Hoaxes Throughout History
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Extraterrestrial Life Hoaxes

The New York Sun announced that the British astronomer Sir John Herschel had discovered life on the moon by means of a new telescope "of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle." Creatures supposedly seen by Herschel included lunar bison, fire-wielding biped beavers, and winged "man-bats." The public was fascinated. It took several weeks before they realized it was all a hoax. More…
On October 30, 1938, thousands of people fled in panic after hearing CBS Radio report that Martian invaders had landed in New Jersey and were marching across the country, using heat rays and poisonous gas to kill Earthlings. But as soon became clear, Martians hadn't really invaded New Jersey. What people had heard (and mistook for a real news broadcast) was a radio version of H.G. Wells's story The War of the Worlds, performed by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater. More…
Harold Dahl claimed that on June 21, 1947 he saw six "donut-shaped" discs flying above him while he was on a boat in Puget Sound. One of the discs ejected bits of molten metal, which (so Dahl said) killed his dog and burnt the arm of his son. Dahl also said that he was later visited by a man in a dark suit who warned him not to talk further about the incident. This was the first report of a "man in black". Air Force investigators identified the metal as scrap metal from a factory, and Dahl confessed that his report had been a joke that spun out of control. [wikipedia, mauryislandincident.com]
Ten days after residents of Twin Falls, Idaho reported seeing flying saucers in the sky, a woman reported finding a flying saucer embedded in the lawn of her neighbor's home. Police came out to investigate, followed by the FBI and three army officers who flew out from Fort Douglas, Utah. What they found was a small, gold-and-silver-colored saucer about the size of a bicycle wheel. The army officers removed the saucer and took it to Salt Lake City for closer investigation. But the police, working on a tip, then identified the saucer as the creation of four teenage boys, who had spent several days building it out of radio tubes, wires, an old phonograph, and discarded electrical parts. More…
Three young men reported running over a space alien on a rural Georgia highway. What made this case unusual is that the body of the alien was lying on the highway to prove their tale. The incident quickly made national headlines. But when scientists from Emory University examined the 'alien,' they determined it was actually a Capuchin monkey with its tail cut off and fur removed with depilatory cream. The boys confessed they had created it as a prank. More…
Michigan motorists began to report sightings of a glowing "little blue man," like a spaceman from a science-fiction movie, who would appear out of nowhere on rural roads, and then just as suddenly disappear. Police couldn't figure out what was going on, until eventually three young men confessed that the blue man was their work. They had created a costume consisting of long underwear, gloves, combat boots, a sheet, and a football helmet with blinking lights. One of them, wearing this costume, would hide in a ditch and leap out when a motorist approached. More…
British film producer Ray Santilli came forward with several canisters of film that he said showed military surgeons performing an autopsy on an extraterrestrial creature in 1947. He said he had acquired the film from a former military cameraman. Skeptics mocked Santilli's claims. Nevertheless, when the FOX network aired his film in August 1995, it received extremely high nielsen ratings, and subsequent video rentals of the film were consistently popular. But eventually (in 2006) Santilli confessed the film was fake. He had filmed the footage inside a London apartment. The body of the alien had been created by sculptor John Humphreys. More…