Chapter 5: Suffolk – The Slimbertwonk Forest Incident

Slimbertwonk Forest lies shin-deep within Suffolk’s smooth, jagged coastline. Pine, oak, ash, aspen, larch and puzzled monkey grow happily together without complaint, combining to give the arboreal quadrant a tree-thick quality, prime territory for rare birds that enjoy frolicking from branch to branch, twittering incessantly and generally spoiling the atmosphere. To the west of this pretty bucolic haven used to exist an army base, where army personnel would gather and conduct army business, safe behind big fences with spiky bits on the top to prevent nosey parkers from intruding on army life. Originally built to train British soldiers how to be assertive in combat, the base was leased to the Canadian air force in 1952, whose pilots and commanders eagerly swarmed to the site and began practicing at planes. And things carried on largely in that vein for a couple of decades. However, this carrying on in that vein was about to come to a halt – for during Christmas 1981, something appallingly weird happened. 

Joint Captain Commander Tanner Cloxton was feeling good. The base’s Christmas party was in full swing; Cloxton had had a lovely time pulling crackers with his military mates and had ‘won’ a little plastic comb and one of those red ‘fish’ that you hold in your hand and tells you about your personality. Cloxton was stoked. Then came the call… 

Perimeter overwatchers Corporal-General Wince Palmuppin and Loose-Lieutenant Gary Yip were in an excitable state, breathlessly explaining that they had witnessed a certain something. Baffled, Cloxton agreed to join the garrulous garrison guards. Whizzing to their location in his little car, Cloxton joined the febrile pair and demanded coherence. According to the soldiermen, a series of obscure lights had appeared in the night-black night skies above the base. They had twirled and blinked before apparently descending into the nearby Slimbertwonk Forest. Disbelieving but curious, Cloxton ordered his subordinates to join him in his car to go and investigate. The scared men were hesitant but were obliged by the lettering of their military contracts to do as Cloxton said. Thus, they unlocked the base’s garden gate and ventured out into the darkness-tinted woods. The following comes from a transcript of a recording made by Cloxton, finally released by the Canadian authorities after a 40-year freedom of information battle with internet-based UFO pests. 

Cloxton: It’s 23 hundred hours, Christmas Day, 1981, and I am talking and recording it, which is what you can hear now if you’re playing this back. It’s very dark because it’s night time and I’m driving into Slimbertwonk Forest in my army car with two of my men, whose names escape me right now. It’s quite cold but I have a decent coat on and a good hat. Whereabouts do you think these lights you saw came down, um…men?

Yip: In the woods, sir.

Palmuppin: Yes, sir, in the woods, sir.

Cloxton: Yes, yes, but whereabouts in the woods?

Yip: Amongst the trees, sir.

Palmuppin: Definitely in the trees, sir.

Cloxton: Look, I mean…wait, what was that?

Palmuppin: What, sir?

Cloxton: That!

Yip: It’s a badger, sir.

Sadly, frustratingly, typically, the rest of the transcript was redacted by the Canadian Centre for Transcript Redaction on national insecurity grounds.However, according to later verbalised statements from the three men, the badger was followed for over three quarters of half an hour before it vanished into a “deep earth aperture” (sett). Cold and bored, the soldiers returned to the base for a cup of tea and some late cake. The next day, local police were summoned to the forest to see what they could sniff out. Constable Forbes Swanker was unimpressed by the tale; besides which he was aggrieved at having to be called out on Boxing Day, a time of year he traditionally spent spending money on deceptively cut-price electrical gadgetry. Known for his officiousness, Swanker made detailed notes as he poked about the trees in the company of Yip, Palmuppin and Cloxton. Discovering badger tracks and setts, the petty officer noted: “We found some badger tracks and setts. The badger is a piebald nocturnal mammal. I am writing this all down in my notebook with a blue biro.” With nothing to show for anything, the forlorn foursome returned to their respective stations and that was the end of it. But was it?

Yes, it was. But what did Yip and Palmuppin really see in the sky? In her 2018 book, Slimbertwonk: A Travesty, ufologist Tracey Pluff wrote: “Are we truly expected to believe that the lights witnessed that night weren’t of extraterrestrial origin? Really? Nonsense!” But professionalised cynic Stephen Crunchie countered in his 2019 book, Slimbetwonk: Rubbish!, that the lights were “undoubtably reflections from the Grumbleton oil rig, set a mere 950 miles off the coastline. Get a grip, you twerps”. 

Today, the former base is a deserted wastedland. Pigeons arrogantly flip about its ragged thicket, the ignorant birds oblivious to whatever it was that might have happened all that time ago back then.