Morristown UFO hoax

January 5, 2009. At about 8:15 pm, five red lights appeared over Cedar Knolls. People looked up across Hanover, Morristown, Morris Plains, Madison and Florham Park.

The lights hung in "a weird pattern over the area." One Morristown resident saw an "L-shaped formation oscillating in the sky." "No way this could have been weather balloons."

Another witness recalled, "The lights seemed to ascend and descend almost in a sequence. They would rise up slowly and dip down." Near the Madison and Morris Township border, the rear lights faded and seemed to drop. Then the front lights went out. One by one.

Hanover Township police logged the first 911 call at 8:28 pm. At least seven calls reached them. Neighbouring departments received many more. Kristin Hurley, 11, spotted the lights first in her family. Her father, Paul Hurley, was a pilot: "I have been in the aviation industry for 20 years and have never seen anything like this, a little scary, little scary."

The Hanover Township health officer watched from Madison at about 8:38 pm. "These things were moving fast, holding formation, and then moving in three different directions; I don't know what it was." The officer said the lights moved against the wind. Morristown Police Lt. James Cullen alerted Morristown Airport, where tower staff saw the lights but radar detected nothing. Flickr user soron616 photographed the five red lights from Morris Plains.

The lights returned on January 26, January 29, February 7 and February 17, when nine red lights appeared. Dorian Vicente, 46, of Parsippany, watched scattered lights form a straight line from Route 80 as motorists slowed. "It was the weirdest thing." Ray Vargas said, "If it's a hoax, it's a real good hoax. There were no flares, no streaks."

On April 1, 2009, the Skeptics Society newsletter eSkeptic published "How We Staged the Morristown UFO Hoax" by Joe Rudy and Chris Russo. Five three-foot helium balloons, each tied to a 15-minute flare with five feet of fishing line. They lit the flares, released the balloons "in increments of fifteen seconds," filmed the launches, and phoned news media to report UFO sightings. They aimed to show "how unreliable eyewitness accounts are, along with investigators of UFOs." Russo was blunter: "Plain and simple, it's a gullibility experiment to get a reaction from people."

The Morris County Prosecutor's Office objected. It had contacted the Federal Aviation Administration, the NJ Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness and the State Police, and the FAA had issued an advisory for aircraft approaching Newark Liberty International Airport. Both men pleaded guilty on April 7, 2009, to municipal disorderly conduct. Each received a $250 fine and 50 hours of community service.

Police had suspected the answer from the first night. "We are reasonably certain … that they were red flares attached to a balloon," Lt. Cullen said. Others disagreed: on the History Channel's UFO Hunters, Bill Birnes declared definitively that the lights could not have been flares or Chinese lanterns, and MUFON posted material about the case. After the reveal, Newsweek's Sharon Begley closed her story with "Nicely done, guys," while George Filer, MUFON's New Jersey director, criticised the fire risk. The Center for Inquiry questioned whether skeptics should use hoaxes to persuade people, and Kevin Randle weighed in on his blog.

The case reached truTV's Best Hoaxes Ever and a Vice documentary narrated by the two men. Russo later had second thoughts. "Would we do this whole hoax again? No. If anything, we'd do something different." In November 2023 he was elected to the Morristown Council.