Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

Fastest Man in Japan — I found this email today in my inbox:
This e-mail from Japan. Please write about me in your paper. I am the fastest man in Japan. I put off clothes in about one second. You can see me. Click here. http://www.joqr.co.jp/bbqr/56bakuhatsu2.asx
Japanese people can watch me in TV. I want world people to watch me. I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.Thank you.
Itabasi-ku 2-14-17, Tokyo, OfficeHERA, Jun Nagatani
Of course, I couldn't resist checking that out. Sure enough, he does remove his clothes in less than a second (it's safe for work). There must be some trick to it. Clothing designed to be ripped away would be the most obvious thing.

Plain Layne is Odin Soli — This isn't going to mean much to anyone, but when I heard the news I was dumbfounded. Plain Layne is Odin Soli. I haven't seen Odin in years, but I know him quite well. We went to grad school together at UC San Diego, though he left before I did. I've also read a novel he wrote. It was a detective story and pretty good. We TA'ed for the same class, plus we had quite a few beers together in the campus pub. Well, this makes the entire Plain Layne saga much more up close and personal for me. Strange how people in your past can suddenly pop up again like that. I'm going to have to see if I can contact Odin to see what he's been up to (besides pretending to be Plain Layne).

Ball-Swallowing Catfish — This story about a catfish with a big, red inflatable ball stuck in its mouth found bobbing around in Sandalwood Lake has been getting quite a bit of attention. Apparently the guy who found the fish, Bill Driver, first saw a red ball in the water, then he noticed that there was a catfish attached to it. The story was reported in the Wichita Eagle by Michael Pearce, so there's no reason to think it isn't true. But what I wonder about is how the ball got into the fish's mouth in the first place. Aren't catfish bottom feeders? So how would it have come across a ball floating on the surface? Is it possible that someone stuck the ball in its mouth and then released it in the lake? Who knows. Though it's just as possible that the fish was swimming near the surface for some reason, saw the ball, and opened its mouth real, real wide. I guess I'll just have to file this case under 'unsolvable mysteries.'

The Woman Who Gave Birth to a Frog — The BBC is reporting that a woman in Iran has given birth to a frog. Doctors are speculating that a frog larva somehow got into her uterus while she was swimming, and then grew inside her to a full-sized frog. That seems very unlikely to me. What would a frog feed on inside a person's body? Wouldn't the frog suffocate? Actually, the brief article seems a bit ambiguous on whether it's definitely a frog that came out of her, or if it's a baby that looks rather frog-like. Either way, this case immediately reminded me of Mary Toft, the 18th-century English woman who gave birth to rabbits. Of course, Mary Toft didn't really give birth to rabbits. She stuffed rabbits inside herself and then pretended to give birth to them. It seems possible this Iranian woman is pulling a Mary Toft.

Harry Potter Hoax — Harry Potter and the Pillar of Storgé. Could this be the title of the next book in the Harry Potter series? It sounds like a bit of a mouthful, but over at Mugglenet, a site for Harry Potter fans, someone calling themselves HPstorge claims to have found a way into a secret area of J.K. Rowling's site where this new title was supposedly revealed. The new title is apparently going to be officially announced on July 1 (we'll just have to wait and see what happens). HPstorge placed screen shots of his/her discovery on a geocities site , but the site promptly exceeded its bandwidth limit, so the shots are no longer viewable. The claim is being treated with skepticism over at Mugglenet, but anything to do with Harry Potter is such a big deal that the BBC is even reporting about this possible find. (via Ozymandias in the Hoax Forum)

Update (June 28, 2004): A spokesman for JK Rowling has confirmed that this book title is definitely a hoax.

Future NBA Star Chimezie Kudu — ESPN recently offered up a strange story about Chimezie Kudu, a 7-foot 11 South African entering the NBA draft. Chimezie almost missed the filing for the draft, since his application was written in an obscure Hottentot dialect. And despite his size, Chimezie's future success hardly seems guaranteed. He's never actually played competitive basketball before, though he has been playing the game for a while. He practices shots "on a single hoop in a local park in his native land -- the rim made out of antelope horn, the netting from the skin of a zebra." Oh, and the ball he plays with isn't quite NBA standard. It's made out of fused sheep's testicles.

StunStrike Stun Gun: Hoax or Not? — From the Hoax Forum: An Indiana company called Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems is developing a stun gun called the StunStrike that it boasts will be able to stun people at a distance, kind of like a taser without the wires. The company president, Pete Bitar, explains that the weapon will fire "a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep." Sounds a little sci-fi, but certainly not implausible. At least until you check out the company's website, and then the credibility meter drops way down. The website looks kind of like something a high school student would slap together for his 'intro to the internet' class, and it's hosted on a free server. So here you have a hi-tech company that evidently hasn't mastered the complexities of html. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Plus, the picture of the weapon looks phony. Posters at Slashdot have been all over this, dubbing the company a 'homeland security scam' and declaring that the weapon doesn't exist. In the company's favor, it has been awarded a small grant from the navy. Plus, they've been written about in the New Scientist. The Slashdot criticism is evidently making the company nervous, because on its website it now announces (in all capital letters) that:
CRITICISM OF THIS WEBSITE OR THE LIMITED INFORMATION UPON WHICH THE CRITICISM IS BASED IS IRRELEVANT AND WILL SOON BE PROVEN SO. PLEASE STAY TUNED.

The company promises a public demonstration of the StunStrike in the Autumn of 2004. So the question is, will the Slashdot people be proven right and the StunStrike turn out to be just smoke and mirrors... or will Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems disprove them and produce a real weapon? Poll below. We should know the answer by the end of the year.

Clueless Childless Couple Follow-Up — Back in May I posted an entry about a German couple who went to a fertility clinic to find out why they couldn't produce a child. The reason: they hadn't realized that you first have to have sex in order to get pregnant. Supposedly they both came from very religious backgrounds and had never been taught about the birds and the bees. The clinic was said to be planning to conduct a survey to find out if there were other similarly clueless couples out there. This story was widely reported in the news, even though it seemed a little far-fetched, to say the least. At the time I noted that a case kind of like this had been reported in a medical journal, but that the reason the couple didn't have sex was not because they didn't realize what they were supposed to do, but because the husband suffered from erectile dysfunction. I emailed the German clinic where the clueless couple was said to have been treated and finally received a reply confirming that the case of the clueless couple reported in the English-language media did derive from the case of the couple who didn't have sex for more mechanical reasons. Here's the email I received from the doctor:



Dear Alex Boese,

As one of the authors of the paper you asked for Prof Johannisson I would like to inform you, that in fact we treated such a couple. The problem wasn't that the couple had tried to get pregnant without having sexual intercourse - the reason for not having sexual intercourse was psychogenic erectile dysfunction in the male. They were aware of their problem and not treated with assisted reproductive techiques. We send them to a psychologist for counselling. The reason to publish this case report was to make doctors sensible for those problems. All other things, described in this paper on (1) the religious background and (2) a planned survey etc are not true and definitively not related to this case! May be, others have had a similiar case published which I am not aware of. Hope, this information helps you to put some light on the situation.

Yours,

Priv. Doz. Dr. med. M. Ludwig

ENDOKRINOLOGIKUM Hamburg

Zentrum für Hormon- und Stoffwechselerkrankungen,

gynäkologische Endokrinologie und Reproduktionsmedizin



So that settles that. There was a very small grain of truth to the story, but in its passage from a medical journal article to the Daily Mirror and beyond, the story was improved quite a bit.

Muslim Messiah Hoax — I suppose this is no different than thinking that the Virgin Mary has appeared in a stain on a hospital window or flocking to see a weeping statue of Mary, but somehow it seems even more bizarre. For the past two weeks hundreds of Muslims have been making a pilgrimage to a West German University Clinic to see the Messiah being breastfed by his dead mother. They've been drawn there by a rumor spread via Turkish websites. According to the rumor, a Muslim woman died while giving birth to Allah's chosen son. She was buried, but later dug up (why?) and found to still be alive, although her entire body was burned except for her breasts. Allah ordered her to breast-feed the Messiah, and then die again forty days later (wasn't there a James Bond movie with a title like that?). A clinic spokesman told the media that people have been coming from as far away as the Netherlands, and that the clinic eventually had to call in security guards to turn away some of the people who refused to believe that the Messiah wasn't there. No one can find the original internet posting that sparked this whole crazy thing, but the rumor has been discussed on turkdunya.de where one person reportedly claimed to have seen the Messiah's mother. (thanks to Big Gary for sending me a link about this... Gary, this story does appear to be true, so I guess people will believe anything)

To Hermione on her 18th Birthday — Donald Nyffington, 37-year-old UNIX programmer, is in love. He's in love with Hermione Granger... or rather with Emma Watson who plays Hermione in the Harry Potter movies. And Emma, unfortunately for Donald, is only 14. So he's started the 'Official Countdown Website to Hermione Granger's 18th Birthday.' The site is convincing enough that you really might start to believe that Donald and his unrequited passion for Hermione are for real. But they're not. The picture on Donald's 'About Me' page gives it away. It comes from an old Onion article titled 'Creepy Middle-Aged Weirdos Swept Up In Harry Potter Craze.' (via Scattered Pieces)

Christmas Party Prank Gone Awry — In an otherwise dull story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about local school-district politics, one bizarre passage caught my eye:



The embattled Mento also sought to downplay his much-publicized conduct at last year's Christmas party, saying he blew up a bikini-clad doll as a harmless practical joke. An exact replica of the doll was displayed at the hearing, complete with the package labeled "Inflatable Fat Ass Party Doll"... All agreed that it took the superintendent about 15 minutes to inflate the doll and that many at the party were surprised at Mento's determination to finish the task.
"It took a long time. Someone joked about needing an ambulance because he might pass out," recalled Scott.



This is the kind of story where you know there's even more to it than they're telling here.

The Old Fake-Wife Scam — How to get divorced from your wife behind her back: use a fake wife. A man and his wife showed up in divorce court, where they proceeded to file all the paperwork to end their marriage. Only it later turned out that the woman with him at the court wasn't really his wife. She was a phony. His real wife learned about the divorce when she received all the paperwork in the mail. You've got to wonder how this guy ever thought he was going to get away with this. Did he think his real wife would never notice and never complain?

Postcards for Mom — Here's a site that ingeniously exploits the power of the internet in order to play a prank. It's Postcards for Mom. Will Hanke created the site late last year in order to play a joke on his mother, Celeste. On the site he invited people to send letters to his mom (you had to email him in order to get her address). People thought it was a great idea, and soon Celeste was getting all kinds of mail, from all over the world. But she had no idea why these people were writing to her, nor could she figure out why they appeared to know personal details about her life. Finally she discovered what was going on when she read an article about Will's prank in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. With his mother now aware of the joke, Will has moved onto a new victim: someone else's mother. This new mother, Betty, was chosen by auction. The highest bidder earned the right to have their mother pranked. It would be a cool way to get your parents really confused.

Plain Layne (and other fake bloggers) — The big news in the blogosphere last week was the revelation that a blogger named 'Plain Layne' wasn't who she said she was. Of course if you, like me, had never heard of Plain Layne before, then the news didn't mean a whole lot. But the people who thought they knew her seemed genuinely shocked.

Plain Layne wrote about her life, and her life happened to be far more exciting and racy than the lives of most people, which is why she had a fairly large following. Jason Kottke has provided a great summary of some of her experiences:

In the past two years, Layne has discovered she's bisexual; fell in love with a Spanish go-go dancer; made room in her home for her cousin's pregnant girlfriend and now her newborn infant; met up with one of her birth parents for the first time; recounted a fling she had with a former boss (who had a girlfriend at the time); hinted at a rape she endured in Mexico (which turned her into a lesbian); charmed a straight woman co-worker into sleeping with her, becoming her girlfriend and then fiancee (!); broken off the engagement with said co-worker; frequently hooked up with one of the ex-fiancee's friends (another straight girl, if you can believe it); most recently slept with three women in the same week; and somehow, as all this was going on, held down a job at a large corporation working 80 hours a week managing a very successful IT group.

About a week ago Plain Layne's weblog disappeared and was replaced by some random text written in Polish. Faced with this vanishing act, her readers quickly realized that no one had ever laid eyes on her, and internet sleuths soon uncovered clues suggesting her non-existence. There's speculation that her weblog was actually some kind of group writing project... i.e. Plain Layne and all her adventures may have been the creation of many people.

At this stage in the life of the internet, I'm surprised that people feel so shocked and betrayed by this revelation. After all, what were they expecting? The phenomenon of bloggers assuming fake identities is hardly a new one. Here's a brief list of previous fake bloggers (or suspected fake bloggers) that I'm familiar with:

• Kaycee Nicole Swenson: a middle-aged woman who claimed to be a 19-year-old girl dying of cancer
• Belle de Jour: Claims to be a London call girl. Probably a writer who has never been a prostitute.
• Rance: Claims to be an a-list Hollywood celebrity. Probably not. Possibly an obscure cartoonist named Keith Thomson.
• Hot Abercrombie Chick: Claims to be an attractive young college co-ed. Probably a guy named Daniel Zeigenbein
• Flashman: LiveJournal weblog that ended abruptly accompanied by a (false) claim that the blogger had died rushing into the World Trade Center to save people on 9/11.
• She's a Flight Risk: Journal of a twenty-something woman who claims to have run away from her wealthy family and become an international fugitive. Widely suspected to be a hoax.

I'm sure there are thousands of other fake bloggers operating out there. But these are the most famous ones that I'm aware of.
Update: The real author of Plain Layne comes clean. She's a man.

Real or Fake? - Running Kilts — They're the latest in Scottish sports technology: running kilts. The instant solution to chafing shorts. They sound kind of like a joke, but actually they're real. And once you get over feeling silly when you first put them on, they're reportedly very comfortable. They actually sound very practical, but still, I would hesitate to wear them to the gym, or to wear them on a windy day.

Intergalactic Personal Ads — Leave a message on Endless Echoes' answering machine, and for only $24.95 they'll beam it into outer space, where it will theoretically travel forever. They bill it as the perfect way to send a message to loved ones who have died (why dead people would get the message in outer space, I don't know). I think the service would be better targeted at lonely hearts in search of alien companionship (Single White Female ISO Single Green Alien). But the whole thing has a hoaxy feel to it... along the lines of those companies that offer to name a star after you, or sell people plots of land on the moon. Why not just call up a radio station and dedicate a song to someone if you really need to send out a message as a radio broadcast? At least that way someone would have a chance of actually hearing what you say.

Fresh Frozen French Fries — Last night I went to Outback Steakhouse and had a big plate of greasy cheese fries. At the time I didn't realize that I was actually feasting on a plate of fresh vegetables, but apparently I was because the USDA has succumbed to lobbying from the food industry and decided to reclassify frozen french fries as fresh vegetables. This seems up there with the EU's decision to reclassify carrots as a kind of fruit (yeah, I know, there was some twisted logic to the EU's decision because the Portuguese use carrots to make jam and anything you make jam out of must be a fruit... or something like that). According to the USDA's 'batter-coating rule', "rolling potato slices in a starch coating, frying them and freezing them is the equivalent of waxing a cucumber or sweetening a strawberry" (as the Sun-Sentinel puts it). I think this is a case of politics and big business coming together to fashion their own bizarre, alternative reality.

Free Groceries Giveaway — A crowd of hopefuls arrived at the opening of the new Kroger's in Churchill Downs, hoping to participate in the Free Groceries Giveaway that flyers left on their car had advertised. According to the flyers, you could just fill up your cart with groceries and then run straight out the front door of the store. The shoppers were disappointed to learn that the flyers were a joke perpetrated by some unknown prankster. The store was giving away free Rick Pitino bobble heads, but I would think that if you're expecting free groceries, a free bobble head somehow doesn't cut it.

The Joice Heth/Stepford Wives Connection — A trailer for Paramount's new movie The Stepford Wives (which is about housewives being transformed into mindless, but beautiful robots) contains some controversial scenes. One shot shows an image of a sexy-looking Condoleeza Rice naked from the waist up (arms covering her chest), and another scene shows Hillary Clinton morphing into a buxom homemaker bearing a tray of cookies. But if you blink you'd miss these scenes because they literally flash across the screen in less than a second. As a result, most people never noticed them when the trailer aired on tv last week. But Rebecca Reynolds, a 'sharp-eyed' resident of Kansas City, Missouri noticed them, and she immediately called up her local tv station to complain about what she felt were the shocking and offensive images. The station aired a story about Rebecca's discovery, and soon word of the trailer's hidden content had spread all across the country.

Media coverage of this story has focused on the scenes from the trailer, but what makes me suspicious is the role played by the outraged midwesterner, Rebecca Reynolds. It seems awfully convenient that she happened to notice what was in the trailer and felt compelled to contact the media about it, thereby generating great free publicity for Paramount. Could she actually be in cahoots with Paramount? After all, Paramount knew exactly what was in the trailer, but they needed someone to complain in order to create a story the media would cover.

I can't prove anything, but I am suspicious since this is one of the oldest publicity tricks in the book: the pseudo-controversy generated by phony complaints made to the media. P.T. Barnum used this strategy again and again throughout his career. For instance, at the beginning of his career he was exhibiting Joice Heth, an elderly black woman who, so he claimed, was 161-years-old (she was probably in her 80s). When public interest in her began to taper off, Barnum wrote an anonymous letter to a local paper alleging that Joice Heth was a fake. But he complained that not only was Heth not as old as advertised, but that she was also not even human, being a "curiously constructed automaton, made up of whalebone, India-rubber, and numberless springs." This letter, and the controversy it created, helped revive public interest in Joice Heth and thereby substantially fattened Barnum's wallet.


Barnum's Joice-Heth publicity stunt occurred about 170 years ago, but it's odd how parallel it is to Paramount's Stepford-Wives stunt, since they both involve the suggestion of women really being robots in disguise. Weird. But probably a coincidence.