Mergin episodes to remove them?

According to the processing times page, there's currently a backlog on title merges, so it may take a while.

As for deleting, you can find instructions for doing this here (it essentially involves emailing the help desk, but please read the guide first). If the 'phantom episode' pages contain any valid data that should be moved to a 'real' episode page, then merging would the better option than deletion. (Please don't now request deletion for the pages you've already submitted merges on, just be patient and wait for your submissions to be processed for those).

I will hold my horses for a while.  :-)
There are no credits to be moved over. They are empty and the credits that are added are false. These episodes simply do not exist.