Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

The Phantom Game Console — Recently a company called Infinium Labs announced that it would soon be coming out with a high-powered game console called 'Phantom' that it promises will revolutionize the gaming industry. You can check out their very slick website to find out more about the console. But rumors have began to spread suggesting that there is no Phantom Game Console, that the whole thing is a hoax. The rumors started when someone paid a visit to the company's headquarters and discovered that the headquarters consisted of nothing more than a "100ft x 100ft room with a desk and two phones." Why would anyone perpetrate a hoax like this? One theory is that it's all a publicity stunt put together by Advanced Studios, LLC, the graphic design company that put together Infinium's really slick website. Of course, Infinium is loudly insisting that the Phantom Game Console is real, and a few journalists claim to have seen working prototypes of the console. So we'll have to stay tuned to see how this plays out.

Vote for the Vampire — Here's a guy that should be running for Governor of California. He's wasted on Crouch Hill ward.

A Real What Is It? — When I first saw this picture I thought, 'that can't be a real animal, it's got to be a hoax.' But apparently it's real. It's an angora rabbit. What an odd-looking creature. More pictures can be found here. (link via Geisha asobi blog)

Thing in the Solar Light — A reader named Chelsea has shared a fascinating site. It's ThingInTheSolarLight.com. The story here is that a couple just bought a solar-powered light for their yard. They set it up, and then they noticed a strange shape appearing to move inside the light. They captured this strange movement on video, and dubbed the moving spectre the 'Wasist.' I think that should be pronounced Vas-Ist. It's german for 'What is it?' The whole thing is quite loony, of course, but oddly entertaining.

Lapdance Island — Britain's Channel 4 was flooded with applicants hoping to get a spot on the new Reality Show called Lapdance Island. In this show ten men would be on an island with forty lapdancers. The winner would be the one who could keep his hands off the dancers for the longest. But the show was a hoax. Details here.

Blackout Photo Hoax — A photo of last week's blackout showing a startling dark patch in the northeast is going around. It looks like a fake to me.

The Real Reason for the Blackout — You may have thought that last week's massive blackout was caused by something like an aging national grid, bad transmission lines, or even human error. But guess what? It actually happened because it was the 60th anniversary of the Philadelphia Experiment. At least, so claims Al Bielek. I'm not clear on why the anniversary caused the lights to go out, but maybe all the power got sucked backwards through time or something. Even more sensationally, Bielek claims that he predicted the blackout a few weeks ago. In case you don't know about him, Bielek claims to be a time traveler stuck in the present era. He says that he was originally Ed Cameron, a participant in the 1940s Philadelphia Experiment, but that Ed somehow travelled through time and ended up being born in 1927 as Al Bielek. So Al is really Ed, if that makes sense. Not having listened to the radio show on which Al is claiming to have made his prediction about the blackout, I can't positively confirm or deny whether the prediction was really made. But my hunch is that he's somehow pulling a Tamara Rand.

Black Market Babies — If you feel like adopting a baby, but can't for some reason, just give the folks at Black Market Babies $50,000 and they'll steal someone's baby and give it to you. They also offer black market pandas and black market tigers for sale. Unfortunately their online form for submitting orders is 'temporarily' out of order. (Link via Entensity.net, who linked to me. Warning: their site is not safe for work).

Is that food real or plastic? — Sometimes plastic display food, like you often find in Japanese restaurants, can look awfully real. This website has a shockwave test that challenges you to separate photos of real food from the plastic stuff. The pictures are too small to really make a good decision, but it's a neat idea. (why they felt the need to design the test in shockwave, I can't figure out. HTML would have worked perfectly well for something this simple, and when viewing it with Safari it crashed my browser).

More eBay Auctions — I got an email from the girl (not guy) selling the Air Guitar and Ring of Saturn on eBay. Turns out she has a few other items for sale, such as a Ticket to Heaven (in case you're worried about going to Hell), and the Answer to Life and the Universe. I guess she's mastering the art of the Strange eBay Auction. WhatTheHeck.com has a great collection of such eBay Oddities. Included are hot-sellers such as Ghost Poop and A Lie.

Inner Peace — Here's a silly email that's going around. Not a hoax. Just a joke:

Inner Peace

I'm passing this along to you as I consider you a valued friend. This worked for me and I think it may work for you. I have found Inner Peace.
Recently I read an article that stated:
The best way to achieve inner peace is to Finish Things You Have Started. So today I finished two large bags of potato chips, the last half of a lemon cream pie, a nearly full bottle of Jose Cuervo, a small box of Godiva Chocolates and I slapped the living shit out of someone I have never liked. I feel better than I have felt for a long time!

Please pass this along to a friend who is in need of Inner Peace

Excelsior, Minnesota: No Starbucks Allowed — The small town of Excelsior, Minnesota recently launched an ad campaign declaring that big retailers such as Starbucks and Home Depot were not welcome in its community. A bold position to take, especially considering that those retailers had never expressed any interest in opening up stores there.

The Crop Circle/Beer Connection — Some new crop circles in Devon may be inspired by a potent new beer.

Ring of Saturn for Sale — A visitor points out that the same guy who's selling an on eBay, is also selling [url=http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1467&item=2946033745]a ring of the planet Saturn.

Is Peter Lynds a Hoax? — Recently a 27-year-old New Zealander named Peter Lynds has been getting a lot of attention. He's been hailed as the next Einstein because he's come up with an entirely new theory of time. And he's done this without having any formal qualifications as a physicist. But suggestions that Peter Lynds may be nothing more than a hoax have been cropping up. Some have even doubted the guy's existence. The Guardian investigated and found that Lynds was real enough, but that his work hasn't exactly wowed everyone in the Physics community. And that thing about him being the next Einstein... that may trace back to an offhand remark by Lynds himself.

Update 8/17/03: A visitor has posted an interesting theory that Peter Lynds is really a 17-year-old radio student who's been sending out press releases about himself under the pseudonym of Brooke Jones. I guess Peter Lynds could resolve this whole issue by just making a public appearance somewhere. Of course, it could be that he's waiting for an invitation.

Fake Friendsters — There's been not one, but two articles in the past few days about the phenomenon of Fake Friendsters. Apparently many people using the new online service Friendster — a service that allows you to meet new people by making connections with the friends of your friends — have been creating fake identities, identities such as God, Giant Squid, or Jackalope. Friendster is fighting back by trying to delete all the fakes. Of course, this is like fighting the tide. Just ask any postmodernist and they'll tell you that the concept of identity is itself inherently illusory. So to insist that only 'real' identities are allowed on the service is absurd. Personally, if I were to create an account on Friendster, I'd want all of my friends to be fake.

Mold Dogs — How do you know if your house has a mold problem? Well, you could hire a mold-sniffing dog to find out. But be warned. Mold Consultants, LLC says the mold-dog industry is a scam.

Hotmail Hoax — To all users of Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc. If you ever get an email claiming to be from your service provider warning you that you need to forward the email you just received "so that we know you are still using this account," then it's a hoax. Variations of this hoax have actually been around a long, long time, but people are still falling for it.

Tourist Flights to Mars — This story is five years old (dating back to 1998) but someone just sent it to me anyway. It details what appears to be a case of extreme gullibility. But a search on Lexis-Nexis for any newspaper report of this scam occurring in the past twenty years turned up nothing—except for skeptical references to this same email. So I've got to conclude that the case this email describes is just an urban legend. This person posting on SpaceFuture.com's message board back in 1998 agrees. Here's the text of the email:

More than 600 people in Italy wanted to ride in a spaceship badly enough to pay
$10,000 a piece for the first tourist flight to Mars. According to the Italian
police, the would-be space travelers were told to spend their "next vacation on
Mars, amid the splendors of ruined temples and painted deserts. Ride a Martian
camel from oasis to oasis and enjoy the incredible Martian sunsets. Explore
mysterious canals and marvel at the views. Trips to the moon also available."
Authorities believe that the con men running this scam made off with over six
million dollars.

To Serve Rabbit — This has gotten a lot of attention. A LiveJournal user, Siamang, posted an entry about how his pet rabbit Grendel died. So (he claimed) he decided to skin and eat his beloved pet. After all, burying or cremating him seemed so impersonal. This was accompanied by pictures of Grendel both alive and served up on a plate. Predictably, the entry got a huge response. But it seems that Siamang wasn't being entirely honest. In a separate journal entry he refuses to say whether his story is true or false. He plays very coy, writing that online journals "can be fact or fiction and are almost always an extremely subjective hybrid of the two." In other words, the story probably isn't true. A lot of people have pointed out that what he claims is rabbit meat looks an awful lot like chicken.

  


Grendel before... and Grendel after