Please help me find an older book about secret experiments, the Antichrist, and quite possibly the end of the world.
September 11, 2011 9:07 PM Subscribe
Help-me-find-a-book-filter: a group of doctors is experimenting with death to find out if there's an afterlife. They unexpectedly unleash the Antichrist, who metes out mayhem and dire prophecies upon the unsuspecting mortal world.
The doctors form a covert group to find out what happens after we die (sort of like the beginning of Flatliners). They take turns secretly experimenting on one another, figuring out through trial and error how cold they have to keep the body while still keeping the brain alive. The invent a way to use EEG to decipher words from the subject's brain patterns, which essentially becomes a brain to text gateway.
Things look promising for their little project and the day comes that the best candidate of the group goes under and starts reporting back to them about what he's experiencing. The doctor's consciousness is in this dark place surrounded by what feels like a veil or curtain that encompasses him. The tension mounts as some unknown entity starts trying to pierce the veil, seemingly wanting to get at him.
What wants in is the Antichrist (I think he calls himself the son of the devil or maybe son of Lucifer). He takes possession of the doctor's body, then goes on a murderous crime spree to try out his new human host. Naturally, he winds up in jail, where he starts telling a priest about how the Bible is wrong and that all the Christians have been going about things completely backwards. IIRC at first everyone thinks he's crazy, but then they start taking him seriously. I can't remember how it ended, but I would guess there was a lot of panicking and carnage.
I remember that the book was trade paperback, had a cream/white cover with just text on it. I think it was written by a male author and was probably published in the late 70s or early 80s. It's not Dean Koontz, but other than that it could be anyone. Does anybody remember this book?
The doctors form a covert group to find out what happens after we die (sort of like the beginning of Flatliners). They take turns secretly experimenting on one another, figuring out through trial and error how cold they have to keep the body while still keeping the brain alive. The invent a way to use EEG to decipher words from the subject's brain patterns, which essentially becomes a brain to text gateway.
Things look promising for their little project and the day comes that the best candidate of the group goes under and starts reporting back to them about what he's experiencing. The doctor's consciousness is in this dark place surrounded by what feels like a veil or curtain that encompasses him. The tension mounts as some unknown entity starts trying to pierce the veil, seemingly wanting to get at him.
What wants in is the Antichrist (I think he calls himself the son of the devil or maybe son of Lucifer). He takes possession of the doctor's body, then goes on a murderous crime spree to try out his new human host. Naturally, he winds up in jail, where he starts telling a priest about how the Bible is wrong and that all the Christians have been going about things completely backwards. IIRC at first everyone thinks he's crazy, but then they start taking him seriously. I can't remember how it ended, but I would guess there was a lot of panicking and carnage.
I remember that the book was trade paperback, had a cream/white cover with just text on it. I think it was written by a male author and was probably published in the late 70s or early 80s. It's not Dean Koontz, but other than that it could be anyone. Does anybody remember this book?
Response by poster: Sadly, I've been all over that Wiki page. It's part of what's so frustrating with this ongoing search. I've searched library catalogs, Wikipedia, Google, Bing, Yahoo, several of the book search sites and still zilch. I get all kinds of srs bzns doomsday Rapture stuff, scholarly works, page and pages of tangentially related material, but never the book or its author. I've been looking off and on for a couple of years now (basically just whenever I think of it).
The reason I'm looking for it is that the description of the possession was scary as shit (or at least it was when I was reading it). I literally threw the book towards the head of the bed so it would fall through the gap between the mattress and the wall. I left it on the floor for about a week before I was willing to pick it up and finish reading. (Even being an atheist didn't make me immune to the fear of the unknown and the dark entity tap, tap, tapping on the veil of his consciousness.)
posted by i feel possessed at 9:06 PM on September 18, 2011
The reason I'm looking for it is that the description of the possession was scary as shit (or at least it was when I was reading it). I literally threw the book towards the head of the bed so it would fall through the gap between the mattress and the wall. I left it on the floor for about a week before I was willing to pick it up and finish reading. (Even being an atheist didn't make me immune to the fear of the unknown and the dark entity tap, tap, tapping on the veil of his consciousness.)
posted by i feel possessed at 9:06 PM on September 18, 2011
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posted by dgeiser13 at 9:44 AM on September 12, 2011