Home to a large military presence engaged in top-secret projects, it’s perhaps not surprising that New Mexico has a reputation as a spawning ground for conspiracy theories and news of the weird. Among the most famous of these are the unproven claims of Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sightings and alien encounters.
Home to a large military presence engaged in top-secret projects, it’s perhaps not surprising that New Mexico has a reputation as a spawning ground for conspiracy theories and news of the weird. Among the most famous of these are the unproven claims of Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sightings and alien encounters.
In 1947, the southeastern town of Roswell made international headlines after mysterious wreckage was found outside the city. The United States military released initial reports of a “flying disc,” but officials later claimed the remnants were actually pieces of a weather balloon. These conflicting official accounts spurred intense speculation, charges of a massive government cover-up, and rich fodder for science-fiction writers.
In 1994, in an attempt to finally quash the unceasing interest in the matter, the Air Force released a report that concluded their story was a cover-up, but not for extraterrestrials. The wreckage, the U.S. military claimed, was debris from Project MOGUL, a top-secret program to detect evidence of Soviet nuclear tests. This explanation however, hasn’t quieted alien believers for whom, some 60 years later, the mystery continues.
[Text courtesy of Elisa Parhad, from New Mexico, A Guide for the Eyes; Eyemuse Books, Los Angeles, CA.]
Aliens; top secret projects; conspiracy theories; Roswell