Fake Newspaper Article MYSTERY RODS
Mystery Rods. For You and for Me.
Get mileage out of this for years, seeing how many will bite on the story. (Most everyone will, especially if ordered in the 'full page format'.) Perfect for sleep-overs, camping trips, ghost stories, April Fools. The danged things are almost certainly from outer space. They're probably here to wipe out humanity (just waiting for sufficient reinforcements). We know of none that have ever been caught, and no dead ones have ever been found---two facts which make us more nervous than the fact that they exist in the first place.
Just tell us your city, town, neighborhood---whatever. Rearrange the story any way you like. Then go to town. Literally. Your kids, your neighbors and their kids will spend the next five weeks running around like lunatics, trying to film or catch one. And you'll be supremely entertained. Where else can you get a show like that for a handful of pocket change?
Article Text Below, Feel free to copy and make changes to the story you submit to us.
Hazmat and CDC Teams Respond
So-Called "Mystery Rod" Finally Captured
Gov't Agencies Won't Assure Public Phenomenon Poses No Threat
Yourtown---- (NOTICE: Any names of towns, locations, people, institutions, etc., used in these sample fake newspaper stories, are purely fictional, chosen at random, and are not meant to portray or represent any real person, place or deed. Remember that no matter what name a writer chooses to use in any fictional story, there is a real person (or many persons) SOMEWHERE who have that exact name.)
State and Federal agencies from around the country descended on the little berg of Federal Way Thursday, in response to claims that a so-called "Mystery Rod" had finally been collected and was being contained in an old refrigerator in the garage of a retired Lutheran minister, Don Moore. Said Moore, "I've never heard of the phenomenon before." He just happened to find the creature stuck in his badminton net, and called a friend at a local school, who called the police, who called the Center for Disease Control---and before the community knew what hit it, government teams were scouring the area and evacuating neighborhoods.
Mysterious "Rods" first entered the collective American consciousness about 1984, when consumers using newer and more sophisticated video equipment noticed extremely fast-moving streaks across their screens when they played back everyday footage.." Since then discussions of the phenomenon have abounded on the Internet.
"There's no question about the existence [of the flying rods]," admitted John Browne, public liaison for the CDC. "We've been aware of them for some time. Lots of agencies have tried to capture one, but they move at speeds of up to 900 mph, and seldom slower than 700 mph, or about the speed of a slow-moving bullet. They're never visible to the naked eye, so no one knew anything about them until the proliferation of relatively high-speed camcorders."
The presence of Hazmat workers made locals nervous, and more controversial still was the evacuation of certain areas by the CDC.
Local man Andy Mahon summed it up, "If these things are harmless, like some kind of supersonic butterfly, then why is the government using full bio-hazard suits to handle the dead ones, and why are people being forced to leave their homes?"
Authorities offered no answers.
The rods seem definitely to be organic. They are living creatures, says the CDC, and presumably they've been with us for millennia, but not a single specimen has been captured until now.
The rods run from 4 inches to about 20 inches in length. Reports that the creatures have accidentally or intentionally penetrated human bodies resulting in fatalities are un-confirmed. Some discussions suggest the creatures have been seen and photographed by astronauts in space.
See FORTEAN BLOBS Page B-5
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Small Size is SMALL -- roughly a 6 x 9 inch "Pocket Clipping" with NO HEADLINE
Tabloid is tabloid sized, smaller than the Enquirer; one sheet, two pages each WITH HEADLINE
Full size is one full page, NOT one full SHEET; it's an INSIDE half-sheet page with NO HEADLINE