/A .
E Bver time, diverse aliens like those we have seen thus far—such as the winged Mothman, and the diminutive, goblinesque Kelly entities—began to give way to increasingly humanoid-appearing varieties. They are products not of Darwinian-type evolution but rather of the evolution of an idea in popular culture. Here we look first at some gigantic humanoids (including one reminiscent of the Cyclops, the one-eyed giants of Greek mythology); then we look at how the now-standard alien likeness developed, how it featured in a famous “alien autopsy” film, and how the Roswell saga became the Holy Grail of UFOlogy.
Some of the alien humanoids were of monstrous proportions. One such being was described by three boys, two aged seven and another twelve, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1969. They claimed to have seen a spherical UFO hovering nearby and, through its transparent shell, spied four beings. One, about ten feet tall, floated to the ground dressed in a diving suit and clear helmet, through which the boys could see that it possessed a single, large, dark eye. When the cyclopean entity approached them, gesturing and speaking strange words, the older boy lifted a brick threateningly. The giant sent forth a beam that knocked the brick from the boy’s hand, then levitated back into the sphere, which silently rose and vanished. Later, tri-
angular markings were found on the path where the cyclopean giant had stridden.
The tale has largely passed into obscurity, except for its inclusion in a book devoted to the myriad descriptions of extraterrestrials (Huyghe 1996, 54-55). Few seem to have taken it seriously, probably having been unable to distinguish the alleged encounter from a hoax—a possibility illuminated by the next case.
From 1989 in Voronezh, Russia, comes the report of another ten-foot- tall being who emerged from a hovering spherical craft. Wearing silver coveralls, the giant had three eyes. When the forty or so witnesses began shouting, the entity vanished along with the sphere, only to reappear five minutes later. The being pointed a four-foot tube at a teenage boy, causing him to disappear. However, after the entity reentered the craft and it flew away, the teenager reappeared. What to make of this monster? According to Patrick Huyghe (1996, 52):
Some witnesses reported having seen a symbol, known as UMMO, on the being’s belt and on the object. This design had been reported in several close encounters in Spain during the 1970s. Most investigators believe it was all a clever hoax by a small cult claiming contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. A report on UFO shapes, which had been published in Voronezh, had included the UMMO symbol, and investigators believed that this had contaminated an otherwise solid case.
The concept of what alien creatures look like has undergone change over time, like other evolved images, such as Jesus’s features in art (Nickell 1988, 41-48), or of the popular likeness of Santa Claus in pop culture (Flynn 1993).
The development begins with the modern UFO era in 1947. A great variety of alien types were described in the post-1947 era (Clark 1993a; Cohen 1982; Hendry 1979; Huyghe 1996; Lorenzen and Lorenzen 1977; Mack 1994; McCampbell 1976; Sachs 1980; Stringfield 1977, 1980; Story 1980; Vallee 1969). There were “little green men” supposedly encountered in Italy in 1947 (Cohen 1982, 203-205); humanlike beings bathed in light who appeared to 1950s “contactees” (Story 1980, 89); “hairy dwarfs” reported in 1954 (Clark 1993a, 177); and many other extraterrestrials reportedly encountered. Figure 18.1 shows a selection of such beings from 1947 to the present. (Science fiction examples have not been included.)
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Figure 18.1. “Alien Time Line” illustrates the evolution of the popular extraterrestrial likeness (drawing by the author).
This Alien Timeline appeared on a Discovery channel program on alien abductions, and also on ABC’s 20/20 (April 4, 1997) in a documentary on the “Alien Autopsy” hoax (discussed in the next section). The aliens depicted in the film were of a type not popularly conceived until years later.
That alien model began to appear after the first widely reported alien abduction—the Betty and Barney Hill case in 1961. It is a humanoid with a small body, a big head, and large, wraparound eyes. This type seems to represent us as it is assumed we will be in our remote evolutionary future (Nickell 1984). Thus, such aliens have dwindling bodies but large brains (due to inactivity coupled with increased intelligence). However, there is reason to be skeptical of all such humanlike models. As one early commentator states: “While it seems incredible that life does not exist elsewhere in the universe, it is equally incredible that it should resemble man” (Palmer 1951, 64).
Still, due to the influence of popular media, this is the type that eventually won out. It is the standardized alien image, now seen everywhere (see figure 18.2.)
Figure 18.2. Alien toys and novelties show standardization of the depiction in popular culture (author’s photograph).
Britain’s Manchester Evening News termed it a hoax that “fooled the world” (Salford 2006). Well, not exactly: Skeptical Inquirer magazine was on to the 1995 “Alien Autopsy” film from the outset.* But now the reputed creator of the fake extraterrestrial corpse used for the “autopsy” has publicly confessed.
The film-—purporting to depict the postmortem of an extraterrestrial that died in a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in mid 1947 (see figure 18.3)—was part of a “documentary” that aired on the Fox television network. Skeptics and many UFOlogists quickly branded the affair a hoax.
Among numerous observations, they noted that the film bore a bogus, nonmilitary codemark, that the injuries sustained by the extraterrestrial were inconsistent with an air crash, and that the person performing the autopsy held the scissors like a tailor rather than a pathologist (who is trained to place his middle or ring finger in the bottom of the scissors hole
Figure 18.3. Scene from Alien Autopsy television program purports to show the postmortem of an extraterrestrial from the Roswell “UFO crash” (photograph courtesy of the Skeptical Inquirer science magazine).
and use his forefinger to steady the blades). Houston pathologist Ed Uthman (1995) faulted the film for lacking what he aptly termed “technical verisimilitude.”
Other pathologists agreed. Cyril Wecht (1995), former president of the National Association of Forensic Pathologists, described the viscera in terms that could apply to supermarket meat scraps: “I cannot relate these structures to abdominal context.”' Nationally known pathologist Dominick Demaio (1995) was even more succinct: “I would say it’s a lot of bull.”
Hollywood special-effects expert Trey Stokes (whose film credits include The Blob , Batman Returns , and Tales from the Crypt ) told Skeptical Inquirer that the alien corpse behaved like a dummy, seeming lightweight, “rubbery,” and therefore moving unnaturally when handled (Stokes 1995).
Belatedly, a Manchester sculptor and special-effects creator, John Humphreys, now claims that the Roswell alien was his handiwork, and that it was destroyed after the film was shot. He made the revelation just as a new movie, Alien Autopsy , was being released, a film for which he re-created the original creature. Released in April 2006, it retells the making of the 1995 hoax autopsy film, with a pair of British television celebrities playing the original producers, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield. Santiili now claims that the 1995 film was a re-creation of genuine footage that became damaged when its container was opened after forty-eight years (Horne 2006). It’s hard to imagine anyone believing him.
As Humphreys told the BBC, “Funnily enough, I used exactly the same process as before. You start with the stills from the film, blow them up as large as you can. Then you make an aluminum armature, which you cover in clay, and then add all the detail.” The clay model was used to produce a mold that yielded a latex cast. The body cavities were filled, Humphreys admitted, with chicken entrails, sheep brains, and the like, which were purchased from a meat market near the north Fondon flat in which the film was shot (Horne 2006).
Are Humphreys’s claims credible? Indeed, not only is he a graduate of the Royal Academy and a special-effects model-maker—his credits include Max Headroom and Doctor Who —but his re-creations are so good as to leave no doubt of his ability to have made the originals. And examples of his work displayed on his Web site (Humphreys 2006) are stylistically consistent with the hoaxed aliens.
Humphreys also admitted that in the original autopsy film, he himself played the role of the pathologist; his identity was concealed by a contamination suit.
The alien autopsy hoax represented the culmination of several years’ worth of rumors, urban legends, and outright deceptions, purporting to prove that saucer wreckage and the remains of its humanoid occupants were stored at a secret facility—e.g., a (nonexistent) “Hangar 18” at Wright Patterson Air Force Base—and that the small corpses were autop- sied at that or another site.
Among the hoaxes were the following:
• A 1949 science-fiction movie, The Flying Saucer , purported to contain scenes of a captured spacecraft; an actor actually posed as an FBI agent and swore the claim was true.
• In 1950, writer Frank Scully reported in his Behind the Flying Saucers that the US government possessed no fewer than three Venusian spaceships, together with the humanoid corpses found on board. Scully had been fed the tale by two confidence men who had hoped to sell a petroleum locating device allegedly based on alien technology (Clark 1993b).
• In 1974, Robert Spencer Carr began to promote one of the crashes from the Scully book and to claim firsthand knowledge of where the pickled aliens were stored. But as the late claimant’s son told Skeptical Inquirer readers (Carr 1997), Carr was a spinner of yarns who made up the entire story.
• In 1987, the author of a book on Roswell released the notorious “MJ-12 documents,” which seemed to prove the crash-retrieval story and a high-level government coverup. Unfortunately, document experts readily exposed the papers as inept forgeries (Nickell 1995; Nickell and Fischer 1990).
• In 1990, Gerald Anderson claimed that he and family members had been rock hunting in the New Mexico desert in 1947, when they came upon a crashed saucer with injured aliens among the stillburning wreckage. Anderson released a diary his uncle had purportedly kept that recorded the event. Alas, forensic tests showed that the ink used to write the entries had not been manufactured until 1974 (Nickell 2001, 120).
The most elaborate Roswell hoax, however, and the one that probably reached the largest audience, was the “Alien Autopsy” film. It will be remembered as a classic of the genre. The truth about “the Roswell inci-
dent”—that the crash device was merely a secret US spy balloon, part of Project Mogul, which attempted to monitor emissions from anticipated Soviet nuclear tests—continues to be obscured by hoaxers, conspiracy cranks, and hustlers.
We should again recall Paul Kurtz’s statement at the time of the original film’s airing: “The Roswell myth should be permitted to die a deserved death. Whether or not we are alone in the universe will have to be decided on the basis of better evidence than that provided by the latest bit of Roswell fakery” (Nickell 1995, 19).
Clark, Jerome. 1993a. Unexplained. Detroit, MI: Visible Ink.
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267-78. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.
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Flynn, Tom. 1993. The Trouble with Christmas. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Hendry, Allan. 1979. The UFO Handbook. New York: Doubleday.
Horne, Marc. 2006. “‘Max Headroom’ Creator Made Roswell Alien.” Sunday Times. April 16. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2136617,00 .html (accessed April 25, 2006).
Humphreys, John. 2006. Official website: http://www.john-humphreys.com/ index.html (accessed April 18, 2006).
Huyghe, Patrick. 1996. The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials. New York: Avon Books.
Lorenzen, Coral, and Jim Lorenzen. 1977. Abducted: Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space. New York: Berkeley Medallion Books.
Mack, John. 1994. Abduction. New York: Ballantine.
McCampbell, James M. 1976. UFOLOGY: A Major Breakthrough in the Scientific Understanding of Unidentified Flying Objects. Millbrae, CA: Celestial Arts.
Nickell, Joe. 1984. “The ‘Hangar 18’ Tales: A Folkloristic Approach.” Common Ground, June.
-. 1988. Inquest on the Shroud of Turin. Updated ed. Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books.
The Humanoids 191
-. 1995. “Alien Autopsy Hoax.” Skeptical Inquirer 19, no. 6 (November/
December): 17-19.
-. 2001. Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal. Lexington, KY:
University Press of Kentucky.
Nickell, Joe, and John F. Fischer. 1990. “The Crashed-Saucer Forgeries.” International UFO Reporter (March/April): 4-12.
Palmer, R. 1951. “New Report on the Flying Saucers.” Fate (January): 63-81. Sachs, Margaret. 1980. The UFO Encyclopedia. New York: Perigree Books. “Salford Man Admits Alien Autopsy Fake.” 2006. Manchester Evening News. April 6. http://www.manchesteronline.co.Uk/men/news/showbiz/s/210/21 (accessed April 6, 2006).
-. 1980. The UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome. Seguin, TX: Mufon.
Stokes, Trey. 1995. Personal communications with Barry Karr. August 29-31;
cited in Nickell 1995, “Alien Autopsy Hoax.”
Story, Ronald D. 1980. The Encyclopedia of UFOs. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Stringfield, Leonard H. 1977. Situation Red: The UFO Siege. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Uthman, Ed. 1995. “Fox’s ‘Alien Autopsy’: A Pathologist’s View.” Usenet. September 15.
Vallee, Jacques. 1969. Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers. Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery.
Wecht, Cyril. 1995. Quoted on “Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction?” Fox Network, August 28 and September 4.
Chapter 19