I’ve read a fair few Satanic Panic texts. They’re all pretty ridiculous, from the Devil’s rhymes in Michelle Remembers to the creepy illustrations in Don’t Take Me Back, Mommy to the cattle mutilation claims in Jay’s Journal. Those are all pretty silly, but none of those books are quite as ludicrous as Rebecca Brown’s He Came to Set the Captives Free. This is not a novel, but it has werewolves.

Just a bit of background before I start the summary. Rebecca Brown, the author, was actually a doctor, but her doctor’s license was revoked after she started telling cancer patients that they were possessed by demons. She told these patients that she was the only doctor who could help them as she would share their satanic illness. Sharing an illness apparently necessitates sharing treatment too, so Rebecca started giving her patients and herself opioids, and she became badly addicted to painkillers. After this a fellow doctor diagnosed her with schizophrenia. This is all a matter of public record. In fact, if you’re interested, here is the actual documentation detailing the loss of her medical license.

Ok, now that we have established that Rebecca Brown was actually a mad person, let’s look at the contents of her book about spiritual warfare.

Chapter 1.
Rebecca is a nurse with a muscular disease. One day, a pastor is brought to her emergency room. He has been tortured and crucified. Rebecca discovers there is a coven of Satanists nearby and one of the head nurses is doing their work at her hospital. This witch convinces sick people to die so they can be reincarnated, but she’s actually summoning demons to take their souls. She sends demons to attack Rebecca. They make her so sick she has to stop working. She almost dies.

Chapter 2.
Elaine, another woman, was born with a hair lip. Her mom couldn’t afford surgery, but a nurse at the hospital offered to pay for it in exchange for a vial of the baby’s blood. A high priestess of The Brotherhood, a satanic cult, drank the baby’s blood and in doing so allowed demons into the baby. Elaine grew up with extra strength and magical powers which she used to beat up a footballer player and a lesbian.

Chapter 3.
Elaine meets a girl at church camp who introduces her to the Brotherhood. She goes to a camp with a bunch of other psychic teens, and there she is forced to join the Brotherhood. She finds out that they sacrifice humans and this scares her, so armed guards beat her and lock her in a dark room. When she still refuses to join, a witch summons a scary demon to threaten her. This does the trick. She joins the cult and a different demon goes into her body.

Chapter 4.
As a member of the Brotherhood, Elaine is given ninja training. She is told that there are 1000 members of the cult in her city. She starts to summon demons by herself. They are physical monsters. One demon, Mann-chan, possesses her and takes control of her life.
Elaine gets her demons to beat up another woman. Then she meets Satan. The actual Satan appears as a man and they hang out. Later he shows up in front of Elaine and 1000 other people to stab a baby to death and take out its heart. Then Satan fucks Elaine.
This deformed, cleft-palate loner is so important that the devil, the 2nd most powerful entity in the universe shows up to coach her in his evil ways.

Chapter 5.
Elaine becomes a high priestess, and her and the most powerful witches get together in meetings that are guarded by literal werewolves. Even though demons possess her body, Elaine will not involve herself in sacrifices. As punishment for this stubbornness, Satan gives her cancer 4 times.

With a click of her fingers Elaine can turn a cat into a rabbit and back again. She later stands in front of a gun that’a fired 6 times, but some demons stop the bullets from hitting her.
She is sent to kill a family who are bringing satanists to Christ, but a host of angels form an impenetrable barrier around this family’s house. These angels ask Elaine to come to Jesus.

Chapter 6.
Satan chooses Elaine as his bride so she can mother his son. She gets more power and uses her mind to a woman into a wall so hard that the woman’s body literally goes into the wall.
Elaine makes friends with most of the famous (but here nameless) rockstars of the day, every one of them a servant of Satan.

Chapter 7.
This chapter is an insane rant about how demons torture each other and molest children in front of their parents and how werewolves, zombies and vampires are all real.

Chaper 8.
This section is all about human sacrifices. These are performed on Halloween, a holiday that the author traces back to the Druids in England. Elaine and her friends torture a hitchhiker, make him wear a crown of thorns, whip him and then crucify him. When he’s on the cross the high priest does a wee on him and then the congregation shit in their hands and throw it at him. Then they stick a spike into his head and Satan appears. Then they have an orgy and eat the dead man’s shitty flesh.

Chapter 9.
Some demons beat Elaine up. The devil orders her to infiltrate and destroy a church, but when she goes into the church, she is almost immediately converted.

Chapter 10.
Elaine gets sick and meets Rebecca, the Christian doctor, in the hospital. They make friends but Elaine throws a Bible at Rebecca when she is prescribed reading the Bible.

Chapter 11.
While in the hospital Elaine realises that some of the doctors are satanists who are trying to kill her. Even though she is now a Christian, she uses her demons to beat one so badly he can no longer work, and she astrally projects herself into another doctors apartment and unplugs his fridge to annoy him.
The good doctor speaks to god, and he tells her that Elaine is a satanist.

Chapter 12.
Elaine and Rebecca move in together. Man-chann and another demon possess Elaine. Satan comes in person to threaten Rebecca. (Keep in mind that in the real world, Rebecca actually lost her medical license because she was caught shooting up with Elaine.)

Chapter 13.
Elaine is possessed by demon and tries to kill Rebecca, but Rebecca makes a Jesus-forcefield and Elaine can’t touch her. As a result, Elaine tries to hang herself and cut herself. Eventually she goes into a coma. Rebecca exorcises her by reading the bible. The next day Rebecca comes home to find Elaine blue faced on the couch strangling herself with a belt.
Later Elaine is possessed by a woman named Sally who tries to stab Rebecca to death.
Elaine again tries to strangle Rebecca.
A sexy guardian angel appears to Rebecca. Some demons and satanists using astral projection attack Rebecca and Elaine, but some angels pick them up and carry them to their car. They go to a church and have a 10 hour exorcism.

The rest of the book is less focused on the story of Elaine and Rebecca. The remaining chapters contain the following useful information for concerned Christians:

Demons are passed from one person to another through sexual intercourse.
Incest within a family and any participation in homosexuality always leads to demonic infestation.
Board games, cartoon, rock music, meditation are all satanic.
Getting raped is a guaranteed way to get possessed by a demon.
Being a vegetarian is satanic.
Christians are god’s servants and Jesus owns them.
Satanists are infiltrating and destroying most local churches with great effect.
Most illnesses and depression are caused by demons.
If your dad rapes you when you are a child, a demon will possess you.
Demons, satanists’ astral projections, were-wolves, vampires and violent satanists are the most dangerous threats to Christians.

In these final chapters, the author also describes a conversation she had with a  actual werewolf that she met on a road at night. The werewolf is about to kill her, but she tells him that she believes in Jesus and then the werewolf runs away. She tells of a warlock coming to her house and giving her cat an evil spirit too. (Apparently satanists repeatedly try to murder her pets.) She also tells a story about a “negro couple” called “The Blacks” whose 4 year old daughter was skinned alive in front of them by satanists.

There’s a lot going on in this book, but I think that the important points to remember are that the authors of this book claim to have met with Satan, one of them had sex with Satan, and they both met werewolves. In reality, one of these women lost her job because she was injecting opioids into herself, her co-author, and her co-author’s mentally disabled child. So while it’s quite possible that Elaine and Rebecca saw the things they are describing, the fact is that they most likely witnessed these events while rolling around on Elaine’s apartment floor high on Demerol.

There’s no evidence for any of the claims made in this book, and it has been denounced as garbage by many Christian organizations. Unsurprisingly, there’s no record of any of the multiple assaults, kidnappings and murders detailed herein, and vampire sightings are still pretty rare. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but it is genuinely astounding that anyone could write something like this and expect people to believe it. I’m amused by the idea of these 2 junkie lunatics believing that that they’re so important that the devil, the adversary of the creator of the universe, would drop into their kitchen to visit them. It’s cuckoo-crazy nonsense. Unfortunately though, plenty of people did and do believe this crap. This book is still in print after almost 40 years, and it’s available from all big bookstores. The author went on to have a successful career as a preacher. She’s dead now though. May she burn in Hell eternally!