The Exchange Program That Began With a Crash

In 1947, two alien craft collided in midair over New Mexico. One crashed near Roswell, the other further west near Datil. Of the twelve extraterrestrial beings on board, only one survived—and that single survivor, according to researcher Len Kasten, set in motion a chain of events that led to a secret thirteen-year exchange program between the United States and a planet called Serpo, thirty-nine light-years from Earth.

Kasten, author of Secret Journey to Planet Serpo, first encountered the story in 2006 while riding a shuttle bus from the UFO Congress in Laughlin, Nevada, to the Las Vegas airport. He overheard Bill Ryan, then moderator of the website serpo.org, recounting the entire narrative to a fellow passenger. The level of detail struck Kasten as impossible for a government employee to fabricate. "It would be impossible for a government employee to have the ability to spin a high sci-fi story of that level of complexity," he says. "It's just not likely a government employee is going to be in the same league as Isaac Asimov."

The Survivor and the Messages