The Truth Behind 5 'Real Monsters' That Fooled the Internet
The Montauk Monster Carcass
Pictured: The Kappa, an ancient Japanese water-demon.
A pretty young girl in the prime of her life is frolicking with her female friends on a local beach, when a monster appears! It's a setup good enough kickoff half of the Friday the 13th movies, but these young sex-vixens weren't murdered in alphabetical order while the survivors grieve by stripping off their tops and offering to split up, because the so-called “monster” was already dead. The Montauk Monster washed up on Ditch Plains Beach in July of 2008, where the aforementioned girls found it, photographed it and sold the pictures to the local paper. Then the Internet got a hold of it and, as usual, shit got all blown out of proportion
The Moscow Monster
The "Chupacabra" Video
Stunning video of a questionable and mysterious creature was recently released to CNN reporters who, ever the bastion of reliability and sober-minded journalism, aired the holy shit out of it while Anderson Cooper screamed “MONSTER!” at the top of his regal yet down-to-earth lungs. The video seemed to show a chupacabra, the legendary Mexican bloodsucking monster that's supposedly equal parts reptile and canine. The Mystery:
The Body of Bigfoot
These monsters have all been sensational in their own right, but nobody's yet gone after the big game and claimed to have unearthed Nosferatu or ridden a werewolf to work. Nobody, that is, until Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer: Two Georgia men who claimed to have not only discovered a bigfoot but, in true hillbilly tradition, also immediately shot, killed and stuffed it in a freezer. The two men actually called a press conference to announce the discovery where they basically took photos of themselves poking the corpse with sticks and tried to cobble together enough interest to justify a pay-per-view event of the footage. In a nutshell, they tried to start a makeshift carnival freak show. And it totally worked.
"Forget about game / I spit the truth!" -Dr. Science
The Reveal: Surely a police officer wouldn't throw away his entire career on a sub-par hoax, right? At the very least, this “discovery” is going to be a master-minded con, right? Nope. Turns out that “bigfoot” was really just a cheap Halloween costume the two men bought over the Internet--the most traceable of transaction methods--and stuffed with possum guts then chucked into a freezer. When asked how they thought they were going to fake DNA evidence under intensive public scrutiny, the master magicians shrugged, mumbled something under their breath and only when pressed itted that they had little to no understanding of what the word DNA meant. “It's like one of those Jap cars, right?” Offered one con-artist, before jamming his finger so far up his nose it caused a mild seizure.The SewerCam Creature
"BLOOORAAARRRGHH! LIGHT BURN!" -Rush Limbaugh
The Reveal: When not digesting Boba Fett over a period of one thousand years, tubifex worms enjoy conglomerating in Raleigh sewers and confusing the hell out of Internet science cowboys. That's right, the so called “sewer creature" was, in fact, just a handful of bait. The worms, in the absence of soil, had coiled around each other, and the pulsating you see is the result of one worm twitching, which in turn caused all of the others to do the same, like a giant game of sub-metropolitan grabass. They're exceedingly rare, these colonies, but experts wanted to assure the public that there was no need for concern: The worms, though odd, are a natural part of life in the sewer.
All part of the circle of life.
Further, the water department assured the public that any water ing by the colony would be thoroughly treated before making its way to your sinks… then they issued a statement retracting their former statement, because the creature was supposedly in a private sewer system. But they quickly reassured the public again that it still posed no danger. The Water Bureau then issued a declaration of “ no-take-backs” and then held a press conference to assure everybody that it was “not un-opposite day.” Long story short, the worms probably pose no threat to anybody, save for disappointing everyone that still wants to believe in magic and monsters. If you're one of those people who doYou can pre-order Robert's book, Everything is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead on Amazon, or find him on Twitter, Facebook, and his own site I Fight Robots, because he's just found the first unicorn! You can come over and see it if you like, but it only comes out when you take off your clothes and do a sexy little dance.
