A forensic analysis of allegedly leaked UFO and alien footage.
Skinny Bob Foreword We present a detailed analysis of allegedly leaked UFO and alien footage. This time it's not about lights in the sky or anecdotal reports but unambiguous imagery. This sounds too good to be true, right? What are the odds you're stumbling upon authentic evidence of extraterrestrial visitation on some website on the Internet? But how exactly do you expect disclosure to happen? A president making a surprising announcement? Mobile phone videos trending on Social Media showing UFOs landing publically? Or perhaps a slow process of leaks from encounters accumulating and leading to eventual admission? This could be one of these leaks. If your initial reaction is dominated by disbelief and ridicule, you are equipped with a properly tuned BS detector for living a healthy life in a complex world. This investigation peeks into a rabbit hole requiring dangerous detector adjustments because of the space it explores being far away from the mundane episodes of our daily lives. Many got lost in this maze, so better stay safe and shallow! What motivates us to dive deeper is the prospect of this material qualifying as the most significant piece of photographic evidence imaginable to mankind. The stakes could not be higher! In the worst case, however, the whole thing turns into a puff of smoke and we are left with memories of a collaborative detective story that brought inspiration and excitement for many years. We might be irresponsible. A proposal for authenticity is essentially an extremely fringe conspiracy theory. What could be more unbelievable and outrageous than the knowledge about extraterrestrial, intelligent life being withheld from the public by secretive actors for decades? By considering a leak rather than hoax we give credence to sinister corners of society that preach theories of similar gravity but with potential to cause harm in the real world. Compared to other fringe communities, the UFO people have always had the bonus of harmlessness although the usual allegations of governmental suppression of disclosure do entail distrusting institutions and ultimately society itself. A healthy society is built on trust, so we hope you consume this investigation with caution and keep in mind that it's not necessarily "the government" and much less elected officials that guard extraordinary secrets. We might be biased. Spending a lot of time on the investigation and knowing the material on a single frame basis is not ideal for maintaining an objective view on the matter. We try to preserve intellectual honesty by choosing our words carefully, explicitly warning about excessive speculation and embracing sceptical objections for possibly unfounded claims. There is a binary resolution to this mystery but insufficient evidence for a verdict and so we remain fundamentally undecided. You might be wrong. Be careful with quick and overly confident assessments based on cursory inspection of the material and preconceived notions about the topic. Both credulity and premature rejection could mislead you. Promoting the possibility of Skinny Bob being authentic is a bet against all odds and bears the danger of getting carried away by a fantasy. But since unlikely things happen every once in a while, what if the truth is actually right in front of you? Status The answer to the big question if we are investigating something authentic or an elaborate hoax is still unknown. Although the material has undergone extensive vetting by laymen and experts around the world, it remains an inconclusive mystery for quite a while now: 11 years 267 days 23 hours 19 minutes Use our RSS feed to stay up to date and get informed about major new discoveries. Disclaimer The claims and statements made on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinion of other individuals or groups participating in this investigation, specifically the extensively sourced r/SkinnyBob community on Reddit. The editor attempts, on a best effort basis, to curate what he believes to be the consensus among an abstract investigative body formed by contributing volunteers on various platforms. Keep in mind that this is an ongoing process. As new discoveries are made and discussions evolve, previous assumptions can become invalid. Ivan The videos were uploaded to a YouTube channel named ivan0135 in 2011. The channel was created the same day the first video was uploaded, on the 13th of April. According to the channel description, the creator is from Russia and was born in 1969. We can't verify if the channel creator and/or uploader is in fact a single individual and really named Ivan. For the sake of simplicity however, we continue to refer to the uploader as Ivan and address him as a single individual throughout this website. According to the information provided, the uploaded clips are small samples selectively taken from a larger collection of video material. The original footage is apparently spread across several physical tapes. Ivan provides detailed lists of tape numbers and timestamps for all the clips presented, even embeds an animated timestamp into the first two videos to indicate where in the original footage the sequence was taken from. When uploading videos to YouTube it is possible to specify keywords to describe the content and improve discoverability. Ivan has set many keywords for each video and we believe this was done solely for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Those are the keywords all videos have in common: ufo, crash accident, alien, extraterrestrial, life, et, zeta, reticuli, grey, desclassified, top, secret, cosmic, sighting, leaked, disclosure, confidential, autopsy, intelligence, service, rosswel, incident, new, mexico, South, Africa, Kalahari, Desert, army, navy, air, force, defense, agency, department, abduction, old, footage, 1947, space, aliens, flying, military, video, airplanes, interview Note the misspelling of "rosswel" and sloppiness with spaces, causing for example "top" and "secret" to become separate tags. It was u/chester20080 that originally had the idea to extract the tags which triggered a lengthy discussion about their meaning. u/toukoqouko pointed out that the misspelling of "declassified" as "desclassified" could be due to the spanish/portugese equivalent being "desclasificado"/"desclassificado". This could hint to Ivan's native language. Original videos We recommend watching the original videos uploaded by Ivan before diving into our analysis: First video published on April 14, 2011 at 02:04:26 (UTC) titled"Disclosure leaked ufo alien case video confidential documents old footage": The video track starts with a still frame of a KGB logo and censored text above and below. The first moving picture scene shows a house and a mysterious object behind it in the air. Switching to an aerial view, a saucer-shaped UFO is filmed – first from a distance and then zoomed in. Next, we see a badly lit humanoid looking creature standing and looking towards the camera. The next scene shows what appears to be a crashed UFO with an alien lying on the ground nearby. Lastly, we see an autopsy being performed on an alien body with a closeup on the alien face and the hands of the physician being at work. The audio track is a continuous rattling sound typically generated by old film projectors. It changes slightly with each scene switch. Additional keywords set for this video: Second video published on May 2, 2011 at 05:21:51 (UTC) titled"alien grey extraterrestrial zeta reticuli ufo leaked footage": The video track starts with several paragraphs of text providing background information about the material. Behind the text are two still frames from the alien shown in the next scenes. First, there is a side-view of an alien moving his head and arms. Then a whole body scan from bottom to top shows it standing in an idle posture with slight movements. The last scene shows a mysterious circle and what appears to be a shadow of something. The audio track is again a continuous rattling sound typically generated by old film projectors, changing somewhat as the scenes switch. Additional keywords set for this video: planet, earth, moon, exclusive, science, predator Third video published on May 9, 2011 at 05:09:51 (UTC) titled"Ivan0135 about ALIEN and UFO documents": The video track shows text messages from Ivan0135 and address negative reactions he has received about the previous two videos. In the background is a handprint from a hand with four fingers. In the end, a final sentence fades in and out. The audio track is mute. Additional keywords set for this video: reply, Ivan0135, planet, earth, moon, exclusive, science, universe, outer, galaxy Fourth video published on May 18, 2011 at 00:35:43 (UTC) titled"alien grey extraterrestrial zeta reticuli tape 06 - family vacation": The video track starts with text paragraphs about historic events with extraterrestrial visitors and ends with a shaky recording of aliens walking. In contrast to all other videos, this one is a color film. The audio track is mute. Additional keywords set for this video: planet, earth, moon, exclusive, science, predator, shuttle, universe, area, outer, galaxy, invasion, astronomy, planets u/Data_Pure compared the upload dates of the videos to important events in the history of the Soviet Union and speculated that together with the name Ivan and the KGB logo, the publishing dates could have been chosen intentionally to further imply a Russian origin. Visual effects The very first video Ivan uploaded starts with an image showing the insignia of the KGB, the main security agency of the Soviet Union. Above and below are black bars, seemingly censoring something: It turns out this still image was taken from the documentary The Secret KGB UFO Files released in 1998. It featured a crashed UFO and an autopsy of an alien body. This Komsomolskaya Pravda article and especially this page (thanks to u/Jazzlike_Squirrel) debunks the documentary sufficiently, making it a commercial hoax. The original image looks like this: Translation: СОВЕРШЕННО СЕКРЕТНО АРХИВ КГБ TOP SECRET KGB ARCHIVE Ivan tampered with the original footage by applying various effects, such as a damaged film overlay like this: As an excellent investigatory achievement, u/BrooklynRobot managed to track down the exact film damage overlay Ivan used. It is available as a stock video clip on the Internet. u/Jazzlike_Squirrel found the Software that was likely used to apply not only the film damage but other post-processing effects as well: Sapphire Plug-ins for After Effects by Boris FX. Additionally, u/BrooklynRobot visualized an effect stack and commented on possible causes for the various image degradation steps. By now there is generally a consensus that all the effects have been applied digitally to presumably clean, underlying footage. The timecode has also been embedded digitally. u/BrooklynRobot discovered that the Microsoft font Consolas (released in 2006) was used with additional distortion effects: In a response to claims that timecodes did not exist for 8mm film and the videos are thereby debunked, u/RedDwarfBee pointed out that there are multiple occasions where the timecode does not follow a temporarily shifting frame, thus proving that it was not originally embedded and added later. The black rectangle in front of the "case" number is probably supposed to be a mysterious, redacted part that hides something sensitive. This is ridiculous because the timecode was likely added by Ivan in the first place. This leads us to an important question: What could be the motivation for these edits? Perhaps one or a combination of the following reasons: 1Spicing up bland footage: Imagine getting hold of highly sensitive, leaked UFO and alien footage from the 1940s and it does not even remotely look like you or the general public expect it to look like: Meticulously assembled clips of clean recordings for scientific documentation and archival purposes. Ivan might have thought that at least for the initial release it has to conform to certain visual expectations to gain traction. 2Incompetence and naivety: Never underestimate human decision making and the possibility of bizarre reasoning like "I thought it looks cooler that way". 3Planned degradation: The effects could have been an integral part of a hoaxing project to hide imperfections and limit production costs. 4Blackmail: The leaker might have wanted to show just enough to make the original owner aware of the extent of the leak with the implicit threat of an uncontrolled release. 5Responsibility: Ivan might have tampered with the footage to initially keep it in a gray zone and gauge the reaction of the general public to determine how to move forward. 6Damage control: If the material was stolen from the Pentagon or defense contractors, they might have decided to release heavily edited parts to jeopardize claims of authenticity in anticipation for the full material to surface at some point. 7Ego: Ivan might have received a portion of the original footate with the condition to publish it only in an edited form, so that releasing the full material remains a privilege of the actual source. 8Power: Ivan might enjoy the feeling of being in possession of material other people would die for to get hold of and created a teaser to feast on the begging for more content. 9Ambiguous provenance: Intentional obfuscation as a layer of abstraction and de-watermarking attempt in case of multiple distinct copies circulating among those in the know. In any case, this investigation is mainly focusing on the underlying footage. We claim this separation is justifiable by the quality differential suggesting unrelated sources for footage and effects. Lastly, there are some black frames in the videos that contain a barely visible dot pattern, as u/RedDwarfBee originally discovered: Dots with an RGB value of #020202 These dots might simply be remains of post-processing effects. A fancier alternative would be a watermark of some sort. The pattern is probably too regular for other steganographic purposes. Audio effects Ivans videos are either mute or emulate the sound of an old film projector to create the illusion that what is shown has been captured from a screening of old film reels. We are pretty sure this was not the case, as shown in the previous section. The audio might be just another stock effect. u/RedDwarfBee discussed it rudimentary but without a conclusion. The problem is its simplicity and low information density with arbitrary tampering potential. It could come from anywhere and is as easy to drag&drop on an audio track as the other effects. If the stock film damage effect was not discovered, tracking down matching stock projector noises would be interesting but now that we already know stock effects were used, it is probably of no additional value. Tin bird Tin bird is a poetic description of the classical UFO looking like a metallic saucer we see in the very first video clip. Contrary to what people think when watching the shaky video for the first time, the UFO is not flying along a trajectory but actually hovering statically in the sky, as u/Shtudi discovered. Image stabilization reveals this fact: Without context, the hovering object could be an oval, tethered balloon. At first glance, it could also be mistaken for a blimp at a distance: Blimps have fins and various protrusions that we would expect to see at least partially. Furthermore, blimps are typically huge and the object we see is not much wider than one of the trees it is hovering above. Given the context, the object is an alien spacecraft. If Ivan presented the videos in chronological order, we hypothesize that the UFOs we see in the clips are actually identical. First it's in the air as shown in tin bird and flying twin and later crashed on the ground in blue boys. The topology of the hull can be seen accurately in blue boys and allows for a comparison with the few good zoomed-in frames of flying twin, revealing obvious similarities and thus supporting this hypothesis. Besides the UFO, the house is also interesting to analyze and could help narrowing down the geographic location the encounter took place. WE NEED YOUR HELP Do you recognize this particular house or houses of this kind and know where to look for them on a map? Please contact us! We present a 3D reconstruction of the house with an estimated path the camera could have travelled to record the video: Note that at least in the few seconds of the clip we get to see, the camera is aiming at the house and not the UFO. This makes sense if the UFO was (digitally) embedded into originally mundane footage. However, being on a moving platform such as a car or train and trying to capture a comparatively small object in the distance using camera equipment of the 1940s, aiming at an object nearby which is easier to see and track would be a reasonable thing to do. SPECULATION A 3D reconstruction based on messy images requires making assumptions. The result may not reflect reality. Counting the columns and following the slope of the roof, we claim to see the balcony extending further to the east. Assuming the northern hemisphere, the sun's reflection indicates that the visible long side of the house is likely oriented to the south. Such balconies typically have a balustrade of some kind and we believe to see it causing a darkening on the eastern balcony extension, exactly where it overlaps with the part going to the north. Therefore we assume a balustrade of rather thin rods invisible at a distance when viewed from the front. For the front view we make the possibly unfounded assumption that the house is symmetrical, meaning that it has a balcony on both long sides. The eastern part of the balcony might be the porch with the main entrance on ground level. There is no obvious gap or door segment visible in the southern fence that suggests a main entrance, but it might just be closed and not visible due to low resolution. Note that especially the fence surrounding the house in a rectangular shape is pure speculation. The western and presumably back side of the house is totally in shadow. We are pretty confident about there being no balcony as the side of the floor from the southern balcony can (barely) be seen in a darker shade ending at the south-west edge of the house. Again, the symmetry assumption may be unfounded, as this example of a smiliar house illustrates: No balcony on this side, but also no extension beyond the edges of the long side u/Data_Pure pointed out that apparently there are no power lines going to the house, at least not at the sides we see. The Rural Electrification Act increased the electrification of farm homes in the United States from 3% in 1930 to 90% in 1959. The house lacking electrification would therefore be plausible if we assume the video was recorded in the 1940s. The architectural style of the house looks acadian or cajun, which is popular in the south of the United States. Use the following search terms to discover photos of such buildings: acadian house cajun house plantation mansion southern mansion There are many different ways these houses are built, usually they have steep roofs with all faces angled but there are also examples matching our house: u/BrooklynRobot found an example of a plantation house with a similar balcony extension: Symmetrical balcony extension without balustrade Our roof is somewhat puzzling because it is unusually flat and the dormers seem more slit-like than portrait style, also uncommon for an acadian house: A singular black spot behind the left dormer is probably a chimney. Originally we believed the black spot to be a shadowed part of the left dormer but it's too far up and the right dormer lacks such a spot. It's also possible that the two white spots are actually chimneys but then the black spot would remain a mystery. Black spot No black spot Trees in the backgroun… truncated (76,448 more characters in archive)