In 1948, the residents of Clearwater, Florida woke up to the sight of massive foot prints on the beach. Measuring 14 inches long and 15 across, these prints seemed to come out of the water where it wandered around for a couple miles before vanishing back into the sea.
Similar tracks would be found on nearby beaches and in July of that year, students enrolled at a local flight school saw what they described to be a furry log with a large boar head and alligator feet wandering around the beach before disappearing into the water.
In November of that year, a famed zoologist with an interest in cryptozoology and the paranormal (Ivan T. Sanderson) traveled to Florida to investigate the phenomenon. After reviewing the evidence, he confidentially declared that the monster parading the Floridian beaches was “definitely not a hoax” and in his expert opinion, the beast leaving behind the tracks was in fact, a 15 feet tall “vast penguin”.
Sanderson died February 1973, still confident that there was a massive bird stomping around Florida.
The giant footprints would continue to appear on Florida’s beaches for another decade.
It wasn’t until April 11th, 1988 that the mystery behind the mysterious tracks was solved. It turned out that a man named Tony Signorni made himself a pair of metal, 30 pound three-toed, lead shoes. He and a local prankster named Al Williams got the idea for the ruse after Williams saw a photo of fossilized dinosaur footprints in a National Geographic story.
The two of them would row out in the middle of the night, Signorni would get off the boat, stomp around the beach a little bit in the giant metal shoes, before climbing back into the boat. Leaving just the footprints behind to be discovered.
Al Williams died in 1969, 15 years before Signorni revealed the secret behind the hoax.
Signorni was still in possession of the pair of metal shoes.
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