Conspiracy Theories & Satanic Panic

Innovatia <dennis@innovatia.com> writes:
>"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so
>monstrous he cannot believe it exists." J. Edgar Hoover, former head of
>the
>FBI

ED: Didn't Hoover wear womens' dresses?

Some of the other quotations Denis provides are from the Cold War era, an
age of heightened tensions and fears.

I agree that in this world the poor want something for nothing, while the
rich often stop at nothing to get everything.

I have also studied some conspiracy theories and discovered that the folks
who write such books often pick out isolated words or activities, weaving
them together creatively and darkly, and they can't substantiate a lot of
what they write about. Lots of hearsay, kind of like
creationist-folk-science claims about finding human giant skeletons over
ten feet tall that never come to light.

The same goes for Christian conspiracy theories, like the "Satanic Panic"
of the 1980s and unsubstantiated exorcism tales:

FORMER SATANISTS WHO BECAME EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS AND THE “SATANIC PANIC”
OF THE 1980s

The testimonies of “former Satanists who became evangelical Christians”
have been questioned even by fellow Christians. Take Mike Warnke, the
“former Satan worshiper” whose “autobiography,” The Satan Seller, became a
Christian best seller. Two Christian reporters who interviewed numerous
people from Warnke’s past, soon discovered that he had a long history of
being a “storyteller,” and that the tales in his book seriously conflicted
with what other people said Warnke was doing at that time in his life. I
heartily recommend the book those Christian reporters wrote, Selling
Satan: The Tragic History of Mike Warnke by Hertenstein and Trott.

Presumably it was those same reporters (working for the Christian
magazine, Cornerstone) who investigated Lauren Stratford’s claims in her
Christian best seller, Satan’s Underground. “They turned up so many
contradictions that it became clear that little if anything in the book
could be trusted as the literal truth. In fact not even the author’s name
was real, it was Laurel Rose Wilson, and she came from a strict Christian
family and only began claiming she had been the victim of a satanic cult
in 1985, when two sensational cases surfaced in the national news. Though
she displays scars on her body, claiming they were inflicted during
rituals by satanic-cult members, the reporters state that they found
witnesses who had seen her inflict the wounds herself. At one point she
claimed to be blind, but it was discovered that she could see. There was
no medical evidence that she had ever been pregnant (which was significant
because Ms. Wilson claimed that two of her own babies had been sacrificed
in snuff films). The publishers withdrew Satan’s Underground from
publication in January 1990.” (Laurence Gonzales, “Satanic Panic,”
Penthouse, 1989?)

Another “Satan seller” is Dr. Rebecca Brown. Her tales of “Satanic cult
abuse” (He Came To Set The Captives Free) were published by Jack Chick,
who specializes in publishing mini-comic books portraying demons and
hellfire. “Dr. Rebecca Brown” was originally “an Indiana physician named
Ruth Bailey, who had her license removed by the Medical Licensing Board of
Indiana for a number of reasons. Among the board’s seventeen findings are:
Bailey knowingly misdiagnosed serious illnesses, including brain tumors
and leukemia, as ‘caused by demons, devils, and other evil spirits;’ she
told her patients that doctors at Ball Memorial Hospital and St. John’s
Medical Center were ‘demons, devils, and other evil spirits’ themselves;
and she falsified patient charts and hospital records. The board’s report
states: ‘Dr. Bailey also addicted numerous patients to controlled
substances which required them to suffer withdrawal and undergo
detoxification, and that she self-medicated herself with non-therapeutic
amounts of Demerol which she injected on an hourly basis.’ A psychiatrist
appointed by the board to diagnose Bailey described her as ‘suffering from
acute personality disorders including demonic delusions and/or paranoid
schizophrenia.’ Refusing to appear before the board, Bailey moved to
California, changed her name to Rebecca Brown, and began working with Jack
Chick.” (David Alexander, “Giving the Devil More Than His Due: For Occult
Crime ‘Experts’ and the Media, Anti-Satanist Hysteria Has Become A Growth
Industry,” The Humanist, March/April 1990) Jack Chick recently stopped
publishing Brown’s books, “We used to publish her books. Then the Lord
told us he didn’t want us to put ‘em out anymore.” (Jack Chick, speaking
to Dwayne Walker in 1997)

Even the editors of Christianity Today praised a book in which
well-documented research showed that the problem with the “Satanic panic”
of the 1980s was that “rumor was prevailing over truth, and people,
particularly Christians, are too believing.” The Christian book reviewer
cited a case in a megachurch in Chicago where one man was
“disfellowshipped” because a female in the congregation “freaked out”
whenever she saw him on Sunday mornings, claiming he was a “Satanic cult
leader” who had “ritually abused her.” “The man was not allowed to face
his accuser, nor would they discuss with the man any specific dates or
events of alleged crimes. Though the man denied the allegations, and the
elders and pastor of the church saw no evidence of sin in the man’s life,
they felt compelled to protect the accuser.” The review continued, “To
date there has been no investigation that has substantiated the claims of
alleged Satanic abuse survivors. Recovered ‘memories’ are the only
evidence any specialist will offer... Well-meaning but uncritical
therapists have validated, if not helped to construct, vile fantasies that
foment a terror of Satan rather than confidence in God... In periods of
rising concern over actual child abuse and sexual immorality the
historical tendency has been to find scapegoats for social ills. A
despised segment of society is depicted as the perpetrator of a villainous
conspiracy. Romans accused the early Christians of wearing black robes,
secretly meeting in caves, and performing animal and baby mutilation. In
the Middle Ages, the scapegoat was the Jews. In America of the 1830s and
40s, kidnapping and murder of children were said to be the work of the
Catholics. A best-selling book of the time, The Awful Disclosures of Maria
Monk, chronicled the atrocities committed by priests and nuns at a
particular convent. That account sparked myriad copycat claims by other
young women.” (Susan Bergman, “Rumors from Hell,” Christianity Today, Vol.
38, No. 3, March, 1994 -- a review of Jeffrey S. Victor’s, Satanic Panic)

The modern “Satanic cult hysteria” only began in 1981 with the publication
of the best-seller, Michelle Remembers. “Prior to 1981 there were no
reports of ‘satanic-cult torture and murder.’ We have none on record, and
I challenge you to find any in the psychiatric or scientific literature.”
So says F.B.I. Special Agent Kenneth Lanning (who has a master’s degree in
behavioral science and whose published work on the sexual victimization of
children is well-known in the law-enforcement and psychology fields).
(Interestingly enough, the article featuring Lanning’s statement appeared
in Penthouse magazine, while the statements directly preceding Lanning’s
appeared in Christianity Today. It’s nice to know that Christians and
secularists, can agree on some matters!)

There are indeed practicing “Satanists” in America, but the F.B.I. has
been studying ritual criminal behavior for many years and has not found
evidence of any organized “satanic menace.” According to Lanning, “I
started out believing this stuff [about ritual murders by organized
satanic-cults]. I mean, I had been dealing with bizarre crimes for many
years and I knew from experience that almost anything is possible... But I
can’t find one documented case [of satanic-cult victimization], and I’ve
been looking for seven years or more. I personally have investigated some
300 cases -- and there is not a shred of evidence of a crime.” He
mentioned how psychiatric patients [and/or people who undergo hypnosis to
“recover memories”] are the ones claiming such crimes took place, but when
the alleged crime scene is investigated there is never a trace of blood or
bone, though the F.B.I. has many means to detect even the faintest traces
of splashed blood, and whole lawns and farm fields have been dug up in
search of bones and bone fragments though none were found.

Satan-mongers inflate statistics, claiming that “according to the F.B.I.,
two million children are missing each year.” “It’s wrong,” said Lanning.
The Justice Department (Juvenile Justice Bulletin, January 1989) reported
that between 52 and 58 children were kidnapped and murdered by non-family
members in 1988. The “Cult Crime Network” claims that “50,000 human
sacrifices” are being performed each year by “satanic cults.” But there
are only 20,000 murders, total in the U.S. each year, and that figure
accounts for all the gang, drug, domestic, and “regular” murders in the
country.

People do commit strange crimes. Some may even be committing human
sacrifice in the name of Satan. But there is absolutely no evidence of any
widespread, organized satanic movement. At one conference on satanism in
America in 1989 the same photo of a boy whose death was “linked to
satanism” was dragged out by just about everyone interviewed by a reporter
covering the conference, implying that was the one and only corpse in the
U.S. that could be traced to satanic-cult activity, and it was the result
of an isolated incident that could not be connected in any way with an
organized group.

As Lanning sums things up, “The fact is that more crime and child abuse
has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus, and Muhammad than
has ever been committed in the name of Satan.” [See also Kenneth Lanning,
“Satanic, Occult, Ritualistic Crime: A Law Enforcement Perspective,” The
Police Chief (Fall 1989)]

- E.T.B.
____________________________

Freakish Christians like to pretend that the majority of the United States
is comprised of “Satanists.” That way they can excuse the fact that
Christianity doesn’t work.
- Fredric Rice (featured at http://holysmoke.org/quotes.htm)
____________________________

DEVILS DEVILS EVERYWHERE, SO THROW A POT OF INK!

The Father of Protestant Christianity, Martin Luther, saw “Satan” lurking
everywhere and once boasted about throwing an inkpot at old Split-foot
himself. (The following quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from
Table Talk, a volume in The Collected Works of Martin Luther):

Snakes and monkeys are subjected to the demon more than other animals.
Satan lives in them and possesses them. He uses them to deceive men and to
injure them.

In my country, upon a mountain called Polterberg, there is a pool. If one
throws a stone into it, instantly a storm arises and the whole surrounding
countryside is overwhelmed by it. This lake is full of demons; Satan holds
them captive there.

Demons are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses, and in dark pooly places
ready to hurt and prejudice people; some are also in thick black clouds,
which cause hail, lightning and thunder, and poison the air, the pastures
and grounds.

How often have not the demons called “Nix,” drawn women and girls into the
water, and there had commerce with them, With fearful consequences.

I myself saw and touched at Dessay, a child which had no human parents,
but had proceeded from the Devil. He was twelve years old, and, in outward
form, exactly resembled ordinary children.

A large number of deaf, crippled and blind people are afflicted solely
through the malice of the demon. And one must in no wise doubt that
plagues, fevers and every sort of evil come from him.

Our bodies are always exposed to the attacks of Satan. The maladies I
suffer are not natural, but Devil’s spells.

As for the demented, I hold it certain that all beings deprived of reason
are thus afflicted only by the Devil.

Satan produces all the maladies that afflict mankind for he is the prince
of death.

(Who needs modern medicine or sanitation practices? What we really need,
according to Luther, are more exorcists to heal “all the maladies which
afflict mankind.” Yet even the “apple” of “God’s eye,” the ancient
Hebrews, did not enjoy unparalleled good health judging by the lengthy
number of illnesses mentioned in the book of Deuteronomy. And what about
Luther and Calvin’s devilishly recurring stomach and bowel problems? Dare
I suggest that the early invention of Ex-lax and Pepto-Bismol might have
proven more helpful to mankind than some of Luther and Calvin’s teachings?
-- E.T.B.)

I would have no compassion on a witch; I would burn them all. (Luther,
Table Talk)

When I was a child there were many witches, and they bewitched both cattle
and men, especially children. (Luther, Commentary on Galatians)

The heathen writes that the Comet may arise from natural causes; but God
creates not one that does not foretoken a sure calamity. (Luther, Advent
Sermon)

(For further quotations like those above, see Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man
Between God and the Devil)
____________________________

The long list of “doorways,” or entry points for demons, make daily life
awkward for some Christians. Members of one North London Church have to
avoid, among other things, Care Bears (because they do rituals for healing
without invoking the name of Christ), the film E.T., Cabbage Patch Dolls
(because they encourage people to treat toys as human), figurines of
unicorns (mythological), and frogs (“And I saw three unclean spirits like
frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, an out of the mouth of the
beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet;” Rev.16:13). One woman
owned a china tea set, passed down in the family as an heirloom; she was
persuaded to smash it by another church member, who noticed there was a
Chinese dragon in the pattern. A woman who looked after the church
childcare was found to be teaching the children relaxation exercises; she
was thrown out. All these things, the church elders suppose, might bring
demonic influence into the congregation’s lives.
- Gareth J. Medway, Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of
Satanism
(New York University Press, 2001)
____________________________

EXORCISMS

While exorcisms would seem to be, at worst, a harmless fad, on occasion
they have had disastrous consequences. On the night of Oct. 5-6, 1974,
Michael Taylor, a Yorkshireman who had recently taken up charismatic
Christianity, underwent an all-night exorcism at a local church. He then
went home and murdered his wife, strangled the family poodle, and was
found in the street by a policeman, naked and covered in blood. The
exorcists subsequently explained that although they had driven forty evil
spirits out of Taylor, a few remained, including the demon of murder.

Fortunately, it is very rare for a possessed person to go crazy like this.
Many other exorcisms have gone wrong, however because of an
extraordinarily widespread and venerable belief that a demon can be driven
out of a body by physical torture. Though few people have expressed
concern at the spread of “Christian ritual abuse,” that is just what
exorcisms often amount to. The victims, mostly women and children, have
been forced to take part in ceremonies where they were savagely beaten,
often fatally. Exorcists have gouged a woman’s eyes out; held a
three-year-old girl over a fire, onto which her favorite doll have been
thrown, so that she would feel the heat of Hell, and later murdered her;
placed a baby in an oven; forced a crucifix up a girl’s nose so that it
entered her brain; and forced two steel crucifixes down a woman’s throat.
Other children have met death by being strangled, being forced to drink a
poisonous potion, or being hit repeatedly over the head with a concrete
block.
- Gareth J. Medway, Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of
Satanism
(New York University Press, 2001)
____________________________

A 32-year-old Catholic woman was beaten to death after she refused to
enter an evangelical church in northeastern Brazil. She was passing by the
Church of the Kingdom of God when two pastors ordered their followers to
bring her inside to attend a ceremony. When she refused, the group held
her ten-year-old daughter while the pastors dragged her by the hair and
beat her in order to “exorcise the devil from her.”
- J. D. Bell, “Nuts in the News,” The American Rationalist, Nov./Dec. 1994
____________________________

EXCERPTS FROM AMERICAN EXORCISM
BY MICHAEL W. CUNEO

I’ve personally witnessed more than fifty exorcisms -- and this isn’t even
counting the occasions where I’ve seen dozens of people undergoing
exorcism all at once...

But nothing happened -- at least nothing startling, nothing that reached
out and grabbed me by the throat. At the exorcisms I attended, there were
no spinning heads, no levitating bodies, no voices from beyond the grave.
(There was plenty of vomiting, no question about it, but nothing more
impressive than what you’d probably catch most Saturday nights out behind
your local bar.) I wasn’t counting on demonic fireworks, but neither was I
counting them out. After all was said and done, more than fifty exorcisms
- no fireworks, none at all.

At least none that I could make out. Occasionally I found myself in a
situation where I was the odd man out, the party pooper of all party
poopers. Just about everyone else on hand would claim to see something
extraordinary, and they’d be disappointed -- confused and disappointed --
that I hadn’t seen it also.

“But you must have seen the body rising. The rest of us saw it. It clearly
rose two, maybe three feet off the chair. How could you not have seen it?”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t see it. I was looking as hard as I could, and I
didn’t see it.”...

So what did I see? Some of the people who showed up for exorcisms seemed
deeply troubled, some mildly troubled, and some hardly troubled at all.
The symptoms they complained of -- the addictions and compulsions, the
violent mood swings, the blurred self-identities, the disturbing visions
and somatic sensations -- all of this seemed to me fully explainable in
social, cultural, medical, and psychological terms. There seemed no
compelling need, no need whatsoever, to bring demons into the equation.
Bringing them in seemed superfluous, a matter of explanatory overkill.

The same with the antics I sometimes witnessed while the exorcisms were
actually taking pace, the flailing and slithering, the shrieking and
moaning, the grimacing and growling -- none of this, insofar as I could
tell, suggested the presence of demons. It was sometimes an attempt
(poignant? pathetic?) to satisfy the dramatic needs of the moment, it was
sometimes an exercise in sheer self-indulgence, and it was sometimes an
indication of profound personal distress. But demons? Here again, I saw no
evidence of them; I saw nothing that had me itching to make a break for
the door.

But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. I don’t want to make out
that I know more than I really do...

Who says... that if you’re suffering from some diagnosable psychiatric
condition, you can’t also be demonized? Why should the first diagnosis
necessarily rule out the second? If demons actually exist, who can really
claim to be an expert on their preferred modes of operation?

If demons exist... More than fifty exorcisms later I’m still in no
position to pass judgment on this. All I can say is that my fifty-plus
exorcisms turned up no definitive evidence of their existence. And right
now this is all I have to go on.

But here’s something else: Some of the people I met during my research
claimed to have experience significant improvement in their personal lives
as a result of undergoing exorcism their depression lifted, their fears
fled, their inner torments dissipated, their blues melted away. I have no
way of knowing how extensive this improvement was, or how long-lived, or
whether the people who told me about it were always telling the truth. But
let’s say, for the sake of argument, that they were telling the truth, and
that their exorcisms really did have positive therapeutic impact. How can
we account for this? How is it that exorcism works, unless it’s by doing
what it’s supposed to do, namely, driving out demons?

Well, it’s quite possible that exorcism sometimes works, but this need not
have anything to do with the driving out of demons.

In psychotherapy -- indeed, in virtually any medical procedure -- the
expectation of getting better may contribute a great deal to one’s
actually getting better. Simply receiving treatment -- any kind of
treatment, but especially treatment in a supportive healing environment --
is the ticket at least partway home. The medical sciences have always
strongly suspected as much, that suggestion and expectancy are powerful
inducement to healing, and today only the most hardened
scissors-and-scalpel skeptic would argue otherwise. Thanks to recent
research on the subject, we now know for certain that the placebo effect
is unquestionably real and sometimes quite powerful- so powerful, in fact,
that some researchers have recommended that it actually be incorporated
into clinical practice. If you’re given pharmacologically inert drugs
(dummy pills) for depression, food allergies, even heart problems, chances
are your condition will improve. If you’re given a bogus operation
(pretend surgery!) for arthritic pain in the knees, chances are the pain
will subside or disappear altogether. The placebo might not work (it
doesn’t work for everybody), its effects might not be long lasting, but
this shouldn’t obscure the basic point. For many people the symbolic
aspects of healing -- the sympathetic attention of a therapist, the
ministrations of a physician, the bolstered hope and renewed optimism that
derive simply from being in a healing situation -- for many people
intangibles such as these may go a long way toward actually improving
health.

Now, if placebos can be effective when administered in the relatively
antiseptic confines of a doctor’s office or a consultation room, imagine
the possibilities in the emotional swelter-box of an exorcism. Most people
who seek out an exorcist are suffering from some psychological or
emotional problem that they’re convinced has been caused by demons. They
believe that demons are just as real, if not quite so obvious, as anything
else in the world and that only through an exorcism will their problem be
eliminated and their circumstances improved. They anticipate walking away
from the exorcism with a new lease on life. The person charged with
performing the exorcism and the supporting cast of friends, family
members, and assistants anticipate the same thing. All parties to the
exorcism have an enormous investment in the affair: They want it to work;
they expect it to work, they pray for it to work. The symbolic universe
they inhabit, with its shared religious meanings and discourse, demands
that it work. It doesn’t always work, of course, but often enough (if only
temporarily) it seems to. And little wonder -- exorcism is a ritualized
placebo, a placebo writ large, one that engages its participants on levels
to which more conventional therapeutic procedures could scarcely aspire.

Here again, exorcism is more in tune with the Zeitgeist [prevailing world
view] than one might imagine. In recent years increasing numbers of
American have started experimenting with alternative medical therapies.
Unhappy with the current state of the medical establishment -- its
impersonality, its technology, its bureaucratic chilliness -- they’ve
sought healing through the soothing, cottage-door remedies of a dizzying
array of herbalists, homeopaths, acupuncturists, diet gurus -- you name
it. Though I wouldn’t want to stretch the point too far, exorcism may be
regarded as part of this scene, on its fringes perhaps, but part of it
nonetheless. It, too, advertises a drug-free, X-ray free, incision-free
approach to restored health. It promises to mend not just the body and the
mind but the soul as well. It’s an alternative medical therapy for those
who see demons, not cholesterol, not toxic particles, not environmental
stress or genetic predisposition... as the major scourge of our time.

So exorcism, let’s say, may sometimes work, though not most likely (or not
very often) in precisely the way it’s advertised. This is the positive
side.

But there’s also a negative side. It doesn’t always work, and in some
cases it’s downright detrimental. Some people, as we’ve seen, are bullied
or badgered into undergoing exorcism. For others it’s simply a cop-out or
a means of self-glamorization. They want to avoid responsibility for their
own shortcomings by blaming them on demons. Or they derive some perverse
thrill from casting themselves in the role of demoniac. It’s difficult to
imagine anything good coming from exorcisms carried out under
circumstances such as these. Emotional extortion, moral evasion, vainglory
-- this is what exorcism can sometimes amount to.

It can sometimes amount to even worse; sometimes exorcism can actually
prove fatal. We’ve all heard the stories. In March 1995 a group of
overzealous ministers connected to a tiny Pentecostal sect in the San
Francisco Bay Area pummeled a woman to death while trying to evict her
demons. Two years later a Korean Christian woman was stomped to death by a
deacon and two missionaries operating out of a church in Glendale,
California. The three men had gotten carried away trying to expel a demon
they believed was lodged in the woman’s chest. The same year, on the other
side of the country, a five-year-old Bronx girl died after her mother and
grandmother forced her to drink a lethal cocktail containing ammonia,
vinegar, and olive oil and then bound and gagged her with duct tape. The
two women claimed that they were merely trying to poison a demon that had
infested the little girl several days earlier.

There are other true stores of exorcisms gone horribly wrong, none more
heartrending than Charity Miranda’s. In 1998, on a cold Sunday afternoon
in January, Charity Miranda spent her final hours undergoing exorcism at
the hands of her mother, Vivian, and her sisters Serena and Elisabeth at
their home in Sayville, Long Island. At one point, as fifteen-year-old
Elisabeth subsequently informed the police, “Mom put her mouth to
Charity’s mouth and told her to blow the demon into her and she would try
to kill it.” When this didn’t work, their mother said, “I’m sorry, girls,
this isn’t Charity. It’s taken over her.” She then tried to destroy the
demon by smothering Charity with pillows. This also didn’t work, so she
picked up a plastic bag that was lying on the living room floor. Elisabeth
Miranda told the police what happened next: “Mom placed the bag over
Charity’s head. Serena was holding Charity’s body down because it was
fighting. My mom told me to leave and I went into her bedroom.” When
Elisabeth, sometime later, came back into the living room, the job was
finished. “Serena was pacing. Mom said don’t’ be sad because that wasn’t
Charity, don’t be attached to the body... The three of us went into mom’s
room and she was saying don’t cry because Charity left that body long
before. We held hands on the bed and listened to my grandfather’s favorite
Frank Sinatra music.”

Charity Miranda was seventeen years old and a cheerleader at Sayville High
School. Her friends informed reporters that she’d been looking forward to
starting college next fall.

Cases such as this, I should emphasize, are very much the exception. The
vast majority of exorcisms are relatively innocuous affairs. They might
not add up to much permanent good, but neither do they end in tragedy.

There is no evidence that Charity Miranda’s mother and sisters, or Charity
herself, got their beliefs about demons and exorcism from the popular
entertainment industry...

[But] there is [one] thing we do know for sure. Exorcism became a raging
concern in the United States only when the popular entertainment industry
jacked up the heat. Only with the release of The Exorcist and the
publication of Hostage to the Devil and all the rest of it did fears of
demonization become widespread...

One final note. In September 2000 [a quarter of a century after its
original theatrical release] a newly restored director’s cut of The
Exorcist was released to movie houses around the country. It was the
cinematic event of the season, inciting yet another jag of media-obsessed
demon-and-exorcism blather. For a solid month, or so it seemed, you
couldn’t pick up a newspaper, flip through a magazine, or turn on the
television without coming up against it...

My central point here is that exorcism-related beliefs took hold within
certain sectors of (mainly white) middle-class America only when Hollywood
and its allies began spreading the message. Again, there is nothing (to my
mind) surprising about this. There seems no limit to the effects of
suggestibility on human thought and behavior. We know, for example, that
people in general complain of being afflicted by certain physical maladies
(such as repetitive-motion disorder) only when these maladies have been
publicized by the media. And we also know (on an entirely different front)
that people in thirteenth-century Europe claimed to be stigmatized only
after popular accounts of the stigmata of St. Francis were published.
Psychologists Elizabeth Loftus, Giuliana Mazzoni, and Irving Kirsch have
recently performed experimental research that directly supports my thesis
concerning the power of the media to induce belief in diabolical
possession. For a good account of their study, see Ray Rivera, “Demons
Usually in the Mind not Body of Victim, Experts Say,” Seattle Times
(October 28, 2000).

For a good introduction to the vast literature on exorcism-related belief
and practice throughout the world, see Felicitas D. Goodman, How About
Demons? (Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1988).

- Michael W. Cuneo, American Exorcism (Random House, Inc. : New York, 2001)

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Received on Fri Oct 8 13:07:59 2004