UFO stupidities:

Abduct My Wallet: Confessions of a UFO Hoaxer

By Lee Shargel
May 18, 2004

The Aliens are coming! The Aliens are coming! Folks don't believe it. The only aliens that are coming are sneaking under a fence somewhere along the Texas border. How can I be so sure? Well, for one thing we've caught a few of them and they don't have tentacles, ray guns or flying saucers. What they do have is bad breath, bad directions and a pocket full of jallopenos. Sorry, no mystery here.

In 1996, I wrote a science fiction novel entitled "Voice in the Mirror." It was a fictional story about the discovery of life on another planet. The other planet was Earth. Yes, they discovered us. Now that's a switch. In my pursuit to find a publisher, I found that I was gathering enough rejection slips to wallpaper my house. Since, my wife felt that the rejection slip pattern did not fit the decor, I decided it was time for a different approach to this publising game. So, Doctor Lee Shargel, Top Secret NASA scientist was born.

I decided that the best way to get the book published was to make the slightest inference that it just might be real. Lo and behold, the NEW AGE publishers were beating down my door. I secured a publisher and a nice (if not small) advance check. I was ready to meet the world as a fictional Top Secret NASA scientist and holder of a PhD in Egyptian Quantum Mechanics. (That degree was made up in a pinch, but it, too, worked) I got an agent and a manager who were only to eager to cash in on the UFO craze. But first it required a plan.

I was booked into a UFO convention in Philadelphia were I presented photos of the actual spacship that had crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. I blew them away with showmanship and P.T. Barnum hucksterisms. And I'll be darned, it worked. I thought, "Hey, there's money to be mined in these Black Hills of Alien Wonder." Note: Around this time our little blue planet had a celestial visitor named Hale-Bopp. So, thinking I should jump on the comet bandwagon, I rode the tail of this comet all the way to the bank and stopped off briefly for a two hour stint on Art Bell's Coast to Coast radio broadcast where I stated with a sci-fi preface that a "Companion" was following the comet. This created quite a stir and unbeknownst to me then, was heard by a small group of people in San Diego, who called themselves, Heaven's Gate. I was invited to be the guest speaker at the International UFO Congress's annual meeting held in Laughlin, Nevada. There I would bring the audience to tears with my tales of abductions, governemnt conspiracies, photos of flying saucers (created in Hollywood of all places) Dolphinoid Aliens (Yeah that was one of my best) and a little piece of alien spacecraft. I saw first hand how these Alien Carnival barkers were picking the pockets (just as I was unashamedly doing at the time) of the thousands of attendees that travelled from all over the world and beyond, (Hey, you never know) to have their ears tickled by speculation and out right lies. As far as I was concerned, this was the height of entertainment. Everything was going fine until it was discovered that I was encroaching on the territory and the profits of this alien mafia.

I was accosted by the UFO congressional leadership, (who voted for these BOZOS anyway?) who threatened my very existence unless I was to cease and desist from this foul game I was playing. They had this turf covered and there was no room for the likes of me. Oh, unless I wanted to share the profits of my alien gotten gain. I refused and was banished to Bogeyland. (That's internet Hell in case you were wondering.)

And so as they say, the rest is history. I was cast into the abyss of the remainder pile at my local bookstore, forced to tolerate the myriad of lies written about me and posted on the internet and finally suffered the greatest of humilations, my publisher took the money and ran! Well, I rebounded in cool New York style. (I am from the Bronx!) I began writing magazine articles and screenplays again. I started a feature film company, FilmWorks LSD ("Indie Filmmaking - It's a Trip!") and I have a new book coming out that has absolutely nothing to do with aliens or the pickpockets that represent them. Now, Ain't that America?

About the author: Lee Shargel is executive producer of FilmWorks LSD, a feature film company. He is also an internationally known science fiction author (Voice in the Mirror). He is also infamous for his International UFO hoax which coincided with the Heaven's Gate tragedy. In spite of the tragedy of those 39 people, Lee Shargel proved his point. The UFO community is a Galactic Crime syndicate preying on the unsuspecting minds, fears, hopes and wallets of millions of people worldwide. His next book due out later this year entitled: "The Christmas Siren" is slated for production as a feature film. You can visit Lee Shargel and FilmWorks LSD at: www.sibotmotion.com