Satan's Underground: The Extraordinary Story of One Woman's Escape [Paperback]

Lauren Stratford (Author), Johanna Michaelsen (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 1991

The remarkable story of one womanís escape and survival because of her strong faith in God from the evil underworld of pornography, sexual abuse, and ritualistic abuse.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ms. Stratford also is the author of Stripped Naked and I Know You're Hurting: Living Through Emotional Pain ,both published by Pelican.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Pelican Publishing (July 31, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882898760
• ISBN-13: 978-0882898766
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #650,411 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This proven hoax has been reissued?!, March 4, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Satan's Underground: The Extraordinary Story of One Woman's Escape (Paperback)

Folks, do yourselves a favor and type +"Lauren Stratford" +cornerstone into Google's search engine. The very first link you will probably see is one to Cornerstone magazine's website, there you will see an updated expose of this author.

Finding the truth is that easy.

It simply amazes me that I'd already seen this story exposed by Cornerstone around 15 years ago, the book was consequently dropped by her publisher, and she was able to go on to concoct yet another tale (again debunked by Cornerstone - see the link) AND get this old story republished!!

She's a victim of a Satanic cult and NOW a holocaust victim as well!

But the joke's on you, folks. You paid for it...

70 of 96 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars the book is the fabrication of a sick person, July 28, 2001

By 

James J. Lippard "skeptic" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Satan's Underground: The Extraordinary Story of One Woman's Escape (Paperback)

This book, published in 1988, was shown to be almost entirely fabrication by an investigative report published in 1990 in the Christian magazine Cornerstone (copies of this article have circulated the net). The book was reissued in July 1991 by a different publisher: Pelican Publishing Co., a small Louisiana publisher. This new edition features cover blurbs from such people as Hal Lindsey and Johanna Michaelson (who helped get the book published in the first place, but who I thought accepted the Cornerstone criticisms) and Mike Warnke (whose claims of being a "former Satanist High Priest" have also been shown to be false by Cornerstone).

What is most galling about the new edition of the book, however, is its afterword, by three Los Angeles clinical psychologists, all women sporting either an M.D. or Ph.D. after their names. The two-page afterword does not address *any* of the Cornerstone criticisms, but alludes to them by saying that (paraphrase) "some critics state that this book should not have been published unless every single fact within it could be verified and documented." It goes on to say how unreasonable these critics are, and that numerous other people have reported stories "like" Lauren Stratford's. I suspect that the "some critics" referred to do not exist; that no one has made any such claim about Stratford's book. The Cornerstone criticism thoroughly documented the fact that the book is almost entirely a fabrication by Laurel Wilson (the real name of "Lauren Stratford"), a very disturbed young woman whose story has changed radically over time.

Surely both the publisher and these clinical psychologists must be aware of the details of these criticisms. To go ahead and republish the book is the height of irresponsibility.

33 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Nightmare of a different sort, November 30, 2004

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Satan's Underground: The Extraordinary Story of One Woman's Escape (Paperback)

Since its 1988 publication, this book has twice been revealed as false. In late 1989, Gretchen and Bob Passantino and Jon Trott exposed Lauren Stratford as Laurel Willson in an article in Cornerstone, still available on the web.

By 1998, Willson had morphed into a "Holocaust survivor." Some time earlier, she presented herself as Laura Grabowski to a group of child Holocaust survivors, who accepted her claim to be a Polish Jew, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and a victim of Dr. Joseph Mengele. She pretended to have been liberated to a Krakow orphanage in 1945 and brought to the United States, where a Gentile couple adopted her at nine or ten. In 1998, her poem "We Are One" appeared on the web. But like the story here, this appears to have been completely untrue.

In 1997, Willson/Stratford contacted Binjamin Wilkomirski with her story. He had published Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood in Europe in 1995. Schocken Books translated and published his story in the U.S. In 1997. Then in 1999, 60 Minutes broadcast a segment on Wilkomirski: He seemed to have been born in Switzerland as Bruno Grosjean, and later adopted and renamed Bruno Dossekker. Also in 1999, Philip Gourevitch wrote on Wilkomirski in The New Yorker, as did Elena Lappin in Granta. All three outfits believed Dossekker/Wilkomirski's story to be false.

Unfortunately for Willson/Stratford, she had already wound herself tightly to the Dossekker/Wilkomirski story: She claimed to be Lauren Grabowski, whom she said had known him in a Krakow orphanage. He, in turn, used Grabowski to corroborate his story. But the respective publications in 2001 and 2002 of The Wilkomirski Affair (Stefan Maechler) and A Life in Pieces: The Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski (Blake Eskin) blew her cover as well.

Gretchen and Bob Passantino and Jon Trott revisited the Willson/Stratford story laid out in this book in Cornerstone in October 1999 (also still on the web). This time, they discussed her apparent fakery as Grabowski, and suggested that Grabowski was actually an American Christian who since her youth had fabricated stories about her alleged victimhood, the most well-publicized case being in this book.

Alas, Dossekker/Wilkomirski's unraveling also involved that of Stratford, whose Social Security number, according to Maechler, is one and the same as that of Grabowski, the claimed survivor. He also suggested that Satan's Underground and Fragments contain startling similarities.

Unfortunately, this book obscures an ongoing and real-world problem of child abuse. However, I for one, don't believe that Stratford was a victim of anything but her own fantasies.

--Alyssa A. Lappen