Dulce Base -- The Seven Levels: Claimed Layout and Functions
Dulce Base -- The Seven Levels: Claimed Layout and Functions
Overview
The most detailed description of Dulce Base's internal layout comes from the claims of Thomas Costello, the alleged security officer, and Phil Schneider, the alleged construction engineer, with additional embellishment from various secondary sources. The seven-level structure has become the canonical description of the facility in UFO mythology.
The Seven Levels
| Level | Claimed function | Operators | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 (shallowest) | Security and administration; human personnel operations | Primarily human military and government personnel | The entry level; vehicle garages; human security checkpoint |
| Level 2 | Human quarters and facilities; dormitories; offices | Primarily human | Living and working quarters for long-term human personnel |
| Level 3 | Laboratories; data centers; communications | Mixed human and alien | Research laboratories; the level where joint human-alien projects supposedly begin |
| Level 4 | Mind control and human consciousness research | Mixed; alien direction | Alleged mind control experimentation on humans; the "Dreamland" section in some accounts |
| Level 5 | Alien housing; ET quarters | Primarily alien | Where the Grey alien population of the facility is said to reside; alien-designed environments |
| Level 6 | Genetic research | Primarily alien | Genetic experiments on humans and animals; hybridization programs; the production of alien-human hybrid beings |
| Level 7 ("Nightmare Hall") | Holding facilities; cages; specimens | Primarily alien | The most extreme claimed content: rows of cages holding human abductees, failed hybrid experiments, mutilated animal remains, and bodies in various states of preservation; described as what Costello saw that drove him to smuggle out the "Dulce Papers" |
"Nightmare Hall": Level 7
The "Nightmare Hall" designation for Level 7 is the most emotionally intense and most frequently cited element of the Dulce mythology. The description -- rows of cages containing living and dead human beings, hybrid creatures, and various experimental subjects -- appears in most Dulce Base accounts. It derives primarily from Thomas Costello's claimed firsthand observation as a security officer who was stationed on the level and who described what he saw as the event that motivated him to photograph and copy documents before fleeing the facility.
The "Nightmare Hall" imagery draws on the same visual vocabulary as the alien abduction narratives popularized in the 1980s (particularly Whitley Strieber's "Communion," published in 1987, and Budd Hopkins' abduction research). The timing of its emergence in the Dulce mythology -- contemporaneous with the peak of abduction literature -- is consistent with cultural cross-pollination rather than independent discovery.
The Physical Plausibility Assessment
The claimed structure presents several physical challenges:
- A seven-level underground facility beneath a mesa in northern New Mexico would require extraordinary construction engineering
- Water, power, air handling, and waste management for a large underground population would require infrastructure that would leave detectable surface signatures
- The workforce required to build such a facility (thousands of construction workers) would be impossible to keep entirely secret
- No DUMB (Deep Underground Military Base) of this alleged scale has ever been confirmed in any declassified government documents
The absence of any corroborating geological, engineering, or documentary evidence for a structure of this scale and complexity is the strongest physical argument against the seven-level facility narrative.
