Hello my friends and neighbors in Candle Bay and all of you out there in cyberspace. This is Coastal Eddie coming to you directly through cyberspace thanks to the magical mystical mysteries of 21st century technology. Powers that be tell me this will allow me to reach a lot more of you inquisitive folks out there. Progress is inevitable and you either go with the flow or get swept under. I prefer to paddle my canoe furiously against the tide but at least I'm not being swept under. Yet. So here I am.
One of the most frequently discussed topics on my radio show is hoaxes. A hoax, by definition, is "something intended to deceive; deliberate trickery intended to gain an advantage", in other words, practical jokes for the psyche. Hoaxes can be traced far back into recorded history, because as long as there is someone willing to be fooled, there will always be a hoaxer willing to fool them, and gullible people have been around since the dawn of man.
I don't find it surprising that the most popular of all hoaxes are those of a paranormal nature--faking evidence of something that never had much concrete evidence to begin with. In 1934, respected (then, but now not so much) surgeon Robert Kenneth Wilson snapped the most famous of all Nessie photos and his photo almost single-handedly began the entire modern-day Loch Ness Monster legacy. Thanks to his photo (and a few other blurry shots of "Nessie"), tourism to Loch Ness has grown into a multi-million dollar industry. In 1993, the photo was debunked by one of Mr. Wilson's co-conspirators and the source for that multi-million dollar industry turned out to be nothing more than a clever combination of a toy submarine, wood putty and a little forced perspective. Some die-hard Nessie fans still claim that the photo is genuine and that the debunking was the result of a conspiracy. Ah, conspiracy, that convenient explanation for the truth which we'd rather not believe. It's far more fun to believe in a monster dwelling in the depths of Loch Ness than a toy submarine, isn't it?
In the annals of famous hoax history, none stand taller than the Bigfoot (literally and figuratively) video shot by Roger Patterson and Robert Glimlin. 1967, these two intrepid videographers set out on a search for the elusive Bigfoot, to prove the creature's existence once and for all, and, I'd imagine, to stop all their friends from laughing at them. They set up their Super 8 video camera and soon a kind Bigfoot sympathetic to their plight obliged them by walking very slowly across the field in front of the camera. The whole scene was fraught with danger as one of the monster-hunter's horses reared in fright and fell to the ground and the other man stood ready with rifle in hand in case the monster decided to investigate them. Despite all the chaos, the camera remained perfectly motionless and captured a few seconds worth of a "Bigfoot" creature taking a leisurely stroll. If you look closely, you can actually see what appears to be a zipper along Bigfoot's back. Unless Bigfoot was in the habit of wearing fur coats backwards, it's doubtful this is real footage. Add to that the fact that the designer of the Bigfoot costume confessed on his deathbed in 2002, and the whole thing starts to smell a little bit like a hoax. It reeks, actually.
One of my personal favorites of the more famous paranormal hoaxes is the "authentic" Alien Autopsy video. I'm sure you remember all the hoopla over this a few years ago. The video made its debut on Fox, who supposedly aired it to uncover the truth-- not to make millions from advertising during the controversial airing of the video. Coincidentally, the only truth Fox uncovered is that advertisers are suckers for bad TV. I think we can blame Fox for single-handedly bringing about the era of bad "reality" TV--for every "genuine" alien autopsy video, there are at least three or four "When Good Pets go Bad" or "Random Videos of People getting hit in the Crotch with baseball bats" shows. It's all Fox's fault, but I suppose that's a subject for another column.
Back to Mr. Dead Alien.... The video, full of X-Files-esque spooky camera angles and lots of slightly out-of-focus close-ups, supposedly shows a full autopsy being performed on one very rubbery-looking dead alien. Mysterious-looking internal organs are extracted and examined and even one of the alien's huge black eyes is poked and prodded at length, presumably to satisify all the gore fans in the audience. The alien's corpse does look pretty realistic, which is not surprising considering it looks suspiciously like the infamous "life-size" alien figure available in any Sharper Image catalog (which can be yours for the low, low price of $1,695!). Judging from the research on this site, it appears that our little grey friend gets around quite a bit. Obviously, he's the best paid alien working in Hollwood today.
The video was almost immediately debunked as a fake when the geniuses behind the autopsy decided to step forward and tell the truth. Despite that fact, some true believers (or gullible morons--sometimes the words are interchangable) still hang on to the fleeting hope that the autopsy video was indeed the real deal. In a mind-boggling convoluted feat of mental acrobatics, these folks seem to think that the alien video autopsy video hoax is a hoax, meaning "they" (the evil goverment powers-that-be) don't want you to know the truth (that aliens do exist), so "they" debunked the video as a hoax when it was, in fact, real. In other words, a hoax of a hoax of a hoax. The video was also debunked with hilarious accuracy in a classic episode of The X-Files, "Jose Chung is from Outer Space", one of the finest X-Files episodes ever filmed, in my opinion.
Well, I've given you a taste of the wide and varied world of paranormal hoaxes, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, folks. Nessie, Bigfoot and Mr. Dead Alien Guy reign supreme at the very top of the heap, but for every guy in a zippered Bigfoot suit there's at least a dozen more smaller paranormal hoaxes out there. Ever heard of P.T. Barnum's mermaid? The tiny dead alien in a matchbox from Chile? Pete, the mummified gnome? No? Well then, prepare yourself for a wild ride, my friends. Sit back and relax and let your old pal Eddie take you on a tour of the sublimely bizarre. See you here next month!
Coastal Eddie, signing off from foggy, funky Candle Bay
