You're Wrong About - Quarantine Book Club: “Michelle Remembers” (Week 4)

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

This week, our lithe psychiatrist takes his favorite patient hiking, a priest burns some furniture and Michelle tries to escape her remembering. This episode contains descriptions of kitten sacrifice, sexual abuse and three more dead babies.Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseContinue reading →Support the show

I'm trying to replicate what I miss about grad school. That's what you've been doing from day one, Sarah, that's been clear. Yeah, but with with greater and greater degrees of brazenness. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast that scratches on old books until a bunch of spiders come out. Boom. I really like that one. We got there. I really like that one.

We did it. Can you tell us the meaning of that metaphor for people who haven't been following the spider dream archetype in the story so far? Nobody should be listening to this unless they've listened to the first three episodes. I'm not going to do a detailed recap because if you're coming in at this point, something has gone technologically wrong with your telephone and you've clicked on the wrong podcast. So go back to episode one and find out what the spider thing means. Because you're coming in at part four of a book club about a satanic panic paperback.

And I cannot begin to summarize the insanity that has gone on in this book so far. Can we tell people who we are at least? I am Michael Hobbs. I'm a reporter for The Huffington Post. I'm Sarah Marshall. I'm working on a book about the satanic panic. And we are on Patreon at patreon.com slash you're wrong about and lots of other places. And it's quarantine.

So it's also chill if that's not something you want to do right now. Happy quarantine or something. Happy quarantine. And today we're doing part four of our exploration of Michelle Remembers. Mike, I would like to summarize in terms of what has been interesting to you so far, like when you think about the, I mean, we've only covered 100 and 29 pages of text. 00:01:50,160 --> 00:01:55,360 And it feels like we've been, it feels like this book has already been like 400 pages long.

You know what I was thinking? I think there's like an interesting like nesting doll phenomenon here of unethics. Because I think it would be very easy to read this book. And I don't know what the sort of debunkings were like, but you could easily debunk this book with being like, here's this woman who's making up all of these visions. And she's the one that started the satanic panic. But to me, I feel like the real ethical problem is there's this weird compounding structure where what she did, I actually find somewhat understandable where she's responding to this coaching from her

doctor. And what her doctor did is 100 times worse because he's basically using his professional credentials to amplify these statements that she's making and to reinforce them in her mind. And then the publisher of the book is 100 times more unethical than Dr. Pazder. Michelle made some bad decisions, but Thomas Cogden ultimately made the worst decision to publish this book, to massage it in the way that he did because it's written hella Dan Brownically, and to publish it as nonfiction and be really, really, really insistent that no, no, we know it sounds bananas, but it happened exactly as described.

That's super unethical. I think the publisher's note is more wishy-washy than that. He's like, I believe Michelle believes it. I believe she's sincere. And I can't imagine it not being true if she seems so sincere. So, you know. So you think he's kind of trying to have it both ways? I do.

Yeah. You read this book and you're like, yes, the publisher signed off on this. Like this was given the imprint of a lot of authority. And you look at it and you're like, yes, it's terrible that all this power was leveraged behind this very strange sort of collection of therapeutic notes, but also like social workers and cops and a lot of other people read this and were like, okay, I believe this happened. And then you're like, how much responsibility do we give to the individual in all this? And of course, that's not an equation that you can ever work out or make sense of,

but there's so much responsibility to go around, I guess is the point. That this is a pact that society made with itself, right? Like women, at the time we're coming forward with claims of like sexual harassment or like, my boss made me have sex with him to keep my job and be like, yeah, right. And then Michelle comes forward with this completely whack job story and we're like, yeah, that sounds like Bible facts. That sounds like it happened exactly as she says. And now that you're saying it, can you hear why that actually does make sense?

No, I don't listen to myself. Okay, so like to use a not totally contemporary example, but when Anita Hill testifies about what Clarence Thomas did when he was her boss, that's uncomfortable because he's been selected as a Supreme Court justice and he's as good as sworn in. And so what she has to say has to be torn apart and she has to be torn apart because she is implicating someone whose society has chosen as useful or authoritative or necessary in some way. Whereas if you're implicating these imaginary Satanists who are everywhere in nowhere, no one has to look at themselves and think, oh, this revolution is going to come for me.

Right. It's a fundamentally like punching down phenomenon, right? Where it's going to be like daycare workers and imprisoning people for long periods of time. It's not going to be like the CEO of this company. And it's going to come after people who are outcasts because of their sexualities, because they're poor, because they're quote trashy. Like it's going to come for people who already have kind of legal preexisting conditions in that way. Right. It's an interesting sort of trajectory of the phrase believe women because we've always been able to believe women as long as they're talking about someone powerless.

If it gives us an excuse to crack down, we're like, yeah, yeah, women never lie. It's fine. Yes. But in the minute they come forward about somebody who we like or somebody who we trust or somebody who has power, we're like, isn't she lying? Yeah. That's women betraying their role as being useful to the patriarchy because, of course, the carceral state is a big important part of the patriarchy. And women, especially white women, are useful to that if we can have people incarcerated in our name. Man, we've said patriarchy and carceral state already in only a few minutes.

It usually takes us like an hour to get there. We're going to get some one-star iTunes reviews out of this. The feminist pervert and the homosexual keep talking about this stuff. Thank you for those. I appreciate those. So let's get into the book. Let's talk about summer camp first, actually. Who do you like? Where else can this metaphor go? So many places. It's fun. I mean, how was your day? My day was really good. I got stung by a bee 10 times and I used sunscreen in my hair because

I thought that because it had the same consistency as hair gel, I could use it as hair gel. Those are both stories that actually happened to me at summer camp. I was a really smart, really precocious kid. Okay. Well, please bring us up to speed on the last we heard of Michelle and Dr. Pastor. Basically, she's already described extreme things happening. She's already described killing kittens. She's already described dead baby stuff. And my primary curiosity is where else can these tortures go? Because she's already gone to the climax. Thanos already has the glove.

Oh, it's going to get weirder. I feel like, yeah, to continue that metaphor, it's like Thanos has the glove and then we come back for Endgame. And the director of Endgame is David Lynch. We've reached the phase in the book where chapters will just start like mid vision now, like we're just in the repressed memory. And so this chapter starts, the nurse had underestimated Michelle's resistance for the last time. And so we have basically more of Michelle alone with this nurse figure who's kind of the main recurring character of the visions. I think of her as like the Cheryl Sandberg. If Malachi is Mark Zuckerberg, then the nurse lady is like the number two.

Well, I'm going to see her like that from now on. Yeah, lean in, Michelle. So we got another story where she's taken again to the graveyard and put into a grave. And we're told she stood quietly for a few moments. She barely heard the first muffled thunk. Then she heard another and another. They seem to be dropping things into the grave, but she didn't know what. Then something hit her on its way down. It didn't hurt. Now two of them came down and hit her at the same time. As she threw up her hands to brush them away, it suddenly came to her. They were dead kittens. Oh God. It's just so silly, right? Yeah, I wonder if Dr. Pazder is ever like,

I don't know, Michelle, these are pretty repetitive. Also, like maybe she doesn't want it to become like scarier or worse. And so she's like more kittens, a greater quantity of kittens. So once again, she's put on a stone slab and she looks down and she sees a dead baby lying between her legs, which they apparently want her to believe that she has given birth to. Okay. And previously we've been told that Michelle has found a cross and is hiding it to keep herself safe with, like in Salem's lot. Oh, okay. Screaming hysterically, Michelle tore away and leaped off the stone slab. The cross was still under the mattress and now she brought it out for the first time. She held it up high and the room went wild. Everyone was

shouting angrily. Again, she was disrupting their ceremony. Michelle held it tight in her hands and even Malachi, the red man, couldn't get it away from her. Then he seemed to change his mind and dragged her, his fist around her fingers, back to the front, back to the slab where the baby lay. So she's now pulling from like Dracula that like they're afraid of crucifixes. And Malachi is now red. Yeah, he's painted red for the ceremony. Oh, okay. Yeah. Duh. I apologize. I haven't been listening closely. Mike, like how have you not, how are you not able to intuit what's going on in this totally normal thing? Michelle still had the cross in her hands and she thought it was safe because she was holding it. Malachi couldn't take it from her. Then he raised his fist,

raising her arms along with it and drove the base of the cross down upon the body of the baby. And Michelle says, I can't stand it anymore. I don't know what to do. Oh, please, please, I don't know how to get out. So is she now coming out of the vision and she's like, don't you believe me? Don't you believe me? Well, I don't even know if we're meant to understand that she's talking to him or if this is supposed to still be in the vision or what because we're not told what he thinks this is. And these people are good at missing nuance. True. You're gonna really love the opening to chapter 15. Oh no. Lawrence Pasder had a knack for what one of his friends affectionately termed creative tardiness. There were so many people crowding in on his life,

colleagues, patients, family members, friends, co members of the many committees he found himself agreeing to serve on that there was always a call or an impromptu visit to delay him. Subtext, he's such a terrific person, so busy and important that it makes him late to things. This is just such a weirdly it's an we don't need any of this. I don't know why we're getting it. And yet we are. It's so boring. And again, I'm like, Oh, this isn't about torture. I'm so excited. It's like all the characterization in this book is just a series of humble brags. His openness and more than that, his commitment, the fact that fending off interruptions did not come naturally to him. Oh my god.

Colleagues, patients, family, friends, they all learned to accept the fact that this energetic and altogether engaging man important in all their lives was unlikely to appear at the designated moment. Oh my god. It was best to allow 15 or 20 minutes, perhaps half an hour. And then the tall life fellow with the high broad Polish cheekbones and the warm white toothed smile would come striding in his expression and mixture of sheepishness and self amusement. Lawrence, we know you wrote this. Michelle therefore was not surprised that Dr. Pazter was absent when she came for her appointment that day in early spring. And then he's late and then he comes in and then they have a conversation and it's not

relevant that he's late. And I don't know why we needed a whole page of that. But that's what we got. I mean, this is the kind of thing that if someone else was writing this about him, we would be like, all right, that's a little thing. And actually, if I wrote that about myself, like Sarah Marshall was late as hell all the time. Everyone loved it. She was cool. So anyway, Dr. Pazter is lively late, but he does make it to work. And I don't think I can go on, she said, when they had entered the office and closed the door. I had this terrible sense of foreboding. I mean, it's really frightening is if something really horrible is about to happen. I mean, I have the strongest feeling that I should talk to a priest.

Oh, so they're finally going to bring somebody else into this. They're finally going to tell someone else about these visions and about the satanic cults that are in Victoria. Yes. And so Dr. Pazter says, what about Father Leo, who is the kind of hip priest who wears turtlenecks who they've consulted previously about their thoughts about cults? Dr. Pazter is like, great. Let's call Father Leo. And Father Leo says that he's free. He come over in an hour. And then Dr. Pazter spoke of another matter. You were kind enough. He began to let me discuss this work with my wife. Dr. Pazter had been anxious to have his wife comprehend something of the nature of this extraordinary endeavor. What? I know, Pig, 142. The missing Mrs. Pazter shows up.

And also, he's pretending he was eager to tell his wife about this. He's like touching foreheads with this other woman and spending hours talking about her childhood. What would you give to be a fly on the wall in the Pazter household in 1977? Because of the secrecy mandated by the doctor-patient relationship, however, he could not have spoken about the case, even to his own wife. Oh my God. Without Michelle's permission. Because he cares so much about the doctor-patient relationship and upholding the code of ethics of his profession. Yeah, he's a very ethical guy. Lawrence, buy the book, Pazter. I tried to tell you something about the nature of your remembering. Dr. Pazter continued, I told her that you were totally reliving a childhood experience,

and that it was very stressful, and that afterward it took time to integrate the information that had come out. Michelle did not reply. Dr. Pazter began to feel that he had perhaps made another mistake in telling Michelle about the mistake he had made in telling his wife. He 100% told his wife that the patient he was spending all this time with was like an 80-year-old man named Morton. Like he did not tell his wife that he's with this like 27-year-old with a delicate mouth who's like going through some stuff. I'm willing to believe that he told that he tried to be like, listen, Mrs. Pazter, whose first name has not been mentioned in the book so far. I know that this patient is taking up a lot of time, but she's been tortured by bona fide Satanists.

And then I can imagine his wife being like, what? Yeah. Are you kidding? Nice try, Larry. This is the third time this has happened. And then we got when Father Leo arrived wearing his customary turtleneck jeans and boots, they tell him that what Michelle has been recovering in her memories seems, according to Dr. Pazter, very definitely anti-Christian. It sounds a lot like Satanism to us. Father Leo had listened silently, spellbound. It's also great that like if you're describing your memory of someone else in a conversation you had with them like years ago, you can be like, Father Leo was spellbound. And it's like, was he at any time like, I am spellbound. As Michael Hobbs described the lack of bike lanes in Seattle, Washington, his boyfriend was spellbound.

Like, I don't know. We don't presume to say whether or not this should be of concern to the church. Dr. Pazter went on, we're telling you about it on the chance that it is. Oh, for fuck's sake. More than that, we need your help. This is an extraordinary thing. Again, power. The church also could have been like, sorry, this just doesn't sound plausible to us. We know that the church of Satan was only founded 15 years ago. And this isn't really something, like despite its appearance in the Victorian, the local newspaper, we don't actually think that

these kinds of things were active in the 1950s based on our information. Could have done that. Right. And maybe they did, because also the church is depicted pretty vaguely in this. Like Michelle and Dr. Pazter keep meeting people within the Catholic Church who are like, oh, that sounds very worrying. I am concerned. And then there's not like a lot of concrete action. So you can also imagine all these interactions being, you know, priests or whatever being like, oh, sure. Right. It's like when your friend says like, you got to watch this show on Hulu and you're like, yeah, I'm going to check that out. Matt LeBlanc is in it. And then your friend writes on their diary and it's like, Michael was spellbound when I described the Matt LeBlanc show to him.

And so he says that he can say a mass for them. And Michelle says, I'd like that very much. But what I feel the need of a really strong need is for a prayer or something, some words to make people safe, what she's worried about. Dr. Pazter said, and as I'm hearing this, I'm picturing him like with his like hand on her shoulder. Like that's just my mental image. Or on the small of her back. What she's worried about, Dr. Pazter said, is if something evil had a grip on her or on someone else, could you do anything about it? That's what the right of exorcism is. Father Leo replied to drive out evil. Oh, so this is where we're going with this.

Yeah, we're bringing in some exorcism. As readers will recall from our exorcism episode, exorcisms became very popular, like bubble tea after the release of the movie. So I guess the church would be in the wave of requests for this kind of thing. Yeah, I think this is at a time when, unfortunately, priests are going through a period of not just Catholics, but people of all backgrounds deciding that they are someone they know needs an exorcism. And I feel like a lot of priests in North America are having to have this conversation and be like, okay, I don't think that's necessary, but like maybe we can do some other religious stuff. That's less dramatic. Right. Michelle says to Father Leo, I seem to need to hear words. I want to have not just general words,

but also specific words, words that were made to deal with this sort of thing. I would give anything if I could have those words in my mind when I go back down there. I wouldn't be so terrified then. I don't know how to tell you, except that I know this is what I need. She stopped her lips quivering. I know I've got to go back down there if I'm going to be free of my memories, but I just don't dare go back down unless I'm a little bit protected. But so the idea is that she needs this like elven amulet to keep her safe when she goes under. I completely sympathize with Michelle at this point, I got to say, because she's like, she's in this locked in this thing with Dr. Pasteur, where regardless of things have turned

romantic or not, you know, even if this were just a totally non cuddly doctor-patient relationship, it would still be inappropriate and bad for her at this point because she doesn't have any power in this relationship. And he's like, nope, got to keep reliving it, got to believe me. And this is the dynamic we see replicated in so many similar cases, especially throughout the ensuing decade. And we already know that Dr. Pasteur has a lot of power over her, and her personally, it seems. Yeah. And what is she going to do? You know, I mean, can you imagine just like being like, actually, I think we need to stop. Right. And it's not clear when this is going to be over. Right. Which to me is what makes this book compelling, because at this point you're like,

how is Michelle going to get out of this? Exactly. Like, that's the real story. It's not like, what happened back there? And how do we recover it? It's like, how is Michelle going to escape this torture session? Yeah. So Dr. Pasteur has another doctor chat with Dr. Andrew Gillespie, who was Michelle's pediatrician when she was a child. Googling. He's finally Googling. We're told Dr. Gillespie's offices were just two floors above in the same building. Yet Dr. Pasteur had had a certain subliminal difficulty in getting himself to contact Dr. Gillespie. Was it? Dr. Pasteur wondered that he was afraid Dr. Gillespie might not tell him what he expected to hear, or that he might. Dr. Gillespie did remember the child and her family, even though it was

20 odd years ago. He remembered Michelle's having had a tonsillectomy. And he remembered something about a car accident, parentheses. Dr. Pasteur's heart missed a beat. Oh, a car accident that had taken place just as she'd reached school age. Dr. Pasteur asked if the child had been hospitalized. Yes, said Dr. Gillespie. He believed so. Dr. Pasteur sat stunned. He released alongside the car accident, the hospital, just when Michelle said they'd happened. The least implausible parts of the story he's seeing as confirmation of the most implausible parts. He's like, nope, yep, there you go. The lump was there too, I'm sure. This is like someone arguing that the events depicted in The Lion King are literally true,

because like, you know, there are lions in Africa. And you like breathe a huge sigh of relief, and you're like, oh my god, it all happened, Simba, Mufasa, the whole thing, I knew it. In the next several days, Dr. Pasteur continued his inquiries, and then came a letter from Dr. Gillespie. At your request, I am trying to recall this patient. I recall seeing her on two or three occasions. I wondered about the mother's ability to cope. She was a kindly but rather ineffectual woman, somewhat overweight. What? I don't know. Fuck that. Why is that relevant? What the fuck? I don't know. I don't know.

Unbelievable. I mean, not surprising, but fuck these people. So then they have their exorcism, at which Father Leo says, this isn't an exorcism. It's not even a ceremony. I'm just reading you some words. I don't even have any vestments on. What do you like to hear some of the right of exorcism? Oh god, not really actually, but go ahead. I don't think I have a lot of choice in this. Apart from me, you wicked and everlasting fire. You are the prince of homicides, author of incest, headman of all sacrifice, master of all evil arts, doctor of all heresies, inventor of all indecency. Go out, therefore, impious one. Go out, foul one. Go out with all

your treachery. So it's just a series of sick burns on Satan? That's the whole right? I mean, there's more to it, but that part I think is actually is kind of a list of superlatives of like how awesome Satan is in a way. Like when they have a special about a serial killer and they're like, the most prolific serial killer in America. It's like, are we a prost or like, what are we getting at here? Yeah, author of incest sounds like he like coined it or something. That sounds like he had a bestseller in the 70s. That's what that sounds like. Like he's Sidney Sheldon. That was really something Dr. Pazzer said huskily. Please make a Google Doc of all the adverbs in this book. It's hard to imagine that anything

could ever stand up against it. I hope not, Michelle said. She felt almost nauseous for she knew that now she would have to return to the round room and it's horrors. It's hard because like so many people are going to suffer because of her and she is suffering so much. Yeah. Anyway, but on Ash Wednesday, Michelle comes in and finds that her doctor is tardy again, but that she has been instructed to press play on the tape recorder in his office when she comes in for their session. Okay. She settled down on the couch to listen. Dr. Pazzer's voice entered the room. Michelle, I want to share something with you, something on friendship written 400 years ago by a man named Montaigne. It is not natural, social, hospitable or sexual. It is not the feeling

of children for parents or vice versa. It is not brotherly love. It is not the love for a female. It is beyond all my reasoning and beyond all that I can specifically say. Some inexplicable power of destiny that brought about our union. Such friendship has no model but itself and can only be compared to itself. It is one soul with two bodies. The tape turned silently. Michelle wound it back to the beginning and listened again. She just finished when Dr. Pazzer came in. How did you like that? He asked. When I read it last night, I had to share it with you. It's really yes, isn't it? Michelle agreed. I know I'm not supposed to be touching my face right now, but like I'm just cradling my eyeballs in both my palms. What the fuck is this? How do you feel about all that, Michael?

I mean, when like a man and a woman who are clearly physically attracted to each other start waxing poetic about their friendship, it's like only a matter of time. And so it is for all these reasons and even more that here we encounter one of the centerpieces of the book, the cage of snakes. Is that exactly what it sounds like? Yes, it is a cage full of snakes. The world was closing in on her. For a long time, the round room had been the only space she was allowed, except for short trips in the car. Now her world was even more claustrophobic, no bigger than a wooden wire cage. Michelle felt bereft. It was as if she had never had a father or a mother, as if she had never lived the normal life of sleeping and eating and playing. There was only the cage and it became

Michelle's entire world. See, she should have started with this. She should have gone snakes, kittens, dead babies. Because now I'm like, this is just a step down from what we've already seen. Do you feel like Michelle is like a showrunner now? Like she's writing for 24 and you're like, Jack Bauer's daughter has already been attacked by a cougar once. It's like not really exciting the second time. She doesn't have a whole writer's room. She's just a lonely Canadian woman doing her best. But to me, reading this to prep for this episode for the first time, I was just like, this is the therapy. She's describing the therapy. I don't know. This is a guess, but my gut response at this moment is like, she's describing herself in a series of smaller and smaller little prisons

and it keeps getting worse. There's no hope of escape. There keeps being less hope of escape. It keeps being more painful. And she's describing feeling like she had never lived a normal life, which is like what this quote remembering is taking from her. It's at this point in the book that like the trauma that she describes while undergoing the therapy really starts to seem to be about the therapy. Right. In a way that neither she nor Pasdur realized. Apparently. And so we have the cage of snakes and then the lady from Vancouver arrives who is a new character and the lady from Vancouver is possessed. And so Michelle describes Shetty is a corner of the cage as her bathroom and she made a crucifix for herself by pulling out strands of her hair and braiding them together

and then putting poop on it to harden it. So she had a crucifix to protect herself with. Okay. Very summer camp. Summer camp. And also where are they getting these snakes? What types of snakes are they? They're like little black garden snakes. We are told that they're not poisonous snakes. That's a huge step down from dead baby. Michelle, I really think you need. I don't know. I think little kid forced to stay awake for days on end standing up in a cage of snakes is like POW type material. Yeah, but garter snakes don't even bite. Garter snakes are cute. Yeah, I was one of those kids who was always trying to catch garter snakes in the yard. Yeah, me too. Yeah, those were dope. Yeah, because they're great. I know they're really neat.

All right. So she's in the snakes. She's peeing. She's made a crucifix which works great against snakes. Michelle came up from her memories and cried for a long time. Dr. Pazder rubbed her forehead while Michelle cried then asked if she would like to come along while he attended Ash Wednesday services. What? He's inviting her to church with him now? I love how when I read to you the parts of this book that were allegedly interesting and when it was published, you're like, yeah, yeah, skip ahead, more torture is fine. And when I get to like, and then they went to church, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow right down. It's just a further violation of professional ethics. You know what's funny is at this point, like so much bad stuff has happened already. I'm

like, yeah, take her to church. And it says the repeated theme of ashes to ashes, dust to dust, aroused bad memories. And she felt none of the peace that acceptance of death was meant to bring. But it was over quickly. An hour later, she and Dr. Pazder were on the road back to Fort Royal Medical Center. Okay, we're back to the ritual. There's chanting, the possessed woman dances. And then this part is really gross. And kind of the worst sexual abuse thing we're gonna hear. Although it's again, it's like magic, sexual abuse. So basically what Michelle says is that the lady from Vancouver who has a snake like tongue comes over and kisses her once again inappropriately. And then Michelle looks down and sees a snake appearing to crawl out of her vagina.

She says, I think she's put a snake all the way through me. And then we're told that this ends and then Michelle's brought up to the statue where Malachi is. And then we get Malachi turned to a table and revealed another dead baby. And to me, this book could really just be called another dead baby. This is our third dead baby. You're like, okay. Also, I mean, I think the snake coming out of the vagina thing is somewhat important because it's the first thing that has happened to Michelle in one of these memories that is physically impossible. Like locked in a cage of snakes, killing kittens, theoretically could have happened. Snakes don't like a snake cannot go through your body in that way. So we've gone from things that are wildly implausible to things that

are impossible. And again, should have been a red flag for any outside observer to be like, this is not how vaginas work. And things are going to get more and more impossible. As we continue, this is also a turning point. That night, Michelle and Dr. Paster worked until after 11 talking about the things that seemed to distress her most. For the first time, Michelle had telephoned Doug and asked him to come pick her up. That is some cuck shit of like, can you pick me up from my therapist office who I'm like, spending all this time with and then poor fucking Doug has to drive down there in the Prius and like pick her up in the middle of the night. I would love to just read a book called Doug remembers I would pay so much money for that. But while they're

waiting for Doug, Dr. Paster pours some tea for Michelle and says, my mother sent me her old missile. It covers 1954 and 1955. And then he shows her that he's found that in 1955 and 1977, Ash Wednesday, Easter, the Ascension, the Pentecost, Corpus Christi and the first Sunday of Advent have the same dates 22 years apart, which lends credence to their theories that Michelle is living back day for day what happened back then. Therefore, snakes can come out of your vagina without you knowing it. Yes. He says, it's also interesting because it helps us to understand that these people seem to move opposite from the church. At Christmas, instead of a joyous birth, they arranged a death. And for Ash Wednesday, when the church reminds us of our physical

mortality, their focus, though twisted, is on life and children. See? And then he points at the dates and what are you going to say? Like, yes, I see it. I see those dates. Most religions are not invented entirely to own another religion. I'm not aware of any real religions in the world that have that structure. Right. Like, fuck the Buddhists. We're going to be all about desiring things. I don't know of any of those. And also that the point is darkness and death and slaughter and pain. And you're like, so do the Satanists enjoy pain? Do they not like to do fun things? When Doug arrived, Dr. Pazzer told him how much Michelle had gone through in the session. Doug helped her into the car and they started for home. He asked no questions.

So as a reader, I feel like you're supposed to be like that, Doug. He's just not helpful enough. I know. Right after he met her fucking doctor, he finally sees the tennis coach in person. And then he drives home in silence. Like, what is really going on in this scene? Be a great short story. This Doug driving Michelle home at 11 p.m. It's just such a flex, dude. Like, here's your wife back, Doug. Okay, now here is my favorite chapter, chapter 18, because we get a lengthy break from the torture and we get to read Michelle's letter to Dr. Pazzer about their special relationship. And they just, they read it and they're like, let's put this in the book. This would be great.

I cannot emphasize enough that all of the things we're reading here are here because of human choices. Michelle's remembering had become relentless. She and Dr. Pazzer were working daily without respite. One day, while she was remembering, the five-year-old Michelle told him, I don't think there's a son anymore. I haven't seen any for so long. That day, he decided it was essential to take a break. Michelle packed them a lunch. And they drove to the top of a small mountain near Thetis Lake. The wild flowers were blooming and Michelle thought the trillions looked like a flock of little nuns flying low over the ground. At home again that night, Michelle wrote Dr. Pazzer a

letter. I didn't quite understand when he started to talk, but the more we talked, the more it grew. Reflecting now, it doesn't surprise me that we talked of what we did, because the pure and innocent things of the world were all around us, like arrows pointing to the truth. I'm not reading this whole thing. I'm looking for another part of the cup. Thank you. Oh my god. The only way they could have reached me was to love me, but they can't love. So I couldn't be what they wanted me to be. Evil can't exist where there's love. That's what they were trying to destroy. Love is the opposite of hate and evil. Love opposes hate and evil. As long as love exists, the others can't. It's just like Christian Boiler plate. It's just like, oh, it's just like every

tedious sermon that I heard growing up. It's just like, evil is evil and good is good, and defeating evil requires you to be good, and that's it, and it's simplistic. And nobody good ever does anything. Evil and evil is this thing that's really easy to identify, and all you have to do is shine the light of good on it, and it disappears forever. This is the kind of morality that is behind like 99% of moral panics. Like Laura Dern talking about the Robbins and Blue Velvet. I have an allergic reaction to this shit because I grew up with it, but other people, it might not trigger other people the same way that it triggers me. I'm just like, fuck these people, fuck these people, fuck these people, fuck these people, like over and over again in my mind.

Because you feel like the rhetoric is just so ridiculous and tiresome and not connected to anything real. Yeah, just like it's the rhetoric of people that have no interest in how the world works. Is that why you're a journalist? Yeah, it's very, to me, a very harmful and very binary way of thinking. And yet my interest in this passage, I guess, is more rooted in the fact that I feel like she's just talking about her Dr. Paster feelings the whole time. And I quote the line, evil can't exist where there's love. And I feel like that's kind of instructive. She could be being like, evil can't exist where there's love. Gotta love me. It just reads like a love letter to me. Being in love with someone who's like actively harming you, which is again, the kind of thing

that the kind of morality I grew up with is incapable of recognizing. Because he's not evil, so how could he be carrying out harm if his intentions aren't evil? Exactly. Which this whole podcast series, this whole show is like an answer to. This is what we do here. So once again, we have absolutely no transition between that letter and Michelle being stuck inside of a statue of Satan again. Okay. And now we get a new character. He was very tall and he held himself erect the way soldiers do. His eyes were a pale blue. His hair is sort of dark gray. And he had a receding hairline. He had terrible skin, all pitted. And the sharpest nose Michelle had ever seen. He was called the doctor. Oh, it's Dolph Lundgren. Finally. Well, the nose thing,

this is a little tenuous, but I also feel as someone who spends a lot of time looking for anti-semitic dog whistles and satanic panic material, that this is one of those. Oh, we are, as the satanic panic progresses, going to get more and more overt claims about this being in some way a Jewish conspiracy, which certainly fits with the fact that Gentiles have been persecuting Jews based on the accusation that they killed babies for sanctuaries, if not millennia. So we're introduced to this doctor character. And I bet you're going to be able to guess what's happening here. Cloaked strangers assisted as the doctor approached Michelle and did something to her head. She couldn't see what he was doing, but she felt a searing pain at the base of her spine.

Is this the thing you told me about at the beginning where he's attaching horns to her head? Yeah. So she's given horns and a tail. Oh, she's given a tail too? Yeah, a tail. She has a tail also. It'd be great if Ambassador was like, Michelle, just going to stop you there. Just want to call two floors up, going to ask your doctor, Hey, did Michelle have horns and a tail at some point? Because that seems like more important to double check than the car crash. Because that feels like something her pediatrician would have heard about. I also feel like this is like the part of inception where things are just getting really like wobbly and falling over and stuff. Because, you know, in the beginning, it was like Michelle

remembered this. And then she wasn't sure how she got to the graveyard. And that was a little weird. But anyway, and then it continued. And now it just, we're just cutting around. We're just cutting between scenes. It's just like cut. And then they lit a big fire in a corner of the round room. Next to the fire, they assembled a whole collection of crosses, paper ones, wooden ones, crosses made of dead Holly. Michelle saw they had another dead baby. They nailed its little hands and feet to a big wooden cross that they had saved from the fire. I know. It's like fourth dead baby. Gotta think of a new thing. It's just, it's so over the top. You know, it's like a John Waters movie. They have a ritualized birth. They've already used this metaphor. Again, she's like

clearly running out of storylines. And then she whips out the Bible that she's been hiding and rips pages out of it and threw pages in Malachi's face. And she just kind of starts attacking them and she actually attempts to stand up for herself. Hell yeah, Michelle. And then they get a bunch of sticks and they chase her back into the snake cage. They just chase her back in there. Okay. It was a very long time that night after Michelle had surfaced before she could bring herself to talk to Dr. Pazder. She was pale, limp, exhausted. He made tea. There's so much tea in this book. He made tea and held the mug to her lips while he supported her head. Take a sip, he said, you'll feel better. Just a sip. Okay, sure. And so they decide that she's going to be

baptized. Oh. And so on June 24th, Dr. Pazder and Michelle go to the church and while they're there, I love this part so much. So they're sitting there and Dr. Pazder says, did you see that? The sacristy light went way down. Maybe it's burning out. Michelle replied, glancing over at it. And then she tensed. What's that? She exclaimed in a loud whisper. A few feet away was a small wooden bench. Neither of them had ever noticed it in the church before and they would have. It was very out of place in the simple modern decor. Okay. Those symbols Michelle said and Dr. Pazder, looking closer, saw that the bench was carved with ornate designs. His heart skipped a beat. They were precisely the symbols Michelle had described as being sewn on the cloaks of the

inhabitants of the round room. Oh. They never say what kind of symbols they are. They're just the same. That's all we're going to get. Right. I also love the idea of a Catholic church having simple modern decor. And so they show it to the priest and he says, oh my God, what is that doing in here? How did that get here? I know those symbols. We'll get rid of it right away. He snatched up the bench and holding it at arm's length quickly transported it from the church to the grass outside. What should we do with it? Dr. Pazder asked, I can tell you what we'll do with it. Father Guy said, we'll burn it. I wanted him to break it over his knees so bad. Fuck this bench. Like Bane with Batman. I mean, that would honestly be like the 12th least believable thing in this book. So why not?

In preparation, Dr. Pazder and Father Guy knocked the bench apart. Oh, Michelle said, and the others looked at her inquiringly. Don't you see? There are 13 pieces. It's like, why get greedy, Michelle? We've already agreed that there's a bench with Satanist symbols on it in the Catholic church. Do we have to add how many pieces it's in? Your case seems strong enough based on this other thing you've made up. Yeah, just tone it down, Michelle. Not everything has to be on brand. And then as they're getting ready to start the fire, Dr. Pazder said, could you hold on just a couple of minutes? I want to get my camera. Dr. Pazder, during his time as a physician in West Africa, had become fascinated with African ceremonies and had taken countless

photos of them. Many ceremonies involved the burning of juju, little dolls and amulets used in black magic and replacing them with a cross. Oh my God. This is a way of trying to get rid of the animistic beliefs among West Africans in the spirits of the jungle. What? Wait, is he talking about burning the religious objects of West Africans? Yeah, they get glossed right over that. They're like, yeah, I've seen these fires before when we destroyed the talismans of people's religion to try to get them to embrace Christ. Like a super chill thing to do to other people's religious beliefs, like just burn their sacred objects. I mean, we're not the bad guys. That's impossible. Michelle was baptized four days later. And then the day after Michelle was baptized,

Dr. Pazder picks up his prints and film from the photo lab. He looks at them and there was father sprinkling holy water on the fire and there was the fire itself, those eerie, leaping flames. But in the background, what was that? That figure beyond the fire. It seemed to be dressed in a long flowing gown. And there was a glow around the head. Dr. Pazder showed Michelle the photographs when she arrived at his office that afternoon. She smiled at the picture of Fratigaya sprinkling holy water and she gasped when she came to the first photograph with the misty figure in the background. They took the pictures to Father Guy. He studied them silently. His mother, quite an old woman who lived with him, picked them up and looked at them. She stopped at a photo

of the figure. Yes, she said after a time, that's Mary with the child. What the fuck? Yes, it's the virgin Mary. The virgin Mary is in the pictures. Wait, really? Yeah. Like the toast? Yes, like the toast. I mean, to be fair, she's known for appearing in random places. That's like kind of her thing. That's her thing. So she's putting in an appearance. Are the pictures included in the book? Oh yeah. Do you want to see them? Yeah, can you show it to me? So I'll read you the description. Dr. Pazder, an experienced photographer, took these three extraordinary photos. They seemed to show that as Father Guy left, led the service, a glowing presence appeared beyond him, moved slowly across the grass behind the fire and came to Michelle's side. So we're

actually looking for this little kind of faint white or like grayish kind of smoky presence. Oh, that thing. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's just like a little, it's just like a little wisp of smoke, I guess, that's like kind of in the shape of like Casper or something. Oh yeah, there it is. Yeah, okay, it's like a wisp of smoke. I don't know if it's smoke, but like, I think there's a lot of possibilities here. You mean other than the fact that? Other than the virgin Mary. I think there's like alternate hypotheses available to us. Chapter 20. On June 30, which is like two days after her baptism, Michelle called Dr. Pazder. For the past days, she said she'd been afflicted by strange, distressing urges.

She felt a repeated impulse to get in the car and drive somewhere she didn't know where. And then an hour later, she abruptly arrived at his office without an appointment, very upset. I don't want to continue this remembering, she said, I'm not going to do it anymore. Ooh, good. I wish I didn't even have a tongue. If I could tear out my tongue, I'd never have to talk again. Book over. So, okay, let's do like Dr. Pazder, choose your own adventure. You've been doing this therapy with your client. Right. And now, for the second time, she's showed up now, not even for an appointment, just like randomly, and is like, we can't do this anymore. Like I would rather cut my own tongue out than continue

describing these things. What do you do? First of all, I think about my home life, my terrible wife who never calls me live, my horrible children. Do you think they're lying in bed and he's like, please call me live? And she's like, no. I mean, she's the goose that laid the golden egg. He's convinced that he is doing this extremely important, extremely innovative psychological work that no one has ever done before. He thinks he is on this journey and she is the instrument of his journey. And so if she bows out, it's like writing a long form magazine article and all of a sudden your main source is like, I don't want to do this anymore. Like you have every incentive to cajole them into continuing.

I was going to say it's like writing a horse who's like, I'm played out. I can't go on. And you're like, no, you're my horse. You have to do it. So given what we know about his execrable ethics so far, I'm sure that he pressures her into continuing by being like, you were so innocent and you're so beautiful. And let me stroke your cheek while I tell you how important this is. I'm sure he does all those things and he also, you know, because the stakes are mounting and she's once again like, please let's stop. He whips out a new tactic. So Dr. Pasder knew that the Satanists had used sophisticated techniques of psychological manipulation to try to inhibit Michelle, not merely to make her forget, but if she should

remember to make her not tell. It was undoubtedly this extreme difficulty that she was reflecting in her refusal to continue. Well played, Dr. Pasder. The reason she's not coming forward is because the Satanists brainwashed her into not wanting to talk about it. Bishop to King's Rook seven. I don't know if that's a real chess thing. It sounds real. And perhaps there was more to it than that. A dreadful memory was coming up. He sensed undoubtedly the unbearably horrible memory that had impelled Michelle to seek spiritual armor from the church. The climax. Such mind control techniques had unbelievable power. He knew in Africa he had seen the influence of Fuji dolls. If a person believed in Fuji, the dolls could be used to make that person roll over and

die. I like how in his worldview, Satanism is real, but also voodoo is real. It's really a grab bag. Again, we're getting in Indiana Jones kind of a universe here where like all religions are real. Now Pasder told Michelle that it was desperately important that she not yield to the Satanist suggestions. And then he did something he very rarely did with a patient. He commanded her to continue the next day after a two-week hiatus. They resumed their sessions. This book was published. This book was read by millions of people and no one raised a red flag. It's kind of weird to force a patient to continue with therapy that is harming them. And where they're like, I need to stop. I hate this. I would rather tear out my tongue than

keep describing these things. And you're like, nope, you have to. What does it mean for an adult to command another adult to do something? That's not good. And also there's like a monetary thing happening too because we know that he's still being paid by her. Yeah, she's paying him for this. Like my hairdresser doesn't get to do that. Like, no, Mike, you really need a haircut. You have to come back in two weeks. Like that's not how these relationships are supposed to work. I mean, also you might remember from our multiple personality disorder episode that something very similar happened with Dr. Cornelia Wolber and the woman who inspired the book Sybil. Do you remember this? Yeah, that didn't she move in with

her doctor eventually? Like this became the central relationship of her life. Yeah. But also that there was specifically a point when she came to her after they had started doing this therapy based on the idea that Shirley had alters, that she had these alternate personalities that she would slip into without realizing it. And she would lose time and stuff like that. And she wrote this letter to Dr. Wolber that she gave to her, you know, in great distress and was like, I'm in a level with you. I don't have multiple personalities. It's not something that I have no control over, but like I did it once and you thought it was really interesting. And you gave me all this positive reinforcement and just I have to stop. I have to put a stop to this. Like,

this isn't good for me. And like, you know, she's the one with no power and she's the one who's doing the courageous thing. Yeah. And Dr. Wolber reads it and is like, you didn't write this, one of your alters wrote this, this is proof that we're getting too close to the truth and we have to continue. Like in both cases, it's like the fact that you're telling me to stop means that I have to continue. I don't think I have to verbalize what that feels very similar to. Right. Right. No means more hypnosis. Right. And it's not even like the lack of evidence as evidence. It's like, I'm telling you, I'm the one producing the evidence and I am no longer comfortable with the process by which I am producing the evidence. And you're saying that is further evidence that

you're telling the truth. Yeah. Which is again, setting the tone for the way that therapists and social workers are going to deal with patients for, you know, the coming years. Like this is all setting the template and it's a bad template. Because basically what is the scenario under which I, a doctor would say, you know what, let's drop this. Right. Like you can't stop the process. You can't tell me you were lying. You can't tell me that this is harming you. None of those things are sufficient for us to end it. So what will end it? Right. Like she would basically have to like, she and Doug would have to like pack up their car and flee in the night. And like she does not seem to be fond enough of Doug at this point for that to happen. Yeah. Like there's no way out of it.

It's like when someone won't let you break up with them. Right. But they're your therapist. It's bad. Like this is a horror movie. This is like how the scariest thing about Rosemary's baby is not the Satanist, but the fact that it takes place in a time in America where women were kept in the dark completely about what was going on with them medically. Right. About their own pregnancies and that we're living in this world where it's totally plausible that she would have no control and get no information about anything pertaining to her own body and that her husband and her nosy neighbors are like totally taking charge of her life. Like it's the same thing. She has no, she can't stop this. Right. It's a little bit like, you know, the Tuskegee

experiments famously where they infected black men with syphilis and basically gave them no treatment like to see what happened. I mean, we need to do an episode on this eventually, but one of the most child details about that is that the results of those studies were being published in medical journals for decades. Oh my God. It's like, here's what's happening with the black guys we infected with syphilis. Like this one went crazy. Yeah. That's interesting. And people read these medical journals and were just like, huh, interesting update. Thanks, Bob. And it's the same thing here where it's like people are just reading this book like, oh, okay, I guess she was forced to go along with her therapy that she clearly wasn't comfortable with anymore. Because of the way

the Satanist programmed her. It's like, wow, these Satanists really were crafty and that's the moral of this story. Right. Well, like, yeah, that you read it and you're like, wow, this experiment done on this woman has taught me so much useful data about Satanism. And it's like, I don't know if that's the point. So this is a good place to wrap up because we have reached another crucial moment in the story where Michelle is actively trying to get out. Yes, full on coercion. This is like the part in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre where you escape the house full of cannibals and you get to the barbecue joint down the road. Yay. And surprise. I like this kind of pattern we've ended up in where we're reading the book in kind of the opposite way that it's supposed to be read,

where we're supposed to be feeling like Michelle's in the snake cage. Michelle's stuck in the effigy with the pieces of another dead baby. How is she going to escape these Satanists? And in the story, as I'm reading it, it's like, how is she going to escape this torturous therapy that she's stuck in and that Dr. Pazder will not let her escape? And how is Sarah's return to graduate school going to go? No, I just want to keep reading books to you. So yeah, so we will see you next week and... Don't get too sunburned.