The Francis E. Warren Air Force Base Incident: The Bizarre Alien Encounter Of John Renz

The alien abduction of John Renz is truly a bizarre encounter and one that divides opinion in the UFO community. On the one hand, many of the details resonate very nicely with other such encounters, both before and after. On the other, many of the details, particularly those revealed through hypnotic regression, are bordering on the preposterous, even for those who believe most cases of alien abduction are very real.

As we will explore, there could be several reasons for the, at least to some, outlandish claims of John Renz, perhaps not least that what is saying is completely true. The encounter, though, gives us a lot to contemplate regarding the UFO and alien mysteries. The same, recurring questions as what is the intelligence behind these encounters? Where do they come from? And just what is the reason for these abductions in the first place?

The incident occurred only two years before a wave of humanoid encounters swept the United States and only several years before the alien abduction phenomenon truly began to unfold at an increased rate.

Something Strange On The Bridge

On the evening of August 16^th, 1971, John Renz finished his shift on guard duty at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and promptly made his way to the mess hall for a beer or two. BY 6L45 pm, he was making his way back to his barracks when he suddenly found himself at the center of extraordinary events. ^[1] His journey back took him to the bridge that crossed Cow Creek, an area of the base that was unlit. As he approached the bridge, perhaps in part because of the darkness he was walking into, he suddenly noticed how deathly silent his surroundings were. By the time he was halfway across the bridge, that silence was brutally broken.

Suddenly, all around him was a sound he described as paralyzing, resembling the noise of multiple thumping heartbeats. At the same time as the booming sounds started, the entire area suddenly lit up as though it was the middle of the day. Perhaps even more unnerving, Renz became aware of another noise that sounded like “heavy breathing” which accompanied the sudden sway and wave-like motion of the bridge. He continued on his way, eager to get off the bridge. However, just as he was about to reach the other side, he realized he had dropped his pipe. Despite the bizarre circumstances that he found himself in, he turned around and headed back across the bridge, stopping halfway when he saw his missing possession. He bent down to pick it up. When he stood back up, however, he was confronted with a surreal sight.

There, standing around three feet from him, was a strange figure, around six or seven feet tall, simply staring at him. The figure had the build of a medium adult male; only its head appeared larger than it should have been. It was wearing a one-piece item of clothing that resembled a wetsuit, and a lens covered the entity’s eyes. This lens also covered where the nose would be, and from this part of it, a silver tube stretched to a device on the chest area of the figure. Perhaps most disturbing, though, was the three claw-like fingers on each hand. A moment later, the being raised one of its arms and beckoned him to come closer.

A Journey to Another World

Following this disturbing invitation, Renz turned and ran back across the bridge away from the figure. Before he could reach the other side, however, he blacked out. His next memory is being in the back of a military jeep with two soldiers in the front. He was still on the base, and it appeared the two soldiers had retrieved him from somewhere. He later discovered that he had been missing for around seven hours from that evening.

Several years later, with the high strangeness of that August evening still in his mind, Renz decided to undergo hypnotic regression in order to unlock the memories that were buried deep within his subconscious. And the revelations were startling.

After turning and running from the creature, Renz recalled waking in what looked like a cockpit area of some kind of vehicle. Also, there was the strange being he had seen on the bridge. This entity spoke to Renz, but it only spoke so telepathically, although he couldn’t recall the contents of this conversation. He recalled the craft suddenly descending into “clouds of vapor that had a reddish-brown tinge!” The craft glided along over a rocky desert, passing between two large mountains. Then, the craft came to a stop.

The Dead Creature

His next memory was of exiting the craft and following the mysterious figure through a huge door that was in the side of a mountain. Several moments later, he walked into a small room with silver-colored walls and floor, as well as a table that somehow floated in mid-air. Renz looked at the table. On its surface was the dead body of a bizarre-looking creature.

Renz described this corpse as having a particularly large head and a face that closely resembled that of a wasp. He also described the eyes as looking like a wasp’s, each with a small slit that appeared to be a pupil. He estimated that the creature would have stood around four to five feet tall and had an insect-like outer shell similar to an exoskeleton. He further noticed an array of bony spikes around the elbow section of each arm and, as its mouth was gaping open, small “shark-like teeth” in its mouth. As he viewed this monstrous sight in front of him, he became more than aware of a strong, sulfur-like aroma that permeated the air.

He was then instructed by the being to follow him out of the room, which he did. He found himself in a larger area. In front of him was a saucer-shaped vehicle that was resting on two rectangular pillars. There were two seats inside what appeared to be the cockpit of the craft, and the figure instructed him to enter the vehicle and sit in the seat on the left-hand side. He did as requested, noticing a control panel in front of the seat with multiple strange symbols in various colors on it. The next thing he knew, with the figure sitting in the seat beside him, he could hear the sound of electronic engines and the craft taking off into the air.

Witness To Some Kind Of Attack

Although he seemingly couldn’t recall that many details of the flight, some details did come back to him. At one point during the aerial journey, he recalled the vehicle taking part in some kind of attack on a mountainous area that closely resembled a beehive. Furthermore, below him, he could see around 200 of the wasp-like figures running and scattering in all directions in response to the attack – the same wasp-like figure as the one on the table he witnessed earlier.

Following this aerial assault, the craft landed in the destroyed region. He recalled seeing one of the wasp-like creatures, alive, wearing some kind of dark cape and carrying what seemed to be three wounded or dead insect-like creatures with large triangular heads and large eyes. Before he realized what was happening, the pilot approached the wasp-like figure and, with some kind of futuristic gun, shot it dead before turning the three smaller creatures.

The next thing Renz realized, he was in the back of the military jeep with the two soldiers driving through the base. Just where he had been and for what purpose remains a mystery to him, with even hypnotic regression unable to provide any answers. As we might imagine, John Renz’s claims proved to be controversial, to say the least.

Some Things To Consider

As we might imagine, Renz’s claims are the cause of division in the UFO community, with many rejecting them outright as nothing but fabricated events in the hope of monetary gain. And those on the skeptical side of this case do have several valid points to make. Why, for example, would an alien entity abduct a person and then take them into the middle of some kind of battle, only to then wipe their memory of the events? For what purpose would this serve? Admittedly, it is hard not to agree here. However, there are other possibilities.

If we accept for a moment that Renz’s claims and discovery of alien abduction are undoubtedly accurate for a moment, then we might ask if the recollections of the flight, the battle, and the killing of this apparent other alien entity was nothing but screen memories implanted by his abductors in order to mask the true events of his experience. There are several other cases of alien abduction where the abductee volunteers seemingly bizarre memories that make no sense, with some even stating that they simply can not access specific memories of the ordeal because they have been intentionally blocked off from them. Could that be the case here?

We might also consider that if Renz was looking to gain financially from claiming he had been abducted by extraterrestrials, why he would concoct such a story in the first place? We might imagine that someone looking to be taken seriously enough so as to be given air time on radio or television would construct a more believable version of events.

A Case That Still Divides Opinion

Ultimately, the account of John Renz and, more specifically, its credibility remain very much up in the air. Indeed, each of us must decide just what to make of the claims. On the one hand, alien abductions and encounters with humanoid entities were beginning to increase during this time. On the other hand, the details uncovered under hypnotic regression border on the outlandish, even to those who might believe that something out of the ordinary took place that August night in 1971.

It remains to be seen of further information comes to light. Could there be, for example, further memories still to be revealed that might make sense of this encounter? Or perhaps another person might step forward with a similar incident, which would perhaps corroborate Renz’s account?

For now, though, the encounter of John Renz remains on the collective backburner of potential alien encounters, waiting to be proven or disproven one way or the other. One thing is certain – if there is any truth in his claims, then the UFO and alien mysteries would become that little bit more nuanced, enigmatic, and, above all else, murky.

The short video below explores this incident a little further.