While working as the Archivist of my collection of curiosities, I’ve researched a lot of cryptids.
Famous monsters like Bigfoot and the Yeti, but also lesser-known creatures like the Sheepsquatch…
and the Loveland Frogman… As a methodical archivist, I have to admit that a lot of
the evidence for such creatures — as amazing as they are — can be somewhat questionable…
Indeed, there’s a long and frankly hilarious history of people trying and failing to fake
the existence of cryptids to the masses. So today, I’ll be unveiling some of the greatest historical
cryptid hoaxes. And while the monsters on this list are fake, the real stories behind their
fabrication are often just as outlandish as the creatures themselves — involving lies, double
crossing, and ridiculous amounts of money down the drain. So, let’s shine a light on these stories…
In the summer of 1937, reports of giant footprints on the shores of Nantucket shocked the tiny U.S.
town. Photographs of what appeared to be the tracks of a large, unknown animal soon followed.
Stories spread that a sea-serpent, right out of ancient myth, had come ashore somewhere on
the island. A few days later, an account came in that a gigantic monster was spotted on the beach,
and huge crowds gathered to investigate… And… they were greeted by this. A sea serpent to be sure…
but clearly not a real one. This hilariously fake creature was the creation of this guy: Tony Sarg,
an early pioneer in puppetry who had orchestrated the whole thing — footprints included — to get the
town and himself into the news. Although even at the time people obviously weren’t fooled by the
giant inflatable monster once they actually saw it, Sarg’s self-promotion plan was a success.
Later that year, he’d actually end up designing the first balloons for the Macy’s
Day Parade — which his fake Sea Serpent also flew in. The Nantucket Sea Serpent is a pretty amusing
and harmless hoax all in all… But not all hoaxes have such pleasant backstories. In New York in the
early 1840s, a reported 10,000 pamphlets swept the city claiming the body of a real-life mermaid had
been found and was going on display. The location of this supposed unveiling was a museum at the
corner of Broadway and Park Row, which just so happened to be owned by one P.T. Barnum:
the infamous showman, conman and all-around questionable dude. And this mermaid was right
out of his scheming playbook— though advertised as a beautiful being out of classical myth,
the actual specimen people would see was a strange, shriveled creature that horrified
onlookers. This is because Barnum’s mermaid was, of course, not a supernatural creature,
but a hoax. The object was in fact composed of the body and torso of a taxidermied monkey attached to
the back half of a fish — in a pretty twisted attempt to create a natural looking lifeform.
While the scientific community at large debunked the specimen (multiple times), the mermaid was a
huge success for Barnum, with people from all over coming to examine it. The hoax met its end when it
was likely destroyed in one of the many fires that destroyed other parts of Barnum’s collections.
And so, the mermaid scam was no more... But other cryptid hoaxes were far more enduring.
Perhaps no single faked image has influenced more people than this famous 1934 photograph
that supposedly captures the one and only Loch Ness Monster. This photo is a huge part of what
launched the supposed sea monster into popular culture, and led to countless follow up articles
and other alleged sightings. It wasn’t until much later that the picture was officially exposed as
a fake… and the tale behind why it was taken is truly ridiculous. The story of the hoax begins in
1933, when the newspaper ‘The Daily Mail’ hired one Marmaduke Wetherell — pictured here looking
‘extremely normal’ — to track down the beast. A British actor turned eccentric big game hunter,
Wetherell reported a series of footprints belonging to the creature. Yes, footprints.
At this time, the concept of the Loch Ness Monster being fully aquatic actually wasn’t
completely in the public consciousness, and a lot of supposed ‘sightings’ from the era involve the
creature lumbering across dry land. Wetherell’s footprints were ridiculed by the Daily Mail when
it turned out he had faked them by pressing the taxidermied leg of a hippo into the sand. Looking
to get back at the newspaper, Wetherell paid his son-in-law to take a photo of a wooden dinosaur
head glued to a toy submarine. From a distance, this hoax made for a decently convincing monster,
and the rest is history… Not all cryptid hoaxes were so inexpensive to produce, however. Others,
like the petrified Cardiff Giant, were extremely costly and complex undertakings in deception.
The grand illusion began two years before the mysterious giant was unveiled when an American
named George Hull hired a German sculpture in secret to carve a ten foot, or 3-meter-long block
of stone into the likeness of a giant. He then transported the giant via railroad to the farm
of his cousin, where he buried it. Nearly a year later, Hull hired two men to build a well where he
knew his fake petrified giant had been buried. In total, this elaborate plan likely cost over
$51,000 in today’s money. But Hull soon made his money back, as people from across the country
scrambled to take a look at the supposed giant. The giant drew such crowds that another conman
hired someone to covertly model the giant’s shape in wax and create a plaster replica. That conman
was… P.T. Barnum again, showing that guy really was everywhere. Once Barnum started making money
off his giant, Hull tried to sue Barnum in court, calling his giant a fake. Reportedly, the judge
told Hull to get his giant to swear on its own genuineness if he wanted a favorable ruling.
In the end, both giants were revealed as fakes in court. Quite the series of twists.
Other equally wild hoaxes emerge from much more peaceful backgrounds. The Cottingley Fairies
appear in infamous photographs taken in 1917 near the small English village of Cottingley.
These photographs feature what appear to be various fairies interacting with two young
cousins — and are extremely bold compared to many other hoaxes by not being blurry in the slightest.
These photographs had a profound effect on the public, which at the time was experiencing a
rise in interest in psychic phenomena in part as an escape from the horrors of the First World War.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — most famous as the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories — was
a particularly passionate advocate that the photos were genuine. Many more were skeptical,
however, as close examination of the photos made it seem pretty clear the ‘fairies’ were actually
made of paper positioned so they appeared to be interacting with the children. While believing the
photos were real might have been a far more appealing option, interest soon died down,
and eventually the two cousins admitted that the photographs were cardboard cutouts copied from
popular children’s books of the time. Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating moment of history. Not all
hoaxes were debunked so easily, however. The Piltdown Man is perhaps the greatest hoax on this
list in terms of how long it was accepted by the scientific community. Though not a cryptid in the
traditional sense, this fossil supposedly belonged to a missing link between apes and humans. The
tale of this missing link begins in 1912, when Charles Dawson — an amateur scientist who should
not be confused with the way cooler Charles Darwin — claimed to have found a skull that would fill
a supposed gap in paleontology regarding human origins. The majority of scholars in the emerging
field believed his finding to be legitimate, and reconstructions of the Piltdown Man became famous.
Nationalism and cultural prejudice played a role in this, as the Piltdown Man satisfied
the expectations of white British scientists that the earliest humans must have emerged in Europe.
Even at the time, however, more thorough paleontologists were skeptical from the outset,
with some suggesting the skull was actually just the cranium of a human stuck to the jawbone of
an orangutan. This assertion turned out to be exactly correct, and was proved definitively
in 1953, with Charles Dawson being the likely culprit behind the forgery. From the outset,
the missing-link concept of the Piltdown man was grounded in an outdated understanding of evolution
as something strictly linear and progressive. Our modern phylogenetic tree of hominid evolution
is way, way more complex: with there being no solitary ‘missing link’ between anatomically
modern humans and our anthropoid ancestors. The Piltdown Man is therefore an even more obvious
hoax in retrospect... And the last hoax on our list is something more harmless, and quite a bit
more recent. The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is a cryptid from the early internet age. It emerged
on the scene with this website encouraging readers to help save the endangered, tree-dwelling octopus
species of the temperate rainforests in North America. The Tree Octopus is obviously just a fun
joke, but thanks to the many doctored photographs on display, a lot of people thought this was a
real animal. This website actually led to early discussions on how easily the internet can trick
people into believing false information — an idea that is commonplace now. The creator of this hoax,
who goes by the pseudonym Lyle Zapato, is an early mastermind of surrealist internet humor,
and I’ve dropped a link to his site and social media in the description below. Because out of all
these cryptids, the tree octopus is definitely the most fun, and my personal favorite… And with that,
I’ve covered some of craziest hoax stories I’ve found while doing research for the archive. And if
there are other cryptid hoaxes that you’re a fan of, let me know in the comments. Also,
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