An area of paranormal research that has come into its own
just over the past seven decades-or-so — and one that has increasingly drawn my
interest since moving from Virginia to Texas nearly eight years ago — is the investigation
of Unidentified Flying Objects, more commonly known as UFOs. “UFO” has, in
fact, become an iconic term in its own right and, while the phrase it is
derived from does not imply the origin of the objects in question, has become
associated in the minds of many with extraterrestrials.
A little
research will quickly reveal that UFOs have been spotted in every state and
hundreds of cities, town, and small communities around the United States and,
no matter where you live, you don’t need to travel too far to find some local
incident to examine. For my money, however, three of the most significant,
interesting, and compelling UFO sites can be found in the American Southwest.
Each of these is worthy of a pilgrimage for anyone serious about ufology — and in
the course of my work as a paranormal investigator I have visited all of them
at least once and written about them in various books and articles — and anyone
who is especially dedicated could visit them all in a single, 1,400-mile
roadtrip starting in Dallas-Fort Worth and ending in Las Vegas (or vice versa).
Aurora, Texas
On April 17, 1897 — almost 50 years exactly before the famous
Roswell UFO incident and 500 miles due east of it — a mysterious airship that
people had apparently spotted in other locations throughout the country crashed
in the little town of Aurora, Texas, just northwest of Fort Worth. And, at the
dawn of ufology though this incident was, it was nonetheless associated with
aliens.
“The
airship … was traveling due north [and] evidently some of the machinery was out
of order, for it was making a speed of only 10 or 12 miles an hour and
gradually settling toward the earth,” wrote Aurora resident S.E. Haydon in a
story published in the Dallas Morning
News two days after the incident. “It sailed directly over the public
square and, when it reached the north part of town, collided with the tower of
Judge Proctor’s windmill and went to pieces with a terrific explosion,
scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water
tank, and destroying the judge’s flower garden.
The pilot
of the ship is supposed to have been the only one on board, and while his
remains are badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show
that he
was not an inhabitant of this world. … Papers found on this person —
evidently the record of his travels — are written in some unknown
hieroglyphics, and cannot be deciphered.
The ship
was too badly wrecked to form any conclusion as to its construction or motive
power. It was built of an unknown metal, resembling somewhat a mixture of
aluminum and silver, and it must have weighed several tons.”
This pilot
was reportedly buried the next day in the Aurora Cemetery, an event that is
briefly mentioned on a Texas Historical Commission marker erected there in 1976:
“This site is also well known because of the legend that a spaceship crashed
nearby in 1897 and the pilot, killed in the crash, was buried here.” This is
particularly interesting in that officialdom generally prefers to ignore
peculiar events of this sort rather than enhancing the attention they receive
by commemorating them. Modern-day residents of Aurora in general are rather
dismissive of the incident and the owner of the land with the sealed well into
which the remains of the airship were dumped has been very limited in his
cooperation with investigators. Aurora Cemetery is open to the public, however,
and is a good place to begin investigating the largely-unknown early history of
ufology in America.
Roswell, New Mexico
In the summer of 1947, something
happened near Roswell, New Mexico, that is believed by many to have involved
the crash of an alien spacecraft and the death of its extraterrestrial crew. It
was one of the earliest UFO episodes of the modern era and, over the ensuing
years, has become the most famous and iconic of them, and the subject of
innumerable conspiracy theories and fevered conjectures as to its true nature.
On
July 8, 1947, the public information office at Roswell Army Air Field released
a statement saying that personnel at the base had recovered a crashed aircraft some
30 miles outside of Roswell.
“The
many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the
intelligence office of the 509th Bomb group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell
Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the
cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chaves
County,” the military press release stated. “The flying object landed on a ranch
near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher
stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office,
who in turn notified Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence
Office. Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s
home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by
Major Marcel to higher headquarters.”
Within
24 hours, however, the service retracted this report and claimed instead that
the debris was simply a radar-tracking weather balloon. That was pretty much
the end of the story until the late 1970s, when new claims from people involved
with the incident drew attention to it once again. And the rest, as they say,
is history (albeit a fantastic, lurid history that has included supposed
firsthand accounts of alien autopsies).
Today, a
good first place for paranormal investigators interested in this incident to
visit is the UFO Museum and Research Center in downtown Roswell. Its exhibits
are a little melodramatic and at times a bit redundant but the place really is
a labor of love and its organizers have done a terrific job with it, and the
associated research library is a bona
fide public service to anyone interested in doing any sort of in-depth
study into ufology in general or the Roswell incident in particular.
Area 51
Located in the desert wilderness about 100 miles north of
Las Vegas, Area 51 is certainly one of the most famous and highly mythologized
of all sites associated with UFOs. So well known is the area around this spooky
government facility for UFO sightings, in fact, that in 1996 Nevada officially
designated its State Route 375 — which runs along the northern edge of Nellis
Area Force Base, on which Area 51 is located — as the “Extraterrestrial
Highway.” Whether any of the strange aircraft seen in the sky really originate directly
or indirectly from an otherworldly source, however, is an open question, and it
may simply be that they are test aircraft operating out of the top-secret base.
A number
of unmarked dirt roads head south off of SR 375 into Area 51 and those who are brave
enough can follow them until reaching signs informing them that they are
subject to being shot if they continue any further. At that point, visitors can
generally also see uniformed guards watching them with field glasses from nearby
hilltops.
Somewhat less nerve is required to
visit the Little A’Le’Inn, a bar, restaurant, motel, and souvenir
shop located in Rachel, Nevada, a hamlet of less than 100 people and the
community nearest to the approaches to Area 51. It is also the watering hole
for local resident, author, and UFO investigator Chuck Clark, who has appeared
on numerous television shows about UFOs, Area 51, and related topics.
Another
feature of note in the area is a commuter lot located east of Rachel at the
intersection of SR 375 and Highway 93, where some Area 51 employees park in the
morning and then get transported into the facility in a bus with blacked-out
windows.
And, in the vast stretches between the sites described
here, there are almost as many UFO sightings, incidents, and stories as there
are stars in the sky (I have got too many of my own to list them all here). The
truth is out there — and the 1,400-mile “UFO Trail” that runs from northern
Texas to southern Nevada is a great place to start looking for it.
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