Jonathan Reed forest video

File:Reed forest video 1996.mp4The forest encounter footage Reed says he filmed at the incident site on 15 October 1996 — the recording that is the subject of this article — showing the being on the forest floor.

File:Reed forest obelisk photograph.pngOne of the still photographs taken by Reed at the encounter site, showing the obelisk levitating among vegetation in the forest near Snoqualmie Pass.

The Jonathan Reed forest video is a video recording that Jonathan Reed says he filmed at the site of the Jonathan Reed forest incident on 15 October 1996, near Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascade Mountains of Washington. The footage shows the incapacitated non-human intelligent being he called "Freddie" lying on the forest floor, the black obelisk levitating near the scene, and Reed's initial approach to the spot where he found the remains of his dog Suzy. Together with the home video of Freddie, the Photograph of Freddie's face, and the audio recording of Freddie, it is among the first pieces of documentary evidence Reed presented publicly from November 1998, and is the footage offered as showing the being at the encounter site itself.

The authenticity of the footage is disputed. The television program Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files reproduced comparable footage of the being using a prop figure filmed in the woods, and the debunking site UFO Watchdog reported that the slide film Reed said he used did not exist until after October 1996 and that the Jeep he said he drove to the site was not in his possession until April 1997 — more than eighteen months after the alleged encounter.

Description

Reed stated he filmed approximately ten to fifteen minutes of video at the incident site, capturing footage of the being lying motionless on the forest floor. Reed described the handheld recording as jerky and unstable, made while running through the woods in a state of distress; he confirmed it was secured to a ladder with duct tape during portions filmed at closer range showing the being's wound. The recording captured audio of the being's breathing, which Art Bell played during the November 1998 broadcasts; Bell identified it on air as coming from "the wood scene" with the breathing, and Robert Raith said the footage ran "about six minutes in each segment".

Obelisk footage

The same recording session captured the obelisk at the scene before it reactivated and disappeared. Reed described the obelisk as a black object levitating above the ground, emitting a low, harmonic hum and making the air beneath it feel thick and dense. Art Bell, who personally scanned the still photographs of the obelisk sent by Reed and verified they were raw photographic prints rather than digital fabrications, described the obelisk as "a black diamond-shaped six-sided object, almost diamond-shaped... pseudo-diamond-shaped... kind of a marquis diamond laying on its side," measuring approximately two and a half by three feet tall, four by four-and-a-half feet wide, and nine to nine-and-a-half feet long, hovering in midair.

Reed stated the obelisk was located approximately 75 to 100 feet from where the being fell. When he passed a stick beneath it to confirm nothing was supporting it from below, the stick met resistance like "going into molasses" as it passed under the object. Two still photographs of the obelisk were presented alongside the video footage; Bell noted that the photographs were so clear and detailed that some viewers rejected them as too good to be real — an inverse of the typical skeptical objection to blurry UAP imagery.

Reed described noticing that the camera experienced increasing distortion the closer he brought it to the black obelisk, and compensated by backing away to capture a more stable image: "As I filmed the video, I noticed that it would distort the closer that I got to the black obelisk... And I realized that the farther away I got, the less distortion would happen. So I ran back as far as I could and tried to record something."

Reed's interpretation of the obelisk

Reed came to believe the obelisk was not a spacecraft — he considered it too small to have carried the being — but rather "a doorway, a portal," anchored simultaneously in two locations, functioning as the target point for dimensional transit. Reed further proposed that the Link bracelet recovered at the scene had served as a wrist-worn interface connecting the being to the obelisk and to a remote controller, citing as evidence the fact that the bracelet was found approximately where it would have landed if thrown from the being's wrist during the encounter.

Camera

The camera used was a Nikon eight-millimeter video camera — Reed described it as "Nikon straight eight... about seven years old" at the time of the 2000 UFO Congress presentation. The camera featured a unidirectional microphone extending from the top of the unit, which Reed cited as an explanation for the clarity of audio recorded during the hyperventilating, distressed run through the forest: "The microphone on this Nikon eight millimeter video camera is a unidirectional microphone sticking out of the top... The viewfinder is on the top." A television professional in the UFO Congress 2000 audience, Russell Callan of UFO Magazine (UK), observed that despite the visible hyperventilation and running evident in the footage, "you did very well to keep the camera steady" during portions of the film.

Reed spent approximately three hours on the scene before returning to his vehicle. He recounted that, having decided he had to leave the site to survive, he remembered his cameras and resolved to document the scene: "Now, exuberant about the prospects of bringing proof of this nightmare and perhaps restoring my own sanity, I grabbed my camera from the pack, turning it on, and then ran as fast as I could back to the top of the ridge... I began breathing so hard that I could almost feel myself starting to lose consciousness." Reed described the filming itself as driven by a moment of adrenaline-fueled logic overriding panic: "I didn't want to think about what had happened, what had happened with my dog, what had happened with this creature. I wanted to just be healthy. I wanted to just come out of this nightmare... I was running on pure adrenaline." After completing the video, Reed returned to his backpack, removed his 35-millimeter camera, and took still photographs of the scene before leaving.

Presentation and circulation

The video was presented publicly in November 1998 when Robert Raith contacted Coast to Coast AM host Art Bell, who played excerpts of the audio portion of the videotape during the broadcasts. Photographs derived from the footage were posted to Bell's website (artbell.com); Bell said he scanned the Kodak 35 mm prints himself rather than producing computer-generated images, to establish their non-digital origin. Before the second broadcast Bell re-scanned the photographs at higher resolution: "I have re-scanned the photographs... photographs of the obelisk, photographs of the alien creature... The new scans are much higher resolution."

During the November 18, 1998 broadcast, Bell played a segment of audio extracted from the videotape live on air, describing it to listeners as: "Listen carefully, folks. You're going to hear a man in a dead flat panic." Reed confirmed after it aired: "Yes, it was" in response to Bell's identification of the audio as Reed's own voice hyperventilating in the forest.

By the December 28, 1998 broadcast, Bell — who had by then personally viewed the videotape — described it on air as showing "a lot of running, a lot of very hard breathing, somebody in the middle of a, well, I guess a panic attack," adding that "some of it was steady, most of it was running or moving" and that the footage of the obelisk and the being "all of it appears roughly as in the still photographs, and backs those up." The same broadcast confirmed the camera model as "an eight millimeter straight eight, but it is made by Nikon" — a detail Bell said generated listener confusion, since many were unaware Nikon had manufactured that type of camcorder. By the January 29, 1999 broadcast, Robert Raith described the video's impact on audiences, noting the visible "interference" during the forest passages and that "you do see the alien laying on the space blanket and it's a bluish gray color, at least from a distance," and said approximately 110 people had viewed the video at a San Diego screening on March 14.

The video was screened at UFO conference presentations including the International UFO Congress (Laughlin, Nevada) and in presentations by Jaime Maussan, and referenced in the book LINK: An Extraterrestrial Odyssey (2000) by Reed and Robert Raith, in which an entire chapter, titled "LINK", is named for the Link bracelet recovered at the same scene. The still photograph of Freddie's face originates from the related home video, not from this forest footage.

Authenticity

The authenticity of the forest footage has been contested since it entered circulation. The television program Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files (Syfy, 2010) investigated the forest footage as part of its examination of the Reed case, concluding that the footage of the being could be reproduced using a prop figure placed in the woods under ordinary filming conditions. A YouTube review by the channel OMG Alien Footage examined both the original 1996 footage and the 2010 Fact or Faked recreation and concluded that the debunking was itself flawed, citing documentary evidence — including photographs of Reed's bullet wound scars (entry and exit), his University of Washington employment records from 1983 to 1996, and the deaths of two colleagues, Rodger Haggitt and Michael Wessels, allegedly preparing to release DNA analysis of the creature — as grounds for reopening the question: "I find it odd that people think anyone would give up a doctor's salary, collection of cars, girlfriend, dog, and life to get hospitalized, threatened, friends murdered, and have people ridicule you as a hoax for over 14 years."

The debunking site UFO Watchdog reported that the Jeep Reed claimed to have used for transportation to and from the forest was not in his possession until 17 April 1997 — over 18 months after the alleged incident date — having obtained the Lynwood Nissan bill of sale showing the vehicle had been purchased by Reed's former girlfriend. It further reported that the slide film Reed said he used was not manufactured by Kodak until after October 1996 — citing Tony Edwards of the company's Product Information Department — which, in UFO Watchdog's account, meant the film did not yet exist at the alleged time. A separate investigation by the Seattle UFO-Paranormal Group, published through the Northwest Museum of Legends and Lore, reported the same finding regarding the Jeep's acquisition date and likewise concluded that Reed's film type was not manufactured until 1997. Reed, who says the agents who ransacked his home removed most of his supporting evidence and records, has not addressed either discrepancy directly in any recorded interview.[citation needed] Questions raised at the 2000 UFO Congress regarding the camera's audio quality — a television professional suggested it was anomalously clear given the microphone's position during running — were addressed by Reed's explanation of the camera's unidirectional microphone design, though the steadiness of some passages has been read, by those who regard the footage as staged, as difficult to reconcile with filming in extreme distress.

Attorney Daniel Sheehan, in a discussion of disinformation within the UFO field, described the Reed case as an example of deliberate fabrication, recounting that one of his professional investigators "followed this guy around and finally caught him reporting to some friends of his how he was bullshitting everybody." Sheehan stated he informed John Mack, who subsequently "issued a statement discrediting the guy." No corroborating detail about this investigator, or about Mack's purported statement, has surfaced in the public record.[citation needed]

External links

• Forest encounter footage (multi-part upload, Part 1) — 146×128, brightest color reproduction
• "NowYouKnow" evidence compilation — 1280×720, includes forest footage, obelisk footage, and home examination footage in sequence
• Dr. Jonathan Reed UFO Congress 2000 Presentation — forest footage screened during live presentation (begins ~6:53)

See also

• Daniel McEvoy
• Hobart (The School)

References

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