Los Angeles International.
A bomb on a transfer bus.
A fragment of metal, a millimetre from his brain.
He survived.
And now he can leave his body.
Astral Encounters
A paranormal thriller series
The story
A terrorist bomb kills a grieving father’s wife and leaves shrapnel lodged by his brain, unlocking the power to leave his body. Now an FBI agent with something to prove needs that power to stop the next attack.
Mark Lewis came to California on holiday with his wife and daughter. He leaves without his wife, with a scar on his forehead, and with something else: the ability to step out of his own body and travel anywhere, tethered to it by a single silver cord.
His daughter is the only witness who can identify the bomber’s accomplice, and the cell knows it. FBI Special Agent Imad Dahn, an outsider in his own bureau, is running out of conventional options. So he takes a gamble that could end his career: trusting a grieving Englishman who claims he can see what no surveillance can.
Every time Mark leaves his body, the cord grows thinner. And the terrorists are planning something spectacular.
The world
Where it happens
- 01
Los Angeles
LAX, a hospital bed, and the first step outside his body.
- 02
The Pacific Coast
From Monterey to Bixby Creek Bridge, the chase heads north.
- 03
Photo: Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 3.0
San Francisco
Fog over the Golden Gate, and a target in its sights.
- 04
Kashmir
In Astral Terror, the hunt moves to a terrorist base high in the mountains.
The characters
Who you’ll meet
Mark Lewis
An English accountant and grieving widower with a gift that costs him every time he uses it.
Clare
His daughter. She survived the bomb, and she’s the reason he keeps coming back.
Special Agent Imad Dahn
An Arab-American FBI agent with everything to prove, and the nerve to believe the impossible.
Kirstie Ackermann
The nurse who goes far beyond her duty for Mark and Clare.
Mohammed Riaz
Urbane, ruthless, and determined to finish what he started.
The books
Reading order
Book 1
From Your Tethered Body
Mark Lewis's California holiday ends in an explosion of metal and glass when terrorists detonate a bomb on an LAX airport transfer bus, killing his wife and driving a three-inch piece of shrapnel into his forehead. The fragment stops a millimetre short of the pineal gland, opening his Third Eye: the pathway to astral projection.
Book 2
Astral Terror
Using his astonishing powers of astral projection, Mark Lewis helped the FBI thwart a terrorist bombing campaign. It seemed the threat was over. But unknown to Lewis and the FBI, an old Soviet paranormal experiment has given the terrorists an astral warrior of their own: an embittered Chechen jihadist.
The truth behind the fiction
Real history, real legend
The Third Eye
The pineal gland, a tiny structure deep in the brain, has long been linked to spiritual sight. Descartes called it the seat of the soul.
The silver cord
Accounts of out-of-body experience describe a shining cord connecting the traveller to their sleeping body. The image even appears in the Bible: “or ever the silver cord be loosed”.
Bilocation
Saints from Anthony of Padua to Padre Pio were reported in two places at once. Witnesses described them as fully present, miles from where they slept.
The psychic spies
During the Cold War, US intelligence funded remote-viewing research for over two decades. The programme, later known as Stargate, was declassified in 1995.
For producers
Film and television rights available
Returning drama · 8 × 60 per season. Homeland meets Heroes, with the drive of The Dead Zone.
Request the pitch pack