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Hey J. Rod (Picture: Getty/Science Photo Libra)

Extra-terrestrial beings have dominated headlines for the past year as people double down on their belief that UFOs are out there – but long before then, there was J. Rod the alien.

Haven’t heard of him?

Oh, he’s just an alien who survived a UFO crash in the 1950s then went to work for the government in Area 51, obviously.

While there he taught us humans about his home planet (the name of which has yet to be leaked), the universe, and how to reverse engineer the technology that brought him to Earth, all while living in an underground bunker on the top-secret military base.

Unsurprisingly he also apparently looked exactly like almost every humanoid alien imagined in books, TV and film – tall and slim in stature, with large eyes and almost transparent grey skin.

The story of J. Rod inspired more novels and TV shows, and he can even be found on sweatshirts and lunchboxes.

What lies within Area 51 (Picture: Getty/iStockphoto)

As to where he himself was originally found, well, it was only one of the most famous UFO crashes of all time.

In May 1953, a UFO, described as like a ‘stream-lined cigar’, was reported to have crashed near Kingman in Arizona.

Forty scientists descended on the site, where they were reportedly confronted with an object ‘metallic, 30 feet wide and three and a half feet high, oval-shaped with portholes’, according to alien author Preston Dennett.

What is Area 51? Area 51 is the common name given to a (formerly) secret US airbase in the middle of the Nevada desert.
Designated as a flight testing facility, the US government only officially acknowledged its existence in 2013.
It has become synonymous with UFO conspiracy theories following numerous sightings around the base – some believe it is used to test recovered crashed alien spacecraft, such as that at the centre of the Roswell incident.

It gets weirder inside.

In a documentary for The History Channel, Mr Dennett added: ‘Inside were two to four, four-foot-tall humanoids, deceased according to most sources, with large eyes and wearing metallic suit.’

But were they really dead?

Apparently not if you believe the legend of J. Rod – and those who knew him.

Guard Gate at Area 51 (Groom Lake, Dreamland) near Rachel, Nevada (Picture: Barry King/WireImage)

In the decades since, two former Area 51 staff have said they worked alongside him.

Former Navy pilot Bill Uhouse said J. Rod ‘sounded just like you’ and ‘tried to answer questions’ in a 2000 interview’ (presumably an internal interview and not for Cosmo, but that isn’t clear).

Dan Burisch, a microbiologist, said it was his job to keep J. Rod healthy, and claims the government made him take tissue samples from the alien.

Unsurprisingly however, no public documentation to verify the existence of this interplanetary visitor exists.

But with the latest US Congress report where individuals spoke about their UFO encounters – who knows what the government is hiding?

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