Page 56 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - Febrary/March 2020 Edition

56 Strange Hoaxes
STRANGE
HOAXES
Bob Lazar, UFO Hoaxster
On November 11 and 13, 1989, viewers of
KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, Nevada, heard an
incredible story from news reporter George
Knapp: A scientist had come forth to reveal that mystified in not being able to find any tracks in uncovered, one humorless author theorized that
the U.S. government possesses the remains of
extraterrestrial vehicles. From these vehicles
have come extraordinary technological
breakthroughs.
The scientist, Robert Scott Lazar, said he never heard [Hamilton's] word questioned." In
had worked in the S-4 section of Area 51, a
corner of the Nevada Test Site. There, he had
read documents indicating the existence of
ongoing research on an "anti-gravity reactor" for
use in propulsion systems. He was astonished,
he said, but he was even more shocked to be
shown nine flying discs "of extraterrestrial
origin" stored in a hangar. As part of the gravity- forward to say that shortly before the tale was
harnessing propulsion, the craft used an element, reported in the Farmer's Advocate, she had heard
115, unknown on Earth, because it is
"impossible to synthesize an element that heavy had made up. Hamilton belonged to a local liars'
here on Earth. . . . The substance has to come
from a place where super-heavy elements could
have been produced naturally." From the
recovered craft the U.S. government had
collected some 500 pounds of the stuff.
Adding apparent credibility to Lazar's
testimony were persistent reports (chronicled
even in the respected Aviation Week & Space
Technology) of bizarre lights over the test site-
craft maneuvering in ways beyond the capacity
of known aviation technology. These reports are
almost certainly genuine.
Lazar's tales, on the other hand, are
almost certainly bogus. Investigations raised
serious questions about his reliability. His
claims about his education and employment
could not be verified, and his character proved to
be questionable. In 1990 he was arrested for his
involvement with the operation of a Nevada
brothel.
The 1897 Cow Abduction
Hoax
On April 23, 1897, a Kansas newspaper, the
Yates Center Farmer's Advocate, reported an
incredible story. On the evening of April 19,
local rancher Alexander Hamilton, his son, and a
hired man saw a giant cigar-shaped UFO
hovering above a corral near the house.
that it blinded one of the witnesses.
This incredible event was recorded two
days later in Lincoln's Daily State Journal,
which printed a dispatch from Benkelman,
Nebraska, by an anonymous correspondent. The
correspondent wrote that prominent local
citizens had gone to the site, where the metal
now had cooled. He reported, "The aerolite, or
whatever it is, seems to be about 50 or 60 feet
long, cylindrical, and about 10 or 12 feet in
diameter." A State Journal editor remarked that
this must have been an "air vessel belonging
originally to some other planet."
But on June 10 an anticlimactic dispatch
Hamilton claimed that in a carriage underneath came from Benkelman. In a heavy rainstorm the
the structure were "six of the strangest beings I remains had "melted, dissolved by the water like
ever saw." Just then, the three men heard a calf a spoonful of salt." The obvious message: Take
bawling and found it trapped in the fence, a rope the story with a grain of sodium chloride. The
around its neck extending upward. "We tried to State Journal, red-faced, dropped it then and
get it off but could not," Hamilton said, "so we there.
cut the wire loose to see the ship, heifer and all, In the 1960s a copy of the first
rise slowly, disappearing in the northwest." newspaper article resurfaced, and reporters,
The next day, Hamilton went looking for historians, and ufologists rushed to Dundy
the animal. He learned that a neighbor had found County. Lifelong residents of the area assured
the butchered remains in his pasture. The them no such thing had ever happened. Later,
neighbor, according to Hamilton, "was greatly even after the telltale follow-up dispatch was
the soft ground." the "storm was artificially created so that a UFO
Hamilton's statement was followed by an concealed within the clouds could retrieve the
affidavit signed by a dozen prominent citizens wreckage of the crashed UFO."
who swore that "for truth and veracity we have
the following days, his story was published in Naked Aliens
newspapers throughout the United States and
even in Europe.
Ufologists rediscovered the account in
the early 1960s, and the story rebounded to life
through books and magazines. In 1976,
however, an elderly Kansas woman came
Hamilton boast to his wife about the story he
club that delighted in the concoction of
outrageous tall tales. According to the woman,
"The club soon broke up after the 'airship and
cow' story. I guess that one had topped them all."
The 1884 Nebraska Crash Two outlandish yet similar tales told half a
century apart seem to indicate that aliens may at
times appear nude. On April 19, 1897, the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch printed a letter from one W.
H. Hopkins. Three days earlier, near Springfield,
Missouri, Hopkins encountered a beautiful nude
woman standing outside a landed "airship." As
he approached, a similarly clad man stepped up
to protect her. Though neither being spoke
English, Hopkins convinced them of his
peaceful intentions. Asked where they came
from, they "pointed upwards, pronouncing a
word which sounded like Mars."
On March 28, 1950, Samuel Eaton
Thompson reportedly met up with nude
Venusian men, women, and children in a forest
outside Mineral, Washington. Friendly but
On June 6, 1884, as a band of cowboys rounded
up cattle in remote Dundy County, Nebraska, a childlike, they spoke "uneducated" English.
blazing object streaked out of the sky and Whereas Hopkins' Martians were sweating in
the spring temperatures, Thompson's Venusians
crashed some distance from them, leaving were cold because of the respective distances of
(according to a contemporary newspaper
the two planets from the sun.
account) "fragments of cog-wheels and other
pieces of machinery . . . glowing with heat so
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