Roswell is a secret air base in the desert in New Mexico where the U.S. government is presumed to have repaired a flying saucer that crash-landed there in 1947. The U.S. government, he explains, deliberately did not deny the UFO rumor so as not to jeopardize the project. To this day, droves of UFO believers head out on pilgrimages into the desert. Similarly, in Britain many new UFO fans visit mysterious circles in wheat fields every year. Mr. Walter thinks these patterns are art.
People spray the whole of New York with graffiti.
So in England they trample down the wheat. The bigger the circles get, the better. Only a tiny portion of UFO reports involve contact with extraterrestrials in person, Mr. Walter says. A watchman in Italy recently reported seeing a creature with three eyes and pointed ears, which he also sketched. While many reports of encounters with aliens have a very commercial backdrop in the United States, such as best-selling books and talk shows, they tend to be of a more philosophical nature in Germany, says Mr. Walter.