For centuries, man has wondered on his position in the universe. Is he alone? Is he the divine creature? Is he descended from an ape or a godly being? Finding its major roots just recently after World War II, the idea of extraterrestrial life existing and visiting our planet has held us captivated. The probability of alien visitors, although not entirely proven, is growing in acceptance due to an overwhelming amount of evidence and public support. Many things have happened that lead people to believe in aliens. However our Government feels the need to hide this. Many people feel the incident at Roswell New Mexico actually happened. There is definitely enough credible information to continue with the Roswell investigation.
The acronym UFO means unidentified flying objet. It is also take to mean any aerial phenomena not readily explainable (Doherty 129). Meteors, planets, rockets, stars, artificial satellites, and weather balloons are often the explanations behind UFOs (Doherty 17). The theory, however, that UFOs come from outer space is called the extraterrestrial hypothesis. The only problem with this theory is the distance involved in interstellar travel. Another hypothesis on the nature of UFOs is the demonic force hypothesis. It states that the UFOs represent demons coming to earth for the final battle between good and evil (Randle 112). The not so widely accepted theory is that of hallucination/dream. Its major debunker is that mass hallucinations would have to be fairly common. The final hypothesis on UFO sightings is the null hypothesis, which states that they simply do not exist (Randle 114).
There are three different specific types of sightings. First comes the Close Encounter of the First Kind. In this setting, a UFO is seen at close range, but does not interact with its environment, this type is the most common (Arvey 54). Next are the Close Encounters of the Second Kind. The UFO interacts with its environment, animals are frightened, humans may have minor burns or clouded thinking, engines stall, headlights dim or home appliances stop working (Arvey 55). The last type is the Close Encounter of the Third Kind. In this last type, aliens may be seen in or near a UFO, abductions may happen (Arvey 55).
There are many explanations for what can appear to be a flying saucer. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, a type of cloud called lenticular forms itself into a large spherical shape, thus looking entirely like a UFO. Ball lightning could be another explanation for what was seen at Roswell. There are four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma (Arvey 62). When a gas loses or gains electrons (is ionized), it becomes plasma. On earth, plasma occurs only in the upper stratosphere when lightning strikes between thunderclouds in the lower atmosphere. Atmospheric electricity in the form of plasma is called ball lightning. Ball lightning can explain most UFO sightings. It can be red, orange, white, blue, or yellow. It is also shaped like a sphere, and seems to burn. None of these explanations can be used to describe the story that is about to be told.
In the summer of 1947, a number of UFO sightings were reported in the United States. Many of these sightings were tracked by several states, this could have added to the strength of the theory that the Roswell crash actually happened. Sometime during the first week of July 1947, something crashed near Roswell. W.W. "Mac" Brazel, a New Mexico rancher, saddled up his horse and rode out with the son of neighbors Floyd and Loretta Proctor to check on the sheep after a fierce thunderstorm the night before. As they rode along, Brazel began to notice unusual pieces of what seemed to be metal debris scattered over a large area. Upon further inspection, Brazel saw that a shallow trench, several hundred feet long, had been gouged into the land.
Brazel was struck by the unusual properties of the debris, and after dragging a large piece of it to a shed, he took some of it over to show the Proctors. Mrs. Proctor has recently (as of June 1997) moved from the ranch into a home nearer to town, but she remembers Mac showing up with strange material (Arvey, 46).
The Proctors told Brazel that he might be holding wreckage from a UFO or a government project and that he should report the incident to the sheriff. A day or two later, Mac drove into Roswell where he reported the incident to Sheriff George Wilcox, who reported it to Intelligence Officer Major Jesse Marcel of the 509 Bomb Group, and for days thereafter, the debris site was closed while the wreckage was cleared. One question that needs to be asked is why was the area closed? If this was not of an extraterrestrial nature reporters should have been allowed to go into the area and report on it, just as if there was a murder, car wreck or hot air balloon crash.
On July 8, 1947, the Commander of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell, Col. William Blanchard issued a press release stating that the wreckage of a crashed disk had been recovered.
Hours later the first press release was rescinded and the second press release stated that the 509th Bomb Group had mistakenly identified a weather balloon as wreckage of a flying saucer.
Meanwhile, back in Roswell, Glenn Dennis, a young mortician working at the Ballard Funeral Home, received some curious calls one afternoon from the morgue at the airfield. It seems the Mortuary Officer needed to get a hold of some small hermetically sealed coffins, and wanted information about how to preserve bodies that had been exposed to the elements for a few days, without contaminating the tissue (Korff, 114). Small, hermetically sealed coffins wouldn't be needed unless they were afraid of whatever was inside getting out.
Glenn Dennis drove out to the base hospital later that evening where he saw large pieces of wreckage with strange engravings on one of the pieces sticking out of the back of a military ambulance. Upon entering the hospital he started to visit with a nurse he knew, when suddenly he was threatened by military police and forced to leave.
The next day, Glenn Dennis met with the nurse. She told him about the bodies and drew pictures of them on a prescription pad. Within a few days she was transferred to England, her whereabouts are still unknown.
According to the research of Don Schmitt and Kevin Randle, in their book, A History of UFO Crashes, from which the following account of the Roswell Incident, in part, is based, the military had been watching an unidentified flying object on radar for four days in southern New Mexico. On the night of July 4, 1947, radar indicated that the object was down around thirty to forty miles northwest of Roswell (Patton, 202).
Eye witness William Woody, who lived east of Roswell, remembered being outside with his father the night of July 4, 1947, when he saw a brilliant object plunge to the ground. A couple of days later when Woody and his father tried to locate the area of the crash, they were stopped by military personnel, who had cordoned off the area.
Acting on the call from Sheriff Wilcox, Intelligence Officer Major Jesse Marcel was sent by Col. William Blanchard, to investigate Mac Brazel's story. Marcel and Senior Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Agent Captain Sheridan Cavitt followed a rancher off-road to his place. They spent the night there and Marcel inspected a large piece of debris that Brazel had dragged from the pasture.
On Monday morning, July 7, 1947, Major Jesse Marcel took his first step onto the debris field. Marcel would remark later that "something... must have exploded above the ground and fell." As Brazel, Cavitt and Marcel inspected the field, Marcel was able to 'determine which direction it came from, and which direction it was heading. It was in the pattern... you could tell where it started out and where it ended by how it was thinned out...' (Korff).
According to Marcel, the debris was 'strewn over a wide area, I guess maybe three-quarters of a mile long and a few hundred feet wide.' Scattered in the debris were small bits of metal that Marcel held a cigarette lighter to, to see if it would burn. 'I lit the cigarette lighter to some of this stuff and it didn't burn', he said. (Korff, 106)
Along with the metal, Marcel described weightless I-beam-like structures that were 3/8" x 1/4", none of them would neither bend nor break. Some of these I-beams had indecipherable characters along the length, in two colors. Marcel also described metal debris the thickness of tin foil that was indestructible.
After gathering enough debris to fill his staff car, Maj. Marcel decided to stop by his home on the way back to the base so that he could show his family the unusual debris. He'd never seen anything quite like it. 'I didn't know what we were picking up. I still don't know what it was...it could not have been part of an aircraft, not part of any kind of weather balloon or experimental balloon...I've seen rockets... sent up at the White Sands Testing Grounds. It definitely was not part of an aircraft or missile or rocket' (Korff, 93).
Under hypnosis conducted by Dr. John Watkins in May of 1990, Jesse Marcel Jr. remembered being awakened by his father that night and following him outside to help carry in a large box ...