Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

Flipping: Is it a new prank or an old one? — The Wilmington, Delaware News Journal reports that there's a new prank that's all the rage in America's high schools. It's called backpack-flipping. The idea is simple. You take someone's backpack, remove all its contents, turn it inside out, and then restuff it with everything that was originally in there. Students are divided on whether or not this is amusing: I think it sounds as annoyingly stupid as wet-willies or giving people wedgies. But is it a new prank? That's the question. Some believe it is: I don't recall ever seeing this occur when I was in high school either. So maybe it is new.

Fake Attack at Elementary School — Sixty-nine elementary students from Scales Elementary School got quite a scare during a recent field trip to Fall Creek Falls. Their teachers told them that a gunman was on the loose in the area: As the students lay cowering on the floor, a man in a hooded sweatshirt pulled on a locked door, trying to get into the room. But here's the punchline -- it turned out that the threat was just a prank. And the pranksters were none other than the teachers, who were trying to make the kids think about what it would be like to be in a real situation like that. Two of the school employees responsible for the prank have now been suspended.

I can understand why it might be useful to stage a fake drill for an emergency such as a fire, but the logic of staging fake terror attacks escapes me. After all, what if someone were to fight back? Nevertheless, this is not the first time we've seen a situation like this. Back in August 2004 I posted about a fake terrorism drill that took place in a government office in Carter County, Tennessee, in which the local Emergency Management Director secretly arranged for armed intruders to burst into the office, fire shots in the air, and take hostages... prompting the workers to panic and run for cover.

How much of the legend of the 17th-Century tulipmania is true? — The tulip craze that hit Holland in the seventeenth century is arguably the most famous financial bubble in all of history. According to the popular account of what happened, prices for tulips began to go through the roof in 1636 as word spread that wealthy people were willing to pay huge sums of money for tulips. Soon the general population joined in the speculative fervor, many people using their life savings in order to buy bulbs, believing they could resell them at windfall profits. At the height of the mania, a single bulb cost as much as a mansion. But eventually reality set in. In 1637 panic selling commenced as people realized they were never going to make a return on their investments, and the price of bulbs crashed, losing over 90% of their value. Many people were financially ruined.

Like I said, that's the oft-told, popular account of what happened. But I've always been suspicious of it. For one thing, the main source many people rely on for their info about the tulipmania is Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which was written in the 19th century, and which doesn't offer any references to back up some of its rather far-fetched tales (such as the claim that one sailor was sentenced to months in jail for mistakenly eating a tulip bulb that he mistook for an onion).

Anne Goldgar debunks many of the legends of the tulip craze in her new book, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age. For instance, according to the Financial Times review of her book, Goldgar was unable to find a single person who was bankrupted by the tulipmania.

Nor did the speculative craze include large sections of the population: "In lore, Dutch chimney sweeps spent their savings on bulbs, but in fact the buyers were mostly merchants and craftsmen from the province of Holland. These are the smug burghers we know from portraits of the era. Many were Mennonites."

A financial bubble in the tulip market really did occur, followed by a crash. However: So most buyers simply refused to pay up for the bulbs after the crash. Unfortunately, in today's financial markets people don't have that kind of luxury. Nowadays, with a single click of a mouse, all your money disappears instantly and forever.

The Underground Railroad Quilt Code — Did escaping slaves fleeing from the South in the pre-Civil War era use secret codes woven into quilts to communicate with each other and guide them on their journey? That is the premise of the quilt-code theory, first popularized in a 1998 book written by Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard, Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad. A National Geographic article from 2004 elaborates on the theory: Apparently a wrench pattern meant "gather your tools and get physically and mentally prepared to escape the plantation." A bear's paw meant "head north over the Appalachian Mountains." A tumbling blocks pattern meant "pack up and go." A bow tie pattern meant "to dress up or disguise themselves."

However, many historians dispute the existence of such a code, arguing that there's little evidence it ever existed or was used. The principal evidence for it comes from oral tradition, such as the testimony of a woman named Ozella McDaniel, who was a descendant of slaves, and told the story to Tobin and Dodard. She claimed the secret had been passed down from one generation to the next, without ever being written down.

A recent article in the Omaha World-Herald summarizes some of the arguments of quilt-code skeptics: I don't know enough about the issue to form an opinion about whether or not the quilt code was real. I've never even read Tobin and Dodard's book. However, it does remind me of a few other secret-code theories covered on the MoH, such as the hanky code (which apparently is real), and powerline codes (which probably aren't real).

Mirror-Magnified Moonlight — A couple out in Arizona, Richard and Monica Chapin, have built a moonlight magnifier (or, as they call it, an "interstellar light collector"). Exposure to concentrated lunar rays, they claim, can have all kinds of positive medical benefits. They hope it may even heal cancer. It cost them over $2 million to build the thing. According to their website, starlightuses.com, here's how the machine works:
The Arizona Republic recently published an article about this device. They describe in a bit more detail exactly what happens during a therapeutic session:
The Chapins don't charge money for this, but they do encourage visitors to make $10 donations and are seeking investors.

I'm willing to accept that light therapy has positive benefits, but I'm skeptical that moonlight has healing powers any different or greater than those of sunlight. Why would it, since it's just reflected sunlight? The Chapins claim that moonlight can't burn us like sunlight (right, because it's a lot less bright) and that moonlight "presents a distinctive spectrum composed of more reds and yellows, and possesses a different frequency than sunlight. This specific light spectrum has never been artificially duplicated." They admit that the healing benefits of moonlight have never been scientifically tested, but they're gathering anecdotal evidence to build their case.

I actually think it would be kind of cool to experience this thing. Would it be possible to get a moon tan? But I wouldn't look on it as anything more than an entertaining novelty, and I wouldn't expect any medical benefits from it beyond those gained from light therapy in general.

The Great Goldfish Hoax — It began with a classified ad in the Fresno Bee: "Found: Large, obese goldfish. Approx 11yrs old, blind as a bat." The ad, placed by Lori Igasan, ran for a week, starting March 16, and soon attracted a lot of attention, especially after David Letterman talked about it on his show.

Igasan explained to reporters that she had just walked out of her house one day, when she happened to notice a large goldfish lying on her front lawn. Immediately she ran inside to place it in an aquarium with her pet turtle. She decided to place the ad in the paper in order to find the rightful owner of the fish.

A few weeks later another Fresno woman, Bernadette Planting, identified the goldfish as her own, Charley, who had recently gone missing from her above-ground pool. A local aquatics saleswoman speculated that the fish was picked up from the pool by a large bird and dropped 1.3 miles away on Igasan's lawn.

Lori Igasan and the goldfish

The Fresno Bee reported the happy reunion of Planting and Charley on May 9. A day later, after numerous readers called in identifying Igasan and Planting as long-time friends, The Bee admitted it had fallen for a hoax.

The two women confessed to the hoax, saying, "It was not our intention to hurt anybody." Apparently it all started when Igasan, the real owner of the fish, placed the unusual ad in the paper as a way to get rid of her unwanted goldfish. When the ad then attracted so much attention, Igasan talked her friend Planting into coming forward as the owner.

The executive editor of the Fresno Bee said, "We're disappointed that these ladies weren't honest, and disappointed that we didn't catch the hoax." The Bee is running a poll of its readers about the hoax. Currently, 44% think that the women should have told the truth, and only 8% think it was harmless fun. Seems like a harmless joke to me. (Thanks, Joe)

Colour-Changing Card Trick — This trick is quite an interesting little demonstration of misdirection. I shan't say more, so as to not give it away, but keep your eyes peeled - there is more to this than just one trick.
(Thanks, Nettie and David B.)

Crushing Crane Weights — In this video a pair of crane weights falls on a car, completely crushing it. The odds of someone capturing this scene on video as they're driving down a street suggest that it must be fake, but it's a pretty well done fake. A professional agency must have created it. (via Digg)

Catching Sunglasses — Here's a youtube video of a guy who catches sunglasses on his face. The sunglasses are dropped from a house, from a bridge, and thrown at him as he passes by in a car. Yeah, it's obviously fake. But it's kind of amusing.

Did Hillary Clinton Participate in a Menstrual Synchrony Study? — One of the stranger rumors I encountered in the course of writing Elephants on Acid was the suggestion that Hillary Clinton participated in a menstrual synchrony study while she was a student at Wellesley College during the 1960s. Stranger still, I haven't been able to disprove this.

Here are the facts. In 1968, Martha McClintock, while a senior at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, convinced all 135 of her dormmates to participate in a study of the phenomenon of synchronous menstruation. She recorded the date of onset of their menstrual cycles three times during the academic year. Her hypothesis was that their cycles would synchronize as the year progressed, and this is what her data showed. She published an article about her study in a 1971 issue of Nature (1971, 229: 244-245). It remains a highly regarded study.

Hillary Clinton (then Hillary Rodham) was also a senior at Wellesley in 1968. This raises the possibility that she participated in McClintock's study. There were about 400 students in the senior class, which make the odds pretty good that Hillary participated in the study. (A third of the class participated.) The question is: Did the two women (Rodham and McClintock) live in the same dorm?

In her autobiography, Clinton writes, "During my junior and senior years, Johanna Branson and I lived in a large suite overlooking Lake Waban, on the third floor of Davis." McClintock, however, has never revealed what dorm she conducted her study in. I emailed her and asked, thinking that maybe she could say that she didn't conduct the study in Davis, even if she couldn't reveal where she did conduct it. She simply replied, "I cannot answer this question due to privacy regulations."

This leaves open the possibility that Hillary did participate in McClintock's study. I emailed the Clinton campaign, but they never responded to me. My hunch, however, is that she didn't participate in it. It seems like the kind of thing that would be more widely publicized if it were true.

Of course, it doesn't really matter whether she did participate in the study or not. Although if she did, it would be interesting as a piece of biographical trivia. Hillary Clinton herself would seem to be the only person who can confirm or deny the rumor.

Prom Babies — The latest trend among teenage girls is, apparently, to have a "prom baby." The idea is that girls try to get pregnant on prom night. This sneaky tactic allows them to avoid the pressure of going to college. Instead they substitute the pressure of raising a child.

This trend was reported by a "Worried Dad" who recently wrote in to Dear Abby. He writes:
I'm thinking that either the letter writer was deliberately trying to start a new urban legend, or his daughter's friends were pulling his leg. I have a hard time believing anyone would be stupid enough to think that raising a kid is easier than going to college.

And as one blogger points out, "If they really wanted to sabotage their own chances of going to college, wouldn't they just submit a poor application?"

I think "prom babies" should be classified as an urban legend of the "shocking sexual behavior of teenage girls" variety, along with other legends such as Jelly Bracelet Sex Codes and Rainbow Parties.

Gnome News — Some gnome stories that have been in the news lately:

Gnome Abuse
On April 13 more than twenty gnomes were found around the town of Seaford, taped to lamp-posts, covered in fake blood, with macabre messages written on them, and some with forks and axes embedded in their heads. Police have now identified those responsible for this gruesome scene. The police sergeant said, "We have established that the little fellows were bought by some high spirited youngsters who disfigured them with some rather gruesome messages before attaching them to posts around the town. We are attempting to re-gnome them in the hope that they will recover from their ordeal and strike a more traditional pose with fishing rods, ponds and flowers."

Derby Gnome
The Queen of England recently attended the Kentucky Derby. And so did the Derby Gnome. Here his Myspace page. But I don't think the gnome got invited to the White House Dinner.

Gnome-Napping Catches On In U.S.
Police in the U.S. are reporting a steady increase in gnome-nappings. For instance, Chicago Ride, Illinois recently experienced its first kidnapped gnome. The Police Chief there said, "The truth is, it's a crime, a felony actually. We're gonna take it seriously."

PC World’s Top 25 Web Hoaxes — PC World writer Steve Bass compiled a list of the Top 25 Web Hoaxes and Pranks. Here's the list (minus Bass's commentary):

1. The Accidental Tourist
2. Sick Kid Needs Your Help
3. Bill Gates Money Giveaway
4. Five-Cent E-Mail Tax
5. Nigerian 419 E-Mail Scam
6. Kidney Harvesting Time
7. You've Got Virus!
8. Microsoft Buys Firefox
9. The Really Big Kitty
10. $250 Cookie Recipe
11. Free Vacation Courtesy of Disney
12. Sunset Over Africa
13. Alien Autopsy at Roswell, New Mexico
14. Real-Time GPS Cell Phone Tracking
15. Apollo Moon Landing Hoax
16. Sell It on eBay!
17. Chinese Newspaper Duped
18. The Muppets Have Not Already Won
19. Chevrolet's Not-So-Better Idea
20. Rand's 1954 Home Computer
21. Microsoft Buys the Catholic Church
22. Hercules the Enormous Dog
23. Lights-Out Gang Member Initiation
24. Hurricane Lili Waterspouts
25. Pranks Shut Down Los Angeles Times Wiki

It's a decent list, though if I were to create such a list it would be very different. For instance, I would think that Bonsai Kitten would have to be in the Top 25. And what about Kaycee Nicole Swenson, OurFirstTime.com, and the Blair Witch Project (after all, the Blair Witch Project spawned the whole genre of hoax websites created to promote movies)? I also don't think that hoaxes such as "Microsoft Buys Firefox" were really big enough to warrant inclusion in the top 25, and it's a bit of a stretch to count some of the entries, such as the Alien Autopsy and the Moon Landing, as web hoaxes. Well, it goes to show that lists usually say more about the preferences of the people who make them than anything else. One of these days I'll get around to making a list of my own.

GreenTeaGirlie — David Sarno at the LA Times uncovers a web of deception surrounding a recent YouTube sensation called GreenTeaGirlie.

It all started in late March when a 10-second video of a young woman introducing herself became one of the most-watched videos on YouTube. Why was this video so popular, many people wondered. After all, it wasn't very remarkable. Was she another lonelygirl15?

Soon after, two related websites appeared: greenteagirlie.com and kallieannie.com.

The first site, greenteagirlie.com, contained a link to Seattle's Dragonwater Tea Co. (promoting suspicion that GreenTeaGirlie was a marketing ploy) and later to a site called Vidstars.net, that claimed to be a marketing service using YouTube video stars to promote products.

The second site, kallieannie.com, was all about the GreenTeaGirlie, whose real name, apparently, is Kallie.

So what was going on? The LA Times reporter figured out there were two different deceptions perpetrated by different groups.

Deception One: A friend of Kallie shot the video of her and then gamed the YouTube system by creating hundreds of fake MySpace profiles that linked to her video, artificially causing it to appear on YouTube's most watched video list, bringing her to the attention of YouTube viewers who then really did begin checking out her video. The same guy helped created kallieannie.com.

Deception Two: A separate pair of pranksters took advantage of the GreenTeaGirlie phenomenon to promote a hoax of their own -- Vidstars.net. Their idea was to create a fictitious company that was supposedly using YouTube stars to promote products. They created the greenteagirlie.com site, and linked it to the Dragonwater Tea Co., as a way to make it seem as if GreenTeaGirlie was a marketing ploy. So it was a hoax within a hoax. All very complicated.

So to sum up, GreenTeaGirlie is an artificially hyped YouTube star, who has nothing to do with Vidstars.net, which is a hoax website pretending to be a company that uses YouTube stars to promote products.

Or, at least, that's the way it seems for now. Unless it's all a hoax within a hoax within a hoax, engineered as a byzantine marketing stunt for Green Tea.

For those interested, here's GreenTeaGirlie's YouTube page that lists all of her videos.

Quick Links: Jesus on Google Maps, etc. —
Jesus on Google Maps
Brian Martin claims that he saw the shape of Jesus in the clouds above Mount Sinai.
(Thanks, Madmouse.)

Cat Gives Birth to 'Puppy'
Following on from the Japanese poodle scam hoax, this made me laugh.
A cat in Zhengzhou, China has supposedly given birth to a litter of four, one of which looks like a poodle. There are no pictures to accompany the article, however.
(Thanks, Robert.)

Sexism in Tetris
It seems a lot of people didn't realise the April 1st post on this computer site was a joke.
(Thanks, ponygirl.)

Japanese Poodle Scam Revealed as Hoax — The Japanese poodle scam - wherein thousands of gullible buyers were sold lambs instead of the dogs they were expecting - was first reported in UK Sun newspaper. The story went that rich women were buying cut-price poodles from a company named Poodles For Pets, and were astonished to find later that they were sheep.

The story itself was immediately dubious (aside from being in The Sun, which tends to be somewhat lax in the fact-checking department), when you consider snippets like:


The story unravelled when police in Sapporo, where the company was claimed to be based, said they had never heard of the scam. The talk-show story was not as it seemed, either. It appears that Kawakami had told a story about a lamb being sold instead of a poodle. However, she'd said that it had happened to a friend of hers.

It seems that nobody had heard of the scam - it hadn't been reported in any Japanese newspapers.

The final nail in the coffin? The original article claims that the scam "capitalised on the fact that sheep are rare in Japan, so many do not know what they look like."
In fact, Sapporo has had a sheep farm since 1848.

Forum thread here.

Museum of Hoaxes Curator in a Box —
I've been out of town recently. My wife and I drove up to Santa Barbara last weekend, where she had a work-related event to go to. While she was busy at that, I decided to check out Santa Barbara's used bookstores. I was browsing at The Book Den, when a student photographer approached me and asked if I would be willing to participate in a project she was working on. She was taking pictures of people in the bookstore, posed in various ways, and then digitally inserting them into a box. She had me climb a ladder. She just sent me the resulting image, and I think it looks pretty cool. It seems like something that's crying out for a good caption, but I can't think of one. Any ideas?

After Santa Barbara we spent a couple of days in Merced, in central California. We're thinking of moving there -- because the University of California, where my wife works, just opened a new campus there, and because the cost of living is so much cheaper there. (Though there's not a whole lot there.) Any move would be at least a year away.

Quick Links: Peace Bomb and Fake Snakes — Peace Bomb
Colin Barnett thought a good way to promote his art might be to place one of his vases outside the National Gallery of Victoria with the phrase "Peace Bomb" written on it. The police disagreed, and now Barnett is spending three months behind bars. I guess his publicity stunt backfired.

Fake Snakes
"Austrian officials fed up with motorists stopping to urinate by the roadside have put up fake snake warnings to scare them into using toilets... Of course there are no snakes but they don’t know that." So what happens when the Austrian authorities really want to warn people about snakes? No one will believe them.

Taiwan Hostage Hoax
Two Taiwanese MPs reported that students had been taken hostage at National Taiwan University. The police arrive, only to discover it was all a hoax. the MPs just wanted to test the police response time.

Quick Links: Honesty, Graffiti, Hindu Goddess, and Mozart —
Brits flunk honesty test
A credit-card protection firm, Affinion International, conducted an experiment in which they left items such as mobile phones, key, and wallets in city centres (Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, London, and Manchester). All the items were clearly marked with the owner's contact number, but most were never returned. Not surprising.

Obscene messages end graffiti experiment
Officials in Louisville tried to give graffiti artists a legal place to practice their craft, but abandoned the experiment after the concrete walls simply became filled with obscene messages. The walls will now be painted beige... and will doubtless soon be covered with illegal graffiti.

Man from Tooting becomes Hindu Goddess
Steve Cooper was just a run-of-the-mill unemployed guy in his hometown of Tooting, England. But when he moved to India he became known as the reincarnation of Bahucharaji, the patron of Indian eunuchs. I wonder how exactly he came into this new career. That's a story I'd like to know.

Mozart Effect debunked
A study commissioned by the German government has officially debunked the Mozart Effect -- which is the idea that listening to certain kinds of classical music will raise a person's intelligence.

Did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein? — A book coming out next month, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, by independent scholar John Lauritsen, argues that Mary Shelley did not write Frankenstein. Instead, Lauritsen argues, the credit should go to her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Why? For one, Lauritsen suggests Mary was too young and inexperienced as a writer to have penned a classic like Frankenstein. (She was nineteen at the time.) Lauritsen also suggests that the language of Frankenstein sounds like something Percy would have written. The Sunday Times reports:
Most literary critics aren't buying Lauritsen's argument. Germaine Greer, writing in The Guardian, argues that Mary Shelley must have written Frankenstein because a) the book is actually pretty badly written, as one would expect from a 19-year-old, and b) the underlying theme of the book is a very feminine one: I'm inclined to believe that Mary Shelley is the true author of Frankenstein. But it is an interesting question to think about.