Chaos is unfolding in a small English town, with a mob of over a hundred residents recently descending on a local graveyard, digging up graves, breaking open coffins and variously staking, beheading and burning corpses. “Look, the police have been bloody useless, they’ve point blank refused to do anything,” forty two year old scaffolder’s wrench holder Barry Plinker, one of the leaders of the mob, told the Axminster Occult Enquirer, after being bailed on a charge of criminal damage. “They were quick enough to arrest us, though, when all we were doing was trying to protect our kids from that bastard spectral flasher who has been terrorising the town.” Residents claim that for the past few weeks local children have been subjected to a campaign of indecency by a ghostly pervert that appears from nowhere outside schools and playgrounds, before exposing its ethereal genitals. “Obviously, at first we thought he was just a regular peado, you know the sort, wanders around in a long raincoat, then pulls it open to reveal himself when he spots some kiddies,” explained Plinker. “But all the kids he flashed at described him as being dressed all in white and being translucent, plus, he apparently just vanished, literally, into thin air after whipping out his phantom John Thomas!” The incidents came to a head when the phantom flasher allegedly appeared in a child’s bedroom and exposed itself before vanishing with an evil cackle, leaving a traumatised child screaming in terror.

“I mean, that was just a step too far – you sort of expect these sick bastards to hang around on the street, but when they start appearing in kiddies’ bedrooms, that’s just a bloody liberty,” opined Plinker. “But the cops just wouldn’t take it seriously, saying that it was just a case of mass hysteria. Even if it wasn’t, they said that they couldn’t arrest a spectre as, even if ghosts existed, there was no criminal offence of phantom flashing, as there were no real private parts involved! They wouldn’t even do an exorcism, saying that they weren’t the Catholic church.” Plinker and his associates on the Facebook group set up to discuss the situation decided that their only option was to take the law into their own hands. “We’d had some experience dealing with suspected kiddie fiddlers in the past,” he told the newspaper. “Identifying them and running them out of town, but dealing with a ghost one was a different kettle of fish altogether.” The group started by setting up crucifixes and spreading holy water outside local schools and playgrounds. “The trouble was that while that seemed to keep him away from his usual haunts, it just encouraged him to keep popping up in people’s houses,” admits Plinker. “Even worse, he started appearing inside the schools, exposing himself in front of thirty kids at a time when he materialised in classrooms!” The group decided that the only sure way to deal with the problem was to tackle it at source. “Someone in the group who had seen a few films on the subject reckoned that if we could locate and destroy the bastard’s physical remains, then that would stop his ethereal appearances,” he says. “So, we decided to systematically dig up every grave in every graveyard in this town and destroy every body.” After putting out a call for action on social media, the mob was assembled and descended on the first graveyard on the list.

In a parallel development, the Axminster Occult Enquirer has also reported on the claims of a local medium to have been in contact with the spectral flasher. “It was last week, I was holding one of my regular Thursday night seances, we weren’t even trying to contact him – it was just meant to be the usual session of trying to put bereaved relatives in touch with their departed loved ones,” claimed sixty three year old Ava Gussthong. “But he just crashed the party! He insisted that he needed to tell his side of the story!” According to the psychic, the flasher’s appearance was preceded by a series of olfactory phenomena. “It’s quite common that, prior to materialisation, the presence of a spirit is announced by a series of smells – in this case it was combination of sulphurous whiffs, the hint of newly ejaculated jism and Old Spice aftershave,” Gussthong told the paper. “Then I felt ectoplasm come pouring out of my mouth before it formed itself into the shape of a man in a dirty raincoat!” Not only did the ghost identify itself as the so called flasher, but also objected to the way in which he had been characterised by Plinker and his vigilantes. “He claimed that there was a bigger story to be told and that things weren’t as they seemed,” the medium explained. “He demanded that I arranged for him to speak to the press in order to put his story out there.”

At this point, Gussthong contacted various press outlets, but only the Axminster Occult Enquirer expressed an interest. Consequently, they agreed to send a reporter to her next weekly séance. Perhaps surprisingly, the ghost turned up and granted an interview. “Look, I’m no bloody nonce,” he supposedly told the journalist. “All of my posthumous activities haven’t been motivated by any kind of perverted sexual interest in underage kids, but rather by revenge. Those kids I targeted were all the offspring of the bastards who hounded me to an early grave!” According to the restless spirit, in life he had been targeted by a group of self-styled peadophile hunters – led by Plinker. “I admit that, in life, I was a pretty sleazy guy – I hung out in strip clubs, had a serious internet porn addiction and regularly paid for sex,” he allegedly explained. “Sure, I liked girls who looked young, sometimes I even liked them to dress in school uniform – but that was just a fetish. I was never into real children!” Nevertheless, the gang decided that he was a peadophile and subjected him to a campaign of terror – bricks through his windows, false allegations painted on his house, even beating him up. “It all came to a head when they poured petrol through my letter box and set fire to it,” the ghost apparently claimed. “Although I was able to put the fire out, I was in despair, at rock bottom. I couldn’t see any way out other than taking my own life..” Once in the hereafter, the ghost saw his opportunity for revenge. “I decided that I’d show them what it was really like to have a peadophile in the neighbourhood,” he allegedly cackled. “One they coouldn’t stop!”

The ghost apparently gave his name to the reporter and the Axminster Occult Enquirer has been able to confirm that the individual had committed suicide following harassment by persons unknown. Local police, however, have maintained their stance that they have no evidence that any crimes have actually been committed, either by the supposed ghost flasher or by Plinker and his anti-peadophile vigilantes – other than their desecration of graves. While a local priest has offered to perform a blessing over the ghost’s grave in hope of setting his soul at rest, the Axminster Occult Enquirer have revealed that such action would be impossible. “Apparently he was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea,” says Gussthong. “Which is bad news for Plinker and his cronies, as they can dig up as many graves as they like, but it won’t get rid of the phantom.”