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December 8 Event
December 8th Event Part II
December 8th Event Part III
December 8th Event Part IV
Abductions and Hypnosis
Abductions and Hypnosis Part 2
Area 51 Interview
Area 51 Part II
Alien Stiffs
Evolution of Abductions
Greys
Pleideians
Roswell Testimonies
Roswell Testimonies Part II
Roswell Testimonies Part III
Roswell Testimonies Part IV
Roswell Testimonies Part V
Goku's DBZ RPG
Character TechniquesCharacter List|
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| Alien Stiffs |
| Whole Cloth or Holy Grail? |
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| --Like a tenacious computer virus, dead aliens have invaded the Internet--and now the television airwaves. We speak of the notorious Roswell "autopsy" film, which purports to depict the 1947 postmortem of an actual, albeit dead, space alien. For several months, Internauts have had access to grainy frame captures (pictured, right) of the black and white film. And earlier this week, the footage made its North American television debut on a FOX network one-hour special. (FOX will rebroadcast the program on Monday night, Sept. 4.) Hours before that, the extraterrestrial stiff was the subject of television events in Britain, Germany, Holland, Brazil, and Italy. Of course, we tuned in Stateside to witness what is either the event of the millennium or a cheesy money-grubbing hoax. So which is it? Ray Santilli, the British impresario who claims to have discovered the long-lost films while scouring America for vintage Elvis footage (you knew Elvis would figure into this story), continues to defend the films as authentic. Most American ufologists are skeptical, although British saucer trackers like Philip Mantle of the British UFO Research Association are more supportive. Here's the background: Per Santilli, a documentary film producer, he purchased 91 minutes of 16mm (for an undisclosed price) from the former army cameraman assigned to record the monumental event of an alien autopsy. 50 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time--the book--details the famous Roswell story: In 1947 something weird crashed outside of Roswell, New Mexico. It's an absolute fact that the Army announced to the world it had recovered a crashed "flying disk." But the very next day, military brass recanted and claimed the object had been a mundane weather balloon. Decades later, a string of researchers would interview the aging witnesses of the event, who claimed to have handled strange, otherworldly saucer debris and to have heard accounts of alien bodies being recovered from the wreckage. According to the cameraman (whom Santilli refuses to name), shortly after the crash, he was called to Fort Worth, Texas, to film the autopsy of one of the Roswell EBEs ("Extra-Biological Entities"). In the most suspicious part of the story, the cameraman claims that the military neglected to collect several cans of the exposed film footage--which sat in the now-elderly lensman's attic for nearly five decades. Of course, as more than a few skeptics have pointed out, the only thing linking the newly discovered footage and the Roswell incident is the "testimony" of the anonymous cameraman. The footage--at least the portion aired on FOX--features two apparent doctors in hooded hazardous material suits cutting open the corpse of a big-headed "humanoid." But there are no identifiable military personnel in the footage, and the "operating room" is blandly nondescript. The FOX special dispatched some of the suspected anachronisms that might prove the film a fake: the clock and telephone and operating instruments glimpsed in the background are consistent with technology of the late 1940s. But other nagging problems remain: the camera work seems a tad melodramatic for military documentary work--the photographer used a hand-held camera rather than a tripod--and the camera dodges key scenes like the sawing open of the skull, focusing on the doctors' backs instead. At times, the "alien" body looks organic, but from other angles it looks like it might be a dummy. As for the provenance of the body, there are only three possibilities: It's either a real alien, a faked dummy, or a deformed human being passed off as an ET. The FOX show consulted Hollywood special effects wizards, who seemed impressed with the organic look of the body, especially when it was sliced open. They concluded that if it was a fake, it was a better fake than they could construct. As for the deformed human being theory, various researchers have pointed out that the body has features that resemble the morphology of assorted human genetic disorders: the low ears, enlarged head, the bulbous eyes. Several of the genetic diseases that might account for these deformities--depending on which skeptic you talk to--include Patau's syndrome (chromosome 13 trisomy), Edward's Syndrome (trisomy 18) or Turner's Syndrome. Still, the body's six fingers and six toes are perfectly proportioned, an unusual occurrence in humans with birth defects. Most troubling were the gaping omissions in the FOX special. According to reports circulating around the Internet, in some segments of the raw footage President Eisenhower can be glimpsed in the background. It certainly sounds implausible, but the FOX special made no mention of this rumor. And in one scene, the doctors remove a flimsy black film from the eyes of the creature, revealing white eyes and irises rolled back into the head. What's going on there? Are the oft-reported black eyes of aliens merely soft-lens contacts? Had the surgeons earlier placed film over the eyes to preserve them? The FOX special didn't explain. Of course, in dismissing the spectacle as a hoax, many skeptics are looking no further than Ray Santilli's lucrative sale of TV rights to his alien cash cow. The FOX program's producers hadn't returned our query at press time, but 50 Greatest Conspiracies has learned that an independent Italian documentary filmmaker paid Santilli's production company $35,000 for rights to still photos of the autopsy. With Santilli selling moving footage to TV producers in Europe, South America and the United States, well, you get the picture. Santilli, no slouch as an entrepreneur, is also offering videotapes of the footage to the public, for 35 British pounds a pop. Santilli even has a Web site where you can find out how to place an order. Skeptics of a particularly conspiratorial bent (folks after our own hearts) have postulated that a hoax might go beyond the coarse profit motive. They contend that elements of the U.S. government might have concocted the film with the intention of later revealing it to be a hoax, thereby chilling the public demand for further disclosures regarding the Roswell incident. OK, so the verdict is still out on the Roswell film. So you might want to hold off on plans for a proper alien wake. We'll keep you posted on the story as it continues to materialize. |
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