“At first I thought it was just rats or mice in the walls, scrabbling around – you get a lot of that in these old houses. But then, from the corner of my eye, I saw this movement and something went scuttling from the fireplace and ran out of the door – I swear it was human!” claims builder Jay Crackass, describing his eerie recent experiences while carrying out maintenance work on an empty house in West London. “It could have been a tramp or a squatter we’d disturbed, but there was something about the way it moved – plus, it seemed unnaturally thin and stunted! I was off the job after that – there was no way I was going to spend any more time in that place!” The house Crackass was working on was one of a large number of houses bought by foreign investors, then left empty for years, while their values increased. “Obviously, they still need maintenance, otherwise they’d fall into wrack and ruin, so teams like mine regularly work on them,” explains the builder. “There have been a lot of reports from other teams as to all sorts of strange noises and apparitions in these houses, but I’d never believed any of it until I saw that thing!”But just what did Crackass see in the house? Hugh Honkley-Pipps, regular columnist for the Daily Excess, believes that he has the answer. “It’s quite obvious – it was a case of immigrants in the walls! As we well know, this country is currently infested with illegal immigrants – with more arriving in boats all the time,” he wrote in his most recent column. “They come ashore then just vanish – well, now we know where they go – they’ve gone to ground in London, infesting these huge empty houses, hiding in the cellars and walls whenever anybody goes into one!”

Honkley-Phipps’ theory, however, has been challenged by Crackass himself, who has pointed out that the figure he saw was white. “The sort of immigrants he and his mates in Reform and the Tory party are always on about seem to from Afghanistan, Pakistan or the Middle East, but what I saw was definitely pale skinned,” he asserts. “Very pale skinned. Literally white, in fact. Like an albino or something that hasn’t ever seen the light of day. Plus, it seemed to be naked and I got the impression that it was that shade all over.” This revelation has led to much speculation that the strange creatures lurking in these empty properties are a race of hitherto unknown troglodytes who have, for some reason, started coming to the surface. “Before they effectively abandoned them, the super rich who bought them often had extensive work done on them,” says top anthropologist Neal Twink. “In many cases, they extended them underground, building many new floors below existing basements, sometimes as many as eight or nine new levels. It’s possible that this activity disturbed these underground dwellers, perhaps even impinging upon their domain – now they’re using these deep basement extensions to access the upper world.” According to Twink, their intent could be hostile. “There’s a very real chance that they’ve been angered by our incursions into their world and are now planning to take revenge against us surface dwellers,” he muses. “For all we know, they could be cannibals, perhaps they’ve come to the surface in search of food!”

Twink’s claims, however, have been dismissed by government scientist Philip Lune, who claims that the authorities have been aware of the existence of these strange pale people for some time and have even made contact with them. “Obviously, we’ve been keen to keep their existence under wraps for the time being in order to avoid the risk of public panic,” he told a press conference. “But with all this irresponsible talk of cannibalism, we feel that we now have no choice but to explain their origin.” According to the scientist, many of the houses with underground extensions were, at one time staffed by their owners. “They had all manner of maids, cooks, chauffeurs and the like – all living in quarters deep underground,” he claimed. “But when the owners left the houses, they were left to fendo for themselves, more often than not inadvertently trapped underground by their employers, who seemingly forgot about their very existence.” The offspring of these domestic staff have now managed t burrow out of their basements and have started emerging into the houses above.

“They are most certainly not cannibals – they subsist on rats, insects even worms,” says Lune. “In fact, they are surprisingly amiable, servile even. Which, perhaps, shouldn’t be surprising in view of their origins.” Lune and his colleagues estimate that there could be significant numbers of these creatures living beneath London’s most expensive properties. This fact, combined with their servile nature, has attracted the attention of various right-wing think tanks. “They could present us with the solution to current employment services,” opines Gerald Inkston of the Institute of Economic Exploitation. “Most specifically, shortages of inexpensive domestic staff. With Brexit and the crackdown on immigration, foreign domestics are impossible to get these days and British workers expect to paid at least minimum wage.” Inkston believes that if it proves possible to train these underground people to carry out simple domestic tasks, then they could prove a Godsend to British millionaires seeking staff. “There’s a big question over whether they can even be classified as human,” he says. “If not, then we wouldn’t even have to pay them or give them any employment rights – they’d effectively be property rather than employees!”

Honkley-Pipps remains dubious, arguing that these subterranean albinos aren’t really British and therefore constitute some kind of illegal immigrants. “I don’t care whether they come from Albania or underground – they’ve no business being here,” he writes in the Daily Excess. “They need to be sent back to where they came from – if necessary, I’m prepared to bury them myself!” Suspicions have been raised over whether or not the original abandonment of the progenitors of this new race really was accidental. “Sealing large numbers of people underground surely isn’t something anyone would do by accident, then forget about it,” says Labour MP Ian Fluke. “It all seems too convenient that they have now re-emerged as a race of docile and compliant domestics, ready to be employed by the very same super rich who originally abandoned them – or that the think tanks proposing this are financed by these multi-millionaires. Perhaps, like their houses, they saw their staff as an appreciating asset?”