Inevitability to Believe

While people are often ridiculed for creating hoaxes and humbugs, the cooperation from the general public, often allowing these hoaxes to become so well known, must not go unnoticed. The human species tends to be a curious one, searching for evidence to prove that there is something “bigger” than us all. Phineas T. Barnum was chastised after the real age of Joice Heth, a supposed 161-year-old nurse of George Washington, was revealed to be only eighty. However, society had no real reason to believe this absurd claim. Joice may have possessed some unattractive qualities, having shrunk to “mere skin and bone” with fingers that “resemble the claws of a bird of prey,” yet did not differ much from a typical elderly woman. The true convincing came from the people themselves, desperately grasping on to proof that life could be prolonged for extensive quantities of time. Barnum was able to manipulate others by creating hoaxes that people would genuinely want to believe as true. Even with the Feejee Mermaid, which was simply a monkey sewn on to a fish, there was an inevitable hope inside of mankind for this story to hold true. Today, there are still many who search for evidence behind legends with ghosts, aliens, and even Bigfoot. People clench on to these rumors, essentially convincing themselves of the seemingly impossible, only to resort to anger once proven wrong.