The Mount Clemens Photos - A Likely Fake?

Jenny Randles' "The UFO Conspiracy" contains a statement to the effect that the Jaroslaw brothers had confessed to hoaxing the Mount Clemens photos in a letter to Dr. J. Allen Hynek. The J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) Mark Rodeghier[footnote 1] informs me that CUFOS definitely considers the photos to be a hoax, and material from the CUFOS library supports that view. I have seen a copy of the original confession letter (which was included in the CUFOS material), but have not had an opportunity to speak to the witnesses and validate their authorship of the letter. For the details of the case see my paper on superstructure cases.

As any serious researcher knows, many more UFO photos are hoaxed as a percentage of initial reports than are normal reports unaccompanied by photos. Daylight photos are especially suspect because of the ease with which a suspended model can be made to look realistically distant, and due to the lack of complex luminosity which must be simulated.

In this paper, I review the evidence for a hoax, point out some inconsistencies, and leave it to the reader to decide.

The Confession

In 1976, nine years after the photos were taken, the Jaroslaw brothers, now 21 and 26 years of age, are said to have written the following letter to Dr. Hynek:

"... Dan suggested to make a model of a U.F.O., hang it up with a string, and if the photo turned out good, we could play a joke on our family and friends to see their reaction and then tell them the truth.

"Dan made a quick model. Then we wrapped plain white thread with paper tape around two poles several times, and then taped the model to the threads. I was reluctant to waste the film, because I thought the threads and tape would be visible on the photo. The weather conditions were just right, the photo came out so real looking we took some more. At the same time we were taking the pictures, a helicopter flew over the area. Just for the heck of it, I photographed it, too.

"We showed our mother the photos and pretended they were real. But before we knew it, while we were in another room, she had called the Newspaper [caps theirs].

"Dan and I for some reason decided to let the paper have a story. We made it up as the reporter asked his questions. And said the helicopter was with the U.F.O. Also, we just didn't think the story would become as big as it did.

"We are sorry if we caused anyone any trouble over this.

"Respectfully, Grant F. Jaroslaw, Dan A. Jaroslaw"[footnote 2]

The Evidence

An article in True: The Man's Magazine[footnote 3], cast doubt on the photos long before this letter was received:

Written with interview material from the Air Force officer who investigated the case (Maj. Raymond Nyles), other Air Force officers (all initially enthusiastic about the case) and from Dr. Hynek, the article covers the case in detail.

The following is a profile of the case from the article:

"Grant Jaroslaw, 15 ... and his brother Dan... told how they had gone out into their snow covered yard about 2:30 PM to photograph the result of a septic-tank test with Grant's $20 Polaroid Swinger camera. The local board of health had flushed a yellow dye marker into the tank and the dye would show on the lake ice if sewage were polluting the lake... Grant was holding the camera when Dan spotted an object which he described as a dark grey disk, over the lake. 'It was hovering above the ice but near open water, about a quarter mile from shore,' Dan said. The object, which the boys estimated to be the size of a helicopter, hovered motionless for about ten minutes.

"'I was real scared it was going to land' admitted Grant, 'but Dan told me to keep taking pictures and I did.' The mystery object made no sound as it hung ominously in the sky. The boys could make out no markings, no windows. 'We've lived here in Selfridge for 14 years and see a lot of planes, but never anything like this,' Dan said.

"Then, according to the boys, the object accelerated without warning and at tremendous speed, disappearing to the south-east. It left no vapor trail, they said, no mark in the sky, nothing - except for Grant's photos, four of them. One had subsequently been misplaced somewhere in the house, he said, but he produced the remaining three. Each was taken from a slightly different angle, but all showed the object in almost the same position. The boys included one thing in their photos usually lacking in most UFO photos - identifiable reference objects. Each of the pictures was framed between a bush and a metal pipe. The pipe was part of an old frame which once supported a children's swing and now straddled the bush..."

Numerous negative factors are cited in the article, some of which are apparently intended to imply deception or irresponsibility by the witnesses or their family.

"Shy Grant Jaroslaw, 15, a high-school freshman playing hooky and his brother Dan, 17, a dropout and employee of a sailmaking company..."
"Why the boys used a camera which takes black and white photos to photograph a yellow dye would remain unanswered..."
"Dan added that he had always believed in UFOs."
"[According to Dan] 'About five minutes after the object disappeared, we saw a helicopter from the air base come right over the area and we photographed it... Frame numbers on the backs of the pictures proved the helicopter must have been over the lake during the time the boys photographed the object. The helicopter picture was number three in the series of five. The first two frames showed the object,. The third the chopper. The fourth frame was the missing one which has never been shown by the family, but which the boys said was of the mystery object.. Number five showed the object again."
The helicopter did not see the object.
The object was not detected by radar.
"The four Jaroslaw prints, three of the object and one of the helicopter were given to the Detroit News to copy, then were immediately taken back by the family, despite pleas by the Air Force and civilian investigators... This refusal to show the original prints was part of a strange reaction by the Jaroslaw family to the initial newsbreak. The family went into hiding, refusing to be interviewed. Its unlisted telephone number was changed twice and large 'Keep Out' and 'Beware of Dog' signs were posted."
"[The Jaroslaw teenagers lived in a] bizarre house - which had been gutted in a fire almost two years before. Mrs. Jaroslaw and the two boys lived in the basement. The rest of the house, located in a fashionable lakefront area, remained uninhabitable. The boy's father, divorced from their mother, lived a few miles away with his second family in a new house."

Various tests were performed on the copies of the original photos:

Fred Beckman tested the photos using a "flying spot electronic density plotter" which revealed no sign of a supporting string.
Beckman printed the photos using "coherent point source light" to produce crisper and sharper images, but no signs of a hoax were revealed.
Polaroid photos are difficult to fake using standard photographic techniques.
"Each"[footnote 4] of the exposures showed the object in the same position which could not have been achieved if the object had been thrown into the air and photographed.

Finally, a more complete investigation was begun.

AF Major Nyls went to the site and re-enacted the photos to try to triangulate the object for William Powers of Northwestern University.
Powers found that the intersecting lines of sight for the photos did not meet over the lake, and they could have met in the vertical plane of the swing set frame (there was a noticeable discrepancy, however, indicating that the measurements may have been incorrect). If this interpretation were correct, the model was 3.5" in diameter and could have swung as little as 8" in the wind to account for the measurement results.
Nyls made a 3.5" model to duplicate the object shown in the photos and photographed it in the same location, hanging from a translucent fishing line. The line did not show and Hynek stated that this threw significant doubt on the photos.
The boys, on the insistence of their father, submitted to a polygraph test. They were very nervous, and the examiner stated that "I could not clear them".

Real Or Hoax - The Factors In A Decision

*Evidence Item*	*If Real*	*If Hoax*
The confession	Might have been written to eliminate pressure from "buffs" (see next point). May have been written by someone else.	Strong evidence for a hoax if validated by direct contact with the original witnesses. Would be preferable if accompanied by a description of how the model was made, or perhaps a photo of the model in a normal environment. It is also unknown why they waited to write this letter until nine years after the event.
Unwillingness to pursue further contact with newspapers or analysts	Many times, witnesses to highly publicized UFO events have been harassed by unprofessional investigators, and endlessly pestered by newspeople and the general public. In the Exeter sightings, the original sighting location was crowded for long after the sighting, damaging the property. Desire for solitude is not unreasonable.	The witnesses' mother originally called the newspaper. The problems with their home may have caused her to hope that this would lead to money. Discovery that the boys had hoaxed the photos caused them to try to avoid investigators. However, there is no information available on any money earned from the photos. If the mother knew, why didn't she admit it (being an adult and not the witness)? Why did the divorced father have such confidence in his sons?
"Dan added that he had always believed in UFOs."	It was 1967, a major flap year, and UFOs were in the news.	They may have had knowledge about common configurations of UFOs. However, the tailed UFO is not a common description, and is unlikely to have been known by the boys based on the popular literature, which emphasizes clean geometric shapes.
"[The Jaroslaw teenagers lived in a] bizarre house - which had been gutted in a fire almost two years before. Mrs. Jaroslaw and the two boys lived in the basement. The rest of the house, located in a fashionable lakefront area, remained uninhabitable. The boy's father, divorced from their mother, lived a few miles away with his second family in a new house."	We do not know the financial circumstances of the fire or the family. If the fire occurred after the divorce, and fire insurance was insufficient to rebuild the home, and the mother's income was not sufficient to reconstruct the house by the end of two years, the situation may not have been abnormal.	The financial stress of the damage to the house may have made the initial notification of the press seem as if it might lead to a financial windfall. However, there is no evidence that it did so, and no specific statement concerning the family's financial situation.

Possible Inconsistencies and Omissions in the Hoax Scenario

No one has described how the model was made, including the witnesses or the Air Force officer. Therefore it is difficult to assess how hard it would be to make. It was apparently a multipart model of relatively small size (typically assumed at 3.5 inches), which may required some model-making skill. It took even an adult Air Force officer several hours in a basement workshop. Given the close quarters in the Jaroslaw house, it is hard (though not impossible) to see how the mother could have been unaware of what was being done. The only alternative is to construe it as a found object which coincidentally resembled an uncommonly reported UFO geometry.

Though the article claims that all of the pictures were not seen, there are three photos in Brad Steiger's "Project Blue Book", and the photo published in the paper is different from that set of photos, which may make four in all. However, one of the three may be an enlargement of one of the others, so there may only be two from the Blue Book archive shown by Steiger. The presence of the Nyls hoax photos further complicates interpretation, since one or more of the photos in the book may be from that sequence.

It is not clear that Nyls photos were retested by Beckman to see if the supporting string could be seen in those photos using his techniques.

There are significant differences between the appearance of the object in the newspaper photo and in the other photos. If the photos are hoaxed, there may have to be at least two models. If the object is real, the differences may be due to a change in luminosity. If the photos are hoaxed and there are two models, the complexity of the hoax is increased.

The claim by Powers that the swaying of the model in the wind accounts for the sight line deviation requires the model to swing eight inches. If the model swings eight inches in the wind, this is more than twice the diameter of the model. Without knowing the actual measurements, it is not possible to assess what effect that would have on the attitude of the model. However, two of the photos show the object level, one shows it slightly tilted up on the right side, and one shows it pointed in the opposite direction and rolled slightly toward the viewer, but otherwise in an apparently level attitude. None of these are outside the scope of pendulum motion, but it is not clear that they support it, either. If the object moved slightly and the photographer also moved, that might also be an explanation for the line of sight variations.

The confession claims that the model was taped to a string between two poles. This does not fit the Powers scenario. If done as the letter claims, the string must cross from the front to the rear of the model. In fact, if the string is sufficiently taut, the model may not swing at all, and certainly would not swing 8 inches, since it would be constrained to a rolling motion, and deviation from front to back level is difficult to accomplish. Also, the photo showing the model traveling in a reversed direction would require the model to be removed and reattached (one might theorize this is when the helicopter was photographed, if the photo is a hoax), or photographed from the other side (which seems negated by the placement of the tree). Finally, it is not clear whether the tape would be visible under the described circumstance.

A model with a tail is tail heavy and would possibly hang tail down if fastened at the center of the disk by a string from above. We do not know how difficult it was for Nyls to hang his model, or whether a level attitude in such an instance could be achieved during the theorized "swing". But since the Jaroslaw brothers apparently did not use this method, it is probably not an issue, except as related to claims that the model swung eight or more inches.

The object as photographed has an extremely strong visual similarity to the Rogue River OR drawing. As that case was classified until some time after 1967, it is hard to understand how this could occur. Also, as mentioned above, and in the comparative analysis, tailed objects are unusual and are not mentioned in the literature.

Conclusion

It seems that the Mount Clemens photos must be accepted as a hoax, despite the absence of some information which would completely clarify the situation.

Footnotes

1. Thanks to Mark and CUFOS for their assistance.

2. The UFO Handbook, author and publisher unknown, supplied by CUFOS.

3. Newsfront by Herschel P. Fink, True: The Man's Magazine, March 1968, p 62

4. More later will show why I have quoted this.