Alan Abel successfully faked his own death by getting his obituary published in The New York Times. According to the paper, he died of a heart attack while skiing in Utah. He was supposedly scouting locations, at the time, for an upcoming film called Who¹s Going to Bite Your Neck, Dear, When All of My Teeth are Gone? Some reports indicated that Alan was found buried in a snow bank with his skis in the form of a cross.

Several years after he was "resurrected," Abel's friend, Bob Pagani, introduced Alan to Andy Kaufman, who became obsessed with the details surrounding this hoax.