Famous Belgian UFO Photo A Fake

[Sentry]

Photos of UFOs, ghosts, cryptos etc. should always be met with skepticism, and evaluated critically. Still photos are easy to fake and at best should be considered supporting, not conclusive evidence.

I'm not sure of the international recognition of this photo, and perhaps this confession is genuine. It is worth noting that at various times individuals have made claims of responsibility for various things, ranging from being Anastasia, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Jack the Ripper, the man inside the Bigfoot suit or the triggerman in the JFK assassination.

Conversation is not scientific evidence, and that applies to everything, including claims of the paranormal and claims of originating famous hoaxes.

 

[Randall]

Shouldn't this all be under the "Black Triangles" thread?

 

[The Pair of Cats]

How many people looked at this image and proclaimed it to be real? Nasa, optical physicists, photo experts? Yet some people only have to hear one dude claim it is fake to throw it away. Let me turn this around. We have plenty of expert testimony saying that the image is real. For this to be busted, we need a recreation. Period. Not just one guy claiming fake.

So just so I am clear the image in question is this one, right?

Well said, Ron.
Let's see this guy reproduce his "hoax" before we get too excited. Hell it took several posts before anyone could agree which one was the "hoax" picture for petes sake!

 

[Simone_m]

Extraordinary hoaxes require extraordinary evidence. Who -really- is this little ["censored for extreme T&C violations"] anyway, and why now?

 

[drew hempel]

Umm I saw a big black equilateral triangle military craft up close in summer of 1997. I posted it in the black triangles forum. Suffice it to say the big black triangle craft are real -- they are military -- they are not blimps -- they do have some sort of antigravity technology.

I didn't just see the lights -- as was the case for UFO Hunters on the big black triangle -- all the witnesses on that show only saw the lights. I could have hit the craft with a rock but I didn't dare take my eyes off it.

 

[Facius_Cardan]

After searching for the original story on the web I found an article, published on the Belgian newspaper "Le Soir", where the purported hoaxer confessed that he had faked the picture. The confession was made to a RTL (belgian TV channel) journalist. You may check the stories through the links below (both in french):

http://www.rtl.be/loisirs/detente/i...petit-rechain-aussi-faux-que-celui-de-roswell

Ltait un panneau de frigolite - lesoir.be

According to the newspaper, the faked photo was this one:


The one mentioned by the belgian military in their investigation and by Leslie Kean (as presented in her website) is this one:


In the end, they may both be fakes, but I must say that after reading the story from the original belgian sources I'm not convinced of the full veracity of Patrick's claims. Why did he come forward only now? And to what purpose? Can he recreate the photo he supposedly hoaxed back in the 90's? Does this story delete all the witness reports (including police officers and military personel) and radar data? I guess they'll have to reopen the file and check the data, but this story cannot be taken at face value. They'll have to do more to dispel my doubts...

 

[stephen dedalus]

According to the newspaper, the faked photo was this one:


The one mentioned by the belgian military in their investigation and by Leslie Kean (as presented in her website) is this one:

The televised report seems to contradict Le Soir. The bottom photo (the 4 April 1990 Petit Rechain photo which receives extended treatment by de Brouwer in Kean's book) appears to be the one "Patrick" is claiming credit for having produced, while the top photo, usually attributed to J.S. Henrardi and believed to have been taken on 15 June 1990 near Wallonia, does not appear in the story:

It would be nice if the media could do its homework and consistently publish the same photo in connection with this. It would also be nice to get a recreation from "Patrick," but I'm not holding my breath.

---------- Post added at 10:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:54 AM ----------

Conversation is not scientific evidence, and that applies to everything, including claims of the paranormal and claims of originating famous hoaxes.

Quite right, but with a phenomenon as notoriously resistant to normal scientific practice as the UFO/UAP phenomenon, sometimes conversation is all one gets. A hoax claim is not definitive proof of anything, but it's certainly not as easily dismissible as some might want it to be. Let's say that "Patrick" never agrees to attempt a recreation. That won't alter the fact that the history of the Petit-Rechain photo now includes a confession from an self-described hoaxer. There is no striking the claim from the record, no matter what. There's always going to be a niggling suspicion surrounding the photo. Those skeptical of Patrick's claims might argue that this is precisely the motivation for perpetrating a hoaxed hoax: tainting the photo in the court of public opinion does not require hard data to back it up. The claim is enough. But as valid as that argument may be, we may also have to consider the possibility that the "experts" got it wrong, and some mischievous Belgian armed only with "conversation" actually has the real explanation for this photo. And while we're at it, let's not forget that "scientific proof" is never just hard data or facts: it's language produced by taking data, filtering it through a disciplinary interpretive apparatus, and trying to convey that interpretation in words. The dichotomy between conversation and scientific proof, in other words, may not be as well-defined as you suggest. That boundary is permeable: mere "conversation" is part of science.

 

[Facius_Cardan]

It would be nice if the media could do its homework and consistently publish the same photo in connection with this. It would also be nice to get a recreation from "Patrick," but I'm not holding my breath.

I doubt this story will get any further publicity in the media, belgian or otherwise. For the larger audiences the so-called "belgian UFO wave" is long forgotten and this confession adds nothing to what wasn't news from the beginning. UFO deniers will find new fodder to throw against the hard-core believers. The latter will probably say that this Patrick guy was probably coherced by the dark forces of an unknown government to shake the credibility of this case. In the end everything will stay the same.
To me, on a personal level, I've noticed that I find the UFO field (whatever that is) increasingly ridiculous and irrational. That feeling is permanently corroding the genuine interest and curiosity I had for the subject. Frankly, I'm tired of the subject as a whole, the lack of credibility of the reports, the few photographic/video evidence is never clear or conclusive enough and the whole array of people that orbit around the UFO subject are, for the most part, annoying and gullible. I'm sincerely thinking of putting this whole stuff away from my mind and fully subscribe the psycho-social theories. As hard as it may be to dismiss the evidence as a whole, there's just been too much time without meaningful advancements in the UFO mystery to conclude that it is anything more than misidentification or human psychology working in anomalous ways.

 

[stephen dedalus]

To me, on a personal level, I've noticed that I find the UFO field (whatever that is) increasingly ridiculous and irrational. That feeling is permanently corroding the genuine interest and curiosity I had for the subject. Frankly, I'm tired of the subject as a whole, the lack of credibility of the reports, the few photographic/video evidence is never clear or conclusive enough and the whole array of people that orbit around the UFO subject are, for the most part, annoying and gullible. I'm sincerely thinking of putting this whole stuff away from my mind and fully subscribe the psycho-social theories. As hard as it may be to dismiss the evidence as a whole, there's just been too much time without meaningful advancements in the UFO mystery to conclude that it is anything more than misidentification or human psychology working in anomalous ways.

I, too, am beginning to suffer from flagging interest in this "field." I think perhaps we've reached what Thomas Kuhn might call a crisis phase: the dominant paradigms have ceased to be convincing, and with no compelling replacement paradigm waiting in the wings, we're all left floating untethered in a sea of possibilities. This can be liberatory, but it can also be frustrating and discouraging.

It doesn't help that so many charlatans have realized how gullible many of us tend to be. The "field" tends to attract seekers who just want an answer, any answer, and will cling in desperation to any snake-oil salesman willing to give them what they need.

Yet somehow, tantalizingly, the core phenomenon (whatever it is, inner or outer, physical or psychological, or the breakdown of the binaries that separate these categories), the residue of the as-yet-unexplained, remains, even if it is in reduced capacity. It is very healthy to take breaks from this topic, but the kernel of mystery, I suspect, will keep drawing us back whether we will or no, Icarus to the sun, moth to the candle. The key, I think, is to fly close enough to the fire to feel its undeniable heat, but not so close that we risk being consumed. A pile of ash is beyond all learning.

 

[uforadio]

Thread was already started on July 27th on Black Triangles forum:
https://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/306-Petit-Rechain/page2?p=120818

Articles and Videos Chronology:
https://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/306-Petit-Rechain?p=120757#post120757

Patrick Ferryn, president of COBEPS, stated that this admission resolves origin of photo but can't affect the integrity of Belgium UFO wave itself.
http://tinyurl.com/3sfuw2n

16 minute feature about the whole story. Guests in the studio were Auguste Meessen and Pierre Magarain.
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/345410.aspx

16minutes RTL video TRANSLATION-part 1 by chikane:
https://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/306-Petit-Rechain?p=120793#post120793

16minutes RTL video TRANSLATION-part 2 by chikane:
https://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/306-Petit-Rechain?p=120804#post120804

Translated video with english subs:
http://www.wat.tv/video/eng-sub-fake-belgian-ufo-picture-3xzkf_3xzit_.html</SPAN></SPAN></SPAN>

Suggestion for Mod to merge the threads.

Best Wishes.

 

[Sean Elifritz]

Damn, I looked around but hadn't seen another thread. But I tend to forget about that triangles section even being there and pretty much never visit it. A UFO is a UFO. Shouldn't matter if it's circular, a triangle, a square, a hexagon, etc.

---------- Post added at 11:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:40 AM ----------

Additionally, that thread doesn't start off with the hoax confession. One has to scroll down through several replies of generalized discussion about the photograph before it transforms into talk about it being a hoax.

 

[uforadio]

Auguste Meessen challenges the "hoaxer" face to face:
http://www.ufoupdateslist.com/2011/jul/m28-004.shtml

Updates form Gildas Bourdais:
http://www.ufoupdateslist.com/2011/jul/m30-003.shtml

---------- Post added at 05:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:45 PM ----------

Damn, I looked around but hadn't seen another thread. But I tend to forget about that triangles section even being there and pretty much never visit it. A UFO is a UFO. Shouldn't matter if it's circular, a triangle, a square, a hexagon, etc.

---------- Post added at 11:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:40 AM ----------

Additionally, that thread doesn't start off with the hoax confession. You have to scroll down several replies until it turns into that.

Hi Wickerman. No problem. It is complety understadable as I would also never found if I haven't search the forum with the word "Patrick". In fact I never visited that section of forum before and didn't even know that it exists

 

[Michael Allen]

It is not clear in your statement which belief system are you speaking of...

(1) The belief that some UFOs represent intelligently controlled craft of non-human origin
(2) All UFOs are mistaken identification of common aerial phenomenon or man-made objects.

Which explanation is more desperate...I think xenophobia is a REAL phenomenon in human beings, and it shows in many ways (particularly in what some others have mislabeled as "skepticism" )

You can turn the question around, why would someone release a faked photo and represent it as a real object if the object wasn't real? The answer to my question is as vacuous and useless as yours, Wickerman.

You almost make it sound as if a hoaxer could never lie about unveiling his own hoax. Just as there are plenty of reasons why a person would want to hoax (which you evidently do not deny), so there are plenty of motivators behind "false confessions."

As such I think your explanation (bias) may represent your "desperate attempt to hold" on item (2) or at best a complete negation of (1) .

Cheers.

 

[Angel of Ioren]

I've merged the two threads.

 

[Lauren Jones]

Extraordinary hoaxes require extraordinary evidence. Who -really- is this little ["censored for extreme T&C violations"] anyway, and why now?

Hi. What are you referring to?

 

[Ron Collins]

Since my French is abysmal is there any pure english reports on this? Has this "Patrick" been confirmed as the "Patrick"? The other slides that he has, have they been inspected?

If the photo is faked, then the real question becomes how was it analyzed and how was it determined to be real and by whom. Furthermore, some questions need to be answered about the hoaxer. What time period was the photo faked. Was it a construct right out of the imagination of this guy or was it a rendering of what was already being described. Is there confirmation of the hoax story from the others involved?

Unfortunately, this situation underscores the problem with resting any real stock in photographic "evidence". We really need to be looking at cases that have multiple avenues for the sighting. Radar, images, multiple witnesses in multiple areas, triangulation, and consistent testimony. I still think that the Belgium wave is a good series of sightings regardless of this photo's status one way or the other. But I think the biggest story, if it is indeed a fake, is that multiple experts can be fooled convincingly.

 

[Sean Elifritz]

Since my French is abysmal is there any pure english reports on this? Has this "Patrick" been confirmed as the "Patrick"? The other slides that he has, have they been inspected?

If the photo is faked, then the real question becomes how was it analyzed and how was it determined to be real and by whom. Furthermore, some questions need to be answered about the hoaxer. What time period was the photo faked. Was it a construct right out of the imagination of this guy or was it a rendering of what was already being described. Is there confirmation of the hoax story from the others involved?

Unfortunately, this situation underscores the problem with resting any real stock in photographic "evidence". We really need to be looking at cases that have multiple avenues for the sighting. Radar, images, multiple witnesses in multiple areas, triangulation, and consistent testimony. I still think that the Belgium wave is a good series of sightings regardless of this photo's status one way or the other. But I think the biggest story, if it is indeed a fake, is that multiple experts can be fooled convincingly.

A lot of answers for the questions you're asking are now at the beginning of the thread as Angelo merged it with another.

My own personal opinion about photo analysis is that it is impossible to say that something is real. All you can really do is look for evidence that it is fake. You might not find any but that doesn't mean the image is real, just that the creator didn't make any obvious mistakes. And since this wasn't done digitally, he used a model with lights on it, it would be more difficult to find negative evidence against it because even though the object in the picture isn't a spaceship or even a jet it is a real picture of a real object.

 

[stephen dedalus]

If the photo is faked, then the real question becomes how was it analyzed and how was it determined to be real and by whom.

The "by whom" is all on page 30 of Kean's UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record, available on Google books.

As for the question of how it was analyzed, that's trickier. De Brouwer refers on page 30 of the Kean book to Professor Andre Marion of the University of Paris-Sud and CNES, citing the use of "more sophisticated technology" and "numeric treatment" in 2002, and the uncovering of some sort of halo effect, but I'm afraid that he engages in no further effort to translate the photo analysis procedures into language comprehensible to the layperson (at least as far as I can remember: it's quite possible that I overlooked something). Perhaps the analysis is simply too complicated to be rendered in more accessible language: I suspect that it probably is, and that even had de Brouwer made the effort to do so, we'd still be no closer to understanding what exactly Marion did unless we too become experts in photographic analysis. What I do know is that even without an advanced understanding of the procedures involved, a recreation of the hoax could be subjected to the same "numeric treatment" to see if the same halo effect is detectable. De Brouwer also offers the findings of earlier investigations, which can also be found in a bulleted list on Kean, page 30, but apart from references to overexposing the slide to reveal the triangular shape, no greater methodological transparency is available in the Kean book (unless I overlooked something, which is entirely possible).

 

[uforadio]

Since my French is abysmal is there any pure english reports on this? Has this "Patrick" been confirmed as the "Patrick"?

If Guy Mossay actually obtained rights for the photo (that is confirmed later by Gildas) from „Photographer X“ he will probably know is Patrick featured in those media reports actually the real photographer of the photo.</SPAN></SPAN>

This is what I sent few days ago to other colleageus on private list:
If anyone wants to hunt down the story further this could be a good lead so that point could be resolved for every case:</SPAN></SPAN>

GUY MOSSAY</SPAN></SPAN> address HAUT-VIN,</SPAN></SPAN>
Country Belgium</SPAN></SPAN>
Phone Contact 087647686</SPAN></SPAN>
Related to Studios photographiques</SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN>

And those are also updates by Gildas Bourdais:
http://www.ufoupdateslist.com/2011/jul/m30-003.shtml
metioned already here:
https://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/8993-Famous-Belgian-UFO-Photo-A-Fake?p=120903#post120903
I mentioned Guy Mossay here:
https://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/8993-Famous-Belgian-UFO-Photo-A-Fake?p=120757#post120757

Especialy take a note on this comment by Gildas - start of quote:
BTW, if Patrick M. is telling the truth today, he let Mossay
sell the his fake picture copyright on his behalf for over 21
years and is therefore he is a thief. My publisher bought it in
1997, and it was rather expensive. If he is lying now, he is
also dishonest, of course. So, I suggest caution.
--- end of quote ---

 

[chikane]

Yeah, it was so iconic and looked so monolithic that for better or for worse it has come to represent the Belgian flap as a whole. And when an image comes to stand for something, debunking the image can seem to debunk that which it stands for, even if there's more to the story than that single image. In the heart, if not in the head, the Belgian flap seems just a little tougher to take seriously now. That's the real tragedy of hoaxes like this, assuming that it is in fact a hoax.

I completely agree with you on this

How many people looked at this image and proclaimed it to be real? Nasa, optical physicists, photo experts? Yet some people only have to hear one dude claim it is fake to throw it away. Let me turn this around. We have plenty of expert testimony saying that the image is real. For this to be busted, we need a recreation. Period. Not just one guy claiming fake.

So just so I am clear the image in question is this one, right?

Yes that's the picture involved. The picture have been studied by these people :

• P. Ferryn, photo analysis expert in SOBEPS in 1990
• Pr Marc Acheroy of the Royal Military School, Bruxelles, did an in-depth by computer in 1990 (in VOB.1. p. 416-418 et VOB.2. p. 234-240)
• Richard F. Haines, (Palo Alto, Californie) american specialist in cognition psycology in 1993
• D. Soumeryn-Schmit, chief of the photographic service of the Royal Institute of Artistic Patrimony, at Bruxelles en 1993
• François Louange (Fleximage, Arcueil) did an analysis by computer in 1993
• A. Marion (CNRS, Optic Institute of Orsay) did a counter analysis by computer in 2002.

this a traduction of the people mentionned here.

Until and unless we get a recreation from "Patrick," we can look to the independent recreation on page 21 of "The Petit-Rechain photograph" by Roger Paquay:

http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite3_2.pdf

I wonder if the re-creator, Wim van Utrecht, would be willing to submit his photograph for "numeric treatment" to see if the halo effect can be reproduced under controlled circumstances with a known fake. If it can, then some of the expert testimony from the authorities de Brouwer cites would be disqualified, and the claims that the hoaxer is hoaxing his hoax would be difficult to support by invoking expert analysis.

Actually, this recreation picture has already been analyzed by Marc Acheroy (cited above) in 2003 but some of the characteristics of the picture of Petit-Rechain couldn't be reproduced (from the same source mentionned before)

---------- Post added at 05:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:36 PM ----------

Since my French is abysmal is there any pure english reports on this? Has this "Patrick" been confirmed as the "Patrick"? The other slides that he has, have they been inspected?

As far as I'm aware, there's no doubt that Patrick M. is the personn that took the picture. Someone of the SOBEPS knew his real identity but promised him not to disclose it. Since he broke the news of the fake he had appeared in begium media and has also been interviewed by Auguste Meessen, which is a scientist who I believed belonged to the SOBEPS and did an analysis of his picture. If he was not the personn who took the picture, I'm quite sure that it would already been exposed.

If the photo is faked, then the real question becomes how was it analyzed and how was it determined to be real and by whom. Furthermore, some questions need to be answered about the hoaxer. What time period was the photo faked. Was it a construct right out of the imagination of this guy or was it a rendering of what was already being described. Is there confirmation of the hoax story from the others involved?

Unfortunately, this situation underscores the problem with resting any real stock in photographic "evidence". We really need to be looking at cases that have multiple avenues for the sighting. Radar, images, multiple witnesses in multiple areas, triangulation, and consistent testimony. I still think that the Belgium wave is a good series of sightings regardless of this photo's status one way or the other. But I think the biggest story, if it is indeed a fake, is that multiple experts can be fooled convincingly.

My own personal opinion about photo analysis is that it is impossible to say that something is real. All you can really do is look for evidence that it is fake. You might not find any but that doesn't mean the image is real, just that the creator didn't make any obvious mistakes. And since this wasn't done digitally, he used a model with lights on it, it would be more difficult to find negative evidence against it because even though the object in the picture isn't a spaceship or even a jet it is a real picture of a real object.

The conclusions were that a hoax couldn't be exposed. There were not as affirmative as to say that the picture was definitely of that of a real object but that it was quite probable it was so. Due to the context in which this picture appeared, which is that it plainly matched the numerous descriptions of the "objects" seen during the belgium wave, and as no fakings could be exposed in the picture wich apparently had some particularities that couldn't be reproduced with a model, I believe that altogether tended to accredit the idea the picture was genuine.

Patrick.M said he had also took other pictures that weren't as good as the one diffused that he must still have. He said he will show them when after he'll find them (he has moved several times). I believe it would resolve the case if could provide these other pictures.