Satanic Panic in the South
I have lived in the southern US for most of my life, in both rural areas and not so rural areas. But nearly everywhere I've lived sooner or later I run across tales of satanic cults., tales spoken in hushed voices from trembling lips, the speaker wide-eyed, serious and fearful. And inevitably I end up going out trying to verify the veracity of these tales. I just can't help it - I gotta know!
Most of the time I come up empty handed, or with evidence that points more toward bored beer-drinking teens who favour heavy-metal music than it does actual satanic worship. Still I'm compelled to share a couple of my more unusual experiences (the names have been changed to protect the innocent).
I attended university in a small, progressive North Georgia town, and worked parttime as a waitress, and part-time as cartomancer/ clairvoyant/ghostbuster. I worked at the restaurant with a young man of the pentacostal faith (often termed 'holy rollers' by some) who told me of a stretch of wooded land near the river where satanists engaged in their nefarious rites and where the presence of evil twisted the trees into strange, leafless shapes. Just the sort of thing I absolutely can't resist. I asked the man to takeme there one night and he outright refused, and he was very hesitant even to give me directions. I finally managed to cajole the location from him and subsequently made plans with another 'ghostbuster' friend of mine to visit the site on our next night off. I'd already had several ghostly experiences in this town, and was looking forward to this excursion, though I seriously doubted anything would come of it. After all, most rumours of satanic activity tend to remain unsubstantiated.
When the day of our excursion arrived, I had an unexplained panic attack. I'd suffered such attacks in years previous, during the course of my father's terminal illness. But since my move to the college-town I'd not suffered any. I meditated daily, I wasn't taking drugs (though I was drinking a great deal, as do most college student) and I was maintaining a reasonably healthy lifestyle at this time. The attack really took me by surprise, and I remember phoning my boyfriend to ask to borrow his gun, though what my motivations were I can't say, other than I was terribly disoriented by my anxiety.
The anxiety subsided in time for my trip to the satanic wood, and my friend and I set off for the location we were given. Our spirits were high and we laughed and joked as we made our way to our remote destination. There was a dirt road, little more than a path really, that would lead into the wood and toward the river. The area was very dark, unadorned by streetlights, and when we turned onto the dirt road that would lead us into satanville, the engine to our vehicle failed. Suddenly, inexplicably failed. We had plenty of gas, and though the van was a bit rattletrap (a student-mobile, to say the least) it had always performed adequately and we could see no reason for it to shut off so suddenly while the engine was running and it was in motion. I almost immediately felt unwanted in that place, shut out, pushed away. I could feel that morning's panic starting to rise again. My friend Bob, who was driving, tried to start the van, again, and again, and again, with not so much as a choke or a cough from the engine. He wanted to get the van started and then go forward - I was trying to get him to leave. But he was driving and he still wanted to explore the wood near the river. It seemed crazy to me. If we were to get the van started why the fuck risk another breakdown, deeper in the woods. I finally convinced him of this fact and he said, 'Fine, if I can get the van started, we'll leave'. And the van started just as he said it. Now Bob was frightened, and he put the van into reverse and peeled out of there as quickly as he could make that van go. We were silent all the way back to town, and experienced no more problems with the van.
Of course this occurence never convinced me that there were satanists hanging out in that forest. But it did open me to the possibility that something unusual might be going on. I definitely felt like our presence wasn't wanted there, and as long as Bob intended to go forward, the van wouldn't start. The second he decided to leave, it started. Could have been coincidence, I'll allow for that, but it was a strange enough coincidence to keep us from attempting the trip again.
My second story might yeild up a few clues as to how satanic rumours get perpetuated. This happened much much earlier, when I was a teenager in highschool. My parents, in all their wisdom, decided public school (public school in the states doesn't mean the same thing it does in the UK) was a bad influence on me, and when I was fifteen they sent me to a private christian institution. As part of the curriculum we were required to take a Bible Study course. Our teacher was the Dean's wife, Mrs Andrews. Wilma Andrews. Did I say I was changing the names to protect the innocent? HA! This woman was not innocent. She managed to traumatize and warp whole classes of students for years on end. The shit she put us through still torments me in my dreams - I'll never get over it.
You see, the woman was totally obsessed with Satan. With evil, with hell, with demons. She dispensed with the prescribed Bible-study curriculum and instituted her own. We had three semesters of Bible study that we had to pass. Three courses: Life after death (where we learned all about heaven and more imporantly, Hell), the Apocalypse (yes, where we learned about what horrors awaited us at the end of the world), and finally, Demonology. Yep, demonology. We had to learn about Satan, his demons, and how to prevent them from possessing us. And believe me, just about anything could get you possessed. You wouldn't believe how many of my classmates burned their ouija boards and rock and roll records (not me buddy - I was the bad girl in high-school). The school held a big bonfire - many actually - for the sinful students to dispose of their evil. Wilma would take pictures of the fire and show us, after the pics were developed, the images of demons in the smoke. I never saw such a thing in those pictures, but perhaps my evil eyes were blinded by satan himself. We were warned against doing aerobics, the devils exercise, and also told not to watch ninja movies. Wilma related to us the story of a man who went to see a ninja movie and was possessed by the ninja demon, who caused the man to go out and steal a microwave. (I swear to the gods I'm not lying - her stories were ALWAYS this ridiculous, but she told them with such seriousness and authority that she always managed to scare a lot of people).
God spoke to this woman a lot, in person, in a voice she actually seemed to hear. And the things He said made him sound like a rather stupid god. Maybe one day I'll share a few more of Wilma's stories, if not here then on my blog. But I am reaching a sort of a point with this in my own roundabout way.
One of our assignments in our demonology course was to visit a local cemetary (and here this woman's incredible irresponsibility is revealed - to send a group of teens unchaperoned out into a graveyard in the middle of the night) to hunt for the satanists that were rumoured to lurk there, armed only with bibles and prayers. Now you tell me what the hell kind of assignment is this? And why on earth did so many parents go along with it? Mine didn't. I just snuck out of the house. Even at that age I had an insatiable curiosity about such things, and some of my classmates (and Wilma) though me satanic myself. (I had what Wilma deemed an unhealthy interest in world mythologies and comparative religion). The other members of the assignment brought their bibles. I brought half a bottle of vodka I'd stolen from my granny's pantry.
The cematary was spooky, and had a reputation for all sorts of strange goings on. Ghosts, dead celebrities, drug use, and of course satanism. I'm not exactly sure, to this day, what we were supposed to do when we actually ran into the supposed satanists (pray at them? preach to them? offer them vodka?), but there we were, a group of ten or so teens, sitting in the middle of a graveyard - mass-hysteria-bait if ever I've seen it. The inevitable happened. One boy (can't remember his name but he had blonde curls and glasses) stood up, pointed and screamed that he'd seen them, and broke into a panicked run crying mangled prayers to God and Jesus. That of course set us off. We bolted.We ran in all directions screaming and yelling. I even left my vodka behind. Damn near pissed myself, though I'll admit, I didn't see a thing.
I can't even remember how I got home, but the next day most everyone had a tale for Wilma. Nearly everyone claimed to have seen white-robed figures flitting among the trees and the gravestones. Wilma seemed quite pleased with these stories (never mind she had a bunch of terrified teens on her hands - they'd brought her proof of the existence of satanic activity in our nasty little town), and the fact that we'd all come away unharmed proved that we were right with God, protected from on high. (and some of us came away unharmed because we were minions of satan. That would be me, I guess).
The students stuck to their story of the white-robed figures, even years later as adults. I've only spoken to one person other than myself who claims to have seen nothing, though they too had been panicked by the sudden flight. I don't know where rumours of satanism in that cemetary began, but I've seen firsthand the sort of self-righteous need for an evil to fight that perpetuates such rumours. In fact that particular cemetary has become so imbued with rumours of satanism that most of the townspeople accept the satanic activity as a given. I meet very few people in that town who doubt the rumours.
I realize this has been a rather long post. Hope I haven't bored anyone to tears.
