Interesting…very interesting…
This is pretty much what I thought, but my friend was so adament that this person wouldn’t lie and was genuinely terrified for their life. Then I got accused of being naive, thinking that police officers and public officials were good people who wouldn’t stoop to committing human sacrifices to gain power. But I think that the best argument against it is that it would be impossible to keep a secret.
Thanks, all, for your responses.
ZJ
I vaguely recall hearing about bodies and satanic symbols that were found in Matamoros,Mexico.Whats the dope on that?
While the claim has often been made Bathory is hardly an example of a satanic cult and the claims are more folklore then history…
Just to give you an idea of how unlikely hiding a satanic cult would be, there is somewhat illegal experiment you can pull.
Go to some isolated, abandoned part of the city (under a train bridge or somesuch). Spray paint a pentagram on the ground, and a couple smaller ones on some neaby walls. Place a few animal bones (chicken may suffice). Light a small fire that will be noticed but will not get out of control or stomp it out so its just smoldering. Leave the area and find a payphone. Place a call to the police that you saw what looked like a camping fire in said abandoned area. Do not give personal info. Leave.
Then watch the media frenzy as the local news bumpers say “Are SATANIC CULTS operating in our fair city!?”
You also might want to check out the books ‘Satanic Panic’ and "Satans’ SIlence’.
After reading those I wanted to lop off the heads of those who convicted in the various cases.
No shirt, no shoes?
Probably just smoke and mirrors to cover up the fact that most of the victims in that case were members of a rival drug gang.
One could also say that the West Memphis 3 is a Satanic Panic case.
You’d think that. Unfortunately, there are way more than enough Giant Government/Shadowy Secret Society Conspiracy theorists out there to prove you wrong…
But, of course, no one here is actually suggesting that anyone do anything quite so stupid, wasting the time and money of the police and fire departments and causing panic among the less firmly clued for no reason other than the amusement it brings.
So, let us not see any more suggestions that might incite the less firmly grounded readers of the SDMB to do anything stupid.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
I’d like to think that the window for causing widescale panic with random pentagram graffiti has probably passed, in any case; I suspect that police departments researching this stuff these days have access to less credulous sources of information than they did back when Geraldo ruled the airwaves.
During the early 1990’s, I went back to visit the small rural Pennsylvania town where I’d spent my childhood. Among the several years of accumulated gossip, I was interested to learn from multiple sources that the town had just recently been invaded by Satanists. The sum total of evidence for this incursion was the discovery of a dead deer at the bridge leading into town one morning. As I said, this is a rural town, and dead whitetails on the county highway are not exactly a rarity in Pennsylvania in my experience, so I was hard pressed to figure out what the big deal was; a close encounter with a semi during the night seemed a lot more reasonable to me. “But it was right at the bridge!” I was told. Everyone seemed to think this was clear evidence that the Satanists were marking the town for unknown nefarious purposes. According to some people, the deer had also been strangely mutilated in some unspecified manner. I was utterly confounded by the collective anxiety generated by what was probably the act of a random truck collision, some guy spotlighting deer out of season, or just possibly some kids dicking around.
As a tabletop fantasy RPGer since the mid-1980’s, I’d been aware of a certain degree of hyperbole and misinformation regarding Satanic activities in America during that time. However, the visit to the old stomping grounds was the first real inkling I had that the panic wasn’t just directed at the dice-and-paper set by religious whackjobs, but was considered a real and present danger by otherwise sensible folks.
Fortunately, since that time, America has progressed to the point where our societal concerns are based entirely on the principles of logic and cost-benefit analysis. So it’s unlikely in the extreme that we would ever again allow ourselves to be duped into mass panic without any evidence whatsoever.
That’s a whoosh, right?
Iffin’ not, bring naif pie.
Hey, I already admitted to being a gamer. And everyone knows that Dungeons and Dragons turns you into an acolyte of Baphomet.* I believe Jack Chick wrote extensively on this fact. Baphomet is of course the god of sarcasm, so every word his disciples utter must be weighed carefully for its true meaning. A useful clue is the ‘rolled eyes’ expression, which among worshipers of Baphomet is a sign of complete fidelity and sincerity. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
*Seriously, does anyone remember a show, I’m pretty sure it was PTL Club during the height of the Satanic scare, that had an episode devoted to exposing the true inner secrets of Roleplaying Games as Expressway to Damnation? They interviewed this one guy, ostensibly a “Dungeon Master,” who appeared in full hooded robe-and-staff sorceror regalia! This isn’t just a false memory of mine, is it? Who *was * that guy?
I once participated in a Beautiful Sex Cult.
Hippies and Wizards!
It was a Potterian orgy of Blood Fire Sex Love Magick!
Dude, Pagans Rule!
I was going to make some joke about the old movie Race With the Devil; then I find out somebody’s remaking it. Damn, but I’m tired of remakes.
At least they haven’t gotten around to The Devil’s Rain. My ex-wife swears that Ernest Borgnine was well-known (in the pagan community in California) to be a Satanist.
You should probably explain to your freind that this person isn’t lying, and you don’t believe she is lying. If she is a vicitm of false memory/implanted memory then she has real memories of the things she claims. The memories don’t correspond to reality, but that doesn’t make them any less real to her. For here she really went through all those things. She isn’t lying to anyone when she says that she did, she is just misled/ confused/delusional. That is not lying.
IOW your freind needs to realise that this isn’t a choice betwen the person lying and Satanic cults being real. Themost plausible scenartio is that the perosn is telling the truth as she believes it but that the Satanic cults are all a product of her (subconscious) imagination. She’s not lyiong but the memories are no more objetcively real than memories of an acid trip or other hallucination.
Just picked up Satanic panic from the library.its a good read. I have a question. I’ve heard about a Cathy O’Brien,who wrote a book called Trans-formation,where she claimed to be a mind controlslave of high government men. Wasshe lying, or delusional?
There’s a lot you don’t know about the Rotary. :eek:
A renowned 10th century Sufi named al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 922) said that Shaytan was the most perfect lover of Allah (and presumably someone to be emulated). As proof of this, al-Hallaj cited the passage in the Qur’an where Allah creates Adam and commands the angels to bow down and kowtow (sujûd, kowtow Islamic-style) to this new creature. They all obey except Iblis. He refused. Allah asked him why, and he says he will not kowtow to anyone except Allah. So al-Hallaj gave a radically unorthodox exegesis of this story, saying look how much the Devil loves Allah, he will even accept being sent to eternal damnation rather than compromise on his devotion. Well, al-Hallaj said a lot of radically unorthodox things like that, and the Baghdad authorities put him to death for blasphemy. In later centuries he was revered far and wide by millions as one of the greatest Sufis ever.
I have a nice ooggly Satanism-in-our-fair-city story of my own:
In the 1980s I lived in Denver, in the outer Capitol Hill area near Colfax Avenue. Near a former synagogue (which still had a hexagram/Magen David cast into the sidewalk) was a house that if you walked in the front door, turned around, and looked up the stairs, there was a lifesize sculpture of an eldritch grimacing demon perched up there leering down at you. The sculpture had been done with impressive artistic skill and the thing looked seriously disturbing. I heard of it by word of mouth and went to see it. Never found out the explanation of who put it there and why. If any Denverite Capitol Hill denizens know the Straight Dope on that demon statue, please post it here.
Terrifel, I love your wit! ROFLMFAO! 
I believe that there is no evidence to suggest that there is a satanic cult, that is, one set up diametrically opposed to Christianity. Le Vay’s version was this pseudo-hedonism thing that really does not qualify, although I heard, like the Devil, Le Vay needed a big dick. Others claim that Aleister Crowley was a satanist but this is somewhat of a simplification of exactly what Crowley believed.
As a Catholic, I have heard many stories about an organization of satanists whose purpose for existence is to mock the Church. In philosophy it is diametrically opposed to the Church. It chief ritual is the Black Mass in which an actual priest, who has been turned to the dark side, consecrates the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ so that they may do horrible and nasty things to it. Apparently, a priest does not loose this power even after leaving the folds of the Church. The people who take part in these services are claimed to raise babies that do not have birth certificates and therefore do not exist so that they might be sacrificed in this unholy ritual. Much of what I’m saying is chronicled in that great piece of lay Catholic pulp fiction Michelle Remembers.
Do I believe that there is such a group running counter to my Church, being the counter point to it’s existence, that has shadowed it from it’s birth, and which mocks its very rituals with human sacrifice? No. I find that very hard to believe. I think that if anything were to come close it would come about because of the great fiction and hype centered around such fantasies
Oh yes, I forgot to add that there is a sect in the Middle East (Iraq for the most part) who have suffered much persecution because they are reputed to worship Satan. The Yazidi are their name but it is a misconception to believe that they worship the Satan of the Bible or Koran.