Sir John Herschel was doing real work when strangers in New York put words, beasts, and winged moon-men into his telescope. In August 1835, a penny paper ran six installments claiming the famed astronomer had found life on the moon from the Cape of Good Hope. From Cooper Hewitt:
This six-part series of articles described this wondrous, and fictional, telescope, as well as the fantastical discoveries about the world found on the moon. These findings included a variety of land animals, birds, forests and rivers. Perhaps most notably, the final article described a civilization of humanoid creatures that had bat-like wings, as seen in the image above. The moon was described as an amazingly fertile and green world—a very different image of the moon than the one we know of now.
The content of these articles captured the imagination of many, and word of life on the moon quickly spread through the world during the weeks following its release. While there were those who took the articles as truth, there were others who questioned of the veracity of this news, and others who were firmly skeptical and did not take the articles as fact. Though the articles are clearly fictitious—and were intended as satire[1]–they do contain some truths, such as the inclusion of Sir John Hershel, who was a prominent astronomer of the time. The inclusion of these truths did perhaps make it easier for some to believe the articles and it took several weeks before the articles were definitively revealed as a hoax.
This depiction of life on the moon may remind you of Georges Méliès’ film, A Trip to the Moon (1901), or Jules Verne’s Journey Through the Impossible (1882). However, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835 predates both of these works by many decades, and perhaps served as inspiration for Méliès and Verne.
The story had forests, rivers, temples, unicorn-like animals, bipedal beavers, and bat-winged humanoids. The public didn't need algorithms to be fooled; it only needed confidence, detail, and a fantasy dressed as science.
The trick worked because the lie borrowed pieces of truth. Herschel really was a respected British astronomer; he really had gone to South Africa in 1834 to study the southern sky, and he really used a large reflecting telescope.
The hoax simply inflated the facts until a 20-foot telescope with a 20-inch lens became a mythical machine with a 24-foot lens capable of revealing whole lunar civilizations.
The fake discoveries also landed in a culture already primed for wonder. Halley's Comet was expected that fall, and Mercury was set to cross the sun. The old question of life on other worlds had moved from learned debate into popular conversation. From the Library of Congress:
Leading up to the Great Moon Hoax was another story published in June, 1835. Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story in the Southern Literary Messenger, told as if true: “Hans Phaall, a Tale.” It described the return of an explorer to his native Holland with stories of life and adventures on the moon. In his day, a satire was counted as successful if a good portion of its readers thought it to be true. But in this case Poe’s sense of humor betrayed him and his article was quickly recognized as fiction by many of his readers. The Southern Literary Messenger was a periodical of fact and fiction that was only ten months old when Poe wrote this story, so it did not have a wide circulation at that time.
But someone, likely a writer on the staff of The New York Sun, either read Poe’s story or was thinking along the same lines. There was excitement about the return of Comet Halley expected in the fall and a predicted transit of Mercury, as well as astronomer John Herschel’s expedition to catalog the stars of the southern hemisphere. In the world of philosophy, the Scottish minister, amateur astronomer, and popular author, Rev. Thomas Dick, was making imaginative claims about intelligent life on other worlds. For example, he calculated the population of the solar system at over twenty-one trillion. This was a time of exciting events, theories, and claims. Stories playing on curiosity about astronomy could sell newspapers.
The author of the Great Moon Hoax series, unlike Poe, composed the serialized article as if reported by an astronomer who had accompanied Herschel on his expedition, the fictitious Andrew Grant. He included many quotes from Herschel, reporting discoveries made through close observation the moon. The articles cited the Edinburgh Journal of Science as the source for the story and was written in a style similar to that of both William and John Herschel. They may even have been inspired by an 1824 article by the German astronomer Baron Franz von Paula Gruithuisen, with a title that translates into English as “Discovery of Many Distinct Traces of Lunar Inhabitants, Especially of One of Their Colossal Buildings.
Reverend Thomas Dick, a Scottish minister and amateur astronomer, had even calculated a solar system population of more than 21 trillion.
In that world, moon life sounded less absurd than it sounds now.
The series didn't open with bat-men; that would've ruined the sale. It began slowly, with Herschel's supposed expedition, the telescope, and the method. Then came plants, birds, mammals, miniature bison, beavers walking on two legs, sapphire-studded cliffs, and finally the winged humanoids.
Each installment made the next one easier to swallow for readers who had already invested their belief.
Skeptics appeared quickly, but skepticism didn't stop the spread. Some papers mocked the story by Aug. 29. Others reprinted it anyway, sometimes with warnings and sometimes with open wonder. The argument itself kept the hoax alive; believers wanted the next installment, while doubters wanted proof of the fraud.
But everybody was reading.
The most likely author was Richard Adams Locke, a British-born writer on the paper's staff. He later stood at the center of accusations and denials, while the paper refused to make a clean confession.
The hoax may have started as satire aimed at wild claims about inhabited worlds, but satire becomes something else when the audience misses the wink and the publisher keeps cashing in. From the Library of Congress:
The popularity of the story as it traveled across the globe was likely also fueled by the conflicting claims of truth or hoax. This is what everyone was talking about. Those who believed and those who disbelieved were equally eager to read the next installment. Some papers reprinted the story with editorials or disclaimers, and as seen from the above examples, some of these were entertaining as well. But it took several weeks for the cries of “hoax” to begin to catch up with the “news” of the discovery. Even long after the initial event, the story was reprinted in the US and abroad, because now it was news as one of the great journalistic hoaxes of all time.
The late Linda Dégh famously wrote that legends are crafted to excite debate on subjects of great importance. Legends, she argued, invite those who believe and those who disbelieve to test the boundaries of our knowledge. Disclaimers and attempts to disprove legends can often spread the story further. Hoaxes sometimes work in much the same way, perpetuated as much by the interest of those who disbelieve a story as those who believe it.
Poe suspected his own story idea had been stolen and reworked for The Sun, and he was sure that Richard Adams Locke was the culprit. Historians today generally agree that Locke was the most likely author. But The Sun did not retract the story or reveal the name of the author. This became a story in itself, a story about how newspapers should behave. An occasional hoax might be forgiven, but there were objections to the failure of the editors of The Sun to own up to the truth once the hoax was unveiled.
There was another victim beyond the readers. Herschel's name gave the tale its authority, and he couldn't answer it quickly from South Africa. His reputation had been borrowed without permission, then used as a stamp of credibility.
The story reminds us that a lie doesn't always arrive shouting. Sometimes, it enters wearing the coat of a trusted man.
The Great Moon Hoax didn't make the public uniquely foolish; it showed how easily curiosity can outrun caution when news feels exciting, scientific, and just close enough to possible.
The readers of 1835 wanted a larger universe, and the paper gave them one, complete with wings.
The moon was empty of bat-men, while New York was full of buyers.
