‘Alien’ Image Raises Questions of the Terrestrial Kind

‘Alien’ Image Raises Questions of the Terrestrial Kind

There has been a lot of buzz in recent weeks about what are being called “the Roswell slides,” a series of Kodachrome images recovered by a group of UFO researchers that include Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and Adam Dew. The images purportedly show an extraterrestrial biological entity, and there are some insinuations (well, several) that the creature is also somehow related to the Roswell Incident of 1947, and that the film stock matches the same period.

Among the recent announcements about this strange affair is that a press conference will be held in May that will feature the images publicly, along with more details about their backstory and possible implications.

Even more recently, however, one of the purported images has now appeared online, as my colleague Nick Redfern had pointed out in an article featured here at MU, where he offered only this on the matter:

“Of course, now, and as of a couple of days ago, you can see one of the images right here. What it shows, I don’t know. Many who have looked at it are underwhelmed. From what I see too, I can’t say I’m particularly excited either.”

I certainly don’t mean to be unfairly critical of the matter, since I don’t have the full back story on it at present, and few of us in the research community will have that story, apart from those directly involved with the purported “find”, at least until later this year.

However, if I had to base my expectations on the history of claims very similar to these–and their obvious dubious nature–I would have to agree with Nick that this is not particularly exciting. If anything, I would say that if the photo linked above (in Nick’s excerpt) is indeed one of the slides the group will be showcasing in May, then I am already beyond skeptical.

Now let me explain why.

The comments thread on the post Nick links to (which takes us to the UFO Conjecture(s)blog) also includes a link to a German language forum, which includes the original photo from which the “alien” image was taken. That image is a still capture from a trailer that had already been circulating the web, which actually depicts one of the slides in question as it is being examined (that image also presents a better context for the otherwise blurry image of the supposed “alien”, and I recommend viewing it here if you haven’t seen it already).

Looking at the image, the first thing I thought of (despite the blurriness of the picture) had been that the body of the purported “alien” bears strong resemblance to a child born with hydrocephalus, an abnormal condition where the amount of cerebrospinal fluid flowing to the brain increases, either due to the brain producing too much of it, or perhaps due to a blockage, or an absorption problem with the blood vessels in the region of the body. This often leads to swelling of the brain, and thus, an enlarged cranium with the infants in question (although the condition is not exclusive to infancy).

An undated photograph (described only as “very old”) from the archives of the University of Rochester shows a more extreme example of the condition in an infant, as depicted at the Wikipedia entry for Hydrocephalus:

An online image search will offer even more extreme examples of the condition than what we’ve featured above, but for illustrative purposes this image does give readers an idea of the physical appearance of an infant afflicted with the condition.

One thing we know about the purported “Roswell slides”, as written aboutby researcher Kevin Randle, is that there are still questions about who took the photos, and where… but that, at very least, the names of the individuals who had owned the images are indeed well known. Randle notes:

Tom (Carey) says something that I’m not sure he is going to be able to retreat from and I’m surprised that it was in the video clip. He said, “…We don’t know where the picture was taken. It’s taken indoors [so Ray or whoever, didn’t stumble across the body in the desert]… We don’t know exactly what circumstances the photographer was being a part of to take those pictures.”

They don’t know who took the pictures, only that they were found as a house was being prepared for an estate sale. The house had been owned by Bernerd and Hilda Ray and was in a collection of slides from the late 1940s and 1950s. They don’t seem to know who took the pictures or when they were taken or how Ray ended up with them and with that, the trail grows cold.

Read more: http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/02/alien-image-raises-questions-of-the-terrestrial-kind/