Exposed Frauds

During the British retreat from Mons in August 1914, soldiers were said to have been shielded by angelic or phantom bowmen who held off the advancing Germans. The tale is widely traced to Arthur Machen's short story "The Bowmen," published in the London Evening News on 29 September 1914, which many readers mistook for a true report. Within months the fictional medieval archers had mutated into protecting angels, retold in sermons and parish magazines as eyewitness fact. It is a classic instance of a legend growing from a published fiction.

At least four relics — in Vienna's Hofburg, the Vatican, Echmiadzin in Armenia, and the lance "found" at Antioch in 1098 — each claim to be the spear that pierced Jesus' side. None has a credible 1st-century provenance. The famous Vienna lance was metallurgically dated to the 7th century at the earliest (Robert Feather, 2003), and later Vienna research placed it in the 8th–early 9th century and explicitly ruled out a 1st-century origin. The Antioch find is widely regarded by historians as a fabrication. The Catholic Church has never declared any of them authentic.

Four stone stelae erected at the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus in the fourth century BCE record roughly seventy cures — blindness, paralysis, muteness, a five-year pregnancy — reported by pilgrims who slept in the sanctuary's dormitory and dreamed of the god. The inscriptions are the largest surviving body of healing claims from the ancient world, and they were composed and displayed by the sanctuary whose reputation they served.

For eight years, crowds gathered on a hillside above Lake Bracciano where Gisella Cardia said a statuette of the Virgin wept blood and delivered monthly messages; court-commissioned genetic testing found the traces on the statue matched Cardia's own DNA, the bishop ruled constat de non supernaturalitate in March 2024 with Vatican confirmation in June, and the Cardias were ordered to stand trial for fraud — while Cardia, through her lawyer, maintains her innocence.

The 1st-century CE Pythagorean philosopher Apollonius of Tyana was credited with healings, exorcisms, prophecy, and a resurrection in a biography by Philostratus written c. 220-235 CE.

The mysterious oil reported to exude from religious objects in the Worcester, Massachusetts, room of comatose Audrey Santo was chemically analyzed in 1998 and identified as approximately 80% corn and soybean oil combined with animal fat — commercial cooking oil components, not an unknown substance.

Two major broadcast investigations — an HBO documentary in 2001 and repeated NBC Dateline reports — followed up on Benny Hinn's claimed miracle healings and found no medically verified cases among those tracked.

Imelda Lambertini died in 1333 at age 11, reportedly from an ecstatic episode immediately after receiving her first Eucharist; her body was found incorrupt and is displayed in a wax effigy in Bologna, though independent scientific examination is lacking.

In 1762, a supposed haunting at a lodging house on Cock Lane, London -- attributed to the spirit of a murdered woman -- was investigated by a committee including Samuel Johnson and exposed as a fraud perpetrated by a young girl and her father.

Photographs of fairies taken by two Yorkshire cousins in 1917, which convinced Arthur Conan Doyle and leading spiritualists of fairy existence, were confessed by both subjects in 1983 to be cardboard cutouts supported on hatpins.

In May 2001, New Delhi was gripped by hundreds of reported attacks by a supernatural monkey-like creature, resulting in documented injuries, two deaths from panic falls, and a landmark academic study of mass psychogenic illness.

Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier (1506-1552) had modest miracle claims in his lifetime, but a posthumous hagiographic tradition amplified them dramatically -- including a fabricated gift of tongues first attributed to him nearly eighty years after his death.

A hollow bronze Virgin Mary statue at Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Hobbs, New Mexico, appeared to weep an olive-oil-like substance in 2018, prompting a formal Diocese investigation that confirmed the liquid was rose-scented olive oil.

A 2020 systematic review of 47 investigations of 38 long-term fasting claimants found no rigorously controlled case confirming anomalous survival without food or fluids, and established fraud in 10 cases.

Relics claimed to be the charred remains of Joan of Arc, held in a Chinon pharmacy bottle since 1867, were analyzed in 2009–2010 by a multidisciplinary forensic team and confirmed to be a mummified cat leg bone and a human rib dating to the 6th–3rd century BC — Egyptian mummy components, not Joan's remains.

A woman declared healed of spinal cancer at a Kuhlman service discarded her brace on stage, suffered spinal collapse the next day, and died four months later — the most-cited case in William Nolen MD's 1974 skeptical investigation.

An Italian statue of the Virgin Mary reported to weep blood in 1995 was investigated by forensic scientists; the blood was typed as male, the statue's owner refused DNA testing, and a subsequent Italian trial established a church custodian had applied blood to a different statue using his own blood.

French mystic Marthe Robin (1902–1981) reportedly lived without food or water for over fifty years, sustained only by the Eucharist, but declined all controlled medical testing and remains contested by Church investigators and historians.

A subset of Guadalupan claims holds that magnified examination of the tilma image's eyes reveals a reflected scene of thirteen or more identifiable people — evidence of a supernaturally accurate image that would have required a living eye to produce.

Televangelist Peter Popoff was exposed using a concealed radio earpiece to receive congregants' personal details from his wife, then presenting this information as divine revelation during healing crusades.

A Belgian farm laborer with a compound leg fracture unhealed for eight years claimed instant healing at a replica Lourdes shrine in Oostakker, Belgium — but post-mortem bone examination introduced serious doubts.

Rita of Cascia, patron of impossible causes, died in 1457; her body has been on display for nearly 600 years, with documented medical examinations in 1743 and 1892 noting repairs to the face using wax and string — indicating partial deterioration.

Silvan, claimed to be the oldest incorrupt body in the Catholic Church, is on display at a Croatian church; skeptical examination reveals the 'body' is a wax sculpture with painted features, glued-on eyebrows and wig, and artificially shallow nostrils and ear canals.

Indian spiritual leader Sathya Sai Baba, who claimed to materialize objects from thin air as proof of divinity, was captured on multiple occasions apparently concealing and transferring objects using standard conjuring technique, and refused every request for controlled testing.

Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) claimed to materialize objects — watches, jewelry, ash, lingams — from thin air before millions of followers, but multiple investigations documented sleight-of-hand, and footage from India's national broadcaster showed an assistant passing him a gold chain before 'materialization.'

British Pentecostal evangelist Smith Wigglesworth claimed to have raised between three and fourteen people from the dead across his ministry (sources vary wildly), but not one account was ever independently authenticated, and his own daughter remained deaf despite his healing ministry.

The 2008 Florida Healing Outpouring drew massive crowds and claimed dozens of healings and twenty resurrections from the dead, but ABC Nightline found not a single claim independently verifiable, and World magazine reported several 'healed' individuals had since died of their conditions.

Self-described psychic Uri Geller was unable to demonstrate any paranormal ability when James Randi advised The Tonight Show to use props Geller had no prior access to, producing an on-air failure that established his method required advance access to objects.

Smith Wigglesworth's own daughter Alice, who assisted in his healing meetings for decades and was the person most accessible to his ministry, remained deaf throughout her life despite her father's claimed powers.

Faith healer W.V. Grant was exposed by James Randi for faking leg-lengthening healings and using prayer-card cold reading, then convicted by the IRS in 1996 for failing to report $375,000 in taxable income.