Speaker 1: You're listening to an air wave media podcast.
Speaker 2: Demons. In some religions, they're helpful spirits, in others their
Speaker 2: dire opponents. How can so many religions have such wildly
Speaker 2: different ideas about these mysterious entities. We'll find out more
Speaker 2: about this topic. Is a familiar voice joins us to
Speaker 2: share her research. Munster Talks proud to welcome back doctor
Speaker 2: Karen Stoles.
Speaker 1: Now it's actually.
Speaker 2: Quite unlike anything we've ever seen before. A giant, hairy
Speaker 2: creature in part ape and part masts.
Speaker 3: In Luckness, a twenty four mile long bottomless lake in
Speaker 3: the Highlands of Scotland, get a creature known as the
Speaker 3: Luckness Monster.
Speaker 2: Morenstertall, Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 2: I'm Blake Smith, and today I'm delighted to be welcoming
Speaker 2: back Monster Talk co host doctor Karen Stalls know whose
Speaker 2: hard work has brought forth two books that will no
Speaker 2: doubt be of interest to our listeners. The what we're
Speaker 2: talking about today is all about unusual religious practices in America,
Speaker 2: and this includes a few items that dip right into
Speaker 2: Monster Talk territory. It's a well researched, fun to read
Speaker 2: and highly informative book, and I hope you'll pick up
Speaker 2: a copy. Now let's get to the interview moremstertall. All right,
Speaker 2: so Monster Talk welcomes back Karen Stallsno, who has recently
Speaker 2: published two great books, first Haunting America, which is available
Speaker 2: on the kindle from Amazon, and the brand new work
Speaker 2: God Bless America Strained and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices
Speaker 2: in the United States, which is also available as an ebook,
Speaker 2: but it's also a very attractive tangible edition. You can
Speaker 2: check the show notes for a on that. Welcome back, Kar,
Speaker 2: Thank you Blake. Typically on Munstertruck, we've tried to steer
Speaker 2: away from religion, but I think Karen's new book does
Speaker 2: cover from topics that will be near and dear to
Speaker 2: monstrel lover's hearts. It's got voodoo and exorcism and even
Speaker 2: a chater on the Church of Satan and how it
Speaker 2: compares to the allegations of Satanic cults in America. So
Speaker 2: this should be fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think there's a lot of overlapping with
Speaker 1: skepticism and humanism absolutely.
Speaker 2: So, first of all, how did a linguist like yourself
Speaker 2: come to write a book about unusual religions.
Speaker 1: Well, I think as an outsider coming from another country,
Speaker 1: something I've always been interested in is culture and coming
Speaker 1: here and seeing groups like the fundamentalist Mormons and the
Speaker 1: Amish and Mennonites, and certainly these beliefs and practices that
Speaker 1: we don't have in Australia. I was fascinated by them,
Speaker 1: and I started writing a book years ago called Red,
Speaker 1: White and True Blue about my experiences as an Australian
Speaker 1: living in the States. And there are a lot of similarities.
Speaker 1: We have the same language, not the same dialect, but
Speaker 1: the same language. Because there are so many similarities. When
Speaker 1: there are cultural differences, they can really be quite a golf.
Speaker 1: So I wrote that book and this is a kind
Speaker 1: of companion book to that, but about religious beliefs and practices.
Speaker 1: That's why I wrote this book.
Speaker 2: The book is about unusual religious practices. I don't disagree
Speaker 2: with your choices, but how did you decide which religions
Speaker 2: were unusual enough to be in the book.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not saying that there won't be a sequel
Speaker 1: in future to cover some of the other religious beliefs
Speaker 1: and practices that aren't covered in this one. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to go with ones that are very popular, some
Speaker 1: that Americans are very fond of, like the Amish, and
Speaker 1: ones that we have a lot of stereotypes about as well,
Speaker 1: and we don't really understand myths and misconceptions. To clear
Speaker 1: a lot of those up, so I looked at minority
Speaker 1: beliefs and practices, but also ones that are very very
Speaker 1: infamous or famous from.
Speaker 2: A monster perspective, I think, let's start with voodoo because
Speaker 2: it ties into zombies, and I know most people know
Speaker 2: it from zombies and voodoo dolls, but there's a lot
Speaker 2: more to it, as you cover in the book, you
Speaker 2: talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it is a religion. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people just think of it in terms of those stereotypes
Speaker 1: of zombies and voodoo dolls, but there's certainly a lot
Speaker 1: more to it now. It's as for the voodoo dolls alone,
Speaker 1: they're not the cute poppets that you think of that
Speaker 1: they had in England a couple of hundred years ago. Instead,
Speaker 1: the real voodoo dolls are made of things like wax
Speaker 1: and sticks and rope and wood, and they're not usually
Speaker 1: something that you stab like a pin cushion. So that
Speaker 1: you cause pain in a corresponding part of someone's body.
Speaker 1: They do function as an effigy, so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of sympathetic magic in voodoo, but they can also be
Speaker 1: used for good spells too. They can be used as
Speaker 1: a talisman or to attract good luck amulets as well,
Speaker 1: so they're used in lots of different ways.
Speaker 2: Where did a voodoo come from? With you describe it
Speaker 2: as of a hybrid religion of Western Africa and Catholicism,
Speaker 2: So can you talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Well, it's got a very long history. It originally came
Speaker 1: from i think the fond and New People and West Africa,
Speaker 1: and it was transported to Haiti when the French colonies
Speaker 1: were set up there and they transported slaves, so it
Speaker 1: started there and there are different variants in other countries too.
Speaker 1: There's ken Dombla which was brought over by slaves to
Speaker 1: Brazil and Santa Ria, which was brought over to Cuba
Speaker 1: with slaves. Voodoo was independently brought to the United States
Speaker 1: as well with slaves who were brought here, So there
Speaker 1: are lots of different variants, different spellings of it as well,
Speaker 1: but by and large the religion doesn't have any doctrine,
Speaker 1: so there's no voodoo Bible or anything like that. There's
Speaker 1: no church. It's more of an oral tradition and it's
Speaker 1: changed over time. As you were saying, it's syncrotized with Catholicism.
Speaker 1: So when it was taken to countries like Haiti into
Speaker 1: the United States, the slaves were subject to something called
Speaker 1: the Code Noir, so that was the slave code which
Speaker 1: was set up by the French colonizers, and this basically
Speaker 1: said that the slaves had to convert to Catholicism within
Speaker 1: about a week of their arrival, so they weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to practice their religion anymore. So, working as slaves, this
Speaker 1: was something that was very important to these people. So
Speaker 1: they held on to their religion, but they had to
Speaker 1: protect it. They had to practice it in secrecy and
Speaker 1: to hide it as much as possible. So the way
Speaker 1: that they did that was to blend Catholicism into their beliefs,
Speaker 1: and so they started using Catholic saints to represent the
Speaker 1: voodoo spirits, and they started using Catholic prayers and novenas,
Speaker 1: and so it really caused this it's called syncretization, a
Speaker 1: melding of the two religions.
Speaker 2: Are the polytheistic.
Speaker 1: Well, their monothe is they just believe in a single God,
Speaker 1: but it's not quite the God that Americans would be
Speaker 1: familiar with, God that you can petition with prayer, and
Speaker 1: one who is involved in our daily lives. Instead, these
Speaker 1: spirits actors and intermediary. So they're known by different names
Speaker 1: in different religions. For Voodoo, they're known as lower or
Speaker 1: Risha for Santaia, and so they function as intermediary between
Speaker 1: us and between God, and they apparently participate in our
Speaker 1: daily lives. So when we have misfortune, they cause that
Speaker 1: and they bring good luck if we treat them well.
Speaker 1: So the spirits are kind of like the Catholic saints.
Speaker 1: They were believed to be once people who lived and
Speaker 1: had exceptional lives, sometimes their relatives, sometimes their representations of
Speaker 1: things in nature like the sun and water. So there
Speaker 1: are some similarities to Catholicism, but certainly monotheistic, but have
Speaker 1: a plethora.
Speaker 2: Of spirits right, And in addition to these saints that
Speaker 2: we may recognize, they have the West African gods are
Speaker 2: now treated in sort of the same way. They're also
Speaker 2: kind of like saint like entities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for example, Papa Lagba. He's a famous one. You
Speaker 1: might see in some voodoo shops and New Orleans images
Speaker 1: of him, the statues and faces of him. Usually he's
Speaker 1: got Cowerie shells for eyes and so he is mildd
Speaker 1: usually with Saint Peter, so he's recognized as Saint Peter
Speaker 1: holding the key to Heaven. So they're just they're blended
Speaker 1: in with the Catholic Saints.
Speaker 2: Wow. So if you wanted to set up a voodoo
Speaker 2: practice or a voodoo there wouldn't be ness to be
Speaker 2: a church, but there would be ceremonies. Are their leaders
Speaker 2: within the group.
Speaker 1: Or Yeah, they don't have popes or bishops, but they
Speaker 1: do have priests and priestesses, so they're a bit more
Speaker 1: progressive than the Catholic Church. So they in that regard,
Speaker 1: they're not like Catholicism, but they've got priests who are
Speaker 1: known as hougens and priestesses who are the mambos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what's a hold on or hold on? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, don't I think?
Speaker 1: Probably because yeah, you dropped the.
Speaker 2: H right, which.
Speaker 1: Americans often do too with words like herbs.
Speaker 2: They do, they do right. It's a long way to go,
Speaker 2: but I was just trying. I can't remember what they were,
Speaker 2: but I thought it would be a voodoo mystery would
Speaker 2: be a But.
Speaker 1: One thing I wanted to say as well, I hope
Speaker 1: that you enjoyed all the puns in the book.
Speaker 2: Oh they're great, and it's yeah, I mind, you're you're
Speaker 2: not as overt as I am.
Speaker 1: But no, no, I'm sorry. I did my best.
Speaker 2: Don't be, don't be. I think they're funnier when they
Speaker 2: slip up on you. Wait a minute, we talked about
Speaker 2: there's leadership, but how did the rituals? I mean, how
Speaker 2: does one get qualified or become a part of a
Speaker 2: voodoo Did you just read a book or.
Speaker 1: Do you need to be trained or there's certainly the
Speaker 1: opinion that there are different kinds of voodoo, that there's
Speaker 1: a real or authentic voodoo and that's practiced by the
Speaker 1: priests and priestesses, and that there are more amateur types.
Speaker 1: But I think there are different types of voodoo. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily that one is more pure and others are
Speaker 1: more corrupt. I think they're just different. So if you
Speaker 1: want to get involved, I mean, usually a priest or
Speaker 1: a priestess, they believe that they're somehow touched by God
Speaker 1: or contacted by the spirits, and that they're chosen in
Speaker 1: some way to be involved in voodoo. But again, there
Speaker 1: are lots of different types in this country, lots of
Speaker 1: different rituals that are practiced too. Because there's no doctrine.
Speaker 1: The main way that people practice voodoo is through ceremonies
Speaker 1: and through rituals. So that could be through spells which
Speaker 1: are kind of like recipes. Maybe there's a famous honey
Speaker 1: jar recipe where someone takes a jar with a candle
Speaker 1: in it and they add some kind of honey or
Speaker 1: molass is something to sweeten that and just thereby metaphorically
Speaker 1: to sweeten the spirits. And of course if you go
Speaker 1: to New Orleans and some of the tourist shops there,
Speaker 1: you'll find things like amulets and talisman and gree gree
Speaker 1: and mojo and so people who practice voodoo as well,
Speaker 1: from priests and priestesses through to just followers. They might
Speaker 1: have an altar as well, so you might see those
Speaker 1: if you go to New Orleans, you go to one
Speaker 1: of the museums there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're just reminded me of the last time we
Speaker 2: went to New Orleans. I went to a voodoo shop
Speaker 2: and bought a little a good luck voodoo doll and
Speaker 2: then on the bottom of it said it was me
Speaker 2: in China.
Speaker 1: Some of those are just really cheap trinkets and very tacky,
Speaker 1: and I mean they're sell them right beside jumbalaire and
Speaker 1: coffee with chicory. So I don't think it's meant to
Speaker 1: be the real thing, even though you'll hear in hush
Speaker 1: tones there that maybe someone who works in a store
Speaker 1: can direct you to the real, authentic stuff if you've
Speaker 1: got the money for it. It's all a bit of
Speaker 1: a ripoff. But you know, with the altars that you'll
Speaker 1: see there, and people have altars at home as well,
Speaker 1: and so they might I'm just trying to think of
Speaker 1: an example. They're usually used for things like spells, or
Speaker 1: they might be used for devotion as well, for worship
Speaker 1: to a particular spirit, And so they might have a
Speaker 1: table or some kind of surface that's covered maybe with velvet,
Speaker 1: and might have sequins and ribbons and various things, and
Speaker 1: they'll include candles and statues of saints, Catholic saints, and
Speaker 1: maybe incense and voodoo dolls, and they'll have offerings, maybe
Speaker 1: things like food, and I'm sure you saw in New
Speaker 1: Orleans too, lots of cigarettes, yes, lots of money and
Speaker 1: sometimes marijuana and other things too. Oh yeah, yeah, these
Speaker 1: are all things to appeal to the spirits and to petition.
Speaker 2: At least in the New Orleans style, it seems mostly
Speaker 2: about trying to get reality to go the way you
Speaker 2: want it, like to intent, like to oh yeah, the
Speaker 2: arts or romance.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. There's crossover with New Age spirituality as well.
Speaker 1: A lot of it's about affirmations and intent, and there's
Speaker 1: certainly a lot of spells which are intended for good
Speaker 1: and folk medicine and blessings and stuff like that. There's
Speaker 1: certainly a lot of bad as well. But getting back
Speaker 1: to the rituals are also group ceremonies. They do the
Speaker 1: standard stuff that other religions do, like weddings and funerals
Speaker 1: and baptisms and healings. And you can also get married
Speaker 1: to spirits as well. Sometimes if you petition them for something,
Speaker 1: they might ask as a favor that you married them,
Speaker 1: and so it's kind of like a polygamy where you
Speaker 1: can marry as many spirits as you like and still
Speaker 1: have earthly partner as well.
Speaker 2: It must be really disappointing when you find that neither
Speaker 2: your wife nor your voodoo god will have sex with you.
Speaker 1: Ah, I'm sure it happens.
Speaker 2: Just you know, Papa Eggby, he's not that into me anymore.
Speaker 1: I think he likes a bottle of ram and a
Speaker 1: good cigar instead.
Speaker 2: Right, he's old. He needs Papa legg By viagra.
Speaker 1: So yeah, oh that's a good one. But they've all
Speaker 1: got their favorite things, and so if you want something
Speaker 1: from them, you have to give them that, whether it's
Speaker 1: French pastries or whether it's jewelry. And if you don't
Speaker 1: give them what they want, then they can cause all
Speaker 1: kinds of harm and misfortune in your life.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about zombies. Now. Obviously there's a
Speaker 2: sort of pop culture shift that's happened in zombies since
Speaker 2: George Romero's Not a Living Dead film happened. But before
Speaker 2: that film, zombies almost always meant a voodoo type zombie,
Speaker 2: something raised by ritual or it is really unclear whether
Speaker 2: they meant something, at least in pop culture, whether they
Speaker 2: meant something that was dead and brought back to life
Speaker 2: or something that was living in kind of a half life.
Speaker 2: But can we talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think one of the definitions of a zombie.
Speaker 1: I mean zombie is also a snake spirit in voodoo
Speaker 1: spelt z's zombi, but zombie. There are different ideas of
Speaker 1: what a zombie is. Usually it's a reanimated corpse. I
Speaker 1: think the kind of stereotypical or prototypical zombie is a
Speaker 1: person who is taken to the brink of death and
Speaker 1: then they're reanimated somehow, so it can be a thing
Speaker 1: of revenge. There's a great fear in Haiti of zombification,
Speaker 1: so much so that it's actually illegal under the Haitian
Speaker 1: penal code. That's how much people believe in it to
Speaker 1: this day. And so if someone dies in the family,
Speaker 1: they might have someone who keeps guard over that body
Speaker 1: for days to even weeks to make sure that and
Speaker 1: one of these evil sorcerers known as a book or
Speaker 1: doesn't come by and steal the body and use that
Speaker 1: body for either to bring that person back as a
Speaker 1: zombie or to use that person's body parts in spells.
Speaker 1: Usually there's some kind of poison that is used for
Speaker 1: these real zombies, and again they'll be taken to this
Speaker 1: point of near death and so much so that the
Speaker 1: family will bury that person and they're in this kind
Speaker 1: of state where they're not quite dead, and then they're
Speaker 1: revived by the sorcerer and then turned into a slave,
Speaker 1: maybe to work on a plantation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a terrible thing to happen. Although in some
Speaker 2: ways though, I mean, being a slave having your entire
Speaker 2: life control by some slave master is not radically different
Speaker 2: from being a zombie. I mean, except that maybe as
Speaker 2: a zombie you don't lament your situation as much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you don't quite have your personality is gone,
Speaker 1: so you're in this kind of half dead state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of In fact, in real life,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of sort of drug related ways where
Speaker 2: a person can pretty much end up being in a
Speaker 2: slave like situation with addictions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and these because these sorcerers don't use anything
Speaker 1: like that. It's always about various potions and poisons.
Speaker 2: So were there any real examples of zombies that came
Speaker 2: up in.
Speaker 1: Your research, Ah, there are a number of examples of
Speaker 1: real I've seen quoti fingers of zombification, and usually they've
Speaker 1: been verified by family members. So this is a strong
Speaker 1: belief of this in the country. Still to this day.
Speaker 1: And there's a famous story that of Clavius Nassis. So
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you've heard of him, perfor.
Speaker 2: I have, but maybe people in the listening audience have not.
Speaker 1: It's probably the most famous case treated in The Serpent
Speaker 1: and the Rainbow of a fellow who turned up on
Speaker 1: his sister's doorstep in about nineteen eighty three, but he'd
Speaker 1: been dead twenty years already, and so his story is
Speaker 1: that he fell ill one day and went to hospital,
Speaker 1: and after a couple of days of spitting up blood
Speaker 1: and vomiting, he was in a bad way. He died,
Speaker 1: and so his family buried him, and then over time
Speaker 1: mourned him and forgot about him. And then he allegedly
Speaker 1: came back, and his story was that he hadn't actually died,
Speaker 1: he'd gone into this state where he was neither alive
Speaker 1: nor dead, and then he was revived after he had
Speaker 1: been buried, he was revived by one of these because
Speaker 1: these sorcerers, who then set him to work in a
Speaker 1: sugar plantation for a couple of years. And so this
Speaker 1: was some kind of revenge act that had been brought
Speaker 1: about by his brother, some kind of family grievance, and
Speaker 1: so he did this to him. And so eventually this
Speaker 1: master on the sugar plantation died and he wandered the
Speaker 1: country for about sixteen years, just waiting for his brother
Speaker 1: to die. And when he did, he came back and
Speaker 1: was reunited with his family and they were convinced that
Speaker 1: this was him because he just knew so much about
Speaker 1: the family history. And so there are actually other cases.
Speaker 1: As a movie, I think it's called Impostor, and it's
Speaker 1: a story of a I think maybe an orphan or
Speaker 1: a criminal in another country who wants to come to
Speaker 1: the United States. Did some research and found the story
Speaker 1: of a boy who'd been murdered and basically assumed his
Speaker 1: personality and came to this country and was just welcomed
Speaker 1: with open arms by the family because they really wanted
Speaker 1: to believe that their son had come back to them.
Speaker 1: So there are a number of cases of zombification in Haiti,
Speaker 1: and usually they turn out to be cases of mental
Speaker 1: illness and mistaken identity. And there was one study which
Speaker 1: was done and there were about three people who were
Speaker 1: tested and it was found that there a disproved that
Speaker 1: they were actually family members, but they had been welcomed
Speaker 1: into the family. They didn't look as old as the
Speaker 1: people who died. They were clearly different people, but with
Speaker 1: just such a strong belief in voodoo in the country,
Speaker 1: they were just very willing to believe that these people
Speaker 1: had come back. It's a very strange situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Even now, Haiti has a really bad situation economically, technologically.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the healthcare situation is really bad there. And
Speaker 1: that's why voodoo and who do medicine is just so
Speaker 1: popular in this country too. A lot of people who
Speaker 1: practice voodoo here and there are may be about a
Speaker 1: million practitioners. They will use orthodox medicine in conjunction with
Speaker 1: folk medicine.
Speaker 2: Right. I guess what I was getting at is it's
Speaker 2: not I mean, it's easier to fake or get away
Speaker 2: with a sort of a voodoo impersonation of a zombie there,
Speaker 2: because here you could relatively easily get a DNA test
Speaker 2: and find out whether this person was really your return relative.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and I think, as you were discussing popular
Speaker 1: culture earlier, zombies in this country are different things. Since
Speaker 1: the Night of the Living Dead. There something that's caused
Speaker 1: by a virus or a plague, and it's a contagious
Speaker 1: condition rather than being a state of animation of being
Speaker 1: a zombie.
Speaker 2: You may recall a long time ago we did an
Speaker 2: interview with the author of a book called The Zombie Autopsies,
Speaker 2: and he talked about how that if a zombie case
Speaker 2: came into the hospital, people wouldn't assume it was a zombie.
Speaker 2: They would assume this person had a medical problem. They
Speaker 2: would be trying to treat them. And it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: of course, which is the worst that you could do
Speaker 2: with zombies? You know, Yeah, they're awfully biby, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there was the CDC who used the whole idea
Speaker 1: of the zombie apocalypse to try and explain to people
Speaker 1: what they'd do in the situation of a crisis exactly. So,
Speaker 1: have you seen The Serpent and the Rainbow or maybe
Speaker 1: read the book.
Speaker 2: I read some of the book, I have seen the film.
Speaker 2: I realized that the book's a lot more serious.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's ridden by an ethnobiologist by the name of
Speaker 1: Wade Davis, and so he went in search of the
Speaker 1: poison that's used by these evil sorcerers, and so he,
Speaker 1: I think, was led down a lot of paths where
Speaker 1: people claimed to give him the real thing, and so
Speaker 1: he was misled by some of these sorcerers, and then
Speaker 1: eventually he came across the real thing, and so that
Speaker 1: was taken to a laboratory for examination and found to
Speaker 1: contain all kinds of interesting things. There was a neurotoxin
Speaker 1: called puffer fish, there were remnants of that, and something
Speaker 1: called Jimson weed, which is a hallucinogenic, and also lots
Speaker 1: of yucky stuff like dried up bits of toads and
Speaker 1: lizards and spiders and babies bones and so these were
Speaker 1: tested by sign just have shown that they the doses
Speaker 1: of the actual ingredients that might do something like the
Speaker 1: puffer fish. The doses were just too small to have
Speaker 1: any kind of real effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it's interesting because I wanted to get him
Speaker 2: on to discuss this, and that'd be great. I've been
Speaker 2: working on tracking him down, but I don't want to
Speaker 2: I don't want to be like an attack episode at all.
Speaker 2: I just was like to learn more about the cultural impact,
Speaker 2: because I think the idea that it was purely a
Speaker 2: chemical process has been pretty much debunked. But he also
Speaker 2: made a lot of interesting points about the social role
Speaker 2: of the controlling power of voodoo and the threat of
Speaker 2: being made into a zombie to wield power.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, And there's a similar thing in Australia. They
Speaker 1: call it. It's an Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal belief in something
Speaker 1: called pointing the bone. So if you do this to someone,
Speaker 1: it's a kind of revenge spell or a way to
Speaker 1: maybe kill a person. You have bad intentions whenever you
Speaker 1: perform this. So when you point the bone, that's supposed
Speaker 1: to cause a person person to wither away and die.
Speaker 1: And there was an incident many years ago with one
Speaker 1: of the Australian Prime ministers I think it was John Howard,
Speaker 1: and an Aboriginal leader was very angry with him for
Speaker 1: something that he did, and so he pointed the bone
Speaker 1: at John Howard. And of course he didn't believe in it,
Speaker 1: so nothing happened. But for people who do believe in it,
Speaker 1: they really do lose that they have that failure to thrive.
Speaker 2: You know. Even here in America some politicians have gotten
Speaker 2: in trouble for pointing their bone.
Speaker 1: In a very different way, but in asked seriousness, the
Speaker 1: power of voodoo to wield.
Speaker 2: Psychological control was probably worst exemplified with what Papa Doc
Speaker 2: Duvalier and his son baby Dyke. Right.
Speaker 1: Yes, he was the president of Haiti and it was
Speaker 1: a real personality cult that was around him, and I
Speaker 1: think in many ways he kind of revived a lot
Speaker 1: of interest in Voodoo during his tenure, and so he
Speaker 1: often claimed to be a voodoo priest and I think
Speaker 1: even said that he was Jesus Christ and God. And
Speaker 1: so he speaking about spirits, he would model his image
Speaker 1: on one of the spirits known as Baron Samity, who's
Speaker 1: one of these evil spirits. He've got good spirits and
Speaker 1: bad spirits and he's the spirit or the lower of death.
Speaker 1: And Papa Doc would wear sunglasses and a black suit
Speaker 1: and would even change his accent, so he sounded like
Speaker 1: this spirit the way that people perceive this spirit, and
Speaker 1: he would really oppress his people with that. And it
Speaker 1: was a very evil, tyrannical regime that he was running there.
Speaker 1: I think there were about some maybe thirty thousands people
Speaker 1: that he killed off.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, he disappeared a lot of people. I mean
Speaker 2: they've never been found. So that's probably the darkest way
Speaker 2: that it legitimately gets wielded. But I mean it sounds
Speaker 2: like from what your book describes it's not you know,
Speaker 2: it's mostly I don't want to say completely harmless. But
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem particularly grim as are disturbing the way
Speaker 2: like it's always portrayed in movies. I'll see. In nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven, I took a paranormal themed road trip across
Speaker 2: the United States. I went to a lot of UFO sites,
Speaker 2: and the only voodoo place I went was I went
Speaker 2: to New Orleans to see the grave of Marie Levau,
Speaker 2: the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. You know, is she
Speaker 2: still a popular figure in voodoo?
Speaker 1: Oh? I mean she died. I can't think of that
Speaker 1: here maybe eighteen eighty one, even though there are claims
Speaker 1: that she's still alive and that it seems like she
Speaker 1: had a daughter who looked just like her and a
Speaker 1: granddaughter who looked like her. So there was this perpetuation
Speaker 1: of the myth that she was living to some biblical age.
Speaker 1: So she's still a big presence in New Orleans after
Speaker 1: all of these centuries. So she's very interesting. Was a
Speaker 1: very interesting woman. She was a free woman who was
Speaker 1: of a mixed background, and she's still known as the
Speaker 1: voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Today. But she started out
Speaker 1: as a hairdresser and then she decided to wasn't really lucrative,
Speaker 1: so she decided to learn her new craft from a
Speaker 1: doctor John, a mysterious doctor John. And so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of controversy about her in the way that she's
Speaker 1: perceived today, a lot of contradiction. I think people see
Speaker 1: her as the voodoo queen of New Orleans, but at
Speaker 1: the same time she died a devout Catholic. People see
Speaker 1: her as being very good and kind. She used to
Speaker 1: assist slaves in being freed, and she do all kinds
Speaker 1: of kind things for the poor. And yet at the
Speaker 1: same time, here she was selling curses and cures, charms
Speaker 1: and blackmailing people, running brothels. So she's really this she's
Speaker 1: a nice dichotomic, yes, yeah, yeah, so yeah. There's also
Speaker 1: just the claim that, as I said, that she had
Speaker 1: just lived her a very long time and people were
Speaker 1: very scared of her. And so to this day people
Speaker 1: go and visit her tomb, which I think is in
Speaker 1: the Saint Louis Cemetery, number one, I think so, and
Speaker 1: there it's the big tomb with all of the crosses
Speaker 1: on it. People tend to draw three crosses. And I
Speaker 1: think with a lot of Catholic prayers too, they usually
Speaker 1: involve the number three or the number nine somehow, this
Speaker 1: repetition of a prayer or something like that. And so
Speaker 1: people might walk around the tomb three times and then
Speaker 1: knock three times and make some kind of request, and
Speaker 1: then leave her a gift as well, because food is
Speaker 1: very polite.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, when I went in ninety seven, I mean,
Speaker 2: her tomb was just covered with all kinds of marks,
Speaker 2: and there were queens and candles out front, and all
Speaker 2: kinds of little.
Speaker 1: Offerings, flowers, and oh yeah, it's They closes the cemetery
Speaker 1: early nowadays, but people used to. I think people still
Speaker 1: try to break in very high walls around the cemetery,
Speaker 1: but people break in and do all kinds of crazy things.
Speaker 2: You know. Since we're talking about the cemeteries in New Orleans,
Speaker 2: I'm not throw something out here that I find very interesting.
Speaker 2: And I haven't seen much published on this, but I
Speaker 2: did they do a lot of research on it. There's
Speaker 2: this story going around about the cemeteries in New Orleans
Speaker 2: that the reason they use above ground burials is because
Speaker 2: the water table is so high in New Orleans. That
Speaker 2: if they dug to bury somebody, that the coffins would
Speaker 2: just bounce up out of the ground if there was
Speaker 2: a flood, and flood's fairly common as we saw, yes,
Speaker 2: but my research indicates that that's not the reason they
Speaker 2: were using above ground burials. It's actually because of during
Speaker 2: the history of New Orleans, they had a period where
Speaker 2: they were controlled by the Spanish, and the Spanish style
Speaker 2: of beers became very popular. And if you ever go
Speaker 2: to Spain and look at graveyards, they looked very, very similar.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I was going to say, I thought that
Speaker 1: that would be some kind of tradition instead a European tradition.
Speaker 1: And I think that they also took advantage of the
Speaker 1: heat in New Orleans, and so they would bury your
Speaker 1: body and then maybe a couple of years later, another
Speaker 1: family member would die and be interred into the same tomb,
Speaker 1: and because of the heat, they would turn into a
Speaker 1: kind of human jerky, I guess. And so it was
Speaker 1: a way of being able to reuse these tombs, but
Speaker 1: it was more a style. I think that sounds like
Speaker 1: a good urban legend, though, well, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's extremely widespread. I only found a very tiny amount
Speaker 2: of literature that referenced the Spanish influence, and most everybody
Speaker 2: else just repeated the story that it was to stop
Speaker 2: the you know, the coffins from popping out. But even yeah,
Speaker 2: a little bit different in floods. Well, I was gonna say,
Speaker 2: I did some scale model experiments, and my findings were
Speaker 2: that if you buried deeper than say three feet, you
Speaker 2: wouldn't even in a good flood, you wouldn't get the
Speaker 2: coffin popping out. It just didn't happen. It doesn't take
Speaker 2: very much dirt to keep something down. But yeah, there
Speaker 2: is a washout. Washouts different like if the if the
Speaker 2: if a big you know, flood came through and pushed
Speaker 2: the dirt away, that's an entirely different story. Clearly, that
Speaker 2: really does happen after hurricanes. Sometimes you do see coffins
Speaker 2: that are floating down the road, but that's because they've
Speaker 2: been dug out by the motion of the water, not
Speaker 2: because they just literally popped up when the ground got wet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you've got the Cheeseman Park here in
Speaker 1: Denver and the occasional happening of some bones which pop
Speaker 1: out of the ground because they were just buried quite
Speaker 1: shallow I love Cheeseman Park.
Speaker 2: The story about what happened there is fantastic.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was only a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: that we had had found well not us personally, but
Speaker 1: some bones had been found in the park. I think
Speaker 1: it was a bicyclist who was going through and found
Speaker 1: a skull or something, and instead of calling the police
Speaker 1: or some kind of government authority, he just called the
Speaker 1: local radio station and told them about it.
Speaker 2: This is just this is really not really related to
Speaker 2: this topic. But I'm going to just see if I
Speaker 2: get the story right. You can correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: But maybe I don't know what well.
Speaker 2: Cheesman Park was originally a very large cemetery outside of Denver,
Speaker 2: and what happened was there was sort of a civic
Speaker 2: minded move to turn it into a park instead of
Speaker 2: a cemetery. But they needed to move the bodies in
Speaker 2: order to do that, and so they put a wall
Speaker 2: up or fence up around the cemetery and began the
Speaker 2: process of moving all these bones. But they subbed it
Speaker 2: out to the you know, the cheapest contractor, and discovered
Speaker 2: after the fact that the contractor had just been throwing
Speaker 2: you know, different body parts into different coffins, you know,
Speaker 2: using the smallest, cheapest coffins to transport things out, and
Speaker 2: just in general, we're desecrating what most people consider to
Speaker 2: be a you know, a sacred burial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, splitting up bodies too, so that he could he
Speaker 1: was I think paid per body, so he was splitting
Speaker 1: bodies up into multiple just truncating them and putting them
Speaker 1: into multiple grapes.
Speaker 2: And of course, now you know, that sort of creepy
Speaker 2: story has led to people suspecting that there are restless spirits,
Speaker 2: and there's lots and lots of ghost stories about people seeing,
Speaker 2: you know, sad, lonely anachronistically clothed ghosts in the region.
Speaker 1: It's also a popular cruising spot.
Speaker 2: Well well, well, go.
Speaker 1: Back to pointing the bone.
Speaker 2: But exactly, let's move on to a topic that I
Speaker 2: find very interesting I think the listeners will too, which
Speaker 2: is we just just talked about how in voodoo, possession
Speaker 2: is considered to be a good thing. But in most
Speaker 2: of Western culture, when you talk about possession, you're talking
Speaker 2: about demons, and you're talking about dark forces taking over
Speaker 2: our bodies and causing us to do terrible things. So
Speaker 2: let's talk about exorcism and demonic possession.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean, as you said, in voodoo, possession
Speaker 1: is a positive thing. It means that you're more holy,
Speaker 1: not less. And so if you go to some kind
Speaker 1: of ceremony, maybe a healing or a wedding of a
Speaker 1: human to a spirit, then it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: pentecostal or charismatic events where people will just get into
Speaker 1: this kind of frenzied state after dancing and drumming for
Speaker 1: hours and so, kind of like handling snakes or drinking
Speaker 1: strict nine, they'll get to a point where they become
Speaker 1: poss by aspiration. Often afterwards that they'll do all kinds
Speaker 1: of crazy things. They might dip their hands into boiling oil,
Speaker 1: or they might cut themselves with raisors or eat broken glass. Usually,
Speaker 1: as it's practiced in the United States, they're going to
Speaker 1: be eating hot chilies or drinking alcohol instead. And often
Speaker 1: they will claim afterwards that they have no memory of
Speaker 1: this kind of spiritual amnesia. They can't remember all the
Speaker 1: crazy things that.
Speaker 2: They do eating hot chilies and drinking alcohol. That's like
Speaker 2: every night in Texas.
Speaker 1: That's right, yeah, and my household, not for me, but
Speaker 1: for others.
Speaker 2: Demonic possession has become a big cultural thing in America
Speaker 2: at least, But there seems to have arisen during the seventies,
Speaker 2: is that right. I mean, it didn't seem like it
Speaker 2: was very popular before that, but then after William Peter
Speaker 2: Bladdie's book The Exorcist, it suddenly exploded.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there have been periods of its popularity
Speaker 1: throughout time. Often people will think that Jesus Christ was
Speaker 1: their first exorcist, but exorcism demonic possession really goes back
Speaker 1: thousands of years to ancient societies like the Babylonians and
Speaker 1: the Egyptians and Greeks and Romans, and they might take
Speaker 1: a clay pot which could represent someone's demons and then
Speaker 1: smash that to somehow get rid of their demons. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this has gone up and down in popularity during the
Speaker 1: medieval era as well, it was very popular and of
Speaker 1: course through Biblical times. But I think what brought it
Speaker 1: to the fore in modern times is the Exorcist and
Speaker 1: gosh or it was the Roman.
Speaker 2: Polanski Rosebery's Baby.
Speaker 1: Yes, with a spawn of Satan.
Speaker 2: There was the Olemen as well, which is a little different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then in recent years too, you've had a
Speaker 1: number of other movies that have come out, like The
Speaker 1: Last Exorism and The Right, which have just maintained that
Speaker 1: popularity of demonic possession and exorcism.
Speaker 2: It does give you this sort of avert right as
Speaker 2: a person who's very skeptical. Right, it would be fantastic
Speaker 2: if half, or if a third a tenth of the
Speaker 2: stuff that seems to happen on movie screens happened in
Speaker 2: real life. I mean, I don't wannybody to suffer, but
Speaker 2: you know, if someone's head spins around and they can fly,
Speaker 2: that's pretty spectacular proof of something paranormal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a book by Michael Qnao, I think it's
Speaker 1: called American Exorcism, and he talks about those kinds of
Speaker 1: the things that you might find in Malachi Martin's book.
Speaker 1: He calls those fireworks, and those are the things that
Speaker 1: just don't happen, the xenoglossia, speaking some kind of unknown
Speaker 1: foreign language, supernatural strength, these things don't seem to happen. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's just very mundane things like lust and maybe alcoholism,
Speaker 1: addictions to pornography. Basically, everyone is possessed all of the time.
Speaker 1: If we just look at the current beliefs in New
Speaker 1: Age exorcisms and deliverance ministries and Catholicism. It really maybe
Speaker 1: with the Catholics might view some of these lesser symptoms
Speaker 1: as being demonic affliction or oppression instead of demonic possession.
Speaker 1: That's right, right, it's more serious, and that would require
Speaker 1: a major exorcism instead of just a minor one where
Speaker 1: they might just say a couple of prayers to get
Speaker 1: those demons out of you.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's a meaningful metaphor for people. So like, if
Speaker 2: you have an uncontrollable urge to drink or an uncontrollable
Speaker 2: urge to watch on internet porn, then you might think
Speaker 2: to yourself, Oh, I'm oppressed by a demon that's making
Speaker 2: me do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Satan's escape Goaten, the devil made me do it
Speaker 1: and all of that. It's a good excuse.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I wonder if there's any studies on the
Speaker 2: efficacy of demonic exorcism in alleviating these symptoms.
Speaker 1: Usually, I don't think there's too much success. They by
Speaker 1: and large will need to as you see in a
Speaker 1: movie like The Right, they'll need to do these exorcisms
Speaker 1: over days and weeks and months, and they still might
Speaker 1: not be successful.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, and Mitchell Malichae Martin's Hostage to the Devil. Now.
Speaker 2: I've actually had multiple listeners email me asking if I
Speaker 2: was going to cover that book on the shell, can
Speaker 2: you talk a little bit about the book, and it's.
Speaker 1: Actually you could bring him on the show through a
Speaker 1: Frank's box.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, he's a little bit dead now.
Speaker 1: So yeah, his Hostage to the Devil is a very
Speaker 1: interesting read. And it's the kind of stuff that you'll
Speaker 1: see in the Exorcist books, flying off shelves and a
Speaker 1: woman being raped by a giant spider. So all of
Speaker 1: these fireworks that I was talking about earlier. And he
Speaker 1: left the church. He was a Jesuit priest and he
Speaker 1: renounced all of his vows except for that of celibacy,
Speaker 1: even though he was quite well known amongst the ladies
Speaker 1: and was known to have affairs, and he started writing
Speaker 1: a lot of salacious stuff about the Catholic Church. And
Speaker 1: I really tend to think that Hostage to the Devil
Speaker 1: is just another one of these works of fear. They're
Speaker 1: just too over the top.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does have what do they call it, the
Speaker 2: extras vulgar displays of power, right.
Speaker 1: Very vulgar, So exorcism.
Speaker 2: Itself, though we have this sort of I guess you
Speaker 2: could say I would call it benign exorcism, where you
Speaker 2: might just be trying to help somebody within an issue
Speaker 2: like there, you know, like we talked about with drinking
Speaker 2: or some other thing that's plaguing them about their personality.
Speaker 2: But there's darker sides to it as well. I've seen
Speaker 2: a lot of cases where people have been the victim
Speaker 2: of exorcism and died.
Speaker 1: Yes, they're usually with the home jobs. You'll hear about
Speaker 1: cases where someone is on methamphetamine and they decide that
Speaker 1: their little daughter is possessed and that they need to
Speaker 1: beat the crap out of her and to get the
Speaker 1: demons out, and then she dies. Lots of very unfortunate
Speaker 1: stories like that. And small religious groups too that try
Speaker 1: to pray away the gay in homosexual people, and those
Speaker 1: who manipulate people with disabilities and mental illness. So it's
Speaker 1: very very much a dark side. I mean, it's all
Speaker 1: pretty dark, to be honest. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: people out there manipulating people who have a belief in this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we in particular, there's a case that happened
Speaker 2: in Europe in the seventies about a girl named Analise
Speaker 2: Michelle and her exorcism took place over ten months, and
Speaker 2: then during the extorism, I guess she had a reduced
Speaker 2: intake of food and liquid. I was gonna say that
Speaker 2: there's audio tapes of her exorcism. I think I'd like
Speaker 2: to stick a little bit of that end here. Is
Speaker 2: quite disturbing.
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, it's not something you want to listen
Speaker 1: to you before going to bed. Pretty upsetting, And I want.
Speaker 2: To interrupt here for a moment and share a little
Speaker 2: bit of the audio from one of Analysa's exorcism sessions.
Speaker 2: Keep in mind that her case took place in the
Speaker 2: mid nineteen seventies, after the film The Extorcist had already
Speaker 2: come out. Based on the evidence from the trial surrounding
Speaker 2: her death, it seems much more plausible that she was
Speaker 2: mentally ill than that she was simply faking it or
Speaker 2: that she had actually had a true demonic possession.
Speaker 4: Here's the audio clip that's more.
Speaker 2: Skin Now to compare, here's some audio from the film
Speaker 2: The Exorcist. Okay boys, And finally, here's a clip from
Speaker 2: a young woman being subjected to an exorcism by the
Speaker 2: quote real exorcist Bob Larson. We'll get to him in
Speaker 2: just a few moments.
Speaker 3: Across from Christ's name.
Speaker 2: Age, I think that's rage? Are you rage? As you
Speaker 2: can hear from these clips, there's a pattern, a similarity
Speaker 2: that to skeptical listeners might sound like they're acting out,
Speaker 2: that they're mimicking the prototype that was given to them
Speaker 2: in the film The Exorcist. Was Analyst really possessed or
Speaker 2: was she mentally ill? Or could medical and psychiatric care
Speaker 2: have cured her. All we can say for sure is
Speaker 2: that had she been given medical treatment, at least she
Speaker 2: wouldn't have died in the horrible way that she did.
Speaker 1: She I think had staffed herself thinking that she was
Speaker 1: going to die in a tone for the sins of youth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And ultimately the priests and her parents were charged
Speaker 2: with negligent homicide.
Speaker 1: Yeah. She suffered from I think schizophrenia and epilepsy, and
Speaker 1: she was untreated, unmedicated, and decided to try exorcisms instead
Speaker 1: and underwent a huge amount of the maybe sixty odd
Speaker 1: exorcisms that of course did nothing for her, and she
Speaker 1: just withered away and died. And it was a very
Speaker 1: sad story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really. Quite recently, I heard some people on a
Speaker 2: radio show who were supporting There were proponents of the
Speaker 2: idea that she literally still even now, after all the
Speaker 2: court seemed to clearly indicate that she was sick, physically sick,
Speaker 2: mentally ill, and what she really knew was medical treatment,
Speaker 2: but they still believe she actually was possessed by a demons.
Speaker 2: But the demon they say she was possessed by were
Speaker 2: like the demon Adolf Hitler.
Speaker 1: Really, I mean, oh, she actually thought that she was
Speaker 1: possessed by Nero and Judis to Scariot and Hitler at
Speaker 1: various times. Yeah, but I'm astounded at how prevalent the
Speaker 1: belief in demons and evil spirits is to this day.
Speaker 1: And I gave a talk at the Amazing Meeting this
Speaker 1: year back in July about exorcisms, and that particular lecture
Speaker 1: went online just on YouTube. And I'm shocked at the
Speaker 1: backlash that I've received from believers about how ignorant I
Speaker 1: am and how demons do exist and you know, we've
Speaker 1: made them in our own image.
Speaker 2: Well, even if demons do exist, I don't think that
Speaker 2: gives anyone the right to take someone else's hostage, you know,
Speaker 2: capture them and force them to be subjected to these
Speaker 2: very dangerous rituals. There's a big difference between praying for
Speaker 2: someone or you know, as in the Bible where Jesus
Speaker 2: just cast out the demon in his name, with these
Speaker 2: I don't know how to violent acts that people are
Speaker 2: doing and these as you call them home jobs, where
Speaker 2: they're suffocating people, they are starting them.
Speaker 1: And so many stories. There's one of a little boy
Speaker 1: called Terence Kottrel who was about eight years old and autistic,
Speaker 1: and his mother took him to their local church. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what denomination it was, and they basically held
Speaker 1: him down and he was kicking and screaming, which was
Speaker 1: further evidence that he was possessed to them, and they
Speaker 1: suffocated him, basically sat on him until he just stopped moving.
Speaker 1: Just very tragic reading these stories, and I do treat
Speaker 1: a number of them in God Bless America and it's
Speaker 1: very upsetting.
Speaker 2: So in the less hazardous but maybe he's still harmful
Speaker 2: side of things, we have the real extorsist Bob Larson
Speaker 2: the Real Excises the Real actressesline.
Speaker 1: In his failed television series for sci Fi.
Speaker 2: That's right, but I have to say that while he
Speaker 2: has amused me until I read this chapter in your book,
Speaker 2: and I don't want to spoil the end, but wow,
Speaker 2: you gave it a lot more gravity than I would
Speaker 2: have thought could be squeezed out of him. But there
Speaker 2: it is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, he's an interesting character and I've been tracking him
Speaker 1: for years, and when I lived in the Bay Area,
Speaker 1: he just didn't go anywhere near San Francisco. I think
Speaker 1: you've just got a different kind of person there. Certainly
Speaker 1: in other parts of the country there are a lot
Speaker 1: of He has a lot of followers, and he's often
Speaker 1: traveling to other countries and always begging for money, and
Speaker 1: if you don't support him, he's going to have to
Speaker 1: close his pearly gates. So it's very interesting and I
Speaker 1: would recommend to all skeptics that they try to attend
Speaker 1: one of his events if he comes through town. That's
Speaker 1: an interesting experience and it's kind of a brainwashing session
Speaker 1: when you turn up. These go for hours and hours,
Speaker 1: and he tries to wear you down and keeps begging
Speaker 1: for donations, but he'll usually start with some videos of
Speaker 1: people being exercised, and what he's really doing it's a
Speaker 1: kind of hypnosis and his building these people up for
Speaker 1: their role playing, and so he's showing these images and
Speaker 1: people are learning through that how they should behave when
Speaker 1: he starts to exercise the room, so it's just he
Speaker 1: has these intermittent bouts where he tries to sell his
Speaker 1: books and DVDs and keeps begging for money, and then
Speaker 1: he'll perform these exorcisms on people around the room. And
Speaker 1: usually at some point he'll pick a victim out of
Speaker 1: the audience and parade them before everyone else. And usually
Speaker 1: it's a person who has some very salacious kind of problem,
Speaker 1: maybe they sleep around or they're addicted to drugs, and
Speaker 1: they'll do a performance basically in front of the room.
Speaker 2: And Joe Nichol described it as being very much like
Speaker 2: stage hypnosis, not that they're hypnotized, but that they are
Speaker 2: complicit in the performance, right, they have a role they're playing.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of shock induction really, the way that
Speaker 1: he drags someone up on stage and how violent he
Speaker 1: is and barking orders at them, and he's all the
Speaker 1: time giving them cues and telling them what they need
Speaker 1: to do, and they're following the instructions and he asks them,
Speaker 1: what demon are you possessed by? And because they've seen
Speaker 1: the videos. They're going to say Legion or Belile or Jezebel,
Speaker 1: one of these famous TV demons. And so then he'll
Speaker 1: ask them what kind of thing they're possessed by, whether
Speaker 1: it's alcoholism or drugs. So he's really feeding them the answers,
Speaker 1: and they just have to choose one of those answers,
Speaker 1: and usually that person's very distraught, and it's a scary
Speaker 1: kind of circus to be there. Everyone is in the
Speaker 1: audience is playing along too. And the last event that
Speaker 1: I went to, there's a woman in front of me
Speaker 1: who was growling, and they just know the drill. They
Speaker 1: know how to behave, and when you're caught up in
Speaker 1: that mass hysteria, everyone's participating. It was just so surreal.
Speaker 2: If he came here, I would go see him, for sure.
Speaker 2: I would like to see at firsthand.
Speaker 1: But I think there's a lot to be said for
Speaker 1: armchair skepticism to go out there and learn how these
Speaker 1: things work. To see it firsthand is very, very different.
Speaker 1: And you know, every skeptic is skeptical of exorcism, but
Speaker 1: to go and experience it and to see it is
Speaker 1: just an important thing to learn. We tried to be exercised.
Speaker 1: But no, he wouldn't go for us. I think he
Speaker 1: could tell that we were skeptics.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you have a dark aura about you, and.
Speaker 1: Exactly that's all that was so from demons.
Speaker 2: Let us now turn to Satanic cults. You covered this
Speaker 2: pretty well. There's a big disparity between the sort of
Speaker 2: self professed members of the Church of Satan and the
Speaker 2: kind of Satanic cults that are described in the famous
Speaker 2: ritual abuse cases, which, by the way, it's interesting one
Speaker 2: of those was just in the news again. There was
Speaker 2: one that's just now been settled out of court just
Speaker 2: a couple of days ago. There's still going on. But
Speaker 2: can you talk about what the differences between the boogeyman
Speaker 2: version of Satanic cults and the real Church of Satan.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And we were talking about cemeteries earlier and
Speaker 1: people breaking into them, and you might hear of cases
Speaker 1: in the news of vandalism of cemeteries and animal sacrifice
Speaker 1: taking place in cemeteries. And that's more likely to be
Speaker 1: someone who practices can Don Blay or Santa Ria than
Speaker 1: to be a Satanist. I focus on Lavaine Satanism, the Satanism,
Speaker 1: the Church of Satan through Anton Lavay in the book.
Speaker 1: And I look at the various different kinds of Satanism,
Speaker 1: and there might be a small band of real devil
Speaker 1: worship as people who do believe in Satan as a
Speaker 1: real adversary to God and who worship him through burning candles. Yes,
Speaker 1: but you'll find that most Satanists are atheists or non theists,
Speaker 1: or skeptics or humanists. So the theistic Satanists are very
Speaker 1: rare breed.
Speaker 2: It seemed like theatrical atheism, if that could be.
Speaker 1: It really is. And these are people who just they
Speaker 1: do practice magical rituals, but it's usually within the context
Speaker 1: of they call it psychodrama, so it might be purging
Speaker 1: yourself of inhibitions and fears, but it's not necessarily that
Speaker 1: they believe that they can affect have affect the external
Speaker 1: world through some kind of ritual. Even though Anton Levey
Speaker 1: did say at some stage in one of his books
Speaker 1: that if you're successful with magic, that you do need
Speaker 1: to acknowledge the power of magic. So who knows he
Speaker 1: was full of dish.
Speaker 2: I mean, well to be blunt, Yeah, absolutely he was.
Speaker 2: I've heard so many interesting first hand anecdotes about the
Speaker 2: kind of things. He would say.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a short, secondhand one, and that is
Speaker 1: that Matthew's mother used to run this little store just
Speaker 1: selling odd and ends, like an early seven to eleven
Speaker 1: in a place called Walton in sort of northern Colorado.
Speaker 1: And he came in one day and he was a
Speaker 1: right asshole to her, really really rude, really mean, picking
Speaker 1: a fight with her. And this is this lovely little lady.
Speaker 1: And he bought an ice block I think, and just
Speaker 1: stood there sucking it while he abused her. And he's
Speaker 1: just nasty for no reason.
Speaker 2: What an odd character he used to raise lions. I
Speaker 2: watched the documentary about him. It was very interesting.
Speaker 1: Well that's the thing, you can't always trust documentaries about him,
Speaker 1: and I do go into that. He claimed that he
Speaker 1: was a multi millionaire and he owned property in Italy
Speaker 1: and throughout California, and he owned boats and Mercedes Benzes,
Speaker 1: and that was just crap. He was pretty much died
Speaker 1: a pauper, and he had a lot of tall stories.
Speaker 1: He claimed he'd had an affair with Jane Mansfield and
Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe, that he had some NUDI picture of her,
Speaker 1: of Marilyn Monroe that autographed to him, and that was
Speaker 1: actually signed by his wife at the time. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he claims a lot of things. He had a very
Speaker 1: grand past, if we believe him, but a lot of
Speaker 1: that was untrue.
Speaker 2: It seems like it's sort of again like a ritualized
Speaker 2: version of just a very selfish, iron randy and type philosophy.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think there is that element. I think they
Speaker 1: profess to be very kind and good people to those
Speaker 1: who deserve it, and if not, then they're assholes, and
Speaker 1: admittedly they I think it's not really something that's practiced
Speaker 1: in any kind of church nowadays. I mean, initially there
Speaker 1: was the House Come Church that Anton LeVay lived in
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and now they have their headquarters in
Speaker 1: appropriately in Hell's Kitchen in New York. But any Satanism
Speaker 1: is really just practiced in the home, and it's just
Speaker 1: not the kind of thing that you hear about with
Speaker 1: Satanic re jewel abuse though.
Speaker 2: But you know, I've never understood the at least the
Speaker 2: way that the church, the Christian Church, represents it. And
Speaker 2: this is not a big thing at Christian Church in general,
Speaker 2: but it certainly sits there in the legendary It's in
Speaker 2: the folklore but not canonical, right that the faust idea
Speaker 2: that people make deals with Satan and are rewarded for it.
Speaker 1: But oh, like Jimmy Page, Yeah right, Well.
Speaker 2: There's all kinds of people that you know but be
Speaker 2: raised as a Protestant. You know, my understanding was always
Speaker 2: that going to hell was the default position. Everybody's going
Speaker 2: to go to hell unless they accept Christ's redemption in
Speaker 2: order to get into heaven. So the idea that people
Speaker 2: would be successful by making a deal with Satan for
Speaker 2: their soul really made no sense because by default he
Speaker 2: gets your soul, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, And of course you can't trust him, So if
Speaker 1: you make a pact with him and offer him your
Speaker 1: soul for fame and fortune, you can't trust him anyway.
Speaker 2: I think it's metaphysical sour grapes. People see successful people
Speaker 2: and they can't understand why they're not successful, and so
Speaker 2: they make this claim, Oh, clearly they made a deal
Speaker 2: with the devil because there's no way, well, they could
Speaker 2: be that successful on their own.
Speaker 1: Then you have urban legends surrounding led Zeppelin, and as
Speaker 1: I said, Jimmy Page, and he goes and buys Aleister
Speaker 1: Crowley's all place in Scotland and purchased a lot of
Speaker 1: Crowley memorabilia, and so people just I guess made a
Speaker 1: natural assumption that he'd made a fausty impact. Yeah, the devil,
Speaker 1: as you do.
Speaker 2: Either either the devil or perhaps sore on.
Speaker 1: Oh dear.
Speaker 2: The Misty Mountain harp comes to mind. But the love
Speaker 2: that song. It's a good song. Yeah, And even as
Speaker 2: you pointed out, even Ozzy Osbourne says, you know that's
Speaker 2: just shell, it's not real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he said, Oh, I'm just a nice guy and
Speaker 1: I'm not a Satanist, and it's I think it's good
Speaker 1: pr for musicians, or it's often been, but not so
Speaker 1: much for some companies that have been attacked by those
Speaker 1: out there who claim that these companies are affiliated with
Speaker 1: the Church of Satan order exactly demons somehow, Liz Claiborne
Speaker 1: and McDonald's.
Speaker 2: For example, Yeah, Proctor and Gambles. This dates me, but
Speaker 2: uh so when I was a kid, way before the
Speaker 2: Internet existed, people still had something like spam offices across
Speaker 2: the country would get on these facts, uh links, but
Speaker 2: people will be sitting fact spam and your facts becually
Speaker 2: would just dump out stuff that people shared, and people
Speaker 2: would share these, uh, these urban legends on fact paper
Speaker 2: and we got some and uh it all explained about
Speaker 2: how that uh Procter and Gambles logou the stars could
Speaker 2: be shaped to say six x six. I totally yes.
Speaker 1: And the girls in the guy's beard, I remember that too.
Speaker 1: I was just a kid. But I remember looking at
Speaker 1: a picture on some Procter and Gamble product in Australia,
Speaker 1: a detergent maybe, and seeing that symbol and thinking that
Speaker 1: there was something evil about it, but really not understanding
Speaker 1: what was behind it. And I don't know if you know,
Speaker 1: but it was actually that whole scam was traced back
Speaker 1: to Mway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if you would like to learn more about Amway,
Speaker 2: you can give me a call. Now. My parents went
Speaker 2: through the Mway thing. We had the driving the circles
Speaker 2: and it was you know, I was just a kid.
Speaker 2: I said, this sounds wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, Procter and Gamble had to retire that symbol
Speaker 1: and they'd been using various forms of that for about
Speaker 1: one hundred years. So I thought that was a shame.
Speaker 1: From a historical perspective, it's.
Speaker 2: Really difficult to convince people that you're not actually secretly
Speaker 2: powered by Satan. I mean, if people are willing to
Speaker 2: believe that Satan is actually you know, working corporations, it's
Speaker 2: going to be If they're willing to believe that, it's
Speaker 2: going to be hard to talk them out of it. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And I think these urban legends always survive
Speaker 1: the truth and exposure.
Speaker 2: But there's this persistent story about the Satanic cults that
Speaker 2: are lurking around the country killing babies, sacrificing babies. But
Speaker 2: you didn't find any others that that's true.
Speaker 1: No, you'll normally find with the Richard Ramirez and other
Speaker 1: characters like that they are pseudo Satanists. Satanists people who
Speaker 1: are members of the Church of Satan don't see those
Speaker 1: people as being Satanists. They're really pretenders. They're people who
Speaker 1: have psychological issues, mental illnesses. And yet it's just I
Speaker 1: think Satanism has always been a good outlet for them,
Speaker 1: something for them to align themselves to, but certainly not
Speaker 1: the same thing as the Church of Satan. And again
Speaker 1: cases of vandalism and animal sacrifice. Animal abuse be related
Speaker 1: to drugs, but animal sacrifice is probably going to be
Speaker 1: Santa Ria.
Speaker 2: The idea that they are out there, you know, farming
Speaker 2: babies to power their dark cults doesn't seem to be true.
Speaker 2: They still sound a little bit like a Hoole's and
Speaker 2: I should I don't want to like people all with
Speaker 2: a dark brush, but you know, yeah, that.
Speaker 1: Really they got swept up into the whole Satanic ritual
Speaker 1: abuse thing. They were an easy target and the book
Speaker 1: Michelle Remembers that's what kickstarted a lot of the Satanic
Speaker 1: ritual abuse claims and the Satanic panic And in that book,
Speaker 1: the author, I think it's Michelle Smith. She underwent maybe
Speaker 1: six hundred hours of sessions with her psychotherapist's later husband,
Speaker 1: and she made all of these claims under hypnosis. These
Speaker 1: were false memories that were implanted into her mind. She
Speaker 1: claimed that her mother had been involved with the Church
Speaker 1: of Satan back in nineteen fifty six, and of course
Speaker 1: the Church of Satan wasn't around for maybe about another
Speaker 1: twelve or thirteen years, so they just couldn't have been
Speaker 1: a part of that. So it was just dumb luck,
Speaker 1: really that that should coincide.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to visit that a little deeper in
Speaker 2: a future episode, because the idea of the Satanic ritual
Speaker 2: abuse ties in very closely with the ideas of alien abduction,
Speaker 2: and not that they're the same phenomena what the experiences
Speaker 2: are recounted as, but that there are a similar phenomena
Speaker 2: in how the experiences are put into the brain.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that would be a fascinating episode. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of information there with the McMartin primary school trial
Speaker 1: that's ak place in California and all the amazing stories
Speaker 1: that came out about that, and children being abused by
Speaker 1: giraffes and just crazy stories people.
Speaker 2: Right, But when the people are not following up on
Speaker 2: whether the things really happens, like, the more outrageous the claim,
Speaker 2: the quicker they are to accept it is true. It's
Speaker 2: very odd.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was a lot of abuse taking place
Speaker 1: there with leading questions bad therapists, legal.
Speaker 2: Abuse versus actual real abuse.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, with some very real world.
Speaker 2: Yes, really bad consequences.
Speaker 1: For the people going to jail for years and losing family,
Speaker 1: losing their careers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And a lot of this just comes down to
Speaker 2: people don't understand how memory works, which is we just
Speaker 2: I did a special called's Believing, which a couple episodes ago.
Speaker 2: It was just a special thing I did with Elizabeth
Speaker 2: Loftus and Richard Wiseman and just you can't trust your memory.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's good for everyday stuff, but if
Speaker 2: something's fantastic, something's weird or unusual, you can't trust your memory.
Speaker 1: You just oh yeah. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: skeptics are skeptical about things like hypnosis and false memory,
Speaker 1: but those are a very real things.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes they are. I would say this is a
Speaker 2: fantastic book, and there's lots more. We've only covered three topics,
Speaker 2: but there's many more chapters and I think you'll really
Speaker 2: enjoy it if you pick this book up. Linked is
Speaker 2: in the show notes.
Speaker 1: And there are plenty of monsters still in the book too. Sure,
Speaker 1: there are religion and skepticism, I'm sorry, puns, lots of puns.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think the main monsters that I focus on,
Speaker 1: the worst monsters being people.
Speaker 2: People, the real monsters, exactly real monsters. Well, speaking of monsters,
Speaker 2: I don't think I've gotten to ask you this before,
Speaker 2: what's your favorite monster? Karen?
Speaker 1: I think I answered this on an interview that we
Speaker 1: did years ago for Skepticality, and that's just oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: In all of these years, it's still Jeff, that's so great.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad we got to do that interview. Wasn't
Speaker 2: that good? Oh?
Speaker 1: That was my favorite. I really loved that story and
Speaker 1: talking with Chris. He was so knowledgeable and I can't
Speaker 1: wait for his book to come out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I really hope he finishes that up.
Speaker 1: He will. I'm keeping an eye on him on Facebook.
Speaker 2: Excellent. Thank you so much for coming back here, and I.
Speaker 1: Really thank you for having me. This was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun.
Speaker 2: More Monstertle. Thanks for listening to another episode of Monster Talk.
Speaker 2: I'm Blake Smith and you've been listening to an interview
Speaker 2: with doctor Karen Stallsnow about her new book, God Bless America.
Speaker 2: I'll link to this books in the show notes at
Speaker 2: monster talk dot org, or you can find it at
Speaker 2: Amazon dot com, along with her other book, Haunting America,
Speaker 2: which is available exclusively for the Kindle ebook reader. That
Speaker 2: book's all about famous American ghosts and it really shed
Speaker 2: some light on a rather shadowy topic. Monster Talk is
Speaker 2: an official podcast of Skeptic magazine. The views expressed on
Speaker 2: Monster Talk or those of myself and my guests, and
Speaker 2: do not necessarily reflect the views of Skeptic magazine or
Speaker 2: the Skeptic Society. This is probably our last episode of
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, and I hope you'll stay with us into
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, where I'll be talking more on cryptids and
Speaker 2: and trying to get to the bottom of mysteries that
Speaker 2: we're all curious about. If you enjoy monster Talk and
Speaker 2: like monsters, why not come join our Facebook group. It's
Speaker 2: a fun place to find out what's new in the
Speaker 2: monster world, and you can mean a wide spectrum of
Speaker 2: folks with similar interests. I'd also like to grow monster
Speaker 2: Talk's listener bases.
Speaker 5: There's someone you know who'd benefit from listening to Muster Talk,
Speaker 5: why not share the show with them or leave us
Speaker 5: a review on iTunes. Those are simple actions, they only
Speaker 5: take a few minutes, and they have a big impact.
Speaker 5: I'd like to say special thanks out to Robert Smith
Speaker 5: and Joseph Hitchar. I hope I'm saying that right for
Speaker 5: their generous support of our transcript project. If you'd like
Speaker 5: to donate, the link is at the bottom of our
Speaker 5: website again at MonsterTalk dot org. Monster Talk theme music
Speaker 5: is by Peach Stealing Monkeys. As always, thank you so
Speaker 5: much for listening.
Speaker 3: I want to stay abreast of the latest from Skeptic
Speaker 3: Magazine and the Skeptic Society. Want cutting edge skeptical articles
Speaker 3: delivered straight to your inbox every week, then subscribe to
Speaker 3: E Skeptic, the free electronic newsletter of the Skeptic Society.
Speaker 3: Visits skeptic dot com to sign up.
Speaker 2: But the.
Speaker 1: Satan of spawn uh and uh well, I uh uh
Speaker 1: a tone for all of the sills.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you would call that in the
Speaker 2: uh yeah, and I don't uh yeah. It's also, you know,
Speaker 2: I the thought that people the sort of the said now, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have to say that while uh well,