In 1947 ranch foreman Mack Brazel rode out on his horse to check his fences. There had been bad weather- a thunderstorm overnight and he was concerned that his fences had been damaged. If the sheep might have gotten out and wandered off into the enormous New Mexico wilderness he would have to find them. He knew how hard it was to find a bunch of sheep in a huge, wild area, but it was still a pain in the butt.

With him, trotting along at his side on his pony, was the neighbor's kid Dee Proctor. Dee was happy with any excuse to ride, and Mac was happy for a second set of eyes looking for problems.

Mack and Dee both came upon a few pieces of strange debris, laying on the cropped grass of the sheep pasture. Riding on they came across more and more, eventually realizing that the debris was scattered over a considerable area. There was also a score mark several hundred feet long, as if something had plowed into the ground and displaced it. The sheep wouldn’t go near it, but leaving Dee to lead the horses, Mack dragged a big piece back to his shed. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.

He took some to the Proctor’s next door, and they said perhaps it was part of an alien spaceship. Mrs. Proctor said there was a reward out for anyone with evidence of a UFO. Mack was excited.

A couple of days later Mack drove into town and made a report to Sheriff George Wilcox, who made a report to Major Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer who was stationed at the Roswell Army Air Field.

And that is when things began to get weird.

The Army Released A Statement Saying That The Wreckage Was A 'Flying Disk'

Major Marcel worked quickly to get the army out to Mack’s ranch and clear up the debris. Soldiers cordoned off a huge area of the paddock and combed the ground looking for debris. On July 8 1947 a local newspaper published a story that clearly stated that Major Marcel and his group had recovered a flying disk, which had been examined and then was flown off to ‘higher headquarters’ for further examination.

The intelligence office that spoke to the paper offered no details of the flying disk itself, only that it had been recovered and was no longer in Roswell.

Now, lets stop for a moment, because this is clearly NOT what our old friend Mack is saying. He has told of finding an odd material in his sheep pasture and carrying it about to show the neighbors. A disk is not shiny material.

Why is he saying something different?

Remember this newspaper report.

People Saw The Disk

In the very same newspaper report there is mention of an eye witness report by a Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot.

The Wilmots were enjoying a fine evening, sitting on their porch and watching the stars because no one had Netflix. At about 10pm they noticed a large object flying though the sky.

The Wilmots ran down to their yard to watch it, staring in disbelief for nearly a minute as it zoomed at up to 500 miles an hour (if you want to believe Dan Wilmot’s estimation), a glowing shape of about 20 feet in diameter, looking like two saucers facing each other and stuck together.

The strange craft disappeared over a line of trees.

Mr. Wilmot, who was a man with some community respect, only said anything about this sighting after the announcement had been made that a saucer had been captured. Perhaps he thought he wouldn’t be believed.

The Story Quickly Changed

Unfortunately the next day’s edition of the paper kind of made out Dan Wilmot to be a liar, by saying that NO ONE had collected a ‘flying disk’.

On the 9^th of July 1945 the paper ran a story that stated, quite firmly, that the wreckage found was that of a weather balloon or similar weather device. Allegedly at this point military officials descended on Roswell and surrounding areas and removed as many copies of yesterday’s paper and press release as they could.

Papers ran a picture of a silvery, foil like weather balloon. This is what was found. This is your flying disk, all broken up and scattered all over the ground.

The thing here is that our buddy Mack had already noted that the material HE found could not be folded or crumpled or squished, and the material showed in the photo was definitely crumpled and crushed.

The Disappearing Radio Interview

It is unclear who allegedly picked up our old buddy Mack, and took him away from his shack to the house belonging to the owner of local radio station, KGFL. However he got there, he went to the radio station BEFORE either of the conflicting news stories broke.

Remember that this is 1947, and radio was a key way of staying in touch with a community. Radio news was the most up to date news available and widely believed by its listeners. So it was important to anyone who was trying to control the spread of information to have control over the radio.

After his interview, which was recorded to be played the next day, the military police reportedly arrived and told KGFL staff that they were authorized by The Federal Communications Commission to confiscate the tape as a matter of national security – words that had strong meaning only two years after the end of WWII.

They also confiscated Mack, and later returned him so that he could give the radio station a ‘truthful’ interview about what he had found near the sheep.

The Rancher Was Held By The Military

Mack Brezel was the foreman of a ranch and responsible to the ranch owner to give a good account of himself and be honest and trustworthy. He needed to keep his job to support his family, who lived back in the little town of Corona, while he subsisted in a simple, electricity free shack on the property of his employer.

He was, by all accounts, a good, honest man. So he didn’t deserve being put in jail for a week by the military for trying to do the right thing.

Yes, after the military police found Mack recording his radio interview and removed it in an effort to protect national security, they also removed Mack and put him in jail for a week, according to his neighbors, the Proctors.

Mack had been so excited about his find, telling everyone he could about what was probably a very big blip in a rather unexciting and hardworking life. After he came back from the air base he was completely different – unwilling to discuss the matter.

He gave two further interviews after being released, one with the paper and one radio interview, where he stated that the wreckage found was that of a weather balloon and that he had regretted ever saying anything to anyone about the wreckage at all.

Major Jesse Marcel Comes Clean

Would you be surprised to hear that a top military intelligence officer like Major Marcel, who was not only a former trainer of intelligence officers but also a man who had seen active service in WWII and was a career military man was convinced that the Roswell Crash object was not a weather balloon?

Maybe, maybe not. A man is a man and can have his own private thought on matters that he has witnessed. And yet despite his obvious military instruction not to talk about classified information, Major Marcel was surprisingly forthcoming with what he found on Mack’s ranch.

A student called Linda Corely interviewed the Major and his wife in 1981 for a college assignment.

The Major refuted that there had been alien bodies in the crash (as had been put forward by conspiracy theories since the event) but insisted that the wreckage was not that of any balloon. He allegedly told Corely that the material they picked up from the site was not able to hold air. He even agreed that the picture of the wreckage as a weather balloon was fake.

Corely says she received a frantic phone call from the Major a week later, saying that he had being lying and insisted she kept the interview material to herself and didn’t finish her assignment.

He sounded scared and she felt for him. Maybe she was a little scared too.

Dead Aliens In The Desert

On July 5 1947, five-year-old Gerald Anderson and his brother, father, uncle and cousin all went out hunting for semi-precious stones on the Plains of San Augustin.

The fun family boys trip soon turned very weird. Gerald Anderson recalled that his party came across a crashed ‘spaceship’, with the bodies of two occupants nearby, and two occupants who were alive, though one was badly hurt.

Gerald touched the side of the craft and felt that it was freezing, odd in the heat of the desert.

Straight away a university group of archaeologists appeared, and then a man named Grady Barnett joined them. Shortly behind them came the military.

A lot of mystery shrouds the evidence of Gerald Anderson. On one hand he, as the last living witness from his family group, appears to have fabricated evidence to support his claim – namely a diary written by his uncle. On the other he has passed polygraph tests. He seems to believe his own story. But should we?

The Aliens Were Professionally Photographed

Sgt Frederick Benthal was a specialist photographer in a time where such things were a necessity. Cameras were complex pieces of machinery in the 1940s and a certain amount more expertise was needed than today’s ‘point and shoot’ smartphones and filters.

Sgt Benthal was flown to Roswell from Washington DC and taken in an ambulance to a crash site. He was allegedly taken to a tent and told to walk around the tent, taking photos of bodies that were lying there. Even though he was apparently instructed not to look (which would make focusing the lens hard, one would think) he did of course see that what he was photographing were small, spindly bodies, only about four foot high, with bulbous heads and big eyes.

Upon completing his task, his camera was confiscated.

Sgt Benthal spent a large part of the rest of his military career stationed in the Arctic, photographing the effects of extreme cold on military equipment.

Not many people to talk to in the Arctic.

A Witness May Have Been Murdered

Major Richard Harris was a Budget and Fiscal Officer at the Roswell Airbase at the same time as the Roswell crashes.

Now deceased, his daughter Ann was only six months old on the night of the crashes. Ann recalls her father talking about his job to fund the cover up of the crashes, funding extra personnel, unscheduled flights, all the extra bits and pieces that you have to pay for but don’t really think about when you are organizing a big event like a wedding or a spaceship crash cover up.

Ann says that her father was invited to view the bodies, but that the smell from the morgue was nauseating and put him off going in there to see them.

In 1997 Major Harris confirmed in an interview with the TV show Strange Universe that the object that had crashed had been a spaceship.

According to his daughter, he was later killed because of this interview.

A Sheet Metal Technician Was Called To A Crash Site?

Technical Sargent Ernest Robbins was by all accounts a good man – a good husband and father, he was a strong Christian man who loved his job and his country. A real All-American military man. Someone you could trust.

After his death his wife told her impression of the night of the crashes in Roswell.

Ann Robbins and her husband had been to a dinner party the night that they had been woken up by a bright light that lit the sky like daytime. Soon their phone rang and Technical Sargent Robbins got up, to return exhausted and damp 18 hours later. He had been through a decontamination chamber.

Ann reported to the Dallas Observer that her husband had said there was a spaceship crash and that he had seen three aliens, one dead, one injured and one healthy.

He said a round spot had been burnt into the ground from a heat so hot it turned the ground to glass.

He would not answer what happened to the aliens.

The Sheriff Was Threatened

Sheriff Wilcox’s granddaughter Barbara Dugger, remembered a conversation with her grandmother about the events of the Roswell crashes. Her grandmother was very old at the time, but still had sharpness of mind and clarity of wit.

Barbara made an affidavit regarding this conversation, which had come about while they were watching a television show about UFOs.

According to the affidavit, Inez Wilcox told her granddaughter that a spaceship had crashed outside of Roswell, and that the she and the Sheriff had been told that they and their family would be killed if they ever talked about the incident.

She said that the Sheriff had seen a crashed space ship and several ‘little men’, one of whom was alive.

After these events, Sheriff Wilcox lost his heart for sheriffing and no longer wanted to do his job.

Not surprising. I’m pretty sure military death threats aren’t really considered a bonus for any occupation!

The Local Mortician Gave Over-The -Phone Embalming Advice

Glenn Dennis was a mortician who was on call to provide services to the airfield. He made an affidavit that states that he was contacted by the air base in July 1947 to ask if he could supply small sized hermetically sealed caskets if needed immediately. He said that he would have to order some in, and a short time later was called back to ask specific questions about preparing bodies that had been lying in the desert sun for some time.

Dennis offered to come to the base, but was told the questions were hypothetical. Dennis suggested that in future bodies be frozen with dry ice.

That evening Dennis was called out to the base for another matter, and saw purplish silvery wreckage that was being examined by military and military police.

He went to get a cold drink and ran into a nurse he knew, who told him to "get out of here or you are going to be in a lot of trouble". She was upset and coming from a medical examination room. Unfortunately she was too late, he had been seen.

Dennis was subjected to threats and escorted back to the funeral home.

The nurse he knew told him of an autopsy she had watched being performed, and drew pictures and diagrams to show him. He filed those away at the funeral home.

Sheriff Wilcox warned Dennis' father that Dennis’ family was under threat.

Two weeks later the nurse was dead in a plane crash.

The files had disappeared.

The FBI Suppressed Information Out Of Roswell Area

Lydia Sleppy made an affidavit concerning her role as the teletype operator of the KOAT radio station.

For those of us who exist in 2017, a teletype machine was a machine used to send words from machine to machine, a bit like a fax that you typed into. It was the great, great grandfather of texting.

Lydia was working when her station received a call that a flying saucer had crashed. Eager to spread the news to her network affiliates, Lydia began to type the third hand story of Mack finding a craft that looked like a ‘big crumpled dishpan’.

A bell rang on the telephone and the teletype machine printed a message, a message that Lydia attested to in her affidavit as being as close to what was said as she could remember. The message said "THIS IS THE FBI. YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY CEASE ALL COMMUNICATION."

Lydia immediately stopped transmitting, shocked.

She did not speak of the matter with her employer again.

Crash Test Time Travelers?

In 1997, exactly 50 years after the Roswell Incident, the Air Force released The Roswell Report - Case Closed, which is the Official United States Air Force Report into whatever the heck DID happen at Roswell.  It claimed that the 'alien bodies' that had been seen outside of Roswell half a century before had been crash test dummies – mock ups of human bodies made of aluminum bones and covered in various materials for ‘skin’ that were part of 'Operation High Dive'.

These dummies were, as much was possible, made to recreate the bio-mechanics of a human body and so that the military could throw them out of planes at high altitude rather then throwing out actual living people (although why they couldn’t use cadavers I don’t know).

Then they got picked up and their brokenness was examined to determine military answers.

These twisted and mangled bodies were confusing to people, who found them and thought that they were aliens.

This allegedly started happening in 1953. Funny how some of them reached Roswell six years before they were pushed out of a plane.

Everyone Is Stupid And Can't Remember Things

According the book The Roswell Report - Case Closed, the biggest problem with accepting any testimony on the events surrounding the alleged Roswell crashes is that people can't remember stuff, and are fallible.

The report did not suggest that the majority of 'witnesses' were deliberately lying (or run around screaming about people wanting attention, which seems to be the 'go-to' dismissal of anything out of the ordinary today), but it suggests that people have trouble keeping memories straight long term, and that people are confused about accidents they had seen, maybe accidents with casualties, crash test dummies and hoaxes.

Then all these thoughts swirl around in witnesses' heads, mixed with a little thing called 'time compression'.

Time Compression is a fancy pantsy word to describe people getting confused about the timings of events as time passes. Basically the report is saying that witnesses remembering events in the past are unreliable and can't be taken as strong evidence of anything.

Nothing happened. Anything you remember didn't happen that way. Anything you remember that did happen that way was too confusing for you to understand.

Nothing happened in Roswell.