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 →