"Britain's Roswell" - The Rendlesham Forest Incident

Rendlesham Forest sits along the coast of Suffolk in eastern England, covering roughly 3700 acres of dense woodland, heathland, and winding trails. The forest stretches between the small towns of Woodbridge and Orford, only a few miles from the North Sea coast. Much of the area is made up of tall Corsican pine plantations mixed with oak, birch, and patches of marshy ground, giving the forest a dark and isolated atmosphere, especially at night when thick fog from the nearby coastline rolls through the trees. Long straight forestry roads cut through the woods, but beyond them the terrain becomes uneven and quiet, filled with narrow paths, tangled undergrowth, and shadowy clearings.

Just after Christmas in 1980, something strange moved through the dark woods between the twin U.S. Air Force bases at RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England. The area was cold, silent, and wrapped in dense fog drifting through the towering pine trees of Rendlesham Forest. 

In the early hours of December 26, security personnel stationed at RAF Woodbridge noticed unusual lights descending into the forest beyond the eastern perimeter. Believing an aircraft may have crashed, Airmen John Burroughs, Jim Penniston, and Edward Cabansag were sent to investigate. As they moved deeper into the woods, the men reportedly encountered an object unlike anything they had ever seen - a glowing triangular craft resting among the trees, radiating blue, red, and white light. Penniston claimed that the surface appeared smooth and metallic, covered in strange geometric symbols resembling hieroglyphics. 

He said the object hovered silently just above the ground before suddenly maneuvering through the forest and vanishing into the darkness at impossible speed.

When daylight arrived, investigators returned to the site and discovered several unusual physical traces. Small indentations arranged in a triangular pattern were reportedly found in the soil, along with broken branches and elevated radiation readings recorded with military equipment. Rather than fading away as another strange rumor, the incident escalated two nights later. 

On December 28, Deputy Base Commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt led a larger team back into the forest after more reports of unexplained lights. Halt carried a tape recorder during the patrol, documenting events in real time as the group witnessed glowing objects weaving through the trees and flashing beams of light from above. At one point, Halt described a bright red object “dripping molten metal” while another smaller object darted rapidly through the forest. The men later claimed beams of light descended from the sky into the weapons storage area of RAF Bentwaters itself - a detail that would become one of the most controversial parts of the entire case.

Unlike many UFO stories built solely on secondhand rumor, the Rendlesham Forest Incident involved trained military witnesses, official memorandums, recorded audio, and documented investigations, earning it the nickname “Britain’s Roswell.” Yet despite decades of scrutiny, no explanation has fully satisfied everyone involved. 

Skeptics have argued the men likely misidentified the nearby Orford Ness lighthouse, bright stars, and natural phenomena while moving through a tense nighttime environment. Others insist the witnesses encountered something far stranger - possibly experimental military technology or a genuinely unknown craft operating near one of NATO’s most sensitive Cold War facilities. 

More than forty years later, the Rendlesham Forest Incident remains one of the most debated UFO encounters in modern history, a case where military testimony, physical evidence, and mystery continue to overlap in the shadowed woods of Suffolk.

One of the strangest and most controversial parts of the Rendlesham Forest Incident emerged years after the original events. Airman Jim Penniston later claimed that when he touched the triangular craft on the night of December 26, 1980, he experienced a flood of binary code entering his mind almost like a telepathic download. According to Penniston, the sequence stayed buried in his memory until years later, when he began writing pages of 1s and 0s in a notebook during hypnosis and recollection sessions. When the binary was eventually translated into ASCII text, it reportedly produced cryptic phrases including references to “continuous for planetary advance,” “exploration of humanity,” and coordinates pointing to locations such as Sedona, Arizona; the Great Pyramid of Giza; and even the mysterious Hy-Brasil - a phantom island from Celtic legend.

Penniston's own account is that as he approached the glowing triangular craft on the first night of the incident, he was able to touch its smooth metallic surface. He later described the craft as warm to the touch and covered in strange black symbols resembling ancient hieroglyphics. According to Penniston, the object emitted no engine noise and appeared to maneuver intelligently before suddenly lifting away through the trees at incredible speed.

 

Years later, he expanded his account by claiming the encounter triggered vivid mental impressions and flashes of binary code that he believed had somehow been implanted into his consciousness during contact with the craft.

Other witnesses connected to Rendlesham also described experiences that went beyond simply seeing lights in the sky. Some claimed the objects reacted to their movements, maneuvered deliberately around them, or projected beams of light toward the ground and military facilities. 

Penniston’s later claims about receiving information telepathically pushed the story deeper into the realm of alleged close encounters rather than a distant UFO sighting. Supporters believe these accounts suggest some form of intelligent interaction occurred, while skeptics argue the more extraordinary details surfaced years after the event and may have been shaped by memory distortion, hypnosis, or the growing mythology surrounding the case. 

Regardless, the direct-contact claims became one of the reasons Rendlesham evolved from a Cold War mystery into one of the most debated close encounter cases in modern UFO history.

One of the most important aspects of the Rendlesham Forest Incident is that it involved multiple trained U.S. military personnel stationed at highly sensitive NATO bases during the height of the Cold War. RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge were believed to house nuclear weapons, which immediately elevated the seriousness of the reports. Witnesses weren’t random civilians looking into the sky - they were security police, radar personnel, and commanding officers accustomed to identifying aircraft, intrusions, and threats. That military background is a major reason the case continues to carry weight in UFO research circles decades later.

Another critical piece is the existence of the “Halt Memo.” Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt formally documented the events in an official memorandum sent to the British Ministry of Defence in January 1981. The memo described strange lights, animal disturbances, radiation readings, and the alleged beams of light descending into the base’s weapons storage area. Even more compelling is the fact that Halt recorded parts of the second night’s investigation on audio tape while events unfolded in real time. On the recording, excitement and confusion among the men can clearly be heard as they react to moving lights in the forest and sky. Few UFO cases possess both official military paperwork and live audio evidence created during the incident itself.

The case also became surrounded by claims of secrecy and intimidation. Some witnesses later alleged they were discouraged from speaking publicly, while others claimed they underwent debriefings that felt more like interrogations. 

Over the years, accounts have evolved and sometimes conflicted, which has fueled skepticism but also deepened the mystery. Researchers have debated everything from experimental military craft and plasma phenomena to psychological effects and extraterrestrial visitation. The Rendlesham Incident sits at a strange intersection of Cold War paranoia, military secrecy, folklore, and genuine unexplained observations - which is exactly why it has remained one of the most discussed UFO encounters in history.

The Rendlesham Forest Incident generally is not viewed as an outright hoax in the traditional sense - meaning most researchers, including many skeptics, believe something genuinely happened in the forest during those nights in December 1980. The real debate centers on what happened. Unlike obvious fabricated UFO stories, Rendlesham involved numerous military witnesses, official documentation, radiation measurements, audio recordings, and multiple nights of reported activity. Because of that, even critics usually stop short of calling it a coordinated fake.

Skeptics tend to argue the incident became a perfect storm of misidentifications, stress, and escalating storytelling. The most common explanation points to the nearby Orford Ness lighthouse, whose rotating beam could be seen through the trees every few seconds. Combined with bright stars, meteor activity, darkness, adrenaline, and armed personnel moving through unfamiliar woods, critics believe the witnesses gradually convinced themselves they were encountering something extraordinary. Some researchers also think later embellishments - particularly the binary code story and claims of direct contact - evolved over time as the legend surrounding Rendlesham grew larger.

Believers, however, point to several details they feel are difficult to dismiss. 

Witnesses described structured craft maneuvering intelligently, physical ground traces were reportedly documented, radiation readings were taken, and military personnel claimed beams of light were directed into sensitive areas of the base. 

The involvement of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt is especially significant to many people because he was a senior-ranking officer who formally recorded and reported the incident. Over time, Rendlesham has settled into a middle ground in UFO history: widely accepted as a real incident involving sincere witnesses, but fiercely disputed over whether the cause was mundane, psychological, military, or truly unexplained.

Now Playing: "I Cant Explain" - The Who 

Into the Cloud That Ate Time: The Bruce Gernon Mystery

On December 4, 1970, the sky above the Bahamas looked calm enough to promise an ordinary flight. 

Bruce Gernon had flown the route before, departing from Andros Island in his Bonanza A36 with his father and his father’s business associate aboard. The afternoon sun reflected off the Atlantic in long silver streaks, and nothing about the weather suggested danger. The flight toward Florida should have been routine - a familiar path over open ocean with little more to worry about than scattered clouds and mild turbulence.

For the first stretch of the trip, everything felt normal. The plane climbed steadily, the islands below shrinking into patches of green surrounded by turquoise water. Then Gernon noticed a cloud ahead. At first it seemed harmless, bright white and isolated against the blue sky. Yet something about it felt unusual. No matter how he adjusted course, the cloud appeared to remain directly in front of the aircraft. It didn’t drift or shift with the wind. Instead, it seemed to hold its position as though waiting.

As they approached, another cloud appeared farther ahead. Gernon maneuvered around the first formation, believing he had escaped whatever strange weather pattern he had entered. But when he glanced behind him, he saw something impossible. The cloud they had just passed appeared to have shifted position, now connected to the second cloud ahead. Together they formed a corridor of vapor stretching through the sky. The atmosphere inside the cockpit changed. The temperature dropped slightly. The air pressure felt different. Before he could fully process what he was seeing and feeling, the aircraft entered the cloud.

Inside, daylight disappeared. The bright white exterior gave way to darkness streaked with flashes of light. Rain hammered the windshield while faint lightning illuminated spiraling patterns along the walls of the cloud. Yet despite the violent appearance, the air felt strangely smooth. There was little turbulence. Instead of being thrown around by storm winds, the plane seemed suspended in an unnaturally calm current. 

Gernon attempted to turn south and escape, but when he looked behind him, there was no exit. The cloud had sealed itself into a tunnel around the aircraft.

Ahead, he could see an opening filled with blue sky. The tunnel appeared to stretch for miles, perhaps ten or fifteen at first glance, but as the plane moved forward, something strange happened. The tunnel seemed to shrink. Its length shortened, its diameter tightened, and the opening rushed closer far faster than it should have. 

Spiraling lines rotated along the interior walls in a slow counterclockwise motion, giving the sensation that the aircraft was moving through something alive rather than a natural weather system. Gernon checked his instruments, but they offered little reassurance. The compass behaved erratically, and radio static overwhelmed communication.

As they neared the opening, the aircraft no longer felt as though it was flying under its own power. It felt pulled forward. The tunnel compressed around them until suddenly they crossed its edge. For a brief moment, the passengers experienced weightlessness. The sensation lasted only seconds, but it felt detached from normal flight - as though gravity itself had been interrupted. Then the world outside changed again.

Instead of emerging into clear blue sky, they entered a strange gray haze. There was no visible horizon, no ocean below, no sky above. The plane seemed suspended inside a blank, featureless void stretching in every direction. The haze resembled thick fog, yet visibility extended farther than fog should allow. The instruments continued to fluctuate unpredictably, and the passengers sat in stunned silence, unable to explain what surrounded them.

Gradually, the grayness began to thin. Shapes emerged below. Water appeared first, then buildings, roads, and shoreline. Gernon radioed for position confirmation, expecting to hear that they were still somewhere over the Bahamas. Instead, Miami answered. Air traffic control informed him that he was already near Miami Beach - far beyond where he should have been. 

The timing made no sense. The trip should have taken significantly longer, especially considering the detour and strange weather they had encountered. Fuel consumption and elapsed time failed to match the distance traveled.

The aircraft landed safely, but the questions remained. Gernon would later describe the experience as traveling through an “electronic fog,” a phenomenon he believed distorted both time and space. Skeptics argued it was weather, stress, or faulty perception. Others believed the Bermuda Triangle had once again produced something impossible. 

Yet for Gernon, the memory never changed. The tunnel, the spiraling walls, the gray void, and the sudden, unexpected arrival near Miami remained fixed in his mind. Whether it was an unexplained weather anomaly, a psychological event, or something stranger entirely, the experience left behind a mystery that Gernon never stopped thinking about. 

Weird Skies Over Norway: The Hessdalen Lights

The valley had a way of swallowing sound.

Snow fell softly in Hessdalen during the winter of 1983, covering the narrow Norwegian valley in silence so complete that even footsteps seemed unwelcome there. The mountains stood like black walls beneath the northern sky, and every house in the valley glowed faintly with warm yellow windows against the endless dark.

That was when the lights returned.

At first, people tried to explain them away. A hunter spotted a pale orb drifting low above the trees and assumed it was an aircraft. A woman driving home late one evening watched a blue-white glow float beside her car for nearly a mile before it shot straight upward and disappeared. Farmers standing in frozen fields began seeing red spheres hovering motionless over the valley floor, sometimes for several minutes at a time.

The lights moved unnaturally.

They didn’t drift like stars or flash like airplanes. They reacted. They paused. Sometimes they pulsed brighter when someone pointed at them, as if aware they had been noticed.

By January, people stopped pretending nothing was happening.

Families stood outside in the cold at night staring into the sky. Curtains stayed open long after midnight. Children whispered about glowing shapes moving between the hills while older residents quietly admitted they had heard stories like this before - stories passed down from grandparents who spoke of strange lights long before cameras and radar ever arrived in the valley.

One old man remembered hearing about an object that plunged into a nearby lake in 1947. Another swore his grandfather had described a “burning star” hanging low over Hessdalen sometime in the 1800s.

The valley, it seemed, had always been watching the sky.

Then the scientists arrived.

They came carrying cameras, radar equipment, magnetometers, and notebooks thick with skepticism. Project Hessdalen, they called it. Officially, they were there to study unusual atmospheric phenomena. Unofficially, many of them expected the mystery to disappear the moment real instruments were pointed at it.

Instead, the instruments made the mystery worse.

One freezing night just after midnight, alarms erupted inside the small observation station overlooking the valley. Radar locked onto a bright object hovering low above the ground. Outside, researchers watched a glowing white sphere drift soundlessly through the darkness. It stopped suddenly in midair.

Then it pulsed.

The light expanded outward in a slow flash that painted the snow-covered hills blue for a split second. Equipment inside the station flickered violently. Readings jumped across monitors without explanation. One camera failed completely.

And then the object moved again.

Not fast at first. It glided low across the valley floor as though following an invisible road. Then, without warning, it accelerated so quickly it vanished before anyone could react. No aircraft could move like that. No known natural phenomenon behaved with that kind of precision.

After that night, some of the researchers stopped sleeping. They began noticing patterns.

The lights appeared more often near isolated roads. They seemed drawn to movement below. Witnesses reported feeling watched moments before the glowing orbs emerged from the darkness. Animals grew restless before sightings. Entire stretches of forest reportedly fell silent when the lights appeared, as though nature itself was holding its breath.

And still, nobody could explain them.

Some scientists blamed ionized gases caused by the valley’s mineral-rich geology. Others argued for rare plasma formations created by underground electrical activity. But even those theories struggled to explain why the lights changed direction, hovered motionless for long periods, or reacted to the presence of people below.

The longer the investigation continued, the stranger the valley became.

Even now, decades later, the lights still return.

On cold winter nights in Hessdalen, locals still glance toward the ridgelines before stepping inside. Cameras remain fixed on the mountains. Researchers continue to monitor the skies. And every so often, deep in the darkness between the hills, a glow appears where no light should be. It sits there like it's watching or waiting for something. 

Then, just as suddenly as it came, it disappears back into the Norwegian night - leaving the valley quiet once more. 

Now Playing: Act Naturally - Buck Owens 

Enrico Fermi and the Fermi Paradox

Enrico Fermi stands as one of the most influential scientific minds of the 20th century - a man whose work helped usher in the nuclear age while reshaping our understanding of the universe at its most fundamental level. An Italian-American physicist of rare versatility, he moved effortlessly between theory and experiment, a combination few scientists have ever truly mastered.

Fermi is perhaps best known for leading the creation of the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, achieved beneath the stands of the University of Chicago in 1942. This breakthrough demonstrated the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction - an achievement that would ripple outward into both energy production and weaponry. His work was central to the Manhattan Project, placing him at the heart of one of history’s most consequential scientific efforts.

Years earlier, in 1938, Fermi had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering research on neutron irradiation and the discovery of new radioactive elements. His experiments revealed that slow neutrons were far more effective than fast ones at penetrating atomic nuclei - an insight that proved critical to later developments in nuclear physics. 

Though he initially believed he had created entirely new elements, these results were later understood to be the byproducts of nuclear fission, a discovery that would change the course of modern science.

Fermi’s intellectual reach extended far beyond nuclear work. In the 1920s, building on ideas from Wolfgang Pauli, he developed what is now known as Fermi -Dirac statistics, a framework describing how particles behave under the constraints of the exclusion principle. Today, particles that follow these rules are called fermions in his honor. He also advanced the emerging field of particle physics by proposing a theory of beta decay that introduced a then-hypothetical particle-the neutrino-giving shape to what we now understand as the weak nuclear interaction, one of the universe’s four fundamental forces.

Despite his scientific achievements, Fermi’s life was shaped by the politics of his time. In 1938, he left Italy with his wife, Laura Capon - who was Jewish - to escape the country’s racial laws under fascism. He immigrated to the United States, where his career would reach its most historically significant phase.

During World War II, Fermi played a key role across multiple nuclear sites, from Chicago to Oak Ridge to Hanford, and later Los Alamos, where he contributed to early thermonuclear research alongside figures like Edward Teller. He was present at the Trinity Test—the first detonation of an atomic bomb—where he famously used a simple, almost improvised method to estimate the explosion’s yield by dropping bits of paper and observing how far they scattered in the blast wave.

After the war, Fermi turned toward rebuilding and guiding the future of science. He helped establish the Institute for Nuclear Studies in Chicago and served on advisory committees alongside J. Robert Oppenheimer. Notably, he opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, citing both moral concerns and technical skepticism—a stance that placed him among those advocating restraint in an increasingly volatile nuclear era.

In his later years, Fermi continued to explore the frontiers of particle physics and cosmic radiation, suggesting that cosmic rays might be accelerated by magnetic fields in space. His legacy lives on not only in theory and discovery, but in the many institutions and concepts that bear his name—from Fermilab to the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and even element 100, fermium.

Yet perhaps his most haunting contribution is not a discovery, but a question—the seed of what we now call the Fermi Paradox. A quiet, almost offhand remark that continues to echo through science and philosophy alike, reminding us that even the greatest minds are sometimes defined not by the answers they give, but by the questions they leave behind.

The Fermi Paradox

In 1950, Los Alamos National Laboratory was still buzzing with the aftershocks of wartime science when Enrico Fermi found himself walking to lunch at Fuller Lodge alongside fellow physicists Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York. Their conversation drifted, as it often did, from serious physics into the strange and speculative - reports of flying saucers, and the tantalizing idea of faster-than-light travel.

By the time they reached the lodge, the topic had already begun to fade into something else entirely. Then, without warning, Fermi cut through the noise with a single question:

“But where is everybody?”

As Konopinski later recalled, the moment landed with a kind of quiet clarity. Teller would say that laughter followed - not because the question was absurd, but because it was instantly understood. Everyone at the table knew exactly what Fermi meant. He wasn’t talking about missing colleagues or empty rooms. He was asking about extraterrestrial life.

According to York, Fermi didn’t leave it at the question. He began sketching out a line of reasoning - quick, back-of-the-envelope calculations that moved from one probability to the next. 

• How many stars might host Earth-like planets? 
• How often might life arise? 
• How frequently could intelligence emerge? 
• And once it did, how long might a technological civilization last?

The implication built step by step. Given enough time - and the universe had plenty of it - some civilizations should have advanced far beyond ours. Some should have developed the ability to travel between stars. Even at relatively slow speeds, the Milky Way could be crossed in a few million years - a blink of an eye on cosmic scales.

By that logic, Fermi suggested, we shouldn’t be wondering if they exist. We should already have seen them.

Yet Teller later remembered Fermi as being more restrained in his conclusion. Rather than pushing the argument to its limits, he offered a quieter possibility - that the distances between civilizations might simply be vast beyond comprehension. That perhaps we exist on the outer edges of things, far from whatever might be considered the “busy” regions of the galaxy. Not at the center of activity, but somewhere out in the quiet margins. Still, the contradiction remained. 

The numbers seem to point one way:

• There are billions of stars similar to the Sun.
• Many likely host planets in habitable zones.
• A significant number of those systems are far older than our own.
• Given time, some should have produced intelligent, technologically capable life.

And if even a fraction of those civilizations reached the stars, the galaxy should bear the marks of their presence - colonies, signals, artifacts, or probes drifting silently through space.

But the sky remains silent. There's been no confirmed signals and no visitors. There's been no undeniable evidence.

And so Fermi’s question lingers, as sharp now as it was in that lunchroom in 1950 - not as a conclusion, but as a tension that refuses to resolve.

Where is everybody?

The Man Who Was Kidnapped by Bigfoot: The Albert Ostman Story

(This article was originally published om 1/26/2011 on BFD)

Newspaper article from The Agassiz-Harrison Advance (1957)

In 1924, a young Scandinavian named Albert Ostman spent several days prospecting for a lost gold mine near the head of Toba Inlet in British Columbia. He had heard that there were several of these old mines in the British Columbia area, and thought it would be a great vacation experience if he could locate one.

He took the Union Steamship boat to Lund, British Columbia, where he hired an old Indian to guide him the rest of the way to the Toba Inlet.

In Albert's own words: "This old Indian was a very talkative old gentleman. He told me stories about gold brought out by a white man from this lost mine. This white man was a very heavy drinker — spent his money freely in saloons. But he had no trouble in getting more money. He would be away a few days, then come back with a bag of gold. But one time he went to his mine and never came back. Some people said a Sasquatch had killed him.

At that time I had never heard of Sasquatch. So I asked what kind of an animal he called a Sasquatch. The Indian said, "They have hair all over their bodies, but they are not animals. They are people. Big people living in the mountains. My uncle saw the tracks of one that were two feet long. One old Indian saw one over eight feet tall.

I told the Indian I didn't believe in their old fables about mountain giants. It might have been some thousands of years ago, but not nowadays.

The Indian said: 'There may not be many, but they still exist.'"

Albert made it to Toba Inlet and was happy to have this time to himself. He figured that he would scour the forest during the days looking for the mine, and at night he would map out the areas he covered and make plans for the next day's exploration. He had plenty of food that he had bought from a grocer in Lund, which consisted mostly of canned items, but also some bacon, a bag of beans, four pounds of prunes, six packets of macaroni and cheese, three pounds of pancake flour, six packets of Rye King hard tack, one quart of butter and two one-pound cans of milk. The grocer in Lund also gave Albert some tin cans in order to keep his sugar, salt and matches dry. Then he had a sleeping bag, a Winchester rifle, a small frying pan, an aluminum pot, and three rolls of snuff. He would bundle all of this together before he set out in the morning and carry it with him as he set up a new camp each night. It would require alot of stamina to lug around an eighty pound bag each day, but Albert didn't really seem to mind so much. He was after all on "vacation." He would travel like this for about three days until he found a spot suitable to be his permanent camping spot.

Toba Inlet, British Columbia

Albert was sleeping in his sleeping bag when he was suddenly awakened to a terrifying realization. He was being "carried"... He had been scooped up and transported off... By something much bigger than he. At first he thought that he must be dreaming. But as he became more and more aware of the experience, he realized that he was not dreaming, but very much awake.

Wrapped up tightly in his sleeping bag, it was impossible for Albert to determine what was carrying him, but he could determine this much: He was being carried over the shoulder of a large bi-pedal creature that seemed to possess super human strength and amazing dexterity.

"My first thought was - it must be a snow slide..." Albert recalled several years later. "Then it felt like I was tossed on horseback, but I could feel whoever it was, was walking."

"I was in a very uncomfortable position — unable to move. I was sitting on my feet, and one of the boots in the bottom of the bag was crossways with the hobnail sole up across my foot. It hurt me terribly, but I could not move.

It was very hot inside. It was lucky for me this fellow's hand was not big enough to close up the whole bag when he picked me up — there was a small opening at the top, otherwise I would have choked to death."

Too afraid to move or to try to escape, and simply dumbfounded, Albert didn't move for several hours as the creature carried him away from his camp site. Then, very suddenly, he was dropped to the ground. He could hear some incoherent chatter, but couldn't make out what was being said, if anything. He was terrified for his life, and still wasn't able to comprehend what was happening. He continued to fight off the notion that he was still sleeping and just having a bad dream.

The next day Albert found himself in an area that was surrounded by cliffs on all sides. And he was not alone. There with him was what he considered to be a family of Bigfoot... 4 specimens of different sizes and shapes... An enormous creature that Albert figured to be the "old man" of the group, an "old lady",  and two younger creatures that appeared to be children. Albert figured the old man to be over 8 feet tall and to weigh about 800 pounds. He judged the old lady to be slightly smaller at about 7 feet tall and 600 pounds. The children were much smaller in stature, and were obviously lacking in the maturity of the older beasts.

"I had never heard of Sasquatch before the Indian told me about them. But I knew I was right among them.

But how to get away from them, that was another question? I got to see the outline of them now, as it began to get lighter, though the sky was cloudy, and it looked like rain, in fact there was a slight sprinkle.

I now had circulation in my legs, but my left foot was very sore on top where it had been resting on my hobnail boots. I got my boots out from the sleeping bag and tried to stand up. I found that I was wobbly on my feet, but I had a good hold of my rifle.

I asked, "What you fellows want with me?" Only some more chatter.

I had my compass and my prospecting glass on strings around my neck. The compass in my left hand shirt pocket and my glass in my right hand pocket. I tried to reason our location, and where I was. I could see now that I was in a small valley or basin about eight or ten acres, surrounded by high mountains, on the southeast side there was a V-shaped opening about eight feet wide at the bottom and about twenty feet high at the highest point — that must be the way I came in. But how will I get out? The old man was now sitting near this opening.

I moved my belongings up close to the west wall. There were two small cypress trees there, and this will do for a shelter for the time being. Until I find out what these people want with me, and how to get away from here. I emptied out my pack sack to see what I had left in the line of food. All my canned meat and vegetables were intact and I had one can of coffee. Also three small cans of milk — two packages of Rye King hard tack and my butter sealer half full of butter. But my prunes and macaroni were missing. Also my full box of shells for my rifle. I had my sheath knife but my prospecting pick was missing and my can of matches. I only had my safety box full and that held only about a dozen matches. That did not worry me — I can always start a fire with my prospecting glass when the sun is shining, if I got dry wood. I wanted hot coffee, but I had no wood, also nothing around here that looked like wood. I had a good look over the valley from where I was — but the boy and girl were always watching me from behind some juniper bush. I decided there must be some water around here. The ground was leaning towards the opening in the wall. There must be water at the upper end of this valley, there is green grass and moss along the bottom.

All my utensils were left behind. I opened my coffee tin and emptied the coffee in a dishtowel and tied it with the metal strip from the can. I took my rifle and the can and went looking for water. Right at the head under a cliff there was a lovely spring that disappeared underground. I got a drink, and a full can of water. When I got back the young boy was looking over my belongings, but did not touch anything. On my way back I noticed where these people were sleeping. On the east side wall of this valley was a shelf in the mountain side, with overhanging rock, looking something like a big undercut in a big tree about 10 feet deep and 30 feet wide. The floor was covered with lots of dry moss, and they had some kind of blankets woven of narrow strips of cedar bark, packed with dry moss. They looked very practical and warm — with no need of washing.

Photo: Lori Simmons (Used with permission)

Albert found himself in this incredulous situation, but yet he somehow managed to keep his bearings. The "old man" was very large and menacing, and Albert seemed to understand that if he panicked and freaked out, it could result in him taking a severe beating from this creature. He was able to gauge his surroundings and figured that he would bide his time until it he had a plan to escape.

The first day was pretty uneventful. He wasn't tied down and he had the freedom to rouse through his belongings at will. He ate his food without cooking it, always under the watchful eyes of the two younger creatures. He had an empty can of snuff, and tossed it over in the direction where the young boy was. The boy sprang to his feet and grabbed it, and took it over to his sister. The two of them played with it for a long while, and they discovered how to open and close it. After awhile, the boy took it over to the father and showed it to him. It seemed to be a subject of considerable attention, as the two "had a long chatter" about it.

The next morning Albert realized that he only had enough food to make it out of there and back to Toba Inlet. He knew had to leave - even if it meant shooting his way out. He wasn't sure what direction he would have to travel but figured that if he went downhill, he would eventually find civilization someplace. He put the rest of his food in his pack, and loaded a shell into the barrel of his rifle. With a deep breath, he started for the opening where the "old man" sat. The father stood up and pushed Albert back... It became very apparent that Albert wasn't allowed to leave. Albert pointed to the opening and told the old man that he wanted to pass through. The old man kept pushing, and said something that Albert would later describe as sounding like "Soka Soka".

Albert backed up to about 60 feet. He would need the space he figured, if he was going to shoot his way out. Then he remembered that he only had six shells, and wasn't perfectly sure that the first one would kill the old man. What it might do, Albert figured, is make the old man extremely angry, and thus wouldn't allow time to get another shell injected into the barrel before Albert took a shellacking. Albert figured that there must be another way out of there, without killing the old man. He went back to his campsite and started to work on plan B...

"I could make friends with the young fellow or the girl, they might help me. If I only could talk to them. Then I thought of a fellow who saved himself from a mad bull by blinding him with snuff in his eyes. But how will I get near enough to this fellow to put snuff in his eyes? So I decided next time I give the young fellow my snuff box to leave a few grains of snuff in it. He might give the old man a taste of it.

But the question is, in what direction will I go, if I should get out? I must have been near 25 miles northeast of Toba Inlet when I was kidnapped. This fellow must have travelled at least 25 miles in the three hours he carried me. If he went west we would be near salt water — same thing if he went south — therefore he must have gone northeast. If I then keep going south and over two mountains, I must hit salt water someplace between Lund and Vancouver.

The following day I did not see the old lady till about 4:00 p.m. She came home with her arms full of grass and twigs and of all kinds of spruce and hemlock as well as some kind of nuts that grow in the ground. I have seen lots of them on Vancouver Island. The young fellow went up the mountain to the east every day, he could climb better than a mountain goat. He picked some kind of grass with long sweet roots. He gave me some one day — they tasted very sweet. I gave him another snuff box with about a teaspoon of snuff in it. He tasted it, then went to the old man — he licked it with his tongue. They had a long chat. I made a dipper from a milk can. I made many dippers — you can use them for pots too — you cut two slits near the top of any can — then cut a limb from any small tree — cut down back of the limb down the stem of the tree — then taper the part you cut from the stem. Then cut a hole in the tapered part, slide the tapered part in the slit you have made in the can, and you have a good handle on your can. I threw one over to the young fellow, that was playing near my camp, he picked it up and looked at it then he went to the old man and showed it to him. They had a long chatter. Then he came to me, pointed at the dipper then at his sister. I could see that he wanted one for her too. I had other peas and carrots, so I made one for his sister. He was standing only eight feet away from me. When I had made the dipper, I dipped it in water and drank from it, he was very pleased, almost smiled at me. Then I took a chew of snuff, smacked my lips, said that's good.

The young fellow pointed to the old man, said something that sounded like "Ook." I got the idea that the old man liked snuff, and the young fellow wanted a box for the old man. I shook my head. I motioned with my hands for the old man to come to me. I do not think the young fellow understood what I meant. He went to his sister and gave her the dipper I made for her. They did not come near me again that day. I had now been here six days, but I was sure I was making progress. If only I could get the old man to come over to me, get him to eat a full box of snuff that would kill him for sure, and that way kill himself, I wouldn't be guilty of murder.

The old lady was a meek old thing. The young fellow was by this time quite friendly. The girl would not hurt anybody. Her chest was flat like a boy's — no development like young ladies. I am sure if I could get the old man out of the way I could easily have brought this girl out with me to civilization. But what good would that have been? I would have to keep her in a cage for public display. I don't think we have any right to force our way of life on other people, and I don't think they would like it. (The noise and racket in a modern city they would not like any more than I do.)

The young fellow might have been between 11-18 years old and about seven feet tall and might weight about 300 lbs. His chest would be 50-55 inches, his waist about 36-38 inches. He had wide jaws, narrow forehead, that slanted upward round at the back about four or five inches higher than the forehead. The hair on their heads was about six inches long. The hair on the rest of their body was short and thick in places. The women's hair on the forehead had an upward turn like some women have — they call it bangs, among women's hair-do's. Nowadays the old lady could have been anything between 40-70 years old. She was over seven feet tall. She would be about 500-600 pounds.

She had very wide hips, and a goose-like walk. She was not built for beauty or speed. Some of those lovable brassieres and uplifts would have been a great improvement on her looks and her figure. The man's eyeteeth were longer than the rest of the teeth, but not long enough to be called tusks. The old man must have been near eight feet tall. Big barrel chest and big hump on his back — powerful shoulders, his biceps on upper arm were enormous and tapered down to his elbows. His forearms were longer than common people have, but well proportioned. His hands were wide, the palm was long and broad, and hollow like a scoop. His fingers were short in proportion to the rest of his hand. His fingernails were like chisels. The only place they had no hair was inside their hands and the soles of their feet and upper part of the nose and eyelids. I never did see their ears, they were covered with hair hanging over them.

If the old man were to wear a collar it would have to be at least 30 inches. I have no idea what size shoes they would need. I was watching the young fellow's foot one day when he was sitting down. The soles of his feet seemed to be padded like a dog's foot, and the big toe was longer than the rest and very strong. In mountain climbing all he needed was footing for his big toe. They were very agile. To sit down they turned their knees out and came straight down. To rise they came straight up without help of hands or arms. I don't think this valley was their permanent home. I think they move from place to place, as food is available in different localities. They might eat meat, but I never saw them eat meat, or do any cooking.

I think this was probably a stopover place and the plants with sweet roots on the mountain side might have been in season this time of the year. They seem to be most interested in them. The roots have a very sweet and satisfying taste. They always seem to do everything for a reason, wasted no time on anything they did not need. When they were not looking for food, the old man and the old lady were resting, but the boy and the girl were always climbing something or some other exercise. A favorite position was to take hold of his feet with his hands and balance on his rump, then bounce forward. The idea seems to be to see how far he could go without his feet or hands touching the ground. Sometimes he made 20 feet.

Albert Ostman in 1977

Albert couldn't stop wondering what they wanted with him... Had he become their pet? Was he livestock?

He never once felt threatened, but still wondered how this ordeal was going to end. They surely must have known that he couldn't stay there indefinitely. Interestingly enough, the old man was coming closer and closer to Albert each day. He seemed very interested in Albert's can of snuff, and one morning after breakfast, the old man and the boy came over and sat down just ten feet away from Albert. He was making a pot of coffee, with shag and branches for kindling, and with a match, he ignited the labels from his cans to start the fire.

The coffee was brewed very strong and once it started boiling, it emitted a nice fog of aroma. Albert sat there eating his hard tack which was slathered heavily with butter and sipped his coffee. The old man and the boy continued to watch. Albert smacked his lips... Over dramatizing the effect of the taste of the food. He wanted his captors to really think that he was eating something delicious, and exaggerated this by rubbing his belly and smacking his lips. Albert actually enjoyed the curiosity of his captors.

He set his coffee down and pulled out his can of snuff. He took a small pinch - he only had two cans left - and before he could close the lid, the old man reached out for it. Not wanting to waste it, Albert held it out to him, allowing for him to take a pinch. Instead, the old man grabbed the entire can, and poured it into his mouth. Then, with his tongue, he licked the inside of the tin.

After a few minutes his eyes began to roll over in his head, he was looking straight up. I could see he was sick. Then he grabbed my coffee can that was quite cold by this time, he emptied that in his mouth, grounds and all. That did no good. He stuck his head between his legs and rolled forwards a few times away from me. Then he began to squeal like a stuck pig. I grabbed my rifle. I said to myself, "This is it. If he comes for me I will shoot him plumb between his eyes." But he started for the spring, he wanted water. I packed my sleeping bag in my pack sack with the few cans I had left. The young fellow ran over to his mother. Then she began to squeal. I started for the opening in the wall — and I just made it. The old lady was right behind me. I fired one shot at the rock over her head.

I guess she had never seen a rifle fired before. She turned and ran inside the wall. I injected another shell in the barrel of my rifle and started downhill, looking back over my shoulder every so often to see if they were coming. I was in a canyon, and good travelling and I made fast time. Must have made three miles in some world record time. I came to a turn in the canyon and I had the sun on my left, that meant I was going south, and the canyon turned west. I decided to climb the ridge ahead of me. I knew that I must have two mountain ridges between me and salt water and by climbing this ridge I would have a good view of this canyon, so I could see if the Sasquatch were coming after me. I had a light pack and was making good time up this hill. I stopped soon after to look back to where I came from, but nobody followed me. As I came over the ridge I could see Mt. Baker, then I knew I was going in the right direction.

I was hungry and tired. I opened my packsack to see what I had to eat. I decided to rest here for a while. I had a good view of the mountain side, and if the old man was coming I had the advantage because I was up above him. To get me he would have to come up a steep hill. And that might not be so easy after stopping a few 30-30 bullets. I had made up my mind this was my last chance, and this would be a fight to the finish ... I rested here for two hours. It was 3:00 p.m. when I started down the mountain side. It was nice going, not too steep and not too much underbrush.

When I got near the bottom, I shot a big blue grouse. She was sitting on a windfall, looking right at me, only a hundred feet away. I shot her neck right off.

I made it down the creek at the bottom of this canyon. I felt I was safe now. I made a fire between two big boulders, roasted the grouse. Next morning when I woke up, I was feeling terrible. My feet were sore from dirty socks. My legs were sore, my stomach was upset from that grouse that I ate the night before. I was not too sure I was going to make it up that mountain. I finally made the top, but it took me six hours to get there. It was cloudy, visibility about a mile.

I knew I had to go down hill. After about two hours I got down to the heavy timber and sat down to rest. I could hear a motor running hard at times, then stop. I listened to this for a while and decided the sound was from a gas donkey. Someone was logging in the neighborhood.

I told them I was a prospector and was lost ... I did not like to tell them I had been kidnapped by a Sasquatch, as if I had told them, they would probably have said, he is crazy too.

The following day I went down from this camp on Salmon Arm Branch of Sechelt Inlet. From there I got the Union Boat back to Vancouver. That was my last prospecting trip, and my only experience with what is known as Sasquatches.

(The italic portions are lifted from a conversation Albert had with author John Green. The story was later recounted in John Green's book, Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us.)

Now Playing: "The Amazing Bigfoot Diet" - Mojo Nixon 

Tracks in the Snow: The Unsolved Mystery of the Devil’s Footprints

On the night of February 8, 1855, snow blanketed the countryside of Devon. Roads disappeared beneath six inches of fresh white powder. Garden walls, rooftops, fields, and narrow village lanes were erased beneath a smooth, untouched surface. By midnight, the county had gone silent.

Sometime before dawn, something crossed it.

The first reports came from early risers. Bakers, laborers, and farmers stepping outside before sunrise noticed an odd trail pressed into the snow - hoof-like prints, each about four inches long, moving in a perfectly straight line. They were cloven, similar to the mark of a small hoof, yet unlike anything locals recognized.

One witness, a baker named Thomas Dunning, found the prints cutting through his garden in a single-file pattern before disappearing over a wall. By morning, he learned he was not alone.

The strange tracks had appeared across dozens of towns throughout Devon and into neighboring Dorset. Estimates suggested the trail stretched close to one hundred miles, laid down in a single winter night. No one claimed to have seen what made them.

That absence became the hugest part of the mystery.

The prints ignored obstacles in ways that disturbed witnesses. In several places they continued straight over rooftops. In others, they appeared to pass directly over high walls without signs of climbing or landing. One trail reportedly led into a 4 inch drainpipe only to emerge from the other side, as if this entity was able to shrink itself. 

At the River Exe, the marks stopped at the edge of open water and resumed on the opposite bank, two miles across. Still in a straight line. 

For many in Victorian England, the explanation came quickly. The tracks resembled cloven hooves, and folklore already offered a creature associated with such marks. Rumors spread that Satan himself had walked through Devon during the night.

Newspapers amplified the panic.

Reports described frightened villagers and whispers of “the Devil’s footprints.” Churches discussed the matter openly. Some residents armed themselves and attempted to follow the trail into nearby woods, only to retreat when their dogs refused to continue.

Intellectuals of the time offered natural explanations. 

Among the proposed were badgers, hopping mice, escaped kangaroos, and even weather balloons dragging loose chains across the snow. Over the years, each theory explained part of the mystery but failed to explain everything. Some even theorized that the prints came from Spring-heeled Jack, an entity that was making headlines in London. It was rumored that this being could leap impossible heights and distances. 

Even today, the incident remains one of Britain’s strangest unexplained events.

But there have been other accounts as well.

Fifteen years before the strange events in Devon, in May of 1840, Captain Sir James Clark Ross landed an expedition on the remote Kerguelen Islands. The islands, isolated and windswept in the southern Indian Ocean near Antarctica, were completely uninhabited. Yet pressed into the snow was something unexpected - a single-file trail of horseshoe-shaped impressions, each bearing the unmistakable look of a hoof. Ross later noted that the islands had no land animals of any kind. His crew searched for nearly two months for the source of the tracks but found nothing. In the end, Ross recorded the mystery in his journal, filed it away as a curiosity, and continued on his voyage.

More than 150 years later, similar hoof-like prints appeared again in North Devon after a snowfall, reigniting the conversation. 

On March 5th, 2009, a woman in Woolsery, North Devon, walked out into her garden after a snowfall and found  hoof-like prints. Each were five inches long, in a single unbroken line. They arched sixty feet across her yard beginning at a window, ending suddenly and impossibly on the other side.

A biologist examined the prints. He attributed them to a rabbit or hare, distorted by the conditions. He also noted - almost in passing, as a scientist trying to be careful - that they were peculiar, and that they bore an immediate resemblance to the prints of 1855, and that the find had sparked, in his words, "quite an academic punch-up" about their true origin. 

The Devil’s Footprints remain suspended between folklore and fact - documented enough to be real, strange enough to resist certainty.

Something moved through the world that night without regard to biological explanation. It left a single line of impressions in the snow like a signature of something that simply moved and didn't care whether or not we understood it.

The snow melted and the prints went with it. Whatever it was that crossed through Devon on that frozen night in 1855, we may never know. 

The Leaping Devil of London: Chasing the Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack

In the 1800s, London stood as the largest urban center in the world, surging with industrial expansion, endless opportunity, deep class divides, and overcrowded slums pressed tightly against pockets of wealth and privilege.

Gas lamps glowed faintly through the hazy streets, casting long shadows over rain-darkened cobblestones smeared with mud and horse traffic. Smoke from factory chimneys blended with the dense river fog, drifting through narrow streets and twisting between crooked alleyways.

The city thrived in chaos - crowded, noisy, and constantly in motion. It was a city that rarely rested. Aristocrats gathered behind velvet-draped windows, while working families squeezed into decaying tenements and cramped backstreets. 

In a place like this, rumors often spread faster than the truth - and somewhere within that fog, rumors began to circulate.

At first, people whispered to each other about the strange figure seen vaulting walls at impossible heights. A masked man had reportedly cleared a ten-foot fence in a single leap outside Northampton in the 1820s. Witnesses laughed it off. London's pub scene was full of drunken stories, mostly embellished with exaggerated details. Newspapers of the day joined the fray by gleefully publishing these tales. 

 

By the late 1830s however, the laughter disappeared.

Women began reporting attacks. They described a tall figure waiting near dark corners or appearing suddenly at their doors. He wore dark clothing, sometimes a cloak, and moved with unnatural speed. Victims said he had clawed hands - metallic, cold, sharp enough to tear fabric and skin. Some said he had glowing eyes. Others claimed he emitted a shrill, unnatural laugh before vanishing into the night.

But the thing that people couldn't wrap their heads around was the dexterity this figure displayed. Witnesses insisted he launched himself upward as though gravity meant nothing to him. He bounded over walls, rooftops, gates, and carriage roads with ease. 

Newspapers soon gave him a name that would outlive nearly everyone who feared him: Spring-Heeled Jack. The city became obsessed with this "new" legend. 

London papers printed every sighting they could gather. Children repeated stories in schoolyards. Tavern conversations drifted toward him nightly. Some believed he was a demon wandering industrial London in search of victims. Others said he was a ghost. A few insisted he was simply a wealthy madman amusing himself by terrifying the poor.

Then came the encounter that made him infamous.

On a cold February evening in 1838, eighteen-year-old Jane Alsop heard frantic knocking at her family’s gate. Outside stood a man claiming to be a policeman. He shouted that Spring-Heeled Jack had been captured nearby and demanded a candle.

Jane brought one.

As she stepped closer, the man threw back his cloak. She later described glowing eyes like burning coals and a face too terrible to fully explain. He pressed the candlelight against his chest, revealing strange clothing beneath. Then he opened his mouth. Blue flame burst outward.

The figure grabbed her, dragging her toward the stone steps while clawing at her dress and neck. Jane screamed until her sisters rushed forward and pulled her inside. Even then, the attacker reportedly remained outside pounding on the door.

London exploded with fear.

Soon, more stories emerged. A servant claimed a monstrous figure wore clothing embroidered with a family crest marked by the letter W. That detail shifted suspicion toward the aristocracy - particularly Henry Beresford, the eccentric Marquess of Waterford, a notorious prankster known for drunken violence and bizarre behavior.

Was Spring-Heeled Jack simply a rich man hiding behind costume and reputation?

No proof ever surfaced.

Police made arrests over the years, but imitators complicated everything. Men dressed like Jack for mischief. Some attacked women and blamed the legend afterward. Others sought notoriety. As sightings spread across London, Liverpool, and Sheffield, it became impossible to know where truth ended and performance began.

But perhaps that was the point.

Victorian London was a city trapped between science and superstition. Factories reshaped the skyline. Industry promised progress. Yet fear still lingered in dark streets where police could not protect everyone. Spring-Heeled Jack became more than a man. He became a reflection of urban anxiety - a monster born not from forests or castles, but from crowded neighborhoods and uncertain times.

He soon crossed into fiction. Stage plays turned him into a theatrical villain. Penny dreadful stories transformed him into something stranger: sometimes a demon, sometimes a masked avenger protecting the powerless. In one tale, he frightened wrongdoers and punished corruption. In another, he stalked women through alleys breathing fire.

The real Jack disappeared into contradiction.

Perhaps he never existed as one person at all. Maybe Spring-Heeled Jack was many men. Maybe he was a rumor that gained flesh through repetition. Or maybe Victorian London created him because it needed him - a living nightmare to explain violence, mystery, and the unease of a rapidly changing world.

Some scholars believed Victorian England’s appetite for public spectacles of violence may have been a way to suppress deeper, more personal urges toward aggression. In that sense, figures like Spring-Heeled Jack could have acted as a kind of emotional release valve - a safe monster onto which society could project its darker impulses. It may also explain why so many horrors of the era blurred the line between human and beast. Creatures like Frankenstein's Monster, Sweeney Todd, vampires, Mr. Hyde, and Dorian Gray all reflected fears rooted in humanity itself rather than something truly alien.

Then came the very real terror of Jack the Ripper, whose brutal crimes quickly eclipsed the legend of Spring-Heeled Jack. Yet the leaping phantom never fully disappeared. In recent years, he has resurfaced in comics, graphic novels, and modern reinterpretations.

Part of that revival may stem from the enduring fascination with stylized Victorian worlds, especially within steampunk culture. But it also raises a lingering question: just as the Victorians may have needed monsters to channel their darker instincts, are we still searching for our own?

What remains undeniable is this: for nearly seventy years, people believed he lingered just beyond the reach of the gaslight, hidden somewhere in the fog. And when the mist rolled in thick enough, some claimed they still heard footsteps overhead - followed by the whoosh of a leap, and a distant impact of something landing far beyond what seemed humanly possible. 

Whatever, or whoever, Spring-Heeled Jack truly was, his legend never disappeared.