Sometime around July 6, 1947 in the aftermath of a violent thunderstorm, an unidentified craft came down in the high deserts of New Mexico on a ranch. Whatever it was, witnesses described the crash material as unworldly, the 509^th Atomic Bomb Wing commander, Butch Blanchard ordered his press officer Walter Haute to drop off an official news release that a flying disk had been captured by the Army Air Corps. From there, the story becomes vague, contested, infiltrated with military counter intelligence, and despite expert witness testimony, an incredible world changing event evolves into the misidentification of a common weather balloon that the Roswell locals had become very accustomed to.

However, a man by the name of Earl Hicks didn’t witness a weather balloon. He shot twelve frame photos from his Kodak camera of 4 small alien bodies lined up as if on exhibit near a crashed vessel of some kind. Of the three he described as already gone, one was still alive. Earl was a worker associated with Mac Brazel, the sheep rancher credited with bringing the other worldly foreign materials he’d found on his land to Sheriff Wilcox in Roswell some 70 miles away in hopes of getting a reward. Little did he know what the US military would be putting him through with hostile interrogations and threats if he ever spoke about his experience?

Earl would snap the negatives and within 36 hours after going home and not even speaking to anyone about what he had, was confronted by plain clothed agents who asked for his film material, not threateningly, but in earnest. How in 1947 without satellite technology, air cover of reconnaissance flyovers, or being tailed by the authorities, these men ended up on Earl’s doorstep is a mystery! If he had told anyone what he had, it might have been explainable, but how did they even know the make and model of his camera? These events would be revealed in an interview that Earl gave in 1994 based upon the discovery of documented testimony of his experience filed away in the archives of an Amarillo newspaper. This ended up culminating in a 4 hour interview given by Earl who was 81 years old at the time. Journalist, Patricia Greer, had discovered Earl’s personal notes and type written records in the newspaper archives in an unrelated search for a project she was working on.

Before the military had ever arrived on the scene of the crash site, Earl Hicks had been there with his camera and had taken photos that somehow came under a secret classification and were confiscated from him some 36 hours later though he claimed to have never revealed what he had in his possession to anybody! One must surely ask just where such information could have been obtained or was there even more stringent surveillance going on that the civilians in the area were simply unaware of? Earl would die 3 years after giving his lengthy interview one of many remaining witnesses that would die carrying their experiences to the grave with them.

It seems that there is a consistent pattern in many of these incidents. First there are the initial reports denied by the government as a hoax, misunderstanding, or some secret project accidentally stumbled upon by witnesses. Then an official explanation bordering on absurd, seems to normalize the event, but then come the later revelations from other sources that were either unanticipated or never intended for disclosure. Sadly, by the time these secondary witnesses emerge and get public attention, the military counterintelligence has done its handy work, and the denial has set in forever. What Earl Hicks photographed might have changed the world or very well could have illuminated just exactly what had taken place so that official denial could no longer cover-up the truth. The question remains, would we today be any better off in dealing with that truth had Earl not been silenced and had his film been revealed? Much of our history remains in an altered state or in a mystery that will likely go unraveled.