Day 2 - Roswell Tour and the International UFO Museum

Note; If you're unfamiliar with the Roswell incident I highly recommend a book called The Ultimate Guide to the Roswell Crash. Another excellent book is The Roswell Legacy by Jessie Marcel Jr. 

Today started at 9:00 AM, kicking off a 2-hour tour with Dennis Balthaser. I've heard Dennis on several paranormal podcasts and radio shows, including The Paracast and Jim Harold's Paranormal Podcast. I've always enjoyed his visits and information and found Dennis to be a critical thinker and reasonable in his assumptions and conclusions.

Jessie Marcel's Residence in 1947

Walter Haut's Residence in 1947

The Roswell Daily Record

The tour took us around Roswell, visiting locations important to the 1947 incident. Thankfully I'd done a bit of homework about the incident and was able to ask moderately intelligent questions which Dennis answered willfully and openly. He was a fantastic host, not afraid to say astounding comments like, "I'm not sure," or just admit there could be alternate explanations to what happened in Roswell in 1947. I found his lack of ego and openness to discuss the things he'd researched as well as suspicions about alternative explanations refreshing.

The Chaves County Courthouse where the Roswell sheriff's office used to  sit.

Speaking of egos, while standing in front of Hanger 84 where it's reported the alien bodies and saucer wreckage were held by the Army Air Force in 1947, I asked Dennis why his tour didn't take us to the International UFO Museum. "I'm banned," he said with a crooked little smile. "Banned?!" I replied looking at him. He went on to explain that he had a 'falling out' with the curator of the museum, the daughter of Walter Haut, the Army Air Force officer who issued the press release of the crashed saucer being in the Army's possession back in 1947. According to Dennis, Haut's daughter really does not like being told she's wrong, nor does she like having people smarter or more knowledgeable around her. This not only created stress between her and Balthaser, but between her and the Roswell town hall, and it may be the reason why Roswell itself is shying away more and more from it's UFO roots. More on that later.

Hanger 84

After the tour with Dennis, which again was excellent and well worth the price, Van and I indeed headed to the International UFO museum. There we toured about and encountered far more information then I expected about UFO's and the entire Roswell incident. After about an hour I was seriously experiencing information overload. A bit of disappointment came in the form of the fact that the actual radio broadcast announced by the local Roswell radio station about the 1947 incident, was broken down. The museum employees had the broadcast piped through a vintage-looking radio, at least they did when it worked. Van asked if the museum had copies of the broadcast for sale, perhaps on DVD, and was directed to the Research Center of the building.

Another shot of Hanger 84

Here I was seriously impressed. The Research Center was very large and extensive, with video rooms, DVD's, microfiche, and more. It looked like the Center was going to be a hub of UFO and alien information but I wondered how accessible this information was to UFO researchers when the gate-keeper was such an arrogant individual. Of course I had no confirmation of the curator's actual personality, I never met the woman. And Van had an encounter of his own, in the Research Center. It seems that despite the extensiveness of the Center they didn't have a walkman or any other type of audio device that could play the CD-copy of the Roswell radio broadcast. Jenius. All that technology and you can't play a simple audio file. After another hour of perusing the content, from interesting and intelligent to cheesy and awesomely pop-culture-ish, we spend some bucks at the gift shop then headed back out.

Click here for my Picasa UFO Museum Pics!

A fantastic bar, reported to be over 100 years old.

Our next stop was the Roswell Winery, a hipster-like hang out with a 100+ year old bar that had some history of it's own. By the end of the night I was ready to crash like an alien saucer in the desert. I was fighting a cold and it was wearing me down but Roswell, the tour, and the museum did not let me down. My conclusions about Roswell? I don't believe we'll ever really know what happened there in the New Mexico desert in very early July 1947 but it's interesting to speculate and divulge in the culture of the event. If you're a UFO enthusiast, Roswell, regardless of what you think really happened, should be on your bucket list.

Supposedly these are Billy the Kid's spur-marks on the bar. Hrm.