King of Pop Had No Soul

Reports from the Orange County Coroner's Office this morning indicate that the late Michael Jackson, aka the King of Pop, had no soul when he expired recently. "It appears to have been surgically removed," according to an anonymous source within the Coroner's office.

The unusual result confirms suspicions, long current in the music industry, that Mr. Jackson apparently traded his eternal soul for the rights to his mega-hit Thriller, the song which earned him lasting fame and, according to an audit by the accounting firm Price-Waterhouse, $10,000,000.

"It looks like the price of a soul has gone up," the source speculated, "we know, for instance, that Andy Warhol accepted a $1,000,000 offer for his soul in 1964."

The trade in souls apparently began during the early days of Hollywood, as part of the general mania of the time, and sharply accelerated in October, 1929, as a result of the stock market crash. Wealthy movie stars and recording artists have recently been observed trading souls for commodities, stock options and real estate at Church of Scientology meetings, according to information compiled by the Internal Revenue Service, which has been "looking into," the trade.

Meanwhile, the Jackson effigy in Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum has been observed "shuffling curiously" on its pedestal, according to a janitorial service contracted to dust the wax figures. "There's a possibility his soul is being stored there," said Max Dupree, the supervisor in charge of the graveyard shift, responsible for cleaning effigies of Ronald Reagan, Napoleon Bonaparte and Josef Stalin, among others.

"It's the damndest thing," said an elder in Michael's Jehovah's Witnesses congregation in the exclusive Holmby Hills neighborhood. "since, to the best of our knowledge, souls don't exist, it would appear that Mr. Jackson was involved in occult activities. Thus, steps have been taken to excommunicate him."

Jackson's legions of loyal fans, still in shock over the chanteuse's untimely death, were aghast at the report. "It's insidious, ridiculous and preposterous," said Timmy McGee, president of the Santa Barbara chapter of the Michael Jackson Fan Club and Street Racing Society, "we give these reports no credence whatsoever."

Circumstances surrounding the pop star's death remain clouded in mystery, with reports that his heart, brain, liver and spleen were also "oddly unaccounted for" when surgeons began their post-mortem examination.

The locations of these organs are unknown, but one source close to the Jackson family blamed his chimpanzee, Bubbles, who was known to wet the bed. "That monkey was always clawing at him," said Joe Jackson, patriarch of the Jackson clan and long suspected to be the force behind Jackson's unprecedented career trajectory.