Is this footage of the tall creature reported in a Las Vegas backyard shortly after a police body camera picked up a bright green flash in the night sky in April of 2023? No, that's not true: This footage was posted by a TikTok user who makes CGI videos and labeled this video as such. The CGI video has been deceptively remixed with authentic media from a Las Vegas Metro Police 911 call record, and local news coverage about a mysterious series of events.
The original 17-second video showing a creature crouching by a privacy fence was posted on TikTok by @owltreestump on June 9, 2023. This account features several CGI shorts and the caption clearly identifies that this is a CGI creation, naming the graphics tool, Blender, which was used to make it. The video has a text overlay that says, "Alright, which one of y'all is this?" The caption reads:
Smh knew I shouldn't investigate noises outside. #cryptid #cgi #blender3d #creepy
The CGI video was hijacked and reuploaded with a text caption that said, "REAL 911 CALL!" This remix contains a real 911 call audio track which was not part of the original video. One example is a video published on Instagram by @emmanuellejacobmusic on June 10, 2023. The post was captioned:
Verified
THE ACTUAL 911 CALL!😱
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• SAVE this reel for later🗣️
✨Follow for your Daily dose of Conspiracy and Music✨
#aliens #conspiracy #ufo #alien #aliensighting
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Image source: Instagram screenshot taken on Mon Jun 12 16:41:22 2023 UTC)
The focus of this fact check is the CGI video and the way it has been reworked to include audio from a 911 call, which may have been a false report. Whether the 911 call was a hoax is beyond the scope of this fact check. A KLAS article reports that Las Vegas Metro police did investigate in the days following, but subsequently closed the case.
The original CGI video posted on TikTok by @owltreestump was designed to appear as night-vision trail camera video -- it includes the iZeeker brand trail camera style datestamp along the lower border. That datestamp reads, "2023/05/26." This datestamp comes about a month after the timing of a fireball or purported alien sighting in Las Vegas, so the video does not seem to have been created with the intention of adding visuals for the Las Vegas incident. The post also includes the hashtags #cgi and #blender3d, showing no intention to deceive. Blender is an open source public program made available from the Blender Foundation which describes their goals in this way:
Blender Foundation facilitates a public project on blender.org with the mission to get the world's best 3D CG technology in the hands of artists as free/open source software.
Our vision is that everyone should be free to create 3D CG content, with free technical and creative production means and free access to markets.
A remixed version of the CGI video has 911 audio added and a few edits that muddy the distinction between the CGI footage and a real channel 8 News NOW KLAS Las Vegas television broadcast. The clips alternate between the CGI creation and the news segment while the 911 audio plays uninterrupted. The CGI video has added text captioning of the 911 call and the TikTok handle of @owltreestump has been cropped enough to render it illegible. The news segment clips (at 1:03 and 1:26 minutes in the KLAS YouTube post embedded below) feature a readout of the 911 call, the scrolling news ticker, and station logo.
The KLAS 6 o'clock evening broadcast on June 7, 2023, opened with a segment about a mysterious flash of light that was caught on an officer's body camera on the night on April 30, 2023 (1:41 minutes in) and a 911 call that was placed to Las Vegas Metro police minutes later. Police were dispatched to the home and the bodycam footage of the responding officer (2:00 minutes in) is included in the news segment, it shows the officer speaking with the teen who placed the call and the teen's family.
The young man who made the call to 911 created a YouTube channel named Alien society51 on June 8, 2021 -- with the description, "This channel is based on true events." At the time of writing, the channel has only one video where he tells his version of what he saw that night, includes some clips from the KLAS segment, and additional footage from the backyard. This is not the backyard scene shown in the CGI video.
A bright light was seen in the sky over several western states at about 11:53 pm Pacific daylight time on April 30, 2023. The American Meteor Society (AMS) received 21 reports of a fireball sighting (event 2408-2023) coming in from Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. Most reports said the flash of light lasted about three-and-a-half seconds. A Ring doorbell video recorded in Sparks, Nevada, was included with one of the reports to AMS -- it shows a front porch in the darkness of night suddenly illuminated as if it's midday.
This is not the only remix of the CGI video. On June 10, 2023, Secureteam10 posted a version on Facebook where the scene was reversed, with the creature appearing on the left side of the frame. The video has the logo WWW.UFOGOD.ORG and titles added which read, "LAS VEGAS NEVADA ALIEN FOOTAGE BEFORE 911 CALL" The post was captioned:
Las Vegas Nevada alien UFO crashed and backyard original footage of extraterrestrials 2023 #nevada #ufo #aliens here's the official TikTok video go check it out:  https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT81SdR5B/
(Image source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Jun 12 22:28:41 2023 UTC)
