Over a period of a week between Xmas and New Year's l980, U.S. and U.K. NATO forces as well as police and civilians were involved in a mystery the likes of wich is unparalleled. A weird craft landed in Rendlesham Forest, aliens were seen in a beam of light beneath the ship, a commanding officer of the U.S. Forces communicated with the beings, photos and films were made, high radiation levels were obtained, trees were damaged, and the lives of many of those involved were shattered.

This case includes hints of Star Wars technology, mind control, harassment of military witnesses, the silencing of a U.S. Senator and a variety of paranormal aspects, which place this in a league all it's own.

The Bentwaters Case -- as it is also known -- is one of the most documented but CONTROVERSIAL in the history of UFOlogy. It is the case where join U.S. , U.K. and NATO personell were ALL involved in an encounter with an off-the-earth craft. It is told in a dramatic and exciting manner that only Jenny Randles can do.

Soldiers at the gate of Woodbridge observed an unusual light in the sky over Rendlesham Forest, and got approval to enter into the civilian forest to see if perhaps a plane had crashed. The men reportedly saw what can only be described as a UFO that night, only to wind up wandering in a confused state of mind elsewhere in the forest. The following night, strange goings-on in the forest prompted a return visit by military personnel. One of these men was Deputy Base Commander Charles Halt, who recorded a tape of events as they happened. After encountering the same mysterious lights in the forest, Halt and his men were surprised when an object which has all the appearance of a UFO appeared and soon headed toward them. Things get fuzzy at this point. Some men claimed they saw aliens or at the very least strange little men at the site of the encounter; one witness reported some type of mysterious communication between Colonel Halt and the mysterious creatures. Others witnesses dispute this, claiming they saw no aliens.

Randles try to go through the events of those nights in an attempt to prove that something unusual was in Rendlesham Forest on those two evenings. In the course of the book, she distances herself from an earlier book she co-wrote on the subject, and in fact her whole defensiveness about this subject mars this book to some extent. Certainly, her claims at being denied access to records of any and all kinds ring true, but her claims of being harassed and threatened by forces trying to hide the truth have to be taken at face value. The troubling thing about this case is the fact that, even after reading this book and acquiring information on the incident elsewhere, the account of what was actually seen by witnesses that night is unclear and incomplete. Contradictory testimony, recalcitrance of many military witnesses to talk, official denials and double talk from the Ministry of Defense in the UK and the American government: all of the facts in this case do little more than muddy up waters already impossible to see through. I do not have abundant confidence in the "truths" of this previously long-ignored, now highly publicized event. Randles spends the first half of the book, when she isn't going off on tangents, trying to reconcile accounts, evidence, and testimony that never coalesce into something one can get a firm grip on. After failing to establish what actually happened to the soldiers in those woods, Randles goes on to devote much of the rest of the book to defending herself against debunkers. This self-interested defense of herself from all sides soon becomes quite boring, and From Out of the Blue becomes a book about her rather than a book about the incident in question. Randles does herself no favors by distancing herself from the work of fellow investigators, confabulating her own views over time as to what she thinks actually happened, admitting the fact that she allowed a tabloid to release the first significant account of the facts, and offering up some possible theories of her own at the end that border on the sublime to the ridiculous. Rather than narrowing her focus as she goes along, she stretches herself out way too thin in an effort to cover all the possible bases of relevant new facts and insights. I've never really been able to figure out this prolific writer in the field of Ufology, as she has a tendency to swing in all directions at once whenever it suits her.

This book leaves you with few facts of any kind, a number of increasingly weird hypotheses, and a significant amount of boredom. Randles' writing style is not conducive to fun, exciting reading by any means. While it seems clear that something quite unusual did happen in Rendlesham Forest on the nights in questions, the bulk of Randles' work leaves me in no position to even form an educated guess about the truth.