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Ten famous paranormal hoaxes

Cheryl Eddy lists what she describes as the ten most notorious paranormal hoaxes in history. I was familiar with almost all of them. I had heard of the Amityville Horror but thought it was just a fictional film and did not know that it was based on a supposed real event. I had also not heard of the Ghostwatch.

Incidentally Uri Geller, whose claims to be able to bend spoons with his mind were debunked by James Randi a long time ago and made the list, keeps re-inventing himself and has emerged once again to ‘explain’ why some of the new iPhones were bending.

“There are two possible explanations,” Uri Geller, the psychic illusionist famous for bending spoons with his mind, told MarketWatch. “Either the phone is so seriously thin and flimsy that it is bendable with mere physical force, which I cannot believe given the extensive tests Apple would have done. Or — and this is far more plausible — somehow the energy and excitement of the 10 million people who purchased iPhones has awakened their mind powers and caused the phones to bend.”

Yes, your crackpot second theory is undoubtedly ‘more plausible’ than a purely naturalistic explanation of people sitting on their phones. And then comes the kicker where he says: “I urge Apple to hire me to explain to the world that this is not the company’s fault at all.” Geller is always on the lookout to make a fast buck. If Apple has any sense, they would stay as far away from Geller as possible.

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Comments

  1. says

    I saw that list on Kinja. The one that galls me the most is bigfoot. There are people who still believe it, even though (after his death) Ray Wallace’s family admitted the whole thing was a fraud, right from the beginning. Some people are so stupid and gullible that not even facts and denials from the source of the lie will dissuade them.

    http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20021205&slug=raywallaceobit05m

    Bigfoot is dead. Really.

    “Ray L. Wallace was Bigfoot. The reality is, Bigfoot just died,” said Michael Wallace about his father, who died of heart failure Nov. 26 in a Centralia nursing facility. He was 84.

    The truth can finally be told, according to Mr. Wallace’s family members. He orchestrated the prank that created Bigfoot in 1958.

    Some experts suspected Mr. Wallace had planted the footprints that launched the term “Bigfoot.” But Mr. Wallace and his family had never publicly admitted the 1958 deed until now.

    “The fact is there was no Bigfoot in popular consciousness before 1958. America got its own monster, its own Abominable Snowman thanks to Ray Wallace,” said Mark Chorvinsky, editor of Strange magazine and one of the leading proponents of the theory that Mr. Wallace fathered Bigfoot.

  2. mordred says

    Wow I actually knew all of them! I really need to get a life…

    I got Ghostwatch on DVD, it’s actually pretty scary even if you know it’s a fake. Really well done, I can only imagine what it’s effect on the viewers was on first broadcast, with the presenters and reporters known to the viewers from real programs! The BBC got into some of trouble for that one.

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