95% of UFO sightings can be written off as nothing: weather phenomena; misidentified aircraft; mistakenly identified stars or planets. 5% cannot be explained. In this series we’ll be looking at the mass sightings. The abductions. The unexplained deaths. Real cases, with real people. These are the 5%. These, are the UFO files. By the time Joao Prestes Filho entered Santana de Parnaíba hospital on 4 March 1946, it was obvious to anyone who saw him that he was not long for this world. He’d been brought to the hospital by local police chief, Joao Malaquías, who had arrived at the home of Filho’s sister shortly after the Filho himself. Filho had stumbled to his sister’s house crying out in agony saying he’d been burned. The skin on his face, arms, and chest was badly burned, to such an extent that the flesh beneath was exposed. When the police chief arrived, 44 year-old father of five Filho said that there was no one to blame for his terrifying appearance, because his attacker was “not of this world”. And so began the strange tale of the gruesome death of Joao Prestes Filho. 4th March 1945 was a cheery time in the village of Araçariguama for it was carnival season. But not everyone was happy. Joao Filho preferred the peace and quiet of nature instead. On this day he chose to take his horse drawn cart to the Tieté River and go fishing. His wife took their five children to engage in the festivities, but managing five children is no mean feat, especially five children excited by the idea of a carnival, and amid the chaos of the moment, she locked the door to the house, leaving Joao a man without a key. Electricity was yet to reach Araçariguama, and it is easy to imagine Joao returning home in the darkness, perhaps with the sounds of the festival floating through the warm evening air. When he arrived back home, he soon realised his predicament. He managed to climb into his house through an open window. This is where it gets weird. He was standing in his home aware of an unusual presence. He turned to the window where his eye was immediately drawn to a glowing object in the night sky. He was hit by a burning beam of light. Covering his face with his hands, he dropped to his knees. Though it only lasted for a moment, the effects would be catastrophic. The farmer felt as though his body were on fire. Joao was somehow able to wrap himself in a blanket, before bursting barefoot into the deserted streets. He walked into the village over two agonising kilometres. It is here that he burst into the house of his sister. Joao’s nephew recalled not being allowed to see his uncle, so horrific were his injuries. His father telling him in the intervening years that he was concerned that the experience of seeing his uncle in such a state would have been traumatic. The man was badly burned from the waist up, with the exception of the hair on his head. Joao was agonisingly conscious throughout his ordeal, talking to the sheriff, though he was having problems with his tongue. Eyewitnesses to Joao injuries spoke of “meat that has been allowed to boil for a while”. His hair, clothing and feet were unscathed by the burning, but his feet were cut to ribbons from his barefoot escape from his house - cut by the jagged rocks between his own house and his sister’s. It was quickly decided that if anything could be done for the poor man, it was at the hospital. Rather than risk travelling the poorly kept road to Sao Paulo, they went to Santana de Parnaíba, where the dying man found a friend in orderly, Aracy Gomide, who tended Filho during his final hours alive. Baffled doctors were unable to diagnose Joao and it was decided that all they could do for him was to keep him comfortable. Gomide, a former army medic said that Filho spoke until he lost too much soft tissue from around his jaw. By now, Joao Prestes Filho was amazingly no longer in pain, despite seemingly decomposing. And thank God. Parts of his face were peeling off and whole chunks of flesh were falling away, exposing bright white bone and tendons beneath. His final act was to ask his new orderly friend for a glass of water. At 10pm that evening, Joao Prestes Filho died. The death was officially listed simply as “cardiac collapse”. Naturally, over time this story has been embellished. Joao’s nephew said that as far as he could recall, the injuries weren’t anywhere near as bad as those described by Gomide the orderly. Could this be down to the fact that he didn’t see his uncle in his final hours? One thing is not in dispute: Something had happened to Joao, for the nephew did report darkened skin from the waist up ‘like he had been burned. Joao Prestes Filho died from injuries that he claimed came from a beam of light shot from a UFO. Whether this really happened, we will never know, but the victim of this story died from something. It is terrifying to think that he could have been telling the truth. So, you're interested in UFOs? Want to read more? Sure you do! Click here for an excerpt from my UFO thriller The Event. Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it! Remember, if you don't already follow me on social media, click one of the icons right at the bottom of the page so you don't miss out. Any shares/retweets/likes are greatly appreciated!
Todd Sees was a 39 year old little league baseball coach and a father of two. In many ways he was a regular guy. His disappearance, however, was anything but... 95% of UFO sightings can be written off as nothing: weather phenomena; misidentified aircraft; mistakenly identified stars or planets. 5% cannot be explained. In this series we’ll be looking at the mass sightings. The abductions. The unexplained deaths. Real cases, with real people. These are the 5%. These, are the UFO files. 2nd August 2002: Todd Sees lives at the base of Montour Ridge, a mountain near the town of Northumberland in the southern part of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. Todd’s home sits in a heavily wooded area not far from the Susquehanna River. The weather is good, so at 5am, he dons his hunting gear, mounts his quad bike, and goes looking for pre-season deer. The father of two tells his wife he’ll be back by noon. When noon rolls around, Todd is nowhere to be seen. At 2pm his concerned wife calls the police. So concerned are they at this out-of-character behaviour, a search party is quickly formed. Local and state police, paramedics, and local volunteers help in the search. The number of local volunteers involved soon grows to over 200, hinting at Todd’s popularity.
After a short search, two miles from his home, his son Nick finds Todd’s quad bike. It should be a big break in the search, but when tracking dogs are brought to the scene, they fail to get a scent. Searchers are baffled. After the search of the surrounding woodlands turns up nothing, divers are sent into the pond close to Todd’s property. Their search too is fruitless. The search of the woodlands continues on through the intense summer heat, then, on the evening of the second day, something is spotted in an area of dense scrub a stone’s throw from the pond. It is 2 miles from the quad bike. Firefighters hack a path through the trees and brush and as they get closer, it becomes clear that the shape spotted in the trees is a body. The worst fears of the search party have been realised: It is the dead body of 39 year old Todd Sees. His clothes are missing and Todd is dressed only in his underwear. The clothes he wore the previous morning are nowhere to be seen. His body is emaciated; the expression on his face is one of abject horror. But the weird is just beginning. Within 30 minutes of Todd’s discovery, the FBI are on the scene. They take over the investigation. They will not let Todd’s wife see his body. She is told that she will have to wait 6-8 weeks to get his body back while they wait for the results of a toxicology report. Later a boot is found 75 feet up a tree one mile from the quad bike. It is Todd’s. Aside from the look of terror on Todd’s face, there are no visible signs of struggle. No bruises. No wounds. The only visible marks are small scratches from the brush. Two separate autopsies return nothing. A toxicology report returns nothing. The cause of Todd’s death is a mystery. So what happened to Todd Sees? The quad bike found two miles from his home. No scents around the vehicle for tracking dogs to follow. His body found in an area of scrub so dense that firefighters needed to hack their way inside. Todd’s body dressed only in his underwear. And a boot found a mile from the quad bike in a tree. The worst part is the unforgettable look of terror on his face. In the days after Todd was found, it was noted by locals that there was a heavy presence of military helicopters. Upon their arrival, the FBI interviewed people in the surrounding area. There are no reports of sightings of Todd, but a nearby farm worker reported seeing something strange on the morning of Todd’s disappearance. In the general area where Todd went missing, the farm worker spotted a disc that hovered above the treeline for approx 10-15 minutes. It rose - stopped - then shone a beam of light down. Something was pulled into the beam of light and the light only vanished when the object suspended within the beam had risen into the bottom of the craft. The worker said that the object suspended in the beam of light was a man. The disc then went west, stopped again, before shooting upwards at an incredible rate, disappearing out of sight. The farmer said horses on the farm were agitated and nervous for approximately 12 hours after the incident. The farmer’s story would be too easy to dismiss if not for one thing: Three men were out fishing on the nearby Susquehanna River on the morning that Todd vanished. They came back from their trip with a story they were sure that nobody would believe. They were wrong. This all sounds too bizarre to be true. But consider this; no family member, friend or associate (e.g. family doctor) was asked to provide a positive identification of the body at any point. The body was removed from the scene of death without a coroner present - going against county law. In all likelihood, the truth about what happened to Todd Sees died with him. Officially, Todd’s death was ruled as “cocaine toxicity”, but the family were told not to open the casket in which Todd’s body was returned to them. So, you're interested in UFOs? Want to read more? Sure you do! Click here for an excerpt from my UFO thriller The Event. Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it! Remember, if you don't already follow me on social media, click one of the icons right at the bottom of the page so you don't miss out. Any shares/retweets/likes are greatly appreciated! So, that was 2017. And it was… interesting.
I learned a lot. Mostly about what it takes to publish your own book. And what does it take? A lot more than I first imagined! I was under no illusions that it would be easy, but nothing quite prepared me for exactly how much work it would take, and if I'm being honest, I'm actually not finished. It will be a matter of 'when' and not 'if' my debut novel is available in epub format for you non-Kindle ereader owners. I just beg for your continued patience in this matter. Thanks! For all the stress, it was definitely worth it. There's nothing quite like seeing your finished book in print, and looking at your bookshelf and seeing it stand side by side with the works and authors that inspired it. At some point I'll be sharing what it takes to go from idea to book and the writing process, because it would be nice to share what I've learned along the way and it's great knowing that somebody else could benefit from it. If you bought the book (and enjoyed it!) you'd be doing me a huge favour by rating and reviewing it on Amazon. These recommendations make a massive difference and will lead to more people getting their hands on my book! So in terms of 2017 all that remains for me to do is to thank the beautiful people who follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for their overwhelming support. I love you! So what about 2018? BOOKS It will take something just short of an absolute disaster for me not to release two more books this year. Three is a reasonable estimation. Last year I made the mistake of setting my goals a tad too ambitious, and stressing myself out* when I couldn't achieve them. *see paragraph about 'learning a lot'. So I'll be aiming for three new books, I could miss, but that's where I'll be aiming. That might sound mental, but one is one draft away from being ready and the other, two drafts, which means I'll be writing book 3 from the remains of half a first draft I've got. So basically, if I don't get those two almost-done books out, I'll be massively disappointed. Stay-tuned for updates on the progress of those! SCREENPLAYS Boy, do I miss screenwriting. There's just something about the format of a screenplay that I just love to look at. And the writing process for an impatient sod like me is much quicker. My personal best for regular writing currently stands at 4.5k words in a day (the second half of my short story Infinity). Not loads by any means, but more way more than my 1.6k per day for the first draft of Laszlo Breyer. For screenwriting I once did 35 pages in a night. At a rate of one page of screenplay per one minute of film, that's a third of a comedy or horror film, or a quarter of an action film. In one go. Much faster. I've got tentative-but-exciting plans for my Zombie/Western script Rush of the Dead this year, that I hope to be able to reveal in due course, and I would ideally like to get another film idea on paper this year too. It's been floating around in the old noggin for ages now. So it'll be good to get that sucker on paper! No more zombies, but a controversial story idea that I think would work better on screen than on paper, though I will possibly (probably?!) novelise it at some point just because it's a great story. BLOG The blog! Blogging is great. You get to write, and then get an instant response to it. And there's no need to write an insane number of drafts, then format for multiple platforms, and worry about things like pricing and pretty covers. I repeat. Blogging is great. But, it takes time. Any writing takes time. Time away from Facebook (good), time away from friends, family and loved ones (bad), and time away from Netflix (fucking awful*). *Just kidding, friends, family and loved ones! It also takes time away from writing books and screenplays. The time invested in creating those is equal to the satisfaction from seeing the end product. So finding time to write a blog amongst all of those other things is tough. That said, this year I'll be posting 2 new blog series. One similar to the Unexplained Files which I love researching (i.e. watching weird YouTube videos), and one that I wanted to do last year but couldn't find time. I'm really excited to see how the second one goes, but of course, I need to ask for your patience. My priority for now is book #2 and I'll be writing the new blog series between drafts. So, that's my 2018! A lot to take on (just reading back what I've written I need a White Russian or three), but achievable. As long as I give myself time. What are your plans and goals for 2018? Let me know in the comments below! Salutations! Just wanted to give you an update with what’s going on. I’ve spent a huge amount of time getting werewolf/crime story The Death of Laszlo Breyer ready for the big wide world. It was fun to go back and see those characters and before we go any further, I'd like to send out a massive THANK YOU! to those of you who bought my novel! Hope you’re enjoying it! (If you are, I’d be delighted if you left a nice rating/review over at Amazon.) It’s available on Amazon for Kindle devices and the Kindle App. And now, I promise to stop harping on about it every two minutes ;-) So what next? Most of my energy will now be going into book #2. I’d like to have it ready for some time early in 2018. It’s going to be tough to get back into writing stuff more than blog length again, and I recently realised that the first draft needs a lot more beating into shape than I remembered! All of which means, the blog posts will be less frequent until I get on top of it. I still have ideas for the blog that I’m really excited about, but I’ll need a bit more time to get those ideas ready. If you are hankering for more to read, then of course the archives are there for you to peruse, or… You can buy my novel! Available now on Amazon! Here’s the link >>> https://www.amazon.com/Marc-W-Shako/e/B074W8BVMZ OK. I promise to stop now. Next week I’ll be back with another Unexplained File!
What about? You decide... The votes are in! Thanks for taking part! Welcome! Today’s post is an excerpt from my debut novel The Death of Laszlo Breyer, set for Halloween release for your Amazon Kindle device/app! (This post was updated April 2021. The book is out now! Link after the excerpt!) Alcoholic ex-detective Jack Talbot is accused of stealing the remains of his dead wife’s killer, but when new killings start, he has to find out who is passing themselves off as lycanthrope psychopath Laszlo Breyer, before the copycat exacts his bloody revenge and kills those closest to Jack. In this excerpt, David saw something unusual on his CCTV cameras and their dog, Freddy, is missing. He is preparing himself to go outside and look.
David tramped downstairs re-tightening the belt on his dressing gown. In the kitchen he rifled through his drawer, ignored the ball of string and screwdrivers and WD-40 and assortment of light bulbs and grabbed the torch. Outside, the wind whipped up again. He looked down at the torch, unsure of the last time he’d used it and flicked it on, off, then on again. Gripping the cold barrel, he stood by the back door. From upstairs came a click and warm, welcoming light cascaded from the landing. ‘What’s going on?’ David’s grip released on the torch and fastened again just in time to stop it falling to the floor. He breathed deeply, ‘He’s gone... again.’ ‘What?’ David sighed, ‘He’s gone again. Your beloved Freddy.’ ‘Well go out and find him.’ ‘What do you think I’m doing?’ he snapped. ‘Go back to bed.’ He heard muttering as the light went off and then the only sound in the house was again the sound of that biting wind. David stared longingly upstairs in the direction of his warm bed, then turned back to the door. He did the maths. It would take ten seconds, maybe fifteen, to get outside, round the corner and to the back of the property. Once there, he would check the rope which tied Freddy. If it was chewed through (again) it was nothing serious, just another escape attempt. He could come back inside, go back to the nice, warm bed upstairs, and start looking for him tomorrow. Thirty seconds. Max. And if it wasn’t an escape attempt? He frowned. Deep down he sensed that this was different from the other times that Freddy had escaped; that the scene on the monitor was somehow wrong. He couldn’t swear to it, but he thought he’d seen a shadow on screen as he entered the study. He drew another deep breath, turned the key in the door, and opened it. Once outside, the bitter wind snatched at his dressing gown as he strode to the rear of the house. Five seconds. The silver torch beam twinkled on the snowy ground a few feet ahead of him. As he rounded the corner the harsh security light flooded his tired eyes. Ten seconds. He shielded them, before turning his attention to the kennel and rope. He kneeled to inspect the rope when, above the wind, came a sound from the trees. He span, half falling against the house, and trained the torchlight into the dense greenness of the conifers. ‘Freddy?’ The wind died to a whisper. In the distance a car door slammed shut and he thought about calling out to the neighbour for help. But what would he say? That his dog was missing? ‘Fred?’ He stood now and gingerly stepped towards the trees, bobbing and leaning to get a view through the branches, his heart racing. Then he heard it. A low growl. The pounding heartbeat rose in his ears again as the torch settled on a pair of glowing eyes. ‘Fred. Stop fucking about,’ he shouted, unable to control the quiver in his voice. As he stepped back he noticed footprints leading into the trees. Too big for Freddy’s? His mind was at the point of contemplating the patch where whatever it was stopped walking into the trees and started to be dragged Please not Freddy when, between the gusts of wind, the growl rose. David dropped the torch. He turned and sprinted for the door. Behind him, he heard the trees part. His shadow shrank in the fallen torchlight only to be swallowed by something huge. He stumbled around the corner and leapt at the kitchen door expecting to feel the cold grip of death at any moment… The Death of Laszlo Breyer is available now on Amazon in ebook and paperback. If you’d like more info on new releases, or almost daily posts on horror and the unexplained, head to my Facebook page... If you have a friend who’s into horror books, or just great stories, then please share this with them! |
Welcome!
In this blog I'll be bringing to you short tales of things that go bump in the night, true stories of weird and unexplained events, and the real-life news of all things odd and macabre, and entertain you along the way. Categories
All
Archives
October 2023
|