Silly Rabbit! Famous hoaxes in recent history

3/3/2016, 8:00 a.m.

I don’t know what is more astonishing, the bizarre things that people will believe, or the made up stories people will come up with. These are some of the more inventive deceptions made in recent years:

Paul is Dead

Being an avid Beatles fan, this is one of my favorites. On January 7, 1967, Paul McCartney lent his Mini Cooper to a Mohammed Hadjij, and on his way to a party Hadjij got into a car crash. Although Paul McCartney was not in the car when this happened, the car was so recognizable that a rumor started to spread: that Paul McCartney was dead, and that a look-alike had replaced him.

To make matters worse, Beatles’ fans began to find clues in their artwork and songs that gave validity to their claim; one example is the song, “A Day in A Life.” The song is about a man that reads in the newspaper a story about a car crash and allegedly, if you play the end of the song backwards you can hear “Paul is dead, miss him, miss him.” Another clue was in the iconic Abbey Road photograph: supposedly, people aren’t buried wearing their shoes, and so, it is not a coincidence that Paul McCartney is barefoot when he is crossing the street.

The list goes on and on, and even after all this time, there are still people that believe that McCartney died in 1967 and we have been listening to an impostor for the last 49 years. Do you think the Beatles did it on purpose? I do.

The War of the Worlds

On October 30, 1968, an episode of the radio show the Mercury Theater on the Air narrated by Orson Welles caused a mass panic. After the show, thousands of people thought that Earth was being attacked by Martians and called newspapers, radios, and police stations asking how to evacuate the city and whether there was any risk of gas raids.

The episode was meant to be a retelling of the events of H. G. Well’s novel, The War of the Worlds. Since the story detailed an Alien Invasion as a contemporary news broadcast for the first 40 minutes, the people listening actually mistook it for the real thing. The show did mention at the beginning that it was fictional but only briefly, which is why the people that tuned in later took it seriously. The producers and writers of the show later said that it was never meant to be a prank, but years later, Welles contradicted the public statement and said that it was all done intentionally.

The Feejee Mermaid

Although the original exhibit of a mummified mermaid began in the 1840s by circus owner P.T. Barnum, the Feejee Mermaid has been featured many times and by many different people. The most recent exhibit is by Robert Ripley of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

The original mermaid’s unveiling however, made for a very elaborate hoax; in order to have the public’s curiosity, Barnum had one of his associates disguise himself as a “Dr. J. Griffin” of the Lyceum of Natural History, and sent the press letters about the doctor, who had in his possession a great discovery, and because Griffin was a “certified naturalist,” everyone believed it to be real.

Lastly, Barnum advertised that the mermaid was a beautiful woman, which was not true; the Mermaid was made using either papier-mâché, the tail of a fish and a torso of a baby orangutan, stitched together with the head of a monkey. Not necessarily my idea of pretty. Oh and not to mention is mentioned in one of Slickster’s favorite X-Files episodes. (Bonus points if you know what episode – leave your answer in the comments.)

J.T. Leroy Hoax

In 1997, a Transgender male author published a series of graphic autobiographical books about his sexual and physical abuse… or so everyone thought! In 2005, it was revealed that J.T. Leroy was the fictional character created by writer Laura Albert and portrayed publicly by Savannah Knoop, an aspiring fashion designer.

The story was such a big deal because, before the truth came out, J.T. Leroy had become a celebrity author and was hanging out with Winona Ryder, Madonna, Courtney Love, etc. This story was so scandalous and notorious that there are now plans of making a movie out of it, and Kristen Stewart might play Savannah Knoop.

We swallow eight spiders a year in our sleep

With a little logic you might have realized that eating just one spider in a lifetime is very unlikely, but even today for a lot of people this is an undisputed truth. Arachnid experts say that in order for this to happen, too many unlikely circumstances would have to happen at once; for starters, you would have to sleep with your mouth open – which not everyone does – and a spider would have to just wonder near your body that rolls around throughout the night, and casually go near an orifice that exhales warm air. Not very smart of spiders if you ask me.

What is even more interesting is that nobody really knows where this myth comes from. Some claim that in 1993 a columnist named Lisa Holst made a list of “facts” in an effort to demonstrate how easily we accept facts on the Internet, but nobody has found a Lisa Holst. Where do you think it came from?

Richard Gere and his fondness for Gerbils

Celebrity fake deaths are one thing; this Richard Gere’s rumor is on a whole different level.

The story goes like this: Back in the mid 80s, Richard Gere went to the Cedars-Sinai Hospital in California in the middle of the night to remove a foreign object from his rectum… which turned out to be a gerbil. The story got even more attention when someone sent to everyone in Hollywood a fax of a press release by the Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals – that never happened – denouncing Gere for abusing a gerbil.

The funny thing is that people would consider “gerbil stuffing” a real thing! How would that even work? Would the animal be alive? Dead? And more importantly: Why?!!

Sure, it is not uncommon for people to stuff things up their bums for pleasure, but there is no evidence of people having actually done it or any medical journals for that matter detailing how to remove a gerbil from a rectum. So don’t try it!