Figure 15. Top, schematic drawing of Adamski’s Venusian saucer. Bottom, schematic drawing of chicken brooder.
Clearly aware of possible skepticism, Adamski did not ask the public to accept his experiences on his unsupported word; as evidence, he offered various photographs showing cigar-shaped objects, a rocky hillside with a white blob on the horizon, and the drawing of a person apparently clad in coveralls—without the book’s explanation no one would ever suspect that he came from the planet Venus. One of the best-known pictures he published showed a bell-shaped “spaceship” with circular openings near the top and three large balls on the bottom for landing gear. By an interesting coincidence, this craft closely resembles a well-known type of chicken brooder, whose three infrared bulbs at the base look very much like the “landing gear” of the alleged spacecraft (see [Figure 15]). When skeptics doubted Adamski’s claim that he had traveled from Kansas City, Missouri, to Davenport, Iowa, by flying saucer, he displayed one of the most unusual items ever called upon to prove the existence of spaceships: his uncanceled railway ticket, for which he requested a refund![[X-13]]
Photography and the UFO
Those who believe in flying saucers have long hoped to obtain a good clear photograph that would establish their existence once and for all. Many “UFO” pictures show vague specks and blurs whose interpretation is limited only by the imagination of the viewer. Of the many pictures taken in good faith and offered in evidence, none shows an indubitable spaceship. Most of them are genuine photographs showing indistinct images of jet planes, birds, balloons, and other objects normally in the sky. They are puzzling only until they are compared with similar photographs of known jet planes, birds, balloons, and other normal objects; then their identity becomes obvious.
Trick photography has often been called upon to prove the reality of the incredible—fairies, ectoplasm, ghosts—and it has also played a part in the history of flying saucers. While the most detailed contact stories have usually come from the United States, for some peculiar reason the best of the faked pictures have come from Europe and South America. A widely publicized photograph supposedly taken at Taormina, Sicily, in 1954 shows four men standing on a bridge and apparently gazing at two UFOs soaring overhead [[X-14]]. The deep shadows cast by the men and the bridge railing show that the sun was shining brilliantly, but the objects in the sky, which look like the inverted covers of teapots or sugar bowls, show only faintly shadowed areas. Stranger yet, the shady side of one UFO is on the left, that of the other UFO on the right. The men on the bridge have their heads tilted at such an angle that they could not possibly have seen the objects pictured, but are obviously looking at the hill in the background instead of at the sky. Even a casual inspection exposes this picture as a crude fake (see [Plate VIa]).
An even cruder fake was offered as evidence to Dr. Menzel in South Africa in the summer of 1962. The optimistic photographer insisted that he had snapped a genuine saucer on the wing, even though the circular object shown in the print was an unmistakable hubcap, the Chevrolet trade-mark clearly legible.
The Isle of Lovers Hoax
Some photographic hoaxes are more cleverly executed. In May 1952, a few weeks after Life magazine had alarmed the world with its article “Have We Visitors from Outer Space?”[[X-15]], the Brazilian weekly picture magazine O Cruzeiro published startlingly clear photographs of an alleged flying saucer[[X-16]]. According to the accompanying story, a reporter and a photographer on the staff of the magazine on May 7 had visited Ilha dos Amores, an island not far from Rio de Janeiro, to do a feature assignment. Late in the afternoon, at a moment when the photographer just happened to have his camera pointed at the sky, the reporter suddenly called his attention to a passing UFO. During the minute or so the object was in view he obtained five pictures which, along with the reporter’s eyewitness story, were released to the public on May 17. If the editors actually believed in the reality of the saucer, the ten-day delay before informing the world of its visit is remarkable. The magazine has never admitted that the photographs were a hoax, but they inspired doubt even in sympathetic investigators[[X-17]].
The UFO appears in a dull sky above a mountain peak. In the first picture the object looks like a jet plane surrounded by an exhaust haze and, with a little imagination, might be called a Saturn-like object. In succeeding pictures it resembles the lid of a teapot, or the bottom view of a rubber stopper for a sink. A study of the shadows quickly reveals the fraudulent nature of these photographs: the dome on top of the “saucer” casts its shadow to the right, while the trees and mountains in the foreground cast their shadows to the left. The picture could be authentic only in a peculiar world in which the sun shone from the west on objects on the ground, but shone from the east on objects flying in the sky!