And meet Dennis Balthaser, Roswell truth seeker
2/26/2000
Written by Wiggz...also known as the AlienZoo prohibitor of dullness.
If you're looking to stock up on alien and flying-saucer trinkets, Roswell, New Mexico is the place to shop. Whether you're a true believer or a semi-skeptic, it doesn't matter: Make sure you allow plenty of space in your suitcase or car, because it's incredibly easy to walk away with boxes full of UFO books and toys. Including the International UFO Museum and Reporting Center, there's six stores to visit, all within walking distance of one another. We'll review four below.
The museum's gift shop (114 N. Main Street) sells a surprisingly large selection of books, videos, and posters -- many things you can't grab too easily elsewhere. Imagine this: filling Area 51 shotglasses with Alien Spring Water, and when you're done with your shot of H2O, setting your glass down on Roswell museum embossed leather coasters. Fun for the whole family! Meantime, the guitar-pick alien head earrings are sure to impress your metal-head girlfriends at the next Megadeth show. I had no choice but to point these out to Blobbert and sing, in a Black Sabbath backward-message way, "I am iron man!" The most curious item on display is the quasi-geo polished rock-slice night light, with a flying saucer branded on it in black, sure to cast shadows on the ceiling of your next slumber party. Describing this object any further will get me in trouble; all I can say is that I want it as a mantelpiece.
Across the parking lot is Star Child (108 W 1st), a smaller store that's packed with hand-painted alien statuettes, flying saucer replicas, and magnets. You can't miss the pink-and-neon green alien salt-and-pepper shakers; they'd go well with your Area 51 shotglass set. Owners Randhi and Richard Hesse moved to Roswell from California in summer of 1991, which is when they heard about Roswell Incident; the story of the crash was just coming out. Richard started making alien refrigerator magnets as a joke; they started selling well; by 1997, the business transformed itself into a retail shop, selling nothing but UFO and alien gifts.
"1997 was a golden year for Roswell. We had thousands of people a day, and it went on for days," says Randhi (a Roswell native) of the golden anniversary celebration. "This store would be crammed. It was nothing but a sea of people, and they would wait just to get into our store. I had to kick the camera crews out because they took up too much room. It was a zoo. It was a madhouse. It was wild. It was crazy. It was fun."
Surprisingly, in spite of the success of Star Child, Randhi has endured the scorn of those who she thought were her friends. While she's considered an "old Roswellite" because she grew up in the town, graduated from its high school, and raised three children there, some people want nothing to do with her because of the UFO element in her work. "A lot of my friends have nothing to do with me because of this business. It's all tied in with one form of religion or another," she says. "But there's this hypocrisy: Everybody who knows us knows how we make our living, yet no one refuses to take our money for a purchase of food or clothes."
She continues: "People come to Roswell expecting there to be more alien signs and decorations. It's because of the Roswell people who don't even want to admit that this is a topic of conversation."
Around the corner from Star Child is Roswell Southwest Alien (104 S. Main), which is, to be frank, a sparsely stocked place that smells like stale cigarettes. Head straight to the back of the store to check out crash-site figurines by Dan Reynolds. Each of these has a small caption, like, "Oops! Sorry, boss, I couldn't find the Roswell Airport," or "I'm calling to let you know I'm a little late. I'm kinda tied up with the Roswell Power Company at the moment."
AlienZone (216 N. Main) is housed in an early 1950s-era men's clothing store, called The Model, which explains the spaces for dioramas -- scenes to display, in this case, clothes -- lining the store's south wall. Operated by two families, the store has a specialty in cute plastic trinkets, from bracelets and earrings to silver-skinned alien dolls. The wife of one of the owners dedicates much of her time to scanning through hundreds of catalogs, dutifully clipping out alien and UFO items, and comparing prices. The fruits of her work are apparent throughout the two-year-old store -- it's packed wall-to-wall with neon-green ET toys.
The Cosmic Jukebox, in the back of the store, is a serve-yourself ice cream and soda shop. On a hot summer day, this shop is the only convenient place to get a quick, cool refreshment.
Yet, you can't go to AlienZone without wandering through Area 51. Situated next door, it's an "amusement center" comprised of 20-plus scenes, inhabited by alien mannequins who carry on with everyday life. Blobbert had no problem posing for shots; my favorite is the one of him drinking with the alien at the bar. Blobbert says AlienZone should recarpet the floor with astroturf, and turn it into a miniature golf arena.
Dennis Balthaser: Truth seeker at Roswell
Most Americans, one might suppose, dream of retiring to a resort-like area situated in a warm, relaxing climate, like somewhere in Florida, California, or Arizona. Not Dennis Balthaser. In 1996, after 33 years as a civil engineer, Balthaser packed up the belongings of his El Paso, Texas home and retired to Roswell, to follow his passion for UFOs. It wouldn't be long, however, before he would be a board member at the International UFO Museum and Research Center, putting in 70-hour weeks as its operations manager. Along with Deon Crosby, the museum's director at the time, he would assemble most of the museum's exhibits, including Harold the Dummy, which Balthaser picked up from the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and drove to Roswell in his pickup truck (Harold wore a baseball cap).
A friendly man who speaks with conviction, Balthaser discontinued his affiliation with the museum in October 1998, and today continues independent research on the Roswell case. He has an outstanding Roswell site, which gives an in-depth account of the Roswell timeline.
On this site, the Roswell specialist tells the story of meeting two persons, while researching the Incident, whom he thinks are government agents. On May 27, 1997, Balthaser received a phone call from an Oklahoma gentleman who said his father was a military policeman stationed at Roswell Army Air Field in July 1947. The soldier was in charge of guarding the ambulances that transported the supposed alien bodies. Talking with him later, Balthaser learned he had picked up a piece of metal debris at the Corona site, but was now willing to put it into the right hands: The Oklahoma man had six months to live.
Slightly more than two weeks later, Balthaser drove to Oklahoma to meet the gentleman and his son. Once there, Balthaser called the son, only to be told that he was away from home due to an emergency. But the phone rang on the following day, a Saturday; the ufologist was instructed to meet at a Denny's, at 7 p.m. That evening, he met a man and woman who met the description he was given on the phone. After sitting down with the duo, Balthaser was told immediately, "The gentleman you planned to meet will not be at this meeting."
Who were these people? Balthaser still doesn't know, even though he was told they were from the Air Force's Office of Special Investigation. The researcher suspects they had tapped his phone. After all, how would they know he was coming to Oklahoma, and later intercept his inquiry? Why would they waste his time? And why did the agents want Balthaser to return to Roswell?
"I spent three and a half hours with two people in a Denny's restaurant. I talked with five or six people on the telephone. They gave me information," he says. "I've talked with intelligence agents since then, and they've told me that they'll give you fact to suck you in, and then throw all sorts of disinformation at you."
If this were a hoax, Balthaser believes, why wouldn't the government clamp down on people impersonating federal agents, and tapping phone lines?
"If you want to hoax somebody, you try to make them the butt of your joke, and make a real splash," he adds. "This was so quiet. There was no splash. I still want answers."
Balthaser thinks he was visited by two people -- a man and a woman -- afterwards at the museum. They acted very strangely and talked to him about things that, he says, "they shouldn't have known about." Balthaser thinks he's been watched, too, but he's not going to let himself fall into feeling paranoid.
We met with Balthaser at the Main Street Denny's, near the museum. Our conversation went along the following lines.
AlienZoo: Has anyone performed calculations to estimate what the trajectory would have been, if the craft had touched down in Corona and landed again elsewhere?
Balthaser: My theory on the Corn site, if it is true, is that the spacecraft hit Corona, ricocheted up, and impacted at Corn. This is possible. But the agent I talked to said the craft was picked up on radar traveling at 3,500 miles an hour, heading in a southeast direction. Mac Brazel, the rancher, said the debris was scattered 200 yards wide by three-quarters of a mile long. That's a big debris field, so much that his sheep wouldn't cross it. He had to take his sheep around the debris to lead them to water.
Brazel had no reason to lie. He knew what weather balloons were. He had recovered some, and the Air Force would give out $20 or $25 to recover them. When he brought the debris] to the sheriff's office, the sheriff didn't know what it was. The sheriff contacted Major Marcel, the intelligence officer. Colonel Blanchard, the commanding officer, sent Marcel and Captain Cabot to the ranch, and they came back with stuff the next day. Marcel went to Ft. Worth, where General Ramey announced it was a weather balloon.
AlienZoo: Do you think, as Philip Corso did, that certain forms of high-technologies were derived from UFOs, but were kept secret?
Balthaser: The bad thing about the whole situation is that the more questions we ask, the more questions our questions raise. I can easily understand keeping things a secret. The Manhattan Project, in which a man had dropped a bomb from 50,000 feet, weren't made known until 10 years ago. The code used during World War II was kept quiet for 25 years after the war. We have technology that we can't imagine. A good example was the Kosovo conflict, where we lost a Stealth F-117, but made no effort to go after it. Why? That's our premier piece of equipment, but we already have something better!
If there are aliens, if they have crafts, I think we deserve to know that. If it's for technology, defense, or national security, I'm all for that. I think we need a place like Area 51 to develop this stuff. We don't want someone to get a hold of our secrets. But if our future as human beings depends on something -- not like whether we have a Stealth or a Black Manta -- I believe that we deserve to know the truth. If we're the only race in the universe, which I certainly don't believe, why are we spending billions of dollars looking for life?
Why would aliens even want to communicate with us? What would we have to offer them? Nothing. I think Stan Friedman said that, intelligence-wise, human beings are trying to get into the preschool of the universe. If they can get here, their technology is so far advanced from ours, that we can't even imagine it.
We can't even send a probe to Mars without losing it.
Why did we quit going to the Moon? We had a big thing going, but all of a sudden we stopped. Word has it that we were told to get off the Moon, because there are bases on the back side. It's just one big cover-up.
Look at how aliens have been depicted in movies. "E.T." is one of the few in which the alien isn't aggressive. They're violent years later, so that the public will stay afraid, and the government will maintain control.
Balthaser isn't reluctant to reveal his opinions. He's critical of the museum's practice of upholding the Ragsdale site as a confirmed crash site. The museum points to Jim Ragsdale's affidavit as undisputed testimony. Balthaser says this is wrong: "I'm convinced that the Ragsdale site is used as profit for the museum. I'm not going to rule out the Ragsdale site, nor will I rule out the Corn Ranch site."
Watching TV: An animal stuffed with stuffed animals
In my second night in Roswell, just before falling asleep, I saw a 45-second news clip about a dog that ate 14 stuffed animals, which had just been surgically removed. After a long day of wandering through crash sites, my bleary eyes seemed to be tricking me: Spread out on a table was a scattered collection of once-plush bears, kitties, and puppies, looking as if they had been set on fire, then extinguished. They were burnt and soggy, all at once. I've tried to find an article about this, but can't. Was it a dream?
I had just overcome a little bout with frustration: The Motel 6 we were was staying in (a big white castle of a place, which looks straight out of The Shining from Main Street) doesn't offer complimentary shampoo, and instead directs you to buy some from the vending machine, but the vending machine doesn't sell shampoo. But shampoo is an abstraction, anyway.
This was a fitting end to my day, one in which Blobbert began to see alien heads in his rice, in the same way he saw Mickey Mouse heads in his cereal when he worked at Disneyland. "I was just out of high school and I was hardcore into studying subliminal images," Blobbert mused, over Mexican dinner at Martin's Capitol Cafe (110 W. 4th). We rate this restaurant a thumbs up, because of its fantastic chimichangas and green chili stew, and really inexpensive prices ($27 for three of us). We disregarded the plywood patch in the ceiling -- where the saucer crashed? -- and the torturous, scalding-hot water in the lavatory faucets -- don't turn it on without turning on the cold water!