It’s not entirely wrong to say that the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s started with the publication of a “shocking true story” called Michelle Remembers. The book, purporting to be a memoir of therapy sessions between the titular Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist-turned-husband ­Dr. Lawrence Pazder, was the first “satanic ritual abuse survivor” story and arguably became the template for many others. The story details how, during therapy with Pazder over a fourteen-month period between 1976 and 1977, Smith “recovered” repressed memories of childhood abuse by a cult of devil worshippers in 1960s Vancouver. When Pazder presented the book for publication, it generated immediate interest, and the couple was offered a “$100,000 hard-cover advance, $242,000 for paperback rights, royalties, and a potential movie deal” (Grescoe 1980). Soon, daytime television talk-shows were featuring alleged survivors as well as self-proclaimed experts on Satanism talking about the danger of the occult and devil worship.  People who were accused had their reputations destroyed or went to jail, and people who came to believe they had been victims were traumatized by their experiences. Now, several decades later, the story of Michelle Remembers and the fear and anxiety that the Pazders unleashed is the subject of a newly released documentary film Satan Wants You.

The Devil Went Down to Vancouver

Lawrence Pazder began treating Michelle Smith in 1973. The two apparently developed a close enough relationship that Pazder attended Smith’s wedding to her first husband, Doug Smith. Later, in 1976, Smith started seeing Pazder again for depression after having suffered a miscarriage. Over the course of fourteen months of therapy, Smith went into hypnotic trances wherein she regressed to being a child and began to “recover” repressed memories of what Pazder would later call satanic ritual abuse (SRA).

According to Smith and Pazder, when Smith was just five years old, between the years of 1954 and 1955, Smith’s mother turned her over to a satanic cult called the Church of Satan (which, according to Pazder, predated the Catholic Church), and Smith was physically, sexually, and psychologically abused. She was forced to watch and participate in human and animal sacrifice and eat and drink feces and urine, and she was buried alive in Victoria’s Ross Bay Cemetery. Finally, the abuse culminated in an eighty-one-day ritual known as the “Feast of the Beast” where Satan himself appeared, speaking in Dr. Seuss-esque rhyme, before the Virgin Mary herself intervened to kick the devil’s ass and free Smith from Beelzebondage.

A Legacy of Lies

Little to no evidence is presented by either Pazder or Smith to substantiate their claims. A few low-quality, black-and-white photographs are included in the book, which, allegedly, show the visage of Satan appearing in smoke—which psychologist and skeptics easily recognize as pareidolia—and a mark left on Smith’s arm that supposedly appeared after she remembered Satan touched her. Other than that, the truth or falsity of the story rests entirely on Smith’s testimony.

There are many good reasons for doubting Michelle Remembers. First, there is firsthand testimony from family and friends of Smith who deny she was abused. In October 1980, investigative journalist Paul Grescoe wrote an article for Canadian news magazine Maclean’s in which he interviewed Smith’s father, Jack Proby, who denied the allegations. Debbie Nathan (who appears in Satan Wants You) and Michael Snedeker, authors of the 1995 book Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch-Hunt, note a complete lack of police reports despite the fact that the book makes reference to the police being called to the Proby house and Smith having been involved in a car accident orchestrated by the satanists.

In Satan Wants You, filmmakers Sean Horlor and Steve Adams interviewed Charyl Proby-Austman, Michelle Smith’s younger sister, who also denied any such abuse took place and revealed that Smith’s accusations created an uncomfortable rift in the family. Horlor and Adams also spoke with Lawrence Pazder’s first wife, Marylyn, and his daughter, Theresa, who explain how Smith and Pazder’s burgeoning relationship led to his and Marylyn’s divorce and led to Pazder growing emotionally distant from his children. Most significantly, Marylyn provides further evidence that the events of Michelle Remembers couldn’t possibly have happened and that the Catholic Church (of which Pazder was a devout member) had a vested interest in promoting the book as factual. Through never-before-heard recorded phone calls between Marylyn and Bishop Remi De Roo, the film Satan Wants You reveals that the Catholic Church was eager to finance the book’s publication and promotional tour, believing that it would inspire people to go back to church. Marylyn and Theresa were also able to recover Smith’s elementary school yearbook, confirming that during the eighty-one days that she claimed to have been captive and horribly abused by Satanists, she in fact attended school.

Backlash against Michelle Remembers didn’t just come from Smith’s and Pazder’s families. Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan were quick to bring a defamation suit against Pazder and the publisher, alleging that “the book was defamatory, libelous and had resulted in a loss of reputation.” Wanda Slattery, a witch in the Church of Satan, called the whole thing “poppycock” and stated, “I cannot believe this story got past an editor’s desk.” Blanche Barton, Magistra in the Church of Satan and Anton LaVey’s lover and confidant, explains: “One of the things LaVey was particularly miffed about is how Michelle Remembers was marketed as a supposedly true story, but was so chockful of things which Satanism isn’t” (Barton 2023). 

As defendants, Pazder and his team offered several contradictory rebuttals to LaVey’s allegations: the defendants claimed Pazder had never heard of Anton LaVey (despite passing himself off as a well-read expert on the occult and satanism), denied that Anton LaVey could suffer a loss of reputation because he was, by his own admission, a Satanist and celebrity (and therefore libel-proof), and argued that, despite the aggressive marketing of the book as “based on a true story,” the contents of the book were instead based on Smith’s memories recalled while under hypnosis and, therefore, not necessarily true.

For his part, Lavey stated unequivocally in his affidavit:

I find it inconceivable that any expert in the field of occult or religion would have been ignorant of my existence relative to the Church of Satan. Such acknowledged experts as Marcello Truzzi, Michael Harner, Edward J. Moody, Randall Alfred, John A. Ferro, Clara Livesy, Father John Nicola, Ellic Howe, Francis King, Colin Wilson … are known to practically anyone interested in the related subjects of religion, anthropology, sociology, psychology and the occult, and have a good understanding of what the Church of Satan and I represent.

Through my own writings and interviews, as well as through other media, I have made it clear that practices such as those portrayed in the book Michelle Remembers are antithetical to the Church of Satan. Nothing is more repugnant to me, nor more dichotomous to the Satanic philosophy than the abuse of children and animals; these innocent creatures are in fact revered by the Church of Satan for their innate purity of spirit and lack of hypocrisy. For us to harm a child or animal, physically, emotionally or mentally, is unthinkable. The heinous acts attributed to the Church of Satan by Michelle Remembers are profoundly misleading and damaging to the Church of Satan, my wife Diane … and myself as its leader. We feel defamed and feel we have all been put in a false light.

While the words “Church of Satan” were removed from later reprints of Michelle Remembers, the damage was already done. Over thirty years later, Satanists still must explain to the ill-informed that we don’t hurt either animals or babies.

The Best Friend the Church Has Ever Had

Michelle Remembers made Lawrence and Michelle Pazder a lot of money, and the industry the book helped create for ex-Satanists, satanic ritual abuse survivors, and experts on Satanism escalated insurance claims into the millions of dollars. Evangelicals and proselytizers such as Mike Warnke, Jack Chick, and Bob Larson created entire (lucrative) ministries based on the idea of fighting devil worshippers. Pazder and Smith went on to serve as “consultants” on the infamous McMartin Preschool trial between 1987 and 1990. Pazder toured the country as a member of the Cult Crime Impact Network giving seminars to law enforcement. Cops would attend these seminars and then go on to pass themselves off as experts in the occult. As Blanche Barton, Magistra in the Church of Satan, explains in Satan Wants You: “We called them ‘cops for Christ,’ people who had their own agenda and created these materials and presented them as actual, scientific, confirmed fact” (Barton 2023). Pazder and Smith made various appearances on daytime talk shows, including The Oprah Winfrey Show and Geraldo Rivera, discussing the dangers of Satanic cults. As media interest in the Satanic Panic died down (and insurance companies became less and less willing to pay out for claims of satanic ritual abuse), Pazder slipped into obscurity and died of heart failure in 2004. Michelle Pazder is still alive and, according to her sister, has never recanted or acknowledged her story as false. Horlor and Adams reached out to her twice before she refused to participate in filming.

The legacy of Michelle Remembers is further reaching and longer lasting than interest in the book. People still debate whether or not memories of childhood trauma can be repressed. Memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus (who appears in the film) is one of the most outspoken skeptics. People who were imprisoned because of accusations of satanic ritual abuse, most famously Dan and Fran Keller, who spent twenty-one years behind bars, and Melvin Quinney, who served eight years behind bars and had to register as a sex offender for thirty years, have only recently been released from jail (as in the case of Dan and Fran Keller, who were freed in 2017) or exonerated (Melvin Quinney was exonerated in 2023).

The legacy of Michelle Remembers and the Satanic Panic it helped create persists in other ways as well. For example, the Hampstead Hoax in 2014, Pizzagate in 2016, or the more recent case of eleven people in Glasgow “accused [of] taking part in a child sex ring also allegedly involving witchcraft, serious violence and neglect.” Perhaps the most obvious example, however, is the conspiracy theory known as QAnon, which has been thoroughly discussed by Jeffrey S. Victor and Stuart Vyse. While the people who genuinely believe in QAnon and other such conspiracy theories remain in the minority (albeit a vocal and violent one), nearly one in four accept at least some of the core QAnon beliefs. More than anything, what QAnon demonstrates is the persistence of conspiracy theories over time and reminds us that no matter how much critical thinking and careful investigation might cast reasonable doubt on the belief that Satanists are dangerous child abusers, people who truly believe will continue try to warn and influence new believers. The work of the scientific skeptic is never done.

References

Barton, Blanche. 2003. Quoted in Satan Wants You, directed by Sean Horlor and Steve Adams, Nootka St. Film Company.

Grescoe, Paul. 1980. Things that go bump in Victoria. Maclean’s (October 27).