Stuff by Paul Brown » Features

Hands Resist Him – the eBay Haunted Painting

Paul — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:32:16 +0000

When Bryan first saw the painting he began to cry. The college student found the artwork listed for sale on eBay. As he studied the photographs on the auction website, he claims, his computer screen turned white and he felt a blast of heat coming from the monitor, ‘like when you open a hot oven door’. He called for his flatmate who was watching TV in the next room. Now Bryan was speaking in tongues, tears were streaming down his face, his hair was standing on end, and his face was beet red. The flatmate held him and recited prayers. ‘I’m telling you the absolute truth now,’ Bryan says. ‘I have never been so scared in all my life…’

Published in the Sunday Herald Magazine on 26 October 2003.
Read the full article as it was published from The Sunday Herald (PDF)

Jet Pack Murder Mystery

Paul — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 14:37:59 +0000

It was almost midnight on December 3 1999. A handcuffed man staggered through the dark streets of North Hollywood. Exhausted, he spotted a payphone and clambered into the booth. Dialling 911, he asked to be connected to the FBI, before relating to a stunned agent a bizarre tale involving a deranged kidnapping plot, various vicious assaults, a $10 million lawsuit, a ruined friendship, and a brutal and unsolved murder. And it all revolved around the building of a futuristic jet-propelled personal flying machine known as the Rocket Belt 2000…

Published in Jack magazine, July 2003. The feature was later turned into my book The Rocketbelt Caper.

Jack was an alternative men’s magazine launched by James Brown in 2002. After contributing several articles, from February 2004 I became the magazine’s DVD editor, writing reviews and interviewing the likes of director Eli Roth. The magazine was closed in August 2004.

The real Lost: The mystery of Flight 574

Paul — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:19:28 +0000

On New Years Day 2007 a Boeing 737 airliner carrying 96 passengers and 6 crewmembers disappeared from the skies above Indonesia. Adam Air Flight 574 was en route from Java to Sulawesi when it vanished from air traffic control radars. No distress signals were received, and the aircraft had been successfully evaluated for airworthiness just a week before it disappeared. A sprawling search and rescue mission combed land and sea for several days without success. How could a 33-tonne airliner and 102 people simply vanish..?

Published in Sunday Herald Magazine on 29 April 2007.
Read the full article, text only at the Sunday Herald website, or as it was published with illustrations as a downloadable PDF.