The Roswell Slides After the Big Reveal

Well, the great reveal has happened and it was… not great. In fact, opinion seems to be running against the idea that this was an alien creature and with many inside the UFO community saying that they were underwhelmed. Even those who are solidly inside the extraterrestrial camp have expressed disappointment in the program and the slides with some suggesting this was all promotion for another Don Schmitt and Tom Carey Roswell book.

Tony Bragalia, who has worked with Schmitt and Carey for months if not years on this, is still convinced that it is nothing earthly and there are scientists who back up his claim. In an article that he has circulated this morning (May 6, 2015), he provided this statement from two of those scientists:

It's nothing like us, we can see that his feet and legs appear to be like that of a reptile and could have evolved from something like a gecko or some similar animal that became larger and developed a large brain and binocular vision. His nose is small, his mouth different from ours. There are parts that could have been removed during autopsy. I[t] seems to have no teeth.

Joint Statement, Luis Antonio de Alba, Anatomist and Physiologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Richard Doble, Canadian Physical Anthropologist.

Bragalia also wrote, quoting  Professor Rod Slemmons, Former Director of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography and 1950s Kodak Executive, “It would be really, really hard to fake these slides or to duplicate them if that is what you want to do [.]”

And while all that is somewhat interesting, it doesn’t actually prove anything other than these fellows have expressed an opinion about the slides that don’t actually say anything about it being obviously alien. In fact, the name of the Rochester, NY Photo-scientist who supposedly rendered a positive opinion on the slides dating was not revealed. Bragalia wrote:

The truth is that the name of the photo-scientist is known to researchers and others. It was not publicly revealed for a simple reason: the man was repeatedly harassed at home by strangers. It is known that skeptic Lance Moody and reporter Billy Cox both separately -and within a day of each other- found the leaked name of the scientist and saw fit to call him at home at night out-of-the-blue to question him. Bear in mind that this was before the scientists name had been properly revealed and well before his image analysis report was even released. Understandably, the man was angry and has indicated that he simply does not need this kind of thing in his life.

And while it is understandable that the man would have been annoyed at the telephone calls, it is also understandable that others would want to corroborate the information that was being circulated by those who allege the slides show an alien creature. The real problem here is that they leaked the name, unintentionally, and then are appalled that others wish to verify the information. Lance Moody has written that the Rochester scientist’s verdict wasn’t nearly positive as others have suggested and that he was not named in the great reveal suggests that there are problems with the claims about his testimony.

Or, in other words, the point is moot because the witness was not there to be asked a few questions to clarify the situation.

John Greenewald was as unimpressed as were so many others. To his Black Vault site at:

http://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/the-roswell-slide-alien-kodachrome-slide-released-but-just-one/#

he posted some rather negative words. “When I woke up the morning of May 6, 2015, I expected to at least see 10, maybe 20, maybe even 50 headlines about this.  What did I see? At 8 am in the morning, well after the first news cycle… there were about 3. And those articles ripped apart this story, and profiled it as the joke it was.”

Greenewald quoted from the UK’s Daily Mirror which had said:

Two photographs of a “dead alien” were unveiled at a big money event last night – and immediately dismissed as fake.

A series of ‘UFOlogists’ appeared at the Be Witness meeting last night to reveal images of an extraterrestrial who supposedly crashed to Earth during the infamous Roswell incident in 1947.

The images were found by former journalist Adam Dew, who reportedly turned down interviews with magazines that wanted to cover the story because “they were not offering any compensation” [Which, of course, shows that they weren’t interested as alleged, they just weren’t interested in handing over some cash].

He claimed to have taken steps to verify the pair of alien snaps and said Kodak experts had dated the film to 1947.

But the rest of the world has not had the chance to test the rigour of his methods, because high resolution images of the alien are not yet available.

They are likely to be sold through his production company Dew Media alongside a documentary about the discovery of the slides.

The photos were supposedly found in Arizona, hidden in a collection of snaps owned by oil geologist Bernard Ray and his wife Hilda Ray, who have both died.

Nick Pope, a researcher who headed up a UFO investigation wing at the UK Ministry of Defence, told Mirror Online he was “underwhelmed”.

“It could be a model, or it could simply be a fake image, dressed up to look like a Forties slide,” he said.

Greenewald concluded, “Others took to social networks, and quickly were able to find nearly identical looking ‘bodies’ right here from human civilizations. This, even further, supports the theory this is nothing more than a museum artifact.”

Bragalia, however, wrote, “An overnight poll conducted by Coast-to-Coast radio has thus far tallied over 800 respondents to a survey asking what the nature of the creature:

42% say it is not an alien image.

58% believe it to either be that of an alien, or that they are simply not
certain what it is.

The figures, however, aren’t quite that supportive when broken down. It is true that 42.1% voted that it is not an alien, only 28.55% voted that it was, leaving 29.35 % voting that they were unsure. It could be said, that over 71% voted no or unsure, which is nearly three-quarters of those who expressed an opinion. I asked Bragalia and he agreed that what he had written about this was misleading, suggesting that I could correct that.

Here’s what I think, if anyone actually cares at this point. We haven’t had a good look at the high resolution slides and have been offered excuses for why that hasn’t happened. The slides seem to depict a creature, cadaver, corpse, in a museum setting rather than the expected situation if it was truly alien. The array of expert opinion we were told would be offered has not materialized and the statements that have been made seem to be weak. Already there have been pictures of mummies in various museums that seem to resemble to a high degree the body in the slide. There is nothing to tie this to Roswell and I will point out that both Carey and Schmitt did say that these weren’t “Roswell” slides, but their commentary seemed to suggest they believed otherwise.

They provided some witness testimony but it did little to validate the slides. Carlene Green, whose father, Homer Rowlette, said that he had seen the bodies. There are those who worry about the color of them she mentioned, but that isn’t the problem here. She is a nice woman I interviewed a number of years ago, but she didn’t see anything herself. She is a second-hand witness who can only report what her father told her so long ago.

We still have nothing for the provenance; we still don’t know who took the slides, when they were taken, or who even owns them now. It could be Adam Dew who has said that his company owns them, or it could be the brother of the woman who found them. That point has not been clarified.

Today, May 6, we really don’t know anything more than we did on May 4. Nothing was clarified at the big reveal. We have the names of some of the scientists, but certainly not in the numbers we expected. We have a better resolution of the slides, but rather than clarify, they have not done that. They seem to be of a creature in a museum setting given what is seen in the background, but we don’t know. At the end of the presentation we are as confused as we were before it started.

Can anyone say Alien Autopsy?

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.