True Crime Campfire - Gotcha! A Grab Bag of Famous Hoaxes

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

We’ve had a pretty heavy summer on TCC, haven’t we? Nazis and Norwegian black metal murders, and those last two cases were gnarly. So we thought maybe this week, you’d appreciate something a little lighter—something just for fun. So we decided to talk about hoaxes. Sometimes hoaxes are hilarious, like the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pranked five of his friends by sending them all an anonymous letter saying “We are discovered. Flee at once,” and then watched in amazement as one of ‘em up and left town the next day. Sometimes they’re kind of a public service, reminding us that we can’t believe everything we see on TV or the internet. Sometimes they’re sick burns—humiliating revenge against a stuck-up snob who deserved it. But whatever the motive, and whether anybody ends up in jail or not, pranking the crap out of our fellow humans is almost always entertaining. Join us for a grab bag of hoaxes through history--from Mary Toft and her miraculous "rabbit births" to the infamous "War of the Worlds" broadcast that terrified America, to a Canadian woman who faked a pregnancy and abducted a real baby, and more. Sources:Toronto Star: https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/i-m-not-a-bad-person-says-gta-baby-snatcher-with-guilty-plea/article_928babfb-b457-5942-bbee-7daf500d3eb6.htmlCBS's "The Dr. Phil Show," episode "I Abducted a Baby/I am a Psychopath"https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-war-on-paper-operation-mincemeatTime Magazine: https://time.com/6174289/operation-mincemeat-netflix-true-story/The Smithsonian Mag: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/infamous-war-worlds-radio-broadcast-was-magnificent-fluke-180955180/NPR: https://www.npr.org/2014/03/14/290119435/society-for-indecency-to-naked-animalsThe Ringer: https://www.theringer.com/music/2017/11/8/16615842/grunge-new-york-times-slangParis Review: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/07/05/an-extraordinary-delivery-of-rabbits/https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2017/05/21/sneaky-teen-texting-codes-what-they-mean-when-worry/101844248/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. We've had a pretty heavy summer on TCC, haven't we? Nazis and Norwegian black metal murders and those last two cases were gnarly. So we thought maybe this week you'd have pretty. appreciate something a little lighter, something just for fun. So we decided to talk about hoaxes.

Sometimes hoaxes are hilarious, like the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pranked five of his friends by sending them all an anonymous letter saying, we are discovered, flee at once, and then watched in amazement as one of them up and left town the next day. Sometimes they're kind of a public service, reminding us that we can't believe everything we see on TV or the internet. Sometimes they're sick burns, humiliating revenge against a stuck-up snob who deserved it. But whatever the motive, and whether anybody ends up in jail or not, pranking the crap out of our fellow humans is almost always entertaining. This is gotcha, a grab bag of famous hoaxes. hoaxes happen for very personal reasons, and one of the most common of those, of course,

is La Paceone. Love makes you crazy, campers, we've seen it many times before, and we've got a stark example for you today. A lady named Michelle Gopal, who in 2010 was a 24-year-old aspiring musician, splitting her time between New York and Toronto, where her boyfriend Kenneth lived. She was getting some modeling work, working to try and get a singing career off the ground. On paper, she pretty much had everything going for her. But her love life was getting a little rocky. Michelle had it bad for Kenneth. They'd been on and off for three years, and he was the first boyfriend she'd ever been serious about. But they were having some issues, and on top of that, his friends didn't like her, kept trying to talk him into breaking it off. And apparently,

there were some real shit stirrers in this friend group, because as Michelle later told Dr. Phil, one day a couple of her boyfriend's homies got hold of her purse and went through it just kind of fission for anything they could use against her I guess and who knows what the backstory is on this okay I mean based on what Michelle does here in a minute I wouldn't be surprised if she'd given them some pretty solid reasons to be suspicious of her not that I'd condone searching through somebody's purse obviously but anyway the friends found where Michelle had written down something about her period like I guess the last start date or something like that.

And for some reason, this convinced them that she was pregnant. No, I'm not, Michelle tried to tell them, but they didn't believe her. And I'm not 100% clear on whether the friends told boyfriend Kenneth that Michelle was pregnant and she denied it or what the precise timeline was, but at some point right around here, he broke up with her. And Michelle was just gutted. She said in an interview later, I gave up so much of myself and my career and my money to satisfy his happiness that I lost a piece of me.

And beyond the devastation, my girl was furious. She felt like he dropped her like a piece of used-up Kleenex, and she was extra pissed off about the money she felt like he owed her, thousands of dollars, allegedly. So Michelle cooked up a little plan to get some of her own back. She bought herself a fake pregnancy bump, had some glam professional pictures taken, posted on her MySpace page,

It's a girl! I can't wait until my little preempts. Princess Valentina arrives. Yeah. She named the fake kid Valentina, which if you've ever seen this girl talk, is very on brand. She, it's like a MySpace blingy banner threw up on her.

Like, including like the glitzy gif of a Playboy bunny logo spinning and sparkling. Like, that's her. That is incredibly accurate, yes. And she registered for baby gifts at Babiesrrr.com. Now, I've seen this reported on in a few different ways.

A lot of sources say she was doing this to get her ex-boyfriend back. Michelle herself told Dr. Phil that this was essentially a revenge plot, like a way to get her ex to buy her a shit ton of baby stuff that she could then return for cash to get her singing career going, which, okay. I'm not sure what the connection is. Like, you're going to get that many diaper genies, really, that, like, you can finance an album?

I don't know. That's what she said. Now, which of these motives was in the driver's seat of this out of control, actively on fire, held together with duct tape Winnebago that was Michelle's brain at the time? I'm not sure. But my money's on she was trying to get her boyfriend back. And then I think it just kind of got away from her. As the weeks went by, Michelle kept the lie going. She showed Kenneth a fake pregnancy test that I assume she got off the internet because that is an actual thing that you can do. which is terrifying. She borrowed an ultrasound from a friend who was expecting a baby girl and posted it on Facebook as her own. And at some point, some tiny little dose of reality began to penetrate her fevered brain and she realized, oh shit, when the nine months are up, Kenneth and his family are going to expect to see like a baby and stuff, right?

Now, this would have been the perfect time to call old Kenneth up and say, hey, guess what, asshole? I was never really pregnant. Thanks for all the baby stuff. I'm going to sell it. Have a nice life, right? And there you go. There's your revenge. But see, I don't think this was just about revenge for Michelle. I do think she wanted that money. But I think a part of her wanted Kenneth back. And now that she'd painted herself in a corner with this baby thing, she didn't know how to get herself out. At least not without getting like ridiculous pastel paint all over her clown shoes. Yeah. At first, she just thought, okay, I'll just sort of cut her. off contact with him and his family. And he'll just think I moved away somewhere with the kid and give up. But Kenneth didn't give up. He wanted to be involved in his daughter's life. And his whole family wanted to be involved too. They were all excited. So once the due date came and went,

Kenneth started getting insistent about wanting to see the baby. He was texting nonstop. And so were his two sisters. They had gifts for the baby. They wanted to see her. When was Michelle going to bring little Valentina by to meet the family. So because the bat-shit lie method had worked out so well for her so far, she came up with a new scheme. And in December of 2010, Indian parents all over Toronto noticed a casting call on Craigslist for a big Bollywood style movie. The producers were looking for baby girls of Indian descent, eight weeks old or less. And if your baby was cast in the movie, you'd get $15,000 pay. Yeah, boy. Yeah, I'm sure you'll have figured this out by now. There was no Bollywood movie. Our girl, Michelle, put that

casting call out, and she rented a vacant space at a strip mall in Etobicoke to hold her auditions. Four couples showed up as the day went on with their baby girls. Michelle introduced herself as a casting agent named Diane Miller, and around 10.30 in the evening, Sejal and Virol Patel walked in with exactly what Michelle was looking for, a beautiful little baby girl named Roma. She was perfect, and Michelle didn't waste any time. I need to take her into the other room so we can see how comfortable she is with strangers. Here, fill out this paperwork and I'll bring her back in just a few minutes. And as the parents settled down to fill out the forms, Michelle grabbed baby Roma, carried her through the

door and out the back of the building where she already had a cab waiting. Oh my gosh. The cab later said that she sketched him the fuck out, by the way. Like, she jumped into the cab with the baby like, drive, drive, and kept trying to get him to run red lights and stuff. Way to keep cool. Way to keep cool. Michelle. She's seen too many movies, you know, because I'm pretty sure I've ridden in many cabs, okay? And if you lean forward and go, drive, drive, they're just going to tell you to shut the fuck up.

They're going to go slower. Yeah. That doesn't work in real life. They're going to take a longer way. Just out of spite. Yeah. Michelle had the cab driver take her to meet Kenneth and his sisters, where she basically just

handed them the baby and got the hell out of dodge in the cab. It had finally dawned on her that she'd done something serious and she was panicking, thinking about taking her passport and running. Kenneth and his family were already suspicious by this point. Michelle had basically ghosted them for two weeks following her due date, and when she showed up with the baby, she didn't have any baby stuff with her. They were afraid that Michelle might be about to take Kenneth's kid and disappear,

so they took the kid to the police station, where, funnily enough, a call had just come in from a pair of panicked parents. A casting agent they had met on Craigslist had kidnapped their baby. Little Roma was returned to her terrified. mom and dad, and Michelle turned herself in shortly thereafter. Michelle ended up sentenced to 10 years in prison, which even years later, she was very pissed off about, calling it a little too pricey for what she did. She only served two and a half, by the way, and later, she capitalized on her 15

minutes of fame by appearing on the MTV show, One Bad Choice. I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I had enough of this bitch from watching her Dr. Phil interview. Yeah, I couldn't do it either. I tried. I got about a minute into him. I'm like, nope, I can't take any more, Michelle. I'm sorry. On Dr. Phil, Michelle just seems pretty put out that this whole thing had to derail her life and her music career. She was just borrowing that baby, after all. And like, that literally is how she talks. Like, she comes across as such. She just doesn't get it. Like, I was going to bring it back. God.

And those parents were crazy to hand their kid over to a stranger anyway. Why weren't they? charged with anything. I swear to God, she said that. Why weren't the parents charged with anything? And when Dr. Fael tried to get her to compute the seriousness of what she did to these poor parents, Michelle just seemed kind of irritated. Like, I get it, but it's not the worst crime in the world. I turn myself in. Why doesn't that count for anything? To Dr. Phil, she said that if she'd wanted to keep the baby, she could have just run off with it and gotten away with it. Yeah, right, sis. This crime was a well-oiled machine until you decided to give yourself up. They'd never have caught yet. Like, are you kidding me? Michelle, who's now a mom herself, claims she gets it. And maybe she does

now that she has kids of her own, though it shouldn't have been rocket science to figure out in the first place. In a 2019 interview, Michelle said she keeps an extra close eye on her kids when they're out in public. Ironic, isn't it? Okay, so moving on now from a hoax with a very personal, very emotional motive to one that went much more public. One of my favorite hoax categories is one I like to call trolling the snobs, and this next story is a perfect example. For this one, we're in the Pacific Northwest in the early 90s, and if you can already feel that nice cozy flannel and smell a faint whiff of coffee and unwashed jeans and hear the amplifier feedback, you're on the right track. Grunge, baby, what is it? Where does it come from? Why have my teenage children stopped washing

their hair. These, apparently, were the questions the New York Times thought the people of America wanted answered in November of 1992, when they published their article, Grunge, a Success Story in the Style section. It was certainly a timely piece. In September of 91, Nirvana's album Nevermind came out and MTV put the video of Smells Like Teen Spirit into their buzz bin, where it would get heavy rotation. The single and the album were both huge successes, and suddenly everybody wanted a piece. of the Seattle music scene. Soundgarden and Pearl Jam had albums out in the months either side of Nevermind,

and by summer of 92, the Seattle sound was huge on MTV and selling millions and millions of albums. But just to take those three bands as examples, other than coming under the wide umbrella of loud rock with guitars, they don't really sound a whole lot of like. They looked

kind of similar, though, because the Seattle aesthetic was, at least initially, an anti-fashion, where bands just wore stuff from the thrift store, instead of the leather, spandex, big hair of the 80s, you know. It's kind of a scene as a response to that, you know, all the glam rock. And now we're going to get grungy. Being in the Pacific Northwest, this mostly meant flannel shirts, jeans, and boots.

I guess if it had started in Florida, the grunge look would have been like ripped up jorts and burkenstocks or something shit. Didn't happen that way. And it was the grunge look that caught the attention of the New York Times style section, especially, and I love this, when fashion designers, tried to jump on the bandwagon. One Perry Ellis designer went out of his way to assure everybody at his show that the flannel

shirts around the model's waist were actually sand-washed silk. Oh, boy, way to miss the point. Or, you know, you could just, like, go buy the real thing for $10 at Kmart. Up to you. Now, the Times article is mostly pretty sharp in an anthropologist discovering a lost continent kind of way,

although it does have a couple of clunkers, like citing Wayne's World and Bill and Ted's excellent adventure as examples of proto-grunge fashion. I mean, Wayne and Garth, sure. I mean, that's standard rockerware, but Bill and Ted, come on, Ted spent most of that movie in a preppy little vest and Bill had on a crop top.

That's classic 80s, okay? You're way off. Now, anyway, to get a better handle on what was going on up in the Great Northwest, Times journalist Rick Marin, called up a guy named Jonathan Pohnman, one of the founders of Subpop, Seattle indie record label where a shit ton of the city's bands got their start. Apparently Pondman was having a day, so he palmed Marinoff onto his friend and CEO, Megan Jasper.

Megan was having a day herself. She was caffeinated to the gills and sick to death of getting bombarded with questions about the grunge scene, especially from like clueless yuppies. Right. So what does smells like teen spirit mean? What does teen spirits mill? So when Rick Maron asked her, what are some of the slang terms the grunge kids use? She decided to have a little fun, which is the most grunge thing I've ever heard. And for this, she will forever be a legend in my heart, okay?

When the New York Times article ran, it had a sidebar called Lexicon of Grunge Breaking the Code, a list of slang terms invented on the spot by Queen Megan Jasper. So just going to read you some of those and they're supposed meetings. Here we go. Wax slacks, old ripped up jeans. Okay. Bound and hagged, which means staying home on a Friday or Saturday night. I'm going to start using that one actually.

It's so good. So many of these are so good. And I cannot believe she came up. with this shit on the fly. Like, that woman is a comic genius. Yes. Yeah. Next one's pretty, like, I want to start using this one too. Harsh realm. Bummer. Harsh realm. This one we are adding to our roast. This next one we're adding to our roast list is

Cobb nobbler, which she said meant loser. Cobb nobler. Bloaded or big bag of blotation meant drunk. lame stain meant uncool person tom-tom club was outsiders and my favorite by far swinging on the flippity flop which just means hanging out what are you doing tonight oh nothing you know just swinging on the flippity flop I'm bound oh man I'm bounding hag tonight oh your parents are such lame stains God did you see those tom-tom? club members earlier. A bunch of cob noblers. Sorry, that one gets me every time. Megan kept waiting for Rick Maren to stop her and say, are you kidding me with these? And she'd come clean and they'd have a laugh about it.

But he never did. She could hear him typing as she spoke. And a little while later, her mom called her Massachusetts and said, you're in the friggin' New York Times. Good job. Most of the people who actually lived in Seattle saw the joke right away and thought it was hilarious. They printed T-shirts of the lexicon of grunge and bands started dropping phrases into their interviews. And something similar happens with text slang or jargon and it has since text messaging was a thing.

There is a USA Today article from 2017, okay? 2017 that claims that teens are sending each other stuff like 5-3-X to refer to sex or LH6 as an acronym for let's have sex or POS for parent over shoulder or 99 meaning parents around or GNOC for get naked on camera. As you can see. And by the way, the person that wrote that article is an Emmy Award winning tech writer. So for the most part, it's playing on a parent's fear that their kid is distancing themselves or like Little Timmy knocking boots with Susie down the street. I promise you that kids are much more invented than that. If they don't

want you to know about something, it'll probably be a bit harder to catch than that. I think some like enterprising teenager just got a hold of this journalist and was like, yeah, GNOC. That's what we say when we want nudes. God. Anyway, the New York Times didn't do any fact-checking at all. As far as most of the country knew, Seattle really might be full of long-haired be-flannel types calling each other Cobb Novelers. If only. Oh, God, I wish. But not everybody fell for it, of course.

And in early 1993, a journalist from the magazine, The Baffler, called up Megan Jasper and asked her if the slang in the Times was real. Of course not, she said. The New Republic picked up the story and ran with it because apparently journalists like nothing more than finding out that the New York Times fucked up. So the Times called Megan Jasper up again and asked her to confirm the slang, which she'd did, but only after Rick Merrin told her his editor would probably be fired if it turned out Megan had fooled them.

The editor's job was never actually in danger, though. Dude was just trying to save face. God, what a lame stain. Yeah, for real. Harsh realm. There are lots of these making fun of the man hoaxes, and this next one is the best we've ever heard of. In 1959, news organizations in the States began to take notice of a new conservative

organization, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, or Sina. Sina's members were deeply troubled by the fact that animals, wild animals, house pets, and livestock, were running around buck naked. They believe that, for the sake of public decency, any animal higher than four inches or longer than six should be wearing pants at the very least. I wonder if they had an opinion, as the meme goes. now on how you're supposed to put pants on a dog. You know, like, is it just the back two legs?

I mean, this is a heated debate. The correct answer is the back two legs. I will not take any disagreement. Okay. God. So their mission was to clothe these lewd animals. A nude horse is a rude horse, was their slogan. Naked animals are ruining the moral standards of America,

said Sina President G. Clifford Proust. And it wasn't only a matter of, of public decency, public safety was at risk too. Sina claimed that motorists on the New Jersey Turnpike were crashing into trees because they were staring at naked cows by the side of the road. News organizations, both in print and on TV, interviewed Proust, which might seem weird. I mean, it is weird, but back in the day, it wasn't unknown for the news to run segments that were basically just, hey, look at these fucking idiots.

G. Clifford Proust was interviewed a bunch of times. and the more the organization was reported on, the more members they gained. At one point, Sina claimed to have 50,000 members. Protesters marched outside the White House, one carrying a placard saying, Mrs. Kennedy, won't you please clothe your horses for decency? Won't someone think of the children? A private plane with Sina painted under the wings

dropped clothing onto cow pastures to encourage the farmers to properly dress their livestock. Parade floats carried mocked-up barns with model animals wearing clothes. G. Clifford Proust was invited to appear on TV for years, bringing painted examples of appropriate clothing. Half slips for cows, Bermuda shorts for horses, pantaloons for kangaroos, obviously. He encouraged Sina members to hand out Sina summonses if they caught their neighbors out walking a shamefully naked dog. There were even songs to support Saina, such as Wings of Decency, which went like this. High on the wings of Sina, we fight for the future now.

Let's clothe every animal, whether dog, cat, horse, or cow. I have to make it clear that, I mean, of course some people thought this was funny and thought it was a joke, but by and large, people believed this was a real organization, and real people were signing up to be members, okay? So it wasn't, like, people didn't know, like, oh, this is a joke, right? And then Buck Henry's career started to take off. Now, I know that sounds like a non-sequitur, but bear with me. Buck Henry had a hell of a career. He co-wrote the graduate, created the show Get Smart with Mel Brooks, acted in movies like the man who fell to Earth and grumpy. old men, and more recently, played Liz Lemon's dad in 30 Rock.

In 1961, he got his first regular TV gig on the new Steve Allen show, and the following year, when a TV executive was watching Walter Cronkite interviewed G. Clifford Proust of Sina, the executive thought, that Proust guy looks a lot like Buck Henry. And he did, because he was Buck Henry. So what happened was that a musician by the name of Alan Abel was out driving when he was out driving one night when he came up on a traffic jam caused by a cow and a bull, you know, getting to know each other in the middle of the road. And what caught his attention about it was how people reacted. There were a couple of salesmen who were like giggling like school kids, some nuns who were just

so embarrassed that they buried their faces in their hands. A lot of people just looked really uncomfortable and Alan had an inspiration. Obviously, this was fertile ground for satire. Right? Because there were so many puritanical conservative movements at the time. And he wanted to, you know, to bag on it a little bit. And what he came up with was the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals. He sent what he thought was very obviously a joke letter to the Saturday evening post and got a pissy reply back from the editor. The post didn't want anything to do with such a crazy organization. See, they didn't get the joke. They thought, thought Sina was real. And this just inspired Alan further, of course, which it would me too. He started a leaflet campaign for Sina, and when news organizations started to ask questions, Alan got his friend Buck Henry to stand in as Clifford Pruist, the president of Sina. For a few years, Buck gave impressively straight-faced performances as Clifford Pruist. The media really thought Sina was a real thing, and they actually did end up with an impressive

membership, although they returned any donations that people sent, which I think was the right thing to do. But after Buck was identified as Clifford Proust, obviously the jig was up. Time Magazine ran a feature story on the hoax in 1963. Walter Cronkite was apparently

as pissed off as anybody'd ever seen him, and that was the end of Sina. Come on, Kronkai. Don't you know how to have a little fun? No, he didn't like that he got God. People don't like to get God. I guess not. Campers, did y'all know that in the fall I have three jobs? On top of the podcast, I have a day job, and I also coach youth sports. So I am a busy, busy bee.

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Simply choose your meals and enjoy fresh, flavor-packed meals delivered to your door. Ready in just two minutes. No prep, no mess. Head to FactorMeals.com slash TCC50 and use code TCC50 to get 50. percent off. That's code TCC50 at factormeals.com slash TCC50 to get 50% off. Most of the time, when you fall for a hoax, the consequences are pretty minor. You just feel like a dumbass for a minute, I guess, and you move on with your life. But in our next story, not so much. On October 30th, 1938, listeners on CBS radio were treated to a live broadcast of Ramon Raquelow and his orchestra from the Meridian Room at the Park Plaza in New York City.

But just a couple of minutes in, a reporter interrupted the broadcast. Astronomers reported blue flames erupting from the surface of Mars. And then back to the music, but only for a little while. Another interruption contained more disturbing news. A meteor had crashed near Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Soon, Ramon and his band were ditched entirely, and the broadcast switched to continuous live coverage of the strange scene around the crater. The object in the middle of the crater didn't look like a meteor. It was a huge metallic cylinder with a diameter of about 30 yards. Crowd started gathering around the lip of the crater, with police struggling to hold them back. And then, the top of the cylinder started to unscrew and fell off.

From the darkness within emerged a horrifying thing. creature. The eyes, it might be a face, might be almost a, of heavens, something regularing out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it's another one and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me. Oh, yeah, I can see the thing's body. Now it's large as a bear.

It glistens like wet leather, but that face, it's, ladies of gentlemen, it's indescribable, but I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. It's so awful. The eyes are black and they seem like a serpent in the mouth, and that's kind of bee-shaped with saliva that dripping from its rimless lips has seemed to quiver and pulsate. Shockingly, police who approached the thing under a white flag of truce burst into flames. Listeners heard screams and explosions, and then the reporter's terrified voice cut out into dead silence. The terrifying news only got worse.

7,000 soldiers sent to the Grover's Mill Crater had been destroyed by the heat ray of an awful three-legged war machine. Reports came in of more cylinders and more war machine. all over the country and poison gas attacks. Five of the terrible machines approached New York and were attacking people in the streets. They rise like a line of new towers on the city's west side. Now they're lifting their metal hands. This is the end now.

Smoke comes out, black smoke drifting over the city. People in the streets see it now. They're running toward the East River, thousands of them. Dropping in like rats. Now the smoke's spreading faster. It's reached time square. People are trying to run away from it, but it's no use. They're falling like flies.

Now the smoke's crossing 6th Avenue. Fifth Avenue. A hundred yards away. It's 50 feet And then an announcer's voice told the listeners You are listening to a CBS presentation of Orson Wells and the Mercury Theater on the air In an original dramatization of the War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

A similar announcement had come right before the broadcast, if you'd been listening to the whole show, it was clear what was going on, that this was just a show. The problem was a lot of people missed the start, and that second announcement didn't happen into like 30 minutes into the broadcast when a lot of the scary stuff had already happened. If you heard the whole broadcast, the time compression made it clear that the whole thing was fictional. We go from the meteor landing, through the police being killed, then an army counterattack to tripods attacking New York all in about 20 minutes. But A lot of people just heard snippets of the show.

Some missed the alien stuff altogether and thought they were hearing reports of a German attack on the U.S. Before the broadcast was even complete, police officers and reporters were filling the halls of CBS studios in New York. There was panic, not quite as widespread as some of the newspapers made it seem later. I mean, the papers loved a good story, but a lot of people were terrified. They packed their cars with their families and supplies. and fled the cities or hidden cellars to escape poison gas. One college kids sped 45 miles to try and save his girlfriend. And I hope he got lucky that night because he's flipp and deserved it.

He thought he was going to have to fight aliens or Germans or something for you. Yeah. Like give him a little something, sis. You know what I'm saying? He's a keeper. A little handy at the very least. Come on. At the very least.

My goodness. The next day, the front page of the New York Daily News declared, Fake radio war starts terror through U.S. But stories of panicked stampedes and suicides proved hard to pin down. And I was actually surprised when we started researching this because I had heard my entire life that people had like jumped off buildings and, you know, taken their own lives and panic and everything. Shaken up by the newspaper's response to the broadcast, CBS ran a national survey the next day. And they found that most people who'd listened to War of the Worlds were aware that it was just a show that there were, weren't actually any rampaging aliens or Germans or whatever. But still, there were plenty of

people who were taken in and they were scared shitless. And remember, this is before the internet. This is before people were skeptical of literally everything that they see in here. You know, this was back when if something was on the radio, you believed it. And you had pretty good reason to a lot of the time. You know, the switchboards at CBS had lit up during the show with calls from frightened listeners and public officials who were worried about a potential panic. And that seems to be where the whole story really blew up. A lot more people were panicking about a potential panic than were actually panicking in the first place, if that makes any sense.

The papers jumped on a chance to show that radio, which was eating into their own advertising revenue, was reckless and dangerous. And as tends to happen, as the story got bigger, more and more people started remembering hearing the broadcast and being scared to death by it. Within a few years, with no actual evidence of mass panic, it just became a widely accepted fact that the War of the World's thing had been a huge deal, which I guess is fitting, you know, a fictional news broadcast resulting in a fictional panic.

Orson Welles' attitude to the War of the World's affair changed over time. Initially, he was apologetic in public, while in private he was furious at how people had overreacted to, as he put it, a practical joke where somebody puts a sheet over his head and says, boo. Later, though, when it was widely accepted that half the country had, had been in a panic, he claimed that that had been his intention all along, to teach people a valuable lesson about not accepting everything they heard at face value. Right. I suspect reaction number one is probably the real one, but okay, Orson. Now for our next story, we go from a fictional war to a real one. On April 20, 1943, a Spanish fisherman recovered a dead body from the

water. The body was dressed in the uniform of the British Royal Marines and had a briefcase chained to his wrist. This seemed important, so the fishermen contacted authorities, and Spanish soldiers took the waterlogged body to the nearest city. Although its fascist government maintained close ties with Nazi Germany, Spain was neutral in World War II, so the local British consulate was informed that the body of a major William Martin had been recovered. The British government sent encrypted communication to their console, telling him it was crucial that they recover the briefcase Martin had been carrying as it contained very sensitive information. But the Germans had already cracked the British code, and when the briefcase was sent to Madrid, they pressured

the Spanish into, you know, popping that puppy open and letting them have a little look. Inside were damp envelopes closed with wax seals, but the Germans figured out a clever little way of slipping the paper out without breaking the seals. They took photographs of the letters, then carefully put them back inside the envelopes where they found them. The British wouldn't even know they'd been compromised. Major Martin's corpse, in bad shape after its long immersion in the water, had already been buried in Spain. The briefcase was returned to the British. Shortly afterward, the Germans intercepted another message to the British consul, which told him the contents of the briefcase had not been disturbed. And those contents were dynamite. They included a personal

letter from a senior staff officer to a general in Eisenhower's North African Army, which told of upcoming Allied invasions of Greece and Sardinia that would follow a faint attack against Sicily. The Germans had been sure that an attack was coming somewhere in the Mediterranean, and now they knew exactly where. Reinforcements were sent to Sardinia and Greece to prepare for the coming attack. And that was just what the British wanted. See, Major William Martin didn't really exist. The whole thing was a scheme to fool the Germans, codenamed Operation Mincemeat. So gross. I know. The body was actually that of Glendur, Michael, a homeless Welshman who had died in London after eating poison bread left out to kill rats. Poor guy. I know, it's awful.

In addition to a uniform and fake naval ID, intelligence officers added what in espionage circles is called pocket litter, personal effects that can help you pass yourself off as someone else. An MI5 clerk, Jean Leslie, wrote a couple of love letters purporting to be from Pam, Major Martin's fiancé, and these were slipped in the corpse's inside pocket, along with the snapshot of Jean and her bathing suit. There was also a receipt for an engagement ring, a stern letter from Lloyd's Bank about an overdraft payment, stamps, cigarettes, and keys. And most importantly, fake official letters were drawn up, including the personal letter on the invasion of Greece and Sardinia, stuff that looked important enough to justify chaining the briefcase to Major Martin's wrist. The Greece letter had an eyelash placed between the pages

so they could check and see if it had been open and read. Oh, I love that little detail. I know. An S-class submarine, the HMS Saraff, was being deployed to the Mediterranean. Its captain told his crew they would stop off the Spanish coast. coast to deploy a canister containing a secret meteorological device. This canister, in fact, carried the body of Glendor Michael, dressed as Major Martin. The Navy had determined where the body should be released so the currents would take it toward shore. And in the early hours of April 30th,

the captain of the seraph and his officers pushed the corpse into the water, read Psalm 39 as a funeral service, then quickly got the hell out of there. The British knew the Germans had cracked the code they used in communications to Spain, so they sent frantic messages to the consul and Huelva about the briefcase just to make extra sure that the Germans would take the bait. And as we just showed you, they took it and swallowed it whole. Fished in. On July 9th, the Allies began Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. The Germans were expecting the Allies to make a faint attack on Sicily, and even hours

after the invasion started, they were still transferring aircraft to Sard. Virginia, where they expected the real attack to come. But of course, it wasn't a faint. Sicily was where the Allies began the invasion of Italy, and by the time the German High Command figured that out, it was too late to recover, all thanks to Major Martin in his briefcase. Okay, we started this episode with a pregnancy hoax, and we're going to end it with another one. For this one, we're going all the way back to 1726, to the English town of Godalming, where a woman named Mary Toft was having a rough time. time. Mary and her husband didn't have much money, and Mary was pissed off about it. Neighbors describe

her as grumpy and sullen. I would be too if I had to be poor in 1726. Worse than that, like a lot of women back then, Mary had lost one child to illness and another to miscarriage. A lot of poor people back then would never have seen how the rich people lived. They didn't have Instagram, you know, but Godalming was a popular stop on the road to London. So Mary had seen fancy stagecoaches pull up full of people in gorgeous clothes and jewelry. And maybe that was what got her thinking. Tempted her to pull a little shenan again that might land her and her family in a glitzy or more interesting life. Especially since by the time our story starts, Mary was about four weeks pregnant.

One more mouth to feed. Gets you dreaming about bigger and better things. One afternoon, Mary was outside pulling weeds when she spotted a rabbit. Now, my first thought would be, aw, cute, but Mary's first thought was, hell yes, free food, and she took off after the rabbit. But the little guy escaped, and Mary went home empty-handed and annoyed. And for the next few weeks, she could not stop thinking about rabbits. It was all she wanted to eat. Rabbits stew, roasted rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.

But she and her husband didn't have the money to go out and buy one. It was too expensive, and that just made the craving worse. A few months later, Mary got sick. started having terrible abdominal cramps. A midwife named John Howard came to see her and thought she must be in premature labor. But when the contractions really got going and Mary started to push, everybody got the shock of their lives. Mary was in labor all right, but not with a baby. She was pushing out a whole bizarre collection of stuff.

First a cat's head, then something that looked like a pig's bladder, and then rabbits. Lots and lots of rabbits. 11, to be specific, all stillborn. The midwife dude, John Howard, who must have been made of pretty strong stuff, picked them all up and put each one in a little jar with preservative, popped him up on the shelf in his living room to study. And, of course, he and Mary started spreading the word about this wild medical miracle, especially when the whole thing happened again a couple months later. Now, what her husband thought here, I have no idea. Like, did he think she hooked up with Peter Rabbit one day while he was at work? Like, was Mary an early furry? I have no idea.

Now, remember, this was the 1700s, so we're not talking like great medical advancements here. And while plenty of doctors and midwives thought Mary and Howard were full of shit, others were intrigued. There was already this pervasive theory at the time that a fetus could be impacted by the mother's thoughts and experiences. Like remember the story of John Merrick, aka the elephant man who was born with a genetic disorder that made his face. looked really strange? Well, John himself believed that his condition had been caused by his mom getting startled by an elephant when she was pregnant with him. So this was a thing that people actually believed back then. Oh, yeah. There was a book in the 18th century that said women should avoid playing with dogs, squirrels, etes, et cetera, because it could lead to the birth of vile creatures.

When is a one have a chance to play with an ape? That's so weird. Because that was like a normal thing in England back then for apes to just be running around and yeah dude they were keeping them as pets they would steal them and bring them home and then they'd be taking care of awfully remember how jim jones used to sell monkeys yeah yeah yeah i just yeah that's true people have always done that um another weird thing too by the way and i wish i remember the name of this person but i saw just like on the internet the other day this story about this woman in like around this same time, I think, you know, 1700s or maybe early 1800s, who got pregnant while her husband was like out at sea and she was going to be tried for adultery because I was like, you know,

illegal, you know, when women did it back then. And she was actually able to convince a judge and jury that she missed her husband so much and was thinking about him so obsessively while he was away that she just got pregnant with his baby and they bought it and she was acquitted. Like, that's a queen right there like good for her so people believe this shit and when word of mary and her rabbits reached london king george himself heard about it and sent his court anatomist a guy named a nathaniel saint andre to check it out now this dude was a character and a half and i wish we had time to get into his back story but if you want to know more about saint andre read the paris review article on this case we're going to put a link in the show notes because this dude basically he was way more into

like fashion and fencing than he was into actually studying medicine. So, you know, he was like a horrifying person to be in charge of patient care. But for some reason, the king liked him. And by the time St. Andre made it to Godalming to visit Mary at her midwife's house, she'd been popping out rabbits at an alarming rate. Like, girl was basically a dead rabbit vending machine at this point. It's just pop, pop, pop, pop. And with the king's very own surgeon in town, words spread like wildfire. Mary was famous. They had to put her up in an unknown location to keep people from mobbing her

trying to catch a glimpse of rabbit births. Doctors were swarming all over the place, trying to figure out if this was real or what. And apparently, Mary put on quite a show. She'd scream and writhe around and her belly would look like one of those facehugger things about to burst out of it. I don't know how she managed that.

And then another rabbit would come shooting out of her like a ping pong ball from the vgoon of a very talented adult film star. It was value for money. And then, as soon as the rabbit would hit the floor, Mary would be over it. Like, totally fine, totally calm, chatting and laughing with the doctors and nurses. It was all really, really strange. You'd think a thing like this might be a little traumatic, you know?

But Mary seemed to be enjoying the attention. And the money. See, the king had offered her a royal pension for allowing his doctor to study her and her bunnies. But for every weird-ass thing that happens, there has to be a no-fun Sally squad of skeptics to come along and try to debunk it. Which they usually do with great success, of course, because we just can't have nice things. Come on, y'all, I love science, too, but can't we just have Mothman? Please, just that one thing? I just want Mothman to be real. Oh, Mothman's real. You cannot convince me otherwise.

So the skeptics soon showed up at Mary's door, and it didn't take them long to work out that there was something, fishy going on. For one thing, when they autopsied some of the rabbits, they found poop inside their intestines, and the poop was full of corn and hay. Now, unless Mary had a cornfield stashed somewhere inside her, that was pretty definitive evidence that those rabbits could not have gestated in her womb. But some of the doctors still wanted to believe, and there were some hot and heavy debates. Until finally, one of the doctors caught a porter sneaking dead rabbits into Mary's groom. When they questioned him, the guy admitted that Mary had bribed him to bring her the rabbits. Oh, boy. And finally, after hours of questioning, Mary cracked and admitted the whole thing

was a hoax. A hoax, by the way, that involved sticking dead rabbits, upper snooch, and sometimes leaving them in there for days at a time. Oh, God, no. Yeah, we can pause for a second if anybody needs to throw up. Mary had a raging infection by this point, and now the doctors knew why. Ew. I bet.

Jeez. Mary's confession was very poor me. She blamed her husband, her mother-in-law, and for some reason, the wife of the local organ grinder for putting her up to the stunt. It could have been true, or maybe Mary just wanted what so many of us

want, her 15 minutes of fame. Clout goblins, campers, have been around for centuries. And so has the urge to put one over on our fellow humans. It's kind of beautiful, if you think about it. So much separates us, but as long as there have been people, we've been punking each other and laughing about it. That, at least, will never change. I do love that, actually.

So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week, but for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe. safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. Today, we'd like to send a big shout out to Stevie, who wrote us the nicest email this week sent through our website. Hi, Stevie. Hi, Stevie. Thanks for reaching out. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much, Montana, Heather, Mary, Little One, 1990, Caitlin, and Herb. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our

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