Skyfish (Rods)

Thousands of people became convinced they'd captured footage of a genuinely new flying life form in the 1990s — until researchers pointed out the "creature" only ever appeared on video camera, never in real life, for a very specific technical reason.

"Skyfish" or "rods" refers to elongated, wavy-appearing objects that appeared in video footage beginning in the 1990s, which some believers proposed were previously undocumented flying life forms. The phenomenon has been thoroughly explained by video and photography experts as a motion blur artifact created by ordinary flying insects or birds moving quickly across a camera's field of view at certain frame rates and lighting conditions.

✕debunked

View as graph →

Quick facts

→The "skyfish" or "rods" phenomenon gained public attention beginning in the mid-1990s, following footage captured by paranormal researcher Jose Escamilla, who proposed the objects represented an undiscovered flying creature.
→The objects appear exclusively in video and photographic footage, never confirmed through direct naked-eye observation independent of a camera or recording device.
→Video and photography experts have demonstrated that the specific wavy, elongated "rod" appearance is consistent with ordinary flying insects or birds captured through motion blur at certain camera shutter speeds and frame rates.
→Controlled experiments deliberately filming known insects with the specific camera settings associated with the phenomenon have successfully reproduced the exact visual "rod" appearance believers cite as evidence.

Entities on file

📅

Skyfish (Rods) (event)

Elongated objects appearing in video footage since the 1990s, claimed by some to be an unknown flying creature; explained by experts as a motion-blur camera artifact from ordinary insects.

No outgoing connections on file.

🧑

Jose Escamilla (person)

Paranormal researcher who captured the original 1994 "skyfish" footage in New Mexico.

→ captured the original footage of → Skyfish (Rods)✓documented

🎲 Take me somewhere else