Panic Attacks E-Book

Robert E. Bartholomew

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 398

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2004

Beschreibung

**Examining the ability of the media to whip up a panic and our tendency to fall victim to mass delusion and hysteria. **This title discusses America's "kissing bug" scare of 1899; Seattle's atomic fallout fiasco of 1954; the phantom slasher of Taipei in 1956; Belgium's recent Coca-Cola poisoning scare and the "mad gasser" of Mattoon, and more.

Leseprobe

PANIC ATTACKS

PANIC ATTACKS

MEDIA MANIPULATION AND MASS DELUSION

ROBERT E. BARTHOLOMEW HILARY EVANS

First published in 2004 by Sutton Publishing

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Robert E. Bartholomew and Hilary Evans 2013

The right of Robert E. Bartholomew and Hilary Evans to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9470 8

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Introduction

One

The Great Moon Hoax of 1835:Tabloid Journalism is Born

Two

‘We’re All Going to Die!’The Halley’s Comet Scare of 1910

Three

The War of the Worlds Spooks a Nation:How it Happened

Four

How Could it Happen Again?The Remarkable Legacy of the Martian Panic

Five

Media-made ‘Monsters’:Four Tall Tales and Why People Believed Them

Six

Europe’s Mad Cows and Bad Coke:Terror at the Dinner Table

Seven

The New American Witch-hunts:Creating the Sex Abuse Epidemic

Eight

Terrorism Scares – the Phantom Menace

Nine

Primitive Stereotyping:How the Media Created the President Johnson Cult and the ‘Lost’ Tasaday Tribe

Ten

Protecting Ourselves from Media Manipulation

Notes

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

James Thurber

Introduction

Knowledge is power.

Francis Bacon

Without a doubt, the mass media – newspapers, magazines, books, radio, television, the internet – have great potential to effect positive change in society. In today’s information age, we depend on some aspect of the media every day of our lives: politics, economic news, foreign events, natural disasters, weather and traffic reports, stock quotations, sports scores, car accidents, obituaries. Yet, for all of the potential good, there is a dark side. We have reached a point where we are so reliant on the media and it is so taken for granted that we are more susceptible than ever before to mass deception. Never before have so many been so literate, so educated and had so much access to so much information. Yet, never before has so much information been controlled by so few and travelled so fast to so many. Never has the potential for mass manipulation been greater.

We truly live in a global village. This is especially so with the growing trend of newspaper, radio and television syndication whereby the same article or programme can be read, watched or heard by hundreds of millions of people. The problem is, media outlets do not simply report, they filter, interpret, editorialize. Sometimes the ‘spin’ is deliberate and political such as the conservative bias of the Fox TV News Channel which touts itself as ‘Fair and Balanced’. This is nothing more than a hollow advertising slogan. At other times the reporting bias is subtle, subconsciously reflecting core cultural values and beliefs such as predictable rah-rah war stories whereby everyone on ‘our side’ is a hero while those on the ‘other side’ are portrayed as ignorant, misguided, evil. To a certain extent the media must reflect society’s core beliefs on certain emotional issues or lose its audience and advertising sponsorship. Either way, truth is the casualty. There is no impartiality. Yet we are presented with the illusion of impartiality.

This book examines cases of media deception and manipulation – both famous and obscure. Each example highlights our vulnerability to believing myths and poppycock that are presented as gospel and accepted as reality. We can learn from past mistakes, not to grow overly complacent or trusting of what we read, watch and hear, and to ask questions and challenge claims. We can learn to step back from the rat maze and see the bigger picture. History is a valuable tool in examining these events, distancing us from their emotional impact, affording a better vantage point from which to glean insights.

Chapter one examines the birth of tabloid journalism. Today’s flashy headlines of celebrity scandal and shock can be traced back to the summer of 1835, with a series of reports appearing in a New York City newspaper. The stories in the Sun caused a worldwide sensation. Created by journalist Richard Adams Locke and Sun publisher Benjamin Day, the paper claimed that British astronomer Sir John Herschel had perfected the world’s strongest telescope in a South African observatory and could actually see living creatures on the moon. Why was the ‘Great Moon Hoax’ so successful, making the Sun the world’s best-selling newspaper? Why were even many scientists fooled? How could people believe such wild descriptions of beaver people and bat-men? How did Locke manage to embarrass rival papers who unscrupulously reported the story as their own? Why did Edgar Allen Poe stop writing his story of Hans Pfaall when he read the bogus accounts? Why did Herschel laugh upon learning of the hoax, only to grow resentful?

In chapter two, we discuss the Halley’s Comet Scare. In May 1910, many people became terror-stricken after the publication of a sensational report on the front page of the New York Times. The alarming article warned of the possible extinction of human life when the tail of Halley’s Comet was projected to pass through the Earth’s atmosphere on the night of 18 May. A series of chance events, combined with newspaper sensationalism, fostered the scare. The relatively recent discovery of deadly cyanogen gas in the tail, and news that its tail would take an unusual course, culminated in worldwide fear. Many newspapers and magazines across the United States and Europe speculated about possible doomsday scenarios. When the appointed hour arrived some people went so far as to stuff rags in doorways, while opportunists sold masks and ‘comet pills’ to counter the effects of the gas. Some sealed up their homes and stayed inside with oxygen cylinders to wait out the night. Many workers in the southern United States refused to work and left their jobs, choosing instead to attend all-night church vigils, believing that the end of the world was at hand. Others made light of the concern, whooping it up with rooftop comet parties. Similar scenes occurred around the world. In Bermuda, upon the report of the death of King Edward VII, some citizens said the comet turned red. Many dock workers ‘fell on their knees and began to pray. They thought that the end of the world was surely coming’ and refused to work. The workers were adamant that the observation was a portent that war would occur during the reign of the new king, George. They were also convinced that a great disaster would strike Earth. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, hundreds marched in a candlelight parade through the streets and sang religious songs.

In 1997, a similar media-driven scare surrounded the appearance of another comet: Hale-Bopp was blamed for over three dozen deaths when the California-based ‘Heaven’s Gate’ committed mass suicide. After examining the notes they left behind, it is clear the members were convinced that by killing themselves they would be beamed aboard a spaceship hiding behind the comet. The publication of books, magazines and documentaries promoting the reality of UFOs, and discussion of the comet–spaceship theory on a popular American radio talk show, combined to trigger the event.

Chapter three describes the infamous Martian invasion scare of Halloween Eve in 1938, when over a million people became frightened after listening to a realistic radio drama produced by Orson Welles’ CBS Mercury Theatre. Based on the book The War of the Worlds, the play spooked a nation and is a vivid reminder of the potential power of the media. Several issues are examined: why couldn’t the Federal Communications Commission take any action against Welles, CBS or the Mercury Theatre? Why did newspaper editors deliberately exaggerate the broadcast’s impact? Why was the drama so believable? How did the script get by CBS censors? How did Welles ingeniously ‘snare’ listeners to other programmes? How did people’s minds play tricks on them, experiencing things described on the radio – things that weren’t real? How did events in Europe render the play more believable? Why are we destined to have similar scares in the future? What was the reaction near ground zero – Grovers Mill, New Jersey – the reported crash site of the Martians? How did this hoax come back to haunt Welles during the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor?

In chapter four, we analyse six other radio panics that were triggered by adaptations of the War of the Worlds script. What do these scripts have in common? Why were they so successful? Why do these episodes keep occurring? In 1944, terrified residents in parts of Chile ran into the streets; others hid in their homes after a localized version of the Welles drama. In one province, military units were mobilized to repel the Martian invaders. Five years later, a similar episode occurred in Ecuador, resulting in pandemonium. The realistic broadcast included impersonations of leaders, reporters, vivid eyewitness accounts and real names of local places. In Quito a riot broke out. An angry mob torched the building housing the radio station which broadcast the play, killing several occupants including its mastermind.

Regional adaptations of the Orson Welles play have triggered localized scares in the United States. In 1968 at Buffalo, New York, a play on radio station WKBW fostered widespread anxiety, even prompting the mobilization of the Canadian National Guard. Three years later, after a broadcast on WPRO in Providence, Rhode Island, residents flooded police with phone calls after listening to a report that a meteorite had fallen in nearby Jamestown, Rhode Island, followed by accounts of invading Martians. The incident was serious enough for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reprimand the station and rewrite the law on broadcasting such potentially deceptive programmes. The most recent ‘war of the worlds’ panic occurred on 30 October 1998 in northern Portugal. Broadcast on Radio Antena 3, news bulletins claimed that Martians were heading towards the capital of Lisbon, panicking hundreds.

Chapter five scrutinizes four media-created social delusions involving real or imaginary creatures, and why they were successful. The ‘Central Park Zoo Hoax’ of 1874 was perpetrated by the New York Herald, resulting in many residents refusing to go to work or leave their dwellings for fear of being eaten by ferocious animals that were supposedly loose in the city. What made the story so plausible to New York City dwellers? What was the motivation of the writer? Why did some animal morality advocates applaud the scare?

During the summer of 1899, James McElhone of the Washington Post unwittingly created an epidemic of ‘kissing bug’ bites across the country. McElhone erroneously reported on what he thought was an impending plague of ‘kissing bugs’ that were said to be biting people’s lips while they slept, in the Washington, DC, area. The ‘wounds’ were said to be serious and cause great swelling. The report was quickly picked up by other papers and spread across the country as jittery citizens rushed to emergency rooms and doctors’ offices for treatment of what they feared were potentially fatal bites. Bug experts examining ‘kissing bugs’ collected by so-called bite victims identified a variety of mundane insects – beetles, houseflies, bees, mosquitoes, but not a solitary kissing bug! What are the parallels with medieval episodes of hysteria involving tarantism whereby peasants in southern Italy would begin to dance uncontrollably after supposedly being bitten by the tarantula spider?

On Halloween night 1992 the BBC aired a bogus ‘live’ documentary during which it created a malicious ghost named ‘Pipes’. The show frightened many viewers around Great Britain, and was blamed for cases of post-traumatic stress disorder in children, and at least one suicide. Why was the show’s host, Michael Parkinson, unrepentant, even defiant at critics?

The ‘Texas Earthworm Hoax’ occurred in 1993, when the Morning Times of Laredo published an account of a giant 300lb earthworm supposedly draped across Interstate 35. Many residents believed the story and flocked to the site despite claims that the worm was 79ft long! How could so many people believe such an absurd claim? Why was south Texas one of the few places in the United States where the story seemed plausible?

Chapter six explores two events during the 1990s that shook European confidence: the mass poisoning of nearly a thousand citizens by contaminated Coca-Cola products, and a belief that the dreaded mad cow disease was spreading to humans from contaminated beef. Both fears were unfounded. Yet, driven by media sensationalism and speculation, Europeans suffered with needless anxiety and worry as their fears were blown up beyond all proportion to the real threat.

In chapter seven the media’s role in creating two separate witch-hunts, hundreds of years apart, is examined. The barbarity of the medieval European witch-hunts and the Salem witch trials of 1692 seem like ancient history. The stark contrast with today’s modern, sophisticated, tolerant society could seemingly not be greater. Today’s superior education and legal and judicial systems would seem to render us immune from any semblance of such cruelty and injustice. Yet a witch-hunt on a similar scale began to take shape in the United States during the late 1970s and did not abate until the early 1990s. An ‘epidemic’ of child sexual abuse swept across America, triggered by a new fad in psychotherapy involving the search for ‘hidden memories’. Soon overzealous therapists were seeking to find the causes of various problems and disorders as stemming from childhood molestation. It didn’t matter that the patient had no initial recall of such crimes. Vague feelings and faint inklings were sufficient to justify the use of dubious techniques intended to reveal these truths: hypnotic regression, dream interpretation, journaling, imaging. On such subjective evidence thousands were imprisoned, their reputations forever tarnished, haunted for the rest of their lives by the spectre of such heinous accusations. They may as well have had the words ‘sex offender’ branded on their foreheads. This chapter compares the role of the book The Courage to Heal in fostering the ‘hidden memory’ movement, with the impact of the notorious Malleus Maleficarum which is responsible for sending more witches to their death than any other publication in history.

In chapter eight, several examples of chemical or biological terrorism scares are presented. In each case, the mass media was influential in either creating or spreading fear that was either entirely imaginary or greatly exaggerated. Such scares are not new. We begin with the 1630 ‘Bubonic Plague Scare’ in Milan, Italy, which was fostered by the printing and posting of public proclamations. This episode is followed by the case of the ‘mad gasser’ of Mattoon, Illinois, during the Second World War, involving reports of a crazed gasser spraying residents in their homes with a noxious chemical. Many ‘victims’ reported getting sick; some even caught fleeting glimpses of the imaginary gasser. The two-week episode and dozens of reported attacks and related illness were the creation of the local newspaper, the Mattoon Daily Journal-Gazette. Other Illinois papers quickly followed suit and within days the entire nation was reading of the gasser’s exploits until authorities determined the fictitious nature of the malady.

In 1983, a mysterious illness was reported among a relatively small number of Arab students at a school in the disputed Israeli-occupied territories. Unfounded press reports began to appear stating that the girls had been poisoned by Jews, triggering a wave of psychosomatic illness reports in nearly a thousand Arab students in schools throughout the Jordan West Bank. The attacks on America on 11 September 2001, and subsequent media anticipation and exaggeration of the threat from imminent attacks using chemical or biological weapons, triggered a flurry of mass hysterical illness reports ranging from ‘anthrax cough’ to the ‘Bin Laden Itch’. Studying these events can help us better deal with future terror scares which seem inevitable given the level of American social paranoia at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Chapter nine examines media complicity in promoting myths and stereotypes about the capabilities and intelligence of ‘primitive’ peoples that are depicted on a simplistic continuum of two extremes: irrational natives or ‘noble savages’. The first part of the chapter discusses the President Johnson cult of the 1960s. In February of 1963, the world first learned of a small, bizarre group of natives on tiny New Hanover island in the South Pacific. We were led to believe that, upon hearing stories of American wealth and power, many of the inhabitants stopped paying taxes and began collecting money in order to ‘buy’ the then president, Lyndon Johnson – the leader of these great people – in hopes that he would use the money to fly to their island and guide them to prosperity. Media reports portrayed the natives as ‘Johnson cultists’ who were confused and irrational; ignorant yahoos, incapable of even the simplest use of logic and reasoning. Yet a closer scrutiny of these events, based on an interview with the anthropologist who lived with them, reveals the cult as a sophisticated tax protest movement that had no intention of ‘buying’ Johnson. The natives have a long history of using theatrics and bluffing as a way to negotiate. The real purpose of the cult was to embarrass their unpopular Australian rulers – embarrass them into a better deal as their island had been neglected for years. Australian authorities refused to allow independent reporters or anthropologists onto the island for fear of learning the truth, instead issuing media reports about a strange cult of irrational natives. The Western media simply parroted the story that the Australians wanted the world to believe. The Johnson cult continues to be the brunt of Western jokes to this day, yet any joke is on them.

The second part of chapter nine recounts another media-created myth. In 1971, it was reported that a Stone Age tribe was discovered in the Philippines. Despite limited access and ‘red flags’ galore, the media accepted the story at face value, reporting it to the world as fact. The media fell in love with the Tasaday people who were compared to living in a Biblical Eden – ‘noble savages’ who didn’t even have a translatable word for war, living in physical and moral isolation from the world. Their pictures graced the pages of Time, US News & World Report and the cover of National Geographic. There was only one problem – it was a hoax perpetrated by the Ferdinand Marcos government. How were so many people fooled for so long? Hints and clues were everywhere but journalists, intoxicated at being part of such a discovery, could not see the clear signposts.

Awareness and knowledge are critical lines of defence against future media-made deceptions. There is every indication that during the twenty-first century we will continue to grow more reliant on the mass media. With this dependency comes a responsibility to thoroughly understand this medium and its potential for good and bad. To fully reach our potential, we must heed the lessons of the past. This book is a starting point in that learning process.

ROBERT E. BARTHOLOMEW

HILARY EVANS

Whitehall, New York

London, England

ONE

The Great Moon Hoax of 1835: Tabloid Journalism is Born

What ardently we wish, we soon believe.1

Edward Young (Night Thoughts)

The modern era of tabloid journalism began with a whopper created in the New York city offices of Benjamin H. Day, owner of the Sun. It was the summer of 1835, when Day and his cohort pulled off what is arguably the most successful hoax in newspaper history. They claimed to have indisputable proof that the Moon was inhabited by an array of strange creatures including beings resembling bat-men and two-legged beavers. The hoax was the brainchild of the paper’s star reporter, Richard Adams Locke (1800–71), a Cambridge-educated amateur astronomer, who at the relatively tender age of thirty-five, had been recently lured to the two-year-old penny daily for the then substantial wage of $12 per week. Edgar Allan Poe describes Locke as a literary genius: ‘Everything he writes is a model in its peculiar way, serving just the purposes intended and nothing to spare.’2 Locke was gifted with a fantastic imagination and a knack for making his stories seem believable. A masterful blend of fact and fiction, the writing of the Moon hoax was spellbinding; science fiction at its vivid and plausible best. The public was also strung along brilliantly. Like a hungry school of fish patiently coaxed by a veteran fisherman to nibble, many New Yorkers and others across the country soon took the bait, gobbling it down hook, line and sinker. The Sun’s ‘fishy story’ began modestly, rendering it all the more believable. It quickly grew in proportion, turning into one of the greatest hoaxes of all time.

Our story begins in November 1833, when the eminent British astronomer Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871), son of the equally renowned astronomer Sir William Herschel, discoverer of the planet Uranus, made an historic voyage. He and his family boarded a ship in Portsmouth, England, bound for the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, intent on observing the heavens in order to map out portions of the southern sky not visible north of the equator. Stored in the ship’s cargo hold were two of the most powerful telescopes of the period, though modest by modern standards. On 16 January, Herschel’s party went ashore at Claremont and soon took up residence there on the grounds of Feldhausen, just south of Cape Town. The location was ideal for setting up the telescopes, and the spacious nineteen-room mansion was equally suited for Herschel’s large family. This would be the location from which Herschel would make many important discoveries. But it was his planned observation of the Moon which was highly anticipated and caught the popular interest. Thanks to the promise offered by Herschel’s remarkable new equipment, there were high expectations that he would add substantially to our knowledge of the Moon, and perhaps learn whether or not it was inhabited.3

Herschel’s expedition would be the inspiration for one of the greatest hoaxes of all time, and the first known case of modern tabloid journalism. It was against this backdrop that, during the summer of 1835, a series of newspaper reports appeared in the Sun, causing a worldwide sensation. It was reported that Herschel could see living creatures on the Moon! While the claim was outrageous, it was also plausible in its time. Speculation as to whether the Moon might possess inhabitants had exercised the human imagination since the earliest times. Many writers had conceived voyages to the Moon, notably the seventeenth-century French writer, Cyrano de Bergerac, whose character was carried there propelled by flasks of water heated by the Sun. But when it came to fact, the existence of life of any kind on the Moon, let alone human life similar to ours, remained as doubtful as the existence of the peoples that Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver had encountered in the course of his travels.

The twisted saga of what would eventually become known as the ‘Great Moon Hoax’ first came to the public’s attention on Friday 21 August 1835. On that day, the New York Sun reprinted an announcement that was supposedly taken from the Edinburgh Courant: ‘We have just learnt from an eminent publisher in this city that Sir John Herschel, at the Cape of Good Hope, has made some astronomical discoveries of the most wonderful description, by means of an entirely new principle.’ Four days later on Tuesday 25 August came a front-page article headlined ‘Great Astronomical Discoveries’, which the Sun had supposedly extracted from the supplement to the respectable periodical, the Edinburgh Journal of Science. This was the first of six articles that were supposedly excerpted from the Journal, in which a detailed account of Herschel’s discoveries was given to the reading public.4

By the early 1800s most American newspapers were weeklies, often selling for several cents a copy – 6 cents was perhaps the most common price – and targeting one of two elite audiences: commercial or political. The so-called ‘party press’ was funded by political groups intent on getting their partisan message across; commercial papers were dominated by advertisements and shipping news, being ‘little more than bulletin boards for the business community’.5 At the time, the Sun’s publisher was determined to market his paper to the working class. When the Sun first hit the news-stands on 3 September 1833, it was a revolutionary concept in journalism. It was the beginning of a new breed of paper called ‘the penny press’. Until this time, newspapers tended to be dull and stuffy, catering to the upper class, featuring erudite viewpoints, and most were sold in advance through annual subscriptions. The Sun’s aim was achieved, in part, by undercutting the major New York papers. A prospectus from the day touted that the paper’s aim was ‘supplying the public with the news of the day at so cheap a rate as to lie within the means of all’. The other strategy was to print sensational stories that seemed plausible; to appeal to emotions, not intellect; and to sell each four-page issue for only one cent. The Editor made sure to include an array of short but spicy stories from local courts on such hot topics as prostitution, theft and public intoxication. The public, especially the common man, couldn’t get enough of this new breed of journalism. Sales soared. Soon circulation topped 5,000 papers a day. Newspaper historian Andie Tucher notes that this ‘was the first paper that was going to support itself by marketing to a mass audience’.6 The Sun was not the first penny paper. That distinction goes to the New York Morning Post, established on 1 January 1833. But the new business of sensational tabloid journalism was a tricky one; the paper folded in just two and a half weeks. The Sun’s place in history is that it was the first successful attempt at tabloid journalism.

The first article appearing on Tuesday 25 August 1835 was full of minute detail, telling the Sun’s readers about the construction of Herschel’s large telescope. The account goes into great technical detail to explain how far the younger Herschel had improved on his father’s instrument. That had been remarkable enough, giving observers the illusion of being a mere forty miles from the Moon: but his son’s new telescope offered observers a magnification of 42,000, enabling them to obtain ‘a distinct view of objects in the moon, fully equal to that which the unaided view commands of terrestrial objects at a distance of a hundred yards; and has affirmatively settled the question whether this satellite be inhabited’.7

If this wasn’t spectacular enough, it was revealed that the image received on the telescope could be transferred to a cloth screen, 50ft wide, enabling observers to see scenes in much the same way as we today watch a widescreen motion picture. Yet even this fell short of the astronomer’s ambitions, for he predicted that before long he would be able to improve on this present device to such a degree as would enable him ‘to study even the entomology of the moon in case she contained insects upon her surface’!

BEAVER PEOPLE AND BAT-MEN

This first article under the headline: ‘GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES LATELY MADE BY SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, L.L.D., F.R.S., &c. at the Cape of Good Hope’, took up three columns on the front page. It was dry and academic, describing the telescope with a wealth of technical information which even professional astronomers might find hard to follow. Mixing in odd details and uneven numbers can do wonders to enhance credibility, and Locke was a master at sounding plausible. The telescope was said to weigh 14,826lb and have the capacity to magnify objects 42,000 times.8 In the article, Herschel supposedly says that he is excited to be on the verge of knowing unequivocally, once and for all, whether or not the Moon is inhabited. While the article generated curiosity on the streets of New York, there was only muted excitement owing to the stuffiness of the writing and its tedious detail.9 But the foundation for the grand deception had been laid. Locke had succeeded on two vital fronts: capturing attention and establishing credibility. Even if most readers could not understand the scientific mumbo-jumbo, it certainly sounded as if he was quoting from a science journal, and he was able to get his main point across – that readers could expect an unprecedented survey of the lunar surface in the near future.

Locke’s knowledge of astronomy and inclusion of great detail only lent further credence to the article’s reality. For instance, in describing the construction of the telescope, he writes that through experimentation, ‘the amalgam would as completely triumph over every impediment, both from refrangibility and discoloration, as the separate lenses. Five furnaces of the metal, carefully collected from productions of the manufactory, in both the kinds of glass, and known to be respectively of nearly perfect homogenous quality, were united, by one grand conductor, to the mold; and on the third of January, 1833, the first cast was effected.’ Just as in the real world, we are told that when the mould was opened after eight days, it had an 18in flaw and had to be discarded. Then, ‘a new glass was more carefully cast on the 27th of the same month, which upon being opened during the first week of February, was found to be immaculately perfect, with the exception of two slight flaws so near the line of its circumference that they would be covered by the copper ring in which it was designed to be enclosed’. While this is pure fiction, it was eloquently written gobbledygook, written by someone with an obvious knowledge of science and astronomy.

But the second instalment on Wednesday 26 August began to describe the observations which had begun on 10 January, when the observers had their first close-up sight of the satellite. Readers were treated to the revelation that there was life on the Moon! The writer first describes lush vegetation and rocks of great beauty. They saw ‘a beach of brilliant white sand, girt with wild castellated rocks, apparently of green marble, varied by chasms occurring every two or three hundred feet, with grotesque blocks of chalk or gypsum, and feathered or festooned at the summit with the clustering foliage of unknown trees. . . . The water was nearly as blue as that of the deep ocean, and broke in large white billows upon the strand.’

This breathtaking description was followed by an even more fantastic claim – the discovery of various life forms on the Moon including a bluish-grey creature the size of a goat, a powerful looking bison-like mammal, and an array of colourful birds. ‘In the shade of the woods on the south-eastern side, we beheld continuous herds of brown quadrupeds, having all the external characteristics of the bison, but more diminutive than any species of the bos genus in our natural history. Its tail is like that of our bos grunniens; but in its semi-circular horns, the hump on its shoulders, and the depth of its dewlap, and the length of its shaggy hair . . .’10 Then came water birds – pelicans and cranes – and they had a tantalizing glimpse of ‘a strange amphibious creature which rolled with great velocity across the pebbly beach’.

On the following night came a greater marvel: ‘four successive flocks of large winged creatures, wholly unlike any kind of birds’, which slowly descended from the cliffs to the plain and folded their wings on their backs and walked like men. Seen from a distance of 80yd, they seemed to be about 4ft tall, and were covered with copper-coloured hair. ‘The face was a slight improvement upon that of the large orang outang, being more open and intelligent in its expression.’ They were evidently engaged in conversation. Later they saw more human-like creatures, taller and seemingly superior. ‘They were chiefly engaged in eating a large yellow fruit, like a gourd, sections of which they divided with their fingers, and ate with rather uncouth voracity, throwing away the rind. They seemed eminently happy. . . .’ A stag was seen trotting up to the semi-humans without the least manifestation of fear. ‘This universal state of amity among all classes of lunar creatures, and the apparent absence of every carnivorous or ferocious species, gave us the most refined pleasure and doubly endeared to us this lovely nocturnal companion of our larger, but less favored world.’

With each passing day, Locke’s ‘fish’ story gradually grew bigger and bigger, and crowds began to form each day as excited citizens waited to read the latest reports. On 27 August, Herschel reportedly classified nine separate types of mammals including creatures resembling a horned bear, an elk and moose. But the most startling observation was yet to come – the discovery of a community of creatures resembling two-legged beavers without the tail. ‘It carries its young in its arms like a human being, and moves with an easy gliding motion. Its huts are constructed better and higher than those of many tribes of human savages, and from the appearance of smoke in nearly all of them, there is no doubt of its being acquainted with the use of fire. Still its head and body differ only in the points stated from that of the beaver, and it was never seen except on the borders of lakes and rivers . . . [where it] has been seen to immerse for a period of several seconds.’11

His most astonishing observation came in the fourth article on Friday the 28th, when it was reported that flocks of human-like forms could be seen flying about with bat-like wings. The creatures were given the scientific name of ‘Vespertilio-homo’ meaning batman. These beings were described with angelic innocence, peacefully coexisting with their fellow creatures in an environment apparently free from carnivores. The highly pretentious yet plausible scientific description of these strange creatures continued: ‘We could then perceive that they possessed wings of great expansion, and were similar in structure to this of the bat, being a semi-transparent membrane expanded in curvilineal divisions by means of straight radii, united at the back by the dorsal integuments.’12

Like a good spy novel, Locke even manages to slip in intrigue and sex. In describing these male and female bat-creatures, he notes how they were seemingly innocent and content, ‘notwithstanding that some of their amusements would but ill-comport with our terrestrial notions of decorum’. It soon becomes obvious that Locke is referring to their sexual conduct, which he was not at liberty to describe for the Sun’s readers. ‘We have, of course, faithfully obeyed Dr Grant’s private injunction to omit those highly curious passages in his correspondence which he wished us to suppress. . . . From these . . . and other prohibited passages, which will be published by Dr Herschel, with the certificates of the civil and military authorities of the colony, and of several Episcopal, Wesleyan, and other ministers . . .’13

Locke went on to describe great oceans and land masses,14 providing his final instalment on Monday 31 August.15 Here we are treated to a description of angelic creatures sporting wings, who seemed to live a utopian existence. ‘They seemed eminently happy, and even polite, for we saw, in many instances, individuals sitting nearest these piles of fruit, select the largest and brightest specimens, and throw them archwise across the circle to some opposite friend or associate who extracted the nutriment from those scattered around him, and which were frequently not a few. While thus engaged in their rural banquets, or in social converse, they were always seated with their knees flat upon the turf, and their feet brought evenly together in the form of a triangle.’ We are also treated to a description of a glistening lunar temple made of sapphire, with a yellow, metallic roof, held up by huge columns towering 70ft into the sky.

The Moon hoax was to end as subtly and cleverly as it began. We are told that Herschel and his colleagues suffered an unexpected setback: one night the telescope, though lowered, had been left in a perpendicular position facing east – and the sunrise. The next morning, the astronomers were awakened by the natives who told them the ‘Big house’ was on fire. The observatory was enveloped in a cloud of smoke. We are told that the rays of the rising Sun, concentrated by the lenses, had burned a hole 15ft wide through the reflecting chamber and the screen on which the observations were projected. Though the plaster walls of the observatory were vitrified to blue glaze, the damage was not crucial: but it meant that observations had to be suspended. ‘This concludes the Supplement, with the exception of forty pages of illustrative and mathematical notes . . . Ed. Sun.’16 And with these words, the series was over.

As the spectacular events unfolded, two Yale professors – Elias Loomis and Denison Olmstead – failing to find the original articles in the Yale library, took a steamship to New York in order to view the supplement at first hand and verify its contents. One day these gentlemen showed up at Benjamin Day’s office asking to see the mathematical notes and unpublished technical details that were deemed too tedious and erudite for the Sun’s readers. Locke came to his rescue, giving the address of a printer on William Street. As the two learned gentlemen set off, Locke cut through alleyways and side streets to get there ahead of them to prompt the employees on what to say. When they got there, the professors were told that the pamphlet had just gone to another shop for proof-reading. In this manner they were given the runaround. Needless to say, they were unable to track down the journal by the end of the day when they had to return to Yale, disappointed and highly suspicious.17

As word of the great discoveries quickly spread through the city, soon Herschel’s revelations dominated all conversation, and sent the paper’s circulation skyrocketing. Even rival newspapers had to applaud the remarkable news. During the affair, newspaper editors, frantically trying to confirm the claims, were faced with the dilemma of possibly missing out on one of the greatest stories in recorded history – or being monumentally embarrassed if it proved untrue. This must have irked them no end, as many New York papers were bitter rivals – to the extent that some editors and reporters were known to get into fist fights when chancing to meet on the street. Newspaper editors could not wait the several weeks it would have taken to contact Herschel who was incommunicado in South Africa, so many took the gamble and reprinted the Sun’s story on their front pages.18 Some gave no credit to the Sun, instead attributing the source as the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Copyright law was not what it is today, and this was accepted practice even though Day complained. In fact, Day was notorious for engaging in the same practice himself.

Even the prestigious New York Times was hoodwinked, declaring that the writer ‘displays the most extensive and accurate knowledge of astronomy, and the description of Sir John’s recently improved instruments . . . [and] the account of the wonderful discoveries on the moon, &c., are all probable and plausible, and have an air of intense verisimilitude’.19 Interest in the fantastic discoveries quickly spread round the world: three journals translated it in France, and three more in Italy. Locke also published the articles in a pamphlet and sold 60,000 copies within a month to meet the public’s insatiable appetite for the story.20

A student of astronomy and mechanics, Edgar Allan Poe said he had stopped work on the second part of The Strange Adventures of Hans Pfaall because Herschel’s ‘discoveries’ outdid anything he would dare include in a work of fiction. Poe’s story describes a trip to the Moon that was full of plausible details and consistent with known science. A well-known English writer, Harriet Martineau, was travelling in New England at the time, and recorded in her book Retrospect of Western Travel the effect of the articles:

I happened to be going the round of several Massachusetts villages when the marvellous account of Sir John Herschel’s discoveries in the moon was sent abroad. The sensation it excited was wonderful. . . . A story is going about, told by some friends of Sir John Herschel (but whether in earnest or in the spirit of the moon story I cannot tell) that the astronomer has received at the Cape a letter from a large number of Baptist clergymen of the United States congratulating him on his discovery, informing him that it had been the occasion of much edifying preaching and of prayer meetings for the benefit of brethren in the newly explored regions; and beseeching him to inform his correspondents whether science affords any prospects of a method of conveying the Gospel to residents in the moon. . . .21

Poe later said that ‘Not one person in ten discredited it; and it is especially noticeable that the doubters were, for the most part, those who doubted without being able to say why – the ignorant – those uninformed in astronomy, people who would not believe merely because the thing was so novel – so entirely “out of the usual way”.’22 When he wrote a critical article on the claims shortly after they had appeared in the Sun, Poe said that he was surprised by the response: ‘I . . . pointed out distinctly its fictitious character, but was astonished at finding that I could obtain few listeners, so really eager were all to be deceived, so magical were the charms. . . .’23

A writer for the Southern Quarterly Review, in New Haven, Connecticut, at the time of the Sun’s revelations, reports that the Moon story elicited widespread excitement across the campus of Yale college. ‘Have you read the Sun?’ and ‘Have you heard the news?’ replaced the customary ‘Hello.’ ‘The literati – students and professors, doctors in divinity and law – and all the rest of the reading community, looked daily for the arrival of the New York mail. . . .’ News of the reported discovery of life on the Moon dominated conversation. According to the writer, ‘Nobody expressed or entertained a doubt as to the truth of the story.’24

The New York Sunday News urged its readers to exercise patience: ‘Our doubts and incredulity may be a wrong to the learned astronomer, and the circumstances of this wonderful discovery may be correct.’ The Mercantile Advertiser was one of several newspapers to reprint the articles and endorse their authenticity, though it refused to identify the Sun as its source by name, instead referring to a ‘journal of this city’. The Advertiser states: ‘It appears to carry intrinsic evidence of being an authentic document.’ The Daily Advertiser was similarly enthusiastic: ‘No article, we believe, has appeared for years, that will command so general a perusal and publication. Sir John has added a stock of knowledge to the present age that will immortalize his name, and place it high on the page of science.’ Even the stolid New Yorker seemed ‘over the Moon’ at the reports: ‘Great Astronomical Discoveries! – By the late arrivals from England there has been received in this country a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science containing intelligence of the most astounding interest from Prof. Herschel’s Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. . . .’ These ‘discoveries’ were said to usher in ‘a new era in astronomy and science generally’.25

Some sceptical voices were also raised, though they were in the minority. The New York Commercial Advertiser, on 29 August (the fifth day of the articles), wrote in patronizing tone:

It is well done, and makes a pleasant piece of reading enough, especially for such as have a sufficient stock of available credulity; but we can hardly understand how any man of common sense should read it without at once perceiving the deception. Without referring to the monstrosities of the story itself, can any one suppose for a moment that such preparations as are described, should have been made without a word of notice in the English papers? Preparations going on for years – an object of glass of twenty-four feet in diameter – a donation of ten thousand pounds by the King – consultations with Sir David Brewster – and other extravagances not less preposterous!26

The New York Evening Post, edited by two eminent literary personalities, William Cullen Bryant and Fitz-Greene Halleck, observed that ‘It is quite proper that the Sun should be the means of shedding so much light on the Moon’ and went on to liken the articles to the eighteenth-century fantasy voyages of Peter Wilkins, indicating that the Evening Post, at least, was not to be spoofed. Wilkins was the heroic character of Robert Paltock’s 1750 novel, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man. Like Locke, Paltock had an extraordinary imagination, including a description of a group of winged Indians who flew in a similar manner to the ‘bat-men’. Also, like Locke, he managed to bring sex into the picture, as Wilkins was able to learn his intimate details of the strange tribe through sexual relations with one of its females.27

Shortly after the last of the six articles appeared in the Sun, the Journal of Commerce requested permission to publish them in pamphlet form. A reporter named Finn visited the Sun to discuss the proposal: he was a friend of Richard Locke. But Locke discouraged him from reprinting the articles for, as he now admitted, he himself was their author. This was revealed by the Journal the following day. The Sun’s rival, the New York Herald, whose proprietor was James Gordon Bennett, known for his sponsorship of motor racing, also proclaimed the hoax and named Locke as its author. The Herald pointed out that Locke was British, a Cambridge graduate, and had an interest in astronomy and optics; also that the article contained numerous errors. Bennett invited Locke to tell the story of the hoax in his columns.

Locke replied in a letter to the Herald, insisting that the suggestion that he had anything to do with the hoax was ‘too ridiculous to receive any further notice’. As for any errors, he, having no expertise in astronomy or optics, was not qualified to judge: if any there were, no one but Herschel himself could be held responsible for them.

So far, the story had been one of bluff and counter-bluff, with everyone concerned hoping to outmanoeuvre the other. But at this point, the plot thickens. What seemed to be a simple hoax was now generating its own clouds of mystification. Some historians assert that Locke never admitted to being the author of the articles28 and if that is the case, then the story of his confession to Finn from the Journal of Commerce is nothing but a fiction.

While Locke is supposed, by almost all commentators, to be the sole author, the detailed knowledge of astronomy evinced in the technical portions of the narrative showed that a more expert person had surely been consulted. Indeed the Sun admitted its debt to Dr Andrew Grant, who had been a pupil of the elder Herschel, and ‘the inseparable coadjutor’ of the younger, accompanying him to South Africa and bringing back a great deal of material to the Edinburgh Journal