GHOST WRITERS FRIGHTEN TRIBES

(Placerville) Ghost writers, allegedly in the employ of the San Juan Horseshoe, have been scaring the daylights out of stone age tribesmen camped on the edge of the San Miguel River here. The primitives, at first hostile, have taken to worshipping the spirit scribes, bestowing them with lavish gifts of gold and tellurium.

A longtime policy at the paper calls for the hiring of a skeleton crew of ghost writers for the summer so as to pursue historical documentation with minor embellishment.

According to publisher General Kashmir Horseshoe (CSA 1861-1863; USA 1863-1865) retired it is far easier recording local history when one is surrounded by a staff that actually lived during the prescribed period.

“Our agenda calls for first-hand accounts, not hearsay as practiced by so many other annal sorcerers,” spat the general. “Besides, we don’t have to pay them much, a few cheap beers and a few bags of jerky.”

Peculiarities like this tend to become debauched by chroniclers and then blown out of proportion by local plebeians already upset by news of spring riots in Purgatory and strikes in Limbo. Chanting

“Let us out or send us down,” unruly mobs of poor souls in both places are still out of control. At press time local authorities are cautious not to draw parallels to the two separate incidents, preferring to call the whole charade a paradox.

–Mary Wanna