Hangar 18: The truth behind the alien warehouse at Wright-Patterson Air Force base

Depending on your knowledge of conspiracy theories about aliens and UFOs you’ve most likely heard of Area 51 in Nevada, the secretive government facility in the desert where evidence that extraterrestrials have visited Earth is kept. However, there is another location that is steeped in just as much mystery and alien folklore called Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

The government facility was home to the Blue Book Project, a US Air Force program to systematically investigate UFOs that ran from 1952 to 1969, and said to be where debris recovered from the Roswell was taken as well as alien bodies.

What’s the truth behind Hangar 18

The conspiracy theories around Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio date back to the 1940s and the supposed UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico.

A press release from the Army airfield at the time said that a “flying disc” had crashed nearby and debris had been recovered. However, a later statement from the Air Force base in Fort Worth, Texas said that it was a weather ballon that had been recovered.

This helped fuel conspiracy theories around the incident which were further stoked in the 1980s by the government itself to hide the top-secret program to develop the first-ever stealth warplane, the F-117 Nighthawk. And again in 1994, when officials admitted that the Roswell crash had been a Cold War spy device that had crashed.

The making of the Hangar 18 conspiracy theory

The myths surrounding Wright-Patterson Air Force Base itself come from ex-military pilots like Oliver Henderson who is said to have told his wife that he had transported debris and alien bodies to Hangar 18 from the Rosewell crash. Or WWII ace Marion “Black Mac” Magruder, whose children recounted that their father claimed to have seen a living alien at the base in 1947.

They said that their father told them: “It was a shameful thing that the military destroyed this creature by conducting tests on it.”

Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, who was the party’s nominee for president in 1964, reported that he had tried to gain access to Hangar 18 but was blocked by the general in charge of the base.

Additionally, Robert Spencer Carr, a science fiction author, claimed in 1974 that the military was holding “two flying saucers of unknown origin” inside Wright-Patterson’s Hangar 18 as reported by the Tampa Tribune.

However, the government has repeatedly denied all of these rumors and even says that there is no Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, only a ‘building 18’ at the military facility.

The Air Force even issued a statement in 1985 to try to quash any rumors: “Periodically, it is erroneously stated that the remains of extraterrestrial visitors are or have been stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. There are not now, nor have there ever been, any extraterrestrial visitors or equipment on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.”

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