"Goodbye" - the forum's fate - Important

[AdrianF]

any more than the presence of a Space Invaders arcade machine at Bentwaters would prove the mindset of the witnesses. .

Oh well, bang goes my latest bit of research.

[Admin]

I'm pretty well convinced now that at one point in our investigations several years ago, we came within a hairs breadth of finding out what happened ... It was from this particular point that new members joined up and started trashing our theories. From there on in the waters got extremely muddy, but then I think that was deliberate ... There was also several occasions where the authorities had a look at the forum, namely GCHQ. don't ask.

I remember, Observer. There have been some strange occurrences in the past. GCHQ weren't the only ones either.

Thanks Admin for all your hard work. Am I right in thinking you are the second or even third Admin this site has had?

I am the first Admin - been here all along - and I remember the first few posts, many of which were your own. Believe it or not, I started work on this website when I was only thirteen years of age. It is for this reason that I was so careful to conceal my identity, although I would have preferred not to. Naturally, over the years, my style of writing has changed so I can see why you suspect there have been others.

Please keep the board. I have only recently joined and the posts are massive in terms of debate, the witnesses and a lot of food for thought over all the issues.

There has been a good response so far... I think the board will remain in some shape or form. Also, I have been considering how the forum can be transferred - should be a simple case of exporting the forum's database (certain tables will not be included for members' privacy). The new administrator can start with a fresh installation of phpBB3 and import the file I send, it should be easy, but I will assist in doing this if necessary.

[IanR]

Believe it or not, I started work on this website when I was only thirteen years of age.

Blimey, and I thought you were an old-timer... So there's a good chance that you'll grow out of this teenage belief in UFOs!

Ian

[Admin]

Believe it or not, I started work on this website when I was only thirteen years of age.

Blimey, and I thought you were an old-timer... So there's a good chance that you'll grow out of this teenage belief in UFOs!

Ian

Ian - my belief left several years ago. To clarify, I was 13 when I registered the domain in September 2005.

[Gordy]

I would consider continuing this forum, I would however move the hosting to a free phpbb service provider. The one I have in mind has a shoutbox for real time conversation included and is totally free of charge.

Let me know who's behind me, will have the same thread titles etc. Thanks, Gordy.

[Daniel]

I would consider continuing this forum, I would however move the hosting to a free phpbb service provider. The one I have in mind has a shoutbox for real time conversation included and is totally free of charge.

Let me know who's behind me, will have the same thread titles etc. Thanks, Gordy.

How much control would you have over the content if it was moved to a free forum service provider? Is it easy to back up the forums data? How often is the software updated, as exploits or spammers would probably rip through the site

@Admin

You've done some good work on this site and I must say it's one of two sites that I felt were free for all to comment, sadly the other forum was lost in 2003/4.

[Gordy]

I would consider continuing this forum, I would however move the hosting to a free phpbb service provider. The one I have in mind has a shoutbox for real time conversation included and is totally free of charge.

Let me know who's behind me, will have the same thread titles etc. Thanks, Gordy.

How much control would you have over the content if it was moved to a free forum service provider? Is it easy to back up the forums data? How often is the software updated, as exploits or spammers would probably rip through the site

@Admin

You've done some good work on this site and I must say it's one of two sites that I felt were free for all to comment, sadly the other forum was lost in 2003/4.

I agree and I don't think it will come to this. I'm sure this site will be transferred to a paid URL by someone on here.

[Admin]

Yep, definitely best to keep to a paid host if possible. We used a free host previously - one particular staff member enjoyed playing around with the forum from behind the scenes (directly modifying the database)... they would change the dates of posts so that they appeared to be from the past and attributed this to their 'time travelling' abilities. The mysterious poster's IP address led to the CIA - just another trick. When I decided to change hosts, they claimed to own the company I had chosen and many, many others, implying they would continue interfering with the site.

[Observer]

For what motive?

Obs

[Vortex]

I'm really sorry to hear the news regarding the future of the forum and I too hope it can be kept alive in some form or another. Like others have already mentioned, this forum has become a vital body of data itself and if nothing else, it should definitely be maintained as a RFI archive of some sort.

As much as this case is solved in the eyes of so many people now, I still feel that there are major discrepancies between the original witness statements/Halt's memo and Ian Ridpath's fireball/lighthouse/stars/animal scrapings theory (which seems to generally have been accepted as the definitive explanation now). Whilst I applaud Ian for his attempt to resolve this mystery with scientific reasoning, down to earth logic and independent investigation, there are still far more questions than answers in my opinion. For example, I've just re-read John Borroughs original witness statement (http://rendlesham-incident.co.uk/eviden ... statement/), which although only referring to 'lights', certainly suggests multiple lights (red, blue and white) arranged in a definite pattern, moving around the forest. Can we really attribute this to a lighthouse beam?

Was the lighthouse beam also mistaken for a red sun-like object that moves between trees and appears to shed molten-metal (as well as a definite mechnical object, triangular in shape)? Do stars make sharp angular movements and fire beams down to the ground? I'm sorry, but this just doesn't fit with me?! Does this mean it was an alien spaceship, no, of course not. But unless we assume that all of the witnesses were lying (for whatever reason?!) when they wrote there statements and the memo, then as Frank pointed out, the Halt memo is probably the best piece of evidence we have that something unconventional and still unexplained took place on those nights in 1980 (indeed, I find it hard to believe that a USAF Colonel would write a memo reporting such unconventional events to the MOD if they had even the slightest suspicision that they might have misinterpreted conventional objects, stars etc.).

On the point of the witnesses lying, call me naive but I just don't understand why anybody would feel the urge to lie about all this stuff in the first place, let alone keep up the lies for the next 30 years?! Surely reporting seeing UFOs in the military is hardly the best career move and I'm sure there are far more lucritive ways to spend your retirement than dipping your toes into the UFO circuit (how about writing gritty Cold War spy novels instead!)?! And if not lying, I think it's rather patronising to suggest that so many people misinterpreted such mundane things as stars and a lighthouse as triangular objects and multiple UFOs...

To sum up, for me the RFI remains unexplained and I have feeling it will always stay that way!

Cheers

Steve

PS - I'm ready to be shot down in flames and burnt at the stake as UFO lunatic now!

[Ignis Fatuus]

[Frank]

I joined this forum to try to resolve the inconsistencies in the witness stories + notebook (which at that time I thought to be a timeline issue).

On top of that I had just read the fantastic scientific analysis of UFO characteristics by Paul R. Hill and to my amazement found a lot of those characteristics in the RFI, up to and including the dripping ‘molten metal’ that did not leave any traces on the ground (which was probably condensed water according to Hill). I wanted to share this with the forum members.

My first shock was the unwillingness of the witnesses to cooperate in solving the inconsistencies in their stories. “Together we stand, divided we fall”, so what was keeping them ..?

My second shock was the behavior of Jim. This started when he joined the forum to answer questions. After giving some unsatisfying answers he disappeared again because ‘the stress was too much for him’. It continued on the 30 year anniversary meeting. Instead of solving the inconsistencies, Jim only added to the confusion and further undermined his credibility. Why would he do that?

My third shock was the fixed mindset of the skeptics. Only those fragments of the evidence supporting a mundane explanation are highlighted and quoted over and over again. Every piece of data that falsified their theories was treated as either a lie or an embellishment. Every primary witness who was on the spot and told he saw something unexplainable was either lying or mislead by common everyday objects like a lighthouse, stars & clouds, a house, … Even the fact that they IDENTIFIED the light house and the farm house as such but still reported they saw something else did not matter.
In the mean time, every secondary witness who was not on the spot but at the base was suddenly treated like a primary witness: ‘If he did not see anything unusual, nothing has happened’.

Together these forms of behavior feed each other. The unwillingness of the witnesses strengthens the believe of the skeptics that they are lying, and the spinning of the skeptics strengthens the unwillingness of the witnesses to face the inconsistencies (which will only lead to more aggressive attacks by the skeptics).

So where does this bring us? The first answer is “nowhere”. The second answer is “back to the basics”.

When you really go back to the basics - Halt’s tape and the original witness statements - and study them in detail, it all becomes very simple.

On the first night, three guys went into the woods to investigate a possible aircraft crash. Instead they were confronted with something unusual that was “out of the realm of explanation” for them at that time. The accompanying drawings and descriptions make this very clear – they do not fit anything familiar. Whatever they saw was able to move back and disappear. They reported it as a “UFO” to the Suffolk police. Traces that may point to a landing of some sort have been found in the woods. We will never know for sure what it was.

On the third night there was agitation on the base because “the UFO was back”. Halt went out with a group of men to debunk this case. Instead they, too, ALL witnessed phenomena they could not explain. We have a live tape recording as proof of it. Treating these men as if they would not be able to indentify scintillating stars combined with cloud movements is unbelievably arrogant and patronizing.

Now if you read Halt’s memo, you basically read the same story, with a few differences: The object of the first night is described in more detail, a silent explosion is mentioned on the third night, and the date was wrong. My observation is that Halt did a good job summarizing the case after two weeks and also put the right conclusion in the header: UNEXPLAINED.

I’m afraid this is as far as you can get with this case. The stuff added over the years is hopelessly inconsistent with it and we can only guess at the motives of the witnesses to undermine their own case to such an extent.

I hope this forum and all the information in it will live on and remain accessible to however wants to study this case. I also hope new information about this case will become available in the future and if so, I’m convinced this forum is the best place to share and discuss it.

(Oh, and if you want to read another discussion about the lighhouse theory: http://www.cohenufo.org/CombinedRendlesham.htm)