Too Hasty on the Roswell Slides?

Well, a couple of weeks ago I wrote an article for Mysterious Universe on why I thought the so-called "Roswell Slides" showed nothing stranger than a mummy. I'm still not ruling it out, but there is now another, new development in this saga that is ongoing and which is worth noting.

Official, court documentation has now surfaced demonstrating a pre-Roswell (in fact, late-1946) connection between Hilda Ray (husband of Bernerd Ray) and none other than Silas Newton. We have Rich Reynolds to thank for this.

And in case you're wondering who Newton was, well, he was a notorious character who was one of the chief players in the equally notorious "UFO crash" at Aztec, New Mexico in 1948.

Newton also had an impressive history of swindles and cons - to the extent that there is an eye-opening FBI file on the man, which can be found at the FBI's website, The Vault.

Newton was always very cagey about where (and from who) he got the story of Aztec's "little men" from the stars. And - of course - that Newton is now linked to the saga of the Roswell Slides only increases the controversy - rather than lessens it.

If I was to play Devil's advocate, I could speculate that Hilda Ray (as an attorney in the 1946 suit against Newton) was Newton's source. That the pair knew each other before Roswell suggests there is still more to this murky saga than meets the eye.

It should be stressed that confirmation of that connection between Hilda Ray and Silas Newton is being sought from a second source. But, the documentation is solid.

And there is something else, too, worth noting in the saga of Silas Newton.

Although the Aztec affair has attracted the attention of numerous UFO researchers over the years, it’s a fascinating piece of documentary evidence relative to the Aztec case that surfaced in the late 1990s I wish to bring to your attention - extracts from a journal written by Silas Newton around 1970/71.

It came thanks to the late,  investigative author and former CIA employee, Karl Pflock, and it is a journal that may ultimately shed more important light on the psychological warfare angle of the crashed UFO mystery.

Pflock (whose photo appears at the top of this page, taken by me in Aztec, in 2003) stated:

“In 1998, under curious circumstances, I was made privy to a fascinating document about one of the most controversial cases of the Golden Age of Flying Saucers, the so-called Aztec crash of 1948. I had little more than passing interest in the case until 1998, when a source, who insists on complete anonymity, showed me a handwritten testament, set down by the key player in this amazing, often amusing, truth-is-stranger-than-fiction episode. The contents of this ‘journal’ seem to lift the veil of mystery and uncertainty from important aspects of the case, while at the same time drawing it more closely around others.”

The story as told to Pflock was that the military was keeping a secret and close watch on Silas Newton when his tales of the Aztec UFO crash were at their height. More remarkably, military personnel were dispatched to visit Newton and told him something amazing: they knew his 1948 Aztec story was complete bullshit, but, incredibly, they wanted him to keep telling it!

According to Newton, when writing in his journal about his clandestine Air Force visitors:

“They grilled me, tried to poke holes in my story. Had no trouble doing it and laughed in my face about the scientific mistakes I made. They never said so, but I could tell they were trying to find out if I really knew anything about flying saucers that had landed. Did not take those fellows long to decide I did not. But I sure knew they did.”

In view of the revelations that the USAF encouraged Newton to continue championing the Aztec incident (or non-incident!), Karl Pflock wondered:

“Did the U.S. Government or someone associated with it use Newton to discredit the idea of crashed flying saucers so a real captured saucer or saucers could be more easily kept under wraps? Was this actually nothing to do with real saucers but instead some sort of psychological warfare operation?”

The questions are many. And, with a Hilda Ray-Silas Newton connection now made, the questions are likely to keep growing.

And, finally...

Pure, controversial speculation, but...
Silas Newton was heavily involved in underground mining projects, and Bernerd Ray was a geologist - geologists being a group of people whose work often takes them underground.
This begs the question: why would the Rays be brought in to see the bodies? Maybe because of Bernerd's work.
Maybe, then, the creatures weren't extraterrestrial. Maybe they were from...below.  Something akin to Mac Tonnies' Cryptoterrestrials theory...