Black-eyed ghost children

A truly terrifying story, which shook the country in late September after the Daily Star reported several times on a “plague of black-eyed ghost children” in Cannock Chase, Staffordshire. Nobody knew exactly what threat the children posed, but you didn’t really need to know. When children with entirely black eyeballs are approaching people in the West Midlands, it is best not to waste time asking questions.

A local ghosthunter, Lee Brickley, seemed to be at the centre of the phenomenon, which he said bore echoes of a sighting made by his aunt in 1982.

“The ghost may be linked to a Celtic tribe known for their blood sacrifices,” suggested the Mirror, making very full use of the word “may”. Sightings of the children have since mysteriously stopped. They may have been recalled to the underworld by their dark lord. They may have been utter cobblers. We may never know.

Giant mutant rats

Many people’s worst fears were confirmed in March, and then re-confirmed in April, when reports of not only rats, but larger-than-average rats, were made in the Express, Star, Metro and Mail. “Giant mutant rat chased terrified family after eating way through brick wall”, said the Star, which also quoted the opinion of experts that there might be more large rats to come, or perhaps just larger rats, if people continued to feed them by leaving rubbish lying around.

At one stage, the plague threatened to cause an epidemic of people standing on chairs and looking worried, but it seems to have since subsided.

Romanian hordes

To look at most newspapers towards the end of 2013, you would have thought that Britain was living out its last days of civilisation. On 1 January, when immigration rules finally allowed Romanians and Bulgarians to live and work in the UK like other EU citizens, we were assured by the Mail and others that a “new wave of migrants” would swamp the country’s labour market and public services. Yet the first plane to arrive from Romania on 1 January contained only a handful of people coming to the UK for the first time. One of them, Victor Spirescu, was mobbed at Luton airport by journalists and MPs, who soon discovered that he had a job lined up and had never even heard of the NHS.

In May, it was announced that the number of Bulgarians and Romanians who arrived in the first three months of the year had actually fallen by 4,000 since the last quarter of 2013. No vampire attacks have so far been reported either.

The great sandwich-making skill shortage

The crisis was almost upon us before anybody noticed. Only on the morning of Monday 10 November did the Mail reveal that leading sandwich-making firm Greencore would that day begin recruiting up to 300 Hungarians to staff its factory in Northampton. “Is there no one left in Britain who can make a sandwich?” the paper asked, and immediatelya dystopian nightmare of torn bread and vertical lettuce gripped the nation.

Happily it was all a misunderstanding. Greencore did plan to hire around 300 people, but they were only looking for about a dozen of them in Hungary, confident that basic spreading and putting-on-top-of skills could still be found in Northampton. “We made a mess of that in terms of our communication,” said the chief executive, Patrick Coveney. “This was a self-inflicted wound.” You worry that at least one indigenous British public relations worker may have lost their job as a result.

Killer spiders

By now we all know that highly venomous spiders around the world harbour a single common goal: to move to Britain. Like eight-legged Romanians, they scurry into fruit boxes in search of a better life, people to bite, and healthcare free at the point of use.

In Staffordshire in March, then in London in October, a Brazilian wandering spider – the most venomous in the world – even brought a sac of hatchlings with it. As the Guardian pointed out in October, a bite from one of these creatures can kill in two hours or, on the plus side, “cause an erection that sometimes lasts for up to four”. In practice, as the Mirror explained, “chances are nothing bad will happen. Out of 7,000 cases, only 10 people died from its bite.”

In the UK, so far, the death toll is zero.

Cat tuberculosis

First it was wild badgers spreading bovine TB. Then, in March, it was our own pet cats – the one creature we thought we could trust.

“Fear,” announced the Daily Mail, “as four British people catch disease from cats in home counties.” Most terrifyingly of all, one infected cat, named Milhouse, had “gone missing”. Gradually, however, the fear dispersed. The outbreak, it emerged, had happened a year before, in Newbury, where nine cats had tested positive for TB. Of the four people infected, only two had become ill, and no other cat-borne infections had been reported in the 12 months since.

As for Milhouse, his owner, a vet called Carl Gorman, “fears the tabby was killed in an accident and says it is unlikely [to] be spreading the infection further”. That could, of course, be just what Milhouse wants us to think …