Tag: #wjbrendle
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When Belief Pulled the Trigger
A true 1923 case from Biggs, California. Originally published on Medium. In 1923, a woman told police a Ouija board warned her that her husband would kill her. She shot him first. When the gun went off in Biggs, California, it wasn’t the sound that unsettled the town. A single shot in a farming community…
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You Chose This. You Kept Choosing It.
A new year and a new you? Start here. Previously Published on Medium What happened to you wasn’t your fault.Staying after you understood it was.No one owes you sympathy for the life you keep choosing. You don’t have to know you’re the problem for the pattern to exist. Most people don’t. They just notice that…
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What Stayed Behind After New Year’s Eve
Originally published on Medium. The party at Key West’s La Concha Hotel on New Year’s Eve in 1982 was loud and happy, but the fun did not last. There is always a time after the bell rings at midnight when the night drops out of itself. The shouting stops. The music fades. What’s left feels…
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Exploring the Forgotten, the Feared, and the Misunderstood
My work examines the edges of belief, history, and human experience. From cryptids and regional folklore to the documented practice of dark magick and the real stories behind witch trials, these books focus on evidence, context, and the people caught inside the stories. This isn’t sensationalism. It’s investigation. Each book stands on historical sources, firsthand…
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Why Yule Still Matters, Even If You Celebrate Christmas
Yule rests in the calendar like some odd gap of time. The date is known, but the meaning slips by most. People force their way through the month with lights and lists and every noise that December brings, that’s fine, but it makes them miss what happens around the shortest day. Those days between the…
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The Legend of the Christmas Spider: A Holiday Tradition from Old Europe
You remember the way the living room felt when you were small. The lights always looked brighter at that age. They carried a soft pulse, the kind that made the walls feel closer and kinder. Someone in the kitchen rattled pans. Someone else told you not to peek at anything under the tree. You sat…
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Under the Cold Moon: What Winter Reveals
Most people walk under the Cold Moon without giving it more than a glance. I don’t blame them. Winter teaches you to hurry, to keep your head down, to get from warm place to warm place. But this moon asks for a slower look, even if you don’t think of yourself as someone who notices…
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Exorcism: What Hollywood Gets Wrong
The movies thrive on terror. The reality is built on empathy, ritual, and the need to feel safe again. Most people think they know what an exorcism looks like because Hollywood has shown them the same scene for fifty years: a dark room, a screaming voice, a priest locked in combat with a demon. It…
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The Royal Bloodline of Dracula: How Power and Immortality Keep Sharing the Same Myth
History, myth, and modern science keep meeting in the same shadow—the idea that power and immortality share the same bloodline. The Living HungerEvery generation finds its own way to chase immortality. The technology may be cleaner now, but the obsession is the same. Stem-cell transfusions, blood-plasma exchanges, entire labs promising to turn back time—all sold…
WJ Brendle 