List of hoaxes

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The following are lists of hoaxes:

Contents 1 Proven hoaxes 2 Proven hoaxes of exposure 3 Probable hoaxes 4 Possible hoaxes 5 Practical joke hoaxes 6 Known pranksters, scam artists and impostors 7 Journalistic hoaxes 8 Notes 9 References 10 See also 11 External links

[edit] Proven hoaxes

These are some claims that have been revealed to be deliberate public hoaxes. This does not include false articles printed by publications on or around April 1, April Fool's Day, a practice that has become so common as to not be noteworthy:

• Some cases of crop circles
• George Adamski's claims to have gone into space in UFOs. His book was based on his earlier book of fiction.
• Cannibal Holocaust's "murdered" actors
• The Amityville Horror - ghostly events reported by the buyers of a house where another family had been murdered (Hines 1988).
• The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, a book about purported sexual enslavement of a nun
• Richard Bachman (a pseudonym for Stephen King that got out of control)
• Bananadine- a fictional drug made from bananas
• Bathtub hoax, an imaginary history of the bathtub published by H.L. Mencken
• Johann Beringer's lying stones
• Berners Street Hoax in 1810
• Steve Brodie, who did not jump from the Brooklyn Bridge
• The Cardiff Giant, of which P. T. Barnum made up a replica when he could not obtain the "genuine" hoax
• Thomas Chatterton's "medieval" poetry
• The Cottingley Fairies
• Disappearing blonde gene
• Drake's Plate of Brass accepted for 40 years as the actual plate Francis Drake posted upon visiting California in 1579
• The Donation of Constantine
• George Dupre, who claimed to have worked for SOE
• The Education of Little Tree, widely acclaimed autobiography by Asa Earl Carter, later revealed to be fictional.
• Emulex hoax - a stock manipulation scheme
• Feejee Mermaid- The supposed remains of a half fish half human hybrid.
• The Flying Bigfoot of Florida
• Spiritualist Arthur Ford's claim of psychic contact with Harry Houdini.
• Furry trout
• The Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814
• Greenlighting An alleged new sexual practice made up by the website Something Awful.
• The Hand that Signed the Paper, purportedly based on the experiences of "Helen Demidenko," actually Helen Darville
• Joice Heth, African-American slave exhibited by P. T. Barnum as George Washington's nurse.
• Histoire de l'Inquisition en France, the 1829 book by Etienne Leon de Lamonthe-Langan
• The Hitler Diaries
• The Horn Papers
• The Hundredth Monkey- a supposed zoological behavioral phenomenon
• Idaho's name
• Il Bambino, a sculpture created by Michelangelo but sold as a classic Greek statue.
• Clifford Irving's biography of Howard Hughes
• The Jackalope, supposedly a form of rabbit with antlers.
• Jdbgmgr.exe virus hoax
• Lobsang Rampa
• Majestic 12- President Truman's supposed secret team charged with investigating and covering up the Roswell UFO incident, and sometimes alleged to be involved in other UFO investigations (Peebles 1994)
• Enric Marco, who presented himself as a victim of the extermination camp of Mauthausen until uncovered in 2005.
• Milli Vanilli, a duo that did not sing its own songs
• The Moles' "We Are The Moles", a 1967 single promoted with not-so-subtle hints that it might be The Beatles recording under a pseudonym. It was actually recorded by Simon Dupree and The Big Sound - a 1960's UK pop group, members of whom later formed the progressive rock band Gentle Giant.
• Mon cher Mustapha letter, a letter supposedly written by a Muslim immigrant in France, designed to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment
• Nacirema, a fictional tribe
• The Necronomicon, a fictitious occult book quoted by writer H. P. Lovecraft in many of his stories.
• Ompax spatuloides Castelnau, a fish "discovered" in 1872 in Australia, made of a mullet, an eel and the head of a platypus.
• The Works of Ossian, "translated" by James MacPherson
• "Our First Time," an early popularized Internet hoax.
• The shoot-outs of Palisade, Nevada
• Paul Is Dead (Paul McCartney death hoax)
• The perpetual motion engines built by John Ernst Worrell Keely and Charles Redheffer
• Pickled dragon
• Piltdown Man, unmasked by unconvinced scientists
• Platinum Weird, deliberate hoax by David A. Stewart and Kara DioGuardi about a non-existing band from 1974 promoted using false advertising.
• Princess Caraboo, aka Mary Baker
• The Priory of Sion- a made-up secret society that plays a prominant role in the DaVinci Code
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a literary fraud instrumental in the surge of anti-Semitism during the last hundred years.
• Q33 NY, an Internet hoax based on the 9/11 event
• A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century
• Ray Santilli's alien autopsy.
• Satan's Underground and other fabricated memoirs of Satanic ritual abuse by Laurel Rose Willson (similar to Michelle Remembers, below)
• George Psalmanazar and his "Formosa"
• Psychic surgery
• The Report From Iron Mountain A literary hoax claiming that the goverment had concluded that peacetime was not in the ecconomys best intrest.
• Rosie Ruiz, who cheated in the Boston Marathon
• Audrey Seiler, 20-year-old woman who faked her own abduction in Madison, Wisconsin in 2004
• Sheng Long- a fictional character from Street Fighter II
• The Skvader, a form of winged hare supposedly indigenous to Sweden.
• Space Cadets, a 2005 TV programme by Channel 4, in which contestants were fooled into thinking that they were training at a Russian space academy to become space tourists.
• The "R. E. Straith" letter sent to George Adamski by James Moseley (Moseley & Pflock, 2002:124-27, 331-32).
• The "Surgeon's Photo" of the Loch Ness Monster
• James Vicary's Subliminal advertising (Boese 2002:127-8)
• Tamara Rand's prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, which was actually made after the fact (Randi 1982:329).
• The Tasaday
• Thatchergate Tapes. A punk band fooled the governments of the U.S. and UK with this fake conversation.
• Robert Tilton's "prayer cloths"
• Mary Toft, rabbit mother
• Toothing- an invented fad about people using Bluetooth phones to arrange sexual encounters
• The Turk, a chess-playing automaton that actually contained a person.
• Benjamin Vanderford's video of his own beheading in Iraq
• Vortigern and Rowena, a work allegedly by William Shakespeare that was actually by William Henry Ireland, collector of books and forger of Shakespeareana
• Yellowcake forgery, the false documents suggesting Iraq's Saddam Hussein was to purchase uranium from Niger
• Death in the Air: The War Diary and Photographs of a Flying Corps Pilot a book containing World War I Aerial combat photos that were actually models superimposed on aerial backgrounds.
• World Jump Day
• Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood 1939-1948, Binjamin Wilkomirski's memoires, who were supposed to be a faithfull account of his childhood in a nazi death camp
• Zzxjoanw, a fictitious word that fooled logologists for 70 years
• Anthony Godby Johnson Mian character of the supposed autobiography A Rock and A Hard Place. Supposed boy who contacted AIDS after being raped. Later proven to be a hoax created by his adopted "mother"

[edit] Proven hoaxes of exposure

"Proven hoaxes of exposure" are semi-comical or private sting operations. They usually encourage people to act foolishly or credulously by falling for patent nonsense that the hoaxer deliberately presents as reality. See also culture jamming.

• The Arm the Homeless Coalition
• The Atlanta Nights hoax
• The British television series Brass Eye encouraged celebrities to pledge their support to nonexistent causes, to highlight their willingness to do anything for publicity.
• The Centaur from Volosdisplayed at the John C. Hodges library at The University of Tennessee
• Carlos, a fictional spirit medium created by James Randi and Jose Luis Alvarez.^{[1] [2]}
• Dihydrogen Monoxide
• Disumbrationism
• Genpets, the bio-engineered pet creatures
• Grunge speak, an alleged slang of the Seattle rock underground, concocted by a Sub Pop employee and profiled in the New York Times
• The Lovelump bio-engineered sex toy
• Project Alpha - exposed poor research into psychic phenomena
• Sina, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals
• Media pranks of Joey Skaggs
• The Sokal Affair
• The Spectra hoax
• The Taxil hoax
• Benjamin Vanderford created a video allegedly depicting his own beheading in Iraq and distributed it over the Internet.
• The avant-garde "music" of "Piotr Zak"

[edit] Probable hoaxes

• Crop circles
• The Ashtar Galactic Command broadcast on Southern Television
• Trance Channeling, a New Age form of spiritualism.
• Psychic performances of Uri Geller (Randi 1982)
• Kensington Runestone - an artifact which implies Scandinavian explorers reached the middle of North America in the 14th century
• Alleged photo of Lincoln's body
• The Loudun demonic possessions of 1634 that led to the execution of Urban Grandier for witchcraft.
• Pope Joan - the one and only supposed female pope.
• Michelle Remembers, a memoir of Satanic child abuse
• NESARA conspiracy theory, a purported secret law under gag order by The Supreme Court, which would abolish the IRS and eliminate all credit card debt.
• Walam Olum - alleged migration legend of he Lenape people, likely perpetrated by Rafinesque
• The Patterson-Gimlin film of Bigfoot (Boese 2002:146-47)
• The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed, book supposedly written by AI program Racter
• The Shroud of Turin - a piece of cloth that allegedly wrapped the body of Jesus Christ (Boese 2002:14)
• Steorn's claims to have created a free energy device.
• Zeno map; Shows lands known not to exist,
• The works of James Frey which were at least partially fictional and has alleged to be a complete hoax.

[edit] Possible hoaxes

• The Book of Veles
• The Buddha Boy - a meditating boy of apparently superhuman perseverance
• Mel's Hole - an alleged bottomless pit
• Josef Papp's solo thirteen hour trans-Atlantic submarine voyage
• Philippine historical figure Kalantiaw
• The Vinland map - alleged medevial map of the "New World"
• The Voynich Manuscript - a mysterious book in an unknown and never-translated language
• John Titor's time travelling claims
• Zinoviev Letter- alleging a socialist conspiracy between the Soviet Union and British Labour Party
• The Killian documents - alleged documents used in a 60 Minutes story alleging George W. Bush did not fufill his National Guard duty requirements
• Communion (book) - a book about alien abduction by Whitley Streiber
• Metallic Metals Act - a study that may not have actually been conducted about a fictional piece of legislation; the study is still cited in textbooks

[edit] Practical joke hoaxes

• The Balloon-Hoax
• The Dreadnought hoax
• Forgotten Silver- one of the first mockumentarys
• I, Libertine, originally nonexistent book
• Naked Came the Stranger- a purposely horribly-written novel
• Plainfield Teacher's College and its football team
• Sawing off of Manhattan Island
• The spaghetti tree harvest was an hoax broadcast by the BBC in 1957.
• Christopher Walken for US president. [1]
• Peter Jackson's Forgotten Silver
• 'Turkeys in Gumboots'

[edit] Known pranksters, scam artists and impostors

• Frank Abagnale, professional impostor and check forger
• Alan Abel, US professional hoaxer
• Jim Bakker
• P. T. Barnum, US showman known for his sensational hoaxes
• Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian writer who often included references to nonexistent books and authors in his works
• Horace de Vere Cole, British aristocrat
• Jeanne Dixon, a self-proclaimed psychic.
• Benjamin Franklin, American patriot, scientist and publisher
• William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper tycoon known as "the father of yellow journalism".
• Danny Hellman, NY cartoonist sued for impersonating Ted Rall in e-mails
• Benny Hinn, faith healer
• Elmyr de Hory, art forger
• Brian G. Hughes, US banker
• Reginald Jones, British professor
• Andy Kaufman, US comedian and inter-gender wrestling champion
• M. Lamar Keene
• J. Z. Knight, trance channeler who claims to contact an entity called Ramtha
• Victor Lustig, professional con artist
• Jim Moran, publicist, actor and TV panelist
• Frederick Emerson Peters, professional impostor and check forger
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Charles Ponzi, originator of the Ponzi Scheme
• Peter Popoff, Faith healer
• George Psalmanazar, European writer
• James Randi, professional stage magician, hoaxer and hoax debunker
• James Reavis, professional forger and impostor
• Harry Reichenbach, Hollywood publicist
• Joey Skaggs, US media prankster
• Soapy Smith, Jefferson Randolph Smith, infamous 19th century confidence man
• Edward Askew Sothern, British actor
• Robert B. Stein, former UFO photographer and debunker of photographic hoaxes
• Jonathan Swift, British humorist and writer
• Robert Tilton
• Hugh Troy, US painter
• Dick Tuck, US political prankster who harassed Richard Nixon.
• Joseph Weil, professional scam artist and inventor of the con that inspired The Sting
• Stanley Clifford Weyman, professional impostor

[edit] Journalistic hoaxes

Deliberate hoaxes, or journalistic fraud, that drew widespread attention include:

• Jayson Blair, reporter for The New York Times
• Janet Cooke, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her fictitious Washington Post story about an eight-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy
• Stephen Glass, reporter for The New Republic
• The Great Moon Hoax of 1835
• Great Wall of China hoax of 1899
• Jack Kelley, longtime USA Today correspondent
• The New York Zoo hoax of 1874
• Nik Cohn's New York Magazine article, "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", which was the source material for the movie Saturday Night Fever, and which Cohn admitted decades later had been fiction, not reportage.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

•   Alex Boese (2002). The Museum of Hoaxes: A Collection of Pranks, Stunts, Deceptions, and Other Wonderful Stories Contrived for the Public from the Middle Ages to the New Millennium. Dutton/Penguin Books. ISBN 0-525-94678-0.

• Boese, Alex, Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and other B.S., Harvest Books 2006, ISBN 0-15-603083-7.

•   Terence Hines (1988). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal: A Critical Examination of the Evidence. Prometheus Books. ISBN 0-87975-419-2.

• James W. Moseley and Karl T. Pflock, (2002). Shockingly Close to the Truth: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist, Prometheus Books, ISBN 1-57392-991-3
• Curtis Peebles (1994). Watch the Skies: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth, Smithsonian Institution, ISBN 1-56098-343-4.

•   Randi, James (1982). Flim-Flam!. Prometheus Books. ISBN 0-87975-198-3.

[edit] See also

• Beale Ciphers-alleged papers to hidden treasure
• Lost Dutchman Mine-alleged location of hidden treasure
• Oak Island---alleged location of Hidden treasure
• List of fictitious people, a list of people who were claimed to actually exist, unlike fictional characters, who exist only in the realm of fiction.

[edit] External links

• Museum of hoaxes - A collection of hoaxes