FAKE WOLVES OF LONDON

Scottie W. posted the following comment to Sunday's posting of another rather dubious video purporting to be of a wolf in Hackney.

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2011/12/few-days-ago-we-posted-video-purporting.html#comments

For those of you too young or musically naive to know what he is on about:



Hell, I just wanted an excuse to post some Warren Zevon....

OLL LEWIS: Crypto Cons - Loving the Alien

In the mid-1990s most of the developed world was gripped by the phenomenally successful American television series The X-Files. With this came a resurgence in interest in all things paranormal on a level not seen for decades. By far the greatest interest was in Extra Terrestrials, which formed a key part of the over-arching storyline of the T.V. series, and there were plenty of experts crawling out of the woodwork to insist that we were years, if not months, away from full contact being established with our alien brethren.

The catch, several of these experts would insist, was that our governments were trying to keep it all secret while they gradually introduced us to the concept in order to avoid a mass panic. Then at some point, amongst all the chatter of lights in the sky and abductions, it was remembered that just after the Second World War there had been a strange incident in Roswell, New Mexico, USA. 'Something' had crashed there; 'something' unidentified that had been flying, so this 'something' was by definition an Unidentified Flying Object. A U.F.O!

Of course by this time you couldn't use the perfectly non-committal term U.F.O. without people thinking that what you meant was 'alien space craft.' So whatever the truth behind the Roswell incident it was now a permanent part of E.T. Folklore. This association would be given credibility in many people's minds at the time by what would turn out to be one of the most famous hoaxes (or reconstructions depending on who you believe) of the last 20 years.

In 1995 Ray Santilli held a press conference in the Museum of London, England, to announce to the world that he had acquired footage of an alien autopsy dating from around the time of the Roswell incident that had been filmed on an airforce base near the crash site. The footage of the autopsy showed what looked to be small deformed men on an operating table. However, upon closer inspection of the video it became apparent that these were not men at all.

The 'things' on the table were short and squat with large round bellies, small limbs and oversized heads giving them an somewhat Humpty-Dumpty-like appearance. Another distinction that they had from what one would expect from a human subject was that they had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. Were a human to exhibit this degree of polydactylism one would not expect the perfectly formed fingers present on the subjects.

All very strange but surely these things had to be fakes; shop dummies, perhaps? Well, a lot of people thought that until the film showed the scientists examining the bodies properly. They took out what appeared to be real internal organs, and from close-up footage of the injured knee of one of the subjects being moved, a lot of people who had already been nudged into the direction of believing that this was an authentic video of aliens being dissected, began to think that these were too detailed and authentic-looking to be models. Therefore, many of the watchers concluded that this could at last be the genuine article; the proof of the existence of aliens they had long searched for!

Others, however, concluded that it was humbug and called for things like the film to be examined and dated, and for details like the people involved in the filming and acquisition of Santilli's film to come forward. How both these lines of enquiry were dealt with showed off perfectly Santilli's clever planning, ability to think his way out of a crisis and pure dumb luck. In terms of forward planning Santilli had expected there to be calls to test the authenticity of the film and he had probably worked out that if he was unable to provide film for this or if his film did not pass tests then this would just result in a load of smug armchair naysayers sitting back and saying “Do you see? It has to be a hoax or he would have provided evidence to prove it's authenticity!” After that you then get a clammer of people who were fooled by the hoax desperate to rewrite history saying that they weren't fooled and you're left with footage that nobody wants to buy unless it's for the Aren't-people-who-believe-in-things-we-don't-kooky report at the end of the local news. You know the sorts of reports I mean: they are always reported on by the local weatherman, who is inevitably a bit camp and loved by grannies, and end with the weatherman gurning in fear as he is bathed in a green light and some whooshy, beepy sound effects play insinuating that it was true all along and the aliens have beamed him aboard their ship.

Anyway, I digress. Santilli avoided this fate by actually providing a section of film from the 1950s for the tests. That crisis averted, Santilli would have to find other witnesses that could collaborate the story of the autopsy film. It would seem this was something he hadn't planned for but at the last minute he was able to recruit a homeless man who put on a very convincing performance for the cameras. If we are to believe the account of this event put forward in the film Alien Autopsy starring Ant and Dec then it turned out that this homeless man, unbeknown to Santilli and his collaborator, was an out of work actor, which was very lucky for the pair as he was able to provide supporting 'evidence' in a very convincing manner.

So in the end Santilli and his collaborators were able to keep their hoax up long enough to make what must have been a tidy sum of money from airplay on most major TV news networks, still photographs in newspapers and a blockbuster documentary made by Fox, the network responsible for The X-files, without which the hoax would never have reached the dizzying heights it did. In the 00s Santilli came clean and confessed to the hoax and to how he pulled it off.

It turned out that the 'secret military base' in which the autopsies had taken place was the living room of a London flat and that the aliens themselves had been dummies made by artist John Humphreys stuffed with offal from Smithfields Market for that authentic internal organ look and that the convincing looking injured knee joint had been from a leg of lamb. After filming, the 'bodies' were placed, cut-up and in bin-bags, throughout the area so that they would not draw attention. Santilli's confession was made into the aforementioned Alien Autopsy movie, which used some artistic licence to put the story of the hoax into a larger comic story (involving crop-circle-loving gangsters), which still retained most of the key facts but slightly altered a few for dramatic effect such as having them bury the alien 'bodies.'

The final twist is that Santilli insisted that his video was not a hoax but a reconstruction and restoration of a film he had seen that had deteriorated beyond repair by the time he had raised the money to buy it. He claims that scenes from this film that had not degraded are inter-cut with his reconstructed scenes.

If you want to watch the footage yourself and make up your own mind, you can find it here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5830866813023883728#

OLL LEWIS: Crypto Cons - The United Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Tucked away in the corner of a gallery of the British Museum in London is perhaps the most unusual object on display in any European museum. The object is one of the most famous the museum houses; for many it is right up there with the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin Marbles, Lindow Man, the Sutton Hoo horde and the Egyptian Mummies. Yet it is not proudly displayed on the floor plans like many of the other more notable exhibits. In fact, if you are not paying attention and do not know where it is you will probably miss it as you are drawn into the centre of the room by a large statue from Easter Island. I am talking of the crystal skull.

In spite of its semi-hidden position, behind you and to the left, past the stairwell and large display case as you enter the Wellcome Trust gallery, the skull's display case is well lit and sports a surprisingly large information panel compared to most of the museums exhibits. The skull itself glistens and sparkles in the light, giving off an almost magical feel, and it is easy to see why so many people have attributed other-worldly properties to it. The skull was not made by the Aztecs, as was thought for many years, or by higher-dimensional beings as in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal skull (NOT aliens as people who didn't actually pay attention to the film say) but rather by a European jeweller in the 19th century.

There are several other crystal skulls dotted around the various museums of the world and belonging to private owners; the British Museum and the Mitchell-Hedges skull are the most ornately carved and spectacular examples, and all of them have been carved using modern techniques or using crystals that Aztec artisans would not have had access to and the item's discovery is typically unrecorded in any archaeological digs. The skull that would become known as the British Museum's crystal skull first appeared in 1881 in the Mexican antiquities shop of Eugène Boban (aka Boban-Duvergé) a Frenchman who was the official court archaeologist in Mexico during the short reign of Emperor Maximilian I. Boban sold two crystal skulls, for which he provided no information on how they had come into his posession. One skull was to eventually end up in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris and the other in British Museum. Boban attempted to sell the British Museum skull to several Mexican museums, claiming Aztec provenance for the object, but these attempts failed and it was eventually sold to American entrepreneur George H. Sisson in 1887. After being placed on public exhibition the skull was bought by Tiffany's of New York who sold it to a very eager British Museum. At the time it seemed like a good purchase as it was the most ornately carved and detailed example of what was thought to be a very rare Aztec artefact, and it took pride of place in the museum's Central and South American galleries.

However, by the 1960s and 70s the twin pressures of doubt in the archaeological world over the authenticity of crystal skulls, due in part to no finds ever having been properly documented and the vastly different artistic styles of the skulls, and the rise of proponents of New Age belief systems ascribing paranormal properties to the skulls, essentially forced the museum to hide the skull from public display for a while, only trotting it out for the occasional appearance on TV shows like Arthur C. Clark's Mysterious World. It was fast becoming evident to the museum that they had been fooled into buying a lemon and the final confirmation of this came when scientists from Cardiff University concluded that a wheeled cutting tool had been used in the skull's manufacture, which, because the Aztecs didn't even have wheels, meant it was certainly not Aztec in origin. The nature of the microscopic groves caused by the cutting implement was reminiscent of manufacturing processes used by mid-19th century German jewellers, and geologists also concluded it was doubtful that Mexicans would have had access to a large enough chunk of quartz to carve the skull before the arrival of Europeans.

Thankfully, though, despite lurking out of the way, the skull is on display in the museum along with a large display telling people of the hoax and how it was discovered. Not a lot of museums would come clean so readily to being duped and even display the object in such a beautiful manner so the British museum are to be commended for this. The crystal skull may have only limited historical value but its beauty and the part it has played in the history of hoaxes mean that this 19th century piece of art has certainly earned its place among the treasures housed in the world's greatest and most impressive historical museum.

OLL LEWIS: Crypto cons - The Eccentric Naturalist Part Two

Returning to England from his South American adventures in 1821 Watson's ship docked in Liverpool where it was inspected by a customs officer to determine whether there were any items aboard liable for import tax. The customs officer took a look at the numerous crates of biological specimens that Waterton had and decided to he should pay a hefty tax on them as surely these were not for a personal collection and Waterton must have intend to sell them. The customs man did not believe Waterton's protests and he had to pay a huge amount of money to bring his scientific specimens into the country. Waterton was not best pleased by these events and vowed he would get his own back upon the jumped up little customs man.

When Waterton visited Guyana for the fourth and final time while out in the wilds he claims to have met up with a hairy red-faced primate. Those of you familiar with the some of the tales the native Guyanese told Freeman et al during their expedition to Guyana will probably be thinking things like “hang about...” or “A-ha, I wonder if there might be a connection.” in relation to the red-faced pygmies, according to Richard they are not descriptions of the same animal/people because the pygmies were said not to be hairy or fur-covered. Personally, I wonder if Waterton had heard similar tales from the natives and took that as his inspiration for what was to follow, most strange animals or tribes do not appear over night after all.

Waterton detailed the animal as follows in the fourth journey in his book Wanderings in South America as follows:

'I mentioned, in a former adventure, that I had hit upon an entirely new plan of making the skins of quadrupeds retain their exact form and feature. Intense application to the subject has since that period enabled me to shorten the process and hit the character of an animal to a very great
nicety, even to the preservation of the pouting lip, dimples, warts and wrinkles on the face. I got a fine specimen of the howling monkey, and took some pains with it in order to show the immense difference that exists betwixt the features of this monkey and those of man.

'I also procured an animal which has caused not a little speculation and astonishment. In my opinion, his thick coat of hair and great length of tail put his species out of all question, but then his face and head cause the inspector to pause for a moment before he ventures to pronounce his
opinion of the classification. He was a large animal, and as I was pressed for daylight, and moreover, felt no inclination to have the whole weight of his body upon my back, I contented myself with his head and shoulders, which I cut off, and have brought them with me to Europe. [Footnote: My young friend Mr. J. H. Foljambe, eldest son of Thomas Foljambe, Esq., of Wakefield, has made a drawing of the head and shoulders of this animal, and it is certainly a most correct and striking likeness of the original.] I have since found that I acted quite right in doing so, having had enough to answer for the head alone, without saying anything of his hands and feet, and of his tail, which is an appendage, Lord Kames asserts, belongs to us.

'The features of this animal are quite of the Grecian cast, and he has a placidity of countenance which shows that things went well with him when in life. Some gentlemen of great skill and talent, on inspecting his head, were convinced that the whole series of its features has been changed. Others again have hesitated, and betrayed doubts, not being able to make up their minds whether it be possible that the brute features of the monkey can be changed into the noble countenance of man: "Scinditur vulgus." One might argue at considerable length on this novel subject; and perhaps,
after all, produce little more than prolix pedantry: "Vox et praeterea nihil."

'Let us suppose for an instant that it is a new species. Well; "Una golondrina no hace verano": One swallow does not make summer, as Sancho Panza says. Still, for all that, it would be well worth while going out to search for it; and these times of Pasco-Peruvian enterprise are favourable
to the undertaking. Perhaps, gentle reader, you would wish me to go in quest of another. I would beg leave respectfully to answer that the way is dubious, long and dreary; and though, unfortunately, I cannot allege the excuse of "me pia conjux detinet," still I would fain crave a little
repose. I have already been a long while errant:

“Longa mihi exilia, et vastum maris aequor aravi,
“Ne mandate mihi, nam ego sum defessus agendo.

“Should anybody be induced to go, great and innumerable are the discoveries yet to be made in those remote wilds; and should he succeed in bringing home even a head alone, with features as perfect as those of that which I have brought, far from being envious of him, I should consider him a modern Alcides, fully entitled to register a thirteenth labour.'

The head and shoulders that Waterton brought back, called 'Waterton's Nondescript' were never taken terribly seriously by the scientific establishment and with most concluding that far from being a head and shoulders they were from a howler monkey's rear end by the skilled taxidermist. The Nondescript is on display to this day in the Waterton collection of Wakefield Museum, though, should anyone wish to peruse this unusual artefact up close.

As to exactly why Waterton made the Nondescript nobody can say for sure, but according to some the Nondescript's facial features bear a striking resemblance to a certain customs man from Liverpool....

OLL LEWIS: Crypto Cons - The Eccentric Naturalist (Part One)

Taxidermy has always been an important part of the arsenal of hoaxers; from the Feejee mermaid to Jackalopes, it was often used to offer unbelieving members of the public and scientists as proof of the existence of a strange animal. It also had the added bonus that whichever showman got his hands on it would have an attraction that they would not have to pay money to or feed. During the 19th century the amount of fake taxidermy knocking around led scientists to despair, so much so that when the first stuffed platypus made its way to Britain it was assumed to be a fake and torn apart by scientists looking for the joins.

Not all fake taxidermy was created to make money, however; some was created for stranger and more convoluted reasons. Such was the case of Charles Waterton's Nondescript.

Charles Waterton was perhaps the model for all eccentric English aristocrats and was well known in social circles for his peculiar deeds, actions and beliefs. These included sporting a crewcut when the fashion at the time was one for long hair, biting guests legs at the dinner table pretending to be a dog and climbing to the top of St Peter's in Rome to leave his gloves on top of the lightning conductor. The last deed supposedly caused the Pope himself to ask Waterton to climb back up and take his gloves down. Waterton's curious ways did not stop there; he believed in the medieval practice of blood-letting as a cure for illness, slept on the floor with a block of wood as a pillow for the rest of his life after the premature death of his wife (they had known each other for about a year when she died in childbirth) and would perform frequent 'flying experiments' by jumping off the roof of an outhouse on his estate.

Whatever the truth and motives behind Waterton's eccentric practices, he was actually quite an important naturalist. He invented bird nesting boxes and walled off 5 square kilometres (about 3 square miles) of his estate with a 9-foot wall in the 1820s to form the world's first wildfowl reserve.

Waterton was also one of the first people ever to warn about and raise objections to the problem of pollution when he successfully proved that chemicals from a nearby soap factory were killing his trees and polluting his lake, and he forced the factory to relocate.

He was also a brilliant taxidermist and one of his students later went on to teach Charles Darwin how to preserve specimens. His writing also attracted praise and his book Wanderings in South America, written about when he went to British Guiana to attend to his late uncle's estate there and the various explorations he had there, inspired many young men to take an interest in the natural world, including Alfred Russell Wallace and the afore-mentioned Charles Darwin.

For all his seriousness about his passion for the natural world, Waterton's eccentricities and peculiar sense of humour shine through even here. He would often create satirical taxidermy tableaux of events of the day, which became a source of great amusement. For example, his most famous work was a tableau of reptiles dressed in dapper clothes made to look like famous Englishmen of the day entitled 'The English Reformation Zoologically Demonstrated.' Another famous example of Waterton's humorous taxidermy was 'John Bull and the National Debt' which depicted a grotesque chimera of tortoise and porcupine with a human-like face being beset by small dragon-like lizards. Because of this sideline it was not a good idea to cross Waterton, as one customs man from Liverpool would find out....

OLL LEWIS: Crypto Cons

The Mutant Moggy

Now as you're reading this on the internet, I think it's a safe bet that you have at some point seen a picture of 'Snowball the monster cat'. Around the beginning of this decade emails started to circulate the globe containing the story of what was reputed to be the worlds biggest cat and an accompanying photo of a jolly bearded man lifting this huge cat aloft.

The story most frequently attached to the photo was that Snowball, as the giant cat was called, had been given birth to by a cat that had spent it's time hanging around a nuclear research facility in Canada. Because of this the cat's offspring supposedly grew to superhuman proportions. These proportions being 69 inches in length from the nose to the tip of the tail and 87lbs in weight, which is around 1.75m and 39.5kg in metric.

Now, what I like to call the 'Stan Lee cryptid explanation', after the legendary superhero creator who usually has genetic mutation and radioactive things in his characters origin stories, is perhaps one of the main reasons cryptozoology doesn't get taken seriously by a lot of main-stream scientists. All too often you'll see this fanciful reason trotted out by the media or a witness and the subject tends to loose all credibility, it's all well and good to use it as an explanation as to why the the population of New York are being attacked by a giant axolotl dressed in a top hat in some b-movie but real life doesn't work that way. So that alone should start the 'this is not entirely serious' alarm ringing. Couple that with the pictorial evidence and you get an even clearer picture of what is really going on. The jolly fellow in the photograph is lifting a weight of almost 40kg in front of him pretty easily isn't he? The cat looks less sharp compared to the rest of the photo and the Jolly Fellow seems to have rather large fingers too. It is pretty obvious that the photograph has been made with photoshop or another similar program and that the accompanying text is just a bit of puff.

So, what is the real story behind the photo? The jolly fellow in the photo is Cordell Hauglie of Edmonds, Washington and Snowball's real name is Jumper. The photo was made as a joke to send to his daughter who had asked for a photo of Jumper to show a friend, Hauglies son held up the cat in the first shot he took (those are his fingers supporting the cat, hence why they look large too) and then Jumper was cut out from the picture and placed over a picture with similar lighting of Hauglie standing further back, creating the illusion that he was holding a much larger cat. Hauglie never set out to trick anyone just to create a funny visual joke for those that knew jumper. The text was added to the photo by persons unknown who received the photograph in their inbox.

Guinness world records do not hold a record for heaviest cat any more because of possible health concerns that people may attempt to overfeed their animals just to get into the record books but according to snopes.com who consulted an old copy of the record book when this record was still extant the heaviest cat was 47lbs, around 21kg, which is almost half the weight claimed for 'Snowball' in the text. Jumper is in reality about the same size as most other domestic cats but slightly portly.

Often with a number of photos of supposedly strange or unusually sized animals that make it on to the internet or into the press perspective tricks are employed to make the animal seem larger or more dramatic and that is something any cryptozoologist should always be on their guard for.

OLL LEWIS: CRYPTO CONS

The Feejee Mermaid Part Two.


As is often the case when Barnum was involved in something, the public story of the mermaid was entertaining but ultimately completely false. What really happened was perhaps just as interesting as the one that Barnum had created.

The mermaid was probably created by Japanese fishermen around 1810 and sold to Dutch traders who sold it to an American sea captain called Samuel Barrett Eades in 1822. This was perhaps the first time the mermaid was used in a money-making scam because the Dutch were somehow able to get Eades to pay $6000 for the mermaid; the fact that he sold one of his ships, which he didn't even fully own, to help raise what at the time was a huge price, suggests that the Dutch really must have been claiming that the creature was a real mermaid and that Eades had fallen for the scam hook, line and sinker. Eades was never able to recoup his investment and died in debt whereupon his son sold the mermaid to Moses Kimball for a fraction of the price his father had paid.

Kimball knew a crowd-pleaser when he saw it, and knew exactly where Eades had gone wrong and not drawn the crowds he could have. Eades had not gone to Barnum. Kimball had worked with Barnum on a number of projects and knew that Barnum could come up with schemes to draw crowds like no other. So Kimball and Barnum entered into an agreement where Barnum would lease the mermaid off him for display in Barnum's museum and Barnum could pocket any ticket sales he made from exhibiting the mermaid. Kimball knew that Barnum would hatch a plan to drive his ticket sales through the roof and he would also benefit from this when he displayed the mermaid in his own museum. The money from the lease would also quickly pay off Kimball's investment and then some, without him having to raise a finger.

The plan Barnum came up with was a risky as it was genius but worked perfectly. He started by writing several letters to the newspapers in New York about the mermaid's discovery and arranging to have them sent to the papers from various locations in other states to create the impression that this was a huge news story and generating a real buzz. After the newspapers had fallen for that and began printing the letters, he paid a man named Levi Lyman to pretend to be a naturalist called Dr Griffin from the fictitious British Lyceum of Natural History to turn up in New York with the specimen. Lyman proved to be a good actor and convinced the assembled press that 'his' mermaid was genuine by using the scientific-sounding explanation that every animal on land has a counterpart somewhere in the seas, using sea horses and sea lions as his examples. When Barnum exhibited the mermaid at his museum ticket sales increased threefold and the Feejee mermaid became one of his most famous exhibits.

Since the fire that destroyed the mermaid there have been several occasions where people have claimed to possess the original Feejee mermaid. These claims are all false, however, and bear little resemblance to the original mermaid. The original was fairly small with outstretched arms and a look on its face as if it had endured great pain at the moment of death and there are also accurate illustrations available of the mermaid from its time in Barnum's museum. These illustrations look very little like what we and all the subsequent claimants to ownership of the original commonly expect the mermaid to look like. Somewhere along the line the public image of the mermaid came to be what looks like the mummy of a small child with a fish's lower body and resting fairly peacefully upon its elbows with only a sneer like a haughty heiress in recognition of the pained look the original had.

OLL LEWIS: CRYPTO CONS

The Feejee Mermaid Part One

The Feejee mermaid is probably the most famous cryptozoology-related humbug ever created and although we have mentioned it a few times on the blog, including Alan Friswell's marvellous creation for the CFZ that featured in the first ever published guide to Feejee-mermaid-fabrication in Fortean Times, we have never actually had an in-depth look at the story behind this staple of the sideshow.

The original Feejee mermaid arrived in New York in the company of Dr J. Griffin of the British Lyceum of Natural History in mid July of 1842. For some time previously the local papers of New York had been receiving gushing letters brimming with excitement over a strange creature that had been caught in the 'Feejee islands' (an alternative spelling of the Fiji islands) that was part human and part fish. Indeed, according to the letters, this was no less than a real mermaid, an animal which according to scientists was a creature of myth created by the minds of randy sailors. The papers were certainly interested in seeing and reporting upon this marvel when Dr Griffin came to town, and they practically besieged his hotel in the hope of seeing the mermaid and gaining an exclusive report.

Someone other than the press was also very interested in the mermaid and this being nineteeth-century New York, it really doesn't take a genius to guess who...the world's greatest showman ever Phineas T. Barnum.

Barnum gave several newspapers what they thought was an exclusive when he approached each in turn offering to donate a woodcut that he no longer needed that they could use to illustrate their stories. Barnum said that he had been trying to buy the mermaid off Dr Griffin and had prepared the woodcut beforehand for use in producing promotional materials; however, Barnum told the newspapers, this was not to be as Dr Griffin had turned him down. The newspaper was happy to take the woodcut off Barnum's hands as this meant that they could get their copy out faster and with an illustration, something their rivals would surely not have! The fact that they could also tie this story in with a local celebrity also helped push up the article's importance and chances of hitting the front page.

On the day the stories were published - the 17th of July - Barnum revealed his true hand and distributed thousands of copies of his own leaflets about the mermaid throughout New York. The woodcuts and the leaflets both depicted mermaids as nubile , plump-bosomed, young ladies without a scallop shell bikini in sight.

This borderline pornography certainly got locals even more interested in seeing the mermaid, who was sure to be a rare beauty if these pictures were to be believed. The reaction of these New Yorkers to seeing the wizened and emaciated half-fish and half-monkey mummy that was the real Feejee mermaid must have been priceless. Unsurprisingly, after the departure of Dr Griffin the mermaid was housed in Barnum's New York museum where it continued to draw huge crowds. The mermaid went on a tour soon after, even reaching England in 1859, and was destroyed in a fire at Moses Kimball's Boston museum, where it was residing, sometime in the 1880s.

FAKE MONSTER VIDEO FROM A NEW YORK LAKE

Richard Freeman sent this.

WEIRD WEEKEND SCRAPBOOK: Oll Lewis

Today was the last day of the 2010 Weird Weekend and I was to be the first speaker of the day. I delivered a talk on fake giants and petrified men, assisted by Kieran Snape who recreated the pose of Mark Twain’s petrified man on stage. The talk was somewhat of a departure from my usual style at weird weekend in that it was somewhat tongue in cheek and a bit of fun to kick off the day, and thankfully the audience seemed to enjoy it and laughed at the right places before an impromptu discussion on giants and biologically related cons in general.

After that it was time to get serious for a minute as I showed the casts of the cat footprints I had taken in Durden farm in February. The casts were almost certainly that of a leopard, with a stride length of 71cm and the forepaw measuring 8 by 9cm and the hind paw measuring 5 by 6cm.

The day ended with Ronan’s talk on the holy grail with him riding into the sunset on a horse, and was followed up by Jonathan’s director’s address. This Weird Weekend has gone incredibly smoothly and has been very enjoyable; roll on next year!

GIANT EARTHWORM REDUX

The other day we posted this story about giant earthworms, and Richard F. (who originally sourced the website) pointed out that we hadn't included this link to the pages about the deahworm including "loads of photos of giant earthworms that they are trying to pass off as deathworms!"

Never mind - it gives me an excuse to post another giant earthworm picture. Wayhay!

DALE DRINNON: Folklore/Fakelore

Just a couple of pieces of Folklore/Fakelore;

The first photo is of a head mounted in the front window of a Tennessee store, as explained in the blog when you follow the link:

http://brentkmoore.blogspot.com/2007/07/creature-of-sugar-flat-rd.html

And the second is a museum mount representing a fictional creature known as a Snouter. Some people have taken Snouters seriously because they had not known that the book is a work of fiction. Just to go on record; the book The Snouters (1967) is a work of fiction.

For the record, I have not heard the word `Fakelore` before, and think it is a jolly good term....

THE "WATER BLACKFELLA PICTURE": Controversy continues

The controversy over this blasted picture continues. Dale Drinnon wrote this afternoon: "I am very much surprised to see that the reference article on the "Water Blackfella" (Formerly "Bigfoot") photo still accepts it as genuine, despite the blog posting that says it is a hoax.

It IS a hoax, it is a model and from the apparent scale, it is no more than a few inches tall: a toy. The wonder of it all is that it continues to circulate. "

I agree with Dale totally, of course it's a hoax. And it's not even a particulaarly good one. So I went back to the posting in question and re-read it. Its a matter of semantics, but David Lee seems of the same opinion as us. Yes, its a hoax, and the link was to another story purporting to be the source of it.

Now Neil Arnold has steeped into the fray, and he reckons it was in Strange Magazine years ago, but will be looking for the original source for us.

I am actually finding this fascinating, and can't wait to see what happens next

THE CASE OF THE FURRY TROUT

I have always been fond of this particular image, because although it is obviously a hoax, it is a hoax that has been manufactured with one particular purpose in mind - to make people laugh. Because it is a hoax so unutterably ludicrous that one cannot, for a moment, imagine that anyone would take it seriously.

You would be surprised.

A few years ago I was working as the deputy editor of a tropical fish magazine called Tropical World. The editor was a very nice bloke, but he had health problems, and a weakness for the sauce which eventually killed him, so I ended up running the show for a considerable amount of the time.

One day when the editor was in hospital and I was once again in charge, I received an email from someone attaching this picture. Now, I had only ever seen it before in a wonderful book called Animal Fakes and Frauds by a bloke called Peter Dance, and was completely unprepared for a letter from a bloke saying that he was in the throes of setting up a coldwater fishtank, with some unusual inhabitants, and was looking for a furry trout to complete his collection.

The frightening thing was that this geezer was obviously somewhat of a fish afficianado (a piece of alliteration that sounds better read out than it does writen down). He already had some rather impressive North American coldwater fish (including bullhead catfish and pumpkinseeds, which are both technically illegal to keep) and an expensive filtration system.

So maybe I was once again suffering from the sin of pride through prior knowledge. There are, after all, hairy frogs. Why not furry trout?

A JENNY HANIVER FROM THE CFZ ARCHIVES

Just to compliment Karl Shuker's excellent article from last week about devil fish and Jenny Hanivers here is a picture of a Jenny Haniver from our own collection, which - like so many of the pictures we have posted recently - was taken at my favourite pecu;iar bar-cum-museum in downtown San Antonio, during my visit there in November 2004...

I have always fancied trying to make a Jenny Haniver of our own, but the weather has been so wet during the last few summers that we have not had the opportunity to sun dry anything, let alone a bloody great skate.

It is something that I would like for the CFZ collection, and apparently they are quite often found for sale in curio shops in the Canary Islands and suchlike places, so if any of you are on holiday this summer and feel in a generous mood you know what to buy your old Uncle Jon.....

RICHARD FREEMAN: The Worst Loch Ness "documentary" ever!

Neil Arnold recently sent me some DVDs of cryptozoological documentories. Amongst these was a 1976 film called 'The Legend of Loch Ness'. It was produced by Richard Martin and narrated by Auther Franz.

The list of errors and downright lies in this programe beggers belief. There are numerous shots of a yellow submarine (not the famous Viperfish) and divers whom we are told are on an expedition diving in Loch Ness. The waters are crystal clear, not peat-soaked like the waters of the Loch. On top of this there are marine fish, sea urchins, and giant kelp found only in the Pacific Ocean.

We are shown film of a blue shark and told it is a bull shark. The narrator cheefuly tells us that bull sharks have a snake-like head and long thin body. Actualy they have a broad head and squat body. He then goes on to tell us that they grow to 25 feet long. In fact the biggest bull shark ever recirded was about 11 feet long. The reson for all this?

...The Loch Ness Monster might be a shark!

Later we are show film of brown bears eating salmon, and told that the monster might hibernate like a bear. The narrator goes on to tell us that the last bear in Scotland was killed in the 1800s! Bears were hunted out in the UK around 800 years ago.

Finally, they boast that their diving crew got exclusive film of the monster swimming past their cameras. We see the close up of a fishes eye then an extreme close-up of what looks like an ordinary-sized eel swimming very close to the camera.

Once again this is in clear water.

It's not so much the zoological inacuracies that get my back up, but the barefaced lies - like claiming to have filmed in the Loch when the footage comes from the Pacific coast of North America, and claiming they have filmed the monster when all they have is a close up of a marine eel.

In which Jonathan and the cat commit image fraud

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/02/19/is-100ft-long-snake-mythical-borneo-monster-or-just-a-photo-fake-115875-21137187/

The Daily Mirror describes the latest rather dubious giant snake photographs from Borneo (see yesterday's post) as a "clever piece of photo editing". Having too much time on my hands and a copy of adobe photoshop I decided to see just how clever a piece of photo editing it actually was.

12:20 I open Adobe Photoshop and Google Earth
12:22 I find Bideford Bay on Google Earth and press the "print screen" button on my keyboard
12:24 The cat comes into the office and jumps on the keyboard
12:25 I swear at the cat
12:26 I start again
12:28 After a bit of mucking about I have the following image as a *.jpg on photoshop

12:30 I then type the words 'swimming snake' into Goodle.com/images and find This URL
12:32 I download this picture

12:34 The cat comes back in and jumps onto my lap. We make friends again and I waste several minutes fussing him
23:36 Using the magic eraser tool I do a fairly half-arsed job at getting ridof the background and produce this:
12:38 With the cat still on my knee I paste the snake image onto the image of the Torridge Estuary. I then blur it a little bit, and making sure that I have an opacity of about 40% I resize the snake and cover it with a pasted image of the muddy water.
12:40 We have this - conclusive proof that giant snakes swim up and down the River Torrisge between Bideford and Appledore.

If I had paid more attention to the job in hand, rather than only taking twenty minutes (most of which was spent alternatively playing with the cat, or remonstrating him for his sins) I could have done a much more convincing job.

So If the Daily Mirror really thinks that the Borneo image is a "clever piece of photo editing" can I have a job in the Art Department? I am, sure that they pay more than I earn at the moment..

GUEST BLOGGER NAOMI WEST: Jackalope Joe's

Some years ago, I was in San Antonio in Texas. I was investigating the stories of blue, hairless dogs which had been described as the chupacabras although they obviously were coyotes of some description. During our stay, my ex-girlfriend and I found a shop called Jackalope Joe's which specialised in the sale of those singular artefects called Jackalopes. When our new Texas rep Naomi (profiled last week on Corinna's blog)asked whether there was anything she could do for us when she and her husband Ritchie visited San Antonio, I asked her to go and visit the shop. The rest is history....

Citizens and passersby of the Western United States expect to see some interesting creatures: waddling, squinting armadillos, gracefully bounding antelopes, massive, meditative long-horns… but a rabbit with antlers? If you haven’t heard of the Jackalope, you can spot one on any given day in a small retail store located in San Antonio, Texas. Jackalope Joe’s specializes in the sale of this odd breed – all of them dead and mounted alongside the more commonly hunted horned creatures. You can even purchase a hunting license for the Jackalope, as its population is not likely to be endangered anytime soon.

Jackalopes are manufactured in South Dakota by Matthew and Brenda Pates. The business began over 40 years ago by a taxidermist named Russ Bachus. But it wasn’t just a moment of creative genius that inspired Russ to stick a pair of antlers on a rabbit carcass: the legend of the Jackalope began in 16th Century Germany, when rabbits with what appeared to be horns spawned rumors of a new breed. It wasn’t until the 20th century that scientists discovered Shope papillomavirus, a disease that causes these horn-like growths.

This fatal disease afflicts both Jack Rabbits and Cottontails.

The appeal of the Jackalope endures despite its sobering origins, and people continue to purchase these cuddly, horned oddities. Rachel, the manager of Jackalope Joe’s, says that much thought goes into customers’ decisions when choosing which Jackalope to buy: they study the eyes, the facial expressions, and even look for resemblances to family members.

"This one looks like Grandpa!” one customer exclaimed. Many buyers choose the Pheasant Jackalope, which sports a pair of wings, bird legs, and a long, vertical, feathered tail.

Another best-seller is the “couple”: a mounted Jackalope head with a Jack Rabbit head snuggled adoringly against it.

Children are especially enamored by the Jackalopes, and Rachel says parents often request that she “confirm” to the kids that the Jackalope is real. This deception brings children as much delight as the myth of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

The popularity of the Jackalope among adults, however, proves that people of all ages would rather entertain a myth than concern themselves with facts. And what myth could be more entertaining than a bunny with a rack of horns?

Although some locals claim they have spotted live Jackalopes in the Texas Hill Country, probably the only ones you will see can be found at Jackalope Joe’s.