The Man from Nowhere: George Psalmanazar’s Formosan Hoax

London, 1704 – The hall of the Royal Society was packed with learned men eager to behold a curiosity from afar. At the center stood a pale young fellow in ornate Eastern robes. He called himself George Psalmanazar, and claimed to hail from the island of Formosa – a land few had heard of and none had seen. With a solemn air, he unrolled a parchment showing strange characters – the Formosan alphabet, he said – and began to recite prayers in a melodious, alien tongue. The scholars leaned in, captivated. Who cared that his skin was ivory-white, unlike any true Asian? Psalmanazar coolly explained that Formosa’s aristocracy lived underground to preserve their fair complexion. The audience nodded, impressed by the detail. They drank in his tales of a tropical paradise with gold-roofed cities, polygamous nobles, and priests who ate human flesh in bizarre rituals. It was shocking, thrilling, almost beyond belief… and indeed, not a word of it was true. Yet for a while, this mild-mannered imposter held all of London in the palm of his hand. This is the story of how a nobody Frenchman invented an entire world – and how the weight of his own lies eventually crushed him.

Early Life – The Making of a Charlatan

George Psalmanazar was not Formosan at all. In fact, George Psalmanazar wasn’t even his real name. The man behind the mask was born around 1680 in southern France (his birth name forever lost to history). From a young age, he was marked by an unusual gift for languages and a restless, contrarian spirit. By his own later account, he breezed through Latin as a child and could out-argue older students with ease. But formal education bored him and he dropped out as a teenager, disillusioned with the dry teachings of church and school. What he lacked in pedigree or fortune, he made up for with imagination and audacity. As a late teen in a Europe teeming with travelers and pilgrims, he hit upon an idea: if he couldn’t earn respect honestly, perhaps he could pretend his way to it. His first ruse was relatively small – he masqueraded as an Irish pilgrim to get free meals and lodging while journeying through France. Dressing in a fake pilgrim’s cloak, affecting a foreign accent, he fooled villagers into charity. But too many people were familiar with Ireland, and cracks in his act soon showed. Instead of giving up, the young trickster doubled down. He realized that the less people know about a place, the easier it is to lie about it. So he reached further east in his imagination.

While recalling the exotic tales told by Jesuit missionaries in his youth, our nameless imposter crafted a new persona: a Japanese convert to Christianity. This was bolder – he darkened his hair, adopted odd eating habits (like devouring raw meat seasoned with cardamom in public to appear “heathen”), and concocted a gibberish language to babble in when pressed. The ruse worked for a time; curious aristocrats gave him alms and safe passage, intrigued by this “pagan” from afar. But living day-to-day as a faux-Japanese was difficult; he had to constantly invent new customs on the spot. And occasionally he ran into someone knowledgeable about the Far East who questioned him shrewdly. Each narrow escape taught him a valuable lesson in deceit. By age twenty, he was a consummate imposter in search of his grand opportunity. It came in 1702, when he crossed paths with a British army chaplain named Alexander Innes in the Netherlands. Sensing the chance of a lifetime, the young fraud abandoned “Japan” and painted an even more obscure backdrop for himself – the island of Formosa (modern-day Taiwan), a place almost no European had visited. To the delighted Innes, he spun a tearful tale: he was a native Formosan kidnapped by Jesuit missionaries, brought to Europe against his will. He had heroically resisted conversion to Catholicism and was now a proud Anglican convert instead – a perfect Protestant trophy for Innes to parade. The chaplain, blinded by anti-Catholic fervor and the allure of converting a “heathen prince,” took the bait completely. He baptized the stranger as George Psalmanazar (a biblical name befitting a convert) and whisked him off to London, where fame and folly awaited.

Psychological Drivers and Manipulation Style

Why would a man carry a lie so far, inventing languages and entire histories? At heart, Psalmanazar was driven by a peculiar blend of intellectual pride, adventure, and perhaps a dash of mischief. He was undoubtedly brilliant – fluent in multiple languages and endowed with a photographic memory – but he felt alienated by the rigid class and religious structures of his time. In impersonation, he found both a means of survival and a form of rebellion. By fooling scholars and clergy, he secretly thumbed his nose at the establishment that had dismissed him. His manipulation style was to exploit the expectations and prejudices of his audience. He sensed that English society wanted to hear lurid tales of exotic lands, especially ones that painted Catholic rivals (like the Jesuits) as villains. He served them exactly that, with theatrical flair. In person, George played the role of the noble savage-turned-devout Protestant with humble sincerity. He would pray piously in his made-up tongue, display charming ignorance of European customs at just the right moments, and humbly accept corrections or exclamations about his “strange” behavior. This performance art made the English feel superior and compassionate – thus they embraced him. Underneath, Psalmanazar possessed a cold analytical mind, adjusting his fibs whenever they were challenged. Someone questioned why a Formosan would have European features? He smoothly replied that Formosan nobility descended from Alexander the Great, hence some of us look Caucasian. When skeptics doubted his island had horses (since none were known in nearby China), he brazenly insisted Formosa did have horses – and camels too for good measure. The more outrageous the lie, the more confidently he delivered it, trapping doubters in the fear of looking ignorant or prejudiced. He found the fragile line between credulity and skepticism and walked it like a tightrope artist, careful never to stumble by hesitating. Yet even as he bamboozled the public, one wonders if late at night George felt pangs of conscience or simply chuckled to himself at the grand joke he was playing on the world.

The Grand Hoax – Life as a Formosan

Once in London, Psalmanazar’s fame skyrocketed. He was invited to salons, universities, and even court, regaling everyone with the wonders and horrors of far-off Formosa. In 1704, capitalizing on his celebrity, he published An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa. This book was the crown jewel of his deception: a richly detailed account of a completely fictitious society. Page after page described Formosan customs with an ethnographer’s precision – all born from George’s clever mind. He presented an invented Formosan alphabet (a curvilinear script he had devised himself) and provided translations of prayers and even the Lord’s Prayer in this fake language. Linguists marveled at the complexity; some even began incorporating Formosan words into comparative grammars, not realizing they were analyzing pure gibberish. The book claimed that Formosa’s capital had magnificent architecture, that the men walked naked except for gold plates covering their privates, and that the island’s priests practiced cannibalism in grotesque rituals – sacrificing 18,000 young boys’ hearts to their gods each year. European readers ate it up, both titillated and appalled. The work went through two English editions and then was translated into French and German as well. Suddenly, George Psalmanazar was not just a curiosity; he was an authority on Formosa, consulted by academics and applauded by the public.

He lectured widely. In one famed appearance, he was brought before a panel of the Royal Society. There, the brilliant astronomer Edmond Halley (of Halley’s Comet fame) interrogated him with tricky questions, clearly suspecting the hoax. But Psalmanazar met each challenge with an almost diabolical quick-wittedness. Halley inquired about Formosa’s latitude and the length of its days; George rattled off plausible numbers. A Jesuit missionary who had actually been to East Asia insisted that Psalmanazar’s accounts were false, but many Britons distrusted Jesuits, suspecting they were the liars – exactly as George had counted on. Every time doubt surfaced, George smothered it in layers of elaborate explanation, delivered with the earnest eyes of a “simple heathen” who just wanted to enlighten Europeans with his culture. It was a performance as delicate and complex as any opera, and for a while, it was wildly successful.

Yet as the months passed, sustaining an entirely fake culture became an exhausting high-wire act. Each new person he met meant new lies to calibrate. George had to invent answers continually, and as more readers consumed his book, more questions arose that he had not anticipated. Small contradictions in his tales accumulated. Furthermore, knowledge of the real Formosa (Taiwan) slowly grew, and real reports from travelers and missionaries did not match the Psalmanazar tapestry. Some began to suspect that the “Formosan” was an impostor. At first, George doubled down, defending his work tooth and nail. But a lie of that magnitude is a heavy burden on a human soul – especially one not entirely devoid of conscience.

Unraveling and Redemption

By 1706, barely three years after his triumph, the cracks in Psalmanazar’s story could no longer be papered over. Close friends reported that he became despondent and withdrawn. The public’s fascination was shifting to doubt and ridicule. Rather than face a humiliating exposé, George did something unexpected for a career liar: he confessed. First to a few friends in private, and then to the general public, he admitted that the entire Formosan saga was a sham. London society moved swiftly from astonishment to scorn. The “Man from Formosa” who had been the toast of the town was now a disgraced fraud. And yet, in this downfall lies the most intriguing chapter of Psalmanazar’s life. Unlike many impostors who, when caught, disappear or self-destruct, George chose to atone and reinvent himself in an honest mold.

He spent the remainder of his life – over fifty more years – in London as a quiet, studious man. Gone were the silks and exotic personas; he dressed plainly, attended church devoutly, and supported himself through genuine scholarly work. He translated religious texts from Hebrew, co-authored an acclaimed General History of Printing, and contributed anonymously to academic journals. Those who met the aging Psalmanazar often described him as gentle, humble, and eccentric but in a harmless, even endearing way. Astonishingly, one of the great literary figures of the next generation, Samuel Johnson, befriended him. Johnson, who had himself known fame and struggle, respected Psalmanazar’s keen mind and apparent penitence. The two would walk together, and neighborhood children would bow in respect to the once-notorious “Formosan” who had become a sort of saintly eccentric in his old age. George refused to ever reveal his birth name, wishing that his shame die with him. But in a final act of contrition, he wrote an autobiography – published posthumously in 1764 – laying bare the development of his impostures and explicitly renouncing them. In his will, he described himself as a “poor, sinful and worthless creature” and asked to be buried in a cheap, unmarked grave. After a life spun from lies, he sought the truth of humility at the end.

Takeaway – The Ghosts of a Hoax

The tale of George Psalmanazar is a morality play about truth and illusion. Here was a man who duped some of the brightest minds of his age using nothing more than the power of a compelling story and their willingness to believe it. It forces us to ask: why did so many cling to his lies, even as evidence mounted against them? Perhaps because his fiction was more enchanting – and in some ways more affirming of their worldview – than the messy truth. Psalmanazar’s success highlights an unnerving reality: we are often willing prisoners of our own expectations. Dress in the costume of our desires, and we will grant you authority. His life warns us to be skeptical of pat narratives, especially those that flatter our prejudices or excite our imaginations. In the end, George’s conscience caught up with him, and he sought to make amends, proving that even a master deceiver can feel remorse. Yet the echoes of his hoax lingered: for decades, snippets of his invented Formosan language and lore found their way into scholarly works, stubborn phantoms of a lie that refused to die. A falsehood, once unleashed, can cast a long shadow.

George Psalmanazar’s journey from deception to repentance offers both hope and caution. It’s a reminder that even those who wander deeply into falsehood can find their way back to honesty. But it also warns how easily even educated people can be led astray by a confident voice telling them what they want to hear. In an age of misinformation, his story feels eerily modern. The next time an extraordinary claim seduces your sense of wonder or stokes your indignation, remember the man who conjured a kingdom from thin air and made the world believe. Truth might lack the sparkle of a well-told lie, but it is truth that endures when illusions shatter. Stay watchful for the George Psalmanazars of today—the charismatic liars and fabricators who prey on our curiosities. 

And as always, stay curious, stay aware… and continue reading our next impostors, Masters of the Masquerade: History’s Most Dangerous Impostors.

With thrills,
Penelope McGrath

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