\n The episode helped ignite decades of speculation that something far stranger had fallen from the sky \u2014 and that whatever was recovered, including rumors of bodies that didn\u2019t belong to human beings, was quietly transported to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a sprawling military installation in Ohio long speculated to house secret government research into unidentified flying objects.\n <\/p>\n
\n Renewed attention is falling on the base after the disappearance of retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, <\/a>a former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson whose career placed him at the center of some of the Pentagon\u2019s most advanced aerospace research.\n <\/p>\n \n The US Air Force has repeatedly denied<\/a> any extraterrestrial technology or \u201calien bodies\u201d were ever in their possession. But Donald Schmitt, the lead investigator at the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, says he believes the government is not telling the truth.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe are presently up to 30 deathbed confessions, all admissible in a court of law, attesting that it did happen. I can\u2019t say that about 99.9% of the other UFO cases, because they\u2019re very fleeting. It\u2019s a sighting, it\u2019s a photograph, it\u2019s a video. Now you see it. Now you don\u2019t,\u201d Schmitt said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWith Roswell, you have the actual recovery of a craft, the remains, the wreckage and the crew, the bodies (from a craft of unknown origin),\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Since the Roswell crash, over 1,600 reports of possible sightings <\/a>have been made in the US alone, according to the Department of Defense, but Russia, China and Japan, among other countries, also are tracking sightings.\n <\/p>\n \n In recent years, both extraterrestrial enthusiasts and doubters have been drawn to dramatic government-released military videos<\/a> and reports of unidentified aerial encounters<\/a>, as well as high-profile congressional hearings<\/a> featuring whistleblowers who claim firsthand knowledge of unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, the modern term for UFOs.\n <\/p>\n \n But Wright-Patterson has played a central role in the US military\u2019s real investigations into mysterious objects in the sky \u2014 from Cold War-era research programs to efforts to study UAPs.\n <\/p>\n \n While authorities say there is no evidence linking McCasland\u2019s disappearance from his Albuquerque home to UFO research, the case has revived curiosity about the base and the decades of speculation surrounding it.\n <\/p>\n \n Here\u2019s what we know about the mysterious military base and UFO lore.\n <\/p>\n \n Long before it became the subject of UFO speculation, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was one of the most important research centers in the US military.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf there was ever a center of gravity for research and development and for all the spooky things that the US government works on, Wright-Patterson\u2019s right there at the top of the list,\u201d said Luis Elizondo, a former Department of Defense intelligence officer who has advocated for greater transparency about unidentified aerial phenomena.\n <\/p>\n \n The base traces its origins to 1917, when the US Army established aviation facilities near Dayton, Ohio, during World War I. Military aviation was still in its infancy, and the site was chosen in part because of its proximity to the home of pioneering aviators Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n Wright\u2011Patterson\u2019s historical association with the study of unfamiliar aerospace technology stems from its role during the Cold War as a center for US Air Force technical intelligence and analysis.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n Eventually, the base evolved into one of the Pentagon\u2019s primary hubs for aerospace research, engineering and intelligence. Today, the base hosts several key organizations, including the Air Force Research Laboratory, where scientists and engineers develop technologies ranging from advanced aircraft materials to cutting-edge propulsion systems.\n <\/p>\n \n McCasland, the missing general who retired nearly 13 years ago, once commanded the laboratory. Marik Von Rennenkampff, a former national security analyst during the Obama administration who also worked for the Department of Defense, described it as \u201cwhere all the super secret research happens.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The base is also home to the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, which analyzes foreign aerospace systems and emerging threats.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe lore is that people are inclined to believe that there was a crash at Roswell, and there\u2019s been a lot of reporting over the years of witnesses and deathbed confessions, but allegedly, (the intelligence center) is where those retrieved materials were ultimately taken for research and study,\u201d Von Rennenkampff said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s really a hub for all things in Air Force intelligence, military intelligence, but also has those very, very interesting links, both to UFOs and McCasland himself.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Officials at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base referred CNN\u2019s request for comment to the Department of Defense public affairs office at the Pentagon, which has not yet responded.\n <\/p>\n The lore of UFO and extraterrestrial sightings<\/p>\n \n In New Mexico, UFO lore is part of the cultural fabric. For decades, many residents have believed visitors from somewhere far beyond Earth may have landed on the plains east of the Sierra Blanca mountain range.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI do remember stories from youth of those that spoke with some of the men that worked at the base that held the wreckage and the aliens they picked up and kept in storage there,\u201d Nancy Crownover, who lives in Ruidoso, New Mexico, about 75 miles from Roswell, told CNN.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI will say they were very believable. Much like I believe that my Native friend saw Sasquatch. There are always those that will say they don\u2019t believe. I appreciate a world that is so much more fun and interesting with aliens,\u201d Crownover said.\n <\/p>\n \n Interest in UAPs surged decades after the Roswell Incident, fueled by the release of military videos showing objects moving in ways that seemed to defy physics.\n <\/p>\n \n One of the most widely discussed episodes was the USS Nimitz UFO Incident in 2004,<\/a> in which Navy pilots reported seeing unidentified objects performing abrupt maneuvers at incredible speeds over the Pacific. Similar encounters by military aviators around the world added to the public\u2019s fascination \u2014 and skepticism \u2014 about what might be lurking in the skies.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAt first I thought, \u2018this is squarely tinfoil hat territory,\u2019\u201d said Von Rennenkampff, but hearing credible military pilots describe encounters,<\/a> backed by radar and video data, changed his perspective.\n <\/p>\n \n Von Rennenkampff said he heard retired Navy Commander David Fravor, former skipper of the VFA-41 squadron known as \u201cBlack Aces,\u201d talk on a podcast about witnessing along with three other pilots a Tic Tac-shaped UAP off the San Diego coast in 2004, \u201cdoing this really extraordinary maneuvering, without wings, tail propulsion, and then suddenly shooting off, literally in front of their eyes.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The Pentagon released in 2020 three short videos<\/a> showing the flying objects rapidly moving while recorded by infrared cameras. Two of the videos contain service members reacting in awe at how quickly the objects moved.\n <\/p>\n \n Project Blue Book<\/a> was also one of the US Air Force\u2019s most sustained official investigations into unidentified aerial phenomena, running from the early 1950s until its closure in 1969.\n <\/p>\n \n Von Rennenkampff noted the project has been criticized by some researchers as more of a public relations effort than a rigorous scientific inquiry, because explanations were often offered for cases the Air Force wanted to dismiss.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe CIA explicitly said it should be the government\u2019s objective to \u2018debunk\u2019 UFO sightings, and after that, Blue Book really became a debunking operations, no matter how credible, how many witnesses, they slapped these truly absurd \u2018explanations\u2019 on UFO sightings,\u201d Von Rennenkampff said.\n <\/p>\n \n Businessman and historian David Coleman, a 51-year-old from outside Chicago, says he became a true believer in the UFO and extraterrestrial topic after his own otherworldly encounter shortly after he moved to Quito, Ecuador, in 2009.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI saw an irregularly shaped set of lights on something that definitely could not be an airplane or a helicopter or a drone, also no noise,\u201d Coleman told CNN. \u201cThe lights were a circular shape and white, a white ring of lights on the outside and then a red single light in the center.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThis is what triggered my curiosity to research the subject. And from curiosity, it definitely turned into somewhat of an obsession,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Coleman says his belief that aliens are real has not changed his day-to-day life.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cTheir record for non-interference is pretty much 100% in terms of being looked at as peaceful in a general sense,\u201d Coleman said. \u201cI think society has evolved enough that we could handle UFO disclosure. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to rock the foundations of religion. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to topple the markets in terms of economic questions.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But on the flip side, he says there is also a darker side looming that does scare him.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf you start to look at the accumulated data between human abductions and animal abductions, there\u2019s definitely something scary going on \u2026some sort of biological interest on the part of the visitors to collect anatomy,\u201d Coleman explained.\n <\/p>\n Congressional hearings and modern whistleblower claims<\/p>\n \n In recent years, unidentified aerial phenomena have moved from the fringes of public discussion into the halls of Congress, signaling growing bipartisan interest in understanding unexplained aerial sightings.\n <\/p>\n![\"Retired](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/130409-f-jz004-207.jpg\")
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