The following is a list of hoaxes:
These types of hoaxes are semi-comical or private "sting operations" intended to expose people. They usually encourage people to act foolishly or credulously by falling for patent nonsense that the hoaxer deliberately presents as reality.
Deliberate hoaxes or journalistic scandals that have drawn widespread attention include:
This list does not include hoax articles published on or around April 1, a long list of which can be found in the List of April Fools' Day jokes article.
A false document is a technique by which an author aims to increase verisimilitude in a work of fiction by inventing and inserting or mentioning documents that appear to be factual. The goal of a false document is to convince an audience that what is being presented is factual.
A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into putting up the highest possible social currency in support of the hoax.
An out-of-place artifact is an artifact of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest to someone that is claimed to have been found in an unusual context, which someone claims to challenge conventional historical chronology by its presence in that context. Some people might think that those artifacts are too advanced for the technology known to have existed at the time, or that human presence existed at a time before humans are known to have existed. Other people might hypothesize about a contact between different cultures that is hard to account for with conventional historical understanding.
Majestic 12, also known as Majic-12, and MJ-12 for short, is a purported organization that appears in UFO conspiracy theories. The organization is claimed to be the code name of an alleged secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, formed in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to facilitate recovery and investigation of alien spacecraft. The concept originated in a series of supposedly leaked secret government documents first circulated by ufologists in 1984. Upon examination, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declared the documents to be "completely bogus", and many ufologists consider them to be an elaborate hoax. Majestic 12 remains popular among some UFO conspiracy theorists and the concept has appeared in popular culture including television, film and literature.
Forgotten Silver is a 1995 New Zealand mockumentary film that purports to tell the story of a pioneering New Zealand filmmaker. It was written and directed by Peter Jackson and Costa Botes, both of whom appear in the film in their roles as makers of the documentary.
The Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous archaeological hoaxes in American history. It was a 10-foot-tall (3.0 m), roughly 3,000 pound purported "petrified man", uncovered on October 16 1869 by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell, in Cardiff, New York. He covered the giant with a tent and it soon became an attraction site. Both it and an unauthorized copy made by P. T. Barnum are still being displayed. P.T. Barnum's is on display at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
The bathtub hoax was a famous hoax perpetrated by the American journalist H. L. Mencken involving the publication of a fictitious history of the bathtub.
Fictitious or fake entries are deliberately incorrect entries in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, and directories, added by the editors as a copyright trap to reveal subsequent plagiarism or copyright infringement. There are more specific terms for particular kinds of fictitious entry, such as Mountweazel, trap street, paper town, phantom settlement, and nihilartikel.
The "Great Moon Hoax", also known as the "Great Moon Hoax of 1835", was a series of six articles published in The Sun, a New York newspaper, beginning on August 25, 1835, about the supposed discovery of life and even civilization on the Moon. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel, one of the best-known astronomers of that time, and his fictitious companion Andrew Grant.
F for Fake is a 1973 docudrama film co-written, directed by, and starring Orson Welles who worked on the film alongside François Reichenbach, Oja Kodar, and Gary Graver. Initially released in 1974, it focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a meandering investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, as well as the basis of the value of art. Far from serving as a traditional documentary on de Hory, the film also incorporates Welles's companion Oja Kodar, hoax biographer Clifford Irving and Orson Welles as himself. F for Fake is sometimes considered an example of a film essay.
Literary forgery is writing, such as a manuscript or a literary work, which is either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author, or is a purported memoir or other presumably nonfictional writing deceptively presented as true when, in fact, it presents untrue or imaginary information or content.
Die Glocke was a purported top-secret scientific technological device, wonder weapon, or Wunderwaffe developed in the 1940s in Nazi Germany. First described by Polish journalist and author Igor Witkowski in Prawda o Wunderwaffe (2000), it was later popularized by military journalist and author Nick Cook, who associated it with Nazi occultism, antigravity, and free energy suppression research. Mainstream reviewers have criticized claims about Die Glocke as being pseudoscientific, recycled rumors, and a hoax. Die Glocke and other alleged Nazi "miracle weapons" have been dramatized in video games, television shows, and novels.
A media prank is a type of media event, perpetrated by staged speeches, activities, or press releases, designed to trick legitimate journalists into publishing erroneous or misleading articles. The term may also refer to such stories if planted by fake journalists, as well as the false story thereby published. A media prank is a form of culture jamming generally done as performance art or a practical joke for purposes of a humorous critique of mass media.
The 2009 Morristown UFO hoax was a series of aerial events involving mysterious floating red lights in the sky, that first occurred near Morristown, New Jersey, on Monday, January 5, 2009, between 8:15 pm and 9:00 pm. The red lights were later observed on four other nights: January 26, January 29, February 7, and February 17, 2009. The events were later revealed to be a hoax, perpetrated by Joe Rudy and Chris Russo. Rudy and Russo have described the hoax as a social experiment, with the ambition of exposing "ufology" as a pseudoscience and raising consciousness around unreliability of eyewitness claims.
The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to forgery:
Students of George Mason University, as part of T. Mills Kelly's course, "Lying about the past", created two popular Internet hoaxes: the "Edward Owens hoax", and the "Reddit serial killer hoax". The goal of the course was the creation of a widespread Internet deception. As Kelly stated in the course's syllabus:
What's our goal? Buzz, of course! Viral! We want our hoax to be picked up and spread around the Internet like wildfire!
Catfishing refers to the creation of a fictitious online persona, or fake identity, with the intent of deception, usually to mislead a victim into an online romantic relationship or to commit financial fraud. Perpetrators, usually referred to as catfish, generally use fake photos and lie about their personal lives to present themselves as more attractive for financial gain, personal satisfaction, evasion of legal consequences, or to troll. Public awareness surrounding catfishing has increased in recent years, partially attributed an increase in the occurrence of the practice combined with a number of high-profile instances.