Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer discretion is advised.
In West America, there are 330,000 churches of various denominations.
In small towns to major metropolitan areas, everyone is protected under the Constitution
of the United States of America to worship the religion of their choice.
If one wishes to worship Satan or to start a church that worships Satan, that person
and church would be protected under the Constitution.
In fact, there are many satanic churches in America today.
Some may be in your own neighborhood.
Just because many operate underground, you may not even know they exist.
With their constitutional rights guaranteed, why would they choose to operate in secrecy?
With the apparent surge in cults and satanic activity, American Exposé went undercover
to ritual locations in Virginia, in temples in San Francisco, and into the minds of ex-cult
members, most of whom still hide from the very cults they were once involved with.
From reports of sacrificed animals, missing children, and chilling murders, roughly from
human sacrifice to the victims of ritual abuse, who for the first time have come forward to
tell their stories of abuse, Satanism, and sacrificial murder.
That part of us that took a habit of rage and strength and the anger that could take
that knife and stop screaming, and of course afterwards then they turn it back on you.
Now it's your fault.
Satanism is an anti-religion, developed in reaction to and as an opposition to Christianity.
Error image, the dark side of Christianity.
But it shares the same history, mythology, and view as Christianity.
Satanists regard Satan as equal in power to the Jewish Christian God Yahweh, and base
much of their mythology on Milton's Paradise Lost, where Satan was the loser in a civil
war fought in heaven before the creation.
Satanists believe that Yahweh was not necessarily the more noble of the antagonists, merely
the winner, and disaffected by Christianity that chose to side with its opponent, reversing
all Christian rites and symbols, especially those of Catholicism.
The root ideas of Satanism go far back to what are called the Gnostic sects, who saw
the world about them as profoundly evil as the real hell, and life on earth as if it
had served in a prison.
They took direction from the New Testament that the God of this world was indeed the
devil.
In the story of the temptation of the wilderness from Matthew 4, the devil offers Jesus all
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, implying that the gift is his to make.
In John 12, verse 31, the devil is called the ruler of this world.
And in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4, Paul says that the devil who rules this world has blinded
the minds of those who do not believe.
Some Gnostics attacked Jesus as the evil son, the evil father, and glorified Judas Iscariot
for betraying him, and further believed the Ten Commandments and other moral rules were
intended to keep men in subjugation.
A group known as the Cathars kept the Gnostic ideas alive, maintaining that the God of the
Old Testament was the devil, and attacking the Roman Catholic Church for worshipping
this devil.
Some Cathars, according to church records, began to see the devil of the Catholic Church
as the true God.
A Satanist was one who renounced Christ and his church, and blasphemously maltreated sacred
objects, symbols, and ceremonies, who adored the devil in the form of a man or a goat or
some other animal, who sang and danced in the devil's honor, and who reveled in child
slaughter and cannibalism, indiscriminate sexual orgies, perversion, homosexuality,
and every species of crime and abomination.
Around the turn of the century, Aleister Crowley became an active anti-Christian, and is generally
credited with the introduction of Satanism into modern society.
Crowley once baptized a toad as Jesus Christ and crucified it, reveling in its agonies.
He was the self-proclaimed Great Beast 666, an adventurer, sexual compulsive and heroin
addict who relished his media epithet of the wickedest man in the world.
One of the world's largest modern-day Satanic churches is the Church of Satan, founded in
San Francisco in 1966 by Anton Leve, who teaches that Satanism is a symbol of the material
world and the carnal nature of it.
The scripture is Leve's Satanic Bible, which, as with everything else involved with Satanism,
is the opposite of Christianity.
The following are just a few excerpts.
I am a Satanist.
Bow down, for I am the highest embodiment of human life.
If a man smite thee on one cheek, smash him on the other.
The only way that Christianity can ever completely serve the needs of man is to become as Satanism
is now.
Satanism condones any type of sexual activity, be it heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual,
or even asexual.
Satanism is a religion of the flesh, rather than this.
Reports, estimations, and statistics regarding Satanic activity and occult practices in general
range from the very minimal to the outright startling.
In America today, it is difficult to get an accurate picture of what really is going on
in the occult world, and more specifically, what is happening in Satanic cults.
Conservative reckonings estimate 200,000 witches and or neo-pagans in the United States alone,
reported by the Bay Area Pagan Association.
And Walter Martin, author of Kingdom of the Cults, said that an estimated 60 million Americans
are involved in cults, and another 6 million dabble in the occult.
The Cult Reiss Directory, published by Cornerstone Press in Chicago, now lists more than 400
individuals and organizations, reports Christianity Today.
Some professionals in the field, like Professor of Anthropology John Connor, an expert in
cult and occult activities, feel that the current occult and Satanic activity in America
is not the problem the media often tries it to be.
It's very easy to assume that's almost to the extent of an international conspiracy,
and it really isn't.
This is, for young people, is a normal form of rebellion.
There are some, of course there will be, and out of a population of 250 million, it would
be surprising if there weren't some groups that were doing this rather seriously.
But by and large, I think a lot of it is just simply overblown, and people get very, very
excited about something that is a little bit more than play acting.
While occult activity to some can be casual in nature, there is a more serious, darker
side being reported as well, a side which is sometimes frightening and dangerous, even
deeply.
Sacrifice, taken from Latin sacrum, meaning holy, and facere, meaning to make.
The act of offering the life of a person or animal or some object in propitiation or homage
to a deity, something so offered.
Eric Pryor, former high priest of Francisco's New Earth Temple and self-proclaimed ex-Satanist
leader, worked extensively in various levels of occult practice for almost two decades.
Now a born-again Christian, his time exposing and recounting the experiences, often bizarre
evil, that he encountered and even initiated while on the dark side.
Human sacrifices are usually done by third world country orders such as a mukumba and
voodoo, voodoo and orders.
They are done by classical Satanists as well.
One of the reasons why sacrifice was first used by the classic European Satanists was
as a bastardization of all that was held sacred by the church at the time, hence the
virgin sacrifice, hence the sacrifice of the infant, which of course was a representation
of the infant Jesus being sacrificed.
The spilling of virgin blood of course is another reason that they do sacrifice.
They would fill the chalice of this virgin blood and actually pass it around.
It's all to make a mockery of that which the church holds sacred.
Now there are other types of human sacrifices.
There are sacrifices of appeasement to appease the gods or god.
There are human sacrifices that are done for the purpose of taking on the properties of
that particular individual.
More life force.
It's believed by many occultists that the life force is in the blood.
The blood is consumed.
You consume the life force of that person.
Now if you're consuming the blood of a person who has a whole life ahead of themselves,
of course you're consuming a lot of life force there.
You're consuming something that's new.
And of course it is like I said a bastardization of that which people hold holy.
Now there are many methods of sacrifice.
There are sacrifices where people are tied down to altars and the bottom of their feet
are slit open and the blood is drained.
There's a sacrifice where the heart is removed and the heart is actually out at a later date.
They remove the heart and they put the heart right in its ground into a poultice which
is then at some point in time used in an incense.
There are human sacrifices where there is dismemberment that takes place.
Primarily the dismemberment is for the getting rid of the evidence if you will.
So the occultists will dismember bodies and bury parts all over the place.
Bodies are sometimes sacrificed not only for the taking on of that person's spiritual
force but also to harvest bone.
It's not uncommon to use bone in handles.
It's not uncommon to use bone in various different incenses.
It's not uncommon to use body parts in various different folk, how shall we say, folk magic
rites.
Many of the satanic sacrifices are primarily animal sacrifices.
Occultists are very smart knowing that it is very hard to get rid of a human body or
any carcass for that matter.
Animal sacrifices preferred, well human sacrifices preferred by many orders but let's just say
animal sacrifices is what is used more often.
There's very few ordinances with reference to that.
For instance, I hacked a horse's head off in Modena, New York.
It took me a great deal of time to do it.
What was I trying to do?
I was trying to harvest the strength and speed of that animal.
Now mind you when I was doing this I was also drinking psilocybin tea at the time clad only
in the skyclad.
I was nude out in the middle of a ranch in upstate and I painted myself from head to
toe with the blood of this animal and went on this very bizarre psilocybin trip.
When you get involved with sacrifice it really does do something to you.
There is a blood lust that does develop.
I've even sacrificed my own blood.
I still bear to this day scars that actually took a digger like you see here, ceremonial
dagger like this and actually as far as I could go and just split my arm wide open and
took the blood with the covers where I mixed various different models in it as well as
the genetics and shared it as a sacrament.
This is not an uncommon thing.
A lot of people that are sacrophobic purposes accepting let's just say this happens here
in the United States that I do know of intimate now that individual sacrifices the more important
thing.
What I mean by that an individual magician or an individual occultist whether it be a
Satanist or ceremonial magician or practitioner of voodoo or whatever these kind of people
are the ones most known to human sacrifice.
When human sacrifice takes place generally you don't want anybody around to tell the
story.
Eric Pratt is not alone in witnessing sacrifice.
While America Exposé was investigating in Richmond, a 19 year old girl who would only
give us the name Sarah agreed to tell her story as long as we agreed to detect her identity.
Some of the most common rituals that I observed when I was practicing was the sacrifice of
animals whether it be a chicken or any animal that was easily accessible.
I witnessed the leader of our cult and a newborn child and placed it on the altar.
The child was drugged to avoid any screaming.
We chanted around it and our leader actually got a knife and cut the child open.
Sarah gave the alleged ritual location as Belle Island, an abandoned pump house in the
center of the James River in Richmond, Virginia.
American Exposé crew investigated the location and found satanic graffiti, a cross, and a
few spots where fires had been lit but there was no indication of human or even animal
sacrifice.
Sexual abuse is defined as a brutal form of abuse consisting of physical, sexual, or
psychological abuse involving the use of rituals.
Though it is not always satanic, most survivors like Mary Clausen state that they were abused
as a part of satanic worship.
My view was about 18 months from my real father and sexual abuse happened.
Many of the people that were caring for us when my mother worked or played around, she
was very dysfunctional herself.
There was a year of satanic occult activity, severe abuse for the year, a lot of ritual.
I saw perhaps nine people murdered and had to take part of it.
There was a lot of heavy duty programming, mind control, and the way we survived it to
start off with, you create other parts of yourself.
We developed MPD, Multiple Personality Disorder.
When I was young, I guess it was just time to start doing the issues.
I entered therapy and within the hospital because I was extremely suicidal.
That's when I met the other parts of myself.
I've been in therapy for years now.
There are 70 known altars and we have been doing infusions.
Eventually one day we'll all be one person.
Many sexual abuse survivors claim that they have been programmed by their former cult
and that sound, sights, and smells still bring back cult feelings.
There were certain pictures that had hidden pictures in them.
There were certain sounds and phrases that they repeat.
It would click into the old programming.
To forget, to follow them, to be with them, to just always come to mind.
They had a man that they were teaching a lesson for trying to teach us the same.
If you ever tell, this is what will happen to you.
We had to skin his legs and then started on his arms.
We were hearing him screaming and they kept telling us that he's hurt in pain and only
you can stop the pain.
If you're hurt, it's all your fault that he's in pain.
A knife was put in our hand and there was a snapping and that's when Jackie was born.
That part of us that took over that had the rage and the strength and the anger that could
take that knife and stop his screaming.
Of course, after then, they turn it back on you.
Now it's your fault.
You killed him.
If you ever tell, you'll go to prison because you murdered the person.
Other survivors, like one lady we will call T.S., they're undergoing therapy to cope with
the damage caused by ritual abuse.
She has drawn to help detail the graphic and horrifying events that happened to her between
the ages of two and six.
And causing me to feel guilty about the place, to feel like it was my fault.
They didn't want me to remember and they used a variety of ways to keep it quiet.
One of those ways was to, if I remembered, I was supposed to cut myself and take a knife
and cut my wrist and they had me go through that motion and I have a scar on my hand and
I worked through that memory in the picture.
They also hung me upside down, used basically a cross in the shape of a knife and they took
whatever was good and turned it into evil.
They put me in coffins, bugs and snakes and then to destroy anything related to Christ
or Christianity or a belief in God.
They used a type of communion.
They actually had me ingest blood and flesh and drawings show being forced to drink blood.
Another method of keeping me silent was to use shock treatment and types of electrodes
in a programming ritual.
Social abuse was a part of keeping me silent.
My fingers were burned on a stove.
I was forced to watch pets killed and put in an oven and I was told that if I talked
the same thing would happen to me.
They would dismember bodies and then hang me upside down over that.
I think it was acid, I'm not sure but there were body parts and they told me they would
lower me into the acid if I ever talked about this.
In one memory I had in order to get the blood they used me as the person to get the blood
from and it was basically the lamb, the child of God and they would put pins and needles
in between my fingers and I would be bled so that they could have communion.
The number three is an important number to the Satanists because it represents the Trinity
and they are very fond of abusing that age child as well as abusing the number and using
it throughout the rituals.
On my third birthday I was severely abused.
Another way to keep me silent was to use a gun and pornography, child prostitution brings
in big money and they terrorize children by using common childhood things.
In my case I was given lots of clowns to keep in my bedroom and if I woke up in the morning
after they told me to go to bed and I told them about what happened and that the clowns
had abused me.
They always said it was my imagination and they thought I was talking about the clowns
in my bedroom and that I just had a bad dream, that's what they will tell the children.
When in fact I have recovered memories of being abused with them wearing clown masks
they did force me to participate in the torture and death of a woman who I later recovered
the memory of being my teacher.
She found out what was happening and she knew too much and of course I was the one that
talked and so I was the one that had to cause her to die.
As children are in most cases the victims of Satan worship and animal or human sacrifice
is so unbelievable.
The credibility of the victim is such that prosecution is very difficult and sometimes
impossible.
Although there are many serious cases of Satanism many law enforcement officers agree that most
cases especially those involving teenagers are simply cases of dabbling although apparent
satanic activity should always be mitigated.
Probation officer Kelly McGee has dealt with satanic cases involving for ten years.
As a probation officer you deal with young adults that have a number of problems whether
they have family problems, self-esteem problems, things of that nature.
We refer a lot of individuals for professional counseling.
I believe that in some situations these individuals are looking for things that may excite them
a little bit, make them feel worthwhile and maybe have some kind of shock value on society
and believe me satanic activity does bring about a shock value to people especially John
Q. Public.
The media hasn't really been able to grasp a hold of what's going on with satanic activity
and a lot of times they'll take little bits of information and make it to the point where
it sounds like there's a major problem.
I don't believe at this point I should say that I don't have any factual evidence that
there is a major problem with satanic activity and cult activity in this area.
I think you have to keep an open mind and look at all the facts and anytime you do have
a situation where you find a ritual site or you find graffiti that shows some kind of
satanic situation then you need to look at it and investigate it and I think the big
thing is if you keep your mind open.
Parents need to keep an open mind.
A lot of times parents and people in general will close their eyes to things that they
don't want to hear.
If you keep an open mind and try to know your kids and learn what your kids are all about,
I think that will be a big step into understanding what's going on and then being able to identify
any problems that may arise or situations that you might see that you might need to
look for help and not keep a closed mind.
To better understand something like satanism you must first know the signs, some satanic
or cult symbols and definitions.
Altar.
An altar is a table, shelf or platform set apart from the mundane and used exclusively
for religious rites and the ceremonial arrangement of sacred paraphernalia.
Baphomet.
A baphomet is the goat headed god of carnal lust and materiality, commonly depicted as
the devil and the most popular deity for modern satanists.
Inverted cross.
The inverted cross is the generic symbol of satanism that represents the rejection of
all that Christianity stands for.
Pentagram.
A pentagram is the five pointed star used as a mandala for magical conjurations.
It represents the human figure with head, arms and legs and is more often known as the
generic symbol of witchcraft.
Anarchy.
The anarchy is the symbol of no government and is typically the sign of rebellion against
any authoritative power.
Pastor Gordon L. Coulter, a former Los Angeles police officer and current pastor at the El
Camino Community Church in San Diego has dealt with youth that have been involved in satanic
activity.
Some of the signs to look for among young people have to do with alienation.
When kids start to find themselves alone and alienated from the main group at school or
the community, that's a good sign to note.
Another is, and it goes right along with that, behavioral signs of some contrast where they
were once maybe a pretty happy person, kind of becoming sad.
Looking at the dark sides of things, I noted at the last county fair here in San Diego
County there was a lot of artwork of Satanism and demonic things and goats' heads.
Those are the kinds of things that I would want to observe and everyone's aware of that
being a theme somewhat in some of the art classes and some of the graffiti and some
of the expression among young men and women today.
Another thing is the grades start to fall down and the interest in school is less than
it ought to be.
They start to cut classes and start to hang out with other kids maybe even away from the
campus.
And so there are those kinds of social signs.
Their friends change.
They become more like a group that is different from the ones that you might prefer as parents
or you kids might have once been friends with.
And the music.
The music starts to have a dark lyric, starts to have a message of suicide and gore and
worshiping the devil himself.
It's not a question of rock and roll or not rock and roll.
I think that's going to be here as long as there are young people.
But it really is the text of the music.
Read it and know it and understand it and decide whether you want that for yourself
or for your family.
Even though Americans are protected by the Constitution to practice their religion, many
believe that some cults have gone too far.
What exactly is too far?
Animal mutilation and sacrifice?
Torture?
Child abuse?
Rape?
Pornography?
Or even human sacrifice?
When does constitutional religion that allows this activity end and law enforcement intervention
begin?
Many experts believe that most satanic activity is a media exaggeration.
But how can so many victims and ex-cult numbers have such vivid memories if it is just their
imagination?
With the secrecy of satanic cults, we may never know if future generations are affected
by the criminal elements of some cult activity unless we open our eyes and take action before
it is too late.
Birds and babies go away.
Mustn't tell.
Mustn't say.
Mommy will get mad at me.
Must pretend I do not see.
Nothing happened.
Don't remember.
Helter-skelter.
Now dismember.
Witches chant and babies burn.
Mustn't talk.
It will be my turn.
Letters, comments and story ideas write to American Exposé, 5221 North O'Connor Blvd,
Suite 1000, Irving, Texas 75039 or fax us at 214-401-2344.