You know how sometimes somebody will say “why would anyone lie about that?” and even though you can’t think of a reason off the top of your head, you just know that somebody would?

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So, on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023, reporter, ufologist, and alien enthusiast Jaime Maussan stood before Mexico’s Congress and, with a seriousness usually reserved for third-act Poirot reveals and people in sitcoms recovering from amnesia, unveiled a pair of very small, very dry bodies. They didn’t just look like someone tried to make Craisins out of E.T. – they were Craisins made out of E.T.

At least that’s what Maussan claimed, under oath and with the eyes of the world turning slowly, nervously to look at him, the way you do when someone on the subway starts talking about how they, by way of example, have a pair of dead aliens with them today. According to Maussan’s testimony, the shriveled carcasses which he was presenting were of non-human origin, stemming not from the evolutionary tree of any known species, but from the fertile grounds – perhaps – of some far-off planet. While he wouldn’t go so far as to say that they were definitely alien in origin, he could say this: They were, above all, and he couldn’t stress this enough, not fake props or Peruvian mummies.

So what were the alien bodies in Mexico?

Looks a little like someone we know

— Universal Pictures (@UniversalPics) September 13, 2023

They were fake props and Peruvian mummies. 

It would be helpful here to stop for a moment and look back at some recent events, specifically surrounding Jaime Maussan and dead people in Peru. 

According to Snopes, back in 2015, Maussan held an unveiling of a remarkable discovery: The corpse of an alien. It may have looked like the mummy of a human child, but further testing and expert analysis revealed that yes, actually, sorry, that’s exactly what it was.

Then, in 2017, a video made the rounds on the internet of a remarkable and peculiar set of preserved remains, discovered along with four other corpses close to the Nazca Lines in Peru. Its haunting, elongated features and three-fingered hands upgraded the body from “creepy and spooky” to “altogether ooky,” and the footage of acclaimed ufologist Jaime Maussan in the video added a sense of legitimacy. Sadly, the good times couldn’t last, and experts with a good eye for dead Peruvians clocked the “alien” in the video as just that.

Other discoveries made by Maussan were, according to filings by the Peruvian prosecutor’s office reported on by the Associated Press, “recently manufactured dolls, which have been covered with a mixture of paper and synthetic glue to simulate the presence of skin.” So, the answer to the question “why would anyone lie about something like that?” from earlier is, in an optimistic world, “force of habit.”

That brings us to 2023, and the presentation of what Maussan called “the queen of all evidence.” Institute of Astronomy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico researcher Julieta Fierro, whose workplace was cited by Maussan as one of the sources that called the discovery “pretty much legit,” called the discovery “not legit.” We’re paraphrasing.

Among the issues that she took with the claims while speaking to the AP: That Maussan had testified that the non-human origins of the corpses were determined through the use of an x-ray, which would require some pretty massive leaps in logic. Also, she said that Maussan had told her that he talks to dead saints. 

Long story short, like the old saying goes, “if it walks like a guy who keeps pulling alien scams, and it talks like the same, but also it keeps trailing off and having half a conversation with Our Lady of Guadalupe like it’s doing a Bob Newhart bit, it’s probably not third-time lucky with the whole ‘finding some little green man bodies’ thing.”