Similar events appear in annals and news reports from all over the world. They’re all born of a similar root: the idea, or the fear, that in every community there are individuals or groups of people leading double lives, lacking all sense of good, who are ready to commit atrocities in the name of absolute evil. Hooded men and women who operate in the dark. Animal sacrifices, especially of cats. Blood-drinking rituals. Black Masses in cemeteries featuring the exhumation of corpses. Sexual violence. Murder. Cannibalism. The same elements that recur in medieval accounts show up in popular movies and TV shows today. Satanism is always there, the eternal anti-Christian threat that celebrates the angel who defied God in the Apocalypse.
