Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

“I’m completely stunned. Please, help me find out if this is true. Note: image taken on the Pinheiros highway, near the Joao Dias bridge”
[Sao Paulo, Brazil].

Skeptics would immediately think this is nothing more than a small guy in a costume, but careful viewing of the video reveals the head of the strange figure is actually on fire.

We blogged about it in Brazil, and soon Marcus Pontes came with an explanation:

“Some years ago a Brazilian artist wanted to make a movie about the curupira [a folkloric figure in Brazil], and he flooded the internet with videos and other false information to give the movie project some urban legend aura.”

Soon afterwards Marcus pointed a link to the original blog where the artist publicized his viral creations: http://neminventonemaumento.zip.net/

Alexandre Camargo also told us that

“It’s really a digital work: the ‘creature’ is the main character of a short horror film produced by Trattoria di Frame (in São Paulo), where I worked some years ago. The designer is the artist Eduardo Schaal.”

Check some more nice images and videos of the creature after the jump

Trickster Curupira closes the car door:

Curupira on the webcam:

A terrifying sketch:

The Curupira is reported to have a fiery hair, and backwards feet. Artist Schaal even included an X-ray of that on his blog: http://neminventonemaumento.zip.net/

Sadly, this attempt at viral marketing happened before Youtube, and it didn’t generate that much buzz.