Anthony Bragalia

For someone who couldn't shut up about the "Roswell slides" prior to the May 5th fiasco, Anthony Bragalia seems curiously silent in the aftermath of the event. No more defamatory e-mails about me sent by e-mail to friends (no, I never called Edgar Mitchell - that was what we call a "lie"), no more boasting comments on blogs... nary a peep.

Huzzah!

#BeSilent

Paul Kimball

The Roswell Slides, Part D'uh

Told you so.

Paul Kimball

The Roswell Slides

Told you so.

Paul Kimball

Stanton Friedman's Public Statement on the "Roswell Slides"

I could find no convincing information that there is any connection between the slides and Roswell... I don’t want to appear to add legitimacy by my presence in Mexico City in the absence of serious evidence of the slides being what is being claimed they are. 

I keep being asked my views about the so-called “Roswell” Slides. So, let me summarize my position. I have tried to obtain as much information as possible and responded with interest when at the International UFO Congress in Scottsdale, Arizona, in Mid-February, I was interviewed by journalist Jaime Maussan of Mexico City who has arranged for a huge event focused on the slides. I recall the so called Roswell Autopsy which turned out to be a fiasco. I had spoken with Ray Santilli over the phone, checked on a number of his claims which turned out to be false, met with him twice in England and even had some comments distributed at his big press conference.

Jaime invited me to attend the May 5, Mexico City, conference as had Don Schmitt. My expenses would be paid. My first thought was that since I would be asked about my views, as the original civilian investigator of the Roswell crashed saucer event, it would be nice to have first hand information. I read as much as I could, positive and negative. I have not held copies of the slides. I could find no convincing information that there is any connection between the slides and Roswell. How would an outsider gain access to the real bodies? I worked under security for 14 years and have been to classified facilities in New Mexico. The barriers are tough. I have seen no specific data to convince me that these are phony. But that doesn’t establish a connection with Roswell events. Yes, I am still convinced that alien spacecraft with bodies on board crashed near Corona, in the Plains of San Augustin, and near Aztec. But I don’t want to appear to add legitimacy by my presence in Mexico City in the absence of serious evidence of the slides being what is being claimed they are. Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence and I have a large “gray” basket.

Stanton Friedman

Note: Originally published at the UFO Chronicles.

The 1977 Tehran UFO Sighting

An article from the front page of the Kingsport Post - News on 19 May, 1977 (Vol. 15, No. 20) in Kingsport, Tennessee, detailing the Tehran UFO sighting of 19 September, 1976, which was featured in my film Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings.

Paul Kimball

Radio Appearance - 29 March 2015

For those interested in the paranormal, I'll be on radio out of the United Kingdom today discussing ghosts, UFOs, and whatever else pops up... and I may sneak in a revelation or two about the "Roswell slides" if I'm feeling mischievous. If I have my time conversion right, it's at 4:30 Halifax time (after the hosts chat amongst themselves for 1/2 hour).

Paul Kimball

Stan Friedman says "No" to involvement in Roswell slides May 5th circus

Chris Rutkowski posted in our sub rosa Facebook group looking into the "Roswell slides" that he had heard from the dean of pro-ET Roswell researchers Stan Friedman that Stan had been asked to appear at the May 5th event in Mexico City being staged by the slides promoters, and that Stan had declined. I contacted Stan yesterday and asked him to confirm this, and he did. "I can't find a connection between the slides and aliens at Roswell," he replied.

I followed up with Stan and asked him three specific questions on the record:

1. Who invited him to attend;

2. Was he going to be paid; and

3. Did he see the slides, or were they expecting him to participate without first having seen them.

His reply:

I was interviewed separately by Dew and Maussan at the 24th Annual International UFO Congress in Scottsdale Arizona Feb.18-22.and Maussan who has interviewed me before, broached the possibility of my attending the May 5 event with all expenses paid.No other remuneration was offered. I was on my way to San Diego to give a lecture at the Association of Electronics Industries on Feb. 25. On return here I received an email from Don Schmitt urging me to attend and then a note from Jaime.I saw some poor screen images, but did not handle or examine the slides. Several people I respect strongly urged me not to attend. After I told them (S and M) I had decided not to go, I received a brief note expressing regrets from Tom Carey. My original thinking was that I was certainly going to be asked about the slides afterward so that getting first hand information would allow me tO express an "enlightened" evaluation.

Anyway, good for Stan. He and I may disagree about Roswell in general, but when it comes to the "slides" we are in accord. 

Paul Kimball

Gray Barker and Me

Standing next to my prized Gray Barker "They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers" print before heading out for a walk this morning. 

Paul Kimball

Frank Scully and the Aztec UFO Con in the (Old) News

Here is a photo of the Hollywood gossip columnist and author Frank Scully, of Aztec UFO hoax fame (or infamy, depending upon your point of view), from the 25 September, 1950 edition of the Toledo Blade. You can find the full article here, fellow saucerians!

Meanwhile, here is some sensible commentary about Aztec and Scully (and other related things) from the St. Petersburg Times on 4 February, 1951.

Hoaxes / cons are powerful things. So long as there are credulous people whose will to believe overrides their common sense, there will always be the Aztecs of the world... including, as it turns out, the Aztec hoax, which still lives on today for a few die-hard proponents.

Paul Kimball 

Rating my UFO Documentaries

All of my UFO-related documentaries are now freely available on-line through various distributors (or you can pay to download them or buy DVDs if you want). An old friend and I were having a beer the other night and asked me how I would rate my own films. I thought about it, and originally posted at my Facebook page my ratings for all of my old docs, but I've winnowed them down to just the UFO ones here (as with allmusic.com's record ratings, out of 5 stars).

I still consider the Friedman film to be the best documentary I ever made on any subject, and I think Fields of Fear isn't bad, either (although it suffered from having a smaller budget and therefore less production value). Others may rate them higher, or they may rate them lower, but I've tried to be as objective as I can be, and this is where they fall for me.

Paul Kimball

Galt, Ontario UFO sighting - 1957

A lesser-known UFO case from Canada in 1957, as reported in a local paper in Alberta (although the sighting occurred in Ontario).

Paul Kimball

Roswell in Context

One of the most oft-repeated claims of the proponents of the Roswell Incident as a crash of an alien spacecraft is that highly trained personnel at the 509th Bombardment Group stationed in Roswell, such as Jesse Marcel, could not have possibly mistaken a balloon, even if it was part of a top secret project like Mogul, for a "flying saucer," by which the Roswell proponents mean "alien spacecraft." In doing so, the Roswell proponents have committed two of the most grievous mistakes that anyone can make when conducting historical research - they have projected their own interpretation on to events, and they have ignored the context surrounding those events.

I have written about that context before, as have others. The Kenneth Arnold sighting, which received major media coverage, was still fresh in everyone's minds. While memes did not spread quite as quickly in the late 1940s through old school media as they do today in the Internet age, they could still move pretty fast, and they could sweep up a populace in hysteria (and other emotional responses), responses which could quickly take root. Flying Saucers were everywhere in the media in late June and early July 1947, to the point that we should not be surprised if someone - even an intelligence officer like Jesse Marcel, or an information officer like Walter Haut, both of whom would have been inundated with the same media sensation reports as everyone else - made a mistake in the heat of the moment when confronted with something that was a bit anomalous to them, and identified it as one of the "flying discs / saucers" that they had been hearing so much about.

It wasn't just the United States, either. Here is a front-page piece from the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia from 8 July, 1947, talking about flying saucers, both in Australia and also Canada.

Jesse Marcel and Walter Haut were not superhuman beings with perfect powers of observation, and an immunity to the broader social dialogue that was taking place at the time. Neither was anyone else stationed at Roswell. Any reasonable person can see this - certainly any historian of repute can recognize what was at work, not just in Roswell but world-wide. Sightings begat reports which begat other sightings which begat more reports which... well, you get how it works. This isn't to say that some of the sightings may not have been real; but the vast majority, and perhaps even all of them, were the result of a frenzy of interest whipped up during that time period by media reports. As it turns out, people who knew what they were talking about at the time recognized what was going on, as can be seen from the following article in The Daily Illini in Illinois a few days after the Roswell incident was reported.

The Roswell incident fits that pattern to a "t", which is why it was so quickly forgotten. It was only decades later, when memories had gotten shorter and the tales had gotten taller, that the story resurfaced and was mythologized by a group of UFO proponents who ignored the context of the original story, and who placed an interpretation on events coloured by their own belief systems.

Paul Kimball

Synchronicity with Silas Newton

From the Pittsburgh Press, 1 August 1930... synchronistic proof that I was fated to make a documentary about Newton's Aztec hoax, two decades before he perpetrated it and almost four decades before I was born!

Paul Kimball

Stanton Friedman on the Condon Committee

Meanwhile, because there is more to life, and even UFOs and ufology, than the Roswell slides, here is a fun blast from the past - an article from the January 30, 1969 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featuring the one and only flying saucer physicist, Stan Friedman,  taking shots at the Condon Committee report on UFOs.

Paul Kimball

The Curse of the (Roswell Slides) Mummy?

The Roswell slides promoters seem to be obsessed with the idea that real researchers are all convinced that the "being" depicted in the Roswell slides is a mummy. Yes, that is a possibility that many have raised, but no-one has yet put that forward as a final conclusion (although I am still happy to take orders for my "It's a mummy, dummy" merchandise!).

So while no firm conclusion has yet been put forward publicly by the skeptics (as opposed to the promoters, who have positively asserted it to be a space alien from the supposed Roswell crash), could it have been a mummy? Is that prospect so far-fetched?

Well, no... as anyone who isn't a Roswell-is-aliens true believer (or a con man looking to soak money out of said true believers) would understand. Mummies were fairly common sideshow and carnival attractions back in the 1940s. For example, here is a newspaper article from the Hanover Evening Sun in late August, 1947, for a fair in Hannover, Pennsylvania (courtesy of Tim Printy):

Is this or something like it the Roswell slides being? 

You'll have to wait until May 4th to find out for certain. But one thing is for sure - when the slides promoters tell you that it absolutely can't be a mummy, they clearly don't know very much about mummies, or history.

Paul Kimball

The 4th of May!!

Breaking news, Roswell slides fans!

I have received, from a secret source, full resolution copies of the infamous slides. 

I am working with some media colleagues and actual scientists now to pull together an event that will reveal the truth about the slides. The wheels are in motion for a live and FREE to view event that we will stream on MAY the 4th, one day before the con event that will be held in Mexico City by the Slides promoters. 

That's right, folks - the day before you'll have to pay up to see them from the slides promoters, my colleagues and I will be presenting the evidence for free!

Why? Because I can, and because it will be fun. Consider it my gift to ufology for all the things it has given me over the years.

Stay tuned for details coming in early April, once we get the technical details worked out. But remember - you will have access to the truth from us the day before you'll have the boondoggle from the slides promoters - and it will be FREE!

Paul Kimball

All Of This Has Happened Before...

This Pittsburgh newspaper article about Roswell comes from 1997. You might recognize the names - they haven't really changed in decades (with the exception of poor Karl Pflock, who passed away several years ago from ALS).

The article can be viewed here as well.

As the saying went in the remake of Battlestar Galactica: All of this has happened before.

Paul Kimball

Stan Friedman - Space Aliens and the Bible

Stan Friedman talks to Rev. Barry Downing about why space aliens might be here, and how the Bible might factor into it, in this short excerpt from footage shot in 2001 in Irvine, California for my documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real. This is raw "fly on the wall" footage so at one point you can actually hear my director of photography Findlay Muir talking to the sound guy John Rosborough about a camera move.

Paul Kimball

Kevin Randle - Good UFO Cases Not Named "Roswell"

Kevin Randle answers the question of whether he thinks that there are any other good UFO cases besides Roswell in this excerpt from an interview I conducted with him in September, 2001. His ultimate conclusion might surprise some people - that the space aliens were here but seem to have left, a position that was also held by the late Karl Pflock.

Paul Kimball

Paranormal Weather

Apropos of nothing, really, but yet another snowstorm has slammed into Halifax.

Of course, not everyone in my house hates the snow. My teddy polar bear Henry gets wistful when it snows - he says it reminds him of his home in the arctic, before he headed south in search of fame and fortune.

Zorgrot, on the other hand, is thoroughly fed up. He's watching tropical islands on the scenery channel right now.

Meanwhile, being snowed in gives me time to go through more old interview footage. Expect some more clips today... assuming the power doesn't give out.

Paul Kimball