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                                                                War of Worlds    Alien Autopsy    Crop Circles    Loch Ness

                                      Hoaxes
 

                                        Do You Believe?
 
The Cottingley Fairies may be one of the greatest hoaxes of all times, but they are not the
only great hoaxes of our times. As long as there are people on earth there will be
hoaxes, fakes, and myths. Human nature and curiosity gets the best of us and we  want
to believe in the unusual and the odd There have been reported claims of everything
from Bigfoot's, alligators in the sewers, TV's causing brain cancer, folk lore's, and more
 recently computer hoaxes. Listed below are some of the other great hoaxes in our time.
 

                                                        Or Are They?

         

  

 

         1938 Radio's "War of the Worlds" Broadcast
 

         Front Page of The New York Times on October 31st, 1938

 

 

The biggest hoaxes to panic the American public began with the following words:
 
"The Columbia Broadcasting Systems and its affiliated stations present Orson Wells
and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in a radio play by Howard Koch suggested by the
H. G. Wells novel 'The War of the Worlds'."
 
It was the day before Halloween and the radio play featured one of the most recognized
voices in the history of radio. The story was about Martians invading the Earth and the
radio play sparked a panic of unparalleled proportions.
 
The radio play was a clever modernization of the original story. At 8pm, October 30,
1938, faux music program began, only to be interrupted by melodrama and news 
updates, accented by sound effects and music. While not a typical presentation, it was
also pretty obviously not a real news broadcast. Most of the population of America
had a bad case of the pre-WWII jitters. When listeners heard the "special report"
breaking into the music, they went berserk first and asked questions later.
 
Most listeners did not hear the introductory passage quoted above, nor the subsequent
"This is Orson Wells" introduction of the play. Instead, they tuned in just in time to hear
a news update that the Martians were wild over New York and New Jersey (most of
panic was centered there, although the broadcast was nationwide).
 
In the aftermath of the broadcast, Americans were appalled, depressed, embarrassed
about the whole thing. Many of the people panicked blamed Wells for the fiasco, rather
than gullibility of their failure to listen to the four separate instances in which the hour-long
broadcast repeated a fictional dramatization.
 
It is unlikely now that the American population would only listen to one broadcasting
station. Most Americans now rely on CNN for national emergency news.

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1995 Alien Autopsy on Fox TV
 

" Alien Autopsy" a Hoax, Fox Says
 
by Bridget Byrne:   Turns out the autopsy was not shot on film in 1947 when aliens

reportedly landed near Roswell, New Mexico. It was shot on video in 1994...
 

TIME Magazine

November 27, 1995 Volume 146, No. 22

SHOW BUSINESS

AUTOPSY OR FRAUD-TOPSY?
A "documentary" about a purported alien stirs the liveliest debate of any home
 movie since the Zapruder film
 

BY RICHARD CORLISS

 
On an operating table in a small white room, a naked humanoid creature lies supine
 and inert--its stomach bulbous; its six fingers slightly curled; a deep, foot-long gash
in its right leg. Two humans in white contamination suits circle the creature, slicing its
 chest, sawing its skull in half, removing internal organs. A third takes notes on a sheet
of paper. Behind a window, a fourth person watches, hidden by a surgical mask. The
only identifiable figure is the humanoid. Its face shows strain, perhaps pain. When the
camera recording the event catches the creature's sightless gaze, an eerie poignancy fills
the chamber. The 17-minute film, silent and in muzzy black and white, has enough
implicit melodrama to fill a satisfying sci-fi epic. But some people believe, or hope,  that
it may be genuine--evidence of an alien life form on earth, conceivably connected with
the report (and alleged government cover-up) of a UFO crash near Roswell, New
Mexico, in 1947. Professional skeptics find the film a clever or clumsy hoax. Others
believe it's real, but not from Roswell. The UFO logical combatants duel it out in
magazines and on the Internet while poring over the footage with an intensity not lavished
on any home movie since the Zapruder film.
 
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         Crop Circles - Real or Man Made?
 
Crop circles are generally formed at night between the hours of 2-4 AM, traditionally
during the shortest evenings of the English year when darkness lasts but four hours, in
fields eagerly watched by farmers, military, later alarms, scientists or hundreds of
enthusiasts in their sleeping bags hoping to be the lucky ones to witness a crop circle
forming.
        

                     

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The Loch Ness Monster

 

The famous "photograph of the Loch Ness Monster", taken by London surgeon R. K. Wilson on 19 April 1934. While this photograph was claimed to be a hoax in 1994, some experts still dispute those claims.

 

 

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