Roswell, New Mexico, USA

Glenn Dennis, mortician at Ballard Funeral Home, received a phone call from the Roswell Army Air Field mortuary officer asking about the availability of small hermetically sealed caskets (3'6" or 4' baby caskets) and how quickly more could be obtained. Approximately 45 minutes later, the same officer called back asking about embalming fluid composition, its effects on bodies that had been lying in the open, whether it would alter stomach contents or tissue, procedures for removing and preparing bodies exposed to elements and possibly shredded by predators, and how to transport unembalmed bodies. Dennis advised packing bodies in dry ice and contacting a pathologist, suggesting Walter Reed Army Hospital. Later that day, Dennis transported an injured airman (laceration and fractured nose from a motorcycle accident) to Roswell AAF as part of his ambulance duties. At the base infirmary, he observed three old Army field ambulances backed up at the ramp; one had a rear door open revealing a canoe-shaped metallic object (~3 to 4 feet high) and wreckage described as resembling broken glass with heat-shaded stainless steel (shiny to pink, red, brown, black), with markings approximately 4 inches high resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics. A second ambulance contained similar wreckage. Inside the infirmary, Dennis was confronted by an unknown captain and then a large red-headed captain (~6'3"-6'4") who threatened him and had MPs escort him off the base. As he was being escorted out, an Army nurse he knew emerged from a supply room, visibly distressed and sobbing, telling him to 'get out of here as fast as you can.' Two men behind her and the nurse appeared nauseated. The next morning, Sheriff George Wilcox visited Dennis's parents warning that the base wanted information about the family. The following day (July 8), the nurse called Dennis and they met at the officers' club, where she described having accidentally walked in on two doctors in surgical masks examining two small, mangled bodies on gurneys. The bodies had four fingers with suction-cup-like pads, slit-like mouths about one inch wide with cartilage instead of teeth, two ear canals but no earlobes, a concave nose with no bridge, very large sunken eyes, disproportionately large skulls with flexible bone like a newborn's, and arm proportions reversed from human (shorter upper arm, longer forearm). A third more intact body was approximately 3.5 to 4 feet tall. The nurse took notes at the doctors' direction and later made pencil drawings of the creatures on the back of a prescription pad, which she gave to Dennis. Rumors indicated the bodies were moved to a hangar and the autopsies completed that night, then the remains were flown to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. The nurse was transferred/shipped out the same afternoon (July 8). Weeks later Dennis received a typed letter with a New York APO number indicating she was in England; his reply was returned stamped 'Deceased.'