Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

“Concepción, Chile – On October first of 2002, while vacationing in the Southern Chilean city of Concepcion, a group of family members found what appeared to a small humanoid creature. The miniscule being measures about 7.2 centimetres long. It has a relatively large head, two arms with longs fingers, and two legs. (…) The child allegedly picked it up and wrapped it with a piece of paper. The child claims that it stayed alive for about eight days, and in some instances, it even opened its eyes.

Nevertheless, after supposedly being dead for a few days, the small creature displays signs of advanced decomposition; it even appears to be in a strange state of mummification. Specialists from the University of Chile pointed out to a possibility that it might be a foetus from local wild life, such as a wild cat. However, they have not reached a conclusion to determine the exact species the supposed foetus could be scientifically associated with. They expect to carry out DNA testing in order to come up with a conclusion.”
[Ufocasebook: Tiny Alien Found in Chile?]

The child is Armando Henríquez Carreño, then 15-years-old. His uncle, Julio Carreño, was also involved in the promotion of the creature, which was named “Toy”. Yes, it was named Toy.

Shortly after the media exposure in the local cable TV, came the first “specialists”: some ladies who claimed they had special powers and who could talk telepathically with the creature. Not even Armando’s mother, Luisa, was able to believe them.

Then came the local ufologists.

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“In 1979 or 1980, a named "Chino" Zayas met and killed this little creature in a cave, near Santiago of Puerto Rico. Rafael Baerga took a series of photographs of the being, which has been put out of his formaldehyde jar on the occasion.” [Patrick Gross, “Photographs that could be genuine”]

Gross usually does a good work, including when presenting ET photos, but in his possibly genuine photos he actually presents the same story as two cases. Because, you see, what he presents as the Salinas case of 1980, which is actually a photo of a latex prop, and the Zayas Case, are one and the same. Santiago is actually Camp Santiago at Salinas, Puerto Rico, from which one can realize that the Salinas and the Zayas case are different versions of the same story.

He’s not to be blamed because as Noguez has compiled, there are at least three different stories going along this series of photos. One of them was published in Quest magazine, according to which two children from Puerto Rico saw a flying saucer landing, and small aliens coming out. The aliens grabbed their pants. One of the children took a tree branch and hit one of the tiny creatures in the head, killing it. They took the body of the dead alien to their town, Salinas, and a local coroner gave them a jar with formaldehyde, into which they put it.

Tellingly, there are no actual names in this tale.

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Mikhail Gershtein, from St. Petersburg, Russia, sent me the “beautiful” alien scan above, from James Moseley’s Saucer News, Vol14 N4, 1967-68.

It’s a “’Space Monster’ allegedly found recently in Russia by a farmer named Vasily Dubichev”. The source for such spectacular story? “The Feb 26 edition of the National Examiner”. Not exactly (or perhaps exactly) where you would expect this kind of news to come from.

I first thought the image could be a montage, so common to such tabloids, or perhaps even an outtake from a B-Movie. For instance, the movie Screamers (aka Island of the Fish Men) has some similar “fish men”, but the problem is not only that there are large differences, but this movie is from 1979, more than ten years after the photo was first published.

As it turns out, there was something fishy, but the photo is probably authentic. As Biologist Gabriel Cunha quickly pointed to me, it’s simply a dead Ocean Sunfish (Mola Mola). A bizarre-looking but nevertheless very real fish.

Note that the National Examiner fish was dead and dried, so its skin is wrinkled and it looks more asymmetric. You can compare it to this stranded Sunfish. Pay special attention to the mouth too.

And if you look closely at the original Examiner image, you can even see the pectoral fin of the Sunfish on the side. Or perhaps it was a Martian ear.

[With special thanks to Mikhail Gershtein and Gabriel Cunha]

A prop decorating the desk of Hellblazer. And also a prop that’s been speculated as the real thing, commonly associated with the Salinas case, which in fact involves another, similar but clearly different alleged alien. Which is not pickled.

The association of this toy with the Salinas case is interesting because Jorge Martin, one of the main promoters of the Salinas case, also promoted in 1997 a case involving a pickled alien, which was later found out to be a toy. So we have three cases here: the alien prop shown in these images, the Salinas case which doesn’t involve a prop, and the case involving an alien toy, specifically a keychain, the later two of them associated with Martin.

No reason for confusion, huh?

The prop here is made with latex and latex webbing, it can be bought for less than fifty dollars and is everywhere. That is, the three photos you see are not of the exact same object – you can notice there are three different jars – but they were all made the same way, all bought for a couple dozen bucks.

Aliens in jars are a recurrent theme. Another popular image is this one:

Which is yeat another prop, this one even cheaper. It comes with an “alien in bottle keychain”:

If you pay close attention you can see that the original image had not only the exact same jar, but that it was also made of plastic – noticeable from the seem running across it.

In 2006, Barney Broom promoted the “mysterious discovery of an alien in his attic”, a story that made it to The Guardian but didn’t resonate that much. It was a bigger, exclusive prop, but somehow it didn’t resonate.

It’s easy to see why pickled aliens are so popular: capturing monster inside bottles is an archetypical image deriving from centuries-old wonder-rooms. And another recent case illustrates the connection nicely.

Also in 2006, Piotr Cielebias promoted this story:

“Location. Kuala Pahang, Pahang, Malaysia
Date: February 20 2006    Time: daytime
A fisherman, Ahmad Affendi, 22, and a few friends found a small bottle on a beach. After shaking the bottle he realized that there was a small figure inside, measuring about 15cm in height. However the tiny figure, which was greenish in color and had a pair of red eyes did not move. The tiny being was wrapped in a black cloth and tied with a white string. Ahmad Affendi took it to an elderly man, Ismail Omar, 94, who then opened the bottle. He claimed that the being was still alive. The witness then took it to the police station but was advised to hand it to the museum. While at the museum over 600 people managed to have a look at the strange figure but unfortunately due to superstitious beliefs they threw it away into the sea less than 24 hours later. It is a common belief in Malaysia that such creatures have bad spiritual effects and should not be kept.”

It looks like a bottled alien doesn’t it? Certainly that’s the context in which the story was promoted.

But as Luis Noguez noticed, the tale is actually related to a Malyasia’s folklore. The creature is a Jenglot. Other photos make it clear it’s actually simply a black doll.

From Malaysian vampires to Pickled Alien keychains, such is the current state of affairs of Aliens in jars.

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Sources

• Noguez, L, “Enlatados: Extraterrestres en Conserva”, pp 87-124, Extraterrestres ante las cámaras, vol 2, Lulu, 2009.

“THE ABOVE IMAGE IS A PHOTO OF J-ROD THE INSECTOID WHO IS IN SOME KIND OF SPHERE AT AREA 51……” [source]

Not. In 2004 that photocopy (remind you of something?) circulated along with Dan Burisch’s story. In fact, most people in the field had already seen the image and knew it was a special effects prop. It was already widely circulated in the web:

The most interesting bit, however, is that this wasn’t simply a very nice prop circulated on the web. It was actually created by professionals Steve Johnson and Trey Stokes, and aired in the USA at the 20/20 TV show, ABC, April 4, 1997. It was a recreation of Santilli’s Alien Autopsy, with a lot more sophistication – this one doesn’t hide its problems behind poor film quality. It’s all there, in color.

The video of the recreation must have been seen by millions of viewers.

It didn’t stop it from circulating, just seven years later, as an alleged real alien.

A Photoshopped version of the 20/20 alien autopsy also go round the web:

You can see that it’s just the pasting of the alien’s face over a corpse. A real, human corpse. The original photo of the corpse has been located, but we will not post it here.

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References

• Noguez, L., “La Autopsia de 20/20”, Perspectivas;
• Myers, R., “Alleged photo of J-Rod alien is special effects hoax”, Ufowatchdog;