Editing Dulce Base (section)

==Influences==
Political scientist [[Michael Barkun]] wrote that [[Cold War]] underground missile installations in the area gave superficial plausibility to the rumors, making the Dulce base story an "attractive legend" within UFOlogy. According to Barkun, claims about experiments on abductees and firefights between aliens and the [[Delta Force]] place the Dulce legend "well outside even the most far-fetched reports of secret underground bases."<ref name="Barkun2006" />

Residents of Dulce claim to have seen UFOs, strange moving lights, and other unexplained sightings in the area.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.santafenewmexican.com/life/features/move-over-roswell-dulce-is-home-to-true-ufo-believers/article_3164df9a-9813-5add-9b16-5e3a90c0340e.html |date=7 May 2016 |title=Move over, Roswell. Dulce is home to true UFO believers |last=Chacón |first=Daniel |website=The Santa Fe New Mexican}}</ref> Jicarilla Apache Legislative Council president Ty Vicenti "has embraced the notion of a Dulce Base, partly in a push to stimulate tourism", and in 2016, the town hosted the Dulce Base UFO Conference at the local casino hotel.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Chacón |first=Daniel |date=8 May 2016 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/21774751/the_santa_fe_new_mexican/ |title=A town of true believers |work=The Santa Fe New Mexican |volume=167 |issue=128 |pages=A-1, A-7}}</ref>

Dulce Base legends have been noted for their similarity to the Shaver Mystery.  In the mid-1940s, welder [[:wikipedia:Richard Sharpe Shaver|Richard Shaver]] began writing letters to science-fiction editor [[Raymond A. Palmer]], who published them in various pulp outlets. Shaver told of malevolent subterranean beings ("deros") who pilot disc-shaped spaceships. Palmer biographer Fred Nadis "specifically highlights the tales of the supposed underground base near Dulce, New Mexico, as a prominent inheritor of the Shaver/Palmer tradition, characterizing Paul Bennewitz’s stories of alien experimentation as 'a dero scene right out of a Shaver story.'"<ref>Gulyas,Conspiracy Theories, Ch. 5</ref>