What happened at Bentwaters, a U.S. air base in southern England, on two nights just after Christmas 1980? Despite the reports of multiple witnesses, the answers are still unclear, making this one of the most intriguing cases in recent UFO history. On the first night, a craft of some sort allegedly landed in a clearing in the Rendelsham Forest, which lies between Bentwaters and Woodbridge, its counterpart Royal Air Force base. Two nights later, according to reports, one or more ships returned to the area but did not land.

Witnesses from the second nights' sighting have come forward to talk about their experience, but the facts about what happened that first night have remained murky due to the continued silence of the highest-ranking security policeman dispatched to the scene. OMNI contributing editor A.J.S. Rayl recently managed to track down this key witness -- Jim Penniston, U.S.A.F. Technical Sgt., Retired -- and persuade him to go on the record. Here, for the first time anywhere, he reveals what he encountered in the English forest outside Bentwaters on that cold December night 16 years ago -- including the hard evidence he brought home, the Air Force's attempts to cover the event up, and the details that emerged in two hypnosis sessions Penniston underwent years later.

But first, we'll set the stage. For years after the original encounter, the primary witnesses to the strange occurrences at Bentwaters refused interviews, and in the absence of first-person testimony, a number of versions of the story sprang up and were inevitably exaggerated. In an effort to unearth the facts about the Bentwaters case, OMNI contacted then-Deputy Base Commander Lt. Col. Charles I. Halt, now retired from the Air Force, who had taken a team out to investigate on the second night. Finally, 1993, he consented to his first major press interview, which was conducted by Rayl and publisheded in OMNI in April 1994. ("Inside the Military UFO Underground: Breaking the Silence Barrier.")

In a nutshell, Halt said, he led half a dozen men to the clearing where a craft had reportedly landed two nights before. There they found three distinct indentations in the sandy ground in a triangular pattern, supposedly from the object that had landed there, and one of Halt's men reported higher Geiger-counter readings inside the triangle than outside it. A red oval light appeared, and Halt and his men pursued it through the woods until it crossed into a farmer's field and "exploded" into five white objects. Halt contacted the command post and was told that nothing showed up on radar. Before they returned to the base, another glowing object approached them, emitting a thin beam that touched the ground near their feet before zooming away.

On January 13, 1981, after interviewing the men who'd taken part in the first night's sighting, Halt filed a one-page memo and forwarded it to the British Ministry of Defense. He never received a response nor was an inquiry launched into the incident "to my knowledge," he said. A copy of Halt's memo was released through the Freedom of Information Act two years later.

Since the release of Halt's memo in 1983, rumors have abounded. What really took place on those two wintry nights at Bentwaters? Could the incident have been part of a military operation, the result of mass fantasy and hysteria, or the disturbing visitation of extraterrestrials from on high? The case has spawned two books and been covered extensively in at least a half dozen more, and one minor character in the case has hit the UFO circuit with tales of holographic aliens and contact between them and Bentwaters Wing Commander Gordon Williams. Now, for the first time, Penniston speaks, telling in his own words what really happened that first night at Bentwaters.