CRYPTOLINK: Bigfoot Hoax – How Far Will It Go?

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

I admit I am curious to see how this will ultimately play out. Rick Dyer is at it again. In 2008 Dyer claimed to have found a dead bigfoot. He claimed that scientific analysis was coming, he had the body for investigation, he held a press conference promising evidence.

It was soon discovered that the bigfoot body was simply a rubber suit – the whole thing was a crude hoax, surprising only the most gullible bigfoot believers.

Amazingly, Dyer is now at it again. He claims to have shot and killed a bigfoot, that he has the body, that the BBC has footage of the whole thing, and that a team of scientists have thoroughly examined the body.

If his claims are true, then Dyer has the smoking gun evidence that bigfoot is real. Of course, at this point no nerd can resist quoting that Klingon saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Does Dyer honestly expect anyone to believe that a proven bigfoot hoaxer really caught bigfoot this time? Where so many have failed before, a hoaxer alone has struck gold.

Read on...

GIANT RATTLESNAKE HOAX (Thanks to Michael Newton for this)

Ages ago we posted a story about a giant rattlesnake in Florida. It turns out to have been a hoax - well, not exactly a hoax, but a neat bit of exaggeration....

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/staugustine-giant-rattlesnake.shtml

OLL LEWIS: Crypto-Cons - Anything But The Tooth

Some cryptids attract hoaxes much more than others, the two greatest examples of these being Bigfoot in America and the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland. These hoaxes are not, in my opinion, humbug and jolity like the hoaxes of Barnum and his peers, for they serve to constantly chip away at any credibility these cryptids may have. The crypids are contently targeted purely by the virtue that they are well known and the huge amount of hoaxes leads people to believe that because there are so many hoaxes then there is probably no truth behind any of the reports. When a person does see something that they think may be Nessie they now will automatically assume that it was a floating log or a wave and not report it. It may well have been a floating log, but what if it really was a sighting of an unknown animal? The evidence would be lost forever.

Particularly irksome is when hoaxes like this are preformed as publicity stunts to market some tawdrey wares. Sometimes they even try to use hoaxes like this to attempt to promote something that may have been of interest to real cryptozoologists, scoring a spectacular own goal in the process. One such incident occurred during the publicity campaign for Steve Alten's book The Loch.

In March 2005 the story broke that 2 American tourists had found a strange and quite large tooth on the banks of Loch Ness. They took photographs of the tooth but as they were doing so a shady water bailiff came up to them and confiscated the tooth, which was never seen again!

This might perhaps sound just within the realms of possibility to some but the story lost any credibility it may have had when you saw the photos of this alleged tooth. It was not even a tooth, rather the tip of a stag's antler. Pretty soon the hoax was admitted to as part of the book's publicity campaign. Perhaps the people responsible were expecting this to get people talking about Loch Ness and the book and for sales to go through the roof.

Well, they were part right: people did talk but mostly about what an idiotic thing to do this was and vowing never to buy the book. Obviously with the publicity generated the book's sales would have improved over what the sales would have been but had they not annoyed a large part of their target audience and thought of a better way of getting publicity the sales could have been higher.

TURTLE HOAX

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/costa-rica-turtle-eggs.shtml

There is something particularly fortean about hoaxes. Many people with an interest in the natural world received an email recently that purported to show Costa Rican people robbing turtle nests of eggs and behaving in an environmentally despicable manner. It was all a hoax. read on

RICHARD MUIRHEAD: Classic Orang Pendek hoax from the 1930s..

http://newspapers.nl.sg/Digitised/Article/singfreepressb19320623.2.24.aspx

NEIL ARNOLD: The Sussex Lion Hoax

Reports of lions and tigers in the English countryside are very often the product of hoax or the occasional zoo escapee, which is easily recaptured or unfortunately shot dead. Lions and tigers would not survive for long in the British Isles, and yet I find it amazing just how many stories pertaining to ‘lion hunts’ and ‘tiger pursuits’ hit the headlines. One such story, from the summer of 1933, concerned four men who claimed that a lion named Rex had escaped from its enclosure at a zoo in Sussex. The story continued through autumn into winter. The coverage as follows:

On October 19th 1933 The Times ran the headline of the ‘Sussex Lion Hunt - Public Mischief Charge’

Evidence For Defence

Justices yesterday resumed their hearing of the case in which four men were summoned as a sequel to a hunt for a lion, named Rex, which was reported to have escaped near Bognor Regis early in July. The defenrdants are: William Edmund Butlin, of The Park, Skegness; Clifford Stanley Joste, of Butlin's Zoo, Bognor Regis; Alan Leslie Proctor, of Glamis Street, Bognor Regis; and John Waller Wensley, of Church Farm, Pagham. The charge as set out in the summons read:- For that You, on or about the fourth day of July, at the parish of Bognor Regis, unlawfully did conspire, combine, confederate, and agree together to commit a certain misdemeanour, namely, to commit a public mischief by your conduct and by means of certain false statements to wit, that a lion, which was being transported in a motor-vehicle at the instance of you, the said William Edmund Butlin, had escaped at or near Clymping . . . and was then at large in the neighbourhood of Bognor Regis, and further that a certain sheep which had been killed and the carcase thereof mutilated by one Charies Bailey, at the instance of and with the connivance of you, the said William Edmund Butlin, Clifford Stanley Joste, Alan Leslie Proctor, and John Waller Wensley, had been killed and mauled by the said lion, thereby causing officers of the West Sussex Constabulary to devote their time and services to the investigation of such false statements, thus temporarily depriving the public of the services of the Public oficers and thereby also Putting the Public in fear against the peace of our Lord the King, his Crown and Dignity.

REPORTED ESCAPE - Yesterday Ernest Newsome, Butlin's secretary at Skegness, said that when Butlin telephoned from Bognor on July 4 he told him all the animals had left Skegness. After reading of the reported escape of the lion he made inquiries, found that the lion had not been sent, and telephoned Butlin's mother.

Mr. Flowers: Could a lion drop off a lorry on the way from - Skegness to Bognor and the lorry-driver not know he had lost it ?

Newsome: I should say it is quite feasible.

Mr. Bray submitted that no prima facie case had been made out against Joste, or,'if there was a case, it was so flimsy that it would be " a public mischief " if the Court did not dispose of it. Mr. Bray said that it was clear there was no Conspiracy and that Joste had no criminal intention.

Proctor, giving evidence, said he was an artist by profession, but by force of circumstances he was also a part-time journalist. He sometimes assisted his father, who was a local accredited agent for a London newspaper. The witness said he had heard about the Craigweil lion, which had been definitely regarded in the neighbourhood as a joke. On Tuesday, July 4, he went to Butlins Fun Fair between 3 and 5 p.m. to see if he could gain any information about the rumour that a lion had recently escaped. He first saw Joste and then immediately afterwards saw Mr. Butlin, but Mr. Butlin would neither confirm nor deny the rumour. The witness said he did not make any inquiries until a second interview with Mr. Butlin, whom he saw at 7 that same evening. Mr. Butlin said he was still uncertain whether it was his lion or not; and Mr. Butlin led him to believe that if there was a lion loose in the district it would in all probability be his. The same evening he heard that a lion had escaped and told his father what he had learned, and a short "story " was written up and telegraphed to London. This brought down reporters of London newspapers the next day. The witness said that he did not himself send any "story” to London. When he left Butlin on the Tuesday he really believed a lion was loose, and he gave his father an accurate account of what he had heard. He certainly never intended to frighten the public or waste the time of the police. Proctor's case was then closed and the hearing adjourned till Monday

October 24th 1933
The Sussex Lion Story
The Chichester Justices yesterday committed for trial the four men accused of conspiracy to commit a public mischief by alleged false statements that a lion had escaped near Clymping and had killed a sheep, thereby temporarily depriving the public of the services of police officers investigating the statements. The defendants are WILLIAM EDMUND BUTLIN of The Park, Skegness. The defendants all denied the allegations. Wensley, giving evidence, described a meeting with Proctor, when he said the latter paid him 30s. for a sheep. Proctor said, "After your man has killed it, will you ask him to maul it about a bit and throw it under a hedge."

Wensley added, " I think he said he wanted the Press to believe that a lion was at large." Later Buthn and others came to look at tbe sheep, and Butlin remarked that “by all appearances it was a lion's work."

Wensley, cross-examined by Mr. Flowers, said, I really thought a lion was at large, because I had heard so many rumours about lions- vegetarian and so on." (Laughter.)

Mr. Flowers.-Your efforts were to convince people that this was not a vegetarian lion, were they not? (Laughter.) The MAGISTRATES held that a prima facie case for investigation by a superior Court had been established and they committed all four defendants for trial at the Assizes. Each man was allowed bail in his own recognizances in thc sum of £100.

December 22nd 1933
STORY OF LION’S ESCAPE

Replying to Mr. CASSELS (his counsel), Butlin said that he thought the newspaper report was correct in so far as it referred to a lion being at large. He thought then that the lion, which was supposed to have come from Skegness, had, in fact, escaped. He spent most of that morning dodging newspaper reporters. Referring to the finding of the sheep's carcass, Mr. Butlin said that he had nothing to do with the payment of 5s. to Bailey, the shepherd, by Wensley. He did not know Wensley, and had never heard of him till that day. " When I saw the carcass," he added, "I asked Wensley if he had had any sheep killed by dogs recently, and he said he had not. I thought in my own mind then that my lion had killed the sheep." Butlin described how during that morning and after he went out by car he borrowed somc fish- ing nets with which to recapture the lion. He still believed that Rex was at large. " I did not realize the real position until later that day, when a message was received from Skegness that Rex had not been sent to Bognor." ; He thought then that the best way to end the matter was to say the lion had been recaptured. Had he said that the lion had not escaped he might not have been believed. " Had this been done for publicity," added Mr. Butlin, " I could have given a graphic pic- ture of its recapture. Instead I ' killed ' the story at once."

"A BAD ADVERTISEMENT"

JUSTICE CHARLES.-Was it not a bad advertisement to you as an experienced show- man that a lion should have escaped from a weak or damaged crate ?-

Yes, it was a poor advertisement and has done more harm to me than people think. Cross-examined by Mr. JOHN FLOWERS, K.C., prosecuting, Mr. Butlin said that the lorry load of animals from Skegness was in charge of the driver, who would not necessarily know what animals he had on board.

Mr. FLOWERS.-Who was responsible for call-ing in a veterinary surgeon after the lion was supposed to have been recaptured ?-

A "vet" is always called in when we get something in the papers about our animals. Cranks start inquiring whether animals have been ill-treated in any way, so we get a veterinary surgeon in to say that they are in good condition.
MR. JUSTICE CHARLES:The lion might have been eating tomatoes and been suffering from an intestinal disorder. (Laughter.) Butlin did not agree that a story of a lions escape and recapture would have drawn a mass of people in Sussex to the show in order to see the animal. “In case people thought it was an attempt at publicity," he said, " I did not have a lion in the menagerie the rest of the summer."

Mr. Flowers.-If you did not want this report to spread you could have denied it from the start ?-
I thought at first it was true.
MIR. JUSTICE CHARLES.-If you thought a lion was at large and had not told the police and someone got hurt you would have been very much blamed ?
Yes.
Several witncsses were called regarding the demeanour of people in the district after the news that a lion was out. One witness said that they did not appear in any way worried and the state of affairs was different from what he had anticipated. The driver of the lorry which brought the original load of animals from Skegness said that he had on board an empty crate, which he should have left at an address in Tottenham Court Road. He did not do so because the road near was up and he was advised to " move on” in case of obstruction. He took the crate to Bognor. Albert Gray, manager of the zoo at Bognor, said that he received a list of animals expected from Skegness. It included a lion, and when he saw the empty crate he thought a lion had escaped and informed Butlin. He told the witness to keep things as quiet as he could and make inquiries. Joste said that he was the manager of Butlin's Auto-cars, Limited, of which Mr. Butlin was managing director. He denied that he had said that the matter was just " a little harmless publicity."
" At no time have I ever suggested it was a stunt," he said. " I heard rumours about a lion being at large, and when I saw it in a newspaper I thought it was true.

KILLING A SHEEP - Proctor in his evidence, also said that, following the rumours, he believed on July 4 that a lion was at large. He denied that the report which appeared the following day was written by him, but said he supplied some of the material, which he then thought was true. He agreed that he asked Wensley to sell him a sheep, to kill it, and leave the carcass under a hedge. It was meant as a joke.

MR. JUSTIICE CHARLES.-Is that Your idea of a joke ? You paid 35s. and left the carcass under a hedge.
Proctor.-Partly as a joke and partly for gaining copy for news.
MR. JUSTICE CHARLES.- You meant to deccive people ?-
Yes.
You did your best to make it look as if the scare were a real one ?-
Yes.
Proctor added that he did not tell Mr. Butlin or Joste what he had done, and he was not aware that a lion had not in fact escaped until he was served with a summons. Wensley, in his evidence, said that he thought that the leaving of the sheep under the hedge was a joke. He had no intention of being a party to a public mischief.
The evidence was concluded and counsel addressed the jury.
MR. JUSTICE CHARLES, in summing up, said that the case was not nearly so important as had been made out. Nothing would probably have been heard of it had it not been for the grossly improper article published by a newspaper. That was the genesis of the trouble. It might have been a showmans stunt or a reporters stunt, but so far as Butlin was concerned it was a little difficult to see what he had to gain by such ridiculous nonsense. What he had to lose was pretty obvious. It was necessary that the public should have been put in fear. Some witnesses had said they were put in fear because of the false report, but the jury would probably have no doubt that that part of the case was exaggerated, for for every one who was put in fear there were 50 or 60 who had no discomfort at all. That affected the seriousness of the case, but not the question of guilt.

BUTLIN AND JOSTE ACQUITED

MR. JUSTICE CHARLES ruled that there was no direct evidence against Butlin and Joste on the charge of committing a public mischief. He left the question of conspiracy to the jury. The jury found Butlin and Joste Not Guilty on the conspiracy charge and they were discharged. Proctor and Wensley were found Not Guilty of conspiracy but Guilty of committing the mischief.
MR. JUSTICE CHARLES fined Proctor £30 and ordered him to pay a share of the costs of the prosecution. Wensley was fined £10. In imposing the fines the Judge said that he did not want to send them to prison, but he wanted to give an indication of his stern disapproval of their conduct. They had been found guilty of a very mischievous and foolish course of conduct which had caused a great deal of unnecessary trouble. Addressing Proctor he said: " I hope you are heartily ashamed of yourself. You have misled the public and you dragged Wensley into it. I hope your father will deal with you”.

DEAR OH DEAR

http://www.unifaweb.com.ar/modules/news/article.php?storyid=924


This was posted to me yesterday afternoon. Thought that everyone had dismissed it as a crude photocopied fake a year or so ago, but apparently not....

OLL LEWIS: CRYPTO CONS - The Native of Formosa

In the first few years of the 18th century London’s high society was gripped by the ‘Formosa craze.’ People would become highly interested in tales of the exotic-sounding island of Formosa (modern-day Taiwan) and eagerly gobbled up the descriptions of it from the first Formosan native to come to Europe. This reverse Marco Polo had supposedly been tricked into leaving his native land by Jesuit missionaries who brought him to the strange land of Europe and he had ended up in the Netherlands where he survived as a missionary. He still followed the religion of his homeland in worshiping the moon and sun and despite speaking perfect Latin and several other European Languages, was given to babbling to himself in Formosan. It was here that he met Scottish army chaplain William Innes who ‘converted’ the Formosan to Anglican Christianity and gave him a name, something he had never had before - George Psalmanazar - before they headed to London.

When in London Psalmanazar began to entertain people with tales of his exotic land, of most interest to London’s educated classes were the stories of Formosa’s religious practices, which included stories of annual mass child sacrifices, and he peppered these anthropological observances with details of the wildlife of Formosa. According to Psalmanazar, despite Formosa being off the coast of Eastern China, the countryside was filled with animals you would expect to see on the African savannah, like elephants, giraffes and rhinos.

As time went on Psalmanazar's stories became wilder and when word of them reached a Jesuit who had just returned from Formosa, the Jesuit decided to set the record straight and label Psalmanazar as an impostor. Psalmanazar publicly denounced his critic as a jealous peddler of lies and society sided with Psalmanazar, believing his exotic tales over the boring and sober ones of his critic. The critic had been right, though; Psalmanazar was an impostor who had been born in France and had never even travelled as far east as Rome. There had been clues to this staring people in the face from the beginning other than the wild tales and their associated out-of-place animals, not least that Psalmanazar had fair white skin and a mane of blonde hair. When questioned about his appearance and why he did not have darker skin like other people from Asia he explained this by saying that the upper-class people of Formosa spend nearly all their time indoors away from the sun while the lower-classes toil outside getting tanned.

After about four years he admitted his deception publicly, but by this time the low attention span of London’s elite had moved on to other flavours of the month and didn’t care all that much that they had been duped. Psalmanazar went on to write about the real geography, culture and ecology of Formosa and was highly critical of the way people had fallen for his hoax so easily. He lived out his days on a pension of £30; a not unsubstantial sum at the time given; to him by admirers.

RUBY LANG: Movie makers behind fake sightings

An interesting little anecdote has come to light in recent weeks about a filmmaker who created his own Tasmanian tiger in the 1970s.

Phillipe Mora, in recounting the making of his movie Mad Dog Morgan (which, due to a mistake with the date, allowed the movie to slide into the public domain!) with lead Dennis Hopper, wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald:

"Collaterally, a dog I had dyed to look like a Tasmanian tiger escaped my motel and for years afterwards sightings were reported of the extinct animal."

Most of the film was shot around places Mad Dog Morgan frequented in his lifetime across Victoria and NSW.



Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-shooting-of-mad-dog-morgan-20100312-q39w.html

Posted By CFZ Australia to Centre for Fortean Zoology Australia at 3/27/2010 12:18:00 AM

CRYPTO CONS: The Great Moon Hoax

By Oll Lewis

The most well known lunar hoax these days is the assertion that the Apollo missions were faked and that man did not land on the moon in 1969. The conspiracy buffs would have it that so great was Americas desire to get to the moon before the Soviets that the moon landings were filmed in a studio. Personally I have seen no convincing evidence of the Moon landings being faked and one presumes that if they were we might have got a fake Mars landing by now too. There is, however, another widely-known moon-related hoax, which was perpetrated over a century earlier.

In August 1835 the New York Sun carried the headline 'Celestial Discoveries' and an article about a new super-powerful telescope set up in South Africa by the British astronomer Sir John Herschel. The story ran that Herschel had pointed his new telescope at the moon and had found life! Not only that but complex and varied life comparable to that of earth.

The newspaper waxed lyrical for four columns about the vast array of plants and animals Herschel had found living on the moon. There were hoofed animals like blue-coloured unicorn goats, ball-like amphibious creatures that rolled up and down beaches, bison with flaps over their eyes to protect them from the light, birds like pelicans and cranes. After four days of rising circulation figures the newspaper printed its most shocking revelation: the moon was home to intelligent life….

This intelligent life took the form of winged, furry ape-men apparently even possessed of their own religion. So powerful was Herschel’s new telescope that the article was able to give a full and accurate description of these creatures as if the observer had been standing only a few metres away:

'We counted three parties of these creatures, of twelve, nine and fifteen in each, walking erect towards a small wood... Certainly they were like human beings, for their wings had now disappeared and their attitude in walking was both erect and dignified... About half of the first party had passed beyond our canvas; but of all the others we had perfectly distinct and deliberate view. They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs from the top of the shoulders to the calves of their legs.

'The face, which was of a yellowish color, was an improvement upon that of the large orang-utan ... so much so that but for their long wings they would look as well on a parade ground as some of the old cockney militia. The hair of the head was a darker color than that of the body, closely curled but apparently not woolly, and arranged in two circles over the temples of the forehead. Their feet could only be seen as they were alternately lifted in walking; but from what we could see of them in so transient a view they appeared thin and very protuberant at the heel...We could perceive that their wings possessed great expansion and were similar in structure of those of the bat, being a semitransparent membrane expanded in curvilinear divisions by means of straight radii, united at the back by dorsal integuments. But what astonished us most was the circumstance of this membrane being continued from the shoulders to the legs, united all the way down, though gradually decreasing in width. The wings seemed completely under the command of volition, for those of the creatures whom we saw bathing in the water spread them instantly to their full width, waved them as ducks do theirs to shake off the water, and then as instantly closed them again in a compact form.'

Needless to say, this story shocked the world and led to rival newspapers copying it or making their own versions, calls to send missionaries to the moon and the circulation of the New York Sun to sky-rocket, becoming the highest selling newspaper in the world. Not everyone was taken in by the hoax, but any scientists who came to inspect the original messages were sent across New York in a wild goose chase until they eventually gave up and went home. The stories grew increasingly wilder over the coming days in describing the society and the temples of the moon men until eventually the newspaper printed the sad story that the telescope had been left facing East and the rays of the sun had burnt out the reflecting chamber, destroying the telescope.

The stories were collected in pamphlet form by Richard Adams Locke, who had been their author all along, making some $25,000 from them before interest waned. When word of the stories eventually reached Herschel and he immediately saw the funny side before dismissing them outright. Another person who passed comment on the stories at the time was Edgar Allen Poe who said he stopped work on a sequel to ‘The Strange Adventures of Hans Pfaall’ because he had been outdone.

As cons and hoaxes go, the great moon hoax was one of a rare breed of cons, like P. T. Barnum’s ‘The Great Unknown’ and the BBC’s ‘Spaghetti Harvest’ hoax that created amusement on behalf of those that had fallen for the tall stories without any great offence or regrets.

CRYPTO-CONS: To Hull and Back: The Story of the Cardiff Giant

By Oll Lewis

Whenever there is a potential for something scientific to be misunderstood by the public there is the potential for con-artists to move in. Some science-based cons can be quite harmful, such as one perpetrated by former Baptist minister Prescott Jernegan in the United States.

In 1897 Jernegan presented his ‘invention’, which he called ‘The Gold Accumulator’, to investors. This fabulous invention was painted with mercury and a secret ingredient that would attract gold from seawater. The investors were suspicious of his claims so he organised a public demonstration of its effectiveness. The accumulator was dropped into the sea from a boat with several guards on the boat to ensure that the object wasn’t tampered with by Jernegan and when it was brought back aboard the witnesses were shocked to see it had become encrusted with real gold.

The investors, suitably impressed, parted with $350,000, a huge sum for the time, and Jernegan promptly took their money and fled to Europe with the diver who had swapped the original accumulator for a gold encrusted substitute while it was underwater, and lived out the rest of his days in style. Several of the investors were ruined after being taken in by this con.

Science-based cons can cover any aspect of science where public misconceptions exist so unsurprisingly, cryptozoology is full of them. The seeds for one of the most famous cryptozoological cons were unwittingly sown by Mark Twain in 1862. Twain was working for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City when he decided to have a bit of fun and write a joke news story satirising the amateur archaeologists that were buzzing around the local countryside and hills looking for arrowheads fossils and petrified objects. He came up with the story that the seated figure of a man had been found embedded in a local cliff. The man had been turned to stone, along with his wooden leg, according to Twain’s story, and an inquest was supposedlymheld with the coroner concluding that the man had died from exposure. Whereas some locals smirked a bit at the silly story and noticed that Twain had described the positions of the man’s hands in the article as if the man were pulling a ‘funny face’, the editors of other newspapers seemingly believed the story and published it as fact. Upon hearing this, Twain was very amused and wrote a second article stating that soil had been analysed from under the man’s toenail which indicated he was from ‘the Kingdom of New Jersey’ and also stated that the fossil would be exhibited in a glass case at the local library.

This story did get one man thinking though… What if there had been a real ancient petrified man? And if there had, would people want to see him? And if yes, then would they pay to see him?

The man who was asking himself those questions was George Hull, a cigar-maker and small-time conman from New York. Hull concluded that there was a good chance of making money out of a similar scheme, but what he really needed was a hook, something to draw people in from further afield than just the local area. He got this hook in 1866 when he heard a travelling preacher in Iowa talking about the giants in the book of Genesis.

Around 1867/8 Hull and a partner, H. B. Martin, bought a 12-foot by 4-foot block of gypsum from a quarry near Fort Dodge and set a pair of sculptors in Chicago the job of carving a giant. The gypsum giant was then ‘aged’ using sulphuric acid, wet sand and ink before it was shipped to Hull’s cousin, Stub Newell, who buried it on his farm in Cardiff, New York for a year before unearthing it in 1869. When word of Newell’s ‘discovery’ hit the press people came from far and wide to get a glimpse of this petrified wonder for a 50 cent fee. So popular was the giant that the farm had 2500 visitors on one Sunday alone. Hull knew, though, that the longer he kept up the façade, the greater the chances were that he’d be found out and the giant would be discredited, so he sold his share in the Cardiff giant to local businessmen for $37,500 while it was at the height of its popularity, to maximize his profits from the hoax.

The sale of the giant to David Hannum and a consortium of 4 more businessmen proved to be a premature move on Hull’s part because when the men moved the giant to Syracuse in New York the crowds were much bigger, even after a large number of eminent scientists had scoffed at the giant. Wherever in New York you found humbug and crowds one man was certain to show up sooner or later: the world’s greatest showman, P. T. Barnum. Barnum knew a crowd-pleaser when he saw it so leased the giant off Hannum and his business partners for almost twice the price they had paid Hull to buy it outright. When Barnum’s lease expired he offered to buy the giant but the consortium refused his offer, opting instead to take the giant on a national tour.

This did not deter Barnum, who secretly had a cast made of the giant so he could continue to exhibit it. Barnum’s plan would have worked perfectly had, upon the original giant's return, both ‘giants’ not been on display in New York at exactly the same time. Obviously this was going to take some explaining, and being possessed of what can only be described as 'balls of steal,' Barnum denounced the original Cardiff giant as being a fake. This had the added benefit of implying that Barnum’s giant was 'the real deal' so crowds flocked to his at the expense of the original. In response to seeing Barnum’s claims in the papers, Hannum uttered the famous phrase that would one day be misattributed to Barnum himself: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Hannum applied for an injunction against Barnum but was told that he would only receive one if he could prove his giant was genuine in court. Any slim chance Hannum had of being able to prove this evaporated when, in December 1869, Hull came clean and told his story to the press. The court ruled that as Barnum had told the truth in declaring Hannum’s giant a fake Barnum had no case to answer. In the end the excitement around the giants died down, mostly as a result of Hull’s confession, which meant even people who didn’t trust the scientific debunking would have difficulty getting excited enough to part with money to see a plaster sculpture. Eventually the original Cardiff giant made it’s way into the collection of the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown New York (via a publisher who had been using it as a coffee table) where it remains to this day and Barnum’s giant made its way to Mavin’s Marvellous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan. The world had not seen the last of George Hull’s handiwork however, as in 1877 he pulled off the same trick using the missing link as his muse rather than biblical giants when he created ‘Solid Muldoon’.

Learning from some of the criticisms made by scientists of the Cardiff giant, Hull set about to make this creation look more ‘authentic’ than just a block of gypsum. Among the materials used in its costruction were mortor, meat, bone dust and clay and it was baked in a kilm before being placed in the ground near the town of Beuleh, Colorado. Three months later the ‘petrified missing link’ was discovered by a friend of P.T. Barnum’s called William Conant, leased to gangster and conman Soapy Smith who took it on a tour of Colarado. After a successful run in the state, Solid Muldoon was then taken on a national tour culminating in New York City where Barnum allegedly offered to buy it. This particular plot was probably hatched between Barnum and Hull most likely around the time of Hull’s 1869 confession that saved Barnum from getting sued.

Whoever was involved, Hull decided to get out while things were going well once more and this time confessed to the press again, probably getting some cash from the story too.

DALE DRINNON: Old Three Toes, The Matter As It Stands After the Supposed 'Confession of The Hoaxer'

Ivan Sanderson introduces the subject of his Chapter 2 In More "Things" with the words 'This Thing is thus a true Monster. I have named it 'Three-Toes'"..' In the book he was reprinting a two-part article of his 'That Forgotten Monster, Old Three-Toes' as his chapters 2 and 3 when they had originally appeared in FATE magazine in Dec 1967 and Jan 1968. In this case the focus is on his part 2 and Chapter 3, 'Old 3-Toes, Model B', although the identity applies equally well to 'Model A.'

The gist of the story is that Ivan Sanderson oversaw an extensive investigation into reports of an enormous creature leaving three-toed tracks in Florida, Sanderson's investigations starting in November 1948 and his eventual report running to 53 pages of typescript. Eventually, a person claiming to have been the author of the hoax was identified, the hoax boots with artificial soles shown and an article about it reprinted in PURSUIT. It was said that this one person had made 'ALL' the tracks.

The trouble is, the fellow was lying. The tracks started before he said he had the boots made up and started making 'Dinosaur' tracks and they continued for longer than he claimed to have been making them. And they are in fact still being reported, after the fellow has died and his boots were taken into custody.

Sanderson says in More "Things", on page 27, 'Prior to 1937, Three-Toes left tracks on several widely-dispersed beaches throughout the world-Southern New Zealand, Tasmania, Queensland, Patagonia and, of all places, Nantucket Island. Then there was the extraordinary business of Kerguelen Island (but more of this anon).' The 1937 case he mentions was in South Africa; another case Sanderson undoubtedly knew about but did not mention was reported by Dr Thomas Gannin Belize in 1932 and mentioned in Secret Cities of Old South America by Wilkins. These tracks were said to be 'Iguanodon' tracks and Eberhart in Mysterious Creatures lists this case along with several other such cases all around the curve of Brazil, including Marajao Island at the mouth of the Amazon and the island of Trinidad, covering the period broadly from 1800 to the 1920s, at least. Some of the Trindad tracks are attributed to the 'Huilla.' At the time the Florida tracks hit the news in 1948, there were letters saying that similar tracks were known around Moro Castle in Cuba and had been showing up for a long time there (including a description of the supposed monster) and later news stories out of Florida said that the tracks returned every four years - suggesting that by the time they were recognised in Florida in 1948, they were already supposed to have been there in 1944.

In a later article in PURSUIT, Sanderson identified the White River monster tracks as being like the Florida 'Three-toes' tracks. Roy Mackal later identified the tracks as an elephant seal. I would have been satisfied to leave the matter alone at this point but in 1988 a new wrinkle appeared. An article was reprinted in PURSUIT saying the mystery was solved: a Florida man had confessed to making all the tracks 40 years before. This was stated in the feature 'Big Creature Hoaxes' in PURSUIT, vol 21 no. 2, whole no. 82, 2nd quarter 1988, pgs 72-73. The 'confession' had it that the tracks were started in late spring and early summer of 1948. Actually, we do not even need to trust Sanderson's account to see that this would not account for 'all' the tracks; Willy Ley's The Lungfish, The Dodo and the Unicorn has a footnote at the bottom of page 146 which states 'Evidence of a large and unknown animal, possibly a gigantic turtle, has turned up in Florida during the winter 1947-8. "something" had tried to climb the sea wall, without success. The tracks looked like turtle tracks but were much too large and too far apart for anything known'

Then again, there were several reports of the creature, which Sanderson mentions, consistently portraying a large furry creature with a body 5 feet wide and 15 feet long, with four flippers, the back ones larger, and a head once described as looking like that of a rhinoceros: the Cuban's report also specified that it had a big mouth full of sharp teeth. Sanderson called that a giant penguin, but a large penguin, a large turtle and a large seal all have about the same outline (through convergence, the shape makes swimming easier)

Thus it seems that the earliest tracks were 'Turtle' tracks with the occasional 'Three-toed' tracks as variants and the hoax tracks came some months later when it was warmer to go into and out of the water. Sanderson even specifies that he found evidences that there was a hoaxter at work.

One quite plain fact is that the hoax-foot-templates did not match the tracks. Sanderson specifies that the tracks were not symmetrical but were lopsided: the Arkansas tracks were even more so. The hoax-tracks by contrast WERE symmetrical. (The part about Sanderson noticing the hoax tracks was made in PURSUIT in the 'editor's note' on page 73, but the difference in the tracks got by the editor.) Some of the trackways made 'Tunnels' through the vegetation and Sanderson noted (probably correctly) that the tunnels thus made were too tight for the human hoaxter to navigate. The same tunnels are also noted in the Kerguelen Island case that Sanderson noted; only in this case the trackways and the tunnels were DEFINITELY made by elephant seals.

The idenitifaction of the tracks as elephant seal tracks was made by Mackal and I am willing to let him have the credit. The one really good sighting of a South American 'Dinosaur' (the Schmidt and Pfleng account up the Amazon) is clearly a somewhat exaggerated account of an elephant seal. I have been through Sanderson's files shortly after his death and I do know that the 3-toes case was never closed: another series of reports occurred in the fall of 1953 and involved the larger part of the Florida coastline. Tracks were reported from Clearwater, Tampa Bay, Sarasota, Charlotte Harbor and Naples in Collier County; sightings were made in the St. Johns River in the northeast of the state. This time the tracks were mostly the 'Giant turtle' or 'Snowplow' [sic] tracks: sightings described a thick-bodied creature 30-35 feet long, 6 feet high at the shoulder, with a head described as being like that of a cow or hippopotamus 5 feet long, 30' broad and 18' between the cow-like eyes, and with a 10" horn on a blunt-ended snout. This is also an elephant seal, probably with exaggerated dimensions but the proportions about right.

The current and continuing guise of 'Old Three Toes' is 'Tarpie', the Lake Tarpon Monster, allegedly a dinosaur that walks on two legs. Here is the info from the website:

Eyewitness accounts vary with respect to length (10-30 feet), skin texture (smooth or scaly) and shape of the head (described as resembling a dinosaur, an alligator, a dog, or pig - we think the last description may be more a case of alcohol than aquatic pigs). Most say it resembles some form of a large reptile, capable of walking on its two hind legs. However, one indisputable fact remains, that the mystery surrounding this Florida Lake defies description and identification! Also, some allege that Tarpie - as the Monster is now known - has taken his share of local wildlife and tourists! Which has the locals quite upset (about the wildlife!).

Some say the "monster" has been spoken of in the area for centuries - Indian legends may have it that anyone foolish enough to intrude on its territory would not return. Many have not! And not because of poor fishing either! http://www.laketarponmonster.com/

ElephantSeal+3-Toes tracks, Photo of Antarctic Ice Floe

Elephant seal tracks looking like the tracks of a biped (one side)

'3-toed' flipper imprint from elephant seal trackway &

Dessicated E.Seal Flipper looking like a 3-Toed foot

It is also my contention that 'Normandy Nessie' currently being reported in the same area is also an elephant seal.

My first inkling into this identification was the fact that Bernard Heuvelmans said that Thomas Helms's 1943 sea monster seen off of Florida did in fact have a head the size of an elephant seal's and the female does appear slimmer and flatter-faced than the male. It could well have been standing up in the water with the flippers pressed to the side as in one of Heuvelmans's plates showing a smaller seal in that position.

Mackal was much criticised for saying that the White River Monster could have been an elephant seal gone up the Mississippi river on the asumption there were not supposed to be any elephant seals there. As a matter of fact there is an unknown animal in the area listed by Eberhart and corresponding to the description of an elephant seal. The english translation of the name means 'Water Horse.' I have seen photographs and pre-Columbian artwork that I am satisfied depict exactly that animal as being like an elephant seal. And the Sea Elephant was originally a mythological animal of the NORTH Atlantic before reports came back of the seals being in other areas. Karl Shuker illustrates one old print of a Sea Elephant based on a French sighting of 1558 in From Flying Toads to Snakes With Wings, on page 197.

There is another issue attached to this: the story of the deathbed confession to a hoax is a popular legend (I refuse to use the meaningless distinction 'Urban legend') and follows a folkloric pattern. The same basic story is told in the case of the Minnesota Iceman, the Surgeon's Photo at Loch Ness, and in this particular instance. In all of these stories, the source is not the hoaxer himself but is a close relative who is reporting on the supposed confession made by somebody else who is no longer around to tell the story for himself. The confessor is dead so that all trace of the 'real guilt' died with him. The narrator is always an accomplice and never the originator of the scheme. There are often other accomplices named but always also either dead or unwilling to admit their guilt. Often there is an implied complicity by the reporter that broke the case or his sponsoring publication. Always the case is supposed to have been a joke that got out of hand when people actually started taking it seriously and so the confession is delayed for years until the narrator decides to 'come clean'

Often the downfall of the confession is that there are several competing versions, each one claiming to be the one and only true confession, such as in the cases of the Minnesota Iceman and the Surgeons' photo at Loch Ness.

ALAN FRISWELL'S HOAX PICS #1 - The Surgeon's Photo

Hi Jon.

Here's the first of my hoax pix. We'll start off easily, with one that we're all familiar with; the famous surgeon's photo. I though that I would recreate it, primarily to see how difficult a job it would be, but also to test the CFZ blogger's powers of observation.

Can anyone guess how it's done, or where it was filmed? I will say that there is no digital imaging involved, and that the image is a true 35mm photo, but that's all you're getting. Over to you....

GIANT ANACONDA - The plot thickens

The saga of the giant anaconda picture from the Northern Irish newspaper rumbles on, and has taken some most unexpected turns.

Firstly Markus Hemmler made the following post on the Fronitiers of Zoology Usenet group:



My first thought as I've read this story was that I know this picture before... I've tried it with a search for Sucuriju with Google-Picturesearch and you know what? I found it on the first site! Some deeper research and I found the site from which I know it:

http://www.popa.com.br/diarios/issi/BRAS-BSAS.htm



Published some years before and probably taken by a man named André Issi. So if this picture is that which they claim to have taken - it's a hoax.

But then I got a very polite note from one of the members of the expedition:

Hi,

This is Greg Warner. I was with my Father Mike when we made the discovery. He is downstairs relexing after our Sunday BBQ. I'm both excited and surprised to see this blog. One thing we hadn't planned for was a fight to convince fellow crytozoologists. We are putting togther our paper to be submitted to scientific journals as a start of phase two of our project.

However, your questions and concerns are valid and I will bring my father upstairs soon to address these questions. Sometimes the truth is extraordinary.

GW

Greg, if you read this I would be very interested to talk to both you and your father. Yes, your claims are indeed extraordinary, but I would be very interested in seeing your evidence. Email me on jon@eclipse.co.uk

The way I see it is that whatever transpires, if all involved behave like gentlemen, (and ladies, of course, where appropriate) then we can continue to push back the boundaries of human knowledge.

Watch this space

GREAT SNAKE? OR NO GREAT SHAKES?

As we came downstairs this morning we were greeted by the following headline, which has been splashed across various portions of The Internet:

LISBURN MEN FIND GIANT SNAKE IN THE AMAZON

and a newspaper report from a Northern Irish newspaper which told how:


"After 23 years of research including the detailed study of ancient art, cultures spanning 3000 years and three continents to the latest in satellite imaging technology, a father and son make an extraordinary trip deep into the heart of the Peruvian Amazon to confirm their theories that this is where a giant anaconda with a difference lives.

But that's precisely what Lisburn man Mike Warner (73) and his son Greg (44) have done, seeking evidence that this was the home of the Yacumama and actually capturing a picture of the creature".

I had already done the morning posts for the bloggo this morning. We have visitors this afternoon, and I wanted to have my decks clear for action. But we had to comment on this before it gets out of hand. However, as Richard says "a number of things sound wrong with this story".

• Firstly as professional cryptozoologists we would have thought that we would have heard of Mike and Greg Warner, especially if they had been researching the giant anaconda for 23 years. They might well have been keeping their research secret however, and despite rumours to the contrary, it is not obligatory for UK cryptozoologists to be members of the CFZ, nor would we wish it to be. But one would have thought that we would have at least heard of them.
• But the doubts don't stop there. The size attributed to the snake is truly fantastic, 40 metres (133 feet long) and 2 metres (six feet) wide. The idea of it knocking down 90 foot trees and demolishing houses sounds equaly unlikely.These, together with the huge furrows the creature is said to make make it sound much more like the minhocão - a supposed giant worm like beast from Southern Brazil and Uruguay. The minhocão supposedly uprooted trees, made furrows and destroyed houses. But it has not been reported in recent years.
• The idea of a snake spitting water like a fire hose to knock monkeys out of trees strikes us as absurd, and may well have been inspired by the archer fish that squirts water at flies.
• On to the photo. It does seem to show a large anaconda but nothing like the 40 metres quoted. The size of the snake is hard to judge. We only have what seems to be the prow of a canoe to compare it to. Canoes can differ greatly in size. Is this a one man canoe or a large vessel for transporting a number of people and their equipment? At the front of the boat we see what looks like tarpaulin and rope covering something so the canoe may be quite large, If this is so then the anaconda may be very big (but nothing like 40 metres).
• If the boat is 3 to 4 feet wide then the anaconda would be 1 to 1.5 feet wide. The width to length ration of an anaconda can differ greatly between individuals and is effected by how much they have eaten. A rough estimate would put a snake of this width in the 18-25 foot range.
  

Now, we would like to stress that this story may be genuine, and that the peculiar aspects of it may just be the result of poor reportage, or even misprints. Neither Richard or I have any great faith in local journalists as a whole, having been misprinted and misquoted, and had complete rubbish just made up and attributed to us over the years. But as it is at the moment the stroy would seem to be too fantastic to be true.

The full story can be found at:

http://www.lisburntoday.co.uk/news/LISBURN-MEN-FIND-GIANT-SNAKE.5335325.jp

and no doubt the usual suspects will be attacking us by the end of the day with lines like "wot do this ppls think they is, Giant snakes rule rar!"

But we really don't care, and - believe me - we would love to be proved wrong: 130ft long snakes which spit water at monkeys would be monumentally cool beyond belief...

UPDATES CAN BE FOUND AT:

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/06/giant-anaconda-plot-thickens.html

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/06/more-on-saga-of-peruvian-giant-anaconda.html

LIZZIE CLANCY: Dead Fairy Blues

There have been quite a few hoaxes in the crypto news recently. Some have been old, some new, and some in particular have caught the imagination of the readers of this bloggo. Lizzie writes:

Hi Jon

My friend Annie sent this link to me, which I thought you might find interesting.

http://www.lebanoncircle.co.uk/DeadFairy_redirect.htm

Liz xxx

I would like more information on the history of this clever hoax...

LETTER FROM ALAN

Alan first came to my notice when he turned up at our stall at last November's Unconvention. He was clutching a box that had once held a plastic Christmas Tree. He thrust it at me, and said "Here's your mermaid".

I vaguely remembered Richard F having said that one of his mates had offered to make us a feegee mermaid, but I had forgotten all about it. Sad to say, so many people offer to do stuff for us, and then fail to deliver, that I had got into the habit of treating all such offers cum grano salis, but the advent of Alan shows that I should not be such a cynical old sod. Now he has become a guest blogger, and furthermore a guest blogger who's output is often so elegantly macabre that I have started hassling him to write us a book..

Yesterday I wrote to him thanking him for his help in finding the person behind the dead mermaid pictures. This morning he replied, as always, giving me much food for thought

Hi Jon.

You're very welcome. I first head about Juan Cabana a few years ago, and while his work is very admirable, it must be a real bummer stinking of fish and formaldahyde while you're trying to chat up girls in the pub. As you might have imagined, I've done a fair bit of taxidermy work myself in the past, and it can get very grisly trying to peel bloodstained fat from the inside of skin layers, and boil bones.

The fake mermaid and the pictures of the 'blackfella' have made me wonder if it might not be a wizard wheeze to invite the regular bloggers to create their own 'hoax' image of a favourite crypto-creature. Kind of like the Big Three, perhaps the Fake Three! I'll certainly make up some pictures, and we could even have a small competition--the winner being the first to guess how they were done. If nothing else, it should certainly sharpen the bloggers critical faculties when viewing putatively 'real' photos. If you would like, we could also put up some of the most famous crypto-images that have been taken in the past, and try to finally confirm them as either fake, or indeed--and why not--authentic.

Food for thought, anyway. I'll deliver another blog soon, the epic tale of how someone who was a theatrical pirate, part-time magician, Elvis impersonator and wannabe graphic artist nearly became part of an expedition to discover the legendary lost tribe of Epping Forest, living wild in the woods since World War II. It's gripping stuff, and--needless to say--completely true.

Cheers,

Al :)

GLEN VAUDREY: Water Blackfella (a masterclass)

Before his computer went belly up a few weeks ago Glen Vaudrey promised us some photographs from the process of making his fake "Water Blackfella" pictures.


Here, finally, and for the first time we see a glimpse behind the magick...


What a clever fellow he is.


By the way (shameless plug time) I am currently typesetting Glen's book Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland: The Western Isles and jolly good it is too. This really is shaping up to be a smashing series.



http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-water-blackfella-pictures.html

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/04/yesterdays-water-blackfella-pictures.html

MERMAID MYSTERY SOLVED

Thank you to everyone, especially Alan Friswell, who solved my conundrum of yesterday. The mermaid, which was supposedly washed up off the coast of Mexico was a complex creation of artist Juan Cabanos, a man of whom I had never heard before. He writes:


I created this 5 foot long mermaid using a human skeleton and covering the entire corpse with real fish skin. The fins and teeth are also authentic and derived from fish. Unknown persons took my photos and used them to create stories of finding this mermaid in various locations around the world. A newsreporter in Mexico sent me the actual newspaper reports (shown below) of my mermaid being discovered off the coast of Campeche.


And the images appear to be nearly a decade old... Well done guys


http://www.thefeejeemermaid.com/

"A NASTY MERMAID"

This set of pictures has been doing the rounds lately. It is supposedly of a dead mermaid found somewhere in the neotropics, but - despite being considerably more convincing than either the "Water Blackfella" picture or the ridiculous Quatari `goblin` - I am sure that I do not need to point out that this is a fake.


YES: A FAKE


However, I am getting quite interested in the aetiology of hoaxes. This one turned up twice in the same day in my e-mail inbox. Firstly on a crypto newsgroup, and secondly as an advert for a dating agency. You figure?


As I was posting them here, Emma was looking over my shoulder and said "Eeew its the nasty mermaid. That's just wrong" and shuddered. Apparently these pictures had been prominently displayed on one of the Mysterious Universe websites and had given her "the creeps".

But where did they come from? Whose logo is that in the bottom corner? When and why were they made? And why has it turned up now? I am intrigued.