Hoaxes and Other Mischief
Martian Invasions, Shaved Monkeys, and More Tomfoolery
To UFOlogists, as well as to persons with casual, essentially sympathetic interest in the UFO phenomenon, UFO hoaxes are dispiriting. A hoax, no matter how clever or objectively amusing, gives confirmation to every doubter, to everyone who has listened to a UFOlogist and raised a skeptical eyebrow, to every slug who has looked a believer in the eye and made a dismissive joke about “little green men.” Worse (and as we’ll see), some widely known hoaxes have been the work of people with serious, vested interests in UFOlogy.
Why They Do It
Plain mischief is behind some false reports of UFOs. Others are manufactured for self-amusement, or faint hope of monetary gain (“Hey, I can sell this video to CNN!”). Some hoaxers long for a million Views on YouTube. Others are moved by dark psychological impulses: not simply the familiar and widely shared wish for recognition as individuals (few of us yearn for lives of complete anonymity), but by desires to embarrass, punish, or humiliate. Such hoaxes may be bluntly sociopathological, or attempts to expose another person’s presumed folly. Occasionally, fabricated UFO evidence arrives in the name of scientific research.
That happened in April 1971, when a high school sociology class in Maynard, Iowa, created a scorched circle and left other physical evidence that suggested a UFO landing at a local farm. Maynard media inflated the story into multiple sightings, effectively turning a hoax (since known as the Maynard Experiment) into a “real” event. In that instance, hoaxers and the presumably astute providers of news became accomplices.
Although the Web attracts audiences of unprecedented size, UFO hoaxes that gain real traction are relatively rare. But even most that are widely seen (visuals being the key in this overwhelmingly visual age) are seldom widely discussed, and almost none are taken seriously by people whose opinions matter. Still, the very presence of such stuff—Here’s a photo of a UFO that buzzed my school!— seeps into the cultural groundwater, like runoff, and stays there. Because of YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms and programs, individual hoaxes don’t need real traction in order to be effective. As one part of a large bunch, the discrete hoax assumes an undeserved, but inevitable, importance, precisely because it contributes to a large total number that is difficult to ignore.
Consciously and subconsciously, we begin to feel, Boy this UFO stuff is a bunch of nonsense. Even guileless, backyard hoaxers, then, do real harm to serious UFO study.
The visually convincing nature of video and computer technology plays a huge part in the seeming reality of many visually oriented hoaxes. Computer- generated imagery (CGI), motion-control programs, PaintBox, Camera360, and many other programs and applications can turn a hoaxer’s concept into apparent reality.
Naturally, trickery predates high-tech. Standouts among early paranormal hoaxes are the Cardiff Giant (New York State, 1869); the Canadian Gorilla (a proto-Bigfoot, 1884); Piltdown Man (c. 1912, Piltdown, Sussex, England); and the Cottingly Fairies (faked photographs made by adolescent female cousins in Britain, 1919–21). Replicas of the Fiji mermaid (monkey head sewn to a fish’s body, c. 1840) are in Ripley’s museums around the world. People across the globe still believe the veracity of the so-called “Surgeon’s Photo” of the Loch Ness Monster (a mock head affixed to a toy submarine, Scotland, 1934). Recent standouts are led by the Pacific Northwest tree octopus (1998); and the pickled dragon (a winged serpent, 2003).