Hoax Museum Blog: Religion

Pilgrims Flock to Manoppello’s Shrine — Promoters of the Manoppello Image are hoping that it's soon going to be as popular as the Shroud of Turin. Like the Shroud, it's supposedly the actual face of Jesus miraculously imprinted onto a piece of cloth.

But I see a problem with their plan. The Shroud of Turin, say what you will about it, genuinely looks mysterious and creepy. But the Manoppello Image just looks like a bad painting.

U.S. Pilgrims Flock to Manoppello’s Shrine After Benedict XVI Visit
National Catholic Register

Pilgrims have flocked to see an image debated to be the veil of Veronica, the resurrection cloth of Christ or a centuries-old hoax...

Some believe the image is the storied "veil of Veronica," the cloth Veronica in the Gospel used to dry Christ's face as he carried the cross to his crucifixion. Others say it is the "Resurrection cloth," a sudarium that covered Christ's face in the tomb. Still others take it as a centuries-old hoax.
What is certain is that none of them can prove how the image — which is present on a fine mussel-silk cloth without the use of any pigments — was created.
Paul Badde, the German author of The Face of God, is convinced that the image is the one and only "Holy Sudarium," the "napkin" from Christ's sepulcher that St. John refers to in his Gospel. In revealing Christ's face at the moment of the Resurrection, he calls it "the first and authentic page of all the Gospels."

Pastor drowns trying to walk on water — A news story has been circulating recently about a west African preacher, Franck Kabele, who drowned while trying to show his congregation that he could walk on water just like Jesus Christ.


This story is almost certainly a hoax that media outlets are repeating as real news.

The Christian Post notes that this story about Franck Kabele was first reported in British papers back in August 2006. They say it first appeared in the Scottish Daily Record, but I found it printed a day earlier (Aug 29, 2006) in the London Evening Standard, as follows:

Priest drowns 'walking on water'
The Evening Standard (London) - Aug 29, 2006

A PRIEST in Gabon has drowned as he tried to demonstrate how Jesus walked on water.
Franck Kabele, 35, told churchgoers in the west African country's capital Libreville that after a revelation he realised that if he had enough faith he could walk on water like Jesus. "He took his congregation to the beach in Libreville saying he would walk across the Komo estuary, which takes 20 minutes by boat," said an onlooker. "He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head and he never came back."

The story had no byline. No details were provided about what church this priest belonged to. And further information never materialized. The story eventually ran in quite a few papers, but always with the exact same details and lack of sources. All of which raises red flags.


So where could this story have come from? Well, digging deeper back into news archives, I found a similar Reuters story that ran back in October 1993. Here's the version that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Minister, Students Drown Trying to Walk on Water
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Friday, October 29, 1993

A group of Tanzanian students and a minister who tried to walk on water have drowned in Lake Victoria, police said yesterday.

The members of the Seventh-day Adventist church were traveling in a flotilla of canoes to a religious festival when they decided to make the walk on water .

"They decided to test their faith by walking on the water like Jesus, but they all drowned,'' a police spokesman said.

Other participants in the pilgrimage looked on helplessly from the shore as the victims drowned. Police are questioning four ministers who arranged the pilgrimage, but they said parents and relatives of the dead will not press charges.

This story had a lot more details, but it turned out to be a case of incorrect reporting. A week later the Seventh-day Adventist Church issued an official statement denying the report:

"Contrary to what Reuters reported, the fact is that on Sat., Oct. 23, a group of Pathfinders (a Scout-like organization) who had gone by boat to attend a Pathfinder rally on a nearby island met with a tragic accident on their way back. Their boat capsized. Of the 20 people in the boat, eight girls and two adults drowned. Ten other young people swam to safety... None of the church members involved was trying to 'walk on water'."

So here's my guess about what happened. The 1993 story about the Tanzanian students and minister drowning must have transformed into an urban legend that circulated in Africa. Details were changed. The students were omitted. The location shifted. But the key detail about a church leader drowning while trying to walk on water remained.

Until eventually, in 2006, the story was heard by a reporter, who wrote it up as a news story and sent it out via a news-wire service, from which it was picked up by British papers that never bothered to fact-check it.

And seven years later it's surfaced again. Proving that a good story never dies. It just gets recycled endlessly.

(Thanks to LaMa for first calling attention to this story in the Hoax Forum.)

A 9-year-old student was NOT suspended for wishing his atheist teacher a Merry Christmas — The War on Christmas! Looks like some people are taking seriously this spoof National Report article about a 9-year-old kid being suspended for wishing his atheist teacher a Merry Christmas.


National Report is one of the many satirical news sites that are now online. Although you have to search its site for a while before finding its disclaimer ("National Report is a news and political satire web publication"), because they don't post it on the bottom of every page, which can easily lead people to believe its stories are real.

Dove Debate — As Bishop Bhekibandla was receiving an Honorary Doctorate Certificate at Moses Bible College of South Africa, a dove appeared out of nowhere inside the assembly hall and started flying around his head. Some people in the audience — most of whom were members of the Jericho Church — started crying, weeping hysterically, shouting amen, and calling out that it was a sign from God showing them who their rightful leader was.

Not so, says rival Bishop Khanyakwezwe, who insists that the sudden appearance of the dove was some kind of cheesy "propaganda stunt." He elaborates, "The dove came with some of Bhekibandla followers just to deceive the Jerichos that he is the rightful Jericho leader which is not the case." [Times of Swaziland]

No pony-killing satanists in Devon — Glad they got this cleared up. Satanists on the loose might have scared away the tourists.

Ralph Napierski, Fake Bishop — On Monday, a man calling himself "Basilius," wearing a cassock, black fedora and purple sash, tried to gain access to the pre-conclave meeting of cardinals at the Vatican. He made it through one level of security before being stopped by the Swiss Guard. Spiegel Online has a profile of the guy, whose real name is Ralph Napierski. Apparently Napierski has a history of posing as a Catholic bishop, though Spiegel isn't quite sure what to make of him, debating whether he's "a joker, a church critic or simply an eccentric with strong leanings toward esotericism."

Napierski's history includes: Claiming to be the leader of the "Catholic Order Corpus Dei" (a non-existent order, but perhaps a play on the real "Opus Dei"); conducting a fake auction on eBay that "drove the price of a small digital photo to €10 million" (he said he did it to highlight a security loophole); and attending Berlin's "Venus" erotic trade fair, dressed as a priest, in order, so he said, to promote the use of sex toys by Catholics.

In the thumbnail below, Napierski is the guy on the left. You can also check out Napierski's website.

Prisoners request kosher meals — Columbian.com reports that there appears to have been a dramatic increase in Jewish prisoners at Washington State prisons, based on food requests at these institutions. The evidence: in 2011 approximately 1 percent of the inmates requested special kosher meals. But now, 2 years later, almost 11 percent of inmates are requesting them.

Federal law requires that the state honors religious dietary requests. The problem is that the kosher meals are more expensive than normal meals — $6.80 more expensive per day, for each request. However, "experts are dubious of some prisoners' sincerity." That is, they doubt all these prisoners really are Jewish.

Gary Friedman, a former Jewish corrections chaplain and "a leading authority on dietary rules and regulations in the United States corrections system," theorizes that the prisoners have figured out a way to get what they think is safer, better food:


Prisons can't deny the requests outright. So what they're doing instead is monitoring the behavior of the prisoners outside of the food hall — observing what items they purchase from the prison store and what they barter for. If the prisoners are caught engaging in non-Jewish behavior, their kosher food privileges are revoked.

Magic Log Found in Cambodia — Thousands of people in Cambodia are flocking to see a "magic log" that was found at the bottom of a pond earlier this month. It's a big log (42 feet long). But what makes it magical, in the eyes of the people journeying to see it, is that it appears so well preserved for a log that's been underwater for a while. From Sky News:


Some of the log's visitors hope it can cure them of their illnesses. But the majority seem to be hoping that the log will reveal winning lottery numbers to them if they rub talcum powder on it.

Myth-Busters of Mohali — Interesting article in tehelka.com about Tarksheel, the Punjab Rationalist Society, which is a chapter of the larger Indian Rationalist Society. Its members try to combat superstition by using logic and skeptical inquiry. After reading the article, it sounds like they have an uphill struggle ahead of them. Some highlights:


And also:

The Saint of Rice Excrements — Back in ninth-century Japan, there was a religious charlatan who earned the title bei-fun-hijiri or "saint of rice excrements". Before telling how he acquired this title, I should relate how I came across his story, which was in a rather roundabout way.

First, I came across a post on the Of Small Wonders & Great Wanders blog about the ancient art of self-mummification, developed by ascetic monks of the Shingon sect in northern Japan:


This led me to wikipedia page about Sokushinbutsu, which further explains:



The wikipedia page, in turn, led me to a 1962 article in the Journal History of Religions: "Self-Mummified Buddhas in Japan," by Ichiro Hori. The article provides a great deal of information about the development of the art of self-mummification — much much detail than I'll go into here. The important point (since it leads us to the Saint of Rice Excrements) is that Hori argues that the self-mummification ritual emerged out of the practice of abstention from cereals (mokujiki-gyô). That is, the practice of not eating rice and subsisting only on fruits and nuts.

Abstention from cereals was considered an important training exercise for Shingon ascetics since a) it required a lot of willpower, and b) it was believed to give one superhuman powers. But of course, human nature being what it is, there were those on the no-cereal diet who cheated. Which leads us, finally, to the Saint of Rice Excrements. I'll let Ichiro Hori tell the rest of the story.

How To Make A Psychic Omelette — E.J. Gold describes himself as a "psychic cook". Or, at least, he briefly kept a blog on which he described himself in this way and offered various psychic recipes.


His recipe for a psychic omelette starts off in a pretty standard way, but once the eggs have begun to harden in the frying pan, the psychic part kicks in:


I'm not totally sure whether he was being serious when he posted this blog (Poe's Law), but given the info in his wikipedia bio, I'm leaning toward the conclusion that he was.

Maybe I'll give this psychic cooking a try one of these days and see if it makes any difference.

Burnt Toast With Image Of Romney Shaking Hands With Satan — This auction managed to generate some attention from the internet — enough to get it pulled from eBay. Try as anyone might, no one could see the image the seller claimed was there. And the guy wanted $88.40 just for shipping. Apparently the auction was really just a thinly veiled anti-Mormon diatribe. Link: gawker.com.

Post-Rapture Pet Adoption — For over three years, Eternal Earth-Bound Pets has been offering peace of mind to Rapture believers. Should the Rapture come, and the devout are whisked away up to Heaven, this service will take care of their pets that are left behind — for a small fee of $135 per pet.

But now Bloomberg News is reporting that the business was all just a hoax concocted by Bart Centre, a retired retail executive in New Hampshire, in order to promote his book, The Atheist Camel Chronicles. Bloomberg quotes him as saying:


Centre also explains that he's revealing the hoax now because, "the State of New Hampshire’s Insurance Department has asked me to discuss my ‘insurance’ offering... and provide them with all the names of NH clients who have signed on and paid for my pet rescue post rapture service."

It's a shame. I thought the service sounded like a good idea, and a perfectly reasonable business proposition. If someone believes the rapture is on its way, why shouldn't they pay to have their pets taken care of post-rapture?

TV Screen Jesus — This might be in the running for the stupidest pareidolia ever. Floridian Guerda Maurice was watching the Bachelor on TV when she saw a design she wanted to take a picture of. (A design? I have no idea what she means by that.) So she picks up her phone and takes a picture of the TV screen. Later she looks at the picture she took and sees "Jesus picture". That is, there was a reflection on the screen that she thought looked like Jesus. She was so excited that she made a locket out of TV Screen Jesus. Link: wtsp.com. (Thanks, Bob!)

Virgin Mary seen in condom —
(via reddit)

Pareidolia Round: September 2011 — Virgin Mary Sea Shell
Felicia Avila of Rio Grande Valley found a sea shell that she says bears the image of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. valleycentral.com

Virgin Mary Rock
Tammy Tollett was vacationing in Lake Tahoe when she found a rock that she believes looks like the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. She says this is the real deal (unlike, presumably, all those other phony pareidolia). orlandosentinel.com

Concrete Jesus Face
The face of Jesus materialized on Mary Vasquez's concrete patio. She's lived in the apartment for 18 months, but only noticed the Jesus face recently. Apparently she first tried scrubbing the face off her patio with soap. When that didn't work, she called the local newspaper. the33tv.com.

Jesus on Cross
Clay Perry recently made a 7-inch cross from some leftover scraps of poplar wood. Then the grandfather of his nephew noticed it appeared to have the face of Jesus on it... right where the face should be at the top of the cross. Personally, I'm not seeing it. 11alive.com.

Krispy Kreme sponsors creation science? — I was walking through La Mesa last night (La Mesa, where I live, is a suburb of San Diego), when I came across a flyer for the Creation & Earth History Museum, which is down the road in Santee.



At the bottom of the flyer, as you can see, is a list of sponsors. Scantibodies, NOTW, 1:1, Christian Examiner, and KSDW didn't surprise me. They're all christian organizations. (The founders of the Creation Museum were also the founders of Scantibodies. KSDW is a bible radio station, and I don't know what 1:1 is, but I'm assuming it's some kind of reference to a biblical verse.)

But Krispy Kreme and Chick-fil-a surprised me. They're sponsoring creation science? Seems like an odd publicity move for them. Am I now going to have to boycott them? (Not that I go to either one much already.) I've sent their pr offices an email to confirm that this sponsorship is real.

Even odder is that I don't believe there's either a Krispy Kreme or a Chick-fil-a in Santee itself. So it's not like they're neighbors.

As I was contemplating this flyer, it occurred to me that a perfect location for the Museum of Hoaxes would be to park it right next door to the Creation Museum. I could work there and stay in San Diego.

Edit: Apparently Chick-fil-a is an openly Christian corporation, which leaves Krispy Kreme as the odd-man-out in the list of sponsors.

Ancient shroud casts doubt on Shroud of Turin — Archaeologists have found a burial shroud sealed within a 2000-year-old tomb in Jerusalem. Comparing the newly found shroud to the Shroud of Turin adds to the evidence that the Shroud of Turin is a fake. From nationalgeographic.com: