The annals of UFO lore are peppered with accounts of alien encounters and abductions, these mysterious entities coming for us for inscrutable reasons we may never understand. Some such cases really serve to bring on the weird, with plenty of clues and details that cloak them in a thick layer of oddness and high strangeness, leaving us to wonder just what is going on. One such surreal account played out in a rural area of the U.S. state of Indiana back in 1983, and it has gone on to become a classic example of just how truly bizarre such encounters can be.

It was a hot summer night, on June 30, 1983, and Debbie Jordan-Kauble was going about her usual routines on what had until then been a very ordinary, mundane evening. At the time she was living in a rural area near a place called Copley Woods, outside of Indianapolis, Indiana, along with her two young sons and parents and on this evening her father was off at his second shift at an automobile factory. That night Debbie, her mother, and two sons ordered take-out fried chicken, and it couldn’t have been more normal, but as she washed the dishes and the grease off her hands things would begin to get weird, spiraling into a harrowing experience that would change her life forever. She would say of what happened:

I was washing the grease off my hands before I left to go to the neighbors house to cut some more patterns out. She lived one block over and one road behind us so I wouldn’t be far in case Mom needed help getting the boys to settle down. As I stood at the kitchen sink and looked aimlessly out the window, I noticed an odd light coming out of the swimming pool pump house. First of all, I knew the door SHOULD be closed because I remembered wrestling with the rusty slide lock. I had been out there just a few hours earlier, putting some more chlorine tabs in the pool floater. It was getting dark out so the strange light really caught my eye. It was not like the incandescent bulb that was in there. It looked more like florescent, white light. And it was very bright. I pointed this out to my mother and asked her if she wanted me to stay home. She thought it was odd but told me not to worry about it. She would lock the doors and if she needed me she would call me. In the five minutes it took me to get in my car and make a quick detour to the turnabout in back of the house, to check on the light before I left, the light was gone. And the door to the pump house was closed. But the pedestrian door to the side garage attached to the house was now open. I do not know why I didn’t stop then and go back inside. I should have but I didn’t. I headed on to our neighbors’ house.

Debbie reached her neighbor’s house without incident and called her mother to tell her she had arrived safely. At this point her mother was calm and sounded normal, but shortly after this, practically right after hanging up, there was a phone call from her mother, who now sounded frightened and urgently implored her to come back home right away. It would only later turn out that Debbie’s mother had seen a “basketball-sized ball of light” hovering around in the back yard, but at the time it was not clear why she was so panicked and scared, so insistently begging Debbie to come home immediately. Debbie then excused herself, apologizing to the neighbor and driving the short distance back home, where she found her mother cowering within and frantically looking through the window outside. Debbie says of what happened next:

Once I arrived, I pulled around to the back of the house again. This time I stopped at the sun room outside access door and found Mom standing there waiting for me. As I walked in, I went for the shotgun Daddy had behind the trash compactor. Mom made a comment about the gun not being loaded and I said to her that whoever was out there didn’t know that and I could always beat the crap out of them with it. I have to say, at this point, that I do not know what came over me. I am no fool and at that time in my life, I was the biggest chicken in the world. If I had know why mom called me back that night, I would have never gone out back. I would have gone in the front door, grabbed my mom and kids and high-tailed it out of there so fast it would make your head spin.

Making the whole situation even eerier and more surreal was that at the time Debbie’s mother not only had no idea why she was in a panic, but she didn’t even remember calling her daughter. At this point, they both thought it was just an intruder, and so Debbie crept outside with the shotgun and approached the pump house, ready to wave her empty gun to frighten any trespassers, but no one was in the pump house, nor was there any sign of an intruder anywhere. The only thing out of place was her dog cowering under a truck and growling uncontrollably. As she did her search of the yard, outbuildings, and garage, she was suddenly aware of a growing, burning sensation throughout her body, which she would later equate to being splashed with acid, and whish grew in intensity until she had the sudden, undeniable urge to get out of there immediately, that her life was in danger. She would say of what happened next:

I suddenly felt as if I was on fire. All the skin on my body started burning. It felt like I was covered with acid. And I thought, “I’ve gotta get out of here RIGHT NOW!” I turned to run out the pedestrian door and that is when I was hit in the chest by something VERY bright and electrifying. I have never been hit by lightning. But if I could imagine what it would feel like, I would say it was like this. It felt as if I had first been punched by a huge, electric fist, right in the gut. The burning, electrical feeling slowly moved down my legs to my feet, out my arms to my fingertips and around my head. Then, I could feel every molecule of my body vibrating. I couldn’t move. And I couldn’t see because the flash was so bright. I know I could not have tolerated more than a few seconds of this but I swear it felt as if this lasted for several minutes. I assume it couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds. I remember thinking, “I’m DEAD! This is what it feels like to die.” I was shaking and burning and I felt like I was vibrating to my very core. The brightness wore off fast. Then, the vibrating and shaking subsided. But I still couldn’t move. I was able to see bits and pieces. VERY much like having been ‘flashed’ in the eye by a camera flash. I had big blind spots in my vision but I could see some shadow and some movement in the yard in front of my. I can now feel someone pulling on my right shoulder, as if to pull me down a bit. Then, I felt a stabbing, burning sensation in my right ear. And I could hear someone telling me it was unfortunate that I had to feel pain.

After this, she suddenly and inexplicably found herself outside, with no idea of how she had gotten there, and above her hovered a bight light about the size and shape of a basketball. The light moved up and down, as if scanning her, and then slowly became an oval shape before disappearing. At this moment, Debbie saw another egg-shaped object, around which several humanoid figures could be seen. She explains:

I could see something about the size of the pool pump house. Maybe 8 to 10 feet tall and shaped like an egg. (Not very big as far as UFOs go.) And I could see 6 people in the yard in front of me. They are at various spots in the yard. At the same time, they all seemed to line up and slide to the left, back to this egg shaped thing in front of me. They were smaller than me. Shorter. I thought they looked like children. Bullet shaped children. Bigger in the head and getting narrow at the feet. I couldn’t see much detail, mostly just silhouettes. The rest of this event is still a blur after 20 years. The next thing I remember is hearing someone say. “It’s over.” I suddenly remembered my kids. I thought, “MY KIDS! Oh my God!” And immediately I heard the voice say that my kids were okay. I heard my name being called and I was able to move and I turned and began to walk up the lower porch steps, toward the back kitchen door. With each step I took, the memory of what had just transpired, faded until by the time I reached my mom at the back door, I did not remember anything after I entered the garage. I said to my mom, “Everything’s cool.” And with that, she became animated again. It was as if she was standing there, in a daze, until she heard my voice.

Debbie then went back to the neighbor’s house, where they told her she had been gone for 2 hours, despite the fact that to her only 15 minutes had passed. At this point, she rather oddly felt like going for a swim in the pool, inviting the neighbor and her daughter to join her. As they made their way to the pool, things would get even stranger still, of which Debbie says:

As we walked though the back yard to the swimming pool, my neighbors’ daughter suddenly jumped and yelled, “OUCH.” She said she had stepped on something that made her foot burn, and now her foot was getting numb. By the time we reached the pool, she said her foot felt numb all the way to the knee, but yet she could walk on it. We weren’t in the pool more than 10 or 15 minutes when we all started feeling nauseated, and my eyesight started getting real fuzzy, even though I had not had my head under water. I could see halos around all the outside lights and it was making me dizzy. The girls left and I went to bed. When I woke up the next morning, I could not open my eyes. They were swollen completely shut.

My mother took me to the emergency room. They, in turn, sent me directly to an eye specialist across the street from the ER because they didn’t have anyone on call in ER who was able to treat something like this. This doctor was just across the street and agreed to work me in and see me that morning. He was stunned at the extent of my injury. He kept asking me if I had looked into the arc of a welder’s torch or the sun. I had not. I was given several tubes of cream and some drops to try to heal my eyes. It took SEVERAL weeks for them to fully recover and to this day, my eyes are VERY sensitive to light. And my vision is very far-sighted. Sometimes my eyes will still suddenly burn and turn red, for no apparent reason. Fortunately, this only lasts for a few minutes.

The following week after the incident, they were having a BBQ in their backyard when one of the guests noticed an 8 foot circle with a 20 foot swath of wilted dead grass coming off of it, which for some reason instilled a sense of panic in her. This mark would prove to have some rather strange qualities, of which Debbie has said:

The mark in the yard remained there for nearly five years. Every year snow melted off of it. Animals would not walk on it. There were no bugs in the soil. Even when the grass finally did begin to grow back, the grass in that place was thick, rubbery and kind of a bluish green color. The dandelions that grew around the mark were three times the size of normal ones. The tomato plants my mom had out by the pool, were the size of grapefruits but when you tried to eat them, they were so acidic the skin on your lips would peel off. And the vines were as big around as my forearm. The leaves on a patch of trees behind the mark withered, turned brown and fell off. The power line above the mark shorted out and blew a transformer, melted the wiring and blew out the tubes on the Heathkit HAM radios in the basement of the house, which was right next to the place in the yard.

In addition to the strangeness with that mark in the yard, Debbie would over the years be plagued with inexplicable health issues, nightmares, and other odd incidents, of which she says:

The aftermath of this day was a nightmare for several years. I was ‘shell shocked’. I sat up at night, watching over my children and waiting. Waiting for something. But I didn’t remember what it was I was waiting for. I got sick and stayed sick for over a year. I developed life-threatening allergies, rashes, fevers, swollen glands, diarrhea, bleeding gums and my hair started falling out. My fingernails started growing thin, peeled and had horizontal ridges in them. I developed irregular heartbeats (PAC’s) I started having panic attacks. Almost daily for a long time.

And the dog that was out there with me that night? She had to be put to sleep about 2 and a half months later. All her hair fell out from the head down. She developed black, oozing sores all over her back, her eyes got milky white and she was obviously going deaf. Her teeth all fell out and her gums bled, as well. When we took her to the vet, he was shocked to see how quickly she had deteriorated. She was not that old (about 6 or 7 years) and the way she looked you would have thought she was 20 years old. He advised us to put her down because he felt she was suffering and he could not help her. He figured she was ‘eaten up’ with cancer of some kind. I think of my dog, and the fate she met. In my heart, I believe whatever she encountered that night was directly related to her untimely death. And there is a part of me that STILL worries I will eventually have some kind of cancer related to my experience of that night. There is nothing I can do about it right now, except take good care of myself and hope for the best.

It would also turn out that other people in the area had seen basketball-sized orbs of light flitting about at the time, and it was all weird enough that she reached out to UFO researcher Budd Hopkins, who would conduct a thorough investigation into the incident and write of it in his best-selling 1987 book Intruders – The Incredible Visitation at Copley Woods, after which it would hit the public consciousness and appear in a 1992 CBS mini-series of the same name. In 1993, Debbie’s sister would write a book on it as well, called Abducted! The Story of the Intruders Continues, and it has gone on to be one of the most shocking and intriguing alien encounter reports on record, being investigated by other notable UFO researchers such as Linda Moulton Howe. As for her own thoughts on the whole affair, Debbie herself has remained rather introspective on it all, rather bravely embracing what happened to her and looking at it as a defining moment in her life. She has said of this:

I often wonder what my life would have been like had I not had the experience. I can’t imagine. Truthfully, despite the obvious trauma, I don’t think I would change a thing. I have become a much stronger person. I don’t give credit to the experience or the ‘Intruders’, other than it FORCED ME to be strong, to survive and grow. And I kinda like that about me. That is the story of this day. You know when you can name the date and time of an event, it MUST have made quite an impression on you. June 30th, 1983, made such an impression on me that it actually crushed the old me while molding the new one. Now THAT’S a defining moment.

What was going on here? What forces came for this woman out in that remote location? Was this aliens, interdimensional interlopers, or something else altogether? What has come to be known as the “Copley Woods Encounter” has gone on to become one of the weirder bizarre incidents in UFO lore, and for good reason. It has many elements that are beyond bizarre, full of high strangeness, and while we may never get true answers it stands tall as a singularly weird account.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence just got two big boosts – a large influx of cash and a famous scientist and ET life proponent to spend it on a new project. The money comes from four rich donors inspired by the words of Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb – famous for his theories that the ‘Oumuamua interstellar object was a spaceship – and the new Galileo Project it is funding will look for SETI with a network of new telescopes and cameras. Is Loeb pushing the SETI envelope to the point where he could end up like the real Galileo – declared a heretic and kept under house arrest for his own unconventional theories and discoveries?

“Science should not reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences that are not conducive to the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry. We now must ‘dare to look through new telescopes’, both literally and figuratively.”

In the press release for the Galileo Project, Avi Loeb tackles the heresy potential head-on – it’s time to “dare to look” at exoplanets and space objects in a new way. He also addresses the type pf researchers that the UFO and ET community is in dire need of.

“After the recent release of the ODNI report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), the scientific community needs the determination to systematically, scientifically and transparently look for potential evidence of extraterrestrial technological equipment. The impact of any discovery of extraterrestrial technology on science, our technology, and on our entire world view, would be enormous.”

The three main objectives of the Galileo Project are to obtain high-resolution images of UAPs (UFOs) using a network of dedicated small-aperture telescopes; search for interstellar objects similar to Oumuamua; and search for extraterrestrial satellites orbiting the Earth. Loeb introduced a sizeable scientific research team at the project announcement. He’s surrounded himself with scientists from various fields and challenged them, other scientists, world leaders and the public to not treat this research the way Galileo’s was treated.

“Moreover, Galileo complained that some of the philosophers who opposed his discoveries had even refused to look through his telescope, e.g., to see the mountains on the Moon, or the four largest moons of Jupiter. Let us not repeat their mistake.”

Look and learn

They refused to look through his telescope. Does this sound like any prevailing practices and philosophies today? The Galileo Project is funding but looking for more financial support from individuals and foundations. In addition to open wallets, what the Galileo Project really needs is open minds. As the real Galileo once said:

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered — the point is to discover them.”

Discover the truths. What a concept!

Alien abductions come in all shapes and sizes. They range from the odd to the full-on absurd, and everything in between. Yet one assumption that many people might have is that the aliens always get their person, and this is simply not true. Through a series of missteps and and other forces of chance, it would seem that at times these aliens fail in their missions to abduct human beings. While rare, here are some of the more spectacular such accounts.

A very strange account comes to us from the year 1964, from California, in the United States. On September 4, 1964, 28-year-old Donald Shrum and his friends went out bow hunting at Cisco Grove, in Placer County, California, and at some point, he would become separated from his group. Since nightfall was approaching, he decided to sleep in a tree for the night and catch up with his companions the following day, but sleep would not be easy for him on this night. As he drifted in and out of a half-sleep daze and daydreams, his attention was captured by a bright white light zigzagging through the dim darkness of the trees, which he at first took to be a helicopter but would soon prove to be anything but when the mysterious light approached him to begin silently hovering nearby.

Shrum tried to stay out of sight, but it was obvious that it had noticed him, and not only that, three strange beings could be seen on the ground approaching the tree. He would describe two of them as humanoid in general shape, but the other as looking like some sort of outlandish robot, and he was startled when they began shaking the tree with great force, seemingly in an effort to dislodge him and make him drop out. As this was going on, the robot apparently exuded a white mist from its mouth that caused him to fall asleep. When he awoke not long after, the strange creatures were still seemingly trying to get him out of the tree, and he fought back by dropping lit matches on them, which caused them to back off a bit but did not stop them. He then resorted to shooting at them with his bow, noticing that his arrows caused sparks when they bounced off the robot.

As the night wore on, more of the robot-like creatures appeared, and the humanoids began trying to crawl up the tree towards him. Shrum claims that he shot arrows until he ran out, after which he began hurling anything he could find at the strange entities. At one point he was gassed again by that white smoke, but he would snap out of it again to find the creatures still unsuccessfully trying to reach him. He claims that this happened until sunrise, after which they finally gave up and left him alone. Somewhat corroborating his story is that his hunting companions would also later report having seen strange lights in the area at the time.

From 1967 we have an equally harrowing encounter, this time from the vicinity of town of Ririe, Idaho. On November 2, 1967, two Native American boys by the names of Guy Tossie and Will Begay were driving south on Highway 26 when they claim to have seen a small, glowing domed object appear in front of them in a flash of light, about eight feet wide and with humanoid entities of some sort observed within the transparent dome. As the two witnesses looked on in astonishment, their car suddenly came to a stop, the engine dying for no reason, after which the dome of the bizarre craft opened as if on hinges. After this, one of the entities within exited and floated to the ground as if defying gravity, and at this point the witnesses could see that it was only about 3 feet tall, with large black eyes and a hairless head.

This creature then apparently walked right up to their car and let itself in, taking a seat behind the wheel while pushing them out of its way, after which the car began to move forward towards the UFO, which was still hovering there about 5 feet over the road. The car then veered off-road into a field of wheat as the object followed it, the terrified witnesses unable to really comprehend what was going on. When the car rolled to a stop in the field, Tossie made a run for it, heading for the farmhouse of a local farmer named Willard Hammon. The whole way he was followed by the UFO, but it gave up and headed back to the car, where Begay was still with that enigmatic being at the wheel. The creature apparently turned to him to spew forth a barrage of unintelligible sounds “like a bird,” perhaps upset that Tossie had escaped, and then left the car to go floating back up to the waiting craft, which sped off in a zigzag path.

Tossie would later bring the farmer back to his friend, and they would both file a report with the police. Although authorities at first didn’t put much stock in the story, they would find several other witnesses who described seeing strange lights in the sky and their livestock acting bizarrely. Both of the witnesses would insist that these aliens had been trying to abduct them, and that Tossie’s break for freedom had probably saved them from an inscrutable fate. Coming to 1973 we have the od case of Lyndia Morel, who was a masseuse at the Swedish Sauna in Manchester, New Hampshire. On the evening of November 2, she finished a late shift at 2:45 AM and headed towards her home in nearby Goffstown, about eight miles west of Manchester. As she drove, she intermittently saw a strange light in the sky that flashed between yellow, blue, and green colors, but she at first thought it was either an aircraft or a planet. However, it kept blinking and moving about, appearing to get brighter as she drove along. At one point, it appeared right in front of her, so close that she could se that it was a glowing orb covered in hexagonal shapes “like a honeycomb.” At this point, her head was filled with a high-pitched squeal, and she found that she could not remove her hands from her steering wheel, even as her car began moving by itself towards the object. She could see through a window on the side of the object “a smallish humanoid figure standing behind a console of some sort,” which seemed to be trying to send her a telepathic message to calm down and not be afraid. She started to feel a sense of calm come over her, a sleepiness that she couldn’t resist.

It seems that she then suddenly snapped out of a sense of calm that had come over her and managed to regain control of her car, veering off to go speeding off towards a nearby house. She would stop the car and run to the residence to pound on the door even as the UFO hovered nearby as if watching her, that high pitched shriek still assailing her ears. When the residents of the house opened the door and saw the terrified woman, they let her in and called police. It was at this time that the mysterious craft gave up trying to get her and disappeared into the night.

A very spectacular case which may or not have been an attempted abduction, but which still seems worth mentioning, is that of an incident that allegedly went down at the Alsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota in 1977. On November 16 of that year, a security alarm was received at the base, which resulted in an A-1C Jenkins & A-1C Raeke dispatched to investigate the disturbance. When the two arrived at the location of the alarm, they spotted a bright light hovering over the fence line, and Raeke went to investigate. As he climbed a low hill towards the light, he then saw “an individual dressed in a glowing, green metallic uniform and wearing a helmet with visor,” who Raeke commanded to halt and surrender. The trespasser apparently ignored these commands, upon which Raeke aimed his M-16 and once again ordered the strange to stop. This entity then pointed some sort of object at Raeke and a beam of light allegedly struck the M-16 to disintegrate it and severely burn the airman’s hands.

This was an unambiguous sign of aggression, with Raeke taking cover and radioing for backup, and Jenkins soon came to his aid. Jenkins would see two further figures approaching, and he too ordered them to stop, but they came right towards them, prompting him to fire off two rounds from his own weapon. One of the bullets allegedly struck one of the intruders in the chest, while another hit its companion in the helmet, but this did not stop them. One of the figures emitted a beam from an object in its hand, which Jenkins dodged while taking cover. The two intruders then moved off and could be seen getting into a disc-shaped object measuring around 20 feet in diameter, after which they sped off. Raeke would later be found to have suffered second and third degree burns to his hands, as well as levels of radiation found on his person.

A more recent case was given to me personally by a witness who does not want to be named. This individual told me of a surreal experience that started off as just a night drive home from work one evening in an unspecified rural area of California. The story follows some familiar beats with this sort of case, with the car’s radio going haywire and the engine dying. It was at this point he saw a glowing disk around 50 feet in diameter bloom out of the night, and simultaneously felt numbed and paralyzed. He says there was a flash of light, after which he found himself inexplicably outside of his car in the desert night, with two large-headed entities dragging him towards the object. At this point, things would get very odd. He says:

One of these things was doing most of the dragging while the other had some sort of device trained on me. I had the suspicion that this was what was keeping me paralyzed and under control, and then something funny happened. I suddenly felt sensation returning to my limbs, and this creature looked surprised. It then started inspecting its device, and I kid you not, actually smacked its hand against it like you might do with a wonky remote control. I used this moment to kick out at them, knocking one to the ground, and I ran back to my car. The two creatures then seem to have given up. They just looked at me, went into their UFO, and sped off into the night. Although I was terrified at the time, in retrospect it is kind of funny that an alien should have an equipment malfunction like that.

Although the witness in this case provided me with the details very seriously, it is unknown how much veracity it has, and all attempts to get more information have failed. Nevertheless, it seems to belong here, and the thought of an alien having its equipment malfunction is too good to pass up. All of the cases such as these and others like them serve to show that these alien entities might not be as infallible as they are made out to be. Perhaps they are just as lost and at the whims of the fates as any of us, and that is perhaps a comforting thought the next time strange entities come for you in the night.

An ancient road as well as the remnants of a dock and structures were found submerged in a lagoon located in Venice, Italy. While there is a lagoon there now, this proves that the location once had some dry land. The discoveries were located in the Treporti channel in the northern part of Venice’s outer lagoon.

A research team conducted sonar scans and archaeological dives in the channel and that’s when they discovered several stones that had an ovoid underside and a smooth upper face that were very similar to Roman basoli which were stones that were used to pave the upper surfaces of ancient roads.

Additionally, they found 12 archaeological structures within a distance of 1,140 meters (3,740 feet). They measured as high as 2.7 meters (9 feet) and 52 meters in length (171 feet) and could have possibly been part of a road-bed. Then they located other structures around 9 meters (30 feet) underneath the road that might have been part of a dock.

Remains of an old dock were found.

They even found the remains of what they believe were several settlements that were located along the ancient road such as bricks, roof tiles, and even pottery.

Based on what they found, the researchers think that the road connected the dock and settlements to several additional roads that connected other towns in the southern portion of the now-lagoon to the northern Roman trading center of Altinum. Although there would have been lots of dry land in that area during that time, there would have also been a decent amount of water – the sea coast would have been on the eastern side of the road while an enclosed waterway would have been on the other side.

As for when the road and settlements were constructed as well as how long they were in use for, the researchers aren’t entirely sure but they are hopeful that radiocarbon dating will help to answer those questions. (A reconstructive photo of the road can be seen here.)

(Not the old road found in Venice)

In an email to Live Science, Fantina Madricardo, who is a geophysicist at the Institute of Marine Science (ISMAR) in Venice, stated, “The Venice lagoon formed from the main sea-level rise after the last glaciation, so it’s a long-term process,” adding, “We know that since Roman times — about 2,000 years — that the sea level there rose [up to] two and a half meters [8 feet].”

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports where it can be read in full.

Figure 1

There has been a disconcerting habit in recent years of even credible, trusted news sources to report fake news. It may not always be explicitly on purpose, but these sources have been known to put forward amazing content which is only very loosely disguised as being anything but real. Chief among this worrying trend are TV shows that have sprung forth from traditionally educational outlets, which have served to confuse people, spread misinformation, and inspire debate as to their reality. Here are some of the worst offenders.

Perhaps one of the most famous hoax “documentaries” ever was one involving an alleged alien body. The stunt took the form of a video supposedly obtained from a retired military officer stationed at none other than Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico, by a British music and video producer named Ray Santilli. Released in 1990, the footage is black and white and very grainy, purportedly showing a skinny alien body with large eyes and an oversized head being dissected by a team in biohazard suits at the top-secret facility. Santilli was very precise in the details he gave about the video, explaining how many rolls of film it had been on and even how much it cost him to procure them, and the video was widely taken to be the real deal. The “documentary” spread to over 30 countries, capturing the imaginations of the countless people who thought that this was finally the real evidence of what was going on at Roswell, and the “Alien Autopsy Film” became an absolute sensation at the time.

Although there were obviously skeptics, there were also enough testimonies by supposed photographic experts and special effects wizzes proclaiming how real it all looked and how difficult it would be to fake it that a lot of people believed. It would alas be proved to be a hoax once and for all when Santilli himself admitted to the fraud. In 2006 he came forward to explain that the “Alien Autopsy” was all faked and even how he had done it, but even then there was some mystery remaining, as he claimed that although the “documentary” he had released was bogus, it had been a re-creation based frame by frame on real footage that had simply been too deteriorated to release. Hmmm. Whether there was ever another “real” video or not, this hoaxed footage has not aged particularly well, and looking back on it seems almost absurd that so many people were taken in by it, believing this now admittedly very fake looking alien dummy to be real, but believe it they did. While the alien autopsy video was a supposed “leaked video” and perhaps does not meet the strict criteria of a documentary, it unfortunately set the stage for numerous faked documentaries throughout the years. Particularly notorious for these are what would normally be traditionally considered to be legitimate sources for credible documentary programming, namely the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and the National Geographic Channel. These are beloved channels that do indeed provide quality, very educational programming, yet in recent years there has been a tendency to release more and more spectacular programs of what are often referred to as “mockumentaries.”

These are programs which go through great lengths to pass as genuine documentaries, presenting realistic footage, evidence, interviews with eyewitnesses, and talks with various “experts” within the field. The programs are extremely convincing in their portrayal of events, and although they are usually marked as at least partially fictional in fleeting disclaimers at the beginning and end of the programs, to the causal viewer they seem to be the real deal, and indeed they are obviously meant to be taken that way. Mixed within the realistic depictions of various phenomena, these documentaries make heavy use of “expert testimony” which is often gained through less than reputable means. Real experts are often led along a manipulative, misleading line of questioning meant to draw out the answers that producers seek, which are then edited in such a way as to seem to be endorsements for whatever mystery the show is peddling. If an expert is not available, then the interview is simply faked with actors posing as professionals, with credentials that cannot be traced, and even the eyewitness testimonies can be faked with actors. “Found footage” and photographs are spruced up with clever CGI and spliced together to complete the ruse. The end result is a program that on the surface for all intents and purposes genuinely feels like an authentic documentary portraying real events and exhibiting honest expert opinions, yet which is at its heart a farce, with only very fleeting blink-and you’ll miss-it disclaimers labelling the programs as for entertainments purposes only.

One of the worst offenders in recent memory was in 2012, when the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet aired a show entitled Mermaids: The Body Found, which was created to seem like an actual documentary which followed the the research of a scientific team investigating the footage of a mysterious body purported to be that of a real mermaid. The scientists claimed that an autopsy had been performed on a dead mermaid and that the government had swooped in and covered the whole thing up. It was all done very convincingly. The show made it a point to make everything seem as realistic as possible, using serious, authentic looking interviews with “scientists” who were actually actors, a somber documentary tone throughout, facts seamlessly woven in with fiction, and realistic computer generated footage to give the implication that it was a factual documentary. For all appearances, the program seemed to be an authentic documentary program, and although there was a disclaimer at the end of the program alerting viewers to the fact that what they were viewing was a fiction based on “scientific theory,” this was not prominently shown, and was more of an easily missed tacked-on message. As a result, the vast majority of viewers went away believing that what they had seen was a legitimate documentary and that mermaids had been found to be real.

A follow-up program on Animal Planet in 2013 entitled Mermaids: The New Evidence, raised the stakes in sensationalism, and truly propelled the hoax into the stratosphere. The program was similarly made in a very realistic looking documentary style and opened with a bang. The first scene showed purported “new footage” of a mermaid taken by a cellphone, which shows the creature sliding off of a rock into the ocean. Upping the ante was another piece of footage which claimed to be of a mermaid encounter in the Greenland Sea. This clip shows a webbed hand touching the window of a submersible, as well as the ghostly face of a purported mermaid blooming out of the dark before the creature darts off. The footage was all fake, but looks quite convincing and is ostensibly presented as the real deal. The show adds in very professional looking interviews with the “biologist” Dr Paul Robertson, as well as a “former scientist” with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who talked about the existence of mermaids and both of which were actually actors. Topping off the whole illusion, the network actually made a spin-off website, which simply informed visitors that it had been shut down by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. The whole thing was so well done that Ed Stockly of the LA Times said of it:

It’s remarkable how well this fake documentary mimics actual programs claiming to reveal actual creatures. Substitute Mermaids for Bigfoot, Chupacabra, the Loch Ness monster, ghosts and aliens, and it’s hard to make a distinction between what’s real but faked, and what’s really fake.

The sensational program attracted 3.6 million viewers, by far Animal Planet’s largest audience ever. Unfortunately, although the network had included a fleeting, easy-to-miss disclaimer at the end, most of these viewers were convinced that it was all real. Immediately following the airing of Mermaids: The New Evidence, social networking sites such as Twitter were exploding off the charts with talk of the amazing footage, and clips of the videos were streamed at a phenomenal rate. In the end, millions of people were duped by the program, to the point where the real National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would go on to totally dismiss the whole thing, saying Mermaids: The New Evidence is just entertainment. No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.” Many people expressed a good amount of anger when they found out they’d essentially been tricked, and social media came alive once again with those voicing their disappointment and frustration at the network.

Although there were the disclaimers announcing the shows as based on speculation and fiction, Animal Planet did very little to make sure that these were visible or prominent, and indeed did very little to let audiences know that the programs were bogus at all. In a press release for the program, the network went through great lengths to sound official and expound on “scientific facts,” pertaining mostly to the generally dismissed Aquatic Ape Theory, a theory that humans went through a phase of aquatic evolution, yet there were only two fleeting references to the show being science fiction in the entire 1,000 word statement. All of this has led to the idea that Animal Planet may have intentionally misled people on the nature of the programs. The show’s executive producer, Charlie Foley, even personally stated that they had wanted viewers to think of it as real, and that this was the reason they had chosen the documentary format. He would say to ABC News of the programs:

We wanted people to approach the story with a sense of possibility and a sense of wonder. Hopefully that’s what Mermaids allowed viewers to do…allowed them to suspend their disbelief.

Although it is unclear whether Animal Planet willfully intended to trick its audience and create a widely believed hoax, they probably weren’t too upset about the whole thing considering the record smashing ratings the shows generated for them. It is unfortunate that this success has ensured that other such fake documentary style programs have become popular and continue to be made, with Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel, two mostly well-respected wildlife networks, being the primary culprits. Another repeat offender in shamelessly sensationalist mockumentary programming is Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week.” In recent years, the network has increasingly upped the ante on turning up the spooky factor with its annual Shark Week episodes, becoming more and more brazen. During Shark Week, the Discovery Channel has released several of these mockumentaries, which have served to draw in viewers and have the unsuspecting masses buy the whole thing hook, line, and sinker.

For instance, the Discovery Channel released several high profile such programs for several years running concerning the continued existence of the Megalodon, and these often involved supposed stories of aggressive attacks by the beasts. In 2013 and 2014, the network released two programs entitled Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives and Megalodon: The New Evidence. The programs offered up several pieces of supposed photographic evidence for the continued existence of the Megalodon, such as one photo purportedly showing a monster shark cruising past a Nazi U-boat during World War II in what is advertised as a “declassified image.” The photo was claimed to show a shark estimated as being around 100 feet long, and at first glance seems to be genuine, but it turns out that according to many astute commenters it was very likely a complete fake or at least heavily doctored. Other photos presented showed half-eaten whales and extremely large sharks swimming off shore, all of which are of unknown and questionable authenticity. There are also presented sonar readings claimed to be of massive sharks far larger than any currently known to exist.

The same programs presented the harrowing tale of a South African vessel that was purportedly attacked by a Megalodon, killing four of its crew members. The footage is presented as a sort of “found footage” scenario from a crew aboard a charter fishing vessel on April 5, 2013 in Hout Bay, South Africa. The video purportedly shows a very large, unknown animal aggressively capsizing the boat either through ramming it or biting it, which allegedly had six people aboard. According to the show, the bodies of four of those aboard were never recovered. The video is presented as absolutely real, and the program goes through great lengths to reinforce the genuine feel of the whole incident, even showing purported news footage in the aftermath that seems to show a news conference with South African authorities speaking on the frightening incident. The problem with this whole amazing account is that follow up investigation has not been able to turn up any official reports or news items that the whole incident ever happened at all, and the South African media seems surprisingly silent on the matter, leading many to suspect the whole thing was a clever, well orchestrated fake. In an article called Megalodon — The Monster Shark Lives! (Not), dinosaur expert Bob Strauss criticized the whole alleged incident, saying:

What can you say about a TV documentary in which the suspiciously good-looking lead protagonist — “marine biologist” Collin Drake — comes up empty in a Google search? Or, for that matter, his equally attractive “marine biologist” pal Madelyn Joubert, who joins him halfway through the show, and whom a cursory web search easily demonstrates not to exist? And, not to belabor the point, a TV show that starts with suspiciously staged-looking video footage of a charter boat capsizing off the coast of South Africa, and no references can be found about this accident (in which three passengers were supposedly killed) from reliable online news sources? I don’t know much about charter boats, but I do know that people whose ship is in the process of sinking do not take the trouble to center their subjects on frame.

Another rather dramatic incident portrayed in the program is the tale of a group of marine biologists who claimed to have tagged a terrifyingly massive shark from a shark cage. The huge shark was tagged and is then said to have lurched at them and then to dive at great speed down to a depth beyond which any known shark is capable of. Although the team claims they did not get a good look at the creature, they are fairly certain it was a monstrous shark, perhaps a living Megalodon. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to tell how real any of this account is. Another Shark Week program aired in 2014 called Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine, outlines the tale of a colossal, 35-foot long shark, named Submarine, which is said to prowl the South African coast attacking boats and whales. The legendary shark was supposedly first spotted in 1970, after which it is said to have stalked these waters and frequently capsize fishing vessels or ravaged sea life. The program claims that Submarine is well known by locals, and provides interviews with eyewitnesses who have seen it, but it is unclear whether these witnesses are genuine or merely actors. The Discovery Channel attached to the show an easy-to-miss disclaimer noting that the material presented is “based on rumor and hearsay,” but does not actually admit to faking anything. Nevertheless, Submarine is supposedly still sighted to this day. Is it a real cryptid or something totally created by the program? It is hard to say.

In response to the outcry and accusations of misleading the public with these programs, the executive producer of Shark Week, Michael Sorensen, stated that three disclaimers had been aired with the shows, including one which read “none of the institutions or agencies that appear in the film are affiliated with it in any way, nor have approved its contents.” Other disclaimers stated “certain events and characters in this film have been dramatized,” and that “legends of giant sharks persist all over the world; there is still debate about what they may be.” However, these disclaimers still manage to cleverly avoid outright admitting any blatant fakery, and it is uncertain just what “dramatized” means in relation to the programs or to what extent it is used. Sorensen was similarly evasive when he commented on the shows, saying:

With a whole week of Shark Week programming ahead of us, we wanted to explore the possibilities of Megalodon. It’s one of the most debated shark discussions of all time, ‘can Megalodon exist today?’ It’s (the) ultimate Shark Week fantasy. The stories have been out there for years and with 95 percent of the ocean unexplored, who really knows?

Regardless, like the Mermaid mockumentaries, the Megalodon shows managed to smash ratings records, becoming the most watched episodes of Shark Week ever aired, so people are obviously interested in the topic. How much of the programs was true and how much is whole cloth fabrications? Is there any merit to what was presented in these shows concerning the Megalodon or is it all just pure made-up hogwash? It is difficult to tell, and the network remains quite ambiguous and evasive about the whole thing. Until a serious documentary that is more interested in informing than in sensationalism, entertainment, and getting ratings, it is probably best to take whatever is presented in these types of programs with a healthy grain of salt. Sadly, there was a time when the Discovery Channel was a place where one could usually rely on getting such genuine, educational documentaries.

Adding to the deceptive quality of such programming is the fact that these shows sometimes get real scientists to appear on them through false pretenses, trickery, and outright lies. When making a fake Shark Week documentary called Voodoo Sharks, about a legendary monster shark called the Rooken, which said to lurk in the swamps and bayous of Louisiana, Discovery Channel approached biologist and shark expert Jonathan Davis to appear. When Davis went to meet with the film crew out in the field, his inquiries as to what exactly the show would be about were continually deflected or even ignored. The frustrated scientist was only able to glean that they were supposedly making a program about shark research in Louisiana. When the show was finally aired, Davis was astonished to see that the program was about mythical cryptid sharks, which he had not been told of at all. Further adding to his shock was the fact that the show presented his interviews wildly out of context, things he had said were mixed and matched to make it seem as though he was endorsing the existence of the mystery shark, and that the interviews had been spliced together with other footage to make it seem as though he was in a race against another team to see who could find the mythical shark first. Davis would later lament that during his interviews with the crew, he had been led along certain routes and asked to say or rephrase things that would fit into what the producers wanted, including things that Davis admitted he would have never said on his own. The clever line of questioning also managed to glean responses to vague questions that could be used out of context to be responses for different questions. Indeed, this practice of deceiving and manipulating experts and their testimony has become commonplace on these cryptid “mockumentaries” and other cryptozoology shows in general.

Besides aliens, mermaids, and the Megalodon, we can’t forget about Bigfoot, and of course there is an equally misleading mockumentary about this cryptid as well. In 2015, the History Channel released Breaking History: Bigfoot Captured, which similarly used faked footage, paid actors, twisted expert testimony, and flat out lies to sell the idea that a Bigfoot had actually been caught. The program starts on the premise that a researcher has actually managed to capture a specimen, but really just follows a fake, paid actor posing as someone trying to capture one, and it really goes all out in sensationalizing Bigfoot in a major way. Predictably, the program brings in experts, in this case anthropologist Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, who would go on to very publicly denounce how badly his words were misrepresented in the show, and it also features a badly rendered CGI rendition of a Bigfoot actually captured and locked in a cage. The whole thing is really over the top, but actually created a Twitter storm of people wondering if it was real or not. The shamelessness of this show was very amusingly broken down by Jim Vorel, at the site Paste, who does not mince words when he says:

This style of BS programming has now been refined into a science of its own. The narrative elements are careful in going out of their way to not “tell you what to believe,” or at least not directly. Instead, they present you with mounds of fake evidence and rely on the impressionable viewer to “come to their own conclusion.” Ignorant, close-minded skeptic characters are used as straw men to shoot down any potential arguments before they’re raised. It all taps into the same desire that fuels conspiracy theorists in general—the desire to be a possessor of secret knowledge, to feel intelligent. The History Channel execs understand that the more ignorant portions of their audience desperately want to feel like they belong to a fraternity of people with knowledge that “they” (whoever the hell ‘they’ are in this scenario) DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW. Perhaps they already believe these sorts of things—in that case, Bigfoot Captured simply triggers their confirmation bias.

In order to be on History Channel in the first place, the program has to make some sort of claim toward veracity—hence, the fake documentary format. Simultaneously, in order to not be called charlatans, the official position of History Channel has to be “people are just watching to be entertained, no one is taking this seriously.” SIMULTANEOUSLY, the show has to be believable enough to still fool people, because if it didn’t, no one would be watching. Just writing that makes my brain want to gnaw its way out of my skull, seeking sweet freedom.

The problem is that no, not everyone knows it’s entertainment. And if you’re intelligent enough to know that, then you should also realize that it’s the impressionable people watching who most need a source they can actually trust in order to provide real information. These people don’t need entertainment. They need a network that’s actually serving their best interest—and for the record, their best interest is “Not having pseudoscientific beliefs that they’ll pass on to anyone in earshot.” This is the responsibility that History Channel claims it’s upholding when a two-hour long program is preceded by a disclaimer on screen for a few seconds saying that the program features “some dramatization.” At least, that’s what I’m told appeared, because I started watching 60 seconds after the program began. For me, and anyone else who joined at any other point during that ludicrous 120-minute runtime, there was zero other indication that you were seeing anything other than an (admittedly shitty) documentary. Not until the end credits, with its clear listing of actors in the “scripted story” segments, do they come close to admitting what you’ve been watching that whole time. Good thing that American audiences always closely monitor TV credits, right? Congratulations, History Channel. You’ve truly earned the title of “that network with less dignity than ABC Family.” Be proud.

Even if the networks are not intentionally trying to deceive audiences, there are obviously dishonest practices going on in the way they are presented for the purpose of generating maximum mystery and intrigue, provoking belief in the fantastic, and giving the audience what they want to see. Whether the ultimate goal is outright deception or not, these sly television programs do a lot of damage to the credibility of any potentially real discoveries or footage found. It seems at the very least that it would be helpful to make more of an effort to more prominently show that these programs are fictional, and to present interviews with scientists and experts in a more honest manner. It seems that in this day and age, with the blooming popularity of paranormal programming, it is probably best to view most shows on the matter with a grain of salt.