The Container Alien
In 2001, Alan Lewis, sent the image along with the following story to Art Bell:
"I have been a faithful listener for years and never thought that I would have any content for your show. Recently, my Father passed away and while I always thought that he worked in the "Black Ops Arena", I never thought that he had anything to do with aliens. Certainly, he never mentioned it. While cleaning out his house, I ran across the attached photo. If you look in the bottom right hand corner of the "container", there is an Area 51 badge. I can’t provide any proof that this is a genuine photo, however, the original didn’t look faked to me."
It’s now quite popular. As with most of the alien photos, most people wouldn’t vouch for its authenticity (including the original sender, in this case), but many wonder “what if”.
There’s no if in this case as the alien should be familiar. It’s one of the most readily available alien props. It can be bought from Amazon for a couple hundred dollars.
Although the identification of the alien as a common latex prop conclusively explains the image to any reasonable person, there’s still the question as to where and who created that exact display.
During the preliminary research for this series of posts, I stumbled by accident with the following image:
It’s from Nick Kask’s flickr, published on October 2007. It was taken at the Soutch Carolina State Museum, during the “ALIENS: Worlds of Possibilities” exhibit.
The exhibit seems to have started in 1998, and perhaps one of the first versions of the display was the one photographed with Lewis father – if we are to believe the original story. It seems to have received some other tubes since.
It’s yet another case where the photo of an alien display is being promoted as the real thing.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted in Aliens | 4 comments4 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Live Comment Preview
Subscribe to the RSS feed
While I would agree that there’s little reason to believe the photo is genuine, I don’t think you’ve looked into all possibilities.
These stories immediately make me think of a few things along these lines — if there were legitimate photos of aliens and “they” didn’t want you to believe the photos were real, what could they do? If “they” happen to be folks with money and resources, then it does not seem impossible that they could create a model of the real thing and pronounce that it is the original. Most people won’t actually look into it. It would seem to be pretty easy to do something like that and I would guess it would be sufficient to discredit just about anything.
You said, “The identification of the alien as a common latex prop conclusively explains the image to any reasonable person.” In what way does it seem unreasonable that, whoever “they” are, they might go to such obvious lengths if it was within their power?
In fact, it doesn’t seem the fact a webpage displays the date 1998 proves that the exhibit was created then. I’ve looked for older photos of that exhibit and haven’t found anything, but I haven’t been looking very long or hard. That’s a stone unturned. But I have found two articles from 2001 that discuss the exhibit, and neither of them mention our friend in the tube. That’s not conclusive, but it is interesting, considering the alien in the tube is a provocative picture. Here’s how the New York Times described the “aliens” in the exhibit:
And I’m a little doubtful that the exhibit would have included our tubed friend at that time, since the emphasis was on imagining from the examples of extremes on our own planet. As the Canarsie Courier put it in 2001, “The exhibition aims to help us take our understanding of life on Earth and use that knowledge to imagine life beyond this planet we call home.” Would such a philosophy lead to an alien in a tube?
So I would not consider that photo properly debunked just yet.
As it turns out, I received aditional information that confirms resonable beyond doubt the origin of the display, including the identity of the man in the original photo.
I’ll update the post soon.
http://forgetomori.com/2009/aliens/the-container-alien/
same alien ?
http://i47.tinypic.com/2ymde9k.jpg
Same model of alien, but I don’t think it’s the same puppet/display. Nice find, though!