Roswell: A Red Herring?

Before we get started here: I fully believe in an anomalous non-human intelligence behind a small percentage of UFO accounts. I'm not a hardcore skeptic.

I am, however, rather picky and prefer to vet and study opinions and research on both sides of any UFO encounter.

Roswell was--once-upon-a-time--of great interest to me, but a close look sheds much doubt on the story and seems to suggest, imo, more myth than E.T.

Rendlesham, too--if one is openminded enough to look--is a tale of evolving and MUCH changed--or ignored if it doesn't fit--stories and further includes the iffy shenanigans of hypnotic regression and quite possibly some sort of psychological testing.

I believe, but I'm picky. So my two major questions are:

1.) Am I relatively alone on this at ATS?

2.) Am I wrong to question these sacred cows of ufology? Does that somehow make me "less than?"

It's my sincere passion and belief that we'll NEVER have a chance of getting to the bottom of the mystery as long as we're unwilling to vet ALL of the data and be willing to let some things go in lieu of focusing on maybe more solid, but often lesser-known cases.

Before we get started: Yes, I know the hype of, "Roswell has more than 600 witnesses!"

Riddle me this then: Exactly how many were allegedly first hand?

How many of those accounts, both first and second hand, have serious problems?

Are you openminded enough to admit there are problems with many of those testimonies? Or do you just ignore those aspects because it doesn't fit your paradigm?

I LOVE my ATS family, and I hope I'm not gonna be hated on here. But I also have a sincere and lifelong passion for ufological truth, and I don't wanna sit down and shut up out of fear of being called a heretic.

Peace Y'all...I hope we're still friends. Gloves Up: DING-DING!

Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those “truths” we once believed.

Unfortunately, the 'evidence' we're vetting is highly dated with respect to Roswell, necessarily otherwise second-hand ('dad told me...') and/or just a small segment of what really occurred, compartmentalization being in place even then.

Until the US government records are fully released without any redaction whatsoever, we'll not know what really happened and what occurred afterwards. It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with no pattern on it, in the dark, with blindfolds.

A bit off topic, but I'm really beginning to think that the whole Cold War scenario was a covert agreement between the US and the USSR to pretend to fight each other's economic ideas whilst actually spending massive sums of money on back engineering crashed UFOs and trying desperately to find a way to fight possible alien invaders...

It always seemed insane to me to think that you could fight an economic or social idea with nuclear weapons... either our leaders were insane to think so, or had compelling reasons to be terrified of the newly-arrived unknown.

reply to post by The GUT


I'm with you on this 100%. I was always of that opinion on Rendelsham, but Roswel was always somewhat of a personal bias - I really wanted to believe it was ET. I read so much that seemed to me to be irrefutable, but now I have pretty much made a 180 on it. I really don't think any of the crashed saucer stories have any ET element involved. At least not any more.

reply to post by The GUT

Roswell: A Red Herring?

Something happened there in '47 and since I was not there, I have to base my opinions on what others say.

One step on, the evidence to date suggests that there was/is some effort from the US Government to hide what really happened. Don't buy the excuses for throwing ejection dummies fro the 1950's into a 1940's scenario. Bunt, on the flip, there are no alien bodies to look at either so...

Red Herring? Maybe.
Intergalactic Watergate? Much better description.

Yip, i'm with you on this.
Roswell gets waaaaay to much attention, in fact, it's a bit of a Circus, a sideshow. Like the Loch Ness Monster, Great for selling crap to Tourist but that's about it for me.
Dont get me started on the Pheonix Lights either.

Some People just dont want admit they might have been wrong, so they continue with the original story they heard third hand rather than take a Bit of ridicule...Humility is a thing we should all learn at a very early age.

redoubt
Something happened there in '47 and since I was not there, I have to base my opinions on what others say.

What about those who say it was balsa wood and tinfoil? Do they count? Mac Brazel?

Brazel told the Roswell Daily Record that he and his son saw a "large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks."[2] He paid little attention to it but returned on July 4 with his son, wife and daughter to gather up the material.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by The GUT

1.) Am I relatively alone on this at ATS?

I doubt it .

2.) Am I wrong to question these sacred cows of ufology? Does that somehow make me "less than?"

Absolutely not , there are no sacred cows in the search for truth .

It seems we are the same person T.G as our views tend to converge more often than not

I would love to believe Roswell was ET , at one time I did but over the years that belief has has turned to serious doubt if not disbelief as it has grown to be more than the sum of its actual parts .

Rendlesham is the same , when I first heard the audio tape and read the FOIA documents I was very impressed.... but was it Alien ? , I no longer believe it was .

Good questions mate

Inquiring skeptics unite!

Ah well, I can agree with you Gut, tough call. For all we know, Roswell, and most everything about the stories were simply a cover for military experimentation and perhaps to seed the enemy with the idea we had alien technologies.

Then again, Rendleshem sure but Kecksberg, and a few others seem like they have some kind of meat to them. The best thing you can do is say. "I'm not sure" because once you cross that line on either side you refuse to listen to possibilities and are easily manipulated.

reply to post by The GUT

What about those who say it was balsa wood and tinfoil? Do they count? Mac Brazel?

Ahem... I don't believe I said that I either bought or rejected this (or any) item except the crash test dummies.

Really, I swear, I was not there. It's an incredibly compelling story with a lot of angles... but, one doesn't have to jump into one end of this pond or the other. You can get the temp just by twinkling your toes in the water.

In sum... calling it interesting allows you to watch and learn without becoming one of those crash test dummies yourself!

reply to post by The GUT


I can totally agree with this.

Back when I was a Field Investigator with MUFON people would sit and talk about Roswell all the time. I felt that with so much time that past since the event wouldn't their time be better spent looking into more resent cases?

From a UFO investigators point of view;
"All the time wasted on Roswell, could have been better used looking into a case where more of the original witnesses are still alive, and evidence should still be on the ground."

reply to post by The GUT


Hell, I'm an abductee and I'm critically view all UFO stories. There are three factors in UFO accounts of all types.
1. Some are true to the best of the abilities of the abductees/witnesses.
2. As with any event, there are the wantabes that flock to topic to get a piece of the action/attention.
3. There are governmental influences upon every aspect these include real, fake, and propaganda elements.

As with any event or perceived event that garners public attention, few topics are as rich in the above aspects than UFOs. And all of that is just fine, to be expected, normal human responses.

I've been preaching for decades that the UFOs themselves are instrumental in promoting this wide-spread myth about themselves. Unfortunately, most don't understand the true meaning of the worth "myth" and, thus, can never see the significance of that observations. They understand (more and more) in simple terms governmental duplicity about the phenomena, but they still can't see the big picture that has also been revealed as the UFO myth has been augmented in depth over the decades. That understanding, that realization of what it means to humanity, still escapes even the typical poster here on ATS that wants to think on the situation no further than fabulous machines from some distant place. But as I said, that is part of the expected coming of age and must come that way. Anything short of that would be disastrous. In short, humans will never be fully ready for disclosure let alone contact.

As for Roswell, let me paraphrase Hillary: " "What difference – at this point, what difference does it make?"
In other words, UFOs are here, folks.

reply to post by The GUT


The problem I see is using WIKI as a source for a quote, it can easily be manipulated and edited.

e.g

Good points TG,
Ive never really believed in the roswell ET story, rendelsham is a bit more juicy but the hypnotic regression puts me right off..
Like someone above stated, only when the US government comes totally clean about roswell will we know the real truth. its been over 65 years since the event, surely the truth, the real truth, would'nt upset people. Whats needed is a million man march, organised by ATS, to the white house to demand the truth about roswell and the et/ufo subject.

reply to post by skyblueworld

I don't see any dichotomy, skyblue, in what you posted as opposed to mine. Unless I'm missing it. To what do you refer and infer? Brazel reported rubber strips, tinfoil, "rather tough paper" and sticks. It's all there in your own image.

My quote was good. It should also be noted that Brazel was the very first of a mere handful of first-hand witnesses. THE first-hand witness I'd say.

reply to post by The GUT





It is some what like 'ancient history' .... So long ago, and now all info is becoming

second hand as age is catching up with any? first hand witnesses .... Makes

you wonder why there have been no 'recent events' especially with how technology

is advancing ....

If you want to know how useless Wikipedia is information-wise, just compare their discussion of Lloyd Pye's Starchild Skull with the website itself. All attempts at correcting the record have met with instantaneous coverups and lies. One wonders who actually has access to Wikipedia and what their agenda is, but it's not the truth.

Starchild Skull site

Wiki page

signalfire
If you want to know how useless Wikipedia is information-wise, just compare their discussion of Lloyd Pye's Starchild Skull with the website itself. All attempts at correcting the record have met with instantaneous coverups and lies. One wonders who actually has access to Wikipedia and what their agenda is, but it's not the truth.

Starchild Skull site

Wiki page

Are you saying the following quote wasn't good?

Brazel told the Roswell Daily Record that he and his son saw a "large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks."[2] He paid little attention to it but returned on July 4 with his son, wife and daughter to gather up the material.

en.wikipedia.org...

Although, ahem, I'll take your word for it that the Starchild site is an unimpeachable and balanced source of information, it has zero to do with this topic, correct?

It's that kind of changing of the subject and ignoring of the facts that we are talking about here. It's not conducive to honest research and is more suited to shoring up one's unsupported opinions and obfuscating the honest search for truth wherever it may lead.

My personal opinion is that it's a bit dishonest to look at something like Roswell or Rendlesham and only focus on the positive testimony or "evidence" that supports the position you want to believe. You must look at all of the problems and inconsistencies and skeptical commentary, too, in order to get something more than the standard, common mythology of the incidents.

Roswell has so many problems and weaknesses that just can't be ignored. It's become contaminated with so much fantasy that the only thing you can really do with it is sit and wait for that one piece of actual, hard, undeniable evidence that has thus far remained completely elusive. Material? Crash site photos? Orders? Authenticated shipping documents? Real alien autopsy footage? There's none of that.

I'd rather be lumped in with blind skeptics than simply go along with what other people say just to keep the peace. I don't want to have to believe, because there's no end to that. Where do you draw the line? I want to know, even if it means I never will.

You are not alone. I too, have spent over 20 years (on the side) investigating, reading, all I could on Roswell. The only thing that is 100% proven, is that something physical crashed in July 1947 on the Foster Ranch, and was recovered by Mac Brazel. As for all the other "crash sites" (including Rendesheim) there was no actually physical debris recovered at all....none.

Now, I believe it was a case of mistaken identity by Mac Brazel. Mac, in an attempt to make some $$ on a posted reward for anyone that recovers any flying disk material, brought some of the debris into Roswell claiming it was from a crashed flying disk. That claim, was forwarded to the intelligence staff at Roswell Army airfield, and from there, it spiraled out of control.

Do I know what it was? No. However all the original 1st hand accounts, especially Jesse Marcel Jr, the last survivor that actually handled the actual debris, all claim it was broken fragments of "stuff like balsa wood but wouldn't burn", "foil like in a cigarette pack", and brittle black rubber-like material. That is the original reports....and even in the only photos of the debris (which has been muddied by claims of switching the material) we see the debris as claimed.

In the end, we will never know, but, the simplest explanation is (although unpopular) the crashed debris of a Mogul Test balloon train (NOT a weather balloon, which were much smaller and less material than a Mogul train).

Was there a cover-up by the U.S. Army, yes. I believe the cover-up was to hide the nature of the Mogul high-altitude tests at a time of intense tension between the United States and the former Soviet Union over atomic secrets.