Hocus Pocus: The Roswell Slides Return

A mainstream media piece by The Guardian from the UK is worth a look for it's portrayal of one of ufology's biggest embarrassments. "The Curious Case Of The Alien In The Photo And A Mystery That Took Years To Solve," written by Les Carpenter, a sports journalist, it sympathetically presents the Roswell Slides story from the POV of the promoter of the events, Adam Dew. There, Dew finally names and discloses the role of his silent partner, Joseph Beason. I'm not sure just why the story was newsworthy at this late date, but it does contain a few new bits, chiefly quotes from the perpetrators, and is the first interview with Dew since the events. It's a nice

By Curt Collins www.blueblurrylines.com 10-2-17

piece, but there are a few things that need to be clarified, and a few errors that need to be corrected.

I was struck by the lack citation of sources in the article, or links to the source material, but the narrative is more accurate than not. The coverage of the deblurring of the Slides is shortchanged and there’s a only a brief mention of the Roswell Slides Research Group and Nab Lator (who is called Neb). Instead, the story is all about how Adam Dew was drawn into the circus, and how two Roswell ufologists let belief lead their investigation.

Hocus Pocus?

The ufologists in the story, Tom Carey and Donald Schmitt, look bad, making unsubstantiated accusations that they were victims. “It was a very sophisticated hoax,” Carey says. “Dew manipulated the slides. The one clue we couldn’t figure out was the placard, but they played hocus pocus with the placard. We were given something that had been altered.” The story says, “Humiliated, Carey and Schmitt apologized to the Roswell Slides debunkers.” No. RSRG member Tim Printy responded on Facebook, saying,

“It states that Carey and Schmitt apologized to the Roswell slides debunkers. I don't remember that apology. If it was given, it was some vague comment they made with little meaning. I also see that Carey and Schmitt still believe that the slides were altered by Dew. This is a lie and they are just fooling themselves. Rudiak claimed he could deblur his placard and we know that we could deblur Bragalia's. The problem with Carey and Schmitt is they believe they were too smart to not figure it out. Instead, they were just stupid UFOlogists stuck in the will to believe in the myth they created.”

Printy is correct. Carey and Schmitt’s claim that they received deceptive, manipulated versions of the scans is false. On the April 20, 2015, KGRA show, Fade to Black, a few weeks before BeWitness, Tom Carey said he was sent a high resolution version of the two Slides, and he describes both pictures in detail, the placard and the man and woman seen behind the body. (In other words, the museum setting was pictured.)

Video: "Ep. 241 FADE to BLACK Jimmy Church w/ Tom Carey, UFO Roswell Slides LIVE on air"
Carey, on receiving the Slides by email: 131:30, describing Slides images: 137 and 140.

Portions of those same scans were sent to David Rudiak and Anthony Bragalia in an attempt to read the placard. After the RSRG deblurred the placard, those scans were made public, and they could be deblurred and read just as easily. The charges of digital manipulation of the slides against Dew and Beason are false. However Dew admits to exploitation being "guilty of not discouraging the talk [of it being alien]. It was good for the project.”

Accusations, Trolls and Rewriting History

Beason's Accusations of the RSRG Ffaking the Deblurring with Photoshop.
( - click and or right click to enlarge -)

BeWitness, Dew's clip of the Nov. 2013 meeting in Chicago

The story confirms that after the deblurring, it was Beason who the RSRG was corresponding with, not Dew and Beason who posted at Slidebox Media the RSRG were "internet UFO Trolls" hoaxing the placard. It was later toned down, and proven to be false, but no apology from Beason was offered. The Slidebox site, http://www.slideboxmedia.com, is now dead, but the YouTube account remains. It's reported that "Beason has moved on."

The most glaring distortion in the Guardian itself is the claim that the show was a last-minute 2015 decision made as a last resort:

"By early 2015, Beason and Dew knew they had no choice but to reveal the slides. The pressure to do so was extreme and Dew needed money to fund his documentary... The only appealing proposal came from Jamie Maussan, an investigative journalist based in Mexico City."

This is inaccurate. At BeWitness, Dew showed a clip documenting how the deal deal was brokered in November 2013, with Carey, Schmitt and Maussan traveling to Chicago for the signing the partnership arrangement.

Old Dogs, Old Tricks

The best quote in the Guardian story is how the investigation went off the rails. The pictures looked alien to them, and after pursuing details on Hilda Blair Ray's past, Dew said, “You start to fill in the blanks." Those blanks were filled with wishful thinking instead of evidence.

BeWitness promoter Jaime Maussan didn't get much coverage in the article, and it’s almost sad that "World-famous researcher" Anthony Bragalia who dreamed up much of the Slides narrative was not even mentioned.

If at first you don't succeed...

Jaime Maussan has never given up on the Slides and continues to promote them, and has since used some of the same “experts” to promote a series of Peruvian mummies as alien bodies. The enterprise was was heavily promoted and exploited by the subscription-based video service Gaia, that bills itself as “a member-supported conscious media company.” For further details, see The Atlantic's article, "The Racism Behind Alien Mummy Hoaxes by Christopher Heaney," Aug. 1, 2017

The new Guardian piece closes by saying that Dew intends to complete his documentary, Kodachrome, but otherwise life goes on. Of Carey and Schmitt, Dew says, “They got their hopes up,” but “will never get the answers they are looking for.”

There’s an interesting question that may not have been asked. Let’s assume Beason was sincere in approaching Carey and Schmitt, asking “I want you to help verify” the Slides. If so, doesn’t Slidebox Media, LLC have a case against Carey and Schmitt for failure to perform the contracted duty? None of the evidence produced in support of the Slides as alien turned out to be accurate.

For an insider's look of the story of the investigation and exposure of the BeWitness fiasco, there's my essay on the Roswell Slides Research Group in UFOs: Reframing the Debate, "What's Wrong With This Picture?"Further details on that in a previous article, "UFOs: Reframing the Roswell Slides Fiasco."

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See Also:

The Roswell Slides - Who Got the Five Grand?

The Next Not Roswell Slides Chapter

The Roswell Slides Slow and Painful Death

SEE ALL ROSWELL SLIDES ARTICLES

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

The Next Not Roswell Slides Chapter

By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 10-5-15

      One of the reasons that the posts here appear on an irregular basis is that I wait for some sort of inspiration to hit. I had put up the post on the size of the debris field with the idea to do the same with descriptions of the debris, or which officers said what about the crash and the like. Rich Reynolds also chastised me for not answering his question about UFO movies and I wanted to do something with the Hangar One nonsense about the Kingman UFO crash which I figured would alienate most of MUFON and the entire population of Kingman. Today, however, a question that I had no answer for appears to have an answer.

I had wondered why Tom Carey had so tenaciously held onto the idea that the image in the Not Roswell Slides was an alien creature. I wondered why Don Schmitt seemed to vacillate between understanding the image was an unfortunate child and it was actually something alien. Given the evidence and documentation, it seemed that the image’s identity was obvious to anyone who looked at it dispassionately, at the other photographs available of that mummy and at the documentation that surrounded its discovery, recovery and display in museums in Colorado and Arizona.

Today, I have the answer in the form of a new book by them, and Jaime Maussan, as part of the BeWitness project or whatever they called it. I’m not going to publish the link because this is not a book that should be in any serious library besides it is currently only available in Spanish. It reminds me of the continuing series of books and programs on the Bermuda Triangle after Lawrence Kusche wrote The Bermuda Triangle Mystery – Solved. It did, in its pages, produce an intelligent and viable solution to the questions asked about the Triangle and seems to be ignored in most documentaries about that nonsense.

We are in the same place with the Not Roswell Slides. The identity of the image has been well established yet we are subjected to another “analysis” of that image based only on what is shown in the pictures and not on an examination of the remains. I suspect they will reject the research done by others that is in conflict with what they say, will trot out the same experts to endorse their original opinions, and continue to promote this as some sort of evidence of alien visitation.

Yes, I am making this prediction on nothing more than the fact the book is available as an ebook (in Spanish for nearly 20 bucks) and one that I have no intention of buying… and yes again, it is difficult to “review” a book without actually reading it, but then I do know the story of how all this came about and what the evidence supporting their conclusions are. Unless this is an expose on how they were duped into supporting the idea that the image was of an alien creature this new ebook will not reflect any sort of reality. If it is just an outgrowth of the fiasco in Mexico City, this marks the further decline in what we now laughingly call Ufology. I thought we had hit bottom in the hours after Mexico City but I see that I was wrong.

Continue Reading ►

See Also:

The Roswell Slides Slow and Painful Death

Scientists and the Roswell Slides

Roswell Slides Insanity Continues ...

BEWOEFUL: The Death of The Roswell Slides

Roswell Slides: 'Dead on Arrival'

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

The Roswell Slides Slow and Painful Death

By Tim Printy SUNlite 9-29-15

     After the release of SUNlite 7-4, the Roswell Slides debacle practically disappeared from the Internet. Maussan and his experts appeared to be still sticking to their guns regarding the supposed size of the body and that the body is not the mummy that was on display at Montezuma Castle/Mesa Verde. Most of their arguments are severely flawed as I pointed out in last issue. They have yet to hold their planned press conference, which was canceled last June. Maybe Maussan will hope that his failure will fade from memory and he can move on to the next UFO promotional event.

From what I have been able to understand, Schmitt and Carey did not mention the slides at the Roswell festival. In August, Carey finally appeared to tell everyone on the Jim Harold podcast that the case was not closed on the slides. His arguments were all the same nonsense spouted out prior to SUNlite 7-4. They are as weak as they are worthless. Carey then went out of his way to show disdain for certain members of the Roswell Slides Research Group. We rained on his parade and now he is attempting to demonize the group.

Meanwhile, the Carey and Schmitt apologists have figured a way to keep them credible. They are being excused for their woefully inadequate research by stating they were limited by Adam Dew’s control of the slides. It is hard to believe such exaggerations because all of the promoters claimed to have access to the high quality scans of the slides prior to the event. Deblurring Bragalia’s scans demonstrated the evidence was there for all to discover. They simply did not want to look.

This excuse of being fooled by Dew, if accurate, brings up a serious problem with Carey and Schmitt’s research that they publish. If they were so easily fooled by a photograph of a mummy, what does it say for all those interviews they claim prove Roswell was the crash of an alien spaceship? Is it possible that some, most, or all of their witnesses have been fooling them as well? How much of what they write is just as inaccurate as the research they conducted on the slides themselves? Quite a few of the statements made by these two “respected researchers” before and after May 5th were so inaccurate and misleading that one has to really question just about anything they say or write about the subject. I have been under the opinion for many years that the writings in Schmitt and Carey’s books are wild exaggerations and distortions. The Roswell slides fiasco confirmed that opinion.

Ten “undeniable truths” about the Roswell slides

Based on how Tom Carey and Don Schmitt write their conclusions about Roswell, an “Undeniable truth” does not have to be a fact. It is just their opinion. With that in mind, I created some of my own “undeniable truths” regarding the Roswell slides. However, contrary to what Carey and Schmitt state about the Roswell case, many of these “truths” ARE facts. Others are opinions based on a preponderance of the evidence.

1. Tom Carey, after examining the slides, declared that the photographs were not taken in a museum setting even though there are numerous artifacts visible in the photograph that demonstrate it was a museum of some kind.

2. Don Schmitt conceded that the slides showed a mummy but reversed his opinion a few weeks later.

3. Tom Carey stated that skeptics could not admit when they are wrong but can not admit he might have made a mistake with the Roswell slides.

4. The placard, when deblurred, states that the body is that of a mummified two year old boy. This is a proven fact that many people have been able to replicate.

5. There was a mummified body of a two year old boy that was on display at Mesa Verde in early 1947. Photographs of this body in the records, despite objections by Carey, Schmitt, and Maussan, are a good match to the body seen in the Roswell slides.

6. The Rays visited Colorado during the mid to late 1940s as evidenced by their photographs from the region.

7. There is no evidence, that can be verified, which proves Bernard and Hilda Ray ever personally knew the Eisenhowers.

8. Jaimie Maussan has reneged on his reward for photographs that match the Roswell slides. He can make everyone think the body is not the same but the evidence indicates otherwise.

9. None of the scientists, employed by Maussan, have published any of their findings in independent scientific journals where their work is subject to criticism from qualified experts.

10. There is no evidence presented that the Roswell Slides are a photograph of an alien discovered at Roswell or that it is something that is not human.

Continue Reading ►

See Also:

Scientists and the Roswell Slides

Roswell Slides Insanity Continues ...

BEWOEFUL: The Death of The Roswell Slides

Roswell Slides: 'Dead on Arrival'

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE