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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Vincent linked to this in the hoax forum, and I thought it was bizarre enough that I should post it here where I can add a poll to it. The story is that 'Stephan M' lost his clothes overboard while on a canoe trip, so he had to wear the same things for the next six days. When he got home he took off his sweater and discovered that a seedling had sprouted in his belly button lint. He took photos of it as proof. Now to me this seems like a joke. I think he just stuck a leafy twig in his belly button and started snapping photos. But would it even be theoretically possible for this to happen? Wouldn't the sweater rubbing against his skin damage a delicate seedling and prevent it from growing? I think so. I also think that the sweaty, salty environment would kill a plant. But others might disagree.

I'm late to the party with this image (all the other hoax-related sites have had it up for a couple of weeks), but hey, I was on vacation, and the picture's too good to ignore. Anyway, no one seems to be able to say definitively whether it's real or a fake... or even where it originally came from. It does seem pretty unbelievable that a footprint would be that well defined through the wall of the abdomen. Plus, the foot seems awfully long. And what are those weird bumps in the middle of the foot? But on the other hand, I've heard some women say that this is possible. So I think this deserves a poll:

What caused the Tunguska Event, that massive, nuclear-bomb-strength blast that occurred in Siberia in 1908? A meteorite, is the standard answer. But a few days ago Russian researcher Yuri Lavbin claimed to have discovered "blocks of an extraterrestrial technical device" in the Tunguska area. Lavbin's theory is that a meteorite was headed for the earth, but it was blasted apart by an alien spaceship, thus causing the massive explosion. Why aliens blasting something out of the sky caused an alien technical device to fall to the ground isn't clear to me.

Lavbin announced this discovery in Pravda (which is kind of like announcing a major scientific discovery in the National Enquirer). He's transported a piece of this alien device to the city of Krasnoyarsk, though, of course, he hasn't yet allowed the general scientific community to view the thing.

So did he really find a piece of an alien ship? Or has he mistaken a piece of Cold-War-era space debris for an alien ship, as some are speculating? Or has he engineered a massive hoax? As is usually the case, time and scientific access to this 'extraterrestrial technical device' should provide the answer. In the meantime, here's a poll so that you can vote on what you think he's found:

You wouldn't want to run into this thing while out for a stroll in the woods. It's a 1000lb wild hog with 9-inch tusks, nicknamed Hogzilla, that hunting Guide Chris Griffin claims to have shot in Georgia last month. To put this in perspective, 500lb wild hogs are considered enormous. No one has ever heard of a 1000lb wild hog before, so it's raising a few eyebrows. Plus, the only evidence for the creature's existence is a picture Griffin snapped of himself posing beside it. He says that he buried the hog soon after killing it. In the picture of Griffin with Hogzilla, the hog sure looks big. Hogzilla could be real. Or the picture could be photoshopped, though I haven't seen a good enough copy of the image to make a judgement on that. Or Griffin could have obtained a large hog from a farm. In the hoax forum, posters have pointed out that tricks of perspective might make the hog look bigger than it really is... though even taking distorted perspective into account, that still seems like a big hog. If I were Griffin, I'd dig the skeleton up to prove that Hogzilla is real, because a picture alone is not indisputable evidence.
Update: A better quality picture of Hogzilla can be seen at Kens-fishfarm.com, and David Emery notes that there have been previous stories about giant hogs caught in the wild.

This question comes from the hoax forum, where it's sparked quite a debate: what's the deal with that guy in the Six Flags ads? You know the one. The 'old dude' who looks like he's about 90-years-old but dances around maniacally like a 19-year-old. Is he really an old man? Or is he a young professional dancer dressed up as an old man? If you're not familiar with 'Mr. Six', then you can check out the commercials starring him at Six Flags' website. Apparently Six Flags is being swamped by requests to reveal the true identity of Mr. Six, but so far they're staying mum, evidently hoping to milk the interest in him for all it's worth. So here's a poll so that the public can vote on who they think Mr. Six really is:

This image may have been circulating around for a while, but I just got it in my email for the first time today. It purports to show the 'worst named bus company in Finland.' That would be the 'Big Hairy Fanny' Bus Line. I've come across oddly named bus lines before (specifically the Lamers bus company that operates in Wisconsin), but I refuse to believe that there's really a bus company in Finland calling itself Big Hairy Fanny. My suspicion is that the picture was photoshopped (it's pretty easy to insert text into pictures). Or perhaps there really is a bus touring around somewhere with 'Big Hairy Fanny' plastered on its side... though it would probably be some kind of joke, or something created for a movie. The final option (which, as I said, I seriously doubt) would be that a clueless Finnish bus company really did name itself 'Big Hairy Fanny'. But if that's the case, then why the umlauts over the two a's? Until I found out what the reality is behind this mystery photo, here's a poll:
Update: The picture is fake, but the real name of the bus is even better than the fake name. It's Fücker Bus Lines, based in Germany. More details here. Of the 366 people who responded to the poll (which I've now deactivated since the mystery is solved), 46% guessed the right answer, but 54% of you guessed wrong and thought the picture was real.

The BBC is reporting that a woman in Iran has given birth to a frog. Doctors are speculating that a frog larva somehow got into her uterus while she was swimming, and then grew inside her to a full-sized frog. That seems very unlikely to me. What would a frog feed on inside a person's body? Wouldn't the frog suffocate? Actually, the brief article seems a bit ambiguous on whether it's definitely a frog that came out of her, or if it's a baby that looks rather frog-like. Either way, this case immediately reminded me of Mary Toft, the 18th-century English woman who gave birth to rabbits. Of course, Mary Toft didn't really give birth to rabbits. She stuffed rabbits inside herself and then pretended to give birth to them. It seems possible this Iranian woman is pulling a Mary Toft.

From the Hoax Forum: An Indiana company called Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems is developing a stun gun called the StunStrike that it boasts will be able to stun people at a distance, kind of like a taser without the wires. The company president, Pete Bitar, explains that the weapon will fire "a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep." Sounds a little sci-fi, but certainly not implausible. At least until you check out the company's website, and then the credibility meter drops way down. The website looks kind of like something a high school student would slap together for his 'intro to the internet' class, and it's hosted on a free server. So here you have a hi-tech company that evidently hasn't mastered the complexities of html. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Plus, the picture of the weapon looks phony. Posters at Slashdot have been all over this, dubbing the company a 'homeland security scam' and declaring that the weapon doesn't exist. In the company's favor, it has been awarded a small grant from the navy. Plus, they've been written about in the New Scientist. The Slashdot criticism is evidently making the company nervous, because on its website it now announces (in all capital letters) that:
CRITICISM OF THIS WEBSITE OR THE LIMITED INFORMATION UPON WHICH THE CRITICISM IS BASED IS IRRELEVANT AND WILL SOON BE PROVEN SO. PLEASE STAY TUNED.

The company promises a public demonstration of the StunStrike in the Autumn of 2004. So the question is, will the Slashdot people be proven right and the StunStrike turn out to be just smoke and mirrors... or will Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems disprove them and produce a real weapon? Poll below. We should know the answer by the end of the year.


The Russian Museum of Erotica, newly opened in St. Petersburg, has been crowing about its acquisition of the penis of Rasputin (the mad mystic and lover of the wife of the Russian Tsar). A photo accompanying the many news reports about this unusual exhibit shows an attractive young woman staring rather in awe at the huge, grotesque thing as it floats in formaldehyde (there's another picture here). It definitely looks like a penis, but is it Rasputin's penis (which, according to legend, was 13 inches long)?

As it turns out, Rasputin's penis has had a rather colorful history since its separation from his body. Here are some of the highlights. In 1916 Rasputin and his penis parted ways due to the machinations of a murdering gang of angry nobles. But, according to rumor, a maid found the bodiless member at the crime scene and saved it. During the 1920s a group of Russian women living in Paris acquired it (or acquired something that they believed to be his penis) and worshipped it as a kind of holy relic, while keeping it inside a wooden casket. Rasputin's daughter, Marie, didn't like the idea of her Dad's penis hanging out with these women, so she demanded the thing back. And it presumably stayed with her until she died in California in 1977. It then disappeared for a while until it came into the possession of Michael Augustine, who found it tucked away in a velvet pouch along with some of Marie Rasputin's manuscripts that he bought at a lot sale. Augustine sold the well-travelled penis to Bonham's auction house who then discovered (surprise, surprise!) that what they had bought was not a penis, but instead a sea cucumber.

That's where events stood in 1994. Now, ten years later the Russian Museum of Erotica is claiming that they have Rasputin's penis. Igor Knyazkin, the director of the Museum, claims that he bought it from a French antiquarian for $8,000. Which just begs the question: where did this French antiquarian get the penis from? One might also wonder why the Museum's penis is preserved in fluid, whereas all early accounts of Rasputin's penis describe it as dried out.

I figure this mystery offers a good opportunity to debut the polling software that I just installed on my site. So what do you think? Does the Russian Museum have the real thing? Or is it just another sea cucumber? (thanks to Big Gary C for suggesting the mystery)