Thank you to everyone who attended the launch party on September 15th at Abi’s Books and Brews. Publishing my work was a huge leap of faith, and I could not have felt more supported than by the host of close friends that packed Abi’s on a Monday night. Thank you so much to Abi’s Books and Brews for being willing to host a launch for an unknown author and allowing me to use their space. Abi’s has quickly become a big piece of the Richmond community, and I could not have been happier with the kindness they’ve shown me during the launch.
If you want a signed copy of Profane Beasts, drop by Abi’s for one! I have signed all the copies that are out on their front shelf, and please support Abi’s as they continue making their coffee shop a kind and safe place for all.
Profane Beasts has also been featured this month on a curated list of indie books on bookshop.org! Just in time for spooky season, Profane Beasts is on Halloween Chills and Thrills on bookshop.org, where every purchase supports independent bookstores instead of acolytes of the seven eyed tree like this guy.
If you want to see the list of incredible Indie Horror check out this link here for not just Profane Beasts, but also some of the other groundbreaking work horror authors are doing right now!
Thank you so much for your support and care for this project! More updates on Profane Beasts will be coming soon, but like it’s said in the publishing business… the best way to market your book is to start writing the next one.
(Anita Hernan is an easy person to find, she likes it that way. Something of a minor internet celebrity, Anita broadcasts her live political show “Whole Truth” biweekly where she speaks to crystal enthusiasts, crash diet salesmen, long shot political candidates, and a few out and out conspiracy theorists. Her audience is a couple thousand strong per her metrics.
The content of these shows includes Anita’s personal political opinions along with extended advertisements for her list of increasingly ‘alternative’ health and wellness products to her followers. Anita leveraged her time as a meteorologist at (redacted) to build connections with the health and wellness community and establish her presence on social media. Her pushing of radical ideas, such as the belief that Hurricane Ophelia was manipulated by the US government to scare the population into taking action on climate change has isolated her from most of the journalist community, and I didn’t think much more of her than another crank selling insanity to make a buck until I listened to a recording of her show where she mentioned Calvary Baptist Church.
After a terse email exchange, I agreed to fly out to Sacramento to meet with Anita and hear what she has to say about “the big one.” I politely declined to be a guest on her show, but she enthusiastically agreed to talk to me about the “irregularities” surrounding Hurricane Ophelia. I mostly wanted to just see if she had a connection to Calvary Baptist Church outside of the storm given her incessant mentioning of the name. When I arrived in her studio, she had reams of weather maps laid out on her table and was standing in front of a monitor. I sighed and pulled out my tape recorder. I had figured prying into her personal connection with the church would be contingent on me listening to her various “opinions,” I just hoped it wouldn’t take too long.)
Anita Hernan – 03/02/2032
Speakers are Anita Hernan (referred to as “A” throughout the transcript) and Kellen Faulk (referred to as “KF” throughout the transcript)
A: Thank you for talking to me today, the mainstream media really has done a number on me recently, going after my sponsors, peppering me with false lawsuits, but they can’t silence the truth.
KF: The truth?
A: The truth about how our government keeps us passive and quiet, having all of the right opinions, and all of the right beliefs, and “government approved actions.” That’s why they are coming after me so much, that’s why I’m constantly getting served subpoena and cease and desists and every other dirty trick in the book. Because they know I’m close to uncovering the truth. That I’m so close to figuring out the messed up way they are controlling what we think about our planet and our place in the universe.
KF: Have you shared this truth with your viewers?
A: Not all of it, they aren’t ready, not yet. Deprogramming your mind from all the toxic propaganda our government pumps into our heads is a long process, and you don’t want to go too fast too quickly. Most people would go insane if they knew the whole truth, so you have to bring them along gently.
KF: But you are interested in sharing this mind altering truth with me?
A: You already know about Calvary Baptist Church, you are already on the path towards truth, I would say you are much farther along than my viewers.
KF: But what if I was to publish your “truth?” What then?
A: (Laughs) Come on now, you and I both know you aren’t publishing a word I say. I’m not stupid. Besides, all of the records and physical evidence that I’ve collected is staying right here with me, so if you want to stake your entire career off of my word alone, well I’ll put you in the rotation of frequent guest stars. We pay 30$ an appearance, which I think you’d be needing soon.
KF: Why Calvary Baptist Church? What’s important about the place?
A: I have here in front of you, meteorological maps of the city of Chesapeake, printed at every hour of the storm. I’ve got radar, rainfall averages, wind speed readings, all of the tools of the trade for the city during the entire time it was destroyed by Superstorm Ophelia. While Chesapeake never got hit by the apocalyptic winds of the eye wall that passed over Norfolk and Portsmouth, almost every populated area was flooded by the storm surge and several feet of rain that the storm dumped over the area over the two days it hovered across the city.
Look here at each of the neighborhoods. Great Bridge, mostly flooded out, Hickory, inundated, Greenbriar, buried under thirty feet of storm surge, and all the way out to Virginia Beach, Dam Neck and Princess Ann were devastated by floodwaters. These rainfall totals are beyond belief, some in the forty to fifty inches. Parts of Hickory were under pelting rain for nearly twenty-four straight hours.
Everywhere in the area was slammed by the storm, except right here on Mt. Pleasant Road.
(Alice pulls out another set of radar maps zoomed into the area around Calvary Baptist Church. Amidst the deep purples and reds of severe rainfall, the radar in a half a mile diameter around the church is clear.)
Right above the church, there’s no storm. You can check every moment during the all hands on deck broadcast Billy Vern did on the storm, bless that man. Not a single drop of rainwater according to either the radar, or the rainfall gauges fell on top of Calvary Baptist. It doesn’t add up, hurricanes do not selectively spare areas of impact. They aren’t tornadoes, they don’t skip houses, and the eye of the storm was nearly thirty miles north hovering over the Chesapeake Bay. This right here shows that there is something our government doesn’t want us to know about the storm, it shows that we have the technology to stop storms from striking vulnerable areas! This is huge, it means the government has been letting people die in these superstorms while protecting their key assets in the path of the storm!
KF: Calvary Baptist church was a key asset?
A: It must have been! If the use of weather manipulation technology is confirmed, like it is looking at these maps, then they must have deployed that power at Calvary Baptist!
KF: Ok, I understand. Now I do have a question that people might ask when this goes public, I know there has to be an explanation, but I think if I was the government, I would simply claim that the weather equipment malfunctioned under the strain of the storm.
A: Oh I know, that would be how I would twist the truth too. Luckily we have more evidence that Calvary Baptist was kept high and dry while the rest of the area drowned.
(Anita holds out a picture of seagull, and places two ziplock bags with what looks like hardened bird droppings of different sizes.)
KF: What am I looking at?
A: Birdshit.
(Anita grins at me like I don’t understand a convoluted inside joke.)
KF: And the birdshit means?
A: One of the cleanup crews reported an enormous amount of bird feces covering and surrounding the Calvary Baptist property within the half mile area that showed no signs of rainfall. Not only were they bird feces, but feces from terns, albatrosses, cormaments, and other species that generally range out over the Atlantic Ocean. These birds don’t come as far inland as Mt. Pleasant, and they certainly don’t swarm around populated areas, but the diversity and amount of birdshit around Calvary Baptist indicates that there was a huge number of sea-birds just hanging out on the property.
You see, seabirds have adapted to the faster and more powerful hurricanes we have today, they drift to the center and then chill in the eye of the storm where the winds and rains can’t bother them. Often this is where we find birds who are exhausted, or who don’t have the strength to escape the incredible power of the eyewall winds.
This birdshit means that those same seabirds were all congregating at Calvary Baptist, far from the eyewall, waiting for the storm to pass, confirming our radar that the church was shielded from the storm. The birds, they showed the government’s hand, showed the special technology they have that can blunt the effectiveness of these superstorms. So while they go on talking about “carbon emissions” and “sea level rise” and “reduced consumption” they’ve got the answer right here to solve the crisis.
KF: And you are bringing them the truth?
A: It’s what I do.
KF: What would you say to the families of (redacted) who recently identified the remains of their loved ones on the banks of the Elizabeth River? If I’m not mistaken, you are being sued for claiming the bodies were “made of rubber.”
A: I never claimed there were no deaths related to Superstorm Ophelia.
KF: What about your statements that many people who were confirmed dead during the storm have been spotted vacationing in South America?
A: If you wish to debate me on the merits of those claims I have a few spots still open throughout this week and the next. Let me see if I can fit you in between-
In preparation for the virtual cover reveal of Profane Beasts, I am ready to share the introduction of the novel. Below are the official first pages of Profane Beasts.
Virginia 1st District Court
Convention v Faulk
…. The following records in the civil libel case of Convention v Faulk are now unsealed for public viewing. These records include all emails, recordings, voice memos, and other relevant information that went into Mr. Faulk’s article posted on Medium titled “Strong Winds and Bloody Roots: The Dark Secret the Storm of the Century Concealed.” The case was brought to court due to “false” and “sensationalized” reports of the events surrounding Calvary Baptist Church both before and during Hurricane Ophelia. After careful consideration of the evidence, this court found that while the eyewitness testimony, email records, and voice recordings that Mr. Faulk used for his story are remarkable, we do not find that Mr. Faulk knowingly misrepresented any of his sources or showed blatant disregard for the truth.
The investigation by Mr. Faulk has revealed key information about the whereabouts of three missing people in the wake of Super-storm Ophelia. Alice Crenshaw, Kelly Harden, and Whitney Ellington’s bodies have never been recovered in the wake of the storm, and this court encourages opening new police investigations into their deaths based on the evidence that Mr. Faulk has revealed. While this court agrees that some of the more colorful pieces of Mr. Faulk’s reporting may flirt with the fantastical, one does not have to believe in the strangest accounts of the events surrounding Calvary Baptist Church in order to think that local police have more work to do in bringing closure to the families of Alice, Kelly and Whitney…
Author’s Note
Dear reader,
A feature of these documents that may immediately become clear to you is that unlike most evidence dumps from libel cases, these documents have been structured in the form of a narrative surrounding key people of interest such as Alice Crenshaw, Ernest Mobley, and others. In addition, the evidence is divided into three ‘parts’ with hymns or other lyrics attached to each ‘part’ of the story. This speaks to a design behind the presentation of evidence, and a final document set that reads more like a pulp story or tabloid than evidence dumps from an infamous court case.
Believe it or not, the submission of evidence in this manner was not my decision, but instead insisted upon by the people trying to ruin my name and my bank account. Their claim was not necessarily that I lied about the actual content of Alice Crenshaw’s voice memos or Ernest Mobley’s interviews, but instead that I had “put the documents together to imply patently false information about both Calvary Baptist Church and the Convention at large.” In response to the charge, I assembled the evidence together in the order that it appeared in the medium article.
As for the charge of misusing the evidence from Alice Crenshaw’s phone as well as the other interviews I’ve collected about what exactly hap-pened at Calvary Baptist Church while Hurricane Ophelia devastated the Hampton Roads area, I will leave that verdict in your hand’s dear reader. Believe Alice and Ernest or not, it’s up to you, but at least now you have the opportunity to hear their remarkable story.
Best,
-Kellan Faulk
‘P.S’. As you read, you will notice several important organizations, individuals, and entities are not named, but have instead been redacted from these documents distributed to the public. I hope you can understand that as someone who has just lived through one life altering lawsuit that took my job, my home, and almost cost me my marriage, that I hope to reduce the number of future lawsuits I am exposed to by as much as possible. I deeply hope to go the rest of my life without ever seeing the inside of a courthouse again.
Thank you,
-KF
‘P.S.S.’ Please be advised that the following documents include depiction and discussion of neglect, religious abuse, anti-queer hate crimes, severe night terrors, self-harm, suicide, murder, mutilation, and torture. Remember that at any point if you find these pieces of evidence too harrowing to look through, that the power is in your hands to put down the book, take a sip of a preferred beverage, and go on a brisk walk during a mild day. I truly believe that reading is one of the most consensual relationships a person can have to a piece of media, and if you feel yourself reaching your limits, feel free to put this upsetting document away for a time.
I do still encourage you to read it through the end, as I believe that encountering what is inside these documents in the comfort and safety of your bedroom, study, or coffee shop is important enough to face some psychic discomfort. Alice, Ernest and all the others never had the chance to just look away from what faced them at Calvary Baptist Church, you have the privilege to take a break and step away if it gets to be too much. I expect you not to waste such a generous opportunity.
-KF
Join me this Saturday at 7:30 on google meet for the official cover reveal and reading of another excerpt if you wish to dig to the bloody root of what happened at Calvary Baptist Church during the storm.
Nathan Buchholz 