"CARET" Drone sightings

The "CARET" Drone sightings (also known as the "Dragonfly" Drones) were a series of alleged sightings of small, unidentified, and unmanned aircraft which were supposedly seen and photographed between May and June of 2007 in the state of California and Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The sightings were first reported in May of 2007 when an eyewitness contacted the Coast to Coast AM website with photos of what he claimed to be an unidentified aircraft that he said was hovering over the area where he and his wife were walking.

The sightings received local and national attention from the media and, according to MUFON, featured "the clearest and most detailed UFO photographs since Gulf Breeze."

The incidents were thrown into doubt in 2023 when the artist behind the "alien language" seen on the drones came forward and stated that the entire ordeal was a "hoax", claiming that the man behind the uploads to Coast to Coast AM had stolen her "glyph" artwork and 3D "alien hardware" models in order to make himself some money, and that he "disappeared" after he was threatened with legal action by one of her colleagues.

"Chad" sighting

On May 10, 2007, a user by the name of "Chad" sent a series of photos to the Coast to Coast AM (C2C) website, claiming that he had seen the aircraft in the photos hovering in the area where he and his wife had gone for a walk. At the time, "Chad" declined to state his location but asked listeners of the show to help him "understand" what the craft was. After the website posted the photos, Chad wrote the website again, claiming that he had now seen the craft at least a half dozen times since his initial contact with C2C, that the craft was "easy to photograph" and that his neighbors had all seen it as well. He said that it "moved like an insect" and wouldn't make much noise except a slight "crackling" sound as it flew, comparing it to electrical wiring near a substation. He also claimed that the craft seemed to give him headaches and that his wife was feeling more fatigued than normal (though he admitted she was pregnant and that her fatigue was normal, according to her doctor). The craft in the photos is shown to have a circular, ringed center with three spiked "arms" protruding from it. Also seen on the bottom of the craft is unidentified lettering and seemingly alien "glyphs". Chad eventually divulged that the photos were taken in Bakersfield.

"Deborah McKinley" sighting

Two days later, on May 12, 2007, MUFON posted a report from "Deborah McKinley" who claimed to be from San Jose, California. McKinley claimed that she and her husband were on a weekend vacation in Lake Tahoe, Nevada when she saw the craft floating outside while she was getting her sweater from their car. McKinley described the movements of the craft as "exact" and said it made no noise except for a small "vibrating" noise. They managed to take a couple photos of it, and then said they never saw it again after it left the area.

"Rajman1977" sighting

Eight days later, on May 20, 2007, a Craigslist user named "Rajinder Satyanarayana" (AKA "Rajman1977") posted a series of six pictures showing a similar craft above what he claimed to be Capitola, California. He claimed to be visiting his fiancé's parents at the time the photos were taken and was sitting on their back porch. He claimed the craft traveled back over to the front of the house and that he ran out to the front and grabbed some pictures of it.

The post was deleted afterward, so "Raj" put the photos on Flickr, where they stayed for a time before they were also deleted. Unlike the Tahoe sightings, Rajman's craft were much the same as Chad's and had the same look and lettering on them.

"Stephen"/"Jenna L"/Big Basin sighting

On June 6, 2007, a woman identified as "Jenna L." posted three photos of a similar craft at the UFO Casebook website on behalf of a man named "Stephen" who claimed to have seen the craft in the air while working in Big Basin in California.

Unlike the previous three sightings, the craft "Stephen" photographed was more intricate, with metal "hair" protruding from both the top and bottom of the craft as well as multiple rings on its arms, which there were a lot more of.

"Ty" sighting

Five days later, on June 11, 2007, a person named "Ty" claimed to have been bicycling in the same area Stephen was the day before his sighting and also saw the same craft Stephen did. He sent 12 photos to UFOlogist, Linda Moulton Howe, who posted the photos on her Earthfiles website. The craft was similar to Stephen's craft.

The "CARET" Documents

On June 26, 2007, a website run by a person calling himself "Isaac" published an open letter, claiming to "explain" the recent sightings. He claimed to have worked in a secret facility in Palo Alto, California (dubbed "Palo Alto CARET Laboratory" or "PACL" for short) which he said created the craft seen in the recent photos.

"CARET" was an acronym which supposedly stood for "Commercial Application Research for Extraterrestrial Technology", and was (or still is), according to Isaac, a secret project dedicated to the reverse-engineering of alien technology.

Aside from this, "Isaac" made other claims in the letter, saying that the craft were "suddenly visible" due to their "cloaking" abilities going haywire. He also included several "documents" he claimed to have scanned while he worked for the project and had smuggled out of the lab.

The documents in question contained several photographs of alleged top secret alien hardware he claimed he had worked with during his time at CARET. The documents also contained a "language primer" for the unidentified lettering seen on the arms of the craft in the Rajman and Chad photos.

MUFON analysis

Four days after the Tahoe photos were released, Steve Reichmuth from the Northern California branch of MUFON was dispatched to look into the Tahoe and "Chad" photographs after a member from the MUFON Los Angeles mailing list sent out the story to the organization.

Reichmuth concluded that the photos were computer-generated hoaxes based upon analysis by VFX artists Steve Neil (who had done work for The History Channel) and Marc D'Antonio (who owns a Connecticut VFX business). The latter said that the photos "were not even GOOD fakes", and that the "hoaxer" in question used radiosity in the creation of the photos, and that rendering artifacts were left behind due to the perceived lack of use of settings prior to rendering. D'Antonio criticized Coast to Coast AM for "falling for it" and called "Chad" a "fabricator". It was also determined that the "Chad" photos had the name "McKinley" in the image text, which was the same name used by the Tahoe eyewitness.

In April of 2008, MUFON's International Director John Carrion wrote a retrospective on the incident and sightings, and called the drone photos "the clearest and most detailed UFO photographs since Gulf Breeze".

Despite the praise, he also pointed out that "non-repudiation has not been established" for any of the witnesses involved, expressing dismay that all five of the photo witnesses chose to remain almost completely anonymous except to those on UFO message boards and forums and people like Linda Moulton Howe.

He added that "You can argue the authenticity of a photograph or the science of a technology (human or not) until you are blue in the face, but with a virtual witness as the source, you may as well just debate science fiction."

Linda Moulton Howe research

UFOlogist and journalist Linda Moulton Howe, who had been posting updates about the photos (mostly without commentary or editorializing) on her "Earthfiles" website, claimed to "be in contact" with the original eyewitnesses and also claimed to know their real names, but never divulged them.

She also claimed that a report came in from Birmingham, Alabama from an "Alabama park ranger" who had witnessed a similar craft and shared the ranger's photo exclusively on her website.

She also claimed to have gotten in contact with "Isaac", following the release of his documents to clarify parts of his story as it was heavily scrutinized by the UFO community online.

Despite her diligence, Howe was criticized for being careless in her handling of the "evidence" she was given. British visual effects artist Kris Avery recreated the "Stephen" drone using LightWave and posted it on YouTube to show that the drones could be CG composites. Howe, believing the video Avery created was authentic (even though Avery had said in the description that it was a CG creation), posted the video and proclaimed that it was real to all of her readers.

When Avery told Howe that it was a CG proof-of-concept, Howe never retracted her post, which led her readers to become upset when they found out it was a CG model. When word got out that the craft in the video wasn't genuine, Avery ended up getting threatened by her readers who accused him of being "a CIA-trained disinformation agent".

The Iron Skeptic analysis

Dr. Aaron Sakulich of The Iron Skeptic dismissed the object in the "Chad" photos as a "CGI object" and said that the objects were "too sharp" in relation to their backgrounds which were slightly blurred.

He also notes that it's suspicious that nearly every main witness sent their photos or documents to questionable or sensationalist outlets like UFO Casebook or Coast to Coast AM, instead of going to MUFON or getting them analyzed by experts. Furthermore, Sakulich takes issue with the name of Isaac's secret project:

"CARET stands for Commercial Applications Research for Extraterrestrial Technology. The government has a top secret program involving the greatest secret of all human history, and they use the word 'Extraterrestrial' in the name of it?

Baloney. The government gives only ridiculous names to things to ensure no one can guess what they're about. Project Blue Book wasn't called Project Maybe We Saw Some UFOs, and the Manhattan Project wasn't called the We're Going to Blast You to Smithereens with Atom Power! Project.

Give me a break.

Commercial Applications Research for Extraterrestrial Technology is the sort of name you'd see in science fiction. Particularly bad science fiction."

Private Investigators & The "Drone Research Team"

Almost a year after the first photos were submitted by "Chad", a private investigator by the name of Tommy "T.K." Davis was hired by a group of people at the internet's Open Minds Forum to find "Rajman1977", telling him "Find the power pole in the photo... and you'll find the house. And Raji."

Soon after, the group who hired Davis set up their own independent website called "Drone Research Team" (or "DRT" for short).

On December 9, 2008, users on the DRT forums managed to locate the power pole in the "Rajman1977" photos, leading to an official announcement from the website in January of the following year. It was noted that the pole's location was not in Capitola as "Rajinder" had claimed and, instead, was located 30 miles north in the city of Campbell, California.

From there, the DRT surmised that Rajinder might live in the nearby apartment complex adjacent to the pole. This hypothesis was based solely upon the sequence of pictures he took and the route it followed. From there, the DRT proceeded to canvas the surrounding area with flyers to get more tips.

The forums on the website also managed to find the locations of the "Chad" and "Stephen" photos. The "Chad" location was not in "Bakersfield" as "Chad" claimed but rather the parking lot for The Summit House, a roadside restaurant off Highway 17 between Capitola and Campbell.

The "Stephen" photos were found to be taken in the Saratoga mountainside off Highway 9, also known as "Big Basin Way", and not the actual "Big Basin" as "Stephen" had claimed.

Dell Alienware computers

Dell Computers began using portions of the CARET glyphs for their "Alienware" line of home computers and laptops, which pushed some to believe that the entire CARET Drone ordeal was all a viral marketing scheme. When Dell was questioned about it by Open Minds, Dell sent the following reply:

"Thank you for your email. It's great to hear that our promotion has reach out to you and your Forum group regarding the CARET document.

Alienware did NOT create the information regarding this phenomena or the CARAT linguistics. This is NOT an intellectual property of Alienware.

The information has anonymously spread throughout the web for some time. We have taken the CARAT linguistics and have applied this as a marketing tool to draw attention to our promotion."

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

In December of 2008, the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles mid-season finale "Earthlings Welcome Here" featured drone craft that bore a striking resemblance to the CARET Drones, causing some to believe that the CARET Drone incidents were all a viral marketing scheme for the show.

When Bruce Simmons of ScreenRant asked producer Josh Friedman about it, he said the following:

The drone/CARET materials are not viral marketing for our show. Fox knows nothing about them.

I've been interested in the drone images for some time and, as I am wont to do, found a way to work areas of interest into the show. Our drone image at the end is a kissing cousin of the others but is of our own design. I don't want anyone out there who chooses to believe in the drone sightings to feel in any way that their inclusion in TSCC invalidates their point of view.

Likewise, any one who believes they are a hoax should not use their inclusion in the show as confirmation of that theory. Simply something in the zeitgeist that I was (and still am) fascinated by. Whether this settles the issue or only serves to incite others who want to use it for their own ends is beyond my control.

Possible hoax exposure

In 2023, writer, producer, artist, and actress Margaret Gel wrote on her personal blog that she had created the "alien language" or "glyphs" seen on the CARET drones as well as on the "alien hardware" and in the "linguistics primer" in the "Isaac" photos.

Gel claimed that she had created the dialect in 1999, years prior to the incidents, and that she was unaware of the CARET photos, until almost 25 years later when she was shocked to find her glyphs shown on one of the alleged drones while watching an episode of The History Channel's UFO Hunters.

Gel claimed that she was part of an online group of artists and UFO enthusiasts which included "Isaac". She said that after she had shown him her lettering and artwork (which was supposed to be a tribute she had made to her family and loved ones), Isaac stole it, altered it, and used it for his "linguistics primer" in the "CARET documents" file. She also claimed that Isaac had also made off with 3D artwork from her colleagues on the site, which eventually became the drones themselves and the "alien hardware" in the Isaac documents, claiming that his goal was eventual monetary gain.

Gel said that when she confronted "Isaac" about what he had done, he told her that he owned the rights to it now since he was the one who had published it and routinely updated his page, thus keeping the copyright in his eyes.

She also claimed that he threatened legal action if she ever told anyone about what he had done and had also done the same to one of the "drone" artists, which seemingly backfired when that artist retaliated with his own legal action, which she said pushed "Isaac" to "disappear" from the forum and never return.

Gel also criticized Dell in her rant calling them "incompetent" for using her language on their "Alienware" computers because they "show parts of my parents' full names" unbeknownst to the company.

While Gel said she suffers from amnesia resulting from brain trauma sustained when she was younger and didn't remember how to fully translate everything she created, she included a page for those interested in learning what her glyphs said in the primer. She also divulges how she went about creating the glyphs and the overall design.