With the release of the film Alien Autopsy, starring British TV presenters Ant and Dec and telling the story of the infamous 1990s ‘Roswell autopsy’ film, it seems like a good opportunity to review the most extraordinary UFO evidence – actual shots of aliens. Unsurprisingly, there are precious few of these – and fewer still that have been at all credible. I know of nearly 50 such cases, which compares with about 10,000 UFO photographs taken over 120 years. Here is a brief round-up of alien photography before the release of the ‘autopsy’ footage.

ALASKA, EARLY 1930s

The earliest example seems to be a photograph that emerged in 2003. The story is that a grandfather handed it over the day before he died, having sat on it for over 70 years. He’d been driving through an Alaskan forest when he spotted the small grey-white creature with large eyes and promptly gave chase. One image showed the entity standing by the roadside, leaning slightly to one side, suggesting to a sceptical eye that it is a model being propped up. But, of course, it could be real. Scale can only be guessed at from surroundings, implying something less than 2ft (60cm) tall. There is a shadow that fi ts the scenery, but nothing in the shot to hint at when or where it w as taken.

NEW MEXICO, 7 JULY 1948

The first of several photos supposedly showing one of the entities involved in the series of UFO crashes plaguing the American West back then. We can see a large head and part of a badly burned torso amidst what seems to be metallic wreckage. The back-story from the anonymous supplier was that a UFO had crashed near Laredo and this dead entity was retrieved. Early suggestions by some researchers were that it showed a monkey used in rocket tests around White Sands during the late 1940s. However, the extent of the tissue damage does not preclude the possibility that it is human and evidence (often cropped out of shot) of what looks like a pair of spectacles implies this is the tasteless abuse of an image of a test pilot trapped in a fire after a plane crash.

WIESBADEN, GERMANY, MAY 1950

Discovered among FBI files when they were released to the UFO Information Network in 1977 was a fuzzy photocopy of a picture. This showed a child-sized alien wearing breathing equipment being led by the hand by two military personnel. The suggestion was that it had been captured alive following a crash. In 1981, German researcher Klaus Webner found that it was a spoof using the 5-year-old son of the photographer and retouched artwork – which might have been evident had the newspaper in the FBI archives noted that its original publication was in a local German paper on 1 April 1950. A better April Fool was played by another German paper in 1952. This time the alien was much smaller and naked, resembling a hairless monkey. Again, it contained clues pointing to a hoax – not least that the original authors of the accompanying piece translated roughly into English as ‘Mr Fraud’ and ‘Mr Make Believe’!

BURGH MARSH, ENGLAND, 24 MAY 1964

Fireman Jim Templeton was taking colour photos of his young daughter with his older daughter and wife both watching; they saw nothing odd at the time, but when the photos were developed one displayed a semi-transparent figure floating at an angle behind the back of the girl’s head. It looks like a person in a spacesuit – or fi re protection gear, leading to suspicions of a hoax by a colleague. Some tenuous UFO links exist, but the source of the image remains more an unsolved photographic mystery than an extraterrestrial one (see FT196:29).

FALKVILLE, ALABAMA, 17 OCT 1973

A police officer investigating an anonymous call of a UFO sighting during a well-publicised local wave confronted a humanoid figure in a silvery bacofoil suit who ran away as the patrol car arrived. The policeman gave chase, but the figure vanished into the night – although not before Jeff had photographed it. The officer later suffered a campaign seemingly intended to tarnish his reputation, and there is some cause to suspect that he may have been set up in a sophisticated hoax.

ILKLEY MOOR, ENGLAND, 1 DECEMBER 1987

This case has often been considered the best candidate for a genuine alien photo. Unique in many respects, it was taken by a man up on the moors photographing the surroundings, who saw a landed UFO and a small greenishgrey figure with dark eyes that scuttled over the rocks. He took one picture but also lost some time, retrieved under hypnosis as a classic ‘abduction memory’. The witness had the photo developed immediately and wrote to me soon afterwards. Although he has shunned publicity, he has cooperated fully with investigation by Peter Hough. The photo has been analysed by three different sources and clearly shows an object under 4ft (1.2m) tall, but it is impossible to say if it is animate or just a model. The area has a history of sightings of both UFOs and imp-like creatures. While the witness has stood by his story for years, there are nagging doubts that have recently grown.

WEST CARLETON, CANADA, 18 AUGUST 1991

A mysterious contact calling himself ‘Guardian’ sent details over a long period to US ufologist Bob Oeschler regarding an alleged UFO crash in this area in 1989. In early 1992, Oeschler received video footage reputedly showing a second incident during which the UFO returned to try to retrieve the first craft. The images show what looks like a hovering aerial device with fl ashing lights blinking in the dark, and include a sequence of still shots of what appears to be an alien face, glowing white and with dark, slit eyes. The story accompanying the footage alleges that the beings are from a race that evolved from dinosaurs, fleeing Earth millions of years ago!