People Who Never Were

During World War II British intelligence invented a man “who never was”. They created a British officer out of whole cloth, complete with family, fiance, and service records. They attached this fictitious personae to a corpse which was carefully washed up on the shores of Spain. Said officer was a courier carrying plans for the invasion of Sardinia. The Germans, who were on the best of terms with “neutral” Spain got a copy of these bogus invasion plans, swallowed them, and pulled troops away from Sicily to defend against this fictitious invasion. The Man Who Never Was saved thousands of lives.

There are those of us who delight in these little frauds, bringing into paper existence (nowadays electronic existence) people, places, literary works, and events that never were. I, myself, am a mere amateur in these matters but I have played the game from time to time. Here are some home pages for people (?) who never were.

The University of Ediacara is a virtual university created by posters to talk.origins. Yours truly is a “honorary visiting research militant”, i.e. a trouble making rabble rouser. It’s well worth a visit.

The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library’s catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound. Note: This is the second Invisible library. The first is, ah, invisible.

The Emily Chesley Reading Circle is dedicated to that remarkable authoress, Emily Chesley (b.1856-d.1948). Her works include “The Afrikaans of East Nissouri”, a precursor of post-modernism, and “Brain Beasts of Blenheim Township”, her strongest “feminist” novel.

A Brief biography of “Calamity” Jane Austin recounts the main events in the life of authoress and gunfighter, Calamity Jane Austin. The biography includes a link to an almost complete bibliography of her works. There also is a short article on the Calamity Jane Austin hoax .

For many years Alphonse was my “gentleman’s gremlin” in charge of ensuring that there were pytos in my various publications. Alphonse, alas, has recently retired and now resides in a gremlin’s retirement home in Lower Oshkosh Falls, Michigan. His post has been filled by his nephew, Albert, who has ably assisted me in preparing these pages.

Nathan Childers has been a regular contributor to my various publications over the years. Childers has been at various times the poetry editor for the Brookings South Dakota Sheepherder’s Gazette, staff editor for Biodegradable Press, and the Editor in chief for Complete Concordance of the word “the” in the Collected Works Written in the English Language, Abridged.

If there ever was a man who never was, surely it was Piltdown man, the most famous scientific hoax of all time. This is the home page for eoanthropus dawsoni.


This page was last updated March 3, 2012