Just a few weeks ago, the Internet witnessed bafflingly successful hoax of Crabzilla. But monster hoaxes have been around long before the word “viral” meant anything not related measles or the bubonic plague. Despite the handicap of not owning Adobe Photoshop, these pranksters created some pretty convincing photos that had a lot of people fooled for a while.
1. Skunk Ape.
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In 2000 an anonymous woman in Florida mailed the Saratoga police department this photo and a couple other featuring what appears to be a large ape with a grey beard. The National Park Service has declared these photos a hoax.
2. The Surgeon’s Photo (Loch Ness Monster).
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Not only is this one of the most famous fake photographs, this is probably one of the most famous photographs of all time. Turns out this is not a snake-like monster rising out of the water, but a really a toy boat with a fake head on it.
3. De Loys’ Ape.
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On an expedition along the Columbia-Venezuelan borders, François de Loys claims he saw apes of an unknown species screaming and throwing feces at them. Scientists believe this picture to be a host and suggest de Loys mistook Columbia’s spider monkey as apes.
4. British Pumas.
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This photo was taken in the British Isles and was meant to suggest that large cats roam the forests of Britain. Although some big cats have been caught, they are always ones that have gone missing from nearby zoos.
5. Chupacabra
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Photos of this naked jackal looking creature began surfacing around Texas and many people thought they were of the legendary goat eating fiend, “La Chupacabra”. Turns out it is just a rare and ugly type of dog called a Xolo
6. Patterson and Gimlin’s Big Foot footage.
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The most famous footage ever “captured” of Big Foot has actually been revealed to be a hoax. Bob Heironimus, buddy of Patterson, was wearing a sophisticated ape suit for the footage.
7. Champ.
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America’s answer to the Loch Ness monster, this picture was revealed to be fake due mainly to the fact that the spot of Lake Champion that is pictures is only 14 feet deep, hardly deep enough to hide a giant sea monster.
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8. In Pennsylvania Rick Jacobs took this picture of what he described is an “adolescent Bigfoot” but were instead revealed to be a bear with mange.
9. Alien Autopsy.
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London filmmaker Ray Santilli made quite the commotion in 1995 when he showed everyone grainy black and white footage of a creature from another planet undergoing some type of autopsy supposedly at the Roswell New Mexico site. Santilli came up to say it was a hoax, but not until 2006.
10. The Cardiff Giant.
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In 1869 workers digging a well near Cardiff, New York unearthed a massive 10-foot “petrified man” that some people believed to be proof that giants once existed on Earth. Turns out a man named George Hull buried the man a year earlier as a really elaborate prank.
11. Kasai Rex.
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There was an old legend about a carnivores dinosaur still living in the jungles of Africa. Unfortunately the pictures of this monster are so fake that they never even had to be
12. Australian Sea Serpent.
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This picture was taken in 1965 by a family vacationing in Australia and is said to be a giant serpent-like creature. Doesn’t look particularly real just by looking at it however.
13. Thunderbird.
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This is actually recreation of a picture said to be passed around in the 1860’s. Apparently a group of military men in Arizona shot down a large pterodactyl-looking based and heroically posed on it’s corpse like so. The picture was never found, but the story was covered in an Arizona newspaper at the time.
Back then, they couldn’t just google “is Loch Ness Monster real?” so they had to take a blurry photo as indisputable evidence. In a way I kind of miss that. The world was a much more magical place back then.
