Visitors 101 Our most distant cousins have been visiting us for millennia. It is only in relatively recent history since the invention of the camera that their surprisingly friendly visitations have been documented on film. Previously humans relied on written accounts or artistic depictions, some of which we hope to show you should they be released to us soon. However this evidence, when it occasionally surfaces is quickly confiscated or ridiculed and labelled as a hoax, so amazingly these visits remain merely a myth until this day. In dusty boxes hidden in shady museums and secure facilities these pictures are mostly hidden away indefinitely until someone discovers them and is brave enough to leak them onto the internet and into public consciousness. Here is our first batch of pictorial documentation of these visitors throughout the ages. Visitors 072 - c1910s Zibzib - Glumfluffle The Sugar Sprites of Hobsbury In the small, fog-draped town of Hobsbury, where the cobbled streets smelled faintly of treacle and pipe tobacco, there existed a secret known only to a handful of people. At Herbert Lemon's sweet shop wedged between a milliner’s shop and a tailor’s, something peculiar occurred every fortnight under the light of a gibbous moon. A little creature, no bigger than a child’s mitten, would scuttle into town, seeking the only thing his kind truly needed - sugar. His name was Zibzib, and he was a proud member of the Glumfluffle species, a diminutive, shaggy race from a planet known only as Twee-Twee 9. Unlike humans, whose existence depended on dull things like bread and potatoes, the Glumfluffles survived solely on the refined, golden crystals of pure sweetness. Without it, they would become lethargic and - horrifyingly - start speaking in slow, dreary poetry. This was why Zibzib and his fellow sugar-seekers had devised an ingenious plan. Every few weeks, they would slip into the human world through a crack in the air (right beside a dusty barrel of humbugs in Pendleton’s) and stock up on as many sweets as their fluffy little arms could carry. The problem? They had no money. And Mr Lemon, the shopkeeper, while quite dim-sighted, had a remarkable talent for counting every boiled sweet in his jars. This is where Elsie Weatherby and her younger brother, Freddie, came in. One fateful morning, Elsie, a bright-eyed young woman of 24, caught Zibzib in the act - perched on the edge of the counter, head first in a jar of sherbet lemons, frantically sucking out the powder like a man on his last breath. He turned to face her, cheeks bulging, looking utterly scandalised to have been discovered. “...Gloop?” he managed, sugar dust coating his whiskery face. Rather than scream (as most reasonable people would upon discovering a sentient, sugar-addicted dust mop in their local sweet shop), Elsie merely tilted her head. “You poor little thing,” she said, suppressing a giggle. “You’ve got sherbet all over your whiskers.” “Emergency rations,” Zibzib, wheezed, licking his paw. “Supplies are low. Tweee-Tweee 9 is in crisis.” By the time he explained his plight (pausing only to gulp down two aniseed balls for strength), Elsie had decided to help. And so, every few weeks, she, Freddie, and their mother, Mrs Weatherby, would ‘accidentally’ drop sweets on the floor outside the shop, where the Glumfluffles would scamper out and snatch them up, stuffing them into tiny satchels made of pocket lint. In return for their generosity, Zibzib and his friends promised Elsie that if she ever needed help—perhaps with a particularly awful suitor, or an infestation of pantry moths—they would be there. Of course, as it turned out, Glumfluffles weren’t particularly good at practical favours. When Elsie’s dreadful cousin Bernard came to call, Zibzib attempted to ward him off by hurling sugar cubes at his head. When moths invaded the Weatherby pantry, the Glumfluffles tried to help by eating all the biscuits, which, while solving the immediate problem, did not earn them favour with Mrs Weatherby. Still, their friendship endured. And to this day, in the corners of forgotten sweet shops, where the scent of peppermint and caramel still lingers in the floorboards, you might hear a faint rustling behind the jars. And if you’re quick enough, you might just spot a tiny, sugar-coated paw reaching for the last sherbet lemon. The End (Or is it?)