Issue #12 
November 7, 2001

The Man in the Stocking Cap

by

Don Baumgart

I first saw the man in the stocking cap when John Razor sent him to me from North Dakota. A young man leans on the railing around the roof of the World Trade Center. The date shown at the bottom of the frame is 9-11-01. The photo could be from a digital still camera that imprints a date mark, or it could be a still taken from a video camera recording. Behind and below the young man an airliner flies toward the tower. Dubious, I messaged John Razor asking what he knew about the origin of the photo. Razor is a recovering alcoholic who has been clean almost forever. He's spending his time now in Dunseith, North Dakota, taking care of his elderly mother. Dunseith is a place with too much time on its hands. It is the home of the world's largest man-made turtle, erected by a convenience store owner to attract tourists. The "W'eel Turtle" is made from 2,000 steel wheels from cars and trucks that didn't make it past Dunseith to the bright lights of Minot. The turtle's head, which alone weighs a ton, moves from side to side. Having seen a postcard of the W'eel Turtle I knew that in Dunseith there was time enough to do anything. I suspected some small town computer wizardry. Razor said he got the pic by e-mail and nobody back two or three e-generations had any idea where it came from. "Yeah, I think it's a fake," he said. "If it was real, how come CNN hasn't been running it?" So, I passed the spectacular photo on to a few friends, telling them it was merely an example of what can be done with PhotoShop. Now, in the aftermath of the destruction of the twin towers, there's a news drought. Broadcasters have committed to constant coverage, but there's not much to cover. So it was that an enterprising news editor at Sacramento's KCRA-TV put together a story, mostly from a hoax site, of new urban myths left in the wake of the holocaust. And there was our old friend, the guy in the stocking cap. The site from which the debunking story was developed, http://www.snopes.com/rumors/crash.htm, had this to say about the pictorial prank of doubtful taste; "A grim sense of humor and digital photo manipulation skills can produce some interesting results these days." September 11 was warm and sunny, snopes.com points out, "not the type of day on which a tourist would have been decked out in a winter coat and hat." Shadows of different objects didn't correspond to the same light source, the aircraft shown is a Boeing 757 with American Airlines markings. The American ship that crashed into a tower was a 767. The list goes on. The operating hours in September for the observatories atop World Trade Center started at 9:30 A.M., the anti-hoax site says. The first plane hit at 8:49 A.M. Do the math. In conclusion snopes.com said, "The photo ripped away the healing distance brought by the nearly two weeks between the attacks and the appearance of this digital manipulation, leaving the sheer horror of the moment once again raw and bared to the wind. Though the picture wasn't real, the emotions it stirred up were. It is because of these emotions the photo has sped from inbox to inbox with the speed that it has." It was a good analysis and a stern castigation, but the Internet has taken its own revenge on the hoaxer. Just the other day the bulletin came from a friend across town, a collection of replies from everywhere. All featuring the man in the stocking cap. He still stands frozen atop the tower, barely smiling at the camera. Behind him the Pillsbury Dough Boy floats toward him. Next frame, he's standing in front of the flaming Hindenberg, the electronic date stamp has changed to 5/6/37. Again he stares at the camera while behind him a flaming Concord airliner tries valiantly to take off. Fire-spouting Godzilla towers over him, and then he sits in the front seat of JFK's Dallas convertible. Finally, he sits at the wheel of the speeding bus while Keano Reeves peers anxiously ahead. Take that, faker! So many years ago, John Lennon sang the essence of our new digital information age, "...nothing is real." We are being inundated by an annoying amount of information and we have to ask it all, all, some stern questions: Who are you, how true are you, and can you prove it?

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