One of the most interesting aspects of the Bentwaters case is the physical evidence gathered by Penniston, including:
- Photographs
Taken by Penniston while examining the craft with a military-issue camera and dropped off at the base lab for developing. The photographs were never given to Penniston, who was told they didn't turn out. Present location unknown.
- Plaster Casts
Of the original three casts of the triangular indentations he found in the clearing after the craft took off, Penniston hand-carried two on the plane with him as he returned to the United States in 1984. Cast #1, which appeared to be the indentation made by the "front end of the craft," he says, was put with the family belongings for shipment home. "It was to be shipped by sea and wound up taking eight or nine months and got lost, and there were all kinds of delays," he says. "Anyway, when we got the shipment, everything was there, except the plaster cast."
Penniston has managed to hold on to plaster casts #2 and #3, which were, "literally," he says, buried until last year to insure that they wouldn't go missing. One remains where he "can get to it." The other has been shipped off for analysis.
- Hypnosis
In 1994, after much contemplation, Penniston says, he agreed to undergo two hypnosis sessions at the urging of several colleagues with whom he was working to uncover any information on the identity of the craft at Bentwaters, the plan being to co-author a book. "The idea was that there might be more valuable information, specifically times, dates, and other names that perhaps we could retrieve," says Penniston. "I knew that information gleaned from hypnosis wasn't always perfect and that if it wasn't done right, the information could be contaminated. So I was reluctant about the whole thing."
His colleagues came up with a list of questions for the psychologist that they felt were not leading or suggestive, and they agreed to let him be hypnotized by a family psychologist who had helped his teenage daughter.
The first of two hypnotic regressions -- both of which were videotaped -- took place in September 1994. In that session, Penniston recounted the same events that he remembered consciously. Nothing new surfaced. The session did, however, turn up a jump in time: Penniston described being near the craft, examining it, and then suddenly standing 30 feet away next to Airman First Class John Burroughs, one of the men dispatched to investigate the scene with him. That sequence of events left about 45 minutes unaccounted for. He and his colleagues decided to try another hypnosis sesssion two months later to explore that seeming discrepancy. (That second session is covered in the next section.)
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