Pitch reporting tears UFO community apart . . . and we didn’t notice for three months

Back in August, I wrote a feature examining the claims of Stan Romanek, the world’s only professional UFO abductee. (He’s the guy who claims to have video footage of an alien peeping into his window.) Romanek and his believers insist that his UFO sightings and tales of alien abduction make up the most fully documented case of extraterrestrial contact.

I saw Romanek present his evidence in Kansas City at the Mysteries of the Universe Conference in late July. Afterward, I looked into what I could find of his vaunted evidence. (Romanek keeps most of it to himself.) What I discovered: Romanek’s 2001 report of a UFO sighting, titled “”5 to 10Min Big Red thing Fallowing my Van!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Then I discovered that three sources validating Romanek’s claim also misspelled “follow.”

Romanek’s wife, Lisa, has argued online that all of these supporting reports were transcribed by her husband from eyewitnesses, but there’s a fourth that she hasn’t addressed.

This one’s author takes great pains to make clear that he or she has no idea who Romanek is:

“I noticed a green van going South if Im not mistaken on Estest St. Just behind the van and above it about 60 or so feet was a big red Ball. … As I watched the van go through the light it looked to me as if this thing was fallowing the van. … I hope the person in that van was ok.”

And then, I found the same misspelling in message board posts sticking up for Romanek, such as this one posted by a a “Steve Coe” on a 2004 article titled “Stan Romanek’s Mystery Equations”:

“I have been enthralled with the Romanek case for some time now it is a great story. As I fallow his adventures on your site, I see something that others have missed.”

My personal favorite is this January 2008 missive from “a physicist” who calls himself “tommyboy.”

reply posted on 14-1-2008 @ 11:04 AM by tommmyboy

I’m new and noticed the post about Stan Romanek. I am a physicist, I didn’t think much about Stan’s case at first, and then I started fallowing it in detail.

Good ol’ tommyboy goes on to provide a link to Romanek’s Web site and introduce a new defense of a silly prediction of Romanek’s that had already been roundly discredited. That defense has since worked its way into Romanek’s standard spiel.

In short, either many defenders of Stan Romanek have an aphasia for spelling “follow,” or Romanek needs to spend less time online.