October 20, 2025 • 48 mins
This is what really happened in Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947—the complete timeline they've spent 78 years trying to bury. A 12-year-old girl held indestructible metal in her hands. Days later, military officers threatened to disappear her entire family into the desert, where no one would find their bodies. Over 100 witnesses saw the crash, the debris, the bodies. Every single one was terrorized into silence.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:31):
On a hot summer night in 1947,something crashes in the darkness,
scattering debris across a remote ranchand igniting a chain of events
that would challenge everythingwe thought we knew about the stars,
our government,and perhaps even ourselves.
I'm Carol Ann.
Welcome to The InBetween.
(00:58):
So right off the bat, I'm going to let youall in on a little secret.
This topic is huge.
There are dozens of books out therewith different updated details.
Much to my chagrin,I have a limited amount of time,
so Think of itmore as a very detailed primer.
However, I do have to tease thatif you stay to the end, you'll discover
(01:19):
why the strangeness in Roswelldidn't stop in 1947.
And you won't hear this storyanywhere else.
Can't say I've cracked the caseor anything like that, but it's just
a little extra flavor for the stew,if you will.
The summer of 1947 was a littleschizophrenic for the United States.
Most of the country was still tryingto sleep off the hangover from our victory
(01:42):
celebrations, from winning the warless than two years earlier.
I mean, not only did we win,but we were now the undisputed top dog.
But with great power, comesgreat paranoia.
The maids weren't even done sweeping upafter the after party
before the kids were back at it,picking fights on the global playground,
which made the atmosphereat the Roswell Army Airfield, or
(02:05):
RAAF in New Mexico rather bipolar.
On the one hand,the RAAF was the home of the 509th bomb
Group, the elite unit
that had dropped those atomic payloadson Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These guys were the best of the best,and the only group
entrustedand trained to handle nuclear cargo.
(02:27):
On the other hand,now that World War Two was over,
this was also the place where any new techthat had been in the hands of the Axis
that we could recover was sent for study.
And we were comingto the sobering conclusion
that they had some pretty good stuffon their side,
like the German V-2 rocketand the Horten Ho.
229, a crescent shaped jet that could slip
(02:48):
under the radar and strikewithout warning.
Captured plans suggested the Sovietsmight have built their own versions,
and might even be tryingto snoop out our nuclear secrets.
The 509th is now a prime target.
And now that temperatures were startingto chill on the world stage already,
(03:09):
we could not let our guard downeven for a second.
It was into this emotional whirlwind
that the modern UFO era of flying saucersexploded
with the June 24th, 1947sighting by Kenneth Arnold of nine
discs skipping overMount Rainier in Washington state.
The world around us was changing fast.
(03:31):
Now, the Roswell incidentdidn't erupt in a single tidy moment.
It unraveled over a long,lightning streaked holiday weekend.
Starting around the last week of June,so just like a week or so after Kenneth
Arnold's sighting hit the papers,radar operators at Roswell Army Airfield,
White Sands and the Alamogordo Bombing
Range began picking up anomalies.
(03:54):
Blips that move too fast for any knownaircraft, clocking speeds up to 1700
miles per hour, executing sharp turnsthat would shred a human piloted plane,
and vanishingonly to reappear miles away in seconds.
These weren't one offs.
These things would hang around for hours,
sometimes mimicking tightformations before scattering.
(04:18):
Radar techsmethodically disassembled the equipment.
Hunting for bad vacuum tubes or wiring,but no luck.
The radars were telling the truth.
But no one outside the militaryhad a clue, including Dan and Mary Wilmot.
It's the evening of Wednesday, July 2nd.
As the sun is going down.
Dan and Mary settle on their porchin Roswell for the evening
(04:41):
ritual of sipping coffeeand watching the world wind down.
It's a quiet nightwith the only real sound,
the distant rumble of thunderfrom a storm moving in.
Then from the southeast comes
in the long gated egg,
about 20ft long,glowing with the soft uniform light.
(05:01):
It flies low,like maybe 500ft up at a speed Mary later
guesses at 400 miles an hour, silent
as a ghost and leaving no vapor trail.
It crosses their view in seconds,vanishing into the night.
The Wilmot's debate calling the sheriff,but hold off, figuring
it's got to be some top secret testflight from the base.
(05:24):
But they certainly are not the only ones
who see something strangein the desert skies.
At roughly the same time, Steve Robinson
is in his milkdelivery truck out on a stretch of highway
just north of town, when he sees an oval
shaped light streak low over his truck.
He watches it move toward the horizon,heading toward the northeast,
(05:46):
thinking he has never seen something movethat fast in his entire life.
By morning, Sheriff George Wilcox'sphone is ringing off the hook.
Farmers spotting lightsweaving through the clouds.
A night watchman at a local mill,claiming one hovered over the building
for several minutes before darting away.
George dutifully takes downall of the information,
(06:09):
but thinking that the air basemust be testing something new.
But, still. That's a lot of calls.
The next night,July 3rd, an archeological team led by Dr.
W. Curry Holden is wrapping up a dig nearBlackwater Draw, just a few miles
to the west of Roswell, when they noticedlight hovering to the north - steady,
(06:30):
unblinking orbs that drift for 20 minutesbefore blinking out.
Holden, a respected professor from TexasTech, adds the sighting to his field notes
as possible aircraft malfunction,but knows that's not quite right.
The lights move too deliberately, toosilently to be regular planes.
(06:51):
Friday, July 4th,
the start of the Independence Dayholiday dawned hot and hazy,
so it's not a big surprise that as eveningcomes around, a massive thunderstorm
rolls in from the west, turning the skyinto a crackling light show.
At the Foster Ranch, 75 milesnorthwest of Roswell, ranch foreman
(07:13):
Mac Brazel is inside with his familywhen the storm hits.
Around 11:30 p.m., a deafening roarcut through the wind,
more like a derailingfreight train than thunder.
Max steps onto the porch,squinting into the flashing dark
but see nothing but rain lashed scrub.
The next morning,July 5th, Mac rises with the sun
(07:35):
saddling up with Bill Proctor,the son of his friends and neighbors
Floyd and Loretta Proctor,to check on his 400 head sheep herd
scattered across the Foster Ranch’s480 acres.
What he finds stops him cold.
A debris field roughly 200 to 300yards wide
and three quarters of a mile long,covering several acres.
(08:00):
It isn't the usual wind tossedjunk balloons
or survey markers,but something else entirely.
There are sheets of thin foil,almost like today's
mylar balloons,impossibly light and super strong.
But it can't be a mylar balloon.
They didn't become a thing until the 70s.
He finds I-beams 12 to 18in long,
(08:23):
as light as balsa wood,but etched with strange,
flowing purple symbolsthat look like a mix of hieroglyphics
and circuit diagrams and flexible strutslike rubberized wood,
all scattered in a pathwide enough to freak out his sheep.
He fills a shoebox full of the stuffand finishes getting his sheep to water.
(08:45):
Also, early that morning, Sheriff Wilcox
gets a call, but it's not from Mac Brazel.
It's from a student who's part of DoctorHolden's team of archeologists out around
Blackwater Draw, around 60 miles southeast of the Foster Ranch.
The night before, around the same timeMac heard his booming noise,
the students team also heard a loud boom
(09:08):
and see something streak across the sky.
They don't know for sure what it is,but think maybe it's a downed airplane.
But they're quite a ways from a phone,so they just let it be.
However, when they get to their dig siteearly that morning,
they find the ground wrecked by a 25ftlong plow line
leading to the twisted remnants of a craft
(09:30):
about 12 to 15ft long and six feet high.
It was egg shaped with a seamless metallichull that gleamed dully.
No rivets, no wings,no landing gear, just a split
open seamrevealing dark interior compartments.
On the ground lay small, charred
figures, two outside the wreck, oneseemingly pinned inside,
(09:54):
each about 3 or 4ft tall,with big heads and skinny arms and legs.
A fourth figure, same kind of creature,is just walking around the debris.
A little dazed and confused.
Its large black eyessomehow communicating a profound sorrow.
One of the students takes offto find the nearest phone and calls
(10:15):
Sheriff Wilcox, telling him,you better get out here right now.
So George Wilcox,operating under the logical assumption
that it must be a planecrash, makes a call to the Roswell Fire
Department to get them out to the areaas soon as possible.
Fire Chief Dan Dwyer'screw rolls out around 9:30 a.m.,
slowly navigating the rutted desertroads, reaching Blackwater about 10 a.m..
(10:40):
But they're not even closeto being the first ones on the scene.
Not only is the student group there,but a good number of locals as well.
All seeing what Dan seeing -a crashed flying saucer,
three dead aliens, and a fourth onewandering around like it's in shock.
Dan describes them as being the sizeof a ten year old, but with heads
(11:01):
too big for their bodies, large eyes,no hair and skin like gray rubber.
But the fire department is also notthe last ones on the scene either.
It doesn't take longbefore a convoy of army trucks
comes rolling up on the carnage,with a seemingly endless
supply of MPs in olive drab,spilling out with rifles at the ready.
(11:23):
The bodies are taken to the basehospital for examination.
Herbert Ellis, a civilian contractorpainting at the base
hospital,caught a glimpse through a side door.
One figurewalking unassisted between two MPs.
It's steps on steady but deliberate,while three others lay on gurneys.
Pale and still under sheets.
(11:44):
Doctor Jesse Johnson pronouncesthree of them dead.
Glenn Dennis, the mortician workingat the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell,
receives a call from the basemortuary officer,
who asks him about small caskets.
Then he receives another callfrom downtown Roswell,
where an airman has been injured.
The funeral home, where Dennis worksalso operates an ambulance service,
(12:08):
so Dennis scoops up the injured airmanand drives him to the base,
is waved through the gate and stopsat the rear of the base hospital.
Parked behind the hospitaland at the loading dock
and in front of the emergency roomare three ambulances,
some with their back doors open and Denniscan see strange looking debris.
(12:28):
Inside the base hospital, Dennisis confronted by two officers.
A red hairedcaptain tells Dennis that he has seen
nothing and heard nothing.
I know nothing. Nothing!
If he opens his mouth, they will bepicking his bones out of the sand.
Meanwhile, after he's done with his ranchduties, Mac Brazel takes a few scraps
(12:52):
of the material and goes to seehis neighbors, Floyd and Loretta Proctor.
He shows them a piece of the material.
And between Mack and Floyd, theytry burning and cutting it with no luck.
The Proctors suggestshe take it into town and show the sheriff.
Later that night,the deceased alien bodies
are sealed into a long crate,which is taken to a hangar.
(13:14):
It's left there overnightwith spotlights on
it, while MPs stand guard around it.
The next morning, Sunday, July 6th,
Sheriff George is back in his officebright and early
when Mac Brazel strolls through the doorwith his shoebox of debris to show him.
He takes out a piece of the foil
looking stuff and shows Georgejust how you can crinkle it in your hand.
(13:35):
But as soon as you let it go, it snapsright back to being perfectly smooth.
George looks at the magic foiland says, wow,
and puts in a call to ColonelBlanchard at Roswell Army Airfield.
You guys might want to have a lookat this.
Colonel Blanchard tells Major JesseMarcel, the base's intelligence officer,
(13:55):
to head over to the sheriff's officeand find out what is going on.
So Major Marcel heads over to see SheriffGeorge and Mac.
Mac shows Jesse the strange foil.
Jesse's like, wow, and takes
some of it back to the base to showColonel Blanchard, who's like, wow.
Jesse then grabs his assistantCounter-Intelligence Corps
Sergeant Sheridan Cavitt, and headsback to the sheriff's office.
(14:19):
They spend a little bit more timeinterviewing Mac
and then tell him, show us.
The whole crew heads back to Foster Ranch.
Unfortunately, between the distanceand the crappy roads,
they don't get there until after dark,
so they have to spend the nightat an old ranch house close to the debris
field, eating cold beansand waiting for daylight.
(14:40):
In the meantime, Colonel Blanchardput in a call to one of his higher ups,
Major General Clements McMullen,to tell him about the weird foil.
Major General McMullen says,get me some of that stuff.
So Colonel
Blanchard gets some of the stufffrom the sheriff's office, which is then
sealed in a courier pouch to go to AndrewsAir Force Base in Washington, D.C.,
(15:02):
along with the crashed shipand the bodies.
That flight leaves Roswell at 2 a.m.
on Monday the seventh.
Later that morning, Mac takesJesse Marcel, and Cavitt
out to the debris field.
They walk the perimeter of the fieldfor a while,
and then drive around for a bit longer,just to make sure that they aren't
missing anything like another crash site,but they don't find anything.
(15:26):
So they return to the original debris siteand spend
the rest of the day collecting debris.
They load the rear of Jesse's carand then the Jeep driven by Cavitt.
It’s tarting to get dark beforethey begin the trip back to Roswell.
It's about 2 a.m.
before Jesse gets back to his house.
In his excitement,he brings a box of the funky foil
(15:48):
into the house, scatters it all overthe kitchen floor, and wakes up his wife
and 11 year old son, Jesse Jr, saying,
wake up you guys, you gotta see this.
For the next hour, they play aroundwith the debris on the kitchen floor.
Jesse Junior studies an I-beam fragment
tracing the hieroglyphic etchingswith wide eyes.
(16:08):
It was like nothing I'd ever seen.
Light as a feather.
But when dad tried to bend itwith the pliers, it just sprang back.
No, Mark.
The funny thingis, Jesse's not breaking regulations
because none of it has yetbeen officially classified.
With the help of his son,
Jesse loads it all back into the carto go back to the base.
(16:29):
He and Cavitt are back at the basebriefing Blanchard by 6 a.m.
and at the morning staff meeting,some of the debris is passed
around the tablefor everyone there to check out,
while Jesse briefsthe room on what they saw the day before.
The big question they need to answeris, do we tell the public?
(16:50):
Colonel Blanchard'sboss, Brigadier General
Roger Ramey,and his Chief of Staff, Colonel Thomas J.
DuBose, who both flew in from Fort WorthArmy Airfield, are also in the meeting.
General Ramey suggeststhey do tell the public about the debris
field find in order to take attention awayfrom the real crash site.
(17:10):
That's had way too much attention already.
So by 11 a.m., Blanchardgives the green light to his public
information officer, First LieutenantWalter Haut, to craft a press release.
At 2:26 p.m.,Haut wires it to the Associated Press.
“The many rumors regarding the flying discbecame a reality yesterday,
(17:32):
when the intelligence officeof the 509th bomb Group of the Eighth Air
Force, Roswell ArmyAirfield, was fortunate enough
to gain possession of a discthrough the cooperation
of one of the local ranchersand the Sheriff's office of Chavis
County.” The storyhit the wire like a bomb.
By evening, it dominated the front pagesfrom the Roswell
(17:54):
Daily Record to the Chicago Tribuneand the New York Times.
The base's switchboardlit up like a Christmas tree.
And for a brief, exhilarating moment,Roswell
was the center of the universe.
At 3 p.m., Jesse Marcel was told,you're going to Fort Worth.
So he gets on a planewith some of the debris and presumably
(18:18):
General Ramey and Colonel DuBose,as well as that's where they're from.
Once they're back on the ground,Jesse finds himself in General
Ramey's office with the debristhey brought.
Ramey tells Jesse,show me where you found it.
And the two walk down the hallto the map room.
When they return, the debris is
gone, replaced with a bunch of janky,
(18:40):
ripped up pieces of weather balloonsscattered on the floor.
General Ramey had gotten the wordfrom the higher ups,
make this go away.
So before you can say cover up,Jesse finds himself
in front of a room of reporterswearing his best poker face,
as Ramey and DuBosestand there telling the press, see?
(19:02):
Just a weather balloon, as they all posefor pictures with the fake wreckage.
The reporters buyit hook, line and sinker,
and the word spreads from on highthat it was all just a big mistake.
But for ufologists, everywhere,
it was General Ramey who made the mistake.
But we'll dive deeper into thatin a minute.
Meanwhile, Mac Brazel,who had stayed the night in town
(19:25):
with his friend Walt Whitmore,co-owner of KGFL Radio,
does a prerecorded interviewfor the station, telling them everything
that he saw and experienced beforehe is invited to the base...
for four days...
with no use of a phone,no access to the outside world.
(19:46):
Round after round of questioningand intimidation.
By the time he sees daylight again,his story has amazingly done a 180.
His quote to the presswho are lined up to greet him is,
“I am sure that what I foundwas not any sort of flying disc,
but I did get carried awaywith the first excitement
(20:07):
and got to high with my windmill.
It was just some rubber strips,tinfoil and balsa wood and tossed paper.
I regret having causedall this excitement.”
And while Mac is enjoying his dayat the RAAF Inn & Suites, the FCC calls
the radio station and tells them,if you air that little interview
you got with Brazel,we will yank your license.
(20:31):
Debriefingskick off in hangar 84 that afternoon.
Witnesses are herded into small groupsunder the fluorescent hum.
Ladies and gentlemen,if you will look right here.
Military personnel
are sternly remindedof their oath of secrecy,
branded with threats of courtmartial or, worse, for any leak.
(20:51):
Civilians get an even blunter version.
Warnings of treasoncharges, family repercussions,
or simply disappearance in the vastdesert.
By July 9th, the perimeter comes down.
Patrols pull back and Roswell exhales.
The town returning to its rhythm of dusty
streets and Friday night dances.
(21:14):
Now, is this timeline perfect?
Not even close.
There are so many peoplewho, over the last, almost 80 years,
have changedlittle bits in their statements
that it's nearly impossibleto nail it down.
Not to mention the fact that some peoplebelieve there is only one crash site
on the Foster Ranch, butsome people believe that there are two,
(21:38):
that the craft actually hit the groundonce, shedding the material
that Mac Brazel found, bounced upand actually crashed
for real at the Blackwater Draw site.
So considering the hundreds
of data pointsthat often conflict with one another,
I did my best to try to weavea thread through what made the most sense.
(22:00):
And the years that followed.
Nobody really paid attentionto the Roswell incident.
The Air Force's Project Blue Book,their official probe into the UFO
phenomena, lumped Roswellin as a misidentified balloon,
not diving any deeperand ignoring any details to the contrary.
But the stonewall from the inside
(22:21):
and the complacency on the outside held
Until two things happened.
First, ufologist named Stanton Friedmanasked Jesse Marcel for an interview.
And second, Jesse said yes.
Stanton Friedman was a nuclearphysicist turned pioneering ufologist.
(22:42):
In 1978, Friedman received a tipfrom a television producer friend
about Jesse Marcel,the Army intelligence officer
who had handled the debristhree decades earlier.
Their interview marked the first timeJesse publicly
described the crash site materialas not of this earth,
igniting a fire in Stantonthat is heretofore unknown.
(23:05):
He heads to Roswell laterthat year and meticulously documents
the crash site, interviewsover 100 witnesses
and, after collecting informationover the next 14 years,
coauthored a book called Crash at Coronain 1992 with Don Berliner,
which builds a casefor an extraterrestrial craft
(23:26):
and government cover up the challengesthe company line.
Stanton's countless lecturesand congressional testimonies
brought the subject of Roswellinto the public square,
pressuring the Air Force for some answers.
So the Air Force responds with the reportin 1994, titled “The Roswell Report:
(23:46):
Fact Versus Fiction in the New Mexico
Desert.” Here the balloon got an upgrade.
Now, their story is that it wasn'tjust a run of the mill weather balloon,
but part of Project Mogul,a top secret program to float microphone
arrays on balloon trains up to 100,000ft
(24:07):
high, listening for Soviet atomic tests
via sound wavesbouncing off the ionosphere.
The missing Flight 4 from June 4th, 1947,
allegedly drifted to the Foster Ranch,and the boys of the 509th
didn't know about itbecause they didn't need to know about it.
But how does a light, floatyweather balloon with a microphone
(24:30):
causea huge gouge in the dirt and burn marks?
It doesn't.
The Air Force must have gotten
a little tired at the sound of everyonelaughing at them, because in 1997,
the took another crack at itwith their follow up report, “The Roswell
Report (24:46):
Case Closed.” Ooo!
They sound a little mad.
This time they actually tackledthe reports of alien bodies
by attributing the sightings to timecompression,
which is governmentspeak for a bad timeline.
Their idea is that eyewitnessesblended the 1947 crash
(25:07):
with memories of OperationHigh Dive, a 1953
to 1959 program that dropped crash
test dummies from high altitude balloonsto test parachutes.
Seriously?
Project High Dive started six years afterRoswell and the dummies were full size.
I doubt there was any confusionbetween the two.
(25:29):
Stanton Friedman immediatelycalled out both reports
as the Air Forceattempting to whitewash the entire event.
Frankly, it was too little,too late for the Air Force.
By 1997,the investigative work done by Stanton
and the others had cracked open the doortoo far for the Air Force to fill it.
The problem is, this case is so big,
(25:53):
with so many moving partsthat it's hard to even tell it.
Nobody saw everything.
So we have to kind of take each detailand put it all together like a mosaic.
And this puzzle has a lot of pieces.
Accounts from upwards of 100different people or more ordinary people
like ranchers and nurses and firefighters,who each hold a separate piece.
(26:18):
First, let's talk about those peoplewho were witness to the magic foil.
It's estimated
that at least four dozen peopletouch that foil material.
Everyone from Mac Brazel and his family,
his neighbors,the Proctors, Jesse Marcel and his family,
everyone at the staffmeeting the next day,
not to mention everyoneup the chain of command from there.
(26:40):
And don't forget about all the soldierswho combed the field picking up debris.
That debris field was 200 to 300yards wide by another 500 yards long,
and looked like the aftermathof a high tech pinata gone wrong.
I can't even imagine how many peoplethey had to truck in to clean that up.
Then there's the testimonyof Frankie Rowe,
(27:00):
who was 12when this whole thing went down.
Frankie is the daughter of Dan Dwyer,
the fire chief,whose crew responded to the crash site.
She had tagged along with her dadafter a doctor's visit later
in that afternoon, munching ice chipsin the kitchen of the fire station
while the crew decompressedfrom the Blackwater call.
Around 3 p.m., a state trooper buddyof the firefighter swings by all excited.
(27:26):
You guys miss something out there?
He pulls a small waddedsilver piece from his pocket,
a fragment he'd palmed during the debrispickup.
He drops it on the tableand it unfurls like
liquid, flat and flawless.
The men crowd in passing it around,crumpling it, burning it,
(27:47):
cutting it, but nothing, leavingeven the tiniest scratch.
Frankie,perched on a stool, reaches for it
during a lull, playing with itfor like five minutes straight.
When you would wad it up in your hand,you couldn't feel it in your hand.
You couldn't feel you had anything there.
And it would go to a sizethat was so small
that you’d have to look to seeif it was still in your hand.
(28:10):
The trooper eventuallystuck it back in his pocket,
joking about getting caught.
But Frankie never forgot.
But let's stop trying to even counthow many hands
touch the freaky foiland talk about the bodies.
The body encounters are fewerand more guarded,
with MPs forminghuman walls around the sites and hangers,
(28:33):
but the descriptionsthat slip through are remarkably uniform.
They were small, 3 to 4ft talland 40 to 50 pounds at most,
with pear shaped heads, 18 to 24in across,
grayish, rubberyskin, bald scalps and faces
dominated by large almondshaped black eyes without visible pupils,
(28:54):
slit nostrils and lidless mouthsfour long fingers per hand,
wearing one piece suits of metallic cloththat clung without wrinkles.
No blood pooled from injuries.
No real smell, just a faint sweet
chemical scentlike ozone mixed with flowers.
Either 3 or 4 were deceasedand one survivor staggered about,
(29:19):
exuding what witnesses describeas an almost tangible sorrow.
The archeology gang were,of course, the first on the scene,
so you would think we would havethe best descriptions from them.
But I can't find any informationabout them.
That doesn't bodewell for our investigation, but
(29:39):
they are not the only ones who saw them.
Dan Dwyer, the fire chief,led the first official response
to Blackwater Draw, his crewarriving early that morning.
Later that night, as Dan's familyis all gathered around the table
for dinner, he tells them allabout what he saw that day.
Frankie remembers her dad being so excited
(30:01):
as he told themthat these things had no hair, gray skin
that looked rubbery, and you could seethey weren't built like us.
No ears, just slits for a nose and mouth.
The one that was moving was sad.
Like itknew what had happened to the others.
And it was deeply hurt.
Before they could do anything really,
the MPs arrivedbarking orders to stand down.
(30:25):
Dan's guysback off and head back to the station.
So he really didn't have much else to say,except to make sure that he told
his children that there is another lifeout in the universe,
and that we would be smug to thinkthat if God created
us, that he couldn'thave created other life as well.
Okay, so it makes sensethat any bodies recovered
(30:46):
would first be taken to the basehospital, right?
Well, remember Herbert Ellis, the painterwho saw them walking in the hospital?
Okay, so we have a witnessputting him at the hospital that day.
And as chance would have it, Herbert'swife, Eula Mae,
also happens to be friendswith Frankie's mom.
So the next day, July 6th,Frankie overhears her mom talking
(31:09):
with Eula Mae over tea,with the two of them,
comparing the descriptionsfrom each of their husbands.
And we have Glenn Dennis, the 22 yearold mortician who got looped in
because of a frantic call from the basehospital asking for child sized caskets.
Well, he'salso the guy that made the ambulance run
and saw the weird debrisin the back of the ambulance.
(31:29):
Well at some point,he comes back to deliver the caskets,
pulls up to hangar 18 as instructed,but it's surrounded by MPs.
After the delivery, he spots a nursefriend, makes plans for lunch,
and while they're eating,she sketches what she'd seen -
a figure on a table, largehead with slit mouth and eyes.
But she warned him,we can't talk about this anymore.
(31:53):
If we do, we are both gone.
As the story goes, that nurse vanishessoon after that day.
Now, I do have to notethat as awesome of a story
as that is,I think this one's really just a story.
No one has ever been ableto track down the missing nurse.
And if you think about it,there are already so many leaks
(32:17):
in the security colander,why would they bother to take out a nurse
when there's about a jillion other peoplewho've seen the same thing?
Anyway, We also have Melvin Brown,a 25 year old MP
and occasional cook at the basewho drew guard duty at both Blackwater
and Hangar 84 from July 5ththrough the 7th.
At the impact site on the 5th,he helped secure the perimeter,
(32:41):
stealing peeks under tarpsdraped over the bodies during loading.
Later at the hangar,he stood post while crates were prepped,
catching another look through a gap.
Brown kept quiet for years,but his daughter Beverly coached the story
out of him in the 1980s, afterRoswell tales resurfaced in the news.
(33:04):
He called them little peoplefrom somewhere else.
Walter Haut, the public informationofficer who'd written that fateful
press release, released a sworn affidavitafter his death in 2005.
In that affidavit, he says, on July 6th,Colonel Blanchard pulled him into hangar
84 for a private viewing to see
(33:27):
what we'd stirred upwith the announcement.
Inside, under guardsat the egg shaped craft, 15ft long
and dented, but whole, with two bodiesunder a canvas tarp nearby.
Child size, but with disproportionately
large heads and dark, almond shaped eyes.
Their skin was gray, suitsmetallic and form fitting.
(33:50):
So plenty of people saw the wreckage
and plenty of people saw the bodies.
And if you're the army,you have a problem.
How exactly do you contain thismany leaks?
Answer? Brute force.
The army goes on a terror campaign
(34:10):
threatening anyone and everyone.
Now, Roswell was about as patrioticof a town as you could get.
About half of its populationwas tied to the bases.
During the war, everyone savesevery tin can and even scrape the foil
from the back of gum wrappersto contribute to the war effort.
They,for the most part, are already on board.
(34:32):
But the military's methodswent beyond appeals to duty.
They tapped fear tailored to the target.
Threats of court martials and Leavenworthfor the military.
Visceral home invasions for civilians.
The result?
It worked.
Stories simmered for 30 to 50 years,bubbling up only on deathbeds
(34:55):
or in quiet conversationswith those already in the know.
RememberDennis, the ambulance driving mortician?
Remember what they told him?
That if he opens his mouth, they'll bepicking his bones out of the sand.
And as just a little aside,I just happened to be besties
with a guy who was a reporter
(35:17):
for the Roswell Daily Recordfor a couple of years in the early 90s.
My friend actually interviewedthe son of the funeral home owner, Mr.
Ballard, who was a teenager at the timeof the crash, about something else.
But after the notebook was closed,so to speak,
the two had a conversation about thatcasket delivery. Mr.
Ballard Jr.
(35:37):
confirmed not only did the deliveryhappen, but his father got a check
from the US government for about ten timeswhat the caskets were worth.
That's some serious hush money.
Oh, and they threatened his dadto keep quiet, too.
I have no idea what the threat was,but junior says it worked.
They never talked about it again.
(35:59):
Sheriff Wilcoxand his family are threatened as well.
His granddaughter, BarbaraDugger, told the story given to her
by her grandmother, so George's wife.
She said George was toldthat if he blabbed,
it would not just be the end for him,but for his wife and daughters too.
And don't forget about poor Mack Brazeland his four day ordeal.
(36:20):
Word has it that this once happy,outgoing, talkative guy was never
the same.
After that, he withdrew from the worldand stayed there.
Jesse Marcelgot the hint before that press conference
when he's told, this is the cover.
Balloon story. No deviations.
(36:40):
One wrong word and your career’s ash.
To his son, they were a little nicer.
Just telling him, don't talk about thiswith friends.
Ever.
Debriefs in hangar84 on July 8th and ninth rounded up
crews in small batches,giving them stern lectures
on classification levels with treasonpenalties spelled out in black and white.
(37:03):
And don't forget the threat from the FCCto pull the license of KGFL Radio,
which was then followed up by a callto Walt Whitmore from one
Senator DavidChavez, the US senator from New Mexico,
telling him to think of the greater goodand advise his team accordingly.
Kind of sounds like a threat to me.
(37:24):
Fire and deputy teams got the speechesbefore they even left the sites.
Then a wave of house calls in the4 to 5 days post-crash
delivered the family harm ultimatumto anyone who'd wandered too close.
One unnamed deputy recalled a visitwhere an officer laid out
photos of accidents in the desert.
Empty cars, no drivers.
(37:46):
Just as visual aid.
But I think the most terrifying accountof them all is that of Frankie Rowe.
On July 8th, a black militarysedan rolls up outside their house.
There's a knock at the door and Frankie,with her mom right next to her,
opens the door to see two gentlemen.
The first one asks for the girlfrom the fire station.
(38:08):
Frankie says, that's me.
They move to the dining room, motherat one end of the table
and Frankie to her side, and the officerstanding across like a judge.
His partner has gone out back
to watch the kids in the backyardand make sure they stay outside.
The officer says, I understandyou were at the station the other day.
Frankie says, yeah, I was.
(38:29):
He comes back with - no, you weren't.
You didn't see anything.
You didn't hear any conversation.
Well Frankie, she was raised never to lie.
So she pushes back and says, yeah,I was there.
I touched a piece of that stuff.
Realizing he's not getting through to her,
he pulls out his baton and startsslapping it on his hand.
(38:50):
You were never there.
Do you understand?
If you can't grasp this,there are things we can do.
He turns to Frankie's mother and says,can she keep a secret?
Frankie's mom says, yeah.
Just tell her what you want.
He looks back at Frankie and says,if you ever talk about this
(39:11):
the rest of your life,we can take your whole family.
Take the kids to the German P.O.W.
camp at Orchard Park and your parentsto the Japanese one in Artesia.
Or we don't even need camps.
He said we'd put you in one.
We put your parents in the other one.
But we don't have to do that.
He said we could take you out herein the middle of this desert.
(39:32):
He said no one will ever find your bodies.
Ever.
No one will ever knowwhat happened to you.
The nightmare lasted about 45 minutesto an hour.
and Frankie finally tells the manshe won't say anything to anybody.
Her mom sends her to her room
at that point, and Frankie has no ideawhat her mom said to him after that.
(39:53):
But the topic died in that house that day.
It wasn't resurrected until researchersknocked on her door in 1989.
Her sister corroboratesboth listening to their dad's excitement
when he told them about the creatureshe saw in the desert,
and the visit from the mena few days later.
(40:13):
So thanks to tactics like this,it worked like a charm.
Roswell's grapevine dried up, storiesfalling into
whispersshared only with spouses or on deathbeds.
Now, after all of that,let's take a moment
to go down an amazingly crazy rabbit hole.
(40:33):
According to Nick Redfern, writing in 2015for the Mysterious Universe website
and referencing a partially declassified
FBI report called “Bacteriological Warfarein the United States,”
the plaguebroke out around Lincoln County,
which is where the debris field is,which is right next to Roswell,
(40:55):
with cases reported from 1947 to 1950.
It didn't affect too many people,but a couple of people died.
According to Nick, the report impliesthat the powers that be were concerned
that this was not a naturallyoccurring event, that it was instead,
something introduced and spreadon purpose, potentially by foreign actors.
(41:17):
Now stick with me here.
I know this is crazy down territory,but when I read that,
the first thing I thought ofwas that maybe somebody decided
this would be the perfect wayto try and decrease
the number of potentialfuture whistleblowers.
Carol Ann,
that's a terriblething to say about your government.
(41:38):
Well, they've done worse.
Don't get me wrong.
I love this country,and I love our military,
but we have been known to makesome pretty boneheaded moves in the past.
Just throwing it out there.
Anyway, back to the story.
Now, of course, some of these eyewitnessaccounts are not without their problems.
(42:00):
Take Major Jesse Marcel Sr., the guy
we all know from those famous weatherballoon photos.
Well, he decidedit was time to set the record straight
when StantonFriedman called him for an interview.
However, his testimony comes into question
because of some of the weird thingshe said later on in life.
Like he was a pilot with combatexperience, which he never was.
(42:23):
But then we also hadthe testimony of Jesse’s son, Jesse Jr.
He says he touched the stuff, too,and backs up his dad's account.
But then we also have Melvin Brown,
who said he saw the bodies twicewhile he was on guard duty.
Except he wasn't a guard. He was a cook.
Cooksdon't typically guard top secret hauls.
(42:44):
But maybe things were crazywith everything
going on and people got their dutiesshifted around.
Then there's WalterHaut's interview in 2000,
where he was a little fuzzyon the specifics.
But the affidavithe released upon his death in 2005
notarized and witnessed,including a doctor's statement
that he was of soundmind, was clear and detailed.
(43:08):
But one little hitch UFO researchershelped draft it based on their prior
conversations, which Haut reviewedand signed without changes.
Does the fact that he didn'twrite it himself change anything?
Some people seem to think so.
But let's not forget that there areproblems with the official story as well.
There are new things still happening.
(43:29):
For example, look again at the balloonwreckage press conference photo.
See the note in General Ramey's hand?
People have been trying
to enlarge the photo to tryand figure out the words for a long time.
But as digital technology gets betterand better,
efforts are still ongoingto try and figure out what it says.
Right now, we can see words like disc
(43:51):
victims, misstatethe meaning of the story.
Now, I don't think it'sout of the question that as technology
gets better, that little memomight become a pretty important clue.
And the third guy in the roomfor that infamous photo, Ramey's right
hand man, ThomasDuBose, came out in 1991 to say, yeah,
(44:12):
the stuff on the ground in that pictureis totally fake.
The real stuff went to DC.
Of course the last question is,what happened to the bodies?
Well, apparently they were createdand flown out under tarps.
Some say they went to Fort Worthand onto Wright-Patterson in Ohio.
Some say they went straightto Washington DC, and some say
(44:33):
the bodies went a few different places.
There's an account of a March 1950FBI memo from agent Guy Hottel
to Director Hoover, describing three
flying saucers recovered in New Mexico,
each about 50ft in diameter,with raised centers occupied by three
(44:54):
three foot tall humanoids inmetallic cloth of fine texture.
- an account sourcedfrom an Air Force investigator,
but dismissed as hearsay at the time.
And then there are the persistent rumorsof a survivor.
A 1972 whistleblower claimed one entity,given the designation
(45:15):
EBEN-1,was held at Los Alamos until 1952,
communicating through simple drawingsand telepathic impressions
before being repatriated viasome interstellar arrangement.
Now, for those of youwho've been sticking around for that
little something extra, it has to dowith the town of Roswell itself.
(45:36):
It's weird.
That bestie I mentioned earlier that spenta couple of years there as a reporter
for the Roswell DailyRecord, couldn't wait
to get a new job anywhere else.
To him,the whole place just had this weird vibe.
It was just an accepted fact that strangethings were a regular occurrence there.
(45:56):
He himself witnessed mysterious thingszipping around the night sky all the time.
And he also said thateveryone who's lived there
their whole lives knows that what happenedin 1947 is true.
They just don't say it out loud.
And half the people there believethe aliens have come back to live there.
A hiding in plain sight kind of strategy.
(46:19):
And he told me this interesting story.
Let's go back a bit to set the scene.
Roswell Army Airfield,which then became Roswell Air Force Base,
which then became Walker Air Force Base,which then closed June 30th of 1967,
left poor Roswell without the only realsource of income they'd had for decades.
(46:39):
Well, the answer to their prayerscame along sometime in the 80s.
Japan, not known for its sprawlinglandscapes, needed someplace
big with runways where Japan Airlinescould train its pilots.
And the longshuttered airbase seemed to fit the bill.
Perfect!
Except 18 months later,they packed up and left,
(47:00):
mumbling something about their equipment,never working quite right.
Was it because they just couldn'tget used to living in a city
that was actively leaning into the touristdollars starting to come their way
as the story of 1947 eventsbecame mainstream?
Or was it that the inherent weirdness
really did mess with their equipment,to the point where they just had to leave.
(47:22):
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
So is Roswell too weird?
Not at all. I don't mean to dunk on them.
After all, it is the home town of JohnDenver, Demi Moore and Priscilla Presley.
And they honored Stanton Friedmanposthumously in 2022
with a star on its International UFOMuseum Walk of Fame.
(47:44):
But the question is,
did the weirdness startbecause of what happened there in 1947?
Or was something beyond our imagination
attracted to the weirdness already there?
My friend assures me that everyonethere has a story to tell,
but only after you close the notebook.
(48:09):
Whew, Nelly!
That was a marathon.
But I hope you enjoyed our little tripdown Alien Lane.
If this is just the startof your weirdness travels for today,
go ahead and clickright here for your next destination.
It's worth it.
I promise.
Be careful out there.
(48:30):
And I will see youhere again, on The InBetween.
On a hot summer night in 1947,something crashes in the darkness,
scattering debris across a remote ranchand igniting a chain of events
that would challenge everythingwe thought we knew about the stars,
our government,and perhaps even ourselves.
I'm Carol Ann.
Welcome to The InBetween.
(00:58):
So right off the bat, I'm going to let youall in on a little secret.
This topic is huge.
There are dozens of books out therewith different updated details.
Much to my chagrin,I have a limited amount of time,
so Think of itmore as a very detailed primer.
However, I do have to tease thatif you stay to the end, you'll discover
(01:19):
why the strangeness in Roswelldidn't stop in 1947.
And you won't hear this storyanywhere else.
Can't say I've cracked the caseor anything like that, but it's just
a little extra flavor for the stew,if you will.
The summer of 1947 was a littleschizophrenic for the United States.
Most of the country was still tryingto sleep off the hangover from our victory
(01:42):
celebrations, from winning the warless than two years earlier.
I mean, not only did we win,but we were now the undisputed top dog.
But with great power, comesgreat paranoia.
The maids weren't even done sweeping upafter the after party
before the kids were back at it,picking fights on the global playground,
which made the atmosphereat the Roswell Army Airfield, or
(02:05):
RAAF in New Mexico rather bipolar.
On the one hand,the RAAF was the home of the 509th bomb
Group, the elite unit
that had dropped those atomic payloadson Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These guys were the best of the best,and the only group
entrustedand trained to handle nuclear cargo.
(02:27):
On the other hand,now that World War Two was over,
this was also the place where any new techthat had been in the hands of the Axis
that we could recover was sent for study.
And we were comingto the sobering conclusion
that they had some pretty good stuffon their side,
like the German V-2 rocketand the Horten Ho.
229, a crescent shaped jet that could slip
(02:48):
under the radar and strikewithout warning.
Captured plans suggested the Sovietsmight have built their own versions,
and might even be tryingto snoop out our nuclear secrets.
The 509th is now a prime target.
And now that temperatures were startingto chill on the world stage already,
(03:09):
we could not let our guard downeven for a second.
It was into this emotional whirlwind
that the modern UFO era of flying saucersexploded
with the June 24th, 1947sighting by Kenneth Arnold of nine
discs skipping overMount Rainier in Washington state.
The world around us was changing fast.
(03:31):
Now, the Roswell incidentdidn't erupt in a single tidy moment.
It unraveled over a long,lightning streaked holiday weekend.
Starting around the last week of June,so just like a week or so after Kenneth
Arnold's sighting hit the papers,radar operators at Roswell Army Airfield,
White Sands and the Alamogordo Bombing
Range began picking up anomalies.
(03:54):
Blips that move too fast for any knownaircraft, clocking speeds up to 1700
miles per hour, executing sharp turnsthat would shred a human piloted plane,
and vanishingonly to reappear miles away in seconds.
These weren't one offs.
These things would hang around for hours,
sometimes mimicking tightformations before scattering.
(04:18):
Radar techsmethodically disassembled the equipment.
Hunting for bad vacuum tubes or wiring,but no luck.
The radars were telling the truth.
But no one outside the militaryhad a clue, including Dan and Mary Wilmot.
It's the evening of Wednesday, July 2nd.
As the sun is going down.
Dan and Mary settle on their porchin Roswell for the evening
(04:41):
ritual of sipping coffeeand watching the world wind down.
It's a quiet nightwith the only real sound,
the distant rumble of thunderfrom a storm moving in.
Then from the southeast comes
in the long gated egg,
about 20ft long,glowing with the soft uniform light.
(05:01):
It flies low,like maybe 500ft up at a speed Mary later
guesses at 400 miles an hour, silent
as a ghost and leaving no vapor trail.
It crosses their view in seconds,vanishing into the night.
The Wilmot's debate calling the sheriff,but hold off, figuring
it's got to be some top secret testflight from the base.
(05:24):
But they certainly are not the only ones
who see something strangein the desert skies.
At roughly the same time, Steve Robinson
is in his milkdelivery truck out on a stretch of highway
just north of town, when he sees an oval
shaped light streak low over his truck.
He watches it move toward the horizon,heading toward the northeast,
(05:46):
thinking he has never seen something movethat fast in his entire life.
By morning, Sheriff George Wilcox'sphone is ringing off the hook.
Farmers spotting lightsweaving through the clouds.
A night watchman at a local mill,claiming one hovered over the building
for several minutes before darting away.
George dutifully takes downall of the information,
(06:09):
but thinking that the air basemust be testing something new.
But, still. That's a lot of calls.
The next night,July 3rd, an archeological team led by Dr.
W. Curry Holden is wrapping up a dig nearBlackwater Draw, just a few miles
to the west of Roswell, when they noticedlight hovering to the north - steady,
(06:30):
unblinking orbs that drift for 20 minutesbefore blinking out.
Holden, a respected professor from TexasTech, adds the sighting to his field notes
as possible aircraft malfunction,but knows that's not quite right.
The lights move too deliberately, toosilently to be regular planes.
(06:51):
Friday, July 4th,
the start of the Independence Dayholiday dawned hot and hazy,
so it's not a big surprise that as eveningcomes around, a massive thunderstorm
rolls in from the west, turning the skyinto a crackling light show.
At the Foster Ranch, 75 milesnorthwest of Roswell, ranch foreman
(07:13):
Mac Brazel is inside with his familywhen the storm hits.
Around 11:30 p.m., a deafening roarcut through the wind,
more like a derailingfreight train than thunder.
Max steps onto the porch,squinting into the flashing dark
but see nothing but rain lashed scrub.
The next morning,July 5th, Mac rises with the sun
(07:35):
saddling up with Bill Proctor,the son of his friends and neighbors
Floyd and Loretta Proctor,to check on his 400 head sheep herd
scattered across the Foster Ranch’s480 acres.
What he finds stops him cold.
A debris field roughly 200 to 300yards wide
and three quarters of a mile long,covering several acres.
(08:00):
It isn't the usual wind tossedjunk balloons
or survey markers,but something else entirely.
There are sheets of thin foil,almost like today's
mylar balloons,impossibly light and super strong.
But it can't be a mylar balloon.
They didn't become a thing until the 70s.
He finds I-beams 12 to 18in long,
(08:23):
as light as balsa wood,but etched with strange,
flowing purple symbolsthat look like a mix of hieroglyphics
and circuit diagrams and flexible strutslike rubberized wood,
all scattered in a pathwide enough to freak out his sheep.
He fills a shoebox full of the stuffand finishes getting his sheep to water.
(08:45):
Also, early that morning, Sheriff Wilcox
gets a call, but it's not from Mac Brazel.
It's from a student who's part of DoctorHolden's team of archeologists out around
Blackwater Draw, around 60 miles southeast of the Foster Ranch.
The night before, around the same timeMac heard his booming noise,
the students team also heard a loud boom
(09:08):
and see something streak across the sky.
They don't know for sure what it is,but think maybe it's a downed airplane.
But they're quite a ways from a phone,so they just let it be.
However, when they get to their dig siteearly that morning,
they find the ground wrecked by a 25ftlong plow line
leading to the twisted remnants of a craft
(09:30):
about 12 to 15ft long and six feet high.
It was egg shaped with a seamless metallichull that gleamed dully.
No rivets, no wings,no landing gear, just a split
open seamrevealing dark interior compartments.
On the ground lay small, charred
figures, two outside the wreck, oneseemingly pinned inside,
(09:54):
each about 3 or 4ft tall,with big heads and skinny arms and legs.
A fourth figure, same kind of creature,is just walking around the debris.
A little dazed and confused.
Its large black eyessomehow communicating a profound sorrow.
One of the students takes offto find the nearest phone and calls
(10:15):
Sheriff Wilcox, telling him,you better get out here right now.
So George Wilcox,operating under the logical assumption
that it must be a planecrash, makes a call to the Roswell Fire
Department to get them out to the areaas soon as possible.
Fire Chief Dan Dwyer'screw rolls out around 9:30 a.m.,
slowly navigating the rutted desertroads, reaching Blackwater about 10 a.m..
(10:40):
But they're not even closeto being the first ones on the scene.
Not only is the student group there,but a good number of locals as well.
All seeing what Dan seeing -a crashed flying saucer,
three dead aliens, and a fourth onewandering around like it's in shock.
Dan describes them as being the sizeof a ten year old, but with heads
(11:01):
too big for their bodies, large eyes,no hair and skin like gray rubber.
But the fire department is also notthe last ones on the scene either.
It doesn't take longbefore a convoy of army trucks
comes rolling up on the carnage,with a seemingly endless
supply of MPs in olive drab,spilling out with rifles at the ready.
(11:23):
The bodies are taken to the basehospital for examination.
Herbert Ellis, a civilian contractorpainting at the base
hospital,caught a glimpse through a side door.
One figurewalking unassisted between two MPs.
It's steps on steady but deliberate,while three others lay on gurneys.
Pale and still under sheets.
(11:44):
Doctor Jesse Johnson pronouncesthree of them dead.
Glenn Dennis, the mortician workingat the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell,
receives a call from the basemortuary officer,
who asks him about small caskets.
Then he receives another callfrom downtown Roswell,
where an airman has been injured.
The funeral home, where Dennis worksalso operates an ambulance service,
(12:08):
so Dennis scoops up the injured airmanand drives him to the base,
is waved through the gate and stopsat the rear of the base hospital.
Parked behind the hospitaland at the loading dock
and in front of the emergency roomare three ambulances,
some with their back doors open and Denniscan see strange looking debris.
(12:28):
Inside the base hospital, Dennisis confronted by two officers.
A red hairedcaptain tells Dennis that he has seen
nothing and heard nothing.
I know nothing. Nothing!
If he opens his mouth, they will bepicking his bones out of the sand.
Meanwhile, after he's done with his ranchduties, Mac Brazel takes a few scraps
(12:52):
of the material and goes to seehis neighbors, Floyd and Loretta Proctor.
He shows them a piece of the material.
And between Mack and Floyd, theytry burning and cutting it with no luck.
The Proctors suggestshe take it into town and show the sheriff.
Later that night,the deceased alien bodies
are sealed into a long crate,which is taken to a hangar.
(13:14):
It's left there overnightwith spotlights on
it, while MPs stand guard around it.
The next morning, Sunday, July 6th,
Sheriff George is back in his officebright and early
when Mac Brazel strolls through the doorwith his shoebox of debris to show him.
He takes out a piece of the foil
looking stuff and shows Georgejust how you can crinkle it in your hand.
(13:35):
But as soon as you let it go, it snapsright back to being perfectly smooth.
George looks at the magic foiland says, wow,
and puts in a call to ColonelBlanchard at Roswell Army Airfield.
You guys might want to have a lookat this.
Colonel Blanchard tells Major JesseMarcel, the base's intelligence officer,
(13:55):
to head over to the sheriff's officeand find out what is going on.
So Major Marcel heads over to see SheriffGeorge and Mac.
Mac shows Jesse the strange foil.
Jesse's like, wow, and takes
some of it back to the base to showColonel Blanchard, who's like, wow.
Jesse then grabs his assistantCounter-Intelligence Corps
Sergeant Sheridan Cavitt, and headsback to the sheriff's office.
(14:19):
They spend a little bit more timeinterviewing Mac
and then tell him, show us.
The whole crew heads back to Foster Ranch.
Unfortunately, between the distanceand the crappy roads,
they don't get there until after dark,
so they have to spend the nightat an old ranch house close to the debris
field, eating cold beansand waiting for daylight.
(14:40):
In the meantime, Colonel Blanchardput in a call to one of his higher ups,
Major General Clements McMullen,to tell him about the weird foil.
Major General McMullen says,get me some of that stuff.
So Colonel
Blanchard gets some of the stufffrom the sheriff's office, which is then
sealed in a courier pouch to go to AndrewsAir Force Base in Washington, D.C.,
(15:02):
along with the crashed shipand the bodies.
That flight leaves Roswell at 2 a.m.
on Monday the seventh.
Later that morning, Mac takesJesse Marcel, and Cavitt
out to the debris field.
They walk the perimeter of the fieldfor a while,
and then drive around for a bit longer,just to make sure that they aren't
missing anything like another crash site,but they don't find anything.
(15:26):
So they return to the original debris siteand spend
the rest of the day collecting debris.
They load the rear of Jesse's carand then the Jeep driven by Cavitt.
It’s tarting to get dark beforethey begin the trip back to Roswell.
It's about 2 a.m.
before Jesse gets back to his house.
In his excitement,he brings a box of the funky foil
(15:48):
into the house, scatters it all overthe kitchen floor, and wakes up his wife
and 11 year old son, Jesse Jr, saying,
wake up you guys, you gotta see this.
For the next hour, they play aroundwith the debris on the kitchen floor.
Jesse Junior studies an I-beam fragment
tracing the hieroglyphic etchingswith wide eyes.
(16:08):
It was like nothing I'd ever seen.
Light as a feather.
But when dad tried to bend itwith the pliers, it just sprang back.
No, Mark.
The funny thingis, Jesse's not breaking regulations
because none of it has yetbeen officially classified.
With the help of his son,
Jesse loads it all back into the carto go back to the base.
(16:29):
He and Cavitt are back at the basebriefing Blanchard by 6 a.m.
and at the morning staff meeting,some of the debris is passed
around the tablefor everyone there to check out,
while Jesse briefsthe room on what they saw the day before.
The big question they need to answeris, do we tell the public?
(16:50):
Colonel Blanchard'sboss, Brigadier General
Roger Ramey,and his Chief of Staff, Colonel Thomas J.
DuBose, who both flew in from Fort WorthArmy Airfield, are also in the meeting.
General Ramey suggeststhey do tell the public about the debris
field find in order to take attention awayfrom the real crash site.
(17:10):
That's had way too much attention already.
So by 11 a.m., Blanchardgives the green light to his public
information officer, First LieutenantWalter Haut, to craft a press release.
At 2:26 p.m.,Haut wires it to the Associated Press.
“The many rumors regarding the flying discbecame a reality yesterday,
(17:32):
when the intelligence officeof the 509th bomb Group of the Eighth Air
Force, Roswell ArmyAirfield, was fortunate enough
to gain possession of a discthrough the cooperation
of one of the local ranchersand the Sheriff's office of Chavis
County.” The storyhit the wire like a bomb.
By evening, it dominated the front pagesfrom the Roswell
(17:54):
Daily Record to the Chicago Tribuneand the New York Times.
The base's switchboardlit up like a Christmas tree.
And for a brief, exhilarating moment,Roswell
was the center of the universe.
At 3 p.m., Jesse Marcel was told,you're going to Fort Worth.
So he gets on a planewith some of the debris and presumably
(18:18):
General Ramey and Colonel DuBose,as well as that's where they're from.
Once they're back on the ground,Jesse finds himself in General
Ramey's office with the debristhey brought.
Ramey tells Jesse,show me where you found it.
And the two walk down the hallto the map room.
When they return, the debris is
gone, replaced with a bunch of janky,
(18:40):
ripped up pieces of weather balloonsscattered on the floor.
General Ramey had gotten the wordfrom the higher ups,
make this go away.
So before you can say cover up,Jesse finds himself
in front of a room of reporterswearing his best poker face,
as Ramey and DuBosestand there telling the press, see?
(19:02):
Just a weather balloon, as they all posefor pictures with the fake wreckage.
The reporters buyit hook, line and sinker,
and the word spreads from on highthat it was all just a big mistake.
But for ufologists, everywhere,
it was General Ramey who made the mistake.
But we'll dive deeper into thatin a minute.
Meanwhile, Mac Brazel,who had stayed the night in town
(19:25):
with his friend Walt Whitmore,co-owner of KGFL Radio,
does a prerecorded interviewfor the station, telling them everything
that he saw and experienced beforehe is invited to the base...
for four days...
with no use of a phone,no access to the outside world.
(19:46):
Round after round of questioningand intimidation.
By the time he sees daylight again,his story has amazingly done a 180.
His quote to the presswho are lined up to greet him is,
“I am sure that what I foundwas not any sort of flying disc,
but I did get carried awaywith the first excitement
(20:07):
and got to high with my windmill.
It was just some rubber strips,tinfoil and balsa wood and tossed paper.
I regret having causedall this excitement.”
And while Mac is enjoying his dayat the RAAF Inn & Suites, the FCC calls
the radio station and tells them,if you air that little interview
you got with Brazel,we will yank your license.
(20:31):
Debriefingskick off in hangar 84 that afternoon.
Witnesses are herded into small groupsunder the fluorescent hum.
Ladies and gentlemen,if you will look right here.
Military personnel
are sternly remindedof their oath of secrecy,
branded with threats of courtmartial or, worse, for any leak.
(20:51):
Civilians get an even blunter version.
Warnings of treasoncharges, family repercussions,
or simply disappearance in the vastdesert.
By July 9th, the perimeter comes down.
Patrols pull back and Roswell exhales.
The town returning to its rhythm of dusty
streets and Friday night dances.
(21:14):
Now, is this timeline perfect?
Not even close.
There are so many peoplewho, over the last, almost 80 years,
have changedlittle bits in their statements
that it's nearly impossibleto nail it down.
Not to mention the fact that some peoplebelieve there is only one crash site
on the Foster Ranch, butsome people believe that there are two,
(21:38):
that the craft actually hit the groundonce, shedding the material
that Mac Brazel found, bounced upand actually crashed
for real at the Blackwater Draw site.
So considering the hundreds
of data pointsthat often conflict with one another,
I did my best to try to weavea thread through what made the most sense.
(22:00):
And the years that followed.
Nobody really paid attentionto the Roswell incident.
The Air Force's Project Blue Book,their official probe into the UFO
phenomena, lumped Roswellin as a misidentified balloon,
not diving any deeperand ignoring any details to the contrary.
But the stonewall from the inside
(22:21):
and the complacency on the outside held
Until two things happened.
First, ufologist named Stanton Friedmanasked Jesse Marcel for an interview.
And second, Jesse said yes.
Stanton Friedman was a nuclearphysicist turned pioneering ufologist.
(22:42):
In 1978, Friedman received a tipfrom a television producer friend
about Jesse Marcel,the Army intelligence officer
who had handled the debristhree decades earlier.
Their interview marked the first timeJesse publicly
described the crash site materialas not of this earth,
igniting a fire in Stantonthat is heretofore unknown.
(23:05):
He heads to Roswell laterthat year and meticulously documents
the crash site, interviewsover 100 witnesses
and, after collecting informationover the next 14 years,
coauthored a book called Crash at Coronain 1992 with Don Berliner,
which builds a casefor an extraterrestrial craft
(23:26):
and government cover up the challengesthe company line.
Stanton's countless lecturesand congressional testimonies
brought the subject of Roswellinto the public square,
pressuring the Air Force for some answers.
So the Air Force responds with the reportin 1994, titled “The Roswell Report:
(23:46):
Fact Versus Fiction in the New Mexico
Desert.” Here the balloon got an upgrade.
Now, their story is that it wasn'tjust a run of the mill weather balloon,
but part of Project Mogul,a top secret program to float microphone
arrays on balloon trains up to 100,000ft
(24:07):
high, listening for Soviet atomic tests
via sound wavesbouncing off the ionosphere.
The missing Flight 4 from June 4th, 1947,
allegedly drifted to the Foster Ranch,and the boys of the 509th
didn't know about itbecause they didn't need to know about it.
But how does a light, floatyweather balloon with a microphone
(24:30):
causea huge gouge in the dirt and burn marks?
It doesn't.
The Air Force must have gotten
a little tired at the sound of everyonelaughing at them, because in 1997,
the took another crack at itwith their follow up report, “The Roswell
Report (24:46):
Case Closed.” Ooo!
They sound a little mad.
This time they actually tackledthe reports of alien bodies
by attributing the sightings to timecompression,
which is governmentspeak for a bad timeline.
Their idea is that eyewitnessesblended the 1947 crash
(25:07):
with memories of OperationHigh Dive, a 1953
to 1959 program that dropped crash
test dummies from high altitude balloonsto test parachutes.
Seriously?
Project High Dive started six years afterRoswell and the dummies were full size.
I doubt there was any confusionbetween the two.
(25:29):
Stanton Friedman immediatelycalled out both reports
as the Air Forceattempting to whitewash the entire event.
Frankly, it was too little,too late for the Air Force.
By 1997,the investigative work done by Stanton
and the others had cracked open the doortoo far for the Air Force to fill it.
The problem is, this case is so big,
(25:53):
with so many moving partsthat it's hard to even tell it.
Nobody saw everything.
So we have to kind of take each detailand put it all together like a mosaic.
And this puzzle has a lot of pieces.
Accounts from upwards of 100different people or more ordinary people
like ranchers and nurses and firefighters,who each hold a separate piece.
(26:18):
First, let's talk about those peoplewho were witness to the magic foil.
It's estimated
that at least four dozen peopletouch that foil material.
Everyone from Mac Brazel and his family,
his neighbors,the Proctors, Jesse Marcel and his family,
everyone at the staffmeeting the next day,
not to mention everyoneup the chain of command from there.
(26:40):
And don't forget about all the soldierswho combed the field picking up debris.
That debris field was 200 to 300yards wide by another 500 yards long,
and looked like the aftermathof a high tech pinata gone wrong.
I can't even imagine how many peoplethey had to truck in to clean that up.
Then there's the testimonyof Frankie Rowe,
(27:00):
who was 12when this whole thing went down.
Frankie is the daughter of Dan Dwyer,
the fire chief,whose crew responded to the crash site.
She had tagged along with her dadafter a doctor's visit later
in that afternoon, munching ice chipsin the kitchen of the fire station
while the crew decompressedfrom the Blackwater call.
Around 3 p.m., a state trooper buddyof the firefighter swings by all excited.
(27:26):
You guys miss something out there?
He pulls a small waddedsilver piece from his pocket,
a fragment he'd palmed during the debrispickup.
He drops it on the tableand it unfurls like
liquid, flat and flawless.
The men crowd in passing it around,crumpling it, burning it,
(27:47):
cutting it, but nothing, leavingeven the tiniest scratch.
Frankie,perched on a stool, reaches for it
during a lull, playing with itfor like five minutes straight.
When you would wad it up in your hand,you couldn't feel it in your hand.
You couldn't feel you had anything there.
And it would go to a sizethat was so small
that you’d have to look to seeif it was still in your hand.
(28:10):
The trooper eventuallystuck it back in his pocket,
joking about getting caught.
But Frankie never forgot.
But let's stop trying to even counthow many hands
touch the freaky foiland talk about the bodies.
The body encounters are fewerand more guarded,
with MPs forminghuman walls around the sites and hangers,
(28:33):
but the descriptionsthat slip through are remarkably uniform.
They were small, 3 to 4ft talland 40 to 50 pounds at most,
with pear shaped heads, 18 to 24in across,
grayish, rubberyskin, bald scalps and faces
dominated by large almondshaped black eyes without visible pupils,
(28:54):
slit nostrils and lidless mouthsfour long fingers per hand,
wearing one piece suits of metallic cloththat clung without wrinkles.
No blood pooled from injuries.
No real smell, just a faint sweet
chemical scentlike ozone mixed with flowers.
Either 3 or 4 were deceasedand one survivor staggered about,
(29:19):
exuding what witnesses describeas an almost tangible sorrow.
The archeology gang were,of course, the first on the scene,
so you would think we would havethe best descriptions from them.
But I can't find any informationabout them.
That doesn't bodewell for our investigation, but
(29:39):
they are not the only ones who saw them.
Dan Dwyer, the fire chief,led the first official response
to Blackwater Draw, his crewarriving early that morning.
Later that night, as Dan's familyis all gathered around the table
for dinner, he tells them allabout what he saw that day.
Frankie remembers her dad being so excited
(30:01):
as he told themthat these things had no hair, gray skin
that looked rubbery, and you could seethey weren't built like us.
No ears, just slits for a nose and mouth.
The one that was moving was sad.
Like itknew what had happened to the others.
And it was deeply hurt.
Before they could do anything really,
the MPs arrivedbarking orders to stand down.
(30:25):
Dan's guysback off and head back to the station.
So he really didn't have much else to say,except to make sure that he told
his children that there is another lifeout in the universe,
and that we would be smug to thinkthat if God created
us, that he couldn'thave created other life as well.
Okay, so it makes sensethat any bodies recovered
(30:46):
would first be taken to the basehospital, right?
Well, remember Herbert Ellis, the painterwho saw them walking in the hospital?
Okay, so we have a witnessputting him at the hospital that day.
And as chance would have it, Herbert'swife, Eula Mae,
also happens to be friendswith Frankie's mom.
So the next day, July 6th,Frankie overhears her mom talking
(31:09):
with Eula Mae over tea,with the two of them,
comparing the descriptionsfrom each of their husbands.
And we have Glenn Dennis, the 22 yearold mortician who got looped in
because of a frantic call from the basehospital asking for child sized caskets.
Well, he'salso the guy that made the ambulance run
and saw the weird debrisin the back of the ambulance.
(31:29):
Well at some point,he comes back to deliver the caskets,
pulls up to hangar 18 as instructed,but it's surrounded by MPs.
After the delivery, he spots a nursefriend, makes plans for lunch,
and while they're eating,she sketches what she'd seen -
a figure on a table, largehead with slit mouth and eyes.
But she warned him,we can't talk about this anymore.
(31:53):
If we do, we are both gone.
As the story goes, that nurse vanishessoon after that day.
Now, I do have to notethat as awesome of a story
as that is,I think this one's really just a story.
No one has ever been ableto track down the missing nurse.
And if you think about it,there are already so many leaks
(32:17):
in the security colander,why would they bother to take out a nurse
when there's about a jillion other peoplewho've seen the same thing?
Anyway, We also have Melvin Brown,a 25 year old MP
and occasional cook at the basewho drew guard duty at both Blackwater
and Hangar 84 from July 5ththrough the 7th.
At the impact site on the 5th,he helped secure the perimeter,
(32:41):
stealing peeks under tarpsdraped over the bodies during loading.
Later at the hangar,he stood post while crates were prepped,
catching another look through a gap.
Brown kept quiet for years,but his daughter Beverly coached the story
out of him in the 1980s, afterRoswell tales resurfaced in the news.
(33:04):
He called them little peoplefrom somewhere else.
Walter Haut, the public informationofficer who'd written that fateful
press release, released a sworn affidavitafter his death in 2005.
In that affidavit, he says, on July 6th,Colonel Blanchard pulled him into hangar
84 for a private viewing to see
(33:27):
what we'd stirred upwith the announcement.
Inside, under guardsat the egg shaped craft, 15ft long
and dented, but whole, with two bodiesunder a canvas tarp nearby.
Child size, but with disproportionately
large heads and dark, almond shaped eyes.
Their skin was gray, suitsmetallic and form fitting.
(33:50):
So plenty of people saw the wreckage
and plenty of people saw the bodies.
And if you're the army,you have a problem.
How exactly do you contain thismany leaks?
Answer? Brute force.
The army goes on a terror campaign
(34:10):
threatening anyone and everyone.
Now, Roswell was about as patrioticof a town as you could get.
About half of its populationwas tied to the bases.
During the war, everyone savesevery tin can and even scrape the foil
from the back of gum wrappersto contribute to the war effort.
They,for the most part, are already on board.
(34:32):
But the military's methodswent beyond appeals to duty.
They tapped fear tailored to the target.
Threats of court martials and Leavenworthfor the military.
Visceral home invasions for civilians.
The result?
It worked.
Stories simmered for 30 to 50 years,bubbling up only on deathbeds
(34:55):
or in quiet conversationswith those already in the know.
RememberDennis, the ambulance driving mortician?
Remember what they told him?
That if he opens his mouth, they'll bepicking his bones out of the sand.
And as just a little aside,I just happened to be besties
with a guy who was a reporter
(35:17):
for the Roswell Daily Recordfor a couple of years in the early 90s.
My friend actually interviewedthe son of the funeral home owner, Mr.
Ballard, who was a teenager at the timeof the crash, about something else.
But after the notebook was closed,so to speak,
the two had a conversation about thatcasket delivery. Mr.
Ballard Jr.
(35:37):
confirmed not only did the deliveryhappen, but his father got a check
from the US government for about ten timeswhat the caskets were worth.
That's some serious hush money.
Oh, and they threatened his dadto keep quiet, too.
I have no idea what the threat was,but junior says it worked.
They never talked about it again.
(35:59):
Sheriff Wilcoxand his family are threatened as well.
His granddaughter, BarbaraDugger, told the story given to her
by her grandmother, so George's wife.
She said George was toldthat if he blabbed,
it would not just be the end for him,but for his wife and daughters too.
And don't forget about poor Mack Brazeland his four day ordeal.
(36:20):
Word has it that this once happy,outgoing, talkative guy was never
the same.
After that, he withdrew from the worldand stayed there.
Jesse Marcelgot the hint before that press conference
when he's told, this is the cover.
Balloon story. No deviations.
(36:40):
One wrong word and your career’s ash.
To his son, they were a little nicer.
Just telling him, don't talk about thiswith friends.
Ever.
Debriefs in hangar84 on July 8th and ninth rounded up
crews in small batches,giving them stern lectures
on classification levels with treasonpenalties spelled out in black and white.
(37:03):
And don't forget the threat from the FCCto pull the license of KGFL Radio,
which was then followed up by a callto Walt Whitmore from one
Senator DavidChavez, the US senator from New Mexico,
telling him to think of the greater goodand advise his team accordingly.
Kind of sounds like a threat to me.
(37:24):
Fire and deputy teams got the speechesbefore they even left the sites.
Then a wave of house calls in the4 to 5 days post-crash
delivered the family harm ultimatumto anyone who'd wandered too close.
One unnamed deputy recalled a visitwhere an officer laid out
photos of accidents in the desert.
Empty cars, no drivers.
(37:46):
Just as visual aid.
But I think the most terrifying accountof them all is that of Frankie Rowe.
On July 8th, a black militarysedan rolls up outside their house.
There's a knock at the door and Frankie,with her mom right next to her,
opens the door to see two gentlemen.
The first one asks for the girlfrom the fire station.
(38:08):
Frankie says, that's me.
They move to the dining room, motherat one end of the table
and Frankie to her side, and the officerstanding across like a judge.
His partner has gone out back
to watch the kids in the backyardand make sure they stay outside.
The officer says, I understandyou were at the station the other day.
Frankie says, yeah, I was.
(38:29):
He comes back with - no, you weren't.
You didn't see anything.
You didn't hear any conversation.
Well Frankie, she was raised never to lie.
So she pushes back and says, yeah,I was there.
I touched a piece of that stuff.
Realizing he's not getting through to her,
he pulls out his baton and startsslapping it on his hand.
(38:50):
You were never there.
Do you understand?
If you can't grasp this,there are things we can do.
He turns to Frankie's mother and says,can she keep a secret?
Frankie's mom says, yeah.
Just tell her what you want.
He looks back at Frankie and says,if you ever talk about this
(39:11):
the rest of your life,we can take your whole family.
Take the kids to the German P.O.W.
camp at Orchard Park and your parentsto the Japanese one in Artesia.
Or we don't even need camps.
He said we'd put you in one.
We put your parents in the other one.
But we don't have to do that.
He said we could take you out herein the middle of this desert.
(39:32):
He said no one will ever find your bodies.
Ever.
No one will ever knowwhat happened to you.
The nightmare lasted about 45 minutesto an hour.
and Frankie finally tells the manshe won't say anything to anybody.
Her mom sends her to her room
at that point, and Frankie has no ideawhat her mom said to him after that.
(39:53):
But the topic died in that house that day.
It wasn't resurrected until researchersknocked on her door in 1989.
Her sister corroboratesboth listening to their dad's excitement
when he told them about the creatureshe saw in the desert,
and the visit from the mena few days later.
(40:13):
So thanks to tactics like this,it worked like a charm.
Roswell's grapevine dried up, storiesfalling into
whispersshared only with spouses or on deathbeds.
Now, after all of that,let's take a moment
to go down an amazingly crazy rabbit hole.
(40:33):
According to Nick Redfern, writing in 2015for the Mysterious Universe website
and referencing a partially declassified
FBI report called “Bacteriological Warfarein the United States,”
the plaguebroke out around Lincoln County,
which is where the debris field is,which is right next to Roswell,
(40:55):
with cases reported from 1947 to 1950.
It didn't affect too many people,but a couple of people died.
According to Nick, the report impliesthat the powers that be were concerned
that this was not a naturallyoccurring event, that it was instead,
something introduced and spreadon purpose, potentially by foreign actors.
(41:17):
Now stick with me here.
I know this is crazy down territory,but when I read that,
the first thing I thought ofwas that maybe somebody decided
this would be the perfect wayto try and decrease
the number of potentialfuture whistleblowers.
Carol Ann,
that's a terriblething to say about your government.
(41:38):
Well, they've done worse.
Don't get me wrong.
I love this country,and I love our military,
but we have been known to makesome pretty boneheaded moves in the past.
Just throwing it out there.
Anyway, back to the story.
Now, of course, some of these eyewitnessaccounts are not without their problems.
(42:00):
Take Major Jesse Marcel Sr., the guy
we all know from those famous weatherballoon photos.
Well, he decidedit was time to set the record straight
when StantonFriedman called him for an interview.
However, his testimony comes into question
because of some of the weird thingshe said later on in life.
Like he was a pilot with combatexperience, which he never was.
(42:23):
But then we also hadthe testimony of Jesse’s son, Jesse Jr.
He says he touched the stuff, too,and backs up his dad's account.
But then we also have Melvin Brown,
who said he saw the bodies twicewhile he was on guard duty.
Except he wasn't a guard. He was a cook.
Cooksdon't typically guard top secret hauls.
(42:44):
But maybe things were crazywith everything
going on and people got their dutiesshifted around.
Then there's WalterHaut's interview in 2000,
where he was a little fuzzyon the specifics.
But the affidavithe released upon his death in 2005
notarized and witnessed,including a doctor's statement
that he was of soundmind, was clear and detailed.
(43:08):
But one little hitch UFO researchershelped draft it based on their prior
conversations, which Haut reviewedand signed without changes.
Does the fact that he didn'twrite it himself change anything?
Some people seem to think so.
But let's not forget that there areproblems with the official story as well.
There are new things still happening.
(43:29):
For example, look again at the balloonwreckage press conference photo.
See the note in General Ramey's hand?
People have been trying
to enlarge the photo to tryand figure out the words for a long time.
But as digital technology gets betterand better,
efforts are still ongoingto try and figure out what it says.
Right now, we can see words like disc
(43:51):
victims, misstatethe meaning of the story.
Now, I don't think it'sout of the question that as technology
gets better, that little memomight become a pretty important clue.
And the third guy in the roomfor that infamous photo, Ramey's right
hand man, ThomasDuBose, came out in 1991 to say, yeah,
(44:12):
the stuff on the ground in that pictureis totally fake.
The real stuff went to DC.
Of course the last question is,what happened to the bodies?
Well, apparently they were createdand flown out under tarps.
Some say they went to Fort Worthand onto Wright-Patterson in Ohio.
Some say they went straightto Washington DC, and some say
(44:33):
the bodies went a few different places.
There's an account of a March 1950FBI memo from agent Guy Hottel
to Director Hoover, describing three
flying saucers recovered in New Mexico,
each about 50ft in diameter,with raised centers occupied by three
(44:54):
three foot tall humanoids inmetallic cloth of fine texture.
- an account sourcedfrom an Air Force investigator,
but dismissed as hearsay at the time.
And then there are the persistent rumorsof a survivor.
A 1972 whistleblower claimed one entity,given the designation
(45:15):
EBEN-1,was held at Los Alamos until 1952,
communicating through simple drawingsand telepathic impressions
before being repatriated viasome interstellar arrangement.
Now, for those of youwho've been sticking around for that
little something extra, it has to dowith the town of Roswell itself.
(45:36):
It's weird.
That bestie I mentioned earlier that spenta couple of years there as a reporter
for the Roswell DailyRecord, couldn't wait
to get a new job anywhere else.
To him,the whole place just had this weird vibe.
It was just an accepted fact that strangethings were a regular occurrence there.
(45:56):
He himself witnessed mysterious thingszipping around the night sky all the time.
And he also said thateveryone who's lived there
their whole lives knows that what happenedin 1947 is true.
They just don't say it out loud.
And half the people there believethe aliens have come back to live there.
A hiding in plain sight kind of strategy.
(46:19):
And he told me this interesting story.
Let's go back a bit to set the scene.
Roswell Army Airfield,which then became Roswell Air Force Base,
which then became Walker Air Force Base,which then closed June 30th of 1967,
left poor Roswell without the only realsource of income they'd had for decades.
(46:39):
Well, the answer to their prayerscame along sometime in the 80s.
Japan, not known for its sprawlinglandscapes, needed someplace
big with runways where Japan Airlinescould train its pilots.
And the longshuttered airbase seemed to fit the bill.
Perfect!
Except 18 months later,they packed up and left,
(47:00):
mumbling something about their equipment,never working quite right.
Was it because they just couldn'tget used to living in a city
that was actively leaning into the touristdollars starting to come their way
as the story of 1947 eventsbecame mainstream?
Or was it that the inherent weirdness
really did mess with their equipment,to the point where they just had to leave.
(47:22):
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
So is Roswell too weird?
Not at all. I don't mean to dunk on them.
After all, it is the home town of JohnDenver, Demi Moore and Priscilla Presley.
And they honored Stanton Friedmanposthumously in 2022
with a star on its International UFOMuseum Walk of Fame.
(47:44):
But the question is,
did the weirdness startbecause of what happened there in 1947?
Or was something beyond our imagination
attracted to the weirdness already there?
My friend assures me that everyonethere has a story to tell,
but only after you close the notebook.
(48:09):
Whew, Nelly!
That was a marathon.
But I hope you enjoyed our little tripdown Alien Lane.
If this is just the startof your weirdness travels for today,
go ahead and clickright here for your next destination.
It's worth it.
I promise.
Be careful out there.
(48:30):
And I will see youhere again, on The InBetween.
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