FATEMAG.COM

by April Slaughter
Researcher, Author & Journalist

Drawing titled "Herbert" by Paulina Cassidy.

J.M. Barrie, author of the classic play Peter Pan, portrayed Tinker Bell as the quintessential fairy; a being of light constantly changing, beautiful, graceful and endearing. According to Barrie, not believing in the existence of fairies meant certain death to them as if being intimately tied into human imagination was intrinsic to their survival. But do fairies actually exist and are they what we grew up picturing them to be? Are they all as inviting as Tinker Bell, ready and willing to grant our every wish and lead us into a world of endless adventure? Read the rest of this entry »

On the evening of Thursday, June 10, 2010 I went to prison – not as an inmate, but as a researcher. The Huntsville Unit Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas is an ominous red brick structure jutting up from the East Texas hillside. The ‘Walls,’ as it has commonly been called for decades, is the oldest prison in Texas and it still currently processes and houses inmates. Stories of ghostly apparitions and strange noises abound, and it’s no wonder; history has been made here. Texas leads the country in the number of inmate executions every year, and this is where all of them are carried out.

There are two death houses here, though only one currently remains operational. From 1924 to 1964 Texas executed inmates via the electric chair. A total of 361 condemned individuals rode the “thunderbolt” into the afterlife, paying the ultimate price for the crimes they had committed. “Old Sparky” now resides at the Texas Prison Museum, also located in Huntsville. Today, inmates on Death Row are put to death by means of lethal injection.

I will admit that I was initially drawn to Huntsville and the prison museum to see the electric chair, wondering if it held residual energy from its past. As it turns out, the electric chair draws more people to the museum than any of the other displays; this, according to the museum’s director and retired warden of the Walls, Jim Willett.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the early morning hours of Sunday, October 10, 2010 at the Black Swan Inn (View a short video by Village House) in San Antonio, Texas, something happened to me that will forever impact the way I look at life… and all that lies beyond it. For over half of my life now, I have been actively searching for things most people consider to be ‘on the fringe.’ Every once in awhile in the past, I would catch a glimpse of something I knew I shouldn’t be able to see; hear a voice on a recorder that I shouldn’t be able to hear. I have been chasing after things I believed to be true, but didn’t exactly know beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true. I used to think, Well, maybe I’m crazy. Maybe this is all just a product of my imagination. Maybe I just want to believe something supernatural is occurring when it very well may not be.

Every doubt I secretly harbored no longer exists. Read the rest of this entry »