About the Museum
The Museum of Hoaxes, founded by Alex Boese in 1997, is dedicated to promoting knowledge about the phenomenon of hoaxes. On our blog (to the left) we post about dubious-sounding claims — and whatever else strikes our fancy. But there's more to the museum than the blog. Check out our historical wing, which contains hundreds of articles about famous hoaxes, arranged chronologically from the Middle Ages right up to the present. Our Gallery of the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes Ever celebrates that one day of the year devoted to pranks and practical jokes. In our forum, you can chat with other MoH members. And there's much, much more.

Web Hoax Museum

BLOG CATEGORIES Advertising | Animals | April Fools Day | Art | Birth/Babies | Body Manipulation | Business/Finance | Celebrities | Con Artists | Conspiracy Theories | Crop Circles | Cryptozoology | Death | eBay | Email Hoaxes | Entertainment | Exploration/Travel | Extraterrestrial Life | Fashion | Food | Free Energy | Future/Time | Gnomes | Gross | Hate Crimes/Terror | Health/Medicine | History | Websites | Identity/Imposters | Journalism | Law/Police/Crime | Literature/Language | Mass Delusion | Military | Miscellaneous | Music | Pareidolia | Photos/Videos | Places | Politics | Pranks | Psychology | Radio | Religion | Scams | Science | Sex/Romance | Sports | Paranormal | Tall Tales | Technology | Urban Legends

BLOG ARCHIVE November, 2008 | October, 2008 | September, 2008 | August, 2008 | July, 2008 | June, 2008 | May, 2008 | April, 2008 | March, 2008 | February, 2008 | January, 2008 | December, 2007 | November, 2007 | October, 2007 | September, 2007 | August, 2007 | July, 2007 | June, 2007 | May, 2007 | April, 2007 | March, 2007 | February, 2007 | January, 2007 | December, 2006 | November, 2006 | October, 2006 | September, 2006 | August, 2006 | July, 2006 | June, 2006 | May, 2006 | April, 2006 | March, 2006 | February, 2006 | January, 2006 | December, 2005 | November, 2005 | October, 2005 | September, 2005 | August, 2005 | July, 2005 | June, 2005 | May, 2005 | April, 2005 | March, 2005 | February, 2005 | January, 2005 | December, 2004 | November, 2004 | October, 2004 | September, 2004 | August, 2004 | July, 2004 | June, 2004 | May, 2004 | April, 2004 | March, 2004 | February, 2004 | January, 2004 | December, 2003 | November, 2003 | October, 2003 | September, 2003 | August, 2003 | July, 2003 | June, 2003 | May, 2003 | January, 2003 | November, 2002 | October, 2002 | September, 2002 | August, 2002 | July, 2002 |

Frenchman Don Jean Habrey, whose stage name is Hors Humain (beyond human), has announced his intention to embark on a "sacred collision with Nessie." Specifically, he plans to dive into Loch Ness and "breathe with the monster to send ultimate breathing to the world of childhood.”

Later, he'll make a Christmas Eve visit to the Loch and "conjure the mythical creature from the loch, with chants, drumming, burning flares and bonfires round the shore."


I'm sad that I'm going to miss it.
Harold Jackson, a resident of Cookeville, Tennessee, found an indentation on a rock on his property. It looks vaguely like a footprint... a very big footprint. 11 inches across and 15 inches long. The article says he took it home. (I assume he must have made a cast of it and taken that home.)

The surprising thing is that he doesn't think it's a Bigfoot print, though his friends do. He thinks it's a footprint of a Native American.

So how tall would this Native American have been if his feet were 15-inches long? According to WikiAnswers, a person's foot is usually 15% of the height of his body. Therefore, this Native American would have been approximately 100 inches tall, or 8.3 feet.
Last week I predicted that the discovery of Bigfoot's body was bound to be a hoax. Score one for me. I also said the "body" looked like a Bigfoot costume. Score another one for me.

In all fairness, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. The Bigfoot Body farce was so obviously a hoax that I'm surprised it gained as much traction as it did. But then, the media can be relied upon to eat up a good Bigfoot story.

Meanwhile, Bigfoot promoter Tom Biscardi, who paid Georgia "Bigfoot trackers" Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer $50,000 for the body, is trying to pass himself off as the victim of a scam. And Whitton and Dyer are trying to portray themselves as clever pranksters. My sense is that they were all out to make a buck.

Links: Fox News, Yahoo! News.
On Friday Aug 15 a press conference is scheduled in Palo Alto to present evidence suggesting that the corpse of a Bigfoot has been found in Georgia. DNA evidence and photo evidence will be presented. (Thanks to everyone who emailed me about this.)

I'd just like to go on record before the press conference to predict that it's going to be a hoax. Bigfoot hasn't been found. Why? Because if a Bigfoot species existed in North America, it would have been found long ago. To remain hidden this long, the Bigfoot species would need to have supernatural abilities.

The evidence that's been leaked so far in support of the Bigfoot Body consists of a photo of what looks like a Bigfoot costume stuffed into a freezer.

Already the "Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization" is claiming that "The Georgia *Bigfoot Body* story is a hoax orchestrated by a veteran media hoaxer named Tom Biscardi."

See my list of Bigfoot Hoaxes for some of the history of Sasquatch shenanigans.
The story so far:

A bizarre creature washed up on Ditch Plains beach near Montauk, New York on July 12.

Local resident Jenna Hewitt took some photos of it. However, the body is now gone. Some guy (unidentified) supposedly has it in his backyard.

In the absence of any evidence except for the photo, there are many theories about what it might be: a sea turtle, a dog, a raccoon missing an upper jaw, a creature from the government's animal-disease lab on Plum Island, or a hoax.

We'll have to wait and see what transpires. Links: Newsday, Gawker.
Apexart, in New York City, is currently hosting an exhibition titled "Nessie Does New York: Monetizing Myth, Legend & Culture." It's basically a collection of Nessie, Bigfoot, and Chupacabra-related kitsch.

Their downloadable exhibition brochure poses this question:



Where were the chocolate Nessie droppings when I was in Loch Ness? I didn't see those anywhere, and I definitely would have bought them.
Threadless.com is selling a t-shirt with this picture. I thought it was cute, but I already own too many t-shirts, so I'm not gonna buy this one.


Backyard Phenomena has posted an interesting speculation about why some witnesses report receiving telepathic messages from Bigfoot:


Some military experiments have shown that microwaves can be used to make a person hear sounds inside their head. So Backyard Phenomena suggests that, "If Bigfoot and UFOs go together, as I believe they do, then their alien handlers could use microwave technology to confound or control witnesses via seeming telepathy."

Me? I'm sticking with the "they're crazy" explanation.
57-year-old Gene Morrill was charged with soliciting 13-year-old boys over the internet. He pleaded guilty, but in his defense noted that he himself had been molested as a child -- by Bigfoot! The Free Lance-Star reports:


It was probably a strategy to get a reduced sentence due to mental incompetence, but it didn't work. He was sentenced to twenty years.

Quite a few people, men and women, have claimed over the years that they were abducted and molested by Bigfoot. The most famous was the Canadian prospector Albert Ostman, who said that Bigfoot abducted him and held him prisoner for six days for breeding purposes. Brian Helme submitted a haiku to the site a few years ago inspired by this theme:


Tom Spring, writing for Computer World, describes many of the jokes and tricks hidden in Google's various websites and programs. One that I wasn't aware of is that Nessie regularly surfaces on iGoogle:


I don't think I'll ever get to see this, since 3:14 am is way past my bedtime. (I now have great trouble staying up past midnight, unlike in grad school when I would regularly still be awake at sunrise.)

Another hidden Google joke is "Google Gothic". Type this phrase into the Google search engine, and then hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button. You'll be taken to Googoth, a search engine catering to "dark, gothic, industrial, and alternative topics."