Honestly, I'm surprised this hasn't happened more often. The challenge with stories about unusual situations, events and topics is that they're often difficult

Honestly, I'm surprised this hasn't happened more often. The challenge with stories about unusual situations, events and topics is that they're often difficult to verify, and you're relying on the author's word that they've actually done the research. Sites like Atlas Obscura feel like perfect publications for hoaxers because of that. Make up an extremely obscure topic or event, then bet the editors won't bother to do any real fact checking because of said obscurity. It's also the reason that stories about cancelled movies/TV shows, lost scripts, unused content in video games, media that's gone missing in general, etc are so likely to be inaccurate or outright hoaxes; trying to actually verify these stories and get reliable sources is quite the challenge.