Greetings from Roswell, New Mexico!




I have no idea what the state of UFO tourism is right now--especially since The X-Files stopped being the cultural phenomenon that it used to be back in the '90s--but Roswell, NM is still open for business. A friend of mine recently made a trip to this flying saucer mecca, and he's letting me post some of the pictures he took (as well as the postcard) of the UFO Museum in Roswell. Click below to see some pictures of this Atomic Age landmark, as well as photos from another UFO display in Erie, PA.

Below are some pics of the museum's main attraction, extra-terrestrial visitors: What they are believed to look like, and how our government supposedly experimented on the remains of the dead aliens that crash-landed near Roswell decades ago. Thankfully, the museum does not feature any anatomically correct depictions of aliens probing humans.














Below are two posters of the 1994 TV movie Roswell, which featured Kyle MacLachlan and Martin Sheen. Even though this film clocks in at an hour and a half in length, the museum plays it regularly for visitors.






Curiously, the museum also has posters from a few classic alien-themed movies from the 1950s, such as George Pal's 1953 adaptation of The War of the Worlds and Robert Wise's 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. The later film also has its own life-sized display of its two title characters, Klaatu and Gort, although why this display is in a museum devoted to UFOs and not sci-fi movies is beyond me.










Here are some additional Roswell UFO Museum pics:












Below are a few pics from the Erie Maritime Museum in Eric, PA. Even though the museum devotes itself to the maritime history of Lake Erie, there have been enough UFO sightings around the lake that the museum has a few UFO-related display items.






Below is a picture of a wooden UFO, and I think that the carving next to it is supposed to be Bigfoot. Some cryptozoology enthusiasts believe that there is a connection between the Lake Erie UFOs and the Lake Erie Bigfoot sightings. Unfortunately, Bessie, Erie's resident lake monster, is not part of this wood carving display.




As with the UFO Museum in Roswell, the UFO display in the Erie Maritime Museum also has posters of classic '50s flying saucer movies. In this case, the poster below is from Ray Harryhausen's 1956 flick Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, albeit with a slight change in the title to fit Lake Erie. Fun trivia fact: Whereas The War of the Worlds and The Day the Earth Stood Still movies were adaptations of fictional sources, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers was "suggested" by the 1953 non-fiction book Flying Saucers From Outer Space by retired U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe, who believed that UFO sightings were in fact sightings of actual extra-terrestrial vehicles.






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