News of the day:
Man busted for beheading warlock after disagreements over witchcraft
... yeah, we get a few kids killed by exorcisms every year or two, too. Think there's a few other things of similar nature -- parents denying kids medical care and whatnot. There's some dark places in the states.
Heh, I remember when the satanism scare was big news back in the early 90's. There's an actual shortage of satanists / witches going around murdering people, and a lot more killing in the name of a god. The belief that a higher power absolves you of personal responsibility is a double edged sword. I kinda doubt the murder rate by witchcraft practitioners is very high, considering it would be big news if it happened.
The 1980's satanism panic is really interesting. The media at the time was reporting there were 50,000 satanists in the USA running around doing unspeakable things to kids etc. Apparently a lot of it started because some schizophrenic woman belived there was a huge network of tunnels under her kid's daycare where they did satanic ritual abuse. Of course this was completely stark raving bonkers, but it was enough to cause a mass panic for over 10 years. Some claims at trial included:
Seeing witches fly; travel in a hot air balloon; abuse and travel through underground tunnels; identifying actor Chuck Norris from a series of pictures as an abuser; orgies at car washes and airports, children being flushed down toilets to secret rooms where they would be abused, then cleaned up and presented back to their unsuspecting parents (McMartin preschool trial, no forensic evidence was found to support these claims)
These things came from kids who were questioned with "special" techniques that used to be standard police procedure. But it's obviously that people can't really fly, and being flushed down a toilet to a secret labyrinth full of witches is just crazy bullshit. Since then, those police interview techniques have become a little suspect.
Interestingly I read a article that the number "50000" turns up quite often in these crazy conspiracy memes, from the 1950's communist scare and the 1980's satanism scare, and in current conspiracies. That's because 50000 is a small enough number to be believable but large enough to be scary. The most recent one I can quote is a "study" (actually not a real study) that says there are
50000 pedophiles on the internet at any one time, all coming to get YOUR KID.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14904410 times)