Everyone enjoys a good hoax regardless of their personal beliefs about the paranormal. The following are examples of famous hoaxes that captivated the personal interest and imagination in their time, only to let everyone down once the truth emerged. Some still believe that these are true.
1. Amityville
Ronald DeFeo, Jr. shocked the sleepy New York town of Amityville in 1974 by brutally murdering his entire family in their sleep. But the next residents, the Lutz family, made the town infamous by fleeing ten days, 28-days, or a month later (depending on who you ask), claiming that evil spirits had driven them out. A bestselling book, string of movies, and interviews followed, turning Amityville into an international sensation. However, it turned out that the Lutz family made up the entire story to get out of an expensive mortgage. Practically all of their claims, including the notion that the iconic house was built on an Indian burial ground, have been easily debunked and later residents have adamantly stated they’ve never experienced anything supernatural. But that doesn’t stop people from clinging to the idea of a haunted house in Amityville.
2. Cottingley Fairies
To the modern eye, it is difficult to believe that this series of five photos, taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, could be taken seriously by anyone. The fairies look like cut out pictures, very likely drawn by Elsie herself, and sport popular hair styles of the time and trendy clothes. However, the pictures stirred up a lot of drama in 1916, and even attracted the support and attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle, a Spiritualist, used his celebrity to spread the story as truth and used a series of questionable “tests” to prove their accuracy. Both girls insisted that the fairies were real until 1981, when they admitted that all but one of the photos had been faked, and both held onto the almost comical claim that despite the fakes, they really had been playing with fairies.
3. The Bermuda Triangle
Easily the most infamous patch of water, the Bermuda Triangle is made by connecting Miami (or Ft. Lauderdale), Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, and has been known for making airplanes, ships, and small boats vanish. It has long been the subject of movies, books, and serious documentaries but there isn’t a shred of evidence to support the notion that anything disappears there. The majority of disappearances have logical explanations that are far from mysterious. According to Larry Kusche, a writer that focused on the Triangle, most of disappearances were sensationalized by writers. A little digging shows that either a storm was in progress, remains were found, or nothing really happened. But don’t tell this to the History Channel, as it might interrupt their programming schedule.
4. Crop Circles
Even today many believe that crop circles, areas where crops are stamped down into geometric shapes, are created by space aliens. But the truth is that they are easily debunked and have always appeared in areas where bored, drunk people have access to lazily guarded crops since the 17th century. The most famous cases started popping up in England in the ’70s, and people quickly panicked about the ensuing alien invasion. (It didn’t happen.) In 1991, two men came forward and admitted that they started the rash of circles in their area after coming up with the idea at their local pub. (I want a pint of whatever they’re drinking!) Doug Bower and David Chorley might have never revealed their secret had Mrs. Bower not grown suspicious of her husband sneaking away at night.
5. Uri Geller’s Bending Spoons
Geller has built a career on claiming that be can bend spoons, hanging out with Michael Jackson, and dragging naysayers through the court system when they’ve dared to call him a fraud. (We aren’t calling you a fraud, Uri.) Over the years, he has been debunked numerous times, including on particularly hilarious time when he was filmed using a magnet to move a compass, but he has always managed to get any video that pops up pulled from YouTube under threat of legal action. His arch-nemesis, James Randi, replaced his prop spoons on The Tonight Show in 1973, and not a single spoon was bent that night. Randi has gone on to demonstrate how the spoon bending trick is nothing more than a parlour trick that anyone can perform, but that doesn’t stop people from still believing that Geller has magical powers.
6. William Mumler
A jeweler turned photographer, Mumler took advantage of the still new and not entirely understood medium to produce the first known photographs of “spirits”. Working out of his New York studio during the Civil War, he made money off bereaved relatives that were convinced that the images superimposed over their own was that of a deceased relative. He even fooled Mary Todd Lincoln with a spirit photograph allegedly depicting assassinated president Abraham Lincoln standing just beside her, a hand placed lovingly on her shoulder. Eventually, people began to notice that some of the spirits in the photographs resembled his studio assistants. Even though he was acquitted of fraud, his reputation was ruined and he died penniless some time in 1884. This doesn’t stop modern spirit photographers from basically doing the same thing and people believing it is real.
7. The Bigfoot Corpse
Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer were behind one of most outrageous hoaxes in very recent history. In June 2008, they claimed that they had the corpse of Bigfoot stuffed into a freezer after having found it in the Georgia woods. The media exploded and Bigfoot enthusiasts quickly claimed victory over skeptics. Searching for Bigfoot, a California based group, purchased the “corpse” for $50,000, only to discover once it thawed out that they had been sold a rubber suit. Whitton, a police officer, lost his job over the incident, and Searching for Bigfoot is suing both men. Goes to show that you should always see what you are buying before you shell out the money for it.
8. The Fox Sisters
People have a tendency to explain stupid things as paranormal. Kate, Leah, and Margaret Fox of Hydesville, New York, were no exception, as they helped kick off the Spiritualist movement when strange noises that startled their parents and drew huge crowds in the 19th century were explained as spirits. For some reason no one pointed out that the sounds followed the sisters and sounded a lot like cracking knuckles and foot tappings. They were huge on the Spiritualist circuit until 1888, when Margaret admitted it was all a hoax, and that not only did they crack knuckles, but they tied apples to their toes and bumped them on the floor for effect. This admission caused a rift between the sisters, two of whom died in poverty within 5 years. The last sister, Leah, distanced herself from the other two and stated that they were alcoholics unfit to care for their children.
9. Alien Autopsy
Everyone seems to love the idea that aliens have, or currently are, visiting us. In 1995, Ray Santilli, a London video entrepreneur, released a video he claimed depicted a 1947 alien autopsy performed after Roswell. Grainy and filmed at angles that conveniently blocked the actual autopsy in some places, this was a hotly disputed piece of film that had skeptics rolling their eyes and Ufologists eager to study it further. Fox fanned the flames even more by releasing Alien Autopsy – Fact or Fiction, a program that showed the autopsy and discussed its authenticity. In 2006, Santilli admitted that large portions of the film were made with dummy aliens, animal innards, and jelly. He still claims that parts of it are authentic, but refuses to reveal which parts are the “real footage”. In 2008, another alien autopsy video became popular in YouTube, continuing the cycle.
10. The Angels of Mons
The Angels of Mons was not a deliberate hoax, rather it is an urban legend that sprang up from a fictional story written by Arthur Machen during World War I. The bloody Battle of Mons was a wake up call for the British, showing that the war would not be “won by Christmas”. Inspired by the bravery of British soldiers, Machen wrote a tale entitled The Bowmen, in which ghostly bowmen assist the British troops. So touching and morale boosting was this short story, that even when Machen wrote a full length book based on the idea and specifically noted that the Angels of Mons had never appeared on a battlefield, people were angry. They did not want to know that this was a fictional tale, and rejected the reality that it was outright. Even though the internet easily debunks it, this unintentional hoax survives to this day.
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