That time I went to Area 51

Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Area 51? Yes, that Area 51. I know, I didn’t believe it either. But it is both my claim to fame, and retroactively the most embarrassing moment of my life.

When I was a teenager, I subsisted on an unhealthy diet of The X-Files and all things Fortean. I followed all the latest cryptid sightings, knew all the best spots to see a UFO, all the possible locations of Atlantis… I knew all about the sasquatch and yeti, strange appearances and disappearances, crop circles... And aliens? Which kind—the lizardmen, the Nordics or the grays? I was into anything which could have been remotely described as a conspiracy, and probably would have gone full-QAnon, if that had been a thing at the time.

I knew all about Bob Lazar, Element 115 (now given the considerably less-cool name, Moscovium), S4, Area 51, the Black Mailbox, Highway 375… In fact, I had all these grandiose plans that I was going to do a Blair Witch-esque documentary or something (found footage films weren’t actually a thing back then) to share with the rest of the world all the fascinating things I had discovered. And I wanted to buy a White Jeep Cherokee when I was older; if you know, you know.

Now when I was seven, my folks, my niece and I went to the States. Mostly SoCal, but we went as far north as San Francisco, as far south as T.J. and as far east as The Grand Canyon. As I was seven, and it was 1992, the only things I really remember were seeing snow for the first time at Palm Springs, and the witch in Captain EO scaring me so much I had to remove my 3D glasses. Oh, and from our window at the Holiday Inn in Hollywood (now Loews) I could see posters for Wayne’s World at the El Capitan Theatre, but my parents took us to see Beauty and the Beast instead. Lame.

But I digress…

So when I was about 15, 16, I remember sitting at our computer, reading as much information about Area 51 as I could find on the internet. Given that this was limited to an AltaVista search on a 56k dial-up modem, you can imagine what an arduous task this was. I remember my mother sitting next to me on another computer playing Solitaire or Mahjong or something, and—like any excited child who gets on a kick—I needed desperately to share all my findings with her. I was already sure she wouldn’t care, but I was bursting with so many discoveries from so many different sources that I was sure no one else could have possibly connected all the dots, and I needed to tell someone. She just happened to be there.

“So, there’s this place in America called Area 51,” I probably said. I don’t remember. “It’s in Nevada, right near Las Vegas. People think they keep UFO’s that crashed at New Mexico in 1947 there and here’s a map. The closest you can get to see it is this mountain. It’s got two runways that are three kilometers long. You can only get to it from these entry points, but there’s orange posts where the border is and you aren’t allowed past them.”

Now, keep in mind, this was a couple of years before 9/11, so it was a different time. No one had heard of Guantanamo Bay, and security wasn’t as big of an issue as it is today. This is all crucial information to the rest of this story.

As any child who has just bombarded their parent with information they really don’t care about—much like my own kids do today—I no doubt waited with bated breath for my mother to offer some half-hearted, monotone response like, “Really?” so I could give her the next lot of details. So imagine my amusement when my mother responded with, “Yeah, we’ve been there.”

Oh, mother. She was so simple! Yes, I know we’d been to Nevada, but did she not understand that I was talking about the most top secret army base in the entire world, and that no-one had been there? Needless to say, I imagine I laughed quite loudly. Parents are so lame.

“We haven’t been there,” I would have tried to explain. “You can’t get there. The only roads in are here and here, and there’s signs and posts and guards and… You just can’t get there!”

It was then that my mother, who had never had any interest in aliens or government conspiracies or the such—in great length and with details she shouldn’t possibly have known—laid out for me how we had been driving (read: she had been driving) en route to Las Vegas when we needed to turn right. Unfortunately, we (she) took the wrong turn and ended up driving down a long road until we were (she was) stopped at a gate where a soldier told us (her) we were going the wrong way and to turn around.

Now, it might seem nitpicky to point out repeatedly that my mother was driving, and that nobody else was responsible for her actions, but that is because it is an important distinction to make in explaining my mother’s logic, and how we ended up at a gatehouse well within a restricted military zone.

You see, from all my reading about visiting Area 51 and where the best spots were to observe UFO activity, it was made repeatedly clear that there were fences and signs demarcating the boundaries of civilian access. Should you attempt to get past one of these signs, the White Jeep Cherokees would appear and you would be in very serious trouble. Photos of these signs made it equally clear that “use of deadly force [was] authorized”.

Now, it is my understanding that these signs are in place for a reason—so that unsuspecting lost tourists would not inadvertently wander into a top-secret military base and be killed without having been sufficiently warned first. And, in all fairness to my mother, I should make it known that—according to my AltaVista results—this particular gate is beyond these signs.

So was taking a wrong turn while looking for Las Vegas possible? Absolutely! Was arriving at a guard house inside a restricted zone after being sufficiently warned by well-placed signs that you would be killed feasible? Not to you or me. But to the person driving the car down Nevada’s Highway 375 that day?

Yes, it is nitpicky, but it is crucial that you understand that my mother was driving.

“But you couldn’t possibly have ended up at the gate!” I would have protested. “Weren’t there signs saying that 'if you go past this sign you will be shot'?!?”

(...did I mention my mother was driving?)

“Yes,” she explained. “But I didn’t think they meant me.”

I know, I was just as dumbfounded as you.

So, anyway, that’s how it happened. While the rest of the US was distracted with Rodney King and the L.A. riots, my mother seized the opportunity to take us all hostage and storm Area 51 almost thirty years before it was cool.

I can’t vouch for the veracity of my mother’s claim, but from the details she presented me with at the time, I have no reason to doubt her. Plus, if anyone was going to sincerely believe that a sign threatening deadly force was aimed at seven billion other people but not them, it would be my mother.

Which, to the best of my knowledge, makes me one of only four civilians who have ever made it that far inside the air force base without being ‘deadly forced’ or taken into military custody. And like I said, it was a different time—heck, I would say they reviewed their security procedures the very next day—so I would not advise anyone to try to beat my record.

What do you think? Was my mother telling the truth, or was she just pulling my leg?