Tony Bragalia and the End of the Roswell Slides

THE “ROSWELL ALIEN SLIDES”

AND MY APOLOGY TO A DEAD CHILD OF THE MESA VERDE

BY ANTHONY BRAGALIA

Several days ago a group of skeptical researchers applied a program called “SmartDeBlur” to the placard found juxtaposed near the being pictured in slides from 1947 thought to be of an extraterrestrial creature found crashed at Roswell. This author championed the slides as those of an alien and this author was wrong.

 The group of skeptical researchers interpreted the placard as reading “Mummified Body of Two Year Old Boy. At the time of burial the body was clothed in a xxx-xxx cotton shirt. Burial wraps consisted of these small cotton blankets. Loaned by the Mr. Xxxxxx of San Francisco, California.”

 Working with a colleague from Europe and with the text of the de-blurred placard, I discovered last night that this interpretation of the text was correct. Found in the September 1938 Volume VIII, Number 1 Mesa Verde Notes that was published by the National Park Service was an article that definitively solves the mystery of the “Roswell Slides.” In paragraph four of the section of the publication entitled Around The Mesa was found this:

 “A splendid mummy was received by the Park Museum recently when Mr. S.L. Palmer Jr. of San Francisco returned one that his father had taken from the ruins in 1894. The mummy is that of a two year old boy and is in an excellent state of preservation. At the time of burial the body was clad in a slip-over cotton shirt and three small cotton blankets. Fragments of these are still on the mummy.” The full text of the article can be found in this link: 

http://npshistory.com/nature_notes/meve/vol8-1f.htm

 This paragraph corresponds directly to the slides placard: the mummified body of a two year old boy, three small cotton blankets (the word “three” understandably seen by the de-blurring program as “these”) and Mr. Xxxxx of San Francisco, California.

A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY 

The word “hoax” has been used to describe the “Roswell Slides” saga. It was not. At least, the principal investigators, Tom Carey, Don Schmitt, and I did not knowingly fake or obfuscate anything. No matter, it is a serious case of mistaken identity, the consequences of which I fully accept.

 I was told that the best-available, highest resolution images of the placard were provided by the co-owner of the slides, Mr. Adam Dew, and given to world-class photo experts including Ray Downing of Studio Macbeth in NY (who conducted analysis on the Shroud of Turin) and Colonel Jeffrey Thau (who sent them to the Pentagon’s Photo Interpretation Department.) Despite the application of the best de-blurring software in the world, they were unable to read the words on the placard with any definitiveness.

 I can only surmise that Mr. Adam Dew did not provide to these experts the highest-resolution images of the slides. Why he did not, I cannot be certain. But Adam Dew has to this very day not yet publicly provided the crystal-clear slide images that I know exist.

 And Adam Dew in an email to a German researcher just two days ago, accused the skeptics who applied the SmartDeBlur program to the placard of using Photo Shop to fake their interpretation of the text. Given the discovery of the Mesa Verde Notes which clearly corroborate this interpretation, it is not the skeptics who faked anything.  Mr. Dew has some explaining to do.

 He has provided at various times to researchers different segments of the slides, partial images of the slides, and images of the slides of varying resolution. We can ask why, but I think we know without asking. Dew’s motivations were from the very beginning very different that those of mine, of Tom’s and of Don’s. He is new to the UFO field and has no stake in it as those who have spent years in such study. Unlike the placard images that he provided, it is not hard to read between these lines.  

INCREDIBLE BUT TRUE COINCIDENCES

The data points and the narrative of the slide are all true. The slide stock is from 1947, the very year of the crash. A Roswell vet from 1947 who actually personally viewed the dead bodies found fallen at Roswell did see similarities between what he saw and the being shown on the slides. Bernerd Ray and Hilda Ray, the original owners of the slides really were very well connected people. Bernerd really was an oil exploration geologist who worked the Permian Basin in New Mexico the 1940s and really was the President of a geological society in 1947 that covered New Mexico and he really did quit the organization after his 1947 term. His wife Hilda really was a prominent oil industry lawyer in the 1940s who very likely was friends with Mamie Eisenhower. They really did hide these slides in a chest only to be found decades later after their deaths. The being depicted in the slide is of an extremely unusual appearance, is unusually well-preserved and does bear strikingly odd features.

 But all of this must be a series of extraordinarily incredible coincidences. My guess is that Hilda hid the slides of the mummy child within the chest because she felt some sort of guilt that they were in some way exploitive. She was a childless woman. She likely read that Mr. S.L. Palmer’s father had stolen the mummy child and that Palmer’s son, with a sense of guilt, returned the child to its rightful place. 

LESSONS LEARNED AND AN APOLOGY TO A DEAD CHILD

I have learned much about myself and things that I need to change in order to become a better researcher. I must be less trusting, more discerning and less accusatory of those with whom I disagree.

 But more than this, I must offer my sincerest and deepest apologies to the Native American people of the Southwestern United States. One of their children, a dead child from well over a century ago, was made a spectacle. Whoever you are, you deserve to be extended dignity and respect. Your people, the Ancestral Puebloans, honored you by preserving you. I played part in disturbing your eternal rest, and for that I am so very sorry. Though I did not seek nor receive any money from any of this saga, and though my efforts were sincere and my offense unintentional, I am making a substantial donation to an American Indian children’s charity and encourage everyone else who played part to do the same.