Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

Water-Skiing Elephant — You can find a lot of weird stuff on YouTube, such as this video of a water-skiing elephant. Watching it, I feel kind of sorry for the poor elephant made to do this.



The story behind the video is that it was a publicity stunt from 1959 dreamed up by New York PR man Max Rosey in order to promote an amusement park. Rosey was also the man who came up with the idea for an annual hot dog eating contest in Coney Island to promote Nathan's hot dogs.

I found this video (and the explanation about it) on a blog called Liquid Soap, which is about publicity stunts of yesteryear. The blog is written by Mark Borkowski, who's also the head of the UK's Borkowski PR agency.

Detective Poses As Corpse — Here's a story about a detective who had to go deep undercover, posing as a corpse in order to catch a man who was vandalizing hearses belonging to a funeral home:

I don't really understand why they couldn't have achieved the same thing with remote control cameras.

New in the Hoaxipedia: Two articles about paintings — Elliot's newest contribution in the Hoaxipedia is an entry about the career of the art forger Elmer de Hory.

And I also posted an article about something from the world of art: September Morn by Paul Chabas.

September Morn shows a young naked girl bathing at the edge of a lake. In the early twentieth century it provoked a huge controversy in America about whether nudity should be allowed in public art. The controversy helped make September Morn one of the most famous (and popular) paintings in the world.

The interesting part of the story is that publicist Harry Reichenbach later claimed to have started the whole controversy by staging a phony protest... pretending to be outraged in order to attract the notice of the censors, but in reality just trying to drum up publicity so as to sell more copies of the painting.

I have my doubts about Reichenbach's story, especially since he only started taking credit for the September Morn controversy years after it happened.

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?

New From Elliot: Church of the SubGenius — In his new article in the hoaxipedia, Elliot gives some background info on the Church of the SubGenius -- the church which may represent a genuine religious movement, or may be just an elaborate joke.

The Church of the SubGenius is affiliated with the Universal Life Church, "an organization that has been legally (in some states) offering tax-exempt ministerships to all who apply regardless of religious or non-religious affiliation." Years ago I sent away to become a Universal Life Church minister, but I no longer have any clue where I put the sheet of paper saying I'm a minister.

I've sometimes thought about starting my own church. It would be the Church of the Great Hoax. Its motto would be: "Whatever you believe, it's wrong."

The Difficulty of Debunking — The Washington Post has a depressing article about the difficulty of myth-busting. Experiments by Norbert Schwarz at the University of Michigan reveal that a few days after telling people a rumor is false, many of those people will have misremembered what they were told and think the rumor is true. The crux of the problem is that:

Other psychologists have found that hearing the same thing again and again from the same source can actually trick the brain into thinking information is more credible, as if the information came from many sources:

So what can myth-busters do? Unfortunately, not much. The only recommended tactic is to debunk rumors by not referring to the original rumor at all, and instead offering a completely different new assertion. For instance:

It's going to make it pretty hard to operate a myth-busting website if one of the rules is that I can't mention the myth I'm debunking. (Thanks, Joe!)

Goat Sacrifice as Airline Maintence — If I saw mechanics busy sacrificing some goats as I boarded my plane, it wouldn't exactly set me at ease. Still, mechanics in Nepal seem to think it did the trick. From Reuters:

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

Mayor Bans “I can’t” — In an effort to instill a can-do attitutde in his workers, a Russian mayor has "ordered his bureaucrats to stop using expressions such as 'I don't know' and 'I can't.'"

Seems like a double-plus ungood policy. How should they respond if asked, "Can you say 'I can't'?"

Link: cnews.canoe.ca

Vernon, Florida — Joe Littrell forwarded me a St. Petersburg Times article, Dismembered Again, about the town of Vernon, Florida. It was so weird that I first I thought it was one of those joke articles, the kind that magazines such as the Phoenix New Times sometimes run. But all the references in it check out, so now I'm pretty sure it's real.

Vernon used to be known as Nub City, because the main source of income for town residents was dismembering themselves in order to file insurance claims. People there would come up with all kinds of ingenious ways to lose limbs:

Eventually insurance companies refused to insure anyone in the area, but Vernon went on to achieve some fame as the subject of a film (titled Vernon, Florida) by Errol Morris:

It sounds like a fun place to visit.

Who’s That Girl? — Recently someone posted on facebook pictures supposedly recovered from a camera they found while on holiday. The photos showed an attractive young woman posing in various stages of undress. The guy who found the camera wrote:

The only thing surprising would have been if this didn't turn out to be a viral marketing campaign for a porn site. But no surprise here. It all turned out to be a viral marketing campaign for a porn site. (Thanks, Cranky Media Guy)

Tombstone Humor — The temperature reached 110 degrees on my patio today. I sat inside the whole day with a fan blowing on me, wishing I had air conditioning, and wondering how anyone could think global warming is a hoax.

I also put together a list of tombstone humor, which I posted in the hoaxipedia.

My favorite humorous epitaph that I came across, which supposedly can be found on a tombstone in a Maine cemetery (though I have my doubts) is this one:

“Tears cannot restore her. Therefore do I weep.”

It took me a few seconds to get it.

More Faces in Trees — At least two or three faces seen in trees seem to get reported a month, and I faithfully note them here. Here are the latest:

Lodi, California: Emily West was doing some meditating over the weekend in her sister's backyard in central Lodi when something caught her eye. "I looked up and saw the face of Christ in the fence and I said, "Whoa," West said. She called her sister Ana over to ask what she saw. She too agreed, it was the Son of God.

Cranky Media Guy forwarded me this story with the comment, "If this is the face of Jesus, then the Son of God is wearing one of those laser-equipped face masks like the Cylons on the original Battlestar Galactica." Yes, well that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Jesus might be a big Battlestar Galactica fan.

And here's a a second face in a tree seen in Portland, Maine, though there are no details about exactly where it was seen, or by whom.



The thing about this image is that I can see two faces. There's the one on the left, outlined in blue lines below. But there's also the face outlined in green lines (on the right), which is actually the one I saw first.

New From Elliot: Brooklyn Bridge Scams — Elliot's latest addition to the Hoaxipedia details scams involving the Brooklyn Bridge. I like this one in particular:

Enormous Green Diamond Found — A Cape Town property developer, Brett Jolly, is claiming that a mine he owns shares in has found what could be the largest diamond ever, weighing in at 7000 carats. Plus, it's green.

By contrast, the largest diamond found to date is only 3106.75 carats. And the largest green diamond only 40.7 carats.

Initial reports said that this new diamond was as big as a soccer ball, but a photo of it has now been released, and in the photo it doesn't look quite that large. I'd say it looks only about as big as a softball. Which is still pretty big. In the photo it's sitting on a table next to a cellphone.

However, most experts are extremely skeptical of the find. No one is being allowed to examine it. So far, the photo is the only proof of its existence, and in the photo, as News24.com notes, "it looks conspicuously smooth on top, almost like a paperweight."

Experts also note that it comes from an area not known for producing large diamonds.

It all sounds very fishy to me. (Thanks to Eric Laurence)

Wrapping Rove’s Car — White House pranksters wrapped Karl Rove's car in plastic wrap, as a way to say goodbye to the guy. CBS News reports:

It would have been funnier if they shrink-wrapped Rove himself and shipped him away somewhere. And if they had done it seven years ago.

New From Elliot: Great Golf Hustlers — Elliot has posted an article about great golf hustlers. Read it and find out why, if someone wants to bet you that they can drive a golfball a mile, never bet that they can't.

Top 20 Most Bizarre Experiments — I've posted a list of the Top 20 Most Bizarre Experiments of All Time. The descriptions are all summarized from longer accounts that can be found in my new book, Elephants on Acid. Basically, although the list can stand on its own, it's meant to be one big ad for the book. My hope is that people might be intrigued enough by what they read in the list to want to find out what else can be found in the book. (They'll either be intrigued or horrified. When people hear about some of these experiments those are the two most typical reactions.) There's definitely plenty more material in the book.

My publisher tells me that the book should start shipping in early October, about a month ahead of schedule.

Introducing Elliot Feldman — I was browsing the web a few days ago when I came across a guy who was posting lots of great hoax-related articles to the Associated Content site. He seemed to know all kinds of fascinating, obscure things.

That guy was Elliot Feldman. I emailed him and asked him if he'd consider posting some articles here to the Museum of Hoaxes. Luckily, he agreed. So I want to introduce everyone to Elliot. We should be getting to read his articles regularly from now on.

Elliot says that he was a game show writer for 25 years. Shows included the Match Game, Hollywood Squares, Nickelodeon's Double Dare, and (yes, it's true) That's My Dog. He published his first novel, Sitting Shiva, in 2003. You can buy it at Amazon.

Elliot is also a cartoonist. You can check out some of his comics at detroitcrazy.com and scene4.com.

He supplied four facts about his life, half of which are fake. You have to guess which are the true Feldman Facts and which are the fake ones:

• He once dressed in a molting chicken suit and was beaten to death by San Diego Padres fans.

• He was a cartoonist long before he was a writer.

• His first TV job was as a (blank) for The Match Game.

• He is currently searching for the Loch Ness Monster in Florida.

Elliot's first article, posted in the Hoaxipedia, is about John Howard Griffin, a white man who had his skin darkened so that he could pose as a black man.

He promises future articles about subjects such as thirties and forties con artist Titanic Thompson, golf hustlers, pool hustler Minnesota Fats, con artists who have sold landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and the Brooklyn Bridge, and Bob, Ivan Stang, and the Church of the SubGenius.

Self-Adhesive Sunroof — I'm torn between thinking this is one of the stupidest products I've ever seen, and actually kinda wanting one.

It's a self-adhesive sunroof, recently offered for sale on eBay. The seller writes:
I like some of the questions people have left for the seller, such as: And also this one: