MATT WILLIAMS SENT THIS

The Rendlesham Forest Incident
December 1980 30th Anniversary Conference

John Burroughs & Jim Penniston

Talk for the first time in Suffolk at the Woodbridge Community Hall Tuesday
December 28 at 6pm.

Also attending is Linda Moulton Howe, Nick Pope (MoD ret), and Peter Robbins (US based Investigative Writer - co-author of Left At East Gate)

In December 1980 strange lights were seen by US Air Force personnel posted to the twin bases of RAF Bentwaters & Woodbridge. To this day they have never been explained. On the 30th anniversary, December 28 2010 two key eye-witnesses are back in Suffolk to re-count their stories. Airman 1st Class John Burroughs and SSgt Jim Penniston were 81st Security Police Officers patrolling the East Gate at RAF Woodbridge when they observed what they initially thought was an aircraft coming down in the forest. The rest is history.

All five are in Suffolk on Tuesday December 28 2010 at:

Woodbridge Community Hall
Station Road
Woodbridge
Suffolk
IP12 4AU

The guest speakers are looking for any civilian witnesses to the incident
to show up that night. The talk starts at 6pm. Tickets are £6.00 each. After the talk there will be a visit to the Rendlesham Forest site attended by the guest speakers. All are invited to come along. To order a ticket please send a stamped, self addressed envelope w/payment to:

Mr G Goodger,
108 Spring Road,
Ipswich.
IP4 2RR.

We accept cheques and postal orders only (Cheques should be made payable to Mr. G Goodger). We will not be able to dispatch tickets if we do not receive a stamped SAE.

Questions about the event please call 07811 021230 or 01473 210726 and we
will do our best to help you.

At the request of the guest speakers, all profits will go to the Ipswich
Treehouse Children's Hospice Appeal. No-one is making any money out of this.

Phone: 01473 423143
Cell: 07811 021230

(Note: Dave Hodrien, BUFOG Chairman/Investigator will be attending this event)

REDFERN ON RENDLESHAM'S BEASTS

England’s Rendlesham Forest extends to around 1,500 hectares in size and can be found in the county of Suffolk’s coastal area known as the Sandlings. It is comprised of large coniferous trees, as well as heath land, and is home to various wild animals, including the badger, the fox and the red deer. According to some people, however, Rendlesham Forest is home to far stranger things, too… read all about it

UNCONVENTION 2010: Ian Ridpath - The Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident

THIS BEAR STORY IS GETTING MORE AND MORE PECULIAR

Yet another press release has come out from the Red Rose Chain Theatre Company which is staging an outdoor production of A Winter's Tale in the forest in August. It begins: "A 'bear' spotted roaming a Suffolk forest was actually an actor in costume promoting an outdoor production of Shakespeare."

This is actually the third different explanation for events in as many days. First we were told that the thespian bods had faked a video, then that they had made up the eyewitness sightings, and now that the sightings were provoked by a bloke in a costume.

This is rather odd. :

Actor and designer Jimmy Grimes said: "We didn't want to scare anyone. The idea is to get kids interested and excited about the play. We want to create a family-friendly, fairytale feel for the production.

Jimmy dude, you are certainly doing that, because now - in the best traditions of fortean investigation- nobody quite knows what was going wrong. According to all the stories:

The 'bear' was spotted by three people including Jenny Pearce who saw it as she finished a picnic with her three-year-old son. She said: "It was really big, moving through the trees. I picked up my son and went back to the car."

Now, no-one at the CFZ is disputing that the whole thing is an elaborate, and furthermore a well-staged hoax. But what exactly did happen. Did Jenny Pearce actually exist? Was she a figment of the imagination? Was she a friend or associate of the theatre company who just joined in for the lulz? Or did she see something?

If she did see something, did she see the shadowy figure of some bloke in a bear costume wandering about in the woods? If so, it must have been a good 'un! Even in these intellectually impoverished days when no-one seems to know ow't about the natural world, one would have thought that an eyewitness could have distinguished between a dude in a bear costume and a bipedal member of the family ursidae.

Or has the cutesy cartoon ethic which has so permeated society to the extent that intelligent, attractive, and otherwise seemingly together young people like the ones that I met at the Royal Academy back in January, call themselves members of a `furry fandom`, put on childish costumes, and have turned to recreating their childhood TV cartoon favourites to get their sexual jollies, permeated society to such an extent, that witnesses truly think that bears waalk bipedally all the time? If this is the case then Jenny probably ran back to her car in order to protect her picnic basket from Yogi and Boo Boo.

This is all very peculiar.

As I said above, nobody here is disputing the fact that the story is basically a hoax, but like all stories in the fortean ominiverse, it has developed a life of its own. Twice so far this year (the seal carcass in January, and the `Devil's Footprints` in March) the CFZ has become involved in a news story which balooned out of all control, and became far more important than it actually deserved. Darren naish also noted the same thing in connection with the absurd fuss made over a dead racoon last year, that was so banal that we ignored it to our detriment. Those who commented on it, had enormous amounts of media attention and tens of thousands of visitors to their websites.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this `Montauk Monster Syndrome` is an increasingly important phenomenon as far as cryptozoology is concerned, and in the current era of mass, and almost instantaeneous, communication it is only going to become more important.

So watch this space, and examine the aetiology of the next nonsensensical crypto-story as diligently as you can.

NICK REDFERN: The Bear Facts

Things are getting very weird regarding yesterday's post about a bear seen in Rendlesham Forest. First we had the sighting of Jenny Pearce, who said: "I saw it moving through the trees ahead. It was much bigger than a dog. I picked up my son and left for the car straight away."

Then today, news surfaced that the tale of the bear was actually part of a publicity campaign by a theater production company that was putting on a version of Shakespeare's A Winters Tale - which includes a famous stage-direction: "Exit, pursued by a bear."

All well and good, except for the fact that (a) Jenny Pearce continues to stand by her account of seeing a bear-like animal in the woods; and (b) this is not the first time a large animal with somewhat bear-like qualities has been reported within Rendlesham Forest.

Sam Holland, for example, had a close encounter with just such a beast in the same area in 1956. I interviewed Holland in 2001, and published his story in 2004. So, there's no way his case can be connected to the current publicity campaign of the theater production company.

And for those who are interested, here is the text of my original Word document on Sam Holland's story :

"Shortly after New Year’s Day in 1956, Holland was walking through the woods with his spaniel dog, Harry, when he was horrified to see a bizarre-looking creature come looming out of the trees some forty feet in front of him.

"It walked upon four huge, muscular legs – ‘like a lion’s’ – and its thick fur coat was both black and glossy. Incredibly, said Holland, the animal was easily ten feet in length; and so could not be considered anything even remotely resembling a domestic animal, or a known wild beast of the British Isles.

"Holland recalled thinking for a moment that perhaps the animal was an exotic big cat that had escaped from a zoo or private estate; that is until it turned in his direction and he was finally able to see its terrible face.

"Likening it to that of a sliver-back gorilla, Holland said that the monstrous creature possessed a huge neck, widely flaring nostrils, and immense, powerful-looking jaws. For a moment or two, the animal looked intently at Holland and his whimpering little dog; then, seemingly losing interest, continued on its way and into the depths of the surrounding undergrowth.

"Holland would later explain that the creature looked like a strange combination of ape, dog, lion and rhinoceros. Needless to say, the British Isles is not home to any such animal that even remotely resembles the beast that Sam Holland says he stumbled upon. Yet he is adamant that his description of the monstrous entity and his recollections of the day in question are utterly accurate.

"Today, Holland believes that whatever it was that he had the misfortune to run into half a century ago, it was unquestionably paranormal rather than physical in origin. But from where, precisely, he has no idea."

Franky, this whole affair puzzles me a great deal. I have no doubt at all that the theater company's publicity campaign is indeed an integral part of the story.

However, that the company should have chosen a location for their campaign that was already home to a large, mysterious 4-legged beast that was seen back in 1956, is decidedly synchronistic in the extreme.

And what about the fact that Jenny Pearce still stands by her report of seeing a large, lumbering beast in the woods?

Is it possible that, in a strangely Fortean fashion, the theater company decided to embark upon its campaign at precisely the same time that a large, bear-like entity (perhaps related to that seen by Sam Holland) manifested in the woods?

Whatever the ultimate truth, I strongly suspect we have not heard the end of this story!

MORE SHUG MONKEY MALARKEY

Today, as Kithra (God bless her) pointed out a Theatre Company came forward and claimed responsibility for the plethora of bear reports from Rendlesham Forest in order to publicise their new production of Shakspeare's "A Winter's Tale" cashing in on its most famous stage direction "EXIT pursued by a bear".

Well I have to admit that this is piece of work by the Bard of Avon with which I am totally unfamiliar (except for the line about bears and a rather unfunny quip about dildos) so I had to look it up.

The Wikipedia description of the play
doesn't really explain why the bear, (and the chick who looks like Little Red Riding Hood) feature so prominently on the poster, but hey - who cares? It's all good fun and in the name of art, so it does not really matter.

But it is springtime, and I have spent quite a lot of the last few days talking to the good doctor on the `phone so the idea of stunts versus art versus reality in some sort of surrealchemical mishmash are quite high in my mind. Although the first lot of bear sightings are - I am quite prepared to accept - bosh, albeit arty bosh carried out for the highest possible motives, and in a rather well executed hoax ** I would not be at all surprised to see this kickstarting a series of less easy to explain shug monkey reports in the region.

See what Redders has to say:
http://manbeastuk.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-on-rendlesham.html

** THE DAILY MAIL: "Actor and designer Jimmy Grimes said they had wanted to make one of the Bard's lesser-known plays more appealing to families and children. Mr Grimes created two youtube clips and email accounts from witnesses who claimed to have seen the bear.

He created the fake YouTube video by running through the woods with his mobile phone and added real life footage of a bear taken from the internet and altered with Photoshop."

We are living in a world where crappy cameraphone footage is so ubiquitous that a piece of footage like that constructed by Jimmy Grimes is entirely convincing. Well done mate

RETURN OF THE SHUG MONKEY

There is a bear in Rendlesham Forest, or so says The East Anglian Daily Times.

"At least three people claim to have seen the grizzly beasts in the forest within the last week, although bears are not native to Britain. [...]

One of those who saw the creature is Jenny Pearce who said: "I was on the green at Rendlesham Forest having a picnic with my three-year-old son and his friend's family. After the picnic we stayed to play and explore the woods. While we were in the forest I saw a large animal moving through the trees ahead. i thought it was a big dog, so I picked up my son because he has never really got into dogs and gets easily scared. But as it continued away from us it was clearly not a dog. It was much bigger and there wasn't anyone there to be walking it if it was a large dog."

It will not surprise anyone to hear that I have been to Rendlesham Forest on a number of occasions. Anyone who went to the 2002, 2006 or 2007 Weird Weekends will know that Larry Warren, probably the most famous UFO contactee in modern Britain is a personal friend of mine and so is his erstwhile partner in crime Peter Robbins. And nearly anyone who has more than a passing interest in the subject will know that Larry was once a USAF Sergeant at the long defunt Air Base at Bentwaters, where in 1980 the most famous British UFO case of all time took place.

But that's not what interests me most about Rendlesham.

The area between Orford Ness and Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk is a very strange place. As well as being one of the most eastern points in the British Isles it has also been the focus for a wide range of bizarre paranormal activity. Writing in the 13th Century, Ralph of Coggeshall, described a "wild man" caught in fishing nets off Orford Castle. This creature who like so many contemporary sightings of humanoids seen in conjunction with UFOs was seemingly equally at home on land and at sea, lived at the castle for several months. The wild man is not the only item of cryptozoological interest from the Rendlesham area. The lanes of the area are reputedly haunted by giant spectral black dogs (like the one seen by Lady Rendlesham in Leiston Churchyard at the end of the nineteenth century), that pad malevolently but silently along. An even more disturbing spectre called the shug monkey, which is described by witnesses as an unholy combination of mastiff and great ape is also seen on occasion, and in recent years the forest has also been the haunt of mysterious black ‘panthers’.

An ex-girlfriend of mine - an East Anglian paranormal researcher - was in possession of some video tape which showed the paw print of some huge animal - like that of a cat or a dog, but far bigger and with strange flattened finger nails rather than claws. She thought that it was a print from an alien big cat of some description, but my immediate thought was of the semi-mystical ‘shug monkey’. When I later found that my friend and colleague Jan Scarff who was brought up in the vicinity of the air bases also knew about the so-called ‘shug-monkey’ I became even more interested, and I have been collecting reports for some years. Nick Redfern also writes about the shug monkey in Three Men seeking Monsters and between us we have built up a convincing image of a large, dark coloured shambling beast which is presumably zooform in nature.

So, did Jenny Pearce see a bear? I suppose it is a possibility. Bears have been reported in the UK over the years; in the most recent edition of Animals & Men writes about London `Bear Scares`. Bears have escaped from captivity and lived wild in the UK before now. One was reported for some years from the Wychwood in Oxfordshire. But as the legislation surrounding private animal keepers is tightened up, the chances of bears being released from captivity into the wilds of Suffolk recedes. There is always the ever present spectre of `canned hunting` - a barbaric and completely vile practrise whereby animals are realeased into the wild purely so some moron with a gun can shoot them for a trophy, but despite claims over the years, no concrete evidence has ever been presented to us for bears being used for this horrid purpose in the UK.

One researcher who shall remain nameless claimed to me about ten years ago that so many bears had been released into parts of mid Wales that there were "organised bear hunts" held every weekend. But he was an idiot, and I will not dignify his ridiculous claims by discussing them further.

No, I have a gut feeling that the creature that has been reported on three occasions in the last week is something far less tangible, and far less easy to catch. It is, I strongly suspect, the return of the shug monkey, some ten years after its last spate of appearances. I wonder what else may be about to make a comeback.

The game is afoot.

The picture, by the way, is of part of Bentwaters Air Force Base (now demolished) which was taken by me in 1997, and exposed all wrong. However, I have always liked the spookiness of it and waited for a chance to use it..