Martian Monkey

In Atlanta 1953, young barbers Edward Watters and Tom Wilson, along with butcher Arnold Payne, took a dead rhesus monkey and removed its tail, applied large doses of hair remover and used green food coloring to make the corpse of the monkey appear abnormal. They then used a blow torch to create a burning circle in the pavement. Officer Sherley Brown came across the scene by accident and was told by the hoaxers that they had seen many creatures just like it. They claimed that they had hit the dead one with their truck and the other creatures had left in their flying saucer, which is what caused the scorch marks.

The prank was played at the height of UFO hysteria in the United States. As a result, the Atlanta Police Department received constant phone calls after news of the story broke, with multiple residents adamant they had seen the flying saucer that the pranksters described. The situation was propelled further when a veterinarian agreed that the animal was not from Earth. The United States Air Force was also called in to investigate.