Marsh Gas? Maybe Not.

Our Ohio correspondent goes over the border on a sweltering Saturday in July to sit inside a community library and listen to Raymond Szymanski talk about flying saucers.

When The Observer caught wind (no pun intended) of a UFO presentation taking place in Hillsdale, Michigan, we knew it was the perfect assignment for our Ohio correspondent. We sent them over the border on a sweltering Saturday in July to sit inside a community library and listen to Raymond Szymanski talk about flying saucers.

After presenting over an hour of evidence outlining how the government has spent the last 75-years covering up the truth about unidentified flying objects, the well-dressed man adjusted his black tie. He then directed the audience’s attention to a small device in his hand. With the push of a button and a flicker of red light, the machine whirred to life, preparing to erase the minds of everyone in attendance: “You were never here, this never happened.”

Despite his solemn message, the ‘Man In Black’ spoke with a smile. That’s because UFO researcher and author Raymond Szymanski has a sense of humor, and it was on full display during his talk in Hillsdale, Michigan.

Ray isn’t a real MIB—a fact made obvious by his choice of a blue suit coat and khaki pants—but his willingness to imitate one for comedic effect says a lot about his approach to the topic. He likes to have fun.

Szymanski believes that extraterrestrials exist, they’ve visited Earth, and our government is lying to us about it. He can be classified as a whistle-blower of sorts since he spent almost forty years working as an engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

In Fifty Shades of Greys (2016)—his first, but not only book title to almost end up in a lawsuit—Szymanski tells how his curiosity was piqued the first week on the job after hearing stories about UFO wreckage stored on-site. Despite his own informal investigation, he never saw any alien bodies or saucer parts. He did hear plenty of tales about secret tunnels and underground bases containing the remains of downed discs. His subsequent experiences are detailed across a trilogy of books, numerous conference speeches, and an appearance on the Ancient Aliens television show.

Two outta three ain't bad. Ray Szymanski's ‘Alien Shades of Greys’ trilogy pairs a wide variety of UFO-related subject matter with a healthy dose of humor.

Szymanski kicked off his Hillsdale presentation with a history lesson about the government’s involvement in UFO research (or lack thereof) since Ken Arnold’s famous 1947 sighting. He covered a few cases that highlight the Air Force’s ineptitude before leading into the events detailed in his latest release—the brilliantly titled Swamp Gas My Ass (2021). Set during the weeks-long 1966 Michigan flap that generated various reports of strange aerial lights and craft, his book does a superb job of weaving press accounts with witness descriptions into a coherent narrative.

Swamp Gas My Ass provides more than just a concise timeline of events, it also introduces new evidence about what really unfolded in the Southeastern Michigan skies during the Ides of March. This comes by way of a series of interviews with a highly decorated USAF fighter pilot who claims he was called into action to intercept a UFO. Colonel Gary K. Carroll was stationed at Selfridge Air Force Base near Detroit in March of 1966. He and his wingman, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Nicholson, were on duty under an alert status when calls rolled in about an unknown aerial object spotted by ground observers. The pilots scrambled their F-106s in a matter of minutes as the Battle Creek Control Center vectored them towards the blip appearing on their radar. The men saw something flying in the distance, but after a few brief encounters from miles away, the football-shaped craft evaded its pursuers with a high-speed, 90-degree turn.

Besides these quick glimpses from afar, Colonel Carroll also obtained a partial lock of the unknown object with his on-board sensors. The radar return lasted only moments before the bogey zoomed off, but it corroborated his visual observations and indicates that he truly intercepted a physical object during the mission. His encounter erodes the Air Force’s official story and lends credence to the laundry list of eye-witnesses who were convinced that they saw some sort of craft moving overhead.

The 1966 Michigan sightings are legendary for introducing an immortal phrase into the pop culture lexicon after government investigators announced that people had seen “marsh gas” dancing in the night sky—not saucers. This official response didn’t go over well with the locals. The ‘swamp gas’ scapegoat didn’t match any of the basic facts in a case where multiple credible witnesses described watching solid objects perform aerial maneuvers for long stretches of time. (Szymanski humorously recreates a scene depicting Dr. Hynek and a group of University of Michigan professors passing around a joint while concocting the far-out explanation.)

A stoned (and bald) Dr. Hynek delivers his lines.

Ray’s lecture included a thought-provoking theory about why interstellar UFOs might have made so many incursions across the area in 1966. He suspects that anxious aliens were watching as humanity invented both nuclear weapons and the ability to reach outer space. This combination meant that Earthlings were now able to export their brand of war throughout the galaxy—a development that prompted a galactic stakeout of our military bases and nuclear facilities. It’s an intriguing suggestion considering that the Michigan flap occurred only a month after the first successful lunar landing took place on February 3rd, 1966.

Szymanski implied that another reason for the area’s increased UFO surveillance was due to the nuclear cache stockpiled near Selfridge Air Force Base—an allegation disputed by the official base historian. Local legend holds that the area around Detroit was ringed with nuclear tipped missiles pointing east as a line of defense against a possible Soviet air raid.

In one of his slides, Ray produced a map showing the placement of government documented missile silos overlaid with locations of UFO reports. It reveals a pattern that suggests the objects consistently approached from the west, almost as if they knew where the armaments were positioned.

To say that Szymanski was critical of the Air Force’s effort to investigate the Michigan sightings would be putting it lightly. He certainly had no love for their primary UFO researcher, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, portraying him as a professional debunker who was only interested in finding ways to write-off or downplay the cases he examined. As he puts it in Swamp Gas My Ass: “For decades that office placated a powerless and gullible public with unscientific explanations.”

During the Q&A portion of the afternoon, Szymanski was asked if his opinion on the Project Blue Book astronomer had softened after his public “change of heart” about the reality of the enigma. (After the project ended in 1969, Hynek acknowledged that maybe there was something to the mystery after all.)

Ray took the opportunity to educate the audience about the real reason for Hynek’s about-face on the issue of UFOs: money. He characterized the Blue Book investigator as a puppet-for-hire who conveniently molded his opinion to suit his employers. He “vilified” one of ufology’s most revered figures because of how much time was wasted during his tenure: “Imagine where we’d be today if Hynek hadn’t set UFO research back 22 years.” He makes a compelling point.

This brings us back to Hillsdale and the reason that Szymanski chose to speak in this small town library. Dr. Hynek’s ‘swamp gas’ cop-out was partly in response to reports of objects hovering over the local Hillsdale College. Students described the thing they saw as football-shaped, and the pictures they drew match closely with the image drawn by Colonel Carroll from the cockpit. The city played a pivotal role in exposing the Blue Book scam—it kicked off what Szymanski dubbed “the beginning of the end.” After the Air Force botched the Michigan job, Congress saw fit to poke their noses under the tent in search of accountability. With this bit of ufological history in mind, there couldn’t have been a more fitting venue for the afternoon’s discussion.

Ray Szymanski elaborates on the Hillsdale sightings and the Air Force’s flimsy explanation.

Ray shut the place down, generously meeting with fans, signing books, and answering questions (of course there were questions). From musings about “Nazi bell” technology, to an inquiry about the true nature of the Greys from a gentleman in the front row referred to as “Mr. Conspiracy,” Szymanski deftly fielded several questions that were unrelated to his main presentation.

At one point, he attempted some crowd interaction by introducing a call and response chant. Whenever he referenced the official ‘swamp gas’ explanation, he asked the crowd to yell back: “Swamp Gas My Ass!”

Sadly, this opportunity to shout in the library didn’t catch on with the group.

While discussing current ufological developments, Szymanski revealed his opinion on the government’s longstanding UFO secrecy had changed since writing his first book in 2016. Instead of thinking that “we still aren’t ready for full disclosure,” he told those assembled that he now thinks we can handle the truth. He points to the nation’s calm response to last summer’s public UAP report as proof. He views the document as an official declaration of the reality of UFOs, believing it vindicates those who have been marginalized for claiming encounters with flying saucers or their occupants.

We say ‘yes and no’–while the congressional report did admit that there were unidentified objects flitting across our airspace, it stopped well short of proposing an extraterrestrial origin.

All said and done, 36 people planned their weekends around hearing Ray discuss UFOs—a record turnout according to the librarian who sat patiently through the event, even when it ran 30 minutes past closing time. Lingering attendees had to be ushered out a side-door because the main entrance was locked.

After two-and-a-half-hours, Ray wasn’t finished. He invited everyone to join him across the street at a local brewery for beers and food, welcoming those with a personal encounter story to bring it to the bar and share with like-minded individuals over drinks.

Szymanski’s engagement and accessibility were refreshing on such a hot afternoon. Thanks to his presentation, we left the quaint town of Hillsdale with a wealth of new insights about those fateful days in March of 1966.

We just hope that Ray’s MIB alter-ego didn’t delete the real classified info from our memory banks.

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