UFO Sightings That Were Actually Hoaxes

Unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, have fascinated the public for more than a century. Sightings range from blurry photographs of metallic discs to shaky videos of strange lights darting across the night sky. These reports have inspired conspiracy theories, military investigations, and entire subcultures of believers. Yet history shows that some of the most famous UFO encounters were deliberate fabrications.

The earliest confirmed hoax dates to 1897, when residents of Aurora, Texas, claimed an airship struck a windmill and killed a small alien pilot. Newspapers seized on the story during a period of intense fascination with air travel, fueled by technological breakthroughs and popular science fiction by authors such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. In the decades that followed, other hoaxes appeared during moments of uncertainty, including nuclear fears and the Space Race, when the idea of extraterrestrial visitors resonated with public anxieties.

Motives behind these hoaxes varied. Some hoaxers gained fame or financial gain, while others staged elaborate stunts for satire, art, or psychological experimentation. Their methods included trick photography, homemade models, planted witnesses, and misidentified military aircraft. Some hoaxers confessed quickly. Detailed investigations exposed others.

Government agencies took many of these reports seriously at first. The U.S. Air Force examined numerous cases under Project Blue Book between 1952 and 1969. Local police investigated incidents like the 2009 red lights over New Jersey, which were eventually traced to a promotional stunt. Despite debunkings, several hoaxes gained lasting cultural traction, inspiring films, television series, and tourism.

This article examines some of the most famous UFO sightings later revealed as hoaxes. Each case shows how misinformation spreads in times of uncertainty, how media can amplify belief before verification, and how the desire for contact with other worlds can make even the most implausible stories hard to resist.

Aurora, Texas (1897): The UFO Sighting That Sparked America’s First UFO Hoax

The “alien crash” that put Aurora on the map and proved that many UFO sightings were staged from the beginning

 One of America’s first alleged UFO crashes took place in the town of Aurora, Texas. On April 19, 1897, The Dallas Morning News ran a piece by S.E. Haydon that claimed a mysterious “airship” had struck a windmill on a local farm and exploded. 

The pilot’s mangled body, Haydon wrote, was “not of this world.” Ostensibly, locals buried the body according to Christian rites in the town cemetery. Metallic wreckage was allegedly scattered across the property, and locals supposedly turned over alien inscriptions to the authorities.

The tale ignited public curiosity. Occurring just six years before the Wright brothers’ first powered flight, it fit neatly into the late 1890s “phantom airship” craze. Across the Midwest and Great Plains, newspapers such as The Houston Daily Post reported sightings of cigar-shaped craft darting across the skies.  

But even then, skeptics raised eyebrows at Haydon’s account. No photos existed, and his story lacked corroborating witnesses beyond his own claims. Decades later, serious investigations exposed the tale as a fabrication.

In 1973, Dallas Times Herald reporter Bill Case investigated the story and found no supporting evidence at all — no official records, no surviving wreckage, and no marked grave in Aurora Cemetery. The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) followed with a formal investigation in 1979, reaching the same conclusion. By the early 1980s, the legend had been thoroughly debunked. 

One of the clearest debunkings came from longtime Aurora resident Etta Pegues. In a 1980 interview, she told Time magazine that Haydon had made it all up. She explained that the town was “dying,” and that Haydon wrote “it as a joke” and “to bring interest” to the town. 

UFO tourists still visit the cemetery, and a Texas Historical Commission marker even acknowledges the tale as a famed local legend. 

The Aurora spaceship hoax is a key aspect of Texan folklore and one of the earliest examples of an extraterrestrial hoax designed to rewrite a town’s fate, but not the only.

Maury Island Incident (1947): The UFO Hoax That Created the Men in Black Legend

A fabricated UFO sighting near Puget Sound fooled the public and helped shape modern alien conspiracy lore.

In June 1947, harbor patrolman Harold Dahl claimed he encountered six flying discs hovering over the Puget Sound while on his boat near Maury Island, Washington. He said one of the objects began to malfunction and scattered molten metal over his vessel, injuring his son and killing the family dog. The next day, according to Dahl, a man in a black suit confronted him at a diner and warned him to remain silent about the incident.

This encounter, which occurred just days before Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting of “flying saucers” near Mount Rainier, ignited a wave of similar sightings across America. Dahl’s supervisor, Fred Crisman, joined him in reporting the event to military officials. Soon, the  Army dispatched two Air Force investigating officers to look into the claims.

After those officers died in a plane crash while transporting supposed UFO debris, the incident gained a sinister reputation and sparked conspiracy theories that continue today.

Yet the claims quickly unraveled. The debris turned out to be common slag, likely from a nearby smelter. Both Dahl and Crisman eventually admitted the story was fabricated. Historians believe the pair had hoped to gain attention, sell the story to publishers, or simply ride the wave of saucer fever that had gripped the nation. The FBI closed the case, labeling it a hoax, though speculation never entirely faded.

Despite its fraudulent origin, the Maury Island Incident created a lasting legacy. Washington State formally recognized its cultural significance in a 2017 Senate resolution honoring the 70th anniversary. It also gave rise to the “Men in Black,” which has spawned dozens of films, novels, and conspiracy documentaries.

Twin Falls, Idaho (1947): A Teen UFO Prank That Fooled the FBI

Four pranksters built a fake flying saucer, turning a backyard stunt into one of history’s most believable UFO sightings.

In the summer of 1947, just days after the Roswell headlines, Twin Falls, Idaho, became the focus of a new flying saucer scare. On July 11, residents discovered a metallic disc about 30 inches in diameter in a backyard. The object featured a plexiglass dome, visible wires, radio tubes, and a central port. 

Word spread fast that this might be part of the same wave of sightings rocking the nation in the wake of Kenneth Arnold’s Mount Rainier sighting and the Roswell crash. The disc attracted national attention. The Army and FBI dispatched agents to investigate.

The timing amplified its impact. In Portland, the Oregon Journal ran the July 1947 headline “Flying Disc Reported Seen Over Portland,” one of many articles now preserved in the Oregon MUFON newspaper archive. These reports show how sightings across the Pacific Northwest fueled national hysteria, giving the Twin Falls discovery instant credibility.

Just a day later, the truth emerged. Four local teenagers admitted they had built the disc from household items as a prank. Once they confessed, military officials dismissed the affair as a harmless prank. They declined to press charges on the teens and later returned the object.

The Twin Falls episode had a measurable effect. Within days, media coverage of flying saucer sightings across the country declined sharply. According to historical analyses of the 1947 flying disc craze, the revelation of the hoax marked the rapid collapse of press interest and helped end that summer's UFO fad. 

Aztec, New Mexico (1950): The Fake UFO Sighting Con Men Used to Dupe a Nation

Two con men’s fabricated “crashed saucer” became one of the most notorious UFO hoaxes in American history.

In 1950, columnist Frank Scully published Behind the Flying Saucers. The sensational bestseller claimed that a 99-foot-long UFO had crash-landed in Aztec, New Mexico, two years earlier.

According to Scully, government agents recovered multiple humanoid bodies and secretly transported the wreckage to a classified site. The story captivated postwar readers and gained traction as a second Roswell-style recovery.

Scully based his account on two sources: Silas Newton, a flamboyant oil promoter, and Leo Gebauer, an alleged scientist. Newton and Gebauer claimed they discovered the crash site via magnetic detection equipment used in oil exploration. According to their descriptions, the disc was made of lightweight metal with no visible seams and filled with preserved alien corpses.

In 1952, journalist J.P. Cahn of True magazine began investigating the story and quickly uncovered inconsistencies. He found that Newton and Gebauer had invented the entire episode while promoting a worthless “magnetron” device to attract investors. 

Cahn demonstrated that con men, who mixed pseudoscience with science fiction, had duped Scully. His exposé, titled “Flying Saucer Swindlers,” marked one of the first high-profile journalistic takedowns in UFO lore.

The fallout was immediate. Scully’s credibility collapsed, and the Aztec narrative faded from serious UFO circles for decades. Even UFO researchers who supported Roswell, such as Stanton Friedman, the physicist who helped revive the Roswell story, and Kevin Randle, the Army officer turned UFO author, distanced themselves from the Aztec case. Authorities later convicted Newton of fraud in an unrelated oil scheme.

Fringe believers have tried to revive the Aztec story in recent years. Scott and Suzanne Ramsey promoted it through their 2012 book The Aztec Incident: Recovery at Hart Canyon. They also presented their claims at the annual Aztec UFO Symposium. Despite these efforts, the mainstream consensus remains that the crash never happened.

Britain’s 1967 Flying Saucer “Invasion”: When a Student Prank Became a Global UFO Sighting

A college rag-week stunt convinced police and reporters that the UK was experiencing an alien influx with a technologically advanced UFO hoax.

On the morning of September 4, 1967, police across southern England responded to a series of emergency calls reporting strange metallic objects scattered across the countryside.

Six silvery domes had appeared in a near-perfect line from the Isle of Sheppey to the Bristol Channel. Locals described the objects as humming, warm to the touch, and emitting a foul-smelling gas when tampered with.

Police sealed off the sites. Military bomb disposal units arrived at the scene and Royal Air Force helicopters airlifted some of the “craft” to secure locations for analysis.

For much of the day, officials believed they were confronting an alien landing. The BBC and ITN broadcast the discovery live. The Times and The Guardian described the event as a “flying saucer invasion.”

That evening, the mystery unraveled. A group of engineering students from the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough stepped forward and admitted responsibility.

Students had built the six fiberglass saucers as part of a student “rag week” fundraising prank. They went to great lengths to create the illusion. They added hidden electronics that produced eerie pulsing sounds and heat and filled the interiors with a pungent mixture of flour and water to mimic alien fluids. 

The students had designed each craft to have no visible seams, bolts, or markings, enhancing their otherworldly appearance. The timing was also deliberate. The crew flipped the saucers upside down the night before authorities arrived, triggering battery-powered circuits that activated once placed upright in the morning.

Though debunked within hours, the Farnborough hoax became one of the most elaborate UFO pranks of the 20th century. 

Crop Circles (1970s–1991): The UFO Hoax That Turned Into Human Art

Years of mysterious patterns fooled experts and fueled countless copycats before two men revealed the trick.

In the late 1970s, mysterious circular formations began appearing in wheat, barley, and corn fields across southern England. Some designs measured well over 100 feet wide, with one Wiltshire pattern spanning 200 feet across, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The patterns displayed geometric symmetrical patterns that baffled both farmers and investigators. 

Early explanations ranged from natural whirlwinds to covert experiments. Meteorologist Terence Meaden proposed that crop circles might stem from plasma vortices — spinning columns of electrified air capable of flattening stalks into circles. Others speculated that the formations were linked to secret military projects or were landing sites for unidentified flying objects.

As sightings increased in the 1980s, a global “crop circle phenomenon” emerged. Dozens of new circles appeared each summer in Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Gloucestershire. While experts revealed some formations as pranks, others drew technical speculation.

In 1994, W. C. Levengood reported abnormal node swelling and cellular changes in circle plants. Physicist Richard Taylor later proposed microwave superheating with handheld magnetrons as a mechanism for bending stalks without breaking them. For more than a decade, no one could explain who or what was creating them.

That changed in 1991. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, two retired friends from Southampton, confessed that they had been making the circles since 1978 using ropes, wire, and planks. They even demonstrated their technique to journalists on camera and recreated a similar circle. Their hoax was inspired by stories of UFO sightings in Australia and a desire to fool paranormal enthusiasts.

Bower and Chorley estimated they had created over 200 circles by night. They also acknowledged that copycat groups such as the Circlemakers soon expanded the practice internationally, producing elaborate formations in Britain, Europe, and the United States. 

Their admission humiliated researchers like Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews, authors of Circular Evidence, who had promoted crop circles as a genuine mystery. Delgado even authenticated one of the hoaxers’ demonstration circles before the ruse was revealed. In the end, crop circles were not a message from space, but an evolving form of land-based performance art, hidden in plain sight for over a decade.

Gulf Breeze, Florida (1987–1990): The UFO Sightings That Divided Believers and Skeptics

A contractor’s photos of glowing discs became one of the most polarizing UFO hoaxes and divided the town.

In late 1987, a contractor named Ed Walters shocked the UFO community when he presented a series of Polaroid photos allegedly showing a glowing, saucer-shaped spacecraft hovering over his neighborhood in Gulf Breeze, Florida. 

The Gulf Breeze Sentinel published the photos under a pseudonym, igniting a local media frenzy. Within weeks, residents began reporting additional sightings, and Gulf Breeze was thrust into the national spotlight as a new UFO hotspot.

According to Pensacola News Journal reporter Craig Myers, the photos were immediately polarizing. Some UFO researchers, including optical physicist Bruce Maccabee, defended Walters and argued the images were genuine. Others remained skeptical and pointed to inconsistencies in the photos’ angles and lighting. 

Walters claimed he had experienced multiple encounters, including being paralyzed by beams of light and chased by alien craft. As the sightings multiplied, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) investigators initially embraced the case as credible.

The narrative collapsed in 1990. After Walters moved out of his house, the new homeowner found a small model saucer hidden in the attic. The model was made of styrofoam plates, paper, and cardboard and looked identical to the object in Walters’ photos. Myers photographed the model and replicated several of Walters’ original Polaroids using basic lighting and camera tricks, strongly suggesting the images had been staged.

Walters insisted the model had been planted to discredit him, but even MUFON ultimately distanced itself from the case. The Gulf Breeze sightings are now widely viewed as a hoax.

Belgium (1990): The UFO Photo Hoax That Fooled the World for 20 Years

A simple styrofoam triangle masqueraded as proof of an alien craft and cemented one of Europe’s biggest UFO scandals in history.

Between 1989 and 1990, Belgium witnessed an unprecedented wave of UFO reports. Hundreds of people, including police officers and military personnel, described triangular flying objects with bright lights moving silently through the sky. Amid the wave, one image stood out: a photograph of a dark triangle with three luminous corners, allegedly taken in April 1990 in the town of Petit-Rechain.

According to Reuters, the photo circulated in newspapers and television reports around the world. Some claimed it had even puzzled analysts at NASA. For over two decades, the photo remained unexplained, and the photographer’s identity was kept secret.

In 2011, a man named Patrick came forward on Belgian television and confessed to creating the image as a prank with two friends when they were just 18 years old. “You can do a lot with a little,” he told RTL, describing how they constructed a small triangular model out of polystyrene, painted it black, and hung it from a thread to photograph against the night sky.

Despite its humble construction, the image convinced UFO researchers for years. As Phys.org noted, even seasoned analysts were deceived by its clean lines and contrast against the background. The pranksters had crafted the model in just a few hours, yet its impact lasted decades.

The Belgian Air Force had scrambled F-16 fighter jets in 1990 in response to multiple radar contacts during the wave, showing how seriously officials had taken the phenomenon. While the broader sightings remain unexplained, Patrick’s confession finally solved the mystery of the most iconic UFO image from that period. “It’s too easy to fool people, even with a cheap model,” he told reporters.

Alien Autopsy Film (1995): The Televised UFO Hoax That Shocked 10 Million Viewers

Millions watched what they thought was alien evidence until one creator admitted he built a fake alien in his apartment to stage the UFO sighting.

In August 1995, Fox Television aired Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction?, a special program that claimed to show leaked military footage of a post-Roswell alien dissection.

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The black-and-white film depicted a bloated humanoid corpse lying on an examination table, while anonymous surgeons in hazmat suits performed a graphic autopsy. According to Time Magazine, the program attracted over 10 million viewers and quickly sparked international controversy.

London-based producers Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield released the footage. They insisted that it was real but damaged, and that only portions of it had been “restored” for broadcast. From the start, however, skeptics noted major red flags. The surgical procedures were amateurish, the tools were out of date, and key anatomical elements were suspiciously off. Publications like Skeptical Inquirer dismissed the film as a low-budget fabrication almost immediately.

Santilli maintained the film’s authenticity for over a decade. Then in 2006, just as the British comedy Alien Autopsy hit theaters, the hoax unraveled. Special effects artist John Humphreys publicly admitted that he had created the latex “alien” in a London apartment using clay, foam, and animal parts. In interviews, Humphreys explained how he used sheep organs and raspberry jam for realism and portrayed one of the surgeons in the video himself.

Despite the confession, Santilli insisted that the broadcast was still based on genuine footage. He claimed the original film had deteriorated beyond use and had to be recreated “frame-by-frame.” Few accepted this version. 

Morristown, New Jersey (2009): A Modern UFO Hoax That Fooled the Media

Two skeptics launched glowing balloons to expose how easily the public still falls for fake UFO sightings, and it worked a little too well.

On several cold January nights in 2009, residents of Morris County, New Jersey, looked up to see glowing red lights floating silently across the sky. The orbs appeared in formation and hovered long enough to be recorded on cell phones and local news cameras. Theories quickly emerged. Some believed the lights were military flares, others suspected aircraft, drones, or satellites. A few insisted they were of extraterrestrial origin.

As reports poured into police stations and media outlets, speculation intensified. The History Channel’s UFO Hunters featured the incident and concluded flares or balloons could not explain the lights.

On April 1, 2009, two local men, Chris Russo and Joe Rudy, stepped forward and admitted they were behind the sightings.

As NJ 101.5 reported, the duo had attached road flares to helium balloons and launched them in staggered intervals from a golf course. They used fishing line and kitchen timers to manage the ascents. They even braved subfreezing temperatures to record the events themselves and document how the public and press would react to unexplained lights in the sky.

According to Morristown Patch, Russo and Rudy viewed the hoax as a social experiment. They hoped to demonstrate how easily people, even experts, could be misled by eyewitness reports and ambiguous video evidence. Their confession included video footage, diagrams, and a detailed explanation of their methods.

The hoax gained national attention and was later featured on truTV’s list of the “Best Hoaxes Ever.” While some criticized the stunt, others praised it for promoting critical thinking—something the world of the paranormal needs to embody if it's to be taken seriously within mainstream society.