You’re Having A Laugh – Part Forty Five
The death of Alan Abel, 1980
We’ve come across serial hoaxer, Alan Abel, before when looking at the vexed question of whether animals should wear clothing and the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA). I always thought it was appropriate that he made his home in Southbury in Connecticut, the accepted abbreviation for the state being Conn.
One of the many concerns about slipping off this mortal coil is how the world will remember you. How will your obituary read? Would it be kind or a hatchet job? Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1816, overheard some people discussing a newspaper article reporting that the poet had hung himself. Introducing himself to the group, they were most concerned to ensure that they had not hurt his feelings by talking about him in that way. In an early example of never the twain shall meet, a reporter, upon hearing that Mark Twain’s cousin was dying, mistook him for the eminent writer, prompting Twain’s riposte that “the report of my death was an exaggeration”.
On January 2, 1980 both the New York Times and the New York Daily News carried an announcement that, at the age of 50, Alan Abel had passed away following a heart attack at the ski resort of Sundance in Utah, where he was investigating a potential location for a film. The Times was particularly kind in its obituary, drawing attention to the fact that he specialised in satire and lampoons, making a point in his work “of challenging the obvious and uttering the outrageous”.
Flattering as these sentiments were, there was one teeny little problem; Abel was still alive, a fact that was self-evident when he held a press conference the next day. He told the assembled newshounds that the news of his demise was a hoax designed to attract publicity and to publicise the fact that he was a serial hoaxer. He had a team of twelve to help him pull it off, some to send the story off to the media – these were the days before fake news could be distributed widely at the click of a button – and some to confirm its veracity.
The editor of the Times was so furious that he had been duped that he vowed that Abel’s name would never grace the pages of his organ ever again. When a reporter from the paper rang him, Abel asked “what can I do for you?”. “Drop dead”, was the response. But Abel provided copy that was too good to miss and even they had to run a story in 1985 about him inducing members of the audience at a talk show to stage a mass faint.
Abel’s original intention was to stage his seeming resurrection at a memorial service held in honour – now that would have been spectacular. However, for all of us meticulous planning, Abel had overlooked one thing. As soon as the obituary was published, his bank froze his assets and he could not access the monies he had set aside to fund the memorial. To make matters worse, his credit card company, Diner’s, cancelled his card and when he rang up to get it reinstated, he was called an imposter. Abel had to come clean sooner than he had wanted.
When Abel did eventually die at the grand old age of 94 in September 2018 at his home in Conn following complications from cancer and heart failure, the news had to be confirmed by the Regional Hospice and Palliative Care who had tended to him in his last days and Carpino Funeral Home before everyone was relaxed enough to believe that the serial hoaxer had really gone to meet his maker.
That’s the problem with being a successful hoaxer.
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If you enjoyed this, try Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin Fone
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/
