10 Prominent UFOlogists Who Were Actually Fakes
A UFO – Unidentified Flying Object – represents flying objects that cannot be immediately identified or explained. When examined, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained. Since the popularity of UFOs as a phenomenon, many people have tried to ride this wave to gain popularity or make money.
While some people are curious about answers to unexplained aerial phenomena and flying objects, some fabricate sightings of UFOs and aliens and create false “evidence” to support their claims. These are ten prominent ufologists who were actually fakes:
Related: Top 10 Craziest Theories About Ancient Aliens
10 Bob Lazar
Robert Scott Lazar, better known as Bob Lazar, is an American businessman who claimed he was hired to reverse engineer alien technology in the late 1980s. This is said to have taken place at an undisclosed location called ‘S-4’, a subsidiary reportedly located several miles south of the US Air Force facility, colloquially known as ‘Area 51’.
Investigations into Lazar’s past soon led to serious concerns about his reliability. It was soon discovered that he lied about his education and previous employment. Ultimately, his character proved questionable as he was convicted of several crimes, including involvement in a prostitution ring and the sale of illegal chemicals. Ultimately, Bob Lazar’s identity as a UFO impostor was fully revealed, as none of his claims could be substantiated by the slightest evidence.[1]
9 Stanley Tiger Romanek
Stanley Tiger Romanek is a legendary UFO hoaxer, documented con artist and convicted sex offender. He was the subject of the documentary titled Extraordinary: the Stan Romanek story. His claims include that he was abducted by aliens, that he was implanted with alien material, and that he suffered injuries inflicted by aliens. Romanek is one of a growing community of people who claim to have been personally touched by aliens. However, it was soon discovered that he was a fraudster.
In 2008, Romanek claimed he caught an alien on tape peeking through his window. He was subjected to a lie detector test about the authenticity of the tape and failed the test. He then claimed without evidence that he had medical conditions that would prevent a polygraph test from working on him.
Later in his life, Romanek was found guilty of possession of child pornography. On December 14, 2017, he was sentenced to two years in a community corrections facility. On November 30, 2020, he was sentenced to ten years of intensive probation under sex offender supervision for violating the terms of his original sentence.[2]
8 Eduard Albert Meier
Eduard Albert Meier, better known as Billy Meier, is the founder of a UFO religion known as the “Free Community of Interest for the Frontier and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies.” Like Romanek, Billy Meier is a so-called “contact person” who has taken UFO photos showing “alien” spacecraft. Meier claimed to have regular contact with extraterrestrial beings he called the ‘Plejars’. The irony in Meier’s case is that he is widely criticized as a fraud, even by UFO enthusiasts like himself.
Meier claimed that the “Plejars” gave him permission to photograph and film their “beamships” (spacecraft) so that he could provide evidence of their alien visits. In 1997, his ex-wife, Kalliope, told interviewers that his photographs of the so-called “beamships” were actually spaceship models that he made using objects such as garbage can lids, carpet nails and other household objects. She also revealed that all his stories and adventures were fictional.
The most embarrassing revelation that dealt the final blow to Eduard Albert Meier’s credibility is that his ex-wife revealed that the photos of two alien women that Meier called “Asket” and “Nera” were actually photos of Michelle DellaFave and Susan. Lund, members of the song and dance band known as The Golddiggers.[3]
7 Ed Walters
Ed Walters is the mastermind behind the Gulf Breeze UFO Incident, a series of alleged UFO sightings in Gulf Breeze, Florida, in late 1987 and early 1988. The hoax began when the Gulf Breeze Sentinel The newspaper published a number of photographs supplied to them by a local contractor named Ed Walters. Although a handful of UFO enthusiasts believed the photos were real, many people doubted their authenticity.
Walters went too far in his claims when he said the UFO craft landed on Soundside Drive and left five aliens in the road. He stated that the aliens were staring through his window. At that point, the aliens communicated with him via telepathy in English and Spanish and presented him with a book with pictures of dogs. People who would later live in Ed Walters’ home claimed they saw evidence of his fabrication of the entire fallacy.[4]
6 George Adamski
George Adamski was a Polish-American author who became very popular not for his literature, but for his ridiculous claims that he had traveled to the moon and other planets in an alien spacecraft. Adamski was the first and most famous of the several so-called UFO “contactees” who came to prominence in the 1950s. During his lifetime, Adamski called himself a “philosopher, teacher, student and saucer researcher.”
George Adamski’s claims failed the test of public scrutiny. All investigators concluded that his claims were an elaborate hoax and that Adamski himself was a charlatan and con artist. Adamski published three books describing his encounters with Nordic aliens and his travels with them aboard their spaceship. At a press conference in March 1965, he predicted that a large fleet of flying saucers would soon descend on Washington, DC. Even now, humanity still awaits its promised alien invaders.[5]
5 James Gilliland
James Gilliland is the founder of Gilliland’s ECETI Ranch. He claimed to have made enlightened contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. James Gilliland has taken his movement one step further by organizing Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sighting events since 2003. Gilliland reported frequent UFO sightings and unexplained light shows on his ranch. However, multiple investigations revealed that Gilliland’s claims were actually a hoax.[6]
4 David Icke
David Vaughan Icke is a former footballer and sports broadcaster as well as an English conspiracy theorist. He has written more than twenty books and spread his conspiracy theories in more than 25 countries around the world. David Icke claimed that there is an interdimensional race of reptilian beings, which he referred to as the Archons or Anunnaki, who have hijacked the Earth.
Icke also claimed that a genetically modified human-Archon hybrid race of reptilian shapeshifters – the Babylonian Brotherhood, Illuminati or ‘Elite’ – manipulates events to keep people in fear so that the Archons can feed on the resulting negative energy. When David Icke expanded his conspiracy theories to include COVID-19, he was promptly banned in Europe and 25 other countries.[7]
3 Travis Walton
Travis Walton was born in 1953. In 1975, as a 22-year-old, Travis Walton was part of a seven-man logging team working on a contract to thin out small trees in an area known as Turkey Springs in the Apache. Sitgreaves National Forest. On November 5, 1975, logging crew chief Michael H. Rogers reported that Travis Walton was missing. When Navajo County Deputy Sheriff Kenneth Coplan and Rogers visited Travis’ mother to inform her of Travis Walton’s disappearance, the deputy sheriff was shocked to discover that the family believed in UFOs and took the news calmly.
When Travis Walton returned after a few days, the doctor attending to him noticed punctures consistent with intravenous drug use. The doctor noted that the punctures were 24 to 48 hours old, and Walton returned on the fifth day after his disappearance. Walton claimed that he lost consciousness when struck by a beam of light from a flying saucer and woke up in a hospital-like room, observed by three short, bald creatures.
Walton said he had no memory of the incident other than walking along a highway five days later as the flying saucer took off overhead. Walton has been proven to be a hoaxer who made up lies to make good money. It is worth noting that Walton failed a polygraph test to verify the authenticity of his claims on live television. Additionally, there were several fabricated UFO abduction stories around the time Walton fabricated his own abduction.[8]
2 Steven Greer
Steven Greer is an American ufologist and retired physician who founded the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and the Disclosure Project. These two organizations seek the disclosure of alleged secret UFO information and also act as a research-based initiative to contact extraterrestrial civilizations. CSETI uses “Rapid Mobilization Investigative Teams” with the aim of arriving at UFO landing sites as quickly as possible.
What makes it easy for people to discover Steven Greer’s fraud is that he specialized in producing and selling documentaries that made decent profits. Steven Greer uses a skilled camera and media production team to produce high-quality videos that are hard to resist. This is how he spreads his hoaxes. Steven Greer’s documentaries contain interesting ideas, but are usually hidden under so many layers of misconception and deception.[9]
1 Dr. Jonathan Reed
Dr. Jonathan Reed is in this place because his claims were the most false. While many ufology hoaxers were content to claim the existence of aliens to scam people, Reed went to extremes by claiming he shot and killed an alien because he vaporized his dog with an energy weapon . His story didn’t end there. He further claimed that the alien came back to life and captured the entire action on camera, but government agents confiscated all his good videos, leaving him with only a blurry video.
When several people asked to analyze his video evidence, he blatantly refused. Eventually, a UFO Watchdog site discovered that the aforementioned “Dr. Jonathan Reed” is actually a resident of Seattle, Washington named John Bradley Rutter, who does not have a college degree.[10]