The past few years have seen a hot new trend in Halloween decorations — giant skeletons. Some soar several feet tall. Others climb from a coffin, creep in a graveyard, or sit on a porch swing.
But Americans’ fascination with giant skeletons isn’t new.
“In the late 1700s and throughout the 1800s, there were a lot of newspaper reports on giant bones being discovered, especially out West,” says Scott Tribble, author of A Colossal Hoax: The Giant from Cardiff that Fooled America.
Tribble says the newspaper reports rarely had follow-ups. Locals usually determined the bones were fake or belonged to an animal. There were, however, several persisting skeleton hoaxes that captured attention:
Here are four of the most famous:
