Tag: #DrBillBrendle
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The Bermuda Triangle: Almost None of It Is True.
The Mystery Was Manufactured I spent this past weekend at NC Crypticon, working a booth where I was selling books and talking up our 4Ever Paranormal podcast. Between signing books, answering questions about cryptids, and talking about folklore, the conversation kept drifting back to the same stretch of ocean. Different people. Different ages. The same…
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Judas Iscariot Didn’t Betray Jesus. He Obeyed Him.
The Lost Gospel That Turns History’s Worst Villain Into Its Most Loyal Disciple Almost everyone has betrayed someone else at some point, whether they’d call it that or not. Sometimes it’s telling a friend a truth they didn’t want to hear. Sometimes it’s ending a relationship someone else wasn’t ready to let go of. Sometimes…
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The Rocket Scientist Who Tried to Open a Portal Under Pasadena
What Jack Parsons Summoned at Devil’s Gate Dam Jack Parsons co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL is the NASA-affiliated research center that built the technology behind America’s rocket program and, decades later, the Mars rovers. Parsons was one of the men who made that program possible in the first place. He was not a fringe…
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The North Carolina Town That Worked for Pablo Escobar
A Cocaine Plane, REO Speedwagon, and a Tiny Town Called Varnamtown I go down some pretty wild rabbit holes while researching books and articles. While researching North Carolina’s mysterious Seneca Guns, I ended up in Varnamtown, a fishing village with fewer residents than many apartment complexes. I was looking for answers about unexplained booms. While…
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The Sound of Thunder
I don’t spend much time looking backward, but one story about rain brought my grandmother back to me. When Kateryna Fedotova tagged me in her rain-writing challenge, I expected to enjoy reading her story and then move on with my day. Instead, I found myself thinking about someone I haven’t thought about in a very…
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Did a Pope Just Hate Cats?
What One Papal Bull Reveals About Where Our Superstitions Actually Come From You knock on wood without thinking about it. You toss salt over your shoulder if you spill it, or you know someone who does. You’ve watched a friend refuse to walk under a ladder, not because they believe in curses exactly, but because,…
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I’ve Been Questioning Monsters Since I Was a Child
The Black Dog with Red Eyes Coming Down the Hall I don’t remember exactly how old I was. I only remember the dog that night. My bed looked straight down the hall in our house. It was walking from the far end of the hallway towards my bedroom. It was black with red eyes. Smoke…
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Okay, It Was Only a Movie, But God Said What?
Skeptics and Believers Are Lying to Themselves the Same Way There’s a scene late in the movie Disclosure Day where a former novitiate named Jane corners her old mentor, a nun named Sister Maura, with a question dressed up as a statement. Genesis, she says, tells us humanity is God’s supreme creation. Sister Maura doesn’t…
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Did AI Just Launch a Missile?
No. But it raised a far more important question. I don’t usually write about artificial intelligence. It’s not something that is really in my wheelhouse. But a recent article in The Debrief discussing the U.S. military’s use of Grok changed that. Not because of the politics or the company behind it, but because it made…
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They Kept the Story. They Lost the Point
Folklore didn’t survive because it was true. It survived because it was useful It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are in life. You already know what it feels like to have a story told about you that was never true. Maybe it followed you anyway. Maybe people believed it because it was…