Cases of Missing Children Rise Sharply as Santa Impostors Terrorize Neighborhood!

Earlier today, New Yorkers received a chilling surprise ahead of Christmas schedule when Santa was recorded allegedly stuffing a child into a bag made of poorly-taped wrapping paper. The video was posted on social media and quickly blew up on multiple platforms with the tag #SantapostorSUS. The suspect was wearing his classic red hat and Santa shoes, but a pixel-by-pixel analysis by Stuyvesant’s leading AP Computer Science student showed that the face inside the costume didn’t quite match Santa’s face.

After several investigations, it was found that this Santa-postor was seen a few days ago with a large group of other Santa-postors stampeding into a Party City at 310 West 125th Street and intimidating the store owner into giving them a value pack of Santa costumes. When interviewed, the store owner immediately curled up into a fetal position on our office floor, shaking wildly and mumbling incoherently. Among the few phrases we could comprehend were, “Who buys a value pack of Santa costumes except people who want to give children lethal doses of trauma?” and, “What was I thinking, running a store in West Harlem? I should have accepted that city sanitation job instead.” In an attempt to bring the store owner back from his traumatized state, one of our writers opened his hand and placed a small, white business card in it, whispering, “Lots of money with Liberty Mutual!” softly into his ear. It wasn’t very effective.

Many concerned families from all five boroughs are now speaking out about seeing Santas attack their neighbors, flooding the internet with stories that everyone outside New York City will inevitably call “fAKe neWS!1!” Naturally, news coverage began as soon as the issue went viral because news stations want more views care about New York City’s youth. ABC 7’s Protect Our Children portion now shows multiple pages in a poorly compressed PDF file of photos of children, all of whom have been snatched by a “Santa.” Both New York 1 and Fox News now have a running total of children abducted on the sidebar at all times, which bears a strange resemblance to the coronavirus case tracker from March 2020.

Reporters at the Humor Department of The Stuyvesant Spectator reached out to the group of Santa-postors, but they declined to respond. Luckily, our highly skilled team of monkeys managed to hack into their Messenger group chat. In addition to the large number of Santa/Elf reactions that each message received, crucial information was revealed about what they were planning to do with the abducted children. Unfortunately, the monkeys saw a street peddler’s bunch of bananas at a street peddler and ran off to eat them, cutting off our connection before we were able to take any pictures of the messages. The few messages that we did see before the connection died were:

“i heard that the elf population is decreasing”

“weve captured over 9000 children now, that shld be enough 2 replenish”

“the north pole-bound exp train leaves at 11:29am from station 9 and three cuarters, mak sure u have them raedy by then”

Since those texts were leaked, the leading theory surrounding the kidnappings has been that these children might be in for a stay of indentured servitude in Santa’s snowy domain. This raises various concerns. Have thousands of children already been shipped to the North Pole to become unskilled laborers, also known as elves? Why was it so easy to kidnap so many kids in such a short time? Is it time for parents to dust off the 10-year-old pamphlets about “Stranger Danger”? The dedicated humans and monkeys here at the Humor Department will continue reporting the latest information as the case continues to unfold.