Hoax Museum Blog: Cryptozoology

The Martian Bigfoot — Flora posted an image in the forum of what looks like a Martian bigfoot. (I inserted a picture of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot for comparison.)

According to metro.co.uk, the image was taken by NASA's Mars Explorer Spirit, but it "wasn't until space and science fiction enthusiasts became involved that the images were taken more seriously."

Here's the complete NASA image (thanks, Mongo) from which the image above was enlarged. I drew a red circle around the Bigfoot image. It's barely visible, in the far left corner. As you can see, the Martian Bigfoot is very, very small. Perhaps Littlefoot would be a better name for him.




The image of the Martian Bigfoot comes on the heels of the Martian "Doorway" which was doing the rounds last month. It's just non-stop Martian Pareidolia.


Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008.   Comments (15)

Is Bigfoot really Cain? — Here's a Bigfoot theory I haven't heard before. Apparently there are some in the Mormon church who hypothesize that Bigfoot may actually be Cain, condemned to walk the earth forever. Matt Bowman provides some scholarly elaboration on this theory on the Mormon Mentality blog.

Apparently the Bigfoot-Cain connection traces back to a story told by an early leader of the Mormon church, David W. Patten. Patten claimed that in 1835 he encountered Cain walking along the side of the road. He wrote: "He walked along beside me for about two miles. His head was about even with my shoulders as I sat in my saddle. He wore no clothing, but was covered with hair. His skin was very dark."

Hmm. That sounds kind of like Bigfoot. At least, that's what some Mormons have apparently concluded in recent decades. Bowman writes: "Cain’s identification as Bigfoot has provided Mormons with a way to assimilate the claims of folktale with new conceptions of what Cain, the embodiment of evil, should be like."

So if Bigfoot is Cain, maybe Nessie is really the snake from the Garden of Eden. 😉
Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008.   Comments (27)

Bigfoot Bait — I wonder how many women are going to respond to this craigslist ad? The scary thing is that the guy's probably completely serious.


Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008.   Comments (6)

Loch Ness Terror Plot? — This is weird:
An east London electrician accused of having terror ties claimed he was not attending training camps but hunting for the Loch Ness Monster during a trip to Scotland with other terror suspects, the Scottish Daily Record reported Saturday.

Kader Ahmed, 20, was up in the Loch Ness area with a group organized by preacher Mohammed Hamid. I wonder if they went on the Nessie Hunter cruise with that boat captain who sounded like Sean Connery?
Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007.   Comments (1)


Bigfoot Prank — WTVY News reports on a prank that reminded me of the Winsted Wild Man hoax from 1895, although quite a bit less sensational:
A teenager wore an outfit depicting the mythical Bigfoot creature. He then carried a fellow young person on each shoulder.
Alarmed residents called the sheriff's department and several others armed with shotguns headed to where the prank was taking place.
The young people, ranging in age from 18-to-23, were given a warning.
However, sheriff's officials say those involved in any copycat incidents will face reckless endangerment charges.

Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007.   Comments (5)

Yeti Footprint Photo Fetches Monster Price — A 1951 photo of a "yeti footprint" recently sold at Christie's for £3,500. That's almost $7000 (thanks to the lousy exchange rate we Americans are currently stuck with).

The photo was taken in the Himalayas in 1951 by Eric Shipton, who was a member of a reconaissance expedition scouting the region before attempting to climb Mt. Everest. Another member of the team, Tom Bourdillon, included this note with the picture when he sent it to his friend Michael Davies:
“Dear Mick, here are the footprint photos: sorry for the delay. We came across them on a high pass on the Nepal-Tibet watershed during the 1951 Everest expedition.
“They seemed to have come over a secondary pass at about 19,500ft, down to 19,000ft where we first saw them, and then went on down the glacier. We followed them for the better part of a mile.
“What it is, I don’t know, but I am quite clear that it is no animal known to live in the Himalaya, and that it is big. Compare the depths to which it and Mike Ward (no featherweight) have broken into the snow. Yours, Tom Bourdillon.”
If anyone wants some photos of footprints of the San Diego Yeti, taken in my backyard, I'm willing to sell them for a reasonable price. (Thanks, Cranky Media Guy)
Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007.   Comments (5)

Best of the forum - 21st September 07 — Due to my ongoing computer problems and personal situation, this is again brought to you by Madmouse.

Peruvian Meteorite (eovti)
An apparent meteorite landing in Peru has led to reports of illness amongst locals. Original suggestions for the cause of the sickness included radiation poisoning, but that seems unlikely.

Sign Language Translator (Madmouse)
There’s been a lot of discussion in the forum about this story. A group of UK students have developed a system to translate spoken or written words into British Sign Language that is then displayed by an avatar. Suggested uses include translating for meetings and for phone calls. This seems like a very good idea to me, although a lot more development is needed.

Belgium For Sale on Ebay (LaMa)
A disgruntled Belgian, protesting about Belgium’s political problems, put the country up for sale on Ebay. He pointed out that, although the nation is second-hand, the offer included free delivery.

Bigfoot Revealed!!! (gray)
A prankster who has posing as Bigfoot to scare campers for the last two years was captured in Manitoba. Apparently the man was less intimidated by the police than he was by the telling-off delivered by his last ‘victim’.
Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007.   Comments (0)

Manusia Kena Sumpah — I have no idea what the meaning of this video is, but whoever created it appears to be trying to simulate the appearance of a Feejee Mermaid-type creature. I found it linked to on the CeticismoAberto blog, where it's noted that the illusion of the creature is created in much the same way as magicians create the illusion of sawing a woman in half. In other words, this Feejee Mermaid actually consists of someone's head poking out the top of a box, with the body of the mermaid being manipulated separately from the head.


Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007.   Comments (5)

Yet another urban myth from Iraq — On the heels of the "American troops eat babies" myth comes the story of the Giant, Man-eating Badgers of Basra:

Ferocious British badgers an urban myth in Iraq
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007.   Comments (7)

Leaping Nessie — New video footage claims to show the Loch Ness Monster leaping out of the water. Despite the fact that the footage is obviously fake, there's a bigger problem with the claim that this shows the Loch Ness Monster. Whatever body of water is shown in the clip doesn't look like Loch Ness. Loch Ness is pretty narrow, and you can always see the other side. This footage, on the other hand, looks like it was shot on the coast of the sea.

Another theory just occurred to me. Maybe what this video really shows is one of those leaping sturgeon that's been knocking out boaters lately.


Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007.   Comments (14)

New Nessie Footage — image Something is stirring in Loch Ness.

Earlier this month, amateur scientist Gordon Holmes filmed a mysterious shape swimming beneath the surface of Loch Ness. In the footage, you can see a dark shape gliding along. Unfortunately, whatever it is, it never breaks the surface of the water, thus denying us any easy way to identify it.

Holmes says that he filmed the creature at 9:50 pm from a layby on the A82:
"I was minutes from going home but I saw something moving and dashed out of the car and switched the camcorder on. About 200 yards away from me I could see something in the water. It was definitely a creature propelling itself through the water. It was fairly bubbling along the water. It was streaking along."

The media is describing his footage as the best Nessie footage ever. The question I'm interested in is not whether or not this might be evidence of Nessie (I don't think it is), but whether this is some kind of intentional hoax. My hunch is that it's not. It's probably just a case of someone who happened to film something unusual. Maybe it's a fish, or a trick of the light, or a stray Museum of Hoaxes reader who didn't realize that the trip to Loch Ness was last year, not this year. If this footage came from anywhere else in the world other than Loch Ness, it wouldn't raise any eyebrows. But of course, it does come from Loch Ness, so it's receiving all kinds of media attention.

Credit goes to Stargazer for posting about this in the forum before I managed to post it here. However, this seemed like too big of a story for me not to put it on the front page. (And thanks to all the people who emailed me about it.)

You can see some of the video footage here, or on YouTube. (thanks to MadCarlotta for finding these links.)

And check out my list of Loch Ness Monster Hoaxes for some retrospective on sightings in the Loch.
Posted: Thu May 31, 2007.   Comments (12)

The Legend of Deerman — A series of articles by Dave Clarke of the Star Courier has revived interest in the legend of the Deerman. The legend is local to Kewanee, Illinois. It tells of a creature, with the upper body of a deer and the lower body of a man, that lurks in the woods, occasionally popping up to scare lovers parked on moonlit nights or people wandering around alone. Supposedly if you see Deerman three times you die.

Clarke credits Jerry Moriarity, the editor and publisher of the Star Courier during the '50s and '60s, with popularizing the legend of the Deerman in his column "Mostly Malarkey."

Half-human/half-animal creatures are a staple of local legends. Some of the other famous ones that I know about are Mothman of West Virginia, the Owlman of Cornwall, the Goatman of Maryland, and the Lizard Man of South Carolina. I'm sure there must be many others. (Thanks, Joe)
Posted: Fri May 25, 2007.   Comments (19)

Giant Italian Skeleton — The photos show a giant skeleton lying on display in a town square, recalling that photo of a giant skeleton supposedly unearthed in Saudi Arabia that circulated around a few years ago. (It was actually an image from a Worth1000 photoshop contest.)

In this case, the giant skeleton is not a product of photoshop. It's a real skeleton, in the sense that it's something that one can really go and see. However, it's not real in the sense of being an actual archeological artifact. It's a piece of art created by the Late Gino De Dominicis. It's titled "COSMIC MAGNET." It's currently on display in Milan, and then will tour throughout Europe.

The Google translation of a blurb about the piece says:
The body of Cosmic Calamita, marking the possible connections between microcosm and the macrocosmos, evokes inaccessible spaces to the progress and the technology, reaching to the myth and the night of the times. Landed on our planet in disowned circumstances, this colossal Moby Dick projects the spectators ammutoliti on the mystery of elsewhere beyond the land space and a time of the history becoming some the terrifying one to cerimoniere.
image image

(via CeticismoAberto.com)
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007.   Comments (2)

Dead Fairy — imageThis website shows a ‘dead fairy’, along with the story of how it was found in the Derbyshire countryside. It claims that the police and a local ‘paranormal expert’ had examined the fairy, and that the barrow it was found in contained over 20 bodies.

The site also features an update posted on April 1st, which explains that no, it is not a real fairy, and that it is a piece of art.

According to one of the people who wrote to us about this story, some people refuse to believe it’s not a real fairy, and are claiming that the artist’s update itself is a hoax.
The fairy is currently up for sale on ebay.

(Thanks, Jen and John.)
Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2007.   Comments (14)

Quick Links: Baby Nessie, etc. —
Baby Nessie Fossil Found in Antarctic
Found on an Antarctic island. Rather far away from Scotland. "The five-foot-long animal would have resembled Nessie, the long-necked creature reported to inhabit Scotland's Loch Ness."

Let blind hunters use lasers
Texas legislation will allow blind hunters to use laser sights that will guide them as they aim at the animal. This sounds very weird to me. Why would a blind person even want to hunt? What's the point? I'm just not seeing it. (Thanks, Big Gary)

Talking doll calls three-year-old "a slut"
A California mother claims her daughter's Little Mermaid Shimmering Lights Ariel doll said "You're a slut." Mattel, the doll's manufacturer, is doubtful, but has offered to replace the doll. This reminds me of the case of the "Who wants to die" talking Elmo.

NASA deals blow to lunar real estate industry
NASA has announced plans to build a base on the moon, and it doesn't care if anyone claims to own the land it's building on. But I'm sure this won't slow down the 'Buy land on the moon' industry, since there will always be some sucker willing to buy lunar property.
Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006.   Comments (18)

Quick Links: The Apostles of O’Neill, etc. —
The Apostles of O'Neill
A group of college kids living in a Washington DC house were informed that they were violating zoning laws that allowed only six people to live in one house. But they did some homework and discovered that 15 people are allowed per house, if it's a residence for a "religious community." Therefore, they've filed paperwork incorporating themselves as a nonprofit religious organization. They call themselves the Apostles of O'Neill.

Nessie could not have been a plesiosaur
Leslie Noe of the Sedgwick Museum has figured out that Nessie cannot be a plesiosaur. Why? Because plesiosaurs couldn't hold their necks above water: "Calculating the articulation of the neck bones, he concluded the neck was flexible and could move easily when pointing down. He explained how the neck was like a feeding tube, to collect soft-bodied prey: The small skulls of plesiosaurs couldn't cope with hard-shelled prey. However, the osteology of the neck makes it absolutely certain that the plesiosaur could not lift its head out of the water - as most alleged pictures of Nessie show."

Fake John Paul II Cloth Relics
The relic trade is alive and well. Souvenir shops near the Vatican are selling "medallions enclosing a tiny shred of cloth and labelled 'relics of John Paul II.'" No word on if they cure any ailments.

"There's a tick on you" as pick-up line
Here's the latest desperate pick-up strategy some guy has dreamed up. He tells women there's a tick on them and then starts pulling their clothes off. The strategy doesn't seem to be working.

Another Message in a Bottle found
Thirty years ago Marie Myatt threw a message in a bottle into the ocean. Recently it was found, just a few kilometres away from where she threw it. Sounds plausible enough. I'm inclined to think this isn't a hoax. (Thanks, Robert)
Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006.   Comments (17)

Tahoe Tessie — image I spent the weekend in a small town (King's Beach) on the coast of Lake Tahoe. While there I figured I would investigate the local legend of Tahoe Tessie, a monster that supposedly lives in the lake. However, the legend doesn't appear to be widely known, even in the Tahoe area. Most people whom I asked about it gave me a blank stare. Some details that I found on AmericanMonsters.com include that:
Legends of this creature first began to surface in the mid-1800's, when members of the Washoe and Paiute Indian tribes began to tell the white settlers about the "monster" dwelling in the depths of the Tahoe basin. As fascinating as those original testimonies may be, the most intriguing account surrounding this mystery-beast did not occur until the mid-1970's, when the renowned, French oceanographer, Jacques Cousteau, lead an expedition to explore the depths of lake Tahoe. While submerged Cousteau reportedly encountered something so terrifying that he refused to reveal what it was to the public. Sources credit Cousteau as saying, quote: "The world wasn't ready for what was down there!"
I managed to pick up a small Tahoe Tessie stuffed animal and a Tahoe Tessie keyring in a gift shop. Then I heard that there was an entire Tahoe Tessie Museum located in King's Beach run by a guy named Bob McCormack. And that it was just a few blocks down from where I was saying. So I took off to find it. Unfortunately I discovered that the museum closed a few years ago and that the building it was in was torn down. All that remains is an empty lot next door to a video store and a row of porta-pottys (see thumbnail). So much for Tahoe Tessie. I didn't venture into the porta-pottys to check if Tessie was hidden in there.
Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006.   Comments (9)

Maine Mystery Beast Killed — image Quite a few people have emailed me this story. Seems that some kind of ugly beast looking like a "hybrid mutant of something" has been found dead outside of Turner, Maine, apparently hit by a car while chasing a cat. People are speculating that the creature is "Maine's own Chupacabra." Others suggest it might have been either a wolf-dog hybrid or a deformed coyote. Here's a description of it:
What was found dead in Turner over the weekend was described as charcoal gray and weighing between 40 and 50 pounds. It had a bushy tail, an extremely short snout and short ears. There were also curled fangs hanging over the lips.
Unfortunately we'll never know for sure what it was since no DNA tests were done on it. Local animal control officers didn't think it was worth driving all the way out to Turner to inspect it. My guess: It was a Hodag.
Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006.   Comments (22)

The Specter Moose —
Status: Mystery Moose (existence undetermined)
image Curtis MacDougall, in his 1940 work Hoaxes, briefly mentions a creature named the Specter Moose. He writes:
Recent additions to unnatural history, all of which received space on press association wires, include:... a "specter moose" reported to have appeared again in the woods of Maine after having previously been seen in 1901, 1917, and 1932. (p.15)
Unfortunately that's all he says about the Specter Moose. But I've always been intrigued by this mysterious creature, and recently when I decided to expand and improve my Gallery of Tall-Tale Creatures, I resolved to find out once and for all what the Specter Moose is.

A web search turned up nothing except one other person who had also come across MacDougall's mention of the creature and was similarly intrigued. A search through various library research databases didn't turn up anything. Google Book search also came up dry. But finally I got some results when I tried newspaperarchive.com, which is an archive of old newspapers.

The Specter Moose appears to have been a moose version of Moby Dick. It was a huge, whitish-gray moose, apparently immune to bullets, who terrified hunters by chasing them around. As such, it's probably less of a tall-tale creature and more of a cryptozoological legend.

On November 14, 1900 the Minnesota Freeborn County Standard reported:
The enormous moose that has been the wonder of the sportsmen in northern Maine since 1891 has again been seen, and this time under rather different circumstances from ever before. A bicyclist came close to the monster in the road between Sherman and Macwahoe, and was obliged to abandon his wheel and climb a tree for safety. So he had a near view of the animal, reports the New York Sun.
Every story that comes from the north woods concerning this moose makes him a little bigger than before. It is generally believed that no moose ever killed in Maine, or, so far as is known, anywhere else, has approached in stature or weight, much less in spread of antlers, this specter moose of Lobster lake. He is called the specter moose because of the weird appearance he presents at night, his color being a dirty gray...
The average weight of moose shot in maine is from 800 to 900 pounds, with antlers spreading from 4 to 4 ½ feet, and rarely having more than 8 to 12 points on a side, while the bell, as the appendage under the animal's neck is called, is generally eight to nine inches long. All who have seen the big moose of Lobster lake aver that he must weight at least 2500 pounds, that his antlers spread not less than ten feet, while the bell is declared to be not less than 18 inches long. It is supposed that this monster wandered into Maine from British Columbia, as none approaching his size has ever been seen in Maine before. He is a great traveler, having been reported in almost every part of northern Maine. The hunter who brings him down will win fame and a big pot of money at the same time.
The Specter Moose returned to the headlines on November 19, 1911, at which time the Texas Galveston Daily News gave this summary of reports coming out of Maine:
The moose has always been described as of immense size and of a dirty white color, from which latter characteristic it became known as the "specter moose." As often as the stories have been told they have been denied and set down as the fabric of an excited imagination or the result of too much whisky. One skeptic even declared that it was not a moose at all but an old gray woods horse that had been turned out to run at large. Still, the story of the "specter moose," be it fact or fiction, survives, and only this week it was related by an Indian guide who has been piloting a party around Lobster Lake.
Finally he reared his antlers again in 1938 when news wires carried this blurb (which appeared on March 15 in the Pennsylvania Charleroi Mail):
SPECTER MOOSE IS MAINE SENSATION
Always hunters get near enough to be appalled by this gigantic beast, but seldom within range for an effective shot. In the accumulating lore of the forest he is described as ten to fifteen feet high, "dirty white" in color, brandishing immense antlers. Not only his ghostly hue but also his keen scent, acute hearing and seemingly magical power of instant disappearance have built up the legend of a wraith. Skeptics say there "ain't no such critter," but a man named Houston brings the story of the latest visitation.
After that the Specter Moose never again seems to have been seen. At least, no sightings made it into papers. Perhaps the big guy died of old age. It's quite possible, of course, that a white moose (or more than one) was wandering around Maine. The size of the creature is the real question. My guess is that Maine hunters may really have seen a white moose, but then exaggerated its size, as hunters have a tendency to do.

Update: To put the Specter Moose in perspective, Mooseworld.com reports that the largest moose on record was an Alaskan bull moose that weighed 1,697 lbs. Other sites report that this record moose had an antler spread of 6 ½ feet. The Specter Moose, at 2500 lbs and with an antler spread of over ten feet, would easily have beaten this record.
Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006.   Comments (10)

Mummified Sea Monster —
Status: Status: Taxidermical creation
image I received this email from Alex Wright (of Glasgow):
I found this interesting/ disturbing mummified monstrosity on a blog site I frequent. They're not sure what it is. It has a Fiji Mermaid kind of a vibe about it and it sort of reminds me of that picture of the Mexican gent holding a 'chupacabra' head that did the rounds a few years back (which was a dog head if i remember correctly)... It's an eBay thing as well.
The guy selling this on eBay (or trying to sell it... eBay seems to have cancelled the auction) claims that he found the "cryptid creature" washed up on a beach in Tampa, Florida. He writes: "I guarantee that this creatures flesh, teeth, jaw and skull are REAL 100% once living, organic flesh and bones." In other words, the flesh, teeth, jaw and skull are all real, but from separate creatures put together by taxidermical arts. Still, it looks like a well-made monster. I wouldn't mind having it on display in my office. (Oh, and that chupacabra head Alex referred to... I assume he's talking about this picture of an alien head taken by artist Charlie White.)

image image image image

Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006.   Comments (26)

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