions at
this rate of speed inside our solar system.
Speaker 12 (34:36):
My colleagues suggested that maybe Omua Mua, this first object
from twenty seventeen maybe it's a hydrogen iceberg, a nitrogen iceberg,
or a dust bunny. I noticed that the object is
so unusual that it couldn't be a rock or a comet.
It was moving too fast to be bound to the sun,
(34:57):
and astronomers at first thought that it's a rock that
originated from another star. As we collected more data, it
looked very strange because the amount of sunlight reflected from
it changed by a factor of tennis. It was stumbling
every eight hours. That's very unusual. It means that it
had a very extreme shape.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
It's either the weirdest space rock scientists have come across, possible,
likely even or it's something different, possibly even artificial in origin.
Speaker 12 (35:26):
And other people said, oh, well, maybe it's a rock
of a type that we've never seen before. And I said, well,
if that's the case, it could be also artificial origin.
It was not a comet. It just shows that the
game is not fair. A fair game should be to say,
this object does not appear to be a comet. We
didn't see any evidence for that. It could be something unusual.
(35:48):
It could be a rock of a type we've never
seen before, which some people claim that's fine, but don't
call it a comet. It's at the core of the
way that experts respond to unusual things. They basically want
them to conform with what they knew before. There was
plenty of time for probes to arrive to us. Some
of them may be equipped with artificial intelligence. Some may
(36:11):
look like a space trash if they're not functional anymore.
What my colleagues in the scientific community are doing is wrong.
They are eliminating the artificial origin possibility just because it
would have huge implications if it's right.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
In nineteen fifty an Italian physicist name Enrico Fermi, the
creator of the nuclear reactor, was on a lunch break
with his coworkers. He was discussing in the recent UFO
sightings in New Mexico, and he randomly blurted out, where
is everybody? This question inspired him to do the math.
If aliens do exist, well, then why haven't we all
(37:02):
seen them yet?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
I mean, what are they waiting for?
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Fermi's calculations concluded that if they were real, then we
would have been visited a very long time ago and
many times over since then, and out of the billions
of planets potentially growing civilizations, there should have been some
evidence of them by now, But where are they? Why
haven't they made contact if the probability is so damn high.
(37:26):
This concept became known as the Fermi paradox. Today, in
twenty twenty three, we need some way to prove that
there is other intelligent life in the universe, or that
there just isn't.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
You could look at this two different ways.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
To me, the easy, more ignorant approach is the whole Well,
why haven't they reached out to us yet? To me,
that screams were so special, I'm offended, why haven't you
introduced yourselves yet? If aliens were in fact real, and
it could travel to Earth from places so far away
that we literally can't see them with our most advanced telescopes,
then that would clearly mean they are incredibly more advanced
(38:03):
than us. In this case, we're like the cavemen in
the universe in terms of interstellar travel. Earth is like
a little ant hill in the forest. How often do
you sit down next to an ant hill in the
middle of the woods and introduce yourself to them? Unless
you're high on shrooms, and unless you're an asshole, you're
not going to step on the ant hill and destroy
it either it's best just to leave them be. They're
(38:25):
doing their own thing out there, with their own colony,
their own system. Now, if the ants started talking to us, well,
that might change things of it, and I would definitely
need the number for your shrooms guy. So if extraterrestrials
haven't gone out of their way to contact us, maybe
we should try contacting them. Both the Voyager one and
(38:46):
two space probes created by NASA carried a type of
time capsule on board for this very same reason. In
the event that some other civilization out there found the
space probe inside, it would be our own little message
in a bottle contains a gold plated copper twelve inch
record with instructions on how to play it written in
binary code. We probably should have waited for the iPod
(39:07):
to come out, but hindsight's always twenty twenty. The concept
of making contact with extraterrestrials is something that's inspired the
greatest science fiction movies of our time, and while it's
held its place in popular culture, it's also been the
focus of many great scientists of our time, and not
just the science community, but civilians too. One man named
(39:30):
John Sheppard spent his whole life building a machine to
make contact with.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Ets, and he believes it actually happened.
Speaker 13 (39:38):
The heart of Project strat is the broadcast operation. There
are sixty thousand voltes running through his basement, powering a
signal that's been straight out into space. The possibility that
something out there might hear and perhaps respond, keeps John going.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
John lives in a quaint little town in northern Michigan. Now,
for over thirty years, he has literally been trying to
contact aliens, send.
Speaker 14 (40:06):
And now a signal, trying out a lure, trying to
get some more information by luring the men close enough
to get accurate electronic measurements, some hard data, something on instruments.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
He built a radio transmitter so enormous that it took
up two floors of his house, with generators the size
of cars, an unbelievably powerful homemade machine you'd only expect
to find at NASA. After decades of beaming signals into space,
collecting data, and tweaking his instruments, one night he experienced
(40:43):
something that remains hard to rationally explain to this day.
After years of sending his own signals into space, he
was suddenly getting something back.
Speaker 14 (40:52):
Contacted our local Sheriff's firement. They sent out a deputy.
I showed him on the cell scope screen what was coming.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
On a frequency on the machine that was far more
than just some strange anomaly. Something was out there intentionally
causing it.
Speaker 14 (41:12):
There shouldn't be that other frequency in there. That's not
part of it. Something caused that amount of energy. I
think something was attractive for.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
The spaceship nor space conditions. The White legend in a
habitat and states like a rich smokers, I ain't need.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
A weed player, didn't take a lean it. She been
on there Gen.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
This is a bean back. I've been going Gene because
her cool. Right now she was over. She was pending
up to Japan.
Speaker 15 (41:45):
The bands of very T shirt sleeve button our top
ten of bird riding. Then you whether you gotta being
down and saying the pear peller. We spend a diecop
and God sweaters drive.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
John n and nine helped. It was booming out of guys.
Speaker 7 (41:58):
We are not the devil.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
High Strange is an eight part series released weekly for
free every Thursday. But if you'd like to binge the
whole series right now, you can subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus
on Apple podcasts. To get all the episodes right now,
follow the show on TikTok and Instagram at high Strange,
and you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at
Payne Lindsay. If you have your own UFO story, email
(42:24):
us at tips at highstrange dot com. High Strange is
a production by Tenderfoot TV in association with Cadence thirteen, created, hosted,
and edited by myself Payne Lindsay. Executive producers are myself
and Donald Albright. Editing by Mike Rooney, Cooper Skinner and myself.
Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set, Sound design, mixing
(42:48):
and mastering by Cooper Skinner. Additional production by Mike Rooney,
Dylan Harrington, Eric Quintana, Sean Nurney, Meredith Stedman, and Sidney Evans.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Our cover art is by polygon On.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
This episode features the song space Cadet by metro Booman
featuring Gunna, written by Wesley Tyre Glass, Sergio Kitchens, Leland Tyler,
Wayne Alan Ritter and Jack Queis Webster performed by metro
Booman featuring Gunna courtesy of Republic Records under license from
Universal Music Enterprises for metro Booman in three hundred Entertainment
for Gunna Special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and the whole
(43:23):
team at UTA, the Nord Group, Station sixteen, Beck Media
and Marketing, as well as Chris Corcoran and the team
at Cadence thirteen. Check out the show's website at Highstrange
dot com and if you're enjoying the show, please help
us out by rating and reviewing the podcast and share
it with your friends.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Thanks for listening.
High Strange is released weekly every Thursday, brought to you
absolutely free, but if you want to bene the whole season,
it's available right now on Apple Podcasts for all Tenderfoot
Plus subscribers. You'll also get exclusive bonus episodes throughout the season.
For more information, check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
There's some type of strange road light hill.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I saw, y'all a tang in it too.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Weird, It maybe a little bit funny.
Speaker 5 (00:35):
Yes, it's be not aspat thrill is coming its way.
Speaker 6 (00:38):
Also, it's definitely coming its way. It goes back out
into the farmer's field directly overhead a very high speed.
At least fifteen people in the weapons storage areas saw
the objects.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
In the sky.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Here's something very very strange.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It's not aspen.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
I said, let's try and approach it.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
We move up to the edge of the forest, and
when we.
Speaker 6 (01:05):
Tried to get close, it went back out into the field.
They knew we were trying to get close.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
It's kind of tourist house.
Speaker 6 (01:14):
Sparks are coming off and so bright.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
It was like looking at the sun coming down to
the ground.
Speaker 6 (01:21):
This is beyond anything that we're familiar with.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Welcome to high Strange. The year was nineteen eighty Suffolk, England.
Tensions between Russia and the US were high.
Speaker 7 (01:41):
There is imminent danger of some kind of Soviet military action.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
There were two bases in eastern England ran by the
US Air Force.
Speaker 7 (01:49):
This invasion is an extremely serious threat to peace.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
They house the most advanced weapons in the world, there
ready for deployment at any second. Right around Christmas time
that year, the forest behind this US military base will
become the location of Britain's very own roswell event known
as the Rendlesham Forest incident. Charles Holt, a military commander
on the base, headed into the forest to investigate rumors
(02:15):
of lights in the sky when he experienced an encounter
of his own. This was the third night in a
row that separate military officers claimed to have experienced something
unexplainable in the forest. I reached out to one of
the witnesses from the first night. His experience is arguably
even more bizarre than Halts. Forty years later, gathering these
(02:36):
different accounts, I'm hoping to try and piece together what
really happened here.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
This guy, yeah, it's perfect for you.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
This is Jim Piniston.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So how many guys believe in UFOs.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
At this point, I'm convinced that UFOs are not a
matter of believing, but rather the question is what are they?
There are outlier cases like this one that still puzzle
our government today. The real question we're asking ourselves is
do you believe these are extraterrestrial or are they some
other natural phenomenon we don't fully understand yet. Or are
(03:20):
these guys simply mistaking what they saw, embellishing their stories,
or just flat out making them all up.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
That's the real question here.
Speaker 8 (03:29):
You've told this story a thousand times, I'd say over times.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
We're fascinated about.
Speaker 8 (03:35):
Story, and they don't have a story. Though I don't
have a story. The story sounds like something that you
read when you're in grade school.
Speaker 9 (03:45):
What is it?
Speaker 8 (03:46):
This is an investigation by the United States Air Force.
I'm December twenty sixth, nineteen eight. This is gonna be
a rough night sleeping tonight. Well, I could talk. I'm
talking about these are triggers. So everything you hear is
a trigger. Nothing, there's no way around it. What I
was seeing was stuff I had never encountered in my
life or since then.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
In the trauma of dealing with it.
Speaker 8 (04:12):
I've always been able to tell you everything it wasn't,
but there is a problem because of what wasn't.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Jim's story begins on December twenty sixth, nineteen eighty, shortly
after midnight.
Speaker 8 (04:30):
I was a fifth generation military at that time. I
was in charge of base security for Woodbreach. Our job
was to protect aircraft weapons plus the personnel on the base.
The night started pretty much as usual. I had done
my guard mount, which is a briefing that you give
your fifteen guys that are going to be working with you,
(04:51):
putting my stuff down and grabbing a cup of coffee.
Sarry mccaully says, did you hear that call on the radio?
I said, no, I missed it. Central Security Control, our
control center is trying to get a hold of it.
We had a direct line. Talked to sargant coffee. He
was a senior controller. I said, well, what's going on?
(05:14):
He says, well, they'll brief you when you get out there.
He wouldn't tell me nfhone, which was odd. I'm being
dispatched for a situation.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
What it is? I don't know he wouldn't tell me.
I arrived at the east gate.
Speaker 8 (05:32):
I contact the senior law enforcement patrolman staff Sargen, Bud Stephens.
He said, what's going on, Bud? He just sort of
points over maybe preiriy yards over to render some forest
adjacent to the gate. I could see lighting above the
forest and in the forest. I turned around to him
(05:55):
and said, well, what is it? He says, oh, inside
the forest you could see orange light. You see a
red light. You could see flickering like that. It would
appear to be a fire, like something's burning. But the
strange part of that, over the top of the canopy
(06:15):
of the forest, there was a bubble of light over
the top of it. But I see out there didn't
make sense to me at all. Whatever is there had
to be really lit up. So my question to a
Bud was, need to hear a crash, And he goes, oh, no,
it'll landed. There's no way helicopter or plane could ever
(06:38):
land in that forest.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
The trees and Redntlesoome Forest at the time were used
as a crop hundreds of trees planted about five feet
apart from each other, which would make it nearly impossible
for conventional aircraft to land there. He went back to
the east gate and called in to report what he
was seeing in the forest.
Speaker 8 (06:57):
Reached central security control. It's now security problem.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Five guys pick up. We got five guys online.
Speaker 8 (07:08):
I says, well, I think this is a possible aircraft
crash in the forest. They lost contact. Was a unidentified
bogie on radar. They know where it came from. It
came from our ease. And all this stuff is happening megafast.
We were giving permission to go off base. We had
(07:29):
a crash kit. I pulled out the camera. Security control
was starting to break up and I couldn't really understand
what they were saying.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
On base, they used repeating systems for their radios, which
allowed their walkies to cover a much longer distance.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Basically, there's never a dead spot.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
But for the first time in his career on that base,
Jim was having trouble reaching the command post on his radio.
Speaker 8 (07:53):
Even though I wasn't hearing nothing in the radio, I'm talking.
I'll get to the edge of the tree line was
coming out of the forest was a white light. It
was so intense that you couldn't really see anything inside
the center of that light. Started taking pictures. I could
feel static electricity on my face and skin. At first
(08:19):
I thought it was maybe adrenaline, but it continued. My
movements felt labored, like walking waist deep and a pool
of water. I'm starting to wonder now, is this a rust?
Is this something out here to distract us? I started
to get worried. As I got to the edge of
(08:42):
the forest. I implemented a helping hand situation on the radio.
It's real and I'm unarmed. I used all the film up,
the camera started going out. This final burn, this bright
white light just exploded. I hit the ground. I was
(09:09):
getting very scared, very concerned for my.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Own well being.
Speaker 8 (09:14):
I know that what I'm seeing is nothing I trained for.
I personally thought, this is an unsurvivable situation. Everything out
there is something I haven't seen. Before I get up
off the ground, the white light started to dissipate, and
when it did, I could see nothing but this black aircraft,
(09:38):
this black triangular craft inside this white light.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Did you ever see anything like that before?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Craft like that didn't exist.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
He pulled out his pen and notebook and started documenting
as many details as he could about what he was seeing.
Itself was warm to the touch, he described it feeling
very smooth like black glass.
Speaker 8 (10:07):
Well, I looked the underneath it. I could see white
beams of light. There's three of them coming out from
underneath the craft. I wonder if that's stable. I wanted
to secure, so I tried to move it, and I
pushed on it, tried to give it a shove to
see if it would move. This didn't move at all.
It was solid, fixed to the ground. Somehow, with this technology,
(10:32):
how can this be? I started to look for things
that aircraft needs to fly, exhausts and intakes and things
like that. There was void of all those things. There
was no openings, there was no crew compartment. I had nothing. Basically,
(10:53):
it was a flying brick. This thing couldn't fly. You
need all those things for craft to fly.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I go out to record all that stuff down in
my book.
Speaker 8 (11:06):
The craft itself was warm to touch, smooth, glass like metal.
Still doing my security checks on the radio, but I'm
getting nothing back. During my interaction with the craft, the
air fell electric. I don't know how to explain that. Boy,
(11:30):
the hair was lifting in the back of the neck
and arms and face come back around and I could
see writing.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
On the side of the craft. That's a good thing.
Speaker 8 (11:42):
I'm thinking, I'm hoping this says Nassai or something. As
I got closer, it was a writing light we had.
It was like gliffs. Victoria Bliss was put the emotion
back into a panic.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
What it looked like the writing.
Speaker 8 (12:09):
There's five symbols. They were different shapes. The one that
stood out the most it was the one that was
above those five. There was another one which was larger
and had a circular a circle around it, and it
was a triangle with this huge circle around it, the
size of a big dinner plate.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
The circle.
Speaker 8 (12:33):
I put my hand on the circular triangle that was
above the other Gliss. All of a sudden, I have
a blinding, pure white light. I cannot see nothing else.
That eliminated all my visions. I start to see things
(12:54):
that don't make no sense at all. That more, things
that don't make those sense, like one and zeros and
things like that.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It terrified me.
Speaker 8 (13:06):
I gained my wits back, lift my hand back off,
and it stops.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Was it in your head or physically there?
Speaker 8 (13:18):
I was trying to determine whether or now it was
physically there or in my head? Okay, When I took
my hand off, that symbol I had my night vision,
which is impossible. I had perfect night vision once I
took my hand off the craft. After that happened with
the light, I was never going to touch that craft again.
(13:40):
All of a sudden, I started to see what I
perceive as activity. All of a sudden, the color light
that had dissipated inside the fabric of the cast started
to come back and started moving around in the craft.
So I backed away for about ten feet. I got
on the ground, tried to dig a hole. I was
thinking that I had active something. When I touched it,
(14:01):
I thought I was going to explode. The craft started
powering up and moved back through the trees. It had
no air displacement at all. There's absolutely no sound. All
(14:24):
aircraft make noise. That's a fact. All of the flaps
that all need either a propeller or intakes or exhaust,
or they can't fly. A few seconds later, it just
took off. It was gone in a blank of that eye.
(14:45):
After the craft departure, all of a sudden, I could
start hearing things. Immediately after it went out of site.
I could start hearing wind. I had full real contact.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Jim Penison was the head of security at the time,
not just some on duty guard, the head of security
on a US military base that held nuclear bombs ready
to drop on Russia at any given moment. He spent
his career in the Air Force and specialized in recognizing aircraft.
Multiple witnesses saw the same things over the course of
three days on the base. After the incident, Jim typed
(15:33):
a report recounting his experience, submitting it to the higher ups.
He took notes in his notepad and drew several sketches
of what the craft looked like. I got to see
these for myself and I'll post them on the High
Strange Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Just go to at High Strange.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
I'm no expert on anything aircraft related, but even to
the layperson, Jim's sketches of the aircraft looked nothing like
the US Air Force has then or now.
Speaker 6 (16:16):
After I had my encounter in the forest, I went
back and talked to all the participants that were involved.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
The first night.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Here's Charles Holtz again, the man who recorded the third
night of the incident on his tape.
Speaker 6 (16:28):
Recorder, Peniston Burrows Cabana sack. They told me a cleaned
up version of what happened.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
They were told what to tell me.
Speaker 6 (16:39):
In fact, Cabanasak brought me a typed statement. He didn't
type it. He couldn't type words that he would not
have used.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Holtz seems to think, or is at least hinting at
the idea, that the reports submitted by his buddy were
merely a cover story.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Basically said, we saw the Lighthews.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I think.
Speaker 5 (17:01):
The British tabloid press had a field day with reports
of the incident, with stories of flying saucers, mysterious lights,
and even aliens. The Times of London, however, dismissed the
incident and poked fun at the other newspapers. It quoted
this man, Vince their Kettle, a forester who works near
the alleged landing site. Their Kettle told CNN that the
(17:22):
UFO was merely a beam of light from the nearby
Orford Lighthouse.
Speaker 9 (17:27):
But if you didn't know as a lighthouse, if you short,
it was something small, maybe two three meters across, pulsing
white in the forest. Yes, it looks as if it's
within the trees, and it does appear to light up
the trees as well.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
When your senses are heightened, adrenaline pumping, and you're out
in the woods at night looking for something weird. Common
sense says there's a good chance you might find it.
Speaker 10 (17:49):
I don't think we're ever going to get very far
with the Renation Forest incident.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
This is Mick West again, an investigative UFO skeptic.
Speaker 10 (17:58):
I don't know if this is ever going to be
a determination of exactly what happened to that. I think
there are laws of all explanations a certain aspects of it.
There was a lighthouse, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It wasn't the lighthouse. I'm very familiar with.
Speaker 6 (18:13):
The lighthouse, and the lighthouse is at orford Ness. Orford
Ness is a little small fishing village on the coast
out on the island. Two little pubs out there have
very good food and reasonable prices. I have pictures of
me standing here. The lighthouse is over there, and the
object was out here. How could the lighthouse reflect off
the windows of the farmhouse when the lighthouse is two
(18:34):
or three miles out that way.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
The lighthouse theory quickly became the easiest and most rational explanation.
But why would all these highly trained men interpret a
lighthouse as some strange foreign object.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Three days in a row. I mean, what's the point.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
The lighthouse was always there anyway, a little strange to
suddenly take note of it and make a huge deal
out of it all.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
The game warden was also familiar with the cars and
dismissed the lighthouse theory outright.
Speaker 7 (19:06):
At the moment, We're standing on the orphored key, and
quite clearly you can see the lighthouse over there flashing.
The light from the UFO was totally nothing like the
light from the lighters.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
We know that people make mistakes.
Speaker 10 (19:21):
We know that people, even with the best of intentions
and with the best of observational abilities, can sometimes perceive
things to be other than the way they actually are.
There are classic cases like the Cottingly Fairies, where these
two girls took photographs of fairies and they managed to
convince a whole bunch of people that these were genuine
(19:42):
photos of fairies, including Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a
big investigator of such things at the time. They stuck
to their story for decades. People once they buy into
a certain explanation, it's kind of difficult for them to
admit that they made stuff up.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Once they told the same.
Speaker 10 (20:02):
Story over and over again, it almost becomes like a memory.
They're not really lying as such, they're simply just telling
the same story, which happens to be false.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
How could so many credible people from the military come
up with the exact same lie, the same exact misinterpretation
of something so completely normal. What are the odds they
were all just mistaken or hallucinating. If their job is
to guard and protect a military base, and they're dreaming
of fantastical stories of foreign lights in the sky that
(20:48):
didn't actually exist, then that would be pretty concerning on
its own, wouldn't it.
Speaker 6 (20:55):
I met the lighthouse keeper, Keith Simmons, met him and
talk with him. Light house has three lenses, red and green,
shine out to sea and white to land. He said,
if you saw a red light, you couldn't have seen
the lighthouse. You had to be out the sea to
see the red lights. So people say that red light
you saw was the lighthouse. There's no way it's not
the lighthouse. The lighthouse is in a different location, twenty
(21:17):
five or thirty degrees away. There's agencies that have a
whole lot more information in what they're reviewing. The following
week from the incident, an unmarked plane came normally went planes,
even the U two's and SR seventy one, which occasionally
dropped them when they had a problem. We provided security
(21:37):
for this plane, provided their own security and had their
own people in uniform which were not Air Force uniforms.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Unmarked planes are not unheard of.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
There's a company known as Janet Airlines that shuttles employees
from the Las Vegas Airport to Area fifty one. You'd
at least think that if unmarked planes full of unknown
uniformed employees were landing on the based to collect information
day whoever they are seem to find this incident just.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
A little bit interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Seems like a lot of extra unnecessary work for a lighthouse.
Speaker 6 (22:13):
It was obvious nobody else was going to investigate. Nobody
else was going to do anything, even though they did
do things in the background, behind the scenes, so to speak.
So I didn't know anybody else was in the background
playing games. I didn't know any of this. I wasn't
told to be quiet. It was sort of inferred that
I should be quiet, and I already knew that. But
(22:33):
I still got to three and four star endorsements on
my report cards and still got promoted because they knew
it was credible.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
When it comes to trolls Holts. I'll be honest, it's
hard not to believe him.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
I get disappointed with all the disinformation that's out there,
but I can't know anything about it except just tell
the truth.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
He doesn't claim to know what he saw that night,
but that it was certainly something they were beyond unfamiliar with.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
I have not ever said I saw a little green man.
I never saw any entity that I could identify. I
know what I saw, but I don't know what it was.
I'd sure like to know. So Obviously, whatever we're seeing
in the sky has the ability to do phenomenal things
change shape, change size, change calor going phenomenal speed, do
(23:22):
things that we just can't even imagine.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
He wrote down in his own memo that he and
several other military personnel saw multiple objects in the sky,
a quote redlight sun object that pulsed and shed into
particles before splitting into five separate white lights and then
disappearing in the sky. It's hard to imagine someone of
sound mind running around with a cassette recorder chasing a
(23:46):
stationary lighthouse all night. The tape itself feels genuine. It
sounds like they really don't know what's going on.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I wish I knew more, but I don't.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
I am firmly convinced that we're not alone.
Speaker 6 (23:59):
I can tell that, but I don't know what we're
faced with.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Charles Holt went on to investigate the supposed landing site
of the unknown aircraft, and he found indentations in the
frozen ground, So something, whatever it was, had to have
physically been there, or someone went out of their way
to make it look like there was. That feels like
we're entering conspiracy land a little bit. Holt and his
crew members also took Geiger counter readings. They found the
(24:25):
radiation on the indentations in the ground were significantly higher
than the background, and while they were examining the site,
they were interrupted by their own firsthand ufhoe encounter, and
each time they made an attempt to get closer to it,
the object moved further away from them.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Never once device in a lighthouse move. So what else
could these things be? Exactly?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Were they truly under intelligent control? Are they extraterrestrials, aliens, spirits,
ai from the future. I could go on and on,
or is it none of those things at all? Something
simpler and much more rational, but easily misinterpreted as something strange.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
However you feel about it.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
A case like the Reynolsome forest incident is a hard
one to just blindly dismiss as nothing at all.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
Let's take a step back.
Speaker 11 (25:23):
Forget the X files, forget popular culture and all the
alien visitation and stories.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Here's political journalist Brian Bender.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Take this at face value.
Speaker 11 (25:35):
Sightings reported by credible people over sensitive facilities, and we
don't know what they are, just an air safety hazard.
The military should probably try to find out what those
things are, if for nothing else, to protect its own personnel.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Our job is to protect our troops.
Speaker 11 (25:54):
If our troops are seeing things that they think are
potentially dangerous or is upsetting to them, it's our job
to do whatever we can do to figure out what
that is. Let's get scientists together and deal with what
can potentially.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Be a safety hazard.
Speaker 11 (26:11):
If we really want to maximize our resources, let's get
the government to be more transparent, share more of what
it might have and its ability to gather more data.
You know, maybe not publicize all of that, but what
if you shared that data with some scientists. If what
we get out of this is a society where we
(26:33):
pride ourselves on the search for knowledge. This is a
topic that fits squarely into that. A whole new generation
of people can put their minds to this see if
they can find more answers than their fathers or grandfathers
or great grandfathers could.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
That would be a real victory.
Speaker 11 (26:55):
We're at a time in human history where technology is advancing.
Assuming we can harness the technologies and they don't kill
us first, I think it'd be a victory if there
was a real career path, approach UAPs as a discipline
and be successful. That's the way to get down the
road of knowledge.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
In nineteen fifty an article was published in True magazine
titled The Flying Saucers Are Real. It was written by
former pilot and retired Marine Major Donald Keho. Donald Kehoe
is likely the very first citizen researcher of UFOs. Unlike
most of his peers at the time, he didn't rely
(27:41):
on the government to provide him all the answers, but
instead embarked on his very own investigation. At first, Keyho
was admittedly very skeptical that any of these reported sightings
were something extraordinary, but after speaking to countless witnesses.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
In numerous high ranking military officials.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
He became convinced that some of these UFO sightings were
of unearthly origin.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Keiho would go on.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
To sell millions of books about the UFO mystery, and
his diligent approach to the subject helped create a much
more pragmatic conversation that still exists to this day. The
road to knowledge is a long one, filled with roadblocks
and potholes. But if we stopped looking to the military
to provide us all the answers and instead turned to
independent scientists from around the world who can collect all
(28:27):
their own data, we might have a much better shot
at the truth.
Speaker 12 (29:04):
When we say the size of the universe, that's the
size of the region that we can see. The universe
is expanding, so if we go back in time, it
was denser. Back in time. Eventually you get infinite density.
That is the Big Bang when the density was infinite.
So that's the beginning of time thirteen point eight billion years.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
This is Abby Lobe, professor of science at Harvard University.
Speaker 12 (29:33):
Within that volume that we can see, which is basically
the distance that light could have traveled in thirteen point
eight billion years, there are about a trillion galaxies.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Like the Milky Way.
Speaker 12 (29:46):
Within the Milky Way galaxy, there are tens of billions
of stars. You have more habitable planets like the Earth
than there are grains of sand on all beaches on Earth?
Are twenty one just a huge number?
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Well, that's a brain buster for you.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
The chance of.
Speaker 12 (30:07):
Us being specially and unique is extremely smart. We know
that most of the stars formed ten billion years before
the present time, and the Sun only four point six
billion years ago. Most stars like the Sun formed billions
of years before the Sun.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Most planets that are habitable would be orbiting stars that
are billions of years older than ours. Of these tens
of billions of stars, many of them have what we
call Goldilock zones, a fancy term for the areas that
contain habitable planets like Earth. As of today, we've found
fifty nine of the estimated eleven billion planets that could
(30:46):
be inside these Goldilock zones.
Speaker 12 (30:49):
If the technological clock started ticking around the same time
as here, then the civilizations predated us. I think that
it's very likely there could be probes visiting us. They
had plenty of time to send probes that would fill
up the Milky Way Galaxy. Most likely there was a
(31:11):
scientist smarter than Albert Einstein on another planet who existed
a billion years ago. They could have launched probes that
arrived to us by now. And that's what we are
trying to find out. Let's find the smartest kid in
our interstellar class of intelligent civilizations. We can learn from
(31:32):
that kid. What Sherlock Holmes would say is never eliminate
any suspect, any possibility. Put all of them on the table,
and if you eliminate them one by one, whatever it
means must be the truth. At the same time, you
have those scientists that don't want to touch it ridicule,
which is also wrong. The correct thing to do is
(31:55):
to collect enough evidence such that we will be convinced.
The pan Star's Telescope in Hawaii was constructed to find
near Earth objects.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Since two thousand and eight, the pant Star's Telescope in
Hawaii has been using astronomical cameras and telescopes to track
moving objects in the sky. Near Earth objects, the kind
that Hollywood loves to make movies with. Bruce willis about
big asteroids that could potentially wipe out the planet.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Well, I'm glad that someone is doing this.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
I mean, remember what happened to all those dinosaurs.
Speaker 12 (32:32):
The hard purpose of it was to find ninety percent
of all the objects bigger than one hundred and forty
meters the size of a football field.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
On October nineteenth, twenty seventeen, the telescope spotted an objects
roughly twenty one million miles away.
Speaker 12 (32:48):
Here was an object that passed close to Earth, within
a sixth of the Earth's sund separation and was about
the size of a football field.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
The data they were receiving started splitting the science community.
Its characteristics were different. It didn't seem to look or
behave like a typical space rock. It's believed to be
somewhere between three hundred and three thousand feet long, and
avi Low became increasingly convinced that the object was of
interstellar origin. It was given the name a Mua Mua,
(33:18):
and it's likely the first object we've ever seen from
outside our own Solar system. Because of its unusually high
speed and trajectory, scientists became convinced that it came from
somewhere else, somewhere.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Far far away, but where exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
The more data they collected, the more science pointed to
the possibility that this wasn't a rock at all, and
maybe it was actually a piece of machinery.
Speaker 12 (33:43):
They flagged it and then they measured its speed and
they realized, oh, it's moving too fast to be bound
to the Sun. It's actually interested up. The more we
found about it, the more unusually it looked. And I said, well,
maybe it's artificial. They said, no, this must be natural,
and then try to explain that anomali is and always
(34:03):
concluded that it's something that we've never seen before.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
According to NASA, they concluded the object has vents on
its surface that emit jets of gases, giving it a
non gravitational boost in its speed. Because of how insanely
forward is from Earth, all we can see with our
own eyes is a little speck of light, so the
shape itself was.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Determined by its light curves.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
On a graph, a muahmua is said to be ten
times longer than it is wide, like a pancake. Astronomers
have never seen an object with such extreme proportions at
this rate of speed inside our solar system.
Speaker 12 (34:36):
My colleagues suggested that maybe Omua Mua, this first object
from twenty seventeen maybe it's a hydrogen iceberg, a nitrogen iceberg,
or a dust bunny. I noticed that the object is
so unusual that it couldn't be a rock or a comet.
It was moving too fast to be bound to the sun,
(34:57):
and astronomers at first thought that it's a rock that
originated from another star. As we collected more data, it
looked very strange because the amount of sunlight reflected from
it changed by a factor of tennis. It was stumbling
every eight hours. That's very unusual. It means that it
had a very extreme shape.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
It's either the weirdest space rock scientists have come across, possible,
likely even or it's something different, possibly even artificial in origin.
Speaker 12 (35:26):
And other people said, oh, well, maybe it's a rock
of a type that we've never seen before. And I said, well,
if that's the case, it could be also artificial origin.
It was not a comet. It just shows that the
game is not fair. A fair game should be to say,
this object does not appear to be a comet. We
didn't see any evidence for that. It could be something unusual.
(35:48):
It could be a rock of a type we've never
seen before, which some people claim that's fine, but don't
call it a comet. It's at the core of the
way that experts respond to unusual things. They basically want
them to conform with what they knew before. There was
plenty of time for probes to arrive to us. Some
of them may be equipped with artificial intelligence. Some may
(36:11):
look like a space trash if they're not functional anymore.
What my colleagues in the scientific community are doing is wrong.
They are eliminating the artificial origin possibility just because it
would have huge implications if it's right.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
In nineteen fifty an Italian physicist name Enrico Fermi, the
creator of the nuclear reactor, was on a lunch break
with his coworkers. He was discussing in the recent UFO
sightings in New Mexico, and he randomly blurted out, where
is everybody? This question inspired him to do the math.
If aliens do exist, well, then why haven't we all
(37:02):
seen them yet?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
I mean, what are they waiting for?
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Fermi's calculations concluded that if they were real, then we
would have been visited a very long time ago and
many times over since then, and out of the billions
of planets potentially growing civilizations, there should have been some
evidence of them by now, But where are they? Why
haven't they made contact if the probability is so damn high.
(37:26):
This concept became known as the Fermi paradox. Today, in
twenty twenty three, we need some way to prove that
there is other intelligent life in the universe, or that
there just isn't.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
You could look at this two different ways.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
To me, the easy, more ignorant approach is the whole Well,
why haven't they reached out to us yet? To me,
that screams were so special, I'm offended, why haven't you
introduced yourselves yet? If aliens were in fact real, and
it could travel to Earth from places so far away
that we literally can't see them with our most advanced telescopes,
then that would clearly mean they are incredibly more advanced
(38:03):
than us. In this case, we're like the cavemen in
the universe in terms of interstellar travel. Earth is like
a little ant hill in the forest. How often do
you sit down next to an ant hill in the
middle of the woods and introduce yourself to them? Unless
you're high on shrooms, and unless you're an asshole, you're
not going to step on the ant hill and destroy
it either it's best just to leave them be. They're
(38:25):
doing their own thing out there, with their own colony,
their own system. Now, if the ants started talking to us, well,
that might change things of it, and I would definitely
need the number for your shrooms guy. So if extraterrestrials
haven't gone out of their way to contact us, maybe
we should try contacting them. Both the Voyager one and
(38:46):
two space probes created by NASA carried a type of
time capsule on board for this very same reason. In
the event that some other civilization out there found the
space probe inside, it would be our own little message
in a bottle contains a gold plated copper twelve inch
record with instructions on how to play it written in
binary code. We probably should have waited for the iPod
(39:07):
to come out, but hindsight's always twenty twenty. The concept
of making contact with extraterrestrials is something that's inspired the
greatest science fiction movies of our time, and while it's
held its place in popular culture, it's also been the
focus of many great scientists of our time, and not
just the science community, but civilians too. One man named
(39:30):
John Sheppard spent his whole life building a machine to
make contact with.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Ets, and he believes it actually happened.
Speaker 13 (39:38):
The heart of Project strat is the broadcast operation. There
are sixty thousand voltes running through his basement, powering a
signal that's been straight out into space. The possibility that
something out there might hear and perhaps respond, keeps John going.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
John lives in a quaint little town in northern Michigan. Now,
for over thirty years, he has literally been trying to
contact aliens, send.
Speaker 14 (40:06):
And now a signal, trying out a lure, trying to
get some more information by luring the men close enough
to get accurate electronic measurements, some hard data, something on instruments.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
He built a radio transmitter so enormous that it took
up two floors of his house, with generators the size
of cars, an unbelievably powerful homemade machine you'd only expect
to find at NASA. After decades of beaming signals into space,
collecting data, and tweaking his instruments, one night he experienced
(40:43):
something that remains hard to rationally explain to this day.
After years of sending his own signals into space, he
was suddenly getting something back.
Speaker 14 (40:52):
Contacted our local Sheriff's firement. They sent out a deputy.
I showed him on the cell scope screen what was coming.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
On a frequency on the machine that was far more
than just some strange anomaly. Something was out there intentionally
causing it.
Speaker 14 (41:12):
There shouldn't be that other frequency in there. That's not
part of it. Something caused that amount of energy. I
think something was attractive for.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
The spaceship nor space conditions. The White legend in a
habitat and states like a rich smokers, I ain't need.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
A weed player, didn't take a lean it. She been
on there Gen.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
This is a bean back. I've been going Gene because
her cool. Right now she was over. She was pending
up to Japan.
Speaker 15 (41:45):
The bands of very T shirt sleeve button our top
ten of bird riding. Then you whether you gotta being
down and saying the pear peller. We spend a diecop
and God sweaters drive.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
John n and nine helped. It was booming out of guys.
Speaker 7 (41:58):
We are not the devil.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
High Strange is an eight part series released weekly for
free every Thursday. But if you'd like to binge the
whole series right now, you can subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus
on Apple podcasts. To get all the episodes right now,
follow the show on TikTok and Instagram at high Strange,
and you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at
Payne Lindsay. If you have your own UFO story, email
(42:24):
us at tips at highstrange dot com. High Strange is
a production by Tenderfoot TV in association with Cadence thirteen, created, hosted,
and edited by myself Payne Lindsay. Executive producers are myself
and Donald Albright. Editing by Mike Rooney, Cooper Skinner and myself.
Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set, Sound design, mixing
(42:48):
and mastering by Cooper Skinner. Additional production by Mike Rooney,
Dylan Harrington, Eric Quintana, Sean Nurney, Meredith Stedman, and Sidney Evans.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Our cover art is by polygon On.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
This episode features the song space Cadet by metro Booman
featuring Gunna, written by Wesley Tyre Glass, Sergio Kitchens, Leland Tyler,
Wayne Alan Ritter and Jack Queis Webster performed by metro
Booman featuring Gunna courtesy of Republic Records under license from
Universal Music Enterprises for metro Booman in three hundred Entertainment
for Gunna Special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and the whole
(43:23):
team at UTA, the Nord Group, Station sixteen, Beck Media
and Marketing, as well as Chris Corcoran and the team
at Cadence thirteen. Check out the show's website at Highstrange
dot com and if you're enjoying the show, please help
us out by rating and reviewing the podcast and share
it with your friends.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Thanks for listening.
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