Sighting

Quote from Jerry's book: "The other major hoax was introduced to ufologists in Jacques Vallee's "Anatomy of a Phenomenon" (1965) and was repeatedly cited in the UFO literature of the next decade (Clark, 1966; Edwards, 1966; Farish, 1966; Lore and Deneault, 1968). Taken out of the context of the innumerable newspaper hoaxes of the period, it certainly seemed impressive: a prominent citizen, in the company of two other witnesses, reporting an extraordinary encounter, with affidavits signed by other community leaders attesting to his honesty. So, anyway, the first newspaper to carry the chief 'witness' story, the 'Yates Center [Kansas] Farmers Advocate' of April 23, had it.

Alexander Hamilton of nearby Le Roy swore that on the evening of the nineteenth he, his son, and his hired man had seen the strange-looking occupants of an airship rustle one of his calves. The next day the butchered remains were found in a neighbor's pasture. The story touched off a sensation, even though Hamilton candidly acknowledged, when a Missouri newspaper inquired, 'I lied about it' ('Atchison County Mail', May 7). By the time Hamilton's confession was rediscovered (by airship scholar Thomas E. Bullard [Bullard, 1982]), however, the tale had already (if belatedly) been exposed as a hoax by Jerome Clark. Clark collected testimony from an elderly woman, a friend of Hamilton's daughter Nell, who had been at the Hamilton residence when the elder Hamilton returned from town and chuckled about the story he had made up and which would appear in the 'Advocate' shortly. The signers of the affidavit were fellow members of the local liars' club (Clark, 1977; Cohen, op. cit.)."

Sources

Tags