Fake News: Morgue Employee Did NOT Pretend To Be Dead For April Fools; Did NOT Get Cremated

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

Fake News: Morgue Employee Did NOT Pretend To Be Dead For April Fools; Did NOT Get Cremated

Was 27-year old Thomas McClure really cremated by accident in a Boston morgue after pretending to be dead for a prank? No, that did not happen, it is just a new twist on an old hoax.

The story originated from an article published on April 1, 2018 on 8shit.net titled "Morgue Employee Pretends To Be Dead For April Fools; Gets Cremated" (archived here) which opened:

Wrong prank in the wrong place. It's April Fools. Everyone wants to prank their friends, family and even customers, but this man got it very wrong. 27-year old Thomas McClure is now an ex-employee of a morgue in Boston, after he tried to prank his coworkers by pretending he was dead. To achieve his goal, he [...]

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:

Morgue Employee Pretends To Be Dead For April Fools; Gets Cremated

Wrong prank in the wrong place. It's April Fools. Everyone wants to prank their friends, family and even customers, but this man got it very wrong. 27-year old Thomas McClure is now an ex-employee of a morgue in Boston, after he tried to prank his coworkers by pretending he was dead. To achieve his goal, he [...]

We wrote about 8shit.net before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:

Furthermore, 8shit.net carries a disclaimer on its about page that reads:

8Shit is a satire and humor website.

It contains cutting edge satire on a diverse range of topics.

The website publishes fake news, shocking rumors and reports with incisive sarcasm, and humor.

We also post crazy real news which often sounds too good to be true.

And an additional disclaimer in the footer of every page:

8Shit is a satire news and humor website. All its content is fiction (except those posts under the "serious" category) and shouldn't be taken as real. All references, names and marks or institutions in this website are used as contextual elements, like in any novel or science-fiction story.

Updates:

  • 2018-04-02T20:30:36Z 2018-04-02T20:30:36Z
    Added link to old hoax...

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Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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