The Top 5 Website Hoaxes of All Time

July 31, 2009— -- This week marks the 10 year anniversary of "The Blair Witch Project," the low-budget thriller that won multiple awards and grossed more than $248 million worldwide.

But before "Blair Witch" became an internationally-known film, it was an internet sensation that doubled as a brilliant marketing strategy. Blairwitch.com debuted in 1999, fooling many people into believing that three students had vanished in the Black Hills Forest while filming a documentary about "an old woman ghost."

The Web site included just enough detail to make it appear real: interviews with "experts," a legitimate location (Burkitsville, Md.), photographic "evidence" and history about the so-called local legend.

As everyone now knows, the "Blair Witch" documentary wasn't any more real than the Blair witch herself.

"The project inspired a slew of marketing-driven hoax Web sites," said Alex Boese, a self-proclaimed "hoaxpert" who has spent decades studying modern society's fakery. One of the most well-known examples was nationalblondeday.com launched by the Reese Witherspoon movie "Legally Blonde."

But these days, Boese said, "I'm getting the sense that the fad for hoax websites has died down a little since the first decade of the Internet."

As the "curator" of the Museum of Hoaxes, Boese said he's fooled many people, including some media outlets, into assuming he oversees a brick and mortar museum.

Just check out this page to see why: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/aboutmuseum.html

"It's the only hoax I've created myself," he said.

He may not be curator of an actual museum, but Boese's Web site is a very real source of information. He has authored two books about hoaxes, and another about bizarre science experiments. And he thoroughly researches every hoax Web site that surfaces on the Internet.