Originally published 03:15 p.m., May 28, 2008
Updated 07:01 p.m., May 28, 2008
A video that purportedly shows a living, breathing space alien will be shown to the news media Friday in Denver.
Jeff Peckman, who is pushing a ballot initiative to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver to prepare the city for close encounters of the alien kind, said the video is authentic and convinced him that aliens exist.
"As impressive as it is, it's still one tiny portion in the context of a vast amount of peripheral evidence," he said Wednesday. "It's really the final visual confirmation of what you already know to be true having seen all the other evidence."
When Peckman went before city officials this month to discuss his proposed ET initiative, he promised to show the video.
Peckman said the general public will have to wait to see it because it's being included in a documentary by Stan Romanek.
"No one will be allowed to film the segment with the extraterrestrial because there is an agreement in place limiting that kind of exposure during negotiations for the documentary," he said.
But people won't have to wait too long to see it for themselves.
"There is an open, public meeting in about a month in Colorado Springs," Peckman said. "We'll hope to do one in Denver at some point, and then in a few months, there will be the documentary that anybody can have, and it'll have the footage."
An instructor at the Colorado Film School in Denver scrutinized the video "very carefully" and determined it was authentic, Peckman said.
Peckman, 54, said the video was among the reasons he was "compelled" to launch the proposed ballot initiative, which has generated news as far as South Africa.
"It shows an extraterrestrial's head popping up outside of a window at night, looking in the window, that's visible through an infrared camera," he said. The alien is about 4 feet tall and can be seen blinking, Peckman said earlier this month.
In a statement, Peckman said "other related credible evidence" proving aliens exist will be shown at Friday's news conference, too.
In 2003, Peckman authored an off-beat ballot initiative that would have required the city to implement stress-reduction techniques. The "Safety Through Peace" initiative failed, but garnered 32 percent of the vote.
Originally published 12:15 p.m., May 29, 2008
Updated 01:15 a.m., May 30, 2008
The Colorado Film School instructor who analyzed a video that purportedly shows a space alien swears the footage is real.
"There is no doubt in my mind that (Stan Romanek, a Colorado native who has reported UFO sightings,) did not post-produce this material. In other words, it's not a trick done in special effects," Jerry Hofmann, a professional film editor with more than 30 years of experience, said Thursday. "I have equipment that will test to see if that shot was recorded originally on that tape, which it was," he said.
However, Hofmann said there's no way for him to know whether or not the little gray alien, which was videotaped peeping through a window, is the real thing.
But Hofmann thinks it is.
"The chances are that we are not alone," he said. "That's the conclusion I've come to."
Hofmann, a Colorado Springs native who used to work in the Los Angeles film industry, said Romanek doesn't have the resources to videotape something so elaborate.
"He kept the camera handy, and he saw this little gray (alien) running around his house. He saw it, so he got the camera out," Hofmann said. "The thing is about 4 feet tall. The only thing that shows up in the video is his head. It pops up from underneath a window. But his eyes blink. His cheeks move. He turns his head side-to-side. This would be a very elaborate puppet."
Hofmann said people who work in Hollywood animatronics have seen the video, and he said that such an elaborate puppet would cost around $50,000.
"The guy (Romanek) lives on a freaking government pension," Hofmann said. "He's got a wife and three kids. He doesn't have money. I just don't think he faked this. I think what we got here is the real thing."
Hofmann said he had never heard about Romanek until he was approached last July to analyze the video. Hofmann, 57, who has been married for 35 years to his college sweetheart and has two grown children, said he used to be a skeptic about space aliens.
"My whole view has totally changed," he said. "There's something going on."
DENVER - Jeff Peckman claims he has real proof that there is life beyond earth and he will show the media Friday morning to prove his claims.
In the video, a four-foot tall gray alien is seen looking through a window. A film industry expert analyzed the video and believes it's the real thing.
"Had it been fake, it would have been very, very, very expensive, it was not done in post production or in a special effects system, or a computer, it wasn't done that way, it was shot on a DV camera," says Jerry Hofmann.
Hofmann spoke with NEWSCHANNEL 13 about what he saw on tape. "The way the glass is through the window, it reflects the wall behind the camera and when the alien pops his head through it, the reflection is over his face." Hofmann says he's been analyzing the original tape and several others since July of last year and says there is no way this is a hoax.
"The aliens face, it moves... it blinks and he moves his cheeks." Hofmann goes on to say the alien was very animated. "In order for this to be a fake, it has to be a very elaborate puppet."
Hofmann, who has worked in Hollywood, tells NEWSCHANNEL 13 a puppet like that would cost thousands of dollars just for that one video clip. Since there are several videos, he doesn't believe it's a puppet. "I was a total non-believer, I didn't get involved because I believed it or wanted to be involved with this thing. I became involved because they needed a third party to look at this stuff."
The video was shot by Stan Romanek, a former Colorado Springs resident, who claims he has been abducted by aliens over the past decade. His website has several pictures of what appears to be U.F.O's and a drawing of three-aliens creatures he claims visited him one night. Hofmann says there are other video clips of lights and orbs he can't explain. "We have shots of lights that go around the side of his house and melts his siding."
The alien video that the media will only be able to watch and not videotape is being turned into a documentary and will be shown to the public in Colorado Springs in June. Peckman, who is holding the news conference Friday, is asking the city of Denver to create an "Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission" to help communicate with ETs when they land.
A few minutes of grainy, black and white video show a shadowy creature with big eyes peeping over a windowsill. But does it show a puppet or an alien from outer space?
The video, purportedly capturing proof of alien life, was released this morning during a press conference at the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria campus in downtown Denver.
Over the course of three minutes or so, the footage shows a white creature with a balloon-shaped head that keeps popping up and down in a windowsill that was 8 feet above ground. The face was white, with large black eyes that seemed to blink.
"If it was a puppet, it would be a very elaborate and sophisticated puppet," said Alejandro Rojas, education director of MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, who spoke at the press conference.
Rojas said the video was taken on July 17, 2003, in Nebraska by Stan Tiger Romanek, who set up the camera because he thought peeping Toms had been looking into his house at his two teenage daughters. Romanek did not appear at the news conference.
The creature would slowly pop its head up and peer through the window then drop suddenly down, apparently trying to avoid detection. It raised its head up about a half dozen times. The alien's other body parts were not visible.
It was unclear whether the creature was taller than 8 feet and was crouching to avoid detection or whether it was standing on something. It also was difficult, because of the faintness of the object, to tell whether it was three dimensional.
Romanek, who moved to Colorado after the recording, claims to have had more than 100 encounters with aliens, Rojas said.
One of many websites detailing Romanek's encounters shows photographs of him with red marks on his back and arms that Romanek says were inflicted by aliens. He says he was abducted by extraterrestrials and has posted pictures of spherical burn marks in his yard marking where a spaceship hovered or landed.
Since one encounter in which he photographed a UFO on a road trip to Pennsylvania, 44 birds have mysteriously crashed into his car window because of some bizarre electromagnetic effect resulting from the contact, he writes.
But Rojas said preliminary research that he and other experts have done on the video suggests that it is authentic.
"I don't believe they have the ability or the motivation to fabricate a hoax," Rojas said at the news conference.
About 30 journalists were in the room for the screening, including a dozen TV cameras. Photographers were not allowed to capture images from the footage today because experts are still reviewing it, Rojas said.
The screening, organized by Denver resident Jeff Peckman, was not open to the public.
Peckman says he hopes to provoke debate about the existence of extraterrestrial life.
"We believe this will be somewhat of an historic news conference," Peckman said. "We're very pleased to see this level of interest."
A documentary is in production that will include much more of the videotape and other evidence, he says. It is due to be released later this year.
Peckman has organized an initiative drive to require the city of Denver to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission to handle alien encounters, saying that the government has not disclosed all it knows about the existence of life beyond Earth.
During the press conference, Peckman frequently referenced the initiative. A petition drive is currently underway. Peckman needs 4,000 signatures
Peckman also said the technological benefits of making contact with extraterrestrials make it a very worthwhile endeavor.
Governments and industry giants have an incentive to keep a growing body of evidence of the existence of aliens hushed up, Peckman said, because the technology they could bring eclipses anything available on Earth.
