Speaker 1: It is late one September night in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: in the borderlands of Nevada and California. Out on the
Speaker 1: edges of the desert town of perump sits a simple
Speaker 1: double wide trailer surrounded by a panopoly of satellite dishes
Speaker 1: and radio receivers. Eighty miles to the east lie the
Speaker 1: bright lights of Las Vegas, and just a little further
Speaker 1: to the north, past desolate valleys and dusty mountain ridges,
Speaker 1: a place known variously to some as Dreamland or Paradise Branch,
Speaker 1: but more commonly today as Area fifty one. Inside the trailer,
Speaker 1: late night radio DJ Art Bell takes a drag on
Speaker 1: a cigarette as the Charlie Daniel's band thunders through the
Speaker 1: Devil Went Down to Georgia, when suddenly he notices a
Speaker 1: call coming through on the Area fifty one line. Earlier
Speaker 1: in the show, Art had invited former employees of the
Speaker 1: secretive US Air Force base to call in on the
Speaker 1: dedicated line if they wish to share any information about
Speaker 1: their time working there. It is shortly after one am,
Speaker 1: with millions listening across more than four hundred radio stations
Speaker 1: throughout the nation, when Art prematurely fades out the music
Speaker 1: and takes the call on my Area fifty one line.
Speaker 1: You're on there, Hello, Hello, Art, Yes, him. I don't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of time A former employee, former employee.
Speaker 1: I was let go on a medical discharge about a
Speaker 1: week ago, and and I've kind of been running across
Speaker 1: the country. Man, I don't know where to start them.
Speaker 1: They'll triangulate on this position. Really released soon. You can't
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time on the phone, So give
Speaker 1: us something quick. Okay, um um, okay. What we're thinking
Speaker 1: of as as aliens are there, that they're they're extra
Speaker 1: dimensional beings that an earlier precursor of the UM space
Speaker 1: program made contact with. H. They are not what they
Speaker 1: claim to be. They have infiltrated a lot of uh,
Speaker 1: a lot of aspects of of of the military establishment
Speaker 1: of particularly the Area fifty one. UH. The disasters that
Speaker 1: are coming, as the caller went on to explain, disasters
Speaker 1: were coming that would lead to the wiping out of
Speaker 1: major population centers led by these apparent aliens, and then silence,
Speaker 1: the signal completely cut out, not just for the call,
Speaker 1: but Art's entire show. Though it would be a stretch
Speaker 1: to say that Art was shaken by the incident. After all,
Speaker 1: he had been fielding similar callers throughout his career, this
Speaker 1: one was undoubtedly different. Not once in his twenty years
Speaker 1: of broadcasting history had he ever lost his satellite signal.
Speaker 1: Something or someone, it seemed, had cut the caller off,
Speaker 1: and so this incident would become one of many events
Speaker 1: in the great ocean of UFO conspiracy theories linked to
Speaker 1: that mysterious Air Force base. Today, for many, the words
Speaker 1: Area fifty one are synonymous with the UFOs and theories
Speaker 1: about just what it is the US government really knows
Speaker 1: about supposed visitors from other realms, And for one incident
Speaker 1: in particular that sits at the very top of ufology law.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard mc lean smith.
Speaker 1: Early in the morning of June fourteenth, nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: two riders are slowly picking their way through desert scrub
Speaker 1: as a herd of sheep amble about in the distance
Speaker 1: ahead of them. The riders a forty eight year old
Speaker 1: ranch manager William mac Brazell and his eight year old
Speaker 1: son Vernon. For the past decade or so, Brazell had
Speaker 1: worked as the foreman for the j b. Foster Sheep Ranch,
Speaker 1: a homestead located about one hundred and thirty miles southeast
Speaker 1: of Albuquerque in Lincoln County, New Mexico. Though the family
Speaker 1: lived seventy miles away into LaRosa, Mac as he was
Speaker 1: known to his friends, was required to stay on site,
Speaker 1: boarding in what was little more than a shack, isolated
Speaker 1: on his own, with no electricity, water, or tell of phone.
Speaker 1: And so it was with great fondness that he looked
Speaker 1: forward to days like these, spending time with his son,
Speaker 1: just enjoying the tranquility of the desert. Just forty years previously,
Speaker 1: Mac's uncle, Jesse Wayne Brazil, achieved some notoriety after getting
Speaker 1: caught up in the murder of Pat Garrett, the infamous
Speaker 1: lawman who gunned down Billy the Kid. Though Jesse confessed
Speaker 1: to the killing, many believed he'd merely been put up
Speaker 1: to it, since that kind of act just wasn't the
Speaker 1: Brazil way. As for Mac, he was very much the
Speaker 1: quiet sort, preferring to just keep his head down and
Speaker 1: work hard for his family. That morning, Mac and Vernon
Speaker 1: were about seven miles from the ranch. As Mac ran
Speaker 1: his eyes over the sheep when he caught sight of
Speaker 1: something glinting in the distance. That's strange, he thought, as
Speaker 1: he tugged his hat down further over his eyes and
Speaker 1: squinted toward the sparkling light it seemed to be coming
Speaker 1: from the ground. Assuming it to be nothing but a
Speaker 1: mirrg or some other trick of the light, Mac kicked
Speaker 1: lightly on the horse and trotted out toward it. But incredibly,
Speaker 1: as he drew nearer, the mirage didn't disappear. Instead, it
Speaker 1: seemed to fracture into a number of separate reflective pieces.
Speaker 1: This was no mirage, he realized, but something material that
Speaker 1: had fallen from above and shattered all across the desert floor.
Speaker 1: Though often out there in that big, wide expanse, it
Speaker 1: could feel to Mac like he might as well have
Speaker 1: been on Mars, how isolated he was from the outside world.
Speaker 1: On occasion, his world would be interrupted by the odd
Speaker 1: weather balloon dropping in from out of the sky. But
Speaker 1: as Mac looked upon the strange mix of materials scattered
Speaker 1: across the floor in front of him, the only thing
Speaker 1: he did know was that this was nothing like any
Speaker 1: of those weather balloons he had seen before. Ten days later,
Speaker 1: after mac Brazel's discovery in New Mexico, something unusual was
Speaker 1: about to unfold fifteen hundred miles away. Since nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: fire control engineer Kenneth Arnold had run his own business,
Speaker 1: selling and installing firefighting equipment to rural areas across five
Speaker 1: western states. Part of Arnold's success owed much to his
Speaker 1: dual experience as a pilot, which gave him direct access
Speaker 1: to his clients in a way that most of his
Speaker 1: competitors couldn't match. In nineteen forty four, Arnold gained his
Speaker 1: solo flying license and duly purchased his own plane, often
Speaker 1: flying forty to one hundred hours per month as he
Speaker 1: peddled his wear up and down the country. By the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen forty seven, Arnold, who was by then
Speaker 1: thirty two, had over nine thousand hours of flying time
Speaker 1: under his belt. On the morning of June twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: Arnold had been helping to install equipment for the Central
Speaker 1: Air Service in Chehalis, Washington. Having finished the job shortly
Speaker 1: before two pm, Arnold headed to the local airport, then
Speaker 1: boarded his call Air single engine airplane, and promptly set
Speaker 1: off toward his next appointment, pulling ever higher into the
Speaker 1: bright blue sky. Above, Arnold set course for the city
Speaker 1: of Yakama, located just one hundred and fifty miles due
Speaker 1: east on the other side of the Cascades mountain range.
Speaker 1: With it being such a calm and clear day, Arnold
Speaker 1: decided to have a look for a C forty six
Speaker 1: transport plane but had apparently gone down in the Cascades
Speaker 1: somewhere on the southwest slope of Mountbrenier only a few
Speaker 1: days previously. A five thousand dollar reward had been offered
Speaker 1: to any one who could locate it. A short time later,
Speaker 1: flying at nine and a half thousand feet, Arnold made
Speaker 1: his approach to the mountain, then turned back on himself
Speaker 1: to make a thorough sweep of its western bridge. Seeing
Speaker 1: nothing below save for a series of dark, rocky crags
Speaker 1: protruding out from under a dusting of fine white snow,
Speaker 1: Arnold continued westward, just past the town of Ashford before
Speaker 1: completing a three hundred and sixty degree turn and heading
Speaker 1: on towards Yakima. Though he was disappointed not to have
Speaker 1: spotted the downed plain, Arnold eased back to an altitude
Speaker 1: of nine thousand, two hundred feet and resolved just to
Speaker 1: enjoy the rest of the flight from thereon, in admiring
Speaker 1: the wide blue sky above and the wild, untouched terrain below.
Speaker 1: Moments later, Arnold noticed a DC four aircraft flying about
Speaker 1: fifteen miles behind him and five thousand feet above. He
Speaker 1: was just making a note of it when he was
Speaker 1: distracted by a series of sudden bright flashes reflecting off
Speaker 1: his plane. Startled by the flashes, Arnold hurriedly searched about
Speaker 1: for any sign of any other aircraft nearby, worried that
Speaker 1: he might have gotten too close to something without realizing.
Speaker 1: Then he noticed something odd just beyond the summit of
Speaker 1: Mount Raynier, what appeared to be nine single aircraft flying
Speaker 1: at a similar altitude to his own plane, approaching rapidly
Speaker 1: in a V formation from north to south. Arnold watched
Speaker 1: with amazement as the apparent crafts, though keeping set on
Speaker 1: their course, continued to dip and swerve in and out
Speaker 1: of the high mountain peaks, moving as if there were
Speaker 1: stones being skimmed across water. As they did so, bright
Speaker 1: flashes of sunlight reflected off them, just like he had
Speaker 1: been startled by moments before. Before long, the objects had
Speaker 1: moved in front of the mountain, from which Arnold was
Speaker 1: then able to observe the shape of them, silhouetted against
Speaker 1: the white canvas of snow behind, and that was when
Speaker 1: things got really strange. At first, the objects seemed to
Speaker 1: be little more than thin black lines, until they would
Speaker 1: flip suddenly and momentarily revealed themselves to be round, saucer
Speaker 1: like discs that came to a point at the back.
Speaker 1: Worried his eyes were deceiving him, Arnold slid the window
Speaker 1: back to get a clear view unimpeded by the plexiglass.
Speaker 1: He also tried turning the plane slightly for a different angle,
Speaker 1: but still the nine strange objects remained visible. Quickly grabbing
Speaker 1: a small tool from his pocket, Arnold used it to
Speaker 1: compare the size of the vehicles with the DC four
Speaker 1: in the distance, judging them to be about half the
Speaker 1: size of its wingspan. The width of the whole v
Speaker 1: formation be estimated to be about five miles long. After
Speaker 1: almost three minutes, Arnold watched the objects as they continued
Speaker 1: on their way south toward Mount Adams, before eventually disappearing
Speaker 1: altogether from view. Are you always taking care of your family?
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Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast today to get started. That's t e la
Speaker 1: DC dot com slash Unexplained podcast of amused and excitable
Speaker 1: Arnold touched down at Yakima Airport just after four p m,
Speaker 1: where he immediately regaled airport manager and good friend Al
Speaker 1: Baxter with what he had just witnessed. Baxter listened carefully
Speaker 1: to what his friend had to say, but there was
Speaker 1: just no way he thought that Arnold could possibly have
Speaker 1: seen what he was claiming. Nonetheless, it was such an
Speaker 1: unusual story that by the time Arnold arrived in Pendleton, Oregon,
Speaker 1: to attend an air show later that day, news of
Speaker 1: his bizarre sighting had already preceded him. Speaking to a
Speaker 1: number of pilot friends at the show, some former Army pilots,
Speaker 1: Arnold was urged to recount his story again. Unlike Baxter, however,
Speaker 1: many were less certain if Arnold had been mistaken. A
Speaker 1: number of them speculated as to whether the aircraft might
Speaker 1: actually have been top secret planes that were still being
Speaker 1: developed by the US military. During the incident, Arnold had
Speaker 1: tried to gauge how quickly the objects had been moving
Speaker 1: by counting the time it took for them to travel
Speaker 1: between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. It was only later
Speaker 1: that evening that he remembered to check the distance between
Speaker 1: the two landmarks. When he discovered they were fifty miles apart,
Speaker 1: Arnold was shocked by his estimation. The objects would have
Speaker 1: had have been flying in the region of seventeen hundred
Speaker 1: miles per hour, three times faster than any known aircraft
Speaker 1: at the time. The day after his apparent sighting, Arnold
Speaker 1: was invited to the offices of the East Oregonian Paper
Speaker 1: in Pendleton to share his version of events. The paper
Speaker 1: published the story the same day, following it up the
Speaker 1: next giving a description of the aircraft as nine bright
Speaker 1: saucerlike objects flying at twelve hundred miles per hour. Before long,
Speaker 1: the story was sweeping the nation, being picked up by
Speaker 1: countless other papers, including The Chicago Sun, whose now famous
Speaker 1: headline supersonic flying sources, cited by Idaho Pilot, is thought
Speaker 1: to be the first ever use of the term flying saucer.
Speaker 1: Two days after the event, Arnold was interviewed on k
Speaker 1: w RC radio. They didn't fly in a conventional formation
Speaker 1: that's taught in our army. They seemed to kind of
Speaker 1: weave in and out right above the mountaintop, and I
Speaker 1: would say that they even went down into the canyons
Speaker 1: in several instances, or probably one hundred feet. But I
Speaker 1: could see them against the snow, of course, on Mountaineer,
Speaker 1: and against the snow on Mount Adams as they were flashing,
Speaker 1: and against the higher ridge that happens to lay in
Speaker 1: between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. But when I observed
Speaker 1: the tail end of the last one passing Mount Adams,
Speaker 1: and I was at an angle near a mountraineer from it.
Speaker 1: But I looked at my watch and it showed one
Speaker 1: minute in forty two seconds. Well, I fell thought, well
Speaker 1: that's pretty fast, and I didn't stop to think what
Speaker 1: the distance was between the two mountains. Well, I landed
Speaker 1: at Yakima, Washington, and Al Baxter was there to greet me,
Speaker 1: and he told me, I guess I better changed my
Speaker 1: brand for the next few days. Arnold was catapulted into
Speaker 1: the spotlight in one day two with interview requests and
Speaker 1: even recognized when out on the street. But incredibly, it
Speaker 1: wasn't only Arnold who had apparently seen the nine supposed
Speaker 1: saucerlike aircraft. On June twenty fourth, while Arnold and his
Speaker 1: plane were heading past Mount Rainier prospector Fred Johnson from Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: was in the Mount Adams district when he too spotted
Speaker 1: something unusual heading toward him in the sky above. Having
Speaker 1: a telescope on him at the time, Johnson was able
Speaker 1: to get a closer view of them. In a letter
Speaker 1: written to the Army Air Force some months after the event,
Speaker 1: Johnson claimed the objects were roughly thirty feet wide at
Speaker 1: a bright top surface, and were round in shape but
Speaker 1: tapered to a sharp point at the back, just as
Speaker 1: Arnold had claimed. Looking closer through his telescope, Johnson had
Speaker 1: also apparently seen some kind of device at the tail end,
Speaker 1: which he described as being like the big of a clock,
Speaker 1: shifting from side to side like a big magnet. That
Speaker 1: same day, a Washington State Forest Service worker on firewatch
Speaker 1: in the Diamond Gap lookout tower, just twenty miles south
Speaker 1: of Yakima, saw something too. It was around three pm,
Speaker 1: while making a routine sweep at the forest with his binoculars,
Speaker 1: that the man noticed a series of bright flashes coming
Speaker 1: from the direction of Mount Vernier. The flashes appeared to
Speaker 1: move in a straight line right across his field of vision.
Speaker 1: Johnson's and the fire service workers account are thought to
Speaker 1: be two of at least sixteen similar sightings to Kenneth
Speaker 1: Arnold's given by witnesses considered credible by either the press
Speaker 1: or Army Air Force investigators. The pilot of the DC
Speaker 1: four that had been flying close to Arnold at the
Speaker 1: time of the incident was also contacted. However, he was
Speaker 1: reported not to have seen anything unusual that day. Back
Speaker 1: at the JB. Foster Ranch in New Mexico, mac Brazel,
Speaker 1: unaware of the Kenneth Arnold's sightings, was beginning to wander
Speaker 1: more and more about the peculiar debris it'd spotted on
Speaker 1: the pastures the previous week. Something about it just didn't
Speaker 1: add up. On July two, just over thirty miles to
Speaker 1: the east of the Foster Ranch, in the town of Roswell,
Speaker 1: something else was afoot. Roswell, with a population at the
Speaker 1: time of roughly fifteen thousand, is the seat of Chaves County,
Speaker 1: and its residents were no strangers to the site of
Speaker 1: objects flying rapidly through the sky. Back in nineteen thirty,
Speaker 1: early rocketing pioneer and inspiration to a young Jack Parsons,
Speaker 1: Robert Goddard, established a base in Roswell to conduct his
Speaker 1: research in the nascent technology. Goddard had picked ross Well
Speaker 1: as the perfect place to experiment due to its sense
Speaker 1: of isolation and the strict secrecy it afforded him. Only
Speaker 1: ten years later, the United States Army Air Forces, having
Speaker 1: acquired land from a local rancher, constructed the Roswell Army
Speaker 1: airfield on the southern outskirts of the town. That July night,
Speaker 1: at one hundred and five South Pennsylvania Avenue, thirty two
Speaker 1: year old Dorris and forty year old Dan Wilmot headed
Speaker 1: out to their porch as they usually did to relax
Speaker 1: after one of the hottest days of the year. The
Speaker 1: couple were well known to many in the city and
Speaker 1: highly respected, partly due to Dan being the owner of
Speaker 1: a prominent local hardware store, but also a serving member
Speaker 1: of the city's Board of Education. It was just approaching
Speaker 1: ten PM when Dan noticed something unusual in the pitch
Speaker 1: black sky. Since both Dan and Dorris had spent their
Speaker 1: entire lives the area, having lived through both Godards experimenting
Speaker 1: and the construction of the local Air Force base, they
Speaker 1: had seen their fair share of aircraft, but this was
Speaker 1: like nothing they had seen before. At first, it seemed
Speaker 1: nothing more unusual than a bright star in the sky,
Speaker 1: until Dan realized that not only was it moving, but
Speaker 1: it was getting closer, sipping through the sky at a
Speaker 1: high rate of speed. Doris soon caught sight of it too,
Speaker 1: as it approached from out of the south, heading in
Speaker 1: a northwesterly direction. In their excitement, the couple sprang to
Speaker 1: their feet and ran into the yard to get a
Speaker 1: better look at it. Dan later estimated it to have
Speaker 1: been traveling somewhere close to five hundred miles per hour
Speaker 1: at roughly fifteen hundred feet, but it was the shape
Speaker 1: of it that really caught their attention, as the couple
Speaker 1: reported later, at about five feet in depth and somewhere
Speaker 1: between fifteen to twenty feet wide, it appeared to be
Speaker 1: oval like, two inverted sources placed face to face. Aside
Speaker 1: from the faintest swishing sound, the object was completely silent,
Speaker 1: but most peculiarly, the whole body of it was glowing,
Speaker 1: not from any light they could see outside of it,
Speaker 1: but from the inside of the object. The couple claimed
Speaker 1: to have watched the object for roughly a minute before
Speaker 1: it disappeared beyond distant treetops on nearby six mile Hill.
Speaker 1: Dan and Doris would spend the rest of the night
Speaker 1: utterly confused as to what on earth it was they
Speaker 1: had just seen, assuming that it would be the talk
Speaker 1: of the town the next day. Much to their surprise, however,
Speaker 1: not one person mentioned it. Before long, the couple began
Speaker 1: to wonder if they had seen anything unusual at all.
Speaker 1: Back out on the j Be Foster ranch, Mac Brazell
Speaker 1: and his son had been joined by his wife and
Speaker 1: daughter to celebrate Independence Day. Having finally decided to do
Speaker 1: something about the debris out in the field, Brazel convinced
Speaker 1: his family to join him out there in trying to
Speaker 1: pick it all up. After riding for an hour and
Speaker 1: a half, the family came upon the strewn pieces just
Speaker 1: as Mac had left them on June fourteenth. Together, they
Speaker 1: jumped down and gathered up as much of it as
Speaker 1: they could, bundling the rest of it up and hiding
Speaker 1: it under a bush. The following day, Mack drove up
Speaker 1: to Corona, a small township forty miles to the north,
Speaker 1: to visit his brother in law, Hollis. Later, when Mack
Speaker 1: told Hollis about the strange materials he had found out
Speaker 1: in the desert, his brother in law's eyes widened. It
Speaker 1: was then that Mac heard for the first time about
Speaker 1: the bizarre sightings of unidentified flying objects that seemed to
Speaker 1: be plaguing the nation. And so it was that, after
Speaker 1: wrestling with what best to do, on Monday morning, je
Speaker 1: Mac loaded up his truck with some of the pieces
Speaker 1: of what he'd found and set off toward Roswell. A
Speaker 1: short time later, after first dropping his family off into LaRosa,
Speaker 1: Mac pulled up outside the Chaves County Sheriff's office. Taking
Speaker 1: the strange materials from the back of his truck, he
Speaker 1: walked through the big double doors and straight into one
Speaker 1: of the most beguiling and enduring mysteries of modern times.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Unexplained, Season four, episode eleven, New
Speaker 1: Dawn Fades, Part one of two. The second and final
Speaker 1: part will be released next Friday five. If you enjoy this,
Speaker 1: think to Unexplained and would like to help support us,
Speaker 1: you can now go to Unexplained podcast dot com, forward
Speaker 1: Slash support. All donations, no matter how large or small,
Speaker 1: are massively appreciated. All elements of Unexplained are produced by
Speaker 1: me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show
Speaker 1: on iTunes, and feel free to get in touch with
Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can reach us online at
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com, or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and
Speaker 1: Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward slash Unexplained. Now, it's
Speaker 1: time to take care of yourself, to make time for you.
Speaker 1: Teledoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help
Speaker 1: you get back to feeling your best. Speak to a
Speaker 1: licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between seven am
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