In this week’s eSkeptic, we reveal the behind the scenes workings of that UFO hoax that captured headlines earlier this year. People in and around the Morristown, New Jersey area saw unidentified flying objects, with many of them naturally assuming that these UFOs represented extraterrestrial space craft. As you shall see, there was a rather more terrestrial explanation. In fact, they were helium balloons with flares attached to them, lofted into the sky by Chris Russo and Joe Rudy, in their social experiment on how to create your own media event surrounding UFO sightings.
Even though this does not mean that all UFO sightings are hoaxes — of course many represent other terrestrial (instead of extraterrestrial) events such as the planet Venus, military aircraft, weather balloons, advertising planes, and the like (and even, pace Men in Black, swamp gas) — it does reveal how the human mind connects the dots and fills in the gaps with plausible explanations that often include fantastic tales of alien beings. Enjoy the story and watch the video clips of this amazing hoax!
Joe Rudy releases a burning flare along side the smoke trail left by a vanished balloon while Chris Russo kneels down to get the next flare ready.
How We Staged the Morristown UFO Hoax
Chris Russo & Joe Rudy
Have you ever seen the face of the Virgin Mary on your grilled cheese? How about the image of Satan in a cloud of smoke? Or Sasquatch running through the woods? What about an alien spacecraft in the sky?
It is not difficult to find people who respond with an astounding “yes!” to one of these — or all four. Humans are, by nature, experts at finding patterns whether they are real or not, and UFOs are among the most common patterns people find in the skies. Now, you may be thinking that UFOs are only seen by a mullet sporting, tobacco chewing, dolt whose highest aspiration is to make an appearance on the Jerry Springer Show, but in fact doctors, lawyers and even pilots report seeing flying saucers, flying triangles, and aerial shapes of all manner of an unidentified nature. Even over the skies of an affluent suburban community in New Jersey. Enter Joe Rudy and Chris Russo and the great UFO hoax of 2009.
headline from Morris County Daily Record January 31, 2009
In November of 2008, we found ourselves sitting around one evening discussing pseudoscience and the large numbers of people that still believe in its various guises. We had always had a strong interest in why people were so easily fooled by such irrational superstitions as psychic ability, spiritual mediums, alien abductions, and the like. Despite the lack of evidence to support these notions, we were baffled. How could so many people in an age of science still buy into dogma that is no more or less ridiculous than the notion of an elderly obese man delivering presents to every child on Earth in one evening? And like most other people, we had always heard about the uneducated farmer spotting an alien spaceship hovering over his farm, but we wondered if that amount of gullibility could be found in our upper-middle class hometown of Hanover, NJ, and the surrounding cities.
The modern UFO phenomena began in 1947 when a pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted objects that he described as “crescent shaped,” adding that they “moved like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” He was subsequently misquoted by an Associated Press reporter as having seen “flying saucers,” which he later corrected, noting: “They said that I’d said they were saucer-like. I said they flew in saucer-like fashion.” Nevertheless, the flying saucer craze was born and 60 years later, despite the fact that there is still no evidence of their existence, the UFO myth is as strong today as ever, fed by cable channel shows that prop up UFO “experts” who claim to be authorities on a subject that’s on par with astrology and palm reading. These charlatans make a career by perpetuating the E.T. fairy tale and exploiting credulous people who want nothing more than a good conspiracy theory to believe in.
ad published by a local auto dealership taking advantage of the publicity
It is in this context that we set out on a mission to help people think rationally and question the credibility of so-called UFO “professionals.” We brainstormed the idea of producing a spaceship hoax to fool people, bring the charlatans out of the woodwork to drum up controversy, and then expose it as nothing more than a prank to show everyone how unreliable eyewitness accounts are, along with investigators of UFOs.
We hatched the idea of tying flares onto helium balloons and launching them in a nearby field — an open yet isolated area surrounded by woods. There we were sure that we would have the privacy to prep the balloons, and that we wouldn’t have our plot foiled. From the beginning we decided to document all aspects of the project, including setting up the flares and balloons, launching them into the sky, and recording any media coverage that the “UFOs” received. The documentation was especially important in order to prevent conspiracy theorists from claiming that we were part of a cover-up of the truth when we revealed the hoax.
On January 5, 2009, we set out into the woods on the border of Morris Plains and Hanover, NJ, carrying one helium tank, five balloons, five flares, fishing line, duct tape, and a video camera. After filling up one 3-foot balloon with helium, we tied about five feet of fishing line to the balloon, secured the line with tape, then tied and taped the flare to the other end of the line. Once all five balloons were ready for takeoff (with our fingers on the verge of frost bite), we struck the 15-minute flares and released them into the sky in increments of fifteen seconds apart from each other. We filmed the “UFOs” as they floated away, and then walked the half-mile stretch out of the woods to our car. The hoax was underway.
national media coverage on Fox News
The media coverage the incident received over the next few days was extensive. Both local and national news stations were covering the UFO over New Jersey. The local paper had a field day with it, quoting a doctor who said the mysterious lights traveled against the wind, and quoting another man who said the object “didn’t appear to be manmade.” The most sought after witnesses were the Hurley family. Paul Hurley, a pilot, along with his family, made appearances on just about every major news station, describing the strange lights that they saw in the sky. The “Morristown UFO” became the talk of the town.
We followed up our light show with four more performances, gaining media attention every time. Every conspiracy website and radio show was mentioning it. To add fuel to the fire, we made appearances ourselves on News 12 New Jersey, on the Jeff Rense Program (a radio show that promotes conspiracy theories), and at an Illinois UFO symposium hosted by MUFON. We even provided our own footage.
To see a number of media stories, along with the footage we shot of our hoax being prepared and under way, follow the links at the end of this article.
fishing line was duct-taped on the flares
The icing on the cake came when the popular History Channel show UFO Hunters featured the Morristown UFO as their main story one week. Bill Birnes, the lead investigator of the show and the publisher of UFO Magazine, declared definitively that the Morristown UFO could not have been flares or Chinese lanterns. Surely Birnes, who has written and edited over 25 books and encyclopedias in the fields of human behavior, true crime, current affairs, history, psychology, business, computing, and the paranormal, and the co-author of The Day After Roswell (a New York Times bestseller in 1997 and subsequently a documentary on The History Channel), could not have let himself be fooled by a couple of twenty- somethings with no formal education in psychology. He could.
This begs an important question: are UFO investigators simply charlatans looking to make a quick buck off human gullibility, or are they alarmists using bad science to back up their biased opinions that extraterrestrial life is routinely visiting our planet? Either way, are these people deserving of their own shows on major cable networks? If a respected UFO investigator can be easily manipulated and dead wrong on one UFO case, is it possible he’s wrong on most (or all) of them? Do the networks buy into this nonsense, or are they in it for the ratings? How can a television network that has pretensions of providing honest and factual programming be taken seriously when the topic of one of their top rated shows deals with chasing flares and fishing line? In fact, we delivered what every perfect UFO case has: great video and pictures, “credible” eyewitnesses (doctors and pilots), and professional investigators convinced that something amazing was witnessed. Does this bring into question the validity of every other UFO case? We believe it does.
Watch the videos
About the Video Producers
Joe Rudy holds a B.S. in Science from Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ. He teaches science, gives private classical music lessons, and is an accomplished classical music performer. He is an avid reader of Skeptic magazine and enjoys reading the works of James Randi, Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, Christopher Hitchens, and especially Richard Dawkins. He currently resides in Chester, NJ.
Chris Russo has a degree in in management and economics from Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, PA. His current profession is in sales although he has spent some time modeling and acting. Although he has no intention of creating any more spaceships, he intends to continue his quest to spread reason and truth; one pseudoscience at a time. He currently lives in Morris Plains, NJ.
Share “What Do I Do Next?”
on Facebook!
Help get the word out about skeptical activism: read “What Do I Do Next?” (PDF) and then share it on your blog, website, or Facebook Profile!
You can share the Quick Reference Guide on Facebook with a single click, posting the point-form version of this free skeptical resource to your profile — or sending it directly to friends who may be interested. Or, share Skeptic.com’s new Skeptical Activism page on Facebook. There, people will find the full PDF version of “What Do I Do Next?” as well as related audio and other resources.
The Banker’s Paradox
Is it possible that human relationships are nothing more than credit calculations and reciprocal relations, or, are human relations genuinely and deeply ingrained in our nature? Michael Shermer discusses the nature of altruism in the Banker‘s Paradox.
While you’re there be sure to read the blog posts of the other Skepticbloggers: Brian Dunning, Kirsten Sanford, Mark Edward, Phil Plait, Ryan Johnson, Steven Novella, and Yau-Man Chan.
I should have commented on this story after it came out… the hoax proposed here is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS! It is essentially launching an incendiary device which could potentially start a fire. If the balloon, or line holding the flare, were to fail and fall in a house or field, the resulting damage has the potential to land the launchers in jail, civil court, or both.
A much safer (and in my opinion, more effective) way to accomplish the same hoax is with a “fire balloon”.
http://www.geocities.com/timbo2049/fireballoons.htm
Constructed from balsa, dry cleaner plastic bag, and birthday candles, the balloon offers less likelihood of starting a fire should it blow into a tree, house or other obstruction.
But it also makes a superior looking UFO as the candles illuminate the inside of the plastic bag giving it an eerie glow. The candles soon extinguish giving the appearance, as many UFO observers claim, of the object “speeding off”. I have launched several fire balloons to the delight of friends and family, usually on a cool night after it has rained.
The “highway flare” method carries a much higher risk of accidental fire. I do not recommend it.
A very dangerous, but informative stunt. You guys really caught Bill Birnes with this one. not sure it was worth the risk, but it worked out ok and no one was hurt, so kudos.
On a sad note, you used the expression “begs the question” incorrectly here. You meant to say “raises the question.”
They are entirely different. I would have thought that two critical thinkers like yourselfs would know what begging the question meant. It is an important concept. Oh, well.
best wishes, Canis
Suppose I arranged an elaborate hoax with before and after photos and x-rays and testimonials from alleged experts that someone had extensive dental work done, when in fact nothing of the sort happened, and the hoax is so expertly done that many dental experts are fooled into believing that the hoax was real — Could we then reasonably conclude that:
“Dentistry exists” is not a true and reliable statement?
Because one claim that fooled the experts was proved to be totally bogus, therefore all claims by dentists and their patients must not be trusted?
Here’s the problem — the number of reliable witnesses and honest photographic evidences of UFOs is rapidly increasing, and has equalled and surpassed that of many accepted phenomena. Hundreds to thousands of people have watched and photographed giant UFOs for many minutes, sometimes for almost a half hour (e.g. the “Tinley Park Lights”). If fewer people have seen Antarctica than UFOs, can we conclude that those who claim Antarctica exists are less believable than those who say UFOs exist — especially if I can show that one person was lying who said he saw Antarctica?
Speaking as a long-time skeptic myself, I do have to point out that this was a poorly conducted experiment, if the authors are claiming to have followed any sort of scientific process. Aside from reporting the flares themselves not only to the media but also to a UFO reporting agency, Russo and Rudy also outright falsified their account of what they saw in their interview that appeared on News12, in an attempt to affect the outcome of their “experiment”.
One interesting aspect of the witness reports, both regular bystander and expert, were that few of them seemed to be drawing the conclusion that the lights were alien spacecraft. Aside from those asked by reporters as to whether the lights were UFOs or not (and UFO does not mean alien spacecraft, alien spacecraft would constitute an IFO), only one individual (aside from Russo And Rudy) appeared to claim any odd behaviour by the lights. Perhaps, despite the authors’ attempts to affect the outcome, most people aren’t nearly as gullible as Russo and Rudy want them to be.
I’m afraid I can’t pass judgment on Bill Birnes, as I still have as of yet to find out if he factored Russo and Rudy’s falsified testimony into his conclusion that the flare explanation was “implausible” (the UFO Hunters footage offered here is, unfortunately, incomplete). If so, then any criticism brought against this TV host by Russo and Rudy becomes pointless.
The authors claim to be disproving a phenomena that they refer to as pseudoscience, but by leading their experiment they unfortunately have engaged in their own brand of pseudoscience in attempting to do so. Remember REAL science, guys, launch the experiment, then step back and watch. Don’t lead the rat through the maze.
Regarding the lack of evidence on the matter, here’s some light reading regarding the subject:
http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/ProjectBlueBook.htm
Thank you for writing and sharing this. It
Well, Jim Hawtree, above, basically said what I was going to say, only better…
This only proves that full-time Skeptics are basically just as evangelical as dangerous as their ‘Mulder’-ish counterparts.
Evangelical skepticism does nothing but hold the human race back (see also: those who laughed at Copernicus, etc)…
Having said that, a large degree of scientific detachment is a must when talking about UFOlogy, but I’m afraid this ‘experiment’ proves nothing.
Nice. Check out my blinking lights. A regular balloon launches these bright little 4-LED/chips and they only cost .50
http://dink.no-ip.info/Blog
Opps, I should have post the exact URL to the comment above.
here it is: http://dink.no-ip.info/Blog/post/UFOs-Seen-Over-Akron-Ohio.aspx
My primary problem with the way they did this is that they dictated so many things after releasing the balloons. They called the media, called the police, contacted MUFON, etc. They even invented a story about the objects racing over their car. I believe that a much more accurate study would have been to launch the balloons…and that’s it! They should have allowed events to proceed naturally after that point as opposed to pushing things in a certain direction. Yet despite all of their efforts there were people who got it right immediately, that they were simply flairs suspended from balloons. However, they did fool the Hurley family pretty good, ha ha. That guy is probably feeling like the world’s biggest horse’s behind right now. Ain’t it sickening that this crap-case (Barely moving pinpoints of light that could be anything. We have radar/visual sightings where high speeds and right angle turns are seen both by the witnesses and on the scopes. We’ve got the hundreds of trace evidence cases investigated by Ted Phillips. Yet Fox News wants to do a piece on this garbage?) made national news while most of the good cases get ignored? And who cares that they fooled Birnes? That guy believes EVERYTHING.
Did they end up doing a story revealing the hoax and interview Hurley then? (Oh wow! He had 500 hours of flying! What a great witness!) I hope he feels like a bum. Hope that the other pilots laugh at him! I’ll bet all the same media that was drooling over this for weeks didn’t utter a peep after the hoaxers revealed themselves.
I saw two triangles in the sky, but they looked like the citeon sign ( u no the car) has anyone else seen this?
Mmmm… I think this is more of a prank than an ‘experiment’ – first it’s dangerous (flares+balloons? what could possibly go wrong) and second the results are far less conclusive than the authors would like us to believe.
For example, the flares were immediately identified as such by the police, which was quick to dismiss this immediately as a prank. The only decent witness they managed with all this work is the Hurley family, which may or may not have been so keen to provide details had they not heard of the ‘other witnesses’… which were in fact the authors.
Yep. The cops got it right, but the public didn’t want to hear that. They badly wanted UFO’s buzzing their town, and so the herd mentality continued. You guys on here act like the hoaxers single handily changed the whole area’s mind and brainwashed them into thinking it was a UFO. I agree, they should have let the balloons off and then not been seen or heard until they came out, but their point was still made. Go back and look at their “reaction” videos. People saying they “looked alive” and “moved in formation against the wind”, and “no man made thing could have done that”, and “most certainly not flares”, etc etc. And then the big fish. History channel moves in with their UFO HUNTER experts and basically proclaim it the next Area 51! Shoulda listened to the cops!
123
Jim Hawtree, that is the dumbest example you have come up with. Dentistry hoax. Really? There is no doubt Dentistry exists, yet plenty of doubt UFO’s do. You are probably mad because you fell for the hoax. It wasn’t 100% scientific, but to me, they sure made their point. People are gullible sheep.
Spork, you can’t “pass judgment on Bill Bines” because the 2 guys “falsified testimony”? What is this, a court of law? They were on the friggin local news.
Bill Bines has “written and edited over 25 books and encyclopedias in the fields of human behavior, true crime, current affairs, history, psychology, business, computing, and the paranormal…” I think he can come to his own conclusions without the influence of TWO people.
Face it. He completely blew it, and so did the History Channel for having this garbage show on their schedule. It belongs on the SCI FI network.
It’s pathetic, I can’t even trust these “educational programming” channels to teach my kid anything of worth anymore. TLC, Discovery, A&E…. they all show garbage now.
I will totally agree on one thing… the utter lack of concern for safety on their part for air traffic. Unless they implemented some sort of safety procedure not mentioned in the videos (did they say how high they went?), then I don’t know what they were thinking. Extremely irresponsible.
What if the real experiment– the sit back and watch kind– was to do the hoax, post this story, and see how those with benefit of hindsight behaved?
There is enough evidence to make me feel that UFOs and alien life are seriously out there. How many reports and books have been done on the subject to show what is real and what the evidence is? There is tons of stuff!! Look into books by Richard Dolan and Stanton Friedman….listen to Coast to Coast AM (www.coasttocoastam.com) and find more info regarding the subject even at your public library. I was once a skeptic, but I was convinced to look into things after an honest friend told me that he saw something in the sky that he could not believe. There is so much to learn and understand….and now is the time to do something with it! This link was on the NASA (Never A Straight Answer) web-site. Figure that one out?!
Uneducated farmers? You can’t be serious! What, you think farmers never get past the 8th grade? Most farmers have forgotten more than you guys ever learned. Plus, farmers spend most of their life outdoors under the sky. Probably the best witnesses one could ever ask for.
Hoaxing is incredibly bad form to begin with, but the potential for causing a fire you go beyond mere bad form. We live in a world where people visit creationist museums to “Educate” themselves as to why the Earth is only 6,000 years old, or buy Astrology books.
So we have young Earth creationist theme parks and “Museums” and an Astrology section in the book store. What does that tell you? That people organize to exploit the dumbing down.
The anti-skeptic responses here are astounding.
By identifying their own experiment as a “hoax” from the get-go, they were obviously NOT trying to convince you this was a double blind controlled study. So your contentions with it not following double-blind controlled protocol are irrelevant. The point was to illustrate gullibility that we are all prone to when we are not skeptical. I do not care if the authors themselves offered the inevitable “Couldn’t have been flares” rationalizations or some real anti-skeptic did so. The fact is many followed that(and no doubt preceded that) with their own similar anti-skeptic conclusions.
Face it guys, there is not just NO evidence of extraterrestrial life visiting earth, there is much evidence AGAINST such and if you continue to refuse skepticism/critical thinking then you will continue to be fooled by hoaxes(as no doubt many replying here WERE in this case), frauds, misperception, etc.
Also a reminder or two:
1)Quantity of anecdotal accounts does not = QUALITY of evidence. It is fully possible(and regularly demonstrated) for BILLIONS to believe and report falsehoods as events they have witnessed.
2)Citing Art Bell/Am Cost-to-Coast as a reference is exactly like citing Alex Jones/Infowars/Prison planet for conspiracies or J.Z. Knight/Ramtha for channeling/mediums, etc. Just plain BAD and irresponsible.
agreed. doesn’t sound like they were trying to change the world with the experiment. they never claimed it was a “scientific” experiment. sounds like they just wanted prove a point and discredit some so-called “ufo” experts…. we need more of this stuff! bravo guys! bravo skeptic….excellent article.
Clever idea, but I won’t say it wasn’t very dangerous. This proves the gullibility of human nature; blame that on evolution. This is great evidence for a research paper I’m writing. Next time when you make a hoax, don’t make it this dangerous, use LEDs or something.