history

  • The research behind Zombie Road is unlike anything I have ever done before. Every chapter has its own bibliography, and the full list of sources runs eleven pages long. I wanted readers to be able to trace the information, explore further if they wish, and see how each thread connects. This same approach will guide…

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  • Grace: Born from the Ashes

    There are moments when fiction stops being fiction. When the story you thought you were writing to escape the world suddenly becomes the mirror that refuses to turn away. Grace was born out of one of those moments. I first began the story in 1992, in the shadow of the Rodney King verdict. The country…

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  • Angels?

    What do I believe? That question has haunted me for years. Angels. Guiding beings. Protectors. Light. Love. The word itself carries a kind of warmth, does it not? But what if we have been looking at them all wrong? During the Screaming House haunting, something strange would happen. The phone would ring, and on the…

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  • It Only Takes One

    The danger of what lies ahead feels familiar to anyone who remembers Kent State. On May 4, 1970, in Ohio, a group of college students gathered on the Kent State University campus to protest the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. They were young. They were angry. They were unarmed. The National Guard had…

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  • I’m Wondering

    How many places do we touch in an average day that once held meaning for the living? How many rooms have we slept in where someone took their last breath? You might think that sounds strange, but is it really? How many hotel beds, how many houses, how many quiet corners have absorbed a final…

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  • The Zeitgeist of Hate

    I came to an understanding recently. What we are dealing with in the United States is not political and should not be framed that way. It runs deeper than red or blue. Yes, people often line up that way and the extremes on both sides dominate the noise. But most Americans live in the quiet…

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  • I first walked down Zombie Road in 2006. I’d heard the stories for years and finally gave in. I thought it would just be a spooky night walk with friends. Instead, it felt like stepping straight into The Blair Witch. I went back again and again. I led groups down there, even filmed with a…

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  • Examining the gap between the Constitution’s ideals and lived reality Many will tell you the United States is a great country. In some ways, they are not wrong. There is a difference between the ideals written on paper and the reality lived by its people. For some, especially those who are white, straight, and Christian,…

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  • I’m four chapters into Zombie Road now, and this book is stirring up a flood of memories. Writing it feels different from anything I’ve done before. If I had written this years ago, before Confrontation with Evil, it would have been a completely different book. That experience changed me. It made me a better researcher,…

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  • Family secrets have a strange way of shaping our lives, even when we do not know they exist. They live in the background, quietly influencing relationships, behavior, and how we see ourselves. I learned this firsthand when I found out, well into my fifties, that my two older brothers were actually my half-brothers. We shared…

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