"Everything that deceives may be said to enchant." - Plato
THE GREAT MOON HOAX, 1835
Edgar Allen Poe:
[In 1834] I wrote a story which I called "Hans Pfaall," publishing it about six months afterwards in "The Southern Literary Messenger," of which I was then editor.
It was three weeks after the issue of "The Messenger" containing "Hans Pfaall," that the first of the "Moon-hoax" editorials made its appearance in "The Sun," and no sooner had I seen the paper than I understood the jest, which not for a moment could I doubt had been suggested by my own jeu d'esprit. Some of the New York journals (The Transcript among others) saw the matter in the same light, and published the "Moon story" side by side with "Hans Pfaall," thinking that the author of the one had been detected in the author of the other. Although the details are, with some exception, very dissimilar, still I maintain that the general features of the two compositions are nearly identical. Both are hoaxes (although one is in a tone of mere banter, the other of downright earnest); both hoaxes are on one subject, astronomy; both on the same point of that subject, the moon; both professed to have derived exclusive information from a foreign country, and both attempt to give plausibility by minuteness of scientific detail. Add to all this that nothing of a similar nature had ever been attempted before these two hoaxes, the one of which followed immediately upon the heels of the other.
Having stated the case, however, in this form, I am bound to do Mr. Locke the justice to say that he denies having seen my article prior to the publication of his own; I am bound to add, also, that I believe him.
Immediately on the completion of the "Moon story" (it was three or four days in getting finished), I wrote an examination of its claims to credit, showing distinctly its fictitious character, but was astonished at finding that I could obtain few listeners, so really eager were all to be deceived, so magical were the charms of a [literary] style that served as the vehicle of an exceedingly clumsy invention.
It may afford even now some amusement to see pointed out those particulars of the hoax which should have sufficed to establish its real character. Indeed, however rich the imagination displayed in this fiction, it wanted much of the force which might have been given it by a more scrupulous attention to general analogy and to fact. That the public were misled, even for an instant, merely proves the gross ignorance which (ten or twelve years ago) was so prevalent on astronomical topics.
The singular blunders to which I have referred being properly understood, we shall have all the better reason for wonder at the prodigious success of the hoax. Not one person in ten discredited it, and (strangest point of all!) the doubters were chiefly those who doubted without being able to say why -the ignorant, those uninformed in astronomy, people who would not believe because the thing was so novel, so entirely "out of the usual way." A grave professor of mathematics in a Virginian college told me seriously that he had no doubt of the truth of the whole affair! The great effect wrought upon the public mind is referable, first, to the novelty of the idea; secondly, to the fancy-exciting and reason-repressing character of the alleged discoveries; thirdly, to the consummate tact with which the deception was brought forth; fourthly, to the exquisite vraisemblance [plausibility] of the narration. The hoax was circulated to an immense extent, was translated into various languages - was even made the subject of (quizzical) discussion in astronomical societies... [it] was, upon the whole, decidedly the greatest hit in the way of sensation - of merely popular sensation - ever made by any similar fiction either in America or in Europe.
- Edgar Allen Poe, The Literati of New York City (1875)
In 1835...The astronomer John Herschel was sent from England to the Cape of Good Hope to explore the southern sky. Shortly afterwards, the New York American brought to Europe a most marvelous account of the discoveries made by Herschel in the Moon. According to the American newspaper, the English astronomer had seen, in our satellite, the most fantastic landscapes, inhabited by impossible creatures. He had seen rocks and mountains of vermilion red color; trees whose branches formed festoons and the leaves feathers; - light quadrupeds, graceful like gazelles and armed with a horn in the middle of the forehead, like the unicorn of the ancients; amphibians, spherical in shape, rolling quickly across the stones of the shore; horned bears; bison with flesh visors over their eyes; - beavers with two feet and no tail, knowing how to light a fire, etc. Finally, Sir John Herschel had seen, in the Moon, men with enormous wings, fluttering in troops and swimming in lakes like ducks. All these wonders had been recognized by means of a new system of lenses and mirrors, combined in such a way that the Moon appeared close to a distance of 80 meters! The author of this letter (which has been attributed to a certain Lock) claimed to have received all these details from Dr. Andrews Grant, Herschel's collaborator, in Cape Town.
For several months there was talk throughout Europe of the discoveries of John Herschel. The name of this astronomer thus became popular everywhere. Everyone looked at the Moon as the region of wonders, as the land of enchantments and fairies. The existence of wings on the shoulders of the inhabitants of these ethereal places was invoked to maintain that Herschel had seen angels, and that, consequently, the Moon was paradise.
Let us add that the ignorant were not the only dupes of American mystification. Several scholars were concerned about this. The matter went to the point that the Paris Academy of Sciences was forced to make a decision. Afago, pressed from all sides, had to declare, in a public session, that this whole story was nothing but an outrageous mystification.
Little by little we forgot this stupid joke. However, since that time, it has lingered in almanacs and in collections of marvelous stories, and many people still have the idea of the inhabitants of the Moon firmly anchored in their heads.
- L'Annee Scientifique et Industrielle, 1865 [translated by Google]
THE COTTINGLEY FAIRIES, 1920
These were modified cut-outs from a children's book, fastened to sticks which held them in place, seemingly suspended in mid-air.
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle takes it for
granted that these photographs are real photographs of fairies, notwithstanding the fact that no evidence has so far been put forward to show exactly how they were produced. Anyone who has studied the extraordinary effects which have from time to time been obtained by cinema operators must be aware that it is possible, given time and opportunity, to produce by means of faked photographs almost anything that can be imagined. It is well to point out that the elder of the two girls has been described by her mother as a most imaginative child, who has been in the habit of drawing fairies for years, and who for a time was apprenticed to a firm of photographers... The picture in question could be 'faked' [if] the little figures of the fairies were stuck upon a cardboard, cut out and placed close to the sitter...and the whole photograph produced on a marked plate." - Major Hall-Edwards, Birmingham Weekly Post, 1920
"I have recently secured a copy of the photograph taken at Cottingley...the dancing fairy forms are absolutely beyond any possibility of reproduction by the introduction of cut out paper figures stuck upright in the grass & herbage, as has been suggested." - Rev. Charles Tweedale, Light magazine, 1921
"It was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun... To this day I can't understand why people were taken in... They wanted to be taken in... They wanted to believe. Look at this photograph: that fairy's all out of drawing; that leg doesn't belong to that fairy. And somebody pointed it out in the newspaper and one of our dear believers said 'well fairies aren't like humans; they haven't got bodies like we have with skeletons and arms and legs, they sort of put it together with thought - sometimes it doesn't come out right.' We didn't have to tell a lie about it at all because always somebody came out to justify it." - Frances Griffiths, interview, 1985
"ALTERNATIVE 3" HOAX, 1977
AURORA MARTIAN HOAX, 1897
"A while back I had the opportunity to appear on the late night radio show, Coast-to-Coast. I bring this up only because, apparently, the next night the host had on Jim Marrs who talked about the Aurora, Texas airship crash of 1897. I wouldn’t have known this but someone who heard my interview the night before mentioned to me in an email that Marrs had talked about Aurora and suggested that it was a real event. That person wanted to know if Marrs was correct and if there is anything to the story of the crash.
"And this provides us with an opportunity to examine one of the major problems in UFO research. No case ever dies, no matter how many times it is exposed as a hoax. This is true even when those exposing it range from the skeptics to the believers in extraterrestrial contact. And it continues even when no evidence for the reality of the case has ever been found... or none was found until people began to realize they could get their names in the newspaper or their faces on television if they said something to confirm the case." - Kevin Randle, Aurora, Texas - A Story That Won't Die, 2005
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