Saturday, March 28, 2015

In The House of Leviathan - By Bestselling Author, B.D. Bruns


Recently, it seems the horror genre has been overrun with teen melodrama. Just google "why Twilight is bad" to get a sense of the disdain (my personal favorite is from The Oatmeal).

Bestselling author, B.D. Bruns wants to know, "what happened to just plain scary?"

In his new book, In The House of Leviathan, Bruns avoids the overdone teen drama and instead relies on classic gothic elements to create tension and terror.  “Mainstream horror has gone so mainstream that it isn’t scary anymore,” says Bruns. “Glittering teenage vampires aren’t even intended to be scary. But, classics like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, now that was terrifying. The difference is that Stoker embraced the unknown. I hope that readers of In The House of Leviathan find my embrace of the unknown to be equally thrilling.”

Set in an Italian paper mill during the 1860s , In The House of Leviathan follows Giuseppe, a humble man working in the mill, who witnesses Old Man Grapaldi summoning the Devil. Omens from the sea threaten the village and bizarre, violent happenings at their mill threaten his family. With their church rocked by inner turmoil and so many good men succumbing to dark secrets, Giuseppe himself must overcome his fears and his physical handicap to save his beloved sister.

Throughout the pages of In The House of Leviathan, readers can expect:

A reinvigoration of the classic horror and gothic genre.

Vivid imagery transporting readers to Italy’s exotic Amalfi Coast.

A connection between our greatest fictional thrills and the exotic history of the real world.

A throwback to masterfully built tension, believable characters with rich backgrounds and plot complexity informed by real world experiences.


Adventurer B. D. Bruns has traveled to over 50 countries to gather material for his bestselling books. He’s won 19 national and international book awards, including three national Book of the Year awards. Bruns’ first fiction book, The Gothic Shift (2014) won the International Book Awards Best Short Story Collection.

He also contributes to Yahoo Travel, BBC, CNN, The Daily Beast, and The Travel Channel.

Bruns’ travel adventures span from entering the Pyramids of Giza and swimming in the Panama Canal to climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and touring Torture Museums in Estonia.

He has attended ceremonies from the descendants of cannibals in the South Pacific and has been consulted by a ghost tour in Malta. After residing in Dracula’s hometown for several years, Bruns moved to Las Vegas with his Romanian wife, where they live with two cats, Julius and Caesar.

For more information, please visit www.bdbruns.com or connect with Bruns on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Goodreads, Shelfari, and LibraryThing. In The House of Leviathan is available on Amazon.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

The Seen And Unseen Dimensions Of Time


By Carisia H. Switala, MTS – Harvard University Divinity School

Author of Eternity’s Secret: What the Bible & Science Have to Say About Time.

I assume most people are aware of the recent “Voice of an Angel” story reported on the news about an 18-month old girl who was found alive in an overturned car 14 hours after it crashed in a Utah river.  The four police officers who rescued the little girl said they heard a woman’s voice calling out for help.  However, the girl’s mother died in the crash and there were no other people in the car.  The officers really believe something otherworldly took place.  Perhaps this story is a good example of the temporal and eternal dimensions of time merging together allowing the mother to call for help from the unseen dimension.

After years of research, I came to the realization that time is an elusive concept.  Most individuals believe that looking at their watch and hurrying to get to work on time is the extent to which this concept is relevant.  However, in my opinion, time is so much more than a measurement of sequential events.  For many years, philosophers and scientists have been trying to explain time.  The ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, believed that time is the measurement of change.  Whereas Sir Isaac Newton, an influential seventeenth century English physicist and natural philosopher, believed that space was a static container and time was an absolute flow. Newton hypothesized that absolute time exists independently of any observer and moves forward at a steady pace throughout the universe.  He also thought that humans perceive ordinary time as a measurement of objects in motion like the sun.

Saint Augustine, an early Christian theologian and philosopher, believed that time was only in the mind and a human invention that cannot be applied to the universe or to God. Augustine’s view was that God existed in a timeless void. However, as the human mind evolved into a thinking machine that applies science to philosophical questions, the idea of relativity introduced the opinion that time is a physical dimension governed by physical laws. This opened up a more expansive view of the world and the universe.


I believe that the ancient idea of eternity, endless time, is a very profound and complex aspect of the subject.  What seems like the passage of time in a changing world is but an illusion in a three-dimensional space.

It is difficult for humans to visualize space. The standard human experience of space can be described in terms of three dimensions: width, depth, and height. Once the fourth dimension of time is added to the equation, parallel dimensions and universes become a clearer possibility in a space-time continuum. This advancement in thought and knowledge reveals the endless nature of time and the continuation of life, defusing the idea of a timeless void. It is a perspective that views eternity as endless time, not the absence of time as Saint Augustine suggested.

We measure the passage of time in seconds, minutes, hours, and years, but this doesn’t mean that time flows at a constant rate. Just as the water in a river rushes or slows depending on the size of the channel, time flows at different rates in different places. Einstein believed that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. In other words, time is relative. So relativity makes it possible, with the proper technology, such as a very fast spaceship, for one person to experience several days while another person simultaneously experiences only a few hours or minutes.

After I delved into scientific theory, I discovered that the idea of parallel universes in quantum mechanics suggests that all possible quantum events can occur in mutually exclusive histories. These alternate, or parallel, histories would form a branching tree, symbolizing all possible outcomes of any interaction. If all possibilities exist, any paradoxes could be explained by having the paradoxical events happening in different universes. This concept leads to the conclusion that time travel is possible, and a time traveler should certainly end up in a different history than the one he or she started from. Hence, relativity and ancient notions of time variation and parallel universes are very similar.

My research into philosophy, theology and science inspired me to merge scientific and religious views about time into one reality of infinite time.  The Bible contains many time-centered passages and reveals eternity to humanity.  Science is also on the verge of discovering the possibility of opening up the fourth dimension of time in order to make breakthroughs in time travel.  When these two disciplines work together, who knows what incredible insights into the seen and unseen dimensions of the universe will be revealed.  The result will most likely be humanity’s inspiration to attain absolute knowledge of the mysteries of eternity.

The new paradigm of time I discerned is endless time. It encompasses the eternal dimension of the universe that allows for infinite life. This dimension contains the unending transformations of nonstop creation. And life doesn’t have to start in the temporal world in order to be infinite because life is eternal and therefore has no starting point. The illusions of the third dimension emanate from a static view of space and time where objects exist and events take place in a linear sequence.  Perhaps one day the next brilliant scientist will be able to mathematically prove the existence of eternity.

Carisia H. Switala, MTS

To purchase the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/MTS-Carisia-H.-Switala/e/B00RUC6KGY

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Image Of A Spirit By Paul Williams


Does An Unusual Photographic Image Capture the Release Of The Human Soul?

In the new book, Image of a Spirit, Paul Williams shares what followed after he took a picture with a cell phone camera of the space surrounding his mother after she died.

Paul Williams has lived a full and adventure filled. Life. He graduated Harvard Phi Beta Kappa in 1965 and became an accomplished Hollywood film director, dated many beautiful women many of whom became famous in their own right. He was also a devoted son who spent the final weeks of his mom’s life with her in Manhattan. He was there with other family members when she died, on the morning of December 27, 2009.

He watched as the caring women attendants cleaned up his mom’s body and dressed her in her favorite blue shirt. He couldn’t be physical with his mother, so he kept his distance and watched the other prepare his mom for her final journey.

Having been a professional photographer, it was then, an hour and fort-five minutes after she died, that he instinctively grabbed his Blackberry smart phone and snapped a few photos looking above his mother towards the two devoted women and the beautiful, loving expressions on their respective faces as they hovered over her.
Picture Above: Left to Right: Miss P, Mom on her back, invisible-to-the-naked-eye psi figure, Melissa, me on my knees.

A few hours later, he uploaded the pictures to his Macbook laptop, and to his utter amazement, discovered a small--maybe six inches tall, blurry hominoid-like figure just above his mother’s body which had been captured by his cell pone camera.

Williams had taken tens of thousands of photographs in his life, had studied and even taught photography at Harvard.

But nothing prepared him for the image that was before him. The photos clearly showed a small utterly clear, distinct image of a person like entity. One of the women was bothered, even spooked by the images. They couldn’t shake the feeling that something was really weird.

Williams determined that there was no obvious conventional explanation for this small blurry figure. It could not be explained by stray reflections or other well-known optical mechanisms. That much was for certain.


What was in the photos? Was it a picture of his mother’s spirit?

Image of a Spirit is the story of Paul William’s experience as he sought to unravel the mystery of the images.

Williams went on a multi-year quest to determine the possible explanations for the captured images.

He shared the photos and sought advice from several Hollywood celebrities and colleagues.

He took the photos to experts for analysis and validation. He researched the possibilities and contacted with people with the highest credentials in the fields of photography, psi research, chemistry and energy science.

He met with Dean Radin, America’s leading scentist  in the field of psi phenomenon investigation. And he met with Loyd Auerbach, author of the classic ghost image referece, the 1996 ESP, Hauntings and Poltergeists.

He gave the photo to Digital Computer Photography expert Professor Hany Farid, in the Image Science Group at Dartmouth College. Dr. Farid developed with Adobe Corp. (Photoshop) the fool-proof  authenticator of digital photos – utilized by courts, the NY Times, and intelligence agencies. Farid performed the forensic evaluation and verified the authenticity of the photo.

Can a cell phone be used to prove the soul exists?

Image of a Spirit. 

What People Are Saying.

I find the image captured an hour after the death, above the corpse, of the mother of Paul Williams, is a really interesting anomaly. It cries out for an explanation. What does it mean? I don't know, but I'd like to know more about it. I've never seen anything like it. This well-written story of Williams' odyssey to answer the question is lively, unexpected, and intriguing.”

ANDREW T. WEIL, M.D., Founder of the field of integrative medicine, famed author of Spontaneous Healing, 8 Weeks to Optimum Health, Healthy Aging and many others

I have never seen such a photograph before—a ”ghost” image that, one, was not amorphous and cloudlike and, two, was comparable to an actual person in continuous time and space—much less one a few inches away and dead less than two hours. I do not know of anyone taking a picture of a specific loved one, so soon after death.

DEAN I. RADIN, PhD, Senior Scientist of the Institute of Noetic Studies, author of The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena, Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality and others.

There are no extant photos captured in the same time and place as the deceased, nor are any so clear, taken in the modern era of photography.

LOYD AUERBACH, Author of ESP, Hauntings, and Poltergeists: A Parapsychologist's Handbook, A Paranormal Casebook: Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium and others

I confirm that the photo shows no signs of manipulation or alteration. In summary, except for the importing of the photo into iPhoto, I confirm that the image IMG00191.jpg is authentic.

HANY FARID, PhD, Professor, Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College, Inventor, in partnership with Adobe Corp. (makers of Photoshop) of the fool-proof forensic analysis system of digital photos.

The picture–-and everything that followed-- more than justified Paul Williams writing this extraordinary book, and you and me reading this book carefully.

From the Foreword: 

“You are about to read a one-of-a-kind and likely history-making book.  I only have one concern about this book.  The book is so interesting, Williams’ life is so extraordinary (and eccentric), the author is so colorful and such a superb storyteller, that the scientific and spiritual significance of his apparent afterlife communication account may become overshadowed by his life.

“Of course, this makes for fun reading, and I personally enjoyed the book immensely.  However, the primary reason I decided to write this Foreword was to make sure that you, the reader, recognize the potential profundity of what Williams has discovered, and what it might mean for science as well as our personal lives.”


GARY E. SCHWARTZ, PhD - Professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Surgery, and Director of the Laboratory for Post-Materialist Science and Spirituality, at the University of Arizona; author of The Afterlife Experiments, The G.O.D. Experiment, The Energy Healing Experiments, and The Sacred Promise Paul Williams.

Also, since the reproductions in the "print-on-demand" Amazon version of the book had such poor quality reproductions, we are only offering the kindle version--no trade soft cover-- (I hope to get a quality publisher soon for a print edition for sale)…

Kindle edition $9.99  (http://www.amazon.com/Image-Spirit-Paul-Williams-ebook/dp/B00SZ4JI3S)
ISBN:  978-1-941768-39-6  Print Edition
ISBN:  978-1-941768-18-1  e-book
Published by Waterside Press

The first clear image of the human spirit was photographed accidentally, after the death of Paul Williams mother. This is the story of the taking and the subsequent authenticating and evaluating of the photograph by leading world experts.

This book is Williams odyssey of identifying, assessing and understanding a psi photo which clearly shows the image of a “spirit” or “ghost”, present at the same time and in the same place of the corpse.
The book is a narrative documentary which includes the results of interviews and evaluations with numerous researchers and experts along with interactions with many great and highly renowned individuals among them, the medium Sandra O’Hara, Pope John Paul II, Robert M. Gates, Erik H. Erikson, Huey P. Newton, Mescalito, the current Dali Lama’s teacher, H.H. Dilgo Khyntse Rinpoche, Oscar Ichazo, Fidel Castro, Francis Coppola  and Andrew T. Weil, M.D.

About the Author:

Sponsored by The National Science Foundation, Paul Williams wrote an undergraduate summa cum laude thesis on non-verbal communication, later published by Focal Press in 1970, in Messages of the Body.

He was a film director/producer/co-producer from 1965 to 2002 with credits to films including  1966; “Out of It” United Artists, Berlin Film Festival (Director/Writer) 1967; “The Revolutionary” U.A., Sorrento Film Fest (Dir.) , stars Robt Duval, Jon Voight 1969; “Dealing or the Berkley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues” (Dir) Warner Bros., based on book by Michael Crighton, stars Barbara Hershey, John Lithgow (also PW Screen Writer) 1971; “Badlands” Sissy Spacek & Martin Sheen, directed by T Malick 1972; “Phantom of the Paradise”, directed by BrianDePalma; “Nunzio,” (Dir) Universal, Toronto Film Festival 1975; “Miss Right” Sony (Dir), stars Virna Lisi, Karen Black, Marie-France Pisier, Margot Kidder, et al 1980;  “The November Men” (Dir) 1994;  “Mirage” Universal(Dir), stars Edward James Olmos, Sean Young (Wms., also Actor); 1996; “The Best Ever” (Dir)  a reality film of the Tantra teaching of Charles & Caroline Muir, 2002; Producer, “Cats: The Movie” Vivendi-Universal, directed by Susan Emerson.   Jeremy Piven and Michelle Rodriguez are among the voice actors, on screen nothing but cats, 2002. Researched as Producer/Director “And the Walls Came Tumbling Down…” in Poland and Italy, with Academy Award-winning writer John Briley (“Gandhi”).  A major production about the conflict between Pope John Paul II and the Eastern European empire of the Soviet Union, the film was suspended on direct orders from the Vatican.  Williams research included sessions with ex-CIA Chief, Robert Gates, ex-NSA head, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lech Walesa, various ex-Communist ministers and the highest prelates of the Catholic Church 2003-2004.

He was admitted into Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences, Directors’ Branch in 1972.

He was politically active and was friends with Eldridge Cleaver and Huey P. Newton, Visited Cuba with FF Coppola, Terrence Malik, et al; met with Fidel Castro, guarded him in 3-on-3 basketball games one morning in 1974.

He was married to Elizabeth Rosenwald (1967 to 1971). Later romances with Margot Kidder, Deborah Salt, had a child with Barbara Clarke Lilly (1974), Carrie Snodgress, Karen Black, et. al.

He lives in Malibu, California, and in Barra de Guaratiba, Rio de Janeiro.

Full bio on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0931435/