Lt. Colonel Charles Halt had just been reassigned from the Pentagon to RAF Bentwaters. This was 1980, the peak of the Cold War. Tensions between the U.S. and Russia were high. Bentwaters was a nuclear alert base, and they had nuclear warheads on-site.
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It was Boxing Day morning, and all was quiet. Airman John Burroughs went with his supervisor to check the base’s East Gate. His supervisor saw something in the distance, out in the forest. What were those lights?
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Burroughs radioed it in to Staff Sgt. Penniston, asking him to come and take a look. They had to make sure it wasn’t a downed enemy aircraft. They walked out into the forest, disturbed by the fact that the lights had gone. The forest was pitch black. Almost immediately, their radios began to go out. What could have caused such interference? Then they saw it.
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Unsure if it was an explosive about to detonate, they had to check. Penniston walked around the object, noting it looked like black glass. He could find none of the aircraft features that he would have expected; no crew compartment, no air intake, nothing. On one side, he found a set of symbols. Something caused him to reach out and touch them. The craft was warm to the touch. Then the craft lit up.
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The light began to pulsate, as though the object were powering up. Penniston was once again afraid it was going to explode. In an eyeblink, the thing disappeared. Penniston made a note. “Speed impossible.”
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Halt thought it might have been a joke. It was Christmastime, and the festivities might have gotten to them. Still, it was becoming a serious problem. Too many of the base staff were spending time looking at the sky. Staff. Sgt. Munroe Nevells, an instructor in chemical warfare defense, was called in to investigate. Nevells went out to the site, and found three tripod-like impressions in the ground.
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The nearby trees had been scorched. Something had obviously happened, but what?
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Nevells and the military police officer who’d accompanied him were blinded by a white light. The light appeared to be an eyeball. It brightened, and then dimmed, almost as though it were blinking. Then, out of nowhere, it stopped. Within seconds, they were blinded again. The light chased the two men out of the forest.
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When they returned to base, the police officer told Halt that the UFO was back. Halt wanted to put the whole thing to rest once and for all. He went to the site with Nevells and the officer. When they arrived, there were four or five vehicles there, and—Halt estimated—25 people in the forest. If the press got wind of this? How was he supposed to explain it?
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They walked to the scene of the incident. Halt saw the indentations, and they were identical. He had Nevells get out the Geiger counter. Nevells took readings from the triangle, but he got residuals at the indentations. When Nevells took a reading in the center? The needle began dancing. The area was radioactive. At the scorched tree? The needle pegged. Whatever was there? Had to have been carrying nuclear fuel.
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Halt took out his tape recorder and began dictating. The animals went crazy again, and then it was silent. The work lights suddenly stopped working. In the distance, Halt saw a bright, glowing object that had a “dark center, like the black pupil of an eye.” The glowing object moved toward them, and three men ran. The object broke into five white lights that danced into the sky.
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In the control tower at the base,Master Sgt. Ike Barker was sitting back and relaxing. Out of the corner of his eye, he was something on the radar. Something was moving so fast, they were getting a continuous line on the readout. They called another radar unit for verification, but before the phone call could connect, the ship was on them.
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The craft eventually came to a stop over one of the nuclear storage bunkers. A bright beam struck the ground outside the bunker. They had no way of knowing what the craft was going to do. Would it detonate the nukes and start World War Three? Would it leave them be? All any of them could do was watch and wait.
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In the blink of an eye, the craft was gone. In 1981, Colonel Halt wrote up his incident report. He believed it should have gone higher up the chain of command, but it didn’t. He had no doubt that it was a UFO under intelligent control.