Tom Carey and Donald Schmitt’s “Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the Government’s Biggest Cover-up” (2009) is, as you’d expect from the title, a curated collection of the many, many statements they and others have elicited from people who were, in one way or another, witness to the Roswell Incident.
Today I thought I’d bring all those witness fragments that relate to the (widely believed to be) ‘alien’ capsule together in one place, because jumping between them all in my notes was becoming quite tiresome. I’ve also tried to arrange them in a kind of logical sequence, following the capsule as it was taken from the ‘crash site’ just north of Roswell NM to the Army base on the south side of town.
Rolland Menagh, as reported by Rolland Menagh Jr in 2005 – Witness to Roswell, p.106
My father was an MP who guarded the UFO crash site north of Roswell. He saw the ship, which he described as being round or egg-shaped and seamless.
Edward Harrison – Witness to Roswell, p.103
“And I say, “How come they have an 18-wheeler out there haulin’ a balloon around?””
James W. Storm – Witness to Roswell, p.107
After a few minutes, a “snub-nosed tractor and lowboy flat trailer showed up.” On the back of the lowboy was a tarp that was covering “a saucer part so big (that) it was covered.” The lowboy continued towards Highway #285, which runs north to south through the centre of Roswell, where it becomes Main Street.
Richard Talbert – Witness to Roswell, pp. 105
“The low-boy had a tarp on it, and there was something under the tarp. I don’t recall now how I did it, but I was able to get a quick look under the tarp. I think it must not have been securely tied down on one end, or it just came loose, and it flapped up briefly as it went past me. Anyway, I saw a silver, oval-shaped something that was approximately 4 to 5 feet wide by about 12 feet long and 5 to 7 feet high. It had a dome on it, but it was damaged because it was cut off at one end.”
Paul McFerrin – Witness to Roswell, p. 105
“We were walking down Main Street when we saw this big, military flatbed transporting an egg-shaped object through town, obviously heading for the base. The flatbed trailer had a tarp over the object but you could pretty much tell what shape the object underneath was.”
Jobie MacPherson – Witness to Roswell, pp. 105-106
“It was coming from the north heading toward the base and went right past me. Jeeps and a flatbed truck. I could see mangled metal sticking out on the flatbed and something else that had a conical shape to it, like a pod.”
Earl V. Fulford – Witness to Roswell, pp. 110-111
When the rig got close enough, Fulford could see that it was pulling a lowboy trailer, and that the lowboy was carrying something under a tarp that was “about the size and shape of a Volkswagen Beetle”
Walter G. Haut (affidavit) – Witness to Roswell, p.286
“It was approx. 12-15 feet in length, not quite as wide, about 6 feet high and more of an egg shape. Lighting was poor but its surface did appear metallic. No windows, portholes, wings, tail section or landing gear was visible.”
Julie Shuster
“At one point I asked [Haut] about the size, and he said the craft was about 25 feet in diameter.”
Tom Carey
“The ship which [Haut] described was about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, more of an egg-shaped object […] And when asked point blank what he believed it was that he had seen, without hesitation he’d say, ‘It was not from this Earth, it was something manufactured off this Earth.’”
George Newling – Witness to Roswell, pp.118-119
“It was shaped like a ‘tear-drop’ and slightly damaged, but still intact. It appeared to be metallic and grayish in color, about 4 to 6 feet high and 10 to 12 feet long, and it had what appeared to be small, hexagonal cells or plates running the length of it on what I assumed was its underside.”
Bill Ennis – Witness to Roswell, p. 118
“It was a spaceship. After all these years, I still don’t know how that ship flew. There was no engine! Before I go, I’d like to know.”
Rolland Menagh’s comment comes second hand in 2005, a half century after the incident. When were the other statements recorded, and under what circumstances? How were the witnesses able to date their sightings to the time of the Roswell incident? Did authors Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt fact-check witnesses’ statements, and how did they document that the witnesses were actually in Roswell at the time of the incident? Are there any contemporaneous documents that mention the flatbed and its load?
leifFraNorden: most of Carey and Schmitt’s interview contexts are embedded in their witness accounts. If you have problems with any of the interviews, just ask them for clarification.
There are a number of issues that raise eyebrows:
1. Whoever brought the ‘alien’ capsule through Roswell did a very poor job of keeping it secret.
2. Walter G. Haut signed the affidavit at the age of 80 in 2002, 54 years after the incident. As he did not write it, the wording is not his own.
3. People don’t remember dates accurately. People remember with words like, ‘It happened after the war ended,’ not ‘8 July 1947’. Also, memory is malleable. It is entirely conceivable that the witnesses saw the transport but did not associate it with the Roswell incident until decades later. The transport could have taken place several years before or after that.
leifFraNorden: 1. There was only one road from the North of Roswell to the US Army base on the other side, as far as I know. And nobody in the Army knew what it was then (or now, it would seem).
2. Haut may well have typed it too, why not?
3. Of course! Every single witness statement in the book might be misremembering, or might have been led or fed by a UFO-crazed interviewer. But that’s not very Fortean. Perhaps you should extend the benefit of the doubt a little bit when you have more than a thousand witness statements.