13.5: Michelle Remembers a Satanic Cult

In 1980, Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist, Lawrence Pazder, published a book that would shape the culture of the decade to come, lasting into the 1990s. Billed as “the true story of a year-long contest between innocence and Evil,” the book recounted lurid memories of abuse that Michelle had recovered in therapy with Dr. Pazder. Going into a trance-like state, Smith discovered that she had been the victim of systematic abuse at the hands of a satanic group in Victoria, Canada. After bringing her to an orgy, her mother gave her away to the cult. The cult tortured her in an open grave, forced her to live in a cage, slaughtered kittens and mutilated dead infants in her presence. If all of this seems to be too much to accept that’s because there’s a very strong argument to be made that, while Smith and Pazder may have believed every word of Smith’s tale, most if not all of it had been imagined.