CUT TO THE QUICK: Short stories for very busy people

by Anthony Talmage, Virtual Voice (Narrator)

What is it that’s so bad about a man’s marriage that he is driven to commit the perfect murder? Why is a gambler’s fate sealed when messages from the future give him the names of winning horses? Will a psychic be able to help the desperate parents of a kidnapped child? These are just a few of the stories in this collection of bite-sized tales which include ghostly goings-on, out-of-this-world visitations, murder, the paranormal, fantasy, nostalgia and much, much more. Author Anthony Talmage escorts us through a rollickingly enjoyable collection of stories for grown-ups

Audible Audio

Published March 24, 2025

About the author

n my career as a BBC journalist and broadcaster and a national and regional journalist, I’d written my fair share of stories about The Unexplained which piqued my interest in the paranormal. This led me to membership of the widely-respected Society for Psychical Research, and the British Society of Dowsers where I learned the art of divining. After establishing the Guernsey Society of Dowsers, I went on to focus my dowsing skills on the areas of Health and Subtle Energies. I later taught dowsing at the Guernsey College of Further Education and I still run workshops on both dowsing and energy healing.
How it all started
My interest in the paranormal began with a car crash. I was driving back to my home in Sussex having just bought my first, brand-new Triumph Spitfire convertible. As I tootled along with the top down I decided to test its performance and pressed down on the accelerator. Before I knew it I had hit 60mph on a suburban dual carriageway. Suddenly, a car hurtled, backwards out of a driveway right into my path. I wrenched on the steering wheel but, due to my inexperience with this particular car, over-corrected and found myself crashing across the central reservation and spinning into heavy traffic coming from the other direction. I remember thinking to myself, ‘What a stupid way to die…’ Then, all noise seemed to cease and I found ‘myself’ floating above that young man in the driving seat watching him fighting for control as if I was viewing a film. The floating ‘I’ was utterly detached and filled with compassion for ‘him’ (not ‘me’) and thinking, ‘how sad.’ Then, abruptly, I was back in my body again and the air was filled with the crashing and grinding of metal as I eventually came to a stop against someone’s garden wall. Calmly, I switched off the engine and got out of the wreckage. I hadn’t even been scratched! But that out-of-body episode changed my life as I realised there is a part of every human being that is eternal, can float freely and retain some kind of intelligence. Thus began a lifetime researching what you might call The Unexplained - the mystical, occult, paranormal, esoteric, mysterious and Things That Go Bump in the Night. And the more I studied the more I realised that access to supernatural powers is not confined to the favoured few but is open to us all. What gives us access to these powers is our Minds. Confirmation of this conclusion came through my interest in dowsing, which I was astonished to find retrained my mind to create a portal to other dimensions. And I realised anyone can do it. I cover all this in more detail in Dowse Your Way To Psychic Power. Meanwhile, my other book In Tune With The Infinite Mind is a good introduction to the whole subject of the power of human consciousness.
With unprecedented changes happening to the Planet and to Humanity there has never been a greater need for positive minds to assert themselves.