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.

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Back in January 2004 I posted a short entry about a factory in China that had been caught making soy sauce out of human hair. I also mentioned the incident in Hippo Eats Dwarf (p.76). Now more gruesome details have emerged, published in the Internet Journal of Toxicology (link via Boing Boing): An investigation led by TV journalists then revealed why the soy sauce was so cheap. It was being manufactured from an amino acid powder (or syrup) bought from a manufacturer in Hubei province: Lovely. But what the article doesn't mention, but which I believe to be true, is that soy sauce isn't the only food product made out of this cheap hair-made amino acid powder. The stuff is also sold in large quantities to the bakery industry which uses it as a source of L-cysteine to make dough softer and more elastic. Think about that next time you're chewing on a bagel.
You may feel that you need to scrub your eyeballs after seeing this supposed ad for Breyers ice cream, so if you click on the link don't say I didn't warn you. (The ad is disturbing for what it suggests, not for what it actually shows.) However, the ad definitely isn't real, which is obvious if you read the text on the right-hand side of it. I don't know who created it, but it wasn't Breyers. Unfortunately the image is now circulating around the internet in a reduced size that makes the text hard to read, leading some people to think that it might actually be a real ad.
A series of pictures showing a woman crushing a kitten to death with her stiletto heels is causing an uproar over in China. The pictures first appeared on the internet and have recently been published by some Chinese newspapers. The woman in the photos has been dubbed the Kitten Killer of Hangzhou, because the background scene has been identified as Hangzhou. I've been able to locate four of the pictures in the series, but I think there are a few more (far more graphic) ones. Here are the ones I found (I don't have larger versions):

Image 3 (possibly disturbing)	Image 4 (possibly disturbing)

The big question is: Who is this woman? One theory is that the images come from a Japanese shoe advertisement. Another theory identifies the kitten killer as a "37-year-old woman from Hubei province with the internet identity 'Gainmas.'" The London Telegraph elaborates:

She had registered a website in Hangzhou and - the ultimate evidence - had bought a pair of stilettoes on eBay last year. She was also registered with QQ, a popular Chinese message service, where she wrote of herself: "I furiously crush everything to do with you and me." Before her QQ address went dead, its owner had several conversations. In one, she is coy, saying "So what?" when asked if the pictures are of her, and then, when asked again, replying: "In theory." When confronted by a reporter, she became defensive, saying: "Suddenly hundreds of people are on my QQ and cursing me. What's the problem if I crush cats? It's a type of experience. You wouldn't understand."

The Telegraph goes on to note:

No one seems to have suggested the serious possibility that the photographs could be a hoax - created by picture-altering computer software. But in the face of tight control of self-expression, young Chinese are seeking wildly different forms of sensation or satire on the state of society.

Without having seen all the pictures (and better quality ones), it's hard to judge whether or not they're real. But it certainly seems like this has already become the Chinese version of Bonsai Kitten (with the added twist that it may be real... in which case it's definitely disgusting).

Update: A "Crush" video is circulating around (you can find links to it in the comments, if you're interested) that makes it pretty clear the woman really did step on a kitten. Also, an article in the Shanghai Daily reports that the lady, and the guy who produced the video, have been identified. The producer, who is a camera operator at a TV station, has apologized. However, the woman, who works as a nurse at a hospital, has disappeared, leading to concerns that kitten commandoes may have abducted her (or something along those lines).
The front page of the skinbags site advertises that skinbags are "Organic objects, in synthetic human skin." That description isn't as clear as it could be, and could easily be misread to suggest that skinbags are actually made from human skin. Much of the rest of the site plays up this ambiguity. You come across passages such as this:

What is it? Could it be human skin? One asks oneself, reaching out a hand in an attempt to touch it : a reflexive gesture. This is what is fascinating – like a game made to scare oneself.

But don't worry. It's not really human skin. Skinbags (as you learn if you search around the site a bit) are latex designed to look and feel like skin. They're made by Olivier Goulet. The skinbag line includes purses, handbags, jackets, overalls, and laptop carriers. It looks like they all have to be special ordered. You won't find skinbags down at The Gap. (Thanks to Timothy Hunter for the link)
A few months ago Timothy Rohn, of Richard Township, Michigan, went outside to discover his car covered in bird poop. Or maybe it was human poop. Or maybe something else entirely. Whatever it was, there was a lot of it. But he didn't worry too much about it. He just let the rain wash it off. But two months later, the same thing has happened again. Something up there really likes pooping on his car. The Saginaw News reports that:

Rohn said the substance definitely is excrement and, from what he could see Tuesday night, it may have contained toilet paper that had broken down in chemicals. He said he did not notice a blue or other chemical tint to the substance.

Rohn's only theory is that airplanes are discharging waste over his house, despite the lack of a chemical tint to the waste. It also seems weird that this only seems to be happening to him, not his neighbors. The police have no explanation. Here's the comment of the officer who investigated the mystery:

"It's manure, and it came from the sky. If it came from some kind of fowl, it had to be one heck of a large flock. To me, it looks like bird droppings but, man, it had to be an awful large flock of birds. It's all over."
This video of a guy lighting a candle by setting his fart on fire is obviously fake. (Given that the video is one big fart joke, it's probably not safe for work, though it's otherwise work safe.) However, it seems that a number of people actually think it's real. To verify that it's fake, all you need to do is visit the url displayed on the film: sheepfilms.co.uk, which is the website of amateur filmmaker David Packer (aka Sheep). He has a lot of films starring himself that employ various special effects, such as fake fire farts.
An Alex from Colombia sent me these pictures and the following note:

I came across these images and sincerely speaking I have no idea what they are. Is there any logical explanation for such thing? I suppose that they are either stage props or someone with a very disturbed mind and undoubtedly very good skills in clay or meat modeling made them, staged them and took the pictures.

Unfortunately I can't identify what's going on in these pictures any better than Alex from Colombia can. It looks to me like body parts being produced in a Hollywood special effects shop. But that's just a guess. At least they're obviously not real body parts.


A pair of images showing a urinal with a fake fly etched into the porcelain is doing the rounds. (I'd guess it's been circulating for at least two years.) The images are accompanied by this caption:

In Amsterdam, the tile under Schiphol's urinals would pass inspection in an operating room. But nobody notices. What everybody does notice is that each urinal has a fly in it. Look harder, and the fly turns into the black outline of a fly, etched into the porcelain. It improves the aim. If a man sees a fly, he aims at it. Fly-in-urinal research found that etchings reduce spillage by 80%. It gives a guy something to think about. That's the perfect example of process control.

Apparently this is true. Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam does sport fly urinals. (Though I'd be interested in getting first-hand verification of this.) The Straight Dope reports that New York's Kennedy airport is considering using the same fake-fly technology.


The Strange New Products blog has word of two new gross faux foods. First there's Harry Potter's Cockroach Clusters from Cap Candy. "The juicy gummy underbelly is covered with a crunchy candy shell, just like real cockroach wings." Yum. I definitely have to try some of those. Then there's ABC Gum. The ABC stands for "Already Been Chewed." "ABC Bubble Gum is a brand new novelty bubble gum that has been formed to look exactly like a piece of gum that's ALREADY BEEN CHEWED!!" I would love to offer that to unsuspecting guests.

If you live in the UK and you've ever had collagen injections for lip or wrinkle treatments, do you have any idea where that collagen has come from? According to this Guardian special report, it could come from skin harvested from the corpses of executed Chinese convicts. "The agents [for the collagen import firm] say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is 'traditional' and nothing to 'make such a big fuss about'." The special report goes on to state:

Peter Butler, a consultant plastic surgeon and government adviser, said there had been rumours that Chinese surgeons had performed hand transplants using hands from executed prisoners. One transplant centre was believed to be adjacent to an execution ground. "I can see the utility of it, as they have access and no ethical objection," he said. "The main concern would be infective risk."

I think there have been several horror movies made with premises similar to this.