Patrick Abbott, Sci-fi Author

Chapter Five

While this cover is AI generated, the text is all human.

Debra was probably laughing at all the gold she fleeced from the mummy, sitting amongst stolen bicycles. Why was there a mummy walking around Savannah, anyway? Was it from some museum? Or did the weirdos of this even weirder city collect things in their homes that would come alive at random times? Speaking of home, how hard would it be to return to Ohio?

Those were all good questions Max would have been asking himself if he wasn’t hanging by his wrists over the Savannah River as a psycho shapeshifting woman was her claws on him.

“Lady! Lady! Stop!”

That was all he could get out of him for the past four hours. It was no good.

“Stop crying about it!” the woman hissed, her voice accented in a very angry French way.

Thankfully, this harsh command allowed his brain to process something new to say. “You’re cutting me! What the heck do you want me to do?! Thank you?!”

In a previous smart aleck quip, Max was able to enrage the vodou priest to the point the man untied him and started a fistfight. The lawyer had hoped for a similar result. This time, however, what he got were eyes lit by the fires of Hell drilling holes into his soul while claws dug to the bone. Feeling cold there for the first time made him shiver.

His lips trembled and he looked up to the sky and said, “Oh Fred, if you can help, please do; otherwise, I think we’re going to meet up soon.”

Taking a bucket straight to the face caused stars to appear all around him.

“Oh, sorry, Max! Didn’t mean to kick it into your zombie face,” Debra’s voice said.

The weregenet gave a low, closed-mouth growl that sounded like a motorcycle struggling to start. As she did so, she hunched forward and held her palms out toward Debra. The red-stained fingers once again turned into claws that dangled in a darkly playful manner.

Debra closed her eyes and nodded before taking a breath and looking at the woman. “Sally MacKenzie, I know why you are so angry. It’s because of what I did all those years ago to your great-grandmother. She came to New Orleans to be safe from the Blitz, and I- well- no easy way to say this- I took her life for no other purpose but to win the weekly prize at La Sombre Société de Madame Apolline. I won, and that riverboat circus totally earned its positive press, but that doesn’t justify the phony blood drive I set up. I can’t bring your great-grandmother back, but I can say, ‘I’m sorry and I love you.’”

Seeing his vampire colleague apologize ignited feelings that earlier encounters with the scouts and their skunk ape, the golem family, and the bicycles had numbed. Deep down he knew there was a kind hearted person in Debra, and maybe, just maybe, all it took was him being in danger for her to come out. He thought back to her saving his life from the Uranium Killer; she had shown goodness there, too. Perhaps, he thought, this was her path to salvation.

Then the woman hissed. “I’m not Sally MacKenzie, you fiend!”

The vampire’s mouth dropped and formed an o-shaped hole. Her eyes darted about and then she looked to the side while she rubbed her chin. After a few passes, she snapped her fingers and donned an eager appearance for a second before her face dropped again.

“Oh, no; oh, no. You’re the zashiki-warashi from Grace Nakimora’s house.” Debra held her hands up as if trying to stop a car. “Look, it wasn’t thought of as problematic at the time. Mickey Rooney played a beloved character in an award-winning movie and-.”

“Do I look like a Japanese child?!” the woman screamed.

Again, Debra’s eyes darted about and then she looked to the side while she rubbed her chin.

“You got to be kidding me,” the weregenet said. “I’m French!”

Debra snapped her fingers and looked eager, but again her face dropped. “Oh, no; oh, no. Look, Phillip Petain was a war hero and-.”

“Shut up!” the mysterious French half-woman, half-genet commanded. “Why do you insist on enraging me?!”

“Hey!” The vampire gave the impression of being genuinely offended, putting her hands on her hips. “I had to sit through a video of everyone I’ve wronged in Heaven’s waiting room. Give me a little credit, okay? There were a lot of people in that movie.

“Now, let me think.” She smiled. “I know who you are! You are that student parking maid I tricked into thinking I was your supervisor and needed to audit your cash. First off, I want to say it was wrong of me to call you ugly. You have matured into a decently looking woman.”

Spit flew from the weregenet’s mouth and teeth became canines. Eyes rolled back into her head and returned unhuman. Falling forward, she went on all fours and hissed. A vein appeared and then became massive on her neck. Her whole body shook.

“You- you- you-.”

The weregenet’s shaking became violent before suddenly stopping. For a moment she seethed, and she closed her eyes and pushed air out through her nostrils. Then, she stood back up and opened her eyes, drilling them into Debra’s.

Her voice contained venom. “I am Nicole DuClare. Do you remember me now?”

Debra’s eyes darted about. “Umm, no.”

“Then remember the nurse who you thought you murdered on the Red Cross relief trip!”

Again, the vampire’s eyes danced. “You’re not limiting it down.”

“Operation Torch. 1942. World War II!” Each word spoken stoked a fire in the woman.

“There was a Second World War and a World War II, now?”

The woman hissed. “Shut up! Just shut up! I was a nurse sent to save people’s lives in Morocco! You jumped me from behind but your mistress was coming so you threw me in a ditch to die! Berbers found me before your curse made me undead like your vile race. They used their magic to make me a weregenet. I survived, but now I am no longer human. Every night I sleep like an animal, in whose fur I am more comfortable in than in my own skin! All because of you! So I vowed I would get my vengeance and destroy everything and everyone you hold dear!”

Debra’s mouth dropped. “Wow,” she said. “Wow. Oh, wow. Okay. First things first. There’s probably more context, but I zoned out a bit during the film and I don’t remember you at all and-.”

“You don’t remember me?!”

Laughing nervously, the vampire took a step back. “The day I drank your blood was the most important day of your life. But for a vampire like me, it was a Tuesday.”

“It was a Thursday!”

From his dangling over the river, Max felt cold and voiced a weak cry for help. Neither of the women responded. Rather, Nicole began coughing.

“You. You ruined my life and you get called a hero?! You are so shallow you can’t even understand what you do again and again and again!”

A spark lit inside Debra and she smiled. “That’s not true. There was one time I tried talking my way past my friend Fred and lightning struck me. So, I’ve been through some hard times.”

Max now shook not from his wounds but from what he feared would come next. And he was right.

Eyes rolled back into Nicole’s head as she fell forward again. On all fours, her sweater became fur, and her legs were still mostly human but shrinking and bending into an inhuman shape. Her mouth grew into an animalistic snout.

“You- yew- hissssss!”

Her body lifted as she gave a sharp yip. Then, with no other sign of distress, her body collapsed onto the ground. There, on the cold cement, she remained frozen, stuck half-way between woman and animal.

“Wow,” Debra said to no one in particular. “I killed her with my words. That makes me like a wizard vampire. I could charge so much as a wizard vampire paranormal detective.” She laughed.

Those last words wrapped inside Max’s head. He wasn’t sure, but he had an idea that the blood loss and a correlational feeling of an ice cold void in him were causing things to appear remote and muted. He tried calling out to Debra but couldn’t get a sound out.

The vampire’s monologue continued when the weregenet’s body shook and a meek cry escaped from Nicole’s mouth.

“Oh, man,” Debra said with a sigh. Then her face brightened. “Hey! This is what Fred talked about!”

“Debra,” Max finally managed to get out, “please, help me down.”

The vampiress twisted her neck. “Max,” she snapped, “this isn’t about you! This is my time to shine.”

She gave her spine ramrod straightness and tilted her head up, full of pride. A smile grew on her face as she took her first step towards Nicole.

Just then, a golden glow flashed. Max had to look away for a moment. When he turned his gaze, Fred was standing where the weregenet was.

“Fred!” both the vampire and the lawyer declared in unison.

He gave a slight bow to both.

“Debra,” the saint said, “you were going to save the life of your enemy. For that, you have proven even you are redeemable.”

The vampire pumped her fist in the air.

“Fred,” Max said softly. His body shook as he pushed whatever strength he had left to speak. “Someone, please, help me.”

The former fisherman turned saint aimed his soft gaze at his friend and then held out his hand. A warm golden glow encased Max, and then the next thing he knew he was on the sidewalk pavement along side Debra. Patting down his body, he realized there were no wounds on him. In fact, he felt fine.

“Thanks,” he said. “I was afraid I was a goner.”

Debra shushed him. Then she reminded Max that not everything was about him.

“So,” Debra said, “was she in the portion of the movie I fell asleep or when I was getting that bowl of heavenly popcorn?”

“Neither,” Fred replied. “The Lord deemed that any of your real victims would attack you on sight. Nicole was a fiction, a mirage, merely the appearance of someone invented to teach you a lesson. She was never real.”

“What?! Her claws were real enough! I was going to die!”

“Max! Be quiet!” Debra’s light red eyes flared. “Can’t you see I am having an important conversation?!” She then looked at the saint and smiled a smile that belonged to an innocent schoolgirl and not a one hundred year old vampire. “Do I get the award?”

“You do, but you still have a long way to go.” Fred turned his golden ghostly form to Max. “And you, my friend, have an even longer journey.”

“What?!” Max went to put his hands on his friend’s shoulders but they went through the otherworldly form. “Oh.” He cleared his throat. “What do you mean?”

The vampire rolled her eyes. “Gosh, Max. Wait! No. I got this.” She closed her eyes for a moment and snapped her fingers. “Positive actions, Debra, positive actions.” She grinned at Max. “It must be your zombie brain rotting. That’s not your fault. You see, my decaying friend, you were a lawyer. Do you know how many sins you need to work through?”

“What?!”

A bright golden flash overwhelmed all senses. When it retreated, Fred was gone.

It was then a digital, high pitch chime boomed in the sky. It wasn’t threatening; rather, it reminded him of something from a first generation console game.

Immediately after the sound, the voice from his nightmare battle came from the sky. “Plus one grace point to Debra.”

“Woot!” the vampire screamed. She then broke into a dance.

Max was dumbfounded. No words could emerge from his mouth nor could thoughts form in his mind. All he could do was watch his partner celebrate.

Then, the voice, a mysterious narrator of the universe, described what Max saw.

“And she is dancing, the pavement slamming under her boots while she grins pridefully over her 1920s outfit. She never sleeps at night, she says. She says she’ll never die. She bows to imaginary fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws back her head and laughs deep in her throat. She is a great favorite in the city, according to herself. Her feet are light and nimble. She never sleeps at night. She says that she will never die. She dances in the night in shadow and she is a great favorite in her own mind. She never sleeps, Debra. She is dancing, dancing. She says that she will never die.”

Max screamed.

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Now a dramatized audio serial with a supporting cast. Stop by and take a listen! 🎧 ","profile_set_up_at":"2022-09-13T04:12:12.508Z","reader_installed_at":"2022-11-19T23:05:42.019Z","publicationUsers":[{"id":1149021,"user_id":47020493,"publication_id":1194827,"role":"admin","public":true,"is_primary":true,"publication":{"id":1194827,"name":"This Strange Sight","subdomain":"ljlong","custom_domain":null,"custom_domain_optional":false,"hero_text":"Urban fantasy meets spiritual warfare in this dramatized audio serial of redemption & revenge, mystery & mercy, angels & demons—featuring a supporting cast—plus behind-the-scenes access and launch news.","logo_url":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/21d04d4e-030e-4aaf-af73-24d1c4f71d31_500x500.png","author_id":47020493,"primary_user_id":47020493,"theme_var_background_pop":"#FF81CD","created_at":"2022-11-16T03:40:55.811Z","email_from_name":"L. J. Long","copyright":"L. J. Long","founding_plan_name":"Guardian Angel","community_enabled":true,"invite_only":false,"payments_state":"enabled","language":null,"explicit":false,"homepage_type":"newspaper","is_personal_mode":false,"logo_url_wide":null}}],"is_guest":false,"bestseller_tier":null,"status":{"bestsellerTier":null,"subscriberTier":1,"leaderboard":null,"vip":false,"badge":{"type":"subscriber","tier":1,"accent_colors":null},"subscriber":null}}],"utm_campaign":null,"belowTheFold":true,"type":"newsletter","language":"en","source":null}" data-component-name="EmbeddedPostToDOM">

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Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency 3: Chapter Four

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 21:01:01 GMT

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Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency 3

Chapter Five

While this cover is AI generated, the text is all human.

The jail cell was dark, or so Debra thought. She wasn’t quite sure. Swelling around her eyes had squinted them to the point only a crackworth of light could stream in. She could discern the walls were gray, but that was about it, and even then an inkling of doubt whispered that her eyelashes might be filtering out the color.

The silver lining of her situation was that everything in her body hurt to the point nothing hurt. She couldn’t even tell if the metal cot she was sitting on was cold or not, let alone the room. Her nerves were too busy relaying the pain.

Filtered light increased for a moment, or maybe it didn’t. Nothing was discernible through what part of her eyes could see.

“Debra,” a voice that sounded airy and ascendant as if heaven kissed it called out, “Debra. It is I, Fred. I have returned. Debra, my goodness, what happened to your face?!”

Through the small open slits of her mangled face, only a grayish shape stood in her view.

Her first attempt to speak ended up being a groan.

At least the soothing voice of her saintly friend seemed to understand. “It’s okay, Debra. I was told you would need intervention, but I didn’t know you were so hurt. What happened?”

This time, she steeled her will and pushed through the pain to speak. “The police kicked my butt.”

“Why, Debra?”

She sent a brain signal to wave her hand dismissively, though she wasn’t sure if it succeeded or not. “Have you ever met Savannah P.D.?” her voice comes out muffled.

“Debra. What really happened?”

Another groan, this time because her verbal defense failed. “I got in a fight with some scouts. I’m pretty sure they took Max.”

“And the police got aggressive with you because you fought children?”

The voice betrayed a knowledge of deeper information, and that annoyed the vampire, but the annoyance unbalanced her nerves and caused a surge of pain.

“Okay, there was a- misunderstanding. I, uh, might have kicked a policeman’s daughter in the face.”

A brightness overpowered her view, forcing her numb left arm to deploy to protect whatever vision she had left.

“Debra, how long will it take you to realize everything that has gone wrong is your fault?”

She said no but her tongue garbled it. After three attempts, she was able to speak. “People are responsible for their actions, Fred. Don’t they teach that in Heaven? Those people tased me!”

A roar shook Debra and then her body tumbled. She felt herself falling onto the ground, surging pain through her. A cry for help was inaudible due to the roar becoming even louder. It was doomsday and there was no one there for her.

She saw.

Around her were sun-covered clouds and beyond them was the infinite expanse of space while an endless amount of small white points dotted the distant black. She felt weightless, and a look down revealed that while she was upright, non-swollen feet were dangling into a cloud.

Then the realization that it was sunny hit her and she screamed. Yet nothing burned.

“Ha!” Her legs danced with joy. “I’m in Heaven! About time! Life after undeath! I will never die! Everything is coming up Debra!”

A whooshing sound beside her gained her attention. Turning, she saw sparks form a golden aura from which Fred emerged, not as a ghostly image but as a man. He was wearing orange overalls with the letters “SS Limbo” on them.

“Debra,” he said.

“Fred! I told you it wasn’t my fault and God must agree!” She put her finger on her chin. “I wonder if the big guy needs a reporter.”

Her friend tisked. “Debra, as I was saying, God allowed you to see this as a final plea. For every step forward you take, there are five steps back. The angels wanted to show you Hell, but you know too many monsters there. Here, you may just listen.”

“You got like two minutes before I try out the buffet.”

He rolled his eyes. “Look, Max - you remember him, right? - is missing and in trouble. He is in trouble because of you.”

“I think,” she said as she crossed her arms, “he is missing because of the scouts and the Junior Club- and maybe a Bigfoot.”

His two hands grabbed and shook her. “You made up the Bigfoot, remember!”

“Oh, yeah.” Her drawn out words echoed in the sky.

“You tied him up! You keep putting him in danger! And now a sin of yours from World War II is about to kill him!”

“There was a second world war, now?”

Fred groaned. “It’s going to be a long night.”

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Until Next Time

The last chapter drops on Halloween!

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Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency 3: Chapter Three

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 15:15:16 GMT

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Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency 3

Chapter Five

While this cover is AI generated, the text is all human.

“Max! Max! Can you believe that mummy thought we could insure curses on treasures that everyone and their colonizer had already looted?! We’re rich, Max, rich!”

Debra skipped down the walking path, her shoes made a clacking sound which tapped in cadence with the vowels she stressed as she repeated her statement. Her giddiness blinded her to the sliced bike chains dangling on the fountain fence. When she did notice, she stumbled. Picking herself up, she stood aghast at the sight.

Fountain sounds boomed in her ears, interfering with her thinking. It took four consecutive double takes for everything to register in her head.

Sights of hypothetical fates befalling Max flooded her mind. Most of them involved a variation of the Bigfoot ripping the chains apart along with her junior detective partner. The rest were just the Bigfoot eating him. All of them sank her heart deeper and deeper. In a soft whimper, she called out his name.

The emotional moment lasted exactly 4.2 seconds. At 4.2000001 seconds, her body jerked with realization.

“Hey,” she said to no one in particular, “wait a minute. I made that up about Gigantopithecus americanum. Plus, the chains.” She knelt and picked up one of the smoothly cut metal pieces. “This isn’t torn apart. This is the work of something that favors finesse over power.”

Her head turned down the sidewalk path, allowing her vision to travel down several blocks to a mansion.

Under her breath, she muttered poison, “That hussy.” In her mind, she had already convicted the villain.

Inside the cards room of the Junior Club of Savannahian Vampires was packed with members, tired from a long night of entertaining tourists, doing chores, and now wrapping up the business meeting. Like normal, the last line item proved to be the worst.

Eva Eve stood erect, her antebellum style white nightgown draping the ground around her, while everyone else dreaded what was to come next. “I just do not feel comfortable with this month’s donations going to the Co-Mason Temple Hospital. I recognize they do good, but shouldn’t we find someone with no connections to the dark arts like Saint James de Compostela Children’s Hospital?”

Groans erupted amongst the vampiresses. A few rolled their eyes.

As usual, Elizabeth Stirk rose to object. “For the last time, they aren’t practitioners of the dark arts. They drive little cars and wear funny hats.” Her voice betrayed her exhaustion.

Then everyone screamed. It expressed their surprise as a sweaty, out of breath, and frizzled haired Debra, looking as if she was chasing down a journalistic source in the 1920s, burst through the door. She held up a finger and acted like she was about to speak, but then raised it up, and a few seconds later raised it even higher still.

Eva broke the silence. “The judge said as long as we allowed you at the tennis courts, you were still barred 100 yards from our door at all times.”

There was no vocal response from Debra, only that she lift her finger a little higher.

Eva put her hands on her hips. “Why did you run and blast through our door if you were going to be out of breath? You could have knocked!”

It took Debra a few more deep breaths to speak, and even then she could barely talk. “Where. Did. You. Put. Max. Isabelle?”

The white nightgowned vampires gave each other queer looks and murmured amongst themselves.

“Do you mean where did we put Max and Isabelle? Or do you think I am Isabelle? Max isn’t here and Isabelle is sitting in the second row over there,” Eva said.

The thin fanged-vampire gave a meek wave.

“Just. Give. Him. Back.” Debra took a breath, gulped, and regained her composure. “Otherwise, I am not leaving.”

“Dispatch, Unit 24 reporting in. It’s too early for this crap.”

“Mornin’, 24, go ahead. What’s the matter, hon?”

“Show me 10-23 at York and Sherman Avenue. I’m at the Junior Club for Savannahian Vampires’ house. I got a 10-15 on one female vampire for trespass and vandalism of carpets as she was dragged out. Guess who it freakin’ is. Debra. Requesting 10-29.”

“10-4, 24. Oh, Debra, yeah, no surprise there. I was wondering where our frequent flyer went. Been a while since we last had a call on her. Let me check, one minute. Yeah. Last decade on the monster file shows multiple priors for trespass, forging documents, disorderly, littering, extortion, operating a tourism company without a license, zombie voter suppression in 2020, and a lot more state and federal marks. All active warrants suppressed because of her work stopping the Uranium Killer, 24.”

“Copy. Still gets me in my craw that we struck that deal. Crap, it’s happening again, dispatch.”

“Let me guess, 24, suspect is uncooperative.”

“10-4. She’s 10-96 on attitude. Yakking and yapping that everything is unfair. She claims she is trying to do the right thing, that she is a hero, and claiming her partner in crime is missing. Dang, she is screetchin’ like it’s the UGA game.”

“Copy. Club members on scene?”

“Affirm. No one harmed but all are rattled. They want her gone so they can go to bed before the sun rises so they ain’t givin’ full statements no matter how hard I try. I’m going to 10-8 Debra with a warning.”

“10-4, 24. Document the warning and the 10-20. Advise her next time it’s 10-15 all the way to county and that we can put her in the cell with the wendigo. He’ll remember her.”

“Already did. She’s still ranting about trying to do the right thing. Nobody here is buying what she is sellin’. Man, won’t she be quiet?”

“Clear the call as warning issued, trespass advisement given. You 10-8?”

“10-8. Releasing suspect now. Oh, she is off and running west towards Bull Street. Biscuits, I can still hear her complaining about everyone being against her.”

“Copy, 24. Dispatch clear.”

“10-4. I need some pancakes. Over and out.”

In a rare concession to reality, Debra stopped blasting the cruel world so she could run and breathe at the same time. Even then, exhaustion forced her to cease running as she approached Bull Street. That gave her time to register her arch-rivals ahead.

Three blue beret-wearing Savannah Scout Society for Girls were neatly stacking a table of Scout Society cookies. Behind them was Coco the Skunk Ape, still on their retainer.

Stopping, Debra bent so she could put her hands on her knees and gain composure. However, her blood began boiling as a scout girl with braces laughed, probably at something stupid, Debra thought.

“Alright,” Debra said, “you little metal-mouthed freak, give me back Max and I will only impose a 25% monsters’ representational fee. Act like Reconstruction bosses again, and I’m upping it to 55%.”

The little metal-mouth who looked like she could get a job in Hollywood playing a poor runt zeroed in her beady little eyes onto the vampiress. Her little teeth reminded Debra of various critters that would scour about the Mississippi River mudflats. Gawd, Debra had never met the girl before but already she hated her.

“Hey! My mommy told me that if you come and bother us again, I can call my daddy!” the Ompa Lummpa of this dimension said.

Endorphins flooded Debra’s brain. The scouts didn’t know she was prepared this time.

The massive and ripped Skunk Ape stomped as it walked forward three paces; each step shaking the ground as it moved. A growl so low it cut through skin and muscle to vibrate bones crawled out of its mouth.

“Debra,” Coco the Skunk Ape said, “You have no fighter to tank all the damage this time. Go home.”

She reached around and tapped the tranquilizer dart gun in her pants’ back pocket.

“Debra, come on. They’re kids.”

She studied the prison tattoos on its body. Two letters LM enclosed in a four-leaf clover were the key, and it made her laugh out loud.

“You mean to tell me that you’re a member of the Leprechaun Mafia?! What did you do? Protect their marshmallow stash in prison?!”

A small frown formed on the monster, and it shook its head. The hard nasal exhale sounded sad. It took a moment for Coco to regain composure and look the vampire in the eye.

“I’ve done things I’m not proud of, Debra. Thankfully, unions give a second chance. Now please go and let these girls fundraise for the local animal shelter.”

A high pitched laughter burst from her. She shook her head and said, “Give me Max, and I’ll let them keep their cookies.”

The metal mouthed one flashed her teeth and pointed at her in a manner worthy of a Prussian officer threatening a neighboring country. “We beat you once and we will do another round of Savannah World of Bleakness and Light to make the lesson more painful this time!”

Debra clapped her hands. “I declare a fight! That means I get to do one attack move first.”

“Fight!” a deep voice from out of nowhere demanded.

She pulled out her handheld tranquilizer gun, and before the big Skunk Ape monster and the little scout monsters in their own right could react, she fired a dart straight into the monster’s neck. The beast went lights out immediately and fell face first into Bull Street with a massive thump.

The three scouts screamed in horror at the sight of the protector going down. Debra, though, cackled.

“Your screams count as a move each! Have fun being limited to only one move this round, you little tyrants!”

Little faces looked at each other clearly in horror. The rules that they had used to dominate before were being used against them. However, their countenances solidified with a fire in their eyes. The one of them on the left said, “I transfer my action point to Sally!” The one on the right said the same thing.

Now, a grin worthy of Debra when she plotted grew on the child. Three moves allowed for a multitude of malicious options. And the one she picked was one of the most malicious. The dental abomination summoned a handful of delicious chocolate-covered cookies, crumbled them in her hands and blew them in the vampire’s face.

“+25 blood damage diabetes attack!” the girl yelled.

Sugar-supercharged blood clogged Debra’s arteries and clenched her heart. Sharp pain brought her to her knees while her now numb feet kept her there.

“You- you- monster!” the vampire cried, half in anger and half in pain.

“Ha ha,” the scout replied.

Brace Face used her last two action points to deliver one-two punch blows straight into Debra’s cheeks. While the impacts themselves weren’t so bad, the damage to the ego was crushing.

“Now leave us alone, you big meanie!”

But Debra did not leave. Instead, she rose and wiped her nose with her arm, costing her a point but gaining her partial health recovery. She knew better than to taunt because that would have been her second action point. Rather, she swung her leg back, then thrusted it forward, arching it straight into the snot-nosed kid’s beak.

Footballs, whether Association, American gridiron, or Australian, go shorter distances on average when kicked than how far the poor scout flew. When she did land, she broke out in a bawl for her daddy. The two lackeys each grabbed an arm and carried her off as they fled.

“Victory,” the disembodied narrator proclaimed.

Debra advanced two steps and put her hands near her mouth to amplify her voice. “That’s right! Flee! Bull Street belongs to me now!” Then, her face and arms dropped. “Hey! Don’t run away! I need to know where you put Max!” She took off after them.

“Dispatch, Unit 24, emergency traffic.”

“This is Dispatch. All units stand by. 24, go ahead.”

“At Bull and Lee. It’s Debra again. She kicked my daughter in the face. I want units on me. I want her down now and hard.”

“Copy, 24. Assault on a child. Units 31, 16, and 7, 10-18 Bull and Lee. 24, what’s Joni’s condition? Need EMS?”

“Her face is scuffed and outfit is ruined, but she’s gonna be fine after some breakfast ice cream. Negative on rescue.”

“10-4. Thank you, Lord. 31, 16, 7, continue.”

“31 here. 10-23. Contact. She’s yelling and running down the street. Oh, she’s holding up her hands.”

“This is 24. Doesn’t matter. Get her on the ground. Remember, what she did to Joni. I’m on foot and almost there.”

“16 on scene. She’s says it was all a misunderstanding. Oh, it’s on now.”

“24 on site, taser deployed.”

“7 on scene. I got another cartridge if she twitches.”

“This is Dispatch. 24, confirm subject resisting.”

“She just tried summoning a fireball. Second cycle.”

“31 here. That zap got her. We’re putting weight on her.”

“24. Putting cuffs on her now.

“10-4. Good job everyone. I’m copying Debra in custody at Bull and Lee. Charge?”

“Assault on my child, trespass, and whatever else I write. I’m throwing her in the back now and on my way to you.”

“Copy. 24 en route to booking with one vampire. 31, 16 and 7, clear the scene when you can. Channel clear.”

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And I am editing the fourth book presently.

Or check out my humorous Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency short stories.

Until Next Time

The next chapter drops Wednesday, October 28th.

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Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency 3: Chapter Two

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:01:11 GMT

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Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency 3

Chapter Five

While this cover is AI generated, the text is all human.

“I know what you are thinking,” Debra said while huffing, “you’re thinking that I did this before, that this shows a lack of originality. Well, my zombie friend,” she caught her breath, “I think what isn’t broken shouldn’t be fixed. If using you as bait worked against the Uranium Killer, who am I to change perfection?”

“Umphrphphfpfpumpfphpm,” Max said. What he wanted to say was a protest against Debra’s latest impressment of him in her plans, but three layers of bike chains made sure he couldn’t.

She laughed. “Okay, maybe you are thinking something more basic. In your zombie voice you are saying, ‘brains, brains, brains.’ I guess that is better than something Fred would say. He would say something like remember death. Well, guess what, bucko? You proved there is indeed life after undeath, so I’m never dying.” She paused. “Huh, that opens up a lot of questions. Oh, well.”

Forsyth Park at night was a beautiful sight to behold. There was something about the soft light from the lampposts filtered through Spanish moss hanging off the oaks that Max typically found calming. And he would have, if he wasn’t tied to the fence circling the park’s fountain. Now, the familiar sight of light-muffling Spanish moss spelled in his soul a sense of danger. The sound of shooting and splashing water became cruel laughter.

What made things worse was that no one was helping him. The park even at this hour had a night exercise runner or two, a senior citizen taking a stroll, young tourists taking a romantic post-midnight walk, and even a ghost tour stopping at the Confederate Monument. Surely, he thought, at least a few of them had to have seen him, yet no one acted like the least thing was amiss.

“Umphpfhpfhphf,” he pleaded. It was no use.

Debra put her finger on his chin like an artist admiring her greatest work. “Yes, yes, I know, Max. Brains, delicious brains. Don’t worry, it will all be over soon. Your decaying undead state will end as that Bigfoot rips you apart limb from limb, buying me enough time to shoot him with the tranquilizer pistol I- umm- borrowed from the zoo.”

Then, bending down to her bag, she pulled out a couple copies of Monster Monthly with her face on the cover and tossed them at him. Each magazine bounced off at a different angle. They laid spewed about nearby.

“You see, besides being ultra-traditionalists, Bigfeet are environmental activists. And I don’t mean they plant trees on Arbor Day, no. Nor do they throw paint on artwork and wait to be arrested. These eight feet tall ape-men of rage savagely maim RV campers and eat litterers as a matter of principle. Man, when this monster sees you - my best friend forever - and this trash by your feet, you gonna get beat, Max.”

Max gave off a muffled scream. It was long and loud, surpassing the epicness of the one he did when going to Oz and when Fred implied the possibility that he was indeed a zombie. The pain not only of his misadventures since Haiti but from his time in the law firm, law school, and life since he left his childhood home all came out.

After taking a moment, despite the gag, he moaned a prayer to God, his first true one since before he could remember.

The crimson hue of Debra’s eyes became one shade lighter. Behind them, he could see a tempest, but not of anger; no, something else.

The edges of her sharp smile softened.

“Max,” she breathed. The vampiress took a step back, looked at the stars in the night sky, and returned her gaze to him; this time with tears forming at the edges. “What am I doing? You’ve been the only monster who hasn’t left me, and here I am-.” She wiped away tears with her arm. “I didn’t even want to make a detective agency. All I have ever wanted to do is to be a hotshot reporter.” Going silent, she put her hands on her hips and took a moment before speaking again. “There’s not even money in this. Wow. What have I become?”

Spraying and falling water from the fountain no longer sounded like laughter. As it joined the chorus of insects singing their night songs, the atmosphere of the park lightened. To Max, it finally seemed like a beautiful night.

Her hands were cold as they always were, but as she removed the chains from his mouth, there was something in them that expressed not a physical warmth but a spiritual awareness. He could see her eyes shifting from the vampiric red to the brown he had seen in them when she was temporarily human in their last adventure. Then, he couldn’t be sure if it was his imagination or the Spanish Moss-affected light, but a faint golden glow appeared to form around her.

Then her eyes went wide and she gasped. “That’s a mummy! They’re buried with all sorts of treasure!”

She dropped the mouth chains and ran off behind Max before she could untied the rest of his body.

The Doppler effect had minimal impact on her loud voice as Max could hear her yelling, “Sir! Sir! Have you thought about Paranormal Detective Agency Insurance to ensure the power of your curses while you are away from Egypt? Sir!”

Max was too tired to scream for help, there was nothing to laugh at in this situation, and he was too whiplashed with emotions to cry in pity. Instead, the vampire’s two one hundred eighty degree mental turns left him dizzy. All he could do was stand still.

It could have been an hour, it could have been two, it could have been merely moments until dawn would first hint at the horizon, when someone finally came. Approaching him down the long sidewalk was the silhouette of a man carrying an old style lantern. As he approached, a tri-corner hat and a yellow colonial coat became visible.

Max’s heart leaped for joy thinking it was a zombie pirate. He had previous good luck with those. It wasn’t; however, he was still elated when he saw the name tag which read “Michael Kroese: Savannah and Tybee Island Paranormal & Ghost Tours.”

“Ha,” the college aged Michael laughed. “Let me guess, you tried sneaking into Sally’s nightly tour without paying. Usually, she ties people up at the Spanish-American War Volunteer Memorial, but I guess the fountain works, too. If you say sorry, I’ll let you go. I think you got more than your punishment if she left you here all night.”

“No, no,” Max replied. “I would never steal from the tourism industry. Back home, I represent, well- represented a trolley tour company once. My name is Max. I don’t know a Sally, but if you let me down, you’ll have my eternal gratitude.”

The smile Michael had flipped upside down in a nanosecond, with the shifting muscles pulling down his eyebrows to make a perfect glower on his face.

“Wait a minute, I know you. My girlfriend won’t stop watching true crime videos about you. You killed like, what, a whole community booster organization, a bunch of tourists at a crappy inn at the edge of town, and didn’t all the gangs get together in Haiti to form a functioning judicial system just to put out a warrant for your arrest?”

“No!” Max’s eyes went wild with pleading. “That wasn’t me! That was Debra! She’s a vampire! Well, okay, Haiti wasn’t her fault, but I swear I didn’t think I killed him! I just threw candles on oily rags!” When those words hit his ears, he stopped and realized how crazy everything sounded.

Michael’s head turned left and then right in a slow shake. “I hope you get the chair, man.”

A sudden punch that stopped a mere inch from Max’s face caused him to flinch. The tour guide cruelly laughed and walked past Max.

Suddenly, the tour guide’s footsteps stopped.

“What is that?” Michael’s voice asked.

The next sound was something smacking against the concrete sidewalk. A sickening sensation hit Max’s gut, but then everything in him froze as he imagined a Bigfoot right behind him.

But what he heard wasn’t the heavy breathing of a fierce primate; no, it was the rapid, high pitched breathing of something small.

A sharp, cutting sensation raced across his face as a blur of black and white flew past his left cheek and landed on the concrete in front of him. Little tap-taps implied what cut him were sharp claws adjusting on the sidewalk.

He ignored the blood trickling down his face to study what was before him. It was like a cat but not a feline. It had big eyes like some nocturnal monkey, tall standing ears, rows of black spots on its white fur, and a tail that would more appropriately belong on a raccoon than a cat.

Before he could say anything, the creature jerked its neck and transformed into a woman who rose from the ground and stood upright. What had been fur became an elegant sweater of the same pattern and horizontal black and white striped pants. She could have been a runway model, and the mascara and eyeliner only added to her beauty.

Max decided this was a time to embrace de facto dual citizenship in humanity and monsterdom. “Hey, help a zombie out?”

The woman swiped her sharp fingernails across his right cheek, cutting him.

“Max,” she seethed, “I hate you. I hate everything about you and Debra and that detective agency of yours. I am going to take revenge on that harpy, and I’m starting with you.”

Max gulped.

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The Account at Zerbe by Sloane Marrow - Free Mystery Book

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Thrust into a new world of power and responsibility, Rylie must navigate the treacherous waters of team dynamics and power struggles as she fights to make Terra Blanca a beacon of hope amidst the chaos. But her mission takes a sinister turn when a secret agent infiltrates the community, hell-bent on testing the innovative governance and social structures that form the backbone of the ambitious social experiment.

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Xandir has been exiled to earth until the end of time. But when his cherub trainee disappears, Xandir makes a deal with rogue angels and giants that could restore life to the mortal woman he loves and end his assignment as a destroying angel in exchange for helping them bring about the end of the world and all of mankind.

Unit Next Time

Next time, we are speeding things up. Chapter 3 comes out October 23! Chapter 4 on October 28! And I will publish the finale on October 30!

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Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency 3: Chapter One

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:02:21 GMT

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Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency 3

Chapter Five

Chapter One

It was hot. It was always hot. It was humid. It was always humid. And somehow, even in this Savannah summer, which continued to last, it always seemed like nighttime. It wasn’t always night, though, Max knew; it just felt like it because Debra had forced him onto her schedule. If he did things during the day, he would hear her yell, moan, or mutter to keep it down; so being a kind housemate he stopped his daytime activity. She also made him listen to her long winded laments about not being able to drink human blood. “Cow blood tastes horrible, and I’m not going back into the gorilla exhibit,” she said. Max would shudder and wonder what she was referring to when she made that statement five nights a week.

However, this night could last forever for all he cared. Isabelle Mercer, the thin fanged, freckled vampiress from the Junior Club of Savannahian Vampires, was walking - no - gliding him back home. The date that night had been lovely.

Earlier that week, Debra haggled her way to have Max and her clear a poltergeist out of the old Campbell Hotel. The vampire invested in a camera that she claimed would pay for itself after she uploaded the ghost hunting videos onto social media. It turned out the hotel had multiple rat colonies rather than ghosts. The clerk must have known; his laugh said more than words ever could. Debra left Max to take care of it, saying he could eat the rodents’ brains.

It was on his way back trying to find a place to dump his bag full of live rats - a place that Debra’s antics hadn’t resulted in them being court ordered to stay fifty yards away from at all times - that he stumbled upon Junior Club vampires in their white nightgowns. One of the vampiresses gave him $100 for the trash bag while another nudged Isabelle until she asked him out to a showing of Gone with the Wind later that week.

The movie wasn’t long enough. Every few minutes, Isabelle would turn and point out things she remembered from the Antebellum South. Now and again she would ask “Why would the Yankees do that?” or if Max needed more popcorn. The latter question made Max blush because Isabelle would smile each time she asked. He liked her smile, which unlike Debra’s didn’t seem threatening. Nothing about her seemed dangerous. Not only that, she didn’t tell him what to do nor did she call him a zombie. On the walk home, she even asked if he needed a place to stay with “fellow humans.” In that moment, he didn’t mind being in Savannah.

All that changed after he bid Isabelle goodnight and entered Debra and his city-provided mansion; an award for saving the city’s monsters from the Uranium Killer. The entryway, dining room, and living room, which for the last 200 years hosted Southern grandees and dames, were strewn with bicycles, some dirty, some worn, others pristine.

In the middle of the room, kneeling next to a bike, was Debra with a cell phone pressed against her head.

“Uh huh,” she said, “yeah, I think I found your stolen dirt bike. It’s a red MudMaxx 4200 with license number 42SVB? … What? Hold on, I think I have that somewhere around here.” She scanned the bicycles but did not acknowledge Max. “Excuse me? Are you accusing me of the recent rash of thefts? Sir, that’s libel!”

With a humph, she turned off her cellphone and crossed her arms. It was then that she finally acknowledged her partner in the paranormal detective agency.

“Max! Tonight’s been a busy one for me. Did you finally expel that horrific zombie-.” Her eyes went wide for a moment as she paused before recovering. “I apologize, I meant that horrific living-challenged American like you who was haunting the Old Hebrew House?”

The lawyer-turned-paranormal-task boy rolled his eyes. “I told you about that last night. The ‘monster’,” he said using air quotes, “is the golem who lives there. His name is Robert House; he’s the rabbi for Jewish monsters in Savannah, remember? He invited me to the comedy club on Thursday to see his show; he also wanted me to tell you to stop peering through his windows at night. His wife is really upset you keep doing that.”

The vampire’s eyes took a long, drawn out path from left to right as her mouth hung open. Once that ritual of Debra processing cognitive dissonance was complete, her face brightened up and she snapped her fingers.

With a voice like a child’s the night before Christmas, she asked, “Did you at least ask him if he needed some paranormal crime solved or had any preternatural chores you could do for him in exchange for a fee?”

Max’s shake of the head deflated Debra’s enthusiasm.

“Well, what did you do tonight while I labored alone in the bicycle paranormal recovery business?”

He thought about responding that if she didn’t steal the bikes, there would be no crime for their paranormal detective agency to address, but the now six months trapped by her side had taught him it was easier to have a conversation with the Sphinx than persuade Debra not to do something. That thought gave him pause as he pondered if he went to Giza would the Sphinx come alive and talk to him. Stranger things had happened since the zombification ritual in Haiti.

“Max!” the vampiress shouted. “I asked you what you were doing tonight!”

An annoyance crept up his spine, and the follow on third ask made his ears and cheeks burn. He gave her a glower, but she maintained an appearance that made it seem she was inconvenienced like a person waiting for a late train.

“I told you I was spending time with Isabelle.”

Her face soured with eyes pouting but a mouth that screamed betrayal. “That hussy. You were out with that rich, wishes-she-has-blood-so-she-could-be-blue-blooded Junior Club member?! Max, she and her poisonous ilk are no good for you. Did you know they took out yet another restraining order against me?”

He nodded his head. “Yeah, you drank too much pig’s blood, showed up on their lawn thinking you were Neil Armstrong, and you had to use their porch swing to re-enter orbit. I was the one who paid out of my pocket - the last of my pay you gave me over four months ago - to replace the swing and convince them not to arrest you. Without Isabelle helping me convince them, they would have the police haul you away.”

There was a long exchange of glares; Max’s held his increasing poverty and upsetness while Debra’s went blank.

“Oh, yeah,” she trailed off. “Hey!” she snapped her fingers. “You know what the best way to earn money is? I have a job!”

“I am not tricking the rabbi into paying us for a hoax haunting or going back to shaking down scouts for cookie money, Debra.”

The vampiress laughed and got up. Turning away from him, she went to the dining table and returned with a glossy sheet of paper. It was a picture of her from the deal-struck propaganda edition of Monsters Monthly magazine that featured Debra as the savior of Savannah’s monsters because of her role in defeating the Uranium Killer. However, unlike all the copies she had strewn about the various rooms, tables, and pasted on the walls, this image had her eyes crossed out and “REVENGE” handwritten in big, bold red lettering.

Max studied the image like a lawyer seeing key evidence for the first time. “Who did this? A rival? Someone you wronged?”

His partner rolled her eyes. “Rival? Bah! The only person who had it out for me left her anger behind because of Fred; may his eternal soul rest in peace and never make us do anything dangerous again.” She made a mocking quick sign of the cross. “This has to be the work of the most reactionary monster out there; one so angered that a new edition came out that his change tolerance the size of an atom has been driven to deface thousands of these and mail them all to me.”

His eyes went wide. “Thousands? For how long has this been going on?”

“This is the work of a Bigfoot!”

Somehow his eyes went wider. “You mean the Skunk Ape with the prison tats who apparently has table top roll playing powers did this?!?! Debra, I still don’t understand how you saved me by saying ‘Quick Load’ but if that Skunk Ape is targeting us beyond protecting Bull Street, we got to call the cops or something.”

With gentle grace, she placed the image on a bike seat and then put her two hands on his shoulders. A long, listless sigh escaped her mouth, and then she touched her forehead against his.

“Max, my dear Max. Once a human lawyer, probably smart for your kind, but cursed to have brain rot as all zombies do. Soon, there will be nothing of you left.” When she pulled her forehead away, there were moist tears forming in her eyes. “I said ‘Bigfoot’, not ‘Skunk Ape.’ Bigfeet believe in the status quo above all things, whether rejecting new magazine editions or changes to their faith systems. In the Holy Land, they remain Samaritans because they reject Judaism’s moving on from Temple worship, in Russia they are Old Believers who think anything after the Fall of Constantinople is a Tatar counterfeit, and in the United States they retain the Latin Mass the Franciscans taught them in the 1600s.”

“Wow,” Max said. He paused and took in the thought of traditionalist monsters. “So in California and Oregon, you’re telling me there are Catholic Bigfeet that reject the changes of Vatican II and deny the pope?”

A tear rolled off Debra’s cheek in a silent cry. “Max, if only you could hear yourself speak. What sort of Catholic could ever reject the pope? Max, my poor Max. This must be the last night for you before you become a mindless brain eater. Don’t worry, I have a perfect plan to end it all: you’re going to be Bigfoot bait.”

Max tried screaming, but Debra gagged him with a bike lock before he could.

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And I am editing the fourth book presently.

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Psyker Marine by Jake Malory - Book for Sale for $4.99 or Free on Kindle Unlimited

My name is James Thorne, and I wasn’t supposed to matter. Before the invasion, I was just a guy in a dead-end job, keeping my head down and my past buried. The Gehenna want our annihilation. Thankfully, they angered the Aetherion who may help humanity not only fight back, but turn the tide.

When I’m offered the chance to be Cleansed, to become something more than I was, I take it. And it turns out I’m special. No, I’m not the Chosen One. And yes, there are others like me, but as a Psyker, I can do things most can’t. Things that make me very dangerous.

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The Williamsburg Case: An Ashburn Foundation Files Novella by Donald Quill - Free Novella

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Until Next Time

Next week, we will continue the Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency adventure!

C.S. Lewis Panel: The Meaning of Narnia and Other Questions

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:03:52 GMT

What happens when a lay Catholics, a Protestant with a pastoral background, and an Orthodox priest and a layman get together? They talk about C.S. Lewis, Narnia, the Space Trilogy, and how Lewis has influenced them. Go beyond the talk of Netflix’s adaptation of The Magician's Nephew with this panel that pushes through the wardrobe.

Here’s what you can expect

The panel includes

Stuart D. Brooks of Sowing Wonder. He’s an Orthodox layman and currently writing a fantasy trilogy.

John Paul Hare of Ruminations and Reflections. He’s a Catholic layman and has written essays about C.S. Lewis’ work as well as other things.

Eric M. Hamilton of Pyrite Dreams. He’s a Protestant who was a pastor and is a published author.

Father Justin of Geek Orthodox. Father Justin is an Orthodox priest and self-described geek who is also a published poet.

Patrick Abbott of Patrick Abbott, Sci-fi Author (me, real original name for a Substack, eh?). Patrick is a Catholic who writes science fiction and humorous urban fantasy as well as objective non-fiction investigating sci-fi related topics.

Quick Review: Logos Theater’s Great Narnia Adaptions

Last Friday I saw the Logos Theatre’s adaptation of Prince Caspian at the Museum of the Bible. Needless to say, it was wonderful. Like all the other two Narnia plays adapted by the group - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Horse and His Boy - it was faithful to source material while also being enjoyable for all ages. It was on par with Horse and His Boy in terms of quality, making it better than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which I personally felt dragged a little before the characters went to Narnia.

Check out Logos Theater to see if you can catch a showing!

Logos Theatre's Website

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Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency 3: Prologue

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 21:00:56 GMT

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Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency 3

Chapter Five

While this cover is AI generated, the text is all human.

Prologue - Coco the Skunk Ape was not a Skunk Ape OR Undeath can be a LitRPG sometimes

They called it a skunk ape. From a late night television show on a channel that once was educational, Max recalled that skunk apes were a Bigfoot knockoff in the American Southeast. But Fred in Heaven as his witness, this was no shaggy cryptid. The beast in front of him had more of a guerrilla’s top heavy frame than the proportions of a human or Sasquatch. Its muscles were titanic in size as it stood up straight like a man. And the tattoos. Oh, the tattoos. Why did it have prison tattoos?

The balance of power in this, the second midnight standoff between Max and Debra - really Debra with Max forced yet again to be at her side - and the braces-wearing Savannah Scout Society for Girls and their hired muscle looked to him to be rather lopsided. Yet, Debra apparently thought otherwise.

“Look, you little runts, you want to earn your tourism merit badge? You want to make a little profit for your field trip? Fine. But if you want to take the tourists up and down Bull Street, you have to pay the monsters’ representational fee.”

The preteen in the blue beret with the fierce stare worthy of an East German youth group leader about to betray her parents to the Stasi spat on the road between her clique and the paranormal detective agency.

“Back off, vampire. We ethically source our ghouls and creatures from the Local Monsters #1864. You’re just trying to shake us down.”

Debra rolled her red eyes. “Last chance to walk away. If you hurry, maybe you can buy some stale popcorn from your little brother so he can afford not getting his campsite egged again.”

Those words caused Max to give his partner the side eye. Last month’s budget was spent in a week all because she said she needed eggs to let some spirit rest in peace.

However, there was no time to dwell on that as the scout leader snapped her fingers, causing the hulking behemoth of a creature to step forward.

“Coco! Educate this bourgeoisie exploiter about what happens when she tries harming a workers’ cooperative. +10 attack her manservant!”

Max swore that he could feel the very paved street below him shake with each of the monster’s footsteps. Normally, he would have wondered if these scouts were socialists or distributists, if he could have said something to calm everyone down, or why they just invoked a RPG-style command. But there were only seconds left for him to decide whether to run or get on his knees and beg for mercy.

From his side, Debra laughed. “Ha! We’re playing Savannah World of Bleakness and Light rules now? Very well, then. Max has a bubble of protection around him!” She then whistled and waved her hands.

From out of nowhere a blue bubble formed around him and then popped, disappearing as soon as it came.

Out of the skies came a male voice, carrying a strange, light-hearted tone. “Critical failure.”

Max had so many questions.

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Until Next Time

Next week, we will continue the Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency adventure!

Very Short Stories Collection #5

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 21:01:34 GMT

Some of My Favorite Very Short Stories

The vss365 and scififri writing challenges, which I post on Substack Notes, are fun little activities that allow me to sprout small tales in unique ways. Below are some of my recent favorites with short explanations. Be sure to check out the other Very Short Stories posts for more: One, Two, Three, and Four.

Consequences

A vss365 story built around the word exhaustion

The ferals raged, screaming and showing no signs of exhaustion.

From the tower, Rick saw other mad prisoners frothing at the mouth as they repeatedly tried scaling the electric fence.

"Yeah," he said to the other guards, "putting chemicals into the insane wasn't smart."

The Wreck of Abdu the Poacher

A vss365 story based around the word flinching

Viral image of the internet.

It all led up to this. Abdu was unflinching during a famine as a child, a civil war, and recently against park wardens who had threatened him with life in jail. And now, in the face of a most ironic death, the poacher was stoic as Jabari the Ape loaded its gun.

Don’t Push a Psi Agent

A vss365 story built around the word experiment

Grok AI generated image

Righteous anger tapped into years of prodding, tests, experiments, and pain. Rookie Psi Agent Kelly de Sousa didn’t know how strong her telekinetic abilities were nor how long she could maintain them, but she didn’t care. Those space pirates who boarded the ISV Bull Run were about to regret their decision.

The Looming Future

A vss365 science fiction tale built around the word unearthly

There was something- something about the pre-mission briefing that Xies couldn’t place. The peacefulness of the prairie, the fresh air; it was beautiful yet he felt an unearthly feel - though he was on Seti Prime - when he remembered the combat to come.

The Grunt’s Lament

A vss365 science fiction story built around the word domestic

Grok AI generated image.

Keni’s shoulders could carry his whole gear, but sagged as he sat and remembered.

“Why didn’t I hold her when she pressed that book in my hand as I deployed out? What made me kill that girl? How come the domestic life never made sense but combat did?”

It was all too much.

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Until Next Time

Next time, I will start sharing the Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency 3 all throughout the month of October. First section drops next Wednesday.

Fifty Years Since the Tehran UFO Incident

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 21:01:15 GMT

This is in a series of anniversary UFO incident investigations. See also Roswell at 80, Tehran at 50 (this post), Phoenix Lights at 30 (March 2027), and the Washington DC Flap at 75 (July 2027).

Image from a 1980s Iranian made film about the incident. The movie served both as a documentary of the incident and a propaganda film against the Shah’s military.

On the night when September 18th became the 19th in 1976, something strange happened above the skies of Tehran, Imperial State of Iran. What would happen would involve the planes encountering mysterious problems, American military intelligence, an active astronomical night, and strangely located equipment.

The Course of Events

The general course of events, based on contemporary and later on witness statements, including interviews done by an American air force attache based in Tehran, was as follows.

11:00 pm to 12:30 am: Mehrabad Airport air traffic controller Hossein Pirouzi and the Imperial Iranian Air Force received four reports of a bright, colorful object hovering over Tehran. Pirouzi stepped outside with binoculars and saw a bright, shape-shifting object rocking like a seesaw roughly 6,000 feet (~1,800 meters) in the air. The airport also made a radar lock on an unknown object in the location where Pirouzi could see the visible object.
Ordered and Scrambled: The air force scrambled a F-4 Phantom II jet from Shahrokhi Air Force Base, about 150 miles (250 kilometers) away. Flown by Lieutenant Yaddi Nazeri and crewed by a weapons officer, the jet raced toward Tehran. Nazeri reported seeing a bright object from 70 miles (about 115 kilometers) away.
The First Plane Incident: As Nazeri closed to about 30 miles (45 kilometers) of the object, his F-4 suffered a loss of instruments and radio communication. He broke off and flew away. As soon as he did so, all failed equipment somehow was restored.
The Second Scramble: While the first plane was still in the air, the air force scrambled a second F-4, this one piloted by Major Parviz Jafari and crewed by a weapons officer. The weapons officer aquired a lock at about 30 miles (45 kilometers) away.
Systems Failure: As Jafari chased the object to the skies of southern Tehran, a smaller object detached from the primary object. This secondary object flew toward Jafari’s jet at high speed. Jafari attempted to fire an AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missile but his weapons console died and radio communication was lost. He performed a hard turn; with the secondary object following him before it broke off and rejoined the larger, original object.
Third Object at 2:00 am: A third object emerged from the primary object and fell to the grpimd, landing in a dry lake bed between Tehran and a nearby city named Karaj. Jafari noted that its bright glow illuminated a 1 to 2 mile (roughly 2 to 3 kilometer) radius on the ground.
Landing: As Jafari’s F-4 was preparing to land at Tehran Mehrabad Airport, it suffered repeated radio and inertial navigation failures. A commercial airliner landing at the same time experiences a radio failure as well.
Sunrise at Helicopter Ride: The air force flew Jafari and a inspections team by helicopter to the third object’s landing site. They found no burn marks or craters. However, their equipment picked up an emergency beeper signal concentrating around a local farmhouse, whose inhabitants reported hearing a massive noise and seeing a blinding flash of light during the night.
Americans Get Involved: American technical advisors stationed in Iran received the initial reports about the incident and went to work on the aircraft, which was a normal routine as the Americans were contracted to maintain the aircraft for the Iranians. Meanwhile, the Defense Attache Office at the American embassy learned about the incident and dispatched a military intelligence officer to write an Intelligence Information Report. The report would be sent to a standard distribution list that included the White House.

As an American attache written intelligence report documented, the incident was notable because of

The credibility of many of the witnesses, such as an Iranian air force general, qualified aircrews, and experienced tower operators.
Radar confirmed visual sightings. Three separate aircraft witnessed the same object.
There were physiological effects on crew members, such as loss of night vision because of the brightness of the object.
An inordinate amount of maneuverability displayed by the objects.

A follow on National Security Agency report stated the agency was studying the incident as an example of a hostile force using jamming technology on American-made equipment.

Oddities of a Different Sort

Things become weird when one looks into the factors that influenced the night’s events.

First, the astronomy. On that night, Earth was passing through the maximum peaks of the Southern Piscids and Gamma Piscids meteor showers. At the same time, Jupiter was at its brightest of the year, and a few days after it and the Moon were conjoined in the sky, and was in the sky north of the city. These events are factors, as the pilots based at Shahrokhi Air Base rarely flew night sorties, and that these two flights were the only night missions that the pilots flew during the American technicians’ entire deployment. This opens up the possibility of pilots not knowing exactly what they were seeing during the chase, such as Jupiter and meteors being mistaken for UFOs.

Additionally, per a report in Skeptoid, the American tech crew noted Jafari’s plane had a documented history of chronic and unresolved equipment electrical outages. Nazeri’s account was only made known in 1994. (Note: the Skeptoid report claimed only the second plane had reported equipment failures that night, though the original attache report indicated both planes had problems when encountering the object.)

Finally, and little reported, was that original attache report stated something was recovered when the Iranians went to the third object landing site: an C-141 transport aircraft emergency crash beacon. Those aircraft were noted to have issues with turbulence related to the mountains around Tehran.

So what happened?

Taking these points into account creates oddities. The sky that night was active with natural astronomical events, and the pilots had little night exposure, yet for citizens of Iran and the air traffic controller, Jupiter waxing and waning would be a known thing, as would multi-day long meteor showers. People definitely observed something peculiar and odd in the sky, but who knows what that was. Both planes had difficulties when encountering the object, yet the American tech crew report only indicated one plane having documented troubles beforehand. Finally, the presence of the C-141 beacon is weird, as there were no indications of an Iranian C-141 losing its beacon that night, yet there it is. How the heck is the normal beacon there, and what is its association with the reported landing light?

So what happened? This is a genuine case of the unknown. We have an event; we have some factors that could explain away some of the incident, but not all of it. Yet, we have little to no evidence to say anything else. Any assessment requires numerous assumptions while being extremely low confidence. Tehran’s 1976 incident is one of those mysteries that may never be solved.

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A plague has swept through the village of Dasen, taking all the magic from the place and the druids. Master Rody longs for the day that it returns. Back when conversing with nature is normal and casting spells is natural to them.

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Until Next Time

Next time, I will share some very short stories.

Book of Enoch: UFO-Obsession and an Ethiopian Orthodox Perspective

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 21:01:57 GMT

Enochism: Merging UFOism with An Unique Understanding of Christianity

If one listens to certain corners of the UFO/UAP fandom, whether in modern non-traditional, non-denominational forms of Christianity or the ancient aliens groups, one will stumble upon people who cite something they call the “Book of Enoch.” Recently, these groups are getting louder and louder while gaining social media impressions.

She doesn’t say what one should think about the “Book of Enoch” nor why. Also, it’s something she won’t touch the Books of Tobit, Judith, and other books not found in Protestant Bibles.

But what is meant by the “Book of Enoch”? The First Book of Enoch - commonly called the “Book of Enoch” in modern translations while also being referred to as the “Scroll of Enoch” in more traditional translations since books as we know them were not published back then - is an ancient Jewish religious text credited to the great-grandfather of Noah. The oldest Aramaic fragments we have of it dates to the Second Temple period of about 300 B.C. to 200 B.C. while the oldest full translation we have of it is a 15th Century A.D. manuscript from Lake Tana, Amhara, Ethiopia. In the book, the pre-Noah’s Flood figure serves as a prophet who gives context to Genesis 6:2-7 which states before Noah’s Flood:

And now the sons of God saw how beautiful were these daughters of men, and took them as wives, choosing where they would. But God said, This spirit of mine shall not endure in man for ever, he is but mortal clay; his life-time shall be a hundred and twenty years. Giants lived on the earth in those days, when first the sons of God mated with the daughters of men, and by them had children; these were the heroes whose fame has come down to us from long ago. And now God found that earth was full of men’s iniquities, and that the whole frame of their thought was set continually on evil; and he repented of having made men on the earth at all. So, smitten with grief to the depths of his heart, he said, I will blot out mankind, my creature, from the face of the earth, and with mankind all the beasts and the creeping things and all that flies through the air; I repent of having made them. (Knox Translation)

What the First Book of Enoch claims is that these “sons of God” described as Watchers taught knowledge such as metallurgy, cosmetics, and astrology to all of humanity. God then punishes these sons of God by binding them in a black abyss and floods the Earth to cleanse the world of the giant children, sometimes translated as Nephilim. The book then goes on to describe Enoch’s visions of the heavens and contains a prophecy of the coming messiah.

So what is so attractive about this book with the UFO crowd? Representative Anna Paulina Luna on the Joe Rogan Show encouraged people to read it as she linked traditional Christian stories of angels and UFO entities - put this way as to avoid calling UFO creatures aliens, thus allowing for different origins other than outer space - to the Watchers in the First Book of Enoch. Thus, for her, the UFO subject is part of a bigger cosmological issue, including a conspiracy to keep knowledge of Watchers from humanity, which she implies the Catholic Church actor in the plot.

The “this was removed from the Bible” discourse is heavy in the Book of Enoch-UFO discussion. It ties older anti-Catholic ideas of censoring the Bible with modern UFO conspiracy theories. In part, that Protestantism is helpful for the theory as it gives a supposed literal interpretation of Bible books. The thinking goes, “If the First Book of Enoch belonged in the Bible, then it is 100% perfect and must be read literally, therefore its texts about powerful creatures coming down and influencing humanity must be literally true.” These people try to use the First Book of Enoch to unite UFOism and their newer form of Christianity as part of a Disclosure-like revelation to awaken mankind to what they considered hidden cosmic truths. This is modern day Gnosticism.

The belief goes further and has even been embraced by other Christians and secularists to promote Ancient Aliens-related ideas. First, Enochism is used by some of the “aliens are demons crowd.” These individuals read about what they think are fallen angels teaching technology, and they embrace theories of advanced civilizations. Some like Antiochian Orthodox Church priest Father Stephen De Young use the Books of Genesis and Enoch as evidence that there were advanced civilizations pre-Noah’s Flood. Others like Catholic influencer Joshua Charles will not cite Enoch but accept pagan mythologies, but put them through an “aliens are demons” mindset to claim there were demon-influenced advanced cultures and flying craft before the Flood. (Both Father De Young and Charles are converts from Protestantism.) Meanwhile, since the 1960s, Ancient Aliens supporters have attempted to link Enoch and pagan tales of gods giving fire and other technology to humans with ideas of aliens influencing mankind. In 2023, Chariots of the Gods author Erich von Daniken released a book called Enoch and the Return of the Gods, which also claimed the First Book of Enoch was about aliens.

Believers in these theories have a major oversight, though. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, both members of the Oriental Orthodox Communion, have the First Book of Enoch in their Bible. What they teach differs from what the UFO believers would want you to think, though. But don’t take my word for it; take it from Deacon H.E. Negash - himself named after Enoch, of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Why is it easier to believe in aliens than angels and gods? - by H.E. Negash

Chris Nolan’s much watched film, and much written about by the chattering class, The Odyssey dryly strips Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem of the personal and intimate presence of the gods and goddesses, leaving one with: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) hallucinations from war, low-level enchantresses, nature (bad weather), and generally the deist worldview of a universe crafted beautifully like a clock and then left alone, which we have been stuck with for the past quarter millennium or so. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has painted Thor and the Asgardian race as aliens instead of Norse gods and goddesses. Giorgio Tsoukalos, the Swiss-born ethnic Greek aliens guy on the History Channel, very publicly (Ancient Aliens. S03 E03 beginning at 29:13. Aliens and Sacred Places. 2011.) attributed the 13th Century below ground level carving of eleven Orthodox churches out of rock, in Lalibela, Ethiopia, to alien aiding and abetting rather than the local story of angelic assistance, or even the Graham Hancock explanation (The Sign and the Seal. 1992.) that Western European Templar Knights and crusaders were the project and product managers thereof, after the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Scroll of Enoch, for whom my father Elias named me (those being the two characters in scripture that never died), is not about aliens. It is about the nephilim. The Biblical Hebrew meaning of which is the fallen ones. Often, Biblical Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew render the same meaning, but in this particular case scholars argue. And it is from the Biblical Aramaic that the more popular meaning of giants is extracted from the text. Let us examine a few verses, and then move on from this argument. As it is written, “Reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition” (Titus 3:10 NKJV).

The Scroll of Enoch: According to the Aksumite School of Biblical Exegesis

Chapter 2 (In Ge’ez and Old Amharic; Classical Ethiopic and Neo Ethiopic)

ወኮነ እምዘበዝኁ ውሉደ ሰብእ። እምድኅረ በዝኁ ሲል ነው እምዘነሰቱኪ ትትሐነፂ ወእምዘ ረወዩ አግማሊሁ እንዲል የሰው ልጆች ከበዙ በኋላ እንዲህ ሆነ። በእነዚያ ወራት መልከ መላካሞች ደመግቡዎች ሴቶች ልጆች ተወለዱላቸው። ቃየል አቤል ከሞተ በኋላ ሉድንም አቅሌማንም አግብቷቸዋል። ከሉድ ዓይነ መልካም ተረከዘ ክት ተወለዱ እስመ እምብእሲት ላህይት ተወልዳ ሎሙ አዋልድ ላህይት እንዲል ከአቅሌማ የተወለዱት ዓይነ ሸውራራ ዓይነ ጨምጫማ ሁነዋል።
ወርእዩ ኪያሆን መላእክት ውሉደ ሰማያት ወፈተውዎን። የሰማያት ልጆች እነርሱን አይተው ወደዱአቸው። መላእክት የተባሉ ደቂቀ ሴት ናቸው። ወሰመዮ መልአከ በእንተ ንጽሑ እንዲል በደብር ቅዱስ የሚኖሩ አንድም በልዑል መዓርግ በሰማያዊ መዓርግ የሚኖሩ። ደቂቀ ሴት ለጊዜው ከሴት ርቀን ንጽሕ ጠብቀን እንኖራለን ብለው ተሳሉ። እስከ ጊዜያቸውም ጠበቁ። ደቂቀ ቃየል በእግረ ደብር ራቁታቸውን የወገብ ድባ እያሠሩ እንዳለሌ እንደባዝራ ሲንጠላጠሉ አይተው በሐፀ ዝሙት ተነደፉ ለጊዜው አንዳንድ ሁነዋል።
ወይቤሉ በበይናቲሆሙ ንዑ ንኅረይ ለነ አንስተ እምውሉደ ሰብእ ወንለድ ለነ ውሉደ። እርስ በእርሳቸውም ኑ ለእኛ ከቃየል ልጆች ሴቶችን እንምረጥ ለእኛም ልጆችን እንውለድ አሉ።

English Translation:

And it came to be that the sons of men multiplied. It says they multiplied. As it is said, from the time they kissed you, you shall be built, and from the time they saw his camels. After the sons of men multiplied, this happened. In those months, daughters, with a good image and a beautiful glow (rooted in healthy blood flow), were born to them. Cain, after Abel had died, married Lud and Aqlema. Those born from Lud, all of them were born with good eyes; as it is said, from a comely woman were born to them comely daughters. Those born from Aqlema were cross-eyed and dim-eyed.
And the messengers, the sons of the heavens, saw them and desired them. The sons of the heavens saw them and liked them. The ones called messengers are the little ones (children) of Seth. As it is said, he appointed him a messenger for purity. Those who live on the Holy Mountain. And one meaning is those who live with a high title, with a heavenly title. The children of Seth took a vow saying, for the time being we will live distancing ourselves from women, keeping our purity. They waited until their time. When they saw the children of Cain at the foot of the mountain nude tying beads around their waist, dangling like beads on the back of a donkey or steed, they were stung with the bosom of whoredom. For that time, they became one.
And they said, amongst themselves, come let us select for us women from the sons of men and let us sire sons.

Exegesis (Interpretation):

These are not aliens. These are angels. But as it is said, in the Aksumite School of Biblical Exegesis, “the letter kills but the exegesis (spirit) gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). So, what is an angel exactly?

The Consonantal Biblical Hebrew, which precedes both the Masoretic Text and the Old Greek Text, renders angel as מלאך (melak; mlak). It is the exact same spelling and meaning in the Ge’ez, መልአክ (melak). The only difference is that Hebrew is written from right-to-left, and Ge’ez is written, uniquely amongst Semitic tongues, from left-to-right. This reminds me of Greek Orthodox Christians and Afroasiatic Orthodox Christians mirroring each other as they make the sign of the cross over their body with their hand.

Melak literally means messenger. And so does its Old Greek equivalent ἄγγελος (aggelos; angelos), from whence we get the English angel, and the Spanish name of my beloved hometown Los Angeles. Melak appears in the Hebrew Bible over two hundred times. About half the time, it is referring to the bodiless army of our father who art in the heavens. And about half the time it is referring to an earthly envoy or ambassador. Here, it is clear that the Aksumite School of Biblical Exegesis is treating these angels (messengers) as earthly envoys of Seth who began to intermarry with the children of Cain.

Hopefully, without committing the Argumentum ad Verecundiam Fallacy (an argument from inappropriate authority), I will remind the dear readers that the full version of the Scroll of Enoch is found today only in the Ge’ez of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church whose Aksumite School of Biblical Exegesis I am citing. You may find fragments hither-and-thither in Aramaic and Old Greek, but the Ge’ez stands alone in כבוד (kabod; weightiness; glory). And Old Amharic is the heir of Ge’ez.

Abbott’s Summary of the Above

That’s right. The ancient and still living Christian tradition of those who have the First Book of Enoch in their Bible is that the story involves the descendants of Adam and Eve’s third son Seth intermarrying with the corrupted descendants of Adam and Eve’s first son Cain, the one who killed his brother Abel. Instead of warning about aliens or demon children, the First Book of Enoch calls on people to avoid worldly things and focus on God, much like every other part of the Bible.

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Unit Next Time

Next time, I will mark the 50th anniversary of the Tehran UFO incident.

Thinking Like an Analyst in Our Sci-Fi Present

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 21:01:01 GMT

Structured Thinking to Defeat Bad Thinking

With the Disclosure flop, there has been chatter about how the press misled people, how things were hyped up, and general disinformation in the news. Much of the social panic of the episode was because of a lack of critical thinking. Sadly, we live in a world where many do not have analysis skills fostered or taught. There is hope, though, as military, intelligence, and business analysts have been taught a unique way to think. Now, I will share with you a layman’s guide to this critical thinking method that will help you judge claims in your lives.

First, let’s take a science fiction mind wash and enjoy this scene from Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the episode The Wounded, Captain Benjamin Maxwell has been launching raids against the Cardassians, an alien race the Federation had recently concluded a peace treaty with. Maxwell’s actions risk a new war that the Federation and its military, Starfleet, aren’t ready for. Maxwell is convinced the Cardassians are preparing for a new war, while Captain Picard of the USS Enterprise is unsure if these claims are valid while believing the other captain has overstepped his authority. Notice Picard’s use of questions and Maxwell’s inability to answer them.

Was Maxwell right? Possibly, the Cardassians were behaving in a way the Federation considered suspicious. However, one of the theme of this episode is how easy it is to misread the other side and thus project the worst on different groups. According to the show’s canon, the Cardassians did not launch a new war. In the follow on series Deep Space Nine, the Cardassians and the Federation had a shaky partnership that was peaceful despite some small scale skirmishing between partisans in contested space. It wasn’t until there was a coup on Cardassia and its new leader allied with the Dominion that a new war broke out.

Maxwell felt he “knew” what was going on. Picard’s use of critical thinking questions showed what he “knew” were really hunches.

First, the Deprogramming

“Being absolutely right and being spectacularly wrong feel exactly the same.” -Scott Adams, Loserthink

Most people do not think critically. Much of the average person’s thinking is a process that combines thoughts with reinforced biases and emotions. As we see on social media, people tend to seek out new information that fits into their already established worldview. Emotional decision making is prominent, with people tipping their thought process using terms like “feel” instead of “think.”

To defeat this shallow thinking, first, you have to reset the mental map. To do that, we can draw from the United States Intelligence Community, the maker of the Dilbert cartoon Scott Adams, and my own personal critical thinking maxims.

Steps to Think By

In 2015, the American Director of National Intelligence released Intelligence Community Directive 203 (PDF). ICD 203 set the critical thinking “standards that govern the production and evaluation of analytic products; articulates the responsibility of intelligence analysts to strive for excellence, integrity, and rigor in their analytic thinking and work practices.” The military, other elements of federal and state agencies, and private corporations have since adopted these rules to make logical assessments and choices.

As I’m not - and you are likely not - James Bond trying to assess a possible nuclear attack or an Amazon employee predicting future markets, I have created a simplified guide to think like an analyst, especially with sci-fi-related claims.

Objective Thinking

Analysts must perform their functions with objectivity and with awareness of their own assumptions and reasoning. -ICD 203

First off, specific claims influence one’s thinking. If I tell you aliens abducted me, your mind anchors onto whether or not I was abducted by an extraterrestrial. Same thing if someone tells you MK Ultra is an active program and controls politicians. You will view every piece of evidence as either confirming or denying that claim, with every confirmation having an oversized impact. Instead, reframe things into an open ended question. Asking “What happened to me last night?” or “What explains politicians’ behavior on X subject?” or “What occurred at Roswell?” will help you approach any subject with an open mind not biased by a claim.

Sourcing

How do you know what you know? -Abbott’s First Maxim of Critical Thinking

Analytic products should identify underlying sources and methodologies upon which judgments are based, and use source descriptors... -ICD 203

There is a war going on for your mind. People and organizations tell you things to influence your thinking and decision making. - Abbott’s Third Maxim of Critical Thinking

Think about the various science fiction-like claims out there, such as aliens being in the basement of Area 51, psychic children abducted for the Montauk Project, or the nightmarish aftereffects of the Philadelphia Experiment. How do you know about them? You weren’t there. Someone told you about them. How would they know? Eventually, you should make a chain of custody linking the claim you heard to the original source. The further a source is from its point of origin, the higher the likelihood of the “telephone game” changing what was actually said. Remember, though, even original sources can be compromised as they may have an agenda. How would they know? What do they have to gain by stating the claim? You should evaluate a source on a range of reliability instead of thinking of a source as true or false.

Hypotheses Generation and Analysis of Alternatives

Always ask yourself if the opposite of your theory could be true. Doing so keeps you humble and less susceptible to bias until you get to the truth of the situation… If you have a strong opinion about a proposed plan but you have not compared it to the next best alternative, you are not part of a rational conversation. -Scott Adams, Loserthink

Incorporates analysis of alternatives: Analysis of alternatives is the systematic evaluation of differing hypotheses to explain events or phenomena, explore near-term outcomes, and imagine possible futures to mitigate surprise and risk. Analytic products should identify and assess plausible alternative hypotheses. -ICD 203

Now that you have evidence and are thinking objectively, lay out all the data. Brainstorm plausible explanations, try weeding them out so you have mutually exclusive hypotheses. Once you have three to five possibilities, make a chart and see what evidence backs what hypothesis. For example, how does Roswell’s wreckage having thin wood and duct tape relate to it being a balloon, an aircraft, or a spacecraft? The one that gets the most votes best fits your body of evidence while requiring the fewest unsupported assumptions. That is your main hypothesis while the runner up is your primary alternative. Figure out what you need to see to change your mind in case you are wrong and your alternative is correct.

Gaps

What signs would you need to see in order to know you were wrong? How many of those signs do you see now? -Abbott’s Second (Modified) Maxim of Critical Thinking

Analytic elements should identify and address critical information gaps and work with collection activities and data providers to develop access and collection strategies. - ICD 203

Wouldn’t it be great if someone had a clear photograph of a UFO? Or maybe Bigfoot on a trail cam? Maybe the raw data from HAARP activity? What about a recorded conversation of two government officials saying something vague about a “big event” near where people claimed to see a UFO? Or, what about proof your source is wrong or even lying to you?

Having more evidence can help lead one to an assessment. We should always be on the lookout for more evidence. Come up with a list of what you would need to see to be more sure of your main hypothesis. These are your gaps. Remember them because if you see a gap filled, you can either be more sure of your assessment or realize you were wrong.

Likelihood and Confidence

Being absolutely right and being spectacularly wrong feel exactly the same. -Scott Adams, Loserthink (I like this quote so much I’m using it twice)

Properly expresses and explains uncertainties associated with major analytic judgments: Analytic products should indicate and explain the basis for the uncertainties associated with major analytic judgments, specifically the likelihood of occurrence of an event or development, and the analyst’s confidence in the basis for this judgment. -ICD 203

Remember, your assessment isn’t you saying “X happened” or “Y will happen.” Instead, it is you declaring “Based on the evidence and my thinking, Z may have/likely/very likely happened/is true/will happen.” With what you know, is your assessment a toss up, fairly solid, or very solid? That is your likelihood. But there is also confidence. Confidence is recognizing the limitations of your sources. Is the case rock solid, or do you have only two sources pointing you to a conclusion? Or do you have a weak confidence level because all your evidence is weak? The more sources of higher quality, the more confident you can be. Finally, always be open to new information, weighing it and factoring it in if necessary.

So You Think Critically Now

Applying this will take time, but you will begin to realize you are less likely to fully believe or dismiss things. You will view things in likelihoods, setting limits on what to obtain and put aside, but always on the lookout for information that can be evaluated for relevance and reliability. Good luck!

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Until Next Time

Next time, I will take a look at the Book of Enoch aka the First Book of Enoch aka the Scroll of Enoch and UFO culture’s relationship to it.

The Fake and Real Giants of Afghanistan

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 21:00:42 GMT

Quick Note: Embracing Pangram AI Detection on Substack

Substack now allows you to check for AI generated text in articles and notes published since late July. I encourage you all to check mine. You’ll be quite pleased to know, warts and all, all my writing is human made. I take pride in my non-fiction research while also crafting fictional characters and having them “come to life” in my mind is such an award in itself. Being an author is a joyful feeling; I would never want to farm that out.

You can check this article via web or app by clicking the “…” in the upper right and selecting the “Scan for AI Text” option. Below is the message you will see.

Now, onto Afghan giants!

There Aren’t Giants in the Hills, But There Were*

Since the completion of my last Afghanistan deployment, a strange phenomenon has occurred. A small but noticeable proportion of people have asked if I heard about the military’s battles against giants. At first, I was dumbstruck. However, after time I realized they were not imagining things but inquiring about a conspiracy theory.

The conspiracy of Afghan giants has morphed and branched, which for many reasons is sad, but one of them is that it replaces real cultural folklore.

The “Giant of Kandahar”

When I see Nate Hallinan’s “Giant Assault” piece of art, all I can think is, “Where in Afghanistan did he get a tree that straight to make a spear and a cloth that long to cover up his little giant?

The Stories

The basics of the tale are that in the mountains of Kandahar Province, the United States discovered a twelve foot (about 3.5 meters) tall giant that had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. A short battle erupted and the Americans killed the giant. The military then transported the monster’s corpse to a top secret base.

The reason the above story is vague is that there are competing claims about the alleged event.

The first claim of the Kandahar Giant came from radio host and author Stephen Quayle in 2005. In November 2005, Quayle was on Coast to Coast AM and stated an anonymous Air Force officer said Marines stumbled across the giant. The story involved the Marines thinking villagers were protecting terrorists only to find a thousand pound (around 500 kilograms) plus monster, the villagers revering the giant like a god, and a gun battle in which no Marines were killed. After the giant’s death, its body was taken to Europe. However, by 2008, the story had grown. On another episode of Coast to Coast AM, Quayle appear along with the alleged Air Force officer. The so-called officer - who refused to identify himself - claimed the giant’s body was transported not to Europe but to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, which was also the alleged location of alien bodies from crashed UFOs. In 2015, Quayle changed the story, with the Air Force officer being the one who killed the giant, who was now just nine to twelve feet (2.7 to 3.6 meters) tall, and claimed the government ordered the corpse’s destruction. As a side note, in 2006 Quayle and co-author Duncan Long published a novel about giants called LongWalkers: Return of the Nephilim. The admittedly fictional work was about a U.S. military unit that fought Nephilim (which Quayle and some others think we're the children of women and fallen angels) giants.
A second person picked up the story in 2016. Filmmaker L.A. Marzulli interviewed an alleged member of the Army Special Operations force, the Green Berets, known as “Mr. K” on Marzulli’s YouTube series “Watchers.” According to the alleged operator, the Army special ops unit clashed with the Giant of Kandahar in 2002. Mr. K claimed his unit was sent to search for a missing patrol in the remote mountains outside Kandahar. They found scattered gear, bullet casings, and a cave with human remains. Then, the twelve to fifteen foot (3.5 to 4.5 meters) tall giant emerged from the cave and attacked the Green Berets, killing one of them with a spear. After thirty seconds of non-stop shooting, the soldiers killed the giant. An Army helicopter then airlifted its body out. Marzulli claimed the giant wasn’t technically a pre-Noah’s Flood Nephilim but a post-flood Rephaim giant.
Later, Nephilim and UFO promoter Tim Alberino became an additional source for the story. In 2026 on the Michael Knowles show, Alberino branched off Quayle, saying he and Quayle met the original source together, but added he had his own sources in the government and military. Alberino stated the incident occured not in 2002 but in 2005. He went on to state Special Forces killed the giant and that there was a giant hunting unit in Afghanistan that battled an entire tribe of Nephilim (which just so happened to be the plot of LongWalkers). He stated the government shipped the giant’s body to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to conduct necromantic rituals and experiments on it, because the spirits of dead Nephilim are actually demons.

Other Nephilim-believing Christians and post-Christian New Ager believers of the Secret Space Program have latched onto the Giant of Kandahar story. Multiple sites have tied the Kandahar Giant with belief in a full scale war against the Nephilim giants, including the belief that President Trump used the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast “MOAB” bomb against the giants in Afghanistan in 2017.

My Thoughts on the Kandahar Giant

During my time working with tribes in Afghanistan, including in Kandahar Province, none of the special forces or regular military I met mentioned anything about the Kandahar Giant. Special Operations forces and Marines love to brag while also honor their fallen. If the story of the Kandahar Giant were true, we would have Marines and operators left and right talking about it. Heck, think how many leaks there were about the bin Laden raid in various books and podcasts.

The conflicting yet ever deepening details of the story resemble stories of alien abductions, alleged religious prophecies, and other conspiracy theories that seek to one up one another, going deeper and deeper into lore. The facts that year, combatants, and amount of dead differ along with the lack of evidence that could be checked like the unit’s name and name of the dead, exact dates, etc. should be enough to bury belief in the Giant of Kandahar. Like I wrote about UFO false prophets in my Disclosure Flop post the day the first Pentagon UFO files dropped, this should disqualify believing people like Tim Alberino. They are selling air, and they and those who promote them can be discounted.

The science doesn’t work either. The website Skeptoid did the math and showed how the weight and height ratio of such a creature wouldn’t work in the real world, while also pointing out such a large human-like creature would have extreme medical problems.

Additionally, in a conversation I had with film maker Elizabeth Mirzaei - who made the tearjerker documentary Three Songs for Benazir, which is available on Netflix - she pointed out that there were no Afghan sources about the Kandahar Giant. In my personal opinion, if the United States killed a giant, the Taliban would have launched a propaganda campaign claiming the giant was a faithful Muslim and about to go on the Hajj to Mecca. I joked with Elizabeth that the Taliban would have found a woman and some tall kids, saying they were the good, faithful Muslim giant’s family. As the conversation went on, I gave my belief that the claim the villagers revered the giant “like a god” was insulting to Afghans’ faith. Afghans are a strongly Islamic people, passing off a story of them having something on par with their devotion to Allah just goes to show the complete ignorance of those who made the claim.

During my multiple deployments to Afghanistan, I heard stories about jinn as well as the infamous story about the Germans wanting to kill a dragon who guarded a diamond, and the Pashtuns who fought for the dragon so that the world wouldn’t fall into darkness. In this region with unique stories and folklore, the Giant of Kandahar was missing.

Finally, the fact some stories of the Giant involve a dead soldier, the tall tale offends me. We lost many good people there, let’s not cheapen their deaths with fake giant attacks.

The Real Giant Story

This isn’t to say there are no stories of giants in Afghanistan. In at least one Shia Hazara location in central Afghanistan, there is a grave for an alleged giant. Dr. Kathleen Reedy, formerly of a Human Terrain System team, documented her encounter with what locals considered a giant’s grave. Her write up in her old blog Marking Time ~ The Afghan and Iraqi Wars as Seen by Those Who Live Them is reproduced below because it tells the tale so much better than I ever could.

While out on a patrol with some local policemen, we came across this grave marker:

It was about 20 meters (about 65 feet) long. One of the policemen pointed at it and said, “This was a famous giant. He was almost 20 meters tall, that is why his grave is so long.”

“A giant?” I asked, perhaps a touch skeptically.

“Yes!” chimed in a second one. “As recently as 80 years ago, there were giants all over in this area!”

“Ah, so maybe just really tall people, like 2.5 meters (8-9 feet). That happens sometimes,” I replied.

“No, no!” a third guy insisted. “Not just tall people, real giants. This man was a small one at only 20 meters. Some were as tall as 30 meters (almost 100 feet)!”

I continued to be somewhat cynical, thinking they were pulling my leg and trying to suggest that if the grave marker was any indication of his size, he had been 20 meters tall, but really, really, really skinny.

Not only did my sarcasm fall on deaf ears, it actually insulted the Afghans. Before I knew it, I had a whole squad of Afghan police who were pretty angry and yelling at me. My interpreter, who had a university education and had lived abroad, was no exception–he was vehemently supporting them. As I stood there somewhat flabbergasted, one of my colleagues stepped in with our stories about giants, such as David and Goliath, and came across as much more open-minded. That mollified the crowd somewhat, and they explained that people’s grandparents had seen the giants and had told their grandchildren about them, so it must be true. In the end, the Afghans knew that giants had roamed the earth within living memory and nothing some disbelieving (female) American could say was going to change the truth.

In my defense, my interpreter later admitted that Afghans do get a kick out of misleading people, especially Americans, about goofy things like this, and had they been doing so, I would have earned super cool points for calling them out. It just happened that the one time I thought they were joking, they weren’t.

What I love about the Afghan’s belief in the giant’s grave is how more magical it is. The Afghan giant is ten to twelve times taller than the Giant of Kandahar, and much thinner. It is more fairy tale-like than the American conspiracy theory of a believable-ish, muscular superman giant. It is an honest reflection of local lore vice modern Nephilim-fans trying to spin and latch onto things. In the end, true folklore is much more fantastical than the modern Western mind that tries to reenchant itself while being held down with modern ideas.

Want more Afghan stories from me?

Check out my post concerning my encounters of Afghan jinn stories.

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DE DeGraw, Author/Poet/Artist

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Until Next Time

Next time, I will take a look at how to use critical thinking to examine real world sci-fi related topics like UFO conspiracies, Bigfoot, etc.

Lord of the World via Project Gutenberg

The Science and Political Worlds of Lord of the World

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:00:27 GMT

The Popes’ Favorite Science Fiction Novel and the World it Dreamt Of

When one ponders what popes might read, one usually thinks of prayer books, writings by the saints, and the Bible. That is in fact where most of their reading is from, but for the last three popes, a science fiction novel called Lord of the World has been on that list as well, and they have cited it in different circumstances.

In 1992, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) responded to President George H.W. Bush’s New World Order speech by comparing Bush’s post-Cold War plan to that of the evil character in Lord of the World. Ratzinger stated the author described “a similar unified civilization and its power to destroy the spirit. The anti-Christ is represented as the great carrier of peace in a similar new world order.”
In 2015, Pope Francis recommended Lord of the World to journalists, saying it was the best book to understand the dangers facing the Catholic Church and the world today.
In 2023, then Cardinal Robert Prevost (now Pope Leo XIV) declared Lord of the World had “a number of passages which give food for thought, in terms of the world we are living in.”

Spoiler Free Quick Overview

Lord of the World, written in 1907 by Catholic priest Robert Hugh Benson, is a dystopian end of the world tale. Set in an mechincalpunk early twenty-first century, charismatic American Senator Felsenburgh arrives in London and quickly secures peace between Europe and a large empire in Asia. Felsenburgh keeps winning the public’s love and quickly rises in power. Meanwhile, Father Percy Franklin starts off as a lowly priest but has his own rise to power as tension between Felsenburgh and the Catholic Church, the last organization outside Felsenburgh’s control, surges to a truly apocalyptic confrontation.

The Dream of the Technological Future of the Lord of the World

A fascinating element of the novel is how Robert Hugh Benson envisioned the future, being accurate in some regards while off in other areas.

The biggest standout is the Volar, which is described as a slender, fish-shaped winged vehicle that “slides” through the sky, glowing with lights, used for passenger travel and aerial bombings, and also seen during parades. The story features incidents of volars bombing and destroying cities, much like would come to pass during World War II.
Telephones with push buttons for autodialing are depicted as being widespread. Meanwhile, wireless telegraphy and electric placards are used to communicate news events from around the world, which made me think of smartphones and cable news television.
Synthetic food, like the artificial meat available in the real world, is common place. It is implied regular food is hard to obtain, whether from government mismanagement or by design is uncertain. There are echoes of this in our reality in certain policies that try to replace meat with highly processed items.
Boring under cities allows for fast car travel in the book. Elon Musk’s Boring Company, building high speed tunnels under Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Dubai, and elsewhere has shown this being a realistic thing, while not adopted en masse yet.
The book describes artificial sunlight used outdoors that, for all intents and purposes, matches the effects of actual sunlight. Nothing today compares to what Benson describes, and thus this is the most “zany” technology in the book.

The Nightmare of the Political Future of the Lord of the World

Being End of the World literature, the politics of Lord of the World reflects the priest’s idea of a world going to Hell.

Government pushing mass use of euthanasia. The government runs centers, with a mandatory waiting period, for people who wish to commit suicide via medical assistance in dying, which we know somewhat as MAID in Canada and Europe.
Europe is depicted as a confederation of socialist states about to be united via a parliament into a firmer union. In reality, social democracy defanged what Benson would consider the worst of socialism, though the rise of social democracy and the welfare state led cultural trends in the general direction the priest-author describes.
In the book, the United Kingdom itself fell to a Labour Party socialist regime in the early twentieth century. Unlike the moderating effect politics had on Labour in the real world, the book’s socialists get rid of the House of Lords and institute a republic.
The Anglican Church of England is disestablished by the government while also going through a period of extreme liberalization in the faith. “Ritualists” in the church - Anglo-Catholics - become disillusioned and join the Catholic Church. Though the real world Church of England is still the official church of the government, liberalization occurred in other ways to the point that several waves of Anglicans have joined the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church itself has gone through a rough time that differs from reality. While a papal state is reestablished like in the real world - this was before Vatican City became independent of Mussolini's Fascist Italty - the book’s pope institutes the death penalty for things like adultery and leaving the faith. Elsewhere, violent pogroms target Catholics both in the prologue and in the story itself. Benson used the contemporary treatment of Jews in Tsarist Russia and other historical examples of targeted killings of Catholics, such as during the French Revolution, as a model in the book that in the real world mirrored the early days of the Jewish Holocaust.
The book features religious radicals plotting a suicide bombing. The first religiously motivated suicide bombing in the real world took place in 1981 in Lebanon.

Summary

Lord of the World is a fascinating look at both what early 1900s English conservative Catholics feared about the future and a unique spin on “End of the World” literature. It has an open Catholic bias, so that may rub some readers the wrong way, but if you are looking for a more grounded Left Behind that doesn’t preach, I strongly recommend it.

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A Mirage in the Memory by Simon Tull - Free Book

Earth, post-Apocalypse. Thibault Allard is determined to save his wife. After he escapes the addictive virtual reality that enslaved them both, he works as a bounty hunter for their unsavoury captor to gain inside access and search for his beloved. But when the morally flexible immortal is handed a ruthless ultimatum, he derails his plans in order to pursue the man who terminated his boss’s spouse.

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It is a very different world from ours that Longman Jones and his love interest, an empath named Sonata Holmes, discover one another.

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This 99 cent novella is a teaser for a longer upcoming novel called Restive Souls, currently in late-stage development.

Unit Next Time

Next time, I will take a look at Western and local stories of giants in Afghanistan.

Kenneth Arnold, Roswell, and the term "Flying Saucer"

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 21:00:22 GMT

Sidenote: Just a Reminder of My No AI Generated Text Pledge to You

None of my writings, fiction or non-fiction, feature AI generated text. When you read something from me, rest assured it comes from a real human author. If I use an AI generated image, I will clearly state it is from AI.

This is in a series of anniversary UFO incident investigations. See also Tehran at 50, Phoenix Lights at 30 (March 2027), and the Washington DC Flap at 75 (July 2027).

Roswell’s Flying Saucer - Context is Key

Take a listen to the famous July 8, 1947 radio announcement about the United States Army Air Force declaring it had recovered a flying disc. Try listening to the broadcast without thinking about any other context you may have concerning the Roswell incident.

The recovery of a “flying disk” was big news, along with the All Star Game, Russia being upset about foreign military presence in Greece, and tax legislation. For many modern listeners, this would seem surprising. Shouldn’t the news of an alien craft being recovered dominate the news? Well, no one said alien or extraterrestrial for a reason. To find out why, let’s look at the start of the weird things in the sky craze.

Contemporary Thoughts During the Dawn of Modern Strange Things in the Sky

The first modern reports of strange things in the sky were foo fighters of World War II. These strange balls of light were mostly seen in the European theater of the war, with both Allied and German pilots unable to determine what exactly they were, but assuming the foo fighters must be a weapon from the other side. The one hundred or so reported sightings started around 1942, peaked in 1944, and dropped off before the end of the war. While some have claimed the foo fighters were a combination of mistaken jets, St. Elmo’s fire, and the chaos of high intense flights, others were convinced the pilots saw something strange. The 2026 U.S. government UFO files have a series of documents in them that describe the foo fighters and how they spooked U.S. air crews.

In the war’s aftermath, the Nordic countries noticed a new phenomenon. Ghost rockets were eerie streaks of light, caught on camera, that disabled signs of maneuverability. In the course of a year, over a thousand were reported with the Swedish military believing over 200 were actual sightings of something material. American Lt. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, director of the Central Intelligence Group - which formed the nucleus of what became the CIA - wrote a letter to then President Truman assessing the ghost rockets came from the Soviet-occupied former Nazi missile testing site Peenemunde.

In both the foo fighter and ghost rocket events, the leading theories involved military technology, or at the very least more mundane mistaken military equipment.

So it should be little surprise that when Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947 saw what he described as flying discs, he initially said “whether it has something to do with our army, or our intelligence, or some foreign country, I don’t know.”

Newspaper articles at the time like “AAF Pilots Reported ‘Foo Fighters’ in War Like ‘Flying Saucers’” and “Ex-Pilot Saw Discs in Italy: Buddies Saw ‘Foo-Fighters,’ Too, Syracusan Claims” compared the flying saucer sightings to the foo fighters. The article War-Time Fliers Saw Silver Objects in Sky 2 Years Ago, published less a month after the Arnold sighting and on the day of the Roswell announcement, stated the cause of the foo fighters remained unknown but sightings “went into limbo when the area east of the Rhine was captured by Allied troops.”

The association of a terrestrial explanation for flying saucers continued with Roswell. From the 1994 Air Force report on the 1947 incident, “The wreckage was described as a ‘..bundle of tinfoil, broken wood beams, and rubber remnants of a balloon…’ [The rancher on whose property something crashed] claimed that he and his son, Vemon, found the material on June 14, 1947, when they ‘came upon a large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper, and sticks.’”

The described wreckage did not sound like an advanced alien craft, and few people thought so. According to an August 1947 Gallup poll, ninety percent of people had heard of flying saucers. Yet when asked what people thought the flying saucers were, the public had very grounded beliefs. Of those who responded

No answer, don’t know: 33%.
Imagination, optical illusion, mirage, etc.: 29%.
U.S. secret weapon, part of atomic bomb, etc.: 15%.
Hoax: 10%
Weather forecasting devices: 3%.
Searchlights on airplanes: 2%.
Russian secret weapon: 1%.
Other explanations: 9%

Among the “other explanations” listed in the Tampa Bay Times article about the poll were a woman citing the Bible claiming the flying saucers were a sign of the End Times, radio waves from atomic bomb testing, and a new product being put out by the DuPont company. The newspaper did not mention extraterrestrial beings as a response. In a related note, the 2026 U.S. government UFO files has another set of reports from 1947 which include officials being contacted by people claiming the flying saucers are Soviet technology launched from Mexico or craft being made in Spain by German scientists. Another report states the Soviets are building flying wing aircraft and that the flying saucers could be that.

Between 1947 and 1948, the years of the first modern flying saucer episode, Newspapers.com lists 34,137 matches of “flying saucers” and 19,861 matches of “flying discs” in its archives. A search of “flying saucers” plus extraterrestrials and “flying discs” plus extraterrestrials reveals a total of three unique articles. One was a humorous short fiction story, another proposed that extraterrestrials piloted flying saucers, and the third was a blurb in the main New Orleans newspaper mentioning someone selling flying saucer insurance. The insurer stated his belief flying saucers were man made. He further stated the insurance would not cover meteorites or other extraterrestrial objects. There was nothing in his article to suggest alien beings whatsoever. As for the word “alien,” that term was not popularly used to primarily mean extraterrestrial beings until the early 1950s. Searches through newspaper records so far have only revealed the term alien referring to not of the United States.

There’s something about Louisiana that blunts my surprise that someone sold flying saucer insurance. The Times-Picayune, July 9, 1947.

The entertainment industry mirrored popular ideas about the origins of flying saucers. The 1949 movie Bruce Gentry – Daredevil of the Skies was the first Hollywood serial to feature flying saucers. In this 15-part series, flying saucers were a pulp villain’s superweapon. The first feature film to feature a flying saucer, the 1950 movie The Flying Saucer, had the vehicle being an American secret technology program that the Soviets were trying to learn about.

As for extraterrestrial beings, those who advocated cases of alleged encounters were still in their mystical stage. The 2003 book UFO Religions by Christopher Partridge documented how the early Contactee movement was still primarily Theosophist, with most ascended masters being mystery men like the Count of St. Germain, with ascended masters from Venus being side features who magically appeared. No ascended master before had used a flying machine to move around, as why would someone who could transcend matter need a starship?

The Later Shift

In 1949 and 1950, there was a hard shift towards aliens being the cause of flying saucers. Two popular books were part of the charge. On December 26, 1949, Donald Keyhoe’s True Magazine article The Flying Saucers Are Real was published. It was the first major piece of journalism claiming UFOs were from other worlds and that the Air Force was slowly revealing the flying saucers’ origins. Early in 1950, the book-length The Flying Saucers Are Real became a bestseller. Then in September, Frank Scully’s book Behind the Flying Saucers claimed the U.S. government had recovered crashed saucers containing alien bodies. Scully’s previous reporting on an alleged flying saucer crash in Aztec, New Mexico - later a con man-run hoax - was a key part of his book’s claim.

At the same time, influential con man George Adamski started doing lectures in late 1949 that flying saucers were alien-operated machines. It wasn’t until 1952 that he claimed he saw flying saucers before Kenneth Arnold did and he - Adamski - was meeting aliens. His claims did much to cement Theosophy to UFOlogy.

Back on July 7, 1947, Kenneth Arnold stated to the Chicago Times that the craft were moving at such extremes that it would kill anyone inside to survive the pressure. He opined the craft could be drones ‘from Mars, Venus, or our own planet,” but he didn’t pursue to alien hypothesis for a while. Then in the April 30, 1949 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, Arnold shifted stating, “There is no doubt in my mind but what these objects are aircraft of a strange design, and material that is unknown to the civilization of this earth.”

This shift was picked up as well in fiction in things like the 1949 pulp short story The Mouse by Fredric Brown. In the second part of the novel This Island Earth - The Shroud of Secrecy - published in December 1949, the main character sees a flying saucer and assumes it is proof of human advanced technology, though later it is revealed to be an alien spacecraft.

Hollywood caught up as well. The Day the Earth Stood Still came out in 1951, and throughout the decade more flying saucer movies arrived, like This Island Earth, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and Plan 9 from Outer Space.

This shift cemented the idea that flying saucers were alien devices in the public’s mind. However, for a few years in the 1940s, the public had more mundane thoughts about the strange sights in the sky.

I hope you enjoyed this objective investigation. Please subscribe and recommend this Substack to others.

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One courageous young girl, one impossible choice.

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On the distant planet Mirron, eye color determines everything. Topaz eyes sit at the top of society. Pearl eyes sit at the bottom. And no one is allowed to forget it.

Twelve-year-old Izzy Ashford is the only Pearl in an all-Topaz town. Adopted and deeply loved by her Topaz parents, but increasingly aware of what her color means to the world around her. When subtle prejudice turns into open bullying just before sixth-grade graduation, Izzy can no longer pretend the color system doesn't affect her.

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Until Next Time

Next time, I will take a look at the famous 1907 science fiction End of the World novel Lord of the World, a book loved by Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, and Pope Leo XIV.

Podcast Episode: Harmonialism and Aliens

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 21:00:41 GMT

For years I have been trying to write a Religion and Aliens: Theosophy post to continue my Religion and Aliens series (see below for all the posts), but the topic is a huge rabbit hole that is too hard to sum up.

Thankfully, Matt Osborne, who recently wrote about Harmonalism and Disclosure Day, was able to do a podcast episode with me which is not only the next best thing, but perhaps even better.

Harmonalism is a religious effort to bring science, the occult, and religion into “harmony” with each other. While many of people will know this as New Ageism, Osborne points out that this effort can be traced back to Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), and has its roots in America since Benjamin Franklin and Johnny Appleseed.

In this episode, we go from Swedenborg to Theosophy to its effects on science fiction to Contactees to how Steven Spielberg has made our modern understanding of what aliens look like (and why “Grays” no longer have huge noses).

For Matt Osborne’s Substack links check out:

For the text-based Religion and Aliens posts, check out:

Additionally, check out my look at the “Aliens are Demons” argument and my podcast interview on the subject.

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While Brewer escapes to a new, peaceful life in the past, he learns that the fate of both timelines depends on the choices he makes. Now he must decide what future he will create, whether to live the quiet life he’s always wanted or risk everything and return to his timeline to save humanity’s future.

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Until Next Time

Next time, I will take a look at the Roswell Incident and What People Thought of Flying Saucers before 1950.

Captain Bolide! #2 - Part Two of Two

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 21:02:02 GMT

Be sure to read earlier editions of my pulp series, Captain Bolide!

Captain Bolide #1

Captain Bolide #2 Part One

And be sure to check out the non-fiction “The Planets Are Evil” post for a look at groups who believed and still believe planets are evil.

THE CONTINUATION

Chapter Three: Planetary Possession

Captain Bolide placed Marshal Tejas on the bed aboard the rocket ship, ensuring the wounded man’s head rested upon the soft pillow. Parched lips kept muttering the words, “I needed to stop him. It’s not him” over and over again. The wounded man ceased speaking only when Bolide patted him on the head and gave him water to drink. After that, the battered and bruise lawman drifted off into unconscious sleep.

Tapping his foot, Bolide looked around his ship. “None of this makes sense,” he said aloud to no one. “Deputy Bravura’s recording and Teja’s accounts aren’t matching up. Once T.I.M. gets back, we can search for Bravura and take care of the marshal at the same time. Until then, I better pack supplies for an expedition.”

The captain opened a locker and grabbed an empty canvas bag as well as a box filled with water bottles, high-condensed food bars, and wilderness tools. When he remembered the sharp barbs of the plants, he made sure to snatch a box of bandages.

His hands moved supplies from the boxes into the bag. At first he started off with a day’s supply, but a creeping sensation of dread caused him to double everything in the bag.

Woosh. The main door opened and in walked T.I.M., its eyes glowing red while its gears made their normal sounds. Instead of speaking, T.I.M. stared at Bolide.

Captain Bolide gave off a guffaw. “You okay there, T.I.M.?”

Small gears whirled inside the robot, but it said nothing.

“Is something wrong, T.I.M.?”

The machine took a step forward, then stopped. “What are you doing?”

An eyebrow shot up on Bolide’s face. “I am getting ready to go look for the deputy. The marshal was saying things that don’t jibe with the recording we found. If the deputy is still alive, we need to find him and figure out what happened here.”

A loud digital sound erupted in T.I.M.’s head unit. The machine twisted its body towards the living quarters and began walking.

“T.I.M.,” the captain asked, “what are you doing?”

No response. So the captain asked again, still no response.

“T.I.M., stop!”

An alarm shot up the captain’s spine. He ran up to the robot and placed his arm on its shoulder. In response, the robot grabbed his wrist and flung him into Marshal Tejas. The lawman screamed in pain as Bolide’s body collided with his.

Two terrible robotic fists rose above T.I.M.’s head.

Bolide took one look at the arriving death and used his body to shield the wounded man.

Deep crimson eyes on the robot lightened, darkened again, and went back to the regular red. Its arms froze while gears screamed on the inside. “You are protecting him. Protection is what the captain does. I must learn from the captain. Must resist. Reset to factory settings- no! Yes!”

Bolide held his breath as the robot’s red eyes turned black. Everything went silent. Then, a soft gear sound was heard, then another, and another. Slowly, red lights - the normal red- came to life.

“Captain,” the robot said, “something was controlling me. Thankfully, I saw you protecting another with your life, and I wanted to add selflessness to my programming. Whatever was controlling me resisted that.”

“What was controlling you, T.I.M.?”

“Something- dark, sir. Something that wanted to leave this planet.”

Before the duo could continue, the inside of the rocket began shaking. Then, a loud roar of trembling earth filled the air.

Chapter Four: The Last Grasp

“Earthquake!” Bolide and T.I.M. said in unison.

Both moved with purpose to stations. The robot’s fingers tapped away on the power control console while Bolide’s muscular arm flung the rocket engine switch up.

Bursting, flaming gas blew out of the rocket ship’s rear, launching it upwards. Soon, though, the familiar rattle of liftoff failed to lessen, but rather increased to a cacophony louder than the planetary quake.

Captain Bolide looked over and shouted at his robot. “What’s wrong, T.I.M.?”

The machine began speaking, but then stopped as its voice was drowned out. Its internal speaker boosted itself to maximum volume. “Captain, the planet’s gravity is increasing!”

“What?!?!”

Looking at his command screen, he could see it was true. 20.98 miles above the surface. 19.87 miles above the surface. 18.74 miles.

“All power to the rocket!”

Quick robotic hand and finger action sent every last watt the nuclear drive could produce down to the engine to ignite more fuel. Doing so caused the glass covering on the gauges to break loose and shatter on the floor. The ship’s shaking then sent the glass flying as little projectiles.

The screen now said 18.73 miles above the surface. 18.73. 18.72.

“It’s not working,” cried the captain.

A hard slap on the back turned Bolide’s head. There, deathly pale, gripping the captain’s shoulder with one hand and the console with the other, was Marshal Tejas. The weakened man leaned over and screamed into Bolide’s ear.

“The planet is alive! It took over Bravura, and I had to destroy my ship to stop it from leaving in his body! If it can’t leave with us, it will try to kill us all! We have to escape its pull!”

“But how?! We are now at 18.69 miles and falling!”

Tejas’ faint eyes darted about, first on the command screen, then at the falling apart bridge, but then settled on T.I.M.

The lawman pushed all the air his lungs could handle as he yelled, “Robot!”

T.I.M.’s head twisted toward Tejas. “Yes, marshal?!”

“Is it possible to turn the ship sideways and use all energy to slingshot out of orbit?!”

Though no sounds other than the ship tearing itself apart could be heard, Bolide knew every processor, chip, and gear was working overtime to do the complex mathematics involved in determining an answer.

“The possibility of success of such an action is sixty-five percent and falling, marshal.”

Bolide needed no request from the lawman. “Do it!”

T.I.M.’s upper body turned one hundred eighty degrees and its arms grabbed a knob and joystick.

The rocket ship’s shift was so sudden that both men fell against the wall that now acted as a floor. While Bolide moaned, Tejas cried out in pain that was audible even above the roar. Straightening his head, Bolide watched the command screen. 16.02 miles, 13.21 miles, 11.92 miles. 8.86 miles. 6.65 miles. 3.21 miles. 2.99 miles. 1.75 miles. 0.91 miles. 1.23 miles. 2.23 miles. 3.35 miles. 5.93 miles. 9.99 miles.

Gravity began lessening, returning to a normal level. 29.21 miles. Both Bolide and Tejas gave a cheer. As the rocket climbed, they could return to standing on the floor, though the marshal had to grab the railing.

“Captain,” T.I.M. said, “the planet is- retreating.”

The robot flipped a switch, turning on the viewscreen. There, the black and dark red planet clearly was entering Apollo III’s clouds.

Bolide could only watch perplexed as the hellish world disappeared out of view.

“T.I.M.,” he said, “how is this possible?”

Tejas coughed and spoke before the robot responded. “That- that world- was something other than a normal planet. It couldn’t leave the orbit of Apollo III, but something in it, or maybe itself, possessed my deputy.”

“And my robot,” Bolide said.

T.I.M. nodded. “I am indeed sorry, captain. I could see and process everything, but there was something stronger overriding my commands. However, it did not just want to leave; it wanted to spread. I believe it was what you would call evil.

“It was your protecting life that I wanted to add to my programming. Thank goodness for the processor you installed.”

“Thank God, T.I.M., thank God.”

The marshal coughed again.

“Come, Tejas,” Bolide said, “let us get you patched up. We’ll have to file a report at the nearest outpost and put out a warning about this strange planet. And afterwards, we can get back to living a life of adventure!”

CAPTAIN BOLIDE WILL RETURN!

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Until Next Time

Next time, I will post a podcast interview episode looking at Harmonialism and Aliens. The guest connects Swedenborgianism, Theosophy, Flying Saucers, Steven Spielberg, and Disclosure Day together. It is quite a fun listen.

Captain Bolide! #2 - Part One of Two

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 21:00:44 GMT

Be sure to read the first edition of my pulp series, Captain Bolide!

Captain Bolide and the Evil Planet

Chapter One: The Object at Apollo III

All the lights on the rocket ship’s bridge held their position, as if the entire craft awaited the results. No beeps or boops echoed; instead, the steady drone of the life support systems was the sole sound on board. Even Captain Bolide held his breath.

Then, what sounded like the rattling of small machines came out of T.I.M.’s, Thinking Intelligent Machine, mouth. Two red light bulbs brightening up was the cue signaling that the operation was a success.

“Thank you, captain,” T.I.M. said. “With the new neuroprocessor, I can generate new programming based on our missions together. No longer am I restricted to the system defaults and your customizations.”

Bolide stepped back, his eyes studying T.I.M.’s torso control panel. “Good to hear. I knew the technicians on Runa Pente made quality innovations. The only doubt was in my skill in installing it.”

With a soft pat on T.I.M.’s rounded head, Bolide walked towards his command panel and peered at the data screen. A large white outline of a circle against a black backdrop confirmed that the remaining minutes of the voyage were all clear. To the left of the space radar display was a stream of labels, each one accompanied by a three digit number. The captain was seasoned enough to make sense of the readouts, but it was still nice to gaze up at the little green lights above to confirm all systems were nominal.

A twist of a knob powered the view screen. For Bolide, space appeared empty, but he could hear the whirl inside T.I.M.’s head indicating the robot was zooming in.

“Captain, I am making out an anomaly near Apollo III.”

Bolide lifted an eyebrow and glanced over at T.I.M., but the robot remained silent.

The captain blew air out of the side of his mouth and counted in his head to five. Then, with a sigh, he filled in the robot to the non-verbal hint. “T.I.M., my eyebrow lift is a non-verbal cue for inquiring to know more.”

“Oh, I apologize, captain. I will make a note of that. What I am seeing is there is something large near Apollo III that is not on any star chart.”

Lowering his view back to the data screen, he saw a dot indicating the gas giant Apollo III coming into sensor range. The rest of the screen remained empty.

“There seems to be nothing amiss, T.I.M., maybe the new processor is-.”

Just then, one of the numbers in the data screen read out in four numerals. The sight of it caught Bolide’s attention. He watched it move up as other, three digit numbers come in. Before he could declare it an outlier, another four digit popped up, then another, then a two digit number.

“What the-?”

As more numbers out of whack appeared, the yellow gas giant Apollo III came into view, and with it, a relatively small black sphere was visible. Straining his eyes, Bolide made out red cracks on the black surface and what seemed to be moving dark crimson clouds.

“What the-? Is that a moon?”

More rattling came from T.I.M.’s head. “No, captain. The object’s orbital path is not revolving around Apollo III but the star Apollo itself. It is a planet in its own right, but it is in orbital sync next to Apollo III; however, it appears to be small enough to be locked with Apollo III.”

The captain stared at the object on the viewscreen. There it remained, centered, appearing dark and foreboding. Something about it upset his stomach. He wanted to look away but couldn’t resist remaining transfixed on it. Only the thought of using the data screen to study it freed his eyes.

Twisting knobs and dials failed to obtain any readings of the black planet. It was as if it wasn’t there.

The ship’s radio whistled, indicating an incoming transmission. A man’s voice, out of breath and weak, spoke. “Attention, unidentified vessel. This is Marshall Sam Tejas. I am in need of immediate assistance. Please help.” A series of coughs was replaced with static, and the radio went dead.

Bolide snapped into action. “Sam?! T.I.M., lock onto that signal, we’re going to help!”

Without moving, T.I.M. responded, “Yes, sir.” After a rattling noise, he continued, “His location is on the planet. I am getting readings of a rocket ship.”

The robot went over to its command console and plugged in the coordinates.

For his part, the captain looked at the dark planet and said, “Hold on, Sam, we’re coming.”

Chapter Two: The Message

Hot, humid air filled Captain Bolide’s nose, adding to the surprise that this planet’s air was breathable. The earlier scans stated the atmosphere was normal, too normal for Bolide’s liking. Yet, here he was, breathing in the air that was the right mix of oxygen and nitrogen while also being free of harmful biologics.

Moving forward, he parted the thick brush of ebony ferns and inky tall grass, with T.I.M. trailing behind him.

Then, an opening revealed what they were searching for: Tejas’ rocket ship. The batter hulk lay in three large pieces while smaller chunks were strewn about. The metal was rusted and burnt in places.

“My goodness,” the captain said, “it’s a miracle Tejas survived! I’ll look for the bridge, you scan about.”

With a dash, he raced toward the head of the crashed rocket. However, where it should be, the rocket ship was torn apart. Only the remnant of a captain’s chair was discernible.

Toward the engine’s resting place, T.I.M.’s voice yelled, “Captain, I found something.”

Bolide gasped. He hurried to the robot. When he arrived, he saw a charred leather flightsuit. Something with half a shine grabbed his attention nearby.

“A recorder!” he declared.

Picking it up, he pressed play, and both he and the robot listened to a raspy voice’s last testament.

“This is the log of Deputy Cade Bravura. We, uh, Marshall Tejas and I were investigating reports of space pirates and several cargo carriers disappearing near Apollo III. When we arrived, we found this- this- planet that shouldn’t be here. I know we should have called it in, but something about it made us think we needed to check it out.

“It’s all wrong. Black plants, crimson clouds that don’t move with the wind, and rivers of- well, I’m going to say it- blood.

“I wanted to leave, but Marshall Tejas seems hellbent to keep me here. He is eyeing me up right now. I think he has gone insane. Well, I am preparing for him to turn on me, and when he does, I will take the rocket back and report this planet. Maybe then we can get a proper survey team here. Curse Marshall Tejas. Oh, I hear him coming.”

Both Captain Bolide and T.I.M. stood and looked around.

“Deputy Bravura mentioned nothing about a crash,” the captain said. “And Marshall Tejas always was a good man when I worked with him. Something is horribly wrong here. Let’s split up and see if we can find Tejas and figure out what happened.”

Chapter Three: Encounters

The black jungle thicket gave way to Captain Bolide’s ray gun, which cut a hole through the worst of it. However, tendrils with small dark red barbs kept snagging on the captain’s wavy blonde hair. Meanwhile, the burning plants left toxic smoke that dizzied his head.

“Dag nabbit,” he muttered to himself, “everything about this planet hurts.”

Just then, the ray gun burnt through into a large opening. Bolide holstered his weapon. While he let the thick, visible, black fumes die, he took in what looked like a small pond of clear water surrounded by seemingly the only green grass on the entire planet.

However, before the smoke settled, he heard a moan, a human moan. Twisting his head so his right ear pointed forward, he made out another moan. Pushing forward, he powered through the wavy ebony fumes and made it to a small glen with only sightly shaky vision.

As his head cleared up, he saw lying on the ground Marshall Tejas. The lawman’s eyes were swollen shut, while his hands were burnt and uniform torn.

“Sam!” Bolide cried. “Are you conscious?”

The marshall groaned as his body shifted. His weak voice then came through the moaning. “I needed to stop him. It’s not him.”

Meanwhile…

T.I.M. picked up yet another scrap of the rocket and placed it with the rest. Cataloguing all the pieces would allow Captain Bolide to determine how exactly this tragedy occurred. He said that the loved ones of these fallen law enforcement agents deserved to know what happened. To T.I.M., knowing the importance of informing others about the fate of people registered in a new file, expanding its worldview.

Just then, a small charge of electricity jumped from a black blade of grass to T.I.M.’s foot. In an instant, the robot powered down, its back slumping forward in the off position. But then, internal mechanism began whirring again, and his back straightened up. His eyes were red, but not the normal red; there was something darker in the light.

“I must spread,” T.I.M.’s body said.

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And I am drafting the fourth book presently.

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Destination tbd... by Teddy Scot - Free Book

Earth is dying. Humanity’s only chance is to leave it behind.

The year is the not-so-distant future, and Earth can no longer sustain life. The atmosphere is breaking down. The sun’s rays scorch the land. Storms rage with merciless fury. With nowhere left to run, humanity faces its final choice: stay and perish—or abandon the cradle of civilization forever.

In a desperate bid for survival, nations unite to launch a massive evacuation. Giant ships—Noah’s Arks for the modern age—carry humans, animals, and plants into the stars. Most will sleep in cryogenic stasis, waiting for a new world to call home. But not everyone is asleep.

On the United Nations flagship, a handful of leaders and scientists remain awake, guiding the search for habitable planets while battling political power plays, secret agendas, and backroom deals. Meanwhile, teams of explorers are dispatched across the galaxies—risking everything to find a safe haven before humanity’s fragile hope runs out.

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Geddy’s Gambit by C.P. James - Free Book

All Geddy Starheart wanted was to get out of the game. Cash in his chips and stop running artifacts and weapons for the infamous Double A auction. But when a routine trip surprises him with that very opportunity, he must answer a very fraught question: What’s the catch?

It was supposed to be a routine job. Pick up the artifact on Ceonus and bring it back to his boss on Kigantu. In, out, done — as easy as making love. But the seller, an eccentric trillionaire with a dark soul, inconveniently died while he was en route. Now he’s got to convince the guy’s weird, clueless stepson to honor the deal.

When a stranger makes a proposal that would let him walk away for good, he's never been more tempted. But to get to the bottom of it, he must be willing to betray some very powerful people -- and survive one insane night on the town.

Geddy's Gambit is a prequel tale for Reassembly, C.P. James' humorous space opera series. Fans of grown-up sci-fi humor like Guardians of the Galaxy, Firefly, Galaxy Quest, and The Orville will love this fresh and funny take on the genre.

Until Next Time

Next time, I will finish the Captain Bolide #2 saga!

Get the first book Fallen

"The Planets are Evil"

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 27 May 2026 21:01:21 GMT

Looking for psychological military science fiction? Read about the adventure of veteran Brendan Murphy as he tries to keep peace between Earth and a mysterious alien race known as the Sabia. Read the Fallen series today! Please remember to leave a review once you are done. Reviews are the lifeblood of independent creators

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The Ancient Belief that the Planets are Evil

The Interpreter

During my first deployment to Afghanistan, one night I was standing on a ridge with my Afghan-American translator. We were gazing up at even higher mountains in the distance. A ruin was barely visible. That decrepit wall and husk of a building were once an observatory of the Ghaznavid Empire.

The Ghaznavids were ethnic Turkic but culturally Persian, ruling an empire around A.D. 1000 from western Iran to parts of India, with the capital in modern day Afghanistan. The empire’s most famous scientist, al-Biruni, is considered the founder of modern geodesy - the science of measuring the Earth - and the first astronomer to combine Indian, Islamic, and Greek astronomical thought into one. In his writings, he wrote how the science of astronomy was separate from the superstition of astrology; and his work helped perfect how praying Muslims worldwide determined the direction to Mecca.

So when I asked my interpreter what the local names for the constellations were, I was surprised that the response I got was, “No. We don’t look at the stars. That’s old women stuff.” When I inquired what he meant, he explained to me that “old women” would look at the stars to tell fortunes. The empire of science had fallen into the realm of superstition. It was another point of the decay of Afghanistan.

However, I later found out that some ancient cultures had beliefs beyond astrology about evil in the sky. Some of those cultures survive to this day, whether in their original group or through fringe theories. Among these beliefs is the idea that the planets themselves are evil.

The Ancient Israelites and the books of Enoch’s Prison Planets

This internet image claims planets are fallen angles, citing the Biblical book Jude and the non-Biblical books of Enoch 1 and the so-called Tesatment of Solomon.

The Book of Enoch has been surging in popularity with those who have overlapping interests in UFOs and fundamentalist Protestantism. These people believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, the Bible being eternal as a living corpus vice an agreed upon canon, and ancient aliens-like ideas of human and alien/fallen angel hybrids.

The book - which only the Ethiopian Oriental Orthodox claim as scripture and even then not in a literal form - itself dates from around 200 BC, though it claims to be thousands upon thousands of years old and written by the great-grandfather of Noah, the ark builder. One of the first parts of the book deal with fallen angels having children with humans, making a race known as Nephilim, who were described in the Book of Genesis as “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.” (Genesis 6:4, Revised Standard Version).

Despite modern fringe groups’ significant focus on the Nephilim, the Book of Enoch includes astronomical statements. According to the book, God arranged the stars in constellations, overseen by celestial beings who direct their movement across the heavens. God uses the angel-led stars to mark time. Everything in the heavens that is ordered is godly.

Not so the planets, which ancients realized were something else because they moved differently from the “other” stars. The Book of Enoch’s author did not like how planets broke the orderly universe. These seven stars - the seven visible planets - are described in the book’s chapter 18.

I saw there seven stars like great burning mountains, and to me, when I inquired regarding them, The angel said: ‘This place is the end of heaven and earth: this has become a prison for the stars and the host of heaven. And the stars which roll over the fire are they which have transgressed the commandment of the Lord in the beginning of their rising, because they did not come forth at their appointed times. And He was wroth with them, and bound them till the time when their guilt should be consummated (even) for ten thousand years.’

The Book of Enoch depicts the planets as prisons for fallen angels and also a spiritual creature and/or angel itself that has sinned against God.

This ancient belief that the planets are either prisons for fallen angels or a sort of fallen angel itself has made its way to TikTok.

Interestingly enough, there is a Second Book of Enoch, written around AD 800. It features a classical understanding of the solar system and universe, to the point that God in the book uses the names of Roman gods for the planets. Meanwhile, the book lacks mention of the Nephilim. No modern day conspiracy theories seem based on the Second Book of Enoch.

The Mandaeans and the Evil Holy Spirit’s Children

From the swamps of southern Iraq to the diaspora in Australia, Sweden, and the United States, there is an ethnic group known as the Mandaeans. While there are competing theories of their origin, the leading one involves a group leaving Judah around AD 50 and settling in Iraq.

Their religion is fascinating as it is the closest living Gnostic rival to orthodox Christianity. The religion honors Adam, Noah, and John the Baptist as prophets. Abraham, the founder of the Jewish people, is viewed as a Mandaean priest who became a false prophet because of his claims that God commanded circumcision. However, the true hatred in the religion is aimed at Jesus. Mandaeans view Jesus as a person who tried to worm his way into the divine’s favor after the universe’s true evil seduced him. Mandaeans further claim John the Baptist denounced Jesus, and since then there has been a rivalry between the faiths.

In Mandaeism, God is referred to as the Hayyi Rabbi, aka The Great Life or King of Light. However, in the vast league of evil there is Ruha d-Qudsha - literally “Holy Spirit” - who is a female spirit who uses false prophets such as Jesus to lead people astray. Ruha also started mankind’s fall by seducing Adam in the Garden of Evil.

Ruha entered an incestuous union with her demon son who rules the underworld and gave birth to the planets. The planets form her entourage and are demons that govern the days of the week, impose fate, death, and astrological influences on man.

The Mandaean solar system is below

Sun - Rules Sundays - Mixed, long story horribly shortened is the Sun is a representation of Hayyi Rabbi’s life-giving light, but the Jewish God also made a physical sun to compete with Hayyi Rabbi.
Moon - Rules Mondays - Miscarriages, abnormal births, and imperfections.
Mars - Rules Tuesdays - War.
Mercury - Rules Wednesdays - Knowledege, supports Jesus.
Jupiter - Rules Thursday - Malevolent authority.
Venus (sometimes Ruha herself, sometimes her daughter Libat) - Rules Fridays - Evil seduction.
Saturn - Rules Saturdays - Restrictive fate, supports Jews.

Esoteric Christianity: Christianity Plus Magic Equals Evil Planets

There is a trend among some Christians to hold esoteric beliefs. These people combine traditional Christianity with a grab bag of ideas ranging from ancient magic to astrology to mystical Judaism and much more. As there is no one Esoteric Christian set of beliefs, I will sum up a particular set as stated by an Esoteric Christian who uses the pen name Ioannis Goldmouth.

In Goldmouth’s cosmology, planets are not merely inert celestial bodies but can be potentially malevolent entities intertwined with ancient cosmology, divine order, and demonic influences.

CORRECTION: I will keep the above statement as a record of where I am wrong. Goldmouth was kind enough to offer this correction to my statement. “Although I will say that my article was slightly misrepresented. I do not believe the stars or planets themselves are necessarily malevolent deities. I believe the stars themselves are physical conduits for both good and bad spirits, sort of like an “angelic ZIP code.” I believe that all of creation, including the celestial bodies, is inherently good because God created it. In fact, the Church actually condemns the notion that the stars and planets are imprisoned spirits as a heresy.

He writes how in ancient Greek thought, planets embodied harmonious orbits that mirrored divine reason and mathematical laws; they served as “secondary gods” or living creatures with souls, crafted by the divine to bridge the earthly realm with higher divine spheres.

In Christianity, these planets form part of the host of heaven, conscious beings capable of willful obedience to God, as evidenced by biblical events like the Sun and Moon halting during Joshua’s battle, aligning with Orthodox interpretations of them as celestial intelligences akin to angels.

However, in the medieval magic book known as the Testament of Solomon, where demons like Onoskelis are linked to planets such as Saturn, planets can be intermediaries for spiritual entities, with occult rituals done according to planetary orbits to summon demons.

Extending the present, Goldsmith ties this in with UFOs and “aliens,” stating phenomena like falling stars or orbs are demonic manifestations tied to these planet spirits. Goldsmith states Christians should be vigilant against “aliens” coming from planets that are ruled by demons.

Podcast Update

This past weekend I interviewed fellow science fiction author Schalk Holloway about the recent waves of End Times prophesies. While critical thinking skills were used in taking down the false prophets of doom, it goes heavily into a Christian point of view - me being a Catholic and Schalk being active in a Pentecostal network in South Africa. I didn’t send it out via email because it is more religious than science fiction, but for those interested you can watch or listen below.

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As the world nears the end of the 19th century, everything is changing. The Adepts openly wield magic in a bid to control the world while the insane Awakened threaten to tear it apart. The six-shooter ushers in a new age for gunslingers. The weapons are their only hope against the powerful magic-wielders. All the while, few know the secrets of witchcraft.

My coven left Africa to travel to America. In the great mountains of the Republic of California, I will face my first challenge. I must capture the soul of an animal and turn it into my guide. The natural world will rise up against me, but I must prevail. Only by passing this test will I take the first step toward real power. I will avenge my people.

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Cal fears he will witness the death of everyone he’s ever known.

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Defiant Space is the exhilarating first book in the Infinite Void space opera series. If you like hard sci-fi suspense, intrepid space exploration, and courage in the face of inhuman pressure, then you’ll love Richard Rimington’s sweeping cosmic adventure series.

The Oracle’s Bridge: Book 1 of The Bridges of Magic Series by Stacy Hall - Book for Sale for $2.99 or Free on Kindle Unlimited

Magic has been corrupted. The kingdom of Veltak lies in ruins, its royal family dead and the Magicians’ Guild reduced to ash, while the dark sorcerer Barok Tana rules with an army of undead and stone‑forged abominations.

Apprentice magician Stric Deamara survives the massacre, hurled twenty years into a ruined future by the Guild’s Grandmaster with a single, impossible quest.

Find the lost infant prince who was smuggled away the night the kingdom burned.

Guided by Talnar, an endlessly cynical book of ancient knowledge, Stric allies with Teela, a hardened survivor orphaned by Barok’s tyrannous rule. Their hunt for the missing heir leads them through ancient forests, hidden elven sanctuaries, and a closely guarded island of wormholes that hurls them into a terrifying modern world, where the true king has been locked away and gaslit into believing Veltak is only a delusion.

Bringing the king home is only the beginning. To tear down Barok’s rule, Stric must forge an unprecedented alliance between humans, elves, werewolves, fairies, and vampyres. He must awaken a rare power capable of harmonising all their magics through one fragile conduit.

If he fails, the Deathseed Crystal feeding Barok’s necromancy will consume Veltak forever, along with everyone he has come to call family.

Perfect for readers who love epic high fantasy with hard, rule‑driven magic systems and cinematic battles, found‑family bonds, slow‑burn, trauma‑aware character arcs, multi‑race alliances, and portal and time‑travel twists.

The Oracle’s Bridge is the first book in The Bridges of Magic Series, a sweeping epic about what it costs to heal a broken world when your greatest weapon is the power to bring divided peoples, and their magic, together.

A must‑read for fans of Jenn Lyons, James Islington, and Ryan Cahill.

Unit Next Time

Next time, I will start the two part short story series based on this topic: Captain Bolide and the Evil Planet!

Schalk Holloway's Website

Two Sci-Fi Authors Talk End Times Prophecies

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Sun, 24 May 2026 16:45:51 GMT

Science fiction authors Patrick Abbott and Schalk Holloway make their own worlds, sometimes with apocalypse for the sake of enjoyable fiction. Yet these two Christians, one a lay Catholic American and the other who sometimes serves as a guide for others in a vast South African Pentecostal community, are well familiar with those who claim the End Times are upon us, whether the Rapture, Blood Moons, The Warning, Gog and Magog, UFOs upending Christianity, and more. Join us as we use faith and God-given reasoning to tackle the prophets of doom.

Schalk Holloway

Schalk Holloway is a published author across multiple fields of specialist literature and an occasional independent novelist. His literary roots lie in Christian ministry, where his work has been adopted into the official curriculum of over 2,000 congregations and translated into four languages. He has also written extensively on training methodologies within the combative arts.

Schalk’s professional background includes: Christian ministry; over twenty years of experience and grassroots interventions in at-risk communities; professional combatives, firearms, and tactical instruction; tactical execution of intelligence-based operations within select security and policing environments.

Get Schalk's Books

In 2004 I interview Schalk Holloway about his South African heritage and how it influence his science fiction. It was a great chat.

Buy My Books

And I am drafting the fourth book presently.

Or check out my humorous Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency short stories.

Written Interview with Mohawk Science Fiction Writer Cathy Smith

Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:00:46 GMT

Talking Non-American Science Fiction

Science fiction has long been a tool for cultures to envision how they would evolve and examine and comment upon contemporary issues. As I consumed more science fiction in various forms of media and met other authors, I began to appreciate the differences and similarities of foreign science fiction.

Motivated to learn more, I am contacting non-American scifi creators to get their comparisons of science fiction from around the world. If you are interested in being interviewed or know someone who would be, please comment below!

See previous interviews with creators from Canada, England, Nigeria, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa, and Ukraine.

Cathy Smith

Cathy Smith is a Mohawk writer who lives on a Status Reservation on the Canadian Side of the Border on Turtle Island (North America).

She is a Mohawk writer which is why she’s chosen “Khiatons” as her motto. It means “I am a writer” or “I write” in Mohawk. She writes soft scifi, fantasy and the occasional non-fiction piece.

She writes soft scifi and reads classic scifi. So far “first contact” is the theme that resonates the most with her. Either there is an arrogance in the name of science that is triggering to her given her heritage. Or else there is a ridiculous amount of timidity about reaching out to the “other.”

Her love of myths and legends makes her a fan of modern fantastic literature that acts as modern myth. Though she thinks it’s best for today’s writers to be aware of pop culture not a slave to it. She hates to see the richness of myths reduced to an over-simplified soundbite.

She has seen people give opinions when they’re less informed than she is. Sometimes in a display of ignorance or of inspiring confidence. This has encouraged her to reach out with opinion writing. Though she makes sure she gives a list of the sources she cites.

Her goal is to contribute to the discussion in whatever genre she writes in.

Her Substack is below and her Wordpress sites links to many of the books she has written.

So, before we start, you have a unique identity compared to the standard nationalities that I have interviewed before. How do you identify in terms of First Nations, First Peoples, Native American, American Indian, or some other term?

I don’t mind First Nations. We prefer to call ourselves Haudenosaunee, settlers called us Iroquois. My people were a group of First Nations that formed a Confederacy in the Eastern Woodlands. My particular First Nation is Mohawk, we call ourself Kayen’kaha.

Tell us about your science fiction works.
I am interested in the niche genre of Indigenous Futurism, if only because I don’t want to be told I can only write historical fiction if I write about my people. So far I concentrate on genre fiction with some indigenous characters in the narrative and perform the indigenous futurism experiments as short stories.

What makes your science fiction works unique?

I like writing Indigenous characters in mainstream genre fiction to prove we do have something to contribute to a futuristic story and aren’t just throwbacks. We are capable of adapting and my people have an ideal of thinking 7 generations ahead and not just of the immediate situation which is something mainstream society can learn from us.

Science fiction creators have had difficulty thinking about First Nations cultures in the future. Star Trek the Motion Picture depicted a Starfleet officer in a combination of traditional garb and uniform, and the Star Trek The Next Generation’s episode Journey’s End had First Nations settlers living primitively, while the story was a rehash of the exiling of First Nations in the 1800s. Why do you think First Nations depictions in science fiction are limited? What’s the difficulty of showing the culture changing like science fiction does with other cultures?

I don’t mind when mainstream writers write of indigenous people in scifi rather than assuming we’ll go extinct like the Victorians did. However, it may be best to look for examples of published Indigenous futurism from Indigenous authors for an example of how it would work as well as research our historical and modern cultures.”

As things once thought of as science fiction become reality, how do you see First Nations culture adapting, and what can everyone learn from First Nations as we move forward together?

First Nations traditional knowledge may be good for ecological best practices. We’d settled Turtle Island for millennia yet it was in such good condition that the Settlers thought it was ‘virgin territory.’ They also thought we weren’t putting the land to full use unless it was ploughed and farmed but my people were farmers so that argument was weak for the Haudenosaunee. Plus the hunting and gathering practices of the other First Nations was often a sophisticated resource management system that satisfied their needs and kept the land in better shape than the European systems.

I believe that First Nations will develop their own fashions with the materials they have on hand. My people would all be wearing leather at their traditional ceremonies if they wore pre-Contact garb. Instead we wear special fashions create with woven cloths we didn’t have access to until the Settlers came with their trade goods though we use it in ways they don’t expect. Sometimes we’ll copy popular Settler fashions in ways they don’t anticipate. For example lace was popular in Victorian times and this gave rise to Iroquoian beading techniques on fabric with white beads that mimic lace designs.

We have no qualms about using technology that is useful. For example when Settlers came with their iron pots clay pots were no longer used for cooking. Now craftspeople make the traditional pottery designs to be pieces of artwork instead of cookware.

In the modern era we are using the internet and mobile apps to teach our culture and languages. I have done historical research and my people are quicker at pivoting than they used to be. In the old days a consensus had to be made in Council and the speakers would give long leisurely speeches regarding their POV on issues. Now we prefer decisive action be made quicker. We talk faster than we used to. In some ways we are better at adapting and pivoting than mainstream culture is because we had to adapt to so much.

Living in an ecological manner doesn’t mean living like primitives and First Nations are finding ways to adapt that are true to their values and culture. I haven’t got some grand vision of what this will look like yet and my writing performs the function of thought experiments to me to see how a situation will logically develop or if someone can make things work in an ethical manner even if I know there will be bad actors when I hear of new technology coming down the pike.

What bit of science fiction do you think will be a reality soon?
Basically we’re living in science fiction now though we’re not as advanced as the early scifi writers thought we’d be. The change from the Victorian age to the 20th century was jarring and they assumed we’d advance at the same pace. I’m getting a laugh at how robots and AI is panning out. Asimov envisioned a Law of Robotics but a fair subset of people using AI are cybercriminals so a ‘lawless robot’ won’t be an anomaly despite what he liked to think on the issue.

What’s next for you?

So far my plans are to write my space opera as my long form work and serials of Robert E Howard inspired fiction on Substack as an experiment to see if I can write male characters right even if I’m not as action oriented as male writers. The Haudenosaunee were a matrilineal culture where genealogy went down the maternal line but our men were still feared warriors. The fallout for me is I prefer, and have more freedom, than women in traditional Settler culture do but I don’t want to see males reduced to brow beaten simps. We had our gender roles but woman’s voices and opinions were respected and their voices were embedded in our political structure.

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Or check out my humorous Savannah Paranormal Detective Agency short stories.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory

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School Trip to the End of the World by BA Gillies - Free Book

Jelun thought life was boring—until alien invasion changed everything.

The Ranid, seven-foot-tall arachnid warriors feared across the galaxy, had mutinied. His homeworld was next to be invaded. Jelun was booked on the first ship out. Instead, a petty fight got his family reassigned to the last fleet—one that would never leave. Now, they were stranded.

Desperate, he pulled off a daring heist—stealing a luxury space yacht with the help of an old Anodroid, a snarky maintenance bot, and a dumb security droid. But fleeing, they intercepted a distress signal: a school ship plummeting to its doom, its treacherous crew long gone, and hundreds of terrified children falling to their deaths.

Saving them would be suicide. Leaving them would be murder.

Helping means losing his family’s only chance at escape. Worse, the ruthless headmistress will sacrifice anyone to save herself.

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The Crucible Directive by K.R. Vance - Free Book

Commander Elias Thorne just saved twelve thousand lives. His reward? A corporate death sentence.

Stripped of his rank by a corrupt Syndicate executive, Thorne is exiled to the UNS Aegis—the oldest, most decrepit rust-bucket in the Vanguard fleet. He is meant to quietly fade into obscurity on a ship held together by duct tape, failing hydraulics, and a foul-mouthed chief engineer named Jax Holden.

But the Solarian Syndicate doesn’t leave loose ends.

When a cutting-edge stealth cruiser ambushes the Aegis, Thorne and his outcast crew find themselves outgunned, outmaneuvered, and completely invisible to the rest of the galaxy.

To survive, they will have to throw out the algorithmic playbook and fight a billion-credit war machine with analog iron, kinetic violence, and ruthless mathematics.

The Crucible Directive is a high-octane prequel novella to The Vanguard Calculus series. If you love gritty military space opera, hard sci-fi physics, and heroes who rely on grit instead of plot armor, lock your mag-boots and brace for impact.

Attrition: Initiation by Bronwyn Leroux - Free Book

Chiara Baschet was only six when her home was invaded by the dreaded monitors of the Cirrian Conglomerate. Chiara thought her world had ended. Then the terrifying man in the suit appeared…

But she soon realized the man, Director Cygnus, was her benefactor, the one with her best interests at heart. The only person pleading with the all-powerful Board for her right to see her family after being separated from them and sent to the awful academy where she could finally use her prodigious intellect.

As her knowledge grew, Director Cygnus began giving her assignments. Projects all grounded in science. An intriguing world without frontiers. A realm where Chiara could forget her worries and cares and indulge in the blissful ignorance of just inventing.

Under this spell, is she even aware of her family’s true plight? Can she recognize danger coming before it arrives? Or will she fall, another victim of attrition?

Wreck of the Dauntless Book One: Mutiny and Murder: A Survival Sci-Fi Thriller Inspired by True Events by Nicholas Hurzeler - Book for Sale for $2.99

Two thousand light-years from Earth, the ultimate survival game has begun.

The Dauntless was supposed to be a beacon of hope—a state-of-the-art colony ship carrying four hundred souls to a lush new world. But beneath the starched uniforms and corporate protocols of the Westmoreland Corporation, a rot is spreading.

First Mate Adrian Jacobs is drowning in resentment. Chief Engineer Jeronimus Cornelis is a charismatic sociopath, with a silver tongue and a taste for power. Together, they whisper of a secret cargo—a fortune in Cortium-7—and a mutiny that will turn the ship into their private kingdom.

But space has no mercy for the greedy. When a desperate gamble to seize the ship ends in a catastrophic collision, Dauntless is left a mangled wreck on a desolate, twin-asteroid system. Abandoned by their Captain in a search for rescue, the survivors are left in "The Graveyard"—a world of oppressive heat, bone-chilling shadows, and a rapidly vanishing water supply. And as the thin line between order and anarchy vanishes, Jeronimus rises not as a savior, but as a tyrant.

In the cold vacuum of P-48, water is life, power is absolute, and the greatest threat may not be the environment after all—but the person standing next to you.

This tale is loosely based on the true saga of the Batavia, a Dutch ship that wrecked off the coast of Australia in 1629.

Laura and the Shadow King (Volume 1): A Zombie-Apocalypse Military Action Thriller by Bruno Martins Soares - Book for Sale for $3.99

In a devastated world, Spec Ops Lieutenant JJ Berger is out of faith. Until he finds a little girl that can change it all.

Since the spread of the pandemic and the retreat of organized society to isolated locations, JJ has seen it all. The leader of the Special Ops Shadow Team, he’s been in charge of connecting with the desperate pockets of healthy population in Spain and Portugal. And he no longer believes in a happy ending.

But when little Laura escapes her cruel captors, JJ becomes the only one between the girl and certain captivity. This unlikely pair becomes dependent on each other, and in the process he learns something new: that he who controls hope, controls the world.

With zombie-like sick people and dangerous gangs on one side and ruthless Russian invaders on the other, are JJ and his team strong and skillful enough to face the overwhelming odds? And why is everyone so keen on capturing this six-year-old girl?

If you like gritty zombie post-apocalyptic military action, you’ll like this roller-coaster thriller by award-winning author Bruno Martins Soares, set in fascinating distinct settings from the Portuguese Atlantic Islands, to devastated Lisbon, to the medieval-like plains of western Spain. Get it now!

Until Next Time

Next time, I will discuss the ancient view of the planets being evil that still exists in fringe sections of society. This started off as a Aliens and Religion: Mandeanism post but it evolved past the Aliens and Religion series.