Esoteric Synaptic Events: Roswell slides go bust

Remember my post about "the Roswell Slides" a little while back? The one where there was supposed to be a big reveal in Mexico City on May 5th that was going to change the world of UFO investigation forever?

Well, it turned out pretty much the way everyone thought it would.

You can read the alleged background of the slides at the link above, but the upshot is this: a Kodak slide was said to have been discovered in an attic. On the slide was photographic evidence of an alien body recovered from the 1947 crash at Roswell. The photograph (pictured above) revealed on May 5th is said to be that slide.

Despite cries to the contrary, the photo is most unambiguously that of a child mummy in a museum or freak show menagerie somewhere. The body even comes with its own little placard...a very odd way for U.S. government officials to store an alien corpse. No, not that I've ever been involved with such a process, but I'm just using logic. Nick Redfern at Mysterious Universe does a bang up job of analyzing the whole affair. In his article, Nick provides a handy dandy link to a quick, cursory Google image search that demonstrates that nearly every child mummy has the same alien-like quality to it. As I just alluded to, Nick invites the reader to examine the total context of the photo. Look behind the body:

"You’ll see yet another head, which looks very much like a wolf head angled downwards, and where you can see hair, the eye, muzzle, and even teeth below the muzzle. And, you can see the back of the small placard that sits in front of it, too, and which presumably explains what it shows: the preserved head of an animal. With that in mind, it’s obvious now that we are looking at some sort of museum, or menagerie, or circus type thing for entertainment purposes.

What we are not looking at is a secret lab where aliens (dead or alive) are held."

The Black Vault has a similar interpretation, adding that this photo might not be part of an insidious hoax but rather a simple misidentification. Oh surely we've never seen that before in Ufology. Discovery News also argues for the child mummy interpretation. However, that article does mention remarks from UFO researcher Richard Dolan and they may have been taken somewhat out of context. As I understand it from statements Dolan has made on Facebook, his words at the May 5th gala event, something to the effect that the mummy theory had been considered and then discounted by unnamed experts, was not a profession of his own beliefs but a citing of those of the event's organizers. That may be and Dolan has long been a level-headed voice in the field. That said, his hands on this matter are not entirely clean due to his association with the event.

Outcry against this May 5th event and the slides themselves has been swift from many quarters such as UFO Chronicles, decrying the whole debacle as a genuine black eye for UFO research, an endeavor already replete with hoaxes, forgeries, charlatans, and publicity stunts. Towards the end of his above-linked piece, Nick Redfern expresses fear that the shenanigans over the slides have damaged investigation into the events of Roswell to a "100 percent, irreversible degree." I hope that isn't true, but I suspect somehow that real, quality investigations will press onward.

These types of ridiculous claims have always been among us, just as hoaxes have been. They always will be, too. It does indeed detract from credible claims and it's frustrating as all hell, but it's a reality. What's more, claims such as the slides are not always perpetuated by the nefarious motive of greed, but by "true believers"; I'm sure you know them, the type that latches on to any UFO-related claim and avows them as gospel despite any evidence to the contrary. After all, anyone who presents said evidence to the contrary must be part of the disinformation wing of the global conspiracy, right? I've found so much of this by reading further into the Dulce matter.

How do we combat it? Well, I can say that my modest contributions will be based on evidence and run through the filter of my own Ufological bibliomania. And I promise not to have any gala events announcing that I've found alien corpses.

Well, that is unless I actually find an alien body and that it is in fact not a child mummy.