I know, I said check back soon for the last Roswell Edition of the summer at the end of the previous column, “Bigfoot Gone Loco!”  And yet, no new column has appeared.  Well, there’s good news and bad news on that front. The bad news is I didn’t have time to complete the new column, “UFOs Over Roswell” (about UFO sightings over our fair city before and after the infamous crash), but, the good news is I didn’t have time because I was working on a new Roswell book.

The book tells Roswell’s history beginning as a humble trading post along the Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail all the way up to the current day as a tourist destination for UFOs.  For those of you familiar with Mike Smith’s excellent Towns of the Sandia Mountains, my book too is a photographic history book in the Images of America series for Arcadia Publishing.  The book, to be called Roswell, has over 200 images collected from the Historical Society for Southeastern New Mexico, the Roswell Museum and Art Center, and the private collections of several prominent ufologists.

So for anyone interested in Roswell’s entire history you can read about Roswell’s founding by Van C. Smith, the arrival of Western heroes like John Chisum, Pat Garrett, and Captain Joseph C. Lea, how Roswell managed to avoid the nearby violence of the Lincoln County War (and why Billy the Kid rarely, if ever, came to town), Roswell’s growth at the discovery of Artesian water, the birth of the prestigious New Mexico Military Institue, the dark days of the Depression, the arrival of the father of modern rocketry Robert H. Goddard and his rocket tests in Eden Valley near town, the origins of the Roswell Army Airfield, a German POW Camp in the 1940s, and everyone’s favorite, The Roswell Incident, as well as what happened to the town after the closure of the base and how it eventually came to become a major tourist destination in the 1990s.

So if you’ve wished for a concise, easy to read history of Roswell, New Mexico, with tons of great photographs this will be the book you’ve been waiting for. Look for it early Fall of ‘08. Below is a sneak peak of some of the photgraphs to be included in the book.

And in the meantime, the Roswell Edition will be back up in running sometime in late August, but until then you can find my writings in the Daily Strange.

One town especially sticks out in Lincoln County though, and that town is Ruidoso, New Mexico, a favorite spot for a quick getaway for many Roswellites.  And, like Roswell’s Main Street full of little green men and flying saucers, the main street of Ruidoso is dotted with ornately carved wooden bears giving it a distinctly forest-like feel.

And interestingly, while Chaves County is alien territory, the mountains of Lincoln County and Ruidoso are ironically enough Bigfoot country.

Yes, New Mexico has Bigfoot too.

Bigfoot has various names and interpretations amongst different cultures.  In the forests of North America he is sometimes called Sasquatch, in the Russian wilderness he is the Alma, in the frozen mountains of Tibet are the Yeti, and here in the desert Southwest of New Mexico Bigfoot are more terrifyingly known as…los abuelos!

(Or translated into English: “the grandparents” or in the singular “the grandfather.” Maybe not so scary sounding after all).

The abuelo, a figure used in Hispanic folklore to frighten young children into behaving, is described as a half-man half-animal, often times like an upright gorilla, and resembles Sasquatch.  This Bigfoot, however, also has the ability to speak to ask children if they have been good or not, and also carries a whip.

While in the Hispanic folklore they have a halfway protective interpretation in that they make small children behave themselves, in New Mexico’s Native American culture Sasquatch have a much more sinister identity.  Take the Atahsaia for instance, which literally translates to “cannibal demon” in the language of the Zunis.  An old Zuni story tells how Atahsaia lures two young girls to his cave (with plans to eat them) by telling them that he is their grandfather!

Yes, in New Mexico our Bigfoot are just a little bit different (and by different we mean stranger) than ones reported in other states.  Why is New Mexico’s Bigfoot so strange though?  Perhaps it’s because in a state where UFOs crash at random, half-rabbits/half-cats called cabbits run wild, and gateways to other dimensions supposedly open up in towns like Lordsburg, being Bigfoot just isn’t quite weird enough.

While Northern New Mexico Bigfoot sightings have recently been getting press coverage in the news, we here in Southeastern New Mexico have been having plenty of Bigfoot activity as well.

Back in December of 2004 two wildlife majors from Texas Tech went camping near Ruidoso.  While one of the young men was fishing by himself in a lonely creek, he could feel the presence of someone, or something, watching him.

To quote directly from the report the witness submitted to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO):

The strange thing that scared me was that the birds stopped singing and the woods almost went silent. I then scanned the steep canyon boulders and pine forest and saw brush and trees shaking vigorously and immediately thought I was about to see a bear.

I slowly went to the opposite side of the creek and stared in the area trying to make out the creature. Everything stopped moving and I quickly started down river towards camp. About 10 minutes later I heard what sounded like a gutteral moan or cry directly across the river, like the creature was trying to scare me, this combined with the fact that it had parralled me down river really made me panic. I then ran all the way back to camp as quickly as I could, spraining my ankle in the process.

I am an accomplished outdoorsman who has had plenty of experience with bears and the area, but I have never seen a bear parralel a human for as long as this creature did, and the cry was definetly different from any kind of growl or vocalization that I have ever heard out of a bear.

An old Bigfoot sighting that used to be available at the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy site told of another Ruidoso encounter.  If memory serves (the site has taken down their section for NM sightings) two men saw Bigfoot from their truck walk across a lonely road in the mountains early in the morning hours.

The town of Mescalero in neighboring Otero County south of Lincoln and Chaves has had nine reports of Bigfoot mischief sent to BFRO so far.  They include traditional sightings of tall hairy bipedal creatures scaring passersby’s in their vehicles and the usual mysterious nighttime screams.  Bigfoot even trampled an old woman’s flower garden and left his dirty hand-print on her dining room window, disturbed the peace by banging the roof of some travelers’ camper, and also reached his hand into another witness’s home and tried to steal some food.

The all-time strangest Bigfoot sighting in this area of New Mexico though, or perhaps anywhere, belongs to Alamogordo resident John Bohannon.  While driving down a road near Three Rivers Campground (North of Alamogordo and slightly west of Ruidoso) Bohannon saw a large ape-like creature walking upright in the same direction as he was driving.  He estimated it to be 8 foot tall, said it had reddish/brown fur, a Neanderthal like face, and that its arms hung down past its knees.  Nothing strange about that for a Bigfoot sighting except for one thing: it vanished into thin air without a trace leaving Bohannon to wonder if Bigfoot “walked into some kind of portal.”

In Lordsburg, NM, there is an alleged portal into another dimension called the Lordsburg Door.  Bohannon also reported seeing a cowboy dressed up in full “1860s garb” that also disappeared into thin air, again evoking shades of a Lordsburg style time rift, in the same area.

Bohannon’s story was discovered several years ago by Sharon Eby who met John Bohannon when she ironically had decided to go to Three Rivers Campground instead of Roswell due to the UFO Festival going on at the time.

Who knows?  With stories of Bigfoot vanishing into mysterious portals, carrying a whip to frighten young children into behaving in time for Christmas, or trying to lure them into his cave so that he can try and eat them, maybe its not so implausible that he’ll one day wander over from Lincoln or Otero County to Roswell and get spotted at the crash site…After all, in New Mexico would that really be so strange?

***

Although author John LeMay (it’s fun to talk about yourself in the third person) may have taken a lighter approach to this article than usual let it be known he was in no way trying to belittle the Bigfoot researchers or the witnesses as cryptozoology is one of his favorite subjects. Check back soon for what will be the last new Roswell Edition of the summer!

Or was it?

Of course, Newton and GeBauer probably weren’t actually selling alien technology, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Aztec crash itself never happened or that there wasn't something else mysterious afoot with GeBauer and Newton.

First off, it’s important to note that GeBauer could have very well not have been Dr. Gee, as skeptics who love to jump on the Newton/GeBauer bandwagon like to believe.  Dr. Gee was name given to a group of eight or nine scientists by Frank Scully that had investigated the Aztec crash.  Scully named them “Dr. Gee” to protect their collective identities.

Newton and GeBauer’s trial with Herman Flader also wasn’t necessarily all that it’s cracked up to be either.  Thanks to an investigation into Newton and Gebauer by longtime Aztec researcher Scott Ramsey some eyebrow-raising bits of information on the two have been found.  Ramsey answered questions about GeBauer and Newton’s trial and history in a recent email and had this to say:

Herman Flader was the only investor in the oil deal that was upset with Silas Newton. The court records show that he and only he felt that he was deceived with his investment. Most people would like you to believe that the oil field that was in question was a "dry well" when actually the court records show it was a big success and the other investors made a lot of money off of it. The skeptics on Aztec would also like you to believe that they were held on criminal charges when they were reduced to "civil charges" at the end, and were made to pay his original investment back plus court costs.

The "Doodle bug" devise that was presented in court was not the one the other investors were shown. Nobody ever saw the one that the F.B.I. presented at the trial. The other investors were not allowed to testify in the trial. (this is all on public record, not rumor mill stuff).

Prior to the 1950 book release "Behind the Flying Saucers" by author Frank Scully, the F.B.I. files showed that Silas Newton was a man of "high regard, a patriotic person of good standing, a big contributor to the Republican Party, and a man of great wealth". After Frank Scully's book came out, he was a “worthless man who could not be trusted, and a person of interest to the F.B.I." This all changed in a time frame of one year. When the F.B.I. decided to investigate Silas Newton, they could not get a judge to agree that Silas Newton had done anything wrong. This started in the Albuquerque Federal Court where the Judge said they had no case, they then went to Phoenix and the courts told them the same. Then they went to Salt Lake City and were told they had no case. They finally ended up in Denver where they had to convince a judge they "would present better evidence at trial."

I am probably the only person that has bothered to read the entire "complaint" concerning the charges brought up against them. I am also the only person to read the 269 pages (that's only 65%) of the F.B.I. files on [Newton]. The other 35% are not to be released according to the F.B.I.

I also had a trial lawyer read the entire work (criminal complaint and law suit) and he was "shocked" at how aggressively the F.B.I. went after them. Pyramid type investments were very common in the oil fields back then.

But Newton and GeBauer aside, there are much more important things to investigate pertaining to crashed UFOs, such as hard evidence and eye-witnesses.  Eventually two significant first-hand witnesses that had been at the crash site were found by Ramsey.

The first of these was Ken Farley.  Farley had been down from Colorado in northern New Mexico visiting a friend at the time of the crash.  When Farley picked his friend up at a town north of Aztec called Cedar Hill the friend told him how he had seen several trucks and a police car heading south on a small road.

Wondering what was afoot they followed the small dirt road until they reached Hart Canyon and found the surprise of their lives.  Atop a mesa sat a disc shaped craft with no noticeable damage. According to Farley there were also many oilfield workers, a couple of ranchers, and two police officers interviewing the locals.  Some of the oil workers were even said to have tried to climb up on the craft.  One of the police officers warned Farley and his friend that they should leave. Instead they ignored him and stayed at the crash site. Later on that morning the military arrived and threatened the witnesses with their lives.

When Ramsey managed to find another first hand witness to the crash his testimony would incredibly end up matching perfectly with Farley’s even though the two men had never met before in their entire lives.  The man was Doug Nolan who was an employee of El Paso Gas Company at the time of the crash.  Nolan stumbled upon the crash with his boss Bill Ferguson who had told Nolan they needed to get down to Hart Canyon to put out a brush fire there.  Once they arrived an oil field worker told them the brush fire had been taken care of but they needed to take a look at “something else.”  The “something else” turned out to be the flying saucer.

Their curiosity firmly aroused Nolan and Ferguson walked up to the craft and peeked into one of the windows in which they thought they could see two bodies slumped over a control panel.  Nolan, being a citizen of Aztec, unlike Ken Farley, was able to identify many people at the crash.  The two ranchers Farley described in his account were a husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Knight, who had cattle near Hart Canyon.  One of the two police officers at the crash actually wasn’t even from Aztec, but from Cuba, NM, and had followed the craft watching it in the sky to Aztec.  Nolan also recalls two other men at the crash site that he did not know, likely Ken Farley and his friend (who remains safely anonymous).

There have also been several secondhand witnesses to come forward, such as Fred Reed who claims that he was part of a cleanup crew called in to survey the crash site and make it look as though nothing had transpired there.  Part of the cleanup was to also cover up any tracks of heavy equipment.

Witnesses aside, hard physical evidence in Aztec’s support thus far has literally been a concrete slab found in Hart canyon.  Why is a concrete slab a big deal though you might ask?  Ramsey believes the slab was poured near the crash site to support a piece of heavy equipment such as a large crane support leg.

Corroborating the theory is an ex-Intel Air Force Officer involved in the crash who says the pouring of the concrete slab delayed the recovery operation for a few days.  The slab does not appear to be part of any of the oilfield businesses in the area as no one from Williams Energy, El Paso Gas, Dugan, or Burlington can connect the pad to any past operations in the oil fields.

Other skeptics point out that the Aztec crash couldn’t have happened because Hart Canyon Road did not exist in 1948. Actually the road has been around for quite some time, and is ironically the site of the last stage coach robbery in New Mexico back in the late 1800s.

UFOs were not scarce in northern New Mexico at the time either.  In 1950, the nearby town of Farmington, NM, witnessed a whole armada of flying saucers hover over their city leaving many witnesses to the event.

To quote directly from the Farmington Daily Times of Saturday, March 18, 1950:

Fully half of this town's population still is certain today that it saw space ships or some strange aircraft -- hundreds of them zooming through the skies yesterday. Estimates of the number ranged from "several” to more that 500. Whatever they were, they caused a major sensation in this community, which lies only 110 air miles northwest of the huge Los Alamos Atomic installation. The objects appeared to play tag high in the air.

And as for Frank Scully, his book Behind the Flying Saucers has many bits of information on technology that although far-fetched for 1950, was actually in existence at the time of the book’s publication, only classified.  The technology he wrote about, including methods of magnetic detection, wasn’t declassified until many years later.  The name Scully also rings a bell in popular culture today thanks to the character of agent Dana Scully of The X-Files, named after Frank Scully.

But even after all the newfound evidence Aztec is often still regarded as a hoax thanks to two con men.  But, after all, since the Roswell crash eventually overcame its weather balloon cover-up, maybe Aztec can one day finally overcome Silas Newton and Leo GeBauer as well.

That’s right; we could only be talking about one place: Aztec, New Mexico.  You know, that other place in New Mexico where a UFO crashed? 

Aztec is located north of Farmington, NM, and was recently featured as one of New Mexico Magazine’s “Five Cool Small Towns” in their May issue.  The town used to be most prominent for its beautiful ancestral 12^th century pueblo ruins, the Aztec Ruins National Monument, just outside of town but is beginning to gain more and more recognition for being the site of an alleged UFO crash just like Roswell.

Every year in March Friends of the Aztec Public Library hosts the Aztec UFO Symposium, and if this year’s turnout was any indication Aztec is getting better known every year.  So well known in fact, that Disney even took special care to place it in their remake of Escape to Witch Mountain, wherein two children will go to a UFO Convention in Las Vegas, NV, and pass by a prominently placed booth advertising the Aztec UFO Symposium.

But, even amidst all the recent exposure and renewed interest strong skepticism still permeates Aztec’s crash.  Larry Barker, as part of his Larry Barker Reports segments for KRQE news, declared Aztec a hoax in his current investigation not long ago and likewise NMSR (New Mexicans for Science and Reason) still view it as fraudulent as well.

However, serious UFO Investigators such as Dennis Balthazar and Scott Ramsey have given the case serious reconsideration over the last twenty years.

“When I first heard about Aztec years ago I also didn't think much of it because basically the hoax theory was getting much of the publicity, however as more research has been done and witnesses interviewed my thinking has changed and warrants further investigation into the incident.”  said Balthazar in a recent email.  “Hoaxes are too often accepted as fact, when additional 'good' research as Scott Ramsey is doing on Aztec opens the door to at least look deeper into it.”

And looked into the case investigator Scott Ramsey has.  But more on that later; first let’s recount the basic history of the Aztec crash.

The full original Aztec UFO story, for those not familiar with it, first gained prominence via famous journalist Frank Scully in his 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers.  In it Scully describes how in March of 1948 an alien space craft 99.99 feet in diameter made an emergency landing in Hart Canyon atop a small mesa near Aztec.  The craft and the alien bodies within it were then collected by the air force.

Scully got his information from Silas M. Newton, a con-man with a dubious past, who introduced him to one “Dr. Gee.” Dr. Gee was the one who then related the story to Scully, as Dr. Gee had been called in with several other scientists to examine the craft and try to figure out just how it achieved its propulsion.  According to Dr. Gee the craft was then dismantled at the crash site, and like the Roswell saucer, taken to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

While it’s interesting to note similarities between Aztec and Roswell, including the close proximity in time in which they happened (Aztec’s was less than a year after Roswell’s which had occurred in July of 1947) the Aztec crash has many significant differences.  First of all, the Aztec craft didn’t necessarily crash like Roswell’s, but made an emergency landing without causing any major damage to the craft.  Secondly, this flying disc was much larger at 100 feet compared to the one found near Roswell.  Also out-topping Roswell was the discovery of 16 alien bodies compared to Roswell’s four or five bodies although none of Aztec’s aliens managed to survive like Roswell’s.

While Roswell had a weather balloon to try and crash its credibility, the arrest of Silas M. Newton and his partner Leo A. GeBauer proved to be a near crippling blow for the Aztec legend.  GeBauer and Newton had been swindling people for years and getting away with it until they messed with Denver millionaire Herman Flader.  Flader was furious when the two sold him a device said to be able to locate oil, but was in fact just a piece of inexpensive surplus junk.  It didn’t help that the two men had been trying to pass off these devices as pieces of alien technology recovered in the crash to help find oil.

Making things even worse San Francisco Chronicle reporter J.P. Cahn began investigating Newton and GeBauer’s scams focusing on the crash angle.  Cahn stealthily managed to swipe a piece of the “crash debris” from Newton and have it tested to reveal its earthly properties of simple aluminum.

And so thanks to the two con men the Aztec legend seemed to crash and burn.  There had been no alien craft, just a story concocted by Silas Newton, and according to many his partner Leo A. GeBauer was really the mysterious Dr. Gee all along.

Or was he?

What the recent investigations by Scott Ramsey have turned up, next week, in the Roswell Edition…

Most everyone knows this.  And yet, those dead dinosaurs have a peculiar way of popping up in modern times where they’re not supposed to. 

People report sightings of creatures that bear strong resemblances to plesiosaurs in lakes from Loch Ness to Patagonia.  Natives in the dense swamps of Africa fear Mokele-mbembe, which has popularly been accepted by cryptozoologists as a surviving sauropod.  Flying reptiles like Pterosaurs are glimpsed in the skies above New Guinea, Africa, and even Texas and New Mexico.

On land, in the broad open spaces of the Southwest, it would seem that we should have nothing.  No sightings of T-Rexes stalking the desert, no herds of Coelophysis spied running across the Great Plains, and certainly no Allosaurus seen prying road kill off of the highway.  Nothing.

And yet we have Mini-Dinos.

The sightings first gained public attention in Colorado where people reported sightings of bizarre 1-3 foot tall reptiles that ran on their hind legs.  Because of their dinosaur-like appearance and the fact that they seemed to always be sighted near creaks and streams, the creatures were dubbed “Colorado River Dinos.”  Nick Sucik investigated several sightings of such creatures in Colorado and the Four Corners area and has since become the leading expert pertaining to such matters.

There has even been a sighting of a mini-dino in Roswell, New Mexico.  Like anyone else who has read this column before you would assume enough odd things have happened in this town that it had likely met its quota for strange events, and yet we even have a dinosaur sighting.

Stepping outside of his parents secluded home north of Roswell at about 10:00 AM one morning, Mark Graham beheld a strange sight.  His uncle’s dog Ono, a half Pit-bull Blue Healer, was chasing something in the field nearby that looked surprisingly like a dinosaur.

The reptile was about three-foot tall, dark tan in color, and running on its hind legs.  It also had a long neck and two small arms.  Graham was able to keep the creature in sight as it was being chased by the dog for just under a minute.  In that time he was able to observe it well enough so as to not mistake it for anything else.  Graham said himself that one of the first things he thought upon seeing the creature was 'dinosaur.'

“My thought at the moment was, ‘Am I really seeing what I’m seeing?’” said Graham recalling the sighting in a recent interview.

Later on when looking through a picture of book of dinosaurs Graham picked an Avimimus as the dinosaur most closely resembling the creature he spied outside of his parent’s home.  An Avimimus was a small bird like dinosaur with the same bodily proportions and size of Graham’s creature.

Graham’s cousin also saw the dinosaur-like creature.  Several days later Graham and members of his family also found strange three-toed tracks on their property that did not match any other known animals in the area.

Investigator Nick Sucik still keeps a healthy skepticism about these “Mini-Dino” sightings however.  Sucik notes that although many sightings seem to be of a heretofore unknown reptile species (or possible dinosaurs); many more also turn out to be that of Collared Lizards.  Collared lizards are often mistaken for “mini-dinosaurs” because of their ability to run on their hind legs.

“Collared Lizards do seem to stir the imagination when people see them running upright.” said Sucik in a recent email.

Although Collared lizards generally do not obtain more than 16 inches in length a 24 inch specimen was captured in New Mexico some years ago by three young brothers.  After admiring their catch, which they determined had grown large due to its great age (evidenced by its faded color); they released it back into the wild.

“What also creates complications is the fact that people in general are familiar with dinosaurs and seem to get excited when they learn that that strange lizard running upright could have been a living dinosaur.”  Sucik relates on past investigations.  “I've had cases where someone insists they saw a little dino, even pointed out a particular dinosaur they'd seen on Jurassic Park as having its likeness, but when you get down to the fine details (length of the neck, length of the legs, position of the forelimbs, posture of the tail, etc.) things begin to sound more and more like a Collared Lizard.”

Mark Graham’s sighting, however, took place back in the 1980s, before cryptozoology research was so well known and dinosaurs saw new popularity due to Jurassic Park and its sequels.  Graham’s descriptions of the elongated neck length and overall size of the creature also imply something more akin to a dinosaur than a Collared Lizard.  In keeping with other “Mini-Dino” sightings in other states, Graham’s sighting was also nearby a river (the Berrendo River to be exact), which further adds to its credibility.

“I saw what I saw and nothing can change my mind of that.” said Graham concluding his sighting.

Roswell isn’t the only place in New Mexico where a mini-dino has been seen though.  Mike Smith reports that Ramón Ortiz of Lordsburg has seen them, and crypto-investigator JC Johnson has likewise heard reports from a family in the Four Corners area that spots them infrequently.  Nick Sucik came across an old newspaper article on microfilm mentioning the curator of a Cortez museum obtaining “baby dinosaur” skeletons.  The curator asked around if whether or not anyone was familiar with such animals and a Navajo man from Gallup, NM, said that his people knew of the creatures.

So is it too soon to say that dinosaurs, albeit small ones, are alive and well in the Southwest?

Nick Sucik concludes, “I wouldn't go as far as to say there's a relic species of theropods running about the Four Corners but there does seem to be something there that might just warrant a closer look.  For certain the Southwest has more than a few surprises still in store.”

***

For more information on sightings of dinosaurs still alive today check out Nick Sucik’s chapter in the book Cryptozoology and the Study of Lesser Known Mystery Animals. Also be sure to check out John LeMay’s article on the subject appearing in the new issue of G-Fan #83 which can be found in select comic shops as well as online at G-Fan.com.

The strangest place in Roswell by far has always been Bottomless Lakes.

Bottomless Lakes State Park, the very first state park to be sanctioned in New Mexico, is located 12 miles east of Roswell and was established back in 1933 by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the Great Depression.

Of course the lakes’ histories themselves date back much further than 1933 and their discoveries and origins are fairly cryptic.  Some Roswell residents whisper that the Indians that used to live near the lakes moved away from them because they felt the lakes were haunted.  Even stranger is the fact Dr. James W. Sutherland, the first doctor to arrive in Roswell back in 1882, had in his possession a manuscript pertaining to the discovery of the lakes which he would never let anyone else see.

The lakes were first discovered in the 1840s by an old Indian fighter from Texas named Gabriel Thompson.  Thompson was chasing some Apaches towards the mountains when he came across the lakes.  Although he was barely literate, Thompson wrote an account of his adventure which years later Dr. Sutherland somehow acquired.  What mysteries, if any, the document held can only be speculated upon since, “It was one of the peculiarities of Dr. Sutherland that he didn’t trust anybody, and all efforts to get access to the story of the hunter proved unavailing,” wrote Will Robinson back in 1948 for an article in The Roswell Morning Dispatch.

The lakes would further puzzle cowboys traveling the Goodnight-Loving Trail when they attempted to determine the depths of the lakes.  Tying rocks to their lariats the cowhands threw them in the lake, and when one would not reach the bottom they would tie another and then another and so on never finding the bottom.  Hence the sinkholes were named Bottomless Lakes.  What the men did not realize, however, was that the lakes were not in fact bottomless but instead their lariats had simply been swept away by underwater currents.

Now eight of the nine lakes, in actuality sinkholes ranging from 17 to 90 feet in depth, are part of Bottomless Lakes State Park encompassing 1,611 acres open to the public.  Hiking trails are available throughout the park, swimming and scuba diving are allowed in the clear waters of Lea Lake, and fishing is allowed in several others stocked with catfish and Rainbow Trout as long as you have a license.

“I really think that Bottomless Lakes does not get the publicity that it deserves.  It is a beautiful place to take friends, family, or just go out and enjoy nature,” says Roswell resident (and all around very cool guy) Will Bullard.

While Bottomless Lakes are a great place to go some people seem to be spooked by them.  Why is this?  Even though Bottomless Lakes may have no hard evidence to back up the urban legends purported to have happened there, one thing it does have is stories…lots and lots of stories.

One of the earliest goes that a horse drowned in one of the Figure Eight lakes (two adjoining lakes that form a figure eight) only to reappear in the other.  People also like to speculate that the lakes are connected to underground currents that flow southeast to Carlsbad Caverns.  The best story to exemplify this (which like any good yarn can never actually be proven) was told by a Roswell woman several years back about an incident in the 1970s.  It goes that the woman and a friend were waiting in a car parked near the shore of one of the lakes and heard something moving about in the darkness outside.  The two women got out of the car to look around and when they returned to the vehicle it had mysteriously disappeared.  The car, according to the story, would later reappear in Carlsbad Caverns.

Stranger still, the woman telling the story said she thought that “something” had dragged the car into the lake.

Like any large body of water Bottomless Lakes has its fair share of alleged monsters.

A security guard boating on one of the lakes back in the 1980s was said to have felt a disturbance under the water as if a large creature had swam beneath his boat.  He also was said to have glimpsed a brown hump come out of the water evoking shades of the Loch Ness Monster.

Even stranger is the rumor that a duckbilled dinosaur was also possibly glimpsed there, as well as a dragon.  Another story goes that divers back in the 1960s saw large sea turtles in Lea Lake.  Once the divers returned to the surface and told everyone about the turtles and then went back down the turtles had mysteriously vanished.  Another anecdote goes that back in the 1930s sea turtles were found in the lake only to be captured and eaten by hungry residents.  Strangest of all though was the half-man half-octopus rearing itself out of the lake in yet another tall tale.

Bottomless Lakes it seems also used to be a popular spot for couples to park late at night on dates.  And like the hook-handed man that used to terrorize necking teenagers in Lover’s Lanes across the US, so the lakes have their spooks and boogey men.  Of course, being in New Mexico they’re a lot weirder.

A young couple was said to have been attacked in their car one night by, of all things, a skirt-wearing giant (although in the giant’s defense the skirt was really more like the type that would be worn by a Roman Centurion).  According to the couple the seven-foot-tall being with “large eyes” jumped onto the roof of their car at which point the driver sped off trying to shake it from the vehicle.  Another story goes that a group of young people were chased in their car one night by a white ghost horse near the lakes.

Again, although many colorful urban legends abound near the lakes there’s really no substantial evidence to back them up.

“I have not heard the ghost horse or the sea turtle stories.  I have heard of the others and/or variations of such....monsters and things sinking in the Bottomless Lakes only to reappear in Carlsbad Caverns.  Of course none of these stories are true.”  says Steve Patterson, the manager of Bottomless Lakes State Park.  “There have been strange stories about these lakes for generations.  I think that deep lakes in the middle of the desert just seem to promote such far out stories. Most of the stories originated many years ago when the depth of the lakes was unknown and survived in one form or another.”

So in the end you can most likely go to Bottomless Lakes State Park and safely enjoy its many wonders without having to worry about enduring your own personal horror story of being chased by ghost horses, sea turtles, or skirt-wearing giants.  Unless you want to make one up…

***

To get to Bottomless Lakes State Park and enjoy all it has to offer go twelve miles east of Roswell on U.S. Highway 380, then seven miles south on New Mexico Highway 409.

Various stories have the Kid escaping death in different ways.  One says Pat Garrett shot the wrong man mistaking him for Billy, another says Garret gave the Kid money and told him to leave the state and never come back, and another even goes that Garrett did shoot the Kid but he later revived while being prepared for burial.  These stories would only be stories if not for the fact that over the years several men surfaced claiming to be Billy after he was dead.

The two most prominent claimants to the boy bandit king’s throne were O.L. “Brushy Bill” Roberts of Hico, TX, and John Miller of Ramah, NM.  Roberts received a good deal of fame in 1948 and even had a public meeting with the governor of New Mexico, Thomas J. Mabry.  Although Roberts and Miller get the lion’s share of attention there is also a third Billy the Kid candidate that died in 1937 in Lordsburg, NM.  That man was Henry “Walk-along” Smith.

The story of Walk-along Smith is a strange one, as Smith was a mystery in himself.  Walk-along Smith was a wanderer traveling New Mexico who walked everywhere he went.  Smith would often stay at secluded ranches where he would earn his keep by teaching the rancher’s children reading and writing before he would suddenly and mysteriously disappear. Smith never stayed in one place for long, although many people knew him or knew of him.

The only things Smith carried with him on his long journeys were a few books, some pencils, and a weather-beaten writing tablet.  Smith was also frequently seen browsing through the archives of the governor’s palace in Santa Fe and was said to occasionally make money by giving music lessons.

When Smith was found dead outside of Lordsburg, NM, the truth to this enigmatic figure was finally “revealed” by the ranchers that had known him best.  Walk-along Henry Smith had really been Billy the Kid.

According to the ranchers back during the days in the aftermath of the Lincoln County War Billy the Kid had captured the sympathy of Governor Lew Wallace.  During a secret meeting Pat Garrett and Governor Wallace had decided that the Kid was innocent for his crimes committed during the war and that he had only killed in vengeance and self defense. Governor Wallace was still powerless to protect the Kid from the mighty Santa Fe Ring, a corrupt group of businessmen and lawyers that secretly ruled New Mexico that wanted the Kid dead.  So it was decided a shootout would be staged in Ft. Sumner to fake the Kid’s death, at which point two bags of sand would be buried in an empty coffin and the Kid sent off to a prestigious university in secrecy.

If the story is true the Kid returned to New Mexico twenty years later at the turn of the new century under the guise of Walk-along Smith.

But there’s more.

As if Smith’s secret identity wasn’t fantastic enough he was also a treasure hunter searching for the Lost Adams Diggings, and if Billy the Kid is New Mexico’s most famous outlaw, then the Lost Adams Diggings is surely its most famous treasure.  The Lost Adam’s Diggings, which forms an epic tale unto itself, was a lost valley of gold found years ago by a man known only as Adams.  Adams and his party where lead to the canyon by a Mexican Indian named Gotch Ear.  Upon arriving Adams and his fellow prospectors found the richest gold placer they had ever seen but only Adams would live to tell about it.  All of the men but Adams were killed by a group of Apache Indians who had warned the men not to go further into their territory.  Adams spent the rest of his life trying to find his way back to the enchanted canyon.

Walk-along Smith wandered New Mexico collecting every bit of information he could find on the lost gold.  More specifically though, Smith was making a thorough list of all the men that had been killed in search of it.  If Smith ever did find the gold, people said he was doing it for the good of the state and would deliver the wealth from the gold to charity.

Smith never found the gold but he did collect an awful lot of information on it.  Renowned folklorist J. Frank Dobie found some of Smith’s findings interesting enough to include in his book Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver, a sizable portion which contains several chapters on the Lost Adams Diggings.

While Smith was in fact a searcher for the Lost Adams Diggings, the chances of him actually being a reformed Billy the Kid are slim.  Though it’s true the two men did share a few similarities, such as a penchant for music and dance as well as befriending and staying at the homes of ranchers, Smith was said to never touch a gun, not even to kill a rattlesnake. Of course some say this is because Smith had let go of his wild gun fighting days to lead a more serene gentle life.

More likely than not ranchers just decided to take advantage of the enigmatic figure of Smith and claim him to be the thought dead Billy the Kid once he died.  Their story could have also been inspired by the fact that John Miller, the “other Billy the Kid,” died in November of that same year possibly before Smith’s death, which J. Frank Dobie only says occurred “late in 1937.”

Bob Boze Bell, editor of True West magazine, whose aunt was given Violin lessons by Smith, says in his book The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid that a photo of Smith was sent to the LCHT (Lincoln County Heritage Trust) for analysis but the results have not yet been forthcoming.

Whatever the case any story that can combine Billy the Kid, the Lost Adams Diggings, an elaborate 1881 government conspiracy, and the already strange town of Lordsburg, is certainly an interesting one.  And it could surely only happen in New Mexico….

While all these in-jokes in TV and movies say something about Roswell in pop culture, nothing quite says just how significantly the town has been integrated into the worldwide consciousness as its inclusion in a certain upcoming summer blockbuster.  It has now been confirmed with the release of the official teaser trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that Roswell will in some way be related to the new film’s “MacGuffin.”  A “MacGuffin” is the term coined by director Alfred Hitchcock used to identify the object that drives the plot of a film and the actions of its characters.  The MacGuffin in the new film, as the title states, are crystal skulls which have long been speculated to be linked to aliens somehow.  Add in the fact that a close-up shot of a crate labeled Roswell, NM, 1947, pops up with some significance in the trailer it’s a sure bet that Indy will be tangling with an extraterrestrial presence in some form or another in the film.

In fact, one of the early scripts for an aborted fourth Indiana Jones film written in the mid-1990s directly dealt with Indy being involved in a UFO crash in the New Mexico desert.  The film was set in the late 1940s and entitled Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars.  Over the course of the film Indy would endure his traditional set-pieces battling Russian spies atop a runaway rocket sled, parachuting out of a flying fortress, and even survive an A-Bomb test all the while trying to return an alien artifact to its rightful owners to prevent global pandemonium.

What’s interesting to note about the ET concept in Saucer Men is that many legitimate Indiana Jones scripts often borrowed from earlier rejected scripts.  For instance the mine car chase in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was recycled from an old draft of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Many of the set-pieces for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came from the un-filmed Chris Columbus script for Indiana Jones and the Monkey King.

Rumors now circulate that David Koepp, the current script writer, had been instructed go through all previous drafts for fourth Indiana Jones films and pick out the best plot ideas and set-pieces from each.  This effort has resulted in the final script for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Apparently the Roswell concept made it through.

Still, a sizeable amount of Indiana Jones fans are not quick to warm to the idea of Indiana Jones tangling with aliens. Some fans even debate in several chat-rooms that the Roswell name popping up in the trailer is possibly just a reference to a military base in Roswell, New Mexico, where an action set-piece will occur.  That theory really holds no validity due to the fact that the crate seen in the trailer with Roswell stamped on it is also stamped 1947.  1947, as most everyone knows, is the year that the Roswell Incident occurred.  The crate also appears to be magnetized by some alien power.  Besides, why waste a second of the teaser trailer’s time on an otherwise insignificant blurb if it’s not important to the story?  Teaser trailers are often a means to generate excitement and speculation without giving up too many plot details or spoilers.

Roswellians, however, are quite excited about the prospect of Roswell playing a part in the film.  Several graduates from the Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell film technology training department were even part of the film’s crew.

In a recent article by Vanessa Beauman in the Roswell Daily Record ENMU-R Provost Dr. Judy Armstrong said, “[Indiana Jones] will reach a different audience.  There will be a whole new group of folks who will have their interest in Roswell sparked.”

This is probably true.

To get an episode on The X-Files or a reference in major science fiction film such as Independence Day is one thing, but to be included in an Indiana Jones film is another matter entirely.  After all, the MacGuffins of the past three Indy films have been very historically significant with Raiders of the Lost Ark centering on the Ark of the Covenant, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on the Sankara Stones, and Last Crusade finding the Holy Grail.  To put Roswell in the class of such things is certainly surprising considering Indy could have gone out in search of something like the lost city of Atlantis in his next adventure.

Aliens or not, the fact that the Roswell Incident is apparently part of the plot for the next Indiana Jones film certainly shows just how far Roswell has come as a part modern day mythology.  Of course we won’t know just how far until May 22^nd 2008…

Ghost stories in New Mexico can sometimes be a dime a dozen.  Whether it be tales of little girls that suddenly appear in the window of a deserted building only to disappear moments later, the wailing woman La Llorona calling for her dead children at night by a lonely river, or haunted hotels in Santa Fe, once you’ve heard one you’ve probably heard them all.

However, there is likely no place that can match the colorful cast of ghostly characters that inhabits the New Mexico Rehabilitation Center (NMRC) south of Roswell located at the former site of the Roswell Army Airfield (RAAF).

There is Old Scratch, a TB patient whom can still be heard scratching on the door of Room 002.  There is the bombardier who appears from time to time in Room 209 to offer words of encouragement to the patients.  There’s also the cigarette smoking man who lights up occasionally in Room 204, a blonde nurse who likes to tell people what to do, and the sounds of crying babies that come from where the old maternity ward used to be.

And then there’s the “little man,” which some researchers such as Jim Marrs have since dubbed the “alien ghost.”

It is no coincidence that the NMRC is located on the old airbase.  The building used for the Rehab Center is in fact the old military hospital from back when the RAAF changed to Walker Air Force Base in the early 1950s.  The hospital was not, contrary to popular belief, the place where the alien bodies from the crash were supposedly taken.  That hospital was torn down and replaced by the building that is now the NMRC, although the new hospital was built right next to where the older building had been torn down, and since then many strange things have happened there…

Ghosts, most skeptical researchers will tell you, can be quickly dismissed as mere tricks of the eyes or one’s own overactive imagination.  While that may be true in the case of a single individual seeing something inexplicable, what about the staff of an entire building?  Ask any one of the night workers at the NMRC and they will tell you of the unexplainable things they have seen or heard at the rehab center over the years.

David Rocha, who has worked at the NMRC for more than 25 years, recalls one Christmas when all of the other employees had been sent home and only he and a handful of others stayed behind for maintenance and security.  All through the night elevators mysteriously opened and closed, doors would occasionally be heard slamming shut, and strange footsteps that were not those of the other men on duty could be heard.  “It was pretty spooky,” said Rocha. “Even though this wasn’t the hospital where they brought the aliens…that was next door…you still have the sense that something happened around here.”

Speaking of aliens, the most extraordinary sighting of something strange at the NMRC happened to Josephine Morones who saw the “little man” back in July of 1997.  While stepping out of the staff kitchen one night Morones was struck with a strange feeling.  Turning to look down the hall she saw a bizarre sight: a small humanoid figure that bore some similarities to a Roswell alien.

“My thing was very weird.  The hands weren’t like fingers, they were like mittens.  All I could see was the thumb.  The skin, or whatever it had on, was like silk tape.  We have [silk tape here] and it looked to me like someone wrapped up in that silk tape,” said Morones of the figure.  When asked whether or not she thought it looked like an alien she said, “It had the egg/pear shaped head; you know how people talk about the slanted eyes and all of this?  This one had round eyes.  That’s what really got me.  It didn’t have a nose; as far as a mouth it had a little bitty mouth.  At first I thought somebody was playing a trick on me.  I really did.  I couldn’t explain the feeling.”

Also strange was the fact that the figure cast no reflection in the glass cabinet it was standing in front of at the end of the hall.  “I kept looking at it and I didn’t panic because I’ve known about this place for a long time…but I looked at the glass expecting to see a reflection and what got me was there was no reflection.  I kept looking at it and it suddenly just faded out and then I was able to move.” said Morones of the incident.

Morones would see the figure again several nights later.  “I was walking out of the kitchen and I got that feeling again and that time I knew what it was.  With that in mind I was able to turn around and look and it was just standing there again.”

This time Morones was able to call for a coworker to come and look at it too but by the time she finished calling him the figure had disappeared, and has not been seen since.

In summing up her strange encounter Morones said, “The first time it freaked me out and I was really afraid.  I had heard all these stories and stuff but I never really believed them.  I didn’t feed into stuff like that.  I didn’t believe in all the stuff that was going on this building.”

Although the “Alien Ghost,” as some now like to call it, is the most famous ghost to have ever been seen at the NMRC it is certainly not the most frequent one.  The most frequently seen figure there appears to be an air force officer wearing an old leather bombardier helmet.  He is most often seen in Rooms 208 and 209 by patients.

Sylvia Scherff, a night nurse, recalls one evening when a patient in room 209 said a man was trying to get her guardrail down so that she could get out of bed and use the restroom.  The only thing was that there were no male staff workers at the rehab center that night.  The woman believed the man left to get help.  Moments later Scherff came in and the woman assumed that the man, who never spoke, had gone to get Scherff to help her out of bed.

Another patient once asked Scherff and another nurse if they had a pilot around the NMRC that went around “offering words of encouragement” to the patients.  Other patients also described a figure that gave them comforting words. “People have described a certain person coming into their room telling them everything will be alright.” said Scherff.

The workers have since tried to pinpoint whether all the people who see the pilot have a similar illness or ailment but so far see no correlation.

“We had several patients describe the same type of person.  It’s not coincidental because we’re talking about patients that had been here two to three years apart from each other and they see the same type of thing.” said NMRC worker Jerry Lopez to sum up the sightings of the pilot figure.

Some of the ghosts can sometimes be a nuisance though.  “Another time in another room that’s in another corner [patients] would call and say, ‘You need to ask this man to get out of this room because he’s in here smoking and we’re on oxygen,’” said Scherff.

The patient in the room claimed the man walked in, sat on the edge of the bed, and lit up a cigarette.  This was said to have happened several times.

Scherff also recalls another nurse one night telling her of how she ran across a short blonde woman in the building who was telling her that she wasn’t doing her job the right way.  The woman abruptly and mysteriously disappeared leading some to speculate that perhaps she had once been a nurse there.  It is also said that a woman in high heels can be heard getting out of the elevator and walking across the hall to a water fountain on some nights.

Another story goes that years ago one of the male workers went to take a nap during his break in a room down the hall. Later on one of the nurses thought she saw the same man up and walking around but in different clothes.  Eventually the real man came back from his break only to find the other nurses confused as to why he would not answer them earlier and why he had been wearing different clothes.  Their conclusion was that it must have been another ghost.

These are but a few of the strange things that occasionally happen at the Roswell Rehab building and there are many more night workers not quoted here that can certainly tell you the same thing.  A film crew also captured some “anomalous footage” of something at the NMRC one night.  The footage has never seen a large audience though due to the fact that it was filmed for inclusion in the currently shelved Discovery Channel series X-Ops of which Jim Marrs was involved in.

While the NMRC building certainly has a long and interesting history, new plans are currently underway to possibly move to a new building that has yet to be built.  But what will happen to the old building and its ghosts?

When asked what he thinks will happen if the NMRC moves into a new home one day David Rocha says, “There’s no telling what they’re going to do with this building.  I’m sure there’ll be more stories said if they leave it open with whoever has it next.”

The year was 1997 and the 50^th Anniversary of the Roswell Incident was upon the town and residents, city officials, and store owners had high hopes for their 50^th Anniversary UFO Festival.  They were not to be disappointed.  During that July Roswell made the covers of magazines such as TIME and Popular Mechanics, was covered by major news networks such as CNN, an estimated 40,000 tourists and media journalists converged on the town, and nothing has ever been the same since.

Roswell isn’t the only town in the USA to capitalize upon its weirdness, however.  While flying saucers and extraterrestrials may dot store windows along Roswell’s downtown district, in the small town of Churubusco, Indiana, it is turtles.  To be exact: giant snapping turtles.

Coincidentally back in 1948, a year after the Roswell Incident, Churubusco had its own media brouhaha brewing when two men claimed to see a giant turtle in Fulk Lake.  Said to be as big as a dining room table by some and a pickup truck by others, the media took a fancy to the story and only a year later a massive hunt for Oscar the turtle, named after Oscar Fulk, the lake’s owner, had commenced.  Although no conclusive evidence of Oscar was found nearly 3,000 people trampled across the town of Churubusco in search of the titanic tortoise.

Now 59 years later Churubusco’s Turtle Days Festival, held every year in mid-June, is the longest running festival in Indiana.  During the festival nearly 2,000 tourists show up to watch the turtle races, buy turtle memorabilia, and eat turtle inspired dishes along with a parade and the usual charming small town fanfare.

“We've already formed a committee for the 2009 [60^th Anniversary Festival] and hope to do some spectacular things like fireworks, a Turtle Ball, recreating the hunt for Oscar and or a Biggest Turtle Contest, etc.”  said Vivian Rosswurm who helps organize Turtle Days every year.

If you travel south, to Fouke, Arkansas, you will find a town capitalizing on its famous Fouke Monster. For those of you who remember, the Fouke Monster was made famous in the 1970s drive-in classic The Legend of Boggy Creek.  For the past eight years every spring Fouke has “Monster Days” celebrating the real life Bigfoot sightings as well as the filming of the movie.  The film has been a mixed blessing for the town, bringing in more tourists although the filmmakers intentionally made the townspeople out to look like hicks, although Smokey Crabtree will tell you the true story of the filming and the real monster in his book, Smokey and the Fouke Monster.

Go through Fouke today and you can even stop by the local Monster Mart to buy some cool memorabilia, or get your picture taken in a cutout of the monster. Although 2008’s Monster Days Festival has yet to set a concrete date, you can contact Fouke City Hall at 870-653-4532 if you’re interested in attending.

Kelly, Kentucky, recently had a Fiftieth Anniversary Festival in 2005 to celebrate their famous Hopkinsville Goblins Incident of 1955, in which farmer Lucky Sutton fended off space aliens from his mother’s farmhouse!  The Incident has since been celebrated as perhaps the closest encounter of the third kind to ever be encountered in Ufology.

The festival started off with a screening of the camp-classic Plan 9 from Outer Space and then followed up with several days worth of activities including special speakers, exhibits, events, and souvenirs.  Geraldine Sutton Stith, Lucky Sutton’s daughter, hopes there will be another festival in the future.

Belleville, Wisconsin, has a UFO day festival in celebration of their famous UFO sightings during the late 1980s and now hail themselves as UFO capital of the world, although Roswellians probably have something to say about that…

One of the other most interesting towns in the US that happens to be famous for UFOs happens to be right here in New Mexico.  A crash, only half a year after Roswell, was said to have happened in Aztec, NM, in March of 1948.

In 1997, when the Roswell buzz was at its highest, the Aztec Public Library took notice and put on the first annual UFO Symposium in March of 1998 to coincide with the 50^th Anniversary of their UFO crash.  Now the Symposium is going strong in its 11^th year and will have guest speakers such as Stanton Friedman, Dennis Balthaser, and Jesse Marcel Jr.

Although no one town can quite compare to Roswell, there is one that comes pretty darn close.  Despite its population of a mere 100 people, Rachel, Nevada, has one monumental claim to UFO fame: it’s the closest town to the infamous Area 51.  Located on the Extraterrestrial Highway the small town of Rachel, like Roswell, gets visitors from all corners of the world from Japan to Europe and has several interesting events year round.  If you go to the town you can even stay at the Little A'Le'Inn where "Earthlings are always welcome." 

All in all these are probably just a few of the towns that make up what now could surely be called Roswell USA; towns that embrace their strange history and make an economy out of it rather than shamefully brushing it under the rug.  And, honestly, it’s a lot more fun that way.