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Faking Forteana For Fun & Profit Online

marhawkman

marhawkman

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Nov 2, 2019
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This thread was spun off from:

Historic UFO Encounters: Newspaper Articles
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/historic-ufo-encounters-newspaper-articles.65811/

The trivial reason for the spin-off is that this doesn't fit that other thread's theme or context.

The primary reason is that web presentation cited here is an example of someone throwing together an online pseudo-Fortean pastiche, probably just for likes / hits / laughs. This sort of thing is arguably anti-Forteana in the sense it makes little sense at face value, is easily revealed to be "fake news", and serves no purpose but to undermine and passively ridicule serious Fortean inquiry.

- EnolaGaia
=====================


Note sure if this counts but one could argue that it's a digital newspaper:
https://upbeatnews.com/insane-classified-photos-that-the-government-was-forced-to-release

It's not really news, but reposts of a bunch of old photos. Allegedly all of them were considered "classified" at some point for some reason, possibly because if they were public people could figure out who took them and when and the govt wanted to protect the identities of their agents.

At any rate, some of them are interesting because it's a very non-X-Files version of UFOs. In particular the one with a USAF logo painted on it..
 
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The first photo in that series didn't have time to be classified by anyone. It was taken by LA Times photographer Gordon Wallace and was published in the newspaper's January 25 (1957) edition.

The man in the photo is LA Times aviation writer Dewey Linze, who eventually discovered the saucer was a movie prop abandoned after filming some sort of documentary. It consisted solely of the shell, with no propulsion or other equipment inside. This 2013 LA Times recap can be accessed at the Wayback Machine:

http://framework.latimes.com/2013/08/30/flying-saucer-hollywood-hills/
 
Apparently you need an LA Times subscription to read that article? But what you say is interesting. This is something I was wondering about. There's a lot of the pics that don't have an obvious reason to be classified since the subject of the picture doesn't appear to be inherently worthy of classification. Stuff like pictures of Queen Elizabeth might prompt questions of "how did you get that?" but aren't really all that interesting.

Then there's the sketch of a USAF flying saucer design... that's a lot more interesting.
 
The photo series is fake as hell. The alleged "first thermonuclear test" photo occurring in some allegedly unknown location is in fact a famous photo of the 1946 Baker test at Bikini Atoll under Operation Crossroads and using fission (not fusion) devices.

The photo showing two saucers with USAF markings is an outright fake. The photo was taken at Muroc (now Edwards AFB) in the early Fifties. The 'saucers' were overlaid to obscure the two aircraft actually pictured - a B-29 and the X-1.

660b7be396a6f8ce079cd7c9a910661b.jpg

I have no idea why some of those photos are included as supposed de-classified images.
 
Well, it is true that the rules determining whether things get classified are largely arbitrary. So it's believable that things get classified for dumb reasons. But this sequence is excessive in that regard. And like you said, some of them seemingly did not originate from sources where classification would apply. If it's published in the LA Times it's WAY too late to throw the photo in the filing cabinet.

One in particular that I found to be erroneous, but a mistake a person who didn't know what it was could make is the "Nuclear waste" picture. It's a picture of a tunneling machine. But this picture is the cutting face and the way the picture is framed it kinda looks like it might be a door... albeit an excessively fancy door. But there is no context here at all. That's a big boring machine, but that's all we really know.
CIAPics038.jpg

Then there's "Tunnels on Tunnels" which is allegedly a US military person, but looks more like a British soldier to me.
 
marhawkman said:
... One in particular that I found to be erroneous, but a mistake a person who didn't know what it was could make is the "Nuclear waste" picture. It's a picture of a tunneling machine. But this picture is the cutting face and the way the picture is framed it kinda looks like it might be a door... albeit an excessively fancy door. But there is no context here at all. That's a big boring machine, but that's all we really know.
View attachment 23668
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Agreed ... If anything, I'm surprised the presentation's author didn't try to pawn off this photo as a crashed UFO. It's big, it's round, and it's exotic / futuristic in appearance.
 
Incidentally, were there ever any authentic vampire killing kits or are they all modern?
 
Xanatic* said:
Incidentally, were there ever any authentic vampire killing kits or are they all modern?
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There may be one or two genuine items about, but I would suggest that most are 'constructions'. Basically an assemblage of items from the 19th century. A small pistol, cross, rosary beads, bottles of holy water, pocket Bible, hammer and stakes all fitted into an antique writing box. Any antique dealer could put that together (I know I could, anyway).
 
There used to be a mermaid on display in a shop window in Portsmouth years ago.
 
The following popped up in my Facebook memories yesterday.

AB75192E-1205-47F1-A20B-C356C2115283.jpeg
 
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Yeah, I hate people like that too. :/ For all practical purposes it's lying. :/

If you're really not sure, that's one thing, but if you know what it is, and choose to misrepresent it? That's abhorrent.
 
Isn't he being sarcastic? :confused:
 
It has a Keel-istic overtone to it. Obviously Keel reported stuff with an anecdotal basis, but he couldn't resist making a taller tale of it all, which whilst making him much more readable unfortunately served to cast doubt on what he spun as fact.
 
stu neville said:
It has a Keel-istic overtone to it. Obviously Keel reported stuff with an anecdotal basis, but he couldn't resist making a taller tale of it all, which whilst making him much more readable unfortunately served to cast doubt on what he spun as fact.
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Yeah that makes trying to figure out what was going on a lot harder because the embellishments serve to muddy the waters.
 
I don't think Andrew Collins is the one trying to tell lies, as he's talking about the ancient aliens cadre selling their beliefs.
 
Vardoger said:
I don't think Andrew Collins is the one trying to tell lies, as he's talking about the ancient aliens cadre selling their beliefs.
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Is that who Gordon was talking about? I wasn't sure because of lack of context.

Even if he's not telling lies he's knowingly ignoring or repeating them.
 
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