Has a notorious Victorian ghoul returned to terrorise Britain’s streets? A flurry of media reports have claimed that ‘Flame Arsed Jack’ is once more abroad, frightening women and children with his anal arson antics while constantly eluding the police’s attempts to apprehend him. “I was walking home from a club with my sister, when we saw this weirdo in a top hat and split-tail coat leaning against a wall, as we came level with him, he turned his back to us, bento over and dropped his trousers! We thought he was just some sad drunk perv mooning us – then there was a roar and this huge blue flame shot out of his arse and hit my sister in the face!” nineteen year old Jane Straggle told the Deptford Advertiser and Car Mart, describing her and the her sister’s recent bizarre ordeal. “After that, he just pulled up his trousers and ran off, cackling and farting maniacally! My sister had to spend several days in hospital – thankfully, her burns were only superficial and she’s suffered no permanent damage to her sight! Of course, the police didn’t believe us – they tried to blame it on some kind of clubbing-related fart lighting prank gone wrong!” The Straggle sisters, whose terrifying experience occurred just a month ago, appear to have been the first victims of the burning bummed apparition’s new generation of victims. Despite police scepticism, several more incidents have subsequently been reported.

With each new incident reported, the ghoul’s power’s seem to become more powerful, with some victims reporting that his fiery posterior emissions are accompanied by the sound of crackling thunder, while others have stated that rather than dropping his trousers, he lifts the tails of his coat to reveal that his trousers are backless, his arse ready-bared for action. Perhaps most disturbingly, his blue flamed displays are no longer restricted simply to frightening victims, but are now harnessed to destructive purpose. This new development was apparently first witnessed at a children’s playground in Enfield. “According to my Timmy, he and his friends were playing quite happily on the swings and slide, when this creep in a top hat sidled into the park and exposed his arse to them,” Mrs Eileen Froakes, mother of one the children who saw the incident, told the Enfield Bugle and Garden Tool Shopper. “Obviously, they were all traumatised to tears by that but, next thing they knew, there were flames billowing from the bastard’s backside and engulfing the play area! They all ran away screaming as everything – climbing frame, swings, slide, the lot – went up in flames!” Responding reports of arson, police quickly arrived at the park, to find the perpetrator still present. “Well, my Timmy, who was hiding in some bushes, watched as these two coppers got out of their car and approached the bastard, but he just laughed maniacally at them and emitted a huge flame from his behind, which sent him whooshing into the air!” Mrs Froakes explained to her local newspaper. “He landed behind their car, bent over and shot flame all over it, causing the vehicle to explode, before flying off on his flaming arse again!”

Police in Enfield have subsequently denied the loss of a patrol car or of any encounter with ‘Flame Arsed Jack’, insisting that its officers had simply responded to a report of arson in a local park. They added that the culprits were thought to be local children, dismissing reports of the blazing bottomed ghoul’s involvement as ‘mass hysteria’. While some have claimed that ‘Flame Arsed Jack’ in his current incarnation is a supernatural phenomenon – pointing out that bare arsed fart lighting would, under normal circumstances, result in severe burns to the perpetrator’s buttocks, whereas the ghoul’s behind appears to remain unscathed – most commentators are in agreement with the police. “There can be little doubt that this so called ‘Flame Arse Jack’ is merely mass hysteria, whipped up by the media,” opines Professor Bob Mincer, Senior Lecturer in Media Mythology at the Thames Valley School of Animal Husbandry. “None of the reports of his manifestations can be independently verified and there is no physical evidence of his activities – no CCTV footage or mobile phone photos, for instance. The thing is that once the idea of this sort of thing has been popularised by the media, everyone starts blaming it for every unrelated incident – like the playground arson.” The academic does concede, however, that at least some of the appearances of ‘Flame Arsed Jack’ might be the result of the activities of a flesh and blood prankster, inspired by the original Victorian ghoul.

He points out that the original ‘Flame Arsed Jack’, who terrorised parts of London in the 1870s, causing tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage with his blazing bum hole, was long suspected to be, in actuality, an elderly cobbler named Mathias Bumble. “All of the property that ‘Flame Arsed Jack’ burned down was reputedly insured by the same company that had refused to pay out when Bumble’s workshop had burned down as a result of his apprentice’s fart-lighting pranks,” muses Mincer. “How he created the flaming arse effect is still a mystery – there was talk of a pact with the devil. But it wouldn’t be hard to do without resort to supernatural agency. In the case of the current ‘Flame Arsed Jack’, he probably has a small butane gas canister gripped between his buttocks, or even up his arse, which he ignites with a lighter. The lack of damage he does to himself is probably the result of shaving his arse to stop his bum hair going up in flames and smearing his buttocks with some sort of flame-retardant grease. He’d only have to perform his act a couple of times and mass-hysteria would do the rest!”

But are the ghoul’s appearances simply evidence of a new wave of mass hysteria gripping the country in the face of multiple economic and political crises, or is something more sinister afoot? “This ‘Flame Arsed Jack’ is a bogeyman created by the ‘Wokerati’ to frighten those who resist their woke nonsense,” declares right wing commentator and self styled ‘Free Speech Champion’ Jacob Hubster, author of the book Woke in Fright, which documents supposed incidents of intimidatory ‘wokery’ against ‘free thinkers’. “All of the victims in this recent wave of attacks had been expressing their right to free-thinking and opposing wokery before being targeted by ‘Flame Arsed Jack’ – the Straggle sisters, for instance, had been objecting to the unisex toilets at the club they had just attended, arguing that they would deprive them of a ‘safe space’ from sexual predators, while the parents of the children terrorised in Enfield had recently objected to their children being exposed to trans-sexual propaganda, when a drag troupe had performed at their school. The pattern is obvious!” While Hubster claims that scared parents are now warning their off spring that if they aren’t woke enough, then ‘Flame Arsed Jack’ will get them, Mincer has dismissed his theory as ‘absolute bollocks’. “He really does talk a lot of shite,” observes Mincer. “The only one creating a mythical bogeyman here is him, with his talk of this non-existent ‘Wokerati’ conspiring against bigots! If only it were true and ‘Flame Arsed Jack’ would blow one of his fiery farts into Hubster’s face!”