Man Builds Exact Replica Of Stoke On 'SimCity', Gets Destroyed By Bowser

Self-described "Stoke layabout" Gil Gerard has spent the last 15 years of his life playing the game 'SimCity 2000' on his Super Nintendo, recreating Stoke to the smallest detail... only to see it destroyed in a matter of hours by a rampaging Bowser!

"I'm pretty gutted, to be honest," said a forlorn Gil. "I feel like my life's work has been for nothing."

"I don't think that this means that an attack will definitely happen," said environmental analyst Cob Juicer. "But, SimCity 2000 is a very intelligent simulator and if it says Bowser will attack Stoke, we should at least be on the lookout."

Stoke City Council have described the chances of Stoke being destroyed by Bowser as "minimal".

Residents Call For Ghost Ban In Tunstall

Residents of Tunny [Tunstall] are calling for ghosts to be banned from its town centre after claiming inconsiderate spirits keep bothering pedestrians! Regulations are planned which will see ghosts banned between the hours of 9am and 7pm from Monday to Saturday.

Chairman of the Tunny Civic Society, Ron Atkinson, has contacted both Staffordshire Police and Stoke City Council about the issue. "This has been a problem for a long time," said Ron. "They reckon that one person was so badly hurt that they ended up with Down Syndrome. Ghosts go tearing around with no consideration for the pedestrians and nothing is being done about it."





President of the Tunny Chamber of Commerce, Doug Morris, was recently bitch-slapped by a ghost while kerb-crawling in the town. The 85-year-old said: "Unfortunately, a ghost made me crash my pussy wagon into a Mothercare store. I didn't think ghosts were allowed in the town centre at all, but that doesn't appear to be stopping the floaty bastards. And have you never noticed how you never see a black or Asian ghost?"

Barry Shanks, a spokesman from Staffordshire Police, said: "It is an offence to be a ghost or dress as one in the town centre. Our police officers have been told to beat anything resembling a ghost with hammers."

Zombies Vote Conservative

A top, top election official in Stoke is disputing a recent claim that more than 950 people who voted in recent city council elections could actually be dead. Of the 100 names of so-called zombie voters her office was allowed to examine, all were still eligible to vote, and all voted Conservative.

A zombie

"They would have voted for us anyway, what's the big deal? Would you deny someone their dying wish? Would you?" said Conservative city councillor Miff Barnstormer.

The data checking came after the director of the city council's famine division ("Stoke Aid"), Terry Pie, testified to Stoke elders that an estimated 950-plus dead people had voted since the day they had died in the recent council election.

Plan To Reanimate Reginald Mitchell Discovered

It has been revealed by city council officials that there were plans to reanimate legendary spitfire designer Reginald Mitchell to design new war planes for Stoke's bid for independence from the UK in 1974.

Mitchell was a proud Stokie, and city council officials thought that he would have had no objection to Stoke's independence if he had still been alive.

Reginald Mitchell

When Stoke's plans for independence were revealed, trained physician Hub Parsley was hired by the city council after he suggested a novel method for resurrecting Mitchell. Parsley told Mitchell's son Gordon that he wanted to dig up Mitchell's body with tractors and have it rubbed vigorously with blankets. Then he planned to perform a tracheotomy so he could insert a bellows into Mitchell's throat and pump his lungs full of air, and then to give Mitchell an infusion of lamb's blood. Finally, he would perform a special Voodoo dance which would hopefully bring Mitchell back to life.

Friends and family declined Parsley's mad scientist offer, not because they thought his solution impossible, but because they felt that Mitchell should rest in peace and only be resurrected if his old foes the Nazis made a comeback.

Batman & Robin

Intro: 'Batman & Robin' is the fourth Batman film, but no-one says that it's the best. Directed by Joel Schumacher, who also directed the previous film in the series, the abominable 'Batman Forever', and with George Clooney replacing Val Kilmer as Batman, the film was released in 1997. Clooney has since described the film as a "waste of money".

Cast: George Clooney (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Chris O'Donnell (Dick Grayson/Robin), Alicia Silverstone (Barbara Wilson/Batgirl), Michael Gough (Alfred), Arnold Schwarzenegger (Dr Fries/Mr Freeze), Uma Thurman (Dr Isley/Poison Ivy), someone no-one's heard of (Bane)

1 min: Arnie is top of the credits. IT'S A BATMAN FILM! How can Clooney not be top?

2 min: We get to see close-ups of Batman and Robin's arses and crotches in their tight outfits. Thanks. For. That. The new Batmobile looks like a flimsy plastic nightmare.

3 min: The first words of the film are Robin saying: "I want a car. Chicks dig the car." Classic opening line, take that Shakespeare! "This is why Superman works alone," replies Batman. Zing!

4 min: "Don't wait up, Al," Robin says to Alfred the butler. "I'll cancel the pizzas," replies Alfred. He then pulls a face like he's shitting himself or something. He's probably meant to be ill. Commisioner Gordon tells Batman that Mr Freeze is causing havoc in Gotham.

5 min: At Gotham Museum of Art, which is covered in ice, Mr Freeze turns some cops/security guards into (more) ice, then says: "The iceman cometh." Another cop/guard begs for mercy. "I'm afraid that my condition has left me cold to your pleas of mercy," Arnie says. Then freezes him. Is Gore Vidal an uncredited dialogue writer in this film? Easy to see why he's called Mr Freeze. He then grabs a big diamond. Don't know why that would be in a museum of art.

6 min: Batman shows up. "You're not sending me to the cooler!" Arnie shouts. Robin shows up and kicks the diamond from Mr Freeze's hand. "Grab the gem! Kill the heroes!" Arnie shouts at his henchmen, who look like Jason Voorhees on ice skates. They must be useless in non-ice-based fights. "Yes, kill them. Kill them, yes," Arnie adds, in case in wasn't clear what he wanted his ice-skating henchmen to do.

8 min: As Batman and Robin fight about 100 henchman, Arnie shouts: "What killed the dinosaurs? The ice age!" I'm not sure that's factually accurate. He then freezes a big dinosaur anyway. Again, I'm not sure why that's in a museum of art. Arnie then scarpers in a rocket he has inside of his big snow plough.

10 min: Batman and Robin go after Mr Freeze, but Batman gets trapped inside the rocket while Robin is stuck clinging to the outside of it. He gets inside and saves the B-man though, in case you were worried.

12 min: The rocket blows up but Batman and Robin use the explosion to surf (!) back to Earth, catching up with Mr Freeze and grabbing the big diamond back from him, defying the laws of gravity as they do so. Take that science!

14 min: Chasing after Mr Freeze, Robin gets frozen by his big freeze gun! "Stay cool, bird boy!" Arnie screams as he scarpers with the diamond, which he's somehow got back. Batman thaws Robin out while Mr Freeze escapes.

15 min: "Drats. My experiment to mate an orchid and a South American rattlesnake have failed again," says Uma Thurman in a lab somewhere. "But I still have high hopes for the animal-plant cross-breedings." She must be a bad guy.

17 min: In the lab next to Uma Thurman is Lionel Luthor from 'Smallville', who appears to be wearing about 3 pairs of glasses. He is experimenting on humans for the pleasure of onlookers in military uniforms. He's created Bane by feeding some liquids into his head via a big tube!

20 min: After walking in on Lionel Luthor's scheme, Uma Thurman is forced back to her lab by him and pushed over into loads of chemicals. Surely she wouldn't survive that, let alone develop some sort of special powers from the incident? Surely?

21 min: Clooney is showing a video of how Arnie became Mr Freeze. It basically entails Arnie shouting: "Argh argh argh," then jumping backwards into a vat of liquid. "That's gotta hurt," Chris O'Donnell helpfully adds.

22 min: Alfred looks like he's shitting himself again. He must be seriously ill.

24 min: It turns out that Uma Thurman survived and has turned into Poison Ivy, who was originally played by Drew Barrymore in that film called 'Poison Ivy'. You know the one. She kisses Lionel Luthor and he dies. She then takes about a minute to explain who she is now, in case it isn't clear. Her lips are now poisonous, apparently, that's why Lionel Luthor died.

26 min: Arnie is making his goons sing songs about snow for his amusement. He then reveals (to no-one) his plan to freeze Gotham, hold the city to ransom, then find a cure for his wife, who he keeps in a tank. Typical wife: lazy. You know what I'm saying, right guys?

29 min: Who's at the door to Wayne Manor? It's only that Alicia Silverstone dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl! Seemingly, she is Alfred's niece from England. She doesn't bother doing the accent.

32 min: After everyone has gone to bed, Silverstone climbs out of a window (dressed in leathers) and nicks a motorbike. BECAUSE SHE'S A REBEL.

34 min: Bane is now Uma Thurman's henchman. Don't know how that happened. Clooney is with Elle Macpherson at Gotham Observatory, donating a telescope. Thurman shows up and asks Clooney to stop polluting the Earth. He says no.

37 min: Uma Thurman starts talking out loud to herself. BECAUSE SHE'S CRAZY. She plans to kill Batman and Robin and turn Gotham into a big forest. She should get together with Arnie, they have similar plans to both kill Batman and Robin.

39 min: We now go to a fund-raising party at Gotham Botannical Gardens, where people dressed like Tarzan are swinging around. Batman and Robin are there hoping to lure Mr Freeze by showing off some big diamonds. This seems like a lame plan as Mr Freeze could easily show up and kill the hundreds of regular citizens at the party.

40 min: They seem to be auctioning off women at this party.

41 min: Uma Thurman has shown up, dressed as a monkey with pink fur. She does a seductive dance then blows some pink fumes at Batman and Robin. They are presumably under her spell or some shit.

43 min: An interviewer asks Uma Thurman who she is. "Poison, Poison Ivy," she says. Surely the name is a giveaway that SHE'S BAD? People start bidding on Posion Ivy and Batman and Robin start arguing with each other about who likes her more.

44 min: As I predicted, Mr Freeze shows up and starts laying waste to random members of the public. "Alright everyone, chill," Arnie says as he freezes people.

45 min: Fights break out. We can clearly see Clooney's foot miss a henchman by about 2 feet as he supposedly kicks kis face off. We also get comedy sound effects as Robin chucks stuff at Mr Freeze's henchmen.

46 min: They said it would never happen, that two such great, charismatic actors would appear together onscreen together at the same time. But no, Arnie and Uma Thurman are together at last! Thurman tries to blow her fumes at Mr Freeze but it doesn't work. "Cool party," Arnie says as he leaves with the diamonds.

48 min: "It's a cool town," Arnie says to himself as Batman and Robin chase after him in the Batmobile and whatever-the-bike-is-called that Robin drives. Mr Freeze shoots the Batmobile with ice but Batman ejects and captures him! Job done.

52 min: Alicia Silverstone returns to Wayne Manor but Chris O'Donnell catches her. She throws him down. "Did they teach you that at Oxbridge?" asks O'Donnell. "London is kinda rough," replies Silverstone. Didn't the scriptwriter even look at a map of England when writing this shit?

53 min: Mr Freeze gets wheeled into Arkham Asylum inside a big fridge. "Allow me to break the ice, my name is Freeze. Learn it well, for it's the chilling sound of your doom!" Arnie says to his prison guards.

58 min: Elle Macpherson now gets the chance to show she can't act, and she doesn't disappoint, telling Clooney she wants to marry him. No, girl, Clooney don't marry!

60 min: Silverstone slips out of Wayne Manor again, but O'Donnell follows her. Coolio appears. Yes, that Coolio. It turns out he organises motorbike street races for money.

61 min: The race begins! The riders race through buildings and under bridges. Quite how they would know the circuit isn't explained as this is supposedly a new route.

64 min: Some goon has somehow broken a bridge, causing Alicia Silverstone to fall off! But as she's falling, her foot is grabbed by another racer who turns out to be Chris O'Donnell. What are the chances?

65 min: Silverstone tells O'Donnell that Alfred is dying, which must be why he keeps pulling faces like he's shitting himself. Clooney already knew this. Because Clooney always knows.

67 min: Arnie gets a visitor in his cell, it's only that bloody Uma Thurman! With Bane's help, she breaks Arnie out. Bane now looks like Shrek in a mask as he's all green and shit.

72 min: Clooney and O'Donnell now realise that Poison Ivy is evil when they see CCTV footage of her breaking Arnie out of Arkham Asylum. Duh.

73 min: At Mr Freeze's base, Batman and Robin are looking at Freeze's wife, still in a tank with some sort of incurable disease. Arnie and Thurman show up, and Arnie makes the AC blow out some sort of smoke, which knocks out the cops there. We know this because one of the cops says, "Argh, my lungs," as he collapses. "Chilled to perfection," Arnie says.

74 min: Batman and Robin face off against Shrek, I mean Bane. Poison Ivy keeps trying to kiss them, to no avail.

77 min: Under Ivy's spell, Robin gets annoyed and tells Batman he's "going solo". Ivy escapes and kicks a lead going into Mr Freeze's wife's tank, presumably killing her.

78 min: Arriving back at her base, Thurman tells Arnie that Batman killed his wife. BECAUSE SHE'S EVIL. We can tell that Arnie is angry because he knocks some stuff from a table. They formulate a plan to kill all humanity. By formulate, I mean they say stuff like 'let's kill all mankind', they don't actually make any concrete plans.

80 min: Back at Wayne Manor, it seems that Alfred has got the same disease that Mr Freeze's wife has got. What are the chances?

82 min: Alfred gives Alicia Silverstone a disc for her to pass to his brother and tells her "never open it". What's the bets that she opens it?

83 min: We're back at Gotham Observatory. I guess they spent a fortune on the set, they need to get their money's worth. Uma Thurman is there and convinces Commissoner Gordon to hand over the keys to that batlight thing that shines the Batman symbol into the sky. Don't know what it's called.

86 min: Guess what? Alicia Silverstone is reading the disc Alfred gave her. On the disc are schematics for the Batmobile and stuff.

89 min: Arnie says he needs the power of Gotham's new telescope to freeze Gotham. Hopefully this won't mean more scenes at the dreary Gotham Observatory. A Robin signal shines in the sky. Batman and Robin argue again. It's obviously a trap by Poison Ivy you idiots!

91 min: Arnie and Bane break into Gotham Observatory. I don't know why we keep comong back here, it's not even an impressive set. Bane places some plastic icicles around the telescope. "If revenge is a dish best served cold, then put on your Sunday finest, it's time to feast!" Arnie says. What? "Tonight, hell freezes over," Arnie adds, as he fires the telescope, which is inexplicably now a freezing ray gun.

92 min: Alicia Silverstone is in the Batcave. Alfred has left her a suit. I guess this makes now her Batgirl or some shit.

94 min: Robin has found Ivy's lair. She is waiting for him inside of a big flower. Robin says he'll kiss her if she reveals her plans, which she does. IDIOT! Has she never seen a Bond film? They kiss but Robin is wearing rubber lips(!). This bit was in the DVD introduction so I already knew it would happen.

96 min: Batman shows up, but she tells her vines to tie him up, which they do. Some other vines pull Robin underwater. It's not going well... but Batgirl shows up!

97 min: As Batgirl and Poison Ivy bitch slap each other, Batman gets his cock out to cut away the vines that are holding him. Not really, he's got an electric saw. Inexplicably, the big flower Ivy was sitting in earlier decides to eat her.

98 min: Gotham Observatory is now frozen. "Let's kick some ice!" Arnie says, to no-one. That almost works as a pun. But doesn't. He fires the big ice ray over Gotham and it freezes over. We see a dog taking a piss on a fire hydrant get frozen. Mr Freeze must be evil, he has no regard for dogs.

100 min: The Bat-gang have not been frozen and fight Mr Freeze's goons. All 1 of them. The goon wins! Not really, it was never a fair fight.

102 min: Arriving at the observatory, the gang say that it's now daylight in "the Congo", so their plan is to reflect sunlight from there using a series of handily placed satellites onto Gotham to melt all the ice. Why don't they just reflect light from the Sun? As they set about reflecting light from "the Congo", Mr Freeze shows up! Even though he was in that exact spot literally 4 minutes ago. He must have popped out for a piss or something.

105 min: We get the big fight showdowns: Batman vs Mr Freeze and Robin & Batgirl vs Bane. Bane goes down almost immediately as Robin and Batgirl kick the big tube coming out of the back of his head, and he shrinks back to normal-people size. Batman puts something hot inside of Mr Freeze's suit (not his cock, if that's what you're thinking), knocking him down. "The heat is on," says Batman. Zing! He then redirects the satellites and unfreezes some of Gotham. But wait, Mr Freeze has set off those plastic icicles, which are apparently bombs! "Freeze in hell, Batman!" Arnie says. The telescope falls off the edge of the cliff it is located on, with Batman on it!

107 min: Batman shoots one of those metal bats-on-some-string things as the telescope is falling and gets back up to what is left of the observatory. Robin and Batgirl reposition the satellites to directly reflect sunlight from "the Congo" onto Gotham.

109 min: It worked! Gotham is saved! We know this because we see the frozen dog that was pissing on a fire hydrant and he's OK now.

110 min: Batman tells Mr Freeze that he's taking him back to Arkham Asylum and plays a video showing Poison Ivy admit to killing his wife, except it turns out she's not dead now (?) and that Mr Freeze should work on a cure for her and Alfred. Handily, Arnie already has a cure for Alfred in his suit and gives it to Batman.

112 min: Back at Wayne Manor, Batman puts the cure into Alfred. With his cock. Not really. He uses a drip. It turns out Poison Ivy isn't dead either, she's now in Arkham Asylum. She gets a visitor to her cell, it's only that bloody Mr Freeze! Presumably he's there to kill her.

114 min: It's taken all of 3 minutes but Alfred has been cured! Hugs all round! Clooney, Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone will make a pretty formidable team in the next film, that's for sure! Oh, wait...

Summary: This film is shit. I watched it so you don't have to.

Rating: 1/5

Bigfoot Corpse Found?

In 2004, badger-baiters Steve Taylors and Dave Lichfields claimed to have made the greatest scientific discovery in Stoke's history: a Bigfoot corpse!

Bigfoot's severed head?

Naming the corpse Dave Stevens, in honour of themselves, they discovered it during a tree-chopping holiday in Central Forest Park. They claimed that the body had already suffered its fatal gunshot wound when they found it, and they also claimed to have seen a further group of the beasts dancing nearby as they dragged the corpse out of the forest.

 

Taylors, 27, and Stevens, 29 and currently on sick leave from his job as a taster at a pie factory, gave photographs of the Bigfoot’s tracks to local newspaper The Stoke Daily Gargoyle. The paper's resident Sherpa and Bigfoot columnist, Nigel Dale, declared the prints as genuine! "This is the real deal," wrote Dale.

 

A website was set up to cash in on the hype. Charging money to register, subscribers had a chance to see pictures of the alleged Bigfoot's decapitated head, and got a 25% discount off merchandising like t-shirts and condoms.

Taylors and Stevens

Some people started to doubt that the Bigfoot was real; Taylors and Stevens had not let anybody view the corpse, and their publicity was being handled by local adventurer Dave Munton, unpopular with some locals since The Stoke Daily Gargoyle broke the story  that he had described Stoke women as "dogs" to undercover reporters while enjoying a stay at a Spanish brothel. The Stoke Bigfoot Association asked for further proof, while the Bigfoot Association of Stoke dismissed the claims as "retarded" and described Taylors and Stevens as "a pair of spazzy clowns". Local magazine The Stoke Skeptic described the story as "obviously bollocks".

Due to local pressure, Taylors and Stevens eventually allowed Monkeyologists from Staffordshire University to assess the corpse. It turned out to be a man in a Bigfoot suit. Taylors and Stevens reiterated that the body was dead when they found it, and that they only decapitated the man (real name: Terry) so he would fit in the boot of their car. Police are not treating the death as suspicious.

Paranormal Hair (Or: Insert A Pun Related To Hair Based On The Title Of A Kiss Song Or Album Title)

They say rock 'n' roll is the devil's music, well, it seems that Kiss bass player Gene Simmons has made a pact with the devil to grow his hair back!

Pictured below on a night out with wife and late-night-Channel 5 star Shannon Tweed, you can clearly see he's as bald as a bastard.

But, by the next morning, as reader Scott Baker points out in his e-mail alerting the Stoke Paranormal Society to "the miracle of Los Angeles", his hair has grown back!

Simmons has yet to comment on his demonic hair growth. Normally though, he is quick to offer up opinions on a wide range of subjects including Islam, which he has described as a "vile culture", and women, saying that: "If you want to welcome me with open arms, I'm afraid you're also going to have to welcome me with open legs."

Baby Eats Snake, No Motive Given

Thirteen-month-old Rihanna Pleb, who has a feeble six teeth, was found chewing on the head of a 12 inch snake by her mother, who alerted her estate with her screams.

"I was squeezing her some milk out from my tit and I looked over and saw she had a snake in her mouth," said Rihanna's mother, Kylie Trunk, who lives in Brindley Ford. "I started to scream. I couldn't believe my fookin' eyes," she told the Stoke Paranormal Society. "I nearly shat myself in fright."

A typical English snake

"We rushed in and found the baby with a snake in his mouth, chewing on it like a little bastard without a care in the world. It was really scary, just horrible," the girl's aunt, Beyonce Trunk, said.

A neighbour who had rushed to see what was going on yanked the half-dead reptile out of the girl's mouth and killed it by smashing its head against a DVD box set of 'The Only Way is Essex', she said. "When he pulled it out, Rihanna started crying like a little bitch," she said. She described the snake's head as "looking like a fucked-up pork scratching" when it emerged from the girl's mouth.

Girl Faces Surgery After Ghost Beating

A 14-year-old girl who suffered severe injuries to her face and legs in a fight with a ghost outside a nightclub will today undergo further surgery.

Packmoor Community School pupil Mariah Hammersley has already had a pin inserted in her nose and a new tattoo on her leg, but faces a further operation to replace a broken eyebrow piercing.


Artist's impression of the ghost suspect



Meanwhile, parents at the school were yesterday calling for ghost hunting measures to be introduced into the area.

Residents say Stoke-on-Trent City Council elders ditched plans for a safe parking area outside of Jinky's Hot Spot in 2009 as a way to discourage drink-driving.

Several local residents have volunteered to form an angry mob to hunt the ghost with sticks.

The Tears Of God

The Tears of God was a UFO cult based in Stallington from 1974 until 1996. The cult ended after a group suicide bid in 1996 when the Hans Gruber Comet appeared in the Earth’s skies for the first time since 1067.

The main belief of the cult was that the Earth was a giant tear on God's face. To survive, it would be necessary to get off the tear before God wipes his eyes, originally scheduled to happen in the year 2012. The only way to escape was via a UFO or a passing comet. Furthermore, all members of the cult had to change their names to Bob (if male) or Mary (if female).

The cult was started in the early 1970s by Bob and Mary South. Bob had been in hospital for a routine hair transplant operation, when a freak power cut (caused by a magician's dove mistakenly flying into a hospital generator during a show in the children's ward) caused him to have a heart attack and near death experience. In his vision, Jesus, Vishnu, Moses and Jimi Hendrix told him that he and his bed-bath nurse (Mary Farbstein) were the chosen ones to lead mankind to freedom.

The couple married and started the cult in an abandoned rubber nipple factory. The Souths started to kidnap young people in the hope of brainwashing them to stay, with mixed results. Many of the young males were forcibly castrated, in the hope they would be too embarrassed to leave, and that they would be able to sing castrato in their amateur operatic productions.

Some rubber nipples

The cult was a world leader in spying on its members, to the extent that many budding cult leaders spent time with the Souths to learn from them. Listening devices were in every room of the compound, as well as up chimneys, in cars, roller-skates and even in the compound’s bouncy castle. The group were also one of the first to raise money through webcam sex shows in the 1990s, in which cult members were required to perform.

Eventually, Bob South discovered that the Hans Gruber Comet was near to the Earth. He called everyone together for a party, where the drinks were spiked with poison and razor blades. South planned on everyone's spirits leaving their bodies and getting on to the Comet. Nineteen of the cult's twenty members died. It is not known whether their spirits reached the Comet. The only survivor was retired accountant Colin Chuffs. "I only joined the cult for the sex," said Chuffs when interviewed by Sue Barker for BBC Television. "I wasn't ready to die," he added. "I'm not a spaz or a mong or nuffin'."

South left a note saying that the group was now going to explore another level of existence, one that would be ethereal, spiritual and sexual. Brown paper bags were placed over the heads of the ugliest members of the group, who were all found lying in their camp beds wearing identical 'Frankie Says Relax' t-shirts. All of the female group members were discovered to have had breast augmentations.

Chuffs lectures on his experiences in the cult across the world. He hopes to start his own cult soon. "I'm not gonna lie, it's gonna be based on aliens and sex," explained Colin. "That's where the action is."

UFO Found In Lake Burslem?

A group of pirates that found a strange circular object on the floor of Lake Burslem in 2011 now says they have found a second object near to the first.

Pete Firestorm, who leads the group, previously joked that the first object they found 50 feet below the surface might be an unidentified flying object. I won't repeat the joke, it's not that funny.

A recently spotted UFO in Burslem

When the object, which has a diameter of 45 feet, was first discovered in June, some thought that had crashed onto the lakefloor and left behind a path of destruction measuring some 90 feet.

The team is waiting until later in the month to further investigate their intriguing discovery.

"Right now, we know of about 20,000 objects, mostly used condoms and shipwrecks, in Lake Burslem. But I think there may be more than 100,000," fishing expert Bill Spatz told The Evening Sentinel newspaper. "I'm not sure what you will see when you go down. Aye, but I'm excited. It's going to be interesting to see what it is. Hopefully not just a bunch of used heroin needles that have got stuck together, like it usually is."

Trentzilla

The "Trentzilla" is a giant snake or serpent-like monster purported to live in the River Trent. It is reported to be green and/or white, snake-like, around 10-12 metres long and at least a metre in diameter.

First sighted in 1876, various theories have been put forward to try to classify the creature, ranging from a hoax or drunken tom-foolery to the suggestion that the creature is a surviving species of dinosaur or that it is a previously undiscovered species of long necked seal. In the absence of a carcass or a living specimen, identity explanations depend only on eyewitness accounts and low-quality photographs.

The monster was most famously spotted in the River Trent on the outskirts of Etruria in 1906 by tag-team wrestling duo Barry & Terry Dynamite. The two witnesses claim to have seen a long figure with stumpy horns and warts on its long neck, catching an opium pipe in its mouth when they kicked it at the monster.

Trentzilla?

In 1976, "Kelly S" sent two photographs, apparently of Trentzilla, to the Stoke Daily Gargoyle, along with a covering letter. She wrote: "It looked like an elephant trunk, but the trunk was more like a long neck with a small head at the end, like a snake's head. It had humps on its back and it moved in a sexual way. It frightened me. I would not like to see it any closer. I do not like the way it moved when swimming." Neither Kelly S nor the negatives have ever been traced. Noted local mystery writers (and key cutters) Dave and Jenny Binky have examined the copy prints, and conclude that "these photographs could well be genuine… either that, or they are fake."

Trentzilla is also the inspiration behind the 1977 horror novel 'The Trentzilla Wakes!', by local writer Phil Skank, set in a futuristic Stoke where the Trentzilla starts to destroy boats travelling on the River Trent.

Cynics have claimed that Trentzilla is nothing more than a bunch of old heroin needles and condoms that have gotten stuck together. This would be consistent with the contents of the River Trent but doesn't explain some of the sightings.