by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
The announcement on July 8, 1947 by the intelligence office at Roswell Army Air Field that they had recovered a flying saucer from a ranch in the area quickly faded from the public consciousness after it was announced the next day that what was found was actually a weather balloon. It wasn’t until 1978 that the story was resurrected after Stanton Friedman stumbled upon it. After that, it spawned a cottage industry that many people profited from with books, speaking engagements, television appearances, videos and assorted merchandise. The original story of a flying saucer being recovered grew until there were two crash sites, recovered alien bodies, and even a living alien. Much of this is now doubtful as the credibility of the people who made those sorts of claims has been called into question, as is reported in detail on the website, roswellfiles.com. The thing about the Roswell case is, once one piece of testimony or evidence is put into question or totally debunked, someone comes along with “new evidence” that is promised to be “the smoking gun.”
An infamous example got many UFO enthusiasts excited beginning in 2012. Robert Sheaffer wrote about it in an article headlined, “The ‘Roswell Slides’ Fiasco: UFOlogy’s Biggest Black Eye,” published on pages 30-32 in the September/October 2015 Volume 39, issue 5 Skeptical Inquirer. According to Sheaffer, video producer, Adam Dew, came into the possession of a collection of slides that were from photos taken in the 1940s by a Texas couple, the late Bernard and Hilda Ray.
Two of the slides looked to Dew to be showing an alien body laid out on a shelf. He got in touch with longtime Roswell researchers, Don Schmitt and Tom Carey, who were in the process of putting together a “dream team” to re-evaluate the Roswell evidence. Team members included Anthony Bragalia and Richard Dolan. Kevin Randle and Chris Rutkowski were invited to take part, but they both backed away because of their doubts about the slides.
Apparently Dew saw an opportunity to make some money and a promotional campaign was set into motion that built up to the big reveal before an audience of around 6000 people who paid from $20 to $100 per ticket. The event was held in Mexico City on May 5, 2015, and was organized by Jaime Maussan.
Prior to the event, low-resolution images of the slides had leaked out, and people in the UFO community noted that there was a placard next to the “alien,” but it was too blurry to read. Carey assured the curious that people from the Photo Interpretation Department of the Pentagon and Adobe had said “it was beyond the pale, that it cannot be read, it is totally up to interpretation.” Bragalia had this to say: “Of the many scientists, PhDs, photography experts and other researchers who are among the very fortunate to have viewed the “alien slides” – not one has ever at any time mentioned that the 3 foot thing depicted in the 1947 photographs resembles a mummy.”
The group promised to release higher resolution images of the slides after the Mexico City event, but that never happened. However, one leaked out and Nab Lator, a member of a “The Roswell Slides Group,” which had formed to conduct a sort of peer review, used Smart Deblur to enhance the card and it was seen to clearly read “Mummified Body of a Three Year Old Boy.”
According to Sheaffer. There was “no mea culpa” from Dew and Dolan. Schmitt and Carey released statements to the effect that the slides might still be of an alien, and Maussan was “still insisting that the slides show an alien . . .” Bragalia issued a statement saying “I must be less trusting, more discerning and less accusatory of those with whom I disagree.” According to Sheaffer, Bragalia had “a lot more apologizing to do” for the things he’d said about the detractors.
Bragalia has recently jumped back in with new evidence in the form of a testimonial on tape from a woman who said she was an assistant to Albert Einstein in 1947 and accompanied him on a visit to an air base where he examined a damaged flying saucer and saw eight dead aliens as well as one that was alive.
The release of the tape and Einstein’s identity are what is new about this case. It was originally investigated in 1993 by Sheila Franklin, who was a member of the Mutual UFO Network. Franklin had heard about the woman’s story from a friend they had in common and Franklin made arrangements to interview the woman on tape. Franklin then got Leonard Stringfield involved, who was focused on crash retrieval reports at the time. He published a series of what he called “Status Reports” and he wrote about his work with Franklin on this case in Status Report VII, which he published in February 1994 titled UFO Crash Retrievals: Search for Proof in a Hall of Mirrors.
On October 1, 2021, Kevin Randle posted an excerpt from the publication that deals with this particular case on his blogsite, A Different Perspective. Stringfield refers to the woman by the pseudonym they both agreed upon, Edith Simpson.
According to Stringfield, Franklin, “a long-trusted researcher in Florida,” called him and told him the story. She said she’d heard about it, in Stringfield’s words, “from an associate who got Simpson’s story from one of her students.” On July 10, 1993, Franklin, accompanied by two of her friends, went to a restaurant near the college where the 64-year-old Simpson taught and interviewed her on tape in the presence of one of her friends. Franklin then sent Stringfield a copy of “the confidential tape.” According to Stringfield, he followed up with 15 phone calls to Simpson and got the details of her “9-day adventures.”
Simpson said she was a top science student who was chosen among many others to spend the summer of 1947 studying with “one of the world’s top scientists” whom she called “The Professor.” It was in this situation that The Professor invited her to accompany him on a mission to a secret location in the American Southwest.
According to her, she, The Professor, and his entourage boarded a commercial airliner and landed at a small airport after a layover in Chicago. She speculated that it might have been Edwards Air Force Base, but when Stringfield told her that it was called Muroc in 1947, she said she had assumed it was Edwards. She said, “I’m sure it wasn’t Los Angeles, but I remember it was a small airport, maybe in New Mexico or even Phoenix. No one told me anything; after all, I was just a peon.”
According to her, they were greeted in the rain by a man she thought was a colonel. They were then driven 50-75 miles across a desert to a base. She said she was taken to a motel while the others stayed at the base.
Simpson said that at one point during her time there, they went into an old hangar that was well guarded. Inside, there were five aliens, possibly dead, on display for her “boss” and other specialists to examine. She describes the creatures as wearing tight-fitting suits. She said they were about five feet tall, had greyish-green skin, big heads, “enormous” dark eyes, and no hair. She heard they had no navels of genitalia.
One of the creatures had a green liquid oozing out of its nostrils that turned blue as it was exposed to the air. Because of this, she assumed it was copper or cobalt based.
According to her, at the far end of the hangar, she saw a disk-shaped craft, about a quarter of the size of the hangar, that was damaged on one side. She said: “My reaction was wonderment, half curiosity, and maybe half fear.”
Because all this was determined to have taken place in July of 1947, Stringfield asked Simpson if what she saw was from the Roswell crash. She said: “No one said it was from the Roswell crash, but I did hear the name pop up during my trip. Now, remember, I told you, they didn’t tell me anything of importance, no secrets, no details. My boss who had the right clearance made a report, which I didn’t see. I was just told to keep my mouth shut.”
According to Stringfield, at one point, she and the rest of the team were suddenly loaded onto a canvas-covered troop carrier and driven 50 miles across the desert escorted by Jeeps. They went inside a building and saw a creature strapped to a gurney that was struggling in pain trying to free itself. Simpson said its torso suddenly expanded grotesquely and those around it had trouble keeping it restrained. They were “dismissed from the premises,” and Simpson later heard that the creature survived.
When Stringfield asked about The Professor’s reaction to all they had seen, she said he wasn’t surprised that the creatures had come to Earth and was hopeful we could learn more about the universe. According to her, he said, “Contact should be a benefit to both of our worlds.”
In the course of her talks with Stringfield, it came out that there were photos taken, and she had said on tape that she was in possession of 48 of them. This, of course, piqued Stringfield’s interest and he was eager to see them and get copies to substantiate Simpson’s claims. They made plans to have her show the photos to Franklin, along with any other documents that might “lend credence to her case,” but this failed to happen.
According to Stringfield, he told Simpson that he had reached a deadline and would need to see the promised materials if he was to publish her story “credibly” in his upcoming Status Report. She said she was searching for a folder where she had hidden a photo and notes from the trip but she had had “no luck” thus far. She said she’d decided to send it to Stringfield with her permission to publish it in his report.
Stringfield called Simpson the next day as per her suggestion and she told him she still hadn’t found the photo. Stringfield was disappointed and wondered whether she had ever had any photos.
Next week: Stringfield wonders and Franklin tells her side.
Thanks to listener Palmer Murphy for the suggestion.