Famous UFO hoaxes

Famous UFO hoaxes: The best-known faked UFO photos, films, documents and stories — and how each was exposed. Read: Famous UFO hoaxes →

Famous UFO hoaxes is also known as UFO hoaxes, fake UFO sightings.

Frank Scully was an American journalist, author, and humorist who wrote for Variety and published several books. He is best known for popularizing a 1948 crashed flying saucer story in New Mexico, which was later exposed as a fraud committed by his sources. Scully passed away on June 23, 1964. Read: Frank Scully →

Billy Meier: Eduard Albert "Billy" Meier is a Swiss contactee born in 1937 who claims to have been in communication with human-like extraterrestrials from the Pleiades since childhood. Beginning in 1975, he produced photographs, films, sound recordings, and metal samples of alleged alien spacecraft, around which an organization named FIGU was formed. Although skeptics and most ufologists consider his evidence to be a hoax created using small models, his teachings and claims have maintained a persistent following and influenced New Age interest in Pleiadians. Read: Billy Meier →

Morristown UFO hoax: The Morristown UFO hoax was a social experiment involving floating red lights in the night sky over Morris County, New Jersey, on five nights in January and February 2009. Two local men named Joe Rudy and Chris Russo created the lights by tying red road flares to helium balloons to show how unreliable eyewitness accounts and UFO investigators are. After revealing the hoax with video evidence, both men were given $250 fines and 50 hours of community service in April 2009. Read: Morristown UFO hoax →

Gulf Breeze UFO incident: The Gulf Breeze UFO incident was a series of reported UFO sightings and encounters in Gulf Breeze, Florida, between late 1987 and early 1991, primarily initiated by local contractor Ed Walters. Walters claimed to have photographed a spacecraft and encountered alien beings, which sparked widespread media attention and inspired other local residents to report their own sightings. Although some investigators and researchers initially believed the claims, most investigators ultimately concluded the case was a hoax after a foam-plate UFO model matching the photographs was discovered in Walters's former attic in 1990. Read: Gulf Breeze UFO incident →

MJ-12, or Majestic-12, is an alleged secret committee supposedly formed in 1947 by President Harry S. Truman to recover and study crashed alien spacecraft. The name originated in the early 1980s from documents that surfaced as part of a disinformation campaign by Air Force officials to mislead amateur UFO researchers. Read: MJ-12 →

Alien autopsy film: The alien autopsy film is a 1995 grainy black-and-white film released by British record producer Ray Santilli that purported to show an alien autopsy following the 1947 Roswell incident. Fox broadcast the footage in a 1995 pseudo-documentary that reached millions of viewers worldwide. In 2006, Santilli and his partner admitted the film was staged in a London flat using dummies filled with animal organs and jam. Read: Alien autopsy film →

Black Knight satellite: The Black Knight satellite is a conspiracy theory claiming that an extraterrestrial spacecraft has orbited Earth for about 13,000 years and that NASA is hiding it. Researchers have demonstrated that this legend combines several unrelated stories, such as radio signals, UFO reports, and space debris. Its most famous photographic evidence actually depicts a thermal blanket lost during the 1998 Space Shuttle mission STS-88. Read: Black Knight satellite →

Crop circles: A crop circle is a pattern formed by flattening crops, which became famous in southern England during the 1980s. Although they were widely linked to UFOs and paranormal ideas, there is no scientific evidence of alien causes. The scientific consensus and historical proof show that all crop circles are human-made hoaxes, art projects, or advertisements created by teams using tools like planks and ropes. Read: Crop circles →