Dulce

Part 1: Mystery Beneath the Mesa

For over half a century, there have been rumors of secretive facilities and bases hidden deep below the surface of the sprawling North American landscape.

This week, we examine the most infamous of these alleged sites, an underground base believed to be situated near the town of Dulce in New Mexico, a modern-day mystery which lies deep beneath the mesa.

Bringing his patrol car to a halt, Gabriel Valdez stared out through the driver's side window at the dark mass lying not far from the side of the road, and then cursed under his breath.

For the briefest of moments, he tried to convince himself that the most sensible course of action would be to simply drive on away from this place and to ignore what he had seen.

And yet his curiosity urged him to exit the vehicle, to conduct a closer inspection, and confirm what his instincts and fears were telling him.

With a heavy sigh, the patrolman used his radio to inform the dispatcher of his location, before opening the driver's side door and making his way across the scrub.

Deep down, he had known what he would find before he even reached the carcass.

A cursory inspection confirmed that this cadaver had been left just like the others he had attended upon.

A series of diamond-shaped indentations had been carved into various points of the hide, with several layers of skin having apparently been removed in an expert fashion.

The creature's eyes, nose and tongue were all missing, despite there being no sign of any wider animal predation having taken place.

It was almost certain that the reproductive glands would be absent, as well as a number of other key internal organs.

all removed in what presented as a clean and sterile manner.

As he stood regarding the lack of any tracks or disturbed foliage on the ground surrounding the animal's corpse, Valdez now became aware of the low rumble of an approaching vehicle.

Looking up from the grisly scene, he caught sight of a five-ton truck painted in army camouflage, heading along the highway towards him.

The transport began to slow as it approached the point where he'd left his patrol car, its occupants returning the questioning gaze he had offered as they passed before it pulled away at greater speed.

As he watched the dust cloud thrown up by its passing dissipate, Valdez found himself experiencing a whole host of emotions.

Confusion, a small degree of fear, but most of all, he felt anger.

directed towards those he blamed for the death of this creature.

For the deaths of all the slain animals he had found in recent months, and the wider falsehood that their slaughter had been used to perpetuate.

A lie fabricated for one purpose and one purpose only,

to keep local residents away from the neighboring mesa for fear that something resided there which neither he, nor any other earthly power, could hope to protect them from.

The town of Dulce in New Mexico would not come into existence until the end of the 19th century, when US authorities ordered the local Apache tribe to settle itself permanently in one place.

The area's Native American population duly complied with this instruction, forming the Hickoria Apache Reservation, around which the town would eventually be established.

For the next century and a half, The inhabitants of this small backwater community would live their lives in relative peace, a short distance from the slopes of the adjoining Archuleta Mesa.

There had always been tales of high strangeness associated with the region, from weird light anomalies witnessed in the night sky to Bigfoot-like creatures seen wandering the scrub.

But by the late 1970s, the looming shadow cast by this towering mountain peak would begin to take on a sinister connotation, with the discovery of a series of bizarre cattle mutilations.

Following several complaints by ranchers and farmers to the local police department insisting that someone or something was slaughtering their livestock, an officer by the name of Gabriel Valdez was ordered to investigate the matter.

But after visiting the affected properties, the investigator often returned to his superiors with far more questions than answers.

Usually, only one animal in the herds which were targeted had been affected, and it had been dispatched in a manner which seemed to discount the involvement of any natural predator.

Although key sensory and internal organs had been removed from the carcasses, there were never any indications that the flesh had been consumed by a potential attacker.

In fact, These bodies would remain untouched by scavengers for weeks after the event, a phenomenon previously unheard of within this harsh and unrelenting environment.

The report submitted by Officer Valdez also highlighted the lack of disturbance in the soft and sandy ground surrounding the remains, offering no hint as to who or what was responsible.

Due to the discovery of shattered bones in some cases, His suggestion that the bodies had been dropped from a great height was something he would go on to be questioned over at some length.

It soon became apparent to his superiors that Officer Valdez had no fixed agenda and was not promoting any theory in particular regarding the deaths of these animals.

Instead, his report simply documented everything he had encountered during his investigation and demonstrated that he had discounted all of the most obvious explanations for the deaths.

But situations would soon unfold, setting in motion a chain of events, which would quash any hopes the investigator might have had in maintaining a calm and rational assessment of the incidents plaguing his community.

During the summer of 1986, a resident named Jerry Julian approached the local police department to report that someone had attempted to abduct her from her home while she was sleeping.

Julian explained to the attending officers that the evening prior, she and her her husband had driven out in their flatbed truck to the slopes of the Archuleta Mesa to do a bit of stargazing.

After a short time, Julian's attention had been drawn to one star in particular, which seemed to be moving through the night sky.

As she and her husband looked on in wonder, The celestial body in question suddenly began to descend from the heavens, landing on the ground a short distance away.

Gradually, the bright light before them began to diminish, revealing a metallic structure from which a small set of steps descended.

Two small figures then slowly made their way down the metallic walkway, before they set off on foot in the direction of the married couple.

With a frightened cry, Julian's husband had grabbed her by the shoulders, bundled her into his pickup, and frantically attempted to start the engine.

She continued to stare back in terror at the two squat figures slowly advancing upon the vehicle as the engine repeatedly failed to turn over.

It was only when the strangers were mere meters away from the rear of the truck, reaching out as if to take hold of it, that the motor suddenly fired into life and allowed the couple to escape.

Later that night, having decided not to report the matter, the couple had gone to bed, only for Julian to awaken in the early hours of the morning due to a strange tugging sensation.

Looking down towards the bottom of her bed, she could see two shadowy figures, identical to those she had witnessed emerging from the strange craft earlier that night.

Suddenly realizing she could feel her sheets being pulled off the bed to expose her lower body, Julian attempted to scream, but nothing more than a hoarse and raspy sound had emerged from her mouth.

This quiet whimper, however, had been sufficient to awaken her sleeping husband, at which point the two figures had immediately vanished.

When questioned further by federal agents who had been tasked with attending the incident, Julian claimed the existence of these entities was common knowledge amongst the native community.

She even went as far to describe a large hole bored deep into the mountain face hidden away much further up the slopes of the mesa, which she claimed the creatures used to access the surface.

Around the same time that the investigators were taking Jerry Julian's statement, Separate claims of a possible alien base concealed beneath the Archoletta Mesa were being directed towards the local authorities.

Security staff at the Kirtland Air Force Base began to receive a string of detailed allegations from a local businessman, stating that he had documented mysterious activity both above and below the mountain chain.

Paul Benowitz was already well known to the senior officers at the base, following reports he'd submitted to them of strange lights in the sky above his home in the Four Valleys district of Albuquerque.

He now claimed that in addition to the lights he had filmed, he had intercepted mysterious energy emissions and radio transmissions, and that these were emanating from beneath the mesa.

The businessman had also taken to conducting regular flights across the mountains in his private aircraft, photographing anything he deemed out of the ordinary.

Invited onto the base to speak in person, He showed them photos of what he believed to be paths and doorways cut into the rock, miles away from any existing road or highway.

He drew maps of alleged air vents and access points, and cited interviews he had conducted with the owners of mutilated cattle, and locals who claimed to have been abducted in the vicinity of the Mesa.

But the more detail that the impassioned Benowitz chose to add to this ad hoc briefing, the less credibility he was extended by his audience.

He began to panic, citing discussions with with shadowy government agents, claiming that the extraterrestrials living below the mountain were one of three separate species to have visited Earth.

But it was the assertion that a whole floor of the alleged alien base contained vats filled with human organs and body parts harvested by the alien visitors, which saw him ridiculed and finally escorted off the base.

Shortly after this, as the businessman's mental health and coherence continued to deteriorate, he suffered a nervous breakdown.

On the advice of doctors, his family applied to have him committed to a psychiatric facility in 1988, seemingly removing any shred of credibility his initial reports to the military may have contained.

But perhaps the most amazing aspect of the stories told by Paul Benowitz is that they are by no means the only such detailed allegations of a secret base concealed beneath the town of Dulce.

During the mid-1990s, a former Air Force technician by the name of Thomas Castello went public, confirming that there was indeed a hidden facility underneath the Archoletta Mesa.

More incredible still was that Castello claimed that this was not an extraterrestrial base, but one constructed by the United States government, where aliens and human scientists worked together on genetic experiments.

Castello related how he had been a US Air Force photographer based at Nellis in Las Vegas, but in the early 1970s, had been transferred to the secret Dulce base in New Mexico.

Whilst there, He was responsible for maintaining the facility's extensive surveillance network and for documenting some of the work being conducted in in the laboratories.

Castello even went as far as to offer photographic evidence with his testimony of what he purported to be some form of alien hybrid suspended in a vat of fluid in one of the labs.

But barely had journalists time to digest his claims that the Dulce base was just one of many such facilities linked by a vast underground railroad network before he disappeared from public view altogether.

However, his claims would later resurface when a further whistleblower came forward, this time from within the ranks of the Dulce Police Department itself.

A former Reservation Police Detective named Avery Tafoya, who had been researching the testimony of Jerry Julian, related how he had stumbled across the reports written by federal investigators assigned to the case.

To his amazement, in addition to the events described by the victim, they had included detailed drawings of a sprawling military facility, exactly where Julian claimed the hidden opening in the mountain was situated.

The drawings depicted that the base had seven different levels, including accommodation blocks, storage facilities and laboratories.

It was also serviced by an underground train network similar to that alleged by Thomas Costello.

Armed with this information, Tafoya stated that he had made a number of attempts to climb the mountain and see the facility for himself, only to be defeated by adverse weather conditions on each and every occasion.

Not to be deterred, he had then used a thermal camera to document strange apertures and vents built into the rock of the mountain.

and recorded what sounded like large machines being operated beneath the slopes.

Over the years, the United States military has gone to great lengths in denying that Dulce Base exists or that it's part of a network of hidden underground facilities.

And it would seem that part of their strategy to do so has involved a concerted effort to undermine the credibility of those making the claims.

The background of Thomas Costello remains shrouded in uncertainty, with attempts to locate and review his military service records seeming to suggest he never existed.

Photographs associated with his testimony have proven to be forgeries, and no formal interview with him has ever been unearthed.

Members of the intelligence community have also come forward and admitted to deliberately feeding false information to Paul Benowitz.

It is alleged that having become uncomfortable with his obsession and surveillance of the Secure Manzano weapons storage complex, the Air Force invented the fictional Dulce base in order to distract the businessman.

They even claim to have placed machinery and fake air vents on the Archoleta Mesa for him to photograph, in order to convince him that a base existed there and draw him away from genuine military facilities.

Gabriel Valdez himself has always refused to believe stories of a base at the Mesa, extraterrestrial or otherwise.

Prior to his death in 2011, the former police officer told his son that he believed it was humans who had mutilated the cattle near the town, and not aliens.

He cited secretive nuclear testing in and around New Mexico during the 1960s, claiming samples had secretly been removed from local cattle to test for radiation poisoning.

There are equally detailed cases both for and against the existence of a base beneath the Archoleta Mesa and the secretive work which is allegedly being conducted there.

With so many stories, it is difficult to know which sources to trust.

It is not beyond all possibility that the US government is in possession of secret underground military bases constructed well away from prying eyes.

But at the same time, some of the claims attached to them seem so outlandish that they push any notion of their existence towards ridicule.

However, throughout this episode, we have deliberately avoided the most detailed and impassioned evidence for such an underground structure at Dulce.

That of a man who claimed he was a former worker at the secretive site and had survived a horrifying battle unfolding between human and extraterrestrial forces during the excavation of what would become the eventual facility there.

Join us in part two as we examine the testimony of one Phil Schneider.

Part two:

War Beneath the Mesa.

Having sought shelter behind an equipment crate of sufficient size, the lieutenant now tried to take stock of the situation.

At least three members of his platoon were gone, their bodies charred beyond all recognition, following exposure to the horrific weaponry employed by their opponents.

Despite this, they had managed to push the enemy force deeper into the facility as they had been ordered to do so,

and if they could just secure the stairwell in front of them, the mission would be a success.

Waving across the corridor, where two more of his team members were sheltering behind another crate, He began to issue a series of orders using hand signals.

Moments later, the pair were were up on their feet and heading towards the looming metal door, each tightly clutching a satchel charge.

Their intention was clear.

But before they could reach their objective, the door suddenly sprung wide open.

A skeletal figure materialized from the darkness within.

followed by a terrifying bright blue energy discharge from its weapon.

The two soldiers did not even have time to cry out, as their bodies were engulfed in a ball of brilliant blue flame.

Almost immediately, an infantryman further down the corridor, operating the platoon's M60 heavy machine gun, opened fire, shredding the attacker with a steady hail of gunfire.

More soldiers then ran forwards, snatching up the discarded satchel charges and priming them before hurling them in through the open doorway.

There was an enormous explosion, immediately followed by a shower of dust and debris as the stairwell caved in, preventing their enemy from accessing this floor or any others which lay above them.

Leaving two of his men to cover the collapsed structure, The lieutenant and the remainder of his platoon made their way back up through the facility towards the main loading area.

But upon his arrival, he was shocked to see that two further army trucks had arrived, discharging several more squads of soldiers wearing black uniforms, who hurried towards the corridors from which he and his men had just emerged.

Turning to his commanding officer, he abruptly inquired as to what was taking place, who this unit were, and why they were now heading underground towards the lower levels.

Curtly dismissed, he and his fellow Navy SEALs could only watch on as the mysterious soldiers continued to head deeper into the base,

where so many US soldiers had already lost their lives in an effort to contain the marauding, extraterrestrial threat.

During the summer of 1995,

Phil Schneider gave a series of lectures across the United States, in which he went to great pains to highlight to his audience the dangers of what he was doing.

He spoke of the murder of his close friend, which he alleged had been made to look like a suicide.

Then he related various attempts on his own life and threats to harm his family in an effort to stop him from sharing confidential military secrets with the public.

But Schneider explained that his love for his country superseded any thoughts for his personal safety, that the American people had a right to know the potential dangers which their government was hiding from them.

He would open his talks by explaining how he came from a family of public servants, how his father had been a military officer who worked on the Manhattan Project.

Then he would reveal to those present the fingers missing from his left hand, relating how he had lost them whilst fighting to regain control of a secret military installation from extraterrestrial attackers.

Schneider would hold up bizarre-looking metals and minerals, claiming that they were products of experiments which had been kept hidden from the American people.

He would then explain in great detail how there was a vast network of underground military bases beneath the surface of North America.

linked together by miles and miles of magnetic train tracks.

Finally, he would close his lectures by saying that when his time came, just like his friend, his murder would be made to look like a suicide, reiterating that he had no wish to end his own life.

Less than a year later, the impassioned public speaker would indeed be found dead in his apartment.

His death, perhaps unsurprisingly to anybody who had ever heard him speak, ultimately being ruled a suicide.

Much as the former Air Force Sergeant Thomas Costello had done before him, Phil Schneider told anyone who would give him the time that there was a military base hidden deep beneath the Archoletta Mesa.

But unlike the enigmatic Costello, Schneider chose to deliver his evidence in a far more public manner, speaking openly to roomfuls of interested people and fielding any questions they might have concerning his account.

He described how, since the end of the Second World War, the United States government had been building a vast network of underground bases around the country.

Schneider explained that to his knowledge, there were 129 deep underground military bases, or dumps, hidden beneath the plains, mesas and mountain ranges of North America.

Nine of these were clustered in close proximity to one another, located in and around Groom Lake, near the infamous Area 51 testing facility in Nevada.

All of these bases were linked by a seemingly endless series of tunnels, which housed a maglev train line, allowing workers to travel between the locations at speeds of up to Mach 2.

As he stood and summarized how these tunnels had been created and how each of the secret bases had been constructed, audiences found themselves visibly impressed by the level of technical detail Schneider used.

Having listed his credentials as a geologist and structural engineer, he related how he had been brought onto the project to assist with the complicated and advanced construction methods being used.

The maglev tunnels had not been drilled or blasted through the the ground, but had instead been created using laser technology that vitrified and melted its way through the previously impenetrable rock.

In order to create each base, four gaping holes were bored deep into the earth.

Each separate floor was then blasted out of the rock before being linked up to these four gigantic corner shafts.

And it was amidst the construction of one facility in New Mexico during the late 1970s that Phil Schneider became an unwitting participant in what would become known as the Dulce War.

Schneider maintained that in August of 1979, construction on the Dulce base had begun to fall behind schedule due to issues relating to the drilling of one of the corner columns.

The facility was being tunnelled out beneath the southwest corner of the Archuleta Mesa, but every time the drilling team team had attempted to pass a certain depth, they found that their machinery was mysteriously failing.

In an effort to discover what was frustrating the drilling operation, Schneider and a Green Beret bodyguard had been lowered into the incomplete shaft via a crane.

But as soon as he stepped out of the crane basket into what appeared to be a pre-existing cave network, he had instantly realized that something was very wrong.

There was a bitter and unnatural stench in the air, as the drilling operation had now allowed ancient gases to escape from the void beneath, along with a mysterious and sooty residue on the unusually smooth walls of the caves.

It was at this point that a tall and slender grey figure had suddenly stepped out of the shadows in front of him, carrying what appeared to be a weapon of some description.

Utterly terrified by this creature's unearthly and intimidating appearance, Schneider had used his sidearm to kill it, only for two more to then emerge out of the darkness behind.

Backing towards the crane basket and firing wildly, the engineer had managed to fell one of the pair, only for the other to then use its own weapon upon him in retaliation.

Schneider was instantly consumed by an eerie blue light and felt a huge jolt of electricity burst through his body, which had sent him crashing to the cave floor.

When he came to, he found himself being bundled into the crane basket by the green beret, who then turned and engaged more of the creatures as the basket began to ascend without him.

Upon his return to the surface, The doctors who treated Schneider found severe damage to both his left hand and foot, with several fingers and toes missing.

After he had explained to his superiors what had taken place, he was removed from the project, but later discovered that construction had continued despite his encounter.

For the next year, it was alleged that further battles beneath the Mesa ensued as US special forces clashed with alien interlopers, who appeared intent on frustrating the construction of the base.

Schneider claims that in total, 66 soldiers and countless extraterrestrials lost their lives before an uneasy peace was finally formed between the two opposing sides.

He went on to allege that the aliens who had been residing beneath the Mesa had worked with humans ever since, creating numerous scientific breakthroughs which had gone on to assist mankind.

Throughout 1995,

Schneider continued to tour the United States, giving talks in which he listed numerous other alleged conspiracies alongside the revelations of deep underground military bases.

Over the course of these lectures, however, it soon became apparent that the former engineer was beginning to struggle with what he had started.

He described how he had been involved in a shootout with federal agents, killing one in self-defense, and how an attempt had been made to kidnap his daughter in a bid to force him to stop delivering his lectures.

Then in January of 1996, two months after his final speech in Denver, federal agents arrived at the home of Schneider's ex-wife, Cynthia.

They explained how Phil had been found dead in his apartment in Wilsonville, having apparently decided to take his own life.

The agents went on to conduct a search of Cynthia's house, removing any notes or materials relating to Phil and his lectures, before then leaving.

The circumstances surrounding Schneider's death have always raised questions about the speed with which the authorities moved to attribute it to suicide.

Phil's body had been found slumped between his bed and wheelchair, with a rubber catheter hose having been wrapped around his neck three times and tied off with a knot.

Both his feet were wedged hard underneath the bed, with his head resting in the seat of the wheelchair at an angle that would not appear to have been easy or natural for him to achieve.

There were traces of blood on the floor nearby, but no injuries or wounds were found on the body itself to suggest where this may have come from.

When the family later asked if a suicide note had been discovered, they were told that all the papers seized from the address had now inexplicably gone missing from a police storage facility.

Subsequent requests for additional toxicology testing on Schneider's remains were refused on the grounds of adverse cost, considering the cause of death had already been determined.

Further and more adamant demands for these tests would also be refused.

because the samples had apparently been destroyed by the laboratory which had been storing them.

One detective who later spoke privately with the family stated that with the missing fingers on Schneider's left hand, it would have been almost impossible for him to have tied off the catheter himself.

When the officer in question had shared these concerns with his superiors, he had been ordered to keep his observations to himself before then being reassigned to a different case.

It appeared that even in death, Phil Schneider was continuing to raise awkward and uneasy questions for those in positions of authority.

When taken in context of the many accounts which already exist regarding a possible underground base at Dulce,

the testimony of Phil Schneider appears to be compelling.

Many of the experimental compounds and construction techniques he listed during the course of his lectures were mere concepts during the late 20th century, but have gone on to become commonplace in modern building work.

His descriptions of the base layout and the functions of each of the seven levels were also eerily similar to those offered by other witnesses, people whom he'd never met or associated with.

And yet, even the lightest touch of scrutiny has shown his accounts to be marred by falsehoods and inaccuracies, which make it difficult to take some of his claims seriously.

He made repeated assertions that his father, Otto Oskar Schneider, was a German U-boat captain, who had been captured by the US Navy and then turned against the Nazi regime.

Yet a cursory search of both German and American wartime records shows this to be an apparent fabrication, with Otto having been born in San Francisco in January of 1906.

Similarly, his claims that the original attack on the World Trade Center involved the use of a tactical nuclear weapon and that the occupants of Waco Ranch had been murdered using chemical weapons have apparently been debunked.

These revelations would appear to suggest that Phil Schneider was an individual prone to exaggeration, sometimes verging on the edge of delusion.

But if this was the case, then where did he sustain his life-changing injuries?

And what happened to the missing samples and notes he had brought with him to his lectures?

Why is there so much evidence that he was silenced by unknown persons, and efforts made to present his murder as a suicide?

Schneider's detractors argue that he was not a well man and merely seized upon the alleged testimony of Thomas Costello, using it to conjure up a fantastical backstory of his own.

But to his supporters, the inconsistencies in his account are explained away as the US government rewriting his family history, designed specifically to undermine Schneider's credibility and keep prying eyes away from the Dulce base.

They point to the same methods used against Bob Lazar and his removal from college and employment records as an example of the lengths the US government will go to to cover up such revelations.

With the advent of the internet, each passing year sees more information on classified military projects slowly creeping into the public domain.

It is therefore entirely possible that at some future point, evidence proving the existence of deep underground military bases will finally materialize, or it may be that advances in technology enable investigators to finally disprove the existence of such facilities once and for all.

For now, at least, it seems there is a lot more digging to be done.

Bedtimes glorious.