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The Truth is out there - via video

Proponent of city panel on aliens reveals 'evidence'

By James B. Meadow, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published May 30, 2008 at 9:27 p.m.

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The brief video that some say reveals a short, gray extraterrestrial peering into the second-story window of a rural Nebraska home in 2003 has created a buzz. What did they see?

The brief video that some say reveals a short, gray extraterrestrial peering into the second-story window of a rural Nebraska home in 2003 has created a buzz. What did they see?

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Picture this:

An ordinary living room in rural Nebraska. A window. A head suddenly appears in the window. A round, elongated head with large almond-like eyes that are nothing but pupils. The head floats, hanging in a window that rises eight feet above the ground. Then, it plummets out of view. Then it's back. Hovering. Peering. Unblinking. What is it looking for? Who is it looking at? Is it a hoax, an elaborate ruse by wise guy frat boys with a Peeping Tom fetish? Or is it something else? Something from very far away.

You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Next stop - the Peckman Zone.

Okay, with apologies to Rod Serling - and Jeff Peckman - what took place Friday in Room 320 of the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria campus wasn't all that eerie. Odd, maybe. Perhaps even a teensy bit bizarre. But definitely curious.

Because what happened was Peckman - the man who wants to launch an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission into the orbit of Denver's governmental structure - made good on a pledge to give the media a glimpse of the footage that helped convince him about the "reality that extraterrestrial beings have visited, and are visiting, our planet."

Peckman, 54, said this with the unwavering faith of a True Believer. Of course, the fact that he's 6-foot-5 - and, therefore, closer to outer space than many earthlings - might give him a different insight.

Mercifully, that insight includes a sense of interstellar humor. For instance, while introducing physicist Claude Swanson, Peckman noted he had an undergraduate degree from MIT, a graduate degree from Princeton and "maybe a ray gun or two."

And after the not-quite two minutes of extraterrestrial footage had been shown, and someone speculated that the alien in question must have been 8 feet tall to be able to look in the window (memo to George Karl and the Denver Nuggets - see if this guy can rebound and pass!), Peckman said, "Maybe it was two 4-foot extraterrestrials standing on each other's shoulders."

And there was no denying his boyish enthusiasm when he pulled out a camera and started taking pictures of the assembled media. At least, he seemed to be taking pictures. Hmm.

Neither did Peckman lack a wry intergalactic view. Because surely he saw the irony of asking the media to analyze the possibility of intelligent life forms in outer space.

Qualified or not, media reps came.The ones that couldn't - from Russia, Ireland, England - already had interviewed Peckman on the phone. All of which was a little overwhelming for the mild-mannered guy who admitted to being "happy and surprised" at the turnout.

It didn't take long to figure out that Peckman was a novice at hosting a news conference. After he politely invited the media to "our modest meeting," he actually said, "What we lack in the nice spread of nutritious food we hope to make up with very enriching information and knowledge." As if knowledge could take the place of free cold cuts and soda.

Because unfed media are known to be crankier than usual, chances are not everybody was buying the assurances of video analyst Jerry Hofmann, who said, via a taped message, that he found "no evidence of post-production effects," and that the video was shot legitimately near midnight on July 17, 2003, by the infrared camera of one Stan Romanek, who now lives in Colorado.

Then, the lights went out. And in a room suddenly as quiet as the 63rd moon of Jupiter, a bunch of skeptics watched the grainy, black-and-white footage. At first there was nothing but a window, a lamp and a stand with a photograph. Then - hold onto your probes! - there it was.

An alien head floated into view, a round skull-like apparition, dark slots for eyes. The eyes peered through the glass. The head vanished. Then reappeared. Basically, it just stared, like some interstellar voyeur. In fact, that's why Romanek had set up his camera; he was afraid some Peeping Tom was ogling his teenaged daughters. Of course, who's to say the alien wasn't ogling?

And that was it. Barely two minutes. Yes, the audience saw an enhanced-lighting version of the film, but it's not like that added to the story line. If, that is, there had been a story line.

In less than an hour, it was over. The media exited, trying to top each other with witticisms that weren't all that witty. Then they drove to the normalcy of their offices.

Or did they?

A skeptical journalist returns to his paper to write a story on deadline. He walks by his editor. For the first time, he notices the large head. The eyes always hidden behind spectacles. The strange, luminous pallor of his skin. He wonders if his editor has ever been to rural Nebraska.

meadowj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2606

Calling all sci-fi fans, wannabe movie makers

Make your own space alien videos on YouTube and send us the link at Metro@RockyMountain News.com. We'll feature them online.

Comments

  • May 31, 2008

    8:36 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    sunshinestate writes:

    At least now when "Clorado" is googled there is more than "illegal" when it comes to 'aliens'.....................

  • May 31, 2008

    10:26 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    HolierThanThou writes:

    When I was a kid, I took a white helium filled balloon and put an alien face on it with a Magic Marker.

    The wind was calm that night as I stood quietly outside the house of a neighborhood bully who beat up my friend. I could see that the light was on in his second story bedroom. A shadow passed by the window. My time to strike was neigh. I raised the balloon.

    At first, a slight breeze turned the face. So, I held it down. My friends waited in some bush a few feet away. I put my finger to my lips. Shhhh!

    Now the balloon was turned perfectly. I raised it just so that the top half was looking in the window. We waited. Maybe it was thirty seconds. Maybe it was a minute. Then came the high-pitched scream and the crashing of furniture. The scream was so shrill, I initially felt bad because I thought we had frightened his mother. But then came, "Mommy! Mommy!"

    Ah, what satisfaction! It was all we could do to keep quiet. Mission accomplished. We stalked away to find a private place where we could roll around on the grass laughing our asses off.

    God, I love comic books.

  • May 31, 2008

    11:10 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Vector049 writes:

    Let me get this straight... A species from another world, probably many, MANY light years away, having a highly advanced technology that allows them to travel/warp through time/space, arrive at Earth only to crash their space ship in New Mexico, play hide and seek in the night sky, and tool amongst us peeping in windows? WTF,O?

  • May 31, 2008

    11:12 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Colorado_Bill writes:

    "Because unfed media are known..."
    It's true! And if Mr. Meadow is "one" of them, that makes him a... "medium!" How spiritual.

    On an unspiritual note, the photo accompanying this article is a visible light picture (presumably a color picture reduced to black and white); it is NOT an infrared photo, which would look markedly different.

    And will someone please explain to me why this press conference did not take place in Omaha? It's not Colorado which has been invaded... [insert joke about aliens desperately wanting to escape Nebraska]

  • May 31, 2008

    5:40 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    singularity99 writes:

    Regarding the comment about Einstein's speed of light barrier, that is kindergarten physics. We are way beyond that now. If you study the history of science, in every era the establishment scientists arrogantly proclaimed that they had mastered the understanding of physics, and were subsequently proven wrong. The speed of light barrier is essentially a function of relativistic mass increase, as is time dilation. In other words, mass creates the Einsteinian limits. If you eliminate mass, you eliminate all of these barriers.

    Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff have already proven that mass and inertia are side effects of subatomic particles interactions with the zero point field. When you cohere to the zero point field by using a pulsed plasma, you not only eliminate mass and inertia, but also tap into an inexhaustible source of energy, where one coffee cup full has enough energy to boil off all of the world's oceans.

    Ben Rich, the legendary former head of the Lockheed Skunk Works, where all highly classified aircraft are created, once said “We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity….. anything you can imagine we already know how to do.” Yep, we have already been to the stars.

    Give me one-tenth the amount of the NASA probe that crashed into Mars (90 mil of 900 mil) and I will build you a mass-canceled, infinite speed craft that will take you anywhere in the universe instantaneously.

  • June 9, 2008

    9:04 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    gheckso writes:

    This is not real. I have been all over the place telling people.
    I made this short piece in a class project back in year 11 (7 years ago). I made a mask (mostly paper machete) and my little brother was the "actor" (alien).