Cyril Hoskin wrote a wildly popular book in 1956 claiming to be a Tibetan lama named Lobsang Rampa whose profound mystical awakening involved having a literal wooden plug drilled into his forehead to open his third eye.

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Cyril Hoskin wrote a wildly popular book in 1956 claiming to be a Tibetan lama named Lobsang Rampa whose profound mystical awakening involved having a literal wooden plug drilled into his forehead to open his third eye. The spiritual memoir became a massive international bestseller, totally captivating gullible readers with its highly detailed accounts of levitation and casual yeti encounters in the mountains. The entire exotic illusion shattered when private investigators discovered the mystical author was actually just a bald British plumber's son from Devon who had never even left the United Kingdom. He defended himself by claiming the soul of a dying Tibetan monk had magically transmigrated into his body after he fell out of a tree in his garden, which is certainly one highly creative way to avoid admitting you just committed a massive literary scam