Scoutcraft Stew

In the fifties people started seeing a lot of 'Adamski type scoutscrafts' and also apparently photographing them. Here's a comment from ufocasebook.com on the photograph (above).

Australia, 1954. This very compelling photograph of a clearly defined round UFO with top and antenna was taken by sheep farmer W. C. Hall in 1954. If you look real closely, you might see another unknown object in the distance just above a mountain. An excellent photo, and for a newspaper clipping, it is in excellent condition.

So, what to make of it? I do believe some of the material from the 1950s is in fact genuine but to complicate matters there certainly were people jumping on the bandwagon and deliberately faking photographs. With the W.C. Hall picture I remain undecided. George Adamski and Howard Menger did have many eyewitnesses that supported some of their claims and claimed to have seen the 'scoutcrafts' as well. On the other hand, some photographs do look suspicious and there were also attempts by the skeptics faking photographs or films - passing them off as genuine - exposing them later on and thereby ridiculing UFO believers who 'bought' it.

Frame of a faked movie by Gray Barker, Jim Moseley and John Sheets

I'm at odds if attempts like the one made by Moseley, Barker and Sheets are a service or disservice for Ufology. I suppose it's both. People are reminded that they can be easily fooled but it can swing to other side of the spectrum where genuine photo's are arbitrarily dismissed. I'm not sure that faking material, passing them off as genuine and later exposing it as a deliberate hoax, is the way to go. The ridicule that comes with it can't be a good thing. On another note, people who did hoax UFO material do suffer the full force of skeptics and believers alike and are branded for life. So why should the skeptics receive praise for the same act?



To make matters even more complicated there are pictures out there claimed by several people. The one above has been claimed by Neil Slade, I read on the net that Paul Villa took it and another source lists it as taken by Tahalita Fry (Dan Fry's wife). (And there are even more claimants.) This is of course a mess since only one source can be the right one. About the picture itself, I have my doubts. I'm leaning towards probably faked - 'Adamski copycat.'

Even in the 1950s there was already mayhem in abundance. In some ways it shows more about the people involved then actual UFOs. If there were actual contacts back then, I'm sure the aliens were scratching their heads as well.