Claim: CCTV footage shows an alien in the backyard of a Las Vegas home; the panicked occupants made a 911 call requesting authorities’ assistance.
Fact: The video was created by TikTok user @owltreestump using an open-source 3D computer graphics software called blender. The clip is CGI and not real footage of an alien.
On 11 June 2023, Facebook user ‘Patricia Lee’ posted a reel (archive) showing CCTV footage of what appears to be an unidentified creature in the backyard of a house. The clip is captioned, “Area 51 I think y’all left the gate open!! #911aliencall #aliens #area51 👽🖖🏾”.
The audio appears to be an emergency call, with the transcription overlaid on the video. It goes as follows:
“There’s like an 8-foot person beside it and another one inside and it has big eyes and is looking at us and it’s over…”
“Okay where is this on your property?”
“In my backyard. I swear to God this is not a joke. This is actually… we’re just terrified.”
“So there’s two people or two subjects that are in your backyard?”
“And they’re very large. They’re like 8 foot, 9 feet, 10 foot. I don’t know. They’re… They look like aliens to us. Big eyes… They have big eyes. And big mouth. They’re shiny eyes and they’re not human. They’re hundred percent they’re not human.”
“Okay. Okay.”
The claim stemmed from reports, such as from Insider (archive) and New York Post (archive), of a Las Vegas family allegedly spotting what they claimed were aliens in their backyard, followed by police arrival in response to their 911 emergency call. Body camera footage of the officers appears to show what is being asserted as an unidentified flying object, commonly known as a UFO.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check identified portions of the text that appears at the top and bottom of the clip, such as “o w – – – – – – – – – p” and the timestamp, which appears to show 2023/05/26, or 26 May 2023, and 22:55:29, or 10:55 pm.
We also identified keyframes from the video and reverse-searched these images, leading us to a tweet (archive) by Twitter user @M0ATH, who, according to their bio, is “a YouTuber interested in strange things around the world”.
@M0ATH wrote: “ذا المقطع منتشر من امس ومسبب ضجه بامريكا ويقولون انه تصور في لاس فيغاس، بعد مانتشر مقطع قبله التقطته الشرطة وكان لاجسام غريبه في السماء، المقطع الثاني وتكمله السالفه بحطها تحت التغريده، بس علموني ايش رايكم بالمقطع ذا وكلامهم ؟؟! [This clip was spread yesterday and caused a stir in America; they say that it was filmed in Las Vegas, after the clip was spread, before it was picked up by the police, and it was of strange objects in the sky.]”
In addition, we also found a tweet (archive) by @HoaxEye, a “hoax fighter and fact finder” account run by Janne Ahlberg, a “product security professional and pentester”, or ethical hacker.
Both accounts — @M0ATH and @HoaxEye — led Soch Fact Check to a video (archive) by TikTok user @owltreestump, who captioned the clip: “Smh knew I shouldn’t investigate noises outside. #cryptid #cgi #blender3d #creepy.”
The portion of the text we figured out above as “o w – – – – – – – – – p” turns out to be the watermark of @owltreestump.
The hashtags indicate that @owltreestump had used blender, an open-source 3D computer graphics software used to create, among other things, animated films and visual effects. This finding helped us ascertain that the video is computer-generated imagery (CGI) and not real footage of an alien.
Moreover, Dr Adam Frank, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, told CNN anchor Fredricka Whitfield that the light streak seen in the sky is “a meteor and it stays exactly the way I would expect the meteor to fade”.
“What’s important about this kind of thing is that this is like the whole history of UFOs. Right? I mean, right in one story, right? Somebody sees something and then you get a story. But there’s never anything to do, you know, there’s never any real evidence. There’s never anything that lasts. There’s never anything that science — which allows us to have this amazing conversation over these wires — can do anything with,” Dr Frank said.
As for his response to the people who made the 911 call and claimed they saw aliens, the astrophysicist said, “There’s nothing I can say to them, right? I wasn’t there. They can’t give me any hard evidence. They can’t give me anything that science can work with.”
“It’s always fuzzy blobs. We’ve got people talking about UFOs for 50 years and it’s always fuzzy blobs,” he added. CNN carried a report of the same and it can be viewed here (archive).
Virality
The reel (archive) by Facebook user ‘Patricia Lee’ has been viewed more than 14,000 times.
Soch Fact Check found that the video was posted here on YouTube, here, here, here, here, here, and here on Twitter, and here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook.
In fact, @cotupacs (archive) wrote on Twitter, “L.A, USA – Alien captured on camera in back garden! The conspiracist theorists (you know the ones that get everything right) have been telling you there will be a staged Alien threat/take over – this is a continuation of this building narrative. As part of this you will see domestic commercial flights targeted/crashed by UAP’s to quickly further this narrative. Don’t fall for it, other than complete nuclear fall out this is the only trick the Globalists have left to play, and they’re clearly getting desperate!”
Conclusion: The video was created by TikTok user @owltreestump, using an open-source 3D computer graphics software called blender. The clip is CGI and not real footage of an alien.
Background image in cover photo: Ai Takeda
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