Question: Did someone really discover a petrified man buried near old Forest City in Potter County, SD?
Answer: The story is told in Stanley Vestal's book THE MISSOURI. Briefly, the petrified man was a hoax concocted by bored locals who created a petrified body and buried it near Forest City. So successful was the hoax that the locals took the body to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, exhibiting it all along the way for a dollar a viewing. The hoax wasn't exposed until after the turn of the century when they repeated the stunt and tried to sell the next body. The buyer and his wife got into such a terrible fight over the purchase that the buyer murdered his wife and then killed himself.
