Christensen 1

Sierra Christensen

ENGL 2010

1 March 2018

The Roswell Incident: Knowledge is Power

Many legends, hoaxes, and conspiracies surround the mysterious events that are based

around Roswell, New Mexico. According to believers, an unidentified flying object (UFO) with

a small alien crew crash-landed just outside of Roswell. Government agents later came to collect

eyewitness accounts, the debris, and alien bodies.1 Believers explain that the government tried to

cover it up with a variety of stories and explanations. Over time, the interested public has forced

government officials to release more and more information. The urban legends attached to the

Roswell Incident show that we are a society that values investigation, knowledge, and truth, and

we use these stories to either pay homage to the dedicated investigators or to demean the

believers who don’t really understand what they say they believe in.

The Myth

The beginnings of all the legends surrounding the Roswell Incident started with a

combination of three events; a discovery, a sighting, and a cover-up story.

On July 8th, 1947, something crashed into a ranch outside of Roswell, New Mexico

(Saler 10). In the midst of his regular rounds, local rancher William W. Brazel came upon

“bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tin-foil, a rather tough paper, and sticks” (Saler 16).

However Brazel was in a rush that day, so he did not stop to investigate further, instead telling

his wife about the incident.

1
​Due to space constraints, this essay will focus on just the debris and accounts, and not analyze legends related to
alien corpses or supposed autopsies.
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On the 24th of June, a private pilot named Kenneth Arnold who was flying from New

Mexico to Washington saw nine unusual objects flying at unusually high speeds. The reporters

he told his stories to are the ones who first used the words “flying saucers” and “flying disks”

(Naughton). These reports of “flying

disks” were not the first documented UFO

sightings, but they are commonly

recognized as the birth of the UFO and

Alien Culture wave that resulted in over

80% of US citizens believing that the

government was hiding information about aliens and/or UFOs in 1997 (Levenson). Some of this

negativity was anti-government sentiment, but a large portion was just the belief that there was

more to know than the citizens as individuals knew.

Almost three weeks after Brazel’s discovery, and less than a week after the Arnold

sighting triggered the local publicity wave, Brazel and his teenage

daughter finally went and collected some of the debris. Because of the

distance from his home to the nearby town of Corona, Brazel was not

aware of the UFO-related commotion in his area. The next day he

travelled to the nearby town of Corona and heard the stories of flying

saucers for the first time. He had thought the debris he found was just

from the RAAF, but now considered that they might be the remains of a

flying disk (Saler). Brazel presented his wreckage to either the sheriff of Corona, who called in
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the RAAF, or directly to a base intelligence officer, Major Jesse Marcel of the RAAF (the actual

order is highly debated).

Local residents and those following the news were mostly confused and curious about the

cause of all this commotion, and most just wanted to know what happened. Whether through the

Corona sheriff or not, Major Jesse Marcel met with Brazel and tried to decipher the mess Brazel

had found. Marcel couldn’t identify what the material was and thus sent the wreckage to General

Roger Ramey.

The day before Gen. Ramey made his official statement, interviews of Marcel and Brazel

along with others were published in the ​Roswell Daily Record ​and read aloud at the two local

radio stations on July 8th (Roswell UFO Museum). Lt. Walter Haut, the RAAF public

information officer, wrote this release under instruction to do so by Col. William Blanchard, the

commanding officer at RAAF (Roswell UFO Museum).

This is where the famous line is first

spoken and read, “The Army Air Forces

here today announced a flying disk had been

found” (Roswell UFO Museum). This

piqued interest all around the globe, and the

RAAF’s were phones were flooded with

calls from all over.

The higher-ups saw this as their cue to get involved. In less than 10 hours after the release

of this original press statement, it was rescinded and all copies were retrieved. The next day (July
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9th), a second statement claimed the officers had mistaken weather balloon parts for flying disk

parts.

The weather balloon story caused a lot of resistance from eyewitnesses and those who

had seen or touched the wreckage found by Brazel. Most of these were family members and

friends, one of whom was a retired army soldier, so others trusted his opinion. They said it was

definitely not like any weather balloon they had ever seen or heard of and that when they tried to

reconstruct the materials, it was more similar to a kite than anything else (Saler 16).

When the unfamiliarity with the discovered material bred protests that put enough

pressure on the government, the Army made a new statement saying that New York University

had begun exploratory research on a new type of weather balloons, and that the wreckage had

been from those new balloons, that were unfamiliar to most civilians and military personnel

(Saler 23). Again in 1973, the call for information to be released caused the government to

release the millions of (redacted) documents they had in their possession regarding Roswell

(Saler 25).

Analysis

Every time Roswell investigators put pressure on either the Air Force or the government,

it was a demand for the information they had. The protesters wanted to know what the

government knew, and the government didn’t want to give that information up. Whether one

believes in aliens and government conspiracies or not, that belief is based on knowledge

When people choose to share and teach the Roswell legends, a subconscious motivation

is to share and teach the value of knowledge and its pursuit. We unconsciously see the believers

who do their best to get all the information available to construct an accurate and unbiased story
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as vigilanties for the cause of truth. However a cautionary tale is present too. The stereotypical

crazed disciples that we see portrayed in movies and television are the bad examples we ought

not to follow.

While growing up, my parents told me stories about the “alien abduction survivors” who

hid in their basement and thought the President had a speed dial to the Alien King to teach me

that I shouldn’t blindly trust anything I couldn’t prove. If something sounded plausible, I was to

do research and use all the information to decide for myself if what I was investigating was

worth believing in. This sentiment is ubiquitous in most retellings of UFO crashes and associated

cases.

Conclusion

The alien and UFO culture remains popular for many reasons. One of the main reasons

that we reiterate these legends is to warn others about the social dangers of certain practices.

Another reason is to encourage investigative behaviors. Knowledge is valuable, and truth even

more so. Roswell stories are told and documented so much because they give us a way to teach

lessons and morals that define our society. These myths should continue to be told, because they

increase our appreciation for knowledge and truth, which is something our society can’t afford to

lose.
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Works Cited

Googelberg. “Witness Accounts of the Roswell UFO Incident. ​The Ultimate Collection on

UFO’s​, vol. 2, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011.

Levenson, Eric. “Aliens, Flying Discs and Sightings—Oh My! A Short History of UFOs

in American.” ​CNN​, CNN, 20 Dec. 2017,

www.cnn.com/2017/12/19/us/ufo-sightings-history/index.html.

Roswell UFO Museum. “Roswell, New Mexico.” ​Roswell UFO Museum​, International UFO

Museum Research Center, 2010, www.roswellufomuseum.com/roswell.html.

Saler, Benson, Charles A. Ziegler, and Charles B. Moore. ​UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis

of

a Modern Myth​. Smithsonian Books, 1997.

Image Credits

Naughton, Russell. “The Kenneth Arnold Story.” ​Flying Wings: An Anthology​. Monash

University Centre for Telecommunications and Information Engineering, 21 Nov. 2001,

www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/wings_ufo.html​.

Roswell UFO Museum. “Roswell, New Mexico.” ​Roswell UFO Museum​, International UFO

Museum Research Center, 2010, www.roswellufomuseum.com/roswell.html.