DV EXPOSE: Wilderness Hoaxes

THE HISTORY OF THE WILDERNESS HOAX

 

 

The most famous Wilderness Hoax is certainly Bigfoot. But he's certainly not the first magical creature to be conjured up by some wily douchebags. In fact, almost everyone used to believe that scary, monstrous creatures lurked in the dark corners of the forest and the deepest parts of the ocean floor. I don't really know why that is... I guess people were fuckin' gullible.

Sea creatures are early-ass examples of fake creatures emerging out of a collective fear of the great outdoors. Sailors in the dating all the way back to the 16th century used to report sightings of "sea serpents," creatures whom would end up finding their presence on maps drawn up from that era all the way until the 19th century.

 

Dragons, vampires, yetis and just about any other mythical creature you can think of were thought to exist until the 20th century. By then, most people had replaced their fear of monsters with their fears of communism, Nazis and Scientology. But dumb asses weren't gonna let modernization and literacy stop them from believing.

 

Enter Loch Ness.

THE LOCH NESS MONSTER

 

 

People have been spotting something "weird" in the waters of Loch Ness since the 6th century. It was this folksy myth that Christian Spurling played upon when he built a plastic hoax monster in the loch in 1933. Spurling, who was the stepson of a famous British filmmaker, admitted in 1993, at the age of 90, that his stepfather had asked him to fake a monster in the Loch Ness so they could photograph it and send it to the Daily Mail newspaper.

The hoax was most likely concocted as revenge against the paper (for what? who cares), but either way a toy submarine and some plastic at just the right angle made for a photograph that has tricked thousands over the years. Even after Spurling admitted the photograph was faked, Nessie hunters refuse to give up their search.

The faked photograph fueled the hoax even further, though, and there have been three separate "films" of Nessie taken over the years, the newest one taken by Gordon Holmes in 2007.

 

 

Despite the fact that Gordon Holmes has sold a DVD and book series claiming he has proof that fairies exist and despite the fact that
video footage is impossibly easy to doctor these days, Nessie fans are undeterred.

This Wilderness Hoax is particularly lucrative, as dozens of different parties have profited off the gullibility of idiots.

THE YETI

A Yeti is a huge snow monster, often called the Abominable Snowman. Or, rather, that's how hucksters describe Yetis. What a Yeti REALLY is is the name given to any mirage seen by explorers in a snow-capped region.

Most of the Yeti sightings have occurred in the Himalayan mountain ranges of Nepal. The sightings began popping up around the late 19th century, as Westerners started recording their expeditions to the Himalayas. The Daily Mail, no stranger to falling for hoaxes, hosted a Yeti fact-finding mission in 1954 that heeded what the paper called a Yeti scalp. Obviously, all research since has proved that the "scalp" is definitely not a scalp.

More recently, the UPN network's funtastic show "Paranormal Borderland" falsified footage they claimed was of a Yeti. Despite the fact that the producers admitted it was all a hoax AND the footage was featured in a show on Fox about hoaxes, the "Snow Walker" video is still fooling people on the internet to this day.

 

The above video, which is the infamous "Snow Walker" footage, was described, on Youtube, as "The only Authentic genuine Yeti (Abominable Snowman) footage." Genius! 

BIGFOOT

 

 

Ah, the mother of all Wilderness Hoaxes. Bigfoot, AKA the Sasquatch, is a mythical creature deeply embedded in the lore of North America. The large beast (which Wikipedia says has been described as reaching the heights of 9'10"), has been the subject of a wide variety of hoaxes, from simple faked footprints to full-on photographic and videotaped "evidence."

The earliest recorded Bigfoot hoax was the awesomely titled "Jacko" affair, which was a faked newspaper report on the creature that took place in 1884 (at the time, Bigfoot's name in the British Columbia press was "Jacko" which, again, is awesome).

Jerry Crew, a Californian bulldozer operator, falsified some Bigfoot footprints in 1958. Crew's footprints would serve as the foundation of a much larger hoax carried out by the brothers Wilbur and Raymond Wallace, which led to multiple footprint casts and 15,000 feet of footage on the mythical beast. Raymond Wallace attempted to cash in on the hoax until the day he died.

Just like the Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti, despite numerous Bigfoot hoaxes being exposed, people continue to be fooled. The most recent footage of the great creature emerged from Manitoba in 2005.

 

 

The three major Wilderness Hoaxes, as well as all other minor Wilderness Hoaxes (like the Mexican chupacabra) expose something rather interesting about our society-- people will believe ANYTHING, no matter what the facts and evidence say.

Do the bumbling protagonists of "Strange Wilderness" succeed? In this culture of idiots, I wouldn't be surprised if they do.