Saturday, May 02, 2015

Glenn Dennis Has Died

According to Albuquerque television station KOB-TV, Glenn Dennis died on Tuesday, April 28, 2015. He was the last of the three founding members of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico.

Dennis told researchers in 1989 that while he worked at Ballard’s Funeral Home in Roswell, he was called by an officer at the base who asked if they had any small, children-sized caskets. Later he said he was at the base while the recovery of the alien craft and the bodies of those killed had been brought in. In the back of an ambulance, he saw some strange metallic debris.

He told several researchers that he was friends with a nurse who told him about the alien bodies and the preliminary autopsy that had been preformed there. In later years his story would be challenged but he did not waver from the details.

In the early 1990s, with Walter Haut and Max Littell, a real estate salesman, they formed the museum. Dennis could often be found there and would sit down to tell his story to those who asked.


In the last few years Dennis’ health had deteriorated and he spent less time at the museum. He had been very ill for some time and died this week.

32 comments:

Unknown said...

RIP.

Unknown said...

Very sorry to hear of his death. He was one of the original parts of the Roswell story and a Roswell fixture for many years. Although I knew he was in declining health he'll be missed.

TheDimov said...

I actually think Glenn Dennis was one of the best Roswell witnesses.. I know the Ms Selff story was false but then again I too would protect someone I deeply cared about, or loved. Maybe there was more to the story I am missing? But I think his testimony was stated in a manner that did not suggest fabrication so.. I think (unless there was something I missed out on as I said) Glenn was one of the very top Roswell witnesses.

TheDimov said...

^ I meant to say the Ms Selff name was false.

Paul Young said...

I don't know anything about how to prepare a body for a funeral.
Does anyone know why it would have been so crucial for the supposed dead aliens to have been put in child-sized caskets as opposed to a casket built for a standard sized adult human...that when Dennis said they only had one, the AAF went looking for other caskets at another funeral home?

Is a big coffin so much different than a small coffin when it comes to storing a body for a short time? (I'm presuming the child coffins that Dennis says he was asked for were only going to be used as temporary body storage...))

albert said...

@Paul,
An adult coffin is pretty hard to trans port, and even if covered, it's pretty clear it's a coffin. Small coffins can easily be hidden in crates, and would be necessary if you had two or three different destinations for the 'cargo'.
.
...

Brian B said...

Sorry to hear he passed.

On the caskets - you don't need a casket to contain or prep a body for transport in a crate. Especially if it's going to be examined and autopsied later.

In fact if they were trying to prep a body for preservation purposes, they would have used body bags. Caskets are for burials and they have no inherent preservation capabilities.

As the so-called witnesses claimed, they built crates to house caskets which makes no sense at all. If you built a crate for small 4 foot bodies you could have put more than one in the crate to draw less attention to the incident since no caskets were even called for.

His testimony is just morticians' talk - and to emphasize "small" aliens were "dead".

Part of his expanding fictional storyline.

Brian B said...

Also - Expect another of several more new revelations (no doubt) from what will undoubtably be another post mortum affidavit.

Larry said...

Brian wrote:

".. Expect another of several more new revelations (no doubt) from what will undoubtably [sic] be another post mortum [sic] affidavit."

I have to wonder what your motive is for making this prediction--preemptive debunking?

jim bender said...

Glen Dennis was one of the founders of the Roswell Museum. Glen's story was not made up and lends great support that Roswell was not a myth.

RIP GLEN DENNIS

Don Maor said...

Roswell witnesses keep dying, that is sad, but their testimony will not die, it will be written for ever, no matter the deniers. RIP to Glenn Dennis.

Regarding coffins, for transportation reasons it is easier for people to handle smaller boxes, and requires less space in the transportation vehicle.

Another very important thing, in case of movements during shipment a smaller coffin permits that the corpse does not suffer damage from blows and movements of the shipment, etc. Coffins also have the good characteristics of sealing against bad odors. Nobody wants to pilot and plane with stench or in danger of contamination, or getting sick.

Finally, it does not matter what the resident ignorant and fool denier thinks about the usefulness of coffins or the required size of them, if the agent in charge of shipping the alien bodies thought that it was necessary to use small coffins, he simply would have requested them. Ignorant deniers need to understand that an officer located 70 years in the past, does NOT care about the "brilliant" deductions of deniers living 70 years in the future.
(This message was not aimed to Paul, who made a reasonable question).

TheDimov said...

Was the only part of his testimony that was proven to be false the incorrect name of the nurse, and in the end to protect her? So that essentially he could still be telling the truth but protecting someone? Because I would do the same thing! He may have wanted to honestly tell the world something of huge importance but concurrently protect a loved one who wanted no attention directed to her, so if that is the only issue then I don't see it as a big one.

David Rudiak said...

As far as I know, the only demonstrable lie was the name of the nurse. In the critic's defense, by telling that one lie, he left himself open to disbelief about the rest of his story, i.e., he impeached himself.

However, the rest of the story has a good deal of corroboration, particularly the part about the base call for small caskets. He was telling friends about that within days, not 40 years later to gain fame. If he made that part up in 1947 to promote the idea of an alien crash, he had one hell of an imagination. And the witness from Hagerman, N.M., whose family owned the mortuary business there, would have to be lying too, about them being the ones to supply the small coffins since Ballard's Funeral Home in Roswell didn't have them on hand.

On the one hand, I argue with myself, if he wasn't going to give up the name of the nurse because he promised her not to, why not just tell researchers that instead of leading them on a wild goose chase with a false name?

On the other hand, by not giving out the real name but using a similar one (anagramish plus word lengths) plus dropping clues as to her appearance and background, maybe some part of him hoped researchers might put the bread crumbs together and find her anyway to corroborate his story. That way he could keep his promise and still back up his story. Yes that is highly speculative, but I think a possible explanation for his behavior.

Witnesses aren't always black and white and can have complex reasons for their behavior. I tried to make that point about witnesses cited for the other side, such as Mogul engineer Charles Moore and CIC officer Sheridan Cavitt who investigated with Marcel. They were caught red-handed in a number of lies, but I think it is foolish to dismiss absolutely everything they had to say as untrue.

Cavitt's motives to lie might be similarly complex, such as taking an oath to keep what he considered to be an important secret, thus trying to distance himself from the event as much as possible (never there, not there at the time, never involved, only minimally involved, never met Brazel, etc.)

But in the midst of the denials, important details slipped out. His wife butted into his interview to declare she couldn't understand why the Marcel's couldn't keep their mouths shut, when the Cavitt's knew to keep quiet. What was there to keep quiet about? Cavitt's tiny balloon crash site no bigger than his living room? (Note, this testimony was actually completely at odds with the Mogul balloon theory.)

Mary Cavitt also blurted out that Marcel had retained a piece of metal foil. The Marcels and Cavitts were friends and often got together. At a barbeque, Mary Cavitt recalled, Marcel was demonstrating the debris couldn't be damaged in the hot coals. Cavitt said he remembered and told Marcel to get rid of it. They buried it somewhere in the back yard.

Yep, that chewing gum wrap foil-paper from a Mogul radar target, was damn sensitive stuff, apparently.

Those little anecdotes reveal a great deal, even if Cavitt did a lot of lying about other things. Often by rejecting what a witness says entirely, you can throw out the baby with the bathwater.

The more important question, is why the lying to begin with? If it's all about narcissm and self-glorification, that's one thing. If it was to protect someone or a secret, that's another.

Nitram said...

DR wrote:

"Witnesses aren't always black and white and can have complex reasons for their behavior. I tried to make that point about witnesses cited for the other side, such as Mogul engineer Charles Moore and CIC officer Sheridan Cavitt who investigated with Marcel. They were caught red-handed in a number of lies, but I think it is foolish to dismiss absolutely everything they had to say as untrue."

Agreed, but how do you rank Dennis's story out of 10 with 1 being definitely false and 10 being absolutely true? (I realise this is only your opinion David).

Surely he is the least likely of the witnesses (first, second or third hand) and I think Edwin Easleys testimony or that of Frankie Rowe is far more likely to be correct for example.

Regards
Nitram.

Lance said...

David's "corroboration" isn't that at all.

It's simply "claims" made decades later that someone said something decades ago at a time somehow still remembered. And because of the ham-handed way that the frankly horrible UFO "investigators" collected these stories, priming the witnesses, etc, the claims are doubly suspect.

The great and disastrous paranormal opus, "Phantasms of the Living" (~1888) purported to collect ghost stories that demonstrated the appearance of spectral figures to the living. It collected these stories from hundreds of witnesses, and, like the testimony David describes, these witnesses gave dates and times of when certain events happened. Only after publication did the authors start receiving letters from other parties and documented evidence that many of the ghost stories COULDN'T have happened the way described. Dates were off...places were wrong, some of the supposed deceased were still alive years after their claimed deaths!

In short, relying on witness recollection for this kind of thing is stupendously short-sighted. Additionally, the stories in "Phantasm" were generally much more recent than the supposed memories dredged up by saucer believers decades after the fact.

Why don't we have even one contemporaneous document that supports these alien body stories? Why are they ALL discovered after ~1978?

Lance






jim bender said...

lol classic case of SKEPTIC/DEBUNKER of the brain.

Glen dennis's courage to come forward and remain steady is remarkable. Mr Dennis!!!!! Bravo RIP

SKEPTICS/DEBUNKERS will Always default to thire obsessive stance. Just like the Roman Inquistion,Jesuits, and the Holy office in their attempts to execute the great one, GALILEO GALILEI who stayed strong and changed the world for the better!!!!

"The world isn't FLAT" lolololo

The Roswell incident was an alien craft not of our world.

Unknown said...

So sad to see what should be a eulogy to the death of a decent man turn into a debate over his views and comments on a controversial subject. My friends, I suggest you save debate for a more proper thread.

KRandle said...

All -

I had hoped that we could save this debate for another time, given the man had just died. If you look back through this blog, you'll find that I have posted short obituaries for a number of people including my friend, Karl Pflock (while I was serving in Iraq, Karl was the only UFO colleague that regularly wrote to me).

We will revisit the trouble with the Dennis testimony at a later date. For now, let's just hold off before this becomes vicious.

Don Maor said...

Lance said:
"Why don't we have even one contemporaneous document that supports these alien body stories? Why are they ALL discovered after ~1978?"

I do have a book from David Holmes, from year 1966, about rumors of small bodies being kept embalmed at Wright Patterson AFB.
The book is titled "life in the universe”. Here is a link to a small extract of the book for everyone to download, mentioning the small bodies:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/0oveb6xwwitjsch/Holmes_1966.zip

The book is mostly about astrobiology, devoting only one chapter to the topic of UFOs. The author seems to have been an important guy, Captain, seems to have been very informed and well-connected guy.

In other words, the rumors of small bodies recovered, existed much before than 1978.

I hope this puts at least some small break to the incredibly paranoid and crazy theory held by some fool debunkers, that researchers Friedman and Moore, and Randle and Schmidt later, with their incredible mental super powers, were able to brainwash dozens of Roswell witnesses.

Don Maor said...

Sorry Kevin, I started writing my lat post before you posted yours.

Don Maor said...

A correction, the title of the book is

"The search for life on other worlds"

Regards

Paul Young said...

I do apologise Kevin, for starting questioning the Dennis casket story on what is essentially your obituary for the man. Rather insensitive of me.

cda said...

I realise a death is a period of grief for family and friends. I just wondered if any of Dennis's family, or in fact if the Ballard Funeral Home, had ever given any support to his claims re the Roswell bodies.

David Rudiak said...

cda wrote:
I just wondered if any of Dennis's family, or in fact if the Ballard Funeral Home, had ever given any support to his claims re the Roswell bodies.

Dennis' brother Bob said he wasn't in Roswell at the time, but did hear the story soon after from his father (Benjamin Dennis) when he returned home from the service.

Part of Glenn Dennis' story was of Sheriff Wilcox being good friends with his father and warning his father that his son should keep his mouth shut about what he knew. Brother Bob confirmed that part of the story. Anything else was for his brother to tell. It was his story.

Glenn Dennis interviewed said one of the main factors in him staying quiet for so long was the very nature of the story would invite ridicule, and he didn't want to hurt or embarrass his family.

There are people telling us he told bits and pieces of the story afterward, such as Sgt. Milton Sprouse saying Dennis told him several years later about the casket call while preparing a funeral for a friend. The reason Dennis confided in Sprouse may be because Sprouse said he also knew about an autopsy at the base hospital. Allegedly he knew a medic at the hospital who told him of seeing the bodies and the results of the autopsy, and then immediately disappeared. They never found out what happened to him.

Sprouse also said five members of his B-29 crew were sent out to help clean up the debris and described the unusual nature of the debris, including the infamous "memory foil".

http://www.roswellproof.com/sprouse.html

Anthony Bragalia said...

Parts of Glenn's story are supported by the affidavits of former Roswell Chief of Police L.M. Hall and former Roswell base technician David Wagnon.

Other testimony about Glen include Rogene Cordes, widow of Brigadier General Harry Cordes,who would help lead the Strategic Air Command. They were neighbors of Glenn's in 1947. She told me that Glenn told her then much of what he would later say.

I also talked with the Dennis family's close friend Mollie Abramatis, who dined at the Wortely Hotel, at one time owned by Glenn. She was aware of the story Glenn told decades before Stan Friedman found Glenn and told the world his story.

Glenn's brother told researcher John Price that Glenn was telling the truth and that Sheriff Wilcox went over to talk to Glenn's father and tell him that his son needed to be silent about anything he may have seen or heard.

Kelly Abbott,Glenn's grandson, says much about the veracity of his grandfather as recounted in a piece I did: Roswell Undertaker's Secret Revealed.

So there is much support for Glenn from those who knew him the best.

Brian B said...

Well I would comment but since Randle keeps deleting my comments - 4 now - why bother. Censorship at its best - so much for "a different perspective". Blog should be called "Randle's Perspective".

Woody said...

Kevin - When was Dennis' testimony first revealed to the public?

Woody

KRandle said...

Woody -

We gathered it in August 1989. Stan Friedman interviewed him on August 9, I believe. I had an interview scheduled for the following week, but cancelled it so that it wouldn't seem we were ganging up on the guy. I interviewed him on video tape (which I think is the first interview) in November, and there was a second done by Mark Wolf a day or so later, also on video tape.

I believe the first public appearance was in UFO Secret: The Roswell Crash, a documentary and we published information in 1991 which included the illustrations that Walter Henn had made.

Unknown said...

Wasn´t Mr. Dennis one of those new witnesses, who called the hotline after the Unsolved Mysteries episode?

KRandle said...

Zak -

No. I learned his name from Walter Haut, after being told there was a mortician involved, but the source of that comment didn't know his name. Walter Haut did, as I explained in another comment section.

Unknown said...

Ah, thanks for clarification.

George Kanakaris said...

'Why don't we have even one contemporaneous document that supports these alien body stories? Why are they ALL discovered after ~1978? '

What if NO documents were made at the time.