67 - The Ummo Affair

This week we're looking at one of the stranger UFO hoaxes in history: the space people from the planet Ummo. Beginning in 1960s Spain, upwards to 6,700 people started receiving letters from entities alleging to be from a star system 14.6 lightyears from Earth. The aliens wrote of a history with more than a little resemblance to the history of Spain in the 20th century and told a familiar tale of a looming nuclear apocalypse. They even showed up in Spanish skies just long enough for one intrepid photographer to get some shots of their flying saucers, and they left behind strange cylinders containing products manufactured by DuPont Chemical. Decades later, a shady science teacher/hypnotist named José Luis Jordán Peña said that he had hoaxed the whole thing to show how gullible everyone was. He also said the CIA provided him with buckets of radioactive sand to help with his hoaxing. And that is far from the only confusing part of Peña's confession.