{"id":1950,"date":"2015-08-13T21:30:33","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T21:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/?p=1950"},"modified":"2020-06-12T13:10:16","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T13:10:16","slug":"hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"HOAX: UFO \/ Mothership “Viral” Photograph Taken in Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"HOAX:<\/a>
This is, from what I can tell, the original posting that connecting a reflection to a “UFO” and made up the fact that Facebook was removing the photo. If true, I wonder why it’s still up after 600,000\u00a0shares?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Well, it’s a photograph that’s too good to be true.<\/p>\n

You’ve probably seen it. At the time of writing this case file, on August 13, 2015, the photograph had more than 690,000 SHARES on Facebook alone. \u00a0The tagline? It reads, “This photo was taken in Australia, get it out there as Facebook are trying to remove it.”<\/em><\/p>\n

With a tagline like that, who wouldn’t LIKE it and SHARE it to their friends? I mean, Facebook was covering this up and it was on the internet, so, it HAD to be true, right?<\/p>\n

Once it was shared to me like 2 or 3 thousand times, I decided to take a moment to investigate.<\/p>\n

Here were my initial thoughts:<\/p>\n

Clearly, the photographer was above ground, since the trees were below him. We can deduce he’s probably in a building (rather than sitting in an open sky crane in a lightning storm), so therefore, probably shooting through the pane of a glass window. \u00a0With the “UFO” having 4, equal cut, “slices” in it, it screamed (to me anyway) this was a chandelier or light on the ceiling of a\u00a0room.<\/p>\n

I have seen thousands of UFO photographs over the years, and many of them are usually photos taken through glass, and a mysterious object shows up in the frame. Yet, it’s the taking of the photo through glass that really is the issue. I felt\u00a0that could explain this photo quite easily.<\/p>\n

Looking out the window, many times, lit objects BEHIND your point of view can be seen as a reflection. \u00a0Most of us have that little thing called common sense to figure out, “Hey, that’s a reflection of a lamp.” \u00a0But, send out a low resolution photo of that reflection onto the internet, add a spooky tagline caption, and voila — you have a viral UFO photograph.<\/p>\n

So, I wanted to prove or disprove my theory so I set out to Google’s handy dandy search engine to take a look at what I could find. \u00a0Well, someone beat me to solving this thing. And, it confirms what I thought.<\/p>\n

With credit to the\u00a0SKEPT!CAL blog<\/a>, they made the discovery of a near identical looking\u00a0lighting<\/a>\u00a0feature that actually\u00a0can be yours for a little over $1,300!<\/p>\n

\"Cowboy<\/a>
Cowboy Silhouette Extra Large Semi Flush Mount Ceiling Light<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Is this an exact match? It looks pretty darn close. Same spacing on the bottom, same or similar design on the side, and, of course, coloring looks just like a southwest\/cowboy color to give that rustic feel.<\/p>\n

They even take it one step farther, and find what is probably the exact location the original “UFO” photograph was taken.<\/p>\n

\"You<\/a>
You can see the tree line matches the original image. The beautiful mountains aren\u2019t visible in the original image, due to the thunderstorm.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The above photograph was taken at the\u00a0Signal Mountain Lodge in Wyoming. \u00a0Quite a distance from the alleged location being Australia in the original post. \u00a0Here is a photograph from inside one of the lodges:<\/p>\n

\"Although<\/a>
Although not an exact match, it’s pretty close. This is one of the lodges available, and although we don’t have access to a photo of each and every lodge, my guess, is one of the lodges as the lamp above in the room.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I guess that old saying, “If it looks to good to be true… it usually is” may apply to this one.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it’s a photograph that’s too good to be true. You’ve probably seen it. At the time of writing this case file, on August 13, 2015, the photograph had more than 690,000 SHARES on Facebook alone. \u00a0The tagline? It reads, “This photo was taken in Australia, get it out there as Facebook are trying to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7,2,41],"tags":[157,49,493,118,483,491,492],"class_list":{"0":"post-1950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-daytime-sightings","8":"category-hoaxes","9":"category-ufos","10":"category-w-photo","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-hoax","13":"tag-lightning","14":"tag-mothership","15":"tag-storm","16":"tag-viral","17":"tag-wyoming"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\nHOAX: UFO \/ Mothership "Viral" Photograph Taken in Australia - The Black Vault Case Files<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"John Greenewald\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"HOAX: UFO \/ Mothership \"Viral\" Photograph Taken in Australia - The Black Vault Case Files","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"John Greenewald","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/"},"author":{"name":"John Greenewald","@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/#\/schema\/person\/2a0a4499606a778e3ae0380fd8a81c49"},"headline":"HOAX: UFO \/ Mothership “Viral” Photograph Taken in Australia","datePublished":"2015-08-13T21:30:33+00:00","dateModified":"2020-06-12T13:10:16+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/"},"wordCount":645,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/8-13-2015-1-44-24-PM.jpg","keywords":["australia","hoax","lightning","Mothership","Storm","viral","wyoming"],"articleSection":["Daytime Sightings","Hoaxes","UFOs","w\/ Photo"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/","name":"HOAX: UFO \/ Mothership \"Viral\" Photograph Taken in Australia - The Black Vault Case Files","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/8-13-2015-1-44-24-PM.jpg","datePublished":"2015-08-13T21:30:33+00:00","dateModified":"2020-06-12T13:10:16+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/8-13-2015-1-44-24-PM.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/8-13-2015-1-44-24-PM.jpg","width":1225,"height":624},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/hoax-ufo-mothership-viral-photograph-taken-in-australia\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"UFOs","item":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/category\/ufos\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Daytime Sightings","item":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/category\/ufos\/daytime-sightings\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"w\/ Photo","item":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/category\/ufos\/daytime-sightings\/w-photo\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":5,"name":"HOAX: UFO \/ Mothership “Viral” Photograph Taken in Australia"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/","name":"The Black Vault Case Files","description":"Discover the Truth","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/#organization","name":"The Black Vault","url":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/1.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/1.png","width":350,"height":110,"caption":"The Black Vault"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TheBlackVault","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/TheBlackVaultTV"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/#\/schema\/person\/2a0a4499606a778e3ae0380fd8a81c49","name":"John Greenewald","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/49e167a0fd63564e8d54fa9b2ee5f1c9c4e6808ec394e8da6d328f5733c76582?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/49e167a0fd63564e8d54fa9b2ee5f1c9c4e6808ec394e8da6d328f5733c76582?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"John Greenewald"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/author\/administrator\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7391,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions\/7391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/casefiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}