A UFO Hoaxer was recently covered on ABC 4 News as being the culprit behind the mysterious lights in the sky over Utah, but hasn’t explained how he did it. This of course is being accepted by the mainstream press who say the mystery is now solved. Normally hoaxes are fairly easy to put to rest. But this one seems a little strange. And it may go a long way toward explaining how the media treats UFO hoaxers as opposed to those attempting to call attention to the mystery. And while some may say it’s a conspiracy to hide the truth, it may actually be something a little stranger – human nature.
The report is handled well enough, with reporters handling the claim by Andrew Smith that all the Hubbub about UFOs has been about something he created. But there are still several things that have been left to speculation – like how he did it. Smith said he didn’t want the situation to get out of control so the secret of how he made it look like massive UFOs were hovering above the city of Lehi. Smith, a local artist said specifically that the object was not made of Chinese lanterns, and was not the result of RC planes flying above the town. Instead, he said the lights were made up of a secret device that he constructed that may have involved helium and flares. But why the secrecy?
Let’s reverse the situation for a moment. The mystery has been officially declared solved because one local claimed to have started the whole thing himself. And yet the same level of proof would have been handled incredulously or not at all had he been making the claim that something out of the ordinary had been happening. Of course extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof said the late Carl Sagan. But isn’t claiming that a major media sensation was all because of something you created in your back yard also an extraordinary claim?
It seems like a natural course of events. Many diligent UFOlogists have declared the case closed, and it’s perfectly reasonable to believe that Smith had been behind the whole incident. But why are we suddenly so trusting when someone claims to have hoaxed an incident? Was the evidence simply not extraordinary enough to be anything but an eventual hoax?
Consider how the incident played out over the Internet in January of this year. On the same day footage of a mysterious object dropping what appeared to be some sort of light over Utah appeared, a similar story came over the internet from footage taken in Jerusalem. And interestingly, though the footage seemed to show very similar things the connection was often overlooked. And now the Dome of the Rock footage finally begins to join other interesting but inconclusive film in the massive stack of possibly dubious footage. But not all footage can be dismissed so easily.