Stranger Than Fiction: Circle in the Woods

Stranger than Fiction is a series of excerpts from an upcoming non-fiction collection of the strange and unusual encounters I, or people I know, have had, gathered into one collection. Look for Stranger than Fiction: A Skeptic's Journey, Black Friday, 2018...

The Circle in the Woods

A lot of people into that sort of thing like to accuse the Air Force of hiding alien bodies and spacecraft. But in the four years I served in the USAF, I met precisely two SPs with stories involving unidentified flying objects.

One evening, while relaxing in the dorms, several of us were sharing stories of how new guys got hazed in the Security Police—a tradition of pranks that included things as simple as sending someone to supply to collect a thousand yards of “flight line”, to elaborate pranks like stuffing the vents of a patrol car with confetti and leaving the vents on full, so that when started, the driver got a big surprise. 

For my pal Dean, the prank was a little more sinister. Before Germany, Dean had been assigned to Woodbridge Royal Air Force Base in England. There, one of the SP rites of passage for security there was to go out on one of the patrol roads surrounding the base, but outside the perimeter fence. In one secluded spot of the woods, well off the patrol path, any vehicle you drove would suddenly die, the engine stalling out and all electronics ceasing to work. This was typically done well after midnight, to spook new guys.

Dean had been pranked and it confused the hell out of him. He swore his radio wouldn’t work and the car did nothing when you turned the key. Anything within this circle that was electronic became completely inoperable: flashlights, radios, etc. The only way to get your vehicle running again was to physically push it out of an unmarked area. It would then start up again, with no problem.

The prank was finally put to end when the base fire department tried it themselves—with a truck that was a little too big to be pushed by hand out of the strange circle. It had to be towed out of the "circle". Base command was not pleased. 

I was amazed by this story, and asked my friend if it had anything to do with the Rendlesham UFO sighting in the 1980s. He just looked at me blankly, with absolutely no idea what I was talking about. 

If you’re unfamiliar with the story of Rendlesham, it goes something like this: In late December 1980, there were a number of UFO sightings near Rendlesham Forest, near Suffolk, England—the first just outside of RAF Woodbridge. Witnesses, including Deputy Base Commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt, claim to have seen bright lights moving in the forest, and possibly landing.

I was shocked that Dean hadn’t heard about Rendlesham—I’d been watching UFO and Paranormal TV shows for years and was familiar with the story, even if I couldn’t recall which base it had taken place at. 

Dean just shrugged this off. He didn’t really care what the origin of the mysterious circle was, he just thought it was a cool effect.