#bigfoot — Public Fediverse posts

More Cryptid cuties! Might make them regular characters.

#cryptids #bigfoot #artistsupport #art #patreon #artist #mastoart

https://www.patreon.com/AmyNewBlue/posts/169204510?utm_campaign=postshare_creator

Capturing Bigfoot releasing Oct 20: What will the fallout be? – Modern Cryptozoology #cryptid #Bigfoot

https://moderncryptozoology.wordpress.com/2026/09/10/capturing-bigfoot-releasing-oct-20-what-will-the-fallout-be/

Step right up for the latest in Bigfoot hoaxes

Once again, someone has put on display a hairy man prop as a real Bigfoot and we can admire or cringe at the art of the hoax.

Parade of hairy hoaxes

Bigfoot hoaxing shenanigans is an unfortunately common part of cryptozoology. Remember the witless wonders, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton? In 2008, they claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods and bagged one. Their story went that they dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer. They released their story and a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, the brazen trio held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a costume with added animal guts. To this day, I cannot fathom what they thought would happen with this swindle. It was just one bamboozle in a long line of cryptid counterfeits that continues to today.

Before the Georgia Bigfoot hoax, there was the Minnesota Iceman. Exhibited as a real creature by Frank Hansen, the iceman was a latex apeman model frozen in a block of ice. It fooled the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who examined the specimen (still encased in ice, of course). Heuvelmans wrote about it, believing it to be a real hominid carcass. I suspect Dyer and Witton got their idea from Hansen. But Dyer wasn’t done with his antics.

In 2014, Dyer claimed that he had “really” shot a creature in Texas. “Hank” was a hoaxed model made of latex, foam and camel hair that he and a partner toured around the US, charging people $10 a head to see the gaff. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time. But people still wanted to see it.

Dack and the Fake “Snake”

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claimed to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains of New York in October 2024. A cobbled-together website at BigfootsRemains.com showed the body and a promotional Press Release of detailed nonsense describing the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”.

“Snake the Bigfoot Hunter”, in his Day Glo duds, gave media interviews about how he came across the carcass by following a rotting smell after which he and a few buddies dragged the thing out of the woods. Borrowing from Hank and the previous infamous fakes, Snake put the creature on display at the New York State Fair in 2025.

There is nothing about this that was remotely believable. But it pissed off infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker enough for him to crow about it:

Not long after the publicity ramped up about Dack, Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather lackluster visual/performance artist who was known for hoaxing Bigfoot before. Even though Whiteley is making it all up, it’s transparent what’s going on here to anyone who can do an Internet search.

The Dack stunt was a success. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so of the populace that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as a joke. I’m guessing that most of the visitors queuing to see Dack are playing into the fun. Though, I would not be surprised if Whiteley ends up being punched in the face by a member of the Bigfoot Standom.

Snake’s performance hasn’t ended. He has posted a “DNA report” of the remains from the “Cornell University Bio DNA lab”. On the radio show Into the Parabnormal in May 2026, “Snake” explained that an old girlfriend worked at the Cornell lab with whom he was able to get back in touch and persuade her to do the testing. He defers to scientists from Japan as experts who authenticated the report. The name on the report, “Clinical Supervisor, Misty Pichard, PhD” does not appear to be a real person anywhere on the Internet, let alone at Cornell. The report looks like an AI-composited document, sounding just sciencey enough to impress the curious.

“Snake” Whiteley knows that controversy gets attention. Arguing about a real or fake story generates more clicks than a non-ambiguous report. (The news stations also know this. In reference to the Ohio Bigfoot flap in the spring, one reporter said it was the most online engagement they ever got. That’s the goal now.) Working in his favor are the recent Bigfoot stories from Ohio and the overall rise in Bigfoot/cryptid pop interest in 2026. He’s also keyed into the PGF kerfuffle and even picked up a religious theme with his new “Bigfoot Bible” book (self-published). It’s a transparent grift that is making Finding Bigfooters like Matt Moneymaker seethe as they perform their role as serious and ethical researchers appalled at this attention-grabbing stunt.

The history of Bigfoot hoaxes (and cryptid hoaxes in general) is very long. P.T. Barnum gave us one of the Cardiff Giants (actually a replica of the original fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag is a top pop cryptid with his own store and a traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that the humbug is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral, and common, part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have laid the foundation for the popularity of many cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about those creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Dack is just another one of those events counting on people’s wish to believe, to pull your leg for a laugh, or to see how much they can get away with. Whiteley has done the work to construct his alternate reality, using ideas from past hoaxes, and sciencey-sounding words, to manufacture a production that is entertaining to some. It’s not original or well-done, but it is art.

Step right up for the latest in Bigfoot hoaxes

Once again, someone has put on display a hairy man prop as a real Bigfoot and we can admire or cringe at the art of the hoax.

Parade of hairy hoaxes

Bigfoot hoaxing shenanigans is an unfortunately common part of cryptozoology. Remember the witless wonders, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton? In 2008, they claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods and bagged one. Their story went that they dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer. They released their story and a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, the brazen trio held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a costume with added animal guts. To this day, I cannot fathom what they thought would happen with this swindle. It was just one bamboozle in a long line of cryptid counterfeits that continues to today.

Before the Georgia Bigfoot hoax, there was the Minnesota Iceman. Exhibited as a real creature by Frank Hansen, the iceman was a latex apeman model frozen in a block of ice. It fooled the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who examined the specimen (still encased in ice, of course). Heuvelmans wrote about it, believing it to be a real hominid carcass. I suspect Dyer and Witton got their idea from Hansen. But Dyer wasn’t done with his antics.

In 2014, Dyer claimed that he had “really” shot a creature in Texas. “Hank” was a hoaxed model made of latex, foam and camel hair that he and a partner toured around the US, charging people $10 a head to see the gaff. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time. But people still wanted to see it.

Dack and the Fake “Snake”

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claimed to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains of New York in October 2024. A cobbled-together website at BigfootsRemains.com showed the body and a promotional Press Release of detailed nonsense describing the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”.

“Snake the Bigfoot Hunter”, in his Day Glo duds, gave media interviews about how he came across the carcass by following a rotting smell after which he and a few buddies dragged the thing out of the woods. Borrowing from Hank and the previous infamous fakes, Snake put the creature on display at the New York State Fair in 2025.

There is nothing about this that was remotely believable. But it pissed off infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker enough for him to crow about it:

Not long after the publicity ramped up about Dack, Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather lackluster visual/performance artist who was known for hoaxing Bigfoot before. Even though Whiteley is making it all up, it’s transparent what’s going on here to anyone who can do an Internet search.

The Dack stunt was a success. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so of the populace that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as a joke. I’m guessing that most of the visitors queuing to see Dack are playing into the fun. Though, I would not be surprised if Whiteley ends up being punched in the face by a member of the Bigfoot Standom.

Snake’s performance hasn’t ended. He has posted a “DNA report” of the remains from the “Cornell University Bio DNA lab”. On the radio show Into the Parabnormal in May 2026, “Snake” explained that an old girlfriend worked at the Cornell lab with whom he was able to get back in touch and persuade her to do the testing. He defers to scientists from Japan as experts who authenticated the report. The name on the report, “Clinical Supervisor, Misty Pichard, PhD” does not appear to be a real person anywhere on the Internet, let alone at Cornell. The report looks like an AI-composited document, sounding just sciencey enough to impress the curious.

“Snake” Whiteley knows that controversy gets attention. Arguing about a real or fake story generates more clicks than a non-ambiguous report. (The news stations also know this. In reference to the Ohio Bigfoot flap in the spring, one reporter said it was the most online engagement they ever got. That’s the goal now.) Working in his favor are the recent Bigfoot stories from Ohio and the overall rise in Bigfoot/cryptid pop interest in 2026. He’s also keyed into the PGF kerfuffle and even picked up a religious theme with his new “Bigfoot Bible” book (self-published). It’s a transparent grift that is making Finding Bigfooters like Matt Moneymaker seethe as they perform their role as serious and ethical researchers appalled at this attention-grabbing stunt.

The history of Bigfoot hoaxes (and cryptid hoaxes in general) is very long. P.T. Barnum gave us one of the Cardiff Giants (actually a replica of the original fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag is a top pop cryptid with his own store and a traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that the humbug is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral, and common, part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have laid the foundation for the popularity of many cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about those creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Dack is just another one of those events counting on people’s wish to believe, to pull your leg for a laugh, or to see how much they can get away with. Whiteley has done the work to construct his alternate reality, using ideas from past hoaxes, and sciencey-sounding words, to manufacture a production that is entertaining to some. It’s not original or well-done, but it is art.

Step right up for the latest in Bigfoot hoaxes

Once again, someone has put on display a hairy man prop as a real Bigfoot and we can admire or cringe at the art of the hoax.

Parade of hairy hoaxes

Bigfoot hoaxing shenanigans is an unfortunately common part of cryptozoology. Remember the witless wonders, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton? In 2008, they claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods and bagged one. Their story went that they dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer. They released their story and a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, the brazen trio held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a costume with added animal guts. To this day, I cannot fathom what they thought would happen with this swindle. It was just one bamboozle in a long line of cryptid counterfeits that continues to today.

Before the Georgia Bigfoot hoax, there was the Minnesota Iceman. Exhibited as a real creature by Frank Hansen, the iceman was a latex apeman model frozen in a block of ice. It fooled the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who examined the specimen (still encased in ice, of course). Heuvelmans wrote about it, believing it to be a real hominid carcass. I suspect Dyer and Witton got their idea from Hansen. But Dyer wasn’t done with his antics.

In 2014, Dyer claimed that he had “really” shot a creature in Texas. “Hank” was a hoaxed model made of latex, foam and camel hair that he and a partner toured around the US, charging people $10 a head to see the gaff. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time. But people still wanted to see it.

Dack and the Fake “Snake”

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claimed to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains of New York in October 2024. A cobbled-together website at BigfootsRemains.com showed the body and a promotional Press Release of detailed nonsense describing the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”.

“Snake the Bigfoot Hunter”, in his Day Glo duds, gave media interviews about how he came across the carcass by following a rotting smell after which he and a few buddies dragged the thing out of the woods. Borrowing from Hank and the previous infamous fakes, Snake put the creature on display at the New York State Fair in 2025.

There is nothing about this that was remotely believable. But it pissed off infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker enough for him to crow about it:

Not long after the publicity ramped up about Dack, Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather lackluster visual/performance artist who was known for hoaxing Bigfoot before. Even though Whiteley is making it all up, it’s transparent what’s going on here to anyone who can do an Internet search.

The Dack stunt was a success. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so of the populace that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as a joke. I’m guessing that most of the visitors queuing to see Dack are playing into the fun. Though, I would not be surprised if Whiteley ends up being punched in the face by a member of the Bigfoot Standom.

Snake’s performance hasn’t ended. He has posted a “DNA report” of the remains from the “Cornell University Bio DNA lab”. On the radio show Into the Parabnormal in May 2026, “Snake” explained that an old girlfriend worked at the Cornell lab with whom he was able to get back in touch and persuade her to do the testing. He defers to scientists from Japan as experts who authenticated the report. The name on the report, “Clinical Supervisor, Misty Pichard, PhD” does not appear to be a real person anywhere on the Internet, let alone at Cornell. The report looks like an AI-composited document, sounding just sciencey enough to impress the curious.

“Snake” Whiteley knows that controversy gets attention. Arguing about a real or fake story generates more clicks than a non-ambiguous report. (The news stations also know this. In reference to the Ohio Bigfoot flap in the spring, one reporter said it was the most online engagement they ever got. That’s the goal now.) Working in his favor are the recent Bigfoot stories from Ohio and the overall rise in Bigfoot/cryptid pop interest in 2026. He’s also keyed into the PGF kerfuffle and even picked up a religious theme with his new “Bigfoot Bible” book (self-published). It’s a transparent grift that is making Finding Bigfooters like Matt Moneymaker seethe as they perform their role as serious and ethical researchers appalled at this attention-grabbing stunt.

The history of Bigfoot hoaxes (and cryptid hoaxes in general) is very long. P.T. Barnum gave us one of the Cardiff Giants (actually a replica of the original fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag is a top pop cryptid with his own store and a traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that the humbug is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral, and common, part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have laid the foundation for the popularity of many cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about those creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Dack is just another one of those events counting on people’s wish to believe, to pull your leg for a laugh, or to see how much they can get away with. Whiteley has done the work to construct his alternate reality, using ideas from past hoaxes, and sciencey-sounding words, to manufacture a production that is entertaining to some. It’s not original or well-done, but it is art.

Step right up for the latest in Bigfoot hoaxes

Once again, someone has put on display a hairy man prop as a real Bigfoot and we can admire or cringe at the art of the hoax.

Parade of hairy hoaxes

Bigfoot hoaxing shenanigans is an unfortunately common part of cryptozoology. Remember the witless wonders, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton? In 2008, they claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods and bagged one. Their story went that they dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer. They released their story and a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, the brazen trio held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a costume with added animal guts. To this day, I cannot fathom what they thought would happen with this swindle. It was just one bamboozle in a long line of cryptid counterfeits that continues to today.

Before the Georgia Bigfoot hoax, there was the Minnesota Iceman. Exhibited as a real creature by Frank Hansen, the iceman was a latex apeman model frozen in a block of ice. It fooled the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who examined the specimen (still encased in ice, of course). Heuvelmans wrote about it, believing it to be a real hominid carcass. I suspect Dyer and Witton got their idea from Hansen. But Dyer wasn’t done with his antics.

In 2014, Dyer claimed that he had “really” shot a creature in Texas. “Hank” was a hoaxed model made of latex, foam and camel hair that he and a partner toured around the US, charging people $10 a head to see the gaff. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time. But people still wanted to see it.

Dack and the Fake “Snake”

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claimed to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains of New York in October 2024. A cobbled-together website at BigfootsRemains.com showed the body and a promotional Press Release of detailed nonsense describing the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”.

“Snake the Bigfoot Hunter”, in his Day Glo duds, gave media interviews about how he came across the carcass by following a rotting smell after which he and a few buddies dragged the thing out of the woods. Borrowing from Hank and the previous infamous fakes, Snake put the creature on display at the New York State Fair in 2025.

There is nothing about this that was remotely believable. But it pissed off infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker enough for him to crow about it:

Not long after the publicity ramped up about Dack, Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather lackluster visual/performance artist who was known for hoaxing Bigfoot before. Even though Whiteley is making it all up, it’s transparent what’s going on here to anyone who can do an Internet search.

The Dack stunt was a success. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so of the populace that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as a joke. I’m guessing that most of the visitors queuing to see Dack are playing into the fun. Though, I would not be surprised if Whiteley ends up being punched in the face by a member of the Bigfoot Standom.

Snake’s performance hasn’t ended. He has posted a “DNA report” of the remains from the “Cornell University Bio DNA lab”. On the radio show Into the Parabnormal in May 2026, “Snake” explained that an old girlfriend worked at the Cornell lab with whom he was able to get back in touch and persuade her to do the testing. He defers to scientists from Japan as experts who authenticated the report. The name on the report, “Clinical Supervisor, Misty Pichard, PhD” does not appear to be a real person anywhere on the Internet, let alone at Cornell. The report looks like an AI-composited document, sounding just sciencey enough to impress the curious.

“Snake” Whiteley knows that controversy gets attention. Arguing about a real or fake story generates more clicks than a non-ambiguous report. (The news stations also know this. In reference to the Ohio Bigfoot flap in the spring, one reporter said it was the most online engagement they ever got. That’s the goal now.) Working in his favor are the recent Bigfoot stories from Ohio and the overall rise in Bigfoot/cryptid pop interest in 2026. He’s also keyed into the PGF kerfuffle and even picked up a religious theme with his new “Bigfoot Bible” book (self-published). It’s a transparent grift that is making Finding Bigfooters like Matt Moneymaker seethe as they perform their role as serious and ethical researchers appalled at this attention-grabbing stunt.

The history of Bigfoot hoaxes (and cryptid hoaxes in general) is very long. P.T. Barnum gave us one of the Cardiff Giants (actually a replica of the original fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag is a top pop cryptid with his own store and a traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that the humbug is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral, and common, part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have laid the foundation for the popularity of many cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about those creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Dack is just another one of those events counting on people’s wish to believe, to pull your leg for a laugh, or to see how much they can get away with. Whiteley has done the work to construct his alternate reality, using ideas from past hoaxes, and sciencey-sounding words, to manufacture a production that is entertaining to some. It’s not original or well-done, but it is art.

Step right up for the latest in Bigfoot hoaxes

Once again, someone has put on display a hairy man prop as a real Bigfoot and we can admire or cringe at the art of the hoax.

Parade of hairy hoaxes

Bigfoot hoaxing shenanigans is an unfortunately common part of cryptozoology. Remember the witless wonders, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton? In 2008, they claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods and bagged one. Their story went that they dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer. They released their story and a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, the brazen trio held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a costume with added animal guts. To this day, I cannot fathom what they thought would happen with this swindle. It was just one bamboozle in a long line of cryptid counterfeits that continues to today.

Before the Georgia Bigfoot hoax, there was the Minnesota Iceman. Exhibited as a real creature by Frank Hansen, the iceman was a latex apeman model frozen in a block of ice. It fooled the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who examined the specimen (still encased in ice, of course). Heuvelmans wrote about it, believing it to be a real hominid carcass. I suspect Dyer and Witton got their idea from Hansen. But Dyer wasn’t done with his antics.

In 2014, Dyer claimed that he had “really” shot a creature in Texas. “Hank” was a hoaxed model made of latex, foam and camel hair that he and a partner toured around the US, charging people $10 a head to see the gaff. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time. But people still wanted to see it.

Dack and the Fake “Snake”

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claimed to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains of New York in October 2024. A cobbled-together website at BigfootsRemains.com showed the body and a promotional Press Release of detailed nonsense describing the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”.

“Snake the Bigfoot Hunter”, in his Day Glo duds, gave media interviews about how he came across the carcass by following a rotting smell after which he and a few buddies dragged the thing out of the woods. Borrowing from Hank and the previous infamous fakes, Snake put the creature on display at the New York State Fair in 2025.

There is nothing about this that was remotely believable. But it pissed off infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker enough for him to crow about it:

Not long after the publicity ramped up about Dack, Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather lackluster visual/performance artist who was known for hoaxing Bigfoot before. Even though Whiteley is making it all up, it’s transparent what’s going on here to anyone who can do an Internet search.

The Dack stunt was a success. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so of the populace that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as a joke. I’m guessing that most of the visitors queuing to see Dack are playing into the fun. Though, I would not be surprised if Whiteley ends up being punched in the face by a member of the Bigfoot Standom.

Snake’s performance hasn’t ended. He has posted a “DNA report” of the remains from the “Cornell University Bio DNA lab”. On the radio show Into the Parabnormal in May 2026, “Snake” explained that an old girlfriend worked at the Cornell lab with whom he was able to get back in touch and persuade her to do the testing. He defers to scientists from Japan as experts who authenticated the report. The name on the report, “Clinical Supervisor, Misty Pichard, PhD” does not appear to be a real person anywhere on the Internet, let alone at Cornell. The report looks like an AI-composited document, sounding just sciencey enough to impress the curious.

“Snake” Whiteley knows that controversy gets attention. Arguing about a real or fake story generates more clicks than a non-ambiguous report. (The news stations also know this. In reference to the Ohio Bigfoot flap in the spring, one reporter said it was the most online engagement they ever got. That’s the goal now.) Working in his favor are the recent Bigfoot stories from Ohio and the overall rise in Bigfoot/cryptid pop interest in 2026. He’s also keyed into the PGF kerfuffle and even picked up a religious theme with his new “Bigfoot Bible” book (self-published). It’s a transparent grift that is making Finding Bigfooters like Matt Moneymaker seethe as they perform their role as serious and ethical researchers appalled at this attention-grabbing stunt.

The history of Bigfoot hoaxes (and cryptid hoaxes in general) is very long. P.T. Barnum gave us one of the Cardiff Giants (actually a replica of the original fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag is a top pop cryptid with his own store and a traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that the humbug is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral, and common, part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have laid the foundation for the popularity of many cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about those creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Dack is just another one of those events counting on people’s wish to believe, to pull your leg for a laugh, or to see how much they can get away with. Whiteley has done the work to construct his alternate reality, using ideas from past hoaxes, and sciencey-sounding words, to manufacture a production that is entertaining to some. It’s not original or well-done, but it is art.

Once again, someone has rather uncreatively posed a hairy man prop as an amazing find and put it on display for all the rubes to pay to see.

See UPDATE below the story.

This time, it’s at the New York State Fair.

Dack

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claims to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains in October 2024. A hastily cobbled together website at BigfootRemains.com shows the body. The site also contains a Press Release which details a trail of nonsense that describes the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”. There is sciencey fluff about his technique and the DNA results. He pretends to do a news interview. He wants money for more research. It’s all laughably bad.

There are many reports of Bigfoot in the New York mountains, so the basis for the claim was not extreme (as cryptid claims go). This is very much a pop cryptid example as the story is more about making bank than making history with a scientific find. There is nothing about this that is remotely believable; it’s designed for entertainment.

While I haven’t sought out the Bigfoot community response, I suspect it is overwhelmingly negative. They are pretty serious folk. Oh wait… this just floated in from infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker with the BRFO:

Oh, he’s pissed, poor thing.

It’s likely there will be a few who are so gullible that they think this is real. Nevertheless, it’s getting some publicity so I bet it will be popular. For my own little side show, I hastily cobbled together a history of related cryptid gaffs.

Hank

Before there was Dack, there was Hank. In fact, Dack looks a lot like Hank. Maybe they are related. Hank was a hoaxed body created by Rick Dyer in 2014 made of of latex, foam and camel hair that Dyer and a partner toured around the US charging people $10 a head. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. Dyer had claimed that he had shot the creature in Texas. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time.

Georgia Bigfoot Body

Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods in 2008. They dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer, releasing a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, they held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a suit with added animal guts. This is the episode Moneymaker cites in his Facebook rant screenshotted above. I think these chuckleheads were trying to pull off another Minnesota Iceman caper, but they were too witless.

Minnesota Iceman

These hoaxes followed a pretty successful gaff that is still discussed today: the Minnesota Iceman. Originally known as the Siberskoye Creature, Frank D. Hansen’s specimen of a hairy ape man encased in ice, made the rounds in the US and Canada in 1968. Hansen’s tale of how he came to have the creature changed repeatedly. It had been found floating as a block of ice off the coast of Siberia (if this sounds like a Scooby Doo episode, that’s because it was), or it shot in Vietnam and transferred to the US, or Hansen shot it himself in Minnesota. The Iceman garnered attention from the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who visited Hansen’s specimen (still encased in ice) and came away believing it was a real hominid carcass. Heuvelmans even wrote about it as real. The story of the Iceman is wild. Hit the TetZoo site for more. The conclusion is, you guessed it, it was a hoax – a latex prop made to appear like it had been shot in the eye. Creative! The ice did the job of obscuring the details. Clever! However, when government officials came sniffing around, Hansen stated the real body had been retrieved by the owner and he was using a replica prop instead. Convenient.

Step Right Up

There are many other examples of cryptid hoaxes – constructed, dead, or alive – that have been displayed in public for a fee. P.T. Barnum was great at this. He gave us the Cardiff Giant (actually a replica of a fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag has his own store and traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

The Jersey Devil, known in 1785 as the Leeds Devil, was advertised as being live on exhibit at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Museum for 10-cents admission. The “devil” was a cruelly concocted hoax where a kangaroo was painted with fake wings and prodded to jump around. The stunt didn’t save the sad excuse for a museum, which closed.

I’m sure I’m missing some examples. What we are seeing here is the art of the hoax. The audience always forgets that real discoveries aren’t made this way. They want to hope, and get a glimpse of something fascinating. Instead, they either get a rude awakening or they laugh at the joke that they willingly fell for. Maybe that’s worth a dime. But not much more.

Update #1

Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls has discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather awful visual artist. So, as suspected, this is a stunt. It’s unclear if Whiteley will show up with the display at the fair, which starts tomorrow. Currently tickets are still selling via Eventbrite.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that this is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral and common part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have built the foundation of several cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about the creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Update #2

Seems like the stunt was a success. He did show up at the fair and continues his schtick. People seem to like it. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as nonsense. I’m guessing that most of the visitors here are playing into the fun. But, there may be a spark, a feeling that this is what Bigfoot would really look like. Because we have no body, we build the description of cryptids based on media and art. The template of Bigfoot was from the Patterson Gimlin film. “Dack” is built from that template from nearly 60 years ago. Nessie’s image was built on the hoaxed Surgeon’s photo. Media depictions play a massive role in how we envision our most beloved cryptids.

I don’t know if Whiteley will make much net profit on this event, but he has succeeded in establishing himself as a B-grade jackass. He’s likely revelling in all this attention, succeeding where Rick Dyer failed.

See more on HOAXES.

For the Patterson Gimlin Film hoax, see here.

Bigfoot remains a moneymaking hoax

Once again, someone has rather uncreatively posed a hairy man prop as an amazing find and put it on display for all the rubes to pay to see.

This time, it’s at the New York State Fair.

Dack

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claims to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains in October 2024. A hastily cobbled together website at BigfootRemains.com shows the body. The site also contains a Press Release which details a trail of nonsense that describes the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”. There is sciencey fluff about his technique and the DNA results. He pretends to do a news interview. He wants money for more research. It’s all laughably bad.

There are many reports of Bigfoot in the New York mountains, so the basis for the claim was not extreme (as cryptid claims go). This is very much a pop cryptid example as the story is more about making bank than making history with a scientific find. There is nothing about this that is remotely believable; it’s designed for entertainment.

While I haven’t sought out the Bigfoot community response, I suspect it is overwhelmingly negative. They are pretty serious folk. Oh wait… this just floated in from infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker with the BRFO:

Oh, he’s pissed, poor thing.

It’s likely there will be a few who are so gullible that they think this is real. Nevertheless, it’s getting some publicity so I bet it will be popular. For my own little side show, I hastily cobbled together a history of related cryptid gaffs.

Hank

Before there was Dack, there was Hank. In fact, Dack looks a lot like Hank. Maybe they are related. Hank was a hoaxed body created by Rick Dyer in 2014 made of of latex, foam and camel hair that Dyer and a partner toured around the US charging people $10 a head. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. Dyer had claimed that he had shot the creature in Texas. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time.

Georgia Bigfoot Body

Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods in 2008. They dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer, releasing a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, they held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a suit with added animal guts. This is the episode Moneymaker cites in his Facebook rant screenshotted above. I think these chuckleheads were trying to pull off another Minnesota Iceman caper, but they were too witless.

Minnesota Iceman

These hoaxes followed a pretty successful gaff that is still discussed today: the Minnesota Iceman. Originally known as the Siberskoye Creature, Frank D. Hansen’s specimen of a hairy ape man encased in ice, made the rounds in the US and Canada in 1968. Hansen’s tale of how he came to have the creature changed repeatedly. It had been found floating as a block of ice off the coast of Siberia (if this sounds like a Scooby Doo episode, that’s because it was), or it shot in Vietnam and transferred to the US, or Hansen shot it himself in Minnesota. The Iceman garnered attention from the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who visited Hansen’s specimen (still encased in ice) and came away believing it was a real hominid carcass. Heuvelmans even wrote about it as real. The story of the Iceman is wild. Hit the TetZoo site for more. The conclusion is, you guessed it, it was a hoax – a latex prop made to appear like it had been shot in the eye. Creative! The ice did the job of obscuring the details. Clever! However, when government officials came sniffing around, Hansen stated the real body had been retrieved by the owner and he was using a replica prop instead. Convenient.

Step Right Up

There are many other examples of cryptid hoaxes – constructed, dead, or alive – that have been displayed in public for a fee. P.T. Barnum was great at this. He gave us the Cardiff Giant (actually a replica of a fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag has his own store and traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

The Jersey Devil, known in 1785 as the Leeds Devil, was advertised as being live on exhibit at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Museum for 10-cents admission. The “devil” was a cruelly concocted hoax where a kangaroo was painted with fake wings and prodded to jump around. The stunt didn’t save the sad excuse for a museum, which closed.

I’m sure I’m missing some examples. What we are seeing here is the art of the hoax. The audience always forgets that real discoveries aren’t made this way. They want to hope, and get a glimpse of something fascinating. Instead, they either get a rude awakening or they laugh at the joke that they willingly fell for. Maybe that’s worth a dime. But not much more.

#Adirondacks #Bigfoot #BigfootHoax #cryptidHoax #fakeBigfoot #GeorgiaBigfootHoax #hoax #MinnesotaIceman #NewYorkStateFair #RickDyer #TravelingHoaxes

https://sharonahill.com/?p=10164

Once again, someone has rather uncreatively posed a hairy man prop as an amazing find and put it on display for all the rubes to pay to see.

See UPDATE below the story.

This time, it’s at the New York State Fair.

Dack

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claims to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains in October 2024. A hastily cobbled together website at BigfootRemains.com shows the body. The site also contains a Press Release which details a trail of nonsense that describes the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”. There is sciencey fluff about his technique and the DNA results. He pretends to do a news interview. He wants money for more research. It’s all laughably bad.

There are many reports of Bigfoot in the New York mountains, so the basis for the claim was not extreme (as cryptid claims go). This is very much a pop cryptid example as the story is more about making bank than making history with a scientific find. There is nothing about this that is remotely believable; it’s designed for entertainment.

While I haven’t sought out the Bigfoot community response, I suspect it is overwhelmingly negative. They are pretty serious folk. Oh wait… this just floated in from infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker with the BRFO:

Oh, he’s pissed, poor thing.

It’s likely there will be a few who are so gullible that they think this is real. Nevertheless, it’s getting some publicity so I bet it will be popular. For my own little side show, I hastily cobbled together a history of related cryptid gaffs.

Hank

Before there was Dack, there was Hank. In fact, Dack looks a lot like Hank. Maybe they are related. Hank was a hoaxed body created by Rick Dyer in 2014 made of of latex, foam and camel hair that Dyer and a partner toured around the US charging people $10 a head. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. Dyer had claimed that he had shot the creature in Texas. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time.

Georgia Bigfoot Body

Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods in 2008. They dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer, releasing a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, they held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a suit with added animal guts. This is the episode Moneymaker cites in his Facebook rant screenshotted above. I think these chuckleheads were trying to pull off another Minnesota Iceman caper, but they were too witless.

Minnesota Iceman

These hoaxes followed a pretty successful gaff that is still discussed today: the Minnesota Iceman. Originally known as the Siberskoye Creature, Frank D. Hansen’s specimen of a hairy ape man encased in ice, made the rounds in the US and Canada in 1968. Hansen’s tale of how he came to have the creature changed repeatedly. It had been found floating as a block of ice off the coast of Siberia (if this sounds like a Scooby Doo episode, that’s because it was), or it shot in Vietnam and transferred to the US, or Hansen shot it himself in Minnesota. The Iceman garnered attention from the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who visited Hansen’s specimen (still encased in ice) and came away believing it was a real hominid carcass. Heuvelmans even wrote about it as real. The story of the Iceman is wild. Hit the TetZoo site for more. The conclusion is, you guessed it, it was a hoax – a latex prop made to appear like it had been shot in the eye. Creative! The ice did the job of obscuring the details. Clever! However, when government officials came sniffing around, Hansen stated the real body had been retrieved by the owner and he was using a replica prop instead. Convenient.

Step Right Up

There are many other examples of cryptid hoaxes – constructed, dead, or alive – that have been displayed in public for a fee. P.T. Barnum was great at this. He gave us the Cardiff Giant (actually a replica of a fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag has his own store and traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

The Jersey Devil, known in 1785 as the Leeds Devil, was advertised as being live on exhibit at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Museum for 10-cents admission. The “devil” was a cruelly concocted hoax where a kangaroo was painted with fake wings and prodded to jump around. The stunt didn’t save the sad excuse for a museum, which closed.

I’m sure I’m missing some examples. What we are seeing here is the art of the hoax. The audience always forgets that real discoveries aren’t made this way. They want to hope, and get a glimpse of something fascinating. Instead, they either get a rude awakening or they laugh at the joke that they willingly fell for. Maybe that’s worth a dime. But not much more.

Update #1

Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls has discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather awful visual artist. So, as suspected, this is a stunt. It’s unclear if Whiteley will show up with the display at the fair, which starts tomorrow. Currently tickets are still selling via Eventbrite.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that this is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral and common part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have built the foundation of several cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about the creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Update #2

Seems like the stunt was a success. He did show up at the fair and continues his schtick. People seem to like it. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as nonsense. I’m guessing that most of the visitors here are playing into the fun. But, there may be a spark, a feeling that this is what Bigfoot would really look like. Because we have no body, we build the description of cryptids based on media and art. The template of Bigfoot was from the Patterson Gimlin film. “Dack” is built from that template from nearly 60 years ago. Nessie’s image was built on the hoaxed Surgeon’s photo. Media depictions play a massive role in how we envision our most beloved cryptids.

I don’t know if Whiteley will make much net profit on this event, but he has succeeded in establishing himself as a B-grade jackass. He’s likely revelling in all this attention, succeeding where Rick Dyer failed.

See more on HOAXES.

For the Patterson Gimlin Film hoax, see here.

Once again, someone has rather uncreatively posed a hairy man prop as an amazing find and put it on display for all the rubes to pay to see.

See UPDATE below the story.

This time, it’s at the New York State Fair.

Dack

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claims to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains in October 2024. A hastily cobbled together website at BigfootRemains.com shows the body. The site also contains a Press Release which details a trail of nonsense that describes the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”. There is sciencey fluff about his technique and the DNA results. He pretends to do a news interview. He wants money for more research. It’s all laughably bad.

There are many reports of Bigfoot in the New York mountains, so the basis for the claim was not extreme (as cryptid claims go). This is very much a pop cryptid example as the story is more about making bank than making history with a scientific find. There is nothing about this that is remotely believable; it’s designed for entertainment.

While I haven’t sought out the Bigfoot community response, I suspect it is overwhelmingly negative. They are pretty serious folk. Oh wait… this just floated in from infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker with the BRFO:

Oh, he’s pissed, poor thing.

It’s likely there will be a few who are so gullible that they think this is real. Nevertheless, it’s getting some publicity so I bet it will be popular. For my own little side show, I hastily cobbled together a history of related cryptid gaffs.

Hank

Before there was Dack, there was Hank. In fact, Dack looks a lot like Hank. Maybe they are related. Hank was a hoaxed body created by Rick Dyer in 2014 made of of latex, foam and camel hair that Dyer and a partner toured around the US charging people $10 a head. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. Dyer had claimed that he had shot the creature in Texas. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time.

Georgia Bigfoot Body

Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods in 2008. They dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer, releasing a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, they held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a suit with added animal guts. This is the episode Moneymaker cites in his Facebook rant screenshotted above. I think these chuckleheads were trying to pull off another Minnesota Iceman caper, but they were too witless.

Minnesota Iceman

These hoaxes followed a pretty successful gaff that is still discussed today: the Minnesota Iceman. Originally known as the Siberskoye Creature, Frank D. Hansen’s specimen of a hairy ape man encased in ice, made the rounds in the US and Canada in 1968. Hansen’s tale of how he came to have the creature changed repeatedly. It had been found floating as a block of ice off the coast of Siberia (if this sounds like a Scooby Doo episode, that’s because it was), or it shot in Vietnam and transferred to the US, or Hansen shot it himself in Minnesota. The Iceman garnered attention from the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who visited Hansen’s specimen (still encased in ice) and came away believing it was a real hominid carcass. Heuvelmans even wrote about it as real. The story of the Iceman is wild. Hit the TetZoo site for more. The conclusion is, you guessed it, it was a hoax – a latex prop made to appear like it had been shot in the eye. Creative! The ice did the job of obscuring the details. Clever! However, when government officials came sniffing around, Hansen stated the real body had been retrieved by the owner and he was using a replica prop instead. Convenient.

Step Right Up

There are many other examples of cryptid hoaxes – constructed, dead, or alive – that have been displayed in public for a fee. P.T. Barnum was great at this. He gave us the Cardiff Giant (actually a replica of a fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag has his own store and traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

The Jersey Devil, known in 1785 as the Leeds Devil, was advertised as being live on exhibit at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Museum for 10-cents admission. The “devil” was a cruelly concocted hoax where a kangaroo was painted with fake wings and prodded to jump around. The stunt didn’t save the sad excuse for a museum, which closed.

I’m sure I’m missing some examples. What we are seeing here is the art of the hoax. The audience always forgets that real discoveries aren’t made this way. They want to hope, and get a glimpse of something fascinating. Instead, they either get a rude awakening or they laugh at the joke that they willingly fell for. Maybe that’s worth a dime. But not much more.

Update #1

Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls has discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather awful visual artist. So, as suspected, this is a stunt. It’s unclear if Whiteley will show up with the display at the fair, which starts tomorrow. Currently tickets are still selling via Eventbrite.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that this is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral and common part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have built the foundation of several cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about the creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Update #2

Seems like the stunt was a success. He did show up at the fair and continues his schtick. People seem to like it. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as nonsense. I’m guessing that most of the visitors here are playing into the fun. But, there may be a spark, a feeling that this is what Bigfoot would really look like. Because we have no body, we build the description of cryptids based on media and art. The template of Bigfoot was from the Patterson Gimlin film. “Dack” is built from that template from nearly 60 years ago. Nessie’s image was built on the hoaxed Surgeon’s photo. Media depictions play a massive role in how we envision our most beloved cryptids.

I don’t know if Whiteley will make much net profit on this event, but he has succeeded in establishing himself as a B-grade jackass. He’s likely revelling in all this attention, succeeding where Rick Dyer failed.

See more on HOAXES.

For the Patterson Gimlin Film hoax, see here.

Once again, someone has rather uncreatively posed a hairy man prop as an amazing find and put it on display for all the rubes to pay to see.

See UPDATE below the story.

This time, it’s at the New York State Fair.

Dack

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claims to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains in October 2024. A hastily cobbled together website at BigfootRemains.com shows the body. The site also contains a Press Release which details a trail of nonsense that describes the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”. There is sciencey fluff about his technique and the DNA results. He pretends to do a news interview. He wants money for more research. It’s all laughably bad.

There are many reports of Bigfoot in the New York mountains, so the basis for the claim was not extreme (as cryptid claims go). This is very much a pop cryptid example as the story is more about making bank than making history with a scientific find. There is nothing about this that is remotely believable; it’s designed for entertainment.

While I haven’t sought out the Bigfoot community response, I suspect it is overwhelmingly negative. They are pretty serious folk. Oh wait… this just floated in from infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker with the BRFO:

Oh, he’s pissed, poor thing.

It’s likely there will be a few who are so gullible that they think this is real. Nevertheless, it’s getting some publicity so I bet it will be popular. For my own little side show, I hastily cobbled together a history of related cryptid gaffs.

Hank

Before there was Dack, there was Hank. In fact, Dack looks a lot like Hank. Maybe they are related. Hank was a hoaxed body created by Rick Dyer in 2014 made of of latex, foam and camel hair that Dyer and a partner toured around the US charging people $10 a head. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. Dyer had claimed that he had shot the creature in Texas. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time.

Georgia Bigfoot Body

Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods in 2008. They dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer, releasing a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, they held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a suit with added animal guts. This is the episode Moneymaker cites in his Facebook rant screenshotted above. I think these chuckleheads were trying to pull off another Minnesota Iceman caper, but they were too witless.

Minnesota Iceman

These hoaxes followed a pretty successful gaff that is still discussed today: the Minnesota Iceman. Originally known as the Siberskoye Creature, Frank D. Hansen’s specimen of a hairy ape man encased in ice, made the rounds in the US and Canada in 1968. Hansen’s tale of how he came to have the creature changed repeatedly. It had been found floating as a block of ice off the coast of Siberia (if this sounds like a Scooby Doo episode, that’s because it was), or it shot in Vietnam and transferred to the US, or Hansen shot it himself in Minnesota. The Iceman garnered attention from the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who visited Hansen’s specimen (still encased in ice) and came away believing it was a real hominid carcass. Heuvelmans even wrote about it as real. The story of the Iceman is wild. Hit the TetZoo site for more. The conclusion is, you guessed it, it was a hoax – a latex prop made to appear like it had been shot in the eye. Creative! The ice did the job of obscuring the details. Clever! However, when government officials came sniffing around, Hansen stated the real body had been retrieved by the owner and he was using a replica prop instead. Convenient.

Step Right Up

There are many other examples of cryptid hoaxes – constructed, dead, or alive – that have been displayed in public for a fee. P.T. Barnum was great at this. He gave us the Cardiff Giant (actually a replica of a fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag has his own store and traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

The Jersey Devil, known in 1785 as the Leeds Devil, was advertised as being live on exhibit at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Museum for 10-cents admission. The “devil” was a cruelly concocted hoax where a kangaroo was painted with fake wings and prodded to jump around. The stunt didn’t save the sad excuse for a museum, which closed.

I’m sure I’m missing some examples. What we are seeing here is the art of the hoax. The audience always forgets that real discoveries aren’t made this way. They want to hope, and get a glimpse of something fascinating. Instead, they either get a rude awakening or they laugh at the joke that they willingly fell for. Maybe that’s worth a dime. But not much more.

Update #1

Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls has discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather awful visual artist. So, as suspected, this is a stunt. It’s unclear if Whiteley will show up with the display at the fair, which starts tomorrow. Currently tickets are still selling via Eventbrite.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that this is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral and common part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have built the foundation of several cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about the creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Update #2

Seems like the stunt was a success. He did show up at the fair and continues his schtick. People seem to like it. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as nonsense. I’m guessing that most of the visitors here are playing into the fun. But, there may be a spark, a feeling that this is what Bigfoot would really look like. Because we have no body, we build the description of cryptids based on media and art. The template of Bigfoot was from the Patterson Gimlin film. “Dack” is built from that template from nearly 60 years ago. Nessie’s image was built on the hoaxed Surgeon’s photo. Media depictions play a massive role in how we envision our most beloved cryptids.

I don’t know if Whiteley will make much net profit on this event, but he has succeeded in establishing himself as a B-grade jackass. He’s likely revelling in all this attention, succeeding where Rick Dyer failed.

See more on HOAXES.

For the Patterson Gimlin Film hoax, see here.

World UFO Day.

#ufos #ufo #aliens #alien #ufology #ufosighting #extraterrestrial #ufologia #ovnis #ovni #area #ufosightings #ancientaliens #aliensarereal #space #extraterrestrials #paranormal #alienabduction #ufofiles #uap #extraterrestre #universe #nasa #extraterrestres #ghosts #flyingsaucer #ufohunter #et #bigfoot #roswell

https://itsmostamazingindia.wordpress.com/2025/07/02/world-ufo-day/

The hunt for the giant squid and Bigfoot emphasizes different methods in the quest for elusive species formed by variations in scientific credibility and proof. #Bigfoot #giantsquid https://bigfootbeat.blog/post/780432282580385792/why-bigfoot-and-the-giant-squid-differ

Pop Cryptid Spectator 8

Welcome to the Pop Cryptid Spectator no. 8. This edition illustrates more examples of how cryptids are an integral part of culture, if you are in town, in the woods, on or offline.

In this edition:

• Bigfoot proposed as California’s official cryptid
• Monster Snap VR Game
• What is a “cryptoid”?
• Fakelore to folklore: The Rake

Bigfoot proposed as California’s official cryptid

The big(foot) news this week was the introduction of a bill in the California Assembly to name Bigfoot as an the official cryptid of California. On February 14, 2025, Chris Rogers (Democrat) proposed bill AB 666*:

Existing law establishes the state flag and the state’s emblems, including, among other things, the golden poppy as the official state flower and the California redwood as the official state tree.

This bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that would designate Bigfoot as the official state cryptid.

*Bigfoot could be the “mountain or wood devil” if you are predisposed to never seeing a coincidence.

Some people didn’t respond positively to the news, noticing that California has more important things to attend to right now and in the foreseeable future. But state legislators are overly fond of such memorial acts, and regularly waste time pushing them through. California already has 42 official state symbols. Why not another one? The symbolic gestures provide recognition and anchors the symbols to the state.

Rogers’ represents the Northern part of the state that is heavily associated with Bigfoot and benefits already from the link. Humboldt County includes Bluff Creek, the location of the infamous Patterson-Gimlin film from 1967, and nearby Willow Creek, home of huge Bigfoot Daze festival. Willow Creek was the place where Bigfoot supposedly made its historic entrance into American popular culture when in 1958, loggers found giant footprints that were reported in the local Humboldt Times, giving the unknown creature the name “Bigfoot”.

Therefore, it does make sense that Rogers’ would like to cement this notoriety. The effort clearly is intended to encourage tourism from those people who believe, or just really want to believe, the forest still hides a mysterious creature that, like some supernatural being, has remained hidden and magical. Rogers’ noted that Bigfoot “generates buzz and interest from outdoor enthusiasts,” more so than other cryptids. He’s not wrong.

Washington and Oregon, however, may have a beef about it, but there is no reason why Bigfoot can’t also be their official cryptid. Heck, Bigfoot or its relations have been reported spotted in every US state with the possible exception of Hawaii. Bigfoot is the top US, for sure.

More from SF Gate and from the SF Chronicle.

Monster Snap VR game

A new virtual reality game coming in 2026 promises to give you a chance to collect photo evidence of cryptids. Monster Snap maroons you in the Bermuda Triangle where mysterious secrets are hidden. (Gosh, this is SO OLD. But I guess having a bunch of mysterious secrets existing in a single named location is convenient.) You can also encounter Bigfoot and spot Nessie. For PC-VR and Meta Quest 2 & 3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYMAgt6k8q0

What is a “cryptoid”?

If you peruse online cryptid content, you may sometimes see the term “cryptoid”. It struck me as a possibly useful term to distinguish between sci-cryptids (those viewed with a zoological lens) and the fantastical or folkloric version of cryptids (such as mermaids, dragons, shapeshifters, jackalopes, etc.). So I took a look into where the term might have come from and how it’s used.

The suffix “-oid” means “similar to” or “likeness”, giving us words like “planetoid”, “humanoid” and “factoid”. It can also be a way to make an interesting derogatory word sometimes referring to a particular ideology or group of people as in “schizoid” or “skeptoid“. Or just a fun suffix for made up things like “graboid“.

According to Loren Coleman, whom I found had addressed the question of the difference between a cryptid and a cryptoid back in 2011, he seems to think it’s mostly a mistaken attempt to mean “cryptid”. In a way, “cryptoid” works when someone is intending a humorous or monstrous description of a mystery creature. But it will be confusing if not consistently used that way.

“Cryptoid phenomena” was a term used by Emile Boirac beginning around 1918 to refer to hidden psychic abilities. Later, it also comes up as the term “cryptoID”, which can ruin your search results. But there are a few books in the 2000s that intentionally use “cryptoid” as a humorous term (as with comics or monster-related art) or simply as a strange error by self-published writers who didn’t have an editor. (Worse than that, some even more careless will use “crypoids” [sic].) Unless it’s used in a more deliberate sense, it seems to be an indicator that the user isn’t well versed on “cryptids”.

Finallly, “Cryptoid” is an official trademarked name of a pyrethroid insecticide. (There’s the -oid again, meaning similar to the natural pesticide pyrethrum.) The trademark makes me jettison the nub of an idea to use the word to mean cryptid-like.

Hope you enjoyed this rather strange etymology lesson.

P.S. Remember the “noid“? Um, on second thought, avoid the noid.

Fakelore to folklore: The Rake

Cryptid Wiki explicitly rejects discussion on “creepypasta monsters such as slenderman, herobrine, the rake”. This is understandable as there is a flood of new creatures invented all the time. To include them would dilute the idea of cryptids. Creepypasta is related to digital transmission of fictional tales. CW also rejects outright fictional characters from books and films as well. While it’s reasonable to mark, say, Cthulhu as an inappropriate cryptid, there are many examples where it’s not easy to draw an objective line.

The Rake is the prime example of a creepypasta creature. The spark was set in motion on 4Chan and then the idea morphed from there. It was formalized, and given a fictional history, in a story from 2009 as a pale hairless humanoid, often spindly in appearance, with small sharp teeth, black voids as eyes, and an unnerving disjointed look, and highly agile way of moving on all fours.

The description and characteristics varied as the stories spread online. It was described similar to slenderman, without a defined face, watching in the background, often in suburban areas. Originally described as a “crawler”, it acquired the name “rake” a bit later and eventually was associated with shapeshifters and “fleshgaits”, as a generally unpleasant entity. It also is not that far from depictions of modern aliens. The lore has grown and evolved online and, as such, I currently can’t find a great resource for the Rake. As time goes on, you can see overlap and blending of creatures with similar features and stories (pale crawlers, skinwalker, wendigo, etc.), and these all diverge widely from the original tales. The rake continues to grow in popularity and is often listed as a cryptid.

A photo circulated widely in 2010 of a pale crawling creature framed as a “swamp monster” captured on a trail camera in Berwick, Louisiana. It was discussed (however seriously or not) as a real or hoaxed thing in the woods. At the time, my opinion was that it was a manipulated image using a digital model. In a short while, this picture became labeled as a rake and the story of the image in the swamp morphed into other tales as well.

A problem arises when creepypasta or “mythical” creatures are seen by people. Long ago, people swore to having real experiences with fairies and dragons. Today, we have many people attesting that they see werewolves (often in the form of dogmen). There is a popular suggestion that fictional beings are thought into existence; that is, since so many people hear about them and visualize them, they manifest themselves into our reality. This is also known as the tulpa origin of cryptids.

The fictional origins of creepypasta monsters can get lost if they are removed from their original context and are mistaken for genuine eyewitness stories. This video embedded below is a good rundown of the history of the rake, though I have not confirmed the details and dates. (They do sound right, but you might want to ignore most of the visuals.) Also, the title portrays the rake as the “first Internet cryptid” – eh, I’m not buying that as the chupacabra from 1992 and others since may more rightly deserves that title. It is a good explanation of why it’s can be difficult to differentiate the rake as a cryptid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x7k4hjDBwU

People claim to encounter the rake, even though it’s fiction. It is unclear if they are telling what they think is the truth or just playing along in a shared manufactured reality. The phenomenon of creepypasta creatures showing up in the real world seems similar to the true story of a made-up April Fools song on a Michigan radio station in 1987 that resulted in a wave of stories from the past and continuing today about the Dogman.

Where can we draw the line for when a fictional creature can exist under the “cryptid” label? Cryptids are liminal creatures, and they deftly pass between the realms of real and fiction. The label is a dependent on the moment in time when people report, and others believe, that the creature could exist in our reality.

Thanks for reading! Send comments, questions, or suggestions to popcryptid(at)proton.me. If you want to send some cryptid plushies or other merch, or books to review, email for my physical mailing address.

For more, click on Pop goes the Cryptid landing page. Make sure you subscribe to all the posts – it’s always free and I don’t send annoying spam. 

Pop Cryptid Spectator is also available on Substack. Please share this with cryptid fans you know!

Pop Cryptid Spectator 7

Pop Cryptid Spectator Issue 6

Pop Cryptid Spectator 5

Pop Cryptid Spectator 4

Pop Cryptid Spectator 3

Pop Cryptid Spectator 2

Pop Cryptid Spectator 1

#AB666 #Bigfoot #California #cryptoid #Fakelore #MonsterSnap #popCryptid #PopCryptidSpectator #PopGoesTheCryptid #rake

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9570

#OtD in 1967, near #BluffCreek, #Bigfoot was captured on #film. Do celebrate with a walk in the forest and a feast of berries.

Happy birthday, Bigfoot!

#PGF