The story that's too weird even for the web... but is it true?

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Pearl Carter is 'in love' with her grandson Phil Bailey. But is it all a hoax?

It's the story that has gone viral on the internet - the tale of a grandmother who has fallen in love with her grandson and is giving up her pension to have his baby.

Grey-haired Pearl Carter, 72, and her 26-year-old grandson Phil Bailey are said to be madly in love - and while she is well past the age of bearing a child herself, they say they are eagerly awaiting the baby that is developing in the womb of a surrogate mother.

The abhorrent love match between the granny and her grandson, 46 years her junior, has been turning stomachs as it speeds around the globe, leaving even regular bloggers - who have seen much of the weirdness the internet has to offer - open-mouthed.


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Miss Carter talks in an interview of luring Mr Bailey into her bedroom, kissing and seducing him.

He is quoted as saying that 'making love to Pearl was a real eye opener. It was  

love combined with all this sexual tension that had been building up.'

Realising she could not give her young lover a child, Miss Carter has used her retirement money of £20,000 to find a surrogate mother and buy a donor egg to inseminate with Mr Bailey's sperm.

It is a sensational and stomach-churning story that has run big in a New Zealand women's magazine this week - and left computer screens burning hot as it has whizzed through cyberspace.

But is it true?

While many readers believe the couple are living in New Zealand, New Idea, the Auckland-based magazine which is running the story has failed to mention any home town or even a country where the couple are living.

Whether News Relay picked it up from another source is uncertain - the story has gone viral on the web. 

But it appears to have been around for at least a week to enable New Idea in New Zealand to pick it up and publish it.

There have been claims by bloggers that the affair is so twisted that it just cannot be true.

Others suggest that a photo of the couple, with Mr Bailey's arms around his grandmother, has been manipulated. 

Another blogger suggests that the photos might be real but a prankster has written a fanciful story to go with them.

Neither Miss Carter nor her grandson have yet emerged to confirm their bizarre story - and there do not appear to be any local reports of it either.

According to the internet reports, Miss Carter had an illegitimate child, Lynette, when she was 18 while living with her Catholic parents in Indiana. 

The child was given away to prevent the family's shame.

Miss Carter never saw her daughter again and eventually married, but  had no more children.

In 1983, so the story goes, Lynette had a baby of her own - Phil - and raised him as a single mother.

Now Mr Bailey says that when he was 18 he learned his mother's story - and she also told him that she was dying from brain cancer. 

Six months later she passed away and he decided to track down his grandmother. It was three years before he found her and wrote her a letter.

Miss Carter was stunned to hear from him and when she saw his photo: 'I thought what a handsome and sexy man he was before pinching myself  - he was my grandson!'

It is not clear whether she and her husband had divorced, or he had passed away - or even if the pair are still married.

Miss Carter says a friend told her about Genetic Sexual Attraction, which occurs when close relatives are attracted to each other.

In 2006, the story claims, grandmother and grandson met for the first  time.

Miss Carter declares, 'From the first moment that I saw him,  I knew we would never have a (normal) grandmother-grandson relationship. For the first time in years I felt sexually alive.'

Mr Bailey, a carpenter, says: 'I wanted to kiss her there and then. My feelings were overwhelming.'

They went shopping together, dined together - and in the second week she lured him to her bedroom, expecting rejection 'but instead he kissed me back.'

They set up home together and, they claim, make love three times a week, unable to keep their hands off each other.

Then they talked of having a baby together - and surrogate mother Roxanne Campbell came into their lives after reading their appeal in an advertisement.

Now heavily pregnant, Roxanne admits she was initially shocked when she learned of the relationship between the budding parents, whom she sees once a month when they accompany her for scans.

'I make no apologies and I believe God's given me a second chance,' says Miss Carter. 

'I never in a million years thought at 72 I'd be "pregnant".'

Time will now tell if this is a phantom pregnancy - or whether, in a few weeks, an elderly woman and her grandson will be strolling down the street with a pushchair containing their baby - amid a storm of outrage.

There are also no dates in the story, leaving it unclear as to when their love affair apparently took place.

The original story appears to have emerged from the United States, however. A more detailed version run on America's News Relay website describes the couple as living in Indiana.