Brad Steiger - Real Nightmares (Book 5): Fiends That Want Your Blood

A real nightmare occurs when you experience a frightening encounter with something strange and unknown, and you know without question that you are not asleep, that you are not dreaming. You know with every ounce of your being that the chilling encounter is real.

I first experienced real nightmares when I was a child. Today, my sister and I attribute our insomnia to the ghostly visitors that walked through our bedrooms nearly every night and kept us awake. Our farmhouse was built on the site of the old stagecoach stop, and it seemed that some other-worldly passengers were still trying to catch the last stage out of this dimension. It didnt help when our parents tore the old house down and built a new home on the same site. Our spirit companions still appeared as shadows moving about the house and amused themselves by knocking on the walls, stomping about with heavy feet, and opening and closing doors. Growing up with real nightmares on a regular basis prepared me for the nights in my adulthood when I would investigate haunted houses with a team of paranormal researchers and encounter a wide variety of other-worldly beings.

For the past five decades, I have been devoted to exploring and examining unusual, unexplainable, and otherwise strange occurrences. In addition to in-field research, I have collected chilling tales of the strange and unknown for many years. My first published works appeared in national publications when I was a twenty-year-old college senior. I wrote a number of stories and articles on the weird, the paranormal, and the mysterious for a wide variety of mystery and mens magazines. While I was a high school and college English teacher, I wrote numerous short stories for such magazines as Fantastic, Alfred Hitchcocks Mystery Magazine, The Saint, Exploring the Unknown, and Fate. My first book was Monsters, Maidens, and Mayhem: A Pictorial History of the Hollywood Monster Movie, followed by the sequel, Master Movie Monsters, later that same year. Next was a collection of my articles on the paranormal published as Ghosts, Ghouls, and Other Peculiar People. I finally left teaching and became a full-time paranormal researcher and writer.

I have been fortunate that my books and articles have struck a responsive chord with both fans and critics. My editing of Project Bluebook was hailed by Omni magazine as one of the best UFO books of the century. I was inducted into the Hypnosis Hall of Fame for my work with UFO contactees, abductees, and past life regression, and I received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the National UFO and Unexplained Phenomena Conference.

My good fortune brightened even more when I began a friendship and a working relationship with Sherry Hansen, who had worked closely with Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the official scientific advisor for the U.S. Air Forces twenty-year study of UFOs. In the latter years of his life, and until his death, Sherry served as his publicist at his nonprofit UFO research organization in Phoenix.

We married in 1987, and for the next fifteen years we lectured and conducted seminars on our combined research into the paranormal, UFOs, and mysterious phenomena throughout the United States and overseas. A number of reviewers have referred to us as the original Mulder and Scully and suggested that we had well established our own X-Files long before the television series began. We were featured in twenty-two episodes of the television series Could It Be a Miracle?, and together some of our television appearances and specials include: The Joan Rivers Show, Entertainment Tonight, Inside Edition, Hard Copy, Hollywood Insider, and specials on HBO, USA Network, The Learning Channel, The History Channel, and Arts and Entertainment (A&E), among others.

I have written more than two thousand articles with paranormal themes. I am the author or coauthor of more than 170 books, including Real Vampires, Night Stalkers, and Creatures from the Darkside; Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and Haunted Places; The Werewolf Book; and with my wife, Sherry, the co-author of forty-three books, including Real Miracles, Divine Intervention, and Feats of Incredible Survival; Conspiracies and Secret Societies, and Real Aliens, Space Beings, and Creatures from Other Worlds.

Thanks to my loyal fansmany of whom state that they began reading my books when they were only ten or eleven years old and have followed my work ever sinceI have been able to devote my career to exploring and examining unusual, unexplainable, and otherwise strange occurrences. The reviews have also been consistently appreciativeoften with a recurrent theme of leaving the lights on and not being able to sleep after reading one of my books.

While most individuals would probably be offended if someone accused them of giving them nightmares, I take it as a compliment.

Commenting on my chilling Real Vampires, Night Stalkers, and Creatures from the Darkside, a reviewer wondered if Stephanie Meyer would ever have written the Twilight books if she had read my book first.

Another reviewer stated that Real Vampires was far darker, more ominous than anything that Hollywood could ever throw at us.

Yet another warned that Real Vampires will keep you awake at night and you will want to sleep with the lights on, which I must warn you may be the only way that you will rest at all.

Real Zombies, the Living Dead, and Creatures from the Darkside prompted similar warnings from book reviewers:

Like a Zombie, this book will grab you by the jugular vein and wont let go. Real Zombies is fascinating, chilling, blood curdling.

Those who reviewed Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and Haunted Places also felt it was their duty to advise readers of possible nightmares as a result of reading the book:

There were several occasions where I had to stop and allow the chills to pass, but I still had to read with all the lights on.

This book will scare you out of your wits!

There are terrifying tales of ghosts and mysterious beings that will unnerve you.

Brad Steigers gripping narrative style takes readers inside the haunts and explores the ghostly activity from the perspective of the witnesses.

A Steiger classic that will send innumerable chills and shivers up and down the readers spine.

Real Monsters, Gruesome Creatures, and Beasts from the Darkside brought similar forewarnings from reviewers that readers may suffer resultant nightmares from reading the book:

Filled with gripping, nail-biting monster stories, be prepared to give up sleeping until you are completely finished with this book.

This book earns a prominent place in my personal library because of its scare factor.

Ive been interested in the paranormal all of my life, and I have never been afraid of monsters until I read this book.

You will have to leave the lights on to get even half-way through this book.

And now, in an exciting new and unique series entitled Real Nightmares, my publisher Visible Ink and I are offering you some fan favorites from those books that readers have declared the most frightening, scary, and awesomethe ones that they had to leave the lights on to finish reading.