Before Roswell There Was Another Crash With Alien Bodies

Conspiracy theorists and those others who follow UFO lore, are well familiar with the alleged alien crash in Roswell, New Mexico. That legendary alleged crash, was supposed to have yielded alien bodies, and spawned dozens of books and movies.

The debate about what really crashed at William Brazel’s farm outside of Roswell in 1947 still rages on, but did you know that there was supposedly another UFO crash, that also entailed the recovery of alien bodies, that occurred 6 years prior to Roswell?

It took place in 1941 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Discovery of the Cape Girardeau UFO incident started as many mysteries do, with the confessions of a dying person. Sometime in the 1970s a woman by the name of Charlotte Mann apparently received a deathbed confession from her grandmother regarding her husband, the Reverend William Huffman, who was the local minister in the area.

As Mann’s dying grandmother revealed to her, Rev. Huffman was apparently called by the local sheriff in the middle of night to come and render aide at the scene of a plane crash. The Reverend believed he had been called upon to deliver the Last Rights to the victims of the crash. But, supposedly when he arrived at the scene, what he beheld was not the wreckage of an airplane, but rather a flying saucer. It was a classic silver-looking round disk that had started a fire, and he told his wife that there were multiple dead bodies on the scene, which appeared to be extraterrestrial.

Well known UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield, looked heavily into this case. According to him, as published in his book about UFO crashes and alien bodies, UFO Crash / Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum:

“Police officers, plainclothes men and military officers were already at the scene sifting through the wreckage,”’ Mann said. Laid to one side of the scene were “three bodies, not human,” she recounted from her grandmother’s story. “My grandfather told my grandmother it was hard for him to tell if they had on suits or if it was their skin, but they were covered head to foot in what looked like wrinkled aluminum foil,” Mann said. “He could see no hair on their bodies and they had no ears.

They were small framed like a child, about 4 feet tall, but had larger heads and longer arms. Their faces had large, oval-shaped eyes, no noses, just holes and no lips, just small slits for mouths,” Mann said. Reverend Huffman was told by one of the military officers at the scene not to tell anyone what he had witnessed for security reasons. Huffman told his wife, Floy, and their two Sons what he had seen when he returned home from the crash site but never spoke of it again,” said Mann.

A Local Legend

While perhaps not as widely known by non-UFO enthusiasts as the Roswell incident, for residents of Cape Girardeau, MO, it is a bit of a local legend. Michael Huntington, a Cape Girardeau resident said, “It became part of legend, it’s Cape Girardeau’s own urban legend.”

But is the story mere “urban legend?” Huntington also said that, according to Charlotte Mann’s recounting of her grandmom’s deathbed confession, “there were pictures allegedly taken that night of men holding one of the alien bodies and somewhere out there those pictures still exist.” Charlotte claims to have seen one of those pictures and indeed it was the very thing that prompted her dying grandmother to come clean about the incident.

“I saw the picture originally from my dad who had gotten it from my grandfather who was a Baptist minister in Cape Girardeau Missouri in the Spring of ‘41. I saw that [picture] and asked my grandmother at a later time when she was at my home fatally ill with cancer, so we had a frank discussion.”

Huntington said the town celebrated the 75th Anniversary of the alleged crash back in 2016. Whether you believe the stories or not, he said the crash is important to history, folklore, and culture.

“This story, whether you believe it or not, is part of Cape Girardeau’s history. It’s part of our culture, it’s part of our regional folklore, and it’s part of a broader history of UFOs, which is a part of American history. Nobody can deny the influence of UFO culture, UFO stories, the visuals, the fascination. Nobody can deny that it’s had an impact on American culture and American politics,” Huntington said.