John Burroughs
| John Burroughs |
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John Burroughs (born c. 1960) is a former United States Air Force Airman First Class who was one of the primary witnesses to the Rendlesham Forest incident of December 26–27, 1980, in which he and Sergeant Jim Penniston encountered a landed craft with glowing symbols in the forest adjacent to RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England — the most significant and extensively documented close-encounter UAP event involving military personnel in European history. Burroughs later became an advocate for UAP witness rights after suffering lasting health effects attributed to his proximity to the craft.
The Rendlesham encounter
On the night of December 26, 1980, Burroughs and Staff Sergeant Budd Steffens were on duty at RAF Woodbridge's East Gate when Burroughs noticed anomalous lights in the forest. After investigating and observing a large white light and multicoloured flickering lights among the trees, the two called for backup. Sergeant Jim Penniston and Airman First Class Edward Cabansag arrived; Steffens remained at the gate while the other three moved into the forest. At the point where the terrain became too rough for vehicles, Cabansag remained as a radio relay while Penniston and Burroughs proceeded on foot.
As the two men approached the object, they experienced a field of static electricity that made their hair stand on end and lost radio contact. Burroughs described the craft's light configuration as giving the image of a craft "under intelligent control," while not being close enough to see it as fully solid. "What I do know," he said, "is that it was nothing mundane. There are no words that can adequately describe the wonder of what we saw."
While Penniston consciously remembered details of approaching within ten feet and touching the craft's surface, Burroughs later concluded his memory of the closest approach was blocked. Through hypnotic regression work with a professional hypnotherapist in 2008, Burroughs recovered additional memories suggesting that he too had approached the craft closely and that the lights of the craft might have been "alive."
Ground evidence
The following morning, Burroughs returned to the forest site with Penniston. They found three equidistant indentations in the frozen soil in a triangular formation — matching the positions of legs visible beneath the craft during the encounter — approximately one and a half inches deep and seven inches in diameter. Penniston made plaster casts of the indentations. The site also showed ground traces with radioactive readings approximately ten times higher than background, as later assessed by Nick Pope of the British Ministry of Defence.
Health effects and advocacy
Burroughs suffered lasting physiological effects attributed to his close proximity to the craft — effects that became a long-running legal and medical dispute with the U.S. Air Force and Department of Veterans Affairs. His medical records from the Rendlesham period remained classified, impeding diagnosis and treatment. David Fravor, discussing significant UAP cases, cited the Rendlesham incident specifically as one where witnesses "got radiation burns" and where one individual "was medically disabled but they weren't going to give it" — with Senator John McCain's office ultimately helping restore the witness's disability classification. The UAP field broadly understands Burroughs as the individual referenced in this account. Elizondo separately confirmed to Glenn Beck that he personally held the disability documentation: "It was a document from the U.S. government for full medical disability for an individual where they said, yes, we are giving this person full medical disability because of their involvement in an incident at Rendlesham, the UAP incident."
Burroughs has become an advocate for UAP witness rights, co-authoring books on the Rendlesham incident and speaking publicly about the case alongside Penniston for many years. He has called for the declassification of witness medical records held by the U.S. government.