Hoax Museum Blog: Paranormal

Slightly haunted house for sale — A house for sale in Dunmore, PA is getting lots of buzz (and multiple offers) because its owner has described it as "slightly haunted" in the real estate listing.


According to Forbes, the owner of the house, Gregory Leeson, "readily admits that he doesn’t believe in ghosts or hauntings." He described the house as haunted "to be funny." Although he says he genuinely has heard "voices, footsteps or doors slamming from time to time."

Haunted Whitstable Shop — Back in July, security camera footage of supposed paranormal activity in a Whitstable shop (boxes floating off shelves and hovering in the air) did the rounds on paranormal websites.


Turns out the paranormal activity was manufactured by a pair of magicians for a new UK TV show, The Happenings. The premise was to try to convince a town "via trickery and fakery" that it's haunted.

Doubtful News points out that the show didn't do very well in the ratings. Therefore, "more saw the You Tube video of the hoax without ever knowing the truth behind it!"

The Candy Witch — In 2004, the researchers Jacqueline Woolley, Elizabeth Boerger, and Arthur Markman conducted a study at the University of Texas at Austin in which they told young children (ages 3 to 5) at a childcare center about the "Candy Witch." This was the script they used:


In the write-up of the study [PDF], published in the journal Developmental Science, the researchers said their goal was to find out how easily the children could be made to believe in a "novel fantastical being." Would they totally accept the Candy Witch, because an adult had told them about her? Or would they, at even such a young age, be skeptical? They found that the majority of the kids did express belief in the Candy Witch after Halloween. However, "not all children accepted the Candy Witch, and that those who did exhibited a range of belief levels."

Since 2004, the experiment has become somewhat famous, and it's been taken to mean that children aren't quite as credulous as once thought. They can be fooled pretty easily, but they're not entirely passive sponges soaking up whatever they're told.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the experiment left one question unanswered: How many kids believed that line about the Candy Witch being "a really nice witch"? She sounds a little malevolent to me, swooping into people's houses and stealing their candy. Are we seriously supposed to accept that she isn't up to something? Perhaps that was the real test of credulity, and all the kids flunked it!

In fact, maybe these "researchers" were part of a covert PR team hired by the Candy Witch to convince everyone that she's "really nice." And then, when we all have our guard down — that's when she'll strike!

So this Halloween, watch out for the Candy Witch!

Agatha Cunningham, the Brooklyn Library Ghost — Two years ago the Brooklyn Public Library uploaded a video to YouTube detailing the presence of a ghost in the library:



But even though the entire library administration insists that Agatha's ghost is real, the Brooklyn Daily has some questions. For instance, they wonder why the news clipping about Agatha's disappearance that's briefly shown on screen seems to be a doctored version of a 1979 New York Times article about the disappearance of six-year-old Etan Patz from the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan.


Perhaps this is a case of a hoax within a hoax. The library might be planting fake pieces of information to make it seem as if Agatha's ghost is a hoax, to hide the fact that the ghost is actually quite real!

The Screaming Ghost in Room 209 —
The story here is that this video supposedly comes from security camera footage of a Sep. 14, 2003 paranormal event at a Wingate Hotel in Illinois. Though it wasn't until Sep 2012 that it was posted on YouTube.

Screaming was heard coming from room 209. But no one was checked into that room. So some guy named John (a security guard?) is sent to investigate. He enters the room and reports that the carpet has been ripped up, the shower is on, and all the furniture is turned upside down. But the room is empty! Also, as John enters the room, a ghostly figure can be seen exiting it.

Of course, we actually see very little of anything in the video, except for the ghostly image, which could be easily faked. We also hear the audio track. But again, that could easily be faked.

The biggest problem, however, is that it's apparently impossible for anyone to identify exactly which Wingate Hotel in Illinois this occurred at. The poster of the video explains that, "Due to legal matters, I am not allowed to say any more information regarding the exact location of this hotel. Please stop asking. Thank you!"

Following the rule that information is only as good as its source, this video has no identifiable source at all. So that suggests...

However, by googling "Room 209 Wingate Hotel" I found this recent negative review posted by someone who stayed in Room 209:


It was Room 209 in a Wingate in Saskatchewan. But maybe the ghost is on the move!

The Landeshut Ghost — [Since Halloween is fast approaching, I thought I'd do some ghost-themed posts.]

Back in 1935, the town of Landeshut (which at the time, I believe, was in Germany, but now is in Poland) had a bit of a problem. A ghost was scaring the residents. The specter had often been seen walking in a dark outer street near the hospital.

People were getting so frightened that the town decided to take the unusual step of offering a 50 marks reward for anyone who could capture the ghost. Fifty marks was about $20. According to the Inflation Calculator website, that would be $330 in today's money.

That doesn't seem terribly generous for such a difficult task. Though perhaps the meagerness of the reward wasn't an issue since I'm not sure how anyone was supposed to capture the ghost. Also, what would the town do with the ghost once it was captured?

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any follow-up to this story. So the fate of the Landeshut Ghost remains a mystery.

Zimbabwe Witch Hoax — New Zimbabwe reports that two witches who crash-landed in a suburb of Harare — after flying around in their winnowing baskets, which is the preferred method of transportation of Zimbabwe witches — were not actually witches. It was all an "elaborate hoax." As part of their witch disguise, one of the women had an owl with her — apparently having an owl is a sure sign of being a witch in Zimbabwe — but this owl had been bought "from a man who captured it in a grinding mill building."

The witch hoax was dreamed up by several "self-styled prophets" who talked the women into playing the part. The idea was that the prophets, having shown that they could bring witches out of the sky, would appear powerful and would attract more customers.

The women got the bad end of the deal because they were hauled off to prison. The brother of one of the women said, "What [she] did is embarrassing. She does a lot of other embarrassing things including pretending to be a witch because of the love of money.”

Sylvia Browne admits ‘mistake’ — Sylvia Browne admits she was "mistaken" about claiming back in 2004 that she had communicated with the ghost of Amanda Berry. Since, ya know, it now turns out Berry wasn't dead. But did Browne make a mistake (i.e. she somehow misinterpreted what spirit was talking to her), or was she just making it all up? Does she understand the difference?

Miniature Amityville Horror house — Artist Tracey Snelling has created an installation which she calls Last House on the Left. It consists of 4 miniature houses from horror films (The Birds, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and the Amityville Horror. It's the Amityville Horror Dutch Colonial that caught my eye. If I ever did have a brick-and-mortar hoax museum, it would make a great addition!


Snelling's miniature houses feature sound effects as well as tiny LCDs that play clips from the films when you look through the windows. The installation is currently on exhibit at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art.

The Stark Insider blog has posted a video of the Amityville house on display:



Update: According to Tim Farley, today (March 6th) is the 37th anniversary of Ed & Lorraine Warren investigating the Amityville Horror house with a TV news crew.

Magic Log Found in Cambodia — Thousands of people in Cambodia are flocking to see a "magic log" that was found at the bottom of a pond earlier this month. It's a big log (42 feet long). But what makes it magical, in the eyes of the people journeying to see it, is that it appears so well preserved for a log that's been underwater for a while. From Sky News:


Some of the log's visitors hope it can cure them of their illnesses. But the majority seem to be hoping that the log will reveal winning lottery numbers to them if they rub talcum powder on it.

The Angel in the Shopping Mall — Over at livescience.com, Ben Radford analyzes a video that supposedly shows an angel falling to the floor of an Indonesian shopping mall. The video is said to have been taken on Sep 11, 2011.



Radford concludes that whoever created the video (and he's sure it's a fake) got the lighting all wrong when they inserted the animated angel.


He also quotes Derek Serra, a Hollywood visual effects artist, who notes: "look at the light hitting the building behind it: given its movement, we would see high contrast shadows from the window frame and tree move across the inside of the building as the light moves around, but those shadows are conspicuously absent."

Of course, true believers might respond that angelic light doesn't behave the same way that normal light does.

Regardless, the only real mystery remaining here is who created the video, and why.

Fairy Kidnappings and Fairy Shysters — Fairies have a pretty good public image. They're widely regarded as good creatures, since they're small, delicate, and magical. But in European folklore, they were often considered quite malevolent. The wikipedia article on fairies notes the belief in fairy kidnapping:




And apparently, the belief in fairy kidnapping created an opportunity for con artists. Dr. Beachcombing, who runs Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog, notes the existence of what he calls "fairy shysters":


Unfortunately, Dr. Beachcombing is holding off on describing these cases until a later date, but I thought the idea of a fairy shyster was intriguing.

The Mermaids of Zimbabwe — Ginny Stein reports for Australia's ABC News on the mermaids of Zimbabwe. Although Zimbabwe is landlocked, it's apparently home to many mermaids. And these aren't the friendly Disney kind of mermaids. These are evil, nasty creatures that live in ditches and creeks, kidnap people, and hold them prisoner for years.