| Self-styled “Professor” Simon Holland is a British science filmmaker who also fancies himself an expert on UFOs/UAP. Unfortunately—as several of his YouTube videos clearly demonstrate—he is thoroughly, negatively biased on the topic and has in the past routinely rejected evidence supporting the fact that advanced craft of unknown origin are operating in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. Indeed, based on what I have seen him pontificate about thus far, it seems that any other explanation for what eyewitnesses report in a given case is preferable in his mind to the most likely one—an unmistakable UAP presence at the time of the incident in question. |
The UFO Chronicles 3-21-25 |
Regarding Holland's recent, highly-imaginative remarks concerning the well-known, well-documented UAP sightings in Rendlesham Forest and at nearby RAF Bentwaters airbase in the UK, in December 1980—which Holland confidently tells us were actually due to the witnesses unknowingly observing events related to a Top Secret paranormal experiment conducted by the US government—I make the following observations:
First, as my UFOs and Nukes book chapter on the incidents reveals, dozens of former or retired US Air Force personnel who were stationed at RAF Bentwaters or nearby RAF Woodbridge have gone on the record regarding what were unambiguous UAP sightings—involving anomalous, airborne, structural craft—during the late December time-frame.
The information presented in the chapter—including that derived from my tape-recorded interviews with a score of those former US Air Force witnesses—convincingly confirms that the multiple incidents reported involved genuine UFOs, some of which were tracked on radar. Therefore, the mysterious events reported were not in any way related to some fanciful, allegedly classified, paranormal experiment in the woods, as Holland claims.
Importantly, key witnesses including RAF Bentwaters Deputy Base Commander, Lt. Col. Charles Halt, a number of USAF Security Policemen (SPs), and one member of the 2164th Communications Squadron, all confirm that one focus of the anomalous activity was the nuclear Weapons Storage Area (WSA) on the base. At one point, a hovering, circular craft with flashing lights directed multiple beams—laser-like in appearance but unknown in composition—down onto one or more of the reenforced concrete bunkers in which large numbers of the weapons were stored.
Although Col. Halt dutifully refuses to acknowledge the presence of nukes in the WSA, in keeping with official USAF policy of never publicly confirming the location of stored nuclear weapons, their presence has been established via the testimony of some of the SPs who were on base at the time, as well as the findings of various researchers.
Specifically, at that time, the Bentwaters WSA held the largest stockpile of US tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Had war with the Soviets erupted, the purpose of those “battlefield” nukes was to blunt the anticipated, massive Russian tanks-and-troops thrust into Western Europe predicted by US military analysts.
As my book documents, UAP activity at American WSAs extends back to the late 1940s—at the first atomic bomb storage depots located at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, and Fort Hood, Texas—and continued to take place at least into the late 1990s, at WSAs located on USAF ICBM bases, including Malmstrom, Minot, F.E. Warren, Loring, Wurtsmith, Grand Forks, and other locations.
Indeed, in August 1980, a UFO landed near an alarmed building within the WSA complex at Kirtland AFB and only hurriedly left when an armed Air Force security patrol arrived. So, the events at the Bentwaters WSA four months later were merely part of a decades-long pattern of UFO activity at nukes storage sites that had occurred for decades and would continue in the future.
In any case, a number of US Air Force witnesses independently interviewed by British researcher Gary Haseltine and myself have confirmed for the record what was clearly a UAP incursion—possibly on two different nights—at the RAF Bentwaters WSA in late December 1980.
If Holland is even aware of those reports, he doesn’t mention it in his video. Instead, he cites a single first-hand source, "Rick, the US Air Force mechanic" who alleges that all of the intriguing goings-on at the base actually related to a highly secret US Government experiment involving unspecified paranormal phenomena.
Improbably, within a day of Holland posting his video about the supposed experiment, he claims that several “scientists, members of the UFO community, the military and the spooks” came forward to confirm, presumably via email or texts, that the paranormal incident had actually occurred.
Really?! Unless Holland already knew those persons and had previously verified their scientific bona fides or military/intelligence community credentials, how can he be sure that the individuals who approached him were who they said they were and, more importantly, were part of, or at least knew about, the alleged secret experiment? As anyone who follows social media posts knows, large numbers of wannabes can be counted on to respond to any given article or video, claiming to know “the real facts” about the subject at hand, whatever it may be.
Clearly, despite Holland’s glaring naiveté in accepting on faith the claims of the individuals who approached him, until all of those persons are publicly identified, their claimed insightful testimony and alleged credentials should not be taken at face value by the rest of us.
Simon further mentions that some USAF personnel "were harmed" at Rendlesham Forest in 1980, implying that those injuries occurred as a result of the purported paranormal experiment. Actually, as far as I know, the only person who was physically harmed—or at least has gone public with his medical issues—is former SP John Burroughs. He has repeatedly publicized certain heart problems he currently suffers from that may be due to radiation exposure. Those clearly seem related to Burroughs’ now well-publicized approach on foot—together with former SP Jim Penniston—toward a small, metallic, triangular-shaped craft sitting on the ground in the forest. Indeed, radiation traces were later detected in the three landing gear depressions in the soil where it had landed. According to Penniston, after a short period the craft took off at high velocity and was out of sight in the blink of an eye.
In a video showing Burroughs’ attempts to remember the details of the incident via hypnosis, the former Security Policeman frantically relives the encounter with the UFO, speaking extremely rapidly and obviously under duress.
The key point that I am making here is that Burroughs’ subsequent health issues apparently resulted from his experience involving an anomalous aerial craft of unknown origin, with bright, flashing lights, that had landed in the woods—not as a result of his unwitting involvement in some purported secret paranormal project, as Holland would have us believe.
Ominously, some of the follow-up events at RAF Bentwaters, including the harsh interrogation of SP Jim Penniston—that included the administration of a "truth serum" type drug—occurred in response to Penniston's involvement in the same incident, not because of his stumbling upon some highly-classified paranormal experiment in the Rendlesham Forest, as Holland implies.
Holland Further alleges that Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI or just OSI) and CIA personnel from Washington flew into the adjacent Woodbridge base aboard a C-5A cargo aircraft prior to the experiment taking place, presumably to provide extra security and to suppress any information that might leak out about it. However, as the former Bentwaters Deputy Base Commander, now-retired Col. Charles Halt, has repeatedly stated, the OSI agents arrived in the UK only after multiple reports of UAP sightings in the forest and at the WSA had taken place and began to spread as rumors. In other words, OSI's presence was a response to earlier security-related UAP events and had nothing to do with some purported experiment, or project, that Holland self-assuredly claims required them to be present before it took place. Nevertheless, in a follow-up video Holland insists that his own interpretation of events is correct. He says,
“What I’ve been told is that Deputy Base Commander Charles Halt now wants to tell us—admit—that he knows about the project. He was briefed, he knew that a team from the Air Force, from the CIA, from another agency had already arrived in Suffolk, possibly on board the C-5A transport plane that landed at a secure area at Woodbridge. And whatever happened in late December was a planned project, and the planned project was to mess with people, to mess with perceptions, to evoke the highly strange—maybe because Suffolk was the ideal place, a ‘weak’ place of reality…”
While writing this article, I sent Holland’s two videos to Colonel Halt and asked him to comment. He replied:
Recently I came across a couple of YouTube programs on the Bentwaters incident by a “Professor” Simon Holland [which were also subsequently sent to me by Robert Hastings]. I was shocked by the nonsense he presented as fact. I guess some people will believe anything. I was one of the primary witnesses so I feel obligated to comment. His statement that this was a secret government experiment is nonsense, as more than 75 people witnessed the UAP event [that I participated in] from more than seven different locations, some being a mile or more away. There were even radar observations of the aerial objects.
Holland further stated that a C-5A aircraft with CIA personal arrived prior to the event and parked on a newly-constructed parking pad. There was no new pad and although a plane did arrive it was not until after the event. There's no proof its arrival was even related to the event. There is suspicion but no evidence that CIA personal were on the plane. I just wish Holland had done his homework as he, like so many, just muddies the waters.
Once again, as several researchers have uncovered, the incident in which Col. Halt was involved was only one of many over a four-night period—all involving anomalous aerial objects. For example, I was the first person to interview the two USAF air traffic controllers at RAF Bentwaters, Ike Barker and Jim Carey, who tracked on radar an unbelievably fast craft that covered 120 miles in approximately 8-12 seconds. At one point, the UAP stopped instantaneously and hovered not far from the control tower. Barker observed it and described it as the twice the size of an F-111 fighter and looking like an “orangish basketball with portholes around the middle”. After a few seconds, the UFO raced away.
Summarizing, self-titled “Professor” Simon Holland gets just about everything wrong when advancing his latest theory about the nature of the events in Rendlesham Forest in December 1980. If one actually interviews the many witnesses to what occurred, as I and other researchers have, and Colonel Halt did, one quickly learns that the common element in all of their narratives is the presence of what were clearly UAPs—several of them—during all of the extraordinary events that took place.
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