by Don Lincoln
Of all the flying saucer reports that began in the summer of 1947, there was one special one that has lately managed to permeate the public’s awareness more than any of the others. As you will see, the real story is somewhat different than what is commonly believed. So we turn our attention to a small town in southeast New Mexico: Roswell.
Roswell
The Roswell story is one of the best known in UFO-ology. In fact, if you’ll forgive the bad joke, you’d have to be from Mars to not have heard of it. It goes something like this. A UFO crashed outside Roswell, New Mexico. Government agents, generally known as “the Men in Black,” swooped into town and confiscated the flying saucer and the saucer’s occupants, which included actual Aliens. The saucer and Aliens were transported to Area 51. One or more of the Aliens died and subsequently an autopsy was performed. A film of the autopsy was leaked in 1995 and shown on Fox TV. This most famous of Alien reports has been the obsession of UFO enthusiasts for more than 60 years.
There’s only one problem. The fame of the Roswell incident is relatively new. It was forgotten for years. Here is what really happened.
It was the height of the Arnold-inspired UFO frenzy. On July 8, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record’s headline was “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region.” The story describes how an unnamed rancher notified the local sheriff that he had an instrument on his premises. A major from the local Roswell Army Air Field took a detail of soldiers to the ranch and recovered the disk. After the local intelligence office inspected the instrument, it was flown to “higher headquarters” (quotes in original newspaper article). No details were released on the construction or appearance of the saucer.
The article went on to tell of another couple in town who thought they had seen a flying saucer. The saucer was supposed to be about 1,500 feet above the ground, travelling at 400 to 500 miles per hour and was estimated to be 15 to 20 feet in diameter. The man who observed the saucer was “one of the most respected and reliable citizens in town,” and he kept the story to himself. According to the article, he had decided to tell people in town only minutes before word came around that the RAAF had a saucer in custody. It was very exciting stuff to have a flying saucer in hand.
The story changed the next day. On July 9, the Roswell Daily Record had a different headline “Gen. Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer,” which is a cute way of saying “never mind.” The paper ran two columns, first on the local sheriff, who was fielding dozens of phone calls from across the United States and Mexico, as well as three from England, including one from the London Daily Mail. The paper also identified the rancher by name. W. W. Brazel, who lived on the Foster ranch, was the person who found the remnants of the “so-called saucer.”
Unfortunately for the UFO enthusiasts, the column also reported that the mysterious object found was a “harmless high-altitude weather balloon, not a flying disk.” Even more specifically, what was found was a “bundle of tinfoil, broken wood beams and rubber remnants of a balloon.” In the end, the UFO was identified as a specific type of weather balloon used to measure weather at altitudes much higher than the eye can see. The local army weather forecaster stated that they were identical to balloons he had sent up during the invasion of Okinawa to determine ballistic information for the heavy guns.
The news was not confined to Roswell. The Associated Press picked up on the story, and soon it was found in national papers. The Chicago Tribune reported more details on July 9 from the original press release, stating that “the many rumors regarding the flying disk became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th [atomic] bomb group of the 8th air force, Roswell army air field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disk through cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office.” However, it also reported that the mystery had been solved, when it identified the “flying saucer” as a “ray wind target.”
The tone of flying saucer reports in the New York Times was rather skeptical throughout 1947, and those in Roswell were no different. On July 9, it did admit that the Roswell reports created more confusion than most, but it also told the official weather balloon story.
It is interesting that none of the reports I have read brought up the extraterrestrial hypothesis. While there was massive confusion, the contemporary thinking seemed to be that the flying disks were unexplained phenomena or likely classified military objects.
Still, the report of a captured flying saucer must have energized the UFO community, correct? Especially a craft found so near the site of the first nuclear detonation? The report that the craft was spirited away, specifically to Wright Field in Ohio, surely got the attention of the alien aficionados, right? The conspiracy types must have had a field day? There’s only one problem. That’s not what happened.
Instead, the Roswell saucer simply disappeared from history. For 31 years, it was considered to be a false alarm; just a hysterical report in a hysterical time. And then 1978 rolled around.
In 1978, on what must have been a slow day in the newsroom, the National Enquirer simply reprinted the 1947 article from the Roswell Daily Record. UFO believers went nuts. Physicist and avid UFO-ologist Stanton Friedman tracked down the intelligence officer who retrieved the debris from the Foster Ranch and interviewed him. The intelligence officer’s recollections made it into a 1979 documentary called UFOs Are Real and a 1980 National Enquirer article. This account didn’t report a flying saucer, but it did talk about weird writing and flexible metal (which sounds a lot like aluminized mylar to a modern reader, although mylar was invented in the 1950s, long after Roswell).
That year also brought with it the publication of the book The Roswell Incident, which didn’t provide much new information, mainly a lot of secondhand reports, supposition, and conjecture. It ended with the rather accurate statement:
Consider the implications of the Roswell Incident: If only one of the many individuals mentioned in this book who claimed to have witnessed the crash and/or subsequent recovery of an extraterrestrial vehicle is telling the truth—then perhaps at this very moment we sit at the verge of the greatest news story of the twentieth century, the first contact with live (or dead) extraterrestrials. This occurrence, if true, would be at least comparable to Columbus’ encounter with the startled natives on his visit to the New World. Except for one thing. In this case we would be the startled natives.
The UFO community didn’t forget Roswell, but everyone else did.
Things got really interesting in 1989 when the TV show Unsolved Mysteries devoted an episode that “reconstructed” what was supposed to have happened. This prompted a mortician from Roswell to contact Stanton Friedman and tell his story. The outcome of the subsequent interview was published in the 1991 book UFO Crash at Roswell, in which the now well-known story came into existence: alien bodies recovered, aliens walking around, small coffins, an army colonel making death threats, the disappearance of a nurse who knew too much, a dramatic series of events that make for an excellent story.
And, of course, there is the 1995 Alien autopsy as shown first in the United Kingdom and then on Fox TV. The show Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction purported to show an autopsy of a Roswell Alien. The show had twelve million viewers when broadcast in the United States. British entrepreneurs Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield produced the show, and they claimed that they had purchased the film from a mysterious cameraman who had shot the original film in Roswell in 1947. However, in 2006, Santilli and Shoefield admitted in a documentary called Eamonn Investigates: Alien Autopsy, presented by Eamonn Holmes, that the film they had shown the world was not shot in 1947, but was rather as they called it, “a restoration.” The claim is now that the original film had degraded beyond use, and they instead shot a new film, using fake alien bodies and a mix of animal parts. It is definitely a fake, as admitted by the producers, although they claim it is a faithful rendition of a true film that Santilli had seen earlier.
Now, in all fairness, many UFO enthusiasts have long believed the rec
ording to have been a fake. But even if serious students of UFO-ology have dismissed the film, as have scientists, it doesn’t change the fact that there are a lot of people out there who are simply casually interested in the subject and that this film has had an impact on the public. There are people who have only heard of the program who now wonder whether alien bodies are being held in Area 51 at Edwards Air Force Base in Nevada or in Hangar 18 at Wright Patterson Air Force base in Ohio.
The story has sufficiently penetrated the public’s consciousness that what I’ve described here formed an important plot device in the 1996 film Independence Day, in which an Alien craft and bodies were being studied at Area 51, and was also the premise of the 2011 movie Paul, in which a laid-back, partying Alien escaped confinement. While he was confined, he had had a substantial impact on the science and technology of the second half of the twentieth century. Another nod to the Roswell history is a television show called Roswell (1999–2002), in which human teens and Aliens in the shape of human teenagers interacted. These are but a few examples of this story’s working its way out into the public’s awareness.
As one learns about Roswell, what is surprising is the fact that the story is a relatively new one. After lying dormant for about 30 years, it was revisited in the early 1980s and fell back into anonymity until the 1990s. It’s really a fairly recent cultural phenomenon and one that the town of Roswell has eagerly embraced. If you go there, you’ll be able to visit a museum devoted to the incident, with newspaper clippings on the wall, as well as assorted life-sized dioramas that depict various key scenes in the tale. You will find many shops devoted to selling alien-themed souvenirs. While not generally a fan of kitschy knickknacks, during my visit to Roswell, I admit to having been tempted to buy a bumper sticker that said, “Wear your seatbelt! It makes it harder for the aliens to suck you out of your car!”
Contacted!
George Adamski was what is sometimes called a “character.” Maybe the best way to introduce him is with the opening of a book review of his 1955 book Inside the Space Ships, written by Jonathan Leonard in the New York Times. It begins:
Competition is getting rough in the flying saucer business. Once a man could make an effect merely by seeing saucers. Then the saucers began to land. Now George Adamski has actually ridden in them. He was staying in a Los Angeles hotel when two men came to see him in a black Pontiac sedan. They looked like American business men and spoke English, but they were from Mars and Saturn (no antennae). They drove him to a softly glowing saucer in charge of a Venusian (no antennae). The saucer took off and flew on magnetic force to a mother ship 2,000 feet long that was hovering close overhead.
The review goes on with the same tongue-in-cheek style, describing the trip, the attractive Martian and Venusian women whom he met, and the philosophy they discussed. The trip, if true, sounds like an experience of a lifetime.
During the 1950s, Adamski gained notoriety in UFO circles and even to a degree in the public as the first of the “contactees” (i.e., people who claimed physical contact with aliens). In the twenty-first century, his claims are not considered reputable even among most of those who believe UFOs to be Alien visitors, but this wasn’t always so. Adamski was a good-looking and charming man who had a fantastic story to tell.
Adamski was a self-described “wandering teacher.” In the 1930s, he founded a school called the “Royal Order of Tibet,” which taught self-mastery, utilizing a mixture of metaphysics and the occult. While he hadn’t attended college, he was called “Professor” by his students and even signed some of his books with the title. When he moved to California, some of his students moved with him to continue to hear his teachings.
To appreciate Adamski, you need to read his books and to encounter his flamboyant writing. Let me sketch out the story told in Flying Saucers Have Landed, coauthored with Desmond Leslie and published in 1953. The story starts, “I am George Adamski, philosopher, student, teacher, saucer researcher.” He claimed to have lived on Mount Palomar, home of the Hale Observatory, which housed the 200 inch telescope. He never worked there (in fact he was a handyman at a hamburger restaurant and lived 11 miles from the observatory), but people often associated “Professor” and “Palomar” and drew their own conclusions. In his book, he claimed that on October 9, 1946, he saw a gigantic spaceship hovering in the sky near his apartment. (Yes, that was prior to Arnold’s 1947 sighting but recall that Adamski’s book was published in 1953, and some of his stories could be characterized as creative.)
A couple of weeks later he was at work, telling people about what he saw, and six military officers were eating there. According to Adamski, the officers told him that his story wasn’t fantastic and that, while they couldn’t say anything, they knew the ship wasn’t from this world. Although Adamski told several stories about seeing UFOs over the next few years, it was his tale of what occurred to him on November 20, 1952, that took his story much further than the typical UFO stories of the late 1940s.
It went like this: He was out in the desert with six companions looking for UFOs. He picked the location because he had a feeling of where to go, echoed by Richard Dreyfuss’s character in the 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. While standing in the desert, Adamski and his companions saw a gigantic cigar-shaped silvery ship, with orange all along the top. It drifted along and then went out of sight. According to Adamski, he told his companions, “The ship has come looking for me and I don’t want to keep them waiting!”
He told them to wait for him for an hour and then set off into the desert alone. When he was far from the others, he saw a man standing at the entrance of a ravine, about a quarter mile away. Adamski walked toward him.
The person appeared to be an ordinary man, somewhat shorter than Adamski and with shoulder length, sandy-colored hair. His clothing was kind of like a high-necked jumpsuit, with elastic at the ankles and wrists. And he was very good-looking. Adamski reports, “The beauty of his form surpassed anything. I had ever seen,” and “in different clothing he could have easily passed for an unusually beautiful woman; yet he was definitely a man.”
The person he encountered didn’t speak English, but luckily Adamski was a believer in telepathy, for that was how they communicated. Through a combination of sign language and telepathy, he ascertained that the man was from Venus and that he was concerned with radiation coming out from Earth and that it might damage flying saucers. Adamski reasoned that cosmic rays in space were more powerful than those on Earth and, by reversing the logic, the radiation from the atomic bombs that were being tested on Earth was much amplified when it got into space.
Adamski then saw the flying saucer that brought the Venusian to Earth. Again through telepathy and sign language, he determined that the saucer was a scout ship and that the larger silvery ship he had seen earlier was the interplanetary craft. Adamski also asked the Venusian whether he believed in God. He did. Pretty heady discussions for two people with no shared language.
Further discussion revealed that all of the planets in the solar system were inhabited by humanoid Aliens and that the Aliens had taken people from Earth in their craft. Further, Venusians were immortal, although they could be killed. The immortality was of a form where their body died, but the spirit didn’t and could move to another body.
After some additional discussion, the Alien made impressions in the sand by walking, leaving significant symbols on the ground. Luckily, Adamski had remembered to pack plaster of Paris in the car (you know … just in case), and he and his companions later made casts of the symbols.
Adamski was made to understand that he couldn’t go in the ship, so he walked the Alien back to the saucer. Adamski had taken some pictures that were affected by some sort of emanations from the scout ship’s propulsion system (which explained why the developed pictures were of such low quality). Prior to leaving, the Venusian took some of Adamski’s film and somehow made Adamski understand that it would be eventually returned. The Alien entered the saucer and left. Ada
mski never did get the Alien’s name, and he returned to his companions.
Later, he told everyone of his experience, including reporters. The book claims his story was carried in the November 24 edition of the Phoenix Gazette. (This part of the story is true, although the article began in a rather tongue-in-cheek style and had significant differences in the details as reported by Adamski in his book, for instance there is no mention of telepathy, rather the Alien spoke a mixture of English and a language that sounded like Chinese.) He later had his film developed, and the photos showed the saucer, which looked like some sort of light fixture with three light bulbs under it (figure 2.2).
FIGURE 2.2. An artist’s depiction of the saucer George Adamski claimed to have photographed. This saucer is reported to be the craft piloted by Aliens who later became known as the Space Brothers.
A few weeks later, Adamski said he was home when an iridescent glass-like craft flashing with brilliant colors moved through the sky toward his house. Apparently the Aliens knew where he lived. When the ship moved over him at a height of about 100 feet, a porthole was opened and a hand dropped the film. The ship left. When Adamski had the film developed, it was covered with symbols that were “still being deciphered.”
Here Adamski’s first tale ended. He says that the Aliens are friendly and that they mean “to ensure the safety and balance of the other planets in our system.” However, “if we continue on the path of hostility between nations of Earth, and if we continue to show an attitude of indifference, ridicule and even aggression toward our fellow-men in space, I am firmly convinced that they could take powerful action against us, not with weapons of any kind, but by manipulation of the natural force of the universe which they understand and know how to use.”
