It might sound strange to speculate about the future of an event in history, but with history now moving into more polarized and fantastic directions in some places, it may be worth taking into account one of the strangest stories still left as a mystery in much of the world. We all know about the Roswell Incident, and there are many out there who know the real truth behind it. But how has the story changed over time? And how may its facts change in the future as mystery is polluted by the new folklore?
Roswell New Mexico first made headlines when it was rumored that the craft that had crashed on one rancher’s property in July of 1947. The craft itself was already somewhat of an icon, though not always associated with extraterrestrials. In fact, while the jury was still out on the presence of aliens on Earth (indeed it would remain so for some time) there was a great deal of wonder about these mysterious craft that were being sighted all over the world by people since Kenneth Arnold first made his report to the media after seeing several of the ships flying in formation in the same year.
Of course the current interest in the Roswell UFO incident was nothing compared to what it is today. If you were to travel back in time to the following year, 1948 and ask about flying saucers you would likely find some people interested in the subject, but almost no one considering the Roswell Incident as anything more than a mistake made by the newspapers. If you asked if they believed the government had lied and covered the whole thing up and even taken aliens as hostages, you would likely have run up against a brick wall. But as the witness testimony and history goes, there were still several people who were involved in the incident and following cover-up that would have found themselves deeply troubled by the things they had seen – things that simply did not make sense to them.
But then the 1970’s came and public perception changed. After Nixon’s impeachment hearings the public looked back and asked themselves if it was possible the government had lied about anything else. On top of that the nation had just been through the Vietnam war and many were looking into the past for answers and taking a much more critical look at their national identity. In 1980 a book simply titled, “The Roswell Incident” was published by Charles Berlitz and William Moore. And so the incident finally found a crossroads for the untold story that had remained dormant uncomfortably in the collective consciousness of the American people. A mystery passed on from one generation to the next by no more than a two minute passing conversation soon became the focus of several peoples’ lives as they began the search for the truth.
So what does the future hold for this story? Since the facts are not officially held anywhere in a vault of records, and any books published run the chance of becoming canonical history, will we one day look back on the Roswell Incident and remember a completely different affair altogether?