Accidental Moon

Accidental Moon was a supposedly fictional novel written by Oliver Morgenstern, though based on his first-hand account of the events at Royal Hope Hospital and his experience with the Judoon. Characters in the novel include the narrator - Morgenstern - and Hazel Magee, a colleague. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters) It was self-published and resulted in him receiving abuse online. (AUDIO: Hysteria)

According to Justin Richards, the novel was "not kindly reviewed". (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)

Abby McPhail read the book the night before travelling to Edinburgh to interview Oliver for her podcast - The Blue Box Files. When she raised the book with Oliver, he seemed embarrassed. He had since re-evaluated his stance and put the events down to a form of mass hallucination or mass hysteria. (AUDIO: Hysteria)

"Huge leather-clad creatures stomped across the foyer, marching in step like some bizarre battalion of soilders just back from yomping across the Welsh mountains rather then the lunar craters.

The leader stopped right in front of me, my head level with his chest. I looked up at the opaque mask of his helmet, a strange jutting shape that protruded out from the body. I could feel the fear growing inside me like an inflating balloon, ready to burst at the prick of a pin. The other staff gathered behind me, clearly seeing me as their resultant spokesman.

If only I could speak. My voice seemed cleft to the back of my throat. A situation that only worsened as the behemoth reached up and unfastened his helmet. With a hiss that might have been that balloon in my chest rupturing, the clasps released. Despite what I had already seen, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw beneath the helmet. The wrinkled skin, like old cork. The eyes set deep in the face - if you could even call it such. Ears so small they could have been the afterthought of some cosmic designer of monstrosity.

And horns!

Behind me, I heard the horrified gasps of my colleagues. The embarrassing sound of Hazel Magee fainting dead away at the horrendous and impossible sight. My first thought, though, despite all this, was"

- An Except from Accidental Moon from The Secret Lives of Monsters