Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 15 - A Chat With Airdorf Games and The Satanic Panic

Episode Date: October 15, 2018

Faith Game - airdorf.itch.io/faith GET YOUR TSHIRT HERE - theyetee.com/products/chilluminati-logo We dive into the crazy world of scary ghosts and short men with big hats who like to braid some ladies hair. Soundcloud - @chilluminatipodcast Jesse Cox - www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - www.youtube.com/user/Thenationaldex Art Commissioned by - mollyheadycarroll.com

Utah is growing and we're growing too. What started on the U of U campus has grown to over 110,000 members with 20 locations and we're ready to meet even more of you. More than a campus or a branch, we're Utah's teachers, businesses, and families. For over 65 years, we've been part of your community.

While our name is changing, our commitment to you is not. University Credit Union is now U-First Credit Union. See why it's getting even better here. Welcome to U-First. Visit us at ufirstcu.com. Hello, hello, hello, everybody, and welcome to the Chilluminati podcast, episode 15, it's not even a marker,

it's just a nice number. It's a nice calming sensual introduction today, I want to say. Yeah, usually you start like, hi, we're here, we're doing a thing. Yeah, I was like, oh my God. Well, today's special. It's special for two reasons.

One, this is a part of our October episode. So, you know, spooky October, Halloween stuff. Oh, that was your spooky voice. Extra voodoo, extra fucking, but two, and the most important reason, it's our first guest. You may know him, you may know him from a video game known as Faith.

Another video game is Faith Chapter Two, The Demo, and the upcoming video game, Faith Chapter Two, it's Mr. Erdorf Games. Hello, sir, thank you for joining us. Hello, hello, hey, thanks for having me, y'all, this is great. Are you nervous? I'm gonna grill you real hard.

You know, I actually have a bit of podcasting experience and in a former life, I did an animation podcast and so I have the equipment and stuff. It's been a long time, so I'm pretty rusty, but yeah, I'm just thrilled to be here and I want to thank y'all for giving Faith some attention on the internet and stuff and playing it at the Demo at CoxCon, that was really cool.

Yeah, we played the first one too on Scary Game Squad, which was really fun. Yeah, I loved watching y'all's reactions were great. It's one of the best games that we played scary-wise because I think it reminds you that being afraid isn't about the graphics or about how good a game looks. It's about the feel of it and I think the pixelation of the game lured you into the false sense of security.

Like, I can't be afraid of a few pixels and oh, you can. You definitely can. Absolutely can. No empty drawers, no flashlight that eats through batteries in five fucking minutes. That is so true. I hate that about horror games. So in all of these games, it just happens

that there's this flashlight with 0.2% battery. It doesn't make any sense. Carrying six guns around, carrying 18 guns around with 4,000 rounds of ammunition. That's a fun conceit. It makes it more fun. Being like, you can't see easily. But it's scary because you can't see.

Ooh. That's great. Yeah, I liked Outlast 2, but I could barely get through the game like sanity-wise because flashlight batteries, which is like, you should be able to do the whole game on one flashlight battery. It makes no sense. There are other ways to build tension.

That's actually interesting time because for those who don't know, our topic today is that obviously of the faith games. But what that all ties into as well, which is the Satanic Panic or the Satanic Scare of the 1980s, was that time where everything that was what the kids were into was Satanic at that point, D&D and video games and like that kind of nonsense. So we're gonna be covering both of those,

but I kind of want to put disclaimer because believe it or not, we actually have fans who don't know us outside of this podcast. And if you don't know that we do like video game stuff, we actually have video game YouTube channels and Twitch stuff. So if you want to see what this game we're talking about is faith, the Scary Game Squad over on Jesse's channel

did it, I covered it on my channel as well. So you can, which is Mathis Games. So if you want to see what the game's all about, you can check it out. And I urge you to go buy it and play it because it's the best experience. Do you guys even game? Do you guys even, are you guys gamers?

Are you guys gamers? Let us show you. As a gamer. As a gamer. As a licensed gamer, I think. Trademark. Copyright. But yeah.

So the question I guess I have for you Eredorf is when did faith come about as an idea? Like what was the thing that was like, you know what, I want to make a game about this. Oh man. Well, I hope you all are in for a long story. Well, it's not too long. One drug fueled night while I was hallucinating

on a mix of mushrooms and acid. If that's where the story went, I would be like, all right, this explains everything about this game. Yeah, I wish it was that exciting. I guess it really just came as an idea. I've always wanted to make games ever since I got my first video game. My first video game was Legend of Zelda

Link's Awakening for the Uchi Game Boy. Yeah, great game. A lot of y'all are old enough to remember it, yeah. It's the single game that has influenced me the most as an enthusiast of video games and as someone who makes games. So I've always wanted to make my own. I dabbled in this program called Zelda Classic

when I was in middle school. It's basically a ROM hack of the original Legend of Zelda and it's like Mario Maker, but Zelda. Right, and so I made a couple of those and I made one other game in school or in university and it was around 2014, I remember because I had just played PT, which is my all time favorite horror game of all time.

Can I ask you a question about that? Yeah. All right, I've always said the exact same thing, but I'm very curious. Can you give me a descriptor of why you think it's your favorite horror game? And I guarantee it's gonna match up exactly with mine. Okay, it was my all time favorite horror game

because it was self-contained and it kept me, I was scared of it long after we turned it off and stopped playing. Can I wait your guess that it's because it wasn't like an eight hour horror game? It was, it's a horror game that you can beat in like 40 minutes an hour. It's a perfect like two and a half minute

Beatles song of horror. Right? Absolutely. It's a perfect game because it's so short and contained and it gave you the scares you needed and it wasn't like, well, we gotta pad this thing out so people feel like they're paying their money's worth because it was a demo and it was free.

Yeah, so we're gonna have this sequence in the game where you have all this equipment and then you lose all this equipment because every good story has a part where the main character is in the worst place they could possibly be plus it'll pad out the time. Like, oh, I know exactly what you mean. That's like the boy meets girl, boy loses girl,

boy gets girl back of video gaming where it's like boy gets, boy gets loot, boy loses loot, boy gets loot back. That happens in, that does happen in Outlast 2, right? It happens in a lot of games all the time. Yeah, spoiler alert, you basically get like left in the woods nailed to it. Oh yeah, that's right.

Oh yeah, that's right. And you have to basically crawl your way back. So much of that game leaked from my brain because it just was not good. Don't forget all the parts where you crouch behind shit while you like fake metal gear solid, you're ass through something like by pure trial and error for fucking 35 minutes.

Yeah, that's true, that's true. You go around the same tractor several times to avoid the red neck. Oh yeah, because they can't jump over objects. So you just go. Oh man. See, I didn't hate the game but I thought it was missing a lot of stuff

and a lot of stuff was really confusing and weird. But anyway, to go back to Jesse's question, absolutely, in fact, one of the philosophies and missions of AirDorff games that I kind of established for myself was to make games that were self-contained and easy to be digested. Like I don't want to make a, I don't want to scope out a game that's gonna take

12, 14 hours or more when I don't have the resources or the time to do it, I have too many ideas. So I, and there's so much, you know, there's so much content to the content apocalypse of the late 2000s and there's so many good games out there and they are all competing for gamers' time. So, and another part to go with what Jesse was saying earlier, Faith started with this question.

It was during this era of, I call them PT where there were games like Visage or Visage, which just came out on really excellent action. All those spoilers, I haven't played it yet. And then Allison Rode with the ill-fated Allison Rode. And then Layers of Fear actually kind of made it through. It was apparently heavily influenced by PT and they actually completed it and I enjoyed that one.

It was more psychological than Supernatural, but it was still, I still enjoyed it. And so I thought to myself, man, like I'm an animation student, I went to a program where we learned computer graphics and game development. And so I was like, man, I really wish I could get a team together and make like a spiritual successor to PT. You know, I feel like I have a good handle

on this horror thing. And I reminded myself that I've never made a game before and I don't know crap about developing games. And so I hooked up Game Maker and I just made the blockiest, most basic demo and it was basically the hunting simulator, hunting mini-game for the Oregon Trail, but there's a monster after you and you have no gun.

And so I was like, well, if you don't have a gun, what do you have? And I'm all about alternatives to defeating enemies besides firearms and in games. And so I was like, why not make him a priest and have a cross? And so it kind of got born out of that and then out of experimentation.

And then my desire to make an effective horror experience as a game using the most basic graphics I can imagine. I suppose someday I'll make a tiger hand-held horror game. That's next, see if that makes sense. You can see the outlines of zombies like where they're gonna go before they get there. It's got some interesting constraints, but the constraints that I imposed on myself,

a limited frame rate, limited palette, very basic graphics, it kind of guided my way and helped me kind of scope out the whole project. And I actually had to stop myself and be like, okay, once you get out of the house, you have to make a choice. And that's it. I don't wanna do anything more than that. And faith can be completed if you know what you're doing

in about 10, 15 minutes, but I have enjoyed seeing people get entertainment out of it. And I'm very happy and pleased that it has sort of caught on as a game that, along with some other games, Puppet Combo does a lot of really good retrograde horror. There was some other good games that came out that are inspired by that era, but I'm kind of hoping it turns into something

of a movement. I do think that horror games in general are in need of a hangout a minute moment, and kind of a reassessment. There are a lot of good horror games out there, but in my humble opinion, horror games are seldom done right. And I can hear a dog agreeing with me in the background. That's Wallace.

Wallace agrees. He's a big student of horror design. Wallace? Yeah, man. He's the man. That is a great name for a dog. If you saw him, you'd be like, I can't believe that there's a dog with a sword.

It's not even a dog. It's basically an Ewok. It is a little tiny Ewok. He really is. Oh, is he a little shaggy? Yeah, he's a Brussels. He's great. We've got a shaggy terrier mix named Jane.

And she would bark every now and then when I was doing my podcasting days. She's not in here now. So it's like web famous because he's annoying. No. Before we do anything though, we definitely should point out that I think you can still go to erdorf.itch.io slash faith, I think, is the website.

Yeah? Yeah, you just go to, you can Google it. It should be the first thing that comes up. It's erdorf.itch.io slash faith. I'll make sure I have the link in the description for people who want to check out. Go like, at least do the faith chapter two demo. It doesn't directly, well, who knows.

It doesn't directly impact you having played the first one. Like it doesn't matter if you play the first one. Just play the demo for chapter two and like, get creeped out because it is great. Yeah, it gets under your skin. That was one of the real games that I played for Scary Game Squad. I've only done that like two or three times

and it was very intense for a game where you just lift Jesus as your only way of defending yourself. Throw that. The mechanics are move and the power of Christ compels you. Throw that. Yeah, that is it. Throw that tee box.

Throw up that tee. It's amazing like what you were able to pull with just that, you know, those two mechanics. Yeah, I really had to exercise some restraint with the demo because as an artist, I'm kind of a perfectionist and especially with this kind of style, I run into the risk of overproducing environments and pixel art.

And so a lot of times I would have to go back and establish rules and be like, okay, for these environments, I'm going to delete every one by one pixel. Like there can be no like dust on the floor. Everything has to be more blocky. So I'd go in and I would actually make more basic some of the graphics and-

Like limit yourself a little more, make it a little bit more rained in. Yeah, and I was afraid that people would get turned off by the mechanic where you walk up to things and examine them. I call it the examine mechanic. So you can walk up to the scarecrow and you can get a close up of its face.

But I thought that was more effective than going to a note and reading or having a text prompt come up. Cause then that needs a button press, you know, like on every Resident Evil game, you can walk up to like 75% of the things in the game are just like, there's nothing special here. And it's like, then why did you,

why did you make this text prompt? Something we've always said for every game, even non-scary games, like I get you want to add the illusion that you can explore stuff, but- Why can I open every door? Why can I open every drawer? Why is it there? Why? Why?

Actually, why? There's nothing in there. It's a waste of your time. Yeah, actually why. Yeah, it's true. And while I am a fan, I'm a huge fan of red herrings. Faith and Faith Chapter 2 are full of red herrings to make you think about, take, form your own theories

about what's going on, because there's very little that to actually tell you what's going on by design. So I added a lot of false leads. And to kind of give that sense of paranoia, which does tie into the Satanic scare of the 1980s. But yeah, I added this new thing where you can walk up to an object and a little blocky picture comes up of it. And so I did that to kind of exercise my pixel art muscles

and also to have an extra layer of potential scares, because there are scares that are derived from looking at objects. And I'm going to go off and spoil my own game if I'm not careful. But going into, y'all don't know how much anxiety I had going into the sequel. I knew that I didn't want it to,

I knew that some people would be fine with just a mechanical clone and graphical clone of Faith 1 that just went, did different things or went to a different place or had different sound effects or monsters. But I also wanted to have, to expand it a little bit. And I had dreams of these first person sequences that you could do in the pixel art.

And it kind of went towards that examine mechanic, but I don't want to have sequelitis. I don't want to be like a Disney film, a Disney sequel, where it's like all new friends and all new songs and people be like, we don't want that, we want old. But then you can't have it just be a clone, a carbon copy of the original because then people might get bored.

So I think I struck a balance. I think I got lucky. But I'm very, very excited to show you all the final product for chapter two. I think it's going to be pretty cool. I'm just going to need more time. I hate it, but I'm going to need more time. Actually, I was supposed to release it tonight

and it feels really bad. I was supposed to release it today, actually. That was my original deadline that I gave myself. And I feel terrible. And it's like, I have a day job and I'm married, so I have other priorities that I will gladly put in front of my games. But it feels a little bad to be here talking about my game

instead of talking about my released game that's already published, but I'll get it sometime someday. I just ask for you all to be patient. And in the meantime, I'm very thankful to be talking about my game on podcasts and interviews and stuff. I feel like I speak for everybody when I say that anybody should be willing to wait for a good game. You know what I mean?

I don't understand the entitlement. I'm going to be waiting forever for stalker, stalker two. Yes, you are. Get out of here, stalker. I will never get out of here. It's good. So I guess then my next question is, why the satanic panic? Why was that the focus of good old faith?

So first of all, I am a child of the 80s. I did two years in the 80s, not quite as many as Jesse. I almost went through the whole thing. I have a whole 80s repertoire. You almost made it through the whole thing, man. And what an era. I had its problems like every decade does, but I'm just fascinated by it.

During the day when I'm working, I'll either listen to bottomless retro wave and synth wave mixtapes. Story of my life. Or 80s pop and 80s rock. I love that era. I'm starting to bleed into the 90s. I don't know what happened to me during the 90s when I was a kid.

I was either asleep or interested in something else. But I totally blew over the 90s and the early 2000s. And I very rarely stray away from 80s music. And there's just something about that era. So I wanted to make a retro game could be set in 1987. It would be a good year. It's like the 80s had been going on for a while, but it wasn't quite the 90s because I

didn't want to be a 90s game. So I was like, OK, 1987. I picked September 21st because it sounded cool. September 21st, 1987 actually happened to be, I believe it is the day my parents got married or went on their first date. I'm a terrible son. That's better than me.

I don't know when my parents went on their first date or can't remember when they got married. And I actually sat my mom down at my house once and it was like, here, play this game. And when it comes up September 21st, 1987, my mom was like, well, it's a good day. She explained the significance. But anyway, yeah, so they say, panic, panic.

To me, the 80s had tremendous potential for horror, not just because of the moral panic that happened, a lot of your religious conservative types got kind of into this culture of outrage towards, like Mike was saying, things that kids were getting into. Let me just say one of my favorite things was people burning kiss records because kiss in the 80s

stood for nights in Satan's service according to a lot of. Yeah, a lot of people were freaked out because, I guess, because somewhere someone justified that somewhere in revelations, there was something about men with long hair being in the service of Satan and people were like, oh, and yeah, they were like, Star Child, don't, I'm not. And so they would burn.

We're going to start with a Star Child. They would burn kiss records. I'm with Mike. I heard about the Star Child so much. But you're right, I believe there's a passage in the New Testament warning against men who refuse to cut their hair or who cut their hair long. And I'm like, doesn't Jesus and all the movies have long hair?

Always. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always in the movies. Yeah, exactly. He's got long hair. He's a white dude. He's got blue eyes and a goatee. Before the Lebowski movies, there was only Jesus.

I don't know what anybody's talking about. He was the chillest dude. He was pretty much a hippie from what I understand. But anyway, yeah, so there was the moral panic. And then so I wanted to stray as far away as I could from the retro wave nostalgic cyberpunk view of the 80s that, for some reason, our culture has latched onto. Don't get me wrong.

I love synthwave and retro wave albums. I love Blade Runner. And I love all of that stuff. But I did not want to make a parody of pop culture's nostalgic view of the 80s. So no blue and pink neon, no cyberpunk music. But the 80s, we didn't have smartphones. And very few people had cell phones.

You had a pager. But that didn't do a whole lot of good if you were in trouble. There was no GPS that was available to the public. There were no cars were kind of clunky and stuff. And so there was a lot of potential for horror. And so I thought about this isolation angle. I just chose Connecticut because I read some stories about Haunted Forest there.

And I was like, oh, cool. And I put my finger on the map and chose a cool road that was on the map called Snake Hill Meadow Road. Hell, yeah. It's like, what is it, a meadow, a road, a hill? What is it? It's everything. It's all those things.

And I just kind of went to work and did some world building. But I did do some extensive research. And then there is my world building about the spiritual aspect of faith is definitely seated in kind of the Hollywood Roman Catholic lore of the devil and exorcism, et cetera. Yeah, so I've made it about 20, 25 minutes into the show. And I think it's time to say that I am a devout Christian.

I'm not Catholic. I'm kind of a minority of Christians that have been persecuted for hundreds of years, but whatever, I'm not better. And so I have a religious background. But I didn't want the game to be preachy at all. And just like I don't want myself to be preachy or judgy at all, I really don't have a problem with anything

that anyone believes or chooses to believe. In fact, a lot of the artists and associates of mine that I respect are Satanists and atheists and stuff. And we get along just fine. But I do have a religious background. And I feel like that helped me kind of form kind of this kind of weird dichotomy you have in faith, where on the one hand, it can be a criticism of Christian

religion and Christian faith. And on the other hand, it can be a tale of triumph of faith over evil. And it really depends on the perspective or the puzzle pieces that the player puts together. Yeah, I wanted to make it ambiguous because there's actually an ending that alludes to John, the main character, not even

being an ordained minister. And that was an impostor who murdered Amy. And while I will never tell anyone, maybe I'll tell someone in the end, I think I told mom, about what really happened in the story of faith, I wanted to leave it ambiguous because that's kind of how this moral panic in the 1980s was. And I think all Christians should examine Christianity

in the 21st century and not be afraid of criticizing it. Some of the things that happened in the name of Christ or Christianity. Yeah, it's a good learning period for Christianity the 21st century. Isn't it always a good learning period for us? So it's that. But there were also psychopaths who

murdered and raped and tortured and then their own words, they said they did it on orders from Satan or from a demon. And I'm kind of a skeptic when it comes to that. I think mental illness plays into it a lot. But I wanted to keep faith ambiguous. So someone who is an atheist or a non-believer or critical of Western Christian tradition could play the game and find it accessible and not

preachy. Whereas I've actually gotten a few emails and a few comments saying, hey, I really like this game. It promotes being a faithful Catholic and it promotes being a good Christian. That wasn't exactly what. Yeah, I was like, doesn't it? But it's good that the game exists where people can read.

It doesn't tell them what to get out of it. They can get what they want to get out of it. And I feel like that's a good game. At the very end, I should put a title card and that's be like, and that's why you should never play with dwindies or whatever. That's why you should never at me. Yeah, yeah, and that's why you should never stop going

to church, this specific church to be exact. Yeah, I didn't wanna, I didn't wanna do that. And so I don't wanna, I hope nobody runs me off with torches and pitchforks for saying that I'm a believer, but it did give me a unique perspective on faith and religion and the downsides and the plus sides that I believe helped give me a unique voice in this game. Yeah, I think a lot of time in the Hollywood

sort of Catholic priest trope type movies, you kind of miss a lot of the things that you kind of touch on in faith of just from the point of view of the dude, just him sort of grappling with it in real time because it is a challenge to his faith, just like the events of the game. And so it's not really so much that it's preachy

so much as it is like giving you some facts about how some people feel and then you just get to decide based on what you do at the end of the game how, what happens, and that's cool. Absolutely, and at the very end of the game, if you get the quote unquote good ending, the when faith endures, John, he kind of rounds it back to the title of the game

by saying, I can't explain what happened in that house, I can only have faith that I did the right thing. Oftentimes anybody who practices a religion that has a component of faith as a principle, eventually they are all confronted with just taking on faith that what they're doing is the right path and not actually knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are following

something real, that they are following a path that is objectively good. That's kind of the whole point, isn't it? Yeah. That's the whole point of faith is not seeing, but rather believing, and so it was kind of a cute way to kind of round it back up to the title, but I did want John's story to be sort of ambiguous

because as you will see in phase chapter two, there's a lot of guilt and a lot of remorse that he feels which are a part of Christianity, it's a reality. Yeah, as a guy and girl of Catholic, I can attest to that very much. Oh yeah. Yep, absolutely. I was a Methodist, so we were pretty cool.

Yeah, we all were cool at things. That's cool. So anyway, that was kind of how it is, and then the more, it's this rabbit hole, this period in the 1980s that bled into the 90s of just this, I would go as so far as to call it a mass hysteria, especially in America, in North America. There was a lot of it in, of course it's been going on

in Latin America for years, and it also kind of bled into Europe. Another thing I should mention is that I was, and I was very excited about this during your Latin American legends, is that I was a missionary for my church for a couple of years in Argentina, so South America. All right.

Did you see a troll man put dirt into a beautiful woman's plate? So no, this is not a lie. No joke, it happened every night. Oh no, you ask any person in Argentina, and there are Argentines, there are Peruvians, Chileanos, people from Paraguay, people from Uruguay, and people from Brazil, Dominican Republic,

and a few Americans, if you're lucky. They will all swear up and down that Duendes are real, and that they or a family member of theirs has seen one. That's fantastic. Duendes are very popular. In fact, I don't know if it speaks to kind of the superstitious nature of the culture down there, but maybe not superstitious, but maybe a little stitches.

But sorry. But when paranormal activity, the first movie came out, I was leaving as a missionary around that time, but the country of Argentina was in a state of national panic over that movie because everyone thought it was real. I don't know how the marketing did it down there, but everyone is convinced it was real, and everyone was going crazy.

That's kind of what happened with Blair Witch. Wouldn't there have been a documentary on TV that came on a week before the movie came out or something, and everybody was like, what the, because viral marketing wasn't a thing. You know what I mean? It was very new. And so it just was like, there was never a precedent,

so they just all were like, this is real. I loved it. There was a mockumentary called Ghost Watch on the BBC that came on either before it or around the same time it's also worth a watch of it. I love that kind of War of the Worlds, like, I like a good. Well, I mean, that's what happened with War of the Worlds. Yeah, the panic.

The mass panic. We even had one like, I want to say, was it like a 10 years ago, a decade ago, maybe a little less? Do you remember that fake documentary about the mermaid that everybody found? What? You don't remember this?

The monkey mermaid? It was like on Discovery Channel or something? Oh, was this one that, was this the, they had like a camera near a oil rig? Like the bottom of an oil rig and then like, something swam by and they're like, right there. I don't remember a mermaid. I've never heard of that.

I remember a white noise. It's called Mermaid, The Body Found. Oh, is it the monkey mermaid? It was in August of 2014. It's called, it was a fake documentary called Mermaid's The Body Found, and the way it was being marketed was very believable. People thought like, oh my God,

they actually found a mermaid and it took like days before they're like, oh, this is just like the fake documentary that they had on Shark Week that was like Megalodon. The Megalodon. Yes. Yeah, people freaked out. I love that thing and that was great.

They're like the whale finish. The aerial photography and you can like see it swimming and stuff. Oh man, I liked it. I ate it up. I want to believe stuff like that. I'm skeptical about it, you know. But at the same time, I'm like, man,

I really want there to be a Megalodon. Well, you're already right podcast. Let me tell you that. Yes, yeah. Great. Speaking of, we can talk a little bit about Satanic Panic where it originated in one of the biggest names that kind of pushed it forward.

The biggest names in Satan. And other than Satan. The biggest name of Satan. The longest name of Satan. The what, the long one? The longest name of Satan. I'm sure that one. Right.

So the Satanic Panic actually originated in the early 70s initially. It was kind of when it was first. Hence the kiss. That's why when kiss was big, it was like, no, kiss doesn't mean kiss. It means knights in Satan's service. They put blood in their comic books, dude.

It's like, have you, I want to be like, but have you listened to the kisses music because like not Satanic at all? Just about. It doesn't matter. They looked the part and they were easy. Those records burnt mighty easy. Oh man.

And yet they wrote the song God gave rock and roll to you. Yeah. Put it in the soul of everyone. They were desperate, man. That's some gospel truth. I saw the end of the second Bill and Ted movie. I'm very well aware. It saved the world.

So yeah. It's the standing pan. Yeah. Excellent. Standing panic started in the 70s and the early 70s, but really, really, really kind of picked up in the 80s and the 90s and eventually died down in the early 2000s.

You know, when all those people who started it probably started dying off. When people started reading and learning. Some would say it's still alive and well in certain parts of North America. Oh, absolutely. You would not. You'll say you're not incorrect, I don't think at all.

But it took, during the 70s and 80s specifically, it was basically a gigantic belief that Satanists had not only kind of perforated through all of these children's entertainment, like the rise of Dungeons and Dragons, which was very new at that time, which of course had monsters and demons and magic. I just played D&D on Wednesday, hell Satan.

What? Yeah, exactly. Hell Satan. I heard that. What was that? But moreover, outside of that, there was a full belief that Satanists had not only done that, but they had completely found themselves

within complete control of secular society and the government, that those who worship Satan were meeting in basements around the world and talking about their grand plans to take over government of the Western world, and that they were basically already everywhere, and these people who believed they were fighting against Satanism were fighting a losing battle already.

And they desperately needed to turn the tides. And one of the biggest people who kind of pushed that narrative was a man by the name of Mike Warnicke. I don't know if you know that name. It's always a Mike. It's a, don't listen, I'm here fighting against the evil mikes of the world. Yeah, that's beautiful, I love that, that's a good mission.

And in a lot of circles, you can actually point to him and be like, he's the reason he even took off, because he published a book in 1972 called The Satan Cellar, which is all about his time as a Satanist. It was all about what he did as a Satanist and all the things that he did when he was participating in all these Satanic rituals and stuff. And now, but now he's on the good side.

And when he published that book, so he's here to tell you all about the secrets, if only you will buy his book. And he kind of led the charge against Satanism that way. He is happily referred to by most people now as a preaching lying dirtbag. Yeah, I feel like, I wanna go on record saying, every time someone says I was a Satanist,

I was in a Satanic cult, I really just wanna be like, were you? But were you? I was a, I was God. I was God. Show me your membership card. I went God. I was totally God.

I went God. I was a God in high school. I went to Hot Topic a lot. Same guy. Same thing, right? I wore like a choker every once in a while. I feel like it's just an easy thing for someone to say and then get away with,

because it's hard to just prove it, cause like, ooh, it was a Satanic cult, it's secret. And then you just rattle off a bunch of things that you expect people to think about as a Satanic cult. Very much like an alien abduction. Like yes, these gray men showed up and they took me away. I feel the vast majority, even if I existed in a world, where I believed in most of the stuff we talk about

on this podcast, I still think 99.9% in this world would be fake. Like even in that world where I believed, I still would think most of the stuff we talk about is people trying to tell a story, or people trying to BS someone, or people trying to get famous, or whatever the case may be.

So I feel like, yeah, it's no surprise to me that some guy was like, Satan, I was part of a cult, I'm trying to warn you, and definitely buy my books. I feel like it's okay to figure out that guy's a liar. You know what's interesting is that, speaking of the context of the Satanic Panic, it wasn't like all the Satanic killings and stuff came out of thin air.

There was David, his name, Berkowitz, son of Sam. Son of Sam, he's a notorious guy, yeah. Son of Sam had his, I believe he was arrested in 77, so people who lived during the 70s to hear about this, they were probably either parents or grandparents in the 80s, and so, actually thanks to Son of Sam, they passed the Son of Sam laws, which say that mass shooters or mass killers

who were taken alive, they can't profit off of selling their stories to the press. And some people criticize it by saying it infringes on their First Amendment rights, but like, First Amendment doesn't guarantee that you can get money for what you say, it just means that you have the right to free speech. But, and then you also had,

there was ritualistic animal killings that happened in the 70s. Yes, yeah. And then you had Manson Family, huge profile who, I don't know what to think of him. And then they had this kind of cult-like family of crime and murder that happened. And then you had Anton Leves,

who during the 60s and 70s published his Church of Satan material, and he was very popular. And actually, there were celebrities who were coming out as members of the Church of Satan, Sammy Davis Jr. I did not know this, but Sammy Davis Jr. was a real close friend with Anton Leves and was a member of the church. And also Liberace, who died in the early 80s.

Hell yeah. But during the, yeah, Liberace was a member of the Church of Satan and a close friend of Anton Leves. And so there was some material, but it just exploded for some reason. And another context that is very important to understand for as a, not a cause, but something that fueled the flames

was the sexual revolution in the 60s. It's just an unsavory thing, yeah. Oh, yes. Most unproper, but the, yeah, this strange revolution involving safety and cleanliness, and experimentation. Lots of boobies. Who would have thought?

People who were teenagers, who would have been teenagers or young adults during the 60s, who resisted the sexual revolution, were now parents and grandparents and parent figures and people with authority in the 80s and probably did not want what happened to their peers in the 60s to happen to the youngsters of the 80s. And so I believe that was a big part of it

because we'll see in a lot of these cases, these court cases and these scandals and these controversies that there's usually some sort of component of sexual deviancy, specifically when it comes to homosexuality. And there were a lot of accusations of pedophilia and of course pedophilia is very wrong and whatever, but as a rich history.

Yeah, and yeah, but specifically the sexual revolution as it pertains to homosexuality and lesbian, activity, I guess, that also came into play. So there was, and as we alluded to it, a lot of it probably stemmed from bigotry and intolerance by the, maybe Southern, but conservative Christian community. Yeah, and it's interesting, I don't know,

like as somebody who is born and raised LA, like that is my heritage, like I'm from this area. It's like, it's not a super religious area, right? I mean, there are certain communities where the Jesus love is real and like, people are just still go to church together and stuff, but LA as a city doesn't really revolve around that. And in a city like this, especially LA,

where Manson happened and a lot of the hippy stuff was like very strong and the movies are made here and a lot of the rich people who have eyes on them who are American are here. It's baked into the culture even now in this area in a way that is like almost inseparable from the place. Like I feel like if people want to rage against something, even direct occult activity,

like real verifiable direct occult activity, it's still here, it's still large and in charge in America. I feel like that's one of our things. Yeah, we have this freedom of religion, this pesky freedom of religion that says, not just freedom of Christian worship, but freedom of whatever worship, the practice of which does not,

as long as it does not infringe the rights of other people. And so it's an incredible statement of diversity that we often either take for granted or our misunderstanding of it causes us to be intolerant. And that includes the church of Satan. If someone wants to make a church where they worship Spongebob or someone wants to make a church

where they worship the original Xbox controller. Hell yeah, so big, so peaceful. They have that right. Sign me up. And yeah. It's one of those things too where we look at just like, when we talk about the killers, especially of that particular time,

it's so easy to blame Satan and the devil. Because I mean, think about how much we struggle nowadays with mental health stuff. Like it was almost non-existent back then. You just know that they're worshiping Satan. That's the reason they're killing. I think to me, it's more like, you're just trying to make sense of something

that is un-incomprehensible. The Manson thing, it's a race war that's coming. We got to go to the desert. We got to dig. We got to get guns. We have to have sex. You sexy weapon. Take a ton of LSD and fuck a bunch.

Yeah, that was a weird branch of hippie, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. That was the ultimate. That's like some fritz the cat, the ending of fritz the cat kind of stuff. Who the heck are these people? The ultimate end to smoking a cigarette at your parents' barbecue.

Like that's where Charles Manson, that's the road to Charles Manson. I bet he did that all the time. Stealing money out of your mom's wallet on your way out of the house. That's the Charles Manson move. You fuck your mom taking your only five spot by. I bet he would play D&D if he...

He would not be invited to my table. There's still tons of locations all over where I'm from at least. There's the Devil's Gate Dam, which is over near where JPL is, where Jack Parsons was doing his weird, like a cult Alistair Crowley stuff. Even today, if you go in there,

I've never gone more than a little bit in there because I'm not crazy. But if you go in there, if you go in there and you shine the light around in there, you see pentagrams on the walls. There's still stories of people going in there and chopping up chickens and all that stuff. And it's pretty nutty, yeah.

It's crazy, man. Well, like I said, it's not like there wasn't any context. There were these mysterious killings. I read one this morning. Sunday, February 8th, 1981, the headless body of an African-American man was found wrapped in a sleeping bed by Albert Lake.

This was near San Francisco. And police couldn't locate the victim's head, but they did discover a chicken wing and two kernels of corn jammed into the bloody next stung. I can't remember this story. A slaughtered chicken was also found 50 yards from the corpse. I don't know if I've told you all this,

but the kind of people that did this crime were the same kind of people that I lived among in Argentina. And it's called Umbanda, and then there's also Kimbanda and Condomble. Which is a Caribbean kind of voodoo-based religion, but I did live with them a couple of years, and it was this very weird, I feel so judgy when I say that they weird,

but it was weird to my white Christian, from the South upbringing. And it was a mix of Catholic tradition and African religion, African tradition, with a little bit of Caribbean, which takes from African and Catholic- This is the case where the expert called it, or something like that, right?

I think so. If you go back there on this day, you're gonna find the head, or something like that, right? Oh, that's right. Yeah, with the dead chicken in mind, Gallant, who was the inspector, Sandy Gallant, like that's a comic book. That's a Saturday's TV show.

I actually love it. One of the country's top experts on Santarilla, religion brought to the Caribbean by West African slaves. That's a little heavy on the use of poultry. It's very tongue-in-cheek, but it's very true. Whitley told Gallant that the murderer would return this severed head to the scene of the crime in 42 days to complete the ghastly ritual.

Quote, unquote, we literally were laughed at by the homicide investigators and our chief of detectives. But as the day, 42-day mark neared, they had self-doubt, blah, blah, blah. But sure enough, Carter's head turned up under a bush near Alvard Lake exactly 42 days later on March 22nd. So a ritualistic killing from this religion. And I talked to a lot of them, they're umbandistas,

and they were very interesting. They were very open about the religion and there was no ill will between us and we made friends with some of them, but they had these weird shops. They were shops where they had relics and one of them was San La Muerte, who is mentioned in faith.

Right. In fact, I don't know if I commented this on that video, but the note that a character named Layton writes to Amy Martin about being a missionary and the story about San La Muerte and this kid, that is literally a page from my journal as a missionary, basically copied and pasted. So they did pray, as y'all who grew up Catholic know,

venerating towards or praying towards statues and statuettes of the saints and of the Virgin Mary and of Christ. It's very normal for them, but they adapted it to include folk saints. So saints that were specific to that geographic region and then San La Muerte. So it was not, and that's a complete bastardization of Spanish, but that's Argentina, it's just how they talk.

People who are Latino or Latina might criticize the phrasing and say it's La Santa Muerte or something like that. It has a lot of names, but they called it San La Muerte because a lot of people in Argentina don't even, don't know proper Spanish, like a lot of us in the West don't know proper English. But anyway, San La Muerte and it was not uncommon to be walking down the street and see a shrine

with a grim reaper statue inside and have someone kneeling and venerating it. There's churches like this still in LA that I've seen that you can walk in and check out. If you ever want to know what it looks like, just go run a movie with like some sort of Mexican assassin in it, because usually there's a scene where he's like kneeling before, yeah, every time.

I'm picturing the shop at the beginning of a runaway jury. Yeah. Oh, man, I spent so long since I've seen that one. It's all right. It's not right, it's okay. That's a selling comment right there. Dustin Hoffman's in it. Who does like a Cajun thing?

It's great. Yeah, a Cajun and it's all kind of mixed in and recently the, you know, administration cracking down on MS-13, like they are known to do things like that, like killing four of the grim reaper and stuff like that. And definitely like gangs are involved in it. I don't claim to be an expert, but it's very prolific this Santeria sect.

You're on the right podcast then, because none of us claim to be experts. Oh, great. But they were there. And one time I talked to a woman who, we would go inside their shrines that were set up in their homes and there's nothing super scary about it.

And then one time I met a shaman, she was an older woman and y'all played out last two, so y'all know about the tall woman, how she talks. Well, her voice was that, but Spanish. And I asked her, so I asked her, you know, a lot of Christians in this area say that y'all are devil worshipers. Is that true?

Or like what, how does that work? And she goes, and she goes, and that voice, she's like, we don't worship the devil. We make animal sacrifices to the devil. We chop off the head, we kind of filet it and splay it out on the sidewalk and we throw in some corn.

We throw in some of this, some of that. We put a ribbon around it and we do that to, and she said, this is almost the exact phrasing to keep the devil where he is. Right, right, the, to not affect us. It's prevented it. So it's more of an appeal.

Yeah, it's a preventative thing. It's like throwing salt on your shoulder, but like way more fucked up. Yeah, yeah, it's the same thing. And it's like, are we not doing the same thing when we're asking God to protect us from Satan or deliver us from evil? We're not making, it's a little different

because they're kind of directly appealing to the evil spirit. And we're not cutting anybody's head off. Well, it's also a cultural thing, and it's a different, and it also has to do with the fact that like, go back further into the Bible. There's a lot of stuff very similar to this.

That's true. Oh, right. Yeah, the Hebrews, and before the time of Christ, they would slaughter animals as a repentance process and as a cleansing process and as worship. So it's not out of the ordinary, but we missionaries, we would come out in the morning and see an animal, ritualistic animal sacrifice

having been left there that night on the street corner and stuff. And so all of this, all this time, you know, I was trying to be a good boy as a missionary, but in the back of my head, I'm like, this is awesome. Like, this is like a totally untapped culture that I've, yeah, culture that I've never heard of. And so I chose them as, I made up a cult.

I mean, no disrespect to people who practice Santeria. I know there's a lot of people and young people who practice it. I mean, no disrespect, but I made up a cult similar to that because that was just the coolest, most interesting thing I could find that practiced these, that checked all the boxes for the satanic panic.

Sure, yeah. Like if people in the 1980s heard of that, they'd be like, that's Satan right there. I know it. I know it when I say it, you know? And so I made no disrespect, but I wanted to make something that would make, I wanted to include something that would make sense

in the world of the satanic spirit. And I really want, it has, the game has like a pentagram and inverted stars and stuff, but I wanted to stray away from that and kind of make up something that was a little more fresh and new and a little more mysterious, you know? If you see a pentagram on a door in a video game, you're like, okay, here it comes.

But if you see these kind of weird symbols, you might not know what it means. And so I incorporated a lot of that culture, that condom-blay, that Kim Banda culture and symbolism in the game, just to have something different. I think the goats heads and the inverted stars and the 666 are cool and all, but like. We get it, yeah.

Yeah, it's cliche. We've seen it a million times. Yeah. And so I'm always on the lookout for something really cool like that. I mean, I'm a Christian and I teach Sunday school, but I'm also really into the supernatural and like demonology.

It's cool. It's undeniably cool. Like, I don't know. It's like Harry Potter, it's the same thing. Like, sure people are mad about Harry Potter because there's magic in it, but it's harmless. It's like played for fantasy escapism, you know what I mean?

Oh yes. We never would have gotten mazes and monsters. Is that the Tom Hanks movie? Yes, it is and it is amazing. That's based on a true story, I believe. Oh my God. That movie was so, true story or not, that movie was so bad, but it was bad in the best way.

I think John Tron recently did like a riff on this. It was like a parody movie on the dangers of RPGing and I'm like, they use that in the movie. And I was like, RPGing? That sounds like something you would do in Quake 2. But it sounds cool. But yeah, you bring up a good point, Alex, about that era is that people thought

that just exposing yourself to things like games and role playing and rock music, not even metal, but rock, could let them in. And it's like a catch 22 in Christianity because Christians do believe that if you invite an evil spirit through your actions or through your sinful behavior, then it can dwell in you and dwell with you and affect you.

But you have to define what inviting means, like listening to ACDC, is that really inviting Satan? Are you even thinking about your body about Satan? Oh, they are. Like, are you even thinking about Satan at that time? Like, are you really like just tossing on like Angus Young and you're like, yeah, I want to cut the head off a chicken. Like, I don't know.

Well, there was this strange case. If you, I can't believe I'm on this site. It's ranker.com, but it had a really good time. It had a really good listicle. Yeah, it had a really good listicle about teens who killed for the devil. There is an instance of a player of Dungeons and Dragons who did murder someone, but you can't just say,

that's like if someone really enjoyed drinking chocolate milk and then they killed someone or performed some horrible act. It was the chocolate milk that they did and anyone who drinks chocolate milk is in fact a devil. A chocolate milk killer. Oh, God. The chocolate milk murders.

That sounds like a good puppet comic. That sounds like a kid detective story. The chocolate milk murder. But there's also, I mean, there's also stories of cult behavior that does end in like the murder of good Christian kids though, too, in the 80s. Absolutely, and it was not as prolific as the people who were under the spell of this panic thought,

but it did happen. So it was this kind of gray area in history and that's kind of how I wanted faith to be. I wanted it to be ambiguous enough to be like, okay, what really happened and maybe have a game that people thought about after they quit or after they exited the game. I definitely felt like I had some things

to like suss out by the end. We got pretty into the finding all the endings bit by the end of the time we played through it, but like, once we walked away from it, we were just like, damn, what does that mean? And playing the demo of the second one, I was like the whole time just thinking about how does this connect?

What does this mean? What story is this telling me? And I mean, I think that's good regardless of what you believe, you know? Right? Yeah, I want to entertain and I don't want to be judgy and I am not entirely convinced by horror movies that have a Christian moral at the end.

As much of a believer as I am, I don't need to have my beliefs verified by a piece of media. No, I think some of the best horror in games, movies or any media is the ones that always leave you just questioning. Like if you see a movie and you're like, it ends on a good note, you're like, all right,

I feel good, but then the horror aspect's kind of removed and you kind of understand like, oh, they're going to win at the end. Any horror movie that ends just like either, just unanswered completely or on a dour note, that's what sticks with you because you think about it. Well, look at The Exorcist on the one hand, it did appear that at least in that movie

that the demon was expelled from the girl, but think of what they had to do to do that, you know? And in the end, did Christ really win or did the power of righteousness actually win the day? Yeah, man still fell down the goddamn stairs. And then think of the ending of Psycho, where you think he's caught, but then right at the end, he has that smile and that just slightly superimposed face

of his mother, you're like, oh, so he's not fixed. Or like, what's that movie, The Witch? Did you guys see that? Oh, man. The Witch was so good. That's a really good horror movie when you're talking about like, crisis of faith versus like what you should do versus like, yeah.

The Devil absolutely wins. Oh my God, yes. And it's glorious and it gives you this weird feeling because I think, what's her name? Thomas? So like Daughter? Yeah, I think so. The Daughter, yeah.

Yeah, she wades through so much crap in that movie and is put in such horrible situations. And in the end, you can't help but admit that she is free at the end of the movie, but at the same time, she literally put her name in the Devil's book. Literally, yeah. So it's this really weird,

and I thought it was a terrific ending, just like Hereditary, I thought was amazing. Hereditary was still gotta catch that. I'm dying to see that. It's good, it's very good. Oh man, then I won't spoil it, but if you liked The Witch, then I highly recommend Hereditary.

People will say it's a slow burn. It is not. If you have the gamma right on your TV, there's plenty to see in that movie that will freak you out. The way that movie is shot. Oh, it's excellent. It's a masterpiece in a lot of ways. It's a fantastic movie.

It's just hard to watch because it's so well done. Yeah, we need to ditch the Conjuring universe. I don't know why they... Agreed. Like, Ed and Lorraine Warren, like they make for Great Hollywood, but they were total hacks. Yeah, after doing these episodes on them,

I'm like, shut the fuck up. Our very first episode was Amityville, and a lot of that was just kind of dissecting what pieces of, what shams they were. Yeah. Yeah, but it makes for Great Hollywood when you hide all that stuff. Of course.

I enjoyed the Conjuring very much. It was a great throwback to kind of that 70s era of horror. Conjuring II was pretty good. That was the Ennsfield poltergeist. But then he got into this... By the way, the Ennsfield poltergeist, though Warrens were there for less than a day.

Oh, yeah. It's not like, yeah. And it's not like the demon Nun Valak was chasing them around all the time. Right. I have not seen the Nun yet. I've seen Annabelle creation, and I enjoyed that one a little bit.

Actually, there's parts of Faith Chapter II demo that are inspired by Annabelle creation. I was told to stay away from the first Annabelle, and I was also told that the Nun is not very good, but... Is the Conjuring have its own cinematic universe? Yes. All the Conjuring movies are now associated with each other. Thanks to Ed and Lorraine Warren,

who had this lustrious, multi-decade career of fighting so many, I guess. Just being Sam's people, yeah. Like the reason they went to the Ennsfield poltergeist in real life was to try and get their story given to them so they could make their own money off of it and shit. They were literally there in England with the family for less than a day during that entire thing,

but then they turned an entire movie out of it. It was enough to stamp their trademark on it and sell it. Makes me want to vomit. Okay, continue. Yeah, total exploitation, but I am very happy with where horror is going, because early 2000s, I was in high school. I'll admit, I went out and saw the ring,

and I actually really do enjoy the ring. I think it's, I like it better than a ring-goo, sorry. But, and then the grudge is okay, Grudge 2 is okay, but after that, you got this slew of PG-13 horror movies that just got worse and worse and worse. Again, it's like, oh, Japanese ghost story? Like, let's make 80 of them because people will just suck them up.

Like, girl with long black hair covering eyes. She's about eight, white dress. She's in, she's in faith. That was a homage to it, but yeah, and then it picked up with, I'll say that the Conjuring kind of helped it. They ruined the franchise by making it a franchise. But it's halfway decent.

I didn't, yeah, it's halfway decent. I didn't really like the Baba Duke. It was okay. It was just very frustrating to watch. Blair Witch, you know, kind of was before all that, but then you had It Follows, which I really, really enjoyed. Yeah, It Follows. We're talking about Satanic Panic.

How about that one with Greta Gerwig? House of the Devil is what it's called. Yeah, it's like House of the Devil. It's literally a slasher movie, but it's like, it just becomes like this, like it's like, it's literally like the horror scenario that you would imagine if you were a believer of the Satanic scare.

Like it's a babysitter who like, she gets, she orders a pizza, but like the dude on the phone is like from the cult and he brings her like drug pizza and she wakes up, and she wakes up, and there's like the devil's baby inside her because she passes out. It's like, it's like a great, like it sounds like I'm spoiling the movie, which I am,

but like, that's the first five minutes. Well, what I'm saying is like, it's not really about the plot. It's not about the twist and the turns of the plot. It's about just like sort of defining this sort of era in America and like sort of like, you know, capitalizing off our imaginations and fears in a very like pomo way that was like really cool.

Like you're looking back at the Satanic Panic and watching a movie about it. Looking at the Satanic Panic too is an interesting like realization in a lot of ways of like, Outrage culture has always existed. It's just what we're outraging against. Yeah, remember when we put like, when when they threw people in with the lions

for their beliefs, like that's the same shit. Yeah, yeah, back in the day, same shit. It is, it's crazy. Oh yeah, people used to, there used to be public beheadings, so that's how people's outrages became public. That was like entertainment for them back then. Yeah, and then you have the news media

which got more and more quick. A lot of people blame the news media in the 80s for spreading this, you know, this panic about Satanism and stuff. And then of course we have social media now where, you know, I could tweet something, something that people don't share the same opinion on and in five minutes I've become a-

You lose your goddamn job. You know, I get tired and pitchforked. And I would say in some ways we are dealing with a period of mass hysteria now. I just think it's gonna be a dull roar for forever as long as we have this ability to offend mass amounts of people with the tweets and their words we say.

Hopefully that type of stuff won't be so central to our lives as we get tired of it. Yeah. Getting tired of it, I think that's a key phrase. But I think everyone is entitled to their beliefs and their opinions. I just feel like we're all getting angry at each other. And I don't mean to be such a love and share,

you know, hold hands and sing kumbaya type on the show, but I do believe it kind of relates to the 80s and there were panics and accusations, like take all the daycare scandals. Do you all remember those? Yeah. There's like five daycares. I think the most famous one is McMartin Preschool.

Which one was that? Where the psych- Right here. I got you. I got you. McMartin Preschool, take it away, Mike. It's just, in 1983, the mother of McMartin Preschool student accused her estranged husband

and a teacher at the preschool located in Manhattan Beach, California of molesting her son. The arrest investigation and trials lasted until 1990, so that's about seven years. That is the most, that was the longest and most expensive court case out of its time. Yeah.

No convictions. Yeah, let's say in 1990, all the charges were dropped. There were no convictions in the trial and the most expensive in history at the time, like you said. And among the allegations were that the preschool staff practiced satanic rights with the children, where they flew through the air

and drilled holes into the children. That sounds a lot like- Pardon? Pizza gate. What? One child even accused actor Chuck Norris of being one of the abusers. Well, they identified Chuck Norris.

Yeah, they, I guess they had a photo and they identified him out of a photo as one of the people who were there. It was like, why did the investigators have just random photos of, oh yeah. But these investigators, so there was some good that came out of this. There were about five of these cases

and during which the administration gave more funding to child protection services. That's a, I guess that's a plus, yeah. There was more, yeah, but it was based on this notion, like Mike was saying, flying in the air and there's even an accusation that the satanists flew in a hot air balloon. I'm like-

What? Okay, what's so supernatural about the satanists? Look, you gotta get around. There's a lot of hot air in hell. We gotta get around. Listen, when you worship satan, something satan doesn't tell you when you sign the contract.

He only has a limited amount of power per day. And you have to race. And you have to run down before it gets to you. You have to race across the planet. You can't, right, you can't. Archant energy. Yeah, no, it's not organ energy for a small gang of people. Oh, right.

Let's not talk about the, by the way, because it has to happen. Of course this is all tied to aliens. Just so you know. Everything is. Because, remember Mike Warnickie, the guy who kind of really perpetuated this. Even to this day, his lies that were in his book,

by the way, the book that he wrote about him being in the cult, that was all disproven in 1994 under a giant investigation. He was never part of a cult in the 1960s in California. Like, you know, purported that he was, of course. But there are still people to this day that fully believe that everything that he said

in that book is true. Not only that, but he is part of the New World Order, which is a shadow government, controlling our actual government, which responds to, what else? The aliens. The world. The beast system.

Championship wrestler. Demon aliens. In black. Yeah. Will Smith comes in. There's only one MWO, and that had Hollywood Hulk Hogan in it. And Sting.

And that had, who was the other guy? Sting, I think. Steve Nash. Oh, the whole team. Oh, they were great. I was told to stay away from wrestling as a kid. Not because it was Satanist, but because you could get killed,

recreated. Oh, the backyard wrestling, yeah. Oh, that's true, though. He just almost snapped and he'd do it wrong and break someone's neck. There was a story that I was just reading about randomly before I even knew that this is what we were covering on here

about something that happened in 1989. That's kind of the same thing where it's like, one bad thing happened and then it was like the perfect like bad example that set a bunch of people off, which was this college kid in Brownsville, like in Texas, he like crossed the border to Matamoros, Mexico. That's right.

He was just like spring breaking it. Basically, there's like a drag there and kind of like a little mini Texas Tijuana vibe where you can just kind of like bar crawl down the street and get like dollar coronas kind of vibe. And somebody just was like, hey, come here. And just like this guy just disappeared from the night and they found him like a couple of days later cut up.

His brain was like boiled with like turtle meat and some other shit and like a boiled drum. They made a movie about it, I believe. They found like a slaughter room in the back and like all these people that were missing turned up and it was this drug dealer who like went mad with power like Colonel Kurtz or something like that. And he like went deep into the like Santa Ria style

like sort of cult stuff, but then just like improv done it himself and was like, I will be unkillable and invincible and like the power of the dark Lord will protect us. And they're like eating these people and doing this stuff. And there was even like a chick from like the college who was like educated, but she was Mexican. And she like would like sort of like, you know,

siren people into the cult and like get them killed. Yep. And that really happened. I'd probably follow her. It really did happen. I believe there's a movie about it too. I don't know if it's any good, but yeah, it seems to be kind of common

with these drug lords and these crime lords. I guess it's about power or fear control, getting power over fear and control. And it was something I was going to say about it, but I guess, I guess not. Yeah, that one was really interesting. The Darth Vader play. Actual ritualistic killings of people for this desire

for power and dark energy and stuff. Oh, the neon demon was another one of these radars. Yes, I just watched that the other day. Actually, yeah. And it kind of revolved at the end. You don't know what the whole movie is about until the very end. And there's actually this theme of consuming someone.

Got the eyeball. Oh my God. Both mentally or emotionally consuming them and physically actually consuming their bodies to gain their powers. And there's even, there's this really weird occult imagery after it happens with that one actress. And it was really interesting.

And it actually kind of tied it in as an effective horror movie. And that left me feeling it just took a long time to get to that. Well, that's because the end's like pretty nauseous. Yeah, that movie was like, that's true. But that movie gave me pause. Let's put it that way.

So back to this Mick Martin preschool trial, there were allegations that there were tunnels underneath the preschool. That's a running theme a lot in this time. The underground tunnel networks where all the saiyanists were using. Yeah, no, I'm serious. Like that, doing like quick, doing the research for it.

They all believe that there was just like this underground network and these tunnel systems that everybody would operate and transport, sacrifices through and all. That's why the sewer like entrances that are like outside the town limits are such a staple of like 80s horror, I think. Yeah, yeah.

Right. The Devil's Cave in Yonkers, New York. It was this park and it had this extensive sewer network that has a ton of like Satan graffiti and people said that Son of Sam would run around there and do stuff, drag people inside. There was one by my middle school that was like, it actually went underneath the cemetery.

Oh, cool. It was cool, but man, did 12 year old, 13 year old Alex like was not ready for that on his fucking bike. Holy, did you totally pee your pants? I didn't pee my pants, but I ran all the way home after we heard a sound. I was just like, oh, and I just like went, it was like, you know, two left turns,

but so movie-like. We used to do Bloody Mary and stuff when we were in middle school. I still do that shit. Just for fun, just to keep track of that. I will not mess with Ouija boards to this day as well. We should do it on camera. Yeah, there's something weird about Ouija boards. We should do it with microphones involved.

I will do it in person with you guys at like a live show or something. A live show? You wanna bring that show? That's where the devil shows up. Right, exactly. He comes to the live show like he'll clap. Dude, you do a live show with like a hundred people

that like he'll show up like at the end of the pick of destiny and shh. Yeah. I'm the devil, I love metal. I hope that's exactly what's going on. Also be Dave Grohl. Dave Grohl will show up at the end and they'll be like, I was Satan the entire time.

I hope that's exactly what's going on. God damn, it made Dave Grohl. Come on, man. Dave, come on, man. Why you? I believe maybe Mike was gonna say this, but a lot of people swear up and down that there were in fact tunnels

or that they remember tunnels being reported, but in reality, there were no tunnels found. There was a trash heap and like a little hollow space probably left over from construction underneath like the parking lot or something like that, but there was no network of tunnels. Sure. See, that's what they want you to believe,

but the New World Order came in either A, collapsed all the tunnels before they could be found or B, misinformation spread and told you there were no tunnels, but you didn't go in. NWO. Yeah, their cartel of mole people came in real quick and closed that shit up.

They performed earthquake. No, man, it was the reptilians. And it was super effective. Oh, reptilians? Yeah, they're good at burrowing. Yeah, they were a subterranean race before the Greys came and created humanity. They got lots of practice hiding all those dinosaur bones.

Exactly. Oh, man, dinosaurs. What's such a problem for Christians? We have a hard time with that. Like, we don't have all the answers. Dinosaurs is one of the answers. Hey, but we have Jurassic Park and that's a tight movie. We do have Jurassic Park.

That's all you need. You didn't stop to think if you should. Anyway, there were no tunnels, but you know how they came up with the tunnels is even though it is good that government funds were directed more towards child protection services, they hired all these investigators that were just quacks.

Like, I don't know what it's called in the world of psychology or psychiatry, but this method of kind of coercing someone that you're interviewing into remembering, quote unquote, things that didn't actually happen. I think they call it tricking. Yeah, the most recent example I saw recently was making a murder with that kid.

Yes, false confessions, yeah. False confessions. And of course, that's been around since Salem Witch trial, since the Inquisition and stuff, but just that they're not threatening to torture the kids, but they find these weird ways to be like, to A, hypnotize them. And I'm not fully convinced about hypnosis.

I don't think you go into your subconscious or if you go into your subconscious, like I'm like an ENFP, like super right-brained creative. So like, who knows what's in my subconscious? Like, I could start rambling about gosh knows what, but they dipped into these kids' subconscious minds and their imaginative children. And actually, they got kids to, quote unquote,

collaborate on these like doors that led into the underground tunnels and the exact locations of them. And they somehow managed to coincide, but they never found them. So it makes for good horror material, but at the same time it's like, okay, they were just drawing these accusations out of them.

And you know how the whole McMartin thing started? How the mother came to the conclusion that their child had been abused? It was that the kid came home and had the hurting poops. Like they had painful bowel movements. And so the mom thought that they must have been, you know, and it's really like abuse.

Sodomizing the kid? Are you kidding me? Because the kid had trouble pooping? Yeah, this all happened because some kid had discomfort while pooping. And it's like such a little thing. Talk to any mom. Talk to any mom or dad, any parent.

Kidding me. There's also, it has that vibe of when you see interviewers say something like when talking to a person, they'll ask a question and it'll be phrased like, so when you were under interrogation, you thought to yourself, this is it, this could be the end.

And they'll be like, I did this. I thought this could, this is it, this could be, like they keep- Right, suggestions. To use the guns, like leading questions, yeah. No, yeah, feeding them lines. So it happened a lot. And so that's how you kind of,

and also they also think that the tunnels, like a lot of kids called, they had these like plastic jungle gym things laying on the ground. They're like big plastic barrel cylinder shaped things that kids would crawl on top of and through. They called those the tunnels. And so all of them had this idea of tunnels on the brain.

And they're, you know, and like I said, they're children, they're imaginative. And so you had this unfortunate practice of drawing these confessions and these allegations out from these kids. And, you know, of course, you have that famous verse in the Bible

from the mouth of babes. So I bet a lot of people ate that up who were of that mindset. If a kid told me that somebody was like coming to get me in the night, every night, I would take it seriously. You know what I mean? Like there's nothing. Yeah, it's tricky, isn't it?

Cause on the one hand, they're children, so they're imaginative and they make stuff up. But at the same time, they're innocent and there might be some truth to it. They just don't know how to articulate it. We were talking about that the other day about just like when we were, I think it was at the end of the Jeff the mongoose episode,

where we were just talking about like that crazy bullshit. That sounds awesome. Yeah, crazy bullshit. Oh, Jeff the mongoose. Yeah, Jeff the mongoose. Was he that like crazy freaking animal that like lived with those people? Yes.

Yeah, they lived in their walls and told them the rumors of the town and all of their nonsense. I listened to an episode of Coast to Coast. I listened to George Norrie talk about that. It was wild. And then he just got whacked with a golf club and that's the end of his life.

There you go. No more Jeff the mongoose style. You always go with the golf club. Yeah, well, we were just talking about how like if you're, if you're in a situation where you're not the person who calls the shots in your life, like if you're part of like a small close knit church, or if you're part of say just like a really tight family,

or you're at a business where it's a small crew, you know, if you're the leader of that group is compromised mentally or sanity-wise or spiritually in a way that is unknowable to us, you know? They can just dead ass, yeah. They can just dead ass say whatever you want and you'll believe them. Like kids today believe what your parents,

like if your parents are like, don't do that or your fucking face will fall off. They're like, hello. Don't do that. Or the Duende one. Yeah, exactly. Right? The dirtier food.

Like furry palms from jerking it too much, you know that kind of thing. That's real, that's real shit. Like that actually weighed on us when we were younger. Not me personally. That wasn't one of the ones that I believe my mom is. Uh-huh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course not. So I grew up in South Texas. So there's a good mix of cultures and a lot of Hispanic kids would tell stories about La Llorona, of course. I'm sure y'all got a lot of heck for mispronouncing it. Oh, I definitely got berated for fucking pronouncing that shit wrong.

It's okay. I happened to be semi-fluent in Spanish just because I was a missionary. So I was cringing a little bit, but it's not a big deal. I wasn't like punching my headphones. But La Llorona and then Chupacabra, there's also one called La Chusa, which is an owl witch, kind of like the skinwalker tale.

And she was this woman who was an owl with the face of a woman. And there are a lot of kids in my school who swore that they or a family member had seen La Chusa. Interesting. It always involved some amount of Bud Light consumption, but you know.

That sounds more like Bud Light, my bitch lover. And then there's a, in kind of the area that I live, there's a creek called Woman Haulering Creek. Because in Texas, we love our creeks so much that we have a sign with a name of the creek right on the highway. You'd be like, oh, that's called Possum Squalor Creek. Possum Squalor Creek.

That's not an actual one. But it sounds like it could be. Woman Haulering Creek is an actual name of a creek that has been named by the Texas government and put on the side of the highway for everyone to read. And it apparently is steeped in the tradition of La Llorona. But I think that might just be a bunch of BS because Woman Haulering, like that could mean

a lot of things besides like hollering and crying are kind of different things. It's probably some dumb cowboy love story or something. Woman, quit your Haulering. That's it, I'm naming that. I'm naming this creek after you. She hollered all the way to the creek, and now I'm going to call this creek Woman Haulering Creek.

But to kind of put a bow tie a little bit on the satanic panic aspect, since we've already been going for an hour and 20 minutes, it's crazy. Oh, it's fascinating stuff. It's such a big thing. Part of the reason it also took off is obviously because in the 80s, once the police and law enforcement started blaming the satanic worship,

the media is like, oh, oh, we can use this. Now the law enforcement's like saying it and acknowledging it. People want to know more because it's so weird and mysterious taboo, yeah. Boom, then we started seeing books and newspapers and TV and all this other stuff that really just rocketed it through the 90s because they could make a ton of money off.

And that's really where the late 80s to the 90s it wrote. And then in the 2000s, either people just got bored or we moved on to something else or those who instigated it initially in the 70s were dying off. It's funny to me how it feels kitschy to be like, Satan's trying to get you. I know, you say that now and people are like, eh. They're like, ah, I missed the 80s.

Like, you know what I mean? Like it's, yeah, go back to it more. But you know, the 80s had its own horror in that serial killers specifically were much more active in the 70s and 80s than they had. Because it was easier to get away with it. I mean, just now it's hard. Oh, yeah, there was no surveillance.

You know, it was a different time. It was a different time. You wanted like forensic investigation didn't come about till, I don't know, sometime in the 90s. There's a great show on Netflix about it called Mindhunter or something like that. It's about, I forget what serial killer it is,

but he's so good in it. The co-ed killers who it is. He's like in the jail and he like interviewed him and like that's how they started forensic, like sort of like the sort of like mental like picking up. Getting into the mind of. Yeah, exactly. Which I find personally fascinating.

Yeah, it's a really good series. That's one of my favorite subjects is just trying to get and like just like listening in the psychology of a serial killer and just being like what it's like to just have like be in that mind of just. Yeah, a lot of these killers are on death row. They'll actually write you letters if you write to them, they'll like respond and stuff.

I've always, there's also like a. What was that Jesse? Oh, so there's also like a ego power chip aspect to it as well and the whole idea of like kind of wanting to get caught and doing more and more crazy stuff because they're like challenging, please someone get me. So there's a recognition that comes with that. Zodiac killer, yeah.

Right, there's like a recognition. So when you do write someone, of course they're gonna write you back because it's like they do appreciate my work. Like that kind of stuff. Yeah, because they see themselves as above. A lot of serial killers consider themselves superior to the rest of mass.

Super humans, yeah. They believe they have, they are beyond morals, beyond laws. There's this also this theory, just for fun, I watch a few conspiracy theorists on YouTube and one of them is obsessed with the beast system which is mentioned in faith. And he's convinced that aliens are actually fallen angels. So there's actually another layer to it.

Right. That she could add. But he also says that he also, he likes to say that followers of darkness and followers of Satan, it's like they have this rule where they have to hide it in plain sight. Because it's like, I don't know if any of y'all have read

Bram Stoker's Dracula, like the OG Dracula. Count Dracula does not come out of his castle to greet the whatever his name is, the main protagonist. He invites him and he says, enter of your free will and choice. And once he crosses that threshold, then he is under Dracula's power. So there's this kind of mythological aspect of Satanism

where people need to be tempted or invited into following them. But then there's also this Hollywood version where, you know, like on Constantine where a demon can infect like a three-year-old girl, you know, just against her will. And so, I don't know, maybe a consideration where it's like they delight in hiding things

in plain sight and tricking the world, but also getting them to follow along with them of their own free will and choice. And like, I don't really, I guess I can believe some of that or understand some of that. I really don't know what to make of it. It feels very sociopathic to me. You know, it's-

Well, yeah, because I imagine to them, it's a lot like they out-thought you. You know what I mean? They got you to do it on their own, on your own, even though they're like, no, but it was the way I phrased it and the way I said it. And it was my mannerisms that convinced you that you would be safe.

Is it Alistair Crowley, who's the one who has the Thilema, that like, do what you want, religion? Do what that will. That's a basic, it's a basic tenant of modern Satanism in addition to like rebellion against authority and fascism, so it actually intersects with kind of a lot of political and social stuff that's going on. I should read up on this.

It sounds like it's a good belief system. Well, they, yeah, it's alluring, isn't it? It's kind of going along with the ending of the witch. It's like, you know, the devil says, do you want to live deliciously? Do you want the taste of butter? Do you want to see the world? All of these earthly pleasures that can be yours

and that you have the right to experience in this life, you just have to sign your name in his book. Yeah. And so a lot of times in this Satanic mythology, you can, in the New Testament, the devil tempts Christ with all of the riches in the world and all the cities in the world and power and prestige if he will fall down and worship him.

And so there is this aspect of earthly pleasure, of earthly reward, but afterwards in the same line of the Christian view of Satan, is that he will never uphold his followers in the end. He'll always, you know, torment them and be like, ha ha, I tricked you. Well, that's funny because that downside to that type of behavior is predicated on the idea

that you believe in the afterlife, you know what I mean? You have to believe in something after and that there's a reckoning. Right, so if you don't believe that, why not just live deliciously, you know what I mean? Live deliciously, it's an alluring concept. Can I, I've always, this is always something I've thought of because it always amused me.

So going off of Alex's premise of like, well, if you don't believe in anything, of course you're gonna sign the book. But like, if the devil appeared before me and was like, hey, sign my book. What do you think he looks like? Oh, whatever you want him to. The devil looks a little bit like Mike, I think.

I would go, yeah, I'd probably go. Not as full of beard. I've got that perfectly coiffed hair. I'd be grim with beard. But like the devil shows up and it's like, Amigos. In my mind, the first thing I'm thinking is, oh, well, if the devil exists, then clearly there must be, like,

I would put, I'd be like, no, bitch. Cause now I know, now I've definitive proof, right? What did I then? Now I believe. Now I believe, yeah. Yeah, what did, what did I then be like? Now I, I don't even have to beat you in a fiddling match. Yeah, now I already, I believe so much now

because I have definitive proof there. I guess that's my flip side to that. I'd be like, well, now I believe. Well, not you convinced me. I'd be that guy at the end of my life, going up to Satan to be like, actually saying I didn't get exactly what I thought I was going to get.

Seems to be more like, I definitely don't think it works that way. I feel like. Well, it's interesting what Jesse said, because once, once the devil locks up to you and tempts you, you know, you know, so you have a perfect knowledge that the evil side exists. So then you kind of have a knowledge

that the good side exists. Right. And in the, in my religion that I practice, we have this principle that really the only people who go to hell are people who have a perfect knowledge of the love of Jesus, but reject it anyway. So full on 100% rebellion against what they know to be true and righteous.

That's pretty forgiving. And, and instead, right. And for everyone else, there's always an opportunity to repent, but it's called blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. I'm sure it's that phrases in other religions. And that is, and people who do that are totally unforgiven and there is no hope for them

because they don't want to be saved. So I can't speak for Thomas and at the end of the witch, I think she was, I think it was her way out. And that was kind of the message at the end. And maybe a reason why the movie was so heavily endorsed by the church of Satan, or it was just a publicity stunt. And they just said it was.

But. I totally get it. It's also very possible that because it goes in line with this idea of escaping the bourgeois, mundane, restrictive, often seen as restrictive, and steeped in hatred and mistrust, theology of Christianity, or any organized religion, you know?

I think that's a key that we should definitely focus on as well, is there's like spirituality and organized religion. And that's like, I feel like that's two different things. And a lot of organized religion is based on like the dudes in power, keeping that power over like the most people possible. And that.

Keeping the tradition pure and unchanged because that's their church. Yeah, yeah. And it's one of those things where it's like, you can still believe in things and still be against the like hierarchical system of whatever you believe in and be like, yeah. Oh yeah.

There's a huge rejection of organized religion in the Christian world. Yeah. We talked about other religions like, man, I did some research like exorcism in Islam and exorcism in Judaism, like the Dibbak and the Jinn. That stuff's off the wall, man. They need to do stuff about that.

I hope it doesn't, maybe it'll offend people, maybe it won't, but like, I would really like to see maybe a game or a movie about Jewish spiritual warfare or Muslim exorcists, you know? Christian bad guys have been getting the spotlight for too long. Yeah. Oh, it's wild in other religions,

in other parts of the world. This sounds crazy. And like, Thai and Cambodian and Indo-Vegeta is spiritual horror. That's what I was just about to say. That is actually picking up the games industry in like South Asia right now. It's like crazy.

We played some game with some crazy ass, like scary, huge. There's a few that I can remember. Most of them have to do. I'm trying to think of the one where it's a point and click, but it's a scary game where you're in a school. Detention. Detention? Yeah, detention.

Oh, detention. That was a big one last year. Yeah, detention's one. We just played one recently where. Dread out. Yes, Dread out with the camera phone. Is that the one? Yeah.

And then? Yeah, it's sort of like Fatal Frame, which is a great game. Absolutely. Sort of like Fatal Frame, but sweet. What was the one with the big monster that was like? That's what I'm saying. We just played one where you're a young man

who was looking into. It was like in a biker game or something? Malaysia, Indonesia. Some, I can't remember what kind of mythology, but it was really crazy. And it takes place in a school as well. And it has to do with the fact that a girl was trying to make someone fall in love with her.

Yeah. Or maybe it's vice versa. I don't remember. You keep traveling back and forth between locations. That was a cool game. Yeah, that was a very cool game. I love that we're getting more unique horror games that give us more unique adventures and stories

than just like the father killed everyone. And this is, he's dealing with his grief now. Like that's one of the biggest tropes in video gaming as of late and it drives me crazy. You know what video game horror trope I hate is where it's something that's supposed to be supernatural, but it's actually just like a gas leak or like we made the wall writer.

It's like, gosh, Outlast One started out so strong. And then they made up this thing called the wall writer, which is like nanomachines. The sci-fi nonsense. Yeah, it's like dark energy nanomachines. Well, that's, it's the Star Wars-ing of stuff where it's like the force was just fine the way it was. Oh, Medi-chlorians.

And then they were like, Medi-chlorians. There's a rational, like giving a rational explanation. If you give a rational explanation for some, for the main spook in a horror piece of horror media, it must be scary. The truth must be scarier than what you thought it was. Right, yeah. It's very hard to do when you're like,

oh, there was a gas leak and everyone was freaking out. Or, oh, this person's insane. It was a dream the whole time. Or, oh, like, it was some sort of experiment. It's the same thing at the end of Outlast Two when you win the reveal of like, oh, you're just a town on the outskirt of- No, I will say the one, I do like that

if they do the reverse-reverse. I hate the ending. Where it's like, it's, they wake up, it's a dream, and then cut to like the old creepy man from earlier outside the window like, oh, it wasn't a dream after all. I actually enjoy that tremendously. I don't know why. Yeah, if you don't, if you have to make

a definitive explanation, like if a scientist has to come up in the end, adjust his classic and glasses and be like, well, it seems that this is what happens. The truth has to be scarier than what you thought. Otherwise, keep the ending ambiguous like Blair Witch. Like, we don't know what happened to those kids. Right.

But we had a great time watching what their misfortunes were. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Well. This has been a good discussion. This is good. I feel like we opened a lot of doors for anybody

listening to like, go Google like one of many things. There's a lot of just, just religious horror in general is a, this is kind of a great thing to dive into. That's kind of what I honestly, like if we talk about Outlast too, like that's kind of what I wish the route that they went down. They kind of stuck with that kind of schoolboy, Christian schoolboy, you know, trauma aspect.

And stuck with that. Yeah, the thing with the priest. I thought that part was effective. I love that part. Yeah, I just wish the whole game was like that. That's what I said as well. I really wanted to be like Resident Evil 4 where you really explored the cult aspect of it.

It was like the big fat guy who was like the self-proclaimed self-proclaimed prophet or leader or whatever. You see him like once, but he doesn't really threaten you. Like sure he's got your wife or whatever. He's pretty gross. Yeah. And he's gross and disgusting. But you don't, I think you even meet him at the end.

He's like, well son, it's the end of the road for me. Yeah, pretty much. That seems pretty much what it was. And you chew the cud with him until everyone dies. And I was like, man, I kind of, I really like Resident Evil 7. There's this weird moment towards the end of it where you get kind of sucked into this dream zone

and one of the antagonists sits, has a man-to-man chat with you. And he's like, hey, I'm just really sorry for everything that's happened. Like we're not killers. We were just kind of in the wrong space thing. Yeah. That's a fantastic thing.

Wrong place at the wrong time. And that place was, that was great. And then when you figure out who the big baddie is and who has been the whole time, I was like, oh man. And then. Can I tell you? Chris Redfield shows it.

It sucks being in Scary Game Squad because there are four people working with four minds all at the same time. There's not a game we haven't figured out like the first five minutes. Every game, yeah. It's really, the worst part, I guess it was fun for us

because then when it was revealed at the end of that, we were like, oh, we do it. You know what? No, we didn't predict faith. You're absolutely right. That's one thing we didn't predict. There's nothing to predict though. Like I don't think even if he's sick to MatPat on it,

he wouldn't be able to find a sound theory. Yes, no, no, he would. He would create a theory. I was like, you don't throw out of the world, man. He'd make a theory up. He'd find one for you. Oh man, I thoroughly enjoyed the first and second Five Nights at Freddy's.

I think the fan base kind of ruined it unfortunately. It happens. As they all do. But I really respect and enjoy the first couple of games that Scott Croson did. But the theories that MatPat did for those games were, I liked those videos. Did you know that I wrote those videos?

Oh, you're kidding. I was the guy who decided what Five Nights at Freddy's was about for everybody. Holy cow, I'm talking to a historical figure. Oh man, yeah. It's huge, man. I wish I could talk to Scott Croson once where it wasn't a weird like man,

like Sherlock Holmes Moriarty situation. Yeah, I would really love to have a man person to person chat with him. Same with the guy who did Baldi's Basics. Although Baldi's Basics is a little more discernible. But FNAF I think got a little too big for its own good. I mean, no disrespect to Scott Croson. I can't speak to him as a-

It ran away. It ran away from him. It ran away from him and a lot of it had to do with the fan base, unfortunately. And now we've got merchandise. I was at church. A movie coming. I was at church recently and a kid was playing

with a Freddy Fazbear plushie. I was like, I don't think your parents know what you're doing. That's like, if your parents knew that that was like a serial killer who stuffed a child's dead body into a metal animatronic and somehow the child's spirit started moving the animatronic around to kill people and get revenge on the night guard of this evil pizza place that has this government conspiracy behind it.

I don't think they would buy them that plushie. It's true. But you know what is interesting is that Scott Croson is another game designer who wears his faith on his sleeve. And it- He used to make Christian games, but I don't know if he's actually- Yeah, yeah, he-

If he's actually religious. He decided that he wanted to try and make something outside of his wheelhouse and he got Five Nights at Freddy's and you know, there hasn't been many interviews with him in more recent years because he's become very, very wealth- Obscure. Very wealthy Thomas Pinchonian type guy. But you know, I think at some point,

I don't think that his faith comes into the game very much, but- It doesn't- Yeah. I'd be very surprised if it did. There's so much to explore. I have no problem. If someone wants to have an overtly political or social

or religious message tied to their art, then do it. That's what art's for, is for expression. But I don't think, I don't need, I neither feel the need to verify nor be verified in my own faith system. And that's the way we should all think, I think. I agree. Well, Erdorf, thank you for joining us.

Yeah, this was a ride, man. We went some surprising places for the old Chilluminati. Yeah, it was fun. Oh, good, I'm glad I didn't totally ruin it. No, God, no, not at all. For once again, if people want to grab your game, they can do so at, it's erdorf.games.io, is that what it was? I'll have the link in the below,

but you can say it out loud for the people. Yeah, you just Google faith horror game, and it's like the first thing that pops up. It's a great game, for reals. You really should play it. You really absolutely should play it, it's great. But we will round out this by saying thank you, Erdorf. We appreciate your company and talking about faith

and the systemic panic of the 80s and all the weird shit that surrounds it. We will be back as a podcast. The next episode will be the Reddit story episode. Yes, I don't know what that means. What does that mean? We're gonna be grabbing stories off of the Chilluminati subreddit.

Oh, I thought you meant there was like a terrible dark secret to Reddit, the concept itself. Oh, I'm sure there's a conspiracy theory for Reddit and the New World Order probably controls. Number 15, haunted Reddit story. His voice, I know that voice you're doing. I know that voice you're doing. If you want to know what I look like in real life,

go to my Instagram. Is that you? Hold on, is that you? Did you hear, did you hear Oni plays their fear episode? They do like a whole, like him and Psychic Pebbles do this whole riff on Chills, it's amazing. That guy has made so much money off his voice though. I want to do a conspiracy theory

that he's like a telemarketer robot. Like there's no way. I am secretly performing these horrific events. You do such a good job at dragging out the right words. I'm gonna be real with you. I think it's you. Do you really? In university, we used to do that all the time.

Like there were like old professors and stuff that we'd be like, number 15, ghost of Professor Park. It is sad that, we would just talk about it. I happen to be pretty good at impersonating and stuff. Or you're just him and you're just trying to hide it. It's like a Banksy type situation. Check out, what is funny is that his rap sounds like a normal person rapping, but.

Yeah, I don't know what his like newscaster voice is like the weirdest voice. His deal is monkey encounter. It's my favorite one. There's this Twitch streamer named Mike Panoots. And he, every Donkey Kong episode, every time he strings a Donkey Kong game, he starts with number 15, monkey encounter.

But I can, sometimes I go down the deep dive and like watch a bunch of Chills videos like for like three hours. Yeah, it happens. That is what happens. I did a panel one time at a convention, which I would love to do again where Norm, the gaming historian,

like dipped out of the convention like last minute. So there was like an open slot, like pretty late in the day. So I just turned off the lights and got Gerard on stage with me and just like watched some of my favorite weird ass videos. It was great. Like we should do that.

I'd be into it. Let's do it. Let's make it a thing. All right. If you guys wanted to chat with us specifically on Twitter, you can reach all of us on our respective Twitters at AirDwarf for AirDwarf Games, at Jesse Cox for Jesse, at Fossiana A for Alex,

and at Mathis Games for myself, and of course at Shilluminati Pod for the podcast itself. As always as well, big thank you to everybody who hooks up with great reviews. We crossed 500 reviews on iTunes, but 505 star reviews on iTunes, which is awesome. Congratulations. Thank you guys so much for that.

Thank you, thank you. And if you want to grab our shirt, you can do so at the Yeti.com and just search Shilluminati. Oh, man, I gotta get me a shirt now. Yes, you do. If I make it to GDC and there's, I'm in the process of getting a talk approved for GDC,

maybe two, hopefully. If by some weird coincidence it happens, I'm gonna totally buy a Shilluminati shirt and like carry it around. It glows in the dark, dude. I know. It's great. It's a wonderful shirt.

It's a wonderful shirt. And if you have stories, if you have a story you want us to read on the podcast next week that you believe actually happened to you and didn't happen to some weird people. Let us know. We can read it. Put it on the subreddit.

Let us know, we can read it. Yeah. Let Jesse take it apart. Yeah, let Jesse take it apart. I'm more than willing. Let us create characters. The art that we got, by the way, from that guy on Twitter of Jeff the Mongoose

and us three, our heads with the alien. Also, please, if you have already posted a story in the past that you want us to maybe read, go back and comment on it as the OP and be like, hey, this one's cool to read. Like, just if, I don't know if that, give it a little bump to you, but please give us permission. Because we're not trying to put your grandma's death

on blast if that's not what you're down for. But yeah, that would be very bad. But thank you guys for listening. Thank you again, Airdorf. And we will see you guys in a couple of weeks. See y'all. Thanks. When it comes to internet, streaming, and mobile,

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