Showing results by author "E.R. Bills" in All Categories

A little boy and girl disappear at Bible camp in the Big Thicket. An amateur sleuth discovers the true meaning of the phrase “dead end” in his pursuit of a Lovecraftian imp. A kitchen appliance becomes a portal to another dimension. A Nacogdoches jogger tries a hellish cure for his nicotine addiction. And, an aging, iconic monster confronts an existential quandary in West Texas.... These horrors - and more - await you in this, the fifth volume of Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers.

Some of these quirky true stories might surprise even the most proud Texan. Austin sat the first all-woman state supreme court in the nation in 1925. A utopian colony thrived in Kristenstad during the Great Depression. Bats taken from the Bracken and Ney Caves and Devil's Sinkhole were developed as a secret weapon that vied with the Manhattan Project to shorten World War II. In Slaton in 1922, German priest Joseph M. Keller was kidnapped, tarred, and feathered amid anti-German fervor following World War I.

An exotic fortune cookie-maker hangs up her rolling pin to spare her customers the terrible truth. A dying man comes to terms with the Halloween inside to survive. A woman finds Ambrose Bierce's diary and resolves to break its curse by making her death the final entry. A long-dead lynching victim returns to punish the men responsible for his grotesque execution. The stories in award-winning author E. R. Bills’ first turn at horror fiction showcase an unsettling new voice in the genre.

For four years now, Bret McCormick and E. R. Bills have been beating the bushes and peering into abandoned wells to seek out the most terrifying tales the Lone Star State has to offer. They have left no stone unturned, no attic unexplored, and no grave undesecrated. And boy howdy, has their diligence has paid off!

On February 2, 1963, a tanker with 39 men aboard departed Beaumont and never returned. In the mid-spring of 1882, Billy the Kid's friend, foe, and equal escaped Huntsville Penitentiary and vanished. On December 9, 1961, a young boy in Wichita Falls disappeared without a trace. On November 18, 1936, a father and son were swallowed by a Walled Kingdom. On December 23, 1974, three girls went to a Fort Worth mall and were never seen or heard from again. This collection explores 20 baffling disappearances that investigators have studied for decades, to no avail.

Part of a coordinated, nationwide Vietnam moratorium effort that confounded and infuriated the Nixon White House, the San Marcos 10 challenged their suspension, taking their case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Author E. R. Bills offers this fascinating glimpse into the 1960s antiwar movement in Texas, the extraordinary measures to quell it, and the broader social activism in which it participated.