Hoaxes & Debunks
The War of the Worlds Panic: Radio, Rumour and the Shape of Fear
A classic media panic case showing how a drama, late tuning and newspaper repetition turned a radio play into a durable legend.
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Hoaxes & Debunks
Browse matching articles and case files from the archive.
Hoaxes & Debunks
The Great Moon Hoax and the Machinery of Wonder
In 1835, newspaper readers met moon forests, lunar animals and winged people in a celebrated lesson about media, science and appetite.
Hoaxes & Debunks
Piltdown Man: The Fossil That Flattered an Expectation
Piltdown Man fooled parts of the scientific world for decades because forged evidence appeared to fit a story people were ready to hear.
Hoaxes & Debunks
The Cottingley Fairies: Paper Wings, Cameras and Belief
Two Yorkshire cousins, a camera and a set of fairy photographs became one of the most instructive image hoaxes of the twentieth century.
Hoaxes & Debunks
The Cardiff Giant: America’s Stone Hoax and the Business of Belief
The Cardiff Giant was a carved gypsum fake sold as a petrified ancient man, and it remains one of the cleanest lessons in spectacle, profit and belief.
Hoaxes & Debunks
The Face on Mars: Pareidolia in a Planetary Archive
The Face on Mars became a classic anomaly because one low-resolution Viking image looked uncannily human until better imaging restored it to geology.
Hoaxes & Debunks
The Fiji Mermaid: A Fake That Made Barnum Famous
The Feejee Mermaid became an object lesson in showmanship because the hoax was never just the object; it was the lecture around it.
Hoaxes & Debunks
The Window Face Photograph: Why the Brain Keeps Finding a Person in the Glass
A face in a window is a useful archive case because it lets us talk about pareidolia, photography and the way expectation edits what we think we saw.
Hoaxes & Debunks
A Field Guide for Recording Strange Experiences Responsibly
A calm checklist for writing down unusual events before memory, excitement and online feedback reshape them.
Hoaxes & Debunks
The Difference Between Evidence, Testimony and Legend
A field guide to three words that often get tangled in mystery research.