The Gralien Report

Halloween is just around the corner, and perhaps the only thing more frightening to me than the fact that I have YET to figure out what my costume will be this year is the sobering realization that vampires–real life blood suckers and night stalkers–do exist among us.

Granted, with the popularity surrounding books, films and television series like True Blood and Twilight, it may come as no surprise that there are people who claim to be so fascinated with the dark side that they take to living nocturnal lifestyles in order to fulfill their own grim fascination with today’s vampiric sub-culture. But these individuals are mere neophytes; initiates by choice that could be headed down a long, dark road to something far more sinister… something so horrifying that the existence of which, though shrouded in mystery, can’t be ignored.

Worst of all, it’s real.

In his new book Real Vampires, Night Stalkers, and Creatures from the Darkside, Brad Steiger yet again takes the psyche of the reader into a veritable neither realm of dark foreboding mystery surrounding one of mankind’s most ancient foes: the vampire.

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I’ve been reading a LOT of books lately, many of them oriented toward the paranormal (including Brad Steiger’s new Real Vampires: Night Stalkers, and Creatures from the Dark Side and Nick Redfern’s Science Fiction Secrets). In preparation for tonight’s interview I’ll be conducting with author Christopher O’Brien on Joshua Warren’s radio program, I’ve also managed to hammer out O’Brien’s latest offering: Stalking the Tricksters: Shapeshifters, Skinwalkers, Dark Adepts and 2012 (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2009).

Seldom are all the many and varied aspects of Forteana looked at closely and carefully with hope of drawing new bits of evidence together from areas where strings of thought might occasionally intersect. O’Brien, on the other hand, makes this his sole focus with Stalking the Tricksters. In essence, various strange elements of Forteana are incorporated into a single “unified theory” of the paranormal: O’Brien discusses hoaxes, evoking names like P.T. Barnum and Joseph Smith, in addition to famous romps like the Cardiff Giant and the multitude of religious relics alleged to exist throughout the Middle Ages. He also takes a discerning  look at secret societies, “Bohemian Grove”, and 911 terror conspiracies; ultimately, this subculture of hoaxes, paranormal and cryptozoological phenomenon, conspiracies, and secret government activity illustrates for us that an underlying, cosmic spirit of disunion pervades human culture in every way imaginable, and that it probably will continue to do so forever.

Enter the Trickster.

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You’re walking home late in the evening, just as the sun is going down, and as the colors of daylight begin to be replaced by dark grays and the absence of light, you’re reminded of how shadows always seem to get the longest—and darkest—just before nightfall. You see all this, and acknowledge the slight, sudden chill in the air as you feel individual hairs prickling under your clothes. As your apprehension grows, you catch yourself smiling, laughing at your own tendency to fall prey to your worst fears, however silly they may seem. You then assure yourself that the movement you see off to the side, just out of your line of sight, is merely an illusion.

Try to assure yourself it’s nothing. After all, shadows are merely outlines of solid objects; opaque, fleeting references to their ultimate source, rather than the objects themselves. So what if the shadow ahead looks like a creature leering at you from the darkness, or a strange freak with a top hat, peeking around a corner? Surely it’s only your eyes playing tricks, right?

Author Jason Offutt would beg to differ with such sound sentimentalities, opting to express instead the absolute fantastic. Though he does so bravely, he assures us that he approaches the subject of actual shadow entities or “shadow people” from a journalistic perspective, “allowing others—experts, victims, willing participants—to tell their stories”. Oh, and what stories they tell.

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Recently, Patrick Huyghe at Anomalist Books was kind enough to send me a copy of Brad Steiger’s latest installment of the Shadow World series, Beyond Shadow World: Our Shared World of the Supernatural. After having enjoyed this book very much, I’m happy to share with you some of the highlights of this masterful evaluation of the spirit realm by one of the most respected experts in spirit phenomenon today.

My introduction to the trilogy was through the intial title Shadow World, for which I wrote a review that appeared at Amazon.com. After this, when the second installment, Otherworldly Affaires, was published, Brad contacted me directly and warned that “because of the controversial nature of the book,” dealing with touchy subjects like sexual relations with members of higher planes of existence, he had hoped I would be willing to review it for him also (today, it remains my favorite book in the series, as well as an over-all favorite as far as books dealing with spirit phenomenon go).

By the time Beyond Shadow World was released, I had expected a dark, brooding culmination of all the most frightening elements of the nether-realms; complete with horrific visions of specters and haunts that both frighten and intrigue us. This, as it turns out, was not the scope of the book at all, however. Instead, Beyond Shadow World was a complete surprise, in the sense that after trudging through shadow-people, demons, disembodied sexual molesters, and God-knows-what-else in previous books, this installment uniquely allows Steiger to illustrate for the reader a cumulative, educational element in the discovery of opening one’s psychic senses.

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Every now and then there are paranormal and phenomenological digests and compilations released that draw a bit more interest (and excitement) than your everyday ghost stories and strange tales. Such is the case with the extraordinary new Darklore Vol II, released courtesy of Greg Taylor, brains behind one of my favorite websites, the Daily Grail. Below is a direct link to the free PDF download:

http://www.dailygrail.com/PDF/DarkloreSampler.pdf

By making this free online version available, Greg hopes to sell more of the actual hard copies, and asserts that “the Darklore project aims to support good research and writing by passing profits back to the contributors on a royalty basis. So if you dig the sampler PDF, make sure you pick up a copy of our latest release from Amazon.” Via the link to Greg’s site below, you can access limited edition hardback and paperback editions at Amazon.com:

http://www.dailygrail.com/news/free-darklore-goodness

In addition to enjoying Greg’s writing, my pal Nick Redfern also contributed to this project. I encourage everyone to help support these fine authors!

Ever since the late 1950s, Americans have been influenced by a strange, dark phenomenon that eludes us to this day. Whether it is an extension of our fears of insecurity and invasion, or some strange state of awareness that bridges the dreamlike realms of space and parallel dimensions, many believe there are personages exerting their influence upon mankind who appear to have arrived here from the skies.

In spite of the associations we make with alien visitors descending upon us from above, the alien abduction phenomenon seems to have remained in the political and social underground of our culture. Even today, it remains a topic that is seldom afforded thoughtful, discerning interest and thorough study. Therefore, things we had begun to understand about alien abduction phenomena as early as the 1960s, looking back at reports like those of Betty and Barney Hill or Betty Andreason, we nonetheless find ourselves questioning more and more as time goes on.

By the same token, looking back over the early reports of alien abduction from time to time also allows us to glimpse elements of the phenomenon with a degree of clarity and un-obfuscated detail. Such is the case with Ann Druffel and D. Scott Rogo’s modern classic, The Tujunga Canyon Contacts, reprinted by Anomalist Books. Following Druffel and Rogo’s investigation into a series of peculiar incidents that occurred in and around the quiet Tujunga Canyon beginning in 1953 (predating Betty and Barney Hill’s famous abduction by nearly a decade), the reader is taken along on a wild, probing encounter with what is arguably one of the earliest reported abduction encounters with the “gray aliens” of popular lore.

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At the request of my good friend Brad Steiger, I recently recieved a copy of his latest work, Otherworldly Affaires: Haunted Lovers, Phantom Spouses, and Sexual Molesters from the Shadow World courtesy of Patrick Huyghe at Anomalist Books. Below is a review of the book, which I first and foremost must say is one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read regarding ghostly phenomenon in years:

Have you ever been married to a ghost? Have you ever parented a “spirit child”? Or perhaps you’ve been visited in the dark of night by some strange presence—with whom shortly thereafter you may have found yourself in the throes of passion! Time and time again, average folks in their day-to-day lives have described such strange phenomena, and it certainly doesn’t always involve favorable circumstances; several individuals have even claimed to have been accosted by “spirit molesters” from the Shadow World. To date, no collection of such accounts better presents the argument that the powers of love and sexual desire can—and do—extend beyond the physical realm than Brad Steiger’s latest work, Otherworldly Affaires: Haunted Lovers, Phantom Spouses, and Sexual Molesters from the Shadow World.

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