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Roswell's aliens came from a 1948 hoax
A con in Aztec
The con artists behind the Aztec crashed saucer story convinced Variety columnist Frank Scully to cover their fictitious crash. Their narrative included small grey humanoid bodies, a metal stronger than any found on Earth, indecipherable writing, and a government coverup to prevent public panic.
What the 1947 reports said
None of this appeared in the actual 1947 Roswell reports. Those described foil, sticks, durable paper, and rubber strips on a ranch near Corona, with no bodies. In later retellings, the ordinary debris was replaced with the Aztec hoax's fantastical alloys.
How the bodies joined Roswell
The 1980 book The Roswell Incident brought bodies into the story through the second-hand legends of civil engineer Grady "Barney" Barnett, who supposedly found them with archaeologists on the Plains of San Agustin, over 150 miles from the debris site. It also claimed that Scully's hoax was a mistaken account of the Roswell incident that "placed the area of the crash near Aztec." Air Force investigator James McAndrew wrote that the Aztec story is still revered by UFO theorists even after the exposure of the fraud.
How did the Aztec hoax become a bestseller?
Frank Scully's 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers retold the Aztec story as fact and sold widely. In 1952, journalist J.P. Cahn investigated the sources for True magazine and traced the story to two men, Silas Newton and Leo GeBauer. Newton had marketed oil-detecting devices, and the same men had presented the crashed-saucer tale to promote them. Cahn's exposure appeared two years after the book.
Why do alien depictions look so alike?
The small grey figure with a large head and dark eyes became the standard alien image through a few widely read accounts. Barney and Betty Hill described such beings after a 1961 New Hampshire encounter that was reported in newspapers and a 1966 book. Whitley Strieber's 1987 book Communion put a grey face on its cover, and it became a bestseller. Film and television quickly adopted the same design.
What lies on the Plains of San Agustin?
The plains are a broad high-desert basin in west-central New Mexico, about 7,000 feet above sea level. The Very Large Array, a field of 27 radio telescope dishes, stands there. Each dish is 25 meters across and can be moved along railroad tracks. The array was completed in 1980.
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