Famous Hoaxes Trivia Quiz

Answer: the Loch Ness Monster

In the proverbial "deathbed confession", UK man Christian Spurling admitted in 1995 to having participated in a fake "sighting" of the Loch Ness Monster in 1934. On April 14, 1934, Spurling and his friend Robert Wilson were strolling along the shore of Scotland's Loch Ness when, lo and behold, up popped Nessie from the water (or so they said). "My God, it's the monster!" Spurling shouted, using a line right out of a B horror film. Wilson, who was conveniently carrying a camera, snapped a photo of an object in the water that appears to be the head and shoulders of a serpentine sea beast.

The photo was printed in the London "Daily Mail" and appeared around the world, sparking Nessie fever. Many scientists believed the photo showed the real elusive beast that has believed to have inhabited the Loch for hundreds of years.

However, in 1995, Spurling admitted that the whole thing was a stunt conceived by one Marmaduke Wetherell, a film maker who had been hired by the "Daily Mail" to search for Nessie.

The "monster" was a toy submarine fitted with a phony sea-serpent head made by Spurling. Despite this single hoax, the Loch Ness Monster is still considered by many to actually exist.

Answer: fairies

In 1917, in Cottingly, England, 16-year-old Elsie Wright and her 10-year-old cousin Frances Griffiths told some grown-ups that they had been conversing with fairies in the woods, and even had some photos to prove it. The famous "Cottingly Fairy Photos" show the two girls by a wooded stream in Yorkshire; upon closer examination, you can see tiny winged sprites and gnomes dancing and tooting on pipes in the pictures.

The photos gained the attention of many people who wanted to believe in the existence of fairies, one of whom was none other than Sherlock Holmes' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Photographic experts who examined the photos declared them genuine and saw no signs of tampering.

In 1983, the cousins, both elderly, admitted that the "fairies" were paper cutouts held in place by hatpins.

Answer: It's in a museum in Cooperstown, New York

In 1869, Stub Newell found something interesting on his farm in the remote upstate town of Cardiff, New York. It appeared to be the fossilized remains of a human being- not just any human being, but an antediluvian giant measuring ten feet high with 21-inch feet. Word of the "find" spread, and people came to the farm in droves, paying a hefty fifty cents apiece, to get a gander at the "Goliath".

The religious saw this as a sign that the Bible had been accurate in its depiction of human giants. A week after the "find", Newell sold his interest in the fossil to a Syracuse business for $30,000. Experts, however, were suspicious.

As it turned out, the "fossil" was discovered to be a carved slab of gypsum, having been sculpted the previous year by George Hull, a cigar manufacturer and atheist, and a distant relative of Newell.

The two had perpetrated the hoax in an attempt to cash in on the publicity generated by the discovery- in that respect they certainly succeeded. As a sidenote, circus magnate P.T. Barnum smelled a good opportunity, and offered to rent the giant to take on the road with his circus, but Newell and the syndicate wouldn't agree. Barnum's solution was to simply make another fake- a fake of the fake- and charge people to see that fake.

Interestingly, Barnum's fake fake drew more visitors than the "real" fake. The "real" Cardiff Giant now resides in the Cooperstown Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

Answer: Amityville

Both the book and subsequent film version of "The Amityville Horror" were blockbusters, captivating the whole world with the tales of horrible demonic events in the white house at 112 Ocean Ave in the Long Island town of Amityville, New York. It wasn't until years later, however, that it became known that the book, allegedly a true story, was a hoax.

The real (and only) horror at the house occurred on the night of November 13, 1974, when Ronald DeFeo Jr went on a shooting rampage in the house, killing his parents and four siblings.

As part of his defense, DeFeo claimed that he had been possessed by demonic spirits in the house at the time of the murders- surely not the first time a murder defendant made such a claim. Word of this got to George and Kathy Lutz, the couple who bought the house and inhabited it from December 1975 to January 1976.

The Lutzes found an unsuspecting author named Jay Anson to write their "memoirs" of their experiences in the demon-infested house, which included levitation, swarms of flies, devil cats, and more.

The house was invaded by researchers of questionable background who held seances and confirmed that there were evil forces in the house. However, the Lutzes refused permission for reputable psychic researchers to enter the house. (read Dr. Stephen Kaplan's "The Amityville Horror Conspiracy") The hoax was nothing if not profitable, with the Lutzes earning thousands of dollars from the book, movies, and talk show appearances. A fascinating book and a scary movie, but none of it true.

Answer: England

Everyone has heard of Neanderthal Man - but what about Piltdown Man? In 1908 and 1912, at an archaeological site in England called Piltdown, a man named Charles Dawson unearthed human, ape, and other mammal fossils. In 1913 an ape's jaw with a canine tooth worn down like a human's was found nearby. Anthropologists speculated that all of these fossils came from a single creature that sported a human cranium and an ape jaw - Piltdown Man.

The "find" was so important because, with a mixture of human and ape characteristics, it suggested the elusive "missing link" between homo sapiens and apes.

In 1953, the fossilized remains were identified as a forgery; the skull was that of a modern human, and the teeth on the ape's jaw had been filed down by human means. What took so long? In 1949, an innovation called a fluorine absorption test became available, which established that the Piltdown "fossils" were relatively modern. Who created the phony fossils? No one knows for sure, as no confessions were ever made. Charles Dawson, the archeologist who unearthed the Piltdown fossils, has been suggested as one of the major suspects.

Answer: Bigfoot

When 84-year-old Seattle man Ray Wallace died on November 26, 2002, his surviving family members announced to the world that he had been fabricating evidence of Bigfoot, the elusive American furry humanoid, for years. Wallace was said to be behind the "Patterson film", a 1967 home movie by Roger Patterson that showed what appeared to be an apelike figure striding away from the camera in a wooded area.

The Wallaces admitted that it was Ray's wife, Elna, cavorting in a gorilla suit. Until the hoax was admitted, many experts considered the Patterson footage to be the best concrete proof so far of Sasquatch's existence. Sixteen-inch-long feet, purported to be those of the creature, were also the work of Wallace; according to his family, he had a friend carve the big apelike feet and then put them on his own feet, to create the appearance of Bigfoot tracks. Why did he do it? According to Wallace's family, it was simply a joke that went too far- he was eventually afraid to admit his role in the hoax for fear of angering Bigfoot researchers, according to his nephew.

But the faithful have not given up on Bigfoot; many scientists still believe that some sort of hairy humanoid creature, or more likely a lot of them, still stalks the Pacific northwest.

Answer: Howard Hughes

In 1971, author Clifford Irving claimed to have found and interviewed the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, who had been absent for society for over ten years. When his sources for the biography were questioned, Irving claimed that he had tapes, letters, and manuscripts from the eccentric, who had authorized him to write his biography. Even when the real Hughes denied Irving's statements in a phone conference, the writer stuck with his story.

As an aside, Irving later admitted that he had never communicated with Hughes personally, except for "on an astral level".

In 1972 Irving, his wife Edith, and collaborator Richard Suskind were all convicted of fraud, and Irving served 14 months in federal prison. Since his release, he has written about a dozen books, most of them fiction.

Answer: crop circles

"Crop circles" are the name given to geometric shapes, usually circles, that mysteriously appeared in the wheat fields of England. Since these formations occurred in the middle of the night with no apparent explanation or mechanism, many thought there was some supernatural explanation. Soon there were "scientists" called cerealologists, or croppies, who devoted their time to studying these agricultural phenomena and proposing explanations for them: vortexes, ball lightning, plasma, wind, heat, animals - and, of course, fraud.

But how could someone perpetrate such a large-scale hoax - and who would do such a thing? Both of those questions were answered in 1991, when Doug Bower and David Chorley, two guys who obviously had too much free time, admitted to having created approximately 250 circles over many years.

In 2002, a Wiltshire, England man named Matthew Williams created a three-hour video called "Circle Makers", in which he and other "artists" demonstrate how the circles are created, using posts, tapes, planks, ropes, rollers, and computer designs.

In England, creating crop circles has become a form of art, with groups competing to see who can create the biggest or most intricate design. And, there are still those who would rather believe that the circles are the landing marks of UFOs.

Answer: Vermeer

There's a very specialized type of criminal known as an "art forger" that swindles people by forging works of art and passing them off as originals. As you might think, this takes some skill. One of the most talented- and successful- art forgers of all time was Antonius van Meegeren, a Dutch painting dealer who also created forgeries.

Although he produced copies of paintings by other artists, his specialty was the works of Johannes Vermeer, a l7th-century Dutch master. What he would do is copy one of Vermeer's works, such as "Christ at Emmaus", bake it to create the appearance of aging, then sell it as a "recently unearthed" masterpiece.

The story of how van Meegeren was eventually caught is in itself fascinating. It seems that he was approached by famous Nazi Hermann Goering and asked about paintings- so he offered a fake Vermeer called "Christ and the Adulteress". Fittingly enough, Goering paid for the fake painting with fake bank notes! After World War II, this sell came to the attention of authorities, who brought Van Meegeren to trial on the charge of selling a national treasure to a Nazi. To get himself acquitted, van Meegeren had no choice but to admit that the painting he had sold to the Nazi was not a national treasure, but a fake - and he set up his easel in court to show how it was done.

The story ended happily for thr forger, who was not only acquitted of the charge, but gained fame for his clever "work".

Answer: Social Text

If you happened to pick up a copy of the 1996 Spring/Summer issue of Social Text, you may have read an article titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" by Allan Sokal, a professor of physics. Although many scientific articles appear full of gobbeldygook, this one was pure gobbeldygook - it was a hoax. According to the author, he submitted the article for "political reasons"; he wanted to see "would a leading journal of cultural studies publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?" He was aggrieved that what he considered the "New Left" promoted the idea that reality is a social construction. Needless to say, the editors of the journal did not find this amusing. (Quote from "The Skeptic's Dictionary" online)