Now that crashed saucers seem to have replaced alien abductions as the "gold standard" of UFOlogical excitement, there is something of a "gold rush" to promote additional crash sites. Already well-established are the legendary Roswell, New Mexico, crash of 1947, and the Keeksburg, Pennsylvania, crash of 1965 (actually the Great Lakes Fireball of December 9, 1965-see this column, May/ June, 2004).
One up-and-coming entrant in the UFO Crash Derby is the tiny town of Aztec in northwest New Mexico, not far from Four Corners. The Aztec crash yarn began with entertainment columnist Frank Scully's 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers. Among its many dubious claims was that a saucer 99.99 feet in diameter (the saucers allegedly followed "the rule of Nines," when measured in multiples of a long-dead British monarch's foot) crashed in Hart Canyon, containing the bodies of sixteen little men, dressed in die clothing styles of 1890. Scully's book generated a lot of publicity and interest, which abrupdy faded when his chief informant, Silas Newton, was convicted as a swindler.
But sunken UFO stories, like rubber duckies, have an amazing propensity for popping up to die surface again and again. Recently Stanton Friedman, the "flying saucer physicist," wrote, "Years ago I was indeed dubious about the Aztec case, thanks to Bill Steinman, Silas Newton, etc., etc. However, once I did my homework, visited the site, and spent time with Scott Ramsey and others who have been doing theirs, I became convinced that indeed a saucer crashed at Hart Canyon near Aztec in March, 1948, and its retrieval was indeed, as one might expect, covered up by the U.S. Government. Scott has really dug into the documentation, and found witnesses, etc. I would probably still rank Roswell the number one crash" (Saucer Smear, May 1, 2006). An annual UFO symposium has been held in Aztec since 1998 (the Web site claims "of the sixteen recovered "crashed disks," twelve were recovered in New Mexico alone"-see www.aztecufo.com). Given that there is little other reason for anyone to visit the tiny town, its semi-famous UFO crash site has obviously become one of Aztec's greatest assets.
Perhaps sensing a profitable venture, some folks are working hard to rehabilitate the once-infamous (and now virtually forgotten) alleged UFO crash at Carbondale, Pennsylvania. On the night of November 9, 1974, three teenage boys reportedly heard a noise in the sky, then looked up to see a red ball of light coming at them from over a nearby mountain. They claimed it plunged into a small pond, from whose depths a light could be seen glowing faintly. The authorities were notified, and thus began a two-day vigil next at the water s edge. Finally, after Geiger counter readings showed that the pond was not radioactive, a determined diver named Mark Stamey braved the depths and soon returned with an amazing find: a battery-powered railroad lantern. It was never determined who had thrown it into the pond.
Aah, but more than thirty years later, "the truth" is coming out: According to BUFO, the Burlington UFO Internet Radio, "the 'lantern story' was a coverup for something much bigger-something that our government did not want us to know about." Diver Stamey is now claiming that the lantern incident was "staged," and a UFO remained in the water's depths. If you want to get the lowdown on the great Carbondale UFO Crash, see www.burlingtonnews.net/ carbondale.html. BUFO claims to be the highest-ranked Internet radio site for UFOs and paranormal subjects.
However, repetitive UFO fatigue seems to be settling in to even die most well-established UFOlogical activities. Attendance at this year's annual Roswell UFO Festival was "pathetically low" according to UFOlogist Dennis Balthaser; no official numbers were released. The organizers blamed the decline in attendance on the high price of gasoline. Nonetheless, the city of Roswell is taking over sponsorship for next year's festival. The National UFO Conference, originally scheduled to take place in Hollywood during the Labor Day weekend, was unexpectedly cancelled; as of this writing the organizers, battling the calendar, hope to hold a last-minute UFO conference in December in San Diego.
However, what we are witnessing does not appear to be the demise of belief in UFOs and related claptrap. Instead, it is gradually transforming itself from a participatory activity to a spectator sport, in keeping with larger social trends that are turning many people into couch potatoes. The Science Fiction Channel has announced a new weekly series, Sci Fi Investigates, promising to look into such worthwhile subjects as life after death, Mothman, voodoo, Roswell, paranormal hotspots and Bigfoot. The era of the individual UFO sighting, membership in UFO clubs, and attending paranormal conferences is fading away. Even UFO magazines and most books on the subject are now irrelevant. Taking their place is what seems to be practically the all-paranormal, all-the-time programming on certain cable TV channels, where exciting state-of-the-art visual effects give undeserved credibility to the same old tired and unsubstantiated claims. Just as the cable news channels talk endlessly about news developments on which they have little or no real information, the History and Science Fiction Channels (among others) now endlessly re-hash and re-re-hash featherweight UFO claims to titillate the masses. UFOs are alive and well, except they're not seen in the skies any more. You'll find them zooming in on digital cable to your new plasma flat-screen HDTV.
Some "mysteries" aren't all that hard to solve; indeed, they make you wonder how they ever qualified as a "mystery" in the first place. The mystery-mongering late night talk show Coast to Coast AM featured on its Web site an account called "The Message on a Microwave Clock." Listener Scott F. writes, "On a weekend in March of this year something strange happened again with our microwave as it had about three months prior. My brother was heating his meal in the microwave and moved toward it when it was finished. He then noticed that the digital clock on the microwave spelt the word child. This had happened one time late in 2005 with exactly the same word on the same microwave. That time, we were so creeped out by it that we immediately pressed the button to clear; it required several attempts before die word was removed and the time was displayed again as usual. . . there have not been any other strange occurrences here. Additionally, there are not any children in my family or neighborhood that have passed on within my lifetime." But the Webmaster added the following "update" at the bottom of the page: "Many listeners have pointed out that this message indicates the microwaves 'Child Lock' feature is enabled." Of course, this doesn't mean that the next strange message displayed on a microwave clock won't be supernatural....
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