British painter Lloyd Canning, who made tabloid headlines when he announced last month that aliens were using him as a medium to communicate with Earth, has stunned the public with another proclamation: it was all a lie. Shocking, we know.

The Telegraph reports that Canning, a former scaffolder who took up painting psychedelic sci-fi scenes told media outlets that since 2005 he had been visited by aliens six times, and the strangers were projecting ideas onto his brain and imploring him to share the projections with his fellow earthlings.

“Ever since that first sighting I have had these crazy visions that just come over me,” he told the Mirror, one of the publications to consider Canning’s story newsworthy. “When they happen it’s like I don’t have a choice—I just have to paint them.”

He went on to describe the encounters with his unusual visitors and his subsequent urges to paint, explaining that “UFOs are not necessarily aliens, but instead could be beings from a parallel universe visiting through wormholes or portholes, or, they could be time travelers from the future.”

Apparently the lie became too difficult to sustain. Canning finally cracked, owning up to the fib via his Facebook page: “For anyone who have seen my story in the papers, the truth is I have never been abducted but I have had some great sightings… Don’t you just love the media, exposure is what I wanted, exposure is what I got lol lol lol lol lol lol lol I love you all.”