'Bat Boy' Lives No More

Today's Washington Post Style section delivered the sad news: the delightfully wacky Weekly World News is no more. One of tabloid's best recurring features involved Bat Boy, the half-child, half-bat who allegedly was captured in a cave in West Virginia. He later escaped, and continued to narrowly avoid the clutches of the FBI.

Bob Lind, a former writer, for the paper, tells the Post a great story about how the WWN's managing editor, Eddie Clontz, pushed for more and more Bat Boy stories -- leading to a run-in with federal law enforcement officials:

"Eddie fell in love with Bat Boy," Lind says. "He was one of the most in-depth characters we dealt with. He could be mean, he could be spiteful, but he could also be kind. And every once in while, he would be captured by the FBI and held in an undisclosed location near Lexington, Kentucky."

One day -- Lind swears this is true -- Eddie Clontz got a call from an irate FBI agent complaining that the bureau's switchboard was swamped with calls demanding that they free Bat Boy.

"Eddie said, 'I'll never do it again,' " Lind says, "then he hung up the phone and went on to the next Bat Boy story."