Local UFO expert to sponsor film festival
Believes he has debris from crashed saucer

Chuck Wade makes adjustments to an inflatable alien outside El Morro Theater Thursday afternoon. Wade put the alien in front of the theater to promote the UFO Extravaganza film festival on Saturday beginning at 5 p.m. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

By Darrel Beehner
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Over the last 60 years, New Mexico has been a magnet for unidentified flying objects.

Besides the infamous Roswell incident, another perhaps even more spectacular crash is reported to have occurred in July of 1947 on the Plains of San Agustin, south of the area now known as the Very Large Array. According to accounts from the time, a U.S. Soil Conservation Service engineer came across a disk-shaped object with four small bodies nearby.

The engineer and other witnesses said the bodies were human-like but were shorter with large heads and slanted eyes. Before they could conduct a through examination of the bodies and the craft, U.S. Army trucks spirited the craft and bodies away.

Now the incident seems nothing more than folklore, except to a handful of people who believe they have uncovered parts of the craft during digs in recent years.

Among those who claim to have uncovered debris from the downed spacecraft is Gallup resident Chuck Wade.

Wade, who is sponsoring a UFO film festival Saturday at El Morro Theater, said he learned of the crash site while attending a UFO crash retrieval conference in Las Vegas, Nev., two years ago. During the conference he met Art Campbell, one of the presenters. In subsequent meetings with Campbell, who had allegedly found the crash site years before, Wade learned of the location.

Since then, Wade has returned to the site and unearthed dozens of pieces of metallic material he believes are remenants from the crash. He as several gray-colored pieces of light-weight material, some only .0011 of an inch thick, with a silicon coating on both sides.

"It damn sure's not a burrito wrapper," he said as he shows the various-sized pieces of material. "This stuff is put together."

Wade has sent several pieces of the material away to have it tested by an independent group of nine scientists. He's still awaiting their analysis.

Other thicker pieces are composed of iron and aluminum with a silcon coating, he said.

"It's not homogeneous," Wade said. "It's like adding raisins to a cake mix, it doesn't blend."

While some labs have expressed great interest in the material, others Wade said, feel the metal is nothing to get excited about.

"The scientists I've got working on it will go into isotopic ratios, which will tell if it is Earthly in origin."

Wade has an number of other items from the dig site that he will share during Saturday's UFO film festival. As part of the festival, Wade has invited people from the Standing Rock and Crownpoint areas who recently reported UFO sitings to offer tales of their encounters with the audience.

Saturday's festivities begin at 5:30 p.m. and include several speakers, a documentary on crop circles and a video presentation of UFO activities in Mexico.

Cost to attend the festival is $5 for adults, $3 for seniors and $2 for students in grades 2-12.

Information: 722-3377