New Mexico

• California in a Fortnight? - California
• Frankly, my dear, you'll love it - Charleston
• Blown away by the Windy City - Chicago
• Blown away by Chicago - Chicago
• Haunted by Hemingway - Florida
• We have the keys to unlock Florida - Florida
• My Love Match with Las Vegas - Las Vegas
• The town that cloned Europe - Las Vegas
• A Chorus of Angels - Los Angeles
• LA: An actresses guide - Los Angeles
• The Stars Bite Back - Los Angeles
• Hotel of high fashion - Miami
• Miami Spice - Miami
• Alien Town: Roswell - New Mexico
• How the kids went Cajan - New Orleans
• Seta and the City - New York
• Glamour by the sea - Santa Barbara
• Celebrity Hotels - USA
• Escape to Sundance - Utah

WALTER HAUT WAS THE MAN who broke the news that a flying saucer had landed on Earth. He was 26 and press officer at the Roswell Airforce Base and his official statement to the world followed the finding of crash wreckage and alien bodies on ranchland in the desert 60 miles outside the town.

Flight Lt Haut issued the briefing to the gathering media based on the reports from the men who had collected spacecraft debris.

Five hours later he received a call from his commanding officer ordering him to change the story. Officially, there were no alien creatures - it was just a weather balloon that had crashed.

The incident happened 56 years ago, but now, thanks to feature films, TV documentaries, books, the X-Files and most recently Steven Spielberg’s TV series Taken, it is topical.

Roswell today has become a mecca for visitors wanting to find out more about just what did happen in 1947.

If the Truth is anywhere you’ll find it at the splendid UFO Research Museum in the heart of town, co-founded by Haut.

Alien capital of the world

Now 81, he still comes to the museum most days and is happy to recall the events which have made Roswell alien capital of the world.

First, I asked him why he changed his story about the crash. “Look, son,” he said, “I was a mere lieutenant in the air force and when a colonel gives you an order you obey it - I was following orders.”

But he added: “My original report was based on eye witness accounts that came from ordinary guys with no reason to make anything up.”

The amazing story began on Tuesday, June 24, 1947, when a search and rescue pilot reported seeing nine crescent shaped objects skipping like saucers across water over the peaks of the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. The term flying saucer was born.

On July 1 radar at Roswell began to track an object that appeared to defy conventional movement.

Then, on the night of July 4, as a violent thunder storm rolled across the desert, locals saw strange lights in the sky and many reported seeing a craft crash to earth.

The next morning rancher Mack Brazel was out checking his land with his young son and a neighbour when he came across a vast debris field.

The material he found was an odd plastic-like substance impervious to damage by heat or bending. He collected some in his pick-up truck and called the sheriff. In the days that followed the military swarmed all over Mack Brazel’s ranch and other ranches nearby.

Truckloads of debris were driven to the Walker air base at Roswell and local mortician Glenn Dennis was asked if he had a number of child-sized coffins he could bring to a hangar at the base.

When young Mr Dennis, now a co-founder of the UFO museum, went to the base he saw body bags being carried into a hangar and was warned by a terrified nurse, who has since disappeared without trace, that a number of strange creatures had been brought in.

Later, an official photographer was brought in and taken directly to Building 84. A 35mm tripod camera was set up in front of a suspended canvas and the bodies were photographed.

By this time, the American media had all the details and, armed with Haut’s statement, descended on Roswell. It was then that the Mount Everest of conspiracies began.

The spacecraft press release was withdrawn and replaced by the cover-up story. The bodies and the debris were removed from the airbase.

Some of the debris was taken to Fort Worth, Texas, and spread out in a general’s office. When witnesses returned it had been replaced by bits of weather balloon.

Rancher Mack Brazel was “invited” to Roswell airbase where he was kept as a “guest for five days and nights. When he left his story had changed . . . and he drove home in a brand new pick-up truck.

But, to this day, the Roswell Incident is something that just won’t go away. Hundreds of thousands visit the museum.

The month I was there, 12,000 visitors, many from England, had already been.

In 1997, the 50th anniversary of the incident, thousands descended on Roswell for special celebrations and now, each year, there is a week long Alien Festival beginning on July 4.

Folk living in Roswell are good at seeing the lighter side.

Alien dishes

Restaurants serve alien dishes, street lights have eyes painted on them, souvenir shops abound and some locals, who believe they’ve been abducted, walk around with tin foil on their heads to make sure they aren’t Taken again.

But to the people at the museum and author Donald Schmitt, whose definitive books and worldwide lectures on the subject help keep Roswell in the public gaze, this is no laughing matter.

On the back of the 1947 incident, the museum has become a research centre for all UFO sightings.

Now is an exciting time. A study team from the University of New Mexico has completed a detailed investigation of the crash site and has come up with startling new evidence which is currently being processed.

After visiting the museum, and following meticulous directions from Donald Schmitt, I drove out to the crash site.

Standing on Mark Brazel’s ranchland, now sold and renamed, and looking up at the huge darkening skies, I felt like Fox Mulder and began to believe that if the Truth is out there they’ll find it one day soon, here at Roswell…