Are aliens visiting us, or is the government playing on our fears?

It was always so simple for me.

Since I was a teen I had no doubt that aliens were visiting us and the United States government was hiding the truth from us. You can't blame me. Aside from personal experiences, which I will get to later, there have been too many unexplained incidents since that fateful day in Roswell that would influence a suggestible young mind.

You remember Roswell, New Mexico, don't you? In 1947 the debris of an unidentified flying object was discovered by William Brazel, a foreman at a local homestead, near Roswell. Once reported, the United States military retrieved the alleged UFO and the very soul of the conspiracy theory was born when the RAAF (Roswell Army Air Field) told reporters they had recovered a "flying disk."

You didn't see this.

The next day they recanted their admission, and the story was changed from a flying disk to a weather balloon. The damage had been done though, and a nations interest was peaked. Throughout the years thousands of people, from scientists and ufologists to some guy you know from history class have tried to figure out what the hell exactly happened.

Did a UFO crash? What happened to the technology? Was it taken to Area 51 and reverse engineered to create some of our greatest technologies? What happened to the occupants of the disk?

Is it a cover up? The easy answer is - yes, it absolutely is. But maybe not the way you think it is.


Believe it or not, Roswell wasn't the first thing that drew my attention to the study of UFO's and the conspiracy theories that follow them.

When I was younger, probably around thirteen or fourteen, I lived on a country road in Southern Illinois. It was a good distance away from the city, and the city itself was an insignificant little dot on the road to nowhere. I had a pretty fantastic view of the stars from the back window of that tiny trailer we lived in. We were surrounded by corn fields, which is like a breeding ground of creepy incidents and UFO sightings.

Sure enough, on one uneventful night I was talking to my late mother before bed when it happened. We were staring out of the window, discussing nothing in particular, when we both saw a long strange light that moved slowly through the sky. There were no blinking lights on it, like the kind you might see on an airplane or helicopter. It was just one solid light, which we both watched and wondered aloud what kind of vehicle it may have been. I've always been fascinated by flight, and always had my eyes pointed upwards in the hopes of spotting one of those magnificent machines.

As we're sharing this moment of mutual intrigue a very odd thing occurred. The object, a solid long light, suddenly split into three separate lights, and each light moved in its own direction. The three still flew in a pattern that suggested intelligent flight, but one moved upwards while the other two went left and right respectively. We were confused and a little scared as we watched these three lights maneuver in the clear night sky.

You can see this, but you're not impressed.

My mother was not a believer. She never gave much credence to the existence of aliens. She wasn't a strictly religious woman, but she had a deep affinity for Jesus Christ, and the concept of UFO's and aliens seemed wrong to her. I, on the other hand, was a child of the new generation. I loved shows like "Sightings," and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was one of my favorite movies. I found them entertaining and the idea interesting, but I never really cared about the possibilities until that night. I was open to the unexplainable, and the unexplainable would soon after consume my every waking thought.

Roswell was a monumental event in America's history. Even if you don't believe in aliens, you have to understand that this one incident contributed more to the people's distrust of the government more than maybe anything else in history. There will always be the theorists who argue who killed Kennedy, or what our own government has done to its soldiers with Agent Orange, but the Roswell crash is the one event that I think most people could easily identify with.

I began to research it myself, and became enamored with the conspiracy theories. It made me dig deeper, and I listened to testimonials from high ranking military officials, as well as some dude that might have seen a UFO one day but he was stoned so it also might have been a bird.

Like, a really big bird.

If you're still seeing him on TV, Romney lost.

My interest in Roswell and UFO's lead me to all of the hot topics, like Project Blue Book, Majestic 12, Area 51, Betty and Barney Hill, Mothman, the MIB, etc.

In my studies I discovered an interesting claim that Roswell wasn't even the first crash and recovery in the United States. One of the first recorded actually took place in 1941, which preceded Roswell by a staggering six years. Even more ironic and unsettling, it took place in my very own hometown of Cape Girardeau, MO.

Reverend William Huffman, of the Red Star Baptist church, was called to the outskirts of Cape in the spring of 1941 to administer last rites to crash victims. Before you guess the ending to this story, yes, they were extraterrestrials.  You know the story from here - he was sworn to secrecy with threats against his family, but he couldn't resist telling his wife. On her deathbed she confessed all of this to her granddaughter, who came forward with the information.

You may not have heard of this incident, and you know why? Because people who report these kind of things are often looked down upon by society as crazy, or at the least attention starved fools.

I'm beginning to think that this is exactly what the government wants.

I believe in life outside of our planet. The sea of space is endless, and to think that there is only one planet with intelligent life on it is an ignorant thought process. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that UFO's are alien visitations.

Hear me out -

• Aliens would have to have such an advanced technology that it would allow them to travel such impossible distances to come see us. 
• If they have this kind of technology, why would they use it to just joyride in our atmosphere, stopping only occasionally to probe some redneck?
• If you have this insane tech, how could anyone with a phone cam catch you flying up there like some kind of arrogant ET?

It doesn't make sense. If aliens exist, and by that I mean the kind that supposedly visit Earth, why has it been the same kind of visitation for so long? What exactly are they trying to figure out by flying around slowly and silently in broad view of everyone to see? Either they have the worst scouts in intergalactic history, or there might be a more logical and sinister explanation for it.

But this is the explanation the government doesn't want you to think about, even though they hide it in plain sight.

I was watching "Conspiracy Theory" with Jesse Ventura, a man I respect as an intelligent outspoken nutcase, when the theory was proposed to him. What if UFO's weren't alien in nature? What if they are, and always have been, products of the United States government designed to throw us off of the trail of what they're really up to?

Like I said before, people who report UFO sightings and alien abductions are usually met with skepticism at best. At worst they're ridiculed, isolated, and looked down upon by a society that is split on what they actually believe in.

And can you think of a better way to hide some kind of new US technology than to parade it around in front of people? Imagine it - the US military creates a new plane and fly it in plain sight. Sounds pretty foolish, right? Most people who see these type of things are conditioned to think that an unidentified flying object is always an alien craft. They can report it all they want and no one will take them seriously. They can video tape it, study it, share it with others, and all they'll find is a small group of believers and a majority of others who either thumb their nose at them or simply don't care.

The government can literally hide in plain sight. These so called UFO's are nothing more than experimental technology, or in the case of something like the infamous Phoenix Lights could be a staged sighting to draw attention away from the real crafts.

It may sound a little far fetched, but I don't see how it could ever be crazier than the belief that beings from another galaxy visit our little backwater planet just to sight see.

There have been numerous planes in history that have been confused for alien crafts. The stealth bomber is a prime example, and that technology was figured out a very long time ago. Do you really think the US government doesn't have even more amazing crafts at their disposal now? How would you suggest they test fly these bad boys without drawing any real attention to themselves?

Are believers and ufologists being played for fools by a government that has built its reputation on exploiting the fears and insecurities of its people?

There is a book out there called "Mirage Men," by author Mark Pilkington, that explores these theories. You can also check out a list of planes that hover over the border between fantastic and just plain sci-fi fantasy here. If you're feeling exceptionally curious, I also recommend you check out the Area 51 episode of "Conspiracy Theory" with Jesse Ventura. 

Erase your web history, before the government back traces it!

This is a sensitive subject for me. As someone who has based his beliefs that there is something else out there beyond what we know, it frightens me to think that I might just be the pawn in a political game. I still hold on to my belief that there are other beings out there somewhere, and someday we will make contact with them and consequences will never be the same.

However, I will not follow it blindly and become part of someones web of deceit. Keep your eyes to the sky, readers.

Just don't believe everything you see.