In Sunday’s review of Peter Lamont’s book, The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick, Teller, of the magician duo Penn and Teller, reveals in few words how a hoax can capture the imagination of a public even after having been exposed. The key to longevity, apparently, lies not in the sophistication of the trick, but rather in the stubborn determination of believers.

In 1890, during a particularly competitive period in journalism, The Chicago Tribune published a story by John Elbert Wilkie. Years before Wilkie would become  director of the Secret Service, he wrote a fiction piece for the The Chicago Tribune which was published as fact. This piece described a trick performed by an Indian fakir, in which a child climbed a ball of twine up into the sky. Wilkie’s piece was accompanied by a photograph of the event: however, it showed no boy, no ball of twine. Only the fakir, seated on the ground, appeared in the photo, which Wilkie explained was evidence that “Mr. Fakir had simply hypnotized the entire crowd, but he couldn’t hypnotize the camera.”

The story made international headlines. However, four months after the story was printed, it was retracted by The Chicago Tribune, which admitted the piece had been “written for the purpose of presenting a theory in an entertaining form.” As Lamont and Teller point out, the retraction didn’t receive nearly as much attention by the public as had the original hoax.

What is interesting is that sightings of this “Indian Rope Trick” were reported for years afterwards, in spite of the published retraction. “Wilkie’s story had remarkable staying power,” pens Teller:

“The story’s genius is that it allows a reader to wallow in Oriental mystery while maintaining the pose of modernity … By describing a thrilling, romantic, gravity-defying miracle, then discrediting it as the result of hypnotism – something equally cryptic, but with a Western, scientific ring – The Tribune allowed its readers to have their mystery and debunk it, too.”