“One of the most highly celebrated and controversial series of photos in the Blue Book files are those taken by an official photographer aboard the Brazilian Navy survey ship, Almirante Saldanha, off Trindade Island, some 600 miles east of Rio De Janeiro”.
[J. Allen Hynek, The Hynek UFO Report]

Hynek criticizes the mocking remarks by the reporting officer regarding Martians and the harsh criticism of the Brazilian government and military. I don’t know much about Martians and tend to agree the sarcasm was undue on an official report, but as an ongoing many years research on the Trindade Island case has shown to me, the Blue Book report is right on the target and fully justified in all of its other conclusions.

Regarding the photographer, for instance, the report mentions that:

“This gentleman has a long history of photographic trick shots and is well known for such items as false pictures of treasure on the ocean floor. Another time he prepared a purposely humorous article, published in a magazine, entitled "A Flying Saucer Hunted Me at Home," using trick photography.”

Amazingly, these hoaxes by the photographer have been downplayed by supporters of the case. For more than half a century, most people didn’t even see these hoaxes. In 2008, thanks to historian Rodolpho Gauthier, we finally publicized Barauna’s joke with flying saucers, and now, through the pages of Tim Printy’s SUNlite, and again thanks to the work of Gauthier, we reveal the details and images of his treasure chest hoax.

The article is embedded above and can also be downloaded.

Once presented with Barauna’s trickery of flying saucer photos, believers claim the joke was in fact a serious, responsible public service promoting critical thinking in which the photographer took part. Very well. It could be so. His treasure chest hoax, however, was part of a deliberate play to deceive, and we have Baraúna first lying, denying the hoax, and decades later, finally confessing “it was indeed a trick”.

That the man who captured one of the few authentic photos of real UFOs was a lying hoaxer of treasure chest tales and proud creator of flying saucer images cannot be downplayed. It’s a serious problem for the case that automatically leads to considerations of how he could have hoaxed the Trindade Island case.

Believers would then mention that the Trindade Island case is not supported solely by the photos or the photographer’s character and that he could not have hoaxed all of the other corroborating evidence.

About that, our still ongoing research may give a different perspective. It will be published soon, but meanwhile I recommend the readers to our already published analysis, and I repeat the statement that all of our research has led us to conclude that the Blue Book report is right on the target and fully justified in all of its conclusions.

Except for Martians, of course.

© forgetomori 2010. | Permalink

“Nuit Blanche, City of Paris
Mirror ball, 1000 mirrors, 7.5 meters in diameter.
The spectacular view of the starry sky has long been a source of delight and curiosity, but the abundance of artificial light in urban areas produces a glow that covers the stars in the firmament. The largest mirror ball ever made was suspended from a construction crane 50 meters above the ground to render the starry sky to the citizens of Paris for one night in the Jardin du Luxembourg during the Nuit Blanche event.”

It’s a work by artist Michel de Broin, and if you’re a hardcore UFO buff, you may have had an instant association with the “Battle of Los Angeles”:

There are more images on LifeLounge, including this one which is a photomontage with the classic UFO photo:

Why didn’t Broin mention the Battle of LA when there is this image clearly referencing it, I don’t know, but it’s definitely a fun piece of art.

As for the Battle of LA in itself, the famous photo does seem to show at first glance a classic flying saucer profile while the searchlights seem to be stopped by something we would assume was solid, but that may be misleading as the photo is certainly taken with a long exposure, as can be seen by the many shell explosions recorded on it.

Was there actually something solid there? Bruce Maccabee thinks so. But then, don’t you think it’s quite a coincidence that the object would have approximately the same width that all the searchlights combined seem to wrap around exactly?

I suspect the famous photo and the apparent solid object could actually be the result of the movement of the searchlights, explosions and smoke from the explosions captured in a relatively long exposure at night. Maccabee considers the idea, but discard it with quite reasonable arguments.

Then again, they are not that conclusive. It’s an unsolved, intriguing case, that could be smoke, could be an alien spaceship, could be… something else.

And now it’s art. [via MAKE]

© forgetomori 2010. | Permalink

“March 25, 1989 – Purportedly the above-top-secret infrared photo taken from the Soviet Phobos II probe, showing an object approaching the Martian moonlet. Estimates say the UFO was approximately 15.5 miles long.” [UFO mag, vol 7, n 1, 1992]

Long before our War with the Moon, the Soviets had already packed “a very powerful laser” to be fired at the Martian moonlet Phobos. “All went well”, UFO mag’s Don Ecker wrote, until March 25, 1989. “Something” turned the Soviet probe into a spinner and the unmanned craft then disappeared.

“According to Zechariah Sitchin in his book Genesis Revisited, the rumor going around was that the Soviet space craft had encountered a huge ‘UFO’ while in Mars orbit. In his book, Sitchin included a photo that the Russians released, which showed a large ellipse shadow reflected off Mars. Sitchin claims that the few photos Phobos sent back prior disappearing were never released by the Russians, and that they treated the entire matter as ‘above top secret’.”

Tasty mystery, isn’t it? And the solution involves some bleeding!

Read on: Phobos 2: a Bloody Soviet ‘Close Encounter’ (1,202 words)

© forgetomori 2009. | Permalink

“A fisherman from Galicia, Span, decided to make public what he claims to have lived through when he was in his boat. Some military fighter jets scrambling a ‘strange object’ that dives into the sea, and a helicopter of unknown provenance that flies over the boat and demand they leave the location. ‘Leave the area immediately, get in contact with the seaport, there you will receive instructions…’ are the words towards the fisher boat.”
[source: Terra Spain, “El terror de un pescador gallego ante un 'objeto extraño'”]

And that’s not all! As Terra Spain informs, “A ‘strange object’ was found in Asturias beach after the Galicia UFO case”, and impressive images record how four men in white hazmat suits remove a metallic capsule. Click on the image for the video:

There is another video from a different viewpoint:

But that’s not all! Terra Spain also reveals yet another video of what looks like a black helicopter with an unidentified capsule:

And that’s not all! Days before the ongoing commotion with the videos, we already had news reports of ‘strange lights’ over Galícia, and on September 16, there was already a video showing what looks like a metallic shiny flying object that suddenly flies away.

Is that all? Probably not! We bet more is coming from Galicia!!! But setting the excitement apart for a moment, let’s get to some ordinary investigation.

Even Terra promptly tells that:

“The video was sent to us in a message directed to the Terra Noticias team.”

Which means, those are all anonymous videos. It’s not clear, but the censoring of faces and even names of the fishing boat and all other details, in all three videos, which would allow the identification of specific witnesses were apparently made by the anonymous senders themselves. And it’s some quite professional censoring at that. Even Terra Espanha, despite promoting and milking the videos, also compares them to “Rec” and the “Blair Witch” pseudo-documentaries.

Let’s remember the #1 rule of extraordinary claims investigation: anonymous source screams fishy evidence. That was true decades ago, but now more than ever, after the Haitian UFOs, the Italian UFO and so many others, it must be clear that any kind of imagery, no matter how impressive, can be faked, sometimes without much effort. No source, no witness, no smoking-gun proof of anything. An Internet video is just an Internet video.

Then let’s agree how bizarre it is to have four strangely dressed guys in a black truck taking what we would presume is a secret device… in the back of their truck. Or a secret device being carried by a black helicopter for everyone to see. Those things don’t make sense, except for making some very interesting videos. Anonymous ones.

Everything suggests a viral marketing campaign. The two videos of the guys taking the capsule indicates several people are involved with it. The original video at a fisher boat must have involved more production. I don’t know if the black helicopter seen is real or digital: if it was real, which it may well be, then the production involved some thousands of dollars at the very least. It could also be completely digital, including the sea wave disturbances.

A lot of speculation, granted, but fact is, the “UFO” can be easily faked, and perhaps no one would be better to demonstrate it than the creator of the Haitian UFOs.

French CGI artist David Nicolas, created a couple of months ago a small clip of a UFO diving into the waters of Rio de Janeiro for a local TV show (it’s a little after one minute on):

The UFO, the water splash, all digital. Curiously, Nicolas also had a helicopter there, which I also assume was digital. Interesting coincidences with our recent Spanish video. Could Nicolas be involved? Perhaps, but the same computer graphic tools were used indeed.

The only detail that doesn’t quite fit here are the reports from non-anonymous witnesses of ‘strange lights’ in the sky over the area on September 25, as publicized in the local newspaper, La Voz de Galicia. Those could be just a coincidence, that is, non-related sightings of UFOs. Or they could be the result of another action of the viral campaign. Would the marketing people go beyond the virtual videos, and create fake UFOs in the sky?

If this is indeed a viral campaign, we will soon be hearing more about it, and I will update this post as news come. Cloverfield, some local independent production, who knows what is the product being promoted. Those censured face people probably know.

And in the end, we could be wrong and the invasion… has already begun. In that event, we will blog about it.

[UPDATE Oct 4, 2009]

As predicted, another “too good to be true” video comes allegedly from the same region in Spain:

Once again, no witness can be identified. Visitors of Terra Spain speculate that the viral campaign is for the movie “Planet 51”, scheduled for release on November 20 and produced by Madrid-based Ilion Animation Studios.

It looks like a good bet, although the story of the movie is about an Earth astronaut that ends on an alien planet, not the other way. And viral marketing campaigns often don’t make much sense, so this could be for another product or production altogether. It’s certainly generating a lot of buzz.

We expect yet more videos, and the revelation of what’s being sold soon.

[UPDATE Oct 5, 2009]

Confirmed: it was viral campaign from Terra Spain itself as a homage to Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds”. More on it, including the making of:

Viral Invasion Confirmed: Spanish UFOs came from Terra.

© forgetomori 2009. | Permalink

I try not to post too many debunking posts in a row as it starts to get boring, but a bunch of images and claims have been circulating these past few weeks and I didn’t comment on them at the time. So I joined all of them into one quick debunking roundup, if you are still not bored by those.

I promise I will try to make the next post about something truly mysterious and wonderful, contrary to exposing some dubious, lame hoaxes.

Read on: Debunking roundup (1,876 words)

© forgetomori 2009. | Permalink