The ad campaign for 'The Fourth Kind,' a new movie about people abducted by extraterrestrials in Alaska, claims the film is based on true events and includes documentary footage. The producers seem to have created Web sites that 'report' on the background. This sounds suspiciously like the Internet campaign that promoted 'The Blair Witch Project' 10 years ago, with its claims that the 'found video footage' was real. 'The Fourth Kind' is one of several recent films to take the 'true story' formula to extreme lengths. 'Cloverfield' was a hit with its mysterious campaign and hand-held video format. The box-office topping 'Paranormal Activity' generated buzz with its video approach, and that film's director is now working on a UFO movie called 'Area 51.' Some trend spotters are calling this faux-documentary formula 'horror verite.' In an article for Video Watchdog magazine, film historian David Kalat uses the term 'fictuality' to describe something he traces back to the origins of cinema in the 1890s, but he says the trend is exploding now. 'And that I'd credit to the spread of consumer video cameras and YouTube,' Kalat says. 'Fake documentaries in the past had a certain dryness to them. Even something funny like 'Zelig' is a pretty quiet kind of film. But now that making real documentaries is easy and cheap and ubiquitous, it means that fake documentaries also have more currency.' Kalat says storytellers and classic Hollywood always have been about making the story feel realistic, but standards of realism change over time. 'We now are more inclined to accept as realistic something that mimics what we might see on the news or shoot on a cell phone,' he says. 'I think it's interesting and noteworthy that the rise of fictualities is coincident with a growing trend of popular real documentaries.' He mentions Michael Moore's films as well as 'Super Size Me' and 'King of Kong.' Reality TV is also a factor. 'I don't think genuine documentaries have ever flourished on mainstream movie screens like this,' Kalat says. 'I think the two phenomena have to be related.' Here are 10 milestones that tried to confuse the audience with allegedly true tales of horror. 'Haxan': This 1922 classic purportedly was a documentary about superstitions of witchcraft and devil worship, though its dramatic re-enactments (and sheer fiction) turn it into a horror movie. This expensive and popular production never played in the United States until a version circulated in 1968 as 'Witchcraft Through the Ages.' It eventually influenced 'The Blair Witch Project.' 'The War of the Worlds': Orson Welles' famous Halloween radio broadcast (Oct. 30, 1938) was in the form of news bulletins interrupting regular programming. This reportedly confused some people who weren't paying close attention to the disclaimers or the program schedule. The same 'live broadcast' shtick was used for the 1983 TV movie 'Special Bulletin,' about a nuclear disaster, and the 1994 'Without Warning,' which were accompanied by frequent disclaimers. 'Chariots of the Gods': This 1970 film is one of several curious 'documentaries' based on best-sellers that make questionable claims, in this case about alien visitation. It was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary and was later shown on TV in a version called 'In Search of Ancient Astronauts.' Similar examples are the 1979 film of Hal Lindsay's 'The Late, Great Planet Earth,' about biblical prophecies, and 1981's 'The Man Who Saw Tomorrow,' about Nostradamus. (Both were narrated by Orson Welles. ) 'The UFO Incident': Amid the '70s resurgence of interest in UFOs came this unusual, fact-based TV movie about a couple who recall their abduction under therapy. James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons played Barney and Betty Hill, subjects of the 1966 best seller 'The Interrupted Journey.' 'The Legend of Boggy Creek': This low-budget 1972 docudrama raked in millions with its story of a Bigfoot-type creature in Arkansas. It mixes interviews with re-enactments. In an interview at the Web site House of Horrors, Dan Myrick (one of the 'Blair Witch' directors) says, 'Shows like 'In Search Of,' 'Chariots of the Gods' and 'The Legend of Boggy Creek' were huge influences on us. It was their 'reality based' format that creeped us out as kids.' 'The Amityville Horror': Beginning with a best-selling 'nonfiction' book in 1997, a whole franchise sprang up around the allegedly haunted house on Long Island, N.Y. The first movie was made in 1979 and, like 'Boggy Creek,' was a huge hit, thanks partly to its claims to be a true story. 'Cannibal Holocaust': This 1980 item is one of several Italian cannibal movies with gross-out elements. The plot follows the search for missing filmmakers in South America, and the last half of the film shows their recovered footage, which documents their unfortunate experience. 'The Blair Witch Project': Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez made this no-budget monster hit of 1999, which masquerades as the lost footage of an ill-fated documentary project. Their production company, Haxan Films, is named after the 1922 movie mentioned above. 'The Last Broadcast': Premiering before 'Blair Witch' but lost in the shuffle until its similarities caught attention, this is another digitally shot faux-documentary about the sad fate of three filmmakers who disappeared in the woods looking for a mythical creature, in this case the so-called Jersey Devil. 'Cloverfield': Another huge hit that takes the form of video footage supposedly recovered from a disaster, this film uses elements of a monster movie to reference the fear and sadness of memories of 9/11. 