Decoding the Roswell Crash

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF at the International UFO Museum & Research Center, in Roswell, there’s a good chance you’ll bump into researcher Dennis Balthaser, who’s been giving tours and talks for more than 30 years about what might or might not have landed near Roswell in July 1947. Here’s what he might tell you.

Weather balloon. In the days immediately following the Roswell Incident, the U.S. military claimed that what crashed near Roswell was an experimental weather balloon. In order to stem public fears, military officials even posed for the press with a weather balloon the next day. But Balthaser is not convinced. For one, the rancher who found the Roswell debris field had previously found military weather balloons and returned them to the nearby base for reward money. “But the rancher didn’t know what this stuff was,” Balthaser says of the crash debris, and neither did any of the people in town. According to museum research, U.S. military officials took the material from the locals, and most of it has never been seen again.

UFO. “I can’t sit here and tell you it was aliens,” Balthaser says. But given the inconsistencies in military explanations and the alleged report of a nurse who examined one of the crash victims, Balthaser can’t tell you it wasn’t aliens either. “She said they’re about four feet tall; long, skinny arms and legs; four fingers on each hand; almond-shaped eyes, very black and no pupil, mouth, or ears—just orifices.” Nobody knows the nurse’s identity. The individual she confided in, local mortician Glenn Davis, said she suddenly disappeared.

Espionage device. In 1994, the U.S. military updated their story, admitting they had offered the weather balloon explanation as a cover for a military surveillance tool associated with the top-secret Project Mogul. The project, which involved flying microphones in high-altitude balloons, was used to determine whether the Russians were carrying out nuclear tests. “I’m really tired of balloon stories,” Balthaser says. “I want something more factual.”

Want more Roswell history? Read how longtime researcher Dennis Balthaser investigates the 1947 incident and why the mystery still draws visitors from around the world.