Ballon boy's dad

is something straight out of Art Bell and Coast to Coast AM

Here it is from Gawker.

Still, Thomas never imagined that Heene would involve his six-year-old son in what he is certain was a "global media hoax" to further Richard Heene's own celebrity. Thomas' story of his time with Heene, based on an interview with Ryan Tate, follows below. It's a fascinating account and after he publicly offered to sell his story, we paid him for it.

......

But he was motivated by theories I thought were far-fetched. Like Reptilians — the idea there are alien beings that walk among us and are shape shifters, able to resemble human beings and running the upper echelon of our government.

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A lot of it surrounded 2012, and the possibility of there being an apocalyptic moment. Richard likes to talk a lot about the possibility of the Sun erupting in a large-scale solar flare that wipes out the Earth. It got to the point where he was really pressing me, saying we're running out of time, we're running out of time, the end of the world is coming. And we have to take necessary precautions to make sure that we're not among the majority that's going to be killed.

.....

Bells were ringing; whistles were whistling. I said, "Wow, Richard is using his children as pawns to facilitate a global media hoax that's going to give him enough publicity to temporarily attract A-list celebrity status and hopefully attract a network.

Seems like this guy was shopping the story around and it's why the media has been all over this as a hoax.