Yes, it’s another Top 20 for 2020 list! And it’s another one about failed predictions, this time from alleged psychics of long, long ago instead of the recent past. As always these bogus predictions are fun from a Flash Fiction angle.
MALACHY O’MORGAIN (1094-1148)
*** The reign of the final Pope ever will come to a close in 2013. Since that is obviously wrong, these other predictions about O’Morgain’s Final Popes are wrong as well.
*** Before 2013 a Pope who was born in a Middle Eastern country will witness massive persecutions of Christians during his reign and will ultimately fall victim to the persecutors himself.
*** The final Pope to call himself Leo will oversee a period in which all of humanity unites under Christianity.
*** Petrus Romanus, Peter of Rome, will be the very last Pope. He will preside over the destruction of Rome and the end of the world in 2013.
URSULA SONTHIEL (1488-1561)
*** A Muslim leader with a ferocious army will conquer all of Europe before finally taking England itself.
*** A Holy War to retake England will break out with the United States and Russia fighting on the side of Christianity. Much of England will be laid waste.
COINNEACH ODHAR (1630-1685)
*** A submarine in Holy Loch will unleash a missile powerful enough to destroy all of Scotland. Continue reading
Here at Balladeer’s Blog I’m about responding to you readers. Some of you responded very strongly to the way I sprinkled my reviews of Robert Ludlum’s Top Seven Novels with observations of what I would have liked to see in terms of offshoots or spin-off stories. So, since Expanded Universes are becoming all the rage in recent decades here’s an outline of my fan fiction-style view of an Expanded Robert Ludlum Universe. 
I. BEOWULF AGATE – Series of short stories or a made for cable series. The tales would be set from the 1950s to late 1970s, ending just before the events in The Matarese Circle. Ludlum’s fictional intelligence organization Consular Operations would take center stage.
II. OPERATION: MEDUSA – Another series of short stories or a made for cable series. Ludlum’s Operation: Medusa was his fictional version of the Vietnam War’s real-life Phoenix Project. Operation: Medusa was the top-secret, paramilitary Black Operations outfit in which David Webb aka Jason Bourne got his first covert experience. 
However, as the decades wore on and African Americans had greater opportunities open up to them many of them began making up their own minds about what political attitudes they would embrace and what political candidates they would support. This did not sit well with the Democratic Party’s power brokers and the nascent Liberal fanatics in their ranks. 
THE GALLOWS MAN – This is another neglected American horror legend which has been presented in many different versions over the years. Ralph Sutherland was born in 1702 in either New York City or a town near the Catskills, depending on the version. 
I. Jacques Morand – Roughly 300 years ago Jacques Morand was in love with Genevieve Parent. Unfortunately for him Genevieve decided to join a convent. When Morand could not change her mind through pleading he turned to threats, which drew warnings from Genevieve’s father and brothers. 
Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues … 
THE SPECTRE LEAGUERS – In 1792 the Gloucester Leaguers returned from the dead to plague Massachusetts 100 years after their horrors had first been unleashed.
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