Legend Hoaxes

 

Hey Legend Trippers, I recently was looking the internet and I came across this story about  this  guy (I refuse to call him a gentleman) named Rick Dyer, who is now going around with a trailer reported to contain a dead Bigfoot. With legend tripping, you are always going to run into hoaxers. Ever since man has looked for legends there has been others, who want to either make a quick buck or to see if they can fool the experts.



One of the first reported hoaxes that dealt with legends was the Cardiff giant. The giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull. Hull, an atheist, decided to create the giant after an argument at a Methodist revival meeting about the passage in Genesis 6:4 stating that there were giants who once lived on Earth. Newell set up a tent over the giant and charged 25 cents for people who wanted to see it. Two days later he increased the price to 50 cents. People came by the wagon load. Archaeological scholars pronounced the giant a fake, and some geologists even noticed that there was no good reason to try to dig a well in the exact spot the giant had been found. Yale paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh called it "a most decided humbug".



The giant drew such crowds that showman P. T. Barnum offered $50,000 for the giant. When his offer was turned down, he hired a man to model the giant's shape covertly in wax and create a plaster replica. He put his giant on display in New York, claiming that his was the real giant, and the Cardiff Giant was a fake. On December 10, when the owners attempted to sue Barnum, Hull confessed to the press. On February 2, 1870 both giants were revealed as fakes in court. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling a fake giant a fake. An Iowa publisher bought it later to adorn his basement rumpus room as a coffee table and conversation piece. In 1947 he sold it to the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York, where it is still on display to this day.

Another hoax is the Minnesota Iceman. It was a sideshow exhibit that depicts a man-like creature frozen in a block of ice. It was displayed at shopping malls, state fairs, and carnivals in the United States and Canada in the 1960s and early 1970s and promoted as the "missing link" between man and Neanderthals. The owner Frank Hansen stated the Minnesota Iceman was discovered in the region of Siberia and that he was acting as its caretaker for an absentee owner he described as an "eccentric California millionaire". Touring carnivals and fairs with the exhibit, Hansen was once reportedly detained by Canadian customs officials, who were concerned he was transporting a cadaver. 

Cryptozoologists Ivan Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans examined the Iceman in Hansen's house trailer in Minnesota, and concluded it was a genuine creature, saying they found "putrefaction where some of the flesh had been exposed from the melted ice." Sanderson also spoke about the Iceman in television appearances, and contacted primatologist John Napier, asking him to investigate it under the official auspices of Smithsonian Institution. Hansen subsequently withdrew the Minnesota Iceman from public inspection, saying the withdrawal was on orders from its California-based owner. Hansen later provided a new "Iceman" for exhibit, described by observers as a latex model that was clearly different from the original.  



Napier, in conjunction with the Smithsonian, made preliminary investigations of Hansen's affairs and said he found that Hansen had commissioned the creation of the Iceman from a West Coast company in 1967, leading Napier to quickly conclude there was only ever one Iceman latex model that he theorized was repositioned and refrozen between appearances. Napier stated that "The Smithsonian Institution…is satisfied that the creature is simply a carnival exhibit made of latex rubber and hair...the 'original' model and the present so-called 'substitute' is one and the same."

In February 2013, the Minnesota Iceman was reportedly auctioned on eBay. The listing read: “This is the actual sideshow gaff billed as “The Minnesota Iceman” by Frank Hansen in the 1960′s. This is a one of a kind hoax that was fabricated by a mid-20th century showman." It was reportedly purchased by Austin, Texas "Museum of the Weird" owner Steve Busti, who has placed it on public display. I would love to believe that Mr. Hanson had a real Bigfoot body but then later substituted a fake one its place, but looking at all the facts, this was always a fake body and a hoax, but a neat hoax.

In 1948 a story came out of Clearwater, Florida of the mysterious three toed tracks found along beach at Clearwater in 1948. The story goes that a Clearwater resident was out for a walk on the beach and found giant footprints on the beach. The three toed tracks were 14 inches long and 11 inches wide and covered 2 miles of beach, before turning into the ocean. Then the sightings began. Someone described seeing the likes of a giant penguin, 15 feet tall with alligator feet, from a distance. Boaters off the Florida gulf coast reported a penguin-like bird floating in the water.

As attention to the Clearwater Monster increased, Cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson became interested. In not one of his best moments, declared that the animal was a giant penguin, which somehow got off track and ended up in Florida. He called it "Florida three-toes. For 10 years the footprints of the Clearwater Monster appeared on beaches nearby. Many believed it was a hoax, but there was no way to prove it and no one came forward.

 

Finally, in 1988, a St. Petersburg Times reporter figured it out. The whole thing was a hoax. The pranksters were Tony Signorini and Al Williams, partners at a Clearwater auto shop.

With Bigfoot hoaxes you got the story of Ray Wallace, who in 1958, created some Bigfoot tracks. The story goes that in August 27 of that year, a tractor operator named Jerry Crew found a series of massive, 16-inch footprints tracked through the mud, on a construction site in northwest California. Due to the size of the prints, the media began referring to the creature that created them as "Bigfoot." The name stuck, eventually replacing Sasquatch in the popular imagination as the name for North America's legendary ape-man. It was long suspected that Crew's prank-loving boss, Ray Wallace, had created the prints by strapping carved wooden feet to his boots and stomping around in the mud. This was confirmed when Wallace died in 2002 and his family came clean with the whole story. On a side note to that story, not all the tracks matched the ones that Mr. Wallace made. So he might have made some of the tracks, found, but he didn’t make all of them.

Now you have Rick Dyer. Here is a little background on him. In 2008 he and Deputy Sheriff Matt Whitton became involved what is now called the Georgia Dead Bigfoot hoax. They announced to the world that they had found and killed a Bigfoot in Georgia. They then went on to state that they had recovered the body and had it in a freezer at a secret location.

 

According to the BFRO website, the motivation for the Georgia Body hoax was the attempt to offer expeditions like the BFRO. Bigfoot expeditions looked like a great business to them, because the BFRO's expedition often sells out months in advance. They saw an opportunity to attract the people who didn't sign up for the BFRO's trips in time. The fact that Whitton was a sheriff deputy is ultimately what made the hoax go as far as it did. Most people, including those in the media, assumed that a sheriff deputy would not put his reputation and career on the line by promoting a hoax that was bound to unravel in disgrace. It didn't make sense, so the Georgia boys were given the benefit of the doubt by the world media. They then released some photos of the supposed dead Bigfoot in a freezer. Nobody was fooled. They could clearly see that is was a store bought Bigfoot costume.

Enter Tom Biscardi, the self-proclaimed “Real Bigfoot hunter “and owner of the Great American Bigfoot Field Research Organization. Biscardi stepped into the picture he convinced the two Georgia boys that there was a way for everyone involved to make a lot of money quickly. He convinced them that they had nothing to worry about, and they would all make out like bandits before the hoax finally unraveled. The Georgia Boys took the matter as far as they did because they knew hoaxes are was not illegal, if the claims were only made to the news media and the boys never made a false report to local authorities. They later claimed that the government came and took the cadavor away and they had to substuite it with the bigfoot costume. While, the two shysters did make a few thousand dollars from the hoax, deputy Whitton was fired from his job and lost his career in disgrace. His partner and motivator, Rick Dyer, lost nothing in the process because he had no career to lose in the first place. He was living hand-to-mouth as a self-employed used car dealer. Biscardi appears now that he made very little from the hoax and is now destitute.

Then in 2012, Dyer started making a movie “Shooting Bigfoot” with Tom Biscardi, financed by a British company. In it he and Biscardi travels around the country, looking for Bigfoot. Then while outside of San Antonio, Texas,  he first claims that he filmed a Bigfoot outside of his tent and then to have shot and killed it. Well the body mysteriously disappeared and Dyer came up with all kinds of excuses where it was. The movie turned out to be a flop and was not nationally distributed to theaters.

Now this week Dyer is on the road displaying in a trailer what he claims is the Bigfoot that he shot and killed in Texas. As you can see in the picture below, this is an obvious hoax. If it were real, I don’t see how the authorities or the scientific community would allow this shyster to take what is probably the most important find of the century and parade it around like a side show attraction.

 

So as can see there are those out there, that likes to create hoaxes. They do this out of boredom, revenge, and make money. As I said before, Some are simply out to see if they can fool the experts. There are some many videos of Bigfoot on the internet that now you have to question them, when you look at them. Some of them are obvious hoaxes, while some took a large amount of time and money to create them. Again the reason is to try and fool the experts. I have absolutley no respect for shyters (dishonest people) like Mr Dyer, whose only goal is to fool the general public for monatory gain. It makes the general public to view us as a bunch of crazy idiots, who can’t find a Real Bigfoot but will make a bogus one to make a buck anyway possible. In my opinion this causes a lot of damage to creditabilty of the cryptozoology community.

Please do not let this deter you from going out and looking for these legendary animals. There is a lot of substantiated proof that there is an unknown primate roaming around our forests and woods. For the record, I have and always will be a big fan of Ivan T. Sanderson. He has done so much for the field of crytpozooology. His books are considered bibles in the study of Cryptozoology. It should be noted that with the detail in the Iceman model and the fact that it was incased in ice, it did make it difficult to tell if it was real or not. It did fool a lot of people. So, please be careful of hoaxes. Tell your member to watch of them. When it comes to evidence of a sighting, the best saying is “When in doubt, throw it out”.