The story might already be familiar, especially for metalheads who follow the odd and macabre. In February, a Florida musician known as Prince Midnight captured headlines with a guitar he'd reportedly constructed out of the skeleton of his dead uncle.
Word of the so-called "Skelecaster" didn't just make the rounds on music websites — news outlets as far-flung as CBC/Radio-Canada and The Indian Express even covered the creation. Midnight, who says his real name is Yaago Anax, spoke to Guitar World, HuffPost and other places about the electric guitar that, it seemed, harnessed the legit framework of the dead.
But was the whole thing just a hoax? That same month, per Vice, two local reporters embedded in Midnight's Tampa Bay home base, Christopher Spata of the Tampa Bay Times and Ray Roa of Creative Loafing Tampa, detailed their suspicions that the skeleton guitar maker was an alter ego of either one