The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (38 page)

San Francisco's literary community was shocked to discover in 2006 that JT LeRoy, the purported 25-year-old HIV-positive former male prostitute, was in fact a 40-year-old woman named Laura Albert. LeRoy's first novel,
Sarah
, was published in 2000 to much critical acclaim. Supposedly based on LeRoy's life story, it told of the young man's experiences as a cross-dressing male prostitute in the deep South, a position that his drug-addled mother allegedly forced him into.

LeRoy then escaped to San Francisco, where Laura Albert and her husband, Geoffrey Knoop, took him in. LeRoy's remarkable story attracted the attention of literary celebrities, film directors, and even rock stars. He was encouraged to publish his short story collection, and his next book,
Labour
, was due out that spring. LeRoy was pathologically shy and showed up heavily disguised in his rare public appearances, often wearing
dark sunglasses and refusing to speak. It was said that he appeared incognito at his own readings, at which members of the literary community would read for him because of his supposed stage fright. LeRoy's elusive nature only fueled the public's obsession with him.

On January 9, 2006,
The New York Times
revealed that JT LeRoy didn't exist—he was the grand creation of Albert, Knoop, and Knoop's half-sister Savannah, who had made his public appearances in heavy disguise. Albert had written the novels and stories and had conducted LeRoy's first phone interviews using a West Virginia accent. What's more, the couple had fabricated the identities of LeRoy's supposed street friend, Speedie, and Emily Frasier, another woman he had lived with. The elaborate hoax was reportedly a way for Knoop and Albert, whose rock band Thistle was marginally popular in the San Francisco music scene, to gain access to rich and famous circles and promote their band.

“The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground.”

—HERMAN MELVILE

FROM THE VIRGINIA CITY
TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE
, 1862

The story: According to the article, a petrified man with a wooden leg was found in a cave in a remote part of Nevada. The man was found in a seated position, with “the right thumb resting against the side of his nose, the left thumb partially supported the chin, the forefinger pressing the inner corner of the left eye and drawing it partially open; the right eye was closed, and the fingers of the right hand spread apart.” The article claimed the man had been dead for at least 300 years.

The reaction: The story spread to other newspapers in Nevada, then to the rest of the country, and then around the world. The archaeological “find” was even reported in the London scientific journal
Lancet
.

The truth: The story was the work of the
Territorial Enterprise
's local editor, Samuel Clemens (later known by his pen name, Mark Twain). Clemens figured people would know it was a hoax by the description of the petrified man's hand positions. (Try doing it yourself.) But he was wrong.

BUNNY LOVER

American children's author Margaret Wise Brown (1910–1952), who wrote many a tender kitty-and-bunny tale, including
Goodnight Moon
and
The Bunny's Birthday
, loved to hunt rabbits. She collected their severed feet as trophies.

OBSESSED WITH WHITMAN

When American poet Walt Whitman died in 1892, his brain was put in a jar and donated to the University of Pennsylvania. The university doesn't have it any more—a lab technician dropped the jar on the floor and damaged the brain. The university quietly discarded it, and Whitman's “Specimen Days” were over.

STRANGE SYNCHRONICITY

Mark Twain was born in 1835, a year when Haley's comet could be seen from earth, and, fulfilling his own prophecy, he died in 1910, the next time the comet cycled near the earth, seventy-six years later.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City hung Henri Matisse's
Le Bateau
upside down for forty-seven days before an art student noticed the error.

FLUNKIES