LOCH NESS MONSTER TRANSPLANTED TO LAKE AUBURN! Top cryptozoologists sneak 3,000-year-old creature to Twin Cities water supply! Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife says it cannot afford to investigate!

LEWISTON’S CONTROVERSIAL PIG HEAD SPEAKS! Severed head warns of doomsday!

UFO DOWNED IN KENNEDY PARK! LEWISTON POLICE USING ADVANCED PLASMA TECHNOLOGY IN CRUISERS! Downed aliens given parking tickets.

VIRGIN MARY SPEAKS FROM THREE-EGG OMELET! Says Lewiston will soon have Borders, Bugaboo Creek!

BOY TRAPPED IN FREEZER EATS OWN FOOT!

I could go on and on. And this will surprise few of you, in particular the thousands who compared me to a National Enquirer writer after the recent mystery creature saga that went on for roughly six years. I have given close consideration to all of your thoughts and comments, people. And I’d like to respond thusly: CENSORED. Especially you 97-point-something radio deejays. Don’t you have one song and two hours worth of commercials to play?

I’m not really bitter. Hell, I’d love to get a gig writing for the Weekly World News or some similar publication. Imagine the luxury of inventing stories rather than seeking them out. No more cold calls. No more laboring over correct name spellings. No more need to wear socks and shoes to work.

TOP SCIENTISTS: NECKTIES LINKED TO IMPOTENCE, POVERTY, DEATH!

The more cynical of you accused me of sensationalizing a story about a wild dead dog for profit and fame. You will note the profit in the dazzling shine off the cracked windshield of my 1990 Stanza. You will note the fame in the oft-uttered question: Mark who?

I wasn’t sensationalizing, buffoons. I was laying out the facts and letting you decide. Because some of you cynics often have trouble tying your own shoelaces, I will lead you gently back to the very first line in the very first story. It went something like this: “A dead animal found beneath power lines in Turner may be a mystery creature. Or it could be a dog.”

Argue with that, Miss 97-point-something deejay!

RADIO STATION OPERATED BY GOVERNMENT TO BEAM MIND-CONTROL RAYS INTO EARS OF LISTENERS! SIX PEOPLE AFFECTED!

The role of a journalist is simple. He or she gathers up pertinent facts and presents them to the audience to judge. In the matter of the Maine Mutant Mystery Creature Beast, 50 percent of the readership gasped, pointed theatrically and cried: “It’s a monster!”

The other 50 percent sneered, wiped their noses on their shirt-sleeves and said: “Dat dere is a dawg.”

Which it was. Go figure. I thought for sure the gills, wings and a single horn protruding from its head would prove to be more significant.

I think very few legitimate reporters set off on a story with sensational ideas. For starters, wild hyperbole and unsubstantiated facts (ELVIS HAUNTS NEW COLISEE!) would never fly with the vulture-eyed editors who feed on these things like carrion. Try throwing in one anonymous source about sea serpents living in the Lewiston canals and those editors will strap you to a chair under hot lights and insist you get it on the record. And rightfully so.

Secondly, the reporter is little more than a news-collecting drone with a little pad of paper and a leaky pen. By and large, we are not smart enough to know which stories are going to catch fire and which will be ignored with yawns. You, fickle reader, make or break a news story.

I had a sneaking suspicion that a lot of people would read a story about a strange-looking animal found dead in the Turner woods. But did I expect MTV, the Columbia Journalism Review and WBLM to come calling? Not a chance. Had I known, I would have gotten a haircut and put on a decent shirt.

MAN CUTS HAIR, DISCOVERS THIRD EYEBALL!

Sensationalism is in the hands of the beholder. If nobody had any interest in alien babies and celebrity gossip, publications like the Weekly World News and the National Enquirer would not remain in existence. If nobody cared about weird wildlife creeping from the woods, the Turner beast story would have been a one-day wonder.

Frankly, I’m content to write about crime and punishment day after day, when it’s there to write. But news of the strange and mysterious is a nice diversion now and then. Because a little mystery, no matter how short-lived, is exercise for the sometimes atrophied muscles of the imagination.

CITY LEADER JIM BENNETT IS ALIEN FROM UTOPIAN PLANET! FEEDS ON NEWS REPORTERS!

But I’m just spit-balling now. I expect the Weekly World News to call any day.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. You can share your Elvis sightings at [email protected].