This seaside resort town in Israel offered a million-dollar prize to anyone who could capture the local mermaid (https://leeduigon.com/2015/04/16/if-you-cant-find-a-centaur-look-for-a-mermaid/). To this day, no one’s been able to claim it.
What do you do with a story like this? A whole bunch of people say they’ve seen the mermaid. But we also know that a mermaid would be a biological impossibility, don’t we?
Then again, a lot of people believe in Man-Maid Climbit Change…
People believe that they wish to believe. Who knows what they’re actually looking at, but they want to see a mermaid, so they do.