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Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles
Area 51, Dreamland, Groom Lake, Paradise Ranch, Watertown Strip, the all refer to the top-secret research installation, located a hundred miles north of Las Vegas, which, for many, has come to stand for all that is shadowy and nefarious about the military-industrial-intelligence complex. Built under the direction of the CIA in the 1950s, the base served as the original test site for the U-2 spy plane and F-117 stealth fighter jet. In more recent years, Area 51 has spurred public interest from its role in the government's $30 billion "Black Budget," from legal claims of worker illness due to toxic burning, and from sensational charges about captured alien spacecraft. It has also given birth to a feisty guerrilla subculture bent on exploding the secrecy surrounding this mysterious spot. David Darlington unfolds the history, legs, and characters involved with Area 51, weaving a weird tale of intrigue and outrage that speaks volumes about popular culture and American democracy at the of the twentieth century.
320 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1997
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May 12, 2024
A RECOUNTING OF MANY LEGENDS AND FABLES ABOUT AREA 51, ETC.
Author David Darlington wrote in the Prologue to this 1997 book, “I am in contact with certain authorities who insist there is no cause for consolation. Some believe that extraterrestrials … are here for our DNA. Others deny that the creatures in question come from outer space at all; rather, they are being manufactured in ‘Frankenstein factories’ at Area 51… as part of an elaborate hoax designed to enslave the world population before a bogus ‘extraterrestrial’ threat. Still others straddle the fence between these anxious positions, combining them with the conviction that mass mental slavery is indeed the aim of an evil ‘Illuminati.’ The validity of these viewpoints is, in my opinion, undercut by the fact that the people who hold them are deeply disturbed. With the help of ostensibly more levelheaded researchers, however, I have assembled a less sensational---if equally incredible---story.
“The popular intelligence… holds that alien corpses and technology from Roswell are being housed at Area 51. According to my sources, this claim is false. The discs came not from Roswell but from a crash at Kingman, Arizona, and they’ve been housed not at Groom but … Area ‘S-4’… Since 1953, a satellite government outside the control of Washington, D.C., has pursued this matter in a secret program… Moreover, this program has been conducted not by our species alone, but with the limited cooperation of extraterrestrial biological entities… from the Zeta Reticuli star system---who, incidentally, are not slimy and reptilian, but … the classic description of the typical ‘gray’ alien… For reasons not yet fully explained, these beings have a pressing need for the element boron… There is some speculation that a deal was struck between the visitors and the U.S. government, allowing the extraction of boron in exchange for advanced technology, but this allegation extends beyond the knowledge of my sources. Neither can they confirm or deny the existence of underground installations by an extensive tunnel system, much less stories of subterranean vats containing human body parts… My colleagues are disposed to distance themselves from this sort of thing. They don’t consider themselves ‘ufologists’ so much as amateur detectives with eccentric interests.” (Pg. 5-6)
He says of Bob Lazar’s claims: “Lazar’s story still begged considerable explanation, even when taken on its own terms. For a few examples:… Why was Lazar, with only a standard ‘Q’ clearance, allowed to see what he describes as ‘an EXTREMELY classified document dealing with religion’?... If he was on ‘the lowest rung of the ladder’ at S-4 in terms of credentials, and only worked there intermittently over a period of five months, why does he refer to himself as a ‘senior staff physicist’?... If the saucer tests were so tentative with so little known about the craft, how did it perform such sophisticated maneuvers on Wednesday nights?... The ‘Lazar Tape’ also leaves a good many scientific questions unanswered… Bob never explains exactly how gravity ‘A’ waves are accessed and electrically amplified; why it's true that such waves extend beyond the perimeters of heavy atoms… how an accelerator housed inside a basketball-sized reactor succeeds in guiding such ornery and unruly articles as protons toward the nuclei of atoms… Of course, nearly all of these questions can be answered: ‘This is a form of technology several centuries beyond anything in our experience. Ou8r knowledge of physics isn’t advanced enough to understand what these things are, much less how they work.’ … As far as questions about alien motivations … are concerned, Lazar’s customary response… is a candid ‘I don’t know.’… [George] Knapp points out that Lazar not only knew what the Area 51 cafeteria looked like, but also knew that EG&G was the prime contractor, that Boeing 737s shuttled workers to and from Groom Lake, and that an agent named Mike Thigpen conducted background checks for security clearances on the Nellis range---all of which turned out to be true.” (Pg. 89-92)
He recounts that during one talk, Lazar “went so far as to characterize John Lear’s line of assertions as ‘borderline insanity,’ explaining that his friend had ‘a tendency to add about fifteen percent color to stories, and if a story goes through him twice, it’s thirty percent, and it doesn’t stop.’” (Pg. 104)
He continues, “Lazar repeated the assertion that he received master’s degrees in physics from MIT… and electronic technology from CalTech…. Reporter George Knapp and ufologist Stanton Friedman had called MIT and been told there was no alumni record for Robert S. Lazar. But Campbell reasoned that, even if Lazar’s records had been expunged as he claimed, it would apply… not to such printed matter as yearbooks and telephone directories... Campbell found no Robert S. Lazar in any such volume issued between 1978 and 1990… Tom Mahood… [failed] to find any Robert S. Lazar [at CalTech], he learned that CalTech doesn’t even offer the course of study that Bod said he had pursued there.” (Pg. 152-153)
He goes on, “‘To say that I was stunned is an understatement; Mahood told me. ‘I thought, “I’ve been had. This guy is a complete fraud.’ But on the other hand, Lazar knew a lot of stuff about Groom Lake… I thought maybe he was at Groom, but not necessarily where he claims to have been… I like the idea that lazar was a patsy... Maybe he was set up; maybe the whole thing at S-4 was staged…Then again, he might STILL be on their payroll, saying what they want him to say for reasons we don’t know.’” (Pg. 156-158)
He adds, “In spring of 1996, I rendezvoused in the Nevada desert with Mark Farmer---the infamous Agent X.” (Pg. 224) Farmer told him, “I think Lazar’s story is a bunch of sh-t… You can’t lie about your background and have two wives at the same time and get a Top Secret security clearance! Lazar seems like a smart guy, but you can be a smart guy and a sociopath at the same time. There are people with borderline personality disorders, schizophrenics, who are able to weave very good stories… If you were really paranoid and tended to believe in the aliens, Lazar’s story would be a pretty good one to latch your teeth into. But there have bene disc stories at the Test Site since the sixties. Lazar’s saucer design comes from Billy Meier, Zeta Reticuli is mentioned by Betty and Barney Hill; ‘S-4’ is a real place at TTR. Lazar’s story just brings all those things together in one package.” (Pg. 239)
He says of one of John Lear’s appearances on a 1996 radio show, “Lear was challenged to confirm or deny his continuing loyalty to a list of fantastic claims. For the record, he abandoned his allegations that JFK was assassinated by his limousine driver, that Area 51 is covered by a five-square-mile roof, that two billion aliens live in the mountainside alongside U.S. highway 93, and that the Nellis Range has a special jail just for ufologists. He continued to hold, however, that underground tunnels crisscross the Southwest, that extraterrestrials eat human beings, that alien abductees are controlled by electronic implants by remote control, that eighty species of EBEs are visiting Earth, that a race of Reptilians is sequestered in the Nellis Range … that the Moon contains not only water but a six-mile high tower… and that, ‘beyond a shadow of a doubt,’ there is an extensive underground base at Dulce, New Mexico. Breaking new ground, Lear also revealed that two flying saucers crashed in Nevada in 1995, that the U.S. Navy (as opposed to the Air Force) controls the UFO cover-up, that the latest Groom range land grab was engineered to decoy attention from more secret facilities, and that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency invented the Internet in 1967.” (Pg. 259-260)
This book will be of keen interest those interested in some of the more ‘far out’ theories regarding Area 51, and related topics.
Author David Darlington wrote in the Prologue to this 1997 book, “I am in contact with certain authorities who insist there is no cause for consolation. Some believe that extraterrestrials … are here for our DNA. Others deny that the creatures in question come from outer space at all; rather, they are being manufactured in ‘Frankenstein factories’ at Area 51… as part of an elaborate hoax designed to enslave the world population before a bogus ‘extraterrestrial’ threat. Still others straddle the fence between these anxious positions, combining them with the conviction that mass mental slavery is indeed the aim of an evil ‘Illuminati.’ The validity of these viewpoints is, in my opinion, undercut by the fact that the people who hold them are deeply disturbed. With the help of ostensibly more levelheaded researchers, however, I have assembled a less sensational---if equally incredible---story.
“The popular intelligence… holds that alien corpses and technology from Roswell are being housed at Area 51. According to my sources, this claim is false. The discs came not from Roswell but from a crash at Kingman, Arizona, and they’ve been housed not at Groom but … Area ‘S-4’… Since 1953, a satellite government outside the control of Washington, D.C., has pursued this matter in a secret program… Moreover, this program has been conducted not by our species alone, but with the limited cooperation of extraterrestrial biological entities… from the Zeta Reticuli star system---who, incidentally, are not slimy and reptilian, but … the classic description of the typical ‘gray’ alien… For reasons not yet fully explained, these beings have a pressing need for the element boron… There is some speculation that a deal was struck between the visitors and the U.S. government, allowing the extraction of boron in exchange for advanced technology, but this allegation extends beyond the knowledge of my sources. Neither can they confirm or deny the existence of underground installations by an extensive tunnel system, much less stories of subterranean vats containing human body parts… My colleagues are disposed to distance themselves from this sort of thing. They don’t consider themselves ‘ufologists’ so much as amateur detectives with eccentric interests.” (Pg. 5-6)
He says of Bob Lazar’s claims: “Lazar’s story still begged considerable explanation, even when taken on its own terms. For a few examples:… Why was Lazar, with only a standard ‘Q’ clearance, allowed to see what he describes as ‘an EXTREMELY classified document dealing with religion’?... If he was on ‘the lowest rung of the ladder’ at S-4 in terms of credentials, and only worked there intermittently over a period of five months, why does he refer to himself as a ‘senior staff physicist’?... If the saucer tests were so tentative with so little known about the craft, how did it perform such sophisticated maneuvers on Wednesday nights?... The ‘Lazar Tape’ also leaves a good many scientific questions unanswered… Bob never explains exactly how gravity ‘A’ waves are accessed and electrically amplified; why it's true that such waves extend beyond the perimeters of heavy atoms… how an accelerator housed inside a basketball-sized reactor succeeds in guiding such ornery and unruly articles as protons toward the nuclei of atoms… Of course, nearly all of these questions can be answered: ‘This is a form of technology several centuries beyond anything in our experience. Ou8r knowledge of physics isn’t advanced enough to understand what these things are, much less how they work.’ … As far as questions about alien motivations … are concerned, Lazar’s customary response… is a candid ‘I don’t know.’… [George] Knapp points out that Lazar not only knew what the Area 51 cafeteria looked like, but also knew that EG&G was the prime contractor, that Boeing 737s shuttled workers to and from Groom Lake, and that an agent named Mike Thigpen conducted background checks for security clearances on the Nellis range---all of which turned out to be true.” (Pg. 89-92)
He recounts that during one talk, Lazar “went so far as to characterize John Lear’s line of assertions as ‘borderline insanity,’ explaining that his friend had ‘a tendency to add about fifteen percent color to stories, and if a story goes through him twice, it’s thirty percent, and it doesn’t stop.’” (Pg. 104)
He continues, “Lazar repeated the assertion that he received master’s degrees in physics from MIT… and electronic technology from CalTech…. Reporter George Knapp and ufologist Stanton Friedman had called MIT and been told there was no alumni record for Robert S. Lazar. But Campbell reasoned that, even if Lazar’s records had been expunged as he claimed, it would apply… not to such printed matter as yearbooks and telephone directories... Campbell found no Robert S. Lazar in any such volume issued between 1978 and 1990… Tom Mahood… [failed] to find any Robert S. Lazar [at CalTech], he learned that CalTech doesn’t even offer the course of study that Bod said he had pursued there.” (Pg. 152-153)
He goes on, “‘To say that I was stunned is an understatement; Mahood told me. ‘I thought, “I’ve been had. This guy is a complete fraud.’ But on the other hand, Lazar knew a lot of stuff about Groom Lake… I thought maybe he was at Groom, but not necessarily where he claims to have been… I like the idea that lazar was a patsy... Maybe he was set up; maybe the whole thing at S-4 was staged…Then again, he might STILL be on their payroll, saying what they want him to say for reasons we don’t know.’” (Pg. 156-158)
He adds, “In spring of 1996, I rendezvoused in the Nevada desert with Mark Farmer---the infamous Agent X.” (Pg. 224) Farmer told him, “I think Lazar’s story is a bunch of sh-t… You can’t lie about your background and have two wives at the same time and get a Top Secret security clearance! Lazar seems like a smart guy, but you can be a smart guy and a sociopath at the same time. There are people with borderline personality disorders, schizophrenics, who are able to weave very good stories… If you were really paranoid and tended to believe in the aliens, Lazar’s story would be a pretty good one to latch your teeth into. But there have bene disc stories at the Test Site since the sixties. Lazar’s saucer design comes from Billy Meier, Zeta Reticuli is mentioned by Betty and Barney Hill; ‘S-4’ is a real place at TTR. Lazar’s story just brings all those things together in one package.” (Pg. 239)
He says of one of John Lear’s appearances on a 1996 radio show, “Lear was challenged to confirm or deny his continuing loyalty to a list of fantastic claims. For the record, he abandoned his allegations that JFK was assassinated by his limousine driver, that Area 51 is covered by a five-square-mile roof, that two billion aliens live in the mountainside alongside U.S. highway 93, and that the Nellis Range has a special jail just for ufologists. He continued to hold, however, that underground tunnels crisscross the Southwest, that extraterrestrials eat human beings, that alien abductees are controlled by electronic implants by remote control, that eighty species of EBEs are visiting Earth, that a race of Reptilians is sequestered in the Nellis Range … that the Moon contains not only water but a six-mile high tower… and that, ‘beyond a shadow of a doubt,’ there is an extensive underground base at Dulce, New Mexico. Breaking new ground, Lear also revealed that two flying saucers crashed in Nevada in 1995, that the U.S. Navy (as opposed to the Air Force) controls the UFO cover-up, that the latest Groom range land grab was engineered to decoy attention from more secret facilities, and that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency invented the Internet in 1967.” (Pg. 259-260)
This book will be of keen interest those interested in some of the more ‘far out’ theories regarding Area 51, and related topics.
May 10, 2014
Originally at firs thought it was terrible because it seemed so long but turned out to be a good book that would make you think about the government and how it can keep such large secrets costing million on top of millions of dollars for so long, and also how much do we really know about what our government does.
The author/ narrator David Darlington tells the reader of his experiences with Area 51 and the people he meets along the way including being caught by the law and Area 51 guards. Besides the encounters with the law the people he meets are ranging for conspirators to retired works of Area 51 to people claiming they have had alien contact. When talking with these people he keeps discovering and unraveling clues as to who, what, when, were and why about the "nonexistent" Area 51 base. While uncovering secrets he him self gets a trip to freedom ridge to see Area 51 and also to see any non normal aircraft in the night skies.
While reading this book I was constantly thinking about how much the government hides and how much we don't know. Some of the story's form these people are false but many of them I believe are true such as what possibly goes on inside the base of Area 51 and some of the theories of how the base works.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested at getting a idea of Area 51 and the information surrounding it.
The author/ narrator David Darlington tells the reader of his experiences with Area 51 and the people he meets along the way including being caught by the law and Area 51 guards. Besides the encounters with the law the people he meets are ranging for conspirators to retired works of Area 51 to people claiming they have had alien contact. When talking with these people he keeps discovering and unraveling clues as to who, what, when, were and why about the "nonexistent" Area 51 base. While uncovering secrets he him self gets a trip to freedom ridge to see Area 51 and also to see any non normal aircraft in the night skies.
While reading this book I was constantly thinking about how much the government hides and how much we don't know. Some of the story's form these people are false but many of them I believe are true such as what possibly goes on inside the base of Area 51 and some of the theories of how the base works.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested at getting a idea of Area 51 and the information surrounding it.
February 22, 2016
There are more detailed (and more daffy) books on Area 51 in Nevada; but Darllington's approach is on the very slightly gonzo-journalism side without losing sight of the good history to be learned here. On one hand, the author immerses himself in the 1990s-era alien-UFO-conspiracy miasma, attending Roswell-themed conventions and the rising star of a certain Bob Lazar, who claimed to have been an Area 51 consultant who actually got to see and try to reverse-engineer captured ET spacecraft for the US government. Against that freak-sideshow backdrop, Darlington delivers some interesting, more down-to-Earth history of the secret air base and its role in USAF aviation, CIA spy operations, STEALTH technology, etc. So is Area 51 really a haunt of captured aliens (or Transforming Robots?), or just an R&D facility that helped end the Cold War with no off-planet involvement? I got a sense of the writer walking a bit of a tightrope, not wanting to offend the (book -buying) flying-saucer believers - who can get very loud and angry at your public appearances if they think you're a government Man in Black - while quietly letting Lazar's yarn collapse under its own farfetched weight. I write a bit in this genre too, so I can relate. UFOlogy does tend to melt one's brain.
December 17, 2018
This isn't a book for conspiracy theorists or someone who wants to know whether there really are aliens or alien spacecraft at Area 51. Rather, it's a book that factually presents the history of Area 51 (it was used to test new stealth aircraft designs) and then presents a complete record of the various UFO groupies that hang out at Area 51, as well as their theories and claims. Darlington's book reads more as a sociological work, as we delve into some of the strange personalities that have made even stranger claims about what goes on at Area 51. Spoiler--the main person making claims about having seen alien spacecraft also claimed to attend colleges that he never attended and to hold degrees that he never earned. Enough said.
May 10, 2025
This book is a good read that provides the early history into the developing curiosity and history of Area 51, the Extra Terrestrial Highway, and Rachel Nevada. The early players, politics, and protests are discussed in detail with the names of those leading the way.
March 16, 2020
Interesting causes one to think about government differently
September 16, 2016
This is a quirky book about a quirky subject. Unfortunately, it tends to be long on information gleaned from a number of people who mostly tell tall tales, and short on researched facts. The latter, of course, tend to be in short supply in the unclassified world. The author does make clear what info and opinions come from what people, and reveals how some claims from many of the subjects are clearly false.
Overall, I rate this a low 3, largely because after a while much of this was repetitive and rambling. I would only recommend it for those interested in Area 51 and/or extraterrestrial alien buffs, or interested in people spouting weird beliefs. David Darlington's book on the Mojave is much better.
Overall, I rate this a low 3, largely because after a while much of this was repetitive and rambling. I would only recommend it for those interested in Area 51 and/or extraterrestrial alien buffs, or interested in people spouting weird beliefs. David Darlington's book on the Mojave is much better.
August 4, 2008
This is everything you ever wanted to know about the secret base, that does or does not exist, but were afraid to find out. A fun read.
June 19, 2008
way too many interviews with nutbags and weirdos. Not enough fact. Author is a sensible guy, but he lets the nutbags go on too long before stepping in.
October 1, 2008
My Daddy read it to me when I was younger, as we planned our trip to Area 51... LMAO, all I remember was it was heavily detailed and uh... it was really interesting!!
January 4, 2017
something weird's going on out in the desert people
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews