The view into RAF Woodbridge from the Left Gate: location of the initial events which were later to become known as The Rendlesham Forest Incident in mmy Dean UFO lore, and also a key location in the BBCs recent adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness.
On Saturday 28th December 2019, I attended Minimum Labyrinth’s Rendlesham: a unique one day event leading participants on a guided tour of Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk: the location of a series of apparently UFO-related incidents which occured during December 1980, when members of the US military stationed at the RAF Woodbridge base at the edge of the Forest supposedly encountered a craft of unknown origin. The case has since been described as ‘Britain’s Roswell’. Coincidentally, in the weeks running up to the Minimum Labyrinth event, BBC Radio released a podcast series which retold Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness in a kind of mockumentary/investigative reportage format, updating it to the modern day, relocating the tale from the hills of Vermont to Suffolk’s Rendlesham Forest, and making the events of December 1980 a central feature of the story’s narrative.
Rendlesham Forest itself is not far from Orford Ness where, according to local folklore, a Deep One-like humanoid was once captured; the Forest is also relatively close to Dunwich - all of which are referenced in the BBC adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness. Indeed, the whole area - which I first visited in the mid-2000s - really does feel like the UK’s real-life version of Lovecraft country (Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth Kingsport, etc), replete with all kinds of curious folklore and lots of Lovecraftian-sounding place names (Ipswich, Harwich, Dedham, etc.). I am also aware of at least one occult group which undertook a Lovecraftian ritual in or around Dunwich in the early 2000s.
In any case, in later entries I mean to suggest that, when viewed in relation to recent histories of esoteric/paranormal/ufological cultures, the linking of Lovecraft to Rendlesham which occurs in the BBCs version of The Whisperer in Darkness represents an organic development of the occultural co-option of Lovecraftian tropes which has been widely occurring within esoteric milieux since the early 1970s. I also predict that it is a development which will likely escape its fictive roots to gain purchase within online conspiracy communities, to eventually become part of the evolving narrative of the Rendlesham Forest Incident - as well as contributing more generally to the emergent Lovecraftian properties of modern UFO mythologies.
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