51

27/6/2009

Since quite early childhood, I’ve always maintained a fascination with Area 51.

Now, I ought to make it clear that I am not some sort of deluded conspiracy lunatic, although the wild speculations about its activities have equally enthralled me since being very young, and fuelled several of my attempts at short works of science-fiction: I simply find the notion that there are places in the world that the powers-that-be seem so desperate to keep hidden fascinating, and it has been a bit of an amateur hobby for a long time to try and discover some of the truth surrounding it. It was certainly more of an obsession in my younger years than it is now: however, as I gradually moved into the field of journalism, I discovered that it was not a topic that held very much credibility in the world of professional writing. Most editors would scoff at suggestions of writing a piece on it, even if it was merely speculative, saving those kinds of reports for silly season or slow news weeks. I eventually decided that it might be interesting to write an article for personal benefit, detailing and critiquing some of the theories surrounding the infamous air-base.

I put a call out on my blog for people to help me find some of the more outlandish theories (partly out of laziness, but also because I thought there would be a wider scope of oddity if I asked outside sources). Sadly, I received no replies for this request; I did, however, receive a lone, anonymous contact.

The contact in question was a gentleman who claimed to have worked at the base from the mid to late 90’s: for the sake of his privacy (and, potentially, his freedom) I will omit his name, age etc. He approached me very cautiously and in writing, seemingly trying to avoid whatever electronic surveillance may be kept on him by his former employers (although why he presumed that anybody observing his behaviour would not monitor his post too was beyond me.) His sketchiness over some minor details in his initial correspondence (and the unspecified level of security and observation he claimed to have on him) made me wary of him at first, but he presented me with some very interesting morsels of information regarding his former occupation, and I eventually managed to negotiate a meeting with him. Naturally, I was very excited to be speaking with this gentleman. We met publically, choosing somewhere open and busy. Before he even spoke, I noticed his mannerisms were skittish and nervy, and his drawn face seemed to suggest an addict of some form or another. He stated outright that there were some details- such as names of former colleagues or people in charge- that he would point-blank refuse to reveal, regardless of how many times I asked him, as his problems were with himself and the things he encountered at the base, and not with the personnel he used to work alongside with. In spite of his current circumstances, he claimed to still have a deep sense of respect for many of his peers and colleagues, and risking their careers was not something he was willing to do. He did, however, feel that what he encountered was something that he needed to speak about, having had well over ten years of reflection on it and the vast potential impact it may still pose. I was very close to informing him that, if I published his claims and they were in any way taken seriously by a large amount of people, his former colleague’s careers could be put at risk anyway. I must admit that I refrained from telling him this- as selfish as it may sound, his deer-in-headlights mannerism made me wary, and I did not want to frighten him off. Whilst disappointed that I may not get any further leads or possible interviewees out of him, I accepted his conditions.

I began by asking about some of its history. Whilst he told me he was not an expert on its past, he did tell me some of the better known facts amongst the personnel on the base: Area 51, he told me, was brought into operation in the latter part of the Second World War (he did not give me specific dates, which was slightly frustrating) and was considerably smaller than it is now. Its purpose was originally to design and test out experimental weapons, reconnaissance technologies and aircraft, but was often considered amongst the upper echelons of power in the American Air force as one of the less important bases, focusing their defences (and their money) on its larger and more productive facilities. While it had links to some of the components of important technologies (including some designs that would later go on to be used in the stealth plane) it was not particularly influential in the field of research and development, and surprisingly, faced closure at one point in around 1949 because of slipping standards and inefficient usage of funds. Its management was replaced, and standards began to improve, with its funding being spent on expanding the base to allow it to work on new areas of research, including (but not limited to) nuclear, biological and psychological methods of warfare.

I must admit that this rung quite positively with me: despite my interest in the base over the years, I have always been sceptical as to its alleged involvement with aliens and the paranormal, believing it instead to hold unsettling secrets of a much more terrestrial nature, such as ethics-free science and cruel new weapons systems. The vast majority of people I have discussed the topic with over the years have leapt straight to the aliens theory, something I have always found extremely irritating. To hear someone who seemed to be genuine, giving me facts that I could find a lot more believable was encouraging. What he told me next began as a disappointment, but soon turned into something much more unsettling.

As he had been informed when he took the job in around 1993, the base’s operations took a dramatic shift in 1964 when a bright object appeared in the sky around 5 miles east of the base, some time in April of that year. The Cold War was still at a high, being only two years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and despite an apparent cooling off period since the hotline between Moscow and Washington had been created to allow the USA and the USSR to discuss and negotiate any further incident, tensions between the Americans and their Russian foes were still high, as was mistrust of the other side. Believing this initially to be the start of some form of deceptive attack, the base went on to high alert, and all base troops were mobilised and deployed to the site within twenty minutes, having informed the White House of the strike. It is believed that President Johnson immediately phoned Nikita Khrushchev via the Hotline, where he claimed no knowledge of any such attack. Naturally, this was taken with a large pinch of salt, but Johnson apparently halted calls for an immediate retaliation from some of his more enthusiastic advisors, in case the Soviets were in fact telling the truth. Base troops were informed to investigate the source of the light immediately, and to inform the White House directly of their findings as soon as was possible.

The light source had, as speculated, fallen to earth quite close by. The impact site was smouldering and burning upon discovery, leaving a sizeable crater behind. Having ruled out a nuclear or artillery strike quite soon (seeing how there was no explosion heard and, in regards to the nuclear strike, they were all still alive) they began to speculate that what must have fallen to earth was a satellite, a light aircraft, or possibly even a surveillance drone. However, all this was disproved when they investigated the crater further: they found no wreckage, no mound of twisted metal and burnt out components that would suggest a failed piece of equipment which had crash landed.

Instead, they found a small, black box.

Troops who initially made the discovery were returned to base immediately and decontaminated, replaced by Hazmat teams wearing radiation suits and wielding Geiger counters. However, these teams discovered no radioactive material on the cube at all. Base staff could not decide what could be done with the object- disposal experts were sent in immediately to destroy the object in a controlled explosion, in the firm belief that whatever it was, it was probably a risk and should therefore be dealt with. When the object could not be destroyed using a variety of disposal methods, including explosives, fire, and acid, all involved were baffled. Troops were even instructed to fire at the object at will, but the object didn’t show signs of even a scratch. Reluctantly, base command was informed by the White House to remove the object for further investigation at the base. A highly secured area was cleared, in which the box was kept underneath a temporary tarpaulin until a more permanent and secure location for it could be created, watched for three days by armed guards. In that time, a concrete, lead reinforced bunker was built, and the object was moved inside.

The box received observations and experiments almost constantly- ranging from observing its response to an electrical current to its response to Gamma rays- but it always remained entirely unaffected. Eventually, as the years passed, it was firmly believed by site researchers that the box was entirely indestructible, and they instead took to observing it daily, in case it showed any change at all, with regular experiments to attempt to work out its makeup. The potential benefits were, obviously, incalculable- a material that could not be destroyed by any weapon known to man. Naturally, it was kept tightly under lock and key: The security systems employed on that room, according to my contact, ‘make Fort Knox look like an open door.’ However, despite the un-ending interest in the box displayed by the vast majority of the American military, it did not appear to be willing to unveil its secrets any time soon. A daily routine of observation and theorising developed and stayed in place for close to thirty years. It is here that my contact came in.

In 1993, he was fresh-faced and close to receiving a degree in particle physics, at that time living in Chicago. It was around this time that he was approached by Government officials who had taken an interest in his potential, and who came to him with an offer of a job that they claimed would make use of his talents. This job was at Area 51.

He was made to sign a secrecy pact and soon relocated to Nevada. The job itself offered much less than he originally perceived- he was at the base in the capacity as little more than a glorified lab assistant, aiding the more senior researchers with their experiments. That said, the pay was very good and he had room for career progression, so he was, for the most part, contented.

He first encountered the box after two weeks at the base, after some initial training and general orientation to the job. He had been informed of it repeatedly over this two week introductory period, and its alleged properties, but encountering it was more than he anticipated. The readings it gave off were enough to make the vast majority of the staff feel uneasy- whilst it gave off small amounts heat, and occasional low level electrical signals, it had no mass. This was both perplexing and unsettling, as this was, to all intents and purposes, not possible. And yet, the box was there. This impossibility made it all the more worrying. My contact described it as somehow feeling impossible: the box looked and appeared in some way as though it shouldn’t be there, although he could not sum up why.

He had received considerable training and information on the unpleasant feelings the box gave off, and all of the staff had at least one story about how the box had made them feel uncomfortable, or somehow disturbed them. There were also several reports that the box had a profound effect on electrical equipment if they were brought close to it, wiping laptops clean of information, frying the batteries of mobile phones, even breaking the bulbs in flashlights. My contact’s laptop was itself wiped of data in 1996, whilst running a basic observational routine. However, his other memorable encounter with the box would ultimately become lore at the base, and lead him to the state he was in today.

One morning in August, 1998, whilst running diagnostics on the object, my contact described an unusually high feeling of anxiety in the room, which he believed to be emanating from the box. He described a feeling of tension, unease, and panic, as though he felt threatened by its presence. This was unusual for him, as over his career at the base, he had grown used to the unusual effects the box had on people. On this morning, it was worse than he had ever remembered. Despite this, he still managed to focus on the diagnostics- on reflection, he claimed, he wished he hadn’t.

For the first time in nearly thirty five years, the box had mass. Its reading went off the scale- electrical power; heat; mass; energy, all going to unnatural degrees. At this point, the laptop corrupted and the screen died. It would later be revealed that the hard drive had been entirely destroyed. Looking over to the box, he noticed another change: it had opened.

My contact at this point went vague and incredibly withdrawn- he described little, staring off into the middle distance, but what he did say made me feel deeply uncomfortable. In a minute voice, a voice I could have easily mistaken for that of a child, he told me: “There was just… a void. Just nothing. No sound, no feeling, no light. No time. Just nothing.” After this, he required a few moments to gather his thoughts and pull himself together, and we sat in silence: him, trying to deal with this memory and myself, trying to make sense of it. What did he mean, nothing?

He continued with the story after a little while: he told me that he had blacked out temporarily, and when he came to, he was outside the bunker, which was under lockdown. Outside, he found a scene of abject destruction: burning wreckage, twisted metal, site personnel running around frenzied trying to return some semblance of order. This initially confused him, but the strangeness of the situation soon became apparent to him when he was told that the base in its entirety had been struck by what was referred to later as a ‘telekinetic explosion’: objects, ranging from pens to office chairs to aircraft, had begun to levitate and move in the general direction of the bunker. After almost a minute of this, the objects violently dispersed outwards, the bunker being the centre of the ‘blast’. Fourteen people were killed by the debris and several others were injured. The objects affected were not just metals, so some kind of magnet was ruled out as the cause, but it did not seem to affect living matter. Armed personnel had rushed to the bunker after identifying it as the centre of the blast, forcing an over-ride of the security systems. They found him passed out in the corner, apparently shielding his eyes. The box, according to my contact, was now unopened. He was removed from the bunker, taken away, and underwent almost a full 24 hours of decontamination, examinations, and debriefings, being the first and only person directly on the scene. Officials were initially sceptical of his claims that the box had opened: the bunker’s CCTV system had been obliterated in the incident, along with his laptop. The readings he took and the incident itself were now lost, with no evidence to support his claims. Despite this, however, some sympathy for his story was later gathered, especially when it was the only link to the explosion they had. Security and examinations of the box were doubled, with an armed guard inside the bunker at all hours of the day, and my contact was given therapy for severe anxiety and stress. The base was cleared of wreckage and repairs were almost completed after a week and a half. However, when my contact returned to the bunker with investigators a few days later to try and provide some further evidence for his version of events, he encountered something highly sinister.

On the back wall of the bunker, visible immediately upon entrance, was a perfectly circular black ring, around the height of a man, looking very much like a burn mark. Investigators informed him that the ring had been present when he had been dragged out, and attempts to remove it yielded nothing. My contact told me that something about it made him vomit, and he had to leave.

Around two weeks of sleeplessness and severe mood swings following the incident caused him to file for resignation: he did not feel that he could remain at the base, for reasons he could not understand or explain for himself. Since the incident, he had been feeling restless and on edge, especially when on his own. He also remembers a series of unusual events occurring in and around the base: several security cameras around the base had short-circuited, along with some motion sensors in the more secure areas. Site staff reported missing objects, namely food items and electrical equipment. And most bizarrely, the base dog was found dead in the mess-hall four days after the incident: examinations of its body suggested that it had been hit by a car, but this was not possible, as no car could have gotten into the mess-hall without destroying it, and the dog was seen to enter (but not to emerge) by several eye-witnesses. An autopsy was performed, and it was discovered that the dog’s muscles had contracted so suddenly and so violently that it had broken several bones, including its back: evidence of poisons or toxins were searched for, but none was found. The best guess that could be made was that the dog under went such severe shock that its muscles went into a fatal spasm and eventually seized up to an unimaginable degree. I recall my contact detailing these events with an almost frightened fascination: I speculated that he had pondered these events for a long time.

A week after filing his resignation, he said his farewells and was escorted from the base to return to his old life in Chicago, where he intended to return to the degree he had yet to finish and attempt to put his former job behind him. Why it had affected him so deeply, he did not know, but he was adamant that he felt he had to get away from that place as soon as he possibly could.

He told me that what happened next was what turned him to drink.

As they left the base, he decided to take one last look back. This he immediately came to regret: in the dust cloud kicked up by their SUV, standing facing the base, was a figure. My contact didn’t describe the figure- this time, it was not because he found the memory too difficult to describe, but because he simply couldn’t remember it at all. He passed out almost immediately after seeing it, and his memory of its appearance is practically non-existent: he said that all he can remember was the most over-whelming sense of dread and terror he has ever experienced in his life. Something about this character inspired a feeling of fear within him that was stronger than anything he had encountered previously (or since.) He was revived by the driver of the SUV, but did not inform them of what he had seen.

And yet, it still haunted him- something about this memory somehow eclipsed the experience in the bunker, and the feeling of horror at the thought of it stuck with him from that moment onwards. Eventually, he took to drink to try and rid himself of this never-ending feeling of unease, but its help has been limited. After he told me this, we went our separate ways, as he asked if we could stop as he had nothing more to offer on the subject and was feeling quite unhappy again, so I returned to my hotel room to write up his claims. I have not heard from him since.

Now, I must clarify here that he didn’t tell me anything about being pursued or followed by this figure- he was not being stalked by some Slenderman-esque entity that toyed with his mind and followed him wherever he went. Before he left, he told me he never saw it again. Only the feeling- the memory of that terror- stayed behind. Which, as it became apparent to me during our interview, was no less scarring.

I will not tell you out right that my contact’s claims are the gospel truth- I still have my doubts about what he told me, and whether there was any truth in it whatsoever. What I do not doubt, however, is that he saw something at some point in his past that left some very deep scars in his mind: it would be a valid argument on your part as a reader to say that he could have been acting, but I know sincerity when I see it, and I saw a sincerely traumatised individual. For these reasons, I cannot escape the nagging thought that there was something genuine in what he said, and that there really is something this sinister at the base. This change of heart has also lead me to re-evaluate the purpose of this article: my original intention was for this to be a purely speculative piece, assessing and investigating some of the claims about the base’s reason for being. However, since I received word from my contact, the nature of this article has changed to actual potential evidence of alien activity on Earth (and Area 51’s involvement with it) and in the process, so has my stance on publishing it- perhaps I am simply being paranoid, but it’s a level of professional paranoia that I like to think might keep me out of federal custody if there is actually any truth in what he told me. A knock at the door from CIA spooks is not a risk I’d like to take, even for the sake of journalistic integrity. Perhaps this is just needless wariness, but I’d rather be wary than flaunt danger needlessly. So, unless an appropriate opportunity arises in which to publish this, where the sense of duty over showing it to the public overrides the risk of official reprimand, I will sit on this one, for personal scrutiny and speculation. However, regardless of the reliability of these claims, it still unsettles me to even consider the notion that one of the most powerful military super powers on Earth could be outwitted and confused by persons or forces unknown for so long: even more so to think that these forces could still be in operation to this day…

~~~

21/3/2014

As stated at the end of the original article, I decided to hold off on publishing it until a time I thought it would be necessary and for the public benefit to do so.

That time has now come.

Unless the news has somehow bypassed you (which I highly doubt), you will be aware that 27 hours ago, emergency services in the Nevada area were on red alert as countless local communities gave reports of everyday objects moving of their own accord. A subsequent ‘blast’ was reported, which killed several people and wounded many others; these objects had, according to witnesses, ‘exploded’ away from whatever point they were originally moving towards. Naturally, hospitals were inundated with casualties, and police officers were working tirelessly to try and bring some calm to the situation, but all this was for nothing when eye-witness reports were received of a large, black ring in the middle of the Nevada desert. The news soon hit the internet, and despite the presence of a specialist teams who were seemingly called in to quell the rumours, it continued to spread like wildfire: a global media rebellion against the American government ensued, with news networks the world over reporting on this inexplicable phenomenon. A cover up of any sort was no longer an option. Satellite imagery later revealed the ring to be well over fifteen miles in diameter, perfectly round and black in appearance, very much like a burn mark.

The images also appeared to show an object at the centre of the ring- namely, a large, solitary black box.

The media uprising in the wake of this incident has presented me with a situation where I no longer feel threatened to reveal what I know. If the US cannot control its own national television networks, then I highly doubt they will be able to control independent online journalists. And, in light of these events, I think I would have published this even if the risks were still there: this is far too large a connection to simply ignore.

Whatever doubts I had about my contact’s claims are no more: I have nothing to offer here but speculation, but I believe what he encountered at the base was a scouting party, a surveyor, so to speak, and that the black ring in the bunker was its window into our world.

I also believe that what we’re seeing now is no longer the scouting party.

I believe that it’s the invasion.

CREDIT: Stefan Rasmussen