Roswell Slides and the Video Clips

For those who don’t wish to follow the links to listen to Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and Adam Dew talk about the Roswell Slides, I thought that I would add a little bit of analysis here. This is my take based on these short clips and what is said in them.

First, Don provides little in the way of information about the slides. Instead he speaks about the historical value of them, and if they are what they are reported to be, then his hyperbole isn’t all that far over the top. If these slides show a creature that was born on another planet and who came to Earth, then the slides are of historical importance.

He suggests this is the proof for which all of us have been searching, but then the same was said about the MJ-12 documents and the alien autopsy film. Neither has withstood the test of time, though surprisingly there are some that still wish to argue the validity of them. Don is on a little more solid ground simply because all the evidence isn’t in and until the presentation in May, most of us are left to speculate about the slides… still they are simply photographs of the same creature so we actually have just a single example here.

Don does suggest that there will be some first-hand testimony offered. This is in the nature of “This is what I saw in 1947,” but that doesn’t help much. With the alien autopsy there were a number of people who claimed to have seen the film prior to its unveiling in the mid-1990s, and we now know that they hadn’t seen anything like it simply because that film was faked.

Adam Dew tells us, “I am a graduate of Northwestern University (BSJ '98). If I wasn't on an actual paying job (as opposed to the slide doc project) I’d post the diploma for you [not me but someone who questioned his credentials],” which doesn’t tell us all that much. A great many of us have college degrees and we don’t know what his area of expertise is.

He does tell us however, that the slides have been shown to various experts such as Professor Rod Slemmons who had been the director of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography who suggested that to fake the slide holder, that cardboard sleeve they are in, would be difficult to do. Well, that is something but not really all that much.

And he showed the slides to Neil deGrasse Tyson who seems less than overwhelmed by the slide. I have two take aways for this. One is that the guy actually talked to Tyson and two, it seems that all sorts of people have seen the slides who have nothing to do with the investigation.

Dew also presents footage of an unidentified man, other than to say that he was a lieutenant in Roswell in 1947 and who says that what is on the film looks “identical… if this is a copy, they did pretty good.” Which, again, is of little value until this guy can be vetted… though I suspect that interview was arranged by Tom or Don and they should know if the guy was in Roswell in July 1947.

However, Dew dated the slides from 1939 to 1949… and I’ll just point out that the coding on the slide suggested the film was manufactured in 1927, 1947 or 1967. Kodachrome was not available in 1927, so that suggests that Dew’s range of dates is inaccurate… for what that’s worth.

Dew said, “Logic tells me it’s probably nothing but I simply can’t shake the thought that maybe, just maybe it’s something.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Tom provides the most information about what is on the slide and what the alien looks like. He says, “What we see in the picture is what appears to be a three and a half to four foot tall alien. It’s got a frail body and the oversized head just as it was described to us [Carey and Schmitt]. It appears bipedal… [It] has two arms. It looks like it has some analog to a ribcage but it has been partially dissected. The pleural cavity and the abdominal cavity have been removed. The head has been severed from the body.”

Then Tom says something that I’m not sure he is going to be able to retreat from and I’m surprised that it was in the video clip. He said, “…We don’t know where the picture was taken. It’s taken indoors [so Ray or whoever, didn’t stumble across the body in the desert]… We don’t know exactly what circumstances the photographer was being a part of to take those pictures.”

They don’t know who took the pictures, only that they were found as a house was being prepared for an estate sale. The house had been owned by Bernerd and Hilda Ray and was in a collection of slides from the late 1940s and 1950s. They don’t seem to know who took the pictures or when they were taken or how Ray ended up with them and with that, the trail grows cold.

Now we have to wait to see if there is more information that will come out at the unveiling in May or if we have most of the pertinent information now. At the moment, this is interesting but not overly promising.