Hoaxing

It is hard to deny that there have been certain photographs connected to the paranormal that have inspired investigators and made people believe. Some of these famous pictures have now become unmasked as hoaxes, such as:

Cottingly Fairies, Nessie (hand), Big Foot film footage and some Crop Circles.

https://i.servimg.com/u/f17/11/53/38/32/_4250910.jpg

These hoaxers have admittedly aided the touism in certain areas, but what damage have they done if any?

https://i.servimg.com/u/f17/11/53/38/32/patter10.jpg

I can't really see that they have done any real damage apart from upsetting the people that really believed they were true.

Have they undermined the subjects? Have they resulted in lots of wasted money being spent on researching them?

Now when you put it like that, i assume there has been literally Millions of pounds invested studying the Loch Ness Monster, Is it really there ? odds are no but thats no reason to stop looking. So even with photographs being debunked and the photographers admitting them being faked there are still those of us who will persist in trying to prove its real.

Even when the Cottingly girls admitted they were fake people still belived they were real.

Same goes for the Bigfoot, just because this footage is faked there are lots of sightings on record all over the USA, and still lots of believers that say these creatures are there. Shame theres no footage of a Yeti, only footprints.

The only real harm done with crop circles is to damage a farmers livelyhood which he gets back by charging people addmission to his field.

So I don't really think that these examples have really undermined the subject matter, isn't part of the fun actally finding out that some things have been faked.

I've had the occasion to talk with the head of an Italian team which went over the Patterson footage again. The members are non-believers (though not strictly skeptics) but in the end they had to give up on their effort to prove the footage a fake.
Unless Patterson and Gimlin had access to some cinematic technology way ahead of anything Hollywood had available at the time there was no way such a good-looking footage could have been shot with the technology available in 1967. "The Planet of the Apes", filmed in 1968, was the best available at the time but the intelligent apes look exactly what they are: men in monkey suits.
Lately the head investigator told me his personal conclusions: "If it's a fake I would like to know how they did it. It would be a masterpiece in its own right".

According to this forum the guy in the suit for the Patterson film has admitted to it being a fake. That is of course if we can believe him. It would appear more than one may have claimed to be in a monkey suit for that famous footage. It looks like the post originated from an article in the Washington Post in 2004. I hope the footage isn't a hoax.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/archive/index.php/t-39322.html

Over the course of the years many have come forward claiming to be the "man in the gorilla suit". Sadly their claims have not hold water; I say sadly because it would put the word end on this story.
All the Hollywood connections have proven to be very tenous at best: Mr. Chalmers, the man who created the costumes and the make-up for "The Planet of the Apes" and the "number one suspect", denied knowing anything about the whole story until his last day and said that at the time he couldn't build anything remotely similar.
But the best testimony is given by Patterson and Gimlin themselves.
If Patterson planned on making any money out of his hoax he failed miserably.
Gimlin cursed the Bigfoot until his last day for destroying his credibility and said more than once "I should have pulled the trigger... that's the only way people would have believed me".
Anyway you are right in saying that, hoax or real, the Patterson footage swallowed up immense resources that could have been used elsewhere.

I was always under the impression that the Patterson Tape was inconclusive. They never did find the truth behind it.


Let us also not forget De Loys Ape. The supposed "Spidermonkey on a box" photo... which can be found here.

I had completely forgot about the De Loys Ape. I dare say there will be quite a few fake UFO pictures about as well.

Ivan Sanderson immediately saw through all the De Loys's Ape scam and declared it to be a female white-bellied spider monkey (Atheles belzebuth): the tail had been cut off or was hidden by the crate and the body had already started decomposing, so looking more bloated than an ordinary spider monkey. The monkey's "genitals" are really the typical overdevolped clytoris of the Athelidae, the final giveaway sign.
I am not a primatologist by trade but I have always wondered how easily so many experts could be taken in: if it looks exactly like a spider monkey it must be a spider monkey, maybe a new species in the genus Atheles or an oversized specimen but nothing radical.

About UFOs... there are litterally hundreds of faked images.
I think the most famous ones are George Adamski's classical flying saucers. They are really parts of a vending machine: Adamski was a vending machine repairsman by trade and the hoax was quickly recognized by some of his colleagues.
Another probable hoax is the so-called Skinwalker Ranch, a property in Utah (USA) which is said to harbour almost every kind of supernatural phenomena: UFOs, poltergeists, demons, disembodied voices etc.
The case was supposedly "scientifically examined" by the National Institute for Development Science (NIDS) but the results have been kept strictly confidential. A book was published using "leaked material" ("Hunt for the Skinwalker") but, despite being supposedly written by a PhD, it is clearly written by somebody with very little scientific training. I mean... every University student can be more scientific than that!

Mauro wrote:

Ivan Sanderson immediately saw through all the De Loys's Ape scam and declared it to be a female white-bellied spider monkey (Atheles belzebuth): the tail had been cut off or was hidden by the crate and the body had already started decomposing, so looking more bloated than an ordinary spider monkey. The monkey's "genitals" are really the typical overdevolped clytoris of the Athelidae, the final giveaway sign.
I am not a primatologist by trade but I have always wondered how easily so many experts could be taken in: if it looks exactly like a spider monkey it must be a spider monkey, maybe a new species in the genus Atheles or an oversized specimen but nothing radical.

Sure, but throw in a few "to scale" props and watch as it confuses even the most intellectual of the experts. The thing about zoologists is that they get very excited about the prospect of a new species very easily, very quickly, and start clambering over each other to get at it.

It's curious to note that, among the plethora of experts, the only ones who weren't fooled by DeLoys even for a minute were Ivan Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans, the two founding fathers of cryptozoology.

Most likely because their "left-field" research into what was considered (and still is!) a novelty form of zoology had sharpened their zoological wit and allowed them to think a bit outside the ball, when something convincing comes up, only those who've lived with criticism know how to apply it when it counts.

Rememebr the case regarding that protoprimate that was photographed in Indonesia? It had experts baffled for weeks, while us zoobie undergrads scoffing that it was probably an OOP fossa or something. Lo and behold, it turned out to be somehting already known on the island (I can't remember the exact details).

I assume we can all agree that the Alien autopsy was a hoax?

Ian wrote:

I assume we can all agree that the Alien autopsy was a hoax?

To be honest I've always mantained it was a joke, albeit in bad taste...

Didn't Ant and Dec appear in a film about the Alien Autopsy, as the hoaxers? probably better than them resurecting their pop career. Anyway, I think there will always be hoaxers. I call it the Loki Factor, and is something to be watched for in any investigated case.

As for the effect of hoaxing, it probably makes it less likley for real evidence to be taken at face value, as plenty of experts have been left with egg on their faces over hoaxes.

I suppose hoaxing is a double-edged blade. On one side it generates interest in the media and with the mass-public. On the other it doesn't help the people genuinely interested in the subject. Kind of reduces what was even then a novelty subject into even more so.

possibly one upside of hoaxing is that the newspapers love a good hoax, or at least they love a good story and never let the truth get in the way of a good story! But after stories appear, people who may have had genuine paranormal encounters may write in about their experience - before the hoax is revealed or more likely forgotten about. Hoaxing could be a good catalyst for peoples memories, but they do muddy the waters.

I still think creating a hoax monster for cumbria would be good to test the power of suggestion - and a few blurry photos would be great!

- at the height of the Warminster UFO flap, a ufo group faked a couple of photos (pre-prepared negative in camera and pretending to take photos at the location of the sighting before handing to other people to get developed) and despite the lack of evidence and the photo's not even matching the direction or description of the sightings at the time, the pictures were taken at face value as proof. And were seen that way for years until the truth was revealed.

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I still think creating a hoax monster for cumbria would be good to test the power of suggestion - and a few blurry photos would be great!

Did anymore accounts of the Lake Windermere monster get reported. I'm still convinced it was a big log.

I think one of the major problems is hoaxes tend to get lots of media coverage, which is obviousy planned by the hoaxer, whereas I dare say a lot of good research gets hardly any exposure. This will always put the hoax at the forefront of the publics mind, especially when it is eventually unmasked.