Hélène Smith, a famous nineteenth-century Swiss medium, convinced thousands of followers she was communicating with aliens by writing out detailed prophecies in what she claimed was the Martian language.

A closer look

Hélène Smith, a famous nineteenth-century Swiss medium, convinced thousands of followers she was communicating with aliens by writing out detailed prophecies in what she claimed was the Martian language. Psychologists were initially baffled by her trance states, during which she would effortlessly scribble bizarre symbols and speak in a highly consistent, alien-sounding tongue that captivated the mystical community. However, upon closer linguistic analysis, researchers realized that her supposedly extraterrestrial language was basically just French with the words swapped out for gibberish, following the exact same grammatical structure as her native tongue. Turns out, even in the vast, infinite depths of the cosmos, telepathic martian warlords apparently conjugate their verbs exactly like a Parisian schoolgirl