Blog
LIVE COVERAGE: Space alien video shown in Denver
- May 30, 2008
- Posted by:
- Category: Uncategorized

LIVE COVERAGE: Space alien video shown in Denver
By
Daniel J. Chacon,
Bill Scanlon
Originally published 12:05 a.m., May 30, 2008
Updated 01:54 p.m., May 30, 2008
The eyes of the world are on Denver today for the showing of a video
that purports to show a space alien. Live transmissions and recordings
of the video were not allowed. The Rocky’s Bill Scanlon is blogging
live.
12:33 p.m. Shannon Mundell, of Arvada, said she
wanted to see the video because she’s known people who have had contact
with aliens and "when you look in their eyes you know that what they
saw was real."
She said that other countries are more accepting of ET’s, but that "in America, we just want to deny it."
Mundell said the video of the creature in the window "was very interesting."
"I can’t say exactly what it was, but I think there’s a good chance it was real.
"I saw the muscles moving and the eyes moving."
She said it was unlikely it was just a puppet because "only in
Hollywood can they make such realistic-looking puppets and they cost
thousands of dollars.
"It’s very unlikely that Stan would have done something like that."
She said the video needs to be investigated further.
Mundell thinks that if there are aliens among us, and they are
peaceful, "It would be wonderful for them to interact with our world
and teach us their technologies."
She is worried, though, that if there’s conclusive proof of aliens
it would cause a lot of emotional suffering from people whose religious
beliefs aren’t compatible with intelligent life from another galaxy.
12:24 p.m. Jeff Peckman, the man trying to form an
extraterrestrial commission in Denver, told the audience it’s time to
take extraterrestrial life seriously.
"It’s time to get ahead of the curve," he said, adding that some
high government officials in other countries and some retired military
officers in the U.S. are among the believers.
He said even some Vatican officials say it’s not incompatible for Roman Catholics to believe in extraterrestrials.
"They’re our brothers — God’s creatures," Peckman said.
12:04 p.m. The presentation lasted about an hour and the video itself was a few minutes long.
Randy Bancroft and fellow skeptic Bela Scheiber found it interesting that the creature was never seen from below the neck.
"It looks like the quintessential Gray, right out of E.T.," Scheiber said.
Bancroft added, "Like with Alfred Hitchcock, it was what he didn’t show you that was the key."
Audience members wanted to know why the creature traveled all those light years just to peep in a window.
"I have no idea," said Alejandro Rojas, a moderator from the Mutual
UFO Network International, who said more investigation of this film
needs to be done.
Other audience members asked why the government seems to be keeping evidence of UFOs secret.
Rojas, the education coordinator for the Mutual UFO Network, said
perhaps the government feels the public isn’t ready to see the truth.
The presenters of the video said it’s been reviewed by experts who
say there are no post-production add-ons, but Scheiber says that misses
the point. The key is to find out whether the original video was a
hoax. He noted many hoaxes in the past were perpetrated by teenagers
and found it interesting that the Nebraska man — Stan Romanek, now of
Colorado Springs — had two teenage daughters.
11:59 a.m. The film showed a window, reportedly 8 feet off the ground in a rural Nebraska town in 2003.
It was shot by the homeowner, who had earlier reported seeing UFOs hovering above his house.
This time, he said he set up a camera because he feared a peeping tom was spying on his two teenage daughters.
In the enhanced version of the video, a creature pops up in the window, looks around, and pops back down, again and again.
To skeptic Randy Bancroft, the creature looks a lot like the seminal
"Gray," the creature in the 1957 movie "Earth vs. The Flying Saucers,"
which has a narrow chin, a broad forehead and almond eyes, not too
different from the friendly alien in "E.T."
11:45 a.m. The drama must be intense down at
Auraria. Hold the phone, because we should hear from our fearless
correspondent shortly. Peckman was expected to keep a tight rein on the
video and other live transmissions from the scene. No cause for alarm,
we think.
11 a.m. Joanne Almeida, of Englewood, is at the film screening because, "I’ve seen things in my life.
"I feel a lot of people are arrogant" in their dismissal of UFOs and the paranormal, she said.
"Instead of being open-minded, they make jokes."
"They’re arrogant to think this is silly and a waste of time when
there are so many other things that are silly and a waste of time."
Almeida said she thinks a lot of this is tied in with oil.
"People in the high circle of politics are very greedy," she said.
"I believe there are a lot of alternative fuels that the politicians
are hiding. Maybe that’s the kind of thing they’re trying to tell us."
Bela Scheiber, a member of the Rocky Mountain Skeptics, said "photoshop has come a long way."
He said it’s no great trick to project an image on a video, given
that two girls in England fooled the world about fairies 90 years ago.
He noted that a man who faked a photo of the Lochness monster
confessed to it on his deathbed and that more than one person has
admitted to faking signs of Big Foot.
Scheiber predicted that Jeff Peckman will show an ambiguous video
and then "cherry pick the things that he wants to show the audience.
"And of course we’ll cherry pick the things that we want to show the audience."
10:30 a.m. Claude Swanson, a physicist from Virginia, was the first to show up at the news conference in the Tivoli on the Auraria campus.
He said he’ll talk for a few minutes about "how time travel is theoretically possible."
"There have been some faster-than-light propagations in the labs,"
he maintained. "There are lots of reasons to be open-minded about these
things."
He said he’s been familiar with the Colorado Springs video for years.
"The first year I was pretty cautious," he said. "I gradually became persuaded there was something real going on here."
6 a.m.
A proposal to create a commission that would prepare Denver for
space aliens has turned the eyes of the world on the Mile High City.
From CNN to NTV in Moscow to the Daily Mail in London, news
organizations worldwide are scrambling to land an interview with Jeff
Peckman, who is sponsoring a ballot initiative to create an
Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver.
"I’ve got about four or five interviews already, and I’m in
discussion with Inside Edition, Good Morning America, Fox national news
and a Moscow TV station that wants to send a team,"Peckman, 54, said
Thursday.
His phone kept ringing all day.
"NBC national wanted me in five different time slots tomorrow on
different programs. I took three of them," Peckman said Thursday
afternoon.
Later in the day, Peckman said he might appear on Larry King.
The media bombardment was triggered by a report on
RockyMountainNews.com Wednesday in which Peckman said that a video
purportedly showing a living extraterrestrial would be shown at a news
conference today.
The story generated hundreds of thousands of hits.
"It’s just an interesting story because you do have a lot of people
who believe there is superior life, if you will, or another life form
out there, other than ours," said Adrienne Wheeler, a producer for The
Early Show on CBS News. "There’s a huge following for this, as I’m sure
you know," said Wheeler, who believes there is intelligent life outside
of Earth.
Paul Thompson, a Florida-based correspondent for the Daily Mail in
London, said the newspaper, which has a circulation of about 2.5
million, asked him to check out what was happening in Denver.
"In England, there was a big story recently where the government
declassified certain files and it was all the UFO sightings," he said.
"I think everyone is interested in UFOs."
Well, not everyone.
Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown said people can believe what
they want, but the attention "is not very favorable to our city."
"Suddenly we’re getting more national and international attention on
this issue than the DNC," he said, referring to the Democratic National
Convention in August.
"In some respects, it’s a welcome relief amidst all the polarizing
politics that we have," he said. "That’s probably good, but it just
doesn’t bode well for our city."
–Daniel Chacon
Famous aliens
*E.T. , star of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 blockbuster.
Made the phrase "phone home" an all-purpose part of the English lexicon.
*Close Encounters of the Third Kind aliens. Another Spielberg creation, they bear a familial resemblance to E.T.
*Yoda. One of the stars of Star Wars, the original
Yoda was the creation of Jim Henson of Muppets fame. Yoda helped turn
references to "The Force" into an everyday phrase.
*The Roswell alien. This alien’s ship is said to
have crashed near Roswell, N.M., where upon government officials
allegedly suppressed the evidence. The official story? The wreckage was
that of a weather balloon. The incident provided the inspiration for
the founding of the Roswell International UFO Museum.
roswellufomuseum.com
*The Mars Attacks aliens. The gnome-sized aliens are also vicious. Most violent fictional aliens are at least human height, and some are much bigger.