ivan0135 videos

ivan0135 is an anonymous YouTube channel that uploaded four short video clips between 13 April and 17 May 2011, purportedly showing classified footage of living Grey-type non-human intelligent beings and related UFO documentary material, then went permanently silent. The channel is the origin of the footage of the entity nicknamed "Skinny Bob," and its uploads collectively frame their content as edited excerpts from a larger archive of classified films purportedly recorded between 1942 and 1969.

Identity

The channel was allegedly created on 13 April 2011 with no profile picture, no channel description, and no identifying information; the username itself gave away nothing about the uploader's identity or location. "Ivan" is among the most common Russian male given names, and some analysts have interpreted the choice as a deliberate signal of Russian or Soviet provenance for the footage; others note it could be entirely arbitrary, while researchers have pointed out it would be a plausible alias for someone wishing to project a Russian origin while remaining anonymous. The numeric suffix "0135" has not been conclusively explained, though one researcher reportedly suggested it might be coordinates pointing to an area of Gabon in West Africa. Another review gives the channel's join date as 14 April 2011 and states that it posted only four videos, with no monetisation, no interviews and no follow-up, that no one has come forward to take credit, and that it appeared four days before an unrelated "dead alien" clip surfaced from Siberia, itself since called debunked.

The footage was purportedly sourced from a classified government archive from the 1940s and 1950s, allegedly obtained by the uploader from a dying acquaintance who had worked in a government capacity with access to first-contact documentation; the recordings were said to have been transferred on cassette or reel-to-reel media in the final decades of the 20th century. No individual or organization has ever claimed authorship of the channel or its footage, and efforts to identify the uploader through YouTube account metadata have produced no results. The combination of the name "Ivan" and KGB-themed video titles led some researchers to theorize a Russian origin, a conclusion no evidence has confirmed.

One forensic review states that the channel's own description named its creator as Russian-born in 1969.

Documents leaks

The four uploads collectively present themselves as edited fragments from a larger archive of classified films purportedly recorded between 1942 and 1969, framed as footage of KGB (or USAF/classified) interaction with extraterrestrial beings. Internal timestamps and case labels embedded in the footage identify the materials by tape and case number. The first video presents edited fragments from classified "cases" including Case 07 ("Tin Bird"), Case 15 ("Flying Twin"), Case 23 ("Blue Boys"), and Case 24 ("Blue Boys Meeting"), totalling approximately 93 seconds of clips drawn from source tapes with a claimed total recorded duration of 1,260 minutes. The series as a whole is framed as leaked KGB archival footage from 1942 to 1969 documenting beings from the Zeta Reticuli star system in diplomatic exchanges with human officials.

All four uploads share a common set of YouTube keywords: ufo, crash accident, alien, extraterrestrial, life, et, zeta, reticuli, grey, desclassified, top, secret, cosmic, sighting, leaked, disclosure, confidential, autopsy, intelligence, service, rosswel, incident, new, mexico, South, Africa, Kalahari, Desert, army, navy, air, force, defense, agency, department, abduction, old, footage, 1947, space, aliens, flying, military, video, airplanes, interview. The misspelling of "Roswell" as "rosswel" and "declassified" as "desclassified" has been noted — the latter consistent with Spanish or Portuguese ("desclasificado"/"desclassificado"), potentially indicating a non-English native speaker.

The fourth and final upload, in colour, is prefaced by on-screen text describing the alleged history of non-human intelligent being contact from 1942 onward and references a 1961 incident — identified as Document 072/E — in which three beings reportedly discovered they were being secretly filmed, characterised as a treaty violation.

Video releases

Video 1: "Disclosure leaked ufo alien case video confidential documents old footage" (13 April 2011)

The first video opens with the KGB logo and obscured text, transitions through aerial footage of a saucer-shaped craft over a rural house, a dimly lit interior shot of a humanoid figure standing still, a crashed craft with an entity lying motionless nearby, and a detailed alien autopsy sequence. An animated on-screen timestamp shows where in the source tape each segment originates. The footage is presented in simulated monochrome 16 mm film grain with period-appropriate surface scratches, and is drawn from three source tapes (Tapes 01, 03 and 04) of a claimed 1,260 minutes (21 hours) in all. The four case sequences, each identified by an on-screen case number and codename, are:

The case numbers, codenames and tape metadata present the footage as excerpts from a larger classified library, a claimed 21-hour archive far larger than the four uploads together represent, in the frame of a joint USAF/KGB programme. The beings designated "Blue Boys" in Cases 23 and 24 appear to be of one type, grey-complexioned bipedal beings of the Zeta Reticuli kind that recur in the later videos, Skinny Bob among them.[citation needed] The Case 24 autopsy sequence is the earliest depiction of a non-human body in the series and has drawn comparison to the Santilli tape alien autopsy footage.[citation needed]

Video 2: "alien grey extraterrestrial zeta reticuli ufo leaked footage" (2 May 2011)

The second ivan0135 video — the primary "Skinny Bob" footage. Sourced from archive.org.

The second video shows the entity that came to be called "Skinny Bob," supposedly filmed in what appears to be a controlled indoor environment. It opens with a side-view of the being moving its head and arms, followed by a full-body scan from feet to head showing it standing in an upright posture with subtle, continuous movements. The closing frames show a circular shape and a shadow of an unidentified second entity. The audio throughout is a continuous projector-rattle sound consistent with 16mm film playback. The footage has been subjected to extensive forensic analysis by visual effects professionals, digital forensics researchers, and the r/SkinnyBob community on Reddit, and remains neither authenticated nor debunked after fifteen years. No individual or production company has claimed authorship of the footage.

Description

The video opens with several paragraphs of text and two still frames of the entity. Three sequences follow:

• A side-view of the entity sitting in what appears to be a chair, showing lateral head movements and arm motion against a plain background. The entity appears to interact with something off-camera.
• A full-body scan from feet upward, displaying the entity standing in an upright, idle contrapposto posture beneath a wedge-shaped object identified as a stadiometer, with continuous subtle movements across the whole body. A tight-fit jumpsuit with a crease on the chest is visible.
• A closing sequence showing a circular shape and what appears to be the shadow of something at the frame's edge — described in broader analyses as the entity resting in a pool or container of liquid.

The audio throughout consists of a continuous projector-rattle sound consistent with 16mm film playback, shifting slightly at scene transitions. The audio is assessed to be a stock sound effect applied digitally, matching the other post-processing effects identified on the footage.

Additional YouTube keywords set for this video include: planet, earth, moon, exclusive, science, predator.

Post-processing effects

All analysts — whether concluding the underlying footage is authentic or synthetic — agree that the ivan0135 videos were digitally post-processed before upload.

The film damage overlay was identified by Reddit user u/BrooklynRobot as a commercially available stock video clip. The software used to apply the overlay and other aging effects was identified by u/Jazzlike_Squirrel as Sapphire Plug-ins for After Effects by Boris FX. The embedded timecode uses the Microsoft font Consolas (released 2006) with additional distortion effects, as discovered by u/BrooklynRobot. The KGB logo still frame that opens the first ivan0135 video was sourced from the debunked 1998 documentary The Secret KGB UFO Files.

The timestamp redaction — a black rectangle censoring part of the timecode — was added by Ivan, since the timecode itself was digitally embedded. The timecode does not follow temporally shifting frames, proving it was not originally embedded in the source material but added later.

Authenticity case

The forensic investigation documented at skinnybob.info, drawing on the work of the r/SkinnyBob community, multiple VFX professionals, and independent analysts, describes the underlying footage as authentic recordings of a non-human being onto which Ivan applied commercially available film-aging effects before uploading to YouTube.

The black-projects researcher James Goodall counts Skinny Bob among the pieces of evidence that, given confirmed government admissions about non-human craft, "opens up the doors to all of these conspiracy theories to potentially being true," and the host of the We Are Not Alone programme called the footage "absolutely 100% real" and reported "really, really strange" takedown requests each time he ran it.

Biological observations

Observable features of the entity documented by frame-by-frame analysts include: blinking with what appears to be a translucent nictitating membrane, visible thoracic breathing, head and arm movements, and possible jugular vein motion. Stewart acknowledged "definite movements" in the footage, including the eye socket going from round to flat on the bottom, while cautioning that some apparent movements, among them that of the jugular vein, may be pareidolia in the pixelation of the film, as in the Victor photograph. The physician's hand movements visible in the first video's autopsy scene move naturally at approximately 24 frames per second, a default recording speed of contemporary film cameras.

The skinnybob.info investigation determined that the entity's eyes do not conform to the stereotypical large dark almond-shaped "Grey" eyes. Frame analysis of the autopsy scenes revealed that the dark area around the eyes consists of shadow cast by an external object onto the face, with a straight-edge shadow boundary wrapping around the cheekbone — not a single continuously smooth covering.

Timestamp redaction

Jon Stewart, who delivered his investigation of the Victor video to the office of Congressman Tim Burchett, described a smudge over one part of the footage's timestamp that looks "almost like a cut out piece of black cardboard put over the timestamp"; he was told that a 2011 program would have left it "very smudgy." Stewart said the analysts could not explain the clean redaction, adding that he was "not saying skinny Bob is the real deal but there are head scratches with that video."

Forensic scanning

A 2025 forensic review by UAP Files applied FFT analysis, motion tracking, blink detection, and AI-authenticity scanning (IMG-Detect) to the footage. Error Level Analysis found no composite artifacts, with compression consistent across frames. Entropy patterns matched real camera footage rather than CGI renders. IMG-Detect returned a 1% probability that the footage was AI-generated — significant given that AI video generation did not exist in 2011. The reviewer described a "mix of real-camera traits and suspiciously 'clean' simulation behaviours," finding the timecode a "Clean digital overlay — lacks analog jitter or sensor roll" and the lighting "Smooth and soft, consistent with CGI environments." The review concluded: "It's not AI-generated. It's not typical 2011-era CGI. It could be an extremely well-done model or puppet. But what it definitely is…is real footage of something. And if it's a hoax, it's one of the most effort-intensive, least-rewarded hoaxes of the internet age."

Provenance hypothesis

According to Will, a correspondent from the site PLANETunderATTACK, he emailed ivan0135 — or someone affiliated with the videos — on 17 June 2014 and received a reply two days later. The reply claimed the footage had been put out through several "sock channels" on YouTube and other sites, done "this way to make sure the info got out even if our channel, website etc was terminated"; that "we were sent that footage to release from a source"; and that the "original version is not available to anyone." It described an unedited twelve-minute original in which "the full scene shows him sitting at a table, looking through what looks like star maps," with "government officials... also seen at the opposite side of the table in clothes of the time," and said the entity's jumpsuit was not the original clothing — "original clothes were taken for analysis, human clothes were provided" — the unedited footage instead showing "a dull silver type ski suit with a utility belt and dull silver footwear." Reddit user u/Jazzlike_Squirrel noted the sock-channel claim could not be confirmed: the first video was mentioned nowhere else until the second gained traction about two weeks later, and the early copies on other channels were lower-bitrate and silent, consistent with re-uploads ripped from the ivan0135 channel.

Reddit user u/Data_Pure noted that Ivan posted the first video one month after a foreign adversary launched a cyberattack on the Pentagon and stole sensitive data. The RSA breach also occurred around that time. If the footage was among the stolen files, the Pentagon itself may have released the edited clips to control the damage and narrative — publishing the material in a "lame wrapping" so that if the original footage later surfaced, a prior degraded publication would undermine its credibility.

A military intelligence contractor consulted by Jon Stewart, whom Stewart described as one of the top CGI people in the world, stated that the presence of a timestamp on the footage indicated a 99% likelihood of government or government-affiliated film origin.

Stewart said that Skinny Bob has the same "owner's signature and timestamp" as the separate Gray alien interrogation video, a correspondence he found interesting without saying what it means; he added that he had been told the footage was put through a film-aging filter to give debunkers a ready explanation, and that it was never in Russian captivity.

Remote viewing

Remote viewer John Vivanco conducted a five-viewer controlled remote viewing session on this footage at the request of Heather Wade, then hosting Midnight in the Desert after Art Bell's retirement. The viewers concluded that "this was a real being" associated with a craft crash in which other beings were present. The remote viewers reported the entity repeatedly sought to return to a moist life-support container. Michael Salla separately reported that Vivanco's remote viewing of the Skinny Bob footage concluded that it was real.

Hoax case

The hoax hypothesis, as documented in the skinnybob.info forensic analysis and by VFX professionals, describes the footage as an elaborate multi-technique production by one or more skilled creators.

Animation and rigging

The 2025 UAP Files forensic review identified that the entity's motion behavior was "smooth, too linear, lacking natural movement variance," and that cloth movement tracked rigidly with the body "like a 3D rig" — signatures consistent with digital character animation rather than biological movement. Blink intervals fell outside normal biological ranges.

A team of five VFX professionals coordinated by Jon Stewart assessed that the underlying animation, if synthetic, was produced in Blender at an exceptionally high skill level. Stewart challenged VFX communities to replicate the entity digitally; no credible replication had been produced as of 2023.

Film-aging software

Jon Stewart relayed the conclusion of a group of VFX and video-analysis professionals that the footage was created in 2011 and put through a commercially available film-aging program called Shutter Shock, whose added grainy dot scratches "line up perfectly" with the footage, together with Blender 3D software and a further program adding a VHS look. Stewart did not fully endorse that conclusion, citing the timestamp redaction the analysts could not explain.

Animatronics and puppetry

Comparing the footage to known commercial alien hoaxes and film productions, industry professionals estimated production costs ranging from five to six figures, assuming combinations of puppeteering, animatronics, costumes, computer graphics, motion tracking, and stop motion. Different scenes would have required different techniques, each adding to overall costs. VFX artist Ben Phillips estimated the total cost at approximately £220,000 with a full team.

If the skinny Bob closeup scenes used an animatronic puppet, comparable creations — such as a Todd Masters alien animatronic from the 1990s costing approximately $80,000, or Disney's "Shaman of Songs" at $10,000,000 — place the production squarely in the six-digit budget category for those two scenes alone. A UAP Files review noted that creating footage of this quality in 2011 would have required thousands in resources, a puppet or model team, controlled lighting setups and professional post-processing, with zero expectation of fame or payment.

Perspective anomaly

The full-body scan scene presents a perspective problem: a vertical camera pan should introduce either perspective distortion (if pivoting) or parallax (if translating vertically), but the footage exhibits neither. Experimental recreation by u/RedDwarfBee using a physical mockup demonstrated that parallax can be suppressed if the camera is far from the subject and the subject is close to the wall, and that distortion from pivoting is reduced at distance. A different theory holds that the entity was filmed as a whole and the scanning motion generated by analog or digital post-processing.

Replication attempts

Reddit user u/Shtudi successfully recreated the tin bird UFO scene from the first ivan0135 video using the same BorisFX effects, demonstrating that at least the UFO footage can be replicated with commercially available tools. No comparable replication of the entity footage has been produced.

Video 3: "Ivan0135 about ALIEN and UFO documents" (9 May 2011)

The third video is the shortest of the four uploads and consists primarily of explanatory text addressed to viewers who had questioned or criticized the preceding clips, apparently responding to doubts about the authenticity or context of the footage. In the background behind the text, a police-station-style silhouette handprint is visible, made by a hand with four long fingers — morphologically consistent with the hand anatomy of the entity shown in Video 2. No new footage of the entity or craft is shown. One series summary instead describes the third upload as presenting additional Grey-type footage, and another account treats this video as a fifth upload, posted on 9 May 2011 to a separate account and purportedly authored by ivan0135 to give context for the original four, while placing a second ivan0135 upload on the same day as the first video.[citation needed]

The handprint allegedly establishes a physical-evidence framing consistent with the broader narrative of the channel: that the uploads represent documentary fragments from a classified government archive rather than a creative production. The four-fingered morphology recurs across the series and is reportedly consistent with the Grey-type being's anatomy as described in multiple witness and research accounts. One comment on the video from a self-described long-term abduction survivor reads: "The images of the alien referred to as Skinny Bob on this channel are legitimate. I am an abduction survivor of over 40 years, and have been closer than arms length to these beings. This is them. The small Greys, Zeta Reticulans, whatever you want to call them, you have just seen one, live and in the flesh on film. Believe it, and adjust your psychology and your actions accordingly."

Video 4: "alien grey extraterrestrial zeta reticuli tape 06 – family vacation" (17 May 2011)

"Tape 06 — Family Vacation", the fourth and final ivan0135 video (17 May 2011). Sourced from archive.org.

The fourth and final video is the only one in colour. It opens with text describing the alleged history of extraterrestrial contact from 1942 onward and references a 1961 incident (Document 072/E) in which three beings reportedly discovered they were being secretly filmed, constituting a treaty violation of a standing agreement between the beings and the government agency that allowed them to be photographed or filmed only with their explicit permission. The video ends with a shaky, handheld colour recording of a group of Grey-type beings walking near a military structure alongside humans, apparently during an official diplomatic contact event. Several beings appear at once, walking alongside a wall and accompanied by humans, and the recording has no audio track. Two reviews state that the 1961 discovery of the hidden camera was held to violate the treaty between the beings and the government agency, and that the beings were so upset that the treaty was revised, though it does not say how.

Reception and verification

Following the last upload on 17 May 2011, the channel went permanently silent. The account has never posted again, has left no comments, and all efforts to identify the uploader have failed; ivan0135 remains on YouTube as an inactive archive. The existence of the third video — explicitly responding to viewer doubts — indicates that the channel was monitoring the response to earlier uploads and chose to engage briefly, an unusual form of interaction for a channel that otherwise provided no identifying information and went permanently silent after the fourth upload. The silence has been read both as a whistleblower choosing to release and then withdraw and as a controlled campaign with a predetermined endpoint.[citation needed] No subsequent YouTube account matching ivan0135's upload style or content has ever been identified.

See also

• KGB UFO files
• Skinny Bob
• Victor alien interview

Open questions

References

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