Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

“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;

Yes, “The Alien Autopsy” has already been more than autopsied as the hoax it is. There won’t be any news here, but the “Alien Autopsy” is certainly the most successful hoax in ufology. Ever. You could measure that by the number of people worldwide that saw it, the money it generated for its creators or the repercussions it had on the field.

We couldn’t leave it out of this Alien November. We won’t deal in detail with the whole story, though.

As a summary of current events, you can either watch this long documentary where Ray Santilli finally admits, more than ten years later, that the alien was made with latex stuffed with sheep brains and chicken entrails:

Or this quick and entertaining clip from the movie “Alien Autopsy” (2006), of which Santilli was a producer, and reason why he made the confession above (it was to promote this comedy movie):

Regarding the creation of the dummy, although not acknowledged, I think that John Humphreys was probably inspired by an illustration of the “Aztec UFO Crash” published in 1987, by William Steinman:

Note the face profile. An almost exact match.

The footage inspired a series of similar creations. Luis Ruiz Noguez, as usual, is our source, and he has compiled more than a dozen other alien autopsies (including the one Santilli created before his magnum opus).

Our kind collaborator internos also comments in more detail about the “Yugoslavian” autopsy, which was actually created in Italy as part of CICAP’s contest of hoaxes. It won the contest.

Last year a very tiny alien autopsy also circulated on Youtube, proving Alien Autopsies are an enduring genre.

Santilli also shows what we all should be doing. How many other people could say they became millionaires thanks to ufology? Some have gone crazy or actually taken their lives due in great part to their involvement with the field.

Obviously they were not doing the right thing.

Almost three minutes of video, known (and sold) as the “Alien Interview”, allegedly smuggled out of Area 51 by an anonymous source who refers to himself as “Victor”. As you will remember, anonymous source means, a priori, hoax.

It first came to light on the Art Bell radio show on 13th March, 1997 when ufologist Sean David Morton was interviewed. Morton claimed the interrogation was fairly recent, sometime in 1996, and that Bob Dean apparently cried at the advanced screening of the film.

As the video is still being milked, more than ten years later, it’s unlikely we will know who the hoaxers were too soon. We hope they will eventually come clean – hey, hoaxers, you may profit from the revelation too, as Santilli did!

Even believers have a hard time believing it, and two very interesting indications of hoax were discussed around. One claimed that “Victor” was none other than Bob Dean himself. Perhaps, perhaps not. I don’t think a clear conclusion can be drawn.

The other was this image:

It looks like the interrogated alien, but with much more detail. Unfortunately, here too, no definite match can be drawn because the original alien interview was of so poor quality. And then, there’s this:

Can you see how the man’s hands are mangled? It’s a terrible Photoshop job. Even the alien puppet could be a digital creation, made from the original video to portray a backstage photo.

Or not. This “backstage” image shows the alien with a lot more detail and definition. It could have been a hoaxed hoax, with texture added over, but if they did such a terrible job with the man’s hands, would they be so good in creating the fake fake alien?

My bet is that’s indeed an actual photo of the puppet used in the Alien Interview, but why would they Photoshop a man in there? In any event, it’s just a bet.

If you know from where this image came from, or obviously, more details about the “Alien Interview”, do send your comments or a private email. [via ATS]

UPDATE 04/17/2011: Over in the comments below, Bayne identified the prop as coming from an episode of “Dark Skies”. And a recent thread in ATS, in a post by “freelance_zenarchist” nailed it without a doub.

So, we’re back to where we were regarding the Alien Interview video, as this backstage prop has no relation whatsoever to it. Why the hands of the Dark Skies artist seem mangled is yet another mystery to me.

“Above, one of the most impressive photos of an alleged extraterrestrial creature recovered from crashed UFOs. For many years it was thought the photo originated from a crash in the USA, but recently it was found it was captured in Germany, shortly before the Second World War. The officers who hold the being are high-ranking members of the SS” [Brazilian UFO mag, n.18, p.18, dec 1991]

It’s one of the most iconic alien images. The men in trenchcoats are described as agents from the FBI, KGB or even SS. None of these is true.

The famous image actually first hit the ufological circles when it was published in an Air Force bulletin in the USA on 1950:

“The June 1950 Talk of the Times reproduced a pair of photos received from Cologne, Germany, one of which is a retouched picture of Dr. E.W. Kay’s model saucer that appeared in the press on January 11, 1950. The other is of two agents holding up a small humanoid with proportions somewhat like a small monkey. The caption reads, “As one silver capsule broke: the first Mars man was captured! Eyewitness G-man, McKenerich, from Phoenix (Arizona), reports ‘I was astounded by the importance of this great moment. For the first time I was seeing a being from another world. At the same time I was equally amazed by the desperation of this Aluminum Man. His body was covered with a shiny metal foil.’ The observatory in Phoenix, Arizona, presumes that this is for protection from cosmic rays.”” [Varicose Brains, Part 3: Headhunt]

The story generated quite a buzz at the time, and it was quoted in Donald Keyhoe’s 1954 book, “Flying Saucers From Outer Space”, but apparently not along with the photo. And not even Keyhoe believed it. No one found the so-called McKennerich, and the Phoenix Observatory didn’t know anything about it.

Fifteen years later, the photo finally gained wider audience when circulated by the “Interplanetary Intelligence Report”. There it was associated with Ray Dimmick’s tale, reason why it was said to be taken in Mexico, even though the men and their suits are not very Mexican-like. As with most of the other alien photos, though, somehow the knowledge the image was originally from Germany and a hoax was around there, because in 1982, the magazine “Contactos Extraterrestres” published the following comment by none other than J. Allen Hynek:

“This photo is a hoax that’s been around for many years. It’s my understanding that it originated from Germany, and that the alleged pilot of the crashed UFO was in fact a shaved monkey.”

Wait a minute, shaved monkey? That’s new. As you will remember, to make things somewhat more complicated, we have another very similar alien photo that also comes from Germany, 1950. Not only that: in 1953, there was another famous alien prank in Georgia, USA, played by local barbers Ed Watters and Tom Wilson along with butcher Arnold “Buddy” Pane, involving… a shaved monkey.

So there may be some confusion here. Or not. Fact is, the photo itself is clearly dubious. As quoted by “Isaac Koi”, Jenny Randles and Peter Hough’s book “Looking for the Aliens” (1991) mention a very interesting analysis:

“Ole Henningsen reports various enquiries into the so-called ‘silver-man’ photograph. For example, commercial artist Claus Westh-Henrichsen had studied it in great detail and found many problems. For instance, he notes that the hand positions of the ‘security men’ indicate that they were gripping a rigid object. After carrying out tests, he proposes that they were actually pushing a pram!"

"Similarly, it appears that by examining the feet of the two security men and the alien (not fully visible on the print), it transpires that the alien would have to be floating above the ground."

"For these and a host of other reasons, Westh-Henrichsen is certain that the picture is another hoax, formed from an amalgam of a shot of the two men and the ‘pram’, with the ‘alien’ superimposed over it."”

I produced this quick and dirty montage to show how indeed the two men’s hands are aligned, and in a position that suggests they were holding a rigid object. A baby carriage is a very good guess:

Compare it to this photo from the other 1950 German hoax of two soldiers holding a real little person’s arms:

The most telling evidence of hoax, however, was noted by Hans-Werner Peiniger. The authors of the original article quoted on Talk of the Times are G. Falcht and R. Logen. This is literally translated as ‘forged’ and ‘make-believe’.

If any German reader is able to search for Cologne newspapers, particularly around April 1, 1950, they may finally put to a much due rest to this photo.

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Sources

• Noguez, L., “El Primer Marcianito”, Marcianitos Verdes, 2006.
• González, L., “FIRST HUManoid CATalog (FIRSTHUMCAT)”, Fundación Anomalia.
• Randles, J, Hough, P., “Looking for the Aliens”, 1991 [quoted by Isaac Koi in ATS].

In 1979, Barry Greenwood, from CAUS, obtained a version of this photo from the FBI files through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It was originally sent to the Bureau by an unknown informant on May 1950, who said it showed “a Martian in the USA”. Soon it made its way to the seminal book “The Roswell Incident” (1980), by William Moore and Charles Berlitz.

The explanation for this photo was quickly found and reported by James Oberg in his 1982 book. German researcher Klaus Webner had seen the image on Moore and Berlitz’s book and was amazed because he had previously discovered it on the Wiesbadener Tagblatt newspaper archives, from Wiesbaden, his home town.

But it was originally published on April 1st, 1950.

Webner contacted the original author of the story, Wilhelm Sprunkel, as well as the photographer, Hans Scheffler, and got confirmation it was indeed an April Fool’s prank. In fact, the confirmation it was an April Fool’s was already published on the same newspaper on April 3, 1950.

Sprunkel told Webner he was inspired by a flying saucer story he read about earlier. It was the tale told by Ray L. Dimmick circulated the month before. It referred to a “pigmy-sized man, about 25 inches tall”, a “tiny visitor reputedly had a large head and a very small body”.

With the idea for the joke, they contacted the Wiesbaden US Army base and amazingly got their cooperation. The soldiers are thus actually American. But the alien? It was photographer Scheffler’s 5-years-old son, Peter.

After some collage and airbrushing, the photo of the child was turned into a one-legged alien with “a large head and a very small body”.

Reportedly, “Webner informed Moore of the fraudulent nature of the image but the latter just replied that it was "bullshit!", and published a sour response in the Swiss magazine Ovni-Présence, complaining about that he was tired with Klaus Webner”.

For anyone wondering the original photos could be real, as Luis Ruiz Noguez noticed the hose between the alien and the soldier don’t cast a shadow. As you can see in the original images with Scheffler’s son, that’s because the hose was airbrushed in.

Interestingly, this photo and the story by Dimmick referring to pigmy-sized visitors would influence the common Gray alien archetype we came to recognize in recent years. Martin Kottmeyer discusses the subject on a series of articles published on Magonia:

• Varicose Brains, Part 1: Entering a Grey Area
• Varicose Brains, Part 2: Heading Towards the Future
• Varicose Brains, Part 3: Headhunt

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Sources

• Noguez, L., “El Hombre(cito) de la Máscara de Gas”, Perspectivas, Fundación Anomalia, 2006
• Gross, P., “April 1, 1950, Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany, The US Military”, URECAT, UFOs at close sight, 2009