Showing results by narrator "Mike Vendetti" in All Categories

It has always been the prerogative of genius to batter on the portals of the Unknowable - and then thrust his soul into the crack, like the little Dutch boy, to keep the devil out. The satanic legends surrounding the unbelievable career of the great concertist Paganini leave little doubt that somewhere there is a window such as Erich Zann's, beyond which lies a world more terrible than imagination can grasp, where science dwindles to zero and incredible passions rage as winds in a vacuum.

With old age come losses. The body ages and the elderly person is unable to partake of activities that were once normal, and the mind may not be as sharp as it once was. Perhaps worst of all is loss of control of ones affairs. Col. Hampton had been a powerful man. He fought Indians, Moros in the jungles of Mindanao, he had been that rara avis in the American service, a really wealthy professional officer. He had played polo, and served a turn as military attaché at the Paris embassy.

As the distribution of power in the United States shifts to the privileged one percent, it becomes more and more difficult for those not born into that elite class to attain a degree of the success enjoyed by their fathers. Louis William Rogers, early 20th proponent of reincarnation, life after death, karma, esoteric mysticism, and matters of philosophical idealism has created this excellent motivational piece still applicable in the 21st century.

An unnamed narrator describes the final fate of his good friend, Denys Barry, an Irish American who reclaims an ancestral estate in Kilderry, a fictional town in Ireland. Barry ignores pleas from the local peasantry not to drain the nearby bog, with unfortunate supernatural consequences. Narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads "The Festival", a short story by H. P. Lovecraft written in October 1923 and published in the January 1925 issue of Weird Tales. It is considered to be one of the first of his Cthulhu Mythos stories.

What if there were a product that taken daily and barring an untimely accident or murder allowed one to live indefinitely? In Kurt Vonnegut Jr's fanciful tale, that is just what happens. At first the miracle product Anti-gerasone seems like a blessing. But what if the population keeps breeding? How to make room for the new ones. And then there is the problem of the curmudgeon who doesn't get the stuff until he's in his late 70s becomes head of the family and is still going strong 104 years later.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti narrates "The War Prayer", a short story or prose poem by Mark Twain, a scathing indictment of war and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war.

Part of Lovecraft's dream series, Celephaïs was created in a dream by Kuranes (which is his name in dreams - his real name is not given) as a child of the English landed gentry. As a man in his 40s, alone and dispossessed in contemporary London, he dreams it again and then, seeking it, slowly slips away to the dreamworld. Finally knights guide him through medieval England to his ancestral estate, where he spent his boyhood, and then to Celephaïs.

They were married, but they hated and couldn't stand each other. Why not a divorce? Not that easy when there is a lot of money involved. Perhaps they could work things out on a trip to the Swiss Alps.

If, after a great struggle, the East were to prevail over the world, what sort of civilization would be imposed by the victors? Would it be an oriental version of the societies we know - or might the great old culture be superimposed upon what was left of Western technology? The story is set in a post-apocalyptic future where global civilization is governed by a hierarchical, religious society centered around belief in karmic-based reincarnation metaphorically viewed as moving forward or backward on a turning wheel.

A group of pilgrims venture to a new planet, leaving Earth to escape the persecution they endured there only to find naked heathens inhabiting their new planet. The heathens worship a spaceship embedded in the hillside. The heathens speak English, but the pilgrims cannot abide their ways, so they decide to destroy them tomorrow because today is the Sabbath. A big surprise awaits them.

As curator of the Twentieth Century Exhibit, George Miller felt that to do a good job, he had to live his work. Then, one day, somebody got into his exhibit, and he went to investigate.

It begins innocently enough, until a beautiful lady passes his table and then returns and drops a card on the table. The message is written in French, and he does not understand what is written there; and it seems that anyone who can read what is written on the card become so aghast that they refused to tell the gentleman what it says.

What a coincidence. The mummies wake up once a millennium, and who should stumble into the pyramid but our hero? This is a fun little story about a British ne'er-do-well who has found possible wealth and prosperity by becoming engaged to the rather plain - and plain is a nice word for it - daughter of a new English nobleman. But wait. He wanders into the pyramid when the mummies have their 24 hours of life once a millennium, and he falls madly in love with the Pharaoh's daughter, who is some 6,000 years old.

The gems in this piece are as relevant today as they were 200, 1000 or 2000 years ago. Sit back and absorb as award winning narrator Mike Vendetti shares Ben's wisdom.

The Mysterious Card Unveiled by Cleveland Moffett narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti is the sequel to The Mysterious Card, which left the mystery unsolved. This sequel is far more evil than the original.

Metempsychosis, the supposed transmigration and death of the soul of a human being or animal into a new body of the same or a different species is the key to this short story by Edgar Allen Poe, narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti. "Metzegerstein", the title of this short story by Edgar Allen Poe, is the name family name of a family that has carried on a long standing feud with the Berlifitzing family bitter rivals somewhere in Eastern Europe.

The Ghosts begins as straightforward haunted house story, one coming out of the Gothic tradition. Our hero, a skeptic, is staying with his brother at an ancient baronial estate. There, he argues with his brother about the existence of ghosts, and what sorts of evidence for their existence would be acceptable. Then, in order to make his point, he proceeds to induce in himself a ghostly experience by means darkness, drugs, and deprivation.

Billy Sunday the acclaimed evangelist of the early 20th century did this sermon extolling Christians to vote for prohibition. Much of his rhetoric resembled today's reasoning for not legalizing marijuana.

Did he drown? Is he dreaming? Did he almost drown? Only Lord Dunsany, aka Edward Plunkett, the eighteenth baron of Dunsany, knows for sure.