Essay/Term paper: The roswell incident

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Science

The people of the world have always had a mysterious belief that Earth wasn't the only
planet in the universe that supported life. This belief dates back to ancient times when heavenly
and demonic stories were told of gods who strode across the skies on their golden chariots. Tales
as far fetched as Zeus who threw lightening bolts from his fingertips to stories as credible as the
American Indian's Cachinas, who supposedly taught them to farm and saved them from numerous
disasters. The Egyptians, who built their mammoth pyramids with only the use of man power,
used hieroglyphics. These same hieroglyphics have been unofficially documented as being similar
to symbols found on unidentified aircraft wreckage found in several incidences over the past fifty
years (Montgomery 225-32, 236-37). Are these stories all mere coincidence? Some researchers
think not and have continued to unveil new evidence that is believably true. Recently, new facts
have been brought up on the most documented UFO (unidentified flying object) sighting of all
time: the Roswell Incident.
The Roswell Incident is a UFO crash that occurred at 11:30 p.m. on July 4th, 1947 in
Roswell, New Mexico (Randal 10). Mac Brazel, a local New Mexico rancher, discovered a
considerable amount of unusual debris while riding out on horseback early in the morning to
check his sheep after a night of intense thunderstorms. He reported to Sheriff George Wilcox
after driving into Roswell, that the aircraft had created a shallow gouge several hundred feet long
and was scattered over a large area. Sheriff Wilcox then notified authorities at the Roswell Army
Air Field and with the assistance of his deputies, proceeded to investigate the matter. Shortly
after the 509th Bomb Group arrived from their station 35 miles away (Walker 38), they closed off
the area for a number of days and retrieved the wreckage. The debris was initially taken to
Roswell Army Air Field and eventually flown to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio (Jeffrey). Before
the military could intervene, the event had already been witnessed by more than one-hundred
people. Local police, fire squad, and curious members of the Roswell community make up these
people. A lot of them were part of the initial recovery team and are now telling their stories that
have been bottled up for nearly a half of a century (Randal 11).
According to one unnamed witness of the Roswell recovery team,
The crash site was littered with pieces of the aircraft. Something about the
size of a fighter plane had crashed, the metal was unlike anything I'd ever seen
before. I picked up a piece the size of a car fender with one hand, it couldn't have
weighed more than a quarter of a pound and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't
even get it to bend (Randal 11).
This statement describes the type of material that was found at the site and has been described in
this manner by numerous witnesses. The next statement was made by Curry Holden, an
archeologist who was one of the first to arrive on the scene, "I saw a crashed airplane without
wings and with a fat fuselage. There were three bodies. Two were outside the craft and the other
one was still inside, visible through a gash in the fuselage" (Walker 38). Other bits of information
have also been documented from locals arriving initially at the scene. First, there is the local
undertaker, Glenn Dennis, who was asked by the base if he could provide child-sized coffins.
Then there was the local fireman, Dan Dwyer, whose crew was called out to the crash site and
who collected some of the mysterious metal debris. He told his family of also seeing two body
bags and one still living being about the size of a 10-year-old child (Walker 38). So many stories
are now being told, that it is hard to distinguish which ones are probable, but because of the
amount of information now coming out, it is very likely that something out of this world did take
place in Roswell, New Mexico, fifty years ago.
There are two soundless films showing the autopsy of one of the beings, known as the
gray variety ("UFO Crash"), found at the Roswell crash scene. One is eighteen minutes long and
takes place in some kind of operating room. The other is three minutes long and was shot inside a
tent in the half-light of emergency lanterns. Both of these videos were supposedly taken by an Air
Force film technician at Roswell and at the autopsy center in Fort Worth. This cameraman is still
undercover, but sold these tapes to British filmmaker Ray Santilli who has recently made these
public and brought the Roswell controversy back into a full blown investigation by many
researchers and some retired government officials.
The first tape gives a fairly good visual of the gray variety beings. On an operating table
in a small white room, the naked humanoid creature lies on its back with a bulbous stomach and a
bald and giant head with lizard eyes. Six fingers lie slightly curled on the end of a respectively
long arm and there appears to be a deep foot long gash in its right leg. Two unidentifiable
humans in white contamination suits circle the creature using instruments to slice and saw through
some body parts (Corliss 105). The flesh gives and bleeds, the joints flex, and the limbs bend.
When the skull is cut into it reveals an unusually thick bone and the brain in fleshlike, but most
unlike a human brain with its grooves and folds. Instead it looks like a chunk of liver on this
grainy black and white film. Large elliptical slits are where the eyes would be on a human and
are covered with a black film. When this film is removed, white orbs are revealed. Moving back
to the pregnant looking stomach, there is no navel. When the stomach is opened up, there are
female genitalia, but there are no coils of intestines (Walker 38). This seems convincingly to be
the autopsy of some kind of being and it does not appear to be the creation of a Hollywood
special-effects lab, especially for the time that this film is dated at. Dr. Paul O'Higgins, an
anatomist from University College London, says,
the anatomy appears human, though with several deformities. The large skull, he
says, could be caused by fluid on the brain, often found together with low set ears,
hairlessness, and lack of secondary sexual characteristics. On an anatomical and
evolutionary basis, I find it impossible to believe these are aliens. Only the lack of
a navel and the black membrane over the eyes bewilder me. (qtd. in Walker 38)
This is the same opinion that many researchers share, they don't believe that the being is an alien,
but there are so many things unexplained on the films that have no other explanation but for the
being to actually be extraterrestrial.
Researchers of the Roswell incident feel that it is highly probable that the government is
withholding information on the crash. For a lot of the researchers, their primary goal is to get the
matter into the open so that the truth can be conclusively determined, one way or another.
Another thing that would help is finding the cameraman. There are many disputed questions that
scientists want to ask him about the films. Questions that will probably never be answered unless
he steps forward. Obviously something had to have happened at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947,
but the truth might never come out. So until it does, people can share their thoughts and stories,
whether fact or fiction, and enjoy the memories of the most celebrated and best documented UFO
event of all time. They can keep their wild ideas that somewhere in an alternate universe, Marvin
and Mindy Martian are sitting down watching over us earthlings.

Works Cited
Corliss, Richard. "Autopsy or Fraud-topsy?" Time v146 27 Nov. 1995: 105.
Jeffrey, Kent. "Time for the Truth About Roswell." http://www.islandnet.com/%7Ebfidler/
ROSWELL/roswell.html (9 Dec. 1996)
Montgomery, Ruth. Aliens Among Us. New York: G. P. Putnum's Sons, 1985.
Randal, Kevin. A History of UFO Crashes. Avon Books, 1995.
"UFO Crash at Roswell, New Mexico." http://www.execpc.com/vjentpr./jroswell.html (9 Dec.
1996)
Walker, Martin. "An Autopsy of the Third Kind." World Press Review Oct. 1995: 37-38.