Liberace Returned In A UFO

[GNC]

Mentioned in FT390 is the case of the UFO over Fyffe, Alabama, a tiny town where hundreds of people saw the pianist Liberace emerge from a banana-shaped UFO, descend a staircase and play music at a piano with "glowing fingers". It was a seven days wonder, but on investigation, it was probably "only" a UFO sighting:
Follow up story

A British tabloid seems to have invented the Liberace connection - unless anyone here knows different?

 

[EnolaGaia]

This 25th anniversary retrospective article at AL.com (AL = Alabama):

https://www.al.com/living/2014/02/25_years_ago_ufo_hunters_desce.html

... makes no mention of the Liberace connection.

Indeed, it makes no mention of any UFO landing at all. The original sightings in February 1989 were consistently of an object seen aloft.

 

[EnolaGaia]

This newspaper article from the Tuscaloosa Times, published a week after the first sighting:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?...AIBAJ&sjid=WaUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4061,5250175&hl=en

... similarly makes no mention of any landing, and describes how the law enforcement officers who actually witnessed the UFO had grown tired of the teasing and over-the-top public response.

 

[EnolaGaia]

The Liberace / UFO connection may well have started with this Weekly World News item from the April 4, 1989 issue:

https://books.google.com/books?id=V...EwAHoECDUQAQ#v=onepage&q=ufo liberace&f=false

This article claims Liberace descended from a plate-shaped UFO and played beautiful music on an invisible piano. One of the alleged eyewitnesses is described as a farmer living near Cotija, Mexico, rather than anywhere in Alabama. The article states the UFO was located over his cornfield.

This item was published only 2 months after the Fyffe sightings in 1989.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Coincidentally, the April 1989 U.F.O. Newsclipping Service I cited in relation to the 1984 Wenatchee / Timm Brothers Ranch giant divot incident includes multiple clippings regarding Fyffe.

One of these clippings mentions the Liberace story, and attributes it to the UK tabloid The Daily Star - 7 March 1989 edition.

http://files.afu.se/Downloads/Magaz...O Newsclipping Service - 1989 04 - no 237.pdf

 

[Ermintruder]

The 'glowing fingers' are refererred to as 'long bony fingers' in the cited article (might there have been an 'ET - The Extraterrestrial' Spielbergian cultural frame crossover? That movie was 1982, and cast a long shadow over the decade)

And @EnolaGaia .....I had forgotten that publications such as the 'Weekly World News' were ever as extreme in their fictional fact-finding (your Google Books reference)....I'm astounded, after reading as much of it as I could manage

 

[EnolaGaia]

And @EnolaGaia ... I had forgotten that publications such as the 'Weekly World News' were ever as extreme in their fictional fact-finding (your Google Books reference)....I'm astounded, after reading as much of it as I could manage

Yep ... Some of the Weekly World News staffers / managers eventually confessed they made everything up, but it wasn't until all but the most credulous readers had already concluded it was wall-to-wall fiction.

 

[Tin]

I like the banana shaped object and Fyffe connection.

 

[Ermintruder]

the banana shaped object and Fyffe connection

Na, na, nah. Just a fruitful coincidence.

In an O/T observation, there's a news item below the Liberace piece that refers to somebody-or-other that looks vaguely-familiar...

I have never, ever heard of a "donnybrook", whether media-related or otherwise....what an odd word!? But it's real. Wow....the World Weekly News has been an educational influence upon me...

 

[Lord Lucan]

Na, na, nah. Just a fruitful coincidence.

In an O/T observation, there's a news item below the Liberace piece that refers to somebody-or-other that looks vaguely-familiar...
View attachment 23718

I have never, ever heard of a "donnybrook", whether media-related or otherwise....what an odd word!? But it's real. Wow....the World Weekly News has been an educational influence upon me...
View attachment 23719

There is a suburb in Melbourne called Doonybrook. Known for it's 'Growling Frog' Golf Course.

 

[GNC]

Ah well, looks like The Daily Star got carried away and the WWN picked up the baton of ridiculousness and ran with it.

 

[kamalktk]

Yep ... Some of the Weekly World News staffers / managers eventually confessed they made everything up, but it wasn't until all but the most credulous readers had already concluded it was wall-to-wall fiction.

Technically they didn't make up absolutely everything. I remember at least one smaller non frontpage story that happened to be local to me that was reported in proper news. It was a weird but not Liberace in a banana ufo weird. I imagine they sprinkled other small real but weird news bits in as well to help "sell" people on the Batboy stuff.