The desert town of Dulce in New Mexico, USA, with less than 3,000 residents, doesn’t even have traffic lights, but it’s a place that attracts UFOlogists and conspiracy theorists to visit and learn.

They believe that underneath this village is a secret 7-story military facility, called Dulce Base, dedicated to alien research.

While mysterious stories surrounding the deserts in this area are nothing new, information about an alien base has attracted public attention.

The story began in the mid-1970s, when a New Mexico state police officer named Gabriel Valdez reported a disturbing case of cattle mutilation. According to him, he saw a “sophisticated spacecraft” flying in the sky near the area where Dulce Base was believed to be located and later discovered a mutilated cow with a dead fetus inside.

He claimed that the fetus was not an unborn calf, but a strange hybrid animal that “looked like a man, a monkey, and a frog.” There was no evidence that the cow had been killed by wild animals.

Political scientist Michael Barkun, author of the popular book A Culture of Conspiracy, which included Valdez’s account, noted that cattle mutilations were often linked to UFO sightings nearby.

The claims spread quickly and were followed in 1979 by revelations from Paul Bennewitz, a physicist and businessman in Albuquerque, a major city in New Mexico. Bennewitz said he had intercepted electronic signals in Dulce, which he believed were coming from deep underground and aimed too high for human activity.

With the growing interest in cattle mutilations and claims of electronic signals, the Dulce Base legend was born. Bennewitz first talked about the existence of the secret base in 1982. He even published a paper titled “Project Beta” in 1988 detailing how to infiltrate the military facility.

By May 1990, John Lear claimed to have “four independent confirmations” that the seven-story underground structure was real. Lear was a former pilot and government employee, as well as the son of the owner of LearJet, an American business jet manufacturer, so many believed his claims.

Lear even went so far as to describe the different alien species that were said to have visited Earth. Lear’s story served as the basis for subsequent claims of an alien base in New Mexico.

However, Phil Schneider soon overshadowed Bennewitz and Lear’s claims with his bizarre tale of a secret alien base. Claiming to be a former government employee and explosives expert, Schneider said he had been involved in the construction of Dulce Base.

In a 1995 presentation, he revealed that during the early stages of the project, the military encountered alien entities underground and a gunfight ensued. He lost several fingers in the fight to alien laser weapons.

According to Schneider, about 60 people died in the conflict below the desert before a peace agreement was reached. However, there is no evidence that his claims are credible. In 1996, Schneider committed suicide, taking the mysteries of Dulce Base with him to his grave.