The Aliens have Landed?

I am easily fascinated by urban legends, harmless hoaxes and the like. By that, I don't mean I'm gullible: it takes a lot to convince me that something strange has really happened. What I mean is that I'm interested in the forms they take and in our need to perpetrate them.

I'm not sure if the Utah Monolith can rightly be described as a hoax. It seems more accurate to describe it as a work of art. The host of imitations that have cropped up around the world since it appeared, though, are a typical hoax-like human reaction to its discovery.

Perhaps it's because I was writing recently about the 1960s and the difference between then and now that I found myself thinking of a story I saw on the TV news when I was small. All I can recall is a scrappy, visual memory of a group of policemen and other serious-looking officials breaking open a flying saucer to reveal an Ever Ready battery. 

A search of the internet quickly filled in the missing details. This was the 1967 British flying saucer hoax. I was nine at the time. A group of engineering students made six small flying saucers and distributed them in one night across Southern England. The design was ingenious: to maintain the unbroken surface of the outer hull, the electronic sound effects inside each craft could be switched on by simply turning it over. They were arranged in a line: locations included a golf course at Bromley, a housing estate on the Isle of Sheppey and a paddock in Winkfield, near Ascot. If it really had been an alien visitation, it's interesting to speculate what impression the visitors might have formed of Earth's inhabitants.

They were quickly discovered. This being 1967, the police were called in and the armed forces mobilized. The army blew up a saucer found at Chippenham. If this really had been an alien invasion, I dread to think what effect this might have had. Another was X-rayed by the police and another sent to Aldermaston. The authorities did try drilling into one of them, only to find themselves squirted with a foul-smelling mixture which some news-sources described as flour and water and others described as pig-swill. And that's one of the things that's so interesting about these kind of events - the way that as soon as you start telling the story, different versions evolve and the details become uncertain. It's interesting, too, to think that most people watching their TVs at the time probably thought the authorities had done the right thing. In fact, looking back, the authorities were as susceptible to the paranoia circulating at the time as everyone else. Possibly more so.

And how things have changed. If this happened now, it's possible that people would just say 'Oh yeah, it's one of those land artists' and move on. The aliens would be left jumping up and down, dodging golf-balls and waving their arms in an effort to attract attention.