This Is Interesting: Area 51 Decoded

May 21, 2011 by PaulM Posted in Culture, History, Lowell 4 Comments

In the mid-1960’s there was a boomlet of interest in Unidentified Flying Objects, yes, those pesky UFO’s. In my semi-rural suburban neighborhood in Dracut there was a phase one summer when some people stood on their porches and in the backyards and looked up at the star-packed sky. They were hoping to see something other than a passenger plane on a night flight. It was a little spooky if you were 10 or 12 years old. But very interesting. There was a lot of science fiction on TV in those days: The Outer Limits, Fantasmic Features with Feep, the Twilight Zone, and Star Trek (which started in 1966). A famous UFO incident in Exeter, New Hampshire, was recounted in a best-selling book “Incident at Exeter” in 1966. And then there was another book in 1966 about the Betty and Barney Hill case in 1961: two people who claimed they were abducted by aliens somewhere along a highway in the White Mountains. Since then, I’ve been intrigued by the prospect that someone or something else “is out there.”

National Public Radio’s website has a fascinating report on a new book about the mysterious “Area 51” government research site in Nevada. The author, Annie Jacobson, offers her take on what really went on and continues to go on at this super-secret site out west. Toward the end of the book she reports on a startling version of the story of the “flying disc crash” in New Mexico in 1947, a subject that has fueled many cable TV programs over the years. Read the NPR report here, and support your local station if you value the source.

4 Responses to This Is Interesting: Area 51 Decoded

  1. Ray says:

    The author was interviewed extensively on NPR Tuesday and was on Morning Joe Thursday. Both sites likely have replay options. Check them out. She is very credible and articulate and the bottom line is she could only scratch the surface of this top secret area and the strange, weird and (likely) illegal science experiments that went on there in the name of national security. The cover for those activities was the space alien stories that distracted focus from what was really going on there. I am reading it now on my Kindle. It is fascinating stuff and makes me wonder what’s going on behind the curtains now.

  2. Dean says:

    I have a friend who lives in Pahrump,NV. His back yard looks over Area 51. He has told me that he has not seen anything or heard anything.

  3. Steve says:

    I heard the Terry Gross interview. The author is credible, but Terry Gross put one question to her that she did not seem able to answer adequately. The whole story is pretty difficult to believe, involving Soviet experiments more than our government’s. It’s made more difficult to believe because she only says “My sources,” without names. In spite of this, she is convincing and unsettling.

    (Maybe her source is Dean’s friend).

  4. Dean says:

    My friend email today. “Area 51 not far here…its a dealy force authorized area. Nieghbors tried to see it from a mountai top. Many censors placed in mountains and desert. Helicopters and trops sent to stop them from going any further.”