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Evidence: The Halt Memo
January 13, 1981: "Unexplained Lights"
In 1983 —under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act— a memo written by Colonel Halt was released to the public. Halt was the deputy base commander and witness to the events of December 28. He wrote the memo and sent it to the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the RAF then forwarded it to the U.K. Ministry of Defense.
Below are the highlights of the memo. Don't worry, there's a button to read the whole thing too. Click here to skip to it!
December 27
”
[When investigating,] the individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest... It illuminated the entire forest with a white light.
”
As patrolmen approached the object, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared. At this time the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy.
”
The object was briefly sighting approximately an hour later near the back gate.
December 28 — Early Morning
”
The next day, three depressions 1 1/2" deep and 7" in diameter were found where the object was sighting on the ground.
December 28 — Night
”
Later in the night a red sun-like light was seen through the trees. It moved about and pulsed. At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects and then disappeared.
”
Immediately thereafter, three star-like objects were noticed in the sky: two to the north and one to the south... [They] moved rapidly in sharp angular movements.
”
Numerous individuals, including [Charles Halt], witnessed the activities in paragraphs 2 and 3.
Evidence: The Halt Tape
December 28, 1980: "There’s something very, very strange"
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt made a cassette tape recording the December 28 discoveries using a hand-held Lanier micro-cassette recorder, in addition to writing his January 13 memo. The tape has many starts and stops, which was explained when Halt appeared on a 2008 episode of the UFO Hunters.
He said, "the tapes are 20 minutes in duration, so there’s no way I could have kept the tape running the whole time. I must have stopped that tape a hundred times. I was going click-click-click-click the whole time we were out there because I didn’t want to run out of tape."
Halt's recording was solely an investigation of the December 26 sighting at first, but two-thirds of the way through the tapes —he got a UFO sighting all his own.
The tape was released to UFO researchers in 1984 by Colonel Sam Morgan. Colonel Morgan replaced Colonel Ted Conrad as Halt's superior. The recording includes a play-by-play of radiation readings, the flashing lights between the trees, and the moving, star-like objects in the sky.
People heard on the recording include:
- Colonel Halt
- Bruce Englund — guiding Colonel Halt
- Sergeant Monroe Nevels — operating the Geiger counter
- Sergeant Bobby Ball — referred to as "Bob"
A researcher named Ian Ridpath created a transcript of the recording. Both the original audio file and the transcript are below.
