The fear of invasion from extraterrestrial forces was not completely without cause. During the night of February 24, 1942, a large UFO was spotted over Los Angeles, California.35 Feared to be Japanese bombers, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began to fire anti-aircraft rounds into the sky at the object(s). As the object(s) moved from Santa Monica to Long Beach, the artillery fire continued, but to no effect. Artillery shells returning to earth struck homes, and many people were injured. The object(s) was clearly seen by hundreds of people and military spotlights were trained on it as tracer fire lit up the night skies. The official air force explanation was that the brigade had actually been firing at a weather balloon or had succumbed to panic and was actually firing at nothing at all. These two explanations did not set the public at ease for two simple reasons: by offering two explanations, the air force implied that it did not have a firm explanation for what had been seen, and secondly, it also implied that either U.S. defenses were incapable of shooting down a balloon or were so ill-prepared that an entire brigade had panicked and suffered from some paranoid mass delusion. Either way, the incident did not speak well of our defense capabilities.
A large percentage of UFO reports involved military installations, nuclear warhead sites, and top-secret military bases such as Area 51. This apparent interest in military sites could be viewed as a threatening gesture, as if the aliens were monitoring our military in preparation for an invasion. The National Security Agency, in its assessment of the UFO phenomenon, warned that history has shown that when an advanced civilization meets a primitive civilization, the result is almost invariably annihilation or subjugation of that primitive society. Naturally, we would be the primitive society.
David Seed discussed the American “narrative of invasion” in his article “Constructing America’s Enemies: The Invasions of the USA.” In it he discusses American cultural fears of invasion, which were being reflected in literature and film.
In the 1953 George Pal film adaptation, The War of the Worlds, one of the men who discovers the mysterious “comet” comments that it must be a “sneak attack” by the Soviets. Similarly, in Norman Edwards’s Invasion from 2500 (1964), the sudden appearance of huge black planes that discharge tanks and ground forces after they have gas-bombed the USA is identified by one observer as “probably them Russians.” A series of novels and films thus articulates America’s fear of its main Cold War enemy by describing the invasion and the subjugation of the USA by communist—which in practice usually means Russian—forces. What became routine comparisons with the communists were deployed to naturalize the reader’s sense of emergency. If the Soviets might come, why not even more alien forces?36
Seed also draws an indirect comparison between the Salem witch trials and the Cold War fears of invasion by alien forces.
The godly terrain of the emerging nation is described as under siege from demonic, invisible forces that have forced an entry even into the citadel of the home. Mather initiates a long tradition in American writing in which the underside of manifest destiny is explored—the fear of failure, defeat, and subversion. Since Mather’s day, invasion has become such a routine term in American culture that it is now variously applied to biological species, terrorism, Chinese agents, businessmen (Japanese and European), and drug trafficking. The proliferation of American invasion narratives in the late nineteenth century coincides historically with the emergence of the USA as an imperial world power.37
The fear of failure, defeat, and subversion were bound with the fear of Soviet superior technology. It was a fear that was compounded by the Soviet’s rapid development of nuclear technology and their launch of Sputnik.
The post-modern age was thrust upon the world with the thunderous sound and blinding light of the Hiroshima bomb. What followed was a breakdown of the understanding of science, truth, religion, and culture, and suddenly, the world was seeing strange machines in the sky. This is perhaps the most important period of time in the paranormal history of the United States precisely because the commingling of science, the paranormal, and religion began to blur the boundaries of each area. UFO believers augmented science and technology to study the phenomenon, which simultaneously took on religious connotations. Contactees would regularly claim contact with Jesus, Mohammed, and Moses. But even more so, the belief in alien life forced UFO researchers to examine and question the ancient texts upon which most, if not all, of the world’s cultures have been built. Examination of the Bible, the Hindu Vedas, and ancient Sumerian texts, as well as cave drawings, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and ancient architecture suddenly became proof of alien intervention rather than social evolution and supernatural gods. The ancient-alien theorists posited that everything we currently believe about the history of humanity is predicated on ancient peoples who believed that alien visitors were gods and worshipped them as such. They also believe that much of the evidence has been systematically removed or ignored by the scientific community because it does not fit with the current worldview of history and humanity.
Thus, this paranormal phenomenon began to blur the lines between science, religion, and the unexplained. In essence, the accusations of UFO proponents against the scientific community and their questioning of science had turned science into a religion all its own. Because the scientific community was unable to remain transparent during their initial inquiries into the phenomenon, and because they twisted information, as demonstrated by Hynek and several others, science began to employ the same techniques as religion. The Condon Committee was told what conclusion to reach before even beginning the investigative process, and science, in its purest form, was replaced by pre-determined conclusions. Religion relies on faith in that which cannot be known. Religious people have faith that there is something greater than themselves. However, science demonstrates similar faith in the idea that the universe could not operate beyond the current scientific paradigm expressed in the physics of Newton, Einstein, and Bohr. When science subverts itself for the purpose of maintaining a worldview, it becomes a religion based on faith in the current understanding of reality, something referred to as “scientism.” The dismissal of the UFO phenomenon by many prominent scientists without direct investigation is a statement based on faith. Two scientists examining the same UFO phenomenon can reach two entirely different conclusions—one based on a belief in extraterrestrials, and one based on the belief that extraterrestrial visitations are beyond the scope of reality. Either way, this discord causes the public to lose faith in the scientific community and to doubt their conclusions. As scientists begin to publish their findings and opinions and base their careers upon their assertions, they begin to have an ulterior motive for maintaining their beliefs even in the face of new evidence. Once someone commits to a worldview he or she believes is truth, it becomes very difficult for that individual to change his or her belief systems or even adjust them to accept new data that may threaten that truth. To be fair, this same psychology is overwhelmingly true for proponents of UFO research and belief. Historically, religion has been trying to compensate for scientific findings through molding science to fit their worldview—but often at great cost to religion and the theology thereof. Hence, religions will offer outlandish, ridiculous, or flawed explanations to maintain their worldview in light of some new discovery, evidence, or so on. Similarly, science has offered outlandish and ridiculous explanations for many UFO sightings, often asserting that the witness is somehow mistaking a flying saucer for the planet Venus or a helicopter or any number of common, everyday objects that most people would easily recognize. This simplistic explanation asserts that the sighting cannot be anything that is unknown. Rather, it is just a mistaken witness or a confluence of coincidental events that have created some kind of visual anomaly. Offering explanations that do not begin to account for new information that threatens a set worldview is more a matter of faith preservation. The public recognized this through the efforts of many UFO investigators and through their own experiences with the phenomenon, thus adding to the
distrust of scientists and science. This is unfortunate for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the most damaging of all is the loss of a set sense of truth and reality by the populace. For his part, Hynek never truly asserts that there are extraterrestrials visiting the earth, but he does assert that the Condon Committee did not actually investigate the phenomenon, and that their public proclamation that there was no need to further investigate was based on faulty science and predetermined conclusions.
The questioning of science during this tumultuous time in U.S. history coincides with the questioning of nearly everything else in the wake of the nuclear age. Questions of government transparency (as discussed in the JFK chapter), questions of life and death and morality all began in the time immediately following the explosion of the nuclear bombs and the beginning of the Cold War. In this post-modern world, the truth was no longer known or fixed; it had been replaced with belief and blind faith. Institutions such as government and science were no longer trusted, as it was these two, combined, that had developed a weapon capable of destroying the earth, and they had done it in complete secrecy. And all the while, there were discs appearing in the sky, and people telling stories of alien life forms visiting them and warning of humanity’s impending doom. While the Condon Committee publicly stated that there was nothing evidential of alien life in the UFO reports, scientists began to come forward with a different story and different conclusions. There were conspiracies everywhere, and the public could do nothing but guess as to the truth—the official scientific inquiry made by the government, or the defectors who claimed different results from their inquiry.
This blurred line of truth continues today and has been exasperated by the new 24-hour media cycle and the Internet, both of which will be addressed in a later chapter; but the chaos of today had its beginnings in the post–World War II culture. Pia Andersson writes in her essay, “Ancient Alien Brother, Ancient Terrestrial Remains,” “An intricate spectrum of relationship, both implicit and explicit, seems to exist between today’s two dominant constructors of reality: the advocates of science and the advocates of religion. Therefore, following the current trend, regardless of which methodology ultimately proves its position regarding prehistory, populist theories about our beginning and our evolution still may turn out to be determined by rhetoric, marketing skills, and media exposure rather than by solid scientific research that rigorous academics advocate.”38 It is this “intricate spectrum” that the paranormal tramples through like a stampede of wild Sasquatch. The influence of the paranormal comes from the questioning of truth—something that has defined the post-modern era. The flying saucer invasion during this time in U.S. history called into question the truth of science, religion, and government. The reason the public responded so quickly to the reports of flying saucers was because these things in the sky summed up their fears and their questions; they provided proof of something hidden and unknown and denied by all the institutions that were being openly questioned by the public. The United States was no longer safe in the shadow of the Cold War, and the flying saucers encapsulated that fear, whether they offered hope of a better tomorrow or fear of alien invasion.
THE SATANIC PANIC
The 1980s, for all intents and purposes, were a mess; and it wasn’t just the big hair, faded jeans, bad music, and cocaine, it was also a paranormal mess. This time period marked a socially amazing reenactment of the Salem witch trials on a national scale known as the satanic panic. Unfortunately, this time period had no scientific or technological breakthrough to which can be attributed a public reaction in the form of paranormal interest. It did, however, have several elements that marked the other periods of paranormal fascination; the Cold War continued, there was the Iran-Contra scandal, and the scandals of past administrations that had come to light, causing more distrust than ever in the government, and enemies of the United States were now feared to be within, rather than without. Similar to the European witch craze, the satanic panic was not the result of ignorant masses persecuting some poor outsiders due to superstitious fears; rather, it was propagated by the elite. Doctors, activists, psychotherapists, law enforcement, and media fueled the belief, distrust, and fear of a vast underground network of Satan worshippers who routinely committed heinous acts of murder, cannibalism, rape, child-molestation, kidnapping, suicide pacts, and Black Masses. Their influence reached all levels of society, including the government, and culminated with the McMartin Preschool Trials—to date the most lengthy and expensive trial in the history of the United States, and which led to every single defendant being acquitted of all charges.
The satanic panic was nearly a perfect storm of conspiratorial fears mixed with paranormal and religious beliefs and fueled by a new form of psychotherapy that would ultimately prove unreliable and downright traitorous. The satanic panic did involve one element of science, and that was the science of psychiatry and psychotherapy, though not considered a science by some. This relatively new pseudoscience was accepted as fact. But it wasn’t fact; it wasn’t real, and people paid dearly because of it. If the failure of this new form of psychotherapy, known as repressed memory theory, taught us anything, it is that the mind is a very fertile place with some very dark nether regions that can seemingly tap into the collective experience of generations long past. The very same heinous acts that people were accused of committing in the 1980s had been used as evidence against the Christians in ancient Rome and against the Jews and heretics by the Christian church in the Middle Ages. All of them focused on Black Masses, cannibalism, sexual rites, infant sacrifice, conspiracies, and pacts with the devil. But how did the general public, the average therapy patient, or even children come to say and believe all these things? How were they able to lob the same accusations against teachers and parents that had been lobbed at different groups throughout history? Perhaps, if this era taught us anything about psychology, it is that universals do exist in human thought—things passed down from generation to generation, culture to culture. The satanic panic revealed the darkest side of this universal consciousness and the willingness of the masses to succumb to its influence.
Malcolm McGrath, in his work Demons of the Modern World, indicates that while the European witch craze had a set theology such as the Malleus Maleficarum that reinforced the beliefs, the satanic panic seemingly did not have any theological merit at the time. He also offers the idea that the satanic panic differed from McCarthyism because there was no actual evidence upon which to base these fears.
McCarthyism went into full swing only after real spy rings had been uncovered within the United States leaking atomic secrets to the Soviets, the USSR had demonstrated its atomic weaponry, and the United States Army had suffered crushing military setbacks to the Chinese communist army in Korea. The logic of the Satanism scare was almost exactly the opposite: the reality of the threat was assumed at the outset, and the search for physical evidence was only to follow in its wake.39
However, there was a social mythology regarding Satanism that went back to pre-Christian Rome, when the Christians were accused of some of the very same dark deeds.
Despite McGrath’s assertion that there were no incidents of actual Satanism, the 1970s experienced a series of high-profile murder cases that were supposedly rooted in satanic ritual. These newspaper reports of satanic cult killings, sensationalized by the media, would have established the existence of these cults before the panic began. In 1973 a high-profile case garnered national attention when three members of a cult sacrificed a 17-year-old in a satanic ritual. As reported by the Associated Press, “Deborah A. Shook, 22, of Washington, NJ, took the witness stand at the murder trial of a youth she said was the cult’s high priest. She told a 12-member circuit court jury that she saw Ross Michael Cochran, 17, bound to a wooden altar in the basement of a rundown rooming house last April and later wiped up the blood after Cochran had been taken away.”40 The murder took place in California, which would later become the epicenter of the satanic ritual abuse scare. Cochran was tortured
and then beaten to death with a club in the forest. The article goes on to discuss other mysterious happenings in the area: “Cochran’s death came about 18 months after Satan worshippers performed a series of Black Masses, cemetery desecrations and animal sacrifices around Velusia County.”41 Prosecution sought the death penalty.
Another high-profile case concerned the disappearance of eight young women who attended the University of Washington in Seattle, six of whose skeletal remains were found in two distinct locations. “A young Miami woman who recently fled Seattle fearing that a Satanic cult had targeted her for death may be the key to the solution of a series of apparent ritualistic slayings in the Pacific Northwest, police said.”42 So there was not only a mythological base for the oncoming panic, but also a base in reality resulting from murders, police investigations, and trials.
Mix into this cultural soup the breakdown of organized, traditional religions and the breakdown of the family, and you have a perfect recipe for a modern witch-hunt. The sixties had produced the counterculture, whose religious leaning began to incorporate the occult/New Age mysticism and was eventually epitomized by Charles Manson’s cult-like family. The Church of Satan had been founded in San Francisco in 1966, and despite the fact that they believed in paganism and magic rather than Satan, founder Anton LaVey made a public spectacle of performing rites and ceremonies to specifically offend the Christian public. The satire was lost on most of the Christian base; his words and actions, along with his book, The Satanic Bible, furthered Christian fears of Satanism. Also interesting is the fact that many of the children in the 1980s were the offspring of this counterculture, baby boomer generation. However, when their music of peace and love gave way to Ozzy Osbourne’s Mr. Crowley—an ode to the famed occultist Aleister Crowley—the parents began to get a little nervous. Heavy metal music was largely blamed during the satanic panic, precisely because many of the artists made use of the imagery and language of the Black Mass that had been passed down through the years, and many claimed publicly that they were influenced by such people as Aleister Crowley. While much of it was for shock value and youth revolt, it had an unsettling effect on both parents and media watchdog groups.
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