List of hoaxes

The following are lists of hoaxes:

Proven hoaxes

These are some claims that have been revealed to be deliberate public hoaxes. This list does not include hoax articles published on or around April 1, a long list of which can be found in the "April Fools' Day" article.

A-F

• George Adamski's claims to have gone into space in UFOs. His book was based on his earlier book of fiction.
• Cedric Allingham, fictitious author who wrote a book about meeting the pilot of a Martian spacecraft. Allingham was created by British astronomer Patrick Moore and his friend Peter Davies.
• Alien autopsy hoax film by Ray Santilli
• Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari, a fake Syrian blogger
• Apollo 20, a series YouTube videos claiming to show evidence of intelligent, extraterrestrial life on the moon.
• The Archko Volume, a collection of documents related to the life of Jesus.
• The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, a book about purported sexual enslavement of a nun
• The balloon boy hoax – a boy reported to be traveling uncontrollably at high altitudes in a home-made helium balloon was later discovered to be hiding in the attic of his house
• Bananadine, a fictional drug made from bananas
• Bathtub hoax, an imaginary history of the bathtub published by H.L. Mencken
• Johann Beringer's Lying Stones
• Berners Street hoax in 1810
• Franz Bibfeldt, a fictitious theologian originally invented to provide a footnote for a divinity school student, which later became an in-joke among academic theologians.
• The Big Donor Show, a hoax reality television program in the Netherlands about a woman donating her kidneys to one of three people requiring a transplantation
• Biggest Drawing in the World, Erik Nordenankar's "drawing" of a self-portrait over the entire world using a GPS receiver
• Jayson Blair's plagiarized and fabricated articles for the New York Times
• C.W. Blubberhouse, whose letters in UK national newspapers were exposed as a hoax by the Sunday Times
• Blue waffle, a supposedly contagious sexually transmitted disease affecting only women, causing a blue discoloration of the vagina
• Steve Brodie, who claimed to have jumped off Brooklyn Bridge
• Bruno Banani, Tongan luger who, as a marketing ploy, was renamed after a lingerie firm, while insisting it was his real name
• Calaveras Skull
• The Cardiff Giant, of which P. T. Barnum made up a replica when he could not obtain the "genuine" hoax
• Andrew Carlssin, a nonexistent "time travelling" stock broker arrested for SEC violations.
• Thomas Chatterton's "medieval" poetry
• The Shakespearean discoveries of John Payne Collier
• The Cottingley Fairies
• Crop circles. English pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley claimed they started the phenomenon, and hundreds of "copycat" circles have been fabricated since by other hoaxers.
• Donald Crowhurst who entered the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race in an attempt to become the first person to single-handedly sail around the world non-stop. Instead he abandoned the race early on but continued to report false positions in an attempt to make it appear as if he was still competing.
• Disappearing blonde gene
• Document 12-571-3570 supposedly establishing that sex had taken place during a space mission
• The Donation of Constantine
• George Dupre, who claimed to have worked for SOE
• The Education of Little Tree, widely acclaimed autobiography by Asa Earl Carter, later revealed to be fictional.
• Albert Einstein quotation supporting Astrology (Hamel 2007)
• Emulex hoax, a stock manipulation scheme
• The English Mercurie, a literary hoax purporting to be the first English language newspaper.
• Ern Malley, a fictitious poet
• Essjay controversy, a false claim of academic credentials, starting on Wikipedia and continued into a New Yorker interview
• The False Decretals
• Fiji mermaid, the supposed remains of a half fish half human hybrid.
• Sidd Finch, fictional baseball player
• Spiritualist Arthur Ford's claim of psychic contact with Harry Houdini.
• Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood 1939–1948, Binjamin Wilkomirski's memoirs, which were supposed to be a faithful account of his childhood in a Nazi death camp
• Furry trout

G-M

• Stephen Glass's falsified articles for The New Republic
• Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia claims by Eugenia Smith and Anna Anderson
• The Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814
• Gundala (film) a super hero movie that was promoted on the web despite the fact that it did not exist
• The Hand that Signed the Paper, purportedly based on the experiences of "Helen Demidenko", actually Helen Darville
• Hanxin, industrious and scientific hoax of a forgery Digital signal processor
• Recordings allegedly made by the pianist Joyce Hatto
• Jimi Hendrix supposed recording of the Welsh National Anthem – see The Red Dragonhood
• Joice Heth, African-American slave exhibited by P. T. Barnum as George Washington's nurse.
• The Historia Augusta, a fictionalized collection of Roman imperial biographies, written in the late fourth century under the names of six third- and early fourth-century historians.
• Histoire de l'Inquisition en France, the 1829 book by Etienne Leon de Lamonthe-Langan
• The Hitler Diaries
• The Horn Papers
• Idaho's name
• Il Bambino, a sculpture created by Michelangelo but sold as a classic Greek statue.
• The Ireland Shakespeare forgeries, a collection of Shakespeare-related documents supposedly discovered by William Henry Ireland and published in 1795 by his father, Samuel Ireland; the discoveries included a "lost" play, Vortigern and Rowena
• Clifford Irving's biography of Howard Hughes
• The Jackalope, supposedly a form of rabbit with antlers.
• The Jacko hoax, a supposed gorilla or sasquatch caught near Yale, British Columbia, in 1884.
• Jdbgmgr.exe virus hoax
• Anthony Godby Johnson, a nonexistent author of a hoax autobiography A Rock and A Hard Place.
• The Lady Hope Story, a claim of Charles Darwin's deathbed conversion to evangelical Christianity
• Fred Lorz 1904 Olympic Marathon.
• Enric Marco, who presented himself as a victim of the extermination camp of Mauthausen until uncovered in 2005.
• Maggie Murphy hoax, a hoax that claimed a farmer grew an oversized potato
• Manhattan Airport Foundation, advocating for the development of an airport replacing Central Park.
• Mars hoax (also called the Two Moons hoax), a yearly hoax, started in 2003, falsely claiming that at a certain date Mars will look as large as the full moon
• The Masked Marauders, an album issued by a Warner Bros. Records subsidiary that reportedly featured a jam session between Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The perpetrator: Rolling Stone magazine.
• Michelle Remembers, a memoir of Satanic child abuse
• The Microsoft hoax, a 1994 hoax claiming that Microsoft had acquired the Roman Catholic Church. The hoax is considered to be the first hoax to reach a mass audience on the Internet.
• Internet reports that the Military Personnel Records Center was destroying paper records (2004)
• The Moles' "We Are The Moles", a 1967 single promoted with not-so-subtle hints that it might be The Beatles recording under a pseudonym. It was actually recorded by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound – a 1960s UK pop group, members of whom later formed the progressive rock band Gentle Giant.
• "Monkey Style", a purported variant of the "Animal Style" cheeseburger on In-N-Out Burger's secret menu, promoted as a rumor in a YouTube video in 2013
• Mon cher Mustapha letter, a letter supposedly written by a Muslim immigrant in France, designed to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment
• My 61 Memorable Games, a fake version of My 60 Memorable Games by Bobby Fischer

N-S

• Ompax spatuloides, a "fish" supposedly discovered in 1872 in Australia, made of a mullet, an eel and the head of a platypus, as a joke on Karl Theodor Staiger which also fooled Francis de Laporte de Castelnau into writing a scientific description of the "species".
• The Works of Ossian, "translated" by James MacPherson
• "Our First Time", an early popularized Internet hoax.
• Edward Owens (hoax), perpetrated on the English-language Wikipedia in 2008 by a class at George Mason University.
• The Pacific Northwest tree octopus (Octopus paxarbolis)
• Paul is dead (Paul McCartney death hoax)
• The perpetual motion engines built by John Ernst Worrell Keely and Charles Redheffer
• Pickled dragon
• Piltdown Man
• Platinum Weird, deliberate hoax by David A. Stewart and Kara DioGuardi about a non-existing band from 1974 promoted using false advertising.
• Pope Joan – the one and only supposed female pope.
• Princess Caraboo, aka Mary Baker
• The Priory of Sion, a made-up secret society that plays a prominent role in The Da Vinci Code
• Progesterex, a date rape drug.
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a book instrumental in the surge of antisemitism during the last hundred years.
• George Psalmanazar and his "Formosa"
• Psychic surgery
• Q33 NY, an Internet hoax based on the 9/11 attacks.
• A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century
• Tamara Rand prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, which was actually made after the fact (Randi 1982:329).
• Rejecting Jane chronicles the rejection by publishing houses of the opening chapters of Jane Austen novels submitted to them under a pseudonym by British writer David Lassman.
• The Report From Iron Mountain, a literary hoax claiming that the government had concluded that peacetime was not in the economy's best interest.
• Rosie Ruiz, who cheated in the Boston Marathon
• Frank Scully's 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers, which claimed that aliens from a crashed flying saucer were being held
• "Seriously McDonalds", a viral photograph apparently showing racist policies introduced by McDonald's.
• The Skvader, a form of winged hare supposedly indigenous to Sweden.
• Songs of Bilitis, supposed ancient Greek poems "discovered" by Pierre Louÿs
• Space Cadets, a 2005 TV programme by Channel 4, in which contestants were fooled into thinking that they were training at a Russian space academy to become space tourists.
• The "R. E. Straith" letter sent to George Adamski by Gray Barker and James W. Moseley (Moseley & Pflock 2002:124–27, 331–32).
• James Vicary's Subliminal advertising (Boese 2002:127–8)
• The "Surgeon's Photo" of the Loch Ness Monster
• SETI: EQ Pegasus Hoax of 1998

T-Z

• Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax
• Thatchergate Tapes, a fake conversation with which the punk rock band Crass fooled the governments of the USA and UK.
• Slowing of Satellites above Tirunallar Saniswaran Temple, because of mysterious UV rays from Saturn, claimed to have been admitted as a Miracle, by NASA.
• Robert Tilton's "prayer cloths"
• John Titor's time travelling claims
• Mary Toft, the rabbit mother
• Toothing, an invented fad about people using Bluetooth phones to arrange sexual encounters
• Tourist guy, fake photo of a tourist at the top of the World Trade Center building on 9/11 with a plane about to crash in the background
• Trodmore Racecourse, a fictitious Cornish race meeting
• The Turk, a chess-playing automaton that actually contained a person
• Tuxissa, a computer virus hoax
• Benjamin Vanderford's beheading video
• Villejuif leaflet, a pamphlet distributed in Europe with claims of various food additives having carcinogenic effects.
• Southern Television broadcast interruption hoax (1977), hoax message inserted into an IBA broadcast in the United Kingdom on 26 November 1977
• David Weiss, a non existing person that was used by the Jerusalem Post as a source
• Laurel Rose Willson's claims to be a survivor of Satanic ritual abuse (as Lauren Stratford), and of the Holocaust (as Laura Grabowski)
• Yellowcake forgery, the false documents suggesting Iraq's Saddam Hussein was to purchase uranium from Niger
• Zzxjoanw, a fictitious word that fooled logologists for 70 years

Proven hoaxes of exposure

"Proven hoaxes of exposure" are semi-comical or private sting operations. They usually encourage people to act foolishly or credulously by falling for patent nonsense that the hoaxer deliberately presents as reality. See also culture jamming.

• The Amityville Horror – ghostly events reported by the buyers of a house where another family had been murdered ( & Hines 1988:64–66).
• The Atlanta Nights hoax
• The British television series Brass Eye encouraged celebrities to pledge their support to nonexistent causes, to highlight their willingness to do anything for publicity.
• Carlos, a fictional spirit medium created by James Randi and Jose Luis Alvarez.
• Crop circles
• Dihydrogen monoxide hoax
• Disumbrationism
• Genpets, the bio-engineered pet creatures
• Grunge speak, an alleged slang of the Seattle rock underground, concocted by a Sub Pop employee and profiled in the New York Times
• ID Sniper rifle, a rifle that shoots GPS chips to mark and track suspects
• The Lovelump bio-engineered sex toy
• Project Alpha – exposed poor research into psychic phenomena
• Pacific Northwest tree octopus, by Lyle Zapato
• Sina, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals
• Nat Tate, an imaginary artist, about whom a biography was published in 1998 by William Boyd intended to temporarily fool the art world
• Media pranks of Joey Skaggs
• The Sokal affair
• The Taxil hoax by Léo Taxil, poking fun at the Roman Catholic Church's attitude toward Freemasonry
• The avant-garde "music" of "Piotr Zak"
• The practice of growing Bonsai Kittens
• January 2009 Quadrant Hoax

Journalistic hoaxes

Deliberate hoaxes, or journalistic fraud, that drew widespread attention include:

• Washington Irving created a hoax about the supposedly missing Diedrich Knickerbocker
• Edgar Allan Poe created a hoax of moon travel in "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" in response to the hoax article "Great Moon Hoax" {See below}
• Jayson Blair, reporter for The New York Times
• Janet Cooke, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her fictitious Washington Post story about an eight-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy
• Dark Side of the Moon (documentary) – this French mockumentary "proving" that the Apollo moon landings were hoaxes is itself an admitted hoax
• The Flemish Secession hoax of 2006
• Stephen Glass, reporter for The New Republic
• Fuckart & Pimp a hoax art exhibition at London's Decima gallery, which purported to be the show of a female artist having sex with clients to consummate the sale of her paintings, created a worldwide media scandal but was later revealed to be a hoax.
• The Great Moon Hoax of 1835
• Great Wall of China hoax of 1899
• Jack Kelley, longtime USA Today correspondent
• David Lassman who wrote the 2007 'Rejecting Jane' article, which chronicled Jane Austen's rejection by modern day publishers.
• The New York Zoo hoax of 1874
• Nik Cohn's New York magazine article, "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", which was the source material for the movie Saturday Night Fever, and which Cohn admitted decades later had been fiction, not reportage.
• Konspiration 58 about the soccer world cup of 1958.
• David Manning, a fictitious film critic created by Sony in order to place good quotes on Columbia Pictures' film advertising.
• Holocaust teaching controversy of 2007
• Cello Scrotum is a hoax medical condition originally published as a brief case report in the British Medical Journal in 1974.
• San Serriffe, a fictional island nation made the subject of an extensive report created for April Fools' Day 1977 by Britain's Guardian newspaper.

See also

• Beale ciphers (alleged location of hidden treasure)
• Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine (alleged location of hidden treasure)
• Oak Island (alleged location of hidden treasure)
• List of fictitious people (people it was claimed really existed – unlike fictional characters).
• Confidence trick
• Literary forgery
• List of common misconceptions
• List of religious hoaxes

Further reading

• Boese, Alex (2002), The Museum of Hoaxes: A Collection of Pranks, Stunts, Deceptions, and Other Wonderful Stories Contrived for the Public from the Middle Ages to the New Millennium, Dutton/Penguin Books, ISBN 0-525-94678-0, OCLC 50115701
• Boese, Alex, Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and other B.S., Harvest Books 2006, ISBN 0-15-603083-7.
• Hamel, Denis (November 2007), "The End of the Einstein-Astrology-Supporter Hoax", Skeptical Inquirer, 31 (6): 39–43
• Hines, Terence (1988), Pseudoscience and the Paranormal: A Critical Examination of the Evidence, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-419-2, OCLC 17462273
• Moseley, James W.; Pflock, Karl T. (2002), Shockingly Close to the Truth: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist, Prometheus Books, ISBN 1-57392-991-3
• Curtis Peebles (1994). Watch the Skies: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth, Smithsonian Institution, ISBN 1-56098-343-4.
• Randi, James (1982), Flim-Flam!, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-198-3, OCLC 9066769

External links

• Museum of hoaxes – A collection of hoaxes
• Snopes – A database about urban legends