Skinny Bob
Skinny Bob is a Grey-type non-human intelligent being depicted in four short video clips uploaded to YouTube in May 2011 by anonymous user "ivan0135," purportedly showing KGB-era footage of a living entity blinking, breathing, and reacting at a Soviet facility. No individual or production company has ever claimed authorship.
The footage
The four clips were posted between May 13–17, 2011, to a channel that remains frozen at those four uploads. The footage mimics 16mm Soviet film grain and shows an entity with a large rounded cranium, large black almond-shaped eyes, thin limbs, and subtle facial movements — including visible blinking and thoracic breathing — across multiple angles and lighting conditions. The entity is shown in what appears to be a controlled interview or observation room setting, seated and reacting to unseen prompts. A timestamp appearing in the footage has a section obscured by what appears to be a deliberate redaction — an anomaly that digital forensic analysts have noted cannot be cleanly explained by any standard 2011-era aging or editing software.
The channel "ivan0135" joined YouTube on April 14, 2011 — four days before an unrelated debunked "dead alien" clip surfaced from Siberia — and posted only four videos before going entirely silent. No monetization, no follow-up, no creator identification has ever emerged. The name "Ivan" was the most common male name in Russia at the time, and researchers have noted it as a plausible choice for someone wishing to project a Russian origin while remaining anonymous.
Anatomical details
The entity depicted in the clips shows anatomical features consistent across all four videos: a bulbous cranium larger in proportion than any known human pathological condition, eyes spanning the majority of the facial width with no visible sclera (white), a slit-like mouth, claw-like elongated fingers, and a short torso with elongated limbs. The footage shows the entity blinking at irregular intervals and exhibiting what appears to be thoracic (chest) breathing rather than abdominal breathing — a distinction noted by biological analysts as consistent with a respiratory anatomy unlike the mammalian pattern. A second clip shows the full body of the entity from multiple angles, and a third appears to show the entity in a different setting or lighting condition, suggesting the footage was recorded across more than one session.
Digital forensic analysis
Visual effects professionals examining the footage identified possible use of a 2011-era 3D software package called Blender in conjunction with a film-aging program called "Shutter Shock," which can reproduce period-accurate film grain and scratch patterns. Researcher Jon Stewart coordinated a team of five VFX analysts who reached a consensus: "100%, Shutter Shock was used" — but also noted the timestamp redaction anomaly: "If that was done under a 2011 program...it would be very smudgy, but this thing is absolutely clean." Stewart additionally identified the same owner's signature and timestamp metadata in the Skinny Bob footage as in the Victor alien video, suggesting a common origin or custodian: "Skinny Bob has the same owner's signature and timestamp as the Victor video."
A 2025 independent digital forensic analysis by UAP Files ran the footage through error-level analysis, entropy analysis, motion tracking, blink detection, and AI-authenticity scanning (IMG-Detect). The results produced a mixed picture: error-level analysis found no composite artifacts and compression consistent across frames; entropy patterns matched real camera footage rather than CGI renders. However, motion behavior was judged "smooth, too linear, lacking natural movement variance," fabric movement tracked rigidly with the body "like a 3D rig," and blink intervals were outside normal biological ranges. IMG-Detect returned a 1% probability of AI generation — significant given that AI-generated video did not exist in 2011.
The forensic summary reached by the UAP Files analysis: "It's not AI-generated. It's not typical 2011-era CGI... what it definitely is — is real footage of something. And if it's a hoax, it's one of the most effort-intensive hoaxes ever created" — noting that producing footage of this quality in 2011 would have required puppet teams, controlled lighting setups, professional post-processing, and thousands of dollars, with no expectation of financial return and no authorship claim ever filed.
Eben morphology comparison
Independent analysis has noted that the Skinny Bob entity "looks nothing like" the Eben type, with significantly shorter fingers and a distinct overall morphology, suggesting a different species or origin within the broader Grey category. The eye socket has been documented shifting from a fully rounded shape to flat on the bottom across frames, a feature difficult to attribute purely to film compression artifacts (a phenomenon called "Paola" in film analysis parlance).
Custody, life support, and recognition
According to John Vivanco's remote viewing investigation, the entity was kept in a life-support container designed to maintain moisture — a condition it required — and repeatedly attempted to return to the container during its captivity. The being was described by remote viewers as deeply distressed, pining for its home and hostile to its captors and observers. Vivanco reported that when multiple viewing sessions probed the entity's consciousness, it recognized the intrusion: "You again. Why are you here? Get out of my head." The fact that the entity had not learned to deflect remote viewing attempts from the outset suggested to Vivanco that no prior remote viewing of this being had been conducted.
Species identification: Immer / Emerther / Zeta Reticuli
The footage is internally labelled as depicting a being from the Zeta Reticuli star system, the origin commonly attributed to the Grey type in UFO research. One researcher tentatively identified the entity as belonging to the "Immer" — a friendly Grey-type group, distinct from the more adversarial Grey factions described in other accounts. A separate community of researchers associates the visible morphology — particularly the prominent small nose and pale grey coloring — with the Emerther, a Grey-type species described in contactee accounts as originating from the Tau Ceti system and associated with peaceful diplomatic contact with Earth governments from 1954 onward.
Provenance and origin
A five-viewer remote viewing session conducted by John Vivanco for Art Bell's Midnight in the Desert program concluded that the footage depicted "a real being" associated with a craft crash that occurred in either 1949 or 1955. This description connects to Bill Uhouse's description of a Grey alien surviving the Kingman, Arizona crash, per Michael Salla.
Connection to the Victor video
The Skinny Bob footage was likely a "planned leak" — passed through film-aging software to provide plausible deniability — and "it was not in Russian captivity," per Stewart. The shared metadata with the Victor interview points to coordination between releases — suggesting a common custodian releasing material through different channels and cover stories to achieve graduated public acclimation.
The forensic connection also raises the question of whether the footage depicts the same entity type as the Victor interview subject. Both show small Grey-type beings in controlled observation settings — and both emerged through anonymous release chains with no claimable origin.
Discussion in the UAP research community
The footage is cited by James Goodall, a longtime Black Projects researcher and Skunk Works contact, as one of the pieces of evidence that, in the context of confirmed government admissions about non-human craft, cannot be easily dismissed. Researcher host "We Are Not Alone" described the footage in 2022 as "absolutely 100% real" and reported receiving unusual takedown requests each time the footage saw on their platform — anomalous behavior consistent with ongoing suppression efforts.