In a World of Speculation

Hallelujah!    Roswell has finally been solved!  Again.  Well that seems to be the main hot item getting splashed across the news services with the release of Annie Jacobsen's book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base.

Before I say anything else, let me put all my cards on the table.  The book has just come out.  I have not had a chance to read the book (though I will be looking at it as soon as I find a copy - most of the material should be extremely interesting).  Everything I have to say about this one part of the book is based solely upon the numerous news stories that have poured out during this past weekend.  Further, I have no doubt that Annie Jacobsen is a solid reporter, superb investigator, and extremely reliable and insightful writer, irregardless of what either Homeland Security or the U.S. Marshals might think (follow this link to Snopes.com for a pretty concise analysis of her Terror in the Skies story).

In a nutshell, Jacobsen argues that what really happened at Roswell was a psychological warfare attempt by Stalin and the Soviet Union to create mass panic in the U.S. by "invading" the country with deformed children disguised as outer space aliens who were piloted out of South America into New Mexico on a captured Nazi made Horten Ho 229.  The children were made to look unearthly by Josef Mengele who did it in exchange for laboratory space from the Soviets.  Stalin was inspired to try this stunt by the panic in 1938 caused by the Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds.  For all I know, Orson Welles was Joseph Stalin.


Surprisingly enough, this completely harebrained theory has flown through the media without anyone catching the "minor" problems in Jacobsen's thinking.

A.  Nobody really knows if the Soviets ever got their hands on a Horten Flying Wing jet because we were too busy grabbing them for ourselves.  I know a little bit about this because my late father-in-law was a member of the mechanical team whose job it was to dismantle the darn thing for shipment back to the States.

B.  Since it is a safe bet that the Russians knew that we had one of these suckers, you can also be sure that they wanted one for their own research.  If they had one, they would be too busy trying to test and develop the flying wing for their own use.  They would not be wasting the device in pursuit of a half-baked practical joke on Truman.  Stalin can be accused of many things, but stupidity wasn't one of them.

C.  It is extremely unlikely that the Soviets would stage such a stunt in New Mexico.  We had a ton of top secret work going on down there.  The Russians had agents working very hard at basing themselves in the area.  Why would they want to create a wild security scare that would threaten every other operation they had going in the area.  Again, Stalin was not stupid.

D.  Josef Mengele was not available in 1947.  He was busy laying low as a farm-hand in Germany while avoiding arrest by Allied authorities.  He didn't make it to South America until 1949. 

Otherwise, Jacobsen's theory is swell. 

Basically, her thinking sounds like an elaborate reworking of Nick Redfern's book Body Snatchers in the Desert, minus the plausibility.  Redfern's book is a must read.  I don't really buy his theory either, but he works harder at it.  Privately, I suspect that Redfern was being led into a weird dog-and-pony show by several people working together (his inside sources seem to tell the exact same story, which is normally a tip off to most investigative reporters that there is something funny going on).  Likewise, the timeline of events is not at all smooth.  But at least it sounds almost half possible.

So maybe Jacobsen would like to rework the last part of her book.  Then again, maybe not.  She still seems to be convinced that the members of a Syrian rock band on their way to Vegas were really terrorists plotting a hard trip to paradise and still sounds miffed that every federal investigator who dealt with the case said otherwise.

 And you can skip what I said about Orson Welles.  He was much too tall to pose as Stalin.

Update:  Sometimes you need to quit when you are looking as if you are ahead.  Annie Jacobsen has given an interview to Popular Mechanics which pretty much tells you all you need to know about how good her source must be.

1.  Her anonymous single source (which from a journalist perspective is a really bad way to precede) claims he was out there to reverse engineer the Soviet Horten flying wing.  Really?  We already had them.  Why in the heck would we need to reverse engineer the thing?

2.  He learned part of the story from personal conversations with the surviving "child."  Really?  Since the little nipper would not have a thing to do with reverse engineering and since these type of secret projects work on a need to know basis, why was he having these lovely chat fests?  It just doesn't add up.

3.  The project started in 1951 which is why it is called Area 51?  WTF!!??  The origins of Area 51 predates World War One.  It started into extensive use by the US Navy as a secret gunnery range during World War One.  The number 51 was used on the map as they were sectioning off the area for use.

What does this tell us.  Well, it strongly suggests that Annie Jacobsen isn't exactly into research and fact checking and all of that hard stuff.  It also strongly suggests that her single source is either deranged or pulling her leg.  No matter what, this story is a crock. 

Folk Tale or Not

Both the high and the low of the paranormal field (if we can even call it a "field") is the strange degree to which it lives as a vast minefield of folkloric reports. There are numerous accounts that sound good, really really good, that are simply nothing more (nor less) than snippets from a campfire tale.

Take for example the so-called Mudhouse Mansion that was recently presented in the Forbes online magazine story about the nine scariest abandoned mansions in America. This place has several really scary stories that are widely repeated on various regional ghost hunter sites..  It looks really creepy and seems to be a spook house delight.  Too bad most of the tales are bogus and few people have even bothered to do the slightest check on the house's history.

According to the folklore, the mansion was once the home of some sort of government official (an oddly nameless chap who seems unclear about both his position and exactly what type of government he served - federal, county?).  It was right after the Civil War and he had slaves hidden away on his estate (which is a pretty bold move for someone living in an anti-slave state better known for its links to the Underground Railroad).  He was a cruel slave driver (no pun intended) whose slaves finally rose up and killed him (presumably on a dark and stormy night).  If you are familiar with the real case of the Hickory Hill Slave House in Equality, Illinois, you will sense a strong case of deja vu.  This story appears to be a displaced, revised version of that incident.

Then, some years later (maybe in the 1870s or 1880s), a family moved into the Mudhouse Mansion.  According to this tale, a husband, wife, and three children happily settled in and were never seen to come back out.  For days, neighbors saw the solitary image of a woman in white standing in a window on the second floor of the mansion.  After many days, the police were asked to check in on the family.  To their shock, they discovered all five family members hanging by their necks from the ceiling on the second floor.  The wife, wearing a white dress, was hanging in front of the window where the neighbors thought they saw her standing.

To this day, there are those who swear that they have seen the ghost of this woman, still staring out of this window.  Some have even drawn pictures of this haunting sight.

Too bad the place wasn't built until 1900 (according to the Fairfield County Ohio Auditor's site).  Likewise, the mansion was never known as the Mudhouse (except by recent ghost hunters).  The actual Mudhouse was a more primitive structure across the road (built around the 1840s) that had largely functioned as a stagecoach inn and tavern.  It would fit the dates for these tales but there seems to be no association in the stories to this structure.

What is being called the Mudhouse Mansion is actually better known by local historians as the Hartman House.  It was built and lived in by a couple named Byler until sometime around 1910 when they sold it to the Hartman family.  Years later, the Hartman's daughter inherited the mansion.  Though the folklore insists that the place has been abandoned since 1931,   the daughter simply became a somewhat reclusive old woman who lived there until her death in the late 1960s.  Then the house was inherited by her nephew who has not taken much interest in the property and has pretty much left it alone.  At the Grave Addiction web site, a comment has been left by a local that presents a pretty accurate account of the house:

"I have some information that you might find interesting. I became interested in the house a few months back due to a friend who drives by it everyday. So I started doing my research, and the best book that I found was my father. My father's name is Emmett Pinkstock, and he grew up in the Lancaster region his whole life. He actually lived in the white house next to the "Mudhouse" house, while he was a young boy (it burnt down in a fire a few years back.). His father and the last owner, Helena Hartman, were good friends. He gave me some really great info on the house and the stories. The house was still in order until the late 1960's when Helena passed away. She had inherited the house through her parents, who were farmers at the time they passed. Dad told me of the beauty that was in the house. There were 22 rooms with 10 bedrooms all upstairs...he told me that all the windows upstairs were all stained glass. The outhouses outside held different things. One building behind the back, he explained, was a generator room where they made their own electricity. Another building was divided into two sections for their carriages and a blacksmith shop. Helena was never married, and was a farmer who raised cows on the property. Dad remembers going up as a young boy and helping with the animals and farm. She was famous for her onion gravy that she fixed (Gross, I know!). She was a very simple woman and was a sweetheart by all means. She wore simple dresses and looked like she didn't have a toilet to pee in. He explained to me that when she died, the house was left the way it was. She was never married and had no kids. The house went over to her nephew who already had a fortune of his own. And also with the name of the house, he referred to it as theHartman-Mast House. Mudhousebreakins for the furniture that she kept inside. He explained she had silver everything and clocks throughout the house that were encrusted with rubies. And as far as the current owner, Jeanie Mast, she really isn't that mean old lady that everyone takes her to be. She's in her early 80's who lives right down from the house. I've been able to talk to her about the history, that house is AMAZING! But there is no Bloody Mary's or war general with slaves. Just rumors that came about. The house was one of the first brick ones in Lancaster and was one of the finest. So of course, like she said, you're going to have legends and stories about it."

No slaves, no hangings, no ghosts, no nothin'.  Just a basic set of facts and a remarkably straight forward history.  And it only took about ten minutes to locate the information online.