Hoax Museum Blog: Photos

Creepy Cat Photo — This eerie photo of four cats has been attracting attention online. (It recently made it to the front page of digg.) It's the cat in the car that gives it that extra creepy twist.



There's been some speculation about whether it's photoshopped. Unfortunately, the photographer, Ivan Capraro, hasn't posted any info about the image. But my guess would be that it's not photoshopped. I'd say it was either a lucky shot, or a cat was purposefully put in the car for the shot. (via A Welsh View)

Hrbacek’s Head Finds New Body — Some surgeons (particularly Robert White) believe that "total body replacement" might be a viable option for people suffering from incurable diseases such as cancer. Just cut off the patient's head and attach it to a healthy body.

In the meantime, photo editors have long been using "total body replacement" for a more mundane purpose: making their subjects look better. Recently, the campaign office of congressional candidate Dean Hrbacek admitted that their candidate had been a victim of this technique. The brochure they mailed out to voters showed Hrbacek posing in a suit. But in reality, only the head belonged to him. Not the body (which happened to be significantly slimmer than his own body).

The campaign office defended the use of the fake photo by claiming that Hrbacek didn't have time to pose for a real picture since he had been so busy meeting voters. (Yeah, right.)

I've got more about the photographic technique of total body replacement in the hoaxipedia.

Two views from an airplane windo — One of these might be fake. Can you guess which?





Update: My apologies. Apparently quite a few people didn't realize I was being sarcastic when I said "one of these might be fake." I thought it was pretty obvious both of them were fake. (Note that I didn't say 'only one is fake'.)

To make up for it, here's a third view from an airplane window, and this one is definitely real. This photo was taken on July 13, 2004 aboard an AirTran flight from Atlanta to Orlando with 110 people on board. The left engine cowling came off soon after take off, but the plane managed to turn around and land safely.

China Moon Controversy — Last week Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao released the first photograph taken by the Chang-e 1 lunar probe. The picture showed the surface of the moon. Wen declared, "Chinese people's dream of flying to the moon for more than 1,000 years has started to materialize."

But then people on the internet started to point out that the picture looked an awful lot like a NASA picture from 2005. In fact, the two photos looked almost identical. So now the Chinese lunar probe programme is defending itself against charges of fakery.

To be fair to the Chinese, the two photos aren't entirely alike. The shadows are different, and the Chinese photo shows an extra crater. So the similarity is likely a result of the fact that both photos happen to show the same part of the moon. But it's nice to see that China has just as many conspiracy theorists as America does, ready to doubt anything produced by their government space program.

Below are the Chinese (left) and American (right) moon pictures side by side (from the Telegraph). The red circle indicates where the Chinese picture shows an extra crater.

F-Word in Enchanted — The rumor going around online is that in one of the previews for the new Disney movie Enchanted, you can hear someone say "Get the f*ck outta here."

The preview in question shows the Prince attacking a bus. The exclamation can be heard around 30 seconds into it, as the bus driver is walking out of the bus.

The first time I listened to it, it definitely sounded like "Get the f*ck outta here." But when I listened to it again, it sounded more like "Get that bus outta here." Basically, it seems to me it could be interpreted either way. Who's to say what the correct way of hearing it is.

I haven't seen the movie, but I assume this scene must occur in the theatrical version as well. It will be interesting to see if the ambiguous phrase makes it into the DVD version, or if it will be edited out. (via Cinematical)

How to charge an iPod with an onion — I'm not sure what to make of this video. Is it true or false?

It describes how to charge an iPod with an onion. The instructions are that you first poke a hole in the onion, then you soak it in an electrolyte solution (Gatorade). Once the onion has soaked up enough of the Gatorade, you simply push the usb adapter of your iPod's power cable into the onion, and according to the guys who made the video "your iPod will power up and it should begin charging."

I'm sure that the onion would generate some electricity. It's the part about sticking the usb adapter directly into the onion that surprised me. Somehow it just seems too easy. And I don't want to potentially ruin my iPod by testing it out.

Fake Photos Alter Memories of Real Events — Researchers from UC Irvine and the University of Padua in Italy have found that doctored photos can alter our perceptions and memories of public events. The researchers showed subjects either an actual or an altered photo of one of two historical events, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing and the 2003 anti-war protest in Rome. The Tiananmen Square photo was altered to include a crowd, and the Rome photo was altered to show riot police and a masked protester. LiveScience reports:


Elizabeth Loftus, who designed the study (and whom I write about in Elephants on Acid), warns that doctoring photos in this way is "potentially a form of human engineering that could be applied to us against our knowledge and against our wishes, and we ought to be vigilant about it."

Big Gary says, "The Ministry of Truth already knew this."

Incidentally, I'm sure that everyone who came on the 2006 Museum of Hoaxes Trip to Loch Ness remembers when Nessie suddenly appeared right behind our boat. If you don't, here's a picture to jog your memory:

Helium Balloons Lift Car — In this video some guys from New Zealand attach helium balloons to a car until it floats away. Unfortunately, no one is in the car when it floats away. (Though that would have been a good update on the legend of Lawnchair Larry.)

Of course, the video is fake. TV3.co.nz reports that it was digitally edited to remove a crane, which is what actually causes the car to rise into the air. Also, the video turns out to be a viral ad created by Ford "aimed at selling Ford cars to generations X and Y."

A Ghost Standing By A Tree? — Christopher Ogden posed by a tree in the town of Ninety Six, South Carolina, and his dad took a picture of him (below). When the two of them saw the full-size image, they noticed something strange. A mysterious figure seemed to be standing beside Christopher, even though he was standing alone when the shot was taken. The photo made its way to a local paper, The Index-Journal, to whom Christopher gave this statement:

There are three theories about what this might be: 1) a double exposure; 2) sunlight on a tree; or 3) a ghost.

I'm going with theory two.

Gravity Speakers — This video purports to show an amateur experiment in which someone created a small gravitational field "using a speaker and a generated sound wave." The instructions say that a Bose Companion 2 Series II speaker was used, and a "sine wave at 16 khz" was generated.

Obviously it's fake. Audio speakers will not create a gravity field. But I'm not sure how they created the special effect. (Not that I know much about creating video effects.)

Perhaps they used some kind of fancy editing software. Or perhaps they did it a really low-tech way -- moving the objects one frame at a time to make it appear as if they were sliding towards the speaker. If they did it the latter way, they managed to make the sliding effect look very smooth.

Perhaps it's a viral ad for Bose speakers.

For some reason this video keeps getting removed from Metacafe. Hopefully it'll stay up long enough for you to see it.

Giant Creme Egg Crushes Car — I'm sure this can't be real. Is it, perhaps, an ad for Cadbury's creme eggs?

Making Mountain Dew Glow — Can you make Mountain Dew glow simply by adding some baking soda and hydrogen peroxide to it? That's what this video claims. I was so excited after watching it that I was all prepared to go out, buy a bottle of Mountain Dew, and try the experiment myself. Thankfully I didn't, because the video is a fake. If you watch it closely, you can see that a break occurs after the person pours the Mountain Dew into the glass. During this break is when the contents of a glow stick were added to the Mountain Dew bottle. According to Wikipedia, hydrogen peroxide serves as an activating agent for the glow-stick dye. "It reacts with the ester to form an unstable CO2 dimer which excites the dye to an excited state; the dye emits a photon (light) when it spontaneously relaxes back to the ground state." I don't know what the purpose of the baking soda is.

Floating Barn — A picture of an apparently floating barn has recently been making the rounds.



According to whoever posted it on panoramio.com, the barn is located in Ukraine, 1 km from Krasnosilka. However, the same person also titled the picture "kin-dza-dza," which is the title of a Russian science-fiction movie. I don't know if that's supposed to mean that the picture looks like something out of a science-fiction movie, or if it's fake.

I'm inclined to think that the building is real, and that the image wasn't photoshopped. I think that the steel beams at the back of the building could support the entire structure. Here's another image of the building, from a different angle.

Suicidal Teens Welcome — An image showing a "suicidal teens welcome" sign in the window of an armed forces career center has recently been circulating again.



The image is at least six months old. And no, it's not real. The sign is a reference to an episode of The Simpsons in which a similar sign was shown in the window of an army recruiting center.

The only question is whether the image is photoshopped, or did someone surreptitiously stick the sign in the window of the recruiting center and then snap the picture?

I would say it's definitely photoshopped. The hoaxer probably created an image of the sign, pasted it into the image of the armed forces center, and then decreased the opacity of the sign so that it blended into the window. Using this technique, it took me about 10 seconds to add the Museum of Hoaxes banner beneath the "Suicidal Teens Welcome" sign.

Meerkat Takes Family Photos — Just yesterday my wife and I were oohing and aahing at some pictures at telegraph.co.uk of meerkats taking photos of themselves. The text told how an inquisitive meerkat, at Longleat Safari Park, had clambered up the tripod of a camera accidentally left in their enclosure. The meerkat had then "explored the controls and managed to take three family photos." The photo of the meerkat sitting behind the camera was really cute.



Nope. Turns out it was a hoax. I should have known. When Amateur Photography magazine queried Keith Harris, head warden at Longleat, he responded:

The Worms Inside Your Face — Warning:The following video is really gross. Definitely NSWE (not safe while eating). But I made the mistake of watching it, and now I want to know what in the world it could be showing.

What happens is that you see a man's face getting scrubbed with a piece of cotton. And then tiny worms begin to ooze out of the man's pores.

The most sensible theory to be found in the YouTube comments (which I don't recommend reading) is that the video shows some kind of pseudo-medical treatment (for what, I can't imagine), in which worm eggs are smeared on the man's face with the cotton, and then the worms seem to emerge from the guy's skin. Sounds plausible. Any other theories?

Shoelace Trick — Is it a magic trick, or a trick of the camera? I'm not sure.

Old man plays songs on a leaf — I have no problem believing it when the old man uses a leaf to play the theme from The Godfather. It's when he plays the tune while simultaneously balancing on the neck of a wine bottle that the video turns kind of surreal. Still, I think it's possible, though he must have very good balance, and very sticky feet.

Playing Chicken with a Train — News.com.au analyzes a series of photos they recently received via email, apparently showing a woman being struck by a train.

They consulted some amateur photo sleuths who theorize that the images (or, at least, the final image of the four) have been photoshopped, pointing out details such as the lack of a shadow under the woman in the final photo.

However, at least one photo expert suggested the images are real. But, to me, the final comment in the article is the most convincing: That makes sense to me, although the blind could be down to shield the driver's eyes from the sun. (Someone, a driver perhaps, is visible standing in the window.) But the woman looks like she's lying down on the ground with her feet up in the air, as if posing for the photo.

Moving Rocks of Death Valley — On Flickr someone with the screenname "melastmohican" has uploaded a picture of a "moving rock" located in the Racetrack Playa region of Death Valley, California. The caption reads: I should have known about the moving rocks of Death Valley (after all, I live only a few hours drive from there), but I have to admit that, before seeing the picture, I hadn't known about them, and so immediately I thought the picture was a hoax

It reminded me of Dan De Quille's "Traveling Stones of Pahranagat Valley" hoax from 1867. De Quille, a newspaper columnist (and roommate of Mark Twain) invented a story about some stones which "when scattered about on the floor, on a table, or other level surface, within two or three feet of each other, they immediately began traveling toward a common center, and then huddled up in a bunch like a lot of eggs in a nest."

But unlike Pahranagat Valley's traveling stones, Death Valley's moving rocks are a real phenomenon. The mysterious force that moves the stones, scientists speculate, is most likely the wind. When the floor of the racetrack playa gets wet, the ground becomes extremely slippery, allowing strong winds to cause the stones to skid across the ground. Either that, or giants go bowling there.