Time, resources, and credibility are 3 valuable commodities stripped from Ufology each time a hoax is exposed.

While some may advance the opinion that exposing hoaxes serves to bolster UFO research and the UFO community at large, it can also be said that everytime a hoax is exposed it only serves to diminish the opinions of those who might otherwise hold the UFO enigma in higher regard.

We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

To my knowledge there are no actual copies of the original photo in circulation.

According to Ryan Wood in MAJIC Eyes Only, “This image was reported emailed to radio host Art Bell by someone named Albert Lewis who said it was found with his father’s effects after his death. There is a badge shown at the right front of the cart that reportedly showing the word ‘Majestic’.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly stopabductions.com relates the origin of the photo differently as, “The photo was found by the wife of a special operations officer in the Air Force after he died. She did not know he had it until she had permission to review his papers. The photo was obtained from another investigator.”

“There is an area 51 tag on the alien which may be hardly visible on the screen but can be seen better in the original photo.”

Interesting how the details of the two stories have already started to diverge and that nobody seems to actually have the original file. I can’t even find a copy of it on coasttocoastam.com

There are a lot of amateur collections of supposed alien photos on the net with commentary but I’ve never seen this one discussed at any length. As I’ve never seen a live alien I have nothing to compare it with but it just looks like a prop. The glass case is a nice, elaborate touch so I’m surprised that this hasn’t been clearly identified as coming from some movie.

It’s difficult to neatly summarize why but Dean’s photo is the only closeup image of a purported alien that I have ever seen that gives me the impression that I might be looking at something real and organic. If it is fake it is the work of a master artist and craftsman imo.

Redoubt,

Are you saying the photos on the Cape Girardeau page you linked are supposed to be the original photos? The text seems to indicate the photos were lost in 1984 and to my eye those photos look like they are video screen captures of a television reenactment. Are there actually good copies of the photos available elsewhere?

These days there really is no excuse for not having high quality scans of these things on the net. Any researcher that wants to float photos into the ufo community today needs to be releasing high resolution scans of the prints, negatives or the unaltered copies of the original digital files with something like a MD5 checksum. There are dozens of places that will host them for free.

I don’t know the provenance of that one, but My first impression is in the comment above. That could be frost, or it might be corrosion. Hard to tell.

The site you link to for the “head and shoulders” portrait is much clearer. It does look creepy, and the “twisted neck” aspect is much more visible. If it’s a fake, it’s pretty decent.

The other looks like one of the dummies from Paul Davids’ Roswell movie. It’s too far away to make any determination for me.

Your comment about Meier is basically what I think of many contactees. THey may have had some sort of experience that scrambled their awareness and made them make up things later, thinking it was OK, since they were still transmitting the “message.”

Re: Meier - The stuff only appeared on film later. Hmm. Seems pretty convenient to me.

I don’t know about that Cape G. picture. I assume that anything that got through an official photo and press blackout was either very lucky, or was meant to be released. The picture on the site you referenced is almost too good to be true. One witness describes the beings clothed in something that looked like aluminum foil, but the picture does not bear this out. Also, the two men holding the creature have no protective clothing on, not even gloves, it seems, although the picture does not have enough detail to show this clearly.

Then again, this could be a real picture from the event, which has not garnered enough publicity to justify a denial. Frustrating, isn’t it?

More info on that photo can be found here: http://www.stopabductions.com/gblHelp.htm

This is one of the few alien photos that I find really intriguing. Note the corrugated steel walls in the back seem to be covered in frost indicating cold storage.