An extensive police presence at Bayside Marketplace on Monday fueled speculation about a sinister alien incursion.
When dozens of police cars pulled up with their lights and sirens blaring outside Bayside Marketplace in downtown Miami on Monday evening, speculation over what could possibly be happening to warrant such an enormous police presence was rife.
It wasn't long before rumors began to spread on social media suggesting that the cops had been called to the mall to deal with "8-10ft tall shadow aliens" that had supposedly infiltrated the building.
So great was the belief in these rumors that some people started to insist that they had actually seen a mysterious "creature" standing in plain sight in front of the mall, with some video clips posted on Twitter allegedly showing it walking around outside the building (see news video below).
"I don't know if the rumors about the aliens at the Miami Mall are real but I do know I never seen this many police in one place," one user commented.
Eventually, though, reports began to emerge suggesting that the police had not been attending the scene of an alien incursion but had in fact been called in to break up a large altercation between as many as 50 teens who had seemingly gotten into a fight in the building.
"There were no aliens, UFOs or ETs," officer Michael Vega later confirmed.
"No airports were closed no power outages."
What's interesting here is how the incident managed to spark such widespread speculation concerning alien visitors even when the actual event had nothing to do with aliens whatsoever.
The term "aliens in Miami" even made it into the top 10 trending searches on Twitter and stories about the alleged aliens were published by multiple major US news outlets.