Customer Reviews

Michelle Remembers

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I bought this book because it seemed like the catalyst for the entire SRA phenomenon that began with it's publication. I could only read about 140 pages into it before becoming completely disgusted with it's portrayal of a woman's disturbed confabulations under hypnosis as truth. Other than the blatant instances of contradiction (such as Michelle having no religious upbringing, which factually isn't true, but yet she "knew" that a bible and crucifix were "good & powerful") there's HUGE flights of fancy (she actually SEES the devil himself). It's no small wonder that when she and the good doctor give no factual correberation to back up their tall tale, that it would be completely disproved 10 years after its publication as a FAKE. How is it you may ask that "thousands" of satanists go unnoticed in Canada, especially when they're all missing the middle fingers on their left hands? Good queston. Other great "facts" the book tells about satanists include this little snippet from page 127:

Michelle-"You mean they've been together for a while? But who could they be? It's hard to believe that people could carry on like that right here in Victoria."
DrPazder-"The only group I know of that fits your description is The Church of Satan."
Michelle-"My God, you mean, like Satanists?"
DrPazder-"Yes, exactly."
Michelle-"You know, I never quite believed they really existed."
DrPazder-"Well, they do. There's a lot in the psychiatric literature about them. Most people think they're strictly Dark Ages, but the fact is, The Church of Satan is a worldwide organization. It's actually older than the Christan Church. And one of the areas they're known to be active is the Pacific Northwest."

As anyone who takes 5 minutes to do a web search (or even consult common sense) knows, the "Church of Satan" was founded in or around 1969-1970 by Anton LaVey in San Francisco, they have a membership estimated at around 5,000 - 7,500. Predating them, and this is a stretch, would be the Hellfire Clubs of the 1700's, which were more of fraternal social clubs than anything devoted to "devil worship". As a matter of fact, only one modern day "Satanist" group even believes in the "Devil" as an entity, that being the Temple of Set, founded in 1985, or thereabout. Last time I checked, (and my Christian Brother teacher's from High School can correct me on this if I'm wrong) none of those, or any other "satanist" group predates the christian church. Dr.

Pazder IMPLANTED these suggestions in Michelle's mind during "therapy". He admits in the book the "remarkable similarity" of the rituals she describes and one's he witnessed in Africa earlier. The use of the word "God" by Michelle in the whole book, both as an adult, and speaking in her "child voice" is telling for someone who "was devoid of any religious upbringing." These are just SOME of the awful inconsistincies revealed in 140 pages of a 334 page book. I won't even go into the "devil drawings" or other nonsense presented as fact.

For those of you seeking a good horror story, look elsewhere. The writing is pedestrian and mundane, the style leaves MUCH to be desired, and the plot is predictable to say the least.
Bottom Line? - Horrible as fiction, dangerous religious propaganda as truth!

The author himself has denounced the work as untrue. It was this book which started the SRA panic of the eighties which destroyed the lives many innocent people. SRA is an urban legend now attributed to false memory syndrome, and to continue its propagation is folly. If as many people as these myths state have been victims of SRA were in existence, half of the US would have MPD. As it stands now, the psychiatric field is questioning the existence of MPD at all! Only the staunchest Fundamentalists still believe in it. How many more people must be persecuted because of ignorance and lies?

You would have little reason to purchase or read this book, unless you were researching the origins of the "satanic panic" which convulsed the world in the 1980's and 1990's, as I was doing.The following information from Wikipedia is far more detailed and eloquent than I could provide.
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The Mail on Sunday newspaper conducted a two week investigation into the claims made in Michelle Remembers and found that other than Pazder and Smith, the people they interviewed described the events in Michelle Remembers as "the hysterical ravings of an uncontrolled imagination". In an interview with Jack Proby, Proby cited (as an example) "three specific points where ... Michelle lied" in Michelle Remembers. Proby indicated that although he decided not to sue, he did file a Notice of Intent to sue against the book's publisher should they go beyond the literary contract thereby preventing the book from being made into a movie. The Mail on Sunday also interviewed the Smith's childhood family doctor: "I believe it was ... an over-active imagination."; former neighbors of the Probys: "I dismissed the book as crazy. The mother was a nice, gracious lady. A little girl could not have been tortured without someone hearing."; a former childhood friend of Smith: "Virginia was like a second mother to me. I certainly never had a bad feeling about her."; and her ex-husband: "Not once during their marriage or the birth of their daughter did Michelle ever mention her experience".

The Mail on Sunday reported that the local Catholic Church and Bishop Remi De Roo were also attempting to distance themselves from the claims in Michelle Remembers: "He [De Roo] wants to distance himself from these people. More than ten years ago he asked the couple to provide him with details, but they never supplied all the information he required." The Mail on Sunday also reported the Royal Canadian Mounted Police stated that there had never been a single prosecution in Victoria for satanic practices. During the interview, Pazder was questioned about the truth of the claims in the book:

" [The Mail on Sunday] asked Pazder: "Does it matter if it was true, or is the fact that Michelle believed it happened to her the most important thing?"
He replied: "Yes, that's right. It is a real experience. If you talk to Michelle today, she will say, 'That's what I remember.' We still leave the question open. For her it was very real. Every case I hear I have skepticism. You have to complete a long course of therapy before you can come to conclusions. We are all eager to prove or disprove what happened, but in the end it doesn't matter."
"

A 1995 book found further inconsistencies in Smith's allegations; the authors found no newspaper record of the car crash that the book describes in the time frame described despite the fact that the local newspaper reported on all vehicle accidents at the time. Former neighbours, teachers and friends were interviewed and yearbooks from Smith's elementary school were reviewed and found no indication of Smith being absent from school or missing for lengthy periods time, including the alleged 81-day non-stop ceremony. Ultimately the book's authors were unable to find anyone who knew Smith in the 1950s who could corroborate any of the details in her allegations.

A 2002 article by Kerr Cuhulain not only explored the inconsistencies in Smith's allegations, but also the unlikely nature of her allegations. Among other things, Cuhulain noted that it seemed unlikely that a sophisticated cult that had secretly existed for generations could be outwitted by a five year old; that the cult could hold rituals in the Ross Bay Cemetery unnoticed given that Smith claimed she was screaming and given that the Ross Bay Cemetery is surrounded on three sides by residential neighborhoods; that an 81-day non-stop ceremony involving hundreds of participants and a massive round room could have gone on in Victoria unnoticed; and that none of Smith's tormentors (other than her mother) have ever been identified especially given that some of them had cut off one of their middle fingers at the Black Mass. Like other authors Cuhulain also noted that many of Smith's recovered memories appear to have reflected elements in popular culture at the time (e.g.: the movie The Exorcist) and Pazder's own religious beliefs and experiences from when he was living and working in Africa in the early 1960s. Finally Cuhulain hypothesizes that Smith's motivation for making the allegations may have come from her desire to spend time with Pazder; though both were initially married to other people, they divorced their spouses and re-married each other after the publication of the book.

James R. Lewis, in The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, wrote that Michelle Remembers "must be treated with great skepticism, not least because literally all the charges involved seem drawn from accounts of West African secret societies from the 1950s, imported to Canada." Nichol Spanos has pointed out in addition to the lack of corroboration of Smith's memories, "skepticism appears warranted by the fact that some of these "memories" involve Michelle's encounters with supernatural beings." Spanos also mentions that Smith's father and unmentioned two siblings contradict the allegations made by Smith, as well as Pazder's time in West Africa during a time when there was widespread concern over secret, blood-drinking, cannibalistic cults.

Despite the lack of evidence and inconsistencies surrounding the allegations made in Michelle Remembers, there are still people who believe that Smith's claims of abuse are the literal truth and that there is a vast, yet secretive worldwide conspiracy of intergenerational satanic worshipers abusing and murdering children and adults.

The book's contents have been unsubstantiated by any evidence beyond Smith's testimony. Despite this, the book inspired copy-cat accusations throughout the world, against in many cases members of the Church of Satan, non-satanic occultists, and others with no connection to the occult.

If not for this horribly-written piece of fiction masquerading as truth, we never would've seen the "Satanic Panic" that gripped both the US and UK in the early 80s, resulting in homes broken, families destroyed, and innocent people ruined w/minimal evidence..even US media, normally derided by a vocal minority as being "too liberal", devoted considerable airtime to this phenomenon, particularly Geraldo Rivera (though he later apologized for his role in fanning the flames).

That said, the book itself is poorly written and often laughable (check out the alleged poetry supposedly from Satan himself)...not only that, but I question the motive for writing it, considering how Smith and Pazder became an item - despite both being married @ the time - and later wed...can we say "conflict of interest"? While Pazder is now dead and I hate to speak ill, his "recovered memories" technique has long since been discredited, leaving one to speculate as to whether or not he put these wild ideas in his patient's head. Besides, the evidence is overwhelmingly stacked against the "victim" here:

- She makes no mention of having a sister...yet one was located, and strongly denied all accusations made (as did her father)
- Despite the length of some rituals described in the books (some for weeks at a time), school records show no periods of extended absences
- A friend of her first husband (Doug Smith) said that she never showed any signs of emotional distress, etc. the whole time they were married
- One reviewer, elsewhere on this page, offered testimony to Michelle's apparent mental instability

Why do you think, once these revelations came to light, Smith-Pazder stopped giving interviews? Could it be because she had no leg to stand on anymore?

And to "a reader" (notice how those who defend these wild tales always remain anonymous? What are they hiding?), your arguments don't hold water...for starters, Laurel Wilson/Lauren Stratford/Laura Grabowski was exposed as a fraud way back in 1989, resulting in her alleged "true story" (Satan's Underground) being pulled from print, for many of the same reasons Smith-Pazder's story was debunked (no extended absences from school, history of mental problems, unmentioned relatives who quickly denied the events she described, etc.), to say nothing of her 1999 attempt at posing as a Holocaust survivor. Ditto Mike Warnke, whose career's been dead in the water since 1993 following a hard-hitting expose.

Speaking of which, it's not just the non-Christian sources you mentioned who are debunking these liars...Cornerstone magazine, a Christian publication, wrote the articles debunking both Stratford and Warnke's claims, and if you read their interview w/Anton LaVey (pays to know thine enemy), you'll see that true Satanism is far more subtle and nothing like what the Smith-Pazders of the world want you to believe.

As for your quote from Hitler (whose religion you mis-stated...he was a Christian, if in name only), I've got one for you from that great showman, PT Barnum: "There's a sucker born every minute".

One of the great hoaxes of the last century. Satan himself marks Michelle with his tail to her neck? Puhleeeze!

I'm astounded that this appalling and dangerous book is still in print; the publishers should be ashamed. This piece of fiction was dredged out of the mind of a disturbed young woman by her psychiatrist. Dr Pazder encouraged Michelle to believe her fantasies, thus damaging a disturbed person even more.

(They married after he was cited in divorce proceedings. In Britain that would be called professional misconduct; I don't know if that applies in the States.)

I call this book dangerous because it almost single-handedly sparked off the urban myth and moral panic of so-called "Satanic Ritual Abuse" spread by a small number of Evangelical Christians in the 1980s. Parents were falsely accused of abuse, and children were torn away from their families by over-zealous social workers who had been taken in by this dross, some not being returned for several years. Almost no one in authority has ever apologised.

If you want to know the truth about "Satanic Ritual Abuse", read Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism by Gareth J Medway, or Speak of the Devil : Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England by Prof Jean la Fontaine, who researched and wrote the British Government's official report on the subject.

Then throw Michelle Remembers in the rubbish bin where it belongs.

just a few facts about this book- from someone who knows, i live in victoria and know the priest from the book. michelle is a real person-but she is crazy and the doctor just wanted to make money off a book. this is what the priest from the book told me anyway. although if you are from victoria and reading this book it is kinda creepy when they talk about thetis lake, the malahat, rossbay cemetery, and the secret tunnels under victoria, well not so secret, all victorians know they're there!

This book almost single-handidly triggered the Satanic Panic when it was published in 1980. Although there never were any court cases involving Satanic Ritual Abuse before this book was published, many individuals came forward in the early 1980s claiming to have been abused in just the same way as Michelle. This book has been investigated by three independent groups. They all agree that it is a hoax, based on Dr. Pazder's studies of African native rituals.

It is a fascinating book if read as a work of horror fiction. Just don't believe that any of it actually happened. Thousands of children (now young adults) and hundreds of adults have had their lives destroyed by the panic that was triggered by this book -- a panic which is only now subsiding. Smith and Pazder have a lot to account for.

Michelle Smith & Dr. Lawrence Pazder Michelle Remembers (1980). This is the first and probably the most important of the Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) books. It allegedly documents horrendous abuse suffered by Michelle at the hands of a Satanic cult. This single book gave a kick start to the entire SRA movement in the early 1980's. The Wiccan Information Network and other groups have found that much of the book content was derived from Dr. Pazder's personal studies of African native rituals, rather than from Michelle's memories. When the accuracy of his book was questioned during a seminar, Dr. Pazder stated that he and Michelle had never claimed that the events in the book actually happened! He is now promoting "Sadistic Ritual Abuse" as the new definition of SRA. He believes that the Satanic conspiracy does not exist. He believes that recovered memories of SRA during childhood are often based on real memories of incest to which a false overlay of Satanic ri! tual has been added.

It's not surprising that there are literal-minded, dichotomous thinkers who like this stuff. It is more disheartening that people with doctoral and medical degrees and board certification in psychiatry fell for it. For example, the top psychiatrists at the Rush-Pres. St Luke's Dissociative Disorders Unit in Chicago (before it was sued out of existence) perpetrated SRA on people who should themselves have known better.

If you like easy answers (devil causes all evil, childhood abuse causes all emotional discomfort) this is the book for you. The miracle here is how Michelle, Dr Pazder, and the incompetent ghost writer managed to make lurid tales of abuse so deadly dull.