# Scary stuff: the boy in the balloon **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 15, 2009, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940 "2009-10-15T18:58:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/261 "2009-10-19T00:42:31Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > According to [this AP story](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091018/ap_on_re_us/us_balloon_boy), the hoax went beyond the family: > > Another issue – whether the balloon actually had enough lifting capacity for a small child, was addressed in the story. Daddy Heene alegedly gave false dimensions to the authorities, leading them to believe it could lift enough weight. When the balloon was recovered, the true dimensions were taken and it became clear that it wouldn’t have been able to lift the kid. > > I can kinda see a new reality show out of this, “Mommy and Daddy Go To Prison”. Even better, “Parent Swap”, watch as the Heene kids go from foster home to foster home in search of parents who aren’t attention-whoring idiotic jackasses. ---
**Author:** ![kidneyfailure](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9f8e36/32.png) [@kidneyfailure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidneyfailure)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/262 "2009-10-19T00:43:40Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Slithy Tove, I’mma let you finish, but “I’mma let you finish” is one of the best catchphrases of all time! 10/10, sir. Kudos on a jolly-good response. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/263 "2009-10-19T01:18:14Z")
I gotta wonder, Was this well planned in that they really thought this through, took their time, figured out all the details and it just turns out they were stupid ? Or was it a case of thinking it out for about 5 minutes before deciding to do it ? Either way is stupid when push comes to shove I guess…just different kinds. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/264 "2009-10-19T01:28:46Z")
> [@Rilchiam](#): > > Earlier on, people here and elsewhere were wondering how a kid that age could stay silent and in one place for so long, or how he even got into that crawl space. Guess this answers that: he wasn’t in the crawl space the whole time. All the parents had to do was _say_ “He’s not in the house; we can’t find him!” Well I assumed he was in the crawl space because he’d been told to be–he had to be hidden somewhere the whole time, right? Policemen were in the house… ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/265 "2009-10-19T01:35:13Z")
> [@](#): > > Heene, 48, a storm chaser and inventor, has described himself as an amateur scientist, but Alderden said Heene has only a high school education. > > **“He may be nutty, but he’s not a professor,”** Alderden said. Ha! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Huerta88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/82dd89/32.png) [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/266 "2009-10-19T03:05:06Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > Well I assumed he was in the crawl space because he’d been told to be–he had to be hidden somewhere the whole time, right? Policemen were in the house… It is sketchily sounding like some unnamed accomplice was possibly hiding him somewhere off the premises. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/267 "2009-10-19T03:32:08Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > I gotta wonder, Was this well planned in that they really thought this through, took their time, figured out all the details and it just turns out they were stupid ? > > Or was it a case of thinking it out for about 5 minutes before deciding to do it ? > > Either way is stupid when push comes to shove I guess…just different kinds. According to the sheriff, they planned it for weeks. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/268 "2009-10-19T03:32:27Z")
> [@Huerta88](#): > > It is sketchily sounding like some unnamed accomplice was possibly hiding him somewhere off the premises. Ugh. That’s creepy. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/269 "2009-10-19T04:07:09Z")
[ > [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > I just saw where the Larimer Sheriff is not just going to file the misdemeanor false report charges, but will also charge the parents with several more serious crimes (criminal conspiracy, fraud) that could potentially land them in prison for over 6 years… And what a _stupid_ thing to go to prison for. He should have just robbed a bank or something so as to garner some respect inside. As it is, he’ll be laughed at and made the honorary bottom boy in the shower room. ---
**Author:** ![Jerseyman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bbce88/32.png) [@Jerseyman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jerseyman)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/270 "2009-10-19T04:26:20Z")
I find this jackass’s Mars video more interesting. Granted that I’d wonder what anybody that hysterical had been taking from the start, he finds a head without any body, a pig’s snout without a head, a few bones, a road a vehicle, a spaceship and another vehicle or perhaps a building all in what appears to be the most desolate desert, none of it to any kind of scale, all in the one photograph. What about all the other Martian photographs? Is it just coincidence that he is showing it through something like Photoshop? Let’s waste time analysing this. In the same desolate area there are a couple of ‘bones’. What sort of bones? What size bones? Chicken wishbones, ribs, pelvis, toe bones, ankle bones, shin bones, thigh bones, backbones, neck bones, head bones? - Oh Lordy see dem bones. Mouse bones, dog bones, turkey bones, ox bones, diplodocus bones? Nothing as precise as that: just _bones_. Then there is a head sticking up. Where is the rest of the animal - underground? that must be the case with the snout that doesn’t even manage to get as far as a head! And all this in the middle of a great big nothing. Never mind, there’s a road in the distance and wow! a vehicle on it. And another one in the distance - unless it’s a building. Yes, Martians are not like us of course, they construct buildings in the middle of the god-forsaken desert with no supporting farmlands or back garden. What they do there is anybody’s guess. So is why the road goes all the way across the screen in one direction, then turns back on itself with no steep hill to need to climb - and on Mars with far less gravity, that would need to be a very steep hill indeed, steeper in fact than any ever found there and definitely not in this photograph at all. Still, there is another vehicle off to the left. As far as Martians are concerned, a very obvious UFO has come crashing out of the skies and released two aliens to go snooping about. Even if it scared the wits out of this vehicle that just happened to be there, why didn’t they report it to the local Authorities to come take a look? Animals might ignore it but if they’re capable of building vehicles then they’re hardly likely to ignore evidence that somebody somewhere else has built one capable of reaching their planet. In one simple word: Pfui ---
**Author:** ![Huerta88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/82dd89/32.png) [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/271 "2009-10-19T04:26:39Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > Ugh. That’s creepy. Yep. From CNN: > [@](#): > > One of the key questions that remain unanswered, Alderden said, is: Where was Falcon as police searched for him? On Friday, Alderden said it had been determined that the boy was hiding in an attic in the garage, and had fallen asleep. **Now, authorities are unsure. Alderden said the boy may not have even been in the home.** > > “The biggest error we made is when we searched the house very clearly we didn’t search the house as thoroughly as we should,” he said. Authorities had assumed a 6-year-old boy could not have reached that attic, he said, **so they took the Heenes at their word that he had hidden there the whole time.** Other articles quote that the sherriff implied third parties had helped with the plot. No one has explicitly said a third party had the kid with them, that’s my own dot-connecting. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/272 "2009-10-19T04:43:04Z")
> [@Jerseyman](#): > > Let’s waste time analysing this. In the same desolate area there are a couple of ‘bones’. What sort of bones? What size bones? Chicken wishbones, ribs, pelvis, toe bones, ankle bones, shin bones, thigh bones, backbones, neck bones, head bones? - Oh Lordy see dem bones. Mouse bones, dog bones, turkey bones, ox bones, diplodocus bones? Nothing as precise as that: just _bones_. I just assumed that this clown was pointing to a funny bone. If this was the 60’s he would be in a nut house explaining why Hillary Clinton is a Lizard Person. ---
**Author:** ![Huerta88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/82dd89/32.png) [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/273 "2009-10-19T04:49:35Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > I just assumed that this clown was pointing to a funny bone. > > If this was the 60’s he would be in a nut house explaining why Hillary Clinton is a Lizard Person. You know, I’ve spent a fair amount of time previously listening to/reading the reptilian stuff, and I am not sure he is a for-real believer in any of this stuff. Remember, he was trying to develop some vaguely-defined “fringe science” reality show. The YouTube videos I saw don’t have him saying"Hillary is a reptilian," they’re much more about him vaguely implying it, and being “controversial,” and mugging for the camera. In short, they look like tryout tapes for a reality show, where a premium is placed on “wacky” (and where true monomania, which is boring, doesn’t necessarily sell well). Trust me, the true “lizard people people” don’t bother asking (as he does in one video) whether there’s proof that Hillary’s a lizard-person – they treat it as a long-established, but suppressed, obvious fact. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/274 "2009-10-19T05:51:13Z")
> [@Huerta88](#): > > You know, I’ve spent a fair amount of time previously listening to/reading the reptilian stuff, and I am not sure he is a for-real believer in any of this stuff. Remember, he was trying to develop some vaguely-defined “fringe science” reality show. The YouTube videos I saw don’t have him saying"Hillary is a reptilian," they’re much more about him vaguely implying it, and being “controversial,” and mugging for the camera. In short, they look like tryout tapes for a reality show, where a premium is placed on “wacky” (and where true monomania, which is boring, doesn’t necessarily sell well). Trust me, the true “lizard people people” don’t bother asking (as he does in one video) whether there’s proof that Hillary’s a lizard-person – they treat it as a long-established, but suppressed, obvious fact. Wait. Are – are you saying Hillary _isn’t_ a lizard person? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/275 "2009-10-19T05:53:13Z")
She plays one on TV! ---
**Author:** ![Huerta88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/82dd89/32.png) [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/276 "2009-10-19T05:57:09Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > Wait. Are – are you saying Hillary _isn’t_ a lizard person? My investment of my not-to-be-reclaimed hours was, precisely, based on figuring out if these guys were serious. They are more than serious, and more than crazy. Which requires more effort than this clown and his acting-school wife could muster. There’s a lot of reading involved in tracking down reptilians. I’m not sure the Heenes are even per se literate. ---
**Author:** ![Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f08c70/32.png) [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowbar_of_Irony_3)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/277 "2009-10-19T08:19:52Z")
But is it ethical for the police and authories to ‘fake’ that they had fell for the ploy and go on merrily causing such a stir? Did the FFA really divert traffic? Any cost incurred for exposing the hoax? Why is it important, in the grand scheme of things? To discourage others? (Which I think is a good valid reason, for the record) ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/278 "2009-10-19T11:45:52Z")
> [@CrazyChop](#): > > But is it ethical for the police and authories to ‘fake’ that they had fell for the ploy and go on merrily causing such a stir? Yes. I think you misunderstood here: the emergency response to this was real. After Thursday night, when the kid said it was done for a TV show, the police pretended to believe the story for another day or two. At some point it sounds like they got the parents to take a polygraph test, which shows you how stupid this couple really is. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/279 "2009-10-19T12:47:11Z")
Or the police were taken in and are now pretending that they knew so as to arrive at the polygraph test. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940/280 "2009-10-19T12:59:04Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > According to the sheriff, they planned it for weeks. Well, they **decided** a few weeks ago to do it. How much planing they did or didnt do is what I am curious about. Some people make snap decisions and never look back once the ball gets rolling. Other make elaborate plans that just are stupid. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scary-stuff-the-boy-in-the-balloon/513940.md?page=15)