Bob meets the Aliens |
But for the events of 1947, which I shall describe below, Roswell is not a city that one would take the trouble to visit. It is in the middle of nowhere. It is 200 miles from the nearest big city. It was founded in the 1870s and now has a population of almost 50,000. This is exactly the same size as the city of Sierra Vista, Arizona, where Pat and I have based ourselves for the past year. Roswell has a nice climate and has coped with the closure of the local military base by developing itself as a retirement community. Roswell is the birthplace of Demi Moore, at one time Hollywood’s highest paid film actress, and of folk singer John Denver. However that does not alter the fact that Roswell is a sleepy little town in the American South West, no different from many similar towns. So let’s talk about what made it famous.
Roswell Daily Record article headline RAAF Captures Flying Saucer |
In early July 1947, a flying object crashed near Roswell. That fact is indisputable. On July 8, a press release from the Roswell Army Air Field reported its personnel had recovered a crashed “flying disk” and, on the same day, the local paper reported that a “flying saucer” had been captured. By the following day, the US Air Force at the highest level was claiming that what had crashed was a weather balloon and debris was produced to support this. Was this true or was it, as many claim, the start of a massive cover up to keep the facts from the public. Conspiracy theorists claim that a huge military operation succeeded in recovering parts of an alien space craft from eleven different locations. Bodies of aliens were also alleged to have been recovered and widespread witness intimidation is claimed to have occurred.
As the years have passed, more and more witnesses have been coming forward with their accounts of what actually occurred in July 1947 and all of this information has been gathered in the Roswell UFO Museum, which Pat and I visited. The testimony of these witnesses appears to focus on three areas. Firstly, some give first-hand accounts of having seen the bodies of space aliens killed in the crash. These are always described as being three to four feet in height with larger heads than us and slanted eyes. Secondly, there are many first-hand accounts of having handled debris from the crash sites with claims that the material was “not of this planet”. Thirdly, intimidation appears to have been widespread with death threats to witnesses and their family members being routine. It is difficult to understand why so many different witnesses would lie about what they saw or did, or why their evidence would be so similar if it was being invented. These witness statements were made several decades after the events in question and, in some cases, from deathbeds. Why would they all lie? When all this evidence is simultaneously displayed in the UFO Museum in Roswell, its credibility becomes overwhelming. As we drove away from the little town, across the surrounding desert, we were convinced that space aliens had landed there.
This piece, written by Bob, was originally posted on our website on February 21,2012.