Boyd Bushman

Boyd Bushman is a deceased former aerospace engineer who supposedly held a "top secret clearance" and claimed colleagues in the aerospace and defense industry furnished him with undeniable evidence of space aliens for over a decade. Like most virally-spread stories, it all started with a YouTube video.

Sprung from the Interwebs
‬ Previously an obscure personality appearing on UFO conspiracy videos with fantasist and con-man David Sereda supporting various crank theories of antigravity, Bushman became notable as the subject of a video shot by Sereda way back in 2007 that suddenly achieved YouTube viral status in 2014 near the end of October, a traditional season for Halloween spoofs and hoaxes.

Some in the blogosphere began promoting Bushman's video as a "deathbed confession" revealing the shocking truth of alien involvement with the US government. When tabloids like the New York Daily News and London's Daily Mail picked up the scent, the story soon spread like wildfire through the global tabloidosphere.

Bushman's "revelations" are a disappointing rehash of tired old conspiracy stories about aliens being housed at Area 51 and top secret government programs supposedly designed to keep this startling secret from the public. Some are frankly loony, such as Bushman's claims that the aliens come from a planet called "Quintonia" (or "Quintumnia") where they engage in cattle rustling.

Most of the weirdly-edited video consists of Bushman telling secondhand stories and holding up hazy paper copies of UFO and alien photos that he obviously believes are authentic. In some sequences, Sereda appears in the role of interviewer. Keen observers have noted that one of Bushman's photos purporting to be of a real alien is indistinguishable from an alien action figure doll once sold at places like Walmart. And at least one of the flying saucer photos he displays as an example of real alien spacecraft can be traced to a piece of sci-fi fantasy art found on the internet. "My people have been feeding me pictures for 13 years," brags Bushman on the video. Indeed.

Hearing him proudly recall how he was able to order unnamed individuals who privately confided to him that they were working with aliens at Area 51 to obtain photographic evidence "because I was a senior scientist", you can't help feeling that the elderly Bushman - known within the aerospace community as a true believer in fringe and conspiracy ideas - was the sad victim of an especially cruel hoax by colleagues or UFO conspiracy promoters.

He had patents
True believers tout the fact that Bushman had engineering degrees and 22 patents to his name, which prove that he worked for Lockheed Martin and was a pretty smart guy. However the fact that part of his story is true (where he worked) doesn't guarantee that all of his story is true. Advanced degrees and impressive former job titles don't automatically equal sanity (see the many accredited but cranky personages involved in Parapsychology), and this is especially true of older retired individuals, who, as a symptom of age, can often be prone to fantasy and dementia.