Did night vision footage show "10ft alien" from Las Vegas UFO crash report? (2024)

A new video has gone viral on social media, purporting to show a mystery creature hiding behind a garden fence, that was quickly tied to last week's reports of a "UFO crash" in a residential area of Las Vegas.

This follows the mysterious sequence of events from late April that included eyewitness accounts of a bright streak across the sky, followed by a report of an object crashing in an individual's back garden.

But did the latest piece of footage, filmed in night mode, really show "10ft tall" extraterrestrials that one of the eye-witnesses claimed to have observed shortly after the reported crash? Newsweek Misinformation Watch breaks down the story so far.

Since Friday, April 9, multiple tweets appeared to show a creepy piece of footage with the strange creature.

"Watch! Actual #Alien Footage from the Las #Vegas #UFO Landing.... On Duty Area Las Vegas Police Captured Clear Dash Footage of the Flying UFO Aircraft on their Patrol Car Minutes Before The Same Officers Also Responded to Scene Where this Gentleman Recorded this Footage," said a post from user CBKNews which was viewed 6.8 million times.

The post appeared to reference a report from days earlier, in which body cam footage from the Las Vegas Police showed them investigating a mysterious incident.

An unnamed man called the police to say he saw something fall from the sky. He said he saw two figures moving in his northwest valley backyard, according to local media reports at the time.

During the call to the police, the individual described the figures as "aliens" and said they could have been between 8 feet and 10 feet tall, adding that they appeared to have "big shiny eyes and large mouths."

The police footage, though extensive, has blurred out much of the backyard where the crash supposedly took place, citing privacy concerns. But the police officers left the property a short while later, after apparently failing to find anything suspicious.

"Hey, if those 9-foot beings come back, don't call us alright?" an officer can be heard saying, as he walks away from the house and back to his vehicle.

Earlier the same night, a Las Vegas Metro police officer spotted a fireball streak across the night sky while he spoke to a citizen on the street.

The unidentified object, which was filmed by the dash cam, shines brightly as it moves above and the unexplained phenomenon caused the police to probe further.

However, the police investigation was reportedly unable to determine what occurred, or whether the two events were connected. The property where the crash was reported was investigated for days before the police department decided to close the case.

UFO enthusiasts and social media sleuths have since raised doubts about the veracity of the report, after it was discovered that the circular "crash site" can be seen at the location for at least a year prior, according to Google Earth imaging.

While it doesn't disprove the whole story, the "alien" in the viral night-mode camera footage is certainly a hoax.

Firstly, the video appears to be intercut with the genuine audio recorded via the police body cam as officers investigated the property. The audio-video mismatch is often a red flag when it comes to verifying dubious or manipulated content.

Secondly, the "alien" video shows the date of recording as "2023/05/26." That directly conflicts with the police's timeframe, as the incident featured in the report occurred almost a month prior, but was first noticed and reported by the media only in June.

Most importantly, the clip is not real because it's a digital creation.

It was posted earlier on Friday, June 9, by a visual effects artist with the TikTok handle "owltreestump," with the hashtags "CGI" and "blender3d," the latter a reference to the open source computer graphics software used to generate the video.

The TikTok video has received around 64,000 total engagements, a fraction of the number received by the offshoot viral videos.

The topic of UFOs and extraterrestrials has been hitting the headlines again amid the U.S. government's disclosure of a number of previously classified UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) videos and the explosive claims made by the alleged whistle-blower David Grusch in interviews and TV appearances.

As Newsweek Misinformation Watch explained, while they are intriguing and further investigation seems warranted, Grusch's claims so far lack substance and have come under significant criticism.