So Supernatural - ALIEN: Roswell

Episode Date: December 9, 2020

It’s the most famous UFO event in U.S. history: In July 1947, a rancher named Mac Brazel found strange debris scattered across one of his fields. Local military officials told him it came from a weather balloon… But many believe the object didn’t come from Earth at all.  

Picture a flying saucer. It might be piloted by tiny gray men with bulbous heads or covered in mysterious hieroglyphics. All of these tropes come, in part, from Roswell, New Mexico. They sound corny now, but in 1947, it wasn't a joke. A rancher named Mack Brazel found strange-looking debris strewn about his field. And after looking at the wreckage, local military officials confirmed it came from a flying saucer. Some 80 years later, the Roswell crash is still the most famous UFO event in history. And it might be the most compelling evidence we have that aliens exist. This is Supernatural. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, I'm talking about the Roswell incident,

which is the granddaddy of all UFO conspiracy theories, and with good reason. Not only did people believe an alien spaceship crashed in New Mexico, they literally saw little gray men at the Roswell Army airfield. And in the years since, the Air Force has admitted that their official story about Roswell was a cover-up, which means the U.S. government might know a whole lot more about extraterrestrials than they've ever let on. I'll talk about all of that in just a bit. Stay with us. On June 14, 1947, this ranch foreman named Mack Brazel and his eight-year-old son Vernon were out surveying their land in Corona, New Mexico. Now, the day starts off pretty normal. Mack and Vernon are driving around, checking that the sheep are all healthy and the fences are in good condition.

And then this metallic glimmer catches Mac's eye. He pulls over to investigate. He probably figures someone maybe, you know, threw out an empty tin can or something. But as Mac walks towards it, he realizes this isn't ordinary trash. For one, this stuff is everywhere. There's not much of it, but it's strewn all across the field, almost like it rained down from above. It seems like scraps of tinfoil, maybe some shredded rubber, and this special material that looks like paper, except it can't be paper because when Mac tries to shred it, it's impossible to tear. But the weirdest part is that all of these bits and pieces are held

together by an adhesive. Mac later says it might be scotch tape, but it doesn't sound like any scotch tape I've ever seen. I mean, first of all, it's purple, and it's covered in these bizarre symbols. They kind of look like flowers mixed with hieroglyphics. Mack is definitely confused, but his number one concern isn't even figuring out where the debris came from. It's making sure his sheep don't ingest it because sheep eat basically anything you put in front of them. But strangely, the sheep almost seem afraid of the debris. I mean, they won't go anywhere near it, which again is totally bizarre. But Mac is relieved that whatever this stuff is, it probably isn't going to hurt his animals. So he leaves it all there and decides he'll just come back another time for a closer look. At the end of the day, Mac tells his wife and daughter about what he saw. None of them

really know what to make of it, and they don't know where to turn to get a second opinion. I mean, this is the 1940s, and Mac apparently doesn't have a phone or a TV or even a radio. So over the next few days, he visits a few of his neighbors and sees what they know. One by one, all these other ranchers and farmers come over to see what's in his field. Some of them even take bits and pieces home with them, and they do these impromptu tests to see if they can figure out what the debris is. They try hitting the scraps with a hammer and even throwing it into a fire, but no matter what they do, the stuff won't bend, it won't break, and it won't even burn.

It is literally indestructible. So this mystery is getting bigger by the day, and Mack still hasn't figured it out three weeks later when he has to go 75 miles southeast to this sleepy little town called Roswell. Mac's there to sell some wool and run errands, but as he's going about his business, he hears some pretty shocking gossip. Turns out, he isn't the only one in the area to witness some strange phenomena. In fact, for over a month now, the country has been buzzing with stories about flying saucers.

At least 16 people have spotted UFOs in the sky. To be fair, a lot of these sightings have been like really quick glimpses, flashes of light, not really much to go off of. But at least one person has had a closer look. Apparently, on June 24th, so this is about a week after Mack first found the debris on his farm, this pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying over rural Washington state. Kenneth was looking for a plane that went down when a flash of glimmering metal caught his eye. And, you know, his first thought is probably like, okay, great, I found the wreck.

Except when Kenneth gets a better look, he realizes the gleam isn't coming from something on the ground. It's in the air, and there's a bunch of them. There's this line of what looks like nine flying saucers darting through the mountain range beneath him, one after the other. Kenneth does some quick mental calculations, and he figures this formation stretches across about five miles of airspace, and it's moving in perfect synchronicity. Occasionally, the saucers will bank or turn, but they do it without ever breaking formation. He keeps watching the saucers, and he's kind of timing them as they go. He realizes they're flying at 1,700 miles per hour.

That's three times faster than the fastest airplane that exists in 1947. So this is truly unlike anything Kenneth has ever seen before. His first thought is that, you know, he might have stumbled on some new military technology. So when he lands, Kenneth asks some friends who work at an airfield if they've ever heard of anything like it. But they don't know about any planes that match his description. One guy even calls a friend down in Pendleton, Oregon, who also doesn't know what Kenneth saw. But somehow the details of this particular conversation get out. Because the very next day, Kenneth is asked to

give a statement to Pendleton's paper, the East Oregonian. He accepts the offer and just like that, his sighting is in the news. Other papers pick it up and overnight, the whole thing becomes a media sensation. All across the country, people are talking about Kenneth's UFO sighting. Not so much because it's exciting as that it's pretty terrifying. I mean, in 1947, the concept of oblong hovering alien ships was literally unheard of. Papers actually coined the term flying saucers specifically to describe what Kenneth saw. That's how little frame of reference anyone had for what he witnessed. It's such a big deal that military personnel are on high alert 24-7. Officials are legitimately worried that something might be

preparing to invade the United States, probably Soviet planes instead of aliens, but it's still concerning. There's even a minister in Texas who gives an entire sermon on how the flying saucers are the sign of end times. So over in Roswell, when Mack Brazel hears these stories, he immediately thinks of the mysterious wreck on his property. He goes and finds the sheriff, a guy named George Wilcox, and Mac's trying to be a little sneaky, like if there is a literal alien spaceship on his ranch, he wants to handle this the right way. So he walks up to George and whispers in his ear

that he's got a flying saucer on his property, which, again, seems kind of like a bananas thing to do. But given everything else in the news, George actually takes Mack seriously. Allegedly, he calls a contact at the Roswell Army Airfield, or RAAF. It's just south of town, and the Air Force seems like the perfect people to handle the situation. But for whatever reason, RAAF does nothing with George's phone call, which in itself is just really weird. Like, if the government is so concerned about the UFO sightings,

why wouldn't they at least follow up on this tip? Still, Mack can't just let this go. So two days later, on July 7th, he goes out to the crash site again. This time, he brings his wife and daughter. The three of them gather as much of the material as they can. Mack loads it onto the truck and drives over to the county sheriff's office to meet with George, the same guy he talked to in Roswell. Mack shows George some of the scraps he's gathered, and George is dumbfounded. The material is unlike anything he's ever seen.

So he decides to call the Air Force one more time, And this time, he's in luck. George is run all the way up the chain until he speaks to an Air Force general named Roger M. Ramey. Now, General Ramey doesn't operate out of the RAAF. He's almost 500 miles away in Fort Worth, Texas, but he says he'll fly over to New Mexico to investigate. In the meantime, the RAAF dispatches an intelligence officer named Major Jesse Marcel. Major Marcel accompanies George and Mac back to the ranch, and sure enough, he's just as baffled as everyone else. Marcel has never seen anything like this stuff before. Now, I'm not clear on what the thinking is here, but for whatever reason, Marcel immediately decides to notify the press. And given everything else that's been going on, the papers just

eat up the story. The next day, on July 8th, a reporter shows up at the Fort Worth base for an interview. The journalist talks to General Ramey, and they even snap a few photos of him holding up the debris. And when reporters talk to Major Marcel, he makes a statement that confirms everyone's wildest suspicions. The U.S. government has recovered a flying saucer. Up next, the Roswell incident balloons into a full-on conspiracy. Now back to the story. On July 8, 1947, this exciting headline appeared in the Roswell Daily Record. RAAF captures flying saucer on ranch in Roswell region. The Air Force had confirmed in these exact words that whatever crashed on Mack Brazel's ranch was indeed a flying saucer.

Now, they might not have meant alien spaceship. Remember, the term flying saucer was literally just coined a couple weeks before this, so it didn't have quite the same connotations it does today. But regardless, the story gets huge. Newspapers from all over the world pick it up and reporters pour into the tiny town of Roswell. But the next day, the Air Force suddenly changes course. General Ramey relays a new message from the U.S. War Department. It states that the debris actually came from a weather balloon. On its face, that definitely sounds like a more believable story than an alien spaceship. But if you think about it, Air Force personnel like General Ramey or Major Marcel

should have definitely been able to recognize a weather balloon. And even Mac knows what a weather balloon looks like. Over the years, a bunch have crashed on his property, so he's used to cleaning them up. This isn't one. But as soon as the Air Force puts out the new statement, Mack goes eerily silent. Now, it could simply be that he doesn't want to speculate, but a lot of people think that someone stopped him from talking. Apparently, at some point after Major Marcel's first visit, all these other Air Force officers descended on Mac's property. They wanted to check out the scene and gather any clues

that might have been missed. And allegedly, while they were there, they took Mac into custody. Supposedly, they detained him for about four or five days. The whole time, they're threatening Mac, telling him he'll be arrested if he tells anyone else about the wreckage, which, if that's true, seems really extreme for a supposed weather balloon crash. For what it's worth, the Air Force's Lieutenant Colonel Sheridan D. Kavik

claims this detention never happened. But Mack's neighbor swears Mack told her about being detained. And her testimony isn't the only evidence we have for a possible cover-up. Apparently, up to this point, Mack's family had been scrimping and saving because their finances were so tight. But right after the government goes public with their weather balloon story, Mack comes into a lot of money. Nobody knows exactly how much or where it came from, but all of a sudden, Mack buys a new truck, leaves Roswell, and opens his own business halfway across the state. Nobody really hears from him or his family again. So the idea of the U.S. government silencing Mack in some way, not so hard to believe.

But even with their chief witness gone, people are still suspicious about what happened at Roswell. Because in the press frenzy, even more eyewitnesses start coming forward. And while Mack might have seen an alien spaceship, others saw actual aliens. The main eyewitness is this 27-year-old woman named Miriam Bush. Miriam works as a hospital secretary at the Roswell Army Airfield. And on July 8th, the same day the Roswell Daily Record reports on the captured flying saucer at Mack Brazel's ranch, she has an experience that shakes her to her core. Miriam starts her shift like usual, making her rounds and checking up on patients.

She's been doing this kind of work for a while, so she can recognize most of her co-workers at a glance. But today, the hospital is packed with strangers. They're in uniform, so they're obviously military, but Miriam has never seen any of them before. She figures they must have come over from another base, which in itself is weird because Miriam hasn't heard any news about a special operation. Her boss must see that she's curious, and he must also really trust her, because at some point that day, he lets her into one of the exam rooms

to see what all the fuss is about. Miriam's gotta be excited, but as soon as she steps into the room, her anticipation turns to heartbreak, because the entire room is full of dead bodies on gurneys. She can see that the corpses are really small, so Miriam's first thought is that these are dead children. But before she can even imagine what sort of tragedy might have happened, she takes a better look at the bodies closest to her. And that's when she realizes

they're not children at all. They're not even human. They're aliens. That sounds wild, but according to Miriam, the corpse's skin is gray and brown. They have these giant, bulbous heads that are way out of proportion to their bodies. And they also have ridiculously large black eyes that are just wide open. I mean, as if they don't even have eyelids. Miriam is stunned. But gradually, reality sinks in and she realizes the Air Force has found actual, physical aliens. When Miriam gets home that evening, she's still upset. She can't bring herself to chat with her parents or even eat dinner. And it's not long before she fully

bursts into tears and tells her family about everything she's just seen. Her parents are bewildered. They have no idea what to make of this story, so they just encourage Miriam to get some rest. Like, maybe this whole thing is some bad hallucination and she'll feel better in the morning. But morning comes and Miriam is still deeply disturbed. She gets up, gets dressed, and goes into work where her bosses are anxiously waiting for her. They tell her she shouldn't have been allowed into the examination room the day before, and they warn her that there will be brutal consequences if she ever tells anyone about what she saw. Miriam never says what they threatened her with exactly, but it seems effective because she

talks to her parents immediately afterwards and she swears them to absolute secrecy. They must not ever, ever repeat what they know. The next 40 years go by and Miriam doesn't bring up the issue again. Then, in December of 1989, Miriam dies at age 69. Officially, her cause of death is ruled a suicide, but her body is covered in bruises and scratches that don't look like they're self-inflicted. And according to authors Thomas Carey and Donald Schmidt, Miriam's family noticed some other discrepancies about the way she died. They didn't specify what those discrepancies are,

just that her death seemed really suspicious. Obviously, we have to take a lot of this story with a grain of salt. It's all reliant on the word of one person and her family with no outside evidence to back it up. But strangely enough, the detail that gives the story some credence is also the most ridiculous part, right? Like the alien bodies. Because it turns out Miriam's not the only one who saw them. Up next, a doctor gives his take on Roswell. Now back to the story. In the late 1970s, an anonymous doctor told a UFO researcher named Len Stringfield that he knew aliens had crashed in Roswell because he was the one who performed the autopsies on their bodies at the Roswell Army Airfield, the same place where Miriam worked.

Presumably, this doctor was sworn to secrecy, which is why he wanted to remain anonymous. But he describes the alien bodies at length, and his account sounds a lot like Miriam's. He says the corpses are all three and a half to four feet tall, and they don't weigh much more than 40 pounds. They have disproportionately large heads, massive black eyes, and that bluish gray skin. And he goes on to say that when he cuts into their bodies, the doctors notice all these other weird details. Like, they're missing a bunch of organs that humans should normally have. Their biology is unlike anything he's ever seen. Now, it is also hard to take this testimony too seriously because it came from an anonymous source. For all we know, the doctor might have made it up

or maybe the doctor never existed at all. But even so, there are other witnesses with the same story. Like this sergeant named Melvin E. Brown. He was also stationed at the Roswell base and he says that he helped retrieve bodies from Mack Brazel's ranch. Even Roswell's mortician, this guy named Glenn Dennis, knew about it. He says he wasn't involved in the autopsy, but that he definitely heard about it from some of his colleagues. Maybe the most convincing witness, though, is Sheriff George Wilcox, who first called the Air Force about the debris on Mack Brazel's ranch.

George later said that when he went out to the ranch, he spotted, quote, four space beings, end quote. He claimed that he couldn't say much more because the U.S. military officials had threatened him. If that's true, it matches up with the theory that Mack was detained by the government and threatened into keeping quiet.

Quiet or not, though, a lot of the public never really believes the official story that the wreckage came from a weather balloon. In 1980, another paranormal researcher named Charles Berlitz published a book called The Roswell Incident. Up to this point, there were always rumors about what really happened at Roswell. But Charles is the first person to compile all of these witness statements into one place and to lay out arguments for why the wreckage came from an alien spaceship. The Roswell incident is a smash hit. It brings the mystery back into the public eye and all these books on conspiracy theories and government cover-ups start jumping off the shelves.

In fact, so many people demand answers to Roswell that a congressman named Stephen Schiff decides to open an investigation. As part of that, the Air Force looks into their records, and for the first time, they confirm everyone's suspicions. The Roswell incident really was a government cover-up, and the wreckage did not come from a balloon. Well, at least not a weather balloon. It all centers around a top-secret spy program called Project Mogul, which was declassified sometime in the 1970s. The goal was to create a balloon with listening devices that could pick up the sounds of nuclear tests

from almost anywhere in the world. So it looks kind of like a weather balloon, but not quite. As the story goes, in the summer of 1947, researchers were launching these out of the Alamogordo Army Airfield in New Mexico, and a few of them drifted off course and crashed in the area near Roswell. The scientists are able to locate most of these balloons, but there are two that get lost in June 1947, just a few weeks before Mack Brazel finds the wreckage in his field. Now, sure, all of this definitely sounds like a plausible explanation for what Mack found on his ranch. It also explains why he was supposedly intimidated and paid off. The U.S. government didn't want him squealing about their top secret program. But weirdly enough, even though Project Mogul was declassified in the 70s, the Air Force was really dragging their feet on putting together this review. If they knew the project wasn't even classified anymore, there's no reason to spend years giving Congress the runaround.

And I should point out that there's nothing beyond circumstantial evidence to connect Roswell to Project Mogul. The Air Force report didn't even try to prove that the wreckage was a Mogul balloon. They basically just said, well, you know, here, this is a possibility. And it seems like this part of the debate should be easy to settle. Just look at the wreckage Mack brought to the RAAF. But there's a problem. Nobody knows where that wreckage is. As soon as the officials finished talking to reporters back in July of 1947,

General Rainey had all of the wreckage shipped off to Washington, D.C. for further study. Nobody knows what happened to it after that, which if you ask me, is pretty stinking suspicious. The Project Mogul theory also doesn't explain why General Rainey and Major Marcel were part of the media circus the very first day that the story broke. Like, whether you think it was aliens or a spy balloon, the War Department must have really messed up in containing their story fast enough. It also doesn't tell us why Miriam Bush's death was so suspicious. And it doesn't even begin to hint at why so many people say they either knew about or witnessed alien autopsies. But all of these loose ends are what make this story so interesting.

Like, even if you don't care about UFOs or aliens, you've heard about Roswell, New Mexico. It's a huge piece of American mythology precisely because we still don't know what happened there, which is why most alien enthusiasts are still reading between the lines and trying to solve this mystery. And a lot of believers probably hope that one day the government is going to fess up and confirm that aliens really exist. For all we know, that pile of debris from New Mexico, wherever it disappeared to, could hold the key to one of the biggest questions in the universe, whether or not we're alone. So as long as there's still some ambiguity to this story, we can keep hoping. Thanks for listening.

I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.