Fear of Clowns

KNTV, a Las Vegas ABC affiliate took on a challenge from a guy who calls himself Prophet Yahweh (born Ramon Watkins) and claims he can summon UFOs through prayer - a talent he says he learned from the Old Testament. The station picked a day, time and location for a UFO summoning. He convinced the news crew by giving them not one, but two UFOs to film: "it's an orange sphere that appeared out of nowhere" ... "I can see it clear as day. In fact, it's bright."

Fantastic Planet thinks "it's a con of some kind," citing the fact that Prophet Yahweh tried to charge for access to videos on his website, but "this isn't to say that he's not involved in some sinister mind control plot involving the militarization of space." Rigorous Intuition also suggests Watkins is the victim of a mind control by the military. Posthuman Blues also finds "the proximity to Nellis AFB suggestive of a psy-ops operation of some sort." Pyramid Termite points to a photo of a black man holding two large balloons and declares Prophet Yahweh debunked.

I feel like I can safely rule out military mind control without giving an explanation.

Here are other videos of "Prophet Yahweh" summoning "UFO's" (WindowsMedia - download to disk before viewing - you may have to change the file extension to ".WMV").

In each, there is a cut in the video after he prays and before the object shows up. The videos are all more or less like the KNTV videos: spherical, metallic looking objects in the sky. It's hard to get a sense of how or if the objects moves, except in LV4, which appears to show some movement.

LA5 shows a red/pink sphere with a white middle.

I find LV2 the most interesting - it shows something the shape of a rotating trapezoid or several spheres bundled together and shifting around each other in a more or less regular pattern.

In LV6 a plane flies through the camera's field of vision, but one can't tell if the plane is closer or further away than the object.

When one freezes the frames on LA2, it appears that the object is actually two objects, although my unprofessional musing tells me this may be an artifact of the video camera that doesn't show up in the other videos.

The rest are interesting if you want to hear Prophet Yahweh talk about how the orbs are meant for the "true children of Israel" and how the Star of Bethlehem was one of these orbs.

The footage KNTV shot shows the object move across the fringe of a cloud, it seems somebody experienced in analyzing video could determine if it was in front of or behind the cloud - as well as the distance and size relative to the airplane that flies by in LV6.

That there is a cut in the video between the praying and "sighting" in each and every clip is suspicious, but that the news crew claimed to witnessed the event is hard to explain, unless they are in on on the hoax. I see the possible explanations as this:

• Hoax
  • It's staged. Watkins has someone launch and possibly control some object.
  • It's staged. Watkins is not in on the hoax, but is a victim of it, possibly KNTV is in on the hoax on him.
  • Watkins knows when weather balloons or experimental aircraft will be in the area to be seen.
    • KNTV is in on the hoax.
    • Watkins got lucky and KNTV picked a fortuitous time and place.
• Not a hoax
  • Watkins is extremely lucky and happens to pray for a sighting before weather balloons or experimental aircraft will be seen.
  • Watkins actually has the ability to call or create anomalous objects in the sky.

The simplest explanation is, of course, a hoax of some kind - you don't have to explain metallic angels, government conspiracies or craft from another planet - or as many such explanations, all three at once.

For what it's worth, here is Prophet Yaweh's press release, claiming more summonings over the next 45 days, culminating in a spaceship that will be visible to all of Las Vegas for two days. An elaborate viral marketing campaign for War of the Worlds? The Prophet is definitely giving ample opportunity to try to debunk his claims.

I've listened to a two radio interviews with him, he comes off as a true believer, so I'm guessing the hoax is in part on him or that he has some talents that a news crew has never before captured on film. One thing's for sure: my friend the Apostropher was wrong.

I'm going to watch a few episodes of season one of the X-Files and try not to let it run away with my imagination.

// posted by Erik @ 6/01/2005 11:43:00 PM
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