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<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">When Pc Alex Deeprose was called to Glasgow's sprawling Southern Necropolis on the evening of 23 September 1954, he expected to be dealing with a simple case of vandalism.</div>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">Titles like Tales from the Crypt were accused of corrupting young children</div>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">But the bizarre sight that awaited him was to make headlines around the world and cause a moral panic that led to the introduction of strict new censorship laws in the UK.</div>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">Hundreds of children aged from four to 14, some of them armed with knives and sharpened sticks, were patrolling inside the historic graveyard.</div>
How a school-yard rumour became a full-blown panic...

<em>When Pc Alex Deeprose was called to Glasgow's sprawling Southern Necropolis on the evening of 23 September 1954, he expected to be dealing with a simple case of vandalism. But the bizarre sight that awaited him was to make headlines around the world and cause a moral panic that led to the introduction of strict new censorship laws in the UK.</em>

<em>Hundreds of children aged from four to 14, some of them armed with knives and sharpened sticks, were patrolling inside the historic graveyard.</em>

<em>Full story over at the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8574484.stm" target="_blank">BBC</a></em>

This great tale from the crypt shows us how even the most unlikely rumours can escalate into something potentially more serious. Back in the 1930s, Halifax suffered a panic at the hands of a phantom assailant, the Halifax Slasher (detailed by Tim Chapman in <em><a href="http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/SAJ2_sell.html" target="_blank">SAJ2</a></em>), while in the mid-1970s sheriffs had to persuade students at a Montana high-school that the cattle mutilators said to be plaguing the region weren't about to turn their scalpels on humans – more on this in <em>Mirage Men</em>.

And then of course, there's the alleged attack of the <a href="http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=9555" target="_blank">killer smurfs</a> in Houston Texas...

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