Out of this World!

Out of this World!

An alien carrying an American flag walks slowly down Main Street in Roswell, N.M. (pop. 45,293), trailed by a glowing spaceship, a green alien on a motor scooter and Star Wars characters twirling light sabers.

It’s a familiar site for residents and thousands of visitors who line the streets to watch the Close Encounters Night Parade, part of the annual Roswell UFO Festival each July.

"This is how we let our creative side just have fun and not be serious," says Shirley Leif, a supervisor at Roswell’s Eastern New Mexico Medical Center. Leif and dozens of other hospital employees spent two months working on their trophy-winning Star Wars float.

The festival, scheduled July 1-4, celebrates the town’s most famous event—the "Roswell Incident."

Sometime in July 1947, something crashed in the eastern New Mexico desert 40 miles outside of Roswell. The first report said that a "flying saucer" had been recovered, but the U.S. military later identified the crashed object as a "weather balloon."

"I never saw any of the bodies, but I knew people who did," says resident Glenn Dennis, 81. "And people at Walker Air Force Base called the funeral home where I worked to ask about small coffins."

The incident made such an impression on Dennis and resident Walter Haut—who wrote the first newspaper article about a "flying saucer" a few days after the crash—that they created the International UFO Museum and Research Center in 1991.

The museum, housed in a 1940s-era movie theater, is a popular spot for people who want to learn more about Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs. Inside visitors can see a collection of photographs and newspaper stories from the time of the crash, as well as props used in various space alien movies. There’s even a giant world map showing the location of UFO sightings.

"UFOs are a relatively new phenomena, and people come here wanting to be convinced one way or another," says Julie Shuster, director of the museum and festival co-chairperson.

For serious UFO buffs, the festival includes panel discussions and dozens of authors who give lectures and sign books on the subject. For others, the festival is purely entertainment, with music concerts, appearances by science fiction celebrities and an alien costume contest.

As for the latter, Sienna Fleming, 9, has donned an alien costume each year since she was born. "It’s one of the most visual parts of the festival," says Nancy Fleming, who helps make her daughter’s costume. "We like to do our part to make it worth coming to see. I think it’s fun to have crowds once in a while in a quiet little town like Roswell."

Norma McQuaid and her husband, Richard, retired five years ago and moved to Roswell. They both volunteer at the museum. "I’m a greeter, and I always wear my headband with the alien eyes on the antennae," she says. "The local paper called me the Alien Ambassador.

"Some people would prefer Roswell be known as a dairy town," she adds. "One day at the museum, I met someone from Siberia. Now, I wouldn’t come from the other side of the world to see cows, would you?"

"Everybody knows Roswell, and it’s all because of the aliens," says Barbara Pruett, who runs a local RV park. "We get people from all over. I bet I hand out 100 brochures a week for the UFO Museum."

Many local merchants make use of the alien theme for businesses as varied as bike shops, printers and carpet stores. Even the local Wal-Mart has a flying saucer painted on the front of its building.

Richard Hesse owns Starchild, one of the first gift shops in Roswell to adopt an alien theme. "When we moved here in 1991, people in town were just beginning to see the possibilities in using the alien idea to advertise the town."

But does he really think that it was a flying saucer that crashed in the desert outside of town 58 years ago?

"I’m not sure what to believe," Hesse says. "All I can say is, it’s a blast. I meet people from all over the world, right here in Roswell."

For more information, call the Roswell Chamber of Commerce at (505) 623-5695 or log on to www.roswellnm.org.

Lyn Kidder is a freelance writer in Ruidoso, N.M.

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