A 22-minute black-and-white reel quietly uploaded to the US National Archives and Records Administration revived the Roswell UFO debate. Labeled The Roswell Incident and dated 1947, the compilation showed a desert crater strewn with metallic fragments and what some viewers interpreted as non-human bodies. The footage mixed still images, short motion segments, passages from the later Roswell Report, period magazine clippings, and book illustrations.
Attention spiked after a social-media user tweeted that the archive had just posted film of the 1947 crash site. Online forums quickly dissected freeze-frames, focusing on a dark shape in the crater and a nearby silhouette many called an alien form. One frame bore the title page of The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert, while the final shot presented a sharply focused crater filled with wreckage. Some enthusiasts hailed the material as the first photographs of the 1947 site; others argued it resembled stock footage prepared for the US Air Force’s 1994 briefing.
British newspaper Daily Mail soon covered the controversy. “In my opinion, this is a hoax. The fact that the video was added to the US National Archives does not give it scientific credibility,” said Mark Lee, a long-time analyst of declassified imagery, according to the Sun. He called the supposed alien outline an example of pareidolia and suggested the crater sequence was inserted only to generate excitement.
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The renewed speculation followed the familiar Roswell timeline. In July 1947 rancher W. W. Brazel found unusual debris on his land north of Roswell. Intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel later described metal fragments spread across a field roughly three-quarters of a mile long. The Army initially announced recovery of a flying disc, then retracted the claim a day later, citing a weather balloon.
A 1994 Air Force inquiry attributed the debris to Project Mogul, a classified balloon program that monitored Soviet nuclear tests, but many ufologists disputed that conclusion. “Something fell at Roswell, and earthly explanations have been ruled out,” said retired Air Force officer Kevin Randle. He pointed to a 1947 memo in which Brigadier General Roger Ramey allegedly mentioned victims of the accident. Thomas Carey, co-author of Witness to Roswell, cited a sealed statement by former base public-relations officer Walter Haut describing an oval craft the size of a Volkswagen Beetle that held several small bodies.
Family accounts continued to circulate. Marcel’s grandson said his grandfather showed the family foil-like shards “as light as a feather but as strong as steel” etched with unfamiliar symbols and warned that speaking publicly could be fatal, the Sun reported. Other witnesses included former deputy sheriff Charles H. Forgus, who claimed he watched large-eyed beings loaded onto trucks, and Julie Shuster, who said her father, Walter Haut, confirmed until his death that the original flying-disc press release was true.
“Today’s testing could immediately ascertain whether the UFO was from outer space or Earth,” said Nick Pope, former UK Ministry of Defence UFO desk officer, to the Sun. He added that one authenticated fragment might force Washington to open decades of sealed files.
For now, the archive’s video stands as the latest flashpoint: believers see long-hidden proof, skeptics see mislabeled footage, and researchers caution that an entry in the National Archives alone does not equal scientific validation.