The popular perception of Millennials as culturally bankrupt philistines incapable of making anything useful doesn’t give them a fair shake. Braving the dank bowels of the web reveals that the extremely online generation has pioneered a new art form: the sharing of spook stories through formularized posts. This medium has developed its own rules and customs. Think of it as sharing digital campfire tales.
Now, Zoomers have taken their elders’ art form and adapted it for the post-literate age. Searching YouTube for “creepypasta” and “greentext stories” will turn up post-Ground Zero folklore adapted into video format with the help of text-to-speech software.
Sturgeon’s rule about the quality of any medium’s content holds true here. Spend a few idle hours wading through 4chan /x/ thread narrations, and you’ll find no shortage of spooky stories featuring such classic horrors as glowing orbs, women being forced to interact with unattractive men, and deer.
Within the other 10 percent, though, you’ll find some buried gems.
One recent creepy video took the novel approach of presenting, not a Reddit skinwalker thread, but government case files that tie into the most-read post on this blog.
Make sure you’re alone and have good OpSec, and watch Chass’ presentation of “The Finders: Behind the Suits and Secrecy”.
Steel yourself and watch it now:
Some highlights from the FBI files:
The police had received an anonymous telephone call (relating to) two well-dressed white men wearing suits and ties in Myers Park, (Tallahassee), apparently watching six dirty and unkempt children in the playground area. HOULTHAN and AMMERMAN were near a 1980 Blue Dodge van bearing Virginia license number XHW-557, the inside of which was later described as foul-smelling, filled with maps, books, letters, and with a mattress situated to the rear of the van which appeared as if it were being used as a bed, and the overall appearance gave the impression that all eight persons were living in it.
A short time later, this office was contacted by Detective Ji Bradley of the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. Bradley indicated that the case here in Tallahassee appeared to be strongly related to a case he was currently working on in the Washington D.C. area.
He stated that the actions of the two men in custody in Tallahassee, along with the children, just might give his case enough probable cause for search warrants to serch premises occupied by a cult group called the FINDERS.
Upon contacting Detective Bradley, I learned that he had initiated an investigation on the two addresses provided by the Tallahassee Police Dept. during December of 1985. An informant had given him information regarding a cult, known as the “Finders” operating various businesses out of a warehouse located at 1307 4th St., N.E., and were supposed to be housing children at 3918/3920 W St., N.W. The informant was specific in describing “blood rituals” and sexual orgies involving children, and an as-of-yet unsolved murder in which the Finders may be involved.
Not observed by me, but relayed by an MPD officer, were intelligence files on private families who weren’t related to the Finders. The process undertaken appears to have been a systematic response to local newspaper advertisements for babysitters, tutors, etc. A member of the Finders would respond (to those ads), and gather as much information as possible about the habits, identity, occupation, etc. of the family. The usage of this information is still unknown.
The individual further advised me of circumstances which indicated the the investigation into the activity of the Finders had become a CIA internal matter. The MPD report has been classified as secret and was not available for review. I was advised that the FBI had withdrawn from the investigation several weeks prior, and that the FBI Foreign Counter Intelligence Division had directed MPD not to advise the FBI Washington Field of anything that has transpired. No further information will be made available. No further action will be taken.
“A kick in the pants to those who are still drifting along, sedated by nostalgia”
WE GOTTA FIND…WE GOTTA FIND
Really hoping Jim gets on Cozy TV.
What is amazing is how even a little research into any of this proves just how full of it the “Satanic Panic” nonsense actually was, but no one will even do that much.
Be sure to look up the Apollo’s Artifacts channel on Bitchute or YouTube if you want to know just how fake the whole thing is and look up his Satanic Panic Reconsidered series. He really goes into it. Literally everyone involved has ties with glowies and dyed in the wool sex freaks. It is completely uncanny and almost cartoonish, yet it’s real.
At this point if you’re still hashing out those “everybody knows it was fake” tropes it’s just assumed you either aren’t paying attention or are a fed yourself.
I’m still skeptical about the D&D connection, at least in the earliest days of the game … but I’m willing to believe that a) a lot of people used the game to groom potential victims/initiates, b) someone might have tried to co-opt Gygax during his time in Hollywood, and c) some of the other strands of the hobby might bear investigation. Greg Stafford was at most one step removed from Marion Zimmer Bradley.
The D&D connection can be traced to Dallas Egbert III, a gay, 16 year old college student who ran off with his gay ‘friends’ to hide from his parents. A detective on the scene declared he had gone into the steam tunnels to play Dungeons and Dragons. He was found not in the steam tunnels and not playing D&D, but his mom still blamed D&D for the whole things, including his eventual suicide.
The fact that it’s the only specific incident and tangible connection that wasn’t ‘deboonked’ and instead allowed to run rampant should be enough proof that it was fake and gay, possibly even co-opted to take attention off the Finders.
Our crooked elites love this tactic. When some of their lower-level stooges like Houlthan and Ammerman slip up and spook the normies, their handlers have the MSM bag men flood the zone with red herrings.
The real Satanism scare of the 80s always centered around ritual abuse of kids at daycare centers and schools. Making Joe and Jane Boomer associate Satanism with nerds rolling d20s in the basement and metalheads playing LPs backwards was noise broadcast to jam the signal. QAnon, the false flag at Comet Ping Pong, and all of Con Inc. are applications of the same tactic.
This is how things like rock music were ruined. How can a musical style powered by blues, gospel, and country, all three of which are distinctly Christian musical styles, be satanic?
But they sure did attract the degenerates and repel the religious by framing it that way, didn’t they?
Liberalism–and that includes Classical Liberalism–is an autoimmune disease that destroyed Western Christianity’s resistance to parasitic infection.
Well, I don’t know if this is quite what you had in mind by “other strains of the hobby”, but White Wolf has been woke long before being woke was even known outside of fringe academic circles. The older Vampire the Masquerade and Werewolf the Apocalypse books are full of explicitly anti-Christian drek, especially the initial supplement about the Furies, which explicitly states that the Abrahamic God was made up to oppress women or something.
Also, a bit of a tangent, but while we’re talking about actively immoral gaming, I should mention Shin Megami Tensei, which I once heard snappily described as “what your Fundamentalist Mom thought Pokémon was”. In other words, a series where you actively tame demons, and God (explicitly the Abrahamic God) is nearly always portrayed as an evil superfascist who wants to destroy all human freedom or some nonsense. Lucifer is also nearly always portrayed at least somewhat positively, and while admittedly he’s not always a good guy, he is sometimes portrayed that way. Garbage that I’m glad didn’t get popular in the West (until the spinoff “Persona” series, at least, which removes most of the overt demonic messaging and is at least somewhat better, albeit still drenched in dangerous nonsense.).
Oh, White Wolf has been progressive from the beginning, but I was thinking of the older California crowd that founded things like Chaosium and included folks like Greg Stafford and Isaac “Authentic Thaumaturgy” Bonewitz, and who again have been linked to the early SCA and the rotten strain of fandom.
I’ve heard mention of the Shin Megami Tensei series, but never knew anything about it. But JRPG handling of religion could be a whole series of posts for someone with the time and inclination. I stayed away from the worse examples, although I watched my best friend in college play parts of Xenogears …
White Wolf is an odd and fascinating case. Their original team was rife with edgy goths, who though Leftists, mostly came off as garden variety Gen X liberals. Transport them from 1991 to Current Year, and they’d look like Paleocons.
Vampire: The Masquerade creator Mark Rein-Hagen, the son of a Lutheran minister, has stated that he wanted to make a game about religion. He doesn’t shy away from confirming that vampires originate from the biblical Cain and his divinely laid curse.
It’s the World of Darkness’ other Four Paradigms that muddy the waters. Werewolf, which includes the Black Furies, is explicitly pagan. Mage has a weird consensual reality concept, but at least one Tradition is theistic. Wraith posits that what most of the dead call heaven and hell are shams, but holds out the possibility that the real heaven and hell require ghosts to finish their earthly business to reach.
As a Storyteller, my ruling is that Vampire came first, so its lore is correct, and everybody else is wrong.
I do wonder how much influence Jonathan Tweet, co-author of the original Ars Magica with Mark Rein-Hagen, had on the latter. Tweet is an outspoken atheist who has used some of his games to fundraise for Planned Parenthood. Tweet also led design on D&D 3E, with the intent of making it ‘more D&D’ and disconnecting it from his folklore and literary roots. Another one of those original partners was Lisa Stevens, founder and owner of Paizo.
The impression I got from oWoD is that it was intentionally contradictory. The Shadow Lords book even directly contradicts itself (i.e. “here is the history of the tribe or maybe THIS is the history of the tribe.”) I think Rasputin ended up getting something like eight different contradictory supernatural origins by the end.
They never explicitly said it, but my takeaway was that the storyteller was suppose to take whatever elements he liked and throw away the rest.
“The impression I got from oWoD is that it was intentionally contradictory.”
That’s my impression as well. I must admit that the ambiguity and tensions in vampire lore appeal to the scripture scholar in me. Seen as the mytho-historical origin story of a fictional people, the Book of Nod is surprisingly competent.
If I recall correctly, isn’t the contradictory nature of the settings and lore also a big part of the reason why oWoD practically never had any kind of crossovers between systems? Werewolves could appear in Vampire but they were nearly-unstoppable killing machines on par with a Tarrasque, Mages could theoretically transform Vampires into chairs since they’re technically unliving matter, etc.
As an aside, for an RPG that slides more towards Christ, I’d recommend Deadlands (the original “Deadlands Classic”, though, not any of the relaunches, especially not the most recent 2021 one). Set in an alternate 1870s with the American Civil War stalemated and ongoing, it’s notable for having one of (and arguably the strongest) magic-using class be the Blessed, who are explicitly stated by one of the creators to be like “Bible Heroes” such as Elijah or Moses. While they can technically be of a number of religions, they’re clearly most natural as Christian holy men, and nearly all of the fiction and material concerning them seems to assume that. They have to actually abide by their religion’s tenets in order to keep their powers, with more serious sins resulting in more severe penalties, AND the penalties for Sinnin’ grow more severe the more power and Faith your Blessed has (after all, those most specially blessed should be held to a higher standard, not get off easier!). The miracles you can pull off are also typically Biblically-inspired, rather than generic – you can calm animals with Lion’s Den, you can multiply food á la the Loaves and Fishes, and when you pull out the big guns you can even call down a Biblical Plague upon a town, though that requires you to spend an entire day preaching repentance to the town in public first, and allows you to exempt certain members or areas of the town from the plague, such as by having them paint a sign in lamb’s blood over their doorposts.
WoD can handle crossovers just fine as long as the Storyteller does his homework.
The thing to understand is that each type of monster basically uses the same advancement mechanic–it’s just that each starts at a different point on the sliding scale.
I refer to Kindred as the Worf of WoD. The flavor text builds them up as undead alpha predators against which ordinary humans have no chance. But that makes them the prison yard tough guy everybody else has to beat up day 1 to earn street cred.
That said, WoD is not a combat-centric system. If your character is in a direct physical confrontation, something’s gone wrong.
Garou are easy mode for jocks who play bog standard fighters in D&D. They’re the one race that’s built to wade into melee combat. So yeah, a starting-level Garou will shred a 13th gen Kindred 1-on-1.
An 8th gen Lasombra with a silvered cane sword is another matter entirely. He’ll bind wolfie’s legs in shadow tentacles, stand back, hold out his blade, and let the frenzied brute sever its own paws on it.
Or you could do like a Malkavian player I know who made a habit of collecting pre-1965 dimes. When he’d accumulated a good handful, he’d grind them down and keep the powder in a pouch he kept on him for easy blowing.
Some people–even Kindred like Therese Voerman–will tell you Wraiths pose no danger to vampires. This is false. A Puppeteer and a few members of his guild can wait till sunrise, then take turns attempting to possess the slumbering Kindred’s body. The law of large numbers says they’ll succeed before nightfall. The first one who does takes a skinride out into the daylight. At 3 auto ag damage per round, not even an elder will last long.