*I* must be joking?
Good God, Robert, imagine what I could make myself believe if my standard of truth was "nobody has proved it isn't so."
This story is a lie, sourced by a single person who has been shown to have lied multiple times in the past. If you can still drag whatever remains of your rational mind around to the idea of "it might be true" after all this, then there are no limits to what "might" be true for you if it's something you want to be true.
Add to this a near-infinite skepticism displayed on any issue where you don't WANT something to be true, and we have a real problem.
I don't know what's happened to you.