Aliens,Pandemonium, & Swamp Gas

ALIENS,
Pandemonium,
& SWAMP GAS .
no J-Rod Alien here . . .

by russell dowden

Today there aren’t many of us fleeing our Homes to escape the `Gas Raid’s From Mars’ but, 21st Century Life offers its own invasion of anthrax rumors, duck tape on windows, misinformed zealots and Tour de Force-Fed Media. What are we to think about all that circles around the UFO community, and how do we discern fact from fraud? Truth from Hoax?

Stick to the government’s line of deceit is my advice; they are infectiously predictable on their own. A few years ago Sonny Salas and I were running a website /UFO group called SETLAB; (Studies of Extra-Terrestrial Life and Answers from Beyond).

In January of 2000 we received an anonymous e-mail from a woman who claimed her Nephew took pictures of the image in question aboard a US Naval vessel.

Uncertain of the validity of the image, we sought out the help of the Coast to Coast AM listeners. Bewildered at the image himself, Art Bell featured the SETLAB fax at the top of the 1st hour on the nationwide talk show on January 26, 2000. You can see these pictures yourself by doing an image search engine (J-ROD ALIEN).

As a result the Setlab site was inundated with traffic and e-mails about the mention. In fact, C2C’s then webmaster Keith warned me that the traffic would be heavy, and our site may be down. . Ironically, his site had crashed that night after 250 hits a minute bombarded the SETLAB photo gallery page.

After a week of going through 100’s of e-mails, I received one from a California man Steve who said he had the scoop on the origin of the image. I recall the phone conversation was like; “Dude these images are from one of our effects projects, a TV show for ABC!”

The XFX team, Steve Johnson and Trey Stokes. It was featured on a reproduction of the Alien Autopsy on a 20/20 show, aired on April 4, 1997. He then directed me to a site called FXMasters.com and indeed the image of recent speculation of J-Rod was laying there in a line of a dozen or more photos that thumbnail larger image files. Not a hoax!

FX Masters were just guys contracted to do the Alien FX Art work for the production company shooting the film. (I’ve not seen that ABC episode incidentally). But there were pictures of the Alien with the design team hanging out in the office playing cards.

We both laughed and talked about ufology and shared our thoughts. There is a whimsical way and how easily things can lead to Pandemonium. Steve mentioned how the War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Wells caused mass hysteria across the country in 1938. Why were people so willing to believe that men from Mars were actually attacking the world? The Power of Suggestion, Hysteria, and Conspiracies caused people to flee from the city to be safer from the “gas raids”! In fact why are we so many of us willing to believe everything we hear on the news?

If you had been one of the original listeners of the Orson Wells’ broadcast, might even you have believed the Martians had landed? To grasp an idea of the powerful effects the media plays on people, one need only flip the remote through the cable news channels to get a fair and balanced report. But is it fair? It picks no bones about Shock and Awe. The importance of evaluating your information resources before you believe is everything. Sharp intuition, a willingness to believe, a great deal of faith, and a lot of rocking the boat, the UFO community marches onward ever-seeking the truth!

The Power of Suggestion, Hysteria, and Conspiracies caused people to flee from the city to be safer from the “gas raids”!

So, when you’re up late at night and you hear a roaring crash out behind the Barn, grab your shotgun and your can of RAID and prepare for the worst. Although, you’re probably not being invaded by rectal probing aliens for an off world trip to Zeta-Reticuli to have you Chakras aligned, you might want to consider the alternative: Uncle Barney may still be up late working on Aunt Margaret’s 68’ Ford Fairlane.