Rendlesham Incident 30th Anniversary Conference Review
Updated: Jun 25, 2019
The Rendlesham Forest incident of December 26th – December 28th 1980 still remains one of the UK’s most impressive and intriguing UFO cases. Multiple encounters with unexplained lights, physical craft and even beings over three consecutive nights. Direct involvement of two nearby army bases. Many highly respected military and civilian witnesses. Both physical and testimonial evidence. Official recognition by the MOD that something unusual took place. The incident was truly fascinating. There is a mass of information about it available online, and I will assume that you already have a background knowledge of the case in this article.
On 28th December 2010 a superb event took place down in the town of Woodbridge. It was exactly 30 years since the final night of the incident, and to mark this important date a conference about the incident was planned. At this conference, two of the key witnesses John Burroughs and Jim Penniston would at last openly speak about what happened to them. Other speakers included UFO researcher and co-author of Left At East Gate Peter Robbins, highly respected UFO investigator Linda Moulton Howe and ex-MOD investigator Nick Pope.
As soon as I found out about the conference I sent off for a ticket, as did my father and brother. I had been waiting for a long time to visit Rendlesham Forest, and finally I would get that chance. It was just after Christmas but there is no way I would have missed it for the world, however bad the weather. I was worried that it would be cancelled due to recent snow fall, but luckily when the day arrived, the snow had started to melt. It was however still quite foggy, making the drive down quite precarious!
We arrived at Woodbridge about ten minutes before the conference kick off time of 6pm. Luckily we managed to find the venue with ease. The conference was set to take place at Woodbridge community hall. In the foyer we immediately met Larry Warren, the original whistleblower of the incident. Larry and I have become good friends after he joined me for my wedding day at Area 51 back in February, and then later came and gave a talk for BUFOG. It was really great to see him again.
When we entered the hall, I was pleased to see that there was a very decent turn out for the event. There must have been a good few hundred people, and every chair in the hall was filled. In fact I think they ran out of seats and people even stood around the back. We managed to find some seats about 2/3 of the way back, and it wasn’t long before the lights dimmed and the conference began.
The first speaker of the evening was UFO researcher Peter Robbins. Peter was co-author of Left At East Gate with Larry Warren. The book detailed the incident in full, concentrating on the final night where both a craft and several entities were seen by Larry and many other personnel. Peter began by covering some of the explanations given for the incident over the years, including the infamous light-house, a meteor shower, stars and the recent claim thata burning fertilizer truck was to blame. He detailed why these explanations do not hold water when faced with the facts of what took place.
At the end of his talk he specially called up Larry to the stage to thank him for his efforts in bringing the case to the public eye. Without him the case may have never been known about, so I was pleased to see him get this recognition.
Next up was US researcher Linda Moulton Howe. Linda has been involved with the UFO subject for many years, and is one of the worlds leading experts on the animal mutilation phenomenon. Over recent years she has been working with John and Jim to get to the bottom of what really happened to them during the incident. This involved numerous hypnotic regressions which they had undergone, and it was fascinating to see footage from these regressions.