Posthuman Blues

I've received some good-natured ribbing for maintaining that the recently debunked "alien autopsy" might still harbor surprises.

To clarify: I've never accepted the story that the footage had anything to do with the alleged Roswell incident. At best, I thought we might be seeing a leaked documentary of secret government testing. My hunches that there might be more to the AA than the mainstream consensus would accept (or allow) gelled upon publication of "Body Snatchers In The Desert" and subsequent email dialogue with author Nick Redfern, who confirmed that the Air Force experimented on progeria victims in the time frame suggested by the "autopsy."





Now that a special effects artist has claimed to have hoaxed the footage -- and, more importantly, appears to have reproduced the being itself -- the mystery certainly seems to have come to an unspectacular climax. Predictably, at least one commentator refuses to accept the "hoax" verdict: clear evidence, in my opinion, of the enduring "will to believe" (although, to be entirely fair, accounts of how the AA was hoaxed are at least as contradictory as those describing how it was acquired; further, one can't automatically dismiss a profit motive for "backtracking" on the AA's origin).

Personally, I find the "hoax" explanation the most tenable. But I don't think ufologists should stop asking questions quite yet, especially in light of the "alien's" unnerving resemblance to victims of progeria.

To be sure, basic resemblances between progeria and the stereotypical "Gray" alien are clear enough. Humans with progeria tend to have disproportionately large, hairless heads and are short in stature, traits found again and again in UFO/close encounter literature. But the being in the AA -- hoax or otherwise -- possesses a number of subtle, secondary traits less commonly known. These include oddly positioned ears (in decided contrast with the absence of ears commonly attributed to ETs), sunken jaw (with possible lack of teeth), apparent absence of a naval, lack of subdermal fatty tissue, and predisposition to polydactyly.

Taken together, these traits suggest an unusual -- if terrestrial -- explanation for the AA; I think a substantial case can be made for the alleged dummy in the footage having been specifically modeled to resemble a human with progeria.

But why would an FX artist, asked to construct a commercially viable alien, take pains to make sure his creation resembled a person with a specific genetic disease? And why would a hoaxer produce two such "aliens" when one dissection would never even be seen outside a group of insiders? (The current confession also asks us to dismiss credible claims by film investors to have viewed the AA -- or related footage -- as early as the 1980s.)

Could the answer have a connection with the general scenario detailed in Redfern's book? (It bears mentioning that even the "alien" black eye lenses have a counterpart in the annals of secret government experimentation.)

To conclude, I agree with the majority of the UFO "community" that the AA is probably a hoax, although I find the conflicting accounts given by Ray Santilli and John Humphreys, the self-confessed FX perpetrator, worthy of follow-up.

But the link to Air Force experiments, however circumstantial, continues to interest me. In our understandable rush to divest ourselves of the AA, is it possible we've sacrificed leads that might point us in other, non-ufological directions?