Headline Causes Widespread Panic, Mass Suicides

Last Thursday, a headline reading, "Headline causes widespread panic, mass suicides," did just that: it caused a wave of unbridled hysteria and suicides all across the country.

"I don't even know why that headline ran," said Casper Precious, Editor-in-chief of the Boston Bastard, the paper that originally ran the headline. "The story was about kittens and how good they taste. I think one of the copyeditors was just playing a prank or something-but obviously it went horribly wrong."

When the story was picked up by wire services across the country, the panic that had originated in Boston spread like wildfire across the entire country's populace.

"The headline seemed to do something to people," said Xander Bennet, an FBI operative investigating the strange occurance. "It's like it short-circuited their brains or something. Obviously, some people are immune or everyone would be dead, but the damage that's been caused by this headline is severe. It's the worst disaster the United States has ever encountered in terms of human lives . . . honestly, I don't know how we're going to get through this one."

Some groups are going one step further, saying that the bedlam caused by the headline isn't just a tragic disaster, but in fact the start of armageddon.

"It's clear that we're in the end times," said Christopher McClain, Director of End Times Watch, an organization that reports on how recent news events relate to end-times scripture in the Bible. "Never before has the world experienced such widespread panic. It's clearly the dawn of the end of the world."

President Venkman announced in a speech Thursday that he attributed the unceasing nature of the diaster to newspapers that insisted on running headlines on the story that were, in fact, carbon copies of the headline of the original story that caused all the trouble in the first place.

"If newspapers would just stop publishing stories with the headline 'Headline causes widespread panic, mass suicides,' then the trouble would cease. But they refufse to do so, and we can't force them, because they have freedom of the press."