Jul 08 2008
|
|
Roswell 2008 Day 3
Down on Main Street, Roswell USA, the vendors had closed down by noon on Sunday. We tried to make it to the designated area of UFO-themed commerce to make some last-minute purchases, but the room was dark. A city worker in the lobby told me that this year’s conference was less exciting than last. I said that this might be due to outrageous gas prices and the general downturn in travel, as well as the romance of a 60th anniversary as opposed to a 61st. Roswell is the one of the only places in the country (and certainly the largest) where an entire town is turned into a UFO convention.
We tried the always-open UFO museum and came away with a few silly gifts to pass out back home, as well as prizes for future Ufomystic contests. The “Alien Zone” store, a block south of the museum, is like one of those themed roadside stores that used to dot the highways like a giant string of fool’s gold nuggets. Signs outside the door promise a “BLACK LIGHT ALIEN EXHIBIT,” and they aren’t lying. A large section of the store is tented over to block almost all ambient light, and the price is right: it’s FREE, Everything under the tent is painted in day-glo colors: guts spilling out of an alien on an autopsy table, goblin-looking things in cages and pickled thingamajigs in jars. A badly produced recording of a man with a heavy southern accent solemnly intones the Roswell crash story and warns “Girls, hold on to your boyfriends!” It’s so good to see that this sort of homespun kitsch is still alive.
Back at the lecture hall, one of the presentations was raising more than a few hackles, or at least eyebrows. I missed it, but Peter Robbins and others filled me in. Apparently something like a revival service was inserted into the program by one of the private organizers, which took many off guard. More of the story on this scene will be covered here within the next day.
The “Roswell Crop Circle Rock” Photo by Paul Davids
Paul Davids attended a surprise lecture by an archaeologist specializing in Roswell crash debris. It seems a local hunter claims to have found a strange artifact in somewhere in the general vicinity of the crash site not long ago. The duo have dubbed the object “The Roswell Crop Circle Rock.” It is a baby fist-sized, brown stone with a strange symbol apparently molded into it. The kicker is that this design is an exact replica of a 1996 crop circle which appeared near Chiseldon, England. They also claim that the rock has “strange magnetic properties.” There is nothing about this on the web yet, but look for full coverage within a few weeks on the Coast to Coast site and other places. This story has everything: it’s difficult to prove, it’s tangentially related to the crash story and directly to crop circles, one of the most popular paranormal subjects in existence. All it needs is a ghost in there somewhere. I’ll throw caution to the wind here and predict that this one will excite believers for months and excise hearty guffaws from others, even a few UFO researchers.
So another chapter in the human/ UFO saga closes. The city of Roswell was incredibly supportive of the speakers, the organizers had everything running like a top (with only a few minor glitches that happen in any huge undertaking) and as I found out this morning, all the hotels in town were booked solid for the weekend. The festival seems headed towards a healthy future, as long as the rest of the country and the world can survive to allow people to make the pilgrimmage at least once in life.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 12:21 am and is filed under Breaking News, Conferences, Crash Sites, Pop Culture, Roswell, UFOlogy, UFOmystic Exclusive, UFOtourism, Wake Up Down There. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.
del.icio.us Digg Reddit BlinkList Google Ma.gnolia StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Help
- Related News Stories:
- Roswell Secrecy »
- Gorightly on Roswell »
- Uncanny Roswell »
- Roswell and the USAF »
- New Roswell UFO Fiction »
- Roswell Alien Amusement Park »
- Roswell Rumbles On… »
- More on the Roswell UFO »
- Roswell: A Human Experiment »
- Roswell Continues… »
|
July 8th, 2008 at 9:10 am
It’s an alien turd. They form them with their minds, as they apparently have no orifice.
July 8th, 2008 at 9:14 am
That rock looks like every other sand-blasted garden ornament I’ve seen. Maybe you walked past the booth that was selling them.
For the abductee who has everything, how about one of these:
http://www.abductionlamp.com Look familiar?
July 8th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Yes, psychic crap. That explains a lot, and it isn’t just aliens who produce it.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I’m going on record- the story behind that rock is a load of shit.
July 8th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
So all that probing is out of envy, eh?
Thanks for the laugh forrie.
And that lamp is kinda cute, too
July 9th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Nobody liked the part about the “alien zone?”
