Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 10/7/22
Fall Fling Edition
We here at the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker hope that your sudden Fall into Autumn (!) was pleasant and fruitful. Despite the month of October being in the same place on the calendar every year, it still manages to sneak up on us. Fortunately, the staff in Bunker Ops has been a Godsend, picking up slack and spearheading smaller projects, leaving Administration time to concentrate on paperwork, end-of-the-month planning, and staying barely ahead of the deadlines set for recent projects.
The Bunker Mascot is adapting well enough to a first-floor lifestyle. She’s eating heartily, taking her pills like a good girl, and getting lots of attention from the extended Bunker staff.
Report Filed by the Agency of Health and Wellness
The numbers continue to accumulate, or decrease, depending on your method of calculation. For the purposes of the bunker, we’ll stick with the former. More pounds lost: a total of 12 for Administration, 9 for Bunker Ops. Hydration is up in both departments, and inches lost, 3 for Admin, and 6 for Bunker Ops. This will be the last chance to do any accounting until the end of the month. We sincerely hope the departments will be able to maintain this brisk pace.
Field Report: Wichita Falls, Texas
I was warmly welcomed at the Museum of North Texas History and shown every courtesy and then some. My lecture was all about the history of the Vernon Plaza and its place in Texas history and the Texas film community. It was, I was told, a great talk, and I felt really good about being in front of people again. The crowd seemed to appreciate it, laughed at some of my jokes, and even asked good follow-up questions. One of the women present grew up in Vernon and was in attendance for the grand opening (she must have been five or six). She remembered The Charge at Feather River, and was terrified of cowboys and Indians and arrows and bullets coming out of the screen into the audience.
Afterwards, we made a quick stop at Spirit Halloween. I am looking for a two-headed Conan-style battle axe. There was not one in attendance, but I did find the Dark Wizard Necromancer mask that I didn’t know I needed. Also, a dagger with an octopoid face on the pommel. I’m halfway to Thoth-Amon, right there. Can Thulsa Doom be far behind?
And speaking of imaginary wizards in a completely fictional setting...
The Digital Hills are Alive, once again, with the Sound of Satanic Panic. Every year we get some variation on this theme—my favorite one so far was the absolutely ridiculous “Rainbow-Colored Fentanyl” scare story. My least favorite? The lady in Central Texas who went viral with her warning to not let children watch Hocus Pocus 2 on the Disney streaming app, because real witches can cast spells through the television set to corrupt the kids and steal their souls.
I wish I was exaggerating or over-stating it. She seems like a very sincere person, runs a local farm, sells the stuff they grow, has three kids. Probably shows up for every bake sale. Active in the community. So how on Earth did she arrive at such a whackadoodle notion?
This is falling on dead ears, I know—make that, preaching to the choir, but just in case you’re gonna forward this to your conspiracy theory-loving relatives, I’m going to drop a few sick beats here.
Satanic Panic is just another conspiracy theory. It’s a system of control. It’s designed to keep you huddled around a kerosene lamp, looking to other people to tell you what to do, say, and think. There’s no danger, and there never was. Not like you think. Not like how the story goes.
Listen, I’ve spent my entire life dancing with all of your paper devils, to no avail. I did it all. Everything within my generation, designed to drag me screaming, into the arms of El Diablo. Let’s do the list:
I watched those ultra-violent Warner Brothers cartoons from the age of five until, oh, about ten minutes ago. I was never encouraged to commit violent acts because of it. I sure never had the wherewithal to drop an anvil on someone’s head. Perhaps all of those Three Stooges shorts inoculated me against taking slapstick literally.
I read comic books, those gateways to juvenile delinquency. Granted, I couldn’t get my hands on those Tales From the Crypt comics of the 1950s, but I made do with what I had. And all I ever got out of comics, by the way, was a precocious vocabulary and a strongly developed moral compass for right and wrong.
I played Dungeons & Dragons, in the midst of a holy battle for the soul of America. I still play it. Not once, not ever—and I mean, never—did me, any of my friends, or any of my friends’ friends, think, feel, or perceive any shift in power, the desire to cast spells, sacrifice children, kiss a goat’s behind, or any of that funhouse mirror folklore that they swore was happening, right down the street, in the next neighborhood over, in the woods at night, and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.
I listened to heavy metal—Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Megadeth, and a lot of hair bands I won’t mention out of sheer mortification. There were other problematic bands, too, like Pink Floyd and Blue Oyster Cult. Backward masking. Satanic lyrics. Subliminal messages. All designed to make me a thrall of Lucifer. Fun fact: You know what they were singing about, when they weren’t singing about girls? Classic literature, true crime stories, movies and TV shows, and historical events, for the most part. There was even a little political commentary. Scandalous!
If you heard of anyone falling into Satan’s arms because of the above, I can assure you it was an urban myth, most likely propagated by the Jack Chick tract he published called “Dark Dungeons” and conflated with the true crime tell-all book written by private investigator William Dear, milking his fifteen minutes of fame, called The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III, about the 1980 missing person case that made national news, which was later ham-fistedly co-opted by the TV movie Mazes and Monsters in 1982. That little Gordian knot was the grain of sand that made so many pearls of outrage, book burnings, and fear-mongering.
We used to mock evangelicals back in the day. There was always something getting them all hepped up. We didn’t have as much media constantly assaulting our heads like we do now, so that made it even more weird and stupid. I heard this from more than one church leader, both locally and on TV: “If it’s not for God, it’s against God.” I just love that black and white morality, there. We used to test that theory out: “Okay, Orange Fanta. Is it sinful to drink it? Does it make me want to break a commandment? I’m going to call it ‘Godly’ until someone can prove me different.” And like the good little rhetorical debaters we were, we could argue both sides. “You say camping is good clean harmless fun, right? Fresh air, exercise. Something else they say about camping—getting back to nature. You know who else loved nature? The Druids. And what did the druids do? Sacrificed babies. Friends, there’s nothing more un-Christian than camping!”
Big laughs, right? We thought so. We were teenagers. Of course, those tactics didn’t work very well, and how could they? But banning and burning? Now you’re talking! “Well, I haven’t read the book, but I heard it was just full of demon worship and satanic rituals. That’s why I think it should be banned from our schools.”
I don’t know how all of the new generation of Super Christians grew up, but I can tell you one thing about Texans, about Americans, about Society in General: the surest way to make someone want to do something is to tell them that they can’t do it. There’s nothing more powerful, more seductive, than making something forbidden and taboo, especially to teenagers, who are, by their very nature, transgressive and irritating.
Lots of people are currently throwing all of religion and Christianity under the bus because of this well-meaning woman who got a little emotional with the reporter, such was her sincerity and passion. I live in a town with a large faith-based community, and I have no doubt that there are some fear mongers in our community, but I never see them. What I do see is food banks and other assistance programs, hot meals, fellowship, fundraisers, knitting blankets and shawls for sick people, visits to senior citizens and people who can’t get out much, helping hands and trips to the grocery store and Wal-Mart. I see that and dozens of other individual acts of kindness, goodwill, and genuine care for other people.
I think about all of those people I know, and they’re not on YouTube or Facebook making a spectacle of themselves, because they’re too busy being in service organizations, raising money to buy eyeglasses for kids, distributing free books to encourage literacy, handing out blankets and sandwiches to the homeless, and doing all of those other things—those Christian things—on a daily and weekly and monthly basis. And those people are too nice to tell someone they are full of shit, so I’ll take the hit.
I don’t know who told this woman that Roald Dahl’s witches cast spells through the television set, but they are full of shit. God is love. God is not fear. Going through life, looking for devils and demons and cultists under every popular book, TV show, movie, rock and roll song, video game, role-playing game and cartoon is a fool’s errand, because when you can’t readily find any, you’ll just make them up. Life’s too short to kid yourself. Don’t be so busy looking for darkness that you miss all of the light.
Now, having said all of that, I absolutely take her point about monitoring what your kids watch, and more broadly, what media they consume. Just not for the reasons she outlines. There’s ratings on everything—and Republicans and Senator’s Wives campaigned for decades to make that happen—so use them. And you should realize that Generation X, now in our 50s, still watches cartoons, plays video games, and in general doesn’t act our age. Some of that media is meant for us grownups, even if it’s a video game or a cartoon.
Part of being a good parent in the 21st century is being a gatekeeper for your kids and teaching them how to consume media, what it is and what it isn’t, and how to decode it so you can understand it better. Schools aren’t going to do it for you. There’s no incentive. If you start thinking for yourself, then that guy who told you about casting spells through the damn television set sounds less like a trusted authority figure and more like he’s just full of shit.
If you’ve stayed this long, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Here’s a link to a collection of Snopes articles debunking and occasionally confirming 30 Halloween related myths and urban legends, including the old reliable “razors in the candy bar” and many others.
Let’s all enjoy Halloween this year. And go watch Hocus Pocus 2, for no other reason than someone doesn’t want you to see it.
I well remember the days of the "Satanic Panic" along with the urban myths about poisoned Halloween candy that practically shut down trick or treating in many areas. As for the Evangelicals and their war on Satan, they are what I tend to call "comic book Christians" (a term I co-opted from "comic book Pagans, to describe those who can't tell the difference between religious practices and their favorite fantasy novels and DnD campaigns). They get downright excited about Satanic conspiracies and thinking Satan is lurking around every corner for them. They thrive on the "us vs. them" mentality. That explains why con-men grifters like Bob Larson keep a following, because he plays into the drama of their fantasy world. They're mainly the Fundamentalists and many of the Evangelicals. They're less-prevalent in mainstream Protestantism such as the Episcopalians. They're the ones running all those bake sales, charity drives, etc.
I don’t think parents needed any excuse to raid candy bags, but they always checked my haul for home-made treats and the like. I got into urban myths when I read the book by Jan Brunvand, The Choking Doberman. It was really eye-opening.