John Burroughs is a U.S. Air Force veteran from Bloomington, Illinois, and one of the three airmen who walked into Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, England, on the first night of the December 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident. A young security policeman at RAF Woodbridge at the time, he is now known for health problems he attributes to the encounter and his long effort to obtain his military medical records.

Shortly after 3 a.m. on December 26, 1980, Burroughs and the supervisor he was patrolling with reported lights apparently descending into the trees east of the base. He then entered the forest with Jim Penniston and Edward Cabansag. In a written statement made days later for Lt. Col. Charles Halt, Burroughs said they followed the light for about two miles until "we could see it was coming from a lighthouse," which the researcher Ian Ridpath identifies as the Orford Ness light. Astronomers have tied the initial 3 a.m. lights to a fireball seen over southern England that night, and the Ministry of Defence said the events posed no threat to national security.

His account expanded over the following decades. Burroughs has described the object rising over the trees and a 45-minute gap shown by two slow watches; Ridpath notes that the original statements mention no landed craft, radio loss or missing time. He has also disputed parts of Penniston's story, telling Ridpath in 2006 that Penniston "was not keeping a notebook" during the encounter. The two nonetheless ran a "Justice for the Bentwaters 81st" advocacy page and co-wrote the 2014 book Encounter in Rendlesham Forest with former Ministry of Defence UFO investigator Nick Pope. It reproduces a letter, drafted by attorney Pat Frascogna and signed by six former members of Congress, asking the president to release both men's medical records from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Burroughs says heart problems diagnosed years after his service worsened after a trip to England for the incident's 30th anniversary, and that the military at first said it had no record of his service in that period. He told the Illinois public radio station WGLT in June 2026 that the office of the late Sen. John McCain intervened, that agencies acknowledged parts of his service history and that the dispute ended in a settlement he describes as tied to a UAP event; he also says his medical records remain classified. WGLT's report carried no response from the Air Force, the VA or the Pentagon. He says he also saw advanced military technology while deployed to Bosnia, and on the Psicoactivo Podcast in December 2025 he described experiencer DNA research he associates with Garry Nolan, Colm Kelleher and Kit Green.

He stayed busy in 2026. Burroughs co-wrote Project Rendlesham: Crossing the Threshold with Toby Martinez, returned to Psicoactivo in May with Defense Department paperwork the show billed as proof of disability compensation for his Rendlesham injuries, and organized the Edge of the Unknown conference in Bloomington on June 20. He called the Pentagon's May 2026 UFO file release baseless. More than four decades after the night in the forest, his public role rests as much on the medical and records fight he traces to it as on what he saw.