Congregation for the Extirpation of Paranormal Menaces (CEPM)

The best sort of April Fool’s story is one that starts out plausible but weird, then gets progressively stranger until you realize it’s funny and laugh. If the reader passes the story on, believing it to be real, then the joke isn’t fun any more. If the news is too personal or emotionally charged, it’s not fun either. (It’s not funny to fake your death, pretend your pregnant, married, etc.) The personal aspect and emotional impact take the fun out of it. That’s why I really loved this post from Jimmy Akin. He’s a very scholarly Catholic writer who takes great pains to clarify matters of faith, communications from the Vatican, etc. In his April Fool’s piece he creates a masterful narrative that’s as entertaining (I think) as many works of urban fantasy. I started out believing he was serious. About halfway through I realized something was wrong, and maybe a few paragraphs later asked myself, “Wait a minute, what day is this?”