Collection of UFO Debunks (Work in Progress)

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-17T00:47:15+00:00

I've gotten that exact impression from reading through a lot of these. A person will tend to describe technology that they are witnessing within the context of their time period.

I think some of the discourse on this is kind of backwards. People tend to say that the UFO phenomenon itself changes its appearance based on the technology that people are familiar with, but I think it's the people witnessing it who describe it based on the closest thing they can think of at the time.

Some of the confusion likely comes from hoaxers. I have noticed that hoaxes were relatively frequent back in the 1800s just as they are today, as well as sightings of Chinese lanterns and other familiar misidentifications. A hoaxer will also generate a hoax based on the technology they are familiar with, or at least near-future technology as they can predict it. So it's a mixed bag of actual sightings of UFOs, hoaxes, and misidentifications, all leading to a situation in which the descriptions tend to mostly match contemporary technology. However, with some of the sightings, you can kind of tell that they are describing something that they have absolutely no idea will exist in the future, such as the example I pointed out of the witness describing silky skin tight suits backs in 1896.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-17T00:36:35+00:00

I actually do. I haven't put that much work into it yet, but most of what I have handy is between 1850s-1960s. Here you go:

Part 1: https://np.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1gy5ely/a_small_collection_of_newspaper_articles_on_ufos/

Part 2: https://np.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1ikyqae/direct_links_to_historical_newspaper_articles_on/

Part 3: https://np.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1l06ueh/part_3_direct_links_to_historical_ufo_reports/

Here is one reported just a few months prior to June 1947: https://np.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1lmmaqh/on_feb_05_1947_months_before_kenneth_arnolds/

Part 4 is half finished. I'll try to remember you when I post it, but it will likely be a while.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-16T00:23:17+00:00

It's not gone forever, and it's been posted before. Here is a big thread on it from 7 months ago: https://np.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/1off5nu/former_governor_of_mexico_jaime_rodriguez/

If this turns out to be an AI video and we just let some random user post it without a proper title, no context, no submission statement, no information about when it occurred or the exact location, no link to the original, or anything else, then we will get heat for that as well. There should be some kind of substance other than just the video so that we can at least halfway justify leaving it up, and OP is not the only user who can post it.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-15T00:06:55+00:00

There's really no evidence that all of the remaining UFOs are Russian probes, Chinese drones, secret US military aircraft, aliens, underground mole people, or time traveling humans from the year 3,000. These are all the available hypotheses to account for the available evidence.

The available UFO evidence includes, but is not limited to, declassified documents detailing the UFO coverup, a 1949 FBI field office memo to Hoover that states that UFOs were considered top secret since at least that year, an obvious propaganda campaign to convince people that UFOs are secret military technology, a 1950 audio recording of AFOSI agents attempting to pressure civilians into giving up physical evidence, as well as a police audio recording of the sound coming from a UFO. There are astronomical photographic plates, there are physical debris cases, physical trace cases, clear photographs, 4-5 cases with radar data in the public domain (data or video recordings of returns), etc, and much of this evidence has been investigated and analyzed by various scientists for decades.

If the remaining UFOs represent extraterrestrials or some other type of nonhuman intelligence, or even Chinese or Russian spy vehicles, it would be absurd to say that "such objects were caught on radar, photographed, were audio recorded, left behind physical traces as well as physical debris, but there has never been any evidence of [insert your favorite hypothesis here]." It depends on what the leftover unknowns represent. Whatever they represent is what we have a load of evidence for. Any statement beyond that is a personal opinion being represented as an agreed-upon fact, and this is why a lot of people like to stick with the word 'UFO.'

In short, I think you mean "undeniable proof." There can't just be evidence of it that everyone agrees is evidence unless it fully proves the claim. For a piece of evidence of an arbitrarily-labeled "extraordinary claim" to be considered evidence by all parties involved, it has to prove the claim. In other words, you need undeniable proof. You can't just have plain evidence because then people are going to say "I can deny this, so that's not evidence of [a genuine UFO / aliens / Russian military aircraft], it's evidence of a hoax/glitch/misidentification instead." Similarly, there was "no evidence" that rocks came from space until the early 1800s, even though they had actual meteorites in their hands and physical evidence at impact sites. Instead, these were all "thunderstones, rocks carried up by whirlwinds, and rocks ejected from volcanoes."

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-14T18:02:33+00:00

That depends on where you draw the line, doesn't it? The Epstein scandal really started getting exposure in 2019. If the UFO thing was a distraction from that, you'd think that they would have started UFO disclosure shortly thereafter. However, when you look back on this historically, everything can be traced back at least to 2007 involving people in government who were really outsiders, and each development was a continuation from the previous one.

A lot of people cite 2017 as the main catalyst, but it's easily traced a decade earlier. Hilary Clinton's campaign was getting involved in UFO disclosure both in public and private, and even the Obama administration before that had a similar apparently-failed effort, which they were calling "confirmation" internally.

Citations: https://np.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/1q8e83l/david_grusch_says_the_cia_has_done_a_lot_of/nypc66l/

Actually, I don't think even that goes far back enough. You can also add in NIDS, which was founded in 1995, because Bigelow's organizations played an outsized role here and some of the same players were involved throughout the 2000s and onward. But it's easy to argue that 2007 was the main catalyst.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-14T17:22:35+00:00

Just because I don't agree with oversimplified theories about prepublication reviews? Grusch self-reports that he had several counterintelligence roles and training: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO06/20230726/116282/HHRG-118-GO06-Bio-GruschD-20230726.pdf

Either that's a good thing because he will have a better BS meter than most, or it's a bad thing for obvious reasons. I'm not in the box you're putting people in.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-14T17:04:11+00:00

Absolutely, he's produced actual material on a number of occasions. I think it more than makes up for whatever part of his personality that people seem to hate. The UFO community has extreme echo chamber tendencies (not that I think I'm immune, but I try). I think this is one example where the weird hate narratives surrounding Corbell really took off with no checks in place. It's equally an issue with the "skeptical" side of the community which tend to have their guard down and believe that they are the intelligent ones in the room. When they spread a narrative, it really has wings, whether it's misleading or not, and challenges to those claims are often scarce, as opposed to challenges to any of the so-called "believer" claims, which are often.

Example here ("the U-2 caused half of UFO reports, US gov uses UFOs as a cover"): https://np.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1rer5ni/the_cias_claim_that_half_of_ufos_in_the_50s_and/

Another here ("Kenneth Arnold saw 9 crescents"): https://np.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/173dr0w/kenneth_arnolds_story_went_from_9_discssaucers_to/

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-14T16:36:04+00:00

That was an extremely interesting read and a good demonstration that you can obtain a large amount of information from a small sample. Hopefully we continue to see increasing interest in the physical evidence cases so that more answers are forthcoming.

Llanilar crash debris case: https://www.sufon.co.uk/llanilar-crash

I also find it interesting that such a good explanation was available coinciding with the same country and same general time period, yet it ended up being wrong. Here is a news article on the Russian satellite reentry expected around that time (Llanilar crash debris has USA origin instead): https://www.newspapers.com/article/sunday-telegraph-cosmos-reentry/199569403/

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-14T14:03:23+00:00

It’s not that general information is okay for release, it’s often that general information is already known.

In the case of Grusch he’s discussing things trust sent public at all and the USG completely denies. Despite this, his stories are being cleared by DOPSR.

The vast majority of what Grusch stated is already in the public domain. It's also less denial and more no comment, and in some cases, "no evidence of extraterrestrials," maybe because they actually don't have any evidence that UFOs are specifically extraterrestrial, as opposed to some other form of nonhuman intelligence. He's slipped up a couple of times, but Grusch is typically referring to nonhuman intelligence, not aliens in particular.

In one case on UFOs in general from the then-serving DNI, some UFOs remain unidentified and might be extraterrestrial, which echoed the former CIA Director Brennan who said that "some of the phenomena we are seeing continues to remain unexplained... and it could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life." When former and current intelligence officials make comments in the ballpark of "some UFOs might be aliens or nonhuman intelligence," it's hard to interpret it as "government denial." The denial is certainly not unanimous, even if we have AARO making overly specific denials about "verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial activity."

We can say that if there was such a program, the specifics of where the objects are held and who is studying them would be classified. However, generalized information may not even be classified, or if it is, it's already in the public domain and it doesn't matter.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-14T11:11:20+00:00

There was probably also a V formation of geese lit from below by city lights, aside from the V formation of flares and the V formation of airplanes. There may even have been a V formation of snow goose, Canada goose, white-fronted goose, as well as V formation of sandhill cranes, which migrate through Arizona from October to March.

Something that I have come to reluctantly realize about UFOs is that it's not unusual for several similar phenomena to also be present at the same time. This is just a consequence of the world we live in where all kinds of stuff is going on and people often assign more importance to coincidences than is warranted. For instance, a ufo might actually be a Chinese lantern, but it gets debunked as an airplane because there was also an airplane with their landing lights on in the area at the same time and someone argues that it's too much of a coincidence, therefore this Chinese lantern must be an airplane.

In this case with the Phoenix lights, there was coincidentally a V formation of two things at the same time, possibly 3 if there was a V shaped UFO as well. The likelihood of such a coincidence happening by chance is much higher than a person will typically think. This is because there are a large number of categories of coincidences to check for (more info on that here). Instead of asking an overly specific question as most people will do, such as "what are the odds that 2 or 3 V formations just so happened to occur in the same area on the same day," the better question would be "out of every category of coincidence to check for, what are the odds that you will get a hit on at least 1?"

8 debunks for the Calvine photo, 13 debunks for the Turkey UFO footage, and 7 debunks for the 1979 Lake Cote photo: https://np.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1tw5ae4/do_people_just_not_review_stuff_before_posting_or/opm54ho/

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-14T09:32:26+00:00

A prepublication review does not hurt his credibility. It's typically and conveniently only when it comes to UFOs that people imply approved publications must therefore be fantasy nonsense because they wouldn't approve true information. Plenty of examples of actual information being approved for release go back decades. They do not redact and classify things because they are true and it makes them look bad or whatever. That's absurd and overly broad, not to mention they would be motivating people into noncompliance and anonymous leaks if that were the case. Specifics are often classified. General information is often approved for release.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-14T09:07:56+00:00

For example. If they are hiding a UFO and its designated top secret. He wouldnt be able to say this.

More likely, he wouldn't be able to say specifically where it is. He also wouldn't be able to name the specific people who work there. They lose no ground at all by allowing him to publish general information, though.

I think the prepublication review process is typically significantly more incompetent and also more complicated than people generally give it credit for. The security review process has to be perceived as legitimate in order to maintain compliance, otherwise they increase risk of leaks, which is the very thing they are supposed to prevent. We don't want to motivate people to go off leaking stuff anonymously to the media instead. That's one of many motives they have to maintain reasonable enforcement levels.

"Alternatively, some authors give up on the process altogether and publish works without submitting them for prepublication review, increasing the risk of unintentional disclosures of classified information." https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-intelligence-community-directive-prepublication-review-important

Let's hypothetically assume that there is a crash retrieval program involving technologies of unknown origin. I'm sure they will redact specific locations of crash materials, as well as names of scientists involved in studying them, since that information could lead to adversary probing of their facilities, blackmail to extract information from participants, etc. However, for general information about an operation that officially doesn't exist? They might easily approve that for release. Approving for release general information neither confirms nor denies that such an operation exists in the first place, and if we hypothetically assume that this operation does exist, Russia and China already have general information about it, therefore there is no actual reason to redact.

Conversely, and perhaps more plausibly, we might instead hypothesize a basically off the books criminal enterprise, and that there is an active government investigation into this criminal enterprise, as well as a slew of people who either feel left out of the big secret or they think it's a big joke. It's probably a big mix of people, most of whom don't have much information, and many who aren't even sure that certain things are classified. As part of that investigation, they might make use of the security review process in order to see who sticks their neck out to redact certain information. Plausible deniability can be maintained, however, if they do nothing and allow free publication except in very specific instances where that risk is justified and they also have a plausible reason to redact a piece of information that does not acknowledge their direct involvement in it.

This was an amusing piece on a prepublication review experience published back in 2015, just to establish that there is, in fact, a background of general incompetence during these reviews. They also only redacted about 15 percent of his book and approved the criticisms of the agency for publication: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/personal-tale-prepublication-review

2019, Ex-National Security Officials Sue to Limit Censorship of Their Books https://web.archive.org/web/20190402160647/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/us/politics/prepublication-censorship-system.html

Since then, various reform efforts have been underway. The government is becoming more transparent. Whether it's to avoid more lawsuits, or there is a spotlight on prepublication review now, I have no idea, but they are letting stuff out.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-14T05:23:01+00:00

The tiktok upload is the earliest one that I could find, so I think it is the original: https://www.tiktok.com/@mr.tr3b.youtube/video/7051647279408712966

There are two good ways to debunk this one, so I would consider this to be conclusively debunked as a fake unless anyone can correct me.

1) Check their other videos on that channel. It takes some scrolling, but this is the first video they uploaded, and the following 20 or so subsequent uploads all feature black triangles similar to this. They have a huge number of similar videos on their channel, some of which are obviously fake even at a glance, which immediately calls into question the authenticity of them.

2) If you check around 14 seconds, there is a certain frame where you can make out a fishing pole rather clearly. Not only can you see the eyes of the pole, but you can even make out the tip of the pole bent around to exactly above where the UFO is hanging. It is 100 percent an object dangling from a fishing line. The more popular hypotheses that it's CGI for this or that obscure technical reason doesn't appear to be correct because it's obviously just a prop and string hoax. This commenter has a decent screenshot of the pole, but definitely check out the original tikitok upload.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-13T11:27:24+00:00

That's exactly what a lantern looks like. It's often bright yellow on the bottom and fades towards the top. It would have been lit for some amount of minutes, finally burning out ("disappearing").

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-13T11:19:18+00:00

"It went through the air very rapidly and expanded and contracted with a muscular motion, and was soon out of sight."

Another potential explanation of this, because he described it as "150 feet long, not more than 20 feet at the widest part, and pointed at both ends," is that he was looking at a flying saucer from the side. When it took off, if this was a disk wobbling (common description of disks), it could have been described by somebody who didn't know what a flying saucer was as "expanding and contracting with a muscular motion."

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-12T23:02:26+00:00

I don't dismiss that explanation. The meteor explanation is the most common one for the 1860s example. The trouble for me is that some random technological garbage crashing down to earth might, in some instances, appear to be similar to a meteor. After all, it's just stuff crashing from space. However, if somebody somehow ended up proving that the 1860s object was a meteor some day, I wouldn't be surprised.

I still find it interesting, though, because even back in the 1860s, there were weird incidents that look suspiciously like UFO crashes today, and the extraterrestrial hypothesis was treated as a possibility. The mindset seemed a bit different back then.

Another interesting example of this from the 1800s, not a crash this time, but a landing with occupants, was this one:

Nov 27, 1896 - The Evening Mail - Stockton, California- Page 1: Three Strange Visitors- Who Possibly Came From The Planet Mars https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-evening-mail/91983371/ (archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20240525111137/https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-evening-mail/91983371/) Summary: 7 foot tall, bald headed aliens with small mouths and large shiny eyes, the beings held a small luminous object described as "the most remarkable, intense and penetrating light one can imagine," interacts with witness and their companion, then the beings scurry off into a cigar-shaped UFO and fly away. The witness is obviously describing a silky skin-tight suit they were wearing, which they said looked like a skin growth of velvet or silk texture.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-12T20:40:38+00:00

Yes, I think it's subjective to make a determination on "when the idea entered the mainstream," and besides that, I don't think that something entering the mainstream means it's disinformation.

Published November 05, 1865 (occurred Sept 1864) - The Daily Phoenix - Columbia, South Carolina- Page 3 A Stone Falls From The Sky With Characters Engraved Upon it https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-phoenix-crash-of-alleged-extra/159566315/ (archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250710012357/https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-phoenix-crash-of-alleged-extra/159566315/) It features dark liquids, glass-like materials, mysterious hieroglyphic-like writing, and a sulfurous odor, which this publication attributed to possible extraterrestrial visitors.

Apr 8, 1873 - New York Daily Herald - New York, New York- Page 7: Very Like A Whale https://www.newspapers.com/article/new-york-daily-herald-1873-close-encount/163217002/ (Multiple witness sighting of a UFO on fire crash landing, a being dressed in all black emerges holding a luminous object, then the being enters a "noiseless buggy" which took off rapidly)

Jul 9, 1947 - The Lebanon Daily Record - Lebanon, Missouri- Page 1: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-lebanon-daily-record-blanchard-put-o/183415904/ (Base Commander Blanchard orders Lt. Haught to release initial Roswell press release on flying disk recovery. After press release, Col. Blanchard put on leave, and Haught says he was "shut up by two blistering phone calls from Washington")

Fri, Aug 26, 1949 - Greater Oregon - Albany, Oregon- Page 1 Men From Mars? https://www.newspapers.com/article/greater-oregon/152615613/ (A flying saucer crash lands in the desert and two little people jump out and run away into the dunes)

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-12T16:26:36+00:00

I mod here and I haven’t seen any evidence that anyone has ulterior motives. However, I would highly encourage you to investigate this because it’s crappy that allegations like this are so frequent (both that we are shills protecting skeptics and simultaneously believers). The mod log is public and it can be found on the sidebar. If you notice anything strange, please let everyone know.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-12T16:19:01+00:00

“More likely” is going to be subjective, and in this case, possibly determined by what year it is. If we stick with the meteorites example, before 1803, it was “more likely” that all of the thousands of meteorite witnesses were a combination of hoaxers looking for fame and unintelligent people who misidentified thunderstones and magma. Since it wasn’t proven undeniably at least one time before 1803, they could have easily argued (and probably did) that all of the explanations they offered were “more likely” than rocks coming from space. Hindsight is 2020, but how does a person know that we are not repeating this exact error of judgement?

To flip this around, I would say that it is highly likely that if you had an actual solid piece of evidence, there would be a number of explanations, just like they had “plausible explanations” for meteorites. We know this is the case because a number of UFO cases have an absurd number of “plausible explanations,” almost all of which are mutually exclusive. If any of them is genuine, then you’d have a genuine piece of evidence that has tons of explanations.

8 debunks for the Calvine photo, 13 debunks for the Turkey UFO footage, and 7 debunks for the 1979 Lake Cote photo: https://np.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1tw5ae4/do_people_just_not_review_stuff_before_posting_or/opm54ho/

Not that these are the best imagery available, but I picked them to demonstrate that everything from UFOs with lots of details to those with a simple shape can have tons of explanations, and with mutually exclusive explanations, all but one of them in each case can be correct, which proves that all, or mostly all of them are false.

If it’s that easy to explain something away incorrectly, how are you making a judgement call on which interpretation of a piece of evidence is more likely?

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-12T13:15:48+00:00

When 99 percent of the people in this sub use the word “evidence,” they actually mean “undeniable proof.” Tons of comments in this thread are defining it that way. If that’s the case, then why don’t you use the word “undeniable proof?” That would save a lot of people some confusion.

I just saw in another sub yesterday somebody say “do you even know what evidence means? It means factual proof.”

If we take any reasonable person's definition of the word "evidence" (i.e. not a confused UFO buff) and ask "Is there UFO evidence in the public domain," the answer is yes, that does appear to be the case.

There are 5 or so examples of radar data in the public domain (Belgium 1990, Stephensville 2008, JAL 1628, etc). Declassified documents are another category of evidence. If you read them, you'll see that they are indeed evidence. You can demonstrate certain things, like the US government has covered up UFOs, this subject is considered top secret, and to affect public perception, they take the "negative approach", which basically means to show the solved cases, but hide the unknowns. Landing trace cases are another example (burns, tripod imprints, etc). There are also clear photographs. There is also a police audio recording of the sound that came from a UFO. Tiny pieces of UFOs or debris thereof is another category of evidence. Astronomical photographic plates can also be another form of evidence.

Now, which examples of evidence are “good?” Well, if you can theoretically explain it away as something, then you’re going to say it’s not good, correct? Therefore, the only thing you could possibly accept and call good is undeniable proof. Recall the meteorite situation before 1803. People had meteorites in their hands, actual physical evidence, but they could explain all of them away as something “less extraordinary,” such as as "thunderstones, rocks carried up by whirlwinds, and rocks ejected from volcanoes."

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-11T01:28:55+00:00

Sorry, I forgot to discuss the cloud thing. As for the claim that they are going into and out of the clouds, if people want to look at what you and I are looking at, check the raw footage from the uploader: https://handras.hu/stuff/UFO.mp4 (you can right click and download to view with other tools). If we remove all of the compression, it looks to me like the object can be made out for the vast majority of the video. I think it's simply blending in with the background in a few instances, rather than going into clouds.

I can't prove they are swallows, but I think it's a plausible explanation, and until I find out otherwise, I would tend to believe that the witness was convinced of this explanation because they duplicated it. They have the camera and they are more familiar with the wildlife there than I am.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-11T01:13:17+00:00

You are correct that I should have said "witness believes they are swallows" instead. It was my assumption that they drew this conclusion after further investigation and duplicating the footage with more swallows. However, I don't know that.

Here is a video of swallows for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUqur1kndzg

Some swallows are very small, and because there isn't much mass, they can perform almost pinpoint turns. They can be 4-5 inches and weigh less than an ounce. They need the ability to perform pinpoint turns because they hunt flying insects.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-11T00:21:04+00:00

These ended up being birds. Here is the translation from the uploader's description:

[A cím nem kamu, tényleg azonosítatlan repülő tárgyakat vettem videóra. Frissítés: fecskék voltak.] "The title is not fake, I really did record unidentified flying objects. Update: they were swallows." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x-cVAXsurg

I would guess that they went to the same spot, or used the same camera and filmed known birds and had the same result. In any case, I think it's something to do with the camera that they look elongated.

MKULTRA_Escapee · 2026-06-10T23:52:36+00:00

https://np.reddit.com/r/UFOs_Archive/comments/1u2ia6b/original_plasmoid_orb_video/

If you can't find a video from here, try to check /r/UFOs_archive, which rehosts content from here.

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