ChrisJohnsen
Paranormal Adept
This documentary just became available to stream via Netflix. I'm in the middle of watching it. I'll save my opinion until I'm finished but I will say Stan is no Academy Award winner, if you know what I mean.
Update:
I finished the doc. The only thing that stops me from filing this guy 100% into the "hoaxer" category, which he clearly has been involved in over the years with at least some elements of his "story," is the participation of someone I consider level-headed and very credible - Alejandro Rojas. Frankly, I was rather surprised when he showed up in this doc.
There is a bit of interesting footage of a silver craft from 2000. Though the filmmakers don't talk with any experts to analyze it. There is the ubiquitous "red orb" footage which he claims follow him around. Unproven. There are the alleged "multiple witnesses" to this phenomena following Romanek, none interviewed on camera. There is some other interesting tiny orb footage showing a small ball of light zipping through the house and in the backyard, which admittedly looks quite interesting, but again, no expert is interviewed to explain what this might be. You're just supposed to take the footage at face value with no questions asked. Some photo/video software effects are used to represent "analyzation" of the video frames and picture stills in question to presumably show that these visuals have not been manipulated in any way, but again, without an expert in visual media, like D'Antonio or Maccabee, explaining the veracity of the tests and providing professionally-interpreted results, how is the layperson supposed to know what, exactly, they might be looking at?
Don't get me started about the footage showing a grey alien peeking in the window, or the "grandpa grey" looking in through the sliding glass door, or the mysterious "phone calls" from his alien-human hybrid children, or "Audrey" the English-accented robotic voice entity calling him "Starseed" on the phone and explaining he has a mission. All are of dubious provenance.
I did come away feeling bad for Stan's long-suffering wife, Lisa. She's interviewed and you come to realize that Stan has allegedly fathered 7 alien-human hybrid children with another human female experiencer, Victoria Albright. Stan and Victoria end up meeting in real life and have a connection Stan's wife has trouble accepting. Victoria is also interviewed in this doc. There is another woman, Heidi, but I don't know how she fits in to all of this other than when one of Stan's hybrid children, "Kioma," suddenly cuts in on a conference call they are having (and apparently conveniently recording).
Parts of the doc definitely made me go "huh, what could that be?" but I cannot help feel that the Romanek story "well" has been judiciously poisoned by his previous, ham-fisted fakery attempts to bolster his original story. Even some of the "experts" interviewed allude to his past hoaxing by qualifying their comments, saying "even if only 40% of what Stan claims is true" and "do I believe everything Stan says? No." Obviously, none of the more notorious hoaxing gets mentioned directly in the film as actual hoaxes. Some, as I've outlined above, get presented as "evidence." The participation of Paola Harris does not help the film's credibility either.
Finally, when we talk about Stan Romanek these days, we can't omit his very disturbing 2014 arrest on possession of child pornography. The film deals with it at the very end, though not talking with Stan about it. There is no on-camera interview portion addressing it, there is no vociferous denial from Stan. Probably due to legal reasons, as I believe the case is ongoing. However, there is an attempt to show, via referencing news article headlines, that viruses and/or hackers and/or the government can easily plant that kind of stuff on a person's computer. That's obviously not untrue as a general rule but you have to ask yourself if that is a plausible explanation in this specific case. Is Stan's (Starseed's) "message" so threatening to the powers-that-be that they need to frame him for child pornography? I guess you'll have to be the judge of that (until the actual judge finally rules).
I'd love for Gene and Chris to watch this documentary and then have Alejandro Rojas on an episode of ATP to discuss his involvement and to expand on his feelings about the Romanek story itself. He is apparently very familiar with it and seems to be friends with Romanek himself.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Update:
I finished the doc. The only thing that stops me from filing this guy 100% into the "hoaxer" category, which he clearly has been involved in over the years with at least some elements of his "story," is the participation of someone I consider level-headed and very credible - Alejandro Rojas. Frankly, I was rather surprised when he showed up in this doc.
There is a bit of interesting footage of a silver craft from 2000. Though the filmmakers don't talk with any experts to analyze it. There is the ubiquitous "red orb" footage which he claims follow him around. Unproven. There are the alleged "multiple witnesses" to this phenomena following Romanek, none interviewed on camera. There is some other interesting tiny orb footage showing a small ball of light zipping through the house and in the backyard, which admittedly looks quite interesting, but again, no expert is interviewed to explain what this might be. You're just supposed to take the footage at face value with no questions asked. Some photo/video software effects are used to represent "analyzation" of the video frames and picture stills in question to presumably show that these visuals have not been manipulated in any way, but again, without an expert in visual media, like D'Antonio or Maccabee, explaining the veracity of the tests and providing professionally-interpreted results, how is the layperson supposed to know what, exactly, they might be looking at?
Don't get me started about the footage showing a grey alien peeking in the window, or the "grandpa grey" looking in through the sliding glass door, or the mysterious "phone calls" from his alien-human hybrid children, or "Audrey" the English-accented robotic voice entity calling him "Starseed" on the phone and explaining he has a mission. All are of dubious provenance.
I did come away feeling bad for Stan's long-suffering wife, Lisa. She's interviewed and you come to realize that Stan has allegedly fathered 7 alien-human hybrid children with another human female experiencer, Victoria Albright. Stan and Victoria end up meeting in real life and have a connection Stan's wife has trouble accepting. Victoria is also interviewed in this doc. There is another woman, Heidi, but I don't know how she fits in to all of this other than when one of Stan's hybrid children, "Kioma," suddenly cuts in on a conference call they are having (and apparently conveniently recording).
Parts of the doc definitely made me go "huh, what could that be?" but I cannot help feel that the Romanek story "well" has been judiciously poisoned by his previous, ham-fisted fakery attempts to bolster his original story. Even some of the "experts" interviewed allude to his past hoaxing by qualifying their comments, saying "even if only 40% of what Stan claims is true" and "do I believe everything Stan says? No." Obviously, none of the more notorious hoaxing gets mentioned directly in the film as actual hoaxes. Some, as I've outlined above, get presented as "evidence." The participation of Paola Harris does not help the film's credibility either.
Finally, when we talk about Stan Romanek these days, we can't omit his very disturbing 2014 arrest on possession of child pornography. The film deals with it at the very end, though not talking with Stan about it. There is no on-camera interview portion addressing it, there is no vociferous denial from Stan. Probably due to legal reasons, as I believe the case is ongoing. However, there is an attempt to show, via referencing news article headlines, that viruses and/or hackers and/or the government can easily plant that kind of stuff on a person's computer. That's obviously not untrue as a general rule but you have to ask yourself if that is a plausible explanation in this specific case. Is Stan's (Starseed's) "message" so threatening to the powers-that-be that they need to frame him for child pornography? I guess you'll have to be the judge of that (until the actual judge finally rules).
I'd love for Gene and Chris to watch this documentary and then have Alejandro Rojas on an episode of ATP to discuss his involvement and to expand on his feelings about the Romanek story itself. He is apparently very familiar with it and seems to be friends with Romanek himself.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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