In June 2007, a freelance photographer named Steven took the following photograph as he was walking in the woods of Big Basin, California.:
Over the next month, people in other parts of California photographed similar objects (and posted them anonymously), and the following are just an example of the images recorded:
The UFO community went crazy. These were the first high quality, high resolution photographs of UFOs ever captured. Furthermore there were a lot of them, taken by many different people in many different locations. They were quizkly dubbed the ‘dragonfly’ or ‘drone’ UFOs.
Later that month, an individual using the pseudonym ‘Isaac’ went public with an explanation of what these craft were. He claimed that during the 1980s he worked for a beyond top secret government organization on a program named CARET, the goal of which was to reverse engineer extraterrestrial technology. These UFOs were, he said, products of such research.
All of his claims are still readable on his website. Be sure to click on the photos and scans he provides.
There is something remarkable going on here, and looking back at it from three years hence (I only found out about this yesterday) makes it even more strange.
It’s all fake, of course. Within weeks countless experts had exposed the images as the product of 3D modelling software Maya and illustration software Photoshop. The ‘drones’ were 3D models composited onto real images. Isaac’s images were not fake in that they seemed to be actual scans. However it is certain the documentation that had been scanned itself was fake. The quality of the fakes is extremely high – obviously someone (or some group) put a great deal of work into this.
What makes this story quite unusual is that no one has ever come forward and revealed it was their work.
There have been many stories, the most intriguing of which was it was a professional viral marketing campaign (for what?). But it’s all speculation, and the fact remains that to this day – over three years later – it is unknown who created the images and why.