Part 1 of this 3-part article began as follows, in relation to my research into the Roswell “UFO crash” of 1947.

“Last week I was interviewed on the subject of my 2017 book, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy. It is a follow-up to my 2005 book, Body Snatchers in the Desert. Both books focus on the theory that what happened outside of Roswell, New Mexico in the summer of 1947 had nothing to do with aliens, but everything to do with classified programs connected to high-altitude experiments in New Mexico, exposure to radiation, huge balloons and much more. As for that interview, it was for a new book that the guy is writing on Roswell from the E.T. perspective. As a full-on believer that aliens did come down on the Foster Ranch in forty-seven, he was having none of what I had to say. He basically said there was no way that terrible experiments – of the types described in my books – would ever have been undertaken back in the 1940s. Clearly, he didn’t know his history. I said something to the effect of: “You’re joking, right?” He assured me he was not joking. So, I told him to check out the ultimate report on this angle of “human experimentation” back in the 1940s (and onward). It is titled Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report. Dated October 1995, it runs to no less than 925 pages and was published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. One of the days I’ll share with you the very strange story of how I got my copy and how it’s filled to the brim with annotations from the retired person who provided it to me. But, that’s for another day. Back to those experiments.”

If all of the above is true  – that what happened at Roswell, New Mexico in early July 1947 involved not a UFO and an alien crew, but a homegrown, top secret experiment of highly disturbing proportions – then why can’t we prove it? Well, first and foremost, no theory that has been put forward for the incident has proved to be the precise answer. For example, even the U.S. Air Force admitted that it couldn’t state with 100 percent certainty that their conclusions told the correct story. Many of you will know that in 1997 the Air Force presented a theory that the so-called “alien bodies” were really crash-test dummies. Actually, that’s not quite right. If you read the 1997 report on Roswell carefully, you’ll see that the Air Force said that the bodies were “probably” dummies. Yes, probably. That was their word, not mine. That’s because the Air Force couldn’t find any papers that confirmed dummies came down in Lincoln County, New Mexico in July 1947. If even the USAF couldn’t find the files back in 1997, then what chance do we have today? The answer is, to be honest, not much of a chance at all. The same goes for the Mogul balloon theory, for the idea that Roswell was a hoax initiated by the Russians, for Mac Tonnies’ “cryptoterrestrial theory” and for the data in my 2017 book, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy.

Can the data in the 1995 report help us to solve the enigma of Roswell? If, in the late-1940s, people were used against their collective will, and used in experiments that led to the creation of a UFO legend, we could make a case – based on logic – that the files on Roswell should be held deep somewhere in the government’s, mindbogglingly-massive collection of “human experiment” files, rather than in hidden UFO records, right? Yes, that should be the case. Unfortunately, however, the report does not help us to solve Roswell. And why might that be? Almost certainly for one particular, eye-opening reason: numerous files that the Advisory Committee hoped to examine couldn’t be found. Let’s see what the Committee had to say about all of this. Its staff stated: “One of the most difficult tasks before the Committee was determining how many federally sponsored human radiation experiments occurred between 1944 and 1974 and who conducted them. When President Clinton established the Committee, he also directed the Human Radiation Interagency Working Group to provide us with all relevant documentary information in each of the agencies’ files. Teams were formed to identify the hundreds of government sites where relevant documents might be located. We discovered there was no easy way to identify how many experiments had been conducted, where they took place, and which government agencies had sponsored them [italics mine].”

The Committee asked an important question: “What rules or policies, if any, existed, to govern federally sponsored experiments in the pre-1974 period?” The response was: “The prevailing assumption was that, with a few notable exceptions, it was not until the mid-1960s that federal agencies began to develop such policies in any significant way…As we began our search into the past, we found that it was necessary to reconstruct a vanished world. The Committee and the agencies had to collect information scattered in warehouses throughout the country.”

In other words, it wasn’t just a case of examining the old “human experimentation” files; it was also a matter of trying to find them. And, we know that a significant body of old material was not found. Just maybe, if Roswell was a secret experiment, rather than the crash of a UFO, then – for decades- we may have been looking in all of the wrong directions for the answers. Instead of searching for tales of dead aliens, we should be looking outside of the box. By that, I mean if people were used in terrible experiments in New Mexico in July 1947, then the truth of Roswell may be buried somewhere – yes, still, more than seventy years later – in a warehouse that has yet to be addressed and examined that remains overlooked. Perhaps, today, there is no Roswell cover-up. Maybe, the files are just sitting somewhere, out of sight, stored away on a dusty shelf and overlooked. Shades of the final seconds of Raiders of the Lost Ark? Kind of. Just maybe, to get the answers to Roswell we –  just like the Committee – need to “reconstruct a vanished world” too.

With this three-part article now at its end, I’ll say this: I’m as certain as I can be that if the files on Roswell still exist, they won’t be found in the UFO archives of the U.S. Air Force, the NSA, the CIA, the DIA, the FBI, NASA, the…well, the list goes on. Where they will be found, I predict, is in a decades-old file that details tales of shocking, secret experiments on people that crossed the line.

There are perhaps no stranger cases among cryptid or alien reports than what have been described as humanoid insect creatures. I have covered this topic before, but there are many other accounts that seem to really go beyond the bizarre to enter realms that are in no way easy to classify or categorize at all. Here we have reports of encounters of what can only be described as walking giant bugs, and they are every bit as completely off-the-wall as you might imagine.

One place where one might expect to see something odd and beyond the explainable would be out in rural or wilderness areas, but nothing likely could prepare some witnesses for their surreal and outlandish experience of seeing an insectoid humanoid in the wilds. This is exactly what allegedly happened to a witness called “Ricky,” who called in his experience on the show Coast To Coast AM on September 27, 2016. He says that at the time he had been on what was supposed to be a fun, family camping trip at the Sequoia National Forest, located in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains of California and known for its towering, ancient giant sequoia trees. With its majestic trees lending it an otherworldly ambiance, this place already looks like something from a dream world, but it would get utterly bizarre one evening after everyone had gone to bed and the witness stayed up gazing upon the flickering embers of the bonfire they had made. He explains:

At about 9 o’clock, everyone decides to go to sleep and my friend and I were left staring at the bonfire. I decided it was a good time to listen to music so I went to my sister’s forerunner and I was opening the back to grab my Ipod. And as I opened the back door, I heard something come out of the tree. It didn’t come out of the tree. It was almost like it was holding on and it fell. And I heard this huge thump. I could feel it. And as I… I had a flashlight on me. I looked over at the tree I heard the fall from and I swear on my life and I swear to God, honest to God, I saw a 6 to 7-foot-tall praying mantis. And as I laid eyes on it, I completely lost breath. I was completely taken aback. It took a step back and it became completely invisible. I could not believe what I saw.

I slammed the door and I ran back to the campfire. I alerted my friend. I woke everyone up and no one would believe me. I was really upset because I knew what I’d seen. So that happened and my friend didn’t believe me. He was laughing at me and then all of a sudden I could hear all these things surrounding us and finally when I brought it to my friend’s attention, he kinda put his ear to it and he heard it too. Finally, I was patrolling the campground with my flashlight and I could just hear these things surrounding us and I heard like this clicking sound, it was like (makes clicking sound). It was really strange. I was so scared.

What was this creature and how can we reconcile it with anything known to exist in those woods? From researcher Albert Rosales we have another account of a camping encounter, this time from the country of Poland. The witness purportedly had been camping out in the remote wilds of Wielkopolska province, Poland, and had her experience as she was walking through a meadow on her way back to the camping site from a hike. As she approached her tent, her attention was drawn to an odd figure squatting down next to a nearby lake. Not knowing what exactly she was looking at and startled that anyone else would be out there in this isolated place, she approached until she was only 8 meters away, as she did realizing that this was not a human being. She would describe it as looking like a humanoid insect, estimated to be around 5 feet tall and with extremely long thin limbs, gray or beige in color, and possessing oversized black eyes that were very much like those of an insect, and thin, fragile looking wings. The witness also expresses that the creature seemed to be surprised that it had been discovered, and would say:

It gazed at me and I knew that it did not know what it would do. Our encounter had no meaning or aim; it appears to have been a total surprise for both of us.

It is unclear what happened after this, but it is certainly not something that anyone wants to run into out in the middle of nowhere in the woods. Another such bonkers report comes to us from the site Phantoms and Monsters, from a witness who says that he has had multiple encounters with some sort of bizarre insectoid, and was just a boy at the time his first. He claims he had lived with his family in a remote mountain area of the wilderness of Ontario, Canada when one day he looked out the window to see something that would leave an indelible impression on his young mind, and which he can clearly remember to this day. He says of what happened:

We had the windows open in the house as air conditioners were not common in 1968. It was a very hot that night. I shared a room with my brother and sister. I woke up during the night and looked out the window into the backyard and in front of a bush about 8 feet away was a small thin creature with shiny black skin. It looked like a small girl but at the same time it kinda looked like an insect. It was crouched on its legs and was leaning forward with one hand on the ground and was looking at me. It had what looked like thin antennas or like needles sticking out from each side of its head and one on top. That’s all I remember and when I told my mom she said it was a dream.

He would have two more sightings of the same creature over the years, each time being told that it was a dream, but he isn’t so sure. Was this all in his head or was there something more to it? The witness himself goes on to say that he feels it might have been an alien presence, and this would certainly fit into numerous reports that seem to definitely be linked to the UFO phenomenon. One report of this kind compiled by Albert Rosales comes from the files of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), and describes a very weird encounter that purportedly occurred in April of 2016, in the area of Zygi, Cyprus. The witness explains that she had been hanging out with friends in her yard when they saw a UFO, followed by what they assumed to be its occupant, which was of a decidedly insectoid appearance. She says:

My two friends and I had just finished our meal and were out in the garden talking and drinking (not alcohol). One of my friends had gone into the kitchen to refill their glass, whilst me and my other friend remained outside. After a moment of silence, my friend pointed out an unusually bright ‘star’ moving across the sky, assuming it may have been a comet or something. After a brief moment, I looked up at it again to realize that it was stationary; around 75-100ft above the treeline. I sat there, staring at this ‘thing’, just in complete shock. Every 15 seconds or so it would lower its altitude, until it was only a couple of feet from the tree tops. The weirdest part about this is that absolutely no noise had been emitted thus far. I tried to get out of my chair to hurry inside, but I felt an overwhelming feeling of paralysis, as did my friend. I turned to her and asked her what was going on, but she looked frozen in fear.

After what felt like hours, something appeared from around the trees underneath the triangular craft. It was a humanoid figure, with a head similar to that of an ant, and skin like a crocodile. It had extremely small eyes in proportion to its head, and long, thin appendages. It walked right up to the fence, before sharply turning and sprinting into the darkness of the trees. After a brief moment of complete fear, dread and anxiousness, the craft moved in a linear path towards the West, before becoming no longer visible. During this time, my friend who had gone to refill her glass watched the entire event through the window. She recalls, although neither me or my other friend do, that the creature had some sort of device in its ‘hand’, and that it held it up briefly before its disappearance.

Other reports are really hard to classify as one thing or the other, and serve to be just plain odd. From an episode of Coast to Coast AM comes a report on August 16, 2017, from a caller in a small town called Harwood Heights, just outside of Chicago, Illinois. He says that one evening he came home from work at around 1:30 AM and looked out the widow to see something outlandish looking back at him from the darkness. He says of the incident:

I looked out to the window to across the street and I saw a crypto, if you will, a Mothman-type insectoid; small body, unusually large head normal, no red eyes, and it kept staring. I went to make tea, fed the cats, came back, rubbed my eyes to see if I was tired and seeing things and, sure enough, it was there. One important thing, there was no foreboding fear. None whatsoever. That I found interesting. I was shocked as many people that had seen similar things. I went several times. I would say about four to five times, just peering outside, looking at the window and it just stood there. I live in a small town near Chicago. I figured police would do their rounds or someone would see it. You could hear a pin drop. It’s a very small community, sure enough, no one was around. It did not faze me to take a picture. I did have a smartphone at the time right but overall no fear and absolutely, you’re just there in the shock because you just can’t believe what you’re seeing. You listen to accounts but you never think you will be in that situation. I went back several times. I was listening to your show that night, peering out every now and then. It just kept standing there.

In the morning I went to see any trace of anything. It was gone, so, yeah. Above all, I would say the strangest thing would be I was not afraid at all and it shocks me to even say that now. Thinking back over the several months and years, I talked to friends, they have an interest in it – I kept thinking it was crouching like a runner would be so it could have been taller as many people claim to it being six or seven feet. It was almost as if definitely the body was much smaller and the head came to a point, almost as if, you know the old cartoons from Mad Magazine Spy Vs Spy, with the nose, if you will, comes into like a parrot’s or a bird beak, but there’s no beak, so it is very kind of pointed protruding face, if you will, but again, there were no eyes and there were no facial features, but again, in that humanoid design that’s where the face would be, of course, so yeah, but the head was much bigger than the body.

The Chicago area has several other strange insectoid reports like this that are really hard to classify. One comes again from the files of Albert Rosales, and describes the experience of a witness who had been sleeping on the sofa at a friend’s house in Chicago, Illinois, when he was suddenly roused from his slumber by a crushing sensation of terror, made even worse when he discovered that he was unable to move. When the paralyzed man glanced around the room in terror, he claims he saw looming by the doorway a 7-foot-tall humanoid entity that looked like “a large praying mantis that was wearing something resembling a black and purple cloak.” This horrifying creature apparently then approached the man and reached out to touch his shoulder with a skeletal hand with long, thin fingers, after which the witness lost consciousness. When he awoke the creature was gone.

Another report from Chicago comes from Phantoms and Monsters, and describes some sort of flying insectoid humanoid at Chicago’s Willis Tower. The witness supposedly outside having a cigarette when he looked up to see a winged humanoid figure ominously crouched up on the tower as if perched there like a gargoyle. Then the creature allegedly moved, unfurled its wings, and leapt off the building to go soaring into the sky. It was then that the witness realized that the creature was very insect-like in form, and Lon Strickler says of the report:

The witness states that the being’s outstretched wings were not very large, maybe 6-8 from tip-tip, but were very jagged and insect-like (shaped similar to a moth). The being was also dark green in color and had a body form like that of a mantis. The legs seemed to be human-like and extended beyond the body while flying. He called it a ‘human, insect and bird mix’…that seemed to mutate while in flight.

Joining the ranks of all of this bizarreness is an encounter originally published in the October 8, 2017 edition of Strange Magazine, that supposedly occurred back in 1948 at the shipbuilding port city of Bremerton, in the U.S. state of Washington. One day, a young woman named Virginia Staples was just going about her usual daily household chores, carrying a load of laundry down to the washing machines in the basement of her run-down apartment building. It was a mindless chore she had done countless times before, and there would have been no reason for this time to be any different, but it was to prove to lead to a shocking experience, indeed.

The dim basement was described as enormous, its volumous floor constantly covered with a sheen of water that leaked from the walls and was rumored to come from passageways leading to the nearby sea, but although it all had a rather creepy foreboding atmosphere, Virginia was used to working in this dark and dank place. Yet on this day something was not quite right, as she felt an undefinable sense of unease and dread, as if she were being watched from the ample shadows clinging to everything in there. She tried to cast the odd feeling out of her head, chalking it up to nerves, but it would not abate, indeed becoming stronger the longer she lingered there, graduating to sheer terror for no discernible reason. She would say of what happened next:

It was such a creepy feeling I finally turned around and looked toward the back of the basement and froze. I was so scared I can still feel it. I couldn’t move. In one of the huge holes in the basement there stood this thing. It was horrible! I stand five feet tall and this creature was as tall as I was. It had a bright orange colored body and little spidery thin legs and antennae on its head that kept moving back and in and out. That thing started towards me. I backed out of the basement and got up to my apartment and packed up all my things and moved. I was so scared. I moved over to Seattle to my cousin’s. Really no one would really believe this, but as God is my witness it really happened.

She would say that it looked to her almost like a humanoid shrimp, and that for years afterwards she says she had potent, chronic nightmares. The interesting part of this tale, other than the sheer outlandishness of the entity described, is that this was in the basement of an apartment complex, and not even a remote one out in the boondocks. At the time Bremerton was a bustling Naval port city home to around 80,000 people, so it makes no sense at all that there should be this thing, even if there were passageways to the sea. Where did it come from and why didn’t anyone else see it? The strange abomination was only seen this one time and we are left to wonder just what it could have possibly been or whether it ever really happened at all.

That is a recurring message we are left with in cases like these. Did they ever really happen at all? They are so completely and utterly bizarre that we have to at least accept the possibility that they are hallucinations, misidentifications, or straight up lies. But what if they are real? If that is the case, then what are we dealing with here? Are these aliens, interdimensional interlopers, or something else altogether? How do we even know where to begin? Whatever the answers may be, this is a very outlandish and little known area of humanoid encounters that really lodges out into the outer periphery of the odd, and as long as cases like these come in we are left to wonder what they all mean, if anything.

Last week I was interviewed on the subject of my 2017 book, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy. It is a follow-up to my 2005 book, Body Snatchers in the Desert. Both books focus on the theory that what happened outside of Roswell, New Mexico in the summer of 1947 had nothing to do with aliens, but everything to do with classified programs connected to high-altitude experiments in New Mexico, exposure to radiation, huge balloons and much more. As for that interview, it was for a new book that the guy is writing on Roswell from the E.T. perspective. As a full-on believer that aliens did come down on the Foster Ranch in forty-seven, he was having none of what I had to say. He basically said there was no way that terrible experiments – of the types described in my books – would ever have been undertaken back in the 1940s. Clearly, he didn’t know his history. I said something to the effect of: “You’re joking, right?” He assured me he was not joking. So, I told him to check out the ultimate report on this angle of “human experimentation” back in the 1940s (and onward). It is titled Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report. Dated October 1995, it runs to no less than 925 pages and was published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. One of the days I’ll share with you the very strange story of how I got my copy and how it’s filled to the brim with annotations from the retired person who provided it to me. But, that’s for another day. Back to those experiments.

A careful study of the massive report demonstrates that as far back as the 1940s highly classified experiments were undertaken on people  – revolving around the effects of radiation. Although, it’s important to note that the report doesn’t just focus on radiation-based issues. For example, there is a section on the CIA’s “mind-control” program, MKULTRA and other controversial topics. One of the things that I was told by some of my sources was that in the summer of 1947 – when the Roswell affair occurred – there was not just one experiment, but somewhere in the region of seven or eight (maybe more…), all of which failed miserably. They involved massive balloon arrays, lifting body-type craft, and high-altitude activity. Those same sources claimed that prisoners were used in several of those various experiments.

So far, no evidence has surfaced to show that the 1947 experiments near Roswell, New Mexico involved prisoners. There is, however, plenty of data available that shows prisoners most definitely were used in top secret experimentation. Notably, plans (that were ultimately shelved) show that some of those experiments involved then-newly-planned radical aircraft. Chapter 9 of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report states that: “In July 1949 a medical advisory panel met in Washington, D.C., to discuss psychological problems posed by radiation to crews of a then-planned nuclear-powered airplane. During the meeting an Air Force colonel noted that crewmen were concerned about anything physically harmful…” The report continues that although the nuclear-powered plane was never built, the military still had concerns regarding “…space flight, weapons plants, nuclear power plants, and on an atomic battlefield…”

Also from the 1949 panel, there are these eye-opening words: “The Committee is not in a position to make recommendations as to where these tests can be conducted other than that they should be carried out at some federal, state, or Armed Services prison, where life prisoners are incarcerated and where arrangements can be made with the prison authorities to cooperate in the experiment.  The selection of the prison is a matter for top military consideration. Continued cooperation of the prison staff and prisoners for a matter of many years will be required.”

As the report also notes, between 1963 and 1973 “…131 prisoners in Oregon and Washington submitted to experimental testicular irradiation with national security and other societal goals, but no potential for therapeutic benefit for the subjects.” The report also states that two, specific studies were initiated: they were run by Carl G. Heller, M.D., and C. Alvin Paulsen, M.D. As the documentation shows, “The government was interested in the effects of ionizing radiation on workers, astronauts, and other Americans who might be exposed, in a nuclear attack for example.” There’s this, too: “Both doctors viewed prisoners as ideal subjects. They were healthy, adult males who were not going anytime soon. In 1963 few if any researchers had moral qualms about using them as subjects, although there seems to have been a consensus in the research community on the rules that should govern such experimentation. By 1973, however, some ethicists, researchers, and others, such as the investigative journalist Jessica Mitford, pointed out that incarcerated people were not well placed to make voluntary decisions.”

And, there’s more: “In 1976, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research recommended the banning of almost all research on prisoners. Prison experimentation effectively came to an end in this country a few years after the commission offered its recommendations.” Does any of this prove that prisoners may have been used in highly-classified test-flights in New Mexico in the summer of 1947? No, it does not. What it does do, however, is to show that prisoners were used in secret experiments. The idea that some of the New Mexico tests of the summer of 1947 may have involved prisoners no longer seems quite so unlikely, after all.

Part 2 will soon follow…

In my previous article, I detailed how Kenneth Arnold – the man who ushered in the era of Flying Saucers in June 1947 – eventually changed his views on the nature of the UFO phenomenon. In Arnold’s own words in the early 1960s: “After some 14 years of extensive research, it is my conclusion that the so-called unidentified flying objects that have been seen in our atmosphere are not space ships at all, but are groups and masses of living organisms that are as much a part of our atmosphere and space as the life we find in the depths of our oceans. The only major difference in the space and atmosphere organisms are that they have the natural ability to change their densities at will.” That’s quite a change of opinion, to say the very least! Still on this issue of changing opinions, I’ll share with you today what I think is the most spectacular (and controversial and mysterious) change of opinion in the entire history of Ufology. It all revolves around the Roswell affair of July 1947 and the U.S. Air Force.

In 1994, the USAF published a detailed report (followed by an even bigger one in 1995) stating that while the Pentagon did not believe aliens crashed at Roswell, its staff no longer believed that the cause of the event was a weather balloon. The Air Force said that what really came down was a Mogul balloon: a huge balloon array designed to monitor for early Soviet atomic test-explosions in the atmosphere. But, that’s not the most amazing change of opinion I want to share with you. Yes, it relates to Roswell (directly, no less) but it is focused on a very different aspect of the mystery – that involving claims that bodies had been found at the crash site. In its 1994 report, the Air Force firmly stated that they had not addressed the matter of bodies for one specific, simple reason: Mogul balloons didn’t have crews. They were completely, 100 percent unmanned. In light of the USAF’s 1994 words on the bodies (or the lack of them), it was a very big surprise when, in 1997, the Air Force announced they were releasing a new report that would show bodies were found after all. They were, in reality, the Pentagon said, crash-test dummies. In other words, witness to the affair were really seeing military dummies on the ranch floor when they thought they were seeing small unusual bodies.

The 1997 report is a strange one. We have to wonder why the USAF even decided to publish the “dummies report.” Three years earlier it had made a clear and concise statement that no bodies of any kind – human, animal or alien – were found. When the USAF changed its opinion  – and having published a new report in 1997 that, in many ways, only served to create suspicions that this was all part of an ongoing cover-up – it wasn’t just UFO researchers who sat up and took notice: it was the mainstream media, too; many of who displayed doubts about the new theory. Or the new opinion. Let’s see what the Air Force had to say about this massive turnaround.

The 1997 report was titled The Roswell Report: Case Closed. In the foreword to the extensive report, Sheila Widnall, who at the time was the Secretary of the Air Force, stated this: “‘The ‘Roswell Incident’ has assumed a central place in American folklore since the events of the 1940s in a remote area of New Mexico. Because the Air Force was a major player in those events, we have played a key role in executing the General Accounting Office’s tasking to uncover all records regarding that incident. Our objective throughout this inquiry has been simple and consistent: to find all the facts and bring them to light. If documents were classified, declassify them; where they were dispersed, bring them into a single source for public review. In July 1994, we completed the first step in that effort and later published The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert. This volume represents the necessary follow-on to that first publication and contains additional material and analysis. I think that with this publication we have reached our goal of a complete and open explanation of the events that occurred in the Southwest many years ago. Beyond that achievement, this inquiry has shed fascinating light into the Air Force of that era and revitalized our appreciation for the dedication and accomplishments of the men and women of that time. As we celebrate the Air Force’s 50th Anniversary, it is appropriate to once again reflect on the sacrifices made by so many to make ours the finest air and space force in history.”

So, why did the USAF alter its opinion? The 1997 report includes the following: “The July 1994 Air Force report concluded that the predecessor to the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army Air Forces, did indeed recover material near Roswell in July 1947. This 1,000-page report methodically explains that what was recovered by the Army Air Forces was not the remnants of an extraterrestrial spacecraft and its alien crew, but debris from an Army Air Forces balloon-borne research project code named Mogul. Although Mogul components clearly accounted for the claims of ‘flying saucer’ debris recovered in 1947, lingering questions remained concerning anecdotal accounts that included descriptions of ‘alien’ bodies. The issue of ‘bodies’ was not discussed extensively in the 1994 report because there were not any bodies connected with events that occurred in 1947. The extensive Secretary of the Air Force-directed search of Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force records from 1947 did not yield information that even suggested the 1947 ‘Roswell’ events were anything other than the retrieval of the Mogul equipment.”

The USAF continued: “Subsequent to the 1994 report, Air Force researchers discovered information that provided a rational explanation for the alleged observations of alien bodies associated with the ‘Roswell Incident.’ Pursuant to the discovery, research efforts compared documented Air Force activities to the incredible claims of ‘flying saucers,’ ‘aliens’ and seemingly unusual Air Force involvement. This in-depth examination revealed that these accounts, in most instances, were of actual Air Force activities but were seriously flawed in several major areas, most notably: the Air Force operations that inspired reports of  ‘bodies’ (in addition to being earthly in origin) did not occur in 1947. It appears that UFO proponents have failed to establish the accurate dates for these ‘alien’ observations (in some instances by more than a decade) and then erroneously linked them to the actual Project Mogul debris recovery. This report discusses the results of this further research and identifies the likely sources of the claims of ‘alien’ bodies. Contrary to allegations that the Air Force has engaged in a cover-up and possesses dark secrets involving the Roswell claims, some of the accounts appear to be descriptions of unclassified and widely publicized Air Force scientific achievements.”

The military’s conclusions read as follows, in summarized form:  “Air Force activities which occurred over a period of many years have been consolidated and are now represented to have occurred in two or three days in July 1947. ‘Aliens’ observed in the New Mexico desert were probably anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research. The ‘unusual’ military activities in the New Mexico desert were high altitude research balloon launch and recovery operations. The reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and ‘crew’ were actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations. Claims of bodies at the Roswell Army Air Field hospital were most likely a combination of two separate incidents: 1) a 1956 KC-97 aircraft accident in which 11 Air Force members lost their lives; and, 2) a 1959 manned balloon mishap in which two Air Force pilots were injured.”

The biggest change of opinion in UFO history? In my view, yes.

As a follow-up to my article on the strange subject of “Alien Big Cats” seen in U.K.-based Crop Circles, I thought I would share something else with you. Namely, a report of a very different – but no less intriguing – “phenomenon” involving these strange and intricate field-based formations. As I noted in the first article: “Since 2011, I have received no less than nine more reports of people seeing  huge black cats in the Crop Circles of England; all of them in Wiltshire, except for an ABC seen roaming around Chartley Castle, Staffordshire, England in 2015. Rather notably, a Crop Circle was found in a field adjacent to Chartley Castle in the summer of 2006. I know that for sure because me, my dad, and my ex-wife Dana were there to see the creation a day after it was made.” All of which brings us to today’s article.

Back in March 2009, a certain feature appeared in the pages of the U.K.’s newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. It had a decidedly eye-catching headline. It went as follows: “Dog Walker Met UFO ‘Alien’ With Scandinavian Accent.” Well, that’s quite a title, to say the very least! The article was written by journalist Sarah Knapton. The story surfaced into the public domain thanks to the U.K. government’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Among the UFO-themed files that the Ministry of Defense released was one that focused on Crop Circles. And, in an amazing fashion, too. Sarah Knapton wrote in her article that the story told of how “a dog walker claimed she met a man from another planet who said aliens were responsible for Crop Circles.”

The woman – whose name is unknown, unfortunately – had made a phone-call to a  military base, a Royal Air Force facility at Wattisham, Suffolk, England. It was clear to the person on the other end of the phone that something very weird had happened. It all went down on the night of November 20, 1989. Yes, we’re talking about more than thirty years ago now. It was around 10:30 p.m. on that night when the woman was out walking her dog. While doing so a man came up to her – quite out of the blue, I should stress – and who spoke to her with what was clearly a Scandinavian accent. Not only that, he was attired in a “light-brown garment like a flying suit.”

The official documentation on the woman’s encounter state the following: “He asked her if she was aware of stories about large circular flattened areas appearing in fields of wheat, and then went on to explain that he was from another planet similar to Earth, and that the circles had been caused by others like him who had traveled to Earth.” The alleged E.T. told the woman that he meant her no harm at all, but stressed that “they were not to have contact with humans for fear that they would be considered a threat.” The woman was said to have been “completely terrified” (yes, that is how the document-writer described it) by the confrontation.

Indeed, the woman got more and more anxious for the safety of herself and her dog, and suddenly and quickly headed off to her home. As the woman exited the area, she couldn’t fail to hear a “loud buzzing noise” behind her. She turned around and was amazed to see what the Ministry of Defense described as “a large, glowing, orange-white, spherical object rising vertically” from a clump of very nearby trees. The Royal Air Force operator carefully wrote everything down – and listened carefully, too. In fact, the phone conversation went on for about an hour, chiefly because the military operator was convinced that this was a “genuine call” and not the work of a maniac or a prankster.

It’s hard to know what to make of all this. After all, the story – with its human-looking alien, the man’s “flying suit,” and his foreign accent – sounds like one of those wacky tales that dominated the “Contactee” movement of the 1950s. It must be remembered, though, that the story was taken seriously – hence why it ultimately became one of the Ministry of Defense’s “real X-Files.” True or not, the tale adds yet another layer of undeniable weirdness to the phenomenon of Crop Circles.

Reports of alien encounters range across the board, and go back to perhaps ancient times. From numerous disparate cultures come inexplicable reports of encounters with mysterious beings from beyond our understanding, and Japan certainly has some of these as well. One very curious case comes from a group of fishermen who came across a strange craft floating upon the sea, holding within it a curious stranger and which has gone on to become a great Japanese mystery.

Although there are various versions of the alleged encounter, perhaps the most well-known and detailed is that found within the pages of an 1825 manuscript called Toen shōsetsu, by Kyokutei Bakin. The story goes that in February of 1803, a group of fishermen toiling away on the coast of Hitachi province saw something very odd bobbing out on the waves, which appeared to be some sort of bizarre vessel the likes of which none of them had ever seen before. They approached it in their boat and could see that the top of the somewhat disc-shaped object, described as looking like a rice pot or an incense burner, seemed to be made of some sort of reddish wood with windows embedded within it, whereas the bottom was covered with metal plates, the whole of which measured approximately 11 feet high and 18 feet wide. The windows seemed to have metal bars over them, as well as resin coating their edges, perhaps to keep water out. For all appearances it seemed to be some sort of ship, although like nothing they had ever seen and seemingly drifting about aimlessly, and the curious fishermen towed it back to shore.

With the otherworldly craft safely on shore, they were surprised to peer in through one of the windows to see that it was adorned with what looked like a bed, sheets, soft carpets of unknown style and fabric, a bottle, and foods like cake and meat strewn about, and that the walls seemed to have been engraved with various strange symbols or letters from some unknown language. However, more startling than any of this was who they found cowering within, for it seemed the vessel had a passenger. There sitting within the craft in hiding was a young woman of around 18 to 20 years of age, standing around 5 feet tall and described as being strikingly, almost ethereally beautiful, with very pale, pinkish skin and thick red hair laced with white extensions that appeared to be made out of some kind of fur and all peppered with white powder. In her hands she held a simple wooden box that she clutched protectively as the fishermen stared down at her with mouths agape. Her elegant clothes were said to be of an unknown fabric, and were long, flowing, and very smooth like silk.

The fishermen tried to speak to the mysterious woman, but she replied in a strange language they were unable to comprehend, and it seemed as though she could not understand what they said either. Throughout all of this she held that box defensively, not allowing anyone to get anywhere near it. Unable to talk with this stranger and not sure how to proceed, the fishermen supposedly ended up pushing what they called the utsuro-bune, or “hollow ship” back out to sea, where it bobbed off towards the horizon out of sight, leaving the enigmatic woman and the secret contents of that box a complete mystery. When the fishermen went back to their village and told the others, one of the elders speculated that it was a princess from a foreign land who had been banned from her homeland, possibly after having had an affair with a commoner.

The tale of the Utusro-Bune would appear again in the works Hyōryū kishū (1835) and Ume-no-chiri (1844), each time with slightly different details but essentiall telling the same repor, and it was over the years printed in several Edo era news sources as well. Similar tales of mysterious strangers appearing by see in otherworldly vessels can also be found in the lore of other areas of Japan as well, making it seem as though it must surely just be a myth and legend. Yet, even considering the nebulous origins of the story it has sometimes been suggested that this might have been an actual event that really happened, and there have been ideas on what might have occurred here.

If there was any reality to the tale, one of the main theories on what those fishermen saw was a Russian woman who had either drifted away from a wrecked vessel, or had intentionally come to try and negotiate trade with the then notoriously isolated Japanese or even to spy on them. This would explain her foreign appearance, striking red hair, bizarre clothing, and incomprehensible speech and writing. It also might explain the bizarreness of her craft, as it might have just been a Russian design the Japanese were not familiar with. A more fringe idea is that this was an early example of a UFO and alien encounter in Japan, even though the strange craft is never described as flying or doing anything other than bobbing aimlessly in the water, nor does it exhibit any particularly advanced technology, the windows sealed with tree resin, and the woman is by all descriptions exotic, but human in appearance, yet UFO enthusiasts have often explained this away by saying that it might have been a submersible craft or a crashed UFO.

Of course there is also the idea that this was just a sensationalized, made up account, as were common back in that era. If this had been real, then in this age of Japan’s very strictly controlled borders it would have had to been reported to the Daimyo and proper authorities immediately, yet there is no official record of the incident among the tomes of other reports of shipwrecked sailors and whalers on Japan’s shores. It is also somewhat odd that the story includes just sending the strange woman on her way with no follow-up or opportunity to find her again, making it all rather convenient for anyone who was making it all up. In the end, we are left to wonder what was really going on here. Was this a foreigner finding herself on these shores for purposes we will never understand? Was it just a sensational report and myth building? Or was this perhaps a visitor from much farther away than Russia? The mystery of the Hollow Ship of Japan remains an enigma.

When it comes to the matter of the Roswell affair of July 1947, just about everything is controversial. There are multiple theories for what happened. There are witnesses who are highly credible and those who are best forgotten. The U.S. government has changed its opinion on several occasions regarding what happened – or what didn’t happen.  The tales of con-men, outright liars, and second- and third-hand abound. Numerous books have been written on the subject – and we’re still no closer to getting a definitive answer. There’s no doubt that one of the most controversial of all those who claimed knowledge of what happened (or of portions of what happened) was the late Glenn Dennis. At the time when everything went weird at Roswell in ’47, Dennis was an embalmer (not a mortician, as so many have incorrectly described him – including Dennis himself, no less) at the local Ballard Funeral Home. He signed a sworn affidavit confirming something sensational – namely, that a nursing friend at the base had quietly admitted to him that a preliminary autopsy of a number of strange bodies had been conducted at the base hospital at the Roswell Army Air Field.

Dennis said: “She had gone to get supplies in a room where two doctors were performing a preliminary autopsy. The doctors said they needed her to take notes during the procedure. She said she had never smelled anything so horrible in her life, and the sight was the most gruesome she had ever seen. She said, ‘This was something no one has ever seen.’ As she spoke, I was concerned that she might go into shock.'” Dennis continued: “She drew me a diagram of the bodies, including an arm with a hand that had only four fingers; the doctors noted that on the end of the fingers were little pads resembling suction cups. She said the head was disproportionately large for the body; the eyes were deeply set; the skulls were flexible; the nose was concave with only two orifices; the mouth was a fine slit, and the doctors said there was heavy cartilage instead of teeth. The ears were only small orifices with flaps. They had no hair, and the skin was black – perhaps due to exposure in the sun. She gave me the drawings.”

When Glenn Dennis’ story began to surface approximately three decades ago, there was a great deal of excitement within the UFO research field – and particularly so in the arena of Roswell research. Things didn’t stay like that, however. The biggest problem was that Dennis hemmed and hawed over the alleged real name of the nurse,. He came up with a variety of names, such as Naomi Marie Selff, Naomi Maria Selff, Naomi Self, and Naomi Sipes. Roswell researchers began to doubt the tale when they failed to find anyone (at the base) with a name anywhere near to those Dennis came up with. That was when the red flags flew. Big time, too. Maybe Dennis had never given anything that was remotely like the real name. Perhaps, it was suggested, the nurse was actually a composite – created by Dennis to protect several nurses who may have been on-site when the bodies were brought in and all hell broke loose. Today, most people in Roswell research totally discount Dennis’ story – and for very understandable reasons, too. Roswell expert Kevin Randle, for example, says of Dennis’ story that it is nothing but “…the fantasy of a man who had no real involvement other than he lived in Roswell in 1947.”

I do wonder, though, if there could be a smidgen of truth to the story; that perhaps Dennis knew something of what happened, but that he handled the whole thing in such an awkward and controversial fashion that it led his claims to be discarded. So, in light of all this, you may wonder why I still think there might be a small number of facts buried in a story dominated by fiction and fantasy? I’ll tell you. As you can learn online: “Maria is a feminine given name. It is given in many languages influenced by Latin Christianity [Catholic]. It has its origin as the feminine form of the Roman name Marius and, after Christianity religion has spread across the Roman empire, it became the Latinised form of the name of Miriam.”

Kevin Randle told me a couple of days ago that Dennis started using the middle name of “Maria” for his nurse after he – Dennis – met with the late ufologist, Karl Pflock. So, we have a “Maria” in the story. And, it so happens that Maria (as the quote above shows) “…became the Latinised form of Miriam.” Why is this important? Well, one of the primary candidates for who the nurse really might have been (if there even was a nurse, of course) was a woman named…Miriam Bush. Miriam was not actually a nurse: in 1947 she was an executive secretary at Roswell’s RAAF hospital. She worked for a medical officer, Lieutenant Colonel Harold Warne, and is said to have seen the bodies found on the Foster Ranch – specifically when they were brought into the confines of the hospital. They were, as nearly everyone claimed, small, damaged, and very unusual-looking.

This trauma-filled experience clearly affected Miriam to a huge degree. The whole thing was like an albatross around her neck. That huge, ominous bird never left her. Miriam Bush’s private life was a mess and she became alcoholic. And, in the late 1980s, Miriam became fearful that she was being watched and followed. She was found dead in a motel-room just outside of San Jose, California, in December 1989. A plastic bag was found around Miriam’s head, and her arms were bruised and scratched. The verdict was suicide.

Dennis said that his nurse was a “good catholic girl.” Could Dennis have known something after all? Did he choose to use the name of Maria in place of Miriam? And, using the fake name, did he hope that one day someone with a Catholic background might make a Maria-Miriam connection and finally realize who the real source was: Miriam Bush, perhaps? Dennis did, after all, make a Catholic comment, suggesting he may have known some Catholic lore. At the very least, this is all a strange and convoluted coincidence of names, which may very well be the case. But, I would suggest that more digging into all of this is still required.

Long before there were Alien Abductees, there were the Contactees. They were the people chosen to spread the word by what became known as the “Space Brothers.” The “word” meaning: peace, love and understanding. In other words, the aliens were here to help us – provided we followed their slightly bullying agenda. While reports of – and encounters with – these very human-looking, long-haired, jumpsuit-wearing aliens were at their height in the 1950s, reports predated that era and still occasionally surface. The Space Brothers would target people in isolated locations – very often desert environments in the United States – and encourage them to share their experiences, write books, and go on the lecture circuit. So many of these people did exactly that. They included George Adamski, Dana Howard, Howard Menger, George Hunt Williamson, and Orfeo Angelucci. Much has written about the Contactees, but there is one glaring issue that is so often omitted. Or, even, unknown to so many.

Most of the Contactees’ experiences are assumed to have begun with the landing of a saucer-shaped craft of the kind that appeared in The Day the Earth Stood Still. That’s not entirely correct, though. The reality is that many of the Contactees said that their encounters actually began with the appearances of strange balls of light (BOLs). The ships, however, would dutifully follow them. Let’s take a look at what the Contactees had to say about those BOLs. We’ll begin with Daniel Fry, the author of The White Sands Incident. According to Fry he first saw what looked like an “especially bright group of stars” that “seemed to beckon me.”

Truman Bethurum claimed amusing and outrageous encounters with a curvy, stacked-to-the-max, hot-looking babe from the stars who announced herself as Captain Aura Rhanes, of the planet Clarion. Interestingly, Bethurum said that prior to his meetings with the captain, he would often see “a small flare” or what appeared to be “a meteor falling though the starlit purple night.” Orfeo Angeulcci – the author of (among others) The Secret of the Saucers – said that his main encounter with a pair of human-looking aliens involved the appearance of a red, glowing, oval-shaped light that was “about five times as large as the red portion of a traffic light.” The sound of a male voice was soon heard, which was “strong,” and had “well-modulated tones and speaking perfect English.” The voice from the lights assured Angelucci that “they” were “friends from another world.”

Dana Howard (who, in 1956, penned Diane: She Came from Venus) said that during one of her most significant alien encounters she saw, “…a rising glow of phosphorescence. It was very tall at first, but out of this phosphorescent substance a form began to manifest…a solid fleshy being, delicate in charm and manner.” Decades ago, a man named Ralph Lael claimed amazing encounters with the Space Brothers on Brown Mountain, North Carolina. Just like those characters above, Lael reported seeing – in close proximity – eerie balls of light. In Lael’s case, the BOLs were around twelve feet in circumference. Lael felt, as one of the BOLs approached him, that “it was alive and had intelligence.”

Bob Short was a Contactee who I met on several occasions – a couple of times at the UFO Congress in Laughlin, Nevada in the late 1990s, and at the Retro UFO gig, which is now no longer around. I often saw people poke fun at Bob and his Contactee-driven claims, but they shouldn’t have. Bob’s encounters, too, began with the sudden appearances of multiple BOLs. Bob wrote (in his book, Out of the Stars: A Message from Extraterrestrial Intelligence) that he often saw, specifically before an encounter of the Space Brother kind, “luminous ephemeral spheres of light.” Bob also said that the BOLs were “so dazzling” that “the actual form behind the light is masked and cannot be scrutinized visually.”

I had a few chats with Short about all of this over the years, and he pondered seriously on the scenario of the BOLs being the true alien entities – and the Space  being “visions” created by the BOL intelligence. If Bob was correct, then it puts matters in a very different state. Maybe all of the genuine Contactee-type experiences occurred in vision-style; in altered state-type situations dictated by those mysterious balls of light.