A jaw-dropping photo of a giant see-through alien with a mantis-style head has been declared authentic by FBI experts.
The alleged transparent extraterrestrial was photographed by a police officer on 6 May 2011.
Fifteen years later, UFO conspiracy theorists have been sent into meltdown after US spooks confirmed the image is, in fact, genuine.
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The revelation came just as the FBI dumped a fresh batch of historic UFO files.
The eerie snap was taken by park patrol officer Chen Yongqiang while hiking at the remote Jiaming Lake in Taiwan’s Central Mountains.
Chen was casually photographing mountain scenery on his iPhone 4 and spotted nothing odd at the time – but when he checked the images further along the trail, he was gobsmacked.
There, striding along a ridge line, was a tall, semi-transparent humanoid figure with a distinctly mantis-shaped head, oddly-proportioned limbs, and what looked like webbed fingers.
Sceptics spent years dismissing the viral snapshot as nothing more than a human hiker or a clever digital hoax, as reported by What’s The Jam.
The Taiwan Ufology Society (TUFOS) spent over a year running forensic checks on every pixel and found zero evidence of tampering or digital trickery.
The original image was then shipped to a professional US institution for independent analysis.
They delivered the same verdict: the photo shows no signs of editing, alteration or synthesis.
A TUFOS spokesperson said the snap remains one of the island’s greatest unsolved supernatural mysteries, with the creature’s freakish appearance ruling out any ordinary human.
Now the picture has gone viral again after the FBI released a swathe of historic UFO documents earlier this month, sparking fresh interest in close encounters.
Sceptics once suggested it could be a glitch from the phone’s memory or a double exposure, but imaging experts said the odds of such a perfectly placed ‘ghost’ image were very small.
TUFOS first went public with the photo in late 2012, prompting fierce debate between believers and doubters – yet the US verdict has now silenced many critics.
According to the official data, the photograph captured a legitimate, physical entity that completely defies conventional human anatomy.
Government officials have refused to comment further on the exact origin of the giant creature, which was photographed roaming at an altitude of 3,310 metres.
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