A town’s Halloween descended into bloody chaos this year after ‘trick or treating’ children were given hallucinogenic drugs instead of sweets. “They just went berserk! Running through the streets, smashing windows, kicking in doors and attacking residents with plastic knives and axes,” says Crapchester pensioner Sid Porrock, who experienced the terror first hand. “One group of the crazed little bastards, all dressed in sheets as pretend ghosts, set fire to my bins, then climbed onto my roof and threw pumpkins at passers by – eventually the police had to shoot them down using rubber bullets.” Porrock, however, believes that he got off lightly, compared to some of his neighbours. “Another bunch of the little bastards, variously dressed as devils, vampires, cowboys, pirates and Barbie, broke into a house a couple of streets away, dragged out the occupants and tried to sacrifice them on a makeshift altar they’d set up on the roundabout in a nearby playground,” he recalls. “Another lot pulled a fast food delivery guy off of his bike, tied him to a lamppost and tried to burn him at the stake while they all danced around him wildly!” The pensioner claims to have been disappointed by the police response to the mayhem and violence. “They should have shot the little gits – they were clearly homicidal! It’s a miracle that nobody was killed,” he opines. “But instead, when they could eventually be bothered to turn up, they just carted them off to hospital! Drugged or not, I blame the parents!”

Parents of the affected children, though, blame whoever drugged them in the first place. “We still don’t know if it was one sick individual, or some kind of organised campaign,” says a still furious Declan Hoop, whose nine year old son Dermot received a dose of LSD disguised as a sweet. “It was in a plastic wrapper, like a boiled sweet – the bastards went to some trouble to disguise it. It was just lucky that he didn’t eat it immediately, instead bringing it home with the rest of the stuff he’d collected.” The nature of the ‘sweet’ was only discovered when it was eaten by the family’s pet dog. “It was bloody horrible – he started foaming at the mouth, rolling on the floor in contortions, before leaping up and running around growling maniacally, trying to attack everyone,” the forty year old bricklayer says. “In the end, I had to get him out into the garden and beat him to death with a shovel. I can tell you, the sight of their father bludgeoning the family pet to death has traumatised my kids for life!” Unfortunately, little Dermot has been unable to remember which house the offending sweet came from. “If I could get my hands on the bastard responsible, I’d bludgeon them to death,” promises an angry Hoop. “God knows how many of these hallucinogenic sweets are still out there!”

Porrock still blames the parents, arguing that they are ultimately to blame for letting their children roam about after dark demanding confectionery with menaces. “Even when they’re not on drugs, the little shits make everyone’s lives a misery every Halloween, pissing through letterboxes, hurling dog shit at front doors and the like if you won’t give them anything,” he muses. “Quite frankly, I’m convinced that the drug laced sweets were a revenge attack by someone fed up with being terrorised by these bastards every year. To be honest, I have some sympathy for them and might have been tempted to do the same thing myself. Not that I have any drugs to give them anyway, apart from prescription blood pressure medication, which might make them ill, but would be unlikely to trigger a bloody trail of mayhem. Still, there’s always next year…” For their part, Crapchester’s police force have defended their apparent slowness to respond to the mayhem, claiming that the police station was itself under siege from a large group of ‘Trick or Treaters’ dressed as ninjas and armed with spud guns and toy bows and arrows. “Obviously, we had no idea what was going on – they attacked us during the changeover between reliefs – the oncoming guys found themselves trapped in the canteen, while those coming off shift were being hit with a hail of missiles as they arrived back at the station,” Inspector Andy Candler told the Crapchester Chronicle. “I can tell you, some of those potato ‘bullets; fired by those guns can be bloody painful. Plus, they were firing flaming arrows and firework rockets from their plastic bows from distances of up to three yards.”

But drug fuelled child violence wasn’t the only mayhem unfolding in Crapchester this Halloween, with further confusion being caused by the popularity of a new Halloween mask depicting Home Secretary Suella Braverman. “There were hordes of the vile little scum, running around, banging on the doors of immigrants and asylum seekers, shouting ‘Trick or Deportation’ through their letterboxes,” claims Porrock. “The residents of those addresses were scared shitless! They thought they were about to go on a one-way trip to Rwanda! They didn’t stop there, though – a few days later on Guy Fawkes Night they were busy setting fire to the tents of homeless rough sleepers, shouting ‘Lifestyle choince!’ before hurling a handful of fireworks into the flames and running off!” Even the local police have claimed that the Suella Braverman masked ‘Trick or Treaters’ hampered their efforts on Halloween, sowing confusing amongst officers. “Look, when you get someone looking like the Home Secretary coming up to you and telling you not to respond to reports of drug-crazed kiddies attacking people, what’s an officer meant to do?” asks Inspector Candler. “I mean, I know that they were only four feet tall and had squeeky voices, but you never know – you just don’t want to risk going against government policy, do you?”

Despite criticism of the masks, which were manufactured locally, their maker has defended distributing them as a Halloween novelty item. “People are always complaining that there aren’t enough proper Halloween costumes worn by kids these days – too many spacemen and cowboys and not enough vampires and werewolves. So every year we try and produce a contemporary bogeyman for kids to dress up as,” explains Harold Milkley, managing director of the manufacturer. “Suella Braverman was the obvious choice this year – I mean, she’s just so horrendous and evil, isn’t she?” A few years previously, Milkley’s company had attracted similar criticism after its Jimmy Savile Halloween masks were blamed for a series of gropings and sexual assaults that year. “Oh come on, I don’t think that we can be blamed for sick little teenage perverts knocking on doors shouting ‘Trick or Treat’ and then feeling up some young housewife’s knockers as a ‘treat’,” he complains. “Somehow, I think that they would have tried that regardless of the mask they were wearing.” Back in the present, this year’s experiences have led for calls for Halloween to be banned in the town – a call that Crapchester District Council is seriously considering.