<img class="size-full wp-image-1823" style="vertical-align: top; border: 0; margin: 8px;" title="2greys" src="http://strangeattractor.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/2greys.jpg" alt="2greys" width="355" height="208" />

...is a prop alien.

Sigh, another one bites the dust.

The image<em> left</em> is a behind-the-scenes shot from the 1992 TV movie <em>Intruders </em>(based, I believe, on the genre-forming non-fiction alien abduction book by Budd Hopkins). The image was found by Mexican researcher <a href="http://marcianitosverdes.haaan.com/" target="_blank">Luis Ruiz Noguez</a>.

The image <em>right</em> is from the 1998  TV documentary <em>UFOs: Fifty Years of Denial</em> and features on the cover of <em>Exempt From Disclosure</em>, an Air Force insider's <a href="http://ufoconspiracy.com/reports/three_second_eben.htm" target="_blank">account</a> of the UFO conspiracy, now in its third edition (more on this in my forthcoming book <em>Mirage Men).</em>

So a prop movie alien inspired by real-life eyewitness accounts ends up being mistaken for a genuine ET whose image, distributed in books and on the Internet, will inspire<em> </em>more real-life accounts, and  these one day will become another TV movie featuring a better prop alien that will, in another 15 years, be mistaken for another real ET... and so the circle remains unbroken.

Can we ask for a better demonstration of the way that myth and folklore work, and how the multiple strands of our  individual experiences, no matter how fantastical, can shape consensus reality?

via <a href="http://forgetomori.com/2009/aliens/the-3-second-eben-intruder/" target="_blank">Forgetomori</a>