A lot of years ago there was a show called "Its Incredible!", one day it presented a man who could move a pencil inside a glass box through his mind powers. Some time later, he appeared in "Believe or Not!" where his trick was debunked (he used his breath to move the pencil).

I guess if some of the cases showed in UM could have been hoaxes too...obviously i dont think the producers would have wanted the audience to know this so we'll never know if that was the situation.

I got at least 3 candidates of stories that i think were possibly false:

1. The girl who got telekinesis powers, i dont remember her name, but UM showed one picture of her levitating a phone. They mentioned too she was caught making some arrangements (wires perhaps?) and there was a photo of her doing that. I think she's in prison now for killing her own baby.

2. The Mann Family ghost. This was the story of the 300 pounds guy that was assaulted by his 90 pounds wife who was possesed by the ghost of Isabella. When I watched this episode i got the feeling each member of the family was smiling knowing they lied in national TV and got away with it!

3. A man who discovered he had a twin brother when people started telling him they had seen him in places he wasnt. He discovered he was adopted and then he looked for his lost brother. I dont think there's an update of this story so i think his brother never showed up. Maybe he died, maybe they didnt want to show the reunion for some reason, but i dont think the man never realized his brother was looking for him, after all, he lived in the same area and his picture was showed (well, his brother's who was identical). Or maybe he never existed. It was a good story, maybe too good to be true.

What do you think?

The show was actually called "That's Incredible".

Many people say the Heidi Wyrick case was a hoax...the little girl who claimed to be able to talk to the dead and identify people long gone.

And I do remember hearing about the telekinetic Tina Riesch, (sp?) I think it was, being a hoax. I remember that picture of the phone flying across the room too.

I know some people have mentioned other cases being revealed as hoaxes, but nothing else really sticks out to me right now...

That has to be the funniest segment ever- even better than The Magic Rock, Megadeath dude behind the till selling cigarettes, Tin Foil Woman, The woman who was healed by little UFO'S, L'Enfant & The Wackers. The guy was obviously 300+ pounds of sex appeal to the other side and there were probably lots of dead women waiting to pounce on him.:lol:


[QUOTE=FanfromES]2. The Mann Family ghost. This was the story of the 300 pounds guy that was assaulted by his 90 pounds wife who was possesed by the ghost of Isabella. When I watched this episode i got the feeling each member of the family was smiling knowing they lied in national TV and got away with it!QUOTE]

Well how about that family in Nevada and their TV ghost... :rolleyes:

That has to be the funniest segment ever- even better than The Magic Rock, Megadeath dude behind the till selling cigarettes, Tin Foil Woman, The woman who was healed by little UFO'S, L'Enfant & The Wackers. The guy was obviously 300+ pounds of sex appeal to the other side and there were probably lots of dead women waiting to pounce on him.:lol:

But nothing can top the Sammy Wheeler segment.

Hoaxes, you've got Tin Foil Woman, Confess Your Crime, and Guardian.

A lot of years ago there was a show called "Its Incredible!", one day it presented a man who could move a pencil inside a glass box through his mind powers. Some time later, he appeared in "Believe or Not!" where his trick was debunked (he used his breath to move the pencil).

I guess if some of the cases showed in UM could have been hoaxes too...obviously i dont think the producers would have wanted the audience to know this so we'll never know if that was the situation.

I got at least 3 candidates of stories that i think were possibly false:

1. The girl who got telekinesis powers, i dont remember her name, but UM showed one picture of her levitating a phone. They mentioned too she was caught making some arrangements (wires perhaps?) and there was a photo of her doing that. I think she's in prison now for killing her own baby.

2. The Mann Family ghost. This was the story of the 300 pounds guy that was assaulted by his 90 pounds wife who was possesed by the ghost of Isabella. When I watched this episode i got the feeling each member of the family was smiling knowing they lied in national TV and got away with it!

3. A man who discovered he had a twin brother when people started telling him they had seen him in places he wasnt. He discovered he was adopted and then he looked for his lost brother. I dont think there's an update of this story so i think his brother never showed up. Maybe he died, maybe they didnt want to show the reunion for some reason, but i dont think the man never realized his brother was looking for him, after all, he lived in the same area and his picture was showed (well, his brother's who was identical). Or maybe he never existed. It was a good story, maybe too good to be true.

What do you think?

The girl who was caught with the flying phone was proved to be a hoax and I believe is currently serving time in jail for the murder of her daughter. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I always thought the Wyrick case was shady, but that is just me.

The case of the man with the twin who he was continually being confused with, struck me as odd, not becuase I felt it was a hoax but because the people who made the mistaken identity, you would have thought would have heard about or seen the UM, and if the missing brother was in such a close vicinity to the man, surely he would have been found.

I always liked the Georgia Rudolph case, the one where the woman had visions of her past life as Sandra Jenkins. I've heard rumors where this was proved as a hoax. Anyone know?

Either I saw it many years ago when it was being shown here or I have never seen it as I did a search but it did not come up for any of the DVD'S and I have no idea what that case was.


But nothing can top the Sammy Wheeler segment.

Tina Resch admitted to faking one incident, but had a plausible explanation for it: some reporters were in her house and kept bugging them because they wanted to see an 'occurence', so to get them off their back, she staged an occurence. reporters can certainly be annoying at times, so i tend to believe the story. one fake incident does not mean all the rest were.

Tina Resch admitted to faking one incident, but had a plausible explanation for it: some reporters were in her house and kept bugging them because they wanted to see an 'occurence', so to get them off their back, she staged an occurence. reporters can certainly be annoying at times, so i tend to believe the story. one fake incident does not mean all the rest were.

It seems like I read somewhere that after she broke her leg all these mysterious things stopped which would lend credence to the theory that she was faking which I tend to agree with. I wonder if she claims all these strange things are happening to her currently in prison.

I do think Tina Resch was faking the whole incident. She seemed a person who needed a lot of attention.

The "lost twin" story is perfecly posible but what make me think is false is the fact that if this person existed somebody could have located him.

I agree with Confess a crime and Guardian been hoaxes too, but i dont know about Tin Foil Woman or this Sammy Wheeler person. What were their stories?

Dont forget Rainboy.

I'm changing my mind and say Tina Resch is a fake. I wouldn't say the segment was totally worthless, though. I always get a kick out of seeing the appliances malfunction and the eggs going through the refrigerator.

The "lost twin" story is perfecly posible but what make me think is false is the fact that if this person existed somebody could have located him.


I agree. I know I'm an 'only child' (at least of my parents together!:lol:), but I've been asked a couple of times in public if I'm one of two other names, and one time when I told someone that I wasn't, they acted as if I was lying to them!

It was really bizarre, but the only chance I have of other siblings would be through my father, and I don't really look much like anyone on his side of the family...

It could have just been a case of two men with similar coloring, similar haircuts, and similar clothing style...most people don't really recall much beyond that.

(I should mention, though, that an old friend found a half-sibling he was unaware of while he was taking college classes, so anything is possible!)

I agree with Confess a crime and Guardian been hoaxes too, but i dont know about Tin Foil Woman or this Sammy Wheeler person. What were their stories?

Confess Your Crime was proven to be a hoax, so I cheated with that one. Guardian, while I believe in UFOs and extraterrestrial life, was a hoax.

Sammy Wheeler was someone who was murdered. It wasn't a hoax, I was just saying that nothing can top it in terms of how funny it was. Seriously the segment was 3 people accusing each other of the murder. You have to see it to believe it, you'll be laughing your Air Wheelers off.

Tin Foil Woman was a woman who claimed to be psychic and would sweat tin foil and cry diamonds.

Tin Foil Woman was a woman who claimed to be psychic and would sweat tin foil and cry diamonds.

Katie... that was a hoot. Honest to freaking God... sweating tin foil? Crying diamonds?!?

If she can cry diamonds, then Tom Shane from the Shane Company is going to put her in a room full of onions and tell her to "Get choppin'!"

Good grief. :rolleyes:

Hoaxes are funny....

i know i've mentioned once or twice or a hundred times how the Sammy Wheeler segment is a favorite of mine: I'm glad they made that segment, but the weird thing is that all 3 of them (Bob Bean, Pat Snead, Danny Wheeler) all had been cleared as suspects and all had pretty airtight alibis. Does make you kind of wonder why they even went ahead with this segment, and it was one of the longer ones too, as i think there was a commecial break after half the segment was over, so it probably ran about 22 minutes or so.

i know i've mentioned once or twice or a hundred times how the Sammy Wheeler segment is a favorite of mine: I'm glad they made that segment, but the weird thing is that all 3 of them (Bob Bean, Pat Snead, Danny Wheeler) all had been cleared as suspects and all had pretty airtight alibis. Does make you kind of wonder why they even went ahead with this segment, and it was one of the longer ones too, as i think there was a commecial break after half the segment was over, so it probably ran about 22 minutes or so.
This case was solved though, wasn't it? Ended up being random, I believe. I think I read that in joshypiano's lengthy thread.

This case was solved though, wasn't it? Ended up being random, I believe. I think I read that in joshypiano's lengthy thread.

yes, the case was solved and it was determined to be a random act.

I hope the new UM has a "where are they now?" segment. I would love to see what Bob Beane is up to these days! :lol:

I hope the new UM has a "where are they now?" segment. I would love to see what Bob Beane is up to these days! :lol:

right on, brother

could you imagine if Bob Bean and Danny Wheeler ran for the same political office? :lol:

I dunno if this counts as a "hoax" but there is one particular UM segment that features a woman who's story I highly doubt. I'm talking about the lady who swears her dad flipped out one day while trying to open a coconut and attacked the lving room with a knife, all the while calling out to her "here doggy, doggy". She insists she was raised by "Mommy Pat & Daddy Mike" who sang Irish Lullabyes to her.


Part of me thinks she's a full fledged card carrying whackadoo, and so I feel bad for her family. Another part of me thinks she's knowingly lying for the attention it brings and so I feel even worse for her family. But ALL of me wants to pimp slap her therapist.

I wish UM could come up with some way of definitively proving she's wrong.

Hey Corky, well I actually laughed at what you said, however I disagree that this woman made that up. Her dad supposedly suffered from mental illness and other emotional problems.

So the whole coconut thing with the knife, yes he was off his rocker but it sounds like the dad had some form of schizophrenia, in the 40's, all they did was probably pump him full of barbituates to calm him down and that was about it.

Now, I do doubt this woman's story, not because I think she is intentionally lying, but because certain things about it dont add it up. I am not saying it for sure cant be true, but I think "Pat and Mike" were two people this woman created in her mind as a young child.

Remember, as a child, she grew up in a very unstable home with her father suffering from mental illness and being in and out of mental institutions, she was probably torn up emotionally and she created "Pat and Mike" in her mind as a safe heaven, a defense mechanism. I am not psychatrist, so you have to take my opinions with a grain of salt here.

I am sure after a while she probably thought about this so much, that after a while she actually convinced herself in her mind that "Pat and Mike" were real and that all this stuff happened when in fact it was all in her head. However I dont think she was just making it up for kicks or whatever, that is my opinion on it.

Hey Corky, well I actually laughed at what you said, however I disagree that this woman made that up. Her dad supposedly suffered from mental illness and other emotional problems.

So the whole coconut thing with the knife, yes he was off his rocker but it sounds like the dad had some form of schizophrenia, in the 40's, all they did was probably pump him full of barbituates to calm him down and that was about it.

Now, I do doubt this woman's story, not because I think she is intentionally lying, but because certain things about it dont add it up. I am not saying it for sure cant be true, but I think "Pat and Mike" were two people this woman created in her mind as a young child.

Remember, as a child, she grew up in a very unstable home with her father suffering from mental illness and being in and out of mental institutions, she was probably torn up emotionally and she created "Pat and Mike" in her mind as a safe heaven, a defense mechanism. I am not psychatrist, so you have to take my opinions with a grain of salt here.

I am sure after a while she probably thought about this so much, that after a while she actually convinced herself in her mind that "Pat and Mike" were real and that all this stuff happened when in fact it was all in her head. However I dont think she was just making it up for kicks or whatever, that is my opinion on it.


I agree with you. I have some 'memories' from my early childhood that just cant be real. (Living in another country for example) so i think sometimes we take someone else story and make it our own.

i think her story was some fantasy that she made up given her troubled childhood.

Huh. Well maybe I missed something because from what I remember of the segment, her mother denied the incident ever took place but did say that her husband had had some emotional troubles. I also seem to recollect Robert Stack saying there was never any official police, newspaper, or hospitilization records for her dad for the "here doggy" incident.


Anyway, I have now remembered the worst hoax ever: I'm talking about the horrible segment in which the man and woman are shotgunned in their bed and are found a couple days later with their baby untouched, thankfully, but no doubt traumatized. The whole thing with those kids saying parties were thrown at the house is such bee ess.

And that segment features the person I'd like to nominate as "THE BIGGEST FREAKING LIAR ever filmed on Unsolved Mysteries". I forget his name but this inbred idiot sits up on national television and says he watched videotapes of the murders, parties at the murder site, and sexual assaults on the corpses. I'm paraphrasing, but in effect he admits to witnessing "Devil stuff...you know like devils...and satans...and thangs".

He is such a perfect example of this type of person I've come to recognize on UM: the small town southern person afeared of all devilish evils. It seems like any bad thing that ever happens can be made so much worser by someone adding, "Yeah...and I heard it was all Satanists and stuff!" They even have Robert Stack calling them SKATErs (Satans Kids Against The Establishment)!! Some group of 5 or 6 Drama Club rejects, really into D&D, Anne Rice, and anagrams, give their little clique a stupid name...and the next thing you know...

It wasn't just that his story is highly doubtful...it was the way he told it. If you haven't seen the segment I believe its on crystaldawn's Greatest Hits #3.

Huh. Well maybe I missed something because from what I remember of the segment, her mother denied the incident ever took place but did say that her husband had had some emotional troubles. I also seem to recollect Robert Stack saying there was never any official police, newspaper, or hospitilization records for her dad for the "here doggy" incident.


Anyway, I have now remembered the worst hoax ever: I'm talking about the horrible segment in which the man and woman are shotgunned in their bed and are found a couple days later with their baby untouched, thankfully, but no doubt traumatized. The whole thing with those kids saying parties were thrown at the house is such bee ess.

And that segment features the person I'd like to nominate as "THE BIGGEST FREAKING LIAR ever filmed on Unsolved Mysteries". I forget his name but this inbred idiot sits up on national television and says he watched videotapes of the murders, parties at the murder site, and sexual assaults on the corpses. I'm paraphrasing, but in effect he admits to witnessing "Devil stuff...you know like devils...and satans...and thangs".

He is such a perfect example of this type of person I've come to recognize on UM: the small town southern person afeared of all devilish evils. It seems like any bad thing that ever happens can be made so much worser by someone adding, "Yeah...and I heard it was all Satanists and stuff!" They even have Robert Stack calling them SKATErs (Satans Kids Against The Establishment)!! Some group of 5 or 6 Drama Club rejects, really into D&D, Anne Rice, and anagrams, give their little clique a stupid name...and the next thing you know...

It wasn't just that his story is highly doubtful...it was the way he told it. If you haven't seen the segment I believe its on crystaldawn's Greatest Hits #3.

I agree with you man. Sometimes its easier to understand the worst crimes thinking they were commited by people into satanic stuff. But the real thing is people do terrible things no matter their belief.

I have read on this site that some people claim that the Heidi Wyrick case is a hoax. Does anyone have any information or reasons why some people believe this?

Does anyone remember the case about the haunted house in Wisconsin due to the bunk bed? The kids saw a woman of fire, appliances started going off by themselves, the garage caught on fire when the father got home from work. Did they ever prove this case as a hoax? I was really young when I first saw this segment, and it freaked me out. I am just thinking about it now as the next couple who moved into that house said nothing was wrong.

I have read on this site that some people claim that the Heidi Wyrick case is a hoax. Does anyone have any information or reasons why some people believe this?

Somebody mentioned that they saw the case disproved on an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullsh*@!, but I haven't actually seen the episode, so I don't know what to make of it.

Why is the L'enfant story considered humorous???

Why is the L'enfant story considered humorous???


I don't know why anyone would consider L'enfant "ha-ha" funny. That case is very disturbing. I realize a child's voice calling at all hours of the night sounds odd, it is certainly not humorous.

The fact that other people answered the calls tells me that it was definitely not a hoax. I can't imagine what that poor guy went through. What a nightmare.

Like most everyone has said, I think Alan Mann's "ghost" is, without a doubt, a hoax. Also the "UFO's healed me of cancer!" lady.

Well how about that family in Nevada and their TV ghost... :rolleyes:

Really. They seem to have been smart enough to at least photograph a picture off the TV that wasn't easily identifiable from a movie or TV show. Perhaps it was from a home video. Twarn't no ghost! :lol:

I always liked the Georgia Rudolph case, the one where the woman had visions of her past life as Sandra Jenkins. I've heard rumors where this was proved as a hoax. Anyone know?

Yes, I was intrigued enough by that case to look into it and posted what I know on the Updates thread.

Dont forget Rainboy.

Rainboy was a fake? They got ten of eleven people, including a priest, to lie, or fooled them into believing they spoke the truth? That one scared the ¢rap out of me! :eek:

yes, the case was solved and it was determined to be a random act.

Yet one accuser fabricated a story that his children had witnessed one of the others shoot Sammy! That was the unfunny part--dragging, as Danny Wheeler said "little infant children" into the situation. Otherwise, pretty interesting segment, almost as much as the U-Haul family airing all their dirty laundry and then learning that murder was random.

Huh. Well maybe I missed something because from what I remember of the segment, her mother denied the incident ever took place but did say that her husband had had some emotional troubles. I also seem to recollect Robert Stack saying there was never any official police, newspaper, or hospitilization records for her dad for the "here doggy" incident.

Yes, I remember of the "Pat and Mike" story, that her mother said her father had some problems but denied the child was ever out of the home. So one of them is either lying, or wrong, and you are talking about a child who was about four at the time. It's true, as the segment said, she could be suffering from "false memory syndrome." There is a movie called Pat and Mike with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and it would be interesting to know whether she could have watched this and appropriated them as parent figures. I guess the only way to prove if she is mistaken is to document whether she could have been out of the home. If these were foster parents, surely there would be some official record of them. Of course, there are informal arrangements such as leaving a kid with neighbors or relatives, but she claims to remember being separated from them in some court procedure, of which there would be a record.

The case of the man with the twin who he was continually being confused with, struck me as odd, not becuase I felt it was a hoax but because the people who made the mistaken identity, you would have thought would have heard about or seen the UM, and if the missing brother was in such a close vicinity to the man, surely he would have been found.

Jim Boomgarden admitted on-camera to have blown a number of golden opportunities when strangers greeted him by NOT asking them who they took him for! Also, not one of these supposed acquaintances of his "lost" brother called the telecenter! I'd like to know how such an elaborate hoax got this far, but I can't remember for sure where it took place...was it the Rockford, Illinois area?

i know i've mentioned once or twice or a hundred times how the Sammy Wheeler segment is a favorite of mine: I'm glad they made that segment, but the weird thing is that all 3 of them (Bob Bean, Pat Snead, Danny Wheeler) all had been cleared as suspects and all had pretty airtight alibis. Does make you kind of wonder why they even went ahead with this segment, and it was one of the longer ones too, as i think there was a commecial break after half the segment was over, so it probably ran about 22 minutes or so.

Even UM needs its moments of levity. Who could resist showing these interviews. I LMAO every time I watch it. :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao:

Good to see you guys keep the site workin'...!

I don´t know if there are another possible hoaxes out there in the UMiverse.

I still haven't seen tin foil woman

Well, we now know the entire Gulf Breeze saga was one big fat lie. Although when I first saw it as a kid it creeped me out a bit.