Hoaxes and the hoaxing hoaxers who hoax them

Whether they use the medium of story, film, or photograph, hoaxers come in many shapes and sizes. Here’s something of a list I’ve just worked up:

Juvenile games

In my short time as a bigfoot researcher I’ve already run up against more than my share of hoaxes. Most of them are fairly innocuous -- a report is made up and then sent in to an organization, but the hoax is discovered pretty quickly. These are usually juvenile pranks -- a joke that the hoaxer can then laugh about with his or her buddies. For instance, you often get a version of “I saw bigfoot and HE STANK!!” Yeah, that’s really funny, kids. Or, sometimes a youngster just wants to try his or her hand at making something up. I ran across a young lady who would send in fantastic tales, pretty well written for her age. But it was obvious that these were literary creations, which I confirmed by phoning her home and talking to her father. He made her call me back and apologize. Interestingly enough, she didn’t stop sending them in after that. I think she was enjoying the attention, even if it was only from an audience of one. These kinds of hoaxes are usually pulled by young people, and they don’t cause too much trouble. Occasionally they are even really, really funny. If you can ever get someone to show you the “deer-head tetherball” report, well, it’s worth its weight in gold.

“I’ll show them all!”

I’ve seen other kinds, like those I mentioned in this post. In one case, the parents of a young man who wouldn’t believe in bigfoot conspired to hoax him in an effort to broaden his mind. In another, a science teacher wanted to prove to his class that it’s easy to fool bigfoot researchers. Akin to this last, Penn and Teller, in a cable tv series, created a hoaxed film clip and tried to pass it off as legitimate so that they could prove bigfoot researchers are easy to hoax. As it turned out, all of these hoaxes were discovered by researchers (though in the case of the Penn and Teller episode, which was a public event, not all researchers were diligent enough to make the discovery as is discussed in this Cryptomundo post. Be sure to read down to the comments section for some pertinent discussion of the whole affair. Then read this link for the mother-load of pre P-T questions about the film from prominent researchers). There’s a common motive among these hoaxers, which seems to be something like a demonstration of “I’ll show them!” or “I bet I can get one over on them!” Not the most mature of motives, perhaps, even though these are full grown adults here.

Hoax your way to the stars

I’ve run across the type that wants desperately to be among the “movers and shakers” of the field. They manufacture evidence so that they have something to talk about and build their reputation on. These hoaxers are hard to spot because they are among us, but I’ve developed a kind of profile to try to spot them:

1. A hoax springs from a desire for life to be different than it is for the hoaxer -- there might be a number of jobs, lots of different activities, an inability to stick to one thing. Always talking about how things are going to be in the future.
2. Hoaxers are often very imaginative and this ought to show up in their writing and story telling. More than once I've been tipped off to a hoaxer by some "writerly flourish" added to a report. Part of the motivation is probably the hope to see their story or their writing in print somewhere.
3. Hoaxers like publicity so their names are often easy to find when you Google. Their desire for publicity shows up in their conversation as well. You can't talk to a hoaxer five minutes without realizing that publicity is an obsession. If you let them talk, and they talk about all the bigwigs they know, all the conferences they’ve gone to (or want to go to in the future, as a featured speaker), all the interviews with National Geographic and Discovery they’ve had to actively dodge, or things of that nature, you may be talking to a potential hoaxer.
4. They don't pull just one hoax, so there will be evidence of more shenanigans out there to be found -- Google, but also use the meta-googling tools like Dogpile to make sure you get a wide selection. If you have access to a newspaper database, use that too. Using this method I found a couple of guys who were telling me incredible tales had also told incredible tales to UFO orgs, paranormal sites, etc. That’s a sure sign right there.
5. They find a lot of evidence. This by itself doesn’t prove someone is hoaxing -- after all, some people have the advantage of a lot of time logged in the field and plenty of active areas nearby. But hoaxers will not let their tally lag behind anyone’s, so they’ll continue to “find” evidence at a regular clip, and will have multiple sightings of bigfoot. (While guys like me never have any, darn the luck!)

I have had plenty of experience with this kind of hoaxer, unfortunately. In fact, I've just recently discovered that a fellow I was partnered with was, to put it in technical terms, “making shit up.” His case didn’t fit every one of the numbers in the bullet list above, and you shouldn’t expect anyone else’s to either. But he left plenty of clues and made a plethora of mistakes so that his discovery was really only a matter of time. We have to remember that the fact that bigfoot research looks like a small pond means that a lot of people who desperately want to be big fish are going to come jump in the water. (I have some examples of these that I’ll probably write about in the future.)

What’ll you do for money?

Another hoaxer to watch out for is the one looking for money. This one is a bit harder to spot, though the focus on money is a big, flashing neon sign that says, “danger!” The Ohio River Valley case quite possibly had this element involved. Money was discussed early and often, it did change hands, and afterwards, from all I’ve heard, the easily obtained video evidence dried up. But I suppose it should go without saying that not everyone willing to take money for their evidence is a hoaxer.

There are a couple of infamous examples of hoaxing for money. The first one was quite a black eye for the bigfoot investigation community, and it ruined a few relationships too. I’m talking about Bossburg -- note that you’ve got to read down pretty far to get to the hoax bit. It comes in right after Roger Patterson makes his appearance.

Then there’s the more recent example -- Tom Biscardi taking money and promising people a chance to see a bigfoot via online linkup, because, see, they had one trapped in a cave! Or something like that. Here’s a BFRO article about the case, appended to a news account about Biscardi suing his former business partners (so scroll down until you’ve passed the news article for the good stuff). There’s a discussion of Biscardi and his reputation in this older Cryptomundo post that touches on the hoax. And here you can find an interview with Java Bob (in Biscardi’s name) and sometimes Biscardi himself concerning the hoax and other matters.

(By the way, I’ve noticed (and you will too if you go read the links I’ve provided here) that certain “personalities” in bigfooting have a penchant for sneering down on people. There’s a ridiculous grandiosity that overcomes some of the folks -- can’t say I understand it.)

These are the hoaxes that have the highest profile. After all, money is at stake. But all of them are a nuisance, at least, and sometimes even more damaging than that.

Literary hoaxes

Literary hoaxes are accounts of bigfoot sightings that are manufactured, written out (sometimes not by the hoaxer but by a researcher), and then presented as if they were true. These are often fairly easy to spot, if you know what to look for. I say they are easy because the act of creative writing creates internal connections in the story that would not be expected in real events. These connections arise from our subconscious organization of the material into symbolic meanings and themes. You simply should not be able to derive sustained symbolism or thematic elements from a true life account. These elements can be woven into real-life accounts after the fact by skillful authors, but it would be a rare occurrence indeed for any kind of sustained literary elements to be present in a genuine bigfoot account. I have given a good showing that Fred Beck’s “Ape Canyon” story could be one of these in an earlier post. But it’s not the best example of what I mean, since the the most literary of the accounts of Ape Canyon comes in Beck’s autobiography, and few people have read it. I have other examples that I’ll be bringing along here in the future. They aren’t rare, as you might guess when you are dealing with something that is most often presented as a story. The allure of the monster tale is hard to resist, apparently. And I’m not sure that there is ever a single motive with these hoaxes, either. Money might be involved, and “I’ll show them” could be too, but there is always added to these other factors a concern for the story as a literary product.

Just plain crazy

Some hoaxes are launched by people who don’t have all their faculties firmly to hand. This can be because they are actually “just plain crazy”, but also can be the result of medications, age, or injury. These are the saddest cases and I’m not going to illustrate any of them. It can hardly be held against the hoaxer if he or she doesn’t even know what they are doing. Luckily, these are pretty rare.

So there you are, my list of hoaxers and their reasons for hoaxing. It certainly isn’t a complete list. Maybe you have some suggestions on how I can work this list over, or maybe you remember some hoaxes I’ve forgotten? Tell me in the comments or drop me a line via the email link on the right.