Don’t Make Me Go Back, Mommy – Doris Sanford

Don’t Make Me Go Back, Mommy: A Child’s Book about Satanic Ritual Abuse
Doris Sanford
Multnomah – 1990

Jesus Shitting Christ, this book is miserable.

I searched for a copy of this book for several years. I went so far as annoying random people on facebook that lived in towns where the local library had a copy cataloged. I’d message these folks and ask them to go to that library to scan/photocopy the book for me. That plan never worked. When I finally saw a copy going for one cent, I bought it without thinking.

I was very excited when it arrived in the post, but as soon as I glanced inside, all excitement was replaced with sadness and discomfort. This book is truly horrible.

This is the story of 5 year old Allison. Allison attends a preschool where the teachers make her and the other children take part in depraved Satanic rituals. These kids are drugged, raped and forced to worship the Devil.

perverse satanic ritual What the fuck lads.

I think I thought I’d read through this and do my usual “haha, look how dumb and misinformed this evangelical Christian author is”, but this book is depressing, not amusing. Doris Sanford wrote this book to counsel the survivors of despicable child abuse, and while the events it depicts aren’t real, reading it is still a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

While we can rest assured that the events depicted in here never actually happened, we can not so easily discount the suffering that this book caused. It doubtlessly scared the shit out of any child unfortunate enough to get their hands on it, and I’m sure it terrified a few parents too. People will err on the side of caution when it comes to the safety of their children, and when confronted with something as horrifying as this book, many people will throw rational thought out the window and join the witch hunt. This book is exactly the kind of thing that makes problems worse instead of better.

library slip mommy At least I know that nobody in recent history had borrowed this book from the church library it originally belonged to.

I would be willing to forgive anyone for overreacting if they solemnly believed that children were being abused, but Don’t Make Me Go Back, Mommy is more than just an overreaction; it is particularly insidious fearmongering. It was released in July 1990, the same month that saw Raymond Buckey acquitted for the second and final time. Buckey was the defendant in the McMartin Preschool trial, perhaps the most notable case of “Satanic Ritual Abuse” and to this day the most expensive criminal trial in American history. While child abuse doubtlessly does occur, there has never been ever any proof of the existence of an organised Satanic cabal of paedophile pre-school teachers.

monster in me I got seriously bad vibes off these pages.

The Satanic Panic had been in session since 1980 when Michelle Remembers was published, and after 10 years with hundreds of claims but no evidence, things were beginning to cool off. Sanford’s book stoked the embers of paranoia and kept the conspiracy alive. Both the Martensville Satanic Sex Scandal and the Oak Hill Satanic Ritual Abuse Trial took place after the publishing of Don’t Make Me Go Back, Mommy. The latter case resulted in an innocent couple spending a combined total of over 40 years in prison. I’m fond of being dramatic, but realistically, this book could be partially to blame for either or both of these cases.

Doris Sanford wrote quite a few other books for children. While none were quite as mental as this one, the rest of her catalog is certainly curious. Some of these books like Brian is Adopted or Maria’s Grandma Gets Mixed Up, a classic tale of senility, are merely strange, but her 1989 opus, David Has Aids, confirms her sadistic desires to petrify suffering children. david has aids sanford my body is filled with aids david dying from aids

Children dying of AIDS isn’t remotely funny, but it’s hard not to laugh at how ill-conceived this book was. Seriously, what kind of a mental case would give this horrible rubbish to a child?

Sanford didn’t work alone though. Graci Evans worked as an illustrator for loads of her books, and the whole team at Multnomah publishing must have been mental to put this garbage out. Also, although the exact nature of her input is unclear, Lauren Statford was at least marginally involved in the creation of Don’t Make Me Go Back, Mommy (source). Statford is famous for writing Satan’s Underground, a discredited book in which she claimed to be a Satanic Ritual Abuse survivor. During the aforementioned McMartin Preschool trial, Statford sought out the parents of the supposedly abused children and told them that she had insider information on the abuse (source). Her story was so ridiculous that even these frightened parents didn’t believe her. After the whole Satanic Panic thing blew over, Statford changed her name to Laura Grabowski and claimed to be a Holocaust survivor. Statford was clearly a depraved, egomaniacal psychopath, and yet she was involved in the creation of a book for children. It is hard to believe that Sanford and co. meant this book to have a positive effect on anyone. Everyone involved in its creation of his horrible book was either a complete idiot or a sadistic pervert.

To this day, my post on Michelle Remembers is the largest source of traffic to this site. Because of this, I have considered reviewing more books on this topic, but while the Satanic Ritual Abuse phenomenon is fascinating, it’s also very depressing and I don’t enjoy reading books about it. I read gross, violent, perverted books all the time, but it’s these books by “Christian authors” that are the most ludicrous and upsetting.

The Hallowed Genie – Basil Crouch

The Hallowed Genie – Basil E. Crouch
Finbarr International – Publishing date unknown
It seems that the standard of books being reviewed on here recently has declined in a pretty serious way. It’s sad to think of the few people who are dumb enough to buy this kind of rubbish, but it’s more depressing still to think that more than a couple actually put this crap out.

First off, this author’s name is Basil Crouch. That sounds far too similar to Basil Brush for me to be able to read this book without imagining the text being narrated by a snooty English fox. This was doubtlessly the reason for the author’s adoption of the slightly more mysterious pen name ‘Basil La Croix’ for some of his other works.

Anyways, ol’ Basil was either a moron or a swindler. The spells/rituals in here are so stupid that I hope he only put them to paper to relieve idiot Occultists of their expendable income. It’s either that or he was a mentally deficient teenager.

Build a little monster out of clay and then put him in a circle of candles. Tell him 10 times that you need some money, read him some Bible verses, and in no time at all, you’ll be a millionaire. The key to this ritual is the word ‘need’. Telling a Genie that you want something is useless; you have to tell them that you need it.

Basil blames wants for a great deal of the world’s ills. He claims to have medical evidence to show that women who experience an unsatiated desire during pregnancy are likely to give birth to a mutant.

medical curiosities The above “medical curiosity” was actually a woman named Rosa Plemons. She suffered from muscular atrophy. She was supposedly kidnapped when she was 19 and put in a freak show. Her tale is more tragic than curious, and I don’t know why she was included in here. I don’t know anything about the bendy lad at the bottom.

Basil makes his ridiculous claim about wants and needs halfway through the book, but it’s only on the last page that he includes images of the resulting ‘medical curiosities’. This is just one of several examples of how disorganized this text is. Certain paragraphs explain that the next section of the book will discuss a certain issue, but that issue won’t actually be mentioned until pages later. Also, it seems as if Basil decided to pad out his text with a few lengthy Biblical Psalms in order to reach his desired page count.

the book of knowhow Me on the bus to work in the morning.

When I started this blog, I read just about any occult-related material I could get my hands on. I quickly realised that most of it is airy-fairy, white-people-with-dreadlocks nonsense. I then focused my attention on black magic and Satanism. I haven’t read or reviewed much that doesn’t at least touch on the darker side of Occultism, so I must have been expecting something of that ilk when I decided to read this. Unfortunately, this book has no badness in it. There’s nothing interesting about it other than the author’s sheer incompetence. This is pathetic.

Note: Since writing this review, I came across a thread about Basil Crouch online. Apparently he was a well respected magician, and there’s curious tales about people destroying his books because they were too “tempting and Dark”. I have managed to track down pdf copies of a few more of his texts, and even though the Hallowed Genie is absolutely awful, I have grown curious and will doubtlessly read and review his other works at some stage. Stay tuned.

Carnal Alchemy – Sado-Magical Techniques for Pleasure, Pain and Self-Transformation

Carnal Alchemy – Sado-Magical Techniques for Pleasure, Pain and Self – Transformation
Stephen E. Flowers and Crystal Dawn Flowers
Inner Traditions – 2013 (First Published 2011, I think)

I’m interested in sadomasochism and Occultism in roughly the same way. I don’t practice either, but I find them both rather intriguing. On seeing the title of this book, I knew I’d have to read it.

The main idea in here, as far as I can tell, is that S&M can be used for magical purposes. That seems very peculiar until you understand the kinds of magical purposes that the authors are talking about. Don’t expect to able to levitate after a good caning. That’s not the kind of magic we’re dealing with.

old orgy Party time!

The book is titled “Carnal Alchemy”. Alchemy is the science/art/ practice of changing one thing to another, the obvious example being lead into gold. The authors of this book claim that Sadomasochist magicians can transmute themselves/each other from total losers into successful individuals through the practice of sadoshamanism. I’m very sceptical when it comes to promises of magical powers, but I can accept this idea.

For an S&M freak, the pain/torture/humiliation is part of or at least powerfully linked to the sex act. I don’t go for that stuff myself, but who doesn’t feel like a success after a good shag? If somebody who gets off on pain is in a safe, loving, sexually active relationship with a person with complimentary interests, this could certainly have beneficial effects on their self esteem and general success. Is this magic? Sure.

My only issue with this idea is that it’s a bit self aggrandizing. Any sexual fetish is potentially empowering in this way. If a person likes something (safe) and they get it, they will be happier. There’s no need to write a book about it. This whole book has a bit of a “We do S&M. We’re magicians. We’re so cool’ feel to it. The authors do seem to suggest that any sexual act has magical potential, but that the ritualistic nature of S&M makes it particularly effective. I don’t know guys. I think you just wanted to write a book about the things you like.

The rest of the book describes the depraved proclivities of several famous occult practitioners, including Aleister Crowley, Anton LaVey and my ol’ buddy Willie Seabrook. There’s also a short section describing basic S&M techniques and a bit about the order of the Triskellion, Sadomagical group run by the authors.

seabrook mask Willie Seabrook and his babe.

The Order of the Triskellion takes its name from the Story of O, a classic of erotic literature. I remember reading that book at work years ago. I had a shitty office job, and I would download PDF books and read them instead of working. It makes me very happy to think that the dickhead owner of that company unwittingly paid me to read kinky erotica.

Anyways, this book is fine. I read it out of curiosity, and reflecting on it now, I didn’t really learn very much. At the same time, if you do enjoy dressing up as Hermione and having your bum spanked, this is doubtlessly the book for you.

The Kill Riff – David J. Schow

The Kill Riff – David J. Schow
Futura – 1990 (First published 1987)

I wanted to like The Kill Riff. It has a cool name, it has cool covers, and it’s the first novel by the guy who supposedly coined the term “splatterpunk”. Everything about it seemed promising. Unfortunately, this was a fairly crumby novel.

It’s about Lucas, a dude who spends his time hunting down members of a rock group because his daughter died at one of their concerts. The narrative switches between his story and the experiences of Gabriel Stannard, the singer of Whip Hand. Regardless of his responsibility for the death of Lucas’s daughter, this Gabriel guy deserves to die for being such a damn poser. Somewhere in the second half of the book, it becomes apparent that Lucas is also a huge arse, and by the end of the book, I was really hoping that both of these lads would die horribly.

The main characters are obnoxious, and the secondary characters are described in a frustrating amount of detail. There are whole chapters on characters that have no bearing on the actual story. There are also embarrassingly lengthy discussions of psychology that do nothing but slow things down. The book does contain some scenes of brutal violence, but they’re lost in a frustratingly slow plot. The Kill Riff weighs in at 400 pages. It would have been far more effective and enjoyable at 200.

David Schow does his best to let his reader know that he is actually a rock fan. He doesn’t care for post-Roth Van Halen, and he includes a paragraph on the Mentors for no reason. It’s usually a novelty when an author name-drops a band I like, but Schow does it so often that it actually seems a bit desperate. We get it bro, you like guitar solos.

I’m being pretty negative here. I have read books that were far, far worse than The Kill Riff. I just think this was a wasted opportunity. It’s a solid idea for a book, but it literally needed more killer and less filler. I’ve got a few more rock’n’roll themed books lined up that I’m hoping to finish by the end of the year. Stay tuned.

The Dark Arts of Tarantula

The Dark Arts of Tarantula – Tarantula
MolochSorcery – 2010

Do the people who write this crap believe in it themselves, or is it just a transparent attempt to take money from simpletons?

This 59 page, poorly formatted piece of garbage might be a contender for the worst drivel I’ve ever reviewed. This is seriously bottom-of-the-barrel stuff.

The physical book is hideous. This looks and reads like like a half-assed high-school project. The cover is ridiculous, and the text inside is an absolute mess. I thought that this was a result of the book being digitalized (as in book to .doc), but on closer inspection, the PDF copy I was reading was actually a scan (as in book to jpg). If I had paid the cost price of 25 dollars for a hard copy of this piece of utter shit, I would hang myself out of shame.

The lad who wrote this nonsense claims that he is able to put the spirits of demons into Dungeons and Dragons figurines. According to him, he keeps these little plastic toys in fancy boxes and feeds them his own cum in return for magical favours. I’m not making this up.

sigil of serylyth This is the sigil that Tarantula created for his demon. I didn’t edit this.

He claims that a member of his occult order ended up having his neck broken by some of these spirits because he wouldn’t feed them enough of his cum. The lad’s friends only found out that demons did it because they were able to chat with his spirit after he died.

Towards the end of the book, the author describes his experience of being bitten by a huge spider and soon thereafter meeting a spiderheaded woman in a crystal castle. The woman’s husband shows up later using a pair of crabs as jet-skis and gives the narrator the power to speak to insects.

The author claims that he has been involved with an occult order for more than 30 years, so it can be assumed that he is an adult. It’s not surprising that he uses a pseudonym.

dark arts of tarantula back

I again pose the question: do these authors actually believe their own rubbish? There’s no coherence or sense to any of this crap. The stuff in this book is so childish that the only adults capable of believing it are the kind that need to have their nappy changed three times a day.

The Infernal Texts: Nox and Liber Koth – Stephen Sennitt

the infernal texts nox and liber koth The Infernal Texts: Nox and Liber Koth – Stephen Sennitt
New Falcon Publications – 2004 (Originally published 1997/1998)

This book is comprised of a collection of essays about different esoteric orders (Nox) and a grimoire for summoning Lovecraftian entities (Liber Koth). The essays, as far as I can tell, were taken from Stephen Sennit’s occult zine, Nox. These essays are split into three sections: one on the Order of the Nine Angles, one on Nikolas Schrek’s Werewolf Order, and one on mixed bag of weirdos that Sennitt Groups together and refers to as The Nameless Sodality.

I find the Order of The Nine Angles quite interesting. Some people know of them as the occult order that actually advocates human culling, and these people probably assume that it’s a hoax or an urban legend or something. I am not now, nor even have been, part of the O9A, but I was once in contact a person involved with the order who committed some truly reprehensible acts. He’s now in prison. (While some of these weirdos are actually quite dangerous, it is worth emphasizing that despite their delusions, they’re far more high-school shooter dangerous than Sauron dangerous.) Obviously the independent actions of a few weirdos shouldn’t necessarily tarnish the reputation of a whole group, but this group’s philosophy is rather sketchy and acts like a magnet for pieces of shit looking to justify their shittiness.

nox infernal texts

It’s hard to know how seriously the stuff on the Werewolf Order should be taken. I had read about this order before in relation to Radio Werewolf, the order’s musical faction. I enjoyed Radio Werewolf’s hilarious appearances on the Hot Seat with Wally George (part one, part two) so much that I wanted to like their music. (Schrek’s later, more serious, appearances on Bob Larson‘s talk show were less entertaining.) Unfortunately, Radio Werewolf’s songs are absolutely awful. Seriously atrocious shit. I have tried listening to their albums just for the sake of the lyrics, but the accompanying music is so lame that I don’t think I’ve ever made it through a full song.

This Order’s philosophy, as put forth in Nox, the same philosophy which Schrek founded Radio Werewolf to propagate, is cringeworthy. It’s just Church of Satanism edginess pushed half a step further. Members of the order are expected to be warriors, not worriers; Pagans, not pious; predators, not prey; and Beserkers, not Bankers. Lame. From Schrek’s lyrics and willingness to be interviewed by Wally George, it is apparent that he had a sense of humor, and if this the stuff in Nox was written as tongue-in-cheek promotional material to draw attention to Radio Werewolf’s awful music, fair enough, but from the interviews with Schrek that I’ve read, I get the sense that there is an underlying sincerity to his nonsense. Part of the act is clearly satire, but the ratio of satire and satanic sincerity is quite unclear. Read with that in mind, this stuff makes the Werewolf Order come across as a shower of plonkers, Schrek in particular coming across as an absolute arse. ( I chose the word “arse” instead of “ass” deliberately here. I’m not comparing him to a stubborn, uneducated donkey. I’m comparing him to two fleshy, hairy bumcheeks with a tinted brown anus nestled ‘tween.)

The essays from the “Nameless Sodality” are forgettable garbage, crap about Zombie Meat and other rubbish. Don’t waste your time.

cthulu nox koth

Liber Koth is a grimoire of Lovecraftian Chaos Magic. I’m not a magician, so I can’t speak to its efficacy. Just reading it might be moderately enjoyable if you were to imagine yourself as a character in one of Lovecraft’s stories who has stumbled upon some dark tome of eldritch secrets, but I didn’t have the pleasure of doing so because I read it while sitting on a crowded, smelly bus home from work. It was a pretty shit experience.

Most of this book was pretty crap, but at least it was short.

The Catechism of Lucifer – Johannes Nefastos

The Catechism of Lucifer – Johannes Nefastos
Ixaxaar – 2013 (First published 2003, I think)

This is another one of those fancy boy Ixaxaar books. I enjoyed the first 3-4 pages and then got very bored. I guess a muggle like me just doesn’t have the brainpower to figure this stuff out.

The Catechism of Lucifer is a Luciferian version of Luther’s Catechism. I did enjoy the fact that the work of a Protestant was being attacked, but that fact also rendered this work a little less blasphemous. I mean, attacking the work of an enemy of Catholicism actually aligns you with the one true church, amirite? I haven’t read anything by Luther (and I hope to John Paul II that I never have to), so i’m sure a great deal of Nefasto’s sinister parody went over my head.

I liked the naughty version of the 10 commandments at the beginning, but the rest of the writing in here is extremely boring. Seriously dull stuff. I mean, I’m sure that some people find it really profound and all that, but I honestly had no idea what this Nefastos lad was talking about. Theosophical Luciferian Gnostic philosophy? Haha, no thanks bud. Thank goodness this was short.

I wonder about the type of people who take these books seriously. I reckon they’re either humourless black metal fans, or neckbeards who collect swords and use an image of an anime character as their Facebook profile pic.

This book doubtlessly looks cool on your shelf and will probably worry your Christian friends if they look through it, but if you want to gain insight from it, good fucking luck. It’s just a load of old crap if you ask me.