What Happened When I Looked For Ancient Aliens In Roswell

A peculiar ranch incident in New Mexico nearly 75 years ago has kept UFO enthusiasts intrigued at the possible presence of alien life on Earth until this very day.

ROSWELL, N.M. — A peculiar ranch incident near Roswell, New Mexico nearly 75 years ago still intrigues UFO enthusiasts about the possible presence of extra-terrestrial life on Earth.

Amid a violent summer thunderstorm in July 1947, a large flying object fell out of favor with the gods and crashed on a ranch about 75 miles northwest of the military town. The events to follow gave rise to Roswell as a tourist attraction for UFO conspiracies comparable to the likes of Nevada’s Area 51.

Local rancher Mack Brazel was the first to stumble upon the field of debris that stretched wider than a football field. Reports of flying saucers were rampant at the time, and while Brazel hadn’t heard of them at first, sightings began to captivate the public nationwide.

Several days later, Brazel reported the crash site to local authorities and described the scene as “a large area of bright wreckage” where he found “rubber strips, tinfoil, [and] a rather tough paper and sticks” to the Roswell Daily Record in a story published on July 8, stoking rumors of a flying saucer.

The story, headlined, “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region,” was primarily provoked by Roswell Army Air Field public information officer Walter Hunt’s now-infamous press release quoted below, emphasis added:

The story was later retracted after the government released a follow-up explanation that the downed aircraft was a weather balloon. For years, that was that. The government’s position has remained the same ever since.

Eyewitnesses to the early events began to challenge the government’s official position 30 years later. Nuclear physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman interviewed an intelligence officer involved with the case, Major Jesse Marcel, in 1979. He claimed the downed aircraft was of another world and that the government kept him quiet.

Countless other researchers and “ufologists” have called into question the government’s narrative for decades, highlighting inconsistencies in its subsequent reports. The International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell has become their campus.

While a bit corny to attract tourists, the people who run the museum are serious, with an entire library dedicated to the academic study of alien UFOs, to which the U.S. military has dedicated an entire program within the Pentagon.

Seem’s Mack’s story changed.

Right after finding the wreckage, he claimed it was made up of metal he had never seen before. Metal bars in the wreckage had strange writing on them. Plants in the area were singed.

Then Mack is taken into custody by the authorities for about a week. After he was released, he gave official interviews where he describes rope and sticks. When his friends and family who had heard the first version of this story asked why it changed, he became irritated and refused to talk about it. For years after, whenever the subject came up, he would get angry and storm off.

Read the whole story here...

http://www.nicap.org/rosbraz.htm

While a bit corny to attract tourists, the people who run the museum are serious, with an entire library dedicated to the academic study of alien UFOs,

We visited the museum some years ago, expecting it to be full of hype and was pleasantly surprised at how even-handed they were.

In the late '90s I read a book titled "The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You to Know" and thought it another "They're here!" expose.

It turned out it was the opposite, with the author doing a scathing expose about the sheer b/s that built up around the incident, pointing out that the story didn't break until the 1970s when someone approached Stanton Friedman at a UFO conference and told him about Jesse Marcel.

What had made me a believer was the mortician claiming the Air Force called asking if he had any "child-size" caskets. Turns out the guy fabricated the whole story, including his talk with a mythical nurse** who had seen the "bodies".

The author (Kal Korff) made the perceptive comment that peoples' memories about the "Crash" improved with age rather than fade and was constantly embellished with new, changing recollections.

A chapter at the end makes a convincing case that the "UFO" was a secret balloon (Project Mogul), one of a series, sent up to drift over the Soviet Union and "sniff" the air for nuclear explosion residue (they didn't get the bomb until 1949). The CIA stepped on it's own crank and knowing no one would accept the "weather balloon" excuse, used the UFO crash as a cover-up.

The debris shown in that famous photo were the remains of radar reflectors (shown underneath the balloon) and the "hieroglyphics" were moon-like crescents, flower petal shapes, etc. that were use by the contractor (a toy company, believed to be Mattel) to decorate the tape used to hold the radar reflecting paper to the wood sticks.

**As just an example, the mortician said the nurse had sketched what the aliens looked like on a table napkin which he kept, then "accidentally threw out" when Stanton Friedman came to interview him. He said the nurse later died in an aircraft crash (no record of it) . . . or "maybe she might have gone into a nunnery and took a vow of silence".

You can't make this stuff up.

Before the True Believers jump on me, read the frigging book - I'm not getting into a spitting contest with you.

[Sidebar] To make a long story even longer, if I had been running the museum, I'd have a guy dressed as an alien come down the stairs, papers in hand, and say "Hey Eddie, the General Ledger doesn't balance" - and watch the people freak out.

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