A set of disturbing photos claiming to show a dead alien flooded the internet, catching the attention of Joe Rogan, who appeared stunned by the bizarre images.
The three photos, which surfaced last week on X, have been linked to former military intelligence official Luis Elizondo, a polarizing figure in the world of UFO investigations. Daily Mail has chosen not to show the images in full due to their graphic nature.
Elizondo has previously made headlines with unverified claims about extraterrestrials and advanced aerial technology.
‘Did you see, Lou Elizondo, these photos that are supposedly of a real alien?’ Rogan said. ‘It’s so dumb. The photos look blurry… of the photos of the dead alien. This is crazy.’
Along with the photos, Rogan presented a 1993 document claiming they depicted ‘an alien hybrid child born to a 15-year-old girl, subject of an ET genetic experiment.’
The discussion quickly veered into speculation when Rogan and his guest, comedian Luis J Gomez, wondered if the figure in the images might be a baby with Harlequin ichthyosis, a skin disorder that causes thick, scaly plates on the body.
‘It could be anything, man. I mean, it might not even be human,’ Rogan said.
The images have triggered intense backlash online, with many users convinced they depict a deceased baby rather than an extraterrestrial being. Critics have slammed Elizondo for allegedly promoting the photos without proper context.
However, UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) researcher Rob Heatherly told DailyMail.com that he, not Elizondo, sent the images to the former Pentagon official in hopes of getting clarification.
‘His only reply to my inquiry, paraphrasing, was that he had absolutely no idea either,’ Heatherly said.
‘Lue gets accused of things frequently that he has no actual involvement in or cognizance of. It’s not required that he address each accusation, especially the absurd one, as this is.
He claimed the photos were sold at auction, saying: ‘I didn’t buy the albums. I found the auctions and saved the images.
‘The person who listed them for sale was commenting about them with me in recent days regarding this.’
DailyMail.com contacted Elizondo and his lawyer Ivan Hannel last week for comment and has yet to receive a response.
Elizondo, however, appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience in 2024, where he claimed the intelligence community and the Department of Defense have ‘hundreds and hundreds of videos of UFOs.’
Rogan did not say Elizondo had shared the images, only mentioned that the former military intelligence official was somehow involved with them.
‘Like you can’t even zoom in on that,’ Rogan said during the podcast, highlighting how blurry the images were. ‘You can’t even f****** focus. Look at these.
‘What is that? What’s that? What is that dude? How about better pictures? These are the only pictures. Is this from the forties? Like, what’s this picture from? What is this?’
Elizondo recently came under fire after sharing an image he said was a UFO.
While speaking in front of Congress on May 1, he held up what he said was a never-before-seen image of a cruise ship–sized craft he claimed was spotted hovering 21,000 feet in the air over the western US.
The image quickly flooded social media and was debunked in less than 24 hours.
Users analyzed the photo and located the object, discovering it was actually a snapshot of two irrigation circles in rural Colorado.
Mick West, a British-American science writer and conspiracy theory investigator, wrote on X: ‘This UFO photo shows two irrigation circles.
‘The roads are perfectly aligned, and the ‘shadow’ is in the wrong direction.’
West also noted that this isn’t the first time Elizondo, who led the Pentagon’s program investigating UFO sightings for 10 years, has made a major UFO blunder.
One glaring mistake involved a high-resolution image of a supposed ‘mothership’ in 2022, which appeared to be piercing through clouds over Romania. It was later debunked as the window reflection of an indoor chandelier lamp.
Others in the Reddit thread were less forgiving toward Elizondo, with many accusing him of spreading disinformation.
‘Trying to clown all of us,’ one user wrote. ‘If any of the people coming forward are serious, they’ll distance themselves from him.’
‘Really brings into question what they are doing with disclosure. Starting to think that Elizondo and co. are just disinformation agents,’ another added.
Despite the criticism, Elizondo doubled down on showing the photo at Thursday’s hearing, saying on X Friday that it was an unvetted image he used to prove a point about civilian pilots lacking access to UFO-reporting resources.
‘The purpose of me showing the photo was to illustrate the need for civilian and commercial pilots to have a central reporting mechanism to report potential anomalous sightings,’ Elizondo posted on X Friday.
‘In this case, the pilot who took the photo, using his own camera, did not have a way to report what he believed was anomalous,’ he continued.
‘The ones who are screaming about it (instead of discussing it respectfully as I hoped) missed the entire point of the photo and are not helping other pilots in the future from coming forward,’ the whistleblower added.
