Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Extra!

Santilli Changes His Autopsy Film Story (Philip Mantle)





Tonight showed the SKY ONE TV show 'Eamon Investigates - Alien Autopsy. The show starts of with Santilli still claiming that he saw real film of aliens and that he purchased it from a former US military cameraman. However, there is now a change in the story. Santilli & his colleague Gary Shoefield claim that it took 2 years to buy the film & that when it finally arrived in London 95% of it had 'oxidised' and the remaining 5% was in very poor condition. They therefore decided to 'reconstruct' it based on Santilli's recollection and a few frames that were left.


When I began reading this I assumed I was once again reading about how the notorious "tent footage" had been hoaxed. To my surprise, Mantle goes on to indict the "real" autopsy:

To do this they hired UK sculptor John Humphreys. Humphreys tells of how he used sheeps brain for the brain and a lambs leg for the leg joint.


After dealing briefly with Santilli's claim that the hoaxed footage somehow qualifies as a "restoration," Philip Mantle continues in a similarly intriguing vein:

Santilli admitted that the six-fingered panels in the debris film were the result of 'artistic license' an he even produced one of the I-beams from the boot of his car. The debris film was also mde by John Humphreys.

In fact, Humphreys is the surgeon in the film, and a former employee of Shoefield's in behind the window. He's Gareth Watson, a man I met several times in Ray's office.


So the AA is a commercial fraud. I'm admittedly a bit surprised. While I never thought the film depicted an "alien," per se, I harbored suspicions that the body might be that of human suffering from progeria, a genetic disease characterized by many of the traits observed in the dissection.




Child with progeria.


As I haven't seen the expose Mantle describes, I'm puzzled why John Humphreys, the man who sculpted the alien (and apparently outfitted it with sheep guts), decided to make his alien look so human. I've even argued that one of the reasons the "hoax for profit" theory seemed insufficient was because a hoaxer would naturally make his alien look alien, in one stroke stifling criticism from surgeons familiar with the insides of humans and tapping into the popular fascination with the "Gray" archetype -- whose anatomy could be freely made to look most inhuman, regardless of superficial similarities.

I have to wonder if the "alien's" physique was specifically modeled after a human with progeria, or -- more likely -- cast in a mold of a progeria victim. Alternatively, Humphreys could be lying: His alien might be a hoax, but accomplished by doctoring a real corpse rather than building a fake one from scratch. Given Santilli's disingenuity, I wouldn't put it past him (unless the new television show has already eliminated the possibility).





Lastly, I find the footage's parallels with government aeronautical experiments, detailed in Nick Redfern's "Body Snatchers In The Desert" and cited as a possible explanation for the "Roswell incident," both suggestive and disturbing. Could Santilli, against all odds, be telling the truth when he insists the "autopsy" is a reconstruction of actual documentary footage? I doubt it. But other scenarios aren't automatically discounted. Maybe the AA was designed as a "straw man" to debunk accounts of military experimentation on unwitting humans. But that would cast Santilli and Humphreys as secondary characters when, given all available evidence, they seem positively central.

So it appears the "alien autopsy" has at last succumbed, but not without a final gasp of synchronicity.

2 comments:

W.M. Bear said...

Interestingly, Mantle concludes his narrative with the following observation:

After watching this tonight I can honestly say that I do not
believe one word of either Santilli or Shoefield and I have no
doubt that the film is nothing more than a complete fake.


The logic here is a bit interesting because:

1) Santilli claims that the film is a hoax (perpetrated largely by himself).

2) Mantle claims that Santilli is totally lying AND that the film is a complete hoax.

Now, logically speaking, if Santilli is lying and Santilli is claiming that film is a hoax, wouldn't that mean he is lying ABOUT the film being a hoax? (Ergo the film is NOT a hoax?)

Frankly, it sounds to me as though Santilli is at least lying about the film being HIS hoax (which I suspect is what Mantle probably means).

At any rate, I agree with you, Mac. I find it hard to believe that the film is a TOTAL hoax. It always looked to me (including the stills) as though it were a real autopsy of SOMEBODY (just not of an alien but likely a deformed human being, as you suggest, based on Redfern's research). I think people when they start thinking "hoax" tend to get these possibilities confused. The real hoax, it seems to me, lies in Santilli's TRYING TO PASS THE FILM OFF AS AN "ALIEN AUTOPSY" and NOT in the fact that it's not a real film of an actual autopsy. (Why is this hard?)

Anyway, it's a known fact that people actually "fake hoaxes" for the publicity. I recall a while back a couple of Englishmen claimed to have made the crop circles using boards, ropes, and weights and the media with its pseudo-sceptical slant largely bought into their story. But, in the end, who knows?

At any rate, it would seem we can be fairly certain that "Alien Autopsy" does not capture on film the actual autopsy of an ETI.

Mac said...

I want to see how Humphreys did it. I'm not saying it's not a dummy, but I'm not sure I'm ready to take his word for it.

An alien?

No.

A "cryptohominid"?

No.

A corpse?

*Maybe*.