The Ummo Affair
The account
Beings from a planet called Ummo supposedly lived among humans and sent letters and craft marked with a symbol.
What investigators found
The photos were judged to be hoaxes made with a model, and Spaniard José Luis Jordán Peña claimed authorship of the hoax.
The story
Starting in 1966, Spanish ufologists and intellectuals began receiving typewritten letters bearing strange symbols, signed by supposed inhabitants of the planet Ummo. The texts discussed science, philosophy and politics. In 1967, photos of a flying object with a symbol on its underside, taken in San José de Valderas, near Madrid, brought the case worldwide fame.
For decades, the Ummo affair gathered followers and inspired books and groups. Analyses of the photos indicated they showed a small model rather than a spacecraft. In the 1990s, psychologist José Luis Jordán Peña declared that he had written the letters, saying he had set up an experiment on belief. Even so, some admirers still believe that part of the letters has another origin.