1. The Cottingley Fairies
The Cottingley Fairies are featured in photographs taken by two young cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths in 1917 in Cottingley, England. The five photos show the two girls interacting with fairies. Elsie borrowed her father’s camera and took the photos. When her father was developing the plates, he saw fairies in the pictures but thought that the images had been faked. So, he banned Elsie from using the camera again, but her mother, Polly, believed the images to be real. And so did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes). In 1919, he wrote an article pronouncing the images as authentic. For the next five decades the girls the hoax continued to be believed by many. In late 1981 and mid 1982, Frances Way (née Griffiths) and Elsie Hill (née Wright), admitted that the first four pictures were fakes. Speaking of the first photograph in particular, Frances has said: “I don’t see how people could believe they’re real fairies. I could see the backs of them and the hatpins when the photo was being taken.” Both of the girls claimed, right up to their deaths, that the fifth photo was, in fact, authentic.
2. Alien Autopsy
In 1995, Ray Santilli began an “alien autopsy” controversy when he said he had footage taken in a tent by a U.S. military shortly after the 1947 Roswell UFO incident. He presented it to select media and invitees at the Museum of London on May 5, 1995. On April 4, 2006, two days prior to the UK release of Alien Autopsy Ray Santilli and fellow producer Gary Shoefield announced that their film was only partially real (a “few frames,” in their words), while the rest was a reconstruction of twenty-two rolls of film. Santilli confessed that he built a set in the living room of an empty apartment in Rochester Square, Camden Town, London. Artist/Sculptor John Humphreys was hired to create two dummy alien bodies using casts containing sheep brains set in jelly, chicken entrails and knuckle joints.
3. Feejee Mermaid
The Feejee Mermaid was presented as a mummified body that was half mammal and half fish. The original exhibit was shown around the United States, but was lost in the 1860s when Barnum’s museum caught fire. The exhibit has since been acquired by Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and is currently housed in the museum’s attic storage area. The Fiji mermaid was brought to Barnum by Moses Kimball during the spring of 1842. Barnum christened his artefact “The Feejee Mermaid.” The mermaid is popularly believed to be the work of an Indonesian craftsman using either papier-mâché and materials from exotic fish, or the tail of a fish and a torso of a baby orangutan with the head of a monkey.
4. Loch Ness Monster
Everyone knows the legend of the Loch Ness or “Nessie” as she is affectionately referred to. The best known image of Nessie (seen above) was revealed as a hoax in the 1990s. But that doesn’t stop many folks from believing that Nessie is real. Just because that photo was questionable, there have been other sightings and evidence to support her existence. So hoax or real?
5. The Cardiff Giant
The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous hoaxes in American history, was a 10-foot-tall “petrified man” discovered on October 16, 1869. Workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. “Stub” Newell in Cardiff, New York found the remains. This “body” and a copy created by P.T. Barnum are still on display. New Yorker and Atheist, George Hull, made the giant after getting into an argument with a minister about a passage in the Bible that stated giants once lived on earth. Hull hired men in Iowa to carve out a 10-feet-long, 4.5 inches block of gypsum. He told them it was for a monument of Abraham Lincoln in New York. He shipped the block to Chicago, where he hired a German stonecutter to carve it into the likeness of a man and swore him to secrecy. Next, all kinds of stains and acids were used to age the creation. When the giant had been buried for roughly a year, two men were hired to dig a well where it was buried, thus “discovering” the Giant. The giant drew such crowds that P.T. Barnum tried to buy it. When he was turned down, he made a replica of it. He then put his giant on display in New York, claiming that his was the real giant and the Cardiff Giant was a fake. On February 2, 1870 both giants were revealed as fakes in court.
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