Aliens, flying saucers and a spaceport in New Mexico
A 'portal to other worlds'?
Last month (April 19), Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, told the US Congress that the Pentagon’s sightings of unidentified flying objects were on the rise, now topping 650 incidents in recent years. However, he clarified, there are no signs of alien life as yet.
It put me in mind of the revelations from New Mexico in one of the whackiest books I read before heading off to the American southwest.
Benjamin Radford’s Mysterious New Mexico bears the following strapline: Miracles, Magic, and Monsters in the Land of Enchantment.
Mr Radford, it turns out, is a writer, investigator, and professional sceptic, someone who investigates legends, folklore, accounts of paranormal phenomenon, ghosts, mass hysteria and miracles.
He explains his interest in exploring these weird and whacky reports in New Mexico. Science played a big role in the state, he says, with the world’s top scientists coming to New Mexico in the mid-1940s to develop and explode the world’s first atomic bomb. And “the New Mexican desert is also home to a huge array of radio astronomy dishes, studying the heavens and searching the skies for signs of intelligent alien life,” he writes. Apparently, a spaceport is also being built in the southern part of the state. One day, says Mr Radford, it will “be used to take travelers into space. In many ways, New Mexico is truly a portal to other worlds”.
Perhaps.
As Mr Radford notes, there is a reason New Mexico, America’s 47th state, is dubbed the Land of Enchantment. “Mystics, artists, outlaws, dreamers, explorers, and scientists have been drawn to New Mexico for centuries…Tens of thousands of New Agers and mystics have flocked to New Mexico , seeking the desert’s wisdom and earth energies. And, of course, countless UFO and alien buffs visit the most famous crash site in the world at Roswell”.
That reference is to the 1947 Roswell incident – the alleged recovery of debris from a flying saucer and claims of a US government cover-up. We’ll next take a look at “the world’s most famous, most exhaustively investigated, and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim”.
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”
– Jack Kerouac
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