Multiple witness UFO cases: the hoaxes?

Originally posted by Orkojoker

Originally posted by Druscilla

Additionally there are some old reported cases that have been reinvestigated and found to have been mass hysteria

Really? Wow, that's interesting. Can you link us up to an example or two of old cases that were later found to be a result of "mass hysteria"?

Either the UFOs were caused by mass hysteria... or Schmoos...

reply to post by CardDown


Someone asked essentially the same thing in another forum on the James Randi Education Foundation page...There was a few good examples people came up with...Rather than copy what they wrote, I'll just link you to that forum so you can read them for yourself.

forums.randi.org...

One that does come to mind and must have involved several people, that's if you believe the British MOD's take on what happened.

The William Schaffner "tape" ... some background here. www.bbc.co.uk...

Where the hoax comes into play is that, a tape was released that purported to detail the conversation between the pilot and his ground controllers. The MOD claims that the tape was "hoaxed", in house, by serving members of the RAF. Yet, there was no investigation into the hoax by the MOD. The official story also runs totally contradictory to the evidence Bruce Barrymore Halpenny was given, first hand, by members of the ground crew who were part of the incident. en.wikipedia.org...

Some more details here. www.uk-ufo.org...

From memory the problem the MOD had with the "fake tape" was that, it was properly marked and the language used was all perfectly in order. So, there you have a very weird hoax. Someone, years after the incident working for the RAF with access to highly sensitive equipment decided to "hoax" and release a tape of the supposed last conversation of Schaffner and ground control and the MOD didn't bother investigating who did it. Make of that what you will.

I'd also point out that, the aircraft involved, English Electric Lightning XS-894, was never "scrapped", a detail brought to light by a bunch of "planespotters" who detail the life and history of every last Lightning that served in the RAF. from their build and commissioning to their scrapping.

I'm remembering the Alien Autopsy video. Yeah, the one what was put on TV with Johnathan Frakes hosting the show about it.

How long did that flutter around as the REAL thing, and the real TRUTH before it was found to be a complete and total hoax?

reply to post by FireMoon
Long time, no see

I enjoyed reading the BBC article and particularly the response from his son in the reply section.

I'm curious as to the RAF Shackleton. Why was it there and why didn't anyone seem to know about it? I don't mean 'OMG! Conspiracy!' I just wonder because its presence precipitated the death.

When Tony Dodd was mentioned, my eyebrow was raised. By all accounts a lovely guy, but was there ever a time when a conspiracy was 'too much' for him? He seemed to occupy a world where saucers crashed, presidents knew the timetable of alien craft and a massive space opera took place above our heads.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Always a pleasure to see you Kandinsky.. It's strange tale and one I was actually quite deeply involved with as a possible one TV special back in the late 1990s. As such, I spoke with several people both directly and indirectly involved in the incident. I was told the following, in every mess it was an open secret that Schaffner was vectored to chase an unknown object and, tragically, lost his life in doing so.

What the MOD want people to believe is this. That a vastly experienced pilot chose to ignore every rule in the book and, in effect, take off on a whim to go chase an aircraft carrying a friendly transponder signal beacon. It being night, Schaffner was obviously flying on instruments and having caught up with the Shackleton, he inexplicably failed to notice he was flying straight into the sea. He then crashed, the MOD's own wording not, pancaked, not ditched rather crashed, over 30,000lbs of aircraft into the sea at a conservative 200 MPH where, it initially floated long enough for him to have, climbed out of the aircraft's still intact canopy and vanished, even though there were at least 3 other aircraft in the locality. Having crashed the Lightning it was then discovered a couple of weeks later, still virtually intact, with the canopy down sitting neatly on the sea bed. This of course ignores the fact that, at some point Schaffner is supposed to have tried to eject and the eject mechanism failed.

Then, rather than take the crashed plane to any of a dozen nearby ports it was landed somewhere in Scotland, I have spoken to one of the salvage crew who confirmed this and shipped to a non standard airfield for examination. The British crash investigators were given 30 minutes to make an appraisal of the craft under the guard of non uniformed personnel and all the clocks and meters inside the cockpit had been removed. The airframe was then,, for some unknown reason shipped to the USA where, as far as is known, it still sits in some USAF hanger.

I would hazard a guess. Schaffner was scrambled and told to just get up there and damn the protocols and chase an unknown object over the North Sea. At some point he lost all power in the Lightning, managed to glide down to a safe ejection altitude, tried to eject, failed, as every last electrical system on the craft had gone down and then made a controlled ditching in the North Sea. He struggled out of the craft and was lost at sea.. Why he lost power we don't know and neither do the authorities although obviously, the concern would be that, it was due to some sort of action by the "unknown object" rather than, him being asked to fly a, potentially, fatally flawed aircraft.

The only other explanation which actually adds up is that. Schaffner lost the plot, took off without permission and deliberately ditched the craft into the sea and then just climbed out of the cockpit and drowned himself. If that was the case,,then I can perfectly understand why it might have been covered up.

The whole, dragging his family into it all, just stinks to high heaven of a cheap shot by the MOD in order to try and dissuade people from asking any more questions.

Something else to consider that may garner several cases to look at is the Airship flap in the late 1890s.

Packaged across several events there's the mysterious story of Charles Dellschau, the Aurora, TX alien body supposedly still buried in an unmarked plot at some Aurora graveyard, and a number of other strange airship reports of sightings and encounters.

Many of the stories show their age with descriptions of people claiming to be from Venus throwing an anchor out of their airship to keep it in place while they stop for repairs, and other such.
I think in one case there was even an attempted cow abduction reported.

As to them being hoaxes with multiple witnesses, some cases report multiple witnesses, but, at the same time too, this was the age of yellow journalism and many of the stories could be complete works of fiction dreamed up by the reporter alone.

There's a number of interesting cases from that time, with many of what were being called airships conforming to what we now consider to be cigar and saucer shaped craft. Thus, the question still remains; Were these reports fact or fake, or even a little bit of both where some details like anchors thrown out of these airships could be a late 19th century interpretation on things they didn't understand?

Certainly some were hoaxes, but, which?

reply to post by FireMoon


Nice to see some of the 'old school' here. I think the trouble you are experiencing on finding multiple witness 'hoax' cases is, there arent many (if any). Im sure there are many multiple witness 'mis-identifications', but a hoax requires a group of people to actively lie, and I think you would have trouble convincing more than one or two people to do this unless there was a substantial gain involved.

On the Scaffner case, yes, there are many, many holes on the MOD's story - not least that the EE Lightning was a Mach 2 fighter- it is extremely unlikely in was travelling at anything less than 5-600mph, as its flight behaviour was unstable below this speed, when it hit the sea- and yet miraculously sustained very little damage. (see the BBC link above for a picture) The same goes for the hypothesis that some how Gaffner 'climbed out' after impact as the Lightning had a huge round air intake at the front which would have acted like a scoop and stopped the aircraft virtually dead on impact with the sea- even at the suggested, laughably slow 200mph impact speed, the effect on Gaffner would at least have incapacitated him, if not proving fatal.

There is also evidence to suggest that without engine power supplying hydraulics, the manual opening of the canopy would not have been possible- although, I have seen arguements from both sides on this.

However, the whole idea of an experienced pilot accidently loosing 5000ft altitude, hitting the North sea in a 1960's Mach 2 jet fighter, then calmly opening the cockpit and jumping out seems very far fetched- my suggestion would be that in this scenario, the impact would have smashed the aircraft to pieces and killed the pilot- the wreckage sinking rapidly to the bottom. Instead of this, they find an almost completely intact aircraft on the seabed with an empty cockpit- without the UFO part of the story, this alone would have been an incredible mystery.

Its a shame that his son has chosen to quote 'occams razor' and not look at the evidence- grief does strange things to people- but this case is a genuine mystery.

Edit: As for the Avro Shackleton- these old 4 prop aircraft (developed from the Lincoln, which was developed from the Lancaster) were a common sight over the North sea during the cold war years- again, highly unlikely one could be there 'un-noticed'. It would be extremely difficult for a Lightning to 'escort' a Shackleton, as the MOD claims the mission was supposed to be, as a Shackleton, on a good day with the wind behind it could just about make 300mph- the Lightning would be wallowing and bucking trying to stay that slow- to attempt this at low level at night for a long period- well, its asking for trouble and the RAF will have known that.

Originally posted by Druscilla
I'm remembering the Alien Autopsy video.

The Alien Autopsy hoax was so prominent in the media, I failed to even consider it. There are still people who believe it, as they saw it, but not the coverage of its exposure. Also, under pressure Santilli admitted the footage was false, but claimed it was a recreation of film to damaged to use. This fits my charlatan theory, they never recant, just retrench.

I'm glad you brought it up, because it made me recall that unlike the CGI fakes, which can be done solo, the older hoaxed photos and films could have required a small team. The "Lost Creek Saucer" film had a team of 3: a driver, saucer operator and cameraman. While laughably bad to modern eyes, it was consistent with other UFO films of the era. www.youtube.com...

Also, bhornbuckle75 linked the Randi forum thread, that's mine. I posted a similar question, but asking for non-UFO cases. So far, most of the examples have been paranormal cases, some of which feature fraudulent investigators. That really clouds the issue when something may have been happened, but was reported by untrustworthy sources.

You folks are coming up with a lot of interesting examples like the Schaffner case, which I'd not read about before. Many thanks!

reply to post by Orkojoker
Don't get too worked up. druscilla is good people but she goes the length to disprove anything UFO related = hardcore skeptic.

Things get complicated, and I'm getting confused myself, between multiple hoax witnesses and multiple hoax perpetrators. The hoaxed film or phony crop circles cases may involve a team to create them, but they don't necessarily come forward themselves to testify about the supposed mystery.

Speaking of hoaxes, does anyone remember "Prophet Yahweh"?

Prophet Yahweh summons UFOs

A lot of people were taken in by this - including this news station


Another famous UFO Hoax was perpetrated by "the Amazing Keskin" in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2002.

He predicted:

between 10:00pm and Midnight, on Thursday June 6th 2002, there would be the largest UFO sighting of the century to take place over the skies of Las Vegas. Coincidently, to be witnessed over the casino that he was to be performing in that night.

And furthermore:

Kreskin said he was so sure that this would happen that he put up $50,000 which would get donated to charity if it didn't happen. This promise was well documented on the The Art Bell Radio Talk Show.

When the event didn't take place as predicted, Kreskin once again went on the Art Bell Show to admit that the event didn't take place as predicted, and that his original intention was actually only to demonstrate a scenario how an enemy possessing the same skill and abilities as himself might create a mass happening on an even larger scale and over a much greater territorial area.

uh, yeah, RRRRIIIGGGHHHTT...

The Amazing Kreskin's not so amazing "UFO Hoax"

I suppose the Kremlin Pyramid UFOs from 2009 qualifies, they were fairly elaborate.



www.abovetopsecret.com...

Funny thing is the author of the thread turned out to be somewhat of a scoundrel himself too

While searching for cases of multiple party witnesses, I'm coming across some of the notable cases of multiple party hoax perpetrators. The Hudson Valley UFO case of the early 80s involved a multiple party hoax by pilots of small aircraft:

They did find evidence that some of the reports of the "V" shape may have been a group of small planes flying out of the Stormville Airport. The pilots seemed to have been flying their planes in a formation in a deliberate attempt at a UFO hoax. The plane hoax only cleared up a small number of reports, however. www.unmuseum.org...

Hoaxers of this kind do their thing and count on the people who are deceived by it to do the reporting.

reply to post by CardDown


Ah, now then, I think CardDown has come up with an actual case here. Allegedly, some private pilots did attempt to replicate the Hudson Valley sighting (incredibly dangerous thing to attempt, just to manufacture a hoax, but they must have thought they were doing something really funny / important!) by flying in close formation at night with their landing lights on.

However, this does not make the whole Hudson valley sighting a 'hoax', as a) the hoax pilots only met on Thursday night, and the sightings were on all days of the week over a long period. Also b) the aircraft hoaxes were said to be quite obvious, and witnesses who saw the UFO and then the aircraft (including police witnesses) said they bore no resemblance to what they had originally seen. Witness sightings describe very large, silent objects hovering at very low level, before moving off- doesnt really sound like your average Cessna, unless they have brought out a VSTOL model. Also, aircraft engine noise could be heard and the hoax attempt was said to be quite amateur and identifiable for what it was.Ive seen some of the footage, and on one you can hear the witness say "yep, thats a bunch of airplanes".

So yes, there was a multiple person hoax attempted during the Hudson Valley sightings- the pilots. However, the really interesting cases in the 'flap' still stand.

Here's video of the Hudson Valley case, purported genuine UFO, along with the planes hoax.
Segment begins at 21:25. Were any of the pilots ever identified?

Originally posted by CardDown
Were any of the pilots ever identified?

Not to my knowledge, as obviously, what they were claiming to be doing was highly illegal. I seem to remember it was a 'anonymous pilot', which gives even less credibility in my eyes- and yet, the urban myth is "oh- Hudson Valley? That was totally explained- it was 'pilots a'hoaxin agin'"-

Damn those pesky pilots- them an their night sky diving friends get everywhere'!!!

Don't know how well this fits in your list, but here it is

en.wikipedia.org...

The Morristown UFO hoax, also known as "The Great UFO Hoax of 2009,"[1][2] was originally thought to be an unidentified aerial event that occurred on Monday, January 5, 2009, between 8:15 pm and 9:00 pm. The event was actually a hoax, meant as a social experiment, as revealed by the hoaxers in the eSkeptic article "How We Staged the Morristown UFO Hoax."[2]

reply to post by Pauligirl


Again, its multiple 'misidentifications'- the (7 original and 'numerous' alleged others) people who called in to report strange lights in the sky were not part of the hoax. There were only 2 perpetrators, 2 clowns called Joe Rudy and Chris Russo, who were taken to court, fined and sentenced to 50 hours community service. They were self publicists of the worst kind- attempting to ridicule people for reporting 'strange lights in the sky' after they had deliberately set up some 'strange lights in the sky'- hardly the "Great UFO hoax of 2009" that they named it......

The caused danger to air and road traffic in order to play their 'elaborate hoax'- just a pair of idiots in my book.

reply to post by Pauligirl

The Morristown UFO hoax does fit in with this, because the partners called in reports and appeared in the media as witnesses. Their experiment was not original. There was an earlier, far more sophisticated operation by three California Institute of Technology students in 1966.
Newspaper story: Californians Flunk Gullibility Test

What is interesting about their experiment is that witnesses described their UFO as doing things it could not. The reports gave the wrong colors and number of lights, great speed, and even scents of perfume from the UFO. In this case, the partners were not posing as witnesses, they were just observing the results.