Alien pictures: Are there any images out there of real extraterrestrials?
While tabloids like The National Enquirer may post articles claiming to have real pictures of aliens, we call shenanigans. However, that might not mean there were never any real alien pictures taken.
One might have been taken in the 1950s. It fell into the hands of Adam Dew, a videographer from Chicago. His former business partner, Joseph Beason, received a bunch of old photo slides with an unexpected twist. Going through old slides of Postwar America, Dew stumbled upon an image he never expected to see.
What follows is a story about secrecy, betrayal, and the gift of hindsight. Were the alien pictures from Roswell real, and if not, why didn’t the investigators catch on sooner?
A dead alien
The participants shared their strange story with The Guardian in a filmworthy case of an investigation, hope, letdown, and possible betrayal. Even if the documentary that was supposed to come from this film never emerges, it would be a good story for Hollywood or a Netflix series.
The story begins when Dew found an odd image of a brown figure in a glass case. Its arms & legs were withered and it didn’t look like it was from earth. Could it be an alien picture? It arrived to Dew in a secretive manner, not with the other Kodachrome photos, but separate, buried underneath and wrapped in paper.
Adam Dew built his career on videotaping sports games, not hunting aliens. However, Dew always wanted to make a documentary. Dew called up Beason and they started hatching a plan to investigate the photos.
The Roswell connection
Beason got the photos from his sister, who got them from a woman whose estate she was trying to clear. The closest alien encounter to the deceased woman, who lived in Sedona Arizona, was Roswell.
Roswell was the site of an infamous UFO landing in the late 1940s, around the same time the alien picture was taken. Locals reported seeing a weird contraption attached to a balloon land in town. While the official story at the time was that it was a weather balloon, the heavy presence of government agents made it seem bigger.
Turns out, in 1997, the Pentagon revealed it was, declassifying the report on Roswell. However, it wasn’t UFOs. The spacecraft was a radiation detection prototype from Earth, designed to detect an incoming nuclear strike. To this day, people remain convinced Roswell was a UFO.
Their only lead
However, Roswell was the only lead Adam Dew & Joseph Beason had to go on for the alien picture. Beason reached out to Tom Carey, a retired businessman with an anthropology background. Carey wrote several books on Roswell. However, he had no actual evidence that aliens were at Roswell.
He also had a mystery of his own: Dan Dwyer, a fireman at Roswell described the aliens as “a child of Earth.” Carey had no idea what the phrase could mean, especially given that aliens weren’t obviously from Earth.
He got his answer via Dew & Beason’s alien picture. On the alien, there was a bug called the Jerusalem cricket, which in South Africa, is called Child of Earth. While this raises more questions than it answers, like what a South African beetle was doing in New Mexico, Carey walked Dew & Beason through an investigation.
Pressure mounted
As their investigation mounted, Dew & Beason spoke with experts in Kodachrome photos, extraterrestrials, and witnesses’ children in Roswell. They were careful to not draw too much attention to the alien picture since they were afraid the government would take it away.
Thus, Dew & Beason showed the alien picture to very few people. As knowledge grew about the alien picture, people began asking to see it. Eventually, as people started concluding there was no picture, Dew & Beason had to show their hand. Carey, reacting to pressure, said he had “the smoking gun” on Roswell at a conference.
Plus, Dew & Beason needed money to fund their documentary. In 2015, they held a special live event in Mexico City on Cinco de Mayo, 2015 with journalist Jaimie Maussan and other UFO investigators. They presented the slides to audience members in attendance and on a live stream.
What they found out
While the money should have funded their documentary, they actually got an explanation for the mysterious slide. It wasn’t an alien. An internet sleuth in their live stream audience converted the alien picture to high resolution so the placard next to the alleged alien could be read.
It was a 2-year-old mummified boy. Apparently, the alien picture showed the remains of a Native American boy mummified in a cotton shirt in Arizona. Closer inspection of the plaque revealed his body was given by an anthropologist in 1896. More investigation revealed there were several photos of the burial site alongside the donor.
“Busted”
Bloggers and UFO debunkers lined up to slam the false discovery. Headlines like “The Smoking Gun: RIP To The Roswell Slides,” went viral. The alien photo seemed to be a bust.
Considering that one of the three of the investigators had a background in anthropology, it should have been spotted sooner. Carey, who was a major voice in the UFO arena before the alien pictures, lost credibility, speaking roles, and respect from the UFO community.
Thus, the investigators went their separate ways on a sour note. Carey believed Dew only approached him for money for his documentary and felt betrayed. Dew maintains that he tried to “remain neutral” on the alien slides, but like Carey, he got his hopes up thinking the alien picture was real.
The Emperor has no clothes
So why wasn’t the alien picture flagged as a misunderstanding earlier? Dew & Beason went to Kodachrome and knew a placard was there. Plus, Carey had a background in anthropology. Shouldn’t he have picked up on what the alien picture actually was?
The previous owners of the picture were deeply involved in a geological society where digs like this are common. Was it hope & denial, or a lack of due diligence for years?
