New York Giants

In homage to my old stomping grounds of upstate New York, I’d like to muse for a moment on some Fortean phenomena found there. Charles Hoy Fort himself was a native Albanian (NY that is), and the pallid data to be captained in these climes is deep as the region’s winter snow! I typically shy away from outright hoaxes…save for those toe-cracking Fox sisters of Rochester, NY…finding the ambiguities of erroneous capture much more compelling than the intentional deception perpetrated by pranksters. But the Cardiff Giant shenanigans are peculiar, offering up a batty Baudrilliardian event-scene!

A primitive race of giants is purported to be evidenced in a petrified giant man excavated near a farmhouse in Cardiff, NY circa 1869. It was in fact a stone carving that was inconspicuously buried by secret co-conspirators, then “discovered” by the allegedly un-knowing farmer, William C. “Stub” Newell. Much attention was generated, and Newell made a small fortune charging admission for the curious droves eager to ogle this oddity. Experts only sensationalized the demand by declaring the giant a genuine phony.

The famous showman Phineas.T. Barnum made attempts to lease the Cardiff Giant, eager to add this anomalous hulk to his growing menagerie of freaks and curiosities. Failing to acquire the actual giant he had his team model a spin-off, a fake of a fake. And so goes the precession of the (damned) simulacra. Here, in this hyperrealized hoax-craft is where the Fortean aspect creeps in, corrupt as it may be by commercial intentions.