After nearly four decades of digging, a North Carolina couple released their third and final book on one of the most enduring UFO mysteries in New Mexico.
Scott and Suzanne Ramsey’s 418-page book, It Came to Earth at Aztec, New Mexico Revealed: The Recovery of a UFO is a product of interviews, documents, photographs and evidence surrounding the bizarre incident. “It’s a chunk of a book at 418 pages,” Suzanne told a publication. “It is very comprehensive look at everything we’ve gotten over the years.”
This time around, the couple offered a mysterious “gadget” as new evidence. Scott says he recovered at the crash site near Aztec in March 1948. “We found an item at the crash site, and we are having it analyzed,” Scott said. “It’s been analyzed twice already, but we’re having it analyzed again.”
The couple dedicated an entire chapter about the gadget, complete with color photographs and diagrams. “We have a lot of colored photographs and diagrams,” Suzanne said.
Scott’s obsession with the case began in the late 1980s. He was working with a client in Farmington testing a generator, when he overheard two men discussing their plans for Halloween weekend. One planned to hunt in Hart Canyon, a breath away from the alleged crash site.
Old tale
Scott asked what kind of crash had occurred there. The answer was an old “wife’s tale” about something that supposedly came down in the canyon. That hooked him.
Scott asked for a map and began digging. “Everything I dug up on it said it was a hoax,” he recalled. “I thought, how can it be a hoax when nobody ever heard of it?”
The reported crash was dismissed as a hoax, but Scott said there was a paper trail behind it, such as records connected to Aztec that were held at Maxwell Air Force Base.
He filed requests under public-records laws. Many of his requests, Scott said, were ignored, rejected or denied. “There’s some really juicy documents down there,” Scott said. He also claimed the FBI has a substantial collection of documents related to Aztec.
He hopes more records could eventually become public. “When you start having people slam the door in your face when you say you want these operation reports,” he said, “and they say they are not releasable to the public, if this thing is a scam or a hoax why not?”
Those closed doors, however, fueled Scott’s curiosity. “That keeps me going,” he said.
Suzanne’s connection to the mystery goes back many years past. Her family moved to Aztec when she was young after her mother read about the alleged crash in Frank Scully’s 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers.
But her mother discovered that finding anyone willing to talk about the crash was another matter entirely. “She started asking people, and people didn’t want to talk about it. She was so disappointed,” Suzanne said.
The Aztec crash was apparently a subject many residents don’t want to discuss. Scott described it as more “worse than talking politics, religion or sports.”
The Ramseys eventually convinced witnesses and other sources to talk. Many of those interviews are included in the new book. “We’ve met a lot of wonderful people who shared their stories — some were scared too,” Suzanne said.
She found it intriguing that witnesses who had never met one another sometimes used remarkably similar terminology and descriptions when recounting what they allegedly saw.
A pop culture
The Aztec case has also become part of popular culture. Chris Carter, the creator of The X-Files, allegedly named the character Dana Scully after Frank Scully. The book helped popularize the Aztec UFO story.
Carter also reportedly included the Aztec crash into an episode of the hit series and has read the Ramseys’ books.
Scott’s research eventually led him to become involved with the Aztec Library’s UFO Symposium. The event raised enough money to help construct a new library. It was also where Scott met Suzanne. The two eventually married.
The Ramseys’ latest book is still about Aztec, but the investigation lead them across the country.
After decades of collecting testimonies and public records, the couple believe the public is now more willing to consider the story. “We realize now that the world is more prepared for it,” Suzanne said.
It remains to this day the 1948 crash was an extraterrestrial encounter, an elaborate hoax, a misunderstood event or something else. The Ramseys, however, believe the Aztec incident is “a very special piece of history” that deserves to be examined. “We just put all our heart and soul into this book,” Suzanne said.
The couple previously published The Aztec Incident: Recovery at Hart Canyon in 2011 and The Aztec UFO Incident: The Case, Evidence and Elaborate Cover-up of One of the Most Perplexing Crashes in History in 2016.
