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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 whatever dubious-sounding claims come across our path on a day-by-day basis. In our archives we have hundreds of articles about the most fascinating and notorious deceptions throughout history, from the middle ages to the present.
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Bigfoot Spotted Near Buffalo
Status: Hoax
Hans Mobius, the 72-year-old president of the Erie County Farm Bureau, claims that last week he saw Bigfoot wandering around on his horse farm in western New York. And he has the pictures to prove it. Here's how the sighting happened: On Saturday, Mobius said he was heading out on his green John Deere Gator to take some photographs of the ash trees in a small forest - so he could try to sell the trees. He positioned himself in front of the woods to take a panoramic photo when, he said, he "saw this thing out of the corner of my eye." The creature, he said, which was about 150 to 200 feet away, seemed to notice him. It turned to one side, then the other.
"It looked like he might have been confused," Mobius said. Then it "zigzagged" its way into the forest and disappeared.
"The way it moved - it kind of loped a little bit," Mobius said.
I don't think I'm going out on a limb if I say that this is an obvious hoax, and such an amateurish one that it's hardly worth adding to my page of Bigfoot hoaxes. And yet it's getting news coverage. Mobius claims that if it is a hoax, then someone is playing a hoax on him. But I have a suspicion that Mobius is in on it since, as Jeffrey Meldrum (a biology professor at Idaho State University) points out, the guy in the gorilla suit looks like he's posing for the camera.
"It looked like he might have been confused," Mobius said. Then it "zigzagged" its way into the forest and disappeared.
"The way it moved - it kind of loped a little bit," Mobius said.