Posts tagged
‘hoaxes’

Ape-ril Fool Was the ape-man on the Miner girls’ farm a hoax to scare them off the property or an April Fool’s joke?

Black Box Specters Two black box specters haunt travelers in Arizona and Ireland.

Miss Neas’s Bones of Contention Doctors and other witnesses reported seeing hundreds of bones working their way through Sarah Neas’s skin

The Tomb Challenge of the Russian Princess In 1818 the Russian Princess Elisabeth Demidoff died at Paris, aged 39. 75 years later, strange stories began to circulate about the tomb and its occupant.

An account of an elaborate magic mirror apparatus by the Master of the Dime Novel–but was it just a figment of his fertile imagination?

Drawing the Dead: How to Make Spirit-Paintings Six methods proposed as explanations for spirit paintings, which were found, freshly painted by spirits, in the seance room.

Cotton Mather and the Steam-boat A “straynge Dreme” and a prophecy related by Cotton Mather.

The day that St Paul and the Angel Gabriel invited themselves to dinner at a pious widow’s house. Hilarity and branding ensues.

In a shameless bid to ride the coattails of publicity for Dan Brown’s new book Inferno, and since I have previously covered Hell and its geography as well as some fiery relics of the Poor Souls in Purgatory, let’s look at some stories about Purgatorial pranks, where the living impersonate the dead for their own purposes.