Welcome to Mysteries over Martinis! This blog is a mix of unexplained phenomena and personal encounters served up with a mystery-themed cocktail. It’s a recipe for intrigue!

Ginger Alien

Ingredients:

1 part Absolut Mandrin

3 parts Ginger Ale

1 orange slice

Fill a highball glass with ice cubes. Add all ingredients and garnish with the orange slice.

 

Insight into the Roswell Incident (Part 1)

This month marks the 67^th anniversary of an incident shrouded in mystery and controversy. With all the years passed, the event still raises more questions than answers. Even the simplest details have been refuted. The varying accounts, numerous credible witnesses and retraction of the original press release make for a story rich in strangeness. I hesitated to beat this dead horse, but when a significant amount of people argue that the proverbial ‘horse’ was never a horse at all, I feel it is a topic worth investigating.

There have been numerous sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) for hundreds, if not thousands of years. However, World War II marked the beginning of an influx of UFO activity. Two events that occurred just weeks apart in the summer of 1947 sparked a frenzy of interest in extraterrestrial visitors and created a subculture known as “ufology.”

On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine unusual objects. They glowed brightly and flew in a “V” formation over Mount Rainier. He estimated their speed to be approximately 1700 mph. Arnold thought they may have been test flights of military aircraft but the military said they had not been conducting test flights at that time. Arnold is yet another credible witness. He owned Great Western Fire Control Supply Company and was a civilian pilot. He was a relief U.S. Marshall and occasionally flew prisoners to the Federal Penitentiary. A prospector on Mt. Adams also witnessed the strange objects around the same time as Arnold, giving credibility to his story. After the media exposure of Arnold’s sighting, similar reports began to increase across the United States.

Three weeks after this report, a violent storm hovered over a desolate area northwest of Roswell, NM. William “Mack” Brazel was the foreman for the J.B. Foster sheep ranch. He lived in a shack on the property and was riding out the storm. The next morning, he went out to the pasture to tend to the herd and discovered a debris field stretching nearly 200 yards wide. He described the material as metallic in color and incredibly light weight. He also found beams that were flexible but could not be broken. He held a match to the material but it would not burn or melt. He was baffled by the unusual properties.

Mack paid a visit to the Chaves County Sheriff, George Wilcox, to report the wreckage. The Sheriff felt this would be better suited for the military so he reached out to the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF). RAAF had the most elite military group in the country. These were the men who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki so they were quite knowledgeable when it came to aircraft and weapons.

That same afternoon, Major Jesse Marcel Sr. and Captain Sheridan Cavitt were sent out to investigate the debris. Mack Brazel led the two army intelligence officers to the crash site. Jesse Marcel was an experienced combat pilot whose primary job during peace time was to investigate air accidents. Sheridan Cavitt was a senior Counter Intelligence Corps agent.

Per an interview for a documentary film about UFOs, Major Marcel had this to say about the downed craft. “They were just fragments strewn all over the area… so we proceeded to pick up the parts. See, I tried to bend the stuff… it will not bend. I even tried to burn it. It would not burn. See, that stuff weighs nothing. It’s not any thicker than tinfoil and a pack of cigarettes. We even tried making a dent in it with a 16 lb sledgehammer, still no dent in it. One thing I was certain of, being familiar with all air activities, that it was not a weather balloon, nor an aircraft, nor a missile. It was something else of which we didn’t know what it was.”

Late on the night of July 7^th, Jesse Marcel was hauling the debris back to RAAF. From there, it was set to be shipped to what is now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. This is where captured enemy equipment is handled. He stopped by his home to show the odd material to his wife and 11 year old son, Jesse Jr. He woke his son up and told him he needed to look at what he’d brought home because it was something he’d never see again.

“We were all amazed by this debris that was there. Probably because we didn’t know what it was, you know. It was just the unknown.” Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr. remarked during an interview with Unsolved Mysteries in 1989.

Amongst the fragments were short beams with strange markings. “This writing could have been described like hieroglyphics, Egyptian type hieroglyphs, but not really. The symbols on the “I” beams were more of a geometric type configuration and various designs. It had a violet purple type color and was actually an embossed part of the metal itself.”

Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr. died in 2013 but he too was an accomplished man. He was a colonel, a pilot and a medical doctor. He was involved with the military for 36 years and he always stuck with his story. However, Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr. was not the only person to witness the strange hieroglyph-like symbols.

Glenn Dennis had recently graduated college and was working as a mortician’s assistant in Roswell. He claims he received a strange phone call a couple days before the UFO story broke. The mortuary officer at RAAF was inquiring about child-size hermetically sealed coffins and preservation techniques for bodies that had been exposed to the elements for a few days.

Later that day, Dennis was asked to transport an injured serviceman to the air base. When he arrived, he described the scene as having a lot of “confusion.” Outside of the infirmary was a military ambulance. According to Dennis, the back of the ambulance contained debris. “It looked like stainless steel that had come in contact with a high degree of heat. It was a purplish, bluish color. I noticed one large piece of the wreckage that looked like there was some Egyptian hieroglyphics.” Dennis recounted for Unsolved Mysteries.

Dennis continued inside to get a coke. While there, he saw a nurse he was acquainted with coming out of an examining room. She had a cloth over her mouth. She said, “My Gosh, get out of here or you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”

She entered a room where a captain stood. He approached Dennis and told him the base was off limits. He explained who he was and said it looked like they had a crash on their hands. He offered to assist. Two military police officers were ordered to escort Dennis from the premises. As he was leaving, a red-head Captain approached and said, “You did not see anything, there was no crash here and if you say anything, you could get into a lot of trouble.”

When Dennis said he was a civilian and the military couldn’t do a damn thing to him, the Captain responded with, “Yes, we can. Somebody will be picking your bones out of the sand.”

Dennis says he later met up with the nurse. She was visibly upset and wanted to discuss what was happening at the air base. First, she made him swear that he’d never reveal her name to anyone as she feared there would be severe repercussions. She said that she was asked to take notes while two pathologists did a preliminary autopsy. She was stunned to find 3 unearthly beings. Two were horribly mangled and one was fairly intact. The smell was terrible. She said the creatures had over-sized heads with deeply set eyes. The nose was concave with 2 orifices. The mouth was a small slit and the ears were small holes with flaps. She also described 4 fingers on each hand and the tips had pads resembling little suction cups. She went on to say that the doctors commented that they’d never seen anything like it before.

According to Dennis, his nurse friend was transferred to England soon afterward. He sent a letter to her and he claims the letter was returned to him marked “Deceased.” He says he later heard that she had been killed in a military plane crash. Because he would not reveal her name, the story cannot be corroborated.

The nurse’s report of witnessing the mysterious travelers jibes with the account given by Julie Shuster, daughter of Lieutenant Walter Haut. Walter Haut was the public information officer for RAAF in 1947. He was a bombardier navigator with flight status and his daughter claims the wreckage found was not that of a weather balloon. She claims that her father saw bodies under a tarp when he was at Hangar 84 which is supposedly where the wreckage and bodies were taken to be studied before being sent on to what is now Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio.

Colonel William “Butch” Blanchard, the Base Commander at RAAF, had Haut issue a press release saying a flying saucer had been recovered. The headline of the Roswell Daily Record read, “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region.”

The next day, the original press release was retracted and the new article was entitled. “Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer.” General Roger Ramey was the Commander of the Eight Air Force at Fort Worth, Texas, which was the Air Force’s headquarters. The debris made a stop there on the way to Ohio to be analyzed. General Ramey stated that upon examination of the debris recovered by Major Marcel was determined to be a weather balloon. The debris was described as a “…bundle of tinfoil, broken wood beams, and rubber remnants of a balloon…” A photo of Major Marcel holding the debris is included below. According to Marcel, General Ramey allowed some members of the press to take pictures of the debris. The photo of him on the floor holding a metallic piece is supposedly some of the “less interesting” debris. He claims that the press wasn’t allowed far enough into the room to touch it.

It is believed by a majority of UFO researchers that Col. Blanchard had received orders by the Pentagon to issue a new press release in order to cover up the recovery of an extraterrestrial craft and the alien crew on board. When reporters tried to reach out to Col. Blanchard, they were told by his office that “no further details were available.” Then later, reporters were told he was on leave.

The same edition of the Roswell Daily Record also contained an article entitled, “Harassed Rancher Who Located ‘Saucer’ Sorry He Told about It.” According to the article, Brazel reported the site as follows. “The balloon which held it up, if that is how it worked, must have been about 12 feet long, he felt, measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in diameter. When the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds. There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine and no sign of any propellers of any kind. Although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil. There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction. No string or wire were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used. Brazel said that he had previously found two weather balloons on the ranch, but that what he found this time did not in any way resemble either of these.”

The description of the debris given by Mack Brazel is different than that described by Major Jesse Marcel, Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr. and Glenn Dennis but the one common thread is that the remnants did not appear to be that of a weather balloon.

While researching this famous incident, I kept coming across contradictory information. Even the details that should be straight forward have been refuted. Not to mention, the complexity of this mystery. Each time I’d try to get a grasp on a story, it would lead me in a completely different direction. I knew there was a conspiracy theory involved but I had no idea just how many twists and turns I’d encounter. It has been difficult to get straight answers to anything. I tried to simplify the details as much as possible without sacrificing the meat of the story.

Many people agree that there is a sufficient amount of evidence to support the theory that a massive cover-up was concocted in order to hide the truth behind the Roswell incident. It seems obvious there was something the military wanted to hide. However, what was being kept secret is an issue of debate. I’ve outlined the details which would support the most extreme theory which leans in favor of an alien crash. Next week, I’ll delve into an alternate explanation for the deception. Until then, get out your tin foil hat and kick back with an ice cold Ginger Alien.