In fact, the man who claimed to have found the artifacts in a Missoulian classified ad that ran Monday and Tuesday said he didn't even know how to spell sarcophagus when he decided to pull off the hoax.
The ad read, "Found: Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagus w/mummy & other important artifacts. S. Hills area," followed by a Los Angeles-area telephone number.
Emerald, a 38-year-old Michigan native who said he's a stay-at-home dad and artist in Anaheim, Calif., calls himself a "professional hoaxster extraordinaire" - and has the record to prove it.
In June 1990, major news sources including the Associated Press falsely reported that Hobbs - which Emerald said is his birth name - was dating actress Elizabeth Taylor. In January 1993, he was arrested for posing as actress Mia Farrow's personal shopper and trying to take $10,050 worth of merchandise from a Beverly Hills store.
More recently, Emerald's been placing the false found ads at a rate of about one per week, but only in newspapers that run them for free, he said.
"Otherwise, I don't consider it a hoax," he said. "They'll run anything you say if you pay."
His first fake ad ran in the Santa Barbara News-Press in Santa Barbara, Calif., during the recent Michael Jackson trial, claiming a prosthetic nose had been found near Jackson's Neverland ranch. In late July, he ran one in the Fargo (N.D.) Forum that said Elvis Presley's tour bus with many personal items was found on a Fargo ranch.
Other of Emerald's fake found ads have featured everything from Andy Warhol paintings to a World Series ring to a panda.
Emerald includes his Los Angeles-area phone number in the advertisements, which never run in more than one paper. He tells callers it's a joke, and they usually think it's funny, he said.
"When I do this, it makes people laugh," he said. "It makes people think. People are curious by nature."
Emerald places the ads to try to brighten people's days, and it seems to have worked in Missoula, he said. As of noon Wednesday, everyone who'd called about the ad - whether from Missoula or as far away as the United Kingdom - thought it was funny, he said.
In fact, he chose Missoula because he thought people here might need cheering up, he said.
"I heard you had fires going on there and people are probably kind of down and out about that," he said. "And with the war in Iraq, it makes people think."
So many calls have come in about the mummy ad that Emerald hasn't been able to answer them all, he said. And some callers refuse to believe the artifacts don't exist.
"Sometimes, people automatically assume that since it's in there, it automatically exits," he said. "And they won't want to believe that it doesn't."
After thinking up the mummy ad and looking up the spelling of sarcophagus in a dictionary, Emerald needed a location where the items were supposedly found before he could place the ad, he said. He decided to go with the South Hills over the Clark Fork River because it seemed more likely, he said.
For the record, the Missoulian does not knowingly publish hoaxes, and removed Emerald's ad after talking with him Wednesday.
The Missoulian Classifieds Department will be looking out for these calls with a closer eye.
Emerald said his hoaxes are difficult to execute and there's more to them than what he tells people, but he has to keep his secrets so that he can put them in a book someday, he said. Several publishers have already shown interest, he said.
Until then, Emerald said, he'll keep striking in the classified ads in other newspapers around the country, trying to make the world a happier place.
"I just try to look for certain areas where I think people need to be happy," he said. "And I don't know how it really comes to me. I just try to find pockets of people that need their lives to be altered in some way.
"I feel like I've been blessed with a really great imagination."
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