Dennis

Roswell Mortician Glenn Dennis' Story,

'Nurse X', and Other Testimony about Small Bodies

Below is Glenn Dennis' affidavit from 1991 concerning phone calls from Roswell base about child-size caskets and preservation techniques, his confrontation in the base hospital with an officer who threatened his life, and a young, mystery base nurse (often referred to as "Nurse X") who allegedly participated in a prelimary autopsy of one of the aliens at the base hospital and provided him a description of the aliens.

Although Dennis' credibility has come under heavy attack (particularly from the inability to verify the existence of the nurse), there is some corroboration for parts of his story. Former Roswell police chief L.M. Hall remembered Dennis telling him about the calls from the base for child-size caskets only a few days after the newspaper stories of the crashed flying saucer. Thus it seems this part of Dennis' story is not of recent origin but dates back to the original event itself. Click here for Hall's affidavit.

David Wagnon, who was a young medical technician at the base hospital, remembered the young, attractive nurse fitting Dennis' description. Click here for Wagnon's affidavit.

Second-hand descriptions of the aliens from family members also seem to match the general description provided by Dennis. See, e.g., the affidavits of pilot Oliver "Pappy" Henderson's family. Henderson's wife recalled being told the beings were small with disproportionately large heads. She also recalled being told that the beings were packed in dry ice, a preservation technique Dennis said he recommended to prevent alteration of the chemical composition of the bodies. Henderson's daughter recalled being told that the aliens were "small and pale, with slanted eyes and large heads." Like Dennis, she remembered being told there were three bodies. Henderson's son and cousin also remember him telling the story.

At a reunion of his old WWII flight crew in 1982, Henderson again repeated his story. Lt. Vere McCarthy remembers Henderson saying, "...something to the effect that they were badly deteriorated from exposure and gnawed at by predators." Again, this strikingly similar to Dennis' story of two of the three bodies being torn by predators

Another very similar story came independently from Beverly Bean, daughter of Sgt. Melvin Brown. Bean has stated that her father spoke of being one of the soldiers to stand guard out at the crash site and later outside a hangar where the bodies were stored awaiting shipment. Although Brown's official military occupation was a cook and baker, he was also a decorated WWII veteran, including a bronze star, his service papers further listing him as an expert marksman. Bev Bean in a letter to researcher Leonard Stringfield wrote:

...he stood guard once outside a hangar where a crashed saucer was stored. He couldn't see anything

as it was all packed up and ready to be flown out to Texas the next day. We disagree on the number of

bodies he saw. I'm sure he said two, but one of my sisters said three... All available men stood guard

duty around the site where a crashed disc had come down and they couldn't understand why they had

to be kept cold, as there were trucks of ice... Although he and others were told they would get into

trouble if they saw too much, they did look under the cover and saw two small dead bodies. He said

they were like us, but not like us. They were smaller than a normal man with large heads and slanted

eyes. He also said they looked yellowish, a bit Asian... I remember when I got older and asked for

more information, he got angry and said, "that's all I know and I shouldn't have told you that much."

Whenever he talked about it, he always looked worried... [Source: Stringfield, Status Report V,

January 1989. Also Timothy Good, Alien Contact, 1991, which includes more of Bean's testimony

and some of Brown's military records.]

In another statement, Bean said her father described the alien bodies this way:

He said they were smaller han a normal man--about four feet--and had much larger heads than us,

with slanted eyes, and that the bodies looked yellowish, a bit Asian-looking. [Friedman and Berliner,

Crash at Corona, 1992]

One of the crew members of a B29 flight the next day to Fort Worth carrying a mystery crate likewise said the crew knew of the rumors of a crashed disc with bodies found inside. Months later, he also heard the body rumors from the wives gossiping about one of his neighbors who had participated in the clean-up:

Sometime afterwards, about three to six months later, the wives began talking among themselves about

the cleanup detail. This originated from the wives of men on that duty. One such was a neighbor of ours

in July 1947. They moved across town, but I would sometimes see him and I ask him what he had seen

out there. He was upset and told me, "You don't want to know." I think he was a baker because he

would leave for work in the early morning, like 0130 hours. A time or two when I'd come in from a late

flight he would be standing on the corner waiting for a ride. They did not own a car. Based on the wives

gossip we heard that he had seen a body.

Judging by this witness' description of the man as a "baker", he may have been referring to Sgt, Brown or one of his co-workers.

Now there is the Ramey teletype message to Gen. Vandenberg stating that there were "the victims of the wreck" and the victims "in the 'disc'" were going to be flown to Fort Worth. Whether mortician Dennis' Nurse X existed or not has become almost irrelevant.

AFFIDAVIT OF GLENN DENNIS

(1) My name is Glenn Dennis

(2) My address is: XXXXXXXXXX

(3) I am ( ) employed as: __________________________________ ( ) retured,

(4) In July 1947, I was a mortician, working for the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, which had a contract to provide mortuary services for the Roswell Army Air Field. One afternoon, around 1:15 or 1:30, I received a call from the base mortuary officer who asked what was the smallest size hermetically sealed casket that we had in stock. He said, "We need to know this in case something comes up in the future." He asked how long it would take to get one, and I assured him I could get one for him the following day. He said he would call back if they needed one.

(5) About 45 minutes to an hour later, he called back and asked me to describe the preparation for bodies that had been lying out on the desert for a period of time. Before I could answer, he said he specifically wanted to know what effect the preparation procedures would have on the body's chemical compounds, blood and tissues. I explained that our chemicals were mainly strong solutions of formaldehyde and water, and that the procedure would probably alter the body's chemical composition. I offered to come out to the base to assist with any problem he might have, but he reiterated that the information was for future use. I suggested that if he had such a situation that I would try to freeze the body in dry ice for storage and transportation.

(6) Approximately a hour or an hour and 15 minutes later, I got a call to transport a serviceman who had a laceration on his head and perhaps a fractured nose. I gave him first aid and drove him out to the base. I got there around 5:00 PM.

(7) Although I was a civilian, I usually had free access on the base because they knew me. I drove the ambulance around to the back of the base infirmary and parked it next to another ambulance. The door was open and inside I saw some wreckage. There were several pieces which looked like the bottom of a canoe, about three feet in length. It resembled stainless steel with a purple hue, as if it had been exposed to high temperature. There was some stange-looking writing on the material resembling Egyption hieroglyphics. Also there were two MPs present.

(8) I checked the airman in and went to the staff lounge to have a Coke. I intended to look for a nurse, a 2nd Lieutenant, who had been commissioned about three months earlier right out of college. She was 23 years of age at the time (I was 22). I saw her coming out of one of the examining rooms with a cloth over her mouth. She said, "My gosh, get out of here or you're going to be in a lot of trouble." She went into another door where a Captain stood. He asked me who I was and what I was doing here. I told him, and he instructed me to stay there. I said, "It looks like you've got a crash; would you like me to get ready?" He told me to stay right there. Then two MPs came up and began to escort me out of the infirmary. They said they had orders to follow me out to the funeral home.

(9) We got about 10 or 15 feet when I heard a voice say, "We're not through with that SOB. Bring him back." There was another Captain, a redhead with the meanest-looking eyes I had ever seen, who said, "You did not see anything, there was no crash here, and if you say anything you could get into a lot of trouble." I said, "Hey look mister, I'm a civilian and you can't do a damn thing to me." He said, "Yes we can; somebody will be picking your bones out of the sand." There was a black Sergeant with a pad in his hand who said, "He would make good dog food for our dogs." The Captain said, "Get the SOB out." The MPs followed me back to the funeral home.

(10) The next day, I tried to call the nurse to see what was going on. About 11:00 AM, she called the funeral home and said, "I need to talk to you." We agreed to meet at the officers club. She was very upset. She said, "Before I talk to you, you have to give me a sacred oath that you will never mention my name, because I could get into a lot of trouble." I agreed.

(11) She said she had gone to get supplies in a room where two doctors were performing a prelimary autopsy. The doctors said they needed her to take notes during the procedure. She said she had never smelled anything so horrible in her life, and the sight was the most gruesome she had ever seen. She said, "This was something no one has ever seen." As she spoke, I was concerned that she might go into shock.

(12) She drew me a diagram of the bodies, including an arm with a hand that had only four fingers; the doctors noted that on the end of the fingers were little pads resembling suction cups. She said the head was disproportionately large for the body; the eyes were deeply set; the skulls were flexible; the nose was concave with only two orifices; the mouth was a fine slit, and the doctors said there was heavy cartilage instead of teeth. The ears were only small orifices with flaps. They had no hair, and the skin was black--perhaps due to exposure in the sun. She gave me the drawings.

(13) There were three bodies; two were very mangled and dismembered, as if destroyed by predators; one was fairly intact. They were three-and-a-half to four feet tall. She told me the doctors said: "This isn't anything we've ever see before; there's nothing in the medical textbooks like this." She said she and the doctors became ill. They had to turn off the air conditioning and were afraid the smell would go through the hospital. They had to move the operation to an airplane hangar.

(14) I drove her back to the officers' barracks. The next day I called the hospital to see how she was, and they said she wasn't available. I tried to get her for several days, and finally got one of the nurses who said the Lieutenant had been transferred out with some other personnel. About 10 days to two weeks later, I got a letter from her with an APO number. She indicated we could discuss the incident by letter in the future. I wrote back to her and about two weeks later the letter came back marked "Return to Sender--DECEASED." Later, one of the nurses at the base said the ruor was that she and five other nurses had been on a training mission and had been killed in a plane crash.

(15) Sheriff George Wilcox and my father were very close friends. The Sheriff went to my folks' house the morning after the events at the base and said to my father, "I don't know what kind of trouble Glenn's in, but you tell your son that he doesn't know anything and hasn't seen anything at the base." He added, "They want you and your wife's name, and they want your and your children's addresses." My father immediately drove to the funeral home and asked me what kind of trouble I was in. He related the conversation with Sheriff Wilcox, and so I told him about the events of the previous day. He is the only person to whom I have told this story until recently.

(16) I had filed away the sketches the nurse gave me that day. Recently, at the request of a researcher, I tried to locate my personal files at the funeral home, but they had all been destroyed.

(17) I have not been paid or given anything of value to make this statement, which is the truth to the best of my recollection.

Signed: Glenn Dennis

Date: 8-7-91

Signature witnessed by:

Walter G. Haut

[Sources: Karl Pflock, Roswell in Perspective, 1994

Karl Pflock, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, 2001

Michael Hesemann and Philip Mantle, Beyond Roswell, 1999]

AFFIDAVIT OF L. M. HALL

(1) My name is L. M. Hall

(2) My address is: XXXXXXXXXX

(3) I am ( ) employed as: _________________________________ (x) retired,

(4) I came to Roswell, New Mexico, in 1943, while serving in the Army Air Force. I was a military policeman and investrigator at Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF). In 1946, after being discharged from the service, I joined the Roswell Police Department, and in 1964 I was appointed chief of police, serving for 14 and a half years. I am now a member of the Roswell City Council.

(5) In 1947, I was a motorcycle office, with patrol duty on South Main Street, between town and RAAF. I and other police officers would often take our breaks in the small lounge at the Ballard Funeral Home t 910 South Main, where Glenn Dennis worked. I had gotten to know Glenn when I was a base MP because he made ambulance calls to the base under a contract Ballard's had, so I would sometimes have coffee with him if he was at work when I stopped in.

(6) One day in July 1947, I was at Ballard's on a break, and Glenn and I were in the driveway "batting the breeze." I was sitting on my motorcycle, and Glenn stood nearby. He remarked, "I had a funny call from the base. They wanted to know if we had several baby caskets." Then he started laughing and said, "I asked what for, and they said they wanted to bury [or ship] those aliens," something to that effect. I thought it was one of those "gotcha" jokes, so I didn't bite. He never said anything else about it, and I didn't either.

(7) I believe our conversation took place couple of days after the stories about a crashed flying saucer appeared in the Roswell papers.

(8) I have not been paid or given anything of value to make this statement, which is the truth to the best of my recollection.

Signed: L. M. Hall

Date: 9-15-93

Signature witnessed by:

No one present to witness

[Sources: Karl Pflock, Roswell in Perspective, 1994

Karl Pflock, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, 2001

Michael Hesemann and Philip Mantle, Beyond Roswell, 1999]

AFFIDAVIT OF DAVID N. WAGNON

(1) My name is David N. Wagnon

(2) My address is: XXXXXXXXXX

(3) I am ( ) employed as: Toxicologist (x) I am semiretired.

(4) I arrived in Roswell, New Mexico, in April 1946 as an enlisted member of the U.S. Army Air Force. I served at Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) for two years, assigned to Squadron "M," the medical unit, as a technician in the base hospital laboratory. After leaving the service, I earned an undergraduate and graduate degrees in science, taught high school, and was a school principal and drug education consultant. In July 1947, I was 19 and a private first class.

(5) I do not recall anything about a crashed flying saucer incident during the time I was stationed at RAAF, but I do remember an Army nurse named Naomi Self, who was assigned to the base hospital. She was small, attractive, in her twenties, and, I believe, a brunette. I seem to recall Miss Self was transferred from RAAF while I was still stationed there, but I am not at all certain about this.

(6) Miss Self's name really stuck with me because it is somewhat unusual

and she was dating the local Red Cross representative, who was quite a bit older, probably in his late forties. I do not remember the man's name, but do recall he had an office in town and was always hanging around Squadron "M" and the emergency room.

(7) There were rumors about Miss Self have a D&C (dilatation and curettage) in the base hospital, the tissue being sent off (probably to Brook Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas), and the biopsy report coming back with some indication of fetal tissue. There was a lot of speculation about this in the squadron.

(8) I have not been paid or given anything of value to make this statement, which is the truth to the best of my recollection.

Signed: David N. Wagnon

Date: November 15, 1993

SUBSCRIBED AND SWORN TO BEFORE ME

THIS 15 DAY OF Nov 1993

Lisa C. Watson, NOTARY PUBLIC

[Sources: Karl Pflock, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, 2001]