The Vampire Catfish: A Message Board And The Boy Who Believed

Summary

Chameleon: The Vampire Catfish – A Message Board And The Boy Who Believed

Podcast: Chameleon
Host: Josh Dean
Guest/Subject: Michael
Release Date: February 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode tells the true story of Michael, a now-middle-aged man who, as a lonely queer teenager in 1990s South Carolina, found solace—and danger—in an early online vampire message board, Le Jardin Sauvage (LJS). The board, rooted in fandom for Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, blurred fantasy and reality in ways that left Michael vulnerable to manipulation, identity deception, and emotional abuse by a persona known as “Dennis.” Through Michael’s story, host Josh Dean explores the darker edges of early internet communities, how they could both rescue and endanger their most vulnerable members, and the consequences that linger decades later.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Lure of Early Internet Communities (00:30–06:03)

• LJS as Refuge: For Michael, who felt ostracized at school and home, the message board was a lifeline.

  • “I was never the popular kid in school… my first experience with having any sort of like, quote, unquote friend group was this board.” (01:06, Michael)

• Anne Rice Fandom: The board centered around role-playing as characters from Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, attracting devoted fans.

  • “You could communicate and speak to the vampires… People who cosplayed as the characters… were all posting on the board. They acted as the moderators but they were also the leaders…” (02:53–03:06, Michael & Josh Dean)

• Immersion and Status: Members sought private, “exclusive” chats with their vampire idols, further blurring fantasy and reality.

  • “A private conversation with a vampire was rare and coveted. They were elusive, mysterious.” (05:03, Josh Dean)

2. Michael’s Vulnerable Childhood and the Rise of the Online Escape (07:12–16:22)

• Background: Michael grew up in poverty in a rural, conservative area, ostracized and abused for being “different.”

  • “I was a queer kid who didn't even really know what queer was… I stuck out like a sore thumb and I paid for it." (08:40, Michael)

• Discovery of Vampires: Drawn to the homoerotic undertones and “outsider” status of Rice’s characters, Michael found belonging.

  • “What spoke to me was the overt homosexuality that were in these books… at the time spoke to me as a young queer kid.” (10:26, Michael)

• First Online Connection: Once his family got a computer, Michael immediately sought out Anne Rice communities, joining LJS.

  • “That was literally the first thing I looked up on the Internet. And that popped up.” (11:54, Michael)

3. The Relationship with “Dennis” (13:02–20:34)

• The Meeting: Michael’s first private AOL chat with “Dennis”—a supposed vampire—was electrifying and freeing.

  • "I was typing it, but to me, I was saying it out loud. And saying it out loud was the first time I got that outside of me... It was like being a thousand pounds lighter." (13:16, Michael)

• Escalation: The relationship turned romantic (despite Michael’s age; he was 15), with role-play interactions blurring emotional lines.

  • "After only like a week or two, the conversations started to become romantic. Dennis was the one who started talking to me in a different way..." (15:50, Michael)

• No Safeguards: Moderators and adults in Michael’s life failed to intervene.

  • “Nobody raised a red flag. There were rules about moderators having personal relationships with members... but the signs were there.” (16:53, Josh Dean)

4. Detachment from Reality & Emotional Fallout (20:05–24:07)

• Manipulation: Dennis leveraged Michael’s vulnerability, fostering an emotionally abusive dependency.

  • “Dennis knew that, and Dennis fed on that, and Dennis took advantage of that.” (20:05, Michael)

• Real-World Impact: Michael’s identity and mental health suffered. Self-harm, dissociation, and family turmoil followed.

  • “I was having a lot of issues with disassociation and stuff, and I, I had started to self harm. It seemed to be the only way I could… shock myself back to reality...” (20:34, Michael)

• Exposure and Collapse: Therapy eventually led to Michael being cut off from his online world, and Dennis cruelly ended the relationship.

  • “The only thing Dennis said to me was, 'You’re dead to me. I’ve already had your funeral.' And then he blocked me.” (23:28, Michael)

5. The Truth Behind the Mask (25:58–33:50)

• Revelation: Years later, Michael learned Dennis was actually Shannon, a woman in her 30s.

  • “A woman with a very fake French accent who’s like, ‘This is Dennis, and you’ll be on Le Jardin Sauvage over my dead body.’” (27:00, Michael)

• Strange Reunion: At 19, Michael traveled to Ohio to meet Shannon. There was no romantic spark; Shannon’s fantasy “Dennis” persona fell apart in real life.

  • “There was no attraction whatsoever… I remember getting off the bus and looking at her and there was no attraction... If it had never been obvious to me before, it was obvious now that I was gay.” (30:59, Michael)

• Awkward Coexistence and Final Break: They never became romantic partners. The reality cemented the fantasy as impossible and their friendship dissolved.

  • “She kept trying to touch me. And I kept like, not being into it. The first night I slept in the bed with her. And then after that I was super uncomfortable and I started sleeping on the couch.” (31:40, Michael)

6. Aftermath, Reflection, and Accountability (34:18–39:18)

• Looking Back: Michael sees Shannon’s manipulation as a product of her own pain and desire for control—but holds her responsible for exploiting him as a minor.

  • "A part of me wants Shannon to have to take accountability. I did something, I shouldn't have done it... Are you still doing this? Are you still pretending to be a vampire… and taking advantage?" (35:15, Michael)

• Community Fallout: LJS continued for years after, inspiring other boards—some of which were later linked to troubling real-world actions (e.g., the Rod Farrell “vampire cult”).

  • “It would be wrong to suggest LJS or… boards like it are necessarily responsible themselves… Many people who frequented these message boards have fond memories…” (38:36, Josh Dean)

• Silver Linings: Michael found identity, music, and literature that still matter to him. The episode stresses that positive community and harmful deception coexisted online.

  • "It didn't destroy any of that. That's all still a part of me... that's kind of what Le Jardin Sauvage left me with. It introduced me to these things I love now." (39:36, Michael)

7. Concluding Themes

• Cautionary Tale: Michael hopes his story will help others feel less alone and more aware of online predation’s danger, as well as the resilience of survivors.

  • “I want more people who were part of this in the past to realize that they aren't alone and that they weren’t all by themselves in this experience.” (37:00, Michael)

• Danger and Potential of Online Roleplay: A reminder of how roleplay communities can foster both community and abuse.

  • "It's about what can happen when no one around you sees you for who you are and the minefields you can stumble into. Especially when no one is looking out for you." (40:11, Josh Dean)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Opening on the Power of Online Identity:
  "This week, an online encounter with an imaginary vampire that moves into the real world and becomes something far more dangerous." – Josh Dean (06:04)

• On the significance of that first connection:
  "Saying it out loud was the first time I got that outside of me... It was like being a thousand pounds lighter." – Michael (13:16)

• On the emotional damage:
  “Dennis knew that, and Dennis fed on that, and Dennis took advantage of that.” – Michael (20:05)

• On fantasy vs. reality:
  "There was never a time where they were like, oh, I'm going to go see my sick mom, so I'll be back in a week. That's not what it was. It was always like, oh, I'm going on a trip to go see friends in... Paris..." – Michael (18:29)_

• Cruel Severance:
  "You're dead to me. I've already had your funeral." – Dennis/Shannon via AIM (23:28)

• On discovery and the letdown of meeting in person:
  "There was no attraction whatsoever... It was obvious now that I was gay.” – Michael (30:59)

• Reflection and hope for others:
  “My experience isn't the only experience is, I guess, the thing.” – Michael (37:00)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:30–01:49: Introduction to LJS and Michael’s experience as an outsider
• 02:53–06:03: Mechanics of the board, roleplay, and “meeting vampires”
• 07:12–11:11: Michael’s childhood isolation, intro to Anne Rice, and discovery of the community
• 13:02–16:22: First chat with Dennis, the spark and shift to romance
• 20:05–23:34: Emotional manipulation, therapy, exposure and Dennis' cruel abandonment
• 25:58–27:36: Michael learns Dennis is actually Shannon
• 30:34–33:50: Michael travels to meet Shannon, the anticlimactic reunion
• 35:15–37:27: Michael reflects on accountability and recovery
• 39:36–40:11: Silver linings: Anne Rice, music, and a reclaimed identity

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Tone & Language

Josh Dean narrates with empathy and clarity, highlighting both the darker and more redemptive sides of Michael’s story. Michael’s language alternates between humorous, nostalgic, and painfully honest, candidly reflecting on both his trauma and the meaningful discoveries he made online. The episode maintains a grounded, inclusive tone, never sensationalizing the abuse or diminishing the value Michael found within the community.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is both a gripping cautionary tale about the perils of online naiveté and predation, and a nuanced look at how young outsiders often find themselves at risk while seeking belonging. Michael’s story will resonate with anyone who has found solace online—or been burned by what they found there.

Transcript

[Michael]

Campsite Media.

[Josh Dean]

Hello.

[Michael]

What is.

[Josh Dean]

What do you want me to say?

[Michael]

Chameleon. Chameleon.

[Josh Dean]

Chameleon Weekly. Today's story comes from a listener who heard the show and wants to tell his own story because he thinks it's important for you to hear it. A story about an online community that back in his teens was a refuge. Until it wasn't.

[Michael]

Le Jardin Savage is what was called a message board.

[Josh Dean]

Michael's in his mid-40s, has floppy bleached blonde hair, and today he's wearing a blue googly eyed Cookie Monster T shirt.

[Michael]

To put it into more modern parlance, it was kind of like Reddit, only very self contained.

[Josh Dean]

You know what he's talking about, I'm sure. But back in the early 1990s, message boards were just beginning to take off. They were incredibly primitive by today's standards, but for a teenage Michael, they offered a whole new world of opportunity.

[Michael]

I was never the popular kid in school. In fact, like, I tended to be ostracized more often than not. So my first experience with having any sort of like, quote, unquote friend group was the this board.

[Josh Dean]

For a kid who often felt like he didn't fit in, Le Jardin Saage was a way to connect with people who actually got him.

[Michael]

My experience of the world was extremely limited. I had never heard of what, you know, goth was. I learned about bands that I still listen to to this day. Like, I didn't know who the Cure was. And I got introduced to the Cure through the sport. I'm still still one of the biggest Cure fans there is. It very much was a community, but

[Josh Dean]

this wasn't your typical forum. It had a theme, one that Michael found absolutely irresistible.

[Michael]

It was all based around one particular subject, which was the vampires of the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles.

[Josh Dean]

The Vampire Chronicles was a bit of a phenomenon in the 1990s. People really connected with author Anne Rice's beautiful, often morally conflicted and sexually ambiguous vampires. Rice published 13 books between 1976 and 2018, which have collectively sold more than 80 million copies worldwide. And if you'll excuse the vampiric expression, they have spawned myriad fan art, fan fiction, cosplay, and entire communities dedicated to celebrating and exploring the mythology of vampires. Laid out in those books, the Lejardin Sauvage Message board, or LJS as it was called by people in the know, was one of the first spaces to bring fans together. And it had one incredible selling point.

[Michael]

You could communicate and speak to the vampires from the Vampire Chronicles, as in

[Josh Dean]

people who cosplayed as the characters from the Anne Rice books were all posting on the board.

[Michael]

They acted as the moderators, but they were also the leaders on the board,

[Josh Dean]

always appearing in character.

[Michael]

Say you put up a subject like, God, I really hate meatloaf. And then another person says, me too. And then one of the vampires will be like, oh, when I was mortal, meatloaf was my favorite meal.

[Josh Dean]

These vampires displayed an incredible level of dedication to their roles.

[Michael]

They would not get online unless it was nighttime, wherever they were pretending or saying they were at. So if they were saying, I'm living in Paris, France, I'm a fabulous vampire dancing the nights away in Paris, France, they would not get online until you could look up what time it was in Paris and it was sunset or

[Josh Dean]

it was nighttime back then, it didn't feel yet like every part of our lives was broadcast online for the world to see. Interacting with people on the Internet relied more on imagination. And if you were able to suspend disbelief or play along, it could open up entire worlds.

[Michael]

Part of that imagination was like, each of these vampires had their own website and their own web presence, and it was almost like their quote unquote house. So you would go to their house and you could talk to them at their house on this website. I guess that's also kind of the allure of the whole thing because as you go along, these characters from a book that you love and have grown attached to are suddenly talking to you like they're your friend.

[Josh Dean]

The vampires were the celebrities of the message board, and the closer to them you were, the more status you had.

[Michael]

All of them were on let's age myself here. All of them were on AOL Instant Messenger. And so you could add them to your instant messenger and attempt to speak to them outside of the board on AOL Instant messenger and have one on one conversations.

[Josh Dean]

A private conversation with a vampire was rare and coveted. They were elusive, mysterious.

[Michael]

It was very exclusive to get to talk to one of them privately one on one. And a lot of times they would ignore most everybody outside of the board. So if you actually got to speak to one in messenger, it was this big, huge deal I went through, and I added everybody whose screen name I could get. And Dennis was the only one who accepted. Well, he was the only one who showed up online to me, and I literally just messaged. I was like, hi, how are you? He was like, oh, I'm great. I'm watching an Antonio Banderas movie. Don't you think he's so delicious? And I said, yeah, I think he's Great. And that was the first conversation that we started.

[Josh Dean]

I'm Josh Dean and this is Chameleon, a show about people who live behind masks. This week, an online encounter with an imaginary vampire that moves into the real world and becomes something far more dangerous.

[Delia d'Ambra]

When a Midwest wife and mother named Bonnie Schultz vanishes the same evening she told her husband she wanted a divorce, everyone suspects her husband did something to her. On Crime Junkie, we just released a two part story that lets you be the judge. In part one, I'll tell you why everyone was suspicious of Bonnie's husband, Rick. But in part two, I'll reveal to you some never before released details that might change your view of this case completely. Listen to missing Bonnie Schultz, parts one and two on Crime Junkie. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Michael]

Chameleon, Chameleon.

[Josh Dean]

This is Chameleon Weekly.

[Michael]

My parents came from two different worlds. My mother was born and raised in Montana and my father was born and raised in South Carolina, not the fabulous Charleston part of South Carolina.

[Josh Dean]

Michael's parents divorced when he was very young. Unusually, his father got custody. He grew up in a place called Johnsonville, two hours drive each way from Charleston or Columbia.

[Michael]

But we didn't even live in Johnsonville. We lived about, I'd say, five miles outside of it in a tiny community called the Neck. The only thing that made it a community was the three juke joints that were there and the people who lived around those juke joints and the nice people in Johnsonville didn't go to the Neck. So I grew up kind of in what most people would consider poverty. And my experience of the outside world was incredibly limited. But also my childhood was also very violent. So it was a very lonely childhood. I felt very apart from everybody else.

[Josh Dean]

Part of growing up in a place like this is to get by. You just accept the way things are. You go to church, you go to work at the factory, you get married, you have kids. And Michael knew from a very early age that this wasn't the life for him.

[Michael]

I was a queer kid who didn't even really know what queer was. And when you grow up in a community like that, people smell the queerness on you and they pick up on it and they ostracize you and they put you aside because you're different. I stuck out like a sore thumb and I paid for it. I paid for it in my home. I was beaten a lot. I was called names a lot by family and people outside of the family. And I was punished for being me. And that happened for years.

[Josh Dean]

Eventually, Michael found solace in a world

[Michael]

of fantasy where the vampire stuff started. That would have happened around the time I was about to 11 or 12. It started with the Interview with the Vampire movie with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

[Josh Dean]

I'm flesh and blood, but not human.

[Michael]

I haven't been human for 200 years.

[Josh Dean]

Interview with the Vampire is the 1994 movie based on the first of the Anne Rice books. I've come to answer your prayers. Life has no meaning anymore, does it?

[Michael]

To this day I can watch that movie and I can literally say all the lines one while they're saying them. Claudia. Kristen Dunn wakes up from being turned and she goes, I want more. I want some more. Of course you want more.

[Josh Dean]

And evil's point of view, God kills

[Michael]

indiscriminately and so shall we. That's an actual famous line from the book as well. But the way Tom Cruise delivers it is kind of badass.

[Josh Dean]

Michael was enraptured and he knew exactly

[Michael]

why they were gay. That's what spoke to me. I didn't know that at the time because I didn't have an understanding of what gay and straight was because I was so removed from that. But now as an adult, what I know spoke to me was the overt homosexuality that were in these books. There's not full on like gay sex in them, but there's a lot of homoeroticism that at the time spoke to me as a young queer kid who didn't even know what queer was. And so I latched on to it

[Josh Dean]

for maybe a couple of years. Those vampires were part of Michael's interior world, fed by the books he managed to find in the local library. But that all changed when one day his dad came home with the family's first home computer.

[Michael]

It would have been a CRT tv, so not flat screen. It would have looked more like the old time. He liked TVs. We're talking far enough back that you would be using your phone line and nobody would be able to call, or when they would call, it would knock you offline. Everybody was kind of curious about it. So one or two people would use it. My father looked at, I would imagine, more than a couple of porn sites. But he got bored with it and he stopped using it. So I would say after about a couple of weeks, it was literally just me using the computer.

[Josh Dean]

Michael had only ever been on the Internet at school, but now he was free to investigate the one thing he was really interested in from the comfort and relative secrecy of his own home.

[Michael]

I Keep wanting to say I Googled Anne Rice, but I didn't. No, I didn't Google shit. Google didn't exist. It would have been Yahoo that I looked at. So that's how I ended up on La Jardin Sauvage was because that was literally the first thing I looked up on the Internet. And that popped up.

[Josh Dean]

If you want a sense of what Le Jardin Sauvage looked like, I found this vivid description from someone who used to be a member. It was the time when people would choose an eyes killing red color for background violet for the font, and they would plant unedited pictures all over the page with blood dripping animated graphics as interlines. Needless to say, it took hell of a time for pages to load.

[Michael]

As I got into Legard and Savage. I found people wanting to be around me. I found people wanting to have conversations with me. I found people who started to call me friends. And these were all experiences that I had never had before. I started to learn about what being gay was and I started to discover inside myself, like, this is the answer to why I'm so different from everybody else. That's something that I didn't have verbiage for before the computer came into the house.

[Josh Dean]

This is why that first conversation with a vampire named Dennis was so significant. When Dennis said, I'm watching an Antonio Banderas movie, don't you think he's delicious? And Michael tentatively replied, yeah, I think he's great.

[Michael]

I was typing it, but to me, I was saying it out loud. And saying it out loud was the first time I got that outside of me. I had never said anything gay before. And it was a release. It was. It was like being a thousand pounds lighter.

[Josh Dean]

Dennis seems like an odd name for a vampire.

[Michael]

This is ridiculous. As a 15 year old, I was enamored, but now his name was Dennis Lachez, which now I know that just literally means Dennis the Chair, but that's what he called himself.

[Josh Dean]

Dennis isn't a named character in the Vampire Chronicle books, but that character he was playing is in it a young pianist who has a brief relationship with the main character, Lestat, who eventually turns him, as they would say, into a vampire and gets him to attack two other characters. The plot fails and the pianist runs into the night, never to be seen again in any of the literature.

[Michael]

And I think the draw was how open to interpretation the character was and that it could be kind of taken anywhere they wanted to take it.

[Josh Dean]

So Dennis, the name this moderator chose, was a very minor character which in the World of the Le Jardin Sauvage message board actually mattered quite a lot.

[Michael]

The person who owned the board, who ran everything, was Lestat. And then the more popular vampires, Louis Armand. When the book Maric came out, the character of Maric was popular. But as you go down the list, there is a hierarchy.

[Josh Dean]

The lesser known vampires, like Dennis, often made up for it in other ways.

[Michael]

He tended to be one of the more bombastic ones, but also too, he tended to be one of the vampires that wanted the most attention. He was the one interacting with people the most. And later I would come to find out he was having more private conversations with people than most of the other

[Josh Dean]

vampires, which is probably why he replied to Michael. And once they'd made the introduction, the connection was immediate. They stayed up talking on AOL Instant messenger long into the night.

[Michael]

There was an instant click and we were able to have conversations about our interests, books, music, things like that. It was incredibly easy to talk to Dennis, and it seemed as though Dennis found it incredibly easy to talk to me. And we just talked more and more and more. I didn't really have a bedtime, so I would end up spending hours at night on the computer.

[Josh Dean]

Things moved incredibly quickly.

[Michael]

I would say after only like a week or two, the conversations started to become romantic. Dennis was the one who started talking to me in a different way and saying, oh, I'm getting feelings for you and I'm starting to find myself attached to you. I had never experienced that before. I, at this point, I hadn't even had like a first kiss. They didn't know what I looked like, but they thought I was sexy and I fell into it head over feet.

[Josh Dean]

It's very important to remember that Michael is still a child at this point and an extremely vulnerable child at that. At 15 years old, he should not have been in a position where a stranger on the Internet was able to open the door to these types of conversations. But none of the adults in his life noticed.

[Michael]

Everybody in my household just kind of ignored me. This computer was not hidden in an office or anything. It was literally in the living room. And that's where I was having all these conversations and doing all these things.

[Josh Dean]

Also, the other vampires who were running the forums didn't step in. Nobody raised a red flag. There were rules about moderators having personal relationships with members. So Michael and Dennis didn't shout about their interactions, but the signs were there.

[Michael]

Anybody who is a computer person or does like World of Warcraft or any of that, knows what emoting is. Emoting is where you chat, but you describe your actions at the same time. So in simplest terms, the emote would be walks up to him and puts his arm around him. But you can get really involved. It becomes really book like and romantic and stuff. And that would be the kind of stuff we would be doing in the chat room. So it became very obvious to everybody that we were in a relationship, but it wasn't something we're public.

[Josh Dean]

People on the board definitely knew about the relationship.

[Michael]

There was another vampire, David, who had a mortal lover off of the board who was another dude. And we would hang out together in a private chat room and almost have, like double dates. That's kind of what it was like. It was a role play in which we were creating this world for ourselves in there.

[Josh Dean]

You might argue that the other people on the board couldn't be expected to know that Michael was so young, but at least one person did.

[Michael]

Dennis knew everything about my life. He knew about school. He knew about homework. He knew about family. He knew about a lot of the horrible things that had happened to me. There wasn't a wall. Everything about me kind of went to Dennis.

[Josh Dean]

But Dennis, real life, it might as well have not existed. His mask never slipped.

[Michael]

There was never a time where they were like, oh, I'm going to go see my sick mom, so I'll be back in a week. That's not what it was. It was always like, oh, I'm going on a trip to go see friends in, you know, Florence, and we're going to go to a masquerade ball and I'll tell you all about it when I get back, that kind of stuff. He told me that he had watched me sleep, sleep, and that he had flown, like, bodily, like, flew like a bird to my home in South Carolina and watched me through my window while I slept. At one point, there was a conversation where something had happened with my dad or whatever, and he had been like, well, I saw where you were. I could kill him for you if you wanted me to. And I was like, no, thank you. Let's not do that.

[Josh Dean]

It is true that people often play with different identities on the Internet. It was a big part of the attraction of these early forums, especially at this time. And a lot of people enjoy role playing, but Michael didn't really have a concept of what this meant. To really understand what is going on with this relationship dynamic, you need to understand that Michael believed it was real.

[Michael]

I just accepted that Dennis was a vampire and that I was in a legitimate romantic relationship, gay romantic relationship with a Male vampire.

[Josh Dean]

And maybe that's what makes this story so hard to hear. The gap between fantasy and reality was completely obscured. Michael's belief is what here gave the Internet its power. And in that space, something dark had taken root.

[Michael]

And what you've got to remember is that I was a profoundly broken person. I was grasping for any, any fulfilling relationship of any sort that I could get. And Dennis knew that, and Dennis fed on that, and Dennis took advantage of that.

[Josh Dean]

It felt good at the time, better than good. Michael was falling in love. But looking back, he sees things much more clearly. He was in crisis.

[Michael]

I was in this amazing romantic relationship, but it was also affecting my mental state. I was having a lot of issues with disassociation and stuff, and I, I had started to self harm. It seemed to be the only way I could kind of like shock myself back to reality and things.

[Josh Dean]

Others in his life were starting to notice changes.

[Michael]

So here I was, wandering around my high school in my dad's old Air Force overcoat in May in South Carolina in combat boots and painting my nails and wearing lipstick. And everybody's just mind blown.

[Josh Dean]

His parents didn't understand any of this. The fashion choices alone frightened them. So they sent their son to a therapist and luckily Michael hit it off with her. He felt comfortable talking about everything in his life, Dennis included.

[Michael]

I started to tell her about this relationship that we were having and, and that I was in love with him. And she, she wasn't judgmental. She talked about it with me. She was very respectful.

[Josh Dean]

Around that time, Michael's dad planned a holiday for the family.

[Michael]

I wanted to stay home and talk to Dennis, but I was going to have to go to Disney World. So I said goodbye to Dennis and told him I'd be back in a couple of weeks and we went off to Disney World.

[Josh Dean]

When Michael got back, everything changed. The computer was gone. His dad said it had gone in for repairs, but that wasn't true.

[Michael]

It had never crossed my mind that this therapist was going to tell my father.

[Josh Dean]

This was of course, the right thing for the therapist to do. Michael was in danger and the grooming he was unwittingly in the middle of was a crime. But for Michael, this was a terrifying prospect for his relationship to be revealed to his father.

[Michael]

More than just a vampire, it was a dude over the Internet. I was mortified. I was horrified. I can't think of a worse way to come, come out to anybody in this moment.

[Josh Dean]

Michael needed to be seen, to be understood. His dad just didn't understand.

[Michael]

He felt that there was some dirty old man on the other side of the computer who had like, more or less mentally molested his kid.

[Josh Dean]

He refused to believe that his son was gay.

[Michael]

And this therapist yelled at my family and they were like, your son is gay and he's never going to be anything but gay. And you need to get used to was like a real thing. But even then, my family didn't believe it.

[Josh Dean]

Suddenly, Michael had no one he could

[Michael]

trust, literally in like 2.5 seconds flat. My entire social world and all these relationships that in my mind were just as real as having real friends in real life were ripped away and cut off. And I didn't have them anymore.

[Josh Dean]

Michael was taken in a police car to a hospital where he stayed for some time.

[Michael]

And so I get out of the hospital and the first thing I do is I convince my dad that I want to go to the library. So my dad drops me off at the library, I get onto the computer and I get onto aim and Dennis is there. I'm doing this whole Secret Squirrel thing in the library. And I messaged him and I'm like, okay, I'm going to fix this. Here's what happened. And the only thing Dennis said to me was, you're dead to me. I've already had your funeral. And then he blocked me. The only person in the world that I felt like cared about me, didn't care about me anymore. And the whole Dennis and Lajarde and Savage and everything was done and gone.

[Josh Dean]

It's easy to see this now as a cautionary tale about the early Internet, but at the time, that's not how Michael saw it. He felt abandoned by the adults in his life and by the one person he thought understood and loved him. By the world that had made him feel safe. Dennis the vampire had disappeared into the night. But it wouldn't be long before his true form was revealed and Michael would meet the person he thought was actually a vampire in real life. In blinding sunlight.

[Delia d'Ambra]

When a Midwest wife and mother named Bonnie Schultz vanishes the same evening she told her husband she wanted a divorce, everyone suspects her husband did something to her. On Crime Junkie, we just released a two part story that lets you be the judge. In part one, I'll tell you why everyone was suspicious of Bonnie's husband, Rick. But in part two, I'll reveal to you some never before released details that might change your view of this case completely. Listen to Missing Bonnie Schultz, parts one and two on Crime Junkie. Wherever you get your podcasts,

[Josh Dean]

You're listening to Chameleon The Weekly. Michael had a difficult time that summer. It was his senior year of high school. He was in and out of the hospital and on a lot of medication. At times, he felt so low that he wasn't sure he even wanted to be alive. The following year, he moved into his own place and started technical college. But it didn't work out, and he found himself back at home. He had more time on his hands all of a sudden and found his way back to the computer.

[Michael]

At this point now, I knew what roleplay was, and I started role playing with people in AOL chat rooms. And I ended up making friends with somebody who actually knew the people on Le Jard de Savich. And she was talking to me, and she was like, well, Lestat's my friend. And it turned out that Lestat's name was Caroline. And she was like, I'm going to tell Caroline about you, and I think you should be a vampire on there.

[Josh Dean]

And this new friend thought that Caroline would like Michael's writing.

[Michael]

I was like, are you serious? And she was like, yeah. And I was like, you really think I could get on the boards as a vampire? And she was like, yeah.

[Josh Dean]

Le Jardin Sauvage was a memory at this point to Michael. He hadn't spoken to anyone on the board for almost two years.

[Michael]

She was like, I'm going to be in New Orleans. I'm going to be there with a bunch of other people. And I was like, well, do you know who Dennis is? And she's like, yeah, I know who Dennis is. Dennis is going to be in New Orleans with us. And I was like, are you serious? And she was like, yeah, when I get to New Orleans, I'll call you.

[Josh Dean]

A while later, Michael received that call. She said, I have someone who wants to speak to you. And passed over the phone, and it's

[Michael]

a woman with a very fake French accent who's like, this is Dennis, and you'll be on Le Jardin Savage over my dead body. I was like, what? And that's how I talked to Dennis on the telephone.

[Josh Dean]

Dennis was not only not a vampire, he was not a man. He was a woman named Shannon. By this point, the spell had already been broken. Michael had seen past the curtain and been invited in. So you can see why Shannon would worry about Michael being part of the board, possibly telling others about their relationship.

[Michael]

And also, my dad got onto my screen name and told Dennis, I'm going to the cops. You better run.

[Josh Dean]

The board was shut down for a period after that happened, but it popped right Back up when things cooled off and there was no follow through from the police. Lestat. Sorry. Caroline overrode Shannon. Michael was in and he started playing vampires on the forum himself.

[Michael]

I think the first one I started playing on the board was Benji, which is a character from the vampire Armand and had played Nicholas for a little bit.

[Josh Dean]

This was a further revelation that speaks to how these boards would operate. Not only were people not real vampires, obviously, but in many cases, one person would play multiple characters. And some moderators also had mortal Personas on the board.

[Michael]

But I didn't enjoy being a vampire as much as I enjoyed just being immortal on the boards.

[Josh Dean]

Dennis was also now back in Michael's life, and it was weird.

[Michael]

What's weird is that even though I knew at this point that Shannon was a woman, which was shocking, the first man I'd ever admitted to be engaged to and stuff turns out to be a woman. It was really confusing in my brain. It was confusing because I was like, okay, well then does gender even matter? Is that even, like a thing? So we start talking. At first it's adversarial, but then after a little bit, we just start interacting like Dennis and Michael again. And we end up talking in roleplay and emoting, and suddenly Dennis and Michael are a thing again.

[Josh Dean]

This is the danger of this type of abuse. Michael knew he'd been fooled. He even knew it was wrong. But that original connection he'd formed, it was real. And it didn't just go away once he knew the whole truth.

[Michael]

I'm back to hanging out with Dennis in the boards and stuff, but at the same time, I'm like talking to Shannon on the phone. But Shannon would talk to me like she was Dennis. And I don't know, I feel like I should have been more weirded out by the whole situation, but I wasn't. Almost immediately, they were back to being like, okay, I still have feelings for you. I want to be with you.

[Josh Dean]

Michael is 19 at this point. He's still trying to go to school, but his dad says that he isn't going to be able to afford it anymore.

[Michael]

And so Shannon was like, why don't you come and live with me? And what's funny is that my parents were aware of this. The person who had exploited me on the Internet that I was having this pseudo long distance romantic relationship with. But once they found out that it was a woman, they didn't care because it was a woman. So they were fine with it. But what's even worse is that this was like a 30 something year old woman. And I was 19. And then when I told them, I was like, hey, I'm going to get on a bus and go to Ohio. They were like, okay, bye. And so that's what I did. I got onto a bus and I rode it all the way to Ohio.

[Josh Dean]

That's 12 hours on a Greyhound bus. And when Michael finally arrived, there was Shannon waiting for him.

[Michael]

And that was probably the most awkward meeting I've ever had in my whole life.

[Josh Dean]

You gotta remember, this was the 1990s. There were no cell phone cameras. Michael didn't know what this person he'd been talking to off and on for years even looked like.

[Michael]

So when I got off the bus, there she was. And it was really weird because I really wanted to be in love with this person. I wanted somebody to love me. And I remember getting off the bus and looking at her and there was no attraction whatsoever. If it had never been obvious to me before, it was obvious now that I was gay. Because Shannon was very much a female. An older woman in her 30s, glasses, blonde hair, a little bit overweight. And she came up to me and she tried to kiss me. And I was like, no. And it was super awkward. She took me to her house, Shannon's

[Josh Dean]

house, where she lived with her two young kids.

[Michael]

And we talked and then took a nap and then woke up. And she kept trying to touch me. And I kept like, not being into it. The first night I slept in the bed with her. And then after that I was super uncomfortable and I started sleeping on the couch. I think it became very obvious to her very quickly that this was not going to be a romantic relationship. And I think it became that same way to me. And neither one of us knew how to deal with it because I had literally just left South Carolina.

[Josh Dean]

So for a while, Michael and Shannon made the best of it. He even got a job at a local grocery store. But the relationship never quite moved beyond the message board.

[Michael]

She happened to have two computers. And one of the most bizarre experiences that I'd ever had is that she set up the second computer and we were literally looking at each other. And she had us being Michael and Dennis on Legarde and Salvation in the chat room. So I'm looking at her and we're interacting, and she's having us interact all romantical and stuff in the computer, even though we both know that that's not what's going on in real life. I think we were saying we were in Paris or something at the time. And so I was adding validity to her story that Dennis was in Paris. So, oh, there's somebody there with Dennis, and that kind of thing. And we were literally looking at each other in her little tiny house in Ohio. Looking back on it now, she was very sad. There was not much to Shannon's life besides the computer. I was trying to have this relationship that I thought I was supposed to have, because here I am with a woman, and I guess we're kind of pretending like we're in a relationship, even though I'm sleeping on the couch, and there's been no physical intimacy whatsoever.

[Josh Dean]

Things eventually came to a head. Shannon had a friend, a guy closer

[Michael]

to Michael's age, and he was obviously gay. And he immediately got a crush on me. And he immediately started hanging out with me, and it became very obvious that he was attracted to me. And then Shannon was like, you gotta leave. You need to figure out where you're going, because you can't stay here. I ended up calling my mom, who was living in Texas. My mom sent me a bus ticket, and I left Ohio and went to Texas and never saw Shannon again.

[Josh Dean]

He'd been in Ohio for a total of two weeks. Michael did continue to talk to Shannon in chats, but the relationship was never romantic again.

[Michael]

After meeting Shannon in real life, I just didn't like her. There was no fantasy left. Shannon just wasn't a nice person, and I don't think Shannon was a happy person. And she tended to make the people around her unhappy, and I didn't want to be a part of that.

[Josh Dean]

Michael continued posting on the board for a while after that, but grew bored and eventually stopped completely. He began to reflect on everything that happened.

[Michael]

I would imagine that Shannon's life was just as messed up and horrible as mine, and I think she was doing the exact same thing I was. I think she was disappearing into another reality. I would imagine that even though I felt like I was me and I felt like I wasn't being a character or anything, I think to Shannon, I was a character. And I think she fell in love with the idea of me. I think it was also about control, and I was easily controlled. I wonder sometimes if so many things were outside of her control in her real life that she found being able to control this thing empowering.

[Josh Dean]

But all these years later, Michael still has questions.

[Michael]

I wonder sometimes if she realizes the kind of impact that she had on my life, like how it echoed throughout. She knew that I was 16, 17 years old. She knew that I was young. So I have a hard time understanding how she would have those feelings for me. I'm 44 years old. I could not imagine having any sort of a relationship with a 17 year old, even a 20 year old. I can't imagine having a relationship with a part of me telling the story and a part of me talking about this isn't so much about disability or anything. It's more about accountability. And a part of me wants Shannon to have to take accountability. I did something, I shouldn't have done it. And I guess there's a big part of me that kind of wants some sort of apology. And some part of me also wants to hear that she knows that that was wrong. And then also, are you still doing this? Are you still pretending to be a vampire on the Internet and taking advantage? Are you still doing that?

[Josh Dean]

Le Jardin Sauvage ran until 2005 or 2006, and it inspired other message boards. Squabbling between organizers was common, as anyone involved with Internet communities in the 90s and early 2000s will tell you. We know that Shannon continued on LJS and apparently she was often involved in arguments with the other moderators. She later left to set up her own role playing site where she was Lestat, giving her the control she probably craved. Michael contacted us because he wanted to show how he no longer sees himself as a victim. How this chapter, as dark as it was, doesn't define him as a person.

[Michael]

I kind of want people to see that I'm more than that, but also too, I wasn't the only one. And I want more people who were part of this in the past to realize that they aren't alone and that they weren't all by themselves in this experience. My experience isn't the only experience is, I guess, the thing.

[Josh Dean]

The world of Anne Rice role playing was huge online and off. It's hard to track because of the shifting identities, but there are several other examples of communities similar to LJS being linked to very disturbing events. The man who once claimed to be a 500 year old vampire and leader of a teen culture that drank blood, Rod Farrell, was a Kentucky teenager. He murdered the parents of a cult member as part of what he said was a ritual initiation. It's been suggested that some cult members were members of ljs, although there's no indication anyone running the board was involved. Another prominent Anne Rice forum that emerged later was called the Looking Glass, known as tlg.

[Michael]

I was in a vampire cult, an Anne Rice vampire cult, and I am ready to talk about it.

[Josh Dean]

Remember this because we're going to look at what happened here In a future

[Michael]

episode, it started to become clear that

[Delia d'Ambra]

most of the people on this forum,

[Michael]

many of whom were grown ass adults with kids and grandkids, proper careers, real jobs, all these people genuinely believed that the vampire moderators were the actual Anne Rice vampires.

[Josh Dean]

This is all horrific and raises serious questions about the safety of online communities. But I think it would be wrong to suggest LJS or other boards like it are necessarily responsible themselves for the terrible things that happen. Many people who frequented these message boards have fond memories of their involvement. Michael made real friends on Legardin Sauvage. Friends who helped him understand who he was and who made him feel safe and supported. And many people found real joy in interacting with and exploring made up identities. Michael has managed to separate his traumatic experience and the world from which that emerged. He still loves vampires and he still loves Anne Rice.

[Michael]

I have signed copies of Interview, the Vampire, the Vampire, Lysette and Queen of the Damned. I don't know if you can see behind me, but yeah, like I still love Anne Rice. The Interview of the Vampire TV show. Like I'm total fanboy for that.

[Josh Dean]

This is a more recent offering. The AMC show is now in its third season.

[Michael]

It didn't destroy any of that. That's all still a part of me, but also too, I think on a positive note, that's kind of what Legarde and Savage left me with. It introduced me to these things that I really love now. 2019, I got to see the cure. I got to see them live. And Dennis introduced me to one of my favorite authors of all time, Poppy Z Bright. They're a trans man now and their name's Billy, but they still use Poppy Z Bright in their writing. But that's somebody whose writings I cherish and I love. So, I mean, there's good things that came from it, things that I was exposed to that I would have never been exposed to.

[Josh Dean]

Michael's story is a cautionary tale, a reminder that we all need to be more careful online. The message board that helped him so much as a teen also created an environment for other people to abuse trust. It crossed the line from being fun to not being safe. And actions as well as identities were obscured. But this isn't just a story about what went wrong online. It isn't even just about the dangers of people hiding behind false identities. It's about what can happen when no one around you sees you for who you are and the minefields you can stumble into. Especially when no one is looking out for you. Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audio Chuck. It's hosted by me, Josh Dean and was written by me and Joe Barrett. It was produced by Joe Barrett. Our associate producer is Emma Simonels. Sound design and mix by Tiffany Dimmack. Theme by Ewin lytramuin and Mark McAdam. Our production manager is Ashley Warren. Campside's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Sher and me, Josh Dean. And finally, if I can ask a few favors before sending you on your way today, please rate, follow and review Chameleon on your favorite podcast platforms to help strengthen the word. I know everyone says this, but it's true. Ratings and reviews really do help. If you have any feedback, tips or story ideas, you can email [e-mail] or leave us a message at a special number we've set up, 201-743-8368. Add a plus one if you're outside North America. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

[Delia d'Ambra]

I think Chuck would approve. Every year, millions of people head into the wilderness searching for peace, beauty and adventure. But hidden in those same scenic landscapes are stories of violence, survival and lives cut short. I'm Delia d' Ambra and on my podcast Park Predators, I uncover the trail true crimes that happened in the most amazing places on Earth. Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.