AudioBlog: UFO April Fool's Jokes

Happy April! While April Fools’ Day will have passed by the time
this blog is posted, the writer thought it would be fun to look at
UFO related April Fools’ jokes. While hoaxes have long been a bane
to UFO researchers, hopefully researchers can put aside their
disdain for such activity at least one day out of the year and get
in touch with their sense of humor. In fact, some have argued
that a sense of humor is essential when looking into the
paranormal. An April Fools’ joke that ended up embedded in the UFO
mythos as evidence for the existence of aliens involved a photo
depicting what has become known as the “Silverman.” Isaac Koi (real
name withheld to protect his profession as a barrister) discusses
this photo at length on his website. According to his (male
possessive pronoun used due to antecedent male seeming name)
research, the photo first appeared in the German
publication Neue Illustrierte “on or about April 1, 1950 with
the title ‘Der Mars-Mensch.’” It was admitted to be a joke a short
time later, but that didn’t prevent the photo from showing up in
literature and on websites with the claim that it depicts a real
alien. For instance, this description appeared in
Brazilian UFO mag, n.18, p.18, dec 1991: Above, one of the
most impressive photos of an alleged extraterrestrial creature
recovered from crashed UFOs. For many years it was thought the
photo originated from a crash in the USA, but recently it was found
it was captured in Germany, shortly before the Second World War.
The officers who hold the being are high-ranking members of the
SS. Read more