How We Staged The Morristown UFO Hoax

[TClaeys]

The problem is that I think the History Channel website pulled the episode from their online viewing. If you do a search for Morristown you don't get any results related to UFO Hunters.

-Derek

Derek,

I made some comments on the UFO Mag site and Nancy Birnes responded to them.

Here is her reponse:

Good points. Bill is going to write a blog post on this as soon as he can. He was going to write it tonight but went to sleep instead.

In the meantime, I've been directing folks to this post at the Paratopia forum where The Clueless One definitely separates the threads and points out some errors in the general rush to condemn:

http://paratopia.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=243

In brief, there was no episode on this, but rather a teaser that was filmed before the third season started. In the teaser, the network's voice-over guy talked about the Tinley park episode from Season Two. This was maybe the second show of that season.

More to come from Bill, in a day or so ... or as soon as a bit of free time opens up.

And here is the link for that forum post.
http://ufomagazine.forumotion.com/in-the-news-f26/morristown-hoax-aftermath-t119.htm#661

And here is a recent interview with the two hoaxers. I'm not clear if Birnes really said that the lights could not be flares or not. The video seems to state that Bill did say this, but I'm not sure at this point.

Here is the short interview. I had trouble embedding it, so just gave out the link.
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2009/04/ledger_live_morris_ufo_hoaxste.html

 

[spacebrother]

When the news first broke on January 7th, I wrote a post about it at UFOMystic. My uninformed armchair guess was, "Reading the descriptions, the lights sound like some sort of balloon train with flares attached to them." I would think that many others had the same reaction.

There were a lot of comments on the post I put up on April 3rd. Down near the end, MUFON investigator Kristen Winslet and photo analysis expert Marc D'Antonio even posted their side of the story. They didn't make any fanfare about the incident (but were forced into revisiting the episode) until the hoaxers made their announcement on April 1st. They had already concluded it was a hoax just after the original event, and didn't think it was worth pursuing any further.

Here are the two UFO Hunters clips in question. They were apparently only promos for a show that was never aired, although the second clip has a graphic that reads "Special Report," and the History Channel titled them both as such on youtube.

<object height="344" width="425">


<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5CJ-4jZKjik&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></object>


<object height="344" width="425">


<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yQgoO_XoOos&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></object>

 

[fahrusha]

Coming into this thread late in the game, I wish to post a link to my blog, where in guest blogger Kristin Ann Winslet, MUFON investigator with the STAR team, writes about cracking the case:
The Case of the UFO Balloons by Guest Blogger Kristen Ann Winslet s Weblog
Thanks.
Fahrusha