Page 23 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - October / November 2018

The Alien In The Photo 23

The Curious Case Of The

Alien In The Photo And

The Mystery To Solve

Slides uncovered in an Arizona home
seemed to unlock the Roswell
incident; a riddle that has baffled
UFO enthusiasts for years. But was it

all too good to be true?

by Les Carpenter

In the spring of 2012, Chicago videographer
Adam Dew received a mysterious phone call
from his former business partner Joseph Beason.
“I have something to show you,” Beason said
with urgency in his voice. Blair Ray near Sedona, Arizona. insisting that anyone who looked at the slides
Later that day, Beason showed Dew a Dew only knew of one UFO place – must first sign a non-disclosure agreement.
series of slides. The slides had been found 14 Roswell, New Mexico, just a state away. A UFO Still, Carey felt an obligation to pursue
years earlier by his sister, who had been hired to supposedly had crashed there in 1947, and many any Roswell possibility so he signed the non-
dispose of the belongings of an elderly woman believed it to be one of America’s biggest disclosure, and in return he was emailed a scan
who had recently died. His sister couldn’t bring government cover-ups. (In its 231-page report of one slide.
herself to jettison the collection, and so she took about the incident, released in 1997, the US air When Carey opened the email
the box home, placed it on a shelf and forgot force denied all of it). attachment in his Philadelphia-area home office
about it. Could this be related? , he jolted in his seat. Clearly visible on the
Many years later, she finally projected figure’s head was a dark mark similar to other
the slides on to her bedroom wall. She saw vivid News accounts and military documents all black blotches across the body’s torso. It
color photographs of Dwight Eisenhower on confirm a celestial device tumbled to earth that appeared to be some kind of skin discoloration,
what appeared to be a postwar victory train tour, night in Roswell, but this is where the stories but to Carey, who has anthropology degrees
pictures of Bing Crosby and Clark Gable, as divide. from two different universities, that mark on the
well as several photos of European towns. Witnesses and their relatives describe a head was something else.
Figuring they had some historical significance, destroyed flying saucer that broke into two “Child of earth,” he said to himself.
she sent them to Beason, who had worked in wreckage fields. Aliens, many of those In the American south-west lives a small
book publishing. witnesses say, were found in the mangled craft, reddish-brown insect called the Jerusalem
Now Dew scrolled through the slides. and then transported to a top-secret site. The cricket. It has a faint, dark indentation on its
Some were stunning and had the unmistakable military, after first announcing a flying disk head, almost like a newborn’s still melding
clarity of Kodachrome – Kodak’s revolutionary crash, quickly revised their story, saying it was skull. The Jerusalem cricket’s more common
mid-century color processing. He wondered actually an experimental weather balloon. name is the potato bug but in Spanish it is
how the person who took them was able to get For years, the Roswell incident was known as el niño de la tierra – “the child of
so close to Eisenhower. They must be important, largely unknown outside New Mexico until earth”.
he thought. 1978, when a Canadian nuclear physicist named The daughter of Dan Dwyer, a Roswell
Then Beason showed him another Stanton Friedman met an air force officer who firefighter in 1947, has said her father saw three
picture, the first of two nearly identical slides. had been there. Intrigued by the man’s story, of the aliens at the crash site. When pressed by
These had not been in the tray, but tucked Friedman researched the case, and helped make his children to describe them, he had said:
underneath, wrapped in parchment paper. a documentary called UFOs Are Real. Soon “Child of earth.”
Dew gasped. Staring at him was a small, after the documentary’s release, the town turned Those three words had haunted Carey for
brown, withered body inside what appeared to into an extraterrestrial mecca, giving birth to a years. What did that mean? Carey assumed it
be a glass case. The figure had withered arms, culture of self-declared researchers yearning to had something to do with the Jerusalem cricket,
shriveled legs, a large triangular skull with find the “truth” about the event. but how?
elongated eye sockets, and a tiny sliver of a Some of those, like Tom Carey, a retired
mouth. Philadelphia businessman with a background in With Carey and Schmitt’s guidance, Beason and
He had but one thought. anthropology, and Don Schmitt, who owns a Dew began what UFO experts call “an
He was looking at a dead space alien. ranch in southern Wisconsin, have written investigation”. They took the slides to
several books on the subject. But so far their professors, color experts and animators. They
Until that day, Dew had spent little time evidence is only anecdotal, and their years of cut one of the images from its cardboard border
pondering UFOs. He’s a stout father of three research have not provided any physical proof to look for a date code, then had it run through a
who shoots freelance sports videos for a living. aliens crashed at Roswell. drum scan to improve clarity. A digital illustrator
People would describe him as gruff, diligent, “If Roswell turns out to be true, it’s the made a 3-D image of what the body might look
short on chitchat – hardly the type to be chasing story of the millennium,” Schmitt says. like alive.
little green men. But he just couldn’t stop By 2012 time was running out on They consulted people at the Kodak
thinking about the slides. Roswell. With nothing tangible to link the headquarters in Rochester, New York. The
“I knew immediately it was a good accident to aliens, Roswell was becoming a cold experts told them the slides were real, had not
story,” Dew told me a few months ago as we sat case. been tampered with, and were from between
outside a coffee shop in Fredrick, Maryland. Then Joseph Beason contacted Tom 1945 and 1950, making it possible the photos
“Whatever was on that slide was a great story.” Carey. were taken right after Roswell.
Dew had long dreamed of making a They looked more into Hilda Blair Ray’s
documentary, and suddenly he had the ultimate At first, Carey was suspicious. He had been life. She had a pilot’s license and worked as an
topic. He convinced Beason, his friend, they disappointed enough times by phony claims of attorney.
should research one together. Roswell evidence, and his first reaction was to
The pair found out that the pictures were distrust any new discovery. To make matters (Continued on Page 24)
found in the garage of a woman named Hilda worse, Beason also struck him as secretive,