The Impossible Cure.

My friend Ben used to watch old Lewis hobble along the sidewalk of the downtown square back in Enid, Oklahoma. Lewis always had his crutches, one under each arm, and he literally dragged his legs and feet along as he pivoted the crutches back and forth. He had gotten really good at it. Ben had seen him going along without missing a beat even when the streets and sidewalks were covered with a layer of ice.

     Ben never knew how Lewis became crippled, and he could not remember a time when Lewis was not using his crutches. His imagination led him down many paths: polio, a car wreck, thrown from a horse, a war injury, plane crash … Ben never knew. He had only heard it could not be fixed. Lewis would always be hopelessly crippled.  Ben had to admire his spirit, though. He’d often whistle as he swung himself along and nearly always had a smile to share when anyone passed him on the street.

     One evening, Ben was having a Coke with Uncle Charlie who was having something a little stronger. Uncle Charlie was himself a fixture in town: red close-cropped hair in a flat top, and a huge red handlebar mustache that he kept neatly waxed and curled up at the ends. Ben and Charlie were not really related, but Ben, along with everyone else, called him Uncle Charlie. Ben thought he was kind of like that strange uncle every family seemed to have.

     So, Uncle Charlie took a long drink of his adult beverage and ordered another one. Ben didn’t know how many he had finished before Ben got there, but Uncle Charlie did like to operate from a higher place than most people.

     “Hey, did I tell you what happened to Lewis?”

     Suddenly, Ben’s heart sank. Had something happened to Lewis? “No … what?”

     Uncle Charlie wiped the beer foam from the bottom of his mustache. “I saw him the other evening out at the big tent revival, you know, up there on that vacant lot at the north end of town. Some traveling preacher came into town and put up a big tent. The preacher claimed that God talks to him personally and tells him to travel around and spread His word. Says God gave him the power to heal just by placing his hands on people of faith, and all he asks of them is donations to keep him going. There were a lot of people there, and old Lewis was one of them.”

     “I never knew Lewis was particularly religious,”  Ben said, “and I thought he had long given up any thought of ever walking again.”

     “Well, Lewis was there nonetheless, a lot of people were, the place was packed. It was a warm night and the preacher was really wound up. I’m telling you, he had the people standing up and shouting out praises right along with him. And then he got to the healing part. Lewis was standing with a crutch under each arm yelling just about as loud as everyone else. The preacher spotted Lewis in the crowd and came right down off the little stage he’d set up and walked right over to him.” Uncle Charlie took another drink and continued.

     “That preacher had already taken off his coat, and he was sweating and swinging his arms around and practically shouting at the top of his lungs. He stopped directly in front of Lewis and slapped his right hand firmly down on the top of his head, almost knocking him over.

     “Do you believe?” the preacher shouted to Lewis. “Do you believe that the Lord God Almighty gave me the power to heal you?”

     “Lewis started shaking. The preacher asked the audience to join him in calling up the power. He pressed down harder on the top of Lewis’s head.”

     “If you truly believe that God gave me this power, you will be healed! You will walk again! I command you now, be healed!”

     Uncle Charlie went on. “He took the crutch from under Lewis’s right arm, held it high in the air, and then tossed it into the crowd. The place went wild. Women and men were weeping and raising their arms and shouting praises. Lewis was staring straight ahead in disbelief.”

     “Then the preacher, with his hand still on Lewis’s head, again shouted, ‘God told me to heal you … be healed!’ and took the crutch from under Lewis’s left arm, held it in the air and threw it nearly to the back of the crowd in the tent. Again, the crowd went crazy, more so than before. It was truly a sight to see; I’ll never forget it as long as I live.” Uncle Charlie took another long drink of his beverage and then carefully wiped the foam from his mustache as before.

     Ben couldn’t wait any longer to hear the rest. “What happened next, Uncle Charlie?”

     Uncle Charlie gave the tip of his red mustache a little twist and turned right to Ben. “Well, Lewis fell on his ass. He’s crippled you know.”

From the book "Twisted by the Wind" by Tom Hays

Shocked Listeners Hear Civilized Life on Planet Amphibia!

By Tom Hays

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my experiences a few years ago in a recording studio in Oklahoma, in which we were fortunate to have recorded strange signals from a distant planet.

I invited readers to visit a web page where they could hear actual samples of those recordings and, if they wished, order the complete collection of those recordings. The results have been gratifying.

As predicted, some felt compelled to question my sanity, but many were amazed (or perhaps amused) and immediately ordered the CD’s by mail or simply downloaded them in audiobook format from the internet. In my view, those who responded with an order were the smartest ones. They are already listening to every exciting episode in this historic series of recordings.

Now, it is your turn. If you have not yet listened to this series I urge you to listen and order now!

Wak Et Bong the Merciless Salamander

Are there really little green men from outer space? Here is where you find out:  http://www.starbasetoad.com

New Audio Books Reveal Secret Discovery of Civilized Life on Distant Planet.

Tom Hays, Writer/Producer

 It was a few years back, a time when life had a different feel to it. The air in the recording studio seemed electric … sparking … crackling with activity and creativity, spiced by the smells of stale pizza, herb and cigarette smoke, filled with the amplified sounds of voices, music and sound effects.

As my friend John and I worked into the fuzzy hours of the night building commercials for my advertising clients, we had little knowledge of just what was coming our way, courtesy of an errant sound mixing console.

My agency studio was filled with second hand equipment, mostly acquired from radio stations. That old broadcast console and the Ampex recorders had some miles on them, but I had a good consulting engineer go through the place on a regular basis who kept it right up to specs.  Maybe too good.

As I said, it was late, and we were trying to finish up, but as we were listening to a playback, we started to hear some sounds that were not coming from what we had just recorded, faint sounds as if from far, far away. We were in a soundproof studio. Nothing was on except the tape player, the console and the speakers. What was that noise? We turned off the tape playback, but the far away sound persisted. We turned the speakers all the way down, and still the strange sounds came. With our ears we followed the sound to the source, the small broadcast monitor speaker in the console. We were not a radio station. We were not “broadcasting” anything. It got weird after that.

“If we’re not broadcasting,” I said, “then we must be receiving.” John turned up the volume on the console monitor and the sound became more audible. It was like nothing we had ever heard before, like a microphone was on in a strange place and no one knew it was on, and it was being transmitted.  Somehow, my old radio broadcast console was picking up that transmission. Strange indeed, for the sounds were like an old radio serial from days gone by. “John,” I said, “we’d better get this while we can.”   John turned on one of the recorders and we started recording.

The recordings continued, night after night, and in time we came to discover that what we were hearing was some sort of transmission from a small planet named Amphibia, in a far away galaxy known as Croakatoria. All in all, we managed to piece together 40 of these recordings. Astounded as we were, but fearing how the government dealt with those people telling stories about "hearing people from outer space", we dared not release the recordings to the public. The project was code named “Star Base Toad”.

Kept secretly and securely in my vault for all these years, I have now decided to risk ridicule and share these recordings with others who may find them of interest …  people who may wish to hear about life on other planets, about alien civilizations and the distant reaches of space and time. It is important to me that the world has the opportunity, through these recordings, to study the society that exists on Amphibia so that we may try to better understand our own. There has never been a time when we needed that more than right now.

In order to share this amazing audio discovery with as many people as possible, I have transferred the 40 recorded Star Base Toad episodes to 4 audio books, which have been published and are being distributed online by OpenBookAudio.com. They are now available at most audio book dealers including iTunes and Audible.com.  The four audio books are also available in CD format at StarBaseToad.com.

If your imagination will allow you to believe that life exists elsewhere, you can now listen and learn about the strange and exciting life on Amphibia. I urge you to listen carefully to the entire series.