#cryptid-hoax — Public Fediverse posts

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.

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.