Friday, February 27, 2015

The Roswell Slides and Me


This story actually begins in July 2011 when Tom Carey, Don Schmitt and I were all at the Roswell Festival. Tom suggested that he and I head over to Church’s Fried Chicken for lunch and I’m not one to refuse an invitation for Church’s. At lunch Tom said that he had been thinking about doing a sort of ultimate Roswell book and wondered if I was interested in that.

I said that I was, but didn’t mention that I had contacted a publisher about just such a book a couple of months earlier. I hadn’t heard back and thought this might present a problem if the publisher made some sort of offer especially since Tom and I had agreed that my name would go first on a hardback, if I could arrange that and his first if we went with his publisher. We hadn’t discussed the possibility of a book by a publisher who would produce a trade paperback.

We made some tentative plans but Tom said that he needed to finish a book with Don about Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. At this point that wasn’t much of a hurtle since we had nothing on paper and we had only just started the idea. The important points here were that we were going to work on a book about Roswell and it would be just the two of us.

Sometime later, after we all had left Roswell, Tom emailed me that he had told Don about the project because he felt some loyalty toward Don and Don had lots of media contacts (Too bad that loyalty didn’t work in the other direction). Since he had told Don about the book, there was nothing much that I could do at that point. In the meantime there were others brought into the project; Tony Bragalia and David Rudiak, both who had some important skills and resources. I worried about how we would split up the credit on the book and knew that publishers didn’t like three names on a book cover and we had moved beyond that.

Nothing much was done, other than my publisher wanted something a little more all-encompassing than a book about a single case so we figured out something else. I was also contacted by a hardback publisher from a prestigious house who was interested in the Roswell book. Everything seemed to be working out.

In July 2012 we were all again in Roswell, and we met late at night in the hotel’s breakfast area to talk about the book project. I mentioned that for this to work that we would need some additional information, some new witnesses, something that would set this book apart from the others. Tom and Don nodded their agreement but said nothing else about that. Remember, this is July 2012.

There was one other thing that I mentioned then and it was the nun’s diary. The story had been told to Don and me by an ex-Special Forces (Green Beret) officer and a woman who might have been a nun or who was still a nun and who verified the existence of the diary and what was written in it. Because these were Catholic nuns and I didn’t know the customs and courtesies of the Catholic Church, this was an avenue for Don to explore which he did (though he had apparently suggested to Tom that I had investigated it). I mentioned at the book meeting that this was something we should corroborate because it was a document created at the time that would provide some very important evidence. No one was going to dispute the provenance because it was held by the church and a photograph of the page would provide the evidence.

Lance Moody got his panties in a bunch over this, but I really wasn’t interested in that. He would have to wait for the investigation to play out and I wasn’t about to be stampeded into something because someone else wanted an immediate answer. I was confident I had it but I now wanted to be sure... Then I learned that the Special Forces officer had been a PFC when in the Army, wasn’t a Green Beret, and hadn’t been in Vietnam which shot his credibility all to hell. And I learned that the diaries had been traced to Oklahoma City and while I had believed they had been seen and verified, such was not the case. Once I learned where they were and arrangements could be made, I’d go look at them myself (and I practiced with my IPad photographing documents). I pushed and learned the diaries had been moved to Wisconsin, which was good, but that they only went back to 1960 which was bad. I asked questions, was told many things, but in the end, I don’t know where the diaries are, I don’t know what they say, and I don’t know if they even exist. Lance got his answer because it seemed that the book was not getting written as fast as I would like and I finally had an answer which would have appeared in the book, if we had written it.

Then in February 2013, Rich Reynolds published a column about some slides that had surfaced showing a body from the Roswell crash but we, meaning the team assembled for the reinvestigation, couldn’t talk about it because of some sort of a nondisclosure agreement that had been signed. I knew nothing of the slides and I had signed no such agreement. Nick Redfern seemed to be the source on this and since I know Nick, I called him to ask about it. He told me that the slides had been found when a woman had been cleaning out a house for an estate sale (though now we learn that it might have been a house that was about to be demolished). She had sent the slides to her brother and he eventually got in touch with Tom and Don (or Dew, after finding the slides sought out Tom and Don, whatever). The owner of the slides, before she died had been Hilda Ray, though I believe that Nick only knew her husband’s name at the time, which is, of course, Bernerd.

Nick said that the information came from a man who lived in Texas and who had been in Midland sometime earlier. He had overheard a conversation between two others talking about the slides and he thought that Nick might be interested. Well, that sounded a little nebulous, meaning only that someone overheard someone talking about slides of an alien creature and assumed that Nick would be interested and provided him with the information. No names except Ray, who had been a geologist in the Permian Basin which covered the territory between Midland and Roswell as well as a lot of other places, had been mentioned. This was all well and good, but I didn’t believe it and sent out an email to my colleagues on the team. Imagine my surprise when I learned that much of it was true. They had slides. They had been found during an estate sale. The family who had owned them was the Rays and they were now in the hands of someone else who had required a nondisclosure agreement before he would go any further in the investigative process. At least that was the story that I got at that time.

At this point I wanted to publish what I knew but also knew that if I did, the owner of the slides would assume that either Don or Tom had told me in violation of their agreement and that could really screw up the deal (which now doesn’t seem all that important.…I should have published what I knew and how I learned it and let the chips fall where they may). Since Tom was deeply involved I believed there was no need for me to inject myself into the investigation. I trusted that I would be told everything I needed to know as things progressed. That wasn’t actually the case, but there was nothing more for me to do about the slides without risking the whole deal for Tom and Don. Ah, loyalty in one direction… when will I learn?

At one point in early 2013, Tom called and told me a little more about the investigation. I learned what they were doing to validate the slides, meaning they were attempting to scientifically prove that the slides had been exposed in 1947 or thereabouts and wasn’t some kind of modern hoax. I believed that the chemical composition of the developing process would have changed as well as the composition of the film stock at some time after the 1940s. All that could be dated and would provide some evidence that the slides were real in the sense that they had been taken in the 1940s and showed an image that was not some sort of artificial construct made in the last couple of years. That wouldn’t mean that the image was of an alien creature only that this was not some sort of a modern hoax.

I asked Tom if I could see the slides but he said, “No.” There was that pesky nondisclosure agreement that he had signed and they weren’t letting anyone see them. That made sense and I didn’t have to see the slides right then anyway. They were doing what I would have been doing in an attempt to validate the slides. The only thing that wasn’t clear was who had actually taken them and if it was either of the Rays, then there was a major problem because neither of them were available for questioning and it wasn’t clear that they had taken them, only that they had copies.

In the meantime I was working on some of the book. I wrote the long appendix about MJ-12 because I thought it was a part of the story that had to be told, but that it shouldn’t be in the main part of the book. It ended up over 20,000 words with 180 footnotes. I wrote an appendix about Project Mogul, again because it was part of the story but it shouldn’t be part of the book. I believe that it removes Mogul from the case because, simply, Flight No. 4 was cancelled and the cluster of balloons flown later that day was just three or four balloons with a microphone and not one of the long arrays.

Tom was still busy with the Wright Field book so I undertook some of the earlier chapters as well… I sent those on to Tom, got his comments, but he was still busy with that other book. At the same time we were interviewing people who had been on the base in 1947, but we were now talking to the low-ranking end of the spectrum because those of a higher rank had been older in 1947 and most of them were gone. Don supplied some telephone numbers and I called a woman who lived on a ranch out near Corona. She told me that there was a diary available, but it was in one of the out buildings that was filled with the debris of several people. It was lost somewhere in there along with the snakes and the scorpions. Here, at last, was someone who talking of a diary written in the right time frame even if it was guarded by snakes and scorpions.

I called Tom and he told me that he’d already seen the out building and that he and Don had already been there and talked to the woman. She and her family smoked all the time so it seemed that the house was filled with a heavy blue haze and that apparently no one ever emptied an ashtray. Tom had seen the out buildings, plural, and they were filled from ground to ceiling with all sorts of boxes, furniture, broken machines, trash, and anything else you might think of. The least of the problems were the scorpions. I’m not sure why Don supplied the phone number but it seemed to be a dead end.

Tom finished the book about Wright Field but we still made no progress on our book, other than what I had done. I warned that the window was closing and we might lose the opportunity, but that didn’t have much effect. And I learned there was quite a bit of material about Roswell in the new book which wouldn’t help us with the sale of the new one. That was, of course, their decision and I had nothing to do with it or say about it other than to suggest that the publisher might see it as a liability.

In the meantime Reynolds was publishing updates on the slide investigation but he wasn’t getting the information from me. Tony Bragalia had an article about the slides, complete with the Rays’ names in Philip Mantle’s UFO emagazine’s first issue in 2013. So the information was getting out.

At this time it was becoming clear to me that this book project wasn’t going work. The window for the book was closing and we weren’t getting anywhere with it. This slide thing was taking more of Tom and Don’s time and everything seemed to be geared toward it. I wasn’t learning anything about the slides. The book project was dying so that I finally gave up on it.

At that time people thinking that I was on the inside were asking me questions about these slides. When they asked me about them, I said that I wasn’t part of that investigation. This was the truth. I did know some things that weren’t wider knowledge, but thought that information belonged to Tom and Don to release. Instead, I get labeled a liar. I think at this point it’s clear that I had no part in the investigation and that my questions to them went mostly unanswered. I’m no longer sure what Tom’s motivation for asking me to assist in a book about Roswell was, but it is clear to me that as time went on, his motivations changed. Somehow our working together on an important book took a backseat to the circus that is now the Roswell Slides.

If I asked questions about the slides, the refrain was much the same. They couldn’t tell me anything about it but I know that wasn’t the whole truth. Remember, back in 2012 when we had the book meeting? They said nothing about the slides then and you could suggest that it was because of the nondisclosure agreement.… except they had a paper copy of one of the slides with them and showed that to David Rudiak. Apparently they could disclose what they knew to him, but not to me. And, don’t forget, it was Tom who asked me to join him in the book project and then invited in Don without consulting me first. I was sort of stuck with that invitation but I also wondered if his invitation to Don had more to do with the slides than anything else.

The other problem was that as we all learned more about these slides, it began to sound like Alien Autopsy Light. Not a big video production like the Alien Autopsy, just two little slides that showed an unusual creature that for some reason every one of them assumed to be an alien and because the slides seemed to have been taken in the late 1940s that it was from Roswell. That would mean the slides were real, but that doesn’t mean it was of an alien creature either and frankly I’m not sure why that connection was made other than the dating of the slides to the late 1940s. It all seems somewhat problematic to me.

Although I wasn’t being included in the investigation and had no input into what they were doing, I was learning a little about it. From the very beginning I was worried about the lack of provenance. How were they going to establish a connection to Roswell if they didn’t really know who had taken the pictures? Like the rest of you, I have learned that the connection to the Rays might even be more nebulous than we thought. Adam Dew has written that Hilda had died in 1988 and the slides discovered when emptying out a garage (or attic) of a house outside of Sedona in 1998. That means the chain of custody is broken as well. Who owned the house for the ten years between Hilda’s death and the clean out... or is that some sort of a typo, which would confound the whole process regardless. Then we learn that they sat around for another ten years or so and that the sister of the man who now owns (or owned) them gave them to her brother (unless, of course, Dew now owns the slides though an arrangement with Dew. Is this getting complicated enough for you?) And let’s not forget that after the Mexico City circus, there is a chance that the slides will sell for a pile of money.

There is an additional problem here. The slides were found with those that apparently belonged to the Rays but there is actually nothing to connect them to the Rays. All the slides that belonged to them, if we believe what we have been told, were arranged carefully and many, if not all the others, were marked. These were not. They were separate and hidden in an envelope, which, if you think about it, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Here we are with no provenance and a broken chain of custody. While they might have been taken in the late 1940s, the material about the Rays might be completely irrelevant. Discussion of their high level contacts, or the lack thereof, is also irrelevant. That they have pictures of Eisenhower in this general’s uniform (and in one of them, the picture is reversed because the ribbons are on the wrong side) only means that they managed to take pictures of Eisenhower. In today’s world, how many people who had no real connections have pictures of a high level member of the military or the government. A picture or two of Eisenhower or Sammy Snead doesn’t really suggest high level connections. Hell I have pictures of me with David Letterman in Baghdad and of Larry King in the deserts of Nevada... not to mention pictures of one of our Senators.

None of that explains how the Rays would have been able to obtain a picture of an alien creature. We all agree that if there was a crash and alien bodies were recovered, it would all be highly classified. I can think of no plausible scenario in which civilians, no matter how highly connected, would have had the opportunity to see, let alone photograph the body of an alien creature and get out of the room with their camera and film intact.

Most of us have only seen a poor quality copy of one slide. There is little detail visible, but there is enough to suggest what might have been photographed is a mummy, probably from South or Central America.… or could it be a body buried in the desert Southwest that was mummified by the weather. And, that provides an opportunity for the Rays, or some other civilian, to photograph what was found. Yes, I know that they all say it isn’t a mummy and claim once we see the high quality slide, we’ll all agree. But we haven’t seen them and if there are pictures of mummies that match, to a certain degree that body in the slide, then it is going to be a hard sell to convince many that it isn’t a terrestrially based mummy as opposed to some alien creature.

But here’s the thing. Without knowing who took the pictures, without knowing where they were taken, and with a range of when the film might have been exposed and developed, there is a major hole in the story. In the end, all that is really known is that there are two slides of an unusual creature that some believe to be alien, but without all the information, without a photographer to interview, and without additional information, such as a tissue sample with a proper chain of custody and evidence, all there is are the two slides and the circus atmosphere that is developing. Unless Tom and Don have some additional information, and from what Adam Dew is saying they don’t, then this will end badly unless there is a pile of money to be shared by them all.


64 comments:

  1. It's not quite correct to say the guy I spoke with overheard the story. I think he knew something and was trying to inject himself into the story - probably, I suspect, to try and make money, as he asked me what I thought the imagery might be worth. I said I had no idea, as I hadn't seen the images. But, the important thing is that he had the names of Bernerd Ray and also mentioned the thing about the genitals hidden. I told this to the Dream Team, who were quite concerned when I mentioned the name of Bernerd Ray because the name had not been publicly revealed then. So, in that sense, the Midland guy definitely knew something and got the Bernerd Ray name before it was public domain.

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  2. Nick -

    As I say, this was my impression of the situation. Thanks for the updated perspective.

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  3. Kevin
    My suspicion (and, granted, a suspicion is all it can be without proof) is that some of the people in the story were talking to others, who spoke to others, who spoke to others, and so on and so on.

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  4. Nick -

    Thinking about it, I wasn't attempting to belittle your knowledge of this, only that the information had gotten out prior to Don and Tom saying anything about it. As I noted, I didn't really believe any of this about the nondisclosure and the slides until my alleged colleagues confirmed you had the correct information.

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  5. No, I didn't think you were. I think what happened is that there were people talking to people in Midland and then one of them spoke to me, seeing the potential dollar value of what he knew/had uncovered.

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  6. Kevin:

    It is now on/for the side the ones you promoted to provide in full reso, the slide depicting an Alien-sic-, they claimed...

    When in May the 5th. I'm quasi sure they will not offer this.

    When in full reso, rendez-vous ^^

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  7. Kevin,

    I actually got my answer about the nun diary back in 1994. You don't mention it above but you cited the nun diary in your book, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell [sic]. You paraphrased an entry from that diary in the book and cited the document as having been referenced by you.

    I asked Pat Packard, who I know was frequently in communication with you (during the days of high cost long distance phone calls) to ask you for the actual entry instead of the paraphrase.

    Pat told me that he HAD asked you on several occasions. But he never was able to get you to send that document.

    I knew then what was up and you later confirmed it. You never saw the document. The paraphrase is an invention. The citation is false.

    It's UFO scholarship.

    Your story of how the tale got into the book makes it look even worse, in my opinion.

    But PLEASE go on and on about the improper things that Charles Moore has done, etc.

    Lance




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  8. Lance

    I believe Kevin to be one of the most honest (and direct!) "Roswell researchers" - he is not afraid to acknowledge (although obviously disappointed)when some of his original work turns out to be incorrect - he did for instance believe in the stories of Glen Dennis & Frank Kaufmann that later turned out to be false - he was mistaken and has acknowledged this.

    Kevin

    I guess we will just have to wait until early May for some answers to your questions. Your colleagues must know something more than we at this stage - I will give them the benefit of the doubt for now...

    I understand you feel let down by a number of the people in the team - I guess this is a private matter and will probably need a private conversation at some point in the near future.

    Of course you are working on your own things in relation to Roswell and I hope that you will have some success that you can tell us about maybe in a couple of months time :)

    Best Wishes
    Nitram

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  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  10. I don't disagree. I like Kevin and respect him. I think he has done some fantastic work.

    We disagree on Roswell.

    And believe me, when I make a mistake, there are no lack of folks ready to point it out.

    I welcome that.

    If you see any factual error in my post above, please point it out.

    Lance

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  11. Linking these images to Roswell is a stretch but there is something everyone seems to be missing here.

    If this is an image of a real alien, why does it have 2 arms, 2 hands, fingers, 2 legs, 2 feet etc etc? How could a being from another world somehow follow our evolutionary path and end up very similar to us?! Unless of course there is a specific form a life must reach to become intelligent.

    Ive never seen this discussed

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  12. Lance –
    If you don’t really know the difference, I’ll attempt, one last time to explain it to you.
    I was told about the diary by a man who claimed to be a Special Forces officer. I have great respect for the Green Berets and worked with them in Vietnam. Please note that I am not claiming to have been a Green Beret but that I worked with them. I was once shot down while pulling some of them and their Mike Force out of a hot LZ in the mountains near Song Be. I also helped them scout landing zones among other things.

    I was told by a nun, or a woman who said she was a nun, that she had seen the entry in the days prior to our interview with her. She had looked through the diaries because she lived in Roswell and wondered if there had been anything of note in them. I had no reason to doubt her word… but that wasn’t good enough.

    I was told that the entry had been confirmed by eyes on it and you can guess where that note came from. Given that, I had no reason to doubt it, and had the notes telling me that eyes had been laid on the entry. Therefore I was confident the endnote was accurate when written.

    After you raised doubts, and when we had the book meeting in Roswell, I said that we needed to get that entry. I believed that it existed and was told again, that it did. I said we need to get a copy of it and I have a year’s worth of emails about this very subject. I was going to Oklahoma to see the diary myself and photograph the entry which I practiced doing with me IPad. Somehow the diaries were always just out of reach. After all that time, the only conclusion that I can draw is that the diaries do not exist… I reported accurately what I had been told by two people who had laid eyes on them… neither of which was the man who said he was a Green Beret but was not.

    Moore, on the other hand, changed the data and invented a launch time for Flight No. 4. Crary’s diary made it clear that it would have been launched around dawn and that it had been cancelled because of the clouds. It would not have been launched at 2:30 in the morning, in the dark because of the CAA regulations. Moore claimed that he didn’t know the name of the project in 1947, but that doesn’t seem to be true (though it is always possible he forgot the name). I did not manipulate the data and Moore did… the evidence of that manipulation is documented. All you have to do is read the diary and what Moore said early on, wrote in his reports or letters and then what he said in the book he participated in.

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  13. All -

    Can we now get back to a discussion of the slides and away from my failure to put eyes on the diaries.

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  14. Hi Kevin,

    Yes! We can move on.

    But everything you say in the last paragraph is supposition. It is mostly you characterizng what was in someone else's mind--something I know you would bristle at if done towards you.

    There are flights that contradict what you say were the hard and fast procedures and rules. And you know that. But I won't characterize why you ignore this.

    I can remind you that much of the content of your earlier books with Don on Roswell are predominantly fiction. Those wholesale revisions that you have had to make to the mythology seem to not bother you quite as much as does Moore deciding that another flight time was more likely during a project that he actually was part of.

    Lance



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  15. Kevin wrote:

    I can think of no plausible scenario in which civilians, no matter how highly connected, would have had the opportunity to see, let alone photograph the body of an alien creature and get out of the room with their camera and film intact.

    To me this is the most basic flaw in the whole story, the idea that the Rays could just casually take a picture of an alien corpse, which is on display like at a museum. The army supposedly threatened civilians and reassigned dozens of service members to keep the Roswell crash a secret, but these two tourists could take photos of an alien and be on their way? Please.

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  16. Stephen Jackson,

    Inasmuch as earthlike conditions appear to be a prerequisite for habitability, it wouldn't be surprising if aliens were basically like us. There have been many examples of homoplasy in terrestrial evolution. The skull of a recent Australian tortoise was remarkably convergent with that of ankylosaurids. It even had posterolateral horns even though is was nowhere near close phylogenetically. Similar environments can give rise to similar evolutionary outcomes.

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  17. "The skull of a recent Australian tortoise was remarkably convergent with that of ankylosaurids. It even had posterolateral horns even though is was nowhere near close phylogenetically. Similar environments can give rise to similar evolutionary outcomes"

    This is a very important point.
    It's the niche that determines
    size, shape, etc. Humans are part of the "tool-making" niche.
    Other creatures in this niche will
    resemble us. Convergent evolution
    is the responsible process.
    Ed

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  18. @ Kevin,

    Thank you for including the line about perhaps there is a pile of money for them to share. That's been my take on this circus.

    I also would like to say that your credibility will not be hurt by this crap fest because you were honest and revealed everything. However, everybody associated with these slides are or will be discredited. And that's a shame.

    So since Tom and Don are no longer credible, why not work on another big Roswell book yourself?

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  19. @Kevin

    Thank you for this honest and open blogpost.

    It is too sad that you trusted Tom Carey, Donald Schmitt and Anthony Bragalia.

    Yet I feel you are blameless in all this, since all of your work shows that you have proceeded from the point of view of an honorable man.

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  20. A real, die-hard conspiracy theorist might postulate that Bernard Ray was brought into the project as a consultant in geology. Why? To work on the excavation of the massive, underground Dulce base that was being constructed at the time, and in doing so he was allowed to see the alien bodies, Akashic records, and other artifacts that were uncovered there.

    Okay this is a not likely but it serves to illustrate the mind-set of the crazier edge of ufology...something to think about before you criticize more mainstream Roswell researchers. Keep in mind there are far more outlandish theories out there than what's been argued in this forum.

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  21. I just want to make a correction to Kevin's main post. I was never shown BOTH slides, only one of them (I think the one that DOESN'T have the woman in the dress standing in it), and for a very brief period. It was not the original slide or a good print, but an inkjet printout on a plain piece of paper, as Kevin wrote.

    As I've written before, I remember paying most of my attention on the head and commenting to Tom that it looked much more human than I would have expected if it was an alien.

    I agree that it makes no sense that the Rays could casually photograph an alien corpse on display somewhere. Further, there is that woman in the dress standing in one of the pictures. From the low quality screen captures we've seen, the dress does NOT suggest a military nurse standing in the picture, but a civilian. I agree it looks more like a civilian setting, perhaps a museum, perhaps somewhere else.

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  22. @Stephen
    You might look into Alien Astronaut theories. There is, like in UFOlogy, an awful lot of BS there, but some interesting points as well.
    .
    Basically, the core beliefs say that 'we are just like them', because we are their descendents. That this explains the commonality of our mythologies, religions, cultures, and languages.
    .
    Some of the BS: that all our advanced technology comes from aliens, that aliens used their advanced technology to build artifacts like the pyramids, that certain artifacts harness or generate 'energy', that humans were/are a bunch of dummies, unable to think for themselves* without outside help,....you get the idea.
    .
    ...
    *Scientists are extremely reluctant to credit early humans with any kind of 'intelligence' at all.
    ...

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  23. @ albert

    I'm very familiar with ancient astronaut theory. I put it in the category of farcical BS only subscribed to by the narrow and fanciful minded.

    I fear they will use this image, if it's shown to be a real alien, as "proof" we were engineered.

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  24. @ Mr Randle

    Are you at all suspicious of the way the slides came about? By that I mean that you are approached to write an ultimate Roswell book and then suddenly these new images appear. Quite handy in the face of such a book.

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  25. I believe that the slides came about after Tom and I discussed the book. I believe that Tom and Don decided not to tell me about them, though even a hint about it would have been a Roswell book an easier sale. I believe they didn't tell me about them because they believed I would be quite skeptical and demand a little more evidence than has been offered. Unless they know something more that hasn't been published all over the Internet or that Dew hasn't told everyone, the slides are going to interesting curiosities and nothing more.

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  26. Thanks for your comment, edward gehrman. Btw take a look at my latest blog post.

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  27. @Stephen

    I don't consider myself "...narrow and fanciful minded...."

    The AAT is a theory, nothing more. It offers a simple, logical explanation for the mythologies that, even today, have much greater power over mankind than they should have.

    Of course, if you dismiss the possibility of ET life, then you dismiss the AAT. If you dismiss the possibility of ET life ever being around Earth, but not elsewhere, then you dismiss the AAT.

    A lot of scientists feel this way. That's their problem. My favorite is "ETs from other galaxies never visited Earth, because they couldn't get here."

    Real scientists don't put everything they don't understand in the BS category. They leave open the possibilities. They know that there are no 'laws of nature'; there are only are 'mans laws'. The history of science is littered with the memories of those who refused to accept 'new' experimental results (and the resulting theories); they died defending the paradigm.

    The advent of Quantum Theory placed probability at the forefront of physics, something the old school (even Einstein) were very uncomfortable with.

    And here we are today, still fighting probability and possibilites.

    ...

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  28. "Real scientists don't put everything they don't understand in the BS category. "

    No, but they do put BS into that category. And the ancient astronaut fantasy is just that. More than a few scientists, working IN their fields of expertise have dismantled, claim by claim, the silly "theory".

    The believers just ignore this.

    And by the way, mentioning quantum mechanics doesn't magically turn pseudoscience into science.

    Best,

    Lance

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  29. With all of the controversy over these alleged slides, the most important issue remains largely ignored. It is entirely possible for older film stock to be preserved and exposed long after the original manufacturing date. It takes careful work if you are doing it purposely, but could easily be a happy set of accidents which could do the work for you. As for the slide holders themselves, there is no reason why anyone couldn't remove slides from old holders and replace them with newly exposed slide film. I worked at a communications firm in the mid 80s and did that thousands of times with old corporate slides to make new slide presentations. What really sets me off is the huge discrepancy between these "alien" slides and those which were found with them. The majority of the photos were sharp, in focus and were not under-exposed while the alien slides were out of focus and very under-exposed. It's like these two careful amateur photographers had forgotten everything about photography just for these two slides. Those things are huge red flags for me and until a real body is produced, I will be unconvinced that these slides are the "real deal".

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  30. Roeffel wrote:

    With all of the controversy over these alleged slides, the most important issue remains largely ignored. It is entirely possible for older film stock to be preserved and exposed long after the original manufacturing date. It takes careful work if you are doing it purposely, but could easily be a happy set of accidents which could do the work for you.

    This has actually been discussed in detail before: Are they genuine slides from the 1947 manufacture time period, or are they modern fakes using old film?

    It is, of course, entirely possible to expose and develop old film long after the manufacture date, but you grossly underestimate the difficulties in doing this 50 or 60 years later WITHOUT also having numerous film defects from aging, such as fogging, graininess, blotchiness, and serious color imbalances.

    The three great enemies of film preservation are heat, moisture, and background radiation from the ground and space. You have to freeze old film in a dry environment. But the hardest to protect against is background, high-energy cosmic radiation, which is difficult to shield against, unless stored underground or in a lead-lined vault. And how much of that incredibly well-protected stuff would still be around?

    You are also ignoring another point that the slides were (allegedly) examined by an old-time Kodak film expert, who noted they were coated with a protective lacquer coating that Kodak discontinued in the 1960s. Try hoaxing that in the modern day. How many people would even know?

    As for the slide holders themselves, there is no reason why anyone couldn't remove slides from old holders and replace them with newly exposed slide film. I worked at a communications firm in the mid 80s and did that thousands of times with old corporate slides to make new slide presentations.

    Are you talking PLASTIC slide holders or the old, original cardboard holders used by Kodak? These slides were in cardboard holders of that era.

    Plastic holders are easy to pop open and reuse, but not so much cardboard holders, which would have to be sliced open and reglued. Not impossible, but yet another layer of difficulty piled on difficulties to modern hoaxed slides.

    What really sets me off is the huge discrepancy between these "alien" slides and those which were found with them. The majority of the photos were sharp, in focus and were not under-exposed while the alien slides were out of focus and very under-exposed. It's like these two careful amateur photographers had forgotten everything about photography just for these two slides.

    The other slides we've seen were all OUTDOOR exposures; the "alien" slides were indoor exposures. Kodachrome slide film is slow film intended primarily for outdoor use in bright sunlight. Indoor use requires bright lighting or a flash, or at least the use of a tripod for long-term exposures. If you don't have this while filming indoors, it is not at all surprising if the pictures come out somewhat underexposred and out of focus.

    Those things are huge red flags for me and until a real body is produced, I will be unconvinced that these slides are the "real deal".

    You seem to be ignoring the possibility, that has been much discussed already, that these could be genuine OLD slides of something quite earthly (like a mummy), but badly misinterpreted.

    So far the evidence released points to these being genuine OLD slides, 1947 filmstock, with cardboard holders that Kodak discontinued in 1950, and with a coating that Kodak discontinued in the 1960s.

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  31. @Lance

    So your take away is the AAT is BS, and I mentioned quantum mechanics.

    You should sharpen up your propaganda techniques; they're becoming tiresome...

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  32. Museums often prohibit the use of flashbulbs when taking photographs in order to prevent degradation of certain artifacts. Not mummies in particular, but other kinds of exhibits such as handwritten documents and watercolor paintings are best preserved in a low-light environment. For this reason, museums often display a sign that says "no flashbulbs" or something similar.

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  33. David,

    At least 1 of the non-money slides seems to be indoors: that of a lady and a large model of the ship, the SS Imperator (mistakenly called the Queen Mary by the scholars on the slide team).

    Lance

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  34. And that shot is well exposed although the human subject seems blurrier than the bg (as we might expect from a long exposure).

    A tripod is not necessary but some support is probably needed.

    Lance

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  35. @Kevin
    > They were separate and hidden in an envelope, which, if you think about it, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

    Good point. Best place to hide the slides is among all the others, provided they were no longer being loaded into a viewer. Separating them makes them stand out.

    > I believe they didn't tell me about them because they believed I would be quite skeptical

    And that is precisely why Don was brought onto the slides team and not you.

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  36. @David
    "... Not impossible, but yet another layer of difficulty piled on difficulties to modern hoaxed slides...."

    No, it's not impossible to cut the holders apart and reglue them. What's damned near impossible is to do that without _any_ evidence of the process.

    If nothing else, this case shows the degree of effort that one would have to take, in order to create the 'perfect hoax'. Spectrographic analysis hasn't even been mentioned.
    .
    Hoaxers face a number of tradeoffs. Eventually they must reach a point where they consider the chances of an in-depth analysis. Often, they have no clue about what that might entail.
    .
    The 'hoax' theory is moot as far as I'm concerned. I don't have a problem with slides per se, but the subject matter is an entirely different issue....

    ...

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  37. What seems fairly obvious is that the two slides in question are of a museum exhibit and not of the "original thing." No photographic analysis could ever prove otherwise. If the exhibit were in any museum the exhibit would have been publicly identified by now. Like 'Jake the Alligator Man' on the coast of Washington, people remember odd shapes and sizes and where they saw them. They are frequently photographed too. The "no flash" rules are comparatively recent, 50's stuff and later, not the 1940's. If the image was made in the 1940's as the slide evidence suggests, then the 'alien' portrayal depicted would have to be either real, or what (by careful promotion) would become real in most people's minds. So, now we have two theories for the source of the museum presentation; one publicity, the other authenticity.

    I inherited a large collection of postcards (early photographic imagery). In that collection were a few disturbing images of the Eastland disaster in Chicago and of the Texas City disaster in 1947, 10 weeks before Roswell. I pulled these cards from the collection and stored them separately, in an envelope (really!). Eventually, I destroyed them. It's the kind of sorting that people often do, especially with slides, of which I also have quite a few (Kodak, going back to 1945 or 1947).

    There is no evidence that the Rays ever claimed to have taken the 'alien' (exhibit) slides. Projectors were few through even the 1950's, they were often not good. People borrowed projectors and the 'slide boxes' to show slides, people 'loaned' slides for others to show. The slides in question could have been found 'left over' in a slide box, as simple as that.

    The real issue is not an almost impossible to ever prove connection between the slides and the Rays. The issue is who had, and where was, the apparent 'alien' exhibit, assuming that the slides are real. The trail can be found by researching the history of this image (type) as being what 'aliens' looked like. I would love to see an exact and specific timeline with dates and images regarding the evolution (or revealing) of what now so many people easily see as an identifiable 'alien'. Can you guys get together and simply do it, even without the rewards of money? Make it "open source," so that everyone has an opportunity to contribute.

    I think, if you do, if you did it, the roots of the alien imagery would very quickly be revealed. Be open, no more skulking around in the typical Roswell source secrecy.



    47 it seems that

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  38. If someone were trying to hoax this and they could have found some unexposed 1947 film and exposed it using processes contemporary to 1947, why couldn't they have found unused 1947 frames and used those? I don't understand why they would have to reuse frames. I assume I missed something. The whole thing sounds a little far-fetched, much more so that sitting down at an old typewriter and creating the MJ-12 documents.

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  39. Terry the sensor "And that is precisely why Don was brought onto the slides team and not you."

    Wow, psychic/clarivident debunkers have all the answers!

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  40. @Don Maor

    And "bunkers" have the truth -- but never the proof.

    That's a special kind of mind trick.

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  41. Rusty wrote:
    "The whole thing sounds a little far-fetched, much more so that sitting down at an old typewriter and creating the MJ-12 documents."

    Actually, the old typewriter Roswell hoax is a time-honored tradition:

    "While searching those papers, they found the evidence that Frank had forged many of the documents, that he had a supply of the old paper, that he had been nothing more than a staff sergeant (which is not to say that staff sergeants aren’t important, only that he hadn’t been a master sergeant), that he had two old typewriters, and other bits and pieces."

    http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/09/how-did-frank-kaufmann-slip-through.html

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  42. In an earlier update on "the slides" there were some good comments and research done by Gregory Phipps on the 'hunter' scene from Kansas.

    Like Greg, I also supplied Adam with some information, in this case pertaining to the slide of Mamie Eisenhower in front of the model of the Queen Mary.

    This photo was taken at their grand ticket office in NY City in 1946 to be exact.

    As follow up to the photo location of the Queen Mary, yes this is indeed Mamie Eisenhower. So it goes to show that the slides taken of Ike were not just "snaps" taken at an event - someone who knew them clearly were connected to this family.

    Prior to becoming President of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower and Mamie sailed aboard the ocean liner to England. He and his wife made the transatlantic voyage on September 27, 1946 to Southampton, England. This was the ship’s fastest transatlantic crossing at that time.

    This model was built in 1935 and displayed at the ship's launching and then moved directly to NY. Today it's part of a museum in NY City but is right now on temporary display in LA for the 80th anniversary of the ship. It is still in the original case shown in the 1946 slide.

    I'm guessing the couple who took these photos traveled with them which could be proven by passenger list research. If it were the Rays, then they would be on the ship's manifest. That would most likely PROVE they probably took the photos themselves.

    I might add that while most people suspect Corso of "foul play" and a "mind for exaggeration", he did in fact state that the bodies he saw in Kansas had 'pointed chins" and were in a "glass tube" just as these slides supposedly suggest.

    I am a nobody in Ufology and have no stake in this at all - my comments are offered as means to help people actually work on finding some historical facts to put the scenes into context. I don't really care if they are "aliens" or not.

    As Gregory has indicated, there is one potential hypothesus one could follow - although a bit strained. It goes like this:

    1) Bernard Ray was on an expedition in NM when a craft crashed in 1947.

    2) He may or may not have seen anything then, but was shuffled off by the military and always wondered what the heck happened and why his expedition was cut short.

    3) Through his academic connections with Eisenhower in Kanasas, he learns that Ike himself has some insider information he can share.

    4) Because the Ray's also traveled with the Eisenhowers and were inside their family circle, they received special access.

    5) Bernard got his answer, took a few photos, and left the scene.

    6) They stuck these slides away for simple fear of what they learned and possible implications.

    Tougher things are more plausible than this....so give it some thought. Cheers!

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  43. Brian -

    There is no evidence presented that the Rays took the photographs. The chain of custody has been broken. There is no information on when the pictures were taken and no information on where they were taken. It is ridiculous to believe that even if they knew the Eisenhowers that he would have allowed them to view highly classified information, let alone photograph. Look at his reaction to fellow officers who talked too much about the plans to invade Europe in 1944...

    Corso's tale is unbelievable on the face of it and to use it to support the image on the slides is a false premise. You simply cannot use uncorroborated testimony to support what is seen in controversial slides.

    Besides, all this discussion of the Rays it irrelevant unless Tom and Don have something better to tie them to the slides and prove that they took them. There is no chain of custody and I have heard no one talk about who owned the house in the ten years after Hilda Ray died until it was cleared out.

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  44. Do the Rays appear in any of the slides from the box? If the Rays took a selfie, that positively links them to the collection of slides.

    And if so, can the slides of the alien being be sequentially linked to the other slides in the box? That would be provenence.

    Unfortunately, we won't know any of this for certain until they are released for examination, if that ever happens.

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  45. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  46. Interesting and polite discussion for a change.

    Small child mummies in very good condition (at least the head appears to be so) are quite rare. If this had been on public exhibit somewhere in that time frame, there should be some record of it and somebody is eventually going to recognize it. I have done electronic newspaper and book searches and so far have come up with nothing.

    Mummies are not necessarily displayed in museums. One such oddity I came across is that the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley in the early 20th century had an adult Inuit mummy on display in a glass case. How did that happen?

    The library is an archive of rare books and manuscripts (such as those of Mark Twain). It was created in 1906 when L.L. Bancroft, a wealthy Gold Rush book dealer and collector (apparently, at one time, people used to make money selling books), donated his large collection of rare books to UC Berkeley. He was also a collector of Inuit artifacts. One of his collectors came across an Eskimo mummy in Alaska and shipped it to him, whereupon he put it on display in a glass case in his San Francisco bookstore. When UC Berkeley unpacked his donated collection of all things, there was the mummy as well.

    I also know of another mummy (an Indian child mummy of 8 or 9 years of age), found in 1951 by a UC Berkeley anthropology professor, that wss put on public display at a county fair! I'm still trying to run that down and find a photo on the off-chance that maybe it matches (though this mummy would probably be much too large).

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  47. @ Brian Bell:

    Your "historical information" is quite incorrect.

    The model seen in the slide image is NOT the Queen Mary.

    It is the SS Imperator.

    I might add that the ship in the slide photo looks nothing like the Queen Mary.

    I assume that this invalidates your claims about Mamie Eisenhower as well? Or do those remain intact no matter what?

    Lance

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  48. Greetings,

    As I already commented regarding this slide (the Lady and the Model) and the self-proclamed "experts" claiming it is the Queen Mary (false-claim, it is NOT the Queen Mary):

    Well if for slides depicting "ordinary" things, they are out/false forensic/historia expertise, imagine when they "expertize" or claim two slides as depicting "extraordinary" beings (ExtraTerrestrial). Misère...

    Well, that's ufology, after all...

    Regard,

    Gilles

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  49. > yes this is indeed Mamie Eisenhower

    I cannot see a resemblance.

    The woman beside the ship model has a full head of thick, curly hair; every Mamie photo I've googled has her with bangs and slightly wavy hair severely pulled back. The hairstyles are not similar.

    The woman has a broad forehead, unlike Mamie, who is wide at the cheekbones, narrow across the brow. As someone with arts training (my avatar is a self-portrait), I have a special interest in skull shape and facial features.

    This woman also looks a little younger and slender than Mamie for the 1946 timeframe (though that's just an impression).

    I could be completely wrong. But twice I have tried to match that photo with the first lady and I cannot. I would be interested in hearing the opinions of others.

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  50. @Lance
    .
    Did you find any information on the location of the Imperator model?
    (I couldn't find a link to the slide in question) It may be that Mamie E. was never photographed near an Imperator model...
    .
    If this tempest gets any bigger, we're gonna need a bigger teapot....
    .
    ..............

    @all
    If the subject is really a mummy on, or formally on, display in a Mexican museum, then the Really Big Show in Mexico City should bring out some information.

    ...

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  51. The ship exhibit is the Mariner's Museum located in Newport News Virginia. The exact location of the exhibit is called the Great Hall of Steam.

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  52. Well if you want to get all twitchy about the SS Imperator there are several early 1900's models of the same size in antique glass cases in Germany too - so is it now Virginia or Germany?? Maybe Mars or the Dark Side of the Moon? Lol

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  53. Commander is mostly correct.

    The folks at the Mariners's Museum were sure that the slide photo showed their facility but they do not have the model any longer and haven;t since perhaps the 1970's.

    The model is now located at the Piney Point Harry Lundeberg School Of Seamanship.

    Lance

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  54. Brian--is it "getting all twitchy" to note that your information's completely incorrect and that your unsupported inferences are likely the same.

    If only the UFO community had more twitchiness and less of whatever you call what you were doing.

    Lance

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  55. Mamie's photograph - well to the Censor's comment, you cannot look at the typical photos of Mamie which are almost all taken after 1950 during the Presidency.

    You must look at the photos of the wartime years - and you will see what she looked like a full 7 years before the majority of photos show her. Yes, she was thiner, and yes so was her face. I have several shots that clearly show the face is hers, and contrary to popular notion she did not always wear bangs - this is a 1950's trend for her.

    Given that there are other shots of Eisenhower in the deck, why do you think it would be odd that she not be in the photos? At least a possibility?

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  56. Mr. Rudiak
    "Mummies are not necessarily displayed in museums. One such oddity I came across is that the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley in the early 20th century had an adult Inuit mummy on display in a glass case. How did that happen?"

    In the 19th century there were a lot of mummies also in privat hands especially of aristocrats, who had an interest in spiritism.

    Also some mummies had to removed from museums, because there weren´t preserved properly and started to smell.

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  57. All -

    This is a side show about the Eisenhowers. It has no real relevance to the discussion of the slides because Mamie Eisenhower would have had no authority to show an alien creature to her apparent friend... and Eishower himself would not have allowed it...

    The question that is getting lost here is does the slide, or do the slides, show an alien creature and if so, can it be tied to Roswell. As I have said in the past, unless Tom and Don have some information that hasn't been leaked, then the answer seems to be, "No." We pictures of a strange humanoid who is probably human rather than alien.

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  58. Kevin - to your point I never said the images showed an alien. Sure it may be human.

    However if these slides came with a deck of slides of famous people, one would think it important to place the images in the context of the people in the images.

    If not then its just ignoring facts surrounding their context. People in Ufology claim they want facts and proof, but then they chuck all the context and only focus on the images? Really?

    For example, if the ship is the Imperator, then so be it. What else can it tell us about the people in the image and where they traveled and how they got the images of so called "aliens" in the first place?

    Seems this is relevant to the study around the images. Some information researched may prove incorrect, as well as some assumptions - that is why it is called "research". Right?

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  59. Mr. Randle
    "The question that is getting lost here is does the slide, or do the slides, show an alien creature and if so, can it be tied to Roswell. As I have said in the past, unless Tom and Don have some information that hasn't been leaked, then the answer seems to be, "No." We pictures of a strange humanoid who is probably human rather than alien."

    But why are you supporting the use of the name "Roswell slides"??
    I think there even was a time, when Mr. Bragalia called the slides "The Ray Slides".


    The Alien autopsy footage was marketed in my country as Roswell: The Alien Autopsy , although is was obvious that the background story and the dummy didn´t connect with the Roswell story. The result was that a lot of people still associate Roswell with the fake AAF.

    So either the investigators have something more in the pipeline which justifies the connection to roswell or it is just a marketing bluff.

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  60. Brian -

    The context is important but it can be argued that the slides were not part of the Rays' collection because they were allegedly found in an envelope hidden in a box that contained over slides. They do not seem to fit into any sequence in that box and they seem to be of lesser quality than the other slides. But here we've moved into a debate of what ship is shown and did the Rays have a personal connection to Eisenhower which is probably going to be difficult to answer.

    Zak -

    Any what would you have me call them. The Roswell Slides is an easy shorthand for the purposes of dicussion. As I have pointed out, there is nothing to actually connect them to Roswell other than the supposed information by a guy who was supposedly there and who supposedly saw the bodies.

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  61. Brian Bell:

    You have provided a theory on how the Ray's couple possibly got involved with the slides of purported aliens. Congratulations, your theory (although speculative) has really annoyed Lance. It is a good start. I wouldn't pay much attention to his trollish comments.

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  62. The two slides in question (alien, mummy, human deformity or whatever) were mounted in a slide format to be shown. We may infer that at some given point in time that they were part of a slide presentation, otherwise why the slide format?

    I suspect that these two slides were shown to quiet a few individuals back in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be "fantastic" news to us, but old news back in the day.

    Is there any evidence that individuals were screaming proof of aliens, based on these slides back in the 1950s or 1960s?

    That the two slides were separate from the others may have been to avoid having them shown with the rest of the slides so as not to upset certain sensibilities, thus being shown only under certain circumstances depending on the audience.

    Tim H.

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  63. I don't know for sure, but just guessing the slides are being associated with Roswell because:

    1) They are vintage late 1940's.
    2) They came from a corner of Texas (or someplace southwest).
    3) They have been associated with a geologist who often worked in NM in the late 1940's.

    They may not be from Roswell, and of course whether or not they depict an alien remains an open question.

    On whether or not the slides are real or faked, they appear to be real vintage items. Despite what people say, it is much harder than one thinks to fake a 1940's slide film.

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