Fictional tales of old, arcane texts that don't actually exist - or shouldn't exist - and yet end up in the hands of naive readers, often driving them insane, can be found in everything from HP Lovecraft to Jorge Luis Borges. It's a tradition that's carried on in the internet urban legend of The Noise Coming From Inside Children, a purported short story by author Ed Kann that was published in a local newspaper back in the seventies and received such a backlash for its horrific, disturbing content it was never reprinted. Sometimes it gets mentioned alongside the creepy Super Nintendo game Secret Of Evermore, but just as frequently its the story itself that gets invoked, with either merry pranksters or people genuinely curious about what they've heard about this missing story. It all leads back to a single blog asking Who is Ed Kann?, suggesting that the author has dropped off the face of the Earth along with his sole published work. The creepiness comes both from the back story and the intimation that The Noise Coming From Inside Children is the most terrifying story ever written, the last surviving "review" of the piece that suggests "no one would ever claim to be a fan of it."
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
