Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart three D
Speaker 1: audio for full exposure. Listen with headphones. You want miss
Speaker 1: changed for me two twenties. Check the other tires for it.
Speaker 1: They look okay. Anything wrong? Oh no, nothing's wrong. I
Speaker 1: was just looking at that hitch shaiker. What hitchhiker. He's
Speaker 1: gone now. I guess he got picked up. Probably, It's
Speaker 1: funny though I saw him a little while ago while
Speaker 1: you were changing the tire. Hey, you probably got a
Speaker 1: left right after we passed him. Probably In the days
Speaker 1: following December, Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Halt, the deputy base commander,
Speaker 1: was asked to write a memo describing the events of
Speaker 1: the three night encounter to give to the Royal Air
Speaker 1: Force representative at R A. F. Bent Waters. The memo
Speaker 1: was sent up to the Ministry of Defense, but Halt
Speaker 1: never heard anything back. I was relieved to be very
Speaker 1: honest with you, and that was I thought at the
Speaker 1: end of it until two or three years later, whenever
Speaker 1: the memo got released. And then it hit the fan.
Speaker 1: I'm Toby Ball and this is Strange Arrivals Episode three,
Speaker 1: The Lighthouse. It hit the fan on October two in
Speaker 1: the English newspaper called The News of the World under
Speaker 1: the headline UFO lands in Suffolk and that's official, the
Speaker 1: article began, a UFO has landed in Britain and that
Speaker 1: staggering fact has been officially confirmed. Despite a massive cover up.
Speaker 1: News of the World investigators have proof that the mysterious
Speaker 1: craft came to Earth in a red ball of light
Speaker 1: at three am on December. You might have noticed that
Speaker 1: they have the date of the first night wrong. Not
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that later. In addition to the article,
Speaker 1: the paper ran the text of Chuck Halts memo. The
Speaker 1: Rundel Shim encounter was now publicly known. Even if the
Speaker 1: News of the World's journalistic standards weren't always of the
Speaker 1: highest quality. The News of the World Sunday tabloid a
Speaker 1: bit like the National Inquiry when they're not quite as bad.
Speaker 1: I'm in mid Path, I'm in English. Amateur astronomers, science
Speaker 1: writer and UFO skeptic. Redpath read the article and became
Speaker 1: perhaps the leading investigator into the encounter. Now, as an
Speaker 1: amateur astronomer, I always like to try and explain things
Speaker 1: with some celestial event. Because the investigations show that the
Speaker 1: great majority of UFO cases are actually caused by natural
Speaker 1: and man made objects, and the biggest culprits are usually
Speaker 1: bright stars and planets, satellites, meteors, sometimes aircraft as well.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't find anything to explain what this flashing
Speaker 1: light might be that the airmen had seen among the
Speaker 1: trees out in Randols from forest. Unable to find an explanation,
Speaker 1: he decided to go to a local source. The area
Speaker 1: is a forest. It's a cultivated forest run by the
Speaker 1: British Forestry Commission. So I rang their office and I
Speaker 1: spoke to the forester, who at that time lived in
Speaker 1: a cottage not very far away from where the m
Speaker 1: and had gone out to investigate. And he said to me,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know of anyone around here thinks
Speaker 1: anything strange happened back then. And so I said, well,
Speaker 1: what do you think it was that must have seen something?
Speaker 1: And he said to me, I think it was the lighthouse.
Speaker 1: And I nearly fell off my chair, because despite all
Speaker 1: the talk in the press and everywhere else, no one
Speaker 1: had ever mentioned a lighthouse. This was the Orfordness Lighthouse
Speaker 1: on the North Sea coast, about five miles from the base.
Speaker 1: It was built in the last of a series of
Speaker 1: beacons dating back to sixteen thirty seven. It's not there anymore.
Speaker 1: It was torn down in the summer of so I
Speaker 1: thought I have to go out and see this for myself.
Speaker 1: At the time, Ridpath was doing some work for BBC Television.
Speaker 1: He asked them if he could go investigate. So I
Speaker 1: went out there with a film crew. We filmed the
Speaker 1: light flashing between the trees and we interviewed the forester,
Speaker 1: who was man called Vince the Kettle, and I came
Speaker 1: back pretty much convinced that this explained at least part
Speaker 1: of the sighting, which was the flashing light seen between
Speaker 1: the trees on both nights of the event. So this
Speaker 1: was the first indication that maybe there was another explanation
Speaker 1: for what had happened over those three nights in But
Speaker 1: of course there was more to the encounter than the
Speaker 1: flashing light. So Ridpath began to look at more of
Speaker 1: the details of the encounters reported by Jim Peniston and
Speaker 1: John Burrows on the first night and our Halt and
Speaker 1: the others on the third night. He wondered what could
Speaker 1: John Burrows as supervisor Bud Stephens, have seen on the
Speaker 1: first night to make him think that something had landed
Speaker 1: in the forest. John Burrows from episode one, we were
Speaker 1: driving down towards the skate when he saw something strange
Speaker 1: in the sky that he said whened for the forest
Speaker 1: later was quoted as saying it landed. I contacted a
Speaker 1: friend of mine in the British Astronomical Association and he said,
Speaker 1: oh yes. At about three am on that same morning,
Speaker 1: a bright fireball had been seen over southern England. Now
Speaker 1: this was a natural's piece of space debris burning up
Speaker 1: high in the atmosphere, and we know from plenty of
Speaker 1: past cases that bright fire balls give the impression of
Speaker 1: something coming to Earth much closer than they really are.
Speaker 1: The firebar was miles up in the sky, probably out
Speaker 1: over the North Sea, but to Stephens it would have
Speaker 1: looked much closer, and when it disappeared in the sky
Speaker 1: behind the trees, it probably looked as though it disappeared
Speaker 1: into the trees. Remember the confusion caused by Stephen's claims
Speaker 1: that the object had landed in the forest and Peniston's
Speaker 1: confusion because the forest was too dense for anything to
Speaker 1: land this fireball explains that as well, there was no
Speaker 1: indication of a crash because the fireball was never anywhere
Speaker 1: near the forest. It was an optical illusion. So they
Speaker 1: went out looking for something because they thought that something
Speaker 1: had crashed in the forest. They saw something they didn't recognize.
Speaker 1: He's talking about the light from Orfordness Lighthouse. It was
Speaker 1: one of the brightest lighthouses in the country out on
Speaker 1: the coast, and from that part of the forest where
Speaker 1: they saw the flashing light, the line of the lighthouse
Speaker 1: could be seen. I know because I went there. How
Speaker 1: nice to weep myself. But bros and Peniston saw another
Speaker 1: light as well, one that could not have been the lighthouse.
Speaker 1: I'm James mcgahey. I am trained as an astronomer, retired
Speaker 1: United States Air Force pilot, was also in the army
Speaker 1: during Vietnam. I've flown around the world. I have studied
Speaker 1: UFOs for over forty years and debunked the number of
Speaker 1: UFO cases and appeared on television. The one thing that
Speaker 1: did come up originally when they were out there the
Speaker 1: first night at the end of this time period, when
Speaker 1: they were out there, they saw a white and blue
Speaker 1: bank of lights through the forest trees from John Brows
Speaker 1: has written statement following the encounter, read by an actor
Speaker 1: we had just passed a creek and we're told to
Speaker 1: come back when we saw a blue light to our
Speaker 1: left in the trees. It was only there for a
Speaker 1: minute and just streaked away. At four eleven in the morning,
Speaker 1: there was a police car out there. British police cars
Speaker 1: are not like US police cars. They have a bank
Speaker 1: of flashing white and blue lights on the top which
Speaker 1: were flashing through the forest as they were driving around
Speaker 1: these forest roads out there. When Burrows and Dennison were
Speaker 1: out there looking around at lights, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they see this bank of white and blue
Speaker 1: lights flashing, which was nothing more than that police car
Speaker 1: in the forest. So for the first night, by this accounting,
Speaker 1: you have three different elements, the fireball in the sky,
Speaker 1: the Orfordness lighthouse and finally the police cars. The first
Speaker 1: night also left physical evidence. Remember Umber Jim Peniston returned
Speaker 1: to the scene just hours after the encounter and made
Speaker 1: plaster casts of imprints in the ground. On the third night,
Speaker 1: Chuck Halt and his group went to the scene with
Speaker 1: a radiation detector and picked up some radiation. First the
Speaker 1: marks in the ground. Now, my friend the forest who
Speaker 1: I spoke to Vince the Kettle said, well, yeah, he'd
Speaker 1: seen these marks as well. They looked to him like
Speaker 1: rabbit diggings. They weren't very deep, they weren't even in
Speaker 1: an evenly space triangle, and they were covered with pine needles,
Speaker 1: so they were clearly quite old. There was nothing new
Speaker 1: or unusual about it. It's soft, sandy soil, so it's
Speaker 1: quite easy for rabbits to dig in, so he didn't
Speaker 1: see anything unusual about that either. At the time, the
Speaker 1: local police concurred that the markings on the ground had
Speaker 1: been made by forest animals, but Halt didn't know this.
Speaker 1: On the night of when he led a party into
Speaker 1: the forest. Now Colonel Holt was taken up and showing
Speaker 1: these knocks. He took a guangacounter and a guyac counter
Speaker 1: operated with him. I just trying to meter. Don't say
Speaker 1: that he can about under ten degrees. The readable about
Speaker 1: cold clicks, it's a normal background radiation that they were
Speaker 1: picking up. It's quite clear from Colonel holtz tape. People
Speaker 1: were trying and tell you that they were elevated readings.
Speaker 1: They weren't. Nick Pope, among others, disputes that these readings
Speaker 1: were insignificant. On June the physicist Frank Close, who was
Speaker 1: now an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, appeared
Speaker 1: on a show called Strange but True Live broadcast by
Speaker 1: the British TV network i t V three. On it,
Speaker 1: he addressed claims about the radiation levels detected by Halt
Speaker 1: and Nevill's. In this clip, he has a Geiger counter
Speaker 1: similar to the one used on the third night of
Speaker 1: the Ryndshum Forest encounter. This is the British equivalent of
Speaker 1: the standard US Air Force issue, which is used usually
Speaker 1: for measuring huge amounts of radiations like in nuclear blasts
Speaker 1: and so forth. All you need to notice is is
Speaker 1: a dial on the front here, and it looks very
Speaker 1: much like the speedo in your car. Now, the speed
Speaker 1: in your car is great for measuring whether you're exceeding
Speaker 1: the speed limits or not. But you know what it's like,
Speaker 1: You're stuck in the traffic jam doing nothing, but it's
Speaker 1: still flickering at the bottom. We know from the report
Speaker 1: that Colonel Holt made at the time that the amount
Speaker 1: of radiation they thought they were detecting on their machine
Speaker 1: was very very small, not point one. And we've checked
Speaker 1: with the makers of the U S equivalent, and they said.
Speaker 1: Their quote is that this measurement was the bottom reading
Speaker 1: of the machine and was of little or no significance
Speaker 1: at all. So it was not possible with the device
Speaker 1: to measure that small amount. So the radiation readings are explainable.
Speaker 1: Halt also brought the star scope, which was essentially a
Speaker 1: set of night vision goggles. He clearly didn't understand the equipment.
Speaker 1: He didn't understand what he did. He was pointing an
Speaker 1: image intensifier at a tree and said the tree was
Speaker 1: glowing when he had a flashlight on it. An image
Speaker 1: intensifier just intensifies the light, doesn't measure anything. It's quite
Speaker 1: clear that he pointed the image intensifier at the lighthouse
Speaker 1: scope that was burned dry. And of course image intensifiers
Speaker 1: amplify the light twenty thirty thousand times, and a beam
Speaker 1: every five seconds coming through the image intensifier effectively burned
Speaker 1: the image out totally. It had been so bright. Halt
Speaker 1: looked through the star scope at a light source. But
Speaker 1: what evidence is there that it was in fact coming
Speaker 1: from the lighthouse. Well orfard this lighthouse had a rotating
Speaker 1: light that did a full rotation every five seconds. Now
Speaker 1: the men then drew Colonel Holt's attention to the flashing light,
Speaker 1: same thing that had been seen on the first night,
Speaker 1: and you can hear the men say, look, there it
Speaker 1: is straight ahead off my flash light. There it is again,
Speaker 1: and there is a five second gap between the there
Speaker 1: it is and there it is again, so we know
Speaker 1: that the light was flashing at five second indivals. On
Speaker 1: an episode of his Skeptoid podcast on the Rundel Shim encounter,
Speaker 1: Brian Dunning sink a portion of the Halt tape with
Speaker 1: a five second tone to show how the appearance of
Speaker 1: the light coincided with the lighthouses rotation interval. We are
Speaker 1: using this tape with his permission. Where right at this
Speaker 1: position here straight ahead and between the sitter it again
Speaker 1: in this case the flashing lights. Well, they never got
Speaker 1: much closer to it. Colonel Halt said, well, it looks
Speaker 1: like it's clear off to the coast. So we have
Speaker 1: a flashing light which is in the direction of the
Speaker 1: orford Ness lighthouse, because we know from where he was
Speaker 1: standing the direction he was looking. So although he didn't
Speaker 1: realize what it was at the time, from Colonel Halt's
Speaker 1: own words, it seems very clear that he was looking
Speaker 1: at orford Ness Lighthouse, as were the m n on
Speaker 1: the first night. But this was not the only strange
Speaker 1: light that Hal and his group saw. On the third night,
Speaker 1: they also saw colored lights down near the horizon. This
Speaker 1: is from the hot tape three or fire that about
Speaker 1: ten degrees horizon dirtly north through that two strange objects
Speaker 1: shape colored lights on them that just to be about
Speaker 1: maybe less in the full circle. There was an Olympic
Speaker 1: eclipse or something there for a negative. Now, what's bright
Speaker 1: star like and flashes colors in the sky? Well? Stars.
Speaker 1: Colonel Hawk was out there until it started getting bright
Speaker 1: in the morning, the dawns started coming up, and they
Speaker 1: were still there, he said. Actually one of them appeared
Speaker 1: to be low over the Woodbridge base, which was towards
Speaker 1: the southwest of him, which was exactly where serious the
Speaker 1: brightest star in the sky is to be found was
Speaker 1: to be found at that time. And when a star
Speaker 1: like Sirius is low down, the air currents in the
Speaker 1: atmosphere make it twinkle. So yes, you will see serious
Speaker 1: flashing red. You'll see it flashing green, You'll see it
Speaker 1: flashing white, simply because it's light is being broken up
Speaker 1: by convection currents in the atmosphere. So just like the
Speaker 1: first night, the encounter on the third night in this
Speaker 1: explanation comprises three elements. The lighthouse not understanding how the
Speaker 1: specialized equipment they were using worked, and then the misidentification
Speaker 1: of the stars. The only thing that's unusual where you
Speaker 1: don't often get lighthouses involved in in the UFO cases,
Speaker 1: the first one I've ever come across. Then, as they
Speaker 1: moved between the trees, it looked as though the bright
Speaker 1: light was moving away, zigzagging between the trees in front
Speaker 1: of them, And it's exactly the same kind of effect
Speaker 1: that you get when it seems as though you're being
Speaker 1: chased by the moon when you're driving in in your car.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't really the light that was moving, it
Speaker 1: was them that will move in which gave the impression
Speaker 1: of the lights receding and zigzagging between the trees. This, then,
Speaker 1: is the skeptical explanation for what happened in rundel Shom Forest.
Speaker 1: It seems to offer an explanation for all of the
Speaker 1: elements over the course of those nights, but it's not
Speaker 1: actually proof of anything. It's an alternative explanation that doesn't
Speaker 1: rely on the paranormal. Of course, not everyone accepts the
Speaker 1: skeptical explanation that we've just heard. I've heard every explanation
Speaker 1: for the Randal Show inside in and Look, I'm not
Speaker 1: here to prove to anyone that aliens landed in the
Speaker 1: forest and Randell Show post of the Somewhere in the
Speaker 1: Skies podcast Ryan Sprague. I'm here to try to find
Speaker 1: the truth, and I'm open to any possibility of what
Speaker 1: Randal Show was. But I'm not willing to accept is
Speaker 1: that it was a lighthouse. Was there another way to
Speaker 1: possibly verify what had happened one way or the other? Well,
Speaker 1: this incident involved the military, and where the military is involved,
Speaker 1: there's paperwork after the break. Strange arrivals will return in
Speaker 1: a moment. The r a F. Bent Waters and r
Speaker 1: a F. Woodbridge based complex house nuclear weapons. In a
Speaker 1: case where an unknown craft or crafts encroached on that complex,
Speaker 1: you would expect to find a mountain of paperwork. Maybe
Speaker 1: that paperwork was classified or remains classified, but you would
Speaker 1: expect that it would exist. The written statements by Peniston,
Speaker 1: Burrows and others were not in fact official documents. They
Speaker 1: did not find their way into the Air Force official
Speaker 1: accounting of this event. The only official document that was
Speaker 1: produced from this encounter, which Chuck Halts Memo, and that
Speaker 1: wasn't for the U s Air Force, It was written
Speaker 1: for the British Ministry of Defense. In two thousand, Prime
Speaker 1: Minister Tony Blair signed the Freedom of Information Act, which
Speaker 1: provided a means for journalists in the public to request
Speaker 1: official government information. Sheffield Hallam University Associate Professor David Clark.
Speaker 1: At the time, I was working as a news reporter
Speaker 1: for one of the big regional newspapers in the UK
Speaker 1: and the Freedom of Information was coming in and my
Speaker 1: editor was saying everyone, all you journalists, you need to
Speaker 1: sort of use this is where it's going to be
Speaker 1: in the future. It's a great tool for journalists forcing
Speaker 1: the government to release the not released. Before Clark realized
Speaker 1: is that he needed to find his own niche a
Speaker 1: subject that he could focus his attention on now that
Speaker 1: this new information had been made available. So I just thought, well,
Speaker 1: what about UFOs. You know, I know that there's this
Speaker 1: unit at the Ministry of Defense that's existence since the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. I know they've got lots of files on
Speaker 1: this thing that in the past they've always stone wall.
Speaker 1: So I just thought, well, I'm going to use this legislation,
Speaker 1: and the very first thing I went for was the
Speaker 1: file on the Randelstrom Forest incident, because up until that
Speaker 1: point they just said the only thing that they got
Speaker 1: on file was Colonel Holt's memo one page of A
Speaker 1: four and I just thought that cannot be true. Clark
Speaker 1: put in his request soon after this new policy was implemented,
Speaker 1: and I really didn't think it would get anywhere. Low
Speaker 1: and Behold, within a few months they said, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: we've located a hundred and fifty five page file, and
Speaker 1: we've also gone back and searched to all the other
Speaker 1: files covering the period of the sighting, and we've found
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of other documents as well, so we've
Speaker 1: copied those for you. We've added those to the file. Here.
Speaker 1: It is big, thick, brown envelope, just dropped through my
Speaker 1: letter box one morning and I just thought, Wow, I've
Speaker 1: hit jack pot here. But despite the size of the file,
Speaker 1: the contents were disappointing. The file itself was something that
Speaker 1: was assembled later when the story going into the news
Speaker 1: of the world and It largely consists of Holtz memo,
Speaker 1: a few other bits and pieces, and then the rest
Speaker 1: of it is just letters from uthologists and members of
Speaker 1: the public who's seen the story in the newspapers and
Speaker 1: who were writing in to the Ministry Defense saying what
Speaker 1: do you know about this? Did the aliens really land?
Speaker 1: And their response every time is just the standard, Well,
Speaker 1: all we've got is Colonel Halt story. We looked into
Speaker 1: it at the time, our air defense experts decided that
Speaker 1: there was nothing to be worried about because they didn't
Speaker 1: see anything on radar. So that's the end of it
Speaker 1: as far as we're concerned. So that the entire file
Speaker 1: just a repetition of that statement whenever they received a
Speaker 1: letter or an inquiry from the media. In other words,
Speaker 1: there was nothing. Later, though, Clark became the official spokesman
Speaker 1: for the government effort to organize and release the UFO
Speaker 1: files that it had. In this capacity, he was able
Speaker 1: to access all of the surviving files. This let him
Speaker 1: take another approach to Reyndlssom documentation. He asked to see
Speaker 1: the general file of UFO reports for the whole year
Speaker 1: of Clark says it was a huge file about a
Speaker 1: foot thick. And the interesting thing from my point of
Speaker 1: view as an arcadist historian, journalist, is the report from
Speaker 1: Colonel Holt was just filed with all the rest of
Speaker 1: the lights in the sky in that file. So his
Speaker 1: original memo is in the general UFO file alongside all
Speaker 1: the other Mr Son So coming out of a public
Speaker 1: house in London and saw lights in the sky. The
Speaker 1: next story is Colonel Hall. Then another story and the
Speaker 1: guy who was the UFO desk officer at the time,
Speaker 1: Simon Weed, and I spoke to him about this and
Speaker 1: he remembered it clearly and he just said, well, it
Speaker 1: was just another story. We didn't take it seriously. And
Speaker 1: this is a critical point when looking at the Rundall
Speaker 1: Shim encounter. As we've mentioned before, if a craft, any
Speaker 1: craft had appeared around R A F. Bent Waters and R.
Speaker 1: A F. Woodbridge basis with nuclear weapons during the Cold War,
Speaker 1: it should have caused great concern and an intense official reaction,
Speaker 1: but it didn't. Chuck Halt talks about how we never
Speaker 1: heard back from the U. S. Air Force or the
Speaker 1: English Ministry of Defense about his encounter. Why why didn't
Speaker 1: the Ministry Defense take this seriously? And There is a
Speaker 1: two page briefing in the files about this, and basically
Speaker 1: what they said was, we didn't take it seriously because
Speaker 1: Colonel Halt and take it seriously. We looked at his memo.
Speaker 1: Why did he wait two weeks to report it to
Speaker 1: us in the first place, and why did you get
Speaker 1: all the dates wrong? If he thought when this was
Speaker 1: happening that the base a nuclear arm base, was under attack,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't wait until the British based commander came back
Speaker 1: from his Christmas holidays two weeks later. I mean none
Speaker 1: of what I've said here. It says that something didn't happen.
Speaker 1: Clearly something did happen, but the time to actually do
Speaker 1: a thorough investigation of it has passed. You can't investigate
Speaker 1: something that happened forty years ago when all the records
Speaker 1: have been destroyed, and when such elementary mistakes were made
Speaker 1: at the time. He's talking about radar records that were destroyed,
Speaker 1: leaving that question forever unresolved. We've heard the accounts of
Speaker 1: the encounters at Ryndoldshop Forest, and in the next episode
Speaker 1: we'll hear more from the witnesses. We've also heard the
Speaker 1: skeptical explanation for what happened. It's safe to say that
Speaker 1: neither the original nor the skeptical account have become universally accepted.
Speaker 1: The public understanding of what happened is still up for grabs.
Speaker 1: So you've got this inconclusive situation where people come in
Speaker 1: with other types of explanations when something seems just completely incomprehensible.
Speaker 1: And so I think that when you don't have a
Speaker 1: cultural narrative to explain what happens, then you will often
Speaker 1: have different types of explanations coming forward. My name is
Speaker 1: Deborah Lotonzi Shutka. I am a folklorist and professor at
Speaker 1: George Mason University in Fifex, Virginia. I have been teaching
Speaker 1: folklore for over twenty years and my area of specialty
Speaker 1: is narrative analysis. Those types of stories are obviously really
Speaker 1: great interest to folklore's because it tells us basically how
Speaker 1: a community or a person is thinking about a set
Speaker 1: of circumstances. So this is an important point for the
Speaker 1: rest of the season. In a situation such as Rendall shown,
Speaker 1: where there are two or more narratives about what happened,
Speaker 1: why does one narrative eventually become accepted and what does
Speaker 1: that tell you about the culture at the time. These
Speaker 1: are the kinds of questions that folklor's are interested in.
Speaker 1: Whether the story is literally true or not is beside
Speaker 1: the point again, David Clark, when it comes to people's stories,
Speaker 1: I just prefer to just treat those stories as stories
Speaker 1: and respect them as stories. And to me, it doesn't
Speaker 1: particularly matter whether they are made up or genuinely believed
Speaker 1: or a real experience, that they are all expressions. I mean,
Speaker 1: the case is almost like re enchantment of the world
Speaker 1: in that. Yeah, you kind of explain it all as
Speaker 1: Ian tries to do in down to earth terms. He's
Speaker 1: talking about Ian Redpath. Yeah, that might be the case.
Speaker 1: I can accept that, but it doesn't explain the psychology
Speaker 1: of it. It doesn't explain why people were thinking about UFOs.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's more like a folk story and the
Speaker 1: fact it took place in a forest as well. Forests
Speaker 1: are enchanted places in folklore. You know, there's loads and
Speaker 1: loads of stories in British food wall about people going
Speaker 1: into forests, getting lost, being led astray by will of
Speaker 1: the whisps. You know, lights that are moving in the
Speaker 1: distance that people go towards, and the light moves further
Speaker 1: away and then they end up falling into a bob.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing that those forests in Suffolk are
Speaker 1: just read them with stories like that. Folklorets divide stories
Speaker 1: into categories such as fairy tales, folk tales, and narratives
Speaker 1: of personal experience. The Rundelson Forest encounter is what folkloreists
Speaker 1: would classify as a legend. Basically, what folklore is, it's
Speaker 1: a body of shared cultural experience that one learns from
Speaker 1: their parents, their friends, their community. Informally, so, folklore is
Speaker 1: the things that we learned about life that are not
Speaker 1: often taught in schools. Among that, probably the most popular
Speaker 1: is the legend, and the legend is a story that
Speaker 1: generally people tell to one another as if it were true,
Speaker 1: although the narrative itself calls into question the veracity of
Speaker 1: what's being told. It's not uncommon for someone to hear
Speaker 1: a legend and then go, did that really happen? So
Speaker 1: the idea here is that legends are told or shared
Speaker 1: to share different types of experiential or belief knowledge that
Speaker 1: calls into question the very nature of that knowledge. Think
Speaker 1: about ghost stories. Some ghost stories you hear are very
Speaker 1: individu ualized I have friends, for instance, who have a
Speaker 1: neighbor who has stories of lights being turned on at
Speaker 1: different times of the night. This story will most likely
Speaker 1: never travel beyond a small circle of friends and friends
Speaker 1: of friends. But then there are also stories that come
Speaker 1: across that are very traditional folk legends. Probably one of
Speaker 1: my favorite is a vanishing hitchhiker, where a person sees
Speaker 1: a person hitchhiking. They stopped because for some reason they
Speaker 1: feel compelled to pick up the person. There's very little
Speaker 1: interaction between the driver and the hitchhiker, and when they
Speaker 1: get to the destination that the hitchhikers has to be
Speaker 1: dropped off at. Usually the hitchhiker disappears. Wherever I go,
Speaker 1: there he is. Wherever I stop, I see him. No
Speaker 1: matter how far I travel or how fast, like calling,
Speaker 1: he's ahead of me. At the beginning of this episode,
Speaker 1: we heard a clip from a Twilight Zone episode that
Speaker 1: is a version of this tale. I believe You're going
Speaker 1: my way. In the standard vanishing hitchhiker story, the driver
Speaker 1: finds out that the person they picked up actually died
Speaker 1: some time ago, often around the spot where they hitch
Speaker 1: the ride. It's a creepy story and one that when
Speaker 1: you hear it begs the question do you believe in
Speaker 1: ghosts or the supernatural? One of the things that folk
Speaker 1: culture often does, especially in the genre of legend and belief,
Speaker 1: is that there is a developing performance of rationality. People
Speaker 1: know that being seen as a believer can automatically cast
Speaker 1: out on people's stories. I'm Lynn McNeil. I am a
Speaker 1: folklorist at Utah State University. I run the folklore program there.
Speaker 1: I teach folklore there. I work in the folklore archives
Speaker 1: that we have there. When someone asked you if you
Speaker 1: believe in the supernatural or the paranormal, you probably think
Speaker 1: of this as a yes or no question, either you
Speaker 1: believe or you don't, And you also understand that how
Speaker 1: you answer will affect the way the person asking will
Speaker 1: think about you. You know that the quote unquote correct
Speaker 1: answer is to say no, because that means you are
Speaker 1: a rational person. That you're thinking is based in science.
Speaker 1: For most people, though, the real answer isn't necessarily yes.
Speaker 1: The real answer is something along the lines of the story.
Speaker 1: The real answer to do you believe in ghosts as well? No?
Speaker 1: Of course not, I mean who would. But after my
Speaker 1: grandpa died, there was like this one Christmas light and
Speaker 1: it was totally the one that he was always into,
Speaker 1: and it just started blinking like the day after he died,
Speaker 1: and it never stopped blinking, and we all just sort
Speaker 1: of knew like that was Grandpa, you know, letting us
Speaker 1: know that he was still there with us for the holidays.
Speaker 1: So no, I don't believe in ghost, but I mean,
Speaker 1: my Grandpa's in that Christmas life. Like that very paradoxical,
Speaker 1: very contradictory answer, and that's never on the survey. But
Speaker 1: when people are surveyed to find out their beliefs about
Speaker 1: the supernatural or paranormal, the questions aren't looking for that
Speaker 1: kind of complicated answer. They're looking for the person to
Speaker 1: answer yes I believe or no, I don't believe. When
Speaker 1: that's the choice, people check the no box. Thissunderstanding of
Speaker 1: what people will think of you if you express a
Speaker 1: belief in these things carries over to how stories involving
Speaker 1: the supernatural or paranormal are presented. When someone wants to
Speaker 1: speak about a supernatural experience they've had, they grow I
Speaker 1: like the word armor over their story in anticipation of
Speaker 1: people who are going to say, okay, weirdo you clearly
Speaker 1: are an irrational thinker. So we see this performance of rationality,
Speaker 1: this intentional reality testing that takes place, that becomes a
Speaker 1: part of the story to say, now I thought it
Speaker 1: could be this, but then I realized it couldn't because
Speaker 1: of this. And I also thought that maybe it could
Speaker 1: be this, but that doesn't make any sense because of X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z. Think about Chuck Halt and how he
Speaker 1: characterizes his intentions as he sets out to investigate the
Speaker 1: return of the lights at Rundel shom Forrest. He says,
Speaker 1: have him made me a distast preparedness off and spend
Speaker 1: about thirty minutes, and we'll go ohead and take see
Speaker 1: what this is all about. And I wanted the document
Speaker 1: was nothing there. Whether you believe that Chuck Halt saw
Speaker 1: unidentified craft in the sky or whether you believe that
Speaker 1: he saw the Orfanist lighthouse and stars doesn't change the
Speaker 1: basics of his experience. He went into Rundel shop forest
Speaker 1: and saw lights. He tried to make sense of what
Speaker 1: he was seeing and arrived at the conclusion that they
Speaker 1: were you fos. They end up at this supernatural or
Speaker 1: paranormal conclusion that for all that it might not be
Speaker 1: scientifically testable the way that we think of the scientific process.
Speaker 1: It's a rational thought process that they've gone through. And
Speaker 1: this is something that any folklorist who has done ethnographic
Speaker 1: work with people on the subjects of belief in the
Speaker 1: supernatural sees right away is oftentimes these are incredibly thoughtful,
Speaker 1: observant people who themselves don't want to have to have
Speaker 1: drawn that conclusion, and yet there's no other conclusion for
Speaker 1: them to draw. Sometimes. The other thing about legends is
Speaker 1: in order for a legend to survive and be successful,
Speaker 1: there's got to be a debate about his plausibility, about
Speaker 1: whether it really happened or not. And that's where the
Speaker 1: clashes between the different factions who are representing the different
Speaker 1: characters in this play, which is why I see it,
Speaker 1: and the clash between what they're trying to established and
Speaker 1: the skeptics who are saying it's all nonsense. It was
Speaker 1: a lighthouse and a meteor and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: It's that debate, ongoing debate that keeps it alive because
Speaker 1: once everyone excepts, oh, yeah, it was a lighthouse, and
Speaker 1: we can all go home now and and be happy, No,
Speaker 1: it's no longer a legend. It's something that's been explained
Speaker 1: and that we can put to one side and move
Speaker 1: on to the next thing. And it's not just a
Speaker 1: dispute between people who do and don't believe that Randolsom
Speaker 1: Forrest was visited by unidentified crafts in as we will
Speaker 1: see next episode, disagreement among the witnesses over what they
Speaker 1: saw has grown over the years as new explanations for
Speaker 1: what happened are put forward. So the reason it's living
Speaker 1: on and it's mutating is because you've got this constant
Speaker 1: sort of clash going on between the believers and the skeptics,
Speaker 1: and even in the believer camp, you've got all these
Speaker 1: different sort of groups of believers are all trying to
Speaker 1: assert their version of it, and that's why it's so latent.
Speaker 1: He's one of the most successful UFO legends. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think he's almost going to supersede Roswell because the
Speaker 1: difference with Randelshim is that all the key participants are
Speaker 1: still alive. You can actually talk to them, whereas no
Speaker 1: one from Roswell. I mean, I know there are sons
Speaker 1: and daughters of people who were there, but really, what
Speaker 1: more can you say about ROSWELLT that hasn't been said.
Speaker 1: There's an awful lot you can say about Rendel Ship
Speaker 1: that hasn't been said Holt, Peniston and Burrows. I'll have
Speaker 1: more to say things that cast a new strange light
Speaker 1: on those three nights in Rundel Shom Forest next time
Speaker 1: on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heeart,
Speaker 1: three D Audio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
Speaker 1: This episode was written and hosted by Toby Ball and
Speaker 1: produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thame, with executive producers
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, Matt Frederick, and Aaron Mankey, with voice acting
Speaker 1: by Jeff Williams and special thanks to Wendy Connors, creator
Speaker 1: of the Faded Discs archive of UFO related audio on
Speaker 1: archive dot org. Learn more about Strange Rivals over at
Speaker 1: Grimm and Miles dot com, and find more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio by visiting the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.