The Aztec crash
The account
A giant disc landed intact on a mesa, and military scientists removed more than a dozen bodies from it.
What investigators found
The story's sources were exposed in 1952 as con men selling fake oil-detecting devices.
The story
In 1950, journalist Frank Scully published the book Behind the Flying Saucers, which became a bestseller. In it, he claimed that in 1948 a flying saucer had crashed near Aztec, New Mexico, and that military personnel removed the bodies of its small crew. His sources were Silas Newton and an alleged scientist identified as "Dr. Gee."
In 1952, reporter J. P. Cahn showed in True magazine that Newton and his partner Leo GeBauer ran scams using fake devices for finding oil. The story was discredited, but it resurfaced decades later with new books and supposed witnesses. Today the town makes the most of its fame with an annual UFO festival.