The Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in Ohio has played a central role in UFO lore.
The base allegedly houses “Hangar 18,” a facility which, according to UFO conspiracy theories, is said to contain debris of crashed alien vessels and even alien bodies recovered from the mythical Roswell incident. It was such a prevalent myth that it was turned into a science fiction action film, titled “Hangar 18,” in 1980. (The Air Force has repeatedly denied the existence of Hangar 18.)
The base’s “Project Blue Book,” which related to investigations into UFOs that concluded in 1969, has also been the subject of plenty of UFO lore, cataloguing over 12,000 sightings, 701 of which remain “unidentified,” according to official military records.
So it’s not a surprise that at least some eyebrows went straight up when news emerged that the FBI had joined the search for a high-ranking retired US Air Force major general who once served as the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at the WPAFB.
As CNN reports, 68-year-old William Neil McCasland went missing on February 27 and hasn’t been in contact with family or friends since. According to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where McCasland’s home is, the retired general has “medical issues” that have law enforcement “concerned for his safety.” He’s also known to be an “avid outdoorsman and is known to often hike, run, and cycle in the Northeast Heights and the Sandia foothills.”
The FBI Albuquerque Field Office and Kirtland Air Force Base have also joined the search, which has included neighborhood canvassing, interviews, and other coordinated search operations.
Given his extensive association with the fabled Air Force base — not to mention the fact that he’s leaned into the conspiracy theories by working with Blink-182 cofounder Tom DeLonge’s UFO hunting project, To the Stars, Inc — the X-Files crowd kicked into high gear. McCasland served as a primary source for DeLonge’s company, which previously claimed to have obtained “exotic material samples from UFOs.”
“Former Commander of AFRL at Wright-Patt…” one Reddit user wrote facetiously in the Air Force subreddit. “Where they moved the actual aliens to…”
“If the FBI is joining, it likely indicates they’ve found some evidence of foul play or foreign interference IMO,” another user in the UFO subreddit suggested, conspiratorially.
McCasland’s wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, has since published a Facebook post — which, strikingly, alluded to the rumors that the Air Force base was indeed storing the bodies of aliens.
“It is true that Neil had a brief association with the UFO community,” she wrote. “This connection is not a reason for someone to abduct Neil. Neil does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright-Patt.”
The timing of McCasland’s disappearance was particularly unfortunate, occurring just days after president Donald Trump vowed in a Truth Social post to release “government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).”
The promise was largely dismissed as a desperate attempt to distract from a metastasizing tariffs battle with the Supreme Court and, of course, the release of the Epstein files. (Trump has also yet to make good on his promise.)
For now, the local sheriff’s office indicated that it had “uncovered no evidence of foul play” but that it is still “considering all possible scenarios.”
UFO truthers, however, are convinced something strange is going on.
“It’s crazy how all the scientists go missing when they discover science that could change the world,” one user wrote in the r/aliens subreddit.
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