Oscar De Los Santos, Ph.D. and Kelly L. Goodridge, M.A., M.F.A.
Introduction
Our essay examines the History Channel program, Project Blue Book (2019-2020). Unlike some of the channel’s documentary offerings, Project Blue Book is a fictional drama, even though each episode stresses that the stories presented are based on real incidents ostensibly involving unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrials. Project Blue Book the series also incorporates actual historical figures into its stories. In fact, its primary focus is on famed astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who worked with the military and scientific communities and eventually gave us the “close encounters” identification breakdowns that fueled Steven Spielberg’s imagination and resulted in an iconic 1977 science fiction film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Like Hynek, the government program Project Blue Book was also real, its purpose was primarily to examine the American public’s reports of unidentified flying objects and sightings of extraterrestrials. The Air Force monitored the UFO problem for 22 years, from Project Sign in 1947, to Project Grudge in 1949, to Project Blue Book, from 1952 until its cancellation in 1969. Hynek entered the program as a skeptic and the Air Force was quick to dismiss most of the investigated cases, but the astronomer grew increasingly perplexed by some reports that weren’t as easily solved or dismissed as hoaxes or natural phenomena. Although known for his rational explanations of incredible events, Hynek eventually came to believe that some sort of unknown life – i.e., not of this earth – was visiting our planet; however, it took much longer for Hynek to change his mind about UFOs and space aliens than Project Blue Book the TV series allows. Still, if the latter were the program’s only distortion of facts, it might be forgiven, but the cases that it presents – events already brimming with drama and high strangeness as initially reported – are further embellished by the show’s writers. In fact, the show goes out of its way to add to extraordinary stories told by often terrified witnesses. This further distorts stories that are already questioned by skeptics. To clarify: Our agenda in this paper is not to argue for or against the belief that UFOs are piloted by extraterrestrials who are visiting earth for who knows what reason. Instead, we wish to examine two stories presented in Project Blue Book the TV series to explain how the show goes off the proverbial rails (or runway) in presenting already wondrous stories that in our opinion would be better served if chronicled as originally told by their originators.
Project Blue Book Meets the Flatwoods Monster
Flatwoods, West Virginia in Braxton County is about 80 miles east of another iconic high-strangeness location in the state, Point Pleasant; however, the Flatwoods Monster was born some 14 years before Mothman. Here is a very brief summary of the event: On September 12, 1952, local brothers Ed and Freddy May, 12 and 13, respectively, together with their 10-year-old friend Tommy Hyer, spotted a brilliant light streaking across the evening sky. The orb disappeared into the nearby woods near the Fisher Farm. The boys ran back to the May home and told their mother, Kathleen May, what they saw. Mrs. May, another young boy, a dog named Rickie, and seventeen-year-old National Guardsman Eugene Lemon trekked into the woods to investigate. As the group drew close to the area where the boys believed the light landed, they spotted a pulsing glow in the distance. Some in the group claimed to hear “a low beating or thumping noise” emanating from the glow, as well as “a sort of hissing sound . . . similar to a jet plane” (Jessee).
National Guardsman Lemon directed his flashlight beam into the woods. In an interview, he claimed to have spotted a giant “man-like figure with a round, red face surrounded by a pointed, hood-like shape.” Mrs. May described the creature as towering, with an Ace of Spades shaped head, glowing red eyes, and small arms that ended in claws. The National Guardsman was so frightened that he dropped his flashlight, triggering the group to stampede back to the May house. Several later said they experienced nausea brought on by a “pungent mist” at the site. According to John Gibson, a local high school freshman who knew all involved, “‘One of the boys peed his pants [and] [t]heir dog (Rickie) ran with his tail between his legs.’” Gibson also claims that “‘Mrs. May and the National Guard kid ended up going to New York to talk to CBS’” (Wenzl).
Braxton County native Gray Barker, who made a career of reporting high strangeness beginning with the Flatwoods case, interviewed the witnesses extensively. Yet as if the events as reported to Barker and eager members of the press were not dramatic enough, Project Blue Book the TV series puts a different spin on the Flatwoods event. For instance, the pulsing glow in the woods reported by the witnesses becomes a fiery conflagration that seems to have burned away a good portion of a field. And while Mrs. May and the children saw a tall entity with a curiously shaped head and red eyes, it was not the gigantic black goblin with the burning orbs depicted in the TV show. The children in the TV episode suffer from eye irritation. Nothing like that occurred to anyone involved in the Flatwoods incident. Years later, in his book, The Mothman Prophecies (1975), John Keel would report cases of conjunctivitis associated with UFO encounters in and around Point Pleasant. And in 1980, Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum claimed to have suffered eye damage as a result of a close encounter with a UFO in Texas.
While townsfolk in the village of Flatwoods were shocked by the real incident, they didn’t turn on Mrs. May, her boys, or any of the other Flatwoods Monster witnesses. Rifle-toting Flatwoods citizens certainly didn’t demonize Mrs. May or park outside her house, as occurs in the TV show. In fact, as the episode nears its climax, the mob surrounding the May house resembles that of a classic Universal horror film, the agitated crowd seemingly ready to level the structure with rifles and clubs.
Enter the TV show’s fictionalized J. Allen Hynek (Aidan Guillen) and his sidekick, Captain Michael Quinn (Michael Malarkey), who not only investigate the incident, but discover that the scorched area where the monster was spotted is radioactive (it wasn’t in the real incident), help the kids with their eye irritations, diffuse tension among the town’s citizens, disarm one member of the mob, and figure out that the monster sighting was nothing more than a combination of tall tree and great horned owl. They even hold a town meeting and hand out flyers comparing a drawing of the frightening creature with an owl. Citizens erupt in applause, the monster witnesses are forgiven, and life returns to whatever passes for normal in Flatwoods.
Except for a group of citizens spotting a brilliant light streaking across the sky and being frightened in the woods shortly afterward, nothing resembling the events depicted in Project Blue Book the TV show happened in Flatwoods in September 1952. In fact, J. Allen Hynek didn’t even go to the village to investigate the case. Project Blue Book relied on “an astronomy club out of Ohio” to cover the incident. Its members determined that the fireball witnessed by the May boys and others was a meteor. Project Blue Book didn’t offer an explanation for the alleged creature sighting, even though it filed the case under the title, “West Virginia monster so called” (Rojas).
Someone who did travel to Flatwoods in 2000 is The Skeptical Inquirer’s Joe Nickell. He determined that a group of townsfolk spotted nothing more monstrous than a meteor streaking across the sky in 1952. The glow in the farm field? Nickell attributed it to red aircraft beacons visible through the woods. And the horrifying monster itself? It wasn’t an alien, according to Nickell, but a barn owl perched atop a tall tree limb. Project Blue Book the TV show may have borrowed much from Nickell’s investigation, but he isn’t the star of the TV show, so it’s J. Allen Hynek who kills the Flatwoods monster by explaining it away.
Except that in real life, as opposed to reel life, it’s still very much alive – sort of. Today, Flatwoods continues to capitalize on its notoriety. And who can blame its citizens for providing Flatwoods Monster photo-op props for eager tourists, as well as a museum, monster trinkets for purchasing, and even an annual Flatwoods Days celebration?
This episode of Project Blue Book continues to advance subplots involving J. Allen Hynek’s wife, Mimi Hynek (Laura Mennell), a mysterious Russian agent (Susie Miller); Men in Black, and unusual codes and symbols that may point to extraterrestrial visitations. These not only evoke the era’s Cold War spy obsession but imbue the show with undercurrents of government secrecy and subterfuge that many associate with extraterrestrials and conspiracy. It’s the kind of conundrum creation we’ve long grown used to, thanks to such shows as The X-Files. Mixed together, this hodgepodge amps up the entertainment factor of Project Blue Book. At the same time, for some of us who study cases of high strangeness and work hard to distill their facts from fictions, the reconceptualization of already remarkable incidents for the sake of dramatic entertainment leaves us frustrated and somewhat uneasy.
Another Spin ‘Round The Roswell Incident a la Project Blue Book
The U.S. Government has changed its story five times about what was first reported to be a crashed disc in Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. What’s more, the UFO crashes in New Mexico in 1947 have launched a long-term campaign of secrets and disinformation. So much so, that it is still being talked about, written about, and featured in television and film 73 years later. To date, no one beyond the government knows more than what eyewitnesses have reported about the New Mexico crashes. It began on July 3, 1947 when ranch foreman William “Mac” Brazel and his young seven-year-old neighbor Dee Procter were out checking the Foster Ranch for damage from the previous night’s violent thunderstorm when they stumbled upon the remains of a crashed UFO or “flying disc.” Nuclear Physicist, Stanton T. Friedman details in his co-authored book Crash At Corona: The U. S. Military Retrieval and Cover-up of a UFO (1992), that eventually three crash sites were discovered in the Corona area: the debris field first discovered by Mac Brazel, the place where the UFO crash landed, and the place where the four alien bodies were found in their “escape capsules” by the Plains of San Agustin – a place where about a dozen civilians observed the wreckage before the military arrived, including a group of student archaeologists or geologists, who like Brazel and other eyewitnesses, claim they were threatened and told that it was their patriotic duty to “remain silent” (Crash At Corona 105).
The first story the U. S. Army Air Forces issued was in a press release that stated: “The 509th Bomb Group at the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF), had captured a flying saucer that crashed nearby.” This release resulted in the Roswell Daily Record’s headline: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region” was published on July 8, 1947.
Project Blue Book presents historical figures and real UFO Project Blue Book investigations like Roswell, Barney and Betty Hill, Skinwalker Ranch and the Flatwoods Monster. Roswell is a two-episode story (S 2 E 1 & 2), and like all the UFO cases featured in the History Channel’s television series, these episodes offer a blend of drama, actual historical events and conspiracy. In fact, Project Blue Book’s Roswell episodes present the mystery and government coverup surrounding the 1947 crashes in Roswell with considerable embellishment. The result is exceptional acting by Capt. Michael Quinn (Michael Malarkey), a fictional character inspired by real-life USAF Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the first director of Project Blue Book; Dr. J. Allen Hynek (Aidan Gillen), astronomer, astrophysicist, Ufologist and professor working on Project Blue Book; General Hugh Valentine (Michael Harney), the founder of the real Project Blue Book and USAF Major General; andGeneral James Harding (Neal McDonough), a character based on the co-founder of the real Project Blue Book. All are convincing and the elaborate period sets and costumes transport viewers to a different time – 1953.
Six years after the Roswell crashes, Dr. Hynek and Capt. Quinn, working for the government’s Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s investigation into UFO encounters, are assigned to follow General Harding to Roswell, New Mexico. They arrive to a threat by an anonymous townsperson, who is threatening to expose evidence of a 1947 extraterrestrial crash-landing six years prior. These episodes offer the historical backdrop for exploration of an extraterrestrial crash in the desert, U.S. Government abuse of power and buying off of citizens and eyewitnesses in an effort to silence them. As if that weren’t enough, an alien skeleton, and an alien autopsy film are thrown in for added intrigue.
Rather than real-life rancher Mac Brazel, a young couple discovers the UFO gouged into the New Mexico desert. The husband, obsessed with what he saw, has built his own UFO in a Spielberg-ish manner. In episode two, the husband is taken into custody for planting his UFO on Main Street in downtown Roswell in an effort to force the government to tell the truth about the July 1947 crash. According to witness and family reports, Brazel was allegedly held in custody against his will by the RAAF for almost a week, threatened and paid to keep silent. Brazel, a man who scraped by prior to the alleged saucer crash, bought a new truck and moved away shortly after he was released from custody. In Project Blue Book, the young man, bitter from the lies and mistreatment from the government six years earlier, is offered a check by Gen. Harding to buy his silence (S 2 E 2). There is also mention that others were bought off yet, Witness to Roswell, which features over 600 alleged witnesses (firsthand, military, family members and acquaintances) surrounding the crash at Roswell, asserts that Brazel is the only witness believed to have received renumeration from the government.
While Mac Brazel wasn’t interviewed by a local TV station after the Roswell Incident, he reportedly gave a wire-recorded interview to the local Roswell radio station, KGFL, prior to being taken into custody by the RAAF. A few days later, while still in custody, he was escorted back to the radio station by military to retract his statement (Witness to Roswell 68). Brazel is also reported to have told his family, “Those people will kill you if I tell you what I know” (Witness to Roswell 76). This kind of intimidation is hinted at in Project Blue Book where the young husband and rancher is waterboarded while in custody. Brazel became a bit of a recluse and refused to talk about Roswell after he was released. Family members are on record stating that he was never the same and stated, “I should have buried that thing” (Witness to Roswell 80).
Project Blue Book offers much more embellishment to the Roswell mystery, some of which is truly outlandish. For instance, it featuresa military officer who claims he was guarding the perimeter of the crash site one night when he shot and killed an alien being that was trying to escape. He told Capt. Quinn and Hynek that he buried the being on his property. As if that weren’t explosive drama enough, the investigative team digs up an alien skeleton and takes it to the local mortuary after hours for examination (Project Blue Book S 2 E 2). While there are no reports of this occurring in the actual version of events, this might be another hat tip to history. Part-time mortician Glenn Dennis is on record claiming that after the Roswell crash in 1947, that he received “calls from the RAAF ‘mortuary officer’ wanting to know his availability of ‘child-sized’ caskets’” (Witness to Roswell 146).
In 1978 the former intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group, Jesse Marcel went on the record to state that what crashed outside of Roswell in 1947 ‘“was no weather balloon, but something ‘not of this Earth.’’’ Marcel waited 31 years to tell his story because he was bound to his military oath and what many call “rank and reluctance:” that is, the higher one’s rank, the more reluctant they will be to say anything. Marcel had had a distinguished career and was a highly decorated intelligence officer. Yet, his statement fanned the flames of conspiracy in 1978. Despite his distinguished career, Major Jesse Marcel stated that what he recovered in the Roswell, New Mexico desert in July 1947 was extraterrestrial (Witness to Roswell 86). Project Blue Book shows that a cover up and conspiracy was already in place as Capt. Quinn and Hynek face opposition in their investigation of Roswell and other cases featured in the series. Stanton Friedman points out, “all classified documents are eventually declassified within twenty years, or at the most thirty or forty years, but documents from the Roswell Incident are not available” (Flying Saucers and Science: A Scientist Investigates the Mysteries of UFOs 138). Yet, in Project Blue Book, it’s only six years after the Roswell Incident when Capt. Quinn and Hynek go into the Walker Air Force Base records room to find that all the Roswell files are missing.
Throughout the series Capt. Quinn and Hynek are overdramatized as champions for truth. Each is willing to work against his own government trying to uncover it. This modern spin of heroism is pure mythmaking. Hynek died in 1978, but in his 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, he offers his opinion on storytelling with regard to Ufology. He writes, “A good book on UFOs’ should, I think, be honest, without prejudgment; it should be factual and as well documented as possible. It should not be, however, a book that retails – or retells – UFO stories for the sake of their story value” (8).
Project Blue Book’s Roswell Incident finale offers even more embellishment with the young rancher, his wife and others in the town – fed up with the government’s lack of transparency and abuse – trying to trick General Harding into admitting there was an alien crash in 1947. They draw Gen. Harding to the local television station with the promise of an interview and instead, intend to trick him into confessing by showing the famed 1995 “Alien Autopsy” film. Joe Nickell, the Senior Research Fellow with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, investigated the famed “Alien Autopsy” film for Skeptical Inquirer Magazine and asserts that the “Alien Autopsy” film is the most elaborate Roswell hoax of all and is the one that probably has reached the largest audience. The flagrant disregard for the timeline of events – it’s off by 48 years – is jarring to viewers with any knowledge of Roswell. This is not unlike the rapid time compression and transformation of Dr. Hynek in the series. Hynekgoes from debunker and scientist to believer of the phenomena in just a few episodes, a process which took him years in real life – to arrive at the realization that the “rational universe” on occasion harbors events that “deny scientific explanation” (The UFO Experience 38).
In fact, the series consistently compresses years of study and discovery to enhance the telling of the Roswell story. Further evidence of exaggeration is witnessed in an alien being floating in a tank, the appearance of sinister Men In Black, who save Hynek’s life at one-point, Russian spies, and a visit to Area 51. Oh, and Dr. Hynek and Capt. Quinn are presumablyabducted by aliens – an episode that ends with their car bathed in a conical light, but the storyline doesn’t develop or explain their time aboard a spaceship. The end of season two, episode two of the series shows Gen. Harding and Gen. Valentine watching the confiscated “Alien Autopsy” film. Obviously shaken, Gen. Harding is reminded by Gen. Valentine that these occupants were the creation of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele at Stalin’s request. Harding seems unconvinced, but this series’ inclusion of a theory of “grotesque, child-sized aviators . . . sent over in a Russian spacecraft” presented in Annie Jacobsen’s 2011 book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base shows Project Blue Book waters down historical events with outrageous claims that do not follow any historical timeline (Area 51 371).
Conclusion
Project Blue Book the TV series is an embarrassment of riches. It conflates numerous aspects of UFO lore that came before and after the events depicted in the TV show. Yes, it is entertaining, but more so for those who don’t know about the historical timeline of ufology and the actual players involved. Those who do will see that it sensationalizes history and does little to understand the actual events that serve as the show’s inspiration. Admittedly, the latter is not the show’s primary objective. Project Blue Book resembles a roman a clef, but only to a point. It distorts real-life case serving as episode focal points and uses constructs of actual people – J. Allen Hynek and his wife, for instance, as well as John F. Kennedy (Casper Phillipson) – before heroizing them. With Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) as one of its executive producers, the show’s excellent production values aren’t surprising. It more than succeeds in capturing the nation’s Cold War paranoid mindset. For anyone who doesn’t know much about the actual incidents used to launch each episode, its entertainment factor is high. For those who know about the featured cases, frustration may trump satisfaction.
Works Cited and Consulted
Berliner, Don, and Friedman, Stanton T. Crash At Corona: The U. S. Military Retrieval and Cover-up of a UFO. New York: Paragon House, 1992. Print.
Carey, Thomas J, and Schmitt, Donald R. Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the Government’s Biggest Cover-Up. New Jersey: New Page Books, 2009. Print.
Friedman, Stanton T., MSc. Flying Saucers and Science: A Scientist Investigates the Mysteries of UFOs. New Jersey: New Page Books, 2008. Print.
Hynek, J. Allen. The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Washington: New Saucerian Press, 2017. Print.
Jacobsen, Annie. Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base.New York: Back Bay Books/Little Brown and Company, 2011. Print.
Jessee, B. “The Flatwoods Monster: A Tale of the Atomic Age.” Medium. November 24, 2019. https://medium.com/the-mysterious-miscellany/https-medium-com-the-mysterious-miscellany-close-encounters-of-the-feathered-kind-the-flatwoods-monster-e519e1b9ce6b. Accessed October 18, 2020.
Keel, John. The Mothman Prophecies. New York: TOR / Tom Doherty Associates, 2013 (originally published in 1975).
Rojas, Alejandro. “Project Blue Book Easter Egg and Reference Guide.” Den of Geek. April 6, 2019. Den of Geek. https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/project-blue-book-easter-egg-reference-guide/. Accessed October 18, 2020.
“The Flatwoods Monster.” Project Blue Book (TV series). Directed by Robert Stromberg. Written by Sean Jablonski. Original air date: January 15, 2019.
Project Blue Book. Created by David O’Leary. Executive Producers: Robert Zemeckis, David O’Leary, Sean Jablonski. Starring Aidan Guillen and Michael Malarkey. Two Seasons (January 8, 2019-March 24, 2020). Originally broadcast on the History Channel.
“The Roswell Incident – Part I.” Project Blue Book (TV series). Directed by Deran Sarafian. Written by David O’Leary. Original air date: January 21, 2020.
“The Roswell Incident – Part II.” Project Blue Book (TV series.) Directed by Deran Sarafian. Written by Sean Jablonski. Original air date: January 28, 2020.
“TRANSCRIPT OF BERGSTROM AFB INTERVIEW OF BETTY CASH, VICKIE & COLBY LANDRUM: August 1981.” CUFON (The Computer UFO Network). Publication Date Unknown. https://www.cufon.org/cufon/cashlani.htm. Accessed October 18, 2020.
Wenzl, Roy. “In 1952, the Flatwoods Monster Terrified 6 Kids, a Mom, a Dog – and the Nation.” History. July 20, 2018. https://www.history.com/news/flatwoods-monster-west-virginia. Accessed October 18, 2020.
Oscar De Los Santos, Ph.D., is former chair of the Writing Department at Western Connecticut State University, where he teaches fiction and essay workshops. His fiction includes Hardboiled Egg and Infinite Wonderlands (with David G. Mead); edited fiction and non-fiction collections include The Living Pulps, Reel Rebels, and When Genres Collide (with Thomas J. Morrissey).
Kelly L. Goodridge, M.A., M.F.A., teaches fiction and nonfiction workshops at Western Connecticut State University. She earned her Master’s degree in English from Western Connecticut State University and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Kelly is the coauthor of 25 Questions All Writers Should Ask Themselves (with Oscar De Los Santos). A former journalist, her articles, essays, and short stories have been featured in The New Fairfield Citizen News, The Ridgefield Press, Madame Luna and Other Moon Stories, and When Genres Collide.