Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

One Million Years B.C. Bigfoot — On Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman notes a similarity between Patty (the Bigfoot that stars in the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film) and the ape creatures that appear briefly in the 1966 film One Million Years B.C. (starring Raquel Welch).

In the images below, Patty is on the left, and one of the One Million Years B.C. creatures is on the right.



Lots of people have suggested a link between 1967's Planet of the Apes and the Patterson-Gimlin film, but a link to One Million Years B.C. is a new one. Maybe Patty will turn out to have been Raquel Welch in an ape suit.

40th Anniversary of Paul Is Dead Rumor (almost) — Magazines have begun to note the 40th anniversary of the Paul is Dead rumor (although they're two months early... the rumor began to circulate widely in September 1969).

Contact Music managed to get a quotation from McCartney about the rumor. He claims to still be laughing it off. But interestingly, he also get the details wrong about how the rumor started:


McCartney barefoot on the cover of Abbey Road was one of the major clues that fueled the rumor, but it didn't spark the rumor. The event that really launched the rumor was when Detroit DJ Russ Gibb played the song "Revolution Number Nine" backwards on his show and claimed to hear the words "Turn me on, dead man."

There's been several books and a number of scholarly articles written about the Paul is Dead rumor. I wonder if McCartney has ever read them.

Loch Ness as one of the 7 Wonders of Nature — Loch Ness is a finalist in a campaign to name the New 7 Wonders of Nature. Other finalists include the Amazon River, the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, and Mount Kilimanjaro.

Loch Ness is very scenic and geologically very interesting, but Willie Cameron of Loch Ness Marketing thinks that the Loch should have a leg-up on the competition because, "None of the other nominees has a legacy we know as the Loch Ness Monster. Whatever it is, it is unexplainable and that is unique."

By that reasoning, shouldn't the North Pole also be a contender, since it's the home of Santa Claus? [Highland News]

The Photoshopped Refugee? — 11points.com has posted a list of 11 photos where black people were awkwardly photoshopped in or out. Most of them I've seen before. A few of them I even have on this site. But there was one I hadn't seen before. It's titled "Photoshopped diversity in a Lebanon refugee camp." 11points provides this description:




They provide a link to rightwinged.com, which offers a fuller analysis. Basically, the black man in the lower-right corner has a strange outline around his head, which (so rightwinged.com has concluded) is the result of a really bad cut-and-paste job.



I'm not so sure. That outline could also be caused by someone standing behind him. And if it was photoshopped, the photographer did a really good job of blending the guy's head into the photo in every other way (such as lighting and color-tone), making it odd that he would have made a mistake as obvious as forgetting to smooth out the edges around the man's head. Finally, what would have been the point of photoshopping this guy into the picture?

In any case, it's been almost three years since this photo ran in the NY Times, and they haven't yet pulled it from their site, so evidently they don't think it's photoshopped.

Golf Trick Shot — The latest viral video going around is titled "Hot Girl Pulls Off Insane Golf Trick Shot." Is it real? I'm not sure, but I don't see why it couldn't be. The trick doesn't seem that insane to me.

World’s Strongest Vagina? — Posted by Neo in the forum:


In the forum thread you'll also find a link to a video of her doing her thing.

My question concerns her claim that the Guinness Book of Records declared her the winner of the title of World's Strongest Vagina. I can't find any confirmation of this from the Guinness Records people.

And on twitter, it's being reported that Guinness has denied awarding her this title.

Wave of Hotel Pranks — As noted by Beasjt in the forum, there's been a case of a phone prankster tricking a couple into smashing up a hotel room by telling them there's a gas leak. I reported a case of an identical prank in April.

The Boston Herald describes these incidents as part of a "wave of hotel pranks":

Thieves steal fake phones — Not the brightest thieves in the world:

[Associated Press]

USB-Powered Chainsaw — A new hoax website advertises the World's First USB-powered Chainsaw:




It's said to be shipping in September. The real question is who created this page and why. It's registered anonymously (typical for a hoax site). We'll just have to wait and see who takes credit for it. (via wired)

Happy 07/08/09! — USA Today points out that a "rare time/date alignment" occurs on July 8, 2009 at 4:05 a.m. and 6 seconds. The exact date then will be: 04:05:06 07/08/09.

Does this mean anything? Well, if you ask a tarot card reader, it does. And, of course, that's who USA Today asks:


As John Walkenbach notes, "the article doesn't mention that this is hokey nonsense. It quotes the numerology expert as if she's actually a credible person."

Jackodolia — More Michael Jackson pareidolia, or "Jackodolia".

The Edison family of Brazil prepared a roast last Saturday, but neglected to do the dishes for a day. Then they noticed that the face of Michael Jackson had mysteriously appeared in the roasting pan. Link: terra.com.br via ceticismoaberto

Hello Kitty Taser — The Hello Kitty Taser raised the ire of Justin Yu at CNET who wrote:


Only subsequently did he realize that it was simply "a Photoshopped picture of Taser's "Metallic Pink" version of the C2 gun."

Hello Kitty guns seem to be a popular meme.

Geographical distribution of Bigfoot same as Black Bear — In its current issue, the Journal of Biogeography has published an article whose authors use ecological niche modelling software to predict the distribution of Sasquatch in western North America. The authors write:


The authors then created an ecological niche model for the black bear, Ursus americanus, and discovered that the two models (for Bigfoot and black bear) were remarkably similar, leading them to conclude that "many Bigfoot sightings are, in fact, of black bears." (via New Scientist)

Woman “prank calls” her own grandmother — Calling a store and asking "have you got Prince Albert in a can" is a prank call. Calling your grandmother 45 times and saying "You're going to die" is not a prank call. It's a sign of serious psychological issues. [google]

Michael Jackson seen all over — The guy may be dead, but he's showing up all over the place. Michaeljacksonsightings.com has a few blurry pictures of the back of someone who vaguely resembles Jackson. They offer this as proof that Jackson faked his death.

A family in Stockton, California have noticed an image of Michael Jackson in a tree stump in their front yard. They swear the image only appeared on the day he died. (I'm not seeing anything at all.)


Then there's the ghost of Michael Jackson, which you can see in the video below. To me, it looks like someone's shadow.

Did Da Vinci create the shroud of turin? — A new theory about the Shroud of Turin: Lillian Schwartz, a graphic consultant at the School of Visual Arts in New York, thinks Leonardo da Vinci created it. Her reasoning is that "the face on the Turin Shroud and a self portrait of Leonardo da Vinci share the same dimensions."

The self-portrait of da Vinci and the face on the shroud do look similar, but I thought it was pretty well established that the shroud dates back to at least 1355, which would make it too old for da Vinci to have created, since he was born in 1452. [Daily Mail]

116-year-old Basketball Shoes — Two days ago Boing Boing posted about the discovery of a pair of 116-year-old basketball shoes:


People leaving comments quickly pointed out that the story was almost certainly fake, since basketball was only invented in 1891, and it's unlikely that a) a shoe would have been made for the sport one year later, and b) that the shoe would survive in near-perfect condtion.

It turns out that the story is a marketing gimmick (hoax) to sell retro basketball sneakers. I'm not sure how long this 116-year-old basketball shoe story has been circulating around, but I don't think it's recent.

The Con Artist Hall of Infamy — A new site debuted three days ago: The Con Artist Hall of Infamy. It's tagline is:


As interesting as the site itself is the fact that it's being bankrolled by two billionaires, Warren Hellman and Arthur Rock, who decided that there needed to be a site devoted to offering the big picture on fraudsters and con artists.

Billionaires with an interest in promoting knowledge about the history of deception! In my fantasies someone like that offers to bankroll the Museum of Hoaxes. Unfortunately, in reality the only people who ever contact me with offers of large sums of money are Nigerian bankers.

Urban Legend Awards Announced — It's not what you think it is. The Urban Legend Awards will honor "contributions made by volunteers, local leaders, businesses, churches, partners and community members to the urban AIDS response in Swaziland." Maybe the term "urban legend" doesn't mean the same thing in Swaziland that it means in the US and UK. [Swazi Observer]