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The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about dubious- sounding claims, and whatever else strikes our fancy. The site is also home to a great deal of other content such as the Hoax Photo Database, the Hoax Forum, and the Hoaxipedia. The menu bar above offers a fuller list of the different areas of the museum.

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Examining dubious claims and mischief of all kinds
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The latest internet meme is Sewer Horse: "Sewer Horse is Watching You"



I have no explanation for the image. Is it real or fake? I haven't got a clue. It seems a bit unlikely that a horse would end up in a sewer, but then he could be in a large underground tunnel that has an opening he's looking out of. Sewer Horse is so popular that he even has his own website.
Just as popular recently as the Office Freakout video (posted about below), has been a video titled "Wii Fit - Why You Should Buy It For Your Girlfriend." It's one minute of a girl in her underwear working out with the Nintendo Wii Fit as her boyfriend ogles her.

There's been a lot of speculation that the video is a (not-so) covert marketing campaign by Nintendo. People grew even more suspicious after it was discovered that the woman in the video, 25-year-old Lauren Bernat, and her boyfriend, 30-year-old Giovanny Gutierrez, both work in advertising. Even better, they both specialize in internet advertising. But Nintendo insists it had nothing to do with the video. The Telegraph reports:


Nintendo may not have created it, but I'm sure their pr people have been busy trying to spread the word about it, once they realized the interest it was attracting. Of course, it could also be a "sub-viral" campaign (defined as a viral campaign a company creates, but then denies having any hand in.)
For the past few weeks a video (apparently Russian) of some guy freaking out at his office has been doing the rounds. Tobester posted about it in the forum, speculating that it was real. But no, it isn't. Wired reports that it was covert marketing for the upcoming movie Wanted, starring Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie:


I found this picture on Puld.net, who writes: "The sources said this is not photoshopped or edited and this person really have no THUMB at all! I wonder how he “Thumbs Up” his friends?"



Polydactyly (having extra fingers) is a real condition, but to me this looks like a composite photo of someone's right and left hand merged together. Polydactyls usually have the extra digit next to their little finger. It would be very rare to not have a thumb.

A youtube video purports to show popcorn popping when placed in between cell phones all ringing at once.



Clearly fake. It's a new spin on the old joke about cooking an egg with two cell phones. The only question is how they got the popcorn to pop. My guess is there must be a heating element beneath the table.


What are the odds this scene is real? Not very good, I'd say. The photo is from 1923. I found it in a book by Mark Sloan titled Hoaxes, Humbugs, and Spectacles. Despite that title, most of the photos in the book are not fake. The majority show circus performers and publicity stunts. Sloan titled this photo "High-Pressure Hijinks." He provides a short caption:


Pressure from a fire hose would be enough to lift a man straight up. Check out this youtube video of a car being lifted by water pressure. But I doubt a man would be strong enough to keep the hose pointed downward. The tendency would be for the hose to kick him straight back. I'm guessing the photo is a composite -- the soldier having been cut-and-pasted onto the background shot.
Eric writes: "Alex, please look into this one" -- Al-Qaeda's terrifying vision of a devastated America in the wake of a nuclear attack.

According to the Daily Mail article, a computer-generated image of what Washington DC would look like after a nuclear attack was recently posted on an Islamic extremist website. Simultaneously, there have been rumors circulating suggesting that "the FBI was warning that an Al Qaeda video was about to be released urging militants to use weapons of mass destruction to attack the West."



Turns out that the FBI hasn't issued such a warning. Nor is the picture of Washington in ruins an Al-Qaeda creation. It's actually a piece of concept art that was used to promote the game Fallout 3, from Bethesda Softworks. Shacknews.com reports:


What occurs to me, when I look at the picture, is how unlikely it is that the Capitol Building would survive a nuclear attack. Growing up in DC, I always heard that the one building in the city most likely to survive a nuclear bomb would be the National Cathedral since its walls are massively thick.
The image to the right is available for purchase on webshots.com. The photographer is listed as Adam Jones. It's titled "Grand Teton and Wildflowers, Wyoming."

The image has become quite popular and has slowly been circulating around the internet. One person on the webshots message board writes:


But the image has met with skepticism from professional photographers. Ralph Nordstrom of ralphnordstromphotography.com writes in his blog:


It's a bit sad to think of that guy in smoggy Beijing staring longingly every day at a fake photo. (via How could I be so dumb)