The past few years have seen a hot new trend in Halloween decorations — giant skeletons. Some soar several feet tall. Others climb from a coffin, creep in a graveyard, or sit on a porch swing.
But Americans’ fascination with giant skeletons isn’t new.
“In the late 1700s and throughout the 1800s, there were a lot of newspaper reports on giant bones being discovered, especially out West,” says Scott Tribble, author of A Colossal Hoax: The Giant from Cardiff that Fooled America.
Tribble says the newspaper reports rarely had follow-ups. Locals usually determined the bones were fake or belonged to an animal. There were, however, several persisting skeleton hoaxes that captured attention:
Here are four of the most famous:
The Cardiff Giant Skeleton of 1869 in New York
In upstate New York, two laborers were digging a well on a farmer’s property when their shovels hit something hard.
“Lo and behold, they find this giant. It becomes one of the biggest news stories of the country for the next few months,” Tribble says.
One of the farmer’s relatives, George Hull, quickly turned the dig site into a tourist attraction. People paid to view the 10-foot giant. Tribble says that many scientists also believed it was real.
“The modern discipline of archeology hadn’t evolved. Up to that point, it had been an enthusiast and hobby-based pursuit,” he says.
Not everyone believed in the giant, and after several months, several scientists argued it was a fake. “But honestly, what really undid the giant was not the experts but George Hull not covering his tracks enough. The man was incapable of not acting suspicious,” Tribble says.
The truth soon came out — Hull had purchased gypsum in Iowa and hired two sculptors in Chicago to carve a petrified giant. Hull shipped it home and schemed with his relative.
Hull claimed the hoax was inspired by an argument with a preacher in Iowa. Hull had been visiting relatives, and the preacher was also spending the night. Hull and the preacher dominated the post-dinner conversation about whether everything in the Bible should be taken literally. The preacher contended yes, even the giants described in Genesis.
“Hull was proven correct that Americans were fascinated with this,” Tribble says.
Read More: Do Giants Exist: What Does the Evidence Say About Real-Life Giants?
Barnum’s Rival Cardiff Giant in New York City
Hull wasn’t the only one who wanted to profit off the faux giant. He sold the giant to a syndicate of businessmen, whom circus owner P.T. Barnum approached with an offer to buy it. The syndicate shot Barnum down, so he secretly commissioned his own faux giant, Tribble says.
The syndicate had the giant excavated and moved to Syracuse for public display. Meanwhile, Barnum put his giant on display in New York City and claimed it was the real deal. The syndicate responded by moving their giant to the city and suing Barnum.
“Within a block of each other, they had two rival giants,” Tribble says.
The lawsuit failed, and by then, Tribble says the public mostly accepted Barnum’s giant was “a fake of a fake.” But, there was a general distrust of scientists, and some people refused to believe the original was a fraud.
“Even as the scientists were saying, ‘it’s a statue,’ you had everyday Americans writing to newspapers saying, ‘I believe they are wrong; I believe it’s a petrified man, and here’s my evidence,’” Tribble says.
Read More: Who are the Keepers of Academic Skeletons?
The Solid Muldoon Hoax of 1877 in Colorado
Some Americans were doing their own research on giant skeletons, which may help explain why Hull was able to repeat his skeleton scam. Hull followed the same playbook as before. He hired someone to carve a giant skeleton, this time opting for a seven-footer made of mixed materials, including mortar and clay.
He then arranged for a fossil hunter to make the discovery. The giant was unearthed, displayed at an admission-charging exhibition, and then taken on tour.
“At that point, Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species was in the popular imagination,” Tribble says. “Solid Muldoon was meant to be a missing link. [Hull] wanted to capture that part-man, part-monkey.”
Once again, Barnum wanted a piece of the action, but his offer was denied. Soon after, the giant was revealed as a hoax, and ticket sales dried up.
Read More: How Many Bones Are in the Human Body, And Other Fascinating Facts About Skeletons
The Petrified Hoax of 1926 in Wisconsin
Belief in giants waned by the early twentieth century, but petrified skeletons still fascinated people.
Petrified skeletons had such a grip on some imaginations that people didn’t even have to see the skeleton to believe in it.
In northern Wisconsin, a newspaper employee decided to have a bit of fun in The Rusk County Journal. Writing under a byline of “The Rusk County Lyre” (Get it? Liar, Lyre?), they told a fantastical tale that some people took seriously.
The story claimed that two loggers felled a hollow tree and were shocked to find a body inside. The body was supposedly petrified by sap, and the loggers found several gold coins dating to the late 1600s, as well as pieces of paper identifying the person as Pierre D’Artagnan. The paper was supposedly signed by Jacques Marquette, the famous French explorer.
Marquette did explore the Mississippi River, but not near the area in question and not with a man named D’Artagnan. The name did belong to a French captain from that time period, but he never set foot in the Canadian or U.S. colonies.
The Lyre likely chose the name because the famed novel The Three Musketeers had a character based on the French captain. In addition to not using a very original name, the Lyre replicated his report on a 1919 hoax in Minnesota.
Some people were oblivious to both hoaxes, and other local newspapers ran the story while omitting the Lyre’s byline. Although other Wisconsin newspapers debunked the story, the legend lived on, and many locals long believed that a French explorer’s body had been preserved in tree sap.
Currently, the Wisconsin Historical Society maintains a web article confirming the Petrified Man was a hoax.
Read More: 3 Science Hoaxes Of Today: From Theranos To Fake Fossils
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Emilie Lucchesi has written for some of the country’s largest newspapers, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and an MA from DePaul University. She also holds a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Illinois-Chicago with an emphasis on media framing, message construction and stigma communication. Emilie has authored three nonfiction books. Her third, A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy, releases October 3, 2023, from Chicago Review Press and is co-authored with survivor Kathy Kleiner Rubin.
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