This is a list of many hoaxes that have not helped us in the research of paranormal, cryptid and ufology. The sad thing is, many are still on other sites as the real thing. Debunkers love it when a story turns out to be a hoax, as they rub it in our collective faces.
1. The Georgia Bigfoot Body in a Freezer: This screamed hoax to many, but the young men were adamant they had a body of a Bigfoot in a freezer. They also had a televised news conference and put their careers in jeopardy. During the news conference, part of me thought how wonderful it would be if the actually did produce a body of a Bigfoot. Nothing was shown on it, other than more talk of what they had. After the news conference, it came out that the body was a hoax, and one young man lost his job in law enforcement over it. Why did they do this knowing they would have to come up with a real body? Money, as the were selling Bigfoot tours on their site for a lot of the green stuff.
2. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Fairies: This case is an old one from back in the day, but it does show that anyone can be fooled. The pictures of the fairies cannot fool anyone today, but back then they looked real enough to fool the noted creator of Sherlock Holmes. The girls claimed the photos were real until they were elderly and finally confessed what was already known. They still claimed to have encountered the fairies, but that part is also questioned because of the hoax.
3. Loch Ness Monster photo 1930s: The famous photo in all the cryptid books turned out to of been faked. Most of the books up until the 1990s had this picture of Nessie. Now that it is proven to of been a hoax, any book that features that picture is undeservedly not taken seriously by mainstream science.
4. Ed Walters Gulf Breeze Photos: There are still many who believe these pictures to be the real deal, including noted photo analyst Bruce Maccabee. If he can be fooled with these pictures, all of his work will be questioned. That will be true, and that is why the analysts out there should be very careful when doing their work. The pictures all have a hoax feel to them when I first saw them. When the model of the UFO was found hidden in the crawl space and the teenage helper talked about how it was done, this case should have been closed. But instead of investigating the claim of hoax thoroughly, the investigators trashed the teenage boy instead. The sad thing is there were a rash of unexplained sightings in the area that are given the brushoff because of this hoax.
http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc370.htm5. Jonathan Reed Alien in the Woods: This fiasco is in the UFO Watchdog Hall of Shame:
http://www.ufowatchdog.com/hall-of-shame/66-jonathan-reedAgain, it does not bode well for serious research in the field when such hoaxes are found out.
I am probably opening up a can of worms by including the Ed Walters stuff here, but part of this place is to have good discussions. There are many hoaxes that also come to mind, but these are some of the main ones now used by debunkers.