Kara Perakovic and Zach Palmer 4/30/26 Kara Perakovic and Zach Palmer 4/30/26

The Great Lunar Hoax of 1835: Bat People on The Moon!

A New York newspaper once got thousands of people to believe there were bat-like humanoids living on the moon, and the wild part is how reasonable it sounded at the time. We walk through the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, the infamous run of articles published by the New York Sun that claimed Sir John Herschel had a next-level telescope capable of spotting lunar forests, temples, strange animals, and “Vespatrilo Homo” flying around like it was normal field research. The story didn’t spread because people were dumb. It spread because it was written like science, released in a bingeable series, and backed by names that sounded impossible to question.

From there, we connect the dots to today’s world of viral posts, “trust me bro” sources, and even AI-generated answers that sound authoritative while being totally wrong.