Extraterrestrials, Part II: The Visitors Arrive

The Second Half of the 20th Century Set the Stage for Modern UFO Encounter Descriptions

Roswell, NM 1947

Something strange was scattered across a ranch outside Roswell, New Mexico.

Rancher William “Mac” Brazel discovered debris spread across the Foster ranch, a remote property northwest of town where he worked as foreman. Exactly when he first encountered it becomes surprisingly difficult to pin down once the contemporary reports and later recollections are placed beside one another. Fortunately, we don't need to solve that particular Roswell puzzle just yet. What matters is that Brazel eventually began wondering whether the unusual material might be connected to the “flying discs” suddenly making headlines across America.

Brazel took some of the material to Roswell and told Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox what he had found. Wilcox contacted Roswell Army Air Field, and military personnel were sent to investigate. Among them was Major Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer with the 509th Bomb Group. Material was collected from the ranch and taken into military custody.

And that's when Roswell stopped being a story about strange junk in a field.

The 509th wasn't just another military unit. According to the Air Force's own later historical account, it was the only unit in the world then capable of delivering nuclear weapons. These were people entrusted with one of America's most closely guarded military capabilities, which makes what happened next one of the most extraordinary moments in UFO history.

The Roswell Army Airfield announced that it had recovered a “flying disc.”

Consider what that meant in the summer of 1947. Flying discs were suddenly appearing in newspapers across the country, but most reports involved civilians pointing toward something strange in the sky. Now the U.S. Army Air Forces itself was saying that personnel from the 509th had actually recovered one!

For a few hours, the story exploded.

Then, almost immediately, it changed.

The recovered material was sent to Fort Worth, Texas, where Brigadier General Roger Ramey told reporters that there was no flying disc after all. Military officers were photographed examining crumpled material identified as balloon and radar-target equipment. Now, here is where the tangled web of Roswell starts getting very sticky… the photographs are real; whether the material shown in them was what had been recovered from the Foster ranch would eventually become another point of dispute among Roswell researchers.

But that was good enough for the day. The sensational story faded quickly from national attention. For years afterward, Roswell was little more than a strange episode from the opening months of America's flying-saucer craze.

Then Roswell came back.

Decades after the original incident, researchers began interviewing people who claimed there had been much more to the events outside Roswell than the public had been told. Later witnesses and investigators described unusual wreckage, military recovery operations, additional debris or crash locations and, most sensationally, claims that a crashed craft containing nonhuman bodies had been recovered. Some people said they had been warned to remain silent, while others described material they believed possessed unusual properties.

Those accounts transformed Roswell from a curious footnote into something enormous. Books were written, witnesses were tracked down, documentaries followed, and eventually two very different interpretations of what happened in New Mexico emerged.

In the government's eventual account, the military had recovered debris associated with Project Mogul, a classified balloon program intended to help detect Soviet nuclear testing. The Air Force argued that the secrecy surrounding Mogul helped explain why its true purpose wasn't disclosed in 1947. A later Air Force investigation also argued that some of the body-recovery stories that entered Roswell lore decades afterward could be traced to memories of anthropomorphic test-dummy operations and unrelated military accidents that occurred in later years. Anthropomorphic test-dummies? Honestly?

Many UFO researchers remain unconvinced. They point to the original “flying disc” announcement, the rapid shift to a balloon explanation and testimony from people who later claimed there was much more to the recovery. From that perspective, Project Mogul doesn't close the case; it represents another chapter in a government explanation they believe fails to account for everything witnesses eventually described.

And there lies the problem with Roswell.

The most spectacular claims largely entered the story years later, when memories had aged and Roswell was beginning its transformation into a legend. That doesn't automatically make those witnesses dishonest or their testimony worthless, but it does make their accounts much harder to verify against the events of 1947. In fact, when researching this article, I was astounded by the conflicting dates and people involved across different articles! This website may have the most complete timeline available, but even this one conflicts with other reports.

At the same time, simply saying “it was a weather balloon” doesn't really explain why Roswell became such a powerful part of UFO history. The military actually did announce that it had recovered a flying disc. The project eventually identified as the source of the debris really was classified. And the documentary record that survives doesn't provide a neat little file capable of settling every argument that followed.

That combination proved irresistible.

No extraterrestrial spacecraft, wreckage or biological remains connected to Roswell have ever been made available for independent scientific verification. Maybe Project Mogul explains the debris. Maybe some of the people who came forward later experienced things that remain difficult to reconcile with the official account. After nearly eighty years, Roswell has accumulated enough testimony, contradiction and mythology that separating the original incident from everything attached to it is an investigation of its own.

For our story, though, Roswell represents something even bigger.

Until then, the modern flying-saucer phenomenon had mostly been about us looking at them — strange objects crossing the sky and witnesses wondering what they had seen. Roswell introduced a far more provocative possibility.

Maybe one of them had come down, and if the military recovered it, another question inevitably followed:

What else weren't they telling us?

A Shift in Perception

Prior to Roswell, most documented encounters lean toward the “something in the distance” category, whether it is a strange light in the sky or an actual physical object. Personal encounters are not well documented, and their descriptions tend to color the incidents with the words and technology available to them at the time.

After 1947, the distance begins to close. People aren't simply seeing objects anymore. They're approaching them, encountering their occupants, communicating with them and, eventually, reporting that they've been taken aboard. Why now?

Maybe we're watching the influence of a rapidly changing culture. Newspapers, radio and eventually television allowed extraordinary stories to travel farther and faster than ever before. Rockets and atomic bombs had already demonstrated that yesterday's impossible technology could become tomorrow's reality, while science fiction was giving us an increasingly sophisticated vocabulary for imagining visitors from other worlds. Perhaps people had always experienced things like this and finally had a language—and a culture—through which they could describe them.

And then there is the government. Post World War Two, trust in government began to erode (and rightly so). People first began to wonder, then openly question, and then outright call out the blatant lies and deceptions that governments forged every day. It used to be that governments could laugh off “conspiracies” … until they started to be true. Unfortunately for governments, they tend to take a long time to realize that in trying to hide the monster, they have created several others.

Visitors with a Purpose

During the 1950s, the UFO phenomenon took an unexpectedly friendly turn. While Hollywood filled theaters with alien invasions and radioactive monsters, a growing number of self-described contactees claimed extraterrestrials were visiting Earth with a considerably more encouraging message: humanity needed to get its act together.

One of the most famous was George Adamski, who claimed to have encountered a visitor from Venus in the California desert in November 1952. According to Adamski, the visitor was remarkably human in appearance, with long blond hair and an urgent message concerning humanity’s use of nuclear weapons. Adamski went on to describe additional encounters and journeys aboard spacecraft, publishing accounts that attracted both a devoted following and considerable criticism.

He wasn’t alone. George Van Tassel organized enormous gatherings at Giant Rock in California, where enthusiasts shared accounts of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. Other contactees described visitors from Venus, Mars and more distant worlds, often portraying them as technologically and spiritually advanced beings concerned about Earth’s increasingly dangerous relationship with atomic energy.

These stories emerged during a remarkable moment in human history. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had demonstrated the destructive potential of nuclear weapons, the Cold War was gathering momentum, and the Space Age was approaching. In that atmosphere, the idea that an older civilization might arrive with a warning—or perhaps a little advice—had understandable appeal.

The contactees’ claims were never substantiated by independently verified evidence, and modern planetary science has made the idea of humanlike civilizations living openly on Venus or Mars extraordinarily difficult to reconcile with what we now know about those worlds. But their importance to UFO history is undeniable. They introduced an enduring possibility into the conversation: perhaps the visitors weren’t here to conquer us. Perhaps they were trying to tell us something.

Of course, if your interplanetary peace ambassador chooses a remote desert for a private meeting, obtaining a second witness can be something of a challenge.

Encounters Become Personal

By the early 1960s, another kind of UFO account was gaining attention. The visitors were no longer necessarily wise, friendly strangers, offering humanity a brighter future. Some witnesses described encounters that were confusing, frightening and deeply personal, with experiences they struggled to understand long after the apparent object had disappeared.

On September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving home through New Hampshire when they noticed an unusual light in the sky. Their experience eventually became one of the most influential alleged alien-abduction cases in history, involving a period of time they could not readily account for and, later, descriptions of being taken aboard a spacecraft and examined by unfamiliar beings.

The details emerged through a complicated process that included Betty’s dreams, recollections and hypnosis conducted years after the drive. Hypnosis can influence memory and produce confident but inaccurate recollections, so those later narratives cannot independently establish that an abduction occurred. That limitation doesn’t tell us exactly what the Hills experienced on the road, however, nor does it erase the distress associated with their account.

The Hill story introduced elements that would become familiar in later reports: missing time, medical examinations, unfamiliar occupants and the sense that an encounter might leave behind more questions than memories. It also helped move the phenomenon away from the public spectacle of a flying saucer overhead and toward the intensely private experience of an individual witness.

Then, in April 1964, police officer Lonnie Zamora reported a very different encounter near Socorro, New Mexico. Investigating a loud noise and what he initially thought might be an explosion, Zamora said he observed a white, egg-shaped object and two small figures before the craft departed. Investigators examined impressions and burned vegetation at the scene, and the case was never officially resolved.

Zamora’s report mattered because it involved a police officer, a specific location and alleged physical traces that investigators could actually examine. It also demonstrated that close encounters were not settling into one convenient pattern. Some witnesses described communication, others terror, and still others simply reported an object that disappeared before they could understand what they had seen.

Whatever lay behind these experiences, the distance between humanity and the reported visitors was shrinking.

Other Famous Close Encounters

On October 11, 1973, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were fishing along the Pascagoula River in Mississippi when they reported an encounter unlike anything in the friendly contactee stories of the previous decades. The men said a glowing craft appeared nearby, and strange humanoid beings took them aboard. Their descriptions included unfamiliar bodies and clawlike appendages, followed by an experience neither man seemed particularly interested in repeating.

The case attracted considerable attention partly because Hickson and Parker went to law enforcement and reported what had happened. While the two were alone afterward, authorities secretly recorded their conversation. Supporters have pointed to the recording as evidence of genuine distress; skeptics note that distress cannot establish what caused it. Both men nevertheless maintained that something extraordinary happened to them.

Two years later, the story of Travis Walton took the phenomenon in another direction. Walton disappeared in Arizona in November 1975 after he and fellow forestry workers reported encountering a luminous object in the woods. He reappeared five days later and described an experience aboard a spacecraft involving unfamiliar beings. His account became the basis for The Walton Experience and eventually the film Fire in the Sky.

Walton’s case remains contested, with supporters emphasizing the multiple witnesses and his continued insistence that the encounter occurred, while critics have questioned elements of the testimony and investigation. For our purposes, what’s interesting is the continued evolution of the visitors themselves. The benevolent visitors of the contactee era were giving way to encounters in which witnesses sometimes felt powerless, confused or frightened.

In December 1980, the mystery returned to the military. American personnel stationed near RAF Woodbridge in England reported unusual lights in Rendlesham Forest over several nights. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt subsequently recorded part of an investigation as personnel attempted to determine what they were seeing. The case remains heavily disputed, with proposed explanations involving astronomical objects, a nearby lighthouse and misinterpretations of events, while some witnesses continue to describe something far more extraordinary.

Then, in September 1994, the phenomenon appeared in a place almost nobody would have expected: a schoolyard in Zimbabwe. Dozens of children at Ariel School near Ruwa reported seeing an unusual object and strange beings near the edge of the school grounds. Their descriptions varied, but several described small figures with prominent dark eyes, and some later associated the experience with impressions or messages concerning technology, humanity or the environment.

The Ariel School case remains particularly fascinating because so many children reported seeing something during the same event. Researchers have also raised important questions about how the children were interviewed, how much opportunity they had to discuss the experience with one another and how later retellings may have influenced memories. Many of the witnesses, now adults, continue to say that they encountered something genuinely extraordinary.

Taken together, these cases reveal something strange about the UFO story. The reported visitors weren’t becoming more consistent as humanity supposedly encountered them more frequently; they were becoming less consistent. Beautiful human-like Venusians existed alongside small humanoids, large-eyed beings and creatures that didn’t seem particularly interested in resembling us at all.

If some of these reports involve encounters with an unknown intelligence, why are the experiences so different? If culture and human perception help shape how extraordinary experiences are interpreted, how much of the underlying event might remain hidden beneath the story we construct around it?

The answer wasn’t about to become any simpler.

“We’re from the Government. We are here to Help.”

The United States Air Force had been officially investigating UFO reports almost from the beginning of the modern flying-saucer era. Project Sign began in 1948, followed by Project Grudge and then Project Blue Book in 1952. By the time Blue Book ended in 1969, the Air Force had collected 12,618 UFO reports, of which 701 remained classified as unidentified. The Air Force nevertheless concluded that its investigations had found no evidence that the unidentified cases represented extraterrestrial vehicles or technology beyond contemporary scientific knowledge.

The US National Archives has the actual Project Blue Book Case Files, along with a lot of other UFO related files. Be warned - you can spend HOURS on this site!

That distinction matters. “Unidentified” means investigators did not establish an identification from the available evidence; it doesn’t automatically mean extraterrestrial. At the same time, an unresolved case doesn’t become meaningless simply because investigators couldn’t finish the puzzle. The surviving Project Blue Book records remain part of the historical record because these were real reports investigated by the U.S. government.

Unfortunately, Blue Book wasn't always the dispassionate scientific investigation its name might suggest. An assessment preserved by the National Archives concluded that limited resources and a government public-relations strategy intended to reduce UFO reports meant the Air Force program often became more concerned with debunking reports than systematically studying them.

And that created a problem that would haunt government UFO investigations for decades. If your investigation appears designed to make the mystery go away, people who believe they've witnessed something extraordinary aren't going to trust your conclusions—even when those conclusions might be correct.

Government secrecy didn't create the UFO phenomenon. But it certainly helped create the suspicion surrounding it.

After Blue Book closed, the public UFO conversation increasingly belonged to civilian investigators, witnesses, authors and enthusiasts. Stories continued to accumulate, along with allegations that governments knew considerably more than they admitted. Governments consistently dismissed, denied, and claimed “Conspiracy Theory” when evidence began to pile up that SOMETHING is going on.

Meanwhile, technology quietly transformed the environment in which the next generation of sightings would occur. By the early 2000s, military aircraft carried radar, infrared targeting systems and other sensors that observers in the 1950s could scarcely have imagined. Navy pilots were trained in identifying and responding to aircraft where mistakes could have very real consequences. None of those made observation infallible — complex sensors and highly trained humans can both misinterpret incomplete information — but the UFO question was entering an age in which unusual observations might leave behind more than an eyewitness account.

And in November 2004, something very strange was about to happen over the Pacific.

To be continued in Part 3…

Field Notes: Extraterrestrials, Part II

📍 Location: Worldwide, with major cases in the United States, United Kingdom and Zimbabwe

👀 Period Covered: 1947–2004

🛸 Classification: UFO encounters / alleged extraterrestrial contact / abduction reports / military observations

👽 Reported Occupants: Humanlike visitors, small humanoids, large-eyed beings and other unfamiliar entities

⚠️ Threat Level: Unknown — reported experiences range from apparently benevolent contact to frightening encounters

📖 Status: Numerous sightings and government investigations are documented; extraterrestrial origins remain unverified

➡️ Next: Extraterrestrials, Part III — The Age of Disclosure: 2017–Present

A Project Mogul "Balloon Train", 1955.

US Air Force Public Domain

Operation Upshot-Knothole Grable Nuclear Test; the only firing of an atomic artillery shell

U.S. Department of Energy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Halt Memorandum describing the incident at Rendlesham Forest

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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