Medha Sarin
Carlsbad Current-Argus
msarin@elritomedia.com
Alex Ly has seen some “weird shit.”
Last summer, the 23-year-old Roswell native packed camping equipment and took his friends to “hit the dunes” at White Sands National Park. He said he admittedly had big plans to “party.”
When night fell at the park and the sky turned pitch black, the group witnessed an otherworldly sight.
“We see these red dots just fly over the dunes,” Ly said. “They flew in an octagon and hovered above the sand.”
Whether the unique lighting formation was human-made or some kind of intergalactic message is unclear. But the apparent anomaly was on his mind as Ly attended the UFO Festival in Roswell this year to indulge in the possibility that there is life beyond Earth.
“There’s a lot of unexplained things out there,” Ly said. “Aliens could be one of them.”
‘It’s about time’
From July 2 to July 4, Roswell celebrated Independence Day and its 17th annual UFO Festival with several vendors on the courthouse lawn and throughout Main Street, where the acclaimed International UFO Museum and Research Center resides among other alien-themed shops and venues.
As a highlight of the festivities, Mayor Timothy Jennings and his brother, former Mayor and festival co-founder Tom Jennings, unveiled a sidewalk “walk of fame” installation honoring the festival’s origins.
Built across from the courthouse, the installation consists of square tiles etched into the ground, the newest one emblazoned with an alien spaceship and the names of Tom Jennings and his fellow festival founder, Stan Crosby.
In a speech, Tom Jennings said skepticism of the belief of extraterrestrial life tarnished the UFO Festival’s creation in 1995. When Time magazine published an 11-page report called “Roswell Files” two years later, he said state officials had a change of heart.
“When we started out, the state of New Mexico, the governor and the secretary of tourism wouldn’t even talk to us,” Tom Jennings said. “When that article hit the press, the governor and his secretary of transportation came to Roswell and wanted to know what they could do. Well, it’s about time, Governor.”
The Roswell Incident
This year marks the 79th anniversary of the 1947 “Roswell Incident,” when rancher W. W. Brazel and other locals discovered unusual debris resembling tinfoil and what they claimed were alien bodies on Brazel’s ranch in Roswell.
The city’s military base, Roswell Army Air Field, reported the debris came from a “flying disc.” The U.S. military countered that it was a weather balloon. Brazel disputed the U.S. Army’s claim, leading to an onslaught of conspiracy theories and hoaxes in the decades since the event.
In 1994, the U.S. Air Force acknowledged that the weather balloon claim had been false. Rather, an American spy balloon containing parachute crash-test dummies produced the debris, according to that report. Alien believers argue this correction is simply part of a cover-up to hide an otherworldly truth.
The question remains: Are aliens real? Mayor Timothy Jennings said he chooses to believe.
“We’re the only place in the whole world that’s had an alien crash,” Jennings claimed. “We know that this is the first and real visitor we’ve had from out of our planet.”
Reporting Intern Medha Sarin can be followed on Instagram @medsar_.
