Hoax Museum Blog: Photos

Is Popeface a hoax? — In response to a posting I made on July 16 questioning the authenticity of an image showing the pope sticking his tongue out, the webmaster of popeface.com has contacted me to insist that popeface is not a hoax. I'm still a little skeptical. It could be genuine, but it's such an odd picture that it immediately triggers my suspicions. Why were the negatives destroyed? Why is he selling it through a website, rather than through more normal channels such as an auction house or even eBay?

Popeface — Here's the latest thing making the rounds in Italy. It's Popeface! Supposedly a picture of the Pope taken during the '80s in which he's sticking his tongue out and making a strange grimace. Prints of it are being offered for sale at popeface.com. Of course, the seller doesn't specify how much he's asking for it. He only tells you to email him for more info at his hotmail account. And strangely, he's also offering the domain name 'popeface.com' for sale. So this has all the markings of a hoax. (Thanks to an anonymous Italian visitor for alerting me to this).

What lurks beneath — I just got this cool photo in my email from a visitor (Amy Lothschutz-Hughes). When I first saw it I was sure that it was a hoax. Turns out it's real. But it's a dolphin in the water, not a shark. The photo was taken by photographer Kurt Jones.

The Mystery of Splat Solved — Finally an answer to the riddle of 'what is Splat' that sounds like it's probably correct. According to John Lundberg of circlemakers.org, Splat was a sculpture created by the British artist John Isaacs in the mid 1990s.

Mysterious Blobs — Two days ago a giant blob-like creature washed up on a beach in Chile. Chilean scientists were baffled. They had no clue what the creature was. Based on the emails I've received, a lot of people immediately suspected it was some kind of elaborate hoax. But I don't think this was a hoax. Scientists now say that they believe the blobby thing was either the body of a giant octopus or discarded whale blubber.
I assume the Chilean blob bears no kinship to another blob which surfaced on the internet about two years ago. To this day I have no clue what this earlier mystery blob was. A real person? A photoshop trick? A fat suit? I've often seen it given the caption 'Splat.'

Big Roosters — A visitor named 'AJ' wrote in with this question:
Awhile back there was a picture of a Very Big Rooster with a guy
in a cowboy hat and a rope tied around the neck of the rooster, where Can I
find that picture?
Here's the picture, plus a look at some other big roosters of yesteryear.

Big Plane — Try to guess if this photo of a really big plane getting stuck as it crosses a ramp over a highway is real or fake. The answer's here.

Julia Roberts on Redbook — Redbook draws fire from Julia Roberts for putting a picture of her on its cover in which a recent image of her head is pasted onto an old picture of her body. Ironically, the title of their article about her is "The Real Julia." Redbook also recently got in trouble for doing the same thing to Jennifer Aniston. The problem, of course, is not in their use of composite images (everyone does that), but in doing such a poor job of them.

Touristguy Video Footage — Steve Merchant just shared this with me. Apparently it's video footage taken from a camera that survived the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Bush Learns to Read — This picture of Bush reading a children's book upside down is a fake. Read the explanation here.

Optical Illusion — A cool checkerboard optical illusion

The Case of the Keyspan Ad — Another case of a hoax photo. The KeySpan Corp. ran an ad showing some Long Island fishermen in order to show its deep ties with the Long Island community. The only problem was that the picture of the fishermen was actually taken in Seattle, which was obvious since they were holding up King Salmon, which aren't found around Long Island.