Here's a story to warm the cockles of your heart and has that added bonus of being true.
I may have hinted this yarn somewhere before, but since it involves someone who went down in history,
a re-telling shouldn't be too out-of-order.

It was 1968 and I was eight years-old. Living in a small town and having acquired a mentality suitable for
such a slow, out-of-touch environment, the edge of my world ended anywhere over a mile south of where
I lived.

Why south? -you may ask. Well, that was because I lived on the northern edge of a town where miles of
countryside waited to be plundered by a kid my age and anything that could be classed as a street or a
collection of houses, all resided in the direction my mother would call the town centre. South.

The macrocosm of a child is bound in a special type of barb-wire, it snags things that adults fail to hold as
important. For myself at that time, knowing where an owl makes it's nest or finding a dead dog are jewels
that far outshine the knowledge we adhere to in the grown-up world.

Bogged down with societal bonds, adults stop smelling the magic and I honestly believe they also lose that
connection between themselves and a reality that lengthens their time here. Still, 1968 was surely going to
be the same as last year in my little kingdom.

But unknown to me and probably my parents too, the world outside mine was up to all sorts of weirdness.
There was a war in a jungle somewhere between the Americans and someone never truly explained. The
fella who killed Kennedy said he wouldn't be seeking re-election and the black-dude who wanted us all to
look beyond our facia differences was shot dead in Memphis.

Making sure the string around the rim of my jam-jar wouldn't snap and checking that my fishing net didn't
have holes in it, the news that the widow of that Kennedy-guy and was marrying some Greek with lots of
ships and the Zodiac Killer was just testing his wings out on Solano County's Herman Road were something
beyond my appreciation and certainly my interest.
Noisy incidents in another room.

John and Ian were waiting for me at the bottom of my little street. It wasn't called a street, it was called
'Gardens' because... well, all the terraced-houses had gardens, I suppose. Life doesn't have to be complicated,
you know? These two boys were four years older than me and if you can think back to your own youth, that
meant a lot.

Older boys knew about sex, older boys knew lots of good stuff like that and if you're quiet and listen, sometimes
you can learn a thing-or-two. Wisdom is currency in the world of a child, it purchases standing and it strengthens
character.

Where adults talk in a language of the gordian, the kids with the scuffed knees and bubble gum-smelling breath
articulate their opinions with tones of simple dread and the acumen of warning.
It's all about preparing yourself to die and become one of those adults.

As I walked behind the two boys, I listened for the enlightenment. Where we were going to capture red-bellied
newts could wait, there was 'stuff-mining' to be done and in their chatter, I could already hear the sounds that
told me that such a type of gold was nearing the surface.

Stuff like, the contents of golf balls is poisonous and made from crazy-men's semen, whatever that is. What time
was best to clamber over the wall of the alley behind my house and keeping low and quiet, watch through the
frosted-glass of a downstairs bathroom window for one the two young women showering in the house strangely
labelled 'for Students'

Keeping up with John and Ian's brisk pace, I discovered that students are older girls who can think. They can
make you look silly with their brains, but their bodies are fantastic. Scaling that wall at my current height was 
still beyond me and the desire to observe women with pubic hair was even more distant. Still, the ammunition
of data can be carried and used later.

We were heading down the main road that in 1968, could never imagine the amount of traffic that uses it now.
The wisdom being dispatched slowed and accepting that if you look up at the sky when you run, you travel faster,
I trotted behind the pair as they crossed the highway that had never known a traffic jam.

As we passed the school that they used to to attend and the one I still did, John and Ian turned their focus on
what lay ahead. It wasn't whether the recent rains had over-flooded the place we were going to and it wasn't
the concern that we might be trespassing on private property at some point. Even the suggestion that the
creatures we sought didn't actually inhabit the many pools that paralleled the ash and cinder path we were
travelling to, wasn't the main concern.

It was that we were entering a different land, a realm peopled with kids who may take umbrage at our invasion
and require a payment of kind. Namely a fight. As my cheap sand-shoes slapped along the pavement and my
jam-jar knocked against my bare-thigh, I wondered if this expedition wasn't the exciting and sunny adventure
I'd imagined, but a trek to altercation with strangers holding high dudgeon and the need to deliver a bloody nose.

But you can't turn back and run. You can't show your cowardliness in the shadow of older kids. You just can't.
Changing the position of my fishing net like a soldier re-shouldering his rifle, I kept in the march towards an
unknown enemy that would undoubtedly make me cry and certainly bleed.

It's called -because it's still there, 'The Black Path' and it links a road that once assisted a steel-rolling company
that created shaped metal for the country's needs to a newer breed of manufacturers. Something with the
then-swanky title of an 'Industrial Estate'.

In truth, this set of one-floor buildings comprised of two businesses, a tyre-outlet and a set of offices that typed
something. It was there and the Town Council had funded it, so I suppose it merited calling it something fashionable.

But The Rolling Mills was quite different and held a history of patriotism and the working-class sense of hard-work
-maketh-the-man. Sprawling for as far as a child's mind could comprehend, the smoke-pluming and noisy factory
once produced metal window frames until the Second World War shouted that it needed assistance.

Nissan huts, armour-piercing shells, tanks and Bailey bridges were all manufactured there behind the walls higher
than any kid could scale -naked student or not, but by 1968, their main requirement was construction steel for a
world that knew what 'good steel' really meant. The Rolling Mills was an immoveable object when I was growing
up and nothing but-nothing would ever make it go away.

In later years, I would visit the public house that served the men who toiled in the taming of the molten snakes
that were disgorged from their shaping rollers. It was on the corner of the Black Path and belonged to a time of
we've gladly relinquished. The front Bar was always hot with a raging coal fire and the rear 'Games Room' was
freezing, open to the elements due to the door being useless after a customer was smashed through it.

Saturday nights were for swollen faces and bruise-closed eyes. No pool cue was ever broken over the head of a
reprobate and no pool-ball was ever thrown at a fleeing client. Such equipment was stolen years before. Cigarette
smoke was in the air alongside 'High-Karate' aftershave that was given at Christmas.

During the week, the tavern would see dirt-smudged faces staring into horse-racing results in tabloids, whilst
gulping down their ale to quench their thirsts. A line of thick wooden-soled shoes that protected the Mill's
employees feet could be seen at the pub's front door.

These scuffed and studded Frankenstein boots were to guard from the screaming metal that quietened it's wrath
between the tongs and the legs of those who drank their breaks away. 'On the tongs' was a task where the money
was made and yet, extremely dangerous.

I have a friend who's father sported a galleon tattooed on his chest from his navy days and took on the tongs back
in the seventies. One winter's evening, a stretch of metal came bolting out of the rollers and for some unknown
reason, decided to 'scream'

This is a rare action, it's when the semi-soft metal bar twists and jumps from it's controlled route to the next set of
elongating  metal drums. This particular beam screamed and hunted down my friend's fleeing father and out-doing the
metal's cry, he also screamed as it left it's mark and turned the inked-galleon into a ugly birthmark of remembrance.

That clanging place forged men and metal, and to a child, was an eternal palace of the Gods. It closed in the nineteen
eighties.

Our quest for the miniature dragons took us into a municipal park that I recognised when my older-sister used to take
me out in a push-chair. I'd never realised it was so far away from my home and even though there was some comfort
to be gained by this revelation, I kept it to myself. I might have been only eight, but I knew one did not mention being
even younger when among those who were lighting your way towards the teenage years.

Pretending the surrounding location meant nothing to me, I dared to walk faster and get alongside John and Ian.
I recall it was summer because of the foliage and there wasn't any snow. The rain I mentioned should also be a good
indicator because no English summer is a real summer without it pissing down somewhere between May and August.

Giant elms surrounded the play-area and along with creaking oaks, shrouded another part of the council-ran property
that wouldn't -or shouldn't be interesting by children wanting to find dizziness on the cast-iron roundabout or enjoy
gathering dog-shit on the back of their clothes by sliding down the towering chute. That 'other' place was a cemetery.
All the play equipment was made by Wicksteed Kettering by the way, a name that will never leave me.

The beginning of the Black Path took us under a railway bridge that serviced the North and South sections of the Mill.
John imparted that bats lived under this shadowed construction and it had been said that they sometimes swoop down
and bite.
Needless to say, my wide eyes scanned the rivet-welded reinforcements for the twinkling of licked fangs and leathery
cloaks in our passing.

The daylight on the other side displayed a field to my left, holding a pond in it's centre that John assured both Ian and
myself, never dried up even in the hottest of summers. It was a said a giant pike patrolled the depths and would watch
from the murk for solitary children gambolling on it's banks. John said so.

To my right, a high metal fence contained a tangle of bramble bushes and the barrier continued to a place I never heard
of until then. It was a Gypsy Camp, a settlement of people that kept themselves to themselves. Ian commented that the
community were known as thieves and rarely bathed. Thinking of the terrible fish in the pond, my young mind could
appreciate why. We followed the path to the left.

The pot-holed tarmac gave way to the ash and cinder, the waste material of the Rolling Mills. It was officially a path now
and the trees and bushes that bordered the route didn't seem to suffer from the dumped clinkers. Every step made a
loud crunching sound and I wondered to myself if the supposed feral-families in the camp behind us would give us a
second thought.

Adjusting my snake-belt and hitching my short pants up, I was changing from a bewildered kid in a foreign land into a
hunter of fiery-bellied amphibians and an explorer with my companions. My older companions.

I say that because I had friends of my own age, but such solidarity is only maintained when parents don't intervene with
the use of holidays. Summer is when the English-made company called 'Butlins' is utilised and families would spend a week
at a holiday-camp with a social structure that held communal spirit as a prerequisite.
Without the need for violins, my family couldn't afford such vacations and so, I was with older boys wandering under
some bushes.

We made our way through the dark tunnel of leaves for around ten minutes without speaking. Occasionally, a large pool
would appear at the edges of path and stunted willows sat in the flooded waters. The hawthorn bushes on our right
stopped and brand-spanking new wooden fence hid whatever there was to be hidden. It could have been ten feet-tall,
but I was eight years-old and proportions were not paramount at that age. Big and little were usually the measurements.

The trees and bushes stopped and before us was lay the narrow path cutting through several pools of dirty water.
John announced that this was where the newts lived and I licked my lips in excitement. I hadn't been beaten up and
the vampire bats had not taken my blood.

Engraving Egyptian gravel-glyphs on my knee as I crouched down to fill my jam-jar with water, I felt the thrill of
anticipation that I'm sure anglers feel as they set up their gear.

I could suggest other light-hearted and positive thoughts a young person may deliberate during the trials of their
age, but this isn't a story read out to a afternoon-drowsy class of school children. When you're the youngest in the
group, you wait for the mood shift of the senior, the sea-change of the elder when what you rightfully own can be
taken by force.

True childhood happiness is built on a base of suspicion that the world isn't what your parents told you, even if
you want it to be. It's real and I reckon it's part of being prospective prey. Anyway, my jar was filled.

If such beasties existed in the smelly standing water, they'd found a grand hiding place. The aroma of the over-rated
puddles contended with the oily stink of recently-applied creosote of the fence and my goodwill began to wane in the
bouquet of malodor.
My salamander-empty jar dangled from the remains of a nail on a post as I scooped and frowned, frowned and scooped.

The bamboo cane bent at times, but I knew it was only an indication that either the fishing net had caught the
edge of a discarded car tyre or a willow root finding it's blackened drink. Melville's Ahab, I was not.
Curses were muttered, eyes met in doubt and the sun shone down on all of us.

When the suggestion came from John that the newts may be using pools hidden on the other side of the fence,
Ian and and I agreed it was worth taking a look at. Like Musketeers, we examined the height of the fence and it's
pointed top. Each unplaned board had been cut to hold a sharp apex and if I was to garnish the situation with
hyperbole, I could say the clouds touched the tips.

John went first with a fair run-up. Grabbing the diagonal edge of a board, he began to make his feet imagine
they were still running and scrambled his body upwards. Pushing with his arms, a leg cleared the 'V' and
without sitting on the top, he dropped into the unknown on the other side.
John's shaven-head appeared after a moment and asked for the containers and the nets to be handed over.
Emptying my jar of only thing I'd captured this day, the taller Ian serviced the request.

Up he went and after dangling against the warm wood for a second on two, began his ascent to the jagged top.
Ian's baseball boots scraped for purchase and with sinews contracting, he too slipped over the fence.
Although, I secretly believed a rib was grazed by one of those spikes in his journey.

I didn't make it. I could say my attempt was thwarted by the cut I acquired when I grabbed one of the spikes,
but the reality was that I was too small and too weak. My rubber soles burned in their haste to propel me into
the realms of my peers, but my spirit didn't hold the same verve.
Looking forlorn and looking up at the mocking barrier, I awaited the verdict from those who were winners.

John's head loomed over between the wooden skewers and said if they would take a look around and if the
newts were found, he'd drop a couple in my jar. I nodded and showed his my greased-stained wound.
The palm wasn't really bleeding, but any injury can be used to explain a failing.
John's eyes told me that it was my problem and without a word, disappeared from view.

There was no internet, no mobile phone to pass one's time away with on a slow-moving summer's day.
But before that ever-changing invention came along, kids still had the ability to get through a waiting period.
For me, I inspected the terrible damage to my hand and wondered if there was an older kid's anecdote that
said creosote was a deadly poison.

That was when the priest came by.
A man of around the late-twenties, but to an eight year-old, he was just an adult. Sporting the usual all-black
garb with the white dog-collar, he carried a slight smile that increased as he saw me sitting beside the post
that had once held my newt-container. Sans newt.

He was dark-haired and I'd guess women would say he wasn't ugly, but I cannot vouch for what students
would think, of course.

There are words to inflate the actual reason for this story and considering what he said -and if I was a religious
person, I could nail some colloquy to the mast of taking theological credenda serious to enhance society's values.
But my jar was empty and my hand hurt.

"Hello" the priest said as he passed me. I was sitting like one of them old Cherokee Chiefs that John Wayne looks
down at in the Saturday morning matinees I'd been to. The smile never faded as all I offered back were distrustful
eyes.

Priests and Vicars belonged in the world of 'do this or you go to Hell' and for a child, the rules of family and schooling
were more than enough to contend with without worrying about laws that concern the afterlife.
I hadn't got the hang of this one yet.

Not being married didn't help. I was still too young to appreciate innuendo of religious celibacy, but when a teenager
implies a weirdness through a clerical axiom to a boy of my age, it's a baton of wisdom that you keep close and use
like a crucifix to ward off the unknown aspersion.
The priest was at my 10 o'clock now and slowly falling away from my interest.

As the sun made my greasy injury look slick, I thought about John and Ian chuckling in merriment among fleeing
splashing basilisks escaping swooping nets. I pondered mangled flesh (come on man, really?!) and yet imagined
wriggling newts.

My absorption dwelled in the possibilities that they would judge a small amount of their catch and my input to
the situation. Would the older boys decide that four newts were two newts each...? Maybe even three of six
divided equally?

"Do you know who I am...?" the priest said watching me from where the Black Path turned the last of it's length
towards a side entrance to the fabled Industrial Estate. His convivial features had gone and for a second, I wondered
what might happen if I tell him I didn't hear his question.
Quickly checking the spool of my cerebral tape-recorder, I acknowledged the query with a stare, I mean, what do
you say to a guy who wears his shirt-collar backwards?

Maybe I could advised him to seek out the Pope and ask him if he knew the confused cinder-path walker's identity or
even check for a name on the back of his underwear. Can God help...? Is there a prayer that doubles as a finger in
the phone-book?
Only soapy-naked students would know for sure.

But I didn't. I felt I was being trapped somehow and this question was some-sort of controlling ruse.
I wouldn't have been able to word it like that then, but the feeling was tangible and that's all prey needs to ready it's
escape. To the pond behind me...? I could skirt the edge and avoid the snapping maw of he beneath the surface and
maybe the pike would treat the chasing priest to Jonah's mode of travel?

Vaulting the fence was out, wound-or-no wound, my little legs would fail me and the priest could grab me from
behind and dispatch the wailing kid in delphic ways I was too young to think about. The Gyspy Camp may save me
from this questioning and staring man of the cloth. But would it mean a life of the Artful Dodger...?
All light-fingered and eyes of the bandit.

The seconds that I'd like to call 'months' that wavered in the air between us held no noise except for a faint clang
of a metal serpent being tamed in the rolling mills behind me. I assumed the priest was waiting for an answer. The
faint memory of overhearing a conversation about some cabalistic act of buggery within the Church swam past like
a mocking Pleurodelinae, but it was beyond my years and all I knew was it involved choirboys.

Then the priest told me the answer that had presumably alluded him and assumedly -myself. However, the information
didn't resolve my rising panic.
"I'm Jesus, that's who I am..." he said with a tone of haughtiness and for reasons only he knew, repeated that last part.
"...That's who I am" With that, he went on his way.

Watching the retreating messenger of God, I wondered what just happened and whether the danger was over.
I would be fifteen before I thought that I'd should've checked his hands for holes and asked him to fix my own.
A Catholic friend that will always be close to my heart and could fight like a demon, once imparted to me during
those growing years that a Jehovah's witness was a person who believed the man who witnessed Jesus being
burned at the stake.
His name was Jehovah.

The priest didn't look charred.

The end of the story is that there were no newts on the other side of the fence. John, Ian and myself tramped
home without any incident to mention and I never told them of the strange encounter.
Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, I got the cinder track to an Industrial Estate.

And God knows what happened to my fishing net.

Quote:Washington Gun Law President, William Kirk, discusses a recent video that has been kicking around in the virtual universe which shows an elderly gentleman get surrounded by an angry mob of pro-Palestinian protestors who decided to start smashing his car. This leads us to one of the most common questions we get here at Washington Gun Law which is what can you do when you find you and your car surrounded by an angry mob? The answer is much more complicated than you might think so learn more and arm yourself with education today.

Quote:On April 7, 2016, the team running NASA’s New Horizons mission were waiting nervously. The spacecraft was about to enter the outermost reaches of our solar system. They'd aimed toward Pluto. Which lives in a region of the solar system called the Kuiper Belt. Just before arriving at the dwarf planet, the team noticed an object nearby. And it was acting very strange. This object, whatever it was, was spinning faster than everything else around it. Too fast. Artificially fast. And the object reflected light in an odd way. New Horizons changed course to do a fly-by. They wanted a better look at this bizarre behavior. But as the spacecraft approached the object, all communications went down. NASA wasn't able to see or hear anything. The New Horizons spacecraft suddenly put itself into safe mode. But nothing was broken. Something or someone was blocking the signal. Whoever it was did *not* want NASA to know they were here. And that they’ve been watching us for a very. long. time.

Here's one of my old ones, but slightly revamped. Enjoy!
......................



She'll come again tonight, I'm certain of it. Pools of wisdom reflecting the streetlights from the nearby road and that
steady breath pluming into the last evening of October. And she's a big bugger too.

It's getting cold and I wish I'd bought those fishermen socks from the jumble sale now, damn I wish I even had the
money to buy them. But that's the problem with a quest, the forced-reality from my supposed betters hinders wonder
and stifles free-thought, just like these leaf-bare alders defuse the wind that dances high above me.

Still, she'll be here soon and the tedious verity I endure will become a leg-flinching dream that sometimes stumbles
across a dusty unwanted memory. The levy required by society can go to hell, I left school in the same manner I was
bundled into it and now a future of unemployment, being in debt for the rest of your life and the age-old trial of
keeping up with the Joneses holds no passion for yours-truly. Certainly not like the fever I have for her.

My Ma will worry of course. I guess there'll be nights when she'll finish mopping the floors at the school for kids with
special-needs and ignoring the stench of hot bleach, she'll look out of the window and ponder the vague shape of
someone she once knew. The bright fluorescent lights will hinder her study of course, and all she'll see is her
doleful reflection staring back.

But her class-bridled mind will pose the question she will ask from this night forth... 'where did my son go?', when her
appeal should really be where did she go. Not long now, the darker in the dark near her favourite tree. A union that
shouldn't be, but a love that defies nature itself.

My Pa won't miss me, if I'm not at the bottom of a bottle. His concern will only floret when he's too-drunk to walk home
and needs his work-shy runt-of-a-kid to support him home. He won't miss me. There are movies where fathers and sons
toss a ball to each other or pass a mutual smile between each other as they finish building a fence on a hot afternoon.

Yeah, Hollywood. They ask you to deposit your harness of reality at the brightly-lit kiosk where your ticket awaits.
But as the credits roll and the crumbs of popcorn are wiped from your duffel-coat, those cigar-puffing rich fellas
never mention is the heartache when you have to pick up that damned burden and step back onto the path of
banality.

The boffins in their white coats and stupid spectacles say this land is too small to hold such substantial creatures.
They were the weak ones I hated at school and the ones I envied when the teaching stopped. But who's the smart
one now? Not enough food, no physical evidence and mere wishful-thinking of the internet, who's the smart one now?

I have a sister, and even though she attends the place where my Ma washes the floor every weekday evening, she's
special beyond her needs. If there's a regret to what I'm leaving tonight, it's her... the only one who can still hold the
magic.
...................................................................

There she is, all hair and nervous muscle. I will not sully what my heart feels by describing the forest-queen that will
take me to her world of herb-aroma and night-silence. She is woman, although not my species. She wants me and
I need her.

A passing car throws a fleeting curtain of light across our leaf-littered rendezvous and for a moment I glimpse her
heavy breasts and agitated gaze, she wants to be away and ideally, with her man. Arms of hard sinew sway back
and forth in her skittishness and hands of leather clench their chagrin for the delay.

Praying for no twig-snap or the snag of a bramble, I step forward and with air trapped in my lungs I stride towards
my future. The promise of sanguine survival awaits and a chance to know how this world really turns.
No more frowns from parents and no more mocking-eyes from those beyond the wood.
Oh, if those clever-ones at school could see me now.

Her presence is commanding, a brute to some and a ghost to others. Her scent whispers of wild roaming and slumber
in undergrowth. Unkempt hair hides her sex and denies the weather, she represents the truth that cinema moguls can
never capture. I stand in her company and breathe in her savage majesty.

Then with an outstretched arm, I'm taken. Like bromidic academia tells us, neanderthal wedlock involved the physical
accruing and turning towards the shadows, I'm thrown over her shoulder and our honeymoon begins.
Like a ribbon from my sister's hair, that tenuous veil of reality is discarded to the night-wind.

That world that demands procedure, that snarls conventionality as a pressing imperative for humans, is now behind
me and twisting my head, I see it fade as the streetlights disappear and smile.

Through ploughed fields and under a crescent moon we travel. Hedgerows and barren copses, forgotten places and
obscure knolls, the terrain of my beloved carriage. An owl hoots at our passing and somewhere in the ferns and bracken,
a mouse thinks to itself -that at least for one night, it's not the design of the night-killer.

My fingers touch the pumping tendons of her great back beneath her hirsute pelt and I believe her pace is quickening.
A clan or a solitary grotto awaits...? I care not for such human concerns of prospectiveness. It is meaningless when
you take the contract to live in the real.

Then my ruminations stop. That world of pungent wild herbs and Autumn-morning foraging, that Arcadia of breathing
the Summer evenings and admiring the textures of a dwindling wild, my fingers find a reality I had never foreseen.

A zipper.

Quote:The Story of CARRIER X In the days just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American people are asking "Where is our navy? Why doesn't it fight?" Gravely weakened by the disaster, the US Navy comes up with a plan to trap the Japanese by using one carrier to imitate a fleet in order to deceive the Japanese Navy into heading for Midway, where they will be attacked. Meanwhile, on the carrier charged with the mission ("Carrier X"), flight commander Bingo Harper is in charge of the bomber crews that shouldered the burden in the desperate early days of the war. He is tough and sticks to the rules, while his young pilots behave more like youngsters and do not always understand his thinking.

Very decent discussion on those who want to ban guns and the current catch and release Justice in America...

Well, folks, my favorite time of the year is upon us. In the spirit of Halloween, as the power of the connection between us and the supernatural builds in intensity I also just found this.

Partial lunar eclipse during this year's full Hunter's moon on the 28th.

Looks like we are in for an especially spooky Halloween this year.

I'm not exactly sure why, but I have been really excited about the upcoming holiday festivities. Halloween always has the coolest stuff to do. 

https://www.space.com/partial-lunar-ecli...0Oct.%2028.
The lunar eclipse will be fully visible from Africa, Europe, Asia and parts of Western Australia. The eastern tip of South America will get a small glimpse of the eclipse at moonrise, but don't expect an incredible view from there.

The partial lunar eclipse of the Full Hunter's Moon will begin at 2:01 p.m. EDT (1801 GMT) on Oct. 28. The most striking parts of the eclipse should occur around 3:35 p.m. EDT (1935 GMT) as the moon enters the darker part of Earth's shadow, known as the umbra, peaking around 4:14 p.m. EDT (2014 GMT). The eclipse will end around 6:26 p.m. EDT (2226 GMT) as the moon fully emerges from the lighter part of Earth's shadow, known as the penumbra.

Enjoy!

A few years ago I was led to an area of thought I never would have imagined I would be exploring. One thing leads to another and two years later I am deep into studying things like dark magic, evil spirits, and demon possession/oppression. 

There aren't many places I can discuss topics such as this, but I would like to present a theory of mine on demon possession, and how I believe we have an over-sensationalized image of it. I think these possessions are more common than we realize, and we have been thinking about them wrong all along. Thanks to Hollywood imagery.

We all have an image in our minds of what demon possession would look like. I always think back to The Exorcist movie. I think of that girl's head spinning as she vomits like a waterfall all over the room, her hideous appearance, bed levitating, and so on. 
But what if demon possession was a more subtle-looking event? What if it was, in fact, so subtle that we don't even notice it; especially for what it is? 

In the New Testament accounts of Jesus' ministry people were always coming to him for healing. No matter where he went people always brought the demon oppressed to him, and he would cast out the demons from the people. "Many people" were brought to him for this. No matter where he went he would heal the sick and cast out demons. This means that a lot of people were walking around with demons back in the days of Jesus. 

I believe it is the same today. I believe that many people are demon-oppressed, but simply don't realize it. We think if we aren't vomiting pea soup with our head spinning as we are levitating then we don't have a demon latched on to us. I do know there are some cases where the possession is so bad that supernatural things happen to the individual who is possessed. But from my research demon possession/oppression can be as subtle as a voice in one's head. A small voice that can be extremely influential. I also think of things like hate, greed, and strife to be "spirits." The Bible refers to "fear" as a spirit. Fear can come over us and cause us to do, or not do things we would never do in a stable state of mind. If fear is a spirit, then it is an "evil spirit." If we apply this same approach then could we classify something like depression as an evil spirit? Couldn't we use the same frame of mind when considering someone who has serious clinical depression as being "oppressed by an evil spirit?" 

I have looked deep into this thought, and I do. I believe we are dealing with more of the spiritual realm than we realize. 

I think Hollywood, TV, and movies, have given us a false image as to what demon oppression looks like, and plays out like. 

What if demon possession and oppression were much more common than we think, and what if it is much more subtle looking than we have been programmed to believe?

Any thoughts or comments are welcome here. There simply aren't many places one can go and have a civilized, out-of-the-box conversation about these matters. I figured I would finally see what you all thought about this.

This was the first ever short story I posted at ATS and I thought, perhaps, another audience may appreciate it.

Old Scars.

Scars. Old Scars. They don't hurt anymore. Hell, not even new ones do it seems. They just ache. Achy, old scars.


Laying in the dark silent room. Internal clock estimates nearly an hour of sleep. That's a good nights rest anymore. I draw a deep breathe thru the oft broken, slightly mangled nose on my face. The cold air makes the crushed nasal passages throb. Creaking, popping ribs, sharp pangs here and there. I'm pretty sure the three on the left are cracked. Nothing to do about them now.

I roll my burning eyes under sandpaper eyelids. Neck and back twisted up like an old lightning struck tree. A slight roll of my shoulders brings the familiar feeling of crushed glass grinding in my shoulder joints. Hips, knees...easier to check off what doesn't ache.....well, that's a short goddamn list. Time to get moving, Death rises with the dawn. People are going to die today, a lot of them. Ours? Theirs? Me? Doesn't matter too much in the Grand Scheme of things.

I set my feet on the splintery floor. I recall it's covered in nails, broken glass and bits of shrapnel...meh, new scars. I shuffle across the floor in total darkness in the direction of the can, familiar bite of foreign objects tearing into my soles. I'll have to remember to pull them out before booting up. I turn on the dim, flickering light and catch myself in a dirty, cracked mirror. Bones poking at odd angles. Skin just a mass of old scars stretched across muscle and bones.

Just old scars.





The end?

It was the second night of November in 1966 on the dark rural backroad of Interstate 77 leading away from Parkersburg,
West Virginia, when two glowing eyes of light pierced the shadows from the overhanging leafless trees. Mr Woodrow
Wilson Derenberger was trundling along to his home after a business trip to Marietta, Ohio and was musing on the
device sitting in the back of his panel truck.

His destination was the small town of Mineral Wells, a title that had always been a point of light debate with his waiting
-at-home wife -Ruby. Some used two words, whilst others called it 'MineralWells'. Still, with headlights of Woodrow's
truck penetrating the darkness of the country road, he wasn't dwelling on controversial municipality identifications, the
thick-set fifty year-old was thinking if some adjustment should be required to the household appliance behind him.

You see, Woodrow was a sewing machine salesman and he had high hopes that he could expand his vending practice
out of West Virginia, something the resident of Wood County believed could make Ruby either hesitant or happier about
their future. Resigning himself to the itching censorious voice in his head that the sewing machine needed some tweaking,
Woodrow slowed his truck, pulled over beneath the stark trees and got out to perform his nagging task.

With his fastidious undertaking accomplished, Mr Derenberger climbed back behind the steering wheel and peered out
into the blackness of the November night. Ahead was something that hinted he might not be alone, illumination that
Woodrow took to be another vehicle and from the volume of the unusual radiance, he guessed that it maybe a big rig.

Driving on and thinking the lights could belong to police officers attending a crash, the salesman heading for home suddenly
found himself arriving at a situation where discussions on Mineral Wells' correct moniker would certainly take a backseat...
along with his sewing machine.

Woodrow would later describe the oddly-shaped effulgence-emanating object as certainly not any conveyance usually
seen on these provincial routes. He was stated the floating craft was like “an old-fashioned kerosene lamp chimney flaring
at both ends, narrowing down to a small neck and then enlarging in a great bulge in the centre” laid on its side. A shape
that some would suggest was similar to what was photographed near the planet Mercury by Scott C Waring in 2018.

To many, this bizarre encounter would be enough, but Mr Derenberger's night was just beginning. That was when a door
in the side of the craft opened, a humanoid appeared and walked to the right-hand of his truck and asked Woodrow to kindly
wind down the window. “He looked perfectly natural and normal as any human being” Derenberger would relate to Ronald
Mains during an interview on WTAP-TV in Parkersburg, West Virginia, on the day after the encounter.


Woodrow Derenberger.                      The shape seen near Mercury.

However, considering the nocturnal situation, the extraordinary craft in the road and the arrival of a shadowy stranger in
a dark topcoat beside Woodrow's truck, one might think these were not an amusing circumstances. But the salesman's
visitor was grinning. Keeping his hands hidden beneath his armpits, the cheerful newcomer requested for the window
to opened via -as Woodrow declared, telepathically.

During this short parley, Woodrow believed he could see some kind of garment beneath the Stygian garment made of
glistening greenish material almost metallic in appearance. Maybe this distraction was the reason Derenberger didn't ask
the stranger why one needs laminated glass to be removed for extrasensory communication.

“He asked me to roll down the window and I done what he asked...” Derenberger would say during the WTAP-TV interview.
“...And this man stood there and asked me what I was called and I know he meant my name and I told him my name." As
the grinning pedestrian surveyed the anxious driver, he then asked  "Why are you frightened?", adding "Don’t be frightened,
we wish you no harm. We mean you no harm, we wish you only happiness"

Gazing at the incredible hovering craft waiting over the road and soaking in what this genial figure was saying, Woodrow
learned the stranger's name. “My name is Cold. I sleep, breathe, and bleed even as you do” he advised the perturbed
salesman from Mineral Wells. It would be later that Woodrow would learn his grinning night-visitor's full name and where
he was from. Indrid Cold, a space-traveller from Lanulos -which as most of you know is 14.6 light years from Earth and in
the Ganymede galaxy.

..............................

After reporting his encounter to the Parkersburg police the next day, it wasn't long before the local media enthusiastically
grabbed the story and cajoled Woodrow to elaborate on his previous evening. Accompanied in an interview for WTAP-TV
with members of the state police, representatives of the Wood County Airport, the Parkersburg Police, and surprisingly
a representative from the Wright Patterson Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio, Woodrow Derenberger endured a thirty-minute
bombardment of questions regarding the grinning man who only wished happiness with thought-waves.

When the interview aired, some viewers and listeners came forward with claims that they had also seen a figure matching
Mr Derenberger’s description of Indrid Cold. One caller reported that a man matching Mr Cold’s description attempted to
flag him down, but he was too afraid to stop. Other people claimed to witness lights and “fluttering vehicles” on the same
road Derenberger said he talked to Cold on and several witnesses reported they had seen Woodrow talking to a man on
the same road.


Woodrow in an interview.                                                                               The smile says it all.

Ruby Derenberger would be reported to have explained: "You should have seen him when he got home. He looked awful.
I thought he’d struck and killed somebody with the truck. He loves to play with the children, but not that night. I had to
shoo them out..." Continuing, Ruby added after Woodrow arrived home that night: "...He just sat there in the kitchen,
grey-coloured and saying, ‘You’re going to think I’m crazy,’ and ‘you’re going to laugh at me."
When told what had occurred, his wife did not laugh.
..............................

Alas like many news articles, the media brouhaha calms down and the microphones get packed away. But for Woodrow
Derenberger, Indrid Cold hadn't finished with him. The grinning man with hidden hands began to visit the sewing machine
salesman's rural home and with his new-found connection with the fourth estate, Woodrow regularly reported the sojourns.

As the months rolled by into 1976, his family would admit that they too had seen Cold and other odd happenings around
their home. These events included inquisitive locals showing up on the Derenberger looking for signs of the mirthful visitor
from beyond the stars. Eventually the toll of harassing phone calls and ridicule led Derenberger to seek medical attention
and it would have certainly been a relief when Woodrow's physician gave him a clean bill of health and found no evidence
of chemical imbalance.

With painful headaches and depression being a familiar companion for Woodrow through the following years, he decided
to write a book on his November night with the grinning Indrid Cold. 'Visitors from Lanulos' elucidated on the habits of the
Lanulosians and how they have no need of clothes and generally walk around naked, they have a fifty-six-person Guiding
Council whose members are elected every six months and on one occasion, took Woodrow to Venus where the residents
also shunned clothing.

Needless to say, Ruby divorced him and soon after, Woodrow felt it prudent to move away from the area to escape his
notoriety. We cannot verify whether the disintegration of their marriage was due to Woodrow's out-of-this-world belief
structure or Ruby just didn't like her husband patronising with jovial off-worlders who allowed their privates to be on show.

Which ever, Indrid Cold has a lot to answer for.

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