Redfern, Roswell, and Recidivism

Copyright 2018, InterAmerica, Inc.

The Anomalist’s Bill Murphy noted Nick Redfern’s two part “retrospective” on Roswell, highlighting Nick’s speculation that nothing extraterrestrial happened near Roswell but a secret government (military) experiment involving humans, in an accidental scenario, that is the real genesis of The Roswell Incident:

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/02/no-aliens-at-roswell-part-1/

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/02/no-aliens-at-roswell-part-2/

Nick’s conjecture is intriguing and I’ve provided, here, several times, supplemental information that offers some support for Nick’s supposition.

Yet, let’s take a closer look at what may have happened in July 1947…

Flying saucers were being seen epidemically after the highly publicized Kenneth Arnold sighting in June.

A few weeks after that Mack Brazel “discovered a mass of material strewn over a section of the vast hardscrabble grazing grounds and thought it strange and significant enough to warrant notifying the Chaves County sheriff, probably on July 6, who in turn called the Roswell Army Air Field.” [From NICAP]

While Nick thinks that debris was from the human experiment that involved a balloon, it’s more probable, to me, that the debris was remnants of a somewhat secret Mogul balloon operation, developed to detect possible Soviet atomic device testing.

Whatever the debris was, it seems more likely, to me, that the Army became caught up, sociologically, in the mass hysteria of the unique flying saucer environment.

The Press Release reporting that Army captured a flying disc was the outcome of a kind of hypomania.

The Army’s upper staff, Blanchard and Ramey, allowed Walter Haut to issue the Press Release with the disc-capture or Haut created the release, himself and he alone hysterical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident

Either way, the momentary hysteria, withered away when the Army caught its breath and backed away from a protracted hysterical circumstantial state by announcing the disc was merely a weather balloon.

The moment dissipated almost immediately, causing little damage or repercussion, until 1978 when the hysterical residue was brought back to consciousness by Jesse Marcel and Stanton Friedman.

Today, Roswell has become a product of hypomania once again by UFO acolytes who can be likened to those duped by the kinds of madness addressed in Charles Mackay’s ahead-of-its-time and edifying 1841 work Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the
_Madness_of_Crowds

Prescient afterthoughts about such delusions [as Roswell]:

“Among them are men of all ranks, characters, and conditions: the truth-seeking but erring philosopher; the ambitious prince and the needy nobleman … as well as the designing charlatan …” [ibid, Page 255]

“ … be very credulous; be very persevering; reject all past experience and do not listen to reason …” [ibid, Page 341]

“ … it is consoling to think that the delirium has passed away; that the raging madness has given place to a milder folly …” [ibid, Page 564]

Roswell is a recurring madness and omnipresent delusion in ufology. Whether it will ever disappear is a question we UFO buffs continue to conjure with, sadly.

RR