A second helping from Satan: A closer look at Michelle Remembers

Summary

The Devil You Know with Sarah Marshall

Bonus Episode: "A Second Helping from Satan: A Closer Look at Michelle Remembers"

Date: October 30, 2025
Guest: Shawn Horler (Filmmaker, director of Satan Wants You)
Host: Sarah Marshall

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Overview

This bonus episode of The Devil You Know brings Sarah Marshall together with filmmaker Shawn Horler to delve into the origins, legacy, and disturbing details of the book Michelle Remembers. Focusing on Victoria, BC—the "witch capital of Canada"—they discuss how growing up there in the shadow of the Satanic Panic shaped Shawn’s childhood, why Michelle Remembers became a cultural phenomenon, and how the book’s personal and societal consequences echo even now. The episode is both memoir and investigation, blending personal recollection with documentary insight, and draws connections between the past and present-day moral panics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Growing Up in the Shadow of Satanic Panic (03:39–06:36)

• Childhood in the 1980s: Shawn recalls how Michelle Remembers and Satanic Panic were inseparable from his upbringing in Victoria, BC, saturated into everyday life through media, public service announcements, milk-carton campaigns for missing children, and community gossip.
  • “You had this constant threat that you are going to be… And plus, with my mom telling me… you’re responsible for [your sister]. …Cars would slow down because you’re on your bike and you’re like, is this the moment that it’s going to happen?” (05:00 – Shawn Horler)
• Local Myths and Scapegoating: Stories about Satanic cults, defaced cemeteries, goths as lurking dangers, and stores rumored to hide sacrificial altars dominated neighborhood lore among kids and adults alike.

The Unique Culture of Victoria (09:45–12:19)

• A British, Isolated, and Weird City: Victoria’s identity was a mix of colonial Britishness and liberal artistic eccentricity, with a significant presence of witches and magical practitioners—adding layers to its Satanic lore.
  • “It’s this weird mixture of that sort of conservative colonial traditions plus this new-age spiritual, very artistic folks…” (11:29 – Shawn Horler)
• Local Celebrities: Authors Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder (Michelle and Larry) were woven into community celebrity culture, discussed by neighbors, and fixtures in local media.

The Social Impact of Michelle Remembers (12:39–16:50)

• Rumors and Real Crimes: The disappearance of a child, Michael Donahy, years after the book’s release, was reflexively linked by locals to Satanism, compounding the trauma for his family.
  • “Not only did your child go missing, you would have to endure these ridiculous rumors that it was a satanic cult that stole him.” (13:23 – Shawn Horler)
• Book’s Ubiquity: Michelle Remembers loomed in many households, forbidden yet ever-present on bookshelves, with its disturbing cover art sparking nightmares and morbid curiosity.
  • “It's the kind of thing that would give you nightmares… my parents forbade, like, I wasn't allowed to read it. Sat on the shelf, my Mom.” (16:58; 17:48 – Shawn Horler)

Examining the Book as Literature and Phenomenon (20:25–29:58)

• Structure and Writing: The much-noted contrast between the gripping first chapter (“the promise that first chapter delivers is a book I would want to read…”) and the rest of the book devolving into undifferentiated therapy session transcripts.
• Ghostwriters and Publishing Motives: Discovery of multiple ghostwriters—one confirmed via letter—helped shape the book, perhaps explaining its uneven tone. The publisher, Thomas Congdon (who edited Jaws), saw the book as a major commercial venture.
  • “[Ghostwriter] I quickly discovered that Michelle’s story was difficult to believe. I eventually produced a manuscript… I don’t think they used it, but I’m not sure about that.” (26:26 – Reading of a letter to Horler)
• Role in the Panic: The authenticity conferred by therapy session transcripts made the book more compelling and “useful” for police and social workers, who built checklists from its content to validate other claims—fueling the panic’s spread.

Moral Ambiguities and Motivations (31:53–34:27)

• Gray Areas of Responsibility: The podcast dispels the binary of total innocence vs. outright manipulation, exploring Michelle’s partial culpability in perpetuating the panic after claims were debunked—such as continuing to give seminars and interviews fingering others.
  • “It raises an uncomfortable question for me. Like, what happens when a victim becomes part of a system of abuse and in a way becomes an abuser themselves?” (33:37 – Shawn Horler)
• The Role of Empathy: Both Sarah and Shawn reflect on ways people, driven by a longing to make sense of their own pain or the world’s, can get swept up in dangerous narratives.

The Affair, Personal Fallout, & the Unsung Hero (37:35–40:55)

• The Personal Betrayals: Credible research and oral histories reveal the book’s deep ties to the affair between Michelle and Larry, which cost their respective spouses dearly. Shawn sees the story now less as an exposé of cult crime than as an epic of deception and self-justification.
  • “The book…is basically a story about betrayal and the capacity to deceive ourselves and each other.” (38:44 – Shawn Horler)
• Mary Lynn (Larry’s ex-wife) as Investigator: Mary Lynn’s tireless efforts to uncover the truth and resist being gaslit are celebrated as heroic.
  • “Hey, Mary Lynn is an inspiration to me.” (40:07 – Shawn Horler)

Institutional Powers and Backroom Supports (35:27–37:35)

• Church Involvement: The Catholic Church played a real role, providing money and support for Michelle and Larry’s project. Father Guy and Bishop Remi de Roo are discussed as both facilitators and themselves figures of controversy.
  • “It was actually a donation from the church to help them write the book.” (37:07 – Shawn Horler)

The Legacy of the Satanic Panic & Hope (43:32–46:30)

• Echoes Today: The Satanic Panic’s dynamics—fear, scapegoating, moral crusades—have replayed in recent years with phenomena like Pizzagate, QAnon, and trans moral panics.
  • “How easily this can happen again. And really did, in a way, within our lifetime…” (44:19 – Shawn Horler)
• Reason for Hope: Despite mass delusion, a persistent minority always fights for evidence-based truth. That fact, for Horler, is the ultimate source of faith in humanity.
  • “There is always the subje[ctive] portion of the population will tell you, no, this is wrong, who believe in empirical evidence… Those people give me hope for the future of humanity.” (45:32 – Shawn Horler)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the ubiquity of fear in the 80s:
  “You had this constant threat… are we going to be stolen?” (05:00 – Shawn Horler)
• On local celebrity:
  “It’s not every city… has the bride of Satan living 10 minutes down the road from you.” (09:20 – Shawn Horler)
• On the book’s sensational material:
  “...piles of dead baby fetuses… all the Satanists from around the world bringing their own fetus and adding it to a big pile…” (22:48 – Shawn Horler)
• On the pleasure and horror of reading the book:
  “It's hard to read and it's not a pleasant read. And if you finish it, it’s an accomplishment, I have to say.” (29:48 – Shawn Horler)
• On the book as personal betrayal:
  “I cannot look at this book now without seeing it as… basically a story about betrayal and the capacity to deceive ourselves and each other.” (38:44 – Shawn Horler)
• On skepticism and progress:
  “There will always be people… who believe in empirical evidence, who will continue… to speak up and say, no, this isn’t happening, this isn’t real.” (45:32 – Shawn Horler)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:39–06:36: Childhood during the Satanic Panic; PSAs, community rumors, and formative anxieties
• 09:45–12:19: Victoria’s unique subculture and how it fostered witchcraft rumors and eccentricity
• 13:23: Real-life tragedies and how the Satanic Panic deepened the community’s pain
• 16:50–17:48: Michelle Remembers as a household presence and cultural artifact
• 20:25–22:48: Breakdown of the book’s structure; why the first chapter grips and the rest drags
• 24:00–29:58: Discovery of ghostwriters, publisher motivations, and the book’s sociological power
• 33:37–34:27: The uncomfortable ambiguity of Michelle’s role and the urge for simple villains or heroes
• 35:27–37:35: Church involvement and the practicalities of the book’s production
• 38:44: Reframing the book as a story of betrayal—real victims beyond the page
• 40:07–40:55: Mary Lynn’s story and citizen investigation
• 43:32–44:19: Parallels to modern panics (QAnon, Pizzagate) and warnings from history
• 45:32: Why skepticism and truth-telling are reasons for hope

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Tone & Style

Informal, personal, and deeply researched; leavened with dark wit and empathy. Both host and guest are candid, occasionally wry, and committed to neither demonization nor blind exoneration.

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Final Reflection

This episode doesn't just revisit the Satanic Panic's wildest claims and their eerie roots in a single book—it examines how stories like Michelle Remembers become social facts, the mechanisms by which anxiety and credulity spread, and the responsibility we all carry for sifting truth from fiction. Both Sarah Marshall and Shawn Horler argue for the crucial importance of skepticism, compassion, and learning from history—“because if you don’t, you’re doomed to repeat it.”

Transcript

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I love these biopics of iconic musicians. And we just got a new one. It's called Deliver Me From Nowhere, and it's about this very specific period of time in Bruce Springsteen's life. He's making Nebraska, which is maybe his most intimate, most haunted album. Jeremy Allen White plays Bruce, but can he pull it off? Does this movie work? We have some of the smartest Springsteen fans here to dissect this movie for this episode and more. Follow Commotion with me, Al Amin, Abdul Mahmoud, on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast.

[C]

Welcome to the bonus episode. I'm Sarah Marshall. This is the Devil youe Know, and this week we're going to the witch capital of Canada with Shawn Horler. Shawn is a filmmaker and writer based in Vancouver, bc, and he directed and produced, along with Steve Adams, the 2023 documentary Satan Wants yous. In this episode, we talk about what it was like for Sean to grow up in the shadow of the satanic panic in the form of its originating narrative, the story of Michelle remembers and living in a city that learns to see itself anew through a bestseller about witches and satanic sacrifice in its midst. I also love talking to Sean about some of the stories he uncovered while working on his documentary Satan wants you to, and the things that get left on the cutting room floor when we go looking for the real stories behind history. Thank you so much for getting on with us and sharing your scary memories.

[A]

It's, oh, so good to see you again, Sarah.

[C]

It's really, again, such a delight.

[A]

So tell me, what are we doing here today?

[C]

Well, we're using your perspective to get into, I think, some of the questions that I think the listener would have about, like, okay, like, say you're just like a bystander, like a kid when all this is going on. Like, what's that about? Like, how does something kind of stick in your memory and your sense of reality when you're growing up to the point where you're like, I can't let go. I have to make a documentary about this because nobody else has for some.

[A]

Reason, and go deeper and deeper perhaps than I ever thought I would, and it turns into an obsession, and then you follow every rabbit hole. And then here we are today talking about it again.

[C]

Yeah. Yes, I love it. And I guess, sort of like, how did you become interested in the satanic panic? And aside from sort of where and when are there moments that just kind of like that, you think back to now as sort of moments where something happened? You just Couldn't let go of it.

[A]

That's a really great question. I mean, it's sort of, you know, I'm a child of the 80s and grew up, born in the early 80s and then grew up throughout the Satanic Panic. So for me, it's pretty hard to separate my childhood from the Satanic Panic itself. Part of the story, of course, I grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, where a certain book called Michelle Remembers was set and written and where its authors lived. But you're asking about these early memories of the Satanic Panic. And for me, it's like, I don't know if you remember. I'm going to assume that you might have been a child during part of the 80s, but these sort of public service announcements. So the PSAs that used to run on television, which was my babysitter quite frequently as a kid, along with my three sisters, but they had these PSAs about stranger danger. And this is like some of the earliest TV that I watch where these. And there's tons of them. Some of them were with McGruff, the police dog. I don't know if you remember him.

[C]

I remember his address after I have forgotten everything else.

[A]

Okay, we're on the same page then.

[C]

Yeah, it's Scruff McGruff. Chicago, Illinois 60652. Right.

[A]

Wow. I was watching some of them this morning just so I could just refresh my memory of these, but there's so many different kinds of them. And all of them featured, you know, these men in cars who would pull up to kids. And basically, you know, if you get in that car, it's the last time you're ever going to see anybody and anyone's going to see you. I don't know how that shapes your psyche as a child, but for me, it just made me very. We'll get to the Victoria portion of this in a second. But it's, you know, like, you'd open the fridge as well. My parents were milk carton people, not milk bag. So in the fridge there'd just be these faces of missing children on the milk cartons for almost a decade of my life. So you had this constant threat that you are going to be. And plus, with my mom telling me, you know, like, when you're out biking with your little sister, you're responsible for her. You need to look after her. And then cars would slow down because you're on your bike and you're like, is this the moment that is going to happen? Are we going to be stolen?

[C]

Yeah. And so in terms of Your sense of Victoria, like, do you have a sense of it as being different from the rest of the world or, like, more safe or less safe? And, you know, what was that like as a baseline?

[A]

That question is interesting, too, because my experience, until I'm an adult, right. As a kid, I would have said Victoria was. You wouldn't think it's any different, because that's all, you know. Right. But all I knew was the fact that there were allegedly satanic cults in the town, stealing children, defacing tombstones at night with pentagrams and graffiti, murdering kittens and animals, that there are stores that you can't go into because they sacrificed babies in the back altars everywhere. That was my childhood. That you just think, oh, didn't that happen everywhere? Yeah. I mean, the warning was, anybody wearing all black clothes approaching you specifically at night or when you're alone were Satanists who are going to steal you. Right. And I know now this is not just unique to Victoria, that this was actually all across North America, but in many ways, it's like, you would never know that at the time because of how media was. You just think this was what happened in our city. And then, of course, all the other rumors about this couple in town who wrote this book and this specific cemetery, Ross Bay Cemetery, where all these horrible things happen, which is already a very creepy place. But as a kid, you just build up layers upon layers of these stories. The PSAs, the milk cartons, and you just. Yeah, what a time to be alive.

[C]

Did he ever just see, like, goths and, like, freak out as a little kid in the 80s?

[A]

Yeah. And they would be, of course, all in black, some wearing makeup, smoking cigarettes, usually, because it was that time, which I now realize that these were the people who I would later, as an adult, want to be friends with. But as a kid, it's terrifying, right? Like, you just. It's that constant sort of existential threat that you watch on tv. It's reinforced by tv. What you see on the news at night when you're watching, like, the evening news, and suddenly they're talking about satanic sacrifice and people eating feces. And this is on at, like, noon on. At 5pm it's just. And this is in Canada. Can't.

[C]

Like, yeah, that's bad. That's on. Right. Because you have to assume American news is, like, there's a factor of five or something about how much we're allowed to dwell on violence. Well, and at about what age did you become aware of. Michelle remembers. And, like, did you see it around. Did your parents have it? Did your friend's parents have it? Like, what kind of saturation of the market did this book have?

[A]

This. I mean, there's a friend of my mother's and this is like I remember her and my mother talking about Michelle and Larry frequently. And then on top of that, I also remember the neighbors gossiping about this. And I subdivision outside of like 20 minutes outside of Victoria as a kid. There was the hospital incident. So where somebody. And this was after the book was published. Somebody tipped off the hospital that a baby was going to be stolen from Victoria General Hospital. And this was news, front page news at the time in the newspaper. There are tons of TV segments about it. Who. The question always was in my mind too is who made this tip? I've always wondered about that. But that was sort of a setting for Michelle. Like already the book was hugely popular. And you sort of. When I think of Michelle and Larry, you think of the initial book being published and sort of that tour that they went on. And for many people, maybe that's where that stops. But at least in Victoria and in Canada, they did 10 years of this. They're speaking in churches, they're on the radio all the time. They did interviews all the way up into the early 90s with Canadian media. There's a gossip columnist in Victoria who used to write about them all the time in the gossip column. It's strange. Very strange.

[C]

Yeah. And. And I guess that's really like at the level of local celebrity, where they guess kind of are part of the way the city sees itself. Would that be fair to say?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it's not every city, not every city has the bride of Satan living 10 minutes down the road from you, you know, Although I guess.

[C]

When you're young, maybe you assume that they all do. This is actually one of my questions about just kind of getting a sense of what Victoria was like generally is like, aside from the Satanism, like what were things that you thought were just kind of regular things. And then you got a little older and you realized that that was just a Victoria thing.

[A]

You know, I mean, the history of Victoria and this part of Canada. Right. It was a British colony isolated from the east because of the Rocky Mountains for a really, really long time until we joined the Canadian Federation. So it has this Britishness to Victoria, even more so than Vancouver or anywhere else in British Columbia. That is, I'd say, pretty unique. When I was growing up, they would say it's more British than Britain. Right. And it does have that like, when you walk around still in the present day, you walk around in Victoria, it just. It has a different feel than the rest of Canada because it was so isolated and it was this own cultural bubble. Specifically on Vancouver island and then the other part of. At least my childhood there is a large. What's the word I'm looking for? It's not necessarily all Wiccan, but there is a large presence of witches and magic and that sort of spirituality that exists in Victoria with folks like Robin Skelton, who is a white witch, Susan Musgrave, who's a poet, who. I'm not sure if she actually was a witch, but I always thought she was when I was a kid. I mean, it's a very liberal city, despite the Britishness. And it's like it's this weird mixture of that sort of conservative colonial traditions plus this new age spiritual, very artistic folks that, you know, I don't know if they have the same saying in the US where, if you. In Canada, if you take the map of Canada, spin it on its side and shake it, all the crazy people fall out to the coast.

[C]

I have heard that one. I think. Yeah, that feels true. I mean, I think the Pacific Northwest is funny because it's like my parents moved to Portland in the 70s, both of them, and at the time, I think it did feel so remote from the rest of the United States as well, and just this. And I think that how that manifests maybe in Oregon and Washington, is more the feeling of like, we kind of take this weird pride in having a lot of serial killers. And like, I don't even think that statistically we. We do necessarily, but it's like our thing. And I wonder if it's like witches are the. The version of that up there. Although you've got serial killers, too. Not to say that you don't, but the other thing.

[A]

So it's the serial killers, witches, and then cults, of course.

[C]

Right.

[A]

How could we forget that, Sarah?

[C]

How could we forget cults? I don't know. Well, yeah, and like, I guess talking a little bit about getting older and sort of starting to unspool these things. Like, was there a period when you started thinking about kind of. Wait, I don't think I'm. Maybe I'm not scared of this anymore, you know?

[A]

So towards closer to when the satanic panic was starting to actually be debunked and unravel, I think it was like, 1980. No, 1990 or 1991. So amidst all these rumors of child abductions and Satanists Living in Victoria, an actual child my age went missing named Michael Donahy, and he was never found. And a lot of the rumors in the community at that time were, again, so here's this explosion. Oh, it's the same culture that abducted Michelle Smith, that the Satanists are still here and they took him. Which is, in hindsight, I look at that and I feel, and I know that this still exists online. If you look in chat forums and comments about the case, I just find that really upsetting for his family that not only did your child go missing, you would have to endure these ridiculous rumors that it was a satanic cult that stole him. Based on this book that came out 10 years before. And to answer your question, yeah, I think by the time I was a teenager, I thought this was a bunch of bs, you know, and had, you know, creative writing dreams and aspirations for myself and forgot all about Satanism in Victoria and eventually got out of there. I mean, it was such a small city that you'd walk around downtown and recognize all these folks and everyone, you know, you're on an island. What else are you going to talk about? Yeah.

[C]

And then I guess there's like the. I think what happens maybe for a lot of people is that you kind of. You escape the place where you grew up, especially as an artist, and then at a certain point, your art brings you back to where you grew up. You know, James Joyce, Dubliners. And then, you know, Satan wants you. Similar thing.

[A]

Yes. Well said.

[C]

Yeah. Is it like walking downtown in the 80s? Like, who would you see? And what were the kind of landmarks? And. Yeah, what was that like? If you saw Michelle, what would she be doing?

[A]

And I've thought about that a lot, actually. If I had ever walked past Michelle or Larry, I mean, Larry used to have a medical office right next to the hospital that had this giant the snake with the two staffs symbol on it, which I had walked past a thousand times. And then again, as an adult looking into the book and their history, realizing, oh, wow, I wonder if I actually, anytime I'd gone to the hospital, anytime I visited my mom when she worked in a psychiatrist's office downtown. Yeah. I mean, your question is, what would Michelle have been doing? At least in my imagination, she'd be wearing one of those Laura Ashley dresses, walking around downtown to be seen. I mean, that's very much the vibe that I. After all the interviews that we've done, after all the research I've done, her and Larry, that's what I imagine wanted to be seen and noted and Talking.

[C]

About kind of developing a direct relationship with the book, I guess. Do you have kind of images of seeing it as a kid of just like, you know, the COVID art, like any of the, you know, the paperback or the hardcover? Because I feel like both of them are pretty creepy. And like, did you have just sort of a mental image of it growing up? And then, you know, to add to that, when did you actually read it?

[A]

You know, this is the question that I wish. My mother passed away when I was quite young. When I was quite young. And I wish that these were the questions that I could ask her. Because this is a book that my family had a giant library. So our whole basement were just bookshelves full of books. And including upstairs as well. My mom and both my parents were voracious readers, but my mom. This would have been a book that my mom would have read knowing that the neighbors would have talked to her about this, that my Auntie Cindy would have talked to her about this. And for the life of me, I don't have a memory of actually looking at, you know what I mean? I was reading, like Lion, Witch in the Wardrobe. I think it was a little bit above my reading capabilities when I was of that age. But, yeah, I mean, what sticks with me is the paperback book cover.

[C]

Yeah. Could you describe kind of what that looks like and what it would be like to encounter it in the wild?

[A]

Well, the thing with the paperback, the mass market paperback cover is that you would look at it originally it's, you know, paperback size, so you could just buy it and put it technically in your back pocket. Easy to carry. The COVID itself is sort of like. It has the title of the book. There's a cutout window in a house with a little girl's face looking at you, a beautiful little girl. And you're like, oh, well, what's this book? Michelle remembers. This must be Michelle. And you open it up and it's, the little girl is up above this giant satanic demon devil. It's just. It's quite a surprise the first time when you open it. And as a kid, it's the kind of thing that would give you nightmares. Right. I mean, this is. As an adult, maybe we can laugh about it a little bit more, especially once you get into the book and read it. But it is. And I've heard about this. So many people have written after our film to say, to talk about, oh, yeah, I had this book in my house. My parents forbade, like, I wasn't allowed to read it. Sat on the shelf, my Mom. Yeah. This is a thing in so many people's lives, this book. It's a huge presence. Tons of people would have had it in their homes. But the extra dimension of actually growing up in that city, it's not just like who had the book and who would talk to you about the book. It's how many degrees of separation did you have to Michelle and Larry? So there's always the person who was the cleaner at their house or somebody that Michelle had taught in a knitting class or. Oh, yeah, I remember when they moved from this house to this house and I lived three streets over. And this is sort of what you. Or, hey, listen, my store was targeted, as you know, that I had an altar in the back and that I was killing children because I'm a queer bookseller in Victoria. And that's just what people said about me at the time. And this has sort of come across after the film was released, and especially we had a couple weeks run in Victoria's Independent Cinema, and I managed to go for one of those screenings and it was just. It was sold out every night. And everyone, at least for the Q and A that I participated in, wanted to talk and share their stories about this because it was this larger than life story that touched so not. Not just people in my city, but people all around the world.

[C]

And also that adults, I mean, God knows they do it now, but like, adults in the 80s and 90s would say things with utter confidence, especially in roles as like, you know, cops or teachers. And then as a kid, you'd be like, I mean, I assume you're right. And I have no way of fact checking you, you know, and yeah, it's easy to check nostalgia, I think, by remembering that on a new season of Heaven Bent Son of a Prophet.

[A]

My name is Jedediah Hartley. Like, my name is. Is very specific. Like, he named me based off of a prophetic dream that he had. Like, my very identity is, like, tied to my father, who my father is, who he was. He couldn't just be a liar.

[C]

Listen to season eight of Heaven Bent, wherever you get your podcasts. This is my hardest question. How would you describe the plot of the book? Which I. And then also, like, if this is something where it's like, well, that's kind of impossible, then it's like, but why is it impossible? Because there is. It's a. It's a strange book.

[A]

I think I would agree with you on that. It's a strange book. And this is, you know, something that I was hoping that we would Talk about today. Just some of the stuff that I uncovered in research and that you may have uncovered in research too.

[C]

Not nearly as much as I've never gotten nearly as far as you. And I'm. Yeah, because we must. But yes, please.

[A]

Okay. We must. To describe the book and the plot of the book. What I would say the first chapter, everyone should read. At least the first chapter Michelle remembers. Because the promise that that first chapter delivers is a book that I would want to read. Every time I read that first chapter, I'm like, this is going to be the greatest story ever told about Satanism and this woman and the spiders coming out of her hands and this crazy little city in the North Pacific with all these Satanists in it. And then what seems to happen with this book is that initial energy, all that craft in the writing that actually was like, oh, this is going to be. I can see why this is a bestseller. Sort of vanishes. So very weird. And I wanted to talk to you about this and see if you had the same experience reading the book. But that's sort of like just the setup of that. You're like, I'm in for a thrilling supernatural horror story, which it does happen.

[C]

Yeah, well, no, it's true. And you do it. Yeah, I think it's like a very expertly written opening chapter. And you really see the Jaws influence where it's like, yeah, there's. Every paragraph sets. The first paragraph sets the chapter and the first sentence sets the scene of the paragraph. It's beautiful. And then at a certain point, and actually I guess one of my questions to you then, knowing what you do would be how much of this was a limitation created by the material itself and how much, you know, whether there were other problems there as well, because, yeah, it becomes kind of just this undifferentiated record of this woman's therapy and what sounds like extremely painful, I mean, kind of unambiguously, very emotionally painful therapy.

[A]

Yeah. And I think that's a great summary. It's basically you're reading a book length therapy session with some diversions. Right. There's a trip to Rome to meet the Pope. There is.

[C]

They went hiking that time. I love that part.

[A]

With love letters. I love that part too. And then there's these other supernatural parts. There's like a woman, basically an exorcist lady, who comes and visits Michelle. At one point, her head spins around. There's a satanic high priest staging a very complicated car accident on this remote mountain highway in Victoria. And then there's of course The Feast of the Beast portion of the book, which you have to wait a long time to get to. But as you put it once when we talked earlier with these piles of dead baby fetuses, when all the Satanists from around the world bringing their own fetus and adding it to a big pile, which, you know, there are these moments that are. Pull me in as a reader.

[C]

It's hard to not be compelled by certain parts of it. But it's. I don't know. But then it's. You're also like, they're having these big fires in an unventilated room. How does that work?

[A]

The details, Sarah? Too many. Don't question the details.

[C]

Yeah, I know.

[A]

It's hell. Here's what my theory is, because we never got to talk about this. And through research, there's sort of like, you know, you read the book as you've read the book, and then if you're going to say, hey, I'm going to make a documentary about this, what are you going to do about it?

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

For me, it's like, well, the first questions you have are, how can I find Michelle? Is she still alive? Is Larry still alive? When we started this process, Larry had died. So the one question is, Michelle is still alive, as far as we can tell, how can we find her? And then the second question was, how can I talk to anyone involved in the publishing of this book? And for me, the sort of starting place and for us, the team, the filmmaking team that all worked on this together, we went to the acknowledgments page of Michelle Remembers and where you'll find an endless list of names of people who helped. And this was that period of time where people put first names and last names in acknowledgments and thanked them and listed their roles. You could actually, you know, 40 years later, go find them. And for me, it's the very first name. And I'm going to get back to sort of this plot of the book and why I think the first chapter is so different than the rest of the book. The first name in the acknowledgments is a woman named Chidi, who she was thanked profusely in her own paragraph, which, you know, really the very first paragraph of the acknowledgments. And for me, that she was somebody that we had to find because if you're going to get that much real estate in an acknowledgment section, she must know. She has all the secrets. And it turns out that she was basically Larry's literary assistant is sort of, I think, how she described herself to us and also became really close friends with Michelle and has stayed friends with Michelle for the past 40 years. And in talking to her about the publishing of the book, one thing that she mentioned is that there are two ghostwriters and couldn't remember the names exactly, but said that one of them, their last name was Kalier. And we, well, we found them.

[C]

And how did you find them and where were they?

[A]

One of them, he is actually has the author of multiple books. He lives in New York. He is still alive. And I searched long and hard to find a way to contact him and I found his actual street address to an apartment in Manhattan on a sub chat forum online and wrote him a letter and he wrote me back. Do you want to hear the letter?

[C]

I do, I really do.

[A]

I do. Do you mind if I read it out loud?

[C]

No.

[A]

So this is what he said. So. Dear Mr. Horler, which people never call me that. It feels like my father. But. Dear Mr. Horler, many years ago I was approached by a literary agent whose name I've forgotten to work with Pastor and Michelle on their story. I went out to someplace near British Columbia where they were living in a camper of some kind. I quickly discovered that Michelle's story was difficult to believe. I eventually produced a manuscript which I hoped would satisfy them. I don't think they used it, but I'm not sure about that. I believe I received all or most of the agreed fee for my work. And he goes on to say, I have some vague notion that Congdon, who is Thomas Congdon, the publisher, was involved in this, but that was not the agency I was working with. Please bear in mind that I'm a very, very busy writer with many awards and prizes to my name and cannot waste much time on this. However, I'm willing to talk to you briefly if necessary. Mornings are best. Here is my phone number. So this was really interesting for me because this again, for me, I always thought, okay, so here's the one ghostwriter, and then there's a second one. Her name was Barbara Wyden. And I did some research about Barbara. She passed away, unfortunately. But a lot of the news that I found about her, she was described as the top ghost writer in New York and that she had a secretive role in the 1980 book Michelle Remembers. And there's this sort of idea, and this came out in this article, you know, that this often invisible world of ghost writers reveals glimpses behind a narrative tapestry that we Often take as truth, which I thought was really interesting because that first chapter felt like it was written by somebody else than Larry and Michelle, in my mind. And there's this book that could have been. The book that could have been maybe was written and they changed it for some reason.

[C]

Yeah. As you've been saying, it starts off strong and then it really doesn't succeed on having a normal book structure. But was it successful or was it able to do what it did because of how weird it is? Would it have been less effective at starting a moral panic if it had been a better book? What do you think about all that?

[A]

One thing that I have wondered about quite a bit, speaking to Debbie Nathan, who is a journalist who's reported a lot on the Satanic panic and co wrote a book called Satan's Silence that included some information about Michelle Remembers as well and her investigations into the book. She found documentation that police departments in the United States had been using Michelle Remembers to develop checklists essentially that they would interview children and parents of alleged Satan ritual abuse cases to actually confirm if this was real or not, using Michelle's experience as the sort of measuring stick to say, yes, this is real. And I think in terms of how the book was written and the fact that it felt like it was like literally ripped from the pages of a therapy session or a therapy transcript maybe actually increased its incredibility for that reason. It actually felt like you were there in the room. It's torture. It is almost like a form of torture porn to read.

[C]

Right?

[A]

Like satanic kind of torture porn. It's hard to read and it's not a pleasant read. And if you finish it, it's an accomplishment, I have to say.

[C]

It is. What? Yeah, it is my. My proof to myself that I can make it through something incredibly unpleasant just because I decided to.

[A]

Congratulations. You and I are part of the same club.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

I must finish this one.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Why? But why? But I must. Yeah, yeah. And in terms of. Yeah, the picture that you put together of the book's composition, like, what did you learn about that?

[A]

Thomas Congdon, the fact that he was editor of Jaws and it was a huge success for him. What I wonder is, did he spend the rest of his career chasing that success? And in the case with Michelle Remembers, after Congdon had published Jaws, he started his own publishing company called Congdon and Lettuce. Michelle Remembers was one of the first books that they published. And I found again as part of the research, my team, we found this article in the Washington Post where he Talks about Michelle remembers being the biggest piece of nonfiction I've ever had. And that, gosh, what it feels like to have a big, trembling piece of commerce on your plate.

[C]

It's wild. It's like he's talking about eating live sashimi. Like, what is that? What do you make of that quote?

[A]

That. And this is like a lot of the other interviews that I've done and research around this project. I mean, people sort of described Larry the same way, is that he always saw this as an opportunity to make the next Sybil. Another book featuring recovered memory therapy, parents abusing their child. That was a huge bestseller in the 70s and turned into a TV show that Larry allegedly watched on television and said, hey, I have a patient, just like that with Michelle. So the motivations really, I think, shaped. There's like, a lot of this background noise that you don't get to know reading the book that I think really shaped it into what it was.

[C]

Yeah, and I think that there's that. I think often when people talk about this kind of thing, there arises this false dichotomy of, like, well, these two men must have been incredibly mercenary and manipulative and sought out to, you know, to. To make their fortune. And I think that there's, you know, or you're innocent and you didn't want to do that. And I think that to me, one of the things the satanic panic reveals is that you can have or believe yourself to have, you know, good intentions, be pure of heart. You just want to, like, find some terrible thing that's happening and raise awareness about it. But that, I mean, I guess we are living in kind of the raising awareness industrial complex right now. Did you come to this with questions about their intent, Especially, you know, Larry and Michelle's intent? Did you feel like they were answered.

[A]

For you with Michelle? All I have are questions with Michelle. And I mean, she is undeniably a victim of bad therapist who acted very unethically and far beyond what any therapist should do. However, why did she write a book with him? Why did she have an affair with him? Why did she marry him? Why did she continue to go on these police seminar presentations with Larry all throughout the 80s where they made lots of money going around and speaking to police departments and mental health professionals about her experiences? Why did she, even after people started to speak out against the satanic panic and all her claims in the book, continued to give interviews where she pointed the fingers at daycare workers as being Satanists? No one made her do those things. And it raises an Uncomfortable question for me. Like, what happens when a victim becomes part of a system of abuse and in a way becomes an abuser themselves or at least part of the sort of framework that allows other people to create the abuse? And that's, you know, I think most people. And what I found with some of the feedback on my film is most people really want a black or white portrayal of Michelle especially. And that this sort of gray area that we tried to explore, at least in what we made through interviews with and, you know, letting family members tell their piece, friends tell their piece, all the experts sort of involved, say their side, that this sort of gray area concerning Michelle is not a place that most people want to exist.

[C]

Yeah. And I guess that Michelle remembers also kind of offers people no gray area because you're either a Satanist or you're not. And. Yeah, right. The question of kind of. Because, like, when you read the book, I think there is this feeling of like, well, I guess, you know, if this is. I don't believe this happened. But if this is her telling some kind of allegory of what like, you know, it clearly is a horrible experience for her to be going through this therapy and to be kind of sent on these scavenger hunts for more information. But it's at least a victimless or at least a crime with only one victim. And it's Michelle. But, I mean, talking more about how this book was written, I mean, yeah, what's. I would love to hear about what you learned about Larry and Michelle in a motorhome, an rv, with Father Guy. Is that right? And also, who's Father Guy? We have some. There's a lot of priest characters in this book, but maybe we can just. We'll start with our lowest on the hierarchy, Father Guy.

[A]

Well, in the book, there's actually a different priest first. This sort of cool, hip priest in the leather coat who they meet initially to talk about Michelle's claims. He, for whatever reason, eventually leaves the story, and they end up with Father Guy, who treats this a lot more seriously. I mean, for Father Guy, what we sort of learned through our research. He helped take their story to Remy derues, who was the bishop of the Diocese of Victoria at that time, who then escalated their story to Rome, where he orchestrated a meeting with the Pope, where they got to present their story and the Vatican opened an official investigation into Michel remembers, and what was sort of happening behind the scenes at the time. In the acknowledgments. Again, the acknowledgments section, as Michelle remembers. I swear Is full of such interesting. There's a mysterious benefactor that helped Michelle and Larry financially get this project. I assume it's financially is why they're getting a thank you. Get this project off the ground. And I actually think that was through Father Guy and what we uncovered in the film thanks to Larry's ex wife, Mary Lynn, who used the tape recording equipment that Larry used to tape Michelle's therapy sessions to record a phone call with father Guy where she asked him about this mysterious $10,000 line item on Larry's tax returns that was actually a donation from the church to help them write the book.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

So, yeah, again, there's hints everywhere in the book. If you just start digging and pulling at threads, you find some really strange happenings with the church and Father Guy, who also faced his own. And Remy de Roux too. Both of them were scandalous members of the Catholic church in Victoria who had their own scandals outside of this huge Satanist baby stealing Satanist cult that also existed.

[C]

So I mean, what are your thoughts? And this gets into speculation inevitably, but informed speculation. In your case, better informed than most other people of the period around. Writing the book for Michelle and Larry, how did the affair progress? Feels like I'm asking about a birth. But that chronology also feels very mysterious. And I mean, reading the book, it's like two people who are constantly thinking about how attractive the other person is and writing each other love letters. They're both married to other people. The end. And you're like, huh, you know, and. Yeah. What's your sense of what was going on and what role? I don't know if the book writing and the affair having supported each other.

[A]

Yeah, I mean that's a. It's a. I have a hard time with this because I used to think, you know, when I first started looking into Michelle remembers again, you know, what really struck me about the book was the like murdering of the kittens, the woman with her head spinning around the dead fetuses and Satan coming and speaking in rhymes.

[C]

Budgie stuff. Yeah.

[A]

Yep. And by the end of it, I really look at the lack of Mary Lynn, Michelle's first husband Doug and the children in this story is a sort of sign that makes me think that the book, you know, I can't look at this book now without seeing it as like a. Basically a story about betrayal and the capacity to deceive ourselves and each other. The lies that we tell ourselves to basically make having an affair and cheating on your spouse actually. How far will you go to make yourself feel like it's not actually an ethical boundary that you've crossed. And all I can think, really, is about Mary Lynn and Doug now, which makes this a very different book for me. Mary Lynn has always been a hero of the story. For me to sort of be gaslit by these two people and to actually, you know, say, no, no, no, I believe in the truth. I'm going to find out what actually happened. I'm going to send letters to police departments all across North America. I'm going to contact Ken Lanning at the FBI. I'm going to like. She. Hey, if you want, like, a story about a citizen investigator who took this, you know, shared everything that she researched and found with four different investigative teams of journalists and police officers across the uk, United States and Canada. Hey, Marilyn is an inspiration to me.

[C]

I know. Yeah. And I love that you get to have her in this heroine role. And I love that you give her that place in history. Well, yeah. And when we did this interview, she mentioned that Michelle had her vacuum. And I think Mary and I both gasped. We were, like, playing it cool. But, yeah, we were freaking out. Another woman's vacuum cleaner.

[A]

I remember Michelle's sister Cheryl. One of the first things that she told us was that Larry went to Michelle's wedding to her first. Michelle's first husband, Doug. And she just was like, who invites their psychiatrist to their wedding? And I'm like, no one. Like, I would never invite my therapist, and I love my therapist, but I would like, there's a. They are part of that world that doesn't cross into my personal life.

[C]

You need to eat shrimp with someone who knows those things about you.

[A]

Certainly not introduce them to your family. And then we had actually spoken, like, there's tons of stuff that never ended up in the film. But one of Michelle's earlier friends told us that as early, I think, as like 1970 or 71, Larry was and her were talking on the phone at home. So this was like way before her marriage to her first husband, Doug. Way before any of the memories surfaced about the satanic ritual abuse. Yeah, it's the love affair part, I think, in you actually speaking to you for the film. I thought your reading of the therapy sessions actually helped me understand them in a different way with the hand touching and the cuddling sessions on the mat, on the floor.

[C]

And it's a very therapeutic cuddling. They have to do it. Yeah. I mean, it's all. What I love, too, is that the book mentions that he was at her wedding. Like, that's the kind of thing you think that they would not say, but they're like, yeah, he was at their wedding, of course. Obviously. I mean, I think one of the things I find compelling about Michelle and what brings me back to the book and the questions about it is like, I think this feeling, you know, And I think this is a big theme in the satanic panic that a lot of people in their 30s especially have of, like, okay, I'm an adult. Like, I'm definitely. I should have it more together by now. Why can't. Why am I. I have no justification for being this screwed up, so how can I be like this? You know, and just the sense of, like, needing a reason to not feel okay. And that feeling, like something that made a lot of what happened possible.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, normally, especially if those feelings get too intense for you, you can go see a therapist about it to try to actually work through why you feel that way. Except for, you know, when we were kids, when our parents did that and family friends did that, they were told that they had all these repressed memories of satanic ritual abuse. And, you know, you had to develop 100 personalities and fragment yourself into those hundreds of personalities in order to cope with it. So, I mean, to the people out there who are in their 30s, still struggling and saying, have those questions about their life, just be glad, for the most part, you're not going to find a therapist who's going to hypnotize you and drug you and basically pull you to pieces and ruin your life for a decade, though they still exist, Sarah. There are still these therapists out there practicing today who are doing the same thing.

[C]

Yeah. What scares you? Kind of looking at what? The sort of, you know, what you learned about this period, kind of digging this deeply into it, and then seeing the way people behave now.

[A]

I think it was actually I had inklings of this inside of me. But I was speaking to an FBI special agent for the documentary. His name is Ken Lanning. He was the special agent in charge of cults and the occult during the 1980s. And he was part of the Mindhunter FBI division, if you're familiar with that. Criminal science win, of course. But to answer your question, when we were talking with Ken, there's a portion of his interview when we finally met him in New Jersey, to have the discussion for the film. And he said, you know, what really keeps him up at night is this idea that if you don't study history, you're doomed to repeat it. And I think that's the takeaway that I take from all of this diving deep into Michelle remembers. And the Satanic panic is how easily this can happen again. And really did, in a way, within our lifetime with Pizzagate and QAnon and now with the sort of fear and moral panic over transgender people and kids in school and these sort of gay straight alliances and brainwashing your kid and making them hate you. And you watch this unfold again and it has all the echoes of the 1980s, and it's just really frustrating, especially when you, like, you yourself and me, we've studied history and you can scream on top of a mountain saying, no, no, don't do this again. And people just won't listen.

[C]

Okay, this is one of our kind of our big questions for the show. And it might be, I don't know, maybe you have a thought on this or not. But I feel like we're trying to think of putting the story together in terms of how can our knowledge of the Satanic panic allow us to love humanity more rather than feel like giving up on it?

[A]

That's a really good question. I think what the Satanic panic, both the rise of it and the fall of it, taught me about loving humanity, is that there will always be people, even if there's like 99% of humanity saying this is true, when it's a lie, there is always the subject portion of the population will tell you, no, this is wrong, who believe in empirical evidence, who will continue, despite being shut down for, let's say, a decade in the 80s and 90s, again and again to speak up and say, no, this isn't happening, this isn't real. What you believe is not actually based on evidence and is not true. And those people give me hope for the future of humanity. The people who are rational who. Who will constantly speak out no matter what the cost is and fight until something like the Satanic panic in the 90s eventually collapses under its own weight because it's just ridiculous and there's no evidence.

[C]

Yeah. Thank you for listening to the W know. Our producer is Mary Stephanhagen. Fact checking by Katherine Barner. Production assistants by Nicole Ortiz. I've been your host. Sarah Marshall. Our sound designer is Evan Kelly. Roorkhni Nair is our coordinating producer. Our senior producer is Jeff Turner. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is manager of growth for CBC Podcasts. Arif Noorani is director of CBC Podcasts.

[B]

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